Title:Draco and Tequila and Silence
Rating: R
Beta: Dess
Length: Just over 2200
Warnings: A bit of language
Summary: There were always three things that could drive Harry insane.
Disclaimer: I make no claim to Harry Potter or the accompanying ideas and characters. They belong to J.K. Rowling, Warner Brothers, Bloomsbury, Scholastic, and others. This is written for entertainment only.
Notes:This is just a little something I came up with while listening to some music. Thanks hugely to Dess for the beta!
Harry looked around the flat silently. The silence was what he thought would kill him. There was no sound in the rooms, where for the last year and a half there had been nothing but sound. Laughter and deliciously lustful moans first, followed by screaming and frustrated growls. The noises weren't always happy, but they was always there.
Now the only person in the flat to make noise was Harry himself, and he felt no need for a fuss or racket. All he wanted to do was get out the bottle of Jose Cuervo in the liquor cabinet and find out how quickly he could down it.
He was half a bottle in before he remembered how badly he held his liquor. It had always been Draco's favorite thing to taunt him for, after they had gotten together. Harry knew better than to attempt to do anything at this point in his drinking. He was pretty happy with that prospect.
Passing out that night, Harry found himself even happier with his night of indulgence. By the time he was falling over his second empty bottle of Cuervo, he could forget that the rooms around him were far, far too quiet. He could also forget that the bottles he was drinking from were supposed to belong to Draco.
Two days later, Harry got out his pensive. He wanted to remember the noise, and more importantly, he wanted to forget the silence. He chose the loudest scenes, the most passionate ones, he could remember from this flat and filled the pensieve to the brim.
Laughter, the sounds of Draco taunting and teasing Harry. Often for his habit of loosing control every time they went to a pub.
Moans, the sounds of Harry urging Draco for just a little more, just a little deeper.
Harry wanted that back, those times where it had seemed that nothing would ever go wrong again, where it looked like he might be happy for the rest of his life.
The screaming. Even when Harry remembered how brutal the fights were, he wanted them back. Harry and Draco had always fought. They would scream and throw everything from old teacups to mild curses at each other over the stupidest things. Then they would come together, often without ever forgiving each other. The sex was always magnificent.
The groans, Draco gritting out that Harry had always infuriated him. Harry would respond that Draco was almost worse than the drink, and that how could Draco expect Harry to keep his control when Draco could make him that angry.
The pensieve contained every major joy in Harry's life. It also contained the moments of fury so bright that Harry thought it could outshine the sun. The only thing it didn't have in it was the silence.
Hermione thought Harry should be well pleased with getting rid of Draco. "He was always picking a fight with you or making fun of you. There was nothing good in your relationship with him." Harry had just shaken his head. Hermione didn't understand what Draco had been to him, or what he had been to Draco.
Hermione might not have understood what Harry was mourning in his lost relationship, but she did have a good suggestion. Within an hour and a half of leaving her house, Harry had bought himself a radio. If nothing else, there might be some white-noise in the flat.
Draco had never liked Harry's job. It was rather unimpressive, Harry would admit. He was an Auror, but all he did was train the new recruits. He could have been the Head Auror if he wanted it, and Draco hated that Harry didn't have any interest in the position. It had been one of his favorite things to fight about.
Harry didn't give up his job after Draco left. He had wanted too, because that would have let him hide in his flat day after day. But his pride was too strong. Draco might not have thought Harry's job was worth shit, but Harry did. If nothing else, it would piss the Draco that still lived in Harry's pensieve off to no end. So Harry stuck with it, waking up every morning to report in for work.
He would come home to silence every night, but he turned the radio on. Hermione's suggestion really was a good one, even if it only half worked. Harry still wanted, desperately, to hear Draco's drawling voice in the evenings.
There was one more bottle of Cuervo in the liquor cabinet. Harry used to tease Draco for keeping so much of the bloody stuff, but now he was thankful for it. He couldn't bring himself to drink that last bottle. He could go buy more, but that bottle felt like a life-line. If things got too bad, Draco had left Harry one last escape route.
"This is a mistake." Harry turned around at the words, which sounded so much louder than the quiet music on the radio. "I should really, truly turn around right now and go back home. We both know how this is going to turn out."
Harry had recognized the voice right away. There was no one else's voice he could have mistaken it for, after all. It was far more familiar than Harry's own voice at this point. Even after weeks with it only through the pensieve.
"Why did you come here, then?" Harry scowled at his quiet volume. He had hated the silence, and yet even now he was working to continue it.
"I wanted to." Draco had never been very good at denying himself. He had gotten what he wanted in the end, every time. It was one of the reasons they fought so often. Harry was very used to having to deal without the things he wanted. He saw no reason to try for things that weren't needed.
"Why didn't you come back sooner?" Draco shrugged.
"I didn't want to." Draco looked around and saw the two empty Cuervo bottles. "You got drunk."
Harry couldn't see a point in denying it. He nodded. "Once."
Draco raised an eyebrow. He hadn't moved. He was still standing just inside the doorway from where he had let himself in. He had never given back his key, Harry remembered. "Two in one go?" Harry just nodded again.
