Chapter Text
The bench that runs along the side of the pool is cold, and hard, and slightly damp. Harry’s arse is starting to go numb. He’s been sitting here a while, watching the swimmers cut through the water. He’s not going to get in, of course—not today, anyway. Maybe if he purchases the membership. And those tight-fitting swim trunks, and goggles and one of those caps. Maybe if he can find a book on proper swimming technique at the library, or something.
There’s a man in the fast lane, the lane closest to Harry, who looks like he really knows what he’s doing. His strokes are fluid and powerful, propelling him through the water with ease, natural as walking or flying. Harry’s been watching him closely. Trying to pick up tips, though he hasn’t a clue what he should be looking for. The most he’s got to show for it is the first stirrings of interest in his pants at the smooth ripple of muscle across the man’s back and arms, the strong kick of his legs.
At the front desk, Harry had asked the woman giving him a tour whether they offered swimming lessons. Of course, she’d said, producing a pamphlet with the slogan Little Duckies: Swimming Lessons Ages 3-10 emblazoned across the front and various timetables inside, asking him which age group he was interested in. Oh, he’d said, and swallowed hard, and told her his godson was six.
He hadn’t been much older himself when he’d crouched on the floor in the Dursleys’ living room: silent, unobtrusive, transfixed, as Dudley watched the 1988 Summer Olympics. They’d been broadcast from South Korea, a place so far away Harry had shivered just to think of it. He’d never seen so many people from so many places doing so many incredible things. Defying physics as they vaulted and flipped and otherwise demonstrated themselves free from the normal physical limits of everyday people. Harry had been fascinated by the swimmers, the way they carved through the water, inhabiting a realm totally inhospitable to human life. Sometimes, in the bath, he would put his head under and hold his breath. Drop like a stone into a different world, heavy and muffled, life above the rippling waterline all blocked out. He’d wondered what it would be like to dive into the pool, to be weightless and swift with everything around him silenced. But he’d grown a little older, and he’d learned to fly instead. Before long, he’d forgotten all about it.
Until, walking by a muggle bar the week before, he’d looked through the window and seen the Olympic rings on the telly, the swimmers at their blocks, and he’d remembered.
At the end of the pool, the man Harry’s been watching touches the wall and surfaces, breathing hard. He peels his goggles off and rubs at his eye sockets, takes a long drink from a water bottle perched on the lip of the pool. Then he plants his hands on the edge and hauls himself up and out—God, he looks like one of the Olympians, massive and marble-hewn. He throws a towel over his shoulders and starts moving in Harry’s direction, towards the exit. When he pulls his cap off Harry gets a glimpse of blond hair before he’s towelling his head, obscuring his face so Harry can check him out shamelessly as he approaches, finally dragging his eyes up from washboard abs and cut pecs to—
“Malfoy?”
The man—the man who apparently is bloody fucking Malfoy—stops dead. “Potter?” His stunned gaze sweeps over Harry on the bench, sitting by the pool fully dressed like an utter nincompoop. “What are you doing here?”
“That’s—” Harry leaps up. Malfoy’s grown, alarmingly, even taller since Harry saw him last, and his massive shoulders are looming in a way Harry simply cannot face from a seated position. “That’s— I should ask you—”
“Me?” Malfoy sneers, “I used to sweep the floors here, didn’t you know?”
“What—”
“You’re the one who’s got no reason to be here—”
“What d’you mean, sweep the floors?”
Malfoy rolls his eyes. “This was my community service site.”
“Oh,” Harry’s pulled up short for a moment. Malfoy’s probation, a condition of his pardon at the trials: two years of community service, performing some menial muggle job after hours, as a volunteer. Harry had been there when the verdict was announced of course, he’d spoken honestly in Malfoy’s defence—he’d been a bigot and a bully, recklessly endangered their peers, but he hadn’t been able to kill when it counted, and he’d risked his own hide and saved Harry’s life when it really counted. The deal felt fair: a clean record for a bit of time paying penance. He hadn’t even remembered what Malfoy had been assigned to do. “You used to clean the floors here?”
“Not just the floors,” Malfoy’s nose wrinkles. “Everything. Have you ever cleaned a toilet without magic, Potter? It’s barbaric.”
“Erm, yeah actually, I have. A good many times, in fact…”
“Oh.” Malfoy’s forehead creases. He’s got bright red goggle marks around his eyes. “Well. In that case, I suppose you have some idea what I’ve been through,” he sniffs.
“Glad to see you’re really contrite about it all—”
“Oh, fuck off. It wasn’t all toilets. And I’m still here, aren’t I? I’m not cleaning anymore, I come here for recreation. Of my own free will. So why don’t you take your sanctimonious bullshit elsewhere; you’re disrupting my post-exercise mood boost.”
Harry considers that. “Fine,” he says. “So, what, this is your gym now?”
“Yes,” Malfoy tilts his chin up. “And it’s allowed, I haven’t done anything wrong, so if you’ve come here to try to, I don’t know, catch me out at something—”
“No, I didn’t— I didn’t even know you would be here, honest—”
Malfoy frowns. “Then why were you here? Watching me?”
“I didn’t even realise it was you! I was thinking about signing up for a membership, and I wanted to check out the pool.”
Malfoy looks completely befuddled at that. “You want to join a muggle gym? Whatever for?”
Harry scuffs his trainer on the damp floor. “I didn’t want to be bothered. While I was, er, swimming.”
“You swim?”
“Not, ah…not yet?”
Malfoy’s eyebrows go up, and he lets out a laugh. “Oh, you’re embarrassed? Of course, the great Harry Potter can’t be seen being less than perfect at anything, is that it?”
“It’s not—” Although, it kind of is, “I don’t need to be perfect at everything, you tosser, I just wanted to take some lessons in peace—”
“Lessons?”
“Yeah, but it turns out they only have lessons for kids here,” Harry’s face is hot, “so it doesn’t matter, I won’t be joining and you can keep your pool—”
“You won’t need lessons. Loathe as I am to admit it, you do have some natural athletic ability—” Malfoy's face scrunches up as he says it, like it actually pains him to pay Harry half a compliment. “It’ll probably come right back, muscle memory and all that.” He waves a dismissive hand. “The pool here is really quite nice, and it’s the most conveniently located one in London, if you’re looking for a muggle facility…”
Harry stares at him.
“Look, I didn’t mean to run you off,” Malfoy huffs. “If you want to come and swim here, I suppose you can go ahead. I won’t tell anyone how embarrassingly bad you are, although I do reserve the right to pensieve any particularly pathetic failings for my own personal viewing pleasure—”
“Wait—” Harry interrupts, because he’s had an idea. “You’re going to give me lessons!”
“Excuse me?” Malfoy’s eyebrows vanish somewhere in the vicinity of his hairline.
“Yeah,” Harry continues, “you’re good, I saw you. You can teach me—”
“I can teach you? Potter, might I remind you my community service term ended four years ago—”
“Come on,” Harry feels himself flush. “I didn’t mean it like that, obviously you don’t have to. Only— Well, you could, couldn’t you? You’re good enough. And you owe me. If you do this, we’ll call it even.”
“I owe you…?” Malfoy says slowly.
Harry’s not sure how Malfoy could have forgotten. Harry certainly hasn’t. “Yeah, erm, that time in the Room of Requirement? With the fire?”
Malfoy blinks, looks at Harry like he’s insane. “You saved my life.”
“Er, yeah? That’s the point?”
“Potter, you saved my life. I owe you a life debt. You could call that in for almost anything. And you want me to give you swimming lessons?”
Harry folds his arms. He can’t back down now. “Yeah,” he says. “That’s what I want. And you can’t tell anyone, and you can’t make fun of me.”
“Oh no,” Malfoy snorts. “I have to make fun of you, Potter. It’ll kill me. And as the aforementioned life debt suggests, I don’t think you want my death on your hands, do you?”
Harry rolls his eyes. “Whatever. That’s not even—” He swallows. “I meant— You can’t make fun of me about— about not knowing in the first place.” He straightens his shoulders and glares up at Malfoy, at the rearing ghostlike memory—the cruel schoolboy wisp of him, taunting Harry that he wasn’t wanted at home over the holidays.
Malfoy just looks confused. “Not knowing? Not knowing how to swim?”
“Obviously,” Harry bristles.
“You don’t know how?”
“I just said—”
“Sorry, sorry,” Malfoy puts his hands up. “I just— I thought you just needed a bit of brushing up.”
“No,” Harry says shortly. “No, I never properly learned.”
“Oh. But—” Malfoy frowns. “What about fourth year?”
“Yeah, managed that mostly on account of having flippers and gills, you know…”
“Ah. I see. Well then, yes. I agree. I’ll teach you to swim.”
“Really?” Harry can’t quite believe this entire interaction has been real.
“Really.” Malfoy chuckles and runs a hand through his slick, wet hair. “Mad idea, no doubt, but what can I say, I must have actually developed some of that do-gooder spirit in all my hours here,” he flashes a sardonic smile. “This time next week?”
“Yeah, okay, see you then,” Harry says, feeling a bit like he’s just been hit over the head as Malfoy nods farewell and saunters his dripping wet, Greek statue of a body past Harry and towards the locker room.
“So,” Harry clears his throat and sets his now-empty glass on the table. “I saw Malfoy today.”
Ron’s gaze snaps around. “Malfoy? Where?”
Harry fidgets with the corner of the disintegrating bar napkin he’d been handed with his pint. “At a muggle gym. Erm… at the pool, specifically.”
Hermione’s pinning him with a shrewd stare now too. They’re his best friends and he’s been itching to tell them about it all day, but sometimes it’s still a bit much when they look at him like that, like he doesn’t have any secrets. He probably doesn’t.
“I’d gone to see about swimming lessons,” he says to the napkin, and Hermione’s hand wraps around his fingers. “Anyway, Malfoy was there. Turns out it was where he’d been for his community service, and he’s gone and got a membership, and he swims there now.”
“With the muggles?” Ron looks flabbergasted.
“Yeah,” Harry shrugs. “And he seemed… fine about it? I don’t know, it was odd.”
Hermione tilts her head in a considering way. “That was the whole point though, wasn’t it, exposure to muggles and muggle culture… Really, it’s quite heartening that he’s continued to frequent the gym—”
“Is he still a git?” Ron interrupts.
“Yeah,” Harry laughs. “I don’t know how I’m going to manage—” He breaks off, looks back down at the napkin, half shredded. “I mean—”
“Manage what?” Hermione asks.
“I might have—“ Harry sighs, sends his gaze skyward in a silent plea for a Time-Turner. “I might have, er, asked him to give me swimming lessons?”
Ron’s mouth drops open. Hermione stifles a prim cough.
“Or, asked might be a bit generous, actually. I sort of… told him he owed me for pulling him out of the fiendfyre...”
Ron’s mouth somehow gapes even wider. “You called in a life debt? Harry, you could have used that for anything!”
“That’s what he said,” Harry mutters.
“Have you been Confunded? Why would you want Malfoy to give you swim lessons?”
Harry grimaces. “He’s a really good swimmer?”
Hermione clears her throat. “Harry,” she says carefully, as if she were approaching an injured animal or a mental patient, “are you quite sure that’s why?”
“What do you mean,” Harry huffs. “Of course it is. You haven’t seen him swim, trust me.”
Hermione raises her eyebrows.
“I think what ‘Mione’s asking is, you aren’t doing this so that you can keep an eye on him, or something?”
“What? Come off it, d’you really think I’d—” he trails off at the looks on their faces, twin stares brooking no argument that yeah, it’s exactly the sort of thing he would do. Or would have done, anyway, when they were kids and Malfoy was a Death Eater-in-training. But now they’re grown-ups and Malfoy’s just a bewilderingly first-rate swimmer. “I don’t think he’s up to something, okay, I just—I don’t know, I saw him and it just sort of came out, honestly,” the last tattered edges of the napkin yield to his rending fingertips.
“All right,” Ron says. “Just curious, then? S’pose that’s better than vigilante stalking.”
“Oi, fuck off,” Harry flicks a scrap of wet napkin at him.
“Actually,” (historically not a good sign for Harry, Hermione starting a sentence this way), “what I was really asking, was whether you aren’t doing this because you saw him in a swimsuit and completely lost your head.” She’s got him pinned; Ron calls it the checkmate stare.
