HP Sport of Queens-verse: "Score," Draco/ Harry, PG13
Title: Score
Summary: Who dares, wins.
Pairing: Harry/Draco
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2300
Author's Notes: This is not the third bit of "Season in Hell", unfortunately-- it's set the morning after Gamesmanship, making it second in the Sport of Queens-verse (professional Quidditch). You can find all parts here on A03: http://archiveofourown.org/series/5720 This part is dedicated to vaysh.
Draco Malfoy was the first man Harry'd slept with. Not the first one he'd fucked, but the first one he'd lain in bed next to. He should have felt sick-- and not only from the hangover. Instead he felt oddly peaceful, as though he'd found the answer to a problem he hadn't thought he'd ever solve.
He lay for a few minutes, listening to Malfoy's steady, slow breathing, watching that tan, muscled back rise and fall. It was still very early, and the room was full of shadows. This is what it would be like, Harry thought, if only I were braver. This is what I would have. And then: this is what I want.
Before he could change his mind, he leaned over and kissed Malfoy between the shoulder blades. Malfoy made a sleepy, pleased sound, and rolled closer. He tasted like moonlight and missed chances. Harry kissed him again, this time where his neck joined his shoulder. So many wasted years, pretending so hard to be someone he wasn't, afraid to disappoint everyone he loved.
Ginny had had skin like marble, pale and smooth and perfect, colored only by freckles and faint stretch marks. Malfoy had the scar on his shoulder from his surgery, vast and angry and red, a fading bruise across his side, green at the edges, a dozen smaller scars, the Mark visible like a black shadow on his arm. And Malfoy, apparently, had reflexes that rivaled an angry cat's, the reflexes that had made him the best Seeker in the country. He came awake, and before his eyes were even open, he was shoving Harry hard off the bed.
The floor was uncarpeted wood. Harry lay on his back, blinking, trying to decide if he was actually hurt or just winded. Malfoy appeared, glaring down at him. “For fuck's sake, Potter,” he said, “I told you you could sleep in the house, not in the damn bed with me.”
“I was cold,” Harry answered, sitting up carefully. He wasn't nearly as drunk as he'd been at dinner, or even as drunk as he'd been when he'd accepted Malfoy's grudging offer of the sagging couch. But still drunk. “I just--”. He'd gotten up to have a piss, and coming back he'd seen Malfoy, dead asleep and completely irresistible.
“Fuck,” Malfoy snarled, and threw a duvet down on Harry. “If I hear another sound out of you before six, if you even breathe too loudly, if you snore or fart, I will kill you myself.” The bed creaked as he rolled over and, apparently, went back to sleep. Harry wadded the duvet into a ball and tiptoed back to his couch.
When he woke up next, morning sunlight flooded the big room and and he could hear the shower running. His head ached and he threw an arm over his eyes to shield them. After a while he heard the door open and someone came in. He forced one eye halfway. It was worth it.
Malfoy was standing over him, wearing nothing but a towel. “Sober yet?” he asked unpleasantly.
Harry sighed. “Yes. I'm sorry about all of this.”
Unexpectedly, Malfoy grinned. “Well, you're hardly the first person to have a messy public freakout. Don't sweat it. You made a horrifyingly dull night into just a horrifying night.”
“Thanks,” Harry said dryly. But that wasn't fair, not really. He sat up, shoving his hair out of his eyes and squinting at Malfoy. He wasn't actually blind without his glasses, but Malfoy had moved back enough to be blurry. “I mean it. You're the only person I've ever told. Thank you for not being a dick about it.”
Malfoy shrugged. “We're not fifteen any longer, Potter. I'm only a dick ninety percent of the time these days.” Harry thought he might even be smiling. “Get up and have some coffee, and we'll see if we can't get your keys out of that storm drain. Charms are my specialty.”
“I really didn't drop them in on purpose,” Harry said. He sat up and slid his glasses on, just in time to see Malfoy move away and toss his towel over the back of a chair before stepping into a pair of faded jeans that--. He got up, moving blindly toward the door, and muttered, “Coffee. Yeah.”
