The desk before him was neat and tidy. There were three perfectly aligned stacks of files in the top right hand corner, ordered properly and labeled clearly. There was a pot of ink and blotter with a quill at the ready in hands reach. Two picture frames with smiling redheads and one darker smiling man twinkling out at him from the left hand corner, the glass smudge free from finger prints and the wood stripped of the garish paint that had adorned it not long ago so that it matched the deep cherry wood of the desk.
Draco smiled at his work and sat back in the plush chair, already feeling more at home now than when he had arrived an hour ago in Weasley's and Potter's cubicle in the early hours of the morning before even a third of the Auror department had woken up. He couldn't stand clutter and disorganization, it nagged and nagged at him, just the thought of sharing Potter's overflowing work area for even one more day making it impossible for him to sleep.
Really that was the only reason he had gotten up so early, the idea of facing the clutter, absolutely nothing to do with laying eyes on Potter again or the dreams he had had for the last four miserable days that made him relive
it all over again - making it annoyingly difficult to enter said cubicle and face the man who was thusly tormenting him. It was aggravating him to no end that that
one damn night just wouldn't go the fuck away and leave him alone, that those moments in the men's loo were what plagued him at night when really he should have been far more concerned with the confusing case they had yet to make any headway on.
And it just wasn't at night that he found the memory and subsequent
reactions springing up on him. Being forced to share Potter and Weasley's cubicle over the week had basically confined Draco to be in continual breathing distance of the other man no matter how hard he tried to ignore or even flee from him. Potter seemed just as hopelessly clueless and horribly demanding as usual - smacking him in the forehead with wads of paper when Draco pointedly ignored a comment he directed at him, bumping his leg into Draco's beneath their shared desk far more often than Draco thought any living soul could possibly manage, he had even snatched Draco's tie and forcibly spun him around in his chair when he was trying and failing to get Draco to participate in some conversation or other with Weasley.
That had sparked a rather loud fight that the redhead had to physically break up.
It was all highly irritating, the touch of Potter's knee making a tingle travel up his spine in a rush, not to mention Potter's rather obscene habit of chewing on the end of his quill causing him to have caught Draco staring more than once - to which he would just cock his head and smile before jabbing the thing back between his lips and going back to his report. He had no idea how Weasley had managed sharing a workspace for so long with the git, how his constant twitching and apparent oral fixation hadn't driven him mad.
Not to mention the pressure that seemed to building in his chest that he blamed on the case but in all reality had more to do with the war hero than he cared to admit even to himself.
"Whoa, been busy have we?" Weasley popped around the corner, a half-eaten maple glazed doughnut clasped in his hand, the sugary frosting smeared across the corner of his mouth. His blue eyes drifted over Potter's newly tidied desk and he shook his head - his red hair bouncing like a lion’s mane with a few strands sticking to the frosting on his lips before he shoved the fatty breakfast into his mouth with what sounded like it was trying to be a chuckle around the monstrous bite.
"Better isn't it?" Draco raised an eyebrow, sipping the bitter coffee that served as his breakfast as he watched Weasley plop gracelessly down into his chair behind his own (slightly less cluttered than Potter's had been) desk.
He nodded absentmindedly, chewing quickly before swallowing thickly. "Er, yeah. Can't say what Harry will think of it mind."
Draco shrugged and stretched his legs out in front of himself, propping them up on the edge of the desk with his ankles crossed. "Couldn't care a fig what he thinks, the bastard blew up my office,
suffering through cleanliness is the least he can do." He retorted, leaving out the fact that he had placed a rather heavy handed sticking charm on the bottom drawer so Potter would have to struggle with it each time he went to open it.
"Point." Weasley mumbled around the last of the doughnut, licking his sticky fingers with a thoughtful air. "Though he does feel rather terrible about all that."
Draco grunted, rolling his eyes dramatically in response.
"Hey Ron, do you thi-erm." Potter jolted to a halt in the opening to their cubicle, his arms laden down with a gigantic stack of heavy books, the top two slipping off to bang loudly against the floor as he stared around at them - a faint pink tint coloring his cheeks. "Shit." he cursed, twitching his hand as much as he possibly could until the fallen volumes were flying back atop the stack.
