why
When you first decided to customize a necklace for him, you didn’t exactly realize that you would end up here, leaning against a table in this bustling bar, head spinning after drowning yourself in eight glasses of vodka, unable to breathe, unable to think.
You didn’t foresee the risks it would bring by communicating with a male designer. You didn’t prepare for the lies you would have to make up because this gift was meant to be a surprise. You didn’t realize you would ruin a winter like this.
Of course, drinking isn’t something you usually take part in. Few cocktails for fun with nights out with the girls, but never vodka alone past 10 p.m. This isn’t you. This mess right here, confused by alcohol. You try to clear your foggy mind and recall how on earth—
His daggers. His frozen edges. His crumbling ice cliffs.
You hate fights, especially fights with him, the person you truly, truly love. The moment he didn’t even look at you as he cooked dinner earlier this evening foreshadows the storm that follows. As usual, you have greeted him warmly, internally congratulating yourself for settling on the final design of the customized gift — a necklace with an intricate crystal lock. But by the time you have taken off your coat and placed it on the sofa, walking to the kitchen and hugging him from behind, he tensed, didn’t reply, stopped cooking, and let the delicious-smelling chicken lay helplessly on the frying pan.
Without turning around, without the slightest gestures to hug you back, he whispered, “How long have you been lying to me?”
You hated that feeling: being suspected for lying for a long time, and worse, actually being a liar for the past few weeks.
Slowly disentangling your arms from his waist, you moved back, unable to formulate an answer quickly. After working on the design for almost a month, you were this close to finally revealing the secret present — but to redeem your trustworthiness, should you tell him the secret before the big day of surprising him?
Yet he took the hesitation as further proof of dishonesty. With a sudden sadistic snicker, he put down the spatula.
“I thought so, cheater.”
And for the first time since you came home today, he looked at you in the eyes, and you almost lost your stance. The lack of familiarity, lack of warmth, lack of love — everything you didn’t recognize stabbed you at the exact same moment, leaving you breathless, senseless, yet filled with horror and remorse.
“No, I can explain, Dray —”
“Don’t call me that.”
Through your view blurred by hot, running tears, you somehow managed to examine his face. Was that a trace of… irritation?
With a whimper almost too soft to travel through those few inches between you two, you said, “It was a present. For surprising you on —”
Interrupting gain, he bit his lips, “Oh yeah? Cheating on me is a gift meant as a surprise?”
Furious as much as being hurt, you stared at his unmoved eyes and forcefully bit out the words, “I, did, not, cheat, on, you!”
A smell of burnt meat filled the space between you. Indifferently turning back to decide that it was fine to let the stove keep burning, he nonchalantly folded his arms and sarcastically smiled in a fraudulently tender way. “Continue,” he looked on the bare limbs of a sakura tree that used to produce an elegant scent, “keep going, tell me the complete story of why I would eventually find you sitting with a man I’ve never seen and being so physically close and looking so happy as if you two were the right people supposed to be in a relationship.”
With a swift motion of his arm, he mockingly encouraged you to speak up, “I’m waiting.”
You no longer cried. Having your arms folded, too, you looked at the ground, “Do you seriously don’t believe me when I say that I have been preparing a present with a designer for you?” Knitting your brows, you unconsciously pulled your arms more tightly towards that shattering clash within your chest.
He didn’t move. If time was a stream of particles floating away in an irreversible direction, it stopped at this moment. Stopped floating, moving. Stopped altogether.
Stepping forward, you looked at him straight in the eyes and clearly pronounced the classic, almost-too-cliche line, “Do you trust me?”
He kept staring at the dying sakura tree for another few seconds, as if the stream of particles that you called time limped back into place, reconstructing the shimmering river it once was. Then slowly, ever so slowly, he turned towards you and, slightly opening his mouth, failed to produce any response — correct or incorrect, it didn’t matter — other than a visible gulp that morphed into a choking breath.
You tried again,“Draco, please trust me,” tried so hard, “I love you.”
Waiting for him, his reply, his reactions, were too difficult — and it became more difficult when the tip of his lips curled into a sneer, moving past words with careless superiority.
“So you’re just a fuck buddy after all, hmm?”
That was all you could take. The complete lack of trust he held towards you was deafening, roaring without colors. And the absence of clearing space that could have allowed you to explain your situation, or the situation he found you in, made you think if he has ever trusted you. But at that instant you took a final glance at him, desperately tried to wipe your tears that suddenly came flowing down your face again, and rushed to the door that happened to be quite near where you stood.
The bang that came afterwards deprived you of the very chance of knowing what Draco experienced after you left. Did he feel guilty? Did he feel sad?
No, you should ask — could he feel guilty? Was he capable of feeling sad?
And, most importantly, did he understand what love was?
Your doubts of whether he had ever loved you fastened your pace, until you found yourself in an unfamiliar alley, a dark corner of the central plaza, and a glowing bar that oddly, for the first time in your point of view, looked unusually inviting.
Cursing yourself for running out of your apartment without bringing your coat with you, which, damn, was still lying on the sofa, your frozen hands pushed the bar’s doors open and you stepped in, feeling like a newborn who had just discovered a new flavor of candy.
So here you are. After recalling how you have ended up here, you suddenly realize that you can call your bestie. You pull out your phone.
Its black screen remains black. No matter what you do. Black screen.
At this instant you want to smash your phone against the counter — why do electronic devices have such horrible timing?
Taking this as a sign for further alcohol consumption, you drunkenly order another glass of vodka. You can’t comprehend the bartender’s gaze, because at this time all you can think of is Draco Draco Draco, Draco fucking Malfoy, the one who you shouldn’t still love, should get over, because he doesn’t care, clearly doesn’t care, doesn’t trust you, is able to throw all the past away just for a simple misunderstanding, doesn’t listen to you, probably hates you still, won’t ever come to find you, can’t ever —
As your glass is refilled with the strong liquor that you by this point can recognize by smell alone, you hug it with your limited warmth, giving in to the peace of not thinking, not worrying, and not wondering where you will end up by the time you wake up again.
Unbeknownst to you, a particular someone has rushed out the door after the clock strikes 10 p.m., desperately running in the dark winter whiteness, unable to see colors because the person who has always been the source of colors for his black-and-white world has left by banging the door in his face, and he clutches your coat that still smells like you close to his thumping chest and loudly calls your name like a madman, as a madman is all he is, a madman is what he’ll become if he fails to find you in the next thirty minutes.
.
.
.
to be continued