fic: genuflect (this fake plastic jesus) - harry/draco
title: Genuflect (This Fake Plastic Jesus)
rating: R
fandom: HP
summary: Draco's always known what this would be.
disclaimer: Me no own nothing, man.
words: 3,801
warnings: Er. Um. Religious metaphors?
notes: Posting and running. Thanks, as always, to restless_jedi for the beta.
Some things he doesn't have to like to know.
He remembers the cold, hard blanket of comforting lies and he misses them. He recalls the straight-backed smirk of things he never really had. There's a brace in owning that's gone and left him slumping, slouching against the ash-blackened wall of a Muggle church that's only mostly still standing.
Draco's got his hands in fists in his pockets, one wrapped tight around the base of his wand, fingertips fitted perfectly into the grooves he's made there. There's ash on the toes of his boots, in his hair. He closes his eyes against the destruction like the darkness will take away the row of pews in front of him that are scorched black with brittle, broken backs. Like they could crumble under his hands.
The smell of old, stale smoke is thick in his nose, in his throat. He wonders if he could choke on it, too.
Potter's footsteps have a muted echo to them, loud but padded by the broken things around him. His boots are heavy on the floor, over the wood of it. The floor is charred and warped and splintered, but so is everything else. Potter had never learned to move quietly; every movement he makes is a sound that screams in Draco's skull.
The windows used to show a scene of Mary and her son in vivid colours. Now they're cracked, scratched, scorched and thick with soot.
"I don't want this," Harry says. He squints at something over Draco's shoulder.
(There's always something there. Angel and Devil like in Muggle cartoons. "Be good Draco." "No, don't." He doesn't know what Potter sees, he only knows the itch of disappointment raising the hairs at the back of his neck like the gravel rough voice of ghosts. Draco wonders if the choice was ever his to make.)
"Of course you don't," Draco answers, like he isn't as tired as he is, like his voice isn't raw because his throat is. He's spent too much time screaming curses, and that shouldn't be the pun it almost is. "You want surrender and sunshine and fluffy bunnies hopping happily through fields of flowers. It's the Gryffindor in you, I'm sure you can't help it."
"This is how you're asking my forgiveness, Malfoy?" he asks, laughs almost, but it's choked back and choked on. It's tired and more bitter than Harry bloody Potter really has a right to be.
(The devil on Draco shoulder laughs too, hisses, "Oh, tortured hero, boy wonder, saint of all our nations. There's a cross up there too, looks like the flames have licked it clean of sin, want to make the last step and be our martyr? They already call you the saviour, already sing their praises to your name, already read the book of you on Sundays, quiet whispers to the alter they make of their homes. Already bleed from their foreheads and cry out that they've been touched by the divine and it's a new brand of stigmata for a new lord. You want us to build you buildings with our hands, with wood and metal and devotion, we'll call them houses of you, and we'll sit inside and raise our bloodied hands to the sky. Pull this off and we'll do it all, you know. Climb up there and make the final step, Potter, see if you can rise again. See if we'll pray for your blood to cleanse us all.")
Draco's got bright, vivid disjointed memories of his lip curling at Potter, of looking down at a scrawny little boy with messy hair and too big clothes and broken glasses. It seems like too long ago and it must have been; he can't seem to do it now. "I don't need your forgiveness," Draco says, and to his ears it's still, somehow, less. "I'm not here to gain absolution from you."
He laughs for real then, still sharp, hard and bitter. "Of course you aren't." Potter's eyes are dark-not green in this place where fire has stolen all the colour-black as the windows are now, as the rumbling sky outside. The candle flames flicker maddeningly in the reflection on his skin. "You're just here for my protection and want to pretend like the entire time I've known you didn't happen."
There's a silver chain, thin as a hair and more fragile than glass, woven around Draco's knuckles. He doesn't clench his fist tighter, because that is his protection.
"Not," he says, raising his shoulder and letting it fall, "all of it." Draco leans forward like he's got a secret worth sharing and Potter's almost on the other side of everything, so Draco isn't actually getting any closer, but he feels like pretending. "You can remember Halloween if you like," he whispers like he hasn't already played all of his cards.
(It'll be Christmas in their new religion. It'll be the big holiday, the real celebration. Not His birth, but close enough, the day they'll take to celebrate His life. They already read His story that night, surrounded by a circle of candy wrappers.)
