Distorted Exposure

AN: Don't kill me for the wait.

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Harry woke with the contented sensation of having his arms wrapped firmly around the solid warmth of another body. Smiling into the barely lit room Harry yawned and did his best to stretch out without waking the blond in his arms. Up close, even in the indistinct light of dawn that eased in beneath the windows Draco looked absolutely gorgeous and even a little docile in his sleep. It was this thought that brought the smile to his lips so early in the morning.

The lump in his arms turned abruptly, murmured something unintelligible and tried to burrow up against him. Harry wondered briefly whether a fully awake Draco Malfoy would have been mollified at such behaviour. It didn’t really matter, Harry knew, it was beyond the point of being about long dead rivalries or unfaltering pride, it was long past such petty things.

Harry watched Draco sleeping and felt oddly protective of the blond as he twisted in his sleep, his expression contorting in discomfort as he turned. Harry realized he had been rough with Draco the night before but he wasn’t about to make any excuses, especially considering how hard it was for him to control himself in the presence of the blond in the first place. Besides, he knew just how enjoyable it had been, for the both of them.

Draco squirmed a touch, pulling away a little and then slowly his eyes fluttered open revealing glazed sleep laden storm grey orbs to the world. Harry had time to notice that Draco’s eyes were distinctly darker in the morning almost a dull slate colour and the observation brought a smile to his lips once again.

“Potter?” Draco, quite nearly whined, blinking slowly as he gazed up at the brunet who still had his arms wrapped around Draco’s smaller frame.

“Ah, you’re awake...” Harry said softly as he loosened his arms from around the blond a little reluctantly, not really willing to let the warmth go but not wanting to seem as though he was holding Draco captive.

Draco snorted in amusement. “Aren’t you particularly fast on the uptake this morning.” Came the dry reply and Harry only continued to smile.

Even so there was a dull ache that took root somewhere deep within as Harry waited to see how Draco would react. He wasn’t quite sure when he had become so deeply enamoured with the blond. Sure there had always been the physical attraction, that was hard to miss and harder still to deny but he hadn’t thought he had dug himself so deep so as to become anything more than physically entangled with Draco.

“What’s with that look?” Draco asked.

Harry didn’t respond. Draco shrugged Harry’s arms off of him and rolled away. “Fuck Potter, this hurts.”

“That’s not the way you sang it last night.”

Draco smiled, not smirked, smiled and Harry felt the pace of his heart pick up just a little. Draco turned and pulled the covers around him as he did, leaving Harry completely bare but he didn’t mind.

“Last night was...” Draco trailed off and Harry simply continued to watch him, not wanting to ask anything of the blond. “...good.” Draco said at last, his eyes catching for a moment with Harry’s before snapping away. Draco stood with his back to the brunet his shoulders tensed as he wrapped the covers tighter around himself and Harry felt his insides contract painfully. Draco back was a portrait of perfection, flawless ivory skin smoothed over corded shifting muscles, with lines that ran in symmetry down his back, leading his eyes in an irresistible path down his body until his gaze ran across the hem of the blanket.

“Is that all you want to say?” Harry asked, not sure what prompted him to do so.

“What do you want me to say?” Draco asked in response, not bothering to turn around. His voice reached Harry as a harsh whisper and Harry winced internally at the tone. He wasn’t sure how to answer the question, he didn’t know what he wanted from Draco.

“Something more profound, meaningful maybe.” Harry muttered, sounding slightly bitter even to his own ears.

“It was sex Potter, not a bloody miracle.” Draco snapped, whipping around to glare furiously at the brunet, laying spread eagle and completely naked on the black and gold sheets, his tan skin in dark contrast to the colours beneath him, even in the dimly lit room.

Draco felt his cheeks flare with heat at the sight but he didn’t look away, or rather he couldn’t look away, not willingly at any rate. It was hard glaring at Potter so resolutely, especially when he looked like a fallen god lying there on the bed, so completely at ease with himself.

“Right that’s what a Malfoy lives for right? Sex and cuddling.” His tone was only casually spiteful.

