分卷阅读42（1 / 2）

When he falls, he falls hard, and he does not bother to get back up, just throws his head back and laughs. He’s still laughing by the time that Harry gets back, because even though he had hurt himself even more in the fall, part of him must have done this as some sick form of punishment, because he had known from the beginning that this was the only possible result.

“Jesus.” Harry swears often, but he doesn’t now, just drops the bag of yarn and books and cookies that he had been holding and sprints down the hallway to him, skidding the last three feet in his socks. “What the hell happened, Draco?”

He’s not good at being soft, Harry. He’s more wildfire than candle light, all hurricane without the gentle rainfall. When he’s being dramatic and melancholy, Draco likes to tell himself that it isn’t a bad way to go out, being burned up by someone else’s love for you.

“I wanted to come down here.” It sounded stupid when he says it out loud. All bad decisions sound stupid when you spend the better part of the hour laying on the cold floor. “Thought I could do it.”

“Did you?” Harry laughs, finding it funny now that it was clear that Draco had not hurt himself, and he seems to see Draco for the first time, and swears, softly, like it was more of an exhale than an exclamation. “Merlin, Draco.” He lets go of him and Draco has to lean onto the wall for support, hunching in on himself in order to hide, because he did not like the way that Harry was staring. “Your chest.”

“It’s nothing.” Draco crossed his arms over himself, trying to cover as much skin as he could. He knew what he looked like—had seen the bruises from the brief glances in the mirror, the scabs and the scraps and the bits of skin that he been ripped at awkward edges, how pale he was, the hollows underneath his ribs, the scars crossing his arms and stomach and curling over his shoulders—and knew that if he had the choice, Harry would not be seeing it. Now that he takes a moment to think about it, Draco thinks this is the first time that Harry had gotten the chance to look at him with enough light to really see, and even though Harry had known (must have known), you could not really prepare yourself for wreckage like this when a human being is concerned. “They said it would heal.”

(Heal, but not disappear. The potions will knit you back together but the scars will still be there.)

(He doesn’t care. I don’t care.)

(You do.)

“Draco.” Harry reaches out and pushes Draco’s hands away, gentle enough that if he really wanted to, Draco could have kept them in place, but he doesn’t, just lets them drift off to his sides. “God, Draco.”

Harry’s breath hitches like he had been caught off guard by the sight all over again, and Draco closes his eyes, tipping his head back to rest against the wall as Harry’s hands trace over his cuts and bruises and torn up skin, because he did not want to look at Harry looking at him, not when it’s like this. “This,” Harry says, a tremble in his voice, and his hands are following a specific set of scars now, old ones, ones that Draco had spent so many hours staring at that he could call up the image in his mind. “These are from me.”

He might be crying. Draco doesn’t look, just moves to catch at Harry’s wrists and keep his hands in place, because he knew without being told that Harry was thinking of running away. It’s what he always does, when he thinks that he has hurt someone.

“Merlin,” Harry says again, like it’s all he can think to say, and he is so close that Draco can feel the word breathed out against his shoulder. Harry’s hands are lying flat across his stomach now, fingers covering the silver scars that are crisscrossing over his chest, like he could make them melt away if he held on long enough, fingers almost disappearing in the dips between Draco’s ribs. “Look what I did to you.”

“To be fair,” Draco said, trying to sound normal even though this was the closest they had been to each other since that night at the hospital, “I was actively trying to kill you.”

“Yeah, well.” Harry had moved on to other places, other scars, other stories with unhappier endings, his touch so hesitant that it was barely more than a brushing of his skin against Draco’s. “You weren’t very good at it.”

“No.” Draco said, and together they seem to come to the understanding that they have had enough of the past and to deal with the future instead, or maybe it had only occurred to Harry at that moment what a precarious position they are in, but whatever it was, Harry apparates them both the ten feet to the couch, catching Draco before he could stumble and meeting him halfway, moving down just as Draco was reaching up for him.

It’s only after, when things have calmed down between them, that Draco finally looks down at himself, at the skin and the ruin painted upon it, all the ways that this life had left its mark on him. “There’s so many.” He twisted to look at the part of his back that was reflected in the mirror, forcing Harry to move with him. “I didn’t realize there were so many.”

“I wish I could take them away,” Harry says, his hands still moving, like he is trying to map out an image of every mark in his head.

“They do look terrible.” Not terrible as in ugly, exactly, but terrible as in they are speaking of a pain that Draco would rather forget, of a past that he cannot possibly hope to wipe away when it is written across his skin.