An Issue of Trust, a harry potter fanfic

Title: An Issue of Trust
Author: Miz Thang
Characters/Pairing: Draco Malfoy, HP/DM
Rating: FRM
Word Count: 835
Warnings: None. Slash, obviously. Angst. Past Character Death (as in the person is already dead,if that makes any sense).
Disclaimer: I don't own anything but the little story's idea. Everything else belongs to who it belongs to.
Summary: Harry wanted to know if he could trust Draco. For 30hath's Jan 12th-Can I trust you?

He asks a question. A simple question. And just as simple as the question was, he expects an answer. Just as simple. Just as easy.

"I could say the same for you, Potter."

Whenever he kisses Draco, it feels as if the temperature has suddenly risen in the room, like some kind of spell.

It's a spell, Draco decides, because being near Harry evokes the strangest feelings in the pit of his gut and Draco would much rather call this arrangement casual.

Temporary.

Unimportant.

"Can I trust you?" Harry's voice echoes in the wind.

Draco wakes up in a cold sweat, takes a few breaths while ignoring the body lying beside him and only wishes he could sleep.

He hasn't in over two years.

Draco doesn't leave his bed unless it's urgent. It may seem as if he's hiding from the world in light of everything that's happened, but really, it's better this way. Is there even a world for him to hide from?

"I need you to tell me the absolute truth. Can I trust you?"

Draco whispers in his ear, "You probably shouldn't."

Harry smiles at him slightly. "Something you should tell me?"

"You should be forewarned."

Draco hates that dream…nightmare. The one where he practically tells Harry that he's bad business. It's like guilt, only slightly different, because he feels as if Harry should have had more of an idea.

Harry's touch is electric to Draco's skin. Hours after, when Draco isn't even in the same building anymore, he can still imagine ghosts of his touch on his skin.

It's more than a spell; it's a form of Imperio, Draco thinks. A form of Imperio that he is all too entirely aware of.

In his dream, nightmares, Harry murmurs the question once more and Draco begins to feel a bit insomniac about it all because Harry is haunting him well beyond the end of the war and their situation.

He doesn't even try to sleep anymore.

"Draco, I am pleased to have you present tonight as we celebrate two years."

Draco stares at Voldemort blankly, almost as if he's looking at something he isn't sure of on the bottom of his shoe. Draco is, solely, the only person in all of England that can give such a look and not be punished for it. No one would call it punishment actually, though Draco himself would much prefer Crucio and death.

"I told them you can be trusted to not betray the Order. To not betray me. I don't think they believed me, though."

"Why's that?"

"How about, 'We trust you, Harry. We just don't trust Malfoy.'"

"Should prove them wrong, then, shouldn't I?"

Harry's words, his voice, their conversations, echo incessantly in Draco's head and it would be ideal if the precious Boy Who Had Once Lived would stop haunting him. But he won't; Draco asked for this.

"When Lucius told me, Potter, that using your willingness to trust and love could capture you better than any elaborate plan, I almost didn't believe him."

Later, at night, he's sleeping and having the dream-nightmare-again…that one…

"Love is a weakness, Draco. You can't afford it."

"Don't tell me what weak is. And I won't betray, Harry."

"You already have," Lucius laughs easily in his ear and Draco feels as if his heart has stopped beating.

The bed dips on one side and he unconsciously rolls towards it, seeking the undeniable warmth of the body in the bed beside him-he won't feel this way in the morning, a guarantee that is.

Arms circle around him, but they aren't the arms he's known-he'd involuntarily betrayed the person he loved.

"You can trust me, Harry. Always."

"And what if I can't, Draco? What if something happens?"

"Then haunt me until the day I die."

Voldemort won't give Draco that luxury; he's grown quite accustomed to the blond-the one Harry Potter let in, loved, fought for…

…died for.

Draco dreams, tangled in nightmares, pinned down by a dark lord, and fragmented by a hero.

And every – single – night, that voice echoes, haunts him as Draco asked, begging, looking for a different answer than the obvious, though Draco figures it's entirely different in a world where Harry won. He hopes it is. He can't stand the thought that it only comes to this.

Draco wakes in fear, lives in fear, and tries to pretend that sharing a bed with the tyrant ruler of most the wizarding world that killed the one person he'd cared about doesn't scare him shitless.

"What if I hadn't trusted you?" Harry, the one that haunts him in his dreams, asks and holds him close.

"You'd be alive, and maybe I'd be dead. Simple." Draco responds.

Simple question. Simple answer.

"That isn't good enough."

"It never is." Draco smiles humorlessly.

He wakes in a world where he can trust no one, not even himself, and waits, patiently for that day where he won't awake ever again.

-end.