Archive of Our Own

STEP ONE
Prepare! Hit rock bottom. 
Revel in rock bottom. 
Understand rock bottom is where you belong.
After all, the key to success is a solid foundation. 

When Harry agreed to take the Auror Trainee Instructor position, he thought it would be fun. And if not fun, at least interesting. Surely, it was better than doing nothing for the past decade.

Time off is how he’d phrased it to Ron and Hermione, who at first agreed he’d earned a bit of rest and relaxation.

Taking my time is what he’d repeated every year — smiling with all his teeth — when Molly and Arthur asked if he’d made any decisions on a career path. 

It kept going in that fashion until one year Harry woke up at his normal time of Somewhere Afternoonish, fully prepared to celebrate his twenty-seventh birthday, only to walk into the restaurant Hermione had booked for his party and straight into a chorus of well-wishes for managing to make it to thirty.

The next morning, Harry owled Kingsley back, accepting the job offer he'd been given on what was apparently his actual twenty-seventh birthday.

He was only three years late. That wasn't so bad, Harry thought, his head pounding so hard he had to dictate the message to a Quick Quotes quill with his hands pressed deep into his eyes. He’d tied the message to the owl’s leg and told her not to leave Kingsley’s side until he confirmed the offer was still valid. 

It was perfect, everyone agreed, after the fact. Harry would get to teach, which they all believed he loved — admittedly he had loved it, at one time, literally half of his life ago — and he’d get to be in the Aurors, which he’d also wanted very badly when he was fifteen. 

It just made so much sense, everyone said, relief painted on their faces.

It’ll be easy, Harry thought, mirroring their expressions.

Harry remembered his first exposure to the Aurors, remembered how elite they’d seemed, how he was warned during his own career counselling they’d only accept the best of the best. Quality over quantity, it had seemed. 

So Harry figured training the trainees would be less teaching and more mentoring, Dumbledore’s Army with a fiscal budget and a break room. 

He also figured that after everything he’d gone through — everything the school itself had been through — that Hogwarts might take a firmer, more robust hand on defence education. 

What Harry had discovered, the reality of it sinking deeper and deeper into his skin like a splinter, was that Hogwarts’ commitment to substandard defence education was its greatest strength, stronger even than the castle walls Harry had watched be blown to bits by Death Eaters almost no one was prepared to fight.

Hogwarts had in fact somehow become even more lax than it was in Harry's time — as had, it appeared, the DMLE’s standards for entry — all of it trickling down from the Ministry into the school. It was as though once Harry had killed Voldemort they’d all put on their pyjamas, kicked up their feet, and settled in for a nice cosy time. 

Harry had saved them all once — or his mother had, anyway, Harry meting out salvation sans intention — and then he’d saved them a second time, on purpose. So on purpose that he’d literally died, ready to give it all up just so these young lambs who had hardly seen a Grindylow, let alone an actual dark wizard, could waltz into his training room and act precious about having class on a Monday. 

So Harry thought that if his teaching style was a bit rough, if he yelled and chastised in response to their weakness and ignorance, well, surely he of all people had earned the right? 

Apparently not. 

Of course, Harry was used to sitting on the wrong side of a desk. Snape had been right, it pained Harry to say, even all these years later. He understood the concept of rules, of course, and theoretically understood their benefit. It’s just that Harry rarely found himself predisposed to follow them if they didn’t suit his larger purpose, which was the formation of young Aurors, brave young soldiers in the Ministry’s army against darkness. 

It all felt a bit more important than whatever rot about appropriate conduct had been shoved into the employee handbook. Harry liked to consider the handbook a suggestion, and thought he should get points for his honesty of opinion, which was, according to the employee handbook, a tenet of the Ministry's workplace culture.  

Draco Malfoy, it turned out, did not agree. 

Which is, in the end, how Harry found himself in Draco’s flat. 

On all fours. 

Naked.

Barely coherent.

Three weeks out from his last orgasm.

His cock leaking in a metal cage.

STEP TWO
Reminisce! Think about everything you've done and wonder: Why? 
Also, soup. Think about soup.

Immediately after the war, rumour had it Draco and his mum — having been contentiously exonerated — had relocated to the continent, fleeing to the more forgiving northern countries to wrap themselves in furs and wait out the tumult. 

There were rumours as well that he’d gone to the States, had exchanged freedom for a job with MACUSA as an undercover operative capturing Death Eater copycat cells. There were rumours about Iceland, about Canada, about Australia and New Zealand, about almost any country where a six-foot tall blond with a cutting jawline could reliably disappear into a crowd. 

Regardless what was true, the one absolute fact was that Draco had disappeared for more than a decade and then one day there he was, in his thirties, queuing in front of Harry at the Ministry soup cart. 

Harry was embarrassed to admit he didn’t immediately register it was Draco, but then he’d overslept and missed his morning wank and so was distracted, his brain only registering the triangle of shoulder blades to waist, the firm-looking rise of arse accentuated by a nice leather belt pulled tight over clearly tailored trousers. 

When Draco spoke, his back still to Harry, who was caught up in staring at the curve of Draco’s neck as he bent his head over the day’s soup options, it wasn’t his accent or the tenor of his voice that finally tipped Harry off. Both did sound slightly different — his normally clipped vowels the slightest bit flatter — so that perhaps there was some truth to the gone abroad rumours after all. 

But no, it was the frown in his voice, the downturned mue of disappointment that knocked Harry out of his staring and made him bleat,

“Malfoy?!” 

Draco had finished ordering his soup, paid, wrapped precisely three napkins around the container, nestled a spoon on top with his thumb, and then he’d turned, his expression placid, almost pleasant as he nodded,

“Potter.” 

They’d had lunch together, inexplicably, Harry realised in hindsight. They hadn’t discussed it. Draco had simply waited for Harry to pay and then they’d sat together as though it was a standing lunch date, a casual soup between colleagues, something they’d done on purpose. 

They sat at one of the round tables in the faux-glass ceilinged room off the atrium — one of many additions the Ministry had made to make it seem less like a lair of authoritarianism and more like what it was, or what it was trying to be anyway: an office building, a place of work — and had the first agreement of their entire lives: the broccoli cheddar soup had far too much salt. 

Draco joked sometimes, when they would get lunch in the months to come, that the Ministry should put up a placard to commemorate history having been made, right there, at an unassuming white metal table near the rubbish bins. 

