Veelainc finish-this-fic Challenge
Jan. 19th, 2003 03:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ivyblossomThe background: I wrote this fic called Dirty, which was a break up fic that didn't putting H and D back together. Shortly thereafter I began a sequel, which is called Rose Red. It's from Harry's POV, and the goal had sort of been to see if I could put them back together.
I got stalled.
So now it has no ending. My challenge of the moment is this: can you finish this fic? I have no idea how it should end. I thought they should get back together, but it's such a disfunctional relationship. So now I don't know.
Can you help me?
Rose Red
The two children were so fond of one another that they always held each other by the hand when they went out together, and when snow-white said, we will not leave each other, rose-red answered, never so long as we live.
-Brothers Grimm, Snow-White and Rose-Red
The last thing he did, before that last argument, before he discovered the last betrayal, was kiss Draco's inner wrist. It felt almost vampiric; a kiss that tried to suck the blood out of him, the vitriol and the ignorance and the thoughtlessness. The careless cruelty. He would suck it out like a poison and spit it onto the rug, watch it burn a hole in the floor. And then he would look up into Draco's face and there would be peace there, finally. He would open his eyes and smile and kiss him and tell him beautiful things. I love you, I'm sorry, tell me all about yourself.
Harry wished he could kiss Draco and make him wake up. He wanted to dislodge whatever strange fruit was in his throat, whatever it was that made him a walking corpse, a beast buried under layers of cotton and wool and deceptive flesh.
Sometimes he wished Draco were sick. For a long time that was the story he told himself; Draco was depressed, he was unwell. That explained his bouts of anger, when he tried to pound Harry into a wall and then cried when he thought Harry wouldn't notice. He was just depressed. That explained why he woke up in the middle of the night and turned all the lights on, proclaimed it day, turned on music, and pretended that Harry wasn't there.
Sometimes he wished that Draco were dead, because it would be easier to mourn him than to hate him.
It hadn't always been like this. Even toward the end it wasn't always so horrible. When Sirius Black died Draco held Harry for hours, rocked him until he fell asleep and cooked him breakfast in the morning. They went out for a long walk together only two weeks before Harry had finally had enough, and they laughed so hard Harry had pulled a muscle.
When Draco was good, he was marvelous. He was breath-taking, he was radiant; he was compelling and challenging and Harry wanted him, even after years of having him however he liked, whenever he liked. One smile from Draco and Harry melted, the smell of him still turned Harry's knees to jelly, his breath on Harry's neck made him forget where he was. Nothing was as alluring to Harry as the knowledge that, no matter how bitterly they argued, no matter who he had been kissing or fucking hours before, Draco was always receptive to Harry's touch. He always purred when Harry nuzzled into his neck or woke him up with a hand between his legs.
But lately there was always someone else in the background, someone else lurching forward at a party, some nameless someone with Draco's lip prints on his throat. It was no secret that Draco couldn't seem to even spell the word monogamy. Harry blamed himself for this, too. He wasn't clear enough from the start, he figured. He never said, in so many words, that there would be no one else, that there should be no others. There hadn't been for a while, there had been no need to point it out, but then Harry started finding the evidence and was shattered by it. Draco didn't seem to understand.
"It was nothing," he said, and sat down on the couch. "I was just bored." Harry didn't know how to respond to this. Is he just bored with me too?
His friends had been warning Harry against Draco for years; Ron had given up the fight. "If this is what you want, Harry," he'd say, "I'm not going to stand in your way. But there's a spare bedroom in my house for you at any time. You've got the key. There's room for storage in the basement." It was reassuring and terrifying. He'd packed his things up more times than he could count and only once did he make it through the front door.
But once had been enough.
He was wracked with guilt for weeks afterward. His dreams were filled with blood and tears and screaming, fingers pointing at him. He had failed some kind of test, his heart was not true enough, his love not strong enough. True love does not leave, they said. It doesn't fade into a sea of anger and resentment and lingering hurt.
The sad fact was that he was waiting for Draco to look up one day, the wedge of the magic apple expelled from his throat, and say, "Oh Harry. How you've suffered for love of me. I'm not a beast anymore. You've transformed me. And now we'll live happily ever after." Heroes can do these things, and everyone knew that Harry Potter was hero. Harry tried to flip to the back of this book, but Draco had glued the pages together.
