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Universal Chaos	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 13263 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter; that belongs to J. K. Rowling. I am making no money from this fic.

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Chapter Nine—No Unscathed Heart

            Harry was quiet at dinner that night, staring at his food as if he didn’t know what it was for, and then picking as if he’d suddenly lost his appetite. Draco watched him in silence for most of the meal, trying to convey that his silence was welcoming and Harry should feel free to say anything to him. But the staring and the picking went on, and Draco decided that it was unlikely Harry would freely confide in him without an invitation.

            “You know,” he remarked, apparently to the ceiling, “true friends help each other with their problems.”

            Harry looked up, blinking. “Yes, I’ve always thought so,” he said. In a moment, his smile was warm, and he pushed his plate away with what looked like relief. “What kind of problem are you having?”

            “Oh, no,” Draco said, even as he reached across the table and gathered one of Harry’s hands in his. “I’m having problems no worse than usual. You’re the one who looks like you could use a conversation with a friend.”

            Harry hesitated. Then he muttered, “It’s such a small problem. I should be relieved. I don’t see why I should have to trouble you with it.”

            “Trouble me,” Draco said. Harry still looked doubtful, so Draco assumed a hurt expression and drew away. “Of course, if you still don’t trust me enough to tell your secrets to me because of the horrible relationship you have with the Draco Malfoy in your universe, I understand.” He dropped his voice on the last words and glanced down.

            “That’s not it!” Harry exclaimed, sounding half-panicked. Draco smiled to himself. That will always work with someone like Harry. “I just—the other Harry tried to bargain with me. He said that he would go to the Mind-Healers if I let him send me back to my own universe. He made it very clear that he’d pursue you the minute I did so.”

            Draco felt as though he’d fallen from his broom and broken his arm in pursuit of the Snitch and was now being told that he couldn’t play for three months. His breath came short, and he had to close his eyes so that he wouldn’t see too much and throw up.

            “Draco?” Harry was around the table in a moment, his hands on his shoulders. “I’m sorry, I knew telling you would—”

            Draco shook his head furiously and reached out to clench his hands down on Harry’s arms. Come what may out of this, he didn’t want Harry to regret confiding in him. He didn’t want Harry to regret anything associated with him. “I’ll be all right. But the thought of him coming after me again—I know that my balance is still fragile, and that he could destroy me if he tried—”

            “I refused the bargain,” Harry said. His voice was deep and soothing, as soft as the hand that he was using to smooth up Draco’s spine. “I’ll stay as long as you need me, and he’ll have to show me that he really wants help before I talk to him again. It was despicable of him to try and make me value one person’s healing over another’s.”

            Draco tilted his head back and opened his eyes when he was sure he would be looking directly at Harry’s face. “And what if I was to say that I needed you to stay for months?” he whispered. “For years, even?” He lifted his hand to touch Harry’s jaw. It wasn’t a gesture he’d made before, but he’d thought about making it, and it unfolded as he’d imagined it. Better, even, given the soft warm skin and the hard line of bone and stubble beneath his touch.

            Harry blinked, and then gave a small smile. “You’re not that fragile, Draco. I know you’ll recover your mental balance before years are up.”

            “Very well,” Draco said, snapping a little in his anxiety, and knowing that he didn’t appear very fragile or needy as he was doing it. “Then substitute a certain verb, and say that I want you here instead of need you here. Would you stay?”

            Harry narrowed his eyes. “I told you I was from another universe. You always knew that I would have to go back there, Draco.”

            His tone was gently chiding, exactly what Draco did not need right now. He had scolded himself more than once down the years for being so weak as to obsess over his parents’ suicide. Harry had to take him more seriously than that.

            “Then I’m asking you the same question I asked you two weeks ago,” he said. “What do you feel about this? Would you stay if you had a choice, or would you hurry back to your own universe and wash your hands of me?”

            Harry sat quite still, his eyes hazy and his hands on Draco’s body comfortless. Draco bit his lip. I should have remembered that he’s very different from the Potter I know and of course he’ll have to consider this in some detail. He won’t give a hasty answer, no matter how much I might appreciate a heartfelt declaration of loyalty.

