Notes:
A million thanks to my beta YetiBettyFoufetti.
Harry was woken up by his racing heartbeat high up in his throat. His back was covered in sweat. He fumbled with the blankets as he threw them on the side. He needed to-
He heard voices outside his bedroom door. One of them was his . Relief spread around his limbs. He took a deep breath. And then another. He fell back onto the damp sheets, already exhausted, and allowed himself to settle back into his senses.
The curtains were drawn. No light could come in and he had no way of telling what time it was. He had no use for information like that.
Someone had tidied up again. He wondered if Draco had done it this time. If he'd gone around the room, picking up all the clothes Harry had thrown on the floor one by one, without magic. Like he always did at work with their coffee mugs, mumbling to himself as he did. As if he didn't know they'd only need a twist of the wand to do it. That it truly didn't matter.
Why wasn't Draco there? He wanted to reach out, through the door and grab him.
Harry rolled around, turning away from the door. From him. His skin hurt when it rubbed against the bedsheets. He wished they'd all shut up. Their voices were like sharp knives inside his skull. He couldn't make out what they were saying, but found he wasn't really interested anyways. Whatever it was, it didn't matter. He was cold, so cold. He felt around for the blanket and hid underneath it.
The bedroom door opened and light swallowed him whole. He buried his face into the pillows, braced for what was about to come. People came in, pulled away at him, measured things. He let them. Behind them, he could just about recognise him. Without his glasses it was hard to make out the specifics. But he didn't need the specifics.
They made him drink potions and swallow pills. Vague promises of 'better' and 'soon' were made. He fell in and out of consciousness. He wanted to be held again.
"Do you want to get out of bed for a bit? Eat at the table?"
"I'm not hungry," he groaned, annoyed, removing his hand from Hermione's grip. Every sound felt like a stab, every touch an open wound.
"We'll eat here," Hermione told Ron as if it was a settled affair. As if she hadn't heard him.
They ate in silence. Ron and Draco sat on the floor, Hermione by the foot of his bed. Harry wondered, picking at his plate, how many times his friends had been forced to eat around his bed like this. Didn't they have something better to do? He abandoned his food and pushed the tray away. He caught Draco and Ron looking at each other helplessly. He couldn't do anything for them. Everything tasted like ash.
After dinner they all took turns proposing activities and Harry declined every single of them. He took his medication - he was able to drink it himself this time, which helped with morale. Their morale. They forced him to get out of bed and ushered him into the living room. Why? He could only lay down on the sofa, and what difference did that make? He asked Hermione as much when she covered him with a blanket, like a mother would a feverish child.
"Of course it makes a difference," she had replied, sitting down on the floor next to Ron, who was setting up the final chess pieces. Draco was looking at him gravely, head resting next to Harry's knees.
The evening plodded on, Harry barely keeping up. His mind was half there, watching them playing chess around the coffee table, half somewhere else entirely.
Ron was playing against both Hermione and Draco. Based on their grunts of frustration, it didn't seem to be going well for them. Harry was weirdly aware he was supposed to find this funny, but it just didn't seem to register all the way. His eyes were too heavy, his mouth too dry. He licked his lips.
It reminded him of how he used to wake up with dust in his mouth. It fell from the low ceiling when Vernon went down the stairs with heavy steps in the morning.
A knight knocked over a tower.
Petunia knocking on the door, which could mean anything.
Concentrate.
A pawn - he didn't know whose - advanced to the edge of the board, only to be taken by the queen.
The sound of hunger reverbaring against the swollen walls.
Eyes too blurry to make out the next move.
The loneliness of years spent in the dark, with no one to hold him.
Draco's hand, searching for his under the blanket.
"Checkmate," Ron said, sometimes later, voice devoid of any celebration.
Harry squeezed Draco's hand. He hoped it was enough.
He could hear them arguing about him in the kitchen. Did they have to always be so loud?
"... don't be ridiculous…"
"... one of us…"
"... you need to go home, you look terrible…"
"... not your responsibility…"
"... my decision…"
He dragged himself back to bed, the blanket draped around his shoulders like a cape. He had to lean on the walls, the ringing in his ears making it hard to know which foot to put in front of the other. He collapsed on the bed, thoughts so mingled he didn't know where one began and the other one ended.
