Their first night together is not entirely unlike their first day working together as partners – which is to say, it's loud, and angry, and there's an awful lot of swearing, but somehow it works out better than either of them had really expected.
Everything about Draco, in that moment, is catlike – the arc of his shoulder blades shifting under the skin, the curve of his spine, the sharp hisses of breath. Harry's fingernails dig into the skin of his hips, staining ivory with blush red, and they move against each other like they are trying to make up for twenty-five years of unresolved emotional baggage. Perhaps they are.
"Harder," Draco hisses.
"Fucking pushy," Harry pants. He is already moving with what he judges to be plenty of force and deliberateness, but trust Malfoy to never be satisfied.
"I said harder, Potter," Draco snarls. "We're fucking, not cuddling, I don't—"
Harry's grip tightens on his hips and he swings him around, tugging upward on one thigh while bending him forward over the nearby end table, driving deeper into his hot, pliant body.
"Fuck." The word's halfway between a moan and a sob. Draco's usually starched Oxford is twisted, bunched around his chest, his thighs spread open, his hair disheveled. Harry fucks him past his everyday pressed perfection and it is the most ecstatically erotic thing he's ever seen.
"You're gorgeous when I'm fucking you," Harry whispers, bent forward so he can whisper it into Draco's ear. His rhythm is brutal, deep, and punishing, and the aging end table rattles with each thrust. The only immediate response is a small, almost desperate moan. "And you're so – Christ – fucking tight."
"Harder," Draco says again, though the tenor of his voice is different now. It's drawn, nearly trembling. "Fuck. Harder – I'm going to come—"
Harry groans, drives down into that careful angle with which he is becoming increasingly familiar, releases one hip to reach around and pull firmly on Draco's lean, fire-hot cock. It drags a garbled, frantic moan out of him. "Should have mentioned you were such a slut for a good fucking," Harry gasps into his ear. "We could have been doing this ages ago."
Draco's entire body is seizing up around Harry's cock, and Harry's not far behind. He is electric, thrumming with the heat of his own arousal. He has never had sex like this before, and now he's hating himself for it.
When Draco does come, it feels all-encompassing and inevitable; it runs down the length of his lean, pale body like a force of nature, and Harry is caught in it, hips jerking, coming inside him with such intensity that Harry's mind goes blank.
And when the roar settles, when the buzzing thrum of orgasm fades, perhaps it should be awkward. Perhaps they should both realize that they've crossed a line that shouldn't have been crossed; perhaps they should be remorseful or worried or any number of things.
Instead, Draco says, "Fuck, that was good."
Harry half-smirks, pulls out of him. Draco is debauched and fucked open, still slumped over the end table catching his breath.
"Not worried about the rules of intradepartmental affairs anymore?" Harry asks.
"Order in," is Draco's only answer, as he turns over on the end table and looks up at him. "We're not leaving this house for another two rounds at least."
"What's my name again?"
"Christ, Potter, I had only just managed to forget how wildly incompetent you are."
Harry glares at him across the carriage as it rattles down the streets of magical Florence. He wants to be angrier at Draco, he really does, but he doesn't even really look like Draco anymore, not with the glamour. His hair is auburn, his eyes are clear blue, and all the familiar and harsh lines of his face are softened.
"I've got fucking enough to worry about, Malfoy," Harry says, "I'm the one who's going to be doing all the actual work. The undercover identity was a formality at best."
"Niles Forger, you absolute clod," Draco snaps at him. "And I'm Thierry Daupin, a French expat living in London."
"Yeah, about that," Harry says, "why did they make you French? You don't speak French."
"Yes, I do."
Harry frowns. "You do?"
Draco's anger only seems to intensify. "My father is half-French; I spent all my childhood summers in Calais."
"You did?"
"Goddammit, Potter, you really didn't listen once during the entire course of our relationship, did you?"
"I certainly don't fucking remember you speaking French!"
"Why would you? It's only an integral part of my identity!"
"Well excuse me for fucking living, Malfoy. As I recall, you spent half our time together insisting to me that it wasn't serious and didn't matter! You gave me no reason to think I should care about integral parts of your identity!"
Draco fumes in silence and rips open the case file again. The spelled carriage goes over a particularly pronounced hump in the cobblestone and Harry tries to massage away the beginnings of a headache.
"Why does a French expat need a bodyguard, anyway?" Harry asks. Despite his protestations, he really does have a bad habit of not reading the case files as carefully as he should. He knows that Niles is Draco's – Thierry's – hired protection, but he can't recall why.
"Because I'm an up-and-coming opera star dealing with unsavory fans," Draco mutters. "I hired a bodyguard for a sense of personal safety."
"Right," Harry says. Then, "Wait, an up-and-coming opera star? Is – what's your assumed role?"
"Mr. Sorrentino will be directing a month-long run of La traviata through December," Draco answers. "Thierry has been invited to audition."
Harry stares in astonishment. "You're—?"
The carriage abruptly rattles to a halt. Draco flips the case file shut and tucks it into his robe before Harry has a chance to cobble together something like a response. He climbs out, breezing into the chilly, biting air of the wintry city.
