✓ Wrong Moves and Knife Wounds /h.s./

[07] rain drops and pain

bar

They're back at the bar only this time the music isn't as loud as it was before. Rory still has her index cards in her jacket pocket. Harry thinks she carries them everywhere she goes.

Like how he carries hand sanitizer. He sometimes has these moment when his hands feel different. They feel dirty and slow, unlike how they should, so he's started carrying hand sanitizer to help get rid of the feeling.

They've been sitting in silence for so long with just the music in the background. The  dubstep is cutting through his ears and shaking his body. He knows Rory is waiting for him to say something, so he takes in a breath, preparing himself for whatever's to come.

His eyes lock on the rain drops against the window pane, the way some of them run past others or stop running altogether. The way some merge to form bigger drops. Harry thinks it's pretty. He cringes. "Pen hated the rain."

"Did she tell you why?"

He knows she did, just can't remember what the reason was. Something about sadness. It doesn't really make sense because Penelope was the saddest thing he's ever seen. Even touching her drained him a little. He tries to shake the thought from his head, replacing it instead with the fact that he loves her. He loves her, he loves her so much. Wouldn't ever look at her negatively because she wasn't a bad person. Just sad. "No."

Rory's head is tilted a little. He knows she knows he's lying but he also knows she won't call him out on it. "Okay, what about you?"

He used to like the rain. Used to think it was pretty. The way they moved and merged, the way they did whatever the wind wanted them to do. He used to sit in the rain before he met Penelope. "I don't like it much anymore."

"Can you tell me why?"

He thinks about it. Why doesn't he like the rain anymore? "I don't know why."

"Is it the way it feels?"

It feels like being cleansed by the universe. "No."

"Is it the way it makes just you feel?"

It makes him feel like he's cheated the universe. Like what he's done doesn't make him worthy of being cleansed. Or maybe it goes deeper than that. Maybe his reasoning is locked behind a woman he loves. "It's because she hated it." He thinks it's the right answer.

Rory's eyebrows raise. Harry knows she knows something he doesn't.

"Tell me what that means," he says after a moment of silence.

"I don't know what that means." It sounds like a lie bleeding past her lips, smearing across the gloss of her lipstick. He doesn't know how he missed how pretty she looks tonight. Dressed in all black. She's wearing heels so she's closer to his height, two or three inches shorter than him. She's pretty, but he has to remind himself that Penelope is prettier.

"You're lying," he shakes his head, attention snapping back at the window in front of him. It's back to the raindrops, the falling rain hitting the street lamps and moistening the cement. Rolling down other windows and passing through cracks. Drowning the worms that live inside of those cracks.

"I think you're compensating."

He doesn't really understand the concept. He knows what compensating means, but the way he thinks of it, it doesn't apply to anything. How could he be making up for a wrong to his girlfriend who's too dead to receive anything? He can't just give her roses and pull her out from the grave, snap life back into her bones and push breath into her lungs. Forgiveness won't bring her back. "Explain."