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Holding that moment forever
Again, this song can be uploaded from YSI for a week: Jonny Lang - Breakin' Me (Jonny is a whopping 17 years old here. He must have overawed all the 17-year-old girls, and possibly a few boys, in Fargo.) It's a nice heartbreaker of a song, too. ETA: more Jonny from the same album: Leavin' to Stay, a blues waltz, and Still Rainin', more on the rock side of blues.
I found this entry in some stray files. I'd written it to post a while ago but never got around to it (obviously).
I know you know them: moments when you're reading a fic and come upon a phrase, a paragraph, an exchange that just stops you cold with its beauty. This isn't inclusive, by any means. Just some I cobbled together to cheer myself up one day.
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bookshop's The Reader - When Draco reads Rosetti's poem, Echo.
As he read, tears started in his eyes and in his voice, and he seemed to be every second a heartbeat away from breaking into a sob; but the cry never came, and all that remained was the harrowing line between the spoken words of his poem and the heartache that lay beyond them.
______________
epicyclical's After the Flood - When Harry finds Draco in the Amsterdam opium den.
"I never said I loved you," Draco says, raising his eyes and looking straight at Harry for the first time.
"I know," Harry says. He steps closer to Draco, who doesn't pull away, and does something he has never done before. He puts his arms around the other boy, not for the purposes of drawing him closer or shoving him up against a wall or even pulling him down into his lap, but just to have his arms around him. It is such an unfamiliar gesture that it almost seems to reshape Draco's body under his hands as something unfamiliar as well. He feels its lightness, the sharp blades of the shoulders, the beat of his heart, the delicate vertebrae, each knob of the spine against the gentle touch of his fingers. And although he has been over every inch of this body so many times, knows it with his hands and lips and teeth and tongue, it remains undiscovered country in its strangeness under his touch, or perhaps it is rediscovered country. Harry feels as if he has found something again, something he always had but left behind, something that is different each time he finds it. Like childhood, like magic: something lost but infinitely recoverable, something he had put away but that had never left him because whether he wanted it or not it had always been, uniquely, his very own.
______________
ajhalluk's Not A Whisper - Draco and Neville's first night together. Neville's POV.
His hands reached out again into the dark and the void, to caress and embrace. "Stay with me. Please. I just want to hold you. To be with you."
After all, we are at war, and either of us may be dead and cold by the time the sun sets tomorrow. Please let tonight be ours.
It seemed to be important to amplify. And if he was about to die, then perhaps a truth could not hurt. Too badly.
"I've - never spent the whole night with someone before. I'd like it to be you."
The light voice suddenly sounded friendly and amused in the darkness. The warm body moved back into his arms, wrapping firmly, tightly against him.
"Really? You know, I'm desperately selfish. I expect I'm unspeakable to share a bed with."
______________
icarusancalion's Sex, Drugs, and Death Eater Rock - Ron and Draco making love at the end of a wild evening.
Seeing things were somehow changed, against orders Ron took it slow, and put everything he had into it. Those grey eyes watched him, as Ron touched his lips to Draco's, delicately; then as he was invited in, Ron softly took his mouth.
Ron drew back, and Draco swallowed, feeling the difference. His heart, pressed against Ron's chest, raced.
This is what your first time should have been like, Ron thought.
______________
ivyblossom's Belong (no working link at the moment found!) - The scene where Harry tells Draco he loves him.
