Apples and Oranges [Drarry] ✔

Chapter 14: One and Only

"The sad truth of the matter I'd come to know while watching him from afar even though he was only a step away, was that we were real people who made real choices with real consequences. More than once – in moments when tense anticipation of something more twisted between us – I wished we were nothing but characters in a story. In a good old romantic comedy.

Because rom-coms are rooted in daydreams. They're ideal visions of what we wish love could be in real life. There is something so gentle in the way a romantic comedy treats its reader.

But real life was nothing like a rom-com. No chance encounters. No perfect matches. No Grand Romantic Gestures. Only bad choices and missed chances and the bitter aftertaste of the what-ifs."

– Apples and Oranges by Francis Gallagher

_____

Draco Lucius Malfoy is a lying liar who lies.

To himself, mostly.

The thing about his book is that it's semi-autobiographical. Everyone knows that. Even Harry who bought the lie that the book was only inspired by real-life events knew that. Everyone who ever met Draco and read the book knows this and isn't even remotely surprised by it.

But the problem with this is that Draco cannot have the book in his vicinity. Because he might grow tempted to admire it – the result of all that hard work that is now appreciated by so many people – and then tempted to hold it in his hands, and then perhaps even open it.

And opening it would be disastrous.

Because the book is semi-autobiographical.

Because Draco has poured way too much of his heart and soul into it. His thoughts and feelings are so deeply etched into the words printed across the page that he sometimes wonders how the book smells like a book, and not like his shampoo or his cologne or his deodorant.

He made the mistake of opening the book yesterday. He read barely a couple of pages – didn't even finish the prologue – before chucking it across the room to get lost between the sofas in his living room.

I was sure of almost all things in life. In fact, I was sure of everything, but him. That's what he wrote about his fourteen-year-old self and reading it made his frustration and sorrow all the more prominent. He still isn't sure of him. But now, he isn't sure of anything else either.

When Harry originally sauntered into Rainbow Books, all cocky and self-righteous, all high and mighty, and as full of himself as he'd always been, Draco had half a mind to simply stop the proceedings and strangle him right then and there – in front of the captive audience.

But he didn't.

Mostly because of the shock.

Well, a dual shock.

Because really, he had no way of knowing Harry would just saunter into Rainbow Books during his meet and greet, and also because he had no way of knowing that the stupid Merlin-damned crush he had on the man was very much still present and as embarrassing as ever.

It took him most of that day to recover from that dual shock, quite frankly. And he'd survived the conversations with Harry mostly on autopilot and some excellent improvisation if he may say so himself. And yes, he flirted – because he couldn't help himself, but also because you flirt so obviously it can be seen from space, not a single sane person will ever take you seriously, ergo they'll never consider that there might be even the slightest chance that you might mean it for real.

But he didn't expect Harry to call him and he certainly didn't expect him to read Apples and Oranges, and he desperately prayed and hoped that Harry would never gleam the truth of the fact that Eric was Draco to the same degree that Draco was Eric, and most importantly, that Eric and Draco are the same in one crucial aspect: their endless and hopeless infatuation with their school rival.