Part II

Obnoxious || Dra-mion-ais-eo || Poly || Non-Magic AU Crack Fic || One-shot || NSFW Themes/Discussions

[Un-beta'd. Any and all errors are, naturally, faults of mine.] [I am looking for a beta though.]

Draco did not particularly like Theodore. He was vulgar and crass, the exact opposite of what Draco expected Hermione's best friend to be.

It didn't help that Theo had managed to worm his way into their relationship without an iota of complaint from his other partners. Hermione had never been so consistently happy in the year he'd known her as she had been since Theodore moved in with them. Draco certainly hadn't invited him, so he blamed that development on Hermione and Blaise.

Draco tolerated Theo's presence and got used to having him around, but unless they were tangled together with Blaise and Hermione, the two kept to themselves. Aside from the antagonizing Draco had long since gotten bored of responding to, Theo left Draco alone, and Draco certainly didn't seek the other man out. In fact, Draco was certain he would never like Theodore.

That view changed on a seemingly arbitrary November morning.

Hermione slept in, which she absolutely never did, and started the morning in slow motion. Draco made her tea and checked her temperature, but she'd waved him off. She said she was fine; said she just hadn't slept well. Draco and Blaise had believed her.

Then Theo appeared, showered, dressed, and with a serious determination around him that was so not Theo that Draco didn't recognize the man.

Draco and Blaise shared a confused glance when he immediately, and successfully, ushered Hermione upstairs to shower. She had frowned at him, but didn't protest. When they returned, Hermione was in her favorite pair of cotton capris, a tank top, and flats, with a sweater in one arm and a blank expression on her face.

"I'll be back in an hour or so," Theo had told them as he grabbed two water bottles from the fridge. "Come on, Hermione. We're taking my car."

Blaise and Draco watched on helplessly as their strong, independent girlfriend followed Theo into the garage like a ragdoll being pulled by strings. They heard him pull out of the driveway a few moments later.

"What the hell is going on?" Draco asked.

Blaise didn't know.

Anxiety and boredom drove them to tidying up while they waited for Theo to return. Draco took to deep cleaning the kitchen while Blaise disappeared upstairs to make their massive bed and collect laundry. By the time Theo returned, the dishwasher was running and a second load of colors was in the washer.

Draco hadn't even gotten a chance to open his mouth before Theo spoke up. "She's at the spa for the rest of the day. I know the owner and there are VIP perks for investors...She'll be there until nine."

Blaise sat up a little straighter on the couch and paused the TV. "What's going on?"

Theo looked at them both, really looked at them, and his already sullen expression darkened further.

"She hasn't told you," he said quietly. "Fuck."

Draco sat on one of the arms of the couch, on the side where Blaise wasn't lounging, and eyed Theodore expectantly.

"You can't let her know I've told you," Theo continued. "I'm sure you'd love it if she told me to fuck off, but she's all I have and you need – deserve - to know about today."

Draco frowned, but like Blaise he nodded and swore secrecy. Theo took Hermione's stuffed chair, the one she would normally be curled up in with that bloody cat of hers and a book, and he sighed.

"'Mione and I met before we were toilet trained," He began, not looking at either of the two other men in the room, but staring at some arbitrary spot on the coffee table. "On a playground our parents took us too. The older kids wouldn't let her play with them. I bit a boy two years older than us for yanking her hair. Made him bleed. We've been friends ever since."

Draco sat on the couch properly and got comfortable, sensing that they'd be here a while.

"We did everything together. I'm a little older, so I got to ditch nappies first, but she was so determined to catch up with me. And once you've helped someone wipe themselves you're kinda of bound for life. She followed me everywhere. I got picture books down from shelves she couldn't reach, I hurt other kids when they made her cry. She kicked a kid in the crotch once and thwacked him in the head with a hardback dictionary because he spat at me and said I had cooties. In primary school we established a reputation and by secondary everyone knew to leave us damn well alone." Theo rubbed his hands over his face. "We did an art project once. Made t-shirts and got to draw on them with that colored glue stuff? Don't remember what it's called. Mine said 'Mione's' on the front and hers said 'Theo's'. On the back I wrote 'Got Cooties?', like the milk commercials? She thought it was funny. Our mums thought it was hysterical. We wore those shirts every Friday until they didn't fit us anymore. Still have'em somewhere too."

Draco smiled slightly, picturing a tiny, frizzier version of Hermione in a t-shirt covered in kid scribble and wielding a massive dictionary. If Blaise's half-grin was anything to go by, he was as well.

"My mum died when we were fifteen."

They flinched, but Theo was still talking and didn't sound like he wanted the condolences they would have given him.

