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Harry will admit he doesn’t look like the average Harrods clientele. His preference for worn-through black jeans, motorcycle boots, and his godfather’s oversized leather jacket draw curled lips and side glances from the moment he steps inside the department store. The tattoos peeking out from the sleeves and neck of his dark red plaid flannel are merely the final straw. And really, it shouldn’t matter to them, since he’s only here to pick up a gift for his extremely pregnant friend, and Harrods is the only place that still has it in stock this close to Christmas. But he’d grown up with the Dursleys and their intolerance for difference, so he isn’t surprised.
Point being, both Harry and the judgemental staff here will be extremely pleased when he has finished his business and can leave.
So it’s all the more insulting when he is apparently overlooked while the employees close up the store and lock him inside.
(He knew he’d developed a talent for making himself inconspicuous to the point of near-invisibility as a survival measure in childhood, but this is just ridiculous.)
And then he stumbles upon a well-dressed man bleeding in a changing room.
Well.
“Er.”
This earns him a shocked stare and a gun pointed steadily in his direction.
“...Need some help with that?”
The well-dressed man gives him a withering look and cocks a sardonic brow. The effect is lessened by the pained pinch to his face and the hand gripping his side, blood slowly oozing around his fingers. The gun, however, doesn’t waver.
“Mm. Back in a mo.”
The withering look remains, though the frown is decidedly confused now.
✩₊°.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧
Ten minutes later, Harry returns and offers the man a leather belt and a bottle of scotch. “Sorry, I couldn’t find anything else for anaesthesia.”
Despite the look of askance the man gives him, he finally sets his gun down, takes a slug from the bottle and tosses the belt to the side. Fair enough.
“I’ll need some space to work. Do you need help getting your shirt off?”
The bastard has the audacity to smirk, if subtly. “No, I think I can manage.” And he does, if a little laboriously.
The fabric of the man’s high-end button-up sticks to the skin around the cut and draws a quiet string of violent curses from him. Harry can sympathise. The wound isn’t too severe, likely thanks to the layers of cloth it had to go through, but it is long and deep enough that it will require stitches.
(Harry sees a lot of bare skin in his profession, but he’s not immune to a well-formed torso. And well-dressed man is as handsome under his suit as he is in it.)
He washed his hands before he came back, but he sanitises them and the wound as best he can and sets to work, ignoring the pained hisses coming from his patient. He works as quickly and efficiently as he can, since he can’t really minimise the discomfort.
“What did you say you do again?”
“I didn’t.” Harry ties off another stitch. “I’m a tattoo artist.”
A weighted pause. “I was unaware knowing how to give emergency sutures was part of a tattoo artist’s purview.”
Harry huffs a laugh. “Misspent youth.”
“Ah.”
“Tell me the other person came out of it worse.”
“I should say so,” the man says, grin wide and bloodthirsty. “Given that he brought a knife to a gunfight.”
Well alright. Harry ties off the final stitch and tapes a gauze pad over top. “There, all finished.”
“...Thank you,” the man says, a contemplative frown on his face. He’d watched Harry’s patch-up job intently, and the lack of criticism means he must be satisfied. Or, as satisfied as one can be with an amateur stitch-job in a department store changing room.
He then looks at the bottle Harry brought. “This is a £10,000 bottle of scotch,” he says, bemused. “That you used as a pain reliever.”
Oops. “Is it?”
“Mm.” He stares a moment at Harry before taking another swallow and passing the bottle over. “Well, no sense wasting it.”
Harry chuckles and drinks, humming at the smooth burn as it goes down.
✩₊°.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧
Tom – as Harry eventually learns his companion in this strange adventure is named – is dangerously intelligent, extremely handsome, and absolutely involved in something illegal. No one dressed in a £7,000 Savile Row bespoke suit hides in a Harrods changing room while bleeding from a knife wound unless there’s something sketchy afoot. But that’s not Harry’s concern – at least, not now it isn’t.
He wanders off to grab some things to eat from the food hall – a wedge of cheese, a loaf of crusty bread, a couple clusters of grapes, and a tin of fancy biscuits, why not – because he’s hungry and his companion should eat something to combat the blood loss. If he’s still there when Harry returns, of course. He wouldn’t be surprised if he never sees Tom again, though he might be a little disappointed.
As he walks towards the stairs, he spies Tom – now wearing a dark green cable-knit jumper instead of his ruined shirt and looking completely edible – standing in front of the monstrously large Christmas tree that seems to be a feature of all shopping centres at this time of year. It’s still lit up despite the store being closed, because apparently Harrods has money to burn on its energy bill. Still…
“It’s a nice tree.”
“Mm. I haven’t had one for many years, but I must admit there’s something magical about a Christmas tree.”
Harry nods. “I brought some nosh. Shall we have a picnic?”
That has Tom glancing over his shoulder at Harry, once again looking bemused. “You are remarkably agreeable and uncurious, given everything that has happened.”
“Oh, no, I am extremely curious,” Harry corrects, setting down his stolen bounty. “I’m simply choosing to lean into the absurdity of this evening. Live with my luck long enough and you accept that some things shouldn’t be questioned, lest you end up looking a gift horse in the mouth.”
“...Very well.”
