We Can Work It Out

Eight Months Ago*****

Draco apparated to one of his favorite bars and immediately walked over to the bartender and ordered his favorite brandy. Without even asking, the bartender seemed to know that it was going to be one of those weeks. They happened once every four to five months. Draco knew that the bartender was on standby to floo Hermione when Draco was either too belligerent to be welcome or too drunk to stay on his barstool, but he knew that the bartender would have no luck contacting her tonight. Oliver Wood, quidditch pretty boy, had asked her on a third date and he knew where she would end up. Oliver would have no trouble with a few no-strings-attached rounds of sex and he was intellectually stimulating enough that if he wanted to push for more she might consider it.

Draco finished his first brandy and tried to push thoughts of Hermione’s deliciously rounded body wrapped around Wood’s form from his mind. He ordered another as he forced himself to not think of what would happen to their closeness if she suddenly did fall for the hunky athlete. Who would care for him if she suddenly had a steady, committed relationship?

Cursing himself for being so snivellingly weak and selfish, he ordered another brandy.

“You’re knocking them back rather quickly tonight, sir,” the bartender said with no inflection, the practiced ease of not riling up a drunk man evident in his tone.

“I’m paying you to pour drinks, Bill, not make observations,” Draco drawled back. Receiving his brandy, Draco stared down into his drink and thought about all the reasons he never approached curly haired witch that occupied his thoughts.

He had no business trying mess up her life with his own. After the war, his family name was lower than mud. The girls that had come so easily in Hogwarts now pretended not to see him whenever he was at some high society function. A few desperate ones still hung around because of the insane amount of wealth the Malfoy fortune had amassed due to good investments and proper management, but they were social pariahs as well. Draco didn’t even have to work at keeping the money he did have, much less bring home his comparably paltry salary from the ministry. Wealth could cover up many a social faux pas, but it couldn’t cover a legacy of dishonesty and Death Eaters.

He gulped down another drink and took a look around the bar. There were a number of bland faced beauties out tonight. Lately, he’d been less able to look at himself in the morning after shagging some random girl. Not because he cared about the women, because they used him as much as he used them, but because he felt cheated and unsatisfied. They weren’t what he wanted. Tonight however, he just wanted someone, anyone to take away the feeling of loneliness he felt. He wanted to feel human. He wanted Hermione.

She wasn’t there, however, there was a brunette in the corner and she’d have to do. Picking up his brandy, he walked over to her and offered to buy her a drink. He knew she could probably smell the wealth on him, if she didn’t recognize him and that would make this much easier. She had perfectly straight, shiny brown hair that was achieved using a myriad of products. He found himself wishing it were wild and curly. Her nose was perfect and had probably been altered and he wished it were slightly upturned. She wreaked of some kind of vanilla musk perfume and he closed his eyes because at least one thing was right. It wasn’t a subtle mix of lavender and vanilla, but he could pretend that this was the girl he wanted and she had run out of her favorite bath soap that she bought at the apothecary down the street from her flat.

Swallowing his fifth brandy that evening, he felt the girl in front of him grab his crotch. He stood and followed her into the bathroom where he had to close his eyes and imagine a woman who would never be under him just to get hard. Their coupling was short, but he made certain she was satisfied and cast a contraceptive charm afterwards. She attempted to get his floo information, but he shook her off and coldly told her to get away from him. She left in a huff and as she did, any semblance of sobriety left with her.

Five brandies in under two hours caught up with him and he suddenly wished he was home. He wished Blaise was available to talk to, he wished his mother was waiting and pestering him about going clothes shopping and he wished he could get to Hermione. He stumbled out of the men’s room and in his drunken stupor he wished he were more drunk so that he didn’t have to contend with the thought of Hermione’s perfect legs hooked around someone else. Normally thoughts like this didn’t hit him this hard, but with Oliver Wood, he wouldn’t be able to tell if it was a random thing or something that could turn permanent.

