The hours ticked by slowly as Harry and Don murmured to one another in his living room, the hard drive linked up to a laptop as they tried to find what they were looking for.
A code.
I had been perched on top of the kitchen counter, legs crossed underneath me, thinking over what the dead sparrow had said to me.
It's all up here...in your mind....
You'll know it when you see it....
I was stuck on his words.
What we needed to find the code was already there in our memories. How could I distinguish what was a real memory and what was a facade?
"Harry?" My voice breaks through their hushed tones and both sets of eyes snap up to mine as if they just realized I was still there.
"What are your memories like?" His dark brown eye brow lifts just enough to let me know that he is both confused and intrigued by my train of thought.
For the first time in hours, Harry stood up from the couch and made his way over to where I sat on the counter top.
The languid motion of his hips as he walked towards me were annoyingly fascinating.
If I knew what arousal was....I'd think that the sensual display of masculinity through his movements would in fact arouse me.
But I did not feel such things.
Pleasure was something unknown to me.
Once the brown haired menace was stood in front of me with his long arms crossed in front of his taut chest, my focus was directed from his waist up to his glowing eyes.
"Like what you see little bird?" A sensation I am not privy too runs through my body and I force my heart rate to deescalate.
This is strange.
He is strange.
"What's your earliest memory?" My tone is clipped and by the way his muscles clench and then relax give him away.
He is uncomfortable.
He is defiant.
"What would that have to do with anything? They're all fail safes. I've told you this already." I roll my eyes and scoff. The attitude is really not my favorite thing about the beauty with the strawberry lips.
I have a favorite thing?
.....What is it?
"Just tell me what your earliest memory is. It's not a difficult question to answer." Harry eyed me warily, reaching a pointer finger up to his ear to scratch behind it.
He is nervous.
"Well...the one where I am holding someone's hand when I was little but it's the same one you have so I know it isn't real. It's just one of those blocks the Agency created." He shrugged like what he'd just said was a simple fact but something about it was nagging at my mind.
"Harry...do others have that memory? The exact same one?" I looked to Don who was glancing between the two of us. When he saw that I was looking to him to answer he shook his head.
"I've tried to tell him...we don't all have the same memories. I have a voice in my head that sounds like the one he has, raspy, older, but....I don't have any memories of myself as a child." Harry pressed the palms of his hands into his eyes in complete frustration. His body was rigid with tension and looked like he could burst at any moment.
"There is no possible way those memories are real. There are too many similarities between what she said and mine."
"So what, you don't think that we could have known one another? That we were partners before all of this?" My tone was annoyed, something I wasn't used to feeling but it seemed around him that something was happening to me beyond my control.
"I KILLED HER!" He shouted suddenly and I felt my palms twitch to reach for my knife or gun but pushed down the instinct as I realized the panic in his eyes.
He was scared.
"I fucking killed my partner. I remember it." He croaked out and finally brought his eyes back up to mine. Those mossy green eyes were shining in a way I'd never seen before. Harry's breathing was erratic, his chest puffing in and out quickly in anxiety and I felt, for the first time, like I should be comforting him....but I didn't know how.
"I remember killing mine too." I whispered into the profound silence, looking to Don once more who was now leant forward, elbows resting on his knees as he studied the floor in contemplation.
When I looked to Harry again, I felt something stir inside of me. Something tickling at the back of my mind. A detail that I had noticed about that specific memory. Harry must have noticed my musings because he reached for my chin to pull my face back up to look into his. The touch of his fingers against my skin were like little licks of fire.
"What is it?" He asked gently and I frowned as I recalled the information that seemed out of place in that specific memory.
"When I killed my partner...I looked at myself," it was his turn to frown in confusion and I straightened up, his fingers falling from my chin and I felt like I could breathe again, "none of the other memories are from a point of view outside of myself or in a way where I literally look into my own eyes...it seems like it isn't a real memory. I mean, I think the voice is real...but more so as a warning." The brown haired man looked at me skeptically, not completely buying into my theory but then Don spoke up.
"His memory is exactly the same," Harry shot him a look that screamed for him to shut up but Don continued, "he said he looks into his own eyes at the end. I've told him that in a memory, a true memory, you can't look into your own eyes like that. A memory does not happen from a different point of view outside of yourself." Harry wouldn't look at me. He just kept staring at Don like he'd betrayed him.