            “I have friends and a home in my own universe,” Harry said at last, his words coming so slowly that it sounded as if he were having to fetch them up one by one from some deep well. “I couldn’t have my friends here. The Ron and Hermione in this universe, and everyone else, know and presumably love the other Harry.”

            “But you would have a home with me,” Draco whispered. “The Manor. You could stay as long as you want.” He winced at the eagerness in his tone, but he wasn’t capable of keeping silent out of pride and thus letting Harry think that he didn’t really matter to Draco.

            “I’d have that,” Harry said, and his eyes were focused outwards again. “And I can’t deny that there’s one attraction in this universe that I’m never going to have in my own.” He leaned nearer, as if he wanted to examine the shape of Draco’s nose. “You.”

            “That’s what I’ve been waiting to hear you say.” Draco whispered those words, too. He wanted to speak them more loudly, but his voice didn’t seem to be up to obeying him at the moment. He found himself reaching up, clenching his fingers in Harry’s hair, drawing his head down towards him. Harry went, uncomplaining. His eyes were very wide and very green, and Draco couldn’t tell, looking into them, exactly what he was feeling.

            Draco kissed him tentatively, feeling the way out with his lips, trying to decide if this was all he desired right now. Yes, it seemed so. Harry’s lips were dry and bitten in places; that was a nervous habit he had, but Draco hadn’t thought he’d scarred them so terribly. He ran his fingers along them and drew back so that he could murmur, “You must let me do the biting, if there’s biting to be done.”

            Harry’s eyes were drowning now, his pupils wide, his breath rushing and hot. He seized Draco’s mouth again without speaking, and Draco moaned in surprise as Harry’s tongue swept out and against him. He opened his mouth, and the surprise turned to pleasure. Harry wasn’t a refined kisser, but the sheer determination he brought to the business had its own kind of charms.

            They wavered and then suddenly toppled over. Draco grunted as his head hit the floor. He’d forgotten that he was sitting in a chair at the table and that Harry was leaning over him. As Harry had pushed more and more forwards, they’d lost their balance more and more comprehensively.

            “Are you all right?” Harry’s words were hurried as he stroked and caressed Draco’s cheek. “I’m so sorry—I never realized—I didn’t mean to do that—are you all right?”

            Draco nodded. He felt more composed now, instead of flustered, as though kissing Harry had cleared some of the tension out of the air. “I just bumped it, and in a minute the afterimages will go away.” Harry looked more worried, so Draco rolled his eyes and pushed up against him. “I’m fine, you great prat. Let me sit up.”

            Harry sat back on his heels, and Draco pulled himself up with his hands on Harry’s shoulders. Harry promptly wrapped his arms around Draco and held him still, studying his expression. Draco let him do it, even passively tilting his head when Harry put a hand under his chin and turned his face back and forth.

            “I don’t know,” Harry whispered. “I like you, I want you, but I’m not sure that we should do this.”

            “I understand that,” Draco said. He refused to panic, both because Harry wasn’t tearing out of the room at the moment and because he knew that Harry was powerless to refuse someone something when that thing had a real impact on their happiness. “But I think we should at least experiment. How can we decide whether or not we should do this without some basis of comparison?”

            Harry smiled faintly, but his eyes were still distant. “I don’t want to leave you heartbroken, if you do fall in love with me, when I go back to my own universe.”

            Draco winced. He hated to hear Harry talking about that as if it were a sure thing, both that he would go and that Draco would be heartbroken. It made him feel as if he were clawing for breath, the way he had when he saw his parents’ bodies. “Always about what I feel,” he said. “And never about how you do. Don’t you think you could fall in love with me, and then you would be the heartbroken one?”

            “I think that,” Harry whispered. His fingers played up and down Draco’s arms. “More often than I like.”

            This time, when he stood up and walked out of the room, Draco let him go. He needed to spend some time by himself, to recover and think about whether Harry’s reservations were enough to make him back away.