Before he had even walked halfway down the street he was sorely tempted to run back. He even knew how it would go, and it was such a sweet return. He would walk back in the door, he would dump his things beside the couch and huff, he would swear and kick things and get angry and Draco would look at him, seeming slightly sorry but never sorry enough, and lean forward to kiss him. And that would get Harry every time, the promise of it. As if this kiss contained everything he wanted. And it always seemed to. And Draco would not resist him, no matter what he wanted. He would let Harry undress him, he would let Harry be loving or brutal or both; he had no boundaries, and Harry thought this made him special.
Never confuse sex and intimacy, young man. That's what they should have taught him at school. Just because he lets you fuck him doesn't mean he lets you have him. Harry would wake up with Draco in his arms in the middle of the night and realize that Draco's hair still smelled like smoke and someone else's cologne. Harry was just another vacation spot, and a dull one at that.
They saw each other on occasion after that, and each time Draco seemed to be laughing at him. Harry was still a knight looking up at a tower where Draco was locked up tight; but there was no evil stepmother, no secret key, no forced labour. There was a back door, and everyone but Harry knew about it.
Six months later, when Harry was stumbling home in a pounding rain at 2am after a rowdy night at the pub, he came across the oddest sight. At first he thought it was just a trick of the light; too much alcohol, a play of shadows, the effect of the rain. It was on the patio of a old favourite haunt of his; a Muggle open-air café where he used to bring a book, meet some friends, drink coffee. He loved that place, but one day they changed ownership, changed coffee beans, and Harry's wizarding friends had finally drifted into another hangout and taken Harry with them.
But there was someone sitting outside on the patio, sitting on a metal chair at a metal table without an umbrella, his clothes completely drenched and hanging in weird folds against him. He must have been out there for hours, by the look of him. Draco.
He was wearing a jacket and a tie, though it had come loose by then. He had puddles forming in the folds of his trousers and his shoes were visibly spilling over with water. At first Harry thought he was dead.
"Draco?" Harry touched his shoulder, and he looked over lazily, as if it were a perfectly sunny afternoon.
"Hello, Harry," Draco said. His hair was plastered down against his head, so wet it almost looked transparent. He picked something up off the table. "These are for you."
Roses. It looked like a couple dozen of them. The paper they had been wrapped in had disintegrated, the petals had been pounded loose by the rain and scattered into the puddles as Draco offered them up. Red roses. Mangled red roses. Harry wasn't sure how to take that. He looked over at the table and saw a box of candy that had sagged and torn under the weight of the rain, a puddle of brown goo oozing out of one side.
"Sorry about those," Draco said, pointing at the box. "They didn't survive so well."
"No, I guess they didn't." Harry sat down opposite him and took the flowers. Water shook off their leaves and splattered over his rapidly sopping trousers. "What are you doing here?"
"I was waiting for you," Draco said, as if that were perfectly reasonable and perfectly obvious.
"Now? Here? Why?"
"I wasn't sure where you were living," Draco confessed. "But I knew you liked this place once, so I thought, eventually, you might come by."
"How long have you been here?"
"Two days." For a moment Harry didn't believe him. How could he sit here for two days? But then Harry remembered who this was, and what kinds of things he had been known to do. Hours spent staring at Harry's skin, touching his hip bone, the tracing his fingers along Harry's abdomen. Hours staring into his face and telling him stories until the sun came up. He looked at the box of chocolates, and then at the flowers in his hands.
"Why?"
Draco sighed. "I miss you, Harry."
He didn't know what to say to that.
Draco ran his fingers through his sopping wet hair and shivered. "I got you these," he said, shaking the flowers in his hands, "because I wanted you to know that I...well, that I'm serious." He held them out to Harry. It seemed natural to take them, and Harry did. They were cold and slimy and already half rotten. "I'm sorry." Draco rubbed his temples as he said it, it was a nervous twitch Harry had seen hundreds of times. Nervous, and sincere. "I'm so sorry."
