"The problem is you all think you're funny," Draco says, in the tonal equivalent of swatting at a particularly annoying fly.
"I was going for dryly sarcastic," Blaise murmurs, smile teasing the corners of his mouth. "It suits me."
Draco walks over to where Blaise is sitting, steps slow, almost indolent. He stops with one leg between both of Blaise's, the pressed line of his trousers brushing the inside of Blaise's knee. Glances down, expression closed off.
"Do enjoy baiting me?"
Blaise looks up slowly, lashes half lowered, his expression shifting off of Draco's into something a little more intent.
"Sometimes," he answers, lips curving slightly, not quite amused now. Fingers brushing the inside of Draco's knee.
Pale eyes track the movement of Blaise's fingers, the color in them glacial, ash and frost. He leans a fraction closer, into the bracket of Blaise's thighs.
"And other times?"
Blaise tilts his head, almost a lazy movement. From one moment to the next, he tightens his fingers, pressing in.
"Other times, my prince, your thorns are so sharp I hurt myself doing it." A pause. "I've only myself to blame, of course."
Something shakes loose in Draco's chest, like branches from which all the snow has fallen, struck by a sudden blow. He feels lighter for it in the aftermath, has to bear all of his weight down, forcibly, to keep from swaying. Holds himself like that for a long time, still as a sculpture, eyes heavy on the protracted touch of Blaise's fingers, anchoring there, too.
"Perhaps you should stop."
Some half-aware sense of Draco, perhaps communicated through the warm place his palm presses against thin fabric, makes Blaise sit up straighter and settle his other hand on Draco's hip, firm, in support. And perhaps a touch possessive.
An intake of breath, stretching time before he makes his voice steady, light enough to ask, "Do you want me to?"
"Sometimes." The word splits in the middle, a tiny, hairline fracture in Draco's voice, nearly imperceptible. He doesn't look up, into Blaise's face, but he feels both points of contact like brands on his skin, and swallows. "I don't like hurting you. Even if it is," he tries for something like their earlier teasing, "your own fault."
It sounds unconvinced, and thin, like a paper shield.
Blaise drops his eyes at the faultline he more feels than hears in Draco's voice, something hollowing out in his chest. His grip tightens hard, and then eases, as if uncertain of its welcome.
"If it is my own fault, I suppose I deserve it." Fingers stroke along the ridge of a hipbone, gently enough to be an apology, if one looks for it.
Draco angles his face away, something pulling in his jaw. "Don't talk like that. I don't... "
He struggles for the right words, but they all seem to acquire edges the moment he thinks them, dreadful and sharp and not what he wants to say at all.
"I don't want you to talk like that," Draco finishes, a little lamely. Realizing this has gone rather beyond baiting, very quickly. His heart gives a tiny kick in his chest.
Some difficult emotion draws at the shape of Blaise's lips, catching in his eyes under lowered lashes. His hand has curved around the back of Draco's knee, lightly holding him in place, fingers barely touching a sensitive place.
"How should I talk?" His voice has gone a little taut, as though he too has trouble finding the right words. "You know I'm no good at lying to you." A beat. "You don't really want me to."
It's hovering just on the edge of a question.
In a lightning quick movement, Draco raises one hand to the level of his hip, where Blaise is steadying him, fingers closing, vise-like, around Blaise's wrist, so tightly the bones seem to grind together. He looks up in the same breath, searching out Blaise's gaze, mouth tight, eyes bright and hard as pinpricks of starlight.
"Am I hurting you?" he asks, by way of answer.
Blaise meets and holds his gaze, leaning forward infinitesimally, as though Draco has broken some silent hold. His eyes are dark, a little wide, something sparking in them with silent intensity.
"No." It's the truest answer. The pain of Draco's fingers pressing into his pulse is a small thing next to the heated thrill of the unflinching connection. His breath catches very slightly. "Am I hurting you, Draco?"
Draco’s gaze stutters a little wildly over the lines of Blaise’s face, the initial startled shock at Draco’s touch subsumed almost immediately by something else, and it’s as though a floodgate has broken, the way Blaise is looking at him now - open and hungry and like this is all he wants in the world.
It’s terrible. It tightens Draco’s throat. Blaise will almost certainly bruise.
With a small noise, Draco leans down, almost far enough to touch their foreheads together. His breathing has quickened.