"I killed her. That is a fact and there is no way," his green eyes turned to me then and the denial was embedded there, "that she is my Karenna. I don't care what either of you say. You are not her," and with that he stalked off into his bedroom, slamming the door behind him, leaving me there wondering how it could be so impossible for him to imagine that I might be who he'd been looking for....that we'd found one another after all of this time...
...and that we finally weren't alone anymore.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The realization that our memories might not be fake had us both startled...but no one is more startled than Harry. It seemed he had banked on the fact that those memories of himself as a child were figments of his imagination. Something concocted to make him feel not alone. "Fail safes" as he'd put them.
It was even more unrewarding that our memories specifically....had too many things in common.
I looked out of the bathroom, my hair soaking wet from the shower I'd just taken, and saw Harry sat at the edge of his bed looking out of the window. The moon was hung brilliantly in the sky, a giant iridescent ball that haloed the night sky in a stark whiteness that shined down upon the man looking up at it.
He looked lost.
My training never prepared me for comfort. In my line of work there was never any comforting after killing your assignment.
Hugging a dead corpse was frowned upon for many reasons.
My mind flicked back to the blood that had stained his shirt from where I had cut him earlier in the day. If he didn't clean it soon it'd get infected. That was not only common sense but medical training 101 for us.
"Hey." I stated into the silence and he did not move a muscle. It was as if he were here physically but completely gone inside.
I could understand that feeling at least.
Feeling empty was the only real thing I could comprehend.
"Harry." I tried again and this time I noticed a tick in his shoulders at the sound of my voice calling his name and slowly but surely, he turned his head to the side to acknowledge me.
"You need to clean that wound."
"What wound?" His voice was devoid of all its usual intonations. My eyebrows crinkled together before I willed myself to make the journey out of the bathroom to stand in front of the lost boy.
In the moonlight he was truly something else entirely. All the usual harsh edges and sharp carvings of his bone structure were drowned out by the ghostly light. It made him look ethereal...something not of this world.
I did not believe in angels...or God for that matter...and yet....
"What wound?" He asked again, his eyes still trained outside up at the moon and its sparkly friends polka dotting the dark sky. My mind worked its way through many different propositions and outcomes.
If he left it, it'd get infected, he'd run a fever, he'd be useless to me if we wanted to break the code.
If I cleaned it myself, he'd live to see another day and we'd hopefully figure this mess out before the Agency caught on to my betrayal. I had maybe another twelve hours before that occurred.
Plan B it was.
I reached my hand out and wiggled my fingers slightly to garner his attention. His peripheral vision caught sight of my hand and he finally brought his usual green eyes up to mine in complete confusion.
I too was confused.
I'd never seen a pair of eyes look so translucent before.
It was....captivating in the most seductive way...and yet...entirely innocent at the same time.
Before I could falter and make a fool of myself, I plucked his hand from where it rested against the bed and pulled it as gently as I could.
Sometimes I didn't know my own strength.
"Come. I inflicted the cut...I'll be the one to clean it...seeing as we're on the same side now and all." I teased and his eyebrow lifted challengingly.
"Whoever said we were on the same side?" The chewing of the side of his mouth, pursing his lips in the process, was his tell. He was trying not to smile.
I tugged on his hand once more and he finally obliged with an annoyed groan.
Fine. Die of an infected wound induced fever. See if I care.
When we arrive at the bathroom, Harry sits up on the counter and looks down at his shirt to see the blood stains that are now so dried they will never be removed from the cotton.
"The supplies are under the sink." He gently knocks his bare heel against the cabinet door and I lower myself down to grab them. In the process, I take notice of his feet dangling just slightly above the cold tiled floor.
There was something to say about a man barefoot in jeans. Even if said man's feet looked like they could choke you with as much enthusiasm as his hands.
I brought myself back up, supplies in hand, and began to sort through the items that I'd need.
"Lean back and lift your shirt." My tone was clipped and short, all business although my body was beginning to warm at the prospect of seeing those laurels tattooed into his hips that I'd seen from my observations in the beginning of all of this. I wasn't sure why that idea enticed me so much...but...I was...excited?
