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if i could never give you peace
drarry (E) | 17,495 | read on ao3
Eleven years after the Battle of Hogwarts, Aurors Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy are forcibly brought together by a new case that's bound to reopen old wounds. Enter a Firewhisky problem, prejudices that never really go away, and an obsession as old as time.
They all talk about it, what Harry’s done, all the lives he’s saved, turning his achievements into legends, his life into myth. But all he’s left with, in the hours of the night when his apartment is empty and no evil at the other end of the wand to fight off, are his mistakes. Those he has to mourn by himself, crack open and untangle and put to rest alone. He’s never quite managed to. “I did it,” he breathes, voice gravelly, like the words are cutting into him on the way out. “I deserved it,” Malfoy replies. His voice sounds different. It makes Harry look at his mouth. Makes him want to crawl out of his own skin. “I don’t know if we did. Not anymore.” His hand moves of its own accord, fingers twitching when they touch the silver line in the middle of Malfoy’s chest, a surge of electricity traveling all the way up his arm, down his spine. It feels a bit like touching the past, all the things Harry’s been afraid of concentrated right there, in the pale expanse of skin. The muscles in Malfoy’s chest jump at the touch, but he doesn’t pull away, so very warm in Harry’s hands. “We all have to pay for our sins,” he says, and in spite of it being almost a whisper, it fills the entire room. “The price of mine is just more visible.” Harry knows he doesn’t only mean the scars on his chest. He wonders if back in France, Malfoy can dare to show his forearms. “Yes, well—I wish we could stop. We were just boys.” Harry presses his thumb to the scar he’s been tracing, watching the skin around it turn red. How hard would it be, he wonders, to claw into Malfoy’s chest. To dig himself in, to hide himself there. The one place no one would think to look. Malfoy grabs his arm, and Harry thinks this is it, he’s gone too far. But Malfoy doesn’t stop him, doesn’t push him away. Instead, he lets his fingers brush the inside of Harry’s wrist, feeling the flutter of his pulse. He’s gentle, so gentle that it makes Harry want to bite even more. “We were never just boys, and if you still think that, you’re more of a fool than I thought.” Harry doesn’t answer, spreading his palm over the silver marbling, and Malfoy’s holding onto him, still, as he presses in, walks his hand all the way to his throat. There’s a touch of red to Malfoy’s ears, a sheen to his forehead, but when Harry catches his eye again, his gaze is smouldering. It strikes Harry, like lightning, that for all his cowardice and wimpiness as a child, Draco Malfoy might just be a braver man than he is. He doesn’t know what else to call this, his ability to call things by their name like it costs nothing. Because when Harry talks, all he seems to do is break things.
written as part of @hd-wireless 2023, which has been an absolute blast. if you're looking for some really great drarry, i urge you to check out the entire collection here.
