(no subject)
FIC! I told you I'd put it up.
This is one of those sneaky surprises wherein I don't surprise anyone. It is a gift, but not so much a Christmas gift as an I-love-you-and-you-are-amazing-beyond-belief gift for sheafrotherdon. I wanted her to know how proud of her I am, and actually this was meant to go up, uh, ages ago, FIRST for her birthday, and then when she went to Iowa City for things, but life nibbled at us, so here it is, an ages-ago-birthday-PhD-feel-better-I-am-so-proud-little-bit-Christmas-but-mostly-just-I-love-you gift.
Story by me! Lovely, lovely wonderful art by linnpuzzle, who was kind and gracious enough to help me out, and has totally been working insanely hard on this, so deserves tons and tons of praise. Without further ado:
Harry/Draco Christmas fic, definitely R, with all the love I can put into words.
This Proof Absolute
Tell me it all comes down
to your arm flung out, 3 a.m., its breaking
just across my belly, this proof absolute:
I'm no one and nowhere else.
He is standing in a kitchen, listening to Draco Malfoy talk.
Something about this, Harry knows, should be strange, but just now, he can’t think to what it is. He’s leaning against a counter - he’s always been a clumsy drunk, and someone’s been pushing firewhiskey into his hands all night, so now the edges of the room are spinning. All he can focus on are Draco Malfoy’s hands.
Harry knows he should be listening to what he’s saying, because somehow, Draco Malfoy is not the sort of person who allows conversational drift, tectonic plate gaps and collisions, like the way the kitchen light flickers behind his head. Earthquakes, Harry thinks, somehow, but Malfoy is far too subtle for that. Landslides and floods are too much for this. He is nothing more and nothing less than the tremble in Harry’s hands, curled around a glass of what he thinks is scotch, and the way the china plates on the mantle shook when he hid under the stairs as a child, almost imperceptible.
“You’re drunk,” Malfoy observes, when Harry laughs at the wrong time, not at what he’s said, but at the quirk of Malfoy’s smile, which somehow, just for a moment, has managed to seem warm and inviting.
He takes a step closer and then another, and one more, until Malfoy’s reaching out hands to steady him. “Harry,” he murmurs, not quite kind - Harry isn’t sure Malfoy knows how to be kind - but present, aware of every flaw in this conversation and where to touch to make him break open.
Harry has never known to say, in situations such as these, with the kitchen clock ticking time as he realizes they aren’t quite enemies anymore.
Malfoy hasn’t chosen a side, not really, and to Harry’s knowledge, he likes potions and warding spells far more than the war. But he overheard it said once that the Order offers better pay and is happy to take without requiring more, and he supposes money and flexibility are enough incentive to counter accusations of morality.
Harry doesn’t hate him, not anymore. Draco Malfoy has become distant with age, caught between casual grace and unbreakable dignity. He only seems touchable when he’s been drinking: too often, these days, but still beyond Harry’s reach. They’ve never talked, much, and twenty-two hasn’t settled any closer to Harry’s bones than sixteen: he still feels awkward, all elbows and knees and words that won’t fit in his mouth, with fame and mediocrity hovering around the lines of his face, almost balanced.
They don’t talk, but when Draco Malfoy bothers with someone, it’s not to be taken for granted, and Harry is no exception. He’s been driven home a few times, when everyone’s too drunk to apparate, and he thinks he could map the silence that lies between them in the winter night with just his fingertips and mouth, vowels caught between his teeth, syllables beneath his tongue. It settles in the edges of the radiator hum and the drumming of Draco’s fingers on the wheel, the half-silenced desire to open his mouth and say something.
Sometimes, the fingers offering him a glass hold that same quiet pause, sometimes a smile across the room knows the unpolished cartography of his heartbeat, just enough to make his pulse race.
Here, in this kitchen, twenty-six minutes into Christmas, he is struck not by knowledge but by the desire to know, to hold honesty in the palm of his hand and offer it unbidden.
“Harry,” Draco prompts, again, drawing him back down. He blinks, once: everything past Draco’s face is out of focus, a warm, soft blur of color.
“I don’t have anyone to stay with for Christmas,” he offers, quiet and almost awkward.
Draco pauses, reaches, and cups his face with a hand against his jaw, thumb warm against Harry’s cheekbone. The gesture usually opens doors, requires more, but this asks nothing. It needs nothing else to be complete.
“I should drive you home,” Draco says.