“That’s the spirit. Besides, I’d rather you kept the gun out of sight, and I’m almost certain the wrong question might result in its reappearance.”
The amused quirk of Tom’s brows and lack of a laugh means they both acknowledge this is a joke that isn’t really a joke. Well. Harry has always been a little too fond of danger, so for better or worse this doesn’t lessen his attraction at all.
He drags some cushions off a couch onto the floor near the tree and covers them with a few throws that are likely cashmere or silk or something ludicrously expensive. Tom sits down on one of the cushions, favouring his injured side, looking like he ought to be in some high-class, possibly risqué Christmas advert, with the jumper and the tree and the low lighting and that face.
(There are several reasons Harry is not questioning this situation – and he definitely will later – one of which is that he’s afraid Tom is a hallucination caused by too many perfume samples to the face courtesy of the overzealous ‘perfumery’ attendants. If he’s suffering from an olfactory chemical assault, he might as well enjoy it.
This is a far kinder dream than he usually has.)
They eat in oddly companionable silence – what kind of small talk would one make in these circumstances, anyway? The warm golden light from the tree makes everything feel a little softer, a little less real. Harry finds his eyes drawn to Tom’s hands and mouth as he eats some grapes. Tom catches him at it, simply raising his eyebrows as he pops another grape in, and Harry can’t find the shame he should probably feel at staring.
Clearing away the detritus of their meal, they end up sitting quite close together, gravity dragging them to the centre of the cushion pile. Harry is staring at the tree when he feels Tom trail a finger down his throat, starting right below his jaw and stopping to rest at the collar of his shirt, flirting with dipping under the fabric.
(Tom’s tracing along one of Harry’s tattoos, a snake twined around a stag’s antler; the rest of the stag hides under his shirt. This knowledge does nothing to lessen the intimacy of the touch.)
Harry’s breath hitches, and he sees the ghost of a grin cross Tom’s face.
“Now this, I like. Care to show me the rest?”
That’s a line. Christ, that is such a cheesy line, but Harry’s still falling for it. He can feel his cheeks heat a little, sees from the recognition in Tom’s eyes they’re both aware Harry knows it’s a line. He never knew he was so goddamn easy.
Harry’s mouth is dry, but he manages to say with relative normalcy, “Well, if you insist.”
And he’s sitting in the middle of Harrods at night with a strange, armed man, unbuttoning his shirt so said strange man can slide his hand down Harry’s newly uncovered chest. Hermione is going to scream when he tells her this is how his gift-finding mission went.
Tom at least pretends to be interested in the tattoo, giving it an appreciative look before his mouth presses to Harry’s neck. Oh.
It’s like a match to dry tinder, igniting a consuming heat in Harry all at once. Tom bites at his neck before Harry pulls him away to press their lips together, and it becomes a golden-toned blur of hands and mouths and skin, as fiercely passionate as it is sudden. Harry slides his hands up under Tom’s jumper, eager to touch his skin in a much less clinical way, and–
Tom grunts in pain.
“Shite, sorry,” Harry breathes, pulling away. He’s suddenly not sure what to do with his hands.
Shaking his head, Tom tugs Harry in for one more heated kiss before they break apart, panting. Tom reclines back onto the cushion gingerly, exhaling heavily once he finds a position that doesn’t aggravate his side.
“Do you want a paracetamol–?”
“No, no,” Tom says. “Come here.”
Harry starts to lie down when he’s abruptly pulled closer and tucked into Tom’s (uninjured) side.
“The blanket, if you would.”
Well, if Tom is able to give commands, he must be feeling fine. Harry pulls a couple of the throws on top of him and Tom and relaxes against the other man. He doesn’t fall asleep right away, drifting pleasantly in the warmth of the body beside him and the fragile sweetness of the moment.
✩₊°.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧
Harry sets the blankets and cushions to rights and throws away their meal’s wrappings before they leave, just as the thin dawn light is peeking over the rooftops in the morning. This is when Harry realises Tom could have gotten the doors open at any point in the night, and he feels a little silly.
(And then the implications of Tom being able to leave at any point but choosing not to fully sink in, and Harry tucks his chin into his scarf to hide a pleased smile.)
There are a couple suits by a posh black car who stand a little straighter on seeing Tom, which only further convinces Harry the other man is the head of some sort of organised crime syndicate. This must be where they part, Harry thinks, before Tom turns around and steps into his personal space.
“Thank you for your assistance,” Tom says smoothly.
“Thanks for not shooting me,” Harry replies, earning a huff of laughter from Tom. And, well, it’s not the smartest choice, but… “Here,” he says, holding out a business card. “In case you ever want a tattoo.”
Tom looks surprised as he accepts the card, eyes wide and a small, pleased smile.
(Fuck, he has dimples. Harry is so fucked.)
“I’ll be sure to give you a call.”
It takes a few extra moments for them to pull away from each other and rejoin the world around them. London on a cold, snow-dusted December morning is much less appealing than whatever fantasy world they slipped into last night. Then one of the suits opens the back door of the car for Tom, and the spell breaks.
“Happy Christmas, Tom,” Harry says, starting off down the street to the nearest Tube station.
“Happy Christmas, Harry,” Tom replies as he walks to his car, still holding Harry’s card in his hand.
If Harry has a skip in his step for the rest of the day, it’s his secret.