“Yes, damn you,” he says, and closes the distance, kissing him.
There is just time enough for Blaise’s breath to trip as the whispered words slide between his ribs, and he reels from them even as Draco’s mouth finds his.
The kiss is hard and ungentle, hungry in a way the bruising hold on his wrist isn’t, and Blaise pulls against it a little desperately, unbalancing Draco enough that a moment later they’re awkwardly tangled together on the edge of the chair, Blaise tasting a whisper of blood where Draco’s teeth have grazed his lip. Under the arcing heat in his blood, his chest aches softly.
Draco catches himself with a knee between Blaise’s legs, bracing it on the seat of the chair, body angling forward in a slanted line; Blaise’s hands are twin points that prop up the rest of him. He feels the muscles in Blaise’s thighs tighten and clench around him, rather than widening his legs to make room, and Draco fists his free hand in the front of Blaise’s shirt, shuddering, their limbs interlocking precariously.
He breaks the kiss with a tight, noisy exhale, shoulders hunched, feeling for a single moment like a trapped animal who has grown to prefer its captivity.
Then Blaise’s heart pounds beneath his fist, and Draco presses down, into the solid beat of it, kissing him again, once and hard, and quickly.
“Blaise,” Draco says, eyes closed.
He says it like he’s asking for something. He’s still holding on to Blaise’s wrist.
draco will be at blaise's flat when he returns. he stays there every night for a week, not knowing when blaise will be back. he'll be reading a work report by candlelight, hair damp from the shower, a glass of wine by his elbow. feels blaise's presence before he sees him, the mark on draco's shoulder blade humming. it's as though his heart unclenches.
Blaise stops for a breath just outside the door, feeling Draco within and needing the moment to still himself, to breathe. Only a moment, that's as long as he can endure waiting.
His eyes seek Draco's as soon as he steps through the door, instinct.
“Amante.” Quiet murmur. Looking at Draco, and only moving after a heartbeat, closer.
"You're out of wine." Immediate. Draco's voice is sharp with reproach and something subtler than that, unhappy and thin. His mouth moves, flickering, and he looks away, pale gaze steady on the table's surface. "You were gone a while."
Blaise, silent, drops his long coat and settles next to Draco on the couch, close but not touching.
Softly, "I know." His tan is darker, almost burned across his nose. Cheekbones a little too sharp, eyes tired. "I apologize. For the wine."
"They asked for you." Clipped syllables. "I told them you weren't dead."
A sidelong glance. Draco stands on a tight exhale, waiting a beat before reaching a hand toward Blaise without looking at him.
A heartbeat, then Blaise’s fingers close tightly around Draco’s wrist, over the pulse there, and he stands up close enough for for Draco to feel his breath on the nape of his neck. His other hand unerringly finds the place where the mark is hidden under the shirt.
“It took a while to find my way home,” he says, quietly, but with an edge of something more difficult. "I'm here."
"And are you under the impression," Draco turns, curling pale fingers into his own palm, eyes catching Blaise's unflinchingly, "that I’m in the habit of being patient about that sort of thing?"
With a small frown, Draco pulls slowly against Blaise's grip. Not to sever it, but to draw him closer.
Blaise shifts at once, as if it’s choreographed, tightening an arm around Draco’s waist so they end up chest against chest, the pulse quick and hard in Blaise’s throat.
“You’re not in the habit of being patient about anything, Draco.” Blaise’s tone is quiet, but his eyes are very dark, searching Draco’s expression. “It is a wonder you are still here.”
Draco's eyes narrow even as his lips part at the contact, Blaise's body flush with his own, vitality and heat. Blaise is no longer touching the mark on Draco's back, but the weight of that touch lingers, as though sunk indelibly into Draco's flesh, as permanent as the mark itself.
"Is it a wonder?" A dark, displeased edge in it, cutting. "I hope you're more observant when it counts, Blaise."
Blaise’s breath arches, slightly, as if the words were a measured blow. He drops his gaze to Draco’s mouth, seeking something softer than the sharpness, more forgiving.
“Now is when it counts,” he murmurs, past a tightness in his throat. “More than any other time.” His fingers, still around Draco’s wrist, tighten a fraction. "Are you angry with me, Draco?"
Draco's heart skips over a beat, the next one pounding bruisingly into his breastbone.
