Burn

The house did not seem comforting, like Rae thought it was. She had been eager to get out of the car and leap up the stares, fighting tears all the while. But when she ran through the door, covering her mouth and trying to stay her shaking hands, it didn’t work. Maybe it was because Trystan walked in after her, just as stunned and angry, while Louis half drug Harry in through the doorstep.

Rae had seen the look on everyone’s face when he Harry hit that boy. She had seen her father from across the room, a knowing glint in his eyes. She was unsure who she was more disgusted with. Hearing Harry joke about him hitting Rich confirmed she was far angrier with him at the moment.

In fact, she was angry at everyone. She was angry at her father because she knew he must have done something. Harry did not drink without cause. She was angry with her self the most, for leaving him alone. She knew that he wasn’t safe alone, so why had she done it? To prove herself right? To hope that he was fine? And she was livid at Harry, who had resorted to drinking and hitting someone.

All she had wanted in life was for him to come to her when he was upset. but she had not been immediately around him. Had he even tried to find her, before he began gulping down drinks to fix whatever his problem was? Or had he just gotten drunk enough to feel angry.

Throwing her clutch down in the living room, she crossed her arms over her chest and let a single tear fall before she wiped it away quickly. She was so sick and tired of fighting with this boy, and she knew they about to get into it again. She was so tired of trying so damn hard, for him to just do this again. It was like she was giving her all and getting nothing in return.

“Did you have a nice dance?” Harry mumbled, throwing himself on the couch. Rae turned around to look at him, disbelief on her face. She understood that he was upset about something else, understood that he did not like seeing her dance with Rich, but she had told him who Rich was before, someone she had known since they were born. “You sure looked lovely together, the two of you.”

“Do you honestly think,” she began darkly, her voice cutting like razors, “That I could ever have feelings for someone else? And that if by chance I did, they would be for that arrogant little brat that I grew up with? He’s like family, Harry.”

Harry made a disgusted face. “He isn’t family.”

“Why do you think he’s named after my father?” she demanded, voice rising a notch. Trystan and Louis were trying to hide it out in the kitchen, so she was trying not to yell. But she was filled to the brim with it. “Our fathers are best friends, so much that his father named his son after my own! Don’t you get that?”

“What I get,” Harry growled, standing and pointing a finger at her. “Is that you’re father hates me and he will never like me. Ever. None of those people will, and you need to realize that you won’t either. You’re nothing but high class.”

“High class? Is that what my father told you? I don’t give a damn what my father thinks of you! If he doesn’t see what he’s doing than he deserves no spot in my life. But if you think, that because of something my father said to you, that it gives you the right to drink yourself stupid and hit people, you’re absolutely wrong.”

“What gives you the right?” he screamed, voice making her flinch backwards. Harry was red in the face now, every single tendon in his body almost bursting at the seams with the force of his anger. It had no effect other than making her own rage swell. “What gives you the right to drag me there and leave me?”

“I’m sorry!” another tear escaped her face and she nearly slapped it off of her cheek, hating that she was crying, hating that he made her feel this way. it was like beating her head against a brick wall. “I’m sorry that I left you, that was my fault entirely. It was unfair of me, and I wasn’t thinking, and I had no right to do that, but I own up to that! I own up that I made a mistake!”

“What and you think this is all my fault?” he demanded, gesturing to himself. He let out an angry laugh, shaking his head and walking around the couch. “You really know where to place the fucking blame, don’t you, Rae?”

“DID I DRINK MYSELF STUPID?” she bellowed, louder than any single one of them had ever heard her scream. Harry was the one to flinch this time, whirling around to face her. She was breathing hard, unable to fight the trembles in her hands. “Did I force a drink into your mouth? Did I make you punch someone you had no right to hit? Do I always get angry and scream at you? Am I the one with the fucked up anger problem, who finds any excuse to belittle myself in front of a crowd because I think I’m worth nothing?”

No one said a thing. Still enraged, Rae stormed forward, roughly shoving passed Harry, so hard that he stumbled a bit. She thundered up the stairs and into her room, slamming the door so hard that the house vibrated with it. Harry stood there for a moment letting the words process in his mind.

Then he walked up the stairs.

*

Harry was so filled with white hot anger that he was nearly blind, tripping up the stairs as he followed to where Rae had gone. He could hear her crying through the door, slamming drawers open and shut when he got there, but he didn’t care. Her words were fuel to the fire. He would never let her say those things to him again, not those words that were so true.

Throwing open her door he stormed inside. She hadn’t even flinched, pulling on one of his t-shirts, obviously the only thing clean at the moment. He knew she wouldn’t have put it on other wise. She whipped tears away and turned around to glare at him. If looks could kill, he would be ashes.