Harry had met up with Ron and Hermione for their weekly drinks that night, had savoured the telling of his lunch news, waiting until just the right moment when he could spring it on them, which coincidentally happened to be in response to Hermione asking,

“So, Harry, how was your day?” 

“Oh, you know,” he’d said lightly. “Average. Trainee mixed up Protego and Piscifor, spent half the morning lecture with fish fingers, had lunch with Draco Malfoy–”

Ron, who worked at Gringotts with Bill and avoided the Ministry at all costs out of a combination of spite and trauma, had spat out his drink with exactly the shocked gusto Harry’d been hoping for. 

Hermione, who led the Ministry’s recruiting department, seemed less impressed.

“I’d heard he got a job at the Ministry,” she’d said lightly, suddenly very interested in draining her pint. 

“You sneak!” Harry accused with a gasp, pointing at her even though he knew it was rude. “Did you… Hermione, did you hire him?” 

“I – I can’t say,” Hermione insisted. 

“Bollocks,” Harry said, crossing his arms. “Can do.” 

“Certain departments are highly controlled,” Hermione said, hedging. “I’m not at liberty to just vomit out my every thought like you two do.” 

“Gross,” Ron said. “Wait. ‘Certain departments?’” He frowned, and then, eyebrows lifting, asked, “Is Draco Malfoy an Unspeakable?”

“Ha!” Hermione laughed, and then slapped her hand over her mouth, blushing furiously. 

“That’s a no,” Harry grinned. 

“Why don’t you ask Harry?” Hermione said, shifting the attention away. “He’s the one who had lunch with Draco.”

“Oh yeah,” Ron said, turning to Harry with an accusatory look, as though he’d been intentionally keeping secrets. “What was he doing at the Ministry, Harry? Did he look the same? Is he still a swotty twat — ouch, Hermione, your nails — did he tell you where he’s been?” 

“I don’t know, yes and no, can a leopard really change its spots, and also no,” Harry said, counting off answers on his fingers. 

Ron frowned.

“So… what exactly did you talk about during your chummy little lunch then? The good old days? Which you definitely did not spend trying to murder each other?” 

“Ron,” Hermione hissed, slapping him on the chest. She’d remained loyal to Harry’s sensitivity around the whole Sectumsempra situation, long after the sting of it had died away, and Harry would have kissed her for it if the thought wasn’t also completely revolting. 

“Erm,” Harry said. “Well, soup, mostly.” 

“Soup,” Ron and Hermione repeated in unison. 

“The broccoli cheddar has too much salt,” Harry shrugged. 

Ron blinked.

“That’s it?”

“And then… he asked me how I was, and if I had any plans at the weekend, and I said, ‘Well, my new boyfriend and I have decided to reclaim imperialism and are making Mulligatawny with chicken, so you could say it’s shaping up to be a wild one,’ and that got us back on the soup topic I suppose.”

“Hmm,” Ron said, eyebrows furrowed into his beer. “And did he seem surprised?” 

“About the soup?"

"NO," Ron and Hermione said, in unison again. 

Couples. Honestly.

"About the boyfriend?” Harry tried again. He cast his mind back, trying to remember if there was any reaction. Draco had laughed, and it wasn’t careful or too polite, or too familiar either. It was just a small laugh, attached to a smile, friendly and simple before moving on. 

“No, he didn’t seem surprised at all, actually.” 

And that was a bit odd, now that Harry thought about it. Harry’s sexuality wasn’t a secret, seeing as he’d outed himself in his mid-twenties by showing up at a 2nd May memorial hand-in-hand with Neville Longbottom, a relationship that had been mostly a partnership of shared trauma, mutually beneficial and then mutually ended, and even now at thirty-four years old still the healthiest relationship he’d ever been in. 

So, people were used to it. 

But Draco, he’d been abroad, supposedly. 

Harry admittedly hadn’t ever been to any of the countries Draco was rumoured to have lived in, but he had left England — had been to Portugal and Greece on bawdy holidays, him and a few other lads who liked the Muggle circuit parties — and every time he went away, even in wizarding company, he was mostly ignored, just another Brit whose shirt buttons became increasingly undone over the course of a sun- and sex-soaked day. 

“So either,” Ron reasoned, vocalising Harry’s train of thought, “he’s been out of country and keeping up with British news, in which case why leave the country? It’s not like anything actually happened to the Malfoys anyway-”

Ron remained permanently sour that, in addition to Draco and Narcissa’s exoneration, Lucius Malfoy had served three months in Azkaban and then been released on good behaviour — “Good behaviour? For the first time in his bloody life, good behaviour! Pah!” — to serve the remainder of his sentence on house arrest in the Manor. 

Harry, who had been to the Manor several times in the immediate aftermath of the war, who knew what it was like to live haunted by dreams that were memories repeating through someone else’s eyes, had a different opinion, which he kept to himself. 

“Or,” Ron continued, “He’s been back in country for a while and is only just now showing his pointy little face again.”

“Or maybe,” Hermione cut in, voice high and eyes sharp, “He never left at all and has been stalking Harry from the shadows for fifteen years! And now he's finally decided to enact his dreadful revenge of over-salting Harry’s soup! What a victory for Draco Malfoy!”

“His face is less pointy, now,” Harry said into the silence that followed. “For what it’s worth.”

Eventually the conversation had shifted to other topics, which really meant Ron and Hermione had started arguing, and as Harry slid down the wooden backing of their booth, he wondered if maybe there wasn’t another reason for Malfoy’s small smile. 

+++

“Are you gay?” Harry had asked, blurting it out at Friday teambuilding drinks after six months of increasingly frustrating soup lunches, which may or may not have culminated in the breakup Harry had initiated just that morning, which he definitely was not drinking to forget. 

It was just a coincidence that he felt like getting ripping drunk — and he was in his thirties, apparently, so he was allowed — but which nevertheless did mean Harry had to use the toilet several times that night, one of which just happened to be at the same time as Draco.  

“Yes, I am,” Draco said without hesitation as he washed his hands. “Why?” 

“Are you single?” 

Harry leaned against the hand dryer, blocking Draco’s access, his cheeks warm. It felt good to lean, even if the metal box was poking uncomfortably against his spine, forcing him to arc his chest out towards Draco, who wasn’t even pretending not to look. 

