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This is what he remembered: there was light, and there was music. He was floating in the pool, wet clothes clinging to his body like a second skin. He could hear someone calling his name, and when he opened his eyes, Draco was there, standing under the moon.
Harry held out his hand—an invitation—felt equal parts exhilarated and terrified. Swim with me, he said. I’ll race you to the bottom of the pool.
They sank beneath the surface, down, down, down, until there was nothing but distorted light and the taste of chlorine. Harry moved through the water, towards Draco, who met him somewhere in the middle.
When Draco touched his shoulder, he stopped thinking.
He could never remember the details of the kiss: how long it lasted, whether his eyes were open or shut, if he had his hand on Draco’s neck or if his fingers were tangled in Draco’s hair. All he knew was that when it was over, he drew away too quickly. There was a moment where they were both suffocating, still close enough to bridge the distance, before Draco drifted away, and Harry was drowning at the bottom of the pool.
This was the moment he always came back to: those few seconds in between. He remembered Draco’s expression shuttering, and he remembered not being ready for the kiss. Remembered the knot in his chest expanding into a chokehold afterwards.
At night, Harry replayed the memory in his head over and over; he watched it play out in slow motion and filled in the blanks differently each time. Don’t go, he said. His arm was outstretched, inches away from making contact. Can we stay, just a little longer?
Can we try again?
In his dreams, he never made it to the surface. He swam after Draco, but the pool kept deepening, and the water threatened to swallow him whole.
They never spoke of the kiss again.
When Harry wakes up on a Saturday morning, he feels as if his skull might split open. Voices are coming from the kitchen, and the room is askew. It takes five seconds of groping to find his phone, which turns out to be wedged into the settee.
He squints at the screen.
Nine thirty-two. For a moment, he entertains the notion of going back to sleep. Before he can make up his mind, however, the shrill din of the kettle slices through the air.
“…Salazar’s tits. Beats me why you keep that blasted thing around.”
There’s the sound of a drawer slamming shut, followed by a muffled thud. With herculean effort, Harry clambers to his feet. Blindly fumbles around for his glasses to no avail.
“You should’ve seen his face,” Pansy is saying as he stumbles into the kitchen. She’s a blur of dark green sitting on the countertop, legs swinging as she talks. Draco is at the table, chin propped in one hand. Neither of them turns around when Harry makes his entrance.
“Glasses,” he croaks.
He can all but feel Draco rolling his eyes as he reaches across the table to nudge them in his direction. “We’ll work our way to complete sentences sometime in the next hour,” he says.
Pansy snickers. “Not before he tells you to go fuck yourself.”
Scowling, Harry drops his middle finger. He remembers watching a rerun of some reality show with Draco last night, ordering Pad Thai, and getting spectacularly drunk. Maybe not in that order.
He points at Draco accusingly. “How come you’re not pissed?”
“I had two shots, if you recall. Unlike you, who insisted on downing two-thirds of a bottle of chardonnay.”
Harry slumps onto the table. “I think I might be queasy.”
Draco takes pity on him and pushes a warm mug into his hands. “If you hurl on the table, you’re doing the dishes for a week,” he says.
It’s a legitimate threat, Harry knows. He inhales deeply and tightens his grip on the mug. The weight of it, along with the heat, feels like an anchor.
“Green tea with lemon and honey,” he says. Not a question.
“Three teaspoons of honey,” Draco says, just as easily.
Harry drinks his tea and thinks about Draco making tea with the right amount of honey. He thinks about Draco reaching for his favorite mug, knowing exactly where he keeps it on the bottom shelf. He thinks about Draco casting a stasis charm to keep the tea at the right temperature.
These days, it seems, Harry thinks about Draco a lot.
“Can’t sleep?” The words are stifled by a yawn as he steps onto the balcony, rubbing his eyes.
Draco doesn’t answer right away. He hums in lieu of a response, taking a long drag from the cigarette pinched between his thumb and forefinger.
Harry breathes in the smell of smoke. Somewhere in the near distance, the sound of sirens pierces the night. He studies the way Draco grips the railing, fingers curled around burnished metal.
“Your hair is getting long,” Draco says. When he lowers the cigarette and turns around, Harry finds himself rooted to the spot.
“I could cut it for you.”
