Disclaimer -I do not own or claim to own the characters in this fanfiction or the world of Harry Potter. This is written for pure non profitable entertainment purposes.
"Harry. Harry I need a doctor."
"Draco-"
"Now Harry!"
-x
When Draco got sick...no...let me start from the beginning, maybe you'll understand it then, or not, I don't know.
I was twenty five when I saw Draco Malfoy again. I was sat at a bar, Ginny had gone to the bathroom and I saw him sitting on his own, sipping a cocktail and staring at the lights in front of him.
The first thing I noticed was the glasses. Thick rim's, black, cute. Of course I never told him I thought he looked cute that day, he'd probably kill me; then again he say's those thing's, but I know he likes them. The second thing I noticed was his hair, it was slightly longer and wavy. It suited him.
I didn't think much. I didn't know what to think. I mean I hadn't seen him in years and we never really got along, as I'm sure you know. That was until he turned and looked straight at me. His silver eye's sparkling and a subtle twitch of the left corner of his mouth and suddenly everything was being seen through the head of a needle. I don't know how to explain it. It was like everything had been put in to tiny pin point perspective and the only thing in focus, clear and at the fore front was Draco Malfoy, Sitting alone at a bar I was in with my long term fiance, in a grey-blue cashmere sweater and jeans and his polished black shoe's.
Ginny say's he blew out all the candles. I'll explain it later, but it made sense. It'll make sense. Or not.
I don't want to go in to how we met again or bumped in to each other a second or third time, often quite literally, because it would be tedious and boring and honestly the amount's of time we ended up going for coffee and just talking, avoiding conversation about the war and what we were now doing with our lives other than the obvious, Me becoming an Auror and being with Ginny, him being a free lance writer and running the Malfoy's many business' and endeavors, was immense.
So I'll skip to the first time we had sex. Ginny sat me down and talked to me about where I wanted our relationship to go and you know, I can never fully show her how much what she did meant to me. How despite how much she loved me, she acknowledge how my feelings for her were changing or maybe had already changed or been platonic and our relationship somewhat convenient and shoved me out the door with my coat and told me to go after Draco or she'd shovel my eye's out with a spoon for being so clueless. Even though she had tears in her eye's and didn't take the engagement ring off for two months after and now wore it around a gold chain. For keep sake she say's. She's telling the truth.
Draco and I didn't have sex that day. Far from it in fact. I had gone to Draco, told him how I felt and he'd punched me in the face and told me he never wanted to see me again. Romantic huh?
I knew it was a test. He'd set way to many for me while we were kid's, including the first time we met, when he was still that bigoted aristocratic brat, clinging to his father's coat tails. Of course I didn't leave him alone.
I called, I text, I threw rocks at (and broke) the window of his flat and not even that seemed to make him reconsider.
It wasn't until he finally opened the door after a month and told me to 'piss the fuck off Potter' did I notice something was really wrong. I didn't understand what it was, but I just knew y'know? He had bag's under his eye's, his cheeks were red but in a feverish way and not like how they had blushed every time I tucked a strand of his white-blond hair, like silk, behind his ear. He looked tired and upset and so broken.
He had cancer.
The doctor's said it was stress induced, many had said it was irreversible, some had said it could be fixed, both Muggle and Wizarding. I remember how fragile he felt in my arms when I kissed him, how subtle his movement's were beneath me and breathy and soft, like innocent sighs were his moans. He was still so graceful, he clung on to me and I held just as tightly back. He threw me in the water that day, not thinking about the splash I'd create. He now had me in his hands and...god, I can't even describe.
He pushed me out to sea in a little boat he'd made out of our heartstrings and mossy memories without a life raft and I wouldn't be able to pull myself back. That's how it felt. In that moment I was his.
Click.
Just like that.
The inaudible click of everything fitting together and the simple handing over of my heart to him and visa versa.
I thought you said you didn't feel pain? I had asked him, Joking on our visit to the hospital while he winced at the massive needle they'd just stabbed in to his frail porcelain arm. I wanted to snap it and rip it out of him for even scratching him just a bit.
He'd gone very quiet then.
I feel pain it's not physical anymore.
I...
He never did finish what he was going to say, even without the interruption of a doctor coming in to check on him as I pretended not to stare at his blood flitting through the tube and in to a small bag like it was nothing. He'd smiled at me meekly and squeezed my hand at the same time as I squeezed his.
He didn't want me to love him. I know that. That's why he tried to push me away so much.
We got in to fights. So many pointless, petty fights that I wouldn't take back for the world. Just because I still refused to leave him.
He pushed me. He pushed me all the way over the edge and dangled me by a thread of every whispered promise and secret under the covers at night and early morning or evening when all we could do was stay in bed and enjoy holding the other and the feeling of the texture of his smooth skin against mine and my calloused hands interlinked with his perfectly.
Find me.
He'd said it only once, but it had stayed with me for good. It was random and we were running together in the forest on our annual visit to Hogwarts under star speckled sky and he'd smiled and said it to me before bolting through the tree's.
I don't know why it meant so much to me at first, but I know now. Maybe it's part of the hero complex he always complains about. I had the feeling that I did want to find him despite having him. I wanted to find the Draco I knew as a child. The misguided, hurt little boy I regret not making the effort to fix. He doesn't need fixing exactly...he's perfect but...
He's my lodestar in a darkness I can't avoid.
He's grace incarnate and strength made more beautiful that God's promises to Adam.
But when he straddles my hip's in the morning with those silver eye's in drowning morning haze and a slight smile only I can see, I know he is so much more to me than that.
Ah...Ginny said he blew out all the candles. What she meant by that was he reset a lot of things for me, with a gentle flicker he blew out my worry's, my past, my future and plunged me straight in to darkness.