"I see," he said nonchalantly. "That's interesting, Potter." He leaned forward and kissed him tentatively, as if it were a first kiss, as if he wasn't sure he would be accepted, as if he didn't already know the taste and texture of Harry's mouth. He kissed him as if he hadn't just now been woken while Harry's anxious hands had been tracing the word 'why' into his skin, over and over, as if he hadn't been sharing his bed for the past week. As if Harry hadn't just told him that he loved him. This was not unusual for Draco. Harry had thought of it as a kind of game, let's pretend. Let's pretend this is a first kiss, pretend it's all new, pretend there is no history, no drama, no tears and frustrations and holes in the walls and stacked feet of letters never sent. He had thought that these tentative kisses were simply a way to keep things interesting between them, to keep things fresh. He had thought that this was what Draco wanted, needed; that things stay new and always a little on the edge. So he played along. He could be tentative too. He could give him those virginal kisses, let him recreate those awkward, teenage moments. But suddenly, now, with his wrists still pinned against the pillow, he understood. There was something closer to the surface now, something in the quiet desperation of this motion that told him what this tentative kiss was. It was a question. Do you love me?
______________
Olympia's Orpheus in Motion - the first paragraph leaves me in tears.
Harry watched the embalming process feeling detached. As if this body was not Draco, not his Draco, not his. He watched as it was charmed and a colourless potion was anointed on it carefully. He watched as they whispered protection spells, and silvery lights were woven tightly around it, a cocoon of magic that settled on it slowly.
It, it, not him.
Never him.
He was gone.
____________________
resonant8's Transfigurations - The scene after Draco loses his magic.
It only took a few seconds for Malfoy to unbend and lean into him, laying his head on Harry's shoulder. They stood like that for a long moment, and then Harry stroked Malfoy's hair, remembering the scent of it as he carried him down from Dumbledore's office, and Malfoy let out a shuddering sigh and turned up his face without opening his eyes.
Harry kissed him slowly, lipping at his mouth for a long time before pressing it open to taste him. Malfoy clung to him but made no effort to control the pace.
______________
rushlight75's Through a Shattered Mirror - The scene between Draco and Harry
"Just relax." Draco's voice was low and soothing. He poured a small amount of something slick and scented into the hollow between Harry's shoulder blades, and Harry jumped at the unexpected contact. A moment later, Draco's hands were massaging the oil into his back, long fingers pressing deep into the muscles of his shoulders.
This was something that Draco had obviously had practice doing before. Within moments, Harry found himself melting bonelessly into the bed, every muscle turning liquid within him under the other boy's talented touch. This was something else that Harry had never experienced before -- this kind of intimate skin-on-skin massage -- and the pleasure of it spiraled through him, making him feel like he was floating somewhere far outside his body.
______________
fearlessdiva's Tissue of Silver This is a climactic scene, as quiet and poignant as any I've ever read. Harry watches Draco.
The light was on in the parlour, and he stepped inside to see Malfoy standing at the escritoire frantically scribbling on a small sheet of parchment. He was wearing nothing but a pair of black silk pyjama bottoms, and his feet were bare. His skin was amazing in the candlelight, an even, glowing expanse of ivory, so smooth the light just bounced off of it. He had a dusting of fine, honey-coloured hair over his chest that Harry had somehow missed noticing that afternoon, and a light trail leading into the pyjamas. There was just a hint of stubble shadow on his face, and his hair was falling into his eyes as he wrote. The planes of his face were sharp and utterly perfect. He was the very definition of sexy disorder, and Harry felt as though he'd been knocked to his knees. Malfoy half-dressed in candlelight was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen.
I want that, he thought. He wanted to know what that skin felt like. He wanted to explore every inch of it with his fingertips and see where the texture shifted. He wanted to taste the graceful curve along the nape of Malfoy's neck, and test the feeling of the jawline against the back of his hand. He wanted to take those slim fingers and entwine them with his own, like he had outside the courtroom, but he wanted to really pay attention this time. He wanted to memorize the swirls of Malfoy's fingerprints, and measure the lengths of his eyelashes. He ached with wanting, so much he couldn't even understand it. All he knew was how much, how suddenly, how completely, he wanted them and how utterly impossible it was.
It took only a split second for all this to wash over him. Less than a second for everything to explode and rearrange itself in Harry's head, and Harry was reeling.