*

            Harry had hesitated, but Draco had said that Harry was welcome to use his broom whenever he liked. So Harry had taken him at his word, and the house-elf who brought him the broom didn’t object.

            Harry spun over the garden, and hung upside-down in the shade of a drooping tree, and spiraled around the ponds, and sat for a while on the bank of a tiny stream and looked into it. His reflection looked back at him, eyes wide and solemn. Harry had hoped to see that he looked calm and collected.

            No, I look like I did when I was in the hardest parts of therapy.

            Frowning, Harry climbed onto the broom and took another turn around the garden.

            One of the things he had wanted to do when he came out of therapy was to live without causing other people pain. It sounded simple in principle. In practice, it was the hardest thing he’d ever done, and it was one of the main reasons he paused and thought about things so often now. He had to consider whether some of his actions might have unforeseen consequences.

            Most of the time, it worked fairly well. But he hadn’t been trapped in a situation like this before, where no matter which way he turned, someone was going to be hurt.

            Draco wanted him to stay. Harry knew he needed to leave. But if he left before Draco was healed, that would be one kind of hurt, and if Draco fell in love with him and then Harry left, that was another kind of hurt. He didn’t know which one would be worse, honestly, seeing the state that Draco had been in before Harry interfered.

            And then there was the other Harry, who might need help getting help even if he decided on it, and who might keep trying to go after Draco even when Draco had made it abundantly clear that he didn’t want his attentions.

            Harry put his head in his hands. Such a mess.

            He sat on the bank of a pond for a long time trying to think of a possible solution, and nothing came to him. Perhaps it was the sort of thing that one could only work out when certain other circumstances had fallen into place and he knew more about what was supposed to happen.

            I hope so, anyway. Because right now, I don’t think I’m capable of making this decision on my own. It affects too many other people. I can hope that something definite happens, like the other Harry owling me that he’s ready to accept help or Draco getting tired of me, but I have to keep in mind that it might not.

            And how long do I tread water?

            For no good reason except that it would give him a definite deadline, and that was what he most needed right now, Harry decided to wait a week. If something hadn’t happened to change his mind one way or the other by then, he would talk seriously to Draco and set a date to return to his own universe.

            The thought of walking away from Draco made him feel as though he were trying to yank out one of his own limbs.

            Despite himself, Harry chuckled. It looks like it’s already too late to get out of here with my heart unscathed, no matter what happens.

*

            Draco knew what he wanted, and for the first time in years, he felt strong enough to reach out and grasp it. The last major decision he’d made was trying out to play professional Quidditch, and that was driven more by grief and loneliness than because he actually wanted to do it. Now, his desire was clear and uninhibited, and he was living in the same house with the person he wanted.

            It ought to have been easy.

            But for some reason best known to himself, Harry was playing a waiting game.

            He came up with endless suggestions to deflect any quiet time alone together which might have led to fucking of the kind that Draco wanted and he imagined Harry was only too eager to engage in. They played a Seeker’s match. They had a long argument about house-elves that Draco, to his astonishment, came off worse in. They went to see a play that starred Gregory’s current girlfriend. They went out to wander for an evening through Muggle London, with Harry wearing a slight glamour so that anyone who saw him wouldn’t recognize him. It left his eyes clear, though, and Draco saw them widening often above a slight, pleased smile when Draco had gaping reactions that he couldn’t control to the sights around him.

            Draco accused him of being more than a little unfair. Harry answered that Draco was just unworldly, and that was fuel for another argument that Draco thought he won, but which he went to bed feeling unsure about.

            At any time, especially in the middle of a crowd of Muggles that didn’t know them and weren’t paying much attention to them, it ought to have been easy to reach out, grasp Harry’s chin, and draw his face down to Draco’s.

            It should have been. It wasn’t.

            Draco found himself beating back doubts around the third day. Maybe Harry had changed his mind and didn’t want him anymore. Maybe he had decided that he was definitely going back to his own universe and didn’t want the encumbrance of a lover who was native to another one. Maybe he was being noble again and thought that he would somehow spare Draco by never making love to him.

