Disclaimer: It's J.K.'s sandbox. I'm just building a castle in it. And it looks just like the one in The Little Mermaid where all the towers are secretly shaped like penises.

(a/n: Oh, you're still here? Wowzers. Well, I could tell you a long boring story about how annoying it is to have an actual JOB that I have to LEAVE MY HOUSE FOR (and you all know how I hate that) and about how they make me do WORK there so I don't have the wonderful free yaoi-producing time that I once did, but you know what?

-flings update-

There. That is for you. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go nap the scent of employment off my body.)

Chapter 10: Drown Out

Drown out

The voice that breaks the silence

And talks the joy out of everything

You were found out

And had to walk in darkness

Without the only thing you cared about…

—The Swell Season

Presently, the only thing Draco Malfoy wanted was to punch his father very hard in the mouth.

He toyed idly with his fork, poking with no interest whatsoever at his dinner (some bird he'd never heard of which was undoubtedly as expensive as it was inedible) and allowing the conversation to wash over him like a particularly annoying wave.

"Smile, darling," said his mother in a whisper, nudging him under the surface of the table as she drained her third (or was it her fourth?) glass of wine.

"If I'd known we were having guests," returned Draco in an equally quiet voice, "I'd've stayed in my room."

Narcissa snorted into her wineglass, quickly disguising it as a cough. "Miss Parkinson—" she said brightly, turning to the girl seated across from her son.

"Oh no, Mrs. Malfoy," she interrupted, flashing an astonishingly fake smile, "you must call me Pansy!"

"Pansy," Narcissa corrected herself, motioning absently for her drink to be refilled. The woman was hell on the wine cellars. "Of course. Now, Draco tells me you're in his year at school. A prefect, aren't you?"

Draco had of course told her no such thing; he hadn't so much as mentioned the girl in passing since second year and whatever small talk his mother managed to drag the conversation along with were topics spoon-fed to her by her husband about ten minutes before the Parkinsons and that insufferably clingy spawn of theirs had turned up to spoil his appetite.

As if sensing the thought his father gave him a quick, sharp look of warning that went unnoticed by their guests, lost completely between the huge fake smile that preceded it and the huge fake smile that followed it. "Of course. Our son has inherited my impeccable taste in friends."

This roused a laugh from the adults which was fortunately loud enough to cover Draco's ensuing derisive snort. Friends? Unless he'd also inherited his father's absurd definition of the term (Friend (noun): one whose lips are planted firmly and permanently on your lily-white arse in an emotionally vacant bond formed entirely of repressed hatred (see "lackey")), he'd never had a friend in his life. Which, considering his options in that area, suited him just fine.

Pansy flashed him another smile and he inclined his head further in the direction of his nearly full plate, pretending not to notice. This…this was just a new low. He'd long ago resigned to the fact that his father was a man of unthinkable stupidity determined to meddle constantly in his life until the day he died, but this was such a new and frightening level of idiocy he could hardly even get his head around it.

They actually expected him to date this girl.

"If you've finished eating, Draco," said his father in a voice which informed him that he most certainly was, "your mother and I will be taking our guests into the sitting room for an after dinner drink."

Draco made a mental note to start brewing his mother's hangover potion.

"Why don't you show…ah…your darling little friend around the manor, dear?"

Pansy smiled so hard Draco thought he heard her teeth creak. "That would be lovely, Mrs. Malfoy."

OoOoOo

"This is your bedroom, is it?"

Draco ground his molars irritably. "Yes. And I'd rather you didn't—is that firewhiskey?"

Pansy smirked a little, taking a swig from the bottle. "No, it's tea, but why don't you shout a bit louder in case our parents didn't hear you the first time. Want some?"

"No! Put that away! Why've you got it in the first place?"

Pansy eyed him exasperatedly, darting behind him to close the door. "I find my parents that much easier to deal with if I've had a little…help. Sure you don't want anyway?"

Draco blinked. This behavior did not match up with the insipid girl he'd been showing around the house for the last twenty minutes, and he wasn't sure he liked her any better like this. "Do your parents know you've got this?" said Draco, mouth denting into a slight frown.

"Do your parents know you're gay?"

Draco's pretense of composure melted instantly. "Excuse me?"

Pansy fingered the rim of her bottle with a tiny laugh. "Ooh. Comfortable in that closet, is it?"

"What," snarled Draco, snatching the bottle out of her hands, "is that meant to mean?"

"It's this charming phrase used to describe those who insist on denying their raging homosexuality. Sure you've never heard it?"

"I know what it means! But it's got nothing to do with me, so—"

"You don't have to lie to your own, Draco," said Pansy in a low voice.

"What?"

Pansy quirked an eyebrow at him. "Obviously I'm better at hiding it than you are. You still haven't worked out I'm a lesbian?"

"You—you're—you're a what?"

"Merlin, and you're supposed to be smart…Lesbians. I trust you've heard of them? Les-bi-an. As in I like women. As in I have about as much interest in penis as my dad does."

"But—you never leave me alone at school! You fancy me!"

"I pretend to. None of the other blokes will bother me when everyone knows I've got a massive thing for you, and you won't bother me because you're gayer than a muggle magician."

"I—" Draco protested feebly.

"Yes you are. And obviously I can't have my parents knowing or they might…well actually I can't think of anything they could do that's stupider than this, come to think of it…"

Draco frowned at her for a long time. "I've changed my mind about that drink," he said, taking a delicate sip from the bottle as he sat down on his bed.

OoOoOo

"Hey," said Pansy from the floor some twenty minutes later, rolling onto her stomach to blink dazedly at Draco. "What're we gonna do about this thing, anyway?"

