Aerial

The Twenty-Fifth Chapter

If love were a tangible object, Harry imagines it as something he could sink his teeth into. Tasting of cherry pie filling, gooey and sugary, tacky and habit-forming. Amorphous and pink in shape and color; covered in soft, squishy and billowing spikes that curl on the ends. The tips of each plume would fade into a transparent flamingo color that quivers when he taps it with the pad of his finger, the entire shapeless entity sighing and thawing as he cradles it in the palms of his hands. It would have an incredibly sturdy center; a quickly swirling cloud trapped inside of a glass marble, the nebula of the love-object creating an obscure scaffolding to keep the entire cryptic phenomenon in place.

If pain were a tangible object, Harry imagines it as his morning wood.

It only takes one single flash of recall for Harry to remember where he is upon waking; that life-changing moment when your body crashed into the passenger door of his pink van, his hands disappearing inside of your sweater, your lips shaping a silent rendition of his name as soon as your palms touched his bare stomach. His eyes peel open followed by the rest of the evening gradually flickering to life, like the switch of a heavy lever that activates a hundred staggered, struggling overhead stage lights one-by-one to illuminate a dark theatre.

The supple first kiss, the feverish second kiss, skin and sighs and moans and tongues and fingers and grins so wide that making out is futile but that's perfectly okay because fuck, you are so, so sexy and you have no fucking idea.

Mint. Virginal. Sweet. Chrome. Hot as fuck. Cherry.

He's won you over. And he can still hardly fucking believe it.

Harry doesn't even bother to take in his surroundings. He doesn't need to. He's an addict and he can feel his fix right beside him, curled up in one of his favorite button-down shirts, your hair spread out across your pillow and a thousand more layers of secrets to peel back. And the single promise that he makes to himself this morning is that he will unearth at least one, something that he can fixate on and obsess over in the spare seconds today where his mind wanders from his catcher's lock on the trapeze to the magnificent clasp you have on his haunted heart.

His hands swipe down his face as if to revive his muscles, his eyes focusing on the stucco ceiling of your bedroom to sketch imaginary rabbits and dragons in the painted molding. He guides one hand further, down his chest and stomach, straight past the elastic of his underwear for a swipe across his drippy slit and a quick adjustment to his aching length, his teeth bitten into his bottom lip to stifle any whimpers of arousal.

He rolls onto his side to survey your sleeping form curled on your side away from him; your waist dipping inward and your hip swelling outward, the curve of your ass, the blink of smooth skin peeking out from your mint green bloomers. He traces his fingertips down your side before tossing his arm across your stomach to tuck your slack body into his, shaping a fitted cocoon against your back and threading your legs together into a close, loving knot. A soft moan skids out of his scratchy throat at the comforting warmth, the impression of your figure coming to life and melting with his, a heaping forkful of fluffy, spellbound pancakes and yearning maple syrup dripping from the corners of his lips.

Harry was hoping that the gravity of your violently shaken worlds would make more sense through the process of his dreams, but everything still feels so inconceivable that he's certain he's stepped into an alternate universe. For a moment, he fears that you'll recoil and change your mind when you're met with the rippling tide of daybreak, but then he remembers the effort that you went through to prepare yourself for your date. Hair down, just for him. Trousers, a hue of cotton candy pink, just for him. Those two salacious embroidered cherries nestled right in between your sacred tits, just for him. The warm declarative metal of his ruby ring bundled onto your finger, the way it felt swiveling down his chest. Just for him.