The new guy was nice. Too nice, Harry thought, narrowing his eyes, watching on as he interacted with the rest of the staff. Handing out bagels and all. Who brings homemade bagels on their first day at work? Who actually bakes bagels? The others could think it was a nice gesture, but no – Harry knew better. Something here was off, and he was determined to find out what it was. After all, he was an Auror – and as one, it was not only his professional pride: it was his very duty to weed out any dangers he came across. Especially if those dangers fed bagels to his partner. Draco was naïve despite this worldly, snarky façade he wore on a day-to-day basis. Obviously, if he ate bagels, homemade bagels, from a complete stranger, he must have been more naïve than a new-born Pygmy Puff. Naturally it would land on Harry to keep him safe, even though he had no care for Draco other than the strictly professional, partner-to-partner, I'll-always-have-your-back type.
And if, from time to time, he had a stray thought of taking him out for one of those fancy, new-fangled teas Draco liked, well, that was its own thing and nothing to do with the here and now.
As Draco run his fingers down the new guy's – Sean, his name is Sean – shoulder, Harry felt something stir inside him that surely must have been the Auror instinct he was so often prised for. Something was so, so very wrong, and he'd get to the bottom of it. Then he'd be able to hold it over the amazing bouncing Ferret's head as the ultimate proof he was better at their job.
'Sean, of course you'll fit right in. Who could possibly say no to a face like yours,' Draco's voice pulled Harry out of thoughts of anticipated triumph and crashed him straight back down into the ground. This was nothing like what Draco usually sounded. Not when he said face like he meant body, not when he laughed in a low, suggestive way that Harry was never the target of. Not when his long, elegant fingers lingered on Sean's shoulder, teasing shapes onto the material of his overcoat.
Harry grumbled something unintelligible, but which sounded a lot like go away and wanker and ugly. But he couldn't kid himself. Sean was far from ugly. In fact, if it wasn't for him being a dark wizard in disguise of baking and flattery, Harry could see himself being interested. As it stood, Harry did know better, and watched Sean's every move with the eyes of a hawk and the heart of a lion.
Which of course meant he missed out the entire conversation Sean had with Draco, and only came back to reality when the former was leaving with a promise of "tomorrow" dancing on his lips.
Draco sat down behind his desk with a self-satisfied smirk (which really fitted him much better than that strange laugh he was afflicted with around the new guy). Reclining in his chair, he stretched his hands far above his head and cracked his knuckles. It was the worst habit Harry had ever been subjected to, and he shared a room with four other boys for a better part of ten years. Not to even mention the tent with Ron in it. Yet Draco's knuckle-crunching routine, where his shirt would ride up his flat, pale stomach, exposing just a sliver of skin, where his head would tilt back showing off his neck – this was the worst. It riled Harry up like nothing ever has, to the point of his hands becoming clammy, his vision blurring, and something strangely similar to his Auror instinct waking up within his chest.
'Must you do that?' Harry asked, forcing his eyes away from where he could see Draco's hip bone protruding above his trousers.
'Sorry,' Draco was clearly not sorry, as evidenced by his grin and the next series of crunch-crunch-crunch coming from above his head, 'It relaxes me.'
'Yes, because you need so much relaxing after spending all morning talking to Sean and his face.'
Draco paused, dropping his hands into his lap, eyes suddenly wide. 'What's that supposed to mean?'
'Absolutely nothing,' Harry busied himself with the stray papers lying on his desk. At this moment, he wouldn't be able to say what was written on them even with a wand to his head.
'No, please, do explain. Why are you so very upset about me talking to Sean?' the smirk has returned to Draco's pale face, but it was altogether different. This one was thinly veiled annoyance, the threat of an argument, and something Harry couldn't decipher. Even now, after two years of sharing an office, five years after the war, he was surprised at the range of emotions Draco could convey with a simple smirk. How did he not see that in Hogwarts, he couldn't understand – how did he think all there was to this man was anger and bitterness, for so very long…
'I'm not upset. I just find it funny that you don't see what is happening here.' Harry finally forced his lips to respond.