In the bathroom he splashed water on his face. He'd left his dress shirt on Malfoy's bedroom floor and his undershirt was wrinkled. His eyes were bloodshot and he desperately needed a shave. He fumbled the medicine cabinet open, looking for a hangover potion, but there was nothing but an industrial size bottle of generic Advil and some expired prescription painkillers.
Harry could remember when Malfoy had been hurt; for a while they'd showed the video over and over on the news. He'd practiced the dive a half dozen times, at an angle so steep it looked impossible, and each time he'd somehow pulled out, and each time the coach had wanted to see it again, only faster. And then he hadn't quite managed it, and Harry and Ginny had watched, Harry holding his breath, Ginny clutching his arm so hard her fingers left bruises, as Malfoy plunged headfirst toward the ground.
It should have killed him, that fall. He'd been bloody lucky to get his arm out and protect his head, bloody lucky it hadn't been his neck. Afterwards they'd talked about stopping Jamie playing quidditch. Harry'd heard the crack of Malfoy's shoulder going out every time he closed his eyes, dreamed about it being James. Ginny had been the one to argue that at twelve, Harry had been risking a great deal more than his neck.
Harry hadn't thought much about Malfoy then. He'd laughed when the news broke that Malfoy was screwing the Hornets' Keeper, though. He'd laughed when the pictures of Malfoy and Zabini came out, too. It didn't seem so funny now. He swallowed three Advil, retrieved his shirt and trousers and put them back on, and followed the smell of coffee down to the kitchen.
His memory of coming in the night before was hazy. In daylight, the house was small, cozy, the walls lined with photos and a few portraits he didn't recognize. He didn't remember Greg Goyle living there, but it was definitely Goyle at the table in flannel pajama bottoms, eating grapefruit and reading the paper across from Malfoy.
Goyle looked pretty much the same as he had in school, only bigger, and with a dozen black stitches down the side of his face. When he looked up and saw Harry in the doorway, he put down his spoon and said, “Tell me you didn't bang Harry Potter in my house last night.”
“In his dreams,” Malfoy answered amiably. “He had a bit of trouble with his flat key last night after dinner, and I nobly let him sleep on the sofa in my bedroom.” He got up and fetched Harry coffee, in a chipped orange Cannons mug. “You'll have to have it black. We haven't got cream or sugar. Help yourself to anything you like, if you're hungry.”
Harry looked dubiously in the refrigerator. There seemed to be a great deal of lettuce, grapefruit, celery, a case of Diet Coke, and a few unsweetened yogurts.
“I wouldn't bother,” a woman's voice said from behind Harry. “Greg doesn't eat anything processed and Draco's off carbs and dairy. There isn't anything edible in the house except when Scorpius comes for holidays.”
Harry spun around, spilling coffee on his shirt. It was Pansy Parkinson, it had to be, although he wasn't sure if he'd have recognized her without the context. She was still plain, although her tank top and shorts showed off a quite nice body. But he thought that she looked as if she'd grown comfortable with herself, too, in a way Hermione had never quite managed.
“Oh, Potter.” Pansy gave him a smug smile. “As much of a mess as ever, I see.” Harry barely heard her, his attention caught by the scars that laddered her arms, thin and white and shining, over all the skin that the Mark did not cover. He looked away, not fast enough, and caught Goyle's eye, and Goyle slowly and deliberately turned his own arm to show his Mark.
Harry hadn't been in a room with three Death Eaters since the war had ended. He took a deep breath. “You all seriously live like this?”, he demanded. “Who drinks coffee without milk? Who eats grapefruit without sugar? That's just sick.”
Draco smiled. His friends didn't. “Tell me you didn't sleep with him,” Pansy moaned. “You promised you were done with straight boys.”
“Tell me you didn't sleep with him in my house,” Goyle added.
“Merlin. I didn't sleep with him, and you're both being ridiculous.”
“I'm not straight,” Harry said, and then his courage deserted him. “But you have to promise you won't tell anyone. I haven't--.”
“Oh, Potter,” Pansy said almost kindly. “You're really a mess.”
Draco dropped his plate in the sink and took away Harry's nearly full mug. “Come on, then. We can stop at the corner and get you a latte with extra whip or whatever.”
