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Title: In Comparison
Author: me
Pairing: H/D
Rating: R
Summary: Draco can appreciate what is right in front of him. Part four of The Arrangement series.
Disclaimer: The Harry Potter characters and situations do not belong to me. Likewise, they do not make me any money.
A/N: Yeah, this fic-verse won't shut up. ^____^ There will be more after this one, too. And for anyone who is wondering, the game Harry and Draco play in the park is actually a writing exercise. ♥ Thanks to Sparks and Coffee for their beta-ing, to Rahl for her thoughts, and to Fire for helping me beat a title into submission. *cackles*
Also posted on AO3 and skyehawke.
...
The Arrangement ~~ An Evening in August ~~ Perfect Potter
In Comparison
Draco passed a tall, dark-skinned man just beyond the overworked sliding doors of Boots, and turned fully around, walking backwards down the crowded sidewalk a mite carelessly. The man wore a grey duster, and the sharp turn to his jaw cut pristinely against his high collar.
Lean. Solid shoulders. Draco chewed the inside of his lip, tasting his own smile.
Turned back around and continued on his way. Groceries, bloody hell, he certainly went through them nowadays, didn’t he? As if he had a parasite. One with dark, mussy hair and gorgeous green eyes, and a fixation on ginger digestives.
Draco adjusted his coat collar against the wind and pushed open the door to Budgens.
There had been a day not long ago when he would have walked right into the Thames before setting foot in a cluttered, crowded Muggle grocery. Dust, the places always had dust on their damned boxes of rice, or grime in their cold goods freezers. But Diagon was the nearest thing to a magical tourist trap these days, and at least Muggles never felt the need to gape at him like recently deceased fish.
This time the man at the cash register ran his goods through the scanner and his eyes over his body. Draco smirked at him.
“Have something to say, do you?”
To his credit, the man did not blush, but cocked his head, flicking his eyes toward the other employee stocking shelves near the produce, and then deliberately back to Draco’s waist. Or thereabouts. “Just that my evening shift is looking pretty damned distasteful right about now.”
“Hm,” Draco murmured, taking several notes from his coat pocket. He set them down on the counter. “My condolences. I’ve already got someone to go home to, my friend.”
The man sighed wistfully. “Bully for her. Him?”
Draco lifted an eyebrow, lips quirking. Picked up his change. “You have an enjoyable shift.”
The man’s tongue was against his front teeth when Draco nodded to him and left the store. Stepped into the twilight and caught a glimpse of another grey coat sweeping over a woman’s calves as she walked briskly toward the bus stop. Draco frowned vaguely and tugged his collar higher again.
Handsome, that cashier, in a boyish way. Draco knew the type. He’d sought that type before. But it wasn’t really his type; it was Harry’s.
Draco saw men every day, men with hair his fingers itched to curl through, and bodies that made his breath catch for more than an instant, made him want. It was a concession his more lax state of mind allowed him during the first few seconds, before his rational, mature sensibilities caught up and reminded him that such thoughts were inappropriate.
Inappropriate, perhaps. But they were reality.
Sitting on the wretched bus whenever Harry managed to gum up his values inexplicably enough to get him onto it— disgustingly two-faced ploy, it was, but Harry could be awfully persuasive— Draco had watched his lover’s eyes slide sideways in the trail of a tall brunet, a well-muscled honey-blond perhaps.
A critical study was, of course, the only logical response. Draco did his staring, enjoyed it, and smirked at Harry’s expectantly raised eyebrows.
“He’s a seven. Barring those trousers.”
Harry snorted. “Nothing wrong with those trousers.”
“You know, Potter, there’s more to life than a taut arse.” Draco leaned casually forward, startling a middle-aged woman who was clutching her purse across her lap in the seat beside him. “He should show what he has to offer to the rest of us slavering souls, not hide it behind some tacky pinstripe facsimile.”
The woman’s eyes widened, darted to Harry and back to him. Harry nodded thoughtfully. “Good thing you own real pinstripes.”
“Salazar, Harry, stop going on about my skivvies in public.”
He had a feeling that the woman chose an earlier stop to disembark than was her usual wont.
Yes, that cashier had certainly been fuckable. And damned forward about it, all things considered. A few months ago, the offer would have been just as promising, if a little more feasible than it was now.
