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drarrily-we-row-along · 1 year

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Arsonist's Lullaby

As you may have guessed, this one is inspired by "Arsonist's Lullaby" by Hosier. cw: arson (as you might have deduced, no one is hurt and they're burning their own property)

Draco was doing that thing with his hands again. The thing Harry had noticed first in 8th year and then hadn't stopped being able to notice in the past five years since.

It's what had drawn him to Draco in the first place, like a moth to flame (pun very much intended). There was something completely mesmerizing about watching him snap his fingers and then cradle the blue flames in his palm absentmindedly while he talked, or read a book, or performed any number of mindless tasks. It was sexy as fuck.

"You're staring again," Draco murmured, not raising his eyes from his book as the fire danced across his knuckles.

Harry hummed, "You're doing the fire again."

"You're as obsessed with fire as I am," he said, mouth curling at the corner.

"Mostly obsessed with you," Harry replied and Draco laughed and finally looked up for his book.

He stared at Harry for a moment, the fire winding its way through his fingers the way some people rolled coins along their knuckles. "You know," Draco said, voice a hint too casual and Harry internally perked up at what was sure to be a fantastic confession, "I thought it would end."

"What would?" Harry asked after a moment when it was clear that Draco wasn't going to go on without a bit of prompting.

His silver eyes latched onto Harry and his head tilted as he looked at him, like he was trying to parse something out. "The desire to light things on fire," he said and something hot flared in the pit of Harry's stomach.

"Tell me more," Harry said softly, voice low and seductive in a way that it normally wasn't outside of their bedroom.

Draco's pupils dilated sharply, "when I was a child," he said, the fire burning brighter in his hand for a moment, "I would sit for hours and stare at the flames in the manor's giant fire place. My parents couldn't understand it, they'd find me just sitting there, doing nothing but watching, like I was transfixed."

And frankly, Harry could understand that; he could watch Draco hold fire all day.

"When she caught me, Auntie Bella would say, 'don't ever tame your demons, Draco,' then she'd wink and tell me, 'but always keep them on a leash.'"

"What did that mean?"

Draco gave him a little smile, eyes flashing, "she could sense the bit of chaos, the desire for destruction, I think."

Harry hummed, "What did you want to destroy?"

"Oh, it changes," he replied easily. "When I was sixteen, the last time she said those words to me, I wanted to burn the entire world to the ground."

A shiver raced up Harry's spine, he remembered feeling the same way at sixteen. "And now?" he asked.

"I always thought it would go away," Draco said, "after I fell in love, after I had given the fire within me permission to consume someone the way I've consumed you."

Harry made a soft noise, low in his throat in agreement.

"The way I've let myself be consumed," he added. "But there's still this desire to burn down the past, to start fresh."

He nodded slowly, "that makes sense, actually."

"What if-" Draco started before snapping his jaw shut and clenching his fist around the fire to put it out.

"What if..." Harry prompted, moving to straddle Draco's hips, looking down at his lovely face.

Draco swallowed and rested his head against the back of the sofa, staring up at him. "What if we did start over? What if we moved to the states, or moved to some muggle city? What if-"

"Yes," Harry said, leaning in and pressing a kiss to Draco's lips, fingers skimming up his neck. "Godric, yes," he said, living in the world as the chosen one had only gotten harder since defeating Voldemort.

"What if I burned down the Manor first?" he whispered.

He felt his eyebrows hit his hair line, "What?"

Draco shrugged nonchalantly, but Harry could see the tension in his jaw, the fear of being too much. "Just," he sighed, "no one lives there. It's full of dark, cursed magic and even darker, more cursed memories." He blinked up at Harry, "What if I burned it first?"

He stared at him for a long moment, just searching his face, and finding only earnest desire there. "Alright," he said finally.

"Yeah?" Draco asked.

Harry nodded and leaned in to kiss him again, Draco's palms skimmed up his back and sides, touching him reverently.

"Pack for us?" he asked when he pulled back.

"Everything?"

Draco shrugged, "not furniture."

He closed his eyes and gathered his magic for a moment, letting it pool in his gut before holding out a hand and snapping. The contents of the flat organized themselves into boxes, shrinking down until everything fit into a tote that they could easily put into the back of the beat up old Subaru that Harry had purchased and refit with magic.

"Fucking hot," Draco said, pulling his face down and kissing him soundly.

Harry let himself get swept up in the moment, lost himself in the fire of Draco's kiss, let himself be consumed as Draco's fingers slipped under his shirt, nails raking up his back.

Far too soon in Harry's opinion, Draco was pulling back, flushed and panting. "Drive us as close as we can get to the Manor?" he asked, "then I'll get us through the wards?"

He nodded and stood, tugging Draco up behind him and out the door. The Subaru brought them faithfully through the night to the Manor and Harry parked just on the other side of the wards.

They climbed out of the car and Draco reached for Harry's hand, his cloak billowing dramatically behind him. Harry took it and they were being moved through time and space to a hill where they could see the whole of the Malfoy estate, the Manor centered in front of them.

There was fire flickering in and out of the hand that wasn't clasping Harry's and he watched the other man carefully. "Are you sure about this? You don't have to-"

"No, I know," Draco said. "And there's a part of me that doesn't want to. I loved this home when I was young."

"We could-"

"But it feels all wrong now," he said, shaking his head. "Can't you feel it?" he asked without looking at Harry, "the way that the darkness seeps from this place, it's killing everything around it," he added, pointing to the forest and the meadows, even the yard was brown and dead.

Draco shook his head, "For a little while, it felt like all I had was this fire burning within me, ready to scorch the earth, to wipe out that maniac and everything he stood for. I just feel like there's something more for me out there."

He slid his fingers through Draco's, holding the hand that wasn't currently holding fire. "There is," he promised, raising Draco's knuckles to his lips.

"I don't think that you can tame your demons," he said softly like he wasn't talking to Harry at all. "And I don't think you can keep them on a leash, either," he added. "I think the only thing to do is to destroy them entirely."

Without another word, he released Harry's hand and held up both of his, letting balls of flames build in his palms before hurling them down toward the Manor. As soon as those were sent on their way, he started on two more, then two more, and so on until the entire building was ablaze, flames leaping dozens of feet in the air.

He threw one last ball of fire, then collapsed. Harry dropped with him, reaching out for him and supporting him as they watched the representation of his old life, of everything evil, burn.

What could have been minutes or hours later, they heard the sound of distant sirens and the first few firefighters apparated in, wands blowing streams of Aguamentis at the raging fire.

"Time to go," Draco said, squeezing Harry's hand and apparating directly into the car.

"Where are we headed?" Harry asked, starting the car and punching the button that turned it invisible.

Draco hummed, turning his head and staring at Harry with a thoroughly blissed out, content expression on his face.

He leaned across the center console and kissed him, "You're so," he shook his head and kissed him again, "fucking amazing."

Humming, Draco kissed him back before redirecting his attention to the open sky, "the world's ours. Wherever you want to go," he shrugged, "we're free."

And it never really mattered where they went, there were always plenty of things to find joy in if they were together.

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Read more of my fics inspired by songs

#drarry #arsonists lullaby #what a vibe #hozier is my jam #a little 'be gay and do crimes' feeling #but also just burn down the past that you had no control over and start fresh #maybe a little darker that i usually write- just so you've got a warning #love #running away together #established relationships #ewe #maybe a little morally greyish?

