Scars

11th of December, 2006. Somewhere in the Dolomites.

"I'm hungry," Hermione mumbled against Draco's lips.

It was later at night, and they were snuggled on the sofa. A magical flame in the fireplace, snow falling outside, a film on TV neither of them was paying enough attention to (Hermione knew Just By Luck like the back of her hand anyway).

Draco traced the braid pattern of her knit pullover, one arm flung over her shoulder, the other around her waist. "You want me to get something to eat?"

"No, it's fine," she said standing up, shivering as her body left the warm cocoon under the blanket. "Actually, I still have the lasagna in the freezer, if you fancy it."

"Potter's one?" He groaned as he stretched his long limbs before reaching the coffee table for his smoke. "You're not trying to poison me or something, are you?"

"You're poisoning yourself," she remarked, glaring at the cigarettes. "Besides, that would be counterproductive for me, at this point. Don't you think?"

Draco smirked, taking his time rolling the cigarette before bringing it between his lips, perfectly aware that Hermione was staring at the motion. He held the packet out for her.

"Want one?"

Hermione cleared her throat. "No." So her voice was a bit hoarse. Big deal.

She headed to the kitchen while Malfoy went to the balcony. The sudden gush of wind that swept through the house as he opened the glass door was so cold that she squeezed herself in her arms.

"Aren't you freezing out there?"

He sat on a chair outside and propped his legs up on the parapet. "Dealt with worse." Then, "Hey, Granger!" he called, before closing the door. Hermione stared at him curiously. "Look," he mouthed.

His fingers snapped, and the tip of his cigarette lit up.

She scoffed, mostly disbelieving that she was turned on by such an innocuous thing. "Show off."

Malfoy flashed her one last smile before turning away to exhale a cloud of smoke.

The unperturbed expression of tranquility on his face was still there when he walked back inside a few minutes later, shrugging the coldness from his shoulders, breath stinging heavily of tobacco. Hermione stopped typing and looked at him from behind the laptop screen; she used the distraction to take her glasses off and rub her eyes. His clean-shaved cheeks had become flushed in the cold air.

He'd shaved earlier, which had been fun. He'd searched for his wand in the bathroom, telling her there were at least a thousand different spells dealing with body hair and that shaving was one of the easiest ones, but Hermione had insisted on doing it the Muggle way.

"I don't even have a razor," he'd said, putting on a bathrobe while Hermione was still lounging behind in the lukewarm water.

"We can transfigure a knife. I did it countless times during the last years at Hogwarts."

"I didn't know you had to shave a beard, Granger."

"Ah-ah, really funny." She'd emerged from the bathtub and wrapped a towel around her body. "I'll just answer by saying that someone had to keep Harry's hair in check."

She'd sat him down on the edge of the bathtub and took the transfigured razor in her hand, then gripped his chin between her fingers to tilt his face, looking for a good starting point. Malfoy hadn't uttered a word as she shaved him with precision, but a subtle smirk settled on his features; it didn't disappear even when she'd cut him a little on the cheek.

"Shit, sorry," she'd mumbled, wiping the blood away with her thumb before mindlessly pressing it to her lips. "Did that hurt…?" Her eyebrows had raised at Malfoy's low growl.

She'd glanced at her finger, and then it was her turn to smirk. "Talk about weird preferences."

"Talk about it," and he'd tugged her closer.

Hours later, his cheek was still sporting the cut, even though she'd offered to heal it. She didn't let herself wonder the reason.

"How's this coming out?" Draco asked, crouching to look at the baking lasagna inside the oven.

"Pretty nicely, I'd say, judging from the smell." Hermione saved the file and closed the laptop, ignoring the fact that she was incredibly behind on her schedule and focusing on which wine she was going to open for the night instead. She kneeled next to him, opening the oven door. "I think it's done. Can you pass me a fork?"

Malfoy reached for one on the sink, handing it over for Hermione to stick it in the middle of the lasagna. Satisfied with the result, she turned the oven off and stood up.

"Right. Get the table ready? I'll just leave the laptop in my room—why are you smiling?"

An annoyingly endearing grin was taking up Malfoy's face. "It's amazing how easily you boss people around."

"Fuck you, I don't boss people around," she retorted, halfway between amused and offended. "Stop smiling like an idiot."

"But how can I, Granger," he said, catching her by the waist to whisper the next words directly inside her mouth. "You fuck me so good I can't wipe this smile off my face."