Draco crossed the street at a jog he was not happy about, swept the hair out of his face with a flick of his head, and got inordinately annoyed all at once. “Oh, fuck it all.” He raised his hand, leaning out into the street. A bus honked, and the black cab just behind it rumbled to a stop two feet from him.
“Gloucestor and Cornwall Gardens,” he said. “Do not take Cromwell, for the love of all saints. And I have a headache, so please refrain from speaking.”
He shut his eyes and let the drive occur without him. Pressed his fingers to his forehead. For fuck’s sake. He’d already taken a potion for this, after lunch. “Bloody incompetent apothecaries.”
* * *
“Here, eat your damned minnows. Godric knows they cost a fortune.”
Harry plucked the container out of his hand. “Sardines, Draco. And I hardly think they’ll put your account out of commission.”
Draco lazed back against the park bench, slinging one arm over the backrest and deliberately settling his fingers against Harry’s neck. “My account, he says. Well. Good to know he’s aware of who paid. Who had to go through the hassle of exchanging perfectly acceptable Galleons for absurd Muggle pounds. Who spent hard earned licensing funds on smelly little ocean dwellers.”
“Why, thank you, darling.” Harry grinned at him cheekily from beneath his conjured sunglasses. Draco eyed them frankly.
“Why haven’t I seen those on you before?”
“Just made them today.”
Draco sighed, shaking his head. “To think of all the sex the great Harry Potter has been passing up.” He flicked a finger up at the glasses. “Should have whipped those into shape weeks ago. I would have shagged you into the shag.”
Harry laughed. “You would cut your own eyes out before you allowed shag carpeting into your flat.”
Draco shrugged. Popped a sliver of Clementine into his mouth. “Then we’d shag on your shag. What do you think of him, then?”
Harry followed Draco’s extended orange, craning his neck. A moment’s thought, and then— “Scrawny. Though I like his shoulders.”
Draco sat up, flinging a loose peel at the rubbish bin across the path and falling short. “Oh, come off it. His stomach alone is worth a look.”
Harry nodded. His eyes narrowed into a very familiar expression, and Draco sat back, waiting for it.
“He’s a Wizarding stockbroker, you know.”
“Is he, now?”
Harry tilted his head. “Accidentally bought shares in a defunct wand manufacturing company, and now he’s contemplating whether to throw himself into the river, or really splurge and tumble off a Swiss Alp. Except he has to go take his Skrewt for a walk first.”
“You’re insane, you know that?”
Harry nodded again. “There. There’s your type, right there with the ducks.”
Tall; Draco liked height, certainly. Olive-bronzed throat, hair unnaturally black, judging by the roots. A girl just at the water fountain, but clearly with him. Harry made an approving sound, sitting back on the bench. “Definitely your type, even if he is straight. I dated someone like him last year. It was in… May, I think. So?”
Draco sat back, tapping his fingers on the bench’s armrest. “Hippogriff trainer with an obsessive addiction to blindfolded sex. He’d be at the stables, except his narcolepsy traumatized the Hippogrifflings and he was sacked.”
“Very creative. Here, you haven’t drunk your water.”
“Not thirsty just yet, thank you.”
Harry passed him the transfigured glass. Let the rest of the park’s patrons figure out why they had dinner tumblers out on a bloody park bench. “Drink it. Can’t have you shriveling up. You haven’t drunk anything all day.”
“Been watching my food intake again?” The man with the ducks was stretching, shirt riding up. Draco grinned at the sight and moved on reluctantly. “Alright, that one then. What’s he?”
Harry repositioned his sunglasses and gave the man in question a smooth, uninhibited stare. A delectable little leer crossed his face. “Gay.”
Draco cocked one arm over his head, settling the glass on his thigh and bracing it with two fingers. “Perhaps.”
“And a bottom.”
Draco snorted. “Oh yes? What’s your reasoning?”
Harry leaned toward him, reaching for the glass and ghosting his fingers over Draco’s leg. “Reminds me of you,” he volleyed, smirking.
Draco glared at his lover. “Says the man who asks increasingly often to take it up the arse— from yours truly, I oh so humbly add.”
“Only on special occasions.” Harry’s smirk was going straight to Draco’s groin and twisting around quite happily there. He inched a hand a tiny bit closer to his belt and watched Harry’s eyes follow it down.
“And what constitutes a special occasion?” Draco murmured.
Harry’s teeth sparkled as he grinned. “Today should do nicely.”
* * *
There were many men who would be good for Harry.
