Seven
Draco was on Potter's doorstep ten seconds after he'd seen the Time-Turner.
He was in his pajamas - he had been in a hurry - with his wand in a vanishing holster (should the need arise) against his leg. The sprinklers were on next door and someone was playing a guitar across the street. Cattycorner to Potter's house on Privet Drive, some sort of a sports match was being celebrated with beers and shouting.
How are we going to play this, Draco? "I was wondering if I could borrow a cup of tea? Isn't that the trope?" Who asks for a cup of sugar these days? Draco didn't even known his neighbors and assumed that only the help would know where to find it. "May I use your phone?" Did Potter have a landline? Why wouldn't he have his mobile on him?
Potter opened the door just as Draco was saying, "My car broke down and I was wondering…?"
"Malfoy?" Potter was genuinely surprised. "How long have you been standing out here? I just got a call from Miss Figg that someone was standing on my porch. She was going to call the cops."
"My Lord. I've only been here for about a minute."
"The telephones never get a chance to cool down around here. Most of my neighbors are retirees." Or spies. Draco had no idea what a retiree was capable of.
"Well," Draco said, trying to take control of the situation once again. "My car broke down and I was wondering if I could call for a tow. I forgot my phone."
"Do you habitually drive around at night in your pajamas?" Draco narrowed his eyes. "I'm asking for science." Potter looked him over from head to toe and Draco felt every inch of it. "You should come in, though. It's too cold out there for silk pajama bottoms."
It wasn't. But Draco took the offer.
Potter himself was in a worn pair of jeans and an old grey t-shirt. The faded black lettering read: I'm a Seeker. There were no holes at the neck this time. Clearly he was in his Sunday best. The sitting room was pretty much as it looked from the mirror. A red and orange checked sofa and matching loveseat. A three shelf bookcase near the fireplace, two floor lamps with flower etched frosted glass, and a television on a stand. It was fussier than he would have assumed Potter would decorate his sanctum sanctorum. "Nice...place."
Potter gave him a crooked smile, closing the door behind them. "The furniture was all here when I moved in. It was Tuney's - er, Petunia's - Sister-in-Law's house. Marge moved to Majorca of all places and I rented it lock stock and barrell when I started at Durmstrang. Minus the dog hair. Do you want a cup of tea and the phone?" Instead of handing him his mobile, Potter showed Draco to an honest to Merlin wall phone. It was a rotary.
"Yes. Yes of course." While Draco pretended to call for a towing service on the assumption that Potter would never check his phone records, Potter set about making tea. His kitchen would rival Chernobyl. The underlying kitchen was 1970s chic in avocado green. And somehow Potter had exploded on it. It was chaos. There were takeaway containers in his trash. Which had no lid. And if the crime scene of his stove told it's tale he had at one point graced the burner with tomato sauce. His cabinet when he opened it had at least fourteen boxes of herbal tisanes (where were emphatically not tea) and somewhere in the very back he found a couple of Lipton tea bags who had clearly been under witness relocation in a raisin tin.
"I don't have any Earl Grey. Can you drink this?" Potter shook on of the wilting tea bags at Draco who merely nodded. Have I a choice?
"It's going to take a while. Do you mind terribly if I wait here until they call back?" Potter did not seem to notice that Draco had not asked for his phone number. Nor provided it to the tow company.
"Sure. Make yourself at home. Why don't you have a seat in the front room? You can just throw my duffle on the floor."
Narcissa Malfoy - Draco often used her as an arbiter of hospitality - would have been horrified to be told she would have to remove a bag from the seat prior to sitting on it (let alone the state of his kitchen). If he didn't have a Time-Turner to confiscate, Draco would have made himself at home by rolling up his shirt sleeves (if he wasn't in short sleeves) and scouring the place within an inch of it's life. Instead, he threw Potter's duffle on the floor before he sat on the not uncomfortable couch.
But not before confiscating the Time-Turner. He cast a quick Gemino before placing the fake on top of Harry's duffle.
It was a classic Time-Turner. This one had two concentric brass circles that radiated from a small glass capsule with the sands of time housed within. How it ended up in Potter's hands was anyone's guess. Malfoy had read about them but had never seen one in real life. And now he had one in his hands. Was it a real Time-Turner? Did it work? As per his training, they all had their particular quirks. He cast a non-verbal apericium and saw the stamp: Property of the Ministry of Magic.
