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It was morning and Draco was awake. He stared at the ceiling for a long moment, at the white paint and popcorn texture, the morning light striking through the swirl of dust motes floating silver in the air. Beside him, Harry made a soft sound in his sleep somewhere between a whine and a whimper and curled closer in on himself. He slept in the tightest of contortions like he was trying to fit himself into a space far too small for an adult man.
Draco’s skin was cool where the blanket had been tugged away in the night. He was beginning to learn that Harry was an incorrigible hog, pulling the duvet back over himself no matter how many times Draco had put it back in place. Harry had even managed to steal a blanket that Draco had conjured up when he woke up shivering to find Harry tangled up and dreaming sweetly in the sheets.
Though Harry’s softened sleeping form compelled him to stay, Draco felt the urge to get out of bed itching under his skin. At the Manor, stillness had been dangerous. If he was not asleep or eating, he was better off moving from one room to the next, finding tasks to appear busy or staying as resolutely out of the way as possible. Even secluded in his private rooms, waiting in bed for too long had been an easy source of punishment. A part of him wished he could remain in bed with Harry now if only in spite but the pull remained insistent, biting at his chest and urging him to roll out from under the blankets.
He hissed as his feet touched the cool wooden floor, freezing against his bare skin. Harry didn’t stir. Draco shifted the last corner of the comforter still left over his thigh onto the bare white sheets just beside Harry’s open palm. Draco peeled himself off of the bed, moving at a snail’s pace and barely breathing. There was a thick shag rug in a deep grey color just an arm’s length from the bed and Draco stepped onto it, sinking his toes into the warmer texture.
A car careened down the road outside, honking noisily and Draco scowled at the window, irritated at the disturbance, but still Harry didn’t move. He was deep in a dream, it seemed, shut eyes flicking back and forth, the barest twitch of his fingertips against the pale bedsheets. He was not entirely peaceful, quavering in that perfect liminality between quiescent sleep and wakefulness one only found in dreams.
Draco pulled his discarded white button-up shirt off the back of the chair in the corner, staring out the window as he did. The cool winter air had left a subtle fog around the corners of the pane, blurring out the single leafless tree below. Outside, the city was just beginning to wake, cars moving at a sleep-slow pace along the orange-tinted sunrise streets. Draco did the shirt buttons up in the middle, just enough to feel a little less bare in only his thin black pants. There was no hope for his hair. The product he had put in it last night to keep it neat had done the opposite, leaving it sleep-rumpled and squished in at the side.
He plucked his glasses from their abandoned place on the nightstand, pushing them onto his nose and blinking as his eyes adjusted. These were an unfortunate new addition. The wizarding occulist had said that years of prolonged dependence on vision correction charms had left his eyes weaker. The only reparation was the pair of thin silver frames he now donned more often than not, a sacrifice borne by his vanity.
Draco did not yet know the intimacies of Harry’s room. He barely knew the flat. Admittedly, they had spent very little time admiring the furniture. He knew that Harry lived alone, though he had friendly neighbors who liked to begin conversations late at night as they were stumbling back arm in arm and fumbling with the keys. He had seen the living room with its wide leather couch, which was far too nice to be Harry’s taste, and its low coffee table. He had seen the room lit with candles and decorated with open pizza boxes and two empty bottles of wine, one white for Harry, the heathen, and an expensive red for Draco.
There was an office, or so Harry had insinuated, but that might have been a bit of creative dirty talk. The bathroom was pretty with tiny blue tile decorations and a ridiculous shower that was more posh than even Draco would have bought, three separate spouts and sixteen pressure settings. Fancy accoutrements or no, Draco had certainly benefited from said shower.
Draco pushed open the wooden bedroom door, turning the antique glass doorknob, and padded into the hall. He skimmed his fingers over the pale cream walls. It was exceedingly quiet in the flat with Harry asleep. The noise of the previous night’s club still thudded in his ears. Draco and Harry had only been under the neon lights for a handful of minutes before admitting to themselves that there was no need to stay out. They both wanted this. Harry's side-along to the flat had been swift and neat.