Draco found one that fit the physical requirements every time he stepped out his or Harry’s front door. The mental status was a bit harder to come by, and even more difficult to prove, and Draco suspected he had higher standards than Harry anyway. His lover liked a sharp wit, of that Draco was certain.
He knew Harry preferred blonds and brunets. Lopsided smiles, and tanned skin. Draco agreed with him on several counts. Muscles without the fuss, or the narcissism; gods knew Draco himself held the monopoly over all the narcissism he ever wanted Harry experiencing from another person.
He liked to watch Harry watching others. There was a fervent gleam in those green eyes that Draco only saw otherwise in the throes of physical intimacy, on his back across the couch or sprawled atop Harry’s kitchen counter, watching the gleam flare and burn there between the whispers and the sounds, the broken groans and breathless laughter just afterward, when he was sliding back down onto sweat-damp cushions or newly-heated marble, Harry’s body a heavy, helpless weight on top of his. The gleam was an addiction, flooding Draco’s veins with adrenaline, sharpening his tongue— which he fancied only made that gleam deeper and brighter.
He loved seeing it. Pure, unadulterated lust that inevitably turned his way.
Lust was rather potent in his life. Draco was young, and not one to ignore a natural state of mind, and body. There was so much beauty in the world, half of it packaged neatly into very male forms, most of the rest succinctly reserved for Harry’s very male form. Draco saw on a daily basis. Stared on a daily basis. Appreciated on a daily basis. Remembered what following through had been like, and wondering exactly how long ago that had been.
It was one thing to lust. Quite another to wish to stray.
Harry’s leg rising up along his hip and waist at night was more than enough for Draco Malfoy. His lover’s long, solid body draped openly across mussed sheets, at the perfect ease to allow Draco to enter it, was so much more than enough.
There might be men Draco wanted to fuck. But there were none he wanted knowing him the way Harry did. Hells. He’d proven that already, hadn’t he, with his inability to have any sort of stable relationship after Harry Potter.
Harry was his hang-up. The thought had made him bitter once. Now it couldn’t.
* * *
Draco slammed the cab door and made for his apartment building, racing the thick splats of rain that were beginning to rush down from the sky. He fumbled for his keys for a total of two seconds before swearing and magicking the outer door open with a discreet wave of his palm, and taking the tiny open-air courtyard beyond in a cloud blacker than the ones building overhead. The stairwell was slick already with the rain; Draco gripped the handrail and made his way to the first floor, and finally, his hallway.
He’d have a nice, silent flat to come home to; Harry was working all night on some convoluted mapping system. This time he didn’t bother with his key. Muggle locking mechanisms were not even worth the time it took to jiggle them open. He locked his door up behind himself and set the wards almost as an afterthought, then went in search of a bottle of firewhisky for his headache.
“Need a damn holiday,” he muttered, flinging the cork into the sink and pouring himself a few fingers of the ruby liquid. Wondered mid-sip if Harry even had a real office to slave over his official duties in.
Draco paced the dark living room twice, glass in hand, before pointing his wand at the hearth and igniting a fire in it. The flames licked merrily up the inside of the chimney. Draco grabbed a handful of Floo Powder and nearly tossed it in.
Ended up putting it back into the bowl and collapsing onto the couch with his drink.
Thank the Founders for distilled liquor of the magical persuasion. It had been some hours since imbibing the potion; no complications to be had. And he’d nowhere to go tonight—again, thank the Founders— so there was nothing in the way of his enjoying himself.
Except that his flat, while quiet, was too… quiet.
“Oh, bloody hell, Potter,” he gritted out loud into the empty room. “You’re not even here and you’re bothering me. Prick.”
Well. He was heading to bed. Who knew that licensing potions all day could be so tiring? Draco rolled his eyes, kicked off his shoes, and got to his feet once more. Downed the rest of his glass and headed off for the enticingly fluffy duvet on his bed.
* * *
He was woken by the slam of his front door, and a much-too-cheerful calling of his name.
Draco turned over and tucked his pillow in around his ears. His eyelids felt like lead weights, the comforting kind, the kind that promised rather interesting and satisfying dreams if he just let them succeed in closing again. Saturdays were not meant for mornings and anyone who thought otherwise was a few bicorn bits short of a potion.
The door to his room swung open. “Morning. Sleep well?”
Draco groaned and lifted his head just enough to free his mouth of his top quilt. “Don’t you dare open those curtains.”
