Companion story to Stranger Things
"Five more minutes," he mumbled when her hands began to run through his bed tousled hair.
"You said that ten minutes ago, I'm afraid," was her quick response.
"Yes, well," he grunted as he reached over his head for the closest pillow to pull over his face, "I am the king of procrastinating, if it pleases you to know." With that, he dropped the pillow atop his head, folding his arm over it to secure it in place. He didn't seem to mind that he sandwiched her hand against his head in the process.
"What would please me is if you would come join me in the shower," she countered as she tried to lift the pillow away from his ear.
"That will only lead to something else, and you know it."
She smiled at the thought. "You don't usually complain about what follows a shower."
"That's because it's usually sex."
"Who's to say it won't be this time as well?" she asked as she caught the edge of the pillow and yanked it swiftly. The pillow slid from beneath his arm, and she tossed it towards the foot of the bed.
"Ginevra, please," he protested, rolling over to face her. His eyes were wide awake, and she knew he had been pretending to sleep for who knew how long. "Give me some credit. I have had this date marked on my schedule for the past three months now."
"And I have been canceling all the other appointments you have made for today for the past six months," she reminded him. Her tone of voice hinted at how she wasn't too happy about the fact. "I thought you were tougher than this, I have to admit."
"Contrary to popular belief, I am not a masochist, Weasley."
She sat up in bed, yanking the covers away from him. If he was going to be difficult, she certainly wasn't going to make it comfortable for him. "Contrary to popular belief, Malfoy, this is not the type of fight which I enjoy. I have already told my mother I am bringing a plus one, and you are not bailing on me now."
He sat up and leaned towards the foot of the bed in an attempt to retrieve the missing sheets. "Correct me if I am wrong, but I never agreed to be your plus one in the first place."
Taking a moment to collect herself before she acted too irrationally, she practiced her deep breathing. She had been doing a lot of that in the week leading up to this particular day. "It has been two years, Malfoy. Two years. Of sneaking around, of lying, of pretending to be single. You are coming."
"You, Weasley," he snapped, his tone beginning to match hers as they geared up for yet another inevitable fight, "are the one who wanted to keep it a secret. I just don't want to go to this bloody party, is all." Wrapping the sheet and duvet around his shoulder, he dropped back down onto his side of the bed, fluffing his pillow beneath him.
"Do not even think about going back to sleep!" she retorted, her red headed temper starting to show its color. "I swear on my wand, Malfoy, that if I have to go hang out with all my married relatives," as an afterthought she added, "and Ron," for she had almost forgotten about her youngest brother, "for an entire day at a wedding no less, I will not come back."
"Yes, well, then do make sure to secure the charm on the fireplace before you go."
"Argh!" she snapped, grabbing the closest pillow and smashing it against his head. He didn't flinch, but if nothing else she knew he would be upset about messing up his hair even further than his morning bedhead. With the stakes as high as they were, she knew she would not win this war in the bed. Climbing out of bed, she moved around to his side. Grabbing the largest handfuls of duvet she could handle, she stepped back and yanked as she moved, releasing the comforter as she went.
The thump hit the floor as she moved towards the bathroom. "Dammit, Weasley!" he shouted behind her. She chose to ignore him. It had taken her almost a month to fess up to Hermione that she had approached Draco against her best friend's judgment. It had taken almost a year for her to reintroduce him to Harry. And now she finally had the opportunity to knock out her entire family in one painful but swift blow, and he was too chicken shit to follow through. Typical.
She turned the hot water faucet as hot as it would go before collecting a towel and removing her nightgown. As she opened the shower door, a wonderful warm mist welcomed her. A hot shower would help calm her hot head. She just needed to rethink her strategy before the next battle in their war. She began to hum the newest Weird Sisters single as she stepped under the scolding hot stream of water. She adjusted the temperature until she could just barely tolerate it, and then she rummaged through the glass bottles in the corner nook until she found the coloring potion and set to work on undying her hair for the day.
She heard the bathroom door open as she worked the potion into her hair and afforded herself a smile. Perhaps her quest was not as doomed as she originally thought. When she heard the shower door open, she wiped the smile from her face and stepped back into the spray to wash the potion from her hair. A pair of hands began to work the lather, pulling her head back as he rinsed her long locks. She had resolved to keep her hair short when she first tried the style and saw how much it upset her mother, but he preferred it longer and she honestly didn't care one way or another.
"Weasley," he whispered against her ear, water showering down over his face and muffling the word slightly. "You don't want me to go."
"That didn't work the first time you tried it, and it certainly isn't going to work today."
"You are going to ruin your brother's wedding."
"My brother ruined his own wedding three years ago when he knocked her up and refused to marry her then." Her head rolled on her neck as he continued to massage her scalp.
"That's on a completely different scale than someone ending up in the hospital though."
If her eyes had been opened, she would have rolled them. As it was, she sighed. "No one is going to end up in the hospital."
"That's what you said about dinner at the Potters, now isn't it?"
She couldn't stop the smirk that crossed her lips, even though it brought hot water into her mouth. That certainly had been an interesting evening when she had shown up on Grimmauld Place with Draco reluctantly in tow. Harry had opened the door, taken one look, uttered a long string of curses, and slammed the door in their faces. The night really hadn't improved much after that. "Yes, well, I had been wanting to take a stab at that particular variation of the hex for some time, and he deserved it. But I won't go around hexing my brothers at a wedding. I swear it."
