Summary: Relationships are like ocean-liners
Summary: Relationships are like ocean-liners. When they go down they take everything with them.
The saddest part of a broken heart isn't the ending so much as the start.
Feist – "Let It Die"
A broken heart, when put under a microscope and observed for everything it could possibly be, can be simplified down to one thing. What once was, what has always been. History repeating itself, if only for just one more time. It's happened before and it's bound to happen again. Maybe to you, maybe to a friend. Never in the same way; every heart is unique in the way it's broken. The one factor, the one similarity between the millions of broken hearts lies not in how it's broken, but in how it's mended. It's a process that happens on its own, in its own time.
It's not a feeling I'd recommend, but the same truth goes for a broken heart as goes for a sunken ship. Once the vessel has resurfaced, all damages set aside, it has the possibility to float once more. A heart that has loved shall love again.
- - -
One. The exact moment in time when you hold a seashell to your ear and you can no longer hear the ocean. Instead, if you listen just carefully enough, you can hear the slight break of your heart.
"Did you sleep with her?"
Five words. One sentence, eighteen letters, four spaces. Just five small words. That's all it takes to ruin the only real relationship you've ever had. He sits down and pushes his hands through his hair and then looks at you with a pair of tired eyes.
"Hermione, don't," he pleads with you. The tears you fought down earlier are returning and you press the heels of your palms into your forehead to relieve some of the tension that boils beneath your skin.
"Did you?"
You need him to say no. Every bone in your body aches with the need for him to cast your suspicions aside. You can live with the fact that he kissed her, you can. It's something you know you can get past. But if he slept with someone else? That's a completely different story. A different book of a completely different genre.
He only sighs. Hangs his head lower.
"Oh my," you start, but suddenly the wind is knocked out of you. Your vision is blurred and you can hear the frantic beat of your heart pounding through every millimeter of your body. The air is spinning in thick orbits around your head, tempting your lungs with the air it can't breathe.
You stumble backward, away from him and out of the hazy galaxy of ruin and disaster that seems to follow you around. He's up and out of the chair, following you out of the room.
"Hermione, I'm so sorry," he says. His hands are reaching for you and they're touching your skin and it's burning you. You can only imagine his hands running all over another woman's body, all over her skin. Touching her in places he's never touched you. It makes you sick.
"Don't touch me," you choke out, wishing at that moment you sounded stronger, more convicted. You're not fooling anyone. You want him to touch you. That's the problem. It's been months and months and weeks and weeks and you still haven't let him touch you. And then he goes and touches her and everything is ruined with a touch.
"Please, please, Hermione," he begs you, his traitorous hands holding onto your clammy arms. "It didn't mean anything," he stresses. You can hear the desperation in his voice. You can see the anguish on his face but you can't look at him for much longer because every time that you do you wind up seeing him with someone else. You make your way out of the foyer and collapse onto your lumpy couch. Your hands grip the sides and he sits on the coffee table facing you. His blonde hair isn't staying behind his ears and he's driving himself crazy pulling at it. Your chest heaves and your hands are obsessively patting away your tears.
"Who is she?" you ask quietly. You're speaking into your knees so you miss the grimace that crosses his face.
"It didn't mean anything," he repeats.
"Tell me who."
"It doesn't matter," he clarifies. "It didn't mean anything. It was one time. A stupid, idiotic, drunk mistake."
"WHO!" He flinches at the harshness of your outburst and mumbles an inaudible word under his breath. "Louder," you command.
"Pansy," he speaks softly.
And then your world comes crashing down on top of you. Out of all the possibilities, it had to be the one you wouldn't allow yourself to consider. The one person you had spent the whole of your relationship trying to be better than. The one person that could change everything.
"You can't stay here tonight," you whisper. The tears are freely spilling and you're trying not to hyperventilate.
"Hermione."
"No," you say as you look up. Your lifeless eyes avoid his. "Just don't."
