I wasn't quite sure how many months I'd been dating Draco Malfoy for the first time I slept at his flat.

It's not that I'd forgotten when we'd first kissed, of course, and I also knew when he'd blurted out the word "girlfriend" and immediately tried to backtrack. (I hadn't let him, which he'd admitted later that he was quite happy about.)

It was more that I wasn't sure which date to count from, since we'd spent a couple months vacillating between making out and pretending that our friendship was entirely platonic.

The full absurdity of that particular approach had been brought home for me when I'd noticed a tiny bit of purple-pink lipstick on the neck of his grey sweater one night when we were out drinking and been hit with a huge wave of jealousy before he reminded me that I'd been wearing that shade the previous week. He'd been very irritated, which was probably fair, since I'd gotten quite sullen halfway through a very inocuous story.

Then we'd rushed through our drinks and I'd ripped off the sweater (and his shirt, just to be thorough) as soon as we'd gotten back to his flat. He'd gotten over his irritation in short order, though he had made a very snarky comment when I left about hoping I'd remember what color lipstick I'd been wearing this time.

Maybe it made sense to count from then. We hadn't really played at an innocent platonic friendship after that, though it had taken a little longer to make it official.

Regardless, when we'd been dating for something in between one and three months, we decided to stay in on a Saturday night on the grounds that kissing was easier in private, and we expected we'd want to do a fair amount of it.

I was leaning against the arm of his couch with my legs across his lap when Draco snapped his fingers at me. "Oh, I meant to ask - how was babysitting last night? Did you end up making cookies?" When I stared at him without answering, his hand started to trail upward from my calf. "I love this skirt. You should wear green more often."

I ignored the last comment. "What the fuck? How did you even know that?"

He managed to keep his expression serious for a few seconds, and then he cracked up. "Sorry - I just wanted to see your face." He was still laughing. "Your brother invited me to join them for drinks last night, and he mentioned it."

I bumped my knee against his chest "Draco!"

He grabbed it and kissed it through my tights. "Astoria!"

"Who's 'them'? Since when do you socialize with people?"

That set off a new bout of laughter - he'd definitely had too much to drink. He wasn't generally prone to laughing this much. "Yeah, I'm really moving up in the world. Drinks at a Muggle bar with your brother, Potter, and Theo Nott. It's a huge social circle full of people I've always had a lot in common with."

Well, one of those names was new. "Wasn't he in Slytherin?" Draco nodded. "Harry Potter was getting drinks with three Slytherins?"

"Thanks, Astoria, I really love that that's what you focused on." I stuck my tongue out at him. "No, it was actually - I was kind of meaning to ask you about that."

"About Harry Potter getting drinks with three Slytherins in a Muggle bar?"

"No, about Theo. We were at a Muggle bar because he's kind of low-key doing some of the same stuff that I am, but with more… you know, talking to people as himself and less getting blamed when they get arrested. He doesn't have my reputation. Such as it is."

"Okay?" I wasn't entirely sure why he was telling me all of this, but I was fairly certain he was still beating around the bush.

"Look - he didn't like me in school, but we got along okay last night, so we'd mentioned before we left - I don't know, grabbing a drink at some point."

"Okay?" I said again. "I don't know why you're telling me this, you're allowed to have friends."

He swallowed. "Well - the thing is - he's been dating your sister for awhile now." I felt myself tense up a little, and he sighed. "Yeah, I know. I'm not going to, like, socialize with her or anything - but I wanted to check in anyway. It's really okay if you're not comfortable with it. It's not like we've even made plans or anything yet."

I looked up at the ceiling. "Why did you bring this up when we're both drunk?"

"Well, I tried to bring it up when we were sober, but I lost my nerve."

I sighed. I didn't particularly want to be the kind of person who dictated who her boyfriend was friends with, but I'd have been much happier if none of those friends were dating someone who'd cast the Imperius Curse on me. "I - fine, I guess. Can I change my mind when I'm sober?"

"Yeah. Definitely." He brought my hand up to his lips and kissed it. "I - seriously, Astoria, whatever you're okay with. I get it."

I grabbed his arm. "I don't like this conversation. Kiss me instead of it, please."

His lips were on mine before I had a chance to blink. I wrapped my legs around him and let out a whimper when his tongue brushed against mine. "I'm always happy to kiss you," he murmured when he broke away. His breath was light on my ear as he moved down to my neck.

We'd both lost track of time when we heard the church bells a few blocks away ring twice. I glanced at the clock. "Fuck - it's late. I should probably get back." I was immediately overcome with a fit of giggles and realized that I definitely shouldn't be Apparating. "Actually, can you take me back?"

He usually could. He often did. Tonight, though, he winced and glanced over at the eight empty bottles sitting on the table. Some were mine. More were his. "I… don't think I can, actually." He ran his hands through his hair and made a face. "Sorry," he said. "I should've stopped - well, awhile ago." I started to run my fingers through his hair, and he tilted his head toward me. "I just wasn't thinking about it."

