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Harry doesn’t know how it happens; it just does. There are insults thrown, fingers grabbing at collars, the push and pull of their bodies and suddenly, they’re kissing.
Harry opens his mouth to biting teeth and the tearing pressure of anger, his hands digging in the furious slant of Malfoy’s shoulders, seeking an anchor here. Kissing Malfoy is so much pain and yet, Harry cannot stop. He licks blood off his teeth and presses in between the furnace of their bodies like every breath is in an implosion, dragging him closer every time.
Harry pants, thoughts flung out of order. Every one of his attempts to talk ends up in a gasp, muted by their next kiss. He sticks his nails in Malfoy’s skin and doesn’t even raise a sound in answer; they’re already tearing at each other, rib cages gaping open with the desperate need that pushes them together.
“Merlin, Potter,” Malfoy breathes out and pushes a hand in Harry’s hair. Harry wishes that his locks would spontaneously turn to a Devil’s Snare, that they’d trap Malfoy’s hand here, where he can see him. Where he’s pliant and amenable to the current activities. He bites on Malfoy’s lower lip at the thought.
But then steps echo and bounce on the old stones of the corridor they stand in, twisted together and Malfoy pushes him away and Harry’s skull smarts with the violence of it.
He watches Malfoy go, shoulders high and shirt creased. He has no idea what happened.
Malfoy looks miserable the next morning at breakfast. Harry stares and waits for him to stare back. It doesn’t happen.
But later that day, Malfoy jumps him at the detour of a corridor and pushes him in an empty classroom, mouth frantic and sharp. At first, Harry is too surprised to say anything. Then he’s too busy mapping the bony reliefs of Malfoy’s naked spine to talk.
It happens again. And again. And again.
Harry spends the next month in a daze, confused by the turn of events and entirely distracted from his former task. He’s discovering with virginal awe the delights of sex and the abundance of it when one has a regular partner. The fact that Malfoy is his regular partner is too much for him to process. He does a good job at ignoring it.
He goes to class with sore purple on his collarbones and hunches his shoulders in the showers so that no one remarks on it. He seeks out Malfoy for entirely different reasons; carnal desire lights up his blood when he sees his name on the map. Harry tries to look inconspicuous and go on with his life: he eats, he sleeps, he can’t remember his homework, he walks into doorways. Hermione looks at him with worried eyes but says nothing.
Nobody ever says anything. Harry doesn’t say anything. He can’t when Malfoy shuts him up with a kiss.
There’s an unused century-old Necromancy classroom on the fourth floor that is blood-chilling if one doesn’t have an appropriate distraction; Harry tugs Malfoy in it by his tie most days. The carpet is plush and sweet against his back and Malfoy lays there for hours, between the shelter of his legs and bites kisses into his breastbone.
Harry enjoys the yield of his mouth against his stomach and watches Malfoy with some difficulty, glasses askew, as he breathes hot desire on his skin. Harry shivers, feeling his need swirl into his chest in the most delicious way.
“Stop playing,” he says and pushes his fingers in Malfoy’s shoulder to urge him, down or up, to do something.
Malfoy laughs; it spreads damp and hot on the crease of his thigh. Harry shudders. He bites the back of his hand to muffle the groan which wants to spill out.
The tease of Malfoy’s mouth slides hotly on Harry’s hipbone and comes to rest at the base of Harry’s length, light as a butterfly. Harry groans desperately.
“Bloody hell, just come here,” he swears as he hooks his thumb under Malfoy’s jaw, in this spot that always makes him rumble with urgency, and tugs him higher. Harry enjoys the weight of him, settling bony and unyielding over him.
“Want my fingers?” Malfoy asks, bites at Harry’s mouth.
Harry shakes his head, glasses sliding; his hands move over the expense of Malfoy’s chest, the feathery hair of his stomach, the pink bloom of his nipples. He watches as the skin pebbles following his path. His mouth is dry. He needs Malfoy. He needs him right now.
“No, use a spell, I can’t wait.”
Malfoy groans in the next kiss but shifts to dig in his clothes, leaving half of Harry cold and shivering. He comes back with the Hawthorne wand in his elegant fingers and has to sit back, out of Harry’s reach, to cast the spell.
Harry squirms at the peculiar but now familiar sensation of another wizard’s magic washing over him. Malfoy comes back, pushes the whole weight of him over Harry. He smiles down at Harry when that elicits a groan in answer, small and so rare it makes Harry ache too deep in his chest.
He swallows. “Get on with it, you git.”
Malfoy hesitates for a moment, then reaches out to take Harry’s glasses off, slow and uncertain. Harry blinks as the world becomes blurry; he has to look away to push back the emotion welling in his chest.