He holds the door and murmurs a warming charm into the collar of Harry’s coat, but the drive home is almost too much to bear. There are a thousand small emotions beating beneath his ribcage, in the hollows of his wrists, just behind his jaw. He presses gloved fingers to the windows, cold with condensation, and lets shame slide down into the darkness beneath the dashboard, sticking like spilled coffee in the indentation of the gearshift.
Draco locks the car - Hermione’s, on loan to Bill Weasley while she’s in Brighton, if Harry remembers correctly - and Harry thinks it’s to keep him from falling, to make sure he gets in all right. Draco slides a hand into his pocket and takes his keys, an intimate enough gesture to make Harry swallow. The click into the lock is smooth, and Harry closes his eyes and waits to be left, but Draco merely holds the door for a moment before letting himself in, shoes in the doorway, coat over the back of a chair.
He loosens his tie and undoes his cuffs and collar while Harry is still standing in the doorway, turns to raise an eyebrow over his shoulder. “Coming?” he murmurs, and Harry steps inside.
It’s strange, to think of Draco Malfoy brushing his teeth as the room spins. Worse, to sit on the sofa with his head between his knees as he listens to the creak of ancient pipes and the dull spray of water. The fingertips against the nape of his neck are cool and damp, water droplets against the sofa, and he’s looking up into his own jumper, too large even on him. “All right?” Draco says, and Harry thinks, perhaps he knows how to be kind, after all.
Draco guides him to bed - hand warm against the small of his back, heating charm against the sheets - and Harry is somehow unsurprised when someone slides in beside him, heavy weight where there’s never been one, before, a murmured charm to put the lights out.
He lies in the silence and breathes.
There is a hand against his shoulder, unobtrusive and quiet, shrugged off easily enough, but he finds he doesn’t want to. “What do you want?” he whispers, into a darkness that seems to swallow his words.
The only answer is a removal of Draco’s hand, for a moment. “This,” he answers, quiet, and tangles his fingers around Harry’s wrist, thumb pressed to his pulse, fluttering, and Harry recognizes when his breathing evens into sleep.
He lies in the silence, and is surprised to find himself falling asleep, too.
He wakes to a hand curled around the back of his neck, steady and reassuring, and Draco Malfoy’s mouth, so close to the hollow of his throat he forgets how to think for a moment. It is nothing so great as love, nothing so simple as lust, and Harry yields not with a bang but a whimper, fingers sliding up to tangle in Draco’s hair.
They have lost all pretenses of grace, here, but intensity lingers around the edges of his half smile. “Do you want this?” Draco asks, quietly serious, deceptively calm.
Harry nods, and it’s more than enough to draw Draco over, on top of him, pressing close with an unholy sort of heat that Harry’s never been able to conjure, not in a flat where frost coats the windows every morning and the pipes break each winter.
They kiss: only once, but it’s the sort of kiss that never quite ends, breathing into each other, warm and quiet, the slow tangle of mouths and tongues.
Draco slides his hands up to cup Harry’s face, drawing him in further, and he’s already half-hard against Draco’s stomach as they arch together, heat building in quiet intensity, a chemical equation lost in the curve of Draco’s hip, the flush across Harry’s stomach.
It’s consuming, tidal, necessary, as he lifts his hips to rub against Draco, spells murmured between their mouths to shed clothes. Harry’s fingers tangle in the collar of Draco’s jumper, dragging him down, until it disappears and he’s left with bare skin beneath his hands, against his own, enough to make him cry out.
Draco slides sure fingertips down his spine, over the comma-curve of his vertebrae, lingering in the spaces between his ribs, thumb curled around his side, touch slow enough to make him writhe. He twists, beneath him, up, until they can push their hips together, Draco swallowing every noise Harry makes, even the silent dictionary of his body, written against the lines of his palms, scrawled in the pulse that slams beneath Draco’s hand.
He bucks up as Draco thrusts down, fingers sliding between them to wrap around his erection. There is steady pressure just beneath the head, then slow, even strokes, until he cries out and comes against Draco’s stomach. There is another half-twist of a palm and Draco comes too, eyes dark, losing all sense of balance.
He wakes a second time, later, past cleaning charms and murmured niceties, with Draco Malfoy curled around him, knees and elbows and sharp angles enough to fit into every hollow Harry has.
“What do you want?” he asks, again, softer.
“You,” Draco murmurs, this time, and Harry finds that perhaps words aren’t quite so necessary, after all.