            Of all his hypotheses, Draco thought the last one the most likely to be true, simply based on the nobly stupid behavior that Harry had shown so far. He’d waited outside Draco’s house until he persuaded him to come out; he’d battered down the walls around Draco’s heart so that Draco could actually take a few deep breaths and start thinking of real life again. There was no reward for him in that. He’d done it because it was the right thing to do. And he’d gone back to confront the Potter Draco knew the same way.

            So being noble was what Harry wanted and desired—or at least what he thought was right enough to use it to combat his wants and desires.

            But Draco was formed of a different kind of stuff, and if he was going to be in this relationship with Harry, he thought his wants and desires ought to matter as well.

            He had a different view of the universe—all the universes—from Harry. He decided, four evenings after Harry had kissed him, that it was time to press home that point.

*

            Harry found himself staring often at Draco as they ate dinner. Draco was scowling at his plate, his hand formed into a fist on the fork, his head constantly snapping up at the small sounds that the house-elves made Apparating in. Harry wondered if the other Harry had contacted him again. It was the only thing he could think of that would make Draco this irritated.

            Deciding that Draco would already have spoken about it to him if he wanted to talk, Harry did his best to keep up an amiable, constant flow of chatter, and leave openings all over the conversation for Draco to join in. Draco’s scowl deepened.

            It must have been the other Harry, and a bad letter at that, Harry thought. He’s done more to damage his chances of having Draco for a lover than I ever could have. He mentally rolled his eyes and continued talking. It seemed that it would take a little while longer to soothe Draco back to calmness, but Harry had never failed at it so far, and he didn’t intend to fail at it now.

            “And when you think about the way that Quidditch teams differ, I’m surprised that they haven’t founded a fourteenth team in Britain. Even if they think that they don’t have room for more matches, they could use that fourteenth team as a place to draw reserve players from. This is my idea, and Ron doesn’t agree with me, because he thinks—”

            Draco rose to his feet and strode around the table. Harry promptly stood, concerned but also wary. The dark look on Draco’s face indicated that he needed to take his anger out on someone, and though Harry was sympathetic, he wouldn’t let that someone be him.

            “Draco?” he asked. “What’s wrong?”

            For answer, Draco stuck a hand into Harry’s hair and hauled his head forwards. Their mouths met and their teeth clicked before Harry could think of a single word to speak in protest.

            Harry moaned. This time, he had more idea of what to do with his tongue than last time, because Draco was fully engaged, darting his tongue in circles around Harry’s, scraping the back of his mouth, urging him further and further. Harry put his hands on Draco’s shoulders to hold him in place and kissed him back until he felt as if he would drown. He had never kissed a man before, but that just made the experience more exciting, because it was so new. He leaned forwards, letting Draco take his weight, glad that they weren’t sitting down this time and wouldn’t topple over.

            Considerations chased themselves through his mind. He should pull away. He had to go back to his own universe. He should warn Draco again about the ways that he could be hurt—

            But when he pulled away far enough to look Draco in the eye, he saw the pure white light of determination. He’d seen it on his own face when he got past feeling sorry for himself and actually started appreciating the Mind-Healers’ efforts.

            Draco had had to spend far too much time living with the consequences of other people’s choices. He deserved the right to make some of his own.

            So when Draco put his hand over Harry’s mouth and hissed, “I don’t want you to protest,” Harry bit his palm in answer and reached out to caress the front of Draco’s trousers.

            The expression on Draco’s face was a revelation.

            Harry had to wrestle Draco’s trousers open one-handed, because he couldn’t take his other hand away from caressing and stroking his cock. When he caught a glimpse of it, he felt his mouth water. Red and thin-skinned and glistening wet, it wasn’t something Harry had ever pictured himself desiring.

            But that made it better.

            He kissed Draco again and turned him so that he was pinned against the back of Harry’s chair, which promptly tilted into the table. Draco, who looked both stunned and delighted that Harry had taken the lead, gasped a bit, but didn’t interfere.

