Chapter Text
“Why are you doing this?” Draco asks, leaning against the doorframe.
Harry briefly looks up at him, before sighing and continuing to try to rip the bedsheets from his filthy bed.
He’s struggling. Maybe I shouldn’t have stopped going to the gym , he whines internally.
It doesn’t help that he hasn’t changed the sheets in about two months, and they’re now practically fused into the mattress.
“What do you mean?” he asks, grunting as he pulls at the fabric, praying he doesn’t look as lame as he feels at the moment.
“I don’t need the room. I can sleep on the floor,” the blond points out, his voice quiet and even.
Harry wonders if he’s ever heard of voice modulation. The guy delivers every word with the emotion of a depressed newscaster.
“You’re not—” he yanks once again, getting one of the corners to unstick and come undone, “sleeping on the floor. Technically, you’re my guest.”
“Technically, I can sleep on the floor. I don’t sleep much anyway.”
“Don’t be fucking ridiculou— aaghhh —”
“You can just ask for help,” Draco shakes his head, clearly fed up with watching him struggle, and walks up to him, taking the sheet out of Harry’s hands. Once he grabs it, almost magically, he’s able to take it off and throw it on the ground.
Harry frowns at him. “How are you so strong?”
“Let me take care of it,” is the response he gets. Draco pushes him to the side and begins to lift the boxes from the bed and leave them on the floor, seemingly unaware of the fact that they’re filled to the brim with Harry’s old school books. Together, they must weigh more or less the same as a newborn elephant —Paul left them there when they moved in, being unfairly strong for a twenty-three-year-old, and Harry hadn’t been able to move them. So, he’d just left them there. To be honest, his back kind of hurts from sleeping in a curled up position to be able to fit in the bed with the boxes. That might be the most pathetic thing he’s ever done.
That, or marrying at nineteen .
He feels useless, standing there watching Draco do all the work. He crosses his arms and paces the room. “Are you okay with daylight, though?” he asks, and Draco trips and almost drops the box he’s carrying.
“What? Why?”
Harry points at the window, which is fully closed at the moment. “The blind is broken, and there’s light coming in in the morning. I tried to fix it, but I only broke it more.”
Draco is still, hands hovering over the box. He blinks, eyeing the broken blind warily. “I’ll see if I can fix that, then.”
“Oh, I didn’t mean that you had to fix it—”
“It’s fine. I don’t like being woken up by sunlight.”
“I thought you barely slept?” Harry tilts his head, teasing him. As usual, he only manages to earn a small, annoyed frown from the blond.
The light on the ceiling flickers, but Harry barely registers it as he moves to help Draco with the last box.
Once all the boxes are out of the way, they both finish taking off the sheets and bed covers, as well as the pillow case —which may or may not have a few drool stains, to Harry’s dismay. He throws it on the pile before Draco can see.
“Where will you sleep then?” Draco wonders a few minutes later, tugging at the sleeves of his hoodie. Harry notices a few scratches on his fingers.
“Uh— the couch? It’s quite comfortable,” he explains. It won’t be the first time he does that —Paul had once invited thirty people to his birthday party, and ten of them had started their own in his room, locking it from the inside. He didn’t manage to sleep that night, given the music blasting in his ears —and the rancid smell of whatever they were smoking—, but he found the couch to be a fine substitute for his cheap bed.
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah,” Harry shifts his weight from one foot to the other, suppressing the sinking feeling in the back of his head. “Once I’ve cleaned the other— I mean, yeah. For now.”
Draco doesn’t catch his slip, too focused on studying the bedroom. Luckily, Harry didn’t have the energy to decorate much when he moved in back then, and so one could say his room is, objectively speaking, quite boring.
“There isn’t much to look at—” he starts, but then he’s interrupted by the light in the ceiling suddenly going off.
They both remain in total darkness, still, in silence, for about two minutes. Harry groans. “Fucking damnit. And it was a new one.” He’ll have to have a few words with the man who sold it to him, and also swore that it was basically impossible to burn out.
He blindly taps the light switch a few times, but it doesn’t work.
Incredible luck.
