WARNING: this chapter contains references to drug use and abuse, as well as mentions of eating disorders and eating disorder behaviour. If you think this might be triggering for you, please read carefully.
Also, references to character promiscuity plays a pretty strong part in this chapter in particular. It's not necessarily long-standing and persistent throughout the entire fic, but just be aware if this makes you uncomfortable.
Chapter 7
The studio was sparsely cluttered with stands and utensils that Harry knew the nature of only from a distant perspective. Lights with oversized heads pointed towards the whitewashed partitions, three in strategic placement with their umbrella heads angled just so. A stand that would boost the camera itself in line with those lights, tripod planted wide-legged. Beams and overhangs suspended above the scene, cables lining the walls, a desk with a thin scatter of papers along the back wall alongside a second door partially opened.
All of that was familiar, and it wasn't what disconcerted Harry.
The minimal crew, the same that were in company at the interview the day before, stood around the edges of the room. Von, because despite only being a stylist in name, he was always permitted into the shoots, and a pair of Syren attendants each dressed in varying degrees of black and in various states of business.
Harry didn't recognise either of them, and they were less involved than usual for a shoot, but that wasn't what disconcerted him, either.
It wasn't that the room was uncharacteristically quiet. It wasn't that the studio manager had stepped in but minutes before, cast a quick glance around, before departing as though she'd been forcibly kicked out. It wasn't that there was tangible tension thrumming against and rebounding off the walls, starting and ending at the photographer.
It was the photographer himself. But it wasn't that Harry's discomfort even arose from the fact that it was Draco who stood behind the camera. It was how he looked at him.
Harry was used to being looked at. In some way or another, he found he always was these days. The excited fans on the street that recognised his face when he didn't hide himself well enough. The calculating, assessing stares of the casting directors and photographers alike as they clinically assessed his suitability for the role in form, in poise. The challenging or threatening or discomforted sidelong stares of his fellow models, the models that he'd never quite meshed with because Estallas had a small enough cohort of its own and had been largely shunned for its insignificance for years.
And because he was Harry Potter. That always put a bit of a dampener on things.
Wary, considering, frowning or dissatisfied. Curious, lustful, admiring or adoring. He'd seen such a wide array of stares and glares that none should have bothered him anymore. None should have. But Draco's did.
How he stared was calculating. It was considering. But it was also curious, and frowning, and just a little objectionable and… something else. Was there a hint of attraction? Was there such a weight behind the way he paused in his work, straightened briefly, and stared at Harry for an extended pause before urging him to move 'just so', or to reposition himself 'like that'.
Harry didn't know. He wasn't sure, and the unfamiliarity of not knowing left him feeling oddly exposed in a way that he hadn't felt since his first casting had demanded he take his shirt off. Not since his first assessor had told him he was 'too fat' and 'should probably work out more', and his first rejection notice had given him a thorough rundown of exactly why he wasn't good enough for the job. Not even when someone had stalked him with a camera for a time and sold some grainy but distinct enough photos to a magazine that had impeded any job offers for a solid month.
Draco stared, and Harry felt as if he'd been stripped more soundly than any fitting had found him. The echo of Draco's words from the previous day still rung in his mind.
"Why don't you blame them for what was done to you?" and "Don't you feel any resentment whatsoever?" And, worst of all, "I wonder if you'd be so lenient if such a thing happened to another child."
Harry couldn't say anything to that. Not a thing, and it wasn't because he didn't have a reply. It was simply that he knew Draco wouldn't like the answer.
He didn't blame the Dursleys. Not anymore. He couldn't find it within himself to care for their part in his messy past, and any resentment he may have once felt had been overwhelmed by more. By worse. By what had followed and had nothing to do with the Dursleys at all. How could Harry explain any of that to Draco when it was, by and large, so complicated and inexplicable?
But more than that…
If it happened to another child, I think I might even be able to use the Cruciatus Curse, Harry thought. The idea was dampening, but it was true. Utterly, completely true.