'Excuse me, but I know exactly what is happening here, and if I choose to flirt with him, and his face, that is at my own discretion and nothing to do with you,' Draco didn't shout. Draco was calm and stoic, only his grey eyes betraying the storm clouds brewing within.
Wait a moment.
'Flirting?' Harry threw the word up like it was poison. 'He's not… you're… flirting? He's dangerous! There's something wrong with him. He… he brought bagels!'
'So?'
'So? Who bakes bagels for the entire staff on their first day?'
Draco shot one eyebrow up, looking at Harry like he was a dumb child, 'Sean only gave me a bagel.'
This wasn't right. This was not how this was meant to go. Draco was supposed to notice Harry's brilliance, praise him for discovering the plot afoot earlier than anyone else in the whole of Ministry. There was not meant to be any flirting.
Strangely, his Auror instincts were well and truly awake now, threatening to burst out of him like a flood if the dam holding them gave in just an inch more.
Harry decided to give it one more go, so he took a deep shaky breath to regroup his thoughts, and started over, 'That's beside the point. That's worse! You're not seeing the truth behind his… face,' admittedly, his delivery was still lacking in fact and focusing altogether too much on the face, 'I can tell you now, this guy is no good.'
Finally satisfied with explaining himself, Harry crossed his arms. It often worked on other Aurors, ones who didn't know him very well – when Harry Potter crosses his arms, the conversation is finished and his point stays. He felt a little silly trying it with Draco, but that was nothing compared to how he felt when Draco noticed, and gave him a look one usually reserves for hair in one's food.
'Potter, trust me, the only one blinded here is you. If you don't like me flirting with Sean, then I suggest you think long and hard about the reasons behind it and stop blaming the poor guy. Come back to me when you figured it out,' Draco crossed his own arms in turn and any retort Harry had immediately dissolved. So that's how it was to be on the receiving end of the discussion-dissuading arm cross. Harry didn't like it.
Coffee. Coffee was good, and nice. Coffee was his friend. Black and hot, soothing his frazzled nerves and the lingering twitchiness. Harry couldn't sleep that night. He was up far too late than it was expected from a respectable, responsible adult. Especially when the reason was said adult's partner and his terribly unprofessional flirting in their joint office. And he wasn't even flirting with Harry.
Harry groaned, pushing that trail of though deep down into his sleep deprived mind. This wasn't about whom Draco was flirting with. It was about the act of it, with a co-worker, in their place of work. Harry's mind supplied, rather unhelpfully, that he never had a problem with it when Susan Bones flirted with Blaise Zabini (and what an utterly odd pairing that was). Or when he caught those two new Aurors, whose names he didn't remember, snogging in the staircase. This one was different, somehow, and Harry started to inch towards the inkling of a possibility that this was not about the flirting, or the danger, or his Auror pride, but about Draco himself. After all, all throughout the night, that was the face he came back to over and over again. Harry suspected he wouldn't be as forthcoming as he was with this new-found knowledge if he had had a proper night of sleep.
Draco came into the office a few minutes late as he did every morning. He shot a knowing, but far from sympathetic look at Harry and started on his paperwork.
'Good morning to you too,' Harry supplied sarcastically. Draco only threw him another glance, 'I slept wonderful, thanks for asking. What a great day we have ahead of us.'
It wasn't a great day and they both knew it. It was raining outside, and the rain made it through the charms in their windows, covering the usually cheerful sunny expanse with heavy pellets and dirty puddles. The lights in their office flickered slightly whenever a heavier roll of thunder stalked through the magical field. It wasn't really there, and Harry found himself wondering how it could possibly affect the inside.
Draco seemed to be on the same track as he watched the lights intently, flicking his eyes between them and Harry. With a deep sigh, he focused back on his paperwork, never responding to the greeting.
Harry, undeterred, continued. He was not about to be made uncomfortable in his own office, because Draco has some skewed idea about Harry having a problem where no such problem existed.
'What are you planning to have for lunch? I'm thinking that café across the road, the Muggle one, they do really nice Croque-monsieur.'
Draco gathered the papers on his desk carefully, his graceful fingers assembling them into a neat stack. Then he slammed them against his desk with a force so brutal it rattled the mug of coffee he had sitting on it.
