filters and papers, "I could go forward in the light, but I better fold my clothes" 33 God - Bon Iver
Dawn almost broke on the balcony; the sky was deep melancholic blue. It uninvited them to the day, invited them to sleep, and it was like they were. Draco sat loose on the worn couch, so pale he was almost a marble blue. Harry could hear him rolling cigarettes, fumbles of thin paper and crackling tobacco.
"Why do you smoke?" he said.
"I'm pretty sure you're not supposed to ask that," said Draco blandly.
Harry smiled sleepily. "Not supposed to?" He sat on the balcony floor like a ceramic pot, still as sleep, against Draco's legs.
"It's outside the social contract. It's taboo. Too personal." He heard paper slide against something, his dangerous tongue, probably.
"Oh right, sorry," Harry sighed, stretching his head to the sky, to lean against knees. "I basically live in your bed, I know every pattern to your lips. But let's uphold formality."
Draco's knees shook slightly in laughter, and he felt fingers play a single rhythm in his hair. "Is nothing sacred to you?"
Harry smiled, but waited. "Nah," Draco sniffed. "It's a left over."
Harry frowned. Draco continued, in an old voice. "Luca smokes more than me. That's all you're left, all you get from old lovers. Habits."
Harry hadn't thought about it like that. He wondered what he'd soaked from Ginny. A clinking lilt to his laugh, maybe, when playful.
He felt something chill his insides slowly. Draco was quiet for a while, eventually becoming still. "He's still part of my life, as well," he said blankly. Harry felt a coil inside him, and had a sudden impulse to shove Draco's knees away.
But he was still, dreary, and Draco continued tonelessly. "She wants you, doesn't she?"
Harry knew, what he meant. He was drawing similarity, or getting even maybe. He felt a flash of diluted anger in his stomach, and closed his eyes briefly.
But Draco sounded as if he were sleep-talking, and merely took sips of red wine above Harry. "He does, too."
Harry breathed deep. He heard himself speak, after a while. "Do you do anything about it?"
There was a long pause.
"Do you?" was the reply.
They were silent.
Harry lay formless later, imbedded in sheets, unsure where he ended and Draco began. It was burning midday outside, but they threw that aside, and created night. It all felt heavier, like clothes draping over him, dampening. The small remnants of the outside world hung on them, strangers in the room.
He thought Draco was asleep, lying still in his neck and breathing slow, wrapped under a white tent. Until he felt small rearrangement; legs folding, shoulder shift against sheet.
Breath tickled his neck. "I don't do anything about it," Harry whispered.
It was quiet for so long that Harry felt he was actually asleep, merely talking to the heavy clothes.
Draco's voice carried on a breeze that wasn't there, in their strangle of covers. "Neither do I."
They were quiet, breathing in the dark. He felt something shift, the breathing on his neck stopped. He opened his eyes to a silk touch. Lips on his; Draco kissed him soft and warm, a slow drip like a secret. Syrup sweet, before it slipped off, left to their false night.
Harry woke up alone. It was darker, messier, staler, as he sat up blinking. The scatter around the room lay untouched, but had grown – more clothes strewn and butts and bottles. He knew without knowing, that he was alone.
He truly considered leaving, but he wouldn't know where to go, and he didn't want people. Nowhere felt as sheltered, as much part of his form as his body, as here. Wasn't that his toothbrush, next to another in the bathroom? His school clothes, in the indecipherable mounds on the floor. He had carved out something, room for him.
His feet pad around the flat in the night. It had shut down. No light, no candles, no brewing coffee and burning ash, flicker or life. All the dead books and matter, lay strewn neatly and without coordination.
He felt he hardly knew what day it was, let alone the time. He felt placeless; he sat in the middle of the flat and watched rain hit the window and draw patterns and streams. He watched with drunk eyes, lulled by the soft thuds, until they grew rhythmic beats like a drum like his pulse and he felt dissociative. He could have been on another planet. A small white dark musty chaotic sphere.
He, Harry Potter, basically living in Draco Malfoy's flat. Like outcasts and runaways, alone and together. Like sheltered Muggles, like deadbeat friends, like –
He wanted to close his eyes to it all.
But nothing else struck his core as this, this unutterable, imperfect, impossible truth.
