all the names for green
I've been sitting on this for a while. Originally written for a challenge, it got a bit - stuck - towards the middle, and I alternatively love it and hate it. I'm not posting it anywhere (besides here in the gloomy bowels of my own journal, of course) cuz it's only about halfway done and probably doesn't make any sense! Would love some constructive feedback though.. *pulls le puppy-eyedness*
Watercolours
Part One - Blend
Moss
(Grey green)
Muggle cars were quiet - quieter than magical transport, with its loud whooshes from Floo-ing and the cracks of Apparition. The Muggle car, old as it was, hugged the bend of the highway, purring along with a sedate hum - a steady undertone that coalesced with green fields and the wash of sky.
Draco kept an eye on the road, and another on the boy slumped in the passenger seat, dozing. James always fell asleep in the car - something about the gently rocking rhythm awoke a deeply-buried instinct, he supposed, of security. Rain was starting to splatter the windshield - trailing across the side-windows like tears.
With a deft flick of his wrist, Draco shifted gears, going from third to fourth as they hit a stretch of open road. From this angle, all he could see of his sleeping boyfriend was a tuft of hair and an outstretched arm, peeping out from beneath the folds of a thick woollen throw. The throw was in Slytherin colours, not that he had any intention of pointing that out. Tourmaline, edged with silver, the colour bleeding into the passing countryside as rain turned the landscape into a blur of silhouettes and mist.
Draco lifted a hand away from the steering wheel. After a moment’s deliberation, he let his hand drift - left and downwards - through the air. Fleetingly, he let their fingers brush - palm against palm, skin against skin - before his hand shored up, coming to a rest, against James’ open palm.
Draco spared a quick glance at James, who wuffled mournfully in his sleep, before finally entwining their fingers, linking digit through digit.
As the rain subsided into a drizzle, twilight started to filter through the mist, bringing in darker shades of grey. Draco felt the pulse of a heartbeat flickering against his own, as he continued to negotiate the curves one-handedly on their way home.
::
Buttercup
(Yellow)
James liked to sleep in. Watching the dawn creep like an intruder into the starlit sky, Draco liked to tilt his head on the pillow and watch the gentle rise and fall of the bedcovers while James slept.
They had never gone into it with any detail, but Draco knew James was convalescing - probably from some grave Muggle disease or other. James never said, and Draco never asked. He had too many secrets of his own to keep to pry with any intent.
After blinking at the ceiling and watching his boyfriend for a few minutes; before getting up and putting the kettle on - Draco would lean in and nuzzle his nose into the crook of James’ neck, hiding his face in ticklish strands of glossy back hair.
He would breathe in the scent of white flowers, and watch James smile - sweetly, sleepily - as their bedroom turned a soft yellow with the morning sun. Their breaths would mingle, for an instant, in a kiss; in harmony with the tentative tweetings of the waking birds, outside their window.
::
Absent-mindedly flicking through a copy of the Daily Telegraph, Draco listened to the sounds of James pottering about their sunny little kitchen. Instinctively, he avoided the tiny script in the top right-hand corner, which proclaimed the day of the week, and the date.
He knew it had been five years since that night on the Astronomy tower, since calamity and Dumbledore. It had been five years since he had, with Severus’ help, fled the Wizarding world - he just didn’t really care to know exactly how long it’d been, or to wonder, with a brief sensation of vertigo, where the time had gone.
More and more frequently, however, he would catch himself looking around their poky flat; marvelling at the telly, the toaster, and the various other Muggle contraptions that he had ended up living with, even taking for granted. He would look up at an apron-clad James - humming as he served up a plate of toast and eggs, bending down to steal a quick, happy kiss - and wonder how he had ever known any other life but this.
::
Heliotrope
(Pink-purple)
In the afternoons, Draco liked to watch James work. James was a waiter at the little café next door, which served tea and scones and fluffy little pastries, and that had been where they’d met, almost a year ago now.