Harry gapes at her. “How would you know—”
“I’ve seen him a few times, at Flourish and Blotts,” she shrugs.
“What?” Ron’s looking between them. “What does Malfoy look like in a swimsuit?”
Harry glares at the both of them, reaches across the table and swipes Ron’s glass, takes a generous swallow.
Ron laughs, “That bad, huh?”
He covers his face in his hands and mumbles unintelligibly.
“What was that?”
He peeks out between his fingers. “He’s fit,” he groans, “he’s like—big, and tall and—” He hunches his shoulders out. “You know, fit—” He hides behind his hands again.
“Blimey, Harry,” Ron chortles. “You’ve really outdone yourself—”
“Fuck you,” Harry says. “And you too.” He points a finger at Hermione and her general aura of self-satisfaction. “And I’m having the rest of this.” He takes another long swallow from Ron’s beer.
Hermione laughs, gentle and chiding and fond. “I suppose as long as the two of you can behave yourselves—”
Ron snorts. “Not likely.”
“Hey,” Harry protests, “I can behave—”
“Mate. You took one look at the man and called in a life debt for swimming lessons. That doesn’t exactly inspire confidence.”
Harry glares at him as he drains the pilfered pint.
“I wonder what he’ll ask you for,” Hermione muses.
“What?”
“Don’t you owe Draco a life debt as well?”
“Oh,” Harry says. “Oh bugger, yeah…”
Ron laughs.
“Shut up,” Harry says. “Maybe I’ll just give him… I don’t know, what am I good at?”
“Apparently there’s something you want to give him,” Ron snickers.
“Shut up— I do not— Just because he’s alright looking doesn’t mean—”
“Well, hopefully he wouldn’t call in a life debt for that, anyway,” Hermione says pointedly.
“Right, yeah. That would be—” It flits through his mind, a vision of Draco looming over him, smirking, murmuring, you owe me. He shivers. “That would be, uh, very uncool, yeah. Well. I’m sure he can come up with something normal. That I can do. Maybe he’s always wanted to pick up complex object-bound curse breaking as a casual hobby…?”
“Come on, Harry, he’s a Slytherin,” Ron gives him a sympathetic glance.
“So?”
“He’s going to be, you know, wily and strategic about it. He’s not going to spend it on swimming lessons.”
Harry flips him two fingers.
Is there any established etiquette for a swimming lesson with an erstwhile enemy who’s become confusingly good looking? If there is, Harry doesn’t know it. He decides two minutes is the optimum amount of time to be late. Not quite rude, yet, but he doesn’t want to be standing around awkwardly in his swim trunks waiting for Malfoy.
He needn’t have worried. Malfoy’s already in the water, crushing laps as Harry shuffles up, towel tight around his shoulders, huddling his bare, goose-pimpled torso. He stands there, cold and half-naked, waiting, as Malfoy executes a perfect flip turn and shoots off in the other direction. Back and forth, twice more while Harry’s left with his toes in a puddle by the edge.
When Malfoy finally pulls up short next to the wall, red-faced and breathing hard, he rips his goggles off and glares up at Harry.
“Nice of you to show up on time.”
“Are you serious? I was two—three minutes late, you unbearable wanker—”
Malfoy plants his palms at the lip of the pool and heaves himself up out of the water, and Merlin, it’s even worse to see up close, the corded muscles of his shoulders, the pike of his hips—
Harry takes an unsteady step back. “Shouldn’t I, er, get in?”
“In the fast lane?” Malfoy scoffs. “I highly doubt it. Come on,” he starts off towards the other end of the pool.
Harry follows, cautious on the slick concrete.
“And surely you’re not wearing those,” Malfoy throws a look back over his shoulder, eyeing the swim trunks Harry had dug up from the back of the guest room closet—an old, worn pair he throws on summer afternoons when Teddy comes over to run through the sprinkler charms in the back garden.
“Obviously I am,” he huffs.
“You can’t swim in those,” Malfoy says.
“They’re swim trunks. I’m pretty sure that’s exactly what they’re for?”
Malfoy rolls his eyes. “You can’t seriously swim in them, they’re so— the drag will be awful—”
“Well I’m not exactly seriously swimming at this point anyway, am I?”
“You poor fool,” Malfoy shakes his head. “Go ahead, tie weights to your ankles while you’re at it. I could certainly use the entertainment,” he stops at the end of the pool, the slowest lane. Smirks. “Here we are.”
Harry rolls his eyes. Malfoy’s looking at him expectantly. He steels himself and shrugs the towel off, a shiver pinging down his spine. Malfoy stifles a quick, soft noise of surprise, and Harry determinedly doesn’t look at him as he tosses the towel at the bench along the wall.
Malfoy clears his throat. “Nice ink, Potter.”
“They’re for work,” Harry says, gruff, still looking away.
“Obviously.” Malfoy reaches a hand out, fingertips inches from Harry’s chest. “Seiðr magic,” he murmurs, tracing through the air between them, down the centre of the runes jutting spoke-like from Harry’s sternum. “Spinning the threads of fate on the job, are you?”
“Spinning the threads of deadly curses, so, more or less, yeah.” Harry brutally stomps on the urge to cross his arms over his chest.
Malfoy’s gaze catches on his hip next and his fingers flex towards it—the hexafoil—as he lets out a soft laugh. “Do you know, there’s a rather famous one of these in an old barn not far from the Manor grounds. I think we used to own the property, as a matter of fact. It’s a muggle heritage site, now.”
Harry snorts. “Which Malfoy ancestor deigned to sell off Manor property to muggles?”
“Oh, piss off. We’ve never been above a fruitful business relationship. And for your information, we used to be quite chummy with them, before the Statute.” Malfoy actually looks offended at Harry’s insinuation that any one out of his vast and storied collection of virulently anti-muggle relatives might have in fact baulked at doing business with muggles.
Mention of the historical Malfoy family relationship to muggles obviously sends his thoughts to one place, and he glances at Malfoy’s forearm. It’s blank. Or rather—almost. There’s a faint shadow there, ash-grey and barely visible. As he is apparently wont to do around Malfoy, Harry speaks without thinking. “What happened to your ink?”
Malfoy’s entire body stiffens up. “I had it removed,” he says, cold and curt.
“Oh,” Harry nods. “Okay, cool, I mean— Good. That’s good.”
Malfoy scowls and hops into the water, splashing over Harry’s feet. “Let’s get on with it, I don’t have all day.”
The water is a fresh, sharp shock to the system. Harry comes up with a chatter in his teeth, hopping from foot to foot as he slicks his hair back, snaps the elastic and presses his goggles to his eye sockets, fitting the strap around the back of his head.
Malfoy makes an outraged sound. “You don’t have a swim cap?”
“Er, no?”
“Merlin’s beard,” he mutters. “And you just jumped in dry like that? Do you have any idea what the chemicals in this water can do to your hair?”
“…Also no?”
“Hopeless, utterly hopeless—”
“I don’t really care that much, because I’m not a vain tosser,” Harry says. “Speaking of which, is your swim cap monogrammed?”
“Of course,” Malfoy sniffs. “I strive for the unity of form and function in all things—”
“Has anyone ever told you you’re annoyingly posh?”
“Yes,” Malfoy says. “Now, let’s begin. Why don’t you start by swimming to the other end and back.” He gestures at the other end of the pool, a full fifty metres away.
“…What?”
“I’d like to assess your current skill level.”
“Current—” Harry gapes at him. “Were you not listening last week, I never—”
Malfoy waves a dismissive hand. “Yes, yes, you’ve never had lessons, I do recall. But surely you have some idea, you’ve done it the one time at least.”
“What— What even—” Harry’s floundering already. “You didn’t even say which stroke to do!”
Malfoy raises an eyebrow. “Do you know more than one?”
“Well— No, but— That’s not the point! Aren’t you going to, I don’t know, show me something first, demonstrate the right form or something?”
“No.”
“You’re infuriating, d’you know that?”
“To you? Yes, it’s intentional. Now go on, let’s see it.”
Harry spends his last exhale cursing Malfoy’s name, sucks as big a breath in as he can take, and kicks off the wall.
It’s a disaster.
The water rushes like a wall to greet him, an endless cascade over his nose and mouth, arms flailing uselessly through it, legs sinking, struggling to keep kicking, urgent pain in his lungs, water in his mouth, panic— he can’t get enough air, he can’t breathe—
Coughing, he surfaces, treading water, hacking up what he’d inhaled, heaving in great breaths. He looks back at Malfoy—he’s barely halfway across the pool.
Malfoy waves him over. “Come on back,” he calls.
If he weren’t half a pool away, Harry would be sorely tempted to punch him. As it is, he struggles back, wondering what on earth had possessed him to engineer a situation premised upon repeatedly engaging in a humbling display of spectacular incompetence in front of the person in the world most likely to gleefully revel in his humiliation.
“I told you,” he huffs. “You didn’t need to make me do that—”
“Yes, I really did.”
Harry gives in and splashes a great armful of water in his face.
Malfoy, in a show of maturity that shocks Harry to his bones, doesn’t splash back. Instead, he narrows his eyes and says, “For that, go again.”
The words are a low gong struck between Harry’s shoulder blades—shocking him still and reverberating all through him. His breath is caught in his throat. Malfoy had spoken so carelessly and with complete surety, the lazy fiat of a Minister or a mob boss—total compliance assumed. Nobody talks to Harry like that.
He could say no. He could get out of the pool right now, call off the debt repayment, walk away. He doesn’t have to let Malfoy, of all people, give him orders. His face is hot.
He makes it three quarters of the way.
When he gets back, Malfoy tells him his kick is weak, that he’s losing the integrity in his knee joints, whatever the hell that means, and not using his core enough. He’s produced a kick board from somewhere and instructs Harry to hold it with his arms outstretched. He follows along, first walking where it’s shallow, and eventually easing into a leisurely sidestroke while Harry huffs and puffs behind the kick board. It’s humiliating how slowly he’s moving. It feels like running in a nightmare, like no matter how much force Harry directs through his muscles, he’s stymied, suspended, inching like a snail.
“Firm up your legs,” Malfoy says. “A noodle can’t kick.”
“Fuck you,” Harry grits out, and does as he’s told. His quads are already burning.
“More core,” is the next command. “Here—” Malfoy reaches for him through the water, touches the tips of his fingers to Harry’s lowest ribs. “Draw in here, and behind the belly button. The movement comes all the way through the hip joint.”
Harry doesn’t muster a reply this time; he’s too preoccupied at the directive press of Malfoy’s touch, the way his muscles respond with perfect obedience. He’s very out of breath, anyway.
When they’ve finally made it back and forth, which Harry is dismayed to see took nearly eight minutes, Malfoy says, “Do it again.”
“You need to buy yourself better goggles. How come yours are such rubbish?”
Harry’s head jerks up and he stumbles from where he’s got one leg halfway into his joggers. Malfoy’s just come round the bend of lockers, towel hanging perilously low on his hips. He doesn’t start getting dressed, just stands there as Harry hops on one foot, keenly aware that his Chudley Cannons pants are on full display.
“I, ah—” He stamps his foot through the elusive leg hole with a panicked vengeance and tugs the waistband up. “I transfigured them from an old pair of glasses.”
“Are you serious? Potter, you berk, no wonder the suction’s all wonky— ”
“They’re not that bad—”
“No, they’re worse,” Malfoy rolls his eyes. “Why would you do that, anyway? Do the vision charms hold?”
“No, the magic isn’t stable like that. I just did the charms on my eyes before I came here.”
Malfoy hums. “I always wondered why you never used those in school. Why you’d cover— Why anyone would disfigure themselves with those hideous facial appliances is beyond me.”
Harry rolls his eyes. “I don’t like being dependent on doing the charms every day.” He shrugs. “Working with curses, there’s always the possibility of something interfering with my magic, and I don’t want to get caught up short.”
“Hmph. Well anyway, you need new goggles. And a swim cap. And trunks that aren’t deadweight. Do you know the muggle store JJB Sports? When do you have time to go this week?”
“Erm… I should be able to swing Wednesday evening after work…”
“Splendid. Meet me there at six.”
