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mildlunacyso, i listened to too much coldplay while hungry and sick with cold (as i am too lazy to take my next dose of cold-medicine), so here comes weird h/d fic sort of in response to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
hackthis' `unlabeled'. but not really.
Disclaimer: JK Rowling owns what I don't, which is everything.
Warning: slash. H/D. well, obviously. this is me, here.
Author's note: First line and vague idea of separation taken from "Unlabeled", by Zahra. Could be considered a follow-up to that fic.
~~what follows.
It wasn't a grand love, but they fit. In small ways, in ways they didn't question, in ways they couldn't understand. He'd look at him and he wouldn't need to say anything. They'd said everything already. It was over, it was all over, and he had nowhere else to go, nowhere else to turn. Any insult was ancient history, and any declaration of love seemed to be merely a retreat behind cliche. He didn't love him, and he didn't hate him, not anymore.
So it disturbs him to realize that somehow, at some point when his attention was elsewhere, and he wasn't looking, he began to need him. It just isn't the same, being alone with himself. He isn't the same. He's restless, unable to breathe as deeply as he'd like. The rooms he's in smell empty, merely air and dust and the underlying sourness that makes him think of white paint.
The last thing he sees before he goes to sleep is silver, a slice of silver like the moon, hiding behind his own eyes, haunting him. Those eyes seem to follow him even into darkness.
He dreams of wandering across abandoned fields, the dark shapes of trees leaping at him, shadows dragging at his feet. He is alone, and he feels like the shadows are waiting for him to realize that he has nowhere to go, that he'd left home never to return, before they swim across his skin at last.
They were together because they wanted to do something wrong, to rip apart the fabric that held their lives together. Scatter all the pieces in a sort of hopeless defiance. He wasn't drawn to him. He was repelled. That made everything safe, didn't it? Maybe after enough people die, you just don't want to be who you used to be anymore. And then they merely made up a new law, a new definition, a new way to fit together when they should have fallen apart.
He hadn't considered the difficulty in scattering when you just feel every piece of yourself you discarded fly straight to the other, in pure magnetic abandon.
And maybe he hated him for that, when he hated him.
In the dream, he turns and turns and turns. The leaves are falling everywhere, all around him, though the trees are bare, and the petals are falling though there are no flowers. The sun is rising and setting in an endless circle, and he could never understand, could never explain, because as soon as he'd have said it, the air shifts, the meaning changes. He tries to keep hold of himself, of some sort of purpose, but he can't even understand what he's running after, except possibly his own shadow. There are only these feelings loose within him, the suspicions he resists, the ever-present fear of release and abandonment, but it's too late. He knows he's already alone. Sometimes he feels his mind dance ahead of him, just as his emotions lag behind him, and he's just alone, and there's nothing more to run from, and all the shadows are still.
The moon is there, then, silver and distant, and he tries to hate it but he can't, not anymore. It tastes bitter on his tongue, bitter like he thinks love would taste, and the distance doesn't make it bearable after all.
When he wakes up, it is still night. The moon has gone behind a cloud, and he's cold, sitting by the window, staring at the stars-- silver and yellow and bright red. He never realized they had so many colors. He never knew they could move and flicker and pulse, and finally flicker out.
He throws his robe on, puts on his fuzzy slippers, rocks back on the balls of his feet, grinning helplessly in the knowledge that he's about to do something completely insane. He'd missed that feeling. He opens the window, grabbing his broomstick, balancing easily on the ledge. He feels the wind, nipping his cheeks and stinging his fingers. It's cold out, and he becomes aware that his pajamas are thin, loose cotton. He shivers convulsively, feeling every nerve in his body tingle with an unnameable feeling, and he fights off a wave of dizziness. He could fall, and die, and no one would save him, not even himself.
His grip on the broom is steady, and he breathes deeply, watching a pale blue star move closer to the distant horizon. It is sinking, and yet it evens out somewhere right above the far-off dark brush of trees, just floating there, no longer moving.
He doesn't move either, staring at it. Some things only go so far, and then they stop, neither rising nor falling. Refusing to resolve themselves. He sighs, feeling not very resolved at all.
It's not that he wants him back. It's not that anything is different. He's certainly the same, and if he thought about it, he'd agree that it's an exercise in futility, and he'd agree that he didn't know what he was doing. What was he going to say?
"Come back, I think I'll sleep better at night?"
"Come back, maybe I could pretend you're just a part of the decor?"
"Come back, just don't speak to me?"