"But I love you," he says. He always had difficulty saying it. The fact that he can say it now makes you feel as though you need to vomit. You shake your head at him, silently pleading with him to stop. "Hermione. I love you."
"I'm sorry, Draco." You stand and smooth the wrinkles out of your blouse. "I'm afraid that loving me isn't enough." You're up the stairs and out of his sight before he can say anything else.
- - -
You lay in bed but your eyes never close. Your mind is trapped in a permanent state of Limbo. Not yet Hell but not Purgatory, whenever your eyes close you see his lips on her body. The force of what your mind conjures makes you sick. You claw at your sheets as the tears freely leak down your face.
You don't know it, but he's still there. Sitting on the worn couch with his head in his hands, he ponders. He knows that the front door is his only option at this point, but he's repelled to it as if it were some kind of magnetic field.
He settles himself into the couch and waits. His gaze burns a hole through the ceiling below your bedroom. There's a tangible energy sizzling around him and he can feel that you're awake.
"I'm sorry," he whispers up to you. You don't know the words were spoken but the warmth they bring wraps you in a cocoon of contentment and your body settles into a night of dreamless sleep.
- - -
Two. There's that time, that specific wrinkle in the smooth pace of things that suddenly flips the switch. Within it holds the power to change everything. You know it's happened but the reality of the feeling has just sunk in. It hits you and it hurts all the way down to the intricate curves of your fingerprints. Something you never thought could feel pain but manages to hurt you more than anything you've ever known.
You emerge down the stairs in fear of seeing him; afraid that if you did it would rekindle the feelings you barely managed to subdue the night before. Your bare feet step onto the cool wooden landing and there's no sign of him. Upon closer inspection you know that's far from the truth.
His toothbrush is next to yours in the bathroom, the bristles still wet from use. The chipped Britain's Best Granddaughter mug is sitting in the sink, the teabag on the top of the trash. The couch is well slept in, the blanket tousled and coated with his sent.
A wave of poorly repressed emotions crash over you and send a shivering sensation down your spine. As much as it hurts, you sit on the couch and wrap the knit blanket around you until you're completely enveloped in his scent. You greedily breathe it in, choking over the frantic flow of oxygen to your lungs. You're so full of his scent that it seeps out of your pores; it's encased in the few tears you let drop.
The ache builds in your chest until you can bear it no longer. You're hasty in your movements but soon you're out and away from his scent and if you try hard enough you can almost forget the exact way he smells like oranges and peppermint.
- - -
You feel numb. The crowd that walks past you is nothing more than static, a flat-line blur. The rhythmic pattern of footsteps is a pulse of energy, one that pounds silently on the cobblestone but louder than a locomotive in your head. Your eyes are empty and can't find anything to focus on. You're less than a meter away and still the stranger's features are all mixed into the same palette of neutral browns and gold.
Each step forward requires more effort. Your home lingers in the distance ahead and your heart is so thoroughly ravaged that you don't think it can handle anymore trauma. The idea of work was a sanctuary to you; it was a place to file away your grief for a short while and allow other things to distract you.
But he's everywhere you look. He's in the books you shelve and in the strangers you watch through the windows. His voice follows you and wraps around you like a lullaby on the streets and his scent calls to you from the candy vendors. And when you reach the crooked ground outside your flat he's there as well. Sitting in the cold outside your door and he's no apparition of your mind and the weight it inspires in your chest is enough to sink you into the cement under your toes.
You're flustered and on the brink of a complete disaster and you fumble loudly for your keys as he stirs and begins to scramble to his feet.
"Hermione," he says but he's too late because you rush past him and through the open door. It closes in his face and you lean against the wall in the dark and listen to the muffled pounds his fists make, defeat wrapped around you like a winter coat. "Hear me out, please," he pleads to the closed door.
Your breathing is erratic and your chest is heaving with such force that the motion alone leaves you with less breath than the second before. You're backed against the wall, doubled over with your arms clenched around your chest. You squeeze yourself extremely tight in hopes that it will strangle the eclipsing feeling of pain.