Hermione laughed against his lips, instantly turning a violent shade of red, and gave him a weak slap on the chest before going to the bedroom.

Dinner was already served when she came back and sat at the kitchen table, paired with a full glass of wine.

"How's the book going?" Malfoy asked as Hermione started cutting her lasagna in regular pieces, examining it still; it didn't exactly look like Harry's one, but it was close enough, she determined. At least she hoped so.

"Uh, you know. It's going… somewhere," she said before taking a mouthful. Pointing at Draco's plate, she mumbled something incomprehensible, wiggling her eyebrows in question.

"Yeah, it's good," he answered, "and I'm ninety-nine percent sure it's not poisoned." She poked her tongue out, making him chuckle. "Can I ask you how you decided to write a book? What happened?"

"Nothing specific, really," Hermione shrugged, trying to downplay it. "I worked at the Ministry for some time; but while Harry and Ron were Auror training, I realised I didn't really care about it, not the work I was doing at least, so I quit and joined the Prophet. Which, if you know a bit about the Prophet, wasn't exactly the lesser evil, but, well. I felt like I had a bit more room to do things I cared about. And Ginny was there, too."

Which had been the unexpected turn of events that set everything into motion. Everyone had assumed Ginny was going to have a brilliant career as a Quidditch athlete, but when it came down to signing the contract, she couldn't bring herself to leave her family. Sure, Bill was still alive and not even doomed to the moon cycle; Arthur was holding up well for his age and his wounds; and even Percy had managed to mend the relationship. Still, the missing chair next to George's always felt like a ghost limb.

And it was due to that everlasting hurt, that deep grief that never grew smaller, that Ginny decided to stay and help her brother, rather than set her foot out in the world to chase her dream on a broomstick. George himself fought with her about it, but she had been adamant in her decision: she was going to stay in London whether he liked it or not. And since she was already there, it would have been the better choice to at least try and take advantage of her, instead of acting like a too-tall child.

Otherwise, if George had preferred it, there would have been the possibility of asking Ron and his fantastic businesslike mind for help.

Ginny had said he didn't argue too much after that.

"She'd become a contributor to the newspaper, all the while working at the joke shop. She found she quite liked that, so she agreed when Luna proposed to open their own publishing house. Long story short, I followed in her footsteps at first, and now she's my editor. So to speak."

"So to speak?"

"I mean, I'm not an author yet. So I'm not sure that what she does could actually be considered editing."

Malfoy hummed, swallowing a bite. "You haven't answered my question, though."

"What question?" The wine was delicious. Another one of his bottles.

"Writing. Fiction. What happened, why do you do it?"

"Why do you want to know?" she asked, defensively.

"Can't I be curious?"

Hermione sighed, momentarily occupying her mouth with another bite of lasagna. It had really turned out great. She ought to tell Harry.

"Well, what can I say." Her eyes stayed focused on her dinner. "I've always loved books, and for a long time I felt like they were the only ones who could understand me. So it only feels right for me to be entering that world. Wouldn't you agree?"

Draco hummed in his glass. "And the honest answer?"

Her gaze darted up to find him already looking at her.

One breath. Two heartbeats.

"Merlin, you're a pain in the arse." Hermione sighed, tiredly pushing some curls away from her face. "I've always thought I would have a story to tell, but then I became a story. The first time I crossed the castle doors—or even the first time I opened Hogwarts, A History—I pictured myself years later, with my life firmly in my hands, recounting all the choices that brought me… wherever I was. I was so solid in that position that my mum was convinced I would become Minister for Magic one day.

"Then, I don't know when, but it occurred to me that I had no control over anything. People called me whatever they preferred, they all had an image of me in their heads that I was somehow supposed to match, and that persona was the one newspapers would speculate about and everyone would make assumptions on."

Draco smiled softly, "That sounds familiar."

"Yeah. I felt like a character in a novel, when I've only ever wanted to be the writer. So I told myself, why not. It started as me trying to regain control over my life, but now it's…" she groaned, gesticulating. "I don't know. I don't even know if I have a story to tell anymore."

"Sounds like the book isn't really going somewhere, after all."

She glared at him, but he had a point. "I fear the main issue is that I not only feel like a character, but like a side character—someone who has to deal with things happening to her without the means to control them in the slightest."

