Tainted Love

The Edge of the Bed

IRIS

The light woke her up, but not enough for her to open her eyes. Her head hurt and the sun would make it worse. Instead, Iris twisted around in her bed, shifting slightly, sighing.

Unfortunately, though, she was awake enough to be able to think - and if she could think, she could remember.

Last night. Fuck. Sebastian and Tracey had warned her. Theodore's going to talk to you. They made it sound like he was going to inform her of an execution. But she knew what they meant. It had been a long time coming, this talk.

It was cold outside the Leaky. Theodore started speaking immediately after the door closed, and Iris thought it would be rude to interrupt him and cast a heating charm. He tried to be kind about it, but the sentiment he was trying to express couldn't ever come across as kind.

He liked Daphne, so he couldn't be with Iris anymore. Those were his exact words - I can't be with you anymore. Like there was some cosmic force separating them instead of his own decisions.

I got more invested than I should have. It was an odd way of saying that he had made it seem real and now he didn't know how to take it back.

Iris didn't know what to say to him, so she mostly nodded. She could be angry if she wanted. She could point out his hypocrisy and tell him that the things he had done were unfair to her. But what was the point? Theodore wouldn't change his mind either way - he would just feel bad about it and draw their conversation out with attempts at an apology.

He hugged her before he walked away. She watched him go. This is what she had always been afraid of. He promised her they would still be friends but things would be undeniably different between them now.

Tracey and Sebastian had given her a bunch of shots and rubbed her back and walked around outside with her. She didn't remember getting home but she had to have made it back at some point if she was in bed now.

The pain in her head was spreading to her stomach. She cracked her eyes open, staring down at her sheets and allowing her body to pull itself out of the memory.

But she didn't recognize her sheets.

She opened her eyes further, blinking to combat the sunlight pouring in through a window that didn't belong to her, either.

It came to her at once with a cold grip on her body. Iris recognized this room. Her heart starting to pound, she flipped around to the other side of the bed.

He was there. Draco. Asleep, his sheets pushed down around his stomach. No shirt on. He slept on his back. Only people who are fucked in the head sleep on their backs. Iris fought the urge to scream.

Somewhere between the shots and the cigarettes and the hurt and the anger she had ended up here.

She glanced down at her own body. She was wearing the same clothes she had on last night, but her bra and underwear were missing. There was a strange sort of coldness on the back of her neck. She reached for her hair and found that it was slightly damp.

She needed to remember what happened before he woke up and then she needed to leave. Whatever had happened was wrong. She was trying to stay away from him - she had been so good at staying away from him lately.

Iris shut her eyes, trying to remember something, anything about what had happened. She was drinking with Sebastian, Tracey left, walked outside, she went to the bar - she went to the bathroom somewhere between those things, sick - and then...

And then. She vaguely remembered two hands locked on her waist. It was not a positive connotation. She could be making that up, though - that could have happened a different night or it could have never happened at all.