I Promise It Will Suck
It was the third time Draco’s phone had beeped in the last hour. He wasn’t going to answer it. He knew what it would say.
Hi Draco, do you fancy a drink tonight? Some of us are going down the pub. Would be nice to see you again. H
Draco, don’t know if you got my last message. Come down to the pub - Ron’s band is playing and Pansy says you’re not doing anything. H
Draco, are you okay? :(
Dracoooo. CMON. PLease don’t make me come get you, I’m in no state. xxxx :D
After the first four, Harry would only be drunker and less able to keep his little “x”s to himself. And if went down to the pub and watched Weasley’s ridiculous band play, Harry also wouldn’t be able to keep his hands to himself. Or his mouth. Or his opinion about what that should lead to. Draco learned that last time. And he wasn’t in any mood to get caught up in Harry’s drunkenly affectionate whirlwind and have to extricate himself again. The possibility of humiliation was too great.
The Glorious Saint Potter is popular, as expected, with all manner of witches, wizards and everyone inbetween. He’s probably dated half the professional Seekers in the European League, as well as a handful of models, actors and a single physiotherapist that Draco was stupid enough to introduce him to. Draco has dated his ex-wife, and made out with Harry. Once. And that’s it. Which is why he’s not going anywhere near the pub until Harry’s over whatever temporary fascination he’s having with Draco right now. If he plans on being friends with him for any length of time – and their lives are so entwined now – then there’s only one way to avoid the mortification of being found inadequate and then reminded of it for the rest of eternity. Draco’s going to keep his legs tightly crossed and his lips firmly sealed and his anti-apparition wards expertly deployed.
Which is why Harry, instead, tumbles through his Floo.
PASS-IT-ON @l0vegl0wsinthedark
Draco jumps - literally bounces in his seat - where he’s sitting in his favourite armchair, his mouth falling open as he watches Harry get to his feet.
It takes a minute. Harry is so drunk he is unable to find his centre of gravity and has to balance on both hands before slowly straightening up and pushing his glasses back up his nose.
He grins at Draco. “You’re alive!” he says.
Draco regards him warily, letting his book fall shut and setting it aside. It knocks against his wine glass and Harry’s eyes fly to it. He sways on the spot and licks his lips, clearly tempted to dash over and throw the rest of Draco’s wine back.
Draco sighs and dramatically pinches the bridge of his nose. “What are you doing here?”
Harry’s face falls a bit. “You never replied to my messages. I got worried.”
“You got worried,” repeated Draco dryly. “Worried that I’d died, I assume?”
He grins. “No, I was just joking about that,” he says earnestly, waving a hand and shaking his head. Draco half expects him to explain the joke. Then: “Did you not check your phone this evening?”
Draco deliberates for a few beats, then says, “No, I did. I saw your messages.”
Harry looks crestfallen now. “And…you didn’t think to reply? Even if you didn’t want to come?”
“No.”
“Why didn’t you want to come?”
“Weasley’s band is terrible. I don’t know how you stand it.”
Harry scowls. “Is that your only excuse?”
“Excuse? I’d think that’s a perfectly legitimate reason not to go lounge around in a pitiful little pub.”
“Pitiful little pub? You loved the chips there last time.”
“Well, almost anyone can fry up a decent batch of chips, Potter.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Potter?”
“Yes.”
“Why?” Draco is smirking a bit; he can’t help himself. He wants to see how Harry might babble about how they should let bygones be bygones and call each other by their given names.
“Because that’s not what you called me after we stuck our tongues down each other’s throats,” Harry says with no finesse or dignity whatsoever and Draco’s face heats up so fast he’s a bit worried he might pass out or something.
“Have you no sense of tact?”
This time, Harry smirks and Draco is suddenly worried.
Harry - ripped jeans, Weasley’s band name on a t-shirt, solid black boots - struts forward. Draco is very, very worried.
Harry bends over Draco and places his hands on either side of him on the armrests, their faces so, so close. He reeks of beer. Draco wants to believe that it’s gross and unappealing; that Harry is unappealing.