“Sorry, what? Did I ask you to come with me?”
Malfoy sends him a pitying look that clearly conveys the utter irrelevance of Harry’s wishes. “No, you asked me to teach you to swim. And part of swimming involves outfitting oneself with the proper equipment. As you clearly are incapable of doing so on your own—”
“Wait a minute, I didn’t even try shopping myself—”
“You are obviously in dire need of my assistance, and in fulfilment of my debt, I shall graciously oblige.”
Harry doesn’t really fancy having his Wednesday night ruined by going shopping—already among his least favourite activities—with someone whose idea of taste is a monogrammed swim cap. But, he also doesn’t fancy another round in the pool with leaky goggles, and Malfoy probably does know exactly what Harry should buy.
“Alright,” he pulls a t-shirt over his head and runs a hand through his hair. “In for a Knut, I suppose.”
Malfoy grins—he probably considers shopping an enjoyable way to pass a Wednesday night—and promises, “Don’t be late, or I’ll make you regret it.”
Harry isn’t even late and he still regrets everything, immediately.
“I’m not wearing that,” he insists, as Malfoy holds up yet another speedo that looks about big enough to cover Harry’s left bollock.
He says so, to which Malfoy smirks and replies, “Maybe you should see a healer, if your testicles are so inflamed…”
“You’re inflamed,” Harry mutters as Malfoy drops the speedo into the basket on his elbow. “Can’t I get one with, you know, legs?”
“Why? Have you got skinny little chicken legs?”
Harry doesn’t, not anymore. He’s got nothing to be shy about; he’s pretty fit these days. But a man’s thighs are… well, a bit private, aren’t they? A part of the body that rarely sees daylight, as it were. Baring them to Malfoy’s eyes would be… simply not the done thing.
Although, Malfoy himself does it. His thighs had in fact very rudely confronted Harry upon exiting the pool Sunday, unfolding him up, up, as Harry had hauled himself messily onto the concrete, panting. Not about to be out-brazened, he walks a basketful of tiny speedos into the dressing room.
He regrets that, too.
Malfoy’s impatient voice echoes outside. “Well? How does it fit?”
Harry’s genitals are being crushed to a fraction of their usual volume. He’s not even sure if his entire arse has made it inside the bounds of this glorified loincloth. “Erm… too small, I think. I mean, definitely too small. Way too tight.”
“It’s supposed to be tight. A good swimsuit is like a good pair of ski boots: if you’re not straightjacketed in, it’s too big.”
“Well, I’ve never worn ski boots, so I wouldn’t know,” Harry grunts, turning to look at his arse—positively stuffed in, dear God…
Unsurprisingly, the grating effect of Malfoy’s posh, scandalised gasp is amplified by the nylon vise around his dick. “You’ve never—! Potter, you haven’t lived until the Portkey’s dropped you off-piste in the fresh powder…” His voice goes dreamy and rhapsodic, “The mountain air, the snow in the pines—”
“Great, I’ve never lived, I don’t care—”
“The champagne and fondue! The sun setting over the Alps!”
“I’m throwing these over the door, heads up—”
“No, wait—!” Malfoy Alohomora’s the door and barges right in, like they’re not in public, in a muggle store, no less. “You don’t know how it’s supposed to fit, let me see—” He steps back and nakedly surveys Harry’s crotch.
“The swimsuit’s not the thing that’s small,” he drawls.
Harry huffs. “Oh yeah? I’ve seen what you’re packing in your speedo and I’m not impressed.”
“Got a good look in, did you?”
“Well, it was kind of hard to miss—”
“Exactly,” Malfoy smirks. His gaze trails over Harry’s torso. He’s infuriating.
Harry puts his hands over his crotch. “Get out,” he says. “And for the record, I’ve got a perfectly normal sized dick, thank you very much, just this swimsuit’s strangling it—”
“Just normal? That must be so difficult for you, O Chosen One—”
“Did I not just tell you to get out? Go find me a regular swimsuit with legs, in a bigger size, for Christ’s sake—”
Malfoy exits the dressing room in a whirlwind of palpable smugness, visibly buoyed by the revelation of Harry’s average dick. Tosser.
At the register, Harry grimaces as he shells out what feels like far more cash than a swimsuit, cap, and goggles should be worth.
“Quality comes at a price, Potter.”
“Is that what you think?” Harry grabs the bag off the counter and heads towards the door. “I’ve heard the best things in life are free.”
Malfoy scoffs. “Nothing is free.”
“You would think that, wouldn’t you?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Oh, I don’t know, just that Daddy never met a problem he didn’t try to buy his way out of—”
Malfoy sneers. “You’re wrong, Potter. He hasn’t bought his way out of house arrest.”
“Not for lack of trying, though?”
Malfoy’s face shutters.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought.”
“Well spotted, you’ve correctly divined that money can’t solve all problems,” Malfoy rolls his eyes. They’re outside now, muggy summer air between them, waning rays of sun illuminating Malfoy’s pale, sharp features, twisted in a scowl. He takes a quick breath in and Harry watches his face resettle, unbothered aristocrat once more. “It can, however, provide an amusing diversion from said problems.” He holds up his own shopping bag, which contains a shockingly small speedo with a great British flag emblazoned across the arse—special edition for the Olympics, apparently. All the stripes converge right in the centre.
“It’s only amusing if you enjoy shopping,” Harry grumbles.
“You don’t like shopping?” Malfoy looks like Harry’s just told him he hates kittens and rainbows. “How? You’re at least half homosexual—”
“Excuse you—”
Malfoy grins, gazing misty-eyed into the distance, “Ah yes, Witch Weekly, New Year’s 2001...”
Harry groans. There’d been a photo of him snogging the Keeper for the Magpies on the front page. Just a friendly New Year’s kiss, but the tabloid speculation had been relentless. He’s kept a low profile since then. There hasn’t been anything worth writing about, anyway.
“You know, I’d been trying—successfully, by the way—to forget about that.”
“I’ll never forget,” Malfoy says, smiling beatifically. “Harry Potter waves bi-bye to Y2K…” he kisses his fingertips.
Harry makes a violent retching sound.
“Anyway,” Malfoy continues, undeterred, “what have you got against shopping?”
Harry shrugs. “Dunno, really. Just seems kind of… frivolous?”
“A bit of frivolity now and then is good for the soul. Are you quite sure you’re gay?”
“Bisexual, as you noted, but in any case, it just strikes me as a bit… I don’t know, it’s just not necessary. Like, I could have done without those swim trunks. My old ones weren’t that bad…”
“Sure, you could have done without them, but why? Why drag yourself through the water with those horrid old things weighing you down when you could just…buy properly fitting ones?”
Harry hums, stuffing his hands in his pockets. The Apparition point is just around the corner. “I’m just not used to going out and buying things, I suppose.”
Malfoy makes an exasperated noise. “Right, only necessary things? Your assessment of which is, frankly, untrustworthy so far.”
“Yeah,” Harry says, feeling a bit mulish about it. “And I don’t need very much.” He says it with his chest out, something he’s always been proud of.
Malfoy looks at him sharply, and then looks away. “When’s the last time you went shopping, then?”
“Erm…” It’s hard to remember. Usually Hermione buys him a new shirt for his birthday, and Molly is always knitting. “Last year? In the autumn, yeah, I had to buy a new pair of jeans.”
Malfoy stops walking. “Last year?”
“Yeah, and?” Harry crosses his arms. “I don’t think this is as weird as you think it is, Malfoy. So I don’t indulge every silly little whim, so what? Maybe you’re just a bit spoiled, have you considered that?”
“Of course I’m spoiled! That’s not the point! It’s you—” He gestures wildly at the whole of Harry—his jeans with the threadbare patches at the knees, beat-up trainers, soft, worn t-shirt. Harry supposes it’s all very offensive to Malfoy, who’d shown up at a muggle sports store in pressed trousers.
“Sorry to disappoint,” Harry snorts. “I never even went shopping until I turned eleven, so—”
“You what?”
“Yeah,” Harry shifts on his feet, suddenly aware that maybe he has just said something a bit weird. “When I got my Hogwarts letter. Hagrid took me to Diagon to get my school supplies.”
Malfoy gapes at him. “When we first met?”
“Yeah, actually. You were horribly spoiled, I remember thinking so.”
“This isn’t about me,” Malfoy says dismissively. “Had you seriously never been shopping before?”
“Yeah,” Harry replies. He turns away, resumes walking. “I’d hardly seen magic, either. I wanted to buy every single thing I saw.”
“Of course you did,” Malfoy mutters, sounding cross. “Maybe you ought to.”
Harry sighs. It’s been a long day, and it hits him all of a sudden, that he’s exhausted. “I’m alright,” he says. “I’m not, like, deprived—of anything, seriously. I’m fine.”
Malfoy nods. “Of course you are.” Then he smirks, “I’m sure the Boy Who Lived Twice manages quite well. But don’t ever say you didn’t need those swim trunks. And the goggles—Merlin. You’ll see on Sunday. Literally.”
Harry laughs, rolling his eyes. They’re at the Apparition point. “See you then. And, er, thanks?”
“No need to thank me, Potter, I am merely discharging my debts.” He gives a little mock bow, grinning, and cracks out of existence.
Harry had tried, last week—really, he had. And he hadn’t done too poor a job, either. Malfoy had been mostly underwater, after all, and Harry had been mostly preoccupied with breathing. He had, in fact, tried to avoid looking at Malfoy entirely, instead setting his gaze at the other end of the pool or the bobbing lane lines, only catching on Malfoy’s face for a moment at a time.
But it’s getting harder to wrestle down the urge to look at him. At his chest especially, where a thin, silvery slash of scar tissue rises up out of the rippling water to meet his collarbone. Harry hadn’t noticed them until he’d got close, the scars. They catch the light just so, spiderwebbing across Malfoy’s torso. Sometimes curse scars have odd properties, they don’t heal right—
“Potter.”
“What?” Bollocks, Malfoy’s looking at him, which means he’d seen Harry looking at him—
“You’re staring.”
“Oh, shit, sorry…”
Malfoy raises an eyebrow. “For the scars, or for staring?”
“Er… both?”
“Hmph. I don’t accept.”
“…What?”
Malfoy’s folded his arms across his chest. It’s really unfair, how his pecs look with his arms crossed. “I don’t accept your apology. For the scars. I’ll accept the staring one, though.”
Harry blinks at him. “What?”
Malfoy huffs a little breath out through his nose. “It’s quite simple. If I let you apologise to me, I’ll have to apologise back, and then we’ll have to go tit for tat all the way back until first year, in a boring and needless performance when it should be obvious—” He pauses, “Although, if we did go all the way back, you’d have to issue the original apology, for snubbing my handshake—”
“Are you serious? You were rude to me at Madam Malkin’s! And you were rude to Ron on the train.”
“Was I?” Malfoy takes on a distant, considering air. “I rather think that was just my personality, at the time.”
“Yeah, your personality was rude.”
“Well, I can hardly apologise for being myself, can I?”
“I don’t know, can you?”
Malfoy’s mouth twists. “Well, there’s only one way to not find out, isn’t there?”
“Are you serious— That’s the most illogical thing I’ve ever—” Harry blows out a breath. “Fine. No apologies.”
Malfoy nods. “Three laps with the kick board, no stopping.”
The rest of the hour, they don’t talk. Malfoy issues commands, and Harry follows them. Bizarrely, the thrill he’d felt last week hasn’t gone away: each time Malfoy gives a cool, casual instruction, there’s an elastic moment where everything zooms in and slows down, like each cell of his body is a camera lens, a fish eye opening wide. He keeps chasing after it. He squeezes a wonky-shaped foam buoy between his ankles to isolate his upper body, to focus on the movements of his arms and the twist in his torso. He slows his stroke and skims his fingertips along the water on each reach forward, to keep his elbow high. Does the same thing but instead touches his fingers to his hip, shoulder, head, on each stroke. Practises kicking on his side with one arm outstretched, reaching. In between, Malfoy provides sharp commentary on everything Harry could improve upon, and Harry manages an occasional wheezing, half-hearted fuck off.
When he complains at the end that the back of his neck is cramping, Malfoy says it’s because he’s lifting his whole head straight up out of the water to breathe, like an idiot. Apparently, he should keep half his face submerged, possibly including half his open mouth as well, for efficiency’s sake. You’ll get used to it, he says. And of course, he’s got a drill for that.
