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Nothing Like the Sun	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 35148 -:- Recommendations : 3 -:- Currently Reading : 4
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter and am making no money from this story.

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Chapter Five—Patience

            “I’m sorry, mate. I told him to leave, but he wouldn’t, and I couldn’t make him.”

            Harry clenched his jaw and said nothing for a moment, but eased the tight hold and patted Ron’s shoulder when he saw Ron turning red. Like it was his best friend’s fault for not being able to send Malfoy away, when Harry couldn’t do it himself.

            Although I’ll have to do a better job now, or he’ll keep hanging around me as if he has the right to do it.

            “It’s all right,” Harry told Ron. “I think I know the best way to make him back off. He won’t want to come within a mile of me by the time I’m done with him.”

            He stalked up to Malfoy, who lounged against the wall next to Harry’s desk as though he’d been part of the Ministry’s original architecture. Malfoy straightened up a little when he saw Harry coming, but he didn’t move his arms or the expression on his face. It was implacable. Harry grimaced. He could imagine Malfoy wearing that expression on his face. More, he could imagine Malfoy standing like this all night. He would have had to get here pretty early to beat both Harry and Ron.

            “Listen,” Harry said, walking up to Malfoy and standing in front of him so Ron couldn’t see the punishing grip Harry inflicted on the git’s arm. Ron might have been tempted to interfere if he saw, if only to keep Harry from getting into trouble, and Harry wasn’t interested in that. “You made it clear that you want something I can’t give you. Stop hanging around me, or I’ll tell everyone exactly how bad you taste.”

            Malfoy’s mouth fell open a little. Then he said, “You would spread—bedroom gossip about me? The exact same thing you got angry at Daphne for doing?” His hands shook for a second, and then he lifted his free one and touched the ends of his hair as though he needed to make sure that it was still on his head. “I thought you weren’t that kind of person.”

            Harry stirred uneasily. Malfoy looked as though he’d just been told an earthquake had destroyed the Ministry. “I would tell a lie and contribute to gossip to make you leave me the fuck alone and spare myself from being the target of more gossip, yes,” he said.

            Malfoy blinked, and then gave a faint smile. Harry let him go and stepped back. Fuck him anyway. No one else in the Ministry would smile when I threaten them.

            “I would just have to accept that as the price of having you, I suppose,” Malfoy said calmly, not taking his eyes from Harry.

            Harry braced his hands on his desk. He was having a hard time breathing because of the liquid fury that curled up through his lungs, and Ron’s uneasy sidelong glances weren’t helping. All his friends knew what had happened with his lovers, and Ron and Hermione probably knew about Ginny from her side, too, but none of them had seen it happening. Harry wanted to break away and run, and he wanted to draw his wand, and he wanted to beg and plead with Malfoy, and none of it would work.

            “You can’t have me,” Harry finally managed to whisper, when he had his voice down to manageable levels. “Some of the others thought they could, and they gave up and got hurt and ran away. I don’t want to hurt you. I just want you to do the other things.”

            Malfoy moved a step nearer, his smile gone. “I would never try to have sex with you against your will,” he said quietly. “But I’m unwilling to just give up.”

            “Why?” Harry asked, after he had closed his eyes and worked through his own rage for a couple of seconds. It shouldn’t have taken that long, but it did, the same way that he should have been a normal kisser and fucker and fuckee, but he wasn’t. “I haven’t given you any encouragement, and you know how awfully I kiss, and all I’m focused on is sex. There’s nothing attractive in any of that.”

            “Do you know what you’re like?” Malfoy whispered in response. “What I think you could be like?”

            The fury abruptly earthed itself in ashes. Oh. Malfoy was going to be like Andy, the memories that still hurt so badly Harry flinched from thinking of them.

            Harry folded his arms and leaned on his own desk. He wanted to go away and drink, now, a lot. But that wasn’t an appropriate response for the middle of the Ministry, either, and there were more people wandering by in the corridors, now, or hanging around and openly staring.

            Damn Malfoy.

            “You think of me as someone who could be a good potential lover, right?” Harry asked gently. “Someone you could train and teach to be better at dating you than I am right now?” He wouldn’t get more specific with talking about bad sex where so many people were listening, but surely Malfoy would understand.

            Malfoy blinked, and lifted his head a little. “Yes,” he said. “I don’t think you’re inherently horrible. No one is.”

            Harry wished he could introduce Malfoy to Frank, and then stand back and watch the fireworks. But it probably wouldn’t go the way he thought it would, because he had never understood Frank, and he didn’t understand Malfoy now. Hell, maybe they would end up bonding over his flaws, and fucking on the floor while shouting their own names.

            That thought brought a small smile to Harry’s face and calmed him down even more. He shook his head. “I’ve had a few people who tried to date me thinking they could change me,” he said. “Or who thought that I was going through a phase instead of—really like this.” One woman was almost leaning on the shoulder of another Auror to see their confrontation. No way would he speak more clearly than this. “It didn’t work for them, and it ended up causing them great pain. Let me warn you away right now, before you experience the same thing.”

            Malfoy moved closer. “You’re very concerned with my pain,” he murmured. “What are you, a sadist?”

            Harry didn’t flinch, carefully. “Yes,” he answered. “But one who didn’t know what I was for a long time, and someone who thought their pain was a sign of affection for me, and someone who never knew when to stop causing it. And it’s all emotional pain, not the pleasurable kind. So I’m not safe for other people to be around.”

*

            Draco didn’t let his smile falter, but that came more from the kind of training that his father had inflicted on him before Hogwarts than because he really wanted to keep his face calm and clear.

            Is there anything I can find that won’t play into his defenses and strengthen his conviction that he’s undesirable, somehow?

