Unlocked: 33
Location: Valencia City, Valencia
Server: Valencia 2
Party
RedNGold LV. 54
Heirlomes LV. 46
Some of the biggest guilds have their Guild House in Velia, closest town to Hogwarts and its dungeon entrance deep within the castle. It has a fishing dock and a ferry to the many islands in the north of Balenos. It only stays in place for half an hour before leaving, passengers or not, and Harry thinks of it more like a ghostship than anything else.
There are a lot of ferries leaving from Velia, going all around the mainland and there's a hot air balloon as well. It's the ferry going from Ancado Harbour to Velia that Harry is most interested in right now, Draco on his heels.
They just dropped off a large batch of logs and planks to help the Hufflepuff guild, the server's main guild, work on their own Guild House, which they are building in Valencia City of all places. It makes a little bit of sense, Hufflepuff has a mix of professions rather than concentrated on one or two, and Valencia City is close enough, definitely closer than Velia, to some of the best grinding spots for their fighters and some rare ingredients for the cooks.
Draco is still figuring out how far away he should stay from mobs before he pulls aggro, which he showcases when they pass three lions and immediately gets attacked by the biggest of them. He's also still getting used to being able to actually kill them.
"You know you just ruined someone's rotation, right?" Harry asks with a laugh as he watches Draco kill two of the three and dodges far away enough for him to lose aggro on the third.
"They'll manage," Draco sniffs haughtily.
But other than a hiccup here or there, Draco proves to be an apt student. He should have known this from their days at school, but for some reason he can't consolidate the student he knew with the man he travels the regions with. The blond's combat level creeps closer ever so slowly, although his lifeskill levels aren't anything to write home about.
They should've brought their horses, Harry thinks, disgruntled because the walk to Ancado Harbour takes longer than he thought. They break off of the main route for a shortcut through dry bushes and past lions and a scorpion here or there. They're easily taken care of and mostly ignored by Harry, although Draco makes it a sport to kill everything he sees just for the cooking ingredients if there are any. His warehouse must be near full by now with all the different kinds of meat and bones he picks up along the way.
They hop back to their main server while they wait for the ferry to come, and immediately after their arrival on Serendia 4 someone calls Harry's nickname. Not his IGN like a normal person, or a variant of it, no, none of that. "Orange!" someone yells from the balcony of one of the houses on the higher platform of Ancado Harbour.
Harry hates himself a little for feeling addressed and turning around. "What!" he calls back just as loudly. It's not his fault he's the first well-known player with an orange cursor, is it. Already he walks the steps up to the platform overlooking the rest of the harbour. "What," he says again, standing near the balcony.
The player disappears inside, then shortly after opens the front door. He leans against the jamb, arms crossed. "Hi," he says. Large red feathers cover most of his body except his hands, his ankle boots and his face. Even his blond hair has a few feathers woven in. But even with feathers obscuring part of his face, he's still devastatingly handsome.
"Hi, Fawkes," Harry says with a helpless smile.
Beside him, Draco straightens at recognising the name. He, like Harry and many others, turned off the option to see a player's username hover. A coloured cursor and a guild emblem along with the guild's name is the only thing that now hovers above players for them. It's a lot less distracting.
While there are 45 servers, most active players only frequent eight of them, those with the front line guilds. Only around 16,500 players are left from the initial 20,000, and about 10% of those left are actively playing (according to Harry's standards), the other 90% sticking to towns and safe passages in fear of going blue.
Fawkes is one of the more well-known guild leaders, his guild Hogwarts the largest in-game with four daughter guilds, ruling on Serendia 4. He's a handsome man, with a sharp jawline and chiselled cheeks and a pair of stunning baby-blues—Harry couldn't stand the sight of him at first. He hadn't known Fawkes' personally at the time and he'd not been interested either. People like him, they get everything thrown at them in life without working for it, they have everything going for them and they know it.
That was before they got lost in the desert together and Fawkes kept Harry alive with expensive potions and meals, going through piles of galleons until he had only knuts left. Four months later and despite his misgivings about friendships, Harry can't imagine not being friends with the man, although more often than not he wonders why Fawkes is friends with him —people like that don't befriend people like him, they exist in a different world altogether.
