AN: Here we go! Thanks to all the followers and favorites.

Chapter 2: Mssr. Holden

Just about every moral code in Harry's book was falling apart in front of him. He'd fretted in the hotel room for an hour before the meeting just to calm his nerves.

It was the first time he'd left Grimmauld Place in, well, too long. The house that was his godfather's first taste of prison was slowly becoming his. Harry didn't feel like getting out of bed most days, preferring to watch the muggle television in his room. After all, he had enough money to keep going like that for as long as he liked.

Ron and Hermione would visit, each time more concerned than the last. Hermione would give Harry that look that made him want to crawl back under his sheets and hide, and Ron's talk of exciting adventures as Head Auror drove Harry up the wall.

He was still glad that he dropped out of the Auror academy, though.

The first month had been a nightmare. Harry was trained to constantly look over his shoulder, to never let down his guard; not once. Leaving yourself vulnerable could mean death. Harry had learned that a long time ago, back in school before he murdered Tom Riddle and the maniac was trying to murder him.

The second month, Harry could barely sleep. He was frustrated, exhausted, and his mind was fraying. He found himself thinking of running away and never coming back.

By the third month, Harry had a meltdown that had been years coming. While he didn't like to remember the details—since it was wildly embarrassing—Harry would never forget the look on the other Aurors-in-training's faces when he finally snapped. Ron had to carry him out of the room and into a nearby bathroom, screaming.

Harry never wanted to feel like that again.

All his past relationships had gone sour through press attention or his own dysfunction, most of his friends stayed an arms-length away, and the papers were having a field day with the Recluse Savior.

Above all, Harry liked his television shows. The characters in those always made him smile. If he shut his eyes and listened to their voices, he was right there with Brian Kinney in an American gay bar, or in the TARDIS with Christopher Eckleston. As bad or as dangerous as their lives got, the people he admired on his silver screen were indomitable. They'd been to hell and back and still had their spirits.

It was more than Harry could say for himself.

Trying to make himself comfortable, he sat down in a green armchair that leaned back to offer a foot rest. When Harry reclined all the way back, he took a deep breath and tried to tackle the moral conflict. At least it didn't require him to stand.

Harry was just about to start weeding through the idea of a justification for purchasing sexual favors from another human being when he heard a key being turned into the lock. Fuck, had it really been that much time that he was sitting there alone and thinking?

With a bang, he closed the reclining chair so that it returned to the upright position. Harry could feel his hands shaking and a sweat break out over his brow. What if everything went wrong? He hadn't been able to be intimate with past boyfriends before, and—

The door swung open and a blonde man swaggered in, an easy smirk on his face. Harry almost launched himself backward over the chair.

"What are you doing here?" Harry demanded, not remembering how his wand got in his hand.

Malfoy's eyes widened. For a moment, he didn't say anything and kept his attention locked onto Harry's wand. The realization finally hit him when he saw the way that Potter was trembling. "Put down your wand," Draco managed in the midst of shock.

"Why should I?" Harry demanded. "Are you here from The Prophet? Merlin, how could I be so stupid! Or are you here to harass me, or hex me, or—"

"No," he replied calmly. "Potter, be rational about this. Who's the only other one with the key to this room?"

The rentboy. But that would mean… "You're lying."

"I have no reason to lie to you," Draco reminded him.

"Then why are you here?!"

Draco wondered if he should pull his own wand out for protection, since Potter seemed so keen on keeping his in the air. "I'm here because you asked me to be."

Harry scowled. "I didn't ask for you!"

"But you've already sent the galleons over, yes?" he asked. The next realization that hit him was that Potter had written that bloody letter. The one talking about how he needed a man, how he wanted to give up control… "Put your wand away."

This time, Harry lowered it. "You're…" Harry couldn't even finish the sentence.

The signature smirk returned to Draco's face. "The rentboy? The escort? The whore you ordered? Why, yes. Yes I am."

Harry couldn't believe his ears. The man looked like Malfoy—sleek, gorgeous, fit, piercing grey eyes—but he didn't sound like Malfoy. It made Harry crumble a little inside. Had Malfoy actually managed to move on after the war faster than he had? That was, if he was ever moving on.

