Part One
In which Harry meets an old enemy, exterminates a rat, and meets his match.
He's a little tired, a lot uncaring, and his halo is just a little tarnished around the edges. But no one notices that as he walks through the door of the bar, because he's a hero. Heroes don't wear out, wear down, like he has done- they shine forever. But he's tired of being a hero. He never saved the world like they claim, he just saved his own ass and happened to do some good while he was at it. He doesn't want the fame, the hangers-on, the people that lurk around him with worshipful gazes. He just wants to be alone so that he can let the apathy enfold him, so he won't have to worry about living up to everyone's expectations.
He sits down at one of the tables, not in the center of the room and attention as is expected, but away at the edge of the room where the shadows fall thick and the eye doesn't wander. The bartender recognizes him- it is too much to hope that he could avoid notice altogether- but in a rare show of understanding, does nothing other than nod to him and nudge one of the boys to make his way over to his table.
Harry catches his breath as he sees the boy winding his way through the tables. Oh, that was more than enough.
Draco hasn't changed much in appearance, he sees, except that his hair is no longer greased back rigidly, but falls loose and soft around his face and in his eyes. The only other differences that Harry can see are his clothes, which are cheap, leather, and slutty, instead of his former designer label robes; and his eyes, which are dark and broken instead of their former chilly arrogance. Harry tips his head back as Draco comes to stand by his table, staring at him with shock, and Harry almost smiles to think that he's actually referring to his former archenemy by his first name, even if it is in his head. He almost smiles, but not quite, and instead he says simply, "It's been a long time."
Draco says nothing, just stares at him, but now a darker emotion shades his eyes, something that looks almost like fear. But why should Draco be afraid of him? He never was before, and now Harry has lost everything that could ever make anyone fear him, everything but his magic. His great, powerful magic that saved the world, he thinks bitterly, but he knows that that's not what Draco is afraid of- he knows better than that. Draco isn't one to be afraid of a power greater than his.
He sees a man coming towards them, and he winces at the glitter and flash that sparks around him. "Harry Potter!" the man exclaims heartily, and grabs his hand and shakes it fervently. Harry retrieves his hand as soon as possible, fighting the urge to wipe it off on his threadbare jeans to get rid of the slimy feeling, and stares at the man coolly.
"That would be me, yes."
"I see you've already run into your old enemy Malfoy, Mr. Potter. I'm willing to give him to you for the night, to do with him as you wish, for a price."
With a flash of sickening clarity, Harry realizes that Draco is a prostitute, and this man is his pimp. Harry looks at Draco with one long question in his eyes, and for once Draco doesn't glare at him or smirk or even drop his gaze, just stares at him with something akin to pleading, and Harry knows that Draco wants him to turn down the offer.
You've got me now, Potter, Draco is thinking. You have in your power to pay me back for every time I saw you, bright and shining and perfect, and did my best to break you into a million pieces so you could know what it felt like to be me. But now… now you're a hero, and I'm the one who's broken, and it'll only take the slightest touch to shatter me into a million pieces, and you have a hammer in your hand.
Harry can see all of this in his eyes, but still he considers. After a moment a brilliant smile spreads over his face- stunning all those that are watching and only know him from his somber, unsmiling pictures in the news- and he nods at the pimp. "How much are you talking?"
He ignores the crushed dreams that he sees in Draco's eyes and haggles with the pimp for a bit before tossing down some money- less than the pimp wants but more than Harry wants to spend, as is the way of bargaining- and gripping Draco's wrist in his own. He sees that Draco is about to say something, to protest, even beg, but he negates that with a shake of his head and drags him from the bar.
As soon as they are outside, Harry takes a deep breath of the fresh air, especially appreciative after the stifling, smoky atmosphere of the bar, and points to the car parked and purring quietly by the curb. "Get on in, will you? I'll be there in a minute." Draco looks like he wants to argue, but Harry can see the thoughts running through his head, can see him thinking, he bought me, I might as well do whatever he wants because it doesn't really matter any more, and after a moment's hesitation he nods curtly and gets into the car.
