Disclaimer: I Don't own Harry Potter, The characters and universe belong to J.K. Rowling. Only the Plot is mine.
Summary: Draco gets drunk, Harry receives some postcards, and spills his tea.
Warnings: Slashy but nothing graphic.
Notes: This was inspired by the song "Another Postcard" by The Barenaked Ladies.
Another Postcard
Harry had always know Draco was a little odd. The other man had warned him of it himself before they had agreed to start dating. Even if Draco hadn't warned of his eccentric, at times baffling, behavior, it wouldn't have taken it very long to figure it out for himself. Regardless of how dense Draco told him he could be sometimes, he was neither an idiot nor truly blind to the world around him.
And it came to be that he was sitting at the kitchen table in the house that he and Draco shared, a forgotten cup of tea and an abandoned piece of toast sitting on his plate as he looked at the morning post in disbelief.
Draco traveled. Not much, only when work required it, but sometimes it was a for days at a time. Over the past couple years he had gotten in the habit of sending Harry postcards of the various places he was visiting, so that Harry would know where he was when he didn't have time to write him an actual letter. The blond's messages on the back were usually just some short variation of "I'm okay. I've been stuck doing such and such menial task".
This card was a little different. The front of the card featured a rather hairy man that was posing in a what appeared to be a mankini on the beach. His boyfriend's hand writing was always perfectly straight up and down and ever single letter and word was written precisely, but on this particular note there was a very distinct slant to the hand writing almost as if he had been writing on the paper sideways, or at the very least a sever slant. Some of the words were almost illegible, and at the end it seemed he had tried to spell "sincerely" several different ways before getting fed up, crossing them all out messily, and signing with a "Oh Bugger it, Harry"
The entire thing would have been highly alarming if it weren't for the small P.S. written sideways in the margin of the card. "Pansy got her deal, and we went out for drinks." And suddenly everything made perfect sense.
Draco, no matter how eloquent and refined he may be, was a complete light weight when it came to drinking. Harry guessed that half of the reason was that the blond was so thin, alcohol hit his blood and saturated his slight frame, leaving him slurring and making the most obscene statements. If they ever went out drinking with friends, he had to keep the blond within his sight at all times, otherwise the former Slytherin had a knack for disappearing from the bar or club entirely.
Looking at the...interesting...picture of on the front of the card and the chicken scratching on the back that made his own writing look amazing, Draco had had quite a few drinks. While he trusted Pansy to keep an eye on the blond, together their judgment tended to lean a little towards the uncaring side. It wasn't hard to imagine an inebriated Draco and Pansy riffling through post cards at a gift shop, and giggling in delight when they found this one.
Harry sighed and looked down at the card a bemused smile on his face. At the very least he could tease the blond about it when he came home. He cast a warming charm on his tea, and popped down a new piece of toast(his warming charms tended to make the bread soggy) and he settled back down to read the rest of his mail.
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The next morning Harry was more than a little surprised to receive another post card from Draco featuring another scantily clad man. Though this time he had to admit that the fellow was a slight better looking. He was standing with his back to the camera in a pair of short wife briefs looking over a balcony at the ocean down bellow. There was also a significantly less amount of hair covering the mans body, only on his head and legs as far as Harry could tell.
More surprising than the card itself was that Draco's handwriting was back to it's usual pristine neatness and the usual "I'm okay. I've been stuck doing such and such menial task". In the post script he had written, "This fellows a tad better looking no? Was a bit tossed when I sent the last."
Harry looked in bafflement at the card not knowing what to feel for brief moment before humor won out the moment and he started to laugh almost to the point of crying. Which, when he had finally stopped and was able to catch his breath, was probably just a tad much when considering the situation wasn't really that funny.
Sighing once again with a bemused smile on his face he set this post card with the other and went about the rest of the day feeling lighthearted.
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On the third day he was almost expecting to get a post card with yet another barely clad male on the front of it, and Draco didn't disappoint. Today's card(in a very artistic black and white) featured not one, not two, but three nude men lounging on couch. Feathers covered all of their bits and they were each holding onto a dove. Harry snorted and coughed tea out all over the table when he saw the picture and he had to grab a towel to clean up the mess before he could even read the message on the back, feeling extremely glad that Draco was halfway across the world or he would have been teased mercilessly over his sputtering.
Tea mess mopped up, he flipped the postcard over and read the message Draco had scrawled, "This city is making me irritable, to much sun, to many individuals in swim wear, and to much time spent in doors. I'll be back tomorrow. P.S. I certainly hope those feathers are clean."
Almost bursting with happiness at the though of Draco being hope tomorrow, he cleaned up after his meal and place the card with the other two. Glancing at them every time he walked by that day.
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On the day Draco was suppose to be home Harry was a little disappointed that he didn't receive another post card in the mail, though that was he supposed be cause his boyfriend was busy with finishing the rest of the paperwork for the last meeting and packing up his belongings, and knowing how Draco traveled, there would be much packing involved.
He puttered around the house all day, suddenly bored out of his mind and impatient for the blond to be home. He spent almost an hour and half playing with the cat, a tortoise shell colored feline by the name of Nikki, before realizing that they had stopped doing anything, and were both just laying on the carpet, Nikki purring in a pleased fashion that Harry was laying on the floor with her.
Rolling over on to his stomach he looked up at the clock and was displeased to find that it was only noon. He decided to take a shower even though he had the night before and wasn't really that dirty. Fifteen minutes later he was wiping fogged up glasses on the hem of his shirt as he rummaged through the fridge, making himself a sandwich.
The clock told him there was still hours left until Draco would be home, and figured now was a better time than ever to go work in the garden, and spent the next two hours outside getting extremely dirty pulling weeds, pruning bushes and trimming flowers. Which meant that when he was done it was necessary for him to take another shower. He got out of the second shower feeling a bit water logged from bathing so much in the last twenty four hours, but at least the last shower had been necessary.
For the next two hours he did practically nothing. He flopped on to their bed and rolled around before realizing that he now had to remake it. He started a load of laundry, which he realized was a sign of true boredom. And then thinking of nothing else he could do he flopped down on the couch and whined to the cat about how bored he was. She seemed at least a little sympathetic, jumping down from the back of the couch onto his stomach, making all of the air in his body leave with a "whomf" and the rubbed her face against his purring loudly.
When it started to get dark in the house and Draco still come home he decided that he should make himself some dinner and Nikki agreed meowing at the door to the cupboard that held her cat food. He sat at the table and picked moodily at his spaghetti wishing that Draco was home and thinking about how silly he was acting, pinning after his boyfriend like some sort of love sick teenage girl on summer break.
The sharp tapping of a an owl on the window broke him from his musings. He let the owl in and was surprised to see that it was carrying a post card, disappointment flooded him when he thought it was going to be telling him that Draco wouldn't be home till the next day.
His eyes widened in surprise when he saw who was on the cover. It was Draco laying on their bed with a smirk on his face clad only in one of Harry's larger and longer t-shirts. He flipped the card over after drooling over the picture for a minute.
"I rather like this one, what about you? Why don't you come upstairs and tell me?"