Author's Note: This was written for an LGBT+ Prompt Challenge on AO3, that involved Draco and Harry being stuck inside on a rainy day.
You hate the rain.
It feels cold, confining- it traces blurry lines on the windowpanes and makes the grass sopping wet. If you dare venture outside, you have to tiptoe around the worms that come up for air because the thought of stepping on one makes your stomach clench.
It reminds you of being on your hands and knees in muddy flowerbeds, trying to ignore the icy trickle of water weighing down your shirt collar and the shivers wracking your body. There were more times than you have fingers where the doorknob didn't turn to your desperately questing hand and you spent a desultory afternoon (or night) sitting with your oversized shirt pulled over your knees and the rain turned the fabric transparent.
At Hogwarts, sometimes it feels worse. When you look through the sheets of water at the courtyard, sometimes you think you can still see him and your fingers itch for your wand, itch to blast him back to the hell he should have never left. You feel trapped. You love the castle (it's your first real home), but even a home can become a prison.
Draco loves the rain. He loves wandering outside and spinning in a circle, tongue outstretched to catch the drops. He doesn't even mind the water slicking back his carefully mussed blonde hair (though he always fusses at you when your fingers can't help but run through it, tugging at the strands when you pull him close for a kiss). He doesn't mind the soggy fabric of his robes- he can always dry them, he reminds you with a slight, not quite condescending laugh.
But today, he can't go outside. No one can go outside because it's supposed to storm, and quite badly, and if there's one thing you hate more than rain, it's thunder and lightning. You chew on your bottom lip while the others chat around you, the noise a blur to your ears. It feels like a countdown, and your body remains stiff with anticipation at the first bright flash, the first loud crack.
"Harry?" Draco's voice breaks your concentration. He takes one look at you and grabs your wrist, tugging you up and away from the impromptu study session that formed in the library. "Come on, let's go."
"Where are you taking me?" You protest, but without much heat to it. He doesn't answer, just keeps towing you away. You feel like you should fight this more, but you kind of like when your boyfriend is pushy. He never used to be. He was shy with you, painfully awkward- like he didn't know what to do and the slightest wrong move would make you break. Sometimes you think you might break anyway.
You end up on the sixth floor, in a room you've never seen before. It's a bit dusty, but it has floor-to-ceiling windows that span two walls. You feel queasy already, but Draco twirls his wand, conjuring a plenitude of cushions and settling them on the floor, pulling you down with him into his makeshift nest. It's surprisingly comfy.
"Draco, I don't know if-" You begin, but Draco plants a soft kiss on your lips before you can continue.
"Trust me?" He asks. His pale cheeks are tinted a bright, very definite pink.
"All right," you relent. You do. He knows how you feel about storms.
The first flash makes you cringe into his shoulder, and you hate how fast your heart beats, how fast your breath becomes. Draco pulls you closer to him, murmuring sweet nothings into the fluff of your hair.
"You know the first time I thought I might like you?" He asks out of nowhere. You shake your head as the first raindrops streak the windows.
"When I saw you on the train," he continues. "I wanted to be your friend, but Weasley got to you first."
"Ron's a great friend," you defend him. Draco rolls his eyes, but you know he agrees. It might have taken a lot of long, awkward conversations and a bit of work (mostly with Hermione's help) but Draco and Ron are friends now. Oddly enough, the thing they talk the most about (and argue the most about, for that matter) is Quidditch.
"You've got the prettiest eyes," Draco tells you, kissing the tip of your nose. Thunder booms but you pay no attention to it, lost in the way his pale lashes sweep across his cheeks. "I've never seen a shade of green their equal."
"I've never seen anyone else with your hair," you tell him, letting your fingers creep up and run through the silky strands. He makes a face, his nose scrunching up, but you know he doesn't mind. "I love playing with it."
"And I your bird's nest," he teases, his own hand plunging into yours, fingertips massaging your scalp.
"My friends always said I was obsessed with you," you confess, and he pauses a moment, his mouth tipping up into a lazy smile that sends sparks shivering through your entire body.
"Mine too," he says. "Pansy threatened to feed me to the giant squid once." The mental image surprises a laugh from you, even as more lightning lights up the room and you can almost hear the rain coming down, so hard it sounds like the thrum of the sky's heartbeat.
"Did you shut up?" You ask. Draco grins.
"No," he says, and kisses you again. It's soft and sweet and you want more. You press closer, feeling the warmth of his body heat. It chases away the lingering chill as you cuddle, fingers idly running across his chest.
"I love you," you whisper into the hollow of his neck. He freezes for a moment, then tips your head up, earnest grey eyes staring right into yours.
"I love you, too," he breathes against your mouth.
You lie there for what feels like hours as the storm rages on outside, but you don't care anymore. Everything you could care about is right here, with mussed-up hair and laughing grey eyes and a soft woolen jumper Ron's mum gave him that's silver and has a green snake embroidered on the front.
"Do you feel better?" Draco asks some time later, when the only remnants of the storm are gentle rain drops spattering against the glass. You look at the streaks on the windowpane and at the swollen pink of your boyfriend's lips and nod.
Perhaps the rain isn't so bad after all.