La Fenice, the building and opera house where their target works and launders a not inconsiderable amount of money for extremist groups, is a magnificent, resplendent building, despite the unsavory connections Harry knows it has. It is all gleaming white marble and golden filigree, and high above the massive mahogany doors a burning phoenix spreads its fiery wings. Harry hadn't made the connection before, but now that he thinks about it, fenice must be the Italian word for "phoenix."
Harry hurries to catch up with Draco, who is already spelling open the massive doors when he's close enough to do so. "Malfoy," Harry hisses under his breath, "doesn't this rather defeat the entire point of undercover?"
"I'm sure I have no idea what you mean," Draco answers. He's already speaking with a French accent, the bastard.
"Undercover personas are supposed to fly under the radar," Harry says, and he has to drop his voice because they are arriving to a crowded antechamber, decorated opulently with scarlets and golds. "Isn't auditioning for an opera at a major venue the diametric opposite of subtle?"
"This is the theatre, Monsieur Forger," Draco says, casting him a stormy but brief glance over his shoulder. "Loud is par for the course. It's the quiet ones who are always out of place."
Before Harry can say anything, Draco is throwing open two double doors on the opposite side of the room. They open immediately into the house of the theatre, a massive, lavish, with a domed and painted ceiling. The curtains stand drawn, the stage empty, and down near the orchestra pit a table is set up in the middle of the left-center aisle.
"Je suis arivée!" Draco says, and Harry immediately decides that he does not want to hear Draco speaking French ever again; it is far too attractive. "Am I late, monsieur?"
Draco is gliding down the aisle like he owns the building, and the man at the table turns when he hears him.
Antonio Sorrentio – Harry recognizes him right away; he'd memorized his face from the picture in the case file. He is tall and handsome, though not in a classical sort of way. He's hawkish and sharp, olive-skinned, dressed richly without being overstated. When he sees Draco, dark eyes seem to light.
"Monsignor Daupin! How delightful to finally meet you!"
Draco offers his hand, but rather than shake it, Sorrentino sweeps it into one of his own and bends low to kiss the knuckle. Harry's taken aback by the gesture, but Draco makes a delighted trilling sound, like a flattered girl.
"They had told me to expect a handsome young tenor," Sorrentino says. "They had not prepared me for a vision of beauty!"
"There are those who would find such boldness unbecoming," Draco returns without missing a beat. Harry would be surprised at how easily Draco has transformed himself into Thierry Daupin if he hadn't seen him do it many times before on other undercover missions. "Luckily for you, I'm not one of those people."
"Lucky, indeed! Before we begin – what is the upper end of your falsetto, my dear?"
"Goodness," Draco says. "Aren't you supposed to buy me dinner first?"
Witty bastard. Harry stands back and folds his arms over his chest. Thankfully, he does not need to fake the surliness.
Sorrentino laughs delightedly, and Draco smiles disarmingly.
"But to answer your question," Draco says, "I can scrape a high F-sharp in a pinch. But my proper register goes plenty high on its own. Why do you ask?"
"If I tell you now I fear I might scare you away," Sorrentino answers. "And before I do that, I'd like to hear you sing at least once. I've heard so many good things about the French Songbird!"
"My goodness, you do know how to flatter, monsieur!"
"You brought your sheet music?"
Draco produces it from the sleeve of his expensive, designer robe, handing it over. Sorrentino only glances at once before he says—
"Be still my heart! O sole mio – an excellent choice. Please!"
Sorrentino gestures to the stage. Draco beams and glides toward the far end of the house, where a narrow stairway crosses the orchestra pit to the foot of the stage. Sorrentino sends the sheet music flying across the way to a man on an upright piano several meters away, arranges his papers, then glances back briefly – his eyes catch on Harry.
"And who are you?" he asks.
Harry keeps his face inscrutable. "Hired muscle," he answers, flatly, dialing up an east-end drawl.
Sorrentino makes a face. "Aren't you just," he says. Then he summarily forgets Harry's existence, turning back to the stage. "Are you ready, my dear?"
"Of course!"
"Luciano?"
The pianist plays up a rousing few chords, Harry sits down, half-unsure—
—but then Malfoy starts to sing, and all the world seems to narrow, as if bowing in deference to the sound that is produced.
Harry will be the first to admit – with great enthusiasm – that he knows nothing about music, let alone opera. But when Draco starts to sing, he feels as though he does not need to.
Draco sings like sunlight through a cloud, like cool rain on feverish skin. He sings with vim and vigor, with impossible sincerity and profundity. Every note, every breath is its own prayer of appreciation of the accidental miracle of life.
To say Harry is stunned would be a tremendous understatement. He did not know that sounds like that existed, let alone that Draco Malfoy could make them. There is a not insignificant part of him that never wants to hear anything other than Draco singing ever again.
It ends too quickly, or perhaps Harry had been too spellbound to notice its passing. The silence that follows the final note rattles in his head and he is left staring at Draco at down-center stage, feeling like everything has changed, somehow, in some inexplicable way.
"Tremendous," Sorrentino says, voice reverent. Then, "I wonder – can you do it again, a half-octave higher?"
He can, apparently, and somehow Harry is surprised all over again.
