Penumbrae

Dark

(Draco)

I never could think straight through the smoke and the sickly sweet stench of beer and drugs and sweat. I settled into a stool and downed my Bacardi.

As I swallowed and looked around, I saw a dark-haired man crossing the dance floor toward the bar. I had already recognized his gait and attitude when he chanced to half-turn toward me, the dim lights glaring off of round, black-rimmed glasses and hiding what I knew to be startling green eyes. As he ordered a drink, I debated whether to stay where I was or go to him. Somehow, my loneliness overrode my common sense and I moved toward him almost reluctantly.

"Harry Potter," I spat out as I reached him.

He smiled dangerously at me. "Malfoy."

"Draco."

The corner of his mouth twitched and his eyes flickered almost imperceptibly. "Draco."

I winced. He had such a way of saying it, making it sound so demeaning. I know, my name's a bit--unconventional, but I hardly had any choice in the matter.

My stupidity in coming here sank in quickly. Why exactly had I come? We had no common ground; we had sparred each other verbally far too often and only my sense of position kept us from clashing physically. To put it bluntly, we hated each other. We didn't meet often--only when I came to inspect progress on a given construction project--but that was enough. All the same, I was here, and the sense of urgency that had propelled me here hadn't completely left me.

"So...do you...come here often?" I tried.

He snorted. "Do you?" I nodded hesitantly. "Have you ever seen me here?" He drank down the rest of his beer.

"Well--"

"Top it off," he instructed the bartender, successfully interrupting me. His eyes scanned the environs desultorily as he waited for his tankard to be refilled. I thought of attempting to initiate some more conversation, but I was spared from making a fool of myself all over again as Harry spoke.

"God, it's hot in here," he commented, eyeing his sweater ruefully.

"Take it off," I suggested, following his gaze. He raised his eyebrows questioningly. "The sweater, I mean. Take it off."

"I haven't got anything under--"

"Oh, that's hardly a problem, we're in a bar. Besides, I've seen you shirtless countless times." I recalled what was really a very pleasing mental image--Harry's curved back, glistening with sweat, muscles rippling anxiously, his vertebrae poking out smoothly.

Harry's smirk drove the picture from my mind. "Thankfully, I can't say the same about you."

"Come upstairs," I blurted, far too quickly and abruptly.

Harry, who had just taken a swig of beer, choked. "What?"

I wished more than ever that magic were real, that I could simply...disappear. But it was too late. I don't know, I still don't know what it was, that necessity that blinded me to all reason. I took a deep breath and repeated, "Come upstairs...with me." After a moment of shocked and awkward silence, I added, "Please."

He laughed harshly, cocked his head, and grated, "So that's it, yeah? I'll come upstairs with you like nothing else exists--like there was no past, like there's no future. Like we've never hated each other. We'll just pretend. And then on Monday morning--it'll be back to normal, with you hating me and me hating you. One night, in a different world. You want some kind of a...sex outlet? No, I won't do that. I know what you want."

"No--no, you don't understand at all--it's nothing like that--" I couldn't even begin to explain the despair, the longing, the emptiness I was trying to fill.

"Of course not," he scoffed.

He drained his glass, then dropped his hands into his lap and seemed to inspect his glass carefully. He gazed almost furtively up at me from beneath his long, lowered, coal-black lashes. After a moment, he chuckled slightly and shook his head, then slammed the glass onto the counter. Rising from his bench, he stared at me expectantly. As I stared back blankly, he said with some impatience, "Well, lead the way."

It dawned on me that he had accepted my inane invitation. I dared not argue, and instead merely stood and began to wend my way across the room toward the dark rickety steps in a corner, skirting the tables and chairs and people. Somewhere along the way I slipped my hand into his, and he did not withdraw it.

I reached my flat and slid the key gently into the lock, opened the door, and stepped into the dark room. I released my hand from his and brushed it over the wall in search of the light switch, but Harry swiftly blocked my hand with his own, keeping the room in relative murky obscurity, lit only by the stark city lights seeping through the window, as he pulled the key out of the lock, threw it onto the floor, and closed the door. He glanced about him, his eyes finally lighting upon the old, worn bed in the middle of the room. He pulled me toward it with uncharacteristic gentleness and sat on the mattress, then looked up at me. After a moment, he said quietly, "I do understand."

I sat down on the bed and faced him, then reached out slowly to pull off his glasses and reveal his eyes, pure green locked with grey. His free hand found its way to my collarbone, tracing up my neck and resting to cup under my cheek. I leaned into the touch and closer my eyes.

That was the last moment I remember with any semblance of sanity. From then on, it was all hands and tongue and lips and pain and despair and anguish and clinging and blindness and intoxication and hunger and necessity. It wasn't love, certainly, but it was anything but lust. It was water for the thirsty, nourishment for the famished...it was begging and pleading for it all to go away, pleading for perfection and sanity.

