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Bleeding—bleeding out on cold, soaked stone, dingy tiles and red, red, red, Potter’s wet, ragged breath a hitching hiccup above him, his own hands scratching and pressing, too hard, not hard enough—
(let it end, let it end, let it end—)
A scathing hiss of ink and flame, the Mark carved into him, bathed in blood and magic and agony and hatred, a punishment, a cruelty, an ever-present, inescapable torment—and this, thisthisthis curse carved within him, skin no longer his own, blood unable to stay inside him, and all he knows is a mouthful of iron and wishes made to the stars, never hard enough, and—
Mother.
Her hands in his hair when he was small, gentle and sweet, her voice soft and indulgent with stories of dragons and kings, everything he ever wanted and nothing he was ever meant to survive—and he should have stayed a boy in her arms, stepping on her toes and listening to her count one, two three, one, two, three as she twirls them both, not, notnotnot this, a coffin with a pulse and the magic seeping from within him—
Potter is mumbling, and Draco does not care, he doesn’t, and there is color in dying—how obscene, how grotesque—more illustrious and vivid than the grey hush of corridors and late nights spent hiding within the shadows of a disappearing room, staring down a Cabinet and death and bodies of birds, and now his own, hisownhisownhisown—
He should be afraid, and he is, always is, but beneath the terror and blood and why, something loosens its jaws, exhales, uncoils—mercy, sweet mercy, dancing in red pools and tingles of twinkling magic—and no more tasks, no more spying eyes, no more curses and poisons and so much death—
(coward—)
And then, he is waking, always waking, ribs and throat and face knit tight, skin humming with the memory of split seams and trickling crimson, dark and stained into his clothes, irreparable, Severus humming a song above him, a melody Draco cannot understand, wand pressed against his chest and traveling down in lines, and relief, relief curdled into shame, shame curdled into hate, hate sharpened to a point that never finds a throat to pierce apart from his own, and he’s—
Still here.
Still here.
Still—
Guilt presses heavy and scorching behind his eyes, a bruise that won’t fade, permanent as the scar on his forehead and bloodier still, a taste of metal in the back of his throat, caught scratching and sticky in the thick wet of his mouth. The castle shifts and sighs around him, alight with magic and antiquity, and he moves silently within it, veiled and ensconced in thin invisibility and meager, pathetic excuses: just a look, just to know, just to see if I—
Syllables curled in the dark, like a serpent under skin, ink stained and bleeding on yellowed, aged pages, power and victory that tasted like freedom, until it didn’t.
Until it tasted like white tile and red flood, pale, chapped lips opening around words he’ll never stop hearing, gaunt, trembling hands pressing down, down, futile, frantic, desperate—stop bleeding, please stop bleeding, don’t stop breathing, I didn’t mean—
All sharpness and sneer and threat and secret, curled lips and disdaining grey eyes, always something hidden in the way his mouth twists, sitting snarled and mean, a coil Harry can’t help prodding, can’t stop circling, watching. Not dead, Harry begs, swallowing petrified fear like poison-tipped blades, please not dead.
He tells himself he’s hunting for answers—what is he planning, what is he doing, why is the Room sealed so tightly against me, is he Marked, what is—but the truth, he knows, is uglier, raw. He needs to see the pulse at Malfoy’s throat, the living pink in his cheeks, indisputable proof that Harry Potter is not yet a murderer, that the blood on his hands can be washed, and he didn’t know, he never meant—
One footstep at a time, his breath caged too tightly in his ribs, ribs too small to hold it all in.
The Cloak swallows him whole, but it can’t soothe the thudding break in his chest.
The Hospital Wing yawns wide in the shadows of Scottish night, all white hush and faint candlelight, and the curtains are drawn, silence an echoing, deafening ring in Harry’s ears.
Show me. Please, show me. I didn’t know—
It’s almost a prayer, but Harry never was a religious man.
He peels back the curtain, slow and terrified and resolute, because he has to see, he has to know, pitifully certain he’ll find something else, something—something more, maybe, some clue in a sleeping mouth, a hint in the twitch of dreaming fingers, anything to justify and dispel the restless guilt crawling and gnawing furiously under his skin.
And—there. There. He’s there, all pale throat, lashes long and light against bruised half-moons, the ghost of warmth at his cheeks, and he’s breathing. Breathing. Breathing.
Harry’s lungs drag in air like it might cut him open, too, desperate and half-deranged with relief and respite, refusing to let the thick, soul curdle of guilt erode the lining of his stomach now that he knows Malfoy is alive, is breathing, is here, right here.
He should turn back, slip out unseen, a phantom with no sin left behind, but—
But, he stays, rooted, watching and counting the steady rise and fall that lets him believe, if only for now, that some lines can still be crossed and crossed back again, unbroken.
Up close, it’s worse. Or, maybe it’s better, but it’s not— Maybe it’s the truth laid bare under soft candlelight, eclipsed with the thick, heavy smell of ointment and potion, dittany and salve, the thing Harry’s been chasing and chasing and chasing around corners and hexes for years without ever knowing its shape.
Malfoy looks…ruined. Not dead—thank God, not dead; another prayer for a man unreligious—but…sawed open, stitched back together by someone else’s careful, meticulous hands. White gauze bands tight at his throat, under his jaw, up the swell of his bottom lip, and it’s stark and angry against skin so pale it’s almost blue in the hollows of his cheeks, bones too sharp, angular and cadaverous, mouth parted just enough to show the ghost of breath.
Alive. Breathing. Alive. It’s a manta in Harry’s mind, and he tries to find the peace within it.
His eyes catch on details like Devil’s Snare: the sweep of blond hair fallen across his forehead, sweat-damp at the temples from sleep and suffering, the smudge of shadow under his sooty lashes, softer-looking than they have any right to be on a man so—cold. There’s blood dried at the edge of the dressing, where Madam Pomfrey couldn’t scrub it all away, and Harry stares at it, sick.
Malfoy should look monstrous. He should look destroyed, ravaged and ruined and broken, but…he doesn’t. He looks breakable, but not broken, beautiful in a way Harry despises—thin wrists half-hidden beneath hospital blankets, pale lips chapped and parted around restless sleep, and he’s thin, too thin, exhausted and bone-weary from months of doing—something, and Harry is so tired of carrying the weight of war, the loom of it above them all, dark and bleeding and terrifying.
Something foul and fetid ignites under Harry’s skin, his ribs, his lungs, something like furious, agonized pity, rage, some sharp new ache that tastes suspiciously like grief, and he wants to grab Malfoy by the fucking throat and shake him awake, demand him to speak, to answer—what are you doing, what did you expect from me, are you Marked, are you Marked, are you Marked? He wants to press his hands to that wrapped, bandaged, wounded chest and promise something he can’t name, something desperate and aching—don’t die, don’t get yourself killed, don’t make me watch you bleed again, I didn’t know what I was—
There’s nothing more for him to do but stand there, hidden under under his father’s Cloak that feels heavier than the stone walls of Hogwarts, staring and staring until his eyes blur behind the thin rims of his glasses. Guilt curls tight with something softer, something Harry is petrified to look into, which he refuses to name, won’t even try, some desperate, hostile wanting for Malfoy to just—to stay just like this: warm, alive, right there, right there, right in Harry’s reach, where he can watch and be sure and—and save the fucking bastard, if he has to.
And Harry doesn’t know what he hates more: that he wants to save Draco sodding Malfoy, or that some secret, twisted corner of himself wants Draco sodding Malfoy to want it.
A shift—barely more than a trembling tremor under the blankets, but enough to send panic ricocheting through Harry’s chest. Malfoy’s brow twitches, cut lips and parted mouth tightening around a breath that sounds ragged, like it scraped him raw, even in sleep.
Instinct, that stupid Gryffindor impulse to do something, to just—fix something, anything, after all he did, and Harry moves before he can think better of it. He leans in, breath catching at the nearness, the bruised half-shadow of veins under too-pallid skin, the softest of flush on those cheeks, a blessed reminder of life, of breath, that Harry isn’t— that he didn’t— His hands lifts, hesitates, hovers.
It’s just hair. That’s all. Just hair—a soft, blond fringe damp with sleep-sweat and exertion and pained torment, clinging thinly to Malfoy’s forehead. Harry brushes it back before he can stop himself, all gentle, clumsy fingers trembling like they don’t quite belong to him, as if he has never seen his own hands before this very moment. The strands are light, delicate, and they stick to his knuckles like they want to be touched, fine and silken and—and normal, stupidly normal, for someone who walks around with a probable death sentence under his sleeve.
Malfoy shifts again, a wince pulled taut between clenched teeth and tense jaw. His hand twitches pitifully above the sheets, and Harry’s gaze snags there without his permission. The thin fabric of Malfoy’s sleep shirt slips up, just enough to show skin so sallow it looks almost translucent, the bones of his wrists too angry and aggressive, not enough food or—or care or rest, the idiot—what are you doing?
Harry’s stomach knots, anchors digging into his nerves. The Mark—it’s there, coiled in black, hidden just out of view, and Harry just—
His fingers drift closer, hovering above the cuff of Malfoy’s shirt, the temptation to check, to see, to know, to catch him balanced sharp and vicious against that smaller, crueler voice whispering, and then what?
A sigh—Malfoy’s, broken and hoarse, the softest ghost of pain spilling from a mouth that shouldn’t look so soft in sleep, not when they’re split down the middle and around the lower half of his jaw, furious red lines and small flecks of dried blood sitting heavy and stark on the swell of a bottom lip—and Harry’s hand drops from the sleeve, slides instead to hover just above Malfoy’s knuckles, wanting—stupidly, he knows—to just…soothe, to hush the nightmare and quell the pain that won’t loosen its grip.
His thumb grazes cold skin, sweat-damp and soft, and Malfoy inhales like he’s drowning, lashes fluttering, throat convulsing around a swallowed sound, some half-gasp, caught-scream choke, and grey eyes snap open, wide and glassy and feral.