Weasley chuckled and slouched more fully in his chair, a clear and obvious sign that he had no intention of helping his partner with his load. "Damn Harry, been to see Mione have you?"
Potter glared and shuffled forward. "Thanks for the help." He grumbled, pitching the pile onto Weasley's desk without so much as a glance in Draco's direction, not that he minded, Morning Potter was hardly better then moody
things aren't going my way Potter after all. "And no these are for you from Jerry. Something about the Timble case you said you'd give him a hand with?"
"Bloody hell." Weasley grumbled, flicking the top book open for a split second before snapping it shut with a pronounced grimace and vanishing the pile with a flick of his wand.
"Hey!" Potter shouted, his hand pushing through his hair, making the thick curls stand up at every odd angle imaginable. "I carried those up two floors!"
"Carried what up?" Weasley feigned innocence. "I don't recall you carrying anything in, right Malfoy?"
Draco nodded. "And forgot his coffee too, lazy sod."
Potter whipped around and frowned, his eyes narrowed as they landed on the blonde perched in his chair, his gaze lingering on his face - mouth opening and shutting like a fish, whatever he was going to say obviously struck in his throat. It was a strange moment...though Draco wasn't sure why it should be. Potter should have been used to seeing him there by now, but still everyone morning it seemed a shock to Potter's system in an array of thoughts that Draco couldn't even begin to understand. It seemed the man couldn't quite decide how he felt about having him there, sharing his desk and breathing the same air day in and day out.
Some days he didn't seem to mind at all, almost seemingly happy to have Draco there, other days he suffered Draco's presence begrudgingly, and place between that every other emotion that one could think of. He never knew which Potter he would get - though if he was honest there most certainly was a pattern to the days that the man would come in so wound that he was practically jumping out of his skin. But that pattern didn't bode well for Draco and the boxes in his head he was desperately trying and failing to reconstruct. They also tended to make him flush and ache to be anywhere but separated from Potter by a few feet of wood.
With determination he gazed lazily back, too tired from the long week and lack of sleep to figure out what was going on in Potter's mind
this morning, it didn't matter anyway - except...he found the air was suddenly a tad too hot, the long lean line of Potter's body in his Auror uniform, minus his robes, was making his eyes itch as they tried to stare against Draco's adamant will that he wouldn't. Not to mention that Potter was still gaping silently with green eyes that were slightly purple rimmed.
He hadn't slept again. Draco would bet everything he had on that fact.
Then Potter snapped his mouth shut, his fist curling and lengthening at his side as he scanned his desk with an air of confusion. "What the hell did you do to my desk!?" He demanded, his hand forming a fist on his hip.
"It's called organization." Draco informed him, a silent sigh of relief slowing his heart rate that had inexplicably started beating rather quickly as Potter let the moment slide. "Something one typically does in one's work space."
"The hell!" He snapped. "Where's all my stuff?"
"What stuff?" Draco furrowed his brow, glancing at the desktop like it wasn't missing a dozen or so knickknacks.
"My
stuff." He rather uselessly elaborated with a jerky hand movement that encompassed the whole of the desk. "You know the...things."
Draco smirked, stretching out his back and taking a long drink from his coffee before answering. "Don't even know what they were, do you Potter?"
"That doesn't matter, it's my desk and I want them - what on earth is that?" Potter was next to him now, staring at a sleek black cabinet that was nearly as tall as Potter himself without any discernible openings on any of its four smooth sides.
"A filing cabinet." Draco informed him without bothering to turn and took.
"What's it for?" Potter narrowed his eyes and reached out a single hand, jumping back slightly when Draco twitched his fingers and sent one of the drawers flying open so quickly it nearly knocked right into his chest.
Draco shot him an incredulously look. "Filing." He replied slowly as if speaking to a dimwitted child who just stared back at him with a slow blink. "For files. You lift and place, like so." Draco instructed, snapping the case file he had been (albeit slightly illegally) perusing and standing swiftly inserted it among the other blue tabbed ones.