______________
pandarus's Invisible to See - Harry's reaction to stumbling upon Draco and Justin in the closet
He couldn't get the image out of his head: Draco's back arching off the wall and the almost luminous pallor of his angular body; the nipples so innocently, so unexpectedly pink; the blossoming evidence of ungentle kisses bruising the pale skin of his arms and throat and belly; the half-open mouth and the way he was moving with such sinuous urgency whilst Justin did - well, whatever Justin was doing. As if he didn't know what Justin was doing. At least they hadn't actually seen Draco's - at least they hadn't seen any details of - that. He had never seen anyone look so totally naked. Not just being naked, but really looking naked. And - used. That was the word. Used. But willingly.
Draco was always hidden by layers of clothes and mannerisms and brittle walls of words, but just now he had been naked in every possible way.
______________
arsenicjade's Origin's of Myth - Draco's life in China; Draco's first-person POV.
So I keep doing what I do, struggling to learn the ways of Muggle living for a much longer time than it takes me to learn the language. Struggling to ignore the sickening emptiness where my magic once resided. Struggling, out of habit, to care that I wake the next morning, and the next.
I exist this way for a little over four years. I exist this way until I am found.
______________
zionsstarfish's The Way of the World - Every place Draco is hurting.
Draco is this close to begging. He can't stand it anymore: the scrutiny, the wondering, the pitying looks. He can't stand that he has a shithole of a life to return to—that is, if Harry ever lets him go—and he can't stand that he's suddenly wondering how things could have been different somehow.
"Please," he says, looking right at Harry. He knows the light from inside the house is spilling onto his face and he knows that Harry's looking back at him, evaluating and wondering, seeing his poorly dyed brown hair that has never really fooled anyone and the dark smudges under his eyes.
______________
ajhalluk's The Perilous Point - Harry apologizes to Neville. Harry's POV.
Awkwardly, he passed over the threshold into the kitchen of Malfoy Manor. As he did so he caught, out of the corner of his eye, Neville glancing towards Malfoy with a look that somehow managed to combine apologetic hesitation - he could understand that, being for the first time wholly conscious of just how insulted Malfoy had every right to be about everything Harry had believed which had led to the whole ghastly fuck-up in the first place - with a centred confidence that where his own conscience had led him, his lover would surely follow. Eventually.
And Harry, who had had no prior reason to believe the truth of that assumption, suddenly saw it made plain in Draco's face as he in turn looked at his lover: his relief, his fierce exultation at the vindication, and his sheer blazing pride in Neville's magnanimity: the pride of someone terrified of heights who sees someone he cares for about to parachute from fifteen thousand feet.
Harry gulped.
Oh god. Please don't let me die before someone chooses to look at me like that.
______________
helenish's Soft Spot for Lost Causes - just about the whole story, but here's a beautiful moment, Ron's POV.
He didn’t come when Draco was inside him, but he came the moment Draco bent and kissed his stomach, his breath caught in his throat, his entire field of vision taken up by Draco’s flushed cheeks, the deep quiet of his eyes, like the midsummer sky, like the still, vast depth of the quarry Fred and George had dared him to jump into the summer before he’d gone away to Hogwarts.
In the morning, he rolled his eyes at himself in the mirror and made a resolution to avoid poetry for the foreseeable future.
______________
zionsstarfish's Not Yet - the ending scene, Draco's POV.
His mouth fit the crest of Harry's shoulder, and his body fit the cradle of Harry's hips and the enclosure of his arms just like he remembered. The ache in Draco's chest deepened and sharpened and every single hope and fear surged to the surface, making it hard to breathe.
He wouldn't have to live off memories anymore.
"It's probably going to rain all night," Harry said, sitting down on the pitiful mattress in the middle of the room and pulling Draco down with him. "I hope you don't mind the space; it's a bit cramped for two. I suppose we can go elsewhere if you'd rather."
The flat was terribly cramped, and smelled stale, and had strange-looking Muggle devices and overdue library books strewn everywhere.
"I really wouldn't," Draco said, and leaned in to be kissed. The rain fell like armour around them and he felt suddenly brave. "Can I tell you something? I'm going to keep fighting. For me, and for us."
