how
The smell of pancakes wakes you up.
Not daring to move, you slightly open your eyes and struggle to adjust to the bright morning sunshine. This place is too familiar, the texture of the sofa and arrangement of furniture—
Then the memories flood into your mind. They rush back faster than any comets can travel, hitting hard and leaving you breathless.
And when you can finally see your surroundings, you find an exhausted Draco sitting on the ground, back leaning against the wall on the other end of the living room. He offers a fragile, genuine smile as you meet his eyes, and his face, originally drained of color, starts to look alive again, with a fresh tint of rose red slowly drifting onto his cheeks.
“H-hi,” He tentatively offers, careful not to scare you, and perhaps afraid of your outright rejection.
You close your eyes. Breathe, you tell yourself. He’s just trying to manipulate you. It’s a new round of drama. Don’t fall for it again.
When you open your eyes he is no longer looking at you. Chin resting on his knees he hugs to his chest, he tries again, “I… I made pancakes for us.”
Us.
Just one word and your wounds are torn apart again. Out in the open and prone to attack. Pulling your coat even closer to yourself, you clear your throat, “Um, I— I need to leave.”
Need to.
Hurriedly he stands up, despite almost collapsing if he has not quickly leaned on the wall for support. Shuffling his hair he begs, “I know I messed up but please, just,” and he looks absolutely shattered as he looks at you, “please at least eat something for breakfast.”
By this time you have already stood up. Unable to find anything to do, your hands turn into fists, uselessly hanging beside your body. “Draco,” you sigh, “don’t do this.”
“This?” He repeats, a shaky breath escaping his tired soul and meeting the harshness of the winter air. “I’m just— I just don’t want to hurt you again.”
The sincerity in his voice startles you, causing you to look at his bloodshot eyes again. He holds your gaze, silently pleading you to stay, even if he knows of course you will leave, and allowing the bubbling guilt to encroach his organs and intestines and every ounce of blood.
“You’re so,” you sharply exhale, “so damn confusing.” Met with his guilty eyes covered with a shade of mist, you continue, “You have never really trusted me, then refuse to listen to me, insult me, break me into pieces, and somehow come to find me, bring me to your apartment, and make pancakes? What is this? Who are you to me?”
By the time you’ve finished your speech your chest has been dramatically rising and falling and rising and falling. He stares at you the entire time, intently listening to every cadence, secretly memorizing the way your lips part, lightly inhaling the scent you give off.
“Everything did happen except the first part,” he quietly states as his voice falters. “That isn’t true. I do trust you.”
You laugh dryly, “Yeah, you trust me so much you call me a fuck buddy because I want to surprise you with a gift. Well done, nice definition of a word supposedly describing a healthy relationship, which is quite unlike what we had.”
“Had.”
His voice comes out much more vulnerable than he wants to.
“Please don’t— I,” both hands scratching his hair he shakes his head and practically begs, “I am so fucking sorry for my outburst! I am so, so ashamed of myself. I was jealous and my irrational fears got a hold of me. I didn’t want to hurt you. I never want to. Why would I? And,” he stops again, “I used to think, how could I?”
“But Draco, nobody has hurt me more than you.”
That line hits him too hard. Even when assassins try to take his life, he doesn’t panic. It is the very thought that you are hurt because he has hurt you that breaks him apart.
No, it’s even worse — he is the person who has hurt you the most.
“I can’t keep up with the pace you’re changing. It’s killing me.” You don’t sound angry; you sound sad.
By this point he has understood the severity of damage he has caused. And he waits for your conclusion that he already knows.
“So Draco,” you smile defeatedly, “let me leave.”
He has been a coward for most of his lifetime. But when it comes to you, your relationship, this essential vitality to your lives that he knows is love, he finds courage to take out his heart for you even if you break it.
With an ill composed anxiety, he painfully asks, “Are you,” he finds these next words difficult to pronounce, “b- breaking up with me?”
His sore, pounding heart suddenly believes in the divine, the religious, the mystical, because his frailty displays such vulnerable madness, and the darkness that used to consume him has transformed into a tenderness too blue to be unloved and a hopelessness too cruel to be ignored.
Your voice doesn’t tremble as you confess, “I want to.”
Want. Not wanted. Want.
Right then and there, Draco’s half-finished puzzle falls to the ground again, pieces piercing his skin as the loud thud bangs his skull. He knows this is coming. He has collected enough evidence from your tone, your diction, your pause and hesitancy and lack of response.
He hates himself for it.
He hates his overly aggressive mockery. He hates his stupidly vulnerable ego. He hates his actions that have made you feel unloved. He hates how he hates himself, because he knows you won’t approve of it.
You have always been the light. His light. The light. It doesn’t matter. Your presence in itself is a treasure, and you loved him, oh how you used to love him.
The realization that you no longer love him strangles him, cuts his throat, puts a bandaid on a bleeding spot, just to make him realize a single bandaid isn’t enough.
“I’m sorry.”
This time it’s not an apology.
It’s atonement. A vow for change. A plead for your potential return.
Because God knows if you even would return.
“If it still matters to you,” Draco stops his tears from preventing his stammering as he walks to the door, “I love you. And,” sighing, he continues, “I understand what you feel, but please promise me one thing.”
You don’t want to agree to him but maybe the way he looks at the ground will make you too heartless if you do not respond. So you give a light “Hm” as a sign for him to continue.
Yet what he says catches you off guard, as he looks at you, staring straight into your eyes with his watery grey ones, as if afraid you won’t listen, as if afraid you won’t agree:
"Please, please please please, please don’t ever hurt yourself ever again — I’m not worth it.”
His tear falls on the ground, breaking for you to see.