"Do I seem angry?" Softly, at odds with the rigid line of his body. "I’d no idea. I thought I was being perfectly cordial.” Draco pulls at the edge of Blaise's shirt as though it's offended him personally, fingers closing tightly over the ridge of his hip. "You lost weight. Don't they have food in the desert?"
Blaise’s breath stutters again as Draco touches bare skin, and his arm tightens around Draco’s waist, hand seeking upwards to find the mark again and pressing his fingers in, punctuating the pattern there. The magic thrills to his touch, kicking at his pulse.
“You’re being perfectly impossible,” he whispers, a sharp, vulnerable edge buried in his voice. “Draco.”
Draco shudders a little at the touch, shoulders hitching, the skin there always more sensitive than he expects. Or maybe it's only that it's Blaise who is touching it.
"I don't like you leaving," Draco says, the words reluctant, barbed in defense, "yet you make a career of it." Draco leans into him hard, eyes closing on a breath. A beat passes, and then, "I don't want to - " He swallows. "I don't mean to fight with you."
The silence stretches. Blaise bends his head, trying to catch his breath against the curve of Draco’s neck, against the pulse hammering in his throat. He is slowly tracing the outline of the mark with his fingers, mapping more than just the small stretch of skin.
“I know, I - “ His voice sounds rough, worn by desert sands. Slowly, he relinquishes Draco’s wrist and twines his fingers into pale hair instead. “I don’t like leaving you.”
"Don't you?" Draco's mouth hovers over Blaise's ear, brushing the shell of it. His voice is cool, and not particularly kind, as though at a truth he dislikes and keeps at arm's length. "And if I tell you it's your bed I've been sleeping in each night for the past week on the off chance you'd be back?" It should be vulnerable, admitting to it. Instead it lands like a carefully aimed knife strike. "Liar.” Softly. “You do like it."
Blaise makes a soft, breathless sound, sharp tension stiffening his spine. He tightens his hand in Draco’s hair and pulls, not gently, snapping their gazes together.
“I don’t lie to you.” Under the heavy tan, there is heated color across his cheekbones, something bright and pained in his gaze. “I hate parting from you. I can’t quite breathe when i am away from you. I - you’re right about… I like that you’re here.” Blaise tightens his shoulders, a hard defensive line. “That you - that my absence leaves a mark.”
Draco leans closer, pulling at the tight grip in his hair to the point of pain so that he can graze Blaise's mouth with his. The gray of his eyes has sharpened, darkly amused and almost challenging.
"Technically I think you left the mark," he says, low, sounding less steady. He drags his fingertips slowly along Blaise's side, not entirely idle in their intent, feeling for new scars. His pulse bounds in his throat. "You like that, too."
There is a scar on Blaise’s ribs, low on his right side, another deep in his left shoulder that Draco will only find later, with their clothes off. Blaise’s breath trips sharply against Draco’s mouth, and before he can think better of it, he pushes roughly into the other and closes the distance, kissing Draco hard, hungrily, senses thrilling violently to every point of contact.
Suddenly, abruptly, he breaks the kiss, fingers digging into Draco’s shoulders and whispers breathlessly, lips nearly touching, “Fuck you, why do you always do that? You know I’m dying to fuck you, you don’t have to bloody stab me.”
Draco catches himself with both hands against Blaise's waist, thumbs digging ruthlessly into the grooves along Blaise's hips. a smile tugs at his lips, quicksilver and fleeting, sharp. Heat floods him, a heavy ache in the pit of his stomach that pools outward, sparking along his nerves. "Are we fighting after all?"
He kisses Blaise before he can answer, long and deliberately slow, teeth catching Blaise's lower lip hard in warning when he tries to skew the pace of it toward something swifter and more demanding.
"Sorry," he adds, sounding breathless and not very sorry at all. "I could stop."
“Liar,” Blaise hisses in retaliation, breathless and pressed flush up against Draco, perilously close to discarding coherent thought in favor of the heat darkening the grey of Draco’s eyes to a storm. “We can fight. Unless you’d rather do this.”
He dips his head to mouth at Draco’s throat, grazing teeth across the fluttering pulse there, and presses a hand into Draco’s lower back, pushing heated, heavy magic into the skin, perhaps a touch vindictively.