The other men she found were no threat to him. They were good looking but dull and he knew that they only provided temporary relief to an itch she needed scratched. Oliver Wood had the ability to inspire the kind of passion that created a bond and started a relationship. He ordered his sixth brandy and watched as the brunette he’d just shagged glared at him before tossing her perfectly styled hair and leaving the bar. It was starting to fill up now and Draco was having trouble keeping his eyes open and his emotions in check. Somebody bumped into him and he shoved back. He saw the bartender go to the floo to call Hermione. Too bad she wouldn’t be coming.

He was sitting at the overly crowded bar and some twenty year old guy elbowed into him to try and get the bartender’s attention. Draco elbowed him back.

“Watch it, mate!” the brown haired man said. He was very attractive in that boyish way and slightly rough around the edges. He reminded Draco of Wood.

“You watch it, you sodding nancy boy poof!” Draco shot back. The punch that bloodied his nose was welcome. He swung back and enjoyed the brawl that took place. He wanted to hurt something so badly and he wanted a physical manifestation of the emotional pain he was feeling. He took two more hits to the side of his head and then began to pummel the younger man in front of him.

He imagined Wood’s face and he imagined what it would look like if he showed up at the quidditch player’s luxury penthouse and took Hermione with him. He imagined her calling out his name instead of Wood’s as she gave him that sense of completion he’d been searching for. He’d apparently imagined a little too well because he could hear her voice over the din of shouting bar patrons.

Draco! Draco, stop it!” apparently he wasn’t hallucinating because he could suddenly feel her as well. “Stop it!”

She grabbed a hold of his arm and held on, preventing him from pummeling the brown haired man further. He turned his bloodied face towards her and drank in the sight of her. Her hair was braided down her back and she was wearing black track pants and a white, worn out Chudley Canons t-shirt that had probably belonged to Ron Weasley at some point. She was out in her lounge wear, meaning she had probably been in bed when the bar tender flooed her, her own bed.

“I don’t care how much money he drops here, he isn’t welcome back!” the bartender was furious. “I know the other bloke started it, but he causes too much trouble as it is with his mouth.”

“He can’t cause anymore trouble than your other patrons. Please calm down, I’m getting him out.” Hermione huffed at the bartender and attempted to support his weight on her shoulders. She almost fell over.

Overwhelmed with relief at the sight of her, Draco tried to move his legs as she helped him out the door. He’d downed an entire bottle of brandy that evening and the punching he’d done and received did nothing to settle his stomach. Neither did the apparating Hermione did as he felt himself squeezed and suddenly saw his bedroom.

“Jesus Christ, Draco, did you take a swim in ‘Vanilla Musk’?” she asked, referencing the cheap perfume the girl he’d shagged had been wearing.

He suddenly felt like he’d been caught cheating. He’d just spent the past two hours wallowing in alcohol and self-pity, all because she had gone on a legitimate date with another man. Why should she look at him? He was an alcoholic that claimed to pine for her and yet screwed anything that moved and she knew about it, had come to accept it. Was this how you showed someone love? Wake them up in the middle of the night and have them take your sorry, drunk arse home because you couldn’t manage on your own? He was an embarrassment.

He opened his mouth to tell her he was sorry and vomited all over her Chudley Canons covered breasts. Looking up at her face wrinkled in disgust at the smell, he started to cry. This was not how his life was supposed to be. He should be stronger for her. He should be the hero she always told him he was. He shouldn’t be pissing his life away. She was the only person that he could talk to and the one thing in the world he needed to talk about, he couldn’t address with her.

“Sh, it’s okay,” she whispered as she held his face in her hands. “Whatever it is, we’ll get through it, okay?” He cried even harder at that and threw up on her shoes and the bottom of her track pants. If he’d ever had a shot with her, he’d just lost it. That made him cry harder.

