WARNING: this chapter contains descriptions of sexually explicit nature. If you don't like that kind of thing, probably best not to read it, at least until the page break.

Chapter 10

"Are you sure you want to do this?"

Harry swallowed, but he didn't hesitate in nodding. He needed this. They both did. It had been a hell of a few weeks, with classes building upon themselves to a manic degree. Harry was understanding for the first time why NEWT students were permitted extended hours in the library; they bloody well needed it.

Exams were still a handful of weeks away, but his headache was a near-constant companion, the buzzing reminder in his ear that he had this essay to write, that chapter to read, or those notes to go over once more and to complete properly this time. Harry didn't know what he'd do without the support of his surprisingly compassionate professors, or the mutual suffering of his friends.

And Draco. He had no idea where he'd be if it wasn't for Draco.

It wasn't only that Draco was an incredibly efficient studier. Not only that he had a wealth of intelligence that Harry had never recognised nor appreciated in the past, either. It wasn't only that he kept Harry company when he sought an escape from the murmuring voices of his friends and classmates alike, an escape that fled from crowds but paradoxically sought companionship nonetheless. Draco provided that company and it was never intrusive. Never too much or not enough.

It wasn't even that, when they were alone together, Harry always sat in Draco's lap. Not that the questions he asked to himself more than Draco were always answered. Not that, when frustration brewed, when his headache became too much, or when the begging internal whimpers for a break became too much to ignore, he could turn to Draco for a kiss, or a touch, or to simply lean against him and soak up the warmth of his closeness. That closeness had taken on a new meaning since Christmas, an extra layer, but it didn't detract from the benefits it had once provided. Quite the opposite, rather.

Instead of being any single part of that, it was everything as a whole. Everything about Draco had become such a rock of support, such a pillar of stability, that Harry didn't know what he'd do without him over the weeks and months building up to the NEWTs. Maybe he was leaning on Draco too much. Maybe he was growing to reply upon the consistency of their touches, the comfort of kisses that felt different to those he'd shared with Cho, with Ginny. Maybe Harry should caution himself against sinking too deeply, should look to other outlets for recovery and support just as Madam Pomfrey and the Ministry Healer reps had suggested.

But he didn't want to. Draco was all Harry needed right now. Yet, somehow, Draco still seemed to question that need. Just as he questioned Harry's commitment to taking it a step further.

"I'm not going to back out now," he said, shifting in Draco's lap. "Do you know how much preparation it takes? It's crazy."

"I do, actually," Draco said. "I read about it, too."

"I'd bloody well hope you did, seeing as you were the one who suggested the book to me in the first place."

"It wasn't a suggestion in itself."

"I know it wasn't."

"I wasn't insinuating that –"

"Draco, I know." Harry cut him off, resting a hand flat upon his chest, fingers splayed. It was strange seeing Draco in such a state. Not his nervousness, which Harry realised only then he was able to detect when he previously hadn't been able to. Not his concern, either, which was also a little bit new, if not as much. Lying flat on his back, the smooth lines of his bed still tucked neatly around him, was entirely different to how Harry usually sat with him. On him. The absence of clothes was new, too.

It wasn't the first time they'd shared a bed. What had become a habit of sharing Draco's seat directly had evolved into sharing a mattress, sharing space, sharing the protective cocoon of the canopy curtains and their Silencing Charm that no one else in the dormitory seemed to make use of anymore. But this was different. Very different

Draco's pale cheeks were slightly flushed. He was breathing slowly, but there was a deliberateness to each breath, as though he were counting the seconds of his inhalation. His hands where they rested on Harry's straddling thighs fluctuated between grasping just enough to be distinctly felt before loosening into an almost caressing hold. He didn't look away from Harry once, hadn't since Harry had slipped between the curtains of his bed barely minutes before.

Harry had never been properly self-conscious – or at least he didn't think he'd been. Hindsight, as he'd discovered only in the past few months, was an interesting thing. Sharing showers and changerooms, getting dressed alongside the other boys – or not, as Harry belatedly realised. He'd rarely shared an open dressing space with his dormmates, and he'd always waited until the shower room was empty before entering himself. It had been natural. Automatic. He hadn't even thought about it, and definitely not with undertones of disgust the likes that Dudley's teasing or Uncle Vernon's blatant homophobia would have exhibited. But it was uncomfortable, he realised. Unnerving to be seen in such a way.