Harry watched the streetlamp cast silvery light through the veins of rain running down the large window. It cast glimmers, a great moving swimming pool of light over the floor; he could run his hands through the web of slippery light. It shimmered and stretched on his hand, alive. But he could never catch it. And he knew the truth.
He was weathered paper torn from a great foreboding book, loose and adrift. And he knew.
He could not say it, but it hardly mattered. Draco was there anyway.
Harry found himself in the common room, lying loose, and felt blind drunk. It holed itself in him like a burying insect, scratching away.
"Budge up," and he let his arm droop from its splay over his face, saw Ginny sit on his legs on the squishy couch.
Harry sat up and blinked. "What time is it?"
Ginny glanced at him, then stared. "Breakfast. Are you alright?"
Harry wondered if Draco was making coffee somewhere, if he was drunk, wrapped around a boy.
"Hmm," he mumbled. He heard voices loudening around him, a clatter of people waking up, and Ron and Hermione swirled in like bright lights to sit around them.
They chat around him like loud drums about Quidditch and Harry closed his eyes to it, lying back down. "God, I'll take a shot at it, shall I?" he heard Ginny say, and the others laughed.
"Harry," she said fixedly, and he peered blearily at her. "Here, this'll pull you in. Did you know that Malfoy's gay?"
He jerked up violently, shot up straight. Ron gaped at Ginny, but Hermione was goddamn watching him, of course.
"Gay?" said Ron, eyes wide. "No way."
Ginny nodded fervently. "I heard Slytherin girls complaining in the bathrooms, before Pansy came in and hexed them. I was in a stall."
"Gay?" said Ron in disbelief. Harry's jaw clenched.
Ginny shone a wide smile. "Yep, they were complaining about how the most attractive boy in school is permanently unavailable. I assumed some kind of sick Pure-Blood arranged marriage, but then, well. I believe the expression was 'gay as fuck'. Did you guys know?"
Did he know, Harry thought. I am a groove in his peach stone. Climbed inside his secret.
They chat on, and he only grew conscious when he heard his name. Hermione watched him timidly.
"Harry, even Slytherins aren't immune to you," Ginny giggled, and he frowned at her. "Second most attractive, they remembered to include you."
Harry groaned. "It's my status they like."
Hermione and Ginny laughed; Ron was still struck solid.
"Don't be daft," said Hermione. She exchanged an amused, knowing look with Ginny.
"Hard to find a girl that would disagree with them," said Ginny, a mischievous glint in her eyes. She winked at him, and Harry glared at her, felt his cheeks redden.
"But wouldn't you know, Harry?" said Ron, finally pulling out of his reverie. "You're … friends with him, after all."
Harry's throat strained, a hard lump formed. So far they had not mentioned their spat in the Great Hall; he felt Ron was ignoring it, or waiting for him to say something, while Hermione danced around it silently. It lingered, in long-sided looks and whispers that followed him like brooding shadows wherever he went.
"You're – what?" Ginny's gaze shot to him. "I thought that was just a rumour."
"But I overheard even Pansy and Blaise rave about you, Harry," said Hermione quickly, and Harry met her sympathetic smile. He returned it gently, while Ron and Ginny roared with laughter.
"I remember that," Ginny laughed like glass. "At the Leaky Cauldron. Pansy was teasing Blaise about that scandalous kiss you shared in spin the bottle. He got all huffy and they had a swearing match right there at the bar, and – wait for it, the killer line – he said 'even Draco thinks he's bloody hot'."
Harry's pulse jumped, stomach overturned. "Wait – what?"
"Oh, you didn't know Blaise likes boys too?" said Hermione nervously, looking between them. Harry blinked.
"You would have been with him, right Harry?" said Ron sourly. "You didn't come out that night, Slughorn's project."
Harry's hazy mind spun, struggling to get a grip. "Yeah, I guess." The first night he went to the flat on his own, it would have been. And Draco thinks – what? It couldn't have been a surprise, having been entangled with his long warm body, having tasted every colour of his lips and neck and skin. But the words, the certainty, spun him, and it was a long time ago. A whole other slice of them, before.
He thought of Lee and Ava's words at the underground bar. Of Draco's soft eyes, when Harry caught him sometimes, watching him. His rose blush, when Harry teased. Tasting his moan in his mouth. His grey indifference, his sharp anger, petty competing. Turbulent, his head spun; it was senseless.
Ron's grumbling stomach saved him, and they made to move off to breakfast. "Hermione," blurted Harry, in a desperate tone. They looked round, and he cleared his throat. "Can you stay, for a moment?"