Harry nodded and stroked Draco's face, his eyes bright. He didn't say anything at all, but in that one gesture was all that Draco needed: faith, hope, and so much love.
I found this entry in some stray files. I'd written it to post a while ago but never got around to it (obviously).
I know you know them: moments when you're reading a fic and come upon a phrase, a paragraph, an exchange that just stops you cold with its beauty. This isn't inclusive, by any means. Just some I cobbled together to cheer myself up one day.
bookshop's The Reader - When Draco reads Rosetti's poem, Echo.As he read, tears started in his eyes and in his voice, and he seemed to be every second a heartbeat away from breaking into a sob; but the cry never came, and all that remained was the harrowing line between the spoken words of his poem and the heartache that lay beyond them.
______________
epicyclical's After the Flood - When Harry finds Draco in the Amsterdam opium den."I never said I loved you," Draco says, raising his eyes and looking straight at Harry for the first time.
"I know," Harry says. He steps closer to Draco, who doesn't pull away, and does something he has never done before. He puts his arms around the other boy, not for the purposes of drawing him closer or shoving him up against a wall or even pulling him down into his lap, but just to have his arms around him. It is such an unfamiliar gesture that it almost seems to reshape Draco's body under his hands as something unfamiliar as well. He feels its lightness, the sharp blades of the shoulders, the beat of his heart, the delicate vertebrae, each knob of the spine against the gentle touch of his fingers. And although he has been over every inch of this body so many times, knows it with his hands and lips and teeth and tongue, it remains undiscovered country in its strangeness under his touch, or perhaps it is rediscovered country. Harry feels as if he has found something again, something he always had but left behind, something that is different each time he finds it. Like childhood, like magic: something lost but infinitely recoverable, something he had put away but that had never left him because whether he wanted it or not it had always been, uniquely, his very own.
______________
ajhalluk's Not A Whisper - Draco and Neville's first night together. Neville's POV.His hands reached out again into the dark and the void, to caress and embrace. "Stay with me. Please. I just want to hold you. To be with you."
After all, we are at war, and either of us may be dead and cold by the time the sun sets tomorrow. Please let tonight be ours.
It seemed to be important to amplify. And if he was about to die, then perhaps a truth could not hurt. Too badly.
"I've - never spent the whole night with someone before. I'd like it to be you."
The light voice suddenly sounded friendly and amused in the darkness. The warm body moved back into his arms, wrapping firmly, tightly against him.
"Really? You know, I'm desperately selfish. I expect I'm unspeakable to share a bed with."
______________
icarusancalion's Sex, Drugs, and Death Eater Rock - Ron and Draco making love at the end of a wild evening.Seeing things were somehow changed, against orders Ron took it slow, and put everything he had into it. Those grey eyes watched him, as Ron touched his lips to Draco's, delicately; then as he was invited in, Ron softly took his mouth.
Ron drew back, and Draco swallowed, feeling the difference. His heart, pressed against Ron's chest, raced.
This is what your first time should have been like, Ron thought.
______________
ivyblossom's Belong ("I see," he said nonchalantly. "That's interesting, Potter." He leaned forward and kissed him tentatively, as if it were a first kiss, as if he wasn't sure he would be accepted, as if he didn't already know the taste and texture of Harry's mouth. He kissed him as if he hadn't just now been woken while Harry's anxious hands had been tracing the word 'why' into his skin, over and over, as if he hadn't been sharing his bed for the past week. As if Harry hadn't just told him that he loved him. This was not unusual for Draco. Harry had thought of it as a kind of game, let's pretend. Let's pretend this is a first kiss, pretend it's all new, pretend there is no history, no drama, no tears and frustrations and holes in the walls and stacked feet of letters never sent. He had thought that these tentative kisses were simply a way to keep things interesting between them, to keep things fresh. He had thought that this was what Draco wanted, needed; that things stay new and always a little on the edge. So he played along. He could be tentative too. He could give him those virginal kisses, let him recreate those awkward, teenage moments. But suddenly, now, with his wrists still pinned against the pillow, he understood. There was something closer to the surface now, something in the quiet desperation of this motion that told him what this tentative kiss was. It was a question. Do you love me?
