Title: He Loves Fierce: a DV Fanfic
Author: Reena )
Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.
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Notes: jk rowling owns most of this harry and draco, and cassandra claire would probably inherit the rest. i am but a lowly worm, etc etc and so on and so forth.
this is um. not really meant for the `armchair slash' seasonal challenge, but it fits, and hey, may as well do all the seasons. or something. (i've only summer left). mostly, this is the bastard love-child of my horrendous heart-ache following reading Cassandra Claire's Draco Veritas chapter 10. title born of cassie's reference to her beta brian's saying, ``when that boy loves, he loves fierce". it is most definitely not worthy, but i couldn't stop myself from writing it, it just spilled from me like the tears i never cry over stories. that is all.
That morning, Draco sat primly on the hospital bed, his legs folded under him, his gaze level, not a hair out of place. There was no accusation or recrimination in his calm, cool stare, but it gave Harry shivers, and he suddenly had no clue whatsoever what to say. He was glad he was sitting down. He was glad of the chair's resolute, unforgiving solidity. He wasn't going to fall. And he was glad his hands were clasped together on his lap, so uncharacteristically shy almost, because it made it hard to tell that they were trembling. His throat was dry, but he wouldn't cough. The soft, echoing silence between them stretched out, feeling as taut and somehow brittle as his heart.
"No need to say it, Potter. You're sorry, right? You wish it didn't have to be this way. You wish to know if there's anything you can do. You just wish I could say something, anything, to make it even marginally better, am I correct?"
"So there's nothing, then?" Harry said, looking down, unable to bear the weight of Draco's even gaze, not anymore. The days when he felt secure in his own skin, in the million tiny threads binding it to the other boy's, were now entirely subsumed by memory, crystallized and refined until they burned him like the light of countless dying stars, with every breath he took. He sighed, soundlessly, because this morning had gone no more or less exactly as he'd most feared and expected.
--Even now. Even now you are completely, utterly oblivious. Yes, there is nothing. After every morning when I woke up and you weren't there, and yet another piece of me was chipped away and lost among the dust on the floor. After every morning when I thought the worst of you, and thus the worst of myself, and couldn't bring myself to either forgive you or hate you or forget you. After every morning when I hated seeing the sun rise because that just meant another day away from everything I'd wanted to be, everything I had been, and would never be again.-- Now, all these days and months and eternities later, yes, there is nothing, and only emptiness, he thought, every word ringing like a tiny far-off silver bell in the silence.
Startled, Harry looked up at him. There was a look on his face, almost of recognition, almost of relief, yet also of confusion. Draco knew it was deceptive, of course, and Harry couldn't possibly have heard him. A lot of things were behind them, a thick fog of false dreams obscured any secret words their souls may once have whispered to each other. Harry had a wistful, achingly vulnerable look in his eyes, the veil upon them so fragile that a breath could've torn it away. He wants to believe, still, Draco realized. He still can't bear to stop. He didn't have it in him, anymore, to gloat and feel any sort of perverse satisfaction-- he didn't know who it was, the self that had felt such things were possible and desired. Who was it that he used to be, that delighted in torment and failure and the need to hurt your enemies and friends, friends especially, more than you hurt yourself? Who was it? When did he become this weak?
"Did you say something?" Harry said, his tone tentative, but his eyes imploring him, not even trying not to.
"I don't have anything to say to you," Draco said, remotely, looking away from Harry, watching the arcing flight of the blackbirds from one bare, sprawling maple tree on the other side of the tall glass. He could almost hear it. The sound of wings.
Harry's breath caught in his throat, and it felt strangely like a sob was trying to escape him, although he was only noticing how the March morning light cast intricate, pale shadows on Draco's thin, sharp features, sharper that he remembered them, he thought. Sharper, and infinitely more beautiful. He didn't know why that would be, why someone would look even more beautiful in the aftershocks of death, the doors between one side and the other still revolving in reflective circles.
"I meant what I said, you know," Harry said finally. "In my letter."
"Letter?" Draco said, light curiousity tinting his quiet, tired-sounding voice.