Maybe he could just stop thinking about it, but that never seemed to work before. If he stopped thinking, things fell apart faster, and his heart sunk faster, and he began to feel like he was falling even when he flew. His grip on his broomstick tightens, and he closes his eyes. What was he doing? What is he doing now?
And then he's flying, perpendicular to the stars.
However long it takes, he'll get there. He'll knock on the other's window, and he would say nothing. He would be the message as well as the messenger. The letters would be written on his body, dipped in his eyes, hidden underneath his skin.
He's cold, and tired, and almost painfully awake. The sky is lightening, and his glasses keep sliding down the bridge of his nose, making him have to right them periodically. He breathes in a continuous rhythm, trying hard not to think, not to expect anything. He just wants to -be- there, and maybe he could just go to sleep, and maybe he wouldn't dream this time. Maybe he could just fall asleep this once, even if just for an hour or two. It would be enough. He could go back, then.
When he sights the window, it is because it is glowing with yellow light, the only bright and open window in the whole house. His heart beats so rapidly he begins to gasp, the dizziness returning. Now that he's here, he wants to leave more than anything. More than even that, he wants to curl up and fall into darkness next to the other's distant warmth, which always seems to be both the hottest and the coldest object in his universe.
Slipping in through the window before he even realizes it, he feels his breath stop altogether.
There's no one in the bed, and it looks like there hadn't been for days. It's completely pristine, pure silky green stretched across a surface wide enough for five. The oil lamp burns steadily on the wall above it, illuminating his portrait.
Harry refuses to look at it, simply standing there, staring at the empty bed.
He is tired. Too tired to simply turn around and fly back home. He sighs, telling himself he knew something like this would happen, he knew it and he'd ignored it, and he was just facing the consequences. No one could run away from the obvious forever.
He sleeps well, wrapping his arms around the pillow, which smells of lavender. Draco never smelled of lavender, with him. Draco.... Draco never had anything to do with their sheets or their coffee mugs or their choice of flowers on the windowsill. He said he hated flowers, and all that sentimental rubbish.
Sometimes Harry had wondered if Draco meant that, but then, one had to wonder whether Draco meant anything he said. He probably didn't. It didn't matter.
When he wakes up, it is still morning, and the portrait above the bed is smiling at him in a way that makes Harry shiver uncomfortably. He wants to tell him to go the hell away and stop bloody smirking like he knows something Harry doesn't, but catches himself. First of all, telling Draco not to do something always encouraged him. The bastard always -was- a bottomless cauldron of perversity. Besides, he's the one who needs to leave. And he does.
By the time he reaches his own window, he could care less if he's returning to his lonely flat alone, no better off than when he'd left. He just wants a shower and some coffee. Definitely coffee, the blacker the better. Perhaps he could even cook something or other-- something just for himself. Something no one else would want. He could do that now, after all. Good opportunities like that shouldn't go to waste simply because... simply because....
Someone seems to be standing on the ledge, blocking his way, and for a moment time stands still and tries to go in reverse. It's impossible. Surreal. He'd been quite clear, hadn't he? He didn't want this. He'd been so clear. He can't really remember what exactly that clarity entailed, but he'd been clear, that much is still certain to him.
His mouth opens and closes, soundlessly, and he couldn't have spoken a word if he wanted to. Then again, neither could the one staring straight back at him, his silver-moon eyes reminding Harry of nighttime and dreams he'd rather not remember.
Draco smirks and turns his back to him, dropping lightly as a cat onto the carpet by their bed. Except it's not their bed at all. It is his. It is just his, now.
As he follows, Harry wonders if the pillows smell of lavender. He's vaguely afraid to check.
The only scent that reaches him is that of fresh-brewed coffee, along with something sweeter and more tangy, that seems a part of him. It fits, as if it had always been here, waiting for him to return, as if it wasn't just a fantasy. Draco's scent leads him to the kitchen. Or maybe it follows.
He can't believe it's this easy. There he is, not looking at him, making breakfast with precise, economical motions. In Harry's other pajamas.
Just a fantasy. Rather like walking behind Draco, wrapping his arms around him from behind, burying his nose in that shoulder, testing for lavender and stray scents of leaf and wind. It couldn't be happening, and it really isn't. It isn't.
This isn't happening, so maybe that's why his fingers wrap around Draco's moving hands, and he hears himself say, "Want any help with that?"
As if there'd been no interruption. As if he wanted to find an excuse to stand there, his body fitted so tightly against Draco's back that he fancies he could feel the other's breath in his own chest.
And then Draco turns around and finally looks at him. "No," he says. "This is the easy part."
