“Ron’s got a bigger cock,” she told him once, lying boneless across his silk sheets, “but you fuck me better. Deeper. Ron fucked shallow to keep himself from coming too-”
He placed a finger over her lips. “Don’t talk about him when you’re in my bed.”
She snorted and turned her back to him.
Since then, Draco fucks her with blazing fury. Even when he doesn’t want to. There was a time when he delighted in taking his rage out on Granger, the thundercloud of his adolescent achievements. But he didn’t know her then and now that he does, fucking her from behind, with her face crushed against his sheets and her hair bunched around his fist, making noises that waver between intense pain and pleasure feels wrong. It’s not how he wants to fuck her.
It’s the only way she’ll have him.
Granger needs someone to jolt the numbness, and Draco needs the moments of calm in between—those times she lets him hold her damp body in his arms as they exchange details about their day. She usually talks. If he tries to tell her about his home, his family, his problems, she goes silent like she feels an obligation to listen. So he’s stopped indulging and she’s pretended not to notice.
“Yes, yes,” she cries now, yanking the sheets so hard the corner of the mattress flashes out. Draco allows one last look at the elegant line of her spine and the twin dimples above her hips before letting go. He falls onto his back, panting. Blinded by sweat-soaked hair he’s too exhausted to shove back.
The mattress dips beneath her weight as she rolls onto her side. “You didn’t hold back.” Her deep sultry voice makes his cock twitch.
“I can’t do this anymore.”
Figure-eights she’s drawing on his torso come to an abrupt halt. “School’s not over for two months.” When he doesn’t reply, she sits up. “What’s wrong?” She sweeps the hair from his eyes and grips his chin in her hand. “Damn it. Why don’t you talk to me?”
“I try to talk to you, Granger. You never listen.”
He knocks her hand back. “There’s a difference between pretending to listen and actually engaging in meaningful conversation.”
“We have meaningful conversations!”
“Only when the subject pertains to you. You couldn’t give a fuck about me.” Saying the words out loud reignites his frustration. “I’m just a good fuck.”
“That’s all we are to each other!”
“That’s not what you are to me.”
That effectively expunges her rage. “I don’t want a relationship.”
“Not just with you. With anybody. I can’t be there for another person when I’m…” She curls her arms around her knees, looking terribly small. “Sorry I haven’t been present.”
“It’s not like you owe me anything.”
“I do.” She blinks hard. “Maybe I didn’t before. But I do now.”
He’d prepared a whole spiel about hating casual sex, hating how she won’t look at him when they do it, about seriously considering Astoria Greengrass just to prove he has options. But now the words are jumbled at the back of his throat.
Granger’s been vulnerable since returning for eighth. If his words wound her, she’ll never forget. She might forgive, but they’ll remain etched in her memory, blooming with pain whenever she thinks of him.
“What do you need from me?” he asks, finally.
He turns down the chance to court Astoria. He graduates Hogwarts without a girlfriend, a job, or his parents there to celebrate. Granger disappears without word. His letters to her go unanswered. Potter’s vague about it at Auror training but after the twelfth time Draco brings her up, he promises, “she’s safe, Malfoy.”
Fifteen months of silence pass before Draco receives a knock on his door. It’s an early Sunday morning and he’s shirtless with tousled hair and yesterday’s stubble.
Seeing her feels like a miniature explosion in his chest. Her smile is wide and bright and her skin is darker than he remembered. She looks happy. “I missed you.”
She asks a thousand questions. All about him. Listening with rapture and pride. Finally, she tells him about Australia. Her parents. That she’s finally beginning to feel whole.
They make love for the first time. Face to face. Eyes wide open.
(725 words, cross-posted from Twitter)
