If Only
Harry leaned his head back over the edge of the rickety metal bench and took a deep drag from his cigarette, closing his eyes. This was all so fucking idiotic. He rubbed at his forehead forcefully with his unoccupied hand. He should just get up, walk into that bar, and have himself a drink. Who the fuck cared, really? Draco wasn't coming back and the fact that Harry even wanted him back was the stupidest thing he'd ever heard.
"Didn't want you when I had you. Don't see why I should give a fuck now," Harry muttered to himself, trying to regain the nonchalance he'd once had when he thought of Draco.
But that had been slowly disappearing, hadn't it? Long before Draco had ever left. And when had he let that happen anyway? This 'Draco' bullshit. When had he stopped seeing him as 'Malfoy', his childhood bully who deserved to have his face rubbed in his mistakes at the slightest opportunity? When had he started to care and how could he go back to the way things were before?
He didn't want to feel this ache in his chest, this hollow in his heart, this drop in his stomach every time he thought of Draco. Malfoy. Every time he thought of Malfoy. If he was going to have these nancy feelings then he was damn well going to refer to him as Malfoy. How had the Slytherin gotten under his skin, how had he accomplished what no one else before him had been able, and...where was he now?
Harry shook his head. He didn't give a shit. He was over this AA bull and he was over this eye-opening sobriety. Dra-Malfoy had meant nothing to him and now all he needed was to fuck, drink, and forget. It wasn't like Malfoy was his soul mate or anything and this mooning over him was just pathetic. Harry had control over Malfoy, not the other way around, and it was time he remembered that.
Harry had just stubbed his cigarette out on the armrest and got up to enter the bar when a hand dropped onto his shoulder and pushed him back down. Harry turned around with a snarl to find Toby smiling back at him.
Toby glanced up with a knowing air at the bar's worn sign. "Figured this was where you'd be after you tore out of the meeting like that." He was kind enough to leave out that that was because this was the closest bar in the area. "I used to come here after every meeting myself and just sit on the curb. But at least I got through 'em first," He said in an attempt at lightheartedness. Harry didn't react and Toby sighed seriously. "Wanna talk about it?"
Harry shrugged and said apathetically, "What's there to say? I made a mistake, this program isn't for me after all."
Toby nodded patronizingly and curled his coat around him as he sat on the bench next to Harry. "So you're just gonna jump right back into a bottle then?"
A tick fluttered just under Harry's eye at the judgment in Toby's tone. Who the fuck did Toby think he was to judge him? "What if I am?" He snapped back argumentatively. "It's my decision to make."
Toby held up his hands in an 'I'm unarmed' gesture and said with a concerted effort to be nonchalant and offhand, "I thought you were trying to be better, to be the man your dream-boy always thought you were."
Harry gave a contrived laugh though his heart felt like it might beat its way up his throat and out his mouth at the mention of... "Yeah, well, my dream-boy was just that," Harry croaked, trying to regain his disaffected air. "A dream. Otherwise he wouldn't have taken off. I don't need him anyway, I don't need anyone." Harry stood up from the bench and looked down on Toby coldly, shoving his hands in his coat pockets. "This was just a waste of time."
Toby didn't appear to be listening. He just grabbed Harry's arm by the elbow and pulled him back down, smiling. He didn't look at Harry as he nudged his askew torso and people-watched the street across from them. "So, what was it? You never did answer me. What was the last straw, what finally ran him off?"
Harry stayed tight-lipped on the subject and had since Toby had asked him a month and a half ago, just after his second session. And he wasn't about to give in now.
Toby sighed at not receiving an answer but he didn't really seem to have expected one. He fisted his hands in his trousers, a nervous habit of his, and whistled lowly. "I still haven't been able to forgive myself for what finally did my wife in." Harry shot a quick sideways glance at him that hopefully went unnoticed. Toby never talked about his wife – well, ex-wife now – not even in meetings. Not since that first night.
