Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

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August 1999 - Auror Trainee Dormitories

Eyes. There were far too many eyes — on him, through him. Judging and finding him wanting; waiting for him to slip. Draco pretends he doesn’t hear the voices as he makes his way to his room, but it’s not like the others are making an effort to hide it.

What’s a Death Eater doing here?

He should be in Azkaban.

You know what they say, the Malfoys are more slippery than a snake.

Robards must have lost his mind. I give him a week.

Draco has heard it all before, but the words still haunt him. Even in the quiet of his room, curled up on the floor next to the bed, he still hears the other trainees’ snide voices. Maybe they were right. What had he been thinking, signing up for Auror training? He could still quit, Draco thinks suddenly and desperately. He stands up, determined to find Robards, to tell him he’s made a mistake. That he's —

Harsh yellow light streams from the open doorway as it swings open with a loud creak. Nothing but a silhouette and yet Draco can recognise him anywhere.

“Malfoy?”

The voice makes his heart leap. If this is Draco's sign to leave, it couldn’t have been any clearer.

Because there’s no way in hell he’ll survive if his roommate is Harry Potter.

~~~

August 2009 - Blaise’s Café

SAVE THE DATE

PANSY & LUNA

We invite you to our wedding cruise to Webb Island, Antarctica!

AUG | 16 | 2009 - AUG | 22 | 2009

Two o’ clock in the afternoon

Apparition Point #4567, Port Mulgrave, North Yorkshire

(Further details attached inside)

Draco looks up from the gilded invitation to find Pansy wagging her thinly plucked eyebrows at him.

“Fab, isn’t it?”

“Are we certain that’s the word we should be using here?” Draco asks diplomatically. “Off the top of my head, there’s ‘this is fucking nuts’ and ‘you’ve both lost your marbles’. But then again this is Luna we’re talking about. The marbles were never there, were they?”

Pansy smacks him hard on the arm. “Oi, that’s my darling fiancée you’re talking about, you prick.” She pouts her scarlet lips. “But, yes, this is her idea. Something about seeing rare Antarctic Smirking Snookstacks or whatever.”

“Crumple-Horned Snorkack?”

“Good heavens, what in the hell is that?”

“Exactly.”

Pansy sighs. “Look, I’m just trying to make my lady happy. This is her one request before relinquishing all planning rights to me.” She reaches across the round, wooden table to grasp both his hands. “I can’t not give her this, darling. You know that.”

“Pansy, listen to yourself,” Draco tries. “It’s a seven-day cruise involving what, twenty people —”

“Sixty.” She smiles sweetly. “Of our closest and dearest friends.”

“Fucking hell. We’re going to Lord of the Flies each other on day two.”

Pansy’s dark eyes turn pitying. “Darling, I know you think you’re being very clever, but again, I don’t read. Except for that time they shot me for Witch Weekly and I said I did. Now that was a fab little picture, wasn’t it?”

Draco allows Pansy a few moments to recreate said shot with a croissant instead of a hardbound copy of Crime and Punishment before sniping in. “Let me see the guest list.” At Pansy’s reluctant (and highly guilty) look, he holds out his hand. “Out with it, Pansy Parkinson. Show me what you’ve done.”

Pansy rolls her eyes and gives it to him. “Ugh, you’re so annoying. I should just cross you off so you can be miserable alone.”

His eyebrow flicks up. “But then who will be your gentleman of honour? Who will tell you to your face that your makeup clashes with the flower arrangements?”

“I can think of one.” Pansy’s gaze zeroes in somewhere over Draco’s shoulder, towards the hardwood counter of the café where Blaise is supposedly hard at work when in reality, he’s napping over a basket of bread while an irritated customer tries to poke him awake.

As Blaise will tell anyone who gets tricked into listening, it’s not easy being the owner of Gothic Alley’s hottest café (in the day) cum sex club (at night).

First of all, customers often confuse their business hours. An elderly couple had once gotten an eyeful of Leather and Lace night by accident (or so they claimed) and received free Murtlap mochaccinos for their trouble.

Reliable help is also hard to find. Draco can count at least a few stray whips and ropes the night crew had forgotten to put away. But he knows better than to inform Blaise about it. A conscientious manager he is not. The last time Draco had judiciously reported several chains strewn in the men’s toilets that had twice nearly tripped him, Blaise responded by saying it added to the ‘modern industrial’ vibe of the café.

A style which Draco had taken to mean Blaise was too lazy to re-do the walls or the ceiling.

Or to provide his customers with chairs that didn’t leave their arses numb.

Draco shifts his uncomfortable wooden stool to be closer to Pansy. “I said honour, Pans, not dis.” He peruses the guest list and makes comments along the way. “See, look at this. At least seven of these people Blaise has fucked. Three he’s ghosted, two he’s led to think he’s dead, and one…” Draco stops to stare at Pansy, unable to speak over the staggering chasm of betrayal that has fractured between them.

Pansy is instantly placating. “My darling, my beloved, my oldest, fittest, sex god of a friend, please —”

“You invited him?” The list is crumpled in Draco’s white-knuckled fist.

“He’s my friend!” Pansy declares so loudly, even Blaise is woken from his coma. In the background, he can be heard fielding complaints from customers. “Tell them to be quiet? This isn’t a church, lady.”

Draco and Pansy hardly notice any of them.

“He’s my ex!” Draco shrieks back.

“It’s been six months, darling. Even seasons move on. Keep up.”

Draco leans forward to avoid prying ears. “He dumped me on our fucking anniversary, Pans,” he hisses.

And Draco was with Oliver Wood for two damned years, alright? Six months is nothing. Worst of all, after the break up, Draco didn’t even have the privilege afforded to most people of not seeing his ex’s stunning smile and even more stunning eight pack on the pages of every sports and society magazine in the country, lauding him as a “Keeper on and off the field” as well as the “most eligible bachelor in the entire League”.

Eligible his arse. What’s so eligible about a slimy bastard who breaks up with you on your bloody anniversary, not five minutes after sucking you off? Draco recalls with painful clarity the way he was coming down from his orgasm when Oliver said, “I don’t think this is working.”

At first, Draco was worried Oliver had meant his dick, but he quickly caught on once the arsehole started talking about “being in different places” and how “it feels like you’re still not opening up to me and you never will”.

What the bloody hell did any of that mean?

Simply a bunch of random words Oliver had strung along to justify breaking up with Draco, that’s what. Although Draco had been spun into a massive whirlwind of confusion, he at least had enough sense to knock Oliver’s stupid Championship trophies off the mantel before leaving through the Floo.

Given everything he’s had to endure, Draco feels he has every right to hold a grudge for as long as he wants.

“Hmm.” Pansy taps her lips. “I never really did see you two as having it.”

“What the hell is it?”

“You know —" Pansy throws her hands up. "—It. Chemistry, passion, pizzaz. Epic love, my dear, like what me and my Luna-bunny have.”

“If it lands me in a wedding in the godforsaken tundra, then you and Luna-bunny can have it,” Draco says, “and we did so have plenty of passion, thank you very much.”

Riding the high of post-match adrenaline, they’d fucked in the Puddlemere locker room. Once.

Pansy gives him a dubious look, but doesn’t pursue it in the interest of her own interests. “It’s just seven days, Draco, and the boat is massive. You’ll see him maybe once.”

“I don’t care. Uninvite him.”

“I can’t uninvite my firm’s biggest client,” Pansy says hotly. “Can’t you just put on your big boy pants for once and suck it up?” She snaps her fingers, eyes lighting up. “Oooh, how about you bring a date too?”

“Why should I —” Draco stops and grips her forearm for support. His voice is laced with horror. “Pansy, tell me no.”

“No,” Pansy says at once. A liar through and through.

Draco buries his face in his hands. “He’s bringing a date, isn’t he? Hard-launching his new less good-looking lover right in front of my cruise ship-quality shrimp cocktail. Fuck.”

“Aw, darling.” Pansy pats his hair. “We don’t know if he’s less good-looking yet.”

Draco lifts his face enough to glare at her. “You don’t know who it is?”

“No, he’s being very discreet. Apparently it’s a new thing, this fling.” She giggles. “Oh my. Am I a poet now?”

Draco ignores the question. “Bet it’s that fucking Marcus Flint. I’ve seen him sniffing around,” he mutters darkly. “Uninvite them, Pansy, or I swear I’ll —”

“But, darling, don’t you see? This is actually a brilliant opportunity for you!”

“How do you figure?”

“You get to do the same to him. Flaunt a better, fitter, more famous boyfriend right in front of his perfect face.”

Better, maybe. Fitter, sure. But more famous than the most wanted Keeper in the league? Did Draco even have the time to pull this perfect specimen?

Merlin, did he need to drop by the sex club tonight?

While Draco mulls this likelihood with increasing grimness, the little bell on the café door tinkles prettily, indicating a newcomer. Suddenly Pansy straightens, eyes alight with excitement. “Speak of the devil and he doth come,” she says breathlessly.

Draco’s well-honed survival instincts tell him to run. In their time as classmates, turned colleagues, turned roommates, he’s long learned the signs of a Potter arrival.

The hushed, almost awed, silence that falls on the room. The thrum of powerful magic seeping into Draco’s every pore. The familiar prickle in his neck that feels as real as a touch.

Draco doesn’t bother turning around, just levels a look at Pansy and says, “No”, in a firm voice. He knows that glint in her eyes. The road to hell is paved with Pansy Parkinson’s bad ideas.

“Yes, Draco,” she insists.

“I said no, you mad woman.”

“You’re being unreasonable.”

“What else is new?” says a deep voice from behind them. The shrill screech of a chair being dragged against wood heralds Potter’s appearance between them. He’s dressed in his usual activewear — plain, black t-shirt, and loose shorts that fall above his knees in the same colour and cotton-poly blend fabric. The combination ought to be far from eye-catching, but on Potter’s lithe, muscular form, it’s as potent as a mating call.

One that Draco, of course, is immune to.

He’s simply speaking on behalf of the simple-minded onlookers whose sighs of longing fill the room as Potter sweeps by them. Not that Potter notices. He never does, the arrogant tit.

With a face that’s eighty percent furrowed brow, Potter drops on the stool, braces his elbows on the table, and focuses all his dour attention on Draco. “You were supposed to be at the gym two hours ago.”

Draco bristles. Technically, Potter is right. He is supposed to be clocking in at nine at the gym. And technically, Potter has the right to call him out because he owns the damn place and that technically makes him Draco’s boss.

But while all of these things are technically true, Draco hasn’t accepted any morning appointments in half a year and Potter damn well knows this. He’s simply being a prick for the love of the game.

“Seamus is there.” Seamus is their newest (and only other) physical therapist and Draco has trained him for this very reason.

So he can cover Draco in the mornings, allowing him to skive off and have coffee with Pansy. Sometimes they shop. Mostly they gossip. All very important activities that contribute to society and the greater Wixen economy, but Potter has yet to come to terms with this reality.

“I do know that Seamus is there. Ask me how, Malfoy.” Potter leans close enough for Draco to smell his aftershave. A scent that's spicy and sweet and uniquely Potter. Mhmm. “Because I was there myself. Because I work there and when people work at certain places, they tend to have to be there. See where I’m going with this?”

“Perhaps you should have stayed there, Potter, since you’re such a big fan of Being There all the freaking time.”

Potter’s full lips stretch into a feral grin. “I was craving some coffee.”

“You don’t even —” Draco makes a frustrated noise when Potter grabs and downs his Flitterbloom frappuccino. “You savage! You owe me ten sickles and another ten for emotional distress! Wait till Human Resources hears about this.” Which should be a month from today since Tamsin is on stress leave. Again.

For what reason? It remains unclear.

Potter grimaces. “Ten sickles? For this sugary crap?” He wipes the cream off his lips by the back of his hand and Draco swears he hears at least a couple soft moans in the background.

Draco smacks Potter’s hand away and shoves a napkin in his ridiculously handsome face. “Oh my god, you’re a menace.”

Potter merely snickers, leaving it up to Draco to wipe the stray cream he’d somehow made worse. Pansy’s loud squeal yanks their attention.

“Oh, perfect!” she exclaims, her hands clasped together. “Look at you two! Already, you’re like an old, married couple.”

Draco snatches his hand away like he’s been burned. He holds Pansy’s gaze in an attempt to telepathically tell her to shut up. He knows where this is going; can hear the gears turning in her head and feels the pressing urge to drive a shaft into it. “No,” he says through gritted it.

“Yes.” She scooches her stool closer to Potter who looks visibly alarmed. “Now, Harry, I know it seems like Draco is being a lazy layabout who doesn’t take you seriously as a superior, but we are actually in the midst of a crisis meeting. See —” She gestures at Draco. “— our Draco here needs a date.”

Potter’s eyes drift to him in interest. Oh great. He’s not only going to laugh in their faces, but he’s going to make sure Draco never lives this down either. They’ll be seventy year old pensioners and Potter will be all, “Hey, remember that time you begged me to date you, you desperate freak?”

Fuck.

Pansy is still talking in great, embarrassing detail, “...and since Oliver is bringing a date, Draco has to bring a better one, otherwise he’s going to look really, really sad. Like those poor cats with only three legs and a little wheel, a stump for a tail, and maybe a bald patch. D’you know what I mean, Harry love?”

“Er…” Harry seems incapable of speech. Whether it’s because he’s still processing all the information about Draco’s love troubles or he’s trying to imagine Draco as the poor, beleaguered cat is anyone’s guess.

“It’s just pretend, Harry dear,” Pansy smiles like a viper. “Seven days of hand holding and calling each other noxious pet names — your choice, of course — and then Draco owes you his life. What do you say?”

Draco stares at Potter. Why isn’t he laughing yet? Merlin’s magical, bouncing tits. Why does he look like he’s actually considering it? Worse — intrigued.

Draco clears his throat. “May I just add that I have not consented to this. I’m perfectly capable of finding a —”

“I’ll do it,” Potter interrupts. He says it so casually, like he’s just agreed to picking up milk on the way home instead of pretending to be in a relationship with Draco for seven days on the wedding cruise from hell. Potter smirks at Draco when he makes a strangled noise. “What? You’ll owe me, won’t you?”

Heat scorches Draco from the inside. “I don’t need your bloody help,” he snaps, standing up so he can tower over Potter. “I can pull a perfectly fine temporary boyfriend, thank you very much.”

Potter leans back and folds his arms, causing the corded muscles to flex in what may be considered alluring to some people (not Draco). More sighs from the peanut gallery ensue. One of them possibly, definitely Blaise.

“Oh yeah?” Potter challenges. Admittedly, he’s developed quite an impressive raised eyebrow. A clear reminder that he has been spending too much time with Slytherins.

But Draco is a Slytherin himself and therefore, is not at all intimidated. He slams one palm on the table and bends low until he’s level with Potter. “Watch me,” he says. Then he straightens and heads for the door. “Oh and I’m calling in sick today,” he throws over his shoulder.

There. That’ll show them.

Circe’s nipple ring, he needs to find the tightest trousers he owns.

“Oi, you haven’t paid yet. Draco, Draco!”

Draco pretends not to hear Blaise. Bloody Potter can damn well pay for his drink.

~~~

August 2009 - 12 Grimmauld Place

Salazar’s pants. Is there no good-looking bloke left in England?

Draco isn’t asking for much. A pleasing face, a charming smile, and a fit body. That can’t be too hard, can it? But that’s what he told himself twelve hours ago before he’d scoured all ten of Witch Weekly’s Hottest Spots for The Flirty Under Thirty.

Sure, some men who’d approached him were decent, but they just weren’t…exceptional. None of them thrilled him. They weren’t Oliver level and certainly not Potter’s level, the ghastly prick. Obviously, Draco understands he’s being too picky considering this pseudo-relationship is just for the wedding, but he’ll be sharing a room with this man for seven days.

He should at least be tolerable.

In his desperation, Draco ends up at Blaise’s club.

For all of twenty minutes. Just enough time for him to realise that: A. All anyone wanted at the sex club was, well, sex and B. Draco didn’t want to have sex with someone he barely knows.

He’s been there, done that, and was decidedly not interested in going back. His relationship with Oliver had given him stability and security. Both deeply unsexy words in theory, but surprisingly very sexy to Draco in practice. Especially once he’d gotten used to it.

He finds he quite misses it actually, having someone to run to after a long day; who will listen to his woes and tell him he’s right and that everyone else is wrong obviously. If only Oliver had told him what the problem was in specific detail, rather than vague excuses, then maybe Draco could have fixed it. He never did have the chance to, given that they hadn’t talked since that night. Hadn’t even had the chance to see Oliver in person until —

Until the wedding.

Between drifting through the throng of slick, mostly naked bodies and finding a quiet alley to Apparate from, Draco entertains a mad, mad idea. What if on the cruise, he could actually talk to Oliver?

What if on the cruise, Draco could fix things between them?

And just in case it all goes tits up, Draco needs a fall back. A convenient cover. A ‘Well, I don't know where you got the idea that I want you back, Oliver. I was just taking the piss. I mean, can’t you see I have a boyfriend?’ type of excuse.

Which is why at midnight, Draco goes home to Grimmauld. Skips past the door to his room and heads straight to Potter’s where he knocks and waits patiently.

Sort of.

He bangs on the door a third time. “Merlin, Potter, what’s taking you so long? Don’t tell me you’re wanking o —”

“What the hell do you want?”

Draco nearly falls over when the door suddenly gives way before him. Potter is behind it, looking deeply disgruntled and deeply shirtless.

The broad, finely muscled torso, Draco is used to. The six pack is nothing new either, as is the dark happy trail that leads to parts unknown in Potter’s low slung golden snitch pyjama bottoms.

The obscene tent his dick is making through the fabric, however, is a fresh addition.

With the fortitude of a saint, Draco forces his eyes up. “Oh my gods. Were you actually wanking?”

Potter leans on the doorway, unashamed. “Don’t ask if you’re not going to help.”

“Ew, Potter.”

“You’re one to talk. Are you covered in glitter?” Swiftly and before Draco can react, Potter swipes the pad of his thumb against Draco’s cheek. “And is this jelly?”

Gods, Draco hopes it’s jelly. The colourful gooey stuff was shot from small canons Blaise had at the club ceiling.

“You were at the club.” Potter’s voice is flat. He stares at Draco’s tiny leather top as though it has personally wronged him and his ancestors.

“Obviously I was at the club, Potter. I’m wearing my tight trousers. Now focus.” Draco snaps his fingers. “Listen to me. I’m in.”

Potter is still scowling, eyes having narrowed onto Draco’s trousers. “In what?”

“In the plan, Potter! The master plan!”

“Did you take something? What did it look like? Tell me.” When Potter tries to reach for his eyeballs, Draco slaps him off.

“Merlin’s fucking ballsack, Potter. I’m talking about the date!” Potter freezes and Draco uses the opportunity to step closer. Thank Circe the erection’s reduced.

Well, somewhat.

Draco could still make out the outline, but it’s not Potter’s fault he’s…hefty.

Again, Draco drags his traitorous eyes away and shoots Potter a winsome smile. “You and me,” he says, sounding a bit breathless. “Faking it for England. Let’s do it.”

~~~

September 1999 - Auror Training Centre

Harry doesn’t sleep much after the war. A couple hours at most before he’s awake, sweaty, and fighting to breathe through the icy grip of a nightmare. Back at the Burrow, he’d spend the darkest parts of the night staring at the ceiling. Now at the Centre, he finds himself looking to the empty bed across the room.

There’s small comfort in knowing he isn’t the only one walking around, sleep-deprived.

Whether it’s due to morbid curiosity or singular boredom, Harry throws aside his covers and follows after Malfoy one night. He finds him in the large gymnasium through the sound of his panting breaths and rough exertions.

Harry’s steps are soundless and Malfoy doesn’t notice him, far too occupied with working through the climbing wall. He’s only halfway to the top, but already Harry sees his slender calves exposed by the department-sanctioned work shorts trembling with strain. Malfoy won’t make it, Harry observes with cold detachment. He’s too weak.

Harry is proven right a minute later when Malfoy slips and falls with a frustrated shout. Harry has his wand with him. He can break Malfoy’s fall, but he doesn’t. Instead he watches Malfoy land on the mat with a loud, painful slam, and only when he’s groaning and cursing to himself does Harry allow his footsteps to be heard.

Harry doesn’t get very close before Malfoy is scrambling to his feet. His face makes a funny spooked expression at the sight of Harry.

“P-Potter, what are you doing here?”

He isn’t going to survive Auror training, Harry knows this as surely as he knows death itself.

And yet.

A part of him is intrigued.

And the rest of him can’t help himself.

“Do you want to spar?” he asks Malfoy.

~~~

August 2009 - Port Mulgrave, North Yorkshire

The beach where they’d been told to wait by the scary tall lady in a pirate costume, real-life parrot included, is littered with a collection of bizarre characters.

There are the guests on holiday, of course. Who are somehow here by choice. Pensioners and couples, and loud, braying families that have nothing to do with the wedding. Meanwhile, for the wedding party, there’s a clear divide between each of the lovely couple’s sides. Luna’s guests are a mix of former classmates, Ravenclaws, and Hufflepuffs, with a sprinkling of the many interesting people in her work as a rare creatures researcher.

Draco’s willing to bet his entire Gringotts vault that one of her work friends is a vampire (or at least someone who drinks blood for fun), and then there’s Rolf Scamander who he’d seen surreptitiously shoving a couple loose tentacles back into his trunk.

Note to self: Steer clear of Rolf and his trunk.

Meanwhile, Pansy’s “closest and dearest” are either Slytherins from their time in school or colleagues and clients from her PR firm. All perfect-looking and shiny and utterly boring. Draco isn’t interested in any of them.

He does another scan of the beach and comes short of one Oliver Wood. Morgana’s beard. Did he go through all this trouble for nothing?

Draco’s wearing a matching couple shirt with Potter that says ‘I’m with him’ with an arrow pointing at “Him”, for fuck’s sake. On top of that, he has to constantly remind Potter to stand on his left or else the point will be lost. This level of commitment simply cannot be for naught.

“So this isn’t a prank or anything?” Ron asks for the fifth time in the past half hour. He gestures at the two of them holding hands. Draco has no doubt Hermione would be asking the same thing were she not on her wiz-mobile, cooing nonsense at the babies who they’d left at their grandparents.

“Mummy misses you too, Hugo-bear. Yes, I do. My sweet boy…” and on and on it went. Draco had no idea conversations with the little gremlins could last so long.

He loves Teddy to death and thinks he’s utter perfection, but for the first five years of the boy’s life, he’d not been an engaging conversationalist in any capacity.

Draco tips down his oversized black sunglasses to send a scathing look at Ron. “What’s so hard to believe?”

Unlike Pansy, Potter’s friends aren’t natural liars by any means. Telling them he and Potter are only faking will only compromise Draco’s Master Plan.

Also, it’s a little embarrassing.

Therefore, Draco decided it’s better to sell the lie to their faces and make sure they buy it. Draco slips a glance at Potter who also glances back. Should Draco just kiss him? Right in front of everyone? That should convince them and besides, he and Potter are bound to do it at some point anyway, might as well get it over with.

For half a heartbeat, Draco is possessed by the spirit of insanity, mayhem, and bad decisions, and he actually leans close, eyes dropping to Potter’s pillow-soft lips. He’ll play along, won’t he?

It’s not like he hasn’t kissed Draco before.

“Well, of course I believe it. I mean, it’s you two.” Ron says, interrupting the insane course of action Draco had nearly taken. Abruptly, he steps back from Potter and gives his attention to Ron.

“You two?” His voice rises. “What does that mean?”

Ron flings both arms in a wide arc. “Well, you know, there’s you and you’re, well, you —”

“Illuminating. How are you not Minister of Magic yet?” Draco remarks, but Ron fails to notice as he’s gesturing to Potter next.

“And then there’s you, mate. Merlin, how long have you been in l—”

Potter coughs. “Hermione’s calling you. Looks urgent.”

Ron instantly whirls around, his head going in several directions at once. Very reminiscent of the pirate lady’s parrot. They even share the same colouring. “Huh? Where? Mione? Honey? Where are you?”

While Ron drifts off in a haze of ginger confusion, Draco turns to Potter. “What do you think he meant?”

With the harsh midday sun glancing off Potter’s glasses, it’s hard to tell what he’s thinking, but he looks at Draco long enough to give him chills. Then he shrugs. “Hell if I know,” he says gruffly.

Indeed.

Draco feels jittery for some reason so he grasps for a change in topic.

“Ugh, where is Oliver?” He cranes his neck to search the throng of people. “Do you see him?”

“What happened to not wanting to see him for the rest of your life?” Potter adopts a high-pitched tone. “Oh, Harry, if I ever see that oath breaking, lying motherfucker ever again, I’m going to smoke him. And if I die and he comes to my funeral, I’m counting on you to do it for me.”

Draco’s face heats up and it has nothing to do with the merciless sun. Alright, admittedly, he may have said that word for word when he’d been in the pits of his despair after the break up.

But when Draco had staggered inexplicably into Potter’s floo after getting dumped, Potter had been so unlike his usual arsehole self, listening and nodding earnestly, and handing him tissues to wipe his snot with, that Draco was lulled into spilling more than his tears that night. He’d shared his broken hopes, his fears, the devastating loneliness he was sure to come once he moved out of the flat he shared with Oliver.

When the morning came, like a dozen trolls dancing the salsa in his head, and Draco woke up on a plush divan at Grimmauld, Potter asked if he wanted to stay for a while.

Thus far, a while has lasted six months.

“First of all, I do not sound like Moaning Myrtle’s shriller younger sister, Potter, and second —” Draco jabs a finger into Potter’s firm left pec. “— I’ve changed my mind. I need to see him.”

“Why?”

“Because —” Draco stops when he hears it. The rush of murmurs and the words “Oliver” and “Wood” squealed in the same breath by the gathered people. Draco turns and there he is, several yards down close to the water.

Even among stunning celebrities, Oliver shined. Conventionally handsome with his neatly cropped brown hair and charming smile. Like a prince from a Muggle fairy tale or an underwear model from the wrinkled magazines Draco definitely doesn’t keep by his bedside. He’s athletic and well-built, but not too much to seem threatening. Gentle nature evident in the way he carries himself.

Draco has known that gentleness for himself and misses it terribly.

He’s already taken a few steps forward without realising it when Potter grabs his hand and thank goodness for it too. Because in the next moment, a tall blond bear of a person wounds himself around Oliver and kisses him. On the mouth. For an extended amount of time. Right in front of everyone.

So this is the new boyfriend then. Obviously crass. Never mind that Draco had thought to do the same thing a few minutes ago to Potter, but that was different. That would not have been real and this…well, this was. Oliver is returning it with equal ardour while Draco seethed, and seethed, and seethed. He’s probably gripping Potter too tightly, but Potter doesn’t say anything.

When they part, Draco finally sees the new boyfriend clearly and is shocked to find that he knows him. He has a beard this time and his dark blond hair is in a bun, but Draco recognises him instantly.

“Lucian Bole,” he squeals to Potter who has no visible reaction. “Oh my god, Potter. Slytherin Chaser? Started playing for Puddlemere this year? You dated him three years ago and he wouldn’t stop hounding you at the gym until you threatened to punch him in the mouth?”