It was still uncomfortable when Draco stared at him that first time several weeks before, climbing into the bed alongside him naked as Draco was himself. Still unnerving. But it was a little easier now, and Harry fought the urge to withdraw from sight, to shrink from Draco's gaze and hasten to cover himself beneath the sheets as was proper. As he should. Harry didn't see anything all that wrong with his own body – it was just a body, after all; always a little thin, once scrawny but less so these days – but to be stared at with such attentiveness? With a hint of hunger, even?

Harry had never felt that before. He'd never stared at Cho and fought the urge to undress her with his eyes. His appreciation had always been for the pretty dress robes she'd been wearing, or her pretty smile, or the fierce expression she wore when flying in quidditch. The same with Ginny; a different kind of pretty but still beautiful, he'd admired the way her own smile encompassed her whole being, how her nose scrunched slightly when she laughed, skewing the freckles splattered over it, or how her energy oozed from every line of her lean body, so enthusiastic and present.

Draco was different. Even as Harry accepted his own discomfort for being stared at, he couldn't quite stop himself from staring in return. Draco's chest was smooth and as pale as the rest of him, the lines of his abdomen hard, the curve of his arms, his biceps as they flexed each time his hands grasped Harry's legs, drawing his gaze each time. It was a different kind of beautiful again, and Harry didn't need to actively begin stripping Draco's clothes as he'd never properly had the urge to with either Cho or Ginny. It was all there before him, expectant and telling, impossible to ignore.

Just as Draco's arousal was all too apparent. That in itself wasn't foreign; whether Draco had only allowed it of himself since Harry had verbally returned his feelings or for some other reason entirely, sitting in Draco's lap had the unfortunate – or perhaps fortunate – side effect of knowing just when his thoughts drifted. Harry didn't find it anywhere near as alarming as he had the first time he'd noticed, though it was a novel experience once more to have it so close. So direct. To feel his warmth and hardness as skin upon skin, and –

Harry swallowed again. He knew his own cheeks were flushed, and likely even more than Draco's. Was he nervous? Undoubtedly. But he intended to go through with their plans for that night nonetheless. That was, unless, "Do you want me to stop?"

Draco shook his head just as quickly as Harry had previously nodded. "No," he said, his voice a little hoarse. "No, I don't want you to – to stop."

Harry nodded again. "Good. That's good, then." Taking a slow breath, ignoring that it shook slightly, Harry glanced to the nightstand alongside Draco's bed. "Would you like to cast the charm, or should I?"

"I'll do it." Draco reached for his wand without shifting his gaze from Harry even slightly. As he did, his other hand slid along Harry's thigh until it was cupping his arse with that same, slightly grasping hold. Harry bit back a shiver. They were doing it. They were actually going to go through with this. All those talks in third and fourth year from long-suffering Heads of Houses, all the clinical precautioning of diseases and 'safe sex' from a surprisingly proficient Madam Pomfrey, seemed so removed from the real thing. Even the past half an hour Harry had spent in the bathroom, putting into dubious practice the once-confounding yet now entirely reasonable descriptions he'd read, felt somehow distant.

Draco's voice was still hoarse when he uttered the charm, briefly removing his hand from Harry's arse to replace a moment later. Lukewarm slickness, a smooth wetness, coated his hand, and Harry couldn't withhold his shiver this time when Draco inched his fingers further. His breath caught as those fingers pressed against him, pressed into him, where his own had been only minutes before.

"Fucking hell," Draco whispered. His cheeks had flushed slightly more than they had been before, and Harry locked onto that as a reprieve from his own embarrassment, from the heat flaring in his own cheeks. "Fucking…"

"Are you going to sit there swearing all day or do you really want me to be the one to do it?" Harry's voice was short of breath, wavering and thinner than he'd expected. He huffed a slightly strangled laugh, curling his fingers against Draco's chest directly above the pounding heartbeat. "I don't actually know what I'm doing any more than you, but –"

"But you decided to go about it this way?" Draco asked, slowly and almost hesitantly extracting his fingers.

