entanglements | d.m.

07.tryouts

September '98 | H I M

A click comes from Draco's right. "Can you stop with the long face?"

He meets Blaise's glare, unwaveringly equal in ire, if not spiked by the unnecessary comment. "You have a nerve with your constant attitude."

"At least mine is granted," Blaise fires back, defenses up in full force. He must gotten off on the wrong foot—his injured one perhaps. All day, he's been trying to start shit and Draco is not in the mood. At all. "You have a girl you are already familiar with. The only thing you have to do is smooth things over."

He says it like it's so easy.

Like Draco hasn't tried to be civil. Hasn't tried to make this weird transition smooth.

Like Draco didn't burn the bridge between them by saying quite literally nothing.

"You know, you have no fucking idea—"

"Of course I don't," Blaise cuts him off, droning now. "You keep that thing between you two sealed for Salazar knows why. Either you had pure starlight under your fingertips—your precious little thing," he mocks with an eye roll, "or you are too embarrassed about how insignificant it all seems, now that the shit is over."

Bloody deep red, that is all Draco sees, fists curling at his sides, molars crunching together. "Shut your fucking—"

"Can you two stop with the bickering?" Theo has turned ahead of them, now walking backwards on their trek to the Quidditch pitch, a merry fucking grin on his face. "We have a wonderful evening ahead of us, and we need to be our best selves. Now stuff your lady problems away and put on a smile that'll sway good man Corner—not that we'd need it," he adds, "only a pleasant thing to look at. Less like we'd rip their heads off at any given moment. Merlin knows they're quivering in our presence alone."

Draco cuts another withering glare at Blaise before releasing that tangent annoyance with a slow exhale. This guy's attitude is about to cost him something.

"I don't have lady problems," he drawls at the brunette ahead, annoyance not wholly flushed away.

So he may be in a pissy mood. So what? So he can't shake it for almost a week. So what?

Repulsed. Repugnant. Those are the words she used.

My early years have not been my proudest, she said.

And that hit its fucking mark. He can feel the blow still, an arrow not to his heart, but deeper. So deep, no one knows of it.

Besides her.

He knew. Draco knew what he'd done. What he'd put her through, but not her proudest? He can't work a way to excuse around it. The regret has been so vivid when she looked at him. Regret and completion.

Another second before her and he would have come undone.

"I don't have lady problems. I have lady visits and they do well on taking my mind off things." Slowed his pace, Theo holds the back of Draco's neck, his grin indulgent. "Might I interest you in some similar arrangements?"

The scrunch of his nose, like smelling something unpleasant, he can't fight.

Besides, no one would want to. Not once they see all. The infamy that lay on his left forearm, fading but forever woven into his skin, like his deeds, stay spun into his conscience.

And... and...

Nothing and.

Never again and.