It was almost too much; Harry wasn't sure what to do. It would be so easy to just take him home, it would be so easy to peel those clothes off him and tuck him into bed. And Draco would let him do it; he would let Harry hold him, he would purr into his throat again. It would be selective memory, pretending the bad memories were fantasies, nightmares, remembering only the best parts. He would remember that feeling of certainty, with Draco's body moving over him, the certainty that this was what love felt like. He would press himself against Draco's body and kiss him like he would never let him go again. They could pretend this made sense and it would be so nice.
I'm sorry. At one time it was all he wanted to hear, the words that would solve anything. Now it was six months later and Harry wasn't sure what to think. I'm sorry doesn't mean all that much, in the end. A tiny bandage on a gaping wound, one flickering flame on in the middle of a cold night, a porch light on a dark street waiting for someone to come home, someone who would never ever come home again.
"I've been an asshole, I know I have been." Harry could hardly disagree. "You deserve better." Harry looked up at him. Draco's lips were almost blue. "I love you."
Harry looked down at his hands, his trembling palms covered by dead stems. He was drunk and he thought that was probably saving him from speaking too quickly. What was he supposed to say?
"Please, Harry." Draco reached out and touched Harry's arm and it was more than Harry could bear. He closed his eyes and thanked God for the rain. "I'm sorry," Draco whispered, and Harry found himself enveloped in very cold, very wet arms. "Don't cry. I'm sorry."
Have an idea? Write it up and post it at veelainc.
*pleads* I have no idea how to end this sucker.
I got stalled.
So now it has no ending. My challenge of the moment is this: can you finish this fic? I have no idea how it should end. I thought they should get back together, but it's such a disfunctional relationship. So now I don't know.
Can you help me?
The two children were so fond of one another that they always held each other by the hand when they went out together, and when snow-white said, we will not leave each other, rose-red answered, never so long as we live.
-Brothers Grimm, Snow-White and Rose-Red
The last thing he did, before that last argument, before he discovered the last betrayal, was kiss Draco's inner wrist. It felt almost vampiric; a kiss that tried to suck the blood out of him, the vitriol and the ignorance and the thoughtlessness. The careless cruelty. He would suck it out like a poison and spit it onto the rug, watch it burn a hole in the floor. And then he would look up into Draco's face and there would be peace there, finally. He would open his eyes and smile and kiss him and tell him beautiful things. I love you, I'm sorry, tell me all about yourself.
Harry wished he could kiss Draco and make him wake up. He wanted to dislodge whatever strange fruit was in his throat, whatever it was that made him a walking corpse, a beast buried under layers of cotton and wool and deceptive flesh.
Sometimes he wished Draco were sick. For a long time that was the story he told himself; Draco was depressed, he was unwell. That explained his bouts of anger, when he tried to pound Harry into a wall and then cried when he thought Harry wouldn't notice. He was just depressed. That explained why he woke up in the middle of the night and turned all the lights on, proclaimed it day, turned on music, and pretended that Harry wasn't there.
Sometimes he wished that Draco were dead, because it would be easier to mourn him than to hate him.
It hadn't always been like this. Even toward the end it wasn't always so horrible. When Sirius Black died Draco held Harry for hours, rocked him until he fell asleep and cooked him breakfast in the morning. They went out for a long walk together only two weeks before Harry had finally had enough, and they laughed so hard Harry had pulled a muscle.
When Draco was good, he was marvelous. He was breath-taking, he was radiant; he was compelling and challenging and Harry wanted him, even after years of having him however he liked, whenever he liked. One smile from Draco and Harry melted, the smell of him still turned Harry's knees to jelly, his breath on Harry's neck made him forget where he was. Nothing was as alluring to Harry as the knowledge that, no matter how bitterly they argued, no matter who he had been kissing or fucking hours before, Draco was always receptive to Harry's touch. He always purred when Harry nuzzled into his neck or woke him up with a hand between his legs.
But lately there was always someone else in the background, someone else lurching forward at a party, some nameless someone with Draco's lip prints on his throat. It was no secret that Draco couldn't seem to even spell the word monogamy. Harry blamed himself for this, too. He wasn't clear enough from the start, he figured. He never said, in so many words, that there would be no one else, that there should be no others. There hadn't been for a while, there had been no need to point it out, but then Harry started finding the evidence and was shattered by it. Draco didn't seem to understand.