"I spend half my time in your lap these days, Draco," Harry said. "It seemed kind of poetic."

"What, so you're a poet now? I'd never have thought it of you given how adamantly you've avoided books for most of your school career."

"Are you belittling me? Seriously? Now?"

"I –"

"Or is this an outlet for you losing your shit?"

"Yes," Draco said, far quicker than Harry had thought possibly of him. He so rarely admitted any form of weakness. "Definitely the latter."

Harry laughed again. Who knew that there was such a way to undermine Draco's near constant aloofness and sarcasm? Chin tucking briefly, he closed his eyes, shook his head, then glanced over his shoulder and down his own back. Bolstered by Draco's admission, and far more confidently than he felt, he reached behind himself and manoeuvred Draco's hand with his own. Draco's breath audibly caught as he wrapped their joined fingers around his heavy hardness.

"Okay?" Harry asked, turning back towards Draco.

Draco nodded.

"Okay. That's good, because… because… yeah. Okay." Words had never been Harry's strong point. He was better at simply acting. So, instead of wading through their awkwardness with blind stuttering, he let his actions speak for him.

Draco's hand was all but immobile in his own, but that was okay. Harry guided his arousal towards him, easing himself backwards at the same time. His own breath caught at the moment they touched, but he forced himself to relax, to inhale – just relax, just like the book said – and sank back onto Draco.

It was tight. A brief moment of painful. Foreign and not at all like his own fingers. A muted sound uttered from Draco, but Harry barely heard him. His ears were deafened with his own rapid heartbeat, with his deliberately slow breaths that repeated relax… slowly… with every inhalation, and his mind filled with the sensation of Draco's hardness easing into him. Strange, unfamiliar, a little uncomfortable and a little of what wasn't quite painfulness – but not bad. Not as he'd feared. Not as he didn't allow himself to admit he'd worried.

Closing his eyes, Harry focused upon seating himself onto Draco. Upon easing himself, relaxing, taking him in, on doing this and smothering the giddy mental chants of fucking hell, we're really doing this. His hands splayed on Draco's chest, steadying himself as he moved gradually, steadily. Only when he sat fully upon his knees, fully upon Draco's lap once more, could he allow himself to catch his breath properly and really, properly think.

Shit, was about all that made intelligible sense. Holy shit, we're really… and he's really….

"Merlin," Draco gasped. When Harry managed to open his eyes, it was to meet Draco's own, wide and staring at him with a dazed kind of rapture. "You're… you're…"

"Doing my best," Harry said, managing a smile that felt more than a little shy. He couldn't remember the last time he'd been properly bashful. "Bear with me."

Draco slipped a hand from where he'd returned to grasping Harry's thighs. He dropped it instead atop Harry's own, squeezing his fingers in a convulsive grasp atop his chest. "You feel so – so –"

"Good? I bloody well hope so, 'cause otherwise I'm definitely doing something wrong."

Draco uttered a strangled laugh of his own. "Do you always have to try and kill the mood, or are you just nervous as hell?"

"The latter," Harry said immediately. "Definitely the latter."

Unexpectedly, Draco's smile froze. His cheeks were still flushed, his eyes a little glassy, and Harry was all too aware of the tension thrumming through him, of his arousal and the heat within his gut that seemed to throb and grow with each given moment. All too aware of the weight and feel of Draco inside him, the hotness, the tightness that wasn't painful anymore. Yet Draco's smile faded with an unexpected calmness, and when he raised one of Harry's hands to his lips, kissing his knuckles, there was a gentleness in the touch that jarringly contrasted his usual abrasive turn-a-phrase. He lowered their hands back to his chest just as gently before refastening his hold upon Harry's legs.

"Tell me to stop if it's too much," he said, and waited long enough for Harry's nod. Then he began to move.

Slow at first. Erratic and unsure. A tense little jerk of hips, an awkward buck, each motion rolling into Harry with a solid force that had his breath tightening and his hands clutching at Draco's chest for nothing if not to steady himself. Foreign and unfamiliar it might be, tight and almost uncomfortable, but it wasn't bad. Not in the least. Rather, with each jerk, each push of warmth and reaffirmation of closeness, Harry felt it grow… better. More.