We fell asleep with crystalline tears in our eyes, holding each other close, keeping the other from slipping off of the edge. At some time in the night I chanced to wake for a moment, and I looked at Harry's sleeping face. With sleep came an unguarded tenderness that softened the harsh lines governing his face. His eyebrows were knit together in a slight frown; my fingertips brushed his forehead and he relaxed. He looked so vulnerable, lost, almost childlike without his glasses, fragments of light canting through the slats of the cheap, cracked, plastic blinds. I closed my eyes with the threat of a sob building up at the base of my throat and fell asleep once more.

When I woke up again, Harry was gone and garish daylight poured through onto the bed. I closed my eyes, trying to cling to the vestiges of emotion from the night before, trying to retain the way he felt under my fingers, his skin, the slight ridges of his spine, the tight wrist, the curve of his neck, his tongue gracing my throat, the touch of his lips over mine and reaching, searching....

I wondered, of course, if it had all been a dream, but through the cloaking mist it had seemed so real, so much more real than anything had in so long. I plucked my clothes from where they lay strewn about on the floor, pulled them on, and began to make my way to the door when a glint caught my eyes. It was the key.

A half-smile tugged at the corner of my lips as I bent over to pick it up, then turned it in my hand to catch the light. It had been real, and his hands had touched this key, the same hands that had touched me and had held me close, the same hands I would remember and long for forever.

I took a deep breath and ran a hand through my hair, calling to my mind the messy black mop I had stroked only hours ago. Finally I opened the door, stepped down the dark, old stairs that no longer seemed quite so broken-down and rickety, and stepped into what had been the bar last night but what was a quiet, albeit shoddy, breakfast place by day. I hardly dared to speak lest I betray the constant tremors running through me, but I managed to order a cup of coffee. I held the foam cup to my lips with trembling hands, pouring lukewarm liquid down my throat. The coffee was stale and slightly greasy, but it didn't really matter. I wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry; I tried to do both and nearly spilled my coffee. I kneaded my forehead with my fist, clenching my jaw and shutting my eyes tightly to drive back the tears. I shook my head and stood up.

My eyes cast over the room one last time, almost hoping against hope to see him again. I would see him on Monday from above, the manager gazing scornfully down upon the workers. And we would hate each other no less. Nothing had changed.

And yet....

And yet, of course, everything had.

Slinging my thumbs into my pockets, I stepped across the room to the door and out into the glaring midday sun.

Light

(Harry)

My parents died in a car crash. My father was driving drunk. The bastards I lived with made sure to impress this upon me so that I would remember what scum I came from. I resolved early on that I would never drink. But that was before I fell in love.

When the first--and only--girl I had ever loved dumped me, I knew that the world had stopped turning. When I realized it hadn't, I exploded with pain and anger. We had made love together, our bodies had made a pact for eternity. I didn't take things like that lightly, and yet--I suppose she did. Which means I'm an awful judge of character and was pretty stupid to fall in love with her in the first place.

I began to drink to drown away the pain, to wash out the hate that had settled on me. But it wasn't enough. I went into a phase where I fucked anything and everything I could get my hands on. That only made it worse. And I was left with a deep hunger, a craving for something intangible and indefinable that I didn't even know where to start looking for.

By now, I had become a chronic drinker, no better than the father who had gotten himself and his wife killed and who had thereby orphaned me. I drifted from bar to bar with the vague hope that if I didn't become a regular anywhere, I'd be able to break out of it. So one Friday evening after a tiring day's work I found myself at the door of what looked to be a low, filthy kind of bar in the heart of the city. I walked in and made my way to a stool.

My mind generally oscillates from praying to meet no one in the bar to wishing I'd find the champion of my dreams there (although what the champion of my dreams would be doing in a place like this is beyond me). What I have never wanted, however, is to run into my archnemesis. The man hates me. We cannot stand each, we are always jumping at each other's throats, and besides, he's such a pretentious bastard. Therefore, I was less than pleased to see him wending his way toward me.

"Harry Potter," he snarled upon reaching me.

I would rather have liked to tell him that I already knew my name, thanks anyway, but instead I merely returned, "Malfoy."

"Draco," he corrected, as if I had no excuse for forgetting his first name, despite the fact that I have never actually used it.

I rolled my eyes and drawled, "Draco."

I gulped down a bit of whatever the bartender had poured into my glass--who knows, it might have been battery fluid, it certainly didn't taste like anything I recognized--as Malfoy--or rather, Draco--attempted to make some conversation.

"So...do you come here often?" he asked tentatively.

I snorted. "Do you?" He nodded, I continued, "Have you ever seen me here?"

"Well--"

Having finished my drink, I had the perfect excuse to interrupt him, so I seized the opportunity and called to the bartender, waving my empty glass at a tap, "Top it off."

As I waited for my drink to be refilled, I cast my eyes about the room. The bartender plunked down the glass, redrawing my attention, and I picked it up. "God, it's hot in here," I commented a bit ruefully, staring down at my sweater. It had been a bit cold outside, and I've always hated the cold.

"Take it off," Draco advised me. "The sweater I mean," he added, as if I hadn't understood him, "Take it off."

"But I haven't got anything under--"

"Oh, that's hardly a problem, we're in a bar. Besides, I've seen you shirtless countless times." He sounded almost eager for me to disrobe myself.

