Notes I didn't mean to take as long in updating as I have, I shall strive not to let it happen again. Thanks to those who reviewed my first chapter and gave me and extra confidence boost. More feedback is of course greatly appreciated. Enjoy sweetheart.
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Harry was seated on a black, fur-covered stool behind a red vinyl covered counter. His legs were crossed as he picked at the chips in his dark green nail polish, boredom evident on his face and in his body language. Thursdays were always slow days at his work. Being a shop filled with various items of gothic clothing, band t-shirts, baggy jeans and the racks of rubber clothes in the basement meant that a lot of clientele were groups of teenagers, all of which would be in school on this particularly sunny Thursday afternoon. The rest of the customers (twenty and thirty something rockers all the way up to fifty year old aging bikers) would either be working or hiding from the sunlight.
Over the course of the day there had been a total of eight customers, which was even slower than usual, and so Harry was finding himself slowly nodding off in his chair.
"You're going to be oozing charisma tonight aren't you?" came Alex's sarcastic voice from somewhere behind a pile of platform shoes. His head popped up, strands of his chin length black hair sticking to his clear lip-gloss.
"What are you on about?" Harry asked through a yawn.
"You." Alex replied as he clambered out from behind the shoes, narrowly avoiding tripping on a stray pink stiletto. He turned around, placing his hands on his hips as he glared down at the shoes. "This delivery is going to take forever to organize."
Harry gave Alex a pointed look as he turned back round from the shoes.
"If you hadn't insisted on trying on every single one then maybe you would have had the display done by now." He replied, standing languidly from the stool and stretching his arms above his head. Harry snorted at the look of feigned consideration on Alex's face. It was the only good thing about the weekday shift- he and Alex were alone running the shop.
"I suppose you may have a point." Alex agreed, bending down to unbuckle the glittering, turquoise platform shoe he was currently wearing. "What I was saying was that not only do you have to slip into front-man mode for the gig tonight but you'll need any extra charisma for hooking up with that Malfoy guy." He finished as he tossed the shoes back into the pile.
Harry crouched down behind the counter, rummaging around on the bottom shelf.
"He probably won't even show up." Harry said as he stood back up, a cloth and a bottle of glass cleaner.
"What went on between the two of you at school?" Alex asked as Harry headed across the room to the fitting room cubicles.
"What do you mean?"
"Well," Alex began as he dropped back to the floor, "I know you Harry, normally if a guy, especially one that hot, showed any interest in you, you would be bouncing off the walls so I figure something pretty major must have happened." He mused as he began sorting the shoes into pairs and lining them up against a wall.
Harry sighed as he squirted cleaning solution onto the ragged cloth and began wiping at the first mirror.
"I told you, he was git." Harry tried to make the sentence seem final but apparently Alex was not relenting.
"For some reason I think there's more to it than that."
"Malfoy was, and quite probably still is, a bigoted, pureblood tosser. He made fun of everyone who was half-blood or muggle born and saw himself as above them." Harry looked in the mirror he was cleaning to see Alex's reflection, the other man was scowling, not something he often did. Both he and Seth were muggle born and Alex, having endured a great deal of stigma when he was younger, could only ever be angered by mentions of wizarding bigotry.
"He hated me from the very beginning, continually making comments about how I was 'Perfect Potter' and about my lack of parents. I hated him as well. He spent so long trying to be a carbon copy of his father, how he never ended up with a dark mark is beyond me." Harry continued, eager to change the conversation to prevent Alex from exploding.
Alex frowned, piling up the empty shoeboxes.
"His father? Wait. Malfoy …he's Lucius Malfoy's son?" Alex asked incredulously, standing up from the floor and brushing himself off. Harry nodded as he stepped out of the cubicle.
"Afraid so." Harry stated as he stepped into the next fitting room. "I don't even want to think about what Seth would say if he found out." Harry's comment was met with silence as both Alex and he remembered Seth telling them about his mother and sister being targeted by Death Eaters for being the family of a muggle born wizard. It had never been proven for a fact but it was widely believed that Lucius Malfoy was the Death Eater in charge of the attack that killed them both during the second war.