And suddenly he's angry. The door rattles in the frame with each of his blows, his angry voice seeps through the wood and into the foyer. It soaks down into your pores and spins like a fireball in your gut, gaining momentum every time his fist collides with mahogany.
- - -
Three. When the air begins to crackle around you and you're certain every drop of blood in your body has reached its boiling point. Your vision is glazed over by a sheen of red and anything found within your path suffers the consequence of your contempt. You've been scorned and you'll be damned if you're expected to take it lying down.
The door shakes again. The sound resonates through the floorboards and through the pads of your feet.
"Don't be a bitch, Granger," he snaps at you loudly, his voice holding the same condescending tone that you loathed; the one that you spent so many of your adolescent years being forced to endure.
Your body tremors with blind rage, your hands are curling into furious fists and you're stalking towards the door with a ferocious gleam in your eye. You crack the door open, it swings helplessly on its hinges and the handle collides with the adjacent wall. You're standing in the open frame before him, his fist raised in mid-knock.
"What did you say to me?" you spit out, your voice low and demanding, testing him to defy you.
He wavers for a second before flying through the open door, kicking it shut with his foot. And suddenly he's in your space, clouding up the air around you with that scent, the one you tried so hard to forget. And his hands are on your face and his eyes are pleading something fierce with you.
"Hermione, please," he begs. "It was one mistake."
You violently rip your face out of his hands and you stand there, slack-jawed and staring. Your mind is reeling and your face burns from his contact.
"One fucking huge mistake," you spit at him, wringing your hands together frantically.
"Please," he repeats, walking towards you again. "You need to forgive me."
You laugh. You throw your head back and your hands are raised in exclamation. And you laugh. A dry, sardonic chuckle that chills your body down to the bone.
"Oh!" you exclaim. "I have to forgive you, do I?"
And as simple as a light being turned on, he's furious. He whips around and his hands make contact with the stained glass lamp that you love. And it's flying through the air and it's broken on the floor by the time you manage to blink.
"Fucking Hell, Granger!" he yells vociferously as he turns back to face you. "I made a huge fucking mistake! What the fuck else do you want from me? Haven't you ever made a mistake?"
You narrow your eyes and drop your voice an octave. "It is not the same thing," you say slowly, angrily.
"How!" he explodes, his hands rocketing out in front of him. "Tell me how it's not the same thing!"
"Oh, I don't know," you start calmly, sarcastically, "maybe because my mistakes never ended with me being sweaty, naked and in bed with an ex-lover!"
And now it's his turn to laugh. He's shaking his condescending head at you and he has the audacity to laugh. He thinks this is something to joke about. You would punch him in the face if you weren't already sure that the contact alone would burn your hand clean off.
"Oh, right! I forgot, that's because you're a bloody prude!" he says whilst laughing. And suddenly the room doesn't feel so cool and the air around you is pungent and thick. Your head throbs and there is a knife twisting violently in your gut. You use all of your energy to fight the sob back down into your throat and your vision is suddenly woozy. Mainly because you know that it's not true; you know that he knows it's not true.
You only acted as such because in your experiences sex has ruined everything. And apparently a lack of it does as well. And it just makes you even angrier.
You stomp forward with blundering steps and you crash into him with your fists. You pummel him with the little strength you contain and within seconds he's holding onto your elbows roughly and you're propelled backward, arms flailing madly in front of you.
"Just tell me how long," you plead wildly, your arms dropping numbly to your sides, your elbows stinging from where he held you so tightly.
"How long what?" he asks harshly.
"How long did you want to do it? To be with her? A few weeks? A month? Our entire relationship? How long, Draco?"
And he recoils. You can almost hear the blood freeze in his veins; you can hear his lungs contract instinctively. His expression hardens, and the shards of silver in his eyes sharpen like razors cutting through glass.
"Don't go there," he warns. His response is stern, his demeanor tense.
"Do you think about her? When we're together do you wish I were her?" you question him in a crazy manner. Your heart is erratic and your brain is no longer in control of what you say.