Draco stared at Harry with his confusing spectrum of emotions, and he made Harry think. He made him consider the hypocrisy of his own thoughts, and for once Harry felt almost ashamed for letting everything, all of that hate and anger and resentment, just go. Even if it was necessary. Even if he had to in order to properly move on.
The only escape was for Harry to sink into his work and breathe, to steel himself with composure and to think only of the impression he wanted – no, had to present. The oversized shirt that be was bedecked in for the shoot was a strange parody of sorts, as though mimicking and thus highlighting the sorry dress of his childhood, but Harry used it. He curled the hem between his hands, and he hitched a shoulder, and he posed just as Draco wanted him to. Just as Draco didn't quite tell him but how Harry felt he should nonetheless.
Draco stared, though his camera and then without it, and Harry stared right back. At least from Draco, and at least in this instance, he had nothing to hide.
"You're telling me not once?"
Harry shook his head as he took another sip of his vodka soda. The hint of lime was all that offset the fizziness that bubbled up the back of his nose.
"Not even once?"
Harry shook his head again.
With an incredulous scoff, Ron rocked back on his stool. The sound was all but lost beneath the surrounding din of the club; the dancefloor thundered with music and the shouts of conversation around the bar and tables rose to compensate. At nearly midnight, the crowds had thickened, and Harry was only more grateful for Hermione's sensibility that insisted they arrive before ten to leave at a 'decent' hour.
As it was, Hermione, seated alongside Ron, was already red-cheeked and woozy after two hours of drinking. She didn't hold her liquor well, which was likely half the reason she chose to leave early most nights they went out together. Ginny had her arm slung around Hermione's shoulders in an effort to keep her upright and was laughing jovially at something Harry hadn't heard.
It had become a Friday night tradition amongst them. Though Harry's friends invaded his flat at any given moment, and similarly invaded Hermione's house whenever Ginny could all but kidnap Harry to join them, the club had become a habit that was as ingrained as Harry's work schedule. It was easy to set it on a Friday night, easy to come after work finished, because work for each of them ended as variably as the rest of their schedules.
Harry himself wasn't particularly partial to the club atmosphere – or at least to certain aspects of it. The dancing was fine, and he'd even become comfortable with stepping onto the dancefloor when he'd finally learnt what to do with his hands. The conversations privatised by the din and the occasional drink were a bonus, too.
But clubbing itself? Or, more correctly, the kind of clubbing that Harry had been all but dragged along to in his early days of modelling? He hadn't enjoyed that. He hadn't enjoyed it at all, and those obligatory experiences had all but turned him off them entirely.
The bouts of drowning in endless drinks, only to hasten to the nearest bathroom or corner and forcibly upend their guts in a fit of guilt for imbibing.
The party drugs palmed between attendants that stood to close, slipped under tongues, hidden in pockets when the barmen or bouncers looked their way.
The frenzy, the fervour, the maddened laughter that arose when those very drugs took hold, and the subsequent collapses, or more vomiting, or the seizure he'd witnessed once when someone had tried a bad batch.
The thick stink of dirty sweat. The pre-sex that undulated on the dancefloor, barely decent and shucking clothes in the wrong places. The actual act itself, as often in dark corners and crowded booths as in the bathroom or back corridors off the main floor. Harry had seen it all and then some, and he'd experienced more than his fair share of it. He'd learnt much from his experiences, and not all of it in a good way.
He knew the slightly off taste of a spiked drug well enough by now. He'd learnt how to stick his hands down his throat when he's 'slipped' with a little too much drink, emptying his belly to avoid the effects of such a slip upon his fitness and health routine. He could recognise when a stray hand wasn't an accidental but intentional slip. He knew the difference between stares that asked and those that demanded, and he'd learnt how to deflect as much as acknowledge and even welcome then.