The thing about Potter now is that he hasn't grown up. He's grown tired and he's grown mean, but he hasn't grown up, not like Draco has. He's never cast a spell out on the battlefield. They're trying so hard to make sure he can grow up that they keep him from ever doing it. He walks around with his shoulders slumped like he's world and war weary when he's not seen half of it. Potter is sullen and angry and he knows loss and danger but he doesn't know how to speak without sounding like a boy who's almost sixteen and just lost every form of guidance he'd ever known.
And Draco knows all about that. So he's not, actually, as surprised as he pretends to be when Potter sneers and says, "You think if I remember how pretty you are on your knees for me that I'll keep you safe, Malfoy? Do you really think your mouth around my cock bought you sanctuary?"
(Like he's saying, go ahead and get down on your knees for me. Repent and beg and pray. I'll give you absolution, then, I'll bathe you in me until you reek of the forgiveness I bring. Crawl along into the darkened cupboard in the corner where the Muggles confess their sins. The curtains are only ash now, but we'll pull them anyway and you can whisper your wrongs and your blasphemies to me. Spit them out as you swallow me down and we'll see, we'll know. Even the whores in the book make it into heaven.)
Draco slides the tip of his tongue heavy slow over his bottom lip. He winces when he hits a cut there, still raw and tasting of copper and magic and loss. "Now, Potter, would you've come if that was my only payment?" Draco asks, tilting his head and closing his eyes.
It's only that he's tired, he thinks. And if it's not true then Potter will certainly never know it anyway, too full of himself and his own regrets to see past his nose. Same as it always was, really, only Draco's too bloody tired to say what he's thinking.
"I think," he whispers finally, to the flames that flicker behind his closed eyes, "that if you want me on my knees for you again, you should've picked a better meeting place. I understand you've got some sort of emotional attachment to hollowed out buildings-the only bloody part of this war that you've fucking seen with your own eyes-but I've got dirty enough for you for one lifetime, Potter."
"Never said I wanted it," Harry says, he shoves his hands on pockets of his Muggle jeans he wears like rebellion. The denim is light blue and worn thin. They're too big for him and the cracking leather belt has them cinched low on his hips.
Draco laughs, and there's something in his ribs that aches when he does it, but he ignores that, for now. No one to complain to anymore anyway. "Course not." He holds out his hands, palms up, like surrender. The silver of the chain shimmers against the candlelight where it dangles between his fingers. "I know what you want."
Potter's got a look on his face like Weasley when the sky had opened up to spill gold. Like hunger and want and the fierce, sharp-toothed, salivating yearn of a starving man with a feast placed before him. Draco wants to take a bite just to spite him.
He thinks there was a time that he could've.
But Potter is stubborn as he's always been, his jaw ridiculously clenched and his body tight, angry. Begging for a fight that, for once, Draco isn't here to give him. "You don't know half of what you think," Potter says, and sneers and is still so very much a teenage boy that it makes Draco wonder sometimes, how he got to be the one who was wiser in the room.
The air is cool around him; the candles don't heat and they can't risk the charms. It's the middle of October and the leaves are changing colours outside where they lie thick on the ground. Draco doesn't-he does not, will not-shiver, but something creeps up his spine when Potter steps back that makes him want to.
It's his robes that aren't thick enough for this, not his skin.
He just keeps telling himself until he remembers, until it's clear enough in his mind he can write it in the air. Draco presses his fingertips-shaking, white, cold and scared-into Potter's forearm. The chain scrapes across the inside of Potter's wrist and Draco thinks, not a coward, and hopes it bleeds into Potter's skin.
There are a lot of days no one ever thought would come, this is only one of them.
Potter's the one who steps away-pulls away and back, out of Draco's reach-and it wouldn't ever be any other way. There's space just to walk between the rows of burnt out pews, space just wide enough, just spread out enough.
Harry stands there in the middle of the church and spreads his arms wide, and throws his head back, just for a second. There are pews on either side like the parting of the sea. The candles flicker toward him, because he's got that kind of magic and Draco's mouth is suddenly, very, very dry and Potter's shadow is shaking and scared against the crucifix and then it isn't.
"What do you want from me?" Potter asks, and laughs. His head falls forward and he curls his lip at Draco, cold as ever and nothing makes sense, but nothing ever has. "You aren't worth whatever the price would be."
"There isn't a price," Draco answers before he means to. The words scrape and cut his throat. There's a pounding behind his eyes and only increases. "There isn't," he repeats slowly, and closes his eyes again, "a price."
