Look who's posting! Did ya miss me? Even though it's only been maybe a month or two since my last post? Just say yes, it will make me feel better lol this is just a little R/S oneshot that's been chomping at my brain for awhile, so I decided that staying up till 2 in the morning to finish it and post it when I have to be awake at 745 is a great idea :) Enjoy!

He just stared at her, watching as she rooted through the fridge for something to eat and something to drink.

"What in the hell are you doing here?"

She stood and turned back to face him, running a hand through her hair in an aggravated manner. "I didn't know where else to go."

"I'm sure Albus would have taken you in. Or Hugo. Or any one of your friends or many cousins. So tell me, Rose, why are you here?"

She stared at him, looking slightly lost. "I…I don't know. I just didn't want to go to any of them." Hesitantly, she stepped towards him. "Scorpius, I –"

"Are you going to let him know where you are?"

She shook her head. "I hadn't planned on it, at least not yet. I need some time and space from him to figure things out."

He gestured towards her left hand. "Maybe you should have gotten your time and space to figure things out before he put that giant rock on your finger two years ago. Or any time since. But your wedding is in two months, isn't it? So why now? Cold feet, Rosie?"

She flinched at his icy tone. "Just let me stay here."

"Why in Merlin's name would I do that?"

"You have an extra room." Her eyes became pleading. "Please, Scorpius, we used to be such good friends –"

"Yeah, used to be." His voice raised and she flinched again, stepping back. "We aren't anymore. Wonder why that is, hmm?" Grey eyes flashed to the eight carats on her finger. "Certainly not because I let our friendship go, or because I stopped owling and started making excuses to blow you off. No, Rosie, that was all you."

Her eyes had filled with tears. "Scorpius, I –"

"Stay in my extra room for a few days. I won't tell anyone you're here. But stay away from me."

"Thank you, Scorp." She stepped forward again, her arms lifting like she was going to hug him. He turned his back, walking briskly towards his room.

"Don't touch me. And don't call me Scorp."

*/*

"I made you some eggs."

Scorpius ignored the small plate of steaming scrambled eggs she had gestured to and instead helped himself to some cereal. He didn't miss the hurt look on her face.

"No thanks." He headed back to his room.

*/*

She was standing there cooking something again. She was always cooking when he got home, every day for the last week. He hadn't known she could cook, but it was possible that she'd picked it up over the last four years.

He wouldn't know.

"Pork chops and sautéed vegetables for dinner tonight," Rose said without looking over her shoulder to him.

"I'm not hungry." Her hair was pulled up into a knot on top of her head, a few stray curls falling out to brush her cheeks and neck.

She let out a sigh and continued to stir the vegetables. "Of course you're not."

"Have you owled him yet?" Scorpius brushed past her in the narrow kitchen and opened his refrigerator to pull out a Firewhiskey. Rose shook her head slightly.

"No."

"Has he owled you?" He popped the lid off and tossed it into the garbage can.

"No."

"When are you going to?"

"I don't know."

"Don't you think your fiancé deserves to know where you are?" He took a long sip of the Firewhiskey.

Rose didn't say anything, still stirring the vegetables. "He does. I just don't know what to say to him."

"Why did you run off?"

She finally glanced at him before opening the oven to check the pork chops. "I don't know. I guess you could call it cold feet. I just started thinking about the wedding and I panicked. I needed to get away." She moved towards him, opening the cabinet to pull out two plates. He glared hatefully at the diamonds still glinting on her finger.

"Why did you come here?"

Rose put a pork chop on each plate, scooping vegetables next to it. "Dinner's ready."

The smell of it was practically making his mouth water.

"I'm not hungry."

He vanished into his room again, leaving her holding two plates.

*/*

She'd been there three weeks. She'd started to grocery shop, to do her laundry there. Her shampoo and body scrub and razor were in the single shower and he found himself staring at them every morning before he went to work.

She still hadn't told her damn fiancé where she was.

He could smell the bacon before he left his room. Every morning she made breakfast, and every night she made dinner. He'd actually started to eat some of it – she was an amazing cook.

