silver | d.m.

21.off

January 2005 | H I M

Life does weird things to you.

It throws a curveball and boom! Deal with it.

Now—that Tess disappearing from the earth's surface for over a week would throw him off tracks that fucking badly is something he did not see coming.

It took a lot of pain acknowledging the fact, and even more to confront her about it—not his proudest moment, he'll admit that.

With Lucius being his father, Draco has always been prone to anxiety, but that week, especially near the end, he had to take more than several moments to take deep breaths and redirect his thoughts.

She was just gone. Away. Bye-bye.

His first thought was; odd, then yeah, I don't like it, to what the fuck happened?

It's not like Tess to leave without a word, not after being around each other constantly for the last months. Weekends, he could deal with. Week days? Not so much, he found out.

He was worried sick, practically assaulted Crawford for updates, and had way too many trips to her apartment to count, only to find no one answering the door.

The energy around them has been off before though. When he was talking to her, it felt like she was miles away, which is such a clichè thing to say, something he has read in way too many books, but once you experience it, it makes fucking sense.

Deep down, he knew shit was about to happen. Call it a gut feeling.

That day, before he went down to knock on her door one more desperate time, he forgot about his phone and after a two hour search, he has declared the stupid little thing as wanted.

A miracle happened, he couldn't believe the relief washing over him when he saw her approach on both legs—her two arms still attached and intact, head held high despite the devestation sitting deep in her eyes.

First, she denied the whole skating moment, saying there was nothing, which was a hit in the gut, since there definitely was something. He has no clue what it was, but it's clear and safely stored in memory.

Bright eyes, snowflakes clinging to her lashes, the beanie on her head and rosed nose from the cold. Damn him, he's never seen anything more beautiful.

Then she gave him a fucking free pass. He thought he didn't hear right. Almost chocked on his own spit. As if... as if that was an option. But hey, she wasn't into sex anymore and it's not like he can argue that.
He'll take her which ever way she offers.

What that week of silence and uncertainty taught him is that he wants his Tess around and the following weeks have proven that that will be very little, meaning he has seen her only twice—both times very quiet, she barely talked, with them ending up asleep on the couch one way or another.

He's just grateful to be there for her, because she needs it, even when she won't vocalise it. He feels it in the way she clings to him at night.

Not spending that much time with Tess anymore also meant he had to find other ways to entertain himself—one of which being to watch his turtle, Spill, crawl around like a little explorer. That is how bored he was. Well, it gave him enough serotonin to survive the day, because he fucking loves his four-legged roommate.

Right now, on this frigid january noon, Draco thought to stock up her pantry and the one of her little buddies since she does not seem to have the time for it.

Thankfully, he knows her well enough at this point to know what she would want and need. He grabs five extra Snickers bars at the cash register because it seems like she could need them.