They gave him a mark, like the stories he always heard of Muggles doing to cattle, his sleeve scratches against it. It's blistered from the heat of the magic burned into it, and he wants to scratch, wants to pack ice on and hope that'll make it not so bloody-
"Malfoy," Potter says, slowly and wearily amused, just to make Draco open his eyes again, "you've always got a price."
He watches Potter's feet when he starts walking again, watches the dust and ash on his boots and the dulled reflections of the flames over scuff marks until he can't anymore. Potter sits on the end of the pew in the front. He tilts his head while he looks up and Draco watches the back of his head.
"There's no price," Draco says again, an almost-whisper and he shakes his head. He puts his hands back in his pockets and leans against the wall again. All they are is repetition, he thinks, all they do is repeat themselves.
His arm hurts, his head hurts, his feet hurt. He can't, when he thinks about it, remember the last time he slept in a bed, behind four walls that were all standing, with a ceiling overhead that didn't look prepared to cave in. This isn't how it was supposed to be, and that's the thing. That's what he keeps thinking. That's his mantra. This isn't how it was supposed to be, he thinks, again and again and again. It's not.
Potter's got his back to him, but Draco can still bloody see that the doubt in his eyes isn't hidden by his dirty glasses.
(Potter looks at the world through his fingerprints, through his scratches and cracks and impressions. Of course he's the way he is, seeing things that way. Of course it's Potter, when everything you see is overlaid with his fingerprints and dust.)
"Just my protection?" Potter asks. His face is still tilted toward the front of the church, that's all Draco can even bloody see of him without looking. "You'll give me what I need to win and all I have to do is walk into our headquarters with you under my arm and say to my friends, no, no, you can trust him, never mind that he's worn his mark with pride, never mind that it's Malfoy, trust him, I'm sure it's alright."
"Gryffindors," Draco says, and shakes his head. "I don't want to be your new best friend, Potter, and I certainly don't wish to be theirs. I didn't ask for your protection, didn't ask you for anything, as I recall."
Potter huffs out a laugh all sharp edges and bitter amusement, and Draco imagines he can see the ash stir and cloud out around him. "You're not the person who does something for free, Malfoy. You don't do anything you don't get something out of."
Draco pushes off from the wall without meaning too. Pulls his hand out of his pocket to press fingertips against the pews as he passes. It's not that he wants to see, it's that he needs to. It's that he can't keep repeating himself to the back of Potter's stupid, messy head. It's that he wants to wrap the chain around Potter's throat and fucking pull and knows that he can't and maybe, probably wouldn't, even if he could, because his hands have enough blood on them already and he can't close his eyes without seeing bright flashes of green that make his stomach turn.
(The problem with Potter is that all he's ever done is live. It's all he's ever been known for, all he's ever accomplished. He's never done anything more glorious than been the one left standing. And maybe that's what's keeping him from godliness, maybe it's his lack of sacrifice that's made it so he's still just a boy, not even able to be called a man with any honesty. They call him a saviour-whispers of hope in the streets where children aren't allowed to play-but he's only ever really saved himself.)
Seven. Eight.
His fingertips are black with ash, and it's brighter around Potter because the candles like him more. Draco laughs, softly, like it's funny and he's not sure what it is but. He presses his fingertips to the back of Potter's neck, to his forehead. Puts a cross there like an anointment. Like saying, look here now, this is your messiah.
(They already think that, they already follow him like sheep. And arms, homes or minds, eyes or thighs, there's nothing of theirs that they wouldn't open for Harry Potter. Nothing they wouldn't spread and embrace him with when he stepped close. They whisper his name in reverence, and go down on their knees when he passes with his hands shoved deep in his pockets. The ones that aren't in the war aren't the victims, they're the prize, and Potter's already won them, and the Dark Lord is Voldemort again, because in their world there's only room for one lord. Only one they'll kneel for.)
"This war is over, Potter, it has been for ages. Everyone knows how it'll end, because it's all but ended already. The only thing left to do is finish it. Nothing that happens in dark fields between white robes and black matters, it's not worth anything any more. I've seen more men die than I can count, and it's all so bloody pointless now, Potter." Draco sighs, kicks Potter's ankle just because. "I only want it over."
"How do I know this isn't a trick, Malfoy?" Potter asks, and kicks him back because he can. His thighs are spread too wide, and he's slouching in his seat.
