every scrap of you (you left them all to me)

Chapter 1

𝄞 never be so kind, you forget to be clever 𝄞

*

Without even realising, it's become a routine.

Friday nights, 9pm, Harry will send that text with an edge of uncertainty, thumb hovering over the send button, before he paces the room, checking his teeth in the mirror. And by 9:07—give or take a few minutes—the flames in the fireplace will whoosh vibrant green, in waltzing Draco wearing a shirt already three buttons loose and his tie draped from his neck.

And they'll make it to the hallway, sometimes the stairs, before someone's lips are on someone's neck, and one of them is hitching a gasp while the other is tossing garments to the floor, so familiar with this dance by now they make it through every twist and turn of the upstairs landing without tripping over anything.

Occasionally, it's two steps and they're on the sofa. But not tonight. Tonight they've stumbled to the intimacy of Harry's bedroom, a feeling of permanence in making it this far, where they'll collapse on the bed, hugged by warm sheets and duck-feather pillows. Draco's cologne is still woven into the fibres from two nights prior.

For the third night this week, Harry's got his heel hooked over Draco's shoulder, and thank Merlin for the mattress supporting his thirty-two-year-old back. Long gone are the days of shuffling trousers to ankles in the cubicle of a club, or that one time on the back seat of the Ford Anglia, (sorry Ron).

Just like all the times before, he pulls Draco down onto his lips, licking greedily into his mouth, fucking like they're starved of it, like it's the first time all over again, until they're spent and breathless, noses brushing, languid kisses ghosting into sleep.

And when Harry wakes hours later, he's alone again.

He knows it before he even opens his eyes.

Nothing but an expanse of creased, slightly warm bed sheet to his left in the place where, last night, a lovely body was nestled into his side.

Propping up onto his elbows, wincing at the stiffness across his lower half, Harry blinks heavily at the vacant space. The empty wine glasses on the bedside table explain his cloudy head, and the subtle tilt in the room as he sits up too fast. A trail of his clothes line the floor—the expensive shirt that he picked out especially. He's not sure why he made such a fuss over which one to wear when the only desired part of him was hidden underneath.

Pine-scented cologne and sweat linger, familiar and somewhat comforting. He collapses onto the pillow, breathes it in, lets his eyes fall closed again.

Maybe one day Draco will stay right through to breakfast, even longer if he's lucky.

༺ ༻

"Sorry I'm late, I—"

"Come in! Don't worry! Dealing with a vanilla pudding emergency!" Ginny's voice trails off down the hallway before the front door is even fully open.

Harry wouldn't expect anything less. Turning up to a five-year-olds birthday party an hour late usually invites chaos. He missed out on the calm before the storm and knows he's now walking into a typhoon of sugar and sticky hands. He wanders through the house, peering into empty rooms before deciphering that the faint cries of screaming children and teeth-grating pop music are coming from the back of the fairly sized cottage.

He's always been jealous of this house, with its beamed ceilings and bay windows. The kitchen is wide, with bifold doors that open up the entire back wall onto a garden that looks like it was taken straight out of Enchanted Homes Weekly. Ginny and Pansy have done well for themselves, to say the least.