Chapter Text
Draco tastes like the ice lolly.
Harry’s never been in love with strawberries before, but he’s ready to take a vow to only eat strawberry ice lollies for the rest of his life. That’s how good the kiss tastes. That’s how good Draco’s mouth tastes.
Doesn’t stay cold for long.
It’s a hard, biting kiss that doesn’t stay hard or biting very long, either, because Harry’s got to taste as much of Draco as he can, and he can’t do that with his teeth. Harry’s back meets a wall—he doesn’t care which wall it is—and Draco presses into the space between them, all warm skin and sunblock charms and one hand fitted firmly under Harry’s jaw.
Harry’s entire body says yes. The kiss turns deeper and sloppier. His glasses come halfway off, but neither of them stop, and he doesn’t care how ridiculous he looks. He doesn’t care that he keeps jerking his hips towards Draco’s like he’s desperate. He doesn’t care that he is desperate.
It’s just not, like, enough.
Not all of what he needs.
Harry throws his arms and, like, most of his weight around Draco’s neck at the same moment Draco’s arms go around his waist, and then Draco shoves him elegantly against the wall again, which is the hottest thing that could possibly happen to Harry.
It takes a few more heartbeats for his brain to catch up. It’s hot because some part of Harry was worried that Draco would treat him like he’s fragile or wounded or something, and Harry isn’t.
He really isn’t.
With his arms around Draco’s neck, Harry can’t push back with his hands, so he pushes back with his entire body instead. More and more of his blood rushes southwards, overwhelming his dick.
Which, Harry realises suddenly, has been sorely neglected. He hasn’t even wanked in the shower in a week or two. He’s been—
What has he been doing?
Not this, and that’s the biggest mistake of Harry’s life.
But he’s making up for it.
At least a bit.
Or maybe he’s never been this hard, and it’s making him lightheaded. His entire dick throbs with his pulse.
“Oh, bollocks, my heart is in my cock,” Harry slurs into the kiss. It’s got to be the combination of blood loss and relief that’s making him like this. Wait, no—not blood loss. Blood reorientation. “Jesus Merlin fuck.”
Draco licks into Harry’s mouth. He adds pressure to the small of Harry’s back, bringing their hips together, and then he’s got his fingers in Harry’s hair, and when he tugs Harry’s head back it’s only natural to let Draco make a long stretch of Harry’s neck and it’s really only natural to stay open for the nip on Harry’s bottom lip and the tender bite afterwards and Draco pulling off with a low, frustrated sound that Harry thought he’d not get to hear again.
And then Harry’s looking up into Draco’s face, his head sort of cradled in Draco’s hand. Draco pulls his hair just hard enough for Harry to shiver himself into a bloody perfect sparkling pain and, like, concentrate for a second or two.
He stares at Draco—silver-grey eyes, huge pupils, a sunburn blush high on his cheeks and streaming down to his neck and glowing on the tips of his ears, his starlight hair coming loose from his plait, his lips shiny on top of the red from the ice lolly.
This expression—the one where Draco’s eyes are narrowed just a bit and they glint in the shadows cast by his eyelashes and Draco studies Harry super intently and breathes all quiet like a cat or something that’s ready to pounce—means Draco wants to fuck Harry.
He wants it a lot.
He’s watching Harry so he can decide what to give him and how exactly to give it.
Harry’s got just enough brain left over to know that his mouth is hanging open—doesn’t care—and he’s breathing hard—doesn’t care about that, either—and he’s right on the verge of turning into a puddle—really doesn’t care, doesn’t care, doesn’t care.
Draco’s hand flexes on Harry’s jaw. He takes a final quick breath, the skin ’round his eyes hinting at a very certain smile, and nips Harry’s lip again.
“You want out of your body, is that it?”
“Yeah,” Harry rasps.
“I should think you’d like it to hurt.”
A pathetic, animal sort of whine comes out of Harry’s mouth.
“Oh, darling, I know. Let’s take you down, shall we?”
Let’s is only, like, a nice turn of phrase.
All Harry’s got to do is kneel on the ottoman and bend over the foot of the bed. His swim trunks are gone by then, though he doesn’t remember Draco Banishing them specifically. He remembers quite a bit of cool, silvery magic and trying to get his mouth on Draco’s and Draco’s hand on his nape, and when his chest hits the covers, all that blurs like his vision.
