"He's watching you again," Pansy glaring, eyes like knives, turning away ostentatiously like an animal threatening, posing for a distant rival. "He always watches you." A hiss in a bright voice not made for hissing. Draco sits, tumbled like a child's blocks into a space entirely too small for his long-limbed slenderness. Grey eyes flick up, over, see a solemn dark face with green eyes, look away.
"I know." Voice a mere whisper, dismissive, a feather of mist like those that drift from their teacups. "Always." Deep breath, release, and folding himself back into himself. No time for relaxation, he thinks sadly, not safe to be so open, though he half-suspects Potter wouldn't allow anyone to... thoughts close on that with a slam. "I'm too tired to care."
"Darling..." Too bright, too quick Pansy, like a tropical bird, smiling now with an edge that makes Draco feel both wary and weary, one letter and infinite worlds apart. His eyes touch hers, slide away as though oiled. She wants, of course, what she's always wanted. There are no secrets between them. "I know what would make you feel better..."
"No," Draco says slowly, sadly, "no, I rather think you don't." They sit for a moment, dining hall clatter all about them, sharing discomfort like children sharing a treat. Nobody else looks over, thankfully, sudden attention on food and hard benches and shared sorrows.
Across the hall, green eyes watch the scene play out.
=
A gentle whispering sound from the stacks, a robe hung slightly askew, kissing the floor like a discarded leaf. Light from the high mullioned windows shone on the table, illuminating the Potions book he was reading but making it difficult to see past the boundaries of where the light fell. Finally he picks out a tracery of Potter standing in the shadow of a shelf, a tangle of darkness for hair, the flash of reflected light from lenses, the sketched impressions of a Gryffindor uniform. "What do you want, Potter?" he asks, hopelessly, never expecting an answer. "Why are you always staring at me?" Fingers press into pale temples, grey eyes closing for a moment as if in pain, a thousand previous moments flashing through his memory like a catalog of unfriendliness.
"You always look so put together." Harry's voice is soft, but the words are so unexpected Draco half-turns from his seat in the library.
Draco's mouth opens, but instead of the sarcasm he expects to hear from himself, two words of truth fall into the silence. "Of course." What now, he asks himself. Bad enough Potter walks around looking so fit, if his very presence has become veritaserum, I quit. Haven't I suffered enough?
"What do you mean, of course?" Stepping forward, reflected sunlight revealing a look of mildly exasperated curiosity. Draco's treacherous mind speaks truth again even as he tries to think of something, anything, else to say.
"It's armor, Potter. Now leave me alone. I'm studying." A languid hand waves at the table, covered in notes and books. "As you should be." Reaching for the sarcasm that was so quick to hand normally but failing him so spectacularly. "Not that you ever do. Study, that is. I suppose there's no point to it, for someone like..." he couldn't even continue. He hated how his voice sounded, how weak and fragile his words seemed, fluttering like dying birds in this silence, this golden beam of sun and dust and unwilling stillness. Potter takes another step forward, face oddly intent, folds his compact body into the space of the chair beside Draco somehow, shockingly too close. A half-noticed scent of broomstick polish and grass and young man making Draco's eyelids heavy for a moment, making the room spin slightly askew.
"Armor?" comes the quiet question. Ignoring Draco's feeble attempt to ward him off, of course... something like Potter couldn't be kept out by wards and walls and moats, let alone anything as mundane as snippy words. "It doesn't look like armor. It looks..." An olive-skinned hand rises, falls, shaping a meaningless form in the air. Draco's eyebrow rises without his prompting, but before he could ask what could possibly be meant by such a thing, Potter speaks again, breaking everything Draco thought he knew about this interaction. "Beautiful."
