Wildfire

Wildfire
By Cinnamon

He’s been hit by an arrow tipped in a red potion that has set his blood afire, and now Harry Potter lies still on the sidewalk. His body is still, but his eyes, his heart, and his mind are not. Fluttering eyelashes close over hazy, glazed green eyes, blood stammers and stutters, driven by a heart beating like a caged bird, and his mind flickers weakly, flying from memory to dream, interrupted by hysterical screams that are caught in his mind and never make it to his throat. His skin is burning, fever driven by that potion-dipped arrow driving him mad, and Harry, though he lies on the sidewalk bleeding, is not aware of much going on around him. He is aware of a lot going on inside him, just not the arrow, the blood, nor the hazy light of dawn slowly creeping over the horizon.

He is aching and weak and sweating. It reminds him of something he can not quite place and, desperate to draw a correlation from this heat to another heat he has known to make this all make some sort of sense, Harry desperately tries to place that memory. In a world gone mad, however, it is difficult to draw up a lucid memory from the depths of his mind, and instead, wild flashes of memory, other times and other situations that burned like this one does, are dancing behind his eyes.

“It’s so hard,” he whispers, voice raspy, cheek scraping along the rough cement.

“Whoever told you it was easy?” Draco Malfoy had replied, scoffing and rolling brilliant silver eyes that even in memory burned like the shimmering light of a full moon. “Whoever it was, they lied, Potter.”

He had shaken his head, eyes stinging, panicky heat in his chest making it feel tight. He remembered that heat, that tightness, that feeling of being just about to break, to lose his mind. “No one told me,” he said, and then he was crying. Another sort of heat, the scalding heat of tears.

“Hey,” Draco had said, suddenly gentle, touching his jaw, tilting his face up. “It’s not that bad. Nothing’s ever that bad.”

It was too easy though, thinking that way, and Harry had pulled away. “I can’t love you,” he’d whispered, and Draco had reacted as though he’d been stung. The heat got worse than, blinding, aching, searing worse, and it was nothing like this heat now. Nothing, nothing at all, so Harry lets that memory fade away, still anxiously searching for some reference, some proof that he’d felt something that burned this way before, and he’d survived it.

It is like fire…consuming flame…

That thought brings Ginny Weasley to mind, for her flickering red hair and her fiery temper, her devilish grin and the way she tackled him, knocking him to the ground in a field of red poppies the first time she’d kissed him. Sixteen, never been kissed, Ginny Weasley pushed him down and jumped on him, straddling him, pinning him, grinning down at him. Wild strands of golden wheat danced around her face and the sun made a crimson halo shine around her, poppies glinting like pools of fire.

“Don’t be scared,” she’d said, voice husky, smile devious.

“Scared?” he’d stammered, not quite sure Ron would approve of this, not quite trusting that this Ginny was real. Where were her shy smiles and her eyes that could never meet his? Her maidenly blushes and her elbow in the butter dish?

All thoughts were gone because her mouth was on his then, lips parted, tongue hungry, and he idly wondered (even as a strange, new heat he’d never experienced or if he had, he hadn’t noticed, started growing in the pit of his stomach and in his veins) where she’d learned to kiss this way, her mouth a hot, strange thing prying his lips apart and searing some strange tattoo inside of him. Her hair had fallen around him, blocking out the poppies and the wild wheat and smelling of soap and clover and not the strange, wild, untamed scent of wheat and sunset and something faintly earthy, musky, that might have been the ground or something more alien. Heat, but stranger than anything else, some wildfire that burned quickly and hot and ran through his veins and was gone as suddenly as the kiss. A flash fire, extinguished, when she pulled away and he opened his eyes and she was grinning down at him again. A girlish giggle and she was gone, running off through the wheat. Alone with a strange tightness and tingling in his body he didn’t understand, the poppies and wheat and dying sun all that was left, the heat was quickly replaced by a strange, unsatisfied coldness…

So that doesn’t fit. This heat, this fever, is not answered with echoing cold. The memory fades away and Harry arches against the black cement, moaning and frantically seeking some reference point. He is burning up and he is panicking and everything is moving so very fast, spinning away. He is losing his footing, his grip on reality, or maybe he’d lost it long ago.

The wound in his back is bleeding, leaking hot blood and somehow, bits of his soul, floating away like bubbles. His eyes flutter and Harry’s left hand curls into a claw, scratching at the black cement desperately, as if for some leverage, to crawl away from this spinning and mind-shattering fever.

His mind had been shattered before, he remembers suddenly, the sidewalk and the arrow disappearing as another memory takes him, this one different than the others.

A breathy, shaky whisper. “It might hurt.”

