Bonfire
When Harry steps back into the living room, he thinks everyone has already left—the room looks empty and the house feels hyper-silent now that his noisy friends have gone. But when he rounds the end of the sofa on his way to collect the last of the empty glasses and bottles his party guests had left lying around, he nearly jumps out of his skin.
Draco is lying in the middle of the floor, stock still, with his hands clasped over his stomach and his legs crossed at the ankles. His long, platinum hair is fanned out around his head like a discarded party favor and his eyes are closed. He’s finally abandoned the stiff, black jacket he’d worn all night and the sleeves of his black jumper are pushed up slightly, exposing his slender wrists.
He looks like a beautiful prince, asleep for centuries and perfectly preserved under a powerful Stasis.
“Should I call St. Mungo’s, or are you dead already?” Harry asks when his heart restarts.
“Hah hah,” Draco replies, only his lips and one dark eyebrow moving. “What you should do is come down here and lie with me. Come on,” he pats the floor next to him with one, long-fingered hand.
Harry scoffs, but does as he’s told, lowering himself down and mirroring Draco’s pose. As soon as he settles, the exhaustion he’s been fighting all evening catches up to him and all his muscles go slack.
“There now,” Draco says with a giggle, “better.”
“You’re so drunk, aren’t you?” Harry asks, thinking that he might be a bit drunk as well.
“Mmm,” Draco hums happily, forging his typical snappish response. “I’ve had just enough champagne to make me feel warm and floaty, but not enough to give me a headache. It’s perfect,” he sighs.
“Floaty, hm? Draco Malfoy feels floaty,” Harry says, unable to keep the teasing from his voice.
Draco sighs again. “I do. Don’t you?”
Harry closes his eyes and sinks further into the carpet. The room isn’t exactly spinning underneath him, but he feels somehow a part of the earth itself and entirely weightless at the same time.
“Yeah. I do.”
They lie there for a while, Harry feeling lulled ever closer toward sleep by the crackle of the fire in the hearth and the soft sound of Draco’s steady breathing. He may never get up again.
“I’m thinking about something,” Draco says after a while.
“If I were you and you were me, I’d say novel feeling, Potter?, or no need to strain yourself on my account,” Harry replies.
“Well, thank Merlin you are not, and I am not, now shut up—I’m trying to say something.”
Harry flutters his fingers to indicate to Draco that he should continue, and Draco somehow seems to sense it despite his still-closed eyes. Or maybe he was just going to keep talking, no matter what. Harry smiles, because of course he was. He’s Draco.
“I’ve been thinking about that beach holiday we all went on, not long after we all started hanging out.”
Harry thinks back—it wasn’t even a year ago, though the way Draco is talking about it, it might have been a hundred years ago. Maybe it feels like that to Draco now. Harry finds that comforting, for some reason.
“Mm,” he grunts in acknowledgement. “It was fun. The water was bloody freezing, but I don’t think it mattered much in the end.”
Draco is silent again for a moment. Then—
“I’ve been thinking about the bonfire.”
Harry feels the subtle shift in Draco’s body across the millimeters-wide gap between them. Every part of him goes stiff, defensive, expectant. And Harry knows exactly why. He thought they’d never talk about it, just pretend it never happened. Harry is sure he’s the only one who’s thought about that night almost every moment since.
Apparently not.
Harry lets his head fall to the side so he can look at Draco’s profile—tension pulling every line in his lovely face taught. “Oh?” He asks. He never was terribly good with words, especially not in situations like this.
“Yes,” Draco breathes out on an exhale, like the admission has been trapped inside of him and has just broken free.
“What—specifically—about it?” Harry asks, because he can tell that Draco wants him to. But he suddenly doesn’t want to know. Because what if it’s not what Harry is thinking? “How loud Seamus yelled when his shorts caught fire? Or all those tiny crabs that came out of nowhere, or—“
“Your hand,” Draco interrupts quietly.
Harry swallows.
“I think about your hand wrapping around my ankle,” Draco finishes.
*
Harry had forgotten a jacket, unfamiliar with how cold it gets on the beach when the sun goes down. Draco had watched him shivering alone on his log bench for a full ten minutes before making a big production of flinging open the blanket wrapped around his own shoulders and insisting that Harry come get under it with him so the horrid chattering of Harry’s teeth would cease and give Draco a moment’s peace.
Harry had pretended to be put out, but crawled willingly over to sit on the ground between Draco’s parted legs and allowed himself to be wrapped up and surrounded.
And then, slowly, Draco’s hands had moved from their friendly perches on the points of Harry’s shoulders and across his chest until Harry was entirely enfolded in Draco. Every nerve in Harry’s body jangled as Draco’s thumbs rubbed small, careful circles into the meat of his bicep and the tender side of his ribs.
So he’d let his hands fall, crossed across his tucked up legs. And if one of his hands came to rest around Draco’s slender ankle bone well, wasn’t he just doing what Draco was already doing? If he slid his fingers carefully, reverently up and down and around the knob of Draco’s ankle, well, so what? It was just…a thing they were apparently doing, sheltered under this blanket while all their friends yelled and laughed around them, entirely oblivious.
*
“Oh,” Harry says again, a punched out little sound that’s more air than anything.
Some of the tension bleeds out of Draco and he ticks his head toward Harry just enough that Harry can see how the tiny smirk on his face actually stretches from one corner of his mouth to the other. A smile.
“It’s weird,” Draco says, finally. “It was such a small touch, but I felt it everywhere. In my whole body.”
“What—what did it feel like?” Harry asks, almost certain now that the answer won’t be like fiendfyre, like an extra-strength Crucio, like my foot fell asleep after sitting with my legs crossed for too long and I’ve just stood up.
“It felt…” Draco lets his head turn even further. His body cants slightly toward Harry, and their faces are so close together now.
“Like you’d injected the bonfire right into my veins and it traveled up and up and settled in my stomach. Like my arms and legs were made of sand.”
Harry lets a hand fall into the small space between their bodies. His finger twitches off its own accord, flicking out to rest against Draco’s leg. Draco sucks in a small breath at the contact.
“And that’s…good?” Harry asks.
Draco’s eyes open and Harry almost has to look away, because his expression is shattered and glassy and far away and right up close all at the same time.
“Do you know what I did when we said goodnight?”
Harry shakes his head. Of course he doesn’t, but Merlin, would he like to.
“I went into my tent and crawled right into my sleeping bag, and I touched myself.”
Harry’s heart painfully skips a beat in his chest and he can feel his face flushing red. He tries not to shout something stupid.
“I wanted to capture that feeling before it went away forever—of your hand on me. I pretended that you were touching me there, and on my stomach and my hips and my back and my—my cock.” Draco’s voice gives out on the last word and he sucks in a breath.
Harry slides his fingers between Draco’s legs. Curls his fingers and presses them gently into the meat of Draco’s thigh.
Draco gasps, but his gaze doesn’t move from Harry’s face.
“And I can still feel it,” he whispers, “sometimes I can feel it if I just concentrate hard enough, and—“
“Can I touch you?” Harry rushes out.
“You’re touching me,” Draco replies, his hand already crossing the space between them to grasp at the hem of Harry’s flannel.
“No. Can I…like you imagined? Tell me. I want to…Draco, please.”
“Kiss me,” Draco breathes, his lips already pressed to Harry’s mouth.