"Look," Alex said as he came and leant against the entrance to the cubicle, "Malfoy seemed different from what you have told me, time changes people. He has grown up and so have you. If he still hated you then he wouldn't have been hitting on you." Harry paused his wiping of the mirror. Alex had a point. A very good one at that. He heard Alex snort with amusement. "You never thought of that did you?"
Harry turned around and brushed past Alex. He went to the display case that contained the shops more expensive jewellery and sprayed some of the cleaner on his cloth.
"No, that thought hadn't occurred to me." Harry sighed as he began wiping the glass, "I just don't see it as being anything long term."
"Never say never Harry." Alex said as he made his way to the door that led to the back rooms.
"Says you! You're not exactly Mr Relationship are you?" Harry asked with a smirk on face.
"No I'm not," Alex replied honestly, "and I'm perfectly happy so who says you and him can't have a little fun? Even if there isn't any future in it." He pushed open the door that took him from the shop floor, "I'm going for a smoke, I'm assuming you can handle the madness of the shop." He said, waving his hand around the desolate room.
"I'll give it my best shot." Harry replied, laughing as Alex disappeared.
A few minutes and several glass and mirrored surfaces later Harry was bored again. With no sign of Alex actually coming back in the foreseeable future, Harry busied himself by making sure the band t-shirts were all in alphabetical order. Over the music of the CD Harry heard the door open and breathed a sigh of relief.
"Finally, customers." He muttered under his breath.
Harry straightened up, fixing the t-shirts back into a line before turning around. He was greeted with a smirk and raised eyebrow.
"You have got to be joking." Harry said, suddenly shutting up when he realised he has spoken out loud.
"Is that anyway to greet a customer Potter?" Was the drawled reply from the blond who was now standing casually beside a rack of mini skirts.
"I'm just surprised to see you here in a muggle shop of all places." Harry said as he stepped behind the counter. Draco rolled his eyes as he began flipping through a display of shirts.
"Yes because that is so much more surprising than seeing me in a muggle club." He paused his flipping to give quiet regard to one of the shirts. "Besides, if one is going to a muggle club then one needs a muggle shop in which to buy muggle clothes. And, it would seem, fate really has it in for us."
Harry watched as Draco moved to a railing of trousers. With the blonde's back turned. Harry allowed himself a quick sweep of Draco's body, eyes lingering on the blonde's ass longer than Harry would have liked. Draco stepped to another rack, pausing briefly to check his reflection in one of the mirrors. Harry rolled his eyes at the blonde's vanity.
"This muggle club you're going to…" Harry began, not quite sure how he wished to finish his sentence.
"The one you are playing at tonight yes." Draco said nonchalantly as he pulled a pair of trousers from the rack.
"So you're definitely coming then." It wasn't a question, Harry was merely thinking aloud.
"Of course I am." Draco said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, "did you think I wouldn't?" he asked as he held the trousers to his hips. They were black, tight around the waist and ass but baggy at the legs, adorned with straps of blue material. "What do you think?" Draco asked.
"I wouldn't have expected you to show up and you'd be better suited to something with chains as opposed to bondage straps." Harry replied; arms folded casually over his stomach. As Draco turned back round to replace the trousers, Harry shook his head at the absurdity of the situation.
"Better?" Draco asked, now holding a pair of flared black jeans, decorated with chains and red stitching.
"Yes but I'd never pegged you as someone to wear red." Harry responded as Draco stepped back to the rack of shirts.
"As long as it isn't paired with gold." The blond said with a smirk as he pulled a red shirt, complete with black dragon decal, from the rack. He held it up, inspecting it.
"Very appropriate." Harry said with a roll of his eyes. Draco frowned.
"The gold or the dragon?" He walked to the wall that held the hanging display of belts.
"Both actually." The shop phone rang and Harry stepped around the counter and answered it, leaving Draco to his browsing. He grabbed a pen and notepad from beneath the counter and scribbled down the message being left by the caller. Bidding a polite goodbye, Harry hung up the phone, looking up to find Draco missing.
"So what have you done since leaving Hogwarts?" came Draco's voice from one of the fitting room cubicles. Harry walked over to the one right the corner, leaning against the wall next to it.
"Nothing that you haven't already seen me doing- working here and playing in Samsara. What about you? What rock did you crawl under?" Harry heard Draco snort as he pulled open the curtain of the fitting room.
