"Apparating?"
Harry tipped back his head and scrunched up his chin, flickering mischief. "Nah, lets take a taxi."
"Come again?"
"You don't like the idea? Bit of a thrill in the dark–"
"Buh-ya-mm–" Draco couldn't decide how to start his sentence. "...magic," was what he spluttered, hoping it conveyed something like: as much as I'd like to get my hand on your cock in the back of a black cab let's save the exhibitionism for the future and please can we apparate right. fucking. NOW.
Draco smiled. Harry, bless his ingenuously indiscreet little cotton socks, didn't even bother to hide the slalom ride his eyes took down Draco's body.
When Harry's gaze hit the floor Draco shifted his weight so there would be some variation on the return journey.
"Hello," Draco said after the pause became lengthy, because there was such a thing as being examined too closely.
"Hmm," Harry said. "Why?"
Draco lifted all but his forefinger off Harry's pile of documents and tapped. "Momentous week, apparently. I thought you might need some reminding of the things that are at stake."
Harry squinted one eye shut and tipped his head to the side. "You think just because you look all--" he waved his hand in the air in a gesture that Draco chose to interpret as ngghh, fuckable, "--all, whatever--that I'll get up in the Commons and say, oops, no, changed my mind?"
"Hope springs eternal, but no. A healthy amount of bitter regret was all I was aiming for."
I haven’t started on your deplorability yet, have I?“
"I strongly suspect there’s no such word as deplorability, Potter.”
“If anyone is ever to describe your political career it may be very necessary to invent it.” No need to be nasty, Draco was going to say, but then Harry licked a rivulet of oil off the back of his thumb and he couldn’t quite muster the edge, especially when Harry raised his eyebrows in the kind of slow smirk that said I know exactly what you are thinking and also? You are so my bitch.
“I don’t notice you trying very hard to discourage my alleged bad behaviour,” Draco said, rather intent on regaining some sort of upper hand. “Aside from your ridiculous petition, of course, but whatever happened to the liberal humanist belief in redemption?”
“You? Redeemed?” Harry flicked off a crumb from Draco’s cuff. “What would be the fun in that?
It had taken Draco ten years to properly see Potter as dangerous when his temper was unrestrained; three to wallow ambiguously in how glorious it was, two to develop a sturdy sense of jealousy, and about six minutes to find it unbearably hot.
It all amounted to a very bad habit of saying things that got Harry ...riled.
They reach a side entrance, which is locked when Draco turns the handle. He slips his hand in his cloak for his wand but Potter murmurs and makes a quick gesture and the door bangs open.
Draco would sulk at such an obvious display if it didn’t turn him on so much.
a lifetime of calamities followed by dangerous illnesses by blythely
Aziraphale’s cup was halfway to his own mouth before he realised that the toast was partly a question. “Our ships?” he demanded, quickly putting a pin in the matter and trying not to splutter. “Are you here to champion this voyage?”
How did we start writing this story?
On a 33C boiling hot day last June, I was on a business trip navigating my way around Leipzig by tram, and tiredly bemoaning the lack of Good Omens fic featuring picnics at Glyndebourne. Circe (@brightlydoesit) indulged me with (what turned out to be the kernel of) Aziraphale’s memory as a story by text, and I was so engrossed I nearly missed the stop for my hotel.
(I was expecting a story with Crowley and Aziraphale lazing about quaffing champagne and eating meringues; what I got was angst about WW2 evacuees. It’s all fine).
Neither of us had written fanfic for many many years. But we had been (re)devouring Good Omens fic and we’d scratched an itch. Then Circe set me the challenge to write a historical scene set in our home town of Bristol, and that’s what you get in chapter three. It also set up the memory aspect to our story (yaye historical research!).
The title emerged as the backbone of the story very early on: we were mainlining The World’s Most Extraordinary Homes, and adulting our way around to buying our first home. Planning permission seemed like the kind of diabolical bureaucracy that if Crowley didn’t have actually have a hand in, he’d certainly pretend he did.