But all Draco wants, as he stares first at the burning green gaze and then at the pink lips surrounded by dark stubble, is to kiss him.
Because he’s very appealing.
*
PASS-IT-ON @lazywonderlvnd
Appealing and fucking moronic, and definitely, absolutely not worth the inner turmoil and anguish and frankly the embarrassment he’ll suffer if he gives into this pathetic attraction of his.
“Do you mind?” Draco drawls. He pushes Harry’s chest, forcing him away, and sidles out from beneath him so he can put some distance between them. “It’s called personal space, Potter. And you smell like a fucking brewery, by the way.”
“That’s so weird,” Harry says, frowning. And then he pretends to light up. “Oh, wait! I was just drinking beer. That must be it.”
“Ha, ha.”
“Wasn’t a joke.”
“Out, Potter.” He points at the Floo. “Go. I’m sick of you.”
“Well that’s kind of rude.”
Draco, again, pinches the bridge of his nose. Sloshed Harry is actually worse than sober Harry, so that’s saying something. Bit of an estimation of his own character, really, since he’s attracted to the idiot.
“Will you please leave?” Draco says finally, looking up again. “Seriously, you’re too drunk to be around.”
“Come on, Draco.” The sense of humourous irony is gone from Harry’s voice suddenly; he sounds drunk and frustrated now instead of drunk and sarcastic. Draco prefers the sarcasm, since at least it’s safe territory. “Why’re you being so difficult, huh? I thought we’d, like … moved past that, or whatever.”
“Moved past what?” Draco scoffs. “Our mutual loathing?”
“Again, we recently stuck our tongues down each other’s throats, so yes, I’d say we’ve moved past the loathing thing.” Harry lifts his arms, an open gesture of vulnerability that makes Draco sneer. He’s so fucking superior. “D’you need to insult me first or something? Go ahead. For real, it only turns me on when you insult me.”
PASS-IT-ON @dracoladon
“Then I shan’t,” says Draco. “Potter, you rakishly handsome, terribly funny, deeply treasured friend of mine, please, fuck off.”
Harry laughs, and collapses onto one of Draco’s (expensive, and now they’re going to smell like stale beer) delicate leather and burnished gold tete-a-tetes. “I’m still into it,” he says. “Must be your voice.”
“Shut up,” Draco murmurs. He’s always been terribly partial to a good flattering. It’s not one of his better qualities. “Shut all the way up.”
Harry frowns. “Not nice.”
“I’m not nice.”
“You are—”
“And we’re not together. We’ve kissed once, Potter. You can’t just disturb my evening at your leisure.“
“So far,” he says. “We’ve kissed once so far.”
“How astute,” Draco says.
Harry leans over the s-bend of the seat and pats the other cushion. “Come sit.”
“You’re pathetic.”
“Come sit next to me.”
Draco scowls, and turns away. Drunk Harry looks all kind of wide-eyed and beseeching when he says those things, like a cartoon lamb. Fucking twit.
“Potter,” he says, slowly. “Even if the idea of us fucking, or snogging, or whatever it is you want were anything but hideously imprudent, it wouldn’t happen. You’re drunk. Please leave. Go trip over your own feet at the Weasley hovel, or something.”
PASS-IT-ON @tackytigerfic
PASS-IT-ON @veelawings x
“But I was drunk last time too,” Harry said, with all the seriousness of a man who thought that was the only mountain he had to climb in this argument. Then, with a smug tilt of his lips, he gestured left of the table actually holding Draco’s wine glass and bragged, “You’re just mad I had more fun drinking than you.”
Draco licked his teeth and crossed his arms. Unbelievable. “Well, Potter, seeing as how you’ve drunk a barrel by yourself and I failed to finish my first glass before you interrupted my evening, I would say your assessment is fair.”
He tried to ignore how brittle he felt because of course, Harry wouldn’t expect them to both be sober for this to continue. Of course.
Harry’s clumsy efforts to push himself off his seat and toddle over to the wall Draco was leaning against only reinforced their difference in mood.
