The light clatter of the bell startles Draco, and it’s unusual. See normally, he is well-acquainted with bars and all its surroundings. The drunken stutters, the poorly landed jokes, the desperate attempt to connect with something, anything. For all the people that stumble here every night, and how jam-packed it always seems, he hasn’t found another place lonelier than this.
But for a few days it seems less lonely. Something heavy sets in his stomach as Draco waits for him to arrive. Every time the doorbell chimes he feels more and more entrapped to his seat. A minute feels like an hour.
He sits at the bar on his own. In front of him is a half finished beer in a large mug that looks more like a jar. He circles his finger around the mouth of it and hears the soft whistle that comes from the friction. The server, a muggle named Tom, smiles at him from time to time and Draco wonders each time what it means. Normally he is fairly good at reading people. That’s his job, essentially. And that has been his job all his life.
People smile at you for a reason. People are nice to you for a reason. People are mean and rude and selfish because that is the inherent nature of men.
Draco gives him an appraising nod after the seventh awkward glance. Tom’s eyes crinkle in joy. He has a happy face, a knowing face, a face you’d want to trust. Draco doesn’t trust him.
Tom leans to him. “Don’t I know you from somewhere?”
“I dunno. Do you?”
“You’re Draco Malfoy.”
The movement of his fingers doesn’t stop. It takes an effort to keep the mask of indifference. He smiles, this time, and his voice is almost the same as he says, “Am I?”
Tom gets the message. His smirk drops. Good, that means he isn’t dumb. That means Draco wouldn’t have to use obliviate and/or threat to keep his barmy mouth shut. “It’s OK. I’m a second generation squib. But I don’t really have anything to do with your world. It’s just… words fly. Sometimes.”
“I see.”
“You can be Malfoy or anyone else. That’s why people come here, no?”
In answer he dunks the rest of the mug. Tom gives him a nod before going back to his business.
To be Draco Malfoy or anyone else. Anything else. That is why he comes to muggle bars. To have a drink in peace and not hear people whispering behind his back. After everything had fallen down and fell back in, Draco and the rest of the Death Eaters’ offsprings stuck out like mismatched bricks on a painted wall. Sore thumb. Bloody hands. They were people no one wanted to look on, not be responsible for. Sorry for. Aware of.
“There is no telling what they’ll turn out to be,” a man shouted at his trial when the judge acquitted him and all the others.
“It’s not their fault,” someone had replied.
“Not ours either.”
Truth and truth and truth. Things happen, worlds shatter and then glue back together. But there are always people like him. Sticking out, that one ugly face in a perfect painting.
Draco comes here to ignore the blot.
But people come and go and leave their pieces behind, it seems. Draco could do without those pieces, fragments of hope. Draco Malfoy knows better than anyone that hope is shit, empty promises, stories you tell yourself when you were just a kid and the world came in on you so fast it blindsided you. You give hope in sentences such as “One day none of this would matter. And we are nothing, just pieces of meat. And we walk and talk and shit and one day we’ll die and no one will remember us.”
There’s peace in being forgotten. In knowing that no one remembers the shitty mistakes you made.
Draco doesn’t turn back as the bell chimes for the hundredth time, but he knows it’s him. He silently contemplates the irony of destiny, it’s cruel sense of humor as he hears Harry Potter’s awkward cough from the door. He always does that, as if he braces himself for what’s to come.
What is to come?
They talk and sometimes verbally attack one another and Draco tries very very hard not to stare at his lips.
A slide of chair beside him, a whiff of musk. It’s a common scent. It’s a scent men go for when they don’t know much about any of the others, but still he knows all the bases and notes of this particular musk. And the man. Draco tries not to pay attention to the man next to him, even as the scent settles, even as he feels the tightness in his stomach loosen. He can see from the periphery his signature unruly hair. Jet black, unruly, rebellious.
“Hey,” Harry Potter says.
Draco nods in return.
“How long have you been here?”
“Not long.”
Potter orders another pair of beers for the both of them. When it comes and Draco finds the nosey bartender smirking at them as if he knows something, he inwardly curses the gods. Again.
But Potter knows the guy, he smiles when he recognises him. Has a small, delighted chat. And not for the first time, Draco feels the same resentment. How can he be so natural at this - life? Here is the moron Draco Malfoy, struggling to breathe, and Harry fucking Potter saunters through life as if he owns it.
It’s worse because Draco knew how it felt. To be sure of yourself, to be sure that the ground beneath your feet will never crumble, even if you push too hard.