“You’ve left your groceries out, you know.” Harry’s footsteps sounded briskly as he made his way around the room, doing things Draco suspected he’d have to smack him for eventually. “All night. Had to spell your eggs fresh again.”
“Bollocks to the eggs,” Draco mumbled into his pillow. He reached threateningly for his wand on the nightstand. “If you’re not planning on getting into bed, then I suggest you leave the room within the next three seconds.”
A hand came down and mussed his hair tenderly. “Need the eggs, you git. Can’t make pancakes without them.”
“For breakfast,” Draco stated flatly.
“What, is this lunch for you?”
If his eyes had been open, Draco would have rolled them. “Yes, go occupy yourself in the kitchen with your eccentric meal choices. I’ll be just fine here.”
A weight settled on the bed behind him, and Harry’s hand slid over the back of his neck, caressing. “You know, some of us just got in from the office.”
“Don’t have a bloody office.”
“I do so have an office. And I’m going to make you pancakes while I’m still wound up from all the fantastic work I’ve been doing all night while you’ve been lazing away, and then I’m going to use your bed to sleep in. With or without you in it.”
“With,” Draco said, burrowing deeper into his quilts. “Bring the pancakes in here and cut out the middle man.”
Harry kissed his neck, a long, sloppy press of lips, and pushed off the bed once more. “Where’s your flour?” he called as he left the room.
Draco turned over and stretched, arching off the bed, loving the feel of it. “Fuck if I know.”
Harry began to clatter around with cooking implements Draco was absolutely certain he’d never possessed. He sighed and floundered deeper into the blankets. Wondered if Harry knew he’d be hand-feeding him those pancakes.
Ah, well. Harry was an intelligent man. He’d figure it out.
~fin~
...
On to Part 5: Hypocritical (or here on skyehawke.)
Or go directly to Part 6: A Slight Dilemma
NOTE ABOUT THE DOUBLE LINKING FOR PART 5: "Hypocritical" is f-locked due to NC-17 rating, and is not especially crucial to the main storyline. If you want to skip it, I don't think it would cause problems in your understanding of the story. See my lj profile for my f-locking policy.
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Thanks for reading!
Author: me
Pairing: H/D
Rating: R
Summary: Draco can appreciate what is right in front of him. Part four of The Arrangement series.
Disclaimer: The Harry Potter characters and situations do not belong to me. Likewise, they do not make me any money.
A/N: Yeah, this fic-verse won't shut up. ^____^ There will be more after this one, too. And for anyone who is wondering, the game Harry and Draco play in the park is actually a writing exercise. ♥ Thanks to Sparks and Coffee for their beta-ing, to Rahl for her thoughts, and to Fire for helping me beat a title into submission. *cackles*
Also posted on AO3 and skyehawke.
...
The Arrangement ~~ An Evening in August ~~ Perfect Potter
In Comparison
Draco passed a tall, dark-skinned man just beyond the overworked sliding doors of Boots, and turned fully around, walking backwards down the crowded sidewalk a mite carelessly. The man wore a grey duster, and the sharp turn to his jaw cut pristinely against his high collar.
Lean. Solid shoulders. Draco chewed the inside of his lip, tasting his own smile.
Turned back around and continued on his way. Groceries, bloody hell, he certainly went through them nowadays, didn’t he? As if he had a parasite. One with dark, mussy hair and gorgeous green eyes, and a fixation on ginger digestives.
Draco adjusted his coat collar against the wind and pushed open the door to Budgens.
There had been a day not long ago when he would have walked right into the Thames before setting foot in a cluttered, crowded Muggle grocery. Dust, the places always had dust on their damned boxes of rice, or grime in their cold goods freezers. But Diagon was the nearest thing to a magical tourist trap these days, and at least Muggles never felt the need to gape at him like recently deceased fish.
This time the man at the cash register ran his goods through the scanner and his eyes over his body. Draco smirked at him.
“Have something to say, do you?”
To his credit, the man did not blush, but cocked his head, flicking his eyes toward the other employee stocking shelves near the produce, and then deliberately back to Draco’s waist. Or thereabouts. “Just that my evening shift is looking pretty damned distasteful right about now.”
“Hm,” Draco murmured, taking several notes from his coat pocket. He set them down on the counter. “My condolences. I’ve already got someone to go home to, my friend.”