“Draco, you don’t have to play hard to get,” Harry said, placing a fist on the wall behind Draco’s head. For balance more than seduction, probably, but it still sent him into a tizzy. “Don’t you see — I already got you.” The warm hand that clutched his earlobe would’ve been awkward on anyone else but Draco found it charming. He was fucked.
“Yes, well.” Draco licked his dry lips. “I would appreciate it if you let me go. I’m not one of your Golden Snitches.”
Without an ounce of tact in his body, Harry followed the path of Draco’s tongue. Then leered up at him. “Yeah? Cause your eyelashes, they do that fluttering thing like wings,” he said, oh so smoothly. Before he ruined it. “When you splash tea in your face because you lift up your cuppa too fast.”
“What the fuck, Potter?” PASS-IT-ON @p1013
“What the fuck, Potter?” Potter repeated in a whiney falsetto. “I’m trying to pay you a compliment” Shifting close enough that Draco could feel the heat from Potter’s body all along his front, Potter’s eyes went half-lidded as he breathed in. “You smell nice.”
“I bathe.”
“I didn’t say you smell clean.” Potter exhaled, and Draco fought a shiver as the released breath brushed against the sensitive skin of his neck, just above his collar where his pulse raced. “I can tell you’ve been out all day, doing… whatever it is you do. I’d like to know what it is, if we’re going to keep kissing. But you… There’s something earthy about how you smell, like the Quidditch pitch after it rains or grass when it’s covered in dew.”
“I smell like dirt.”
“You smell,” Potter said, and this time, he brushed his nose, then his lips, against Draco’s skin, “like something I want to put my hands on. Something I want to get dirty with.”
Gathering the tattered remains of his sanity, Draco stepped out of the partial prison of Potter’s body leaning against the wall. He hurried back to his wine, drinking a too-large sip of the shimmering red. The alcohol burned in his throat, but not nearly as hot as his blood through his veins.
“Where are you going?” Potter asked, sounding petulant. “I’m starting to think you don’t want me here.”
“I don’t, you imbecile.” Draco rounded on him, wine sloshing dangerously in his glass. Potter still leaned against the wall, eyes dark and trousers slightly tented in the front—not that Draco was looking. “I don’t want anything to do with you.”
Potter followed after, his drunken gaze sharper than it had been at any other time that night. “That’s not what you said last time.”
PASS-IT-ON @bonesliketambourines
“I was drunk last time, Potter,” Draco snaps, ignoring the flare of hurt in Potter’s eyes. What’s it to him if the Golden Boy gets his feelings hurt a little? Could do him good, to feel rejected for once. “And I most certainly am not drunk now. Unlike you. I’d rather not be part of the oh-I-didn’t-mean-it-this-was-such-a-mistake show you’re bound to put on as soon as you sober up; and more importantly, I don’t sleep with drunk people when I’m sober. I prefer my men consenting, thank you very much.” He turns his back firmly and takes a sip from his glass, willing the slight tremble from his hands. Bloody, fucking, Harry sodding Potter.
Potter is quiet behind him, and Draco shifts a bit, feeling his shoulders draw up defensively. He hates being stared at like this. “What is it,” he finally snaps.
“You think I’m only here because I’ve been drinking,” Potter observes, suddenly sounding far too coherent for a man who smelt as strongly of barmat as he did. “That’s what’s going on. You think I’m drunk and that’s the only reason I’ve come over. I’d like to remind you, Malfoy, that I started texting you when I was sober. You’re the one that didn’t reply.”
“And you can’t take a hint from that?” Draco is not going to turn around. He’s not.
Harry’s too close behind him, and his hand is warm at the small of Draco’s back. The hair on his arms stands up. “What can I do to convince you?” he asks softly.
Draco turns to stare at him in bewilderment before he can stop himself. “What?”
Harry’s looking at him steadily, eyes clear. “I’ll respect your concerns,” he says with a small grin, and that doesn’t clear anything up for Draco. “Where’s your kitchen? I’m going to make us some cheese toasties.”
“It’s just ahead, but— Potter, what?”