The silence now was unsettling. His footsteps, bare on the uncarpeted hall, felt impossibly loud. His breathing like gusts of wind. The little kitchenette was a welcome sight. He stepped over to ridiculous Muggle cafetiere in the corner and tugged it out, flicking a hand to set the kettle to boil with a snap of wandless magic.
The act of pouring out the grinds in the base of the press was a steadying one. He moved carefully, neatly, afraid to drop even the smallest crumb onto the counter, though maybe that wouldn’t be so bad: leaving a little mark of himself on this place, a stain of coffee on the granite countertop. He shook the grounds into the press, breathing in the fresh scent, already more awake for the smell of coffee on the air.
When the water boiled, he let it sit for a moment, watching the steam curl lazily into the air. He poured it over the grounds and waved a finger, stirring it gently and watching the inky crumbs swirl into the water. In the moments while it steeped, he ran his hands over the smooth countertops. They were a bold black and green granite, cold under the touch and as always, perfectly, strikingly clean.
Feeling only slightly guilty for prying (as the excuse of looking for cream was always available to him), Draco opened the fridge and looked inside. He had expected an abundance of takeout or a total lack of food, as was usually the case at Blaise’s flat. Instead, the shelves were overflowing with fresh produce and tupperware, evidence of an extensive cooking regime.
Eyeing the closed bedroom door, Draco opened one container, sniffing at a rich yellow curry. He put a pinky into the sauce and tasted it, shutting his eyes as the flavors burst across his tongue, sweet and spicy and perfectly balanced. Oh, Harry was a good cook.
With a slight flare of jealousy at those who Harry had cooked for, Draco slid the container back into the fridge, licking the last of the curry from his pinky for fear of being caught. He wondered, as he plucked the creamer from the fridge, who it was exactly that had had the chance to taste Harry’s food. Was it only the Granger-Weasley pair? Were there other people he was seeing? Draco could not fault him for that if it were the case, as they were not exclusive.
And yet, a certain bitterness clouded his tongue at the idea of someone else taking up his place on the bed, of someone else stirring two teaspoons of sugar and a good dollop of cream into Harry’s coffee and bringing it to him, someone else hoping that the smell would bring him out of his sleep-groggy state. It took some searching for Draco to find the mugs in the corner cabinet, between the plates and the rather overwhelming overflowing spice shelf. There was an odd mix of mugs, as though Harry had received a matching set in white with horizontal blue stripes and added to the collection with various novelties and handmade things. Draco thought he might recognize the handiwork of Luna Lovegood in a few of the more oddly shaped ceramics.
Barely hiding a smile, Draco slid a finger through the handle of the flashing grey mug with Harry’s face emblazoned, Falcons quidditch robes flapping in an unseen wind. It was a very flattering image, and if Draco remembered right, this particular sort of novelty mug erased clothing when filled with hot water. He set that and one of the more ordinary mugs on the counter, reaching to press the plunger down on the cafetiere slowly. The freshly brewed coffee rose to the top, bubbling up and through the plunger.
He poured the cups, stirring sugar and cream into Harry’s plain mug and leaving the other black. Sure enough, as the coffee warmed the porcelain, Harry’s robes disappeared, leaving him flitting back and forth across the mug clad only in a pair of pants emblazoned with the Falcon’s logo.
It was easy to slide back into Harry’s room, a coffee balanced in each hand. Harry had still not moved, though he was snoring slightly and breathing more quickly and Draco thought he might open his eyes soon.
He set the plain mug on the little nightstand just beside Harry’s glasses and looked at him for a moment. Harry had shaved the sides of his hair so that just the top was long and shaggy (and perfect for grabbing onto at the right moments). His cheeks had a flush of morning stubble, though he was usually bare-cheeked and smooth to the touch. His eyelashes were a soft brown shade, darker than his sun-kissed hair.