“Why?” he asked, rolling his eyes as he cast a drying charm on his hands. 

“I’m going to kiss you now,” Harry said, pushing off the hand dryer with less grace than he might have liked in the moment. “So if you don’t want that to happen you should, I dunno, push me away. I won’t be offended.”

“Oh.” 

Draco hadn’t pushed him, or at least hadn’t pushed him to stop. 

Draco had pushed him further into the toilets, away from the door and the mirrors, had pushed him into a stall and locked the door. 

Draco had pushed Harry up against the cold metal and ground into him so forcefully that the point of his belt buckle left an angry red mark on Harry’s skin, hidden but stinging beneath the dark hair that guided Draco down towards his crotch. 

Draco had pushed Harry’s arms above his head, held his wrists with one long-fingered, surprisingly strong hand. He pushed their lips together and his tongue into Harry’s mouth so that even after they’d finished kissing Harry tasted like Firewhisky, which he hadn’t been drinking. 

Draco pushed both of their trousers down, pushed down their pants too, and then pushed their hard cocks together in his unoccupied hand. He spat down into his fist and then pushed the spit around both of their heads, and every time Harry got too loud Draco pushed his palm flat against his swollen mouth, until Harry couldn’t handle it anymore, was squirming and desperate against the stall, and Draco looked Harry in the eye and saw right through to the sticky wet core of him, pushing one more time as he forced Harry to his knees and said, 

“Open your mouth for me, Potter. Nice and wide now. Anything you miss you’ll have to clean up off the floor.”

And that’s how it started.

STEP THREE
Accept! 
The harsh truth of life is this:
Control is a shared delusion.
Good thing we’re all crazy here.

Harry had been surprised at first, when he’d learned what Draco did at the Ministry. 

In their traditional fashion, it wasn’t by Harry asking or Draco telling, despite their by this point regular hookups and even more regular lunches, where they both pretended everything was normal. 

Harry took the stance that if Draco didn’t want to offer information freely then he didn’t want to be seen wondering. Either Draco couldn’t, or wouldn’t, say, and so Harry figured the best course of action was to pretend he didn’t care at all, because if he gave into the impulse of curiosity even a little bit, he’d be back to stalking Draco through the halls. 

Harry thought, twenty years on, it might be a bit embarrassing, even if the idea did sometimes feel like a better use of his time than trying to teach the equivalent of three children in a trench coat how to practice constant vigilance. 

The mystery was solved, anyway, a few months after their tryst in the toilets. Harry had been called down to Being Resources, the memo in his pocket only giving an office number and a time. He’d been late, but only by a few minutes — ten, Harry thought, wasn’t so bad — and had been left in the hallway to stare at a poster of a bowtruckle swinging repeatedly from a branch, one bony thumb extended outwards as it proclaimed in bright, shining letters, Hang in there! 

Eventually the door opened, and Harry walked into the office ready to claim innocence and/or self-defence, depending on which one of his trainees had snitched on him that particular day, only to find himself face to face with Draco. 

And then, not much later, face to arse.

As he dug in tongue-first, kneeling behind Draco’s upsettingly clean desk while he pretended to be — or perhaps really was, the absolute nutter — sorting personnel files, Harry realised it made perfect sense Draco would end up in a poncy git role like Being Resources. 

At Hogwarts, Draco had always been caught up in rules. Literal rules, as evidenced best by the Inquisitorial Squad, but theoretical rules as well: rules of social status, the structure of justice, clear guidelines laying out who deserved what and why.  

Even in their wildly unexpected but thoroughly fulfilling sex life, Draco immediately settled into the role of rule-maker.

They weren't to go on proper dates, because that would mean they were dating, which was not correct.

They weren't to go to Harry's flat, because it was “a cry for help” and made Draco sad.

They weren't to talk about it with other people, so that as far as anyone else knew they’d grown past their differences and become workmates who ate lunch together, sometimes enjoying a pint on Fridays to set an example of interdepartmental camaraderie.  

Harry didn’t mind. It was one of the things he liked most about Draco, in fact. After a lifetime of people looking up to him, turning to him for decisions, asking his opinion and valuing his input, when Harry was with Draco what he wanted hardly mattered. Harry liked that Draco never asked for more than the bare minimum of him, hardly ever venturing past consent. 

And even that, Harry had suggested, he didn't need quite so much of. 

So it wasn’t a surprise to Harry, per se, when Draco slid next to him in a booth at The Sword & Two Stones, the posh cocktail lounge down Diagon all the Ministry youths were obsessed with — Harry was unsure if they knew it was a gay bar, albeit a class one, and if that was part of the appeal, or if fit bartenders in tight button downs and bowties were just sort of universally appreciated — and slid a small box onto his lap. 

“Wassit?” Harry asked, mouth stuffed full of olives from his martini, which he’d only recently started drinking due to Draco’s influence, an uncomfortable truth he pretended not to have noticed.

Harry reached to open the box but Draco slapped his hand away. 

“Not here, you swine,” he chided. “Honestly, who raised you?” 

“You know the answer to that,” Harry said. 

“Right,” Draco said. His face was trained to bely no reaction, but Harry thought he saw a flash of something warm dart across those steel grey eyes.

Eventually, they’d run out of neutral topics to discuss during soup lunch, and so Harry had jumped in and just started telling Draco everything, virtually slathering him in harsh truths and miseries. 

Draco had his own stories to share, many more than Harry would have expected from someone whose father self-identified as a Peacock Enthusiast, so that it did become something of a sick competition, which Harry won by telling Draco about the month, pre-Hogwarts, when he’d accidentally turned the tyres on Vernon’s car into licorice wheels and had got in so much trouble he’d been forced to rummage through the kitchen bin for food. 

“Finish your drink,” Draco said, and then, motioning to the box, “You can open it at mine.”

Harry was learning he wouldn’t be told twice.

+++

Draco’s flat was, as always, pristine. Everything he owned was shiny, all his toys fresh out of the box.

Harry knew Draco didn’t manage the cleaning himself, because one time he’d spilled a glass of wine, knocking it over with his foot as Draco hitched his leg up for a better angle, and Draco had gone almost catatonic inside of him, obviously paralyzed between leaving the stain or admitting a weak spot. 

Harry, who had become quite proficient in house husbandry by Molly osmosis, did know how to clean the stain and could have done so without his wand, without Draco even needing to break his rhythm.