"I'm sorry about the mess," Potter was saying from the kitchen, the kettle coming to a whistling boil, "But I was just packing for a small trip I was planning for next weekend. Ordinarily, it's much tidier." Draco knew this was not true. There were minute and hour notches on the device. He knew that revolving the circles would play with time.
"I'll survive," Draco drawled.
"To tell the truth, I'm glad your car broke down." Time-Turner momentarily forgotten, Draco perked up. Was Potter going to address the beach incident? He had been unfailing polite but professional since the incident and it was grating on Draco's last nerve. Even though he was doing the same.
"Oh?"
There was a knock on the door. "The tow company?"
"I don't… think so." If it was a towing company it was going to either be Ministry or MACUSA.
"I'll be right back. And then I have something to tell you. I was going to wait until Monday to tell you, but why not now?"
"Let me guess. Ectoplasmic effluvia? A poltergeist?" Draco heard Harry snort and then open the door. A minute or so later he was back.
"Hrm. No one was there."
"Stalker?"
"No Ford Anglias tonight, so I think I'm alright. So as I was saying," Potter said very slowly walking out of the kitchen with milk, sugar, and two teaspoons. Draco would have bet money that a bag of sugar would make it's way into Potter's tea. "So you know how Macron has been sending out incentives for scientists?" Draco's head spun trying to find the file with the name. Muggle President. France. He nodded, although he knew no such thing. "Well, I was offered a job at Beauxbatons. In the Pyrenees."
"You can't leave me!" It was out of Draco's mouth before he could check himself. Quite despite himself he was completely furious. He was the one who was martyring himself on the altar of self-sacrifice! How like Potter to try to fix things.
"Don't you think my research is bullshit?"
"I do! But I forbid you to leave."
"I think you've made it very clear Draco that whatever this is," Potter moved his hand back and forth between them, "Is something you don't want to entertain. I thought I would make it easier for you by taking myself out of the equation."
"I-I-" Draco didn't know what he was.
"I've never felt this way about anyone in my life. And I can't look at you without doing something. I'm a doing something person. I can't sit on my hands." Potter stared at Draco as if he were trying to read his mind. Draco, who was able to do so, caught the thoughts before he said them. "I think you need to figure it out for yourself."
"Harry, I ….love ….you."
"Oh my God, the tea," Harry said. His smile could have melted the sun.
"Are you seriously going to get tea after I just said what I said?" Draco was not impressed with the keening sound to his voice. Nor was he impressed with Harry's lack of focus.
"Hold that thought!"
Draco sighed. Harry literally ran back, tripped over an umbrella stand that looked like a troll foot, and then caught himself before he spilled tea everywhere. "I love you, too."
I know.
And then Harry was standing over him.
Harry wasn't sure what he was doing, but the moment his lips touched Draco's all rational thought had been deleted from the equation anyway. It had always been like this. Harry gave everything. He was incapable of holding back.
Three years of bottled lust was a heady thing. It had grown incrementally in the hothouse of his body invisible and tentative. But all flowers in time reach for the sun.
"Is this okay?" Harry asked between breaths taken when he was able to pull away from the reddening skin of Draco's mouth. This was red. The color of Draco's lips after Harry had taken them.
Draco was taking off Harry's shirt. "Don't stop, asshole."
And then Draco's tongue was in his mouth. He threw the t-shirt and Harry heard one of the teacups fall on the table and the run of hot tea on the carpet. I'll take care of that later. With Draco's fingers in the course down of his chest, Harry groaned. Draco made a small sound in the back of his throat in response. And then Harry did something that would go down in the annals of his sexual resume. Even if he hoped he would only need one interview.
He took Draco's pajama bottoms off with his teeth. And his underwear.
"Holy fuck," Draco said on what breath he was able to muster. He did offer the assist by lifting his hips.
Harry, who had never done such a thing in his life, was fairly impressed with himself. All of which took a backseat to the gold fur of Draco's torso tapering down to the crease Draco's speedo had only eluded to. Below that, dark gold curls presented his cock to Harry. It jumped under Harry's consideration.