The man sighed wistfully. “Bully for her. Him?”
Draco lifted an eyebrow, lips quirking. Picked up his change. “You have an enjoyable shift.”
The man’s tongue was against his front teeth when Draco nodded to him and left the store. Stepped into the twilight and caught a glimpse of another grey coat sweeping over a woman’s calves as she walked briskly toward the bus stop. Draco frowned vaguely and tugged his collar higher again.
Handsome, that cashier, in a boyish way. Draco knew the type. He’d sought that type before. But it wasn’t really his type; it was Harry’s.
Draco saw men every day, men with hair his fingers itched to curl through, and bodies that made his breath catch for more than an instant, made him want. It was a concession his more lax state of mind allowed him during the first few seconds, before his rational, mature sensibilities caught up and reminded him that such thoughts were inappropriate.
Inappropriate, perhaps. But they were reality.
Sitting on the wretched bus whenever Harry managed to gum up his values inexplicably enough to get him onto it— disgustingly two-faced ploy, it was, but Harry could be awfully persuasive— Draco had watched his lover’s eyes slide sideways in the trail of a tall brunet, a well-muscled honey-blond perhaps.
A critical study was, of course, the only logical response. Draco did his staring, enjoyed it, and smirked at Harry’s expectantly raised eyebrows.
“He’s a seven. Barring those trousers.”
Harry snorted. “Nothing wrong with those trousers.”
“You know, Potter, there’s more to life than a taut arse.” Draco leaned casually forward, startling a middle-aged woman who was clutching her purse across her lap in the seat beside him. “He should show what he has to offer to the rest of us slavering souls, not hide it behind some tacky pinstripe facsimile.”
The woman’s eyes widened, darted to Harry and back to him. Harry nodded thoughtfully. “Good thing you own real pinstripes.”
“Salazar, Harry, stop going on about my skivvies in public.”
He had a feeling that the woman chose an earlier stop to disembark than was her usual wont.
Yes, that cashier had certainly been fuckable. And damned forward about it, all things considered. A few months ago, the offer would have been just as promising, if a little more feasible than it was now.
Draco crossed the street at a jog he was not happy about, swept the hair out of his face with a flick of his head, and got inordinately annoyed all at once. “Oh, fuck it all.” He raised his hand, leaning out into the street. A bus honked, and the black cab just behind it rumbled to a stop two feet from him.
“Gloucestor and Cornwall Gardens,” he said. “Do not take Cromwell, for the love of all saints. And I have a headache, so please refrain from speaking.”
He shut his eyes and let the drive occur without him. Pressed his fingers to his forehead. For fuck’s sake. He’d already taken a potion for this, after lunch. “Bloody incompetent apothecaries.”
* * *
“Here, eat your damned minnows. Godric knows they cost a fortune.”
Harry plucked the container out of his hand. “Sardines, Draco. And I hardly think they’ll put your account out of commission.”
Draco lazed back against the park bench, slinging one arm over the backrest and deliberately settling his fingers against Harry’s neck. “My account, he says. Well. Good to know he’s aware of who paid. Who had to go through the hassle of exchanging perfectly acceptable Galleons for absurd Muggle pounds. Who spent hard earned licensing funds on smelly little ocean dwellers.”
“Why, thank you, darling.” Harry grinned at him cheekily from beneath his conjured sunglasses. Draco eyed them frankly.
“Why haven’t I seen those on you before?”
“Just made them today.”
Draco sighed, shaking his head. “To think of all the sex the great Harry Potter has been passing up.” He flicked a finger up at the glasses. “Should have whipped those into shape weeks ago. I would have shagged you into the shag.”
Harry laughed. “You would cut your own eyes out before you allowed shag carpeting into your flat.”
Draco shrugged. Popped a sliver of Clementine into his mouth. “Then we’d shag on your shag. What do you think of him, then?”
Harry followed Draco’s extended orange, craning his neck. A moment’s thought, and then— “Scrawny. Though I like his shoulders.”
Draco sat up, flinging a loose peel at the rubbish bin across the path and falling short. “Oh, come off it. His stomach alone is worth a look.”
Harry nodded. His eyes narrowed into a very familiar expression, and Draco sat back, waiting for it.
“He’s a Wizarding stockbroker, you know.”
“Is he, now?”
