(Warning: mature, dub-con)

Chapter 28: An old-fashioned cabinet

When we sit on the couch in the evenings, I'm permanently erect. It's not exactly what you'd call unwind. It can't be helped. I've got to respect his boundaries. He asked me to.

The other day I tried to find out why he always shuts me out like he does.

I know he likes me. I've caught him looking at me with his eyes full of stars dozens of times now. It can only mean one thing, really. And he must know what he is to me.

I've never told him, I'm too chicken-hearted for that kind of declaration it seems. But I haven't been able to hide my need to protect him, have I. Not even close. And even if I don't have fairy genes that can make my eyes sparkle like the Milky Way, at least part of my feelings must reflect in my gaze, too, whenever it comes to rest on him.

A couple of times lately I've tried to move things forward between us. Like catch his starry glance and answer it with a lazy bedroom smile. But each time I did that, he literally ran from the room. I've got no idea why he would do that. And the desire to get past this something that's keeping us apart made me do what I did.

The other night when I was at my desk in the living room, going over a couple of interrogation transcripts I had brought home from work because I simply don't seem to be able to ever get finished with those, I realized he was observing me. I knew the stars were there in his eyes, I can feel them on me by now. So I did it, I tried to read his mind. I know it was wrong, but I was just growing desperate.

I never really got in. I had only just touched the outskirts of his mind when I was like blinded. His consciousness radiated an emotion of such clarity it was like looking into the sun. I retreated and had to give my own mind a couple of seconds to recover. Then I cautiously extended my consciousness again. But when I tried to get close to his, that blinding light was gone. I found myself like groping about in a wall of thick fog. It made me turn around in my seat to check if he was still in the room with me.

He met my gaze squarely, sternly, all stars gone.

"Don't do that again, Harry," he said. I stuttered an apology, until he said, "I know I told you to try your Legilimency skills on me, but I was having an honest competition in mind, not an ambush."

And when I apologized some more, he said, "It's okay, just respect my boundaries?"

Like a question. It made me feel like a rapist.

So that's what I've been doing since then, sit next to him on my couch in the evenings and respect his boundaries. It's hard though. Pun intended.

He knows what's going on with me. He doesn't need any Legilimency to read me, not with the way I've got to adjust my sweat pants all the time. We've talked about it a couple of times, if briefly.

He said he didn't like the idea he was making me uncomfortable. I told him it was cool and it was my problem.

When we have the same conversation tonight, he doesn't nod to that like he did before. Instead, he offers me a blowjob.

He offers me a blowjob.

I'm not one of those scumbags who'd have Summoned Fairyboy, I should say no, but I can't. Not when I've been fantasizing about this for weeks. Years, really. But I can't just say okay, fine, either, can I.

"I don't know..."

He throws me one of his trademark smirks, then pulls his legs up to kneel next to me.

"Come on, stud. Show me what you got."

Okay. Fine. -

Having Malfoy suck me off is just one crazy fantasy. Yes, I'm calling him that in my head for a moment, before I stop thinking. Godric, this is one hell of a blowjob. It's so intense I forget everything. Including boundaries. I put both my hands on him.

He feels so good. So good. I squeeze him, front and back. He gives a shocked gasp, but I don't really hear it. He's like damp, like everywhere. I pull him on top of me. He tries to free himself, but I don't let him. His scent is sweet and spicy, a mix of forest honey and come. I make him straddle me and start to feel him up in earnest.

Godric, he feels so fucking great. Smooth and all slick, like he lubed himself, and finally I understand. This fragrant wetness is fairy pre come, and he's producing it front and back, and it's so insanely hot I explode against his stomach.

Only when I'm spent and look into his eyes again, my breath still coming in gasps and groans, I see that he's close to tears. -

I've said sorry like a million times over. He has gone to take a shower. Now he sits next to me on the couch again, at a distance of a foot, and in two pairs of pyjama bottoms. I've got the suspicion he did the adhesive hex, Secunda Cutis, too. I say sorry again.

He shakes his head.

"It's okay."

"It's not! I was way out of line, doing that to you. I know you aren't ready, and we don't even know if sex is a hazard for your heart..."

He shakes his head again, more vigorously.

"That's bullshit. That's not why I... Shit. Sorry."

"Don't say sorry, it's not you who did anything wrong..."

"Please don't talk about it. Please?"

"I won't. Just... I just want you to know I think everything about you is perfection."

He listens to that declaration, not showing a reaction. But he doesn't move away.

"I do, Draco, and I want you so much. You know I do."

He's still looking down, but from the side, it looks like he's smiling a very tiny smile.

"Give me a little more time, Harry?"

I say I will, I swear to him I will. And I ask him to let me touch him again, no private parts, just cuddling. So I'll know nothing's broken between us.

He nods and I put my arm around his shoulder. Carefully, I pull him in and start stroking his wings. He accepts the caress, and after two minutes or so, his left wing lifts for an inch, allowing me access to the sensitive underside and the small cavity between his wing joint and his shoulder blade.

And I know that even if I didn't get to satisfy him tonight, one of these days, it's going to happen. -

"What's this?"

Coming into the kitchen from the living room, Draco walks up to where I've just started clearing the dinner table. He's got something in his hand, and when he thrusts his arm forward to push it into my face, I see it's my map. The Ministry's Map. It's still in magnifying mode, showing the rooms and hallways of the Potions Section.