She hadn't always felt like that. She could still remember a time when she had the courage of her convictions, a spark that made the Hat send her to Gryffindor. But then…

The war. Somewhere in between all that madness, she'd gone from being fearlessly sure of every step she took, to feeling completely overwhelmed by minor inconveniences.

She had gone from fighting it to letting it happen to her.

When her eyes landed on Draco, she found he wasn't looking at her anymore. Not in the eyes. Instead, his gaze was fixed where she was absentmindedly gripping and scratching lightly on her left forearm. She had rolled her sleeves up in order to not stain them with the food.

"Ah." For some reason, Hermione turned her arm around to look at it better under the light rather than hiding it immediately. "Right."

After eight years, her maimed flesh didn't even look mangled to her anymore. It was just smooth skin interrupted by battered lines. She traced them, like she hadn't done in ages: M, and then U, and then D, and then B… and so on.

At first, it had seemed like the cuts were never going to heal. Bellatrix Lestrange's darkest magic and a knife that smelled like it had been devoted to black rituals ever since the dawn of time were a lethal combination. Hermione had bled for hours, for days, under Fleur's bandages. To this day, she still didn't know what kind of demonic curse the witch had placed on her; what she knew was that the pain kept coming anew when she least expected it, burning like she was being cut open for the first time again and again, until she had screamed for someone to do her a favour and cut her arm off.

Eventually, thanks to a combined effort coming from healing techniques and skilled werewolf aftercare, the pain had subsided and the cuts had started to scar. Being magical wounds, it would have been impossible to make them disappear for good, and Hermione had stared at the jagged lines with a blank mind as Fleur explained it to her. She'd told her she could teach her charms to disillusion them, some that Bill used and that Remus had passed along; they were temporary, but could do the trick when needed. But Hermione, still looking at her damaged skin, had refused to learn them.

"It's true anyway, isn't it?" Hermione had said, voice broken as tears soaked her cheeks. She'd passed her fingers on her skin, feeling the split where the knife had cut in, committing it to memory. It was going to feel like that forever. Fleur's blue eyes had been mortified, utterly unable to help her friend.

"I am a Mudblood," Hermione went on, digging her fingers in her arm. "I don't have the excuse of being a Half-Blood, like even fucking Vo—You-Know-Who himself, and I can't even have the twisted dignity of being a blood traitor. At least that means you're choosing what your stance is in this goddamn war. I can't have that because I am a fucking Mudblood, through and through, and my only crime is that I was born!"

The other woman had hugged her tightly when she hid her face in her chest, crying desperately, shoulders shaken by violent sobs. And yet, nothing she told her had stuck to Hermione's brain, too fragile and too troubled to be thinking clearly.

She'd pushed through that day. And then she'd pushed through the next. And the next. And the next. She had focused her efforts on what really mattered. Help Harry. Find the horcruxes. Win the war.

And then she'd learnt how to change the bandages by herself, quietly, using her teeth to pull the gauze. And when there was no need for bandages anymore, after the war, she'd bought long-sleeved shirts. She'd forced herself to accept that scar as a part of her. If she couldn't get rid of it, she would learn to deal with it.

The first time she went to the beach with her friends, she had a panic attack in the car. Years later, though, she was finally able to buy sleeveless dresses again.

And yet, even though—or maybe precisely because—she didn't pay the scar that much attention anymore, those few times she was abruptly reminded of it were becoming harsher than ever to tolerate. Mostly because they bore the knowledge that other people saw it, too.

How many times had Malfoy seen the scar without her noticing? The previous night? That morning? In the bathroom? Had she walked around the house with a t-shirt? Had he seen it then? When they'd had dinner the first time and she'd rolled her sleeves up, like she did now, like she does every time? What had he thought about it? Did it upset him? Did it scare him? Did it bring back memories that left him gasping for air?

She would have felt like that, she mused. Had she been in his place, she would have felt like that. What other possible reaction was to be expected, when presented with such a present, permanent, ugly reminder of what she had gone through, what she was, how different that made them—

A gasp left her mouth, her eyes darting to Draco's arms.

They were crossed on his chest.

Long sleeves down.

Gaze fixed on his left forearm, her mind was reeling through the last 24 hours. How had she missed it? It was impossible to miss…

"You want to see it?" His voice came out clipped, but honest. A genuine question. And Hermione simply nodded.

"Yes."