Closing his eyes, he sank back onto Draco, moving his hips with each thrust that gradually smoothed, gradually fell into a rhythm that became increasingly easier to bear. His hand unerringly sought his own arousal, and in time with Draco's thrusts, with his own rocking motions, he jerked himself off to the heart-throbbing beat of pleasure.

Sharp heat. Heady tightness. A coiled tension built in his gut, and the flush of warmth that suffused him seemed to trickle down ever limb, into every extremity. Draco's gasping breathes, the stuttered groans that arose from him every other moment as if unbidden, met Harry's own as they moved faster and easier. Pleasure thrumming through Harry built in the backs of his eyelids, a direct line between his brain and his groin, his pumping fist that twitched with a mind of its own in an increasingly desperate bid for release.

Hot and tight, constant and increasingly hurried. Harry fell into the stuttering rhythm, of sinking onto Draco with hitching jerks, until Draco shifted both of his hands around to his arse and adjusted himself just slightly. A spark of renewed pleasure, a different kind, skittered like a lightshow off the inside of his eyelids. Once, twice, again. He couldn't withhold the strangled moan the fell from his lips, his hand convulsing to match Draco's thrusts and chase it, chase the mounting pleasure as it climbed and climbed and…

In an shaking burst he found himself coming in a thick, warm rush into the fist of his hand. A desperate cry spilled forth unbidden, and he wouldn't have cared if the Silencing Charms around Draco's bed had abruptly failed. He wouldn't have cared in the least; not before that all-consuming, euphoric pleasure.

Never before. Never like that.

His jerking hips and riding motion had abruptly stopped, but though Harry swam through a haze of pleasure, he was all too aware of Draco still thrusting beneath him with increasingly erratic jerks. Thrusts that pushed into him, grazing across the quivering mass of sensations and sparking them alight in an almost painful clamour. Steadying himself with one hand on Draco's chest, gasping in a desperate bid for breath that seemed to have abandoned him, Harry opened his eyes to the sight of Draco's flushed face, his eyes still open and fixed upon Harry's but expression wrought in a mask of his own pleasure that Harry had never seen before but knew instinctively. Even through the buffeting aftermath of orgasm, the stuttering hitch of his heartbeat and the unexpected heaviness of his limbs, Harry reasserted himself enough to push back further onto Draco just a little more, to push him just enough.

Draco's groan as he came rivalled Harry's own. Arms shaking as they propped him up from Draco's chest, Harry blinked through his dazedness, through the disconcerting feeling of Draco's release within him. His thighs trembled too, holding himself steady just enough for Draco to ride out the waves of his pleasure with spasming jerks. Only when Draco's hips stilled did Harry all but collapse back onto his haunches, dizzy and slightly disoriented yet filled with an airy detachedness and disbelief that he'd never felt before.

The pleasure, that unique kind of closeness, and what it could achieve – he'd never had thought it could be like that.

"Are – are you alright?"

Draco's question was more of a gasp, breathy and barely audible. Raising his heavy head, pushing himself upright a little more, Harry met Draco stare for stare. He'd never been good with words, but in this instance he didn't think he needed to be. The smile that he couldn't suppress was heartfelt and more than a little awed. When he managed to climb off of Draco, awkward and wavering on his awkward and wavering knees, it stung a little, felt a little discomfortingly slick and empty as Draco slid out of him, but that hardly mattered. Not when, as Harry all but crawled his way towards Draco and dropped a swooping kiss upon him, Draco clutched him against him with a fervour and intensity that chased away any possible concerns he might have.

"Never better."

"What time is it?"

Harry didn't really care, but he asked anyway. It could have been breaking dawn, the sun crawling through the window to seep through the shadows and chase them away, hauling the eighth year boys awake, and it wouldn't have mattered. Harry didn't really care what anyone would say, what anyone would think, of him and Draco sharing a bed. Not even Ron. Not right then.