"That's how you knew I had left the lab the other day? You've been stalking me?"

Technically, I still do. I pull the map from his hand.

"How did you get that map, Draco."

"I was looking for the Y-pad in the cabinet and found that map in a drawer, that's how, Auror Potter," he snaps.

He doesn't even know that's not supposed to work. He doesn't know my cabinet is a safe that only opens to me. That's why I keep the map in there. Kept the map in there.

"Okay, get me a tissue from the cabinet. Second drawer from the top on the left," I say.

"What's a tissue," he asks, confused.

"A throw-away handkerchief," I say. "Muggles use them. Haven't you seen those little boxes in the drugstore?"

"You stalk me, and now you think you can avoid talking about it by ordering me around and making me get you a handkerchief?"

"I hexed the tissues so they heal small wounds. I got a cut. Got it on the job today," I say, showing him a cut in my palm I just gave myself with the pizza knife for the purpose.

"Oh, Harry," he says, looking at the small trickle of blood in my hand with concern. "Oh Harry, I so hate that kind of thing. I hate you getting hurt." He sighs and puts the map on the table. "I guess I shouldn't be mad at you for watching out for me. I'd do the same thing for you if I could. Sorry for shouting at you?"

I feel really bad about my little trick. But as he walks over to the cabinet, I hold my breath, nearly bursting with curiosity.

The tissue drawer opens without the slightest hitch. -

Saturday afternoon. Ron is at the door. I'm absurdly relieved Draco went out to the drugstore to stock up on shampoo and hair gel yet again. Probably eyeliner, too.

It turns out Hermione sent Ron over to collect some of the old wooden farm animals that I found in Sirius' cabinet when I first checked through it.

"What on earth does she need those ancient toys for?" I ask.

"No idea," he says sullenly. His speech is indistinct. He's wearing a plastic prosthesis where his front teeth should be, and it doesn't really fit. I know Hermione's stand on magical dental treatments. Quick and easy, but no lasting quality. There's nothing like Muggle odontotherapy when it comes to sustainable results, I've heard her preach on that often enough. It's obvious Ron wasn't given much choice in the matter, and I get why he isn't in the mood for talking.

I think I know why Hermione made him come to my flat to get those cows and sheep, though. We haven't seen each other since our fight in the Flying Pumpkin, and she wants us to get back to normal.

It comes in pretty handy, actually. Welcoming Ron in as warmly as I can, I take him into the living room and point at Sirius' cabinet.

"All the toys are in the bottom drawer. Take what you need."

"I can't open that cabinet, you know that," he grumbles.

"Please try?"

"Why?"

"To humour me?"

"Why would I want to humour you," he says, but he does as asked. The drawer doesn't open. I make him try the others, too, but the cabinet doesn't allow him access. Like it's supposed to.

In the end, I open the toy drawer myself. When Ron leaves with a bag full of bleating sheep and mooing cows with missing ears and tails, he's even more pissed at me than he was. -

A couple of days later, Draco is just down in the drugstore again, Hermione drops by with the news that Draco's smear test didn't yield any results indicating dark magic, so her diagnosis stands confirmed.

I use the opportunity to ask her to bring me a spell book from the cabinet.

"That's Sirius' cabinet," she says.

"I know. The book is right there, in the glass case."

She sits down, ignoring my request, eyeing me.

"Can Malfoy open your cabinet?" she says.

"He can, and I don't understand why," I say, accepting it's pointless to try to be clever with her.

"Okay. Some antiquities, like your cabinet, bear carvings that make them reserve the right to open them to their owner. It's a long-lost craft that makes these objects priceless."

"Alright, I know all that..."

"Spouses," Hermione continues, her voice raised, "spouses are by and large considered to have the right of usage concerning objects in the shared living area. Apparently your cabinet takes Draco for your legal spouse."

I'm speechless.

Hermione grins devilishly.

"The question we've got to ask ourselves is, could it be the two of you have been engaging in activities here in the living room that might appear like marital behaviour to a simple-minded, old-fashioned piece of magical furniture?"

"Ron seems out of sorts lately. Don't you think he has been acting different? I mean even before he lost those teeth? Like really strung up, you know. Lashing out at people for no reason. I've been wondering why. Everything alright between the two of you?"

It is a bit mean of me to use this, but it works. She bites her lip and stops talking about questions that need to be asked. -

xxxxxx

AUTHOR'S NOTE

I've done some editing to this chapter to make this fic meet ff net's requirements concerning explicit scenes. I understand there is a policy against the naming of body parts and stuff. The chapter's original version is on my ao 3 site, in case you are over 18 and want to check it out.

I'd very much like to know if you, dear reader, are okay with this chapter's degree of "mature", or whether you feel this is still too much, and not what you'd expect to find, or want to find on ff net.

Personally, I subscribe to the truth that all human activity lies within the writer's scope. And terms like smut don't make much sense to me. I feel that if the physical is an integral part of romance in real life, the same would have to hold in fiction.

But then I'm aware that many, or you, might disagree.

So, if you'd like to share your views, in a review or a PM, I'd appreciate the feedback! -

Thanks for reading, happy you're here! :)