A/N: Okay, so I had this major big plan for a fic that I'll probably still like (so if you end up reading that and the character names sound familiar that's why) but I just couldn't make it work, so this came out instead as my own pinch hit. Lol at myself. Also, might have been watching a bit too much Dexter over the last few days.
Prompt: I want to see this cliche switched up a bit. So this time Auror Draco (who's making amends for the war) is dealing with a crime where Harry is the main suspect.
Additional Info: Is Harry being framed? Is he a criminal in the eyes of the law but he's actually trying to do good? Or is Harry just bored of being the good guy? Surprise us
Cliches: auror/criminal scenarios, intelligent/smart/ravenclaw-worthy!Draco, and secret/hidden!relationship
When the Cat Comes to Stay, the Mouse Shall Play
The cottage is dark when Draco slips through the back door that evening, but he knows Harry will be up waiting for him. Just as surely as he knows Harry is involved in the recent spate of cursed object murders reeking havoc on his department, and just as surely as he knows that he doesn't know what he's going to do about it.
"Good day, dear?" Harry's voice wafts through the kitchen from the living room. When Draco wanders in, bag and coat left on the worktops behind him and rolling his sleeves up to a calculated level of 'casual,' it is to find him on the sofa reading by the light of a dying fire.
It makes the shadows on Harry's face glow red, and his eyes eerily dark.
"Wonderful," he says back, leaning against the back of their atrociously decorated sofa. It doesn't match the decor of their home, but when Molly Weasley gifts you with a moving in present, you don't say 'no.' Not that she knew Draco Malfoy was a part of that process. Or still is.
He leaves his sleeves a little below the elbow, plenty of flesh on display including the delicate paleness of his wrists, and the shadow of the dark mark will always stop the display from being any form of sexual, which is helpful in this case. He can't be threatening. Maybe if Harry can see the way his pulse is jumping, vulnerable beneath such a thin layer of flesh, his fight or flight instinct won't kick in.
"I saw you at Quidditch supplies again today," Harry murmurs, still not looking up from the book open on his lap. His posture is rigid and upright; it doesn't suit the scene of relaxed, firelit leisure time. But then, Draco knew before he took out his wand to unlock the door that Harry would be on guard and that this would be the reason why. The moment their eyes had locked through the sparkling store window, Draco could have sworn his heart stopped.
"That's the third time this week, isn't it?" He could have denied it, but Harry isn't blind, he knows what he saw. Or Draco could make up a bullshit excuse, but for this second, stalling works fine. It gives him the opportunity to dig into Harry's head, to let him think he's steering the conversation. And no one trusts a backpedalling ferret later in conversation. "What are you doing round there so often, Harry?" He let's his mouth quirk up a little, eyes wide and innocent, and Harry must see it in his peripheral vision even though he doesn't physically react.
"I like Quidditch," he answers, dry like a polar icecap instead. "The more important question here, is what were you doing there?" His eyes flick up to meet Draco's, dark like the smoldering coal behind him that has burned away to ashes.
"...I like Quidditch too," Draco decides to say, somewhat safe, amusing in the right light. His throat feels heavy as he gets it out though, the weight of Harry's stare like a constant pressure choking the life out of him steadily. Harry does not smile.
"Draco."
"Harry." The deadness behind Harry's eyes is the most unnerving thing. They've been cold to each other before, so that is no shock. Now Harry has his temper under control - and Draco has always preferred the bite of words to fists - their arguments over the past years have been more of the glacial variety than explosive. But that passion had always been there before, never quite going out.
Harry is that light in the group, the one whose inner child bubbles to the surface at the slightest provocation. He is fun and charismatic and has the freest smile in any room. Sometimes, Draco feels so insignificant beside him he doesn't understand how Harry could have chosen him. Now, there is a little rat squirming in his chest, squeaking that Harry chose him as his on tap stream on crime investigative intel.
It doesn't sit well, and he tries to dismiss it.
"Would you like a cup of tea?" The question is so non sequitur Draco feels like he's had his broom slipped out from under him mid flight, but he scrapes together an answer like he doesn't wonder if Harry can still sleep peacefully at night naturally.
"I'd rather shower," he replies, taking in a soothing breath. He can do this. "And go to bed," he adds, coy, because if you want to distract a man there's one surefire way of doing it.
"I'll put the kettle on." Harry smiles up at him, his secret smile that Draco thought was only for him, but now thinks maybe it's only at him.
They're having this out now then? Fine. Draco is a Slytherin, and an Auror, and a Malfoy. In that order. He can get through this unscathed.
"You and that muggle contraption," he chuckles, watching Harry uncurl his limbs and lope back to the kitchen. Fingers trail across the small of his back, and Draco follows them in a slow turn. It isn't so much that he thinks Harry means him any harm - all the victims of the Curse Collector are criminals that met a suitably sticky end - but it makes his skin itch thinking about turning his back to a killer. Yes, a killer. That's what Harry is. His Harry.
"Did you work out your troubles with Puresnow?" He's referring to Puresnow's objection that Draco should be treating his anonymous curse source as a suspect, not just an information library. Harry doesn't know that, but it turns out - annoyingly - that Sylvia Puresnow can do some things right.
"We argued it out earlier, yes."
"Yes, I know, at the mouth of Knockturn Alley." Harry had seen then. And what else could he have seen or heard while they were, ironically, supposedly staking him out? Like their postulations on why Harry could be visiting Borgin & Burkes? Or Puresnow's theory - again, probably bloody correct, damn her to hell - that he was making a final payment on the Austrian Gold Mud Slugs he would have needed for his previous curse. A very costly item that put Harry right in the auror department's line of fire. Stupid, stupid Harry, why would he do that?
