For You To Hold
For @drarrymicrofic 's prompt: Ink (and also bingo!) (also was listening to The World We Knew by Frank Sinatra because ~mood~)
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And as he walked down the street, all the puddles and rain-drops washing across the stone path and all the light-poles that glimmered in them; it all seemed dull.
All the nights they had spent walking down these same streets together, the neon and street-car lights the only things lighting their way as they danced around each other like leaves that were falling from the same tree. Now, the neons flickered in his wake, the collar of his coat pulled up to hide his nape from the rain, his boots taking lashes from the dips in the path where the day’s tears had collected.
He wouldn’t add to the puddles, he told himself; he wouldn’t let the ghosts of nights passed twirl around him even as the cigarette smoke curled past his figure.
But he can’t help to wonder what part of the dream they had had was too heavy, which road they had walked down had tired Harry’s feet, and which song had died in his throat. What comfort had made him too comfortable, too safe?
Draco lets the questions fall with the water that runs off the brim of his hat as he walks under a gutter. They were of no use to him. The ink that stained his hands was of no use; no comfort was to be found in the letters that had gone unanswered, the words of spite and of grief had no use, and the bottles he emptied had no use.
The coat he wore, double-breasted and made of wool though it was, had no use; he was still too cold. The whiskey he drank that burned his throat had no warming effect on his heart—on his soul. The world they had known—the world he had thought he knew—was empty now.
And that’s how it was supposed to be, wasn’t it? Ending with marriage with no love, a house but no home, an heir but no child, a blood pure as fresh-fallen snow, spilled over a desk-top, a letter that would be burned by the end of the night; a world that they thought they had known— but was never really meant for them.
What was the use?