______________
Olympia's Orpheus in Motion - the first paragraph leaves me in tears.
Harry watched the embalming process feeling detached. As if this body was not Draco, not his Draco, not his. He watched as it was charmed and a colourless potion was anointed on it carefully. He watched as they whispered protection spells, and silvery lights were woven tightly around it, a cocoon of magic that settled on it slowly.
It, it, not him.
Never him.
He was gone.
____________________
resonant8's Transfigurations - The scene after Draco loses his magic.It only took a few seconds for Malfoy to unbend and lean into him, laying his head on Harry's shoulder. They stood like that for a long moment, and then Harry stroked Malfoy's hair, remembering the scent of it as he carried him down from Dumbledore's office, and Malfoy let out a shuddering sigh and turned up his face without opening his eyes.
Harry kissed him slowly, lipping at his mouth for a long time before pressing it open to taste him. Malfoy clung to him but made no effort to control the pace.
______________
rushlight75's Through a Shattered Mirror - The scene between Draco and Harry "Just relax." Draco's voice was low and soothing. He poured a small amount of something slick and scented into the hollow between Harry's shoulder blades, and Harry jumped at the unexpected contact. A moment later, Draco's hands were massaging the oil into his back, long fingers pressing deep into the muscles of his shoulders.
This was something that Draco had obviously had practice doing before. Within moments, Harry found himself melting bonelessly into the bed, every muscle turning liquid within him under the other boy's talented touch. This was something else that Harry had never experienced before -- this kind of intimate skin-on-skin massage -- and the pleasure of it spiraled through him, making him feel like he was floating somewhere far outside his body.
______________
fearlessdiva's Tissue of Silver This is a climactic scene, as quiet and poignant as any I've ever read. Harry watches Draco.The light was on in the parlour, and he stepped inside to see Malfoy standing at the escritoire frantically scribbling on a small sheet of parchment. He was wearing nothing but a pair of black silk pyjama bottoms, and his feet were bare. His skin was amazing in the candlelight, an even, glowing expanse of ivory, so smooth the light just bounced off of it. He had a dusting of fine, honey-coloured hair over his chest that Harry had somehow missed noticing that afternoon, and a light trail leading into the pyjamas. There was just a hint of stubble shadow on his face, and his hair was falling into his eyes as he wrote. The planes of his face were sharp and utterly perfect. He was the very definition of sexy disorder, and Harry felt as though he'd been knocked to his knees. Malfoy half-dressed in candlelight was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen.
I want that, he thought. He wanted to know what that skin felt like. He wanted to explore every inch of it with his fingertips and see where the texture shifted. He wanted to taste the graceful curve along the nape of Malfoy's neck, and test the feeling of the jawline against the back of his hand. He wanted to take those slim fingers and entwine them with his own, like he had outside the courtroom, but he wanted to really pay attention this time. He wanted to memorize the swirls of Malfoy's fingerprints, and measure the lengths of his eyelashes. He ached with wanting, so much he couldn't even understand it. All he knew was how much, how suddenly, how completely, he wanted them and how utterly impossible it was.
It took only a split second for all this to wash over him. Less than a second for everything to explode and rearrange itself in Harry's head, and Harry was reeling.
______________
pandarus's Invisible to See - Harry's reaction to stumbling upon Draco and Justin in the closetHe couldn't get the image out of his head: Draco's back arching off the wall and the almost luminous pallor of his angular body; the nipples so innocently, so unexpectedly pink; the blossoming evidence of ungentle kisses bruising the pale skin of his arms and throat and belly; the half-open mouth and the way he was moving with such sinuous urgency whilst Justin did - well, whatever Justin was doing. As if he didn't know what Justin was doing. At least they hadn't actually seen Draco's - at least they hadn't seen any details of - that. He had never seen anyone look so totally naked. Not just being naked, but really looking naked. And - used. That was the word. Used. But willingly.
