A/N: Written for the amazing xNomii for her drabble help.
Also, if you're wondering where the title came from, I had a complete title-block, picked up the nearest book, and choose the first word I saw. It just so happened to be a Chemistry text book :D
Enjoy!
You've barely spoken before but it's your first day at the Ministry and you know no one else. Maybe if he'd ignored you, or if he'd looked a little less lost you would have gritted your teeth and bore the terrifying loneliness. But he doesn't, and you gravitate towards him like a flower following the dance of the sun across the sky.
You expect to hate him. After all you've heard, you expect to find him annoying or stuck up or prattish at the very least. You expect the hatred to click, like it did for your fathers (or so the stories say). But if anything clicks, it is his smile as it slots into your life like it belongs there.
And the horrible thing is. It isn't just bearable. It's enjoyable. Deliciously, painfully so, and you can't understand why. You've never felt like this.
He buys you coffee. Not in a way that makes you suspicious – just an offhand manner. "Oh, I get some every morning," he smiles at you. "They were having a buy one get one free, and I thought it was a waste to not get another one. But I can't drink two cups of coffee." And he hands it to you like it's the most natural thing in the world.
You thank him, slightly dazedand smile, grateful. You always find it so hard to wake up. "This'll perk me right up," you say, taking a sip.
It's warm and strong and not your flavour, but you make a spontaneous decision to love it anyway. (So lovely).
"I'm usually more of a mocha person," you tell him with a smile. "But this is delicious!"
The next morning, there's a mocha sitting next to your morning paperwork. He even writes your name on the cup.
The letters flash magically at you. The bright colours makes happiness curl in your stomach.
You can't deny the attraction, but you can suppress it. You try not to think of him (try and fail) and you don't mention your budding friendship to your friends or family. Not that you would have anyway, even if you weren't half in love. It's not something they'd understand.
If he had asked you out on a date, maybe you would have refused but he does it far more subtly than that.
"Hey," he says, offering you a confident smile as he leans on your desk.
"Hey yourself," you reply, ignoring the way your stomach leaps and twists at his unintentionally, effortlessly handsome demeanour.
"I was hoping I could have a favour," he says.
"Depends what it is," you say. But you know you'll probably do it for him regardless.
"You remember my sister?" he asks. You nod (you'd never forget anything he tells you). And it had surprised you to hear that the Malfoys, the pureblood fanatics, had birthed a squib.
It didn't surprise you, however, that they'd shut her away from the eyes of the wizarding world.
"Well she's recently got back in touch with me, and we've been writing to each other over the past few months," he tells you. "She wants me to meet her husband and her kid, but they don't know anything about wizards. So I have to pretend to be muggle."
You know where this is going now. "And you don't know anything about muggles?" you supply for him.
"Exactly," Scorpius says. "I was hoping…"
Maybe you sound a little too eager, but you don't really care. "When do you want to do it?" you ask.
It shouldn't amaze you, by now, how much he throws money around. The Malfoy family are rich – so rich you sometimes wonder why Scorpius has a job in the first place. But somehow it always takes you by surprise just how wealthy they are. You are, of course, reminded once more when he lets you into an empty flat that he's rented for the sole purpose of fooling his sister's family.
"You're going to need furniture," you say, assessing the bare room. "Maybe some basic appliances, like a fridge and stuff."
"What's a fridge?" he asks, and you sigh. This could be a long day.
It is a long day, and even then you don't get all the shopping done that you need to do. It takes you more than a week to get all the stuff you need to make the flat look real, and for the first time you're grateful that your family is somewhat muggle obsessed. You're all for hiring the furniture; you know how expensive outfitting an entire flat can be, and Scorpius probably wouldn't need it for that long anyway. But he points out that he'll want to meet up with his sister again, and so you take him to a muggle appliance store.
Big mistake.
He buys everything. Well, near enough. "This is ingenious," he tells you afterwards, as he irons his shirt. "I mean, it's much easier to do it with magic, but this actually works!"
"Of course it works," you tell him, amused. "What would be the point of it if it didn't?"
He shrugs, to busy inspecting the shirt with amazement. "But look how flat it becomes!"
You hide a smirk, because it's covered in creases on one side – the side Scorpius insisted on ironing. The other side looks more respectable though. You did that one. "Do you want to put your shirt back on?" you ask, with what you hope is a gracefully-arched eyebrow. Not that you mind getting such a glorious view of his abs. It's just that the temperature in the room seems to have risen about ten degrees, which it shouldn't have because the shop was out of heaters.
He smirks but shrugs the shirt back over his head. "So do you think this is good enough?" he asks. "Will it fool a muggle?"
You cast a cursory glance over the odd assortment of things you'd bought, including three clocks, a grand piano and an old-fashioned hat stand. No doubt Scorpius would come off as a little eccentric, but… "You'll be able to pass for one of them with no problem whatsoever," you grin confidently back at him.
A small tinge of pink colours his pale cheeks. "Thanks," he says. "For helping me today. And… I really enjoyed it."
Now you're blushing. "Don't mention it," you say. "I had fun too."
Reluctantly, you rise. You know the day's ended. "I'd better get going."
"Wait, Albus," he says, rising with you. You pause, your heart beating a little faster in your chest. "Do you…"
He trails off, and you wait patiently while he looks at the ground as though expecting to see his question written in the carpet under his feet. When he looks up, he's gone red. "I don't think I know enough about muggles to pass for one," he says, and you wonder if that was what he'd intended to say. "Would you mind being with me when I meet my sister and her family?"