The way Draco arches in his arms makes his heart kick rebelliously.
"You don't know me very well, Weasley," he says at length, voice a tired, rough scrape, as though he'd been screaming. "I can't," he stumbles, blinking hard, "choose one. I can't. I'd rather not have either." He looks up at her, expression curiously still. "I told Potter. I did tell him. I told him I couldn't."
It catches at the end, helplessly. He sounds lost.
Her expression changes, something shifting in her eyes. After a moment, she breathes out shakily and wipes her eyes.
“Oh for god's sake.” Her voice is rough and teary, but steadying. “Malfoy, for god's sake.” She reaches over and grips his hand, firmly, her small hand warm and stronger than it looks. “You're a mess, aren't you?”
Draco swallows reflexively, fingers limp in her implacable grip, both sets thin, pale, elegant. It surprises him, a little. He’s never noticed Weasley’s hands before, how strong they are without quite sacrificing gentleness. He stares at them now, willing away the horrifying, telltale sting in his eyes, anchors his gaze there and struggles to even out his breathing.
“It’s alright,” he says at last. It sounds only a little strangled. “It will be alright.” Easier still, the second time. “I have a plan.” His throat bobs over a careful swallow. “First it involves making sure they make it out of this war alive. I could use your help with that.”
He looks at her. A pinscratch appears and disappears between his brows. He thinks, in a distant sort of way, that Weasley has never looked lovelier than she does now. Or perhaps he’s never noticed.
When Draco opens the door to his room, it’s to pitch blackness. He blinks, unable to see a damn thing in front of him, and stands for a moment in the paltry rectangle of light thrown by one of the lit sconces in the hallway. Immediately, he knows two things: that Blaise is somewhere within these four walls, and that there isn’t a chance in hell he’s sleeping.
“Are you sitting alone in the dark?” he demands, equal parts exhaustion and exasperation making it come out harsher than he intends.
Blaise doesn't know how much time has passed; has lost count, deliberately, of how many minutes - hours - it's been since he slammed the door behind him, catching himself in the claustrophobically narrow little room in this broken house that is the only home he seems to have left.
Not long enough for exhaustion to overtake the heat in his blood, or even for the long gash along his forearm to start hurting in earnest, though he knows it will soon enough. Long enough for his heartbeat to start to settle, sitting still as he is on the one bed in the room, back pressed against the wall hard enough to feel the rough edges of wood against his spine, hard and unyielding. Long enough to feel the ache in his chest, hidden right beneath the anger, like the spell that nearly cut his throat earlier that night.
Long enough for Draco to have been here before now.
The room is wrecked, heavy wooden table and chair, the two lamps and even most of the old, blurry panes in the window having all fallen victim to his fury. Glass shards and splintered wood showered across the floor. If Draco can't see it yet, he will in a moment.
"I'm here," Blaise says, voice low and rough around the edges, only just loud enough for Draco hear. He has his eyes closed, head leaned back against the wall. The other boy's footsteps on the stairs have given him sufficient warning that he could have perhaps salvaged some of the wreckage. Instead he has kept still in the darkness, listening to each step, uncertain right until the sound of the door whether Draco would enter, or find some other place in this cursed house to wait for daylight.
The line of Draco's mouth thins as his eyes adjust to the darkness, taking in the state of the room, a thing broken to pieces. Aside from that, there is no other hint of expression on his face, a pale smoothness like marble, though thin in places, a faint, fragile flickering like light beneath the surface.
"I see that," Draco says, inflectionless, gaze sliding over glittering glass to settle on Blaise's outline, limned in the pale golden glow coming in through the doorway. He folds his arms over his chest and settles there, shoulder braced against the wooden door, silent for a long moment. It is altogether better, he supposes, for the room to have borne the brunt of Blaise's anger rather than the true object of his ire. Draco can still feel the weight of Potter against his chest, though it's fading, sense memory he'd quite like to be rid of.
The path to the bed is littered with sharp edges. Draco looks down at his bare feet and frowns, refusing to clean up the mess himself. His voice comes out a little sharp. "You could at least clear a path."
Blaise doesn’t open his eyes. He doesn’t need to; can hear from the tone of Draco’s voice exactly what his expression looks like; smooth and cool, the finely shaped mouth thin, the lines hardened. Looking like his father. Some dark remnant of anger somewhere in his chest wants him to say that out loud, and he curbs the impulse sharply, tightening his hands around each other enough to make the knuckles go white, and blood trickle sluggishly from the cut on his arm.