Potter’s lips part open just a bit. “Oh,” is all he says. But stalkers and obsessed ex-lovers are just par for the course for the Boy Who Lived. And like all of Potter’s ill-fated relationships, this one had barely lasted a week.

Draco can’t suppress his excitement. “This is perfect. He’s probably still in love with you. You’ll be the perfect distraction.”

Potter’s brow furrows like thunder. The air around them crackles. “Distraction for what? What the hell are you up to, Malfoy?”

Draco pats him on the shoulder in what he’s learned through mimicking others is an assuring and comforting way. “Now, now, Potter. Calm your crazy magic please. I’m simply doing what I should have done months ago.” The magic is pulsing through his skin now, hot and alive. Draco tamps down the urge to shiver and smiles brightly up at Potter’s stormy face. “I’m going to get Oliver back.”

~~~

August 2009 - Camelot of the Seas

Draco Malfoy is an idiot.

Harry’s known him for eighteen out of the twenty-nine years he’s been alive and he’s thought of him in many different ways. Annoying, cruel, spoiled, clever, frivolous, stubborn, loyal, softhearted when he thinks no one is looking, but this…

This is the first time Harry’s thought of him as genuinely stupid.

He observes Malfoy as they get themselves into tiny boats that will take them to the ship anchored further away from the shore. Watches as his eyes barely stray from Oliver Fucking Wood.

Harry has respect for his former Quidditch captain. He’s a decent bloke. A fantastic player. But he’s been Oliver Fucking Wood in Harry’s mind for the past two and a half years.

Harry listens to Malfoy moan when they arrive on the ship and he spots Oliver head to his assigned room, the opposite direction of theirs. Probably Pansy’s doing in consideration of Malfoy.

Malfoy who’s apparently changed his mind and now wants Oliver Fucking Wood back.

Harry has a migraine by the time they reach their suite. He should have never agreed to Malfoy’s hare-brained plan. In fact, while he’s on the topic of stupid decisions, Harry shouldn’t have offered Malfoy a place to stay in the first place. Harry didn’t bloody want them to be roommates.

Six months ago, when Malfoy was laid on his sofa, helpless and blinking up at him with uncharacteristically soft grey eyes, looking for all the world like he needed someone to save him, Harry should have just done the first thing that had come to his mind.

He should have grabbed Malfoy’s tear-stained face and kissed him.

Now six months of enduring patience and giving Malfoy space he needs to “heal” (Hermione’s words) has come to bite him in the arse and Harry is stuck in close quarters with Malfoy while he harps on about how in love he still thinks he is with Oliver Fucking Wood for seven days.

Harry’s in a pretty shit mood. He barely notices his surroundings. Not until Malfoy stops abruptly by the doorway of the suite’s bedroom. He turns to Harry with a wry, slightly nervous smile.

“Just like old times, eh?” Malfoy says.

Harry looks beyond him and finds only one bed.

~~~

Chapter Text

~~~

April 2000 - Sixth Floor Abandoned Building

It’s a week into their stake-out mission and neither of them sleep much. The reason why is clear. Although he and Malfoy have become unlikely allies during training, they’re both still too cautious of each other to let their guard down.

So during the night, they stay awake and talk.

Sometimes it’s Harry by the windows, on watch duty just in case there’s movement at the warehouse across the street, while Malfoy sits cross-legged on the bed. Sometimes their roles reverse and it’s Harry’s turn to fail at sleeping, opting instead to observe Malfoy’s sharp profile backlit by the amber street lights.

They speak of a lot of things, but mostly they end up talking shit. About Robards, about half their fellow Aurors, and especially about the canned food the department had packed for their mission.

“I’d commit atrocities for a curried sandwich from Pret right now. Atrocities, Potter. The worst you can think of.”

That gives Harry pause. Not the promise of atrocities, but the far more interesting other thing. He turns away from the window. “How do you even know what Pret is?”

Malfoy stops spelling paper cranes to fly and flicks a guilty look at Harry. “I had to, um, take a Muggle Studies course before training.” His eyes are lowered and in the dim light of the room, Harry detects a faint blush on his cheeks. “We’d go on field trips,” Malfoy admits grudgingly.

Harry smiles then, light in a way he hasn’t felt in a while. “This I have to hear. Tell me about your little field trips, Malfoy.”

Malfoy glares at him. “Fuck off.”

But Harry is persistent when he wants to be and ends up chipping away at Malfoy’s resolve. He laughs more than he expects that night, finding Malfoy to be a better storyteller when he isn’t doing it to make Harry’s life miserable.

Perhaps that’s why the story is still on his mind two days later.

It’s an easy decision to make and it doesn’t mean much, to sneak out and get sandwiches while Malfoy is asleep.

~~~

The stake-out, a mission that’s only supposed to last two weeks, has stretched on to three. With instructions to stay and wait for movement, Harry and Malfoy have no choice but to follow orders.

Even though the prolonged inactivity is starting to drive them mad. Even though their snide remarks grow more callous every day. Even though they’re one disagreement away from burning everything to the ground.

It all comes to a head when Malfoy yet again takes a billion years to finish his shower, selfishly taking all the hot water with him.

Harry could have spelled the door open, but there’s a primal satisfaction in kicking the door down and unleashing even just a small portion of his rage. “Mal —”

The name dies in Harry’s throat. The only sounds to exist for a long while are the hinges creaking where they hang off crookedly by the doorway and the splash of water as it bounces off Malfoy’s naked, porcelain-pale skin and slips down the chipped tiles.

From his unique vantage point, through a haze of steam, Harry is awarded a view of Malfoy’s arched back while he’s bent over, one hand braced on the wall, and the other, three fingers deep inside the firm globes of his arse.

So this, Harry thinks deliriously as all the blood in his head rushes south, is the reason for Malfoy’s hour-long showers.

“Malfoy?” Harry rasps.

Malfoy doesn’t turn. He’d seem a statue if his entire body wasn’t visibly trembling beneath the onslaught of the shower spray.

“Please, Potter.” His voice comes out a plaintive whine that causes Harry’s already hard prick to jerk. “Please…I’m so close. Give me…five minutes.” Malfoy barely finishes his sentence before his fingers begin to move.

Instead of shock, Harry finds himself entranced by Malfoy’s wet, blushing hole and the desperate, shameless way he works it open. Like he’s seeking pleasure that exists in a plane Harry cannot hope to reach.

Harry’s not going to lie. He’s rubbed himself off more than a few times since the mission started, but those are rough, forgettable moments. Nothing but a necessary exercise.

Nothing like this.

Malfoy fucking himself with his own fingers while he glistens like an angel and moans like a whore is nothing less than transcendent. Beautiful yet filthy. An alluring contradiction that shatters all of Harry’s inhibitions. Harry decides then and there to give Malfoy the five minutes he asked for. He just isn’t going to leave.

The sound of his zipper is loud as he frees his erection. Harry starts stroking, hard and fast, using the precum that’s already leaking from the tip to smooth the glide. His eyes never leave Malfoy’s pink stretched out rim and Harry makes no effort to hide his pleasured grunts.

A part of him, mad and insanely horny, needs Malfoy to know. Needs him to fucking look back actually.

“P-Potter?” Malfoy’s fingers stop, but he doesn’t turn. “What the hell —”

“Keep going,” Harry grunts, giving his dick a rough twist that sends bursts of hot pleasure down his spine, “or should I give you a hand?”

“Fuck, you’re insane,” Malfoy bites out, but he resumes, his rhythm more erratic than ever. Can he even come like this? Harry wonders. Desperate as he is, he probably needs something bigger. Longer. Harry’s dick, for example. Fuck. The mere thought of shoving inside Malfoy’s pert arse nearly sends Harry over the edge. His back falls against the wall and he has to grip the base of his prick tight to stop.

Harry’s breaths sound harsh even to his ears. “Touch your cock.”

“What?”

“Touch your cock, Malfoy, or I’ll do it for you.”

Malfoy whines but he does as Harry says and grips his cock. Harry wishes he can see it, but he’s content with the soft moans that are coming out of Malfoy’s filthy mouth and the sound of wet, slapping flesh as he wanks himself off.

“That’s right. Faster.” Harry matches Malfoy’s rhythm and for a few glorious moments, they are in complete depraved synchronicity.

Then Malfoy ruins it by coming first. Loud and flushed pink all over, he falls to his knees like a broken doll. And Harry doesn’t know what possesses him to do this, but he marches forward, one hand still working his aching dick while he turns Malfoy towards him by the shoulder.

Malfoy’s face is a beautiful ruin. His grey eyes are red-rimmed and blown wide with lust. There’s tears running down his wet, flushed cheeks, mixing with the shower spray. Dark blond lashes flutter at Harry, first in confusion, then in surprise. Malfoy’s mouth parts open, but instead of berating Harry, he only gasps and licks his lips. Their eyes connect, igniting a collision of pure madness.

Never in a million years did Harry think he’d end up like this. Standing over Malfoy, pumping his dick, while Malfoy kneels before him like a sinner awaiting benediction. His climax hits him like a blazing inferno, burning everything away until the only thing that remains is immense, overwhelming rapture. Harry has never felt so wasted yet full at the same time.

He almost falls on Malfoy, but he manages to brace himself on the slippery wall. The water is freezing now, but Harry has never felt hotter. He looks down at Malfoy who’s wearing evidence of Harry’s pleasure on his skin. Deep satisfaction settles for a few moments, before the rest of Malfoy registers.

The web of scars on his chest. The Dark Mark on his forearm.

Malfoy’s entire countenance, so soft mere seconds ago, turns chilly once he notes Harry’s reaction. He gets on his feet, grabs a towel off a hook on the side, and knocks Harry’s shoulder on the way out.

Harry, who still has his dick out in his hand like the idiot he is, is left to clean the mess.

~~~

Harry tries to lure Malfoy into conversation for the rest of the day and fails spectacularly each time. Only when they’re deep into the night and enveloped in darkness does Harry say the honest truth.

“I’m sorry.” Harry’s probably imagining it, but he can feel Malfoy stiffen all the way from his spot by the window. He goes on, filling the silence with words he should have said a long time ago, “I nearly killed you and I never apologised.”

For a long while, there is no sound but the draft coming through the cracks. Then Malfoy says, “You saved me too,” in a quiet voice. “I think that makes us even.”

Harry recalls the gruesome scars Malfoy is left with forever and silently disagrees. He doesn’t argue, though. Their truce is still shaky and these are the first words Malfoy has spoken to him the entire day. There’s also something that Harry really, really needs to know.

“Do you fuck men?”

There’s instant commotion on the bed as Malfoy struggles with the covers to sit up, spluttering all the way. “Oh my fucking god, Potter, you can’t just —” His voice breaks off. “—You can’t just ask people these things. Fucking Salazar with a stick.”

“Why not? We’re both adults here. Unless you’re ashamed of —”

Malfoy groans, loudly and extensively. “Shit, Potter, yes, alright? I fuck men exclusively. Are there any more intrusive questions you have no right to be asking?”

Harry grins. So Malfoy’s gay and Harry’s…possibly not quite as straight as he thought he was. To be fair, he’s only been with Ginny and then a couple other girls between eighth year and Auror training. Fighting in a war and picking up the broken pieces left after said war hasn’t exactly allowed him the time and freedom to be curious. To explore his own desires.

But now it’s all he can think about.

Touching Malfoy.

Fucking him.

Images from earlier play in an endless loop in his mind, igniting heat low in his belly.

“Can you show me?” Harry asks before he loses his nerve. “How to fuck a man?”

There’s silence, intense and thick.

Malfoy expels a shaky breath. “You’re not right in the head. Are you, Potter?”

“Probably not,” Harry acknowledges with a grim smile. He walks towards Malfoy while presenting his argument, “Look, I know you’re pent up. We’ve been stuck here for weeks. This way, we both get the release we want. It’s only logical if you think about it.” He stops by the foot of the bed, far enough that Malfoy isn’t startled into running, but close enough so he can watch Malfoy make a grand production about denying his needs.

True enough, he launches a pillow at Harry’s head and misses. “I — I won’t be your gay sex guru, you lunatic!”

“You don’t have to be. I learn fast and I’ll make it good for you. Unless…” Harry flops on the bed, weirdly disheartened. “You don’t find me attractive, is that it?”

Malfoy’s dumbstruck expression is the answer to that.

“Is it a commitment thing?”

Malfoy closes his eyes with a deep, strangled sigh. “Good Merlin, help me. What did I do to deserve this?” He raises both his palms to the sky and then drops them. “No, Potter, it’s not a commitment thing. It’s — I — we can’t just —”

“If sex is too sudden, I’m fine with sucking your cock.”

For a moment, Harry worries he’s induced Malfoy into a stroke. But then he whispers, “Oh god, oh god, oh god,” more to himself than to Harry, before falling back on the bed, ever dramatic. It’s not an outright refusal so Harry takes the opportunity to crawl over him.

The bed dips and creaks as Harry makes his way up Malfoy’s body until they’re face to face. Bracketed by both of Harry’s arms, Malfoy looks up at him with unreadable quicksilver eyes. “Is that a yes?”

Malfoy breathes once, twice. It sounds a little bit like wheezing. Like he’s not getting enough air, and then suddenly, “Yes, alright, fine. Have at it.”

As far as concessions go, it isn’t the most enthusiastic. But in the endless weeks they’d been trapped together, Harry has found himself somewhat of an expert at reading Malfoy. He notes the quickened breaths, the dark, dilated eyes, the way he’s licked his lips multiple times in the past few seconds.

There’s no doubt Malfoy is into this, but it’s up to Harry to prove it.

He slips down between Malfoy’s legs and begins undoing the complicated laces of Malfoy’s trousers. Who wears trousers with laces anymore anyway? Malfoy that’s who. He’s the only one of Harry’s acquaintances below thirty who hasn’t moved on to more modern clothing. Instead preferring to dress like a 19th century country lord.

Malfoy releases a sigh once his cock is free. It’s already at half-mast and Harry only has to stroke it a few times before it becomes fully hard. Harry can probably do this for longer, mesmerised as he is by the feel and look of Malfoy’s cock. It’s long and smooth. Pale and pink like the rest of him. Harry teases the leaking tip with his thumb before rolling his grip back down to the base.

When Malfoy moans and bucks his hips, Harry pauses. “Do you want my mouth?”

“Fuck.” Malfoy jerks again.

“Use your words.”

Malfoy slides him a venomous look beneath the arm he’d flung over his face. “I hate you.”

Harry grins. “Since you’re not being very helpful, I’ll have to figure this out on my own.”

Harry hadn’t lied. He is a fast learner and in this particular matter, he’s become an ardent student. He discovers that swirling his tongue around the tip of Malfoy’s dick makes him curse like a sailor. The same thing happens when Harry cups and mouths at Malfoy’s balls, until finally, Malfoy grabs his hair and says through gasping breaths, “Suck me, please. Potter, I need —” Malfoy’s voice breaks into a guttural moan as Harry, ever so eager to please, sucks at the weeping cockhead and takes Malfoy into his mouth inch by glorious inch.

Fuck, it’s glorious.

There’s pain when Malfoy hits the back of his throat, but there’s fullness too. Overwhelming and immense, filling not only Harry’s stretched-out mouth, but everything inside of him that’s been empty for too long. Instinct propels Harry to oblivion. He pulls back until he only has the tip of Malfoy’s prick in his lips before driving forward. Eventually, he learns to relax his throat and does this again and again, tears springing in his eyes, until he doesn’t have to because Malfoy is doing it himself. Bucking his hips up and using his grip on Harry’s hair to fuck himself into Harry’s mouth with wanton abandon.

Harry has no choice but to take the brutal thrusts. Not that he would ever choose otherwise, despite the soreness. Despite being deprived of breath. Malfoy’s broken cries, a constant symphony in his ears. Saliva rolls down his chin, mixing with Malfoy’s precum. Mindlessly, Harry grinds his own aching length against the bed, desperate to find friction. He’s probably never been more of a mess, but it’s the best he’s ever felt. Harry wonders if he can die like this.

Cause of Death: Asphyxiation secondary to Malfoy’s raging cock.

Malfoy makes a whiny noise. “I’m…I’m coming. Potter, please.”

For the first time, Malfoy tries to pull Harry off by the hair, as if to distance him from the coming climax. Harry wants none of that and makes it known when he grips Malfoy’s hips and doubles down on sucking him. Malfoy damn near throws them both off the bed when he comes. A rush of bitter fluid spills down Harry’s throat and he swallows it, determined not to waste a single drop even if he ends up drowning. He keeps sucking — gentle, lazy pulls — until Malfoy is soft and trembling on the ruined sheets.

Only once Malfoy stops convulsing does Harry lean back on his heels to grip his prick, in search of his own pleasure.

God. Merlin. Fuck. Seeing Malfoy laid out like this, thoroughly used and spent, is doing him in. Harry doesn’t know where to come — on Malfoy’s pale stomach? His blissed-out face? His heaving chest? He’s still deciding when Malfoy brushes a hand against his thigh.

His storm-grey eyes, though heavy-lidded, are open now and fixed on Harry. “C’mere, Potter,” he rasps.

At first, Harry is confused, but then he realises what Malfoy wants him to do after he directs him to straddle his chest. Malfoy’s lips are pink and lush when he tells Harry to fuck his mouth.

Harry dies a million rapturous deaths after he slides down Malfoy’s hot, convulsing throat. The headboard doesn’t survive at all, as well as two of the bed’s legs. Harry’s magic has always been a little wild, a little out of control, but he’s never felt so awashed with it the way he is now. The closer he gets to the end, the hotter it burns inside his veins until he can feel it raze through his skin.

He worries it’ll hurt Malfoy, but Malfoy is looking up at him with so much wonder and desire, luscious, shiny lips stretched around his prick, no pain at all in his expression, that Harry can’t help but grip the broken headboard and thrust harder. If there’s one thing he won’t forget from this night of revelations, it’s the sight of Malfoy so utterly debauched. So beautifully wrecked. So full of Harry’s cock, he’s choking on it.

Even when Harry closes his eyes against the searing wave of completion that lifts him to uncharted heights, it’s still Malfoy’s face he sees. And once he comes down from the high, Harry can’t help it.

Fucked-out and delirious, he seeks Malfoy’s lips and tastes himself.

~~~

In the middle of the night, a few hours before dawn, they are woken by the alarms they’d set on the street. It shouldn’t be a surprise, really, that the one time they fall into restful sleep would be the same night their target finally makes an appearance.

As if none of their earlier heated entanglements happened, he and Malfoy immediately execute the plan they’d gone over a thousand times for the past three weeks. Send a Patronus to the Auror department, head for the roof of the warehouse, wait for backup, and commence seizure. The plan proceeds smoothly and they capture the head of the illegal unicorn trade with only a few injuries on their side.

It’s taken a few missions together, but Harry has come to realise that Malfoy's a good partner to have at his side. He even started taking over paperwork duty without being asked, ever since Harry had tried to do it once and it was apparently “not much better than if a snivelling first year had done it” (Malfoy’s words).

Harry can’t believe he’d ever thought Malfoy wouldn’t make it through training.

A few hours after they’d wrapped up the mission, Harry stops by Malfoy’s desk and watches him sleep for a few minutes. It’s hard to look at Malfoy and not wonder when he can see his face screwed up in pleasure again. Harry doesn’t think he can last until their next mission.

Would it be insane if he asked Malfoy to dinner?

More importantly, will Malfoy refuse?

The man in question makes an irritated noise, pulling Harry out from his thoughts. His arm comes up to shield his eyes from the sun and the sleeve is rolled up just enough to expose half of the Dark Mark.

The sight hits Harry like a bucket of ice water.

Harry is fine with Malfoy now. He truly is. He’s seen how much Malfoy’s changed or perhaps who he really is without Voldemort’s poison or his family’s influence. But some nights, when Harry’s caught in the tangles of a nightmare, this is what he sees.

Soulless eyes and a skull entwined with a snake.

Seeing the mark feels like a sign. A reminder that he can’t consider Malfoy without also thinking of his friends and the people he calls family. It’s too soon, Harry decides. Too soon after the war to complicate his life by making his relationship with Draco Malfoy more than what it should be.

Having made up his mind, Harry nudges Malfoy awake. “Hey, wake up. Robards wants us in his office.”

Malfoy rubs the sleep from his eyes and follows. As they walk the sterile, fluorescent hallway, Harry resolves to get it over with. “Malfoy, that — what happened back there, I don’t think it’s wise if we…continue. What I mean is —”

“Potter, Potter, stop talking.” Malfoy laughs, but it’s a humourless sound. “You’re giving me a headache. I get it. Don’t worry about it.”

Harry shifts uneasily. “You mean you’re not mad?” Any time Harry had broken up with a girl, they always ended up furious with him. Even Ginny. Although they’re fine now, it did take a lot of apologising for being a shit boyfriend before she deigned to forgive him.

Malfoy huffs and rolls his eyes. “Potter, you were curious and very bored. And so was I quite frankly. Let’s not forget who begged who to suck whose cock.” Harry blushes despite himself, prompting Malfoy to smile like an evil git. “Good talk. Now let’s take care of Robards, shall we?” Then he gives Harry the same kind of head pat one gives a puppy before walking past him.

Harry tamps down a surge of frustration as he follows behind Malfoy. This is a good thing, he tells himself. It’s exactly what he wants. After all, there’s nothing more annoying than people who cling to him despite being told no.

Harry’s relieved Malfoy isn’t like that. He really is.

~~~

Chapter Text

~~~

August 2009 - Camelot of the Seas

If there’s one thing Draco cannot fault Pansy, it’s her parties.

Always immaculately planned and executed, she’s garnered a reputation for it in the society rags. It’s no surprise that for her wedding, she’d gone and dialled it up to a thousand (and then some) by hosting different themed parties for each night on the cruise. For the first one called Monsters and Nightmares, Pansy had decorated the large function hall like a gruesome fever dream.

Ghostly pillars of fire welcome them at the entrance while servers dressed like various creatures of the night hand them appropriately scary-looking drinks. Draco’s own fruity concoction has several floating eyeballs in it that he deeply wishes aren’t real. Or moving. The moving part is the one doing him in, to be honest.

Horrifying drinks in hand, they’re then ushered into the hall that’s no longer a hall, really, but more of a cross between a dark, haunted forest and a heretofore undiscovered tenth circle of hell.

There are no sensible tables or chairs in Pansy’s nightmarish fantasy. Rows of dead, wasted trees and crumbling tombstones fill much of the outer area, where people painted like living corpses dance and lure guests into secluded coffins. Instruments of torture and unique contraptions of a sexual nature are scattered everywhere, hanging off branches and sitting in open graves. Draco stops at some of them to say hi to acquaintances, but he doesn’t linger on account of the screams of agony and pleasure. Not very conducive to conversation, no.

In the middle is the dancefloor, enveloped by misty smoke where actual ghosts soar above the dancing guests and circle the floating platform. Two DJs covered in white sheets play a bumping, techno set.

He and Potter fit right in with the gory crowd. Draco is dressed as a lord vampire and Potter as his bloody, half-naked victim. Subtlety has never been their strong suit and Draco figures that as long as Potter has agreed to be used for his nefarious purposes, Draco may as well commit to the bit and show him off.

To his credit, Potter does an excellent job drawing everyone’s attention and making everyone envious of Draco.

He looks downright sinful under the strobe lights. Draco had carefully styled his dark, shaggy hair into an artful mess meant to evoke images of having just rolled out of an orgy. The graceful waves manage to soften the hard, masculine lines of Potter’s face. Together with his naked green eyes (He’d agreed to contacts at Draco’s behest and aggressive extortion) and absurdly thick lashes, the overall effect makes him seem beautiful almost rather than his usual ruggedly handsome.

There’s not much to be said about the rest of Potter.

His leather trousers are as tight as God intended and fake blood is smeared all over his tanned, bare chest, exposed in all its glory by the tattered remains of a shirt hanging off his broad shoulders. The pièce de résistance is a studded leather collar around Potter’s neck, attached to a silver chain, the other end of which is wrapped around Draco’s wrist. While this was meant to make Potter appear the wretched victim to Draco’s sadistic vampire, so far it’s only succeeded in making him look like some sort of savage despoiler of virgins.

However, all of his painstaking efforts are wasted because a quick scan of the smoky room tells Draco that Oliver is nowhere near the dancefloor to be incredibly jealous over Draco’s new beau.

Draco stops searching for his ex when Potter winds his arms around Draco’s waist and tugs him close. “You dance like a plank of wood.”

Draco’s outraged gasp makes Potter’s eyes glimmer with mischief. Draco must have missed the part where they’d entered the dancefloor. But that’s because pretty much the whole room is the dancefloor, filled to the brim with hot, sweaty bodies in writhing chaos.

And also, how dare he? Draco is a multi-awarded dancer with many accolades, thank you very much. Granted these were mostly Mother and Son dance awards from Mother’s ladies club that he’d won from age three to eight but still. Draco can tear up any dancefloor if he wants to.

He narrows his eyes at Potter. “And you dance like a plodding troll.”

The music is a frenetic mix of loud, distorted techno-pop, but Draco makes it work. Slowly, he slides his hands from the waistband of Potter’s trousers upwards until they thread around his neck. All the while Draco grinds his body closer in quick, fluid movements that match the heavy beat.

He’s pleased to feel a crack in Potter’s impassive armour when his fingers curl bruisingly on Draco’s hips.

Draco lifts a challenging brow, still maintaining his rhythm, although it gets harder. The heat from his exertions, the cold steel from the chain, the feel of Potter everywhere, paired with the charged look in his eyes is altogether dizzying. “A plank of wood doing it for you?” Draco means to be condescending, but his voice comes out breathless.

He doesn’t wait for a response. Instead, he turns until his entire back is flush against Potter and proceeds to roll his arse backwards.

Unexpectedly, Potter folds quickly. He buries his face into the crook of Draco’s neck. “Malfoy,” he growls, thick arms becoming a tight vice around Draco’s waist. The deep timbre of his voice together with his breath on Draco’s skin sends an eager thrill down his spine. “What are you playing at?”

Fuck if Draco knows. What started as a way to show up Potter has somehow escalated to dangerous territories. The Wouldn’t It Be Great To Fuck Potter territory. Draco’s been there before. He’s seen the sights, perused the gift shop. He’s gay and he has a pulse.

Of course he’s thought of fucking Potter.

But so far, it’s remained a harmless thought. A helpful visual aid when he’s wanking off. Potter had said it himself that it’s a bad idea many years ago, and Draco agreed wholeheartedly. So why is Potter sucking his neck and grinding his dick against Draco as though he’s changed his mind?

Alright, so Potter’s probably pent up and a little drunk. He hasn’t really brought anyone home in a while (that Draco has seen anyway) and Merlin only knows what Pansy’s put in that damned welcome cocktail. It’s very likely that it means nothing for Potter to mess around with Draco and then move on with his life. Draco’s never seen him get attached to anyone.

But for Draco…

Grudgingly and despite his better judgement, Potter has become somewhat of a friend. Not to mention someone who is possibly integral to his life as a functioning whole so it wouldn’t do — no, it wouldn’t do at all to fuck things up by, well, fucking.

Draco holds himself in high regard, but in the matter of Potter, he doesn’t really trust himself not to fall like a tower of cards. The day he asks Potter, “What are we?”, and Potter replies with a pitying, “It’s only sex, Malfoy. Maybe the best of your life, but it’s just a Tuesday afternoon for me.”, is the same day Draco throws himself into a volcano.