Draco shifted beneath him. Harry suspected he reached for his nightstand, then was sure of it when the faint glow of a Lumos charm spilled over his shoulder, not quite touching his eyes but radiant nonetheless. It blurred against the edges of his already blurry vision, his eyes free of glasses as they had been for hours. Hours of sleeplessness that was by no means reluctant and gruelling this time.

They didn't speak much. Oftentimes, and lately more frequently, they did and not only of study. But not this time. Harry was content to lie atop Draco, his arms wrapped around him, their legs linked and as close as humanly possible without bridging that gap of utter closeness. That it had been bridged at all still felt faintly surreal, but in an increasingly wonderful way. Less passionate, less fierce and intense than it had been, but definitely wonderful.

Harry liked to touch Draco. He liked the closeness, liked the feeling of warm proximity, and it didn't feel like a strange desire anymore. More than that, though, he discovered he needed it as he'd never realised before. He needed to be close, and needed to be close to Draco even more so. What had been the simple use of a body, of someone for comfort and support, had become a real and specific desire and necessity.

Was it a crush? A fancy? A lustfulness that had manifested without Harry's initial realisation or consent? He didn't know, but he didn't really care. Much as every problematic thought that arose in his mind that night, he couldn't be bothered to cling to it long enough or aggressively enough to stop it from slipping away. Holding was Draco was about all that felt important.

His warm chest rose and fell, pushing against Harry's own.

The lines of muscle in his back were loose but still dense, distinct enough that Harry's fingers had something to cling to.

The hold of his legs, intertwined with Harry's, were locked not tightly but just as firmly as Draco's arms had been wrapped around Harry's shoulders until moments before. Until he'd released him to –

"Nearly three o'clock," Draco said.

"Hm?" Harry had all but forgotten what he'd asked. He didn't really care, after all.

"We've still got a couple of hours until morning."

"Oh." Harry blinked lazily. "That's good, then."

"Are you going to go to sleep at all?"

"I –" Harry paused, thought about it, then shook his head against Draco's shoulder. "No, I don't think I can. You're more than welcome to, though. Don't let me keep you up."

"Was that a pun?"

Harry grinned. He peered up at Draco with just his eyes, his peripheral view affording him just enough of a glance of his face to glimpse the smirk playing across the corners of his lips. "Not intentional, but I see your point."

"Do you?"

Draco wasn't quite aroused just at that moment, not completely, but the suggestion was there enough for Harry to feel it. He didn't know if either of them would act upon it, even if the desire for that particular passing thought was certainly stronger than every other one that preceded it.

Shifting, conscious of his own slight arousal, Harry pressed his lips against the boniness of Draco's shoulder. "I guess this sort of adds a different dynamic to the situation."

"To what situation?" Draco asked, readjusting his arms around Harry.

"Me and you. Me sitting on your lap, I mean."

"You say that like it's a novel perspective, but I can assure you it isn't."

Lifting his head from Draco's shoulder, Harry regarded him fully. The light of Draco's muted Lumos was bright enough for Harry to see the blurry lines of Draco's face. Enough to know that, though Draco was teasing him just a little, there was a degree of sincerity to his words, too.

"What do you mean by that?" he asked, almost warily.

"If you think about it, I'm sure you'll work it out," Draco replied.

"Draco."

"Harry."

Harry sighed. Frowning, pursing his lips, he thought. It really didn't take much consideration because, really, though it hadn't been foremost in his own thoughts, if it had been for Draco… "You mean that, pretty much since I first sat in your lap, you've been turned on by it?"

"Well, not all the time –"

"Draco."

This time, it was Draco's turn to sigh. Raising a hand to his face, he pinched the bridge of his nose in a way that, historically, Harry had always taken as a sigh of ridiculing exasperation. Now, it seemed far more indicative of exasperated embarrassment. "You're only just realising this now? I thought that when you belatedly realised I liked you in the first place –"

"Which wasn't even my own realisation," Harry interrupted. "Pansy practically spelled it out, then you told me yourself."

Draco's hand almost flattened over his face, covering most of it. "You really didn't know." It was less of a question than a bland statement of fact.