The gasp is all teeth—sharp breath, sharp hate, sharp terror, serrated and cutting and savage. Harry flinches, caught halfway between chagrined, repentant apology and bullheaded, stubborn instinct, hand still poised stupidly in the air, like some pathetic little crime, half-finished and drifting.
Malfoy scoffs at him, teeth bared in a snarl. “Potter? Come to finish the job then, have you? Not enough to almost kill me once, you need to come make sure you do it right?” His voice is spit and glass, each word a cut across Harry’s already raw throat.
Harry knows he should move, should—should defend himself, explain, maybe, or just leave, slip back into the shadows where all this mess belongs.
Malfoy’s hands curl into fists, snarl curving the jagged lines on his lips. “Take your hero complex and that bloody Cloak, and get out.”
But he doesn’t. He can’t.
Because Malfoy is still looking at him like that—eyes bright, wide, shining, alive—and Harry’s chest is splitting under the weight of it all, of blood on a bathroom floor, the way Malfoy’s body jerked under his spell, the bandages binding his skin together like fragile, brittle glass, too thin and too pale and too tired, delicate and bleeding, and it’s Harry’s fault, really, all of it.
The Mark sits buried under Malfoy’s skin, Harry knows it does, and Harry just wants to tear him open and scrub him clean, put him back together right, this time.
And he can’t look away.
Malfoy spits something caustic at him, twitching like he wants to lunge at Harry and throttle him with his bare hands. “Don’t you ever,” Malfoy snarls, voice wrecked and hoarse, “ever look at me like that again. Like you know me. Like you pity me.”
Harry’s jaw snaps tight, pulse a molten rocking in his ears. “I don’t.” He steps closer, reckless, ignoring the way Malfoy minutely shrinks back, fighting furiously not to wince at the pull of sensitive, healing skin. “I don’t pity you, Malfoy.”
Malfoy laughs, a bitter, derisive, rasping thing. “No? What’s this then, Potter? What do you want?” His eyes snap to where Harry’s hand sits, lingering close to the sleeve of Malfoy’s shirt, just near his wrist, and he snorts, cruel. “Want to see the Mark? Want to play spy? Is that—”
“Shut up.” Harry’s voice is rough, strangled. He’s too close now, can see the staggered rise and fall of Malfoy’s chest, the gauze that hides sticky, split skin, the blood Harry brought out from within him—I did this, I almost killed him, I didn’t kn— His own fault. His own doing. He wants to crawl out of himself, burn the memory clean, do—do anything to make it stop echoing in his ears, the sound of Malfoy’s body hitting wet floor a constant loop in his mind.
“Make me,” Malfoy snaps, lip curled over ravaged, raw scars. The dare hangs between them like a current, devastation and destruction, sparking and vile.
Harry’s breath hitches, anger and horror and some unknowable, hot, brutal thing gnawing viciously at the edges of sense. His hands are damp fists at his sides and then—then they’re not. They’re in Malfoy’s hair, too rough, too desperate, nails catching and scratching on errant fly-aways and the soft knots of sleep-tussled strands.
Malfoy’s throat catches, clicks, a half-snarl caught achingly in his throat, just behind the tip of his tongue, and Harry does the only thing that makes any sort of sense in the ruin of his mind.
He kisses him.
It isn’t soft. It isn’t gentle.
It’s teeth and panic and a hiss of pain when Malfoy’s cut, split lip breaks under the force of it. It’s violent and mean and as much of a fight as the past six years have been, nasty and cruel and brutal, the way Malfoy’s mouth curls around the poisonous sound of Harry’s name, how Harry spits Malfoy right back, burning and caustic. Malfoy’s hands shove at his shoulder, then claw at the front of Harry’s shirt, pulling him closer, tearing him nearer like they could rip each other to pieces and then, maybe, it would finally be enough.
Harry’s pulse roars. Everything blurs—the sterile hush of the Hospital Wing, the stinging salt-copper taste of Malfoy’s blood on his lips, in his mouth, the shallow gasp that might be a moan or a curse or—God—both. Malfoy bites him, sharp enough to draw a startled, strangled grunt from Harry’s throat, then drags his mouth back like he wants to spit him out and swallow him whole all at once.
It breaks as suddenly as it started, all gasp and shove and blood, Malfoy’s palm slamming against Harry’s chest, hard enough to make him stumble back, lips red and raw. They stare at each other, both painting, mouth slick with spit and iron and something like lament.
Neither says sorry. Neither says don’t.
Harry’s heartbeat thrums violently under Malfoy’s palm for one suspended moment before Malfoy yanks his hand back like it burns him, like his skin is as savaged there as his chest, his jaw, the wet swell of his bottom lip. His shove only makes Harry lean in harder, chest to chest, pulse to pulse, teeth grazing the bruise of mouth already bitten and bloated raw. There’s blood on Harry’s tongue, copper salt and sting, and something molten and greedy opens in him when Malfoy snarls and yanks at his hair, pulling him in instead of pushing him away.
It’s a war, all of it, always, teeth clashing, lips splitting, hands fisted in hospital sheets and thin sleepwear. Harry’s Cloak is a mussed, piled mess at his feet, and Malfoy’s hiss turns to a gasp when Harry pushes him down, not hard enough to break, just enough to pin.
No pity. Harry needs him to understand that, wants to carve it into his skin, into the taste of his wet, warm mouth, hot with copper and salt and spit. There’s no pity in this, only heat, only need, only proving a point.
“You think,” Harry pants against the bandaged, wrapped curve of Malfoy’s throat, kneeling over him on the thin mattress of the bed, tasting saline and bitterness and the harsh scrape of gauze under his chin, “you think I feel sorry for you?”
Malfoy’s laugh is wet and feral—half a sob, half a taunt, as cruel as he always is. “Don’t flatter yourself,” he spits, but it catches when Harry grinds down, hips shoving the space between Malfoy’s thighs, the thin hospital blanket twisting around their knees.
The sound Malfoy makes—strangled, helpless, whimpering—lights something bright and reckless behind Harry’s ribs, the cavity of his chest. He wants to hear it again, needs to, needs to drag it out, to win whatever fucked up, cruel game has existed between them for so many years, an endless charade of taunts and swears and magic and slurs, always and always and never-fucking-ending.
He palms Malfoy’s hip, the dip of his waist, tugging him down and dragging him closer, feels the bones sharp under his hand, the flutter of muscle too thin, too fragile—when did he lose so much weight, has he always been so skinny? It makes Harry angrier, hotter, and he pushes harder.
Their clothes are in the way, Malfoy’s sleepwear bunched up around his knees, caught tight around his shoulders, Harry’s trousers digging irritatingly into his hips, and Harry’s teeth catch on Malfoy’s jaw, mouthing the pale throat just above the scratch of white gauze. He tastes herbal, Harry thinks distantly, like dittany and salve, and Harry wants to bite him.
“Don’t—” Malfoy hisses, but his hips arch up, traitorous, grinding against Harry’s thigh with little restraint, soft sounds getting caught in his throat, behind the lock of his jaw, kept witheringly in the steel restraint of his mouth.
It’s beyond what Harry had imagined, and Harry swallows his next curse with another kiss, deeper this time, filthier, all tongue and teeth and the tang of blood thick between them. There’s nothing soft within it, within them, just the rough, vicious drag of cloth, the wet heat of their mouths, the obscene friction when Harry shoves his knee between Malfoy’s legs, pressing down until Malfoy chokes on a broken, pathetic moan, wanton and warm.
Harry’s mind is a blur of heat and fury and want, an echoing cacophony of yesyesyes, moremoremore, caught precariously on the precipice of Malfoy’s mouth beneath his, teeth scratching his lips, nails pulling at the fabric of his clothes, as desperate and undignified as Harry has ever seen him, not nearly enough as Harry wants. And this is what he needed—to feel Malfoy’s heartbeat hammering into his own, to feel him alive, hot, pinned, loud and whining for it.
There’s an even more sinister voice within his mind that whispers mine, with dripping fangs and curling nails and too much possession for Harry’s comfort, and he shoves it down and away with vitriol.
He drags his hand down, over gauze and bandage and fragile ribs, past the sharp line of Malfoy’s stomach, the soft of his skin around his sides. He wants to see all of him, ruin all of him, understand all of him, finally, beyond boyhood rivalry and schoolyard taunts, more than notes passed in class and duels held at midnight. He wants to prove a point Malfoy will taste for days.
Malfoy’s breathing is ragged, a litany of half-swallowed, half-slurred curses and bitten-off pleas, all jerking hips and twitching fingers when Harry ghosts his hand lower, lower, under the thin hem of his shirt, pressing past the edge of bandages, skin hot and damp with sweat and salt. He’s warm, but God he’s warm, lit alive and glowing with it, with air and heat and life and skin, heartbeat and hummingbird pulse, fluttering a storm wherever Harry presses his lips, nips with his teeth.
Harry’s fingers nudge past the band of Malfoy’s trousers—silk, Harry realizes, amused beyond himself, of course—and his pulse spikes, because—fuck, the thought, the image of finding Malfoy hard for him, like a triumph, a victory, a bloody point to prove to get Malfoy to just stop, to let Harry help, damn it all, the arrogant little shit.
But—
His fingers slip lower and—wet. Heat, not what he expects, not the shape, not the hardness, not…
Malfoy freezes. Harry does, too, the shock slicing bloodstained through the molten haze like cold steel and skin, ravaged and hushed. Harry’s fingers flex, brushing deeper, and it’s slick, impossibly soft, the kind of yielding that makes Harry’s brain white out—
Then, Malfoy’s shoving him, all teeth and nails and ragged, bristling fury, snarls and sneers and magic so wild it burns in the air, the crackle in Harry’s lungs. The bed jolts under them, blankets tangling, a sharp sting where Malfoy’s nails rake the fabric of Harry’s shirt, catching on his collarbone.