"I didn't know you lived here," Harry comments, leaning on his glaive and trying to focus on anything but his stupidly beautiful face.
"What can I say," Fawkes says with a disarming smile, "I like the quiet. Not many people bother coming here."
"Calpheon 3 has a whole group that moved to Valencia together," Draco says. "Some of them settled in the harbour."
Fawkes turns to him with a dry expression. "Calpheon 3," he repeats. "Calpheon who?"
Draco flushes.
Honestly, he should've known better; none of the Calpheon servers have a high guild. Harry hides his smirk behind the back of two fingers. "You're plenty out of the way, that's for sure," he says, deftly avoiding opening that particular can of worms.
The older man nods toward the docks where a large ship is already waiting. "Where are you heading?"
"Just Velia."
"Just Velia, hmm?"
Harry sighs. Denying Fawkes anything is hard work. "Hufflepuff needed some help with their house," he tells the man. "I saw some of yours as well."
"Mine?" Fawkes raises his chin, tilting his head with interest. "Oh?" He rubs his lower lip with his pointy finger. "I don't remember sending any."
Draco looks unhappy. "They need your permission?"
"I'd like to know where they are."
Harry notes it's not a no, but Fawkes' guild is one of the first ones and one of the strongest, and their buddy-system saved quite a few lives, especially in the beginning. Somehow in the three months since they've been together, Draco has never met Fawkes before. Odd, but then, it's not like they do everything together. To think of it, was Draco even aware that Fawkes and Harry are friends? It never came up, he realises.
The time for introductions has passed, but it's weirder not doing it, isn't it? "Fawkes, this is Draco," he says awkwardly.
Draco's unhappy look darkens further and Harry has no idea why.
"Draco, meet Fawkes, GM of Hogwarts."
Fawkes smirks. "Pleasure."
"I'm sure," Draco sneers.
Harry feels like he's missing something, like he's done something wrong, made a misstep somewhere in this interaction, but neither seems inclined to help him out. Well then, suit yourself, he thinks exasperatedly.
A loud horn sounds in the distance. "Shit, our ferry," he exclaims.
They narrowly make it onto the ferry already leaving the docks.
Fucking Fawkes.
Unlocked: 33
Location: Calpheon City, Calpheon
Server: Serendia 4
Party
RedNGold LV. 54
Heirlomes LV. 46
Harry doesn't bother getting out of his clothes, just takes off his boots and his armour and leaves them in their usual places on the always-present desk underneath the window. At least the curtains are yellow in this inn, which is a change, and there are tulips in a rather ugly vase on the sill. Perhaps the rooms get better the more dungeon levels they've unlocked, because he doesn't remember those tulips being there before.
Draco disappears into the bathroom without closing the door and predictably turns on the shower as far it will go in heat and pressure. It'll feel like nothing more than a light drizzle, Harry knows, a hint of lukewarm water despite the steam that quickly fills their room. It merely serves to remind Harry that this isn't real, even if remembering his memories so many times has given them a hazy layer, even if he isn't sure he could point out what is real.
The mattress dips beneath his weight when he lowers himself on it. He feels nothing as he crawls under the blankets, wonders if he should be uncomfortable with his clothes on in bed. He thinks it used to be, but it doesn't feel different here.
Draco re-enters the room, his black clothes still drenched from his shower. They'll dry up fast now that he's out, probably within the next minute or so. He lays down on his sleeping mat.
Harry swallows. "Are you—" He breaks off. "Are you uncomfortable?" he whispers. He doesn't know what he wants the answer to be, doesn't know where he's going with it. "The bed is—it's pretty comfortable." It's just like any other bed in H:CoS. "You don't have sheets and I do, so—so we could. If you want."
"What exactly are you asking me, Harry?" Draco says, sounding only a little bit amused.
"Don't leave," Harry hears himself saying from afar, already three sentences ahead in a conversation they haven't had yet and that might not happen either. He exhales carefully when Draco crawls over him and into the bed, stretching himself out alongside Harry's back. "I mean it," Harry says as he pulls the covers back up.