Harry wanders down the street a ways, stopping under a streetlight so that the he is lit in a halo of eerie light. He doesn't realize the unconsciously menacing picture that he makes, however, and after a moment he moves on, leaving the little pool of light. He lights a cigarette as he walks, inhaling the smoke gratefully as he passes by drunks, beggars, and drug addicts. He doesn't really care about his surroundings; he just wants a chance to breathe.
Ironic, that, his inner little demon mutters, considering the cigarette in your hand.
Bugger off, he mutters back, and keeps walking.
Soon he finishes his circuit of the block, and is once again standing by the car. He stares at it for a moment, thoughts unreadable in his eyes, and then with a sigh he opens the door and slides onto the soft leather seat. As the door closes behind him, he gives a tired nod to the driver behind the wheel, and the car purrs quietly as it pulls away from the curb.
Draco looks at him out of the corner of his eyes, his thoughts undecipherable in the shadows of the vehicle as it prowls through the streets of the city. Harry sighs again as his head lolls back against the smooth leather of the seat, and he rolls his head over to look at his companion. "Don't look at me like that. I'm not going to take you."
"You're not?" Draco asks in confusion, and the smaller boy wonders to himself if he's more relieved or disappointed. "But I thought…"
"That I'd bought you," Harry finishes helpfully. "Not exactly. I bought your time for the night, yes. I don't have any intention of giving you back, however. It's never wise to give me reason to think badly of you, as your pimp will discover tomorrow when the wonderful money I gave him suddenly curses him with bad luck and he will die an ignomious death being run over by a tourist bus."
Draco blinks, then blinks again. "You're keeping me?"
"You could look at it that way," Harry says calmly. "I prefer to think of it as taking care of you, since you obviously have no idea how take care of yourself."
Draco gives him an affronted look, which he ignores as beneath his notice. "If you argue, I do believe I shall gag you. I found you working as a prostitute in a tiny bar in the slums. If you call that taking care of yourself, then I don't want to think about what you consider bad treatment. Where's your wand?" he asks abruptly.
Draco blinks. "It was broken and I don't have the money to buy another one for, oh, the next fifty years. How did you know?"
"You would have magicked your way out of this if you could," Harry informs him calmly. "Thus, you didn't have a wand. Why don't you have the money?"
"I owe thousands to the person you bought me off of. I have barely enough money to live off."
"Owed," Harry corrects him. "It will very shortly be past tense. The tourist bus, remember?"
"You were serious about that?" Draco demands, and now it's Harry who gives him an affronted look.
"Of course I meant it. I always mean what I say. Or almost always, anyway. Certainly about anything as important as this. This is our stop," he adds, and opens the door as the car purrs to a halt in front of a beautiful little house on the outskirts of the city. He slides out of the car and holds his hand out to Draco, who hesitantly takes it and lets Harry pull him out of the car and into his arms.
Startled, he almost jumps back, but he controls the impulse. Harry notices, though, and has already released him except for the iron manacle also known as Harry's hand gripping his wrist. Harry gives him a crooked grin and his heart jumps, but he hides it from his face. No way that Harry is going to see the way that he affects him, not in a million years.
But Harry gives him that peculiar smile that always meant that he knew something that he shouldn't, and Draco realizes that he's seen it anyway. Depressing thought, that he's so transparent to his sworn enemy.
But a sworn enemy wouldn't be wrapping him in his coat after scowling at the threatening sky and then hurrying him into the house just to make sure that not a single raindrop touches his skin. A sworn enemy wouldn't be sweeping him up into his arms and holding him close, carrying him up the steps and murmuring into his hair before setting him down on the bed with whispered reassurances. Draco watches him as he moves around the room, setting things in order for bed. He strips with quiet unselfconsciousness, pulling on a loose t-shirt and cutoffs before Draco gets a real chance to gape properly at the superbly fit body that his nakedness had revealed. Harry takes a pair of boxers and hands them to Draco, smiling faintly before he turns his back to allow him to change.
Draco battles a blush. He's never had anyone turn their back for him to change before, certainly not anytime recently, and it makes him feel like his nakedness is, indeed, something to blush about even though it had never bothered him before. Or maybe it's just the fact that it's Harry who's turning his back to change. Harry, his supposedly-sworn-enemy, who has everything anyone could want in the world including a gorgeous body and a face that time has only chiseled into sharper, cleaner lines, making him a pleasure to look at. He thinks that he could do that forever, just stare at him, and then he realizes that he's doing exactly that, just staring at Harry when he's supposed to be changing.
