Dealing With Absence » h. styles au

53ᴿᴰ CHAPTER

                                         53ᴿᴰ CHAPTER 

        "Love unlocks doors and opens windows that weren't even there before" 

The pair of lips pressed to her neck stop, at some point, pressing a warm trail of kisses from behind her ear to her shoulders and then back, completely ceasing movement and just remaining there.

It feels like hours until despair finally subsides and Elisha is breathing properly again, the same lips stretching against her skin as they seem to curve into a faint smile.

The arms around her waist are tight and leave room for few close to none movement, the hands gripping at her hips with fingers digging into the flesh. It’s soothing somehow, how silence wraps around them easily, even the city outside the window losing life as the individual lights lull into sleep along with their owners. There’s a bright centre somewhere, where buses are long parked and the magic of one of the most demanded cities still lives, even though the magic is long gone for Elisha.

Between four moulded walls and stained carpet, barely any furniture in this old room and years of restrained dreams, Leesh wonders if she even knows what magic means anymore. Wonders where the time when London was actually appealing has gone; if it even existed, at some point. She’s sure it did.

A muffled laugh echoes in the room and vibrates against her skin, and for a while she considers it being her own, until his lips brush against her neck again.

“Are you quite done yet?” Harry questions, pulling her closer, closing his eyes as his lashes fanning against her cheeks. He breathes out another tiny laugh before applying pressure to the place the moisture from the tears still remain, lifting a hand to brush it away with the sleeve of his jumper.

When she tilts her head to the side, Harry’s eyeing her curiously, the ghost of a smirk still playing over his lips and he stills his hand against her skin, freeing his fingers from the material so he can run them underneath the pooled water under her eyes. It feels almost like wind, just a brush and then the sensation is gone, except not really, because his fingers refuse to move away from her features.

It’s actually funny, because even though her mind is swimming in thoughts of ‘God is this really him’ and ‘it’s been so long since you actually touched me’, of images painted by memories that seem so far yet so present, of touches and words from a lifetime ago that still seem to surge some effect over her, and, mostly, of words of apology and frustration, the first thing her brain forces her to do is… laugh.

It’s funny because it actually isn’t; because this laugh sounds choked from the tears and desperate from the feeling of tightness squeezing her heart inside her chest. It’s a laugh she can’t control as it bursts all the way out of her compressed lungs, like the sound is being squeezed out of her and trapping all the words she had never really planned behind.

Jesus Christ, she sounds like an utter freak.

And even then, the look on Harry’s eyes is nothing but soft. The creases between his eyebrows are just light, now, and his lips are obliviously parted, twitched up on the edges, the white of his teeth nipping gently on the lower flesh. His hair is freed from his usual beanies and headbands (but then again, when did that become usual? When did Elisha become enough part of his life to watch as changes turned into casualties?), curls falling loose around his face and strands escaping to the front of his eyes.

She laughs again and on impulse reaches out a hand to run through his fringe and comb it back on his head, carding her fingers through the mess over his scalp and not pulling away as she turns on his grip so they are face to face, now both of her hands sinking into the velvety touch.