A voice pierced his conscience. "Hey, don't disappear like that. You scared me."
Harry could make out Draco's dark silhouette against the light emanating from the living room. "Sorry," he said, turning his head. "Too bright."
Draco closed the door behind him. He came and sat down next to him, put a hand to his cheek.
"I'll turn them off. Do you want to go back? We could watch something together."
"No."
"Listen to the radio."
"No."
"Do you want to go to sleep?"
"Yes."
"I'll let you sleep then," he said, standing up. "I'm staying with you tonight as well. I'll be on the couch if you need anything."
The loneliness he'd craved for just a second ago turned on itself, became something else entirely. Desperation filled him. He was in no state to contain it.
"Please," he said, his voice breaking midway through the word. "Please." For a horrible second, he feared Draco would make him say it out loud. He was just about to when Draco spoke, his voice soft as silk.
"Alright," Draco replied, as if it was as simple as that. "I'll sleep here." He then turned around and melted back into the light, leaving Harry with the task of having to calm down his throbbing heart. It throbbed and it throbbed as if he had just ran a marathon.
Ron and Hermione came to say goodbye. He pretended to sleep. They pretended to believe it. The front door shut with a click and Harry's heart skipped a beat.
But Draco still didn't come. He was taking his time, prolonging Harry's torture. He could hear water running, dishes being put away. Who cared about the dishes?
Eventually, footsteps. The bedroom door opening and closing.
Draco crossed the dark room, shut himself in Harry's bathroom. Soon, the steam from the shower came in from under the door into the room, making it moist.
When Draco got under the covers his skin was still scalding from the hot water, his hair still damp. Harry buried his face in his neck like a drowning man who somehow found himself at the surface of water against all odds, frantically pulling at his t-shirt.
"I'm here," was all Draco said while Harry just sobbed into his arms. "I'm here. I'm here."
Draco slept next to him every night for a week. During the day he was at work and someone else - usually Ginny since she didn't have a fixed schedule - stayed with him. He'd be back in the evening with Ron and Hermione and they always made him get out of bed, made him eat at the dinner table, made him watch movies on the telly. They tried to bribe him into conversation, talking about things that they thought would be of interest to him. He let them talk. He'd close his eyes, concentrate on the rhythm of their voices, and like that, the hours passed. When the sun set and the atmosphere changed, suddenly charged with anticipation, he'd lean into Draco and ask him to stay. And every night, Draco stayed.
One early morning - Harry didn't know which, the days had all blended into each other at some point - he found Draco speaking on the phone in hushed French, perched over the open window. Harry immediately backed away from the living room, but it was too late. Draco had heard him. He straightened up immediately.
" Je t'appelle plus tard. A plus. "
Harry was already in the bedroom. He locked the door with magic and stopped in the middle of the room, halfway between the bed and the window.
"Harry."
Draco was shaking the door handle, as if that would make a difference.
"Harry, you know you can't do this."
He didn't care.
"I'm calling Ron."
"OK, OK!"
"Harry," he said when the door finally gave out and he stumbled into the bedroom, looking relieved more than anything. "I was talking to a lawyer."
"Oh," Harry said.
"I'm sorry."
"You don't have to be sorry," Harry mumbled, ashamed, not knowing what to do with himself.
Draco crossed the room to where he was standing and hugged him. "But I am."
Harry tried to kiss him every night. The first time he did it, face still wet with tears, Draco sort of answered him. Allowed it, really, for a while, until slowly pulling away. "Not now," was all he said, resting his chin on Harry's head. Then he became very skilled at guessing when Harry would try to again, and simply moved his face out of his way. So Harry kissed his neck. His ears. His hands. Whatever he could, until Draco eventually stopped him.
"Not like this," he'd apologetically say, voice hoarse and sad. Harry would then settle into his arms, ears still ringing with the pain - the injustice - of being denied the one drug he had left.