"When we were kids we were always having sleepovers, and that reinstated after Mum got sick. 'Mione never left me alone, even when I thought I wanted her too. She anchored me, went to the cemetery with me every single time. I didn't really feel 'normal' again until the summer before we went to Uni. We initially we were going for the same degree. Had all the same classes at the same times. We were going to use my dad's connections to get into publishing. Make a name for ourselves until one of us was making enough money to support us both. Then one of us would write a book, have the other publish it, get famous.

"I kissed whipped cream off her mouth when an American friend of ours convinced us that regardless of when Thanksgiving was, November was the month of pumpkin pie. We moved out of the dorms and into a flat my dad bought us two weeks later."

Theo inhaled shakily and rubbed his face again. When he clasped one fist in the other and pressed his hands against his bottom lip, Draco noticed a wet shine in his eyes.

"We did this stupid poetry night thing with some other bibliophiles every other Friday. My dad came up to watch plenty of times, but her parents were always so busy with expanding their dental practice that they could never made it. They promised to come to the last reading of the season, though. The group consisted solely of Uni kids, and since we had finals in December, the last Friday in November was when we stopped for the term. Her parents made arrangements and promised they'd be there..." Theo swallowed hard, and the painful sound carried through the silent room easily. "They got hit dead on by two pissed speeding teens twenty minutes from the café. No survivors. They all died on impact."

"Oh God," Blaise whispered.

"No, no," Draco groaned, equally as horrified as Blaise. "Please tell me she doesn't-"

"She does," Theo said quietly. "I don't know if she'll ever not blame herself to some degree. She's much better about it now, but..." Theo wiped his eyes. "She was so disappointed. It was her turn to read and they weren't there. She was on that shite little stage when the officers walked in. The minute I saw them I knew and she noticed them too. She couldn't finish her reading. She just…shattered into a million pieces that night. Didn't talk for nine months."

"At all?" Asked Blaise.

Theo shook his head. "Completely mute. She'd done it once or twice when we were kids. On the few occasions that she was out of my sight those bastard kids would pounce. Tell her to shut up, stop being such a know-it-all. Nobody cared what she had to say. All that shite. It never lasted more than a few days or a week. Dad says her parents took her took her to a psych and he told them to reassure her that her words mattered. That it was a phase. She'd grow out of it." He dug his heels into his eyes. "But there was no one telling her that her words didn't matter. There was no amount of reassurance, of affection or love I could offer her to make her talk. We still went to class, but I switched my major to Psych. She did all her assignments and wrote her essays, but she didn't make a sound for almost a year."

Theo swallowed again, wiped his eyes on his sleeves and his palms on his jeans. "Obviously, she got out of it. We finished Uni, but she didn't want to take over the writing industry anymore. She didn't want to deal with people who would bring up her parents and make it all about politics. She was a miserable orphan who had gotten a double, triple technically, inheritance. Her parents hadn't spent a dime of what they'd gotten when her grandparents died. Neither of us needed to work, really. Dad gave me half of Mum's life insurance and everything she'd inherited from her deceased family. We wanted for nothing, except the things money couldn't buy. The only real problem was that Hermione wanted to get as far away from home as possible and I didn't."

"That's why you split," Blaise said quietly. "You went in different directions."

Theo shrugged. "We never explicitly broke up," he said. "But we weren't holding each other to that fact either. Believe me when I say I was just as excited to meet you two as you were to meet me." He sent a look in Draco's direction and something akin to guilt stirred in the blond's chest. He would probably be an insufferable arse too if he was in Theo's shoes.

"I dabbled in a bit of casual sex while she was gone and she found you two. I got a letter or an email a few times a year notifying me that yes, she was alive and fine and missed me and would come home if I needed her to. But I never asked. I'm the last person on this Earth that would ask her to do something that might take her voice away again," Theo muttered. "Today's the anniversary of their deaths, if you hadn't inferred that on your own. I don't know what she's done the last few years - probably holed herself up and drank herself stupid - but I won't allow that."

Draco and Blaise agreed that no, she should not spend the day wallowing, and they didn't want anything to happen that may cause them to experience her muteness first hand.

"What else can we do?" Draco asked quietly.

Theo gave him a hard, piercing stare. "Don't treat her like glass. I dragged her out of here do she could try to relax and spend the day on her own. My friend – the one who owns the spa. Her name's Pansy – knows enough to make sure Hermione doesn't have to spend the day pretending she's fine. She can cry the entire time she's getting a massage or in the sauna if she wants, but she's still coming home with fresh nails and toes. I planned on cooking. Pans will feed her lunch and snacks. All organic, healthy shit to cleanse her chi or some shit."