"Why are they blue?" Potter muttered, his fingers skipping over the rows inside the drawer. "And red and yellow? Oh god it's like Hermione’s been here."
"Take two seconds and you can figure it out yourself." Draco grumbled, flopping back into Potter's chair once more and purposely ignoring the Granger comment. If Potter would just stop wrinkling his forehead and worrying about the fate of his precious but useless knickknacks he would realize that Draco had just saved him hours of work and had made his life just a hell of a lot easier.
Not that that was the reason Draco had done it. He simply couldn't take another day of Potter rummaging around his cubicle muttering to himself things like, "
I know it's here somewhere, maybe..." and so and so on till Draco felt like he was going to go insane and bash his head through a wall.
The day progressed downhill from there. After thirty minutes of grumbling, Potter had finally caught onto the ingenious system Draco had employed and had begrudgingly began using it without divisive comments. But that didn't stop him from snapping at things he normally let roll of his shoulder, didn't keep his leg from bouncing and bouncing like it was desperate to run right off of his body. The first, second, third, and forth cups of coffee he sucked down didn't seem to lend him any more alertness except to make him even more jittery to the point that he was nearly gashing his teeth at the files before him. The friendly natured comments Weasley directed Draco's way only seemed to piss him off to a level the blonde thought was a tad excessive.
He nearly broke a quill right after his redheaded partner muttered something in his ear and then left for a meeting, his eyes sliding to meet Draco's for a flash of a second before the instrument snapped between his fingers.
He was in a positively purple eyed, red faced, twitchy limbed state with his hands in a near consent fist in his disastrous hair that didn't look like it had seen a brush in a month when the memo zipped through their cubicle and landed delicately before Potter - who just stared at it for all of a minute like he had never seen such a thing before in his life.
Merlin, the man needed to sleep.
"Are you going to open it?" Draco asked, kicking him lightly under the desk when he didn't even so much as mutter incoherently or twitch an eye in response. "Potter?"
"Yeah, alright." He muttered in a resigned tone, like the note was going to detail his impending doom. He ripped it open, cursed at the paper cut it sliced across his finger, stuck the bleeding red digit in his mouth and quickly scanned the parchment. He looked more than a little mad during it and oddly fetching with his wide dry eyes blinking at the neat and tidy scrawl.
Which really just confirmed that the week really was getting to Draco when he thought that the sleep deprived man who was actually making their desk rattle with his jittering limbs looked a bit...sexy, especially with the edge of his finger stuck in his mouth. It was thoughts like that, Draco knew, that were going to make him start twitching himself if he didn't get a handle on them soon.
Draco saw the moment whatever the note contained registered in his brain - Potter's eyes widened impossibly behind his glasses, his breath stuck in his chest then gushed out through his nose and he was out of his seat and striding across the cubicle with that purposeful tread that always overtook him the moment he switched into full Auror mode. He almost let out a sigh of relief as the man swung his robes on and began quickly buckling it up when his eyes darted down to the note lying forgotten on the desk and he stopped with his heart suddenly in his throat.
It was a note from the hospital. Something had happened with the girl.
And Potter was leaving. Without him, the insufferable git.
True it wasn't exactly Draco's job to go, sure he wasn't really needed unless called upon, and yes Potter was perfectly capable of looking in on it and reporting back anything Draco needed to know but still...he
needed to go. This wasn't just a case anymore, any sort of detachment was gone, which perhaps was another reason he should probably stay behind. Yet he needed to see the girl again, to see her state, to see if he would...feel anything this time.
Without really thinking of the probability that he would end up splinched or worse, he reached out and latched onto Potter's arm just as he was spinning and a second before he Disapparated - squeezing them both through the tight tube of space and forcing them out with a loud whoosh and sickening nausea into St. Mungo's waiting room. He immediately let go and stumbled a step, a little disoriented from the suddenness of it all.
"Malfoy?"
