Fatherhood | drarry teen adoptive parents au

forty six | a little sky

Harry didn't see Draco awake again until he came down for his birthday dinner that night.

He'd clearly had a migraine and looked peaky and drawn, and moved as though the air around him was fragile but he smelt amazing when Harry hugged him, fresh from the shower and warm.

"You cut your hair again," Harry noted quietly, running a hand through the short, raggedy blonde edges.

Draco shifted away from him slightly uncomfortably. "I like it like this," he replied. "It keeps away from my face. And stops me looking so much like me."

"I want you to look like you," Harry whispered, and Draco didn't know what to reply to that.

Luckily, Casper noticed Draco's arrival and saved him from having to say anything as he came tearing across the room from Arthur's lap.

"Daddy!" he cried happily, throwing his little arms up in the air to be picked up.

"Hey, Curly Cass," Draco said, and obliged, though he looked almost weak under the two-year-old's weight and had none of his old vigour and enthusiasm about him.

"Daddy's got a poorly head again, Cassy," Harry told him gently as Draco winced. "Remember quiet voices, please."

"Can I take him?" George asked with a shy smile, and Draco nodded, all to eager to hand his son off again. Casper went with the other boy happily enough, but Harry stared at Draco in annoyance.

"Why don't you want to hold him as much any more?" he asked. "I told him 'quiet voices', he knows what that means. He wouldn't have yelled."

"I don't feel good, Harry, alright?" Draco muttered, glaring at the ground. "I don't feel ... strong. I don't feel like I'm enough for Casper."

"Then be enough!" Harry exclaimed. The other Weasleys quickly began to busy themselves in leaving the room; they knew when an argument was about to kick off between Harry and Draco.

"Just be enough?" Draco scoffed. "Harry, I have a head injury that gives me migraines pretty much every day of my life now. I am depressed, I am traumatised, and I'm trying to juggle all that with being a father, and it's fucking hard!"

"I know it's hard!" Harry snapped. "I'm doing it too! I fought, just like you did, I'm ill, just like you are. Maybe not physically, but everyone is mentally damaged now, Draco. And no one is asking anything great of you."

"I just don't understand what you want from me," Draco said in despair. "What do you want, Harry?"

Harry thought for a moment.

What did he want? He wanted so many things.

I want him to do more to help raise Casper. I want him to stop cutting his hair. I want him to go to therapy again, and not quit this time when it gets hard.

I want him to get over himself, to get out of bed every single day, to let himself cry and be angry, and go down to the river to skim stones on the water in the evening, and even smash stuff if he wants to.

I want him to write poetry and bring me fresh fruit from the Weasley's orchard each morning, and cook with vegetables from the allotment in the evening, and I want him to kiss me on the mouth again, hard, the way he used to.

I want to wake up in the morning with him kissing me that way he did every single day before the war in that blissful first summer with Cas, and feel whole and complete, and content with the knowledge that that's how we will be ending the day too.

But failing all that, I want peace.

I want us to get along quietly and kindly, not at each other's throats, and I want us to both know where we stand because right now where I'm standing feels like it's falling away beneath me as his pedestal grows large enough to split the earth.