Chapter 21

A/N: Hello readers! I'd forgotten that I had this chapter edited and laying around my desktop, so sorry about that. But it's here now and that's what counts, right?

Thanks to Adele for betaing and to all the lovely people who took the time to review. We're getting close to the end here, only 2 chapters after this one!

~Frosty

The moment they were back in their apartment, Scorpius left her standing in the living room and went into the bathroom to grab himself a towel. She knew he was just doing it to stall some more, since he could just as easily cast a drying charm.

However, she didn't raise a fuss about his completely transparent stalling techniques. Truth be told, she was a little glad for the delay. She wasn't sure if she was ready for the conversation they were about to have and couldn't really blame Scorpius for wanting to avoid it as well.

She cast a quick drying charm on her clothes and started a fire to warm herself since her warming charm was grossly inadequate. While her spell work was usually exceptional, her warming charms never seemed to work as well as they should. Her mum had always said she wasn't "thinking warm thoughts" while she did it. Personally, Rose thought her mum was a little barmy sometimes, but that was just her opinion.

Scorpius came back into the room, the towel slung around his shoulders entirely for show. His completely dry hair and clothes suggested that he'd cast a drying charm while he'd been in the washroom, making the towel entirely moot.

He seemed to realize that she'd seen right through him because he pulled the towel off and threw it back into the bathroom. Rose frowned slightly at the thought of him just leaving the towel in a lump on the bathroom floor. They didn't have the Manor's House Elves anymore, so someone was going to have to do the laundry. Maybe they could hire a maid? Rose wasn't sure she knew how to work a Muggle washing machine and her cleaning spells were lacking in the same way her warming spells were. It was hard to find practice when wherever she went, there were House Elves just waiting to clean up any mess she made.

"I needed to get out, okay?" Scorpius said defensively. "We've only lived together for a few days and already you're questioning me if I don't announce where I'm going?" he asked lightly, his tone completely at odds with the harsh words. It seemed he had decided to go on the offensive.

Very well then. Rose crossed her arms and glared up at him.

"You finished a bottle of Firewhiskey and disappeared at who knows what hour. I was worried because I care about you, you bloody moron!" she yelled. Two could play the offensive game, and she was doing it better.

Scorpius blinked and then blinked again.

Taking advantage of his silence, Rose pressed on. "Did you think I spent the day looking for you because I was miffed that you didn't tell me where you were going? We nearly died this week in case you hadn't noticed. I think that allows me to worry a little more than- mmmph."

Scorpius, tired of listening to her rant, kissed her.

"What was that for?" Rose demanded a second later when he pulled away.

He shrugged. "Seemed like the best way to make you stop talking."

He kissed her again when she tried to yell at him for being a prat. This time, she didn't even bother resisting just so she could yell at him. Kissing was much more pleasant than yelling anyway, and he'd been the one to antagonise her first, she had just wanted to have a conversation.

Just to let him know that he couldn't always stop her arguments with kissing, she nipped his lip, smirking against his mouth when he made a slightly-pained grunt. She was going to count this one as her victory.

When his hands drifted under her shirt and up the bare skin of her back, she pulled away once more. Not because she wasn't completely enjoying his attentions, but because she had some questions that needed answering before the situation degraded way out of her control.

"What are we doing?" Rose demanded.

Scorpius raised an infuriating eyebrow. "I thought it was rather obvious."

"That's not what I mean and you know it," she whacked his chest for emphasis. "What are we doing? Mum and Draco know about... whatever we are, and we live together. That kind of implies there's more between us than we acknowledge."

He pondered her words for a moment. "Lots of women share dwellings with men with whom they share no familial connection or fidelity obligations. Some of them even shag these men."

"I don't want to be one of those women," Rose said. Her words were almost as much of a surprise to her as they were to him. The surprise didn't, however, make them any less true. She wanted something... more.

They'd been suspended in a limbo of sorts by the fact that they were stepsiblings and nothing could ever come of a real relationship between them. Everything had to be kept from their parents as a shameful secret, never to be spoken of in the light of day.

But now their parents knew.

It would be difficult to disappoint them further than they already had. Scorpius had been kicked out of the house for Merlin's sake! Rose was sure she was next once she explained to Draco that Scorpius hadn't taken advantage of her for anything besides bailing him out when he inevitably got himself arrested.

She stepped away from Scorpius. There was a strange look in his eyes that she didn't waste the energy to place; she wouldn't be able to interpret his expression when he really didn't want her to know what he was thinking. Her mum had once told her that Draco had the infuriating habit of hiding behind a mask sometimes, and Rose had nodded along, thinking that Scorpius had inherited this trait, whether through genetics or by learning it. Maybe she'd learn to do it, just so he would know how it felt to try and read someone who was completely blank-faced.