            Draco was starting to wonder if there was. He understood better, now, how Potter had handled malicious gossip and the defection of his lovers. He had admitted everything, if only to himself, and built a fortress wall out of weaknesses. Know the worst about yourself, and tell it to people who got close enough, and no one else could hurt you.

            So. Draco couldn’t resort to the insults and the impatience that were habitual to him when confronted with this sort of nonsense, whether in a lover or someone else. He had to build on the patience he had learned more with Potions than with people.

            “You’re very concerned with my pain,” he repeated. “I find it patronizing.”

            The faintest flicker in Potter’s eyes, but he didn’t drop the smile that widened across his lips. “Good. Then you should go away, before I patronize you again.”

            “You’re essentially judging that I won’t know when I’m hurt, and I’ll take risks that are unacceptable to me, by becoming involved with you,” Draco continued. “You don’t trust me to know when enough’s enough. You don’t trust me to know what I want.” He took another step nearer. “And what I want is you.”

            “You haven’t given me a single credible reason why.”

            Oh, he’s good. Of course, almost all of that would come from his lovers in the past and what they had done to him, but Draco could admire skilled emotional fencing when he saw it, and Potter was much better at it than Draco would have thought he could be when he was a schoolboy with him.

            “Because I want to see what happens,” Draco said. It wasn’t the most credible reason, perhaps, but it was his honest one. “Because of the reasons I mentioned when you talked to me last.” No one else needed to hear them, not right now.

            “Because I was honest and have a sense of humor?” Potter shook his head. “You can find that anywhere. And I’m trying to be protective of you, as you wanted, but you seem to reject my efforts.” He gave Draco a pointed look.

            Draco became more aware of their audience, then, and managed to hold back on the impulse to draw his wand and cast Privacy Charms. He hadn’t so far, and doing it now would just give more support to the theory that he had something to hide. He didn’t want to do that if only because Daphne would clap her hands for glee when she heard.

            “I want to date you,” he said. “Will you date me?”

            “No.”

            Potter pivoted on one heel and walked back to his desk, as though he considered this conversation over. Draco followed him. He could tell from the slight hunch of Potter’s shoulders as he sat down that this was affecting him, and from Weasley’s werewolf glare that he might be courting danger, but he couldn’t pay attention to that right now.

            “I want you,” Draco said softly, directly into Potter’s ear. “More than I’ve wanted anyone for a long time. What would you say to a date where we didn’t need to sleep together? A dinner, a conversation, perhaps some dancing?”

            Potter tensed up all over, as though someone had poured an Alertness Potion down his spine, starting from his shoulders. Then he looked up and gave Draco a fake smile that he didn’t even have the decency to pretend wasn’t fake. “I’m not good at dancing, either.”

            “Then what do you like to do?” Draco perched himself on the corner of Potter’s desk, and as though that was less objectionable to standing over him, Weasley grunted and went back to his work. Draco watched Potter’s bowed head. He was beginning to think that it was a mistake to have confronted Potter at the Ministry. Mostly, he had wanted a public setting so that Potter wouldn’t find it so easy to slip away, but there were too many things he couldn’t say here.

            “Eat by myself, and go to bed early,” Potter said, and this time his smile had turned almost poisonously sweet.

            “A compromise,” Draco said, smiling at Potter. “Invite me over to your house for dinner, and I’ll eat with you in silence. It’ll be like being by yourself.”

            Potter’s jaw fell, although he shot up a hand and caught it, propping it back into place before it could start looking ridiculous. “What?” he whispered. “You would—why would you do something like that?”

            “Because I want to be with you,” Draco said. “If it takes longer and I have to do some unusual things, that’s the price I have to pay.”

            “You have no idea about the price you’ll pay,” Potter whispered harshly, leaning towards him and letting his warm breath stroke over Draco’s lips. Draco shut his eyes and listened to the rhythm of air moving in and out of Potter’s lungs. He wondered if any of Potter’s other lovers had ever sat like this and simply listened to him. “The real one. The one that’ll batter your heart and your body.”

            “That’s what someone else told you, isn’t it?” Draco raised his hand without opening his eyes, and caught Potter’s hand exactly where he expected to find it, tracing over the delicate bones of his wrist. “And you think it was the truth for everyone?”

            Potter’s hand tensed in his, and then Potter gave a strong yank. Draco stood up, sliding easily down from the desk, and opened his eyes. Yes, it was the right hand he held, the one with the scar from the Blood Quill on the back.

            “It was the truth that I ignored for too long,” Potter said, looking straight at him, and with his eyes full of shining light and defiance and flame that Draco wanted to touch. He’s made his weakness into his strength, indeed. “I don’t want to ignore it for anyone else, so I’m going to make sure that no one else gets hurt.”

            Draco raised Potter’s hand further. He knew that Potter wouldn’t suspect what Draco was really doing until it was too late. He would just think Draco was displaying the scar to their audience. “This was something else that hurt someone, didn’t it?”

            Or you think it did. But he wouldn’t soften that, not at this moment.

            Potter sat up straighter. “Yes, it did. You don’t think it’s ugly, looking at it?”

            Draco thought it was hideous. But it made him ache with a desperate, painful hopelessness to see Potter sitting there, expecting to be scorned, to be mocked, to be walked away from, and that made him wish that someone had put Dittany on the scar in time or that Umbridge had never tortured Potter, not that he’d never seen the scar.

            Draco drew Potter’s hand up and up, until Potter had to stand. Potter came easily, his lips twisted into a half-smile. He thought he knew all about what Draco was doing, and his stance said that no one could humiliate or hurt him anymore.

            Draco lifted Potter’s hand to his lips and kissed the scar, straight on one of the sloppy curves of the s in lies.