"Granger," he warns through clenched teeth, "you know that's not the case."
"Does it get you off?" you provoke him further. "Thinking about her?"
And within a second his hands are on you and your shoulder blades make contact with the adjacent wall. Broken shards of stained glass crunch under your feet and under any other circumstance you would worry yourself to sickness about cutting your feet. But his lips have somehow found their way on yours and it's quite possibly the best thing you've felt in days.
His hands roam across your face and the expanse of your stomach, all the while his body is pressing you firmly against the wall. His urgent kisses are like a new breed of magic you're just now discovering. It's static and it's whimsical and as soon as you begin to explore this new realm of enchantment it's gone. He pulls away from your mouth, panting heavily and stern as ever. His body relaxes against yours; the wall is less unforgiving now.
He backs up slightly and allows you room to move. Your head is aching with the need to instantly process what just happened but your frazzled emotions prevent any such thing from happening.
Your shoulders droop and you look at his face lamely, a whole new surge of emotions and admiration swirling in your gut. It's far too much to process so you just hang your head and take a step forward. Another step. Five steps and then you're at the base of the stairs.
He watches until your foot disappears onto the top landing.
- - -
Four When you're so far consumed within your thoughts that the only message your brain can rely to your body is the fierce longing for physical contact. It's what drives you to move forward, what compels your heart to keep pumping blood. It's a smoldering passion that trembles beneath the surface and if you don't quench it you're afraid that you'll cease to exist entirely.
You're restless. Endless tossing and turning is a burden on your mind and the bed sheets that tangle with your legs weigh down on you like a boulder. There's an ache between your legs that's seemingly impossible to suppress and you're miserable.
You can't stop thinking of him sitting just one floor below you, just a thin layer of floor and ceiling stands between you and him. You try to imagine him. How he's sitting, what he's doing, if he's thinking of you.
Your legs are twitching and your mind is foggy and you wish that you could just fall asleep. You roll over and groan, every position less comfortable than the last.
And then you've had enough. You roll over, determined, and with a shaky arm you lower your hand into your shorts. You're frozen then and you feel completely ridiculous. You pull your hand away as if it were burned and swing your legs off the side of the mattress.
You figure that as long as you're going completely insane you might as well do it thoroughly.
- - -
Your feet quietly pad down the stairs, some new form of adrenaline pumping through your veins. He's awake and sitting somberly on the couch as you approach him in your running shorts and oversized shirt. He looks up at you, his tired eyes pleading for you to not fight with him.
You hadn't realized it before, but your heart is pounding frantically and your hand shakes as it reaches for his. He looks at you with question in his eyes but allows you to take his hand as he stands.
"What?" he asks as he stares down at you.
It's too late to back down, you tell yourself, and you take his other hand and hold them both out in front of you. The earth plates may shift and the ozone layer could possibly deteriorate and dinosaurs could begin to roam the plains once more but you would hardly notice, for you're guiding his hands underneath your shirt.
You shiver when his hands make contact with your bare breasts and you gulp. Wait for him to react. He hasn't and you're on the verge of a panic attack when his left hand twitches. It's a jolt of electricity and your nipple hardens under his touch and somewhere within the course of that split second he swings you around and you're on the couch and he's on top of you.
His abdomen is pressing into yours and his lips explore every crevice of your mouth while he pinches your nipples and rolls your breasts in his hands. Your body has turned into a melting pot of desire and he's the only thing keeping you whole.
His shirt is removed and you're wiggling out of your shorts when he pulls away. The cool air stings your lips and you look at him with a worried expression. He stares not at you but into you for what seems like forever before speaking.
"We shouldn't," he says. The shorts that hang around your ankles drop lamely to the floor. You suddenly feel very cold, very small and thirty different definitions of insignificant. You attempt to look away from him but by doing so you catch his eye for a brief second. That connection is all it takes to reignite the spark.
You collide with a frantic speed, your arms wrapping around his neck and your legs around his waist as he carries you up the stairs, your lips entwined the entire time.
