Tainted Love

Late

DRACO

Draco knew he was hurting her.

There was no plausible deniability, no way to explain his actions away. Even when he was drunk, more or less blacked out, he could read Iris's face. He could have been gentle with her. He could have allowed her to be gentle with him.

It wasn't that he wanted to hurt her. He wasn't sure exactly what it was, really, or whether it could be boiled down to one thing at all.

He wanted proof that she loved him. The compulsion of reassurance. He had never been loved by anyone else, not like that. Not properly. His father's suggestion that things would change when she went back to America had shaken him more than he would care to admit.

Even if you did manage not to see anyone else... I doubt she would do the same.

Draco knew it wasn't true. It wasn't like Iris to hurt the people she cared about. Maybe he had fucked her to make sure he was still among those people. He was too rough with her. Hadn't he always been? She cried when he was through.

And there was the other part of it, the more threatening part, the part that made him feel sick when he thought about it too much.

She's not fit for you, his father had said. The more that Draco thought about it, the more sense it made.

It had nothing to do with her blood status, had nothing to do with the fact that she hadn't lived through the war by his side. Those things may have bothered him once, but he had long since accepted the role the Dark Mark would play in his life. And so had Iris.

She understood the way people hated him. She had hated him herself, once. He thought of her, half-awake, curled under his arm. His heartbeat calming after a nightmare. Trying not to wake her; knowing that she wouldn't mind being woken up.

It had nothing to do with her friends or her money or her kindness. It wasn't that she didn't care enough about him. It wasn't that she didn't love him enough.

She loved him too much, maybe. He was phrasing it wrong.

Of course Iris was fit for him. The trouble lay where it usually did -- with him. Draco was not fit for her.

He knew he was hurting her. He knew. But he couldn't stop himself. Wasn't that proof enough? He watched her nursing her wounds in the kitchen, avoided her when she got home from work. They had gone days without any substantial conversation -- every time they spoke Draco felt himself hardening, being cruel.

So he would retreat instead of talking to her, disappear instead of trying to explain.

Watching her react to his little moments of cruelty was sickeningly reassuring. If he could still hurt her, she still cared. He hadn't lost her yet. An ugly cycle of negative validation.

The sharp feeling that clawed to the surface whenever he found her in the same room. The insecurities his father had planted - an escape, a distraction. Lucius had been right about some things -- namely, the fact that Draco had changed Iris and made her worse. What else was he right about, then?

Would he even be able to find out before she left? Was it worth trying to untangle her from him? He had less than two weeks to do it. Less than two weeks to love her the way she was supposed to be loved.

It seemed almost impossible. And if he couldn't do it, he shouldn't lie to her. He shouldn't pretend like he could.

In that way, he supposed, his father was right. Pansy was the one who was fit for him. She deserved to be hurt by him; he deserved to be hurt by her. Iris didn't.