"Then why did you ask?" It's the sort of snarky comment he would normally insert there, so he does.
"I wanted to know if you'd try and bend the truth." Draco has always been good at the art of untruth, and it's because he knows it is better tie a truth to one's own needs than to outright lie. Draco isn't the only one who has been watching.
"Why would I? Can we not turn something into an argument tonight?" A futile attempt to disarm a Harry who has already settled in for what will probably turn out to be a gruesome discussion. Draco can see it in the way Harry's back is never quite to him, how he watches Draco through their reflections in the window above the sink.
"Let's not," Harry agrees, but Draco is not so disillusioned that he could possibly think that is the end of it. "We can be civilized instead." They can, yes. They can sit down, like adults with their cups of tea, and talk about how Draco is an auror gunning for a promotion he will never get on a murder case, and Harry is the Curse Collector, a twisted vigilante who has convinced himself he is doing good by cursing a two hundred year old doll to slash a slasher's throat in his sleep. Very civilized. Draco feels like the doll here, in this surreal reality, like they should be perching on plastic chairs and drinking warm air. The teacup Harry passes him from their odd collection even has a pink flower on it.
"You're doing recon on me." It pointedly isn't a question. For some reason, after all of Draco's feeble attempts to lighten the mood, this is the moment Harry chooses to let his lips curl. Amused by some logic Draco cannot see.
"Harry, seeing you-" He shouldn't even have bothered a denial. Harry could have heard anything while he was watching them watching him. But Draco needs more time, the conversation is careening out of control and Draco still doesn't have any clue which direction he wants it to take.
"Don't lie. I'm not stupid, Draco."
"Alright, there's not need to snap," he placates, resisting the urge to unbutton his collar. Showing his nervousness more than Harry can already sense in the room is too close to vulnerability. Harry glances at his jugular anyway, and his thumb twitches like he wants to press it there.
"Well?"
"We've been ordered to put surveillance on all curse breakers in London for a case." Straightforward. A plan is forming in the calmer centre Draco's forcing himself to create. He can salvage this.
"And you just happened to get stuck with little, old me?" Harry purrs, brushing that thumb across Draco's wrist, like he doesn't realise what he's doing and can't resist the temptation of touching something so fragile. It's the same with a lot of the killers Draco has interviewed. Oh, Harry.
"No, I volunteered myself for you, actually," Draco offers, because Harry appreciates honesty above a lot of things and this will work in his favour later. "They all assumed I was hoping to get some sort of righteous satisfaction over you from my schoolboy days. My actual motivation was that I know your routine; I knew where you'd be. The more time I could log on you, the quicker we could clear you." Or not, as the case may be.
"You know concealment charms don't work on me," Harry says, tapping the black wire of his glasses knowingly. "You must have known I'd see you."
"Even with my bad dye job?" Draco jokes, feeling some of the tension crackling on the table between them melt into the clean wood.
"Even with your horrendous dye job," Harry confirms, somewhat delighted, even though they both know it was a charm.
"I was prepared for the possibility that this conversation would occur."
"And this way, you don't have to feel guilty about deceiving me, because it's obvious you weren't trying very hard to hide." Yes, Harry has been watching him. How he works, how he thinks.
"I am sorry, Harry, but it's a case and Harborhound said we weren't to talk to anyone. Not even…" The pause here is real. There is no manipulative quality to it, although Harry may not see it so, just an uncertainty. Draco isn't sure this is something he would be ready to say even if today hadn't happened, but... "Not even family." He says it anyway, because it is something he needs to say, and something Harry needs to hear.
"It's alright, Draco. You're chasing after a murderer and your job is really important." The sharpness in Draco's mind latches on to that. Proof. In a memory. Enough to ensure Harry's guilt. He had never said the case was about a spree of killings and the department statement made no hints towards the fact either. And if Draco hadn't been sure before, he is now. But still, if anything, it confuses him even more. Where does he want to be in an hours time? "To you. To me. To everyone, really. And you know I'm proud of you. You've clawed your way up from the dirt the end of the war left you crawling in."
"I know you are," he stammers and hopes Harry thinks it is the emotion clogging up his windpipe and not the horror that absolute, unquestionable proof provides.
Harry must suspect he knows as well, must be playing out the same analytics of their conversation and asking himself the same questions from his side of the conversation. An unpleasant bubbling, like tar boiling in the pit of his stomach, pesters at him. He wants to drop a hint to let him know. The idea is beyond idiotic. It's ludicrous. But his loyalty for Harry apparently trumps all else, even his slight advantage in this strange game of cat and mouse they have found themselves in.
Harry's stare is heavy, their eye contact so intense Draco feels drugged.
"How far would you go," Harry whispers, quiet like the breeze on a still pond, leaning forward over the table. His chair creaks. His fingers brush along the bones of Draco's fingers, the touch ever so light. "For family, Mr Malfoy?" Two fingers press at his pulse. Draco can feel his own heartbeat pounding away through the contact. Terrified in the presence of a hunter higher on the food chain.
"Further than I could ever come back from," he breathes back, letting his hand twitch under Harry's to scrape his palm. Harry will know. First and foremost, Draco is a Slytherin. Harry will understand what his confession is alluding to.
"Shall we order a takeaway tonight?" Harry confirms, bringing Draco's sweaty fingers to his lips. "I've got a bottle of wine waiting in the fridge that would go perfectly with Italian."