Harry no longer joined his modelling 'friends' in their parties, but he'd been to enough clubs and seen enough to know that he didn't want to reattempt such an endeavour.
Though the club that he found himself in that night was obnoxiously loud, thundering with a heavy bass, and reeking of the typical scents of alcohol, sweat, and lust, Harry didn't mind so much. His friends didn't demand anything of him – or at least not in the way that his nights in his past had.
At that moment, his voice just beginning to slur with drink, Ron was making a different kind of demand. Nudging aside his beer glass, he hitched himself up in his chair a little and plopped his elbows heavily onto the table. He stared at Harry as Harry took another swirl and sip of his vodka, frowning just slightly as though he couldn't understand what Harry had just told him. Likely he really couldn't.
"Explain," Ron said.
"What do you want me to say?" Harry said, absently grazing his hand through his hair. He settled his tumbler down upon the table alongside Ron's glass. "We were kids back then, Ron. And no, just because there's history between us doesn't mean I'm obligated to hate him."
"Bullshit," Ron grumbled. "This is Malfoy."
"Draco," Harry said, because he couldn't help himself. Really, 'Malfoy'? Resorting to the use of surnames seemed such a petty way of expressing discontent. "And yes, I know. I was actually with him all of Monday and Tuesday."
"How the bloody hell did you survive?"
Harry shrugged. "He's not as much of an ass as he used to be, I guess."
"I call bullshit on that, too."
"Maybe you should drop by and meet him, then. You can come to the next shoot or something if you'd like. I'm sure I could ask Dot to pull some strings."
Most likely Harry could organise no such thing in any official context. He didn't have that kind of power, despite what people seemed to think he was entitled to with his supposed position. Harry wasn't fooled; he was a face in a picture, not the depth behind it. It was a surprisingly liberating position to be in, or so he'd discovered over the years.
But it didn't matter that he wouldn't actually be able to invite Ron along. Dot and Pansy both had spoken of inviting Harry's friends in for a shoot to include in the series, but he had little enough involvement in the decision at this point. Outside of the interview series, it wasn't worth the bother. Ron had about as little concern for fashion and modelling as Hermione, though he did partake of spending on what he termed 'nice clothes' with the money he'd never had before. At Harry's suggestion, however, he only wrinkled his nose and made a retching sound.
"No," he said, poking his tongue out in the image of disgust. "No, I'm good. I'm just… Mate, I can't believe you haven't actually had a single argument with him. Not once?"
Fiddling up his tumbler, Harry only shrugged again. He wouldn't call their Monday afternoon confrontation an argument. Not really. As Harry had also gradually realised, if he decided it wasn't, most of the time it really wasn't. Arguments – or fights – tended to develop on the basis that both parties expected them to proceed. Harry had learnt that it was almost easy to dodge or deflect a challenge when he denied participation in them.
"Ah, that's our Harry," Ginny said, abruptly throwing her free arm around Harry's neck and dragging him towards her. "Ever the pacifist."
"Yeah, now," Ron said emphatically, frowning at his half-empty glass. "Weren't you the one who faced off against Voldemort? I seem to remember you doing something like that."
"Technically, I wasn't the one who killed him," Harry pointed out."
"Yes, and – and that's in the past," Hermione broke in, her words slurring as she leant into Ron. The motion dragged Ginny along with her, and subsequently Harry until he was half-hauled around the small, round table. "It's in the past, Ron, so you – you shouldn't… You can't just make –"
"Yeah, don't make assumptions," Ginny said, shooting Ron a scowl that Harry didn't believe in the sincerity of for a moment. Ginny wasn't an angry drunk, but she was certainly a theatrical one. "Our poor Harry, just trying to make his way in the world –"
"I didn't accuse him of anything," Ron said, returning her scowl.
"Harry, who wouldn't even raise his wand to kill a fly –"
"Bad idea," Hermione mumbled. "Bad idea, killin' a fly with a… with a wand."