The ambulance passes by in a blur of pulsing red lights; it’s gone before Harry has time to look away. The back of his eyelids burn with white-hot intensity. His pulse is thundering in his ears—at times he feels as though the earth might give way beneath his feet.
“Alright,” he says.
He settles cross-legged on the bathroom floor, hands splayed against the tiles.
Draco comes in with a pair of scissors and a stack of newspapers. He tosses the newspapers at Harry and raises an eyebrow. “I’m not cleaning up,” he says. “And take your shirt off, unless you’re planning on changing into a new one.”
“We do have cleaning spells,” he grouses, even as he’s moving to spread the newspapers out. He does not think about the second part of what Draco said.
“And here I was, thinking those had slipped your mind when I found moldy dishes in the sink last week.”
“It wasn’t even anything greasy,” he protests. “Besides, I only left the plates there for a night. How was I supposed to know mold could grow that fast?”
Draco levels him with a withering glance. “You don’t say. There was pasta sauce. Honestly, Potter, I’ve got no clue what goes on in your head sometimes.”
He chanced upon the café on his way to work.
The coffee shop sat between a hardware store and a vintage boutique, tucked away in an alley. The interior exuded an understated charm—it was furnished with oak tables, the brick walls clad with framed photos and hanging ivy.
There was an odd sense of déjà vu when their eyes met across the room. Malfoy did a double take behind the counter; for a split second, Harry wondered if he’d walked into an alternate reality.
The first thing which registered was the earring. He couldn’t help but stare at the silver chain dangling from Malfoy’s earlobe, attached on the other end to a stud piercing in his cartilage. It caught the light whenever he moved his head, drawing attention to its presence.
It looked good on him. Malfoy looked every bit like he’d just stepped out of a cologne ad, in a collared navy button-up and dress pants. He was also wearing an apron.
Harry felt as if he were having an out-of-body experience. In what universe, he thought, does Draco Malfoy work as a barista at a Muggle café?
By the time he reached the counter, Malfoy had smoothed his expression into one of indifference. He drummed his fingers on the counter. “Hello,” he said. “Fancy seeing you here, Potter. Can I recommend anything?”
Harry gawped for a second too long. “Malfoy. Hello. Er, I’d like...a coffee to go. And a bite to eat as well—perhaps a pastry?”
To his credit, Malfoy paid no heed to the awkwardness in the air. He rang up the cash register without missing a beat and handed Harry a receipt. “That’ll be eight quid, then. You can collect your order over there.” He gestured towards the back of the room. “Feel free to take a seat while you wait.”
Harry left the café in a daze, with a warm cup of coffee and a pastry.
The coffee was sensational. His first mouthful left the impression of a rich, velvety hot chocolate, shot through with just a hint of bitterness and the faint trace of something nutty. The pastry: a golden-brown tart topped with glazed raspberries. When the tangy cream filling melted on his tongue, followed by an explosion of sweetness, Harry thought his soul vacated his body for all of three seconds.
The coffee, he found out later, was a marocchino. The pastry was an almond cream tartlet.
When he showed up at the café a second time, he asked Malfoy to recommend something else. Malfoy’s expression stayed neutral, but there was an infinitesimal quirk to his lips as he rang up the register, fingers flying deftly over the keys.
Harry learned to avoid looking at Malfoy’s lips. Instead, he often found himself staring at Malfoy’s hands—he was suddenly hyper-aware of all of the things they did, when Malfoy cracked his knuckles after a long shift, or when he tugged at his earring while deep in thought. He cataloged all of these gestures and filed them away in the back of his mind.
It was a force of habit, or so Harry told himself. He was reminded of sixth year at Hogwarts—checking the Marauder’s Map for traces of Malfoy, stealing furtive looks across a crowded dining hall, the deep-seated conviction that Malfoy must be up to something. It vexed him to no end.
Or so Harry told himself.
He found a table by the windows, next to a bookshelf lined with old records. A black cat leapt onto the bookshelf and gave him an unimpressed look. The cat’s name was Jiji, he learned later.
“She used to be a stray,” Malfoy explained in between taking orders. Harry rested his elbows on the countertop and listened. “She’d show up outside the café at the same time every day, at nine on the dot. She napped on the windowsill.” He paused to take a ceramic tumbler from the cabinet behind him.
“Eventually, she started coming in. We do feed her, but for the most part, she comes and goes as she pleases.” He handed the tumbler to the barista next to him, a young woman with a pixie cut. She snorted.
