VI• Delicate

If there was one thing Raven had noticed about Hayden, it was how delicate he was.

Hayden was very careful in everything he did.

Raven had read over the same line at least thirty times, unable to understand anything she was reading when she was so distracted.

Hayden had a small smile on his lips the whole time he read, his eyes would travel from one end of the page to another, a beautiful excitement in them.

And then when he'd read for a bit longer, his brows would furrow as a frown would tug at the sides of his lips.

And then, he would read a bit more and Raven would see an urgency in his eyes, a fear for what would come next as he'd bite on his lips.

And Raven would forget to breathe.

And when the urgency left his eyes, calm would overtake it, and he'd go back to smiling in that pure, care free way.

"You like Harry potter, don't you?" Raven asked, when Hayden closed the book, making sure to fold the edge of the paper as a make-shift bookmark.

Hayden turned to look at Raven, the familiar sinking feeling in his gut overwhelming him when he saw her expression.

Raven was looking at him like he meant something, her eyes holding a severity in them, a heavy emotion that would bring Hayden to his knees if he didn't avert his gaze.

"Yes" he simply replied, unable to keep her gaze.

The boy was afraid of what he felt, of how much more he could feel.

Already, he felt like he'd lost grasp of his own sanity, thoughts overridden by the girl with the striking green eyes.

"Who's your favourite?" She asked.

Hayden turned to look at her, surprised. He'd heard that she almost never talked, but since he'd been with her, she'd been the one initiating most of the conversations.

Not that Hayden didn't appreciate it! He was even thankful for it, seeing as his nerves around her heightened till the point he couldn't speak freely.

"I think my favourite would be Ron" Hayden mused. The look of shock on Raven's face immediately he said that was hilarious.

Hayden forgot about his nerves for the moment, angling his body so they faced one another directly now.

"Why?" Raven asked with a look of disbelief.

"Why not?" He retorted, unable to keep the smile off his face.

"For one" Raven whispered, trying not to disturb the quiet of the library. "Ron is extremely insensitive".

Hayden chuckled at that, before replying

"But, he's also the only one who ever notices anything about Hermione. In fact, he points out every thing about Hermione to Harry.

He was the only one who was worry about how she could juggle classes, and also the only one who noticed when she was absent in class".

Raven looked flustered now.

"But he used to make fun of her, even going to the extent of only realising she was a 'girl' when he needed a date" Raven argued back, smugly.

There was a familiar pang in Hayden's chest, he didn't know why he felt so happy in that moment seeing her behave so differently than she did around other people.

It made Hayden feel so happy seeing her smile, even if it was at his expense.

Hayden could count multiple facts that would debunk her theory without a chance of recovery, but he didn't.

Instead, he grinned lopsidedly at her. "Well said".

Raven smiled back at him for a brief moment, before the both of them turned back to reading their respective books.

***

The rest of the week rolled by quietly, with Hayden and Raven falling into a routine.

A smile in class in the mornings, followed by their failed attempts not to focus on what the other was doing.

When neither of them was caught up in any work in their free time, they'd find a way to sneak to the library.

It was no surprise that going to the library had become the best part of the day for them both.

They'd built a small world for themselves in the dimly lit portion of their school library, a world where the queen of frost and everything apathetic, thawed. A world where she became a fiery goddess that smiled and laughed, and spread warmth with every smile.

Hayden, although not fully unguarded around Raven had made a high degree of progress, his shy innocent smiles soon became boisterous laughs that made Raven blush, his shy gazes intensified, sending sensations Raven had never felt, course through her until she was left helpless.

Words bound them together, sentences intensified that bond and books sealed it.

The itch in Raven's fingers only intensified, and her urge to explore Hayden only skyrocketed.

It was madness the way her senses were wired, tuned to his presence.

Her nose sought out his scent, her hands itched to pull him to her, and though the girl's lips had never touched another and her body had never been touched by hands that weren't hers, and that too, in ways that weren't remotely sexual, Raven found herself wanting to consume every part of who Hayden was.

She wanted his eyes on her every time, her hands itched to just hold his face, her fingers travelling along the skin of his face as she smiled in that nervous, innocent way that tore her apart.

She wanted to hear him speak, hear the words leave his mouth in that gentle tone that seemed to caress her soul, her heart rate slowing.

She wanted to quell the insecurities she could clearly see in his eyes, wanted to tell him that she didn't care about the clothes he wore, the shoes he tried so hard to hide from her, the way he dipped his eyes, scooting away from her when she looked at him too long.

Raven had never felt such madness, such.....lack of sanity. Hayden did things to her that she couldn't control, and Raven was scared, scared, scared that she would lose herself in him too deeply, that she would willingly give away the keys of every door that held within it, her sanity.

But then, there, right at that moment, Raven didn't care.

Because when she would look into those eyes painted in those shades of brown, struggling to meet her gaze as they hid behind the curtains of eyelashes, when she would see that beautiful smile fight it's way unto those supple lips that fought between hues of red and pink, and when she would see those hands clasp one another shakingly, unnerved by the gaze she had on him, Raven would forget to breathe.

If she wasn't already there, then Raven was undoubtedly a stone's throw from the gates of damnation.

She was damned to a reality in which she'd become too overwhelmed by the sight of one person, where her breaths would seize just by hearing him talk, where she had to convince herself not to let her hands travel along the skin that bordered his eyes, down the slope of his nose, brushing those lips in a way that would make him more flustered than she'd ever seen.

Raven had wholly, truly lost her mind.

"It's getting late" Hayden said next to her, flipping the hard cover binding onto the yellowed pages that had 'Rules of Economics' on them.

Raven looked up from her own book, seeing the tender smile on Hayden's face.

Without meaning to, her own smile peeked out to greet his. "Sure".

Side by side, they walked through the scanty library, down the hallways until their homeroom was in sight.

The resistance they both had to part ways was almost tangible, a powerful feeling that left a sour taste in the mouth.

" See you later" It was Raven that first said, waving at Hayden as she left.

"Yeah, later" Hayden called back, a weight sinking in his gut.

As he watched her walk away, he felt a stare on him.

Hayden turned a little to the side, seeing the boy who'd been consoling Raven in the cafeteria.

The boy's eyes held within them, storms of fury and hate, and every single bit of it was directed towards Hayden.

Hayden felt a flurry of emotions overwhelm him, ranging from the shame he felt from being unsightly in comparison to this boy,....no, man that looked beyond perfect, to the fear he felt from having those familiar emotions of hate and disgust thrown his way.

'Please, not again. Don't look at me that way, please' Hayden screamed internally, feeling the stitches that held the already minute confidence she had within him start to tear.

His breath picked up, his hands shaking by his sides as memories hit him.

He felt nauseous, he felt suffocated.

'Breathe, Hayden, breathe' Some part of him chanted as memories of the stall he'd spent most of his school hours in resurfaced in his head.

He was back in that stall, tears in his shirt and tears leaking from his eyes.

He was curled up in there, a book on his lap as he flipped the pages with fingers that were caked with dirt.

He read, not because he felt like, but because he had to.

He had to lose himself in a reality that wasn't his, had to stop the taunts that constantly buzzed in his ears, had to envisage that he had as much food as the Malfoys, as much confidence as Harry and Ron, that he had as much control as Dumbledore did.

He read because he had to live the life of another so he wouldn't dwell on how much he detested his.

It was in those stalls he'd said his last prayers, offering a plea to a being that didn't seem to exist.

"If you're really there, please take me away. Just let me die, I beg you".

His prayers had never been answered.

*******

14/11/2020.

~Ameenah.