And Draco isn't. He just isn't. And he thinks-sometimes, when he lets himself or when he can't stop himself-he thinks that he isn't. And then sometimes-when it's too dark and there are echoes of curses whispered under stars screaming in his ears, when he closes his eyes and sees green and bloody fucking Potter and all he wants to do is scream-sometimes he can't think and he doesn't want to and then, of course, it occurs to him that he is and he's a bloody fool on top of it and that's, possibly, endlessly, unbelievably worse.
(They wear lightening bolts cast in gold on chains around their necks, curl their bony, tired, sickly fingers around them when they say their prayers. They open their arms wide for the storm, and they look to the sky like it's all a sign. They laugh at the rain and shiver at the thunder like it's the voice of God. It's an old symbol meant for a new thing, now. When it burns them they'll point fingers and shout claims of unrighteousness.)
Potter sighs and runs a hand through his hair. He doesn't know of yellow fields or green heat. He knows black and white. White and black, like it's got to be one way or the other and Draco could, actually, laugh at him if he didn't think they'd have to start all over again. Potter doesn't know of too many things really, but that's the same as it always was. Potter cups his left knee with his right fingers, and doesn't stop looking at Draco though, so maybe, possibly, perhaps there's a chance Potter knows more than Draco wants to give him credit for knowing.
"For Christ's sake, Potter," Draco says, and really, really wants to hex him into next week, "I'm doing you a favour, here and you know it."
"You want me dead, Malfoy. Your Lord wants me dead."
Draco scratches his arm and feels the skin tear and laughs. The chain around his fingers catches the light and that's what Potter watches with fucking ravenous eyes. "Don't be such a fucking twat, Potter," he says, and wants to throw out his hands but doesn't trust himself. "You're Harry fucking Potter, yeah? The Boy Who fucking Lived. You're going to make it through all of this just fine. You'll walk away at least. Can't say there's anyone else walking around with that promise from fate."
And Potter is just Potter, even if they don't know it. He's got the same things going through his head as he always did and there was never a time when Draco couldn't get to him. His clothes will always be too big, he'll defend Weasel until the day he dies, he'll stick his nose where it doesn't belong and he'll never admit that he hates Muggles and their world as much as Draco and every other one of the Dark Lord's lot. More than, in some cases.
Draco's walked by in the shadows to watch Potter with a bruise across his cheek and his fingers deep in the dirt because he had an invitation.
So Potter leans forward, his elbows on his thighs and Draco's standing before him with what there's never been a doubt is exactly what Potter needs, even if he doesn't like where it's coming from. Potter opens his mouth and he wears a look on his face like there is something foul in the air. Like he knows the smell of spell burnt grass and old wounds and reptiles slithering through the remains and he's measured it and found this worse.
"You don't know what fate has promised me," he says, and sneers. "My parents died," Potter adds, like it's a new revelation, even as he slides forward, as he lowers his eyes.
Potter presses his fingertips against Draco's hip, just briefly, and then pulls them away.
It's how Malfoy's are taught to be. How Draco grew up learning lessons in getting and having what he wants. And maybe he never saw it before, but he's not as thick as he used to be. Not as blind by half.
When Potter wraps his fingers around Draco's wrist, Draco sees and he laughs and he wonders who the whore is now. And he doesn't have to like the answer to know it, because some things are never going to change.
(And it's like it's always been. Like it's always going to be. When you're left to wonder if you're supposed to pretend, if you should, if that'll get you into Heaven faster. They give you grape juice and call it wine and tell you it's the blood of Christ. It won't be different. That'll stay the same. The power's always going lie in His blood.)
"I think I know it exactly," Draco sighs, and pulls his arm back. It burns and there's a twinge in his knee, a sharp pain in his right shoulder. "It's time this was over, Potter. Time bloody all of it was over."
Carefully, slowly, he lets the chain fall from around his fingers. It falls in Potter's lap and shimmers in the light like it's laughing at him.
"I'm through," Draco says, and shrugs before putting his hands back in his pockets. He kicks Potter's shin one last time for good measure. "Just so we're clear."
"We're clear," Potter answers, and puts the chain around his neck. It glows there, clear as glass and then bright green, like it's been returned to its owner now and even it knows the end is drawing near. "I won't owe you."
"Of course not," Draco says, because he's known from the beginning what this was and what it wasn't. He wasn't here for absolution, didn't want his soul cleansed or his heart eased or a chance to say he sat at the table for the last meal. Draco never kissed his cheek.