There was the neat curve of his cheekbone to his nose, which was slightly crooked (a bludger to the face, Harry said, and though Draco teased him for his brutish look, he secretly found it incredibly attractive). The little spot beneath his nose and above his lips had a little shadow to it. This was one of Draco’s favorite parts, though he would never say such sappy things out loud. When he laughed, Harry’s lips crinkled there. When he frowned, that little spot gave away the expression right before Harry would make it. When they kissed, Harry’s nose brushing up against Draco’s, he could press a tiny kiss there in the second before they broke apart for breath.
Harry murmured something in his sleep, rolling towards the smell of coffee and Draco stepped away, embarrassed at his close study. He pushed his glasses up and pressed both hands around the mug, searching the room for something to do to appear busy. When nothing obvious emerged, he found himself peering at the array of trinkets atop Harry’s dresser.
The curl of steam rolling from the coffee mug with the most perfect aroma made him consider his cup first. Draco worried for a moment if ought to go and clean up the grounds, rinse the cafetiere and put everything back as he had found it, but a more rebellious side of him kept him in place before the dresser. He looked at the trinkets scattered there as though he had every right to do so.
The dresser was of a neat wood, not mahogany but something equally sturdy -- black walnut, perhaps -- and carefully made. It was understated in design, much like all the furniture in the apartment. The dresser had square stone handles with the shape of a monstera leaf pressed in gold gilt on the surface of each drawer pull, the only acquiescence to decoration in the bureau’s straight lines and unassuming quality.
There was the obligatory picture frame with Lily and James Potter laughing in front of a fountain in pride of place. There was a small pile of mixed Wizarding and Muggle money tossed as if pulled from a pocket before doing laundry and some pocket lint stuck to a folded grocery list.
There was a candle, wide with a wooden wick, half-burned but with a small layer of dust accumulated on the surface of the partly-melted wax. This candle had been burning the first time he had been in Harry’s room, or so he thought, and he wondered vaguely if Harry had had anyone here since then, and if he had, if they had not merited the candle.
Draco didn’t look very closely at the little orange pill bottle pushed to the back corner. It wasn’t his place, curious as he might be. Though was looking at any of it really his place?
Draco brought the mug of coffee to his lips, sipping carefully to test the temperature. It was that perfect and fleeting temperature where it was almost hot enough to burn his tongue but still bearable. The flavor burst across his tongue, accents of chocolate and nuts in the warm mocha flavor.
Harry had good taste. This was certainly not supermarket coffee. He wondered, as the coffee settled in his throat and warmed him from the chest up, if Harry shopped at the little bodega cafe right near the entrance to Horizont Alley. It was Muggle and tiny and few people knew it existed but they always had the best mixes and Draco knew the owner was like to add a hint of spice to the grounds and it always balanced out perfectly. He wondered, and sipped, and looked at Harry’s things with unabashed curiosity.
Folded up on the back corner of the dresser was a little leather journal. He almost laughed to hismelf at the idea of perfect Potter keeping a journal, but a closer look at the cover (only the cover, he was not a snoop) showed the leather-hammered initials, S.O.B. Not Harry’s, then, but Draco wasn’t certain whose.
There was a small mirror beside the dresser, hung up on the wall, framed with bright stained glass. It looked handmade with a myriad of blue and green glass held together with slightly sloppy soldering. There was an odd little shard of extra mirror glass fused into the corner, but on closer inspection, it didn’t seem to show the room properly. Magic mirrors were never safe, and he looked quickly away, at the main part of it instead. He took in his own appearance, frowning at the blooming bruise at his collarbone, and nearly jumped in surprise at the sight behind him. Harry was awake and watching.
“Morning, Malfoy,” Harry grumbled, voice scratchy with sleep and perhaps a bit of their previous night’s activities. Draco took a moment to compose his expression into something more formal and less obviously bare before he turned to face Harry. He felt out of place, no space in the bed as Harry stretched out of his closed sleeping position, bare limbs on every inch of bedsheet and pillow. Draco was an interloper.
“You snore,” Draco muttered, looking anywhere but at the endeared smile on Harry’s face, holding the cup of coffee like it was a lifeline.
“So I’ve been told,” Harry shrugged. He was squinting at Draco with blurry eyes -- that was his “looking at Draco without wearing glasses” expression, Draco had decided -- and was holding the cup of coffee with an insouciant air.