"It was nothing," he said, and sat down on the couch. "I was just bored." Harry didn't know how to respond to this. Is he just bored with me too?
His friends had been warning Harry against Draco for years; Ron had given up the fight. "If this is what you want, Harry," he'd say, "I'm not going to stand in your way. But there's a spare bedroom in my house for you at any time. You've got the key. There's room for storage in the basement." It was reassuring and terrifying. He'd packed his things up more times than he could count and only once did he make it through the front door.
But once had been enough.
He was wracked with guilt for weeks afterward. His dreams were filled with blood and tears and screaming, fingers pointing at him. He had failed some kind of test, his heart was not true enough, his love not strong enough. True love does not leave, they said. It doesn't fade into a sea of anger and resentment and lingering hurt.
The sad fact was that he was waiting for Draco to look up one day, the wedge of the magic apple expelled from his throat, and say, "Oh Harry. How you've suffered for love of me. I'm not a beast anymore. You've transformed me. And now we'll live happily ever after." Heroes can do these things, and everyone knew that Harry Potter was hero. Harry tried to flip to the back of this book, but Draco had glued the pages together.
Before he had even walked halfway down the street he was sorely tempted to run back. He even knew how it would go, and it was such a sweet return. He would walk back in the door, he would dump his things beside the couch and huff, he would swear and kick things and get angry and Draco would look at him, seeming slightly sorry but never sorry enough, and lean forward to kiss him. And that would get Harry every time, the promise of it. As if this kiss contained everything he wanted. And it always seemed to. And Draco would not resist him, no matter what he wanted. He would let Harry undress him, he would let Harry be loving or brutal or both; he had no boundaries, and Harry thought this made him special.
Never confuse sex and intimacy, young man. That's what they should have taught him at school. Just because he lets you fuck him doesn't mean he lets you have him. Harry would wake up with Draco in his arms in the middle of the night and realize that Draco's hair still smelled like smoke and someone else's cologne. Harry was just another vacation spot, and a dull one at that.
They saw each other on occasion after that, and each time Draco seemed to be laughing at him. Harry was still a knight looking up at a tower where Draco was locked up tight; but there was no evil stepmother, no secret key, no forced labour. There was a back door, and everyone but Harry knew about it.
Six months later, when Harry was stumbling home in a pounding rain at 2am after a rowdy night at the pub, he came across the oddest sight. At first he thought it was just a trick of the light; too much alcohol, a play of shadows, the effect of the rain. It was on the patio of a old favourite haunt of his; a Muggle open-air café where he used to bring a book, meet some friends, drink coffee. He loved that place, but one day they changed ownership, changed coffee beans, and Harry's wizarding friends had finally drifted into another hangout and taken Harry with them.
But there was someone sitting outside on the patio, sitting on a metal chair at a metal table without an umbrella, his clothes completely drenched and hanging in weird folds against him. He must have been out there for hours, by the look of him. Draco.
He was wearing a jacket and a tie, though it had come loose by then. He had puddles forming in the folds of his trousers and his shoes were visibly spilling over with water. At first Harry thought he was dead.
"Draco?" Harry touched his shoulder, and he looked over lazily, as if it were a perfectly sunny afternoon.
"Hello, Harry," Draco said. His hair was plastered down against his head, so wet it almost looked transparent. He picked something up off the table. "These are for you."
Roses. It looked like a couple dozen of them. The paper they had been wrapped in had disintegrated, the petals had been pounded loose by the rain and scattered into the puddles as Draco offered them up. Red roses. Mangled red roses. Harry wasn't sure how to take that. He looked over at the table and saw a box of candy that had sagged and torn under the weight of the rain, a puddle of brown goo oozing out of one side.
"Sorry about those," Draco said, pointing at the box. "They didn't survive so well."
"No, I guess they didn't." Harry sat down opposite him and took the flowers. Water shook off their leaves and splattered over his rapidly sopping trousers. "What are you doing here?"
"I was waiting for you," Draco said, as if that were perfectly reasonable and perfectly obvious.
"Now? Here? Why?"
"I wasn't sure where you were living," Draco confessed. "But I knew you liked this place once, so I thought, eventually, you might come by."
"How long have you been here?"