“You fucking know everyone, don’t you?” he seethes at Potter as soon as the boy is out of earshot.
His eyes widen in surprise. “Tom? You should know him too. His grandfather was a -”
“Oh I don’t care.” He takes a sip of the drink. “I need a smoke.”
“They don’t allow that in here.”
“Well then I’m going out.” He stands up, picks the jacket from the counter and throws it over his shoulder. “Are you coming?”
He does. Harry Potter is still the obstinate Gryffindor, but somehow he stays around even when Draco tries with all his might to push him back. He has wanted this for so long that he can’t cope with the idea that he might have a chance at it. He keeps trying to blow the whole thing off. Nightly chat, smiling, being nice to him. He keeps leaking the bad parts of him to scare him off.
But one thing about Harry Potter: He is not scared off easily.
“What’s the matter?” the harebrained asshole asks as Draco leans against the wall.
Draco takes the long awaited drag. “Nothing.”
Potter sits on an empty crate, leaning forward to Draco. He has his legs planted carefully so he wouldn’t get mud on his shoes. The back of the bar is as seedy and carelessly crummy, just as he expected. But he doesn’t mind. The light at the back of the pub is low on electricity, and in the cloudy light, he feels he can finally breathe.
“Yeah, I forgot. You always act like you have a broom up your ass.”
Draco chuckles at the bad humor. He can’t help it.
“At least I look good while brooding.”
“Oh, sod off. You call that brooding?”
“Yes.”
“I call that being a prick. You know they only let you in these bars because of me, right?”
“Right.” Draco makes a circle with his lips and carefully, carefully blows out the smoke. Harry keeps his eyes on the blonde guy as it forms the perfect ring, a misty cloud in the dim light.
“I forgot that everyone is obsessed with the Chosen One.”
“Yep.” Potter laughs. “It isn’t just you pining after me, Malfoy.”
The laugh gets stuck at his throat. A glaring hotness in his ears. He stares at Potter and suddenly can’t remember why he’s there. Can’t remember why he waits at crappy bars listening to crappy songs.
He lets the cigarette fall from his grip. He jabs the front of his boot on its light. He doesn’t try to mask the hot anger in his voice.
“I’m done.”
“What - hey!” Potter grabs at his hand as he’s about to leave. Draco tries to jerk it free but the prick is already up, now grabbing him by the shoulder.
“Let me go, Potter,” he seethes.
In answer, his grip gets even tighter. Quite successfully, he corners Draco into the wall. For the first time Draco realises how it feels to have his face so close. For the first time he finds Harry’s green eyes bright with anger. Palpable. Radiating. “Is it because I said it? Because I finally said it?”
“It’s because you’re a prick. Let me go.”
“You’re the prick!”
“Let me go!”
“Draco -”
Too close now. Harry’s face closes in on him, like a bright, tumultuous force. And Draco can’t look away, can’t breathe without breathing in the musk and cold breath and… Jesus fuck. He wants to beat Harry Potter into a pulp, make a mess of that pretty face. He wants to leave his mark on him, any mark at that point. Draco fears that he’ll forever associate desire with violence, because that’s what it seems. You call something ugly enough times and it becomes just that.
Draco wants to beat him to a pulp for forcing the truth in his face, but instead he kisses him.
His mouth falls onto Harry’s with such force for a moment all he can feel is how chapped his lips are, and how numb. He thinks of pulling back, just for a moment, but then Harry leans in, his hand finds Draco’s face and his finger brushes over his jaw and Draco tilts his face. And it’s like a puzzle piece, like the last word to a long-lost incantation, their mouths cement on each other and there’s the tenderness, his smile, the gold flakes in his eyes. Draco’s hands finally find something to hold on to, he captures Harry’s face as his tongue pushes past his lips and he moans, almost chokes on his air. Draco tastes the beer. Tastes the cheap cigarettes. Potter pushes his legs apart so he can settle between them, presses his mouth with more determination and they kiss for what it seems like eternity.
Another thing about Harry Potter: He tastes just as Draco imagined he would.
Harry gasps as they pull apart. His hands finally let go of Draco’s face and he falls back, slightly. The hands that left his face left their marks, Draco feels his cheeks blistering. And as he sees the other guy barely retaining gravity - capricious gravity - he feels, not for the first time, entirely preposterous.
Harry speaks first. “Well, that was -”
“Quite.”
“Quite something.” He takes a step back, sits back on the upturned crate.