This was never going to be anything more than his benediction.
rating: R
fandom: HP
summary: Draco's always known what this would be.
disclaimer: Me no own nothing, man.
words: 3,801
warnings: Er. Um. Religious metaphors?
notes: Posting and running. Thanks, as always, to restless_jedi for the beta.
Some things he doesn't have to like to know.
He remembers the cold, hard blanket of comforting lies and he misses them. He recalls the straight-backed smirk of things he never really had. There's a brace in owning that's gone and left him slumping, slouching against the ash-blackened wall of a Muggle church that's only mostly still standing.
Draco's got his hands in fists in his pockets, one wrapped tight around the base of his wand, fingertips fitted perfectly into the grooves he's made there. There's ash on the toes of his boots, in his hair. He closes his eyes against the destruction like the darkness will take away the row of pews in front of him that are scorched black with brittle, broken backs. Like they could crumble under his hands.
The smell of old, stale smoke is thick in his nose, in his throat. He wonders if he could choke on it, too.
Potter's footsteps have a muted echo to them, loud but padded by the broken things around him. His boots are heavy on the floor, over the wood of it. The floor is charred and warped and splintered, but so is everything else. Potter had never learned to move quietly; every movement he makes is a sound that screams in Draco's skull.
The windows used to show a scene of Mary and her son in vivid colours. Now they're cracked, scratched, scorched and thick with soot.
"I don't want this," Harry says. He squints at something over Draco's shoulder.
(There's always something there. Angel and Devil like in Muggle cartoons. "Be good Draco." "No, don't." He doesn't know what Potter sees, he only knows the itch of disappointment raising the hairs at the back of his neck like the gravel rough voice of ghosts. Draco wonders if the choice was ever his to make.)
"Of course you don't," Draco answers, like he isn't as tired as he is, like his voice isn't raw because his throat is. He's spent too much time screaming curses, and that shouldn't be the pun it almost is. "You want surrender and sunshine and fluffy bunnies hopping happily through fields of flowers. It's the Gryffindor in you, I'm sure you can't help it."
"This is how you're asking my forgiveness, Malfoy?" he asks, laughs almost, but it's choked back and choked on. It's tired and more bitter than Harry bloody Potter really has a right to be.
(The devil on Draco shoulder laughs too, hisses, "Oh, tortured hero, boy wonder, saint of all our nations. There's a cross up there too, looks like the flames have licked it clean of sin, want to make the last step and be our martyr? They already call you the saviour, already sing their praises to your name, already read the book of you on Sundays, quiet whispers to the alter they make of their homes. Already bleed from their foreheads and cry out that they've been touched by the divine and it's a new brand of stigmata for a new lord. You want us to build you buildings with our hands, with wood and metal and devotion, we'll call them houses of you, and we'll sit inside and raise our bloodied hands to the sky. Pull this off and we'll do it all, you know. Climb up there and make the final step, Potter, see if you can rise again. See if we'll pray for your blood to cleanse us all.")
Draco's got bright, vivid disjointed memories of his lip curling at Potter, of looking down at a scrawny little boy with messy hair and too big clothes and broken glasses. It seems like too long ago and it must have been; he can't seem to do it now. "I don't need your forgiveness," Draco says, and to his ears it's still, somehow, less. "I'm not here to gain absolution from you."
He laughs for real then, still sharp, hard and bitter. "Of course you aren't." Potter's eyes are dark-not green in this place where fire has stolen all the colour-black as the windows are now, as the rumbling sky outside. The candle flames flicker maddeningly in the reflection on his skin. "You're just here for my protection and want to pretend like the entire time I've known you didn't happen."
There's a silver chain, thin as a hair and more fragile than glass, woven around Draco's knuckles. He doesn't clench his fist tighter, because that is his protection.
"Not," he says, raising his shoulder and letting it fall, "all of it." Draco leans forward like he's got a secret worth sharing and Potter's almost on the other side of everything, so Draco isn't actually getting any closer, but he feels like pretending. "You can remember Halloween if you like," he whispers like he hasn't already played all of his cards.
(It'll be Christmas in their new religion. It'll be the big holiday, the real celebration. Not His birth, but close enough, the day they'll take to celebrate His life. They already read His story that night, surrounded by a circle of candy wrappers.)