Potter is already striding down the hall, and by the time Draco snaps out of it and hustles to follow him he’s rummaging through Draco’s fridge. Draco definitely does not look at his arse as he’s bent over. “I’m making us food, and we’re going to eat and drink water and have polite conversation, and when I’m sober, we’ll try again,” he says, voice slightly muffled.
Draco’s jaw drops and he barely is able to stop himself from squawking unappealingly. His knuckles are white around his wineglass.
Seriously, what?
passing it to @the-starryknight :) if you’re able to!
Wineglass still in hand, Draco followed Potter to the kitchen, watching indignantly as he set a small bottle of creamer and a packet of cheese on the counter and shut the fridge.
“Don’t touch that,” Draco snapped, watching the way that Potter’s shirt rode up appealingly, revealing only the barest sliver of a sharp hipbone under his white button-up. It wasn’t fair, parading into his kitchen like that, drunk and untouchable. And he wouldn’t touch. Draco swallowed hard, pressing further into the room. He set the wine on the table and braced himself against the solid wood table, arms crossed.
“You have an actual breadbox,” Potter said, putting his grimy Gryffindor hands on everything in sight. Draco scoffed, not deigning to answer. Of course he had a proper breadbox. What heathen left his loaf on the counter?
“Don’t touch that,” Draco huffed as Potter reached for a pan, clicking the burner on with a tap of his wand. Draco certainly didn’t let his gaze linger on the possessive curve of his fingers over the shaft of the wand.
“Touch what?” Potter asked, reaching for the cafetière in the back corner of the counter, sliding it out with a scrape over Draco’s gorgeous granite countertops.
“That!” Draco snapped, shoving past him to protect his little percolator. He pressed his hands over its smooth glass surface, glaring at Potter. “At least let me do it before you manage to destroy my entire kitchen.”
He grabbed the Taylor’s from the cabinet, spooning several heaping servings of coffee grounds into the pot. He sent a steaming Aguamenti into the pot at precisely the right temperature and let it sit to steep. He ran a hand through his neat hair, staring at the coffeemaker instead of at Potter, and thinking longingly of his abandoned book in the sitting room.
“Alright,” Potter said, and shifted out of the way, brandishing that wand again for a quick Accio to summon the spatula. He put a piece of toast in the pan, and raised an eyebrow at Draco. “Am I eating alone?”
PASS-IT-ON to @peachpety :)
Draco lifts his chin. The action distorts his reflection in the cafetière’s stainless domed lid, elongating his perfectly patrician nose. “I’m not hungry.”
His stomach growls, the traitor.
Harry chuckles and adds far too many slices of cheese to the pan. He leans close to Draco, shoulder brushing shoulder, his hoppy stench diminished by the aroma of the toast. In the coffeemaker lid, his reflection is all teeth and messy hair.
“I promise it won’t suck,” he cajoles.
“Oh, I assure you it will.”
Harry scoffs. “I’ll have you know I’m a brilliant cook.” He catches a glob of liquefied cheese on a fingertip and delivers it to his mouth with a moan.
“You’re a sloppy cook,” Draco says, cheeks warming at Harry’s continued groans and finger sucking. “And uncouth.”
Harry shivers a grin onto his lips. “Bloody hell, Malfoy, keep talking.”
Draco shifts, a slow deliberate turn that brings them face-to-infuriatingly-gorgeous-face. Harry’s smile fades, and he stills. They’re so close, Draco can count the individual hairs in a small patch of dark stubble at the oil-glistening corner of Harry’s mouth.
The bread sizzles.
He can trace the whorls of the dirty fingerprints clouding the lens of Harry’s ridiculous glasses.
The cheese melts.
He can almost get lost in the gold flecks shining in Harry’s stupidly green eyes.
Almost.
“And I promise,” Draco says silkily, “it will suck. You forgot the butter, you clod.”
Harry’s glazed eyes widen and flare evergreen. “Shit!” He bumbles and bangs at the stovetop, and Draco smugly presses the plunger on the coffee with satisfying force.