He just chose not to. 

Now, every time he came round, Harry would smirk and toe at the spot where the wine sank into the rug, the blue fibres slightly stiff underfoot and a single, almost-but-not-quite-imperceptible shade darker. 

Which is what he was doing when the box once again found its way into his lap, Draco throwing it rather unceremoniously as he sipped whiskey — something old and Scottish and Muggle and, Harry was certain, from the bottle he’d gifted Draco for last year’s interdepartmental Secret Saturnalia. 

“Not going to offer your guest a drink?” Harry asked, fingernails prying the lid off the snug velvet box. 

“You know where the bar cart is,” Draco replied, hand motioning in the wrong direction. 

Harry had never seen Draco’s house elf, mostly because Draco liked to pretend he didn’t have one. Harry presumed that was due to Draco spending so much of his time day-to-day in close proximity with one Hermione Granger. 

Harry thought sometimes of the two of them, let loose to prowl through the Being Resources department — which had been called Human Resources prior to Hermione’s first day — and shuddered. They were opposite ends of the same magnet, attracting and repelling lawful chaos everywhere they went. 

“Will you open the fucking box?” Draco snapped. 

“Sorry,” Harry said. And then, looking down at its contents, “What… is it?”

Inside the box was a length of what appeared to be silver wire. It was thick and soft and, when Harry picked it up, draped over his fingers like freshly rolled noodles. 

Harry gazed up at Draco in silent question and was surprised to see a flush spreading across his sharp cheekbones as he stared down at Harry’s hand. 

“Take your cock out,” Draco said, so softly Harry barely heard him. 

“What?” Harry asked, but his other hand was already working the zipper. 

“You heard me,” Draco said. “Take it out. Don’t get hard.” 

“A bit late for that,” Harry admitted. 

He pushed down his clothes so that he was sitting bare-arsed on Draco’s couch, which was a treat all on its own. Draco rarely let Harry’s naked body touch the furniture, preferring to fuck him against the wall or the floor or bent over any hard surface they could find. 

On the rare occasions they did fuck on the couch, and especially since the wine incident, Draco put down a blanket first. Harry supposed the implication should’ve offended him at least a little, but mostly he just felt like he was at a picnic.

They both stared at Harry’s cock lying heavy against his thigh. It was at the sweet spot he loved, just past flaccid, hard enough to show he’d started giving in to baser impulse. Touching it now would be like diving headfirst into a pool. 

“You looking at it won’t help,” Harry said, and Draco scoffed and turned his back, being so patently ridiculous that Harry started laughing, which finally did distract him enough to dissipate the gathering heat in his belly. 

At which point the cool metal in his hand started twisting and snaking its way down Harry’s arm, slithering towards his dick. Harry was so caught off guard that it was only when the metal started curling snug around his flaccid length that he yelped.

“Hey!” and “What!” and “Draco!” 

Draco turned, and Harry looked at him searchingly and somewhat helplessly, so that he saw it the moment Draco’s expression shifted from curious to greedy. 

The metal continued to wrap itself around Harry until it reached the base of his cock, where it enclosed itself in one firm loop around his base and went still. 

Draco took a large swig of his whiskey and stepped forward. He kneeled between Harry’s legs, resting his cut crystal glass on Harry’s knee with one hand, the other gently lifting Harry’s cock. He tilted his head side to side, as though examining the metallurgy. 

“Fascinating,” he murmured. 

“It’s… something,” Harry said. “What is it?” 

“What do you think it is?” Draco breathed, tearing his eyes away to look up into Harry’s face. 

“Wrong question,” Harry said. “It’s a cage, I–obviously. What I meant was, why is it? On me, that is?” 

“Did you come this morning?” Draco asked. “Like I told you to.”

“Yes,” Harry said, nodding. “Of course.”

“Good boy,” Draco grinned, patting Harry’s knee. 

He stood up then and straddled Harry, raked his free hand through Harry’s hair, fingers trailing thoughtfully down Harry’s neck as he said, 

“I’m glad you’re beginning to learn obedience, Potter.” 

“And why’s that?” Harry asked, arching his neck to try stealing a kiss. 

Draco pulled him back by his hair, and Harry, who had wanted this more than the kiss anyway, bit his lip to keep from pointing out he’d always had the ability to follow rules, it was just the motivation that was so often lacking. 

“Because,” Draco said. He tightened his grip in Harry’s hair until he saw a shine of pain in his blown out pupils. “You won't be coming again until December.”

STEP FOUR
Acquiesce!
This is your new reality.
What would you do with control? 
Fuck it up, obviously.

The first week was easier than Harry expected, due to the fact that he spent a large part of it figuring out how to piss without splattering all over himself. 

Once he realised sitting solved the problem, Harry’s mind was free to wander through the rest of his predicament. 

When Harry had told Draco he didn’t need to ask for so much consent, Draco had asked him to clarify, and what Harry’d said then was, 

You always have my consent. I’m yours to fuck any time, anywhere, at your will. 

And,

I don’t want to be asked. Only told.

What Harry had been expecting to come from that was Draco pulling him out of lectures, calling Harry over at all hours, interrupting dates, inviting him to stay the night and then fucking him as he slept. That type of thing. 

Instead, Harry sat on the toilet on day five of his chastity tour and thought he should’ve known better. Draco always was obsessed with being clever.

Of course, Harry knew it wasn’t just ego that made Harry's request so appealing to Draco.

It wasn’t the power, either, although that was certainly part of it.

It was power over Harry, specifically, that he knew fueled Draco’s desire. 

He’d always hated the habit Harry had of squirming off the hook. He hated it then when they were students, and he hated it now when they were colleagues. He’d never said as much, but he didn’t need to. 

Draco could have used his Being Resources powers to punish Harry with disciplinary action — as many before him had tried — but what Harry also knew about Draco was that he put his own pleasure first, and if faced with an option that would please him for a moment versus an opportunity for pleasure that would only linger and grow, Draco would choose the latter every time. 

So it was interesting, Harry thought, that Draco had caged him and then was suddenly nowhere to be found, skipping off with the key once again. 

He wasn’t in the atrium cafeteria, queuing for their standing sodium overdose. 

He wasn’t at the bar for Friday drinks, flirting with the bartenders when he knew Harry was looking. 

He wasn’t even in his office when Harry wandered down to Being Resources, limping from a particularly frustrating practical. 

