For Bluey in the GGE (I know, it's terribly late, and I'm sorry for that), who must love me, because she requested CharlieDraco. It's her fault that my headcanon!Draco plays violin, so.
In which Draco is a violinist, and Charlie is one of those poor blokes with music in his soul and the unfortunate luck of being tone-deaf.
.
His fingers dance across the strings and it's a whole different sort of magic than what they're used to. His eyes are closed, his chin pressed tightly against the rest, his wrist so fluid the bow acts as a natural extension of his arm.
He is beautiful.
And Charlie doesn't for a moment take this for granted, because he knows Draco, understands how his mind works, and this… this is an immensely personal thing, and the fact that Draco is willing to share it with him is absolutely humbling.
The thing about Draco is, he isn't by nature an expressive person. He was taught only to show what emotion he wanted to, and usually that doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of what he feels — he feels just as deeply as anyone else, Charlie knows. He simply doesn't show it.
But when he plays, he can't seem to prevent what he feels from influencing his tune, his melody, his pace. When he is sad, the violin hums melancholy and mourning. When he is contemplative, the violin sounds steady and even and slow. When he is excited, the bow races across the strings at a giddy pace. The violin is an extension of him, an expression of him, a glimpse beyond the mask that is usually so firmly in place.
Charlie loves Draco's violin. He could sit and listen to his boyfriend play for hours and not get bored, because the flow of the music is active and engaging and alive. But Charlie himself cannot play. He has tried. Draco attempted to teach him, once. It was… laughable. Charlie has arms built for restraining rogue dragons, hands used to gripping tethers and heavy handles, not a bow. There is no sense of rhythm in his hands; they cannot keep a beat. It feels intuitively wrong when he makes mistakes, but somehow that doesn't seem to help him do it right.
The fact is, Charlie's a bit tone deaf when it comes to singing, he can't dance well to save his life, and he has no rhythm in his fingers. Yet he cannot stay away from music, cannot seem to stop himself. He is drawn to it, drawn to the subtle interplays of notes, the melodies that speak to so much more. He is drawn to the poetry of sound, and the poetry of words spoken and words sung. He sings out of tune and loves every moment of it; he dances around their flat completely off-beat and totally happy.
It doesn't matter that he's not very good. He loves it, and he's not going to stop loving it wholeheartedly just because he's not good.
But he is often jealous of the easy play of Draco's wrist, the way a bow humming across strings can create vibrations that come alive out of the simple friction between them.
Draco is Draco, though, and so he knows, intuitively, when Charlie gets like this, and he puts the violin back in its case and those long violinist's fingers cup Charlie's face and he says, "It doesn't matter what your hands can do."
And Charlie hears what he doesn't say, what he won't say because even after four years Draco is still hesitant to be sappy without reason; it just isn't him, and Charlie doesn't protest because he doesn't ever want to change Draco.
What Draco means but will not say is that it doesn't matter what his hands can or cannot do — what matters is what's in his heart. Charlie's soul is made of music, and somehow, Draco just gets that, even if it means he has to suffer through Charlie's caterwauling at all hours, or being pulled into an impromptu supposed-to-be-waltz that turns out more like the two of them spinning circles in the kitchen and attempting to crash into the countertop as few times as possible.
Because Draco knows that Charlie accepts him unconditionally, knows that Charlie understands and accepts his past and all that it entails. Knows how rare it is that he's found someone who truly doesn't want to change him — who will support him if he decides himself that he wants to change something, but who will not pressure that decision.
And in return, Draco accepts Charlie unconditionally, mad as he is, Weasley as he is. Accepts all the man's peculiar quirks and annoying enthusiasm. This — this acceptance, this relationship — is not something Draco ever expected, ever could have predicted. That doesn't seem to matter, though, because regardless of what he expected, that doesn't change what is.
Regardless of what he expected, it doesn't, cannot, change the fact that Draco loves this man, even when his graceless feet run the pair of them into the counter for the fifteenth time. They both wind up laughing in the end.