The thing about Potter now is that he hasn't grown up. He's grown tired and he's grown mean, but he hasn't grown up, not like Draco has. He's never cast a spell out on the battlefield. They're trying so hard to make sure he can grow up that they keep him from ever doing it. He walks around with his shoulders slumped like he's world and war weary when he's not seen half of it. Potter is sullen and angry and he knows loss and danger but he doesn't know how to speak without sounding like a boy who's almost sixteen and just lost every form of guidance he'd ever known.
And Draco knows all about that. So he's not, actually, as surprised as he pretends to be when Potter sneers and says, "You think if I remember how pretty you are on your knees for me that I'll keep you safe, Malfoy? Do you really think your mouth around my cock bought you sanctuary?"
(Like he's saying, go ahead and get down on your knees for me. Repent and beg and pray. I'll give you absolution, then, I'll bathe you in me until you reek of the forgiveness I bring. Crawl along into the darkened cupboard in the corner where the Muggles confess their sins. The curtains are only ash now, but we'll pull them anyway and you can whisper your wrongs and your blasphemies to me. Spit them out as you swallow me down and we'll see, we'll know. Even the whores in the book make it into heaven.)
Draco slides the tip of his tongue heavy slow over his bottom lip. He winces when he hits a cut there, still raw and tasting of copper and magic and loss. "Now, Potter, would you've come if that was my only payment?" Draco asks, tilting his head and closing his eyes.
It's only that he's tired, he thinks. And if it's not true then Potter will certainly never know it anyway, too full of himself and his own regrets to see past his nose. Same as it always was, really, only Draco's too bloody tired to say what he's thinking.
"I think," he whispers finally, to the flames that flicker behind his closed eyes, "that if you want me on my knees for you again, you should've picked a better meeting place. I understand you've got some sort of emotional attachment to hollowed out buildings-the only bloody part of this war that you've fucking seen with your own eyes-but I've got dirty enough for you for one lifetime, Potter."
"Never said I wanted it," Harry says, he shoves his hands on pockets of his Muggle jeans he wears like rebellion. The denim is light blue and worn thin. They're too big for him and the cracking leather belt has them cinched low on his hips.
Draco laughs, and there's something in his ribs that aches when he does it, but he ignores that, for now. No one to complain to anymore anyway. "Course not." He holds out his hands, palms up, like surrender. The silver of the chain shimmers against the candlelight where it dangles between his fingers. "I know what you want."
Potter's got a look on his face like Weasley when the sky had opened up to spill gold. Like hunger and want and the fierce, sharp-toothed, salivating yearn of a starving man with a feast placed before him. Draco wants to take a bite just to spite him.
He thinks there was a time that he could've.
But Potter is stubborn as he's always been, his jaw ridiculously clenched and his body tight, angry. Begging for a fight that, for once, Draco isn't here to give him. "You don't know half of what you think," Potter says, and sneers and is still so very much a teenage boy that it makes Draco wonder sometimes, how he got to be the one who was wiser in the room.
The air is cool around him; the candles don't heat and they can't risk the charms. It's the middle of October and the leaves are changing colours outside where they lie thick on the ground. Draco doesn't-he does not, will not-shiver, but something creeps up his spine when Potter steps back that makes him want to.
It's his robes that aren't thick enough for this, not his skin.
He just keeps telling himself until he remembers, until it's clear enough in his mind he can write it in the air. Draco presses his fingertips-shaking, white, cold and scared-into Potter's forearm. The chain scrapes across the inside of Potter's wrist and Draco thinks, not a coward, and hopes it bleeds into Potter's skin.
There are a lot of days no one ever thought would come, this is only one of them.
Potter's the one who steps away-pulls away and back, out of Draco's reach-and it wouldn't ever be any other way. There's space just to walk between the rows of burnt out pews, space just wide enough, just spread out enough.
Harry stands there in the middle of the church and spreads his arms wide, and throws his head back, just for a second. There are pews on either side like the parting of the sea. The candles flicker toward him, because he's got that kind of magic and Draco's mouth is suddenly, very, very dry and Potter's shadow is shaking and scared against the crucifix and then it isn't.
"What do you want from me?" Potter asks, and laughs. His head falls forward and he curls his lip at Draco, cold as ever and nothing makes sense, but nothing ever has. "You aren't worth whatever the price would be."
"There isn't a price," Draco answers before he means to. The words scrape and cut his throat. There's a pounding behind his eyes and only increases. "There isn't," he repeats slowly, and closes his eyes again, "a price."