“Get off!” Malfoy’s voice is a snarl, hoarse and broken, a foul knot of choked anger. His eyes are wild, wide, enraged, too bright, all grey and fog and rain-fat cloud. God, and Harry… “Get out! Get off me, Potter, get—”
Harry’s mouth opens, questions clawing up his throat, cloying and wet, his chest full of—of panic, maybe, and something like awe, like hunger, like confusion, loud and screeching in his ears. “Malfoy… I didn’t— What—”
“Get. Out.” Malfoy’s voice cracks, feral and furious, and he shoves at Harry again, vicious, reckless, uncaring of the pain that flashes across his face when his bindings pull taut under magicked gauze. “Go play hero somewhere else. Go pity someone else. Just—get out!”
Harry trips, stumbles blindly off the bed, breathless, clothes twisted around his hips, his elbows, awkward and caught. There’s still blood and spit cooling on his lips, wet and tacky, and he wants—fuck—he wants to reach out, to ask, to touch, to just understand whatever this—
But, Malfoy’s eyes are broken shards of hate and terror, a barricade he dare not cross.
Harry nods jaggedly, stutteringly, and he backs away, step by step, Cloak dragging behind him like a wraith across the floor, limp and light. The hush of the Hospital Wing presses in oppressively, heavy and damning, and Harry can’t even bring himself to open his mouth and…
And what, he wonders, apologize? As if Malfoy would ever allow Harry to even get a word in, let alone an apology for—Merlin—touching him like that, feeling the wet slide of him, warm and thick and just so—
Outside the door, the castle feels colder than it ever has, and Harry stands there, staring without seeing, the tip of his finger still damp.
He should be asleep. He should be asleep, but his eyes keep snapping open in the pitch-dark hush of the dormitory, every breath too shallow, too hot, too constricting.
The curtains around his bed feel suffocating, a coffin sitting heavy and restrictive around his lungs, trapping him in the memory of Malfoy’s mouth, Malfoy’s voice, that wounded gnarl of hiss and hatred that twisted into a gasp against Harry’s tongue, the heat of his lips. The feel of him pinned, gasping, shoving back, even as he dragged Harry closer.
The way Harry’s fingers had slid lower, felt—
Harry shoves his hand under the blankets, beneath the thick quilt and down lower, palm pressing flat over the hard, insistent throb in his pants. He shouldn’t—fuck, he shouldn’t—but he’s burning with it, skin too tight, cock aching against his wrist as he shifts, grinding into the mattress like a boy again, desperate and thoughtless, pathetic and leaking over Draco sodding Malfoy.
Malfoy’s eyes, all wide, bright, wet with rage and terror and life, so warm and alive, lit from within like low-lying fog across the Scottish Highlands, pewter and slate and blinking and real. Harry’s mind replays it over and over, the moment Malfoy froze under his touch, the slick heat he hadn’t expected, the shape of him all wrong, all right, all Harry can even think about now, even when he tries to drag the thought away. Malfoy’s thighs, spread around Harry’s hips, canting and jerking, the shape of his lips when he gasped…
Harry’s hand slips under his waistband, and just the brush of his fingers makes his hips stutter, a strangled gasp catching in his throat, snared and sticking on the back of his tongue. He bites his lip hard enough to taste blood, just to stay silent, to stop the hitch in his breath from echoing across the room. Ron snores somewhere on the other side of the curtains, and none of them knows Harry’s here like this, shaking, rutting into his own hand like a dog, like he’s starving.
He closes his eyes, but all he sees is Draco. Not Malfoy—spitting slurs in the corridors, immaculate perfection behind gilded posture and marble-carved sneers, that arrogant, obnoxious, cowardly curl of his lips a permanent fixture on a face Harry would love to throttle—but Draco, hand fisted in Harry’s hair, lip split from his teeth and his magic, chest rising in sharp, broken breaths under white gauze and the permeating scent of dittany and sterile antiseptic. He can still taste the flash of his throat, soft and pale where Harry pressed his mouth, long and lean and pulse a fluttering avalanche under Harry’s tongue. And…the way he sounded when Harry’s fingers slipped lower, between—God—between his lips, that shock, that wet, thick heat.
Harry’s wrist stutters pathetically, and he jerks himself harder, faster, teeth clenching painfully around a groan. He wants… He wants… He doesn’t know what he wants. To see it again? To taste it? To press Draco open and ruin him and save him all at once, as if Malfoy would ever lie down on his back and spread his legs and let Harry within the sweltering scorch of his body, let alone allow Harry to roll up the sleeves of his robes and expunge the filth of the Dark Mark from his skin? But, Harry doesn’t know, doesn’t even care, and he just—
“Fuck.” It slips out, a whisper ripped from somewhere deep and raw. His hips buck up off the mattress, thighs trembling under the weight of it. His palm is slick now, the head of his cock leaking across his knuckles as he strokes harder, faster, chasing the image in his mind like a curse, like fingers just one millimeter away from the snitch, fluttering and flickering aureate and gold just out of reach.
Draco’s voice, Draco’s mouth, the twist of pain into want, the soft heat where Harry shouldn’t have touched, shouldn’t know, but he does now, the slick slide of his fingers across kept little curls, across damp skin and between dripping lips, and it’s just so fucking—
His whole body locks, jaw snapping tight around a bitten-off moan as it slams through him, heat coiling low, roiling and rolling through his legs, his spine, down the tingle of his arms and fingers, burning white behind his eyelids.
He comes harder than he ever has, thighs quivering, chest heaving, his free hand knotted in the sheets like he might rip through them, an anchor in the mist of post-orgasm shaking. It leaves him raw, spent, heart still clawing at his ribs like it wants to get out, crawl its way up his throat and out into the whipping freedom of open air and midnight light.
He lies there, wet and panting, sweat cooling sickly on his neck, around his clavicle and hairline, his cock softening in his palm, guilt curdling sour in the back of his throat. He wipes his hand on the side of his mattress, against creased sheets and wrinkled quilt, too wrung out and exhausted to care.
In the reverberant darkness, the thought seeps back in—slow, inevitable, unwelcome. Draco, slick and wet and beautiful under his hands, mean lips and crueler words, barbed and spitting and furious, panting and writhing against Harry’s thigh, fingers a vice-grip in Harry’s shirt, pulling him in, closer, deeper. Draco, with that secret hidden in the cradle of his hips, legs spread so nicely around Harry’s waist.
Draco, Marked and hunted and bleeding and half-ruined, lying in the Hospital Wing, because Harry almost killed him—could have killed him—and Harry just wants to shake him, ask what are you doing, what are you up to, just tell me, tell me and let me help you!
To save him, maybe, from all of it.
Inside his bed, Harry rolls onto his side, eyes wide open, heart still hammering out Draco’s name against his ribs.
He reaches for his Map.
Morning breaks over him like a punishment, slaughtering itself across the windows of Gryffindor Tower, the light unkind on sweat-and-semen-damp sheets and the restless twist of a half-kicked quilt still caught around his ankles and calves. He’d dreamt it again—or, maybe, not a dream, more like an echo, a fevered replay behind his eyelids, plastered achingly across the front of his brain. Malfoy’s mouth—and he does feel more like Malfoy now, in the stark light of day—hot and reckless, biting and mean, the way Harry’s fingers dug in and hadn’t let go, not until he had to.
And now, it’s morning, and he’s alone with the proof of it sticky on his stomach, the hem of his shirt, the…lining of his sheets.
It should feel filthy. It does, really, but worse is how it doesn’t feel…wrong. Not—not entirely, not in the way Harry expected. It mostly just felt easy, and that scares Harry more than any sordid amount of filth or foulness ever could.
He stares at the hangings of his four-poster, the wrinkles in the fabric he’s memorized over a hundred nights now, and tries not to let the word Malfoy slip out under his breath. That itch is already there again, stirring and coiling beneath his skin, and Harry hates it as much as he revels in it—the urge to see Malfoy again, the need to make sure he’s still alive, to see the wound on his chest, the fading bruises, the place where Harry’s wand ripped and ravaged him open.
Harry just needs to know he’s healing. To know he’s real.
Blinking wan and wearily and rubbing a (recently Tergeo-ed) hand down his face and through his hair, Harry drags himself to breakfast late, fumbling through half-muttered excuses to Ron and Hermione, but they’re too busy arguing about Apparition tests and licenses to notice he’s half-mad with distraction, that glaze in his eye not lifting for anything. He scans the Slytherin table the moment he sits, eyes rapid and discerning across the span of the Great Hall and—nothing.
Malfoy’s seat is empty.
He tries not to care and fails rather spectacularly. He picks at toast gone stale and sips at tea gone frigid, and he manages to hold out for all of seventeen minutes (a record for him, he thinks sardonically, teeth hurting and bitter for no discernible reason at all) before he excuses himself to no one in particular and ducks into the closest loo he can find, already slipping the Map out from within his pockets. His thumb languidly brushes the worn crease where the parchment folds shut, eyes flicking briefly over his father’s name, and he searches, watching—
Draco Malfoy. The footprints hover in the Hospital Wing, so he’s there, still there, still breathing, still alive. Harry gnaws at his bottom lip—the same lip Malfoy had sucked on, bit, smeared with his own spit and blood and heat not eight hours before—and he stews, mulling questions back and forth in his mind, furiously aching to just ask when, when will he crawl back to his side of the castle, when will he go back to whatever he’s plotting, whatever he’s doing, tucked away and hidden in that Room Harry can never get into, no matter how often he may try?
He’s up to something. Harry knows this indisputably, knows it like he knows his own heartbeat, his own magic, the same, steady dread, that beating tattoo in his chest, rhythmic and repetitive and routine. Malfoy’s secrets are like poison under Harry’s skin—always have been, Harry grumbles to himself, petulant with his simmering, stewing curiosity—but now, they taste sharper, tangled with something Harry can’t seem to untie. It’s not enough, now, to just know; he wants to understand, to see and feel and comprehend fully what’s behind that half-dead, half-crazed look in Malfoy’s eyes, the way his hands tremble and shake, the way his mouth had tasted like something feral in the candlelit dark of the Hospital Wing.
