He nursed the glass in his hands, fighting the urge to down it immediately. The part of his brain that was still fighting inebriation – the small bit of rationalization that he was holding onto – told him to pace himself, to calm down. A rapid, continuous flow of Firewhisky may have seemed to solve all of his problems in the immediate sense, but somewhere inside himself, he remembered that those same concerns – the very same reasons for the alcohol – would still be there to haunt him when morning came.
To hell with it, he decided, knocking back the shot glass and slamming it against the bar counter. He tapped his fingers against the table, signaling to the barkeep that he needed another double.
"You sure you want another?" asked the tall man behind the counter. He was young, blond, and thin. His face was coated in stubble that was only a few shades darker than his hair color, and his eyes were a stunning grey-blue.
The drunk man nodded. Of course he wanted another drink. Why else would he have come to the bar alone? It was rather obvious he hadn't come to make friends, and the gold band on his left hand should have made it clear he wasn't interested in meeting any women. He had come to drink, and drink he would.
Once again, his glass was filled with the searing red spirit, and suddenly the man found himself even more miserable than he had been to begin with. Thoughts of fire, of the color red, of his broken heart penetrated his thoughts.
"I changed my mind," he slurred, passing the drink back to where it had come from. "I can't drink anymore. I need to get back home to her. I need to… I need to fix things." He got to his feet, swaying drunkenly, and felt himself nearly fall to the floor, held up only by the arms of another.
"I think you've had enough, haven't you?"
He glanced up at the woman struggling to support him. Her hair was fiery and red – fierce and brave as she was – but her eyes were a soft, subtle shade of cinnamon. Of course she had come to help him, to pull him out of his misery rather than to allow him to wallow in his own self-pity. Of course it would have to be her, the absolute last person that would have wanted to see him like this.
The man continued to stagger, trying and failing to pull himself from her arms, maintain his last shred of dignity and walk away with his chin held high. But he was too drunk, too weak, too pathetic, and as he looked around the nearly empty bar, he realized that she was the only one left to help him.
"I'm going to take you home," she said, her voice quiet and gentle. "And I'm not letting you out of my sight until I'm sure you're going to be all right."
For once, he didn't struggle, and she was able to pull him along the chilly streets of London, holding tightly onto him as though if she relaxed her grip that he would slip away. For the first time in their marriage, he allowed her to be his steadying hand and help him.
She opened the door to the house and helped him onto the sofa in his study, propping his feet up onto the coffee table for good measure. It was the first time in a while that she had gone to Malfoy Manor, and the reality of what she was seeing around her was sinking in. The house was a disaster, littered with unwashed clothing, dirty dishes, and garbage that he apparently could not be bothered with throwing away. What had happened to this man in the few weeks since she had told him she needed some space?
"Draco, what's happened to you?" she asked, her voice as gentle and comforting as she could manage.
He snorted drunkenly but did not speak.
"Draco, please. I want to help you so badly, but I can't if you refuse to answer me."
His hard grey eyes narrowed. "You're the last person that I want help from."
"Why?" she asked, obviously taken aback by his bluntness.
"Because, Ginny!" he all but shouted, getting to his feet and steadying himself as best he could. "Because you chose to walk out on me! Rather than giving me an opportunity to fix what was wrong, you up and left. You gave me no chance to make things right again."
She took a deep breath to calm herself, knowing well enough that shouting back at a drunk man would only make things worse. "Draco, I didn't mean to make you feel badly..."
He cut her off. "Feel badly?" he asked incredulously. "You think I feel badly? I'm mortified, Gin. I'm crushed. I'm devastated. I'm any number of descriptive words, but to say that I feel badly is… it's an insult!" He threw himself back onto the sofa unceremoniously.
"Okay. Okay, I'm sorry." Ginny closed her eyes and sat beside her… she wasn't sure what he was. Were they still friends? Should she still call him her husband even though she had asked for a divorce? Where they were at the moment, she didn't know what to call him. But whether or not it was the alcohol talking, it was pretty obvious that his drinking had been triggered by whatever Draco was feeling, which had started long before the evening had begun. "Will you please take a sobering potion so that we can talk about this?"
"No. I won't. If I sober myself up, I'll pretend nothing is bothering me. Just like I have been doing for last eight weeks."
"Eight weeks? Our problems began a long time before that. We haven't been happy for years!"
"I know that!" Draco snapped. "Don't you think I know that? It isn't about how long we have been unhappy, Ginny. You've been gone for eight weeks. That's when the drinking started!"
Anger coursed through her. "Sobrietus!" she said, pointing her wand at her husband's head. Ginny waited a moment, pausing to allow the full extent of his drunkenness to leave his body. "How dare you act like this is all my fault," she hissed, her voice low. "You are the one who stopped caring about me, you know. You're the one who put your career over our marriage. You gave up on me, and now that I am finally coming to terms with that, you're trying to take that away from me!"
Draco looked down at his hands in a brief moment of shame and vulnerability. Almost indiscernible tremors coursed through him. "I always thought that you'd be waiting for me when I became successful," he said, his voice quiet and pained. "I never thought for a minute that you'd be so miserable while you waited."
She bit her lip and wrapped her arms around his shoulder, pulling him in closely for a hug. "Draco, I love you," she said, her voice soothing and gentle. "And for the longest time, I thought the same way as you. I thought that I could wait for you, and no matter what, my feelings for you would always be the same. But while you and I were busying ourselves with the present, life happened."
His heart ached at her confession, but at least he could understand where she was coming from. The lives that they had planned out, that they had been so certain of, that they had been working for, weren't necessarily the lives that they were destined for.
But that didn't mean that they couldn't fight it.
Draco reached forward to grab her hand, lacing his long fingers with hers. He urged her towards him, hoping that they could hold onto this moment and that she would allow herself to take comfort in his warmth. He kissed her hair as she let her head rest on his shoulder.
"I want to fix it," he whispered, inhaling the florally scent of her hair. "I promise I'll try harder not to lose sight of things."
Ginny reached up to loop her long arms around his next, pulling him flush against her in a bone-crushing hug. She couldn't get close enough to him.
She whispered, "I want to try to fix it, too."
PROMPTS:
ACTION: a character must hug someone/something
EMOTION: crushed
QUOTE: "life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans" - John Lennon