Draco wiggles closer so he can wrap himself around Harry. "I know," he says against the collar of Harry's shirt. "We have to stick together."
Harry imagines his heartbeat slowing as he calms down. We're on our own here, he doesn't say. Doesn't need to, really, because whatever they used to be, school rivals hating each other's guts, it doesn't matter in the face of this. There is no point worrying about before when they're not even sure there's going to be an after. Maybe this is their after.
He grabs Draco's hand and presses it to his covered stomach. A low satisfied noise escapes him that would have embarrassed him if he wasn't so utterly content right now. "We should've done this earlier," he murmurs. Harry is self-aware enough to know he doesn't do well on his own, that knowing another person— whom he is comfortable with, thank you— is nearby has a strange way of grounding him.
"I missed holding someone like this," Draco confesses.
Harry hums in agreement. "Four months," he replies thoughtlessly.
"What?" Draco asks, leaning up.
It takes Harry a moment to realise what he's asking about and when it finally occurs to him, he tries not to flinch. His arm jerks anyway, jostling Draco's and making him lose his balance. Harry turns and lies on his back, waits for words to present themselves while Draco squirms on top of him. "Four months," he ends up repeating. He clears his throat. "It was just comfort."
"I'm not judging."
Longbottom had been just that—comfort. They'd been friends, he was Harry's first friend in this godforsaken place, but reds… there's a reason Harry's cursor is orange for the foreseeable future, who knows how long it'll take for it to go back to green, if ever. Killing in self-defence, kill or be killed, to him it was all the same. One player went blue and one player went red, simple as that. Simple as murder.
There's still doubt lingering inside Harry's chest, the persistent idea that he has a need to defend himself, that by seeking comfort the way he does means he's betraying a promise that he never even made in the first place. There is nobody that he's betraying, not truly, and yet.
They'd been working toward it, moving toward it at a snail's pace but moving there regardless. It's all gone now, it's not here.
Here is Draco, not—
"I'm sorry," Harry says following a short silence, thinking of dark curls and silver eyes, and even though Draco's lips brush his shoulder in acknowledgement as he settles in for the night, it's not Draco who is the intended recipient. But it doesn't matter.
It doesn't.
Unlocked: 39
Location: Calpheon City, Calpheon
Server: Serendia 4
Party
RedNGold LV. 58
Heirlomes LV. 52
Draco is running himself into the ground.
Harry didn't notice it, at first, partly because Draco outright lied when Harry asked about the speedy levelling. Was Harry doing something wrong, was it just the monsters who happened to be giving a ton of EXP because Draco had a lower level, was it some kind of equipment bonus? After hitting level 50, levelling becomes a horrible process, making very little progress in a lot of time. Yes, Draco had non-answered with a straight face.
No.
Because Draco has taken to sneaking out in the middle of the night. Maybe it's because they haven't stopped sharing a bed that Harry has finally noticed, coming out of his rest with a frown because he's able to turn around in the cramped space without Draco pinning him down.
Harry knows what it's like to go without rest. Remembers the buzzing in his head and the vague sense of voices, mind never shutting up. always wondering what if what if what if, rage a rolling boil. He doesn't want Draco to implode the way he himself had. H:CoS isn't a place that appreciates purposelessness so it should be more than reasonable for Harry to put to use the one useless thing he's allowed himself to have.
That's not to say he doesn't understand the anger fuelling Draco, but he needs the guy clearheaded. Going without rest for so long is not constructive to survival. He can't exactly force Draco to stay put, though he can—
Harry doesn't know what he can do, how he can help. There was no one around to help him when he went off the rails, not until a month later when Davis cussed him out with very colourful language and punched him in the face, "Because your lacklustre attitude is grating on my nerves. Oh please, it's not like you could actually feel that." It helped, he thinks, because she called him out on behaviour he hadn't been aware of.
