Harry seemed to stop dead in his tracks at the sight of the bed. "Er . . . ."
Severus recognized that he clearly wasn't operating at anywhere near full mental capacity yet, for he was genuinely confused by Harry's reaction. "What is it?"
"Do you want me to, um, transfigure a cot near the bed?" Harry asked with visible self-consciousness.
It was obvious that Harry was completely willing to humour him.
Severus debated the offer. The rest he'd achieved last night had done wonders for him, but he wasn't up to sex. Not that he was even sure Harry was suggesting they re-establish such intimacy. Harry had said he still loved him, but there had been nothing threatening in that statement. In fact, Harry had gone out of his way to assure him he wouldn't pressure him for things he wasn't able to give.
He knew that he'd hurt Harry deeply if he said 'yes' to the cot suggestion. He didn't want to do that. But, by the same token, he didn't want to give him any wrong ideas.
The whole situation suddenly felt frighteningly complex.
"Hey," Harry's soft voice called his attention from his incipient funk. "I'm okay with the cot idea, Severus."
He knew it would be less complicated if they were in separate beds. It would feel the same as it had when he was in infirmary. Only . . . he'd been out of hospital for nearly two months now.
Finding his nerve, Severus softly countered, "I'm not."
"You're not what?" Harry asked, visibly confused.
"Okay with the cot idea, as you put it. I'm not . . . I can't allow fear to rule me."
"True enough," Harry answered. "But there's no reason to cause yourself undue distress. This is a small thing. We don't have to stress over it. I'll just transfigure a -"
"No," Severus said. "Last night, you asked me if I trusted you. My answer hasn't changed since then."
"This isn't about trust," Harry said. "You were hurt and you have a right to take whatever measures are necessary to feel comfortable."
"Whether you sleep on a cot across the room or on the other side of the continent, the issue is still going to be there. Coddling these fears isn't going to help either of us."
"It's not coddling," Harry protested.
"No, it's . . . worse than that," Severus said. Searching the tumultuous mess that was his heart and mind at the moment, he tried to explain, "It's . . . giving him power over me for the rest of my life."
"I guess I don't have to ask which 'him' you're referring to." Harry's hesitation to even speak Burke's name for fear of what it would do to him was palpable. "But sleeping in separate beds until you feel better isn't giving him power over you. It's just giving yourself time to heal."
"I beg to differ," Severus said. He didn't know why he was pushing this. All he knew was that he was tired of living under this crushing weight. After what he'd endured, it mightn't make any sense, but having Harry near . . . helped. From the instant he'd opened his eyes in infirmary, he'd always felt better when Harry was present. It was his own insistence on pushing Harry away that had brought him to the straits he'd been in last night, he realized.
"Severus . . . ."
He interrupted whatever Harry was about to say with something he felt he had to voice, before he lost the nerve. "I . . . am not who I was. I don't know what's left of me, but there are some things I do know. Burke was a monster who . . . committed unspeakable acts upon my person. You are the man who killed that demon and healed the wounds he left on my body. There is no way I could mistake you for him. Now you are trying to heal the wounds on my soul. I don't know how you can still care, but somehow you do, and . . . that matters."
He'd never felt so vulnerable in his life as he did at this moment.
He could see how deeply his words had affected Harry. For a moment, it seemed Harry couldn't find his voice. Then he rasped out, "You don't have to -"
"Yes, I do. For the last three months, you have endured . . . extreme emotional distress because of what Burke did to me. That stops tonight. I might be insane. I might never get back what was taken from me, but . . . I don't have to hurt you."
A strange brightness flashed through Harry's eyes as he protested, "Sleeping on a cot for a while won't hurt me."
"Won't it? Is that where you would prefer to sleep?" Severus challenged. He'd never been in a relationship where he felt confident enough to make that kind of demand. In the past, his lovers had always tired of him first and moved on. The insecure portion of his nature that Burke had capitalized upon was whispering that Harry might prefer to bunk on a cot rather than be so close to him, but everything Harry had done for him over the last few weeks indicated that he still had deep feelings for him.
