Can't love me when I'm broken
“I love you.”
“You can’t.”
Severus looked at the witch, still lying on his bed, unabashedly naked and languid. He turned his gaze away once she made that declaration; if he did, he would cave in under her gaze –it always made him feel humbled, how could she have the face of a woman who has lived through hell and lived to tell the tale, yet having such sweetness in her eyes when she looked at him.
Him.
Him, the unworthy one, for he felt so little in front of her. So undeserving of the way she moaned his name in reverence anytime he was buried deep into her. So inadequate, even if he was the one who made her laugh and sigh and look as alive as he remembered her from her earlier years.. Not her best friend, or her husband; he was.
“But I do,” she insisted –stubborn woman!–, and he tried to busy himself by dressing himself up. It was no use though; his hands were trembling, and his eyes were aching.
He didn’t deserve this love.
“–and I know you love me, too,” she continued, her voice soft, almost insecure about that statement. As if she was asking instead of confirming.
“We had a mutually beneficial agreement, Hermione,” he said. He had turned his back on her, pretending to be dressing; a garment at a time, his underwear, his trousers, his still immaculate shirt –save for a smear of bright red lipstick on its left cuff. Everything to hide the way his whole being felt shaken by her words. “You wanted an adventure, consolation away from your marriage; I wanted to know how it feels to fuck the Minister.”
A moment of silence passed, and then he continued, trying to imagine the look of heartbreak that was surely crossing her face just now. “I don’t love anyone, you’re smart enough to know.”
“I don’t believe you,” the woman’s voice reached his ears, quieter now. Struggling to sound even. “Where is your heart, Severus?”
“What do you know about my heart, Hermione?” he snapped, his hands clutching at the white fabric of his shirt. “It is hard to have a heart when you have stopped so many others. I’m not the man you want to believe I am.”
When she didn’t respond –not even her breath was heard despite the stifling silence in the room–, he muttered, his steps leading him to the bedroom door, “I want you gone by the time I return to this room.”
Five minutes later, there was no one there.