He drops you onto the bed, your legs sprawled and clad in only a tee and your undies. You should feel embarrassed but he's looking at you like he's never seen something so magnificent and you could be wearing a burlap sack for all you know and you still feel beautiful.
He crawls over to you with the agility of a lion and hovers above you, his hand toying with the hem of your shirt. His tempestuous charcoal eyes meet yours and he quirks his lips in an attempt to smile. He leans forward and plants a kiss on your nose.
"I'm sorry," he says. You lean up and reach forward and place your hands behind his head and weave your fingers in his hair.
You pull his lips to yours and murmur, "Shut up." He tries pulling away again to speak but you lean in further and capture his open mouth with your own. It's like the waves of the ocean crashing onto the shore and the sensation sends gooseflesh to every centimeter of your body.
Before you realize what's happening your shirt is being lifted over your head and his mouth, his mouth is on your breasts and you squirm where you lay and you're sixteen candles to the wind, completely consumed in pleasure.
He pulls away and you moan at the loss of the contact. He sits above you, scrutinizing you and you're suddenly aware of how on display you are. You modestly cover yourself with your arms and if he looks at you without doing anything for much longer you'll surely sink into the mattress.
"Are you sure?" he asks you. "You don't need to prove anything to me, I didn't mean what I said earlier. I know that you're no prude."
You pull yourself up and you're sitting Indian-style before him, clad in only your panties. "Not what this is about," you assure him as you hook your right leg around his hip.
"Granger?" he asks with a smirk on his face. The sight of it warms your heart and sends a jolt of excitement through your body. You straddle him and you can now feel the length of him at your core and you've never wanted something more deeply than in this moment. You wrap your arms tightly around his neck and he peppers kisses along your neckline. It sends shivers across your body and when he nibbles softly on your earlobe you let a moan escape and you inadvertently roll your hips against his.
He gasps and the sound gives you a strange feeling of empowerment. You capture his mouth with yours as you begin gyrating against him, his erection rubbing in between your legs in an oddly delicious way.
He wraps his long arms around your back and changes positions once more. You settle yourself into the pillows and watch as he kneels above you, the crescent of light from the window wrapping around his head like a halo.
All clothing is removed and he's between you now, his raspy breath blowing across your face. He looks deep into your eyes and you bring a hand up to trace his jaw line. You see question in his eyes and you cast his suspicions aside and give him a slow, strategic nod.
He enters you the moment his lips touch yours and pleasure showers over you like snow sprinkling on the earth. Your toes curl against the sheets and you want to record this moment forever in your cognitive mind. Even if tomorrow things aren't the same, you always want to remember this moment with the man you love.
Your bodies fit together like the most beautiful sonnet ever composed and stars explode before your eyes and you're gone.
- - -
Five The memory of what was done hangs over your shoulders like a burden, riddling your mind with the thought of what else could have been. You obsess over this, it's the one thing that keeps you from losing your mind completely but under severe scrutiny you'll see that there wasn't a mind left to lose.
You wake up to find a large hand splayed across your bare stomach. It sends the memory of last night cascading over you like a rapid flow of ice-cold water. You quickly roll out from underneath his grasp and you hop out of bed, completely naked.
You don't check to see if he's awake when you leave the room, headed for the bathroom. You turn the shower faucet on and step into the hot water, letting it pour across your face like a baptism.
You emerge out of the bathroom fully dressed to find Draco downstairs pulling on his boots. The sight of him so prepared to leave causes your heart to grow heavy; had you set your expectations too high?
"You're leaving," you point out. He ties his final lace and stands, smiles at you. Your heart beats strongly in your chest, pounding against your skin and your bones and pleads with every being under the sun to not be broken again.
"Yeah," he says, walking towards the door. He turns to face you as soon as his hand lands on the knob. "I want to give you time to think about things. About us," he finishes.
Some part of you understands him. You know that logically it will be much easier to rebuild the pieces of your shattered heart without his face looming around every darkened corner. But then there's that other part of you. That part that loves him so unconditionally that even if it meant your heart would remain broken, you'd be willing to see him wherever you went.
