Coloured Grey

AN: Happy Holidays.



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A sobbing retching sound. Harry crossed the rotted wood flooring in quick strides.

“Oi Malfoy.” Had he even voiced those words? They echoed in his head.



Reaching out without realising it. Startled when the sobbing lump didn\'t flinch away.

\'Malfoy.\' This time his voice was clear as a bell against the rasping, hitching chorus of sobs.

\'Let me help you.\'



“Bugger off.”

Harry couldn\'t be sure that he wasn\'t holding a conversation with himself.

Crawling onto the bed. Feeling the blood-stiff sheets beneath his knees.

A low gurgling sob sounded again.



The strike of a fist that caught him in the ribs stunned him for a moment. He hadn\'t been expecting that much For a second the world spun dangerously as he desperately tried to maintain his position on the bed Just barely he managed to get a purchase on the sheets....to keep from crashing to the ground.



Furious eyes stared at him.

Motionless Harry crouched under that gaze, the desperately boring tip of a drill.

Harry refused to flinch away.



Malfoy was a pale, livid figure sitting hunched, one hand crossed across his torso clenching at bruised or broken ribs.



Wordlessly Harry inched closer.

I don\'t want to harm you

The words were stuck in his throat, held in place by Malfoy\'s furious glare.

Wanting to help, wanting to make a difference, but then what was the point? After all that Malfoy must have suffered was he really even making a difference? Wasn\'t it just being selfish, to want to help Malfoy because he was somehow hoping, praying that it would make him feel some sort of relief, some glimmer of acomplishment.



\'Essence of dittany.\'

The words reverberated in the relative stillness of the air.

Some of the edge left Malfoy\'s glassy glare.

The resin bottle rested on the browning sheets between them.

Malfoy reached out, grasped it with stiff, tentative fingers.



He popped the cork with his teeth. Harry\'s eye caught on the jagged cracked edge of his left canine, the gap on the bottom right, the trickle of blood that filled the crevices of his busted lip.



\'I ran.\' Malfoy spoke. \'I didn\'t care if I lived or died, but I ran....\'

His voice cracked, broke. He looked away, his eyes lidding slightly, his brow furrowed.

\'Explain that to me. I wanted to die, but I ran....\'



\'I don\'t have the answers you want to hear...\'



Malfoy laughed, a gravelly barking sound. His hand clenched like a claw around the bottle.

Harry sat, unflinching and without words to even stick in his throat.



-



For seven whole minutes they both sat unmoving, unseeing, staring at each other.

Malfoy\'s hand inched towards the hem of the shirt.

Sopping and red, he peeled it away from his skin.



Harry tried to choke down the lump in his throat but it suffocated him none-the-less.

The open bottle was placed on the sheets, Harry held it in place with two ginger fingers.



The clenching of his jaw made the bones in his cheek all the more prominent.

The choked off gasp made him seem all that much more fragile.

The faultering fingers made Harry reach out.



\'Let me do it.\'



Furious eyes.



\'Leave.\'



\'No. Let me do it, Malfoy. Just get it over with.\'



That barking laugh again. And then Malfoy flinched away, lunging for the far side of the bed. He was jerked to a halt by the the covers which still ensnared him from the waist down.



A low, pained grunt. Harry reached out, grabbing him by the elbow.



\'Fuck, don\'t--\' A broken hiss.



\'Malfoy it\'s dittany, I ain\'t trying to hurt you.\' Harry knew it was useless. He was being optimistic to think that the problem was so simple....or rather he was being thick.

Selfish, but he didn\'t think he could accept that Malfoy just wanted out.



\'There\'s nothing left for you to run from. Malfoy, the past is the past—\'



\'As if you have any clue what any of it\'s about. The real world. The dark side. LIFE.\'



\'Malfoy you\'re not the only one--\'



\'If you had any idea, you\'d be running too.\'



Only too true, right?

It\'s hard to run, though, while you\'re in the process of falling to pieces.



--



"Let me fix you."

Harry wondered why those words echoed like a banshee\'s screech in his head when he couldn\'t bring himself to voice them.



\'You\'re going to bleed out at this rate.\'



\'Perfect.\'



\'If you\'re going to be stubborn, I\'ll only end up doing it when you pass out.\'

Was is a bluff? Harry wasn\'t quite certain himself.



The fleeting look of horror (beyond his comprehension) that flitted across Malfoy\'s face gutted him completely.

Harry knew then that he would sooner see the other man dead than violate him like that.



And here he had thought that the world had very little left to teach him in the ways of cruelty.