            Potter tried again to pull back, but shock made him weak, and Draco finished the kiss first. He placed Potter’s hand back on the desk and bowed, deeply, at the waist, but keeping his head raised so that his eyes were never off Potter’s.

            “I think what was done to you was uglier,” Draco said, and then straightened up, and smiled, and walked away from Potter, through the crowd of watchers who parted for him. Draco still wished he could have done that gesture in private, but it would have been easier for Potter to dismiss it there. And it was Draco’s own bad judgment that meant they had an audience, anyway.

            There, Potter. Dismiss that.

*

            Is he mad?

            Harry stared at the back of his hand, the part of the scar that Malfoy had kissed. How could he? He didn’t have Frank’s long intimacy with Harry, true, and thus maybe he had less reason to flinch from the scar, but he knew the person who had inflicted it. That ought to make him more cautious about associating with Harry, not less.

            I think what was done to you was uglier.

            But the scar was what was done to him. Harry clenched his hand into a fist, and watched the way the monstrous words wavered back and forth for a second before he turned his back and sat down at his desk.

            “Show’s over,” he added, to the people who were still almost climbing over each other in the corridors to watch him. “Or are you watching for something that you can tell your grandchildren about and claim was seen decently?”

            The audience left, after that. Harry sighed and kept working, filing at least two reports before Ron cleared his throat.

            Harry spun to face him, then, and raised a Privacy Charm around their desks and cubicle. If he was going to have another distressingly intimate conversation, he would have it with charms on from the beginning. “Yeah?” he asked.

            “What did Malfoy mean with that last thing he said?” Ron had his feet up on his desk again, his hands behind his head. Hermione would scold them if she saw, Harry thought with a smile that he knew was faint.

            He rubbed his forehead and sighed. Malfoy had confused everything, just when Harry was sure that he finally had his life sorted, and had had his decision not to date in the wizarding world confirmed. He had been stupid trying. He ought to stick to Muggles and people who would never know who he was and never want anything more from him.

            I confuse people just by being near them. I must have confused Malfoy, or he wouldn’t have wanted to date me at all.

            “I don’t know,” Harry said, rubbing his hand’s scar this time. “What was done to me, if not this? Is he referring to Umbridge’s punishment? But that has nothing to do with why we wouldn’t work if I tried to date him. The scar does.”

            Ron cleared his throat. Harry glanced over at him. That had been a significant throat-clearing, the kind Ron only did when he was sure he had a perspective on a situation that Harry hadn’t considered, and then usually it was about work.

            “What?” Harry asked, when Ron didn’t go on but stared at the paperwork on his desk as if that held the answer.

            “I think,” Ron said, voice as delicate as new ice, “that he meant the things Frank and the rest did to you were uglier.”

            Harry got up from his chair. He stood there for a second, with his hands on the back of it, and said, “But he doesn’t know about those, not in any detail. And he knows what I did to them. I think he has his pronouns wrong. I think he probably meant that what I did to them was uglier.”

            “And now you’re patronizing him again,” Ron said mildly.

            Harry shook his head and turned away. Malfoy had confused him too badly. He knew that he would get nothing done if he remained here, and there were people who needed his best. He would send a memo to the Head Auror and the Head of the Department, telling them he was leaving. Otherwise, there would be panic and worry, like there had been over the latest kidnap scare.

            His fingers shook as he dashed off the note, and he had to close his eyes and draw in a deep, slow breath before he could finish it. But when he opened his eyes again, Ron was there and taking the note from him, giving him a sympathetic smile before he leaned in to speak into Harry’s ear.

            “No matter what decision you make, mate,” he said, taking Harry’s hand and gripping it, “I’m here for you. Hermione’s here for you. That’ll never change.”

            Harry leaned against him for one long moment, wishing he could stay. But the confusion Malfoy had stirred up in him lashed the sides of his mind like a whirlwind, and Harry had to shake his head and pull away.

            “Thanks, Ron,” he whispered. “But I have to go home and do—something. Take a run or cast spells in my training room or something. Something that’ll use up the energy.”

            Ron nodded—Harry had covered for him, too, when Hermione had been ambushed and hurt by people who didn’t like the legal changes she was proposing—and he stood guard over Harry’s desk as Harry rushed out of the Ministry. The privacy charms were down, and people gawked and gaped and tried to make excuses to bump into Harry on his way out and chat with him.

            But Harry had got good at avoiding people over the last year, when he started admitting there could be no one in the wizarding world for him, and he no longer saw gossip as something he owed his co-workers. So he slid around them with a smile and a nod and a vague promise of “later,” and emerged into the sunlight with his eyes shut and his lungs drawing in bigger gulps of air than he had known he was capable of.

            He stood there for a few minutes with his arms folded, calming down. If it had been night, he knew where he would have gone. The Muggle clubs would be calling to him, promising the sort of relaxation that only came when Harry was giving pleasure to someone else and knew he was, making up, in some respects, for all the crimes he had committed in the past.

            But it was day, bright day, and Harry made his choice of a different goal. He Apparated home, almost scraped the lock off the door getting it open, and then grabbed the running shoes and clothes Hermione had given him for his last birthday. Three minutes later, he was pounding down the street, head lowered, trying his best to outrun the chaos Malfoy had dumped back into his life just when Harry had thought everything was settled, beautifully arranged.

*

            Draco looked up at the sound of applause. It was the sound he had been more or less longing for since he successfully arranged for the brewing of seven hundred vials of Wolfsbane, but he hadn’t thought it would happen outside his head.

            Daphne stood near the door. Draco stood up and advanced quickly on her, and Daphne fell back a step, but then shook her head and walked towards him instead. Draco could see from the quiver in her lip that it was hard for her, but she smiled at him and said, “Well done, Draco. Really. I’m impressed.”

