Playing With Fire * { Fred Weasley }

Coping Mechanisms

It would have been easier if I could've crept out without waking him, but we were too tangled up, too close together to avoid disturbing one another.

Later, this would strike me as an apt, bitterly ironic metaphor.

But I'm getting ahead of myself again.

"What's the time?" he asked sleepily as I pulled my jeans from the wreckage of discarded clothes at the foot of his bed.

"Just past five."

He yawned. "You don't have to leave so early, you know. You being spotted leaving only works in our favor."

Just like yesterday, the thought of creeping out of his dormitory the night after we'd actually had sex—again—gave me a vaguely anxious and sick feeling. I knew that I was partly upset about the way things had gone the night before and the way that it had exposed this massive gulf of misunderstanding that existed between Fred and me—a gulf that I somehow hadn't known about until I was trying to have a conversation about it and failing to describe the strange sense of foreboding that was invading my thoughts like a billowing smoke.

I thought about telling him this, but the thought of further widening that gulf when I was still getting used to its existence felt like more than I could bear, especially so early in the morning.

This wasn't even getting into the fact that I didn't even know if I'd been spotted going up with him in the first place, which begged the question of why I was doing this and I was not yet ready to even consider that answer.

This was all too much to think about at five o'clock in the morning, though, so I forced my face into an entirely neutral expression and deflected.

"I'd be doing the same thing if you were my real boyfriend," I said, wiggling back into my jeans. "It's consistent with my character."

He laughed sleepily. "Wouldn't doing something completely out of character only prove that you're desperately in love with me? I think you talked me into studying with you for the same reason a few months back."

"There's a good deal of difference between studying and sneaking back to your own bed early in the morning."

"I suppose that's fair." He was quiet as I got the rest of my clothes on, to the point that I assumed he must have fallen back asleep.

But then, just as I was about to leave, his hand closed around my wrist. "Charlotte."

I looked back at him reluctantly, unsure of what I would find. His expression was uncharacteristically serious, a hint of worry tugging at the corners of his lips. "Are we okay?"

I hate admitting this because it sounds terrible, but there was a small, awful part of me that felt a little glad that he seemed thrown off kilter by me. Let him have a taste of what it felt like. Let him worry about the complicated dynamics and consequences of whatever we were doing. Let the questions he can't answer gather until they're a lump in his throat and a strange, squeezing feeling in his stomach.

But the moment was fleeting, and I immediately felt terrible that I'd even entertained such a thought. As complicated as the situation was, I knew he didn't wish me ill. The very least I could do would be to return the favor.

"Yeah," I said, forcing a smile. "Everything's fine."

There was a slight crease in between his eyebrows, like he didn't quite believe me, but wasn't sure why. "Okay."

It hurt a little, that he was willing to believe that lie, but I steeled myself and leaned in, brushing my lips against his cheek. "I'll see you later."