He would have liked to have taken his time with Draco. He really would have. But five years of abstinence and the joy of reciprocation pulled him like the tide. He swallowed Draco and did not relent under the stutter of breath and words above him. If he had had any doubts as to Draco being British they were settled under the force of Harry's tongue.
He did not stop while Draco's fingers worked their way among his curls and urged him on. He did not stop when Draco pushed up into him. He did not stop until Draco pulsed salty against his tongue on an Ahhhhhhh that Harry thought he would think about for a very long time.
On the red and orange couch that Harry thought were a dark grey and lighter grey, with the front window completely open and the lights on, through the judicious application of lube that Harry had fortunately stowed in the coffee table after some, er, extracurricular activities of his own, and with the pleading guidance of Draco, Harry fucked his Department Head into the couch. He hadn't even quite removed his jeans.
He would not have taken Draco as a screamer.
It was so unbelievably hot that Harry didn't last very long. When he was more coherent, which took longer as he edged towards middle age, he vowed to study Draco's body in protracted detail. For science, of course. But later.
Someone knocked on the door again. Harry tried to ignore it, particularly moved by the exasperated look on Draco's face. But it persisted. "I will literally be right back. It's probably nothing." Harry zipped his jeans before getting up.
"I'm going to just lay here naked while you go off and do something more important than me laying here naked." Harry loved Draco's sardonic rejoinders. He was adorable when he was picayune.
"Umbridge?" The owner of the name stood on his doorstep in her quilted robe and curlers.
"I couldn't help but hear screaming from your home, Harry." She was trying to look around him, but Harry was too burly for her to see anything without coming into the house. He'd be damned if he let her in.
"Oh, I dropped the tea kettle on my foot," Harry said.
"You know I used to be a nurse," he did as she had mentioned it about a thousand times, "I would be more than happy to look at the injury."
"Thank you for the offer, but I think I'm alright now."
"It would be no bother."
"I appreciate your offer, but I really am alright. I need to clean up the spill. Have a good night."
When he was back he immediately closed the curtains. "I'm fairly certain she only heard the screaming - which was incredibly hot by the way - while standing in her backyard peering into the window."
"You're so loved, Harry."
"Yes." Harry smiled down at Draco. "Let me just get you a wash cloth. I think it's in your best interest to just stay here tonight. Who knows what those harridans will get up to." He walked into the hallway looking back once at the boneless and lithe body of Draco Malfoy. He had left one leg propped on the sofa and the other dropped to the ground. It was a very lovely view. Draco's pajamas and underwear had ended up on the ground. His right thigh had a circular impression of something the circumference of a garter Harry had not come across.
Harry had his head in the linen closet when he heard the sound of the tea cup falling to the ground. And the clink of something metal followed by Draco's fuck.
"To tell the truth, I'm glad your car broke down." Harry was trying his hardest to make his voice as even as possible. He carefully poured out water into the two mugs. He hadn't put quite enough in and stiffed himself in order to make sure Malfoy's was full enough.
"Oh?" Draco sounded a little distracted and Harry assumed it had to do with his car. It was such a strange coincidence that Malfoy had broken down so near his house. Lucky for Malfoy anyway. Many lashes would have been batted over his wearing pajamas.
There was a knock on the door. "The tow company?"
"I don't… think so." Malfoy sounded surprised and Harry was pretty certain that it took longer than a few minutes for someone to come out.
"I'll be right back. And then I have something to tell you. I was going to wait until Monday to tell you, but why not now?"
"Let me guess. Ectoplasmic effluvia? A poltergeist?"
Harry opened the door, completely ignoring Malfoy's mockery, and no one was there. The evening was still and Miss Umbridge, the neighbor to his left, was standing on her lawn. With binoculars. He waved at her as she waved at him. He could tell she wanted to ask him about his visitor, so he closed the door before she could come over.
"Anyway."
"I think I should get going," Malfoy said. Harry hadn't even given him his tea yet.
"But the tow company hasn't even showed up yet."
"I appreciate your hospitality, but I really need to go." Malfoy was half out the door before Harry called him back.
"At least take a coat, okay?"
Draco grudgingly took Harry's leather jacket. It was too large for him but it did something to Harry's stomach to see him in it. "I'll see you Monday, Potter."