Ron and Ginny kept moving, nudging each other at the portrait hole, but Hermione looked at him curiously. She sat beside him. "What is it?" she said softly.
Words stuck and slipped. "I don't know," he began. "I don't know anything." Answers are boring. It's questions which are interesting. Draco's words reverberated in him. "He changes, he's unpredictable. And then he's unpredictably the same. I never know."
Hermione looked at him softly, searching, and pressed her lips together. "Well, I can't pretend to know him." Harry felt desperate, for some rationality, something reliable. Hermione provided that. He clasped her hand.
She watched him, her eyes softening. "But I know you," she said quietly. "Maybe you're missing something?"
Harry walked through his school day, and thought about what he might be missing.
He was passive, by the time the Gryffindor's romped the common room with hard liquor, and spun into their atmosphere. Their buzz and chatter ended up at the familiar Muggle bar; Harry was instantly surprised at the change. They had established something; almost all of the students from their year were bustling around, loud clumps at the bar or the wild inter-house table. At the table their drinking games and squabble centred the whole bar, brought all the bright focus.
Hermione was determined he had fun, and kept weaving their arms together, pulling him along. Harry didn't drink as much, merely listened and watched and smiled, felt Hermione's warm hold. Enthused by Harry's participation, Ron drank more than he should and guffawed loud, arms waving, ran the drinking game like a captain.
He decentred, wandered over to the bar and perched on it. His loose lean, neat posture, framed out of the shot, reminded him of another person. Who he hadn't seen, since their small exchange under sheets, their heavy admissions, carrying lightly on a breeze.
He felt a warm, heavy hand on his back, and for a second thought his mind had manifested him here. But when he turned, it was Blaise.
Blaise considered him, face aglow with the warm bar light. "I believe I promised you a drink, Potter," he said.
Harry considered him too, thinking vaguely he shouldn't, especially this direct. He noticed the hard lines to his dark face, sharp cheekbones and angles, skin like a velvet night. The suggestive slant to his eyes. He was attractive, really, thought Harry. In an admirable, sultry, brooding way. He hadn't thought to notice.
Harry pulled something, from his dissociative state, a false confidence. He wore it like clothes. "Come on, then," he said flatly.
Blaise raised his eyebrows, faintly surprised, but smiled suggestively. He ordered dark liquor, like burnt amber, and Harry sipped on it slowly, looking away. Slow skates of burn slid through him like a caress. The warm hand didn't leave, and Harry didn't move it.
Harry watched his drink swill around slowly. "So, you're into boys."
Blaise hesitated, and when he glanced at him he saw traces of shock again. Harry wasn't surprised. "Got that from a kiss, did you?"
Harry shrugged unhelpfully.
"I'm curious," Blaise drawled. "What you get up to with Draco, all locked up together."
"What are your thoughts?" said Harry flatly, watching the liquor.
The heavy hand caressed him lightly, and for the first time Harry felt estranged. A stir of unease.
"I can guess," Blaise said, low, and he moved closer. Harry looked up at him dimly, and considered asking where Draco was, why Blaise was talking to him, but Blaise was watching his mouth and Harry looked back down at his drink.
He had a strange thought, amid thoughtlessness. This was his first, conscious, interaction with someone who shared his sexuality. He laughed aloud, felt more attached to his own body, and looked around at Blaise. As if some small string connected them, and he wanted to share something, lean into his warm hand. Perhaps he was just desperate, for something he could claim, but that was okay too, he thought. Blaise smiled slowly at him, curious.
"Blaise," a hard voice shot to them. Harry turned sharply and met icy grey. Draco stood behind him, tall and imposing, and flicked his gaze to Blaise. "You look tired," Draco said, sharp brittles. His expression was as casual as his words, but his eyes as sharp as his tone. Shards of cold ice.
Blaise frowned at him, but eased off Harry in response. Something passed between them, and he sneered at Draco. "Sure, Draco," he said, and slinked into the crowd.
"What are you doing here?" Harry watched Draco, who seemed to ignore him.
Draco watched the crowd, eyes flickering over the mass intently. "What did he want?"
Harry was silent, watching, and after a while Draco's erect body hunched forward. He moved round him to lean on the bar. He leaned against Harry, and their eyes met. The close stare was expectant, competitive, hard.