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passivenovember · 1 year

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my holiday exchange fic for yikes_writes!

Billy’s list of hangups is short. You could read it in five minutes. Three, if you don’t give a shit about him at all.

He’s a chameleon. Adaptable. Takes a lot to get him worked up and peeling his own skin back from the bone in an effort to get away, and it’s saved him a lot of grief in his life. Caused a lot of grief, too, when Billy does his own scalping. All the work and all the pain. Makes him vulnerable.

But the thing about Steve Harrington, and Steve Harrington’s house and the unsteady emotions they planted in barren fields last fall, watering and groveling and laboring at every turn until something pale green and fragile sprouted from the soil–the thing about that is, Billy’s raw nerves hit the open air and it doesn’t sting under the weight of Steve’s gaze.

He bleeds, and Steve patches him up.

Nothing Billy ever says or does will leave a mark when raptured by Steve’s soothing, expert presence.

But today Billy feels like an inconvenience.

With his head, bent over the warm compress Steve Frankenstein's from an old sock and a bag of uncooked beans, Steve sniffs and says, "Sorry. Feeling a little under the weather. This is why I didn't want to fuck tonight," Even though he called Billy, rasping low in his ear about how his parents aren't home.

Billy's content to leave it at that.

Colds and bruised ribs and the promise Billy made to himself to be out of Steve's well-conditioned hair in twenty minutes tops.

He doesn't need to know what's got Steve flushed and stuffy.

Just the knowledge of it, that Harrington's spread thin and exhausted, running on half a bottle of cold medicine and a prayer, does something to Billy.

Has him wishing that he could trade places with his Prince. Wrap Steve in a blanket and feed him soup and sloppy, insistent orgasms until Steve's brand new again.

Billy shrugs, instead. Says, "We don't have to fuck," Because Billy's not an animal. He can control himself.

Steve's watery, tired eyes level him with a knowing look.

Billy shuffles on the window seat cushion. Feels warm, cooked all the way through despite the chilled glass mere inches from his skin. Must be the way Harrington's crouched in front of him, looking up at Billy like that, smirking up at Billy like that like there's a joke he's supposed to get.

Billy doesn't get it.

Steve tells him, anyway. "What, you drove all the way across town and you don't want me to bend over real nice for you, baby?"

And Billy would be lying, a tall-tale-having piece of shit if he said those words have no effect on him. That when Steve scoots forward, pressing harder against Billy's ribs like the warmth with heal him to the bone, his cock doesn't fill out against his stomach.

"Just wanna go home and pop a couple aspirin," Billy says through clenched teeth.

Steve doesn't believe him. "You gonna tell me how it happened this time?" He asks, eyes intent on Billy's face.

"Nothing to tell."

Steve shuffles sitting back on his haunches to study Billy's cold, harsh exterior. The hoodie he's wearing sloughs a little to one side, teasing at the strip of dotted skin right above his collarbone. He looks soft, like if Billy were to poke all the sharp, unfiltered edges of his home life into Steve's flesh he could take it. He'd absorb everything, and there'd be nothing left to kick back in Billy's face when he goes home tonight.

"Billy," Steve mumbles, and Billy kisses him.

Hard and desperate with teeth and tongue, eating up every small, pathetic noise Harrington can't choke back. Billy tugs Steve's arms around his neck, uncaring with his compress plops to the ground.

"Your Ribs," Steve moans, but Billy's got his legs under him.

He picks Steve off the ground, staggering toward the unmade mattress of Harrington's flu nest.

The sheets smell like him, linen salty with sweat and brisk with vapor-rub.

Billy wants to roll around in it.

He wants to fuck Steve open. Aches, like the bruises on his ribs, to take Steve apart.

So he does.

Billy devours him, burning through the hurt and the sickness until only the truth remains.

With one phrase, one boot tugged over his pant leg, car keys jingling in time with whatever shitty Holiday commercial is playing on the radio as Steve throws up in his bed, sicker than he’s ever been in his life--Billy opens Pandora's box.

“I’m sorry,” Steve gasps, tears springing to mix with his unearthed stomach acid, “I didn’t mean to throw up, fuck, I’m so sorry--”

“Don’t,” Billy fiddles with his bootlace, wondering how much force it would take to cut his finger off at the knuckle. “Jesus, don’t.”

Apologize.

Fall apart. Beg me to stay.

“Don’t make it a big deal,” Billy says because he never pegged Steve for a crier.

Max is. Just the motion of car-sickness, a singular step toward the riot of her stomach lining, and she’s done.

Steve nods. He winces, like any small noise or sudden movement will bring his head to rumbling disaster. Billy reaches across the mattress, mindful not to press in close to Steve’s back, and clicks the radio off.

Steve’s skin is flushed red. Not love-heart pink, not sunburn fried, but red. Like, McDonald’s fry carton red, and he’s shivering. Steve sits unsure as a toddler faced with a choice.

Help or ego death.

With his arms outstretched but withered in front of him, Steve blinks down at the vomit in his lap like a baby bird who’s scared shitless to fall from his nest, and Billy’s fingers flex against his ankle encased in worn, mud-stained leather to stop from reaching out.

It’s pathetic.

Billy clears his throat. Looks around Steve’s room like maybe the bedroom walls have gone translucent, in the last few minutes. Like the whole Harrington family is waiting to break the sleepy little nest Steve built for them. “Your mom--”

“She’s not home,” Steve gurgles. “She’s never home, you. You know that.”

His nose is already plugged up, already trying to cut off his air supply. Billy considers it a blessing, you know. Lucky red that Steve doesn’t have to smell the vomit.

“I’m sorry,” Steve says again, lip quivering, “I shouldn’t have asked you to come over when I wasn’t feeling good. I didn’t mean to throw up like this, I’m. Shit, I’m so fucking gross, no wonder you never stay with me--”

Billy snatches the leather from his foot. And Steve flinches, like. He’s worried Billy’s gonna take his boot into combat and use it to kill Steve dead for getting the flu.

“What,” Steve tries sweetly, “What are you--”

Billy’s car keys hit the nightstand with a pathetic, deafening ping. Finally relieved that they get their way, for once, and Billy’s giving in to the ache in his bones to stay.

With Steve.

In this fucking house.

He glares down at them, silently blinking a morse-coded reminder that he’s only doing this because there’s no other choice. Harrington’s not like Billy, he’s bronzed baby shoes on the fireplace mantle. He’s aged whiskey and old money and silver spoons full of cough medicine the Help runs out to by on winter nights just like this one.

But all of that amounts to nothing.

Family and money and status–It falls, just like fresh snow. Melts into puddles. Just like Billy, Steve’s going to have to take care of himself, and.

Billy ignores the huge, watery brown eyes that blink up at him. Bigger than they usually are, wider than Billy’s ever seen them, like. Full on Disney princess. Damsel in distress when Billy balls the comforter into a hazardous lump on the floor and tugs Steve off the mattress.

Steve whimpers. “Where are we going?”

“To the bathroom,” Billy snaps. He reminds himself to be gentle. It’s still softer than he’s ever been with anyone, including the time Max sprained her ankle and Billy had to carry her three miles home.