“Right, and bread crusts started appearing on the windowsill out of thin air, just two days after Draco was hired.” She grinned conspiratorially at Harry. “I’m Alex, by the way.”
Unprompted, a mental image popped up: Malfoy, bread crusts in hand, tiptoeing towards a dozing cat. He wondered if Malfoy was the one to name her. The thought shouldn’t have made him want to smile, but it did anyways.
Harry felt inexplicably fond.
He was somewhat surprised, too: he’d never have pegged Malfoy as a cat person. Back at Hogwarts, Malfoy didn’t have any pets, though Harry did remember his eagle owl—a hefty, tawny-eyed bird—for some reason.
“I’m Harry,” he said. “Nice to meet you.”
Alex looked between the two of them with palpable interest. “So, Harry,” she said. “How do you know each other? Draco never tells me anything about his personal life.”
At this, Malfoy glanced at him, uncertainty flickering on his face, and Harry looked back.
“We went to school together,” he said.
He had no idea why Malfoy was working in a Muggle café. He didn’t have the faintest clue as to how Malfoy became a barista, of all things. Part of it was curiosity, but there was something else Harry couldn’t quite place his finger on. The café had a perennial quality to it, a sense of being removed from the bustling streets outside. At the same time, it fit seamlessly into the space it occupied. Maybe it was the ambient music playing softly over the speakers, or maybe it was the way the tables were never empty for long in the afternoons.
Harry showed up a third, fourth, and fifth time—he kept coming back.
He became a regular at the café, and Malfoy made him something different every time. He tried sticky caramel buns with a frothy flat white, sour cherry and pistachio Danishes with a steaming mocha, and cinnamon apple beignets with a silky hazelnut latte; his days became that much sweeter around the edges.
Harry demanded to be let in on the secret behind the recipes; he was certain there must be one. After all, the only other explanation was that Malfoy was simply brilliant at his job. His pestering was met with an eye-roll, occasionally a saucy quip. The back-and-forth became something of a pattern for them.
On days when business was slow, Alex would chatter away with him. Harry learned that Malfoy had been working at the café for two and a half years. He tried to win Jiji over with tiny pieces of croissant.
It went like this.
Harry came in during the evening, after clocking out of the Ministry, and passed the time sipping his drink. When Malfoy disappeared into the back room to take his break, he brought his empty tray to the trolley nearby and made clumsy attempts at conversation. They talked about monotonous things at first, like the weather and Harry’s job at the Ministry. Later on, he asked Malfoy about Jiji, and found out he always wanted a kneazle for a pet.
“We had peacocks at the Manor,” he said. “But they were more for show, really. Nearly lost a finger to one when I was seven. We’d just gotten them, and no one told me to stay away from the peahens after they’d laid their eggs.” He sniffed. “I wanted a cuddlier pet, one I could play with.”
Harry was helplessly endeared.
At some point, he started thinking of him as Draco, and not Malfoy.
Saying his name out loud felt like a minor revelation. It came with surprising ease—the transition from one name to another. He wondered if this was what it meant to know someone, to have their name roll off your tongue without resistance. Draco refused to call him by his first name, but pink bloomed across his cheeks the first time Harry said his.
(“Sports were pretty intense at our school,” he told Alex. “We were on different teams, but we used to play in the same position. Draco could never stand losing to me. Believe it or not, we used to have a bit of a rivalry going on.”)
It didn’t occur to him that he’d said anything out of the ordinary, not until he saw Draco flush.
“Wanker,” Draco muttered. The tips of his ears were crimson.
Harry lifts the hem of his shirt, ready to undress before Draco snatches his hand. “Wait,” he says. They’re standing close, so close that he can see Draco’s lashes fanning out across his cheeks. He’s discomfited by the spike in his heart rate.
Draco raises his hand slowly, the way Harry imagines he might approach a wild animal. Draco has to rise on his tiptoes—according to him, their height difference is negligible—and Harry has to fight the urge to do something incredibly stupid. Like grabbing his face and snogging him senseless, or pinning him against the door and taking him apart on the spot. He wonders if Draco would return the kiss—
“You should take your glasses off first, dummy,” he says. “Or they’ll get caught on your shirt.”
Harry is speechless.