'Did you think about yesterday? Because that is the only thing I am willing to speak to you about at this moment, and if you haven't had any epiphanies on the subject, then do shut the hell up and leave me alone.'
Harry complied.
They worked in silence, only the distant sounds of thunder breaking it up, until lunch time came and a knock on the door disturbed their working.
The moment Sean came in through the door, a loud, rumbling crash shuddered their office and the lights first blazed so bright it was blinding, then went completely out. The sudden darkness and the accompanying shouts of surprise rattling throughout the building had Harry realising it was the same through the building.
Of course, it must have been Sean's fault. Why else would it happen at the same exact moment he entered their office? Harry's Auror senses were wreaking havoc in his head. He could feel the tingling of residual magic playing on his fingertips, recognised it was his own surrounding the room, invisible yet undisputedly there. Oh.
'Merlin's pants, what happened?' Sean stood in the middle of the room, mouth open and surprise written all over that face. Harry noticed with some satisfaction that it was not a good look on him.
'Sean, could you please go and check the rest of the offices? It's probably just a fault in the Magical Maintenance. Be a dear and let Robards know, alright?' Draco shooed him out of the office as Sean looked behind his shoulder to throw a last glance at the lights. Those bloody shoulders, Harry thought, it was all their fault. If Draco didn't play noughts and crosses on them, there wouldn't now be glass from the lightbulbs littering their office floor.
Draco cast a silent Lumos and the room filled with warm, quivering light. It gave their usually stern office a strangely intimate feel, which Harry thought was horribly unwelcome at a time like this. Draco stalked towards Harry's desk, resting his palms on the wood, and for the first time that day he did not look even remotely pissed off as he asked what all that was about.
'I don't know what you're talking about.' Harry tried to hide his face from the searching look Draco gave him.
'Come on, Potter, I know your magic when I feel it. Why did you just deprive the entire floor of electricity?'
Harry couldn't help but look at Draco proudly. He only recently mastered Muggle terminology, and the 'electricity' word was still giving him trouble sometimes. By the determination in grey eyes boring into him, he noted this was not the time to change the topic.
'Well, I haven't been… I haven't been in the field for a while,' Harry stuttered, 'just releasing some pent-up magic?'
Draco scoffed at him. 'That would only work if you haven't used magic in years. Now stop lying to me.'
Harry met Draco's stern gaze, but he didn't feel fortified by this show of strength on his own part. If anything, it made things harder. He looked away.
'I don't like Sean.'
'I got that.'
'I don't like him in here.'
'Fine,' Draco sighed, 'I won't see him in here again.'
'I don't like him around you.'
Harry was just as surprised as Draco as the words escaped him. Maybe it was the lack of sleep, maybe the dying sounds of a storm, maybe how the light of Draco's magic accentuated his pointy, beautiful face. The words came out and no matter how much he wished it, he couldn't take them back.
'Why?' Draco's voice was soft, softer than he ever spoke to Harry before. Softer than velvet. Softer even than the hand which covered Harry's own, imploring him to speak.
Harry didn't speak. In the half-dark of their office, words were not necessary. He didn't even notice when his hand, of its own accord, grabbed Draco's shirt and pulled him towards Harry, crushing their lips together, hungrily, fantastically, now, now, mine.
The kiss wasn't a kiss. It was a devouring, a claiming, a release of emotions pent up over the last two, no – the last ten years. It was want and hate all at once, it was an apology and a plead.
It was unlike any kiss Harry ever had.
He pulled away, breathless, feeling Draco's own breath on his skin, hot and fervent. His hand still locked tight in Draco's shirt, Harry rested his forehead against the pale one in front of him. Draco's face was tinged pink, most noticeable on the high cheekbones, darker in the soft light.
Harry gathered the very last bits of his courage, and whispered, 'That's why.' Draco snickered in return, a shuddered laugh which tingled Harry's entire being.
'Alright then. You could have just said so from the start,' the answer had Harry's heart pounding even louder, if that was possible. The lights around them flickered on, softly, and flooded the room. Harry squinted against the sudden intrusion.
The storm outside a distant memory, sun shone brightly through their charmed window. Were the puddles formed before flowers grew now. The only sound the sing song of birds, happy chirping in the tree branches carrying across the field.