𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐏𝐥𝐚𝐜𝐞 𝐖𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐲 𝐆𝐨

𝐗𝐗𝐗𝐈𝐕

How you just fall into place with everything else. Like you're trying to make it look like you don't exist.

"Don't say that," I told him sadly.

"It's fine," I felt him shrug. "I'm pretty easy to forget about anyways."

I mustered the courage to look him in the eye, as blurred as it was. It pained me, but I could
suffer.

For him, I told myself.

"Stop!" I whined helplessly, "I could never forget you. I can make you believe in the future. I could help you be happy again! Whatever it takes! I'm right here!"

He shook his head, but not as a disagreement, more in disbelief.

"Why?" he said breathily. "I don't understand you."

"What don't you understand?"

"How you can just... care. About me. About everyone," I believed him when he said that. The confused and utter astonishment etched into his face said it all, and much more.

"I guess I never really had much of a choice in that before now," I thought out loud, "Empathy is a hard thing to forget."

"Doesn't it hurt sometimes?" he asked me. It was a genuine question, I suppose Draco had never really had much of a need for empathy.

"Of course it hurts," I answered, as truthfully as I knew, "But doesn't everything?"

"I suppose," Draco nodded his head as he spoke.

"It's alright though. We need it, I guess. Like you said we need sadness. It would be detrimental without it," I said.

He chuckled into the air halfheartedly.

I wrung my numbed fingers over his forearm and bicep tighter than before. I suppose that something about that moment made me want to be as close to him as physically possible.

Like if I let go, the world would crumble around us.

But it just wasn't close enough.

I shifted my feet to be parallel to one another in his direction. 

Gently, as gently as I could, I moved my right hand to his left and turned his body to face mine.

I saw his eye widen, his hands tense up and curl into each other, but also into mine at the same time.

I gazed at him deeply. I wanted to see every thought of his, every part of his soul that he was hiding from me.

"Please?" I almost whispered.

He just stood there, frozen in the grasp of my palms. His legs sook anxiously, I knew that if he could move, he might've backed away.

But I really didn't want him to.

"Please," he whispered back to me.

I didn't do it like last time. I didn't lunge at him in anger and frustration from his mood swings. I didn't press my face to his messily as he did nothing in return.

Slowly. I did it ever so slowly. Just so he could keep up with my every move, so not to confuse him.

His breath hit my nose, then my cheeks, then my lips. I knew that he could feel mine too.

Not once did I remove my eyes from his as I leaned in even farther.

His breath turned into his lips. His lips on mine. It was just a graze, a slight touch of the unknown, but it was still there, and he was still there.

He jerked back, still in my grasp, but I couldn't feel him anymore.

"Please. Can I kiss you?" I asked, trying to hide my desperation.

"I don't know," his voice cracked and wavered.

"What is it that's bothering you about this?"

He sighed, and then gasped for air and then sighed again, not knowing the right words to put into a situation like this one.

"If you kiss me," he tried to catch his breath. "If you kiss me, I won't ever want it to stop. I'll wish for you to hold me forever and bind me to yourself like I was always there," he shook his head, purely in disdain, "I want to so badly, but I just can't hurt myself like that."

He breathed out, so harshly that I wondered if the cold air burned in his lungs. It must have.

I needed to choose my words carefully. More careful than I ever have spoken before. This moment was fragile, and could easily shatter.

"Have I never said that I would never hurt you?" I chose finally, hoping to Merlin that they were the right ones.

"Not you. Me," he said, but I could still fix this.

"Then I won't let you hurt yourself. That's what I'm here for. I won't ever let you feel that again."

The sadness and anxiety on his face softened at my words.

"Come here," I whispered.

Finally he let me in.

I kissed him. He kissed me.

It was a sigh of relief. It was a tear down his cheek. It was a shiver in my spine.

We forgot perfection. We forgot contentment.

It was us taking a hill in the distance, and turning it into a mountain.