He strips off the slit leather shirt he's wearing, as well as the black boots and leather pants so tight he was afraid they were going to castrate him. It was with a sigh of relief that it all landed in a little pile on the floor next to the bed, and he pulled on the boxers. The blush burning hotter on his face, he clears his throat awkwardly and Harry turns around.
The slow, unreadable gaze of the other boy runs over him, and suddenly Draco realizes that he's wearing boxers. Just boxers. Nothing more than boxers, and it's far too easy for Harry to see how pathetically skinny he is. No real muscle, just wasting flesh over bone. Well, he thinks defensively, it's not like I've had a lot to eat recently. But still his heart stops when Harry's gaze comes back to his face, and he ducks his head so that he can't meet his eyes because he doesn't want to know what he's thinking. He just doesn't. It will hurt too much if he sees disgust or worse, pity, and he's too sure that he will see one of the those two emotions to risk actually looking into those bottomless emerald eyes.
Harry's soft voice interrupts his reverie. "I'm a bit overdressed, then, don't you think?" he asks, and his voice is filled with a quiet amusement. Shyly Draco looks up at him, only to have the breath catch in his throat as Harry strips off his shirt, leaving him in only a pair of well-worn denim cutoffs. Well-worn denim cutoffs that cling to his butt like a second skin and leave his rather impressively muscled chest bare to Draco's devouring gaze.
"You didn't look that muscled under your clothes," he said, a split second before he realized that he'd said out loud instead of in his head. His face flaming even hotter than before, he curled his knees up to his chest and buried his hot face against them, not wanting to see Harry laugh at him. Again.
"That's because I don't dress to catch attention," Harry says in his same calm voice, and crosses the room. Draco feels the bed depress with the other boy's weight next to him, and then he's being peeled away from his oh-so-interesting knees so that Harry can look at him. "What are you hiding for?" Harry asks softly. "And why the blush? You've got nothing to be embarrassed about around me, trust me. What's wrong?"
Draco only shakes his head mutely, never in a million years willing to admit the rather amazingly pitiful truth. "What is it?" Harry asks insistently. "You can tell me."
"Don't like comparing you and me," Draco mutters under his breath, hoping that Harry can't hear him. "Hate feeling inferior."
It is too much to hope that Harry couldn't hear him, of course- as soon as the words are out of his mouth he hears Harry's indrawn hiss of breath and the tension that radiates from just a foot away from him. Miserably, he wishes that he can take the words back, or maybe just curl up in a little ball and hide. But the first is never possible, and the second can't be done with Harry's cast-iron grip on his wrists. Again.
Harry places two fingers under his chin and gently tips his face up to his. He closes his eyes tightly, childishly avoiding seeing the rejection he knows he will see there, and he both hears and feels a sigh feather past the sensitive shell of his ear. With a sense of shock, he realizes that Harry has leaned forward until his face is right next to his, his mouth inches away from his ear.
"Never inferior," Harry whispers, and Draco's eyes snap open in shock. "Quite probably my superior by far, but never inferior."
Draco jerks away, shock radiating from every line of his body as he opens his mouth to say something, and Harry doesn't know what he is going to say but he knows he doesn't want to hear it so he forestalls the words but the simple, expedient method of kissing him.
Draco's mouth goes slack under the soft, insistent pressure of his own, and Harry licks at the corners of his mouth, begging silently. His lips part, and then Harry's tongue is in his mouth and rubbing against his with carnal sweetness, and can't help but melt against the taller, stronger body pressed so tightly against his.
And then, just as abruptly as it had begun, the kiss ends. Harry pulls back far enough to look into his eyes, and Draco sees no scorn, just gentle reassurance and a distance, wistful sort of sadness.
Harry apparently isn't satisfied by whatever he finds in Draco's eyes, and he grabs his right hand with his manacle-grip and, pulling it into his lap, he presses it against the ridge that strains against the worn zipper of his cutoffs. "You can't really think that I don't want you," he says. "So why do you keep thinking that you're inferior?"