            Draco locked his door with a single flick of his wand, not taking his eyes from Daphne’s face. He didn’t miss the way she swallowed, or the way her eyes flicked sideways towards the lock, just for a second.

            “Daphne,” he said gently. “You have two seconds to tell me what you’re doing here before I cast the Entrail-Expelling Curse on you.”

            She gasped, but the words rushed out before the deadline Draco had given her was up. “Wh—what I meant was that Potter has run away from the Ministry for the day. Sent some memo claiming that he just had to get away and his superiors would have to excuse him. The great Harry Potter, running from his own shadow. What could it be due to but that little conversation you had with him in his cubicle this morning?”

            Draco wanted to curse, but restrained himself with a single grind of his teeth. He ought to have anticipated this. He ought not to have confronted Harry at work in the first place, he could admit to himself now. He had only done it because he had been worried that Harry would think Draco had given up if he didn’t, and Draco wanted to show Harry that he finally had someone who would follow him from one end of the earth to the other if he had to.

            But Harry hadn’t taken it that way.

            And I spend an awful lot of time calling him Harry when I was thinking of him as Potter just this morning.

            Draco threw the thought away. It was a weak one, not one that he had time for at the moment. “Where did you learn this?”

            “The things that you can learn with a bit of flirting, a bit of bribery, and Disillusionment Charms,” Daphne said, lowering her eyelashes.

            “Good,” Draco said, unlocking his door and casting a few spells at his office so that Daphne—or anyone else who might have a grudge against him at the moment—couldn’t mess up his paperwork or his potions. “Then it was ordinary eavesdropping and gossip-hunting that anyone could do, and maybe I can convince Potter to spare your life when I find him.”

            “What are you talking about?” Daphne was following him, staring at him. Since that was what Draco had wanted, rather than her remaining in his office to damage anything, he didn’t try to stop her, and only turned to confront her when they were in the middle of the corridor. Daphne stood there with her hands knotting into one another, her eyes huge and focused on Draco as though he was the one who had threatened her. “What do you mean? Everyone knows that Potter is just temperamental and prone to taking off like this. I-it doesn’t mean that he’s stalking me to kill me.”

            Even better. Draco had only meant to make up a tale of Potter losing his temper, but the best lies were the ones that people convinced themselves of. He shrugged and eyed Daphne up and down, as though estimating her ability to survive in battle against Potter. “I don’t know for sure. But you ought to remember how successful Potter has been at tracking down criminals, and taking them down. Not even some of the Aurors know how he does it.”

            That, at least, was true, and it made Daphne scuttle away like the rat she was. Draco chuckled, and then turned and began to wave his wand in the complicated charm that would let him track a moving target and weave a chain between their location and Draco’s mind. Technically, the spell was illegal, but not enough on that side for the Ministry to have wards detecting it when it was cast.

            The chain shimmered into being behind Draco’s eyelids as he closed them, silver and made of long, gleaming links, touching the center of his forehead between the eyes. Draco opened his eyes, smiled, said, “Perfect,” aloud, and began to stride down the corridor.

            He did pause to turn around and cast a single sign at his door, in case someone besides Daphne linked his disappearance to Potter’s.

            Gone for lunch.

*

            Harry bent over, his hands on his knees and then wandering up to hold his stomach. He didn’t know how long he had run. A few miles, he suspected. Maybe five. Maybe more. He was still in wizarding London, but barely. He rubbed at the pain forming in his side, winced, and stood up, only he had to blink away sweat like tears before he could see where he was.

            Some unfamiliar street, at least half Muggle, if the buildings standing around him told the truth. Harry shrugged. Everywhere was the same distance from home when you could Apparate. He took out his wand.

            Then there came the sound of someone Apparating in behind him.

            Harry leaped into the air and twisted around, landing crouched on the balls of his feet, his wand up and his mouth already open in a snarl of gladness. Dealing with an enemy was the best outlet for his wild energy of all, because that meant he was doing something useful at the same time he was calming himself down.

            Which made it all the more bitter to see Malfoy standing there. Harry put his wand down, swallowed frustration as thick as blood, and folded his arms. “What do you want, Malfoy?”

            “To talk to you.” Malfoy moved a step nearer, and then stopped and looked around as though he was only noticing the Muggle buildings for the first time. Which made no sense, if had Apparated to find Harry, but Harry put that aside to worry about for later. “Why are you here? Why would you come to a place like this?” He turned to Harry and waited.

            For an answer, Harry supposed. But Harry didn’t feel like giving him one. He shrugged at Malfoy and turned away, walking towards a narrow space between two buildings that would keep someone from watching him as he Apparated.

            Malfoy trotted after him, more similar to a lost puppy than Harry would ever have suspected he could be. “Where are you going? Home? Will you invite me past the wards?” He spoke as if it was a question, but he held out an arm with an air that made it clear he expected to be invited.

            Harry turned around and stared at him. It was a good stare, a condescending stare. He had practiced it for those times in the Muggle clubs when someone he didn’t really want to sleep with approached him. Malfoy’s face flushed a long, slow pink under it, and his chin went up until Harry thought his eyes were watering from the force of his squint.

            “No,” Harry said, and focused his mind on his flat.

            Malfoy grabbed hold of him, effectively stopping him, since otherwise Harry would Side-Along Malfoy whether he wanted to or not, and then his wards would try to reject Malfoy, and it would be a messy situation of exactly the kind that Harry tried not to get into anymore. He shook Malfoy off immediately, but then Malfoy grabbed his other arm, and really, this was getting ridiculous. Harry already regretted that he had shown this much emotion to Malfoy, or told him anything at all about his other lovers. Malfoy was obviously someone who thought he deserved more than he was given, and since that was true all the time, it didn’t matter what Harry gave him.