“Sorry,” he says instead, the word clumsy and strangely shaped in his mouth, like something in a foreign tongue.
Still with his eyes closed, he pushes at the mess of sharp edges and broken things on the floor, and the debris moves with a sound like waves across small stones, coming up in miniature slopes against the walls. He should vanish it, but there is something strangely tranquil about the visible wreckage. An acknowledgement he doesn’t look at too closely.
“I wasn’t sure you’d come.”
Draco's gaze doesn't flicker away from Blaise for a moment. He takes several steps forward, blindly trusting that the floor beneath his feet has been cleared of anything that could hurt or draw blood, cursory as Blaise's efforts may have seemed.
"This is my room," he points out, arms still crossed, frown deepening at Blaise's closed eyelids, the oddly serene set of his mouth. Annoyance makes Draco's fingers twitch against his forearms, curling into the drawling edges of his voice. "I see you've beaten it to a pulp, well done. Take off your shirt."
He waves a hand at the door to close it, plunging them back into a forgiving cloak of darkness, the soft sounds of their breathing. Draco gracefully lowers himself to sit on the edge of the bed, unseen, several handspans away, tilting his head at some subtle change in the rate and depth of Blaise's breaths. He hadn't been stupid enough to venture downstairs without a wand, firmly anticipating having to stun one or both of them. He reaches for it now, meaning to conjure a light source, and hesitates.
"Take off your shirt, Blaise," he repeats, softly. He says nothing else, eyes blinking against the dark, and he thinks, or perhaps he only imagines, that he sees the glint of Blaise's eyes opening.
Draco does it on purpose. Blaise is certain of it, and part of him chafes hard against that, fighting the immediate, visceral response to the way his name sounds on Draco's lips, the answering leap in his pulse at the simple fact of the other boy's nearness. He seems to have opened his eyes after all. The darkness is an unexpected velvet curtain around them, only offset by a dim lightness coming from the window, a distant streetlight whispering faintly across the cracked ceiling. Draco is barely a shadow, an almost imagined outline of pale hair and slender lines, everything else hidden. He might be a dream, conjured out of memory and desire; Blaise doesn't need light to know the precise shape and angles of him. He bites down on a memory; lying in his own bed in the pitch black dorm and listening to Draco's breaths from the other bed, the shallow tension there, seeing the other boy's hair tangled across the pillow, the sharp lines of strain in his face as vividly as if he was touching them.
He moves, slowly, his body protesting the sudden rush of sensation after having been kept tautly in place for too long. He undoes the buttons slowly, fingers finding them one by one, and finally shrugs out of the ruined shirt, the muscles along his left side pulling painfully, still sore from the weeks-old hurt there. The feeling catches at his thought with memory like claws, and his heartbeat stutters uncertainly.
The broken windows have left the air in the room cool with nighttime chill, and he shivers when it touches his bare skin, very aware of Draco, silent and motionless and almost near enough to touch with a casual brush of his hand. The shirt's fabric clings briefly to the dried blood on his arm, and he pulls at it, almost grateful for the simplicity of the pain when it tears free.
"I'm fine," he murmurs, his voice coming out a little rougher and softer than he intended. It's harder to stay angry with the darkness wrapped gently around them both, but the quiet in his chest leaves too much room for the mute, miserable ache lodged there. His next breath comes out a little unsteady.
"You're tired. Go to sleep, Draco."
Draco smiles a little, the curve of his mouth small and strained and not entirely humorless, lingering for a moment and gone.
"This is my bed," he says, voice remote and flattening, without a hint of that smile to soften it. But when he reaches out it's almost careful, fingers closing around Blaise's wrist, the strong, beating pulse there, vitality and heat. He pulls on Blaise's arm, less insistence and more persuasion, eyebrows drawn gently as though waiting for the inevitable resistance. There is none. Draco's brows draw down more sharply at that, only for an instant, eyes flickering from Blaise's upturned palm to the bow of his lips, the steady, watchful window of his gaze, lids just slightly lowered in defense.
