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That night wasn't easy for Harry. It started with a sudden jolt on the bed as he quickly came to his senses, roughly waking me up. After that, he didn't move, his inaudible breathing telling me that he most certainly wasn't asleep.

I scooted closer to him, propping myself up on one elbow and glancing down at him. His eyes were open, I could see it in the faint light coming from the street, the curtain forgotten open the evening before. "Hey" I murmured putting my hand on his hand, wanting him to know that, despite the late hour, he wasn't the only one awake. "You can talk about it, if you want" I suggested quietly, but he shook his head.

"Talking about it would make it real" he whispered faintly. "I'm sorry for waking you up."

I shook my head, even though I knew he wasn't looking at me. "It's okay" I told him gently. "You can talk about something else, if you want."

He sighed, but still didn't dare to change his position. "I remember my mother's last birthday" he murmured after a while. "It was a month before she..." he added, letting his voice fade away while a frown took over his features.

I hummed, removing my hand from his arm and brushing his hair back before putting it back in its previous place. I ran my hand up and down his arm before finally resting my head on his shoulder, his back against me.

"My dad didn't want to take me in town to get her something, so I wrote her a note instead" he shared quietly, shaking his head, his voice trembling slightly, a little chuckle leaving his lips at the memory. "I felt so guilty because I didn't have a present for her. I should've just taken my bike and gone alone, but it would've taken an hour to get there and I was eleven, and scared of getting lost." He paused, but I didn't dare to say a word, not wanting to discourage him from sharing. "She liked the note."

I smiled at his words, hearing his own smile in his voice even though I couldn't see it. It was nice to listen to him talking like that, it didn't happen often. I wished it did though, because good memories should be cherished just as much as bad ones should be accepted in order to move on.

He sighed. "I wish I'd made it longer now, made sure she knew how important she's to me" he said, and I perked my head up at his words, studying his face in the mild darkness. He didn't notice my gaze on him, his eyes closed as he spoke. "My dad got her flowers and woke up early to make her breakfast, which was quite nice because she was usually the one that made it. She drove me to school and I said bye. That night, we ate at a restaurant to celebrate."

The corner of his lips turned up slightly as he remembered the event and it made me want to hug him, but I didn't, fearing that my slightest reaction would've shattered that moment. I stayed there, in silence, waiting for him to continue, surprising myself with how interested I was in what he was saying. It mattered to me, and it was weird because nothing someone else had shared had ever been that important to me. But it was Harry, and I always cared about what he was saying, so maybe I shouldn't have been that surprised at all.

"She took the paper tissue in the bread basket and a pen and drew on it as a thank you. We left it there, because she did it so often and it was just normal to us" he whispered, furrowing his eyebrows and opening his eyes as he came to the last sentence. "My dad and I went back there a year later for her birthday, and we discovered they'd kept the drawing. It was hanging on the wall behind the till. I heard him cry that night." He stopped, staring at the wall in silence for a couple of seconds. "I think about it a lot."

I nodded, finally wrapping my arm around his middle and putting my head back down on the pillow, listening to his even breathing for a few seconds. "Thank you for sharing it with me" I murmured after a while, but he didn't reply.

We stayed like that for a while longer, before I noticed that Harry's breathing had got considerably louder, realising that he'd fallen asleep again. I cuddled closer to him and closed my eyes as well, but it wasn't long before I was woken up again. He woke up two other times that night, on the second going as far as sitting up quickly on the bed and staying there, with his face hidden between his knees, as I rubbed his back in silence.

I went downstairs and got him a glass of water, hoping that it would've helped him to take whatever panicky thoughts were rushing through his brain that night, keeping him from having an even sleep. He drank it, and we stayed awake for some more minutes before shutting the lights off again, and from that point on he slept through the couple of hours until morning.

• • •

The following afternoon I went in my studio and got a bunch of paintbrushes, plastic plates and a few cans of different shades of paint, ranging from white and grey tones to deep blue and green ones. I took a plastic bag I usually put my messed up drawings to take downstairs and throw out and checked inside, making sure it was empty before shoving my art supplies inside and getting a few hard paper sheets. I gave a quick look around, and grabbed a small, empty water bottle and a plastic cup before finally exiting the room and going to fill the plastic bottle with water in the bathroom.

I entered the bedroom carrying the bag, and Harry looked up at the sound, shooting me a confused glance from the bed. He slowly lowered the book he was reading, putting it on his thighs and closing it, only the back of the book showing as he kept his index in the middle of the pages. He'd been quite quiet for the whole day, more than usual at least, and it wasn't hard to understand that something was going on in his head, and was the reason why he was isolating himself, virtually more than physically, like that.

