Incandescent | H.S

Part Forty-Seven: Setting Suns & Swallowed Stars

It was an uneasy sensation to feel so displaced next to the person you loved the most. An adoration once so consuming and enthralling, now a soul shredding enmity. A poisoned vastness that you both struggled to find the good in.

While painfully aware of each other, you kept to yourselves on the car ride back to Harry's house. It was raining, only a light trickle for now, and yet you could sense the storm that would roll in as your night progressed.

You stared out the window, feeling small and insignificant. As damaged as the bond was between you and Harry, he had convinced you to leave the shit show of a night and head home. He wanted to talk there, in a private space. Although all he could sense was doom, the last thing he wanted was to continue what was happening in a bar.

All cards were on the table now. Spread out and exposed to each other. As bitter and toxic as the admissions had been, everything was out in the open. Now all you had to do was decide where to go from here.

I don't know how to be yours, anymore.

A confession so brutal, it actually felt like Harry had been kicked in the chest. A cherry-hued boot that struck him deep and harsh. Leaving him flat on his back, winding and struggling to breathe past the agony it caused him.

The car pulled up outside of Harry's house, and you thanked the driver before heading into his home. It felt alien. Like you didn't belong there. Like the walls had already rejected your existence. Your chest felt like it was being ripped apart, your throat burning with a thick ball of sadness that you wanted to weep from your body.

Harry lagged behind you, shutting the door before shedding himself of his jacket. He watched you, on edge as you kicked off your shoes and ran your hands through your hair with a shaky sigh.

You met his eyes and almost fell apart all over again. The intensity of the pain stripped all of your stability and you fell back onto the couch in exhaustion. Harry followed suit and you noted the considerable space between you. Both physical and mental.

His expression destroyed you. What was said at the bar had struck a sensitive nerve he never knew existed. One that became exposed once he knew he had the ability to hurt you as he had. He looked devastated. Like he could tell what was coming.

You didn't know what to say. The thought of being apart from him was unbearable to conceptualise. However, at the rate your relationship with him was going, so was staying. Because how could you? The man sitting next to you had become a weakness for you.

You let him project his issues onto you, let him use you as a soundboard but negated against anything you had to say. It wasn't healthy. It was eating away at you, and you could sense what remained of this bond being deteriorated into shreds of bitterness and hatred.

If you had to walk away from him tonight, you wanted to leave this while you could still find a hold of minor parts of you that were still intact. Tiny specks that had been warmed by his sunlight yet hadn't been eroded by his storms.

"There was nothing stronger than us." You whispered, unsure of how to tread.

By the look in his eyes, there was no use in trying to be careful about it. It would hurt regardless.

"Was?"

"Was."

Harry clenched his jaw, blinking up at the ceiling as tears threatened to flood his cheeks. The pain was excruciating. The last thing he wanted to do was hurt you. But his own pain from his anxieties had festered so broadly, he couldn't sense your anguish past his own. And even though you'd had to spell it out for him every time, it wasn't as if he could prevent it. He was fucking selfish.