The metal around his cock seemed to serve as a lightning rod for magic, so that the day’s lesson in topical defensive spells — stinging hexes, burn charms, and Harry’s favourite: a rather nasty jinx that covered the target’s hands in papercuts — had taken a rather sour turn for Harry. He had only just that day started to feel like he was walking normally again, his body finally used to the extra weight of the metal hanging between his legs.

Hermione always kept an emergency stash of dittany in her desk for Harry, and that’s where he was originally headed, but he was distracted by Draco’s closed door. Harry leaned his ear against it, which he knew was pointless, since Draco would be smart enough to soundproof his own office, but he was trying to show restraint. All he really wanted to do was turn the knob and barge in. 

Harry sat in the chair outside Draco’s office and tried to ignore the cool press of metal on his thigh as he crossed his legs, foot tapping impatiently on the stone floor. 

Harry had been confused by Draco’s absence, but the more Harry thought about it, the angrier he got. It was just like Draco, actually, to set him up with this – well – Harry didn’t know what to call it, exactly. This challenge. And then to leave Harry to deal with it alone, to fall deeper into the hole of his own thoughts… 

Every so often, Harry would be reminded anew of just how well Draco knew him, of how easily he could be played.

Harry wasn’t under any preconceived notions that he was particularly slick — especially not now, as he’d grown further away from giving a fuck with every passing year — but the fact that Draco knew him meant that Draco wasn't just stumbling upon his various weaknesses and soft spots.

He was driving Harry mad, and it was by choice. 

The thought should’ve sickened him, Harry knew, but the shock of heat that burned through him felt less like revulsion and more like unfettered desire. It was the thrill of undressing in front of another person, of displaying to them everything your body had to give, even the weird parts, and seeing on their face not hesitation but joy. 

Harry gave up after an hour, throwing a v at the bowtruckle on the Hang in there! poster, who fell off his branch with a satisfactory snap. 

+++

Week two was, pun intended, harder. 

Harry had gone a week without coming before. As a chronically single adult, he’d found himself occasionally falling into cycles of obsessive masturbation, consistently draining and desensitising himself to the point that if he wanted to get anything done at all — anything that didn’t involve a wet hand and a search history screaming to be deleted, that is — he’d need to take a break and reset. 

The problem with week two, as well, was that it reminded Harry of the banner he saw every day as he walked past the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes, a cloying purple thing that screamed Be Careful What You Wish For! at every passer by. 

Because, halfway through week two: Draco came back. 

Draco came back wearing glasses. 

Draco came back wearing glasses, which he took off with a dramatic flourish during his monthly leadership meetings, rubbing the bridge of his long, straight nose as Harry’s mind went fuzzy around the concepts of retention rates and work-life balance. 

Draco took to looking over the top of his glasses as they sat in the cafeteria at their usual round table. Harry would say something Draco found stupid or wrong, which would elicit the rise of a single arched brow over the elegant silver frames, and then he had the gall to push the glasses back up his nose with a single long finger and it wasn’t right and it wasn’t fair. 

Glasses were Harry’s thing.

It was infuriating, and all Harry wanted to do was go home and pull himself off to the image of himself coming in thick hot stripes over those perfect git frames, something he knew Draco would never let him do in a million years.

He couldn’t even imagine it. When he did, just once, only getting so far as Draco sinking to his knees, Harry’s cock throbbed so violently that he shouted. 

Instead, Harry was forced to lay awake in bed, hands fisting in his sheets, cock still straining in its cage, and pictured himself stomping on Draco’s face. 

He eventually fell asleep to the melody of retribution, which Harry was pleased to discover sounded quite similar to the crunch of glass underfoot.

+++

Week three pushed Harry from confused and annoyed, marching him straight past frustration and anger, and plopped him into a feeling he hadn’t much experienced before, but which he would realise with hindsight was the onset of mind-numbing lust.

It was, far and away, the longest Harry had ever gone without coming since the night he first discovered what coming was, when he realised it didn’t mean something was wrong with him, and that it was about to be — for several years at least — one of the only reliably good things in his life.  

The descent had actually started somewhere around Thursday of week two, but Harry had been so caught up in the revelation of Draco being disappointed with him over his glasses that he’d misdiagnosed the vibrations coursing through his body as some sort of sick combination of anger and envy and, sure, desire, and had been reduced to joining Ron on one of his weekly runs just to get the extra energy out. 

It was a marvel what the body could become accustomed to, and how quickly, Harry had thought on that run, doing a bad job of ignoring how exhilarating it felt to be wearing the cage in Ron’s presence. 

It was only when he got home and showered, his hand grazing over his balls as he soaped carefully around the cage, which caused a shudder so violent Harry bent in half with the force of it, that he realised he may be in actual trouble. 

The problem with said realisation was that, once Harry was aware of it, it was all he could think about. 

It was as though he’d pushed a door open without meaning to, had only leaned his shoulder against it for a rest, but once it opened a crack it couldn’t be closed. The door had flung itself open instead, and then there Harry stood, framed in it as the light of his lust poured out around him, unable to turn back and unwilling to step forward, helpless on the precipice of something he couldn’t even see. 

Of course, the minute Harry acknowledged the great ache of his need, Draco knew. Harry would like to have said Draco knew because years of mutual obsession tended to connect people spiritually, but the truth of it was much simpler. 

It was just obvious. 

Fuck, Draco could probably smell it on him.

On Monday, Harry sat on the edge of his desk while giving a lecture about the forty-five strategic uses for revealing charms, which was normally one of his favourite lessons, as he loved to watch the horror dawn on his students’ faces when they realised they’d be expected to memorise all forty-five. He'd only made it as far as strategic use #14 (finding dark animagi disguised as flies on walls) before the firm press of the desk against his inner thighs became too similar to the weight of Draco’s hands on him when he held Harry’s legs open and fucked him face-to-face.

On Tuesday, Harry sat alone in the atrium, burning his tongue on mediocre minestrone and yearning so hard he thought he’d explode into a million soggy pieces from the force of it. Every time a man walked by, Harry would feel overcome with the force of his want to bend them at the waist, push them against the rickety metal table, tear off their trousers, and shove first his tongue and then his dick deep inside their sweet, waiting holes. 

