Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Ginny’s visiting again, and Harry doesn’t know how he feels about it.

It’s not that he isn’t fond of her —he is, despite their tumultuous history and the frustration of his closest friends—, but rather that they have radically different ways to go about heartbreak. Harry didn’t know what his way was until last month, and it’s proven to be quite unsuccessful and unhealthy. He buries himself in work, shutting his feelings away and hoping for the best. Obviously, as proven by his embarrassingly decrepit apartment, doing that doesn’t work out that well. 

Ginny, on the other hand, is fully hands-on. Harry is not surprised by that, because no child raised by Molly Weasley would ever be anything other than an obsessive cleaning freak. 

He’s being victimized by her post-nap energy spike at the moment, which is for sure well-intentioned, but not at all appreciated by a currently-trying-to-nap Harry. 

Ginny wacks him in the butt with the stick of the broom she’s holding in one hand. “Get your ass up and help me.”

“I don’t know if I feel like it, sorry,” Harry mutters, covering his head with his pillow. He’s sprawled face-down on his bed, trying to ignore the madness unleashing in his bedroom. 

“This is why you don’t get married at 19,” Ginny sighs, her tone sarcastic, resuming her frantic floor-sweeping. 

“I fully agree.”

They now have an endless amount of legal papers piling up and waiting to be taken care of as proof of that. 

Ginny stays silent for a second, before tentatively adding, “I’m sorry about Paul, by the way. I couldn’t make it to the funeral.”

Harry chuckles, a sour taste filling his mouth. “Couldn’t make it to the courthouse either.”

He hears her scoff from under the pillow. “Oh, please . We already went over that, didn’t we?”

“If you can’t even make it in time to your own divorce —”

“What does this even have to do with anything? Eugh ,” she adds, and Harry knows she’s found the pair of dirty boxers hiding under the bed. “Seriously, have you considered calling in Pest Control guy? I think I just saw a cockroach.”

He doesn’t respond to that —just like he didn’t respond to her comment about Paul’s funeral. That’s just another name he’ll have to add to the ever-expanding list of people he’s grown to care about and then had to bury. 

He still stops by his room somedays. It feels strangely lived-in, despite Paul not having been there for at least three weeks. He hasn’t dared to touch anything yet— he texted the family to come and get his belongings, but they’ve been ghosting him for the past few days. 

The only remnant of Paul’s existence outside his own room is a single polaroid picture, pinned to the corkboard over the couch. It’s the only picture they ever took of them together, because Paul had always been a little bitch about being in photos. 

Harry now wishes he’d pressed him to take some more. 

“You know what?” Ginny says after a while, and the sound of her voice startles Harry a little. “I’m getting tired of doing all the work while you smother yourself with your pillow. I’m gonna go.”

Harry dignifies his reply by finally lifting the pillow and sitting up on his bed. He runs a hand through his hair. “I’m sorry, Ginny.”

The redhead has left a bag full of trash in the corner of the room. She lets the broom fall to the floor. “Just call me when you’re feeling better, and we’ll talk. Good night.”

She gives him one last look of pity before stepping out the door.

“You owe me a beer, by the way!” she adds, but doesn’t wait for Harry to reply. 

Harry’s owed her a beer for months . Maybe when he’s got his shit together he’ll take her up on that. When he’s not thinking about every single little thing he might’ve done wrong for their marriage to fall apart so catastrophically. 

They just aren’t made to be together like that . So, it’s for the best. He hopes it is, at least.

He looks out the window and is surprised to see that the sun has already set. His digital clock reads 8:00 PM, reminding him of all the time he’s lost moping around. He manages to get up, even though his head hurts like hell and he can’t find his glasses. Surprisingly, Ginny has managed to put away a good chunk of the clothing that covered the floor, getting rid of any tripping hazards. He staggers and grips the doorframe, staring dazedly at the dark living room. 

He can see the light from the streetlamps cast on the floor, orange and comforting. Outside on the street, someone is screaming something in a language only drunk or high people can understand. It happens every other night —apartments are cheaper in this side of town, and even more so when they’re located right over the only bar in a five kilometer radius. 

Still, he doesn’t mind it. After everything he’s been through, he likes being reminded that there’s people around him, going on with their lives and being very much alive . 

Now that Ginny’s left, though, he doesn’t really have anything to do. He doesn’t plan on eating anything for dinner —he still feels the falafel he ate for lunch sitting at the bottom of his stomach—, and he sure as hell isn’t picking up that broom. 

He walks by the counter, ignoring the massive pile of divorce papers and soon-expiring bills. He picks up his sweater from the floor, hastily puts it on and walks out the door, only grabbing his keys on the way out. The phone stays inside, because who would even call him right now? 

Not Hermione and Ron, that’s for sure. They had a bit of an argument when they found out about the divorce. 

It’s cold outside, and Harry shivers as he makes his way out of the building and past the bar. The man who was screaming before is now engaged in what looks like foreplay for some kind of subpar brawl with a scrawny dude who’s swinging a beer bottle. 

He makes sure to walk faster before he can find himself right in the middle of it. 

He knows where he’s going— where he’s been going every damn day for the past few weeks. It’s not far away, and in any case, it’s worth the short walk just to get some privacy. It’s a public park, small due to lack of investment from the authorities, full of overgrown bushes and slanted, gangly trees. There’s not much light in there at night, and it wouldn’t be the first time Harry —or anyone— has been mugged while walking through it. 

He loves it, though. 

He even has a favorite bench: the one sitting on the far right edge of the lot, right behind a big bush. Not for any particular reason— he’s just gotten used to sitting there. So, he heads straight towards it when he reaches the park. 

Only to find out there’s already someone sitting on it. 

Harry narrows his eyes. He left his glasses at home —because of course he did—, and can’t see properly at a distance. Deciding he’ll make a run for it if the person makes any sudden movements, he gets closer to them, hands in his pockets. 

He can just about make out the person’s white skin and blond hair, and also the ambiguous dark clothing they’re wearing. From where Harry’s standing, they almost fade into the background. 

“I’m afraid I have no money,” the person says, and Harry notes their lower, neat voice. 

Probably a guy, then. But he can’t really guess. 

He makes an apologetic gesture. “I don’t intend to rob you,” he replies, getting closer. He stops right in front of them. “I’m afraid you took my bench.”

Laughter or anger would be an expected response to his strange comment, but instead he’s met with a calm, solemn nod. The stranger shifts and slides to the left of the bench, leaving an empty space next to them. “We both fit in it.”

Stranger has an accent he can’t quite place, a mishmash of different regional cadences and an uptight, rigid definition to the way they end each word. And they’ve offered Harry a seat without even doubting. 

Harry probably should know better, but then again, if he did, he wouldn’t have married at nineteen. So, he sits down. 

“I’m Harry Potter, by the way,” he starts, stretching out his hand towards Stranger. 

If they’re going to be weird, might as well find out who he’s being weird with. 

There’s a beat of silence before a cold hand touches his and gently shakes it. “Draco,” Draco says. They don’t say a last name. 

Their fingers are freezing cold, long and skinny. Harry lets go after a second, slightly uneasy. 

“Nice to meet you,” he says instead, shoving his hand in his pocket. He blinks hard, trying to get his eyes to focus. Tragically, they don’t. “I’m sorry, I can’t see shit right now.”

Draco doesn’t laugh at his remark, and they don’t inquire any further. Harry swallows the feeling of awkwardness and stares ahead, right at the streetlamp standing a few meters away from them. Strangely, it’s the only one that’s turned off in the entire park, leaving both of them in the shadows. 

What a great night , he thinks. If this is going to be his new life as a divorcee, he better get used to it. Sitting with strangers at the park and all that.

Just as he’s preparing to remain silent for the next hour or so, Draco sits up straighter and whips their head around. Their leg moves against Harry’s for a second as they turn around, still so very cold , and Harry refrains from moving away from it. 

“What’s happen—”

“ Silence ,” Draco mutters, and their eyes are now darting all over the bushes behind them. They’re gripping the armrest like their life depends on it. 

Harry shuffles back until his back is pressed against the opposite side of the bench, prepared to bolt if it comes to it. 

But it doesn’t come to it, after all, because then Draco is standing up and walking straight into the bushes . 

No goodbye, or anything.

Harry decides that that’s the most he’s going to do today. He also stands up, his heart beating faster by the second, and runs away. The entire time until he gets to his apartment, he’s thinking, What the hell was that?

Chapter Text

He’s thinking about Draco from the moment he wakes up the next morning.

Which kind of sucks, actually, because he happens to have a job he has to go to, and he cannot risk another demotion —that would make it two in the same month. 

The thing is, though, that he’s inexplicably enthralled —or rather mystified— by last night’s encounter. And, despite having been practically blind throughout the entire thing, he saw just about enough to become curious.

He doesn’t fully know why. He doesn’t want to think about it too much. 

And yet, as he makes his way to work, he makes sure to walk through the park and by the bench they had been sitting on yesterday. His phone buzzes in his pocket, but he doesn’t take it out to read whatever message he just got. 

Instead, he looks up at the sky to wonder at his own insanity and then pokes his head inside the bush. For some reason, he was fully expecting to find a corpse —nobody ever knows what people can get up to in places like these—, but there isn’t one.

Well— that’s false. There is one, but it’s small. An animal’s. 

A squirrel? 

He doesn’t even try to get a better look at it. It’s clearly not alive anymore, so he steps back and takes a moment to regain his composure. He brushes his shirt, getting off the leaves that got stuck to it. 

It’s strange, but at least he knows that Draco wasn’t murdered. That’s good to know, for some reason. 

Why he even cares this much, he doesn’t know. He blinks and shakes his head, deciding to forget about it —at least until he gets off of work, at around 7 PM. Even though he hates working, he can appreciate that it helps clear his mind and forces him out of the house every day. He just has to make sure no-one knows what kind of shithole he goes back to sleep in every night. 

So, he marches on. 

—

“I’m afraid I still have no money,” Draco says.

Harry smirks. It took him ten minutes to decide he’d be going back to the park after having dinner, just the time he needed to find a clean jumper under all the junk he’s left on the floor. 

He hasn’t forgotten his glasses today. Because the thing is, talking to strangers is a lot less stressful when one can actually make out their faces. 

Turns out, Draco is a guy. And his outfit is certainly… peculiar.

“You still took my bench.”

And just like that, as if they’ve been doing it for weeks, Draco moves to the side to make space for him. Harry sits down slowly, satisfaction crawling at the base of his stomach. 

“Don’t you have friends to talk to?” Draco asks, still not facing him, still and rigid despite his unabashed inquiry. 

Strangely, that makes Harry laugh. “Not really, no. Not right now.”

Draco doesn’t say anything else, which gives Harry the time to stare at him for as long as he wants to. He’s got a delicate, narrow frame, rounded jaw and pointy chin, with a straight, stern nose and angular, slanted gray eyes. His hair, which he barely saw the previous day, is indeed a quite peculiar shade of platinum blonde —Harry wonders if he dyes it or if it’s his natural color. 

Draco is also wearing black clothes from head to toe: an awkward, ill-fitting shirt, painfully skinny jeans and dark combat boots. 

Harry isn’t going to ask him about it. He himself is wearing five-year-old boxers, some old loose jeans and the only clean jumper he owns at the moment. He’s definitely not in a place to judge anybody’s fashion taste.

His phone buzzes in his pocket, but he still doesn’t pay any attention to it. It’s probably Ginny, making sure he hasn’t died from his self-imposed neglect. 

She cares too much sometimes— one of the reasons they didn’t really work together. Harry has some sort of fight or flight response to people trying to care for him. Ginny had once called that a side-effect of his “savior complex” (whatever that is). 

Draco steals a quick glance at Harry’s pocket, then slightly raises his eyebrows. “So you do have friends.”

“Ex-wife,” Harry replies, and immediately regrets telling a stranger about his intimate life. Trying to change the subject, he nudges the blond with his knee and retorts, “What about you? Why are you here all of a sudden?”

“I have nowhere else to go,” Draco replies simply, not looking bothered by his admission. “Also, it’s nice here.”

“It literally is not ,” Harry shakes his head. “I saw a dead squirrel in there this morning,” he  points at the bushes behind them, “and I’m pretty sure there were five guys snorting cocaine right next to the fountain ten minutes ago.”

“I don’t mind it.”

Harry eyes him warily, increasingly curious about the other’s lack of conversation skills. Then, he realizes he missed quite an important detail. “Wait, did you say you have nowhere else to go?”

“I did.”

“Why is that?” Harry then adds, “How old are you?”

Draco slightly twitches his lips when he replies, “I just don’t. I don’t know what else to tell you.”

Harry’s phone buzzes once again. And, once again, he ignores it. “What do you do when it rains?”

“Your wife is ringing your phone off the hook.”

“ Ex- wife.” Why are they even arguing right now? Harry huffs, exasperated. “I’m trying to help you here.”

“You don’t know me.”

“Still, I’m a human with a slight sliver of empathy. Aren’t you cold?”

“I’m never cold.”

That could be debated , Harry thinks, if one were to judge him solely by the monotone tone of his voice and his stand-offish behavior. But anyway. 

He slightly tilts his body to allow himself a clearer view of his odd companion, and somehow manages to hit his elbow against the armrest in the process. He groans, but is immediately distracted by a sharp change in Draco’s demeanor. 

The blond perks up, his eyes falling to Harry’s elbow. “You’re hurt.”

They’re relatively in the dark, given the fact that the streetlamp is still broken. And yet, Harry can clearly see the other’s pupils grow significantly. “I’m fine, really—”

“You’re bleeding,” Draco interrupts him, and without hesitation he grabs Harry’s arm with one hand and pulls it towards him. 

“How do you even know that?” Harry murmurs, surprised by the sudden physical contact. 

He’s still cold as fucking hell.

Draco proves himself right by pushing the sleeve up Harry's arm and dragging one of his fingers over the crook of his elbow, tightening his grip when Harry huffs in pain. 

When he raises his finger, Harry can see it’s stained red. 

“Oh,” he lets out. Maybe he is bleeding, then. He frees his arm and moves it a bit, but the pain is dull and not too intense. He shrugs his shoulders. “I am fine, though. It doesn’t hurt.”

But Draco isn’t even paying attention to what he’s saying. Instead, he’s staring at his finger, almost as if drawn to it, bringing it closer and closer to his— lips?

“Don’t be weird,” Harry says, swatting his hand away, even though nothing about this thing they’re doing is normal. 

“But it doesn’t— smell,” Draco replies, voice so low Harry almost doesn’t catch it. He blinks, his pale eyelashes fluttering with the movement. “Bad.”

“What?”

“That’s never happened before.” The blond looks slightly dazed, somewhat confused. He then raises his head and, for the first time, makes full eye contact with Harry. “Who are you?”

Harry pretends he isn’t unnerved by the other’s direct gaze. He looks away, fidgeting with his hands on his lap. “I already told you.”

“I don’t mean it like that.”

“So far you know that my name’s Harry, I have no friends, and I have an ex-wife. Which is, really, about everything you should know about me.”

Draco is now fully looking at him, as in, looking , barely even blinking. He taps his chin with his finger, leaving a small red blemish on it in the process. He narrows his eyes, “Will you be here tomorrow?”

“We just established that I have no friends, so, yeah, I think it’s safe to assume I will.”

They're suddenly sitting too close to each other for Harry's taste, because the blond's face is mere centimeters away from his and he looks dangerously ready to jump him. Harry nervously chews his bottom lip and grips the edge of the bench with his fingers, trying to read the room, and not quite managing it. 

But Draco just says, “Good," and Harry doesn’t know how to interpret that. Especially when it’s followed by a quiet, “You’re quite interesting.”

Harry gulps. “Er— thanks. You too.”

Creepy would be a better word for Draco, but whatever. The guy has been nice so far. If he ignores the blood thing. 

“Please put a bandaid on that,” Draco adds, breaking eye contact and sitting farther away again. “It’s not good to go around bleeding out.”

Harry stares at the smudge on Draco’s chin. His blood on Draco’s chin. 

His evenings keep getting weirder and weirder, but he’s far too deep in to go back now. “I will.”

Chapter Text

He almost doesn’t make it to the park tonight.

The screaming man from a couple of nights ago is named Ted —something he learned against his will, much to his dismay, because he got pulled aside by him when he was trying to sneak out of his apartment. Harry got startled for a second, and was already trying to remember what they taught him in self-defense class in high school, but it was pointless. 

The man was wasted beyond belief, and had mistaken him for Son Heung-min. Harry didn’t have the heart to tell him that he’s sadly much, much shorter —not to mention an entirely different race— than the renowned football player. The only thing they have in common is the dark short hair, and that’s about it. Still, Ted looked quite dumbfounded, as well as a bit cross-eyed. He still had a black eye from the other day’s fight, to which Harry had been an early witness before making a run for it. 

So, whatever that was, he manages to escape it unscathed. He presses the bag against his chest so it doesn’t fall, prioritizing it over his sliding glasses. His phone has finally gone quiet, after a day of ignoring Ginny’s texts, no distractions left to keep him from going to that bench in that park. He’s even forgotten —momentarily— about the fact that he’s still being ghosted by Paul’s sister. He doesn’t appreciate it, but what stays behind that locked door cannot bother him anyway. 

The park comes into view. Harry feels the bandaid he put on under the fabric of his sweater, the pain long gone. It had been a tiny scratch, really, but he didn’t want to trigger Draco again. He’d seemed abnormally affected by it —Harry presumes he might be of the apprehensive kind. 

Fortunately, to balance out Ted’s drunken interrogation, there doesn’t seem to be any snorting going on at the park today. Which means that he makes it to the bench more easily than he’d prepared himself for. 

A small smile crawls its way across his lips when he sees it, but it quickly disappears when he notices that there’s nobody sitting on it. He stops in front of it and looks to both sides, confused, and also feeling a bit silly for being excited about this in the first place.

The bag is suddenly heavy in his arms. He bites the inside of his cheek, shifting the weight of his body from one foot to the other, thinking about what to do. Should he just go home? 

Maybe these last two days have been an overly-complex hallucination caused by his loneliness and his lack of coping skills. That wouldn’t be too far-fetched. 

“Good night,” a voice suddenly speaks behind him, and he turns around so fast he almost drops the bag to the floor to punch the stranger right in the face. 

Thankfully, he doesn’t end up doing so, because he sees the light blond hair before he even lifts his arm. 

It’s Draco. 

He sighs, heart hammering in his chest. This goddamn creep , he thinks to himself. The guy truly knows how to walk without being heard. “I almost knocked you down,” he groans, looking up at the taller man. “Don’t do that ever again.”

Draco’s expression doesn’t shift. He blinks, “I just said ‘good night’. I didn’t do anything.”

“You scared the shit out of me is what you did, coming from behind like that.”

“Well, I certainly couldn’t come from the front, could I? The path ends right here.”

Harry is tempted to throw the bag in the trash and call it a night. Instead, he leaves it on the bench. “Where were you?”

Draco walks past him to sit next to the bag, carefully grabbing it and setting it on his lap so Harry can sit in its previous spot. His eyebrows twitch as he answers, “I was just talking to those guys next to the fountain, is all.”

“What?” Harry furrows his brow, wondering if he’s gone insane. “They weren’t next to the fountain just now. There was no-one there when I came in.”

“Right. That’s because I was talking to them outside.” Draco looks at him as if he’s a three year old asking dumb questions. “They won’t be coming here again.”

Without a reason, Harry feels a chill run down his spine. “...What did you do?”

Draco just plays with the straps of the bag, twisting them around his long fingers. “I already said I talked to them. You mentioned them yesterday, so I talked to them today. They won’t be coming back.”

This all just sounds like he’s about to become Draco’s partner in crime, which he hasn’t asked for, so he coughs a bit and tries to change the subject. “That’s— alright. Okay, listen, I brought you something—”

“A bag,” Draco provides, helpfully. 

“Right. Thanks, I didn’t recall the word for it,” Harry replies, but the other doesn’t catch on to his sarcasm. “Okay, just let me say— this might be weird, and it probably totally will be, so I will understand if you don’t want any of it, we’re basically strangers after all—”

“I think you are interesting,” Draco retorts, his face serious, and still gripping the bag in his hands. “We have talked.”

“I mean— Yeah, I guess we have.” Harry doesn’t know what to say to that, to being called interesting. People don’t usually say that to guys they met days ago. But he still continues, “I just mean that you don’t have to feel forced to take it. I just thought you’d want it.”

He signals to Draco to open the bag, and the blond does so —to his credit— without looking too creeped out. He opens it and stuffs his hand into it, pulling out what’s inside. 

It’s a hoodie, and a brand new one at that. Harry would have never forgiven himself if he’d given Draco any of his old, raggedy hoodies. Not that Draco looks like the type to wear hoodies —he’s still wearing his collared shirt today—, but it wasn’t within his budget to buy a suit. 

He himself cannot believe he bought clothes for what’s, essentially, a stranger he met while partially blind at a park. 

He nervously glances up at Draco, awaiting his reaction. The blond does look sort of startled, fingers still as he stares at the black fabric in his hands. He mutters, “What is this?”

“You’ve never seen a hoodie?” 

Draco shakes his head. Harry wants to comment on how that’s impossible for anyone who hasn’t been living under a rock for, like, the past fifty years, but he ultimately decides it’s better not to. So, he gestures towards himself, then grabs his own hood and puts it over his head. “This is a hoodie.”

Draco eyes his outfit with a clinical look on his face. “It appears to be a puffer jacket.”

“No, under that, you idiot,” Harry huffs, unzipping his jacket and showing him the hoodie underneath. “It’s a hoodie because it has a hood. It’s really good to keep your ears warm.”

Draco stays silent for a few seconds, seemingly taking in the fact that he just got a gift. “It’s for me?”

“I got two,” Harry explains, panicking a little. He’s bad at gifts, and he doesn’t want the other to take this the wrong way. “In different sizes. I kind of guessed, but I don’t really know if I got them right.”

Draco looks at him. “Why?” he simply asks. 

And this flusters Harry more than any other question would have. He stutters, “I— I don’t really know. I guess, for the cold?”

Something twitches in the corner of Draco’s mouth. “I told you I don’t feel it. I’m okay.”

“But you— your clothes ,” Harry tries, gesturing to Draco’s outfit. “You’ve been wearing the same ones for two days. And you— said you had nowhere else to go.”

“So, this is for pity,” Draco guesses, and Harry might as well die right now. 

“ No ,” he vehemently denies. He feels a drop of sweat run down his temple. “I wanted to help.”

“I think you’re the one who needs help right now,” Draco says, and Harry knows he sees how sweaty he got, despite the darkness. “Are you dying?”

“You’ve clearly never seen a person die.”

“I’ll admit I’m not too familiar with death, no.”

Harry has had enough . Humiliated, he reaches out and grabs the hoodie, pulling it towards him. 

To his surprise, Draco doesn’t let it go. Instead, he keeps a firm grip on it, staring Harry down. 

“What the hell are you doing? Give it back,” Harry groans, yanking at the fabric but not succeeding. 

The blond gives it a strong tug and takes it out of Harry’s fingers. “I’ll keep it.”

“Why? You don’t even like it,” Harry says, embarrassment seeping through his words. 

“I do like it.” Draco tilts his head, considering the garment. “But I’m as much in need of help as you are.”

“I actually do need help, I just don’t take it.”

“Then, that was a bad analogy. What I meant was,” Draco turns around and leans in, slightly coming into Harry’s personal space. He marks his words, slowing them down as if to make sure he’s making a point, “I am okay .”

“Sure, then where do you live?”

Draco seems agitated by the question. He goes quiet, then replies, “Somewhere.”

“Is somewhere far away?”

“...Kind of. But that doesn’t matter—”

“It does,” Harry retorts, his impulsive side taking over. Without thinking, he’s grabbing Draco by the sleeve and asking, “Actually, would you live with me ? I have a free room.”

Chapter Text

He realizes when they walk into his apartment that he might have made a big mistake. 

That being, the fact that he’s been having a depressive episode for the past few weeks and everything is a mess, other than the two or three corners that Ginny managed to clean up. 

He stops at the doorway, still holding up his keys, staring at the pile of documents on the counter and the dirty laundry covering the couch. 

It’s actually not that bad , he tries to tell himself, right before a cockroach makes its way across the living room, even stopping halfway to look at him for half a second. 

Nevermind.

“Can we… go in?” Draco asks behind him. 

Harry briefly presses his eyes shut, then steps to the side to let Draco into the apartment. “Please refrain from making any comments,” he says. 