Harry wants to help him. Not that Malfoy has ever done anything to deserve it, but Harry won’t let others be put into danger just because Malfoy’s in over his head, lost and used in the wings of a war he has no business withstanding, a puppet to the whims of his family’s backings. Harry wants to help him, to get him out of Voldemort’s hairless, slimy grip, get him away and out of it all. Dumbledore would listen, Harry’s sure, and shouldn’t Harry go to him? Explain it all and let Dumbledore ferret Malfoy away to safety, some Order-sanctioned safe house somewhere for him and his foul parents?
He…should, but every time he thinks it, his chest tightens something ferocious, clenched and restrictive around his lungs. Because, he knows, is terrified to admit, then it wouldn’t be Harry dragging it out of Malfoy. It wouldn’t be Harry’s secret to keep, to protect, to save. And some dark, twisted, selfish part of him wants that—to be the one Malfoy tells, confides in, trusts.
The only one who gets close enough to see him whole.
Harry watches the Map like an addict. The lines of that name drift back to the dungeons after four days, and each night, he’s had to fight and brawl with the impulse to visit him again in the Hospital Wing, to not leave the blessed sanctity of Gryffindor Tower to see if Malfoy still smells of dittany, still tastes of blood and salve and sweat. He wonders if Malfoy is still in pain, if the wounds itch under his gauze and wrappings and robes.
If, maybe, Malfoy remembers it, too—kiss, bite, cut, taste, wet.
But, under it all, winding tighter every hour, is that same pulsing, frantic thought: time is running out, time is running out, hurry, hurry. Dumbledore’s eyes so blue and grave, whispering about Horcruxes and Tom Riddle’s soul clinging on, like rot in festering walls, and Malfoy’s part in all of it remains a splinter even Harry cannot dig out, blood sitting heavy beneath his fingernails, the seams of his robes.
He won’t wait anymore, then. Seven days, he decides. Seven days. One week of pacing the Tower, pressing the Map flat under his palms like a prayer, wondering if supplication works if the one on his knees doesn’t even believe in God, doesn’t know if he believes in much of anything at all. One week of telling himself this is about the mission, about the war, about doing, finally, what is right.
And if he can’t sleep at night, if the thought that keeps him awake long into the indigo blues of twinkling Scotland night is the memory of Malfoy’s mouth, the sound he made when Harry dragged him closer, the warm crush of his ribs under Harry’s hands, then…
He hates himself for it. He also doesn’t stop.
When Malfoy slips away down that shadowed hall on the seventh night, Harry is already halfway down the stairs under his Cloak. He tells himself, repetitively, repeatedly, wrathfully, that he’s only doing the right thing. It’s the right thing. It’s the only thing, and Harry is done letting Malfoy die.
The castle at night has always felt half-alive, walls whispering secrets into his shoulders as he slips under his father’s Cloak, feet soundless on cold, twisting stone. The magic here has always felt dense, thick like moss on walls older than antiquity, clinging and growing and weaving the wards around Harry’s shoes, his hair, swirling through the space between his fingertips. The Map burns in his pocket, the dot marked Draco Malfoy a single pulse of certainty in the dark maze, and Harry does not let it go, will not let it go.
Hermione would say it’s stupid—dangerous and reckless, in that bull-headed Gryffindor way he always is, without reason or justification—but his blood is fizzing, brain pounding out the same wild drumbeat of, find him. Find out. Fix it. Don’t let him disappear again.
When he sees that pale blur of blond hair, black robes drawn tight, head down, shoulders hunched like skulking prey, Harry’s heart trips over itself. He follows at a distance, breath caught in his teeth and cloying against his throat, wet and sticky and sickly-sweet. Malfoy pauses at that blank stretch of wall on the seventh floor, paces, turns, paces again.
Watching the stilt to his walk, like the stretch of skin on his hip hurts mercilessly, all Harry can think is, I need to see the thing that hurts him. He almost says it aloud, but his throat is dry, constricted and tight.
The door blooms from nothing, ancient wood and wild magic and iron hinges loud in the darkness of night, and Malfoy slips inside without looking back.
Harry barely waits a beat before following, edging himself past the creaking hinges and slipping surreptitiously into the wake of Malfoy’s quiet, ghostly steps. His knuckles find the door, press back, and it gives, slipping shut, swallowing them whole.
The Room is huge tonight, cavernous, echoing with hidden alcoves and jagged piles of broken objects and lost things, shadows coiling around towering cabinets and dusty crates and tall, leaning piles of…everything.
And, past the half-fallen stack of old, creaking candelabras, likely older than Dumbledore himself, is the Vanishing Cabinet, identical to the one at Borgin and Burkes, looming like a coffin at the far end, half-shrouded in dusted tarp.
At its feet is Draco Malfoy, sleeves rolled to the elbow, pale wrists exposed as he drags a cloth across the Cabinet’s carved edge.
He’s—stunning, Harry thinks, jarringly and quite without his own permission, sharp enough to send a nauseous swell down into his stomach. But he is, beauty and misery and sharp around the eyes, fingers long and light as they flick the sheet away, tapping systematically at the Cabinet’s exterior—one, two three, four—all crisp lines and too-thin skin.
Harry steps out of the shadows, lets the Cloak wrinkle down by his feet, no warning, just the click of shoes on stone.
Malfoy spins, wand half-raised, chest heaving. His face falls into a mask of frenzied ice, venom and acid on his tongue. “Potter,” he spits, voice raw with disbelief and fury. “Of course. Of course you’d sniff around where you’re not wanted.”
Harry shrugs, ignores the staccato impulse to reach for his own wand. He won’t. Not this time. “Nice Cabinet, Malfoy. New hobby of yours?”
“Get out.” Malfoy’s wand shakes—not much, but enough for Harry to see it, savor it, what it means. “This isn’t your business.”
“You’re making it my business,” Harry fires back. He steps closer, feels the air buzz static and solar between them. “What’s this for, huh? What’re you sneaking around with cabinet doors for? You think I don’t know something’s wrong with you?”
Malfoy’s laugh is a hollow thing, dead and decaying. “Salazar, listen to yourself. You think you’re so noble. Always in everyone’s bloody secrets like it’s your right.” He steps forward, too, close enough Harry can smell the bitter bite of dittany and salve on his collar, mingling with something lighter, cedar and pine. There are bruises darkening under his chin where the bandages have rubbed raw. Harry doesn’t want to look away from them. “You should start learning how to mind your own, Potter—”
“I nearly killed you,” Harry interjects, and it sounds like an accusation and an apology tangled into one, always too pathetic and lacking. “You think I’m going to just—just let you keep skulking about the castle? Doing whatever task Voldemort has set you to? I can’t.”
Malfoy flinches infinitesimally at the name, and that seems to rankle Harry more than the secrets and scars. “You don’t get to feel good about this, Potter. You don’t get to swoop in like you’re going to save me, or whatever ridiculous idea you’ve got into your thick head. I don’t need you.” His eyes glitter like a cornered animal’s, panic flaring and flickering just beneath the curl of a sneer, all wide and dark.
But, Harry sees the tremor in his wrist, the hollow divot of his throat, where scars still stitch his skin tight and red. He’s lying. He’s bleeding inside, exhausted and terrified, too worn to bear the overhanging stench of death and torment that lingers in the air, thick and rife with war. Harry’s chest twists, equal parts pity and rage, and he knows Malfoy would hate him for both.
“You do,” Harry says, quiet and deadly sure, insistent. “You do. And I’m not just— I’m not going to leave you here to die for him.” Don’t you get it?, he wants to ask, imploring and half-crazed, don’t you see?
“Don’t you—” Malfoy shoves at him, but Harry catches his wrists, feels the sharp, bird-bone fragility under his grip.
He swallows around the bile in his throat.
They slam against the side of the Cabinet, the fucking thing Malfoy’s been bleeding himself dry over for months, the thing Harry could smash apart right now, if he wanted to. And he wants to.
Harry presses Malfoy against it, back and shoulder blades likely aching from the press into his skin, and Harry just wants to—to— “Let me in,” he snarls, breath hot between them. “Tell me what you’re doing. Let me help you.”
“I’d rather slit my own throat—”
“Fucking do it, then.” Harry’s voice breaks on the last word, too loud, too close, too much. Malfoy flinches, doesn’t back down, too wound around pride and prestige to ever cave and capitulate when he could threaten and abuse, driving Harry to the brink of madness, just because he can.
Their faces nearly touch, and Harry can feel the tremor in Malfoy’s arms where he struggles, the flush under his skin, heat and hate tangled up, gnarled and caught.
And he’s just— He’s so infuriating, so blindingly stupid, the biggest fucking wanker Harry has ever met, an arrogant, cowardly little shit of a human being, and—
Something breaks in Harry first. He doesn’t even think—never does, the voice in his brain that sounds like Hermione whispers—just moves, teeth clashing against Malfoy’s mouth in a kiss that’s all teeth and salt and frustration and fury. Malfoy bites back, literally, teeth sharp on Harry’s lip, and Harry groans, fists tangled into the front of Malfoy’s obnoxious robes.
It’s not sweet, and it’s not gentle. It’s the snarl and scathing vitriol they’ve always carried between them, just translated violently into bruising mouths and nipping incisors, Malfoy’s spine bowing against the Cabinet’s edge as Harry crowds in, hot and prodding and mean.
Malfoy’s hands claw at his shoulders, pushing, pulling, both at once, and Harry doesn’t let himself wonder when exactly he wanted to be drawn into Draco Malfoy. “Get off me,” Malfoy hisses, but his hips buck forward, nails digging crescents into Harry’s jumper.
Harry growls into his mouth, voice shredded, strange and low even to his own ears. “You don’t want that.”
He fumbles at belts, robes, fabric all in the way, whole desperation and single-minded hunger. Malfoy curses him in English and broken French, some slurred half-thing that catches in the clench of his jaw, head thrown back as Harry drags him open, fists the damned fabric around his hips.