“I don’t care.” And he didn’t. He hadn’t cared for months, about anything, except this. Silver eyes slowly closed above him, and Harry let out a slow, careful breath. It was like standing on quicksand, he hazily decided, even as he watched Draco lower his head, silky blond hair brushing Harry’s jaw as Draco’s tongue licked his throat. Hot quicksand that shifted and gave way beneath his feet and at first, he struggled against the strange feeling of gravity giving way. And then it seemed more pleasurable to give in, to let wave after wave of sand give way, to fall into this, whatever this was. It didn’t seem to matter much, because Draco’s tongue was tracing small circles at the hollow of Harry’s throat, and he tilted his head back and closed his eyes, the sand shifting beneath his feet just a little more.

He wondered how Draco could be so sure of this, know exactly where to touch with his hands and his mouth to make Harry ache and arch and shiver and cry out, wondered how Draco could remember all that when he himself could scarcely remember his own name. It felt good, every now and again, to forget that. Forget everything.

“Oh god,” he breathed, shivering, as Draco pulled his shirt off, sliding lower, his hands on Harry’s stomach, mouth on his chest. He looked up, and Harry could see him trembling.

“Harry?” he mumbled, sounding unsure. It was so strange, that tiny, shaky voice, when matched with this hands still running over his stomach and sliding lower.

“Mmm?” Harry replied, stretching lazily, like a cat.

“Do you want me?”

In reply, Harry arched his hips and moaned.

Draco smiled a bit, though had Harry been paying attention then he would have seen it as a slightly hesitant and distinctly out of character smile. But Draco had lowered his head again, steadily stoking the fire inside Harry until it was wild, out of control. Wildfire that consumed. His trousers were gone and Draco was on top of him, bodies pressed together, skin rasping against cotton and denim, grinding and tearing as the fire took them both.

The heat then… what sort of heat was that? The hazy, desperate kind that possessed and clutched at the mind until no other thought was able to be processed, except want this need this now now now need this fuck this now now now. Which was why, as Draco slid lower and lazily drew his tongue up along exactly where Harry needed it (heat spiraled higher then, grew tighter somehow, took firmer control. A dragon digging fangs in deeper so as not to let go of its prey), Harry cried out wordlessly and arched his back and begged. Begged and cried and forgot his name and Draco’s name and every name he’d ever heard in his entire life.

And then he was inside Draco’s mouth, and Draco’s lips and his tongue and his breath and his hands, and Harry couldn’t tell the difference anymore because he was alive, he was on fire, and he had never burned this hot before and everything was spiraling downwards into something deep and dark, somewhere he’d never been before but wanted to be now. So he pushed up, into that mouth that took him willingly, pulling him and guiding him ever downwards into that spiral of fire and flame and heat, and then —

“Do you love me?” Even the whisper was hot, aching.

He didn’t reply, he was unable to reply, because he was crying and begging and aching and he hated Draco then, with the fire of a thousand suns, for offering that and then taking it back, and then Draco licked again, almost, it seemed, as an offering. An exchange. Can’t you love me, Harry? Look at what I can do for you…

“Yes,” Harry hissed, an acknowledgement, an agreement, a compromise, it didn’t matter. “I love… I need…” His hands were tangling in Draco’s hair and he was tugging, chest heaving, breath burning.

That hot and burning, twisting hell was back now, and he was melting beneath it all, drowning, falling, inside Draco’s mouth, dancing flames taking him deeper and deeper into the fever and the heat, and then he was gone, mind shattered, pouring into Draco.

Was that heat like this one? Like broken splinters, Harry’s mind is searching, searching. A glass that has shattered into a million fragments, he is searching through them now, for something that made this heat make sense.

But it hadn’t been like this, because this sort of fever is not a spiral, it is a lazy circle. It does not move towards any climax but spins around and around in an endless loop of madness and fire. This is… this is like nothing he’s ever felt before. He is lost in a ring of endless heat and there can be no escape, but still, his mind keeps searching, frantically seeking some respite, some promise, that this hell could not last forever.

***

Draco had not shot the arrow, though he had watched it cut through the air and embed itself in Harry’s shoulder. And for a long moment, he had not moved, nor wanted to move. If Harry’s blood burned with poison, his own burned with fury, shame, bitterness. There lay, on the sidewalk bleeding, the man he’d poured everything he had once believed he didn’t have into, who had taken it, twisted it, and thrown it back into his face. And now he lies bleeding, dying, and Draco turns to walk away.

He doesn’t, of course, he can’t. And, footsteps slowly picking up speed, he makes his way down the street, crossing the back pavement, eyes searching the shadows for the assassin, more to avoid looking at Harry than because he actually believes he’ll see whomever had shot him. Jobs like this are done fast and then over with. He should know; usually he was the one who did them.

