Disclaimer: Not mine. Still Rowling's.
Warnings: HD slash, fluff, Oblivious!Harry, frustrated!Draco
Parce que patience
Everything's peachy until he starts on about salads, at which point you think, "Sod it, I'm going to have to go to Canada now."
Like actually go. Which is not in your plan, despite what you've said.
You eye him wearily. "Salad?" It's all you can do not to add, "Scarhead" to that, some sort of reminder who it is he's speaking to. He smiles like you're Weasley. Frowns like you're both fourteen.
Harry Potter, you think, will drive you spare.
He's already driving you to Canada.
Ten months of planning, greatest minds of your Slytherin year working day and night, all tossed because he's misjudged a menu. Pansy'll have your head when she hears.
"Never mind, Potty, I rescind my offer." Like you'd've settled for just a dance, anyway.
You dance with Longbottom because he will. You're sure he thinks Potter's watching, Potter's working up one of his famous jealousies, but you doubt it. Potter can barely hold his head up, let alone focus on anything as far as the dance floor.
No, no; dancing with Longbottom is face-saving, a bit, because you've clearly come cross-club to ask someone and it wouldn't do to leave without a partner. It's also goodbye, as much as you're able. Damn it, you hadn't counted on actually requiring goodbye tonight.
This, you suppose, is what you get for trying to predict Potter.
"He's…" Longbottom trails off, squints uncomfortably. "I'm sorry, Draco. He's not himself tonight." Longbottom's risked smile is small and verbose, sliding optimism where experience says there's none to be found. You've always thought this a Hufflepuff trait but when it comes to Potter, even the Gryffindors fall victim.
You have, yourself. It's how you came to be, theoretically, going to Canada come morning, yeah? A misjudgement you'll pay for in pride or comfort for years yet, you're sure.
"No," you say faintly, because Longbottoms — Gryffindors — require words where Slytherins do not. "He's precisely himself."
You don't explain that, how mucking up something relatively simple and patently obvious is part of Potter's persona, but with his friends, you don't need to. Longbottom knows.
"Just give it one more try," Longbottom pleads. Pleads. You close your eyes to hide what you're about to do from your Malfoy pride. "Draco, please, you know he'll hate himself for this come morning."
Despite yourself, you do.
It goes no better. This time, you're working on Potter's general disdain for instruction. He's a contrary bastard, for which you love him dearly, and nothing bypasses his control like putting words in his mouth.
"Say no," you say. Croon it, really, into his ear. Rub his back because you love touching him, because it seems to be soothing him. He's lovely and pliant and easy this way, and you lay it on thick in advance of how brilliant it will feel when he throws it in your face.
You can't wait.
"C'mon, Harry, say no." You can already hear him snap yes.
He lolls his messy dark head to one side. Smiles beatific. Says, "No," clearer than he's said anything else all night.
Well, that tops it. You've nothing left but goodbyes now. Them and the prospect of Canada.
"Wait," he says as you finish swallowing your intentions, and like a complete git, you feel yourself hope. He's brought you low, lower than you can remember being for anything else, and you think it's astonishingly Slytherin of him to have waited this long to give in.
Then he tells you you have very pretty shoes and you want to die.
Blaise doesn't ask how it went. Has no need, not if you're back at your table already. Instead, he says, "Care for another?" like when he leaves he'll actually be heading to the bar.
You pity the Gryffindors, who've a plastered Potter to mind and are about to inherit a zealous Zabini to fend off. Then, because you can, because you need extra time to plot how you'll avoid Canada — other side of the world, for fuck's sakes, what were you thinking? — you feed Blaise the latest offense. "I've pretty shoes," you say. "Very pretty shoes. Did you know?"
He stares a bit. Gawks, really, and were he anything but Slytherin you'd mock him for it. Then night falls on his expression and he charges off in high dudgeon.
Oh, how you pity the Gryffindors.
Your undying, patently obvious thing for Potter has become the subject of much speculation among your strange social circle. Having established that you are, in fact, interested, your friends debate the obstacle that's holding you back from what they've decided would be the most entertaining courtship in wizarding England.
Everyone's got a theory, all of them shit. Granger thinks it's that you're bent, something she doubts would have met your father's approval. Weasley thinks it's that it's a Gryffindor, essentially the anti-Slytherin house. Girl Weasley thinks it's that you could have anyone you want, anyone at all, so why commit just yet? Blaise thinks it's that it's Harry Bloody Potter, because Blaise dormed with you during the unfortunate rival Seeker days. Longbottom thinks it's that it's the Boy Who Lived because Neville knows you best from the war, when you were prone to pointing out idolizing the who BWL lark was a pig-ignorant way to deal with the situation.
Lovegood thinks it's Nargles. You don't need her reasons.
