~~how many different ways...

[reenka]

well, since i was told i ended my previous "missing moment" snippet badly-- i tried to weasel out, and create something vaguely resembling a resolution or a "point" or...something. something beyond what my actual life experience tells me is "likely" to happen. i can't. i wrote more pointless arguing and more angsty obsessing. well, write what you know, they say :) heh.

yah so, i have like, no clue, how (barring outside "Plot" sources) Malfoy and Potter would ever get over themselves. how do -any- of us ever get over outselves. and, "how many different ways can one emotion fail you?" -- a million and one, ivyblossom can tell you. and more still.




disclaimer: jkr says lots of things that i don't. actually she said most of it. and she owns all of it. this is just one of those things she'd never say. but still, one can hope, no?
warning: SLASH. H/D. although there's probably a different category for "past slash, now mush".
a/n: inspired by: "How many different ways can one emotion fail you?" ~~in dialogia, ivy blossom
sankyouuuu ivy:)
~~

~~failure becomes you~~

It's hopeless, he thought, it's hopeless, it's hopeless, it's hopeless. He repeated it over and over, sometimes a mantra, sometimes a wish. He didn't want to imagine. What if. What if he pushed him down, tumbled him onto the stone-cold floor, pressed his burning mouth against his neck, breathed his need and hope and greed for him so deep, so deep inside him. The truth burns and cauterizes and heals-- it doesn't just, fade away. It doesn't just, not matter. These same fingers, heated from the barest contact with his skin, these same fingers on the verge of twisting around his wrist, tugging him back from the brink. All he had to do was pull hard enough. All he had to do was move fast enough, wasn't that true? Harry closed his eyes, leaning against a shadowed stone wall. On the Quidditch field, all he had to do was concentrate, and -move-, and if he was fast enough, if he was fearless, if he was single-minded enough, he won. And now speed meant he missed the details, and single-mindedness meant he was blind to his feelings, and movement-- movement meant moving away.

Harry didn't know how he'd gotten outside. It was cold, though, and his fingers were getting too stiff to move, and the birds were louder than his heartbeat in his ears. He was breathing fast, unaccountably anxious. He couldn't really believe he did it. He had to resist the urge to look back, check again and again that indeed, Draco was not about to follow. Draco would never follow. Even if he said something that made him think of him being under Harry's power, it was really just a game to him. A game he played with himself. He didn't even need Harry there, to be the antagonist or the lover. He was there as a symbol, for Draco as well as the rest of the wizarding world-- to be wanted or hated. Or both. Harry's toes were starting to go completely numb, as well as his nose and his chin. He didn't care. He was angry again.

"Don't you like me this way," Draco had demanded, a week before. "Don't you get off on this, Potter?"
He had charmed his wrists and ankles to be bound to the bed. His stare was challenging, cold, but the evidence of his arousal was all too obvious.

"I just want you how you are," he'd said, then. Draco had laughed, without much humor.

"Just keep telling yourself that. Even I don't want me how I am, not like this, not with you."

"Why the hell does this have to be so difficult?" he'd asked, not for the first time. He just wanted... he just wanted to kiss that smirk off his mouth.

"What did you expect from me, Potter? Cupcakes?"

Harry had sighed. "I can never win, with you, can I."

"You said it, not me," Draco had drawled in his old tone, attempting smugness but not quite reaching it.

"I don't want to win anymore. You win. So what do you want?"

"I don't know," Draco had said, finally. "Isn't that just hilarious? I don't know. To be inside you. Isn't that good enough anymore, -Potter-?" He said it as a taunt, but Harry knew he was really just being frustrated with his own chosen bondage. His eyes, hooded, emitting swell after swell of sweltering heat waves.

At that point, Harry had pretty much growled in frustration and launched himself at Draco, lifting his restraints, starting a sort of casual scuffle they'd engaged in now and again, just to break the tension. It didn't really work, and they ended up breathless and turned on and somewhat confused as to why they just couldn't seem to have a straight fight anymore-- it just didn't work anymore. Anytime they touched, sparks went off and it's like they forgot themselves and only remembered their need for skin to skin contact, right that second. Not that Draco was complaining. Harry, on the other hand, was always furious with himself.

Harry had begun to distrust sex, much as he enjoyed the release of it. It just prolonged things and made them more painful. Like at this moment, when supposedly he should've been resolute and almost vindicated, though he'd made no victory, all he wanted was that hot breath against his mouth, that hand clutching at the back of his neck, those teeth nipping at his bottom lip, almost breaking the skin, needling him with little jolts of pain that went straight down to his center. Harry couldn't stop the rush of sensations even imagining these things caused. He couldn't stop the helpless need he still drowned in, the desire to run as fast as he could, the way he came, the only thing on his mind being, would he catch Malfoy still where he left him. Would he be there? Would he have wanted him, if he'd just forgone words altogether, and rushed him? Would he have responded without any reservations? Could they hold still in that moment, distill it somehow, purify it. Could they exist in those fleeting minutes when they were utterly united in a singular desire? Did that even mean anything?

It didn't matter, Harry thought. It didn't matter, because they couldn't, they couldn't make that moment stay any more than they could make any moment stay, of resolution or of weakness, of passion or of apathy. They had mapped out this place well. A no-man's land, nowhere one could live, nowhere one could settle, but they had. They'd settled here, where there was nothing for them, not air to breathe, not ground to support them. Everywhere you looked, it was the same bleak nothingness. Draco had almost gotten used to it, but Harry still felt a fresh surge of indignation and rage at his powerlessness every time he paid any attention to it.