Draco glanced up sharply, startled to hear his name not in Potter's clipped voice but in Weasley's slightly amused deep rumble. "Weasley," he straightened fully as he took the other man in, piecing together quickly that he must have received the same notice that Potter had and headed here straight away as well. Weasley hated department meetings and what better excuse to slip free early? "Been in yet?" He asked, taking one step forward before harsh fingers were digging into his elbow and keeping him in place.
"What do you think you're doing?" Potter snapped, his grasp much too solid and rough, trapping Draco in mid-step, his gaze livid behind his spectacles.
"What do you think?" Draco shot back, refusing to back up a step even though he knew that would alleviate the sharp pressure that was starting to build up under Potter's fingers.
Potter's grip tightened painfully. "You're not coming."
"Yes I am." Draco glared back at him. "I need another look at the disk and seeing as their not removing it from her, I'm left with little choice."
"I'll give you a recount." Potter said through gritted teeth and Draco saw something hot flicker through his gaze.
"A recount?" Draco balked. "What good would a blasted recount do me?"
"Harry just let him come, you know we could use him." Weasley said and Draco resisted the urge to chance a glance his way, instead he kept up his glare, watching the minute reactions that were speeding across Potter's face.
"Are you insane? Am I the only one that remembers what happened last time?" Potter all but erupted and Draco rolled his eyes, fucking Protective Potter was making an unscheduled appearance.
Did he mention how much he loathed Protective Potter?
Draco's eyes narrowed dangerously. "I'm not-"
"I'll meet you in there Ron." Potter interrupted him, pulling sharply on his arm and dragging (again with the yanking) him down the hall, Draco just managing to catch Weasley's bemused expression before the redhead was spinning around and heading the opposite way with a spring in his step.
"Unhand me Potter!" Draco grappled for purchase at the wall, inwardly cursing Potter's hidden strength and pointedly ignoring all the looks getting sent their way as he was manhandled down the white walled hall.
"Shut it." Potter ordered, yanking open a door and shoving him unceremoniously inside before following right after him, the door thudding shut behind them. With a muttered
lumos from Potter, Draco blinked and looked around them, only to find himself trapped inside a tiny storage cupboard with a glaring Potter to boot. "Are you trying to get killed Malfoy?" Potter spat at him, the glowing orb lifting off the tip of his wand to float in the air above them - casting everything in silvery light and soft gray shadow.
"Of course not." Draco countered. "Don't be an imbecile." The air in the cupboard was already much too hot, smelling of raw alcohol and cleaning potions, the space so small that he could feel Potter's angry breath on his face like little puffs of an itching dragon. "Why are we in a damn cupboard?"
"Good. Now what the hell do you think you're doing here then?" Potter's magic sparked and the orb above them glowing brightly for a moment, reflecting sharply off Potter's lenses. "Because as history tell us, you don't react well with these blasted disks! What makes you think this time will be any different?"
Draco scoffed and folded his arms over his chest. "Perhaps, perhaps not."
"You." He huffed, pointing an accusing finger at him that trembled with his rage just a little. "You have a death wish. You fucking moron. You're not coming, that's final."
"That's not your decision." Draco seethed. "This is my case as much as yours now."
"It is
my decision and I'll take you off it faster than you can blink if you push me." His voice was low and dangerous, hard around the edges and breathy at the end, his face faltering with a crack of weariness. "You can't...
I can't let you, alright? Just go back to the office and I'll fill you in later."
"You're being a stupid arse." Draco kicked at the wall behind him and tried to deflate the anger simmering in his blood. He could yell at Potter till he literally passed out but that wouldn't get him anywhere - not when the blasted man thought that he was in the right. That he was doing it for Draco's own bloody good. And maybe he was, maybe he had a point. But there was something driving him forward, he couldn't give this case up. He needed to know, needed answers, needed to find out what had left that oily imprint in his memory. "It's not like I almost died last time, just got a nap out of it is all."
Potter let out a disbelieving laugh. "A nap? Merlin Malfoy, do you have any idea how you...you don't. And you haven't even...I can't even..." He tugged at his curls and huffed out a constricted sigh, like something heavy was sitting on his chest.
