Perplexed

Pairing: Draco/Harry Slash

Disclaimer: All rights belong to JK Rowling and I own nothing but this completely noncanon plot. I love noncanon 3

Draco Malfoy was perplexed. And it really was unlike him to be perplexed. He was a Malfoy after all, and barely anything stumped the Malfoy-breed.

Barely anything that is, except for one Harry Potter.

Although when Draco thought about it he could properly say that Harry Potter had always really perplexed him, from the moment they had met and the brunette had refused to shake his hand. He had always perplexed him with his obvious awkwardness with his own fame, perplexed him by always defying, even in times when it had cost him. Harry's entire attitude perplexed Draco—the way he would laugh off serious matters, the way he would brood for hours about absolutely nothing and come out of it with a smile on his face. Draco was perplexed by his Quidditch skills—how could all of that be natural?!—by his power, which not even Harry really knew completely of, and by the way that no matter what, Harry told him that he would always love him.

That was what perplexed him the most about Harry Potter—the man's love for him.

It simply did not make sense. Sometimes Draco had to wonder if his boyfriend knew at all who he was dating.

Since Draco avidly hated being perplexed—which might be why he had hated Harry for so long—one day he decided to just approach his boyfriend about the matter.

He found Harry in the kitchen one evening, making dinner. Another perplexing thing: Harry cooked their food even though they had house elves. But that was something that Draco would question his boyfriend about later. For now…

"Harry?" he asked, taking a seat at the kitchen table. Harry made a small grunt of acknowledgement and Draco rolled his eyes. How uncouth.

"Harry, you know that my father was a Death Eater."

Harry did not look up from the pasta he was stirring. "Yes, I know."

Draco stared hard at his back. "And I was a Death Eater too."

"Yes," Harry shrugged, "But you didn't want to be."

For a moment Draco gaped at him. How the hell could he be so blasé about that?!

"But I still was!" Draco pointed out almost viciously, "and I still have the mark on my arm to prove it. How…can you stand to look at it?"

"I don't mind it," Harry replied casually, "It's just a part of you."

"A bad part," Draco shot back. "You can't deny it's bad."

"No," Harry almost absently agreed, "I can't, but what does it matter? It's the past."

"But it's still not gone. It's still physical evidence of…what I was," Draco persisted.

"But you no longer are."

"How do you know?" Draco suddenly snapped, rising from his seat. "Dammit Potter, how do you know that all the 'bad' is completely gone from me! I could be plotting to kill you in your sleep!"

Harry seemed not to even notice his outburst, instead casually adjusting the temperature on the stove. "You wouldn't do that Draco."

By now, Draco found himself furious as he glared, chest heaving, at Harry Potter's back. "Will you turn around and face me damn you!? I want you to look at me and then tell me what you said to me last night!"

Harry paused, but still did not turn around. "What did I say last night Draco?"

Draco was looking at him almost desperately now. "That you loved me," he growled, "You just had to tell me that you loved me!"

"Yes. And?"

"And?!" Draco repeated incrudously. "God don't you know anything?!"

"I know that I love you."

An iron band clamped around Draco's heart and squeezed. "Don't!" he all but yelled, "Don't say that Potter! Don't say things that you do not mean!"

"Why wouldn't I mean it?" Harry is half turned now, but his eyes are still on the food, his back still facing Draco. "Why wouldn't I mean those words?"

"Because you can't possibly love me!" Draco snarled, hating that his words had to be the truth, feeling the inner loathing that had started up after the war cresting over him again. "I was a Death Eater! I almost killed Dumbledore! I…tortured people, I tried to kill you, I insulted your friends, your parents, your scar, everything! So after all that I have done…how? How the hell can you love me?!"

Harry was completely frozen now, his posture tensing only slightly. He still had yet to turn around, he still had yet to speak. It was slowly driving Draco, whose nerves were already stretched tight, mad.

"Dammit!" he cursed, lunging forward to grab Harry's shoulder, snapping him around so that he could stare into deep emerald eyes. Emerald eyes that shone with a calmness, a passivity that did not fit and only served to infuriate Malfoy further. "Look at me!" he demanded again, harshly, shaking Harry slightly. The spoon Harry had been holding fell to the floor with a distant clatter. "Look at me, Potter. I'm not what you want. I'm not what you love. I can't be."

Harry's gaze was steady as he stared up into Draco's eyes, his expression neutral. "Don't tell me who I can and can't love Malfoy," he replied simply, with a nonchalance that took Draco's breath away. "And yes, I'm looking at you. I've always been looking at you."