Because Draco took his glasses off and set them aside.
Harry’s not really looking at the closet. He can’t really see it. The closet is not part of this, but it is in front of his face. Harry can just make out the toe of one of his trainers through the cracked-open closet door.
That’s the only door in the room that’s not warded. Harry’s head buzzes lightly from Draco’s ten or twelve Muffliatos, or maybe it’s just being completely naked and bent over the foot of the bed while Draco leans over him and brushes his lips over Harry’s earlobe.
“Remind me.” The warmth of Draco’s breath gives Harry another full-soul shiver. “What’s your word?”
Oh, bollocks.
Harry doesn’t know any words.
His mind shuffles through the English language along with some Parseltongue nonsense and finally holds up Harry’s word like a trophy.
“Snatchers,” he says.
“Good boy,” says Draco, and Harry drops straight down into the lovely, thoughtless haze where he belongs.
He doesn’t have time to beg Draco to spank him.
Draco drums his fingers on Harry’s left elbow, then his right. Harry knows exactly what that means. It means to fold his arms behind his back.
It’s only natural.
And it’s only natural for Draco to lock his off-hand around both Harry’s arms.
And it’s the most natural thing Harry’s ever done to tilt his hips a bit and let the rest of his body get heavy on the bed.
“Are you ready, mon éclair?”
“Yeah,” Harry says, and means to follow it up with a yes for maximum clarity, but instead he sort of whimpers please.
Jesus Merlin hell and bollocks, it’s been too long. Harry can’t remember how long it’s been, but it’s longer than anyone could’ve expected him to bear.
He just needs Draco like this. Needs Draco’s hand coming down in a totally predictable rhythm. Needs the heat and the prickle of it that bleeds out from Draco’s handprints and covers Harry’s arse from the tip-top to his sit spots. Needs to get strained and whiny under Draco’s hand and have Draco push back, unlocking whatever it is inside Harry that keeps him so bloody tense all the time. Needs Draco over him, behind him, saying, good, wonderful, such a sweet boy, shh, yes, j’avais besoin de ça aussi, oh, make that sound again, it was so pretty. Needs to cross into the place where he’s slack on the blankets, his bones and the pressure of Draco’s hand holding him where he needs to be, taking it, taking it, taking it.
Needs to stop pretending he’s anybody but himself.
Harry knows he’s making noise and can’t stop.
Then he knows he’s crying and can’t stop.
Then he’s rutting against the bend in the mattress and Draco has his fingers on Harry’s hip to pull him into place again.
“A bit more, sweetheart. Just a little more. For me, perfect boy. Yes.”
Then Draco’s cooing in his ear, his fingertips on the base of Harry’s spine, and Harry understands very dimly that he’s supposed to crawl up onto the bed, so he does.
His arse is like hot coals or something. It’s a white sort of pain, a bit redder every second. Harry’s completely weightless until he drops his head onto the blankets again. He’s over some pillows now, he thinks, and Draco shifts his knees apart and coos at Harry some more until Harry flops his arms backwards and Draco catches his wrists.
“Let’s give you something to do with your hands, shall we?”
The something is holding himself open for Draco.
Harry’s pretty sure all the air in the room is made of Draco’s magic. It’s all over him and in him and his skin is supersensitive in the best way Harry’s ever felt.
But maybe it’s not so much the air, or the magic.
Maybe Draco’s tongue on his arsehole is magic, too.
Harry is a puddle—a quivering, panting sort of puddle—by the time the thick head—fuck, how is he that thick?—of Draco’s cock is notched to his hole and Draco’s hands are on his hips and Harry realises Draco’s been talking to him for quite some time.
“—yourself. Ah—yes.” His hands tighten on Harry’s hips, but he doesn’t push forwards. “I want you to do this part, mon éclair. Come this way. Oh, don’t whinge, my darling. I’ll fuck you just as soon as you’re ready.”
There’s, like, a lot of lube, but even so, it takes work. Harry’s got to focus with everything he’s got left to coordinate his muscles and bear down at the right moment and ease himself onto Draco.
