June 2002

When they settle down finally, Draco slides Harry to the ground by the bank of the brook as gently as if he were made of glass, and then eases off his boots with the softest touch he can manage.

"Fuck - fu- fuuuuuuuck," Harry hisses through his teeth, trying not to inadvertently lash out at the source of the pain. "I know you're helping me, sorry, Malfoy, FUCK-"

"It's over, it's over," says Draco soothingly, "They're off, it's ok. I've got you."

He guides Harry's aching feet with cool hands to the icy water's edge, and each breathe an audible sigh of relief as the burned skin makes contact with the brook. Tenderly, Draco washes the burns clean of mud and ash, and when the skin is looking fresher - albeit still pink - he tears off two lengths of his own robe and washes each in the water.

"You'd make a good Healer, you know," Harry sighs as Draco binds the first sopping swathe of material over his right sole, and the blonde laughs lightly.

"I always hoped that's what I'd have been, if I wasn't..." his voice tails off.

"If you weren't an accidental terrorist?" Harry smirks. It's not funny, he knows it's not, let alone accurate. But Draco chuckles anyway.

"Less of that, thanks, Scarhead," he rolls his eyes. "But, yes. That."

"You'd have been a good Healer," Harry says again. "And I'm sorry. You should've had that option."

"In an alternate universe," Draco smiles teasingly. "A parallel universe where my father wasn't a manipulative, evil scumbag and my mother had a backbone."

Harry doesn't know what to reply to that, so he changes tack as Draco wraps the second makeshift bandage over his left foot.

"What do you miss about your life before?" he asks, catching himself by surprise at the question as much as Draco.

"I didn't have much of a life before this," Draco admits. He runs a hand through his hair to keep it from flopping in his eyes. "After the war, we were in hiding - I suppose I haven't seen much of the world or ever done much else.  I suppose I miss my mother though, now and again. What about you?"

What don't I fucking miss, Harry expects himself to respond, but then he realises that the list is surprisingly short.

"I'm not sure I did a lot with my life, either," he says slowly. "I had a house, and a job, and friends, but I didn't really do anything, if that makes sense. I miss all those things, obviously. Especially Ron and Hermione. Miss them like crazy."

He clears his throat, trying not to think too much about his friends because of the tears threatening to burst down his cheeks.

"I guess you could say I miss sleeping in a fucking bed that doesn't have sticks and dirt in it," he laughs wryly, and Draco echoes the laughter.

He grins, though it doesn't reach his eyes. "And I miss showering in hot water. I miss my hot coffee in the morning and my mint tea at night. And my radio, God, I have this radio that I completely love, and I really miss that. Oh, and clean underwear is another good one."

Draco nods along, admiring the way Harry's mouth forms words, and the pretty movement of his throat as he speaks.

"I'd rather miss all those things forever than miss you," he says quietly, and a blush creeps over Harry's face.

"You're never going to have to," he responds a little awkwardly. "I think we both know how this one ends for you, and I'm not leaving when it does."

Draco frowns. The mood is shifting slightly south, the game is clearly over. "No, you could put up a fight," he says. "I bloody want you to put up a fight!"

"The Aurors won't listen," Harry sighs, frustrated, "They're mostly corrupt and each wants to say they killed the famous Draco Malfoy. And I won't let them do that. It might be over my dead body."

"You can't act like that for me," Draco snaps, annoyed now. "Have some self preservation, for fuck's sake."

"Why should I? You don't have any."

"Look at your soul and then look at mine, Harry, and tell me who of the two of us deserves to live. Or better yet, look at our forearms." Draco glares at him. "Yours is blank. You're a decent person, you could actually do something with your speccy little life if it wasn't for me. And it's entirely my fault you're here. So you're not throwing it away for me, if the time comes-"

"Draco, shut up," Harry interrupts irritably. "Let me just tell you this. I have no idea how long I've been with you in this forest, alright? But what I do know for absolute certain is that it's made up the only exciting days of my life."

