the being alone
@drarrymicrofic prompt: inhale rated M. happy belated draco day to that piece of shit twink. cw: implied infidelity (not between drarry).
Ginny slips into bed freshly showered and still smelling like wood. She’d always leaned citrusy; Harry checked.
“Aren’t you early,” he turns toward her.
“Yeah,” Ginny whispers. Harry can her affectionate smile despite the bleary darkness. “Sorry, Deadlines, you know how it is.”
She’s been leaving at seven on the dot, he remembers hearing Parkinson say, because they work in the same publication and everybody’s friendly with each other these days. If she knows why he’s asking, she doesn’t show it.
Harry lifts his arm, and Ginny shifts closer, sighing.
“Are you free this Friday?” she says into his collar. Her hair, now shorter, still gets in his face. “Like, after work.”
“Mhmm. We’re going somewhere?”
“Oh, it’s Draco’s birthday,” Ginny says. “The girls want to go to the club and celebrate. I know that’s not exactly your thing, but… thought I’d ask, y’know?”
Harry pecks Ginny’s head and breathes. Beyond the natural scent of her second-day hair, there’s that hint of pine again. “You’re going?”
“Of course,” she says, as though she marks Malfoy’s birthday on her calendar every year. “I’ll be home pretty late.”
“Later than this?”
“Probably,” a hint of shame, but that never lasts long with Ginny. Harry moves his lips down her temple, then cheek, getting up on his elbow to kiss behind her jaw. “There’s a non-zero percent chance that I’d kip on someone’s sofa instead if they’re closer to the club. Lav’s condo is nearby.”
Ginny tilts her head back as she speaks, and Harry looks.
Purple blotches bloom on her neck one by one, trailing down her collarbone and the skin between her breasts, shadowed beneath the worn flannel that has once been Harry’s, sparse enough that she can’t tell they’ve reappeared in the dark. Can’t trust Ginny to cast cosmetic charms for shit. He runs his hand up a particularly large bruise and strokes her ear.
How did he fuck you? Harry wants to ask. Instead he says: “I’ll come.”
Ginny’s brows jump up.
“Yeah?”
“It’s his birthday,” Harry shrugs slightly. “Don’t worry about kipping on someone’s couch. I won’t be drinking that much.”
A brief, negligible second of silence passes, and Ginny circles her arms around him, their legs winding together. “My hero,” she croons, sardonic, “here to Side-Along me wherever I want to go.”
“’Course,” Harry says, barely hearing it. Pulling Ginny closer, he mouths at a teeth mark on the side of her throat, maps the indents with his tongue. “That’s what I’m here for.”
Another whiff, and he can just see Malfoy leaning against the wall between their cubicles, case file in ringed hand, unclasped holster dangling from broad shoulders. His knee would bounce slightly, face gaunt and bored. He’s fidgety, never did like to keep his eyes to himself, and Harry would catch him giving Harry’s cubicle a cursory scan, blandly glancing at Ginny’s ever-looping portrait on his desk.
Harry rucks up her flannel, groping, squeezing. Ginny hums.
“Real quick, alright?” she murmurs, a chuckle underlining her words, nose nudging against Harry’s temple before she turns to face her back toward him. It’s how he likes her best these days. “You’re so insatiable lately.”
Malfoy would click his tongue and say “Get a move on, for fuck’s sake,” and Harry would jog past him to grab something just before they head out—a coat maybe, he’s never too sure—and smell oakmoss. Harry would tell him again how strong his cologne is, and Malfoy would look him dead in the eye, grin, then snark at him twice more about being worse than a hound dog.
Bloody piece of shit, Harry thinks, inhaling. Slips a hand under Ginny’s waistband and burrows into the mottled soft of her neck. Breathes in again, parched.
