Chapter Text
3 July 2003, Thursday, 10:02 PM
“It’s always something with you.” Draco sweeps down the hall ahead of Harry in what can only be described as a snit, his curse-breaking jacket moving with him, hugging his nipped waist and sliding over his perfect pointy hips. “If it isn’t your Gryffindor impulsivity, it’s your magic. If it isn’t your magic, it’s—”
“My stunning good looks?” Harry supplies helpfully.
“I’ll stun you,” Draco mutters, and whips his wand precisely over the sensor for the Secure Decontamination Centre. The doors slide open on a gust of charmwork and admit them to a warm anteroom. Harry hops on one foot and pulls one of his shoes off, then the other. He manages to get them both into the Decontamination Bin on the first try, then peels off his socks and stuffs them into the crook of his elbow.
Harry’s feet sink into the plush carpeting. It’s not half-bad. He wiggles his toes and hasn’t undone his own buttons when Draco’s jacket flies into his face, catching on the top of his head and plunging Harry into a half-darkness smelling of warm leather and Draco’s skin.
Inhaling has unfortunate implications for the state of his cock.
Holding his breath has unfortunate implications for consciousness.
Harry breathes in deep, resigned to the renewed heat between his legs. He was already halfway there from being around Draco in the first place.
“This is a jacket,” Harry points out from underneath the jacket, waiting a beat to see if Draco laughs.
He doesn’t.
Harry takes off the jacket and flings it in the direction of the Decontamination Bin, a handy piece of Gringotts charm-tech that sends their clothes through a clothes-sized secure tunnel and deposits them on the other side of the Decontamination Centre, folded and ready for wear.
“That was a warning,” Draco says, and underlines his ominous tone by chucking more of his clothes at Harry. As a seasoned professional, Harry does not think about how Draco’s body is increasingly naked a mere two metres from him as his waistcoat and shirt and vest and trousers buffet him at varying speeds. “The next time you interfere with my schedule, it’ll be a hex.”
“Isn’t your schedule just a bath?”
Just a bath is a mistake. Harry has seen Draco’s bathtub before. He keeps a photo of it in the office they share, and saying the word bath fills Harry’s mind with detailed images of Draco in said tub, his skin glistening, his nipples hidden by stiff peaks of bubbles, droplets clinging to the ends of his hair until they quiver their way down into the water with a plip—
“Yes,” Draco hisses. His pants whiz by Harry’s face, followed in quick succession by his socks. Harry doesn’t find his own nakedness particularly bothersome. What makes this routine hard, literally, is that Draco’s always faster at stripping and he’s usually irritated when they have to come to Decontamination because of Harry, which means he stands there mouthwateringly naked while Harry tries not to get an erection and trips over himself. It’s not just the nudity, either. The tips of Draco’s ears flush pink when he’s annoyed, and sometimes the blush spreads down to his cheeks and his neck and his chest—don’t think of the bubbles, Harry, do not think of the bubbles—and Harry wants to know if his skin is hot to the touch when it’s that pink. “In my bathtub. My favourite—”
“Place in the world and the jewel of your Thursday routine, I know, I know.” Bollocks—his socks are still wedged in his elbow. Harry throws one sock into the bin. His second sock misses, so he jogs over to pop it in.
Draco takes the opportunity to whip the elastic off his hair, sending it tumbling down around his shoulders, and stalk into the first phase of the Decontamination Centre without him, so Harry has to gather his prick in one hand to keep it from bouncing everywhere while he sprints after Draco, arriving just in time for the Minor Cleansing.
Draco stares him down as the charms surround them, his arms crossed over his chest. Harry surreptitiously lets go of his dick.
“Er,” he says. “What?”
“If you know,” Draco says, his tone somehow twice as deadly as before. “Why couldn’t you have kept your hands to yourself at that bloody church?”
Harry tips his head back and lets out a groan. “I couldn’t keep my hands to myself. I need them for magic. That’s my job. That’s our job. And I couldn’t just stand there while—”
“Yes you could.” A shift in the air makes Harry pick his head up, and when he does, Draco is no more than three inches from his face, bending down ever so slightly so his silvery-grey eyes are exactly level with Harry’s, piercing him to the core. “You could just stand there. You could have let me—”
“It was coming right at us!”