He sets out to wait. His clock says it's 2 PM, so he pulls up his settings window and plays around with it while he waits. A half hour later and Harry's bored with it since it's not like he actually wants to change his settings after spending an entire day customising everything to his liking.
He ends up spending some quality time staring at the ceiling instead, noting the details the designers put into it. He could actually count the little dots in the plaster. He thinks of the fact Draco still showers with his clothes on, the fact he himself hates taking his gloves off.
They're both messed in the head, he thinks.
Draco slinks into the room wearing socks, a boot in each hand, head hung low. The idea that he thinks he needs to hide this for whatever reason both saddens and angers Harry. Does he not trust Harry? Is he ashamed? Is he doing things he shouldn't be? Draco closes the door behind softy and sets his boots down against the wall, unaware of the concerned stare thrown his way. Harry opens his mouth to say something but Draco chooses that moment to lean back against the door, hands buried in his hair. He slides down to the floor with a barely audible noise, face pressed against his pulled up knees.
Harry clenches his gloved hands into fists and closes his eyes. He tries to breathe quietly and find his way back into rest because he can't. He can't watch, can't listen, can't do anything other than lie there and try to tune it all out, perhaps wait until a better opportunity, when Draco doesn't look ten seconds away from breaking down.
XXX
There's a message waiting for him from Ikram. It's been sitting in his inbox for two days already and he has yet to open it. It's bad form, he knows that. It could be urgent, for all he knows. It could also very well not be, so he lets it sit there while he goes about his daily business. Most of it involves, as Bones put it, sticking his nose into places it doesn't belong. Personally, Harry prefers to call it networking, but that doesn't mean Bones isn't right.
Harry tries and fails to keep to the edges of the player community, but if he also wants to support the front line guilds, he can't have it both ways.
With a last glance at the form huddling pathetically on the floor near the door that hasn't moved since he got up from the bed and got dressed, Harry opens the message. Reading it, he feels silly for not doing so sooner.
From User: Rowena
I heard the Order is going to approach you and your boy soon...
Remember you can say no! I called dibs months ago :)
~Rowena, GM of Ravenclaw
Harry doesn't really see the need to add anything fancy as an automated postscript, but he gets why she would, why others would do it. Rowena didn't use to have one, until recently it seems. Harry hasn't been in contact with her beyond their weekly meetings, and those have been the same for months so he hasn't had a reason to send her a message yet.
To User: Rowena
still not interested.
gm of ravenclaw?
~RedNGold
From User: Rowena
Morning, Orange! I'm great, thanks for asking...
GM = Guild Master? What do you mean?
~Rowena, GM of Ravenclaw
Harry snorts.
To User: Rowena
i know what it means jfc... i meant what's with the new sig?
~RedNGold
To User: Rowena
i'm sure everyone knows you're ravenclaw's gm by now.
~RedNGold
From User: Rowena
You'd think!
~Rowena, GM of Ravenclaw
From User: Birdsong
You're distracting my GM ;)
~Fawkes
To User: Birdsong
no u.
~RedNGold
Harry dismisses his menu and walks over to Draco. "Get up," he says, "time to go, we have things to do." Guilds to avoid, like the Order of the Phoenix, who he is definitely not interested in joining, not now, not ever. Together with the Death Eaters, who are full guild of mostly reds, and Gryffindor and Slytherin, they make up the majority of the combatants on the front lines. Harry has watched them grind from a distance, reluctantly impressed but becoming increasingly wary of their attitude, more determined to stay out of their way.
Things are fine as they are, there is no need for change.
Harry doesn't like change.
"Draco, c'mon, let's go." He pulls on Draco's arm until he finally gets his feet under him and stands up. "Please don't look at me like that," he adds.
Draco shrugs and grimaces. "How am I looking at you?"
"Like you—" have given up "—are blaming me for this," Harry says.
"What, want me to smile?" He pulls his lips back in a snarl. "There, happy?"
Harry wants to respond but draws a blank, has no idea what to do with this. This is probably a moment where they should sit down and talk but what should he even say? "Did something happen?" he finds himself asking cautiously but he doesn't want to know.