            “You’re not invited home with me,” Harry snapped at him.

            “You acted as though you would be happy to invite me home and cook for me a few days ago,” Malfoy interrupted, a little breathless. His eyes were wide, and Harry wondered why. Exertion? Unused to being refused? “What changed?”

            “You keep saying things,” Harry said, and kicked hard, with a little twist to the side, in a way that made Malfoy release him and stagger back clutching his knee. “If you’d just wanted a casual relationship, where I sucked you sometimes and we saw each other sometimes, fine. That’s the only kind of thing I do. But you had to press further and act like you felt sorry for me. And you want things of me that I can’t give, like good kisses and a good fuck and consideration. Sorry for your luck. But I hear there’s a thriving industry in whores glamouring themselves to look like me. I’m sure that you can find one of them who’ll do it for you.”

            “I don’t want a whore,” Malfoy said, his face and voice so stark that Harry could imagine that he’d never worn such an expression or had to speak in such a way in his life before. Well, good for Harry, then. Malfoy needed a few fucking life lessons. “Otherwise, I would have accepted your offer.”

            Harry bowed and pressed a hand to his heart. “It’s flattering to have someone who understands me so well.”

            Malfoy dodged to the side, then seemed to register that the kick he was expecting hadn’t actually come at him, and straightened up, flushing, instead. Harry gave him a sweet smile, fluttered his fingers at him, and turned away again.

            “Have you ever tried to have someone teach you how to kiss?” Malfoy asked from behind him. “To teach you how to take off your glasses? It might do wonders, if you tried it.”

            Harry pinched the bridge of his nose. He ought to just leave. Apparate. Ignore Malfoy if he tried to bring this up in the corridors of the Ministry again. Act as though he never made a mistake and went back to dating wizards instead of Muggles. He could be with Muggles for the rest of his life, he knew he could. He’d been content before he started “dating” Malfoy, and he wanted that contentment back.

            But Malfoy had always got under his skin, and he was the first wizard Harry had been with in over a year. That gave him some sort of claim, Harry supposed, grudgingly. And it was more than remarkable that Malfoy was still here, when he had already seen how bad Harry was, instead of running the other way.

            Maybe it would take a fuck with me to teach him how useless I am with body parts other than my mouth.

            Harry shuddered. He hoped not. He didn’t want to either batter Malfoy’s arse or shrivel up Malfoy’s dick by doing his cold fish impersonation.

            He turned back and said, “I tried as hard as I could at everything. I got better with my mouth. But everything else hurt someone. Hard to ask the person whose lips you’ve just lacerated for lessons.”

            Malfoy rolled his eyes. “You’re exaggerating.”

            “I’m not,” Harry snapped, thinking of the finger-shaped bruises that Frank had on his hips, and the way Veronica winced away from him after the first time they made love, and the way Jacquelyn touched her lips and closed her eyes after their first kiss. Harry hadn’t understood what all of the signals meant at the time, but now he did, with the benefit of hindsight that Frank’s clear words had given him. “And I couldn’t do anything about hurting them, because I already had. Even Veronica Tobley, who you’ve probably heard of. I thought I’d learned enough by the time I started sleeping with her not to hurt her, but I still did. Why subject yourself to that?”

*

            Draco wanted to say so many things, including making fun of Potter for his apparent belief that he could shatter someone’s arse just by touching him.

            But icy water ran through him when he opened his mouth, and that wasn’t magic or even his common sense, which sometimes did interfere when he was about to say something sarcastic. It was the truth. He could look into Potter’s eyes and see, too clearly, that he believed everything he was saying. Some of it, coming from another person, would be self-pitying exaggeration, and some would be lies repeated from others, with the person who repeated them wanting reassurance.

            But Potter had absorbed everything that those people told him and made it part of the barriers that he used to hold others back from him.

            Why?

            Draco wanted to know who had said those things, and why, but most of all, he wanted to know why Potter believed them, where the arrogant boy who had believed he was above the rules and the hero who had done whatever he wanted with his life had gone.

            Draco shook his head a little and said, “The people who taught you couldn’t have been very good, and everyone knows that you can’t learn much about sex by yourself.”

            Potter’s throat twitched, but he didn’t answer.

            “Let me,” Draco whispered, and extended a hand. Potter didn’t try to touch it, but he didn’t try to avoid it, either. Draco rested it on Potter’s cheek. He smiled a little. “See? No snake tried to leap out of your skin and bite my fingers off.”

            “No, that only happened with a Muggle who tried to touch me without my permission,” Potter said absently.

            Draco shuddered. Potter’s lips turned up in a smirk that Draco never wanted to see again, and he stepped away. “You see?” he whispered. “This wouldn’t work even if I was the best at sex you’d ever bedded. You’re scared of me. Of my magic. And it would probably happen sometime around you. I get more fearful when someone’s fearful around me.” He closed his eyes. “It happened once in bed. I don’t want it to happen again.”

            Draco shook his head and moved nearer. “I wasn’t shuddering for a reason you just made up in your head,” he corrected, when he saw Potter looking at him again. “I shuddered because the thought of that much magic pouring through you makes me excited.” He paused, and then decided he might as well say everything he was thinking. One thing might convince this strange, startling Potter as well as another, Draco understood him so little. “And because I want to be the only one who touches you in a way that you invite.”

            Potter’s lips parted slightly, and he might have been anyone reluctant whom Draco was trying to seduce. Draco tried to encourage that by catching Potter’s eye and smiling, showing that, as far as he was concerned, Potter was just another person, someone Draco could respond to normally, and who could respond normally to him.