He stops as he passes through the door and gazes back at you. You can still see his smile even after the door closes.
"I love you, too," you say to the closed door, knowing that even if the words weren't spoken they were there.
- - -
You're caught in a frenzy of chaotic behavior. You rip the sheets off the bed and although you could certainly magic them clean, you're stuffing them into your small washing machine.
You're frantic in your rituals; everything that he could have possibly touched is cleansed, soothed, scrubbed and vacuumed. Your hands are raw from scrubbing the kitchen tiles and despite the fact that your entire flat is glittering with cleanliness you can't get it out of your mind that you may have made a huge mistake.
What if things could have worked out? What if throwing yourself at him during your time of weakness changed things? What if you lost the man you loved forever.
You can cope with his mistakes, his flaws don't define him. You want all of him and that includes the things he's done wrong and all the things he does right.
You sit on the kitchen tiles, the smell of bleach permeated into your clothes and you sulk. You should have made him stay. You could have said something; anything.
Instead you're left alone walking alone in your flat, scrubbing your grief away with bleach and ammonia. You walk through the living room and spot the woven blanket sticking out between the couch cushions. You rush over to it and grab it, hold it up to your nose.
His scent fills you up and it makes you woozy with delight. You walk up to your bedroom still pressing the blanket to your nose.
You secretly conceal it underneath your pillow and you settle in on top of the crisp, clean covers and you sleep, his scent keeping you warm and safe.
- - -
Six The point in your life when finally, after so much wreckage, things begin to fall back into place. The sun may not shine all day, but if you look hard enough you can find sunlight in the darkest of places.
Five days. It's been five days since you've seen him, spoken to him. 124 hours, 7,200 minutes, five long days.
You lean against the counter at the library, slowly and most likely incorrectly organizing the ancient card-catalogue. The bells above the door jingle and when you look up your sight is filled with aristocratic features and a head of blonde hair.
He slowly struts over to the desk, his expression void of any emotion while you're on the verge of a complete emotional breakdown. You realize the cards are fluttering in your hand and you drop them as if they're composed of acid.
"Hello," he says as he approaches you. You dumbly clear your throat and look around, think that perhaps he was speaking to someone else. You feel like you've never even dated him before; never even met him.
"Hi," you offer, your voice sounding smaller than it ever has.
"I'm looking for a book," he tells you bluntly, and your heart drops all the way to your toes. And here you thought that maybe, just maybe things would work out. You're aware that your mouth dropped open but you can't be bothered to do something about it.
That is until he begins laughing.
You're so confused and if he chuckles uncontrollably one more time, you may slap him in the face with an encyclopedia.
"Hermione, do you seriously think I came here looking for a book?"
And again, you're stunned. You search for words but there are none.
"I was planning on waiting," he said. "Waiting for you to come to me, to tell me you were ready to let me back in." You're about to speak when he cuts you off. "But," he stresses, "I got tired of waiting."
And now it's your turn to smile. You lean farther across the counter and level him with a quirky grin.
"And you just assume that everything's fine, Mr. Malfoy?" you ask him jokingly. He laughs again and it truly feels as if you are two completely different people.
"Well you tell me, Smartest Witch of Our Time." You toss a quill at his forehead and laugh. "You do know that I'm sorry, right? And that it will never happen again?"
You consider this. You think about how things will be tomorrow. A week from now. Two weeks, a month, maybe even a year. And you settle on the realization that you believe him; you trust him with your entire being.
"Yeah," you say as you lean across the counter, brushing his lips with yours. "I know."
- - -
Seven When you're so blindly happy that nothing could possibly get you down. You can now hold a seashell to your ear and confidently say that you can hear the crash of the ocean. And at this exact moment in time, you feel weightless. You feel infinite. But who's to say if it'll last, for we do not dictate the future. We simply take everyday that comes to us and make something beautiful out of it.
- - -