He stares staunchly at the bathroom wall while Draco sits behind him, working silently. The snip, snip of the scissors is accompanied by the almost imperceptible sound of hair falling onto the tiles. Draco brushes a lock of hair away from his nape, and Harry shivers.
“Quit squirming,” Draco says, exasperation bleeding through the words.
Harry tries not to imagine Draco’s expression: lips pursed and eyes narrowed in concentration, brows just slightly furrowed.
“I can’t help it,” he says.
Draco huffs. “You should make appointments, you know. Get a trim every month or so.”
“Alright…I’ll see you in five weeks?”
“Bugger off,” Draco retorts. “You’re impossible.”
The corners of Harry’s mouth tug up.
Living with Draco is something like this: in the mornings, Harry will inevitably wake up ten minutes late and spend another five rummaging under the bed for a missing sock. They take turns choosing Muggle films to watch on Friday nights; they drink a little too much wine with dinner. Draco argues that beer is the worst kind of alcohol, because alcohol is supposed to either taste good or get you inebriated, what good is a cheap six pack that does neither?
When he wakes up on the couch in the middle of the night, there’s a fleece blanket draped over him, and his glasses are folded neatly on the table.
Draco leaves mugs of half-drunk tea all over the house. He makes a cuppa in the morning while perusing the newspaper, then promptly forgets about the unfinished tea as he’s making a fresh pot an hour later. They have more than a dozen mugs in the kitchen, and the pantry is dedicated to an assortment of tea leaves. Harry likes the sweet and spicy ginger chai; Draco is partial to the lavender Earl Grey with citrus undertones.
Their weekends are lethargic, the hours slipping by in a blur of calling friends and putting away laundry. In the afternoon, Draco will make tea for two and Harry will sit across from him, watching him measure out twelve grams of tea leaves while the steam kettle screeches on the burner. He pours warm milk into the blue mug and steeps the tea leaves for four minutes, eyes flitting to the clock on the wall every so often.
Draco adds three teaspoons of honey to one mug, one sugar to the other.
They sit across from each other at the table, sunlight spilling into the room and staining the walls. Harry takes a clementine from the fruit bowl and sinks his thumb into the top of the skin. He peels the pith and pries the flesh apart, wordlessly hands Draco half a clementine. Their fingers brush; neither of them looks away when their eyes meet.
The tea sends warmth traveling down Harry’s spine. Heat lodges in his chest and wraps around him like a weighted blanket; he tastes honey. When Harry forgets to turn the mug around, he finds the chipped edge enveloped in a protective charm. A few days earlier, Draco grumbled about the stupid blue mug which ought to be thrown out, really. He reminded Harry, not for the first time, of the dozen other mugs they own, none of them lopsided or hazardous.
Regardless, each time they sit down at the kitchen table, the blue mug is there, charm in place.
Harry will watch Draco bite into the clementine. He watches the juice running down his wrist; it drips from his knuckles and pools on the table. They will clean up later, wipe away the sticky residue.
The scent of oranges and tea lingers in the air long after the table has been cleared.
“I’ve been thinking,” Harry says. He’s tipsy, and the bar is far too inviting.
Ron sets his beer down and exchanges a look with Hermione. Before either of them has a chance to respond, he continues. “It's weird, innit? We live together. In the same flat. I still can’t get used to some of the things he does. Like, he never squeezes the toothpaste from the middle. He rolls up the end of the bloody tube, who does that?” Ron fiddles with his coaster while Harry talks, and Hermione watches him with a knowing expression. Neither of them interrupts, though, so he plows on.
He tells them about a coffee shop which has grown to feel like a second home, about tea in the afternoons, and about late nights spent in the living room, curled up under a shared blanket.
“I never knew it could feel this way,” he says.
He doesn’t know how long they end up staying at the bar, but by the time he’s home, he has no recollection of getting there.
“Home,” he muses. “M’ home.”
The words come out slurred as he tries to figure out whether his trainers have laces. Draco is there, drowning in an oversized pyjama shirt, hair tousled like he’d just woken up. He looks disgruntled as he tugs Harry to his feet, holding his elbow to keep him steady.
The room is moving, so Harry reaches out to touch the nearest wall. The concrete feels pleasantly cool against his feverish skin. “One,” he mumbles.
Draco sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose with his free hand. “Potter, come on,” he says. “Your room is just around the corner.”