Harry's innate honesty wouldn't allow him to dissemble. After a long pause, in which Severus could nearly feel Harry's shock, he said, "That's not the point. This isn't about what I want. This is about what we need to do for you to feel better."
Love . . . this was love. Even an insane lunatic such as he could recognize that fact.
Holding that concerned gaze, Severus gulped around the lump choking his throat and said, "We have done things my way for the last three months. It has brought me to the brink of destruction. I . . . want to try it your way." Sensing Harry's resolve weakening, Severus reminded, "We can always transfigure a cot later if things don't go well."
"All right," Harry finally conceded. "If you're certain that's what you want."
"It is." Aware that he would probably be sitting in a high level security hospital cell in St. Mungo's right now were it not for this man's intervention, he added a soft, "Thank you."
That incomprehensible gentleness was back in Harry's eyes as he said, "Nothing to thank me for. Do you want the loo first?"
On that blessed note of normality, Severus nodded and fled to the bathroom.
He was nervous as a first year late on his first day of class when he stepped out of the lavatory in his nightshirt a short time later. The tension in his gut let up when he saw that Harry was wearing his blue pyjamas as he sat on his usual side of the bed reading his thriller.
Harry looked up from his book as he entered the room and smiled at him. "Hi. I'll take my turn now."
It was all so wonderfully ordinary and unthreatening that Severus couldn't muster up any alarm when Harry passed close to him on his way to the loo.
Climbing onto the bed, Severus lay down on his back under the duvet and waited for Harry to return.
Harry was back a few minutes later, easing into the bed beside him as if he expected the mattress to explode.
Harry's nervousness helped lessen his own anxieties somehow.
As Harry settled down in the bed beside him, it felt almost comforting. Harry's familiar scent and warmth were certainly reassuring. Severus couldn't believe how good it felt to simply feel Harry's heat. For the first time in months, his bed didn't feel like an arctic wasteland.
Not that it felt the way it used to by any stretch of the imagination, Severus could almost touch the worry emanating from the other side of the bed.
When nothing untoward occurred, Harry released a shaky breath after a few minutes and gave a nervous chuckle as he turned on his side to face him across the white expanse of his pillow. "I keep waiting for something to explode."
Too shaky to even pretend at superiority, Severus nodded. "Me, too."
"I think we're going to be all right. Are you okay with this?"
Thinking that he was comfortable for the first time since Harry and he had parted outside the infirmary when he was released, Severus gave another nod.
"Good. I'll turn out the wall sconces and leave the fire going, okay? Or we can leave them all on if you feel more comfortable that way." Harry offered.
Harry had used his wordless, wandless magic to douse the wall sconces every night that he'd slept here, but Severus appreciated that he gave him the opportunity to ask that the lights be left on.
"The hearth fire should suffice," Severus answered.
The wall sconces were doused immediately, leaving only the flickering flames by which they used to make love.
"Good night, then," Harry said.
Closing his eyes on the firelight and all the memories it inspired, Severus answered, "Good night."
He felt Harry's magic embrace him. It wasn't the same wild, passionate exchange that they'd had when making love, but its warmth and potency soothed him with their inherent protectiveness.
Daring to hope that things might actually be turning around for him, Severus allowed sleep to claim him as he floated safe in Harry Potter's magic.
*~*~*
The torchlight glistened on the blood coating the corpse shackled to the rack. The word 'corpse' was perhaps too generous a definition. The grisly remains before him looked more like pulp than flesh. His tongue had sampled every inch of that body, but now, the mere sight of it made the contents of his stomach lurch.
Too late, always too late. Severus . . . .
"Potter . . . Harry!"