Pansy refrains from theorizing, you think because she's probably got it sorted. S'none of those things, not any of them.
She waits until the last of the wine's gone, the circle breaking off for the night, then reaches out for your hand. Squeezes and says, "It's that he hasn't shown any interest back, yeah?"
But he has. And that's the problem. He bends you over with his gaze every time he sees you, devours you whole and strips you bare and makes you ache. He couldn't show more interest if he tried, and he's obviously aware of yours.
No, what's holding your peace is that no matter how combustible you are together, he's yet to make a move. You've spent ten months planning, trying to corner him into something, and it's not worked yet.
Thisstill wouldn't be enough to keep you quiet, but he's Harry Potter and you're Draco Malfoy, and if you corner him to offer any of the things you both want to offer, he turns suspicious. Thinks you're plotting. You've already tried and he runs. He's like that with everything now, snapped by the pressure and praise that came with defeating Dark Git, and you don't mind that he runs from the Prophet like Skeeter's Inferius, but you're decidedly less keen on him running from you.
First time you asked him to dinner, he brought a bezoar. First time you cornered him at Longbottom's, he hit you with a Stupefy before you'd said six words and spent the rest of the night apologizing by proxy. Your every early attempt at civil conversation brought out subjects you'd rather have never discussed. Your father, the war, Dumbledore, the war, the Dark Git, the war, your curious friendship with Longbottom, the war. Then, one fine day, he'd stopped. Started conversing like a normal bloke — well, as normal as Potter ever got, it was still Potter — and you'd thought maybe this was progress.
Hadn't stopped the running. So you'd thought that was his answer, clearer than the bezoar, kinder than the Stupefy. But…but the looks. You've tried and honestly, you've no other explanation for those.
So you can't make your move as overtly as he requires because he doesn't sodding trust you and if you force things on him, a decision either way, it might go in your favour but it'll hobble things before they're started, your fantastic history of mutual distrust, so you can't. All you can do is wait for him to have a clue.
Or a little of that courage he's so famous for. Gryffindor courage, you think, may have been exaggerated.
He disappears with Longbottom and Weasley after the shoe debacle, and Blaise loiters by the bar in what's obviously deep, wrenching thought. He's had no more success than you have, you suspect, for all he's roughed up the Gryffindors to do it, and right now he's buying time to find a way to tell you.
You've no drink nearby and no desire to dance anymore, so you loiter at your table and ponder Canada, clearly your largest tactical error.
You're sure it's a lovely country, really, but you'd Crucio to stay where you are.
Harry Potter's never been one for action like he has for reaction. Pushed beyond reason by his stubborn refusal to meet you halfway in this torrid, fruitless flirtation, you decide to provoke that reactionary side.
Announce you've plans to relocate. Canada, you say when someone asks, because it's far off and as ruddy foreign as you can picture in the moment. Yes, yes, Canada, where they've tea and beavers and…well, you don't know what Canada has, really, but you're sure it's something you might theoretically enjoy. Were, y'know, you actually planning to visit.
You know Potter hears because he looks at you strange from that point on, like he's been stung by you before and fully expects a repetition.
Frustratingly, all he does is look. The clock runs down and now your time's up.
Blaise, when you tell him, looks like you've lost the plot.
"That's your brilliant fucking plan, Draco? Christ Almighty — " And he covers one side of his face with a palm, squeezes his eyes like just looking at you hurts. Breathes deep for composure, then tries again as mild-mannered Zabini. "I'll send you with mitts, then. Hear it's cold there, yeah? Ridiculous git." He shakes his head.
You think about explaining how things are between you and Potter. How he keeps his distance and those ruddy inescapable molesting looks. How your best hope was to draw a line in the sand, set a bar for him to hit. He'll say goodbye tonight and you'll know for sure it won't ever be anything more than looks, no matter how steamy, or he'll make you stay.
"Ta for the mitts," you say instead, because going through all that, your motivations, is too much to consider.
He blinks at you like Weasley did when you started hanging out with Neville, like you're some strange spectre of someone he once knew. You half-expect him to accuse you of Polyjuice consumption. Weasley did. Imperio may also have been involved. You're fuzzy on those sorts of details. Couldn't take your mind much off Potty and the incredibly edible way he'd grown since offing the Dark Git.
"What about the rest of us?" Blaise asks, eyes burning. You raise your brows, because what does he think you'll do with that question? "You'll piss off to Canada to spite Potter and just what, leave the rest of us here because we don't matter?"
Not for nothing have you been living on Pansy's couch and Blaise's mercy. "You matter."
"Not so much as Potter," he counters, and you've nothing to say to that. It's not true, not really, but that it is. It strikes you then that you've made yet another appalling choice, wagering solid mates on the banked heat in Potter's eyes. This really shouldn't surprise you, as you've a history of bad choices. A history, you think on philosophical flush, with no place in Canada. For the first time all night, you ponder optimistically the prospect of a fresh start.
