For the glorious @mintamintathings, 900 words. TW for alcohol.
Draco closed his eyes and laughed, and laughed, and laughed. His head shook with the vibrations, smacking against the tiles every time he took a gasping breath to the rhythm of distant music. Gods. How ridiculous, how impossibly ridiculous this all was, the entire fucking situation. He tried to raise a hand to wipe his face, but it was heavier than lead. It just lay there in the ends of his useless arm. Useless—everything was useless. Draco laughed, choking on each sob of it like he was a child, like he was insane. He was a little bit of both.
He stopped laughing, but only for a hiccough, tearing through his chest. Then another stab of manic laughter. “What—” another hiccough—“Do you want?”
He meant to inflect more. To make it accusatory: what do you want? Or at the very least, what do you want? Instead it sounded like a joke. Potter, to his credit, didn’t laugh. Draco’s chest was still going up and down too fast for comfort.
“I just—you disappeared.”
“No, I didn’t,” was what Draco intended to say. What he garbled instead was a matter of chance.
Finally a good point. Draco bestowed a generous shrug.
Potter sighed and then suddenly, out of nowhere, he was down by Draco’s head, crouching improbably close. “Why are you hiding back here at your own party?”
“Am not hiding,” Draco huffed. “Just—tired.”
“Tired.” Potter lifted a thick eyebrow. Were they always so thick? So black, too?
“My arms won’t move,” Draco said, and it wasn’t an excuse, because he didn’t need to excuse himself to Potter. In his own party. Even if he was lying on the floor in the kitchen laughing like a bastard.
“Look,” Draco whined, wiggling them. “I can’t. Training broke me.”
Now Potter laughed, and it wasn’t even a bad laughter. “Training didn’t break you, don’t be such a crybaby. I thought you were trying to impress me.”
“Exactly, I—what? Who said I was—” he squinted, which for some reason made Potter laugh even more. “I’m not trying anything. Wanker.”
The last word was served with such venom, it should have scared Potter away. Instead he actually sat down on the floor next to him, and picked up one of Draco’s useless arms.
“Let me,” Potter said, and started massaging Draco’s forearm. “I told you. I said you should take it easy, no? But you kept… fuck, Malfoy, you’re so tense. Doesn’t it hurt like shit?”
It was more stunning, actually, in the full sense of the word, jaw-gaping-stunning, to have Potter touch him like that. Not that Draco only joined the gym for—none of it mattered. He’d already given up way before the party, hence why he was hidden alone on the floor, crying—er, he meant laughing—but the warmth circling back into his arm made him wince, drop it.
“What are you doing?” he asked, suspicious. “Why are you so… all of a sudden?”
Potter had the audacity to seem confused. “So what?”
This, Draco wanted to say, but found his mouth too dry for words. Like this, with me. He hoped his glare was telling enough.
“I’m not… look—I didn’t know what you wanted, in the beginning. What I could give you. Or if I wanted to. But you just kept on coming week after week with your fucking leg warmers and that ridiculous sweatband, making me laugh with your crazy jokes, and at some point I… fuck, you’re too drunk for this. Let’s just talk tomorrow.”
In a feat of supernatural strength, Draco managed to push himself up, so fast the whole room was spinning. It was dark, the glow of fairy lights from the living room faint, but he could see the frown on Potter’s face. Why did he have to be so fucking pretty? Wasn’t it enough that he wrenched Draco’s heart every single night at that blasted gym? Which may or may not have been the reason why Draco was suddenly so interested in fitness? Which may or may not have been the reason he now yelped as he tried to grab Potter’s face, which wouldn’t stop spinning?
“Potter.” It was a question, and a statement, an accusation and a bit of a plea.
“I like you, okay,” he sighed. “You’re an absolute lunatic, and I like you. Let me help you to bed, and then we can—I can ask you on a date, tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” it felt like his heart was trying to claw its way out of his chest. “Really?”
How did he make rolling his eyes seem so fond? “Yeah. And you’d better say yes, after all this. I have training at six tomorrow and yet here I am, scraping you off the floor in your own bloody party. Thanks for inviting me, by the way.”
“I didn’t… think you’d come,” Draco swooned, literally, unsteady on his feet. “Why did you come?”
“Are you really that drunk?” a thick slug of an eyebrow cocked. “Or do you just want me to say it again?”
“I like you,” Potter laughed, putting an arm around him. “Come on, let’s get you to bed.”
It would hurt like hell tomorrow. Draco fell asleep to the sound of Potter’s laughter, and discovered he didn’t really mind at all.