It’s a miracle in itself that he was okay with his suggestion of living together— he still doesn’t know what came over him to even consider doing something like that. He doesn’t have a reasoning for it —his brain has gotten kind of fuzzy since they met at the bench two days ago. 

Draco just stands there, taking it all in —whatever it all is—, his hands hidden inside the front pocket of his new hoodie. The hood is up and covers his hair, which is barely peeking out at the front and over his eyes. He got the size right, thankfully. At least that he did well. Still, he’s extremely surprised the blond even accepted it, let alone agreed to come to check out his apartment. 

If Draco tries to rob him, maybe the keys he’s holding between his fingers might be enough. He’s not completely sure about that, though. 

He coughs. “Okay,” he starts, breaking the awkward silence, “maybe you can make a comment. Please say something.”

Draco’s hand appears as he reaches up to scratch his nose. “It’s certainly… cozy.”

Harry scoffs. “You’re too polite.”

“You wanted me to say something, and I did. It’s better than the bench, at least?” Draco replies, sounding kind of unsure by the end of the sentence. His eyes land, of course , on the pile of divorce papers. 

“I’m not too sure it is, actually.” Harry rushes to the couch and throws all the clothes into a basket he has lying around, clearing it for the first time in a while. He stands back up again, just to see Draco getting closer and closer to those papers.

He should have thrown them away a long time ago, now that he thinks about it. He just never found a moment to do so. 

“Stay away from those,” he says, and Draco turns his head to look at him. “That shit’s personal.”

“More personal than inviting me into your home?” Draco asks, sounding like he’s genuinely asking the question. Still, he takes a step away from the papers. 

“Take that as a sign of how benevolent I am.”
“So you do feel pity for me.”

Harry would reply to that, but he’s too busy chasing a cockroach right by the wall. Maybe I should have called in Pest Control Guy , he thinks. 

By the time he loses the insect, he’s sweating and his sweater feels too hot. He pulls it over his head and throws it on the ground. It lands on an empty pizza box, but he doesn’t really care. He tugs at his t-shirt, trying to get it to un-stick from his torso, and then he feels something touching his elbow.

“What the fuck?” he turns around, and obviously it’s Draco. The blond is still fully dressed, hood and all, but he’s currently trying to grab him by the arm. 

“I’m not trying to rob you,” Draco says, unknowingly replicating the first thing Harry ever said to him. “Your cut still hasn’t healed.”

Harry stops moving around and stares at him. “How do you know that?”

“It smells ,” Draco replies, as if it’s the most obvious answer in the world. He gently turns Harry’s arm, tapping on the band-aid with his index finger. “Did you just put this on and call it a day?”

It’s embarrassing to admit it, but that’s exactly what Harry did. “...No?”

Draco presses his lips. “You’re supposed to clean it first.” 

“Hygiene is for non-divorcees,” Harry complains, letting the blond take a look at it regardless. The band-aid comes off relatively easily, and neither of them comment on the fact that it’s Bluey-themed, which Harry is grateful for. He smirks at the attention his little cut is getting. “Are you a doctor now, or what?”

Draco doesn’t reply. It’s kind of humiliating that he’s virtually homeless and has better habits than I do , Harry thinks.

“Sit down. I’ll clean it up,” Draco says, and Harry can’t help but laugh. Is he bossing him around in his own apartment?

“Yes, sir,” he jokingly complies, sitting on the couch and kicking off his shoes. “Do you even know where the first-aid kit is?”

“I think I’ll manage.” And, with that, the blond is off in the direction of the bathroom. How he even knew it was that way, Harry has no clue. Instead, he takes a look at his elbow, noting how the cut looks slightly bloody but not infected. 

Thank God. One day, his negligence is going to kill him —but not today. 

He smiles a few minutes later, when a very focused Draco enters the living room carrying a box of cotton swabs and a bottle of rubbing alcohol. “I don’t know how you even found these. I didn’t know where they were.”

“You have expired pills in the cabinet,” Draco tells him, sitting next to him and crossing his legs. “ And a broken thermometer. You know that mercury is toxic, right?”

“Shut up, mum .” Draco is right, though. He probably should buy a digital one and throw that one out. 

“You can catch all sorts of things with an open wound like that,” Draco continues, ignoring him. He taps the swab on the tip of the bottle, then dabs it over the cut. 

“It’s a tiny cut . I’m not going to die.”

“That’s what Henry V said, and he did die.”

“I’m starting to regret inviting you into my apartment.”

Draco is holding his arm up and working his way around the wound with the other, way too meticulous for such a small scratch. His hood obscures most of his face —which is why Harry is staring at his nose. 

He’s really pale, goddamn. 

It’s not until five minutes into the impromptu healing session that he realizes that he should, objectively , be uncomfortable as Hell right now. 

Because he’s the one being held. He’s the one being cared for. They argued about this with Ginny a lot, because she would try to do stuff for him and he wouldn’t let her. He never let his guard down around her, not even when he was head-over-heels in love with her, because he was afraid he’d disappoint her by not being perfect. 

She’d married him for his strength. Not to play nurse with a 20-year-old man. She also had her own trauma to sort through, namely, the death of her older brother a couple of years back. So, he’d tried not to burden her with anything , and ended up shooting himself in the foot because of it. 

All of this to say, he’s not feeling like this right now. Guess it’s easier to be around people when you don’t have a fear of letting them down. 

He still tries to play it cool and rests his head against the back of the couch, huffing in fake annoyance. “You’re acting like I broke my damn arm.”

“I’d just rather not smell it every time I’m near you,” Draco replies, and Harry doesn’t understand. How the fuck is he supposed to smell anything?

“ Okay , I admit I haven’t been showering as much as I should’ve, but I don’t think I’m as gross as you’re making it seem—”

“Wait,” Draco cuts him off. Harry focuses back on him, looking at him through his eyelashes, and sees that the blond is staring at something right above his head. “Is that you? Who’s that?”

Harry sits up straight to see what he’s referring to. He follows Draco’s gaze and finds the thing that piqued his interest: the polaroid picture of him and Paul. 

He feels his stomach tighten, but he ignores it. 

The door stays closed. I don’t have to go in there.

“That’s my roommate, and yes, that’s me,” he nods, noting the painfully ugly haircut he used to wear around that time. “He’s not around anymore.”

Draco stares pointedly at the picture for a solid half minute. “Did he leave?”

“I guess you could say that.”

Maybe his tone gives him away, because Draco turns his head back to him and raises an eyebrow. “Where?”

“He just left,” Harry insists, because he’s not going to unload the entirety of his trauma on a man he can barely even consider a friend. 

He thinks about it a bit more, and then his heart sinks. 

“ I have a free room” , he said. And it is true. But said room is still fully furnished, everything intact and where Paul left it. 

“Fuck,” he breathes out. 

The door stays closed. So, the question now is: where the fuck is Draco supposed to sleep?

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.”

Chapter Text

“Do you know how to count?” Harry asks.

Draco blinks, as if not understanding the question. “Of course I do. Why wouldn’t I?”

“I don’t know, does an hour and a half sound like ‘twenty minutes’ to you?” Harry groans, pulling at his damp T-shirt and running a hand through his wet hair. “I swear to God, I almost don’t need a shower anymore. I nearly drowned in there.”

“I just lost track of time. You didn’t say I was taking too long.”

“You also finished the bottle. How am I supposed to shower now?”

“It was a 7-in-one shampoo, and it was nearly empty. Not my fault.”

Harry bites back an earnest defense of his shampoo choices, feeling his face go red. “Whatever.”

The lights are still off, which doesn’t help his situation at all. He could’ve sworn he paid his bills last month —he vividly remembers Ginny pestering him to do it, and him doing it to get her off his back. So, it can’t be that the company has finally decided it’s time for him to perish in the dark —he did almost burn down the building once because he plugged in the microwave and the toaster at the same time, but that surely can’t be enough to deserve such a petty blackout. 

Maybe he’s being dramatic. It’s really not that bad, other than the fact that he’s now stranded inside his own apartment with a very quiet stranger. By his own choice, which is worse.

“So, you said you wanted to shower?” Draco says, breaking the silence. His blond hair and fair skin shine under the dim light of the phone’s flashlight, giving him a ghostly appearance. He’s wearing his gifted hoodie and a pair of Harry’s gym shorts, because Harry would rather give him his entire wardrobe than stare at those god-awful skinny jeans again. Though, the sight of his slim, pale legs might be as much of a discovery as his questionable fashion choices.

He clears his throat. “Sure. I’m halfway done already, anyway.”

Draco nods and gives him back his phone, which he was holding, and points his head towards the door. “I’m going to speak to the neighbors.”

That stuns Harry. He falters, his hand on the bathroom door. “What? Why?”

“Their power might be out, too. We should ask around.”

To be honest, Harry hasn’t really made an effort to get to know his neighbors. For all he knows, he could be living on his own in an empty apartment block. So, the fact that Draco is already showing more initiative than he has is quite embarrassing for him. “Sure,” he finally responds. 

How am I getting out-extroverted by a quiet stranger?

“You can keep the phone. I’ll find the way out,” Draco solemnly says, then disappears into the darkness of the hallway. 

Harry doesn’t have time to point out to him that, maybe , introducing himself while barefoot and with wet hair isn’t the best of looks if one is trying to seem approachable. But still, he shrugs and goes into the bathroom to — finally — take his shower. 

He doesn’t really get how he’s coaxed himself into cleaning up just now. Maybe Draco used some sort of hypnosis on him and he hasn’t noticed. 

He grabs the bottle of hand soap from the cabinet over the sink — it’s not his 7-in-one, but it’s close enough —, leaves his phone on the toilet seat and gets started.

At the exact moment he reaches up to soap his hair, he hears an electric buzz and the lights turn on with a pop. 

The water coming out of the shower head starts slowly heating up as well, which Harry thanks God for, because he’s always been very bad at taking cold showers. Faster metabolism be damned —he’d rather not die of hypothermia, when comfort and warmth are very viable alternatives. 

Took you fucking long enough , he thinks, and proceeds with his shower. 

—

When he comes out of the bathroom, wearing the exact same clothes he was wearing before —those pants he gave Draco were a miraculous saving grace, but he has nothing else to change into—, Draco is nowhere to be seen.

Which is —fair. He’s probably still socializing with the neighbors. If there are any. 

Maybe Harry could introduce him to Ted, the guy from the bar. They’d probably get along. 

He walks around his apartment, shoving dirty clothes into cabinets and under chairs, where they can’t be seen by the naked eye. The cockroach he’d been chasing before appears again, but Harry has come to terms with his new sharing-space situation. He lets the cockroach go. 

He’s considering whether he should check the fridge for rotting food —there’s probably something — when he hears a couple of knocks on the door. 

He goes to open it —it’s Draco. 

The blond looks behind Harry and into the apartment, seemingly surprised. “It’s back on?”

“It is,” Harry confirms, and lets him in. Draco is still barefoot, but he doesn’t look uncomfortable about it. Even though his feet are now quite dirty. “We’re fine now—”

The lights flicker once more as he says that, but they stay on. He glances around, shivers down his spine. He doesn’t believe in ghosts, but maybe he should consider checking the Internet for tragic deaths in his neighborhood. 
Other than Paul’s, that is. But his death hadn’t been that tragic, in the sense that it hadn’t involved some overly complex scheme, a murder plot or anything else. It had just been… sad. So, Harry doesn’t think that, in the case that ghosts do exist, his old roommate would be choosing to haunt him. 

Draco closes the door and presses his lips. Harry notices he’s now carrying a small plastic bag in one hand. “None of the neighbors had any issues, apparently.”

“You asked everybody?”

“Mostly. Some weren’t at home. Some guy on the upper floor threw a vodka bottle at me.”

So, he lives in a building of lunatics. That’s great news. 

“Well, I took a shower,” Harry says, an unnecessary remark from someone with visibly wet hair. “And I have no food.”

“I’m not that hungry.”

“That’s great for you, but what about me —” Harry is quickly interrupted by Draco throwing the plastic bag at him. He manages to catch it, and feels how light it is in his hands. He stares at Draco. “What is this?” 

“You have a very nice old lady as a neighbor next door. She gave me these as a housewarming present.”

He’s been so antisocial that his long-term neighbors now think he’s just moved in. Great. 

When he opens the bag, he’s met with a small tupperware containing six muffins. His lips curl into a smile. “That’s great.”

But then he lifts his eyes to meet Draco’s, and he catches a stain on Draco’s face. Again . 

“You’ve blood on your face,” he mutters, and almost unintentionally reaches up to touch it with his thumb. The touch startles Draco, who widens his eyes and abruptly jolts away from his hand, and also works to wake Harry from his trance. Oh, shit . “Sorry, I shouldn’t have done that.”

“Do I have—”

“I didn’t mean to touch you. Did that bottle cut you, or something?”

Draco suddenly looks squirmish and uncomfortable. He breaks eye contact to stare at the wall, and Harry can see a small drop of sweat making its way down his hairline. “It didn’t.” He rubs the spot with his hand, then his entire face, and walks past Harry and into the living room. 

Harry wants to die. He shouldn’t have done that.

Why did he do that? What on Earth came over him?

He cleans his blood-stained finger on his jeans and follows Draco, apologetic. “I don’t normally do that. I didn’t mean to do that,” he repeats as he leaves the bag on the table.

But Draco keeps walking away from him, as if he’s carrying a loaded gun or a bomb strapped to his neck. “I touched you, too. I just wasn’t expecting you to— whatever.”

Harry is entirely uncomfortable with this conversation about touching, which is making it sound like a totally different thing to the upstairs neighbors —now that he knows he has them. He tries to lighten the mood with an awkward laugh, deciding to stay put and not go after the blond anymore. He raises his hands, defeated. “You just have to be careful with bottles. Glass shards are no joke. Trust me, I know.”

“I can take a few shards.”

“Are you sure you’re not bleeding out?”

“It was one drop .”

“Bullshit. You were just as dramatic when I had that tiny cut.”

“ My blood doesn’t smell.”

“Jesus, you are particular about blood, huh,” Harry jokes, and he immediately realizes that it was the wrong thing to say. 

Draco’s face falls, his mouth trembling slightly. He says, “You have no idea what you’re talking about,” before taking a step towards him. 

Harry’s heart starts pounding in his chest. “It was a joke, dude.”

“I have to ask again —who are you ?” Draco hisses, and he’s as close as he’ll ever be, because now it’s Harry who’s backing away from him. “What do you— Why are you so—”

“You are being dramatic, and I mean it this time,” Harry says, hairs crawling. He sees Draco’s gray eyes more clearly now, his pupils as small as the point of a needle. “Don’t make it weird.”

He straightens his arm in front of him to stop Draco at the chest, so that he can’t come closer. He feels the wall against his back, cold and smooth. 

The blond drops his eyes to the hand holding him back. Harry would take it off, but it doesn’t seem like the best option if he wants to avoid getting tackled. 

A few seconds go by, and neither of them says anything. They’re both breathing hard, and Harry’s arm is starting to shake a little. 

“Don’t make this weird,” Harry repeats, trying to keep his voice even. “It was a joke. I’m sorry I touched you, but I didn’t know you’d react like this.”

That gets Draco to finally look at him. To be honest, Harry is feeling quite scared. “It’s not about the touching,” he replies, and immediately he steps back and shakes his head. He looks slightly dazed, and his eyes jump all over Harry’s face. “I apologize about— this.”

“...Alright—”

“Good night.”

And, with that, Draco turns around and hurries to his —or Harry’s— bedroom, shutting the door behind him. 

Harry just stays in the living room for a while, against the wall, his heart hammering in his chest. He wonders, Who the hell did I let into my house?

Chapter Text

He wakes up and immediately swears when his back cracks. 

He’s in his early twenties, yet his body can’t even handle one night sleeping on a slightly-less-cushioned surface. Honestly, he feels as if someone spent the night beating him up with a bat. His back hurts, his arms are sore, and for some reason he doesn’t feel his toes. 

He stares at a single sock crammed under the TV stand for quite some time, his mind struggling to catch up to the reality of his situation. 

He let Draco into his apartment. 

He survived.

It’s still hard to ignore what happened last night, and he wonders if he should buy a switchblade. You know, just to be safe. 

He blinks when a timid ray of sunshine appears through the half-closed blinds, and realizes that the lights are off again. Still, this time there’s enough light coming from the outside that he doesn’t need to use his phone to navigate the space around him. He puts on his glasses, which he manages to find on the floor, next to his shoes. 

The hairs on his arm stand up as he’s walking around, making him aware of the abnormally low temperature. Sure, it’s the middle of winter, but he’s pretty sure it’s not supposed to be this cold. He taps the controller to turn the heating on, but of course that’s not working either. 

His breath is faint and white every time he exhales. He groans and wraps the blanket he used to sleep around him and over his shoulders. He manages to unstuck one of the blinds and opens it, letting the light in. 

His head feels heavy —there’s a dull ache pulsing all around his body, and mouth is dry, stapling his lips shut. He hasn’t slept well, which doesn’t help with his — other issues. He makes a mental note to take his meds today.

It’s been a while, but they’re probably worth picking back up again if they can prevent his thoughts from spiraling. 

Making his way towards his —or his previous— bedroom, he stops in front of the closed door and just stares at it. As much as he hates the feeling of dread it gives him, he knows he’ll have to go in at some point. Take care of everything . Because, predictably, one doesn’t leave behind instructions on what to do with their stuff once they die. Not when one is twenty-three and in good health, anyway. But that’s a can of worms for another day. 

This is why he should take his meds. Harry shakes his head, hoping to gain a little bit of energy from it. 

Then — his door. It’s closed, just like yesterday, and he wonders if he should go in at all . 

Maybe Draco sleeps naked. Maybe he’s still mad at him.

It’s still baffling to him how quickly things went downhill last night. He doesn’t quite understand what he said, or did, to elicit such a drastic response, but he doesn’t feel like poking the bear again. 

For some reason, he can’t help but be intrigued by the guy —and he doesn’t want him sleeping on the street. If it weren’t for that, he would already be out of his home. 

Finally, after about five minutes of not doing anything, he musters up the courage and lifts his hand and knocks on the door. “Draco?” he asks, wincing in pain as his lips pull apart, dry and chapped. He knocks again. “Draco, are you awake?”

Seeing as he’s not getting any response, and telling himself that he’s just checking if Draco is even alive , Harry opens the door and steps into the room. 

His eyes take a few seconds to get used to the much darker space, which is almost pitch-black. Immediately, he spots one single line of sunray making its way across the wall, from the blind to the mattress next to it. There, Harry sees a dark lump lying down, not moving, only touched by that light. Specifically, it’s drawing a narrow line on Draco’s face, tracing the slope of his cheek, his nose and his left eye. 

There’s something almost —painterly about it. Baroque, or whatever. Harry takes silent steps towards him, then kneels down next to the bed. He doesn’t even know why. He just wants to look at him. 

Draco’s chest is slowly rising and falling, which is already a good sign. His eyes are closed, and his lips are slightly parted. Some strands of his blond hair have fallen over his eyebrow, scraping the eyelids and the eyelashes. Under the light, his skin looks white and smooth, almost like porcelain. 

Harry’s breath hitches. He also doesn’t know why. 

He doesn’t notice his limbs getting stiff, nor the slowly descending temperature around him. He almost cannot move. 

Draco looks so… peaceful . Quiet. Or serene, rather. There’s a stillness to him that Harry didn’t notice before. 

His chest relaxes, and his heartbeat slows down. He feels serene now. He blinks and lets out a small yawn, and rests his head in his arms on the edge of the mattress.

So peaceful . His eyelids are starting to fall a bit. But it can’t be, he just woke up… He isn’t tired. Objectively. 

Cold air creeps around him, and a newfound feeling of absolute placidity takes over his entire body. He breathes out, and then—

Draco opens his eyes. 

It doesn’t startle him, even though it should. He just shuffles to get more comfortable and closes his eyes. “Good morning,” he mutters, his voice escaping him. 

Draco’s voice is, in turn, low and smooth as silk. “What are you doing here?”

“I just—” he cannot talk. He’s slurring his words, struggling to finish his sentence. “Good morning,” he defaults once again. 

He hears Draco exhale and whisper under his breath. Then, the sheets move and shift around Harry, and next there’s a new weight right beside him, right by his head. “You shouldn’t do this,” he hears Draco say. He’s speaking softly, but still coldly, something that fucks with Harry’s brain. 

“Good mor…nnnin—”

“Okay. Just— stop. Stop.” Harry feels a cold hand on his face, long fingers grabbing his chin, and he lets his head be held by them. What follows is certainly something , in some language he’d probably understand if he weren’t so out of it. “Look at me.”

This feels different. There’s a weight to Draco’s words that wasn’t there before, something that is intrinsically alluring yet commanding at the same time. 

He looks at him, because there’s nothing else he can do. 

“Your eyes are very gray,” he points out, groggily, but then he hears a loud ‘Pop!’ and everything falls right back in its place. 

His body becomes suddenly aware of itself, and he’s immediately overwhelmed by the intense cold in the apartment. 

He also notices that his glasses have fogged up. 

“Fuck,” he mutters, and the words are raspy against his throat. He coughs. “I’m sorry,” he adds, scrambling to get up and pick up his blanket. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

“You’re saying that a lot.”

Draco looks calm, a completely different person than the one who cornered him last night. Harry feels ashamed under his quiet gaze. 

“I know. I don’t know what’s happening to me.”

Draco stands up, taking a moment to brush his clothes with his hands and comb his hair back with his fingers. 

They are long fingers. Harry’s brain has really latched onto that detail, for some reason. 

“I do,” the blond replies, simply. “I’m unsure of what to do.”

“I don’t think I understand what you’re getting at,” Harry says. His brain is still a bit foggy, and that, added to the dread he was already feeling, is only making him more tired than before. He could go back to sleep right now. 

“Forget it.” Draco walks past him, grabbing the hoodie on his way out of the room, and turns to look at Harry after putting it on, hood and all. “Next time, knock on the door first.”

“This is my apartment,” Harry protests, but he doesn’t have the strength to push it any further. He presses his fingers against his temples. “Ugh, I should have really taken those meds,” he mutters to himself. 

Draco studies him from the doorframe, his silhouette contrasting against the dimly lit corridor. “Are you not feeling alright?”

“It’ll pass.”

It doesn’t even sound believable, but he doesn’t really care, either. It’s been months. He’s been here before. 

Draco opens his mouth for a brief instant, then closes it again. “Alright.”

They step out of the room in silence, and Draco walks to the kitchen and sits on the stool next to the counter. Harry goes around him to reach the fridge, opens it with a slight tremor —there might be cockroaches in there as well—, and closes it quickly while scrunching his nose. 

“This smells bad,” he comments, turning to look at Draco with a pitiful half-smile. “I still don’t—”

Whatever he was going to say leaves his brain when he sees Draco’s face.

He has a long, narrow line of red skin going across it, from his cheek to his left eyebrow, going over his eyelid and the bridge of his nose. 

Sunburnt , Harry thinks. But how?

Chapter Text

Harry discovers rather quickly that Draco is as particular about his daily habits as he is about blood and fashion taste. 

For starters, and much to Harry’s frustration, he insists on keeping the blinds down. All the time . He claims his skin is sensitive, which Harry understands , but really, it’s a bit much to force one’s condition onto an unsuspecting flatmate. 

There’s also the issue with the lights —and all the electricity in general—: they have been refusing to turn on for more than five minutes at a time, and only if Harry presses the lightswitch in a very specific manner. One up, one down, and wiggle it a bit until it gets stuck in the middle. 

He called in some guy the other day, one who’s supposedly an expert according to Ginny —he resigned himself to texting her again, just to seek help about this matter—, but he took a look around and literally quit after five minutes. 

He said he didn’t deal with “ghost shit”, and handed Harry a hastily written phone number for a local medium. So, Harry called her in too. 

She quit as well, saying that “the apartment had a bad aura”, and left after attempting to spray Draco down with some weird, pepper-based spray concoction. She’d been weirdly off-put by him, too, but she’d also been off-put by Harry’s dirty sock under the TV —so, Harry didn’t really make an effort to heed her advice and kick Draco out. 

After a few days, they just decide to give up, and Harry resorts to walking around with his phone’s flashlight on when it’s nighttime. Draco, on the other hand, has a knack for slithering smoothly in the dark without eating the wall or tripping over loose cables. 