Vaguely unsettled by this, I tried to laugh it off and said, "Thankfully, I can't say the same about you."

"Come upstairs," he rejoined abruptly.

Having just taken a swig of the unidentifiable liquid in my glass, I quite naturally choked. You don't say things like that, you just don't, even in a bar. "What?" I managed weakly.

He had the grace to look embarrassed, and he breathed deeply before repeating, "Come upstairs...with me." Then, after a pause, "Please."

It struck me that he was either delusional or insane, or both. I swallowed down the faint nausea that had risen up in me and laughed. "So that's it, yeah? I'll come upstairs with you like nothing else exists--like there was no past, like there's no future. Like we've never hated each other. We'll just pretend. And then on Monday morning--it'll be back to normal, with you hating me and me hating you. One night, in a different world. You want some kind of a...sex outlet? No, I won't do that. I know what you want."

"No--no, you don't understand at all--it's nothing like that--" he protested earnestly.

"Of course not," I scoffed, trying to hide the fact that I thought he was really telling the truth.

I raised my glass to my lips, thinking. He did sound like he meant it. Maybe...maybe he wasn't just a horny delusional. Maybe there was more. Maybe he was like me, searching for something to fill the void....

I drained my glass, stared at him for a moment, then laughed slightly and stood up. He continued to stare blankly, like he didn't understand my concession, until I said, "Well, lead the way."

Finally having understood, he rose as well and began to weave his way through the crowds and the chairs and the tables toward a dark stairway starting in the corner of the room. At some point, he slipped his hand into mine. I did not withdraw it.

When we reached what was presumably his flat, he pulled out a key and let us in. It was dark inside, with only a little light spilling through the slats of the blinds on the windows. Draco reached for a light switch, but I intercepted his searching fingers. I pulled the key from the lock and dropped it somewhere on the ground before closing the door. I looked around the dim room, my eyes meeting a very shabby yet strikingly immaculate room with a small kitchen and breakfast table, an armchair, a bureau, and a bed. A closed door in one wall must have been the bathroom, while an open one beside it suggested a closet. I pulled him gently to the bed and sat down upon it, then raised my eyes to meet his beautifully cold grey ones. After a moment, I whispered, "I do understand."

Draco sat down beside me, and after a moment, carefully pulled off my glasses. I tentatively raised my hand to his elegant collarbone, then brushed it up his neck to cup under his cheek. He shivered slightly as he leaned into my touch and closed his eyes. I leaned toward him and kissed him softly, hesitantly. He kissed back, and I felt a beautiful warmth spread through me, making my heart race and my hand tremble. I hardly knew what was happening; it wasn't quite like anything I'd ever done before. We were driven by necessity and pent-up anguish, it was love and lust and yet neither. It was hunger and pain and despair and yes, insanity, and yes, delusion. There was no past, there was no future; there was only then, there was only him, there was only us, struggling to breathe and rise up from the weight of being possibly irrevocably lost.

We finally fell asleep clinging to each other, tears drawing lines down our faces that sparkled with the light seeping through the window. It was all so ethereal; I didn't know what I was dreaming and what I wasn't, but I did know that for the moment, at least, that urging, unsettled feeling had gone away.

The next day, when I awoke, Draco was still asleep. Stark daylight canted through the old, dilapidated blinds and onto his pale skin. He looked almost translucent in his sleep, a delicate network of veins peering through his skin. He looked so fragile, and I could hardly bear to leave him. I knew, I just knew somehow that if I left him there he would break. But I shook myself mentally and reminded myself that everyone looks like that when they're asleep--probably even me. I pulled my clothes on slowly, wanting to delay the hour of parting, half-hoping that he would wake up. It was possible that he would be mortified by the situation and kick me out, but it was equally possible that he would remember every touch and every unspoken word as well as I did.

When he didn't wake up, I had little choice but to leave him. The bar had been transformed into a rather shoddy breakfast shop, and there I purchased some stale, oddly greasy coffee that I threw out after a few sips. My head throbbed from the alcohol of the night before, and the aggravatingly bright sunlight shot through my eyes as I wandered outside to my cold, empty home.

On Monday I saw Draco looking down at us disdainfully from high above. My heart fell. Had that night really meant nothing to him? Did he really see it as just some one-night-stand deal? Because I sure as hell didn't.

But then one day, a few weeks later, I happened to look up at him...and I caught him gazing at me with the oddest look on his face--a look of defeat and longing, and yet a kind of esoteric knowledge. He glanced away quickly when he realized I was looking at him, but it was too late. I had seen...I knew....

The next Friday, exactly four weeks from...that night...I found my way to the same dirty, downtrodden bar in the heart of the city and walked in. I looked around to see if I could find Draco...and I saw him sitting alone on a stool. I made my way to the same stool I had sat in four weeks ago, ordered a drink, and prayed that Draco would notice me. I kept my eyes down, trying not to appear too eager, but it was so hard to keep a smile from stealing to my lips as I watched Draco approach from the corner of my eye.

At last he stopped before me and looked up.

"Harry Potter," he whispered.