The streets are empty, dark. The only sound is Harry’s breathing, and of course, Draco’s heart, which still beats. That surprises him. It beats and it bleeds and once he’d been accused of not even having a heart, by the very same man who lies there now, bleeding.

“Harry,” he scolds, voice very gentle, because he had fallen into that trap of always treating Harry with gentleness long ago, though the boy never deserved it, never returned it. Even he had given everything he had to protect Harry from everything that threatened, had given everything he was to Harry in an effort to keep him alive, keep him sane. Happy, even. It hadn’t been enough, but then whoever thought the heart and soul of Draco Malfoy was worth anything? Certainly not Harry Potter.

“What have you done to yourself this time?” Draco sighs, pushing back black hair out of Harry’s eyes, which are shining oddly from fever, flashing between fluttering eyelashes. The arrow is still protruding, and Draco gently pulls it out, ignoring the rush of blood that results. He strokes Harry’s face, clammy with fever, sweat, blood. “Open your eyes,” he whispers, lips brushing Harry’s ear. “Just for a moment, love. Open your eyes.”

And Harry does. The fever recedes enough at Draco’s voice (mostly because that brought with it another level of Hell and the potion’s entire purpose was to cast the victim into their own personal hell), and Draco smiles gently. “Harry, you stupid prat,” he chides, still stroking hair out of his eyes, one hand slipping down to cradle Harry’s.

“I’m dying.”

“Yes.”

Green eyes narrow thoughtfully, and Draco fights panic. He’d never wanted to look into those eyes again, but he cannot look away. “You came.”

“Always do, for you.” A teasing grin, silver eyes light up with amusement, and Draco hopes Harry doesn’t see the way his lower lip is trembling.

“Always,” Harry whispers. A smile flickers across his lips and his eyes flutter, they’re going to close.

“Not yet.”

“What?”

Tracing Harry’s lower lip, Draco shakes his head. “Not yet.”

It takes a great strength of will to not give into the heat, but Harry manages, and Draco is oddly proud, his smile encouraging. “Why?” Harry asked.

“You wanted this,” Draco accuses, though his tone is still soft. “You wanted to die.”

“No.” Harry sounds so disgusted that Draco is mildly taken aback.

“No? You’ve wanted to die for years.”

“No…”

Exasperation is strange and somehow made shaper by a rising panic. “Then what? You never told me what you wanted.”

“You.” It is getting hard to breath, Harry’s voice feels seared, his throat is getting rough. Heat his burning him up, from the inside.

Silver eyes study his face disbelievingly for a long moment, and then Draco lets out a tight breath. “You’re impossible. Even while dying, you’ve still got to…”

“Got to what?” He arches against the sidewalk, whimpering from the ache of heat in his skin, and Draco strokes his chest soothingly.

“Surprise me. Enthrall me. Captivate me and make me want you.” Draco rests his head on Harry’s chest, listening to the erratic beating of Harry’s heart. He is bent over Harry now, folded around him, a protective embrace that can no longer protect, or maybe it never could.

There is silence for a moment, and Draco is sure Harry has slipped back into the fever, but he is wrong. “Draco?” It comes out as a husky whisper, a plea.

“Yes?”

“I love you.”

It hurts and it burns and Draco wonders if it’s easier this way, to finally confess when you know you haven’t got to do any of the scary things to back it up. Like beg and sacrifice and plead and lose most of yourself in an endless and vain effort to save the one you love. He wonders how Harry can be so selfish, so stupid, so blind, and he wonders how he can still love him, after all of this. He wonders how and if the world will go on without Harry Potter to save it, time and again, but knows that there will always be another stupid boy to play hero. He wonders if heroes ever think of how much they’re giving up to be heroes. Their hearts, their minds, their sanity. He wonders if Harry knows he’s lost his mind years ago.

“I know,” he whispers, because now, none of that matters. All that matters is that Harry is bleeding, burning, and dying. He lifts his head and kisses Harry (who used to taste indefinable and now tastes of blood) on the lips, gently coaxing his mouth open, and this time, for the first time, Harry kisses him back. Hot and feverish and (why is everything feverish when it comes to Harry? Draco will never know) achingly bittersweet, and then Harry is moaning, slipping further (quicksand underfoot, hot sand slipping away, Draco knew what it was like, he’d taught Harry what it was like), and Draco gathers him up against his chest.

“It’s alright,” he soothes, and Harry rests his head against Draco’s shoulder and closes his eyes.

Cool rain starts to fall then, soft, misting rain, that beads up like crystal tears on Harry’s eyelashes, or tiny pearls of ice. Draco is achingly, echoingly cold inside, and it doesn’t matter, because Harry burns in his arms, Harry had always burns in his arms, and it is the only thing that had ever mattered. They burn up together.

Wildfire in a field of wild wheat and poppies.