When I turned my attention back to the task at hand, cotton swab dripping with alcohol ready to be applied to the wound, my jaw almost dropped.
Almost.
Harry had, instead of following directions, pulled his shirt off in one sweep. His hair had just fallen back down to his shoulders as he dropped the ruined shirt onto the floor beneath him.
I was trained not to be caught off guard...
....but there I was....completely thrown.
"What....what are you doing? I just said to lift your shirt."
"I have to shower anyways so might as well." My nose scrunched up in confusion. Did he not know the process of cleaning a wound?
"Why am I cleaning your wound then if you are just going to take a shower and completely ruin it and then have to repeat the process all over again?"
The curly haired man smiled a smile that sent a thrill through me from the top of my head down to my toes.
"Maybe I just wanted you to touch me more than once." His words were thick and heavy with a tease that I did not know how to recover from. I did not understand it. I did not know what to do.
For the first time in my life...
I was left speechless.
My mouth opened and closed several times before he relented with a deep chuckle that reverberated through his chest.
"You look ridiculous. Set the swab down and I'll be right out."
I followed his command, set the swab down on the sterile cloth resting on the counter and practically ran out of the room closing the door behind me. I took a deep inhale and placed my hand to the back of my head where it was still sore as I listened to the shower turning on.
Had I hit my head that hard?
It was the only explanation for the escalation in these....emotions.
I felt sick to my stomach. I felt almost as if I had committed the highest treason or the mortalist of sins.
We do not feel.
"Didn't I say you were to feel nothing? Did I not warn you?"
I hiss and wince as the voice from the false memory resurfaces.
How could a memory that was not even my own still inflict so much fear.
A part of me felt that some aspect of this particular recollection had to be real. There was no way that the type of all encompassing fear that I was feeling now was not real in some way.
All memories had to start somewhere.
It was my turn to make my way to the edge of the bed and stare up at the night sky now. Reaching a hand out to feel the comforter, his spot where he had been seated was still warm to the touch and instead of sitting directly where he had just minutes ago. I placed myself just to the side of it so that my palm could feel the residual heat.
It felt.....nice.
I felt....not alone.
"It's a full moon." Startled by the deep tenor of his raspy voice, I snapped my head to the bathroom door behind me and saw his silhouette. He grabbed the supplies off of the counter and then padded his way over to where I sat, a beige towel hung far too low on his hips.
I tore my eyes away as he approached, forcing my breathing to remain neutral. I could not embarrass myself and my training in front of him. If I could read him easily then I knew for a fact he could read me too.
That was definitely something our training prepared us for.
"Here," he set the items down onto the mattress and swatted my arm to make me shift over into his former spot, "work your magic oh wicked one." His smirk crawled upon his watermelon flesh colored lips and my breathing slightly faltered.
Was he doing this on purpose?
He was. He had to be.
With a deep inhale, I reapplied the alcohol solution to the cotton swab and looked, for the first time, at the cut just below his belly button. A light trailing of dark, course hair disrupted the slash as it dusted its way down towards the towel.
Without a warning, I pressed the swab to his wound and dragged it along the rough edges. It wasn't too deep, but certainly deep enough to need stitches.
Harry's stomach clenched at my sudden assault and a rush of air was sucked in between his teeth.
"Christ, Karinne. Real gentle touch you've got there." He winced as I continued to move it along the ridges, collecting any dried blood he'd missed in the shower while simultaneously disinfecting the cut.
"I'd say I'm sorry, but I'm not a liar." My tone was flat, ungiving of the playfulness I had wanted to give him.
There were far too many thoughts running through my mind since our discovery that I had not allowed myself to process.
Harry was the boy in my memories.
I was the girl in his.
We had been forced a part for reasons unknown to us.
We had never killed one another.
We had loved each other.
My eyes dart up to his and they are already trained on mine. It's as if he could read my mind because his brows furrowed together and he looked away quickly to peer up at the moon.
Finishing up the disinfecting, I began to pick up the tweezers needed for stitching and Harry audibly groaned.
"Can we not...just yet?" I tilted my head to the side in confusion.
"Why?"
"M'not in the mood to be stabbed by you again. I'll do it later." I could not help the eye roll.