"Two days." For a moment Harry didn't believe him. How could he sit here for two days? But then Harry remembered who this was, and what kinds of things he had been known to do. Hours spent staring at Harry's skin, touching his hip bone, the tracing his fingers along Harry's abdomen. Hours staring into his face and telling him stories until the sun came up. He looked at the box of chocolates, and then at the flowers in his hands.
"Why?"
Draco sighed. "I miss you, Harry."
He didn't know what to say to that.
Draco ran his fingers through his sopping wet hair and shivered. "I got you these," he said, shaking the flowers in his hands, "because I wanted you to know that I...well, that I'm serious." He held them out to Harry. It seemed natural to take them, and Harry did. They were cold and slimy and already half rotten. "I'm sorry." Draco rubbed his temples as he said it, it was a nervous twitch Harry had seen hundreds of times. Nervous, and sincere. "I'm so sorry."
It was almost too much; Harry wasn't sure what to do. It would be so easy to just take him home, it would be so easy to peel those clothes off him and tuck him into bed. And Draco would let him do it; he would let Harry hold him, he would purr into his throat again. It would be selective memory, pretending the bad memories were fantasies, nightmares, remembering only the best parts. He would remember that feeling of certainty, with Draco's body moving over him, the certainty that this was what love felt like. He would press himself against Draco's body and kiss him like he would never let him go again. They could pretend this made sense and it would be so nice.
I'm sorry. At one time it was all he wanted to hear, the words that would solve anything. Now it was six months later and Harry wasn't sure what to think. I'm sorry doesn't mean all that much, in the end. A tiny bandage on a gaping wound, one flickering flame on in the middle of a cold night, a porch light on a dark street waiting for someone to come home, someone who would never ever come home again.
"I've been an asshole, I know I have been." Harry could hardly disagree. "You deserve better." Harry looked up at him. Draco's lips were almost blue. "I love you."
Harry looked down at his hands, his trembling palms covered by dead stems. He was drunk and he thought that was probably saving him from speaking too quickly. What was he supposed to say?
"Please, Harry." Draco reached out and touched Harry's arm and it was more than Harry could bear. He closed his eyes and thanked God for the rain. "I'm sorry," Draco whispered, and Harry found himself enveloped in very cold, very wet arms. "Don't cry. I'm sorry."
Have an idea? Write it up and post it at veelainc.
*pleads* I have no idea how to end this sucker.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2003-01-19 06:09 pm (UTC)My hope is that Harry would be smart and let Draco go. It's taken Draco six months to truly realize how lost he is and find the resolve to ask Harry to come back. But I think Harry would have come to some realizations himself in that time, which you indicate in sections like the bit I quoted above. So, well, if you must have a definitive ending, I'm voting for angst. I just don't think I could write it myself...in part because I don't think I could do justice to what you've already written, but also because...angst! Devastation! Pain! *weeps*
Maybe that's why I wanted to vote for ambiguity--I can imagine the heartbreak, but I don't really want to see it. *weeps more*
no subject
Date: 2003-01-19 06:47 pm (UTC)two things. First, I don't think Harry knows the whole story yet. I don't think he really understands what's going on, and I don't think he has any sense that there is anything to understand, either. Things might look different if he knew all the whys and wherefores, but perhaps not. Does it make it better if there's something Draco's reacting to? Maybe it doesn't. I don't think Draco's just being thoughtless, though he is being thoughtless. I think there's more to it than that. And I don't think Draco's the only one at fault for their issues, either. But that's just me.
Second: I'm not sure Harry's strong enough to do the 'right thing' in this context. Maybe he is, I'm not sure. I agree that Harry should let Draco go, but it's one of the few places where I will pull on canon and say that here's someone who's really not used to be loved, really loved, and in this context Draco really does love him. And Harry really loves Draco. It's just a constant struggle.
Hehehee well, since leo/scorpio is always a struggle...
