Favoring The Strong {Drarry}

- ö -

tw: mentions of past abuse (draco & harry)

It's been days since they've agreed to talk through everything and now that they're all sitting around the kitchen table it's hard to actually put their thoughts into anything resembling cohesive sentences. After about an hour of silence, Harry decides that maybe it'd be easier to talk if they had a good starting point. He looks from his sons to his soon to be husband before nudging the blonde man next to him. Draco looks at him unimpressed before sitting back in his seat and crossing his arms.

After another fifteen minutes of silence and throat clearing, they call Val.

"So," she says once she's seated at the kitchen island looking over the table at the rest of them, "what am I doing here?"

Harry looks at Draco and the blond drops his head to the tabletop, his hair a halo around him on the flat surface, letting out a groan.

"We're supposed to be talking," Harry explains when Draco refuses to sit back up properly.

"And?"

"None of us are really sure how."

"To talk?"

"Not about this kind of stuff," he says petulantly, tugging a loose string free from his fiancé's jumper. Draco sits up again at the provocation and narrows his eyes at Harry before blowing the string from the darker man's hand. "There are just things, for better or worse, that you just get used to not talking about. Things you couldn't talk about at one point so that when you can..."

"The words just get stuck," Draco says quietly not looking at anyone.

Val looks between them. She's stopped herself from wanting to be a part of what they have and though the pang is still there, she's mostly over it. She figures it was a whim at best from getting to know Draco better and being faced with two gorgeous men during moments of high emotion. A part of her is glad she's figured that out for herself, because she's comfortable in the role she has taken up in their lives. She's in this relationship just as much as they are, even if she doesn't get the perks of being laid beneath them both. They're still her boys.

"Then start small," says Val with a shrug, as if it's obvious. Which to her, it is. "Don't try talking about the big stuff yet. And don't try to do the talking all at once."

"What exactly would be starting small?"

"Problems that are already resolved but you've never really talked about."

This time Draco looked to Harry for an idea of where to start.

"I..." Harry tilts his head to the side, thinking of how to word his thoughts in a way that doesn't seem too alarming. Draco and Val have seen him broken beyond repair, but James and Teddy haven't yet. He doesn't want them to. He thinks of Dumbledore screaming for death in a watery cave and doesn't wish that experience on anyone. Especially his sons.

"James and I can go upstairs," Teddy offers when he sees the look Harry levels them with.

"No," he insists. "We're a family. No more hiding." He takes a breath. Start small. "Until I got my Hogwarts' letter I lived in the cupboard under the stairs."

"You what?" Val says at the same time Draco forces out an enraged: "Under the what?"

"My family are pretty standard muggles. McGonagall once told me that she'd thought of them as the worst sort. They were greedy, racist, probably more than a bit homophobic, and they hated magic. Anything that didn't fit their idea of normal, they hated it. So the lot of them being white and muggle meant that I was the problem. That I shouldn't've existed. Tossed me in there as soon as I was off the bottle."

"Dad!" both Teddy and James say rushing over to him and wrapping their arms around him. He's happy that he's raised them to see how wrong it was, because even after more than 20 years out of the dank little cubby hole, he can't imagine growing up any other way. Can't imagine thinking of it as anything but his cupboard.

"You never told me that," Val says quietly from her place near the counter.

"You know you didn't deserve that. Don't you?"asks Draco softly.

Harry doesn't respond anymore than it takes to send each of them a sort of crooked sad amalgamation of a smile.

Draco's hand is reaching over to comb through the dark curly mass of hair on his fiancé's head almost without him noticing. If their sons weren't there he'd pull the ravenette as close to him as possible and hold him. Like he holds him after his magical panic attacks and his nightmares. But this isn't a hallucination he can just wake up from. This is his past. Parts of him he never deserved and never thought important enough to share. Draco thinks of something he's never told Harry and feels the lump grow in his throat.

He looks down at the table pulling his hands away from the light and good that is Harry and their family. Back into himself.

"I... When I was younger," Draco decides to preface with and watches from the corner of his eyes as Harry looks away from him. They both know what he used to be like. He glances over at his son's who are nowhere near the absolute horror that he was and gulps. "I was a right prat."

Harry snorts in surprise while wiping used tears from his eyes.

"That's one way of putting it."

"Fine, I was a terrible child," Draco corrects with a wave of his hand and a put upon voice to ease the tension even though he can feel the knots in his shoulders rolling beneath the years of healed scar tissue. "I was horrid, really, and my father was no better but I wanted to be just like him. I broke one of the Malfoy heirlooms one night. It was an accident of course, I was probably no more than 5 years old."

Draco is sinking into the nightmare of a memory when Teddy speaks up.

"And what happened, Dad?"

"When Father came home I... I blamed one of the house elves, Misty. He asked if I was certain it was her and I told him I was. And he..."

Harry lays a strong hand on his bicep, and Draco blinks, only just realizing the tears in his eyes.

"He what, Draco?"

"He made me watch as he tortured her to death." He looks up into Harry's face searching for the comfort he knows is always there when he needs it. "Then he beat me with his cane for lying."

Draco feels like crying, but he doesn't. Without the return of his magic and all the stress he's under, his body is too weak for him to even consider it. Even the thought of crying drains him of the energy to sit up properly and he leans against Harry's chest as much as the darker man will allow.

Val walks over to them both, kissing them each on the forehead and running a hand across both of their heads, ruffling their hair as she goes.

James and Teddy, though stunned and emotionally distraught for their father's, can't seem to match up the horrid tales of childhood with the two men sitting in front of them. Can't even begin to imagine their Grandfather hurting anyone when they've just met him and he barely brushes their cheeks when he asks timidly for a hug. They know that both sides are true, but forcing the image to the man they know doesn't fit the same way it had before they'd met him.

They have more to talk about. More discussions to have and tears to dry, but for now, they consider the talk over so James gets up and sets the kettle on.

-&-

hey futher muckers

its been months since ive updated this sorry

i just havent been feeling very well mentally or emotionally and its been hard to push through the fog, ya know

anyway! new chappie!
kinda sad.
but hey! we're on the back end of this trilogy now and i hope you lot still enjoy it enough to stick with it

love it? hate it? hate me? lemme know. tho as always i  hope you enjoyed
love y'all

-- angel janeé xoxo 💋