"Learn to finish a damn sentence." Draco leaned back against the wall with a stiff spine, trying to put as much space between the two of them as Potter seemed to be radiating, sparking in energy with a manic gleam that was beginning to make Draco's chest ache. The feeling of being crushed slowly was back in full force, every single day of the week had added another rock to the pile and he felt as if he was sinking and he could see clearly now that Potter was sinking with him - that the weight was becoming unbearable for both of them.
That something was going to snap.
He wondered if this was how his chest was going to finally crack under it all, breaking into his bones and suffocating him. He puffed out a breath that seemed illusive and curled his fingers into the wall behind the small of his back. It felt like it had so very long, back when their days were filled with arguing, of clenching his jaw so much it was constantly soar, of letting his mouth run off until he found himself nose to nose shouting back at Potter. It was like he was staring at the Potter from back then, the Potter that looked like he was going to rip him to shreds, put him back together, and then do it again. He looked like he did the night of their first meeting on accident at the club. He felt like it to - the energy rolling off him colliding with Draco's own emotions in a violent crash. It had only been a week since they'd...and yet, here they were again already. He itched to have the beat and animosity of the club around them. Felt the desire curl in the pit of his stomach with a startling fierceness and not for the first time that week he fought against the need to bend Potter beneath him, to meld their flesh together until the tension faded back to the corner of his being.
It would fix everything and ruin it all in one go.
Part of him told him that it was all his fault, that the pressure on his chest could have been relieved days ago if he had just given in. Except that wasn't right,
he wasn't the one who had ruined it, who had brought them back to this, who made every moment spent with the other man feel like standing on the edge of a precipitous.
They had been here before, danced this line, they tipped one way then but Draco was determined they wouldn't fall that way again. Unfortunately that only left one alternative that Draco feared would lead to them cursing each other till one of them - Draco probably - ended up in Azkaban for murder.
But even so, he wanted to breathe properly again and Potter wasn't talking anymore, he wasn't even yelling, his wand wasn't even in his hand anymore. He was just panting, his chest moving deeply with each breath and he was staring at Draco with a smoldering gaze like a fire was smoking beneath them. They were a mirror to his own thoughts - like someone was reading a script over them and playing their bodies like marionettes. It seemed so silly, surely they could...melt the tension with others.
That didn't work though. It just added to the craving and Draco had no idea how long they’d been staring at each other now - it felt like a small eternity.
"It can be..." Potter muttered suddenly, his voice heavy and rough, and then he was stepping forward - Draco's shoulders connecting solidly against the wall as Potter grabbed his chin, forced his head to the side, and descended on his neck like a damn vampire going for the kill.
"Don't." Draco huffed out but his eyes were slipping closed and his hands were inexplicably clutching at Potter's strong shoulders. Potter's mouth was hot on his throat, sucking and licking and fucking biting, no doubt leaving marks that would torment him for weeks - moving across his pale skin as Potter pressed into him and fit their bodies together, knee to knee, hip to hip, hands on his jaw and on his waist, holding him pinned. "Don't." He said again, more breathe then words, his hips moving in disobedience to his command.
A command he meant, because he couldn't, they couldn't. It was against the rules. Forget the glasses nicking in the loo,
this was breaking all the rules to specks of ground up glass. This left nowhere to hide.
"Yes." Potter growled into his ear, nipping at the lobe and licking at the shell. "Need to." He sucked the patch of skin right under Draco's ear into his mouth and hummed, pressing his hips forward until Draco couldn't be anymore trapped. Wonderfully, wonderfully trapped between hot heat and cold wood, Potter's smell of ink and coffee and forest familiar in his nose and making his head spin. "You've been driving me fucking insane." His knee slipped between Draco's thighs and rubbed up and down, causing Draco to curse and grasp at his back with sharp nails that would leave half-moons in his skin.
