✓ Wrong Moves and Knife Wounds /h.s./

[04] connect the dots and mental notes

outside

She's kneeling in front of him in a matter of minutes. Almost half an hour later.

He looks up at her and then down at what she's wearing. Ripped jeans with the top button unmade. Her top half is adorned in a large sweater and her hair is a mess behind her head. He wonders how she looks with her hair loose. Penelope's hair looks nice when it's loose and when it's put up. Past, he has to remind himself. People think it's odd to speak of the dead in the present tense.

Rory's exposed knees scape against the wet cement and Harry should cringe at the fact that that must hurt, but he doesn't. Instead, he just continues looking at her. She looks worried. Maybe she's dealing with something like he is.

"Hi," he finally says when he notices that she's shivering. The wind picked up minutes before she arrived. His skin feels hot and cold at the same time.

"Are you okay? Can you tell me why you're out here?"

"I couldn't breathe in there," he answers quietly. She simply nods, mouth opening and ready to speak when the door behind them opens and the doorman emerges, hugging a jacket to his chest as he points at them both.

"You can't loiter here."

Harry stays quiet, still crouched in front of Rory. What kind of name is Rory for a girl?

"We were just about to go inside now, thank you," she speaks up. Her voice is soft and gentle and he isn't familiar with it. He doesn't know if it's trustworthy. "Do you want to go up? We can take a walk if you still feel like you can't breathe."

He shakes his head and stands to his feet, reaching down to pull her up by her wrists. They're clean. Her eyes aren't dark either. They don't remind him of shadows and skeletons. They don't make him feel guilty, but Penelope is always in his head so Rory doesn't have to have dark eyes or scarred wrists to make him feel guilty. Pen is doing that for him already. "I'll go inside," he says, pushing past the doorman and through the exit staircase door.

He hasn't been in an elevator since the day he met Penelope. He remembers her telling him to take the steps when they went home because she liked being alone in the elevator. She would walk into his apartment minutes later even though he was only on the third floor. "Great," Rory's voice pulls him from his thoughts.

When they get into the new apartment, he looks at the mess of boxes and the scatter of knives from when he knocked one over. Rory presses a hand to her lips as she looks at everything. He feels attacked, but he asked her to do this. He gave her permission to look at him and judge. He can see her connecting the dots right now.

She looks at the ceiling where the light should be, but there are no lightbulbs. She drags her eyes to the boxes, to the sloppy way he'd written the names. All of the room names are written in small letters except for the kitchen box that's written in sloppy, uppercase letters.

She's figuring him out and he's getting scared.

There's a bunch of post-it notes slipping from the kitchen box. Harry forgot to throw them out. They remind him that he used to leave notes to Penelope. Maybe Rory is connecting the dots. Maybe she knows why they're in the kitchen box. Maybe she knows Pen is in the kitchen box. She looks at him blankly before parting her lips. He half expects her to ask something like, 'How did it feel to get away with murder?' or, 'How did her blood feel when she coughed it up all over you?'