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He isn’t, and then he is.
When you look up, Draco is carved in relief against the backdrop of drab stone, smooth skin stark against its jagged edges. His head is thrown back, weight sitting on palms that splay out behind him. From below, your gaze follows feet that don’t quite touch the ground, up legs tense from the cold, across his torso arched and bare, over that long stretch of neck—you could map his body with your eyes alone for eons—to the glassy eyes that prised you open to showing piety for the first time in your life. Your knees ache from where they dig into the granite, but you’d let your limbs bruise, atrophy, let them fucking rot if it meant another moment of this.
You’re back, you want to say, but the knot in your throat threatens to wrench wet sobs from your chest and you’d rather just keep drinking him in, sharp and sweet like mint. At his feet you are a tatterdemalion of a man, cyclically parched and slaked for all eternity.
In your worshipping stupor, you don’t notice your jaw has gone slack until it's closed by the top of his foot under your chin.
When he opens his mouth, his voice is deep, bounces off the walls of the chamber and cloaks you both in its ringing. It’s so cavalier that if you didn’t know better, you’d think he was just bidding you a good night—but you’ve seen how residual terror makes his shoulders shake.
“Did you miss me, Harry?”
It shatters the silence like glass.
Your hands have twisted into white-knuckled fists so tight that when you release them to launch yourself forward, the feeling coming back to your fingertips—no, Draco—is heavenly reprieve, like it’s him carrying the oxygen about in your blood. His form is white-hot even through your shirt and when it moulds against yours, you know you’ve been granted a pardoning most merciful.
Wishing you could swallow him whole, your arms wrap hungrily around his neck. You whimper out a sob into his hair, and he holds you just as tight. He squeezes for dear life—for dear love, you hope, to keep the love that he holds dear. The pads of his fingers anchor onto your lower back. A few of them are forceful where your button-down has rucked up—flesh on flesh on flesh—and run even hotter, searing. He presses there as if looking to burn his prints onto your skin; you will treasure the invisible brand until you die.
Draco whispers frantically into your neck, muffled, but your name on his lips is a song you will always recognise. You breathe him in and reply in tandem. Your voice breaks on every other word, but you choke it out all the more urgently.
“I’m here, I’m here.”
To yourself, I’m home.