Harry also finds out that Draco loves his new hoodie, which would make him feel proud did he not nearly hiss at him every time Harry attempts to take it to clean. He decides one day that he has no more non-smelly clothes to wear, and begrudgingly uses his washing machine for the first time in months. Draco’s hoodie doesn’t go in there, because he tried once and got his hand swatted away. Literally. 

It can feel like he’s babysitting a cat sometimes.

There’s also the fact that Harry has a job, which forces him to be away for hours at a time —and when he comes back, tired, stressed and sore, he always walks into his dark, cold apartment. Some days, Draco is locked away in his room, not making any noise, and Harry entertains himself by watching some movie on his laptop (thankfully, it still works, unlike the TV). Some other days, Draco's in the living room, sitting alone in the sofa, with his eyes closed. On those days, Harry sits next to him and watches his movies —and every time, even though he could swear the blond has his eyes closed, he keeps getting short, dry remarks about the stupidity of the characters or how the plot makes no sense. 

He enjoys those days, strangely enough. 

Some other days, he’s not there at all. 

Harry doesn’t know where he goes. He’s always away for —what he thinks are— hours, and he comes back with a spring in his step. He’s more awake , almost ecstatic, lively and jittery and unusually chatty. On those days, Harry lets him talk and just watches him pace around the living room, spewing random nonsense about centuries-old “celebrities” he’s never even heard of. As an example, he’s really fond of Edgar Allan Poe. Harry had no idea who he was before living with Draco, but he’s now gotten acquainted with him against his will. 

He’s wondered if Draco does drugs. Harry honestly can’t tell if that’s the case or not —he didn’t take that joint months ago, and lost his opportunity to become a drug expert. But, to his untrained eye, there’s definitely something going on with him, when he goes out on his own to —do his thing , whatever ‘his thing’ is. 

By the time he finds the apartment empty for the tenth time, he decides it’s time to start a stealth operation. 

They already cut my power off , he reasons. I’m not getting in trouble for smuggling drugs. 

It’s a good reason, but deep down he knows he’s just giving himself excuses to justify what he’s doing today. 

Which is: following Draco when he leaves the building. 

He’s told his boss that his child is sick at home to get him to let him leave early —he wouldn’t have thought he’d be so good at lying, but that just proves that we never truly know ourselves. So, thanks to that little white lie, he’s been able to sneakily stand around the corner, obscured by a large concrete pillar, to try and catch Draco redhanded. 

He’s been doing it for five days when it finally works. 

He’s almost asleep, leaning against the pillar with his eyelids starting to fall, when he hears the very specific sound of his building’s front door opening. He knows it’s his, because the door dampers are broken and that usually leads to the door slamming shut every time someone goes in or out. 

He peeks from behind the pillar and barely catches the slim shadow of a blond, white person, dressed in all black. Draco . 

His heart jumps in his chest, for some reason —maybe, because he’s been waiting for so damn long . Days, to be precise. And, thanks to that, his boss now greets him every time they walk past each other, and asks him if his kid is doing well. 

He always says no, because he still needs time. His fictitious kid would be the sickest in the world, if he had everything Harry has told his boss he has. 

So. Focus.

Draco is walking down the road, fast to the point of almost running. Harry, being considerably shorter than him, is taking leaps to keep up with him. He keeps fearing Draco will look over his shoulder and see him, but he never does that. Instead, he turns a few corners, hands in his pockets, and crosses every road with an impressively low regard for his own life —once, he does so when the light is red, in a three-lane road, and a few meters away from the actual crosswalk. He gets beeps, honks, and everything in between, and also a few screaming drivers, but he gets to the other side as if that didn’t relate to him at all. 

Harry catches up to him minutes later, because he had to wait for the light to turn green. He doesn’t want to die . 

When he does, he sees him entering a local he’s never been to before. A nightclub, it looks like, and an expensive one at that. Harry glances up at the neon sign, which reads, “ Closet Case ”. 

There’s a bouncer at the door, but Draco talks to him briefly and he’s let in without a hassle. 

Harry still doesn’t know what the fuck is going on. He stares at the people queueing up outside —all of whom Draco just walked by without an ounce of shame—, looking completely unfazed. 

If there’s something Brits will get defensive over, it’s queues. So, this doesn’t really make sense. 

When he tries to do the same, he’s met with instant backlash, and his pleas do nothing to save him from ending up at the end of the queue. Gritting his teeth, he decides to lay low and get in the slow way. 

He just hopes he hasn’t lost Draco in the crowd. He doesn’t know how big the establishment is on the inside. 

When he makes it to the door, there’s a commotion going on with the people right in front of him. It’s a group of four, two ladies and two men, and someone is screeching about not buying wristbands and someone else is screeching back at them about being a cunt. 

The bouncer is trying to reason with them, and Harry takes the chance to slip by them and inside the bar. 

Sometimes, being as short as a twelve-year-old kid does help. He’s resented his stunted puberty growth for his entire life, but he’s grateful for it today. 

He makes his way through the crowd —not without a certain amount of effort, name-calling, and elbowing—, trying to see above the sea of bopping heads. The room is big, dark, and noisy, not to mention trippy as fuck when one of those spotlights blinds him with purple-neon light. 

He also just walked past someone smoking something , and he accidentally inhaled just as they let the smoke out, and he is already *feeling it*. So, he might be a bit dizzy. 

He shakes his head. Focus. 

It’s when he’s knocked a drink out of someone’s hand for the third time that he spots a light-blond head in the distance, like some kind of apparition. 

He doesn’t know how he spotted him. The room is packed . But still, his eyes are drawn to that person, and as he sees them leave, he thinks, Fuck it. If it’s not Draco, he’ll turn around and keep looking. If it is him… well, he’ll have his answers. 

Though, taking into account whatever it is he just involuntarily snorted, his hunch might’ve already been proven right. 

He ducks and shoves his way across as if his life depends on it, starting to remember how much he hated partying like this. And how much Ginny loved it. And why they didn’t work after all. 

Finally , he gasps, reaching the corner of the room and taking a second to rest against the wall. He looks around, and finds the blond head once again, almost by instinct. Said head is—

Following some other head into a narrow, secluded hallway?

This is where the drugs come in , he thinks. Hyping himself up, he starts following them, trying to seem as inconspicuous as possible. 

Thankfully, when he enters the hallway, probably-Draco and the other person are already stepping into a room, hidden behind a dense, beaded curtain, and then a door. 

As soon as the door closes, he runs towards it and sticks his ear against it, like his five-year-old self would have done. 

If anyone comes around, he’ll say he was looking for the bathroom. And if the door opens, he’ll either make a run for it or join in on the fun. If you can’t fight them, join them , he tells himself, sort of like a mantra. 

Luckily for him, the door is either not that thick, or Draco and his friend are standing really damn close to it. Because he can hear everything, albeit a bit muffled. 

“This place is nice,” he hears a voice say, and he immediately identifies it as Draco’s. 

“It’s private, too,” the other person— the other guy, rather, replies. Something in his tone makes Harry perk up. His tone is… unexpected. “ Intimate. ”

“That’s what I said I wanted, yes.” Draco’s voice is also different. Harry is not used to hearing him like this. Whatever this is. It’s just… different. The same way the other guy’s voice is different. “Do you know why?”

“I have a few ideas,” the guy says, his words slow.

Harry’s mouth quirks down at the sultry, husky sound of that man’s voice. Now this is a weird drug deal , he thinks. 

“Do you?” Draco asks. And, for some reason, he’s matching the other guy’s energy. These two words come out so suggestive that Harry starts to feel like he should not be here at all. 

He feels like he’s interrupting something. 

He thought he was chasing after drugs, goddamnit. Not— this .

“We don’t see many pretty guys like yourself around here,” the guy replies. “Only rich assholes playing with Daddy’s money. Not worth the shot.”
“Right,” Draco replies. “What makes you think I’m not a rich asshole?”

“You’re wearing an off-brand hoodie and skinny jeans.”

Despite his discomfort, Harry finds it in himself to feel offended by that remark. That is his gift to Draco, after all. 

“Very observant,” Draco says. 

“You’d be surprised.”

Their voices are becoming more and more difficult to make out as the conversation grows more and more— like that . Whatever adjective can be used to describe that.

What the fuck am I doing, Harry starts to wonder. 

He should go. He really, really should go. But he can’t. 

He cannot move a fucking bit. And so he keeps eavesdropping. 

“Come here,” says Draco, and then it’s silence.

Harry presses his ear against the door, as if it’s going to do anything. There’s nothing. 

He probably should get goi—

“ God, ” the random guy says, followed by what really, really sounds like a moan. 

And, okay , this gets Harry going. Because— what the fuck?

He’s inexplicably mad. 

This is his flatmate. His mate. 

Weird, mysterious mate, sure, but they’re still friends. They’ve bonded. They’ve grown closer. He thought Draco trusted him enough to tell him about what’s going on in his life.

Only to find out he’s sneaking out regularly to do this ?

His brain tries to tell him that this is perfectly normal, actually, and that he was doing it with Ginny too, but he shuts it off and locks the thought away.

This is different . This is not like him and Ginny.

This is— 

Gross. He has no other word for it. 

It’s not that it’s two guys. It’s that it’s Draco.

He’s not making any sense . 

He doesn’t give a fuck, though. And when more sounds come out of the door, his only thought is that he wants to make them stop. 

So, he does the most logical thing.

He barges in. 

Chapter Text

Draco shoves the guy away the moment Harry stumbles into the room, the door slamming hard against the wall. He moves so fast, it’s like he wasn’t doing anything at all —he’s now standing at a perfectly respectable distance, hands casually tucked in his pockets, hair meticulously combed back.

But it’s too late. Harry heard everything .

He doesn’t have a reason for what he’s doing. All he knows is that he’s furious —angrier than he’s been in months —, and his heart racing, blood surging through his veins.

The guy stares at him, brow furrowed, shirt rumpled and hanging loose.

Harry can’t help but notice the first three buttons are undone, showing way too much skin and leaving his neck and collarbone exposed. 

And, as if it didn’t quite belong, Harry’s brain finally registers the dark smear trailing down the side of the man’s neck. 

Blood , Harry realizes. 

It’s fucking blood. 

Harry’s mind races, trying to piece together what he’s seeing. The nightclub’s thumping bass seems miles away, drowned out by the roar of his own confusion and —now dwindling — anger. He stumbles back, clawing at the door frame for support. A breathless, “What the fuck ?” escapes his lips before he can stop it.

Draco, as always unnervingly composed, swiftly moves to him and grabs him by the arm. He drags Harry to the side, slamming the door shut with his free hand and shooting him a cold, frustrated look. “What are you doing here?” he demands, his voice clipped.

Harry’s gaze drops to his lips. They’re vibrant red . 

What the fuck. What the fuck. What the fuck —

“Harry,” Draco says, his grip unyielding on his arm. He’s standing right in front of him,  blocking his view of the bleeding man. Harry instinctively tries to pull away, but Draco refuses to let go, fingers digging into his skin. “I can explain,” he continues, and his voice is commanding and heavy. Slow.

He’s going to kill me , Harry thinks, panic rising. He’s going to die. 

The man behind Draco speaks up, but Draco interrupts him, his tone dismissive. “It’s alright,” Draco tells him, never releasing Harry. “I’ll take care of him.”

The man’s voice becomes clearer. “Do you want me to—”

“Go away,” Draco orders sharply. The man leaves without another word, closing the door behind him. Leaving them alone in the small room, bathed in soft neon light. 

“ I don’t want to die, ” Harry whispers in a moment of panic. His throat is tight as the words come out, and he cannot breathe, the air around them suffocating and dry. “Please, I—”

Draco’s lips twitch, and he carefully cleans the blood around his mouth with the back of his hand. His eyes, even in the dim light, seem different—bigger, and wilder, the pupils dilated. 

He looks feral . 

Harry’s instincts scream at him to run . 

His brain is rushing. The man’s neck was covered in blood, with fingerprints streaked up to his jaw. Draco’s mouth had blood as well. 

He’d been hurting him. Did he bite him? Did he stab him?

His legs feel unsteady, and he curls into himself, arms trembling. “Please let me go,” he pleads.

He’s not looking at the blond anymore. “Harry,” Draco calls again, reaching for his other arm, but Harry jerks away from him and yanks his arm free. 

“ Don’t fucking touch me ,” Harry snarls at him. He just noticed that the sleeve Draco grabbed is stained red, and the sight makes him nauseous. “Oh, fuck —”

“Harry, I wasn’t hurting him,” Draco starts, but his voice sounds distant in Harry’s head, barely reaching him over the pounding in his ears. All he can focus on is the blood on his arm. 

“There’s so much blood,” he mumbles, staggering back and almost knocking a table over. He bends and crouches on the floor, still staring at his arm. “What did you do ?”

He hears rustling, and two feet come into his line of sight. Draco is crouching right beside him. “Hey,” he hears the blond say. His voice is different now —softer, lower, cautious. “I’m sorry I scared you.”

“There’s blood everywhere .”

“No, there isn’t. Look around you. Look at me.”

Harry forces his eyes away from his arms up to Draco’s face, right in front of him. The neon light next to him lights up his face at an angle, casting shadows on the opposite side. Harry blinks.

“Look at my mouth,” Draco says.

Harry focuses on Draco’s lips. The blood is gone; Draco brushed it away. They’re now clean, but still slightly swollen. 

Harry’s heart is still racing. He focuses on a small mole over the top of Draco’s lip to ground himself. When Draco speaks, he tracks the movement. “Is there blood?”

“Not now.”

Draco raises one hand and holds it up in front of Harry’s eyes. “Is there blood here ?”

Harry painstakingly drags his gaze from one finger to another. There’s only a faint trace of red on the tip of two fingers —probably what stained his sleeve. 

That stain looks much, much smaller now. 

Draco drops his hand and Harry stares at him, eyes wide and trembling. “A little,” he finally admits, exhaling shakily. 

Draco sighs and sits cross-legged on the floor, pressing his lips into a thin line. “Breathe,” he says, and Harry syncs with him as he inhales and then exhales. They remain in heavy silence for a while, and Harry keeps his eyes on Draco as he feels his heart begin to calm down. 

He musters up the strength to speak after a few minutes, sitting down as well and resting his back against the table. “You’re going to kill me someday,” he mutters, more to himself than to anyone else. 

Draco is absently picking at the threads of the carpet that covers the floor. He shakes his head. “You were not supposed to be here, Harry.”

For some reason, the way he pronounces his name makes him feel funny. Probably because his head is still buzzing, filled with adrenaline. He steadies himself, choosing his words carefully. “I need to know what this was about. Or I’ll have to kick you out.”

This gets Draco to look up at him, his pale eyebrows knitting together. His pupils are still blown, but he seems much calmer now. 

He expects the blond to protest or try and justify himself, but instead, Draco simply offers a resigned, “I understand.”

Harry presses him further. “Did you hurt him?”

Draco chuckles, which sounds strange, given the situation. They lock eyes.  

“No, I didn’t.” Draco says, then adds nonchalantly, “It was actually pretty pleasurable for him.”

Harry almost chokes. He coughs. “So, he’s a masochist? Is that what this is?”

“It wasn’t painful for him.”

“You stabbed him, it must’ve been—”

“I bit him,” Draco snaps, his tone sharp. He bites his lip self-consciously before looking away, hiding his face. “Didn’t stab him.”

Harry is in disbelief. His face flushes as he tries to imagine the scene, and fails spectacularly. “So it is a sex thing,” he guesses, bewildered. 

Draco has never seemed interested in such matters; he’s never mentioned girlfriends, or exes, or hookups of any kind —which Harry finds rather strange, given his looks. 

Surely, girls must throw themselves at him. Ginny saw a picture of him once, and she stated very confidently that he was “out-of-this-world hot”. Harry didn’t text her for two weeks after that.

So, he’s more reassured than anything when Draco shrugs and half-heartedly replies, “Kind of. Not really.”

He wasn’t really expecting him to look for that in a man, either. He assumed, apparently incorrectly, that Draco was straight. 

Maybe he’s experimenting? 

He can’t help but ask, “You bit him so hard you drew blood? Draco, that is—”

“I’m into it,” Draco cuts him off, as if to shut him up. He’s still not meeting his eyes. “I need it.”

Okay. Harry isn’t going to judge anyone for having a strong libido —he’s had plenty of friends who couldn’t go two days without sleeping around. But then again, Draco does not look like someone who is too familiar with blue balls. Or anything else remotely similar.

“Okay, you need it, then,” Harry accepts, his face feeling hot. He rubs his eyes with his fingers. 

How had he ever thought he was going to die?

Maybe it would have been better than the sex talk , he thinks. 

But still, there’s that feeling he can’t shake off. It’s gnawing at his stomach, making him uneasy.

“Why with random men, though?” he asks, his mouth speaking by itself. 

He wishes he would have shut the fuck up when Draco’s jaw almost hits the floor. He’s usually not that expressive, so this is quite an impressive feat. “What?”

He’s walking on dangerous territory, and he knows it. But he’s discovered something about himself tonight, and it’s that he doesn’t like it when his friends sneak out to have fun without him. 

So, he doubles down on his offer. “You don’t have to sneak out for this. We’ve all been there.”

Draco stays still, looking lost. 

Harry presses on, “What I mean is, I can help you. This is about blood, right?”

The blond slowly nods. 

Sure , as a kink it’s weird as fuck, and Harry thought he was full-on murdering the guy when he came in, but it could be worse. 

“Then, bite me . I only ask that you don’t get it on the carpet.”

Draco opens his mouth, but nothing comes out.

“And not on the neck, please,” Harry adds, thinking better of it. “I have work, and having to explain this would be kind of difficult.”

Draco seems completely speechless, but Harry knows he’s doing him a favor. He can be a good friend and help him out, as long as that keeps Draco from going out on his own, finding random men.

For some reason, he doesn’t really like that idea. 

He can bite my forearm, or something . 

Forearm. Sure. It’ll be like getting his blood drawn. 

Chapter Text

The walk back home is, without question, the most awkward twenty minutes Harry has ever had to endure. 

After their brief exchange, Draco stands up and strides out the door, not even bothering to wait for Harry. He still looks quite dazed, as if Harry’s suggestion was so outlandish it actually broke him. 

Harry doesn’t think that’s entirely fair. It surely must be easier to bite someone you’ve known for a while than a complete stranger, right?

He can’t be certain if the man was a stranger or not, but he likes to think he’s gotten better at reading Draco’s body language and tone. And, with the guy, it felt more like he was talking to an assistant rather than a lover. Or a long-time boyfriend. 

Not a boyfriend , Harry tells himself. Draco wouldn’t have a boyfriend without him finding out about it first. They live together, after all. And they’re friends.

Sort of. Harry has always been of the opinion that being physically close to someone almost always leads to emotional closeness, too. At least, that’s how he ended up crushing on Ginny —after countless summer days, where she’d play soccer with them even when her brother didn’t want her around. And also cold winter nights, where she’d rope them into helping her and Mrs. Weasley make food for Christmas eve. 

So, in Harry’s mind, they’re friends. He’d rather die than ask Draco about it, though.

He follows Draco outside, and, yes , maybe he feels a small spark of satisfaction when the blond brushes past the guy he’d been with without a glance, ignoring him entirely when he tries to grab his shoulder. He tries not to look too smug about it, even though he can feel a pair of eyes burning a hole through his back as they walk to the front gate. 

Suck it, he thinks. He can go and find a rich asshole to fuck tonight —anyone he wants. 

But not his friend. That’s all. 

Draco stops by the bar before they go out and grabs a drink someone left unattended. There’s a woman sitting right next to it, but she doesn’t claim it when Draco takes it —she’s too busy trying to get the man sitting by her to keep his hands to himself. 

Harry accidentally bumps into him as he walks by, and can’t help but smirk when he hears him fall to the floor with a loud thud. The woman starts laughing, and Harry feels less bad about possibly stealing her drink. 

They’re finally outside. 

The queue is the same as it was when they came in, if not twice as long. Harry rushes to match Draco’s long strides, walking by his side. His eyes barely reach the blond’s chin, but he can see that his eyes are still and his mouth is pressed, giving him a stern look. 

Finally, shame gets the best of him. “Listen, I’m sorry ,” he says, and it comes out shakier than he meant it to —he’s practically jogging now. 

Draco hands him the drink before he replies, “You can explain why you were following me around, for starters.”

Harry cups the glass in his hands, feeling the lingering cold from Draco’s fingers. He feels hot, which means that his face is probably very red. “I just— look, you’ve been going out a lot .”

“You go out every day,” Draco argues, now stuffing his hands in the pocket of his hoodie. He’s still not looking at Harry. 

“Yes, to work,” he emphasizes the last word to really convey how much he hates that place. Working at a police station is a lot less glamorous for those who aren’t playing Detective or placing people in handcuffs all day. It’s a lot of paperwork, and even more annoying assholes who think they deserve special treatment because of their badge. Frankly, it’s exhausting. “I come back home and you’re gone. How was I meant to be okay with that?”

Draco briefly closes his eyes at that. He does that when Harry is annoying him more than his usual apathetic self can tolerate. “I… appreciate spending time with you. I do.” He doesn’t sound so sure about that. “But this is bordering on codependency.”

This word stings more than it should, because Harry used it on Ginny in the exact same context when they were breaking up for good. She was the clingy one. She wanted to “work on their problems”. And Harry needed space. 

It’s utterly unthinkable that he’s the one on the receiving end of it now. He reminds himself that, according to his track record for the past twenty three years , he does not do this. 

Yet here he is, doing it now. 

And stopping dead in his tracks. “What do you mean, codependency?”

“You know what I mean. I don’t go out much, but I need a change of scenery sometimes. But I didn’t tell you because I knew you’d react exactly like this.”

An old couple walks by them as they’re having it out, and the lady gives him a pitying look—Harry wants to tell her that, no matter what it looks like, this is not a young couple’s love quarrel. 

“So what?” he snaps back, his fingers tensing against the glass. He angrily takes a sip of it. “You live with me. Forgive me for wanting to know your whereabouts.”

Draco starts walking again, and despite his rage, Harry follows after him. 

“You don’t need to know shit ,” Draco snarls, and it’s the first time Harry’s heard him swear. It catches him a bit off-guard, and he spills a good part of his drink on his jacket and undershirt. “You’re not my mum. You’re not my partner. So, piss off.”

Harry doesn’t know how to answer that. He’s still mad, but Draco’s anger is so pointed and rare that he doesn’t know how to react to it. 

Maybe he took this too far. 

He asks himself why he cares so much, when it comes to Draco. But there isn’t an answer. 

They walk the rest of the way home in silence, Harry sipping his drink —or rather, that poor woman’s drink— and trying to stay out of Draco’s sight. He stays behind him, a couple of steps back, and tries to reason with his own possessiveness. 

He loses every time. 

The lights don’t turn on, as always— nothing new. 

Harry slams the door behind him, then takes off his jacket and throws it against the wall. 

He’s acting like a manchild; he’s aware of it. But he doesn’t care. 

The shirt also comes off, because it’s soaked around the collar where he spilled the drink. He adds it to the growing pile of dirty clothes, managing to stub his toe in the process. “God-fucking- damnit ,” he groans.

Even with the phone’s flashlight in his hand, he can’t see where Draco went. 

I don’t fucking care , he tells himself. 

But he does. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t have walked across town to cockblock him. He didn’t know that ’s what he’d been doing, but still. 

Only to find out that the motherfucker had some weird kink, to add on top of that. His face still gets hot when he tries to picture it, too overwhelming for his brain. 

Draco and random guy and kink doesn’t add up. It shouldn’t. 

It’s not right.

And then— codependency? 

First of all, how fucking dare he? He gets to live rent-free in his apartment, only to go out at night and bite strangers at a nightclub? While he works his ass off to pay rent?

He grabs the first shirt he finds and stuffs it over his head, messing up his hair and skewing his glasses. 

Codependency . Fuck him, he hates that word. So condescending. 

He walks into the bathroom, phone in hand, ready to angry-brush his teeth and go to sleep in his fucking couch. 

Good fucking night.

What’s worse is, the drink didn’t even get to him. He might as well have drunk a glass of water. He braces himself against the sink, leaning over it, and stares at himself in the mirror. 

The phone light is not flattering at all. The only good thing to come of it is that he can’t see his scar. 

He’s reaching for his toothbrush when the door creaks, and he spins to find Draco looming at the other side of it. 

“Fucking leave me alone, will you?”

Draco doesn’t respond. Instead, he steps in and closes the door, resting against it. Harry sighs. 