"You look like you've seen a ghost, sit down," Draco told him before taking a step forward only to see Potter flinch away.

"Maybe I have," Harry blurted out. "How… Why are you—I mean, but you're Malfoy."

Draco had heard that about a thousand times before. "I don't really go by that name anymore. I'm just 'Draco'."

"But you're rich!" Draco had never let Harry forget that.

"My parents are," Draco nodded. "And I am now. But it's all my own money; money I earned."

Harry was still in shock. "By sleeping around?"

That bit always annoyed Draco. His clients always thought that Draco was the sinner in the situation, that he was the more corrupt. They often forgot who perpetuated his business. "Yes, by sleeping around," he said tensely.

"Why?"

Draco cracked a cocky smile. "You know what they say. If you love what you do, then you never work a day in your life."

If Harry wasn't so bewildered, he would have laughed at that. Draco's humor was still there, apparently. "But… Why?"

It seemed that Potter was no different. "I'm not being forced into this," Draco muttered. "There are a lot of people who are, but I'm not one of them. I'm a free agent, and I run my own business. My own hours, my own choices."

"Don't people try to abuse you?" Harry couldn't keep that one from coming out of him, a manifestation of his own guilt.

"If they try, then I leave. Why do you care so much about how other people treat me?"

Good question. "Because nobody should be taking advantage of… People in your situation."

"Prostitutes?" Draco asked flippantly. Seeing Harry so aghast over the concept when he had been the one who ordered him for the night was amusing.

"Yeah."

"Lower your wand, Potter."

This time, Harry listened. Nerves fried, he sank back into the armchair. It felt lumpier than before. Even so, he was amazed. Harry could barely have a proper roll in the sheets with blokes he'd fancied, and there Draco was turning tricks to strangers and enjoying it. "Why?" he asked again. "Why do you 'love it'?"

Draco knew that was a hard point to grasp, so he took a seat on the nearby couch. It was a long story and he deserved to kick up his heels to rest if the entirety of his night would be answering questions from Potter. "There was a time," he began, feeling his chest open up and the information fly out of his ribcage like trapped butterflies. "When I couldn't deal with the truth. People weren't my favorite thing, either."

Enraptured by that vulnerable look in his eye, Harry listened.

"As I'm sure you know, the war wasn't kind to anyone." Harry nodded. "So, when I ended up on the wrong side of it, it really messed me up. I hated everyone and I hated myself. People either despised me or looked disappointed with me wherever I went. I grew to loathe them, and loathe their looks. I thought that people were a lost cause, that the human race was doomed to fail because we had so much hatred with us. Hated that made a war possible."

Draco continued. "That was when I met Natasha, the woman you owled. She was the queen of the night life, and had constant companions by her side. It made me wonder how she could properly trust any of them or not grow annoyed by their admittedly annoying quirks and characteristics. That's when I learned that they were her employees. Can you believe it, a boss genuinely liking their employees enough to buy them drinks and go partying with them?"

Harry knew his Auror instructor back at the academy would have never done that will him. "Anyway, I wound up talking to her. She could see what a bitter little thing I was, and offered to help."

"By prostituting you?"

With a roll of his eyes, Draco shook his head. "No. At first, she let me watch over the financials of the business since I'm rather good with numbers, but nobody wants to hire a Death Eater." The word sent chills up Harry's spine. "Then, I had a strange epiphany. I saw how, bizarrely enough, the other working girls and guys were… Happy. I hadn't been happy in a very long time."

"So," he shrugged. "I tried it out. I was feeling sick of feeling sick, and those people made me laugh and smile."

"There's a pretty big jump between liking prostitutes as friends and becoming one," Harry mumbled. He had no idea why Draco was being so honest, anyway.

"Yeah, but I'm never one to do things half-way, hm?" Draco joked. "My first appointment I was a total wreck. I couldn't bring myself to trust someone who was paying me for sex, and it made my hatred for humanity grow even larger. Then, he actually showed up at the door. He was a Quidditch player, though I won't say which team. He was charming, interesting, and hiding a very gay secret from the press."

Harry frowned, still not quite understanding.