Right then, he finds he doesn't quite want to know what follows, but maybe he knows what remains.
~~
hackthis' `unlabeled'. but not really.Disclaimer: JK Rowling owns what I don't, which is everything.
Warning: slash. H/D. well, obviously. this is me, here.
Author's note: First line and vague idea of separation taken from "Unlabeled", by Zahra. Could be considered a follow-up to that fic.
~~what follows.
It wasn't a grand love, but they fit. In small ways, in ways they didn't question, in ways they couldn't understand. He'd look at him and he wouldn't need to say anything. They'd said everything already. It was over, it was all over, and he had nowhere else to go, nowhere else to turn. Any insult was ancient history, and any declaration of love seemed to be merely a retreat behind cliche. He didn't love him, and he didn't hate him, not anymore.
So it disturbs him to realize that somehow, at some point when his attention was elsewhere, and he wasn't looking, he began to need him. It just isn't the same, being alone with himself. He isn't the same. He's restless, unable to breathe as deeply as he'd like. The rooms he's in smell empty, merely air and dust and the underlying sourness that makes him think of white paint.
The last thing he sees before he goes to sleep is silver, a slice of silver like the moon, hiding behind his own eyes, haunting him. Those eyes seem to follow him even into darkness.
He dreams of wandering across abandoned fields, the dark shapes of trees leaping at him, shadows dragging at his feet. He is alone, and he feels like the shadows are waiting for him to realize that he has nowhere to go, that he'd left home never to return, before they swim across his skin at last.
They were together because they wanted to do something wrong, to rip apart the fabric that held their lives together. Scatter all the pieces in a sort of hopeless defiance. He wasn't drawn to him. He was repelled. That made everything safe, didn't it? Maybe after enough people die, you just don't want to be who you used to be anymore. And then they merely made up a new law, a new definition, a new way to fit together when they should have fallen apart.
He hadn't considered the difficulty in scattering when you just feel every piece of yourself you discarded fly straight to the other, in pure magnetic abandon.
And maybe he hated him for that, when he hated him.
In the dream, he turns and turns and turns. The leaves are falling everywhere, all around him, though the trees are bare, and the petals are falling though there are no flowers. The sun is rising and setting in an endless circle, and he could never understand, could never explain, because as soon as he'd have said it, the air shifts, the meaning changes. He tries to keep hold of himself, of some sort of purpose, but he can't even understand what he's running after, except possibly his own shadow. There are only these feelings loose within him, the suspicions he resists, the ever-present fear of release and abandonment, but it's too late. He knows he's already alone. Sometimes he feels his mind dance ahead of him, just as his emotions lag behind him, and he's just alone, and there's nothing more to run from, and all the shadows are still.
The moon is there, then, silver and distant, and he tries to hate it but he can't, not anymore. It tastes bitter on his tongue, bitter like he thinks love would taste, and the distance doesn't make it bearable after all.
When he wakes up, it is still night. The moon has gone behind a cloud, and he's cold, sitting by the window, staring at the stars-- silver and yellow and bright red. He never realized they had so many colors. He never knew they could move and flicker and pulse, and finally flicker out.
He throws his robe on, puts on his fuzzy slippers, rocks back on the balls of his feet, grinning helplessly in the knowledge that he's about to do something completely insane. He'd missed that feeling. He opens the window, grabbing his broomstick, balancing easily on the ledge. He feels the wind, nipping his cheeks and stinging his fingers. It's cold out, and he becomes aware that his pajamas are thin, loose cotton. He shivers convulsively, feeling every nerve in his body tingle with an unnameable feeling, and he fights off a wave of dizziness. He could fall, and die, and no one would save him, not even himself.
His grip on the broom is steady, and he breathes deeply, watching a pale blue star move closer to the distant horizon. It is sinking, and yet it evens out somewhere right above the far-off dark brush of trees, just floating there, no longer moving.
He doesn't move either, staring at it. Some things only go so far, and then they stop, neither rising nor falling. Refusing to resolve themselves. He sighs, feeling not very resolved at all.
It's not that he wants him back. It's not that anything is different. He's certainly the same, and if he thought about it, he'd agree that it's an exercise in futility, and he'd agree that he didn't know what he was doing. What was he going to say?
"Come back, I think I'll sleep better at night?"
"Come back, maybe I could pretend you're just a part of the decor?"
"Come back, just don't speak to me?"
Maybe he could just stop thinking about it, but that never seemed to work before. If he stopped thinking, things fell apart faster, and his heart sunk faster, and he began to feel like he was falling even when he flew. His grip on his broomstick tightens, and he closes his eyes. What was he doing? What is he doing now?