“Let’s just forget about this. Do whatever you want,” Harry adds, and he can’t help how hurt he sounds. Or the fact that he’s talking like a codependent girlfriend. 

Then, he feels cold fingers on his arm. 

He nearly drops his damn toothbrush. 

“I can do what I want,” Draco starts, back to his monotone voice. But now, it’s deeper. “I just don’t know if I should .”

Harry reminds himself that he’s supposed to be mad. He still is, as a matter of fact, but he’s forgotten what he was mad about. He looks down to see a pale hand circling his wrist. 

“What are you doing?” he asks, still not turning to him. He won’t humor him about this, because he knows he’s weak when it comes to arguments. So, he continues to stare at himself in the mirror. 

“Can I—” Draco coughs, and he seems unsure. It’s a strange sound. “I’m taking you up on your offer.”

Harry drops his toothbrush.

He doesn’t have any other choice —he turns to face Draco. The blond is closer than he thought, and their chests bump when he does so. Harry takes a step back, eyes fixed on him. “You’re joking.”

“Why would I be?”

“You just scolded me for being codependent —”

“I didn’t mean—” Draco looks up at the ceiling, as if he’s asking for divine intervention. “You got under my skin. It came out wrong.”

“ —and now you want to— to— bite me?”

The neighbors must be grabbing popcorn by now. But that’s not what he cares about at the moment.

“You were the one who offered,” Draco reasons. “And I would have never asked, had you not walked in on me while I was doing it to someone else.”

Harry’s brain tries to picture it once again, and it short-circuits instantly. “So, you’re not mad at me?”

“I’m not.”

He’s still touching his arm. Harry just got goosebumps, but he tries to be subtle about it. 

“So… your offer?”

“It still stands.” 

How he can go from cussing Draco’s ass out to letting him bite him, he doesn’t know. There’s a lot of stuff he didn’t know about himself that he’s finding out tonight. 

He guesses his loyalty will always get the best of him. 

Draco watches him intently. “Are you angry at me?”

That’s the question, isn’t it? He’s supposed to be . How is he so weak? 

“I was. People don’t usually like being called codependent.”

That draws a small smile out of Draco’s lips, and Harry doesn’t know what it means. “I’m sorry about that.”

“It’s fine. I’m sorry about being— weird about you going out. You can go out.”

“Maybe,” Draco answers, but he’s clearly distracted. His thumb keeps drawing circles around Harry’s wrist, and he raises his other hand. “Listen, this can be strange.”

“I know. You’re biting me.”

What this says about his previous sex life, he doesn’t want to think about. To be fair, he and Ginny had always been quite content with having vanilla sex. He’s aware that there’s people out there doing all sorts of things. Objectively, biting is probably pretty tame. But he’s never been bitten. By a friend , no less. 

This might be the dumbest thing he’s ever suggested to someone. 

“Aside from that. People tend to get…”

“Horny?” Harry fills in, helpfully. 

Draco shrugs. “Kind of. It’s a bit different, though. I think.”

Harry moves the arm Draco is still holding. “Do this one. Here,” he adds, pointing at his forearm, right above his wrist. 

Draco still doesn’t move. “Okay.”

Harry scoffs. “The more you wait, the weirder you’re making it.”

“Alright. Alright.”

Harry is expecting a lot of things. Such as: getting bitten, for example. 

But Draco still takes his time. His free hand grabs Harry’s free hand and brings it up to Draco’s shoulder, and he instructs, “You might want to hold onto me.”

Harry bites back a laugh. “What? Will I be so horny I’ll faint?”

“Some people lose blood and get lightheaded,” Draco explains. 

Harry has some doubts about that —he’s never fainted at the doctor’s office, and he’s donated blood once —, but he decides to humor him. Everything to help a friend out.

So. He’s going all out. Because he can.

Smirking, he lets his free hand snake around Draco’s nape and into his hair, fingers grabbing at loose strands and settling around the back of Draco’s head. He takes the chance and brings his lips to the other’s ear, and he whispers playfully, “If you imagine I’m a girl, you might not even need to bite me.”

“Er— right,” Draco mutters, suddenly very stiff under Harry’s touch. He tightens the grip on Harry’s wrist. “Just— hold still. And don’t look.”

Harry nods, making sure Draco can see it, and relaxes against him.

His hair is actually really soft , he realizes. He’s never paid much attention to it— it’s almost always covered by a black hood. He does shower regularly, though, so it makes sense that it feels so good under his fingers. 

Draco leans forward, pressing him against the sink, and keeps them still with his free arm. He’s essentially caging Harry in, and he realizes that this should be incredibly weird, but it isn’t. 

Things aren’t like they should be when it comes to Draco. 

Draco takes his arm —the one he was holding onto— and gently bends it until the forearm is facing him, Harry’s elbow pointing up. 

Harry lets him do his thing. He adjusts his hand on Draco’s nape, accidentally pulling at some hairs, and immediately feels guilty about the shudder that runs through Draco as a result. “Sorry,” he whispers.

He closes his eyes and rests his head on the blond’s shoulder. 

It would feel like a girl, if he weren’t so overly aware of whom he’s doing this with. 

Draco exhales. And then he bites him.

And Harry discovers that he’s a hypocrite, really, because he was livid at that guy for being so pathetic, but then he’s the one tensing and letting out all the air he’s been holding into a gut-wrenchingly humiliating, “God—”

He’s just like that guy. 

And he possibly, maybe, just screwed up the only solid friendship he’s had for the past month.  

Chapter Text

Harry wants to move on, but his brain refuses to do so— it keeps playing that moment on loop until he’s convinced he’ll have a very awkward dream about it later. 

He still feels it— everything. He’s never been so aware of every inch of his body before.

He feels the lingering touch of Draco’s left arm against his hip, resting behind him on the sink. And the gentle weight of Draco’s fingers on his raised arm, holding it still, drawing it closer. 

And then— cold lips brush the skin on his forearm, light as a feather, taking their time before pulling back and letting the teeth go through. 

It hits Harry that he hasn’t known the heights of human emotion ever before in his life. 

His thoughts slow, his limbs grow heavy, and a warm wave of barely-contained pleasure ripples through him. He presses his eyes shut, breathing hard against the crook of Draco’s neck where he’s hiding his face. 

His brain finally catches up to the fact that he’s now sitting up on the sink, legs opening to let Draco come closer, and that he’s still holding blond strands of hair between his fingers. 

And he’s still being bitten. He can definitely feel that. 

Harry bites his lip to prevent another God from coming out, trying to protect the last sliver of dignity he’s got left.

He almost lets it out when Draco pulls back with a wet pop and takes a second to actually breathe, panting softly right next to Harry’s ear. 

Harry must be crazy. He’s going insane. 

He opens his mouth to say something he’ll definitely regret when Draco pushes him away, almost making him fall off the sink. He stares at the blond as he staggers back, lips red and hair wild , looking so thoroughly out of it that Harry can’t help but wonder if he’s still on drugs. 

He stretches his arms and gets off the sink, not even bothering to clean his wet forearm. “Did it feel good?” he asks, despite clearly being able to see how big the other’s pupils have gotten. 

Draco is just staring at him. Wide-eyed and tense and wobbly. Harry takes a step towards him. 

“Don’t tell me this was too weird for you. You were out at a club—”

“Don’t touch me,” Draco replies, and he sounds so panicked for someone who is so serious half the time. “Please.”

Annoyance bubbles up at the base of Harry’s stomach. “You were the one pushing me up against a sink.”

“You won’t remember it tomorrow,” Draco cuts him off once again, and there’s a brief flash of emotion behind his eyes. “They never do.”

“I’m not even drunk,” Harry sulks, resenting the other’s reaction. “We both agreed to this.”

“This was a mistake.”

“You are being way more dramatic than you need to be.”

“Just—” Draco covers his face with his hand, pressing his eyelids. He gestures towards Harry, stepping back to put more distance between them. “Clean up. And go to sleep.”

“Fine,” Harry spats, increasingly more frustrated by the blond’s antics. “I’ll go. And you can fuck off.”

“That’s fine.”

He stares at the door for a long time after it closes behind Draco, trying to process what the Hell just happened.

He feels like they just crossed a line. He didn’t know there was a line to begin with, or what it means, but he can tell . And, judging by Draco’s reaction, maybe he should have stopped it before they did this. 

He sighs. Marrying at nineteen was just a sign— he should have known he can’t trust himself to make sound decisions, like, ever. 

His phone runs out of battery with a sad ‘ ping ’ and he’s left in the dark by himself once again, as if an omnipotent being is agreeing with his assessment. 

—

The next morning is quiet and awkward.

Harry doesn’t have to go to work, since it’s the weekend, which means that they have a bit more than forty-eight hours to sort out the mess they got into last night.

He walks into the living room to find a not-really-awake Draco sitting on the kitchen stool, cradling an empty mug between his hands.

He does that sometimes— he heats up the mugs with nothing inside and carries them around like his very own heating pad. 

“Good morning,” Harry says, carefully, walking around him as if the blond is a feral cat who could jump at any second. He settles on the counter opposite from Draco, leaning his arms against it. 

Draco eyes him warily— he’s wearing his usual hoodie with the hood covering half his face, but Harry can make out his features quite easily. It comes easy to him by now, really, because he’s the only face he’s been seeing consistently lately, and Draco’s face is not hard to look at either way. So, it’s not a bother. 

Draco doesn’t reply to him, but he’s used to that. Instead, Harry’s eyes inevitably fall to his mouth. 

He doesn’t want to . But Draco’s teeth are—

“Stop looking at me like that,” Draco hisses, hunching his back and turning his face away from Harry. 

“I’m— sorry,” Harry mutters, but his brain is foggy. He just saw—

Long, pointy teeth, biting into an abnormally full lower lip. 

It’s not that he’s paying attention— obviously—, but he’s pretty sure Draco’s lips are on the thinner side. Now, he looks—

Snogged. He has the look of someone who’s been making out with someone else for hours and hours on end. 

Harry hopes he snuck out again last night— because if he didn’t, he has no explanation for this. They sure as hell didn’t kiss. 

And his teeth —

Every time he tries to focus on the teeth, his brain diverts to the topic of the lips. Quite stubbornly, actually. 

“Is this from last night?” Harry asks, ignoring the way his pulse is doing weird things in his neck. He reaches out to feel Draco’s forehead, adding, “Did you get sick, or something?”

To his surprise, Draco doesn’t pull away immediately when he touches him. He actually leans into the touch a bit, letting Harry feel the hot skin under the back of his hand. 

And this makes even less sense. 

Hot skin?

“Are you dying?” he breathes out, panicking a bit, because he doesn’t know what the number for medical emergencies is. Last time he tried, he actually called some random pizza place in London. He grabs Draco’s face and pushes his hood down so he can properly look at him. His other free hand moves by itself and cradles Draco’s jaw. “That’s because you went out only wearing a hoodie.”

Draco is fighting his grasp with a notable lack of strength, but he does show his discontent by rolling his eyes at Harry. “I’m okay—”

“And what’s going on with your teeth ? And your lips?” He can’t get it out of his head. 

What if Draco is dying? He doesn’t remember how to perform CPR— or anything else, for that matter. Is CPR even a good option if the other person is not suffocating?

Draco grabs his hands and gently pushes them down. “My lips are just fine.”

“They are not ,” Harry replies, and immediately after he realizes that he’s staring —very pointedly— at Draco’s lips. 

Was it because of him ?

“Are they like this because you bit me?” he asks, and he almost gets hit by a flying mug. 

Draco didn’t throw it. But the moment he brought that up, his hands jerked and it slid out of his grasp. He stares at Harry, eyes wide. “How did you—”

“I told you I wasn’t drunk,” Harry replies, deciding to ignore the mug that’s now rolling on the floor. “I have a damn good memory.”

“Do you?” Draco ponders, his voice quiet. Even though it’s dark, Harry can see a faint red tint that’s spreading across his cheeks. 

This is definitely not normal . 

“Of course.”

“What do you remember?”

Maybe to Draco it’s a casual thing to ask, but Harry now wants to crawl under the counter and die. 

What are they doing now? Roleplaying ?

“I mean—” Harry coughs the awkwardness away, forcing himself to actually say it. “You pushed me up against the sink, and—”

“Not that ,” Draco cuts him off, looking mortified. He puts his hood back up. “After that.”

“I already said it. You bit my forearm.” He stretches out his arm and pushes up his sleeve, showing the already fading mark of two round, deep red dots surrounded by shallower divots.

It still doesn’t hurt, but now Harry feels like it’s buzzing all the time. Which is way too weird for him to even try to dissect. 

Draco’s eyes linger on his arm for quite some time. Finally, he asks, “Was it pleasurable?”

This conversation is going off the rails, but Harry started it, so he might as well finish it. Even though he’s feeling his cheeks grow warm, he heatedly tries to defend himself. “I was just helping you out. With your needs .”

Draco’s gaze is now on him, and it doesn’t move, effectively pinning him in place. “Was it?” he repeats, slowly, and with his tone alone he manages to make Harry’s hairs stand on end.

There’s no point in lying to him. If he’s been with someone ever before —which, judging by the way that guy reacted yesterday at the club, he probably has—, he must know that the pathetic ‘ God’ that he let out wasn’t anything close to a call for help. 

“It was,” he admits, and shame washes over him in a cold wave of realization. 

Because, fuck , it really was. 

And he doesn’t know what to make of it.  

Chapter Text

He comes to the conclusion that they indeed crossed a line the other night. It’s still unclear what the line was, and where that single action leaves their friendship, but something is decidedly different about it. 

It starts that same afternoon of the day after, when Harry is sitting on the couch watching a random series on his laptop, which is propped up on a chair. He’s pretending that he’s paying attention, but in reality he’s been doom-scrolling on social media for the past hour and a half. Someone in the movie that’s playing lets out a loud gasp, but it’s not enough to draw Harry’s attention. He scrolls some more, barely reading the small lines of text under each post. Then someone touches his hair, ruffling it slightly, and that makes him put his phone down. He peers over his shoulder to see Draco behind the couch, walking around it to sit next to him. 

Harry is not used to this . Sure, Draco has touched his arm before, and he did bite him last night, but that was different. This— is more casual, affectionate, and there’s a tenderness to it that he hasn’t gotten from Draco so far. Still, he smirks and eases the surprise away. “Well, how nice of you to join me at last,” he says, alluding to the fact that the blond spent almost the entire day in his room. Harry even had time to open the blinds for a few hours, worried that the lack of sunlight would actually kill him at some point. 

They’re now closed again, for obvious reasons. 

Draco just shrugs. “I figured you’d be feeling lonely by now.”

Harry can’t help but chuckle at that, slightly endeared despite his best efforts. It’s strange, really, given that the blond has a very deadpan sense of humor (if he has a sense of humor at all, that is), and Harry doesn’t know for sure if he’s joking half the time. He lets out a theatrical scoff. “I enjoy my own company a lot, thank you very much.”

It isn’t entirely true, though. He spent ten minutes walking back and forth between the couch and Draco’s room’s door, debating whether he should knock and ask to hang out. He’s just not sure if they’re on good terms again. And it would kill him to have ruined their friendship, just for the sake of being a good samaritan and helping a friend out. But Draco is here now, and Harry’s mind wanders on its own to the events of the previous night. Even if they’re okay, he will not be forgetting about what they did any time soon. One does not willingly get bitten by their roommate and move on with their life. 

His thought process is interrupted, though, when Draco shifts in the couch and leans towards him, turning until he’s on his back and lying down on Harry’s lap. Harry stills, his hand hovering over his friends’ head. He carefully leaves his phone on the armrest, not daring to move too much. “What are you doing?” he asks, unsure what to do, eyes fixed on Draco’s face. The blond has closed his eyes, and he almost looks smugly relaxed. As if this is something they do every day, something they’ve been doing forever. 

Which they certainly have not . Harry wonders dazedly if he’s still dreaming. 

“I think I might be sick,” Draco replies, and Harry follows the movement of his lips. They look normal now, narrow and defined. “You were right.”

“Really?” Harry’s instincts kick in, and he quickly brushes Draco’s bangs away to feel his forehead with the back of his hand. The other’s skin is still warm against his own, like it was in the morning. “Oh, God, you are. I’m going to get the first aid kit—”

He tries to stand up, but Draco grabs his arm before he can. “Don’t go,” he says, voice calm, and Harry settles back down, sinking into the couch. 

Draco’s head is on my lap . 

He is definitely still dreaming. Because this is a dream, he relaxes and locks the voice in his head away, the one that’s telling him that this is crossing even more and more lines. Instead, he tentatively moves his hand and moves his fingers to lightly brush Draco’s hair, kind of intrigued by how light it is. 

It must be his natural hair— he hasn’t seen dark roots at all since they met. It’s a really pretty color, now that he thinks about it. He sometimes wishes his hair was a bit more interesting. 

“If you die because you refuse to take the medicine, it’s not going to be on me,” he comments, still feeling the heat radiating off of Draco. “I’ll bring your body to the doctors and tell them that you died by stubbornness.”

Draco opens his eyes a bit at that, watching him through his light lashes. “I don’t think medicine would help in this case.”

This stuns Harry, because he would have never thought that Draco was the type to reject modern medicine. He flicks his forehead, shaking his head when the other glares at him. “What would help then?”

He’s expecting anything but the blunt response he gets. “You.”

And— Oh?

Harry furrows his brows, confused. This dream is starting to get really weird . “What do you me—”

“Forget it,” Draco interrupts, closing his eyes again. Harry can tell he’s frustrated, but he doesn’t know why or how. “You won’t get it anyway.”

This, in turn, irritates Harry. “You’re always saying that, as if I’m a fucking idiot without a brain. What wouldn’t I get?”

“Anything,” is Draco’s simple response, which only grates Harry’s nerves more. 

“I just want to understand,” he says, hurt. Even though Draco’s head is in his lap, he can’t help but feel like there’s a wall between them, one they cannot break down or jump over. 

With this, Draco shifts slightly, his hood falling in the process. He tilts his head so that Harry’s hand is resting between his jaw and collarbone, and opens his eyes once more to look at him properly. “It’s hard to explain,” he finally breathes out, as if he’s mentally preparing himself for a taxing conversation. “I don’t know if it can be explained.”

Harry shouldn’t be touching his collarbone right now. It feels kind of illegal.

He bites his lip, holding back for a second before blurting out, “Are you gay?”

This makes Draco laugh, something he’s getting more and more used to, but is still quite surprising to hear. He stares at the blond as he coughs and shakes his head, trying to regain his composure. 

He has a nice smile , Harry thinks. He really should do it more often. 

“I’m not gay,” Draco answers once he gets back his voice. “That’s not what this is about.”

“It’s okay if you are,” Harry earnestly adds, not wanting to be misinterpreted. “I have plenty of friends who like men.”

“Why would you think I’m gay?” Draco asks, watching him. 

Harry is suddenly very aware of the position they’re in, and how it would look like to anyone if they were to come in at this very moment. He has one hand lingering on the crook of Draco’s neck, and the other is in his hair. Draco’s head is in his fucking lap.

The blue balls have finally made it into his dreams. That’s just amazing. 

He breathes in and leans back a bit, to trick himself into thinking he’s not all up in Draco’s personal space. “I dunno— that dude at the club, for example,” he mutters, slightly embarrassed by his assumption. 

“I said it was pleasurable for him. I didn’t say it was pleasurable for me .”

“You said you were into it. That you needed it,” Harry reasons, and Draco presses his lips as if he’s been caught. “It’s okay, though, really—”

Draco sighs. “I know it’s okay. But I didn’t mean it like that. More like— I’m into biting , yeah? Anyone. The guy just happened to be there and willing.”

“So, you don’t like men?” Harry doesn’t know how he went from being worried about Draco being sick to talking about sexuality, but here he is. And, honestly, why does he even care?

Draco’s eyes are bright as he’s looking at him. “I can like both, if they’re my type.” He says it lightly, but there’s a certain weight to his last two words. Like he’s waiting for Harry to catch up. 

And, suddenly, Harry sees him. Fully, and completely sees him. As if it’s the first time. 

His brain heats up as he takes in the pale skin, blond hair, gray eyes and slender nose, thin lips, and it’s all so much and he doesn’t know how he didn’t appreciate it before. He notices now, with much more clarity, that Draco is not just handsome. He’s somehow astonishingly, absolutely beautiful. 

It knocks the breath out of him. And he can only think, ‘ Oh .’ Oh, as in, ‘ Oh, how did I not notice it before? ’

But also, ‘ Oh, I’m so fucked .’

“What are you thinking?” Draco says, and Harry realizes he’s been staring in silence for about two minutes. 

He’s helpless— his heart is racing, and he feels stupid and flustered, and so he asks the first thing that comes to his mind. “Does this have anything to do with you being sick?”

To his surprise, the blond doesn’t speak and instead props himself up with his elbows. Their noses brush against each other as Draco stands up, leaving Harry halfway into a coma, and he can only watch as his friend walks away from the couch, not before replying, “Good night, Harry.”

Good night is right. Harry looks at his phone to see that it’s not even six P.M. He pauses the movie and closes his laptop, mind racing. If this was a dream, he has a wickedly perverse imagination. If it really happened, he has a problem. Because he just realized he finds his friend attractive. 

Above him, the light in the ceiling flickers and turns on for the first time in weeks. 

Chapter Text

When he wakes, it’s as if he’s still dreaming. 

He’s disoriented.

The first thing he sees is a blinding white glow that blankets everything, leaving no shadows and flattening every surface. The living room, the kitchen, the hallway—it’s all stark, all colorless, all silent. From the couch, he can see every single light is on, flooding the space with brightness that makes his eyes ache when he tries to look around. A heavy feeling creeps through his limbs and settles in his head.

Am I dead? he wonders, dazed.

He plants his foot on the floor, and the carpet crinkles beneath him, like he’s stepping on a thin layer of ice. Rising shakily to his feet, the only sound he hears is a soft, persistent static buzzing in his ears, gnawing at the edges of his thoughts.

Fuck.

He tries to speak, but nothing comes out. A drop of sweat falls from the tip of his nose, and he suddenly realizes just how drenched he is, his clothes clinging to him uncomfortably. He wipes his forehead with the back of his hand, but it does little to help. Still, he pushes himself to move, to find Draco.

It doesn’t take long. The door to Paul’s room is slightly ajar.

His heart sinks to the pit of his stomach when he sees it—the door he could have sworn he’d locked. He’d nearly thrown the key into the ocean more than once, desperate to forget about it. To forget about Paul.

But now, a harsh light seeps through the cracks around the door and the hinges, casting the already-blinding living room into shadow.

Harry drags himself toward it, every step feeling like he’s carrying a thousand-kilogram weight strapped to his back. His movements are sluggish as he wipes his glasses on his damp T-shirt, but it’s pointless—the fog stubbornly clings to the lenses.

His breath is shallow as he reaches for the door, his hand trembling slightly when it hovers over the handle. A strange hum reverberates through the wood, pulsing in time with his racing heartbeat. For a moment, he hesitates. He’s not sure he wants to open it. Something about the brightness leaking from the room beyond feels... wrong. 

Unnatural. 

The static in his ears grows louder, more insistent, as if urging him to move. 

Swallowing hard, Harry grips the handle. It’s hot under his sweaty palm, to the point it should be almost red by now. Slowly, he pushes it, and the door creaks open, the light inside blinding him for a second. 

As his vision clears, Harry sees Draco—or at least he thinks it’s him. 

The light in the room is overwhelming, so intense that it distorts everything. The outlines of Paul’s furniture blur in the brightness, and every time Harry tries to focus, his eyes sting and his lids clamp shut.

The static buzzes louder now, a maddening and persisting hum he can feel at the base of his skull. His skin feels too tight, too hot, like it's suffocating him, and it takes every ounce of strength not to collapse. 

He stumbles toward the center of the room. There, on the floor, is a motionless figure—a lump in the white glow.

"Draco?" he whispers, his voice muffled, as if submerged. The sound drifts away from him, distant and distorted.

The figure doesn’t respond. A cold dread spreads through Harry’s chest as he comes closer, his legs trembling beneath him. He feels like he’s wading through a thick pool of water, each movement pulling him deeper. He breathes out.

“Draco?” he calls again, louder this time, though his voice still sounds faint, swallowed by the overwhelming hum that drowns it out. 

He reaches the figure and kneels. 

