Summer Grey
– a little something especially for my lovely Ishuca, even through it's not a lovely tale –

The room was painted a light grey; a flickering light bulb hung from the high ceiling by it's cord, the dim glow reaching its tendril fingers over the cracks in the walls and chipped window sill. The window was grubby, fingerprints where it hand been slammed upwards during the warm summer days, with the ever-green leaves outside clung to their branches like small children onto a mothers comforting grasp.

If you listened hard enough during those humid days, you could hear the laughter from the park a block and a half away, the creak of the slide that should have been replaced years ago, polished a smooth copper from sneakers and faded blue jeans and pretty flowered skirts. Now, as winter threw its cold cloak and set its self to blowing and rattling the windowpanes, all you could sense was the lonely moan as the swing rocked back and forth on thick chains, back and forth. It was whispering for the children to come back and play, to come and play while it swallowed up their childhoods and left all their dreams scattered on their bedroom walls, like forgotten memories.

Snow had settled during the night, and steely eyes peered from the window on the fourth floor, raking over the bare trees that had kicked the clothes off while they weren't paying attention. They were haunted by summer days still, by lazy days of warmth and smooth kisses, one flowing into the next effortlessly. Champagne spilling into glasses and onto the mahogany coffee table, before it was wiped down with a cloth and put to better use, sweeping the backgammon set onto the floor, dice rolling away under the luxurious leather sofa that was too sticky to be of any use on hot nights.

Footsteps squeaked and a loose trolley wheel rattled in the corridor outside, turning the steely eyes away from the landscape and back into the room. It had the air of oppression, the white-painted column heater whirling away with the air of dysfunctional use on the far wall, next to the almost-closed door. Wilting winter lilies were splashed in a regulation shaped vase, dropping with the lack of fresh air and disinfectant. Their water was stale and murky, and velvet petals fell to the bedside with the same wispy sadness that stung on the bareness of grey walls.

The lone figure by the window moved finally, unsettling the stillness of the room by his thoughts of movement. He wrapped his long, dark cloak around himself firmly, sitting back down in the hard, bony chair next to the steel, white-sheeted bed, stretching long legs out in front of him. He reached for the polystyrene cup on the washed out starfish coaster and tipped it up to his parched mouth.

The coffee swirled cold, but he drank it anyway, gulped it down to the gritty dregs. He wished he were at home, pouring fresh, expensive coffee from the pot, rich and frothy, drinking it out of a bowl-mug as he battled a wine hangover from the night before. He wished he were at home, with a view and soft music, candles and open mouthed kisses on the thick rug in front of a blazing fire. Where one side of his body so scorching hot that it felt like it was burning, the other side chilled by drafts of air over his naked skin.

His back arched unconsciously, partly in an attempt to get comfortable in the hard pit of the chair, the other with a distinct memory of the taste of flesh on flesh. How many times had he lain on that rug and kissed that swollen mouth, swept his fingertips over the spine, licked on nipple and ear and trailing sweat drop from chin to breastbone. How his body ached for that again.

The door creaked as another gust of winter wind howled through the hallway, as the clipped sound of running high heals followed the sound of paper being kicked up with the nimble fingers of nature and spread out over the floor. He smiled mirthlessly.

Black hair stirred with the winds restless breath, rising back onto the pillow. They had wanted to cut it short, regulation, but after the hour-long argument they conceded, leaving it long. The pale face still looked bare, but at least with the hair long and scruffy, it remained a little bit like the memory of a nervous eleven year old bitting his lip in anticipation of the unknown. It was like holding onto memories that had died and buried long ago.

They had made vows to each other; never to rehash old arguments, to put space and distance between the fights and words of hurt and thoughts of harm behind them; but something in those green eyes just made you want to remember. To remember the good in yourself; to remember that no matter how bad life gets, there's always something there to keep you grounded. Now all the green eyes could do was stare, stare far away, stare into that distant point as if he dared look away, it would be gone forever and he never wanted to let it go.

A limp hand was picked up regularly, stroked, and caressed, kissed with tenderness; trying to pull back the past with a simple touch. The bed sheet rose, and fell again. How did he become this way? This empty vessel with no ocean to sail across, his eyes turned skyward as if all the stars had gone out, like all they had been were pinpricks in the night cloak and could simply be patched over with a swish and a flick. No noon star to sail home by, no midnight sun rising through the sea of angels and hopelessness.

Steel eyes remembered, on those grey summer days, when the thunder rose low in the valley and shook the sheets, crumpled with kisses and torn with hurried fingers gripping the scarlet silk like sun-kissed skin. They remembered the nights of heat and want, panting tongue and fresh of ice, melting, melting to warmth and white wine breath. It seemed that all they could ever do was remember. Green eyes and black hair so soft that it felt like satin through your fingers, tangled with apricot scent and naked desire dancing.

How did it all end up like this? Grey rooms and plain course sheets, iridescent lights and cold coffee by a bedside. Wilting lilies and the haze of summer some million miles away. The lone figure and the barely breathing soul in the bed, waiting, waiting out summers grey hours like a weather vane searching for a breeze in the stillness.

A brush of cracked lips against stale forehead and the figure slips out through the almost-closed door, leaving the room with the gentle brush of his memory, his unseemliness in a foreign ache, the quiet uninterrupted once more. Soft words followed his unfaltering steps.

I love you, Harry.

And as Draco walked away, a loose trolley wheel rattled in the distant hallway, the loose sheets rose once more and the room was still.

– finished –