"You're moving back to the Manor then?" he asked monotonously.

Disappointment immediately crushed the little part of her that had dared to hope. She didn't want to move back to the Manor, but she'd taken the risk that she'd have to go there when she spoke up. Sighing, she nodded. If he just wanted to shag her, then she wasn't going to break herself just to stay close to him – and it would break her, she knew. They could live separately; it would just take some terror-filled nights alone to get used to it. What were a few nightmares when compared to a life sucking Dark object? She could do it.

"I guess I am," Rose said sadly.

She was at the door to her bedroom when she stopped. If they were already done, then it wouldn't do any harm for her to ask one more question. It would only really be one more nail in the coffin; inconsequential in the larger scheme of things, but she needed to know.

"When you told Lucius that you loved me, were you telling the truth or just trying to shock him?" she asked, her back to him. Scorpius never failed to somehow make her into a coward.

His answer wasn't the one she'd forced herself to accept as the truth when he asked if she was leaving.

"I was telling the truth."

Shock rooted her to the spot, she didn't want to turn and face him in case she had imagined what he'd said and she'd read the truth on his face. Slowly, suppressing her elation, she turned around to look at him, her face carefully neutral. It wasn't the blank slate Scorpius could don at will, but it was as close as she'd probably ever get.

"What did you say?" she asked in a small voice.

Scorpius looked very apprehensive, but he still spoke. "I said that it was the truth when I told my grandfather I loved you."

She swallowed; that's what she thought he'd said. Rose opened and closed her mouth a few times in shock. She'd been just about to leave and then he had to go and say something like that. She was having a hard time keeping up with all of his contradictory actions.

She supposed it was partly her fault that they seemed to be constantly misunderstanding each other; communication issues went both ways.

"Weren't you leaving?" he demanded when she stood staring too long.

No, not after that. She couldn't seem to get her mouth to move properly, and her brain was too busy trying to process the new information to force her slack jaw into action. She really needed some sort of software upgrade if she was going to keep getting shocks, one of these days her poor brain was just going to give her an error message and shut down.

Mutely, she shook her head. No, she wasn't leaving, she wasn't going anywhere.

"What?" Scorpius snarled, his hackles up because he'd bared a vulnerable part of himself and she was being an idiot and not responding. "Are you going to chew me out for feeling the wrong thing now? First I can't leave without getting a lecture, and now you think you get to dictate what I feel?" He advanced on her, getting into her personal space as he continued to throw questions at her that were positively dripping with accusation.

"No, you idiot. I was shocked," she finally snapped, interrupting the next undoubtedly stupid question he'd been about to ask. Where he got ideas like those, she'd never know. Why ever would she be angry with him for falling in love with her? And never in her life would she try and dictate what another human being should feel.

"And now you're over it," he said, shooing her towards the door, "so kindly leave me to berate myself for my idiocy."

As usual, she didn't obey him. His orders were stupid most of the time anyway. Rose knew better than to take his words for their surface value. The blighter didn't know how to react to strong emotions besides lashing out at everyone around him, usually her.

"What about loving me makes you an idiot? You have better taste than I ever gave you credit for," she said. Her heart wasn't in her words, she was mostly keeping him talking so that he didn't notice she was frantically running over recent events in her head, trying to find out if there were moments where he actually showed that he loved her and trying to work out her own feelings.

Like an unprepared student facing a quiz, Rose was scrambling to sort out everything she knew and come up with an answer. Her mouth was running on autopilot, stalling for time while her brain worked on the problem.

If she was being honest with herself, she had suspected that something deeper might have been between them from the moment he woke her up with kisses and asked if, just once, they could be together without alcohol. If she was really being honest with herself, she would admit that she wasn't the type to sleep around, even if she was blackout drunk. There had always been something there; the two of them had just never named it.

Scorpius scowled at her. "You're making jokes? For once I say something serious to you and you turn it into a joke."

Worse than angry, he looked hurt. Rose's heart stabbed her in her chest with every beat, reprimanding her for letting her mouth run off by itself just to give her some time. She didn't even need the time, not really. She knew what she should have said the moment he had admitted that he'd been telling the truth when he'd said he loved her.

"Sorry," she said. Slowly, Rose approached him, careful and wary as if he might lash out at her should she advance too quickly. He didn't move away, but his thundercloud of an expression wasn't exactly welcoming.

Rigid and tense, he stood there as she hesitantly wrapped her arms around him, unsure of her welcome. He didn't push her away, but he didn't pull her any closer - or respond at all, really.

"I didn't mean to make a joke, I panicked," she explained.