"Thing," said Draco distantly. "Thing. What thing?"

"Parents. Setting us up. What do we…do?"

Draco stared impassively at the ceiling. "Dunno."

"D'you wanna just…do it?"

"Eh?"

"...y'know...date. Keep our parents from finding out we're…like…faggotty things."

"I'm a faggot," corrected Draco, passing her the nearly empty bottle. "You're a dyke."

"'S goddamn right I am. I like women…"

Draco snickered. "You're drunk."

"Your face is drunk. C'mon, think about it…you'd never pester me for sex…an' I don care how many blokes you see…an' our parents would leave us aloooone…heh…let's jus' do it."

"All valid points," said Draco evenly.

"So—"

"I can't," said the firewhiskey in his stomach. "I'm in love with Harry fucking Potter."

In any kind of just universe, anyone who laughed the lengthy and deafening hurricane of laughter that Pansy proceeded to laugh would've suffocated within at least ten minutes of starting.

Apparently he did not live in a just universe.

"Knew it."

"Liar. I didn't know it! How can you know it?"

"You're just too…obsessed with him, y'know. Nobody talks about people they hate that often unless they secretly want to shag their brains out or something."

This time Draco laughed as well. "Don't…don't tell anyone I said…that…ha…I haven't even told him…"

"Stupid. Gotta tell people, when you feel like that…just hurts everyone, otherwise…"

"Oh yeah? Going to tell Granger anytime soon?"

Pansy cackled. "Granger? Ugh. Best of luck to Weasley with that one. All right to look at but you couldn't pay me to put up with that mouthy little—"

Someone knocked loudly at the door and she flung the bottle under Draco's bed.

"Draco? Is…oh, what is her name…is your little friend in there with you? Her parents are asking for her…"

You're still drunk! Draco mouthed at her.

"Don't worry," Pansy whispered back. "They're stupid. See you at school."

She hoisted herself off the floor on only her second try, before walking to the door in a perfect line of practiced straightness. "Oh, hello, Mrs. Malfoy! Do excuse me, I'm awfully tired…"

OoOoOo

Brain.

On fire.

That was Draco's immediate thought, or at least the nearest thing to a thought he was capable of forming with the roaring, screaming, ungodly hellspawn of a headache brutalizing his skull.

…Bottle? he thought as one rolled out from under his bed.

Oh.

That's what he'd been doing last night.

Getting unthinkably drunk with Pansy Parkinson.

Right.

She wasn't all that bad, really, he thought, staggering across the room for the door but only making it as far as his desk before he had to sit down again. Almost like a friend, he supposed, after all that talking…

Talking…

...about…

…talking about…

Oh. Oh dear god.

He'd told her about Potter.

Potter…

His chest throbbed suddenly with a pain far worse than any hangover, and he berated himself silently for allowing the thought.

Don't.

Think about.

Him.

Funny how a mind that had mere moments earlier been wallowing so deeply in a vat of evil headache soup it couldn't manage full sentences found itself mysteriously capable of instantly flooding with immaculately detailed reproductions of every moment he'd ever spent within eighty yards of Harry Potter.

"I don't understand." He looks down, long lashes half-covering those wide, beautiful emerald eyes. "You don't want to see me anymore?"

"That's not what I mean."

He doesn't look comforted. "I…but I don't need time away from you! We don't see enough of each other as it is!"

"I'm not just getting this out of nowhere, Potter. I've had a lot of time to think it over."

He just stares. Crosses his legs. Looks away. "…but I'm in love with you."

And I don't.

Say.

Anything.

He put his head down on the desk, groaning loudly. "Bugger," he mumbled quietly into the cold surface. "Bugger," he repeated loudly enough to irritate his hangover. "Oh fuckbuggeringwankershit, what is wrong with me?" His head pulsed angrily in protest of the noise and he ignored it, groping randomly in his desk drawer for the nearest quill.

I am an idiot.

I am an idiot and he doesn't deserve this.

"Dear Potter," he scrawled across the fist piece of parchment he found…

OoOoOo

"I love you.

That's probably a daft way to begin a letter, particularly a letter you might not even get in the first place because I haven't got a bloody clue where to send it, but then I seem to be doing a lot of daft things lately so I suppose it doesn't matter much. Which segues rather nicely into my second point:

I have been a fucking idiot.

I don't expect you to forget that. Or forgive me. I won't blame you even if you crumpled this up and chucked it out a window the minute you saw my handwriting. I've already blown more chances than you should've given me to begin with and if you've somehow managed to wise up while I was busy being an arse I can hardly hold it against you.

But I hope you haven't. I hope you're still naïve and soft-hearted and wonderfully stupid enough to forgive me. And when you have, if you ever do, meet me at that place you showed me so I can take back every stupid word I said there. I'll wait. Every night. Even if you never come. Even if it takes forever. You mean more to me than all the time in the world.

Love,

Draco"

Harry smoothed the edges of the parchment, which had begun to wrinkle slightly from the fifteen or so readings he'd given it in the twenty minutes since its arrival.

"I love you too, Draco," he said quietly, clutching the letter to his chest with a smile.

(a further a/n: NO I DID NOT WRITE THE MAJORITY OF THIS CHAPTER BETWEEN 2:17 AND 4:39 A.M. AFTER DRINKING A LITER OF MALIBU RUM! WHY WOULD YOU EVER SUGGEST SUCH A THING?!

(shifty eyes)

IGNORE THOSE PARENTHESIS! THEY KNOW NOTHING!

And hey, at least it's not a cliffhanger.)