Draco can’t stop eyeing his lips, chapped and shiny. “Do your folks know?”
“Ron and Hermione and Ginny. Yours?”
Draco could never forget the day he told his mother. His father rots in Azkaban, there was no reason to torment him further and let him know that Draco is the same disappointment as he had been. His mother cried helplessly. He can still feel the burning shame, as prominent as it had been since he was fifteen. Since he realised just why Pansy never did it for him. She was smart and funny and just like him… only not. No one was like him.
Until. Until Harry Potter came up one day in a seedy bar and said, as if it were the most obvious thing, “We’re the same.”
And what was Draco supposed to make of that? Was he supposed to know that Albus Dumbledore played him like chess just as his parents did him? Was he supposed to know that Harry was always lonely, bone-deep, cotton-picking lonely? Was he supposed to know Harry was obsessed with him all the time he felt the same? Was he supposed to know that he wanted to kiss Draco?
Draco doesn’t recognise his voice as he says, “You said we’re the same.”
He shrugs, the moron.
“Don’t you hate yourself?”
He narrows his eyes. “No. Why should I?”
There’s that Gryffindor-esque haughtiness. Draco has a list made of reasons why. He has dutifully reminded himself of them ever since he could remember. God, society, his family, his blood, all the things he is betraying. All the things his mother didn’t name but were there, between them, have been there since.
“It’s not normal,” Narcissa said, “I never thought you’d be like this.”
“Like what, mother,” his voice was calm despite the tremon down his spine. “Gay?”
“You’re the last of the Malfoys.”
“I’m your son. Look at me, mother.”
“I can’t. I can’t.”
She cried and didn’t look at him. Hasn’t since. Broken hearts are hardly kind. Draco hasn’t found it in himself to be kind either.
A question from Potter snaps him back to the present scene. He asks, softly, “Do you hate yourself?”
Draco shrugs. He thinks it’s obvious.
“You moron.”
Draco doesn’t answer, can’t find his voice to answer. He wants to tell Potter that it’s the most natural thing. Hate chases him like a magnet, a squeeze of lime after a shot. He wants to say desire can be ugly if you convince yourself enough, if you repeat in your head over and over again. He wants to tell Harry that he has been obsessed with him for long that he can’t pinpoint the moment it went so out of line.
“I hated you for so long,” Draco whispers. But he doesn’t mean that. What he wants to say is that hate is a lot like love, and if you are young and ignorant and ignorantly vain, you can morph your awe into rivalry. You can blur the lines.
“You didn’t hate me.” Harry chuckles. “We were supposed to be rivals. So that’s what we were.”
“I almost got you killed. You and your friends.”
“You also saved our lives.”
Draco sighs. His heart is constricted into an angry fist. He purses his lips and can taste him again, beer and smoke. He doesn’t know what to say, how to go on, how to be alright with this unnatural warmth this moron brings to his chest.
Harry smiles, softly. And Draco remembers how his father said that tenderness is the mark of a weak man. Men are steel and ice and ivory, anything else is worthless. But tenderness looks so good on Harry Potter, feels so good to kiss and take his due. He conjures another empty crate and sits beside him.
“You know what the first goddamn moment was?” Harry asks, “When I realized something was amiss?”
“Can’t imagine.”
“It was you eating that fucking apple.”
Draco chuckles despite himself, “W-what?”
“In Hagrid’s class. We were thirteen.”
“What?”
Harry sighs. “Embarrassing, I know. I hated you for such a long time. I mean, not hate, but you know - and suddenly you’re eating this freaking apple, of all things… and all I wanted to do is taste it off from you.”
The breath that leaves him is half choked on itself. “The apple.” Then the laughter comes as another memory presses on himself. His father in their library, him sitting in front of him on the floor.
“My father used to teach me muggle myths,” he says, his voice soft like mist in the cold air. “One of them was of the forbidden fruit. God supposedly forbade the first man and woman to eat that. But they did. And that tipped this ridiculous god over the edge. He banished them from heaven and hence they came to this shitty place we live… All for eating that fruit.”
Harry laughs. “And that’s an apple, I presume?”
Draco glaces at the guy from the corner of his eyes. He still feels the kiss, the scent of musk imprinted on his mind. He knows it’s going to take time for him to not look at the other guy as if he’s stealing a glance. Not feel like he’s doing something he shouldn’t. But Draco likes terrible challenges, he likes to put himself on the test. And fail and fail and hope the next time would be different.
“Ten points to Gryffindor,” Draco replies, taking Harry’s hand.