When he's unraveled like a spool of thread and came undone like an exploding star I just wanted to preserve him. Every memory every feeling, notion, sensation. Everything.
If some one asked me to tell the world I love Draco Lucius Malfoy I'd whisper it right in to Draco's ear himself. He is my world.
Draco wants kid's. He had always wanted kid's. We had talked about it, but what with the surgery's to lengthen his life expectancy and his diabetes getting in the way, with all the times he'd go in to un-induced hypo's, it was something he gave up on his own. I would have given him anything. Heck I would have got myself some ovaries and a womb and told him to make us a baby if he'd let me, but I didn't want to upset him anymore. He said he needed to make that decision.
Just...just let me be in control...of this...okay?
Draco's kisses are the best, Ginny always giggles when I tell her this, but they really are and I just...not the heated one's we have in the shower or in the bedroom, but the one's he gives me when I find him on the sofa reading, with his hair pulled back and his bright smile, it's those innocent I love you more than anything kisses. I hope I show him just as much of that as he does me.
I love the sound of his heart beat. It's completely different, it's too it's own unique beat that I'm sure isn't like anyone else's. It's special, it sounds so different like it's slightly off beat but perfect and just...Draco. My dragon hearted prince.
Cheesy I know. But why should I care?
We never avoided the issue of him being sick exactly. We just didn't base our lives on it. We didn't let it rule us. So we liked to think anyway.
It was when he was going through a particularly bad spell (no pun intended) that I started becoming over protective and he started hating it.
You're suffocating me, Harry can't you see! I'm already dieing but you're killing me!
He'd said it.
I'm already dieing.
He'd said the one thing we never said. Screamed it in fact. With tear's streaming down his beautiful face and so much pain physically and emotionally and spiritually inside his slight frame and I just...
Click.
There it was again.
Draco and I...me...I needed to protect him I just wanted...I just want...all I ask is to be able to fix him. In all way's not just this.
The war, everything, it just fucked us all up, but...this was Draco. My Draco. He looked so defeated. That wasn't like him. It wasn't what it was supposed to be it was just...so hard for me to see that. That side of him I knew was there, but he hid and I ignored so it wouldn't upset him.
I took his hand, I kissed his knuckles and I went and ran him a bath, and used all my lemon and tea tree shower gel to make bubbles and I helped him undress in silence and helped him in.
I didn't get in with him. I sat on the side and let him rest his head against my arm up on the rim of the bath tub.
Drown with me.
He whispered and I ran my hand through his hair, wetting it slightly and kissed his forehead.
Always.
Every trip to the doctor's then was like some kind of count down. Like every time we stepped through those god forsaken, fucking doors we were losing a life like we were in some kind of game.
I went to church a few times. Sometimes with Draco, sometimes on my own. I don't know what I...we were looking for.
We started traveling by train a lot. We went all over in our own private carriage, just the two of us watching the scenery blur past us. Draco's head in my lap, his eye's gazing out the window, mine on him.
Leave me in the rain.
We had gone on a trip to Russia for two day's and it had rained, huge storm clouds above Moscow and he'd asked me that. He'd asked me to do the one thing I hated doing. Leaving him. I knew he wouldn't run...well I didn't know. I was petrified that he'd do something drastic, but I suppose I trusted him...or I was testing myself to see what it was like not having him there.
It was horrible. I hated every five minutes of it.
That's all it was.
Five minutes on his own. In the rain.
It felt like five years to me.
When he got back I wrapped him up in my arm's and just...didn't let go. He had to pry me off him.
He's restless at night, he has horrible dreams sometimes. As do I. We all do. But it's Draco.
I...I love him so much...that is such an over used meaningless word now. It's so much more than love it's just. Everything. He's my everything and there's no word for what I feel for him.
"Harry. Harry I need a doctor."
"Draco-"
"Now, Harry!"
I don't think I've ever felt so still in my entire life. Just sitting in the hospital waiting room, staring at the clock as each hour passed and each polystyrene cup of stale coffee got cold and rancid.
Draco.
Oh god, Draco.
I'd do anything he ever told me to. Anything.
It was so cold in the waiting room. I only noticed when I couldn't move my fingers off the cup without blowing on them.
We learn from the ones we hate the most.
That used to be Voldemort and I learned a lot about loyalty and sacrifice from him.
I hate the illness. I don't know what I've learnt from it, if anything at all.
Blow out all the candles.
I didn't say it, but it was going over and over in my head, just willing Draco to do what he always did and not...do this to me. That's so selfish, but...love is isn't it? Love is just as bad an illness. It takes away from us and shatters and brakes us and holds us until death.
I love you Harry.
Don't say that. Please, if anything why did you have to say that Draco? So final so...end all.
We're the reckless, we're the wild youth from the war and one thing I learnt from that is if you're still bleeding you're the lucky one.
Keep bleeding huh? You'd laugh at me I know you would, tell me how weird I sound saying that, but you'd get it.
Draco...you set fire to me. Are we lover's that went right?
Draco please don't die.
"Mr Potter?"
I stood.
"Mr Potter-Malfoy. He..."
Click.
"He's suffered severe internal bleeding but we managed to stop the most of it. He's sufferd quite a lote and it took some hard work but we managed to stip the cause of the bleeding and the scan shows no sign of any further or future damage. I'm glad to to tell you he'll be okay for now and the cancer...we aren't sure how. It's a medical miracle, but it seems to have regressed significantly. Mr Potter-Malfoy sir...he's honestly a medical phenomenon, to even start to explain the complex- Mr Potter...you're going to be a father."
Click.