"I..." he wants to stand, to run, to just get away from those eyes. Bad enough when they were merely solid circles of light reflected from smudged lenses; seeing Potter's actual eyes is infinitely worse. Intense, shockingly green eyes staring, hungry, watching, always watching. "Well, thank you for that, I suppose." He says breathlessly, trying and failing for the waspish tone that couldn't be reached, like a cursed sword that fled when needed most by its owner. "I should go," as he quickly begins gathering his things into the satchel that he carries. Just run away like always, comes the vicious voice in his mind, but for once he is able to laugh in its metaphorical face. He knows he is a coward, none greater, but this... who could fight against this? Potter is a tempest, a typhoon, a tornado of fire that bends the world around itself. Such things cannot be opposed, they must be avoided or failing that, simply endured.
"I wish you wouldn't," he hears from a distance. "I wish... you didn't feel like you needed armor." He looks up into glowing green eyes, closer than they have any right to be.
"I need armor to be here at all, especially for moments like this," Draco says, frightening himself with the words he never meant to say. "But it doesn't help. I've never felt more naked." The sudden awkward press of chapped lips on his, so amazingly petal-soft, finally shatters his thoughts beyond fixing.
=
"Why do you always stare at me so?" Amused words with an undercurrent of concern, falling into the stillness of a room. Potter, draped on the bed like a discarded garment, book propped askew in front of himself giving the barest hint of studying while staring unabashed at Draco. Calm half-smiling face, turned always and forever in his direction like a sunflower. Sometimes Draco would step out of the shower and half expect to see him there, looking, watching, with that expression that makes him feel more exposed than any amount of skin could possibly do.
"I like looking at you," comes the lazy reply, warm slurring words belied by the tight focus of shining green eyes. Dark fringe hanging in disarray, half-shadowing the face beneath, eyes of a feral animal staring at its prey. The hands on the book tense, flex, release and turn a page for sheer effect, words passing by unread and unremarked like flotsam on a stream. Draco feels the flush start on his cheeks, thinking of those hands and the power they held in the world as well as the power they held in this room, fraternal but not identical.
"There are other things to watch, you know," Draco huffs, half-exasperated, half-charmed, off-balance as Potter always leaves him so. He turns, focused intently on his own book, wrapped himself in coolness to try and escape the feelings in his own mind.
"Not for me." Three small words, stealing the breath from his lungs with sudden shock and want. Looking back, he is lost in shining green eyes.
=
"Harry, mate, why do you watch him like that?" Ron curious, feeding like a shark at the table, food piled in front of him like a bastion against the falling night. A mouthful, another, gulping, gone, expression unchanging with questions for eyes.
"Do I?" Half-listening, half-aware, soul poured into eyes that watched, looking across a hall to blond hair, tall thin form, crouched small to be unseen but seen nonetheless by any who looked. Eating like a bird, pecking here, there, tiny bites, nervous glances, shifting on the bench just enough to not be invisible like he clearly desired. No Pansy today, sitting alone at one corner of a bench as though ashamed to need to eat and breathe and live like others. Grey eyes flashing, glancing over, rolling even as they smiled independent of that cold, closed face. Of all the thousand sights of Draco Harry was least fond of that particular face, the uncaring mask that stood between him and what he wanted to see, the cloud that sometimes covered the sun.
"Do you? Do you? I don't know if you're barmy or you think I am!" Far too loud voice a shock even in the warm chatter of the dining hall, others looking up, glancing, eyeing Harry where he sat. Social discomfort pulling him back, back from blond hair and grey eyes, back from his place of comfort, back to food and red hair and irritated eyes peering at him. Curious probing expressions from younger half-known faces, watching and wondering at the sound of an almost-fight between two bodies which had seemed in the past to almost share a mind.
"Crikey, Ron, make a scene about it, why don't you?" Harry looks down, back, up, anywhere but where his eyes always go. Others around losing focus, drifting back to their own lives, their own thoughts, their own restless sleep from moment to moment of social persiflage, never awake enough to see what's right in front of them.