Harry tilted his head. “Accidentally bought shares in a defunct wand manufacturing company, and now he’s contemplating whether to throw himself into the river, or really splurge and tumble off a Swiss Alp. Except he has to go take his Skrewt for a walk first.”
“You’re insane, you know that?”
Harry nodded again. “There. There’s your type, right there with the ducks.”
Tall; Draco liked height, certainly. Olive-bronzed throat, hair unnaturally black, judging by the roots. A girl just at the water fountain, but clearly with him. Harry made an approving sound, sitting back on the bench. “Definitely your type, even if he is straight. I dated someone like him last year. It was in… May, I think. So?”
Draco sat back, tapping his fingers on the bench’s armrest. “Hippogriff trainer with an obsessive addiction to blindfolded sex. He’d be at the stables, except his narcolepsy traumatized the Hippogrifflings and he was sacked.”
“Very creative. Here, you haven’t drunk your water.”
“Not thirsty just yet, thank you.”
Harry passed him the transfigured glass. Let the rest of the park’s patrons figure out why they had dinner tumblers out on a bloody park bench. “Drink it. Can’t have you shriveling up. You haven’t drunk anything all day.”
“Been watching my food intake again?” The man with the ducks was stretching, shirt riding up. Draco grinned at the sight and moved on reluctantly. “Alright, that one then. What’s he?”
Harry repositioned his sunglasses and gave the man in question a smooth, uninhibited stare. A delectable little leer crossed his face. “Gay.”
Draco cocked one arm over his head, settling the glass on his thigh and bracing it with two fingers. “Perhaps.”
“And a bottom.”
Draco snorted. “Oh yes? What’s your reasoning?”
Harry leaned toward him, reaching for the glass and ghosting his fingers over Draco’s leg. “Reminds me of you,” he volleyed, smirking.
Draco glared at his lover. “Says the man who asks increasingly often to take it up the arse— from yours truly, I oh so humbly add.”
“Only on special occasions.” Harry’s smirk was going straight to Draco’s groin and twisting around quite happily there. He inched a hand a tiny bit closer to his belt and watched Harry’s eyes follow it down.
“And what constitutes a special occasion?” Draco murmured.
Harry’s teeth sparkled as he grinned. “Today should do nicely.”
* * *
There were many men who would be good for Harry.
Draco found one that fit the physical requirements every time he stepped out his or Harry’s front door. The mental status was a bit harder to come by, and even more difficult to prove, and Draco suspected he had higher standards than Harry anyway. His lover liked a sharp wit, of that Draco was certain.
He knew Harry preferred blonds and brunets. Lopsided smiles, and tanned skin. Draco agreed with him on several counts. Muscles without the fuss, or the narcissism; gods knew Draco himself held the monopoly over all the narcissism he ever wanted Harry experiencing from another person.
He liked to watch Harry watching others. There was a fervent gleam in those green eyes that Draco only saw otherwise in the throes of physical intimacy, on his back across the couch or sprawled atop Harry’s kitchen counter, watching the gleam flare and burn there between the whispers and the sounds, the broken groans and breathless laughter just afterward, when he was sliding back down onto sweat-damp cushions or newly-heated marble, Harry’s body a heavy, helpless weight on top of his. The gleam was an addiction, flooding Draco’s veins with adrenaline, sharpening his tongue— which he fancied only made that gleam deeper and brighter.
He loved seeing it. Pure, unadulterated lust that inevitably turned his way.
Lust was rather potent in his life. Draco was young, and not one to ignore a natural state of mind, and body. There was so much beauty in the world, half of it packaged neatly into very male forms, most of the rest succinctly reserved for Harry’s very male form. Draco saw on a daily basis. Stared on a daily basis. Appreciated on a daily basis. Remembered what following through had been like, and wondering exactly how long ago that had been.
It was one thing to lust. Quite another to wish to stray.
Harry’s leg rising up along his hip and waist at night was more than enough for Draco Malfoy. His lover’s long, solid body draped openly across mussed sheets, at the perfect ease to allow Draco to enter it, was so much more than enough.
There might be men Draco wanted to fuck. But there were none he wanted knowing him the way Harry did. Hells. He’d proven that already, hadn’t he, with his inability to have any sort of stable relationship after Harry Potter.
Harry was his hang-up. The thought had made him bitter once. Now it couldn’t.