Draco had a weakness for scones - butter-soft, with Devonshire cream and jam. For three years, after a process of trial and error, he had returned to the little patisserie , with its aged wood panelling, Toulouse-Lautrec prints, and scones which melted against the roof of his mouth.
One particular afternoon last summer, he had looked up from his sketchbook, absently licking a smear of cream, and stared straight into tourmaline green eyes, dark-lashed and blinking.
Flicking out the tip of his tongue, he grew slowly aware of a lush bottom lip, black hair, and a little apron that was the silliest shade of pink he had ever seen.
Though they did not speak, Draco found himself suddenly, uncannily aware of the new waiter, who materialized as a pink-aproned, dark-haired blob continuously lurking in the corner of his vision.
Wordlessly, they watched each other. James served tea, and Draco sketched - pencils one day, charcoal the next, soft minimalist doodles which reduced the worlds to a blaze of line and shadow; the faint curve of a teacup.
One evening, just after closing time, James’ bony hip accidentally jarred Draco’s elbow, causing the emergence of an unsightly grey blob in the rim of a saucer.
Draco - who hadn’t really spoken to anyone for almost four eyes, excluding the rare message to and from Severus - had looked up, a frown puckering his forehead, only to find himself oddly speechless at the sight of James, dishcloth in hand and apron ties hanging loose from the small of his back.
James was blushing, frozen where he stood, caught out at his artless attempt to catch a glimpse of what Draco was writing every day. Nose-to-nose, Draco could feel short puffs of breath feather across his upturned cheek.
Suddenly all Draco could see was eyes the colour of Slytherin.
Later, clinging to the edges of his table, smoothing a trembling hand up from a beautiful arse and delving under silly aprons and soft Muggle fabric to find pebbley nipples and smooth skin, Draco had helplessly kissed back.
::
Of course James - James Evans, as Draco later found out - didn’t know Draco’s real name. After four years of being a Muggle, Draco had learnt enough to know that a name like Draco would raise a few eyebrows, to say the least.
After waking up for the fourth time in a week - slack-jawed, legs hooked around James’ lean waist - in the middle of James’ small but comfortable bed, Draco had obligingly agreed to James’ offer to move in, and a small plaque with the names James Evans and Ethan Black had appeared by the buzzer a day later.
Sometimes, watching James sleep - mouth agape and cock softening in the slick clutch of Draco’s body - Draco would have the sudden, insane urge to write a letter to his past, to find an owl and send a missive winging back to a time and a boy who seemed so far removed from who he was now.
Potter, my boyfriend looks so much like you.
::
There were times, of course, when Draco thought about the war. The last time he’d heard from Severus, over a year ago, the war had been at a pivotal point, with both sides at the edge of defeat, and the Wizarding World had seemed on the cusp of perishing completely.
Draco tried not to think of what a year’s worth of silence really meant.
In his five years of exile, somewhere along the line, Draco had learnt that everyone had nightmares, even Muggles, even James. He supposed that James was an orphan, really - the majority of his nightmares seemed to feature some relative or other, dying in a particularly horrible and gruesome manner.
Sometimes, in dreams, Draco saw the finished Vanishing Cabinet - every gnarled wood stain and splinter reproduced in its entirety, and himself, fraught and exhausted, before it.
Thrust back into that instant before free-fall, before casting his lot with fate, he would see his dream-self hesitate, then suddenly, recklessly, step into the Cabinet, without looking back - leaving Bellatrix’s summons wilting away at his feet, leaving behind Death-Eathers, and family, and pain.
In his dreams, between the crest of one moment and the surge of the next, he would watch Draco Malfoy as he silently vanished.
::
Corinthian
(Blue)
Over the course of the past five years, Draco felt himself slowly - like a blade of grass bending into the wind - becoming that most unthinkable of things … a Muggle. Like tendrils of ink dissipitating into water, he felt his actions gradually being coloured by Muggle habits, Muggle traits.
At odd moments - helping James scour the kettle, buying something called a hotdog -Draco would think of his father, and wonder why it mattered still.