            But Potter snapped his walls up again, shaking his head as though Draco’s almost getting past them was a dangerous trick that he wasn’t about to let Draco repeat. “No,” he said. “You don’t really want that. You just think you want that.”

            Draco let his eyes narrow. “Ah,” he said. “I understand now how you hurt your lovers.”

            Potter turned eyes that were almost liquid on him. This is what he wants, Draco thought, an ashy disgust curling in his throat. This is what he understands. The rejection and being told that someone hates him.

            But Draco didn’t intend to spend a lot of time gratifying Potter’s wishes today. He intended to have his gratified, instead. Potter owed it to him after the way he had left Draco hanging the other night. “You patronize them to death until none of them can stand to be around you,” Draco finished.

            Potter flinched, but folded his arms across his chest as if to hide the sucking wound Draco had just dealt and counterattacked. “How do I patronize you, then?”

            “You think you know my own thoughts and desires better than I do.” Draco moved in towards him again, and Potter didn’t retreat this time, though that might only have been out of rage and not the desire that Draco hoped it was. “You think you have to protect me from being hurt by you, as though I was a child playing with fire instead of the grown man, certain of what I want, that I am. Why do you do that?”

            “Because I was blind once,” Potter said, and the bitterness would be enough to make Draco pause if he hadn’t already made up his mind that nothing would make him pause. He moved nearer again instead, and Potter was too occupied in staring at the past to stop him. “Because I should have realized long before I did that I was hurting them, and stopped. They didn’t tell me because they were too kind and gracious to—”

            Draco snorted.

            Potter turned on him, his body a single coiling whip of muscle. Draco watched him and wondered why that quality, at least, hadn’t kept some of Potter’s lovers in bed. “If you say a word against them, we are done here,” Potter said quietly. “You don’t know anything about them except what the distorted rumors said, and the vast majority of those were created by people who were jealous of them for enjoying me.” Potter rolled his eyes. “If they only knew.”

            His eyes locked on Draco’s. “But you’re too smart to believe those stupid rumors. So don’t you start.”

            Draco scowled and tried to control his temper, and then decided he might as well let it go. Why not? It wasn’t like Potter would be easy to do combat with either way, and this at least had the advantage of being honest. “They didn’t tell you because they were so kind and gracious and wanted to spare your feelings,” he said. “What kind of lover does that? Sits around waiting for you to realize that you’re hurting them, instead of having the courage and honesty to speak up about it?”

            “Courage and honesty.” Potter’s eyes had gone cold, so cold, but at least he had lowered his wand and didn’t seem inclined to Apparate anywhere. “You would recognize those virtues if you woke up in bed next to them?”

            “You’re very sex-focused,” Draco said calmly. “But considering the string of unfortunate people who told you that you were no good, I can understand.”

            Potter’s fury choked him, and Draco rolled ahead into the gap. “Someone who expects you to read their minds doesn’t tell you the truth, Potter. Someone who wants to sulk and flounce and be attended to and use their pain, when they do reveal it, to guilt you into doing things for them, doesn’t tell the truth. Because why wouldn’t they speak up earlier, if you were hurting them so badly that it’ll scar them forever?”

            “I don’t think I scarred them,” Potter whispered, and this time his eyes were looking into some sort of private hell, from the expression in them. “I think all the bruises and marks I left healed.”

            “Emotionally,” Draco said. “Merlin, Potter. Does that aspect of sexual involvement even exist for you anymore?”

*

            This time, the fire burned through the memories, the things that Harry wanted to atone for and explain and leave unsaid all at the same time. He still thought he should warn Malfoy. If he knew everything, or more likely if Harry could explain the truth in such a way that Malfoy would know what Veronica and Frank and the rest had experienced, then he would walk in the opposite direction thanking magic for his good fortune.

            But what Malfoy had said…

            “That’s what I want,” Harry snapped. “Everything I want. What I wanted was someone who would share my life with me, far more than I wanted a bed partner.” He closed his eyes so that he wouldn’t strike out, because he knew his magic was so near the surface that it was a real possibility. “What kind of inhuman monster do you think I am, that I don’t want that?” he whispered.

            Something changed in the air near him, and Harry opened his eyes to see that Malfoy was right in front of him. When had that happened? Harry raised his hands, intending to bat Malfoy away or make a barrier, and Malfoy seized his wrists and wrenched them down. Harry yanked again, remembering the way Malfoy had touched his hands this morning, and not wanting a repeat of that. The Blood Quill scar on the back of his right hand still burned and stung where Malfoy had kissed it.

            “I think that you’re someone who’s trying to be an inhuman monster,” Malfoy whispered to him, his voice as near as his kisses had been, nearer than his hands. Harry tried to pull free again, but he was hampered by the narrow confines of the alley and the stronger hold Malfoy had on him than he had on Malfoy and, all right, by the warm weakness creeping through him that said merely being held again was a wonderful thing, no matter the circumstances. But then, that was the sort of weakness Harry had always known he was prone to, the same kind that made him long for a partner when he had already learned that he was too dangerous for one. “Someone who wants to deny every connection that someone could have with him, who wants to deny his lover the right to even touch him.”

            Harry pulled again, and this time his wrists popped free. He retreated, and found stone against his back. Malfoy was walking towards him again, mouth set in a sour expression.

            That strengthened Harry, practically threw the strength into his back and legs, because it was familiar. He straightened up and shook his head at Malfoy. “I’m not your duty,” he told him quietly. “You don’t owe me anything. You don’t have to kiss and touch me because you think you do.”

            “You prick,” Malfoy said, his voice lowering to a level that Harry was automatically sure meant danger. “You owe me.”

            And that was familiar again, the concept of debts, although with most of the ones he had hurt, they were debts that Harry knew he could never repay. He nodded shortly. “Fine. What do you need?”