Thank goodness for whatever god is on shift tonight because the music stops just as Draco’s trousers were becoming uncomfortably tight and a bright spotlight is directed to the floating platform, revealing Pansy and Luna as the DJs all along.

Draco takes his chance to unravel himself from Potter, releasing the chain tangled between them in the process. “Oh, look! A thing is happening!”

“Malfoy —”

“Welcome, all, to Nightmares and Monsters!” Pansy says through a Sonorous charm. “Are you having fun?”

The resounding cheers drown out whatever Potter is still saying. Thank Merlin. Potter is probably recovering some of his senses now and is cursing Draco for taking things too far.

“Well, get ready for more fun!” Pansy continues, “Tell them, Luna dear.”

Luna smiles peaceably then says, “Oh yes. There’s a murderer amongst you.”

A hushed, fearful silence falls on the once boisterous crowd. Pansy quickly grabs the wand from Luna. “A fake murderer! Fake, not real, people. Calm your tits,” she declares to a chorus of relieved sighs. “So what my beloved means to say is we’re having a murder mystery game tonight. Now each of you have been given blank cards earlier at the door, but if you look at them now, they will display your assigned roles. Because there are so many of you, there are going to be three murderers in this story. Let me explain…”

Draco zones out the rest of Pansy’s terribly dull background story. Who did she get to write this? Blaise? Gregory? Is that why Greg isn’t here yet? To hide from the shame of such shoddy literary work?

A billion hours later, Pansy is still droning on. Something, something, indiscriminate murder, must find clues all over the ship…Draco isn’t really into it. He’d been a detective once upon a time and has no inclination to return to the sport. He checks his card to make sure he’s not the killer then moves on.

“Where are you going?”

Godric’s trouser snake, Potter’s still there.

Draco shoots him a quick, strained smile. “To the toilets! I’ll be back.” He isn’t lying. After that erotic…whatever that was, Draco needs alone time to sort himself out. Physically, emotionally, mentally. Possibly spiritually. Gods, are you there? It’s Draco.

“I’ll go with you,” Potter says, determinedly dogging his steps.

Draco nearly lets out a curse, but he forges on. He’s hoping to lose Potter in the crowd, but with all the people and the very real spikes a lot of them are wearing, traversing the room becomes a treacherous task. It seems almost impossible to dodge Potter until the lights go out and people start screaming.

In a way, perhaps this is divine intervention, the gods answering his plea. Because what a lot of people don’t know about Draco is that he has stellar night vision. Like an owl or a possum, Pansy had commented once. A remnant of an ancestor who was not completely human, but hopefully was neither owl nor possum. Draco is quite lucky with his gift. A great, great, great grandfather of some sort had apparently been born with claws instead of hands. Imagining foreplay under such conditions makes Draco’s dick wince.

Despite the furor, Draco’s pretty sure he hears Potter calling his name, but he uses this opportunity to slip away. Does he feel bad for leaving Potter like this? Yes. But Potter will be fine. He’s never alone or lacking in entertainment for long. And anyway, Draco will go find him once he gets some fresh air.

Draco reaches the exit at the same time the lights turn on and someone screams, “Oh my god, Ron’s dead!”

~~~

Draco is hanging by the deck on the third floor, observing the events down below with an air of judgement that only someone who’d completely taken themselves outside the game can have. He tuts disapprovingly as a famous singer tackles a high-ranking Ministry official into the pool for the murder weapon. Disgraceful. They have magic for heaven’s sake. What is with all this unrefined brawling?

“Where’s Harry?”

Draco turns.

And then he shrieks. “He’s — aghhh!”

Ron is still wearing the bloody machete on his skull and the effect is both realistic and gruesome. It takes a while for Draco’s pounding heart to calm.

Ron, inconsiderate beast that he is, pushes on despite nearly giving him a stroke. “So? Where’s Harry?”

“Aren’t you supposed to be dead?” Draco smooths the hair that had fallen on his face and snaps, “Also, I’m not Potter’s fucking keeper.”

“But you’re his boyfriend now, aren’t you?”

Draco chews his lip. Fuck it, he’s got a point. “That doesn’t mean we’re attached by the hip, Weasley.” Over the years, they’d learned to call each other by their first names without getting nauseous, but it’s easy to fall into old habits, especially when Ron was being his old annoying self. “I’m sure you don’t always know where Hermione is.”

“I do actually,” Ron declares proudly. Like he isn’t a creepy stalker for it. “See my watch.”

Draco wrinkles his nose at the absurd pocket watch containing the twin babies and Hermione’s faces, together with their locations. “That’s sick, Weasley.”

“I could say the same about this whole situation.” Ron jabs a bloody finger in his face. “There’s something off about you, Draco.”

Despite the fact that deep inside, he’s sweating like a sinner at confession, Draco projects a careless air of indifference. “Alert the Aurors then. Suspicious former Death Eater on the loose.”

“It’s not that, you prick.” Ron takes a deep breath, then pins him with a sharp stare. “I just don’t want my best mate to get hurt. You’re my friend, but Harry is like my brother, alright? And he acts like he’s tough, but he’s sensitive so if you’re not careful…”

Draco stares in confusion. “Are you high?”

Ron flushes. “No! Are you even taking this seriously, Malfoy? You’re —”

“Hold that thought, Weasley. Precarious as it is.” Draco’s eyes catch on a familiar chestnut brown head over Ron’s shoulder and he shoots forward like a magnet.

“Where are you going? Hey, Draco!”

Draco shakes off Ron’s attempt to grasp his arm. “To the toilets! I’ll be back.” This time, it’s definitely a lie.

Draco hurries past Ron. It’s like sighting a unicorn, seeing Oliver only a few yards away and Draco rushes to wrangle him before he can escape. In hindsight, perhaps vampire cowboy would have been the wiser option costume-wise. He could really use a rope right now.

Oliver has just slipped into the stairwell when the lights go off again. This is the fourth time it’s happened and each instance, someone inevitably dies. The story is so damned predictable, even Trelawney would have tired of it at this point. And it’s probably going to be another one of Pansy’s actor clients using this opportunity to “practice their craft”. What a load of bull —

The only warning Draco is given is the feel of heavy hands on his back before he’s shoved forward, headfirst down the lengthy stairs.

Draco may no longer be an Auror, but he’s earned his former title. He has quick reflexes, and coupled with his possum-like night vision, he manages to grab onto a rail. The motion nearly pulls his shoulder loose, but he’s able to twist his body upon landing on the steps to face his attacker.

Shock lowers his guard. He never expected in a million years to find the person bringing down a giant knife to his face to be Lucian Bole.

This has to be a nightmare.

It costs Draco his ankle, but he sidesteps Bole and misses the slash by an inch. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” he yells, pointing his wand at Bole.

For a second, there’s only pure unadulterated rage in Bole’s expression as he stares back at Draco. How he can even see Draco in this darkness is the question. Is it a spell? A magical device he’s wearing? Another ancestor who may have dipped their toes in interspecies relations? Gods. Draco has so many questions, but he has to abort all of them when Bole lifts his knife again.

Before Draco can blast him to oblivion for daring to hold a sharp object so close to his precious face, bright red light explodes from the doorway and strikes Bole squarely on the chest, sending him hurtling backwards into the dark void.

Draco whirls around, prepared to face down the new attacker, when the lights return, whereupon he’s treated to Potter’s heaving bare chest and furious face. One that’s closely followed by Pansy’s gleeful one after she Apparates at the top of the stairs.

She claps and performs an excited little dance when she registers their presence. “Oooh, Draco darling, I was so sure you wouldn’t join. Congratulations on catching the last killer!”

Pansy glides down the steps and grabs both his and Harry’s arms, oblivious to the mayhem she’s wrought. “You both win a prize!” She looks from him to Harry. “Isn’t that fab?”

Draco gives her a dazed stare. Again, fab isn’t the first word he’d use in this situation.

~~~

April 2001 - St. Mungo’s Trauma Unit

“Where’s your partner?”

Harry, together with the two Healers fixing the cursed hole on his abdomen, pauses to stare at Malfoy who’d just barged into the hospital room with all of the delicacy of a rampaging bull. If Harry squints, he can almost see smoke coming out of his nostrils. Had Malfoy not been wearing his scarlet Auror robes, he’d have probably been escorted outside by security at this point. But he looks official, though a bit feral, and the Healers probably assume he’s here under a formal capacity.

Harry knows for certain that he isn’t.

He signals for the Healers to keep working before addressing Malfoy. “Why are you looking for him?”

He couldn’t have expected Malfoy’s response.

“So I can strangle him myself, Potter!” Malfoy exclaims, throwing his hands about wildly and pacing at the foot of the bed. It’s easy to tell when Malfoy is stressed. He’ll make sure you know. “Why else? He left you.” Malfoy’s voice rises for each curt sentence. “During a mission. When backup was still on their way. And you were under fire!”

The Healers’ hands are shaking now, obviously distracted, which isn’t good for Harry’s wounds in any case. Still, he lets Malfoy stew in his defence while a warmth settles in his chest. So Malfoy does care after all. He’d been so stoic and accepting when Robards had announced he was reshuffling teams two weeks ago.

A good change, Robards told Harry, although what he’d really meant was that his new partner had no ability to think for himself and give lip. Or report Robards for not following safety protocols on some of their missions.

Unlike Malfoy.

Robards is, as they have established, a raging idiot. Because Terrence did not turn out to be a good change at all. He abandoned Harry to the fishes, then subsequently got himself splinched in his haste to get away.

Harry tells Malfoy as much, going into detail of what body parts Terrence had lost, which mollifies him a little bit.

“I’m still going to strangle him when he gets well,” Malfoy insists, though with less heat. “In fact, maybe he’s well now. What’s his room number?”

The Healers stop altogether to stare at Malfoy in alarm. “He’s not serious. Please continue,” Harry tells them and they reluctantly get back to work. The hole looks less like a troll’s fist had slammed through his flesh and more like a thumb now. “Don’t you have your own mission?” Harry asks, although he knows the answer.

At six in the morning, roughly four hours ago, Malfoy was supposed to depart for Budapest for a month-long joint mission with their Hungarian counterparts.

Malfoy bites his lip, all his bravado melting like ice cream under the hot sun. “About that…”

“What happened?” Harry sits up despite the Healers’ complaints and the sharp pain that slices through his torso. His gaze is wholly focused on Malfoy who can’t seem to meet his eyes.

Before Harry can leap off the bed and force it out of him, Malfoy says, “IkindoftoldRobardsthatit’seitherhepartnersusagainorIquit.”

Harry has become fluent in verbal and non-verbal Malfoy, but this one flies over his head and into the atmosphere. “Repeat that, and this time in Human please.”

Malfoy sighs the sigh of the severely put upon. "I bloody told Robards I’d quit if he doesn’t make us partners again.”

Harry’s heart seizes in his chest. “And?”

Malfoy’s eyes lower. His entire face, including his ears, are pink. All not very good signs. Then he says, “He fired me.” in a small voice, and it somehow feels worse than getting shot.

~~~

August 2009 - Camelot of the Seas

For a brief moment, upon waking, Harry believes he’s still dreaming. For what other reason is there for Malfoy to be wrapped around him like a limpet while they’re laying in bed?

It hits Harry then. Like a conflagration of a thousand puzzle pieces, the previous night comes together with painstaking clarity.

Saving Malfoy from getting fake-murdered by Wood’s boyfriend. Getting whisked away by Pansy who declared them winners on the platform. Getting plied with drinks. Dancing. More drinks. Noticing Malfoy limping. Carrying him to the room even though “We’re wizards, Potter, what on earth are you doing? Levitate me at once.” Stumbling into bed and then…

Nothing.

Because Malfoy had turned to him, alcohol-flushed cheek resting on his palm, and said, “Potter, you’re still good, right? With the plan?”

And while everything inside of Harry screamed, “No, I want to date you for real, you irresistible headache of a person,” another part of him couldn’t help but recall Malfoy’s earlier words.

“I want to get Oliver back.”

Despite being clouded by drink, Harry was still aware that this fool plan was the closest he could ever come to changing Malfoy’s mind. So Harry said a careless, “Sure,” while every muscle inside him clenched in dismay.

Malfoy’s entire countenance had lit up with a slow, beguiling smile. “Thank you,” he yawned. “Sorry there’s only one bed.”

“S’alright.” Harry scooched closer until he was inches from Malfoy who, for once, didn’t do a damned thing aside from blinking up at Harry sleepily. “It’s like you said. Just like old times.”

An intriguing rosy flush coloured Malfoy’s face. “It was only one time, though,” he said, lashes lowering, “like this.”

The reminder made Harry hard. Gods, how many times had he wanked off to the memory of Malfoy’s mouth on him? Too many. Not nearly enough.

“...a shame,” Harry heard Malfoy murmur, but before he could ask what he meant, Malfoy’s eyes had closed and his soft snores filled the space between them. Sleep came to Harry after that, as easy as the rhythm of Malfoy’s breaths.

But in the stark light of morning, comes the difficult part.

The fact that Malfoy hasn’t woken yet is a surprise considering how skittish he’s gotten each time Harry has tried to get close to him recently. It grinds his gears to no end, the way Malfoy acts as though he’s expecting Harry to jump him like a rabid highwayman. Something Harry won’t do of course. Unless it’s a roleplay Malfoy’s into and they have a conversation about it first.

Perhaps the thing that frustrates Harry the most is that he knows Malfoy is attracted to him. He’d have to be an idiot not to notice Malfoy’s prolonged stares when he works out at the gym. The way his throat bobs nervously any time Harry walks around Grimmauld shirtless. Or the way Malfoy’s hands had lingered tortuously over Harry’s chest and arms when he’d smeared fake blood on it yesterday. He could have used a spell, but he didn’t.

And Harry loved it. Just as much as it killed him not to pull Malfoy close so he could give him exactly what he seemed too scared to ask for. But then again, attraction is one thing, feelings are another. What can Harry do if Malfoy still has lingering ones for Oliver Fucking Wood?

When Malfoy begins to stir in his arms, Harry closes his eyes and feigns sleep, curious to find out what he’ll do once he finds them like this. But other than Malfoy shifting a little, nothing happens. Harry begins to wonder if Malfoy had fallen back to sleep, but then he feels it.

The brush of Malfoy’s hand as he smooths the hair from Harry’s brow.

Harry has to make an effort to focus on his breathing. A futile task because his lungs stop expanding altogether when the back of Malfoy’s hand glides down his cheek, lingering agonisingly soft on his jaw before slipping away. It’s torture, keeping himself immobile, but Harry needs to know what else Malfoy will do when he thinks no one’s watching.

He’s sorely disappointed when Malfoy starts to disentangle himself from their embrace. While Harry would have liked to hold on, he lets him go. Only opening his eyes once the door to the bathroom closes. He stares at the empty space next to him, breathing in vanilla and citrus for several moments, while he lets a gamut of wild thoughts run through his mind. He turns them over and shapes them just so, until they coalesce into what may be a vaguely solid last-ditch plan.

Attraction is one thing, true, but it is something to work with. And if Malfoy’s actions this morning are anything to go by, then maybe…just maybe, attraction isn’t all there is for him.

Harry gets up with a renewed sense of vigour and begins to stretch. For the past six months, he’s tried the patient and gentle approach. Or as patient and gentle as he can be around Malfoy anyway. But that obviously doesn’t work on his dense as fuck roommate. No, for him, Harry has to be blunt, bold, yet still somehow subtle enough to not make Malfoy run for the hills.

Harry’s never had to do this before. For anyone. But of course Malfoy’s the exception. He always is. And if Harry wants to have him, he has to leverage his biggest draw.

He needs to seduce Malfoy.

Harry lowers himself into a push-up, eyes locked on the bathroom. He’ll give Malfoy twenty minutes before he bangs on the door, as sweaty and glistening as he can make himself be.

~~~

August 2009 - Camelot of the Seas

“The sharks are circling.”

Draco sends his friend a dubious look over his oversized sunglasses. He and Blaise have been lounging on the recliners next to the pool for the past half hour, soaking up the Caribbean sun. Well, Blaise is anyway. Draco doubts that even the sun can penetrate his twenty layers of suncream and the large, yellow umbrella floating above his head.

Although the Malfoy line brings many gifts, it also carries with it the curse of too-sensitive skin that burns instead of tans.

“I’m talking about your boyfriend,” Blaise says and Draco turns to where Harry is slowly, but surely getting crowded at the Polar bar.

As the name suggests, the bar is designed to resemble the icy tundra where they are headed, complete with an assortment of little stuffed penguins dressed as waiters. Though severely adorable, the smartly outfitted creatures barely make a dent in Draco’s rising temper. His hands curl into fists when one of Pansy’s model clients runs a finger down Potter’s bicep.

So this is why their drinks are taking forever. Merlin’s pointy hat.

“I’d get in there if I were you. Too many rapacious hands, not that I blame them.” Blaise whistles low. “Is it just me or is he extra godly today?”

Draco narrows his eyes at the bar. Potter is extra godly today. It’s hard to explain in quantifiable terms. If Draco had to try — it’s like his tanned skin is glowing twice as much and there’s an extra glimmer to his smile. Draco, known to be pricklier than a hedgehog prior to his morning coffee, had found himself smiling back like a daft idiot more than a few times.

On top of that, Potter is also doing sort of a fantastic job at being a fake-boyfriend. Holding Draco’s hand, helping him slather on his sunscreen in an excruciatingly thorough way. Only being a little bit of an arsehole when Draco asked for his umbrella to be repositioned a dozen times. Even then, his remarks could almost be taken as charming. Draco has had to mentally slap himself a couple of times — and once, physically — to remind himself none of this is true.

For example, this unwarranted burst of jealousy that has him sharply glaring at his own friend. “And I suppose one of those rapacious hands belongs to you?” he asks icily.

Blaise laughs, a musical sound that lights up his handsome face and causes a pool boy to tip over. “Salazar knows I’ve tried. But no. Not his type, you see. Not blond enough.” His tone and smirk is laden with enough meaning to scorch Draco’s face.

In hindsight, he supposes Potter does date a disproportionate amount of blonds. Anthony Goldstein, Hannah Abbott, Matthew from Finance, Matthew from the club, Matthew from that weird band. The list goes on. Draco should count himself fortunate because it helps reinforce their story. The thought that in reality, Draco had never been…in consideration, despite being blond as fuck, should not leave a sour taste in his mouth.

Nor should the sight of Potter getting approached by fawning admirers, the aforementioned rapacious hands, and…

Draco sits up so abruptly, he knocks his giant umbrella into Blaise who yelps. But neither Blaise’s ungentlemanly cursing nor the harsh glare of the sun can make his attention waver from Potter who’d begun chatting with none other than Lucian Bole.

Lucian Bole, that demented maniac, who can now add would-be murderer on top of dating Draco’s ex in his list of grievances to Draco. Draco didn’t buy that shit about “acting” at all. He knows loathing and he knows intent, and he’d seen both in Bole’s eyes. The only place Bole should be at right now is in the hold awaiting the authorities for the grave crime of wielding a knife so close to Draco’s face.

So what the hell is he doing sidling up to Potter?

Stupid question. Draco realises as soon as he hears it in his mind. What did anyone who sidled up to Potter want?

Blaise gives him a knowing look when he marches off. To which Draco throws him the finger over his shoulder. He barges through the throng of Potter’s admirers just in time to hear Bole say, “For old times sake.”

“Excuse me,” Draco says, voice purposely loud to draw attention. “Babe. Love. Darling. My, er, Golden Snitch. I was wondering what was taking so long.” Potter looks amused when Draco drapes himself all over him. Satisfied at the effect, Draco glances at Bole as though he’s just registered his existence. “Oh. Where’s your boyfriend, Bole? Lost him already, I see. Well, it was only a matter of time.”

Bole grins, all creepy, white teeth. “Nice to see you again, Draco. Don’t worry. This was actually Oliver’s idea. He’d love for you to join.”

“Join what now?” He sends a sharp look at Potter. This sounds a little too much like the beginnings of a foursome.

Potter appears undaunted by his glare and instead, starts a casual, slow glide of his fingers up and down Draco’s arm. “Nothing important. Babe.”

Bole makes a jeering noise. “Come on, Harry. You’re seriously saying no to Quidditch?”

There’s audible disappointment in the crowd, but Potter simply says, “I have better things to do,” before giving Draco a scorching look.

Although he knows it’s just for show, Draco blushes despite himself. Bole’s eyes flash with distaste, but it dissipates when Oliver appears next to him.

“Are we ready to play?” he asks eagerly. His eyes snap to Draco and he beams like the sun. “Oh, Draco, hi!”

Draco feels like he’s been Stunned, caught off guard by the sheer joy in Oliver’s face at seeing him. Him. Did he trip into an alternate universe where it’s two years ago and they were still together by mistake? “Er, hi,” Draco says dumbly.

Oliver’s smile slips a bit at the lack of enthusiasm, but he carries on cheerfully. “Are you joining the match then?”

The weight of several eyes on him are heavy and intense. Draco sort of wishes the pool is closer so that he can simply pretend to fall into it and drown. Potter’s stare is the most unnerving out of all them so Draco focuses on Oliver’s expectant one instead.

“Sure, why not?” he says.

In response, Oliver smiles. Bole sneers. Potter scowls.

And Draco — well, Draco pretends this is all going to turn out fine.

~~~

The match is, as most things seem to be for Draco, a total dumpster fire.

For his team anyway.

Not so much for Oliver’s team which is composed of either professional players or players who could have gone pro were they not also disgustingly exceptional in other areas of life. Oliver had magnanimously offered to mix up the teams to “make things fair”, but Draco (idiot that he was) had taken umbrage to that and insisted his ragtag team “had the moxie and spunk of champions” and “are totally going to crush you. I mean you, Bole, specifically”.

His ragtag team being Gregory (who’d finally shown up), Potter (who still hasn’t stopped scowling), Ron (who’s happy to be included), Anthony Goldstein (who can’t take his bloody eyes off Potter), Ginny (who is luckily, a professional player, but who’s also always made it clear she wouldn’t spit on Draco if he was on fire), and her lovely boyfriend, Neville (who is not a Quidditch player by any means, but has gotten himself wrangled into the game thanks to proximity and association).

“You’re doing amazing, sweetie!” Ginny yells into the roaring wind while Neville waves back, clearly chuffed.

She’s not wrong. So far, Neville’s kept his seat and hasn’t thrown a bludger at a teammate. All stellar achievements considering, but they are, as a whole, getting absolutely shit on. It’s only fifteen minutes since they’d taken to the air and already, Oliver’s team is flying circles around them, scoring three goals effortlessly (Weasley is our King indeed), and generally playing with them the way a cat plays with a poor raggedy mouse.

Their only chance, at this point, is for Potter to find the snitch. But the berk took off like a cannon at the whistle and is nowhere to be seen. Draco can only hope he’s searching for the snitch instead of hightailing back to England.

His hopes on that front aren’t particularly high.

“We need to score!” Draco cries out, ducking yet another bludger from Bole, the bleeding arsehat. Thankfully, Greg appears quickly and lobs the bludger right back at him.

“Thank you!” Ginny yells back, her bright red hair whipping behind her like an angry cloud. “I wouldn’t have realised that without you saying it, Malfoy.”

Draco rolls his stinging eyes. Godric and Salazar sitting on a tree. Who thought it a good idea to play Quidditch above the open sea anyway? That vile prick, Bole, that’s who.

Ginny slides in front of him, her eyes sharp and fiery. Draco is pleased to see her as pissed off as he is. In this, they are finally in tune. “Cover me, Malfoy,” is all she says, and then she’s zipping upwards to intercept one of the other team’s Chasers, Ryo, who has the Quaffle.

Draco barely has time to yell for Anthony to follow before he soars after Ginny who does a majestic short loop that stops just above Ryo’s head and knocks the Quaffle from his hands while she’s upside down. Time seems to slow as the Quaffle heads for Draco’s face. For a second, he wonders if Ginny’s intention is to knock him out, but decides that no, she’s too competitive for that.

However, there’s worse things she can do to him if he fumbles this one.

The Quaffle lands in his hands with a hard smack and then Draco is spinning downward to dodge yet another bludger courtesy of Bole. The detour knocks him off course but Draco recovers, swerving, and makes for the opposite floating silver hoops they’re using as goalposts. There, hovering like an impassable wall instead of a human, is Oliver.

Along the way, Draco’s team settles into formation. His fellow Chasers weave in and away from other players trying to intercept them, while passing the Quaffle amongst themselves. Anthony is surprisingly competent when he isn’t distracted by Potter’s arse on a broom.

Which reminds Draco — where the fuck is Potter?

Draco casts a quick look at the cloudless blue sky above them and finds no trace of the Chosen One, now renamed the Missing One. He’d have spent more time searching were it not for Ginny yelling at him to focus.

It's at the end where Oliver proves why he’s considered the best Keeper in the League. Because even with Ginny’s clever tactics and feinting at the last minute to pass the Quaffle to Draco, Oliver still sees right through them. It’s even worse when he shoots Draco an apologetic look as he catches the Quaffle Draco has tried so hard to send through.

There’s a brief moment where old feelings sprout like poisonous thorns inside his chest. Oliver has always been unfailingly kind to Draco. Painfully gentle. And any time the papers or an acquaintance said something snide about him, Oliver would get this same pitying, ‘I’m so sorry, babe. If only they know you like I do’ look.

Draco had hated it then, and he hates it just as much now.

If Oliver couldn’t defend him, Draco would rather he be angry for him.

Buried in the murk of shady memories, Draco fails to hear Ginny’s urgent warnings, leaving him perfectly open for one of Bole’s bludgers to strike true. Pain explodes in his temple, making Draco blind to anything but the agony. Strong air currents rush from beneath him as he falls like a rock, helpless to fight gravity.

The last thing Draco hears is a scream before his body breaks the water.

There’s a peaceful calm that envelopes him upon sinking into the icy ocean. Perhaps because a part of Draco knows someone will come save him eventually. He’d have loved to save himself, of course, but he’d left behind his wand (like an idiot) and never learned how to swim (like an idiot). So he waits and waits, lungs burning, until finally he feels strong arms wrapping around his waist and hauling him up to the surface.

It’s hard to say how, but he knows even without looking that the arms belong to Potter.

“Where you been, you wanker?” Draco mumbles into Potter’s sun-warmed neck while Potter hugs him closer and levitates them up the side of the ship.

Potter merely huffs in response and calls out for a Healer. One scrambles towards them, firing questions and instructions in the same breath, but not doing much in terms of actual healing. Once he’s laid out on the warm, hard floor, Draco opens his eyes to dozens of curious, nosy faces.

Wonderful. This must be how a tap dancing fire monkey feels at the zoo.

And they couldn’t be bothered to lay him on a pool chair?

“My god, Draco, are you alright?”

He blinks at Oliver’s concerned face hovering above him and opens his lips to say —

“What do you think? Your boyfriend smacked him in the head with a bludger,” Potter says testily, appearing by Draco’s side. Involuntarily, Draco traces a rivulet of water as it drips from Potter’s wet raven hair down to the strong line of his jaw, and finally settling on the sun-kissed column of his throat. Draco has to shake himself alert so he doesn’t lose the thread of conversation.

But come on.

How is it fair that they both take a tumble in the same ocean and yet Potter comes out of it looking like a sea god while Draco probably resembles a drowned rat?

“I thought he’d dodge, not just sit there like a statue,” Bole reasons, his unfortunate face also making its way into Draco’s view. “And besides, we were playing a game. It happens.”

“A game?” Potter says, his voice dropping dangerously low. “Well, here’s your game.”

The many people who have no business being here gasp when Potter pulls out a small, quivering, golden ball from his pocket. He flicks it aside as though it means nothing, is less than nothing, his gaze returning to Draco whose mouth has dropped open like a fly trap.

“Potter…” he breathes, a fluttering of wings in his belly.

The corner of Potter’s lips curve into a lopsided smile and Draco can’t even hate him for being cocky. He’s sort of earned it at this point.

Draco’s ragtag team of spunk and moxie actually did it.

“Boys, boys, no fighting please,” Pansy interrupts, her impractical heels clacking to a stop dangerously close to Draco’s ear. “It just ruins the wedding vibe, you understand? How about this? Everyone gets a prize.”

Ron sputters into view. “There’s a prize?”

Pansy giggles. “Why, yes, of course. Silly Weasley. Instead of only the winners from last night’s game, now all of you get a one night stay on Paradise Island!” Pansy spreads her hands wide, revealing several keys dangling and jangling off her fingers. Portkeys that will take them to and from this so-called island, Draco assumes. Pansy beams at them, her face clearly stating that this is the best idea ever.

Same as with most of her ideas, Draco feels an ominous sense of foreboding.

