Dec 5: Draco/Ginny
December 5th! (Already?) So, we've had male/male, female/female, you knew it was only a matter of time before the male/female. Here it is :) (It doesn't bite, I promise. At least not hard)
Title: untitled (any title suggestions are more than welcome)
Pairing: Draco/Ginny
Rating: NC-17
Summary: When Draco first sees Ginny after the war, she's changed so much he barely recognized her but she's not the only one who's changed.
Time period: Post-war
A/N: another first time pairing, as requested by fluffaholic. This one sort of ran away from me in a big way both in words (read: over 2000 words) and emotional complexity.. I hope I've done the pairing justice.
I swear I wrote this before yesterday but somehow it's still angst-central anyways.
The first time he sees her after the war he doesn't recognize her. She's all grown up in a black halter top and low-rise jeans, sipping a cocktail at the bar and Draco is considering seducing her until she says, "Malfoy" in that flat tone and his world stutters and stops.
"Ginny," he says, her name rolling off his tongue as if it belonged there and it is he who is most surprised that he even knows her name, let alone remembers it this many years later.
"Didn't expect to see you here," she remarks, taking another sip of her cocktail. Here is a trendy muggle bar. She doesn't know I've lost my magic, Draco realizes with a start, or she's just being cruel. Draco doubts the latter is the case. The Weasleys may be many things but they are never cruel.
"You're not the only one who's changed," Draco mutters and he means to throw some bite into it but it just comes out sounding a bit mournful somehow. "Can I buy you a drink?" he finds himself saying without thinking, really.
She laughs. Not a cruel laugh, but an amused, I can't believe this is happening, laugh. Draco can't help but recoil, just a little.
"I suppose," she says and downs the rest of her cocktail. She pats the stool next to her and Draco climbs awkwardly atop it. He hasn't been around many wizards since he lost everything and he didn't realize he would feel so awkward. He, ridiculously, thought he could pretend like he still had his magic but it was like losing a limb. He feels detached, not a whole.
"Cosmo," Ginny tells the bartender and he nods before turning to make the drink.
"Diet Coke," Draco says when he comes back. Ginny turns her head sharply towards him. He can feel her eyes on him when he sets down the muggle money with an ease that he's never possessed before.
"Not drinking?" She asks, her eyes giving away her curiousity.
"No," is all Draco says. He doesn't tell her how the healers tell him if he doesn't pollute his body his magic may come back. He doesn't tell her about how he's taken to healthy eating and meditation and other practices he would have laughed at only a few years earlier. He sits in silence and drinks his Diet Coke.
"What are you up to these days?" she asks and Draco can't tell if it's because she wants to know or if she's making small-talk.
Avoiding the wizarding world, thinks Draco. "Acting," he says instead.
She raises her eyebrows. "You always were a drama queen," she says with a smile and his old self would have shot back some retort but now he just gives a half-hearted smirk and drinks his diet coke out of his too-small cocktail straw.
"You're different," she says softly but he doesn't turn, afraid she may see how he's different; afraid that somehow she see his lack in his dull grey eyes.
"Everybody's different," he says instead and stares at the bar in front of him.
"You haven't made one crack about my family."
"It got old," Draco says instead of, you're one step above me now.
"Maybe you got old," Ginny says instead in a teasing manner and takes another drink of her ridiculously feminine drink.
"Not too old," Draco says with an easy smile and a sideways glance. He's alarmed that he can fall so easily into flirting with this younger woman, the ex-girlfriend of his oldest, most bitter enemy, and the daughter of a man mocked by his family. Then he thinks of how Harry is no longer his most bitter enemy and how his entire family is dead and it suddenly doesn't seem so alarming. It seems, maybe not natural, but easy as if there is some inside joke between them that Draco is yet to discover.
She's good at this, Draco discovers. She's good at making small talk and laughing at the appropriate times and without meaning to he finds himself imagining taking her to screenings and cocktail parties. She's trying to get her healers licence, Draco learns and somehow this is right. In this small shallow conversation she has managed to make him feel just that little bit better and while it's not much, it's more than he's had in a long while.
"If I didn't know better, I'd say you were trying to seduce me," she says at one point, two drinks later.
"If I didn't know better, I'd say you wanted me to," Draco retorts smoothly. She smiles slowly and places a hand on his arm.
"Maybe," she whispers into his ear as she gets up. He gets up after her, a panic filling his chest as he sees her walk away.
A few steps away she turns, her red hair shimmying as if it was charmed, though Draco thinks he knows better. "Bathroom," she mouths with a smile that can only be described as coy. The panic releases in Draco's chest like a hand releasing his beating heart and he smiles easily, as one can only with practice.
He rubs at his forehead and sits back down, taking a drink of his diet Coke.
"Can you add a shot of rum to this?" he asks the bartender who only looks at him a moment before nodding.
"You're not driving, are you?" he asks, even as he pours the shot.
Draco shakes his head. He hasn't quite mastered that art yet. Quite frankly, it scares him, and he'd rather hold out for a chauffeur.
He downs the drink in one gulp. It burns all the way down but it's just what he needs to look Ginny in the eye when she comes back from the bathroom and say, "come back to my place."
She nods and Draco realizes he's not surprised, not in the least, and this is strangely comforting.
They floo from a nearby wizarding pub. Draco can't quite bear to take his flat off the floo network, not yet. He doesn't have much hope, true. He has all muggle appliances and things he never thought he would learn to use like a vacuum cleaner, but there is still a small part of him that is still holding out for a miracle.
