𝐔𝐍𝐃𝐄𝐒𝐄𝐑𝐕𝐄𝐃

Chapter 16

If Only

Harry leaned his head back over the edge of the rickety metal bench and took a deep drag from his cigarette, closing his eyes. This was all so fucking idiotic. He rubbed at his forehead forcefully with his unoccupied hand. He should just get up, walk into that bar, and have himself a drink. Who the fuck cared, really? Draco wasn't coming back and the fact that Harry even wanted him back was the stupidest thing he'd ever heard.

"Didn't want you when I had you. Don't see why I should give a fuck now," Harry muttered to himself, trying to regain the nonchalance he'd once had when he thought of Draco.

But that had been slowly disappearing, hadn't it? Long before Draco had ever left. And when had he let that happen anyway? This 'Draco' bullshit. When had he stopped seeing him as 'Malfoy', his childhood bully who deserved to have his face rubbed in his mistakes at the slightest opportunity? When had he started to care and how could he go back to the way things were before?

He didn't want to feel this ache in his chest, this hollow in his heart, this drop in his stomach every time he thought of Draco. Malfoy. Every time he thought of Malfoy. If he was going to have these nancy feelings then he was damn well going to refer to him as Malfoy. How had the Slytherin gotten under his skin, how had he accomplished what no one else before him had been able, and...where was he now?

Harry shook his head. He didn't give a shit. He was over this AA bull and he was over this eye-opening sobriety. Dra-Malfoy had meant nothing to him and now all he needed was to fuck, drink, and forget. It wasn't like Malfoy was his soul mate or anything and this mooning over him was just pathetic. Harry had control over Malfoy, not the other way around, and it was time he remembered that.

Harry had just stubbed his cigarette out on the armrest and got up to enter the bar when a hand dropped onto his shoulder and pushed him back down. Harry turned around with a snarl to find Toby smiling back at him.

Toby glanced up with a knowing air at the bar's worn sign. "Figured this was where you'd be after you tore out of the meeting like that." He was kind enough to leave out that that was because this was the closest bar in the area. "I used to come here after every meeting myself and just sit on the curb. But at least I got through 'em first," He said in an attempt at lightheartedness. Harry didn't react and Toby sighed seriously. "Wanna talk about it?"

Harry shrugged and said apathetically, "What's there to say? I made a mistake, this program isn't for me after all."

Toby nodded patronizingly and curled his coat around him as he sat on the bench next to Harry. "So you're just gonna jump right back into a bottle then?"

A tick fluttered just under Harry's eye at the judgment in Toby's tone. Who the fuck did Toby think he was to judge him? "What if I am?" He snapped back argumentatively. "It's my decision to make."

Toby held up his hands in an 'I'm unarmed' gesture and said with a concerted effort to be nonchalant and offhand, "I thought you were trying to be better, to be the man your dream-boy always thought you were."

Harry gave a contrived laugh though his heart felt like it might beat its way up his throat and out his mouth at the mention of... "Yeah, well, my dream-boy was just that," Harry croaked, trying to regain his disaffected air. "A dream. Otherwise he wouldn't have taken off. I don't need him anyway, I don't need anyone." Harry stood up from the bench and looked down on Toby coldly, shoving his hands in his coat pockets. "This was just a waste of time."

Toby didn't appear to be listening. He just grabbed Harry's arm by the elbow and pulled him back down, smiling. He didn't look at Harry as he nudged his askew torso and people-watched the street across from them. "So, what was it? You never did answer me. What was the last straw, what finally ran him off?"

Harry stayed tight-lipped on the subject and had since Toby had asked him a month and a half ago, just after his second session. And he wasn't about to give in now.

Toby sighed at not receiving an answer but he didn't really seem to have expected one. He fisted his hands in his trousers, a nervous habit of his, and whistled lowly. "I still haven't been able to forgive myself for what finally did my wife in." Harry shot a quick sideways glance at him that hopefully went unnoticed. Toby never talked about his wife – well, ex-wife now – not even in meetings. Not since that first night.

Toby half-smiled at him, though it didn't look like a happy expression. "She loved me. Really loved me, I mean," Toby elaborated as though he couldn't really describe how deep her devotion for him had run, and Harry had no doubt that he couldn't. He had the same trouble when he tried to expound on Draco's emotions for him – they had gone so far past love that he wasn't even sure there was a word for it.