“I hate you—”
“Good. Hate me. Just—” He hoists one of Malfoy’s legs up around his hips, fingers digging painfully into the dip behind his knee, all savage motion and palms under trembling thigh, pressing him into the hard wood of the Cabinet. Malfoy gasps, a soft, startled sound, and Harry swallows it down, teeth scraping jaw, throat, the hollow behind his ear where he smells of soap and cedar.
This is mad, some half-voice whispers, alarming and wild in his head, this is utterly mad. But, Harry’s mouth is on Malfoy’s throat now, licking the curve of his jaw, the tip where savage crimson lines veer beneath the cut of his chin and across the swell of Malfoy’s lip. He can feel the thunder of Malfoy’s pulse under his skin, loud and beating and alive.
Alive.
Alive.
Malfoy sucks in a breath, claws at him, all defiance and faux-dignity, even now. Harry wants to laugh, wants to—wants to crush him, save him, needing more than anything for him to feel something other than the cold, creeping rot they both know is coming, already looming foul and putrid above them.
“Look at me,” Harry pants, nose buried in the soft blond hair gone damp at Malfoy’s temple. “Look at me, Malfoy. Look at who’s here.”
Malfoy does, eyes wild, wide, pupils blown dark as night across twinkling steam-grey, and Harry wants—wants— It should be fast, he thinks. Frenzied and brutal and blind, just need and heat and something to tear at until the ache within him goes quiet. That’s how he wants it, how it started, how it should be between them.
But, his hands tremble when he drags Malfoy’s robes open, the silk-lined black splitting around bone-pale skin. Malfoy’s chest is thin, ribs sharp under too-fine flesh, malnourished and over-exhausted and why is he doing this to himself? Harry’s breath catches, fingers light, and then he sees.
Jagged maroon lines slash across porcelain skin, still raised and ruinous and angry, half-healed but gnarled at the edges. It’s gore and viscera and terrified cruelty, stained and steeled into the smooth definition of Malfoy’s chest, a permanent reminder of schoolboy fear and reckless impulsivity. I did this. I did this.
His stomach lurches. The rush in his veins sours fetid for a heartbeat, guilt a leaden poison in his mouth. “Fuck.” He presses a hand to Malfoy’s ribs, like he can cover it, hide it. Like he can undo it, if only he willed hard enough.
Malfoy’s laugh is brittle glass, serrated and shard. “Don’t look at me like that, Potter. Save your noble horror for someone who wants it.” He tries to twist away, but Harry pins him harder, palms splayed over ruined skin, feeling the heat of scar tissue and curse wounds pulse under his fingertips.
“You’re… I did this.” Harry’s voice catches, chokes, dry and scratching. He wants to say I’m sorry, wants to say I didn’t know— But, it rings hollow here, not enough, not an excuse nor explanation, and Malfoy wouldn’t care, anyway. He wants to say I’d take it back, but he can’t, doesn’t know how.
And it’s not like he’s the first person to place a Mark on Malfoy’s body.
Malfoy’s breath hitches, though whether from the pressure or the look in Harry’s eyes, he doesn’t know. “If you pity me, I swear to Salazar—”
“I don’t,” Harry snaps, means it. It shocks him, a little, how true it is, how little any of this has to do with pity and guilt and debts unpaid. It’s all— He wants to rip the hurt out of Malfoy’s chest and shove himself in instead. He wants to bury it, bury himself, anything to keep Malfoy’s brittle heart beating one day longer, one week, one months, one year, just—more.
His palms slide up, reverent despite the roughness, thumbs brushing the snarled edges of rust-red ragged wounds, the jut of Malfoy’s dipping collarbone, the hollow where his throat bobs under slashed skin. He noses at the scars there, pressing his lips down, tasting that hint of ointment and herb, the wafting scent of pine.
Malfoy goes still, rigid and quivering tension under Harry’s mouth. “Don’t—” His leg still sits perched on Harry’s hip, the jut of his calf pressing into Harry’s trousers.
So, Harry does. He dips lower, tongue tracing the seam of a scar, soft and delicate and so painfully gentle. Malfoy flinches, hard enough for Harry to feel it, hissing a breath through his teeth, but he doesn’t push Harry off, doesn’t send him away.
Harry’s lips ghost raised, ravaged skin, softer than a lover’s touch and more reverent still. “You’re—” he whispers, words tumbling out half-formed and odd, like he doesn’t know what he wants to say, doesn’t even know if the words exist. “You’re real. You’re not—not just…” Harry doesn’t know. Not just a name on a Map, a flash of blond around hidden, winding corners and long, dusted corridors, an echoing headache throbbing in the space behind Harry’s eyes, like an endearing, perpetual fucking nuisance.
None of it feels right, and he can’t say it all, too knotted and tangled in his throat. He tastes it on Malfoy’s skin, instead, salt and sweat and iron memory.
When he pulls back, Malfoy’s gaze slices him open, pale and furious and raw.
Harry can’t help himself, needs to know, for certain, this time. His hand drifts down, down, catching on the cuff of Malfoy’s sleeve where it’s been pushed back to his elbow, down, and—
Harry feels it, can count the ridges along the skull, the swirling shape of the snake, all raised skin and inked black in the soft, pale curve of Malfoy’s forearm, right there, just under Harry’s fingertips.
Malfoy stiffens, arm jerking—but Harry grips him tighter, thumb dragging over midnight stain etched deep and hateful. The skull and serpent burn his eyes, sear callouses within him, but what flares in his chest isn’t revulsion. It’s a surge of something—something darker, maybe, possessive, a snarl cutting into his stomach and mangling the cavity of his chest, the space between his ribs. Mine. But it’s not— The word skims his brain, but no, that’s not it, not quite. I’ll protect you. Even from this. Just let me protect you.
“You let him do this,” Harry breathes, voice rough, half accusation and half awe. “You let him brand you, like—”
Malfoy bares his teeth, that vicious, growling, cornered thing again. “What did you expect me to do? Say no and watch him torture my mother to madness? You—”
But, Harry cuts him off, mouth slanting back over Malfoy’s before the hiss can turn into a howl. He bites him, drinks him in like the taste might burn the Dark Mark away, knows it won’t and tries, anyway.
Malfoy shoves at him, gasps and groans into his mouth, furious and helpless and shaking, hips canting forward against Harry’s, desperate, aching.
Harry doesn’t let go, fingers closing over the Mark like he could squeeze the rot and detritus from Malfoy’s blood, purify him and leave him clean, untouched, new. He wants to. He wants to peel the snake and skull from his skin and devour them whole.
“You’re not his,” Harry grits out against Malfoy’s mouth. “You’re not anyone’s to mark.”
Malfoy’s eyes flash, all vindictive light and steely grey, thrilled and baiting beneath Harry’s lips. “No?” he asks, and his voice drips with disdain. “Not even yours, then?”
Harry wants to rise to the bait of it, wants to fight and scratch and beat the petulance from Malfoy’s face, turn it into something understanding, real, break the facade and leave only the vulnerable, the part Harry wants to hide away and keep safe, preserved.
He doesn’t.
Harry chases him, mouth relentless at his jaw, his throat, his scars. “You don’t get to shut me out. Not now,” he breathes, hoarse with heat and hurt and something like a promise, a threat. His hands frame Malfoy’s face, rough and careful, like he’s holding something precious—and maybe, he wonders, he is. His thumbs drag at the fragile skin under Malfoy’s eyes, the dark, bruise-purple rings, and look at me, his touch says, because the words catch in his throat. Let me see you.
Malfoy’s laugh stutters out, shaky and sharp. “Don’t flatter yourself, Potter. You think you can save me? Saint—”
Harry cuts him off, doesn’t care enough to wait, to listen to spewed bullshit and pettish recalcitrance. His lips ghost down the scarred seam of Malfoy’s chest, his fingers tracing each jagged edge like a vow.
“I can’t save you,” Harry admits, a raw rasp against blood-warm skin, heated and flushed. “Not if you don’t want it.” His mouth finds the thin skin over Malfoy’s heart, and the hammering pulse there betrays him more than his teeth and sneers ever could. “But you’re not dying on me. Not like this. Not for him.”
A breath shudders out, caught between a hiss and something softer, sweeter. Malfoy fists a hand in Harry’s hair like he wants to pull it back but doesn’t dare.
The pressure sits heavy against Harry’s scalp, and he relishes it, treasures it, savors the feeling of Malfoy touching him, holding onto him, warm and solid and lean and breathing, real, all real.
Harry kisses the hollow of his throat again, nipping at sensitive, flaming skin, feeling the twitch of Malfoy’s muscles and the strangled gasp he stutters out, breath warm across Harry’s face. He noses at the line of him, lips brushing gently where the wound still glows carmine, and he wants desperately. He wants to tear the Dark Mark off Malfoy’s arm with his teeth, wants to strip every trace of Voldemort from within him, wants to cover it with himself, instead. And it’s—it’s not even about ownership, not possession or keeping or having. It’s about witnessing him, wanting him, secreting him away somewhere safe, far away from it all, where Harry knows he will be alive, warm and unwounded.
“You’re not alone in this,” Harry murmurs, low and barbarous and pleading. His palm skims up Malfoy’s forearm, brushing the staining edges of the Mark, not squeezing, just—just feeling. Just holding it, holding him. “You hear me? You’re not alone, Malfoy.”
Malfoy’s mouth parts, a sharp retort ready on his tongue, but it never comes. Harry feels the shiver run through him, the moment Malfoy almost lets go, almost softens, almost gives in, just not enough.
Harry doesn’t wait for him to try, no patience within him, now, for gentility and saccharinity. He takes it the only way he knows how between them, with lips crashing back on Malfoy’s, teeth scraping raw skin, fingers dragging robes off shoulders and down hips, nails biting at hipbones, as if he can anchor Malfoy here to him with flesh and friction alone.