* * *
Draco slammed the cab door and made for his apartment building, racing the thick splats of rain that were beginning to rush down from the sky. He fumbled for his keys for a total of two seconds before swearing and magicking the outer door open with a discreet wave of his palm, and taking the tiny open-air courtyard beyond in a cloud blacker than the ones building overhead. The stairwell was slick already with the rain; Draco gripped the handrail and made his way to the first floor, and finally, his hallway.
He’d have a nice, silent flat to come home to; Harry was working all night on some convoluted mapping system. This time he didn’t bother with his key. Muggle locking mechanisms were not even worth the time it took to jiggle them open. He locked his door up behind himself and set the wards almost as an afterthought, then went in search of a bottle of firewhisky for his headache.
“Need a damn holiday,” he muttered, flinging the cork into the sink and pouring himself a few fingers of the ruby liquid. Wondered mid-sip if Harry even had a real office to slave over his official duties in.
Draco paced the dark living room twice, glass in hand, before pointing his wand at the hearth and igniting a fire in it. The flames licked merrily up the inside of the chimney. Draco grabbed a handful of Floo Powder and nearly tossed it in.
Ended up putting it back into the bowl and collapsing onto the couch with his drink.
Thank the Founders for distilled liquor of the magical persuasion. It had been some hours since imbibing the potion; no complications to be had. And he’d nowhere to go tonight—again, thank the Founders— so there was nothing in the way of his enjoying himself.
Except that his flat, while quiet, was too… quiet.
“Oh, bloody hell, Potter,” he gritted out loud into the empty room. “You’re not even here and you’re bothering me. Prick.”
Well. He was heading to bed. Who knew that licensing potions all day could be so tiring? Draco rolled his eyes, kicked off his shoes, and got to his feet once more. Downed the rest of his glass and headed off for the enticingly fluffy duvet on his bed.
* * *
He was woken by the slam of his front door, and a much-too-cheerful calling of his name.
Draco turned over and tucked his pillow in around his ears. His eyelids felt like lead weights, the comforting kind, the kind that promised rather interesting and satisfying dreams if he just let them succeed in closing again. Saturdays were not meant for mornings and anyone who thought otherwise was a few bicorn bits short of a potion.
The door to his room swung open. “Morning. Sleep well?”
Draco groaned and lifted his head just enough to free his mouth of his top quilt. “Don’t you dare open those curtains.”
“You’ve left your groceries out, you know.” Harry’s footsteps sounded briskly as he made his way around the room, doing things Draco suspected he’d have to smack him for eventually. “All night. Had to spell your eggs fresh again.”
“Bollocks to the eggs,” Draco mumbled into his pillow. He reached threateningly for his wand on the nightstand. “If you’re not planning on getting into bed, then I suggest you leave the room within the next three seconds.”
A hand came down and mussed his hair tenderly. “Need the eggs, you git. Can’t make pancakes without them.”
“For breakfast,” Draco stated flatly.
“What, is this lunch for you?”
If his eyes had been open, Draco would have rolled them. “Yes, go occupy yourself in the kitchen with your eccentric meal choices. I’ll be just fine here.”
A weight settled on the bed behind him, and Harry’s hand slid over the back of his neck, caressing. “You know, some of us just got in from the office.”
“Don’t have a bloody office.”
“I do so have an office. And I’m going to make you pancakes while I’m still wound up from all the fantastic work I’ve been doing all night while you’ve been lazing away, and then I’m going to use your bed to sleep in. With or without you in it.”
“With,” Draco said, burrowing deeper into his quilts. “Bring the pancakes in here and cut out the middle man.”
Harry kissed his neck, a long, sloppy press of lips, and pushed off the bed once more. “Where’s your flour?” he called as he left the room.
Draco turned over and stretched, arching off the bed, loving the feel of it. “Fuck if I know.”
Harry began to clatter around with cooking implements Draco was absolutely certain he’d never possessed. He sighed and floundered deeper into the blankets. Wondered if Harry knew he’d be hand-feeding him those pancakes.
Ah, well. Harry was an intelligent man. He’d figure it out.
~fin~
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On to Part 5: Hypocritical (or here on skyehawke.)
Or go directly to Part 6: A Slight Dilemma
NOTE ABOUT THE DOUBLE LINKING FOR PART 5: "Hypocritical" is f-locked due to NC-17 rating, and is not especially crucial to the main storyline. If you want to skip it, I don't think it would cause problems in your understanding of the story. See my lj profile for my f-locking policy.
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Thanks for reading!