Facedown, Harry holds the wall and kicks. Muscles taut and thrumming, bubbles running out of his mouth, Malfoy’s fingers gentle at the back of his skull. When his warbled voice filters through the water: breathe, Harry dutifully turns his face to the side, heaves a great open-mouthed gasp like a fish, then plunges back into the cool, muffled cocoon, awaiting permission to surface on the other side. If he lifts his head instead of turning, Malfoy’s hand is right there, giving no quarter. When Malfoy’s touch recedes, Harry is spitting out chlorine, heart pounding and dizzy with shortness of breath.
In the shower, lathering up the shampoo and rubbing it over his head, he can feel the ghost of Malfoy’s fingers there, the gentle pressure. Breathe. Malfoy’s hand, pressing on his skull. Malfoy’s voice, telling him just what to do. Breathe. Harry puts his head under the spray. He wraps a hand around his cock.
When he emerges, Malfoy is already gone.
“So, why’d they place you here?”
Malfoy’s given him one minute to rest between laps, the large digital clock on the wall above the bench counting the seconds down in blaring red. Harry’s desperate to buy himself time.
Malfoy frowns. “How should I know? I suppose it struck the right combination of conveniently located for monitoring and appropriately humiliating.”
“Oh. I thought maybe they would have told you. Like, what they wanted you to get out of it.”
“It was obvious what they wanted me to get out of it. It didn’t have to be here, specifically. Just anywhere I could be humbled. Cleaning toilets and showers and disinfecting exercise equipment could do the trick as well as anything else.” He shrugs.
“And were you? Humbled?”
Malfoy squints at Harry as though he’s said something extremely stupid. “Haven’t I mentioned the toilets multiple times now? I had to learn to plunge one, Potter. The only thing keeping me from losing my lunch was knowing I’d have to clean it up. Do you have any idea how many clogs of hair I pulled out of a shower drain? Do you know what the filth that clogs a drain smells like? Do you think I’d ever mopped a floor before? Or washed a window or, Merlin forbid, used one of those machines—a washer? I had to be taught all of that. Some old muggle man had to show me the ropes, looking at me like I was mentally challenged because I didn’t know how to use a dustpan—”
Harry doesn’t try to stifle his chuckle at the image of Malfoy stumped by a broom and dustpan.
Malfoy glares at him. “And all that wasn’t even— Oh, look, your time’s up. Better get to it.”
Swearing under his breath, Harry kicks off, struggling to the end of the pool and back. It’s their third lesson; Malfoy’s had him doing drills to work on his form until now, but he’s finally tasked Harry with “putting it all together” for practice laps. He’s supposed to touch the opposite wall and head right back, but when he surfaces, he cheats in a couple desperate gulps of air. Back at the wall next to Malfoy, he gets one more minute of rest.
“What wasn’t even…?”
“Oh. Well.” Malfoy looks away. “The worst part wasn’t even what I thought, at first. The doing of it. Getting dusty and smelly, crawling around on my knees to clean behind a toilet. It was…” His mouth twists unhappily, “…the insignificance of it. No one even looks at you, when you’re mopping a floor. In fact, everyone pointedly avoids looking at the person cleaning the floor. Even just walking down the hallway, rolling the bin of used towels to the washer. Nobody saw me. All those muggles, walking by me like I wasn’t even there. I was invisible. Like a good elf.”
“Oh.” Harry swallows. “Yeah, I know what you mean.”
“I don’t resent it,” Malfoy adds. “Before you go assuming—I didn’t enjoy it of course, but I can admit it shifted my sense of the scale of things, and my place in all of it. And, obviously, got me used to muggles. Hard to be afraid of them when I’d seen them at their most… sweaty and naked.” He wrinkles his nose.
Harry laughs. And then, “Wait, afraid?”
“Yes, of course,” he cocks his head, shoots Harry a quizzical look that indicates he’s said another stupid thing. “What did you think the whole thing was all about?”
“Er… Thinking you’re better than them? The rightful rulers of the world, or whatever.”
“Oh, well. Obviously there was that.” His gaze flits around the pool, away from Harry. “But conceit isn’t enough. There’s got to be fear—that’s the engine of it, you know, the urgency.”
Harry should have pushed off the wall ten seconds ago, but Malfoy doesn’t seem to have noticed; his eyes have clouded over.
“But why would you be—” Harry drops his voice to a whisper, “I mean, we’ve got magic—”
Malfoy’s eyes snap back and he smiles, twisted and wry, “What’s that I detect? A whiff of—what did you call it—thinking we’re better than them?”
“No! No, I—”
“Don’t worry, I won’t report you,” he winks, and Harry almost forgets what they’re talking about. “We have the natural advantage, it’s true. But there’s so many more of them. And, historically, when they’ve found out about us—well, they’ve been afraid too.”
Harry can still see the quiver of Vernon’s moustache over his curling lip. “Right. But you’re not afraid anymore?”
“I just said so, didn’t I? Oh—!” His eyes have landed on the clock. “You little—! Break’s over—go on, and you’re to do two laps this time, thirty seconds rest in between.”
Malfoy’s voice zings down his spine, detached and easy, and beneath, a current of something uncompromising. Entitled. It should piss Harry off. It definitely shouldn’t make his throat seize up, make the pit of his stomach hot and nervous.
He kicks off the wall.
Malfoy runs his swimsuit through the water extractor and hangs it up in his locker, unhurried. All month, he's lounged around in a towel, idly chatting while Harry dresses and packs up his bag. Last week he had disappeared around a corner, into some deeper bowel of the locker room Harry hasn’t explored yet.
“You really take your time in here, huh?”
Malfoy frowns. “It’s a Sunday afternoon, Potter, I don’t have anywhere else to be. You might try relaxing once in a while. The world won’t stop if you aren’t showered and dressed in five minutes flat, you know. I don’t suppose you’re always rushing off to perform time-sensitive heroics, are you? Is there a Kneazle in a tree somewhere that needs urgent rescuing?”
“Oh my god, can you fuck off for even like, two minutes?”
“Can’t. Didn’t you know that was also part of my sentence? All charges dropped on the condition that I clean toilets without magic and do my level best to annoy one Harry James Potter whenever the opportunity presents—”
Harry laughs. It’s not fun, exactly, with Malfoy, but that’s mostly because Harry’s in physical pain or on the verge of drowning approximately eighty-five percent of the time. Malfoy isn’t exactly fun either, but… well. He’s something. Harry isn’t sure what, yet.
Malfoy is grinning. “I’m only joking, of course,” he says magnanimously, like a prat. “It wasn’t in my sentence, it’s a choice I make every morning as I rise to greet the day...”
“Thinking about me as you rise to greet the day, are you?”
Malfoy flushes. “It’s a figure of speech,” he grumbles. “I’m only thinking about how to most effectively torture you, don’t flatter yourself.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.” Harry rummages around in his bag for his shirt. “Are you getting dressed, or what?”
“Oh, no, I’m only gracing you with my company while you get dressed. I’m for the sauna.”
Harry looks up. “Do you do that every week?”
“Yes, of course. What, you don’t fancy it?”
“I, ah— I’ve never been in one, so I wouldn’t know, really—”
“You’ve never been in a sauna?” Malfoy looks aghast.
Harry straightens up, shirt in hand. “When would I have done that?”
“Anytime! Wizards have them too, you know—”
“Yeah, well, it’s not really my cup of tea. Pampering.”
Malfoy stares at him. “Stop getting dressed, no, take all that off, you’re coming with me—”
Harry can feel Malfoy’s gaze on him as he strips off his joggers and pants, tilting his hips awkwardly and snatching his towel up. He's probably examining the lily-wreathed antlers wrapping across Harry’s back and around his side. Harry’s caught him a couple of times, his attention snagged on one or another of Harry’s tattoos—the antlers or the unicorn rune tucked among them, the entwined line of runes along his forearm or the weaving labyrinth over his shoulder, a few fresh, raw lines added this week after he'd dealt with a particularly nasty inheritance curse on an old jewelry box—Malfoy always looks away quickly, smoothing out the slight furrow of curiosity in his brow.
“Come on,” Malfoy strong-arms him around the corner to a dark doorway and opens the door to a blast of arid heat, tugging Harry inside.
He falters just inside the threshold. The air is so hot it catches and skids in his lungs; a slight frisson of alarm emanates from his chest.
“Relax,” Malfoy says. “Sit.”
He certainly looks relaxed. He’s unwound the towel from his waist and spread it out over the wooden bench, spread himself out too, with his arms and legs splayed and his head lolling back, and his—Harry swallows—his cock is just out, soft and shameless.
Gulping for air, Harry looks desperately anywhere else, and—ah. Malfoy isn’t the only one. There’s three older men in the corner, chatting about football with their wrinkled junk on full display. One of them’s greeted Malfoy, and now they’re all exchanging pleasantries like they’ve just run into each other in a pub—no one seems to notice that they’re all starkers.
Harry nods politely and wobbles over a ways down the bench from Malfoy. Hoping it’s not rude, he doesn’t undo his towel. He closes his eyes and focuses on breathing. Swimming takes a lot out of him, and the wood-fragrant, dry heat seems to suck out what’s left, leaving him hazy and loose, softening into the bench. The improbable low hum of Malfoy chit-chatting with a group of nude, elderly muggles lulls him further towards oblivion.
A sudden blast of frigid air slices through his stupor—the old men are filing out the door, sagging balls towel-clad once more.
Harry peers over at Malfoy, studiously avoiding looking at his dick. “You know them?”
“Hm? Oh yes, we’re acquainted. We’re often in here around the same time on Sundays. Nice gentlemen—Ernie was recently widowed and I think he’s really leaning on his friends… Anyway, I pretend to know about muggle football with them.”
Harry processes that. “Why did you keep coming round here?”
Malfoy blinks, slow. “Suppose it wasn’t much different than you. By the end, I rather got used to being invisible.”
Harry hums.
They remain quiet, heat seeping into their bones, sweat speckling their skin. Harry doesn’t even think about moving until Malfoy says, “Well then,” and stands up. “D’you fancy the sauna now?”
Harry, one with the bench, nods. “Yeah. Yeah, s’nice.”
“Come on,” Malfoy, smiling in a soft, small way Harry’s not sure he’s seen before, holds the door open. The normal-temperature air slaps Harry in the face, rouses him. He follows Malfoy out of the warm dark, back to the bright, cold world.
Harry is not a man of routine. He doesn’t jog the same route around London every day, doesn’t frequent his favourite restaurants on any sort of schedule. Predictability does not beget privacy.
The one glaring, shabby exception is the Leaky Cauldron. Most Fridays, Harry can be found there after work, nursing a pint in the corner with Ron and Hermione. Tom looks out for them—no funny business and no reporters—plus there’s the fact that it’s the Leaky: an institution, a way station, a threshold between worlds. It’s a place where you can be left alone.
Although to be fair, no one’s ever described an evening engaged in conversation with Hermione Granger as getting left alone.
“So,” she folds her hands on the table. “How are things going with Malfoy?”
“Er, all right, I suppose,” Harry takes a swig of ale. He’s just enough in his cups that he’s sorely tempted to blurt out the development most prominent in his mind, though it’s a bit— “I saw him starkers, last week.”
Right. Onwards, then.
“You what?”
“In the sauna!” Harry holds his hands up. “He goes to the sauna afterwards, and last time he invited me in with him, and he was… you know... But there were some old blokes in there and they were, too. I think—” He looks pleadingly at Ron. “That’s normal, for saunas, right?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Ron waves his hand, “You should have seen the baths in Romania, Merlin. Anyway, the important thing is, does he have a small dick?”
“Ronald!”
“No,” Harry responds glumly. “Not at all. It looked rather nice, actually.” He buries his face in his glass to avoid eye contact. “It’s not like I like him, or something,” he says hotly. “I mean, he’s Malfoy! Just because he’s got muscles now— He’s still a posh brat, and— and yeah, so what if he doesn’t hate muggles anymore, he— Well—! He’s still all gleeful about it when I’m suffering,” he finishes petulantly.