That has to count for something.

They sway, a little, Steve’s sweat sticking Billy’s shirt to his skin. It occurs to Billy, that. In all the months they’ve been doing this, using each other’s assholes as basketball nets and shooting load after load into cavernous pits designed to hold things more than just sex, he’s never been anywhere but the foyer and the staircase and this room.

He was asked, once. Last summer.

Big brown eyes, blinking at him, like always. Searching his face. Nails digging into palms and Billy, resisting the urge to hold Steve’s hands so he wouldn’t hurt himself when he muttered, “Do you want to watch T.V.?”

And there’s this thing, about Steve’s eyes. They store hope like polished snowglobes. They whittle at resolve and they leave people second-guessing and they twinkle, so brightly Billy has to turn away for fear that they’ll see right through the walls Billy repairs, right here, in this house.

Billy said no.

He pretend it was because he had someplace to be after he fucked Steve asleep and followed closely up the winding staircase, and thought to himself that if he walked into the den and saw a mammoth flatscreen television he’d break his fist punching a hole right through Dick Van Dyke’s face.

Because, really, he stopped being mad about Steve’s money right around the time he started loving him. Really, he was hiding in plain sight. Worried to the rotten, jagged core of him what would happen if he got too close. If watching T.V. turned into cuddling, and kissing that led nowhere, just.

Into the safe, comfortable warmth Billy found in Steve’s arms.

So Billy said no.

And he kept saying no, all the way down, until Steve throws up on his mattress and nuzzles into the crook of his neck, cooing softly. “Tired,” He says, “I’m tired, baby let’s go back to bed.”

Billy’s knees are weak. He’s gonna pass out, he’s–

“Where’s your bathroom, pretty boy?”

Steve blinks at him again, as if startled awake. “There’s one in my parent’s wing,” He says, and.

Whatever softness Billy was feeling goes up in a cartoonish plume of feathers ripped from imported pillow sacks. He steels his jaw, half-carrying Steve into the hallway.

Billy can be an asshole about it, later.

Steve gives mumbled, groggy directions. Turn left, it’s at the end of the hall, go past the California king and take another right, the fourth switch turns the mood lighting on. Yes, mood-lighting, Billy, my head hurts–

Steve has to be wrestled into the bathtub.

He cries the whole time, complaining that his shoulders hurt, his eyes are too heavy, and he’s gonna drown if Billy doesn’t sit and keep watch. Better yet, he should strip down and get in, right? Water safety and all that.

“Nice to see the flu didn’t rob you of your sex drive,” Billy says, grinning when Steve waggles his perfect, sweat-dotted eyebrows. “Slut,”

“Only for you, baby,” Steve says.

Billy notices far too late that there’s something warm, blooming in his chest, and. “Whore,” Billy reiterates, turning the hot water on high because whatever this thing is, he’s gonna burn it out of him

He knows it’s a fruitless cause. That this something warm has been taking root for a while now. He keeps a lid on it and tries to pull it up by the roots, normally, but.

Steve coos again at the bubble mix Billy pours for him, one capful so the room doesn’t overflow with champagne-pink clouds, and Billy feels his heart grow three sizes. It hurts. Feels like Steve’s banging both fists against his chest when He leans his groggy head back and blinks those eyes again and says–

“You’ve got the best cock I’ve ever seen,”

Billy shakes his head. “Got any soup in this haunted mansion?”

“I’m serious,” Steve says dreamily, “It’s perfect. It leans a little bit to the side, and you keep it so warm, it's like I’m sticking a lit candle in my ass–”

“You need medicine,” Billy opens the cabinet and finds nothing. It’s beige and empty, five-star hotel empty like no one lives here. “Is there some in your bathroom?”

“Took all of it before you came,” Steve snarks. Like, there. Like, gotcha.

And Billy’s not thrilled about it, but it explains a lot.

Loopy. Loopy little–

“You don’t wanna hear me wax poetic about the kickstand between your legs?” Steve leans all the way back in the tub, legs stretching long and soap-covered out in front of him as he smiles softly at the ceiling.

Billy buries his head in his hands. “Just shut up and burn the sick out of you.”

“Fine, I don’t have to talk about your cock I can talk about other things,” Steve gathers a mound of bubbles in his hands and blows them over the lip of the bathtub, hair sticking out in all directions. “I can talk about your eyes. Wanna talk about your eyes?”

“Steve–”

“They’re so blue,” Steve says. Like Billy doesn’t own a mirror. Like a million cheerleaders haven’t told him they’re gorgeous while they bat their own and try to get him to eat them out.

But this.

This is Steve. And when Steve says,” When I saw you that first day, in the parking lot, you know? Do you remember that first day?” Billy’s sick to his stomach.

He breathes deeply through his nose. “Yeah–”

“I thought you didn’t have iris’. I thought, that guy doesn’t have any color in his eyes,” Steve snorts. “Well, first I thought that you were too pretty to be a guy. Then I thought you were too pretty for Hawkins, that this town would eat your head or something, but then you turned and looked at me and I was like, no. No, he’s got blue eyes. And they’re so blue they’re almost clear. Or at least they were,” Steve says, like a confession, “That first day I saw you.”

Billy sits gingerly on the toilet. Wishes like hell he hadn’t left his book at home.

“Now they’re blue like the sky,” Steve mutters. He lends his chin to the edge of the tub, eyes rolling to ding like stones against Billy’s heart.

Steve splashes, somewhere in the bathtub. “Do you want to run away together?” He asks.

Billy resists the urge to puff his chest. To bare his teeth and say something to wipe that look off Steve’s face before the warm things in Billy’s stomach get too brave. He opens his mouth to say fuck off. You’re high on z-quil. You’re out of your fucking mind if you think I would let you take my hand. You’re dumber than I thought if you believe I wouldn’t fold me down to fit in your back pocket, if you think I wouldn’t drop everything and go anywhere with you.

Instead, Billy clears his throat. “Where would we go?” He asks, because.

In this snow globe world full of pink bubbles and flushed red skin and brown eyes, blowing wide with hope and joy. There’s no harm. If Billy doesn’t speak loud enough, reality won’t hear them. The sky won’t come crashing down, shattering like glass over his daydream.

“I don’t know,” Steve admits quietly. Just as quiet as Billy, playing along. “If your eyes are blue like the sky, maybe they’ll match the ocean, too.”

Billy holds his breath.

“Why do you keep showing up all hurt and bleeding?” Steve asks.

And Billy.

He’s gotta draw the line somewhere. So he clears his throat, wipes the sunrise of belonging from his cheeks, and says, “I’m gonna start a load of laundry,” because that’ll coax the sky to fall. It’ll call reality back to this room, slobbering like dogs at the callous of Billy’s feet.

Has to, right? No one in the history of the world has ever wanted to fuck the emotionally unavailable washerwoman, much less run away–

“You’re not gonna leave, right?” Steve mutters.

It’s not what Billy’s expecting, that. He’d let the game vanish so easily, tension lifting like a gossamer veil

Easy as pie.

Steve floats, a little, arms windmilling in that massive tub to get closer to the edge. Where Billy’s wringing both hands to stop the chorus of he likes you he tolerates you and you love him what’s the fucking problem from all the soft things in his heart.