" – and who's just trying to make nice with Draco so they can finally get around to shaggin' after all these years."
Unfortunately, Ron had taken that moment to finish off his drink. In a violent spray, he coated the table in spit and beer, spluttering and gasping as he did so. Hermione rocked in her seat, blinking at him owlishly – Harry wondered if she'd reached the blurry-eyed stage of her drunkenness yet – while Ginny burst into cackles of laughter.
Ron ignored her. Instead, still spluttering, he turned back towards Harry, demands stuttering from his lips. Harry idly swirled his glass again as he waited for him to gather himself.
With a ragged gasp, Ron reached a grasping hand towards him. "You – you can't, mate," he said, oblivious to Ginny's hyena impression. "You can't fuck Malfoy. Mate, seriously –"
"Ron, I won't," Harry said.
"There are so many other fish in the sea, so many better pickings. You could have – hell, I'd even prefer you shag Ginny –"
"Hey! I'm not a fucking piece of meat, Ron."
"Misogynist," Hermione muttered, and Harry wondered just how much of the conversation she was actually keeping up with.
"I'm not a misogynist," Ron said, swinging his wide-eyed attention towards her. His face seemed even paler than usual in the darkness of the club, offset by the scattering strobe lights seeping from the dance floor. "I'm just saying, surely even you'd prefer –"
"I would not," Ginny said. Extricating her arm from around Hermione while simultaneously almost crushing Harry's head into her shoulder in a tight squeeze, she stabbed a finger at him. "They'd be totally hot together, and you know it."
"Don't be disgusting!"
"What, so now you're a homophobe too?"
"Damn homophobes," Hermione muttered.
"I'm not a homophobe either!" Ron all but shouted. It was likely a good thing that the music was so loud, as Harry had it on good authority that a good proportion of the club would take personal offense to the very word. "I just don't want to think of my best friend and his arch-enemy in the sack together. Is that too much to ask?"
"I'd actually rather you didn't imagine me in the sack with anyone, to be honest," Harry said, more to himself than to Ron.
"Alcohol really brings out the worst in you, Ron," Ginny said, shaking her head exaggeratedly. "You bastard. To think, my own brother."
"I'm not!"
"For shame. For utter shame, that you'd be such a discriminative asshole when two of your best friends are girls and or gay."
"I said I'm not!"
"Harry," Ginny turned her face into his temple and planted a wet kiss on his brow, "don't worry. Even if Ron's a massive git, I'll still stick by you. You can still shag Draco."
Ron was all but frothing at the mouth. "What – what are you even -?"
Harry chose that moment to ignore him. Apparently Ginny has decided it was pick-on-Ron-night, which was a welcome reprieve given that, more often than not, he found himself as the target of such teasing. It was nice that Ron would be burdened by it for once rather than partaking.
"Can I get you a top-up?" he asked of Ginny instead.
"Yah," Ginny said, leaning away from him with a wink and a toothy grin. "Thanks, darl."
"Maybe I shouldn't. You're pissed."
"Love, you're the only one of us who isn't." Ignoring Ron herself as he continued to splutter, Ginny pointed a dismissive finger at his half-finished glass. "It's 'cause you drink like a bird, Harry. Put it away a little faster and you'd be up to your fourth round like the rest of us."
Harry didn't reply, just as he didn't point out that they were actually on their fifth round. Extricating himself from Ginny's hold, he spared Ron a vaguely apologetic glance before ducking away from their table and leaving him to Ginny's assault. Their exclamations were quickly lost behind him as he made his way towards the bar.
Ironically, the club Rowdy's wasn't the rowdiest of places Harry had found himself. If anything, though the bar was packed and the dancefloor just as much, it was almost tame in comparison to those Harry had been in before. They had a very firm No Drugs policy which was part of the reason it frequented as Harry's primary suggestion. There was likely still a hand or two that slipped under a table or over a drink without notice, but Harry personally hadn't had any bad experiences, and that was enough for him.