It is Draco. It looks like him—white-blond hair tangled against a pale face, eyes closed as if in sleep. But there’s something wrong. The stillness. The unnatural light clinging to his body like a second skin. His lips are swollen, and there’s a reddish tint to his face that Harry doesn’t like.

This is not right .

“Wake up,” Harry croaks, his throat tight. 

He winces when the buzzing stops so abruptly that his head hurts, ears pulsating from the sudden absence of sound. 

And then, in the silence that follows, Draco’s eyes snap open. 

They glow with the same blinding light that fills the room, and they are completely white.

Harry feels horror rising up his throat, a scream trying to make its way past his lips, but he covers his mouth quickly to prevent it. 

This has to be a dream. Another one. 

He should run, but it’s as if he’s glued to the floor. So, instead, he takes a deep breath and steadies himself against the carpet, placing both hands on the floor.

Draco shifts slightly as if responding to the movement, and his pale brows furrow. “Harry,” he mutters, barely moving his lips.

Harry’s breath catches in his throat. He leans towards Draco, desperately searching his mind for the damn emergency number. “What do you need?” he asks, taking in his friend’s feverish state. 

A pale, slender hand draws a weak gesture. “Stay,” Draco says, and his voice is so low Harry almost doesn’t hear him. 

Harry swallows, his throat dry with fear. “You’re not going to die, are you?”

Draco’s face glimmers under the light as he tilts his head backwards, exposing the skin of his neck. He’s sweating profusely, probably more than Harry. “Just stay.”

So Harry does. He settles on the floor with his legs crossed, sitting closer to Draco. 

His hand shakes as he reaches out, fingers brushing against hot skin. 

He opens his mouth, about to say something like, " We really should call an ambulance ," but the words die in his throat the moment his hand touches Draco’s face. 

A sharp pain explodes in his palm. It runs through him, a flash of white-hot light burning behind his eyelids, radiating through every nerve, leaving a trail of pins and needles in its wake. His breath catches, eyes widening in shock, before they roll back and everything goes dark.

The blackness that follows is suffocating. He can’t feel his body, and it’s as if he’s been ripped from the physical world, drifting helplessly into the void.

At first, there’s silence. 

Then, the voices begin.

Faint, far-off. Harry can’t place where they’re coming from, but they vibrate with an intensity that makes them feel scarily real. 

A woman’s scream cuts through the air, high-pitched and piercing, stretching on too long until it twists into something jagged—sobs, broken and trembling. Harry recoils instinctively, her anguish filling his head.

Then, a man’s voice joins. It’s harsh, full of wrath that vibrates with a terrible weight. His anger merges into the woman’s despair, wrapping around Harry like a suffocating fog. 

There’s a child now. A small voice, pleading—crying out for someone named Bella. It sounds so far away, so fragile. Then, without warning, the boom of a door slamming reverberates through him, loud and final.

The child’s pleas follow. Soft, desperate, unanswered. Each one weakens and sounds more and more distant, eventually fading away completely.

There’s a new flash of light, and Harry gasps as he’s forcefully brought back to reality. 

His eyes open.

He’s in Paul’s room. Draco is sitting next to him, staring at him with wide eyes.

Wide, normal eyes.

It’s all white and hot and completely disorienting. Harry feels like he might throw up. 

“I’m sorry,” Draco says, and Harry realizes that he’s shaking. He’s never seen the blond so agitated, so beyond terrified. “I’m so, so sorry.”

“It’s not your fault,” Harry replies, still not fully there. 

It’s too bright . Why is it so damn bright?

“You shouldn’t touch me,” Draco continues, and his voice breaks. “I should go.”

Harry’s brain is kind of mush right now, but he still manages to feel the anger bubbling up inside him. “Don’t be an idiot.”

“This shouldn’t happen,” Draco replies, as though he’s not hearing a single word Harry’s saying. “It’s too dangerous. I’m too dangerous.”

Harry stares at his friend’s flushed face, at his swollen lips, at his damp forehead. He’s clearly missing something important, but he doesn’t care about that right now. 

He shifts his legs to sit closer to Draco. “You’re in pain, aren’t you?”

“I shouldn’t—”

“Shut the fuck up,” Harry cuts him off, frustrated. He presses his lips. “What’s hurting you? Tell me.”

Draco’s lip trembles, and it’s so out of the ordinary that it surpasses whatever supernatural shit they’ve got going on at the moment. “I really can’t,” he mutters. “Not yet.”

And, despite Harry’s growing concern, he bites back the demand that was forming in his throat. Instead, he nods. “That’s alright.” He’s looking at Draco— only at him, ignoring their surroundings. His field of vision is Draco’s face entirely. “What do you need?” he asks again.

Because it feels like the right question. 

This time, Draco’s reply doesn’t catch him off guard. It feels right . As though Harry had been expecting it all along. 

Draco says, “You.”

A simple request, so very vague, but Harry somehow knows what he means. 

So, he gives it to him. He stays.

Chapter Text

“You look like fucking hell,” Ginny says, and Harry instantly regrets opening the door.

He had been about to lie down next to Draco to keep him company when they heard the knock on the door, perfectly audible in the dead-quiet apartment. Draco’s face twitched at the sound, seemingly annoyed despite the sweat beading on his skin and his flushed face. 

Harry sat up, confused. Then, two more taps came, firmer this time, and he knew exactly who it was. The realization hit him like a bucket of cold water— she wasn’t supposed to be here. He hadn’t been expecting her at all.

He stood up. Around him, the light dimmed slightly. 

Draco groaned, curling in on himself, still on the floor. Harry took a second to brush his damp hair back once again, and whispered, “I’ll be right back.” As he stepped toward the door, his eyes didn’t even water from the light anymore— his body had adjusted, somehow. 

When he opened the door, he was greeted by a redheaded hurricane on the other side. 

Now, Harry is frowning. 

“I don’t feel so good,” he mutters, suddenly aware of how disheveled he must look. He knows a few things: he hasn’t brushed his hair, nor his teeth, his clothes are all sweaty and he has a dying man in his dead roommate’s room. A man Harry can’t seem to leave alone.

Not to mention the fact that his entire apartment is lit up like it’s the entrance to fucking heaven and they’re welcoming God himself into the decrepit living room. 

Ginny is standing there in her sports clothes, a plastic bag dangling from one hand. With the other, she reaches up to feel Harry’s forehead, and immediately recoils with an expression of shock. “Jesus, Harry,” she exhales. “You’re soaking wet .”

If he were in a better state, it would be the perfect time for a lame quip like That’s what he said , but his head hurts too much to attempt anything remotely witty. Instead, he settles for a tired, “It’s really not a good time for you to be here.”

“Is it ever?” she shoots back, stepping inside without hesitating. “We’re divorced for a reason, you know.” Without another word, she moves past Harry and walks down the hallway. “I said you owed me a beer, and now you owe me two. I thought I’d drop by on my way back from the run.”

Harry follows her after closing the door, too exhausted to hold her back, and watches as she leaves the bag on the kitchen counter. It opens up when she does so— two bottles of beer peek from inside.

She seems fine, even under the white light inside the room. Still, Harry squints and tries to explain himself, “Listen, I don’t know what supernatural shit is happening right now, alright?”

She blinks, genuinely confused. “What?”

Harry ignores the way his shirt is sticking to his body and motions around him. “This. I don’t know what the fuck is going on, and I’m losing my goddamn mind.”

Ginny is standing completely still now, and not even a second passes before she’s right in front of him and scanning his face with evident worry in her eyes. “Harry,” she says, slowly, “what are you talking about?”

“Don’t you see the light?” Harry asks, getting more and more desperate.

The redhead’s expression is of absolute bewilderment. “I thought you were an Atheist?” She sounds cautious, as if Harry is a madman who got out of an asylum and she’s trying to follow his ramblings. 

Harry wants to scream. “Not that kind of light, oh my God ,” he grunts, pulling at his hair. “The literal light. It’s so bright in here I swear I’m going blind.” Again, he gestures to the living room around him, to the buzzing energy coiling between them and hanging in the air. 

Ginny stares at him for a solid three minutes, before bursting into laughter.

Harry doesn’t understand. “What?” he demands, the sweat on his skin burning hotter.

“You almost had me, I must admit,” she smiles, shaking her head. “I thought you’d lost it for a second there.”

“Ginny, I wasn’t—”

“That was funny. You really should call that guy again, though,” she continues, looking around her with her hands on her hips. “He did a fucking bad job if only one light is working.”

Harry freezes. “Which light?”

Ginny rolls her eyes. “Duh,” she says, pointing at the light in the ceiling above the sofa. “How have you guys been surviving here without any other light?”

Her words hit him like a well-aimed punch to his guts. 

She can’t see the light , he realizes. 

He really is losing his mind, then. 

A second later, another realization hits. You guys , she said.

Draco.

Harry remembers that he has someone to take care of. Someone he’s left unattended for too long, even after promising to come back. 

He forgets about Ginny and the light as he sprints toward Paul’s room, dropping next to the blond with his heart beating hard against his chest. “Draco,” he calls out, because the other’s eyes are closed and he’s barely moving. “Draco, wake up.”

His friend is in the same position he left him in, but he looks much worse. His pale skin shines under the bright light, and Harry can see a web of faint, dark veins sprawling across his cheeks.

Harry’s breath catches, worry flooding his senses.

“Draco,” He repeats, now whispering, leaning in closer to Draco’s face and gently shaking his shoulder. “Wake up.”

“Why is he lying on the floor?” Ginny asks behind him, but he’s not paying attention to her. 

It does get the job done, though, because it’s only after she speaks that Draco moves.

His eyes snap open, and then he’s breathing out loudly, gasping for air, as if he’s just coming up to the surface after being underwater for too long. 

His hand jerks up and grabs Harry’s shirt in a firm grasp, almost bringing Harry down. 

Ginny curses under her breath, and after that she’s next to Harry, kneeling on the floor and stretching her arm out towards Draco.

“Wait—” Harry starts when he sees her moving, but it’s too late.

She places a hand on Draco’s leg, and the blond practically hisses at her, jolting and jerking away from her touch. 

He’s still grabbing Harry’s shirt, and Harry has to place a hand on the floor as he feels himself being dragged forward. “Draco—” he calls out again, breathless, and then moves a hand in Ginny’s direction. “Stop— stay away.”

Ginny’s eyes dart between them, wide open and scared. “Is he okay?”

“I don’t know what’s happening to him,” Harry replies, weakly. He tries to get Draco to let go of him, but it’s impossible— the blond is too strong. So, he leaves a hand on his wrist, fully wrapping his fingers around it. 

Draco stops shifting, and looks at him. 

So much light , and his eyes are somehow brighter than all of it. 

They’re both breathing hard. There’s a beat of silence that follows, where even the maddening buzzing stops, and neither of them moves. 

Harry feels a very particular pain, sharp and precise, somewhere in his chest. It could also be his poor heart giving up after the day’s—and week’s— events; that would make a lot of sense. 

Draco’s face seems almost alien, other , when he looks at it like this— ghostly white, veins under his skin, and swollen, almost purple lips. Despite his best efforts, his friend’s hair is falling flat against his forehead, sticking to it, and his cheeks have grown even redder.

The blond looks like he’s in pain, frail and flustered.

Immediately after that, Draco’s head snaps to Ginny. “Who are you?” he asks, and it strikes Harry how small his voice sounds.

Ginny presses her lips before answering. “I’m this idiot’s ex-wife,” she points toward Harry with her head, and ignores Harry’s ‘Hey!’. She adds, “I brought beer.”

As if mentioning it is going to help Draco’s state in any way . Harry shakes his head.

He huffs when he feels Draco’s grip tighten around the fabric of his shirt, his knuckles white. The blond’s eyebrows are furrowed, and his eyes have narrowed into slits. 

Ginny watches him warily, her expression shifting from worry and confusion to something sharper, complicit. “Okay,” she says slowly, raising her hands in surrender as she stands up and steps back. “Clearly, I’m interrupting something here.” Her tone is light, but it has an edge to it. She holds Draco’s gaze— hers, firm and cautious, and his, cold and unwavering.

Harry is completely lost. He looks between them, struggling to understand what’s going on. “Draco, this is Ginny,” he says, trying to ease the tension. “I told you about her, remember?”

Draco clenches his jaw, but he doesn’t look away. Harry lightly presses his wrist with his fingers, trying to convey a sense of trust, hoping it works.

It does— Draco reluctantly releases his shirt, slowly, as if he’s letting go of a bird that might fly away. “I know who she is,” the blond mutters, and his voice is thick and low in a way that Harry has never heard. “I just don’t understand why she’s here.”

Ginny raises an eyebrow at that, and Harry can feel his own cheeks grow warm from the direct confrontation. There’s something off about Draco’s behavior— something tense, defensive, even. 

He’s seen him disconnected and cold, but never like this . Angry and visibly upset. 

Harry swallows, trying to find the right words to de-escalate. He places a hand on Draco’s shoulder, hoping he doesn’t bite it off— which, fortunately, he doesn’t. “Ginny just— wanted to hang out, it’s not that big of a deal,” he says quickly, throwing a nervous glance in Ginny’s direction. She’s standing still, her arms crossed and expression unreadable. 

His attempt fails— Draco’s eyes flash with something almost feral, furious , and he turns his head from Ginny to look Harry in the eye. He snarls, his voice cutting, “I didn’t realize this was such a casual gathering.” His lips curl up to show a row of white teeth as he adds, “Why don’t you invite the rest of your exes while you’re at it?”

Harry’s mouth drops open. “What the fuck is this about?” he snaps, shocked by the sudden hostility. “You were fine just moments ago, so what are you doing right now?”

Ginny, surprisingly, doesn’t look angry. In fact, she seems almost… amused. Her eyebrows raise as she studies Draco, and a small, knowing smile spreads across her lips. “Oh,” she says softly, as if something’s just clicked into place. 

“What?” Harry asks, but she just shakes her head. 

“It’s nothing,” she replies, tapping her chin with her index finger. “I just think… I’ll leave you two alone.”

Draco’s gaze hardens as he continues to glare at Ginny, his expression unreadable. “I think that would be best,” he says.

Harry’s mind is reeling, trying to keep up with the exchange. He glances back and forth between his friend and his ex-wife, protests rising up his throat. “Ginny, you really don’t have to—”

Ginny cuts him off by raising one hand. “Oh, trust me, I do . You’ll thank me later, I promise.” She throws a glance at Draco, her smirk growing bigger, and she leans against the doorframe. “Besides, I don’t think your friend likes me very much.”

Draco doesn’t confirm nor deny her not-so-veiled accusation, but his tense stance works just as well. He follows her with his eyes as she walks out the door and into the hallway, where she pauses for a second. 

“Take care of yourself, alright?” she tells Harry, before briefly pointing to Draco with her head. “And… maybe take care of him too.”

Then she’s gone, and they hear the sound of the entrance door closing. 

The silence that follows could almost drown Harry— he turns to Draco, utterly and completely lost, and finds his friend still staring at the spot where Ginny was with a deep scowl in his face. 

“What the hell was that?” Harry demands, frustrated. 

“I don’t trust her,” is Draco’s response. He still appears feverish, but there’s a hungry look to him that wasn’t there before.

“Well, I do ,” Harry replies, not even bothering to hide the annoyance in his voice. “Will you tell me what your problem is?”

“You shouldn’t be together,” Draco explains, as if that’s a good enough reason for how he acted. He leans against the wall, closing his eyes.

“We aren’t. We are divorced,” Harry retorts. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t get along—”

“You shouldn’t be together physically ,” Draco clarifies. Harry follows the movement of his lips. “It makes me sick.”

“You were already sick before she came,” Harry points out. 

This earns him a glare from the blond. “Well, her being here definitely did not help.”

Harry shakes his head, incredulous. “I cannot fucking believe you. This is so stupidly childish and so beneath you.”

Draco’s eyes snap open, and he sits up straighter. “ Childish? ”

Harry can’t help the bitter laugh that comes out of his mouth. “Hell yeah. You were so sick when I came in, and then you somehow find the strength to be an absolute bellend to one of my only good friends? Please .”

Draco’s mouth opens, and Harry can see the fury emanating from the blond’s eyes. “You let her waltz in here like everything is fine,” he says, voice low. 

“She came in by herself! She was only trying to help, and you were a total jerk to her just now! Why?”

Draco’s face twists. “You really don’t get it,” he spits. “She doesn’t belong here.”

And this gets Harry going. Because, yes, he might be a mess, and a divorcee at twenty-three, but he gets to keep her in her life and he is grateful for it, because she’s good. And kind. And, now free of the pressure of being a romantic partner, she is a fiercely loyal, protective friend. 

So, he feels his anger sharpen as he blurts out, “ What are you even talking about? You act like you ’ve been here forever, like you deserve to be here.”

“Maybe I do,” Draco retorts, nostrils flaring. “And maybe I don’t like that you let her into our space , right as I am going through—” his voice catches, and he falters for a second, before continuing, “Like it’s nothing.”

“Our space?” Harry scoffs, incredulous. “We’re flatmates , Draco. It’s my flat. What the hell are you on about?”

“This is so much more,” the blond states, and his words feel heavy in Harry’s ears. “ We are so much more than that.”

“Oh yeah? Explain that to me.”

Harry scoots so that he’s sitting closer to Draco, setting a hand flat on the floor right next to the blond’s leg. Draco’s eyes flicker to it before shooting back up. 

Draco's eyes are gray, his cheeks are red, and something pulses in Harry's chest.

“Explain,” he repeats, enunciating the word. 

And Draco does.

He grabs both sides of Harry’s head, pulling him closer, and then he kisses him. 

Chapter Text

Draco’s lips crash into his without warning, demanding and hungry . 

Harry’s eyes flutter shut instinctively, reacting on pure impulse. Draco’s hands cradle his head, fingers running through his hair and digging into his scalp. The feeling registers in his brain a second later, leaving him seeing stars and burning through his skin and into his skull. 

Any rational thought he’s ever had in his twenty-something years of life evaporates— his mind goes utterly blank .

They become no more than two people — no memories, no shared history, nothing. Everything begins and ends with this kiss, and Harry will be damned if he’s the first one to pull away.

He barely notices that Draco’s skin and lips are still warm , which he’s entirely not used to. His hand blindly comes to rest on the dip of Draco’s shoulder, thumb over his collarbone, and he feels a faint pulse beneath it. A heart fluttering to life. 

His own heart, in contrast, seems to be slowing down— leaving him breathless, with a growing heaviness in his limbs. He slouches forward, fully leaning into Draco, leg shifting to rest on top of the blond’s. 

Somewhere, far off, Harry hears an indistinct sound— laughter, hurried footsteps, rustling fabric. But the echoes slip away before he can grasp them. 

His free hand falls to Draco’s hip, somehow intuitively, like that’s where it belongs. That prompts the blond to release his face to tug at his shirt and pull him even closer. Their legs get tangled, knees knocking, but neither of them seem to care. Harry’s hand slides down from the shoulder, grazing the thin fabric of the shirt with the tips of his fingers before hooking them into the first thing he can find— the belt loops of Draco’s jeans. 

It’s only when he pushes back with just as much—or more—enthusiasm, Draco’s lips parting under his, that a loud thud pulls him back to reality.

His eyes snap open. Draco’s head has hit the wall behind them, and he’s staring at Harry with blown pupils, lips slightly parted. 

Harry tries not to look at his reddish mouth, or at his glistening fair skin, suddenly fully aware that he did this . 

It’s indecent that he looks like this– no-one should ever be allowed to.

Harry Potter has never—and will never —look this good. 

For five agonizing seconds, he holds Draco’s gaze before his brain catches up. “I’m not—”

“I know you’re not,” Draco interrupts, lazily rolling his eyes. He leans back against the wall, tugging at the collar of his shirt, which to Harry is almost obscene. “You’re definitely not.”

Harry’s hands are still gripping Draco’s belt loops, the other resting on his waist, but he can’t bring himself to move them. Instead, he stammers, “Why did you—” He tries to get the words out, but his tongue is failing him. He swallows hard, trying again, “You kissed me.”

“Yes, and you kissed me back .” Draco arches a pale eyebrow, as if to punctuate his statement, and Harry’s face burns at the accusation.

“ Why ?”

“That’s something you need to figure out yourself.” Draco’s voice is infuriatingly calm. 

“ Draco. ” His name sounds weird in Harry’s mouth, like a bad word he just learned the meaning of. “Why did you kiss me?”

Draco shrugs, pressing his lips together and looking away. He’s still undeniably beautiful —and that’s just an objective observation that Harry’s brain makes. Harry pushes the thought away.

“You asked me to explain,” the blond finally replies, a trace of impatience in his voice. “So, I explained.”

Harry furrows his brow. “It’s the first time anyone’s kissed me to explain anything—”

Draco’s eyes flick back to his. “You felt it, didn’t you?”

Harry doesn’t know what to say to that, so he doesn’t. He remains in silence, stubborn, ignoring the way his fingertips feel like they’re on fire. Ignoring the fact that he’s almost straddling Draco, leg hooked over the other’s hip, caging him in against the wall. 

He stays quiet, and Draco’s expression shifts under his stare.

Firmer. Intense . 

“You felt… this,” the blond starts, quietly, his tongue barely peeking out before he closes his lips. His hand moves tentatively, giving Harry plenty of time to react, but he doesn’t .

He’ll try to explain to himself on many occasions why he doesn’t move. The answer is that something deep within him just doesn’t want to . 

Draco plants his hand on his chest, the palm fully open, and presses lightly. 

And Harry’s heart quite literally expands , making all the hairs on his arms stand on end. He feels a burst of energy rushing through him, warm but not hot , strange yet familiar. His chest tightens, breath catching in his throat, and for a second the world blurs at the edges and there’s only him— Draco.

The room shifts, and then dims down, the light that once blinded them beginning to fade. 

Draco’s hand trails up to Harry’s neck; Draco presses his thumb next to Harry’s throat, right over the carotid artery.

“Did you or did you not?” Draco asks, his voice smooth, looking up to bring his face closer to Harry’s. 

Harry bites the inside of his cheek. “I did,” he admits, helplessly. 

It’s pointless to deny it— his rapidly accelerating pulse is hammering against Draco’s thumb. 

“You felt this,” Draco says once more, and he brings Harry’s head down to kiss him on the cheek. 

The floor shifts beneath Harry’s feet, breaking and changing . He’s pretty sure he would seep through the cracks if Draco weren’t holding onto him right now. A huff escapes his lips before he can help it, and he realizes he hasn’t been breathing at all.

He inhales sharply, his lungs hurting. “You didn’t kiss me on the cheek before,” he points out.

Draco pulls back, and Harry can see the corner of his lip twitch. “I didn’t know you were paying attention,” the blond says. His words are light, teasing, but he still has that look in his face. Like he might swallow Harry whole. 

Now it’s Harry’s turn to roll his eyes. “You can’t french-kiss your friend at random and expect him not to notice,” he retorts. 

“You still kissed me back,” Draco repeats, and Harry wants to die. 

Something must have come undone in his brain. Maybe he hit his head. “You told me you weren’t gay,” he muses, sounding pathetic. He cringes internally. 

Draco bites his lip, a sign of nervousness that wasn’t there before. “You can kiss guys and not be gay.”

“Then what—”

“Bi, you goddamn fool,” Draco cuts him off, exasperated. “I’m bi. Are you happy with that?”

Harry doesn’t really know. Draco could be anything under the sun; it doesn’t change the fact that he —Harry— kissed him back. That he liked it.

And that has implications he doesn’t even want to think about. It’s too late to be having a sexuality crisis— he sorted that out when he kissed Paul that one time and didn’t feel anything. Which obviously meant he didn’t like men.

All this to say, why did he enjoy it when Draco did it? What changed?

He feels about thirty-five brain cells die inside his brain, and decides to steer away from those sorts of questions.

Instead, he focuses back on Draco. “So, what’s with all this light?” he asks.

“Not so interested in my sexuality anymore, huh?”

“Don’t change the subject.”

“ You changed the subject first.”

“When did you get so combative?” 

Draco taps his fingers on Harry’s neck, reminding him that they’re still there. “It’s your fault. Quite literally so.” 

Harry shivers at the touch, trying to hold back a groan. He frowns. “How is it my fault?”

“You were the trigger,” Draco answers, simply. He winces when Harry moves his hand, but Harry is only brushing his bangs out of the way. 

“The trigger of what?”

“Of my sickness,” the blond explains, watching him intently. His voice comes out slightly shaky when he adds, “The more I’m near you, the more I’m scared I’ll just— give in. And I can’t.”