Draco cleared his throat, once, twice. He turned his forearm up, curling his fingers in a tight fist on the hem of the sleeve. Was it poetic or was it just appalling that the left side of his body, the one that guarded the heart, was the same one where he carried the memory of his family, of his wife, of the war?

And what was Hermione supposed to make of the fact that both their left arms had been cruelly vilified?

He pulled up the sleeve with a sharp movement, arm landing on the table with a thud.

The first thought that crossed her mind was that the Dark Mark wasn't dark at all. In fact, it looked a lot like her own scar, minus the evident scar tissue. If anything, it reminded her of a faded red tattoo.

The skin wasn't ruined—not plainly so, at least. The lines that formed the skull and the snake were large and long, and they occupied the entirety of Draco's forearm, from elbow to wrist. But they weren't black like she remembered.

"It's blood magic," he answered her scrutinising frown. "It was linked to the Dark Lord's life, so it was black only while he was… alive, alive. Actually, my… my Father told me once, after I… that there might be a chance that it disappears, had he… died." His voice jumped, stuttering on every sentence. "Because during those fourteen years before he got another body, the Mark had almost faded, like this, so… But yeah. No such thing."

Hermione realised she had leaned over the table when she balled her fingers in a fist, stopping herself from touching his arm.

"It looks…" She was unsure of how she was going to end the sentence. "Clean."

Draco scoffed. "Yeah. It does."

"Sorry, can I…?"

He outstretched his arm towards her. Hermione rested a finger over it, tentatively, slowly.

Under her touch, the line on his skin felt like a slightly-too-large vein. It was definitely there, but it wasn't as startling as the scars on his chest. Surely not as the scar on her arm. Hermione traced the Mark inch by inch, following every curve, every angle, every pattern.

"How…?"

His palm was tightly closed in front of her, knuckles white. "There's a ritual. It's long and complicated, and half of the spells are in Ancient languages I didn't understand—but it connects the bodies, in a way. To bind the Mark's bearer to the Dark Lord on one hand, and to harness a collective power from everyone else who's already marked on the other. It's about loyalty; but also, and even more so, about control. He could summon us from anywhere, just by activating it. During the Tournament, when Diggory… I saw Snape and Karkaroff grip their left arms at the exact same time, and I knew it'd happened." He was following the path of Hermione's hand with his gaze carefully. "I had no idea about the pain, though."

"I might know a thing or two about that."

"No," he said, shaking his head, "no, you don't."

Her finger stopped in its tracks. "Excuse me?"

"I don't mean it like that. The opposite, actually…" Draco pressed two fingers to the corner of his eyes, squeezing the bridge of his nose. "You know, my… um…" He pointed at her arm. "That was supposed to have some of the same magic. She came to me, asking for details, because she thought it was 'fresher in my mind'. I didn't know them anyway, so she tried whatever came close enough—but she failed to consider a very important detail.

"In order to take the Dark Mark, you have to be willing. You really need to want it, because otherwise not only the spell won't work, but you'll die. Simple as that." He paused, nodding at her arm. "That was unwilling. And since the grounds for the spell were similar, it means that—"

"Mine was more painful." She pulled her hand back, smiling humourlessly. "Well, that certainly brings so much relief."

"I just mean that I don't know what you went through, and we shouldn't compare…"

"Oh, fuck off. You fucking know what I went through, because you were there!" Hermione snapped, spitting out the words out with all the venom she had in her body. "You were right there, and your aunt asked you about the spell, and you knew how that felt, and even if you didn't, you heard me, because you were right there."

Draco stared at her with knitted eyebrows. "You're right. I was."

"That's all you've got to say?"

"What else do you want me to say? That I'm sorry?"

"No, I don't want a stupid apology."

"Good, because I don't think you need it."

"I can't believe this," Hermione scoffed, suddenly feeling the need to stand, to jump, to throw something at the nearest wall, to walk outside in the barren cold with no clothes on. "You sit there and you talk to me like some kind of martyrised version of yourself—I don't know what you went through, I can't imagine the pain, everything that happened to me is nothing compared to what happened to you… you think I don't fucking know that? You think I'm just going to romanticise your life to fit some kind of twisted idea about the illusion of choice?"

"Okay, so what is it that you want me to tell you, Granger?" His arm was still bare on the table as his eyes narrowed and his voice charged with coldness. "The opposite of that? That what I had to go through is something you won't ever be able to understand? Does that sound better? Does that make you feel better?"