I sat down at the bottom of the bed and started taking out everything I'd brought in, one by one, putting them on the mattress, quickly realising how bad of an idea that was when I took in the white duvet that was on my bed again. I shook my head and ignored it, even though part of me started to feel a bit concerned about the possibility of it getting stained, perfectly knowing that I would've never managed to bring Harry into my studio, or anywhere else, because I wasn't particularly pushy and he didn't seem to have any intention to stand. I stared at everything I'd put on the bed when I was done, quickly making sure that I'd got all we needed before speaking. "Teach me to paint the ocean."

He gave me an enigmatic look as soon as I spoke, seeming just slightly confused as he slowly folded the corner of the page of the book on his lap, his eyes still on me, before closing it for good and removing his index from the pages. "I don't know how to paint" he said, slowly and carefully, a look I couldn't quite decipher in his green irises.

"My teacher said you paint better than me" I tell him, hoping that it would've been enough to get him on board, because he'd seemed to enjoy painting a lot the last time we'd done that, and I felt like he needed to get distracted and relax a little bit, especially with everything that had happened the night before, and the week before as well.

He glanced at me for a while longer, but then he gave up and put the book on the nightstand, picking one of the paper sheets up with a little sigh. "I have no idea of how to draw the ocean" he told me quietly, and I knew he was right but I didn't mind it anyway, because my goal was to distract him, not learn how to paint.

I took the plastic plate and put it between us, putting a little of each paint I'd brought on it in silence before taking another paper sheet and putting it on my legs. I furrowed my eyebrows and turned around, getting two books with the hard cover from my desk and giving him one before putting the other under my sheet. "Well" I said, while checking the different paintbrushes I'd brought, trying to figure out which one would've been the best for the task. "You said that it should represent the way you feel" I stated, finally choosing a medium sized one when I realised I had a very little idea of what I was doing. "How do you feel?"

Harry shrugged, looking down at his paper sheet. "Some way" he murmured, and I just knew he wouldn't have been of any help.

I sighed, because I wasn't that much of an entertainer myself but I knew I had to find a way to keep it going if I wanted to be at least the tiniest bit successful. "I think I feel..." I paused, furrowing my eyebrows as I thought of the best way to describe the feeling in my chest. "I think I feel content" I said in the end. "A bit scared though, for the future, you know."

He picked up a paintbrush, looking down and playing with it. "Why are you scared?" He asked gently.

"Because... I don't know." I looked down as well, staring at the drying bits of paint on the plate between us. "I know what I want to do with my life, but... what if it doesn't work out? I don't want to spend my life doing something I don't enjoy doing." I stopped talking, shaking my head. "Sorry, I know it's stupid."

"It isn't stupid" he said quietly, but somewhat gently. He didn't ask me to continue, but I did anyway, because he stayed completely quiet, seeming to be waiting for me to say something else.

I gave him a little shrug, not daring to glance up at him. "It's just... everyone has hobbies, you know. I mean, things they enjoy doing. And then they grow up and they get so stuck in everything else and they just forget it all, you know. If I couldn't draw, I'd feel like I lost myself." I let out a little chuckle, blinking fast to get rid of the wetness in my eyes, that I wasn't even sure why was there. "I don't want to lose myself."

"You won't lose yourself" Harry told me softly, and I looked up, discovering that his eyes were already searching for mine.

I frowned slightly, not understanding where his apparent sureness was coming from. I appreciated him trying to make me feel better, but I honestly would've preferred him to be honest with me. "Why?"

He shrugged, glancing down again. "Because people tend to lose themselves when they aren't aware of what's going on."

I nodded slowly, figuring he was right. I looked at my paintbrush, dipping the tip in the blue and mixing it with a bit of white to lighten it up. I brought the bristles over the sheet on my lap, starting to paint the bottom left corner of a deep shade of blue, making sure to add some texture as I did so. "What's the craziest thing you've ever done, Harry?"

"Aside from overdosing at a party and almost dying?" He asked in reply, and I suddenly got the strong urge to roll my eyes, mixed with a tightening feeling in my chest at the remembrance of that day, that I still wasn't able to forget even though months had passed since then. At the time I'd been scared, and worried, but I knew that if it had happened again, my heart would've fallen out of my chest. I didn't want to even think about the possibility of Harry going through something like that again.

"I would call that stupid, not crazy" I replied, pursing my lips as soon as the words had left my mouth, not wanting him to take them in the wrong way.

He looked up from the colours he'd been nonchalantly mixing the whole time. "Are you calling me stupid?" He asked, but despite the meaning of his words, the tone of his voice was soft, and he didn't seem to be mad, or upset.

"No, but you can't deny that was a dumb decision" I replied quickly anyway, wanting to clarify what I'd said as quickly as possible.