“Oh, fuck,” he gasps. That is a stretch. “Oh, fuck, oh—”
“Not yet,” Draco says quickly. “Not yet. I’ll tell you when it’s time.”
Harry bites down on his lip. He was about to come. He’s so close it feels like holding his breath, only centred in his cock.
He’s got no choice but to whine, then, because otherwise it’s literally going to spill out of him. Harry tenses his thighs, but that makes them tremble harder, which makes him clench everything, which makes Draco say what sounds like a curse word in French.
Next Harry knows, he’s pinned to the bed and stuffed full of Draco and somehow Draco gets his hand between Harry’s body and the pillows and Draco wraps his fist around Harry and that’s all it takes to make him come so hard he doesn’t see stars, he sees, like, galaxies.
They fuck an entire second time.
Draco turns pink all the way down to his nipples. His hair comes completely out of its plait, and Harry could look at the white-blond waves for the rest of his life.
They’re in the bath when Harry becomes aware of himself as a person with a brain and a body again.
Hot water trickles down his back, dripping off the flannel in Draco’s hand. The droplets hit the water underneath Harry.
Draco’s humming a song. It’s the song he sings when he cuts Harry’s hair.
His head is so clear that he can’t avoid knowing what he knows now.
“Directionality,” he says.
“That’s right,” Draco answers, and keeps humming.
“Goes the other way.”
“I should think so.”
Draco’s humouring him, but Harry’s only fucked out, not making things up. His ribs don’t get tight around his lungs this time. His lungs expand, aching where they meet his bones.
“I wanted out, but I got, like, in.”
Harry did get to escape for a little while, but being under like that—
It didn’t erase his orbiting feelings.
It made them right-sized and fit them into his body. It mashed the separate parts of Harry together—the person he was trying to be and the one he is. And now that he’s good and mashed, there’s room left over for something else.
Harry doesn’t have long to wonder what’s going to fill the empty space.
His breath catches around the ache in his lungs, which is really a sort of stabbing pain in his heart, and all at once his eyes sting like mad and Harry’s pretty sure he can’t breathe.
“Oh, fuck,” he chokes. “Oh, fuck, I’m so sad.”
Harry’s really bloody sad.
He’s sorrowful at dinner and grief-stricken by group campfire conversation. It turns into a horrible pit in his throat that he can’t swallow.
Luckily, Harry’s been through, like, a war and dying and things like that, so he can just wipe his eyes on his sleeve and carry on. It’s easier to be likable or more tolerable when he’s sad, anyway.
What else is there to do? He can’t drown in tears, so he pretends he’s not crying and lets Draco chivvy him to all the group individualised activities, which Harry likes or at least treasures for the future despite his watery vision.
Still doesn’t make any sense.
What does make sense is that it feels like everyone else is dying.
Like—they’ll all die someday, but Harry’s going to lose them all in a matter of hours.
Fine, okay, Jesus—in a matter of days or weeks or months, and he doesn’t know how to make himself into someone who won’t. He can only be half-likable for a limited amount of time.
Even worse, everyone at the non-curse-cottage acts like this is totally normal.
Draco stays within arm’s reach, wiping away any tears that happen to fall out of Harry’s eyes and letting Harry tip over onto him whenever the weight of his grief gets to be too much, which is often.
Ron spends one group individualised free period under Harry’s heavy blanket with him, whispering what he thinks are hopeful statistics for the Cannons.
Pansy hexes Harry whenever she thinks he looks too sad, so he brings himself out of it long enough to chase her around in the garden until she screeches for mercy.
Blaise asks Harry for advice on getting Hermione to stop reading before three in the morning.
Greg bakes Harry two hundred miniature biscuits.
At group campfire conversation on the fifth day—when Draco’s sat between Blaise and Pansy, having some sort of secret aside—Hermione climbs onto Harry’s garden chair and wraps her arms around him so tightly that she squeezes some tears out of his eyes.
“Do you want to talk about it?” she asks, her voice pitched low so she doesn’t interrupt Ron and Greg’s conversation, which is a teasing argument about Exploding Snap or something.
“Dunno what to say,” Harry says in his weird not-crying-but-actually-crying voice.
“You could say what’s wrong.”