They gave him a mark, like the stories he always heard of Muggles doing to cattle, his sleeve scratches against it. It's blistered from the heat of the magic burned into it, and he wants to scratch, wants to pack ice on and hope that'll make it not so bloody-
"Malfoy," Potter says, slowly and wearily amused, just to make Draco open his eyes again, "you've always got a price."
He watches Potter's feet when he starts walking again, watches the dust and ash on his boots and the dulled reflections of the flames over scuff marks until he can't anymore. Potter sits on the end of the pew in the front. He tilts his head while he looks up and Draco watches the back of his head.
"There's no price," Draco says again, an almost-whisper and he shakes his head. He puts his hands back in his pockets and leans against the wall again. All they are is repetition, he thinks, all they do is repeat themselves.
His arm hurts, his head hurts, his feet hurt. He can't, when he thinks about it, remember the last time he slept in a bed, behind four walls that were all standing, with a ceiling overhead that didn't look prepared to cave in. This isn't how it was supposed to be, and that's the thing. That's what he keeps thinking. That's his mantra. This isn't how it was supposed to be, he thinks, again and again and again. It's not.
Potter's got his back to him, but Draco can still bloody see that the doubt in his eyes isn't hidden by his dirty glasses.
(Potter looks at the world through his fingerprints, through his scratches and cracks and impressions. Of course he's the way he is, seeing things that way. Of course it's Potter, when everything you see is overlaid with his fingerprints and dust.)
"Just my protection?" Potter asks. His face is still tilted toward the front of the church, that's all Draco can even bloody see of him without looking. "You'll give me what I need to win and all I have to do is walk into our headquarters with you under my arm and say to my friends, no, no, you can trust him, never mind that he's worn his mark with pride, never mind that it's Malfoy, trust him, I'm sure it's alright."
"Gryffindors," Draco says, and shakes his head. "I don't want to be your new best friend, Potter, and I certainly don't wish to be theirs. I didn't ask for your protection, didn't ask you for anything, as I recall."
Potter huffs out a laugh all sharp edges and bitter amusement, and Draco imagines he can see the ash stir and cloud out around him. "You're not the person who does something for free, Malfoy. You don't do anything you don't get something out of."
Draco pushes off from the wall without meaning too. Pulls his hand out of his pocket to press fingertips against the pews as he passes. It's not that he wants to see, it's that he needs to. It's that he can't keep repeating himself to the back of Potter's stupid, messy head. It's that he wants to wrap the chain around Potter's throat and fucking pull and knows that he can't and maybe, probably wouldn't, even if he could, because his hands have enough blood on them already and he can't close his eyes without seeing bright flashes of green that make his stomach turn.
(The problem with Potter is that all he's ever done is live. It's all he's ever been known for, all he's ever accomplished. He's never done anything more glorious than been the one left standing. And maybe that's what's keeping him from godliness, maybe it's his lack of sacrifice that's made it so he's still just a boy, not even able to be called a man with any honesty. They call him a saviour-whispers of hope in the streets where children aren't allowed to play-but he's only ever really saved himself.)
Seven. Eight.
His fingertips are black with ash, and it's brighter around Potter because the candles like him more. Draco laughs, softly, like it's funny and he's not sure what it is but. He presses his fingertips to the back of Potter's neck, to his forehead. Puts a cross there like an anointment. Like saying, look here now, this is your messiah.
(They already think that, they already follow him like sheep. And arms, homes or minds, eyes or thighs, there's nothing of theirs that they wouldn't open for Harry Potter. Nothing they wouldn't spread and embrace him with when he stepped close. They whisper his name in reverence, and go down on their knees when he passes with his hands shoved deep in his pockets. The ones that aren't in the war aren't the victims, they're the prize, and Potter's already won them, and the Dark Lord is Voldemort again, because in their world there's only room for one lord. Only one they'll kneel for.)
"This war is over, Potter, it has been for ages. Everyone knows how it'll end, because it's all but ended already. The only thing left to do is finish it. Nothing that happens in dark fields between white robes and black matters, it's not worth anything any more. I've seen more men die than I can count, and it's all so bloody pointless now, Potter." Draco sighs, kicks Potter's ankle just because. "I only want it over."
"How do I know this isn't a trick, Malfoy?" Potter asks, and kicks him back because he can. His thighs are spread too wide, and he's slouching in his seat.