“Two,” he says, more insistently this time, pulling against the grip on his arm.
“Two what?”
Harry moves his hand along the surface, feeling the tiny ridges underneath his fingernails. He traces a thin, jagged line running through the plaster.
“Walls,” he answers, like it should be obvious. “I’m counting the walls.”
“Okay,” Draco says haltingly.
“Three…four.” He looks down at Draco’s hand wrapped around his arm, and swallows.
There’s a slight draft coming in through the window; the drapes are billowing. Harry collapses onto the duvet, and Draco grabs hold of his feet, tugs the trainers off. Instead of tossing them to the side like Harry would have, he places them neatly by the foot of the bed.
Harry lies awake, staring at the ceiling through heavy-lidded eyes. He thinks about Draco’s hands: curled around a steaming mug of honeyed tea, holding half a clementine, molded around his arm to keep him grounded. When Draco leans down to lift his glasses, Harry catches his wrist. “You could sleep here tonight,” he whispers hoarsely. “Your room is so far away.”
Without his glasses, he can’t make out Draco’s expression in the dark, but he can feel his pulse thrumming. As he drifts out of consciousness, the bed dips ever so slightly, and Harry thinks, home has four walls.
The thing is, Harry has been in love before.
He’s familiar with wanting—wanting to touch, to hold, to consume. But this is different, somehow. He watches the way Draco sleeps, with knees folded and half of his face pressed into the pillow.
Harry reaches out, fingertips just shy of grazing skin. His hand trembles.
The front door jingled as he pushed it open, and he was immediately greeted by a blast of warm air. The café was busier than usual, which hardly came as a surprise; it was that time of the year, after all—Christmas holidays. London was bustling with life: the traffic was even worse than usual, the streets were crowded with commuters, and shops everywhere were lit up late into the night.
Harry made his way to the queue near the entrance, unwinding his scarf and trying to shake some feeling back into his fingers, numb from the cold. The song playing over the speakers sounded vaguely familiar—a man crooned about troubled days and hoping snow would make Christmas right. Harry hummed along under his breath.
When he reached the counter, Draco was there. He was pouring hot chocolate into a mug, the mouth-watering scent wafting in all directions. Alex looked frazzled, but she gave him a little wave from afar. “Hey,” she said. “Harry, what can I get for you?”
He offered a smile in return. “The pumpkin pie…uh, the pumpkin drink with whipped cream on top?”
“Oh,” she said. “Well, as it happens, we don’t have that on the menu. I’m not sure I know how to—"
Draco glanced up from his drink and nodded at Alex. “I’ll just finish up here.” Harry began to apologize, but Alex waved him off with a wink.
He watched Draco arrange marshmallows on the hot chocolate. Draco was wearing dangly earrings and a dove grey jumper; there was a single strand of hair falling into his eyes. Harry tried not to imagine reaching across the counter to brush it aside, tuck it behind his ear.
“Graham cracker crumbs and crushed pecans,” Draco said without looking up. “It’s called a S’mores hot chocolate.” He pulled out a kitchen torch, and grinned at Harry. “This part is pretty neat.”
The torch flickered to life—there was a blaze of orange before it died down to a smaller, hissing blue flame. Draco moved the torch over the mug in a sweeping motion. When he withdrew the flame, the top layer of the marshmallows were browned and melting at the edges.
“It’s like Muggle magic,” Harry said, awestruck.
Draco set the mug on a tray, and one of the other baristas stopped by to collect the drink. He gave Harry an unfathomable once-over.
“Do you trust me, Potter?”
He was thrown by the question. Before he could answer, Draco spoke up again. “You said you wanted the pumpkin drink, right? I’ll make you something else. And if it’s no good, well, it’ll be on the house.”
Draco made him a milky colored drink with chocolate sauce drizzled over the side and whipped cream on top, garnished with chopped peanuts. There was a small plate of biscotti, too: lemon and gingerbread. The lemon flavor was a bestseller, Harry knew. At this time during the day, they were usually long sold out.
They were also his favorite.
The drink was decadent; it tasted like a vanilla milkshake—the sweetness of the chocolate sauce blending with the rich and creamy base. The peanut brittle was mingled with just a dash of whiskey, the tang of alcohol subdued. He was positive that he made a few embarrassing noises as he finished the last dregs.