Ron is openly laughing. Hermione at least has the grace to hide her titter behind a polite hand.
“I don’t know why I’m friends with you lot,” he mutters. “You’ve got no— no empathy for my situation.”
“Don’t know why I would,” Ron chuckles, “seeing as your situation is having a hard-on for Malfoy—”
“I— That’s not— Stop laughing, I’m serious, this is— Oh god, oh no, he’s here—”
Malfoy is walking in, head ducked, hands in his pockets, on the heels of Pansy Parkinson. Harry’s never seen him in the Leaky before.
“Speak of the devil,” Ron’s chuckle has taken on a distinctly twin-like tone—always a sign of trouble. “Oi! Malfoy!”
“What,” Harry hisses, “Ron, no—”
Too late. Malfoy’s swung round, Parkinson at his side with her eyebrows raised. Ron is gesturing them over to the booth.
“Join us,” he says, a deranged grin spread across his face.
Malfoy shoots a quick look at Harry, a flashing neon what the fuck sort of look. Harry shrugs helplessly.
Pansy sits first, next to Hermione. “Good evening,” she says, careful, polite.
Malfoy slides in next to Harry. Fully clothed, of course, as one might expect for a Friday night out in London, but the last time Harry saw him he was naked. The memory hammers around the inside of Harry’s skull, begging to be acknowledged and dwelled upon.
“Er, hello. Parkinson. Malfoy.”
“First round on me,” Ron directs a pointed smile in Malfoy’s direction. “What’re you drinking?”
Malfoy says something Harry doesn’t hear, on account of the nearness of his thighs, and also his arms, and also the rest of him. Then Ron’s terrier is bounding towards the bar, and silence reigns at the table.
Malfoy clears his throat. “Granger. I trust you enjoyed Morbid Maladies of the Mind and Memory?”
“Oh, yes,” Hermione, on the familiar terrain of books, now looks the most at ease of any of them. “The case studies of memory modifications performed on muggles before the Statute have been so extremely helpful, there’s just so little recent research that’s applicable to the reintroduction of magic...”
“I’m sure you’ve been anticipating Eustacia Rutherford’s latest manuscript?”
She nods eagerly.
“Our shipment of advance copies is coming in next week. I can hold one for you, if you like?”
“Oh, please do!”
Harry whips his gaze between them. What in Merlin’s name is going on?
“Draco helped me locate a rare text a few weeks ago,” Hermione says, as though that’s a complete explanation and not a piece of information that only adds to his confusion.
Pansy, though, who’d previously had the stock-still, sharp-eared sort of look that Harry associates with a rabbit evaluating a lawn crossing, softens.
And then there’s a handful of glasses bobbing towards them, clinking merrily down onto the table.
“To Harry and Malfoy not killing each other in a pool full of muggles,” Ron says, raising his glass.
“What?”
Everyone turns to look at Pansy.
“Ah,” Malfoy says. “Yes, well…” He shoots a pleading look at Harry.
Ron’s quicker though, jovial, his pint glass still in the air. “You know, Harry’s swimming lessons?”
Pansy looks at him, frowning, and slides her gaze slowly over to Draco. “Potter’s what?”
“Yeah,” Harry says, his face going hot. “Malfoy’s been giving me swimming lessons.”
Pansy’s stare on Malfoy sharpens. “Interesting,” she says. “And how long has this been going on?”
“Just a few weeks,” Malfoy says. “It’s not— It’s not some big secret, Pans, I just, I said I wouldn’t—”
“So it is some big secret?”
“No, that’s not—” He huffs. “Well, it’s Potter’s secret, all right?”
Pansy lets out a soft hmph. “I see.”
“Yeah,” Harry sighs. “So now you’re in on it too, I guess.”
“Sorry, Potter,” Malfoy murmurs. “But I didn’t invite us over here, you know—”
Ron grimaces.
“It’s fine,” Harry says. “But it’s not anyone else’s business, got it?”
“Potter, I’m a Slytherin,” she says.
“Right,” Ron cuts in, glass aloft once more. “So… to Harry and Malfoy’s secret swimming lessons?”
Harry takes a long, deep gulp.
“So how, exactly, may I ask—” Pansy takes a second, delicate sip of her elderflower gin fizz, “Did this come to pass?”
“Well,” Harry clears his throat. “I happened upon Malfoy at the muggle gym he goes to. I’d gone to check out the pool, to see about— to see—”
“To tour the facilities,” Malfoy cuts in. “As it turns out, we both see the appeal in being able to exercise without… unwanted attention. Potter saw me swimming, and of course, could not fail to notice my prowess in the water.” He spreads his hands in a self-aggrandizing gesture. “As he was looking to polish up his own skills, in the spirit of letting bygones be bygones and moving forward and all that, he humbly requested I share my expertise, and give him some pointers.”
“Yeah,” Harry says, rolling his eyes. “That’s pretty much it, except with less banging on about how great Malfoy is.” Under the table, he knocks Malfoy’s knee with his own. After a moment, Malfoy knocks back—and stays, the warm length of his thigh resting up against Harry’s.
Suddenly, Harry’s palms are sweating and his tongue is thick. Does Malfoy mean— Or is he just teasing— Or maybe it’s just a friendly, platonic, you’re welcome, sort of knee knock, nothing to get dizzy and rabbit-hearted about. God, he needs to get a grip.
“So, Malfoy.” Ron slaps his glass down, a slop over the rim. “Since when are you some sort of expert muggle swimmer?”
“Just expert will do, thanks,” Malfoy smirks. “Muggles don’t swim any differently than we do, you know.”
“Although of course it’s much more difficult to learn the muggle way,” Hermione interjects, “without the assistance of flotation or breathing charms.”
“What!” Harry rounds on Malfoy. “D’you mean to tell me I could have had breathing charms this whole time?”
Malfoy rolls his eyes. “Sure, Potter. I could have started you off with a crutch and then who’s to say whether you’d ever wean yourself off it or if you’d just continue on, dependent—”
“I’d say! You just wanted me to— to ingest half the pool water and nearly drown for— for fun—”
“Yes, it has been fun,” Malfoy says, still smirking.
“Wanker.” Harry knocks him again, with his shoulder this time, and decidedly more vim. Below, their legs are still a warm line pressed together. Across the table, Pansy raises a singular sculpted eyebrow.
Harry keeps his head down and focuses on drinking his beer.
“Well, we’d best be off,” Ron plunks his empty glass down on the table.
“What? It’s not even ten—”
“Yes, well, I’ve got an early morning tomorrow…”
Harry narrows his eyes. Ron never wakes up early on Saturdays unless the Cannons are playing. They aren’t.
“That’s right, we promised Molly we would swing by. She’s making those blackcurrant muffins Ron loves, and you know I’ve been dying to get the recipe.” Hermione smiles sweetly. She’s never baked a muffin in her life.
“Is that so,” Harry says flatly.
“I’d better follow you out,” Pansy says. “I’m on the first Portkey to Paris tomorrow.”
There’s the distinct thump of Malfoy kicking her under the table.
The three of them sidle out, chattering their goodbyes, and Harry stays right where he is, next to Malfoy, as apparently neither of them has any early morning commitments.
And then they’re alone.
“D’you want another?” Harry raises his glass. He feels just on the verge of doing something stupid. Wants to sidle right up to the edge of it and peer over.
“Sure, why not. I’ll buy.” Malfoy slides out of the booth and when he returns, gets in on the opposite side so that Harry has to look straight at the harmonious angles of his face. He wishes Malfoy were back beside him.
“So,” he clears his throat. “That was…”
“Odd.” Malfoy grins, a pleasing, crooked twist of his mouth. “Your friends were… Surprisingly gracious.”
Harry shrugs. “You haven’t tried to kill me in the pool yet, so I reckon they figured you’re all right now.”
He snorts. “That’s a rather low bar.”
“Yeah, well, a surprising number of people in my life haven’t cleared it, so…”
Malfoy laughs outright, then covers his mouth with his hands. “I didn’t mean to make light—”
“I did,” Harry chuckles and sips his beer.
Malfoy relaxes.
“And anyway, you seemed pretty familiar with Hermione already— What was that all about, with the books?”
“I work at Flourish and Blotts, didn’t you know?”
“No, I didn’t.” He’d wondered, of course, but he hadn’t thought to ask Hermione—if anyone out of the three of them would have known, after all, it’d have been him— “How come I’ve never seen you there?”
Malfoy raises his eyebrows. “How often do you come into Flourish and Blotts?”
“Er, right, point taken…”
Malfoy snorts; it’s a soft sound and Harry finds he doesn’t mind it. “Even if you had, you wouldn’t have seen me. I do inventory and accounts. Track all of our orders, decide which books we should be buying and in what quantities, monitor what’s selling well, that sort of thing. It’s not a customer-facing role. I’m mostly in the stockroom.”
“How come Hermione’s getting books from you, then?”
“Well, Granger is hardly a normal bookshop customer, is she?”
“No,” Harry chuckles. “I suppose she isn’t.”
“When someone comes in with a request to special order a book we don’t have, locate a rare text or an ancient tome from the private collection of someone recently deceased, that sort of thing—I take care of that. So I’ve helped her a few times.”
Harry frowns. “She never told me.”
“Would you have expected her to?” Malfoy smirks. “Still keeping up on my whereabouts, are you, Potter?” He stretches his legs out under the table, pokes Harry’s ankle with his toe.
“No—! No, I—” He huffs. “It’s just— I hadn’t seen you at all. Just thought it’d be, I don’t know, relevant information to share. Wouldn’t you have wanted to know, if Pansy had gone into Quality Quidditch Supplies or something and I’d been working there?”
“First of all, Pansy would never step foot in Quality Quidditch Supplies. And secondly, I’m kept apprised of your every move by Witch Weekly and the Prophet, remember?”
“Wankers,” Harry mutters into his beer.
“Still no love lost for the press, eh, even after all these years?”
“Are you kidding? They’re a sodding nightmare. This is about the only place I can go without getting papped. D’you know, last weekend I met Dean and Seamus for breakfast and the next morning I woke up to speculation about whether we’d had a threesome the night before—”
“I had wondered about that...” Malfoy grins wolfishly. “Not true, then?”
“Of course it’s not! I wouldn’t— I don’t—”
“Well, I certainly don’t know what you do or don’t get up to, Potter.”
“Not much.” Harry huffs.
Malfoy’s eyes go wide.
“I mean— Oh, Merlin—” He scrubs his hands over his face, “Not nothing! It’s just, nothing that interesting— Like, not for the fucking papers to be—” He blows out a breath. Malfoy is looking at him, steady and amused. “Ugh, never mind.”
“What, you don’t want to discuss the sordid details with me?” The wolfish grin widens; he clasps his hands over his heart. “You wound me, Potter. I’d thought we’d made ever so much progress these past few weeks.” He sips his drink, nudges his ankle up against Harry’s.
Harry snorts. The blood is running hot through his neck. “Not that much.”
Malfoy grins over the lip of his glass.
“Did you catch the Arrows against the Tornadoes last weekend?” Harry’s sweating for a subject change. “Bit of a sorry show from Babbington.”
“Ugh, don’t remind me,” Malfoy buries his face in his hands. “Our chances at the title this year are completely shot.”
“That’s right, you always were a Tornadoes fan, weren’t you?”
“Had to be, with this colouring,” he preens. The sky blue really does suit him, Harry remembers. “Meanwhile you root for the Cannons? Dreadful record without even a colour scheme to redeem them, honestly, everyone looks horrid in orange…”
“Nah, the Cannons aren’t my team.” Harry grimaces, remembering the offending pants Malfoy had seen in the locker room a few weeks ago. “The, uh, the pants were a gift.”
Malfoy scrunches his brow in disdain. “What sort of gift d'you call that?”
“A Christmas cracker from Ron.”
“Hah— Who do you support, then?”
“Harpies, of course.”
Malfoy scowls. “Carrying a torch for your ex’s team?”
“Not for my ex, if that’s what you mean,” Harry snorts. “Ginny’s like a sister to me more than anything. Course I root for her team. Ron’s the only holdout in the family.”
Malfoy wrinkles his nose. “So you dated your sister? Gross.”
“Shut up,” Harry laughs, kicking at him under the table. “Aren’t there multiple cousin marriages in your family tree?”
