InsaneJournal

Yours

You raise your eyebrow up at me. I don’t know how, but I never get tired of that expression. Once it had really irritated me, would make blood pound in my veins and hatred bloom from my soul. I stopped hating you long ago, of course. How could I ever hate someone like you?

That question is actually very easy to answer, I know that. You were a coward during the war, you didn’t have the courage to leave the side you were on, leave the parents you’ve always loved, the friends that you had, and beg for mercy from the one person who you thought hated you more than anything, the one person who probably did hate you more than anything just then. Those are the answers that you would give, anyway. I know better. I don’t think that even I, the paragon of all that is Gryffindor, as you still like to call me, could have left if I had been you. I can’t blame you for everything that happened, not now. Not since afterwards.

You reach down to the basket that is at my feet, your eyebrow still raised. I want to kiss it, of course. I want to kiss every single part of you, every moment of the day. I never get tired of being with you, of thinking about you. Of sex with you. I want you even now as your long, slender hands pick up the basket at my feet and look at it sceptically. I know how every inch of you tastes, I can’t help thinking about that as your scepticism turned from the basket to me.

“Potter.” Your eyes are narrowed, and I can’t help but remember that time. We were both at work – and even though I had long since stopped blaming you for all that had happened, had stopped hating you, I still didn’t really know you well enough to like you – and I was just walking past the supplies cupboard when your pale, slender hands reached out and dragged me in. You thought I was someone else, at least at first. I never asked who. You never told. It doesn’t matter to me.

“What is this?” Your voice drags me back from my reminiscing to the present, and I can’t help but grin.

“It’s a kitten,” I say with a shrug as you open the basket.

“I can see that.” The kitten has tabby markings. I don’t suppose even your friends know that the Prince of Slytherin’s favourite colouring of cat was tabby. Maybe most people wouldn’t see the importance in that. I do. Most people would see you as cold, aloof, and picture you with a sleek black, or an ice white. Your friends, perhaps, would know you better, would see the man who still does impressions like a child, who is still petulant when it suits him, but I still don’t think they would chose the colouring of a cat based on that. I see the man who still doesn’t believe that I love him, who still thinks that he is not good enough for me when I know different – the man who can’t sleep on his left side, the man who snores if he hasn’t had sex before bed, the man who is all teeth and claws on the outside but is the most amazing person I could ever have met inside all that. Mottled and different, with different façades and even different truths to you: that screams tabby cat to me. “The question is, why do I have a kitten?” you continue, and I have to break out of my reverie again.

“It’s your birthday.” I shrug. “It’s a present. It’s yours.” As am I.