"Ughhh." There were no words for how much I didn't want to flag down the Knight Bus or something equally loud when I could barely walk in a straight line.

He glanced toward his ajar bedroom door. "Why don't you stay here? You can have the bed, I don't mind sleeping on the couch."

"I - okay, sure."

I was not entirely sure I wanted him to be on the couch, but he was already pushing himself up. "Just give me - fuck, some amount of time - to change the sheets?" When I frowned at him, he said, "I suck at changing the sheets sober with magic, and as we've just established, I'm not sober enough to do magic right now."

"I can help."

"No, it's fine," he said quickly. "I've got it.

"Why do you need to change the sheets, anyway? It's not like -"

"Because I jack off every night before I go to sleep, Astoria, and I want to make sure there aren't any tissues or stains on the sheets before you sleep on them." His face had gotten very red very quickly.

I considered that as he lurched into the bedroom. "Oh," I said to the empty room. Then I struggled to my feet and followed him, during which I realized that I couldn't 'barely' walk in a straight line - I couldn't walk in a straight line at all.

He glanced over at me when I stopped in the doorway. "You do realize that you following me in here defeats the purpose, right?"

"Well, it's not like I don't know that you have one - I can usually feel it when we're making out."

"Uh-huh." He leaned over to yank the last corner of the sheet off and tossed it in the corner.

When he turned toward his dresser, I stumbled over to him to wrap my arms around his neck. "I like you."

He bent his head down to kiss me. "I like you, too."

"You don't have to sleep on the couch, you know."

"Astoria, I'm not making you sleep on the couch."

"No, I - I meant we could both sleep on the bed. Not in a sex way, just -"

"Yes," he said quickly, whirling back to yank open the dresser. "Green or blue?" I shrugged, and he pulled the green sheets out of the drawer and started trying to fit them to the bed.

It did not go well. He wasn't wrong - he was spectacularly bad at this.

Alternatively, he was very eager to make out with his girlfriend in his bed and not nearly sober enough to think about both things at once.

Upon a moment of reflection, I decided that it was probably the latter.

"Draco?" He stopped trying to fit what was clearly the shorter side of the sheets along the length of his bed and looked back at me. "I don't really like sleeping in my clothes. Do you have a shirt I can borrow? Like, a longer one, I guess?"

He let out a groan and fell face down onto the bare mattress. "You're trying to kill me," he said in a muffled voice.

"You don't have to if you don't want to," I said quickly.

"Yeah, that's definitely what I was thinking. 'I don't want to sleep next to my half-naked girlfriend wearing my shirt, but don't know how to tell her.' Yes, I know it's not in a sex way. It's still really fucking hot." He gave up on the sheet, and started rummaging around in the next drawer down. "Here," he said, tossing a shirt to me. I opened my mouth, and he added, "Don't start - I think it's the only red thing I own, and I bought it specifically to wear around you."

Before I pulled my shirt over my head, I realized two things: first, that the shirt he'd tossed me had short sleeves, and second, that there were unhealed cuts on my arm from earlier that week.

He wasn't too drunk to notice my hesitation. "Astoria?"

"You own short-sleeved shirts?"

"Of course I own them. Sometimes I'm wearing a jacket or home alone or something."

"Maybe I'll sleep in my shirt. I don't mind that much."

He slumped against the dresser, opened his mouth, and closed it again. "I'm too drunk to know how I'm supposed to say this," he managed finally, "but - you didn't try to, I don't know, kill yourself or anything, right? And like, you didn't - nothing is super deep or anything?"

"No!"

He held up his hands. "Okay. I just wanted to make sure before I made any promises. Astoria, if you put on the damn shirt, I promise that I won't comment on - on whatever - and I'll do my best not to look."

My heart started to slow down a little. "I - okay. Sorry."

He shrugged. "Don't be sorry. You did warn me that you were a mess, and I keep coming back for more."

That broke through my discomfort. Before I could change my mind, I reached down to pull my shirt over my head. I heard him suck in his breath, and when I reached back to unhook my bra, he let out a loud groan. When I emerged from underneath his shirt, I found that his hands were clenched behind his back.

"Sorry," I said cheerfully. "Did you want to help? You should have said something."

"You're definitely trying to kill me." He went back to trying to get the sheet on the bed. As soon as he managed it, I immediately sat down on the edge to pull my skirt and tights off.

I heard him make a noise in the back of his throat, and I looked over at him. "Should I -"

"No," he said quickly. "No, feel free."

I pulled my knees up to my chest. His eyes went straight to my underwear. "What do you usually sleep in?"

"Less than I'm going to right now." He reached down to grab a pair of pajama pants off the floor. "I need a few layers between us - you're driving me crazy."