Winding his way to the bar, he hailed the barman with a gesture that took a solid five minutes to be noticed. When the barman sidled towards him, a pair of drinks in hand that he palmed off to the woman alongside Harry, he flashed him a brief nod.
"What'll you have?"
"Another beer on tap," Harry said, "and just a straight bourbon."
"Sure thing," the barman said. "Nothing for yourself?"
Harry spared him a smile and a shake of his head. He knew the man recognised him just as he recognised him in return, and he wasn't particularly surprised to be asked. 'Drinking like a bird' didn't go unnoticed by most people. But Harry withheld for more than his dietary regime; Von always liked to remind him to hold back if he had any sense.
"Skinny twits can't hold their liquor," he'd said countless times, and not only to Harry. It seemed a common reminder he gifted to models whenever one threatened to invite him out for an evening.
Harry heeded him. Von was practically his nanny, after all.
Leaning back against the bar, Harry propped his elbows on the counter and turned his regard upon the club. The sunken dancefloor was a jumping, bobbing mass of bodies, more like one fluid creature than separate entities. The raised floor surrounding it was almost as crowded, with every table was filled to bursting, and a constant stream of clubbers disappeared and reappeared again from the darkened corridor leading to the restrooms.
Harry watched, and he pondered. Clubbing wasn't necessarily his scene, but he didn't particularly mind it. He didn't think he'd ever be the type of person that would spend night after night getting lost in the throes of madness and drink, even if he didn't have his work to consider. When Harry's friends said he'd mellowed out, he supposed that meant as a party-goer too, though he didn't think he'd ever been much of one to begin with.
Some people just have it, he thought idly, watching as a pair of young women latched onto one another, the shorter stretching on her toes to plant a sloppy kiss on the corner of the taller one's mouth. I'm not the only one in the industry, either. I bet someone like Draco wouldn't be either.
Harry blinked. Then he almost snorted at himself and his train of thought. Ginny and her suggestions were putting ideas into his head. As if he hadn't been contemplating Draco and the strangeness of their relationship, of Draco's shoot, and of the words that continued to echo in his mind enough already. He truly hadn't considered the prospect as more than a passing thought, a recognition of attractiveness, until Ginny had elaborated on it. But when he thought about it…
Draco was fit. He was tall, and lean, and his features were the kind that would cast the perfect shadows before the right angle of a camera. He possessed the kind of aloofness that bespoke entitlement the likes of which Harry might have expected he'd lost to the war, and his sentence, and the ostracism he was likely facing as just about every other ex-Death Eater that hadn't been imprisoned faced. It was just a little captivating to witness, and Harry knew he wasn't removed from being caught like a feeble moth in a spider's web.
But it wasn't going to happen. Harry didn't have the same problem with Draco as Ron clearly still possessed, but he was realistic enough to know that the likelihood of anything occurring between then was so minute it was practically zero. While Harry had moved beyond the past and could barely recall the type of person he'd been when he'd hated Malfoy, Draco was different. He had to be different. Surely.
Even if he did call Harry by his name.
"Fancy seeing you here."
Shaken from his thoughts, Harry turned towards the voice at his side. He had a moment to make out blond hair, a crooked smile, and a swagger even in stillness, before a brief bout of 'oops' rose within him. A face didn't always help to alleviate the blank absence of a name.
I know this guy, he thought, painting a smile on his face. I know him, but his name is…?
This was one of the reasons Harry didn't always go to Rowdy's. Unfortunate confrontations were made only more likely in frequent haunts.
"Hi," Harry said, raising his voice to match the man's.
"Haven't seen you in a while," the man said. "We didn't get a chance to exchange numbers last time. Where've you been?"
What's his name, what's his name, what… "If I'm going to be boringly truthful, working," Harry replied.