A shivering lump at the far edge of his bed. Harry sat frozen. Control wavered, a tenious illusion out of either of their grasps.



do it Two simple words stuttered through chattering teeth. Harry acted without thought.

Feet to the floor, he circled to the far side of the bed. His knees hit the ground without hesitation.



Malfoy was a broken marionette sat at the edge of those stained covers....a mockey of some grevously overabused child\'s toy.



Impatience was muffled but ever present as his gaze tried to avoid the puddles, streaks, splashes of blood in his line of sight. Malfoy had to make the first move. Harry knelt statuesque, waiting.



One hand of swollen, bruised, torn fingers lifted the hem of the blood-dark tee.

Fingers glazed in essence of dittany reached out. Flesh gleaming red and torn, twitched of it\'s own accord. Pulsing films of fresh life-blood continued to wash down Malfoy\'s torso.



Fingertips to slick flesh. A choking sound. Harry\'s gaze flickered upwards: Malfoy looked as though he felt sick to his stomach.



hauntedeyes



Harry focused on the work at hand. Knitting, scarring flesh followed in the wake of his fingers. The hem of the tee was dragged up further. More work to do. Harry tried not to think of what could have possibly caused such injuries. In vain, he insisted to himself that he had no right to delve into Malfoy\'s past.



A ripple of muscles and a low pained moan brought him out of his dazed focus. Harry looked up. Lips torn open afresh, worried by pinked teeth; a turned head; closed eyes; clenched jaw.



\'I\'m sorry.\' For what?



A cruel laugh then, it surprised him to hear it coming from Malfoy\'s lips.



\'Fuck you Potter.\' Malfoy seemed almost to break as he said those words.



His body pitched back, his hand going slack. Harry had him by the shoulder: a perfunctory reaction.



hauntedeyes theyrefusedtofade.



The "sorry" didn\'t leave his lips this time.



On the bed now, still crouching though.

He was not the threat. As clear as day, he was not the threat.

And maybe if he told himself that enough times he would start believing......that Malfoy would believe that too.



His hands worked feverishly fast.

There was a storm in his head. All natural though. He was use to it.

What kind of saviour whines about a headache?



---



\'Your back?\'



hauntedhauntedhaunted eyes



No response. So Harry lets his fingers do the work.

The flesh under his fingers trembles as it heals....shaking along side the shredded soul that was huddled in Malfoy\'s battered body.



Having gone through the motions Harry avoids the obvious.

The pool of blood does not stem.

Invisible are the wounds. Harry doesn\'t dare air Malfoy\'s dirty laundry like that.

It is a cruel thing to make a man incapable of denial.

Harry doubts that Malfoy would survive such a test of will in the condition he\'s in.

Harry decides it\'s better not to see the pool of blood that Malfoy sit in--that spreads under the ashen man.



----



hauntedeyesfollowhim



Harry makes a show of capping the bottle of essence of dittany.

It is placed on the floor by the bed.



\'If there\'s anything you need...."













\'water\'



Harry swiftly moves to make himself useful. ((there are no thunderheads banging away at his skull))



-----



Harry returns with a cool drink of water in a tall glass.

The bed is empty.

Ah, but the bathroom light is on.



Blond hair loops onto the seat of the toilet in thin ashen strands.

Malfoy\'s pale body is a shaking mess of controted limbs.

The wounds...too drowned in dittany are angry and red: a damn waiting for an excuse to break.

The blood sodden shirt is by the door.



Malfoy sits in a puddle of his own blood.

He retches against the toilet.

There is nothing to show for it but the subtle spread of that red pool.



When Malfoy slides sideways Harry finds himself kneeling in that red,red blood, holding him.

Harry eases some cool water from the glass over Malfoy\'s crumpled brown. hauntedeyes



Grey, flat and broken stares back up at him.

Harry hates not knowing if Malfoy is feverish or if his hands are just clammy and cold.



------



Three swallows of water he manages to force down the other man\'s throat.

Senses seems to take Malfoy then.

Harry finds himself glad to have had the forethought to carry Malfoy to the bed before he became lucid.

He pushes away the guilt he feels for taking the cowards way out.



Harry swallows and tries to see through eyes that are blurred with the pain in his head.

It is selfish but he dearly wishes for those haunted eyes to close.

When they finally do, Harry hopes that three swallows is enough for them to open once again.



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AN: Okay....so way depressing for a holiday chapter....sorry. But having a muse is a bitchy thing. Hope everyone has a safe and happy holiday season. I am now going to go off and ignore the reality of the world in the safe cacoon of my friends and family.



- Incessant_Darkness