Title: The Liar and the Mediwizard
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Draco
Warnings: Hurt/comfort, fluff, established relationship
Rating: R
Wordcount: 1600
Summary: Harry isn’t always a liar. Draco isn’t always a mediwizard. But sometimes, for their own reasons, they play both those roles.
Author’s Notes: This is an Advent fic for
anubiswolfe, who requested: a fluffy Harry/Draco where Harry is either physically (or magically?) ill or injured and Draco taking care of him. Nothing too serious, but enough that he'd be a grump and probably physically unable to do much for a while, haha. The injury or illness doesn't matter much either and can be from most anything (hurt on the job, by a random stranger, ect) A "mother hen" Draco would be cute.
The Liar and the Mediwizard
Harry straightened slowly on the couch, grimacing. It was unfair that not only had he been cursed to lose his magic for a week, the potion that he’d taken to ensure the curse didn’t last any longer than that also stiffened up his limbs and made it difficult for him to move anywhere.
But it was even more unfair that Draco be expected to take care of him. He had said that he would be happy to do it, but Harry knew that was just politeness. Draco was a Potions master with his own sideline in experimental and rare potions, and just before Christmas was always his busiest time. There were some people for whom rare potions made the perfect Christmas gift.
So he would just go to the bathroom by himself. He would lurch along like a golem and look ridiculous, but that was just the way it would have to happen.
“Going somewhere?”
Damn it! He’d thought Draco was safe in his lab, behind a wooden door that would keep any sound of Harry’s movements from reaching him. Harry promptly lay back on the couch and shook his hands a little, trying to relieve the stiffness in his fingers.
“Oh,” Draco said at once, in a voice of pure understanding. “That will be your hands feeling the side-effect of the potion, yes? I have the salve I promised you.” He took out a squat little brown jar from one of the pockets in his flowing cloak and advanced on the couch. And on Harry.
“But you shouldn’t have to put it on me!” Harry snapped his jaw shut a second later. He hadn’t meant to blurt it out like that. Bloody stupid curse, bloody stupid potion. They had also affected his control over his tongue, he was sure. Or he wouldn’t have said something so stupid.
Draco lifted his head, poised like a hawk. The jar of salve shook in his hand for a second as though it would fall to the floor, and then steadied. His voice was utterly without passion. “I see. You would prefer a Weasley? Perhaps the youngest Weasley?”
Harry stretched out one hand, ignoring the ticking way his arm moved, as though he had wood for joints. “No! Draco, you don’t have to be jealous of her. You’re the only one I want to date or sleep with.” He kept to short words as much as he could. His jaw might still move of his own will, but it was stiff like the rest of him.
Draco sniffed. “Then explain to me,” he said, coming up to the couch and standing over Harry with his eyes still on Harry’s face, “why I shouldn’t do a task that I’m perfectly well-qualified for.”
Harry tried to fold his hands so they wouldn’t shake, but that was a far more complicated task than it had been just a week ago. He sighed and gave it up, glaring at Draco. “Because you’re busy.”
Draco watched him with slightly parted lips, as though Harry knew the secrets of the universe and could tell them to him if Draco only waited. Then he smiled grimly and nodded his head. “I see. Of course I can’t possibly help my lover. He has to lie there and suffer by himself. Or stagger to the bathroom by himself. That was where you were going, wasn’t it, Harry?”
Harry eyed him cautiously. He wasn’t sure if the threatening tone in Draco’s voice promised dire consequences for him if the bathroom was his destination or if it wasn’t. “You don’t need to worry about me, Draco,” he tried. “You know the curse won’t last more than a few days after this, and it’s limited. And the potion isn’t so bad.”
Draco bent down towards him. Harry nearly forgot his own grievances and stupid situation in watching the graceful way Draco’s head moved. That arch of his neck was enough to keep Harry occupied for hours by itself, but add the curve of his cheekbone…
“But I can help you,” Draco whispered. “And I know exactly how to brew all the potions that they’ve asked for this year. No experimental potions that I’ve never done before. No wild chances that I have to take.”