“Nothing’s wrong,” he answers instantly. It’s true, isn’t it? They’re all here and alive and none of them died. “I mean, obviously, some things are wrong, but it’s like—it’s—” He gestures at the fire, which doesn’t deserve it. “Everything, sort of. It’s like—Sirius and my parents and—and everyone. I’m still in the Prophet every week and I haven’t done anything for ten years.”
Hermione makes a sound of disagreement.
“I haven’t, Hermione. I’ve barely got any certifications. I didn’t do the parchmentwork for my parents’ house. I couldn’t even fix Grimmauld. It’s everything, sort of, but it’s really just—it’s me.”
“What’s you?”
“I’m not, like—” Worth any of this, is what he wants to say, but Hermione will argue, and they’ll go ’round in circles about it, and he’ll eventually stop arguing because her logic is better than his or whatever. “I dunno.”
Hermione does not say anything.
She keeps her arms around him until it’s time to go inside.
The activities go by, taking the hours with them.
Harry spends the night before the last one half-awake, his face in Draco’s neck. He can’t fall asleep for fear of missing a second of it.
When the sun comes up, Harry’s surprised to find himself…
Determined.
To be as likable as he can today. Even lovable. To make the most of the hours he’s got left. He ignores the fast tickticktick under his skin, off-time with his heartbeat so he can just make it out all day.
Tomorrow, they’ll all go back to their lives, and he’ll go back to Grimmauld, and then he can—
Do whatever it is people do when they stop being likeable.
Hopefully he doesn’t explode. Kreacher would have a fit.
On the last afternoon, the weather doesn’t permit for group poolside debrief.
Harry spends the slot of time on his knees, rain pattering on the roof and Draco’s fingers in his hair.
Draco’s quiet in the shower. He washes Harry’s hair like he’s going to cut it. Gentle. Meticulous. He doesn’t skip any of the steps.
Harry shuts his eyes and tries not to die of how much he loves it.
And how much he loves Draco.
“I don’t know what to do,” he finally manages to say. Harry doesn’t know what to do about anything, really, but mostly about tomorrow, when Harry’s done with the cottage, and his friends are done with him.
“I do.”
“What?”
“Go downstairs for dinner.”
Harry sticks his hand into Draco’s on the way downstairs, just, like, needing it, and Draco curls his fingers through Harry’s and squeezes.
Pansy shrieks in the kitchen as they get close, and Ron laughs at her. Harry slips his hand out of Draco’s even though it feels worse than actually dying and takes a deep breath. This is the last dinner. The last evening. The last campfire later. The last night. He can get through it. He’s going to be so lovable.
“You’re not serious!” Pansy shriek-shouts. “Ronald Weasley, you are not serious. I thought you meant—oh, stop it! I thought you meant—”
“I am serious.” Ron’s voice wobbles a bit. Harry’s a step away from the kitchen door and that tiny wobble is like a red flare against a dark sky. Like—he feels it. The seriousness. His feet keep moving him towards the kitchen. “I’m really bloody serious, Pans.”
Harry’s brain shows up late and out of breath. Stop, stop or something.
Harry doesn’t stop.
He steps into the kitchen just as Ron holds his hand out.
Draco slides his hand onto Harry’s waist. Harry doesn’t know why, and doesn’t know, and doesn’t know, and then his eyes reconnect to his useless brain.
There’s a box in Ron’s hand.
It’s a ring box.
He opens it, his hand moving so fast it blurs in the golden light coming through the windows. Pansy’s face goes brilliantly pleased. Completely shocked. She’s wearing dungarees and her curse-breaking shirt again, and Harry just knows she’s going to be furious about it later—dungarees, Potter? Really? For my own engagement? What was I thinking?—and he’s going to die.
The floor goes out from under Harry.
It’s the same feeling he had in Grimmauld Place during fifth-year when he’d walked in on Molly with the boggart that looked like Ron’s dead body. Lungs empty. Brain full of ice. Falling forever.
“Harry,” says Draco.
Ron and Pansy whip their heads towards Harry, and both of them start for him.
“I’m so happy!” he shouts, his voice cracking. “I’m so happy for you, bloody fuck!”
The tickticktick in Harry’s head goes silent.