The gash on Blaise's arm is still trickling blood. He is waiting to see what Draco will do. Draco imagines, with a sharp, unpleasant twist beneath his ribs, that Blaise supposes there is a likely reality in which Draco takes the offered exit without further argument, leaves this room, the bed, leaves Blaise bleeding there against it without so much as a backwards glance. Even now. Perhaps especially now.
"I am tired," Draco admits, and touches his fingers to the wound, a barely there pressure. "Do you know I've lost count of the number of times you've said 'I'm fine' while actively bleeding on me?" He looks up, lips drawing down. "I find that tiresome. I found that display downstairs positively exhausting," he adds, a little archly, and then, sharp and preempting, "Don't. I don't want to talk about that now."
He presses down lightly, stemming the sluggish flow of blood with only his fingertips.
Draco holds Blaise's gaze. "Potter told me how this happened."
Blaise can't help it. The muscles in his arm tense under Draco's fingers at the mention of Potter, and his gaze sharpens. He makes a small, commanding gesture with his other hand, and light blossoms in the one surviving lamp, throwing a warm glow and deep shadows across Draco's face and the guarded, intent expression lingering there. It's a familiar one. He's seen it often enough when Potter is mentioned, or is in the room. If he dwells on it, Blaise thinks he could probably decipher it; Draco's expressions are rarely what they seem at first glance, and it is the small details that give it away. Tension in the lines around his lips, a hint of something in his gaze that shifts too quickly to be certain of. The pulse in his throat. Potter told me.
It is fucking intolerable.
"Did he." Blaise's arm is still resting in Draco's grasp, which is much too light to keep it there if he moves even a little. His expression twists, the delicately slanted eyes narrowing and he briefly and strikingly resembles his mother.
"And what was that? I'm a terrible soldier, I should be reprimanded, i should be interrogated, I should be locked in the dungeon pending further investigations into my traitorous activities? Potter seems to have willfully missed the fact that I am not here to fight for him.”
The last word is shaded with icy contempt. Blaise draws in a sharp breath and deliberately turns his gaze away, silencing the other words burning in his throat. The back of his hand rests against Draco's thigh, shaking slightly.
A muscle in Draco's jaw clenches very slightly, a slant to his expression that looks almost like rebuke before it softens into understanding, and then vanishes altogether, leaving behind a smooth, unyielding plane. He looks down at the blood staining his fingers, bright and gleaming in the low light. He sighs almost inaudibly, and raises his wand, frowning against some faint strain of corruption the waylaid spell left behind. It feels a bit like oil in water, other and strange, unruly. Draco sets his own magic against it, fighting the urge to recoil, the feeling crawling up his spine as he begins to siphon away the dregs of dark magic preventing the wound from healing.
"No, actually." Draco's tone isn't as neutral as he wants it to be, clipped almost to the point of abruptness. "He said you fought well. And that he owes part of his intactness to you." He lays a hand over Blaise's palm to still the infinitesimal tremor, bleeding away the corruption like a slow, reluctant poison. His frown deepens, cloud cover darkening his expression. "You're being stupid. Hold still." Draco's grip tightens, eyes flashing. Blaise's features tighten in challenge, stark and beautiful, but his arm remains motionless in Draco's grasp, and Draco feels a breathless thrill at that, in the back of his throat. "Think, for a moment. What good does it do you to make Potter your enemy? We've little enough room to stand here as it is."
It's a cynical thought, exacting and cruel. It feels wrong to think of Potter's regard as an asset or liability and nothing else, but part of Draco does think it, though he has never before said it out loud. He can say it here. He can say it nowhere else.
Draco's touch and the subtle, clever magic in it feels like the warmth of early spring sunlight against Blaise's skin. He had been too preoccupied before to pay much heed to the remnants of the malevolent spell clinging to the wound, but now that it is drained away, relief shudders through him like a tremor under the skin. Paradoxically, the pain sharpens, his own body and magic now at liberty to call attention to the damage there. Draco's expression shifts minutely, and for a few breaths there is quiet, Blaise's attention caught and held by the bloodstained fingers against his skin and the delicately woven magic slowly mending the wound. Draco's magic is elusive and complicated; Blaise can feel his own settle against it, and heat thrills up his arm, warming cold skin and muscles, catching at his breath.