"If you've always been looking at me then why…" Draco swallowed thickly, his breathing heavy, his heart racing. As he stared into Harry's eyes he felt like he had run a marathon, and Harry was the end point. Harry had always been the end point.

Draco could not speak any longer as he felt Harry's arms wrap around his biceps, and automatically he tensed. He did not know if he tensed because he was expecting Harry to get angry or because he thought that Harry would try to start persuading him otherwise. The green eyes were tender as they looked down into his own, so tender that Draco had to look away, his gaze falling to the familiar lines of Harry's throat as the hands held him in place, as Harry's hands held him up.

As always, he thought, feeling the prickle of tears grow worse and worse. As always.

"Draco," Harry's calm voice drifted to him, and Draco tried to will himself not to hear it. "I don't care about the past."

"How can you not?" Draco tried to get his voice to rise above a whisper. It refused him. "How can you not care when the past matters so much…"

"Why does the past matter? It's not who either of us are anymore."

"Yes it is! It…"

The hands are starting to grow tighter; the weight of Harry's gaze starts to try to crush him. He can not get his tongue to work as he struggles against Harry—as he struggles against them both. But Harry does not let him go; Harry keeps talking, keeps asking more and more of him.

"It what Draco?" he insists, "What do you want to say? I've gotten over the past; it's not something I want to remember anyway. Draco you're shaking!"

And indeed he was. Draco did not even notice when the shaking had began, or even care really if it stopped. He could not think beyond the anguish that for months he had been repressing; he could not hear anything except for Harry's words, and even they seemed so far off. So…impossible. The scars of Draco's past were still haunting him; he saw it every fucking time that he looked down at his left arm. Physical evidence not even Harry's reassurances could erase.

"How…" he tried to form words but they were caught up in his throat, in his racing, aching heart. Harry's eyes were reflecting so much love that Draco could only hopelessly, desperately, feel annoyance from it. He would not let himself feel anything but annoyance from it.

"How can you just forget!" he burst out, and now that those first words were out, he found that they could not stop. He shook Harry's hands off to reel backwards, his eyes strangely glassy as he stared up into that love in Harry's face, into his concern, and started to scream at him. "God is it always easy being fucking Harry Potter?! Did you suffer at all during the war?! I tortured people, and sometimes at night, I can still hear their screams! I called people Mudbloods, but you know what? When I saw their blood fall from their bodies it didn't look any different than mine! Not a fucking drop was different! And if our blood was so alike, then why did I continue to hurt them!? Why…did I used to laugh at their pain? Why did I blindly follow my father? Why…"

Draco no longer saw Harry in front of him, wonderful, perfect, heroic, brace Harry Potter. Instead he saw only dark dungeons full of souls that screamed at him, for him, and he could not save them because he himself was chained up. He saw only red eyes and the face of a snake, the devil incarnate, bone fingers curling toward him in a caress that he could not escape from—

Draco had let himself cry only once after the war, and since then had used everything within him nearly everyday from preventing that from happening again. He had thought that with each day things would get better, and he had thought for a time, after he had gotten together with Harry, that things would.

But it had not taken long for Draco to realize exactly who his boyfriend was and what he meant to the world. It had not taken long for Draco to look at Harry and remember when the man had been a boy and his eyes had once held so much hate for him; it had not taken long for Draco to recall each insult that he had thrown against that boy, each old vendetta that he used to hold against him.

And the void in his chest, the void that had just started to heal closed, was torn open again.

And the feelings in that void began to pour out at him, one black memory after another until his heart was aching and screaming, until his eyes—resolutely dry for too long—stun with the liberation of tears.

In Harry's arms, in the arms of the boy he had once hated, the man he now loved, Draco Malfoy broke down and began to cry.

"H-How can…y-you…?" he rasped as Harry's arms enfolded him, as he was pulled into a warm hard body that held him upright. Draco could not struggle; Harry, at Draco's tears, could not let go.

"Oh god Draco…" Harry uttered absently in his ear, his warm hands stroking the blonde's hair, his back, touching him wherever he could if only to let Draco know that he was there. That he was not alone in his grief, his tears. "Draco, I never thought anything less of you, even back then. I knew that you didn't really…want to be a Death Eater but baby…what choice did you have? Voldemort would have killed you—"

"So I'm selfish!" the blonde tensed, another anguished sob ripping unbidden from his throat and unraveling the seams of his heart. "I'm a selfish bastard for only caring about myself and not thinking of all those people—"

"It's natural to care about yourself before others, Draco, and it made sense; what, with how you were raised… I'm sure that you didn't really know the extent of what being a Death Eater would be—"

Draco was suddenly trying desperately to push away from him, pale hands flailing across Harry's chest as he tried to throw the other man's arms off of him. But Harry would not let him go. Harry would never let him go, even as he started yelling, thrashing, throwing ill aimed punches at the man that he loved. He would not let him go.