Harry blew on his fingers, trying to regain feeling. Finally, realizing he was standing around, not moving, in the snow, he turned to head back to Hogwarts. At the last minute, he changed his mind, and laid down in the snow. He stared up into the sky, grey and featureless and completely unreadable, just like Draco's eyes. He moved his arms around in semi-circles, making his snow angel without much thought. He was quite surprised when he saw booted feet standing right by his head. Blinking the sun out of his eyes, as he tried to look upwards to see who it was, he was greeted by a familiar droll voice. "Having a nice morning ice-bath, Potter? I know I get you excited, but this is still probably going a bit over-board."

Harry sniffed, too tired and deeply upset this time to offer up a sporting reply.

"What, no gems of Potter wit to share with me?"

"What the hell are you doing here, Draco?"

"Oh, just passing by. Slytherin business, of course. Fancy running into you."

"Yeah, of course. Just passing by."

"Oh, don't be so melodramatic, by Merlin, you'll age before your time. Worse than me."

"Am I, really?"

"See? That's what I meant. There you go again."

Harry pushed himself up to his feet again, staring intently into Draco's eyes, shadowed and swaddled in impossibly dense, foggy grey. "Let's not argue, please," Harry said, dully.

"Sure. I'm all for that. Not argue. Right. Of course."

"Oh, don't patronize me, you know what I mean, Malfoy."

"Oh yeah, of course I know. You'd made sure to tell me, haven't you."

"I have."

Inwardly, Harry was thinking, unbelievable. Let down my guard for one second, and this happens. Someone up there must really dislike me, he thought sourly. He's just an insufferable git like I always thought. What's gotten into me? Stupid, heartless bastard. Harry raised his wand and leveled it at Draco, unsmiling.

"No more of this. No more, Draco." He summoned all his strength and conviction, thrusting it into this one moment. Five minutes later, he'd be a quivering mass of pain and regret, but right now, he would show Malfoy. He didn't know what he'd show him. But he'd show him.

Draco's face twisted and his lip curled in that familiar way, almost reassuring. "So, that's how it's going to be, eh, Potter?" He drew out his own wand and stood there, caressing idly along its length. Harry swallowed.

"Are you sure you wouldn't want to get some other use out of my wand?" Draco said, in a low, drawling voice, sending prickles down Harry's neck.

"Fuck you," Harry spat, viciously, all of a sudden. "This is just a fucking game to you, isn't it?" He was beginning to feel a good shouting match coming on, and he was glad of it. This was better. He understood this. They knew all about this.

"Yeah, and I'm winning."

Neither could tell, later, who cast the first spell, who yelled the first curse. Harry went on auto-pilot, his mind in the same careful trance as when he had a surprise test in Transfiguration, say. He couldn't consciously do this faster than Malfoy, so he relied purely on instinct as usual.

"Petrificus Totalis," he yelled, faster than he could think, and before he could do much other than blink in surprise, Draco had fallen to the ground, motionless-- literally petrified. Hary couldn't bear to look at him. He took off at a run, feeling guilty and heartsick and very much the loser. He couldn't take it, couldn't take fighting him. He couldn't take any of this anymore. He was repeatedly discovering that when it came to Draco Malfoy, all his reserves had been tapped. He was exhausted. He had so many battles ahead of him, he knew, and this did not bode well, but he simply could not spare another ounce of his strength for any of these confrontations. It simply took too much out of him-- more than anything else. He'd rather fight Voldemort, one on one, any day. That just took speed and luck and cunning. This... he didn't know what it took. But he knew that inevitably, he failed.

He'd run all the way to the Great Hall this way, without thinking. Bursting in, eyes wild, several somewhat embarrassing marks of no-holds-barred magical combat written all over his skin, he met Ron and Hermione's bewildered, concerned stares. "It's nothing," he said, sitting down, looking with apparent fascination at the swirls of wood within the table. "It's nothing. Just Malfoy."
~~

hee! i can't believe i'm going to say this... but the Snape Fuh-Q-Fest is just, too yummy, and yes i don't care -who's- he's paired with, the way it's presented is just hilarious. i found this story-- harry/snape... and i didn't quite -read- it, but, i tell you, the sex was good! heh. i love the zillion-and-one snape-shag scenarios page, and the who/what-to-do list is quite exhaustive, indeed. (sorting hat, anyone?? heh). "God, he's sexy when he's being a bitch," indeed. yes, reena is a sucker for sexy bitches. and yes, reena's ecchi nature won over her moral standing, again! dammit! agh, i'll NEVER LIVE THIS DOWN, will i~! ;p you're not going to believe this, but.... when i read the `bitch' story, at the end, when they snuggled, i was like, aaawwwwww.... EVIL, evil, i tell you..!! well... at least they didn't try to be all lovey-dovey and "star-crossed" and everything. -that- will never change-- the only star-crossedness to be had is.... yes, you know it....

~~HARRY/DRACO!~~

oooh, yah.
and ok, i know this pic is h/s but, but... yum~! *thrusts head into hands* goddamn, i'm slipping, i'm slipping....someone.....heeeelllppp meeeeee.....;}