Toby half-smiled at him, though it didn't look like a happy expression. "She loved me. Really loved me, I mean," Toby elaborated as though he couldn't really describe how deep her devotion for him had run, and Harry had no doubt that he couldn't. He had the same trouble when he tried to expound on Draco's emotions for him – they had gone so far past love that he wasn't even sure there was a word for it.
Toby took a deep breath and gave a strangled sounding laugh. "We had gone to this work party, before I'd got fired, and I spent the whole night throwing 'em back while I laughed it up with my yuppie coworkers and she shot me dark looks from the corner." Toby shrugged emotionlessly. "I couldn't care less, I was having fun, you know?" And, yes, Harry did know. He remembered the last party – Ron and Hermione's – that he had been to with Draco. So far this could have been a story about them.
Toby swallowed and that ever-present grin resurfaced but with none of its joy or good humor. "When it came time to leave, she tried to take the keys from me but I snatched 'em away and told her she shouldn't drive in her condition anyway, told her she didn't multitask well and she had to focus all her concentration on being pissed at me."
Harry could picture that clearly in his mind's eye, it was exactly how Toby was, what made him up, and he pointlessly hoped that was the end of the story. That Toby's next words would be 'We made it home, I told her I loved her, that I'd get help, and she's stayed by me through it all. We're happier than ever.' He hoped that Toby would be a shining example of what he and Draco could be if they really worked at it and committed to each other. And, even though he knew they were divorced, he'd rather Toby waved that away and said something along the lines of 'nah, I was just kiddin' about that.' That Harry could deal with but this...He didn't want to know any of this.
When had he become such a goddamn bleeding heart romantic?
Toby glanced at Harry with a hollowness in his eyes that seemed to want to claw its way out of those maudlin irises and devour Harry's too. "She sulked the whole drive and I kept trying to cheer her up, trying to get her to kiss me, teasing her she was gonna get wrinkles from frowning so much, so I never saw the truck coming." Harry closed his eyes and tried to breathe slow and deep while Toby continued on in that empty voice of his. "Plowed into her side, just t-boned us into a tree, she was six months pregnant at the time and." Toby stopped and Harry heard a sob catch in his throat. "She wasn't after that. She served me with the papers a week later."
They sat in silence and Toby hunched forward as if he were in pain with his head in his hands. Harry gripped the bench so tightly his knuckles were white and he tried to keep from exploding with rage. He was seething and shaking with ire when he finally opened his eyes and hissed, "See, that's why I left! I can't deal with all these peoples' horror stories! It doesn't make me feel better or less alone, it just makes me feel like I chose a unique way to fuck my relationship up but that it was inevitable, regardless of what I did."
He had Toby's attention now and Harry slumped back against the bench and admitted, "I feel so hopeless after, because not only do I have my own shit, but now I have everyone else's worst moment in my head." Harry held Toby's shrewd gaze and asked without a hint of guile, "How is that supposed to help?"
Toby matched Harry's dejection in pose and expression and looked up at the night sky that was too bright with artificial light and plastered with pollution to hold any stars that they could see. "Harry," He said finally, "Now you know that you're not evil for this, you're not the devil, or a monster. You're human and you made a mistake and you're not the only one to have made it."
Harry stared at Toby as though waiting for him to continue and, when he didn't, Harry gazed at him in slack-jawed disbelief. "Oh, please," He erupted loudly. "You don't really believe that, do you?" He threw himself off the bench and pointed at Toby accusingly. "I am a monster, and so are you. What we did to people we claimed to care about, that doesn't go away and it wasn't anything so simple as a mistake. You took a life and I destroyed a boy who wanted nothing more than to love me. We are not innocent in this."
Harry's tirade barely seemed to have an affect on Toby and he realized after a moment that it was likely because he had heard much worse, told himself much worse. No one can hurt you as well as you can hurt yourself; it was a lesson Harry was learning rather painfully. "I said nothing of innocence," Toby answered after a lingering pause that seemed more for Harry's benefit than his.
