Title: In the fall form grace

Author: Simbele

Pairing: Harry/Draco

Rating: MA (R)

A/N: For Ally. Happy Birthday!

As Harry Potter lowered his wand to look at the smouldering remains of Lord Voldemort on the ground in front of him, he realised something.

It was over. Fucking finally, and not a bloody second too soon.

Two and half years of ashes and funerals, dirt and grief and vindication and cold blooded murder, and it was finally over.

He sank to his knees and looked at his hands. They were red.

With whose blood he wasn't sure, but it wasn't his. In fact, there wasn't a scratch on him.

Looking up again, he noticed for the first time the bodies around him.

There was dozens of them, in piles, pieces, shards and smears. All because of him.

The familiar faces mixing with unfamiliar ones, and the blood was even redder on his hands now.

The tears began to fall, but they were useless. They couldn't bring back the loved ones he had lost, killed and forsaken on the hallowed grounds now impure under the stench of decay. And suddenly the dead were living and he could feel them reaching for him. Their eyes were gone but he could feel their gazes on him, burning him, drying his fallen tears but still letting him cry in a futile attempt to let it all out, to take it all back, to make it all better, to get them all back, to make them forgive him, to make him come back, to get. him. back.

But He was standing in the midst of them all, his hatred shining clearest of them all. His contempt and loathing was think enough to cut with a knife and his hands would never touch him they way they did back then, with love and passion and lust and care. And it was all. his. fault.

All his fault, all him to blame, his blame, his mistake, his chaos to bare, his path to wander alone, all alone, he's gone, he'll never come back, you killed him, what have you done, why would you end him like that? Why would you kill him, the only one who ever saw you for what you really were-

A sharp stinging pain on his left cheek, colliding with his tears and it was Real.

But if that was real, then what was-

Oh.

Focusing on home, on the smells of home and the way He looked in the morning, just after sex, they way He kissed, and suddenly he was home again. Safe.

In their bed, in their home. In his arms. With him whispering sweet nonsense in his ear.

"I've got you, don't worry, it's not real, that didn't happen, it didn't happen like that Harry, I'm still here, we're all still here and we all still love you. We will never stop loving you, so come back to us. To me."

A shaky breath and a salty tear spills down His beautifully chiselled cheek bone, and the tremor in His voice tells Harry that this was a bad one. He must have talked in his sleep again. Draco had never been good with his nightmares, especially when they involved him.

"Are you here? Are you back? Harry?" The arms around him shook badly from trying to hold him still. He must have struggled again.

"I'm back, Love. I'm here." And the arms around him relaxed only to shake even more, and now he was crying for real. And sure enough, that was all it would take for Harry to feel that he should be blamed for so much more then he was and they cried together in the dark of the night, the open window letting the summer breeze in, and once again he realised that he was home, safe, alive, and so was Draco. And again the words fell from his lips, as they always did.

"- I'm so sorry, I shouldn't be like this, you shouldn't be with me, I nearly ended all of us, all of you, I nearly killed you, and you still love me, and not even now am I good to you, why are you still here? I don't deserve you, don't deserve you, why are you still here?! Why-"

The arms around him tightened again, and teeth fastened on his shoulder.

"Because. I. Love. You." It was ground out between stiff jaws and soon the teeth loosened their grip and was replaced with tongue. "Because I love you." A whisper against his collarbone and a hand in his hair, suddenly pulling his head back. "And because I always will."

Harry turned in the arms holding him and faced eyes that seemed forged out of molten mercury, wet with tears and he saw the pain there, mixed with love. Both caused by him.

"Don't think like that, Harry. I'm here by my own free will, and you can't make me leave, for not matter how much you tell yourself you aren't worth this I still know you are, and I will never forget that." A death grip around his wrists as if Draco was afraid that he was going to run, to flee from his salvation.

"Thank you." The two words held so much meaning it would be impossible, or a horrendous waste of time, to try and express them fully. Instead, Harry settled for a kiss.

It was only here, in Dracos embrace and in his kiss that Harry ever felt safe.

Ever since that day on the battle field - when everything had been so frightfully close to destruction and chaos and a not-quite ending but darkness and pain - Harry had been on edge, never quite calm, except for when he was with Draco. With him, beside him, close to him, inside him, wherever. As long as Draco was his to have he could sleep calmly at night.

The kiss deepened but the tears kept on falling, the salt mingling with the taste that was uniquely Draco, and Harry couldn't help but think that maybe, just maybe, Draco was ruined too.

Harry slowly rolled them over and the there was arms around him again, around his waist this time. A mouth slowly biting his neck and silky soft hair against his shoulder, just above the tattoo of the Lily and the Stag. He was planning on adding a Dragon soon, but he hadn't told Draco yet.

Harry bit back, and they were moving against each other, a parody of a dance, a symbol of trust. Each shaky intake of breath and each slow kiss was tribute to what they had gone through together, and Harry didn't even dare to think the thought of what might have happened if he hadn't had Draco there to support him.

While Draco slowly raked his fingernails down Harrys arms, he had to concentrate or there wouldn't be anything left of him, come morning. Spreading Dracos legs to lie between them was a beauty in it self, to know that the Fallen Angel in his bed had come for a safe haven and had stayed for Love. Sliding in him, slowly but steadily, he realised there was no words for Dracos moans. No galleons that could by the therapy that this was to him.

No darkness could reach him now, no nightmares, no bogey man, for Draco would chase them all away and Harry would forever be safe within him. There was no way to tell where one ended and the other begun, and united they stood, divided they just might fall again. This thought made Harry bury his nails into Dracos back just a little bit deeper.

And when Draco came with a content sigh and Harrys name as a whisper on his lips, he could see the sun rise in his eyes again.

Together they padded out to sit on the sofa on the terrace to watch the sun rise out of the ocean, sitting cuddled in a massive duvet.

Harry raised their hands, fingers entwined with each other and kissed Dracos knuckles.

"Thank you."