Draco turned his nose up at that comment, his mouth opened and shut quickly as he failed to rebuff Harry’s jab.

Harry sighed. “Look Malfoy, it doesn’t matter. I didn’t mean anything by it, I just wish you’d quit treating this like some horrible mistake you made while drunk.”

“Fine Potter. It was...” Draco paused, as though doubting he was really going to say what he was thinking of saying. Harry almost felt the need to hold his breath in anticipation but resisted. “It was intense...and memorable.”

Harry smirked. Draco scowled, snarled deep in his throat and blushed. His cheeks reddening just enough to be noticeable in the growing light.

“Now that wasn’t so hard was it?”

“Whatever Potter, I’m going to take a shower.”

“Was that an invitation?”

Draco paused, glancing sparingly at the brunet. Dropping the quilt around his waist he kept walking. Harry licked his lips, swallowed and slid himself off the bed, stalking the blond, biting his lip with every slight sway of his hips. He wondered passingly just how sore Draco was going to be by the end of their little reprieve from shoots before stepping in the bathroom and locking its door with a final sort of click.

Harry decided, while appraising Draco’s body in the more ample light of the bathroom, that waking up face to face with Draco Malfoy of all people wasn’t as bad as he would have ever guessed it to be.

Though it did make him unbearably hard. But then there were a several ways of dealing with a morning erection, Harry knew, and some, he decided as Draco wrapped his hand around the firm, velvet length of his already leaking hardon, were far more enjoyable than others.

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The polite rapping of knuckles against the heavy wood of the double doors was enough to force Harry to pull his lips away from Draco’s and his hand away from the nape of the blond’s neck where he had been using it as leverage to snog Draco senseless.

Brushing his lips consciously on the back of his hand and running a hand though the haystack that was his hair Harry made his way over to the door, leaving Draco in his spot, leaning up against the desk that Harry had pushed him up against.

Draco wondered idly how long he and Potter would have continued on were it not for the interruption. After all they had both found that in relative silence, broken only by sounds of need and pleasure, the two of them meshed in unimaginably constructive ways.

Harry opened the door and Draco saw Alex leaning in the door frame. He could hear the soft spoken greetings and scowled at the way the photographer flirted shamelessly with Potter. Really some people had no class. Draco felt his scowl deepen as the ex-Gryffindor humoured him.

Alex leaned in and whispered something in the brunet’s ear and Potter laughed, a sound that rang through the room and seemed to stifle the air in Draco’s lungs. Draco hissed in annoyance, narrowing his eyes at the pair by the door. Sure he was only fucking around with Potter but he still expected the idiot to retain some sense of self-control around other men. It wasn’t as though Potter wasn’t satisfied.

Draco was about ready to teach Harry bloody Potter a thing or two about the nature of Malfoys when the brunet turned with a smile to wave him over. Draco glared at the him, cursing the nerve of the idiot and walked over to the door. Alex flashed him a smirk, one that Draco returned with a healthy dose of menace and Harry, glancing between the two thought it best to explain the situation.

“They’re done developing the photos taken so far and we’re supposed to take a look at them.” Harry summed shortly.

Draco simply nodded and at the motion of acceptance Alex turned to lead the way.

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When they were all seated in the snug little office Harry had first sat down with Ren in, the four of them simply allowed the silence to stretch on for a moment. Finally Draco found himself clearing his throat rather impatiently snapping his employers from their trance where they had been staring at a manila folder with reverent intensity.

Ren smiled and Alex simply gazed at the two men seated in chair before him. The tension in the room, though palpable was of an entirely different nature then that which had seen the premiere and extremely volatile encounter between the two models. Now the air seemed thick with a sort of apprehension and Alex found he had no clue as to why.

“So I suppose you two will like to see your photos then?” Ren asked in a cheerful voice. Harry nodded slowly and Draco only stared.