One thing Muggles did very well, which the Wizarding World seemed to overlook, was comfort. Mass-produced, squishy comfort, particularly in the form of soft cotton shirts, washable bedlinen and that ingenious little invention known as the sofa.
Malfoys did not have sofas, or couches, or anything that could be remotely construed as contributing to poor posture. Malfoys had armchairs and divans - and, occasionally, a chaise lounge.
But James had a sofa, which could be defined as an acquiescent lump of furniture that moulded to every curve of Draco’s body. It was yielding, yet robust, and leant itself to every position - including sitting, lounging, spooning, slouched to one corner, feet off the sides, and coyly leant over the back with his legs spread.
Draco felt an odd affinity with James’ sofa, with its delicate, forlorn shade of blue.
Draco was especially fond of the sofa on rainy days when James didn’t have to work. After kissing James awake and nagging him into making breakfast, he might grudgingly allow himself to be tucked into the sofa’s warm folds, curled into James’ lap, and to listen to the pleasant whine of the television against the backdrop of softly plopping raindrops.
On such days, when the sky was overcast, Draco would flick through television channels until he came across a suitably exciting cooking programme, before settling into James’ embrace and allowing the corner of his lips to be mouthed as he whispered fold the eggs huskily into James’ ear.
Somehow, they liked to kiss - slowly, wetly, lapping at the delicate traces of each other - to the thought of food in the background. In his more sentimental moments, Draco likened this phenomena to the circumstances of their first kiss, with its tang of fresh bread and scones.
After the sun had set, Harry would attempt to bully Draco into cooking dinner. For all his skill at breakfast foods and pastries and wearing lurid little pink aprons, James was really a rather mediocre chef, whereas Draco, who had grown up coddled by kitchen elves and Potions Masters, had a natural aptitude for combining ingredients.
Later, returning to their blue sofa and watching James’ eyes sparkle viridian, Draco would lower himself so much as to snuggle, and bite his lip before he called James Potter in a casual slip of the tongue.
::
Snow
(White)
James had his good days and bad, just as Draco had his. Today had been a beautiful day.
Draco had woken up with his fingers tangled in soft black hair, to the sight of snow falling soundlessly outside their window, bordered by the summery chintz of James’ curtains.
Draco loved the snow, and how it looked on James’ eyelashes - like pixie dust - when his eyes crinkled in a dopey grin, against the odd burst of sunlight glittering through ice.
It rarely snowed in Brighton, especially in March. Draco pulled his thick cashmere scarf tighter around his neck - crimson, to bring out the flush in his complexion - before turning to James and linking a mitten-ed hand through his, as they watched snow falling into the sea.
Draco didn’t think he’d ever felt happier than this.
A brief memory rose to the surface at that thought - Mother, running towards him in her heels, her eyes alight with laughter as Father chased her around the living room on Draco’s new broomstick - but the image was quickly squashed by the warmth of James’ arm wrapping around his chest; James’ cheek softly rubbing against the fine hairs on the back of his neck.
Draco closed his eyes, and stuck out his tongue to catch a snowflake.
It melted after a brief moment against his lips, to the sounds of seagulls crying in the background.
::
Draco had returned to their apartment, to get some money before they set out for dinner.
The sum Severus had given him five years ago - tantamount to all the money Severus could spare from his family vault - had never run low. Draco, unused to Muggle currency, had never spent much, and in any case after their flight from Hogwarts Draco had no intention of getting caught by either side during an escapade to Muggle Harrods. He had lain low, for four years, before James came along.
Draco looked at the twin indents on the pillows, on their still-unmade bed, and fleetingly passed his hand over the hollows, remembering the feel of James’ chest, his thigh, his hardening cock, against his own.
He realised James never really called him by his pseudonym, Ethan - coined from his French middle name, Etienne, which had been his mother’s pet name for him when he was very young. At the beginning, before speaking his name, James would always pause, very briefly, as if in sudden disorientation. After a while, James had tentatively started to call him by a variety of endearments, before settling shyly on sweetheart, and, more recently, love.
