Author's note: This is a gift fic for slashychick666 on LJ. The song for this fic is Dancing by Elisa, which you can download from my LJ under this story.
Sakai Michiba presents:
Dancing (on our knees together)
I didn't ask you to do that for me.
I didn't ask you to do that for me…
Don't…care…
My hands were shaking as I punched the ground next to you, and you coughed up a mouthful of blood. I wanted to make some nasty, snarky comment, but I didn't, I didn't. My fingers caught a drop of that blood, and I was lifting it for inspection when you caught my hand. You were crying, like that day, and my chest ached. People were sobbing in the background, sobbing and cheering and jumping in the air, whooping, but I was there, shaking and knelt with you in the middle of the battlefield. You weren't crying for the same reasons. Leave me. For Merlin's sake, leave me.
I didn't.
My hands are shaking as I wake up from the nightmare, and I roll onto my side to look for you, but you're not in bed. "Malfoy?" I call, and I hear quiet laughing deep inside the house. My feet are bare when they hit the floorboards, the freezing cold floorboards, and I curl my toes in the cold. Why do you have to do this? Why can't you ever be in bed with me when I wake up in the morning? I can't help but smile as I hear another giggle, and I peek my head out of the bedroom door. "Maaaalfoy…"
There is a wild, silly scream, and you dash past me from the depths of the—our—house, naked save for the skivvies on your head. They're mine. I break into a run behind you, laughing quietly, and when I catch you from behind, you lean back into my embrace and tilt your head up. This is a good day, will be a good day, and I whisper a kiss across your bottom lip. "Good morning," you murmur, and I touch the tips of our noses. "I love you."
I love you, too, on your good days, and I suppose that it is this love that gets us through the bad ones. You were never the same after it happened, after you grabbed the Horcruxes from my arms. "I love you, Potter," you snapped, your normally cold grey eyes flooded with emotion, as you tucked each Horcrux into the front of your robes. You ignored me when I asked you what you were doing, why on earth you were telling me, of all people, that you loved them, and in the middle of all the madness of the final battle, you leaned right over and kissed me. "Doesn't matter why," you whispered.
I was floored, but not for long. Voldemort was advancing, and I was paralysed with fear. I couldn't kill him; Malfoy had the Horcruxes. I lifted my wand, but his was already lifted, his mouth moving, and the world went silent in a flash of gold. I was dead, I was surely dead…
No. Sound suddenly hit me like a train, and I was reeling with the impact. You were there, on the ground, smoking copiously as your robes burned, and I realised what had happened. You'd leapt in front of the Killing Curse, Horcruxes tied to your chest, and the damned curse had hit them, had destroyed them and rebounded. Voldemort was dead. Voldemort was dead and you, YOU killed him. I dropped to my knees.
"I didn't ask you to do that for me…"
You see me lapse into thought and you frown, and my arms tighten around you. "Harry?" you ask, and you look very frightened. "Harry, is it Voldemort? Is he here?" You turn into me, and you're clinging tightly to my shirt when I shake my head.
"No, no, he's dead. You know he's dead," I insist, and you're shaking as I run my fingers through your hair. "You know he's dead, Draco...He's not coming for you."
"But what if he does?"
God, you were so normal, even after you threw yourself in front of the curse. Hermione said that there could be repercussions, that there was old, evil magic in those Horcruxes, but you laughed it off. We were seeing each other after you got out of the hospital, after they healed your internal bleeding, and even now it seems so strange.
There was a knock at my front door, and I extricated myself from my chair and the book I had been immersed in. Another knock, impatient, and I rolled my eyes before I opened the door. There you were, at eleven in the evening, with the night air carrying your hair in its current, and you were shivering. "Merlin," I whispered, "it's freezing. Come in, come in."
You didn't move. You just stared at me with those eyes, warm again for the second time in their eighteen years even though the rest of you was so cold. "Draco," I whispered, and your face shattered before you stumbled into me. "Draco, Draco, for fuck's sake, what's wrong?!" Your arms were secure around my neck, and I was embracing you, pulling you into the house and shutting the cold out with the front door. You were shaking your head against my chest, and we stumbled together, falling onto the couch.
"I shouldn't have lived," you choked, and you met my eyes, seeing the horror in them. "No, don't look at me like that! I should've died back there!"
