this is my favorite charli xcx song, and Harry has always played the leading role in my fantasies while listening to it. pls enjoy this fic. i've included multiple mentions of the duo frou frou as a treat for the girlies (anyone who loves frou frou as much as i do).
“Why is it called a pineapple?” Harry asks, leaning against a kitchen cabinet. The knob is digging into his spine, but he’s too loaded to move, let alone notice. He’s shed his pirate costume on various surfaces over the course of the night, his ruffled shirt the only sign left that he was anything at all in the first place.
Nobody replies, because Hermione– dressed as a fairy– is passed out at the kitchen island, hunched over on one of the barstools with her head cradled in her arms. She has a tendency to overestimate her ability to tell when enough is enough, but always ends up having more fun than any of them.
He never should have had this party, is still not sure what he was expecting to get from all this. Most of the people he invited came in their half-arsed costumes, ate ludicrous amounts of sweets, and got drunker than they’d planned to. Surely, his Halloween party should have been a success, right?
Yet, that was never the goal at all. There was one objective for the night, and it’s nearing three in the morning, still uncompleted.
Eventually, Hermione is carried out over Ron’s shoulder amid hoarse goodbyes and ‘have a good night’s. Harry and Luna collect the cups, and the sink smells of pineapple and rum, of Draco’s breath after every pub night. They take down the streamers while Imogen Heap sings ‘I have to be somewhere/now where did I put it,” and Harry is reminded of the infinite times he was held sonically hostage to Draco’s Details CD on long drives.
He feels nauseous, and can’t decide if it’s because of the lack of Draco’s presence, or the way he’d overindulged with every passing hour. He decides it’s because of Draco, because everything is. Draco is the reason he painted his bedroom walls blue, and threw this party in the first place.
Their little friends with benefits situation ended three years ago, and Draco’s moved on. Multiple times. But none of them stick, and with every breakup that spark of hope grows in Harry’s chest. That Draco will come back and finish what they started.
Eventually, Luna leaves too, and Harry’s left with a house devoid of all the things he’d placed in it to lure Draco in like a blonde fish to a Frou Frou CD on a hook. Nearing four, Harry leaves it on, lets the music remind him of better times when he wasn’t drunk, when he wasn’t slowly becoming one with the sofa, when Draco being in his house wasn’t something he had to carefully orchestrate.
It’s begun to rain outside, and he’s drifting off to the pitter-patter when the doorbell rings. The sound is like someone dumping a bucket of ice water on his head, and once again the hope that maybe it could be him overcomes the alcohol, just as it did every time a new guest arrived to the party.
It’s funny, how you can have hope for something and fully believe it to be impossible at the same time. The feeling sits in Harry’s mind after being drilled into him all night. Is it him? No. Is it him? No. Is it–
“You have to stop inviting me to things.”
Draco is wet, soaked– which is ridiculous, since he was always so silly about keeping out of the rain, the precise temperature of his warming charms. He’s in his robe, the same grey one with hairspray crust on the shoulders that Harry liked to scratch at. Underneath the fabric there are freckles from Draco’s bad experience with a tanning booth that he hasn’t bothered to magic away. Harry likes to think it’s because he knew how fond he was of them. He knows that body and the stories behind it. He knows Draco so well it’s sickening.
“Just– stop, alright? I can’t keep coming up with excuses the next day.”
He looks like a petulant child– fists at his sides, the crease in his brow, the sheer stubbornness that coats every word.
“I’m sorry?” Harry doesn’t mean for it to come out as a question, but he’s not sure what he’s supposed to be sorry for, and is still reeling from his learned experience being proven wrong so abruptly.
“I don’t understand why you feel the need to remind me. You- you invite me to your house. You give me… I get a taste of what it’s like to be around you again and then I leave, and I just can’t any more! I can’t come to your parties, your pub nights, your fucking luncheons. You’re cruel, Harry. This is all so…”
Harry reaches out a hand, rests it on Draco’s shoulder, “I’m so confused right now.”
“You’re swaying,” Draco notices.
“Harry, you don’t have to keep trying to include me in things. I know… I can’t be your friend.”
“I can’t believe you’re asking me that.”
Draco averts his eyes, and seems to realize he’s wet, before pushing his way into Harry’s foyer and drying himself off with his wand. Harry wishes he wouldn’t, because the sight of him truly affected by the rain is something to behold, something he now realizes he’s been deprived of for so long.
“You know why,” he continues, “You know why, and yet you keep inviting me to things because my friends are your friends and vice versa, but I don’t need to be included in everything, not when you know how much it hurts me.”
“Draco, what the fuck are you on about?”
“What am I supposed to do? Just act normal? I’ve been in love with you for three fucking years, and everybody knows it, and I know you know it, and I’m sick of being embarrassed–”
“Draco,” Harry stops him, a hand pressed to his firm chest. The gesture isn’t needed, but Harry wants to touch him so bad, feel the linen of Draco’s shirt under his fingertips now that he knows that Draco wants it, “You’re stupid.”
If he wasn’t drunk, he would have been much more eloquent, but this is the best he’s got, and as long as Draco stops talking long enough to listen, maybe he can make it through this conversation.
“I only threw this party for you.”
Draco takes two steps back, knocks his hip against a fern, then takes a step forward.
“You threw…” Draco looks around the room, now devoid of all its decorations, and Harry hopes he can imagine them in his mind. Imagine a room full of people they love, drinking something he likes, eating his favourite candy, listening to his favourite music, and understand that Harry has always been trying to show, unsure if he was allowed to tell, “What are you saying?”
“I Gatsby’d it,” Harry replies, because Luna said that’s what he was doing, and the phrase has been stuck in his head all night.
“You Gatsby’d it,” Draco deadpans.
“I threw an entire party and filled it with things I know you like, just because I wanted you to show up,” Harry admits, “I had rum rollovers and Frou Frou and I dressed up as a pirate because I know you love men in frilly shirts, because I wanted you to walk in and notice.”
It’s definitely odd saying it out loud, but Draco just showed up at his doorstep and professed his love for him, so Harry feels free to say his truth.
“Sorry about that,” Draco scratches that spot behind his ear, where he’s always thought about getting a tattoo. Harry remembers how it tastes, “So…”
“I love you too, by the way,” Harry blurts, “You said you were in love with me and I called you stupid and–”
Draco reaches for him, and Harry is both expecting it and caught off guard when they kiss– quick and painless and just as sweet as he remembers.
“You threw a party for me,” Draco murmurs.
“Everything I do is for you,” Harry replies, and Draco kisses him again, and again, until he finally manages to pull away from his lips, “I mean, not brushing my teeth or whatever. Like, the pub nights and the dinner parties. Those were all for you.”
“Why didn’t you just–” Draco starts, and Harry knows why he didn’t just, but he’s still too muddled to explain all that.
“I have a lot of problems,” he says instead.
Draco laughs, and Harry’s so glad that it’s finally because of him again, and not some brunette at the pub, “Yes, you do.”
They move on to the sofa, trading explanations through the night as Harry’s buzz finally wears off, and Draco admits that he got pretty smashed in his kitchen, unable to bear the idea of refusing the invite. The sun peaks through the curtains in the early hours of the morning, and they begin to doze, twisted around one another. They haven’t spoken for a while, simply rested in the warmth of long-awaited understanding.
But, as Harry finally lets sleep overcome him, he hears a snort and one final whisper.
if you liked this, feel free to give it some love over on ao3!