~~~

October 2001 - St. Mungo’s Rehabilitation Unit

“Harry, how does this feel?”

Harry grits his teeth as he slides down the wall into a sitting position. It hurts like a motherfucker is what it feels like, he wants to say. But instead, he tells the kind middle-aged therapist, “Feels good, yeah”, before he slides up again. There aren’t a lot of injuries that magic can’t instantly fix, and spinal injuries are one of them. Unfortunate news for Harry who now has months of physical therapy ahead of him after getting injured in a mission.

Still, it’s good. Harry’s glad for it. Not the injury, but the break it’s given him. He’s had a lot of time to think and that thinking has led to him reconsidering his life choices.

“Tuck your chin, Potter,” a familiar posh voice says next to him. “Martha, what are you doing? You should be watching his form.”

Harry sends an apologetic look at poor, beleaguered Martha, but dutifully tucks his chin before Malfoy gets on his case again. Somehow his bossy former partner has taken it upon himself to be involved in Harry’s healing and rehabilitation and to everyone’s endless consternation, confusion, and concern, Harry lets him.

Mostly because it’s too much effort to say no, but also because Malfoy can be surprisingly brilliant when he wants to be and for some reason, he’s bent on using his tricky little mind to help Harry. Without any prompting whatsoever, he’s researched everything from magical ways to Muggle ways to mystical forms of healing. Faster than anyone’s expected, Harry’s getting better. Less pain, better mobility. He’s sleeping well too. Although that one he probably owes to the extended break and the Mind Healer he’s been seeing.

“Mr. Potter, may I ask you something?”

Harry pauses from stuffing his things inside his bag to look at Martha. “Yes?”

“Can you—” Martha hesitates, visibly bracing herself, “Can you perhaps tell your boyfriend not to disrupt us so often?”

Harry nearly chokes on air. Is that…is that what everyone thinks? That he and Malfoy are…

“He’s not my boyfriend, Martha,” Harry says, heat rising in his cheeks. “And, um, I’m sorry. I’ll try to tell him off.” A lie. Harry happens to like his life peaceful and without angry Malfoys.

Martha gives him a dubious look. Whether it’s thanks to his first answer or the second, Harry isn’t sure, but the disappointment is palpable in her retreating form. When Malfoy comes back from wherever he went off to (something about Physical Therapy courses), Harry considers telling him about Martha’s amusing assumption.

“Hey, guess what —”

“When are you going back?”

Malfoy is eyeing the scarlet envelope that’s sticking out of Harry’s bag. His sharp, pale face is cold.

Harry doesn’t know why he’s been hesitant to let him know, but he sees no escape for it now. “I, um —” He licks his lips, nervous under Malfoy’s unwavering stare. “— I handed in my resignation to Robards. That letter’s just him trying to get me to change my mind.”

Surprise flashes in Malfoy’s eyes, but his voice is carefully neutral. “And are you? Changing your mind?”

“Hell, no.”

Malfoy smiles at that. “Good boy.” The approval prompts a rush of pleasure that Harry, embarrassed as fuck, tries to tamp down. “Now if you don’t mind my asking, what are you planning to do as a free man?”

“I’m not sure,” Harry admits, taking the cane Malfoy hands him and falling into step.

He thinks of the long road to full recovery ahead of him and the vague future beyond it. Under different circumstances, he might be more worried about it, but knowing that Malfoy left the force not too long ago and hasn’t mentioned any plans yet either brings some measure of comfort.

Harry listens to Malfoy as he prattles on about the new curry restaurant that’s opened next to Blaise’s café. Harry’s free today (he always is) so he offers to go with him.

Who knows? Maybe they can talk about it. The future, as it were. Perhaps it’ll be a little less daunting if Malfoy’s in the same boat as him.

~~~

Chapter Text

~~~

August 2009 - Paradise Island

Alright, Draco will allow Pansy this one thing: Paradise Island does, in fact, live up to its name.

With its white, sandy shores, dense forests of coconut palms, endless turquoise ocean as far as the eye can see, and quaint little cabins connected by a maze of wooden bridges raised on top of the water itself, the island does appear like the closest thing to paradise on earth.

The only thing that stops it from being so is the fact that Draco still has to see Bole’s face, but even that has become less of an issue once it’s become obvious he and Oliver are having a lover’s tiff. Watching Bole try and fail at coaxing Oliver is a laugh and half. Next to Draco’s strawberry margarita that’s bigger than his head and endless supply of shrimp cocktail, it’s his new favourite thing.

“There are other dishes here aside from shrimp, you know.”

Draco narrows his eyes at Potter. He’s sitting across from him on the long wooden table the lovely staff had prepared for them for their dinner by the beach. They’d put up canopies made of gauzy colourful fabrics that swayed prettily in the wind. This far away from civilisation, the dark sky is a bounty of stars and the full moon alone is enough to light their path. The torches are a nice touch, though, casting dancing shadows on the sand.

“I am aware,” Draco says before taking another satisfying slurp off his shrimp cocktail. Yum.

The corner of Potter’s lips quirk in amusement as he gets to his feet. He holds out his hand to Draco who stares at the appendage like it's a viper poised to bite. “What?”

“Come on. Up. Everyone’s left.”

That’s not quite true. While most of their companions had left to explore and do naughty things in the dark, Ron is still working through his third lobster whilst hand-feeding Hermione chunks of mangoes at the same time. It’s rather sweet, actually. Nauseatingly so. Draco sets down his shrimp with a grimace.

Potter wriggles his fingers again and stares expectantly at Draco. “We’re in a tropical paradise, Malfoy. You can’t tell me you don’t want to see the ocean.”

Draco pouts. “I see it.”

“Please?” And Potter actually, actually flutters his thick, dark lashes. The effect is so utterly ridiculous that an unexpected laugh bursts from Draco’s chest.

“The fuck are you doing? That’s not going to convince me at all,” Draco says, but Potter doesn’t stop, the incorrigible, bedeviled twit. No one should look this fit doing such a thing. The gods are so bloody unfair. “Stop, stop it. Alright! I’ll go. Just stop —” He throws up his palms in surrender. “— whatever the fuck that is. Bloody hell.”

Potter smirks as Draco takes his hand. No one is really paying attention, but Draco knows it’s better to keep up the act just in case. They walk in comfortable silence until they reach the edge of the shoreline where the waves begin to lap at their feet. Along the way, Potter had convinced him to take off his sandals. A good idea, although Draco will never admit it.

They go further, until the water is up to their calves. A pleasurable thrill runs through him at the feel of cool seawater on his skin and powdery-soft sand between his toes. Draco can’t resist kicking the water at Potter who retaliates in typical extreme Potter fashion by grabbing him around the waist and threatening to dunk him underwater. Draco manages to free himself but at the cost of falling over and getting himself soaked anyway. When Potter extends his hand, laughing, Draco takes it only to pull him down with him.

This time, it’s Draco’s turn to snicker, although the amusement fades quickly as Potter shakes off the wetness from his face like a dog and smooths his messy hair back in a fluid motion, drawing attention to the corded muscles of his arms. His white t-shirt is wet and clinging, leaving little to the imagination. Potter’s eyes catch Draco’s then, mossy green and glittering like moonlight bouncing off the dark sea.

Something about them — those magnetic eyes paired with Potter’s soft smile — pulls a tight coil loose within Draco and he finds himself saying, “I always thought it would be fun to go skinny dipping.”

Potter takes a moment to respond, gaze drifting over Draco’s own cream shirt, turned sheer by the water. “So why don’t you?” he asks in a rough voice that sparks heat low in Draco’s belly.

Draco looks away in an attempt to hide the flush in his cheeks. “I was going to a year ago when Oliver and I went to Seychelles. But he’s too famous. A stray picture would have caused a scandal. You know how it is.”

“Not really,” Potter says after a beat. “Who cares what anyone thinks? If you want to swim naked and get sand and seaweed all over your bits, that’s your prerogative.”

Draco barks a laugh. “Oh my god, Potter. Spoken like a true golden boy. Of course you wouldn’t care. Not when everything always manages to go your way.”

“Not everything,” Potter mutters. A splash of water hits Draco on the side and he glares at Potter who splashes him again. “If I join you, will you find your missing balls and do it?”

Draco’s mind stutters and trips headfirst into the dirty, dirty gutter. Potter and him? Butt naked in the ocean with nothing but the moon as their witness — and possibly six of their closest friends, some strangers, and Bole? It’s an instant no. Innate Slytherin self-preservation should have made Draco shove Potter in the sand for even suggesting it.

Except…

Some sort of sorcery is afoot. Again, Draco blames the eyes and the smile and perhaps the heady vastness of the open sea before them. It speaks to Draco, reminding him that he’s merely a speck in this infinite universe. The world won’t end and it certainly won’t stop if he, for once, does something reckless without thought to consequence.

“I’m going to need a few more drinks, I think.”

Potter blinks a couple times, as though he’s not sure the words came out of Draco’s mouth, and Draco blinks back because he can’t quite believe it either. But then Potter’s lips stretch into a slow, entrancing smile and all rational thought is lost to the evening breeze.

“Stay right here,” Potter says as he gets up and jogs back to the beach. Draco looks on, bemused, before lifting his face back to the starlit sky.

He’s traced Ursa Major and Minor, Orion, and Cassiopeia by the time he feels a presence behind him. “About time. Did you have to distill the vodka yours —” Surprise coupled with a strange disappointment washes over Draco when he’s met with wide brown eyes instead of deep green.

“Hi, sorry, Draco, I —” Oliver rubs the back of his neck uncertainly. “It’s just I saw you by yourself and I thought maybe we could, um, talk?”

Draco catches himself before the “What for?” can slip from his tongue. Isn’t this the chance he’s been waiting for? To finally get Oliver alone? What else could Oliver want to discuss but their relationship?

The part of Draco that always has a finger on the worst-case scenario is already resigned to the reality of them never getting back together. But this — Oliver seeking Draco himself is unexpected. Welcome. He’d be stupid to say no.

Draco stands but not before he throws a glance behind Oliver to the beach beyond. There’s more people now than there had been earlier, dancing by the bonfire, but he can’t make out Potter among them. Where the hell is he getting their drinks? Antarctica? When Draco’s eyes return to Oliver, he arrives at a decision.

“Alright. Shall we take a walk?”

Oliver exhales a relieved breath and nods. They walk side by side on the shoreline, away from the light of the party and towards an outcropping of rocks in the distance. Worry creeps through Draco’s skin like a snake in the grass, but he forces himself to shake it off. Potter will be fine. On the unlikely chance he’ll be miffed at Draco later, it’ll be easy enough to explain why he disappeared.

Potter will surely understand.

~~~

For several minutes there is only the sound of the crashing surf and the howling wind as it whips their hair and clothing about them. Draco’s loose linen shirt, once drenched, is now damp and cold to the touch. But neither Draco nor Oliver seem inclined to be the first to break the silence, not even when they come to a stop in a secluded alcove beneath a rocky bluff. Which is odd considering they went there specifically to talk.

Draco briefly entertains the wild notion that Oliver may have taken him here to get knifed in the face. After all, his boyfriend tried it once. Who’s to say they don’t share the same inclination?

“Sorry, I’m not used to this.”

“Murdering someone?” Draco blurts out.

“What?”

Draco waves him off. Oliver’s shock seems real so he’s probably safe…ish. “Nothing, nothing. Go on.”

Some of the tension in Oliver relaxes and his easy smile returns. “You know, I’ve missed your humour, Draco. I…I never really realised it until you left how much I laughed when I was around you.”

Draco stares at him in disbelief. “I left, was it? Are you sure? Because I distinctly recall being the one told to leave with nary a warning or an explanation.”

Oliver’s smile curdles and he runs a hand through his short, cropped brown hair. “Alright, you’re angry and that’s — that’s fair. But look, Draco, I never told you to leave.”

“Oh, and how was I supposed to take ‘This isn’t working out, Draco. I think we should break up’ then?” he demands, nearly choking on his outrage. “Should I have carted my naked arse to the guest bedroom and had a nice little nap until you were ready to explain yourself to me?”

“But I did try to explain!” Oliver reaches out as if to touch him, but he closes his hand into a fist and lets it drop to the side. “I ran after you, remember? But you refused to listen and then you started throwing my stuff in the fire, and my trophies —”

“Oh, your poor trophies. What a tragedy.”

“It’s not just the trophies, Draco,” Oliver exclaims. “My grandmother’s urn —”

His what? Draco doesn't recall throwing an urn.

Sort of.

In his defence, his fury had been a thick fog, blinding him to everything but his desire to lash out.

“And I thought you would come back, you know,” Oliver goes on, “to get your things and we could talk properly by then. But then you send Harry to come get them —” His voice hitches, breaking off into a toneless laugh. “— of course it’s Harry, and he said you never wanted to speak to me ever again and I understood that. I really did. I know you probably hadn’t calmed down yet so soon after, so I offered to write you a letter that you could open whenever you feel like you’re ready. Hell, you could have also burned it if you wanted, so long as you had it, but — but Harry said no.” A helpless expression settles on Oliver’s handsome features, but Draco is too stunned to react. The words had plunged him into an icy river and it’s taking all of Draco to stay above the current, because this is the first time he is hearing about a letter. Potter has never —

He’s never told him this.

“He said there’s no point because I’ve hurt you enough and you’re not the type to take anyone back,” Oliver continues, “and I thought, well, maybe he’s right. He’s always known you better than I have. I mean, he’s the one you ran to, wasn’t he? So I decided that perhaps it would be better for the both of us if I just left you alone.”

Draco’s heart is trapped in his throat, but he tries to speak around it anyway. He has to know. “So why then? Why did you really break up with me?”

Oliver’s eyes drop to the sand. “I meant it the first time I said it, Draco. I honestly didn’t think you were as invested in our relationship as I was. I thought it better to cut it off then before I…well, before I could fall any deeper. So I was surprised when you reacted like —”

“Not invested?” Draco’s voice rises. The cold retreats in the wake of his rising temper. “I moved in with you, Oliver!”

“Months after I first asked you! After you’d said no three times.”

“I told you, I needed time to get my things in order. I couldn’t just leave Pansy without a roommate!”

Oliver shakes his head. “And you were always at the gym or at Harry’s or going off with Pansy and Blaise. Merlin, we had to move our anniversary dinner because you couldn’t leave the gym long enough to —”

“The bloody pipes burst, Oliver!” Draco thinks he may actually lose his mind. Did Oliver think he preferred sloshing about in mucky toilet water over a nice dinner at his favourite restaurant? “And I wasn’t the only one busy. Did I ever say anything about the weeks you spend away at training? Having to push aside my life to attend your important events and parties? Having my face and name plastered on the papers for everyone to pick at any time we went out?”

Draco is breathing hard by the time he’s finished. He has so much more to say, but he holds it in when he sees the devastation on Oliver’s face.

“I never wanted to hurt you, Draco,” Oliver says weakly. “I don’t want us to fight anymore.”

The broken plea in Oliver’s wet, brown eyes knocks all the fury out of Draco with the force of a bludger, leaving his chest feeling like it’s been hollowed out by a spoon. It’s unfair, really, how their arguments always seem to end up with Draco being the villain.

“Then why did you want to talk at all? Why did you even approach me?”

Their gazes hold and for a second, Draco thinks Oliver will finally say he’s made a mistake; that he wants him back. That these problems aren’t irreparable so long as they’re willing to try. Some sliver of hope to make this all worth it.

For all that they’d hurt each other, they’d been good for each other too.

Hadn’t they?

“Harry, he — I heard you live with him.”

Draco frowns, confused by the abrupt turn of the conversation. He’s not sure if the words are a question or a statement so he searches Oliver’s face only to find it completely shuttered. Unreadable. Draco ends up telling the truth because what else is there to say?

“Yes, I am.”

Oliver nods stiffly and shoves his hands in his pockets. “It’s…well, I just wanted to clear the air, Draco. That’s all.”

Draco stares at his former lover, finally realising the futility of it all. No matter how much time has passed, they’ve somehow remained in the same place — with Draco lost and Oliver still without the answers he needed.

~~~

Draco weaves through the bridges and the cabins like a man possessed with a singular goal: to get his hands on Harry Potter. What happens after that is anyone’s guess.

When Draco finds him, Harry is facing the floor length window of their cabin, overlooking the ocean. At Draco’s unsubtle approach, he turns and their eyes meet. Tension crackles like a looming thunderstorm, immense and heavy. Promising destruction.

Draco is the one who steps closer, but it’s Potter who strikes first.

“Had fun skipping off with Wood?” he asks in a bitingly cold voice.

“Fun?” Draco bares his teeth. “What do you consider fun, Potter? Is it inserting yourself where you’re not needed? Sticking your righteous nose into other people’s relationships? Thinking you have the authority to speak for me?” Some of Potter’s barely leashed anger gives way to confusion and Draco uses the opportunity to press forward until he’s crowding Potter’s space. “Oliver told me all about the letter, you prick! The day you came to pick up my things, he told you he wanted to give me a letter.” He shoves Potter hard enough for his back to hit the window.

Understanding dawns on Potter’s face. “Malfoy —”

“How dare you!” Draco cries. He grabs fistfuls of Potter’s shirt. He’s not even sure if he’s shaking Potter or if he’s simply shaking in general. “He wanted to explain but you told him no, without even asking or – or consulting me. Why would you do that?”

“Have you ever stopped and tried to put yourself in my place?” Potter covers Draco’s hands with his own, but doesn’t make a move to pull them off. “I had just spent the entire night watching you drink and cry your stupid heart out. You told me a million times you never wanted to see him again. Merlin, you asked me to hex him for you. I thought it was a one time thing, seeing you that pathetic for him. I never thought you actually were. But you are, aren’t you?” Potter laughs, bitter and mocking. “Just look at you. He talks to you once after months and you’re already like this. What happened, huh? Did he beg for you to come back?”

Draco’s grip on his shirt tightens, but he’s unable to speak through the knot in his throat.

Potter’s lips twist cruelly. “Ah, I see.”

“I fucking hate you.” Draco tastes the lie for what it is. The one he hates most is himself.

Potter’s dark emerald eyes lose their fire, replaced by something grim and hard. “If you’re looking for something to hate, then chew on this,” he says coldly. “If he really wanted to talk to you, he would have. A comment from me isn’t going to stop him. He knows where you work, where you hang out. Hell, he could have fucking owled you any time. He didn’t need me to pass it on.” Potter’s next words fall like a scythe, “But he didn’t, did he? So what does that tell you?”

The answer is blinding in its clarity, tearing into Draco until he’s scattered into pieces. The truth that has always niggled at the back of his mind becomes a blaring refrain that’s impossible to ignore.

Draco knows he’s not worth it.

People can like him and want him and lust after him, but they won’t ever fight for him. He’s long accepted that he’s not that kind of person — the kind that someone loves with their entire soul. But he knows it in the way he knows where the cups are kept in the kitchen or which shirt to wear for dinner at the Minister’s house. He hasn’t known it like this. In the same way he knows the soul-searing agony of a chest splitting open or an endless series of Crucios from a mad woman addicted to the sound of suffering.

But he does now.

And in an effort to smother the brutal tempest of emotions that threaten to take him, Draco lashes out at the closest thing he can destroy.

Potter.

Before Draco can even raise a hand, Potter uses his hold to flip their positions. In a sudden, dizzying motion, the back of Draco’s head hits the glass with a thud. He makes a helpless noise as Potter presses closer, thigh shoving in between Draco’s legs. Anger, hurt, and resentment bubble up like boiling water, threatening to spill over, but all of it is eclipsed by the burning intent in Potter’s green eyes.

“You know what, Malfoy?” he whispers, low and quiet, but no less fierce. “Right now, I think I fucking hate you too.”

The ghost of his breath on Draco’s cheek is the only warning he gets before Potter is kissing him. Destroying him with every glide of his punishing lips. His warm, roughened hands grip Draco’s jaw, molding Draco the way he wants him. He gasps, confused and aroused all at once, and Potter uses the opportunity to lick into his mouth, to plunder deeper until they’re both moaning with want. A kiss has never tasted quite like this, Draco thinks distantly. Like whisky and honey. Desperation and lust. Like the best he’s ever had.

A speck of reason pierces through the thick haze of desire and he uses the fingers he has buried in Potter’s hair to wrench him off. Draco has a moment to register the deep red blush on Potter’s skin, his misty eyes, the distinct lack of glasses. Likely fallen off the wayside. A vindictive part of him hopes they’re in pieces. His desire-addled brain takes smug satisfaction in seeing Potter look as wrecked as Draco feels.

When Potter tries to catch his lips again, Draco tightens his hold on his messy curls to what must be the point of pain. Except Potter, the kinky bastard, simply groans and jerks his hips. Fuck.

“Must be nice,” Draco says in between heavy breaths, “to be so above it all. To be able to take whatever you want with whomever you please, and forget them once you’re done. Face no consequences. As much as I hate you, Potter, I wish I was like you. Heartless. Perfectly alone.”

Frustration flickers in Potter’s eyes, but it disappears when he ducks his head and nips at Draco’s ear. “You know what your problem is, Malfoy?” Another nip, followed by sharp bites strung along Draco’s jaw, his neck. Souvenirs of Potter he gets to wear long after this madness burns itself to ash.

Draco closes his eyes against the rush of pleasure when Potter mouths his neck. “What?” His voice comes out a sigh.

“No one’s stopping you from taking what you want, except yourself.” As if to prove his point, Potter grinds his thigh in slow, excruciating strokes against Draco’s groin. Draco’s head falls back against the window, helpless not to thrust back. He’s certain he’s wet already, well on his way to getting drenched. Merlin help him, the way Potter moves should be a crime in at least twenty countries.

“Look at you. Desperate for it.”

Draco grits his teeth against the urge to moan like a bitch in heat. It’s been so long, that’s all. That’s all. “Fuck…you.”

“What do you want?” Potter growls in his ear, then bites it in time with a hard grind of his thigh. Holy fuck. This time, Draco can’t stop the keening noise that leaves his lips. “That’s right. Let me give it to you.”

Potter’s wolfish smile is the last thing Draco sees before his world spins and tilts upside down. He realises belatedly that Potter has shoved him backwards on the king-sized bed when Draco’s back bounces on the springy mattress, his long legs dangling off the side. It’s a disgraceful position, one Draco has no chance to correct. He doesn’t even get the opportunity to feign outrage at being manhandled.

Because Potter, the mad fuck, descends on him like an angry god.

It’s reward and punishment both, the way Potter’s mouth devours him, obliterating any chance of coherent thought. His hands are everywhere — in Draco’s hair, on his jaw, his chest. Buttons start flying in Potter’s wake as he all but rips off Draco’s custom linen shirt. The sound of protest he makes is swallowed by Potter’s lips and just when Draco is gasping, dragging dark messy curls by the fistful so he can pull Potter closer, deeper, Potter leans back on his heels, taking the whirlwind of heat with him.

Suddenly bereft and exposed, Draco shivers as Potter observes with unreadable eyes the mess he’s made of him. The shirt is a lost cause, torn and slipping off his shoulders, unveiling the scarred canvas of skin that is Draco’s chest. Oliver used to wince at the sight of them and so Draco would kiss him and murmur coaxing words of desire. Anything to distract from the hideous marks of Draco’s past.

But Potter, the artist himself, doesn’t blink, his eyes intense. So Draco doesn’t bother with hiding.

“If you apologise again, I’m going to kill you.”

Potter’s eyes snap to Draco, noting the defiant tilt of his chin, and his lips quirk with ominous promise. “No apologies,” he says, “Not tonight.”

The words are heavy, laden with meaning. Friends, colleagues, roommates. In many ways, they’d built a life around each other. With each other. And every ill-advised kiss and illicit touch from hereon threatens to torch all of that into cinders. But if Potter says there’s no need for apologies, then what need of them for regret?

“Just for tonight,” Draco agrees, damning them both.

Potter smirks as if to say, ‘We'll see about that’. Under different circumstances, Draco may have experienced some alarm, but anything resembling sense departs for the midnight train when Potter begins pulling off his t-shirt, inadvertently starting the best strip show of Draco’s life.

It’s been years, ages really, since Draco has last seen Potter fully naked. But the lean, somewhat lanky boy who’d eagerly offered to suck him off in a rotting twin bed that had far exceeded its life expectancy is long gone. Replaced by someone closer to divine, with a body and a face that puts the finest sculptures to shame. All of Potter is mouth-wateringly broad and muscular, from his arms to his chest, his glorious six-pack abs. Yes, Draco has seen all this before. Potter is no shy maiden, but it’s never been like this. With Draco lying beneath him, struck breathless by the promise of dark devastation in his emerald eyes.

As if he knows exactly how close Draco is to the edge, Potter pops the button of his shorts open and pulls them down his thick legs with deliberate slowness.

Every bit of moisture in Draco’s mouth down to his throat evaporates into nothing. His eyes are on Potter’s…well, everything. But mostly on the monstrous bulge that’s straining the fabric of his navy cotton pants. By the time Potter drops to the floor to kneel between Draco’s legs, Draco can probably sketch it from memory. Blindfolded. With his teeth.

Draco sits up on his elbows. “What are you —?”

Potter’s hands sliding up his legs and rubbing the inside of his thighs cuts off the question. “I said I’d give you what you want, didn’t I?” A hiss is ripped from Draco when Potter’s palm finally lands on his aching dick. “Is this what you want?”

Pleasure skitters along his nerves at Potter’s firm grip, but it’s not enough. It’s a single drop of water in a vast desert. “N-No.”

“No?” Potter continues his tantalising strokes and Draco arches to the touch. “Tell me then.”

Draco tries. He wants…skin. His, Potters. Fuck. He reaches blindly and Potter catches both of his wrists with one hand. “Ah, ah.”

A string of curses spills out of Draco’s mouth. “If you don’t get my dick out, I swear I’m going to kill you!”