On Wednesday, Harry thought if he didn’t escape the Ministry he might do something that would get him sent to Draco’s office in the not fun way, so he gave his students a pair work assignment (figuring it would take them at least an hour to realise the scenario he’d set was impossible, that the whole point was to identify the crime scene was staged) and stepped out for a quick coffee. 

The café was Muggle and also shit, overpriced bourgeois rubbish coffee and pre-packaged pastries liberated from their plastic and arranged on a tray, all meant to trick tourists into believing they were buying local because it wasn’t Costa or Caffè Nero. 

But the baristas were fit and the tourists were somehow getting even fitter with each passing year; Harry sat at a corner table and drank his burnt mocha and cruised a particularly vapid-looking blond until the toilets were free, at which point Harry kneeled and fisted the other man’s impressively heavy cock until his face was just as sticky and wet as the floor.

On Wednesday night, Harry stripped off all his clothes, sat on his kitchen floor, and ate ice cream straight from the carton. The cool press of the tile felt like a balm against the fevered weight in his balls, and Harry licked cookie dough bits from the valley of the spoon while fondly remembering what it was like to have standards.

On Thursday, Harry noticed a sharp decline in his conversational skills, his mind drifting constantly to sex: sex he’d had, sex he hoped to have, sex he somewhat regretted having but would have again. Of particular prominence were his fantasies about Charlie fucking Weasley, a man he’d wanted for so long and so badly that he had to forcibly stop thinking about it or he’d start leaking through his trousers. 

By mid-day, every sentence Harry began trailed off, incomplete. It all felt like an unfairly obvious metaphor for his dick, the way he kept trying to hold a reasonable, adult dialogue, but all that came out were limp, mostly useless statements. 

It didn’t help that he was surrounded by innuendo — Merlin’s tits, the wand talk alone — which only served to feed the stream of unfiltered filth that was playing on a loop across his brain. 

By Friday, Harry had no choice but to give up talking all together, having convinced himself that if he opened his mouth, instead of words, a moan would fall out. 

Harry had cancelled the day’s trainee lesson and was fully prepared to go home, take a cold shower, and research if there was a spell for putting oneself in a coma, when the memo flew into his office. 

You’ve been awfully quiet today, Harry. 
Are you feeling well? 
Let’s have a chat at drinks. 
Xx DM 

Harry groaned, the memo paper struggling against his grip. 

A week ago, Harry could’ve handled drinks. It would’ve been uncomfortable, but Harry was a skilled compartmentaliser and was certain he would have managed. 

But now.

Well.

The problem was, Friday drinks rarely ended with drinks, or even meant drinks at all. 

Friday was now permanently booked in as the night Harry went for work drinks and then ended up on all fours in Draco’s spotless — well, almost — flat, his arse plugged with the load Draco had given him earlier as he begged for the privilege of more. 

+++

As expected, Draco’s “Let’s have a chat at drinks” really meant, “Let me look over my stupid handsome glasses at you and smirk with my stupid mouth, showing you the stupid pointy tooth I pretend not to notice how much you like licking, and just when you think you might be getting off easy, which would be the only getting off you’d have earned, let me run the tips of my fingers gently across the small of your back as you’re ordering a round, which is the most openly affectionate I’ve ever been, so that your stupid sick heart sinks down into your stupid sick stomach and shoots right through to your trapped little stupid sick dick.”   

Which was likely why Harry found himself naked on the floor in record time, face pressed against the black hardwood exactly where Draco had pushed it down before leaving the room to “get something,” a statement which never bade well for Harry’s ability to sit normally the next day. 

Harry was busy with his first non-sexual thought of the week: wondering why nothing ever seemed to roll away and get lost under Draco’s furniture — and by this point, Harry had seen under most of the major pieces — when he was forcibly pulled up and out of his thoughts by a firm hand at the back of his neck. 

Draco pulled Harry up to his knees, positioning himself so that his thighs pressed hot and firm against Harry’s shoulders. Draco pressed his dick, already fully erect, against the side of Harry’s face.

Harry wondered if he’d broken a rule he wasn’t aware of, not having been given the privilege of making it hard tonight. 

“Open your eyes,” Draco said. 

Harry did.

Draco had moved a mirror into the room, positioning it so that Harry was the central focus point in the reflection.

Harry, on his knees, Draco’s left hand pressing his cock against Harry’s flushed red cheek, Draco’s right hand trailing the length of his stubbled jaw, guiding Harry’s vision down his already flushed chest to where his cock sat trapped, angry and red, desperately trying to get hard as it leaked a helpless small puddle on the floor.

In front of Harry, in front of the puddle, was a small bone china plate. Harry recognized the pattern, having seen it once before, long ago. 

“Don’t look away,” Draco said, as he began stroking himself against the side of Harry’s face. 

Harry swallowed, mouth dry from where it had been hanging unwittingly open. Draco cupped his palm beneath Harry’s lips and his eyes flicked down to look at it. 

“What did I say?” Draco asked coolly, his free hand boxing Harry’s ear. 

“Sorry,” Harry gasped, snapping back to eye contact with himself in the mirror. 

“That’s okay,” Draco said, soothing, petting Harry’s hair. “You’re still learning, aren’t you?”

Harry nodded. 

“Now spit.”

Draco returned his palm to Harry’s mouth and, without so much as blinking, Harry spat into it. He tried to force it out cleanly, but he was used to gravity doing the work, and he watched in the mirror as a wayward drop slid down off his chin to land in the puddle of precum between his legs. 

“Messy,” Draco said, grinning, the hand Harry spat into twisting noisily around the head of his cock. His knuckles kept brushing Harry’s cheek, leaving wet streaks behind. 

Draco’s free hand wiped roughly at Harry, spreading the spit across his chin and up to his lips. He shoved several fingers in Harry’s mouth, which he desperately sucked, almost choking himself, eyes watering with the effort not to look away. 

“Where do you think I should come, Harry?” Draco asked. He was palming himself harder now, using the pressure of Harry’s face as friction as he switched back and forth between teasing his head and dragging his fingers down his throbbing length. 

“Should I come in your mouth?” he asked, removing his fingers with a sickly wet pop, leaving Harry panting in their wake.

“Should I come on your mean face?” he asked, slapping Harry with a wide, flat palm.

The shock of it shot down Harry’s spine and he moaned, feeling dangerously close to spilling over. It was only seeing the hard glint in his eyes reflected back at him that stopped Harry, forced him to breath in through his nose and push down his release as Draco’s cock leaked across his face, dripping down onto his shoulder. 