“What do you want?” she growled, her voice shaded with hate. He had never seen her look both so angry and so sad, at once. It made him mad at himself, that he had hurt her feelings so deeply. But when he was mad at himself, he took it out on others. “I don’t have any alcohol in here, if that’s what you’re looking for.”

“You are fucking impossible!” he exploded, spittle flying from his lips from the sudden outburst. He stalked towards her, ignoring a flash in her eyes that was familiar but he could not place. Rae leaned away from him, but there was only a wall as he cornered her. “You want so desperately for me to be like you, you want so badly for me to live like I’ve never had problems, to be perfect. I’m so sick of it, so sick of you wishing I was something else.”

“You know that’s not true.” There wasn’t anger that time, but hurt, in every color and tone that could exist. “You know that I’m here because of who you really are, and not who you pretend to be. You think-“

“You don’t know who I am!” he screeched, making her shrink back. He was yelling as loudly as he could now. He imagined lights were flicking on in other houses. “You have no fucking idea, because you live in this little delusional world of yours where everything is perfect and where you’re always right! You have no idea how hard it is for me to pretend I don’t want to kill myself at those parties!

“Not to mention you just had to meet my parents, had to put me through something I never thought I would go through again. You think you know how to fix everything, but you can’t! So stop thinking you deserve shit that you don’t know anything about! It’s pathetic.”

When the look hit her face, he regretted the words. Every single word that he had said, yelling in her face, watching her cry and push herself into the wall, had not even been about her. They were about him. They were his deepest fears. He thought he could fix himself, he thought he could prove his parents wrong. He thought he deserved happiness. He had just yelled at her, because he hated himself.
But he hadn’t realized it until he saw the pain cut across her face, deep and sharp. Rae looked like she had been punched in the stomach, and he realized there was no taking back those words. There was no rewind. It made him even angrier, as if that were physically possible.

Harry watched as tears streamed down Rae’s face, her green eyes unable to contain them. She looked so small, standing there in his t-shirt that engulfed her tiny frame, her dark chocolate waves a mess and her slight height that he towered over. Her back was pressed against the wall as she glared at him, hands trembling.

No words came to his lips, though he tried to formulate a sentence. He clenched his fist, his anger rising, though it was not directed at the girl in front of him, but at himself. He hated that he couldn’t find words to say to her, to offer her comfort.

When he said nothing, she nodded to herself, making a disgusted face. She glared at him full force and it hit Harry like a knife in the stomach, twisting and causing him pain. “I’m so done with this,” she whispered, the hurt raw in her voice, making it crack. She swallowed and he knew she was made at herself for sounding weak. She hated sounding weak. “Fix your fucking self, I’m done doing it.”

Rae pushed herself from the wall and made for the door, but he moved faster than her snatching her wrist to prevent her from leaving. “Let me go!” she screamed, louder than he had heard her scream in a long time. The tears were spilling over her eyes faster. “God dammit let me fucking go!”

His grip tightened on her wrist, her volume and words waking up the anger in him, the anger that she usually made go away, that she usually healed. “Don’t talk to me like that,” he growled, his voice scaring even him. He hated when her temper flared, it’s bite always strong.

“Or what?” she hollered, yanking her wrist but failing to remove it from his ironclad grasp. Her eyes flashed with danger. “What are you going to do, Harry?”

He clenched his fist.

Blind and in a tornado of hatred and fury, yelling out as loud as his lungs would let him and drove his fist through the wall. He felt the crack of the drywall under his skin, smelled the dust of the contents hit his nose. A huge hole had formed in Rae’s wall, right next to her head, only inches away, his hand still in it.

Rae was cringing, her eyes closed. He realized, when the ringing in his ears from his rage began to quiet that Rae was bawling. Her eyes were closed and her free hand was covering her face, her body shaking all over. His other hand was still around hers and he let it go, blinking in surprise when she ripped it away from him, clinging it to her chest.

Hands were on him and he turned to see a storm of rage in a pair of blue eyes, Louis’ strong hands ripping Harry away from her. Trystan was there too, screaming things at Harry that he couldn’t understand as he looked at Rae, crying.

When she opened her eyes, his soul died. What was remaining of it, turned black and withered, seeing the look she gave him. It was not hate. It was not sadness. It was absolute fear. He hadn’t even hit her, but she looked at him like he was the scariest thing in the entire world, and he felt himself die inside.

“Get him out!” Trystan screamed again, grabbing a crying Rae and pulling her towards the bathroom, gently pushing her inside. When the blonde saw him staring, she fumed, practically spitting at him. “SHE LOVES YOU.”

Trystan slammed the door hard, making it vibrate. All Harry could think about, as Louis pulled him away from the room, was, She doesn’t love me anymore.