Daddy issues || h.s

3.2

"Come, I want to try something." Harry said and took her hand. He led her away from the maroon folder with the black and white photos, and towards dirty pencils and fresh paint. 

"Jump," he said, resting his hands on her full hips. She bent her knees, and her toes took flight from the floor and hung in the air as she gracefully jumped up and landed on the table. "Do you trust me?" He asked. She nodded and said: "I would trust you with anything, you know that." As she spoke the words, pink roses bloomed on his cheeks, just like they had done on hers when he had spoken them.

He leant in, pressing his lips against hers in a soft kiss. One hand was in her hair, while the other rested oh her thigh. He tugged at her t-shirt and she broke the kiss just long enough to see it land on the floor. Their lips hugged again, hand his arms wrapped around her. She giggled as she felt him unclasp her bra, and soon that too fell to the floor. 

"Now," he said, kissing her chest, his lips brushing over the faded scars, leaving wet marks on her skin. "I have thanked you so many times for planting flowers in my chest, but I don't think you realise how truly beautiful they are. So I want to show you, I want to show you what the inside of my chest looks like."

His lips left hers, her erratic breathing the only evidence they had ever been there. She closed her eyes and sighed, feeling naked without his arms around her. 

"Open your eyes," he said, and she did. He held a paintbrush in his right hand, the bristles dripping with paint. "Are you ready?" She nodded, and suddenly she felt the feathery touch of the brush against her skin. His brushstrokes were light, almost like soft kisses, but as the paint spread out across her chest, she did not see the beautiful flowers taking form, because her eyes were trained on the boy in front of her. 

She felt herself drown in his beauty, and when he looked up at her, she wandered in the green forests of his eyes. The trees in them were tall, their green colour so bright it almost hurt her eyes, but their roots were deep, stretching down into the soil. And she knew, no matter how strong the storm, the trees would never fall.

"There," he eventually said, and put down the brush. Adelaide looked down, and found her chest gone. Blue flowers had sprung from her ribs, and green leaves broke forth from her lungs. From her heart there grew red roses, and on her neck there were purple bellflowers. But out of all the flowers, one stood out. It repeated itself over and over again, popping up between the other flowers, as if the tree they grew on was the base of all the other roots. The flower was small. It was pink. And it was soft.

It was a cherry blossom.

"Wow," she said, looking down at her paint-covered body. "They're beautiful."  

"May I?" Harry asked and lifted an old camera. Adelaide nodded, and when she heard him press the button, she giggled, lifting her hand to cover her mouth. Her sudden movement caused her face to blur, and years later, when the photo was finally developed, it was found that not even a blurry photo could dull her beauty.

But when the photograph was carried out of the darkroom, they found it was not the only photo they had taken that day. In fact, there were three. The first one showed Adelaide, her hand covering her mouth, the flowers on her chest in full bloom. The second one showed not only her chest, but his too. They were pressed against each other, the paint transferring from her chest to his. She laughed when she pulled him to her, feeling the paint smudge his clean skin. Then she grabbed the camera, snapping a photo of the faded paint on his chest. 

"Now you know what the flowers in my chest looks like too. They may not be as perfect as yours, and they may be a bit unclear, the colours blending into each other, but you planted them there, and not even the best florist in the world could make them grow stronger than you have done." She said, and as his lips fell upon hers, and their hearts stretched out towards each other, the paint smudged even more, and once again, the flowers were only in their chests.

Out of all his artworks, those three photos were the ones that travelled the world. They hung in the worlds most famous museums, side by side, letting people see the inside of their chests. And if they had both lived to see it, Harry and Adelaide would have laughed at the impeccable irony of how it was the image of their love, and not their love itself that would last forever.