He meets Draco's eyes, but the other boy's gaze is nearly opaque, his features carefully composed. There is a slight, unhappy draw to his mouth, though, that makes Blaise ache to reach out and brush his fingers over it, make some attempt to smooth out the tension and the quiet discomfort there. It's tempting, to give in to the unspoken gentleness of the other's boy's touch. To lean into the partial truth Draco has offered him and pretend it is the whole story.
Blaise doesn't know how to do that.
"That isn't true, and you damn well know it. I have little room to stand on. I have you, and that's all." He pushes past an uncertain roughness in his voice, his shoulders set aggressively taut. His fingers curl up and twine tightly with Draco's, the gesture precariously suspended between prayer and possession, a feeling like a stone lodged in his chest, stealing his breath.
"But you - there is nothing you could do short of handing the Dark Lord the key to the front door that would rattle Potter. Do you think I don't see him watching you? Do you think I don't see you watching him, and pretending not to? And don't say you're playing him, don't. Don't lie.”
Draco’s eyes narrow sharply. “I wasn’t going to. I only meant--”
A muscle in his jaw moves, and he looks away, blowing out a tight, frustrated breath, mindful of the half-finished healing spell, its progress arrested for the handful of seconds it takes him to gather himself. It’s strange to be called on something he had to defend not an hour ago. The difference gives him a faint sense of whiplash and, at the same time, soothes some small, shivering part of him that struggles to make itself known in ways he can understand.
He shakes his head, a small, contained movement. Resumes the spell, edges of flesh knitting themselves together at its quiet insistence. Draco’s gaze keeps pulling down to the sight of Blaise’s fingers interlocked with his, not tentative but strong, extinguishing the weak tremor from before. What Blaise says is partly true. Potter trusts Draco, or thinks he does. He trusts his feelings more than anything else, which has so far worked in Draco’s favor, and will likely be the first thing to work against it, if it comes to that.
Draco finishes the spell. Wordlessly, he lays his wand aside, on top of the threadbare coverlet, hand steady. Blaise’s grip on his other hand is unrelenting. Draco thinks, for a moment, that he feels it tighten, fine bones grinding, as though, task completed, Blaise expects Draco to pull away from him.
Again, the sense of whiplash, something leaden turning over heavily in the pit of Draco’s stomach, drawing the corners of his mouth farther down.
Draco swallows, and squeezes back, not gently.
I stand where you do, he thinks but doesn’t say, throat dry. He doesn’t imagine there is anything he can say that will keep Blaise from throwing himself against the invisible bonds of their current precarious arrangement, strategy and common sense be damned. So much for survival instinct. Draco can only plant his feet here, refuse to budge, and hope it’s enough of a tether to hold them both.
Draco looks up. Something in his gaze has hardened. “You promised.”
The quiet words take Blaise's breath away for a moment. Draco's tone isn't particularly kind and there is more than a hint of challenge or rebuke in the firm set of his lips. As if he genuinely isn't certain Blaise remembers, or thinks it is a promise he might seek to break. The unfairness of it stings his throat.
i don’t think i get to take credit for anything else.
"At the manor," Blaise says, very quietly, carefully, aware he is invoking something dark and heavy, but needing to say it, the words soft and difficult on his lips; "I was awake at night, thinking of you. Nothing else, just you. I knew I would be made to do… things so terrible, I -" he catches his breath softly, making an effort of will not to look away. His eyes reflect the soft light, warm and fractured amber, trying to convey something that he doesn't know how to say. Instead, he lays his right hand against the sharp line of Draco's cheekbone, gently, a thumb drawing across pale skin, the tarnished shadows pooling under the other boy's eye, as if his touch could smooth them out. There is a strange, breathtaking intimacy to being connected only by that fragile point of contact, fingertips to skin, Draco's eyes holding his. His hands have stilled on the buttons, with only a few left, the careful stillness a warning Blaise pushes right past.
"All I wanted," he continues, dropping his voice to a whisper, "was you."
A carefully held breath shudders free at the admission. He doesn't know how to put words to the remembered feeling that crests somewhere beneath his breastbone even now. His left hand, slow and clumsy now, has somehow settled on Draco's waist. He can feel the heat of the skin through the thin fabric, and makes the transition gracelessly.
"It was the same - tonight. Running in the dark, when I couldn't breathe - I was coming here, I was just trying to come to you. You see -" he drops his hand a fraction, touching two fingers gently to Draco's lips, his gaze catching there as well, "you brought me here. You kept me alive, Draco."