"I'm not saying your actions, or mine, weren't heinous, reprehensible, or even sickening, because they were," Toby clarified, his hands shoved deep in his coat pockets. He squinted up at Harry and his lips twisted. "But I'm not inhuman because of them and neither are you. You're going to have to learn to live with that, Harry," He said, as though he were the one who was imparting the sage wisdom and excruciating truth. "You're not going to be able to hide behind some monster defense. You're not a monster. You're a person, a person who knowingly and willfully hurt another person. That's all. Like I said, it's morally repugnant, but it's not supernatural. You did what you did and you have to come to terms with that."
Harry fisted his hair, nearly pulling out great handfuls of it in his frustration, which revolved around both Hermione's whinging, whiny voice and his worsening condition. "It's got to be Voldemort," He asserted confidently. "You have to look up countercurses or, I don't know, exorcism spells or something." He gripped his own chest forcefully. "I'm not like this. You know me, Hermione. I'm not."
He looked at her pleadingly and Hermione bit her lip uncertainly. "Harry, it's not Voldemort!" She burst out. "When are you going to—"
Harry's eyes flashed coldly and he snarled, "Then what, Hermione? You fucking tell me what then?"
Hermione had backed away from him, looking almost frightened, which was beyond stupid because Harry had never hurt her. And would never hurt her. She must not be as smart as she thought if she couldn't get that through her head.
He only realized later that she never had answered him.
Harry shook the memories away, feeling slightly dizzied, and swallowed hard. "How do you live with yourself after you do?" He asked with stripped desperation. "If I admit it – that it was all me. Fuck, Toby. I don't deserve to live after that."
Toby stood as well and placed his hands on Harry's shoulders as if to steady him. "You deserve a second chance, Harry. We all do as long as we work for it. But if you walk into that bar, then you're right," Toby said, looking behind him with a flash of wanting before he came back to himself, his eyes hardened. "You don't deserve that chance." He let go of Harry completely and took a single step backward. "I'm not going to stop you, it's your choice to make, but I can't be your sponsor anymore if you decide to take the easy way out."
Fear welled up in Harry, both at the thought of never having a drink again and of losing the one person who seemed to know what he was going through and was willing to stick by him despite that. Predictably, he masked that fear with anger. He spat with a challenging vitriol, "Aren't you supposed to support me, even through that?"
Toby shook his head solemnly. "Harry, you go down that path and I've seen enough of your personality to know that you're not going to come back from it, it's not gonna stop there, you're gonna keep going until you self-destruct and I'm not going to let you drag me down with you."
Harry had no doubt that he would, and that he would likely revel in causing Toby's fall from grace, his beloved sponsor. He couldn't help but be surprised that Toby seemed to know it as well though. He sank down onto the curb and pressed the palms of his hands into his eyelids as hard as he could. Spots of undefined light danced in the darkness.
Toby dropped down a few feet away and took out a stick of gum, popping it in his mouth and waiting. "I don't know why I care so much," Harry eventually admitted in a growling tone. "Why it matters that he's not here, that he's not written, that he's stopped caring. But it does. It does so much. He used to love me. He really did."
God, did Harry feel weak for even saying those words but they were all he'd been able to think for the past month and besides, as much as he hated it, they were the truth. And he could use a whole shitload more of that in his life.
"You've got to earn it back," Toby replied around the chomping of his gum.
Harry groaned; Toby didn't get it all. It wasn't that he wanted it back, it was that he shouldn't want it at all. None of this was ever meant to matter to him. That wasn't how he'd planned it and this wasn't what was supposed to have happened. He was never supposed to care about Draco, it was never supposed to be about emotions or romance, but passion and heat and anger and relief and losing himself in this completely exploitable thing. And now...now everything was wrong.
Draco had left and for some reason Harry felt like sicking up every time he thought of it, every time he went home to an empty apartment, when he should have been celebrating with a new fuck, a new release, a new someone to be used until he found another. But, to be completely honest, he wasn't sure he could even get it up nor did he think wearing an unwashed white t-shirt that smelled heavily of dust and the faint sandalwood of his former...something under his clothing was a particularly attractive quality.