He snagged a piece of bacon from a plate and barely missed her hand swatting him away.

His head was in the refrigerator for a bottled water when she spoke and made him bump it on the top of it.

"I owled him this morning."

He didn't look at her, instead focusing on unscrewing the lid from the water.

"I told him where I was and asked him to come see me in a week or so. I'm just waiting on a response now."

"What if he shows up here now?" Scorpius chanced a glance at her. She continued to flip bacon as if she hadn't heard him. "This looks awfully domestic, don't you think? How do you know he won't jump to some conclusion about this?"

"Wouldn't be the first time," she muttered under her breath.

"What?"

"Nothing."

He'd heard her clearly but couldn't understand it. Why would her fiancé ever jump to conclusions about them?

He put it out of his mind and left for work.

*/*

It was eleven at night, and she was standing in his kitchen in the shortest shorts ever invented, stirring a cup of tea.

He stared at her. "What are you doing up?"

She looked up at him from the mug and he could see the faint flush on her cheeks. "I have a cold," she replied, sniffling slightly. "Hot tea helps. Do you want me to make you some?"

He shook his head and Rose did her best to keep her eyes averted from his bare chest. "Then I guess I'll head back to bed."

"What did you mean the other day?"

Rose stopped walking and turned back to look at him, sipping her tea. "About what?"

"Your fiancé jumping to conclusions about us."

She stared into her mug for a few moments before setting it down and crossing her arms. "Shawn was always jealous of you. And our friendship." Rose sighed, picking up her mug and taking another sip from it. "He assumed for the longest time that something was going on between us, or that something was going to end up happening between us. I did everything I could to convince him otherwise." Her arms came down to her sides and she looked at him sadly. "He thought – he's always thought – that I was in love with you."

There was a fist around Scorpius's lungs now, squeezing the air out until he couldn't breathe. Unable to speak, he just stared at her.

A tear slipped down her cheek. "No matter what I said, or what I did, he never trusted me when it came to you."

They stared at each other for a minute, neither sure what to say next. Rose drained her tea and moved past Scorpius to make another one. Her hand grazing his wrist shook him out of his daze.

"Was he right?"

Slowly, she turned to face him. He stepped towards her. "Did he have anything to worry about? Were you in love with me?"

Rose looked away for a moment, her hands clenching into fists. When she looked back at him, her eyes were bright and glassy.

"Yes," she said softly, "I was." A tear slid down each of her cheeks. "From fifth year until a few months before I met Shawn. And there were so many times I was going to tell you, but every time something happened. Usually it was seeing you with some girl wrapped around you." She turned back to stir her fresh mug of tea, leaving Scorpius feeling like he'd been brutally slapped awake from a dream. "Six months after we left Hogwarts, I made up my mind. I was going to give telling you one last shot. If something got in the way again, it just wasn't meant to be and I would move on." She glanced over her shoulder at him. "That day when I came to your flat and found you with Carrie Finnegan."

He could remember the day so clearly, it was like he was watching it in a Muggle movie. Rose entering his flat using the spell he had told her. Seeing her face when she noticed the trail of women's clothes that led to his bedroom. Watching her go pale as Carrie Finnegan emerged from the bathroom, the towel barely covering her up as she sauntered over to Scorpius and planted a kiss on him without even seeing Rose.

"So I decided, that was it. Two months later I met Shawn."

His hand moved of its own volition and wrapped gently around her left wrist, turning her slowly to face him.

He had no idea what to say.

"He's the reason I ended our friendship," she said quietly. He could hear the regret in her voice. "It was the only way to convince him that I was serious about being with him. And I was, I was really serious about being with him."

"You were?" His voice sounded strange to his own ears. "Are you still?"

Rose bit her lip. "Did you ever – ?"

He didn't need to hear the end of her sentence. "All the time." His voice came out hoarse. "I always wondered what you and I would be like. There wasn't a day that went by after fourth year that I didn't think about it. I wanted to say something to you, but I never knew what."