Blaise’s words squeeze tightly around Draco’s heart and strain his breathing, the slow, shallow motion of his chest his only movement. Even his eyes have gone still, caught and held by Blaise’s, the sharply lowered eyelashes half obscuring their honeyed amber gleam in the low light. He feels their weight on the curve of his mouth almost more than he feels the accompanying touch.
His breath trips. He reaches for Blaise’s wrist and pulls the hand away from his lips, holding it between them. A muscle in Draco’s jaw has pulled dangerously tight.
“You left.” Some structure in Draco’s chest collapses as he says it, quietly and without ceremony. Draco swallows, and it’s difficult, painful, catching against an obstruction, the pulse in his neck pounding erratically. His voice remains steady. His hand doesn’t; it trembles very faintly, fingers shaking against Blaise’s wristbones. “Without a word, in the middle of the night. You left, and didn’t even give me a chance to—that could have been it. I could have—”
It sounds like accusation until it doesn’t, the wretched, unforgiving edge in his tone pointed outward until, at the very last moment, it angles in, colliding with the soft, shivering parts of him. He leans forward, as though absorbing a physical blow, cruel tension coiling in the line of his shoulders. He wants, badly, to lean farther still, into Blaise, to press himself into every ache and bruise. He doesn’t, spine stiff and straight and unyielding. His mouth moves noiselessly, clumsy and flickering, flinching away from the rest of it. He wets his lips, and a noise slips out, miserable and small.
“I – ” Draco grits his teeth.
These are things he hasn’t said out loud, summoned somehow, reluctantly, by Blaise doing the same, an unwilling kind of justice. He hasn’t wanted to say them. Hasn’t wanted to admit how many of the hurts Blaise has sustained are his fault, the bruises on his side infinitely kinder in comparison. He feels them, now, a thousandfold, opening himself up to it here, in this brief, unlikely respite that looks like safety but isn’t, Blaise saying things Draco doesn’t deserve, things that don’t touch the entire truth of what Draco is responsible for, the bleak desolation of these past few months. Draco’s other hand has dropped from where it was hovering over the remaining buttons of Blaise’s shirt, settling lightly on Blaise’s thigh. Not quite propping himself up. Simply touching him.
He looks up, seeking out Blaise’s gaze. It’s so much gentler than Draco merits.
“I did that,” Draco says, low and quiet. His eyes are inscrutable, opaque gray mirrors guarding a small ruin. His heart keeps dropping in his chest. “I did that, too.”
“When you talk like that, I—” Draco swallows, the tight, shallow rise and fall of his chest his only other movement.
He isn’t sure how to explain. Blaise just—says things, sometimes, and Draco’s never certain whether it’s the things he says or the way that he says them or an equal measure of both. It’s a tiny, excruciating shock to Draco’s system every time, that dark well of honesty, like Blaise is voicing some crucial, inviolable truth with Draco at its center, an edge of reverence in it that makes Draco’s heart beat double and scatter. Blaise says these things like it’s easy, where for Draco truth has always been the hardest and most painful thing to say out loud, catching against every defense he knows. And always Draco finds himself so hungry for it, as though he’d been starving before, startled into acknowledging some deep, irrevocable ache that longs for more of those words in that voice, a kind of sacrament he isn’t at all convinced his soul deserves. But he wants.
Draco pushes himself up further, halfway to sitting, Blaise still poised over him so that their chests brush lightly with the movement. He casts his eyes over the beautiful, open lines of Blaise’s face, the little hints of strain edged summarily aside as though pain were a trifling inconvenience, easily ignored. Draco can’t even find it in himself to be annoyed about it, his own heart a living, breathing sort of hurt in his chest, of little consequence. He lies there, unmoving, almost wants badly enough to see how long they can both stand it.
A soft sound, and Draco shifts, guiding Blaise with the angle of his body in slow increments, until Draco is lying half over him, Blaise’s shoulder pressing into the bed. He tangles the fingers of his left hand in Blaise’s and clenches them, hard.
In a low voice, Draco says, “It makes me crazy, when you talk like that.” His eyes are very dark, and very bright. He angles his head down, not quite brushing their mouths together, something tightening behind his voice. “Blaise.”