As soon as they step out of the fireplace Draco can feel her appraising his place. He knows it has muggle written all over it. Electric lights, television, even the large black luggage he has to use now when he travels are all signs that someone without magic lives here.
"Is this your place?" she asks. He considers lying, he could tell her he has a muggle roommate or something, anything but the truth.
"Yes," he says and puts his hand on her bare arm. He runs his fingers over the freckles and tries not to notice the uneasiness in the air. "Who else's would it be?"
She shrugs. "I never figured you for the type to have a television."
"Are you done judging?" he asks, his voice coming out harsh.
She ignores him and instead walks into the kitchen. She runs her fingers lightly over his top of the line stainless steel appliances, the closest thing to magic he can get. He puts his hands in his pockets and watches. He feels exposed and he doesn't know why he doesn't just drag her off to his bedroom and make her forget all about his muggle gadgets.
"My dad has one of these," she says and he looks up towards her. She'd holding his can-opener in her hand.
"He would," Draco says before he can help himself. She frowns and puts it back in the stainless steel container that holds his utensils. "Look, are you done examining at my kitchen?" Draco says impatiently.
"Is there something else you'd rather I examine instead?" she asks with a raised eyebrow. He smiles slowly before walking over to her.
"Yes," he says before resting his hands on her small waist. He kisses her neck and inhales the scent of her hair - peach. He loses himself in the scent for a moment and is only brought back to reality when he hears the click of his belt buckle and realizes she's undressing him. He runs his fingers up underneath her shirt against her warm skin until he lifts the shirt over her head in a smooth gesture. Her chest is bare underneath and Draco runs his hands hungrily over her breasts, rubbing her pert nipples between his fingers. She makes the softest needy gasps as he takes a nipple in his mouth and runs his tongue over it and Draco thinks he may be addicted to hearing those sounds.
"Bedroom?" she asks breathlessly as she pulls Draco's shirt over his head. He nods and before she can protest he's carrying her, her legs wrapped around his waist and her arms around his neck.
He all but throws her on the bed and watches the way her hair flies all over the place as she laughs. He climbs on top of her easily and silences her laughter with his mouth pressed against hers and his body grinding into hers below him.
"Just vanish them," she says when Draco breaks away to pull off her jeans.
"Hmm?" His hands freeze on the zipper.
"I don't have my wand with me," she says, "but yours should be around here somewhere."
"Not worth the time to find it," Draco says and pulls down her zipper the rest of the way. He's about to pull down her jeans when her hands are on his without warning. He glances up.
"Yes?"
"Since when have you done anything by hand that you could do with magic?" she asks, her green eyes unwavering as he stares at her, frozen to the spot.
"Since when does it matter?" he snaps back, quickly getting impatient with her need to know everything about him.
"Since the biggest muggle-hater I knew in school is suddenly living like one," she says angrily and pushes him off her. "What the hell is going on with you?"
"I lost my magic, okay?" Draco finds himself shouting. There is a silence during which Draco realizes that he's never admitted that aloud. Healers and Aurors and Death Eaters have all told him but he himself has never said aloud. Until now.
"How?" Ginny whispers.
"He - Voldemort took it. One moment it was there and the next it wasn't. No one can figure it out." Draco shuffles to the edge of the bed and puts his feet down on the plush carpet. He rests his elbows on his knees and stares out the window into the darkened sky.
"I'm sorry," Ginny says from somewhere behind him on the bed. Draco thinks she might actually mean it. "I didn't know. I mean, you just disappeared."
Draco doesn't answer, doesn't move, barely breaths until he feels her hair tickling his bare back and then her breasts pressed against his back. Her mouth is near his neck; he can feel her breath, but he doesn't turn. He doesn't want her pity.
"You don't need magic to do this," Ginny says and kisses his neck. "Or this." She runs her hands down his chest, stopping at the button on his jeans. She skips only a beat before she undoes the button and slides down the zipper. Draco can feel her breath coming steady against his neck, can feel her heart beating through his skin. He exhales as she takes his cock in her hand.
"Get these off," she says, tugging at his jeans with the hand that isn't stroking his cock to hardness.
"I can't while you're - "
"Fine," Ginny says and releases his cock.
He lifts his hips and tugs his jeans down before kicking them off. When he turns, Ginny has slid out of her jeans too and is lying on his bed wearing black lace knickers.
"Christ," he says under his breath but Ginny hears him and smirks.
"Taken up muggle cursing too?" she asks in a teasing way that Draco tries to find annoying but fails.
"Are you going to taunt me the entire time?" he asks instead in a superior tone he used to have perfected once upon a time.
"Only if you can't find a better use for my mouth," Ginny says and the smile that comes to her mouth can only be described as wicked.
It takes Draco approximately twenty seconds to better occupy her mouth, just enough time for her to lick her lips before he crushes his mouth against hers. He loses count of the seconds and minutes after that. After that nothing matters but the tight heat as he moves inside her and the feeling of her nails scraping down his back as he comes.
"It's funny how you go on," Draco says to her after as she lies in the crook of his arm as if she belongs there. "It seems as though you can't possibly go on at first. It seems absurd that they would let you live, but you do. You just keep living."
"As long as there's something worth living for," Ginny says around a yawn.
"I suppose," Draco says but secretly disagrees, thinking of his cold metal appliances and his dead family and the unused wand still tucked away in a drawer. But then his thoughts float towards the minute chance that he might get his magic back and the girl asleep beside him and wonders if there might be some truth in that after all.