A sullen silence fell between the three until Blaise let out a heavy sigh and stood.

"I need to go to the store anyway," He said, "What do you need to cook, Theo?"

"I started a list yesterday. It's on the fridge."

Blaise disappeared into the kitchen, leaving a very uncomfortable Draco alone with the source of his discomfort. Just when Draco had finally worked up the courage to open his mouth, Theo spoke.

"Don't, Malfoy. You don't need to convince yourself that you don't hate me just because you've heard my depressing - albeit condensed – life story," he snapped. "I don't want your fucking pity and I sure as hell don't need it."

Draco blinked, stunned. "I wasn't-"

"Bullshite! You're trying to lie to a god damn Psych Major. I did a fucking independent study on body language for two terms so I wouldn't have to play twenty questions with my mute girlfriend, do you really think you're that hard to fucking read?" Theo shouted. "I bet I know your brain better than you do. I know how you feel about 'Mione and Blaise, and Blaise's mother, and I definitely know how you feel about me."

Draco flinched back. He couldn't think of anything to say. There really wasn't anything he could say, was there? Theodore would just read past it all.

"I'm sorry," he mumbled lamely.

Theo let out a bitter half-laugh. "Don't hurt yourself, Blondie."

And just like that Theodore had transformed back into his usual insufferable self. Only now Draco knew it was a mask, a mask he wore to hide from Draco.

Guilt was not a pleasant thing to be immersed in.

Blaise had taken over the cooking once he realized that Theo's menu for the evening was full of simple, carb dense dishes he knew how to cook. He had also shooed the other man out the door to go pick up their girlfriend when he started to get antsy and pace the kitchen.

"Sit in the parking lot for thirty minutes, for all I care," he'd sighed, exasperated. "But you're driving me up the fucking wall, babe."

With Theo gone, Draco and Blaise were alone in the house again. The former was staring into a partially-cooled cup of tea while the latter waited patiently for the other to start speaking.

"How do I fix it?" Eventually floated from the island. "I just…damnit, Blaise, I don't understand. Did you already know why he's the way he is? He's unbearable most of the time and it's an act, for god's sake! How do you grow to love someone like that?"

Blaise sighed and stirred the fettuccini noodles. That shit stuck to the pan fast if you didn't keep an eye on it.

"I guess I just knew he was full of shit early on?" Blaise answered, his voice unsure. "I dunno, Dray. You know Hermione's got a hell of a built in douche bag radar. She wouldn't put up with him when he's in a mood if he was a complete tool. I looked for what she saw in him and I found it." He shrugged. "From there I could see his bullshit for what it was. It's just humorous now, because I know he speaks in half-truths and double-entendres."

"But does it not drive you mad?" Draco pressed, frowning at Blaise's back.

Blaise shrugged again and briefly opened the oven door to check on the brownies. Not quite done.

"Sometimes," Blaise admitted, "But he knows when he's gotten into dangerous territory, usually before I know he's starting to press my buttons. I think he uses verbal communication to distract people from his own subtler non-verbal signals. People pick up on little cues without even being consciously aware of it, you know. And Theodore knows just how to scramble the signals he's sending." Blaise set a strainer in the sink for the fettuccini before carefully fishing out one noddle with the slotted spaghetti server. He added two more minutes to the timer counting down on the microwave. "That's why you think he's arrogant," He continued when Draco stayed silent. "He wants you to think that. You jumped to conclusions the night we met him. He fed you false signals and you ate them out of the palm of his hand instead of analyzing the entire situation for what it was. He's…odd in the sense that he refuses to give people angelic first impressions of himself. If someone quick to judge him, rather than thinking and trying to figure out the games he plays, then he just keeps playing them. People have to earn his real side."

"That doesn't make sense," Draco muttered. "Why isolate yourself like that if you know most people are going to take everything you say and do at face value?"

Blaise turned around for a moment. "Draco. I know you know I heard you two earlier. He wasn't lying when he said she's all he has. Even when he wasn't this way people judged him. In secondary he got hell for being bisexual and there's only so much your friend and fellow bully victim can do without getting you both expelled. Yeah, he has his dad, but he can't really talk about his relationship with all of us to him. He can't talk about the other people in his life with his Father. Hermione said his dad doesn't judge him, but-"

"Theo knows it makes him uncomfortable," Draco finished. The longer they had this conversation the worse he felt. He'd spent the last six months wishing Theodore would vanish back to wherever he'd come from, but the man didn't really have anywhere else to go. Didn't have anyone else to go to. "How do I fix it?" He asked again.