Draco broke first. "I'm drunk."
Harry watched him, a breath away. "He was buying me a drink," he said carefully.
Draco's eyes traced his face, sloppily. "Is that right," he said, quietly. Harry felt a touch, a hand on his outer thigh. He looked down to it; a pale hand skirt his jeans slowly, circled round his leg deliberately. His body flared in response, but he looked up and met an icy stare. He looked hard back, and the hand reached his inner thigh. His body shook, in violent hot circuits pacing up and down, but he didn't look away.
Light fingers moved higher, dangerous close, and Harry's lips quivered. "You're drunk," he murmured.
Draco merely watched him closely, eyes swimming loose. Fingers inched close, moved up, and traced his hard outline, and Harry's body jolted violent. He broke the stare, swung his head down to the bar, breathing in loud huffs. "People can see," he shuddered.
Draco ignored him again, fingers tracing a dangerous pattern and Harry dissolved, body throbbing and flushed.
He didn't realise his eyes were closed, until he felt lips at his ear. "Come home with me," whispered Draco.
He didn't know he was nodding, didn't feel himself lean into the touch, until it disappeared and a hand clutched his shoulder hard. The world immaterialised in a loud rush of colour and noise –
Familiar smell and feel, a dark narrow white hallway and wooden floorboards.
"Fuck, Draco!" Harry yelled, toppling over. "You can't just –"
Lips slammed into his violently, coaxing his open, and he was slammed into the hallway wall. Draco's hands clutched at his shirt aggressively, tugging it up in bunches, and his tongue moved deep in Harry's mouth. Draco was swaying slightly, but pressed himself hard against Harry. He tasted like fire, burning liquor and ash, tainting Harry's mouth and warming it like flames.
"You –" Harry spoke into his mouth, but Draco growled deep in his throat, and clutched him hard. His mouth moved to Harry's neck, licking and biting him amid hot kisses, and Harry's head hit the wall. His own hands gathered hips, drew them against his tighter, and Draco finally got his shirt off, drawing it over his head messily and returned to his neck, trailing kisses and bites over his collarbone. Hot, large hands splayed over his stomach, gripping his sides and tantalizing his skin. It was intoxicating, and Harry's head fell on a shoulder, breathing shakily on warm skin as urgent hands climbed his back.
"You're drunk," he said.
"I changed my mind," murmured Draco into his neck, his hands gripping his own shirt and furling it off in a single long move, and stumbled into Harry again. Harry breathed into his neck, hands climbing his broad back, the hard lines and raised beds of muscle. He loved it; as much as Draco seemed to appreciate him, clawing down his sides.
Nails gripped the edge of his jeans, pulling him tightly against hips, and their beating centres were pressed against each other, Draco as hard as him.
Harry exhaled a sharp noise. "You're mindless."
Hands travelled to his belt, fumbling with it. "I'll be your experiment."
A trickle flared cold up his spine. His body pulsed with heat shimmers, but Harry shook his head indistinctly. "No."
Draco leaned into him, tantalized him with a distracting hard heat, and got his belt undone. "You want this," he said low.
Harry shook his head, slower and more determinedly. He lifted it, opened his eyes and blinked at the wall behind Draco. Ignoring his volcanic body, he shifted, until Draco's head came up. His face was loose and flush, eyes swam drunk. Harry watched his eyes determinedly, until they focused on him. The cloud of haze slowly cleared, and Draco looked at him, direct.
Harry felt it, the inevitable, unutterable truth, at the centre and border of him. Draco frowned at him, confused. At his throat and mouth, and spoke it.
Harry stared intently at him, a hard concrete stare. "I want you."
Draco just watched him, as if he spoke another language. Then his face twitched, brow furrowing. He stepped back messily, staring.
And staring. Harry broke it, looked to the floor. He felt a rush of winds in him, taking his breath and centre, but merely looked down.
Draco was too still, and when Harry glanced up once he saw his eyes were swirling. Harry breathed deliberately, and after a while shifted up to watch him. Draco's eyes were wet, and catching Harry's eye, he finally broke. He looked away, and moved down the hall messily, grabbing the hallway drunkenly, into the kitchen.
"Draco –" Harry said, too quiet.
But he was gone, and Harry heard fumbled clicks of a Muggle lighter, struggling against fingers. A deep weight of pain sank in his stomach, and he closed his eyes.