Harry Potter, son of rich and famous football star James Potter, worked in a shitty little cafe that barely had any customers outside of a dinner rush.
He wanted normalcy. His mother thought it was sweet, but his father thought he was ‘absolutely insane, Harry, why would you want minimum wage?’
The cafe wasn’t too bad, really. It was run by this set of twins, Fred and George Weasley, who had managed to fully adopt Harry into their (large, loud, aggressively ginger) family within a few weeks of him getting the job. They were kind, and flexible with scheduling, and had an odd tendency to prank their staff, especially their poor manager. Said manager was a bookish woman named Hermione Granger, who was both absolutely terrifying and surprisingly sweet when she needed to be, if a bit awkward. There were only three servers; Ron Weasley, who was the twins younger brother and Harry’s best friend (both at work and in general), was often the target of pranks, and threatened to quit almost every shift, but usually laughed while saying it; Harry himself, of course; and Draco Malfoy.
Draco was quiet, but when he did speak, it was with lethal doses of sarcasm. He was insanely pretty, with high cheekbones and white blonde hair, and his eyes shone silver in the fluorescent lights. He worked there to make money after his father had kicked him out for being gay, something he had confessed to Harry once while drunk out of his mind.
Harry and Draco were close, yes, they were good friends. Harry just also happened to be in love with him.
How could he not be? There was just something about the blond that made Harry want to wrap him up in a blanket and protect him from the world, even if Draco would have to be dragged into hiding, kicking and screaming. He was proud like that.
Harry was lamenting over his depressing love life to Ron during a particularly slow shift -- “Good god, mate, just grow a pair and ask the prick out already, I can’t keep listening to this, you hear?” Thanks Ron. -- when the bell above the door jingled. Both Harry and Ron immediately snapped their heads in the direction of the door.
“What the fuck…” Ron trailed off. Harry was inclined to agree.
The man and woman who walked in looked like they belonged on a runway, not in a dingy cafe. The woman was pale, with a chic bob cut and a fur coat, while the man was darker skinned and looked vaguely like he was hewn from marble.
Harry got over his gaping faster than Ron, quickly walking up to the pair with a plastic smile on his face. Rich people never tipped well. “Hi, welcome, how may I help you?”
The woman tilted her head at him. “Is there a Draco Malfoy available?”
Harry was immediately on guard. Draco didn’t talk much about his old life for a damn good reason, and if these two were here to drag him back, they’d have to go through Harry. “His shift hasn’t started,” he said, mock-pleasantly. “I’m more than capable of serving you today.”
The man, who had looked rather bored up until this point, squinted at him. “Hold on,” he said slowly. “You’re a Potter.”
Harry sighed. He got recognized on occasion, and it was never fun. He could already hear Ron snickering from behind him. “Yes, I am, and yes, I work minimum wage,” he said drily.
“Draco’s Harry is Harry Potter?” the woman demanded, before throwing her head back and cackling. “Oh, that’s rich!”
Several thoughts ran through Harry’s head. Firstly, it seemed Draco was in regular contact with these two, if they knew Harry’s name through him, so Harry wouldn’t have to fight anyone. Secondly...Draco’s Harry?
Before he could fully process that, the glamorous woman in front of him was offering her hand. “I’m Pansy, darling, Pansy Parkinson. Blaise here and I like to kidnap the little dragon for brunch every now and again, we miss seeing him at social gatherings.” Harry shook her hand.
The man, Blaise, nodded. “He wasn’t at his apartment when we swung by, so we decided to check out his work. It’s, uh...charming.”
Harry sighed. He knew exactly how the cafe looked to rich people, he heard it from his family all the time. “His shift starts in twenty minutes, if you’d like to wait and see him. He’s probably at Starbucks, it’s his inner basic white girl craving.”
Pansy cackled again. “Inner basic white girl! I like you, Harry Potter.” She brushed past him to take a seat at the bar, Blaise following behind her. Harry moved to get an order from them, but Ron grabbed his elbow as he walked past.