Ren tossed the manila folder onto the cluttered desk, atop all the other photos and papers, and delicately spread out the eight by elevens. There was a sharp intake of breath from Harry and he reached with a tentative hand for the top photo. It was one of the first and it featured him sitting on the couch, eyes locked with the sinfully burning gaze if the blond, looking all but lost in those deep gray wells.

The picture stroked something inside him and Harry felt his stomach clench. He could hear his heart beating in his ears but though his hand shook slightly and the blood in his veins began to grow uncomfortably warm Harry couldn’t draw his eyes away from the picture that he and Malfoy made.

The next instant his gaze was fixed on the next picture in the pile and then the next and the next. He suddenly found himself understanding why the usually playful siblings had adopted such a serious air. He hadn’t thought that he and Draco had such chemistry and to see it immortalized in picture was almost more than he could handle.

Suddenly Harry felt his eyes roaming, drawn to the other pictures that lined the walls, the desk, the floor. It helped cool the heat in his cheeks a little and clear his head some as well. Some of the pictures, he found, were far more blatantly sexual than anything he and Draco had helped to create and yet none of them spoke so much nor were quite as vibrant as a single image of himself and the blond.

Harry glanced over at Draco, wondering meekly whether his discomfort had been noticed but the blond was staring unwaveringly at the pictures spread out before him, a powerful flush of red colouring his cheeks. Harry wondered exactly what feelings they evoked in the ex-Slytherin, and if they were anything akin to what he felt looking at the pictures or if they were sordid fantasies, spurred by their activities the nights past, or if maybe even the blush was one of disgust. Harry couldn’t for the life of him tell.

The emerald gaze the brunet sported was scrutinising, and it spoke volumes in its uncertainty, in the way Harry frantically searched Draco’s face for any sort of response but the blond was stoic. With carefully steady fingers he reached for the pictures, shifting through them almost clinically with the periodic nod or sign of approval, but Harry didn’t miss the way the blond let his head drop, his bangs shielding gray eyes from the world. Harry wondered when he had picked up on that subtle trick of Malfoy’s.

Draco tossed a few pictures back onto the desk as he continued to leaf through the rest. On top happened to be one that captured the kiss between them on the stairwell. It was hard to imagine that he looked so submissive against Draco, especially knowing how the blond looked arching under him, utterly responsive and desperate for his very touch, willing to submit everything for just a touch.

The pictures made everything that was real all the more so and that was why Harry caught his heart racing at a thundering pace. That was why Harry knew that Draco clenched his hand around the arm of the chair not out of hatred for the images he saw but out frustration for what they implied.

Another set of pictures careened over the shot of the kiss, this time showing the Harry wrapped in Draco’s embrace, a double image produced by the mirror figures whose eyes gazed so intimately out from within the photo. Even in their stillness Harry could feel the way the gazes caught the shifting emotions between the two of them, swilling it back and forth.

In the photos was everything Harry had hoped never to admit. They were false, make believe situations only in principle. Sure the roles were reversed and yet everything that the pictures represented spoke volumes about his relationship with Malfoy. He could see the hesitance that permeated the room. To expose everything to the prying eyes of the world, it seemed almost cruel but really what choice to turn back was there now.

To scrap the photos would mean that both he and Draco would have to accept them as a reality. And that brought up implications that seemed even worse then the clinical dissection and trial by public eye.

The pain and confusion seem to resonate in Draco as well because as he placed the last of the photos back atop the manila confines, his hand shook furiously as they hadn’t done when he had reached to pick them up. Harry found himself more curious as to the blond’s response to the situation they were faced with as opposed to being inclined to examine his own feelings on the subject. He wondered if Draco even saw anything in the pictures, but then glancing at the very last picture that lay atop all the other Harry decided that he must.

Lying amidst the velvet covers of the huge canopy bed that had been a part of the last shoot were two figures sculpted of cream and ivory, the covers, portrayed as a curtain for modesty, were raised in all the right places to create a tantalising story beneath the sheets. Harry saw, in a detached sort of way, that his eyes were half-lidded and his head was turned to one side, resting peacefully right above where Malfoy’s heart would have been beating, and Draco was glancing out at the world, his lips pressed every so softly against ebony locks, the soft pink of them acting in sharp contrast to the jagged black of his hair. Draco’s eyes screamed of possession and the look itself brought to light the erection that throbbed in his lap which Harry had failed to notice up until then.

