Tainted Love

Good Things

DRACO

"Iris," he breathed.

They had gotten closer in the night. They tended to get closer in the night. He was still holding her hand but his grip was looser and a little clammy. He wondered who had moved - him or her - but supposed it didn't matter.

Ends over means. He had been trying to remind himself of that recently.

"You awake?" He asked, still speaking quietly. Her body shifted but she did not reply.

So he held her hand tighter. The air outside his sheets was cold. He thought idly that it was a new month - March 1st today. They had made it to March.

The back of her head was grazing his chest so that he couldn't see her face. He could hear her breath, though, and feel her back moving against his skin when she inhaled.

"I'm sorry," he said. "Never got around to saying that bit."

Last night was not their best night, all things considered. Iris was so happy with him at the beginning. Beaming at him every time he caught her eye. He should've taken it as a sign that things would be fine and left it well alone with Theodore. He should've known better than to do something that would piss her off.

But her happiness hadn't sated him. It had pressured him. If Theodore got to her before him, if the other people in her life rightly convinced her that she was above him, he would never get to see her look that way again.

As much as he took pleasure in picturing the look on Nott's face upon hearing that Iris had never thought of him as more than a friend, Draco supposed that it wasn't exactly Theodore's fault.

It definitely wasn't Iris's fault. He hadn't meant to take it out on her, to make her upset. He must have known it would, though. He wasn't thinking. It had been an ill-formed plan born out of a cruel desire to wipe the smile off Theodore's face when he walked into the Leaky. And Iris had borne the brunt of it, as she often did when he fucked up.

"I wasn't thinking," he said to the back of Iris's head. "Or, I was... thinking wrong. I know I was thinking wrong."

That was the best way he knew how to put it.

He had put it all out there for her last night, the heart of it. Speaking at her for two minutes straight, watching her face as she processed every phrase he threw out, logged every word and change in tone.

She knew how he felt - she had always known, he supposed, and she had probably known before him. Iris had a way of figuring out his emotions before he could even consider them.

Her words hadn't been enough to convince him, though. The only way she could show him that she understood him was letting him fuck her. Guard down, her body underneath him, her legs trembling, little drops of water escaping from her eyes, beads of sweat on her collarbones.

Neither of them were capable of lying when they were like that.

Sex was the only thing that had stayed constant between them. If they were still fucking he knew she would stay with him. It was an unfair system, solely perpetrated by him and leftover from Pansy. The only way she had ever told him she loved him was with her body. Her words were always lifeless.

He would learn to listen to Iris, learn to believe her. He would do just about anything if she was at stake - and she had made it clear that she was.

"Won't happen again," he murmured. "I know you wouldn't believe me, but I won't risk it."

Iris didn't respond, her shoulders moving up and down in steady breaths. He let his eyes trail down her form, the curve of her side, the baby hairs at the nape of her neck.