“Give in?” Harry shakes his head, lost. “What are you talking about?”

Draco presses his eyes shut, probably frustrated to no end. Harry wants to get it, he really does— but Draco’s cryptic words are just not helping.

After a while, Draco starts, “I’m—”

But Harry is already asking, talking over him, “Do you like me ?”

The question hangs in the air, and Draco stares at him, mouth agape. Then, he sighs. “I just kissed you, Harry.”

“Yeah, but—” Harry looks around, gesturing animatedly, something he does when he’s nervous. “You’re sick.”

“I kissed you precisely because I’m sick. Don’t you get it?” Draco sits up straighter, forcing Harry to reposition, and grabs Harry’s arm. “Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed.”

“I literally have no idea what you’re getting at.” Harry blinks, bewildered. 

“I’m weird , okay?” Draco lets out, sounding desperate. “I’m different. And you know it . You’ve been putting up with living in the dark with no electricity for over a month—”

“But that’s not your fault—”

“ —and you had to chase me around at night to figure out why I was sneaking out. Isn’t that strange?” Draco shakes Harry’s arm. His eyes are big and wide. “Don’t I weird you out?”

“You don’t,” Harry replies, hoping that he sounds as sincere as he is. “If you did, I would have kicked you out by now. You’re just— peculiar.”

Draco scoffs, then presses his temple. “I can’t tell you. You have to figure it out for yourself,” he mutters, more to himself than to Harry. 

Harry leans in to hear him better. “How am I supposed to know if you won’t tell me?”

“Because you’re my—” Draco cuts himself off, wrinkling his nose in a pained expression, and tsks . “I can’t.”

“Then do something,” Harry urges, growing more and more impatient. “Something that’ll get me to understand.”

A flicker of realization crosses Draco’s face, and he goes still. 

“Draco?” Harry asks. He waves a hand in front of the other’s eyes. 

“You’re right,” the blond finally says, and his face falls into a serious frown. “You have to let me bite you again.”

Harry’s heart races. “Of course, but—”

He stops talking when Draco’s finger brushes the skin of his neck, tracing slow, deliberate circles over it. Draco meets his eyes after this, focusing all his attention on him. 

“Not on the forearm,” he specifies.  “Here.”

Chapter Text

Harry showers first.

Not for any particular reason. He’d rather not be drenched in sweat when Draco bites him, though, so maybe that’s a reason. A valid one, actually.

He steps into the shower, his legs slightly wobbly, and lets the water fall over him and flatten his hair against his scalp. He rests his head on the wet tiles, feeling their coldness pressing against his skin, and takes a moment to ask himself, ‘ What the fuck do you think you’re doing? ’

This has gone too far. 

He can still stop it, make it go back to normal. Right?

He feels a pressure on his lips, a ghost touch still lingering. His mouth is in some sort of half-state, kind of… vibrating . Harry doesn’t know if that’s normal or not. He does know that his heart has almost given up and that he’ll have to remain celibate for the rest of his life. Just to be safe.

He didn’t like it that much. Right?

Right . 

He cleans his body thoroughly, making sure to get rid of all the sweat, and triple-checking that his armpits don’t stink. Not that Draco is going to get anywhere close to them anyway, but it doesn’t hurt to make sure that he can’t smell them when he bites him.

Suddenly, he shakes his head. What?  

Why is he preparing for this as if they’re about to have a night of wild sex? Why does it matter if his armpits stink? Draco probably wouldn’t even notice. He’s probably only going to bite him and move on. 

Still, Harry can’t shake off the feeling that this time is different. Draco’s words dance in his head, twisting and twirling around his every thought. “ We’re so much more than that ,” he said. 

“ You were the trigger .”

It’s like he’s holding all the pieces of a very fucked-up puzzle in his hands and is expected to complete it with his eyes closed. He knows it must mean something, and there has to be a bigger picture to all of it that he should be able to see, but it’s proving to be damn near impossible. His brain is slowly unraveling after the past day’s events, and he isn’t sure how he’s supposed to put it back together.

He gets out of the shower after twenty-five minutes, significantly cleaner but just as conflicted. The light in the bathroom is working at last, and the other light has gotten way softer, and so Harry has a full view of himself in the mirror. 

He lifts his chin and brushes his fingers over his collarbone and the base of the neck, right above the spot Draco touched. His coworkers are definitely going to notice it. But, at this point, it’s too late to back down. 

He gets dressed in a rush and opens the door, silently sending a prayer to whatever entity is on the night shift today. For good luck or protection, either of them work. 

Draco is waiting for him in Paul’s room. Harry winces as he goes in, now much more aware of where they’ve been this entire time, of how— disrespectful they’ve been.

If Paul wasn’t a vengeful ghost before, he definitely is now. And Harry wouldn’t blame him. 

He gestures quickly as soon as they lock eyes. “Not here,” he says, and he hopes that Draco gets it. 

The blond doesn’t reply, instead getting up and walking past him to stop at his own doorstep. He turns around to stare at Harry, tilting his head as if he’s waiting for him to give the green light. 

Harry swallows. This is where you stop it , the voice inside his head tells him. 

And the thing is, he could. He could say no , turn around and pretend like this never happened. Ignore the blinding light, and Draco’s attitude, and the kiss — everything, and accept that his flatmate is a freak who likes to lie down on the floors of people’s dead roommates’ rooms and have panic attacks. And then kiss people out of the blue. 

He could stop it. 

Maybe he should.

He blinks in confusion when Draco walks up to him, only stopping when they’re about to bump into each other. Harry looks up to him, silent. 

Draco hasn’t showered, but he’s wearing a different shirt now. One of Harry’s . And, for some reason, he doesn’t smell at all. 

“For the record,” Draco starts, “I’m just trying to prove a point. I don’t want to take advantage of you.”

Harry lets out a nervous laugh that sounds shakier than he means it to. “I know,” he mutters.

“Do you really want to do this?”

Harry doesn’t do it on purpose, but his mind starts pulling out memories from when he first hooked up with Ginny. The vibes had been more or less the same. Which is— it doesn’t make sense . 

Getting his artery blown up isn’t the sexiest of concepts, objectively, either. 

Draco’s fingers brush the hem of his shirt, and Harry has to press his lips shut to avoid a reaction. Sure. He’s being very objective right now.

So, because he’s weak, and he liked it last time (right? Damn right ), he answers with a small and honest, “Yes.”

He tries to ignore the way Draco’s pupils dilate immediately after. “Right,” the blond replies, looking a bit chipper. “You won’t even have to do anything, I promise.”

And Harry can’t help but laugh at the other’s eagerness. “You’re taking this way too seriously,” he says, teasing him. 

But Draco just states, “You’ll see,” and leaves Harry wondering about what that might be. He then walks back a few steps, and the door opens when his back touches it. Inside, it’s fully dark. 

Harry tries to walk in, but he bumps into Draco instead. He looks up once more, after he realizes that the blond is not moving. “What now?”

Draco bites his lip. “Are you sure you want—”

He’s cut off abruptly when Harry plants both hands on his shoulders and kisses him briefly. 

When he pulls back, Draco huffs. “Okay, that’s one way to get into it, I suppose,” he exhales, cheeks going red.

Harry grins. He’s about to make some sort of witty comment when he’s hauled into the room by a pair of hands around his waist, and he almost stops breathing once the door closes behind him. He cries out when his hip hits the dresser, which is right by the door. He hears Draco laugh, and it’s a short-lived sound, but it makes him feel something. 

What that is? He doesn’t know. 

The fingers around his waist get a firm hold of it and order him around, forcing him to walk forward, and he resorts to holding onto Draco’s shirt with his fist to avoid losing him in the darkness. And then he’s somehow at the side of his bed, and he falls flat on his back immediately after, dragging Draco down with him. 

“Woah,” Draco grins, and his body weight shifts so that he’s not pressing Harry against the mattress anymore, “No need to be so aggressive—”

Harry just wants him to shut up and get on with it. So, he tugs down at the shirt and kisses Draco again. 

He’s done it twice now— it’s getting harder to deny that it feels good. Heat pools in his stomach when Draco reciprocates the kiss, leaning into it, bringing his arms up to rest on both sides of Harry’s head. Harry’s hands reach up at some point to cup Draco’s face, somewhat mirroring what the other did to him before— and he discovers a rather new urge to run his fingers through his hair and down his neck.

Huh . He’d think about it if he weren’t practically melting into the mattress. 

A small groan escapes through his lips when Draco leans back, breaking their kiss, and takes a deep, long breath. Then, a hand in his hair tilts his head to the side, exposing his neck, and the other holds Harry’s arm still over his head.

He feels Draco’s lips resting on his neck and barely manages to fight back a full-body shudder. Then, the lips part and something sharp digs into his skin. 

A hot white flash burns through his eyelids, and suddenly his eyes are rolling back and he feels like he’s falling off a cliff. He trembles, skin running cold, gusts of non-existent wind parting under him. 

A hand clasps his own and intertwines their fingers together, somehow bringing him back. 

Almost. He stays in the all-white space, but he regains the awareness of another body pressing against his. The crook of his neck hurts, but it’s a bearable kind of pain. 

He whines , quite a pathetic sound. 

What follows is a cacophony of distant voices that fall right alongside him in the light. Harry can’t quite tell what they’re saying at first, but they get stronger as he falls deeper and he catches a few words. 

Silas. Family.

FIRE.

The last one erupts beside Harry, an ear-piercing scream that shatters the air like glass. His chest heaves and fills up as he’s brought back to reality, and he claws at Draco’s shirt to stop the fall. 

He goes still. 

He’s not falling. He’s on the bed, legs tangled up between Draco’s, their arms indistinguishable from each other’s. Draco rolls off of him and lies down next to him, his weight causing the mattress to sink and bringing them even closer.

They remain in silence for about five minutes.

Then, he hears Draco ask, “Are you okay?”

Harry’s voice is hoarse when he replies, breathless, “I went somewhere for a second,” and he’s being truthful.  His brain turns to mush when he even tries to get around it, to understand it.  Because this— is not a hallucination. He has heard things almost every time he’s been with Draco. Now, he fell. He was falling , fast and helpless.

He brings a hand to his neck, only to find it extremely cold and sore. He rubs his fingers together, feeling a wet substance sticking to them. 

Blood . 

He has lost his fucking mind. 

Words form in his lips, pushing to get out, but he loses them when a head presses against his shoulder. The rest of the body follows: a pair of arms circle his waist, and a leg comes to rest over Harry’s knee. 

His heart jumps in his chest. 

He blinks, trying to analyze the bizarre mix of happiness and fear that he’s feeling right now. “Draco?” he finally whispers, reaching up to brush the other’s hair.

“Yeah?”

Harry closes his eyes for a second before letting it out. “ What are you?”

Chapter Text

Draco sighs against Harry’s collarbone, which is something he should not be allowed to do, and mutters, “You still don’t know.”

Harry wishes he had a gun. Or a white board so Draco could spell it out for him. Or both. 

He keeps his fingers in Draco’s hair, moving them to brush the curve of the ear. “I cannot figure you out. It’s maddening.”

A shiver runs down his spine when Draco lets out a small groan, shifting to prop himself up by the elbows and bringing a hand up to Harry’s jaw. “You’re going to kill me, Harry.”

He also shouldn’t be allowed to say Harry’s name in this state. Now, or ever. Harry wants to chase the sound, drown it out with his own lips.

Because, actually, fuck rational thinking. Rational thinking can go figure out what the hell’s been going on with the lights. And the hallucinations. Rational thinking left a while ago, and Harry isn’t sure he wants it back.

So, to honor that sentiment, he grabs the back of Draco’s neck and brings their mouths together, giving the blond a short, light kiss. “I’m sorry. I’m kind of out of it at the moment,” he replies, and the way his voice comes out does confirm what he just said. He will deny ever using that voice.

Draco huffs. “So am I, because you keep kissing me—” he stops abruptly, and then his hand jerks over Harry’s jaw. 

Silence. Harry uses it to untangle the mighty mess that’s going on in his brain, one strand of thought at a time.

What does ‘Silas’ mean?

His efforts are interrupted by a pair of lips, which he’s not complaining about, even though he should. He inhales in a rush to respond to it, feeling like he’s losing his mind again, and closes his eyes.

He sinks further into the pillow as they get into it, letting Draco hold his face and deepen the kiss, and if he ignores the pounding of his heart in his chest he might actually be keeping his composure for once, which is an improvement. His own hands are hovering around Draco’s neck, mapping it blindly as if he’s trying to memorize it, and it is everything .

It’s everything Harry was waiting for.

The tip of his tongue grazes against the outline of Draco’s teeth, and then he feels a sharp pain that breaks through the mind-fog.

“ Fuck ,” Harry groans, pulling back and turning his face away. He touches his tongue, still aching. “I got cut. How the fuck did I —”

“Harry,” Draco says, and Harry wants to ignore the sting and tell him to shut the fuck up with his husky voice. But he doesn’t, and Draco continues, “feel it.”

“Feel what?”

Draco’s hand runs slowly down his forearm, making Harry’s hairs stand on end, and gently grabs his hand, pulling it towards him. He falters for a second there, before adding, “If you don’t get it after this, I’ll have to leave.”

This ignites something in Harry’s chest. Determination . “What is it?” he asks, breathless.

But Draco only brings his hand closer, until Harry feels his lips under his fingers. Then, they’re parting— opening up and letting him in.

This feels illegal. It’s also probably unhealthy that Harry is reacting so viscerally to it— he feels warm all over, fuzzy, out of his own skin. Content. Happy .

He’s got his fingers in a man’s mouth, and he’s goddamn happy about it.

Finally, Draco’s hand retreats, and he’s left touching the other’s teeth. He moves his fingers around, trying to find what cut him, and then—

The canine tooth.

It digs into his fingertip, sharp and long , and Harry gasps softly.

This is not normal. It’s not—

Over them, the light flickers on for a brief second. Harry is faced with the proximity of Draco’s face, and the fact that his eyes are big. And his eyelashes are long .

He finds the other one; it’s also long and pointed. Unusually so. He can’t help it— he says, “Oh my God ,” over and over, probably about fifty times. “Why are they so—”

They’re not canine teeth. They’re—

They’re fangs .

As soon as the realization hits, the light above them starts going haywire. It flickers once more, and then it speeds up, blinking so fast it’s almost making Harry’s eyes bleed.

He sees Draco now. He sees the… fangs. He’s touching them.

There’s also the fact that the blond’s entire mouth is stained dark red.

“ Oh my God ,” he repeats. Again. 

They’re staring at each other, and Harry can see the nervousness in Draco’s eyes. 

He wants to kiss it away. He also wants to pull away as fast as possible.

In the end, his selfishness wins over his cautiousness. He brushes his thumb over the corner of Draco’s lip, removing the remnants of blood around it.

“Harry,” Draco repeats for the umpteenth time, but this time it’s deliberate. He’s urging him, expectant.

And Harry’s brain starts catching up. His ears clear, and his eyes focus fully on the boy in front of him.

The light is flickering. Then,

“Vampire,” he says, with certainty. 

The light goes still. It stays on, and Harry is seeing Draco for the first time. Or it feels like it.

The look in Draco’s eyes is all he needs as confirmation— he got it. 

He got it.

A vampire.

What the fuck?

More importantly, How the fuck?  

His thoughts are escaping him, slipping between his fingers. This isn’t possible. It isn’t . The same way that Santa isn’t, or the fucking Easter Bunny. It’s just the way things work. 

“Yes?” he asks, because he needs to hear it from Draco. He has to know that it’s not only in his head.

Draco’s eyebrows twitch, pulling together, and his lip trembles. He bites down on it, looking away, hiding his face.

“Hey,” Harry says, worried about the other’s reaction. He grabs Draco’s chin and forces him to look at him, and is surprised to see that his nose is bleeding. “Draco, are you—”

“I’m okay,” the other replies, stubbornly, but his face is contorting beneath his contained expression. “I’m okay.”

“You don’t look okay.”

The puzzle lies complete in front of him, inexplicably straightforward. He managed to solve it.

Vampire .

It. Doesn’t. Make. Sense.

He should be feeling the weight of the entire world coming down on him right now. This is a once-in-a-lifetime event, or even better, a once-in-humanity event. This is the evidence everyone’s been looking for since forever; proof that the supernatural exists, that the occult thrives in the shadows and dark corners of humanity.

But he doesn’t care at all. He doesn’t understand , but he will. And his feelings are much simpler, much less ambitious than he would have predicted.

He likes Draco. Draco just happens to be a vampire.

He— what?

It’s kind of funny that he’s more shocked by his affection towards the blond than by the other’s true nature.

But— he likes him. He might be down bad , and probably, royally fucked. Harry’s hands shake as he tries to clean the blood streaming from Draco’s nose. His fingers are unsteady, and they smear more than they clean, but Draco lets him do it, lets him fumble through the motions in silence. 

Then, he mutters, “It’s been a long time.” And he’s looking at Harry, as in, looking , the way he does when he’s waiting for him to catch up.

Harry shakily asks, “How long?”

The blond replies, voice wavering slightly, “I’ve been looking for you for the past hundred years.”

Chapter Text

They’re sitting on the sofa, shoulders brushing together and legs stretched out. 

Physically, that is.

Mentally, Harry might as well be floating in a black void of absolute bewilderment. His brain has fully detached from the rest of his body, refusing to do any work.

I’ve been looking for you for the past hundred years . 

It’s truly fascinating how they’ve come to this point. Harry wonders what would’ve happened if they had met before— if he had somehow existed in another time.

That’s on his parents for taking too long to hook up, honestly. After which they had the audacity to take too little to get themselves run over by a dump truck. But that’s another issue entirely. 

The thing is, though, that he’s thought about this before. His depressive thoughts take over from time to time—arguably more often than he’d like to admit—, and they tend to lead him down the familiar path of an existential crisis. And, in those times, he can’t stop thinking about the fact that he’s merely a speck of dust in the grand scheme of things. 

How many have come before him, and how many are yet to come. 

The more he sits with it, the more terrified he gets about the concept of time. And how Draco has apparently managed to toy with it and avoid being affected by it. Untouched, stuck in his own little bubble. 

Immortal.

Next to him, the immortal vampire in question is eating a pizza twice the size of his own head. Folded in half . 

Harry side-eyes him. “You know you can die from eating too much at once, right?”

Draco swallows one particularly large bite, not without considerable difficulty. “I can’t die”, he simply states, matter-of-factly.

Right . He might have gotten over the whiplash of revealing his true nature way faster than Harry has—or ever will . He dropped the bomb on him (so, telling him he’s some kind of well-preserved mythical creature from another century), and asked for food immediately after. Harry didn’t know what to do, but he was too overwhelmed to think, so he ended up complying. He rang the emergency number, and the pizza place guy picked up. Because he’ll always get it wrong, and he knew it then. He got Draco the largest pizza on the menu, and suggested they watch a movie. Probably the worst idea anyone’s had after their roommate comes out as a vampire, but it’s not like there’s a manual out there Harry can check out. 

So, Draco can’t die. That’s great . Very on-brand for the average vampire. “Still. You shouldn’t push your luck,” he eventually replies. He watches as Draco tries—and fails—to fit the remaining pizza into his mouth, as if he’s been stranded on a deserted island for the past twenty years. 

The sight of it is so bizarre that he can’t help the smile that grows in his lips, and it’s not until Draco stops to look at him quizzically that he realizes he’s been staring. 

“What’s funny?” Draco asks, lowering the pizza for one second. His mouth is red from tomato sauce. It feels familiar. 

Harry grins and reaches out to brush away the sauce with his thumb. They share a complicit look, and Harry lets the touch linger before dropping his hand. It’s different. And definitely weird. But, there’s comfort in this space that they’ve created. 

“Nothing,” he replies, his voice annoyingly soft. “It’s just nice seeing you eat.”

It’s the first time he’s witnessed it, and it’s fascinating. 

Draco blushes a bit at that, and looks away to take another bite— this one smaller. “Shut up.”

His actions don’t say the same, though, because immediately after there’s a hand on Harry’s upper thigh. Draco then turns it around, letting it rest limply.

His sleeve has ridden up as a result, and Harry glances at the pale skin on his forearm. 

His breath catches. 

It’s covered in scars, layered and uneven, each one a pale, jagged line carved into the skin like a spiderweb. They disrupt the smoothness of the skin around them, ridges and valleys in faded white undertones.

Harry unpeels his eyes from it, feeling like all the blood has drained from his face, and forces them up to Draco’s face. 

“I’m sorry,” he whispers. He doesn’t know what to say.

Draco is not nearly as bothered as he is. He finishes off the pizza with a single bite, cleans his hand on his shirt and shifts to face Harry on the couch. “Why are you sorry? These are very old,” he says, running his free hand over the scarred skin. 

“I—” Harry stutters when the other grabs his hand to guide it to the same spot, gently threading their fingers together. “It’s not my place to ask.”

The skin is rough and taut where the scars protrude, and Harry maps it out, following Draco’s movements. 

“You can ask,” Draco says. “I don’t mind.”

Harry exhales, letting go and clasping his hands together. “I have… one, too. Not like these, though,” he adds. 

Draco’s eyebrows rise up. “I haven’t seen one on you.”

Harry shrugs. “I try to hide it. I’m not— But it’s nothing, really, compared to yours—”

“Hey,” Draco cuts him off. Harry stares at him. “A scar is a scar. You feel however you want to feel about it.”

“Yeah,” Harry replies, feeling strangely comforted by it. He sweeps his hand up his forehead, pushing his bangs away. “That’s it,” he adds, before Draco can say anything. 

Draco observes his forehead, leaning in slightly closer and carefully tracing it with one finger. After a while, he leans back. “Was it bad?”

“A bad fall,” Harry explains, feeling inexplicably silly. He drops his hand. “Yours?”

Draco’s mouth twists in a small, discontent grimace. “A bad person.”

Harry swallows. “Oh.”

But the blond doesn’t let him linger in pity for any longer, because he shakes his head and starts digging in the front pocket of his hoodie. “I want to give something to you,” he says. 

Harry sits up straighter. “What is it?”

“There you are,” Draco mutters, taking the hand out of the pocket and turning it to show a small, shiny button. Harry reaches out to take it, but Draco swats his hand away. “Let me attach it.”

Harry looks down as Draco carefully places the object over his chest, pinching the fabric of the shirt with his fingers. 

It’s not a button. It’s a pin . 

Small, round and golden, shimmering under the ceiling light. It has an ornate design, featuring a dragon and a serpent with intertwined tails, and a prominent letter ‘M’ in the center. 

Harry brushes his fingers over it. “Where did you get this?”

“It’s mine,” Draco says, rather noncommittally, leaving his hands on both sides of Harry’s waist. “I’d like you to keep it for me.”

“What does the M stand for?” Harry asks, but Draco is already getting up. He walks into the kitchen. 

“I’m still hungry,” the blond says, his back turned to Harry, rummaging through the half-empty cabinets. “Do you want something?”

Harry sighs. “No, thank you.” He feels the pin once again, letting the coldness of the metal seep through his fingertips. He bites his lip, fighting back a smile. 

He’s wearing something that’s his . 

—

Later in the day—and well into the night—, when Draco has consumed three quarters of the scarce food in the apartment, and Harry has whined about it some more, Draco suggests they sleep together.

Literally, of course. He stares at Harry in confusion when the latter goes red from head to toe and almost explodes, which is how Harry finds out that his intentions are much more innocent.

“There’s enough space for both of us on the bed,” he explains, signaling to Harry’s king-size mattress. 

“I can sleep on the sofa, really, it’s not a problem—” Harry starts, flustered as hell, still trying to recover from the let’s-have-sex jumpscare.

“I want you to stay,” Draco says, which, really, is all that Harry needs to throw his remaining common sense out the window. 

If Draco wants him to stay, he will , goddammit. 

“Sure,” he agrees. 

And then he’s being led to the bed, quietly, fingers laced together, and it’s so normal yet strange but absolutely okay. 

It is so okay. 

It’s okay when he wraps his arms around Draco’s torso, pulling them together, and buries his face in his shoulder. It’s also okay when a hand trails up his neck to gently scratch the back of his head, making him drowsy right away. 

So, when Draco asks, “Is this okay?”, Harry can only laugh. 

“No,” he replies, though he nestles in closer anyway.

Chapter Text

When he wakes up, he’s in a graveyard. 