“Are you ok?” he asks out loud into the darkness, keeping his hand on the wall to feel grounded.
“Of course.” He hears steps and then a hand is touching his arm, grabbing it firmly. “It’s not turning on?”
“Nah, it’s out. I’ll just have to buy a new one.”
“It’s alright.”
Draco’s presence feels heavier in the dark, somewhat more intimate despite him keeping his distance. The only point of contact are his fingers, wrapping around Harry’s bare arm, which is now covered in goosebumps. He’s so cold.
“Maybe we can go to the living room? The lights were on there, weren’t they?” Draco suggests, and Harry starts nodding before remembering that Draco can’t see him.
“Yes.”
Draco moves for him, somehow not bothered by the darkness at all, and walks them to what Harry assumes is the door. He opens it, because Harry hears it open, but nothing changes.
All the lights are out. The entire apartment is pitch black.
“Fuck,” Harry breathes out, frustrated. Power’s out. For the first time... ever?
Did I pay my bills last month?
Draco just exhales, in what Harry can’t tell if it’s a laugh or a groan, and lets his arm go. He hears footsteps going away, some rummaging, and seconds later a small light appears in front of him.
He can see Draco now. The blond shrugs and hands him his phone. “There. Is this better?”
“Thanks,” Harry answers, a bit unsettled. He takes the phone and points it at the floor. “What do we do now?”
“What we were doing before?”
“I don’t feel like cleaning up anymore.”
Draco grimaces. “I’ll take a shower, then. It’s been a while.”
That reminds Harry that he probably should do that, too. He didn’t care about it when he lived alone, but if they’re going to be sharing, he might as well not smell like last week’s take out. “That’s alright. The water will probably be cold, though.”
“I’m okay with that.”
Harry swallows before asking his next question. It feels inappropriate, and it definitely is . “Do you want me to— hold the light for you?”
Draco blinks. “Why?”
“I mean, would you rather showering in the dark?”
Draco seems to think about it for a second, before stretching out a hand towards him. “Lend me your phone, then— I’ll just leave it on the sink pointing at the ceiling.”
“But then I’ll have no light,” Harry argues. If he had accepted that joint months ago, maybe he’d have a lighter. Instead, he’d been a bitch and said no.
Which means that the stupid joint is the reason why he’s practically asking a stranger to shower together.
“Can’t you sit in the dark for a while?”
“And what, talk to myself? Take a nap?” he’s aware that he’s sounding more and more whiny the more he insists. Draco probably thinks he took him here to hook up with him, or something.
Draco presses his fingers to his eyelids. “Okay, but just— turn around while I shower.”
“Of fucking course,” Harry replies immediately, indignant and slightly offended that his intentions have been misconstrued. He voices out what he was thinking just now, adding, “I’m not making a move on you, alright?”
To his surprise, this earns him a small, amused smile he hasn’t seen before. “I know,” Draco says.
So, they go into the bathroom. As promised, Harry turns around as soon as he closes the door, and leaves the light next to him on the floor. He crosses his legs and stares at the door, tapping his fingers on it. “How long do you usually take?”
He hears an exasperated huff. “I haven’t even started .”
“I know, but like, if I have to sit here without nothing to look at—” he stops talking, realizing how filthy that sounds.
“Just look at your phone then!”
“I can’t, it turns the flashlight off if I unlock it.” That’s on him for getting the cheapest phone on the market, though.
“Twenty minutes,” Draco finally answers.
He hears the rustling of clothes falling to the floor, then quiet footsteps and a closing curtain. His curtain is not see-through —it has some triangles drawn on it, something to do with some series Paul had been obsessed with—, but he doesn’t dare to ask if he can turn around. He doesn’t want to sound more desperate than he already has.
When he hears the sound of running water, he adds, “Is the water cold?”
Another sigh. “It’s fine .”
It does cross Harry’s mind at this point how weird —more like utterly bizarre — it is that he’s divorced and sitting down in his own bathroom with a naked stranger a meter away from him, in the dark. Surely that’s something his seventeen-year-old self would have never predicted.
“Twenty minutes, no more,” he says. “I want to shower, too.”