"Oh." I considered that. "I don't think I'm sorry."

He yanked his shirt off and tossed it on the floor, though he kept the band around his forearm on. "I know you're not sorry. Should I put on a shirt?"

I shook my head very quickly. I'd found that I liked his bare chest quite a lot as long as his dark mark was covered. When he'd wrapped his arms around me, though, I realized that beds felt very different than couches and that I, at least, was wearing a lot less than I usually was. It didn't feel bad, but I still heard myself saying, "I - just so you know -"

"Not in a sex way? Yes, Astoria, I know." He hesitated. "I - you don't have to answer this, but you remind me of that a lot, and I don't think I've ever given you any reason to think I'll forget, have I?" I shook my head. "Then - is there - like - I don't know. Did something happen?"

It was a very clumsy way of asking me whether I'd been raped at Hogwarts while he'd been a Death Eater. After a moment, I decided to answer truthfully rather than deflect it. "Not what you're getting at, no." I felt him relax a little, and I added, "But - I mean, you try being a fifteen year old girl when there a lot of teenage boys running around who've found both that they have a real knack for torture and that no one will stop them. We were always afraid of it."

He stiffened again. "Yeah," he said after a moment. "I - fuck. You know that I never - and would never -"

It was a very clumsy way of telling me that he'd never raped anyone when he'd been a Death Eater and wouldn't do so in the future. After a moment, I settled on, "Draco, if I didn't know that, I wouldn't be here."

I wondered whether he'd ask me how I knew that. He didn't. Instead, he asked, "What can I do to make you feel better?"

It was a marginally clumsy way of trying to turn a lot of trauma into a solveable problem, and while it wasn't really possible, I did appreciate that he'd internalized the knowledge that I liked solutions more than apologies well enough to remember it even when he was very drunk. "Nothing."

He sighed, but he didn't push me, which I appreciated. I wondered whether he'd bring up the cuts on my arms again. He didn't do that, either. "I - I'm not going to forget that it's not in a sex way - or anything - but do you want me to sleep on the couch? I really don't mind."

"You mind," I sniped back.

He gave a very frustrated groan. "You're a pain. Fine, yes, I mind - ten minutes ago I was thinking about making out with my very hot half-naked girlfriend in my bed, and I mind things taking such a shitty turn. I'm not mad at you, and I want to do whatever makes you feel comfortable - I just mind the situation."

"This is who I am."

"I know this is who you are. I'm still not thrilled with the situation. What will make you feel comfortable? I want to do that."

"You wouldn't be happy if I told you to go sleep on the couch."

He rolled onto his back and buried his face in his hands. "No, Astoria, of course I wouldn't be. I can want to do things that don't make me happy." He sat up and grabbed his pillow. "I feel like you're hinting that you want me to leave, so I'm going to. I'm not trying to make you feel bad about it, I just… don't know what else to do and I feel like I'm making you feel worse, and we're both way too drunk to be having this kind of conversation."

I reached out to grab his wrist before I'd processed what I was doing. When my skin touched his, though, I realized that I didn't want him to leave. "Draco?"

I saw some of the tension go out of his limbs. It often did when I said his name, probably because I'd spent a very long time refusing to do so. "Mm?"

"What were you saying about making out with me?"

He looked down at me and sighed. "Astoria, I don't know if I'm in -" Then his eyes traveled down my body - when he'd thrown back the blankets, he'd left my legs exposed, too. He looked back up at me. "Please tell me you're not just fucking with me. If you are, I'm definitely not speaking to you for at least a week." I rolled over and let his shirt ride up on my thigh, and he sucked in his breath. "Astoria -"

"Just come kiss me."

He leaned down to brush his lips against mine. "In a minute. I just realized that neither of us has had any water recently, and I don't want a hangover."

On the bright side, my boyfriend's obsession with balancing overdrinking with water did mean that my head wasn't pounding when I opened my eyes. On the downside, it meant that the pounding headache I would have had otherwise didn't wake me up, so I didn't open my eyes until it was just past noon.

"Oh - fuck!"

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him yank his wand off the table and sit up. "What?"

"No - I - sorry - I just remembered that I'm supposed to get lunch with my brother in less than an hour."

He fell back onto the mattress and groaned. "Thanks for the heart attack. Ugh - any chance you can not mention that you slept here? It'd be nice to not get any sarcastic comments when I'm at work."

"I dunno. You know that -"

He cut me off. "That it's his slightly twisted way of accepting me? Yeah, but it's still annoying." I stumbled out of bed and yanked off his shirt, and he groaned. "Astoria, you're seriously killing me right now."

I pulled my shirt over my head and struggled into my tights and skirt. "Sorry," I said. "I'll talk to you soon."

He put an arm over his eyes. "Yeah," he said listlessly. "Have fun."

"You too!"

I rushed out before he could process what I'd meant.