Drabbles

The moment Draco put the glass flask to his lips and felt the potion trickle onto his tongue and coat his throat, something changed in Theo’s demeanour. One moment he was leisurely leaning against the table with the cauldron behind him, the next his eyes were wide in panic. He’d been flicking through the pages of an old potion tome to double-check that the potion he’d brewed would work as intended, but Draco had lost his patience.

When Theo called out, “Stop!” and slapped the flask out of his hand, it was already too late. The potion (which tasted weirdly like cherry liquor and how Draco had always imagined Theo’s skin to taste if licked) was sitting heavily in his stomach. Theo had both hands in his hair, his eyes frantic behind his glasses.

“Fuck, Draco, fuck,” he hissed, pacing back and forth.

“What is it?” Draco asked, feeling his anxiety spike. “Did you just kill me?”

He tried to feel inwards, to see if he felt any different about Daphne, his ex-wife, but the marriage bond still vibrated in his veins. Resentment and annoyance. The only way the two could still feel about each other.

“I might as well have,” Theo groaned, picking up the book where he’d dropped it on the carpet and pushing it into Draco’s chest before pacing again and muttering under his breath.

Theo’s potion room was not a dungeon but set in a high tower in Nott Hall, the windows reflecting the forest beyond and the setting sun on the horizon. The place was so Theo, extravagantly decked out with Persian carpets and a seating area by the window with pillows in gemstone colours. Draco enjoyed taking a piss out of Theo for his decorating choices but secretly loved them. Like so many things about his best friend. He couldn’t wish but hope that one day he could hide inside that pillow fort. No longer be a Malfoy, married to Daphne and under his father’s thumb.

“Read!” Theo snapped.

Draco lowered his eyes to the book and found the paragraph that Theo had circled with his wand.

“While the potion is powerful enough to break any kind of vow or blood bond, there is one catch,” Draco read, lifting his head to see the green behind Theo’s glasses had almost disappeared behind his enlarged pupils. “If the bond is not replaced with another, it will lead to the death of the consumer. In the case of a marriage bond, haste is necessary too. The only way to ensure the potion will not lead to death is to consummate the new bond as quickly as possible.”

When he lifted his eyes from the page, Draco felt a strange calm wash over him. He hadn’t meant to reveal his true feelings like this, but being forced to do so took responsibility away. He didn’t have any other choice. And for once in his life he was grateful for that.

“Let me get Pansy,” Theo panted, sounding very much like he was hyperventilating himself into a panic attack. “Or even better let us apparate to her place now.”

Theo crossed the distance between them and grabbed for his wrist. Before he could apparate them out of there, Draco snatched his arm away and shook his head.

“What?” Theo said, shoving at Draco’s chest. “You rather die than bond with somebody else? Are you insane?”

“I’m not going to die,” he said, trying to sound calm in the face of Theo’s storm.

“The fuck you won’t,” Theo growled, trying to catch his arm again. But Theo had never played Quidditch and Draco’s reflexes were better. He dodged the next few attempts too, slowly, but cunningly guiding Theo to the the window with all those pillows.

“If not Pansy then who?” Theo eventually said, stemming his hands into his waist. “Granger? Potter? I’ve seen how you look at them from a distance. You’ve got the hots for one of them, don’t you?”

“No,” Draco returned, not in the mood to explain his very complex feelings towards his former enemies. Instead, he finally reversed their roles and caught Theo’s wrist in his hand. Thanks to his quick reflexes he had Theo pressed into the pillows beneath him, watching the orange of the sun reflected in his glasses.

“I’m going to fuck you,” Draco said with a little smirk that he knew drove Theo up the walls. The one Draco had only used on women so far when in Theo’s company.

Theo had frozen beneath him to the point Draco wondered if he had accidentally petrified himself with his wand trapped between them.

“Fuck,” he finally said, his eyes impossibly round, “who?”

“You,” Draco said. “Unless you have any objection.”

He didn’t actually wait for a reply before crushing his lips to Theo’s.

Draco had touched men before. Mostly during the brief time before his marriage with Daphne. It had been more of an experimentation phase, though, never done with any feelings. So, pinning the shithead friend he’d been in love with for over a decade into these pillows, tasting Theo’s desire on his tongue when he threaded his hands through his hair and lifted his pelvis against Draco’s until they both broke away with a groan— fuck, he couldn’t have imagined anything more beautiful.

“I have many objections,” Theo said, while simultaneously unbuttoning Draco’s shirt and tugging on his suit jacket. “Fucking asshat.”

“I love it when you insult me,” Draco laughed, grinding his erection against Theo’s.

“First objection,” Theo hissed, sliding the shirt from Draco’s shoulders before shoving against his chest so he could sit up and rip his jumper over his head. “Why the fuck now?”

“Well, seeing as I might die if we don't,” Draco drawled and let himself sink onto Theo’s chest.

“If that’s the only reason then you better find somebody else, you wanker.” Opposite to his words, Theo’s hands were already on the button of Draco’s trousers, yanking them open only a moment later.

“What’s your second objection?” Draco moaned against the shell of his ear when Theo’s hand snaked into his pants and gripped him hard enough that it felt like punishment.

“We’ll be bonded for life.”

“You don’t want to be bonded with me?”

“That’s not—” Theo groaned and rubbed his face in frustration with his free hand, the other curling so tight around the base of Draco’s cock that he almost blacked out from the sensation. “You absolute fucker, arrogant prat, you think you can just have whatever you want, don’t you? Served on a platter for you after you put me through so many years of—”

Draco shut him up with another bruising kiss, moulding his body against his until Theo’s hand was trapped between them. Not in the mood for further interruptions, Draco vanished the rest of their clothes with Theo’s wand, then cast a lubrication spell. The moment his fingers were on Theo, probing inside the tiniest bit, they both pulled back.

Theo’s glasses were completely crooked on the top of his nose, his clever green eyes shining with desire.

“I will only say this once,” Draco said and wriggled his finger inside until Theo’s eyes pinched close and he threw his head back. “I asked you to brew this potion for me not just so I could be free of Daphne once and for all.”

Theo groaned, pushing back against his fingers, seeking him. It made him think of all the times Theo had sought him out before. In grade six when Draco had almost lost himself to feelings of anxiety and panic. After the war when nobody wanted to be around him any longer. Before the wedding when Draco had gotten drunk enough that he’d been sitting on the ledge of a roof, crying over how much he had ruined his life. And even now when Draco could finally be free.

It was always Theo, that ridiculous man with his fancy interior design and a mouth that cursed like a sailor's.

“I wanted to be free of the bond so that I could finally be with the person I’ve wanted to be with since I could even think about wanting another person.”

“Fucking fucker,” Theo tugged on his curls with both hands as if he was ripping apart at the seams and needed something to hold onto. “You think I will forgive you for making me wait so long?”

“Better late than never,” Draco answered with a grin, before sinking into a place that had always seemed like a distant dream. No, not a dream. Something closer. Nearer.

“What the fuck am I to you?” Theo moaned, tears gathering at the corners of his eyes. Draco carefully slid the glasses off his nose, then kissed away the salt on either side, before finding his mouth with his and whispering, “Home.”