Marilyn was acting strangely. At least, Draco thought she was. This was his first time seeing her since that ill-thought out (or, well, entirely non-thought out, if he was being honest) farewell the other night, so maybe he was just being paranoid. Looking for strange behaviour where there was none to be found. Perhaps that was making him act oddly, and so she was just responding in kind - so creating a vicious cycle that led to him realising he wasn't even following the plot of the film that had been playing for nearly an hour now. But judging by the way she picked at her tights, neither was Marilyn.

"Do you want to go for a walk?"

It was that or making an excuse to leave altogether - because sod staying here and enduring this like nothing was different. The look of relief on Marilyn's face, though, and the fact that she immediately turned the television off with no sign of protest at all about seeing the end of the film, told him he'd struck gold.

They quickly pulled on their coats and their shoes in a silence that made Draco increasingly uncomfortable, but when he glanced towards her to see if she shared in that discomfort, she seemed entirely preoccupied - a thousand mile stare on her face as she gnawed on the corner of her lip. Only when she caught him observing her with a frown on his face did she release her lip from between her teeth, blinking herself back into the present.

"I, uh, I don't know how fast I'll be able to go with my knee."

"I'll do my best to refrain from dragging you through the streets again," he said drily.

The joke did the trick, because she smiled softly and shook her head, standing once she was done lacing up her boots and gesturing for him to lead the way. Draco hoped the smile meant that it wasn't him who had her looking so glum this evening.

The streets outside were freezing, dark, and mostly empty - a perfect night for a walk. There were almost no clouds at all in the sky above them, making the world feel enormous and clearing his head all in one as he took in great lungfuls of the icy air. As he turned towards the Muggle woman beside him, though, he saw that her face was still just as troubled. Apparently the cold night air hadn't had the same effect on her. Or perhaps her troubles were just too large to be solved so quickly and simply. And not too long ago he'd considered Muggles incapable of having worries on such a scale. That small realisation was enough to have him grimacing along with her.

"Something bothering you?"

He just came out and asked it. It was less agonising than both of them walking alongside one another pretending nothing was off or strange.

"It's just been one of those weeks, you know?" She sighed, and he detected no trace of a lie "I don't like time off. I don't like time in general."

"There's always so much of it to fill," Draco agreed grimly.

"Exactly!" She nodded quickly "Back when I was a dancer my friends would always say that they didn't know how I did it - where I got the energy from. But I didn't know how they did it. Okay, the lifestyle was a lot. When you're not in in actual rehearsals, you're doing barre exercises to keep your legs strong, or cardio to keep your stamina up, or pilates, or yoga, or physio, or-"

She stuttered to a halt and then sighed, shaking her head "Well, you get my point. There was always something more to do. If by some miracle you get through everything to do with the day job, then you probably have at least five things to do with being a normal human being to address. Your friends haven't seen you in weeks, or you have three weeks worth of laundry to do, or meal prep. If not, then you might get to spend an hour reading a book or watching a film, but that's what it is - a treat. A way to unwind after days of not being able to at all, and secretly loving every part of it. I miss sleeping because I'm exhausted, and not just because it's time to go to bed. I miss not having any energy to think, never mind the time."

Draco said nothing. Mainly because he wasn't sure she was entirely finished.

"Now, though, especially when I have to take time off...I get everything I need to get done and then some, and then I check the time and it's not even midday. I spend the rest of the time driving myself mad by sheer force of thought alone. Am I being a complete whiny cow?"

"No," he shook his head and, upon reflection, was surprised to find he actually meant it.

Usually he found complaining insufferable - all but his, if he was being honest. When he'd been with Pansy Parkinson back in his Hogwarts days, most spats they had were because she'd accused him of not listening while she wittered on about how some girl in one of her classes had slighted her by daring to buy the same shoes from Hogsmeade on the last trip. They probably would have had more arguments of that ilk, had she not been so intent on keeping him. It was part of what made her exhausting. He could've listed off everything he disliked about her in alphabetical order, and she'd have forgiven him the next day so long as he pouted enough when he apologised. With Marilyn, he'd perhaps get half-way through the list before she broke his nose...and the list wasn't particularly long.

"Really?" She arched an eyebrow.

They exited the block of terraced houses and began to walk towards the edges of the city, where it was more grass and open spaces and nature, than just houses.