            Harry started rubbing.

            It was fun to make his fingers turn in different directions and watch the thrashes and gasps that he got out of Draco when he did that. Harry had always found himself treating sex as a deadly serious business, so this was a revelation, too. He leaned in for a sloppy kiss as he closed his fingers down in a circle and tugged hard on Draco’s shaft. Draco bucked against him and reached out with a wavering hand as if he wanted to hold Harry’s fingers still and make him stop at the same time, and couldn’t decide what he wanted.

            Then his hand found Harry’s shoulder and crushed down on it so that Harry thought Draco might break his collarbone, and Harry felt soft spasms ripple across his palm. Draco was coming. He looked down, disappointed that he hadn’t got to see more than the last few drops of white semen leaving his cock.

            Draco dragged in some deep breaths and then shoved, sending Harry sprawling to the floor. Harry panted up at him, not entirely displeased. “You really like having me on the floor, don’t you?” he asked.

            “Shut up.” Draco was on him then, restless elbows and jabbing knees and squirming fingers and all. Harry lifted his hips to make it easier for him, and very sternly held his laughter inside. He didn’t think Draco was of the kind to appreciate the fun of the situation yet.

            Then Draco started rubbing him through his pants, so urgent that he didn’t even attempt to get them all the way off, and Harry lost his laughter in the rhythm of his thrusts.

            It was all so surreal: his body and the pleasure coiling through it, Draco watching him with greedy eyes and avaricious fingers gripping and stroking and squeezing, the cloth rasping and catching against his cock, and the whispered message that he couldn’t stay playing in the back of his head.

            When his orgasm struck him, Harry was actually taken by surprise. He’d been paying too much attention to other things. He shuddered and threw his arms around Draco, clinging to him the way he would cling to a floating piece of wood in a shipwreck. Sobs and whimpers left his lips. He’d never felt this intensely, and it was a pleasure on the edge of pain.

            In the aftermath, Draco put his mouth to Harry’s ear and whispered.

            “I don’t care if you eventually have to leave. For now, I want this. And I think you do, too.”

            Harry stared up at him. The last words, and the way Draco’s eyes darted away from him, betrayed his uncertainty.

            Harry brought his eyes back by the simple expedient of kissing him, and then stroked the back of his neck as he thought about it. Yes, he wanted this, too, and it was already too late for him to get out of there with an unscathed heart.

            He had wanted someone else to make a decision so he wouldn’t have to do it all on his own. Well, Draco had.

            I’ll do my very best to make him happy in the long run, Harry thought, as he cupped the back of Draco’s head and Draco shook against him, and, strangely enough since I thought it would, I don’t think making him unhappy in the short term will help.

            This will still be hard.

            But it always would be.

*

            butterpie: Of course, for Harry that’s not enough. He doesn’t want to hurt anyone. But I think that’s probably impossible, so he’ll have to settle for doing as little damage as possible.

            keikey: Thank you so much! And don’t worry, marriage proposals don’t offend me. ;)

            Kale: About the best thing I can say for Harry is that he doesn’t realize he’s fallen in love with Draco, if he has. He’s never felt the emotion before, which is one reason he might not recognize it.

            And I agree that the other Harry deserves some sympathy. Harry’s problem is that he despises cowardice, and he sees the other Harry’s attempts to apologize through Harry and then drive Harry away from this universe as cowardly. Plus, he doesn’t think the other Harry is really in love with Draco, just obsessed with him.

            polka dot: Yes, he’s unhappy. Harry refuses to forgive him for not wanting help.

            MewMew2: Thanks!

            Thrnbrooke: Well, now he’s told Draco that. But whether he would want to reconcile with the Draco in his universe…I don’t know. He hasn’t had the same terrible things happen to him that this Draco has.

            FallenAngel1129: I think Harry would want to claim that privilege for himself!

            SP777: At the moment, Harry doesn’t think the other Harry can pull it together. We’ll see whether he’s right or wrong about that.
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Universal Chaos