Malfoy curses him for it, spitting and sneering and scorning him with groans and gasps, his nails raking Harry’s back, legs falling open so Harry can shove down his trousers, kick off his shoes. He hikes his leg back up over Harry’s hip when he’s bare, bracing around Harry’s waist like a trap he’ll never escape, and Harry kisses him through it all, steady and savage, pinning Malfoy open with the eyes he’s so desperate, apparently, to hide from.
Malfoy keens, head tilting back against the Cabinet, cruel and angular along his spine, when Harry’s mouth drifts down again, over scars and bruises and lines, down over the black snake that coils like a threat under his skin. Malfoy doesn’t flinch this time, doesn’t freeze, but his eyes are wide and wild when Harry kisses it, an oath and promise and threat. A vow.
You’ll live. I’ll make sure of it. I will not let you die. I’ll stand between you and him, just watch me. I’ll protect you, if you let me. I will. Let me. Let me.
Not—not because Malfoy is his, because he isn’t, not really. It’s because Malfoy is here, alive and breakable and real. And Harry will be damned if he lets him slip through his fingers now, not when he’s naked and gnarled and gorgeous, leg soft and silken on Harry’s waist, lithe and lean and infuriatingly lovely for something to gruesomely foul.
Harry can’t help himself, fingers tracing each line, each ridge rough under his thumb, his forefinger. His breath catches on the shape of Malfoy’s chest, the tight, taut draw of muscle over bone, the fragile divot of his stomach, past the sweet dimples of his hipbones. Lower, still, where—fuck—where Malfoy’s thighs tremble apart for him, flushed and slick and wet, damp beneath the small tuft of meticulous, kept little curls.
It hits Harry like a Bludger, whipping and brutal across his sternum—soft. Warm. Not the sharp, cruel thing he spits hexes with in hallways, not the cold, derisive sneer Harry has built his hate around for years. Soft. Wet. Warm. Something secret and alive in the cradle of his palm.
He can’t help staring, lips parted and tongue flashing the dry crack of his lips. He’s just so—
Malfoy kicks at him, a harsh snap of heel to Harry’s thigh, just under his arse, enough to send him jolting. “Stop staring and just—get on with it.”
Harry can think of nothing he wants to do less than stop staring. He shakes his head, hand digging into Malfoy’s thigh to keep him still, nails pressing half-moons to soft, plush skin. Harry ducks and presses open-mouthed kisses over the pale stretch of Malfoy’s throat, because he can, because Malfoy lets him. “No,” he sighs, “not yet.” His voice is unrecognizable to himself, ragged with awe, with something dangerous and half-deranged and sweet, all at once.
He drags his other palm up, spreads Malfoy open with careful fingers, feels the flushing heat of him, soft and velvet and silk beneath coarse little curls. Malfoy bucks, sucks in a breath, tries to clench his thighs shut, but Harry holds him open, presses him back against the Cabinet, and slips two fingers in, slow, dragging them out and pushing in until Malfoy can’t stop the shattered little sound that tears out of him.
He sounds broken, keening and whining, thigh quivering where it hooks over Harry’s hip, around the bruising grip Harry has on him. “Shut up,” he snarls, rutting down pathetically against Harry’s fingers, “and just—fuck me, Potter—”
And that, Harry marvels, might just be one of the most wondrous things he has ever heard. But— “Not like that.” He shakes his head again, lips ghosting hot over Malfoy’s ear, across the spread of his smooth shoulder. “Not yet.” He slips another finger in, feels Malfoy stretch wider around him, shuddering, biting down a sob as Harry curls his fingers, feeling the wet, slick glide of him across Harry’s knuckles. “I want—want you to feel good, you hear me? Gonna make you feel so fucking good.”
He circles Malfoy’s clit with his thumb, slow massaging that makes Malfoy writhe, torn between bracing himself and yanking Harry closer, up against his chest and hips and neck.
And God, Harry thinks, drunk and stupid and out of his mind, how could he have not known what it would be like to do this, to have Draco Malfoy gasping into his shoulder and clutching petulantly at the seams of his clothes, helpless against his own wanting, writhing with it in the crook of Harry’s hand? How could he ever think hexes and curses and schoolyard brawls would have ever been enough, when he could have had this?
“Potter—” Malfoy’s voice is frayed at the edges, his hips twitching, like he wants to grind down on Harry’s palm and ride his fingers, taking it if Harry won’t give it fast enough.
It’s so beyond anything Harry had ever imagined, and he laughs, breathless, mouth pressed to Malfoy’s jaw, tongue tracing the ripple of serrated, piqued skin. “Just feel it, okay? I want— I want to see you enjoy it.” His thumb keeps circling Malfoy’s swollen little clit, soft at first, teasing, and Malfoy curses, snarls something vile that melts into a bitten-back moan, leg curling painfully around the hand Harry has under his knee, keeping it perched and pretty on his hip.
“Stop teasing,” he spits, but it comes out thin, ruined, breathless, his thighs shivering wider when Harry crooks his fingers just right, feels him flutter and clutch around them. He’s ruined, gorgeous and panting, all in the palm of Harry’s hand, and Harry just cannot believe—
He wants to commit it all to memory: the way Malfoy’s breath breaks when he presses deeper, the trembling arch of his pale, ravaged hips, stuttering when Harry twitches his fingers, sending lightning up his spine, the shock of Malfoy’s soft, slick, wet heat swallowing his fingers, like it’s desperate to keep him there, tucked up close, warm and hot. Fuck, Harry wants to remember it all, cannot bear to forget even a second of Draco sodding Malfoy spread out like this, whimpering on Harry’s fingers, soaked.
“You’re…” Harry whispers, half a laugh, half a prayer, devoted to a God who must exist, must, if it means Draco Malfoy looks like this, just because Harry touches him, deep and hard. “You’re so fucking beautiful like this.”
Malfoy’s hand scrabbles at Harry’s wrist, trying to push him faster, fuck himself deeper, but Harry bats him away, presses him back against the Vanishing Cabinet’s sleek, hard wood, one hand on Malfoy’s inner thigh to keep him spread wide.
“Hey, let me. Just—let me.”
And, for once, Malfoy does. He glares at Harry all the while, half-lidded eyes glistening and dark, more black than gleaming grey, and his cheeks are flushed pink and pretty, lips swollen and parted around broken gasps and sucked in breaths, but he—he lets him, keeps his thighs spread and shaking, trembling in the palm of Harry’s steady hand as Harry presses his fingers in, listening to the obscene, wet suck of velvet and heat.
It’s incomparable, unimaginable, beyond any fantasy Harry could have ever dreamt in the swaddled, hidden alcove of his four-poster bed. Malfoy is so warm, so wet, perfectly snug around the thick of Harry’s fingers, calloused and harsh from Quidditch and drills, and Malfoy just takes it all, beautiful and glistening down the lines of Harry’s hand and across his knuckles.
Harry drags a mouth down Malfoy’s throat, teeth grazing the spot where his pulse hammers like a trapped bird, caged and frenetic and riotous. He works his fingers in, all steady, patient thrusts, curling them just so until Malfoy jerks, hips snapping forward harshly, demandingly, a whine catching in the back of Malfoy’s throat. Harry shivers when he feels slick dripping down over his fingers and palm, down the back of his hand, when Malfoy bites down onto his shoulder to muffle the sounds clawing out of him.
“Don’t hold back,” Harry pants against his skin, thumb sticky with Malfoy’s wetness as he rubs his clit harder, faster, relentlessly chasing the twitching shudders in Malfoy’s pale, wondrous thighs. “I want to hear you. Let me hear you.”
“Fuck y—ah!” He tries to spit a curse, but it’s drowned out by a ragged cry when Harry rubs tight, easy circles around his clit and pushes deeper with three fingers at the same time, coaxing his body open and languid and trembling, all tremor and shake and wail in the nestle of Harry’s wet, warm palm.
“There you go,” Harry grins, teeth and gleaming bright, and Malfoy snarls at him again, nails digging holes into Harry’s shoulders. But, Harry doesn’t mind, would relish a few of Malfoy’s marks on him, anyway, after all he’s done, the damage he’s caused, the way Malfoy tilts his head back and lets Harry nose at his jaw and shoulder, teeth skimming lines over flamed, scarlet scars.
If this is what it feels like to know how Draco Malfoy comes, Harry thinks there are worse ways to bleed.
Malfoy shatters with a garbled hiss that wrenches into something like a sob, body jolting harshly against the Cabinet, the bony jut of Harry’s hip. Harry doesn’t stop, works him through it, fingers slick and patient and resolute, drinking down every buck of Malfoy’s hips, every helpless little sound, amortentia and toxin, flushed and damp and glowing and real.
When Malfoy finally goes boneless, slumped back against the Cabinet, chest heaving and hair plastered damp against his temples, Harry pulls his fingers free, dragging them over the inside of Malfoy’s thigh, just to watch him twitch and whimper and glisten.
That insidious little voice in Harry’s head comes back with a vengeance, scathing and caustic. Mine. Mine to protect. Mine to keep alive. Not possession, now, not ownership. Promise, a promise, solemn as a vow, the beat of pulse in Harry’s veins. I’ll keep you alive.
He kisses Malfoy’s slack mouth, tastes the ragged edge of his breath, panting and heady. Malfoy glares at him through shining, delirious, half-lidded eyes, the threat there but weak, soft, docile, his words slurred with the remnants of molten, honeyed orgasm. “Fuck you,” he pants, tremoring. “Get—get on with it.”
He’s so soft in Harry’s hands, and he can do nothing but laugh, endeared and amused, into Malfoy’s mouth, dizzy and drunk with the taste of him. “Yeah,” he says, low and sweet, baritone thick, fumbling awkwardly with the buttons of his trousers. “Yeah, okay. Gonna have you now.”