And then he's flying, perpendicular to the stars.
However long it takes, he'll get there. He'll knock on the other's window, and he would say nothing. He would be the message as well as the messenger. The letters would be written on his body, dipped in his eyes, hidden underneath his skin.
He's cold, and tired, and almost painfully awake. The sky is lightening, and his glasses keep sliding down the bridge of his nose, making him have to right them periodically. He breathes in a continuous rhythm, trying hard not to think, not to expect anything. He just wants to -be- there, and maybe he could just go to sleep, and maybe he wouldn't dream this time. Maybe he could just fall asleep this once, even if just for an hour or two. It would be enough. He could go back, then.
When he sights the window, it is because it is glowing with yellow light, the only bright and open window in the whole house. His heart beats so rapidly he begins to gasp, the dizziness returning. Now that he's here, he wants to leave more than anything. More than even that, he wants to curl up and fall into darkness next to the other's distant warmth, which always seems to be both the hottest and the coldest object in his universe.
Slipping in through the window before he even realizes it, he feels his breath stop altogether.
There's no one in the bed, and it looks like there hadn't been for days. It's completely pristine, pure silky green stretched across a surface wide enough for five. The oil lamp burns steadily on the wall above it, illuminating his portrait.
Harry refuses to look at it, simply standing there, staring at the empty bed.
He is tired. Too tired to simply turn around and fly back home. He sighs, telling himself he knew something like this would happen, he knew it and he'd ignored it, and he was just facing the consequences. No one could run away from the obvious forever.
He sleeps well, wrapping his arms around the pillow, which smells of lavender. Draco never smelled of lavender, with him. Draco.... Draco never had anything to do with their sheets or their coffee mugs or their choice of flowers on the windowsill. He said he hated flowers, and all that sentimental rubbish.
Sometimes Harry had wondered if Draco meant that, but then, one had to wonder whether Draco meant anything he said. He probably didn't. It didn't matter.
When he wakes up, it is still morning, and the portrait above the bed is smiling at him in a way that makes Harry shiver uncomfortably. He wants to tell him to go the hell away and stop bloody smirking like he knows something Harry doesn't, but catches himself. First of all, telling Draco not to do something always encouraged him. The bastard always -was- a bottomless cauldron of perversity. Besides, he's the one who needs to leave. And he does.
By the time he reaches his own window, he could care less if he's returning to his lonely flat alone, no better off than when he'd left. He just wants a shower and some coffee. Definitely coffee, the blacker the better. Perhaps he could even cook something or other-- something just for himself. Something no one else would want. He could do that now, after all. Good opportunities like that shouldn't go to waste simply because... simply because....
Someone seems to be standing on the ledge, blocking his way, and for a moment time stands still and tries to go in reverse. It's impossible. Surreal. He'd been quite clear, hadn't he? He didn't want this. He'd been so clear. He can't really remember what exactly that clarity entailed, but he'd been clear, that much is still certain to him.
His mouth opens and closes, soundlessly, and he couldn't have spoken a word if he wanted to. Then again, neither could the one staring straight back at him, his silver-moon eyes reminding Harry of nighttime and dreams he'd rather not remember.
Draco smirks and turns his back to him, dropping lightly as a cat onto the carpet by their bed. Except it's not their bed at all. It is his. It is just his, now.
As he follows, Harry wonders if the pillows smell of lavender. He's vaguely afraid to check.
The only scent that reaches him is that of fresh-brewed coffee, along with something sweeter and more tangy, that seems a part of him. It fits, as if it had always been here, waiting for him to return, as if it wasn't just a fantasy. Draco's scent leads him to the kitchen. Or maybe it follows.
He can't believe it's this easy. There he is, not looking at him, making breakfast with precise, economical motions. In Harry's other pajamas.
Just a fantasy. Rather like walking behind Draco, wrapping his arms around him from behind, burying his nose in that shoulder, testing for lavender and stray scents of leaf and wind. It couldn't be happening, and it really isn't. It isn't.
This isn't happening, so maybe that's why his fingers wrap around Draco's moving hands, and he hears himself say, "Want any help with that?"
As if there'd been no interruption. As if he wanted to find an excuse to stand there, his body fitted so tightly against Draco's back that he fancies he could feel the other's breath in his own chest.
And then Draco turns around and finally looks at him. "No," he says. "This is the easy part."
Right then, he finds he doesn't quite want to know what follows, but maybe he knows what remains.
~~