Tainted Love

Pink

IRIS

It had been almost a month since Paris, but Iris still felt it with her whenever she woke up. The hotel, the hidden balcony, the hair at the nape of Draco's neck -- little details made their way into her dreams, and every morning it was harder to forget them, to awaken into reality. They felt more real than her actual life.

She had been sleeping with the windows open, even though it was late November and the air was freezing. It made her bed feel safer, like it was protecting her, which helped her sleep. But in the mornings she woke to wind tearing through her curtains, flicking faded blue light onto her face, waking her up halfway and making her dreams feverish.

The sun was rising later, setting earlier; it made it near impossible to get out of bed. When the wind woke her up, she would stare through the crack in her curtains and watch the sun rising in an orange ball, staining the city skyline. She had to wrap her arms around her torso to feel warm. When it got bad enough she'd cast a Heating Charm.

By the time she actually had to get out of bed, the sun would be up, the color of scrambled eggs. Still casting blue light all over. She usually just ate cereal or made toast. She still cooked herself dinner, still loved making things, or tried to, but it was too much effort in the mornings.

Then work. The hours dragged. She tried to trick herself into having fun, tried playing the games she used to play at work -- betting on things her coworkers would do, thinking of recipes she could make in the evening, seeing how fast she could do all her tasks, timing herself, practicing little charms when she finished early. Or else thinking, fantasizing -- she had endless narratives that she used to draw upon: what her wedding would be like, what her children would be like, what she would do if she was stranded, what she would do if she was kidnapped, what if she was a famous singer or athlete, what if she discovered a new potion and what would she say about it in interviews?

But she couldn't get lost in those stories anymore. She had to really focus to make them interesting; it felt like more of a chore than just working.

She felt lonely -- she was alone all the time, and now it felt like she was separated from her own mind. There were people around her, of course, on the streets and at work and in the lobby of her apartment building, but she didn't really know any of them.

Sadie and Simon were home from their engagement-moon in three days, but they had been gone for over a month. She hadn't seen James since she asked to go on a break. She talked to Tracey and Sebastian and Theo but only through their Patronuses. She missed their faces.

And Draco hadn't spoken to her since Paris. He hadn't even tried, as far as she could tell.

She felt used by him even though he had been kind to her. Perhaps because she wasn't sure where the kindness was coming from -- whether it was connected to her body, the expectation that she would let him fuck her. Would he have been loving if she had refused?

Maybe. She couldn't know, she hadn't given him the chance. She had been miserable as soon as he started explaining himself, she kissed him so that she didn't have to hear it.

Iris had never been a sad person. She was scared of the sadness, the way it would touch her unbidden, coming from nowhere. She tried to send it back to nowhere, but it got mixed up with her other feelings. It lined them with blue, hid behind them so that whenever she felt happy, angry, horny, anxious -- sadness followed.

And since it could be hidden within any feeling, Iris started to fear them all. If she could kill the sadness, she could kill the love that was its core.

At night it was different. Cocooned in her bed, touch-starved, her mind escaped into fantasies she'd never let herself consider during the day. She wished she had done more with Draco in Paris -- she wished she had stayed up all night with him, touching him, sexually and then not, she wished she had let him kiss her, slept with his hand tucked low across her stomach. She wished they had showered together in the morning, that she had kissed him goodbye, been naked, used every moment to try to go back to the past, before any of it.