Billy lets go of his hands, released like doves into the space between them. He brushes the hair off Steve’s scorching hot forehead. “No,” he says roughly, “No, I’m just gonna wash the sheets, okay?”

“And make some hot cocoa,” Steve snaps.

Billy grins. Warming himself by the heat of that fire. “Sure,”

“One for you, too?” Steve narrows his eyes, floating around his pink snow globe. He cranes his head so he never loses sight of Billy, and never lets him free.

–

Billy disappears through Steve’s bedroom window.

It’s dramatic and noisy and too much like Romeo and Juliet. Starcrossed lovers and the thought that if Steve wakes up and sees this, Billy will throw himself out the window to stifle his own embarrassment.

But just like before, Billy has no choice.

The window is wide and bright.

Steve’s words hang over him, like a day of bad weather. He knows that if he pads across the slate of soft carpet to vanish down the stairs and shut the front door behind him, everything that happened tonight will follow like a storm cloud. And Billy will have to cover himself with the neck of his jacket so as not to get wet. And it won’t be snow globe fantasies, anymore, it’ll be real.

Real enough to hurt.

Billy tucks Steve farther under his blanket, still warm from the dryer. In his sleep, Steve places his warm, soft fingers on Billy’s and anchors him there. So Billy stays, crouched and looming, for long enough that it starts to feel strange.

But not real.

In the dark, inky world of nightfall, Billy can unmask his love and it doesn’t count.

–

He shows up to Family Video a few days later and Steve acts like nothing happened.

He’s still happy when the little golden bell dings! And it’s Billy that darkens his doorstep. He still groans. Still says, “Thank God you’re here, I was two seconds from decapitating my hand in the tape rewinder,” but his eyes say something else.

They sparkle.

They whisper I’m so happy to see you. I missed you, where have you been why haven’t you called?

But maybe that's just wishful thinking.

And that girl. The one with the short hair and the chipped nail polish who always looks pissed to see him, tells Steve, “Make it quick,” because she’s the only one free of delusion about what’s going on here.

Billy shoves his hands in his pockets. “Can I talk to you for a minute?” He asks, looking everywhere but at Steve, and still, he doesn’t miss the look that passes like electricity between Harrington and his girlfriend.

Billy wonders if she knows.

What Steve smells like when he’s covered in a sheen of fresh sweat. How his legs shake around Billy’s hips, how they lock together when he says come inside me, please come inside, fill me up. Billy wonders if she’s picked up on it. Finicky and shoddy as the connection is between them.

“Sure,” Steve says casually. His mouth is set in a thin, stubborn line, and there’s an air of detachment. Like it doesn’t matter, either way. Like he was hoping Billy would show up, here, run ragged and angry and isolated as the day he was born, to remind Steve why they would never work.

That Girl takes her place in front of the computer, busying herself with things Billy will never understand and as Steve rounds the corner, beelining toward the back exit, Billy doesn’t miss the sad, pitying stare she levels behind him.

Billy thinks.

Maybe the only one with delusions here is himself.

–-

There’s snow on the ground. Somewhere, rumbling past brick-lined streets and dodging gouged trashcans a truck splatters ice melt, noble in its losing war.

There’s wind, in Billy’s hair.

Ice on the sidewalk.

Steve parks them against the brick wall. Far too close and far too sweet when he asks, “Are you cold?” Like he could move the moon and Saturn to change the seasons.

Billy jams his fingers into his pockets, angry, and can’t wait to get the fuck out of here.

Everything nags at him. Steve’s soft brown eyes, the girl behind the counter, the bruise under Billy’s left rib. Hawkins was just a bad dream. A detour. Still, it wasn’t all bad. He knew it would end, it was always going to end, so it might as well end now.

Billy clears his throat. “Listen–”

“We could go somewhere,” Steve says, sensing like a wayward satellite that something is wrong, here. “Do you wanna go? There’s a coffee shop on main, we could–”

“I don’t. I don’t want to go anywhere,” Billy says sternly. He watches the frosted ground, imagining it transformed into white, warm sand. That he had taken Steve at his offer and even though they gave it a shot and ran away together, they still withered and froze to death.

Predictable.

Billy clears his throat again, wishing for a glass of water. “This will only take a minute, alright?”

Steve nods. “What will?”

“My answer to what you said on Friday.”

“Yeah?” Steve wonders, stepping closer to fend off a sharp, freezing burst of air from the North.

“I know you were sick. Talking out your ass.”

“Billy–”

“No, just.” He chances a look at Steve. His nose is red, already. Like Friday. Like hope. And he might as well be the cause of this. His eyes are soft and kind and the effect it has on Billy makes him feel like things have changed.

Like, maybe, they could–

“I don’t think we should see each other anymore,” Billy tells the asphalt. “Or. Fuck each other, I mean.”

Steve’s eyes are slanted. Huge like they get when he’s been hurt. “Why not?”

Billy’s stomach twists at the sight of it, and he swallows to stop from throwing up. Or embarrassing himself with all the shit his warm feelings urge him to say. Because whether Billy likes it or not, the door is closing.

And he doesn’t like it.

It makes him bleed. Makes him shiver, terrified eyes tracking the hand Steve wants to put on his shoulder to rub warmth back into him. Even now, even still–

“Stop,” Billy gasps. “Stop being so nice to me.”

“No,”

“You have a girlfriend. It’s not supposed to be like this,” Billy shrugs Steve’s hand from his elbow, watching as it topples, the last leaf of fall, against Steve’s leg. “You’re not supposed to do this.”

“You’re full of shit,”

"Fuck you," Billy turns to leave, to disappear, but.

"I don't have a girlfriend," Steve gets in his way, arms wide and vulnerable. "Why would you think that?"

“I never should’ve helped you, I should have let you take care of yourself.” Billy snaps, and.

He wants to say more. Wants to insist that it goes back further, stretching into study sessions and drunken Homecoming parties, and sloppy handjobs far above the thrashing water of Hawkin’s quarry. It trickles into first meetings and clear, lifeless eyes across school parking lots.

Tears, blue as the summer sky, shed against Billy’s pillow over this boy and the hole in Billy’s chest that he couldn’t bare Steve falling into.

Steve is unphased. A masked vigilante. He steels his jaw, asking, “Okay, so why didn’t you leave?” Like he already knows the answer.

Billy wants to punch him. Wants to kiss it better, wants to–

“That’s not who you are, Billy,” Steve says. “You help people. With homework, and if their cars break down on the side of the highway. You give parts of yourself to everyone, even though it’s like pulling teeth. Even though nobody ever does the same in return. It’s just what you do. Kindness from you is so natural, I don’t know why you can’t admit it.”

“I–” Billy tries, grasping at straws. Feels like his tongue is too fat for his mouth. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yeah?” Steve asks. His eyes are watery. Tear swamped. They cling to his lashes, refusing to fall. Refusing to give in. “You’re not the easiest person in the world to fall in love with, Billy. You’re kind of an asshole."

Billy takes a soft, shuddering breath. “You never should’ve fucked me, then.”

“The first time, or—”

“Every time, ever again,” Billy chokes out. He scrubs a hand across his face.

Steve’s cheeks fall red. Flushed. He wrinkles his nose in anger and closes the distance between them. He studies Billy’s face, eyes searching each peak and valley like he’s discovered something ancient and important and so complicated that it’s kept him awake at night, trying to find a solution.