"Yeah" he simply said, finally looking down and starting to paint something on his paper sheet, the position in which he was sitting making it impossible for me to see what he was doing. "It was a few months after my mum passed" he said after a while, and I stopped what I was doing, looking up at him as he spoke. "I argued with my dad and ran away. It was raining and I took my bike and cycled for over an hour under the rain to get to the cemetery. I sat in the mud in front of her grave for hours before my dad came to pick me up. He didn't speak to me for days" he said quietly, his tone rushed, shaking his head when he was done. "I don't know why I still remember that."

I nodded, and for a few minutes we painted in silence. I poured some water into the cup and I leaned forward, putting it on the nightstand next to Harry before dipping the tip of my paintbrush in it to change colour. I took some white, trying my best to make the blot on the paper resemble the surf.

"And you?" Harry asked after a while. "What's the craziest thing you've ever done?"

I shrugged, knowing that my answer wouldn't have been interesting at all. I'd always been a quite plain person, and funnily enough, all the craziest things I'd done had been in his company. "I mean... you" I said in the end, reasoning that I had no reason to feel awkward about it. He knew how I was, and he didn't seem to mind anyway, so there was no reason why I should've done so.

Harry glanced up at me at my words. "You still haven't done me. You can if you want to though, I told you" he simply said, seeming completely unbothered by the sentence that had left his lips, looking down again and going back to painting as if he'd said nothing at all.

"Not... what I meant" I said, feeling sudden blush rush to my cheeks at the meaning of his words, not believing that he'd really just gone as far as saying something like that. "I mean, the craziest things I've ever done were with you."

He looked up for a slight second. "I know."

I nodded at him and I stayed in silence as I went back to my painting. It was a bit crazy looking, but I didn't really mind, considering that it wasn't part of any project. I mixed a bit of white and black with the line of the waves, hoping that it would give it a more tridimensional look, before cleaning my paintbrush again and dipping it back in the white, tapping the paper in some specific points harshly, hoping to give it the realistic look of the waves. "This okay?" I asked, lifting my drawing and book and turning them around so that he could get a good look at what I'd done.

"You killed that paintbrush" he commented, his attention drifted to the stick I was still holding in my hands, and I glanced at it, discovering that the bristles were kind of wild looking after the way I'd attacked the paper.

"How could you" I said, playfully brushing the back of his hand with it, leaving a white line on his skin.

He jolted back for a quick second at my action, turning his hand to assess the damage before glancing up at me. "Really?" He said, not waiting for me to reply before reaching out with his blue-tinted paintbrush to get his revenge.

I squealed, lifting the book I was holding in defence, and the line of blue ended up on it instead of on my face. For good measure, I poked the hand in which he was holding his paintbrush with mine, leaving another spot of white on it, and it was in that moment that he grabbed me by the ankle and pulled me closer to him, putting his painting aside. I fell back against the mattress, laughing as I managed to protect myself from another attack with the book, and Harry snatched it away, smiling down at me as I lay there defenceless.

Without thinking about it twice, I grabbed his paintbrush out of his hand, figuring that if he had no weapon he couldn't do much at all, but I was wrong, because before I could even realise what had happened he got a hold of my paintbrush, that I was holding close to my chest. I widened my eyes, rolling out from under him but not managing to make it far, because he grabbed me from behind, making a weird sound fall out of my mouth in surprise. He pulled me against his chest, quickly sliding the white paintbrush he was holding down my nose before I even knew it. I turned my head to look at him, eager to get my own payback, and it was in that moment that his lips landed on mine, completely unexpected, but definitely not unwanted.

The kiss didn't last long though, because I parted from it just a few seconds after, taking it as my chance to poke Harry's nose with the paintbrush still in my hand. He opened his eyes quickly at my action, the surprise being enough to make him fall back on his ass on the mattress, his action accompanied by the loud sound of his painting falling on the floor.

The paint fight continued for a while longer, and before I even knew it I was kneeling in the middle of the mattress, painting Harry's nails of blue while he seemed to be quite concentrated in painting a strand of my hair white. I normally would've been upset about it, but it was Harry, and after all I was painting his nails with something that would've probably stained them, so I didn't really mind. I took his other hand after I was done with his right, already thinking that I would've probably had to use nail polish remover to clean them for good later on. It was doing better and his fingers weren't swollen anymore, the only hint of there having been any kind of trauma being the yellowish bruises around his knuckles, but I was still careful in handling it, not wanting to hurt him in any way.

I glanced up at him when I was done, he'd finished painting my hair and was looking at what I was doing, a little smile on his lips, just enough for his dimples to show. I stared at them for a few seconds, cherishing their sight, considering how rarely they appeared.

He took advantage of the moment to tap his paintbrush against my nose again, more of a simple statement than anything else, and I tried to do the same, but he suddenly intertwined his fingers with mine, making the blue-tinted paintbrush I was holding fall on the duvet, his arm wrapping around my waist and bringing me closer to him, his lips landing on mine again.