"What would make me feel better?"

"I don't know. You're talking like you're desperately looking for an excuse to hate me."

"I'm not looking for—"

"I can see your mind working in there, I can feel it. And I know nothing about what you're thinking because you keep it all to yourself." All Hermione could hear was the growing spite in his tone. "Are you trying to make me fit into a stupid scene you're playing out in your head? Is my real presence not matching the one you have in your head?"

Why the fuck would she even try and talk to him, if this is what she got in return?

"Do you think people should look at you as a paragon of redemption, Malfoy?" she asked, tilting her head emphatically and fixing him with her stare. "Is that the idea of yourself you have in your mind?"

"You're being absurd. I'm sorry if I grew the fuck up and developed enough self-awareness to be able to look objectively at my life."

"I'm not being absurd, I'm genuinely asking," Hermione insisted. "I bet it's amazing to draw a breath of relief and say well, thank fuck that's all gone, I can live with myself now that the only reminder is a faded scar."

"You don't know how I live with myself," he said, voice dangerously low.

"I hope miserably," she retorted, unsure whether she believed her own words or not.

Draco paused. Took a deep breath.

"I'm not asking for forgiveness, Granger."

"Good," Hermione said, echoing him. "Because I don't think you deserve it."

His jaw visibly clenched, and his fist, if possible, tightened.

Hermione hastily pulled her sleeve down and finished her glass of wine, and all the while Draco kept looking at her.

"Do you think I'm a coward?" he said then, glancing at his arm.

Daring, nerve, and chivalry were supposed to be Gryffindor's main qualities—according to the Sorting Hat, at least. It had been easy to assume that bravery was a natural consequence of those.

The first time Hermione had really thought she was brave had been that night in the Shrieking Shack, in third year. She was clinging to Harry's arm, trying at once to keep him from doing something utterly stupid and to hold herself up as she felt her knees being just a second away from buckling, and she'd looked at Remus and Sirius pointing their wands in Pettigrew's face, eyes murderous.

"You don't understand," the man had whined with that ridiculous voice and that trembling pointing finger. "He would have killed me!"

Hermione had looked at Remus' knuckles go white around his wand before focusing on the way Sirius' dried-out features, vexed from all those years in Azkaban, had exploded in a desperate roar: "Then you should have died! Died, rather than betray your friends!"

Bravery. That must have been bravery. That was what she had just done, when she'd entered the Shack and stepped in front of Harry without thinking twice about it, telling a wanted criminal, a convicted felon, that he would have to kill her before getting to her best friend.

Harry had been quick to say that Pettigrew was a coward, afterwards. As far as he'd told her, in his dreams Voldemort had called him a coward, too. But was he, really? Someone who didn't think twice when it came to selling his 'friends' to the Dark Lord, someone who survived for twelve years as a rat just to run back to his master as soon as the moment was right. Was that what a coward would have done? Daring, nerve, and chivalry: his morals were devoted to a genocidal cause, but…

Draco had taken the Mark when he was sixteen. He said he had to be willing to take it, but then he'd lowered his wand in the Astronomy tower. He said he had to be willing to take it, but then he hadn't identified Harry, Ron and her at the Manor. He said he had to be willing to take it, but then he'd looked away while his aunt was torturing her.

"I don't understand you, Malfoy. I don't," Hermione said, shaking her head and deliberately delaying her answer.

"I'd say it's because you're missing pieces."

"Like what? What am I missing about the Manor? Why didn't you identify us? Why didn't you tell Bellatrix the spell?"

"Because I didn't know it," he answered, glossing over the rest.

"And what if you knew it? Would you have told her, then?

He looked at her. She couldn't possibly bring herself to understand the look on his face. "We can't deal with what if's."

Hermione took a breath, then another. She wanted to yell at him, and she wanted to go to sleep and never wake up again at the same time.

"Why did you take it?" Draco stared at her, silent. "You said you had to be willing, but said nothing about loopholes. What made you willing?" Before he could answer, she went on, "No, actually, don't tell me. It was your family, wasn't it? With your dad locked up and your mum alone with her psycho sister, and even Voldemort being your roommate, you wanted to do something to protect them, didn't you?" Slowly, he pulled his sleeve down. "Bravery." The word dripped of sarcasm.