"The school I went to - it was a boarding school, up in the highlands," he said "All your hours are accounted for. Perhaps not as rigidly as you're accustomed to, but enough. We'd all have breakfast together, classes, lunch, more classes, dinner. Then there was homework, Quid- er, quite a lot of sports, clubs, the like...maybe the odd school trip here and there. But even when there was spare time, there was always somebody to hang around with. Summer wasn't bad, but summer was always temporary. It was fun, especially in the early years, because it was a novelty. Whenever things felt too quiet I'd tell myself 'enjoy it now, because you'll soon be stuck in a dormitory with a bunch of idiots who all snore'."

"And now you miss the snoring?" She asked.

"No," he said emphatically, earning a laugh "But the rest wasn't so bad. Certainly not as bad as I thought it was at the time."

"The only thing worse than not appreciating what you've got is looking back and wishing you had," she sighed with a shrug "I want to go back and give my past self a slap for ever complaining about any rehearsal, any demanding choreographer, anything."

"Then you'd end up with a dodgy hand to match the dodgy knee."

"A small price to pay for a sense of perspective," she laughed.

Silence threatened to loom then, but Draco was reluctant to allow it. They'd had their share of comfortable silences, but those weren't the kind that tonight had been occupied by. Things were finally feeling normal now - amicable - and he was worried that if he allowed her to retreat to her thoughts again, the awkwardness would return.

"What thoughts have you been driving yourself mad with?"

There was that grimace again.

"Lots of different ones," she said vaguely.

It wasn't like her to be vague - nor shy. Not really. Which didn't bode well. Had be been right in thinking that the kiss - even if it had just been on the cheek - had made her uncomfortable? Merlin, it made him uncomfortable and he was the one who'd done it. His mind had no shortage of questions to throw at him concerning it, and not a whole lot of answers. All he knew was that he didn't regret it. Not unless it risked ruining whatever safehaven he'd found for himself here.

That was the downside of going from spending time around girls of Pansy's ilk to Marilyn - being insecure was not something he was accustomed to. Being frustrated at the fact that things like insecurity, and confidence, and attractions levels shouldn't even come into play here because nothing would happen (nor could it happen) was just an added bonus of all the confusion. Whether it was that frustration that showed on his face, or some kind of dejection, he wasn't sure - he didn't want anything to show on his face, damn it, but she just had a way of making the indifferent mask slip - but whatever it was, Marilyn caught it.

He noticed the moment her steps slowed and was about to stop and ask if her knee was troubling her when she caught his arm to stop him anyway. Rather than frowning and bending to rub at her knee at he'd expected though, she kept hold of his arm and used it as leverage to pull herself onto the toes of her good leg, and pressed a kiss to his cheek. She let it linger for a moment - staying there for just a beat longer than one would expect. Her lips were soft and warm, in stark contrast to the biting breeze swirling relentlessly around them, and Draco had no idea how to react, his eyes widening of their own accord as he stood stock-still.

Then it was over, and she was stepping back and continuing to walk.

"There. Now we can both be paranoid that we were too forward," she said knowingly.

Draco didn't bother biting back his smile...but he did suppress the urge to life a hand to the cheek she'd just kissed.

Things felt much more normal from then on. Marilyn couldn't be any more relieved, either. She felt terrible for not telling Draco about her strange encounter with his old school friend. After all, she'd have been furious if she found out that he was having secret meetings with people who had hated her from her old schools. Why hadn't she told him? She didn't know. Genuinely, she didn't. Hell, she still might. It had been a week since she'd seen Hermione - did that make it too late to tell him without risking his ire for not informing him sooner? Possibly. But it wasn't like she saw him every night.

Since she wasn't able to work, he tended to drop by every other night. It was difficult to tell whether he was playing it cool or if he just had other things occupying his time. Both versions of events threatened to overly flatter her somewhat - if it was the former, then there was something to play it cool with, and if it was the latter then that meant he was spending all of his free nights with her. It was better to just not dwell on it. Dwelling on the matter of Hermione was more than enough for her tastes...rather too much, even.

