for the @drarrymicrofic prompt "Two Ghosts" (song by Harry Styles), WC: 509
Each morning the stitches held him together, each night they pulled him apart.
Harry didn't know who had told Draco about the tattoos, it hardly mattered when he started showing up to every appointment. Not speaking. Just watching, then fading into the darkness as Harry paid.
Harry watched the first name go on Draco’s body as the thirteenth was embedded into his own skin. And still, they didn’t speak.
As the final letter was laid down on Nymphadora Lupin along his right shoulder two months later Draco broke their truce of silence. “Who?” He sounded like he’d forgotten how to speak, the word cracked and snapped.
The next week Draco asked the same question, “Who?”
It took Harry another six weeks to answer. “Colin Creevey.”
Three weeks later he echoed the question back to Draco. “Who?”
Hogsmeade villager, worked in the laundrette, Harry remembered. He knew them all. The whole list, at least the ones he’d found so far.
Two weeks later they sat in their chairs at the same time. “Crabbe?” Harry asked.
“I have him.” Draco replied.
Harry handed the artist another name instead, the list was endless.
The first time they left the shop together was by accident. The second might have been, the third was not.
“Why?” Harry asked, pausing on the rain slicked pavement, not bothering to move as a passing car splashed muddy water onto his trainers.
“They are mine to carry as much as yours.”
It was the most words he’d heard Draco speak in years. He walked away without looking back.
When Harry had forty three names on his body, the lines of them stretching down the outside of each arm and leg like the stitches of a ragdoll he invited Draco for coffee.
The week after Alice Longbottom died Harry was unable to keep the tears to the darkness for once. The loss felt especially tragic, gone all those years but now, gone forever. Her name went along his right side, just under his arm.
Afterward Draco asked him for coffee.
Harry declined. And instead invited Draco back to Grimmauld Place.
They sat looking at each other across the kitchen table for an hour, drinking whiskey, not speaking before Draco left.
After the fifth week of staring at each across the scarred kitchen table, whisky doing nothing to loosen their muscles or tongues, Harry got up and left the room.
In his bedroom Harry took off his clothes, folded them neatly and placed them on a chair.
He stood before Draco, pieces and parts of the dead holding him together.
Draco removed his own clothes, pale fingers dripping with blood red ink steady, folding them and setting them aside.
They didn’t read each other's names, didn’t compare. Didn’t tenderly trace the lines or share a comforting touch. They were each too fragile for comfort.
They came together in tears and silence holding each other together for a moment before the darkness tore them apart once more.