The man laughed. It was a loud laugh, a good laugh, and profoundly genuine. Harry could see why he'd liked him in the past. "Yeah, I can commiserate with that. It's been mayhem at work with Valentine's Day and all, though that was a few months ago."
Valentine's Day? Where…? A flicker of memory, something about a florist, breezed across the surface of Harry's mind, but it disappeared before he could grab hold of it. "I'll bet," he said. He glanced over his shoulder as the barman reappeared behind him with a gesture of the two glasses he held. "I'm actually here with friends."
"Oh." The man's smile faded slightly, though not completely. "Me too, though they're all practically smashed already."
Harry laughed a little, and the man's smile widened once more. "Yeah, you and me both."
"Really?" he asked, volume rising with more enthusiasm than Harry's words should have incited.
It was obvious. It was so blatantly obvious what was going through the man's mind that Harry didn't even bother pretending he didn't see it. He knew what attraction looked like. He knew the particular light of lust in someone's stare, the way that stare would flicker downwards just briefly before catching itself. He knew what was being asked without words.
And why not? He's fit enough, and he wants it, so why not?
With a mental shrug, Harry scooped up Ron and Ginny's drinks. He spared the man a small smile, a different kind of smile, and tipped his head towards his friends' table. "I'll drop these off," he said, "then did you want to get out of here?"
The man didn't need to reply. He followed like a dog on Harry's heel as Harry wove back through the club, leaving any thoughts of Draco, work, and anything at all behind him.
Smoke curled in artful swirls towards the pale ceiling, barely visible in the darkened room. Harry watched it coil, blinking lazily, before tucking his arm beneath his pillow and propping himself a little higher upright.
"You know," he murmured, "it's kind of ironic that you smoke when you sell flowers."
Simon – for Harry had blessedly recalled his name before they'd stumbled into the unlit apartment – glanced towards him. His eyes were very dark in the shadows. Very intent in their stare. "Why?"
Harry turned to face him, tucking his other arm under the pillow to join the first as he shuffled onto his side. "Well, I have it on good authority that flowers burn."
Simon's smile spread around the butt of his dwindling cigarette. He had a good smile, too. A good smile and a good laugh. He rolled onto his side, propping his elbow and resting his head upon his fist. "Such botanical lore," he teased, taking another drag. "You're practically a florist yourself."
"You could say that," Harry murmured. He closed his eyes when Simon, cigarette captured between his fingers, reached towards him and grazed a finger down the side of his face. The smell of smoke wasn't particularly tasteful, but Harry could overlook it.
"You'll give me your number this time?" Simon said just as quietly. Yet even in its quietness, Harry could hear the edge of a demand. A want. A need? Maybe not quite, but that forcefulness was definitely there.
And why not? he thought as he always did. Why not?
He never told them his real name. He never shared what he actually did as a profession, and should any of them pry too deeply or learn too much, he erased himself from their memories with a well-aimed Obliviate. Harry wasn't sure if it was a good thing or not to consider himself about as practiced in the art of afflicting memory loss as Gilderoy Lockheart had once been. He certainly wouldn't ask of the morality of his actions from Hermione; memory spells were a sore spot for her.
Smiling easily, Harry nodded. That barest affirmation was apparently enough for Simon. Reaching behind himself to the nightstand, he discarded his cigarette butt and slid across the distance between them. He levered himself over Harry, finger rising to trace his face once more, and when he dropped into a kiss, deep and hungry, it tasted of tobacco.
Harry didn't particularly like it. He didn't like it, but he allowed it. Because why not? Simon wanted it, and Harry didn't not want it, so why not? He allowed himself to sink into the thick taste, the heat of Simon's hands, and the weight of him as he pressed Harry into the unfamiliar bed to be lost in skin, and warmth, and gasping breath.
Why not? Really, why not?
A/N: Thank you to all the of the lovely people keeping up with this fic, and especially to those who have been reviewing. I appreciate it so much, and I'm sorry that it always takes me ages to get around to replying to your lovely words!