"What are we doing?" Draco asks in return. He pushes off against the wall until they're chest to chest, until Harry has to look up slightly to keep their eyes locked.
"I was thinking we'd go back to C—"
"No, you idiot," he says tightly, "I meant, what are we doing?"
Ah. "So something did happen?" Harry's fingers twitch. "Draco, why are you sneaking out?"
Draco purses his lips. "Someone approached me. They called me a non-player. They said—they said some things, and I—" He breaks off and looks away for a moment. "There's nothing wrong with refusing to play, there isn't. If I didn't—if—and you know, I value my life, everyone here does, whether they play or not. But the people we hang out with. Harry, they make me hate myself. I went down to Olvia and I looked around and I kept thinking how worthless they are, and it makes me hate myself because I was like that, too."
"But that's why we go there, to help them out."
"And it's not enough, Harry. Why aren't we doing something? Why do you—why do we keep doing quests and levelling up when we're not doing something useful with it? Won't that help them too? I asked one of the front liners what her level was, and she's lower than ours. Most of them are."
"Yes," Harry says slowly, "because they are in groups."
"Groups that are trying to beat the game." Draco shakes his head and steps away. "Unlike us."
"So what are you saying here? Because I don't think I understand. Players make you hate yourself but you want to join them anyway? We're on the mob lines when they need us, we've been getting resources for them so they're never long with broken equipment, we help them advance. We're already helping them."
Draco takes a deep breath. "I want to join the front lines."
No.
XXX
Friendship has no place in H:CoS.
XXX
Harry doesn't say, getting yourself killed on the front lines won't bring our lives back. He doesn't say, getting yourself killed on the front lines won't bring Hermione back. He just says, "If that's what you want, then you should do it," he says, voice steady despite the buzzing in his head and the voice that viciously screams, I told you so.
"I should," Draco repeats, "so not we. Not us?"
Harry imagines his mouth drying up. "What about us?" he says, tilting his chin up, as if he isn't internally begging for everything to stop. He wants to lash out, angry and hurt and confused. "You already know what I think about joining the front lines," he snaps. There's plenty of other things that need to be done, the front lines are fine, there's no reason for Harry or Draco to be there.
Draco spits out angrily, "I thought you were a team-player."
"I thought we were going to stick together," he returns swiftly.
"That's why I want you to come with me."
"You think I want to see you die?" Harry demands, irate and irrational. "You think I want to get a notification telling me user Heirlomes is no longer available?"
"You think I want to be stuck here?" Draco flails his arms in an angry gesture. "God, you're a fucking piece of work, Harry. But you know what? Fine, you stay here and do your non-player thing and I'll go help out where it actually matters."
Harry feels something inside of him break and he just doesn't understand but he knows that whatever is happening here is his own fault somehow. He crosses his arms defensively and doesn't say, you promised me. "Fine," he says tightly, tries to keep the rising panic out of his voice. When he lifts his hand to open up the menu, he sees it shaking. By the time Draco has his boots on, he lets his glove linger on the screen. "I don't want you to go," he says.
"Yeah, well, I don't want to stay," the other man snaps.
"Okay," Harry says. His shoulders drop but his finger is still pressed to the screen, unwilling to let go until he absolutely has to, until this entire thing is over and done with, until he knows where they stand—or where they don't. "Okay."
"Fuck," Draco sighs. A hand forces Harry to look up and away from the floor. "Harry, I owe you one. You're a little—no, a lot fucked up, but you helped me out, so I owe you one. Not everyone belongs on the front lines."
That stings more than it should. "You do," he says, although he's not sure what he's replying to exactly. The kiss that gets him is sweet enough it almost hurts, a gentle press of lips that's barely there. He lets his arm drop to the side when Draco steps back but doesn't spare the confirmation window a second glance. "Good luck, I guess." He already knows what it says, anyway.
Deletion confirmed. User Heirlomes no longer appears in your friends list.
XXX
Harry had forgot what it was like to be alone.
He remembers now.
Except.
To User: Birdsong
draco left.
~RedNGold
To User: Brainy Bird
can i have a hug? :(
~RedNGold