"And so I talked to him. For hours. He never even asked me to do anything," he recalled. "When we had sex, it was because I wanted to and he wanted to."

"So you met one gorgeous bloke and decided that they would all be that great?"

"Hardly. But I had some growing faith in me, as skeptical as I was. I learned with each client, though. At first they were seemingly made of stone, but that melted away. At their heart they were artists, poets, comedians, and philosophers. It made me see something that I'd never seen before. That once you crack down the walls around people, I think most of them are innately good."

Harry thought that was the biggest load of rubbish he'd ever heard. "Even the ones that buy prostitutes?"

"Even you, Potter," Draco countered. "Think of your happiest memory. Were you doing it alone?"

"No," he muttered, not seeing how this related to selling one's body.

"Exactly. It took me a long time to come to this, but now I know. It's not things or money that makes us happy, it's people."

"So this is your best way to connect to people?"

"Males specifically, I suppose," Draco lamented. He'd known many interesting women in his life, but the attraction was never there.

Finally, it was time for Harry to ask what was really bothering him. "Why are you telling me all this?"

"What, the truth?"

"Yeah," Harry murmured lamely.

"It's what makes me happy. I hate lies," Draco admitted. He'd suffered through enough of his parent's lies, friend's lies, and the lies of everyone around him to know that. "But I really like people." Honest, open people with nothing to feel ashamed of. Shame only held you back.

Harry felt like someone had punched him in the face. Draco really was doing better after the war than he was. Draco had new friends, a job, a place of his own (most likely), and he was happy. Happy, of all things!

The years had been kind to Draco's appearance, as well. His toned but subdued muscles filled in all the right places, and his legs had to be miles long. Harry thought of himself in comparison as a bag of bones. Eating wasn't his strong suit anymore. "So, are we going to do this?" Draco asked.

"What?" Harry said before understanding what he was asking. "You—you want to? But we used to hate each other, I don't know if you've forgotten. You used to tell horrible jokes about my friends, and my parents!"

Draco's face twisted in worry. "I never meant them," he said quietly. "I was just jealous of the attention you were getting, and I fed into my father's lies about how you wanted to be adored by the public. I'm sorry."

What? Six years after the war and Draco says he's sorry? No, that was too easy. That couldn't be it. That couldn't be the apology that Harry had wondered about and sometimes dreamed of. It couldn't truly be this easy. But if Draco was being honest… "How do I trust that you're telling the truth?"

A sad smile graced Draco's lips. "You can't tell. You just have to trust me."

"Well, I don't."

"I understand." Draco often looked back at how awful he'd been to the people around him in school. He was a mess of anger back then, too.

Harry felt like screaming. "Would you quit being so calm over this?!" he demanded. "You're selling your body, my life is a mess, and I ordered you as a prostitute! Please tell me that you are as freaked out as I am because I can't deal with this!"

Draco shrugged. "Stranger things have happened."

"You're so different," Harry marveled, shaking his head. Where were the snide remarks? What about the he insults and taunting? "I can't have sex with you. I need to lie down."

With what could have been mistaken for a tiny smile, Draco nodded. "Here," he offered his hand.

"I told you, I don't want—"

"I'm offering to lead you to the bed, Potter. Now take my hand before you pass out in the damn chair and I have to carry you."

He had a point. Warily, Harry accepted his grasp. It was immediately a mistake, because he smelled fantastic.

With all the care Draco possessed, he led the disoriented man out of the living space and into the bedroom, where a green silk canopy bed welcomed Harry with open arms as he climbed in. "Thanks," he muttered, hoping Draco wouldn't hear.

"No need to thank me," Draco responded, sitting down at the foot of the bed.

"You can go home now."

"Actually, I'm on the clock. You paid for a full night," he grinned, much to Harry's chagrin.

He tensed up in the bed. "Well, like I said, I'm not having sex with you."

"That's fine, Holden Caulfield," Draco teased.

Slightly horrified, Harry sat up in the bed. "What? Draco, that's… The Catcher in the Rye is a muggle book," he gasped.

"They're not half bad at writing, either," Draco shrugged. "Though Holden's whining really did get to me sometimes, I liked him."

"You're the only one who does," Harry snorted.

