Under December Sky

By: ShinigamiForever

A/N: So, here goes nothing. From Draco's POV, some angst, some screwed up babbling, some nonsense, some slash, mostly stream of consciousness thoughts. Yep, that about covers it...

Translation note: Et je suis detruit sous le ciel de december: As I was lost under the December sky...

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(Et je suis détruit sous le ciel de décembre...)

You are purposely trying to provoke me.

I can see it in the way you are moving, all fluid grace and dark lethal beauty. You are taunting me with your turned back, your black hair flickering like the sway of willow trees. You know I am there, watching you. You are purposely doing this.

It is like seduction.

There it is, that turn of the head. You glance quickly in my direction, so quick nobody would notice. You are smirking, a small smile of victory.

You have gotten me to look at you.

I'm betting you can feel my eyes bore into your head, your back, your neck, the nape of your neck where that little curl is hanging, right in the middle. And I'm betting you also know that I am purposely trying to look away, making snide comments with Crabbe and Goyle. But it doesn't matter, because for a while, I was looking at your turned back, the subtle play of your robes, and that I had curled my fingers into my palm and squeezed.

You like playing games.

Every morning, you will do this to me, hoping to make me slip. You will play your little games, and I will react, regardless of how much I want to. My eyes will be attracted to you, the strange attraction of a chaotic pattern towards a fixed point. It doesn't matter where you are, just that you are there, and I will be watching, whether you are teasing or not. Sometimes, it will be a fleeting glance of emerald green eyes, tinged with laughter. Sometimes, it is the momentary caress of someone else's hand as I am watching, transfixed to the way you look. Sometimes, it is the gentle toss of your head, scattering raven shaded locks around your head.

You plan this all.

You love doing tainted things. You like the feel of cuss words on your tongue, the way they roll off the air and land so lovingly on my face in shock. You love the way it shakes up the atmosphere, like the one time you calmly slapped me across one cheek with the back of your hand and called me a "goddamn fucking son of a bitch who can go to hell" after I had turned around because I didn't want to face your questions. You didn't do it because you meant it. You did it because it was a dramatic effect. You did it because you liked the way it made me jump a little with shock.

It's also the way you pronounce my name.

You like to draw out all the syllables, drawl it across your lips and let your mouth savor their taste. "Draco Malfoy," you'd say in this soft, carefree voice and then you'd smile. I know that each time you say it, that name somehow taints you even more, and one of these days, you'll be black just as I am now. But even then, as I know you are being slowly colored, I can't get over how slowly you'd say my name. I can't get over your smile, so unlike the Harry Potter everyone knows, but then if you look closely enough, it makes sense. I can't get over your voice, all caramel and milk and expensive wine.

You'd think that after all this time I would have gotten used to it by now.

But I am not, just as I am not used to the quiet mocking in your eyes every time they lock with mine. They are whirlpools of accusation and forgiveness and love and hatred and so much feeling. I wonder if the feeling is real, or if you're just faking that too.

Most of the time, I don't think you're even really here. You're kind of faking your own existence too. They talk about the great Harry Potter and the Boy Who Lived, all in capital letters, but in truth, you're just breezing through the motions anyway.

You don't care anyway. I asked you once, "What is it you're looking for, Potter?" You hate it when I call you Potter. That's why I do it most of the time.

You had thrown me an exasperated look and then dug your fingers deeper into your arms. "Something, something beyond this. A fog, maybe. A ghost, maybe. But it's there, so tantalizingly close that it hurts, but somehow…" And you had stopped, looking at me so curiously as if you've never seen me.

I know now that every thing you look at isn't really there for you. You're off chasing whatever that something is, and you're never close enough to feel the now that surrounds all of us. Joking with your friends, I can see the same pearl covered expression on your face that you had on when you answered my question. One of the only questions of my mine you have ever answered.

You'd tell me that the twins are catching on to us, and then you'd laugh, but the way you said the first sentence was so light and bubbly I could almost choke on the saccharine. You have this talent of changing your voice into whatever tone you feel like, and I have learned never to trust it. You say I have this sneering cold voice you haven't managed to learn yet, but you don't need to. You already have a cynical dry voice that is about as warm as frostbitten trees. At moments you pop into these philosophical dialogues where you ramble on and on about philosophers I have never heard about and mental complexes I had never known to exist. Life is really very simple for me, just magic and school and you. But you are faceted with so many sides I don't know which side the light has hit first.

But right now I think I can almost hear your voice over the fray. There is something crimson underlying it, underneath the mint fresh first impression, then the soft soothing second impression, then the sorrowful graceful final impression, then the guarded cautious false entrance. I've never heard your voice in the raw form before. But I have a feeling it is crimson and dark and thick with your twisted brand of apathy and love.

You're not truly dark.

In a way, you're lighter than any body I have ever known, but something about you hints death and dusty demigods put to rest. I don't buy the story about traumatic childhood. I just know that there is something powerful in your weakness and something poisonous about your passion. But I never say anything.

It's not that we're extremely close or anything; in fact, being together has made us farther apart. Knowing how to lie to each other is worse than just stumbling around the map of romance, which neither of us have followed anyway. And most of the time I really don't give a damn about what happens.

Still, there are days when everything is dyed in this color of gray blue and nothing is as I left it a moment before. All the atoms and emotions are rearranging themselves in paradoxical patterns. Those are the days when I wish you would be stable, and you usually are, but those are the days when I wish your kissing meant more.

The first time we kissed, you looked at me with honest doubt written on your face.

I realized then that this was your experiment and I was your guinea pig. See which levers I can pull and how they affect him. See what I can do to make him hurt, then to heal that hurt, then to reopen the wound. I realized that when I traced circles on your back and you giggled and told you it wasn't really that funny, but you looked up and I realized you didn't think it was funny either. It was all data collecting for you, and that one day will come when you will dredge it up from your memory and kiss a person exactly the way you want. It's not that I'm pessimistic. It's that I'm realistic.

But the heart has reasons of which reasons know nothing about.

I once had a dream that you were walking in front of me, step be step approaching a cloudless gray mass of fog at the end of the road. You kept walking, but one in a while, you would turn around a tell me to hurry up. And then you started walking faster and faster, increasing you space every minute, and I yelled, "I love you!" into the dark corners of the air. You disappeared then, without a backward glance, and I was frozen with the snap shot image of you, your back turned on me and confident.

Breakfast is over. We get up to leave.

As I trail behind you, a shadow only known to you, I realize the only difference between the dream and reality is that you haven't left yet.

But when the experiment's over, and you have your results, you can let me down slowly and easily, because by then, you would know which levers to pull. When you do that, you will leave.

But I will still trail you, because under this gray labyrinth of a sky, I know that unlike you, I am not conducting an experiment, I am placing myself in your razorblade hands.

With that in mind, I follow you to our first class.

You don't turn around. I don't call out to you.

We walk in silence.

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A/N: Well? Feedback please!