Every time she'd seen Draco since then, she'd tried to view him in light of Hermione's warnings. Her eyes were peeled for red flags - any red flags, however minor. And she found none. None of the sort that she'd encountered during previous dating disasters, anyway. She had her fair share of those, too, so it wasn't like she was just too inexperienced to recognise them when she saw them. There had been guys desperate to rush her into bed just so that they could brag to their pals that they'd bedded a ballerina, there had been pretentious assholes who thought that because her career path lay in the physical that she had nothing going on upstairs, there had been the possessive, the idiotic, and the dreary. And Draco was unlike any of them. So that meant that either he was decent and absolutely not the person Hermione had known, as she'd damn well thought in the first place, or that he was some fresh and new brand of monster that she had not yet encountered.

In the beginning she'd decided that only time would tell, but time was passing and it had not yet told. Not anything bad, anyway. The only glaring red flag so far had occurred that time after the cinema, which had involved Hermione herself. It didn't sit well with Marilyn at all that the only proof that the strange woman had was something she'd basically had a hand in herself.

So...it was only fair she tell Draco, right? But she still dreaded it. Perhaps she should've told him right away - okay, with everything that she was sure of now she definitely should've told him right away, but that was just it. She had to be sure. If she hadn't sat back and gathered her own evidence, formed her own opinion, she never would have been sure. Any evidence to the contrary of what Hermione said could have easily been chalked up to him putting on a facade to win her over. It was like what the police did in all of those true crime shows he judged her for loving so much. They spoke to the suspect before the suspect knew that was what they were. Draco had proven himself innocent.

All right, he wasn't perfect. He was a snob, he could be a little dismissive at times, and he certainly wasn't the most empathetic of souls. But she'd known all of that before Hermione had done her utmost to ride in on a white steed and rescue her, and (if she was being honest) she hadn't absolutely hated it. He clearly embraced the snobbery, at least - for there was nothing more tiring than somebody of the upper classes who insisted that they weren't well off - if nothing else he was aware of it. Some might even call it good taste...although Marilyn was, admittedly, not one of those people. She was used to making do, and she was proud of that trait in herself. But she didn't begrudge him his snobbery, and Draco didn't begrudge her her working class-ness. Not that she knew of, anyway. There was a paranoid streak in her that wondered if she was the butt of some joke between him and all of his rich friends; something they laughed about over brandy and cigars. But she thought not. She hoped not. It wasn't a thought worth indulging, and much like Hermione's warnings about him, it was one with no evidence.

As for his flaws, he worked on them. Actively worked on them, and openly too - at least with her, anyway. Man, she was a sucker for that. For somebody who had flaws but still tried in spite of them, rather than somebody who was just naturally good and perfect, no effort required. Good and perfect were boring when there was nothing else to them. Or maybe thinking so was her own flaw.

Flawed or not, it was that line of thinking that had her carefully applying red lipstick and double-checking the way she'd curled her hair as she waited for him to arrive so they could go out for dinner. It wasn't going to be anything fancy - probably something in a pub - but it had been a long time since she put on a pretty dress, did her make-up, and had dinner with an attractive man. She was going to enjoy it, damnit.

...But that didn't mean she wasn't immune to the odd worry. She'd been joking when she'd kissed him on the cheek and announced that now they could both worry. Okay, the kiss hadn't been a joke. That was...oh, an expression of her joy at having found a kindred spirit. Somebody who knew what she was talking about. Sure, the upset she'd professed had been a bit of a smoke-screen to mask what she hadn't told him - the matter of Hermione - but it was an honest smoke-screen. She'd shown him her mountain of worries, even if not the peak. And he'd understood. He'd related. It was refreshing. To not be brushed off with a "you'll find something else to fill your time", without the person saying it realising that they might as well say to a widow "you'll fancy someone else in no time". Admittedly, that was a little melodramatic, but she felt she was entitled to that. She'd spent so long putting on a brave face that she was getting sick of the sight of it.

It was nice. She was just anxious about ruining the niceness by taking her little dress-up game too far and having him misread the whole thing, especially since it had followed the kiss (on the cheek) so quickly. What if he thought she was trying to seduce him? She had other, far better, dresses for such a purpose, but he had no way of knowing that. Or what if he turned up in the most casual thing he owned (which still probably had a shirt collar, knowing him) and she looked like an idiot all dressed up? It was a prospect that almost had her swapping her dress of red velvet for jeans and a nice top.

But then he was knocking on the front door and it was too late.

A/N: A weird place to stop, I know, but it was that or have this chapter end up being ridiculously long so here we are! Sorry!