Draco looked around at their poky little apartment, at the faded wallpaper and the cheerful little kitchen, and wondered if he had ever imagined love would feel - and look - like this.
He wondered - if there had been no Voldemort, if he had never fled the Wizarding world, and his heritage - if he would ever have known what it could feel like.
Passing before a window on his way out, Draco paused for a moment, looking at the distant figure of James, in his little woollen beanie, alone against a sea of white, swirling specks of sky. For a moment, as Harry tilted up his head, one of the flakes looked bigger than the others, almost like a sheet of paper, or an owl the colour of snow.
::
Ashen
(Grey)
James was quiet that night. The spells hadn’t happened for a while - the days when James would get weak, too weak to leave the bed, and set the teacup rattling as he reached for it with shivering fingers - but after watching the way James was pushing treacle tart, his favourite dessert, around his plate, Draco calmly got up, did the dishes, and put him into bed.
He was there, gently trailing a finger down the side of James’ face, when James turned towards him, burying his head in the crook of Draco’s shoulder, a moment before his body was wracked all over with spasms.
He held James through the night, curling his fingers in soft, messy hair, weathering the fits of shivers, and quietly wiping at the helpless tears of frustration that seeped out.
::
That morning, Draco awoke, as he always did, to the scent of white flowers.
The sky had lightened a few shades of gray, from darkness, and Draco blinked sleepily in the half-light as he reached over the bedspread, seeking for the familiar feel of soft hair and stubbled cheeks.
What his fingers found instead was the cool crispness of paper - a note.
Suddenly, jerkily awake, Draco sat up, mindless of the blast of cold air raising goosebumps across his naked chest, and glanced at James’ handwriting, scrawled starkly across the torn page of their desk calendar.
Ethan
I had to go -
I’m so, so sorry, I can’t explain where, or why. I’ve suddenly heard a close friend of mine is very, very sick, and I have to go see her.
Please wait for me.
I love you. I love you.
J
Draco raised a subconsicous hand toward his heart - and realised it was pounding, sickeningly fast. He whipped his head around the apartment - everything looked exactly in place; James’ mugs on the counter, his underwear in the laundry basket - where had he gone?
Trembling, he got out of bed, and stumbled the four steps to the wardrobe, pulling its doors open.
Half of James’ clothes - his oldest, most comfortable clothes - were missing.
In the greying dawn, stark naked in the middle of their bedroom, Draco suddenly felt cold, all over.
He stood there for hours, stock-still against the overcast sky, before he moved.
::
The first day without James passed in a blur.
After finally moving his frozen limbs, numb from the cold, Draco had swathed himself in one of James’ remaining sweaters, an ugly patchwork of dark red and gold, and sat on the sofa.
He watched the shadows creep across their flat, casting James’ weird football-inspired wall-clock, his omelette pan, his pink apron, hanging behind the door - slowly into shadow.
He’s coming back.
Draco watched the dust-motes dance in a sudden shaft of light, in the sunset. He tried not to think of the fact that - even after hearing his Father had been thrown into prison, after fleeing his school, his family, his kind; even after receiving word of his Father’s death - he couldn’t recall a time when he felt lonelier, or more alone, than this.
::
After three days, there had been no further note, or sign. Not even a phone call.
Draco had abandoned all illusions of propriety, and gone through all of James’ things - his clothes, the scraps of paper in the bedstand drawer, the small mobile phone he had left - to find nothing. No sign that James had been cheating on him, no sign that their relationship had somehow been an elaborate con for Draco’s money; no sign of why he’d left.
After the third day, he allowed himself to cry, wrapped underneath the duvet, when he realised James’ scent had left the flat.
After the seventh day, after forcing himself to swallow down two bites of Marmite on toast, his feet wrapped in a pair of James’ thickest socks, he remembered he was a wizard.
On the eighth day, after wrecking the kitchen in a fit of rage, confronting the fact that without James, the last five years of his life had meant nothing, to no one, he remembered he was a Malfoy.