Impact (H.S. AU) (COMPLETED)

25 * EVERY BREATH YOU TAKE * 25

HARRY

How does she do this to me? How does she make my heart beat faster and my head pound harder? How does she flood every thought that pops into my mind and influence every move I make? Every fiber of my being wants to turn around and go back for her, to apologize for being an idiot and tell her about the way she makes my body feel like I'm floating.

It's otherworldly, indescribable. The way her eyes can burn into mine and inflict the sensation that they do. They rattle my bones, stir up my breathing, get my heart truly beating. Everything about her is so precise and spectacular. The angle of her nose and the lines of her lips, the fiery curls of her hair and the warm golden brown of her eyes. She makes me crazy, insane even. I hear her voice in my head, sweet and soft or sometimes loud and strangled. Either way it is music, a piece of art meant to be cherished rather than strung in a line to make a sentence and forced into un-wanting eardrums.

I lied to her again when I told her I wasn't going home. My instinct was to go to the bar and drink away the feeling of the boulder sitting on my chest but with her voice in my head and the image of her behind my eyelids I couldn't bring myself to do it.

I walk inside and despite having already taken a shower today, I find myself walking into the bathroom and starting the water. I step into the shower with a grimace, my leg is still sore from the fight last night. I look down to see my torso covered in bruises, some worse than others. A mix of purple and blues adding to the black sketches across my skin. I let my eyes travel across my skin and I wonder how she looks at me and isn't horrified. The bruises, scrapes, and bumps all over me. The angry red blotches across my stomach from a car airbag and the giant scars down my back.

The water stings as it hits them, cascading down my back and I have to remind myself that it's all in my head. I reach my hand over my head to run it along the divots in my skin where they reside, the deep scars scraping down my spine. I flinch as my fingertips just barely brush the tip of one of them. It doesn't hurt, my body simply remembers where it's supposed to hurt, it's not real.

I hear my old shrink's voice in my head, reminding me of the three steps to getting through psychosomatic injuries and it makes me feel nauseous. The water is far too hot, but I welcome it gladly as it scorches my skin in the same places her hands have touched me. I can still feel them, soft and small as they trace the black lines across my skin and hold my face so gently as if I'm something to be protected.

I run my fingers along my wet skin wishing for the burn that accompanies her each and every touch, but I am cold. No matter how hot the water I'm freezing, the scorching cascade down my back is no match for the inferno she creates within my veins. No number of cigarettes could give me the high I get from her lips on mine. The electricity that runs up my spine when her fingertips brush my skin cannot be met by any amount of adrenaline from any fight.

There is not a number, not a description, not a word to describe the way she makes me feel and the way she has impacted me.

JESS

How does he do this? How does he melt my insides and rip my heart out all in the same sentence? Why do I still want to turn around and chase his car down after it all. After all the secrets and the yelling, after everything he's done I still want to be in his arms. I still want to wrap my arms around his neck and pull him impossibly close to me.

His voice won't get out of my head, smooth and velvety or rough and raging there is never an in-between with him. I can hear his laugh in my mind, it fills a room and never fails to make me smile. I can picture him, his beautiful viridian irises as they look up into my eyes from underneath his rich curls that frame his face. I can't take my eyes off him, god he looks like an Adonis when I'm looking up at him like this. His eyes, his cheekbones, his jaw, his lips. He looks like a protagonist, like the one that wins in the end, how appropriate.