His first thought is that he’s having that dream again— the one with his parents and his godfather and his godfather’s husband. That’s a weird one, and he’s had it a couple of times. It’s never fun. 

He immediately realizes that it’s a different graveyard than the one he’s used to. This one seems older, and way more unsettling.

He looks around, confused, taking in the soul-crushing silence. Above him he can see the moon, casting long, distorted shadows on the floor. There’s dense overgrowth weaving through a vast maze of tombstones, all tilted and weathered and huddling close together. Tall grass sways in the cool night air, almost covering most of the stones, and wrapping around dilapidated chappels. 

What the hell?

Harry glances down and stretches out his arms, only to find out that they’re not his own—small and stocky, unlike the long, elegant fingers he now possesses. A rather tight white shirt clings to him, paired with knee-length pinstripe trousers, dark stockings and ankle high boots that feel completely foreign and—to be quite honest—almost like he’s wearing a costume. Kind of like the one he was forced into when he played Oliver Twist in Year 2.

He wonders if he hit his head.

He takes a step forward, trying to find the main path back to wherever —he’ll find that out sooner or later—, but then someone appears from behind a large tombstone and Harry nearly jumps out of his skin. 

Or—someone else’s. Whoever he is right now.

Before he can stop them, an array of words flow out of his mouth, high-pitched and boyish : “Damn you, Silas! You nearly gave me a heart attack!”

The person—Silas?—takes a step toward him, and Harry sees that it’s a young guy, probably around seventeen years old, tall and slender. His hair is short and dark, neatly combed back, and he has a striking face, with big brown eyes and a sharp nose. He’s dressed similarly to Harry, but his trousers are longer and his clothes seem to fit him more comfortably than Harry’s. 

He has a small mole right over his upper lip—for some reason, Harry notices that right away.

Silas nods his head in Harry’s direction, a grin appearing in his face. “There you are. I was beginning to think you’d lost your nerve and run away. What brings you to such an unsightly place all on your own?” His voice is upbeat, like he’s teasing him.

Harry feels his own face shift into what’s probably a relaxed smile. “A friend of mine invited me, but I seem to have misplaced him. Have you seen him about?”

This makes the boy chuckle, and he reaches out to ruffle Harry’s hair. “You’re such a child.”

The contact makes Harry’s body tense up, and his heart almost flies out of his mouth, and he realizes—

These are not his feelings. It’s bizarre. There’s himself , with his thoughts and his awareness, inside someone else’s head. What’s worse is, he’s not even in control. He’s helpless, drifting alongside a stranger’s train of thought. 

“We’re merely two years apart,” he says, like he’s reading a script out loud. He pulls away, his cheeks warm. “Stop it.”

They start walking at the same pace, Harry’s hands hanging limply by his sides. His supposed friend—Silas—keeps reaching out to tap his shoulder when a tombstone catches his eye, which is very distracting. 

And, one time, almost by accident, their hands touch, and Harry feels like he’s going to die.

Damn . He, of course, had to get the closeted guy. Is this how it feels to be his own brain? 

“I just love this place,” says Silas as they make their way across the silent graveyard. “I find it rather… thought provoking.”

Harry smirks. “If you’ve dragged me out here for some philosophical rambling, you’ll find me a most reluctant audience.”

Silas’ smile only grows wider, his eyes bright. He bumps their shoulders together for a second, before walking ahead a few steps. “Oh, come now, don’t be such a cynic. I simply thought we might do with a change of scenery. Besides, it’s rather freeing— being away from prying eyes.” He turns to look at Harry once again, raising his eyebrows in a complicit gesture. “There’s a thrill in that, is there not?”

His words are veiled, masking something else. Harry feels himself falter, a rush of adrenaline running through his body. He mumbles, “You do have a way of finding trouble in the most unexpected places.”

Silas stops walking, waiting until Harry catches up to him. When he does, he replies, “Trouble?” He shakes his head, continuing, “No, no… Merely opportunity. One must seize it wherever it may lie.” With that, he places a hand on Harry’s shoulder.

Harry would be creeped out by that if he wasn’t stuck in a body that seems to be extremely excited about it. Which is why his voice comes out slightly wobbly when he asks, quite eagerly, “And what might that opportunity be, exactly?”

Silas’ hand lingers on Harry’s shoulder, his fingers curving slightly. Suddenly, he’s standing very still. “That,” he says slowly, “depends entirely on what you’re willing to take.”

There’s an intensity to the other boy’s gaze as he steps even closer, and Harry’s alarms are going off. But, because he’s not there , he leans in without reservations, instead of— running away. 

Or punching Silas in the face.

He has to remind himself that he theoretically likes this guy. Or, his host body does.

“You speak in riddles,” he says, sounding more breathless than he expected. “If you have some grand revelation, then out with it.”

“Oh, it’s not a revelation.” The older boy tilts his head, his eyes darting all around Harry’s face. “Rather… a proposition.”

“Well, what is it?”

The hand on his shoulder moves, coming up to cradle Harry’s nape. “Tell me, Draco, have you ever kissed a boy?”

And. 

Oh .

Draco?

The world is spinning. Where the fuck am I? Is this some kind of purgatory? Did his brain somehow come up with a new type of torture? 

He barely has time to process it all before the hand moves against his nape, pulling him forward. He stares into Silas’ eyes for a second before their mouths collide, and they’re big and dark and magnetic, locking Harry—Draco—in place. 

The kiss is not gentle. Not tentative. It’s urgent, demanding and messy, and Harry wants to crawl out of this skin, erase the memory from his brain. Draco’s head is a mess of excitement and panic, every feeling contradictory and imposing, and Harry wants to scream at him to just stop . 

Please , just make it stop. 

Then, a sharp sting comes, and a burning pain pierces through his skin. Through half-lidded eyes, he watches as the boy bares his teeth and pulls him back in, placing his mouth on his neck, and then there’s the unmistakable feeling of fangs sinking in, hot and terrible. 

He cries out, but this time, Draco’s crying, too. 

The sound haunts him, even after he goes out. 

Chapter Text

The second time, he’s woken up by a slap.

His head jerks violently backwards, following the motion, and he immediately feels the burning pain spreading across his cheek. It contrasts against his own body, which is eerily cold. There’s a throbbing pain in his neck, and he feels the soft fabric of a bandage wrapping around it.

Somewhere near him—or above him, he realizes that he’s lying down—, a nervous voice stammers, “Mister Malfoy, I do not think it’s necessary for you to slap—”

“Silence, Pettigrew,” another voice interrupts, much nearer and sharp as glass. “He’s my son. I shall treat him as I see fit.”

He finally manages to open his eyes. 

He’s in a dark room, with one barred window and no lights except for one single candle set right by him. He’s lying in a rigid, cold mattress, and there’s two men standing over him. Watching him. One is short and round, face undefined and mouse-like, flat and unremarkable. The other is tall and thin, all sharp angles and hard eyes, with a very straight nose that Harry has seen before. Light, thin long hair cascades down his shoulders, framing his face like threads of gold. The blond man turns to the other and tells him, “You shall leave now. The boy is awake— I’ll take it from here.”

Pettigrew jumps and hurries to the door, looking unsettled, not before the blond man stops him again by grabbing his arm. 

“Not a word of this to anyone, Doctor” the blond man says, slowly. “Or your wife shall find out about Mrs. Abbott.”

The short man stumbles as he makes his way out of the room, muttering an array of promises and excuses in the process. The blond man closes the door after him, and then turns his attention to Harry. “Now, you ,” he says, and the hairs on Harry’s arms stand on end. “What possessed you to be in the company of that boy again? I expressly forbade you from seeing him again after last year’s… incident.”

Harry doesn’t know what he’s referring to, but his body tenses up regardless, and he feels his lower lip tremble. “How do you know—”

“The gentleman who brought you found you after following him,” Malfoy seethes. “Said he feared he was forcing you to keep him company.”

“I— we’re friends,” he stammers, helplessly, his throat completely dry and his cheek still burning. “He wouldn’t hurt me, Father.”

“Of course he would,” his father hisses, raising his hand in anger. “He’s been no good after his father killed himself, and now he has passed on his misery to us.”

“That’s not true,” Harry replies. He feels defensive over Silas, to his own frustration. 

“Do you think I’m blind to what’s happening between the two of you? To the rumors swirling around town? It’s an embarrassment for our family that you let yourself be seen with such a deviant individual. It’s pathetic, son.”

Draco picks at the bandage covering his neck, and the man’s eyes fly to it. Then, he moves them to Draco’s face. “Tell me,” Malfoy starts, eyes fixed on Draco. His eyes are cold and sharp, unmoving, pinning him in place. “What did you allow him to do to you?”

Draco winces at the charged question, instinctively turning his head away, but his father turns it back to him, grabbing him firmly by the face. 

“Nothing… I swear,” Draco chokes out, pressing his arms against his own chest, as if the gesture is somehow comforting. 

Fast as lightning, his father grabs him by the arm and pulls it towards him. “You lie to me,” he snarls. He moves his free hand to snatch the pin on his lapel, and he brings it to rest against Draco’s forearm. Draco feels the sharp tip of the needle dig into his skin, and he tries to pull away, but he can’t. 

“Let’s try that again,” Malfoy says, voice low. “You will answer me truthfully this time.”

He stares at Draco until the boy ducks his head and nods, a tear slipping down his nose. 

“What did you allow him to do to you?” 

“Father, I—”

“Did you let him touch you? Did you let him kiss you?” Those last two words come out with disdain, obscuring the man’s already dark gaze. 

“No,” Draco says, and Harry has to give it to him for lying through his teeth with such conviction. “It was not like that, Father. We were merely—”

“Merely what?” Malfoy’s laugh is sharp and sudden. “Playing at friendship? You presume too much, boy. Friendship is a fickle thing, particularly when entwined with undesirable company.”

The pin darts across Draco’s forearm, sinking in, and Draco cries out when pain blossoms in its wake. “Father, please listen—”

“I’ll listen when you learn to speak the truth. Until then, we shall see how much you value your little companion.”

The pin draws an ugly map on Draco’s skin, even though he’s not looking at it. He crouches forward and buries his head in his knees, pressing his face against the fabric of his trousers, clenching his free hand into a fist so tight he ends up feeling the warmth of blood under his fingers. 

He doesn’t scream. He brings his free arm up to his lips, and he bites down on it. Hard.

“Look at me,” his father calls out.

Draco’s head is spinning, and Harry fights to remain conscious despite the unbearable pain. He’s seeing dots and stars behind his eyelids, and he can smell his own blood dripping down his arm and in his mouth. 

“I said look at me ,” Malfoy repeats, much harshly this time, and he yanks Draco’s head up once again by digging his fingers into his cheeks. 

Malfoy’s eyes are terrifying. Draco shivers under his touch, staring into the dark void that swallows him whole.

His father speaks, his upper lip curling in anger. “You will learn, Draco, not to consort so shamelessly with other men. Least of all with licentious layabouts like your so-called ‘friend’.”

He then gets up and walks to the door, finding a woman standing on the other side when he opens it. He remains cold as he lets her in. “Narcissa,” he says. “You have ten minutes. We shouldn’t risk that he turns .”

The woman—Narcissa—rushes to close the door after the man has left, and she sits on the edge of the bed where Draco’s lying. 

Harry doesn’t miss the fact that Draco lets his sleeves fall down, covering both the bite on the left arm and the jagged cuts on the right one. “Mum,” he calls out, voice shaking. He looks at her, and he breaks. He sobs, “Mum, please help me.”

He hates how small he sounds. How insignificant. Helpless . 

A lock of dark hair falls out of Narcissa’s tight updo, hanging over her eyes. Her hair is brown with lighter strands, strictly rolled into a topknot. She presses her lips into a tight line, unable to speak, and instead rests a delicate hand on Draco’s aching cheek. Even in the dim light in the room, Harry can see that her eyes are wet, tears pooling at the corners.

“I’m sorry,” she finally chokes out, in a whisper. Her other hand joins the first and she cradles Draco’s head, bringing him to her. Draco leans against her small body, arms falling limply to his sides, head nestling under his mother’s chin. She hugs him tightly, rubbing his back and brushing his hair, and plants a kiss on the crown of his head. She clings to him like he’s slipping away, her breathing fast and shallow. “He’ll come around. He just needs time.”

“He won’t,” Draco replies, shutting his eyes. He can smell the perfume she uses on special occasions, the one his father is always complaining about. This is something Harry doesn’t know how he knows it. “He hates me so much , Mum.”

“Shhh,” she whispers, and her chest heaves under Draco’s cheek. “Don’t say that. He doesn’t hate you.”

“He’ll leave me in this basement to die .”

These words hang between them, harsh and brutally honest, stretching the silence. Narcissa lets out a soft gasp and pulls away to look him in the eye, now with tears flowing down her face. Still, her voice is firm and unwavering as she says, “Don’t believe that for a moment. I shall talk to him, and he’ll come to his senses. Remember,” she adds, almost breathlessly, “No matter what you are. No matter what he says— you’re still my child.”

She grabs the abandoned pin from the bedside table before attaching it to Draco’s bloodied shirt. Harry wants to tear it off, but Draco just stares at it in silence.

"His child, too," she adds.

She wipes the tears away from Draco’s eyes before her own, and then she leans in to give him a brief kiss on the forehead. She stands up, brushing her skirt and touching up her hair to tuck the strand back in. “I’ll come back for you in the morning.”

Draco is still on the bed, looking up at her. Freezing cold. “Mum—”

“In the morning,” she repeats, walking towards the door. Her silhouette is stark against the bright outline of the threshold, and the image burns itself into Harry’s brain. “I promise.”

Then, she steps out and closes the door behind her. After that, the candle goes out and Draco is left in the dark. 

Strangely enough, his mouth is starting to hurt.

—

The third time, he’s woken up by fire.

Tall flames burn around him, vibrant and suffocating, climbing up the walls and pooling on the ceiling along the thick wooden beams. There’s so much smoke that Harry can barely see anything, and he can only feel the immense heat clinging to his body and sliding down his throat.

What the hell is going on? Harry wonders, terrified. His wounds still hurt, the pain dull and persistent on one arm, and sharp and stinging on the other. The skin around his neck feels tight and swollen, suffocated under the bandage. He's lying in bed, completely still.

He blinks. The room is on fire .

He gets up hurriedly and stumbles, his legs failing him, crawling pathetically until his fingers touch the cold stone of the wall. There he curls up and covers his face with his hands.

His heart races, beating in time with Draco’s, panic surging through him. He wants to scream, to ask for help, but Draco only seems to shrink more with every passing second, trembling hands covering his nose, mouth, and eyes.

Everything burns; his eyes are watering and his throat is dry.

He’s going to die , Harry thinks, terrified, wishing he had some control over this new body. He mentally urges him to open his eyes, to look for an exit—but it’s useless. The heat swirls next to him, curling against his limbs and his skin. 

Run.

Crawl.

WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU WAITING FOR?

“Draco!” a voice calls from somewhere above him, and Harry’s heart nearly stops. He follows the sound. Through the smoke, he can glimpse the first rays of morning sun filtering through a small barred window near the ceiling. A hand is reaching through the window, extending toward him. “Draco, are you here?”

Draco struggles to get up, leaning against the wall, his eyes misty and a cough building in his throat.

He sees a face. It’s Silas .

Harry has never wanted to burn in a fire more. He tries to back away, but Draco only huddles closer to the wall and stretches out to link his fingers with the boy’s. “You came,” he croaks, his voice breaking, and he cannot contain the coughs that follow.

“Of course I came,” the boy says with a smile.

We’re burning, and the idiot is flirting , Harry thinks, anxiety filling his brain.

“I can’t get out,” Draco says, tearfully.

The boy on the other side squeezes his hand before letting go. “Yes, you can,” he says, stepping back for a moment to grasp the bars of the window with both hands.

“But how—” Draco begins, but he runs out of words when his friend lets out a grunt and pulls, removing the bars blocking the window in one swift motion. Debris falls inside the room, covering Draco and sticking to his face. Silas tosses the metal aside and reaches for Draco, offering his hand once more.

“Grab on,” he says. “Quickly.”

Draco obeys, lightheaded, and in an instant he’s being pulled up and squeezed through the narrow window, which scrapes at his stomach and knees. He falls just outside, rolling to land on Silas, who hugs him tightly against his chest.

He left you for dead in a graveyard , Harry wants to scream, but he’s talking to the void. He forced himself on you.

But Draco cannot hear him and he’s not running away, not escaping from the boy. Instead, Harry can feel his heartbeat pick up in his chest.

They stay in that position for a while, breathing heavily. Then, Silas cups Draco’s face with both hands and kisses his lips, dusty and desperate.

Harry is completely on edge. 

HE BIT YOU , he shouts once more, fighting to gain control over the situation. But it goes unanswered, as all his other pleas have.

When Draco looks at Silas, confused and mesmerized, the boy simply says, “Come with me.”

And Harry feels like crying when he hears himself reply, “Alright.”

Chapter Text

He wakes up in a daze, his body flushed and covered in sweat.

The first thing he notices are the hands holding his face, fingers gently woven into his hair—firm but careful.

He blinks a couple of times, his senses coming back slowly, like a tentative stream of water. He’s lying in bed, the light above him casting a white glow, his eyes slightly teary. Draco is right there, so close that their noses will touch if Harry moves even a little. He’s holding him like he might fly away if he doesn’t keep him close. Draco’s eyes meet his, lips parted, and Harry wants—

He doesn’t know. His heart aches when he remembers the vivid images burned in his mind, the helplessness, the fear. 

He exhales shakily, closing his eyes. Draco’s hands are warm, grounding, the weight of them familiar in a way that would be unsettling if he were anyone else. 

“Look at me,” Draco whispers, his thumbs tracing circles over Harry’s cheeks. Harry does as told, tentatively, his chest tightening. “What did you see?”

“I— I’m sorry,” Harry stammers, shaking his head. “I don’t know what happened—”

“You were screaming,” Draco interrupts, his hands leaving Harry’s face, lingering between them on the pillow. “Which one did you see?”

Harry’s eyes inevitably drop to Draco’s hands, trailing over the scars that disappear beneath the sleeve. “Which what?” he asks, dreading that he already knows the answer.

“Memory,” Draco says, and he sounds softer now, apologetic. “I’m sorry, I didn’t remember that you could— do that.” He looks away, embarrassed, his cheeks faintly pink. 

“I saw… quite a lot,” Harry admits slowly. “It was bad.”

Draco nods. “Father was there, wasn’t he?”

“I wanted to break his ribs,” Harry lets out, anger bubbling up to the surface. He’s never had this thought before, but it feels right somehow. He closes his hand into a fist, clutching it tightly. 

A small, fleeting smile appears on Draco’s face, giving him a bitter look “I used to dream about it when I was a kid,” he murmurs. “Hurting him the way he’d hurt me. The thought was intoxicating.”

Harry furrows his brows. “You never…?”

“No,” Draco replies, scoffing. “God, no. He would’ve killed me. But in my mind, I did. A thousand times over.”

He then stands abruptly, pacing around the room. His dark clothes swallow his frame, a stark contrast against the paleness of his skin and hair. Harry shifts, sitting up as Draco flips the light switch on and off. Draco then glances over at him with a raised eyebrow. “Finally, eh?”

Harry smirks, the tension breaking for a second. “Are you going to stop fucking with my lights now?” 

“You’d have to stay away from me for that to happen,” Draco replies, a quiet challenge. 

Harry eyes him, standing up and moving toward him, stopping just short of their bodies touching. He bites his lip, fighting back a smile. “Would you want that?”

Draco’s hand finds the small of Harry’s back, and Harry shivers at the touch, still not moving. “You do not want to know about the things I want,” the blond says calmly, and Harry almost faints right there. He feels a sudden, sharp flutter in his chest, breath hitching. 

He chuckles, then reaches up to the back of Draco’s neck, gently pulling him down for a quick, soft kiss. Again.

There’s no denying it anymore—whatever they’ve got going on. Something’s got to give—either his sexuality crisis, or his long-neglected need for touch. 

They pull apart, and Harry gives Draco a light slap on the cheek. “We can talk about it if you want to,” he offers, carefully. His thumb hovers over the faint scar Draco still carries from the sunburn, from the day he’d been sleeping in Harry’s room. Looking back on it, Harry doesn’t know how he could be so thick. 

Draco brushes his fingers under Harry’s shirt, over his back, and pulls him closer. “There’s nothing to talk about,” he murmurs. “The bastard died a long time ago.”

At that, as if on cue, the light starts flickering again. Harry fears it might explode, so he slaps his hand over Draco’s on the switch, turning it off.

“Okay,” Harry finally says, his voice soft. 

And Draco only repeats, “Okay.”

The pin on Harry’s sweater feels heavier as they drop the subject.

The mood lightens up when Draco suggests they clean the apartment, and Harry immediately accepts, even if just to find something to do other than throw mental darts at Lucius Malfoy. 

He should be concerned that he’s at a point in his adult life where he has real beef with a Victorian, now long-dead man, who had a bi vampire for a son. But the thought, once again, doesn’t fit properly in his brain, as if it doesn’t belong. So, he doesn’t entertain it. 

It’s easy not to think about it when this is happening.

‘This’ being Draco Malfoy without his second skin, his day-to-day uniform: the black hoodie. He ditched it to move the piles of clothing away from the floor and into the washing machine, and is now wearing one of Harry’s Arsenal t-shirts. His arms are fully exposed—and Draco seems unfazed by the fact that his scars are showing—, and so is his hair ; fair, light and resembling frost. 

Harry is staring. He’s not ashamed to admit that.

“You’re staring,” Draco points out, without bothering to look at him as he fights with the buttons on the washing machine (Harry is starting to doubt he knows what any of them are supposed to do). 

“I am not ,” is Harry’s flustered reply. 

Maybe he’s a little bit ashamed to admit that to Draco . 

He tries to distract himself by trying to move the massive stack of divorce papers still sitting on the kitchen counter—they’ve been there for months, and he should have brought them to his lawyer before then. Obviously, he hasn’t done that. But these are important documents that he should make an effort to preserve.

He throws the important documents in the bin. Who the fuck cares?

Nothing feels relevant in the grand scheme of things when one’s just discovered that vampires exist. 

One of the papers touches his finger as he throws it away—maybe as a last, final fuck you —, and Harry hisses when the cut starts to bleed. “Shit,” he mutters, holding his hand. 

Draco’s head immediately perks up. “What’s wrong?”

“Papercut.”

Draco flies to be next to him, leaving the washing machine behind, holding Harry’s hand between his with a concerned wrinkle between his eyebrows. Harry wants to smooth it over with his thumb.

“It’ll be fine,” Harry reassures him, chuckling. “They’ve probably been possessed by Ginny to make my life misera—”

“Stop,” Draco interrupts, eyes fixed on Harry’s finger. He then drags them up to Harry’s face. He seems perplexed. Scared, even. 

Harry’s heart skips a beat. “What?” 

“I can’t—” Draco blinks, shaking his head. He brings Harry’s hand up to his face, resting it against his lips. “Smell it.”

“You couldn’t either when we met,” Harry replies, confused. 

“That was different. It didn’t smell bad , but I could smell it. This—” he brings Harry’s hand closer to his nose, and Harry snatches it away with a slight slap. “I just can’t. ”

“Are you sure you’re a vampire?” Harry asks lightly, right before his neck decides to become achingly sore all of a sudden. Reminding him. 

The blond sees Harry’s pained expression and smirks, his face relaxing. “You would know, wouldn’t you?”

Harry throws a pillow at him, laughing when Draco looks at him indignantly. “You will not tease while wearing my clothes. I’ll take them from you.”

“So you want to undress me now?” Draco asks, and it should be illegal for someone so regal-looking to be talking like that. It’s doing things that Harry doesn’t want to address. 

“Shut the hell up. Oh my God. Just—” he gestures to anything, trying to steer the conversation back in its place. “Help me with this.”

Draco nods and looks around, ignoring the fact that he closed the washing machine’s door wrong and it’s now losing water. He then points to a single door, the door Harry has been avoiding, and asks, “Want to clear that one out?”

Paul’s door. Still untouched, after all these months. Even after Draco’s meltdown, everything had stayed in its place. 

Draco eyes him with intent, not budging. He knows —he must see right through him. How he’s been avoiding doing anything about it. 

With a deep sense of dread, he casually replies, “Sure.”

Chapter Text

THEN

He’d been running for months.

