So yesterday while folding laundry I started thinking about the fuck or die trope and suddenly this scene came to me. It’s 556 words, drarry auror partners, friends to lovers speed run. Beta read by the amazingly sweet and lovely @crazybutgood 💞 Thank you for always being there!
People stop and stare as Draco strides through the corridors of the Ministry, his Auror robes billowing behind him. They whisper to each other once he passes them, but he doesn’t take any notice. He only has one goal.
“Harry!” he cries when he finally barges into his and Harry’s office, slamming the door shut behind him and adding a few privacy spells for good measure.
Harry sits in their visitor’s chair, back hunched, knees drawn up to his chin, hair a tangled mess. When he looks up, Draco’s heart clenches at the sight of his red-rimmed and shiny eyes.
“Oh, great,” Harry says with a grimace. “Who told you?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Draco says, clutching the stitch in his side from his half eaten lunch that he abandoned in the cantine. “Is it true?”
Harry snorts, chewing one of his nails. “That I, against your explicit prohibition, examined the weird phallic we found at the raid yesterday and ended up being cursed by it to die unless you fuck me? Yeah, it’s tr—”
“I’ll do it,” Draco says before Harry’s even finished his sentence.
Harry blinks, his breath stuttering, but then he gives Draco a sad smile. “Of course, you would,” he says, voice soft and almost soothing, as if he’s the one who needs to comfort Draco and not the other way around. “The thing is, though,” he wipes his hand quickly under his eye, gives a short listless laugh, “you have to want it too, or it won’t work.”
The past two years flash before Draco’s eyes: their first animosity when they’d been newly partnered, the first case where Draco saved Harry from an Avada Kedavra, their building camaraderie after that, long nights at stake-outs, passing looks and grimaces across the room at every boring Head Auror meeting. Harry falling asleep over their late night reports, Harry bringing him tea in the morning from the café he passes on his way to work, always perfectly steeped, just the way Draco likes it. Two years of partnership, one and a half years of unlikely friendship, and one year of longing, refraining, wanting.
“Why me?” Draco whispers, his chest tight from the impossible hope slowly but surely unfurling in it.
Harry doesn’t answer, won’t meet Draco’s gaze.
Still, there’s no answer from Harry, but his eyes flick to a parchment on their desk where Draco discerns the words ‘the one your heart most desires’.
Draco steps closer, kneels in front of Harry. He’s never been brave, Harry’s the one who holds enough courage for the both of them, but he needs to find it in him now. For Harry. For himself.
“And what if I’ve wanted to for a long time? What if I want it so much it keeps me awake at night, wondering what it would be like to be allowed to—” He stops, unable to finish the sentence. “What if I’ve been wondering what it would be like to fall asleep afterwards with you in my arms? Will it work then?”
Harry lets out a shaky breath, eyes shining with tears but something else as well. Draco takes a leap and leans in so close that their lips are brushing, his heart beating violently in his chest.
“I think it could,” Harry whispers as he pushes impossibly closer. “Let’s try.”