"What do you think?" Draco asked, sweeping a hand over the outfit as he turned back around to look at himself in the full-length mirror. Harry avoiding staring too long at Draco's ass which was distractedly highlighted by the tightness of the trousers.
"Nice." Was all Harry said in response. Draco rolled his eyes at Harry's obvious lack of use for adjectives. The blond went back into the fitting room cubicle and pulled the curtain shut.
"I travelled around for a few months before father's trial, after it was over and done with I got my flat and have been happily wasting time since." Harry heard the distinct sound of trousers hitting the floor during the blonde's speech.
"So basically you do nothing?" Harry asked, noticing Alex creeping back into the shop- it was the only time he was quiet: when there was even any sign of seduction in the room.
"Basically, I do a bit of writing some days. Nothing of epic proportions but it keeps my brain engaged, then at nights I go out. It's a simple life but I seem to like it that way."
Draco pulled open the curtain, back in his own clothes, the jeans and shirt hanging over his arm. He ran his free hand through his blond hair, checking nothing was out of place. He made his way across to the counter where Alex was now sitting, doing a feeble job of pretending he wasn't spying on the pair.
"You're Samsara's bassist aren't you?" Draco asked as he laid the garment on the surface of the counter. Alex nodded and smiled.
"Alex." He said, holding a hand out to Draco. The blond took it and gave it a shake as Harry too stepped behind the counter, taking the security tags from the clothes.
"Draco." The blond replied with a curt nod as the handshake was broken.
"So I've heard." Alex said with a mischievous grin as keyed in the price of the trousers. Harry was fishing a bag out from the shelf behind the counter and so the other two missed his quiet groan.
"Yes but I'm sure Potter didn't have the nicest things to say about me after I left the gig on Monday night." Draco said, raising an eyebrow at Harry who had busied himself folding up Draco's purchases. The blond handed over a muggle credit card and Alex swiped it.
"No he didn't to be honest but like I told him- people change." Alex replied as he handed Draco the receipt and a pen with which to sign it.
"Wise words, lets just hope he listens to them." Draco smirked as he handed the signed receipt back to Alex. Harry was pretty sure Alex was nearing the stage where he would be getting throttled. Alex just chuckled as he stepped from behind the counter and wandered to back of the shop. Blatantly leaving Harry and Draco alone once more. Harry slid the bag across the counter to the blond who took it in his hand and hung it by his side.
"Well Malfoy, we actually managed a civil conversation. It has only taken us what? Nine years?" Harry asked as he leant forward on one elbow, head tilted slightly as he looked at Draco.
"Wonders will never cease Potter." He leant down to the counter, his face nearer Harry's than it should have been.
Harry's eyes flicked subtly to the blonde's lips. Draco smiled softly as his fingers curled around his receipt that still lay on the counter. Harry seemed to snap out of his daze at the crackling noise of the paper.
"I'll see you tonight Potter." Draco said quietly before he stood up straight again. Harry blinked a couple of times until he too stood up. The blond turned and headed to the door.
"See you Malfoy …maybe I'lleven let you buy me a drink." Harry added with a smirk that didn't quite rival the one Draco sent back.
"That would be…" Draco bit his bottom lip and stared at the ceiling as he searched for an appropriate word, "delightful." He said finally with a smirk. Harry snorted but smiled back at the blond as Draco left the shop.
Harry watched out the window as Draco crossed the street and disappeared round a corner. He turned back to face in the shop; pretty sure he was still smiling. He looked up to see Alex sending him a knowing smile over the top of a make-up stand.
"Oh shut up."
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Notes: I had planned on putting the gig in this chapter as well but felt it would end up too long so I left it there. Expect the next chapter to be out a lot quicker than this one was. New little feature for the end of chapters (idea taken from Kerrang magazine) feel free to not read it, I'm really just doing it to satisfy myself.
This chapter was created by…triple strength bowl-sized mugs of black coffee, My Chemical Romance, Franz Ferdinand, the dislodging of CS' writers block, nearly breaking my toe on this months 'Vogue', an addiction to the new Nine Inch Nails video and cold shower inducing thoughts about Trent Reznor, getting phone calls asking if I wanted to go on a drive at 9.50pm and returning home an hour later with a numb hand.
