Title: He Loves Fierce: a DV Fanfic
Author: Reena
(lorien@warp.core.binghamton.edu)
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.
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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