"I hate to admit it, but this time you aren't the one I'm worried about. Except that you might end up on the receiving end of one. I've heard about how you and your brothers 'bond' under happy circumstances."
She turned to face him, taking a step back to get the water out of her eyes. "Draco, I am tired of my mother setting me up on blind dates with sad men like I'm a charity case. I am definitely tired of going on those dates and having a miserable time. It's been seven years, Malfoy. It's not going to be that big of a deal."
"See, you say that, Weasley, but I haven't put the memory of our first dinner date with the Potters in my Pensieve, so I do actually know better than to believe that."
The fundamental problem with their relationship was that they were both too stubborn to give in to the other when they didn't want to do something or agree on a certain point. Most of the time, they argued until one of them used a mostly harmless hex on the other, and then they made up like rabbits for a day to a week depending on how bad the argument was. But this time, she couldn't devise a way out of it, and it troubled her.
"No," he said before she had the chance to speak again. "No, I know that look and I don't like it one bit. That is the look of defeat."
"Malfoy, I have to be at my parents' house in less than half an hour to help set up. I don't have time to go twenty rounds with you today."
"I don't know why it needs to be a fight in the first place."
"Well that's the problem, isn't it?"
"That I don't want to fight with you?"
"That you don't understand why I need you to be there today. My brother is getting married today, I've told my parents – who, by the way, and still convinced I'm single – that I am bringing a date, and you aren't coming. I know you are not close to your parents, but I would hope that you could still understand how that might make things a little awkward for me today. Are you really going to stand here and tell me that you cannot tough it out for one bloody family reunion?" She hadn't meant to bring up his parents. The words had slipped out before she even knew what she was saying.
"You waited a month to tell Hermione, Weasley. You waited a year to tell Potter. And now it's my fault that you want to tell your parents, after two years of keeping it a secret let's not forget, at your brother's wedding? I may not be the master of timing, but it's a bad idea and I don't want to ruin your brother's day. There are plenty of other days we could chose to ruin instead."
Her skin was starting to prune, and that was the last thing she needed today. She moved past him to turn off the faucet. His body moved to follows hers, conveniently blocking her way out of the shower. "It's an impasse, Malfoy, okay? Can we leave it at that? I don't have time to argue, or I am going to be late."
She circled around him to exit the shower and grabbed the towel off the rack as she rubbed herself dry with much more force than needed. He followed her out of the shower, grabbing a towel and wrapping it around his waist. "Weasley, look at me."
"I don't have time to-"
"Hey," he snapped. He caught her hand as she dried off her leg and pulled her upright. She crossed her arms across her bare chest and raised an eyebrow as she waited. "Tell your parents that I had a work emergency come up. Once of the Wicked Sisters got poisoned at a show and I'm on call to keep an eye on their vitals."
"I'm tired of lying, Malfoy." She grabbed her towel from where she'd dropped it on the floor and finished drying off. "I'm tired of feeling ashamed of our relationship because I feel like I have to keep it hidden. And my mother is going to kill me if I am late, so I really need to go." She moved from the bathroom to the bedroom to the closet quick as a fox. Her bridesmaids dress hung where she had left it the night before, and she dropped it to the ground so she could step into it and pull it up.
"Can you please stand still for one minute so we can finish this conversation?" he asked as he appeared in the doorway
"The conversation is over." She hugged the dress to her chest with one hand while she began to pull the zipper up with the other.
"It obviously isn't, or you would not have so much malice in your tone when you said it." Watching her struggle with the zipper, he moved into the closet and spun her around. Grabbing the dress at the top of the back with one hand to squeeze her petite figure into it, he swatted her hand away and yanked the zipper up with one quick motion.
She gasped as the corset of the dress shoved the air from her lungs. When she did catch her breath, instead of a thank you she responded with, "You're getting my dress wet." She found her wand on the vanity where she had left it the night before and with a well practiced flick did her make up in an instant. Her shoes took longer, as she hadn't worn them in ages and couldn't for the life of her remember where she had left them.
"Weasley," he tried again as he continued to follow her around the bedroom. She knew ignoring him would only make matters worse as it bruised his rather significant ego – one of the traits that had not changed since his time at school. But she honestly didn't know what was left to say.
She disappeared into the closet again, rummaging around without success to find the elusive shoes. She could feel the time ticking by and cursed herself. "Weasley," she heard him call again he appeared in the closet doorway.
"I don't have time-" she stopped when she glanced up at him and saw him holding the shoes in question. He held them out to her and she grabbed them, shoving her feet into them and using her wand to buckle the straps. Successfully uncomfortable, she grabbed the handbag that matched the outfit the best and moved to leave the closet. Draco, however, stood in place blocking the doorway, his hands on the frame, his shoulders taunt and his pecs flexed.
She shot him another look she knew he didn't like. "If I am late to this blasted wedding, I swear..." her threat trailed off as she continued to stare at his exposed chest.
Removing a hand from the frame, he reached forward to push her damp, red locks behind her ear. "I had almost forgotten you are a redhead."
"I need to go."
He ran a hand through her tangled knots, then stilled it at the base of her neck. Pulling her towards him, he gave her a kiss that had her leaning in subconsciously. Then she caught herself and pulled away, ducking around him through the small space between his body and the frame.
"I wouldn't wait up," she told him, using her wand a final time to fix her hair before placing it securely in the handbag.
"But you are stopping by after the festivities." He said it as if he knew, but she knew he was silently asking her.
"I don't know," she answered honestly before apparating away.