Malfoy sniffs. “I don’t intend to carry on that tradition.”
“Going to marry a muggleborn and dilute the bloodline, are you?”
“A muggleborn?” Malfoy gasps in mock shock. “Honestly, Potter, I’m trying to annoy my parents, not kill them.”
Despite himself, Harry laughs.
“I do think I could get them to come around to the right halfblood, though,” Malfoy muses.
“The right halfblood? And who exactly would that be?”
“One with an indisputably powerful magical bloodline.”
“Right.” Harry takes a gulp of his beer. “Well, I suppose you can sell them on it by saying you’re hearkening back to the storied days of Malfoys old, where you were all best friends with muggles or whatever it was—”
Malfoy laughs. “Yes, my father is rather susceptible to a glory days argument...”
Harry snorts a bit of beer up his nose.
When Malfoy finishes his drink, he sets the glass down with a twinkle in his eye. “D’you want to do something fun?”
“Fun?”
“Yes, fun. Finish your drink and follow me.”
Harry, as usual these days, does as Malfoy tells him.
Outside the night is hot and hazy, new stars winking overhead, stored-up heat of the day releasing from the asphalt. Malfoy leads him around past the bins, swaying a bit, gesturing excitedly. “As I recall from our school days, you enjoy a bit of breaking and entering, no? A bit of light trespass?”
“What?” They’ve come to a stop in a dank corner. One of Harry’s favourite feelings prickles over his skin: adventure. “Yeah. Yeah, I do.”
“Perfect.” Malfoy grabs his elbow and whisks Harry away into side-along Apparition.
They appear in another alleyway, behind a building the shape of which feels vaguely familiar.
“Is this…?”
“Back entrance,” Malfoy grins. “Employees only.” He mutters a few charms under his breath, flicks his wand in a complicated motion. “It’s a bit tricky, disarming the security system. The first time I tried this I just went ahead and unlocked the door, I had no idea— Merlin, the noise, I nearly pissed myself.”
The door glides open for them. Malfoy starts off down the pitch-dark corridor. Harry doesn’t ask where they’re going—the knowledge of it spirals around his stomach in dizzying, swooping circles like a bird of prey.
“Why were you trying to break in at night?”
“I had to figure all this out.” He waves his hands around, the glow from his Lumos glancing wildly over the walls. “I went through all those terrifying-looking machines in the weight room one by one until I wasn’t worried about getting my fingers smashed trying to clean them.”
Harry’s brain sticks on it, the vision of Malfoy crouching by the hulking machines, fiddling with the pins and levers, hesitant, learning. “Have you ever used them?”
“Course I have—still do, can’t you tell?” He’s swaying down the corridor loose and easy, self-assured grin gleaming in the low light.
Harry’s feeling loose and easy as well. “Yeah, you’ve grown up to be a strapping young lad, Malfoy. Is that what you want to hear?”
“Among other things.”
Harry swallows.
“Ah, here we are.” Malfoy pushes the door open and they’re hit with warm, chlorine-soaked air. The surface of the pool is black and glittering. Malfoy starts stripping without hesitation, Harry watching dumbstruck and a bit drunk, and quite possibly gaping in an embarrassing—
“Are you coming?” Malfoy glances over his shoulder, catching Harry with his mouth open. He preens and dives in—an elegant, luminous flash. He blows out a great gout of water when he surfaces and slicks his hair back. “Well? I can barely see you, you know. No need to be coy about your only-normal-sized dick.”
“Oh, come on—” Harry doesn’t think about it; he’s naked in a flash, cannonballing into the water right in front of Malfoy’s face, splashing him as soon as he’s up and sucking in air.
Malfoy cackles, striking back, and then they’re waging gleeful, all-out battle. Arms flailing, kicking out, limbs glancing off each other, skin slipping under the surface, until Malfoy catches one of Harry’s ankles and yanks. He goes under in a sudden rush, water filling his mouth and lancing up his nose.
Sputtering, he’s up again, treading water. They circle each other warily.
“Where’d the lane lines go?” The pool is a wide-open sea around them, unbridled and free.
Malfoy shrugs. “They take them in at night. It’s always like this.”
“Do you swim often, at night?”
“I used to, at first. A couple of times a week, when things were…” He turns his face away.
“Why?”
Malfoy sends a lazy splash of water in his direction. “Merlin, you don’t let up, do you? It made me feel better. Being in the water. Reminds me of home, when I was… When I was young.” He’s tipped onto his back now, floating.
“Did you swim much, as a kid?” Harry asks.
“Oh, all the time,” Malfoy’s voice goes distant and warm. “There’s a rather large pond on the Manor grounds. I used to spend all summer out there, floating on the giant lily pads, diving for hidden treasure, you know—kid stuff. Just being out in the water. Mother used to have to get very stern with me, when it was time for supper and I refused to get out.” The cavernous ceiling sends his words echoing, ghosts fading away over the soft plash of the water. Something inside Harry has gone very still. “That was before anything had ever gone wrong,” Malfoy says.
“It sounds lovely.” It feels like there’s a shard of glass stuck in Harry’s throat. He isn’t thinking about what a little brat Malfoy probably was, playing all day and not listening to his mum. He’s thinking about a time before anything had gone wrong—wondering what it would be like, to remember that.
“It was. I miss it all the time.”
“You’re lucky,” Harry finds himself saying—something he’d thought about Malfoy for over a decade now, something he’d never have been caught dead admitting, before.
“I know it,” Malfoy replies, almost a whisper. He’s still floating like that, on his back so he’s looking up at the ceiling and not at Harry. Harry follows, flips up, weightless, cool water lapping at his sides. He’s never done this before, this achingly low-stakes act of youthful rebellion—skinny dipping at night—and now he has it, a memory of sweet, blithe, mischief.
Objectively, it oughtn’t make much of a difference: day versus night, suit versus skin. But it thrills through him nonetheless, a luxurious revelling. “I can see why you liked it,” he says after a minute.
Malfoy hums. “What about you?” he asks, still quiet. “Why did you come here, in the first place? Why swimming?”
“Dunno, really.” Harry trails his arms up and down through the cool water. “I always wanted to learn, as a kid. My aunt and uncle wouldn’t take me for lessons, though. And then that week, it just popped in my head. Like, they’re not stopping me now, are they? Might as well give it a go.”
“Whatever did they have against swimming lessons?” Malfoy sounds genuinely confused. It almost seems funny, now, so many years later, naked and weightless under the cloak of night.
Harry laughs, a soft echoing chuckle. “Oh, it wasn’t what they had against swimming lessons. It was what they had against me. Lessons would have meant spending money on me and taking me out in public, which were about their two least favourite things.”
Malfoy doesn’t laugh. He’s silent a moment. Then he says, “They must have been very afraid of you.”
Harry closes his eyes. Floating in the blackness, it’s almost like he isn’t in his body at all. “Dunno what there was to be afraid of,” he says. “I was just a little kid.”
Now it’s Malfoy’s turn to laugh, but it’s soft and awed, not mean at all. “I knew you then. Even as a little kid, you were quite fearsome.”
Harry turns his head to look over at him. “Quite fearsome?”
Malfoy rolls his eyes. “Yes, in a… a mad, superhuman sort of way. Every year you survived some increasingly extreme death trap scenario. You were invincible. Unkillable.”
Harry’s chest swells up a bit, at that, until Malfoy adds,
“Like a cockroach.”
“Oi, rude,” Harry laughs, splashing a wave at him.
Malfoy flips, treading water, and slicks his hair out of his face, grinning. “Fancy a race?”
“A race?” Harry scoffs. “Come on, I don’t stand a chance.”
Malfoy makes a pained, ecstatic noise. “I’m going to bottle you saying that.”
“Fuck off,” Harry laughs, “I’m the student—”
“Yeah, yeah,” Malfoy strikes off for the wall. “Come on, we’ll just do lengthwise. Obviously I’ll beat you, but don’t you want to know how much faster you are now?”
Harry does want to know.
“How about this,” Malfoy says when Harry reaches the wall, “if you manage to finish within ten seconds of me, I’ll give you something you desperately need...”
Harry swallows. “What would that be?”
Malfoy grins, sudden and shark-like. “A wardrobe makeover. Go!”
“What—” No time to protest, Harry shoves off the wall. Only, he’s not wearing goggles so he can’t fucking see, and then he’s floundering in the middle of the pool, wiping his eyes, finishing it out Tarzan-style while Malfoy somehow glides toward the other side.
“What the fuck,” he pants.
“Sadly, your wardrobe will have to wait another day for my intervention.”
“Do-over on the way back. I wasn’t used to opening my eyes—”
Malfoy tsks. “I’ve got an assignment for you on the way back.”
Every cell of Harry’s body snaps to attention.
“Keep your eyes closed. Count your strokes, and listen for my voice.”
Harry’s eyes have sharpened in the dark, and Malfoy’s face is quite close. “Okay,” he says.
Malfoy is off in a flash, back to the other side, calling to Harry to kick off. Deep breath, and he goes—eyes closed, long, smooth strokes and steady kick, counting, breathing on the five. On his second breath, he hears Malfoy shout “halfway!” and the knot of uncertainty gathering between his shoulder blades loosens—ten strokes left. Sure enough, five strokes later Malfoy’s calling “last breath,” and Harry isn’t afraid—he counts down five and touches the wall.
He surfaces with a gasp, thrumming all over. And—oh. Malfoy isn’t in the water anymore. He’s perched on the edge of the pool, leaning back on his hands with his legs spread. Judging by the immediate eyeful Harry gets before he blinks and tears his gaze anywhere else, he’s more than halfway hard, too.
“Well done,” Malfoy says.
A quick, quaking feeling runs all through his muscles. “Ah—” What to say? Malfoy’s never full-on complimented him before. “Thank you?”
Malfoy hums. His dick is just out. “You’ve been a surprisingly good student, you know. I didn’t expect that.”
“What did you expect?” Harry forces himself to keep looking at Malfoy’s face, keep his voice even.
He shrugs. “That you wouldn’t listen to me, you’d fight me on everything. You’ve got better at taking direction since school, Potter.”
“Not really.” And then, “Just from you.”
Malfoy’s chest hitches. “Is that so?”
Harry swallows, shrugs. It’s obvious.
Of course, Malfoy doesn’t let it go unsaid. “You don’t mind taking directions from me?”
Harry is still looking up at him. The familiar feeling has started up in earnest, faint tingling bubbling up from the base of his skull, trickling down his spine. “No, I don’t.”
“Do you want to do it now?” He shifts his legs open an inch wider; his smirk is a gauntlet.
“Try me,” Harry says.
“Come here.”
Harry steps forward.
Malfoy reaches out, threads his fingers into Harry’s hair. “Open your mouth.”
He does it, shivering and hot, the water cold around him.
“Look at me,” Malfoy says, and he guides Harry’s head into place, nudges his mouth a bit more open. “Are you ready?” he asks, and Harry nods.
“Oh, yes,” he says when he’s pushed his cock in and Harry is blinking up at him, awaiting instruction. Malfoy looks at him, wild-eyed, and slowly, like a question, presses Harry’s head down. “Oh, holy fuck,” he whimpers, watching. He does it a few times, then chokes out, “Go on, like that—”
Harry does just what Malfoy says. He feels like he might float away right there; his knees are shaking and he’s so hard from this. He’d had no idea, absolutely no clue, that he could want anything so badly. When Malfoy says, “Yes, just there,” he lets out a low, stifled cry. Then Malfoy’s fingers are tightening in his hair and he’s spilling down Harry’s throat until Harry feels frantic and dizzy, and when he pulls off he hears the echo of Malfoy’s voice in his head, Breathe.
Malfoy is in the water, suddenly, turning Harry around and backing him up against the wall. He’s got a hand at the small of Harry’s back and one tight on the back of his neck, eyes burning and close. “And I’m supposed to believe you don’t get up to anything interesting?” he breathes, hovering just so the bridges of their noses brush together.
“No,” Harry gasps. “I mean, yes, I— I don’t know, come on—” he whines, rolling his hips where they’re pressed together, letting his legs float up and wrap around Malfoy’s waist.
