So it goes like this:
There's two boys. One of them is blonde and sharp, difficult to deal with, beautiful in that mad way that angels are - not the make-believe ones with the pretty wings and child faces, but things with teeth and claws and manes and feathers. Beautiful in a wrong way. The kind you can't help but admire and hate at the same time.
The other boy's a mess. He's got a scar on his forehead and eyes like forests. Of the two, he's the hollow one. The blonde boy has too much of everything, but this boy, this scar-headed boy, is an empty vessel. Flesh and bone and blood and very little else. Here's a boy who's seen death. Transfigure him into a raven and put him in a graveyard, and he'd fit right in.
Such strange creatures, these boys. You can kill the blonde one, easy, but the one with the scar is a bit harder. You can light a match to the scar-boy and he'd burn, crisp up like bacon. You can't burn the blonde boy because he's made of iron and ice.
You hurt the first with silence and the second with words.
It's easy.
They do it to each other all the time.
The first is named Draco. The second is Harry.
It goes like this:
Draco has a pedigree that spans the rule of kings, queens, dicatators, prime ministers. Draco wears silk ties and expensive blazers and designer coats and cashmere scarves. The first is a boy of fine breeding, bloodline virgin-pure. The first lives by blood alone.
Harry's a half-blood, just a bit diluted, but diluted enough for Draco's father to regard him as a pesk, an unpleasant little spot that just won't come out, no matter how hard he scrubs. Filthy, Lucius mutters. Disgusting.
"You're sickening, you know that?" Draco says when he's in a bad mood (too much Firewhiskey and not enough common sense). His words slur, roll off of his lips sluggishly like cold vomit. "You're a fucking sicko, Potter, is what you are. Fuck off."
Shithead.
Pissbrains.
You disgust me.
No one puts the good with the bad. One rotten apple and the whole basket spoils, is what Lucius is getting at. When the nights get chilly and the tension between them is stretched too tight for comfort, when Draco is fucking (or being fucked by) that halfblood bastard, he reminds himself of whose skin he is touching, of the foul blood that runs through Harry's veins, shot through with grime and hate and ugliness. The boy with the green eyes, he's shit. Don't you ever fucking forget it.
It goes like this:
Harry's the drug Draco can't quit, try as hard as he will. Harry's better than cigarettes, which his father says will turn his lungs black as coal. Better than Firewhiskey, sometimes. Better than whores and dark-eyed girls in dresses showing far too much to be considered proper clothing at all.
Their routine is simple: fuck, leave. No one stays behind, no one sleeps in the same room, it's just the screw and then you're out, get out, don't let the door hit your ass. Don't let anyone see you, oh God no. Shut up about it the next morning and ignore the purple spot under Harry's jaw, the heavy circles under Draco's eyes, the untucked shirts and ties slightly askew, oh no. Be quiet, don't speak about it and maybe it won't happen, maybe it'll go away. Like fucking magic out of a textbook, flick and swish Harry Potter out of your bed and out of mind.
Tough shit, it doesn't work.
That's why they've got the routine, isn't it? That's why they keep coming back.
It goes like this:
"You're beautiful," Harry might say.
"Piss off," Draco will reply.
Harry shuts up, quiet. It's what he's good at doing. Draco looks out the window, at the night.
"You ought to go," Harry might say.
"Piss off," Draco will reply.
That's that.
It goes like this:
They don't see each other, after the War. Draco finds himself a girl but it's not the same, it will never be the same. The second is gone, and the first drifts on a bobbing current, untethered. It's maddening. Eye-gougingly, nail-tearingly maddening.
He's Icarus, Harry the flimsy wings keeping him above the sea. Now he's gotten close, too close to the sun. The feathers are falling, vanishing, quick as a snap of the fingers. He's falling in, down into the deeps.
It goes like this:
Draco needs Harry.
Maybe Harry doesn't need Draco.
(No one tells a needle to put down the junkie, after all.)