He’s still smiling to himself, so pleased is he with his wit and brilliance, that when he opens the cupboard to retrieve two coffee mugs, he’s forgotten about his novelty cups. He’s amassed quite a collection because Pansy, the bint, insists on gifting Draco the mugs for every bloody event—his birthday, Christmas, a Tuesday.
Never mind that he’s only missing two cups to make his collection complete.
Tuesday can’t come soon enough.
“Is that…?” Harry says from behind Draco’s shoulder. “Is that my face on those cups?”
PASS IT ON to @cibeewastaken
Draco snapped the cupboard shut. “No.”
Harry reached around and opened it—despite Draco’s attempt at stopping it, but the heat of the man pressing up against Draco was a tad distracting—and then he was holding one of the cups.
Harry raised an eyebrow.
“You look better on the cups,” Draco snapped.
“Because I’m half-naked?”
Draco sputtered. “As if! I was trying to—I didn’t buy it! Pansy is the—I never used any!” Then, belatedly, “At least, not the ones with your nipples out!”
Harry peered into the cup where his nipples were out. “There’re coffee stains.”
“Oh, shut it!”
And of course Harry decided to use that one, and picked another where Harry was flashing a charming smile for Draco.
The toasties were good, despite the late butter addition. Through his mouthful of cheese and bread, Harry said. “Do you remember the concert we went to?”
“Which one? We’ve been to a lot. Do you mean the angry Russian piano or the teenage pop music?”
Harry grinned like he’d won. “Hm. What about the museums and art galleries?”
“The ones in England?”
Harry shrugged. “Or the ones in Italy, Egypt, France, Japan—but do you see my point?”
“That you have a shit memory?”
“That I have always enjoyed spending time with you, even before we stuck our tongues down each other’s throat, ” Harry said. “And I’m not going to stop enjoying your company.”
Draco took a sip of coffee. “That’s grand.”
It was subtle, but Harry’s smile fell a little. “That doesn’t count as anything?”
It really didn’t. Draco wasn’t worried about that. He was worried that Harry would decide—after Draco was in too deep—that he didn’t want Draco, after all.
PASS-IT-ON @pineau-noir <3
“No, Potter, for your information, none of those counted.” Draco keeps his voice cool despite the swirling emotions in his gut.
“What about when we kissed?” Harry’s starting to sound more sober which does not bode well for Draco. He’s also got a self-satisfied grin on his face and that won’t do. “I know we had both been drinking, but Draco, I felt the way you trembled in my arms.”
Draco let’s out a laugh, a true laugh, at that.
“Potter it was raining. I was soaked and cold.” He takes extreme satisfaction in the way the smile falls off Harry’s face.
“Look,” Draco starts, trying desperately to get Potter out of his kitchen, out of his life before he becomes necessary, “will you leave if I concede friendship?”
Harry pouts and Draco does not find it charming.
“I’ll leave if you go on a date with me.” He takes a bite out of his toastie and, like the heathen he is, says mid-chew, “A real date. Something we both agree on.”
“No,” Draco responds. “I will not be blackmailed in my own kitchen.”
“You’ll be blackmailed somewhere else?”
Rolling his eyes, Draco lets out a frustrated huff. “I won’t be blackmailed anywhere, much less by someone as pissed as you currently are.”
“Then I’ll win you over with reason.”
“Why do you want to win me over?” Draco shouts, finally losing his temper. “We’re not mates! We, as you so crudely put it, stuck out tongues down each other’s throats once. I do not understand why you’re so insistent.”
Harry throws his hands up in the air. “Because I fancy you, you berk! Because you make me laugh and I enjoy spending time with you and I dream about your sexy fucking posh accent and you and Astoria split up but she only has nice things to say about you and I’m not nearly as drunk as I was.” Harry takes a big gulp of coffee, wincing when it inevitably burns his mouth.
“And I think we could have something…” he trails off. “Nice.”