Malfoy makes a noise of contentment that Harry refuses to process, and bites playfully at the exposed line of his throat. Harry closes his eyes on it, shivers. Malfoy huffs a breath in answer.
He shuffles back a bit, smoothing a hand over Harry’s thigh, and lines up. The push-in is slow and steady and Harry has to hide his face in his hands. There’s too much power in this; too much power in Malfoy’s reach, when Harry is so vulnerable, fingers grabbing at his ribcage to pull it open.
The wet kisses of Malfoy’s reassurance have him yielding the prison of his fingers. Malfoy eases his wrists away from his face and holds them in his hands, gentle pressure opening him up to the space between them.
“Alright?” Malfoy asks, so silent Harry feels like he dreamed it.
Harry nods and frees his hands to knot them at the back of Malfoy’s head. Malfoy moves; Harry gasps into it, the rocking of their body like a pendulum, pressure pushing at their skin. He strains his neck to taste Malfoy’s mouth, to lick into it and share his breath, a back and forth of air, a mimicry of their bodies.
“I like this,” Harry pants in the space between them, and sees the flicker of something anthracite in Malfoy’s eyes. “I like this,” he repeats, because it’s the only thing he allows himself to say.
Malfoy silences him with a kiss. And later that night, Harry follows him, veiled by the Invisibility Cloak. He still doesn’t say anything.
It’s foolishness that pushes Harry to talk. He’s still reeling from Malfoy’s all-encompassing warmth and a mind-blowing orgasm, the quiet of his mind not loud enough to drown out his words.
“What is this?” he asks, unaware that he is bringing up his doom.
Malfoy stiffens, trousers tugged over his hips but not yet buttoned.
“What do you mean?” and Harry fails to perceive the icy quality of it.
“This,” he waves between them.
Malfoy shrugs his shirt on. Harry feels defenseless where he is, naked and seated on the floor, Cushioning Charms fading under his legs.
Malfoy works his jaw, turns away from Harry and doesn’t look at him when he answers. “It is what it is, Potter. We fuck. We go on our way.”
Harry stands up, feeling ridiculously more naked.
“And what? We fuck and you go back to do whatever you’re doing for Voldemort? Was the fucking part of your mission?”
Malfoy flinches at that, taking a step back.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says through gritted teeth. His knuckles are white at his sides.
Harry feels it like a fist against his ribs, cold dread in his stomach. He had stupidly hoped that the sex wasn’t such a simple affair; that he could build trust from it and extend that to Malfoy like an olive branch. That he could get him to seek help from the right people. The certainty that Malfoy doesn’t care one bit about him slides uneasily at the back of his throat; Harry doesn’t dare examine why.
“You know exactly what I’m talking about.” Harry says, feeling stubborn and small. “If you asked for it, Dumbledore would help you.”
Malfoy gives a weak laugh, an exhalation that betrays his exhaustion. He looks back at Harry, eyes hollow.
“Fuck off, Potter,” he says, so quiet it’s almost wordless. He strides out of the room.
Two weeks later, Harry stares down at his reflection in a pool of Malfoy’s blood.
Harry doesn’t think much about Malfoy after their liaison inevitably dissolves with attempted murder. Or he does, but he’s careful to do it late at night, when the world fades into nightmares. He never tells anyone. He keeps it in his chest through the War and through the forest of Dean and and through the Battle of Hogwarts and through the trials after.
He cannot shed it when he kisses Ginny. And he doesn’t either when she inevitably pinches her mouth at his lack of enthusiasm and leaves him alone in her bed, in the heavy night of summer.
He lifts it away from him the day Malfoy comes ringing at Grimmauld Place and Harry opens the door, baffled.
“Did you testify at my trial because we fucked in 6th Year?” he asks, looking tired and haunted.
Harry feels his heart lift in his chest and steps outside. He closes the door behind him on Ron and Ginny, and the awkward conversation of the recently broken-hearted.
Malfoy doesn’t say anything. He stands here, spine rigid, ready to snap.
“No,” Harry says and watches the tension being washed away from him. “I testified because it was right.”
Malfoy scoffs and hides behind a hand, rubs at his forehead nervously. “Of course you did.”
The silence falls over them, light and undemanding. Harry watches Malfoy curiously, notes the marks of an exhaustion that has sat too long on his face. Malfoy looks frail, run ragged, but he has lost the nervous energy that seemed to be the only thing driving him forward in 6th Year.
Harry swallows. “We should talk,” he says. He should have said it years ago.
Malfoy looks at him, eyes light in the early evening.
“Yes, we probably should.”