When Draco slipped away from the counter to take his break, Harry followed him. He ignored the way his palms were sweating.
“I’ll take it you enjoyed the drink, then?” Draco said, eyebrows raised.
He bit back a smile. “Not half bad, actually.”
Draco scoffed.
Harry picked at a loose thread on his sleeve. “So,” he said. “Are you doing anything after work?”
Draco gave him a befuddled look. “It’s Christmas Eve.”
“Yeah. I mean, Hermione and Ron are having this get-together, and I thought you might want to go—“
He could feel his face growing warm. “They said I ought to invite you. It’ll be a reunion of sorts; a bunch of our old classmates will show up. It’s more of a party, I reckon. Nothing too posh, but there’ll be drinks and food and—“
“I’ll be there,” Draco said, cutting him off mid-ramble.
“Wicked,” he exhaled. Rubbed the back of his neck. “And just so you know, funnily enough, I do.”
Draco looked at him in bewilderment, mouth open to question before it sank in, and promptly turned on his heels. Harry almost missed the faint tinge of pink in his cheeks.
The thing is, Harry has been in love before.
He’s familiar with wanting. He wants to sit at the kitchen table for hours, wants to dwell at the bottom of a swimming pool, wants to say, I know you like your tea with one sugar, and have it mean, I know you. His hand is suspended in midair, hovering over Draco’s sleeping profile. Harry is eleven years old again, trapped in the entrance way of Privet Drive. He reaches into the flurry of envelopes, desperate to catch just one letter. He grasps at air and they seep through his fingers like quicksand.
In the early hours of daybreak, Draco stirs.
He turns towards Harry—distance is no longer tangible. His hand grazes Draco’s face; Draco’s legs brush against his. They fit into the negative space around each other, limbs unfurled and loose. The pillows are creased, and the sheets are warm and dappled with sunlight.
When Draco opens his eyes, blinking against the brightness of the room, Harry holds his breath. This time, he doesn’t draw away. He keeps his hand still against Draco’s face, palm bracketed around the curve of his cheek.
He’s twenty-five years old, and he loves just as desperately. He holds Draco’s face in his hands. He says, I think about you all the time.
Draco flushes. His eyes are soft with sleep, his hair mussed. The room is awash in rosy hues, and the walls are painted with the promise of a new day.
“I don’t know how soon it’ll be,” Harry says, “but what do you think about getting married?”
The teaspoon clinks loudly against the mug, and Draco stops stirring his tea. “What do I think,” he says. “About the practice of matrimony in general?”
“About getting married to me, you tosser.”
The corners of Draco’s mouth twitches. “Are you proposing, Potter?”
“And what if I am?”
Draco takes a sip from his mug, poker-faced. “I think not.”
“No?” Harry reaches across the table to cover Draco’s hand with his own. His hand is steady as he laces their fingers together.
“I expect more from you.”
“More than a proposal in our kitchen?”
“You’ll have to do better than that,” Draco hesitates, and then his voice dips, just slightly, “Harry.”
They sit across from each other at the table, sunlight spilling into the room. Draco says his name, exactly the way it’s supposed to be said, on a Saturday afternoon like any other. And in that moment, Harry knows.
He knows what it means to fall for someone: to want more than what the hands can hold. He lies in bed next to Draco, cups his face between quivering palms, and wants to wake up the same way again and again. He slots his fingers with Draco’s, cradles the fluttering pulse under his thumb, and wants to keep holding on, never loosening his grip.
He wants to live a lifetime of Saturday afternoons.
Harry has a plan.
In July, he asks Draco to clear his schedule for the second week of August, and proposes a vacation to Greece. “We should live a little,” he says breezily. “The Ministry has already approved my request for a leave of absence. Apparently, I’ve got quite a few vacation days saved up. A change of scenery would be nice, eh?”
Draco crosses his arms over his chest. “I could take some time off, I suppose. But why Greece? You’ve never mentioned anything about wanting to travel.”
“Well, ‘Mione’s been there. She was just telling us about it the other day, how her parents took her one summer and she’s always wanted to go back. Says the place is gorgeous, and the seafood is brilliant.” He shrugs. “There’s a winery we could go to. It’s not far from the villa, they’re open for booked tours and wine tastings. I thought you’d fancy that.”
“Mm.” Draco steps closer to him. “I do,” he says.