            “To touch you,” Malfoy said, and did it again, sliding his hand along Harry’s collarbone as though he wanted to trace it down and under his shirt. Harry shied. Malfoy’s hand was too close to several of his scars, including a few of the ones that had made Karl close his eyes, and Karl was the kindest lover Harry had ever had. “To teach you. Of course, I can’t do that without you wanting me to do it. But you owe me a chance.” And he stood there, staring into Harry’s eyes and making Harry feel that he had nowhere to run.

            Which was ridiculous, of course. He still had his wand in hand, and there were no wards that would prevent Apparition here.

            But still part of Harry whimpered and flinched away, and it took him forever to set his teeth and say, “Fine. One lesson. And after that, don’t blame me if you never want to come back again.” No one did, he knew. Malfoy was already strange in that he wanted to try kissing again. But a second trial ought to convince him.

            Malfoy said nothing. Harry opened his eyes, wondering if he had convinced the git with those last words, or, more likely, if he had simply wanted to press until Harry’s will cracked and then leave.

            Malfoy was giving him a big smile with all the trimmings instead. “Fine,” he said, and took Harry’s hand. “Now are you going to invite me home?”

*

            Draco looked around the door that Potter led him in through and raised his eyebrows. There was nothing of the quiet elegance he had almost expected, given the way that Potter had reacted to the luxury of the Sapphire Rose, as though he didn’t see it every day but didn’t think it was anything unusual, either.

            The place was decorated well enough, in gentle, simple colors, and there was a large table for eating and comfortable chairs and a fireplace with patterned stone above and around it that Draco had to admit would be nice to watch when shadows were playing over it in the evening and you were sitting in front of the fire with your eyes almost closed. But nothing that echoed his house, nothing that compared to what he could give Potter.

            “Let’s get this over with.”

            Draco started and turned. Potter was standing in the kitchen, his arms folded and his stare so intense that Draco nearly lifted his hand to his face to feel if it was flaking the skin off. Instead, he forced his hands to remain at his sides and gave Potter the most neutral smile he could imagine.

            “What do you mean?” he asked.

            “I promised you one lesson, and you promised me a lesson in kissing.” Potter took a step towards him. But Draco was watching his eyes instead of his body, and saw the way they almost closed, lashes fluttering defensively. “Would you rather do it here, or in the kitchen, or in the bedroom?” He lowered his voice on the last word, but for once, Draco didn’t think it was an attempt at seduction.

            “Here,” Draco said, and sank down on the one couch in front of the fire, his hands spreading out along the back. “Come here, and take off your glasses.”

            Potter swallowed, so loudly that Draco expected to hear someone complain from the street, and took off his glasses. His eyes dominated his face without them, overwhelming. Even though Draco could see the lightning bolt scar half-peeking from beneath Potter’s fringe, it was no longer the most important thing about him.

            Draco raised his hand and curved it, beckoning without words this time. Potter came towards him, steps as heavy as an elephant’s.

            “What is it?” Draco whispered, sliding his hand beneath Potter’s chin when Potter knelt down in front of him.

            “You’ll let me know in a second,” Potter mumbled to him. “You said you despised them because they didn’t let me know what they were thinking. You’ll let me know the second you’re in pain? You’ll pull back?”

            Draco bit his lip, savagely, and Potter stirred in front of him like a gazelle. Draco had to calm himself down and nod. “I’ll tell you.”

            “Good,” Potter said, and his smile was so bright that Draco leaned in. Potter almost immediately tried to jab his head forwards, and Draco caught his chin again and pulled back.

            “First lesson,” he said. “You don’t have to kiss like a bird pecking at a biscuit. Go nice, and slow.” He paused and thought about that, because Potter was looking at him with the kind of weary patience that said he’d heard those lines before. “Better yet, why don’t you hold still and let me touch you?”

            A quiver ran through Potter like a nervous spasm. Draco knew why, one point of understanding in a blank of confusion. Potter wanted to touch people, not be touched. He didn’t want to do anything but give people something and then retreat.

            “This is what I want,” Draco said, using the voice that he used to make his Potions apprentices leap to their duties. “And you agreed you owed me this much.”

            Potter nodded, and then held still. His hands rested on his knees, quivering, but then fell quiet. Draco thought about hauling Potter onto the couch with him, so he would be more comfortable, but he was reluctant to make him move just after he’d asked him to be still.

            So Draco leaned in and kissed him instead.

            Potter kept his mouth motionless, his head motionless. Draco turned his own head gently back and forth, doing nothing but slide his lips over Potter’s. Potter was making muffled gasps deep in his throat. Draco didn’t know exactly what for. He thought it was going well enough so far. Potter’s mouth was as dry and gentle as anyone else’s from the outside, which ought to go part of the way to disrupting his notion that he was inherently bad at sex.

            “Good,” Draco whispered when he pulled back. “Now, I want you to open your mouth and only move your tongue. Nothing else. Not even your lips. And I want you to move it slowly, rather than quickly. Can you do that?”

            Potter’s eyes flicked open, then shut again. It was as though he was too overwhelmed by what he was doing to look, but also as though he thought it would go away if he looked. He hummed once.

            “Good,” Draco whispered again, and then opened his own mouth.

            Their tongues slid together, so slow and smooth that Draco was afraid for a moment it was choking Potter. But no, it wasn’t. Only slow, only smooth, and when Potter tensed and then acted as if he would flick his tongue down Draco’s throat after all, Draco pulled back, just as slow, just as smooth, and making it clear that it was all his idea, not because he was tired or rattled or hurt.

            “Just depend on me,” he said. “Can you do that? I’ll tell you when I want you to move it faster, kiss me deeper. Think of it as another way of serving my pleasure,” he added, when Potter hesitated. “That is what you want, isn’t it?”