Draco tries to interject, but Harry just shakes his head and holds up a finger before continuing.

"Yeah, some of the hardest days too, I know that. Obviously. But what I'm trying to say is that my heart didn't beat before this, Draco. I never knew what it meant to want someone so badly till this. And it surprised me to find you so appealing and softly beautiful, but I do. Find you beautiful, I mean. And I know I couldn't go an hour without what you give to me."

"That doesn't mean you have to defend me if the Aurors get to us," replies Draco almost sulkily, though his heart feels like it's caving in on itself and there are tears pricking at his eyes. "In fact, I don't want to discuss this any more or I'll get really angry with you."

"Fine, let's not discuss it," Harry says. "But you know where I stand. I refuse to lose you."

"You might have to."

"I won't. Come to me now."

Draco sighs, but he shifts to sit as close to Harry as he possibly can, as if he's trying to absorb his breath.

"There aren't words," he says softly, resting his head on Harry's shoulder and staring into the abyss of the water, "For how I've begun to feel about you. Or if there are, I don't know them."

Harry takes his hand in response, and glides his thumb gently over Draco's knuckles. "I feel like I know some words," he replies quietly, "If you feel the same as I feel."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. For a start, I've never known closeness like this. You take up so much of me and so much of my attention and my emotion that it feels like you're trapped entirely inside me somehow and I can't ever get you out."

"But it isn't a bad kind of trapping, like a butterfly on a pinboard or something," he adds hurriedly, realising how his words might come across. "It's more like... like you know the way you'd press a flower in a diary, and the imprint of the stem is always visible on the page even after you've taken it away, and how the flower stays pressed forever in that exact same way, unless you tear it to pieces. You know what I mean by that?"

"Weirdly, yeah," Draco smiles. "Tell me more."

Harry clears his throat. "Alright. I think thats you and me. We'll hold our shape like that till someone pulls us apart, and even afterwards we'll forever wear the aftermath of one another. Until we're destroyed.

Because I think I might have found something in you that I've needed forever. And in return you take things from me that have been weighing me down forever. I've never felt this full of something, yet I feel like I'm floating. Does that make sense?"

"It does to me."

"Well, it's electric. And I feel like... like right now, Draco, we're dancing on the edge of a ridiculously finely tuned knife.

It's razor sharp, and beneath us is a ravine, and there's a gale wind howling all around us, and everything's on fire, yet you and I are fucking dancing in this slowly burning valley, and we know it will eventually engulf us, if the blade or the elements don't kill us first, but until that time we're spinning on this imperceptibly dangerous axis, in perfect time," Harry says in one hot rush of breath. "And that's how it feels to be with you."

The words crash into one other like waves on a shore, each tumbling fluidly over the last but serving more to enhance the meaning than to confuse it.

He sighs, presses his fingers hard into the skin of the hand he holds. Feels the responding pulse which makes him ache to the pit of his core.

"We talk about alternate universes all the time," he continues, "And I've come to realise that I'd choose you in every one I possibly imagine. You've become a constant in all my wildest, most ecstatic daydreams, and that's how I know I can never let you go as long as I live."

Draco doesn't put up a fight this time at those last words, doesn't argue about Harry really should let him go and save himself if it ever came to it, that he really ought to have some self preservation - instead, he flops back into the bank with his feet still dangling over the water, and pulls Harry gracefully on top of him, so that their hips and stomachs and chests are aligned and pushed up against each other.

Then he slips a cool hand under his waistband and feels the other boy already responding to him. "Do you like me, Harry?" he asks, grey eyes serious.

"Like you?!" Harry scoffs as his eyes roll back with the pleasant tingling on Draco's hand on his skin. "Haven't you been listening to the words I've been saying? You are gossamer and air and flames and I fucking adore you, you will never be unloved by me so long as you live! You're in my fucking soul, Draco Malfoy."

"We're in love, then."

"We are."

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a/n: thanks so much for reading, hope you enjoy this update as much as i loved writing it! love always, treat people w kindness 💙💚

~ paradisedraco