He lifts Malfoy by the thighs, easy as breathing now that he’s pliant and soft and boneless, deliquescent in Harry’s hands, still panting open-mouthed against Harry’s throat. He’s too light, Harry knows, too thin, bony and lean in a sickly, malnourished way, and Harry resolves himself to fixing that, too, because someone should notice, and someone should care, and he does. He does.
Harry lines himself up, feels Malfoy’s slick heat fluttering delicately where he nudges in, catching on Harry’s fat tip, so tight and wet Harry nearly blacks out, vision white and blinding and—God, he’s unbelievable.
“Fuck, Draco—look at me.” He cups Malfoy’s—Draco’s, because he has to be Draco, if he’s in him like this, cock wet and warm and inside him—jaw, forces him to meet his eyes. He’s so warm, snug and tight and squeezing messily down around Harry’s cock, and it’s— Harry may die like this. “You feel that? That’s you, okay? Soft, warm—Merlin—alive.”
Storm cloud eyes flicker, thundering grey and damp, gleaming, and he tries to sneer, tries to spit something cruel, another way to hurt, to bleed, but all that comes out is a breathless moan as Harry lowers him down onto his cock, sinks in deeper, dragging every second out until he’s buried to the hilt in all that sopping, sucking heat.
The first thrust knocks the breath right out from Harry’s lungs, all humid air and keening moan. He’s never felt anything like this—the hot, clutching slickness, the way Draco tightens around him instinctively, thighs twitching and trembling in Harry’s hands, around his waist. It’s all heat, all of it, life and breath and blood and real, and Harry cannot bring himself to close his eyes, to look away.
His forehead presses to Draco’s, intimate and so near, noses brushing, sweat-slick skin sticking where their chests touch, both damp and muggy with exertion and proximity. He holds Draco up by the thighs, feels him flex and tremor, small, broken sounds leaking out with every slow push in, every harsh, languid drag out, and he could get drunk off this, easier than firewhisky and warmer still, hot around his cock and the tips of his fingers.
He wants to close his eyes, to drown in how good it feels, but he can’t, can’t bring himself to, not for a moment. Not when Draco’s here, alive, soft and slick and his to protect, because no one else will, no one else is, and so Harry will do it, and he will do it right. Not when Draco’s eyes flutter open between moans, wild and glassy, watching him right back, deep as the Great Lake and misted over, eyes Harry has memorized for years.
Harry lets his hand roam, using his weight to fuck Draco back against the Cabinet, ignoring its perilous creaking and harsh hinges. He runs fingers over the arch of Draco’s ribs, the thin curve of his tapered waist, the faint rise and fall of his chest with every ragged inhale. His thumb skims over a pulse point and feels it hammering, desperate, real, then over a nipple that pebbles beneath the scrape of a nail, and the noise he makes—
Draco is all whine and whimper, keens and moans and sobs around air, the spit in his mouth, and he curves down into Harry’s hand when he squeezes the round swell of his arse, digs his fingers into soft, supple skin and bruises.
God, Harry thinks, dizzy with it, the drag and pull of Draco around him, the perfect warmth of him. He’s letting me do this. He’s letting me in.
Harry wonders if it’s magic or religion that makes him feel like this, the vestige of Muggle childhood that brings out from within him solemn swears to Gods and deities, as if any of them have protected Draco Malfoy up until now, as if they’ve protected Harry. As if they’re worth a damn to the brand seared gruesomely into Draco’s arm, the arm wrapped around Harry’s shoulders, pressing their foreheads together, like they need to breathe the same air to live.
Maybe, he concedes, staring darkly at the dewy clump of Draco’s tear-streaked lashes, there is something divine in this, and he bottoms out harshly, deep enough to knock a hiccup from Draco’s lungs.
He shifts his grip, bracing Draco higher, angling him open against the Vanishing Cabinet, and Draco’s whole body shudders, head thunking back and eyelids fluttering around a mangled little mewl. Harry watches the pale column of his throat, the way the cords stand out when Draco chokes out a sound, half a whimper, half a curse, all of it stained with the cerise scars across his skin, crossing jagged across his jaw and to the sweet, lovely swell of his lower lip.
“Harry—fuck!” Draco’s hands fumble at his hair, tugging him in for a kiss so desperate Harry feels it in his bones, the arches of his feet. There’s no finesse to it, just wet, teeth clacking and tongues tangling, Draco’s legs tightening around Harry’s hips, like he wants Harry to crawl inside him, bury himself there forever.
Harry, for a flashing, fleeting moment, is very, very tempted.
The sound of his name falling from Draco’s tongue like that has him spiraling, and Harry groans loud into his mouth, against kissed-raw lips. He can feel it building, pleasure clawing up his spine, molten and burning and entirely too much. Every slick slide in and out feels like an electric shock, and Draco’s just so wet, so soft beneath him, for him.
Harry swears he could come just from the way Draco’s walls flutter around him, trying to keep him in, snug and deep.
His thrusts get sloppier, harder, his forehead pressed to Draco’s cheek as he pants against his ear. He drags one hand down, finds Draco’s sensitive clit, and rubs him again, thumb circling just to feel Draco jerk and keen and writhe in the nestle of his arms, the space between their chests. There you go, he thinks, lost, I’ve got you, there you go.
Draco fists a hand around the nape of his neck, tugging him back to growl in his face. “Don’t—don’t stop. Potter, you better—”
Harry laughs, a broken, breathless sound that floats too much like relief, like something lamenting and mourning, not ready for this to end, for it to be over and having to face leaving the comfort of Draco’s body. “Not stopping. You’re so—fuck—you’re perfect, Draco—”
He’s close. He can feel it in the way his hips stutter, the way the tension curls tight and mean behind his navel, coiling and curdling into spirals low in his stomach, drawing his bollocks up tight. He kisses Draco again, sloppy and deep and wet there, too, made for it, feeling him tremble apart around him.
“I—I’m gonna come,” Harry gasps, voice cracking weakly around his desperation and relentlessness, newly lost in the obscene noises coming from between them, the slapping of skin and sticky wet echoing in the reverberation of the Room. He drags his mouth along Draco’s collarbone, tasting salt and sweat and cedar, hints of salve and dittany sharp on his tongue. “I should— I think I should pull out.”
Draco’s fingers dig into his scalp like claws, talons. “No.” The word is a snarl, but there’s something else beneath it, a cascading tremor of want, of raw, feral need, laced with something like fear, dire despair. Draco meets Harry’s eyes, wide and dark and so fucking open. “Don’t you dare, Potter. Stay.”
Harry swears he sees stars, some far away constellation colliding behind the green of his eyes, crackling and roaring and incandescent. Something bursts inside him, shatters pitifully, something soft and tender and terrifying. Stay. Draco wants him close. Draco wants him inside. Draco wants him.
He kisses Draco like a vow, thrusts deeper, feeling Draco’s whole body clutch him tight, velvet heat milking him for everything he’s worth. “Okay,” he pants, voice stuttering on every vowel, slurring on his consonants, thick like syrup in his mouth. “Yeah, okay. I’ll come in you, Draco. Nice and deep, I’ll come in you.”
Draco’s legs tighten and spasm around his waist, fingers so tight in his hair Harry thinks he’s ripping strands out, and he shudders and moans open-mouthed against Harry’s lips, all high-pitched whines and pitifully desperate whimpers, breath punched out into little hah, hah, hah!s every time Harry slams up into him, the Cabinet creaking and squeaking in time to each thrust.
Harry focuses on Draco’s clit, the way his thumb slides over the swell of it, as sloppy and wet as the rest of him, and he massages harshly, watching every muscle in Draco’s face until he can see the way his lips twitch, eyebrows furrowing, eyes glassy and wet and locked just behind Harry, right over his shoulder, like he’s hiding, afraid.
“Look at me,” Harry rasps, because he needs this, needs it. “Look at me when you—fuck—”
And Draco does, even as his eyelids flutter, even as his hips twitch with every thrust, even as Harry feels him clench, pulsing around him so tight and slick that Harry loses the last of himself with a shout muffled into Draco’s shoulder. Draco looks at him, a hair’s breadth away, grey and black and starlight splinter across Harry’s palms, the space in his lungs. Draco squeezes around him, so tight it’s almost a chore to keep fucking up into him, but Harry does, reveling in each little blissed out squirm Draco feebly trembles, every little whine and mewl and keen hushed out against his lips.
It’s pressure, relentless and soaking, and Harry can’t, he can’t—
He spills inside Draco, shuddering, clutching him so tight it must bruise. Draco digs nails into his back, across his shoulder blades, pulling him closer and closer still, so Harry’s buried as deep as he can go. Their breaths tangle; their chests heave. Harry wonders if this is what magic coalescing feels like, if that’s something magic can even do, because if it can, it must be this, this hot, heaving, panting thing, covered in each other and basking in shared, humid air and sweat-damp faces, flushed and blissed out and shaking against each other.
Harry holds him there, forehead pressed to Draco’s temple, his whole body twitching with the aftershocks. He can feel it, the sticky warmth inside Draco, the way they’re still joined, how Draco stays soft and pliant in his arms, instead of shoving him away, and even that feels like an unexpected kindness, gentle and giving when he usually isn’t.
He kisses Draco’s temple, sweet now, reverent. He wants to say something—anything—but all that comes out is a ragged, hoarse whisper, catching mercilessly on the tip of Harry’s tongue, a reassurance to whom he doesn’t know. To himself, maybe. “You’re alive. You’re okay. I’ve got you.”
And, for once, Draco doesn’t flinch away. He just closes his eyes, breathes Harry in, like he’s the only thing tethering him to the world.
Harry doesn’t pull out for a long time. He stays pressed flush to Draco, his nose buried against the curve of his jaw, taking him in like he’s still half afraid Draco might vanish if he lets him go. He might, Harry thinks, reminiscing on curled-lip sneers and sharp-toothed snarls, the fond memory of a boot stamped viciously into his nose, the absolute pillock.
Eventually, Draco wriggles a little, legs still draped around Harry’s hips, but there’s no real force behind it, just a half-hearted hiss of, “Get off, Potter, you’re heavy,” that falls flat when Harry lifts his head and looks at him, easy, lazy smirk on his face.