"Oh," Harry said, completely at a loss now. --Letter. You know, the letter. Where I asked you to believe in me. Where I told you I'd never done anything without the thought of you guiding my steps, not for months, not for what seems like forever. Where I asked you to forgive me, even though I knew, with a leaden certainty spreading poison throughout my body, that this would be the one thing you wouldn't be able to do for me. But I could do nothing else, not then, not now.... Where I finally admitted that without you, nothing made sense and I didn't want it to. I needed you, but I needed you whole, needed your happiness more.-- I suppose that's where I said all that, he thought, numbly. I suppose that's where I meant to say that I loved you.
A delicate shiver ran up the length of Draco's spine, like someone was blowing rosepetals over the freshly-healed skin of his wounds. He resisted the urge to draw his knees up to his chest, lean his forehead against the startlingly cool surface of the window, and let the rest take care of itself. He wouldn't. He couldn't, not now, not ever. And not anymore.
"Draco."
Draco's head turned, faster than Harry could blink, the fair-haired boy's posture and bearing suddenly tense and coiled like a startled cat's. Harry smiled a little. Now that he had nothing to lose, every little thing reminding him of what he had was an unexpected blessing.
"Potter," Draco said, his head inclined, a smile hidden in the folds at the corners of his lips. Or maybe that was just Harry's imagination.
"I guess I'll go now. I just wanted to give you something before-- before I left," Harry said, stumbling over his words, more unsure of himself than ever, and yet completely certain he couldn't leave without this one last thing. Almost certain he probably couldn't live without it, either.
"Oh?" Draco breathed, his clear grey eyes seemingly wider and gleaming with a morning light of their own, bearing into Harry's, making his knees go weak for some ridiculous, unfathomable reason. It was a good thing he was sitting down, certainly. His fingers twisted slightly in the smooth grey material of his trousers. He wasn't one known for losing his nerve when it counted, but right now, right now he wanted to be anything but himself, as well as unable to bear imagining ever being anyone else, anywhere else. Right here was where the sun was shining, Draco's eyes all the windows to the sky he could see anyway. How could he not know? Did he really? Was Draco as oblivious as he accused -him- of being?
"Yeah. This," he mumbled, his lips barely moving, transfixed, still, by Draco's ever-shifting gaze. There as no reassurance there, nothing to hold on to, nothing to cling to and say-- There, there is what I've been dreaming of all those cold February nights alone, freezing, without you touching any part of my consciousness. There is that tiny, yearned-for flame to warm my fingers over, even if just for a moment. Just for a moment.
The air was as cool as Draco's look, there was no denying it. Harry didn't care, didn't bother needing to deny it. This was it. So he got up, his knee lifting and pressing down onto the bed-springs, before Draco could fully react. All veils cast off, and all that remained was soft, inchoate yearning, the need to -show- what he could no longer just whisper, his mind a soft, feather-light brush against Draco's own. He was leaning forward, ever so gently, ever so slowly. Draco was absolutely still, his face completely unreadable, and the moment was as empty and endless and as poised on the razor edge of hopelessness and hope as the far-off March sky. Harry's hand moved, also slowly, tucked a pale silvery strand of Draco's shoulder-length hair behind one ear. Harry's eyes were somber and clear and filled with a luminous, untethered sort of gravity, not sinking but rather rising, soaring free.
His fingers, faintly pulsing with distant warmth, cupped Draco's cheek for a moment, their presence almost ghost-like, something that should've been barely registered. His thumb swept lightly across one high, proud cheekbone. Harry's breath was caught perpetually in his throat, and he was utterly unable to release it. Some part of him feared that if he did, something inside him would finally break beyond any mending. Draco, of course, was still breathing, soft, even breaths, taking shape next to his mouth, as inevitable as all clouds. And then, something released itself within him, snapped loose like an overburdened string. Harry brought his head closer, leaning further in, their clouds of breath now mingling in the chill. His eyes were closed, and he didn't know what he was getting into, if he ever did.
His lips knew where to go, there could be no mistake. That, they always did. His fingers still cupping Draco's cheek, he bent awkwardly over the deceptively slight figure, his heart hammering frantically against his ribs, and there was no hiding the trembling in his hands now. There was a tingling, a fiery surge of sensation where their lips met, crackling, spreading in every direction, finally, like that longed-for flame to warm one's heart by when it was cold and damp and dismal everywhere. Everywhere but where they touched.
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