The second time I didn't pull away from the kiss and I closed my eyes, feeling Harry let go of my hand to cup my cheek, the stick of the paintbrush he was still holding pressed against my back. I intertwined my fingers in his hair, tugging at it slightly as I felt his tongue slide across the seam of my lips. I pressed myself against his body as his grip on my hip tightened a bit, not enough to hurt but enough to make me feel it, and he fell back against the mattress.

He turned us around quickly, pressing me into the duvet as his tongue delved into my mouth, making a shock of electricity run up my spine and momentarily leave me breathless. He gently bit onto my lower lip as he parted from the kiss, leaving a trail of wet kisses down my jawline, grinding his hips down against mine, a hint of hurriedness in his movements. I took in a shaky breath, feeling the air trembling down my throat, slightly crushed by the weight of Harry's body on top of me, enough for me to dip a bit into the mattress, but not enough to actually take my breath away. I ran my hand through his hair as he bit down on my collarbone and he hummed against my skin, coming up to kiss my mouth again as his hips rolled against mine.

I pulled him down against me, the cold metal of his necklaces falling down on my throat as his lips found their way on mine again, my chest expanding and contracting quickly against his, my heart beating so quickly that for a second I feared it would stop altogether. I felt his excitement against me and I blushed faintly, not having expected something like that, even though I definitely should've. I bit my lower lip, trying to push my slight embarrassment away as I let my hand run down his stomach, reaching down and pressing my palm against him through the soft fabric of his grey sweatpants. He glanced at me in surprise as soon as I did, his pupils wide, and it was clear that he hadn't thought I would've gone as far as doing something like that.

I gently rubbed up and down, and I heard his fast intake of breath against my ear as he lowered his head at my action. I brushed his hair back, turning my head to kiss his jawline while I kept up with my actions, hoping that it would've been enough to get him off, because I didn't feel confident in doing anything else in that moment. All of sudden I felt the warmth of his hand over mine, and he moved it to a slightly different position, letting out a low moan as he did so. He kissed me, and it was a bit sloppier, rushed, his breath hitching as I squeezed him gently.

He kissed down my throat, grinding his hips down against my hand, the muscles of his back trembling, and I pulled him up, leaving a little kiss at the corner of his lips, enjoying the way his chest rose and fell quickly, letting me know that he wasn't impartial to what was going on. His breath quickened as he neared his peak, his movements becoming sloppier and more rushed, a low hum leaving his lips before he could stop it.

It took just a gentle squeeze for him to reach his high, his lips parted and his heartbeat rushing against mine, a low groan leaving his throat as he put his head down on my shoulder. I passed my fingers through his hair, feeling him shiver above me as he finished.

We stayed there for a couple minutes after his body had finally relaxed on top of mine, weighing down on me a bit more than usual, his head still hidden in the crook of my neck and the thumping in our chests slowly going back to normal. I moved slightly and he let out a little whine, and I couldn't help but smile at it.

"You should get changed" I murmured into his ear, suddenly more aware of the dampness of his sweatpants against my wrist, and he sighed, but hesitantly sat up, his legs trembling under his weight.

It was only when he got up that I was able to do the same as well, and take in what was surrounding us. The paintbrushes had fallen on the white duvet, and the majority of the paint that was in the plastic plate had ended up on it too, staining it of almost every shade of blue between white and black. My painting was crumpled up in a corner, forgotten and messed up beyond saving, but I couldn't really bring myself to care.

"I'd say, this is the good time you say goodbye to your blanket" Harry said, a faint pinkness staining his cheeks, his hair disheveled, and I couldn't help but let out a little laugh.

"I guess so" I said, taking the water bottle from the nightstand and wetting a couple of my fingers with it, being careful to make the leftover water end up in the plastic cup, before sliding closer to Harry and brushing my wet thumb over his nose, getting rid of the blue mark I'd left on it.

He gave another hesitant look around before standing up, slightly unsure on his legs for a couple of seconds before catching his footing and walking to the bag he'd put in the corner of my room, taking out a change of clothes. "I'll have a shower" he said quietly, and I nodded, watching him as he walked out of the room with the clothes in his hands.

I sat there for a couple of seconds more, wondering if something like that had really just happened, but not finding a single part of myself regretting it. I sighed and stood up, taking everything of the duvet so that I could pull it off my bed, furrowing my eyebrows when I realised that Harry's painting was still on the floor.

I picked it up and flipped it around, studying it with an attentive gaze. It wasn't done particularly well, but the faint agitation of the water under a dark, greyish sky was easily visible, making me feel slightly uneasy. How was I supposed to know if the thunderstorm had just been there, or if it was on its way?

I didn't know.

I hope you enjoyed this chapter. x

Miki

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