Draco stepped towards the foot of the bed, knocking a knee against the wide wooden footboard. It was certainly an antique if Draco had any eye on him, though he couldn’t quite assign its time and place. It was very sturdy, he had learned.
“I should be off,” Draco said, lifting his chin. Though he didn’t know how long Harry had been watching, any further dalliance would only be evidence of his interest in Harry and Harry knowing such things could not be borne.
“Ron made it,” Harry said, nodding to the mirror. Draco looked back at it, reassessing its quality. The younger Weasley boy had made a minor name for himself in various forms of handcrafted charmwork objects. It seemed he did far better when allowed to experiment than he did when assigned homework, but that was a quality of many of the Weasley brothers. “The er-- extra bit there, though,” Harry nodded to it, “that’s linked to a pub in Hogsmeade. Aberforth’s, did you ever go?”
Draco shrugged, though he knew the pub well. Aberforth Dumbledore had not been welcoming to his patronage during his final years at Hogwarts.
“It was a gift,” Harry said, voice going a bit softer. Draco pressed both hands to the cup of coffee, hoping for some solace in the heat of the ceramic, but found very little. “My godfather, Sirius,” Harry trailed off for a moment, lost in some deep and emotional memory. “Well, in any case, it was meant to help me.”
“Right,” Draco answered, uncertain how to respond. Obviously, Harry’s godfather was dead, and a complicated part of the war in any case. Was Harry expecting comfort? Was he expecting some apology? A thousand different possibilities pooled into his mind and onto his tongue, but Harry was faster.
“He was… is very important to me,” Harry mused. “I doubt you ever met him, but,” Harry trailed off again, and Draco knew his chance was fleeting.
“I can imagine he was a good man,” he said quickly, “if he was important to you.”
It was the right thing to say. Harry’s features softened from their anxious frown and he smiled again, that soft sort smile that tugged only the corners of his lips and the edges of his eyes. He pulled on his glasses too. He looked more awake like that and more like himself, fixing that unsettling oddness of Harry-without-glasses.
“Oh fuck,” Harry said, squinting at Draco’s midriff. Draco ran a hand over the loose buttons on his shirt, but saw no stain and no obnoxious love bite to evoke such a response. “Tell me you’re not using that mug,” Harry groaned, pressing a hand over his eyes.
“I would say that it was the only one available, but I think you would see through that,” Draco said plainly, covering for any momentary anxiety on his part. He sipped the coffee, a small smile pulling at his lips. If it bothered Harry that he was drinking from this particular mug, then so be it. He adjusted his fingers on the cup so that Potter’s nude Quidditch form was more visible.
Harry rolled his eyes and drank from his own. “You remembered my coffee,” he said. Draco shrugged as though he hadn’t memorized it perfectly and intentionally.
Looking for any welcome distraction, Draco turned to the windowsill, eyeing the array of tiny objects laid out neatly along the sill. There was a snitch with a broken wing, twitching in the corner, and a little gold claddagh ring in need of a good polishing, and two weathered stones.
“You’re not going to make me get up, are you?” Harry grumbled, though there was no malice to his tone. Draco said nothing, looking down at the ring and wondered who it was for. Perhaps it had been his parents’ or someone else important to him who had passed it on in the way of wills. “I won that snitch in a game against Slytherin,” Harry said, drawing his attention. Draco reached for it, running a finger over the neat gold body and it purred at his touch, wings fluttering gently.
“Oh, did you?” Draco mused. “Kept it in case anyone forgot your early quidditch fame?”
“Not exactly,” Harry laughed. His voice was brighter, tinted with the freshness of coffee and the growing sunlight in the room. The fog had begun to fade from the window pane, leaving just the corners doused in silver. “It was a gift, actually. One of the only things Dumbledore ever properly gave me.” There was more vulnerability obvious in Harry’s voice, a certain rawness that Draco knew would only draw him in deeper if he turned to catch Harry’s eye. He ran a hand along the dust on the windowsill: a place that Harry rarely disturbed if the cleanliness of the rest of the house was to be believed.
