Warnings: Violence, language, sexual references, infidelity (sort of)
Ginny is certain he's having an affair.
Harry's not particularly good at reading her emotions, but this one's obvious enough even for him to pick up on. He can sense the tiny part of her that's been evolving ever since her suspicions first formed, slowly beginning to hate him a little for doing that to her.
She should. She deserves better.
No matter how he tries to play the good husband, though, he can't help but need more than just the picket-fence life. He always has. He was shaped in hatred, and then later in war. He's never learned to live without the blood-pumping excitement of never knowing when the next blow will fall. He resents it – always has – but that doesn't mean he knows any other way to be.
Perhaps Ginny has always understood at least part of that. It certainly took her long enough to make up her mind about whether she should be marrying him. Yet even if she did come into their relationship with open eyes, it hardly justifies how he slips away from her without a word some evenings, too desperate to wait any longer.
When they meet, there's no covert rendezvous in overdecorated hotel rooms that charge by the hour. Dingy alleys do just as well. Better, in fact, because there's no clean up necessary. No one who can be bothered caring will notice another stain or two, and personally he likes the way the droplets can be allowed to drip freely down a building wall and carve out an epitaph detailing what's occurred between the two of them that night.
There's no plan. No schedule. Certainly no safewords.
And the only touches between them are filled with pain. But the crunch of knuckles against ribs hurts so good when Malfoy's the one delivering the punch. It's a release as powerful as any orgasm.
More importantly, it's all Harry can have of him.
So every now and then they get together and beat the holy shit out of each other until blood is surging inside their veins and out of open wounds and, to be honest, into Harry's ever-hardening cock. It only ends when they're both breathless, no longer able to lift their arms to even attempt a proper hit or block. On those nights Harry feels as though he lives for the brief but repeated moments of contact, and even more so for the way they both lean heavily against each other afterwards in exhaustion, practically sharing oxygen as they gasp together and try not to fall over completely until one of them finally gets up the strength to shove the other away. That person is usually Malfoy. Harry never wants to let go.
Things will never be any other way between the two of them. They can never climb beyond their long-cemented need to strike out at each other; their relationship, such as it is, will always be soaked in blood and pain, and every time they meet like this it only escalates. Part of him is just fine with that – he's not sure that even sex could compare to the power of holding each other's lives in their hands – but he still often catches himself wanting something different.
He's not having an affair, no. Not technically.
But oh, how Harry wishes.