Malfoy hisses, “Let me,” and reaches between them. Harry is moaning embarrassingly loudly; he’s got no right to get this worked up over a hand job, but then Malfoy says, “That was so good, Harry, you were so fucking good, God, look at you—”
Harry cuts him off by kissing him, and Malfoy makes a noise and kisses back, and then Harry is coming in his hand, still kissing him even as his legs go limp and his heartbeat slows.
“Wow,” he says once Malfoy’s stepped back. Clears his throat. “That was…”
“Interesting?”
“Yeah,” Harry feels himself flush. Then he shivers. “Is it just me or has it got really bloody cold in this water?”
“Come on,” Malfoy turns to heave himself neatly out of the pool. “How about the sauna?”
A thousand scenarios had run through Harry’s mind the past twenty-four hours, as he had contemplated facing a swimming lesson with Draco in the wake of what they’d done Friday night. Countless awkward, excruciating, exhilarating permutations. But in the end, Harry knows exactly how it’s going to go, and he’s right.
The same mild greeting as always: Hello, Potter. Only, the tiniest ghost of a smirk flits across his mouth. His mouth, which Harry had kissed, in this pool—
He jumps in, dunking his head under the cold water.
They’d gotten off a second time, in the sauna, after they’d gone warm and lax. You want it in your mouth again, already? Draco had murmured as Harry had gone to his knees. Afterwards, Draco had tugged him up and returned the favour, drawing it out until Harry was shaking, incoherent. They’d thrown their clothes on sweaty and sticky, recessed through the dark corridor in fragile silence. Outside, Harry had scuffed his trainer on the ground and said, “Well, er, see you Sunday?” And that had been that.
“Two laps finger drag to start, thirty-second rest,” Draco says briskly.
Harry shivers; Draco’s gaze is hot.
He does as he’s told.
Draco drives him harder today, just like Harry knew he would. Pushing him, cutting back his break time.
“Just— wait,” Harry gasps after a particularly punishing drill: 200 metres without stopping, increasing his speed at each 50. Draco’s only given him forty-five seconds to rest. His lungs are burning and he’s lightheaded. “Come on, I—” he sucks in a breath, “I need more time—”
“Yes, well, I need a ticket to the Tornadoes next weekend, but I’ll be sitting at home, woe is me. You’ll go when I tell you.”
Despite himself, Harry lets out a ragged laugh. “I’m serious— Ten more seconds, let me catch my breath—”
“If you can breathe enough to laugh, you can breathe enough to go again.”
Harry gapes at him.
“Your attempts to engender my sympathies are misguided, Potter. The more you struggle, the more I enjoy myself.” There’s a gleam in his eye—a challenge.
“You’re a sadist,” Harry mutters.
Draco smirks. “That depends. Are you a masochist?”
“No!” Harry yelps. “At least, I don’t think so— Oh, shut up—”
Draco’s grinning. He lowers his voice and says, “Let me know if you ever want to find out,” which makes Harry extremely hot in the face. To compound matters, Draco keeps looking at him in that self-satisfied predator sort of way, before saying, even quieter, “I’m not going to give you more rest. I know you can handle it. You’ve been doing very well today, I’m quite pleased—”
Harry’s whole body actually sort of seizes up for a second and his breath stutters. Draco sees it and his face goes nakedly hungry, and he leans in and whispers, “Go.”
To Harry’s intense disappointment, the sauna is occupied after their lesson. Ernie’s in there with his friends—Marv and Herb, Harry finds out, as he attempts polite small talk while gritting his teeth against the memory of Draco’s mouth.
He mixes up Man City and Manchester United and does an abysmal job covering his tracks, and then mostly shuts the fuck up and tries not to get a boner.
When the elder gents clear out, Draco doesn’t waste any time.
“Take that blasted towel off,” he says, and when Harry complies, he smirks and says, “that’s what I thought.”
Harry tries to catch his breath and come up with some clever retort, but then Draco reaches for him and all he can do is make a little helpless noise.
After that, it’s like tumbling headfirst over a cliff. Draco’s greedy hands on him in the sauna, his own desperate fumbling back, nervous and rushed, filling his brain with static. Or other times, Draco following him into the shower stall and pinning him up against the tiles, Harry’s hands slipping over the broad heft of his shoulders, breathing hard into his neck.
It doesn’t take long for him to lose his grip on life entirely. Thoughts of Draco are constantly lurking just under the surface of his mind, ready to rear up and derail the normal workings of his brain and body. He has to start arriving early to the pool to take a cold shower before he puts his suit on. His focus at work is entirely shot—he’s resorted to pinching his forearms under his desk, hard enough to leave faint, lingering marks. He stumbles through household tasks in a haze. In the moments when he’s absolutely, pathetically desperate for it—which is to say, often—he gets on his knees alone in his shower, turning his face up toward the water and furiously jerking off to the memory of Draco’s bored drawl telling him to keep his elbow up, kick harder, he’s earned himself another lap.
In the aftermath of the war, Harry’s fought hard for control: over the course of his own life, over his very body. Strange, then, that he should be getting off blindingly, mind-numbingly hard at giving it up to Malfoy, of all people. It had never even occurred to him, before, that he might like this sort of thing at all, with anyone.
He does like it, though. He really likes it.
“What if we—” Harry’s breath catches in his throat. They’re in the sauna again. It’s been weeks of this, getting each other off quick and secret. And yeah, the way Draco works him over with ruthless efficiency is blisteringly hot, but, “What if we went somewhere— More private—”
Draco slows his hand. “Such as?”
“I don’t know, ah— Just, we could—” He swallows. “We could, you know—”
Draco hums. He lets go of Harry’s cock, trails his fingers down lower. “This?”
“Fuck—” Harry fights the urge to cover his his face, knees drawing out of their own accord. “Yeah,” he pants, “yeah, we could—”
“Let’s go.”
“What?”
Draco’s already at the door, towel around his waist.
“Now,” he says. “Somewhere more private. Come on.”
“But I’m—” Harry gestures at his about-to-burst dick. “I can’t—”
“Tuck it into your waistband, walk bent over like an old hag, I don’t care, we’re going.”
Harry tries all of the above, shuffling through the locker room, face flaming in mortification. Draco somehow glides past as though he isn’t sporting a similar condition, which feels like a cosmically designed taunt. He leads them out through the back entrance, spares a glance around the alley and grabs Harry’s bicep.
They land with a crack in an unfamiliar front hall. To the right, a modest sitting room containing a comfortable floo-sized brick hearth, a sofa and recliner upholstered in matching emerald velvet, and a wall lined with a haphazard collection of bookshelves in all different styles and heights. A bit ahead, a kitchen on the left. Further down the hall, darkness.
“Come on,” Draco’s still holding his elbow and he pulls Harry into the dim, to the last door at the end of the hallway.
It’s Draco’s bedroom, of course. It's not like it hadn't occurred to Harry what he was asking for, as he asked for it. Still, though. Draco lives here. The walls are a creamy sort of neutral color like a milky cup of tea, and there's a wide window with brocade curtains parted. A neatly made bed at the centre sports sheets of soft sage with a deep forest blanket over top. Harry doesn’t quite get a look at anything else though, before Draco shoves him unceremoniously towards the bed and commands, “Clothes off, on your back.”
Harry shivers. Draco crawls over him, and God, even just that is a luxury—their bodies laid out on a bed, no hard bench at his back, no need to rush. It’s almost a surprise, when Draco kisses him. They don’t do much of that in the sauna or the showers. Here, though, Draco’s got a hand braced next to Harry’s head and the other in his hair, pressing their bodies together, and his mouth is hot and soft and sweet. Harry’s throat hurts like there’s a stone caught in it. He doesn’t try to move them on to anything more, just lets Draco kiss him feverishly, touch his cheek, the front of his throat, the ridge of his brow. Until—
“Shall I?” Draco asks, skating his fingers across Harry’s chest, lower.
Harry nods, throat too tight and face too hot to get any words out. He squeezes his eyes shut as Draco mouths down his torso.
“Knees up and out, that’s it,” he murmurs, pressing Harry’s legs open, slick fingers touching so gently Harry’s back bows up and he can’t breathe for wanting more. Neither of them even has to say anything—Draco’s fingers give the commands and Harry’s body obeys, filling up with the pleasure of yielding.
When Draco puts his mouth on him, everything sharpens to a sudden point.
“I can’t,” Harry gasps, “I’m going to—”
He’s going to come like this, too soon, the humiliating inevitability of it spiking through him, spilling out in a rush of helpless, white-hot ecstasy.
He scrubs his hands over his face, breathing hard, heartbeat in his ears. He’s not ready to open his eyes.
“Fuck,” he says. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be a prat.” Draco snatches his hands away and smirks as he wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “That was—” he clears his throat. “That was very good. And besides, you’re still going to get me off.”
“Oh,” Harry breathes. “All right.”
Draco tells him to kneel, back against the foot of the bed, and fucks his mouth slow, petting his hair and murmuring, You love it like this, don’t you, and, you’re so good at it, and, you’re such a slut for it, you couldn’t even help it—
By the time he’s finished, Harry’s head is a fuzzy mess and he’s wondering if he might be able to go another round.
Draco pulls them both onto the bed instead, stretched out and fitted together. His arm is heavy and solid over Harry’s chest, pressing down just slightly, just enough to give Harry something to breathe against, a point of resistance to push on until all the tension left inside him unknots.
By midweek, Harry feels like he could vibrate out of his own skin.
He’d laid in Malfoy’s bed for a few minutes—practically snuggling if he was willing to admit that to himself, which he wasn’t—just until the silence between them moved from comfortable to weighty, until they were teetering on the verge of dozing off together with the early evening sun spilling lazy golden rays through the windowpane.
Which would have been far too familiar, of course. So, ignoring the slight itch under his skin, Harry had stretched and yawned and made his excuses, and Draco had shown him to the Floo. He’d tumbled out into his own homey sitting room, and then he’d ordered takeaway and eaten at the kitchen table before going to bed with that odd, unsatisfied itch gnawing at him.
The itch had grown and grown.
On Wednesday he’s so keyed up by the time he makes it home from work that he walks through the front door, paces the length of the sitting room twice, then throws a handful of Floo powder into the grate.
Draco is curled into the sofa with a book. He’s wearing reading glasses, round silver frames, which doesn’t at all help the gnawing feeling in Harry’s chest, or the situation in his pants. He starts, catching sight of Harry’s head in the hearth.
“Potter? I wasn’t expecting you…?”
“No,” Harry says. “I just got home from work and I was wondering what you were up to—”
Draco smirks. “Couldn’t even wait a week? Come on through, then.”
The pit of Harry’s stomach whooshes in relief and anticipation. He steps through to Draco’s sitting room, dusting ash off his collar.
“Clean that up,” Draco says, frowning over the rims of his spectacles.
Harry’s cock throbs in his jeans. He mutters a quick cleaning charm at the splotches on the floor.
Draco’s folding his glasses, marking his place and setting the book on the side table. He uncurls his legs, plants his feet and spreads his knees, starts unbuttoning his trousers. “Come here. On your knees. Naked, I should think.”
Harry’s face burns as he stumbles forward, shedding his clothes. On the floor, he looks up at Draco, who’s started palming himself, gaze roving over Harry’s body.
“You’re really something, you know that? Especially like this. Perfect.”
Harry’s breath catches. His spine bows and he drops his gaze to the floor. He can hear Draco getting his cock out, the wet slap of lube in his hand.
“Would you like to do something for me, Harry?”
Doesn’t he always? “Yeah, all right,” Harry says, his voice rough and his eyes still trained on the spot between Draco’s feet.
“Give me your hand.”
Uncertain, Harry looks up. He holds out his hand.
Draco slides their palms together. “Touch yourself,” he says.
A shocked, hot throb of desire rockets through him. “Just— like this?”
“Yes,” Draco says. “You came over here because it wasn’t enough for you to have a wank all on your own, didn’t you? So. You can do it for me, right here on the floor.”
Another wave rolls through him. He’s lightheaded already.
Draco is sitting there on the couch, fully dressed with just his cock out, stroking himself as he looks down at Harry, who’s naked, on his knees, jerking himself off because Draco told him to do it. It’s too much to keep his eyes open; he squeezes them shut and lets his head hang. His breathing is ragged and loud in the stillness of the sitting room, the rhythmic sound of his hand on his cock even more obscene.
