Way Down We Go

Chapter 16

Harry has been staring at him.

Draco has noticed.

It's been so long since someone has looked at him with want that he doesn't even realise that's what's happening until Potter actually, verbally, confirms that he finds Draco attractive. And even then Draco doesn't quite believe it until he, well, starts paying attention.

And then he feels like an idiot.

Because Potter is about as discreet as a first-year with a crush and it's honestly embarrassing that Draco ever thought him capable of artifice—ever thought that Potter's initial hesitance to touch, followed by effusive clinginess upon being given permission—was a construct. That his lingering eyes and gentle assistance and concern over Draco's comfort was an act.

Potter is unabashedly greedy for physical contact to an extent that should be exasperating but, for some reason Draco can't determine, Potter's predilection for neediness is more endearing than anything else.

Possibly because Draco is equally starved for affection.

Regardless, Potter is the definition of guileless as he coaxes Lyra from around Draco's neck and delivers her to her terrarium for the night with soft, sibilant, conversation.

As he tucks a blanket around Draco's bare legs.

As he shifts Draco's head into his lap.

As he absently finger-combs his loose hair.

He waits until he thinks Draco is asleep before tracing the scalloped curve of his ear with a tenderness that makes Draco feel like—like—

He doesn't even know.

For someone who's spent most of his life acting as if he ought to be treated with the utmost care and reverence, now that he is, Draco is completely uncertain how to handle it.

He starts trying to return the kind gestures: digging his fingers into the knots on Potter's shoulders when they're watching television or bringing home an extra packet of Potter's favourite crisps after work. He makes Harry tea as he sorts through manuscripts and gives up napping in favour of squinting his way through correspondence between his great-aunt and one of Potter's distant many-times-removed cousins who were either friends or mortal enemies depending on the letter.

Draco can empathise.

He orders a roll of butcher paper on Amazon and tacks pieces up on the wall in the living room so they can draw out a rough genealogy tree of Potter's ancestors. And they add to it whenever they stumble upon a birth announcement or a mention of a wedding in a journal or a coming out ball invitation. There are a lot of blank spaces and question marks and scratched out portions. But it's growing. And sometimes Potter will pause whilst crossing the room, mug against his chest, and just...smile at it for a moment.

So the effort is worth it.

Draco offers to cut Potter's hair, but he declines.

Draco, shamefully, is relieved.

Potter's hair is nearing his shoulders, now: wild and objectively beautiful when it's fanned out around his sleeping face as he suns himself in the afternoons, sprawled artlessly in the open doorway of the potions barn whilst Draco tends to the plants.

Sometimes, Draco imagines seeing that dark hair tangled with blond on a shared pillow.

"Pansy," he says, face-down on the sofa one evening. "What has happened to me?"

Potter is off with his Gryffindors doing god knows what in London for the day. He took his invisibility cloak and he was dressed in his Auror uniform when he left, which Draco has certainly not spent the last several hours thinking about.