"You're impossible you know that?" I huffed and dropped the utensils from my fingers onto the bed and began to angrily put them back into the medical bag. Harry's eyes watched me warily but there was a twinkling in them that made me want to gauge them out.
"Sorry that some of us don't get off on the pain." His voice was dripping with condescension and I was having none of it.
My hand whipped out and gripped his jaw firmly and when he tried to grab for my wrist to break it away, my other hand wrapped around his making it pause in mid air while my bare foot snapped up to where his other had begun its ascent and locked it against the bed.
"You act like I chose to be this way," I seethed and poured all of my hatred I'd had stored inside of me into my words, "you act as if you aren't just as fucked up as I am."
Harry's breath came out ragged and deep. His anger matching mine, fire against fire. His eyes were a dark hue, an evergreen forest instead of the light mint.
"Get your hands off of me." I only clenched my fingers tighter on his jaw in response.
"Disappointed Harry? Disappointed your former partner can not only fight better than you but can also pin you down and match you in strength? Had you imagined some damsel in distress? Someone who needed you?" My words are pure gasoline to the flames in his eyes.
"Yes. I guess I'd hoped she'd be what I imagined her to be. Human. Not a heartless bitch devoid of emotion."
There it was.
It was something I'd only experienced through a now false memory.
Emotional pain.
I immediately recoiled and stepped away. My chest heaving and what seemed to be my heart physically breaking. I looked down to my chest to see if there were a gaping hole, blood, anything to explain what I was feeling inside but there was nothing.
My head spun.
This was not me. I did not feel.
I am wicked.
I cannot feel.
I pressed my hand into my chest and rubbed my sternum to try and alleviate the sensation but instead I felt like I was going to choke. My throat felt like it was being constricted of air and like something was lodged there.
What was happening to me?
"What is this?" I gasped and my entire face began to ache. I glared at Harry who looked to be calming down, the fires in his eyes slowly being put out.
"What did you do to me?" I demanded as my eyes began to prick suddenly and my heart began to pump harshly in my chest.
Green eyes found mine and looked to be inspecting my predicament.
"Did you poison me?! What did you do?! Spit it out!" I yelled as I took a couple of heated steps towards him but he was already on his feet.
He surveyed me like I was a specimen under a microscope.
"You look....," he started to say but then shook his head immediately dismissing whatever thought he'd had and then, with wide eyes, reached a hand up to my cheek. Before I could turn away, repulsed by his closeness, his index finger scraped against the skin there and pulled it back glistening.
"You're crying." He whispered and I swore I'd heard him wrong but when I reached my own shaking palms up to my cheeks, the sensitive pads of my fingers felt the warm liquid oozing out of my eyes and I sucked in a sharp breath.
"You're feeling." He murmured and then softly, gently, laid his warm hand against my cheek and with the soft tissue of his thumb, swiped the tears away.
"Why are you crying little bird?" He asked inquisitively, almost unbelieving that I am capable of such a feat.
He is not alone in that disbelief.
"I-I don't know. What you said....it....hurt." His eyes tightened on the edges and then softened all at once.
"Well....I guess you proved me wrong," I lifted an exasperated eyebrow and he blinded me with a toothy grin, "you're not a heartless bitch after all." I smacked his hand away from my cheek and he let out a cough of a laugh that sent a chill down my spine.
"What do you think this means?" I practically pleaded for him to have the answer but he just shrugged and sat back down on the bed.
"You're so helpful." I barked at him and again I was met with his laughter.
Mood swing much?
I slumped onto the bed and laid back, my arms thrown haphazardly around me in complete and total aggravation.
What was happening to me? Ever since I'd hit my head I'd been feeling....too much. None of it made sense.
"What do you feel right now Karinne?" Harry's voice floated over to me effectively disrupting my thoughts.
"Confused." He turned slightly to be able to see me but I just closed my eyes. I didn't want him to read the other emotions there still unknown to myself.
"What...." his voice drifted off into silence and only after a couple minutes did I finally open my eyes to see what he was up to.
Harry was looking down on me, his wet hair curling against his neck and shoulders as it dried slowly, and he looked lost again.
"What?"
"What do you feel when you look at me?"