At some point, he became aware that Ron and Hermione were concerned. They said as much to Draco every night before they left, thinking Harry couldn't hear them whispering in the hallway. Harry himself only became equally concerned when he found Draco crying in the kitchen at three o'clock in the morning after waking up alone and panicking. He was speaking on the phone and this time Harry was certain it was not with his lawyer.
He made sure not to make any noise as he turned back into the bedroom. He laid there for an hour or so, until Draco quietly came back to bed, plagued by thoughts he hadn't been lucid enough to have until then. He tried to pretend he was asleep. It didn't fool Draco.
"You're not sleeping?" He sounded like someone who was trying to hide that he'd been crying.
"Uh-uh."
"Did you hear me? On the phone?"
Harry'd been sitting in the dark for an hour so he could make out Draco's features just fine in the faint moonlight. He was looking at the ceiling, probably trying to come up with something clever to say to make Harry feel better. He felt the urge to put him out of his misery.
"I manipulated you," he said it all at once, like that it was all said.
Draco turned to look at him. "What?"
"I'm sorry. I do this all the time. I can't help it. When people- when I feel- I go and do something self-destructive. To make them come back." And then again, for good measure, "I can't help it. You can tell him that. You could explain. He'll understand."
"Don't be ridiculous," Draco said, reaching out. But Harry moved away from him. He was - he felt, at least - sober for the first time in weeks.
"You regret it," Harry said. It should have been a question, but came out like a verdict.
"I don't regret it."
"You were crying," he accused, as if it were a crime.
"Of course I- Harry. It's- God dammit." He pulled himself up and leaned on the headboard, rubbing his eyes with frantic movements. "God damnit."
"I'm sorry," Harry whispered, words almost stuck in the back of his throat.
"Don't- stop it, Harry. It has - Let me be clear," he turned to look him in the eyes, "I broke up with Camille because I'm not in love with him anymore. Haven't been for a long time. It has nothing - there's nothing you could have done to manipulate me, okay?"
"You broke up with him after you found me high out of my mind, Draco. You did it because you felt guilty. This isn't right. Nothing about this" - he gestured around, as if to point to something relevant, but nothing was there - "is right." He was realizing things just as he was saying them, an ebbing ache pulling at him from the depths of his mind, making him go on, press on. "You don't want to be here."
"Jesus. Fuck," Draco choked, burying his face into his hands again.
"You're sick of me."
Draco let down his hands and met Harry's eyes.
"I'm not sick of you, Harry," he said, enunciating every word. "I'm just - I'm just… I'm just sad. I'm sorry if right now you're not in a position to process that, but that's all there is to it. I'm just sad."
Harry breathed in and nodded, letting Draco's words settle into meaning slowly, on their own accord.
"I don't know what to say to make you understand- without - I was alone for a very long time. I didn't have friends like I do now. I didn't have a family. Camille was the only thing I had for a very long time. Just because I'm not in love with him anymore doesn't mean I don't - Goddamnit."
Harry reached out ever so slightly, lessening the distance between them. Draco picked up on it instantaneously and met him halfway, a mess of limbs trying to come together.
"... should have done it a long time ago. I was just so scared - Jesus."
"Alright," Harry conceded, wrapping his arms around him, holding him for once. He felt so small in his arms, when he usually felt so big, so broad, the other way around. He kissed the top of his head, flushed with embarrassment at having been so bare, so needy. At having asked so much from someone who didn't owe him anything.
Covers drawn up to his eyes, Harry watched Draco rummaging through the backpack of clothes he'd brought over one evening. He looked vulnerable, dressed in a faded t-shirt and some shorts he found in Harry's wardrobe. His mark so clearly visible on his bare, skinny arms. The color of it was so intense it seemed to swallow the soft, morning light around it. His skin was gray, his eyes were pulled downwards, like heavy curtains. By the time he found what he was looking for and stepped into the bathroom to change into work robes, Harry had fallen back asleep.
That evening, Harry didn't ask him to sleep over and Draco didn't volunteer either.
Draco hugged him tight before he left. Harry raised up on his toes so he could press his cheek against Draco's. He could feel Ron's eyes burning on the back of his neck.
"I'll see you tomorrow," Draco said softly, arms wrapped around him.
"See you tomorrow," Harry replied, letting go.