*Holds true to belief that Draco is a scorpio*
And yes, I'm rationalizing. I really don't know how to end this. That's why I'm asking other people to give it a shot. My gut is to try to bring them together. Cause, you know. People's takes on it are very interesting. :)
no subject
Date: 2003-01-19 08:09 pm (UTC)As for the fics...I've been sitting here re-reading "Dirty" and "Rose Red" (truly a painful pleasure), and there are so many more questions than answers. Draco is such a complete asshole, and there doesn't seem to be a specific reason for it--is it because his upbringing fucked him up so that he doesn't know how to love, or how to be in a relationship that isn't about power and control and exploiting the other person's weaknesses? Or is there another reason? If it's the former, could he even begin to overcome that in such a short period of time?
It's so hard to judge Draco's sincerity in the last scene of "Rose Red," remembering how he was so confident in "Dirty" that roses and chocolates would bring Harry back to him in a snap. Is he really sorry that he's been an asshole, or is he sorry that he was an asshole to such an extent that Harry didn't come back? How much of this is still about keeping the upper hand, even unconsciously?
I think I know what you mean about Draco not being the only one at fault for their issues. Maybe things would be different if Harry weren't so passive about all the betrayals, if he didn't try to muffle his sobs and rationalize Draco's behavior. (Wah, if only they communicated instead of just having sex all the time....) I remember that's why I said something about how bad they were for each other when I commented on "Dirty." And of course you may have a point about Harry not being used to being loved. But he does have friends, so he knows about kindness. And Draco has been so unkind, so often.
I don't really mean to argue. Like I said, I loved this fic, and I love that there are so many ways it can go. My hope is that Harry will see the light and save himself more heartbreak down the road. But I know there's no guarantee that he'll do so now, especially alcohol-fogged as he is. Draco bearing flowers in the rain is a hard image to resist at any time. ;)
no subject
Date: 2003-01-19 08:38 pm (UTC)One of the things that's long interested me is the aftermath of sexual abuse, and how it manifests itself. Actually, I think I write Draco the way I do all the time because of the way I've seen people around me react to sexual abuse while thinking they don't need to deal with it.
This is the first time I've written an unfaithful Draco, but I think that makes the most sense for what I'm actually interested in; as someone pointed out (looks over comments) this is a self-hatred issue, or, hmm, a wacky set of boundaries. Different ideas about his own value vis a vis others, what it is he has to offer, which. In these fics, Draco both betrays Harry and makes it up to him with sex.
And I think he means it that the infidelities aren't a big deal...one of the things that I think is so sad and so interesting about many abuse survivors who haven't dealt with this stuff is how laissez-faire they can be about sex. I knew a girl once who slept with her roommate so she could use his computer. This seemed like an even trade to her, because her sense of self-worth was so fucked up. She couldn't walk into a situation without seeing herself as a sexual offering, seeing who she had to fuck in a room to make life easier or to get ahead. And this had nothing to do with her relationships, it was just the way she needed to proceed in the world. You know? Like, she had nothing else to offer anyone. If she wanted something, attention, help, whatever, sex was the way to get it. She learned early that that's what she had that had value. And this all made total sense to her.
I kinda looked at this fic and didn't think I could squeeze all that into there.
And I agree with you that Harry should be very suspicious about this act of Draco's. He was so damn confident. But honestly, I think the fact that he did it speaks for his frame of mind. It's the only thing he can think of to do that's not just fucking Harry, which he can see isn't going to work this time. At least, not yet. I figure he doesn't think there's anything else he can offer, so he goes for cliches. I think he is sincere, but of course I would think that. Heehehehe cause I love him.
Blah blah blah but maybe all this is why I can't write the ending. Because, like, there's lots I would want to put in there, and I don't think a fic of 2000 words justifies all this wanking. And I still don't know what Harry should do, in spite of all this.
The endings people are writing are really interesting. I'm glad I asked people to do this!! LOL
no subject
Date: 2003-01-19 09:03 pm (UTC)Because, like, there's lots I would want to put in there, and I don't think a fic of 2000 words justifies all this wanking.
Well, you know, we probably wouldn't object if you decided to go longer. More Ivyfic is always a good thing. ;)
no subject
Date: 2003-01-19 09:06 pm (UTC)*weeps*
I guess I'm just not done with this stupid storyline. But I still don't know how Rose Red ends.
no subject
Date: 2003-01-19 09:12 pm (UTC)*arms self with box of tissues*
There, I'm ready whenever it comes. Bring it on, sister!
*hunkers down*