Harry had vague memories of the Knight Bus from the night before, but it turned out that Draco also had a battered black Golf. “Volkswagen sponsored the League final for a while,” Draco said. “It was for being MVP.” He caught Harry looking at the sticker on the fender, 'Quidditch Players Eat Their Dead,' and made a face. “I know. Inappropriate as all hell. Believe it or not I didn't put it on, and whoever did, used Unspeakable grade magic. Apparently the adhesive will outlast the car.”
Harry, whose best friend hated Malfoy more than anything and was married to an Unspeakable, got into the Golf without answering. It was early for a Sunday and there wasn't much traffic. Harry fumbled for something to say, and finally settled for asking about Malfoy's little boy, who was in Albie's class at Hogwarts.
It was a mistake; the next fifteen minutes were devoted to the many virtues of Scorpius Malfoy, who sounded nearly as revoltingly perfect as Harry's goddaughter Rose. Harry leaned against the window and wished he'd drunk Malfoy's black coffee. He'd failed at pulling the hottest and sluttiest wizard in England, he'd embarrassed himself last night at dinner and then this morning in front of the hateful Parkinson and Goyle, and he had a hangover the size of Sussex. Also he was divorced, fat, lonely, and his back hurt from sleeping on Draco Malfoy's couch. How was this even his life?
“Do you ever wonder why we ended up where we are?” he said, not really meaning it as a question.
Malfoy flicked his wand and sent the fire hydrant outside Harry's building scurrying further down the street. “No,” he answered, slotting the Golf into the new spot. “I pretty much know exactly where I went wrong.”
Harry sighed and climbed out of the car. In daylight, dropping his keys down a grate in hopes that Draco Malfoy would take him home and allow Harry to shag him seemed ludicrous. He should know better than to sleep with quidditch players anyway; when he'd been an Auror he'd picked up Oliver Wood at least five times for knocking his girlfriends around, and Brendan Lynch had had a couple of arrests for illegal potions possession, and there'd been the Nixies Chaser who'd liked to photograph underage girls--. And Malfoy, who'd cheated on his wife with the Hornets' Keeper, and then posed for pornographic pictures with Blaise Zabini-- who'd just been arrested in America for tax evasion.
If only Malfoy didn't have such a nice ass. Harry tried not to watch too closely as Malfoy bent over the grating and used a Summoning Charm on the keys. “Any luck?” he asked.
“It's your bloody key,” Malfoy pointed out. “Why're you standing all the way over there? Anyone would think you wanted to spend the rest of your life on my fucking couch.”
Harry sighed and knelt beside Malfoy. “The trick is to magic off the grating,” he said, “because you'll never actually line the keys up to come out.” There was a screech of tortured metal as the grate came up, and then his keys flew into Malfoy's palm.
“Done this before, have you?” Malfoy asked, very dryly. “Why didn't you mention this last night? You weren't that drunk by then.”
Harry looked down at the cracked concrete sidewalk. “Do you know how many gay wizards I know? I mean, openly, for sure, gay? Four. I can't-- I work for the Ministry. I can't just go around propositioning people. Or Muggles, not without violating the Statute of Secrecy. I guess I just thought...”. There was no way he could finish that sentence.
“It gets easier,” Malfoy said. “Really. Or maybe you just stop minding so much.” He sighed. “Don't get me wrong, being outed like that was brutal, but once everyone knows, once you don't have to lie about who you are every minute of every day-- it's better. You shouldn't have to keep it a secret. Take it from a Death Eater, it's not the worst thing you can do.”
“I can't just come out. I can't. I'm not even sure-- I mean, I've never even kissed anyone. Anyone but Ginny.”
Malfoy smiled at that. And then he moved and before Harry realized what was happening Malfoy was kissing him, his mouth gentle on Harry's, his hand on the small of Harry's back. He tasted like toothpaste and coffee, and he wasn't anything like Ginny at all. Then he slid Harry's flat key into the pocket of Harry's crumpled dinner jacket and stepped back.
“Tell you what, Potter,” he said. “Buy me dinner sometime, and we'll go from there.” And then he was gone, and Harry was standing on the street touching his lip with something like wonder, and watching Malfoy's Golf rocket away.