“And the ring?” Draco asked, peering out the window. “Are you planning to be married, Saint Potter?”
There was a beat of silence, and Draco berated himself for going too far in his barbs. He waited without breathing, staring daggers at the little ring. “I was,” Harry answered, naked honesty in his throat. Draco blinked at the ring, feeling it like a rejection through him, though he did not let it show in his body, keeping his shoulders their same relaxed calm. “It was pretty rash of me, honestly--”
“Gryffindor,” Draco scoffed, “to the very end.”
“--I mean, yeah. Obviously,” Harry sighed, scruffing a hand through his hair. “I’d meant to propose to Ginny with it.” Draco looked down at the ring with a thrill of bitter jealousy in his chest. “Felt like what I was supposed to do, you know? But soon as I had the ring in hand, I knew. I just knew that it was never going to work.”
Draco stepped away from the windowsill at that and steeled himself, turning to look at Harry properly. They were still across the room from each other, but the space between them felt insignificant. Draco could feel the weight of their connection on his chest and low in his belly, inextricably twisted up with Harry like they were tied by Fate herself.
“There were so many things I was supposed to do,” Harry sighed. “I was fighting with myself to be this version of me that everyone expected.”
“I can understand that,” Draco interrupted, eyes flicking down to the coffee cup in Harry’s hand and away. His own had grown cold between his palms, the warmth sapped up into his own body heat.
“Turns out the people that matter like me just fine like this,” Harry swept out a hand at the flat and the bed and his life around him and maybe Draco too was included in that gesture. Draco wasn’t sure he quite remembered how to breathe, just then. Was he someone who mattered to Harry?
Unsure of what to say and feeling rather like his heart was on display, Draco said nothing. How odd was it that Harry could be sharing so much and yet Draco felt like the one watched and considered and aching for Harry to see him. Draco had spent the morning snooping through Harry’s things and yet here he was just as naked to Harry as Harry’s words were to him.
“I enjoyed last night,” Harry started, and Draco immediately thought of a thousand terrible things that could follow. “I’m glad you stayed,” Harry said shyly, running his free hand absently over the bed beside him as though his hand were acting without his volition.
“I-” Draco cleared his throat, and continued before he could lose his resolve, “I am glad I stayed too. Though, I must submit a complaint.”
“Oh?” Harry laughed.
“You’re a terrible sharer,” he nodded to the small mountain of blankets across Harry’s lap, including the knit green one he had conjured in the night. Draco's wand still lay on the nightstand on his side of the bed -- and how pathetic was he, if he was thinking of it as his side -- but Draco thought it looked right there. Like it belonged.
“I am,” Harry agreed, and the intensity of his tone had Draco turning back to him, trying to read the double-meanings in his words. “I like to be warm,” he shrugged, and pulled one of the blankets off his pile, patting it flat on the bed beside him. He looked to Draco, then to the available space, and waited.
Draco breathed, letting the feeling of the air in his throat and moving through his nose bring him some sense of stability. He moved slowly to the side of the bed. He set the coffee on the bedside table. He took off his glasses too, for good measure, because he didn’t need them to look at Harry so close. He lifted the green knit blanket daintily, pulling it aside.
He slid underneath the blanket right up close to Harry, so they touched thighs and bumped shoulders and Draco could feel how toasty he was underneath the heavy duvet, still sleep-warm and lovely. He nudged closer and Harry put an arm around him, curling his fingers into the soft hair at the base of Draco’s neck, over the fabric of his shirt and his shoulder, and down to rest at Draco’s hip, right in the dip where it really felt like Harry’s fingers should belong.
“I’m an awful sharer,” Harry said again, meaning more than the blankets. He chewed on his lower lip and really, he looked as nervous as Draco felt.
Draco tilted his head against Harry’s shoulder, tucking his forehead against the soft part of Harry’s neck. “I could endeavor to be alright with that,” Draco hummed, and reached for Harry’s hand, pressing each one of their fingertips together, pinky, ring, middle, pointer, and thumb. “If you’re amenable, of course.”