This is one of those sneaky surprises wherein I don't surprise anyone. It is a gift, but not so much a Christmas gift as an I-love-you-and-you-are-amazing-beyond-belief gift for sheafrotherdon. I wanted her to know how proud of her I am, and actually this was meant to go up, uh, ages ago, FIRST for her birthday, and then when she went to Iowa City for things, but life nibbled at us, so here it is, an ages-ago-birthday-PhD-feel-better-I-am-so-proud-little-bit-Christmas-but-mostly-just-I-love-you gift.
Story by me! Lovely, lovely wonderful art by linnpuzzle, who was kind and gracious enough to help me out, and has totally been working insanely hard on this, so deserves tons and tons of praise. Without further ado:
Harry/Draco Christmas fic, definitely R, with all the love I can put into words.
This Proof Absolute
Tell me it all comes down
to your arm flung out, 3 a.m., its breaking
just across my belly, this proof absolute:
I'm no one and nowhere else.
He is standing in a kitchen, listening to Draco Malfoy talk.
Something about this, Harry knows, should be strange, but just now, he can’t think to what it is. He’s leaning against a counter - he’s always been a clumsy drunk, and someone’s been pushing firewhiskey into his hands all night, so now the edges of the room are spinning. All he can focus on are Draco Malfoy’s hands.
Harry knows he should be listening to what he’s saying, because somehow, Draco Malfoy is not the sort of person who allows conversational drift, tectonic plate gaps and collisions, like the way the kitchen light flickers behind his head. Earthquakes, Harry thinks, somehow, but Malfoy is far too subtle for that. Landslides and floods are too much for this. He is nothing more and nothing less than the tremble in Harry’s hands, curled around a glass of what he thinks is scotch, and the way the china plates on the mantle shook when he hid under the stairs as a child, almost imperceptible.
“You’re drunk,” Malfoy observes, when Harry laughs at the wrong time, not at what he’s said, but at the quirk of Malfoy’s smile, which somehow, just for a moment, has managed to seem warm and inviting.
He takes a step closer and then another, and one more, until Malfoy’s reaching out hands to steady him. “Harry,” he murmurs, not quite kind - Harry isn’t sure Malfoy knows how to be kind - but present, aware of every flaw in this conversation and where to touch to make him break open.
Harry has never known to say, in situations such as these, with the kitchen clock ticking time as he realizes they aren’t quite enemies anymore.
Malfoy hasn’t chosen a side, not really, and to Harry’s knowledge, he likes potions and warding spells far more than the war. But he overheard it said once that the Order offers better pay and is happy to take without requiring more, and he supposes money and flexibility are enough incentive to counter accusations of morality.
Harry doesn’t hate him, not anymore. Draco Malfoy has become distant with age, caught between casual grace and unbreakable dignity. He only seems touchable when he’s been drinking: too often, these days, but still beyond Harry’s reach. They’ve never talked, much, and twenty-two hasn’t settled any closer to Harry’s bones than sixteen: he still feels awkward, all elbows and knees and words that won’t fit in his mouth, with fame and mediocrity hovering around the lines of his face, almost balanced.
They don’t talk, but when Draco Malfoy bothers with someone, it’s not to be taken for granted, and Harry is no exception. He’s been driven home a few times, when everyone’s too drunk to apparate, and he thinks he could map the silence that lies between them in the winter night with just his fingertips and mouth, vowels caught between his teeth, syllables beneath his tongue. It settles in the edges of the radiator hum and the drumming of Draco’s fingers on the wheel, the half-silenced desire to open his mouth and say something.
Sometimes, the fingers offering him a glass hold that same quiet pause, sometimes a smile across the room knows the unpolished cartography of his heartbeat, just enough to make his pulse race.
Here, in this kitchen, twenty-six minutes into Christmas, he is struck not by knowledge but by the desire to know, to hold honesty in the palm of his hand and offer it unbidden.
“Harry,” Draco prompts, again, drawing him back down. He blinks, once: everything past Draco’s face is out of focus, a warm, soft blur of color.
“I don’t have anyone to stay with for Christmas,” he offers, quiet and almost awkward.
Draco pauses, reaches, and cups his face with a hand against his jaw, thumb warm against Harry’s cheekbone. The gesture usually opens doors, requires more, but this asks nothing. It needs nothing else to be complete.
“I should drive you home,” Draco says.