“That is what Protego is for!” shouts Draco. “Not your hands! Your hands have been a problem from day bloody one, Potter!”
He turns on his heel and strides into the next phase. Harry’s brain briefly short-circuits at the sight of Draco’s pale, naked, perfect arse at full striding tension, and he is once again left to run after Draco, this time with his cock fully, ruinously hard and bouncing every which way.
“Hey!” Harry skids to a stop just past Draco as the Major Cleansing Charms whirr to life. As a result of the constant Cleansings, the air in the Decontamination Centre is intensely clean, providing a neutral background for any scents that enter the area. Namely, Draco. And the soap he uses with—a hint of bergamot, maybe? The potions he uses on his hair have an even lighter and more expensive profile, and his magic smells like sweet almonds and silver and rain, so, really, nobody can blame Harry for having a massive hard-on about it. But his dick isn’t the point. He had an argument to make here. And it was—it was related to day bloody one. “All I did on day one was volunteer to be paired up with you. And be your partner eventually.”
Draco rolls his eyes so dramatically that for a second his head is all the way back, exposing the soft hollow of his throat, pale as the rest of him except for where a tendril of one of his Sectumsempra scars pinkens the skin. Then his eyes are back on Harry’s, glittering and dark.
“Thanks ever so, Potter. You rescued me from a career filled with jobs well done and bath schedules uninterrupted.”
“I broke the curse, didn’t I?” Harry grins, helpless in the face of a naked, irritated, sarcastic Draco. He gets into a snit at least once a month, but Draco’s had three years to request another partner, and he never has.
Draco puts a hand to his chest and widens his eyes until he’s the picture of perfect innocence. “Wherever would we be if you hadn’t raised your hand that fateful day?”
Well, Harry refuses to be embarrassed about that.
Yes, he’d shot his hand up in the air before Bill finished his sentence, but Draco had burst into the department like a human thunderstorm and, to hear Bill tell it, practically demanded a place in the training programme at wandpoint. Bill told the story that Christmas at the Burrow with an air of astonishment. I’ll never forget it. He twirled a napkin around his finger, staring into the middle distance. He said, I’ve come here from saving my mother’s life, so there’s nothing you can say to scare me off, Weasley. Like he was the one who was interviewing me!
Plus, Draco was wearing that jacket.
“Dunno. I don’t like to deal in hypotheticals. Anyway, I’ve been practicing self-acceptance.”
The innocence drops off Draco’s face. His scoff doesn’t sound half as irritated as he probably wishes it does.
That’s because Draco is the one who doesn’t deal in hypotheticals. He doesn’t deal in hints, either, or else Harry is staggeringly bad at dropping them.
His most recent attempt had been pretty obvious, he thought. During last month’s second trip to the Decontamination Centre he’d pursed his lips and said, casually, d’you think there are non-work situations where people end up naked together this frequently? And Draco had scoffed seven times in a row, each scoff getting more indignant, until finally he said I will not dignify that with a response and whirled away for stage three, another Minor Cleansing, just to be sure.
Draco walks to the final stage, and Harry follows him. He barely manages to wrestle his smile into a more work-appropriate half-smile before the charms start their work. They ruffle Draco’s hair slightly, and Harry holds his breath, concentrating hard on not threading his fingers through the white-blond fall of it. If he does that, he’s done for, because Draco will probably hex him.
And if Draco doesn’t hex him, then there’s a lot more of him Harry wants to touch.
“Listen,” Harry says.
“Shan’t.”
“I’m sorry I exploded Dark residue all over us at the church. Dunno if it’s fair for me to shoulder all the blame, since I’m not the one who did all that freaky shit with a rosary—”
“Begone, Satan.”
“—But I will shoulder the blame, if that’s what it takes.”
Draco narrows his eyes. The silence between them is embellished by the light tinkling sound of the Cleansing Charms. Harry keeps his gaze resolutely on Draco’s face and definitely not on the long column of his throat or his nipples or his scars or his hips or his—
“Takes to what?” Draco prompts, seconds before Harry’s eyes latch onto Draco’s cock by sheer magnetic force.