“Should I come in your hair?” he asked, nails digging into Harry’s scalp as he pulled Harry’s head back.

Draco met his eyes briefly, only for a second, but a second was all Harry needed to notice what he’d never seen before, something Draco usually kept locked away beneath the surface, where Harry couldn’t reach. 

Admiration? 

“No,” Draco hummed. “I don’t think so.” 

He pushed Harry’s head back down, releasing his grip as he motioned at the plate. 

“Hold that for me."

Draco's breath was going ragged, so that Harry knew he had only a handful of seconds left before he came, always so in control until right before the end.

Harry tried to grab the plate without looking away or moving too much, as Draco had asked of him, and found he couldn’t do it. His mind floundered in place, desperate to be good and follow every rule, and it was only just before Draco came that he remembered he was a wizard and could do magic, that he was actually very good at it when his brain wasn’t entirely slime. 

Harry levitated the plate under Draco’s cock, controlling it via his reflection, watching as Draco curled up over Harry’s head and came in thick stripes across the delicate winding ivy pattern of the Black family china. 

Draco stood curled over Harry as he caught his breath.

He had grabbed the plate with one hand mid-orgasm; the other rested heavily on top of Harry’s head, the warm pads of his fingers now scratching lightly at the scalp where nails had so recently dug in. 

Harry was staring at himself still, because Draco hadn’t told him to stop, but even watching it happen didn’t prepare Harry for the cool rush of air against his back as Draco peeled himself away. 

Harry watched in the mirror as Draco took several steps back and then set the plate down on the floor. 

“Turn around,” Draco said, softly. 

Harry complied. It felt odd, breaking eye contact with himself. Almost a betrayal.

“Do you want my cum?” Draco asked. 

Harry nodded, swallowing thickly.

“Do you?” Draco asked again, tilting his head. “I’m not convinced.”

“Yes,” Harry moaned, his entire body on fire so that it was all he could do to keep from shouting out, “Please, Draco. Please. I need it.” 

“Hmm.”

“Please,” Harry begged. He fell forward onto his hands and hung his head, showing Draco the back of his neck in supplication. 

“Slut.”

Draco pushed the plate forward a few inches with his foot. It spun out, clattering to a rest on the floor between them.

“Go on, then. Show me your pretty pink tongue.” 

Harry took a deep, steadying inhale. Slowly, his limbs shaking from the effort of restraint, he began to crawl forward towards the plate. 

Harry could hear the rustle of clothes, the clink of Draco’s belt. He was getting dressed. Draco was dressing himself in his respectable workwear, buttoning up his soft, wrinkle-free shirt as he watched Harry crawl, naked, panting, and practically cross-eyed with lust, to lick his cum off a plate.

A plate his own godfather possibly used, once. Maybe ate a nice Christmas roast off of.

Harry would wonder, later, if Draco had done it on purpose. If he’d known he selected the china that used to be Harry’s. The china Sirius had left him, with Grimmauld, which Harry had swiftly disposed of. After selling the house he’d dropped all the Black family heirlooms in a box outside the gates of Malfoy Manor, not knowing if it technically still belonged to them, or if anyone besides Lucius even lived there at all. 

Harry didn’t care. He was nineteen at the time and he was broken, furious, a saviour desperate for salvation, for anything or anyone who would make him forget. 

He was running away. 

Often, Harry wondered if it had been a mistake to take the Ministry job, to come back.

Often, Harry thought it didn’t matter, because despite his body being perceived in all the expected places — in a corner office of the DMLE, at the Burrow for Sunday roast, in the society section of the Prophet — the only time Harry ever felt he had come back to his life at all was when he was here.

Naked on the floor of Draco’s flat.

Crawling. 

STEP FIVE
Smile!
You’ve done it.
You’ve lost everything.

Harry spent most of the fourth week wanting to cry.

Draco had asked Harry to stay at his for the week by rolling over in bed on Saturday morning, kissing Harry awake, and saying,

“I’ve put you on leave and informed your manager you had a personal emergency. You’ll be out of office for at least a week, I’m afraid.”

“Oh,” Harry said, bleary in the early morning light. He’d been having a lovely dream about peeing standing up. “Still abusing your power, I see. Some things never cha–”

Harry was cut off, the words shoved back down his throat by Draco’s cock, but he felt confident the message was received. 

It wasn’t until Sunday evening that Harry understood the full scope what Draco meant.

He was halfway in the Floo when Draco pulled him out, wrapping his arms around Harry’s waist in a way that would’ve seemed affectionate, downright loving even, had he not been rendered breathless by the squeeze of Draco’s deceptively toned arms. It was as though Draco was testing his elasticity, checking to see when his bones would snap, prey in the jaws of a snake.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Draco asked, lifting Harry’s t-shirt over his head. “And in all these unnecessary clothes.”

“Well, that’s the problem,” Harry said, tilting his head to give Draco’s wandering mouth further access to the full line of his neck, his jaw, just behind his ear. 

“I see no problem,” Draco said, his words muffled against Harry’s skin, his tongue tracing the flush creeping up the back of Harry’s neck. 

“Well, you're not wearing your glasses,” Harry said, rather impressed with himself for remaining upright.

Draco snorted and unzipped Harry's jeans. 

“I don’t have any clean clothes, or a toothbrush, or anything.”

“I have a fully stocked guest cupboard.”

“Of course you do.”

“Of course I do,” Draco smiled. He turned Harry around to face him, cupped Harry’s chin with his elegant pale fingers, and turned his head from side to side. “We can start with a shave.”

“You don’t like my beard? You’ve never said.” 

“I don’t care either way, although I’d hardly class this–” Draco said, his grip tightening. “-a ‘beard.’”

“More than I’ve seen on you.” 

“I’m blond,” Draco said, as though that explained anything.

“So–”

“So, you’re going to be eating my arse later, for quite some time in fact, and I don’t want your so-called beard roughing it up.” 

+++

The entire week passed like that, small moments of tenderness, of the simple joy of skin touching skin, followed by pushing and pulling and a sharp sudden distance that only served to make the cycle back to infatuation more striking through its dissonance. 

It felt almost as though Draco was making up for lost time, as though this was something he’d always wanted and not just a thing they kept doing because Harry kissed him once, drunk and in a toilet. 