His expression was a mystery to her because her head was tucked against his shoulder, her face buried against his neck. She was hiding against him. Once again, the snarky blond had turned her into a coward. It was so much easier to speak to him when she didn't have to look into his eyes. Those stupid eyes that could see right through her, yet had somehow missed the one thing that was most important.

She loved him too.

Now she just had to work out how to tell him. The words were stuck in her throat, having lodged themselves there, probably a long time ago.

Scorpius remained still and unresponsive, but she could hear his accelerated heartbeat. It matched the pace of the frantic fluttering of her own.

"You know how I just let my mouth run sometimes," she managed to say around the lump in her throat made up of the words she really wanted to speak.

Firmly, Scorpius took her shoulders and pulled her away from him. "You're forgiven. Now leave."

Indignant, Rose bristled. "I'm trying to have a conversation with you and you keep trying to get me to leave!"

"I don't want to deal with you right now," he snapped. He just wanted to go lick his wounds and forget about how she'd looked terrified when he'd admitted that he loved her. They didn't have the best relationship, but he'd expected something other than terror when he told her. It was humiliating and he wouldn't just stand there and allow the embarrassment to continue.

"You're infuriating, I have no idea why I love you," she snapped right back at him.

When Scorpius didn't respond, she ran back over what she'd said and paled. Merlin, she hadn't meant to tell him like that. It figured that she couldn't get the words out when she wanted to say them, but they snuck out effortlessly when she least expected them. She was just as surprised as Scorpius that she'd said them. Her bloody mouth needed to stop speaking without her brain first approving her words.

"Are you mocking me?" he growled, grabbing her shoulders and digging his fingers into her skin. There was a dangerous glint in his eyes.

Rose knew he didn't take teasing well so it stood to reason that he'd react poorly if she made fun of him for something so serious, but he was hurting her. There were probably going to be finger-shaped bruises on her poor shoulders.

She needed to calm him down before he did something that he would regret.

"Scorpius, you're hurting me," she said calmly.

Surprised, he let go immediately, having not meant to actually injure her, just to get her to tell the truth.

"It just slipped out, but that doesn't meant I wasn't telling the truth." She unconsciously cringed away from him and her eyes flickered shut, braced for some more shouting or laughter or something. Merlin, if this was what Scorpius had felt like moments before, she never would have let her mouth make a stupid joke.

Her eyes opened when she heard an exhalation and a soft thump. Scorpius had retreated a few steps and fell heavily onto the sofa, allowing the softness of the cushions to hold him up.

"I seem to be more inebriated than I'd thought. Did you just say that you loved me too?"

A small smile on her lips, Rose nodded. "I have less sense than the both of us thought, apparently."

Tentatively, he slid his hands around her hips and pulled her closer. "I, for one, never thought you had all that much sense."

She contemplated whacking him for the remark, but she still felt a little guilty for making a joke when he had told her he really loved her. A few snide remarks from him were what she deserved for doing something so unfeeling.

When he didn't receive the reprimand he'd expected, Scorpius just sat there, staring up at her with that strange look on his face again. It was something similar to besotted and didn't sit well with Rose; Scorpius wasn't supposed to be besotted with anyone but his own reflection. It just didn't fit well with his character.

If she didn't suspect that she had a similar expression on her face, she would be completely disturbed. Neither of them had ever really showed anything but animosity unless there was alcohol involved.

Now that she thought of it, Scorpius had been drinking that day. It was hardly fair that his senses were dulled by the effects of his libations while she was stuck without that blissful embarrassment reliever.

Starting to feel uncomfortable under his stare, Rose started to blush. She could feel the warmth creeping over her cheeks and down her neck; knowing she was blushing only made it that much more embarrassing and so darkened the red stain on her skin.

When he saw it, a slight smirk quirked up a corner of his mouth.

Rose's eyes widened and then narrowed; he was trying to make her uncomfortable with that stare of his. Well, two could play that game.

"Why did you disappear this morning?" she asked, a challenging glint in her blue irises. "Even someone who drinks as much as you has a reason if he starts drinking so early in the morning."

It was Scorpius' turn to glare.

A knock at the door stopped their little game form getting out of hand.

Since no one knew where they lived yet, neither of them had any idea who could be out there. Both of them sat frozen, unsure if they should answer the door.

"Rose, I need to talk to you!" Hermione called through the door.

Reflexively, Rose turned herself into a cat. She wasn't yet used to being open about her relationship with Scorpius, and it was a habit to transform into a cat so as not to be caught places she shouldn't be, like standing between Scorpius' knees while his hands rested on her hips.

"Coward," Scorpius said, shooting her an irritated look. He was just standing to get the door when it opened of its own accord.

On the other side, Hermione was slipping her wand back into her pocket. Rose made a mental note to find stronger locking charms. It had only taken her mum a moment to undo the existing ones.