Summary: Who dares, wins.
Pairing: Harry/Draco
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2300
Author's Notes: This is not the third bit of "Season in Hell", unfortunately-- it's set the morning after Gamesmanship, making it second in the Sport of Queens-verse (professional Quidditch). You can find all parts here on A03: http://archiveofourown.org/series/5720 This part is dedicated to vaysh.
Draco Malfoy was the first man Harry'd slept with. Not the first one he'd fucked, but the first one he'd lain in bed next to. He should have felt sick-- and not only from the hangover. Instead he felt oddly peaceful, as though he'd found the answer to a problem he hadn't thought he'd ever solve.
He lay for a few minutes, listening to Malfoy's steady, slow breathing, watching that tan, muscled back rise and fall. It was still very early, and the room was full of shadows. This is what it would be like, Harry thought, if only I were braver. This is what I would have. And then: this is what I want.
Before he could change his mind, he leaned over and kissed Malfoy between the shoulder blades. Malfoy made a sleepy, pleased sound, and rolled closer. He tasted like moonlight and missed chances. Harry kissed him again, this time where his neck joined his shoulder. So many wasted years, pretending so hard to be someone he wasn't, afraid to disappoint everyone he loved.
Ginny had had skin like marble, pale and smooth and perfect, colored only by freckles and faint stretch marks. Malfoy had the scar on his shoulder from his surgery, vast and angry and red, a fading bruise across his side, green at the edges, a dozen smaller scars, the Mark visible like a black shadow on his arm. And Malfoy, apparently, had reflexes that rivaled an angry cat's, the reflexes that had made him the best Seeker in the country. He came awake, and before his eyes were even open, he was shoving Harry hard off the bed.
The floor was uncarpeted wood. Harry lay on his back, blinking, trying to decide if he was actually hurt or just winded. Malfoy appeared, glaring down at him. “For fuck's sake, Potter,” he said, “I told you you could sleep in the house, not in the damn bed with me.”
“I was cold,” Harry answered, sitting up carefully. He wasn't nearly as drunk as he'd been at dinner, or even as drunk as he'd been when he'd accepted Malfoy's grudging offer of the sagging couch. But still drunk. “I just--”. He'd gotten up to have a piss, and coming back he'd seen Malfoy, dead asleep and completely irresistible.
“Fuck,” Malfoy snarled, and threw a duvet down on Harry. “If I hear another sound out of you before six, if you even breathe too loudly, if you snore or fart, I will kill you myself.” The bed creaked as he rolled over and, apparently, went back to sleep. Harry wadded the duvet into a ball and tiptoed back to his couch.
When he woke up next, morning sunlight flooded the big room and and he could hear the shower running. His head ached and he threw an arm over his eyes to shield them. After a while he heard the door open and someone came in. He forced one eye halfway. It was worth it.
Malfoy was standing over him, wearing nothing but a towel. “Sober yet?” he asked unpleasantly.
Harry sighed. “Yes. I'm sorry about all of this.”
Unexpectedly, Malfoy grinned. “Well, you're hardly the first person to have a messy public freakout. Don't sweat it. You made a horrifyingly dull night into just a horrifying night.”
“Thanks,” Harry said dryly. But that wasn't fair, not really. He sat up, shoving his hair out of his eyes and squinting at Malfoy. He wasn't actually blind without his glasses, but Malfoy had moved back enough to be blurry. “I mean it. You're the only person I've ever told. Thank you for not being a dick about it.”
Malfoy shrugged. “We're not fifteen any longer, Potter. I'm only a dick ninety percent of the time these days.” Harry thought he might even be smiling. “Get up and have some coffee, and we'll see if we can't get your keys out of that storm drain. Charms are my specialty.”
“I really didn't drop them in on purpose,” Harry said. He sat up and slid his glasses on, just in time to see Malfoy move away and toss his towel over the back of a chair before stepping into a pair of faded jeans that--. He got up, moving blindly toward the door, and muttered, “Coffee. Yeah.”
