"Love, what've you done with my tongue? I open my mouth but you hear me wrong" Cigarettes & Loneliness - Chet Faker, peppermint oil, gold sheets
Sex changed everything.
Harry decided this, watching Draco shred wild mint, to smoke it back. On weathered chairs brought outside, with a streak of light on his spread bare legs and ankles crossed, sleeves rolled on his borrowed jumper. His lip would curl in distaste, but he kept at it, cheeks hollowing and eyes probing in delight, at the paper burn and smoke in new light.
There's an interesting power to it. To touch him, and understand how it felt; to watch it unfold, in his hands, in other hands, parts of parts, a synecdoche of sames.
Was it sex? It was so different from what he'd known; muffled sounds and locked doors at the Burrow, country sun on damp skin, sneaking out at morning. Half-formed plans and holding hands. A malleable, soft thing, a feminine other, warm and sweet with him; she'd cry out, for things left unsaid. Until it was an inevitable.
He was balanced and met, in Draco. He found he was exploring himself, in another – in reactions, in watching reactions. Hearing himself in their voice. In alignment with him, competing with him; a reflector. In Draco's hard power and swift force, his hot and dry, blood and air.
In heartbeats and hands, in warmth or quiver. Harry was stronger, could hold him down and up, but Draco was faster, could knock out his knees, so he could climb and tower over him, could chase him down.
A body was a rapture. And Harry knew him, could see him; and loved it, he loved it.
X
They didn't talk about it. He knew 'suspicious' was an understatement, that if McGonagall was finally doing something about it, it was over.
"We're running out of mugs." Draco cupped water from the tap, letting it drip from the corner of his mouth like veins.
How did this start? In a potions classroom, in Fiendfyre, in a bar?
"You know, you can clean."
In Post, in privacy?
"Of course," Draco picked his nails, and started skimming over the floor. "Of course. Of course I can. Of course I of course can –"
Harry chucked a ball of yellowing newspaper with a quick jolt of arm, and Draco laughed and tore it to shreds.
X
Sex was weaponry.
Sometimes his body would feel like an old door, lifting a leg, or an arm above his head, when waking up or walking. It creaked like the cabin.
Draco's eyes gleamed in the dark like embellished lettering on books. "I like to bite," he said quietly, finding soft parts of skin.
Harry could sometimes see a shadow of his old self, old snark, in the twist of a lip or an edge to his voice. A mosaic tile.
"You scratch your ear like a dog," Draco spat across the room. "Brute."
Harry let axed wood tumble from his arm and sprinted over, but Draco darted like a fox. "Look –" he ricocheted off couch corners, vaulting over things and got hold of an elbow. "Look at this," he jerked up his shirt, to show the end of scratches trailing to his ribs, dots of dried blood. "You animal."
Sometimes he was the most honest, shadowless. Staring unwavering eyes. He could imagine that Draco saw similar things as what Harry did. Saw him fall apart, saw a light leave.
Draco threw his head back to laugh, snatching out of his grip and darted to the bedroom; when Harry passed the doorframe Draco shoved from nowhere, pinning him to the bed. Harry felt air punched out of his lungs, and Draco grinned wide down at him.
His eyes were childplay. "Fight me."
X
The silver jack russell flickered for a moment before fading and all Harry could think of was Deluminators and a chest of light.
Draco stood behind him, pulling locks of hair to their ends. "Your hair is almost long enough to tie up." Harry was reminded of the last year, of Hermione chopping it back, of running around aimless.
Maybe Ron didn't know how to communicate with patronus'. Maybe it didn't work.
"I've converted you," Draco nipped at the nape of his neck. "Hermit."
"I thought it was vagrant."
"Sounds too urban, we're wilderness now."
"You never wear shoes," Harry argued. He liked to 'trek his day', Draco said, calculate it in the leftovers left on his feet. "And you don't sleep correctly."
Maybe Ron didn't need words. Maybe Draco didn't know whose it was.
"Correctly," Draco repeated, like a sour taste on his tongue. "3pm. I never see 3pm. I think that means something."
"It doesn't."
X
Sex was an oasis.
He felt gluttonous; he had Draco's scent infused in his body. Sometimes he would be disgruntled by it – it had the potency to mask his own, it had the rebellion of a secret, something covered by clothes. But then he realised he could own it. Wear it on his chin.
It could fill him up like Draco's glass bottles and jars on the windowsills of the cabin, filled with dead petals and bristles and other residue of beautiful things.
"Let's get married," Draco tiptoed over whispering grass, with airplane arms. "I'll take your name."
"Can we even get married? As men." Harry had no idea; he had no representation of it.
"Nah," Draco pumped his ring finger with a fist. "Not by their books."
Harry wanted to shake his head at him, roll his eyes, shove him, but Draco stomped in a puddle ahead of him. Harry kicked pale sticks like driftwood instead.
"We can stomp and chant around a fire," Draco said. "Wield rings from metallic earth."
"No one would recognise that, legally."
In the midst of it, it could be a binge. Like that ache of blood at the back of his throat after running. A wanderlust face, a rapid-fire in slow motion, an everlasting luxe, in a still. A narcotic depletion, heroin craze.
At the wake of it, it could be an invitation.
Draco straddled him, panting, and shook his head back like a dragon. Harry found his hand and guided it under his jaw, sucking a finger, while his other hand pumped; Draco shifted to cover his eyes like a mask, and kissed him sweetly.
"Let's be strangers," he whispered.
Harry didn't exist in this space, but all he was was this space.
X
"Do you really think that about monogamy?" he said on the bed, as Draco's fingers trailed a little too close. It made you think about intimate things. The most intimate, the faraway shiny chandelier words.