Toby took a deep breath and gave a strangled sounding laugh. "We had gone to this work party, before I'd got fired, and I spent the whole night throwing 'em back while I laughed it up with my yuppie coworkers and she shot me dark looks from the corner." Toby shrugged emotionlessly. "I couldn't care less, I was having fun, you know?" And, yes, Harry did know. He remembered the last party – Ron and Hermione's – that he had been to with Draco. So far this could have been a story about them.

Toby swallowed and that ever-present grin resurfaced but with none of its joy or good humor. "When it came time to leave, she tried to take the keys from me but I snatched 'em away and told her she shouldn't drive in her condition anyway, told her she didn't multitask well and she had to focus all her concentration on being pissed at me."

Harry could picture that clearly in his mind's eye, it was exactly how Toby was, what made him up, and he pointlessly hoped that was the end of the story. That Toby's next words would be 'We made it home, I told her I loved her, that I'd get help, and she's stayed by me through it all. We're happier than ever.' He hoped that Toby would be a shining example of what he and Draco could be if they really worked at it and committed to each other. And, even though he knew they were divorced, he'd rather Toby waved that away and said something along the lines of 'nah, I was just kiddin' about that.' That Harry could deal with but this...He didn't want to know any of this.

When had he become such a goddamn bleeding heart romantic?

Toby glanced at Harry with a hollowness in his eyes that seemed to want to claw its way out of those maudlin irises and devour Harry's too. "She sulked the whole drive and I kept trying to cheer her up, trying to get her to kiss me, teasing her she was gonna get wrinkles from frowning so much, so I never saw the truck coming." Harry closed his eyes and tried to breathe slow and deep while Toby continued on in that empty voice of his. "Plowed into her side, just t-boned us into a tree, she was six months pregnant at the time and." Toby stopped and Harry heard a sob catch in his throat. "She wasn't after that. She served me with the papers a week later."

They sat in silence and Toby hunched forward as if he were in pain with his head in his hands. Harry gripped the bench so tightly his knuckles were white and he tried to keep from exploding with rage. He was seething and shaking with ire when he finally opened his eyes and hissed, "See, that's why I left! I can't deal with all these peoples' horror stories! It doesn't make me feel better or less alone, it just makes me feel like I chose a unique way to fuck my relationship up but that it was inevitable, regardless of what I did."

He had Toby's attention now and Harry slumped back against the bench and admitted, "I feel so hopeless after, because not only do I have my own shit, but now I have everyone else's worst moment in my head." Harry held Toby's shrewd gaze and asked without a hint of guile, "How is that supposed to help?"

Toby matched Harry's dejection in pose and expression and looked up at the night sky that was too bright with artificial light and plastered with pollution to hold any stars that they could see. "Harry," He said finally, "Now you know that you're not evil for this, you're not the devil, or a monster. You're human and you made a mistake and you're not the only one to have made it."

Harry stared at Toby as though waiting for him to continue and, when he didn't, Harry gazed at him in slack-jawed disbelief. "Oh, please," He erupted loudly. "You don't really believe that, do you?" He threw himself off the bench and pointed at Toby accusingly. "I am a monster, and so are you. What we did to people we claimed to care about, that doesn't go away and it wasn't anything so simple as a mistake. You took a life and I destroyed a boy who wanted nothing more than to love me. We are not innocent in this."

Harry's tirade barely seemed to have an affect on Toby and he realized after a moment that it was likely because he had heard much worse, told himself much worse. No one can hurt you as well as you can hurt yourself; it was a lesson Harry was learning rather painfully. "I said nothing of innocence," Toby answered after a lingering pause that seemed more for Harry's benefit than his.

"I'm not saying your actions, or mine, weren't heinous, reprehensible, or even sickening, because they were," Toby clarified, his hands shoved deep in his coat pockets. He squinted up at Harry and his lips twisted. "But I'm not inhuman because of them and neither are you. You're going to have to learn to live with that, Harry," He said, as though he were the one who was imparting the sage wisdom and excruciating truth. "You're not going to be able to hide behind some monster defense. You're not a monster. You're a person, a person who knowingly and willfully hurt another person. That's all. Like I said, it's morally repugnant, but it's not supernatural. You did what you did and you have to come to terms with that."

Harry fisted his hair, nearly pulling out great handfuls of it in his frustration, which revolved around both Hermione's whinging, whiny voice and his worsening condition. "It's got to be Voldemort," He asserted confidently. "You have to look up countercurses or, I don't know, exorcism spells or something." He gripped his own chest forcefully. "I'm not like this. You know me, Hermione. I'm not."