You hesitate. "I don't know, Scor," you say. It's the first time you've shortened his name, and it falls naturally off your tongue – so natural it happens by accident. It's too late to add the rest of his name without looking like a moron, though, so you leave it as it is.
He either doesn't notice or doesn't mind. "Please?" he asks. "I'm terrified I'm going to say something stupid or he's going to start talking about muggle sport or something."
"Well, I suppose…" you say, and a look of insurmountable relief sweeps over his face. "Are you sure you don't want to meet them by yourself, though?"
"Very sure," Scorpius says instantly. "I just know I'll mess it up."
You smile reassuringly at him. "You'll be fine," you say.
"I will if I've got you to watch my back," he says, and you have to make a conscious effort to repress the happiness that bubbles up inside you.
You go to the flat together on the Friday before Scorpius's sister is due to visit. Her and her husband won't be there until the Saturday night, but you both agree that you'll need some time to make the flat look habitable. "We'll need food," you say as you toss some well-thumbed copies of your sister's muggle magazines onto the coffee table. "Even stuff we won't use for cooking. It'll look weird if you've got nothing in your cupboards. And you'll need to make things look a little untidy – nothing major, just enough that it looks like you've missed things while tidying up."
A panicked expression crosses his face. "Albus," he hisses. "What am I going to do? I don't know how to cook muggle food!"
"Oh," you say. How had you forgotten about the actual dinner? "That is a problem."
"Do you…?"
You shake your head and bite your lip for a moment. He watches you expectantly, waiting for you to come up with a brilliant solution.
"Well," you say eventually. "I guess we'd better decide what we're going to have and practice cooking it tonight."
He looks relieved at the simplicity of the solution. "What if we still can't do it?" he asks.
"Then I'll introduce you to the unhealthy wonder that is muggle takeaways," you reply with a wink.
You decide on something easy – a pasta bake with some vegetables, and a sponge cake for desert. You have the most enormous fun shopping for ingredients, and Scorpius insists on piling the trolley high with an assortment of food no one will ever eat.
You're not sure whether it's a blessing or a curse there are so many food-tasting booths dotted around the supermarket. They certainly get their money's worth out of Scorpius, who is instantly delighted by any food he tries. "This is amazing!" he exclaims as he sips at a cup of chocolate milk. You glance at the ten boxes of muesli bars he bought from the last tasting place and realise that if he keeps this up you're going to need a second trolley. "Why would I ever go back to eating wizard food?"
"It's all processed," you inform him as he asks the lady for three two-litre bottles. "It's terrible for your health."
"How can something this delicious be bad for you?" he asks, pushing the trolley further along the isle.
"Yeah, well," you say. "It's that saying, isn't it? The most fun things in life are either immoral, illegal, or they make you fat."
Scorpius blinks at you. "I've never heard that before in my life," he says.
You smile. "Must be a muggle thing," you say. "You should memorise it, seeing as you're trying to pass for one."
You can't help but laugh as he pulls out a notebook and pen and asks you to repeat it.
The dinner goes really well – Scorpius doesn't make any huge bungles, his sister's husband is really nice, and everyone leaves feeling happy and well-fed thanks to a last-minute call to the Chinese place down the road. Well, not everyone leaves; you sleep on the sofa and spend the night feeling very thankful that you hadn't managed to convince him to buy a cheap, uncomfortable one.
He smiles gratefully at you when you get to work on Monday, but something seems off about it. It's shyer, smaller… stranger, and you immediately worry that you've done something wrong. Thinking back to Saturday night, you try to recall saying something offensive or, Merlin forbid, saying something to indicate your growing feelings for him. But you didn't even drink that much, you know. You can't imagine what it could be.
You can't ask him about it; the bustling crowd in the Ministry atrium pushes you apart. When you started there, you'd worked almost right next to each other, but since then you'd both been promoted and now work on other sides of the building. You won't be able to see him until your break.
He finds you later that morning. You glance over your shoulder to make sure your boss is busy – Scorpius might be lucky enough to have an easy-going boss that lets him wander off mid-morning, but yours has the temper of a dragon and claws to match. Thankfully, she's occupied in what you remember is a horrendously important meeting.
"Hey," he says, perching on the edge of your desk with an elegance only he can accomplish. "I just wanted to thank you again for all your help this weekend. I'd have died without you."
You smile up at him. "I told you, it wasn't a problem," you say lightly. "I had fun. A lot of fun."
"Yeah, me too," he says. "That's why… that's why I was wondering if you want to do it again."
"Sure," you say, shuffling papers around on your desk that didn't really need to be shuffled. "When are you meeting up with your sister again?"
"No, not like that," Scorpius says quickly. "Just us two. Having dinner. And I promise I won't try to cook like a muggle again."
You smile, and the detached part of your brain thinks that's just as well. You know Scorpius has money, but you think that even his bank account might be stretched if he has to buy a new oven every time he feels like heating something up.
The attached part of your brain is flailing around a meadow like a summertime fairy. 'He's asking me out on a date!' you realise. 'He's actually asking!' And suddenly it doesn't matter that you told yourself you'd say no. It doesn't matter that he's a Malfoy and you're a Potter and you're both blokes (and Merlin what will your parents say?)
"Sure," you say, trying and failing at being nonchalant. "Sounds great!"
"Okay," Scorpius smiles. "We can decide a time later. I have to go. I'm, er, technically not supposed to be here."
You shoo him away, scolding him for disobeying his superiors. But as he disappears around the corner, you realise that your smile seems to have been attached to your face with a permanent sticking charm.