Blaise pulled out the pan of brownies and set it on a cooling rack, then strained the noodles and found a jar of alfredo before he responded again. "Pay attention," he advised. "Look under the mask and find Theo. You'll know him when you see him. He looks a little scared and a little lost, like a little kid waiting for someone to steal his favorite toy. And once you've found him, you'll already be halfway in love with him, so take the man to dinner and maybe suck him off when you get back."

Draco choked on his tea. "He's rubbing off on you," he managed a moment later.

Blaise threw him a Cheshire grin. "Often, yes. You should know this. We all sleep in the same bed."

Draco glared at his boyfriend and was laughed at in return. "If you need something to look forward to, he really is quite good at fencing."

Blaise's guffaws followed Draco as he left stomped out of the kitchen, tea forgotten.

Draco had failed to read the same paragraph eight times and it was Theo's fault. Draco was in the living room, minding his own business, when the other man appeared and parked himself up against the doorframe.

"Really?"

Draco turned a page, but kept the previous one marked with his finger. He'd get back to it later when he could focus.

"You're going to have to be a bit more direct," Draco muttered, refusing to play into whatever game Theodore had concocted. He'd gotten more creative with his methods of grating on Draco's nerves, but ever since that grim November day, his attempts had been less and less successful.

Funny how even the least tolerable of people became more tolerable when you understood them a bit better.

Theodore waved a very crisp tri-folded piece of parchment in one hand and waved it in Draco's direction. "This, Malfoy. What the fuck is this?"

Draco flipped another page and did his best not to fidget. He wasn't going to be the one to back down this time "Looks like a letter."

"No shit, prick," Theo hissed. "What the fuck is it?"

"We just talked about this," Draco said in the same patient tone he'd often received from his mother as a child. "It's a letter. You sure you're feeling alri-"

"Draco."

He caved, Theo's almost exasperated but rather pained tone making him forget that he was supposed to be pretending to read, and glanced up. The letter was quivering slightly in Theo's shaking hand.

"It's an invitation," Draco said quietly. "One I didn't – don't – expect an answer to and certainly didn't expect you to acknowledge."

Theo sucked a breath in through his teeth. "Why? We aren't friends, Blondie, we're just dating the same people." They both frowned at that last sentence. "Never thought I'd say that."

Draco never thought he'd notice that Theodore only called him Blondie when he was nervous.

"I thought you read people like open books?" Draco said quietly. "Maybe we both did the same thing. I expected an arse so I saw one. You expected to see me hating you, so that even when that changed-"

"What should I wear?"

Stunned, Draco just stared at the still slightly trembling man in the door way. "I…what?"

"What. Should. I. Wear." Theodore repeated tauntingly slow.

"Um," Draco faltered. "Is that a yes? I wasn't expecting a yes. I was testing the waters so I could strategize accordingly and-"

"The café up the street?" Theo interrupted. "They're open late on Saturdays and sparingly that's their slowest evening this time of year."

"You're saying yes," Draco repeated dumbly.

"Nine?" Theo continued. Then, without waiting for an answer, he pivoted on his heel and vanished somewhere deeper in the house.

Draco stared at the spot where he'd just been, deeply confused and trying to figure out what the hell had just happened. The locks slid and clicked on the front door as Blaise and Hermione returned from the store. Blaise snorted at the look on Draco's face, took the extra bags from Hermione's arms, and said, "You're turn."

"What's wrong?" she asked him, taking a seat beside him and barely far enough away to not be considered in his lap. "Did something happen."

"I think I have a date tonight," he murmured. Her fingers found their way into his hair and he leaned into the pleasant touch. "I assume Blaise told you."

"He did," she said with a small smile. "That was idiotically, sickeningly adorable sending him a letter to ask him out. What did he do?"

"I think he yelled at me, technically?" Draco continued, finally turning away from the door, though he was still utterly bemused. "I'm not quite sure what happened. I told him I hadn't planned out this far and he just ignored me and set up the date? Nine, he said. We're going to that café you like at nine."

Hermione bit her lip, trying not to giggle at him, and Draco frowned. "I'm sorry," she said, though she didn't sound it. "I'm not trying to make fun of you. It's just really amusing to watch." Her nails gently raked through the hairs on the nape of his neck, sending signals to places he'd much rather focus his energy on as opposed to trying to understand Theodore.

He held her hip to steady her and leaned in to start trailing kisses along her throat. "I think I can be persuaded to forgive you," he murmured.

Her new position, he noted, could not be classified as anything other than in his lap, and he found himself preferring it to the alternative very much.

~End of Part II~

*hearts* To everyone for reading this thing that started out ridiculous and then somehow developed emotions and plot.