"So why?" still questioning, challenging, but finally quieter. "He's just... like he always is. What's to see?" Harry doesn't know how to answer this. One shoulder rising, falling, dark hair falling into his face for a moment.
"Nothing. Everything." Eyes sliding back again, gently, inevitably, falling back like a benediction onto that long, lean shape across the hall.
=
"I can't... I can't bear it. You must... please... excuse me but..." Draco fluttering, broken-winged bird, destroyed by sorrow, a tower fallen into sudden, ruinous wreckage. Words blowing like dust in the aftermath, disconnected from mind and meaning. Small, compact dark haired form in front of him, taking him, stopping him, bringing him back to earth one fragile toehold at a time.
"Draco... stop. Slow down. I heard and I'm so sorry. I'm here. I can take you wherever you need to go. Let me help." Soft words, tiny ribbons to restrain the panic that fights, jungleborn and blood-fanged in his soul. Calm, sorrowful eyes staring at him still, always watching, always waiting for... what?
"Go." A tiny clink of a word, thrown down like a coin of loss, a penny snatched from the eyes of a corpse that will never cross the Styx now with the ferryman half-paid. "Just... leave. I can't... I can't be with you right now. My mother, she..." usually elegant pale fingers tearing at blond hair, casting perfection into abrupt disarray. Folding, suddenly, bending without meaning to, wrapping instinctively around a hole where his intestines used to be, ought to be. Words faded into a mindless keening, strong hands holding him up. Screaming, inconsolable, for the loss of the only parent he had that was worthy of the name. "I hate... I hate..." he chattered, teeth clattering, somehow ruinously, shockingly cold despite the room being the same room it was five minutes ago when the air was fine. "Stop fucking looking at me!"
"Don't you know what I see?" Quiet words, almost but a not quite a challenge. Warm breath on his freezing ear, somehow bringing a tiny bit of heat into a place that may never seem warm again. "I see love. I see bravery. I see a heart so hurt it can't help but cry, a heart so strong it hates to survive. I see you, Draco. I always see you." Absurdly soft lips press to the side of his face as he cries. Clutching at the jumper in front of him, heart and soul and core splitting open like some horrible egg, hatching only grief and pain and loss, he clings to the rock that supports him.
"Harry, god, Harry..."
=
Olive skin alight with candle flame, a twist and curl of dark hair between two perfect nipples, Draco kisses his way down. Eyes watch him, always watching. This has been so long coming, and yet no time at all, circling each other like mating birds. A gentle sigh, an almost-hidden catch of breath, he hears words in these, twisting a bit further, licking a bit more, biting that hair's breadth harder to learn the paths of desire. "How's this?" he murmurs, "or this?" His mouth is busy, his eyes are full, but Draco feels his soul smiling inside him at the writhing of the body beneath his lips and hands. "Yes?"
Green eyes half-lidded, watching with pupils blown wide with lust and desire in the flickering light. "Yes," whispered, shocking despite being sought, endless affirmation bouncing through hallways of mirrors, yes to everything, yes to every question, yes to things not even thought of yet. Desire coiling through them both, clenching in Draco's spine like a tentacle, tension rising in tiny increments, sneaking in when unseen but there nonetheless, building towards white-edged fire of joy so overwhelming it is a shock each time. Fingers touch and clench and touch again, lips parting and tongues searching, darting, the shocking heat of secret places, even more shocking heat inside the body of another... and through it all, the watchful eyes, Draco feeling seen and stripped and flayed and known until he barely knows himself any more.
"Do you know..." he whispered, later, pale and dark bodies coiled around each other like vines. "How long..." Fingers stopped him, resting on his lips, green eyes shining, watching, watching.
"Of course I know." Smile like a sunrise, breaking soft and glowing across a face Draco has hated and feared and wanted and loved for longer than he feels like the world has existed. "How would I not know? I always see you." Fingers tilting his head, lifting him slightly, lips just as soft as that first touch in the library months and years and lifetimes and aeons ago. "I only see you."