Tainted Love

Grey Area

IRIS

October was over and things were no less confusing than they had been at the start.

Iris supposed that was a slight exaggeration. Since the beginning of October, her own feelings about the situation that she and Draco were in had become frighteningly clear. She used to hate him and now... now she didn't.

There was a different emotion in place of the hatred now. It was not love, not anywhere close to it. But there was something.

Most times, she thought he felt it too.

Then he would say something or do something and she would realize that he didn't. He couldn't. It was all very confusing.

It was Friday now. They had fucked yesterday afternoon so Iris thought he might deign to speak to her today, but it seemed like he wasn't planning on it.

They were still working on the mirrors, trying to figure out how to use them to communicate - or whether they could be used that way at all. Because Draco was insisting on not getting close to her today, they were both looking at one individual mirror.

It struck Iris as a very inefficient method, but she didn't like to speak to him when he was acting like this - when he was ignoring her on purpose.

There was a time where him ignoring her would've struck a nerve and made her melancholy. Now, she understood it as strange phases that he went through. He hated himself for not hating her. She just had to wait until his desire for her surpassed his self-loathing. Then she would have him again.

But that theory relied on the fact that Draco didn't hate her anymore - that he really did desire her. And some of his actions pointed to the contrary.

Iris wondered if Draco was being confusing on purpose. It would be just like him. But deep down, she thought that his mood swings revolved less around some sort of twisted desire to hurt her and more around his own confusion about his feelings.

He probably got off on the fact that he was still managing to string her along either way. Was he even stringing her along, though? Was there some part of her that wanted him to?

It seemed like everything he said to her was ammunition for both sides.

I like you better without clothes. Those words coming out of his mouth had felt like getting punched in the stomach.

It happened two weeks ago and she remembered it like it had happened five minutes ago. The odd sense of disbelief mixed with longing when he had told her to stay.

His eyes were half-lidded, his shirt somewhere on the floor below him. He was below her, physically - lying on his bed as she stood over him. He never let himself be below her. The motion alone felt like some form of vulnerability, like a cat lowering its ears.

And she had stayed. His bed smelled like him, just like him, a deep sort of musk that was synonymous with night. Moonlight spilled over his bed, painting him silver from the mirror.

She pulled on her underwear and her sweater as she got back under his sheets. He made no move to touch her - didn't even look at her again. He grabbed his wand and motioned the blinds on his windows to swing down, then set it down and turned over.

His back faced her. She stared at the muscles relaxing in his shoulders.

And when she woke up in the morning the heat of the sun was bathing her in yellow light. She breathed in the smell of him, the casual warmth of his blankets. When his hands had fallen on her waist they had been strangely cold for having been under his sheets all night.