"I knew exactly what it would be like!" Draco hissed, the sound a long sibilant sound of pain. "Stop trying to make excuses for me Potter! I knew what I was getting into and yet I went and did it anyway! I did it! I can't be perfect like you Potter! I can't be! I can't be...good enough for you!"

There it was—the heart of the matter. It had been there ever since that first kiss they had shared years ago in the heat of an argument, a stunning surprise that had been both wonderful and horrible in the consequences. The consequences, years later, were finally occurring for the worst.

Draco no longer had the strength to fight that unrelenting force that was Harry, and breathless with sobs and inner pain he fell limply against Harry, who always seemed to be there to support him. Even when Draco wanted nothing more than to just fall and get it over with, Harry was always there. Harry was not only the world's savior, but his own; the tears that ran down his cheeks began to taint with shame. Harry had always been there, and Draco knew, with all that he had done, that he did not deserve it; he did not deserve the precious thing that was Harry Potter's love. He just…couldn't.

"I'm waiting for you to wake up," he whispered against the warm, soft skin of Harry's throat. "I'm waiting for you to open your eyes and one day recall all that I have done, and hate me for it. I'm waiting for it, Harry."

"Well then you're going to be waiting for nothing," Harry's reply was so soft and yet so hard, so gentle and yet so rough. Harry's voice was a promise. "Because I swear on all the magic I have within me, every ounce of strength and beat my heart takes, that I will never leave you, Draco Malfoy. I'm too far gone for that."

Through tear filled, red rimmed eyes grey eyes seek Harry's green ones, meeting in the collision of a car crash as Draco sees there all the love, all the strength, all the horrible lovely truth behind those words. And he knows with all his heavy heart that Harry meant it, as his heart flutters as hope fights the recurrent despair.

"Y-You can't…" he still tries to protest, if not for his own sanity. Harry's response is to simply lean down and capture his lips in a kiss that wipes all guilts and troubles and hopes from his mind. Draco can only lean completely into Harry, as always, and surrender.

When Harry pulls away his eyes are so bright they seem to glow as he looks down at his flushed lover, taking in the vivid silver eyes, the glistening tracks tears have made on his pink cheeks, his parted kiss swollen lips.

"I don't regret a thing," he whispers as he leans down to press a burning kiss to the blonde's forehead. "The past might always be there, but if you let it, so will the future. Marry me Draco; be mine forever."

There are so many reasons to say no; there are so many dark things in his heart that try to scratch up to the surface and remind him, as always, of what he has done. And for a moment, Draco almost lets it, almost let's his guilt overweigh him…Until he looks up and meets emerald eyes.

Eyes which, even when he had been shrouded in darkness, he had not been able to stop thinking of; eyes which, in his darkest hour, he had often envisioned, even when it had not been true, staring down at him lovingly. All he had ever wanted, and all he had thought a person like him could not have. Or so he had thought…

"I love you." Those words, those three letters, said in that same adoring tone, said from those same sweet lips. It was no longer a dream; as he watched the lips move, it was real. And suddenly Draco was not so perplexed before.

He had done the worst of things; he had murdered, tortured, hunted, stalked… And maybe he really didn't deserve Harry's love, and maybe he should have just left Harry then, before it became too much.

And yet…

With a single tear and nod of his head he did the opposite; but it had to be worth it to see Harry beam; it had to be worth it to hear his laughter, to be held in those strong arms, pressed against such warmth…

Maybe Draco Malfoy could redeem himself through the only means he could see fit—loving Harry Potter. Maybe in Harry he could forget his past and maybe, with Harry, he could forge a future.

And maybe, their love would be strong enough to heal all wounds, side by side with the vastness of time.

And maybe, their love simply didn't need a reason; maybe it was meant to be, or maybe it always had been. And maybe Harry was foolish for loving him, and maybe he was foolish for being selfish by staying with Harry.

And yet…maybe Harry, with time, with the love that blazed in deep green eyes, just might be the one to fix him.

That thought made Draco less perplexed anyway as he fell limp in Harry's arms, the pasta burning on the stove.

Turned out angstier than intended and had an abrupt ending but, meh, I think it's pretty decent. Would you kindly review? Hehe, Bioshock reference...