“Is that all this ever was to you? Just fucking?”

“Yes,” Billy tells him, even though it’s loss. And heartbreak. And pulling teeth.

“I don’t believe you,” Steve admits softly, softer than Billy deserves. Then, as if it could possibly mean anything or change their future; "I don't have a girlfriend, Billy. I only have you."

And that so--

Isn't the point.

Still, Billy holds his ground. He says, “We’re done. This is over.”

Steve rolls his eyes, shiny as glass, and still.

Nothing.

The hole in Billy’s chest opens up and swallows Steve whole, just like Billy always knew it would.

–

Smack in the middle of dreaming of California and honey-soaked walls covered in posters and tacked friendship bracelets from summer camp, Maxine breaks his door down.

“What the fuck is wrong with you,” She says, instead of hello.

Billy isn’t in the mood to uncurl himself from the mattress. He imagines it would make a noise, like gum scraped from the frozen sidewalk, and tucks his face into the pillow. “Close the door,” Billy tells her.

“I broke it down,” Max snarls.

She wasn’t the first.

Neil did. Took it off the hinges a couple of weeks ago as a punishment for Billy’s rash, impulsive decision to disappear into the arms of a fairytale prince and not have enough decency to beg for forgiveness when he came home with a smile on his face.

Billy doesn’t point it out.

Max turns anyway and balances Billy’s door over the gaping, darkening void that will let their father in on the well-kept secret that they’re okay, now. More than okay. A united front, determined to make it out alive.

When she turns back, eyes the same watery, icy blue as his own, Billy wonders why she loves him. So he asks, says, “Why do you love me, Maxine?”

And Max tells him, “Because if I didn’t nobody else would,” and she’s right.

She must sense that he latches onto her joke and carves it into his arm, true as the commandments on that stone Moses gifted to the world, because she plops herself onto the mattress.

“Talk to me,” She says. When Billy starts shaking, she rubs his back. Says, “Wanna eat all the ice cream in the freezer and watch The Breakfast Club?”

It’s their ritual. Their cure-all for living in this house, and yet.

Billy doesn’t answer. Can’t. Won’t survive the pissed-off, worried expression that will eclipse Max’s face when he admits that he feels like Bender, today. Like he lashed out and hurt his Claire, his Steve, who will never look at him the same way if he ever looks at all.

Billy reaches, mechanically, behind his headboard and brings Mr. Mac out from his hiding place. Billy hugs his favorite teddy bear to his chest, uncaring who sees.

Max doesn’t acknowledge it. Just says, “Steve called,” because she knows Billy will answer.

“On the phone?”

“Radio.”

“He’s an idiot,” Billy grumbles, but there’s no real heat behind it. “Someone could’ve heard you. Someone–”

“Neil isn’t home,” Max reassures. She lets it sit for a minute, knowing that Billy will thaw without the lurking presence of his father, a massive, dark cloud poised to rain ice on everything.

But Billy doesn’t thaw. Can’t. Won’t survive it.

Max lets him shake and cry for a handful of seconds, and then she pulls his hair.

Billy swats at her wrist. “Don’t be a shithead.”

“Why’d you break up with Steve?”

“We weren’t together–”

“That’s such a lie,” Max tugs on his hair again, so light it feels like wind tussling. “If you didn’t break up, why did Steve radio to ask me to come get your stuff from his house?”

Billy flips over to glare at the ceiling. “It was a lie.”

“Huh?”

“A fib, a con, a sham,” Billy says, “I’ve never left anything at his freaky fucking mansion on the hill.”

Max looks like she doesn’t believe him.

His belly flares red at that, anger gnawing at the lining. “It’s true. That’s the whole point of casual sex, you fuck and you don’t spend the night and you never–”

“Ew, Billy,” Max groans, palms flying to cover her ears. “I’m sixteen, that’s so gross, why would you say that?” She gags dramatically, fists dropping into her lap when Billy stops jabbering and smirks at her, instead. “You’re my brother and Steve’s my babysitter.”

“He’s not my boyfriend.”

“Well, he could be,” Max shoots back, eyes boring into Billy’s soul deeper than anyone else ever could.

Sometimes he hates that she knows him so well. That despite everything, every mountain they ever had to climb to get here, stretching into a beautiful picture behind the ringing truth that nothing on earth would be strong enough to tear them apart, she’s always understood him.

Billy pats Mr. Mac on his weathered old snout. “What did he say I left over there?”

“The usual shit,” Max says. “Clothes, a pack of cigarettes, your annotated copy of The Virgin Suicides–-”

“God, that’s such bullshit. I never left anything, Max, I always made sure to take my–” She stretches out on the mattress beside him, throwing elbows until Billy makes room. “Jesus, you’re gonna poke a hole in my stomach.”

“Wanna know what I think?”

“No,” He spits. “Not really.”

“I think you tripped up,” Max tells him anyway. Billy pouts, resisting the urge to turn from her. To bury his head under the blankets and scream until the Earth crumbles apart. “Oh, come on, Billy. You’ve been over there pretty much every weekend until the ridiculously early hours of the morning since last year and you’ve never, not once, been too tired or drunk or horny–”

“--We’re not having this conversation–”

“--To accidentally leave something behind?”

Billy thinks about it. “No.”

“Not even pencils? Or math homework? Or a stray sock stuck somewhere under the bed until Steve’s maid finds it and asks where it came from?” Billy doesn’t say anything. He breathes deeply through his nose, watching as Max sits and jams both knees against his rib cage.

“Ow, little shithead.”

“You’ve taken bags over there before. Like, duffel bags,” Max determines.

“Yeah, full of basketball gear,” Billy levels.

When he holds her venomous stare and doesn’t crack and spill all his secrets to her, she frowns. “It’s okay,” Max says. “You can tell me.”

Billy sits against the wall. “Tell you what?”

“Don’t play stupid, Hargrove.”

“There’s nothing to tell,” Billy snaps, sounding to his own ears like a man backed into a corner. Ready to slit his own throat before he admits that–

Billy squares his jaw. “All of that shit is circumstantial.”

It’s a trigger. Stupid. He’s so stupid–

“I don't believe you,” Max says easily, and.

It’s too much like Steve. Soft and gentle and dipped in sad, pitying glances that unleash an entire can of worms all over his grandmother’s quilt. I don’t believe you. She says, in so few words. You’re not as good at this as you think you are, because I know you. I’ve been watching. I’ll take your lies and plant gardens from your deceit.

“Max,” Billy says.

I don’t believe you. In the summertime, you’ll look out the window and you’ll have to face it. Buds and blooms of loss in the shape of the choices you trampled underfoot like weeds.

“Max, I–”

You lost him.

Max doesn’t push it. She tucks Billy’s stupid, soft teddy bear against his neck and crawls under the blankets with him.

Billy curls inward, wishing like hell that the warm things in his belly didn’t have teeth.

You’re stupid. They say. Sugary sweet. You’re a coward spinning lies made of glass. Keep telling yourself you haven’t fallen in love.

When the front door opens somewhere on the other side of the world, Billy hardly registers a change. Neil and Susan speak in hushed, whispering voices that travel like vines over the walls of the house on Cherry Street. They tap snow-covered shoes on the porch outside, the screen door slamming shut as they wonder about the kids.

