The rain keeps Harry up all night. He tosses himself out of bed when the light gets grey outside his wind—more bloody rain. His jaw aches from gritting his teeth while he tried to sleep. The waterproof satchel is still packed, so it takes even less time than yesterday to shower and dress and disappear.

Harry is going to get what he wants.

Today. 

He’ll have it.

Doubt trickles into his gut as he crosses the street. Raindrops taptaptaptaptap on his hood. Feels like the droplets are rolling right down his spine. Everything’s sodden. The puddles drag at his boots. He can’t bloody drive the boat. He doesn’t know how—fuck, he still doesn’t know how.

He’s got his head down, watching every step, willing himself to take one more, just one more, and lifts it in time to jerk backwards.

Harry’s come to the wrong place.

No, he hasn’t. That’s his boat, bobbing there like it always is.

But someone’s inside it.

Is that his own reflection?

Harry shuts his eyes for a count of three and opens them again.

The person in the wheelhouse isn’t wearing green. They’ve got a blue rain jacket. Hard to see with all the rain, but it looks like they’ve got the hood pulled over a hat, like Harry.

“Hey,” he says loudly.

What next? Don’t steal my boat? I’m standing right here you bloody arsehole?

Or—keep it, I don’t want it, I don’t know what I wanted?

An engine rumbles to life.

The engine on Harry’s boat.

Whoever’s inside the wheelhouse glances up, and Harry’s heart does a throbbing, banging thing—please, he thinks—and then they’re turning ’round, stepping out of sight, and climbing onto the dock, and Harry knew, didn’t he? He knew it was Malfoy as soon as he moved, and he still can’t believe it.

“Come on,” Malfoy calls, over the rain and the engine.

“I can’t,” Harry admits instantly.

Instead of shouting why not? Malfoy comes down the dock towards Harry in long strides, grabs a piling with one hand, and puts his other hand out.

“Come,” he says. 

Harry wouldn’t call being heartily fucked romantic.

Romance is, like, flowers or something. It’s sharing a massive sundae at Fortescue’s. It’s not being bent over a pillow and absolutely filled to the brim with cock. It’s not being shagged so hard Harry’s losing control of his hands. It’s not having his prostate hammered so thoroughly that he’s drooling helplessly on the sheets and making mad ah ah ah Draco ah sounds he’s got no control over.

Harry’s right on the edge of his orgasm—monumental, as per—when Draco does The Thing.

He curls his long fingers into Harry’s hair, pinning him just a bit so every part of Harry feels like it’s well under control, and he leans down close and closer so his chest is pressed to Harry’s back everyplace it can be.

And then, breath hitching just a bit—because of the thorough shagging—Draco says: “Sweet boy. Yes.”

That just—

Pitches Harry cleanly over the edge. Pleasure winds up and spurts out of his cock in great hot pulses, but it also spurts everywhere else. It’s warm all through his chest, and around his heart. A heart-orgasm.

Because—

Nobody else knows that about Harry. Knows how he likes to be pinned just a bit. Knows he loves to be called sweet boy right before he comes.

Only Draco.

Draco rolls his hips into Harry, riding out his own peak, and Harry arches back into Draco, because he is a sweet boy, his heart still throbbing, his cock still twitching from the aftershocks.

And then Draco leans his forehead against Harry’s temple.

Harry squeezes his eyes shut and treasures it, memorises it, one, two, three-

And…

Done.

Draco pulls his fingers gently out of Harry’s hair, then his cock gently out of Harry’s arse, and hops lightly off the bed.

Harry watches his blurry, naked form as he stretches, shakes out his hair, ties it back up.

“Merlin’s great bells,” Draco says absently. “Wherever did my shirt get to?”

“Maybe it’s underneath me,” Harry slurs. “Underneath my dick.”

“You are perverse,” Draco pronounces, and bends down, searching for his shirt on the floor, Harry guesses. “And you sound drunk.”

“Fucked,” Harry slurs.

“Are you sober enough to get home? If you’re not—” Draco must find his shirt, because he pulls it off the floor and over his head. Harry mourns the loss of his blurry view of Draco’s nipples. “Get yourself to the sofa. I won’t be held responsible for any injuries you incur on the journey.”

“Ha,” says Harry. “You don’t want me to stay here.”

Draco gets closer. Bends down so Harry can see his eyes, which does that same warm orgasm thing to Harry’s heart. Then he pats Harry’s cheek. “I’ll get you a glass of water.”

“M’fine.”

Harry drags himself off the pillow and rolls to the floor, then painstakingly pushes himself up to his feet. His clothes are in various corners of Draco’s bedroom as if a tornado tore them from Harry’s body. Did he do that? Or did Draco? Last he can remember, they were leaving the Ministry for their Friday-evening fuck, because Draco says routine is the cornerstone of sanity or whatever. Throwing their clothes everywhere is part of that, Harry guesses.

He spells his clothes on, finishing with his curse-breaker’s jacket just as Draco bustles back into the room, his trousers and waistcoat looking actually pressed, a glass of water in one hand. He pushes it into Harry’s, hardly looking, and goes past him.

Harry drinks.

He drinks at a normal speed so he’s not, like, appearing to linger.

“Well,” he says gamely, and puts the glass on Draco’s sideboard or whatever it is. “I’ll be off, then.”

This is always the moment he hopes Draco will insist that he stay. Make him get back into bed. But they’ve been partners for five years, and Draco hasn’t ever insisted unless Harry is actually bleeding, and then it’s usually St Mungo’s he insists on, not his own flat.

“Yes, of course,” Draco says, as if he’s not really paying attention.

Something taps at the window.

An owl, probably.

“Right,” says Harry.

He turns to go, leaving Draco to his window—which he’s opening—and the owl—which he’s reaching for—and has made it three steps down the hall when Draco calls after him.

“Potter. Wait.”

Harry’s heart leaps. It leaps and leaps and leaps, jumping madly. It’s happening. Draco’s insisting he stay. He’s going to get to sleep in Draco’s bed. They’re going to kiss. They’re going to confess that they’ve fancied each other for at least five years. They’re going to—

Draco sticks his head out through the open door, holding up a piece of parchment. “We’ve got an assignment.”

Draco presses harder on his shoulder. “You left the DMLE.”

His anger—his fear, wearing the trappings of anger—materialises only once he’s spoken the words.

“I—”

“You didn’t tell me you were leaving.”

Of course Potter didn’t tell Draco he was leaving. He had no obligation to, and Draco has no right to be notified, but Potter’s open for him in more ways than one. He might not have another chance.

“I didn’t leave you.” Potter bucks his hips backwards until he has more contact, and Draco thinks he may suffocate. He may perish from the unselfconscious need that’s all over Potter. “I only left the DMLE. I transferred to Level Nine. I’ll still be—I’ll still be at the Ministry. With you.”

“Good,” Draco says ferociously, and nips Potter’s earlobe. “You can’t just walk out, Potter.”

Possibly Draco has gone mad. He and Potter have seen each other regularly at the DMLE, at pub nights, at birthday parties. They have shaken hands. And if there were some lingering glances across crowded rooms, if there has been palpable tension for years and years, if Draco feels pulled to Harry like they’re bonded—

Well, that’s not the same thing as having any claim to him.

“I’d tell you if I was really going to leave.” Potter lets out a quiet whine and grinds his hips into the pillow beneath him. “I would. I would tell you.”

Draco adjusts himself, drags his lubed-up, terribly hard cock over Potter’s crease and notches his crown to Potter’s hole.

“Say that again.”