Title: Senseless Promises
Pairing: Harry Potter/Draco Malfoy
Summary: Harry and Draco meet in a forest and prey meets prey.
Rating: R/M (possibly PG-13, but I like to be safe.)
Word Count: 592
Warnings: A little graphic and dark; quite possibly the most confusing thing ever.
Author's Note (October 2010): I started this, and "finished" this sometime in August, and am only posting this now as a rediscovery. It was a surprise reading this, and while I feel like it can go on, I can't get "into the zone" to write in this style right about now. So, an in-progress complete story? Idk. Also, probably a tad confusing. Sorry.
It was a dirty kiss between us, smeared blood and mud and groping hands and whispered words that just didn't make any sense.
We promised each other things—insane things—that we knew we wouldn't be able to keep. We promised each other roses and love letters and a smiled "Good morning" from whoever's bed we decided to sleep in the night prior (not that we'd sleep much; we promised that, too). We promised each other sunshine and long lives spent together; we promised shared coffee and tea and biscuits and forgetting whose shirt is whose, but not caring either way.
That was the way things were supposed to be, even if we weren't entirely sure what we were promising at the time, but promising it anyway.
The trees heard us while they whispered with the wind; and the animals that we scared away and the ones we called to us with our pants and groans; and the soil beneath my back (why did I let you do that—why why why?) and the rocks between your toes; and the Devil heard us, staring down from the stars, his eyes twinkling the brightest of all but how did he get up there?
It was war and it was a silly, stupid thing to do—all mindless hunting and fleeing and trying not to kill but always having to. It was uneven breathing behind a mask and rushes of self-righteous dignity with each beast brought down in crueler and harsher ways any the animals had ever used.
It was you cursing and shouting hexes every wizard mastered by third year—unfit for the situation, but effective, nonetheless (did we really need Crucio and Avada Kedavra and intestines pulled out of mouths and bursting eyes like cherries and oh, God…)—and missing half the time because you really didn't like this, but you knew you had no choice. It was you yards, feet, inches away before oomph! mere centimeters, me flat on my back and twigs digging in and doesn't this sound so familiar? (Like old times, maybe, or the future—maybe precognition; like memories echoing in my head until I can't distinguish one from the other.)
My back? Oh, remember, you'd twisted me—a sharp jerk with bruising, shaking hands and then shaking, panicked eyes—why so scared, Harry? you'd caught me and mounted my head on the wall of the Ministry and bragged and laughed for years and years about how you'd saved the world to your kids and to parties and all of them had vivid red hair, everyone in the entire damn world—andthen your hands again, ripping off my mask and our eyes meeting, prey to prey (and hadn't I been silly, thinking the lion'd caught the deer when we'd both been running from the world together).
I think (I've had so much time to think, and it's the only thing that makes sense), at that moment, both of us died.
I saw the light in your Avada-green eyes dim and there was so much despair in the resulting blackness I couldn't look away. I think you'd hidden away the spell you'd survived and cast it on me right then, and I'd whispered it to you soundlessly and it'd worked because you hadn't taken away my wand—when I'm feeling especially happy (can I be happy? is that possible?) I do it silently and wandlessly, and I didn't kill The-Boy-Who-Lived, and you'd done it to yourself; when you landed on me, you were already a mindless, gaping corpse.
AN (August 2010): I don't know who I'm copying, but I know this style sounds familiar. Oops.