Draco's hands cupped instead, kissing his shoulder blades. "I don't know what I think."
Draco shifted, so Harry could see fake freckles over his face, night shadows from the leaves and branches tapping the window.
"But, Luca?" Harry said.
"We had an understanding," Draco lay back soft and tall. "To not understand each other."
Harry wanted to understand him. Draco unhinged his mouth wide so his jaw crackled, the bolt under his thumb.
"Did you want to date me?" Harry said.
"No," Draco paused. "I don't know what that was. Attraction. Anger, at you, and myself. And I was in the midst of a nervous breakdown," he smiled at himself. He turned to Harry. "But a lot was about this," he poked his hip, too sharp. "Only last summer I figured out why, why I was so angry."
Harry watched him, his chest rise and fall slowly, and laced fingers with the ugly scars there.
Draco looked to them for a moment. "I wanted you to hurt," he whispered. "I didn't want you."
Harry couldn't find anything to say. Like so many other things, it was just there, in bloody hands and the big big web of everything.
He looked at the floor, at Malfoy's black clothes and his recycling ones. Wanting someone was a different thing, when you had them.
X
Sex was flux. It was Draco.
Even Draco's pleads sounded like questions, with lilted endings and room for a grand conclusion – though he didn't leave room for answers. It was nonsense, said not for the words but for the candescence of sound over throat and tongue and teeth into the void, into Harry's ears. The temporal tune, in organ lungs, in hums. His eyes, heaven grey and wide.
Draco lay flat and open like a cross, of pale limbs on the couch, before rolling a curious hand over himself.
Harry hesitated, before crawling across the floor, half-kneeling. "What are you doing?"
"I don't know," he licked his own slow smile, and leaned back. But he did, they both did. "Don't touch." Draco poised his feet to pedestal on Harry's shoulders, to hold him back and steady himself.
"Watch."
Sometimes he looked at Harry like he had answers, and Harry wouldn't know what to do with that. He'd hide instead, pucker wide bites over his shoulders like open red lotus flowers.
Harry sat watching Draco roll grainy bread in his mouth across the table, his cheeks bulging. He sipped wine. He came over and bit that part of his neck he knew would make him end up knocked to the floor.
"Subservient, aren't I," Draco mumbled, at the tip, at the bald monk head of him.
Harry lay back flat under the table, sighing and twisting carpet, twitching into his mouth. No, no he wasn't.
X
Perhaps this place could do with pine needles too.
And more cooking equipment, things were too old here. A better axe, sharpened blade. It needed more light, Harry thought, he could fix that up, and the door creaked like another inhabitant, and they needed more clothes, really. And less dust. And Draco bitched about the coffee, they needed – More things, more sprouts and imprints.
Harry only caught his mistake when the sun set. And dark fell on the cabin and he stood in the middle of it. He went outside, in the cold for an hour, alone.
Draco protested by putting clothes back on.
Harry crawled up blankets to his lean form, bed-length long, and fiddled with buttons and sleeves. "Don't," he said. "Let me."
He undressed him slowly, rubbing fingers over fabric, peeling it back, to Draco's curious eyebrows. He spread himself luxuriously, stretching his arms behind him and smiling but Harry got hold of his shoulders.
"Don't move," Harry said, tasting his chest.
Draco was watchful, patient, as it all left. He raised his arms, shifted up his hips, in timely movements, letting Harry uncurl it all, unbuckle it, in layers. The sheets looked discoloured, beige, next to his alabaster white.
Harry pulled at his lower lip with teeth, and whispered. "Let me."
Night wore a sheath over his bare skin, like sheer fabric. A thin cover, as Harry moved over him with tracing lips, that made it feel more intimate, bare.
"Curious, are you," Draco watched him.
Harry watched his body respond, and mouthed at his thigh. "I just want to explore you."
Harry tracked his shelf secrets, hidden in his home. Bruises the colour of autumn leaves, aging, on his hips and inner thigh. His softness, blurred like pastel oil painting smears, his masculine edges. As Harry shifted to mouth along him, a slow taste and hard heat in his mouth, Draco sighed. "Well, now I'm not moving for anything."
He thought of the start of the year, of how this person could lull him into a dream state. His pale powder skin and electric beats, with a life of its own, all under Harry's hands.
He kissed up the line of pelvic hair. "You're so beautiful," he murmured.
When he trailed to his ribs, he looked up and caught eyes. Draco made a breathy sound, almost a laugh. Night softened his face, soft cheekbones and parted lips like a darker ink blot, sharpened his eyes.
Something roughened under Harry's touch – scars. He followed them, familiar things, between their bodies. Cracked up like pottery, hairline forks worn and weathered, with white and pink filler; his fingers lined it. An arid desert, dried out and cracked up.
Draco was still, but moved after a moment, and Harry shifted to accommodate. He touched the mark on the centre of Harry's chest. Harry watched fingers move tentatively, as if it were a new wound, but then surely, hand flat. He grabbed Harry's hand, and tapped at the etched words there. Then his forehead in a quick touch.
Harry looked up. "I thought we didn't talk about scars."
Draco looked around his face, lips pressed tight. "No, we don't."
And Harry wasn't sure if it was a statement of fact, or a declarative.
Harry frowned down at his chest. At the ship wreck there, and handled it possessively. "You're perfect," he said quietly and solid, like an argument.
Fingers in his hair made him look up, and Draco considered him, before pulling him in. "I don't want to be perfect," he said against his lips, and grappled with him with sharp arms, to flip them, to pin him down.
Draco smiled down at him, eyes flashing.
"I want to be ruined."
"Do you believe in time? I don't, but I know you do" - A.P