He holds the door and murmurs a warming charm into the collar of Harry’s coat, but the drive home is almost too much to bear. There are a thousand small emotions beating beneath his ribcage, in the hollows of his wrists, just behind his jaw. He presses gloved fingers to the windows, cold with condensation, and lets shame slide down into the darkness beneath the dashboard, sticking like spilled coffee in the indentation of the gearshift.
Draco locks the car - Hermione’s, on loan to Bill Weasley while she’s in Brighton, if Harry remembers correctly - and Harry thinks it’s to keep him from falling, to make sure he gets in all right. Draco slides a hand into his pocket and takes his keys, an intimate enough gesture to make Harry swallow. The click into the lock is smooth, and Harry closes his eyes and waits to be left, but Draco merely holds the door for a moment before letting himself in, shoes in the doorway, coat over the back of a chair.
He loosens his tie and undoes his cuffs and collar while Harry is still standing in the doorway, turns to raise an eyebrow over his shoulder. “Coming?” he murmurs, and Harry steps inside.
It’s strange, to think of Draco Malfoy brushing his teeth as the room spins. Worse, to sit on the sofa with his head between his knees as he listens to the creak of ancient pipes and the dull spray of water. The fingertips against the nape of his neck are cool and damp, water droplets against the sofa, and he’s looking up into his own jumper, too large even on him. “All right?” Draco says, and Harry thinks, perhaps he knows how to be kind, after all.
Draco guides him to bed - hand warm against the small of his back, heating charm against the sheets - and Harry is somehow unsurprised when someone slides in beside him, heavy weight where there’s never been one, before, a murmured charm to put the lights out.
He lies in the silence and breathes.
There is a hand against his shoulder, unobtrusive and quiet, shrugged off easily enough, but he finds he doesn’t want to. “What do you want?” he whispers, into a darkness that seems to swallow his words.
The only answer is a removal of Draco’s hand, for a moment. “This,” he answers, quiet, and tangles his fingers around Harry’s wrist, thumb pressed to his pulse, fluttering, and Harry recognizes when his breathing evens into sleep.
He lies in the silence, and is surprised to find himself falling asleep, too.
He wakes to a hand curled around the back of his neck, steady and reassuring, and Draco Malfoy’s mouth, so close to the hollow of his throat he forgets how to think for a moment. It is nothing so great as love, nothing so simple as lust, and Harry yields not with a bang but a whimper, fingers sliding up to tangle in Draco’s hair.
They have lost all pretenses of grace, here, but intensity lingers around the edges of his half smile. “Do you want this?” Draco asks, quietly serious, deceptively calm.
Harry nods, and it’s more than enough to draw Draco over, on top of him, pressing close with an unholy sort of heat that Harry’s never been able to conjure, not in a flat where frost coats the windows every morning and the pipes break each winter.
They kiss: only once, but it’s the sort of kiss that never quite ends, breathing into each other, warm and quiet, the slow tangle of mouths and tongues.
Draco slides his hands up to cup Harry’s face, drawing him in further, and he’s already half-hard against Draco’s stomach as they arch together, heat building in quiet intensity, a chemical equation lost in the curve of Draco’s hip, the flush across Harry’s stomach.
It’s consuming, tidal, necessary, as he lifts his hips to rub against Draco, spells murmured between their mouths to shed clothes. Harry’s fingers tangle in the collar of Draco’s jumper, dragging him down, until it disappears and he’s left with bare skin beneath his hands, against his own, enough to make him cry out.
Draco slides sure fingertips down his spine, over the comma-curve of his vertebrae, lingering in the spaces between his ribs, thumb curled around his side, touch slow enough to make him writhe. He twists, beneath him, up, until they can push their hips together, Draco swallowing every noise Harry makes, even the silent dictionary of his body, written against the lines of his palms, scrawled in the pulse that slams beneath Draco’s hand.
He bucks up as Draco thrusts down, fingers sliding between them to wrap around his erection. There is steady pressure just beneath the head, then slow, even strokes, until he cries out and comes against Draco’s stomach. There is another half-twist of a palm and Draco comes too, eyes dark, losing all sense of balance.
He wakes a second time, later, past cleaning charms and murmured niceties, with Draco Malfoy curled around him, knees and elbows and sharp angles enough to fit into every hollow Harry has.
“What do you want?” he asks, again, softer.
“You,” Draco murmurs, this time, and Harry finds that perhaps words aren’t quite so necessary, after all.