Potter laughs darkly, the fucker. “That’s the second time you’ve threatened me. Wanna try asking nicely?” he asks with a feral grin, throwing Draco’s hands aside.

Draco would have scoffed at that had he been capable of focusing on anything but the things that were finally (thank fucking Merlin) happening down there. The slide of his zipper is the best feeling in the world, second only to Potter’s warm hand circling his all-too eager prick. Draco closes his eyes and groans. It’s best if he doesn’t see Potter. His sinful face so close to Draco’s leaking erection is more than enough to make him explode.

Unfortunately, Potter’s husky voice is just as bad. “Look at you.” Potter pumps from tip to base, steady and sure. “Wet and impatient. Needy.” Each word is punctuated with a slow, torturous glide. “Desperate yet so stubborn. So goddamned infu —”

Before Draco embarrasses himself by coming from Potter listing the dictionary, he bounces his hips impatiently. “There’s a better use for your mouth, you know.”

“Is that a request?” The movement stops and Draco whines from the loss of it.

He licks his lips. “A…suggestion.”

“Ah,” is all Potter says to that, prompting Draco to open his eyes just in time to catch Potter lowering his mouth onto his cock.

Holy mother of Merlin. “Fuck.”

Potter continues to pump at the base, except now his expert tongue has joined the fray, licking and swirling at the tip. The sounds this pulls from Draco are barely human and when Potter’s lush mouth finally descends like a hot suction, replacing his hand, Draco has to fist Potter’s hair to get a grip on himself. He’s so close to bucking his hips and shoving the rest of his length down Potter’s throat, but he manages to hold back with the last, fading dredges of his restraint.

Something like this needs to be savoured. Potter on his knees, eyes on Draco while he swallows him whole.

Potter makes a gagging noise once his tight throat constricts around his dick and Draco nearly loses his mind. He’s had Potter like this before, but he’s the world’s biggest imbecile for forgetting exactly how all-consuming, how gloriously lush and hot and goddamned eager Potter is. And now all the inexperienced awkwardness is gone. Potter sucks Draco’s cock like a champion. Like he’s born for it. The velvety cavern of his mouth moulded specifically for Draco.

The possessive thought sends Draco over the edge and he starts fucking into Potter’s mouth with frenzied thrusts. “So good,” Draco moans, molten heat pooling in his groin and spreading outward to his limbs. “You’re so…so good.”

He feels Potter’s pleased hum all the way to his bones.

Draco yanks Potter by the hair so their eyes can meet. “You like that?” Draco can’t resist taunting. “Hearing that you’re taking me well?”

Potter’s eyes flutter close, rosy colour blooming on his hollowed cheeks. So sweet, Draco thinks distantly, one second before Potter sucks him so hard, it sends him hurtling unceremoniously to a searing climax. Draco curses as he spills himself down Potter’s throat.

Vaguely aware that he could be hurting Potter, Draco tries to pull him off gently, but the stubborn fool grips him by the hips and holds him there until he’s swallowed all of his come. Afterwards, Potter licks the length of his shaft and laps at the tip while Draco falls on his back, utterly boneless and still shaking from the aftershocks.

“Bend over.”

At first, Draco thinks he’s hallucinating.

Then he feels Potter pull off the rest of his shorts and nudge his knees open. Draco almost throws back Potter’s earlier words about only doing what Draco wants, but one look at Potter’s face tells him the man has neither the patience nor the inclination to humour him. No, at the moment, Potter looks something closer to the Grim Reaper rather than a seductive, playful nymphette.

And on a completely unrelated note, the bulge has somehow, impossibly grown larger.

Draco gulps, his eyes lasered on the wet spot on Potter’s pants.

“All fours, Malfoy,” Grim Reaper Potter says.

Never let it be said that Draco Malfoy is a coward. Because despite the fact that this couldn’t possibly end well for him, he still does as Potter says. Draco flips over, plants his cheek on the sheets, and bares his arse to all and sundry.

But mostly to Potter’s wicked torments. Shit. Is this it? Is he finally going to fuck Harry Potter?

The bed dips and Draco panics. “Potter, the spells. My wand’s in —” He breaks off into a gasp at the rough squeeze of his left butt cheek, followed by a stinging slap that drags an unsolicited mewl from his lips.

Oh, Gods. There’s nothing for it. Draco’s going to die tonight. No wonder Potter hadn’t been too fussed earlier. Regrets and apologies — what use are they when Potter is going to make sure Draco doesn’t survive the night?

“I can hear your thoughts from here.” Potter’s grabby hands drift to the other cheek and give it a hefty smack as well. So it wouldn’t feel left out, Draco supposes. A fair lad, their Potter is. “Just relax, Malfoy. I’ve got it.” Now Potter’s hands are massaging his stinging bottom. “Gods, this arse.” Potter punctuates it with a harsh squeeze. “This arse is mine.”

Only for tonight, Draco adds silently because he doesn’t want to ruin the moment. Especially since the moment features one of Potter’s long, thick fingers gliding down the crack of Draco’s arse. Electric and intense. These aren’t just the feelings Potter’s touch is eliciting, but the spark of his intoxicating magic dancing on Draco’s skin.

Then Draco feels it — sudden lightness. He pushes up only to be shoved firmly down by Potter’s palm on his back. Did Potter just…clean him? Without words or a wand? Draco’s already half-hard, traitorous dick twitches in interest. Before he can wonder about lubrication, Potter’s delicious finger is replaced by his even more delicious tongue.

Draco nearly flies off the bed. Or he would have if Potter didn’t have such a sure grip on his hips. Merciful Morgana, who taught Potter to use his tongue like this? Draco can’t decide between murdering this anonymous lucky stranger or thanking them profusely for their service to humanity.

“Potter, maybe you shouldn’t — ah!”

Potter blows a puff of air in his arse and it’s all Draco can do to stop his knees from giving out. “Shouldn’t what? This?” Draco moans as Potter tongues the sensitive skin around his hole. “But you taste so fucking good,” Potter says huskily, effectively releasing Draco of all his inhibitions. He doubts he tastes good, but he almost believes it the way Potter is carrying on. Like he’s a starving man and Draco’s bum holds the key to the buffet.

And just when Draco thinks it’s too much, too goddamned heavenly that his soul might actually ascend, Potter drifts lower until he’s mouthing and sucking on Draco’s balls. The sound that explodes from Draco is guttural and raw. He’s pretty sure he’s crying a little. He’s definitely begging, that’s for sure.

“Shhh.” Potter stops his overwhelming assault on Draco’s senses to make soothing noises. All the while dropping gentle kisses on the soft skin of Draco’s trembling inner thighs, up the curve of his bum, and then inside his…

Draco moans again and Potter’s cooing nonsense resumes, this time joined by the comforting glide of his palms on the swell of Draco’s arse. “It’s alright. I’ve got you, I promise. Just let me…”

The flat of Potter’s tongue lands with perfect accuracy in Draco’s hole. At which point, Draco is certain he blacks out, a piece of his soul flying out of his body. There’s no other way to describe it — Potter consumes him completely. Draco returns to reality at the feel of Potter’s probing fingers. When they meet his prostate, Draco’s toes curl and he nearly comes, crying out as Potter deftly works him over. His climax is calling him, closer than ever, but instead of answering, Draco grits his teeth and grips the base of his cock tight.

The words come out a desperate plea: “Potter, I need you.”

Potter’s movements halt and Draco mentally says farewell, old chap, to his pride and dignity.

“Fuck me.” Draco squeezes his eyes shut. “Please.”

There’s a pause. When Potter speaks, his voice is hoarse, “I need to get you ready.”

Draco would have laughed if he didn’t feel like a single, raw nerve flayed in the sun. “If you keep going, I’m going to come like a geyser. But I want —” He swallows. “ — I want to come with your cock inside me.”

The silence is louder than thunder. Potter’s magic heightens to a palpable thrum and Draco finally makes the executive decision to look at Potter over his shoulder. It’s unexpected, seeing Potter so disarmed. His gaze is on Draco’s pert arse, expression torn between desire and restraint, and something inside Draco melts like butter.

“Potter, look at me.” Potter’s eyes jump to him in surprise and Draco levels him a calm look despite his nerves telling another story. “You said you’d give me what I want and what I want —” He wiggles his bottom in what he hopes is a seductive way rather than a flobberworm way. “— is to be fucked into the mattress. Do you understand or should I get someone else to give me — ow!”

The curve of his shoulder stings where Potter bites it. “Don’t,” Potter says, sounding pained. “Don’t say things like that.” He mouths at the bite while Draco squirms at the mixture of pain laced with pleasure. Potter’s slick, sweaty form is plastered to his back, muscular arms a steel cage around him. The scent of amber and Potter’s unique musk invades his senses.

Potter is everywhere and it feels divine.

But Potter is everywhere except where Draco really wants him.

Draco rolls his arse back against Potter’s hardness while undignified filth starts pouring from his mouth. “Then give it to me please. I want it so bad. Want you…”

Potter groans in his ear, bites him again, then heaves himself off. This time, Draco doesn’t hesitate to follow him with his eyes. Worth it. So fucking worth it to raze everything to the ground just to see Potter’s beautiful cock once again. Draco should be intimidated, really, by its impressive length and girth. The way it’s flushed angry and red. But anticipation builds in his belly instead, creating a tidal wave of need. Potter gives his dick a couple of strokes, spreading precum from the tip down to the base where his fist rests on dark curls. Their eyes hold the entire time.

Draco licks his lips and sees the moment something within Potter snaps like a tight string.

A heavy palm lands on Draco’s back and shoves him lower. Lower than Draco’s ever gone. Face buried in the sheets and arse high up in the air like an offering to the gods.

Well, one god.

And Draco succumbs, pliant and willing. Because, fucking hell, Potter is finally spreading his legs wide, his arse cheeks even wider. The question of lubrication is answered by the tingle of magic followed by the gush of warm oil in his hole at the entry of Potter’s fingers. Draco’s moans are muffled by the bed. A small consolation for all the indignities he’s suffered, surely.

Except Potter couldn’t let him have that, of course.

“Hold still, love.”

The endearment, so surprising yet sweet, turns out to be a prelude to Draco’s destruction. One moment, he’s melting under Potter’s expert fingers and in the next, he’s crying out as Potter pushes his cock past the tight rim of his hole. Oh, gods. Draco grapples for the bedsheets. It's too much. Too full, too hot, too fucking good.

He’s glad he’s not the only one losing his mind. Potter pants above him, fingers digging bruisingly into his hips and providing anchor as he shoves himself one exquisite inch at a time.

They groan in chorus when Potter bottoms out. The depth of his entry punches all the air out of Draco. It’s as if he can feel Potter all the way to his throat. Overwhelmed and overstimulated, Draco barely has time to catch his breath before Potter begins moving, pulling nearly all the way out before driving himself straight to the hilt. With every slow, agonising thrust, Draco moans and begs for more. Harder, faster. “Potter, please. You hateful motherfucker.”

Potter laughs, breathless and rough. Fiery coals dragging on the ground. His hands drift up Draco’s sweat-slick back with possessive tenderness, followed by movement on the tangled sheets. A change in angle, Draco registers distantly, one moment before he’s hauled up with an arm around his waist and Potter plows into him, a rough upward thrust that hits Draco’s prostate in a manner that births galaxies in his eyes.

“Ah!”

Wildfire licks at Draco’s spine with every brutal snap of Potter’s hips, igniting every nerve along its path and prompting senseless cries to pour from Draco’s lips. Along with Potter’s guttural moans, the rocking of the bed, and the sounds of wet, slapping flesh, they create a symphony of mindless lust that rents the quiet of the room.

Draco doesn’t know how much longer he can last. It’s too much to bear — Potter’s unyielding rhythm, the way he’s draped all over Draco, enveloping him in his scent. Potter’s greedy hands, touching and caressing, pinching Draco’s nipples until they’re sore and swollen. Draco feels like a prisoner, trapped in a tempest of sensation. Potter hasn’t stopped sucking and biting whatever flesh he can latch on. His mouth is on Draco’s neck now while he murmurs wicked words into the ruined skin.

“Gods, you’re so sweet. So tight. Is this what you want?”

Draco rolls his head back onto Potter’s shoulder while he takes it. Potter’s violence. His desire. His hard, brutal fucking. Draco squeezes around Potter’s cock and delights in feeling him shudder. “Yes, yes,” he cries in between breathless moans. Over and over again, Draco tells him how much he loves it, until Potter’s hand slides down to grip Draco’s weeping cock.

All it takes is a couple of tugs and Draco explodes like a dying star. Time, space, and everything in between seem to fold and collapse into itself, leaving nothing but relentless waves of mind-numbing pleasure. It isn’t long before Potter flips Draco on his back, descends on his lips, and joins him in climax with one final thrust. They cry out in ecstacy. The hot flood of Potter’s come inside him has Draco wrapping himself around Potter and dragging him closer so he can suck his tongue.

Somehow Draco can’t bring himself to stop. To end this blazing connection. Not yet, his heart seems to say, and for once, Draco succumbs to it. He kisses and holds Potter close to him for as long as he can, like a dragon guarding his treasure, until bone-deep exhaustion comes to pull the final curtain over his eyes.

Draco drifts to sleep like this, cocooned in Potter’s arms, blissfully unaware of the magic drifting over his body. Cleaning him, warming his skin, and soothing his aches. He barely even shifts when a kiss is pressed on his forehead, followed by a soft, “Goodnight”.

~~~

August 2009 - Paradise Island Cabin #13

Waves swell and crash in the distance. Exotic birds trill on their balcony. The sun peeks through the gauzy curtains, casting the polished wooden interior of the cabin in warm, golden hues. Everything around them is alive, beckoning them to rise, but still, Malfoy sleeps.

And so Harry watches.

He rarely has an opportunity like this, to have Malfoy so still and unguarded. Harry takes his time, tracking the messy fall of Malfoy’s platinum hair down to the winged arches of his brow, his straight aristocratic nose. There’s a dusting of pink on his sharp cheekbones, matched in colour only by Malfoy’s plush lips. Shaped like a bow and pouty even in sleep. Eminently kissable. Insanely fuckable.

A devil wearing the face of an angel.

Gods, if Harry gets any harder, he’s going to turn into stone. It doesn’t help that the sheets have slid down to Malfoy’s stark hip bones, exposing the bruised, kiss-bitten mess Harry had made of his fair skin. Harry fights the urge to touch and lick his handiwork. To bite deeper into the marks so they may last longer.

Harry doesn’t want Malfoy to wake yet. Not until he figures out how to make him stay.

Of course Malfoy doesn’t help. The way he’s purring and burrowing into Harry like a sun-glazed cat is liable to test the limits of a saint. Harry sees the moment his blond lashes flutter and begins the count.

Five…

Malfoy’s grey eyes open, misty from sleep.

Four…

Less sleepy once he takes in the expanse of Harry’s chest he’s pressed into.

Three…

Malfoy stops breathing.

Two…

Still not breathing.

One…

Harry tips Malfoy’s chin up and says, “Breathe.”

Harry feels the shuddering breath and locks his arm around Malfoy’s waist before he can bolt.

“Where are you going?” Their eyes hold — one grey and arrested, the other green and knowing.

“To the toilet,” Malfoy says without missing a beat, which Harry knows is code for “You’ll never see me again because I’ll be escaping through the lavatory window.” Malfoy can always Apparate, of course, but if given the choice, he tends to lean towards the more dramatic one.

“Can we talk about last night first?”

Malfoy turns into cement in his arms. It takes him a long while to answer and when he does, his face is carefully blank. “Nothing to discuss, Potter. I know the deal when it comes to you. Like you said, no apologies.”

Sometimes Harry thinks he’d do anything, including duelling Voldemort again, if it means understanding even a smidge of what goes on in Malfoy’s mind. “What deal?” Harry asks, his voice calm despite knowing he won’t like whatever the answer is. “And what do you mean ‘when it comes to me’?”

Malfoy’s eyes flash with irritation. “You really want me to spell it out?” he asks, his calm neutrality slipping. “I know how you like your one night stands. You don’t have to worry about me.”

“You’re not—” Harry’s voice cracks a little and he shifts his body towards Malfoy until he’s facing him in full. He slides a knuckle down one soft cheek. “You’re not a one night stand, Malfoy. That’s not what this is. I want more with you.”

Malfoy stares at him, confusion written all over his face. “What do you…oh.” His lips fall open while Harry’s heart thuds painfully.

Do you finally get it? Harry wants to say. Do you finally understand what you mean to me?

“I suppose it makes sense.” Malfoy ducks his head and Harry can see his ears turning pink. “Until the wedding at least.”

This time, it’s Harry’s turn to be confused.

“What are you saying?”

“Well, you and me. We’re stuck together.” A laugh punches out of Malfoy, making his eyes sparkle. He leans closer to Harry as though he’s in on the joke. “I’ve made it so you can’t pull anyone while you’re here, haven’t I?”

At the languid strokes Malfoy’s fingers are suddenly tracing on his chest, slow-dawning realisation stalks towards Harry like a B-rated horror movie villain.

“And what about Oliver?” Harry finds himself saying. He can’t believe he’s bringing that idiot up, but he has to say something. Anything. Malfoy’s touch is occluding his common sense.

Malfoy’s lips press in a thin line. “I no longer suffer any delusions about him. You were — well, you were right.” The words seem to drag from his throat. Vindication ought to feel good, but there’s only a pang in Harry’s chest at the hurt Malfoy is so obviously trying to hide. Acting on instinct, he throws an arm around Malfoy’s waist and tugs him close. “At least he thinks we’re together,” Malfoy continues, seemingly unaware of the movement. “I don’t think I can stand it if he knew this is all fake. That I’m…alone.” The last word comes as a pained whisper.

Everything inside of Harry is screaming, “I’m here. It doesn’t have to be fake. Do I not count? Do you really dislike me that much?” Except Harry knows that’s not true, and that is perhaps what makes it tragic.

Because he knows Malfoy doesn’t dislike him at all.

No, Malfoy trusts him; enjoys spending time with him. He’s gone through extreme and unnecessary lengths to help Harry. Remembers his birthday and how he likes his tea. Stocks the cupboard with Harry’s favourite sweets; buys him things without prompting simply because he thinks Harry will like it. He’ll talk to Harry for hours and not run out of things to say.

The truth is Malfoy likes him, but it’s not in the way Harry wants.

Harry doesn’t recall when his feelings towards Malfoy began to change, but he remembers with clarity the jealousy. Searing claws that dug into his chest, making it hard to breathe, every time he saw him with Oliver. The gut-punching discovery that he wanted Malfoy as more than a friend and more than a simple fuck became undeniable, but by then it had been too late.

Maybe if Harry hadn’t been so dense, content with riding the high of his independence, his ability to pluck pleasure with whomever and whenever he pleased, and to drop it just as easily the moment he tires of it, then he and Malfoy wouldn’t be like this. If only he’d cared less of what other people around him thought, perhaps he’d have seen what was in front of him all along.

Now Harry has Malfoy in his arms, pliant and willing, but it’s only because he can’t be with the man he truly wants.

“I find this topic rather tedious.” Malfoy’s arms slide around his neck. “That’s enough talk for this morning, don’t you think?”

It’s painfully easy to melt into the sultry invitation in his glossy, grey eyes, but before Harry lets himself surrender, he lifts a hand to cradle Malfoy’s cheek. “Is this what you want?” he asks, the pad of his thumb rubbing gently over Malfoy’s bottom lip.

With his gaze still on Harry, Malfoy’s tongue darts out to lick the tip of Harry’s thumb. Harry shivers and Malfoy smirks like a devil as he closes his sinful mouth over his thumb and sucks. It takes all of Harry’s famed willpower to resist the urge to give Malfoy exactly what he’s asking for. Somehow he waits, watching the delicious drag of Malfoy’s lips up his thumb before releasing it with a pop. Harry groans at the look of lust and defiance in Malfoy’s grey eyes. Grey like the colour of a gathering storm. Grey like the chains around his heart dragging him under.

Harry is already doomed, but he needs Malfoy to deliver his sentence.

“I want you,” Malfoy says, deliverance and damnation all at once.

Harry has Malfoy on his back in one swift motion and he crushes their lips together with all the desire and frustration he feels in his soul. As if by doing so he can finally carve a place for himself inside of Malfoy’s distant heart.

~~~

Chapter Text

~~~

March 2002 - 12 Grimmauld Place

The sound of voices by the foyer snaps Draco out of the dull haze he’s in. He has stacks of paperwork and business plans spread out on Potter’s burgundy carpet. He’s gone over them so many times, the letters had begun to blur and hiss at him in Parseltongue.

Usually, Potter is here, hovering around Draco. Not in a particularly helpful way, but more in an irritating distraction that draws him into snack breaks and convoluted Muggle board games type of way. Sometimes Weasley and Granger join them, whenever they get bored of each other probably, and it’s…well, it’s nicer than Draco expected it to be, hanging out with the Golden Trio. A lot less hexing and name-calling compared to their Hogwarts years, that’s for sure.

Although it does gall Draco that he’s yet to bankrupt Potter in the high-stakes battle of dominance, wit, and real estate that is Monopoly.

But he will.

Soon.

And what sweet, vicious triumph it will be.

The thought of today being the day prompts Draco to rush to the stairs, with little care to the disarray he’s left in his wake.

Gods, he’d been waiting for hours.

While he and Potter don’t have a solid agreement per se, it’s become sort of an unspoken routine by now that Draco shows up at his house at some point in the day unless they have people to see, classes to attend, or licenses to wheedle from the Ministry. Today was a little unexpected, what with it being Draco’s weekly dinner date with Pansy. But the life of a publicist for England’s best and brightest is one of excitement and endless surprises, and this time Pansy was pulled away by a pop star’s unfortunate encounter with a Tentacle hex in the middle of a busy street.

Kreacher had kindly offered to drag Potter from whatever abyss he’d snuck into, but Draco thought it unnecessary. He knows Potter will come eventually, and he does at nearly ten in the evening. But instead of Muggle takeaway as Draco had hoped, he’s brought with him a stranger.

Tall and lanky, with warm blond curls. The man’s face is pleasing, if not extraordinary. The kind that’s suited to being a children’s Healer or a middling accountant in a middling firm. As inoffensive and benign as anyone can be. He has a nice laugh, though, Draco notes. Light and airy. Potter must be murmuring something truly fucking amusing in his ear for him to make such a sound.

“Let me take your coat first,” Potter says when Pete the Accountant or whatever his real name is (doesn’t matter) stops laughing his nice laugh and leans in for a kiss.

Draco doesn’t stay to hear what other noises Potter can pull from the man. He slinks into the shadows and makes his way back to the study. Kreacher is there bringing in a fresh pot of tea, having already finished organising Draco’s papers.

His eyes widen upon seeing Draco head straight for the Floo.

“Master Draco?”

“Don’t tell him I was here.” Draco pauses by the mantel to level Kreacher with a serious gaze. He doesn’t like using his influence on Kreacher, but this time it feels imperative that Draco escapes unscathed. As though he’ll die if Potter ever finds out. “If he asks, tell him I left two hours ago. Please, Kreacher.”

The ‘please’ is unnecessary. Kreacher acquiesces without question and assures him on his honour that Master Potter will never find out.

Draco leaves quickly, his heartbeat still pounding in his ears. His thoughts even louder.

Of course Potter is dating. He’s young and fit and single. Plus the fact that he’s also Harry Potter cannot be overstated. It’s nothing new either. He was doing so before the injury and has every right to do so after. It’s Draco that’s the problem. Lost in the whirlwind of helping Potter start a gym, nay, Wizarding England’s premier fitness centre, he very nearly lost the plot.

“You look like you need this wine more than me,” Pansy comments when Draco arrives in their living room.

Draco expels a huge breath as he falls on the sofa. “No, what I need —” He turns to her, undoing the laces of his stuffy shirt. “— is a good fuck.”

Pansy squeals, her dark eyes sparkling with excitement. She bounces closer to him. “Darling, I’ve got just the thing. You’ve heard about Blaise’s new sex club, right? The one he started with Theo?”

No. Draco had, in fact, not heard of Blaise’s new sex club. He’d been under the impression it was a café actually. The complicated workings of Blaise Zabini’s deviant mind is explained to him for all of two minutes before he snatches Pansy’s wine, downs it in one go, and tells her he’s in.

Frankly, Draco needs no convincing.

~~~

August 2009 - Camelot of the Seas

So far, fucking Potter hasn’t led to the end of the world yet.

No earth-rending cataclysms or divine hand of judgement falling from the sky. The sun continues to rise in the east. Hell remains sufficiently hot; their pig friends properly grounded. And getting railed by the Chosen One’s masterful dick every day doesn’t change the fact that Potter is a force of nature, and sometimes that nature is called ‘Getting on Draco’s Nerves’.

It’s almost a comfort, really, to find some things remain unchanged.

Except instead of merely contending with your garden variety Potter-isms — stealing Draco’s coffee or going about shirtless or distracting Draco with nifty Muggle inventions (Post-its! Whatever will they think of next, those darned Muggles?) — now Draco has to deal with it in bed too.

The past few days, Draco has slept like a crup’s favourite chew toy. Only in this case, the crup is Potter whose body happens to double as a furnace. Many times Draco was forcibly awoken in the middle of the night, overheated from Potter’s warm torso plastered against his back. And when Draco squirms and complains in a reasonably polite manner, what does Potter do?

He runs his fingers, wordlessly spelled with Cooling charms, through Draco’s skin and tells him to go back to sleep. Sleep! As if anyone can sleep after such a…stimulating disturbance.

Well, sometimes Draco does. Deeply and soundly. The words ‘snoring’ and ‘candidate for a sleep study’ have been mentioned in tones of concern. Claims Draco has dismissed as baseless slander. But there are times it’s hard not to help himself. Where it’s easier to simply roll his arse back against Potter and let the inevitable happen.

One would think that with Draco being so very pliant and accommodating, Potter would be too. But no, he proceeds in typical Potter fashion to be stubborn and incorrigible.

“Body paint? Really?” Potter observes his feline reflection in the bathroom mirror with a grimace. “We couldn’t just wear cat ears?”

Draco lowers his black-tipped paint brush from Potter’s cheek to glare at him. “Cat ears? Do you hear yourself when you speak, Potter? Or is it just the clanging of cymbals twenty-four seven? Might as well wear plain robes and signs on our chests that say ‘Lion’ and ‘Dragon’ like complete idiots.”

“Why not? That’s what Ron is doing.” Draco snorts at that and Potter smirks. He sidles closer, warm hands coming up to rest on Draco’s hips. “I suppose it’s fine as long as I get to paint you too.”

Draco narrows his eyes, ignoring the distracting way Potter’s thumb strokes his hip bone. “Over my dead body. Now stop bloody moving so I can get your whiskers on.”

Of course Potter does the opposite and moves despite being told outright not to, and his whisker ends up stretching all the way to his lightning scar. He looks demented but also deeply unapologetic.

“Whoops, guess we’ll have to start over. Come on then.”

Draco gets no warning before Potter hooks an arm around his waist and hoists him over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. He heads for the shower. “Potter, you savage!” Draco screeches. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Need to get all this paint off first, right?” Potter’s hand slides up his leg to palm Draco’s arse through the thin material of his pants. They’d both undressed earlier for ease of painting which, in hindsight, might have been a mistake. “May I?” Potter asks politely, in contrast to his increasingly impolite, groping hand.

