Kneeling

A/N: 100 reviews! You have no idea how happy it makes me that so many people are reading and commenting. Thank you all so very, very much.
Sorry it took me so long to get back to you, but my life has suddenly become horribly busy. I promise I’m not abandoning this fic, though.


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Draco had never felt anything like this. His whole body still seemed alight with pleasure. It wasn’t so much due to any great skill on Harry’s side - in fact, it had been kind of obvious how inexperienced Harry was - but rather the fact that he was doing something like that for him at all. Willingly. If he had known that this would happen, he never could have held out as long as he had.

In following Harry to that secret room, he had willingly surrendered the last shreds of his dignity, expecting their encounter to go like every one before it had. What had happened instead - Harry’s awkward apology, his willing submission, and finally, this - he still couldn’t quite wrap his head around it. For the first time, Harry seemed to care.

Draco didn’t know how long this unexpected change of attitude was going to last, if things would be back to normal the next time they met. But he was going to enjoy it while it lasted. At this one moment in time, after Harry had finally made love to him the way he had always dreamed of, allowed to sleep snuggled up to Harry for the first time, he felt more content than he could ever remember being in his life.

Still, he knew it would be best to leave before Harry woke up, knew that in the morning he would probably be as cold and aloof as ever again. He tried not to let the thought break his heart.


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To all outward appearances, that night didn’t change anything. They still met in dark, secluded corridors, furtively, and snaked into secret rooms to fuck. But underneath, where it counted? Everything had changed.

There seemed to be a completely new dynamic to their relationship. They usually took their time now, instead of trying to get each other off as fast as possible. They allowed themselves to play around, to explore the other one’s body, almost like real lovers would do.

To his surprise, Harry found that he actually enjoyed this a whole lot more. For one thing, it didn’t give him nearly as much of a bad consciense. He was still all too aware of the fact that this was Draco Malfoy he was fucking, but he didn’t cringe anymore at the mere thought of it. He hadn’t known just how much he had felt like we was taking advantage of Draco until the feeling ceased.

And it was surprisingly hot to whisper “Tell me what you want” against Draco’s skin and see Draco’s cock twitch in response. Bit by bit he learned what Draco liked, what made him arch up, or gasp, or come. To his surprise, it was rather different from what he himself preferred.
Draco liked to be fucked long and slow, face to face. He liked to wrap his legs around Harry’s hips, or put them on top of his shoulders, and didn’t seem to mind getting twisted into impossible positions when Harry forgot to watch his movements in the heat of climax.

Another thing that baffled Harry was that Draco could come just from having his nipples played with. He himself didn’t get anything at all out of being touched there, and the rougher touches and bites that Draco liked when he was strongly aroused just hurt him. He didn’t mind doing it to Draco, and even got pretty good at intuiting just what kind of touch Draco wanted at any given moment, but he just didn’t see the appeal himself.

He even learned to suck Draco off with some measure of grace. He didn’t manage to do it quite as skillfully as Draco could, and he didn’t ever try to swallow again, but he’d gotten a whole lot better since his fumbling first time. It helped that Draco was never anything but grateful and responsive, and usually seemed perfectly happy with his efforts. He wasn’t shy about offering advice, but strangely enough he wasn’t condescending about it, either.

The biggest change, however, was that they started to talk to each other after they had fucked, even sometimes lazing in bed together. Harry found out that Draco had an amazing talent for telling stories, a way of varying his expression, gestures and voice that brought the people he talked about alive in Harry’s mind, especially when he used it to imitate pupils and teachers.
Suddenly, it wasn’t just about impersonal fucking anymore. Harry wasn’t really comfortable having anything even vaguely resembling a real relationship with a Malfoy, but most of the time, he deliberately didn’t think about that.

The world owed him a little happiness now and then after all he had been through, didn’t it? And if he found that for some strange reason he actually kind of enjoyed talking to Draco, of all people, well, what harm did it do? It wasn’t like he told him any secrets or anything.
Harry slowly got to know what Draco was like when he wasn’t making an effort to be an asshole. He couldn’t help but start to like that private Draco, the one he only got to see when they were alone together. That Draco seemed to be an entirely different person from the supercilious bastard he used to know, the one he still met outside of their secret rooms, the one he still thought of as “Malfoy”.

He found that he could enjoy Draco’s cutting sarcasm when it wasn’t aimed at him or his friends. And even when they were bitching about someone they both disliked, like Professor Binns or Trelawney, Draco’s little jabs seemed to lack the mean spiritedness Harry had always reviled in Malfoy.

Despite the fact that it still felt strange beyond all reason to be holding a civil - no, a friendly - conversation with Draco Malfoy, he had to admit (at least to himself) that he enjoyed their talks. He was pretty sure that Draco did, too - sometimes, when he thought Harry wasn’t looking, he caught Draco smiling at him with a twinkle in his eyes that looked almost like happiness.

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