*

            He makes it sound like something dirty.

            But Harry had come this far, and he had given Malfoy what he felt he was owed, and once this was done, he didn’t have to see the git ever again, if he didn’t want to.

            And he had to admit, he had missed kissing. He knew it was horrible, but he had wanted to hold another person the way Malfoy was holding him now, kiss another person with the slow sweetness that Malfoy was kissing him.

            Except it was never slow enough, and the sweetness was all in Harry’s head.

            Harry stiffened up and started to move back, but Malfoy immediately caught his cheeks again, pressing in enough that the touch was painful. “I’ll tell you,” he said, not angry but intense, eyes a few centimeters away from Harry’s. “All right?”

            Harry swallowed, once, although his throat was so constricted that it didn’t feel like it went all the way down. Then he nodded.

            This wasn’t what he was made for, not the kind of happiness he was meant to have. But there was that weakness again, and when he was with Malfoy, he could pretend for a little while. That made it hard to refuse.

            Malfoy kissed him again, and slid his tongue so gently down Harry’s teeth that it was like it wasn’t there at all—until he suddenly pressed it forcefully into Harry’s own tongue, and hissed something between his teeth. Harry couldn’t understand it very well, given how occupied Malfoy’s mouth was with kissing rather than speaking, but he knew what it meant.

            Hesitantly, expecting every moment to hear another hiss that meant pain, he eased his tongue into Malfoy’s mouth, down over his front teeth, along his gums. It was slick and wet and burning, and Harry wanted to go faster.

            But he held still, held steady, even though he was shaking, a fine trembling that had invaded his limbs and made him kneel there swaying back and forth. His head was steady, though. It had to be, as tightly as Malfoy’s hands were clasping him.

            And then Malfoy’s tongue swept down and gently captured his, and Harry let his eyes fall shut with relief as he realized that this was probably the first time he had ever kissed someone and not hurt them. He let Malfoy guide, let him lead, and this time the wetness was good, was adding to the slickness and the friction and the desire between their mouths. Harry was hard.

            Luckily, he was good at ignoring that.

            Malfoy pulled back at last, his eyes thoughtful and his hand caressing Harry’s cheek for a second before drifting away. Harry bowed his head and sucked in a breath that went deep enough to hurt.

            “All right,” he whispered. “That wasn’t horrible.”

            “No,” Malfoy said in a considering way. “But not nearly as good as I know it could have been, either. I’ll see you tomorrow,” he added, sauntering towards the door.

            “The fuck?” Harry asked blankly, tottering to his feet. The second-to-last sentence Malfoy had said had made every muscle in his body contract, because it was so much the sort of thing Veronica and the others would say before they walked out the door. But the last sentence contradicted everything. “I told you, one lesson. That’s it.”

            “And it felt good, didn’t it?” Malfoy turned just his head back over his shoulder, the challenge as fierce and free as fire in his eyes.

            Harry felt something in himself crumble as he stared at Malfoy. He knew he would say things if he stayed here that he shouldn’t say to anybody, not because they would hurt Malfoy but because they would betray others.

            “That doesn’t matter,” he said, and stomped into his bedroom, and slammed the door. He forced himself to stand there until he heard the sound of Malfoy walking out. That was all he did. He didn’t take anything, or brand anything to show he’d been there, or leave the door to Harry’s flat open to show that he was free to come and go as he pleased.

            But by then, Harry knew how stupid his own earlier thoughts had been. He wasn’t going to be free of Malfoy. Malfoy would come back, and probably attempt to get Harry to the point where they would fuck.

            And then it would all go downhill. Because no matter how good Malfoy might be at teaching Harry to kiss, he couldn’t change the fact that Harry had all but raped people in the past. That was the deepest guilt of all, that Harry hadn’t known how badly they didn’t want it when he was inside them. How could someone not know that?

            And fuck what Malfoy had said about Harry patronizing people and thinking he knew them better than they knew themselves. This wasn’t about protecting Malfoy. It was about protecting himself. Harry already had all the guilt he could handle; he didn’t need more eating like acid into his soul.

            So he leaned against the door and began to plan. He wouldn’t hurt Malfoy deliberately, not with his fists and not with his magic and not even with his words or his tongue.

            But there were other reasons that Veronica and all the rest had left him, reasons that had nothing to do with what he looked like or how poorly he fucked. And Harry already knew that Malfoy valued the emotional side of things. When he showed Malfoy how damaged he was there, how much care he would need if Malfoy ever intended to become his permanent lover, Malfoy would back off.

            And Harry knew just how to convince him of that, too.

            He lifted his head and smiled at the far wall where a mirror had once hung. Harry had taken it down once he no longer needed it to see his reflection, when other people’s eyes became enough for him.

            “Still the game to me, Malfoy,” he whispered.

*

            delia cerrano: I don’t think that’s true of everyone—Ron and Hermione and the Weasleys, for example. And most of them honestly didn’t know about the Dursleys or mean to make the problems caused by them any worse.

            neogetz: Thanks. I hope you don’t feel this chapter was a cliffhanger, because I really didn’t mean it to be, but I’m glad you find this story so emotionally involving.

            LaffyTaffy: Thanks! Draco is trying hard, at least, and Harry is strong in ways that Draco doesn’t understand right now.

            CareLessLover: It was. Harry thought Draco would follow the track record of his other lovers and give up on him.

            SP777: Draco does know that now, and I think you can see him being blunt in this chapter.

            moodysavage: Yes, he will.

            TRUgrit: Not for a while, just because it’ll take a while for Harry to trust Draco that much. But eventually.

            Stephie: Thank you!
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