“Pleash don’ leave,” he begged. “Don’t leave me.” He had vomit around his mouth, blood on his face and she was covered in more of his bodily fluids than anyone other than his mother ever had been. Yet, she stayed.

She got up and for a brief moment he thought she was finally leaving him to his own devices, instead, she stripped down to her underwear. “I doubt you’ll remember this in the morning,” she mumbled, coming back to him in a black bra and black lace boyshorts. If he didn’t feel so miserably sick, he’d have been incredibly turned on.

She hoisted him up and took him into the bathroom , propping him up against the toilet. Using her wand, she divested him of his clothing and conjured a wet rag to wipe off his face and knuckles. The cloth felt so soothing and he leaned in to her touch.

“It was your mother’s birthday this week, wasn’t it?” she asked. It was and so he nodded. “I could tell something was wrong all week. I’m sorry, I should have been thinking more clearly.” She used the wet rag and wiped the sweat off his face in slow, soothing strokes, her other hand threaded through his baby fine and, let’s face it, thinning hair. What did she have to be sorry about?

He was both relieved and frustrated at her reasoning. At least now he didn’t seem so pathetic, but at the same time, she would never know that part of why he drank himself into a stupor once a week was because he had never made a move nor had a claim on her. She was the only part of what he felt to be his ‘property’ that he could never bring himself to publicly claim. He looked at her body, displayed as it was and gurgled, “Yer beautiful.”

She smiled lightly before lifting his newly cleaned form up using her wand and depositing him in his bed. He was clad only in his boxer shorts. “You are drunk,” she said in return. He couldn’t have moved if he wanted to and so his eyes followed her around his room.

She walked over to his dresser bureau and fished through his drawers coming up with an undershirt and a pair of green silk boxers. Reaching around behind her back she flicked her bra open and let the lace garment fall to the floor in front of her. He stared transfixed at her pale back and the light muscles and curves rippling there. He briefly wondered what it would feel like to sink his teeth into the skin he saw. The expanse of her back was covered by the pale white of his undershirt and her lace clad bottom was covered up by his shorts. When she turned around he thought she looked more mouthwateringly attractive than any of the girls he’d seen in the bar that night dressed in their most accentuating short dress. She unbraided her hair and climbed into bed next to him.

Elated, he pulled her to him. “I’m shawry,” he wheezed. “I luff yew.”

She snuggled in next to him and smoothed his eyebrows into place. “I love you too, Draco. We’re all the other one has got, aren’t we?” she asked. He nodded, laying his head to rest on her breasts. Later he would worry about why she was home when he thought she would be in another man’s bed, but right now he was satisfied that she was here. He needed her and she had come. That’s all he wanted to know.


****** Present Day*

Staring at Hermione as she shifted through her owl post, Draco thought back to the morning when he’d awoken in her arms. That was the first time he’d acknowledged that he wanted her as more than a friend and a shag. He knew he’d been attracted to her for quite some time and he knew he’d loved her for even longer. When Weasley had been in the picture he’d been able to clamp down on the emotion. Now, however, he wanted nothing more than her total submission to him as a man.

He had decided the morning he awoke with her wrapped around him that he would no longer accept her substitute. He hadn’t been with another witch since then. If you loved somebody, they were the only person for you. Maybe the reason Hermione never saw him was because he’d busied himself with other girls for so long, trying to erase her from his thoughts. It was her Gryffindor influence that he could no longer shag much less get it up for another witch. He’d also cut down his alcohol consumption since that evening. She deserved better than an alcoholic.

Now, she wanted a baby. He hadn’t been keen on the thought at first, but the more he thought about her rounded belly, the more he knew he wanted to be the reason it was round. She didn’t need a sperm donor, she had him. All he needed to do was wait until he figured it out.

A/N- Thank you to everyone who has reviewed and a special thank you to my faithful readers from pictures. A lot is going on in my life right now, but I will finish this story and 'After Midnight', you can count on it! Thank you again!