In the bathroom he splashed water on his face. He'd left his dress shirt on Malfoy's bedroom floor and his undershirt was wrinkled. His eyes were bloodshot and he desperately needed a shave. He fumbled the medicine cabinet open, looking for a hangover potion, but there was nothing but an industrial size bottle of generic Advil and some expired prescription painkillers.
Harry could remember when Malfoy had been hurt; for a while they'd showed the video over and over on the news. He'd practiced the dive a half dozen times, at an angle so steep it looked impossible, and each time he'd somehow pulled out, and each time the coach had wanted to see it again, only faster. And then he hadn't quite managed it, and Harry and Ginny had watched, Harry holding his breath, Ginny clutching his arm so hard her fingers left bruises, as Malfoy plunged headfirst toward the ground.
It should have killed him, that fall. He'd been bloody lucky to get his arm out and protect his head, bloody lucky it hadn't been his neck. Afterwards they'd talked about stopping Jamie playing quidditch. Harry'd heard the crack of Malfoy's shoulder going out every time he closed his eyes, dreamed about it being James. Ginny had been the one to argue that at twelve, Harry had been risking a great deal more than his neck.
Harry hadn't thought much about Malfoy then. He'd laughed when the news broke that Malfoy was screwing the Hornets' Keeper, though. He'd laughed when the pictures of Malfoy and Zabini came out, too. It didn't seem so funny now. He swallowed three Advil, retrieved his shirt and trousers and put them back on, and followed the smell of coffee down to the kitchen.
His memory of coming in the night before was hazy. In daylight, the house was small, cozy, the walls lined with photos and a few portraits he didn't recognize. He didn't remember Greg Goyle living there, but it was definitely Goyle at the table in flannel pajama bottoms, eating grapefruit and reading the paper across from Malfoy.
Goyle looked pretty much the same as he had in school, only bigger, and with a dozen black stitches down the side of his face. When he looked up and saw Harry in the doorway, he put down his spoon and said, “Tell me you didn't bang Harry Potter in my house last night.”
“In his dreams,” Malfoy answered amiably. “He had a bit of trouble with his flat key last night after dinner, and I nobly let him sleep on the sofa in my bedroom.” He got up and fetched Harry coffee, in a chipped orange Cannons mug. “You'll have to have it black. We haven't got cream or sugar. Help yourself to anything you like, if you're hungry.”
Harry looked dubiously in the refrigerator. There seemed to be a great deal of lettuce, grapefruit, celery, a case of Diet Coke, and a few unsweetened yogurts.
“I wouldn't bother,” a woman's voice said from behind Harry. “Greg doesn't eat anything processed and Draco's off carbs and dairy. There isn't anything edible in the house except when Scorpius comes for holidays.”
Harry spun around, spilling coffee on his shirt. It was Pansy Parkinson, it had to be, although he wasn't sure if he'd have recognized her without the context. She was still plain, although her tank top and shorts showed off a quite nice body. But he thought that she looked as if she'd grown comfortable with herself, too, in a way Hermione had never quite managed.
“Oh, Potter.” Pansy gave him a smug smile. “As much of a mess as ever, I see.” Harry barely heard her, his attention caught by the scars that laddered her arms, thin and white and shining, over all the skin that the Mark did not cover. He looked away, not fast enough, and caught Goyle's eye, and Goyle slowly and deliberately turned his own arm to show his Mark.
Harry hadn't been in a room with three Death Eaters since the war had ended. He took a deep breath. “You all seriously live like this?”, he demanded. “Who drinks coffee without milk? Who eats grapefruit without sugar? That's just sick.”
Draco smiled. His friends didn't. “Tell me you didn't sleep with him,” Pansy moaned. “You promised you were done with straight boys.”
“Tell me you didn't sleep with him in my house,” Goyle added.
“Merlin. I didn't sleep with him, and you're both being ridiculous.”
“I'm not straight,” Harry said, and then his courage deserted him. “But you have to promise you won't tell anyone. I haven't--.”
“Oh, Potter,” Pansy said almost kindly. “You're really a mess.”
Draco dropped his plate in the sink and took away Harry's nearly full mug. “Come on, then. We can stop at the corner and get you a latte with extra whip or whatever.”