He tried to explain this to Toby. "I shouldn't care! He should be nothing to me. God knows I told him that enough times," Harry muttered ruefully as his diatribe gained momentum. He couldn't even see Toby anymore or the edifice of the bar, all he could hear was Draco's voice in his head, telling him how Harry had never cared, never known him, never thought anything of him, never even liked him. Harry gave a volatile, stilted laugh and proclaimed as he dug his fingernails into his forearms, "I hate that he's under my skin. I hate that I love him."
And, for a moment, the whole world just seemed to Stop. Dead. Still. The earth didn't turn, wings didn't flap, bugs didn't crawl. There was just Harry and this disease-spreading infection he had breathed out into the air. The words were out of his mouth before he could censor them, shove them back in, think better of them, and something inside of him was twisting in agony and all he could think was 'Dear God. No.'
Though that was quickly followed by a second, more pressing one that he blurted aloud: "Oh God, I think I'm gonna be sick."
He stumbled down the alley next to the bar and retched behind the dumpster on day-old crisps and unripe pickles.
Toby's voice was behind him not much later and he placed his hand on Harry's back in consolation. "Harry, come on, pull yourself together. You've got to give yourself, and him, more time than this." Harry wanted to scream, the last thing in the world he wanted right now was to talk about...anything to do with him. But he was too weak and emotionally broken to protest and Toby just kept going. "Nothing is going to fix itself overnight and you're going to have to work on yourself first before you even think of trying to win him back. Then you can try to prove to him you're worthy of his affection."
Harry Potter worthy of Draco Malfoy – well if that wasn't ever a right laugh and a half. He collapsed a fair few feet away against the brick wall though the stench of vomit still reached his nose with the acrid, bitter smell, and his nostrils burned with the action. This couldn't be real.
He coughed and swallowed down a second attempt, the lumps in his throat nearly undoing his good intentions. Fuck, he hated this. He hated being ill and he hated feeling guilt and shit and remorse. It had been all he'd felt since the moment Draco had walked out on him and he was so fucking sick of it all.
But, somehow, he knew it wasn't going away. At least not until he saw Draco, not until he tried to make things work between them and gave them a real, fair shot, not until he begged for his forgiveness – even though the chances of receiving it were slim to none. Not until he was sure that there wasn't any hope left.
He spoke aloud, part to himself and part in response to Toby. "But I don't even know where he is! He's not here to see me making progress, he doesn't know," He said, voicing the reason why it was so hard for him to keep up with the program. He was doing all this for Draco, but the blonde may never even know it – it was gut-wrenching and most days it made him want to throw up his hands in defeat and stop off for a nice gin and tonic on his way home. "This is all for nothing because he'll never know how hard I've worked for him."
Toby gazed at him, one part sympathy and two parts get-over-yourself. "Harry, give it time. You shouldn't be worried about seeing him at this juncture anyway. You're not even close to the point where you should see him yet," Toby said honestly. "You've got time to find him. You need to be focused on you now."
Harry gave the back of his head a single thwack against the brick wall for good measure and said with what he wished was baseless humor, "I think I've done enough of that for a lifetime." It was true and it made him feel like shit. He brought his head back against the wall a little harder this time and sighed, "Draco."
Toby's gaze snapped up to meet his and he glommed on to the new information with enthusiasm, as though he was afraid it would disappear if he didn't pounce on it. "Is that your boy's name? Draco?" Harry nodded sterilely and Toby whispered, "It's nice."
Harry shook his head and corrected, "It's perfect."
~*~
Five and a half months later found Harry in the dingy pizzeria that was a block from Ron's – what had once been Ron and Hermione's – home. He and Hermione still weren't living together – and it was embarrassing how long it had taken him to notice that development – and were sharing custody of their daughter, Rose. He smiled at the both of them across the table as he picked at the stale crust on his plate.
"How are the sessions going, mate?" Ron asked jovially after the lull had crossed the just-this-side-of-painful threshold.