"No." Draco hissed in a desperate attempt to cling to his denial, to hold onto the last shred of decorum, even as he dug a hand into Potter's hair and tugged till the man was cursing and moaning against his neck, his lips tingling and feeling so horribly full at the thought of kissing him, of tasting him like that for the first time ever. He dreamed of it often, of parting those lips with his tongue and finding out if he tasted like he smelled, if he kissed like he handled the rest of Draco's body - with an unquenchable passion that left him breathless. He licked his lips and pressed them together to keep from doing so, shifting until his own knee found its way between Potter's, the man's hard member hot against his thigh even through their many layers of clothing. Too many damn layers.
Potter licked at the hollow of his throat, his fingers deftly undoing the clasp of his robe and the buttons at his collar to fully expose the long column of pale flesh. "I
need to." He muttered again and Draco felt his stomach flip over and over on itself as he moved his hips, effectively rubbing both their crotches against the others thigh, Potter still lavishing attention on his collar and skin just beneath. "Merlin
yes."
"Just like this." Draco clarified, biting into his tongue to keep from groaning out as they rutted together, their hands on each other’s hips. "And never speak of it." He grabbed at Potter's arse and felt his head go light till he could no longer think clearly, oblivious as to why he never noticed how sensitive of a neck he had before, because
gods, Potter's mouth was going to drive him batty. "Not a -
fuck - word."
Potter nodded and kissed his way up his throat and over his jaw, his lips full and red and slick with saliva hovering near his as his forehead came to press against Draco's, coming too tantalizingly close to the one rule he wasn't willing to relent. "Anything." Potter promised in a moan and Draco stared at his mouth, open with panting breaths, Potter's heavily lidded green eyes peering at him without the obstruction of his lenses that had mysteriously vanished. The irises were so very, very dark, making Draco gasp as he picked up the pace, grinding his hips forward with a frenzied fervor - desperate to make the pressure on his chest lift and send him careening into the abyss if only for a moment.
But Potter didn't try to kiss him, he just kept his mouth there, centimeters from Draco's own, sharing their gasping breaths and feeling the others nearly silent moans on their lips like a feather light caress. It was torture, pure fantastic torture and Draco found his hands suddenly back in Potter's hair, twisting through the silky strands as he held the Auror's head and rode the waves that were building in him. Waves that were threatening to crush him because they had never done anything like this, their faces this close, their eyes locked and lips nearly touching.
The urge to close that distance was nearly overwhelming, debilitating, a cruel taunt he knew he couldn't give into. There would be no coming back from kissing Potter, no matter what else their bodies did. He just knew, somewhere in the deepest part of his heart that if he started kissing him that he wouldn't be able to stop. Ever.
It was the look that flashed through those green orbs and that mouth that trembled and cursed with a loud groan that sent Draco tumbling - that made his hands tighten and his eyes spring wide and his body tense. That made him lose sense of anything else as he became instantly sticky - the weight of Potter's cock on his thigh, rubbing and rubbing and rubbing, making his orgasm surge on and on longer then he was prepared for.
Then Potter's lips were forming words - or one word in particular - a word he had heard yelled, spat, muttered in disdain, said with curiosity, whispered in uncertainty, called, and laughed, a word he couldn't deal with hearing now. Not when he was barely coming to grips with this new arrangement. His arm felt heavy, his body completely sated, and his mind in a complete panic as he slapped a hand over Potter's mouth, cutting the word off before any sound could be made. Potter pumped his hips once more than his eyelids twitched, his teeth sank softly into Draco's palm and he came with a flood of wet warmth - sagging against him, using Draco and consequently the wall to keep them both up.
Potter was heavy and his pants were uncomfortable in the mess of his own cum but Draco couldn't seem to gather the energy to move. Instead his hand slid from Potter's mouth to his shoulder, hanging there as he stared at the dark head illuminated in the soft light that had turned almost to a golden hue sometime during their encounter.
It was funny though, the weight in his chest wasn't gone. It was still there, pressing against his lungs, except now it felt different. It felt almost like the moment before he nearly gave in and snogged Potter violently. And if one thing was for certain it was that he wasn't going to walk away from this unscathed.
