Chapter Text
Draco lies on their bed and listens to the lulling sound of running water. He debates joining Harry in the shower, decides not to. Something flutters inside his chest. Draco opens his mouth, trying to force the words out, but he hasn’t uttered a thing in years. The irony: mere minutes before Potter offed the Dark Lord and saved them all, a stray curse hit Draco in the throat.
Fate’s a bitch.
Maybe it was karma. Draco remembers the way he’d let thoughtless words fly in the past; malicious, cruel taunts. Now he’s learned to appreciate the weight of them. He likes to listen to his friends’ inexhaustible voices, words round as apples tumbling from their mouths. Draco knew the exact moment Potter wanted to kiss him by the way his voice changed when addressing him. Suspicion had given way to something tremulous and hesitant.
The shower turns off. The words inside Draco press against his lips, suffocating him.
Potter kissed him outside the pub on a Friday night. His eyes searched Draco’s face. I want to kiss you again, Draco signed.
They kissed again. Potter became Harry, and his words softened like pebbles on the shore, licked tender by the sea. At night they use a spell that projects speech in the air. Words float over them like quiet fireworks in the night sky, except for the ones Harry whispers in Draco’s ear: I love you.
Harry walks in the room, towelling his hair. He sits on the bed.
Draco hasn’t said it back, not in sign language, not with that spell. He thinks of it, though, when he cooks Harry’s favourite meal, or when he soaps Harry’s back in the shower, leaving kisses in the wake of the streaming water. He thinks of it when he brings a cup of tea to Harry after a fight, signing I’m sorry.
Harry catches Draco staring. ‘What is it?’
Draco sits up, shuffles forward and presses his mouth hard on Harry’s, almost painfully.
Harry gazes in his eyes and smiles. ‘Me too.’
THE END