"It's like I said earlier. Underneath his abrasive, lying, confused, and often arrogant surface, I think he was a very complex person. The whole book he's obsessed with making connections to people in order to rid himself of this horribly lonely sense of dread looming over him. The more I think about it… Potter, he reminds me of you."

Harry gave him a glare. "I don't call everyone a 'phony'."

"Not his outside traits," Draco sighed. "The ones at the heart of his character. Just a boy trying to keep everyone safe and driving himself so crazy over it that he can barely hold on to his connections and relationships."

"I am not a catcher in the rye."

Sure you're not, Draco thought with a smile. "Anyway, I suppose we can compare you to literary figures another day. Do you need anything?"

Harry's brow furrowed in confusion.

"For me to call room service for food, a bath, a foot rub…" Draco listed.

"That would be, erm, nice. The last one. If you want to."

Draco smiled and leaned forward to remove Harry's shoes. At first, Harry nearly jumped out of the bed when Draco touched him. Next came his socks, and then Draco's skin was touching his for the first time in what felt like an eternity.

At the first grind of Draco's hand against his feet, Harry nearly flinched away at the pain.

"You'll get used to it. It's deep tissue," Draco told him clinically.

So, as mental as this whole thing was, Harry let himself relax. His eyes focused on the ceiling tiles and the patterns they made as Draco took away every pain from his arched and gnarled feet. Harry had never really liked feet, always thought they were gross. He sort of pitied Draco.

Either way, Draco continued his massage up to Harry's thin ankles and Harry said nothing about the movement. Draco's fingers were being far too good to his aching muscles to call it quits now.

"If you turn over," Draco said. "I could give you a back rub."

The lack of lumbar support in Harry's bed had him almost rolling right onto his stomach. Instead, he tried to look controlled as he shifted positions in the bed. It was just a massage, it was just a massage, it was just a massage…

Slowly, Draco moved to straddle Harry's legs, careful to keep from scaring him off with any sudden movement. It was sort of like trying to keep a balance of attention with a deer fawn. If this got too sexual too fast, Harry would be gone.

And he really looks like he needs to get laid, Draco thought as his thumbs pressed down hard on Harry's back.

Searching for knots and tension was easy with Harry since they were littered across his dorsal, trapezius… Every muscle that could possibly have an ache and a pain seemed to have at least three. Dedicatedly, Draco worked on one tender spot alongside the slope of Harry's spine.

An involuntary moan escaped Harry's mouth, his fingers digging into the clean sheets.

Carefully, Draco flattened his palm and slid it under Harry's muggle t-shirt. Immediately, Harry reacted with a shocked spasm.

"Sorry, your shirt was bunching up," Draco tried to explain.

"It's fine. It's just, ah, your hands are warm."

With a smile, Draco continued his work. Harry was in bliss with every soothing touch and roll of Draco's knuckles across the small of his back. "Do you sit at a desk a lot?"

Harry would have shrugged, but his shoulders were currently occupied. "No, I just kind of prop myself up when I sit."

"Yeah, that's why," Draco murmured, his voice soft. "You probably need to buy some sturdier pillows, or I could teach you a few muscle loosening spells. It's all about mobility."

"Oh, definitely," Harry joked, laughing at the strangeness of it all.

Hearing Harry at rest and laughing was a refreshing sound for Draco. He'd almost thought Harry had lost that dry, sarcastic humor. In its own way, that made Harry a little indomitable. "That better?"

"Much."

"Good," Draco said, letting himself fall to the wayside of the bed and kicking off his own boots.

Harry turned his head on the pillow to look at his old arch-nemesis with a strange curiosity. Draco was almost caring now. "Thanks."

Draco turned his head to face Harry and chuckled softly, playing with the hair on the back of Harry's neck. "What did I say about thanking me?"

At that, Harry inched away from him on the bed so that they couldn't touch.

"Harry Potter, are you going to bed at eight o'clock at night?" Draco asked, laughing a little insensitively. After all, people couldn't change their habits too much.

"No," Harry mumbled a little pathetically. He just didn't want Draco touching him, or coming near him. The first time in a long time that someone was willing to have sex with him, and Harry couldn't even look at him. "There's too much history between us. You can leave and go home, nothing's going to happen tonight."