Draco moved. Harry had almost forgotten what he looked like, a combination of a serpent and a cat. All lithe steps and quick, darting strikes of his hands when he decided to act. Draco turned off the radio. "Why the hell did you get that infernal contraption?"
"It was too quiet." Draco nodded. He would have been as unfamiliar with the silence as Harry had been, before he left.
"You didn't quit your job." Harry looked at Draco in shock.
"You expected me to?" Draco shrugged again. Harry wanted to volunteer to quit now, if it would keep Draco here. If it would put Draco's clothes back in the wardrobe of their room and his spare bottles of tequila back in the cabinet.
"I thought you might." Harry shook his head.
"I'm nobody's slave. I thought we covered that. I like my job." Harry didn't want to go there. They were just going to fight again. God knew they had done enough of that already.
"Your job is one that is reserved for the old and the infirm. You are neither."
"But I am damn good at it." Harry didn't want to fight with Draco, not now when there might be a chance of him coming back, but fuck was he glad to here Draco raise his voice. There was once again noise in the flat. What kind of noise was irrelevant.
"You should have gotten a job at Hogwarts if all you wanted to do was sit on your arse and grade papers." Draco was only a step down from shouting now, and Harry almost smiled. Thank God.
"I don't have the patience to teach children. They don't focus; they don't understand how important this stuff is."
"You don't understand how fucking powerful you could be, if you would just buck up like a man and take what is yours!"
"You don't see it do you?" Harry stood, and now he was almost shouting as well. He was also almost laughing. Draco was back, and he was being exactly who he was. Bigoted and superior and stubborn, but also proud and shining and fearless. And as much as anything else, he was loud. He shouted, he forced the world around him to sit up and take notice.
"I don't want to be powerful! I don't want to be in charge of the Aurors, and I sure as hell don't want to climb my way up to the post of Minister. I just want to get on with my life. I want to do something meaningful, and I want to do something without the Daily Fucking Prophet up my arse all the time!" Harry was panting for breathe by the end of his exclamation. Draco never once showed any insecurity.
"You could take it! No one could stop you. But you won't, because all you can see is what you would be risking! You're a stupid, insipid, cowardly Gryffindor."
Harry reveled in the argument. He knew they were dashing any hopes of rebuilding a relationship with each other; he knew this was only going to make everything worse in the long run, but he couldn't regret it. For this moment, right now, he felt like he was flying. There was the sound and the passion and the adrenaline that he had always associated with Draco.
"But I'm not cruel! You are, and you can't accept that some people would be happy with a peaceful life!"
Draco looked around the flat contemptuously. His gaze lingered on the empty Cuervo bottles and the radio. "You couldn't take eight weeks of peaceful life," Draco pointed out, his voice was suddenly calm, poisonous. "It was, as you said, too quiet."
It was. But Harry didn't need to power for his life to be right again. He couldn't think of what he was doing, it didn't make enough sense for that. Before he realized it, his lips were on Draco's.
The kiss wasn't the sweet, joyous reunion Harry would admit to having imagined a few times in the last weeks. Nor was it the desperate, clinging kiss that Hermione had described when she had Ron had gotten back together after a fight that had put her at her parents for almost a week.
It was hard, more of a continuation of their fight then a separate entity. Draco bit Harry's lip so harshly that Harry knew it would swell up hugely, and Harry had drawn blood on Draco's tongue. They pulled each other's hair and tried to force each other into the positions they wanted.
It was everything Harry could have asked for. It was Draco and Harry, passionate and all-consuming. The only way they had ever known to be with each other.
"Damn it, Draco. This is all the sound I need." Harry grabbed Draco's hard cock, making him grunt.
Harry sighed in mingled relief and pleasure when Draco returned the favor.
Harry thought it was as noisy and relieving as any of the memories in his pensieve.
Draco never announced that he was coming back. Harry had a feeling that he hadn't intended too, that the visit that one night was supposed to be one final taunt. Harry hadn't lied when he accused Draco of being cruel. But Draco had stayed the night that night, and Harry had known from that moment that Draco wouldn't be able to make himself leave. He needed the sound as much as Harry did.
All Draco had done when he brought his clothes in was said, quietly, "We aren't ever going to really be happy. We're going to argue all the time, and spend almost as much time fighting as fucking in the end."
"We went almost a year happy that way." It was true. During those days, the arguing had seemed more like an adventure than an issue.
"We did." Draco could clearly remember that as well. He went into the kitchen, carefully weighing the empty Cuervo bottle that still sat there. "You never so much as chilled this, did you?" Harry shrugged. It hadn't been important at the time. Draco gestured to the bottles. "I'm going to do more damage to you in the end than this ever could." Harry shrugged. That wasn't important.
"I need to go buy more liquor. You've gone and drank mine." Harry smiled. Draco was right, he would end up doing more damage than some liquor, but Harry's life would never be so fucking quiet, and he would always have the little bit of adventure, the little bit of danger, he needed. Draco would never stop being who he was, noise and all, and Harry would never fear loosing himself in the background of his own life. Neither of them would be happy all the time, but nor would they be miserable.
That was all Harry could ask out of this relationship. They would both take what happiness they could find, and they would survive the rest of it. And none of it, happiness or misery, would ever be silent.
Harry could content himself with that.