✓ Wrong Moves and Knife Wounds /h.s./

[12] pink eyes and bandaged masterpieces

[unedited]

outside

Harry sees Rory crying inside of the café. She's got these shaking hands that he feels like stilling. He wants to take the ceramic mug from her grasp because it's so close to shattering against the table in front of her and on her, but he just watches. Finds the scene quite right. Maybe it's because she looks more human this way.

Vulnerable, in a sense, and he thinks he can trace every aspect of it from the way her shoulders are tense and her lips are quivering on the rim of a cup she's yet to take a drink from. The steam is making her hair frizz up a bit at her fringe and he needs more time. More time to trace those lines at her eyes and around them and read between them but she turns. She catches his gaze from outside of the café, and there's a glare against the glass so he hopes he looks obscured to her.

Rory waves a little but she doesn't hide the tears. They're lodged in her eyes and sleeping on her lashes, waiting for that one blink to send them flying down her cheek bones like some of them had already done.

He doesn't wave back.
Considers it for a moment,
But doesn't.

And Rory turns her head away for a reason unknown to him.

When he's inside of the small shop and walking over to her table, he feels different. He wants to be the person to comfort her but he doesn't know how. He used to do things like that so easily; so naturally, but then Pen came along and he thought maybe he had a shot and he didn't. Harry's hands feel different so he hides them in his sleeves and takes a seat across from the crying girl who's immediate response is to set down her drink.

It's filled to the top like he thought before, and he wonders if there are tears in it. When he looks at her eyes, his hands twitch. The brown of her irises looks dull. Her scleras are tinted with pink but the tears in them are gone. The streaks of water on her face are gone too, but he sees that her eyelashes are still wet.

"Good morning," is the first thing she whispers to him, slowly trailing her fingers away from the table and onto her lap.

Harry feels different. "Hello."

"I didn't think you'd come."

He thinks it sounds like a lie. He thinks he needs her. Thinks not coming would be like giving up on himself and everything he's kept alive for years and years and years. "Did you already have breakfast?"

"You don't care, Harry."

It's true. "Are you okay?"

"You don't care, Harry."

It's not true. So far from it. Harry feels different like this. He closes his mouth and waits for her to say something else.

It takes a moment too long, but then she's locking eyes with his. Her gaze is hard and weak at the same time. "You needed to tell me something?"

"Wanted," he says quietly, uttering the word before projecting his voice just for her. "I wanted to tell you something that happened yesterday."

She shifts closer and he unloads. Tells her about his paid vacation from work and why he's got this nasty bandage around his hand. He tells her that his thoughts get the best of him and how memories sneak up on him sometimes.

Harry tells Rory that his name is written on so many reports and that so many hospitals have pictures of his broken body. A masterpiece made by his ex girlfriend who he still loves. He's weak for that, his lawyer from way back once said. He's weak for allowing a woman to touch him and bruise him and he's weak for not fighting back but he tells Rory that if he was given a second chance, he still wouldn't do anything about it. He'd let it happen all over again.

And when he's done and Rory's tears have dried, it's his turn to swallow the lump in his throat. The air suddenly feels tight when he sees her hand move to push her hair back.

"Hey," her voice is small but certain.

A small, minuscule smile tugs at his lips. "Hello."

"You're not wrong for that."

"They keep saying I am." He thinks he sounds childish. There's a couple in front of them and they're smiling into a kiss and tugging at each other's hair.

Rory reclaims his attention. "I think you think too much."

He shrugs and takes a look around the room. She doesn't know him that much to know it's something he does when somebody says something that's obvious to him. "I think I do too."

"I think you need a break from it all."

"I can't just shut everything off."

She slides from her side of the booth and leaves the mug on the table, dropping two fives on the table and looking at him expectantly. Harry's dumbfounded for a moment for the change in mood. He thinks this is more than just about him getting a break. Thinks maybe she needs a break too, and he stays quiet and keeps it to himself as he follows her out of the café.

He recognizes her car parked outside but they don't walk toward it. Rory hails a cab instead and Harry absentmindedly picks at his nails.

When they're situated in the backseat of a green city cab, he uses one of his fingers to trace designs on the window.

"Hey, Rory?"

She doesn't answer.

He turns to look at her but she's too caught up in staring at her hands. He's been there before. He remembers moments when he didn't know why he felt so withered. He remembers staring at his hands for an answer. Like maybe he would have found a nasty cut and he'd go to a doctor and find out that he only felt so dead inside because the cut was infected and only needed to be cleaned. "Rory."

Her neck turns but her hands remain unmoving.

"I care if you're okay."

"Okay," she looks away for a split second before her gaze is back on his. "Thank you."

"And I care that you were crying."

"Harry..." she trails off. Hides her hands between her thighs.

"You can tell me if things don't feel right. I want you to know that because right now things don't feel right to me."

"Why not?"

He doesn't know if she's asking because she really wants to know or because she's supposed to want to know. "You're scaring me."

"I'm just a little sad," she smiles softly. It's barely there, but there all the same. "We all get sad sometimes."

It's different this time, though. "But you're not...You're a good person."

She presses a hand against the partition of the cab. "Right here," she tells the driver. A middle-aged woman whose hair is a cape around her face.

Harry knows she won't respond to what he said before. Knows it's out in the open but will stay that way. "Why are we here?"

She opens her side of the door and looks at him over her shoulder. "Let's go."

(A/n: It's very likely that there are major mistakes in this so please forgive me.)