Draco felt that something was compelling him to stay. If people were innately good, then Harry had to be a breed of his own. Draco had read The Quibbler and heard the rumors, and Harry had been willing to die for all of their sakes. "That's okay. I'm not the one who called you, you know."

"I know," Harry snapped, right back to his edgy defensive maneuvers. After a beat of silence, the guilt was unstoppable. He sat up, looking down at Draco. "I'm sorry. Not just for now, you know. But for everything, too."

Saying that made something click inside of Draco. An enemy became a friend. "I forgive you. I don't blame you, since I was such a little shit to you."

That made Harry laugh again. "Yeah, but in the end we were never really so adverse to one another." Another question came to mind, so his voice was cautious and careful. "Why did you never tell Bellatrix that it was me in the Manor?"

Draco hadn't been expecting that one, so it took him a moment to delve back into the painful memory. "It was the same reason that you didn't let me burn in the Room of Requirement," Draco knew. "You wouldn't have been the only one entirely screwed over if Voldemort had won, too. You were our only hope."

The 'our' caught Harry's attention. "I'm sorry about Crabbe, too," he said in a hushed voice in reverence for another life lost because of him. He could still feel the flames singing his skin as he closed his eyes.

"That wasn't your fault." The betrayal of Vincent Crabbe was another one of the demons that Draco had grappled with before his current sense of peace with himself.

Harry had been told that things 'weren't his fault' since the day the war began. In his opinion, that was a steaming load of shit. Voldemort's second war was about killing Harry, and anyone who stood in his way. Remus, Sirius, Severus, Dumbledore, Lily, James, Tonks, Moody, Scrimgeour, and Fred…

"Harry?"

"Let's watch some television," Harry said loudly, hoping to dispel any further talk of the war. Snatching the remote off of a nearby table, he turned the television on and silently prayed that it had cable.

When the dark screen lit up, Draco let out a laugh. "Pay-per-view porn. How classy."

On the screen, two busty ladies were shedding their bikini tops in the sand for a messy session of beach sex. "And they're not even really gay," Harry sighed, looking at their long, sharp, French-tipped fingernails.

"A travesty," agreed Draco, quickly catching on for Harry's need for a subject matter that wasn't life-or-death. "I weep for authenticity."

Harry flipped the channel up one and got a rather disturbing view of a pizza-boy making a 'delivery' into a woman who looked old enough to be his mother. "Is it all porn?" he asked, laughing. What he would have done for a little Top Gear right then and there.

"Possibly. Try the next one?" The next channel wasn't any less lustful, but at least it was two men this time and the moans were fake enough to crack Draco up. "Oh, Harry. If only I had known you were gay in school."

Raising an eyebrow, Harry looked from the screen and over to Draco, hair now mussed and looking a little more casual. "What, would we have had an illicit affair?"

"Who knows," Draco grinned. "Maybe we could have had trysts in the dungeons and exchanged longing looks across the Great Hall."

Harry smirked. "I always thought that was more Nott and Colin's thing."

"I like one-upping my friends," Draco said simply and smugly. "It would have rocked the world, you have to admit. We could have changed everything."

"Yeah," Harry admitted, smiling. "There would be even more paparazzi after us, too."

"They'd never quit asking when we'd be married."

"They'd get supposed 'eye-witness' accounts of our depraved homosexual lives from our 'close friends' who can't reveal their identity."

"They'd give us a couple name."

Harry almost doubled over laughing. "What, like, Harco?"

"No, that sounds ridiculous," Draco huffed, leaning back. Obviously, his name came first in any mish-mosh of letters that they were making. "They'd call us Drarry."

It sounded just as ridiculous, but Harry grinned anyway. "So, all we need is a time machine."

"Nah, I think I like where I've ended up," Draco told him, crossing his legs and turning his attention back to the two men on the screen busy sucking each other off.

"In a hotel room next to a celebrity who paid hundreds of galleons for you?"

"Of course. I'm worth every sickle."

"Still not having sex with you."

Draco rested his arms behind his head. "Whatever, Holden."