"Really," Harry said. Shuffling slightly on top of Draco, he adjusted himself so that he could rest his chin upon Draco's chest, his arms still wrapped around him. "So, do you?"

For a stretching pause, Draco remained hidden behind his hand. When he lowered it, he dropped it atop Harry's head in a feeble cuff that carried more affection than annoyance. "Yes, you idiot. So, no, it won't really change anything. Fundamentally, at least, though there'll be more than my own fantastical constructs to serve as food for thought."

Draco always did speak with an increasingly pompous turn-a-phrase when he became uncomfortable. It was kind of cute, and more than a little amusing. "For you, maybe not. It definitely changes things for me." Harry paused, thought, then pursed his lips again. "And other things."

Draco peered down at him, eyeing him with a slight frown even as his hand began a gentle caress through Harry's hair. "Meaning what?"

"Meaning," Harry drew his gaze briefly sidelong in the direction he knew Blaise Zabini's bed lay, "I'm thinking about our friends. And about them not knowing."

Draco's frown deepened a little more, though his hand still gently grazed along Harry's scalp. "About your friends not knowing, you mean."

"Did you tell Blaise as well as Pansy?"

"I didn't tell either of them anything," Draco said. "They're just cluey enough to pick up on what is apparently blatantly apparent to anyone I spend time with."

"Everyone but me," Harry muttered.

"Yes, but you're blissfully unaware to most of what shouts loudly in your face, Harry."

Harry pinched his back gently, but Draco continued to smirk even as he flinched slightly. Harry couldn't help but smile in return, which in turn drew a smile from Draco. He'd noticed that Draco often followed suit; it was as though it was reactive.

"I'd like to tell them," Harry said after a moment. "Ron and Hermione, at least. And Ginny."

Draco's smile slowly died. "Really?"

Harry nodded.

"You don't think Weasley –" He flinched again as Harry stabbed a finger in his back. "Fine. Ron. You don't think he in particular would have a problem with this? I'm honestly still astounded some days that you've managed to overcome the past. I don't think Ron would do the same quite so easily, especially with the hatred between our families."

"You managed to," Harry murmured, but he took a moment to turn Draco's words over. What Draco posed was a likely possibility given the precedent, but then, Draco hadn't been there at Christmas at the Burrow. He hadn't listened to Ron's words and felt the weight of them, encouraging and accepting. Ron had surprised him in the past, if not quite on this exact subject. Why should it be so impossible for him to do so again?

"I think he'll be fine," Harry finally said. "And if he isn't, I'll work it out somehow."

"You have a lot of confidence in him," Draco said.

"Of course I do. He's my best friend."

Draco only grunted, the sound felt as a vibration through his chest as much as heard. Harry stared up at him, eyeing his persistent frown. He had the sudden urge to wipe it away with a his thumb.

"Draco?" he prodded.

"Not yet," Draco replied, slowly. "Just... not yet."

"If not yet, then…?"

"After exams, maybe. With everyone being as stressed as they are, I can't imagine the atmosphere would be conducive to open-mindedness. Maybe directly in the aftermath, when the entirety of our grade is riding on a euphoric, liberated high."

Harry found himself smiling before Draco had even finished speaking. Pushing himself onto all fours, he crawled his way up Draco's body until he was hovering above him, leaning down to capture Draco's lips as he caught his attention.

"You mean it?" he murmured against Draco's mouth, hands rising to cup the sides of Draco's head. "You'd actually be okay with that?"

"Harry, I was happy to have you passing out drunk in my lap before you even had the faintest notion of considering caring for me in return," Draco replied, his own hand returning to threading through Harry's hair. "I think I've managed the worst of it."

Harry's smile became a full grin, and he dove in for a crushing kiss once more. When Draco leant up towards him, pushing his mouth against Harry's own and parting his lips to suck him in with thirsty desire, Harry sunk to meet him. Only when he managed to claw his way free for a momentary breather did he speak again.

"You know," he said, his face so close to Draco's that their noses brushed, that he barely needed to whisper, "we've still got three hours to morning, apparently."

Draco didn't need any more suggestion than that, and Harry let himself be pulled down flush against him with nothing but utter agreeability. It was looking to be about the best sleepless night Harry had ever had.