It's as distant as it ever is.
Then Blaise says, "Never mind, then, he's — " And someone's grabbing you. Turning you.
Potter. You know those eyes, red-rimmed though they are. Know that painfully earnest expression, that dragged-through-hell flush. He fists your shirt, moves in close enough to keep things private between you without coming close enough to inspire hope.
As it turns out, just AK eyes are enough for you anyway. Pathetic creature. You feel Veela without the bloodline and want desperately to sneer, snarl, something that will grant dignity. It doesn't come.
"Thought you said no," you say, pithy as you please. You'll remember that beatific smile forever, the sex you never had.
He tells you you're not leaving and he's got a queer sort of madness in his eyes, something hectic and wild you really want to blame on Firewhisky. Potter riled is truly spectacular, all glittering eyes and fiendish vehemence. That shag you never had would have been through the mattress.
You set him to rights. Not the whole of the plan, Merlin, no, if Blaise didn't understand it, Potter stands no chance, but enough of your life to offer calm logic. Practical purpose, the backbone of any good Slytherin tale.
Throw in a bit of French, yeah, because you're dead sexy when you speak it and if you're getting nowhere with Potter after all this time, he'll know what he's missed.
Predictably, he gapes, pretty mouth working like moving too-bitten lips somehow spurs his thought process. You trace the faint line between his brows with your gaze, set each small frustrated sign to memory because come morning, you won't have it again.
"Say that again," he says, and you barely hear him, wrapped in the sudden sinking sickly realization that this, this is goodbye. No more Potter. No more looks, no more taunts, no more...Fuck.
"Which part?" You wonder if he hears your voice crack. You do, Blaise does, but Harry — he's Harry now, has to be, you're saying soddinggoodbye, you're a special breed of idiot — Harry's pissed and baffled and adorable.
Says, "All of it," and you think Triple fuck and try to hide and hear yourself call him "Potter" for distance you don't fucking feel, and when you look away for self-preservation, he touches you.
Draws you back.
Pleads.
You can't even look. He's just too Harry and the weight of your leaving's finally trampled your hope, and if you were dead sexy in French, he's dead sexy in earnest. If you look just one second longer, you'll move in fast, kiss him while he's right there, and you can't leave that way, but you can't stay either, not unless he's…
"Again," he says, so close you feel his breath against your mouth. You try because it's him, just words, not hard, but he stops you before you've made it three syllables.
And your knees melt because he's stopped you with his mouth.
You've imagined kissing Harry Potter. You're dead brilliant at imagining kissing Harry Potter, actually, you've loads of experience here. Angry, frustrated, soft, careful, tentative, insistent, awkward, you've done them all.
Failed to quite grasp the brilliance of combination, though.
He's pissed and it's sloppy, all knocking teeth and misplaced tongues and fumbling grip on the scruff of your neck. He tastes like sick-up, which you'll tell him later but which knots your stomach with implications. It's long and varied, hard and pressing when it starts, gentling to a soft sort of wonder when the lack of maidenly hexing registers, then heats up at the realization that you're both kissing each other.
All told, a lovely, lovely cycle, and you'll severely hex anyone twat enough to interrupt.
He's warm and hard against you, and you itch to close the remaining space because Salazar, haven't you had teasing enough? Surely it's time for a little Slythindor contact. Fuck's sakes, you've been closer pinning each other to walls in Hogwarts.
You run out of breath first, but when you inhale, it's all Harry-scented and it hits you like nip to a Veela. Possibly your eyes roll to white. Probably you moan. Every bastard in the world should envy the fuck out of you for how good Harry smells, how brilliant Harry kisses, even when he's making a right mash of it.
When he pulls back to breathe, you whimper. He rests his temple against yours, holds his clutch on your body as though he's afraid Canada's coming to steal you away now he's finally grown a pair.
"You taste like sick-up," you say because you know and you think he should know you do.
He fumbles through proof you're right, that mid-kiss realization of why he's tossed back more alcohol tonight than he does through the Death to Dark Git festivities. Fumbles, and trails off at a crucial moment.
Because you could cheerfully throttle him for mucking up yet again, moments after that snog no less, you call him Potty when you force him to finish. "You can't let that sentence hang, damn it, it's not bloody fair."
Because you, you were willing to go to Canada to knock sense into him. The least he can do is cobble a thought.
"Don't go," he says. "I don't want you to go."
You should leave it there, accept that you've the answer you wanted, but you're not as easy as all that. "That's not your choice to make."
"Isn't it?" And Merlin, don't you know that flash in Potty's eyes, the one that says you're about to be crushed under Potty's newest fixation, and if the thickness pressing against your thigh is any indication, for once you're actually looking forward to it.