"No, no, you shouldn't have," I gasped as tears spilled over my own cheeks at the thought of you dying back there, and this seemed to be all the confirmation you needed. You pulled me down on top of you, and I was kissing you then not because I loved you, but because you were so beautiful.
You love baths on your good days. We have a large bathtub, large enough for the both of us, and you love it when I put bubble-bath in the water. "Thank you, Mother," you whispered, and I frown at the term. Your eyes flicker up to meet mine, and for a moment, I see a flicker of sanity there, and my heart thumps in my ears. "You're…not…"
"No, no, I'm not," I breathe, and we are tangling around each other in the bubble-bath. "No, no, no, I'm Harry…" You are nodding, and there is sanity in your eyes, and your hands are shaking as you lean up to kiss me.
"God, I'm so scared," you whisper against the corner of my mouth, and I squeeze you tightly, reassuringly. "I can't control what I say…or what I do…It's not me, it's not me, Harry…"
The first signs began to show about two months after the final battle. You were sleeping later and later, and you didn't recognise me when you woke up, even though it was just for a few seconds. "Father, why are you in bed with me?" you would ask, and I would turn my head away until you whispered my name and curled up to my back. You were always shaking afterward, but you did not seem to know what was happening.
You did not recognise me for longer stretches of time, then there were days when you did not recognise me at all. You would run from me, screaming, sobbing, and you would hit me. I never hit you back, but held you close until you stopped screaming, until you were quiet, and when you slept, I cried until I slept, too.
"Is it you now?" I ask. God, it's been weeks since you opened your eyes, truly opened your eyes, and looked at me. You nod, and tears spill over my eyelids as I pull our chests flush together. Your hands are in my hair, and I am practically tearing at you, my nails digging into your flesh in an attempt to keep you here, to keep you real, and you are gasping my name as my nails find purchase on your hips. Water is splashing out of the tub, and we are sliding on the porcelain, and I love you, I love you, I love you. My tongue is pushing into your mouth, and I'm tasting you, not the other you, not the you that scares me or makes me break down sobbing, but the you that stumbled into my arms that fateful night.
Another wave of water hits the floor, and shampoo bottles hit the floor, breaking, but God, I don't care, as I roll with you, pressing your back into the porcelain, and you're moaning into my mouth. Your hands are tangled in my hair, and I gasp as you pull it, tug it until handfuls are coming loose in your fingers, but the pain is nothing compared to the joy I feel at having you, you, with me now. Your hips lift against mine, and I begin rubbing our cocks together, needing you, wanting to fuck you but so fucking terrified that I'll look down and it won't be you. I'm thrusting my hips against yours, feeling your hands wrapped around both of us simultaneously, and we have created waves in the bath large enough to splash onto the floor with my every movement against you.
I hate that I come in moments, I'm so happy to have you and not the happy-go-lucky Draco or the lost Draco or the Draco that wants to run from me. I hate that I'm gasping out my orgasm against you in no more than two minutes, but you don't seem to care, and you're coming, too, and I collapse against you, inhaling the fresh scent of your wet hair. Your hands are shaking on my back, and we are breathing together.
I never know what to say to you when you're sane. Together, we get out of the bath, and you're leaning against me, and I'm whispering about things that have happened. Hermione and Ron are having a baby, Fred and George opened a third shop in Madrid, I got promoted the week before. You're nodding and listening, but these are not the sorts of things you want to hear. I won't tell you how long you've been out this time, and you know why. You know that it will only make you crazier, knowing how long you've been out.
"Harry?" you ask as we sit on the bed, wrapped in our towels, and I smile over at you, having to smile for you. "You won't leave me, will you?"
I laugh, and I lean over, and I kiss you. Never, never, "Never…" Immense relief shines through in your eyes, and you're whispering how you love me, how you would die without me, and then you blink. You are on your feet in a moment, towel hitting the ground, and I have only a moment before we go tearing through the house, you screaming and me trying to catch you. You rip open the front door, and I chase you, naked, out into the snow and to the tree line of the woods. You're screaming when I catch you and pull you close to my chest, and you're sobbing as we sink to our knees.
We are dancing on our knees together in the cold and the wind.
You're not the one who's crazy.