Tainted Love

Back Out

DRACO

The music played, fast and loud, punishing everyone on the dance floor. Making them dance like puppets, marionettes who don't know where they are or why they're doing what they're doing. But nobody seemed to mind. They moved their limbs like the song wanted them to and laughed instead of complaining.

Maybe they did know where they were and what they were doing -- maybe Draco was the odd one out in that regard. The bar counter that had once been so familiar to him was alien now. It was white, which was to say that it was whatever color the lights were flashing at the moment.

Someone had spilled a drink a couple of chairs down. A puddle glinted in the light. Draco stared at it for a while.

He wasn't sure what had brought him to the Siren. Self-loathing? Everything was blue, the colors cascading between light and dark. Every time he caught someone's face, they turned to the side. Not on purpose. He couldn't tell what anyone looked like.

He had a very restrained field of vision. He was imposing it on himself. If he looked too far to his right he would look up the stairs, up towards the private rooms. And then he would remember Iris, and, more specifically, the segment of time in their relationship that he would've taken Iris there.

He was cruel to her on purpose. He wondered why, but all he could come up with was confusion. Confusion was his answer to most questions these days, most things he wondered. Back before all this, he had never been consciously confused. Even when he knew nothing, he thought he knew everything.

It was wrong but nice. He felt bad for the way he treated his mother. This was new, feeling bad about things. It was mostly consumed by feeling bad about Iris.

The bartender slid another drink across the counter to him. Draco didn't remember ordering it. It tasted like black licorice. The air was hot and thick with sweat and magic. He considered running a hand through his hair, checking to make sure it was still in place, but instead he kept the hand on the outside of his glass and let the ice inside cool it down.

"I know you," someone said from behind him. Everyone knew everyone in his world. It was all about who you know.

Draco wished that he could be more anonymous, that he had the ability to not be seen. Did he really wish that, though, if he was here? He would never see Pansy or Blaise out at a bar, not unless the bar had been shut down and thoroughly cleaned to host them.

"Draco, right?" The voice asked. Draco turned, taking in a blonde girl with a wide smile. She gestured towards him with an electric blue drink. "Sorry, didn't want to get your attention by touching you. Thought that might have been weird."

Considering his eye contact an invitation, she slid into the chair next to him, obscuring his view of the puddle on the bar.

"You know me?" Draco asked.

The girl chuckled. She had a really nice smile, one of those ones that makes you think, this person is actually happy.

"Oh, no, not personally," she said. "We've never met -- before now." She extended her hand. Draco shook it, to be polite and also because she had a sort of commanding atmosphere around her.

"I'm Alice, by the way," she said. "When I said I know you, I just meant from the paper. Hope that's not too weird."

Yes, it was. If she knew him by the paper -- assuming she meant the Prophet, which was the only paper Draco's name regularly appeared in -- that meant she either knew him from early articles about him being a prejudiced pureblood supremacist who had escaped proper punishment or she knew him from the more recent articles about him and Iris.