“You can come whenever you want,” Draco says. “I know it’s hard for you to stop yourself.”
Harry shudders, a low whine escaping him.
“That’s right,” Draco murmurs. “You just get so worked up being on your knees for me, don’t you, darling, you’re so easy—”
Harry gasps, curls forward, and comes all over his hand and his stomach, dripping onto the carpet.
Above him, Draco swears low. He scoots forward so he’s just on the edge of the sofa and reaches a hand out to curl in Harry’s hair, tip his head back.
“Can I?” he asks, “Fuck, please, Harry—”
Harry nods, blinking up at him, slow and dazed. Draco’s face has gone tight and his movements quick. In a moment, he’s making a choked sound and coming across Harry’s cheek and mouth, down his neck and chest. He sighs and slumps back into the sofa, breathing heavily.
Harry sways unsteadily to his feet, naked and sticky. Did he really just do that? Get himself off on the floor between Malfoy’s feet? As if he belonged there, as if they were—
“What are you doing,” Draco slurs. “Come here.” He gropes for his wand and cleans Harry up with a flick of his wrist.
“Thanks,” Harry mumbles, collecting his scattered clothes and pulling them on. He feels jittery and embarrassed.
Draco catches his forearm before he can get his shirt on. “No need for that, I like the tattoos.” He tugs Harry closer, towards the sofa.
“Er… what?”
Draco frowns. Then his eyebrows shoot up. “Surely you weren’t about to just leave?”
Harry swallows. That unsettled, itchy feeling under his skin is back. “Yeah, I was? It’s getting late, I’ve got to make dinner—”
Draco drops Harry’s arm, sitting up a bit. He rights his shirt where it’s rucked up around his waist. “You don’t have to. I was just about to start cooking myself when you came through. I’ve got everything for a mushroom risotto and there’ll be plenty—”
“It’s all right,” Harry says. “You don’t need to cook for me, I’ll head out—”
“Of course I don’t need to,” Draco huffs. “It was an invitation. Just thought you might want to stay. You know, have a cuddle and a spot of supper.”
Harry’s stomach clenches. “Really? You thought I—” He tries to swallow but his mouth is dry.
“Was I wrong? You’re the one showing up here unannounced in the middle of the week.”
Harry opens his mouth, shuts it. He’s still holding his shirt in his hand and his skin prickles. “I— That doesn’t mean I want—”
Draco’s face hardens. “So you got all you wanted, then? Glad I could be of service.”
“Of service? You?” Harry laughs wildly. “I just—” he gestures at the floor, “did that—!”
“Yes,” Draco says. “Because that’s what you wanted.”
Harry stares at him; he feels hot and cold all over. “And how do you know what I want?”
“How could I not?” Draco is looking at him with that same expression he gets when Harry’s said something stupid. “Feels like I hardly do anything else, but give it to you.”
“Right.” Heat courses through Harry’s veins. “All I asked you for was swimming lessons, Malfoy, I didn’t ask you to— to—”
Draco has gone very still. “I know you didn’t ask me,” he says. “Sometimes, Harry, people do things without being asked. Because they want to.”
Harry stares at him, trying to work out what to say. He feels like some essential thread of the conversation has slipped through his fingers and he doesn’t know how to get it back. “I don’t need you to do things for me,” he tries.
“I know,” Draco sighs. “Despite my best efforts at making myself useful to you, I know you don’t need me—” His face twists and he sags back into the sofa. “I think you should leave. Please.”
This time it doesn’t feel good, doing what Draco asks.
Draco isn’t in the pool on Sunday.
Harry gets in anyway, furious in a vague, gnawing way. He runs through the warm-up drills and the speed drills, and then he swims lap after lap until he can’t breathe, or think, or feel anything at all.
“Excuse me? Is Draco Malfoy in today?”
The witch at the counter startles when she looks up from her book. “Oh! Mr Potter! Of course, yes, do you need him? I’ll go get him, just a moment—”
“No, don’t—he works in the stockroom, right?”
“Yes.” She flutters around the counter, wringing her hands. “Yes, he’s back there— Is everything alright?”
“Everything’s fine,” Harry says with his bland press smile. “I’ll just go— Erm, where is the stockroom, exactly?”
He finds Draco in a maze of dusty bookshelves, fingers trailing over the spines, muttering to himself. He narrows his eyes when he sees Harry approach.
“Come to request a rare book, have you?”
Harry clears his throat. “Er, hello.”
Draco stares at him.
“You weren’t at our lesson, on Sunday.”
“Were you expecting me? I thought you made it quite clear that you weren’t interested in my… services.”
Harry swallows. “Come on, Draco, don’t be stupid. I’m still rubbish, I definitely need your lessons.”
Draco folds his arms, staring steadily.
“And—” Harry takes a breath. He fixes his gaze on Draco and juts his chin out. “And the other stuff, too.”
Draco smirks—a good sign. “The other stuff? All of it?”
“Yeah.” Harry feels his face heat up. “I’ll even let you cook for me, if you want.”
“Oooh, that’s big talk, Potter.”
“Shut up,” Harry laughs, ducking his head. There’s a threadbare corner on one of his trainers where his right big toe is; it’s going to turn into a hole soon. “It’s possible I’ve been told that I can take it a bit far, sometimes, with the self-reliance.”
“Is that so? I can’t imagine…” Draco’s grinning; it’s doing a funny thing to the centre of Harry’s chest.
“Yeah,” Harry says. “Repeatedly and emphatically, in fact.”
“You can change that, you know. If you want. That’s something you can get better at.”
Harry chuckles. “Fancy giving me lessons?”
“Oh, well, you know I’m an excellent teacher.”
“First rate,” Harry says. “Definitely better than I expected.”
Draco preens. He’s smug and his eyes are twinkling and he makes Harry want all sorts of things he’d never known he wanted.
“Would you, er, would you like to get lunch? I’m actually on my break right now…”
“Oh— Yes, I’d like that. There’s a new café around the corner that looks nice.”
“All right,” Harry turns, but Draco stops him with a hand around his wrist.
“Really, Potter? You’re going to come all this way in the middle of the workday, track me down at my place of employment, and you’re not even going to offer a proper apology?”
“What—oh.”
Draco smirks. A familiar thrill sparks low in Harry’s spine.
“I really am sorry,” he says, smiling. “Can I make it up to you?”
Draco leans back against the bookshelf, gestures at the floor between them. “You know what to do.”
Harry doesn’t go back to work, after lunch.
The café is perfectly pleasant, and Draco is his usual snippy, demanding self, insulting Harry’s table manners and making him pay for the meal.
No, Harry’s in much too buoyant of a mood to return to the pile of cursed objects awaiting his attention at the office. Instead, he heads home and showers, brushes his teeth, actually combs his hair for once, and frenetically cleans his entire house.
He’s expecting company, after all.
Draco Floos in at six o’clock sharp. He casts an appraising eye around the furnishings, then turns to Harry. “The tour can wait. I want you in bed, now.”
Harry is happy to oblige.
Draco pushes him down on the bed, kisses him in that greedy, single-minded way that turns Harry’s head all soft and muddled.
“Are you going to let me fuck you, this time?” he asks, fingers teasing.
“Shove off,” Harry pants. “You’re the one who gets me all—”
Draco smirks, dipping down to mouth along Harry’s neck. “Can’t help it,” he murmurs. “I like it when you get like that.”
Harry shivers. “Well, don’t— Don’t do it if you don’t want me to— oh—”
“Turn over, then,” Draco says, nipping at his shoulder.
He gets on all fours so Draco can work him open, murmuring, look at you, you want it so bad. It’s true, and all he can do is cant his hips back and hang his head, make desperate noises and let Draco get him ready.
When he is ready, Draco shuffles up behind him, sitting back on his heels.
“Like this,” he says, and guides Harry back into his lap, so Harry feels the hot, urgent press at his entrance. “Sit down,” Draco whispers. “Slow.”
Harry does what he’s told. He lets gravity take him, spearing him open, slow, until he’s all flush against Draco.
“Very good,” Draco murmurs. “Now, stay.”
Harry makes a confused sound, but Draco just runs his hands over his flanks, the sides of his torso, shushing him quietly. “Just stay like this,” he says. “Does it feel good?”
“Yes,” Harry gasps. “But— I need—” He’s just there, waiting, stretched wide.
“Squeeze,” Draco says, and Harry clenches around him, moaning. “Again,” he says, and then, “Again.”
Harry’s started rocking his hips, tiny movements, but Draco stills him with a hand to his hip.
“Did I say you could do that?”
Harry shivers and shakes his head. A whine works its way up out of his throat.
Draco makes him stay still as he ghosts his hands all over, and the urgency inside Harry builds and builds.
“Come on,” he tries, “Thought you said you were gonna fuck me—” He squirms in Draco’s lap, and Draco swats the side of his thigh.
“Lift all the way up.”
Hands on his knees, Harry lifts his hips. After torturous minutes of no friction, the slow drag inside him is revelatory, overwhelming. “Oh god,” he chokes, shaking, unsteady when Draco pauses him at the top.
“Do you want it?” he asks, teeth on the soft hollow behind Harry’s ear. “Want to sit back down on it?”
“Yes,” Harry gasps, trying to drop his hips, but Draco’s hands are holding him in place. “Please,” his hips twitch, the tip of Draco’s cock teasing him. “Please, Draco.”
“Oh,” Draco says, sounding punched out. “Say that again. Ask me.”
“Please— Please, can I—” He doesn’t even know what the words are for what he wants.
But Draco says, “Yes. Down again,” and his usual steady drawl is threaded through with a tremble.
Harry, always eager, plunges down with a desperate groan, fills himself up and grinds back.
“Slow down,” Draco says. “You can fuck yourself, but go slow.” When Harry moves, he whispers, “Slower.”
So, Harry goes slower. Inch by inch, levering himself up and down. Slowly, slowly, becoming more and more frantic. Draco’s thumb at his tailbone, dipping down to touch. Beads of sweat and hot shivers breaking out over his back. His own cock, ignored and throbbing. The steady, inexorable stretch and drag inside of him.
“Please,” he says again, in a hoarse whisper.
Draco’s arms come around him. “What? What do you want?”
“More.”
“You want to go faster?” There’s a teasing lilt to his voice; like he knows what Harry really wants.
Harry shakes his head.
“No?” Draco noses at the side of his neck. “What, then? Tell me what you want.”
“I want you to do it,” Harry chokes out, curling in on himself.
Draco gathers him in tight, drives his hips up in little circles. “I’ll do it, I’ll give it to you,” he murmurs. “Just— Ah, you’re so— How do you want me?”
“On top,” Harry says.
On his back, he looks up at Draco as he hooks his hands behind his knees. He’s staring down at Harry like he’s in pain, almost. Harry blinks up into the force of it.
When Draco pushes in, he leans down and captures Harry’s mouth. Both his forearms are braced on either side of Harry’s head, biceps caging him in, the stretch of his back a broad bulwark. Harry makes a low noise and brings his hands up around Draco’s arms, strong and stable. Draco kisses him again.
“Yes,” Harry breathes. “Yes, like this—”
It builds and builds again, until Draco asks, “Are you going to come?” His voice is frayed, his hips driving wildly. “Harry, come on, are you— Please—”
“Yes,” Harry says again, tilting his mouth up and doing what Draco asks.
Draco stays, after. They totter down to the kitchen on wobbly legs and cook pasta. Harry opens a jar of cheap tomato sauce which Draco turns his nose up at, but once it’s on the pasta he devours it, along with the cheap wine. It’s loads better than eating takeaway alone.
He stays the night, too, tucking himself into the bed, throwing his arm across Harry’s chest, a settling weight.
Eyelids drooping, Harry turns to ask, “When are you going to call in your debt?”
“Hm?”
“You know. I owe you one, too.”
“Ah.” Draco shifts, pulls him in tighter. “I suppose I’ll have to find some equally odd thing I want from you. I don’t know, yet.”
Harry pouts. “You don’t know what you want from me?”
Draco’s voice is warm in his ear. “I know exactly what I want from you, Potter.”
“Good,” Harry sighs, letting his eyes fall shut. “I want to give it to you.”