Harry blinked at him. “So?”
Draco fetched a sigh up from somewhere in the vicinity of his boots. “That means I have extra time, if that’s what you’re really unsure about,” he said, unscrewing the lid of the jar. “And that means I can take care of you. As though I wouldn’t always prefer to be with you rather than with my potions,” he added, in a mutter Harry wasn’t sure he was supposed to catch.
Harry stared at him with his own mouth open, and then shut it with one of those infuriating clicks. He reached out a hand, which halted and jerked with horrid motions, but at last came to rest on Draco’s hair, just as Draco reached out and touched Harry’s shoulder with the salve on his fingers.
Draco looked up, which made Harry’s hand fall back down to his side and wasted all his effort. Draco’s cheeks had a faint flush. “Did I say too much?” he asked. “I just, I really want to do this for you, Harry-”
“I think we’ve both been trying to spare each other all these aggravations, and it turns out that we would both rather be aggravated,” Harry said, smiling at him. “If you really won’t fall behind in your potions, and you want to do it, then yes, please.”
He fumbled at his clothes, but Draco pulled his shirt up and off over his head a second later. Harry laughed as his glasses clattered to the floor, and snatched them out of reach of Draco’s impatiently stamping feet. His laughter didn’t sound too bad. Maybe Draco’s salve was already working to relax some of his muscles.
“You changed your mind fast,” Draco whispered into his ear as he turned Harry over on his stomach and pulled off his trousers and, a second later, his pants.
“I like doing what makes you happy,” Harry said, burying his head in the pillow. He felt less like a puppet when it was Draco’s fingers picking up his arms, guiding them, and making his muscles quiver with the way he smeared the warm and sweet-smelling salve into them. “And if this makes you happy…”
His words ran out in groans then, because Draco was working his fingers into the tense muscles of his back, the knots that had formed as Harry lay here on the couch, and the stiffness lingering from the potion. The salve seemed to warm almost immediately as it struck Harry’s skin, and to sink down and pass into his bloodstream. By the time Draco rubbed some on his fingers and glided them tentatively into Harry’s entrance, Harry’s body felt-not flexible, but alive again, the way it hadn’t truly felt since the curse itself.
He might not have his magic right now, or full control of his tongue, but he could ask with his body. He lifted his arse in silent begging, and Draco chuckled above him-a laugh of delight, not the scornful one that Harry now knew he would never hear-and slicked himself. A second later, he was sliding deep.
All Harry had to do was lie there with his face in the pillow and be taken, caressed, held, cared for. Draco’s hands were on his shoulders, still moving in wide, deep rubbing motions, although Harry thought all the salve was inside him by now.
Along with Draco.
When he came, it was as if the warmth had dropped to his groin and freed that, too, from the involuntary lack of control. Harry released with a hiss, and heard Draco gripping him from above, hissing as he thrust back and forth. Harry was more moved by Draco than moving himself, but it didn’t matter. It couldn’t matter, not when it happened like this, for this reason. He closed his eyes and smiled.
Draco pulled out gently and sat down on the couch behind him, combing his fingers in long motions down Harry’s back and arse. “I’ll always want to take care of you,” he said, when Harry twisted his lolling neck around to look at him. “Always. Before anything else.” He leaned near enough that his face was all Harry could see. “Can you understand always?”
Harry gave him a smile in which he thought enough simple happiness appeared to make Draco start. Then Harry whispered, “I can,” and slid a groping hand back to touch Draco.
Draco met him halfway there, and bowed his head to kiss the back of Harry’s hand. Warmth, life-giving, seemed to flow away from his lips and heat skin that had been feeling like plaster.
Harry sighed and subsided, for the first time in more than a day, into simple, relaxed sleep.
The End.
Quickening. This entry was originally posted at
http://lomonaaeren.dreamwidth.org/616650.html. Comment wherever you like.