Over and over and over again, we play the same old game.
Cards kept close to my chest: that way the secret's kept.
So wear your poker face.
Here's to the fool, here's to the thief.
Fiction is bitter and you got a taste.
xXx
Put a gun to my head and paint the walls.
xXx
Now you know, you can go, you can give up trying.
Should have just called it quits,
Should have just called it quits,
Leave before it's too late.
- Alligator Blood
He was standing at the window. She still hadn't left. He'd taken her on the grass and he'd felt that something was different. And the fear rose within him like bile from his stomach and he'd refused to accept it. He led her to the room. Again. And again. He took her. Again and again she gave herself to him. And she knew what he was trying to find, and she knew that he wasn't going to. And her fear was just as strong—he could see it in her eyes.
And he couldn't find it. And it wasn't the same. And he knew it. And she knew it. And his cure was tainted. Tainted by honesty, by truth, by—
"I don't love you," he whispered. A vain attempt to return to what they were. Empty words to open up a space between them, a space he'd maintained so long, a space that had been shattered so terrifyingly easily. Too close. Too fucking close. It was almost suffocating. Adrenaline was flooding his veins. Fight or flight. Fight or flight. The feeling, the impulse, was all too familiar. But not with her. Never with her. Not before now.
She looked at him penetratingly, determinedly. And he felt himself swallowed by her eyes. Falling. Falling. Falling.
"I don't believe you." Crashing. Crashing. Crashing.
"Then you're naïve." His tone was harsh with panic. Everything was spiralling. This conversation couldn't be happening. This was just an awful dream—a nightmare. It couldn't be happening. She couldn't be asking this of him. He couldn't give it to her. Didn't she know?
"I love you, Draco." Her words were soft. Sad. Bittersweet. And his masochistic heart soared even as the words slashed it to shreds.
You can't save me. But the words would never come out. There was too much feeling around them—too much truth within them. And as she watched the bars crash down over his icy eyes, she nodded in resignation. Because of course she'd known. For all that she didn't want to. She somehow knew everything.
He watched her as though from afar as tears she would never let fall began to prick at the beautiful green of her eyes—like rain on the treetops, he thought absently —and even still as she turned abruptly, but slowly, and walked away. She was hoping he'd stop her, he knew, but he couldn't—couldn't—and so he turned to the fire flickering dejectedly in the grate. But his ears followed the sound of her measured footsteps, and the sound of the door opening, and the sound of its ominous click as it shut behind her. And his empty stare remained fixed on the dying flames.