Billy’s just about to fall asleep when Neil pounds on the wall. “Son, where’s your sister,” Neil demands, already on the brink of explosion. “She’s not in her room–”

“Go away,” Max tells the monsters. The one in the hallway, the one that lives like a shadow cast over everything Billy tries to shape into something else.

And Max doesn’t leave his side.

Billy shakes hard enough to knock the foundation out from under them, and Max stays put.

–

Everyone is full of speeches.

Billy’s learned to tune them out but he doesn’t plug his ears. He takes it, eyes cast toward table tops and high school parking garages, imagining each swirling grain and skittering pebble is the sound of the ocean foaming up around him.

Neil’s pressed vocabulary is always related to shortcomings. Susan offers words of reassurance, Max covers landmines with sarcasm and presence. Action trumps words. Words mean nothing.

Billy doesn’t listen to any of it.

Other people have things to say to him, and that’s harder to ignore.

Hard, because he had politeness beat into him before he knew how to foster his own. Hard, because the truth is, no one gives a shit what Billy has to say about the world. Hard, because Billy never thought his own speeches were scribbled with anything worth listening to, so he keeps his visions to himself.

It’s easy to see that no one ever had the decency to tell Steve Harrington the truth.

Billy’s window slides open one second after the clock strikes twelve.

And Billy doesn’t turn away from the wall, because he gets in his bones what this means. Steve’s shadow is the Hindenburg. He pauses, hunched over Billy’s laundry hamper like he’s worried about a siren going off or that Billy will tear the oak bandaid from its gaping hallway wound to alert the guards himself.

It’s snowing, again.

Billy can’t decide if Steve’s labored, shallow breathing that layers with the heating vent is from stammering over the holly bush under Billy’s window, or if Steve’s upset.

Probably both.

Probably a stewing, concentrated mix of the latter when he straightens and says, “What happened to your door?”

Billy clutches the teddy bear under his chest.

There was a time when he would’ve been embarrassed for Steve to see even the mailbox at the end of their driveway, let alone his bedroom or his fleece pajama pants, and Mr. Mac, the way Billy holds him tighter for fear that Neil is lurking in the darkness.

Eventually, Steve straightens. “Are you asleep?” He asks.

When Billy shakes his head, Steve pulls his sneakers off, lightly tapping their frozen toes against the windowpane.

“Hey,” Billy snaps, twisting around to shoot daggers at Steve’s pink, windswept cheeks. “My dad–”

“If he comes in here, I’ll kill him,”

“You’re full of shit.”

“He’s the one who did that, right?” Steve straightens, pointing a snow-logged, chunky sneaker at the doorway.

And even now, after so many admissions of grief in Billy’s life, after Steve’s patched split lips and broken knuckles and fucked all the sadness from the room until it has to seep back under the cover of his grandmother’s quilt, Billy wants to tell Steve he’s wrong.

Feels, deep in the center of himself, those words sharpening themselves like knives against the pumice of Billy’s heart.

But Steve is unwilling, immovable. He takes Billy’s silence as an admission and drops his sneaker to the ground. “You can’t stay here anymore,” He says like He’s got any authority to make those kinds of decisions.

Billy smacks his pillow into shape. “You’re out of your mind.”

“I need to talk to you,”

“Shove it up your ass, Harrington, I’m not in the mood for grand speeches,” But the irony is that Steve’s going to climb on his podium, dust off his soap box, and say it.

And Billy’s going to listen.

If there was ever anyone in his life that he would take at their word, that he would fold his ego to make room in a twin-sized bed for, it’s Steve.

And Steve knows it, so he lowers his voice. Says, “I know I can’t make you come with me–”

“I’m not skipping town.”

“Why not?”

“For. A million reasons,” Billy tells the wall. Namely. “Max. I’m not leaving without Max.”

And it’s true.

True blue, more than the sky, deeper than the ocean, a butterfly sprouting wings of sadness in Billy’s ribcage for using it as an excuse. Because if Max saw them now, Steve poised by the window in sock feet, offering the world but ready to leave it behind, and Billy, nursing bruises on his left side and wondering what will happen to his bedroom door–

If Max saw them now, she’d say they’re in love.

She’d tell Billy he’s an idiot for letting the moon pass him by. She’d pack a bag for him and tell him to run, that she’ll be okay for another few years.

That she’ll meet him on the Golden Gate Bridge with the sunset in her hair.

“Billy,” Steve says, soft as summer rain.

Billy flinches, curling into himself.

There are hands on his back, ice-cold and gentle. “Billy, baby, look at me.”

Billy can’t.

He’s shaking. “I’m sorry for what I said to you.”

“I know–”

“Every time. All the things I said,” Billy pets harshly at his teddy bear. Doesn’t care who sees. “I try so hard not to let that part of me call the shots because it’s outdated, you know? All the stuff it says, all the walls it builds, it’s trying to protect someone who doesn’t exist anymore.”

Billy’s pillow blooms wet, little spots of color. “I don’t want to be that guy, Steve.”

“You aren’t,” Steve kisses his neck, love, and hope pressed like flowers against Billy’s skin.

The heavens open up. “I love you,” Billy says, and it doesn’t hurt like he thought it would. It sings. “I didn’t mean to hurt you, Steve. I love you and I’m sorry. So fucking sorry–”

“I’m sorry, too.”

Billy turns, blinking confused and helpless.

“When I said you’re not an easy person to love. That was fucked up. I was angry because I couldn’t understand why you never open up to me, why you won’t let yourself be happy,” Steve’s gaze holds steady, soft, and sweet on Billy’s face. “It’s not your fault that you try to protect yourself from hurt, Billy. You’ve never had anyone be gentle with you.”

Steve touches his face, setting off fireworks wherever he lands. “Let me try. I love you. I want to take care of you and you have to let me try.”

And the worst part is Steve believes what he’s saying with his whole, wide, forgiving heart. He believes, sure as the sun will rise tomorrow, that Billy’s a good person. That he’ll cross bridges and climb mountain ranges toward healing, and when he gets there he’ll be someone worth running away with.

But maybe the worst part. Underneath it all, gripped by landslides of disappointment that ring in his father’s voice, is that Billy wants to believe it, too.

“Let’s go somewhere,” Steve says suddenly. He turns Billy over, and Billy goes easy, the bear still clutched by his face.

Outside the window, Hawkins is covered in white.

Billy’s grandmother always said when assembling quilts just like this one, that snow meant rebirth. It brings forgiveness and change and fresh starts, regardless of whether anyone deserves it.

“Where do you wanna go, baby?” When Steve kisses him, slow and deep and like he’s finally found home, Billy isn’t sure he’s deserving.

But love isn’t something anyone should have to beg for, crawling hundreds of miles on their knees. Billy is tired of fighting.

“Anywhere,” He says, fingers gentle on Steve’s face. “We can go anywhere.”

#harringrove #fluff #hurt and comfort #running away together #harringrove holiday exchange

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unhhhhbelievable · 2 years

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Trixie wanting Katya to take another break from drag so they can take a yearlong vacation together, hello???

I fear you not being able to tour, and me not making money. My biggest fear.

Oh, that is terrifying.