My eyes immediately went to the ceiling.
If I were allowed to be attracted to someone, I would think I'd be attracted to him.
That had been one of the first things I had thought to myself when I'd spied on him that first night that seems like ages ago.
My heart began to beat wildly in my chest and I reached a hand up to it to try and soothe the chaotic thing.
"Attraction." The word slipped out on an exhale and I wished I could breathe it back in and out of existence. A quick glance at the being beside me bathed in moonlight and he looks...surprised.
"You're attracted to me." I did not confirm his statement, instead I looked to the ceiling and tried to will the swirls in my stomach away.
They were annoying me.
"Do you know what attraction is?" I nod my head.
"What makes you attracted to me?"
"Oh I don't know, have you looked at yourself in a mirror lately? It definitely isn't your charming personality." Another quick glance after my tirade and he is smirking down at me.
Annoying idiot.
"Well, you've obviously been with men before so you've been attracted to people before." I shook my head and gazed up once more.
"Never attracted to them. You know how it is. There isn't that....thing." I saw him nod in understanding and then the room went quiet.
My body was a complete mess. The blood pumping through my veins was heated and filled with electrical pulses that tingled with every pump of my heart. My thoughts were all over the place as well. I couldn't seem to see where he was going with this inquisition and I was beginning to worry that it was all at the expense of making a mockery of me.
That terrified me.
I think.
"I want to try something." He stated suddenly and I froze. My entire body was a solid block of ice at his words as they held a hint of something that I was not sure I could identify.
"Come." He said and I sat up like a mummy from its tomb.
"Come? Where?" He waved me over and so I stood. It seemed I did not have a choice.
As I walked towards him, the moonlight silhouetting him just so, I wondered if this was how we were before. I wondered if in our partnership...in our love affair...that he had this much control over me.
A gentle whisper in the back of my head seductively said yes.
I stood before him in his borrowed pale t-shirt and my worn out jeans and waited for his next request. I did not know this side of me, this obedient side, but he seemed to be more in touch with these so called emotions that I was having so I waited...patiently....well as patiently as I could.
"What now?" I huffed out and he tilted his head to the side.
"Touch me."
My eyes practically went cross eyed.
"Excuse me?!" I squeaked out and a wolfish grin spread across his perfectly sculpted face. His eyes penetrated deeply into mine.
"I think you should try touching me...as long as you feel comfortable."
"And if I'm not comfortable?!"
"Then...I stitch myself up and we go to bed." I eyed him suspiciously and suddenly smacked him across the face and pointed my finger directly in front of his nose as he turned his attention back to me from the impact with his eyes filled with annoyance.
"That's for trying to take advantage of the situation," I then pull my knife out and place it at the space below his belly button, where my blade found its home against his flawless skin earlier today, "and this," I shoved the knife down into the towel next to his length and he sucks in a sharp breath, "this is your first and only warning."
Harry's eyes were wide and filled with the slightest bit of fear but also laced with complete understanding as well as acceptance that he might have overstepped.
An idea popped into my head.
I could explore these feelings.
But on my own terms.
"Drop the towel." I stated and Harry's entire body went rigid. Where he had been the picture of cool and calm before, now he was, dare I say, nervous.
"Wh-what?" He asked hesitantly as I withdrew the knife and placed it back into the band of my jeans. The smirk he'd once had plastered on his face was now strapped to mine.
"I said...drop. the. towel. Harry....now." At first he looked like he was going to fight me on it...but then...there was a glint in his eyes that told a different story.
Painfully slow, Harry brought his large and veiny hands to the fluffy towel wrapped along his hips and unraveled it before dropping it to the ground. My eyes stayed level with his, not completely interested in what was between his legs, as I'd practically seen it earlier in the day with my knife threatening to cut it off.
Harry's green eyes looked down into mine with a challenging stare, as if he were daring me to make the next move.
He was trying to call my bluff.
As my eyes trailed down his torso and stopped just at his navel, I realized that maybe...maybe I had bitten off more than I could chew.
My stomach began to flutter again and my hand instinctively went there to feel for the cause and Harry, observant as ever, noticed the movement and gave me a more softened look.
"Just start small Karinne. Begin where you want to feel first."
Where did I want to feel first?