Draco watches as the blue and grey, speckled shower tiles come into view. The animal-themed party is only two hours away. As it is, they’re already pressed for time. As it is, they may truly end up with lame signs around their necks like utter pillocks. But as it is, Draco is really, really into whatever Potter is doing with his arse.

“Fine,” Draco says in the most begrudging tone he can muster. The only thing is, he can’t quite hide the eager shiver that runs through him when Potter drags his waistband all the way down.

~~~

Now if Draco were being honest, he’d rather have frustrating, hogs-all-the-covers Potter than the other Potter. The one who is…sweet. Caring, even. The kind that soothes Draco after sex and takes his time to clean him; who knows when he’s cold and drapes his coat on him without being asked. Someone who holds his hand and often for no good reason. The kind of Potter that messes with his head.

Draco doesn’t expect that side of Potter to appear a few nights later while they’re playing Paintball in the ship’s hold, of all things. But perhaps he should have, given that it seems to be Potter’s destiny to always play the hero.

At first, Draco thinks Potter is up to nefarious business again when he crowds Draco against a stack of metal shipping containers, until he hears the loud explosion in rapid succession. Thud, thud, thud.

Draco stares at the crimson streak on Potter’s cheek with frozen horror. Blood is the only thing his mind is capable of processing. Potter’s blood.

“Oh gods.” Draco’s hands become wild and searching, grasping at Potter’s tactical vest. A goddamned vest. Pansy may as well have sent them out stark naked for all the protection they offered. “Potter, Potter, look at me! Are you —”

Several more thuds follow, and then Potter is lifting his head from where it had fallen on Draco’s shoulder, his lips cast in a pained smile. “Pansy couldn’t make these hurt less?”

Relief washes over Draco like cooling rain, quickly followed by grave embarrassment. Because of course it’s not real blood, but paint. The game is called Paintball, for fuck’s sake. Merlin, Draco has lost his mind.

Unfortunately for the unseen attacker, he’s also lost his patience.

“Let me at them! They hit you five times?” Draco shoves at Potter’s chest, but the stubborn fool refuses to budge. Both of his hands come up to plant themselves on either side of Draco’s head. “Potter, you idiot, what are you doing?”

“What does it look like? I’m protecting you,” Potter says with a lopsided grin.

Draco’s jaw nearly falls to the floor. Who says things like that? Without any hint of irony? Draco searches Potter’s deep green eyes and finds only sincerity, albeit laced with mischief. Of course the reckless lunatic is enjoying this. Unbelievable.

This isn’t even the first time Potter’s performed casual, heart-stopping gallantry. No wonder all his former flings are obsessed. Despite all evidence to the contrary, Potter knows how to act like the perfect boyfriend.

And Draco only has two more days with him.

Not for the first time, Draco reminds himself he should be glad there’s a time limit looming over their heads. Otherwise, certain childish delusions he’d long ago buried may rise up and dance on his ashes. Already, he feels the stirring of an unsightly emotion in his chest, one that grows more intense and needy with each passing day.

Draco has always been selfish with the things he considers his. However, the fact his irrational hindbrain can’t seem to comprehend is that Potter doesn’t belong to him at all. He’s not an object to take and keep for himself. Far too many had held this delusion and suffered for it. Draco has seen it all, witnessed the trail of broken hearts who thought they’d be the one to finally hold the elusive Harry Potter down. Draco knows better than to end up like them.

So although it’s becoming more difficult with each passing day, Draco holds back. He resists the urge to unravel in Potter’s arms. To be soft for once. To be weak. Because somehow, he and Potter still have to live with each other after this.

“Hey, you okay?”

Draco shakes his head free from the tangle of his messy thoughts and manages a smile Potter won’t even see because on top of everything, some genius (Pansy) had shut off all the lights. No sense in making it easy for them is likely the running logic for Pansy and Luna’s complex operation. “Of course I’m —”

“Aww, how sweet.”

It takes only a moment of surprise to catch him off guard and Draco pays for it when he feels a blunt explosion on his leg.

“Fuck!”

Draco is hopping on one foot, cursing the culprit to hell and back in at least three languages, when he turns to find Blaise. The tip of his wand is lit, illuminating the smug smile on his handsome face.

“You,” Draco growls.

“And me.” A familiar figure steps from behind Blaise. Tall, dark, and Evil Incarnate.

Draco hadn’t thought of Theodore in ages. Not since his catastrophic falling out with Blaise. In the aftermath of their pseudo-divorce, Blaise had won custody of him and Pansy and that had been the end of that.

He wrinkles his nose. “Ew, Theodore. What are you doing here?” Then to Blaise, “And why haven’t you killed him yet?”

“Wouldn’t miss our dear Pansy’s wedding for the world. Also, she blackmailed me into coming,” Theo answers at the same time Blaise says, “Haven’t decided how yet.”

Theo directs a pout at him. “Darling, you said you’ve forgiven me.”

“You cheated on me, you fucker, and you nearly ran my business to the ground.” Blaise directs his gun at Theo’s pale throat. “You’re lucky if I don’t cut off your balls with a dull razor.”

Because he’s a sick lunatic, Theo grins at the threat and steps close until the tip of the gun is pressed firm enough into his skin to leave an indent. “Mhmm, you always did know how I like it, my love. Remember when…”

The rest of Theo’s words Draco decides to tune out. For Potter’s sake, he hopes he is too. Blaise is listening, though, and instead of punching Theo’s eminently punchable face, he actually giggles. Giggles.

There truly is no accounting for taste.

Draco drags Potter by the arm. “That’s our cue to go. Ah, ah. No, Potter Don’t look back or you’ll turn to salt.”

Together, they make for the exit, dodging stray paint bullets and overeager combatants along the way. At one point, Draco spots Bole. But drawing upon the deep well of fortitude and restraint that rests inside his spirit, Draco resists the urge to make him pay for the bludger incident. Someday, though. Someday.

The well is deep, but not limitless.

When they finally cross the threshold and the briny wind hits his face like a slap, Draco takes a moment to close his eyes and calm his heart.

Potter’s arms brush against his as he rests them on the railing. “Your friends are quite…”

“Insane?”

“Well I was going to say interesting.”

“Inasmuch as Dragon pox can be interesting to some people, I suppose.” Draco slides a glance at Potter and notes the bloody paint that’s stuck to his skin and hair. “You need a Cleaning spell, Potter. Several of them.”

Potter stretches his arms above his head and sighs. “I think I’d rather shower. Care to join me?”

Draco directs his gaze from the promising glimmer in Potter’s eyes to the dark, moonlit horizon. In two days, they’ll have reached the southernmost tip of the world. Signs of it appear every day. Cooler winds despite the warming barrier around the ship, floating ice sheets, and unique magical creatures. Just the other day, they’d spotted mermaids, with scales the texture of iridescent ice, sunning on an iceberg. And there’s more to come — Frost Giants and Ice Crumple-Horned Snorkacks and darling penguins, if Luna is to be believed. Sights Draco could never have hoped to see from his comfortable, boring perch in England.

He’d called Pansy a mad woman for taking them here, and she is. Without a doubt. But perhaps not for this reason. Draco is starting to realise that his best friend simply had the bollocks to not give a shit about what others thought.

His eyes once again drift to Potter. “Actually, I have a better idea.”

~~~

August 2009 - Paradise Island

Malfoy is trying to kill him.

That is the only logical explanation for why he’d used the island portkey to bring them back to the beach and ordered Harry to take his kit off in nearly the same breath.

“I’ve always wanted to go skinny dipping,” Malfoy had said.

And Harry has only ever wanted him, so —

Here he is, doing Malfoy’s bidding and losing a jagged piece of his heart along with every item of clothing Malfoy takes off with a delighted laugh. At this point, Harry’s seen Malfoy naked in nearly every conceivable way. He’s made a point of doing so just in case he never gets the chance again after the wedding.

However, this — the moonlight draping its unearthly silver glow all over Malfoy’s naked porcelain skin while he skips over the glittering water like a nymph exceeds everything that’s come before it. Malfoy seems so unreal, so far beyond his reach, that Harry ends up revealing his desperation for all the world to see. He drags Malfoy close, digs his fingers into the hinges of his jaw, and kisses his soft, shiny lips to prove that he is.

Real, that is.

It’s hard to put a name to the urgency that’s surging in Harry’s veins. The burning need to sink into Malfoy’s skin, to carve through muscle and bone, and live there. To take and take until the hunger in his soul is sated.

Malfoy doesn’t shy away from the fierce onslaught. Instead, he revels in it. He throws his arms around Harry’s neck and melts like hot wax under his touch. The clash of their tongues and grind of their hips echo the rhythm of the crashing tides around them. Despite all this, it’s not enough. It rarely is. The only time the madness wanes is when he’s buried deep inside of Malfoy.

Harry’s hand slides down wet, silky skin to fist their cocks. The water laps at their knees, adding contrast to the heat pooling in his groin. “Want you,” he says with a lingering bite on Malfoy’s bottom lip.

Malfoy throws his head back with a moan while Harry strokes them both. He looks at Harry through heavy-lidded, misty eyes. “We can add that to the list then,” he says in between breathy gasps. “Skinny dipping and…” Another gasp. Nails dig into his shoulders. “Fucking on the beach.”

Dark invitation is written all over Malfoy’s face, more tempting than the devil himself when divesting poor sods of their souls. One Harry is helpless not to answer. After one last stroke, Harry gathers him by the hips and lifts.

Malfoy makes a strangled noise, his eyes widening. “Potter, what are you doing? I can walk!” he demands even as he wraps his legs around Harry’s waist like a lemur.

Harry kisses the protest away and carries him back to the shore with ease. Well, perhaps not complete ease. The drag of his dick in between the crack of Malfoy’s arse is sensual torture unlike any other and the harsh bite of the wind does nothing to cool it. By the time he reaches the spot where they’d abandoned their clothes and lays Malfoy down, Harry is holding on by a single, fraying string.

Malfoy’s no better, his pretty cock leaking all over Harry’s belly. His breaths come out from his wet, kiss-bitten lips in rough, harsh bursts.

Perfect is the only word Harry can think of as he watches Malfoy laid out before him like a feast. Flushed pink and dewy from the sea. Eager legs spread wide, hips undulating erotically, every bit of Malfoy is begging to be ruined.

So Harry does.

He starts by settling between Malfoys thighs until their cocks are flush. They groan in unison at the delicious friction and Harry uses the opportunity to slip two fingers in Malfoy’s mouth.

“Suck,” he says, even though there’s no need to. Malfoy’s already wrapping his lips around his fingers like a vice, sucking from base to tip and back again, his smoky eyes on Harry the entire time.

“Look at you,” Harry murmurs, “So beautiful. So eager.” He punctuates each word with a pump of his hips, the glide of their cocks igniting sparks of electricity along his nerves. More fingers are added to the fray, until Malfoy is moaning all over his knuckles, spit glazing his chin and eyes hazy with desire. It’s tempting to fuck Malfoy’s mouth when he’s like this, but Harry knows it’s not the time. Not when Malfoy had asked so nicely to be fucked on the beach.

Harry has four fingers deep inside Malfoy’s clenching hole, working him open, when he feels palms on his chest, shoving him back. “Potter, wait. Not like this.”

Confusion slackens Harry’s muscles enough that when Malfoy pushes him again, his entire world tips over. Suddenly his back hits the sand, punching the air out of his lungs, and everything becomes a messy jumble of limbs and confusion until Malfoy — the linchpin of Harry’s universe — straddles his hips and lowers himself on Harry’s cock.

Pressure so hot and intense enfolds his entire length that Harry has to grip Malfoy’s hips to stop himself from bucking up. He grits his teeth and lets Malfoy take his time, savouring his little moans until his arse rests on Harry’s hips.

Grey eyes flutter close at their joining. “Ah,” Malfoy breathes out in wonder. The colour of his skin is a rosy pink now, like strawberries and cream.

Harry licks his lips. He’s always had a fondness for sweet things. “This what you want, darling?” he asks, hands coming up to palm Malfoy’s arse.

“Yes,” Malfoy moans as he grips his cock and starts rolling his hips.

Harry hisses at the motion, at the exquisite tightness all around him. “Take it then,” he manages. “Take all you need.”

For a while, Harry simply lets Malfoy ride him and chase his own pleasure. It’s only when Malfoy starts raking his nails down Harry’s chest, crying for more, that Harry plants his feet on the sand and fucks into him in furious drives until their both groaning in ecstacy.

“Ha–Harry, I’m close, I’m…oh gods.”

Malfoy drops to his chest, unable to keep himself upright, and Harry wraps his arms around him without breaking the rhythm of his thrusts. “Say it again.” He sucks a bruise on Malfoy’s shoulder. “My name.”

Malfoy turns his tear-stained face towards him. “Harry.”

Harry groans, the motion of his hips growing wilder and rougher. He’s so close to the edge, it feels like he’s dying. With another bite to Malfoy’s neck, he growls, “Again.”

“Harry, Harry, Ha — mhmph.”

Harry pulls him by the hair for a violent kiss, in time for the thunderstorm brewing in his veins to break and consume him completely. He hears Malfoy cry, feels him tighten convulsively around his cock, and knows he’s coming too. Though seemingly impossible, Harry holds him closer. His name an undying litany on his lips.

“Draco. Draco. Draco.”

Not long after, Malfoy collapses in a dead faint. And like he always does, Harry cleans him and takes him back to their bed. He watches him sleep, but instead of the usual contentment settling in his bones, there’s only grim conviction.

Harry is a fool for ever thinking they can go back from this. He should have known from the start. For him, there’s only this or more. Not friendship or a ridiculous fake relationship. Not even fucking Malfoy is enough. No, what Harry needs is the beach and all that it represents. Magic, wonder, explosive connection. All that with Malfoy for however long he can have him.

Now that he’s admitted it to himself, he’s prepared to do everything he can to get it. Even if that means serving Malfoy his pathetic heart on a platter. There isn’t much time. Tomorrow being the eve before the wedding, what ought to be their last night together. But that will have to change.

Because tomorrow, Harry makes a vow to tell Malfoy everything.

~~~

May 2006 - Lightning Fitness Centre

Harry,

Thanks for all your support for the past three months. I doubt I’d have recovered as well as I have without you and your amazing team. You guys are doing fine work there and I’ll make sure everyone I know hears about it.

These tickets aren’t enough to thank you, but I hope you enjoy the first game of the season. Bring a date! ;) Or a friend. Listen, if there’s anything you need, just let me know.

Oliver

Harry grabs the tickets and makes for the door. His mind goes to Ron first. Newly married, newly moved into a house, and newly promoted, his best mate definitely needs the break. Except…well, it seems hardly fair to take Ron out and leave Hermione in the dust.

At least that’s what Harry tells himself as he makes his way down the hall, towards the mahogany door bearing a neat gold-plated sign.

Draco Malfoy

Physical Magi-Therapist

Harry rolls his eyes every time he sees it. His door doesn’t even have a sign and he owns the damn place, but of course Malfoy had to have one. Says it makes patients feel “assured” and “confident that they’re in the hands of a professional”.

In Harry’s opinion, it’s more because it makes Malfoy feel “important” and “better than everyone”.

The door is already slightly ajar and on any other occasion, Harry would have simply barged in, but the sound of voices coming from inside stops him.

He recognises Malfoy instantly, but it takes him a while to place the other one as Oliver’s. He’s not sure why he’s so taken aback or why he decides to hide out of view. Malfoy had been Oliver’s main therapist for the entirety of his treatment and both had been working together for months. It makes sense that they’d talk.

Except Oliver’s last day should have been yesterday.

“Hmm, everything looks in order,” Malfoy says. A shuffling of papers highlights his words. “Your trainer seems to have you on the right track. But again, if you feel any discomfort, you speak up. Alright?”

There’s a smile in Oliver’s voice. “I will. Thanks for looking over my training plan.”

“Don’t thank me yet. Did you think I did that for free?”

Oliver laughs. “I would never. You can owl me the invoice.”

“Don’t think I won’t.”

“But what would it take, though? To have you on permanently?”

Harry nearly makes a noise, annoyance giving way to a feeling more serious. Is Oliver really poaching Malfoy under his nose?

“Oliver…”

“Alright, alright. I won’t ask again.” A beat passes. “I guess this works out anyway.”

“What does?”

“Well since you’re no longer my therapist, I can ask you on a date.”

There is only silence for a long, long while. Silence and Harry’s pounding heart.

“A…date?” Malfoy’s voice sounds incredulous. “With me?”

“I should hope so since you’re the one I’m asking,” Oliver says. “I like you, Draco, and I would really like to get to know you if you let me.”

There’s an indrawn breath — Malfoy’s. “You…like me?”

“Is that so hard to believe?”

Malfoy laughs at that, sharp and hollow. “How do I count the ways? Honestly, Oliver, I don’t know what to say.”

“Yes would be a good start,” Oliver says eagerly. “Harry says you never say no to sushi.”

There’s a pause. Harry stops breathing. “He said that?”

“Yeah, the other day I asked him what restaurants you might like.”

“So he, um — I mean, he knows then. About this.”

“I guess so? Is something wrong?”

Yes! Harry wants to say. He’d thought Oliver was just asking for recommendations when he’d said, “So where do you and Malfoy usually like to eat?” out of the blue the other day. He didn’t think it was for this — because Oliver liked Malfoy.

Harry tries not to think about what he would have said instead if he knew.

“No, no,” Malfoy says quickly. A binder snaps with finality in the background. “Sure, let’s do it. Why not? How does tonight sound?”

“Tonight?”

“Is that a no?”

“No! I mean yes. I mean — I’m confused.”

Malfoy laughs again and this time it rings with sincerity. Harry doesn’t stay around to hear them make plans and walks quietly back to his office. Belatedly, he realises that he shouldn’t have stayed around at all.

Maybe that’s why he’s feeling queasy and uncomfortable. He’s violated Malfoy’s privacy and Oliver’s too. Besides, what Malfoy gets up to outside of work is his own business. Harry’s seen the glitter in Malfoy’s hair on some mornings and the red marks that he tries to hide from under his collar. He knows what Malfoy does when he says he’s going out with Pansy or Blaise.

But he’s never brought anyone he’s dating around. Certainly not someone Harry knows like Oliver. His former Quidditch Captain together with his former Quidditch rival. It’s a little…weird.

Yes, perhaps that’s what it is.

They’re two people who Harry knows that couldn’t be more wildly different. Who wouldn’t feel odd about it?

Harry opens the door to his office to find Ron spinning on his leather chair and chomping on his Chocolate Frogs. No one really respects Harry’s authority around here, that much he’s long accepted.

“Hermione wants to know whether we’re having game night at our place or yours?” his best mate asks by way of hello.

“I don’t know. Yours, I guess.” Harry throws the tickets on the table. “Just not next Friday. We’re watching the match.”

Ron nearly falls over the chair reaching for the tickets. “Bloody hell that’s bril — wait, why is it all crumpled?”

Harry drops into one of the armchairs in front of his desk. With a lazy flick of his wand, the tickets right themselves again.

“There. Fixed.”

“I’ll never get used to that. So how’d you score these?” Ron smirks. “Or should I even ask?”

‘Oliver Fucking Wood’ blares through Harry’s mind like an emergency siren, but his mouth says, “Oliver…Wood.”

Ron nods, tearing open another frog. “Ah. Good man, Wood.”

For a second, Harry considers telling Ron about Oliver and Malfoy, but decides against it. After all, it was only dinner.

It may not even amount to anything.

~~~

August 2009 - Camelot of the Seas

Draco thought he’d left his lavatory window climbing days goodbye, but it turns out he’d simply been waiting for the perfect opportune moment.

And what better time than the morning after he’d moaned Potter’s first name while he rode him on the beach like some lovesick sap in a cheesy bodice ripper Draco definitely doesn’t read and cry to in the privacy of his bed covers. Even the briefest recollection of how desperate he’d sounded, how Potter had surely read every soppy emotion on his face like a picture book with large block letters, makes every pore on Draco’s skin start to sweat.

Draco doesn’t even know where he’s headed actually. What with it being polar night this time of year, the pitch-black darkness that envelopes the sky for most if not the entirety of the day drives everyone to sleep in. Not to mention the impossibly tall, fearsome waves rocking the ship as they cross the deadly waters of the Drake Passage. So named after the ancient kraken that resides in it. Legend says that it’s simply his fun way of saying hello.

Or that he’s hungry. Either of the two really.

After a bumpy journey up the top deck, Draco finally settles on one of the lounges next to the pool. A kindly gentleman in striped bermuda shorts, a bow-tie, and a jaunty sailor’s hat brings him a cup of tea, thereby creating the perfect atmosphere for Draco to brood. He wraps his thick shawl (a gift from Mother) tighter around his shoulders, blows the waft of steaming smoke from the cup, and looks absently at the dark open sea.

There’s no getting around it.

Fucking Potter had been a bad idea.

Of course it was never going to be simple. Nothing with Potter ever is. He’ll always be different — special — and it has nothing to do with his name. But because Draco has known him since he was eleven years old, in nearly all the awful and brilliant ways one can know a person, and somehow the fascination has never ceased. No. In fact, it’s…escalated.

Stupid, stupid Draco.

He vanishes the tea, draws his knees against his chest, and buries his face in it. He was on the cusp of screaming his frustrations to the wind when loud conversation rolls around the corner.

“Lucian, stop it.”

At Oliver’s voice, Draco scurries to the ground and plants his stomach flat on the floor. As far as hiding places go, it’s about as flimsy as a house of sticks. Draco can only hope the lovely couple is too occupied with arguing to care about looking under pool chairs for erstwhile eavesdroppers.

“Look, we both agreed this is only for the wedding,” says Oliver. The sound of footsteps grows closer and a pair of sandaled feet come into view.

“I know!” Bole bursts out. “But give me a good reason why it can’t be real. You like me, don’t you?”

“Not that way, Lucian. You’re my friend, but…” A heavy sigh. “Maybe this was a mistake.”

“A mistake?” Lucian asks. “Pretending to be your boyfriend so you can show up your ex is mental. But guess what? I did it anyway because I love you, Oliver!”

“Lucian, you were the one who sug — what was that?”

Draco slaps a palm over his mouth, but it’s too late. They’d heard his gasp and were now even marching towards his hiding spot. Draco doesn’t bother to hide (not that there would have been anywhere to go). He’d been terribly confused at first, but not anymore. What Lucian said couldn’t be any clearer.

Oliver Wood is a fucking liar.

He faked having a boyfriend because…why? Draco knows why he did it, but what was Oliver’s reason?

“Draco?”

Draco sits up and meets Oliver’s horrified face. Lucian’s horrific one he mostly ignores. “Oliver, I believe we need to talk.” His voice comes out collected, an impressive feat considering he was not only caught eavesdropping, but with his body plastered to the ground.

“I…” Oliver swallows, cheeks burning red. “I’m sorry. I can’t do this right now.”

Draco tries to give chase, but Oliver is an elite athlete and already halfway across the deck by the time he gets to his feet. Bole, an elite prick who by chance happens to be a slightly less elite athlete, sends him a venomous look before departing after Oliver.

Draco watches them go, heart hammering in his chest.

Should he run after them? Confront Oliver? Pretend it never happened?

Wild thoughts run through Draco’s mind with the speed and ferocity of a ricocheting pinball and before he even realises it, his feet had led him back to his quarters.

To Potter.

He knows how his other friends will react. Pansy will no doubt double over cackling, then demand he repeat every embarrassing detail before offering another one of her terrible ideas. Meanwhile, Blaise will be with Theo whose face Draco refuses to see more than he absolutely has to. But Potter — well, Potter usually has some decent advice to offer.

As if to prove that he’s made the right decision, Draco nearly runs into the man himself when he opens the door to their suite. With his tousled hair and rumpled hoodie, Potter looks like he’d been in a rush to leave.

A flash of surprise crosses his green eyes. “I thought I’d have a harder time finding you. Where have you been?”

“I took a walk.” Draco closes the door behind him and pushes past Potter.

“A walk?” Potter follows. “At eleven in the morning?”

“That’s a perfectly reasonable hour.”

“Not for you.”

“Listen, Potter.” Draco stops short of the doorway to their bedroom and whirls on Potter. “I’m not going to argue with you about the logistics of walking. Not today and perhaps not ever. There are much more important things I have to tell you.”

Potter’s brow furrows at that. “Like what?” he asks cautiously.

“It’s about Oliver!” Draco exclaims.

Unsurprisingly, he’s met with little interest and receives only a blank stare from Potter for his trouble. But Draco’s too excited to let that dampen his spirits and he presses on, “I happened to overhear him and Bole talking during my walk, and get this: they’re not really dating! It’s all fake and I think…I think he did it because of me,” he adds the last part with some hesitation, looking to Potter for either confirmation or denial, but Potter’s face remains a complicated mask.

“What are you going to do?” he asks, toneless.

Draco bites his lip, a sinking feeling in his chest. He suddenly doubts his choice of coming here. “I was hoping you could tell me actually.”

Potter’s brow shoots up to the sky. “Are you serious?” He scrubs a hand down his face, a humourless laugh gusting out of him. “Gods, you’re something else. Aren’t you, Malfoy?”

“I just wanted some advice,” Draco says, taken aback by the fury in Harry’s voice. The hurt. “Forgive me for thinking I could come to my friend for —”

“But I’m not your friend, am I?” Harry bursts out, his green eyes flashing with emotion. “You’ve made sure of that, haven’t you? I’m just a guy you fuck with before Oliver Fucking Wood comes skipping back into your life.”

Draco’s mouth becomes slack, but he’s unable to make a single sound. It’s like the ground is crumbling beneath him and there’s nothing to hang onto. “That’s not…that’s not true.”

“Which part?” Potter challenges. “Why are you so hung up on that bastard anyway? So what if he’s not really dating Bole? That doesn’t mean you have to crawl back to him like some pathetic —”

“You have no idea what it’s like!” Draco’s hands curl into fists. “You treat relationships like they’re milk. Good enough for a few days. Maybe a week. But I spent two years with Oliver. Were they perfect? No. I know I can be a lot, but he stayed, Potter.” His words come out as a plea. “He’s the first one — no, the only one to treat me like I’m something more.”

Potter rears back as if he’s been slapped. “Didn’t I stay too? All these years…was I not there for you longer than he has?” Potter asks with a voice so raw with pain that Draco stops breathing altogether. “I guess it’s my fault for not telling you sooner.”

“Tell me what?”

“Where do I start?” The wistful look in Potter’s eyes makes Draco’s heart clench. “That I’m in love with you? Have been for years and I beat myself up every day for not realising sooner?” Draco hasn’t even noticed how close they’d drifted to each other until he feels the back of Potter’s hand on his cheek, a soft caress. “You can do with that what you want, Malfoy. I won’t tell you what to do.”

Faint as the brush of a butterfly’s wings, the touch retreats just as quickly, and Draco is left staring at Potter’s back as he disappears through the door. Helpless and paralysed. Grappling with a world that’s been thrown completely off its course.

Meanwhile, in the bedroom, a tiny barn owl taps on the round glass window, bearing a letter.

Draco,

I’m sorry for running off like that. If you haven’t completely blocked me from your life as I surely deserve, I’d like to explain.

I’ll be waiting for you at the Observation deck.