However, at a certain point, I'm not encouraging this, if you need to runaway into the wilderness for like another year, that would actually be so sickening for me. That would be so sickening.

Just give me the signal and "I'll go crazy."

She's "having a hard time."

She's going on retreat.

Girl, we'll be on an island, CLINK CLINK.

Clink clink, with my little fl- with my little love drink.

Oh, I'll be your doctor voice, The patient's doing just fine.

#THESE STUPID ASS MEN #WHY ARE THEY LIKE THIS #SO DUMB #a literal conversation they've had #running away together #the audacity #trixie mattel #katya zamolodchikova #unhhhh #fear

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thekittyfox2999 · 8 months

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hear me out.

Good omens fugitive au.

I'm already working on it, so bear with me

It's just a run away together plot-

#good omens #alternate universe #running away together #because everyone is after you #and you get together #and stop armageddon #and that's it #nothing else #might make into multi part written fanfic #idk

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justhereforkeefe · 24 days

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#miraculous #ladrien #oneshot #assassin!marinette #prince!adrien #running away together

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violetthistle1 · 6 months

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Dignity be Damned Chapter 3 excerpt (3)

Sirius spent a lot of time outdoors. Remus supposed he might not have been outside at all until he escaped Azkaban. Their first cottage was on a lakeshore in the south of France, and Sirius would spend hours lying in the sun, looking up at the sky. He was much quieter than Remus ever remembered him being. Remus would join him, not usually laying on the ground, but in a lawn chair beside him, reading whatever book he had handy. On one such occasion, Sirius had asked him to read aloud to him, so Remus did so, in much the same way Sirius used to read to him in first year when Remus was a moody delinquent who could barely read.

Over the years, Remus thought of a thousand things he had wanted to tell Sirius or ask him if only he had the chance to speak with him again. And if he hadn’t been the traitor he thought he was. But now, Sirius was right in front of him, and all those things had faded into the ether of time, forcefully forgotten. Sure, he remembered the big ones. Like, What the hell happened that night? That was a big one, or Why the fuck didn’t James just name himself Secret Keeper? That one had kept him up on many a night. Although there was always the old classic, Did you ever really love me at all?

Remus didn’t dare bring those up now though. There may be a time in the future when those questions were finally laid to rest, but for now, he could wait. Being with him was enough. Looking over and seeing his pale skin finally tan under the warm summer sun, hearing Padfoot run and chase after squirrels, glancing up over dinner to catch a peek at him, to have their eyes meet as Sirius did the same. Who needed words really?

****

Read chapters 1-3 now on Ao3! New chapters are posted every Thursday and Sunday.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/50555698/chapters/127980328

#remus lupin/sirius black #wolfstar #fanfic #harry potter #marauders #learning to trust again #running away together

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felsicveins · 3 months

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Burnt bridges

#yall were eating too good its time for something sad #trolls 3 #jd ex husband #trolls oc julien #john dory #jd trolls #john dory trolls #living up to the name Epic Gay Divorce #maybe julien in his own way tried to reconcile but it came across as almost threatening?#so they had an argument and jd realized that julien hasnt changed at all so he wanta nothing to do with him #and jd isnt running away. julien just wanted to say something hurtful #jd mustve shared that he felt guilty about brozone breaking up so now hes using that info against him #THIS IS SO ZJCJEJJDOJEHWIJVJEHROVJEHSJOCNEJVD #very indulgent #trolls #trolls band together

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blue-mood-blue · 1 month

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I have been thinking about the blackening (as one does)…

…and it’s so interesting to me, the penalty Shen Qingqiu is faced with should he not decide to yeet his disciple into hell.

Account termination. Instant death. Sent directly home to his already-long-dead body, and that’s it for the villain of the piece who outright refuses his villainy. The protagonist needs a blackening for the story to continue, and Shen Qingqiu is going to provide it or get written out of the narrative. Either way, Luo Binghe is going to lose him. Either way, this is a turning point.

I wouldn’t claim that this is the intent of the penalty, but it fascinates me that the System has, potentially, backed the plotline into a corner - because Binghe still stands to be blackened even if Shen Qingqiu took the other choice.

Think about what that would look like, to him. He’s at the Immortal Alliance Conference, and everything is going wrong. He’s been outed as a demon, and not just a demon - the top tier of demon, as bad as it gets from the perspective of a righteous cultivator. His beloved teacher, the person who has been kindest to him and opened his home and heart to him, is standing there with his sword in hand, deciding what he’s going to do about what must look, to him, like a horrific betrayal. Binghe is apologizing. Binghe is begging for his life.

Shen Qingqiu hears him. Maybe it shows on his face, or in his voice, that he already knew; maybe there’s no hint at all, but Shen Qingqiu is suddenly talking quickly with an abrupt sense of urgency that Luo Binghe is having a hard time keeping up with. Telling him he’ll be wonderful - telling him he’s the best. Telling him the world will be his, with emotions cracking through that aloof mask that Binghe has never seen on Shizun’s face before, and it’s terrifying for reasons that Binghe cannot identify.

(He will, later. When he has time to think, he’ll realize it sounded like a goodbye.)

And then Shen Qingqiu is bleeding. And then Shen Qingqiu is on the ground. And then Shen Qingqiu is dead. There’s no countdown for Binghe - there’s no System, there’s no warning, there’s no answers.

Luo Binghe is a heavenly demon in the middle of a conference sabotaged by demons. Luo Binghe is alone. His fellow competing disciples are scattered, some dead or injured. The Peak Lord of Qing Jing Peak, the second in command of Cang Qiong Mountain Sect, maybe the only person he loved and who loved him back, is dead at his feet. No one will believe him if he says it isn’t his fault.

(He can’t believe it isn’t his fault.)

What choice does he have but to run? The last heavenly demon the cultivation world went up against has been sealed under a mountain for years, and one of the people responsible for that is probably looking for Shen Qingqiu already. They’ll be looking for him, too. There isn’t anywhere to hide; there isn’t any time to mourn.

There isn’t even enough time to ask why. Why again.

There is no closure waiting for him, because there is nothing to explain what happened. It just is.

It would be a different kind of blackening, certainly - less intense, probably, less of a warping, desperate thing. But how many times can one person have all the love and safety in their world torn out from under them before it starts to show? Before they just don’t allow things like love and safety to touch them, because that’s the better option?

Interesting to consider that, simply by offering the choices it did, the System rigged the story to guarantee that Luo Binghe would end up in hell (deliberate or not).

Interesting to consider that, even if Shen Qingqiu made what might have seemed like a kinder choice, there was every chance it wouldn’t have been.

#scum villian self saving system #svsss #shen qingqiu #luo binghe #I have been thinking about Alternative Blackening Methods #(for reasons)#(don’t worry about it)#and while I don’t think it would be on the same level as the endless abyss #I think suddenly losing his Shizun would fuck Binghe up #especially like that with no explanation right in front of him??#like #he is not gonna be okay #and then he’s stuck in a realm filled to the BRIM with cultivators after his blood #maybe it’s not THE blackening but it is A blackening #and it gives me feelings #because even if sqq was willing to make that sacrifice I’m not convinced that would have… helped Binghe #(also au where sqq somehow has the mushroom body ready to go before the conference)#(and Binghe unexpectedly encounters his Shizun in the wild)#(and they run away together in the most ill-conceived escape plan known to man)

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drarrily-we-row-along · 2 years

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Day 227: I Didn't Know Where Else to Go

Harry, for all intents and purposes, enjoyed his nice quiet life.