He stepped closer to her, feeling like he was having an out-of-body experience as he looked at her, this girl that he had loved and worshipped for years. She was feverish and her nose runny – from crying or the cold, he didn't know – but he'd never seen someone so beautiful.

His right hand closed over her left and something pressed painfully into his palm.

Slowly, simultaneously, they looked down at her hand. Eight carats glinted up at them.

He dropped her hand as if it had burned him, and by the time she had opened her mouth to speak, his bedroom door was shutting with a snap.

*/*

This time he was the one making a cup of tea when she came out of her room. He didn't want to face her, had managed to avoid looking at her for almost a week, and so remained with his back to her, stirring the honey into his tea.

"I told him I wanted to owl you."

He didn't turn around.

"He said that he wouldn't allow it, that I had ended our friendship and that it would stay ended."

He drank a sip of his tea, ignoring the fact that it scalded his tongue and the roof of his mouth.

"That was when I panicked. I had always assumed that once we were married he would be okay with the idea of you and I being friends again. When I realized he wasn't…" she hesitated for a moment, and Scorpius gritted his teeth, focusing all his willpower on not turning to face her. "When I realized he wasn't, it scared me. The thought of my entire life without you was far more terrifying than the thought of my entire life without him. That was when I left. When I came here."

He still didn't say anything, and after a moment he heard her leave, the front door closing behind her softly.

*/*

Scorpius had hoped that he would be able to avoid her for the remainder of her stay – she surely would be leaving soon. Her wedding was in two weeks.

Except that when he got up at one in the morning to get a glass of water, she was sitting on the counter in the kitchen, her face in her hands.

His gaze zeroed in on what it always did – her left hand, the ring finger, the giant sparkling reminder of what could have been for them.

It was gone.

The fist was around his lungs again as he stared at her empty finger in disbelief.

Finally noticing his presence, Rose dropped her hands to rest on the counter next to her.

"Hi."

Scorpius's gaze stayed on her left hand. He never needed to voice the question bursting against his lips.

"I gave it back to him two days ago." She watched him nervously, shifting slightly as he stepped towards her, his right hand finding her left again and leaving them both with a strong sense of déjà vu.

"Scorpius." Her voice was barely a whisper as her eyes met his pleadingly. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry."

"It's okay."

His left hand came up and his finger wound themselves slowly, deliberately, into her hair, tangling her already mussed curls.

"It's okay."

Slowly, his lips lowered until they met hers. He felt his whole body come alive as she kissed him back with the same gentle nervousness he was feeling. His right hand clasped her left more tightly, and her right hand came to rest on his hip.

It was the most amazing kiss he'd ever had and he never wanted it to end. All the clichés his female cousins had gone on and on about – butterflies, fireworks, sparks – were all true, all so incredibly true that he felt like he was going to be waking up from this dream any minute now because there was simply no way that feelings like this really existed.

Their lips continued to move slowly, gently, perfectly in sync as if they'd been kissing each other for their whole lives.

Scorpius tore himself away from her for a moment, practically sprinting to his room and back. She hadn't moved other than her hand coming up to touch her lips as if in disbelief.

He dragged her hand aside and pressed his lips to hers again, needing a reminder that this was real before he did anything else. She kissed him back with the same fervor, her legs wrapping around his hips to pull him closer.

They broke apart a moment later, breathless.

Rose bit her lip nervously, unable to decide if she should laugh or cry from happiness.

Scorpius ran another hand through her hair, his nails dragging along her scalp gently. The sensation was almost enough to distract her from the feeling of something sliding onto her left hand.

"I love you." He spoke around the lump in his throat, his voice low and rough. "I've always loved you. And I don't want either of us to mess this up again, so –"

"Yes." Her voice came out as a whisper and her hand gripped his tightly. "Of course, yes."

"Thank Merlin."

Their lips met again, Rose pulling away for half a second only to whisper

"I love you too."

Well? You like? If so...there's a box down there for you to tell me! So use it! :D And please visit my profile and vote in the poll there so I know what story to post next. My plan is to get enough of all of them done so that I can post the first chapter of a new story on my birthday! Early November! :)