Oliver

~~~

Chapter Text

~~~

February 2009 - 12 Grimmauld Place

Harry bounds from the cellar two, three steps at a time. The bottles tucked against his side clink in warning, but it’s hard to contain himself. It’s as though his feet are buoyed by little wings. The exact same wings that’s making his heart soar.

When Malfoy stumbled into his Floo at midnight, a broken trophy handle in his hand, eyes crystalline with tears, and looking so clearly lost, Harry had been beside himself.

“Who did this to you? Give me a name.”

Of all the names he could have given, Oliver’s is the last thing Harry had expected to come up. For several seconds, he simply stared at Malfoy, utterly dumbstruck at how stupid Wood is to let him go. And where had Malfoy gone? Not to Pansy or Blaise or even Vince. He’d gone here.

To Harry.

Is it proper to celebrate the end of someone’s relationship? To enjoy hearing Malfoy speak of Oliver like he’s worse than Voldemort? Probably not.

Is it wrong to feel a sense of anticipation? Of rightness? Because Harry would never do this to Malfoy. If he was lucky enough to have a chance, he’d never let him go.

A few steps from the drawing room, Harry stops to calm his breathing. The walk to and from the cellar is far from strenuous. It isn’t even necessary, with Kreacher around who dotes on Draco like a mother hen. But Harry needs the time to collect himself, to temper the wild hope stirring in his chest. He reminds himself that somewhere beyond that door, Malfoy is still hurting and the last thing he needs is Harry taking advantage of it.

All his preparation ends up being for naught because when he steps inside the cosy, firelit room, Malfoy is already soundly asleep on his sofa and snoring into a throw pillow.

Harry sighs and bends down to pick up the empty wine glass on the floor, Malfoy’s fingers still entwined with the stem. Did he finish the rest of the bottle when Harry left?

He feels a tug on the sleeve of his jumper and turns in surprise to find Malfoy staring up at him with red-rimmed, grey eyes.

“You left,” he accuses.

Harry sets the glass on a nearby table, careful not to detach himself from Malfoy’s grip. “You asked me to get more wine.”

Malfoy pouts. “No more wine.” He scooches further into the sofa to make room for Harry to sit.

It’s not a large sofa and Harry ends up pressed to Malfoy’s hip. “Fantastic idea. Let’s get you into bed, shall we?”

Harry tries his best coaxing voice, but Malfoy shakes his head. “No bed. Hate beds.” He holds onto Harry’s wrist with both hands as if it can stop him.

It can.

Harry recalls Malfoy had been in bed when Oliver broke up with him and he grips his knees to get a hold of his anger. “You can stay here,” he offers.

Malfoy beams brightly, and it chases the shadows from his sad eyes. “Mhmm. Yes, I like it here.”

I like you here, Harry thinks as Malfoy snuggles into the pillow again. He supposes there’s no helping it. He takes one of the quilts hanging off an armchair and drapes it over Malfoy.

Malfoy, already half asleep, gives a thankful sigh. Although Harry’s promised not to take advantage of his vulnerable state, he allows himself the simple pleasure of brushing the hair off his peaceful face.

“Potter?”

Harry’s hand freezes where they are. He’s scrambling for an excuse (“There’s a bee on your forehead.”, “I’m stretching my arms and your face was in the way.”) but Malfoy’s next words mark them all as irrelevant.

“How come I’m never enough?”

Harry’s heart seizes in his chest. He stares at Malfoy’s closed eyes, wondering if he’s hearing things or if Malfoy is simply talking in his sleep. Perhaps it’s this ambiguity that drives Harry to lean close and whisper, “You are to me.” For once, speaking the words he’s long kept to himself.

Harry waits and waits, a cluster of doxies in his belly, but time passes interminably and Malfoy’s eyes remain shut. And when his soft snores fill the quiet of the room, Harry sighs and accepts that at least for now, he’ll have to keep on waiting.

~~~

August 2009 - Camelot of the Seas

The sun lies low in the horizon when Draco emerges from his suite, and he’s met with a wintry seascape cast in the deep blue and purple hues of twilight. Despite the Barrier spell the cruise boasted on their pamphlet, the passage’s famed ruthless waves still manage to pull the ship into a fitful dance as though it were nothing but a piece of driftwood.

The ocean’s way of laughing at their paltry human magic probably.

Draco nearly tips over many times, which is only one of the many reasons why he’s beginning to realise following the letter is a bad idea. But he wasn’t exactly in the best place to make decisions ten minutes ago. Not after he’d spent forever rooted to the floor of their suite, trying to make sense of Potter’s words.

I’m in love with you.

No matter how many times Draco turns it over — upside down and sideways, backwards and forwards — he isn’t able to find any interpretation other than the bald-faced truth.

Potter loves him.

He’d said it with his naked heart cracked open all over his face and yet Draco had done nothing but stand there in a pale imitation of a lamp post. At least lamp posts are useful. Draco is decidedly not.

The door shutting close snapped him out of his reverie and Draco had sagged against the wall, weak-kneed and spinning. How can the world remain the same when his entire being feels irreparably changed?

Potter loves him.

Why? How? Since when?

At that point, Draco realised that he’d just let go of the one person who had the answer to all of his questions, like the total arse that he was.

He was on his way to find Potter when he heard the insistent tap on the window and read Oliver’s letter. It seemed obvious to him then. He’ll meet with Oliver, yell a little, demand answers, then search the ship for Potter. After all, wouldn’t it be best if he faced Potter free of all the baggage he carried?

Only now Draco is second-guessing himself.

Here he is, waiting at the Observation deck like an idiot, wasting his time yet again on Oliver who’s nowhere to be seen, who likely doesn’t even want to be found, when every minute that passes is a minute Potter could be spending changing his mind about wanting Draco. And that’s the last thing he needs because…because damn it, Draco wants Potter too.

More than Oliver. More than he has wanted anything in the world.

Fuck this. He needs to go back.

“I really don’t know what any of them see in you.”

Draco whirls at the icy voice to find Bole. And while he’s never been a fan of Bole’s appearance by any means, this time he actually does look terrible. Unkempt blond hair, stubbled jaw, dark smudges under his eyes, and a general aura that says he’s really going through it. Like he’s been to hell and back, in a handbasket made of Venomous Tentacula.

“Look at you,” Bole continues, approaching him with long, menacing strides that trigger warning alarms in Draco’s brain. “You’re so desperate, you didn’t even think twice about whether the letter’s in Oliver’s writing, did you?” He laughs mockingly. “Even with the announcement to stay in the rooms because of the waves, you’re still here. Exactly like I knew you’d be.”

Draco frowns. He vaguely recalls there being some sort of announcement earlier as he was leaving his suite. But to be fair, he’s heard a million useless announcements on a near daily basis since he’s been here. Case in point:

Dearest Passengers, lunch is being served in the Winter Hall.

Dearest Passengers, if you have consumed today’s clam special, please report to the Infirmary immediately.

Dearest Passengers, if you look to the left side of the ship, you will find a pod of Ice Merfolk sunning on an ice sheet. A rare sight found only in these waters. Wave and say hi. This may be your only chance.

Apologies, Passengers. Do not wave and say hi. Cover your ears and evacuate to your rooms. These are not merfolk, but sirens. I repeat, do not wave and say — MERLIN, COVER YOUR EARS GODDAMNIT.

While that last one had actually been important as well as entertaining (for the ones that didn’t fall overboard and had to be rescued anyway), most of the time, Draco prefers to tune out the sound of the captain’s voice for his own sanity. Also, he’s had a lot on his mind, alright? And now here’s another one to add to his giant cake of confusion — because what the hell did Bole bring him here for?

“Okay?” Draco arches a brow. “Brilliant work at being a giant freak, Bole. I’ll have a medal minted in your honour. Now stop wasting my time and say whatever it is you want from me.”

Bole jabs a finger at his chest. “I want you to stay away from Oliver, whore.”

Well, that’s a bit much, in Draco’s opinion.

Sure, he mocks people who deserve it and applies sarcasm as liberally as the recommended sunscreen use, but to resort to childish name-calling? Tacky business.

“Did Oliver ask you to say this?” Draco smirks when Bole’s lips tighten. “Because what I gathered from your little conversation earlier is that Oliver would prefer that you stay away from him.”

“That’s not —” Bole closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. He seems to be making an attempt to calm himself at least, based on the sound of him counting to ten under his breath. The effort is appreciated, but it obviously doesn’t work because when Bole opens his eyes, they’re wilder and twitchier than ever. “See, you don’t know the whole story, alright? So why don’t you just shut your fucking mouth for once?”

The warning signs are there, but a large, very non-Slytherin part of Draco is simply too pissed off to care. “I think I understand the story well enough, thanks,” he clips out. “You’re an obsessive creep, Bole, and I’m really interested to know what Oliver is going to say about you luring me here and threatening m —”

“Just stay away from him!”

Draco sees the attack coming and has his wand ready, but what he doesn’t account for is Bole reaching for him with his bare hands. They’re wizards for fuck’s sake. Draco has no qualms about ducking to the side and blasting the git with an Expulso. Bole slams against the rails with a satisfying thud before flopping on the floor.

Could Draco have used a lighter spell? Sure. Did Bole deserve a lighter spell? Hell, no.

“Look, I don’t know what the fuck’s going on with you, but you need to calm down,” Draco says, approaching Bole’s prone form. Fortunately or unfortunately — Draco hasn’t decided yet — he seems to be alive, the rise and fall of his chest is even and unlaboured. Draco prods a shoulder with his foot to no response. “In case you forget, you’ve brought this on yourself,” he mutters. “I can’t risk you hurting anyone else. Incarce —”

The spell ends up bouncing off the side of the ship when a hand suddenly grips Draco’s ankle and pulls. This sends Draco flying and landing on his arse while Bole, possibly possessed by the spirit of a relentless ghoul, takes advantage and pins him down. Draco’s wand clatters uselessly to the ground.

“How about you brought this on yourself, Malfoy?” Bole roars in his face. “Turnabout’s a bitch, isn’t it?”

Gods, Bole looks terrifying up close. Plus, he’s getting spit all over Draco’s face. If this isn’t making it to the Top 5 Worst Moments of Draco’s Life, right up there with Voldemort branding his skin like cattle and getting Cruciod by Aunt Bella (all in the same night, mind you), he doesn’t know what will.

“What the hell are you on about? What did I ever do to you?” Draco cries, struggling against the punishing hold. His confusion has been swallowed by fear. He’d told Pansy this wedding was a terrible idea, but did she listen? Now Draco won’t even have the satisfaction of telling her ‘I told you so’ because he’ll be dead!

“You’ve taken everything from me!” Bole squeezes his wrists painfully tight, Draco fears they’ll snap. “Harry, then Oliver! You disgusting Death Eater whore.”

“Be reasonable, Bole!” Draco attempts a coaxing tone. “That’s only two people. Surely that can’t be everything you have. What about your fam —”

“Don’t talk about my family! They’re all dead!” Bole yells, prompting a flurry of spit that Draco tries yet fails to dodge. Dear. God. He would really love to be dead too at this point. In his defence, how is Draco supposed to know the intimate details of Bole’s familial situation?

Thankfully, the reminder of his dead family seems to have distracted Bole enough to allow Draco enough purchase to knee him in the balls.

As far as self-defence techniques go, it isn’t the most honourable, but it is terribly effective. And while Bole is groaning and cupping his (hopefully) broken balls on the floor, Draco crawls forth to his wand. There — just a few inches from the rails, rolling to and fro, rocked by the dangerous motion of the tides. When he hears Bole’s pained moans start to fade and the sound of stumbling footsteps grow louder, Draco rushes to stretch his arm towards the wand and makes it.

Almost.

“Expulso.”

He feels the polished hawthorn on the edge of his fingertips before he’s blown away.

Under different circumstances, perhaps Draco would have hit the railing. Perhaps that’s even what Bole had intended. But as established by recent events, Bole is an idiot and hadn’t accounted for Draco being too close to the edge.

Aided by a timely wave that sends the bow pitching downward at the same moment the spell hits him, Draco soars over the rails…and falls. He swears he sees Bole’s horrified expression before he goes down, but Draco averts his eyes to the sky instead. Isn’t it a terrible enough fate to die by drowning? Surely Bole’s godawful face can’t be the last thing he sees as well.

It’s odd.

Falling to near-certain death feels a lot like flying. The rush of wind on Draco’s back is familiar as is the vast sky in front of him. His heart pounds just like this, a thundering drum that sends adrenaline pumping through his veins. Draco feels the call to close his eyes, to imagine himself elsewhere — a bit of peace before everything fades to black. He’s halfway to the Hogwarts Quidditch pitch, drawing closer to a waiting dark-haired boy in scarlet Quidditch gear, when Draco yanks himself away.

How many times has he felt the touch of Death in his short life? He’d felt it in the spill of hot blood on the cold bathroom tiles. In the searing lick of flames against his ankles. In the words of an evil man condemning his family to die if he failed. Yet all of those times are more preferable than this silent, helpless submission. Should Draco die today, he’d rather do it screaming and fighting to his last breath.

Regret comes roaring like a tempest in his lungs that bursts out into a loud curse directed at the dim, shadowy sky. Release, relief, and grief intertwine at everything that could now never be. Draco lifts a hand towards the ship, a hopeless effort to grasp someone beyond his reach.

In the next second, his body breaks the water.

After that, nothing matters anymore. Without a wand, Draco is helpless to fight the primal force of the South Sea. Tides more violent than a rampaging dragon and colder than a dementor’s touch latch onto Draco and drag him into dark oblivion.

~~~

August 2009 - The South Sea

Harry’s heart drops along with Malfoy.

If he’d been a minute too late, he’d have missed it; would have simply seen Bole by himself on the observation deck and moved on with his life. But after seeing what he’s done, Harry is certain he could murder Bole with his bare hands. Although that will have to wait, because nothing is or has ever been more vital than saving Malfoy.

Harry hears Bole yelling in the background and with a flick of his wand, sends him flying to wherever. Harry hopes it’s not overboard. He’s still bent on revenge after he’s assured of Malfoy’s safety. Harry has never wished for a broom more than he does at the moment. Even though he’s sprinting for his life, it still feels like he’s running through molasses.

Meanwhile, Malfoy could already be drowning.

Harry shakes the terrible thought away before leaping over the railing and diving into the sea. He sees the moment Malfoy disappears in the water and feels his heart catch in his throat. He knows it’s unlikely, but he shouts after Malfoy in the hopes that he can hear him through the impossible divide of air and sea between them.

Hold on. Wait for me. I’m coming.

When Harry hits the water, he’s met with a barrage of cold, relentless waves and total darkness. It’s too much to handle all at once. His mind and body scream at him to return to the surface, but Harry disregards everything aside from the pounding in his chest, propelling him to swim deeper.

It’s easy to get caught up in the chaos of the sea and his fearful thoughts, but over the years, Harry has learned to handle his emotions better. To close his eyes and find that calm island within him. He goes there now and becomes utterly still, directing the warm pulse of his magic into a wide arc of pure light that illuminates the oily gloom.

There.

With Malfoy’s white-blond hair floating around him like a shroud and his body hanging lifeless in the dark, Harry is all of a sudden thrown back to a similar scene a lifetime ago. Except the one waiting for him in the water had been Ron and much of the danger had been a lie. All of it had been real to Harry, though. The stakes, the fury, the desperate need to save the person he loves. In this, nothing has changed. Harry won’t let anyone take Malfoy from him. Not even Death.

Fear hardens into steely resolve. He reaches Malfoy in a few sweeping motions and holds him tight. There’s no time to check on his well-being or to feel relief. Harry’s lungs are burning and the Warming charm he’d cast silently won’t hold for long. Already, he feels shadows curling around the edges of his consciousness.

It’s dangerous to Apparate like this and to take another person with him only compounds the difficulty, but Harry has no choice. With an urgency that’s belied by his steady movements, he gathers his magic in his hands, savours the heat of it, the frenetic pulsation. He waits for it to swell to its fullest before directing it to his wand where it bursts, enfolding him and Malfoy like a veil of sunlight.

This close to blacking out, Harry is unable to form a concrete location in his mind, so instead he focuses on the feelings of home. Of safety. Of warmth. At his fervent wish, Harry’s magic bends to his will and he disappears with Malfoy tucked close in his arms, the crack of Apparition smothered by the sea.

~~~

August 2009 - ???

It takes a few moments for Harry to orient himself to his new surroundings, but once he does, he isn’t surprised to find himself here. While Grimmauld has evolved into a home — a fuller one once Malfoy had moved in — Hogwarts will always be Harry’s first.

No wonder his magic had taken him to this place in such a crucial moment. Not only to Hogwarts, but to Hagrid’s hut specifically. As a student, he considered the place a refuge and that did not change even when he got older. Harry still visits Hagrid as often as he can.

There’s comfort in the fact that the hut has stayed the same over the years. A single room, a quarter of which is occupied by a massive wooden bed, covered with a patchwork quilt. The rest of the place is cosy, if cramped. Charming knitwork coexists with hunting tools while mismatched furniture provides a backdrop for pheasants and herbs hanging off the ceiling. Despite it being summer, the fireplace is roaring, Hagrid’s favourite kettle boiling inside it. Something Harry is thankful for as the icy numbness of his bones begin to fade.

His attention snaps back to the man in his arms, alarm rising when Malfoy’s chest begins to heave huge, hacking coughs. Harry tries to soothe him, but Malfoy falls back into unconsciousness after the coughing fit, his skin freezing cold and deathly pale to the point of being grey. Harry feels for a pulse and finds it weak and thready.

The door slams open. “Who the bleedin’ hell are — Harry?” Hagrid deep bellow turns into a squeak. “Wha' are yeh doin' here?”

Harry doesn’t look away from Malfoy. “Hagrid, I’m going to need your help.”

Without hesitation but with heaps of confusion, Hagrid gathers the supplies Harry fires at him while he carries Malfoy to the bed. Luckily, Harry was trained to respond to hypothermia during Auror training. Perhaps the one good thing to have come out of that experience.

Well, that and Malfoy.

Harry lays him down and uses the quilt to cover him after Vanishing his wet clothes. He follows it with a Drying spell and several Warming charms that run without him having to maintain it.

“Mind tellin’ me wha' happened ter Draco?” Hagrid asks as he brings over more blankets and heated bottles.

Harry takes his time, tucking Malfoy in and feeling his pulse. When he finds it steady and the skin warm to touch, Harry allows himself to sag against the bed and to the floor. Belatedly, he realises he’s still wet and dries himself with an absent wave of his wand.

He gives Malfoy another glance before facing Hagrid. “I saw Bole push him off the ship and he fell.” Harry gathers his knees to his chest and buries his face in them. The weight of all that had happened, all that he could have lost, crashes into him like a tidal wave. “Gods. He would have drowned if I hadn’t been there.”

A heavy hand grips his shoulder. “But he didn’t. Yeh saved 'im, Harry,” Hagrid says gruffly. “An' why would this Bole fella do tha'? Could it be an accident?”

“No…I don’t think it was,” Harry says, his voice grim. “I’m going to kill him, Hagrid. I swear I’ll —”

“Not without me.”

They both turn to the bed. Harry is half off his arse when he drops back to the floor, the force of Malfoy’s swollen yet stormy grey eyes holding him down. Alive, alive, alive, his heart sings.

“No one is killing Bole but me. Understand?” Malfoy says it with such conviction that Harry’s almost convinced he’s well. But then he starts coughing into his hand and Harry is up again, summoning a glass of water.

“Drink first.”

“Merlin’s hat,” Malfoy wheezes, rubbing his chest. “I’m not an invalid, Potter. I can drink without help.” Malfoy takes the glass from him and Harry watches him like a hawk for signs of choking. Satisfied he’ll be okay, Harry drops next to him on the bed and settles a hand on Malfoy’s shoulder, unable to stop himself from touching the warm skin.

“So why did Bole try to kill you?”

“Because he’s a lunatic!” Malfoy bursts out, spilling some water onto the quilt. “I’ve been telling you since he tried to knife me, but did anyone listen? He’s got it in his head that I stole you from him and that I’m going to steal Oliver too!”

“Killing ye’s a tad extreme, innit?” Hagrid comments.

“Right?! That’s what I said, but he didn’t like that, obviously, and now — oh gods.” Malfoy grips Harry’s arm suddenly. “Oliver might be in danger too.”

Harry stiffens. “You’re thinking about him now?”

Malfoy pales, his eyes widening. “No, no.” He shakes his head and stops. “Well, yes. But it’s only because his fake boyfriend’s proven himself to be unstable. I’d be concerned for anybody. Heck, I’d even worry for Theo.” His lips twist in a grimace. “Well, maybe not —”

“Stop.” Harry gets up and turns away. “You don’t have to explain. Hagrid will alert the Aurors and I’ll Apparate us back. The wards shouldn’t be too difficult to get past. And then you can save Oliver like you want—”

“Wait! Potter, please.”

There’s a thud and Harry looks back in time to see Malfoy picking himself up off the floor, muttering curses under his breath as he struggles to keep the voluminous, Hagrid-sized quilt from drowning him. A rosy flush spreads from his face to his neck, and the appearance is so different from his previous corpse-like visage that despite feeling rightfully annoyed, Harry finds it all to be…endearing.

Not for the first time, Harry thinks of love as a curse.

Or a terrible joke the universe is playing on him.

“Alright, you listen to me, Harry Potter,” Malfoy huffs once he’s done wrapping the quilt around his body a dozen times. He resembles a child wearing his mother’s frock, but of course Harry’s stupid brain thinks it’s the most charming anyone has ever looked. “I admit I’m not very good at this…feelings business. But I’m going to do my best, okay?”

At Malfoy’s serious gaze, Harry braces himself for the worst. He’s only seen this look on Malfoy when he’s faced with a complicated problem. Harry supposes in this case, that makes him the complicated problem. Him and his inconvenient feelings. He wishes Hagrid isn’t around to witness such a low moment for him, but ultimately, it doesn’t matter where this happens as long as it does.

Maybe hearing Malfoy’s rejection point-blank will finally be the first step to a cure for what he’s feeling.

“I love you.”

Harry blinks. The words hit him like a Stunning spell, suspending the air in his lungs and rendering him immobile.

“So I’m goin’ ter be sending those owls, I’m thinking,” Hagrid says quickly. “Scuse me, lads.”

There’s shuffling and heavy footsteps and the scrape of the door, but neither he nor Malfoy look away from each other. Malfoy’s eyes are unwavering, so unlike Harry who feels like the ground has fallen beneath him.

“I just wanted to tell you before we go near the damned sea again,” Malfoy says quietly, his fingers twisting the edge of the quilt into knots. “I was so scared I wasn’t going to be able to after I…after I nearly d-di —” When the words trip into a sob, Harry closes the distance between them and drags Malfoy into his arms.

It’s heaven, embracing Malfoy after thinking him lost. Harry inhales his skin and his hair, wishing he can simply breathe all the rest of him in and keep him safe forever. They stay like this for a long while. Quiet sniffles are pressed into Harry’s skin and a suspicious wetness grows on his shoulder, but Harry doesn’t call it out. It’s not like he’s much better, the way he’s trembling all over and squeezing Malfoy far too tightly to be comfortable.

“I nearly died.” Malfoy pulls back, but Harry doesn’t let him get very far. His grey eyes are shimmering with tears. “And the only thing that was on my mind when I was falling is that you’d think I’m dead without ever knowing how much I love you.” Malfoy pauses, and in his broken face, Harry sees the truth of his words. “I’m such an idiot.”

Harry runs a thumb down a pink, tear-stained cheek. “No, you’re not.”

“Yes, I am!” Malfoy insists. “I should have gone after you as soon as you left and to hell with fucking Wood or Bole or whoever. No one else matters.”

Harry inclines his head at that. “Okay, maybe a little bit,” he relents, which makes Malfoy scowl despite all his earlier claims. Harry tips Malfoy’s stubborn chin up. “Say it then. How much you love me.”

Flames burst on Malfoy’s face. “I…” He stops, looking uncertain. For a second, Harry thinks Malfoy won’t say more — doesn’t expect him to, really.

Until he does.

From Malfoy’s lips comes a beautiful, breathless laugh and traces of it linger when he finally speaks, “I’ve been in love with you for years, Potter. I don’t even know when I knew.” A wrinkle appears between his brows. “Was it when you kissed me that first time? Maybe before that, back when you saved my life even when I didn’t deserve it.” Malfoy smiles at him, small and a little strained. “I thought I’d given myself away so many times. I’d meet with you and leave, scolding myself for being so obvious and thinking surely you could tell, but…you never did.”

Harry makes a pained noise. He pitches forward, forehead dropping on Malfoy’s shoulder. “I guess I’m an idiot too,” he grumbles.

A kiss is pressed to his unruly hair and gentle fingers stroke the curls at his nape. “You’re not allowed to speak ill of the man I love. Only I can do that.”

Warmth unspools in his chest and Harry lifts his face. “I love you too,” he says, suddenly desperate to let Malfoy know. To make sure he’ll never doubt it again.

Malfoy’s eyes soften into liquid mercury and in their depths, Harry sees his own emotions reflected back at him, clearer than the purest spring. With grasping hands, Harry pulls Malfoy in for a deep kiss. It’s like sinking into the ocean again, except this time the waves are calm and soothing. A balm for his tired soul.

In between searing kisses, Malfoy manages to speak. “Draco,” he gasps. “If we do this for real, you need to call me by my name.”

Harry groans his approval into the kiss and says it. “Draco” Like a prayer. “Draco.” Like a spell. “Draco.” Like a promise.

Merlin knows how far they would have gone if they hadn’t heard Hagrid gingerly knocking at the door, asking if they’re ‘doin’ alright in there’ and ‘ready ter go back’.

As a matter of fact, Harry isn’t. He’d much rather abduct Draco back to Grimmauld and make up for lost time, but…

Bole is loose in Pansy and Luna’s wedding and Harry’s conscience can’t let it pass without being resolved.

Also, he’s promised Draco retribution.

“Before anything,” Draco gestures to his quilt, now severely rumpled and slipping dangerously low to his hips after their exertions. “I’m going to need some clothes.”

They both turn to Hagrid who scratches his shaggy head sheepishly.

“Aye, I might have somethin’ for ye.”

~~~

August 2009 - Hagrid’s Hut

Did Draco think he’d be chasing down his ex’s murderous fake boyfriend wearing Hagrid’s old Hogwarts uniform that’s been haphazardly spelled to fit him?

Not at all.

It’s hard not to question which specific life choice has sent him careening to this point, but there is some comfort in knowing Professor Snape will never see it.

“It suits you.”

One person is enjoying it at least.

Draco stares at Harry, unimpressed. He hasn’t missed the way Harry’s eyes keep straying towards the gold and red striped tie around Draco’s neck like it’s made of actual gold and he’s part-niffler.

“Imagine if you’d been in Gryffindor,” Harry adds in an awed voice.

Heat blooms in Draco’s cheeks. “Are you serious? We’d have tried to kill each other in the bathroom after a month instead of six years.”

Harry frowns at that. “Or we could have become friends sooner once we knew each other better,” he argues, sounding so sincere, Draco has no doubt he genuinely believes it.

Sweet, innocent Gryffindor.

“This coming from the one who rejected my handshake of peace before we’d even stepped foot in Hogwarts?” Draco laughs. “Face it, Po—Harry, you were determined to despise me, and I made it easy for you by being effortlessly despicable. To you anyway,” he adds with a sniff, “To everyone else, I was the epitome of charm.”