And Draco isn't. He just isn't. And he thinks-sometimes, when he lets himself or when he can't stop himself-he thinks that he isn't. And then sometimes-when it's too dark and there are echoes of curses whispered under stars screaming in his ears, when he closes his eyes and sees green and bloody fucking Potter and all he wants to do is scream-sometimes he can't think and he doesn't want to and then, of course, it occurs to him that he is and he's a bloody fool on top of it and that's, possibly, endlessly, unbelievably worse.
(They wear lightening bolts cast in gold on chains around their necks, curl their bony, tired, sickly fingers around them when they say their prayers. They open their arms wide for the storm, and they look to the sky like it's all a sign. They laugh at the rain and shiver at the thunder like it's the voice of God. It's an old symbol meant for a new thing, now. When it burns them they'll point fingers and shout claims of unrighteousness.)
Potter sighs and runs a hand through his hair. He doesn't know of yellow fields or green heat. He knows black and white. White and black, like it's got to be one way or the other and Draco could, actually, laugh at him if he didn't think they'd have to start all over again. Potter doesn't know of too many things really, but that's the same as it always was. Potter cups his left knee with his right fingers, and doesn't stop looking at Draco though, so maybe, possibly, perhaps there's a chance Potter knows more than Draco wants to give him credit for knowing.
"For Christ's sake, Potter," Draco says, and really, really wants to hex him into next week, "I'm doing you a favour, here and you know it."
"You want me dead, Malfoy. Your Lord wants me dead."
Draco scratches his arm and feels the skin tear and laughs. The chain around his fingers catches the light and that's what Potter watches with fucking ravenous eyes. "Don't be such a fucking twat, Potter," he says, and wants to throw out his hands but doesn't trust himself. "You're Harry fucking Potter, yeah? The Boy Who fucking Lived. You're going to make it through all of this just fine. You'll walk away at least. Can't say there's anyone else walking around with that promise from fate."
And Potter is just Potter, even if they don't know it. He's got the same things going through his head as he always did and there was never a time when Draco couldn't get to him. His clothes will always be too big, he'll defend Weasel until the day he dies, he'll stick his nose where it doesn't belong and he'll never admit that he hates Muggles and their world as much as Draco and every other one of the Dark Lord's lot. More than, in some cases.
Draco's walked by in the shadows to watch Potter with a bruise across his cheek and his fingers deep in the dirt because he had an invitation.
So Potter leans forward, his elbows on his thighs and Draco's standing before him with what there's never been a doubt is exactly what Potter needs, even if he doesn't like where it's coming from. Potter opens his mouth and he wears a look on his face like there is something foul in the air. Like he knows the smell of spell burnt grass and old wounds and reptiles slithering through the remains and he's measured it and found this worse.
"You don't know what fate has promised me," he says, and sneers. "My parents died," Potter adds, like it's a new revelation, even as he slides forward, as he lowers his eyes.
Potter presses his fingertips against Draco's hip, just briefly, and then pulls them away.
It's how Malfoy's are taught to be. How Draco grew up learning lessons in getting and having what he wants. And maybe he never saw it before, but he's not as thick as he used to be. Not as blind by half.
When Potter wraps his fingers around Draco's wrist, Draco sees and he laughs and he wonders who the whore is now. And he doesn't have to like the answer to know it, because some things are never going to change.
(And it's like it's always been. Like it's always going to be. When you're left to wonder if you're supposed to pretend, if you should, if that'll get you into Heaven faster. They give you grape juice and call it wine and tell you it's the blood of Christ. It won't be different. That'll stay the same. The power's always going lie in His blood.)
"I think I know it exactly," Draco sighs, and pulls his arm back. It burns and there's a twinge in his knee, a sharp pain in his right shoulder. "It's time this was over, Potter. Time bloody all of it was over."
Carefully, slowly, he lets the chain fall from around his fingers. It falls in Potter's lap and shimmers in the light like it's laughing at him.
"I'm through," Draco says, and shrugs before putting his hands back in his pockets. He kicks Potter's shin one last time for good measure. "Just so we're clear."
"We're clear," Potter answers, and puts the chain around his neck. It glows there, clear as glass and then bright green, like it's been returned to its owner now and even it knows the end is drawing near. "I won't owe you."
"Of course not," Draco says, because he's known from the beginning what this was and what it wasn't. He wasn't here for absolution, didn't want his soul cleansed or his heart eased or a chance to say he sat at the table for the last meal. Draco never kissed his cheek.
This was never going to be anything more than his benediction.