PASS-IT-ON @shealwaysreads
Update to ask @xanthippe74 to PASS-IT-ON instead ❤️
“Nice,” Draco repeated. “Potter, I’m sure anything we’d have would be about as nice as two ill-tempered Kneazles shut in a box together. We get into an argument every time we’re in each other’s company.”
“Not every time,” Harry protested earnestly.
“Yes, we do. And those trips you mentioned were all disasters. Don’t you remember you threw your guide book at me in Cairo?”
“I threw it at the bathroom door. You spent two hours in there and we missed our Portkey to Giza.”
“I was applying sunblock potion. You know how easily someone of my complexion would burn in the desert.”
“Yeah, well you stormed out on me the moment we arrived in Tokyo!” Harry countered, slamming down the mug with the picture of his half-naked self on it.
“Because you accidentally booked us in a love hotel! A love hotel, Potter, where people go to—” Draco made a disgusted sound. “See? We’ve been fighting from the moment you barged into my flat. And now my kitchen’s a mess.”
Draco stood to take his plate to the sink, relieved to turn his back on Harry and his remorseful expression.
“I’ll clean up,” Harry said quietly. “And you got a cheese toasty out of it, didn’t you?”
“I wasn’t even hungry,” Draco grumbled.
Harry’s chair made an awful scraping sound as he pushed it back from the table. A pair of warm hands gripped Draco’s hips.
“I offered you something else besides food, Draco, remember?” Harry murmured. He pressed the full length of his body against Draco’s back. “I’m a bit more sober now. And I mean it. I really do fancy you.”
Draco inhaled sharply when Harry had the audacity to slide one buttery hand around to the front of Draco’s trousers. Ugh, it was probably leaving grease stains on the fabric. Harry was obviously not as sober as he thought if he was still saying ridiculous things like that to Draco. Best stall a bit to let the coffee do its work.
“All right,” Draco said, taking hold of Harry’s wrist to pull it away. “You take care of the washing up, and then I’m all yours. Don’t forget to sweep all those crumbs off the floor and clean the table, too. I’ll be in the sitting room. If you’re still feeling amorous, that is.”
He slipped out of Harry’s reach and left the kitchen before Harry could say a word.
PASS-IT-ON to @glittering-git
Draco returned to the sitting room and picked up his book, a Muggle werewolf romance Pansy insisted he read. He was only 40 pages in and he’d already read the word moist more times than one person ought to in a lifetime. He sent a wistful thought to his wine glass sitting on the kitchen table, which usually made the reading more bearable, but there was no way he’d be going back for it. He needed space from Harry and his amorous behaviour.
He knew how easy it would be to get overwhelmed by arresting green eyes and a too-eager Harry fucking Potter. Especially once he was sober. He needed to put his defenses back up—he couldn’t let himself remember how soft Harry’s hair had felt when they’d kissed or the way Harry always got pillow marks on his cheeks from sleeping on his stomach. He couldn’t, not if he wanted to keep his heart intact.
And that was the crux of the matter, wasn’t it? It’d be as easy as breathing to give his heart away, but he couldn’t be sure Harry wouldn’t break it. Maybe not tomorrow, maybe not in a year, but one day, he might look at Draco and find him wanting. And Draco wouldn’t be able to bear it—it would crush him like nothing else before. So, it’d be best not to put himself in a position to be hurt in the first place.
Draco turned back to his book, intent upon letting thoughts of Harry Potter drift like waves of sand from the shore.
And it worked, until Harry cleared his throat and forced Draco to acknowledge him. Draco looked up from his book, swallowing as he met Harry’s intense, entirely sober gaze.
“I’m sober. The coffee and cheese toastie helped, but I cast a Sobering Charm just to be safe. I didn’t want you to have any excuses. Don’t you understand?” He looked at Draco like he was a puzzle to be solved. “How I feel has nothing to do with whether or not I’ve had a few drinks. This is about you”—he emphasized this by pointing his index finger too close to Draco’s face—“and me.” He pointed to his chest. “I’m sober and I’m still feeling…how did you put it? Oh right, amorous. So, you tell me, Draco, what does that mean?”
PASS-IT-ON @rockmarina (if you want to ❤)