“Mate, what the actual fuck?”
“You think I know?” Harry whispered back, shaking off his grip and calling out to the two at the bar. “Do either of you want a drink?”
Pansy and Blaise exchanged looks, before shaking their heads. Yeah, sounds about right. Harry moved on to serve the old drunk asleep at a corner table some water and coffee -- he was a regular customer named Mundungus Fletcher, Fred and George adored him for some inexplicable reason -- and tried not to be too obvious about eavesdropping.
“Of course he’s Harry Potter,” Blaise was saying. “You know how Draco is, ‘go big or go home’ and all that.”
“He’s cute too,” Pansy gossiped. She sounded very excited. “In need of a haircut, definitely, but those eyes! His body isn’t half-bad either, if you catch my drift.”
“A dead man could catch your drift, Pansy dear.”
Harry flushed, focusing on pouring out coffee without spilling it. Pansy’s voice drifted over once more.
“I’m just saying, it makes sense that our little dragon has such a big embarrassing crush on him.”
What.
Harry dropped the coffee pot, and watched in slow-motion horror as it fell right in Mundungus’ lap, successfully waking him up and causing his to screech blood murder.
“Oh fuck,” Harry whispered to himself, running to get more napkins as the drunk cursed him out in what sounded like six different languages, which was honestly just overkill.
“You’re doing great, mate!” Ron hollered, and Harry flipped him off as he dumped several handfuls of napkins in poor Mundungus’ lap.
As if they had a built-in radar for chaos, which they honestly seemed to, the twins materialized on either side of Harry, who hadn’t even known they were in today.
“Aw, you burned Mundungus,” George cooed, a dramatic pout on his face. “I like Mundungus.”
“It made him smell better though,” Fred observed. “Coffee, rather than, well, stale vomit.”
Mundungus redirected his cursing to the two of them, who returned it gladly as Harry backed away.
“I show up to work not even a minute late, and this is what I’m greeted with?” an incredulous voice asked from the entrance of the cafe. In the chaos, Harry hadn’t heard the bell. He sighed, turning to face Draco, cheeks burning red.
“I hate my life,” he greeted, and Draco snorted.
“As you should.” His silver gaze went to the bar, and he frowned at the sight of Pansy and Blaise snickering. “What are those idiots doing here?”
“Looking for you, apparently,” Harry said, face burning brighter as he remembered why he had dropped the damn coffee in the first place. “They seem nice.”
“It’s an act,” Draco said, but it sounded fond. “Pansy, you wretched whore, didn’t I say not to bother me at work?”
“But dragon darling, you were nowhere to be found!” the woman in question pouted, seemingly unbothered by being called a whore. “Blaise wanted crepes!”
Blaise nodded. “We should get crepes.”
“I’m working,” Draco said dully. He turned back to Harry. “Don’t believe anything they tell you, they’re compulsive liars and terrible people.”
Sometimes, Harry’s mouth moved faster than his brain could stop it. “So I shouldn’t believe you have a big embarrassing crush on me?”
Draco’s already pale face turned impressively paler.
Pansy whooped. “I didn’t think I was being loud enough!” she cheered.
“I hate you,” Draco groaned. He looked at Harry, but not directly, more like at his shoulder. “I’m sorry about this, truly. I understand if it’s awkward, but I can get over it.”
“What if I don’t want you to?”
Draco’s gaze snapped up to meet Harry’s directly, and Harry took that as a sign to continue.
“What if I don’t want you to get over it?” He reached out, tugging Draco closer by his colorful, coffee-stained apron. “What if I fancy you too?” The twins and Ron, now successfully distracted from the coffee debacle, had started a three-way humming of ‘Kiss The Girl’, which Harry and Draco both pointedly ignored.
Draco tilted his head, a small, beautiful smile forming on his face. “I’d call you an idiot, and I’d tell you to kiss me before I kicked you.”
Harry did, with Pansy and Ron calling out cat-calls in the background.
All was well in that dingy cafe.