Harry’s lips twist into a smirk, eyes dropping to the tie then back to Draco. “The Hat wanted to put me in Slytherin, you know. We’re more alike than you think.”

Draco’s first instinct is to laugh. Uproariously and with much knee-slapping. But at Harry’s smug expression, the amusement dies in his throat. “Lies,” he accuses. There is simply no way. Harry Potter is the most Gryffindor to ever Gryffindor outside of possibly Godric Gryffindor himself.

As if to taunt him, Harry’s left brow lifts in a distinctly Slytherin fashion. “It said I’d do very well there, but I said no so he put me in Gryffindor.”

At first, Draco wants to be appalled on behalf of his clearly superior house, but then he realises how much of a blessing that was. The thought of what could have been runs through his mind like a grainy Muggle film montage — Harry, young and doe-eyed, waiting for him in the common room. Harry emerging from the showers in only a towel, steaming and damp. Harry sleeping in the bed next to his while Draco secretly wanks to the image of him post-shower. Harry with his green, green eyes draped in Slytherin colours, dark hair windswept after a Quidditch match.

Salazar have mercy. Draco would have surely flunked out of Hogwarts for not getting any schoolwork done. There are few crimes he wouldn’t commit for a chance to see Harry wear his Slytherin tie and nothing else.

“So, er, yeh boys leavin’ or wha’?”

The jarring addition of Hagrid’s gruff voice to his erotic fantasies sends Draco jumping a foot in the air. Harry casts him a sly look as though he can read the exact content of Draco’s thoughts.

Draco mutters a quiet, “Piss off,” under his breath while Harry, the smirking, unrepentant bastard, entwines their hands together for a Side-Along.

There’s a tickle in Draco’s ear and a gravelly whisper of “Keep the uniform later,” before the ground falls from underneath his feet and he’s sent spiralling to the other side of the world.

~~~

August 2009 - Camelot of the Seas

After their disgraceful knee-buckling, leg-sprawling arrival in their suite, he and Harry immediately start scouring the ship for either their friends, Oliver, or Bole himself. In time, however, the search progresses to anyone, just any person at all. It’s almost like the ship had been abandoned, leaving only eerie white hallways and large, empty swathes of space that echo loudly with the sound of their footsteps.

They considered sending a Patronus, but decided it’s too risky since they may end up alerting Bole of their presence before they were ready.

“Bole hasn’t gotten to all of them, do you think?” Draco asks Harry after they finish searching another floor with no trace of anybody. “Or what about pirates? What if the ship was overrun?”

Harry shuts the broom closet he’d been inspecting close and swoops in to give him a quick kiss. “I doubt it’s pirates and I really doubt Bole can take all of the guests on. Something’s definitely off, though.”

“What was that for?” Draco asks, referring to the far too fleeting kiss.

Harry shrugs and flashes him a lopsided grin. “You looked worried. Thought I’d distract you.”

Draco blushes despite himself. “Well, I’m still worried!”

“I could try again.”

Draco gives Harry a good shove to establish dominance. Salazar on a cracker.

“Wait, look at that.”

Draco lifts his face and sees several figures standing at the top deck. Whether they are pirates or passengers is unclear, but their loud, angry voices are starting to carry all the way down to their level and Draco doesn’t wait for their words to become distinct. After exchanging a single wordless look, he and Harry sprint in tandem towards the stairs.

The question of where all the people went is promptly answered after they stumble onto the top deck.

A quick scan tells Draco that everyone on the ship, from each strangely dressed staff member to every bewildered guest is here. It’s almost a miracle the ship had not tipped over yet. Strangely enough, it isn’t quite as chaotic as it should have been with so many people gathered in one place. In fact, for all their loud arguing, everyone is lined up into rather orderly rows. For what reason, Draco couldn’t tell at first, not until Pansy’s dark head sprouted above the crowd like Venus emerging from seafoam.

If Venus was keen on wearing yellow sundresses, floppy hats, and standing on bars designed to look like the South Pole with its myriad of cute stuffed penguins dressed as waiters.

So maybe not like Venus after all.

But despite the rather adorable circumstances, Draco’s favourite girl in the world, the best woman he knows despite her assemblage of terrible ideas, still manages to look intimidating as fuck.

“Listen, you moaning lot,” Pansy says into her Sonorous-enhanced wand, “My best friend, Draco Malfoy, is missing —”

“And so is mine,” Ron adds from behind Pansy. “Ours.” He wags a finger between him and Hermione. “Harry Potter. You may have heard of him.”

“Do you mind? This is my announcement,” Pansy snaps, palm coming up to cover the wand. Not that it helps. With her normal voice, the spell really isn’t necessary.

“But I just thought —”

“Shush now.” Pansy makes a shooing motion at a red-faced Ron and continues, “So as I was saying, my man of honour, Draco Malfoy — pale of face and weak of constitution. Well-known for his abysmal survival skills, I might add — has been missing for several hours. I have reason to believe he has been wrenched from the safety of my bosom intentionally. That’s right!” Pansy nods fervently as does Luna next to her, wearing a matching sundress, but in blue. “I speak of foul play!” she cries.

“Foul play!” Luna echoes.

“Of malicious intent!”

“Malicious intent!

“What proof do you have?” someone yells from the crowd.

Pansy steps dangerously close to the edge of the bar and places a palm on her chest. “I feel it here in my beating heart,” she says in a solemn, earnest voice that makes the hair on the back of Draco’s neck rise. “My best friend is in danger.”

There’s silence, likely shock from the discovery of Pansy’s heretofore non-existent heart.

“Bit much, Pans,” Blaise comments from the side, breaking the quiet spell.

“Also, Harry wouldn’t leave the ship without telling me,” Ron adds, clearly unaware of his best mate’s secret skinny dipping excursion with Draco a few nights ago.

Pansy makes an annoyed noise. “Circe’s tits, Weasley, will you stop bumming my show?”

“I’m not…”

While the announcement of his grisly fate is derailed by petty argument, Draco feels a nudge to his side. “Should we let them know we’re here?” Harry asks.

Draco keeps his eyes on the proceedings. The crowd had started jeering and throwing stuffed penguins once Pansy explained that they would have to undergo questioning before being allowed to leave.

Draco folds his arms across his chest and sniffs. “I think I’m fine, thanks.”

Abysmal survival skills indeed.

“Draco…”

Merlin, his name in Harry’s deep voice paired with the comforting weight of his palm against the small of his back. It’s worse than an Imperius.

“Alright, fine.” Draco relents, but only because the cute penguins did not deserve this awful treatment. He stomps over towards the nearest pool chair and calls for everyone’s attention.

Unsurprisingly, no one listens.

Harry hands Draco his own wand at the same time some idiot from the crowd shouts, “May as well hold a funeral if your best mate’s fallen in those waters.”

“How about I hold your funeral, dickhead?” Draco’s enhanced voice rings across the entire deck and he bestows a smile and a wink at the dumbstruck crowd like the consummate professional that he is. “Missed me?”

There’s silence again which Draco assumes is shock at seeing his handsome face when they’d thought it lost forever. The calm lasts for only a second before it’s overrun by pure pandemonium.

“You wasted our time, lady!”

“Is this another game?”

“Why’s he wearing a Hogwarts uniform?”

“Oooh. Look, darling, it’s Harry Potter!”

Draco ignores the angry mob and the poor penguins they chuck, his eyes on Pansy who’s quickly carving a path towards him with grave intent. Whether to welcome him into her warm bosom or to strangle him for causing so much trouble remains to be seen.

He decides not to leave it up to chance.

“Everyone, please!” he cries. “I’m here to announce that there is a murderer among us.”

Pansy halts a meter from him while the others explode in relieved sighs.

“I knew it was a game!”

“Didn’t we play this one already?”

“Can we get back to work?”

“Who’s steering the ship?”

“Merlin, it’s a real one this time!” Draco bursts out. He scans the crowd and points at a familiar blond head not too far from him. He’s almost thankful for the audacity of the rat bastard to stick around, thinking he can get away with murder. “That man, Lucian Bole, lured me to this very deck earlier and threw me overboard!”

Instead of looking at Bole’s half-guilty, half-You Seriously Believe This Lunatic expression and possibly losing his appetite, Draco focuses on Harry who appears behind Bole with a wand pointed at his back. A firm warning in case he even thinks of escaping.

Their eyes meet over the crowd and Draco smiles. Harry winks back and it’s almost like their Auror days, but better. No paperwork for one.

Oh, and Potter loves him. A fact that cannot be overstated enough.

“Is this true?”

Draco’s gaze drops to Pansy who stops before him, her face uncharacteristically serious.

“It’s not!” Bole cries. He tries to grab Oliver who’s next to him and misses. “He’s a liar! Why would I do that? I’m not a murderer, Oliver. You know me!”

Oliver looks uneasily between him and Bole, as if he isn’t sure who to believe.

Oh, for fuck’s sake.

“You’re right about one thing. I am a liar,” Draco admits loudly and with no small amount of pride, “Sometimes because I need to be, and sometimes for fun. Keeps things exciting. You know what I mean?” He spots Blaise and Theo nodding emphatically. “But in this case, I’m telling the truth. Bole!” he calls sharply, “You probably still have my wand on you, don’t you?”

Bole has a second to look properly stunned before Draco summons his wand and it comes hurtling to his fingertips. Draco holds it up like a newborn baby and watches as the crowd’s expression changes from ambivalence, to shock, and then comprehension. There’s a few who still appear deeply confused, but alas, there’s not much Draco can do about that.

Perhaps they can read about his impressive tale of survival in the papers like the rest of the world will.

“It’s not like I meant to do it!” Bole exclaims, red-faced. “It was an accident.” He spreads his arms wide in a bid for understanding, but everyone around him scrambles backwards as though fearing they’ll be next.

Draco narrows his eyes. “That’s the only reason you’re not slithering on the ground with tentacles for arms. As it is, we’ll do this right and proper.” A sentence Draco never thought he’d say. “We’ll both go through questioning with the truth serum, but in the meantime and until the authorities get here, you’re under arrest.”

Does Draco have the power to speak for the aforementioned authorities and arrest people? No.

Are the authorities coming any time soon? Considering all the bureaucracy-shaped hoops law enforcement has to jump through to arrest someone on international waters paired with the persistent grudge of one Gawain Robards? Probably not.

Does Draco desperately want to see Bole locked in the hold? Yes. Yes, he does. Frankly, if this had been a pirate ship, Draco would have insisted he walk the plank.

“You can’t arrest me,” says Bole, ruining everything for Draco once again. Fuck. It’ll be the height of stupidity to allow Bole to go free and not cuffed to a steel pipe.

Before Draco can start making up laws and lying through his teeth, another voice speaks up. “He can’t, but I can.” Ron appears next to Harry and flashes his flashy badge from the breast pocket of his purple and green tie-dyed shirt.

Draco expels a relieved breath. With Ron being so…Ron, it’s easy to forget that he’s actually a competent and important person. Career-wise at least. When he’d dropped out of Auror training to join a ‘special strategy division’, Draco had simply assumed it was a flimsy excuse to cover up the fact he’s not cut out for field work and never thought about it again.

But then a couple years later, Draco remembers asking Harry what Ron does for work, if he even does anything. Because he’s either always around, moaning about the Cannons while eating all their snacks at the gym, or gone for weeks on end. One time appearing late at a fundraising party held at the Minister’s house through a washroom vent. Draco, trousers down and dick in his hands, had been aghast to say the least.

Harry’s first response had been to give him a long, assessing stare before asking Draco if he knew James Bond.

The answer was no, of course. Back then, Draco did not know the suave, well-dressed, devilishly handsome Muggle who defeated villains with his clever, but obviously magical devices. But after watching all his ‘movies’, Draco had avidly told Potter he wished he did know the man. Mostly in the biblical sense.

The reason why Potter had suddenly lost his entire James Bond collection overnight is starting to make sense to Draco now.

There’s another clamour as a man claiming to be captain of the ship, but could easily as well be a random person in a captain costume, informs them that only he has the authority to arrest people because the ship is his jurisdiction. This is followed by a lengthy tirade about how forcing everyone here to interrogate them is “highly unauthorised” and “a fire hazard” and “definitely illegal”, but Draco tunes most of that out in the same way he assumes everyone else is.

All that matters is that after an unnecessarily long-winded speech, “the captain” ends up agreeing to having Bole locked up until the authorities arrive.

“To the hold with you!”

“No.” The captain gives Draco an odd look. “To a locked suite! This isn’t a pirate ship, son.”

“Would be better if it was,” Draco mutters under his breath.

“My darling, my love!” Draco is dragged from further discussion by Pansy who pulls him off the chair and hugs him tightly. “I thought such horrendous things about what could have become of you. Though, to be honest, I never once considered a Gryffindor uniform to be one of them.”

“Hmm.” Neither did Draco. But judging by the hungry way Potter had eyed him earlier, he’ll be singing a different tune soon enough.

“Tell me, did you really fall in that awful water?”

Draco nods, sinking into the embrace and Pansy’s familiar floral scent. “That I did. What did I tell you about this cursed wedding idea again?”

“Shut up, darling. You’re ruining the moment,” Pansy snaps, but it comes with no teeth as she strokes his hair exactly the way he likes. Draco nearly purrs in pleasure. “My poor petal,” she coos, “I take back everything I said about your survival skills.”

On any other day, Draco would have happily taken all the credit for his miraculous return in order to restore his maligned reputation, but this time he finds himself unable to. As though drawn by an invisible magnet, Draco catches Harry’s eyes over Pansy’s shoulder.

Truth be told, there are far too many people between them. There’s Bole and Ron and Pansy and the rest of the hundred people gathered “illegally” on the deck, and yet they all disappear the moment Harry’s lips curve into a familiar lopsided grin just for him.

Draco smiles back without even realising it.

“Afraid none of it is my doing, love. It’s all Harry,” Draco says softly, eyes never straying. “He saved me.”

~~~

August 2009 - Webb Island, Antarctica

Harry walks as close to the edge of the icy cliff as he can without running the risk of slipping and falling into Antarctic waters. That’s enough of that for one lifetime, he thinks. Not to mention a single day.

At the edge of the world, overlooking endless night and the dynamic flares of otherworldly green light that dance upon it, Harry takes the first deep breath he’s had in a long time.

And instantly regrets it.

Warming charm aside, it’s still too bloody cold.

Who sees this freezing, desolate place and thinks, “Yes, that’s exactly where I want to get married”? Luna’s mind — and to a certain extent, Pansy’s, will always elude him.

The ceremony was lovely, though. Held at this very cliff and decorated with gorgeous ice sculptures. Due to the extreme darkness, thousands of silver faerie lights in the shape of snowflakes floated down the aisle and above them. Afterwards, they were directed to the transparent dome made of ice some distance away for the reception. The penguin show, the main event composed of actual penguins, was so adorable, it made several people cry. Even Draco, though he’d tried his best to hide it.

As with any thought of Draco recently, Harry thinks again of the moment he saw him emerge through the crystal wedding arch in his fancy silver and blue fur-trimmed robes and softly curled hair. Harry had lost his breath and his mind, standing agog long after everyone had taken their seats.

Ron had nearly fallen over his chair, snickering. “Getting ideas already, huh?”

“What ideas?” Harry muttered as he sat down, heat scorching his face at the heavy stares of the people around him. His eyes were still on Draco who by the looks of his smug smirk, knew exactly the effect he had on Harry.

“Oh, you know…” Ron hummed the wedding march tune and was promptly shushed by at least five guests, one of them Hermione.

They both straightened like errant schoolboys at her stern look of warning, not daring to make a sound for the rest of the ceremony. But his best mate’s words continued to echo in Harry’s mind while he watched Draco, as did the vows Pansy and Luna exchanged.

I promise to love and to treasure you for the rest of our lives and beyond. Always and forever.

Always and forever. He and Draco…

“Something on your mind?”

Harry stumbled a step and Draco had to hold onto his waist to prevent them from pitching forward and crushing the other guests on the dancefloor.

“Oh, it must really be quite the something then,” Draco said. He slid teasing fingers up the hard planes of Harry’s chest, encased in a crisp, white dress shirt, and wrapped them behind his neck. “Go on then. Spill.” Although Draco’s voice was light, his eyes had turned to steel. “What’s more important than dancing with me?”

Harry kept in time with the sway of Draco’s hips. He debated lying for a moment, but ultimately went for the truth. “Marriage,” he said bluntly and this time, it’s his turn to catch Draco from tipping over.

“What the fuck?” A curly, platinum lock fell on one flushed cheek while Draco stared at him like he’d suggested they rob Gringotts in broad daylight.

“You asked.”

Draco sputtered some more. “Well, I didn’t think that you — that this, I mean — what the hell have you been drinking?”

Three shots of whatever was in the unmarked black bottle Blaise had passed around that somehow managed to taste like ambrosia and rat poison all at once, but that’s not the point.

“Is the concept so ridiculous?” Harry asked softly, his hands slipping down to the small of Malfoy’s waist. They resumed dancing to the slow, jazzy tune the band is playing.

Malfoy took his time responding, fathomless quicksilver eyes searching Harry’s face, pink tongue darting out to lick his lips. The tempo of Harry’s heart grew faster, more erratic, the longer they danced around each other in static silence.

Perhaps it had been foolish to tell the truth after all.

“Harry,” Draco rasped suddenly. His hold around Harry’s neck tightened. “If you propose now, in the middle of this dancefloor, then I’m afraid it'll have to double as our gravesite. Just in case you aren’t aware, Pansy Parkinson-Lovegood is a mad woman. She’ll kill us both for stealing her spotlight and unlike Bole, actually succeed.”

Harry stared for a protracted moment, found Draco completely serious, then threw his head back and laughed. Draco smiled too, a soft, fond curve of his lips, and Harry almost kissed him then.

Because his answer wasn’t exactly a no.

“It was just a thought.”

“Mhmm. A thought, huh?”

Harry pulled him closer, bringing their lips to the point of near-touch. “Perhaps someday,” he said quietly.

“Perhaps,” Draco murmured with shining eyes, brighter and more precious than any crystal in this place. It’s the last thing Harry saw before Draco leaned in to kiss him, his mouth tasting of promise and of hope.

At the memory, Harry’s feet itches to return. To find Draco and abscond with him back to the ship. But at the same time, Harry is reminded of why he’s out here in the miserable cold in the first place.

Oliver Fucking Wood.

“What do you mean why do I need to talk to him?” Draco had laughed, exposing the graceful line of his flushed neck. They had been dancing for nearly an hour and there’s a tempting sheen of sweat on the hollow of Draco’s throat that Harry was dying to lick. “His fake boyfriend almost killed me. We need to clear the air.”

The air seemed clear enough from where Harry was standing. Draco was in his arms. Bole was locked up and Oliver was somewhere far, far away (at the bar). But Draco was ever persistent and Harry — well, Harry’s not stupid enough to tell him what to do. So once the song ended, he let Draco go so he could search for his ex-boyfriend.

Harry left the warmth of the reception not long after, choosing to celebrate his noble act by freezing his arse off.

How long has it been already? Ten minutes? Twenty? Surely that’s more than enough time to “clear the air”. Unless there’s more to it than that.

Wood could be planning on stealing Draco away while Harry wastes his time mooning on a cliff. Or what if Draco is in danger again? What if Harry’s already too late? What if —

“It’s just as I thought,” says a familiar posh drawl, “Oliver’s still madly in love with me.”

Harry turns, blood roaring in his ears, and…stops. Because standing behind him, looking every bit like a mythical snow spirit, is Draco. He’d donned his silver furs again, but the furious gales had blown his hood off and whipped his hair around him like a golden halo.

The ethereal illusion is shattered when Draco’s lips stretch into a cackle. “Ha, you should have seen your face! Priceless.” He steps into Harry’s space, one hand reaching up to comb Harry’s fringe off his eyes. “What do we do with you?” he sighs, expelling a puff of white cloud. “How much Sleekeazy did we waste on this again?”

Harry catches the hand and threads their fingers together. The frantic rhythm of his heart calms somewhat at the touch. “What happened?”

“Ah. So it turns out Oliver’s not holding an undying torch of love for me.” Draco rolls his eyes as if to say ‘Can you believe that?’ and Harry cannot actually. “But somehow he got it in his head that since we were living together, that we were…together. And I guess he didn’t want to show up alone for whatever reason.” Draco’s slim shoulders lift up in a careless shrug. “I don’t know.”

“Right,” Harry says dryly, “you really don’t know.”

“It was a fifteen minute talk, not a complete mental analysis of Oliver Wood’s mind,” Draco sniffs. “But apparently, fake dating was Bole’s idea, but Oliver didn’t know he was deranged obviously. He was quite apologetic. Started crying a lot. Nearly got his tears on my robes.” Draco shudders at that, seemingly recalling the horrors nearly inflicted on his clothes. “I told him it’s alright. That if I was in his place, I might have done the same thing.”

Draco flashes him a cheeky grin and Harry can’t help but smile back. “You didn’t tell him.”

“Tell him what?” Draco slides his free hand up Harry’s nape and peers at him from lowered lashes. At which point, Harry forgets his question entirely. “That we were also pretending? But we aren’t now, are we?”

There’s enough genuine hesitation in Draco’s voice to prod Harry into teasing him. “Hmm, I don’t know. Does this feel like pretend to you?” Harry runs his knuckles down one cold cheek and watches as Draco’s lips part on an indrawn breath.

“If it is, then you’re a far better actor than I thought,” Draco says breathlessly.

Harry cradles Draco’s face with both hands and says, “We both know I’m not,” before he slots their lips together in a searing kiss.

It’s funny.

Here they are in the coldest place on earth and yet Harry has never felt warmer. His blood turns into molten lava with every slide of Draco’s tongue against his. The feel of Draco’s body, so eager and responsive, spark flames in every nerve in his body. In time, they catch and burn everything of his to ash until all that’s left is desire and the naked truth.

Since the beginning, Harry has never once pretended.

To him, this has always been real.

~~~

Chapter Text

Epilogue - Two Years Later

~~~

August 2011 - Blaise’s Café

“I can’t believe you’re doing this to me!” comes a wail from the corner table. “How could you, Draco?”

Draco snatches the guest list from Blaise’s hand in case it becomes a casualty in what looks to be the beginnings of a truly historic strop. With that said, he does take his time folding the perfumed stationery into a neat little rectangle before sliding it into his nifty little coat pocket. Much like what a certain Mr. Bond would wear himself.

Yes, the rumours are true. Draco’s wardrobe has, in fact, experienced a revolution in the three-piece suit department.

Only once he’s satisfied, does Draco address his friend.

“How could I?” Draco repeats in an incredulous voice. “You mean how could I think of getting married without your express approval of my guest list? Very easily, I assure you.”

Blaise opens his mouth to appeal, hesitates, then he settles on Harry instead. “Potter, surely you have a say in this.”

Harry brings a teacup to his lips, the diamond on his finger catching in the sunlight. “I really don’t,” he says with the inner calm of a man who has allowed a higher power to take the wheel.

The power being Draco. The wheel? Their wedding.

“You don’t even like Theo, so why did you invite him?”

“Wrong,” Draco clips out, “I loathe the snide bastard with the fire of a thousand, blistering suns. But that doesn’t matter. Mother insists on having the new Mrs. Nott at the wedding and I can’t not invite her step-son. In other words, you'll have to deal with your —” Draco throws a vague wave at Blaise’s person. “— issues like a mature adult.”

“Issues?” Blaise’s voice rises, “If you’re in my place, will you also be able to deal with Potter cheating and swindling you four times?”

“Four times sounds like a you problem, frankly. And also —” Draco bares his teeth. “— that’s never going to be an issue for me.”

As if to prove his point, Harry threads their hands together and brings it to his smiling lips. It’s silly. It’s maudlin. Two years they’ve been together and these sentimental displays ought to get old by now, and yet —

Draco finds himself melting each time.

“You don’t understand!” Blaise cries, ruining the moment. Draco observes as his friend makes an effort to drape himself in the chair in artful despair, but because he’s furnished his shop with ridiculous torture devices (stools), he ends up settling for an awkward slouch. “Last time I ran into him at a club, he had triplets. Triplets! Three gorgeous half-Veela gods, Draco! On each arm and then some. You should have seen the smug look he gave me, I wanted to —” Blaise inhales sharply, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Who is he going to show off this time and how will I ever top it?”

The faint migraine Draco had started with has morphed into a resounding one. Maybe it isn’t too late yet to float the idea of elopement? Because why is everything in the world suddenly his problem? He glances at Harry, at their entwined hands and matching rings, and knows his fiancé won’t be opposed to the idea. Not at all.

No, it’s his mother’s potential wrath that’s holding him back.

“Then go pull some random at the club,” Draco suggests, “You literally own one. How hard is it to find another set of triplets or some celebrity or two?”

Blaise makes a frustrated noise. “They’re all so dull, Draco. The same basic faces and boring styles. You’ve fucked one, you’ve fucked them all. I’m so sick of it.”

It’s the first Draco had ever heard of his friend mentioning any sort of dissatisfaction regarding his decadent lifestyle and Draco feels the first stirrings of an unfamiliar emotion — concern. Thankfully, Pansy barges through the door like a whirlwind of chaos before the feeling develops.

“Guess who I found on the streets of Diagon Alley!” she squeals, her dark bob bouncing with excitement. With one hand, she holds the door open and the other she uses to gesture to the mystery person.

They all crane their necks. Other patrons included because no one can ever mind their business around here and Pansy is loud enough to draw the attention of the entire street. Besides, they’re all curious to see who could cause Pansy Parkinson-Lovegood, publicist to the brightest stars of the constellation, to react like this. In the next moment, their questions are all answered and far surpassed.

Because in walks…danger.

Wild auburn hair that cascades like liquid fire and falls a few inches below his massive shoulders, framing a face that isn’t handsome per se. But rather, more rugged. Striking. A face that’s sold out the yearly Dragon Tamer charity calendar for five years straight.

Charlie Weasley doesn’t have to explain the nature of his work for anyone to know how treacherous and physically demanding it is. He wears it on his body — sun-kissed and muscled and overwhelmingly masculine. The kind you develop only by working with giant beasts of fire. He wears it on the patchwork of scars scattered on his skin, the most prominent being the pale jagged stripe that stretches from his left cheek down to his strong jaw.

He’d probably appear more intimidating if he wasn't grinning widely, clearly chuffed at seeing Harry, and pulling him into a bear hug. A hug Draco gets inadvertently drawn into because Harry has yet to let go of his hand.

“It’s good to see you too, Draco,” Charlie says warmly, cobalt blue eyes sparkling like the ocean in midsummer. “Mum told me about the wedding. About time, eh?” He gives both him and Harry another tight squeeze before releasing them.

If only Draco isn’t happily committed and disgustingly in love, he might have gotten other interesting ideas in his head. But in this case, he only has one. He looks to Blaise who’s already eyeing Charlie as though he’s trying to burn through the leathers he’s wearing with nothing but his mind and says, “So I have an idea.”

Harry turns to him, a curious look on his face that quickly morphs into comprehension. Trust his fiancé to read him better than a book. “Draco,” Harry says with a note of concern.

Draco flashes him a saucy wink. “Just trust me, darling.”

Hey. If it worked for them, who’s to say it won’t work for someone else?

~~~

End