He loved his quiet, one-room cottage by the sea, with his garden in the back full of fresh vegetables and flowers, and his lovely hive of bees. He loved Mable, the scruffy mutt that had shown up on his doorstep, looking for food and then never left. No one in the village knew him as anything other than James Evans and it was the most peace he'd found in his life.

Harry absolutely did not miss being in the aurors. He didn't miss the press, the constant niggling anxiety that was present whenever he was in wizarding communities.

No, the quiet was enough.

It had been so quiet in his cottage for so long, that the pounding on his door one night in the middle of a wild storm made him summon his wand before he moved slowly to the door.

There was another round of a fist banging against the door before he finally blew out the nerves and yanked it open.

He wasn't prepared for the man who fell through the door, stumbling as though it had been holding him up.

"Draco?" he asked, catching him and bearing most of his weight as the other man slumped on his feet; cold, wet fingers clinging to Harry's shirt.

"Sorry," he whispered, silver eyes taking in Harry's face like he was noticing every new wrinkle, every last sun worn freckle. "I didn't know where else to go."

And then he promptly passed out.

Harry carried him over to the bed before locking the cottage door and warding it against whoever might be after Draco. Then he set to work, stripping the other man of his soaking wet clothes, finding numerous bloody gashes and deep red and purple bruises.

(Read more below the cut)

"Shit," he hissed, casting a series of diagnostic charms he'd learned both as an auror and as the former partner of the man in front of him, who held no real regard for his own life. He cast a series of spells to stabilize the other man's condition before going back to his bedroom and digging his case out from under his bed.

Harry spent the next hour and a half tending to wounds, using the spellbook he had, along with half a dozen potions before he was satisfied with Draco's diagnostics.

He managed to get Draco into a pair of loose pajama bottoms before pulling the blankets up over him and stoking the fire, adding a few more logs for good measure. Then he sat down in the armchair and let himself drift while he waited for Draco to wake up and explain himself.

-------------

Draco had always been a stubborn sod.

Honestly, he shouldn't have even been surprised that the other man hadn't woken up by the time Harry did the following morning.

He went about his business as usual, letting Mable out into the back garden to chase away any rabbits that might be contemplating his vegetables, before making a pot of coffee and starting in on the bread making he did every other day.

The morning went on as usual and Harry was just pulling the bread out of the oven when the spell he'd left over Draco to alert him to movement went off.

"Your stomach always did wake you up," Harry called softly, his voice carrying across the small space.

Draco groaned, rolling and wincing, "Harry?" he asked, eyes blinking open like it was difficult.

"Hey," he said, sitting on the edge of the bed and brushing Draco's hair back out of his face.

His eyes fixed on Harry, soft and warm and for a moment it was like they'd never left. Ten years of time and space disappeared as though they'd never existed in the first place.

"I shouldn't be here," he said, eyes clouding again. "Sorry, I've put you in danger-"

"Hey," he said, gently pressing him back against the mattress. "You're not going anywhere. You've suffered massive internal injuries, you need to rest and-"

"I need to go," he repeated, struggling to stand.

Harry touched his shoulder, "You're not going anywhere. You said last night that you didn't know where else to go."

"I was delirious."

"I'm aware," he replied. "But I ran diagnostics; you didn't have any tracers on you, there's been no abnormal magical activity within a 10 kilometer radius, my cottage is warded and it's unplottable. We're safe."

Draco sank back against the pillow for a moment, rubbing his face with his hands.

He took in the curve of his wrists, even narrower now than they'd been when they'd worked together. He'd lost weight, too, and Harry's gut churned uneasily. "You've been working too hard," he said softly.

"Someone had to," Draco snapped and Harry recoiled, standing and moving back to the bread he'd left sitting on the counter. "Sorry," Draco said, and even without looking at him, Harry knew he was shaking his head. "I didn't mean that."

"You did," Harry replied evenly as he spread butter and then honey on a warm slab of bread. "Do you still like honey in your tea?" he asked as he prepared a cup for himself.

"Yes," he murmured, defeated.

Harry returned a few minutes later, handing Draco a plate with bread and a cup of tea before sitting down in the armchair once more.

"I'm sorry," he repeated.

He nodded.

"I never have been good at keeping myself from antagonizing you."

"Yes, well," he said before sipping his tea, "Wouldn't feel right if you weren't, so," he let the rest of the sentence drop, shrugging a shoulder.

"What do you do here?" Draco asked.

He shrugged again, "I bake bread and I garden. I take my dog for walks on the beach. I tend my bees."

"And you're happy doing that?" he asked as though he couldn't quite believe it.

Harry hummed, "I stopped trying to atone a long time ago."

The other man didn't say anything to that, probably didn't want to start a fight, but that was okay. Harry didn't mind the silence. He'd actually grown rather accustomed to it.

"Don't you miss it?" Draco asked eventually, tearing the crust of his bread between his slender fingers.

"It or you?" Harry replied.

He shrugged, "either. Both."

"It, no," Harry said softly. Then he waited and Draco's eyes found his, "You? Everyday."

"Harry," he whispered, face crumpling.

He reached over and took Draco's hand in his, "I just couldn't do it anymore. I couldn't watch while you did everything in your power to get yourself killed. Every mission we took," he shook his head, "It's like you were looking for danger."

"Someone had to-"

"I couldn't anymore," he repeated.

Draco stared down at his hands clasped in his lap, "I know."

"Still hurt, though," Harry finished for him. "You were always welcome to come with me, you know."

"I wasn't ready."

He hummed, "And now?"

Draco shook his head, "It's too late now. You've built your whole life here, it's safe and quiet. I'd just bring all of the chaos and-"

"It's not too late," he interrupted. "I got bees, Draco," he said, "so I could make you tea and slather your toast in honey. I bought a cottage by the sea because you always said you wanted to live by the sea someday, the humid air was good for your complexion and all of that. I learned to bake bread because you love the smell of bread in the oven. I've carved out a place for you here," he added, feeling small and afraid in a way he hadn't in a long time. "I want you here."

He blinked at him, "You can't mean that."

"I do."

"They're hunting me," he started. "The ministry-"

"They'll stop," Harry replied. "They stopped looking for me. They'll stop looking for you, too. Eventually."

He still looked uncertain, "You haven't seen me in a decade," he said. "And you just want me to stay here? You don't know anything about me anymore-"

"I'll learn." He brought Draco's knuckles to his lips, "I've never stopped loving you. You just have to let me."

Draco stared at him, tears in his eyes.

"Let it go," he murmured. "You've done enough. Just," he sighed, "Stay."

Harry'd never been so relieved in his life as the moment that Draco nodded and threw himself into Harry's arms. He hadn't ever fancied himself particularly gifted in Divination, but with Draco's body pressed against his, Harry knew that everything was going to turn out just fine.

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This is very out of order. But it's the prompt that sparked a little bit of joy today.

Read my other ficlets here.

#Drarry #Running Away together #love #soft #healing #hurt/comfort #cottage by the sea #ex-aurors #100 drarry drabbles in 100 days

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