"So you do think I'm a coward."

"I think you had two very clear possibilities. One," she held up a finger, "take the Mark like almost everyone you've ever known, for whatever reason truly moved you, agree to the murder of your Headmaster, and take part in a war you probably had no real opinion on." She raised a second finger, pointedly. "Two. Do nothing of all that. Come to our side."

Malfoy picked at the hem of his sleeve with his nails. "You really think it was that black and white?"

"What I think—no, what I know," she said, factually, ignoring every possible implication, "is that there were at least three people in your family who took the second path. So I can't possibly imagine what stopped you."

He started spinning his rings. "Do you feel like you had a choice in the war, Granger?" Hermione frowned, crossing her arms. "Because I don't think you did. I think you were defined by your blood status so you either fought it or died in it—and the scar on your arm proves it. That is clearly the product of someone else's agency defining you.

"This," he held his arm up, "this is a choice I made. And, you know, I never really felt the need to be at the centre of my story, not like you described it anyway. But when it came to this… I had to toy with everything my family meant to me. Because, yes, you're right, there are exceptions, but unfortunately for me I have always loved my parents terrifically, despite the way they wrecked me.

"And I still love them, more than anything in the world, even if they don't deserve it. It took me years to realise how much they broke me, and sometimes I still feel like my foundations are shaking—but I love them anyway. And when I was sixteen, it was a no-brainer: take the Mark in order to help them? Okay, fine, I'll do it. Was it dumb? Yes, probably, even though the circumstances were… Which bears the question, was it a true choice, or did I let everything around me define who I am? I don't know. In any case, I'll have to live with it forever."

He said it with his grown up face, with his adult voice, with his tired eyes. But for just a second, shorter than the blink of an eye, Hermione had a flash of him during that crucial year, with his funeral-black suits and his ill-looking features.

"Would you do it again?" she ventured, a mere whisper bouncing against the red cabinets of the kitchen.

"Honestly?" he said, looking at his covered arm. "I think so, yes."

Their breaths were the only thing you could hear for a long time.

Then Draco cleared his throat and resumed eating his lasagna. Hermione rubbed her eyes tiredly, feeling the unwelcome sting of tears in the back of her throat. There was so much more she wanted to say, so much more she wanted to ask, so much more she felt like she needed to talk about.

"I don't think you're a coward, by the way," was all she managed. Draco's eyes snapped up, wide in surprise. "I think we all just tried to play with the shitty hand we were dealt. And to have that kind of weight on your shoulders at sixteen years old is unfair."

He hummed lowly. His fringe had fallen into his eyes.

As in a dream sequence, Hermione pictured herself standing, crossing the space between them, pushing the hair off his face and saying, "I didn't mean you don't deserve forgiveness—if anything, forgiveness is not deserved, it's earned. What I wanted to say is that you shouldn't be asking for it in the first place, even though I'm not sure I wholly believe that, and would you forgive me for it?"

Instead, what she said from her place was, "I'm sorry I slapped you the other day."

On cue, Draco smirked. "It's fine. Sorry I kissed you back."

Hermione smiled. "Apology accepted."

She finished her dinner, and he emptied the bottle of wine. When they finally cleared the table, after they went to the bathroom and got changed, and after she glared at him because he went for another smoke after brushing his teeth, Hermione watched him awkwardly glance at the sofa with the corner of his eyes.

"Don't be ridiculous," she said, taking his hand and walking him to the bedroom.

He didn't say much, after that. They slipped under the covers, and then he slipped inside of her. Hermione clung to his shoulders as he moved on top of her, tasting the fresh cigarette on his tongue, feeling the weight of him on her body, gasping in his mouth when his hand cradled her cheek to kiss her.

A small voice in her head was screaming at her to tell him, "This is real—you and I, we're real, I'm going to remember this because this is real." But it sounded too much like a faint chime in the wind, and Hermione didn't listen to it.

Instead, she kissed him hard and deep when Draco spilled into her, moaning and clutching her hair. She kissed him again when he pulled out, and again when he cleaned the sheets, and then again, and again, and again, silently.

And he kissed her back. Again, and again, and again. Silently.

He curled himself against her, arms wrapped around her waist and head resting under her breasts. She ran her fingers through his hair, slowly, humming an old lullaby and wondering what would happen to them when the storm inevitably subsided.

She fell asleep with the feeling of his lips on her belly.