Harry had vague memories of the Knight Bus from the night before, but it turned out that Draco also had a battered black Golf. “Volkswagen sponsored the League final for a while,” Draco said. “It was for being MVP.” He caught Harry looking at the sticker on the fender, 'Quidditch Players Eat Their Dead,' and made a face. “I know. Inappropriate as all hell. Believe it or not I didn't put it on, and whoever did, used Unspeakable grade magic. Apparently the adhesive will outlast the car.”
Harry, whose best friend hated Malfoy more than anything and was married to an Unspeakable, got into the Golf without answering. It was early for a Sunday and there wasn't much traffic. Harry fumbled for something to say, and finally settled for asking about Malfoy's little boy, who was in Albie's class at Hogwarts.
It was a mistake; the next fifteen minutes were devoted to the many virtues of Scorpius Malfoy, who sounded nearly as revoltingly perfect as Harry's goddaughter Rose. Harry leaned against the window and wished he'd drunk Malfoy's black coffee. He'd failed at pulling the hottest and sluttiest wizard in England, he'd embarrassed himself last night at dinner and then this morning in front of the hateful Parkinson and Goyle, and he had a hangover the size of Sussex. Also he was divorced, fat, lonely, and his back hurt from sleeping on Draco Malfoy's couch. How was this even his life?
“Do you ever wonder why we ended up where we are?” he said, not really meaning it as a question.
Malfoy flicked his wand and sent the fire hydrant outside Harry's building scurrying further down the street. “No,” he answered, slotting the Golf into the new spot. “I pretty much know exactly where I went wrong.”
Harry sighed and climbed out of the car. In daylight, dropping his keys down a grate in hopes that Draco Malfoy would take him home and allow Harry to shag him seemed ludicrous. He should know better than to sleep with quidditch players anyway; when he'd been an Auror he'd picked up Oliver Wood at least five times for knocking his girlfriends around, and Brendan Lynch had had a couple of arrests for illegal potions possession, and there'd been the Nixies Chaser who'd liked to photograph underage girls--. And Malfoy, who'd cheated on his wife with the Hornets' Keeper, and then posed for pornographic pictures with Blaise Zabini-- who'd just been arrested in America for tax evasion.
If only Malfoy didn't have such a nice ass. Harry tried not to watch too closely as Malfoy bent over the grating and used a Summoning Charm on the keys. “Any luck?” he asked.
“It's your bloody key,” Malfoy pointed out. “Why're you standing all the way over there? Anyone would think you wanted to spend the rest of your life on my fucking couch.”
Harry sighed and knelt beside Malfoy. “The trick is to magic off the grating,” he said, “because you'll never actually line the keys up to come out.” There was a screech of tortured metal as the grate came up, and then his keys flew into Malfoy's palm.
“Done this before, have you?” Malfoy asked, very dryly. “Why didn't you mention this last night? You weren't that drunk by then.”
Harry looked down at the cracked concrete sidewalk. “Do you know how many gay wizards I know? I mean, openly, for sure, gay? Four. I can't-- I work for the Ministry. I can't just go around propositioning people. Or Muggles, not without violating the Statute of Secrecy. I guess I just thought...”. There was no way he could finish that sentence.
“It gets easier,” Malfoy said. “Really. Or maybe you just stop minding so much.” He sighed. “Don't get me wrong, being outed like that was brutal, but once everyone knows, once you don't have to lie about who you are every minute of every day-- it's better. You shouldn't have to keep it a secret. Take it from a Death Eater, it's not the worst thing you can do.”
“I can't just come out. I can't. I'm not even sure-- I mean, I've never even kissed anyone. Anyone but Ginny.”
Malfoy smiled at that. And then he moved and before Harry realized what was happening Malfoy was kissing him, his mouth gentle on Harry's, his hand on the small of Harry's back. He tasted like toothpaste and coffee, and he wasn't anything like Ginny at all. Then he slid Harry's flat key into the pocket of Harry's crumpled dinner jacket and stepped back.
“Tell you what, Potter,” he said. “Buy me dinner sometime, and we'll go from there.” And then he was gone, and Harry was standing on the street touching his lip with something like wonder, and watching Malfoy's Golf rocket away.