Draco snatches his hand back and holds it close to his own body, staring at Harry with a baleful gaze. "Plenty of people get off on people weaker than they are."
Harry looks somehow infuriated and... relieved? "I don't get off on my inferiors, Malfoy," he says, very slowly, and Draco quails just a little at the anger in his voice. "I tend to think they're sort of sad."
"You must pity the whole damn world, then," Draco snarls, getting angry suddenly and completely. "Since no one's the equal of the great Harry Potter." He manages, with the skill of years of practice, to turn a complimentary sentence into something insulting. It's all in the tone.
The anger is definitely starting to fade from Harry's eyes now, leaving that inexplicable relief. "You think that, huh? Think I'm still sitting on my little golden pedestal, with my little golden grown? Hero of the people, is that it, Malfoy? Love to think that I have all these people worshipping my every move, because then you can sneer down your pointy little nose at me and think that isn't it typical and if only they knew what a mealy-mouthed little boy I actually am and so on and so forth."
"First things first, Potter," Draco drawls, all anger and grief and sadness and insecurity vanished under his icy sneer. "You never were on a pedestal. You never wore a crown. You're not some great hero, you're just a pathetic excuse for a wizard who accidentally killed Voldemort in a desperate scramble for self-defense. You want to talk about sad? What's sad is all the sniveling syphocants who grovel before you when you've never been worth the rags that you wore in that Muggle place. And my nose most certainly is not-"
He stops. Harry is grinning at him like a lunatic, a demented sort of happiness in his eyes and smile. "You're enjoying this, aren't you," he says on the dawning realization. "You're actually enjoying me being an asshole to you." Harry nods happily. "For Christ's sake, why?"
"Stupid sniveling syphocants- that's a good one, by the way, very apt- think I'm perfect. I'm not perfect. Just an accident, like you said. Was trying to save my own ass. You think I like people crawling to me all the time? You think I enjoy it? Because I sure as hell don't," he says before Draco has a chance to answer. "I only know a handful of people that are left in the world that aren't afraid of me or don't treat me like some goddamn god, and some of those are starting to act like they're buying into the hype. And they know better, know how it really happened, know that I'm not that person.
"But you, Malfoy," he says, apparently not going to stop and let himself reflect too much on whichever friend has put the crack of grief in his voice when he speaks of them knowing better, "you're a bit different, aren't you? You don't hesitate to let me know exactly what you think of me, even though I know better, because I'm not so stupid as to actually believe that you meant everything you said in that little speech. You do think highly of me, which I certainly don't mind- in fact, it's rather a goal of mine at the present- but you don't worship me, and you can make me feel like I'm still real. And I need that so much, maybe more than you could ever know." He leans close again, so that his words are breathed against Draco's lips. "Face it. You're all broken up, but you got broken the wrong way and you can't put yourself back together because the puzzle pieces are jammed together all wrong. I can break you the right way, put you back together and help you heal, because I know what can hurt you the most."
And when Draco shivers at his words, thinking of a hundred horrible, humiliating things that Harry might choose to do to him, Harry Potter whispers, slowly and sibilantly, "It absolutely kills you to have someone to love you."
Draco freezes, and it feels like the whole world freezes with him. "I don't get it."
Then Harry laughs, and it's a demented but utterly happy and free sound, and Draco has to smile along with him because there's really nothing else he can do. "You'll find out what I mean eventually," Harry says, still grinning. "Because I don't think you'd ever believe me, and that means that I'll just have to show you. But for now... for now, maybe we should just get through the rest of the night."
Draco regards him with deep suspicion, and Harry laughs again, delightedly. "Not that. Not that at all, though I'm sure it's fairly obvious that I want to." He glances briefly at his lap, where his erection is still obvious. "No, what I meant is that we should probably get some sleep."
"Sleep?" Draco asks slowly, his head cocked to the side like it's a foreign word. "You mean just... curl up and doze off?"
"Exactly that," Harry says, and holds his arms open in invitation. Thinking that he really can't take any more shocks in the near future without going stark raving mad, Draco sighs and crawls into Harry Potter's arms, just like every teenage girl and quite a few boys across the wizarding world long to do, and when he closes his eyes he finds to his surprise that he's able to slip easily and quickly into a deep, dreamless sleep.
