Notes: This has been sitting, dormant, on my computer for more than a year now. Might as well let all you whiners out there see what little I've accomplished.
He shows no reaction to the emotion that I've opened between us. He just stares unnervingly, his arms crossed protectively over his chest. The stillness makes me so nervous that I begin to chew on one of my fingertips, my teeth rubbing the skin red and raw.
After more than a minute passes, I decide to try again. "I said, 'I love'-"
"Yes, I heard you; you don't need to repeat it." His words are very short and clipped. I swallow hard and stare for a moment at the swollen flesh around my nail, before risking a glance back.
"And… um… what do you think about…um…?" He sighs as I stammer.
"I think a better question would be what do you expect me to think?" He shakes his head. "Honestly, Harry… honestly."
"I don't know!" I feel desperate. "I don't know what I think, and I don't know why I keep imagining you-" His eyes widen, and the words die in my throat.
"You imagine me… what?" He asks, but I can tell he's already figured it out. He takes a step closer to me and I find myself wishing I'd just stayed in my bed and imagined this confrontation instead of deciding to try living it. "Please, Harry. Tell me."
I open my mouth to speak, but embarrassment chokes my words. Tears of frustration burn at the corners of my eyes. "I can't," I confess, finally. "I can't say it. You already know, anyway. I know you know; you don't need me to say it."
There is another long pause between us, during which I sniffle slightly and try to swallow my humiliation. Finally he whispers, "Earlier I said you were no longer a child." Silence. "I was wrong."
I look up angrily, more than slightly insulted. "Are you saying I'm…?"
"Immature? Yes. Naïve? Yes." He smiles humorlessly. "Still a child."
My eyes narrow. "I'm fifteen; I'm not stupid. You said you weren't supposed to like me… the way I like you. But I think you do like me, a little bit. And you don't know what to do, so you just want to get rid of me and pretend it never happened. But that won't make it go away…" The exhausted expression on his face makes me stop.
"Very astute." He runs his fingers through his hair. "You are a very intelligent child, Harry. But still a child. And I'm supposed to be the adult." He shrugs. "This doesn't mean that I know what to do, or how to feel about you. It just means that I'm responsible."
I ignore his words because they are not what I want to hear. "You said I should act out my fantasies." I spin around and take a few steps away from him, toward the door, as if I was leaving. "You would throw me to the inexperienced little boys that I share a room with?" I'm angry, almost comically so, and turn on my heel to glare at him. "You'd prefer to know that I allowed Seamus, or Ron, or Lee, or Fred, or George to rape me?" He flinches as I narrow my eyes and spit out the words without giving a thought to their blatant obscenity. "Fuck m—?"
Suddenly he is by my side, one hand curled around my neck. I barely saw him move, but here he is. And he is angry.
"You're baiting me." His voice is calm, but his eyes are on fire. "You want something and, in typical Potter-ish fashion, you are going to go to any lengths to acquire it." He sounds rather remarkably like Professor Snape in this moment, and I can barely keep from laughing aloud with agitated recognition. "You father used to do this, in his own little ways." He begins to advance, his feet brushing against mine as he uses his grip on my neck to push me backward. When my shoulder blades finally hit the far wall, I realize how tight his fingers are, how much violence his is truly holding back so as not to harm me physically. "It was one of his most annoying traits."
We stare at each other for a tense moment, neither quite ready to acquiesce. I memorize his facial features, the gentle curve of his nose, the piercing and unusual color of his eyes, the heavy line of his eyebrow—werewolves tend to develop a single eyebrow as they grow older, he told me once.
Finally, he sighs and releases me, his hand hanging uncertainly in the air for a moment before dropping lifelessly to his side. "And, you know? I always gave in to your father." He looks very tired. "Just as I suspect I'll give in to you." He looks more sad than angry now, and I begin to feel uneasy. Maybe getting my way isn't a good thing, not this time. And it's slightly creepy to be compared to my father in a way that sounds very sexual. But probably isn't.
Most definitely isn't.
I look at him with worried eyes, and his expression fools me into thinking he knows all of my hesitations, my fears, my expectations. He fools me so well that, when he draws in close to my face, I think he is going to tell me to go back to bed—to my own bed—where I belong.
But he doesn't. He kisses me, hard and fierce, wrenching my jaw open with one hand and forcing his tongue into my mouth as my eyes fly wide open and I give a surprised squeak. My hands flail for a moment, hitting him weakly on the shoulders, until he breaks the connection of our lips with a loud smacking noise unattractive enough to make me flinch. "Not so nice, is it?" He whispers, his voice low with contempt and pity and an underlying nastiness that I never thought he possessed. "Not so much like your dreams… not so brave now, are you?" He still has hold of my chin, his fingertips pressing into the flesh of my cheeks, and turns my face from side to side as if to study it. I wonder how he knows so precisely how I am feeling. Perhaps he reads my thoughts. Perhaps he knows exactly what it's like to think them.
"Damn you," he whispers finally, his breath hissing against my cheek. "Damn you for being you."