Draco was always hidden by layers of clothes and mannerisms and brittle walls of words, but just now he had been naked in every possible way.
______________
arsenicjade's Origin's of Myth - Draco's life in China; Draco's first-person POV. So I keep doing what I do, struggling to learn the ways of Muggle living for a much longer time than it takes me to learn the language. Struggling to ignore the sickening emptiness where my magic once resided. Struggling, out of habit, to care that I wake the next morning, and the next.
I exist this way for a little over four years. I exist this way until I am found.
______________
zionsstarfish's The Way of the World - Every place Draco is hurting.Draco is this close to begging. He can't stand it anymore: the scrutiny, the wondering, the pitying looks. He can't stand that he has a shithole of a life to return to—that is, if Harry ever lets him go—and he can't stand that he's suddenly wondering how things could have been different somehow.
"Please," he says, looking right at Harry. He knows the light from inside the house is spilling onto his face and he knows that Harry's looking back at him, evaluating and wondering, seeing his poorly dyed brown hair that has never really fooled anyone and the dark smudges under his eyes.
______________
ajhalluk's The Perilous Point - Harry apologizes to Neville. Harry's POV.Awkwardly, he passed over the threshold into the kitchen of Malfoy Manor. As he did so he caught, out of the corner of his eye, Neville glancing towards Malfoy with a look that somehow managed to combine apologetic hesitation - he could understand that, being for the first time wholly conscious of just how insulted Malfoy had every right to be about everything Harry had believed which had led to the whole ghastly fuck-up in the first place - with a centred confidence that where his own conscience had led him, his lover would surely follow. Eventually.
And Harry, who had had no prior reason to believe the truth of that assumption, suddenly saw it made plain in Draco's face as he in turn looked at his lover: his relief, his fierce exultation at the vindication, and his sheer blazing pride in Neville's magnanimity: the pride of someone terrified of heights who sees someone he cares for about to parachute from fifteen thousand feet.
Harry gulped.
Oh god. Please don't let me die before someone chooses to look at me like that.
______________
helenish's Soft Spot for Lost Causes - just about the whole story, but here's a beautiful moment, Ron's POV.He didn’t come when Draco was inside him, but he came the moment Draco bent and kissed his stomach, his breath caught in his throat, his entire field of vision taken up by Draco’s flushed cheeks, the deep quiet of his eyes, like the midsummer sky, like the still, vast depth of the quarry Fred and George had dared him to jump into the summer before he’d gone away to Hogwarts.
In the morning, he rolled his eyes at himself in the mirror and made a resolution to avoid poetry for the foreseeable future.
______________
zionsstarfish's Not Yet - the ending scene, Draco's POV.His mouth fit the crest of Harry's shoulder, and his body fit the cradle of Harry's hips and the enclosure of his arms just like he remembered. The ache in Draco's chest deepened and sharpened and every single hope and fear surged to the surface, making it hard to breathe.
He wouldn't have to live off memories anymore.
"It's probably going to rain all night," Harry said, sitting down on the pitiful mattress in the middle of the room and pulling Draco down with him. "I hope you don't mind the space; it's a bit cramped for two. I suppose we can go elsewhere if you'd rather."
The flat was terribly cramped, and smelled stale, and had strange-looking Muggle devices and overdue library books strewn everywhere.
"I really wouldn't," Draco said, and leaned in to be kissed. The rain fell like armour around them and he felt suddenly brave. "Can I tell you something? I'm going to keep fighting. For me, and for us."
Harry nodded and stroked Draco's face, his eyes bright. He didn't say anything at all, but in that one gesture was all that Draco needed: faith, hope, and so much love.
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*glomps*
Oh, and if you want me to email you a copy of Belonging? Just say!
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