He was tired, filthy, and ravenous. Every fiber of his body ached, straining as if withering away. He sat at a bar, the dim light catching the rim of his glass, the liquid inside shimmering and golden. He didn’t know what it was. His teeth hurt more than usual, hidden behind chapped lips, and hunger clawed at him with a familiar, unbearable ache. 

He worked his jaw, trying to fight it. The pain from the aggression of last week still lingered. A man had swung at him, and despite Draco’s best efforts, he’d actually landed a hit. It had been a win-win situation in the end, though— nothing tasted better than the blood of someone you wanted to kill. 

But it was getting harder to escape Silas’ companions. If he had known, he might have fled with a better plan. Instead, he’d run off impulsively, no possessions, no cash, just the barest instinct for rebellion. For freedom. And now he was paying the price, his escape somehow angering—seemingly—half of Britain’s vampire population. 

Draco was starting to understand why silver vampires like them—those who survived the hunters, who lived through decades of cursed existence and unrelenting paranoia—were so feared: they knew people. He didn’t; he’d never been a part of that world. He was aware of the others, and they of him, but there was no kinship, no camaraderie. Just slight reverence because of his close relationship with Silas.

Silas, of course, had never liked that—Draco’s aversion to it. He’d always talked about their potential to rise, to take over , to lead their kind into something greater. Draco had always avoided those thoughts; the idea of it only haunted him. His condition was crippling—it made him weak, always hiding, always thirsting, always seeking the darkness. It meant flirting with desperate drunk people in dark alleyways and busy nightclubs, hoping they could help alleviate his constant discomfort. 

Another glass clinked against the bar, spilling its contents over Draco’s hand. The person who’d sat next to him quickly muttered an apology, but Draco didn’t react. He was too lost in thought, too focused on where he’d go next.

Not Martha; he’d already overstayed his welcome at her place, and he’d felt her and Bernice’s patience wearing thin by the end of it. He owed them everything—he’d learned more about himself in those two weeks than he had in years. They’d shown him something he’d never thought possible: that vampirism wasn’t the end. Not if you found the right person.

Not if you found your soulmate . 

But he knew better than to believe in such fantasies; a damned man like him wouldn’t be so lucky. He’d left his luck back in that burned down building decades ago. 

He took a long sip. It tasted disgusting; his lip curled and he spat the liquid back into the glass.

Next to him, “Can I buy you a drink?”

He looked over at the stranger, ignoring the way his teeth seemed to grow and dig into his lip at the sight of someone standing so close. He could smell his blood: rich and tangy. 

The guy was big, probably two heads taller than him, and heavy-set. He had tan skin and golden blond hair, short and curly. His clothes were ill-fitting, a bit too tight and a little awkward, and they looked decidedly worn out. He was a bit broader than Draco would have usually gone for—he had a thing for people shorter than him, and often found himself drawn to androgyny—, but it could work for the night. So, he nodded. “Please do. This one’s terrible.”

The stranger laughed and slid his stool closer to him as he motioned to the bartender. Draco sized him up as he did, already scheming in his mind how he’d get the guy alone. Because, God , his blood had a strong smell. 

The guy turned to him. “What’s your name, by the way?”

This was usually the first step: introduction, small talk, followed by a promise of something —usually sex, but he had used the ‘cigarrette break’ excuse a few times, too. Either of them worked just fine. He never really got to any of it anyway; all of them fainted after he bit them. 

He tilted his head, catching the man in an endearing lopsided smile. “My name is Silas,” he said. “What’s yours?”

The man’s smile only grew wider. “I’m Paul. Nice to meet you.”

NOW

He still has the same damn jacket . 

In the closet. It hangs in there, forgotten, blending in between a mess of piles of clothes, stacked up notebooks and a few books. He absentmindedly touches it with the tips of his fingers.

“He used to wear that every day for weeks,” Harry says, suddenly appearing next to him. His eyes are soft as he looks at the chaos inside the closet. “I tried to buy him a new one, but he wouldn’t take it.”

Draco lets the jacket go, staring at it for a few seconds more before bluntly asking, “He died, didn’t he?”

Harry doesn’t answer right away. He shifts, his weight making the floorboards creak. When Draco finally glances at him, his jaw is tight. 

“Yeah,” Harry says at last, voice low. “About three months ago.”

Draco doesn’t move. His fingers twitch at his side, the faint ghost of that scent—rich and tangy—coming back to him. It’s absurd to think that he’d remember something so fleeting, but it’s there. Gnawing at him. 

The silence between them stretches on, thick and suffocating. No. It can’t be. 

“How?” he finally asks, his voice barely a whisper.

Harry looks away, letting out a long breath. “How what?”

“How did he die?” Draco’s voice is flat, but his hands curl into fists at his sides.

Harry presses his eyes shut for a second, biting the inside of his cheek. “He… I guess you could say he got pretty sick. It went so fast, by the time he went to the doctor, he was already halfway gone.”

Draco’s stomach churns, and he brings up a hand to his chest to claw at his speeding heart. Dread washes over him, cold realization setting in.  

Paul died .

THEN

Paul studied him, his eyes warm but sharp, as if trying to figure him out. “Rough night?” he asked, leaning an elbow on the bar. 

Draco chuckled, dragging his finger around the rim of the glass. “Rough decade .”

He wasn’t joking—but Paul’s laugh came easily, and it was startingly genuine. 

“You don’t look half bad for it,” the man said with a grin. 

Draco hummed as he played along, tapping his fingers against the glass. “Flatter me all you want, but I believe that no drink is ever free.”

The man’s hair caught the light as he leaned in to speak closer to him, looking like a halo around his head. “Fair enough. To be honest, I’m just looking for someone to keep me company tonight.”

This was familiar territory. It was surprisingly easy to get things going when alcohol was involved—though Draco had been told many times that his pretty face could turn anyone’s head. 

So, he let a smirk appear on his lips. “Oh, I can keep you company alright. I am in hiding, after all—I’ve got nothing better to do.”

He got another laugh from Paul; this was good for him, a sign that things were going smoothly. The man took the glass the bartender was handing to him and gave it to Draco, who downed it in one shot just to be done with it. 

A low whistle followed. “You drink well.”

“Did you actually want to do something, or were you just saying things?” Draco said, cutting through the bullshit. He could tell when people were stalling, and he needed to know if he could even count on that guy. 

He even used his other voice, the one that always worked when he was trying to make people think he wanted to get it on. He rarely got turned on by this process, but he was good at pretending he did. 

Paul raised both eyebrows, probably surprised by the direct question, and left his glass on the bar to fully turn to face him. Draco could see the familiar haziness in his eyes, the mental fog taking over. 

“Let’s go, then,” Paul said.

NOW

He remembers the alcohol. He remembers the dark corners, the dim lighting, and the faint sound of some radio station blasting some outdated single from the last century.

He remembers a man, and a bite, and the intention to leave him behind—the way he did with everyone else. 

But Paul was different. He’d asked him to stay; asked him questions, groggily watched his face with a swollen red mark in his neck, and listened . 

That night, they’d spoken well into the early morning hours, until an exhausted bartender came to kick them out. And a creepily intuitive Paul had given Draco his number when the latter had refused to step foot outside. The sun was already out, and he wasn’t risking it for a potential hookup. 

He remembers that they met again. And what Paul became right after.

He watches as Harry takes the jacket and leaves it on the bed, ready to fold and throw away. Seeing it without its owner makes his heart hurt.

But then Harry suddenly turns around and gives him a wide smile, and Draco’s breath catches. He can see that Harry is putting on a brave face for him.  He didn’t want to do it—but he is . Draco wants to reach out and grab him, hug him tightly and kiss him until both of them forget how to breathe. 

For the sake of Paul’s memory, he keeps his composure. This time. He already messed it up once.

He doesn’t even know how he ended up in Paul’s room when he had that first meltdown (which, for the record, was entirely Harry’s fault). His feet had just… guided him there, as if he was being pulled in that direction by an invisible force. And Draco’s energy had felt comfortable there, between those four walls, confined within a space of someone he’d had such a strong connection with. 

And then it was all blinding white light, up until Harry figured it out. His body has felt different ever since—quieter, more still, more… present ? 

Before, there were days where he felt like he didn’t exist—like people could walk right through him without noticing him. Time would move slowly and it would drown him, keeping the walls up. He was unreachable.

He doesn’t feel like that anymore. And, to be honest, it’s quite scary. He’s also annoyingly warm, and frustratingly hungry, for some reason. 

Next to him, Harry is making a big show of emptying the closet until it’s just a bar with some hangers in it. His eyes are crinkled in an unusual way, forcing his expression into an almost painful mask. Draco’s heart is beating out of his chest.

“Well, should I have his sister pay for transportation? This is a fucking lot of stuff,” Harry comments, in what he probably thinks is a nonchalant way. He’s almost being smothered by a sea of clothing, books and notebooks. 

Their eyes meet, and Draco’s heart just goes . 

Paul is dead. 

Draco killed him.

He pulls Harry in for a hug. 

Chapter Text

This time, he’s running. 

The meadow stretches endlessly ahead of him. Tall, green grass sways in the warm breeze, parting to let him through. His arm hangs loose at his side, hand stretched wide open, fingers skimming the grass tips. Behind him, charcoal-black clouds wash away like ink on a running sink, taking the thunder with them. It still shakes in Draco’s chest, deep and persistent, even when it’s no longer there.

He doesn’t know exactly what he’s chasing. Something. Someone . The idea is blurred in his mind. But he cannot find it—or them — yet. He’s been running for a while. 

He’ll reach them. He’ll run to the end of the meadow and fling himself off the edge if it’s necessary. 

Reality blinks. 

The shift is sudden, like a frame spliced into a reel of film. Draco stumbles but stays upright, his surroundings warping briefly before settling again. Immediately after, he looks up and he’s not alone anymore. They’re there with him. 

Bernice and Martha.

It shouldn’t make sense—Draco knows they must have passed away decades ago. He was merely a runaway when he’d met them, frozen young and inexperienced in his own condition. As it turned out, the 1920s weren’t particularly kind to strays like him. Especially the ones who’d run away from Silas’ protection. But they had taken him in— they had helped him.

It was not every day that one found a vampire who had ceased to be . 

He stops short, an arm’s length away, and his breath catches. Their silhouettes are faint and hazy, their bodies translucid, bending the light in a way that is definitely not normal. Their skirts flow gently, and their hands are linked together. 

Draco waves hesitantly. They smile. 

“It’s been a while,” he says, voice trembling. He thought he’d lost those smiles to time.

Bernice nods, her short blond hair brushing her chin. “It has been, hasn’t it?” Her voice is melodic and sweet, the way it used to be all those years ago. She reaches out to place a hand on Draco’s arm, but her hand goes right through it—Draco feels a surge of warmth where her fingers fade into his skin. “You’ve been keeping busy, I hope.”

Draco smiles faintly. “Trying to,” he admits. “Managed to get away from him . Again.”

He doesn’t specify who Him is, but the women know. They nod knowingly in understanding. 

Bernice sighs. “You’ve grown so much, dear boy.”

He hasn’t. Not in a century. But he doesn’t bother to refute it, and he returns their smiles anyway. “A lot has happened,” he says instead, glancing down at his hands. “You would enjoy the 21st century.”

Martha tilts her head. “Flying cars?”

“Not quite,” he replies. “Getting there.”

Martha laughs again, a little louder this time. The sound rings pleasantly in Draco’s ears. “Well, that’s disappointing. I thought you might have some good news for us.”

“No Third World War yet,” Draco comments, jokingly. “Made a new friend.”

He mentions it like it’s not important, even though it is . It’s life-changing.

Bernice’s expression shifts. She leans in, eyes softening. “So you did find them. Your soulmate?”

Draco’s chest tightens, because of course they would want to know. They told him about it, after all. He’d been searching ever since. He nods, a bit breathlessly, “I did.”

It still feels unreal. Even after being told about it, and seeing how it worked for Martha after she’d met Bernice, he hadn’t believed there would be a person out there for him. He was a creature of the night, and for him the night was the darkest.

He’s always dealt with the infinite—the never-ending, ever-stretching passage of time, relegating him to the shadows. He was infinite. Different. Harry is the opposite. Not all-encompassing. Not eternal. And Draco is just figuring out how much he likes that about him. How much smaller, but also important, he makes him feel.

The two women light up at his answer, their figures shimmering in the afternoon’s golden light. Their smiles widen and they once again try to reach out to him, hands on his shoulder and arms, despite their inability to touch him. 

“That’s incredible,” Bernice beams. Wrinkles frame her big brown eyes, faint reminders of the time passed. “We prayed for you, even after you went on your own.”

“You will absolutely love it, dear,” Martha adds. “Are you excited?”

“I’m scared,” Draco admits, anxiety rising inside him. Because he is . He’s terrified. “I don’t want to die.”

Martha’s smile turns sympathetic. “You don’t realize yet that dying is a privilege that our kind doesn’t often get.” She turns to her partner and grabs her by the hand, bringing it up to her lips to kiss it tenderly. She then adds, “What matters is that you find someone worth living for.”

“And worth dying with,” Bernice says sotfly. “You grow old with them, and in the end, time will bring you closer.”

He hasn’t had the chance to do that, ever. All his previous partners—and Paul, though he’d been merely an anchor to keep him tethered— have drifted away from him, carried away by the unyielding pass of time. And he’s remained still. 

He wonders how things will change if he becomes normal . He almost doesn’t dare to imagine a life with Harry, well into old age. That hadn’t been in the cards for him up until a few months ago. Finding that person and finally fulfilling that fantasy still feels like a dream. He never fully knew how much he dreaded his condition until he met him— and now he has a way out.

“I will try,” Draco finally says, heart pounding. He painfully adds, “I think I love him.”

“And it would be worrisome if you didn’t,” Martha replies, reassuringly. “You should embrace him fully. Let him see you.”

Harry’s already seen almost everything there is to see about him. Except…

The two figures blink, as if the wind is unraveling them. “You should take him back,” Bernice says, and in that moment her face shifts and Draco can catch, for a fraction of a second, the very familiar brown hair with strands of white-blond woven all through it. His breath catches as the woman continues, voice changing, “You should take him home.”

And then, everything is falling apart. The ground under his feet gives way, swallowing him under, and he tries to grab at the two women without success. He yells out, “Mum!”, but the face is already gone, and so are the women. He passes out in a whirlwind of colored flashing lights and fading voices. Then, it’s all still.

When he wakes up, once again lying next to Harry in the small, narrow bed, he has only one idea in mind: he must take Harry home. His home.

It must mean something— he hasn’t had a dream in more than a hundred years. 

Chapter Text

A few hours later, they’re on the move.

The bus hums softly beneath them, the engine rattling with every turn of the wheel. Outside, the night is still dark, painting the sky pitch black, leaving only the stars to be seen. Draco sits upright, head resting against the glass, his eyes tracking every sign they pass. 

Harry is half-asleep beside him, with his head on Draco’s shoulder. His hand is lying on Draco’s thigh, fingers curling slightly, though it doesn’t seem that he’s doing it on purpose. Still, since he left it there they’ve been getting all kinds of weird looks from the driver on the rearview mirror. It’s starting to piss Draco off. 

But he’s a different person now. Instead of getting up to give the old man the beating of his life, he stays put and lets his finger trace circles all around Harry’s hand. He also tries to keep himself from noticing that he doesn’t feel like draining the man of all his blood—or anyone, for that matter. 

He hasn’t drunk in days . If that’s not a sign, he doesn’t know what is.

The bus jolts as it goes over a bump, and Harry shuffles, pressing his face further into Draco’s shoulder with a low groan. Draco looks down at him, smiling faintly. 

“Your head is very heavy,” he whispers to the boy’s ear, not wanting to be heard by the old man. 

Harry purses his lips, his eyebrows twitching for a second, but he doesn’t open his eyes. “Wake me up at a reasonable hour next time,” he replies groggily. His glasses are crooked and fogged up, giving him a look that makes Draco want to fling himself out the window. Or do something that the old man probably wouldn’t like. “I was having such a good dream, y’know.”

“I don’t even want to know—”

“You were a ferret,” Harry continues, because he just can’t stop talking when he’s sleepy. “You know ferrets?”

He bites back a smirk. “Of course I do, Harry.”

“It was funny. You kept trying to sell me an apple for an extremely unreasonable price.”

Draco sighs and looks up to the ceiling, wondering what Harry must have been smoking to have such bizarre dreams. “I don’t eat apples. Sorry to disappoint.”

Harry lets out a small laugh, rubbing his eyes. “I’m sure that you do. In another universe.”

That’s when Draco turns back to the window, scanning the dark road outside. They pass a few old houses, and then a faded sign, and his stomach sinks.

“Fuck,” he mutters, leaning forward. “I think we missed it.”

Harry stifles a yawn. “How do you know where it is, anyway? Wherever it is we’re going.”

“Some houses are still there from when I last visited,” Draco explains, gathering his things in a panic and pushing Harry to do the same. They stand up. “Fuck, fuck, fuck—”

They walk to the door, and he signals to the driver to stop anywhere. Harry asks, “Why are you panicking?”

“We don’t have much time.” Harry looks at him in confusion, and he clarifies, “It’s still dark, but not for long.”

He gets an anxious “Oh” in response. He nods. 

They make it out of the bus unscathed, though the driver seemed like he wanted to call the police on them. If it’d be for looking suspicious or looking gay, Draco doesn’t know. 

The bus left them on a pretty sad-looking stop that has no street lamps nearby. They both look around, trying to see where they are. Draco is particularly frustrated, because his sight in the dark has worsened significantly in the last few days. He can barely make out Harry’s dark silhouette next to him.

He would have rather died than do this before, but he now reaches out to hold his hand. Harry doesn’t fight it, and he hums approvingly when their fingers lace together, standing closer and rubbing his shoulder against Draco’s. 

For the first time, he doesn’t mind not having his sight back. 

The walk to the place is just as long as he thought it’d be. The path they take is uneven, overgrown in places, and by the time they pass the neighborhood, they’re already seeing the timid hues of the early hours of the morning. The sky is a faint shade of purple and gray, peeking through the trees. The sun is still not out, but Draco grunts and quickens his pace anyway. They jog briskly through the forest, hands still linked, followed only by the sound of their own footsteps. The air is still, heavy and humid, and Draco clings to his padded jacket for some warmth. He’s not used to the cold, either.

Harry holds his hand tighter and grins. “Finally feeling the winter, eh?”

“I don’t know how you guys do it,” Draco replies, watching as his breath dissipates in a white cloud in front of him. “I might not make it.”

“You are.”

“But I’m—”

“Run!” Harry exclaims, and he starts sprinting without explaining further. 

Draco tsks and runs right behind him, shouting, “Are you mad?”

“It’ll keep you warm!”

Surprisingly, it does . He huffs and groans, but he manages to keep up. In a matter of seconds, his cheeks are hot, and he’s having palpitations.

Eventually, Harry slows down to let him go first, as he’s technically the one who knows where they’re going. Draco looks to both sides to keep track of their surroundings, not wanting to miss it once again. 

Then he sees it. They’re walking past a lake. 

He almost drowned in that lake when he was three—he remembers it. When he’d come back, decades later, he’d stayed far away from it. 

Then, they’re walking past a broken down stone shed. 

Silas had kissed him senseless there when they’d run away. He also remembers it. 

His chest does that thing it always does when he thinks of Silas. The pain runs deep, like it’s been carved all over his skin with a knife. There’s also the fear. He lets Harry’s hand go as they leave it behind, not wanting the boy to feel how tense he just got. 

And finally, the trees part, revealing the clearing— a small, quiet space in the forest, where the last remnants of the night are slipping away. They have no shadow as they walk into it, feeling the cool air around them. Draco stands still for a moment, letting his heart settle before it jumps out of his chest. 

The memories are there, but to his surprise, they’re much more muted this time—faded, blurry, and he’s having a hard time holding onto them. The house (now gone, burnt and buried under a century’s weight) seems much smaller now in his mind, and it keeps shifting, changing, like a dream he never had. The screams appear weak, the fire almost cold, and he fights himself to retain this last bit of himself before he loses it. But it’s hard . 

He looks down at the ground, at the unkempt, dead grass under his feet. It’s covered in a thin layer of ice, and he breaks it with every step. 

Harry says something, but Draco doesn’t hear him. His pace slows, and he keeps walking until he reaches the edge of the trees. There, the ground dips slightly, and in the dim light, he can see the outline of something barely visible—a small, uneven slab of stone, half-covered in snow. 

Draco crouches beside it, brushing the snow away. It stings his fingers, but he keeps going, moving his hand until the flat, stone surface emerges. 

The slab is rough, uneven. Ugly. The letters are jagged and tilted, like they were carved in a rush. The engraving reads:

Draco Lucius Malfoy

June 5, 1882 — September 2, 1898

In Loving Memory

Below, written with—seemingly—more desperation, there is a brief epitaph:

Thy sun has risen, not set,

Thy life is now beyond

The reach of death or change;

Not ended, but begun.

He recognized the handwriting all those years ago, when he visited, and he broke down at the sight of it. Silas held him up, threading his fingers into his hair, muttering things in his ear. He was inconsolable. 

Now, he smiles and traces the letters with his finger. 

He sees Harry when he sits right next to him, in silence, feet disappearing under the snow. Neither of them say anything—Draco just keeps tracing the words, like they mean something.

They used to, many years ago. But he’s starting to forget.

Silence.

The forest stretches endlessly before them under a sky of silver, the clouds shifting over them. Draco sits motionless before the gravestone, letting his hand drop. 

Harry shifts, and their shoulders touch once again, breaking the cold. 

“She never knew what happened,” Draco mutters. “She thought I died that night. In a way, she wasn’t wrong.”

She hadn’t been. Silas—and everything after him—had fundamentally changed who he was, to his very core. He had learned to live again; different rules, different logic. 

And now he’s going through the same damn process all over again. 

“Are you angry about it?” Harry asks, carefully. 

“No,” Draco replies, simply. The word comes out easily, which surprises him. But he isn’t—not anymore. “She deserved to mourn the death of her child; I’m not that person anymore. I haven’t been for a long time.” He can’t help the bitter tone that seeps through his words. He’s not angry, but resigned. 

“You don’t believe that,” Harry says, softly. 

And Draco turns sharply to look at him, words bubbling up his throat, but they die the moment his eyes find Harry’s. 

His eyes are big, light green in the ever-growing morning light. His hair is messy, his lips are chapped, and his glasses are broken because he tripped on a branch before, but—

But.

Who knew one person could have an entire galaxy behind their eyes?

He thinks of a universe where he hasn’t found him. Or loved him. The idea scares him, because, truly, what a miserable life that would be. 

He has to keep telling himself that it doesn’t matter; not here, not to them. He did find him, and he does love him. And he’s convinced that he would choose him—in a hundred lifetimes, and in any version of reality. 

He kisses him. 

It feels much more present, now, when he does it; like nothing else exists but the two of them. This time, as he’s pulled closer into a hug and he buries his face in the crook of Harry’s neck, there are no dreams—none to haunt him. 

The past—his childhood years in the happy home, chasing ducks and reading books and climbing trees with scraped knees; the thrill of being a teenager, roaming graveyards and dreaming of boys; his mother’s face, and voice, and smell, when she had held him that last night before he fled—all these fade from his mind as though they never were. 

He does not remember.

When he lets go, he only knows Harry. 

For a long moment, there’s only the sound of the wind blowing through the trees, along with some timid birds that have flown in to rest in the highest branches. Draco drops his eyes to his lap. 

A ray of sunlight has made it through the clouds, and is lighting up his hand. He stares at the rare sight, watching the way his pale skin shines and feeling the warmth wash over him. 

He blinks. It doesn’t burn.

For the first time in a century , it doesn’t burn. 

He looks up at Harry, only to find his eyes wide in surprise. They stare at each other, mouths open, and they both understand. It worked . 

This time, when he gets up, he doesn’t look back. The old gravestone remains, tilted, ugly—forgotten. A luminous blur fills Draco’s mind as he turns his back to it, facing the clearing, now bathed in the morning sun. 

Harry starts walking before he does, motioning at him to follow. His smile is big, relaxed. “Come on,” he says, “You can do this now.”

It used to terrify him—the smallness of human life. Its fleeting moments. Its tiny joys. But here, in the middle of nowhere, next to Harry and nobody else… his world feels manageable for the first time in centuries. No vastness. No endless, yawning night. Just this. The world swirls around him, no longer infinite, collapsing and expanding all at once. It is everything, and it is enough . 

Draco steps fully into the sun. And he is reborn.