“To make it up to you. I know you’ve missed your bath window, so why not postpone it for another hour and let me buy you a pint at the—”
“If you say Leaky fucking Cauldron, I will use an Unforgivable Curse on you.”
“—Nettle and Lark, Draco, God. Why do you always think I’m going to invite you on a date at the Leaky?”
Draco’s mouth drops open. He snaps it shut quick as lightning, but before Harry can say anything else, such as I’ll invite you anywhere, okay? Anywhere! a shopkeeper’s bell jangles merrily over the Decontamination Centre. It’s an alert sound from both their Gringotts badges, little pins they wear on the inside of their jackets that serve as emergency Portkeys and a summons for any off-duty curse-breakers to respond. The louder the jangle, the closer the developing situation. Harry’s never heard a shopkeeper’s bell ring at this volume.
He breaks and runs first.
“No!” Draco shouts, his footsteps fast and light behind Harry. “No, Potter, I swear to Merlin—”
Harry grabs the threshold and swings himself into the changing cubicles in the dressing area of the Centre—why, honestly, after you’ve just stood there starkers through all the Cleansings—and his feet sink into more plush carpeting. His things are folded in a neat stack on a low bench. Harry stops himself with a palm slapped to the wall and rifles through the clothes, jacket, jacket, jacket.
“Don’t do this!” Draco cries. His hand is on Harry’s wrist, his waist, his ribs. Harry’s fingers find the pin as Draco yanks him backwards, spins him, and pushes him up against the wall. He darts a hand in and Harry shoves the pin into the air, pinched between his fingers. It’s vibrating, just begging for an answer. Draco’s other hand has ended up flat on the wall next to his head. He tries to get the pin, but Harry keeps it moving.
The front of Draco brushes against the front of Harry. Professionally, he ignores all the soft bits and the lean, hard lines of him. The pin jingles and jangles like there’s no tomorrow. The sound of it has Harry’s blood up. It’s loud, which means whatever’s happening is near, which means it’s probably in Gringotts, and they’re closest. They have to be. He’s a bit of an adrenaline junkie, okay, and he needs something to take his mind off Draco naked in the Decontamination Centre, and he just—he likes being the first to rush in.
Draco gives up trying to take the pin and traps Harry’s wrist to the wall. He leans in so close that Harry can’t see anything but his eyes. If Harry were startled by a loud sound, he would definitely accidentally kiss Draco through no fault of his own. Draco’s breath is a warm whisper on his lips, and his nose is one errant nuzzle away from touching Harry’s.
“I want a bath,” he says urgently. “Let someone else take this one. Come on, Potter.”
Come on, Potter, because all of Draco’s scoffs and eye-rolls and strops have never once meant that he’ll let Harry go on a job alone, and Harry would be lying to himself if he said that wasn’t part of the attraction. Harry gets another fifteen minutes with Draco if it’s some wizarding family jewels needing a pat on the head and a counter-curse or two, half an hour if it’s…he doesn’t know. A necklace or something. Not that Harry would deliberately try to spend more time with Draco, professionally. It’s just that the job is all he’ll ever have of Draco, who’s never going to want a prat like Harry for anything else.
Especially when Harry’s…
Well. How Harry is.
The pin rings a little louder, vibrates a little harder, between Harry’s finger and thumb. Draco’s hand is firm but not harsh on his wrist. The pressure of each individual finger is a pulse on his skin.
It’s so close. The emergency that needs the nearest curse-breakers is right under their feet. If there’s something wrong down there, doesn’t he owe Gringotts? For letting him work here in the first place? Even after Harry had a screaming meltdown during Draco’s trial and threatened to become the next Dark Lord if they so much as made Draco look at Azkaban? Even after Harry was a post-war disaster for the entirety of their year in the new training programme co-administered by the Ministry and Gringotts? Even after the dragon incident?
And he doesn’t think Draco will go to the pub with him, fine, that’s most of it. He thinks Draco is going to go home to his bath, and Harry can’t let that fifteen minutes slip through his fingers.
He pinches the pin.
It jumps one more time in his fingers and stops moving.
Draco drops his head forwards, his hair tickling Harry’s chin. “Curse you, Potter. Curse you so very fucking—”
“Curse-breakers Potter and Malfoy responding,” Harry says, loud and clear. “Where do you need us?”