Harry glanced at Draco and without the blond noticing Harry felt a train of emotion roll through him. The picture seemed to implore to him and Harry wondered why at the moment the most tempting notion in his mind was to draw Draco into his arms and to bring forth that possessive look once more. Looking at the picture Harry realised that he wanted Draco, in every sense of the word, in every way that the picture seemed to convey. It had been taken the day after he had first taken Draco, and every ounce of emotion between them at that point in time seemed projected in the snapshot. Perhaps that was why when he replaced it back on the desk, Draco’s hand had shook where it had been so still and confident before. Harry swallowed, his throat feeling dry, and he found his couldn’t look at neither Ren nor Alex.

A tentative brush of the photo on top and Harry pulled his hand away as though burned by its existence. It was hard to think that pictures so still, capturing a single moment could bring to life the emotions of a lifetime. They were absolutely incredible and teasing all at once, an offering of what he wanted, what could be but never would.

“So how many more shoots will you be needing me for?” Draco’s voice was calm, absolutely professional, nothing at all like Harry felt.

“Just one.” Ren replied. If she was taken aback by the indifference of Draco Malfoy she didn’t let it show in the tone of her response. “As you can see these photos turned out magnificently. Never before have we had the pleasure of working with such natural chemistry. As such we got all the photos we needed in the shoots that we already had. Now all that we need are a couple individual shots of both you and Harry.”

“Right then.” Draco replied curtly, he seemed to be waiting for a dismissal.

“Ah, before you go, I want to clarify something,” Alex cut in softly, almost timid, which was quite unlike the photographer, “You are fine with us publishing the photos right?”

Harry felt the question being asked to the both of them. Harry opened his mouth to respond but found he didn’t know what to say.

“What an utterly ridiculous question.” Draco snapped to his right, and Harry quickly closed his mouth. “Why on earth would I have participated in this process if it wasn’t to have the photos published.”

Harry swallowed. So Malfoy was fine with it, he saw nothing more than a job well done in the pictures, or if he saw anything more he wasn’t perturbed by it, not enough to be phased for more than a split second at least. Right, well he could be just as cold and indifferent as Malfoy if it suited him. And yet Harry’s voice was soft and almost sad in its answer. “It’s fine.”

“Right.” Ren responded with some finality in her voice. “Well in that case, if you could meet us tomorrow Harry for your individual shoot and Draco yours will be the day after that.”

Draco nodded beside him and stood up, pocketing his hands as he did so. The siblings offered him twins smiles and the same for Harry who found himself standing, though more slowly than Draco.

“It’s been a real inspiration working with the two of you.” Alex said as Draco opened the door to leave. Harry didn’t miss the implication towards the both of them and in the way Draco paused at the door, the blond hadn’t missed it either. Harry offered up a simple smile and the Draco said nothing as he continued out the door.

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AN: Don't hate me. All those wonderful reviews and I make you guys wait two months for an update? Who the hell do I think I am? See I even yelled at myself, so no need to hate me. I'd like to sincerely apologise for the wait but I've had a hectic two months. I thought things would get better after the month of May, that I would have more time but if it were possible I seemed to have been more depleated of time in June than May. I know, excuses, excuses. But I really am sorry. Now however my schedule is completely cleared up and I should have plenty of time to write. I want to finish this fic within a year of its starting date so within the next two months I should be able to get the last four chapters up, I might even manage it faster if I'm further inspired.

In any case I hope everyone enjoyed the chapter. As you can see things are finally coming together which is nice. I'm glad to see how many people are still reading and enjoying my fic, the reviews were wonderful and if you liked this chapter, or even if you absolutely hated it leave a review telling me what you think. All feedback is appreciated.

- Incessant_Darkness

Edit: Cleaning things up a bit.