Drabbles

The first arsehole Theo ever sees is Draco Malfoy’s. Which is fitting, really, because Draco Malfoy is also the first proper arsehole Theo’s ever met. 

He’d successfully avoided kissing Draco’s arse — literally and metaphorically — for the entirety of their matriculation at Hogwarts and it would’ve been a clean sweep had they not instituted an 8th year and had Theo not been cleanly swept under by the allure of a broken man in need of repair. 

Draco had shattered so nicely in the aftermath of the war, the broken pieces perfectly sized for Theo’s clever hands to put back together. He’d thought he’d done it in a way that had left a perfectly Theo-sized place to fill, but then he’d caught Draco staring across the classroom at Zabini with a gentle longing he knew, and felt the first flicker of panic. 

But looking wasn’t touching and so Theo still let Draco crawl into his bed that evening, where Theo looked and touched and sucked and fucked until he was certain the only person who could fill Draco was him. 

He’d been naïve. 

Looking wasn’t touching but shagging in a broom cupboard absolutely was. 

~~~

Pansy giggles to him about it over eggs, and Theo is sure he’s finally gone to hell. The sulfuric odor is right, if the storybooks are to be believed, as is the smile of wicked delight that reveals his worst nightmare, stretching his heart to breaking. 

“Can you believe it?” she snickers, ignorant to the ramifications of the sordid gossip; he and Draco aren’t overt with their fraternization, which is another way of saying they actively conceal it. “Trousers around their ankles like absolute degenerates.”

He can’t believe it. But not because of their trousers. 

Draco is shameless.

Theo’s bed is their usual haunt but they aren’t strangers to a broom cupboard, or a discrete under-the-table handy in the library, or reserving the Prefect’s Bath for far longer than should’ve been approved, doing everything they can think of to each other. 

But as Pansy natters on about the coitus-interruptus, Theo thinks of something they’ve never done. It seemed implicit, he’d thought. They were shagging each other; only each other. But the words had never been said. 

Acknowledging it hurts but Theo can’t bear to stand there and deny the existence of wrongdoing a second time. The stakes feel higher, even if his life doesn’t literally depend on it this time.

He waits in Draco’s room. 

They hardly ever spend time there and Theo wonders if it’s not because Draco likes being immersed in the scent of Theo, but that he doesn’t want Theo leaving his mark on his own sheets. 

He stands in the middle of the room, lest he linger after he’s gone. It’s the only courtesy he’ll offer. 

The door opens and Draco slips in, hair damp from his post-Quidditch shower and dressed in loungewear. The combination never fails to drop Theo straight to his knees and the realization of just how easy he is for this man coats his throat like bile. 

Draco notices him and his expression goes from surprised to intrigued within the space of a blink. 

“Well hello,” he drawls, tossing his Quidditch gear aside and stepping into Theo’s space. 

Theo steps back, and Draco frowns, confused.  

Even in a post-war world, Draco Malfoy thinks he can have whatever he wants, as if he’s not a half a foot into Azkaban or a sneeze away from becoming a pariah. The fucking entitlement of it burns hotly in Theo’s chest. He holds onto his anger with two hands, as tightly as he can. 

“I heard about the broom cupboard,” he says evenly. 

Draco — Salazar fucking smite him — grins.

“I know,” he laughs, stepping forward again. “It was only a matter of time, if you ask me.”

“Not sure I did,” Theo bites out. “Didn’t think I had to.”

The pale brows twitch again. “What?”

“And since I didn’t,” Theo continues, because if he stops he’ll die, like a shark in water, “I thought I’d make something clear. You’re free to do what you like.” He thinks to leave it there but his ego, the wretched thing, demands a voice as well. “As am I,” he says, to appease it.

Draco’s head tilts, comprehension somehow eluding him. “You’re free to do what you like?” he repeats. 

“Well, now that I know Zabini is free game,” he says, “Seems only fair I have a turn, too.”

For a moment, it looks like Draco might laugh. Theo can’t bear to hear the derision in it, the scoff that Blaise Zabini might deign to fool around with him . He doesn’t smile and Draco’s face neutralizes.

“You’re not serious.” Draco is properly baffled now. “You want Zabini? What about me?”

What about him? Theo wants to shout. Why wasn’t he enough?

“I was only using you,” Theo says instead, because it’s so much safer to pull away than be pushed. He can control the velocity that way, limit the damage to crucial systems like his brain and his soul and his stupid, weak heart. “And now I’m done.”

Draco’s face falls. Theo hates him for how much it makes his own spirit crumble. 

“Theo.” 

Draco says his name like Theo has always wished he would, like it’s a prayer or a plea. But Draco has always been the best of them when it came to exemplifying their house ideals, ambition and cunning and calculation in all their multifaceted applications, and so Theo grits his teeth against the temptation of it. 

He stares at Draco, face perfectly composed, and resists.

Draco stares back. He lasts longer than Theo expects — though after all their trysts, his stamina shouldn’t be a surprise — and Theo is about to break when Draco finally does. 

“I see.” He looks away and Theo takes his first full breath in what feels like minutes. “Well. If that’s…” He sniffs once, eyes still averted. “Then I suppose I’m the fool once again.”

It’s hard to watch. Theo can see the fissure lines; can tell exactly where to put his hands to hold Draco together. 

He shoves them into his pockets instead. Curls them tightly around the lining. It’s not his responsibility anymore — it can’t be. 

It’s then that he realizes he’s in Draco’s room, clogging up his space, and so he steps forward, toward the door. It’s also toward Draco, a mistake he realizes when the eyes he’s desperately addicted to find his, searching his face. 

Theo wants to kiss him goodbye. 

He wants to kiss him hello. 

He walks around him, as calmly as he can, leaving what he hopes is a Theo-sized hole in his wake. 

But hope is a sham. He knows he leaves nothing but a vacancy. 

~~~

It’s not until the following day that Theo comprehends the actual gossip and not just what his brain was able to parse through the ringing in his ears. 

The Quidditch Captain caught shagging Blaise Zabini was not, in fact, Draco Malfoy but none other than Harry sodding Potter. 

He spills tea down his front, mouth no longer interested in drinking as much as it is in gaping down the Slytherin table to where Daphne is ribbing Zabini about his conquest. Zabini is all smiles, no denial and no rebuttal. He shagged The Chosen One, after all. There’s only glory for him. 

Draco, sitting two seats the other side of Daphne, catches Theo’s reaction. His keen eyes dissect it, eating up the shock and regret and turning them into something that makes him tilt his chin up, jaw clenching.

By contrast, Theo can’t close his mouth. His jaw is fixed open in abject horror as he realizes the severity of his assumption.

“Draco,” he blurts, and Daphne cuts herself off mid-word to whip her head to him. Zabini is staring too, and Pansy, and Goyle. The only person not staring is Draco. 

Because he’s pushing back, he’s standing, and he’s stalking down the length of the table. 

Theo’s vision goes wonky. He blinks and it shifts again; a third blink clears it enough to see that Draco is gone. 

He thinks to rise, to follow after him and beg, properly, forehead to the flagstones, but he can’t move. 

A hand clasps his shoulder a moment later and his first thought is gratitude that someone’s come to unstick him, but then he’s being yanked backward off the bench and hoisted up by hands and a strength he knows as well as his own. 

He barely has his feet under him when he’s swept off them again. 

“You fucking idiot,” Draco snarls, and kisses him, right there, in front of McGonagall and Zabini and The Chosen One. 

And Theo kisses him back.