Every day Draco went to work, leaving clear instructions for Harry to follow while he was gone, and then the moment he stepped through the Floo his hands were on Harry, in one way or another. 

It was the most time they’d ever spent together — the most time Harry had spent with anyone outside of Ron and Hermione and then, later, Neville — and it was beyond pleasure, a constant torment. 

On Monday, Draco came home later than he said he would. Harry knew that sometimes people stayed late at work — he didn’t, but he was aware that people, generally speaking, were known to — but he couldn’t shake the feeling that Draco was staying away to punish him, so that by the time Draco came home Harry was pacing, fingering the metal spiraling around his cock in a state of nervous arousal. 

Draco calmed him down by sitting on the couch, putting on a movie (he’d grown fond of Orson Welles at some point) and placing his cock in Harry’s mouth for him to suck on. 

Only then did Harry close his eyes and relax, relishing in the comfort of Draco’s unbearably soft skin, of the soft weight of his flaccid length in his mouth, where Harry kept it warm until later, when the movie was over and Draco decided he was ready for dinner.

On Tuesday, Draco came home early, pulled Harry down the hall to his bedroom, and then spread himself wide. Draco made Harry watch as he fucked himself with the dildo Harry had found while snooping earlier that day, the dildo he desperately wanted to ride but was certain if he so much as touched would cause him to explode, his greedy hole starving and untouched. 

It turned out his concerns were for naught, because after Draco fucked himself he gathered the come off his belly and rubbed it on the dildo, then gave it to Harry to lick clean.

He didn’t explode, and was proud of himself for it.

On Wednesday, Harry was reminded that Draco enjoyed having a designated place for everything. 

They’d gone to Harry’s once, the first time they had sex properly, and Draco had been so horrified by Harry’s organizational ethos of Floor and Not Floor that he’d had to step outside and put his head between his knees. 

So it made sense that, when Draco announced he’d made two big decisions, the first would be that Harry needed a plug.

After all, Draco had a plug.

Harry had a hole. 

It just made sense.

The second decision was admittedly less logical, but then Harry hadn't ever claimed to be a rational person, so he followed along with no less devotion when Draco announced that, after a certain hour, Harry shouldn’t be allowed to have anything unless it was in Draco’s mouth first.

Which was how Harry ended up on his back on the sitting room rug as Draco passed his own come — come he’d first drank out of his palm — down his tongue and into the aching chasm of Harry’s open, waiting mouth.

On Thursday Harry realised there were only four days left in November, which spurred him into a joyous description of the masturbation he was going to engage in on Monday. He laid in bed next to Draco, who had just minutes before come down Harry’s throat, and rambled with his rough, fucked out voice about where he’d do it (everywhere), how long he’d go at it (all day, as many times as he could, the goal being to literally pass out), and how vigorously (he’d need a salve, at least).  

Draco had taken on a rather funny, pinched look at hearing Harry’s plans for his day of solitude. He said something under his breath about chickens and the timing of when to count them, and Harry was going to ask him if he’d said something wrong, but before he could Draco rolled over and shut off the light.

So it wasn't surprising that on Friday, Draco left for work early and stayed out later than he’d ever done at any previous work drinks, only sloshing himself home shortly before midnight. 

Harry was waiting for him, naked on a blanket on the couch, figuring Draco would appreciate both the uncharacteristic expediency and consideration, and if Harry was hoping for a bit of praise in return, well. It wouldn’t be remiss. 

Three days, he kept telling himself, flexing his fingers and repeating the words as though he were back in Flitwick’s class, learning a charm to turn rubber into glue or sticks into stones or whatever. 

“Three days,” Harry said to the ceiling. 

The ceiling did not have a response for him, except to glow briefly green from the light of the Floo. 

At the sight of it, Harry’s cock twitched against the cage, a Pavlovian response to Draco’s presence, which usually meant presents. 

Although by this point the presents all felt rather cruel, like gifting a sunset to someone who was colourblind. But Harry knew he’d look back on this in December — Three! Days! — and have fodder for the rest of his hand’s natural life, so he kept going, dragging himself through the gauntlet. 

And also, Harry supposed, he was even starting to… like… being here. 

It was nice, having someone next to him at night. In bed, yes, in his throat, yes, but also next to him as they ate dinner, chatting through the washing up.

Someone he could sit next to in the bathroom as they got ready for bed, Harry perched on the tub while Draco completed his fifteen step moisturising routine, amusing them both with his impressions of their colleagues. 

Someone Harry could wake up with, like for example how he was being woken up now, on the couch, where he hadn’t even realised he’d drifted off to sleep.

Someone whose warmth Harry could curl into, who would hold him in his arms and tell him how impressed he was with his improved manners. Someone who would stroke his hair and kiss his temple and apologise for staying out late, for being impulsive and emotional and then, ever so gently, raise his chin and brush him with warm, soft lips that stunk of Firewhisky as he carefully said, “Harry, I lov–”

“FUCK.”

Harry thought, for several long seconds, that he had died, and that it kept this time. 

First, his vision went black. 

Then, his body started to seize. His hair, all of his hair, everywhere, felt like it was standing to attention. 

He took great gasping breaths but still it wasn’t enough. There wasn’t enough air, because it was all being taken up by moaning. 

Warmth barrelled through Harry like a shot, so fast he didn’t even realise it was happening until it was far, far too late. 

Finally, horrified, Harry opened his eyes, peering over Draco’s arm wrapped around his chest, to look down at the ruin of himself.

He’d come, of course. It was still dribbling out of him, his cock leaking pathetically all over itself and the cage, and although Harry was watching it happen he could barely feel it at all. 

He felt numb, weightless, his body floating away and unbearably heavy all at once, until Draco, who had almost told Harry he loved him, shifted up to get a better look and then said, in a tone of voice Harry had never heard before, from anyone, 

“Baby.”

Harry groaned into his hands.

“You didn’t really think you’d win, did you?” Draco asked, smiling into Harry’s hair. 

Harry turned onto his side, pressing himself against the hard length of Draco’s hip, utterly ruining the front of his nice work trousers as he took Draco’s glasses off and set them carefully to the side, next to his own.

Harry's voice, when he could speak again, was so soft he could barely hear it above his heart, pounding away in his ears as he said,

“I love you too, you cheat.”