Harry's attention snapped over to him. Sessions? Thirty-two sessions in two-hundred and five days. Three-hundred and sixty days since he had last set eyes on Draco Malfoy or...just four days short of a year. God. Had if really only been a year?
He felt like he'd lived six lifetimes since then, and not one of them held a candle to the life he'd had with Draco. He took a swig of his seltzer and shrugged his shoulders, cradling the plastic cup in between his sweaty palms.
He hated all the habits he'd picked up from the AA tweakers in his group, this tendency to do antsy, odd things with his hands one of them. He was still sure, to this day, that a lot of them had been doing a lot more hardcore shit than drinking occasionally. He heard Gwendolyn's voice in his head, shrill and annoyingly accurate, 'Rationalizing, Harry. If it were occasionally you wouldn't be here, would you?' Bitch.
He hated her voice, he hated his acquired mannerisms, and he hated this counting each day bullshit that he now did automatically, but most of all he hated that it was working because that meant he couldn't whinge about it to death and then give up.
He smiled guardedly. "They're not easy," He answered finally, "But, I don't know, I think I'm starting to see the good in them, I guess." And that was the truth, which was one of his 'goals' – to be more honest. He was dead surprised he hadn't failed yet. And he was starting to see the good in them, Toby was helping a lot and being sober wasn't as much of a battle as it had been when he'd started – not to say it wasn't a right bitch or that he wouldn't down an entire bottle of whiskey if it was placed in front of him – but he could walk by a bar without even noticing it now.
Hermione smiled at him from across the counter and asserted genuinely, "That's great, Harry."
It seemed a bit of a mundane achievement to Harry, underwhelming to say the least. "Is it?" He asked after a moment. "I don't know. It feels better, saying some of this stuff out loud to a group of my unbiased, nonjudgmental peers but." He paused, wishing he had a real drink in front of him instead of carbonated water, what a sorry fucking excuse. "I don't think I really deserve to feel better about things."
Hermione looked momentarily stricken before she reached across the table and patted his hand. "Harry, that's – You've admitted your culpability in everything that's happened and all you can do is hope that the opportunity to tell Draco how sorry you are presents itself."
Harry gave a barely perceptible flinch when she mentioned Draco's name – it only ever happened when it caught him off-guard. If he was prepared for it then he was fine but he hadn't expected her to say it. Because no one said it. Because it was better that way. He looked up and saw that Hermione had caught it, empathy swelling in her breast. He squirmed uncomfortably, his head bent low. "Those are just words. Hollow and empty. I'll never be able to make it up to him."
Hermione gazed at him in quiet sympathy. For a moment she looked agonized, as though there were something on the tip of her tongue that she couldn't quite get out. It disappeared a moment later and she stared at the countertop and imparted with distinct glumness, "Words are all we have, Harry, and they're only as empty as you allow them to be. You can only say what you feel and he'll have to decide how much merit to give that."
Harry laughed without humor. "That's if we ever meet again and I'm sure that's not an experience Draco's eager to repeat."
Hermione said nothing and sat motionless across from him, biting her lip. She seemed almost...guilty? That couldn't be right. Harry was still trying to hone in on it when Ron cleared his throat and said with a gallant attempt at compassion, "One day at a time, eh, mate?"
Harry actually grinned. It was a valiant effort considering Ron still hated Draco's guts. The adage was appropriate, only, he didn't know how to explain that at the same time it wasn't. He tried anyway. "Yeah. It's just – The days without him are starting to blend together, hard to tell if it's been one or six. Nothing to really mark the passing of time anymore."
He shrugged and Ron tipped his water bottle toward him while Harry eyed it appreciatively. It was amazing what his friends were willing to endure for him considering what an absolute prat he'd been. "Well, what does Gwendolyn have to say about all this?" Ron asked curiously.