Harry’s mouth goes dry, and the rest of the conversation is abruptly forgotten. “Come here, you,” he murmurs. Draco loops an arm around his waist before leaning in—to press a feather-light kiss to his cheek. He ghosts another kiss over the shell of his ear, and Harry makes an inhuman sound.
“You’re a menace,” he grumbles.
Draco hums, lips curving into that smile Harry secretly likes best, the one with a bit of teeth showing.
They arrive at noon, to a clear blue sky and an expansive view of the rugged coastline. Santorini is warm, the air dry and the occasional gust of wind briny.
“Come on,” Harry says. “I made reservations for us at the winery. We should be able to get there in good time, long as we catch the next bus.”
Draco gives him a sideways look. “You're awfully keen on this wine tasting. Any particular reason? Does seem rather uncharacteristic of you, Potter."
“None at all.” He plasters on a wide grin, hoping to mask any signs of apprehension. “We’ll have a blast, I promise. And tomorrow we can spend the day at the beach. Maybe I’ll get that tan after all.”
At the winery, they’re taken on a private tour, and they taste a total of eight wines. Their guide is friendly, welcoming them to the area as she gives a brief history of the place and introduces them to the winemaking process.
The industrial stone building used to be a tomato factory until the 70’s, when it was renovated into a winery. The guide explains that Assyrtiko grapes are indigenous to the island, cultivated in volcanic soil and long hours of sun.
Along with the wine, they’re offered a cheese platter and a serving of breadsticks. Harry takes a shine to the Vinsanto—a sweet, amber-colored dessert wine with notes of coffee and bergamot; they end up buying a vintage to take home. After leaving the winery, they spend the rest of the day exploring Kamari, the coastal village nearby. Draco finds an open air cinema with a bar, and Harry orders a strawberry daiquiri for both of them.
When they kiss halfway through the film, all Harry can taste is summer.
He’s drunk on more than wine.
Draco sets his wine glass down at dinner. “You didn’t have to do this,” he says. There's a pretty flush stealing over his face, but his gaze is unwavering. “I wasn’t expecting you to arrange something like this.”
Harry ducks his head, trying to keep from fidgeting. “Listen, there’s something I’ve got to tell you.
“I’ve got to get this out, and this is now or never, so don’t interrupt, alright?” He swallows hard. “I used to be… I was afraid. Afraid of my own feelings. Of what they could mean. And I was—I was a right knob. After that night, when you kissed me in the pool, I should’ve said something sooner.
“The truth, as I’ve come to realize, is that I’m not brave at all.” Harry twists his napkin in his hands. “At least not when it comes to this.”
Draco visibly tenses. Harry pushes on anyway, heart thudding.
“I’m still afraid. Afraid of mucking this up, somehow. Or worse, what if I don’t? That doesn’t make much sense, I know. But what if we do this,” he lets out a harsh breath, “and it’s everything we imagined? Because right now, that’s what scares me the most. Knowing we could have that, but never trying.”
Harry pulls the ring box out of his pocket, and sets it on the table. “I want to marry you,” he says. “Will you let me, Draco?”
Draco swipes the heels of his palms against his eyes.
Even now, Harry flounders for the right words. For a long time, too long, they’ve become fluent in ineffable language. He knows how to read between the lines, to hold a warm mug between reverent palms and understand its weight. Words, on the other hand, sit heavy on his tongue. He opens his mouth and feels full to bursting with everything left unsaid. If he had to describe it one way or another, Harry would say—
“I don’t know where we’ll be in another five years. Ten, twenty. And not knowing can be scary, sometimes. We could be completely different people, but… whatever that may look like, we’ll never be strangers again. Because I know you. I know you, Draco.
“I know how you like your tea, and I’ve known you before I even liked you. And now—
“I don’t ever want to stop. So show me. Teach me all the things I don’t know about you yet.”
Draco blinks, the corners of his eyes red.
“You know I’ll say yes. Yes. I’m saying yes. What else is there for me to say, Harry?”
He holds out his hand. “I can certainly think of worse ways to spend the rest of my life.”
There are things that linger, even if they come in passing. There’s tea and oranges, and there’s sunlight and happiness. At the center of it all, there’s Draco, and there’s Harry. Summer is dwindling. The days peter out and time erodes memory until one day, those too will be lost.
Even so, there will be more summers to come.