Draco’s cheeks are flushed petal pink, his hair damp and pushed back in soft, sticky strands, clearly ravished and ruined. There’s a faint tremor in his lashes when he tries to glare, but Harry can see right through it, can physically feel the way Draco’s heart thunders under his palm, how it’s not just the aftermath of sex, but something deeper, messier, terrifyingly tender.
Harry cups Draco’s face like it’s a secret he’s only just found—isn’t it?, he wonders, and he crushes that down, too—brushing a thumb under his eye. “Stay with me for a minute,” he murmurs, voice gone hoarse, gravelly, croaking and low. “Just…stay, okay?”
Draco scoffs, petulant and pettish. “What, you want a cuddle now? Pathetic.” But the bite in it is dull, blunted by the way his eyes flutter half-closed when Harry leans in to kiss him again, soft and slow this time, just to taste him, to know.
Harry shifts, pulling out carefully, wincing at the slick sound ricocheting off the mess of the Room, wet and thick and sloppy. He doesn’t want to let Draco go—and isn’t that a horrible, wretched thought—doesn’t want the warmth to fade. So, he fumbles for his wand, flicks his wrist, and Transfigures a nearby always-spinning globe on the dusty floor by the Cabinet into a soft pile of blankets, coaxing Draco down onto it with gentle hands, placating and pacifying.
Draco fights it, of course, the obnoxious bloody tosser, tries to twist away with a muttered, “I can stand, Potter, your prick isn’t that impressive,” but Harry shushes him, pushes him back down by the chest, docile and soft on the ruby-stained skin of his scars.
“Lie down,” Harry says, and it’s not a command so much as a promise.
Draco goes boneless with a scoff, glaring curses and daggers both at the ceiling as Harry settles above him.
And then, Harry just looks. Really looks, because he can. He looks at the angry vermilion of the fresh scars—his doing—the faint dusting of straw-pale hair down Draco’s navel, the soft plushness of his hips and thighs, the flush still sitting high in his cheeks, the flicker of annoyance that can’t quite mask the exhaustion in his bones, the weary shake of his tender muscles.
Harry drags a mollifying hand over Draco’s hip, gentle, reverent. “You’re—” he swallows, the words thick on his tongue, humiliating in their vulnerability. “You’re real.”
Draco snorts dryly, the corner of his mouth twitching. “Brilliant observation, Potter. Ten points to Gryffindor.”
Harry leans down, presses a kiss to the sharp jut of Draco’s clavicle, another to the divot of his throat, where his pulse flutters fast beneath another serrated line of scar tissue. “Shut up,” he breathes against his skin, overly fond. “Just…let me. Please.”
He doesn’t wait for permission. He mouths his way down Draco’s chest, kissing each wound like an apology and a prayer, as if that would be enough to save them both, to bow his head to the altar of serrous skin and savaged soul, to hope the blood between them is enough to sanctify, to wash the magic within them anew.
Draco hisses and flinches when Harry’s tongue flicks over a particularly raw line of puckered skin near his ribs, but doesn’t shove him away. Instead, his fingers find Harry’s hair again, half to tug and half to anchor himself, tangling easily, intimately, into sex-mussed strands.
Harry wonders if it should terrify him how much he doesn’t mind the weight of Draco’s hand on his head. He pushes that thought away for later, content enough, now, to nose lower, between the supple swell of Draco’s thighs, to where his own spend drips out of him, messy, vulnerable, proof, real and white and thick.
Draco stiffens, tries to jerk away, hissing, “Don’t. Potter, you don’t have to—”
“I want to.” Harry’s voice is rough, scratching, and he does. God, he wants this, wants to clean Draco up himself, to taste the proof that Draco let him in, kept him in, with tight thighs and searing hands and eyes brighter than super nova stars, to discover just what they taste like together, that cloying bitterness of come and seed and well-fucked sweat still tacky on Draco’s soft, soft skin.
He kisses him there, slow, patient, licking away the mess with careful swipes of his tongue. Draco goes stock-still, a shuddering gasp breaking loose when Harry laps him clean with a flat tongue, his thighs twitching under Harry’s steady, weighty palms. Harry holds his legs, thumbs spreading the folds of him open so Harry can reach, press in deep and fuck him with swiping licks and fleeting kisses to his clit, the flutter of his entrance gaping and searching, seemingly, for something to fill it again.
“Potter…Harry! Fuck!” Draco’s voice breaks on his name, shatters magnificently into glass and shard, dazzling and luminous. His hips rock, as if he doesn’t know whether to pull away or rut into Harry’s mouth, and he looks pink all over, blush staining the lines of his collarbones and the dip of his clavicle, sparking heat down his chest, across his wounds and up to the tips of his ears, the bridge of his nose.
Harry looks up at him through his lashes, sees the high flush on Draco’s chest, the way his hand comes up to cover his eyes, like he can’t bear to be seen like this, and that won’t do. Harry bites his inner thigh instead, murmuring, “Look at me. Want you to see me.” Because he does, and Draco’s gorgeous, ethereal, spread out on his back and whimpering with over-sensitivity, and all Harry wants is those eyes, bright and wet and wild and on him.
Draco glares down at him, breath stuttering, chest a staccato with each intake, wrecked and ruined. “You’re insufferable—mm!—bloody insufferable.”
Harry grins, the taste of them still bitter and cloying on his tongue. “Yeah. And you love it.”
Draco scoffs, but it dissolves into a high whine when Harry slides two fingers into him again, gentle but insistent, curling deep, feeling that little flutter around his knuckles, how the muscle curves around him, lets him in, sucks him close. Draco’s hips jerk, dig down, his lashes flickering as Harry works him open all over again, this time just to watch him tremble, to feel how slick he still is, how warm and alive and wet on Harry’s hand.
Harry crawls back up, fitting himself between Draco’s legs, his cock hard and leaking, dragging against the soft of Draco’s inner thigh. He kisses him, lets him taste them together, open-mouthed and messy—perfect for it, he really was made for this—swallowing down every whine and protest and plea and plosive, until Draco is quivering with it, legs a cage around Harry’s waist.
“Again?” he asks, breath hot against Draco’s lips. “Let me in again. Want to see you—all of you.”
Draco huffs, biting cruelly at Harry’s lip, hard enough to sting, the burn of blood harsh between them. “Do it, you fucking idiot. Do it, before I change my mind.”
Harry laughs, delirious with it, dizzy off the taste of blood, of Draco, the way he’s still here, still open for him, still wet and gaping and laced honey-sweet with semen and spit. He pushes in slow, savoring the slick slide, the lovely stretch that makes Draco keen and cling to his shoulders.
This time, when he bottoms out, Draco doesn’t snarl, doesn’t push him away or bite or swear or hate. He pulls Harry in by the neck and kisses him like it’s the last shred of sanity holding him to the earth, a cruel, desperate reason for living, nails raking lines down Harry’s back and ribs, forcing him in deeper, harder, faster, the way Draco likes, whatever he likes.
And Harry, gasping into Draco’s mouth, feels it—the walls cracking, the shields crumbling, falling to shambles with every twitch and whine and mewl and moan, the sound of Harry’s name a challenge and threat all on its own. He thrusts in deep and slow, drinking in every sound, every tremor, and Draco moans for him, breaks for him, shatters perfectly around his cock, sensitive and sighing and scratching Harry closer, closer, closer.
There you go, Harry thinks, then follows.
When it’s over, Harry doesn’t move. His chest is still heaving, his hands still ghosting over Draco’s ribs as though he might slip away the moment he stops, cock still nestled into the sweltering heat of Draco’s body, letting Draco keep him wet and warm. The silence between them is heavy, full, and neither seems to have any inclination to break it, no patience for pithy reassurance or worthless relief.
Draco’s lashes flutter, gaze flicking anywhere but at Harry’s face. His lips part, like he wants to spit something cruel and cold—something to push Harry away before it’s too late, Harry is sure—but it catches behind his tongue, swallowed by the rawness of his breathing, the tattoo of his racing pulse.
Harry brushes damp hair from Draco’s forehead, thumb lingering over the cut of his brow, the dimple of his temple, and he feels the words burning behind his teeth, petty displeasures of, I won’t let you go back there. I won’t let them have you. But, he swallows them whole, because to say it aloud might break whatever this fragile, quivering thing between them has become, and he was never one for sweet, saccharine sentiment, anyway.
Not between them.
Instead, softly, he murmurs, “Don’t…” His voice catches, and he clears it awkwardly, feeling a fool all the while. “Don’t do anything stupid.”
Draco snorts, weary and bitter and caustically derisive, though his chest stutters under Harry’s palm when Harry lies beside him, chest to his back, slipping back into his body, the dipping warmth of him. “Bit late for that, isn’t it?” he asks, and while his voice is breathless, hoarse, the words lack their usual bite.
They lapse into silence again, pensive and putrid in their fumbling restraint. Harry will follow him. Harry will fight to keep him breathing. And Draco, for all his pride and poison, doesn’t quite pull away, and there is a comfort within that, thin though it may be.
Draco glances sidelong at him, jaw tight, eyes shadowed by too many sleepless nights and not enough meals, fatigue written into every pore on his face. “And what now, Potter?” It’s almost a challenge, but something in it sounds closer to fear, prideful and grieving.
Harry draws in a slow breath, feeling the weight of it press on his ribs, war-weary and bone-tired, thoughts a haphazard scatter of Tom Riddle and memories and Horcruxes and Marks, tasks and poisons and cursed necklaces. He’s exhausted, drained. His hand doesn’t leave Draco’s skin.
“Now,” he says quietly, steady as he can manage, “you let me try to help. Whether you like it or not.”
Draco doesn’t answer. His gaze darts away, lips pressed thin, but he doesn’t pull back. He stays, and, for now, in the quiet of the Room, that small, unwilling acquiescence is enough.