This was the part of the conversation he had not been looking forward to and he was glad that it had at least waited until the end of the meal. He swallowed nervously. "She wants – She thinks I should seek Draco out and bring him to group." Ron's jaw dropped, Hermione's eyes widened, and Harry hastened on before either one of them could get a word in. "I've thought about it but I-I don't know how to find him." Not to mention, I'm not sure I want to. "I don't even know where he is, he could be anywhere in the world for all I know. And..."
He ran out of steam, emotionally wrung-out and exhausted.
"And?" Hermione prompted gently.
Harry tried to explain without thinking about it, because when he thought about it he felt like his chest was being ripped open, his heart torn out, and gleefully stomped upon. "It'll be – The way he'd look at me." Don't picture it, don't picture it, don't picture it. "I don't know if I could survive it." No, he was sure he couldn't.
"Seems kinda soon to be pushing you together anyway," Ron started uneasily.
Harry nodded his agreement quickly and hastened to add, "Yeah, I said the same thing, but Gwendolyn wants to at least start doing sessions between us now because she has a feeling we're going to need a lot of them." Harry sighed and admitted, "I think she's pretty sure it's going to take a long time to convince him and that's really why she wants me to try to ask now – so that maybe in a year he might consider saying yes."
Hermione was biting her lip and gazed at him thoughtfully before asking with cautious cadence, "Well, what do you think?"
Harry exhaled on a hitched breath. What did he think? "I don't know," He answered truthfully. "I'm scared shitless" – terrified – "to see him again but – every time I think about it my heart gets caught in my throat and I know, no matter what, I want him back in my life. I miss him," He admitted shamefully, "And the thought of losing him for good terrifies me."
At this, Ron reached for Hermione and lovingly closed his fingers over his wife's left hand, thumbing the rubbery band of skin on her ring finger absentmindedly. "I know what you mean, mate," Ron said and he turned to Hermione with an utterly unfeigned devotion in his eyes. At least that was one problem Hermione and her husband didn't have, they both loved each other to the moon and back.
Harry honestly didn't understand why they were still separated. They seemed better than they had only a few months ago – less argumentative, more understanding and patient with one another – and Ron had confided that they had been going to couples counseling. However, whenever Ron asked her to move back in, Hermione balked, and Harry could see that it was driving Ron mad with worry and suspicion.
Little did Harry know that Hermione was thinking of the very reason why she continued to decline Ron's offer of rebuilding their marriage – as she often did. She had always prided herself on being an intelligent woman and yet she had fallen into such an easily avoidable pitfall. She should have seen it coming, should have stopped it in its tracks long before it had gotten this far, and the worst of it was that she had known she was going to fall into these thorns and yet she had done nothing to stop from rolling downhill.
Draco was so different from what she had expected. She had initially been attracted to the strength and handsomeness in his face but now it was so much more than that. She was enamored of his determination and seriousness about carving out his own place in the world and she envied the way he restricted himself nothing, intent on exploring everything that the world had to offer and deciding what he wanted of his own. He was so full of life now, not carefree by a long shot, but happy.
And his laugh seemed to linger for days afterward. Ron's fingers danced over her own and she was yanked back to the present. She smiled softly at her husband. She did love him.
She was just also falling in love with Draco Malfoy.
Hermione squeezed Ron's hand before she turned to look at Harry and his expression nearly broke her heart. Harry wasn't looking at either of them but staring at the empty space next to him as though he expected Draco to be in it. He looked up at her and gave her a cringing grin as he realized she'd seen, like a schoolboy who had been caught in the act, though with an all too adult devastation in his eyes and she had to bite her tongue to keep from blurting Draco's location.
Only the fact that the blonde would, she knew, never speak to her again held her back. She may have harbored schoolgirl fantasies about her best friend's ex but she had never once deluded herself into thinking that those fantasies could be transitioned into reality. In some unnatural, self-destructive way, Harry and Draco belonged either together or on opposite ends of the world. There were simply no other options for them, no middle ground or common interest that could offer them a less extreme alternative.
And it was this revelation that made her decide to, once again, broach the subject of meeting with Harry the next time she saw Draco.
She would let him decide which extreme it would be.