My heart accelerated as my eyes met his plush lips that were slightly parted now, taking small breaths of air as his heart, too, began to quicken.
I had thought about those lips for what felt like years even though it had only been several days.
I took a hesitant step forward and his eyes reacted to each movement I made. It seemed that even though we both were predatory animals...we both were feeling very much like prey.
"Can I-um...may I..." my voice had escaped me and I couldn't find a way to ask for permission but Harry just nodded, his hooded eyes dropping down to my lips and his pink tongue darted out to lick his own in anticipation.
"You don't have to ask. We never did before." I sucked in an inhale of breath.
Was he admitting that I was the girl in his memories?
Was he accepting that I was his?
A nod, that was all I could give him. I couldn't question how he would know such a thing or if he were only saying it to get what he wanted out of me but it was all I had needed to make me jump off of the ledge and free fall.
I placed my small hand against his cheek where I'd just struck him. The skin slightly warmer there compared to the rest and the feeling was different. In all the times I had touched him before it was out of survival, instinct, aggression. Now I was touching him to feel, to caress, to explore.
The slight stubble of his jaw line tickled the pads of my fingers as I drifted them down to trace the expert sculpting of the bone there. I could hear his breathing coming in faster and deeper as my index and middle fingers ghosted across his bottom lip. My focus had been so intent on my exploration that I hadn't even been reading his body language nor looked into those expressive eyes that gave away entirely too much information.
They were deep black pools now. The minty green long gone and replaced with dilated pupils that screamed for more of my touch.
It was then, at my realization that he too was feeling for me what I was feeling for him, that I brought my fingers to his hair, coiled them into the luscious, soft curls and collided my lips with his.
His lips felt like flower petals but they molded into mine with a force that was unlike anything I'd ever felt before. Sure, I'd kissed plenty of people in my day, but none of it had ever felt like anything.
This felt like he was made for me.
My free hand reached up to his chest and drifted over the swallow tattoo before lifting up and over his prominent clavicle. The other was grasped onto the back of his head like its entire life depended on it.
Harry deepened the kiss, tilting his head to the side to gain entrance to my mouth and slowly, his tongue reached in to flick teasingly against mine. A moan, that I did not realize I had been holding in, slipped past my throat and spilled into his mouth.
Suddenly, his hands were latched onto my waist and pushing me back until I hit the bed behind me. I know I had assumed control, I remembered having it, but now here I was underneath him and I could feel his delicious weight sinking into me and it immediately no longer mattered to me who had the upper hand.
All I knew was that I wanted him.
Harry broke the kiss and began to kiss down the side of my mouth, to my jaw, and then into the crevice by my ear that pounded with my heart beat. The sound of his breath hitting my ear sent something entirely new through my body and stirred a warmth between my legs.
"This, off." He pulled at his shirt clinging to my body and I obediently heaved it off of myself like it was riddled with the plague.
"This....this off too." He demanded as he pulled at the band of my jeans. An idea snuck its way into the forefront of my mind.
"As you wish." My voice sweetly obeyed and in his drunken state he allowed me the slightest amount of room, the only room I needed to flip him over and straddle his narrow hips. He looked completely taken aback as I reached my hand down to his neck and clamped my hand around his strong and slender throat.
I smiled sweetly down at him as I pulled the knife out from its hiding place and Harry's eyes tripled in size.
"Wait! You were in complete control! I wasn't trying to force anything!" He looked panicked. Clearly his penis's previous encounter with my knife was crossing his beautiful little mind and I couldn't help the laugh that tumbled out of me. I tossed the knife behind my back and it landed perfectly into the wall.
"Oh Harry...you're too easy." The fear in his expression was replaced with pursed lips and sparkling in his eyes. I heard a soft popping sound and looked down to see his fingers deftly working the buttons on my jeans and then pulling the zipper down. My shocked eyes looked up to his that were dancing with mischief.
"Tell me...how deep does that pain kink of yours go, hm?" He reached a hand into the back of my jeans and grabbed a handful of the flesh there, squeezing to the cusp of discomfort with the most sinister smile painted upon his freshly reddened lips.
All I could do was gasp.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Author's Note:
Well..........
................
...............
that took a turn.
-Balletclutz