The horrible vision in front of him shook as . . . well, as he shook. As the nightmare faded, Harry's eyes snapped open to stare around the dark room in complete confusion. Where? What?
There was still some light coming from the dying gold embers in the hearth. By its feeble illumination, he could just make out Severus' familiar, strong features. It was Severus who was shaking him, he belatedly realized.
His entire body sagged with relief as he reached out to grip his companion's nightshirt-covered arms. "Severus?"
Alive. Severus was alive.
The external shaking stopped.
It was hard to judge expression in the low light, but much of the tension seemed to leave Severus' face as he asked, "Are you all right?"
"God, I should be asking you that," Harry said. He was here to ensure that Severus got the sleep he needed to recover. "I'm supposed to be keeping you from having nightmares, not waking you with mine."
"It's of no matter. Are you all right?" Severus repeated.
As he took stock of himself, Harry realized that Severus had reason to be concerned. He was soaked to the skin with perspiration and shaking from the cold, even though he was under the heavy duvet. There was an embarrassing trail of hot tears running down his cheeks that he knew had to be visible even in the poor light.
"I'm okay. Sorry I woke you," Harry said, releasing Severus and settling back against the soaked sheets. Chagrined by how slimy they felt, he performed a silent drying spell on himself and the bedclothes.
He could feel Severus watching him out of the darkness. Turning, he met that ink-black gaze across the pillow.
Severus was lying on his side, facing him. They weren't touching, but were close to do so if necessary. The setup was oddly familiar and pulled at Harry's heartstrings.
"Was it one of Voldemort's nightmares?" Severus questioned.
Harry thought that of all the things he missed about being close to Severus, this was the one that topped the list. Most people would probably have picked the sex, for they'd had a fantastic sex life, but, hokey as it might be, he missed having someone there in the night when he woke in a panic. There was just something so calming about that deep voice that the mere sound of it soothed away his anxieties.
That Severus could reach out of himself to ask meant a lot to him. The week he'd spent bunking in with Severus had done wonders for the man, but his friend was still far from normal.
Taking a deep breath to try to calm his racing heart, Harry gave a negative shake of his head. "No. It was the new one again."
"The new one?"
Harry wasn't sure if he should even tell Severus. They were working so hard to get Severus past what had been done to him that he hated to refer to anything that brought up those dark memories. But Severus had asked, and that was something of a milestone in itself.
Holding Severus' gaze, he softly explained, "The one where I don't get to you in time."
He'd told Severus about the dream the night they'd met prowling the halls last month when they were still completely estranged, but there was no reason Severus should remember that.
"You dream about that regularly?" Severus surprised him by asking. His tone made it clear that he remembered that particular conversation.
Harry nodded. "Not as often as I used to have Voldemort's dreams, but they're fairly regular." Admitting that made him feel strangely exposed. Trying to lighten the mood, he joked, "I warned you I was mental."
Even in the dying firelight he could see the tension that claimed Severus' features. After a long pause, Severus said, "I . . . I'm sorry."
"Sorry? What have you to be sorry for?" Harry asked. "I'm the one who should be apologizing. It took me so damn long to find you -"
"You shouldn't have found me at all," Severus replied.
Harry hated it whenever Severus voiced the sentiment that he would have been better off dead. Trying to get a handle on the anger raised upon hearing Severus say that, he said, "I know what you went through was awful, but you're going to get better. I really wish you wouldn't say things like that."
"Like what?" Severus asked.
"Like I shouldn't have found you. That whole 'it would be better off for everyone if you'd died' line. It . . . really hurts me when you talk like that."
A couple of weeks ago, Severus would have voiced a 'tough luck' type of response, but tonight, he answered in a strained sounding tone, "I didn't mean it that way."
"What did you mean then? It's the same thing you've been saying for months." Harry glared across the pillow. There was nothing he hated more than being lied to. Severus didn't usually dissemble with him, but there wasn't a Slytherin born who didn't excel at the art of evasion.
