Flatmates (drarry)

Chapter Eight

 Draco woke up in his own bed, eyes heavy with sleep. His chest was still bare, but his collarbone in particular felt cold without the heat of Harry's breath against it.

He sat up, groaning, now cross-legged in his bed. Harry was leaning against the doorframe. They stared at each other for a long moment, each remembering, each waiting for the other to bring up the previous night.

Draco ran his tongue across his lips. "You're not hungover?"

Harry shrugged. "Surprisingly, no." He paused. "It's your day off, right?"

The blond boy was still rubbing sleep from his eyes. "Yeah, why?"

"Well, seeing as you cleaned out the pantry last night-"

"You're welcome."

Harry grinned. "Right. Thanks. We need to pick up some groceries again, though, because I now expect cooking like that every night."

"I'm not your housewife, Potter," Draco said, tossing a pillow at his flatmate.

"Damn, that's a real shame." Harry picked up the pillow, fluffed it a bit, and tossed it back at Draco. He looked content, if not longing. "Be ready in ten?"

"Deal." Draco paused as Harry's silhouette drifted away momentarily. "Harry?" He was back in the doorway. "Did you carry me to bed?"

Harry smiled playfully, ears reddening. "Thank me later."

--

"Should we attempt to eat anything besides pasta, or shall we just accept that this is all we know how to make?"

Draco stood before the plethora of pasta choices, holding a box of linguini in his hand. Standing over the near-empty cart, Harry shrugged. "We should probably be realistic. Load 'em up."

Draco turned to face the shelves, gathering boxes in his arms. Harry grabbed boxes at Draco's sides, effectively trapping him against the wall of pasta - an issue that only made itself clear when Draco turned around to reach the cart.

They were frozen.

Draco, pressed against the shelves. Harry, keeping him there. Suddenly, Draco's eyes were all too grey and Harry could see the soft hairs that grew when porcelain-white met blond-white and in that stupid supermarket pasta aisle, Draco had never looked more beautiful to him.

Harry wanted nothing more than to close the gap and meet Draco's soft, pink lips. Draco was moving towards him, entranced and with nowhere else to go.

The clatter of falling pasta boxes shoved them apart with the force of an invisible person. Draco's hands were empty and the tile floor was littered with individual pasta noodles that had slipped out of their cardboard containers.

And the inches turned to feet as Draco stood away from Harry across a river of uncooked noodles. "I can't do this."

The unrelenting London rain pelted the roof of the store as a shitty 2003 pop song played through the tinny loudspeakers. Harry stared at his flatmate, waiting for an explanation of his own inadequacy, why something he thought was plausible was now somehow an impossibility.

"This isn't how... I mean, I was just looking for a flatmate! I didn't mean to fall in love, or whatever the fuck this is... I mean, you're you!" He raised a tattooed arm and ran his long, slender fingers through his hair. "Hate doesn't just turn to, to love like this!"

"Maybe it does though, Draco!" Harry ran a tongue over his lips, pulse beating in his wrists. "It wasn't fair of me to stay so bitter when we moved in, and I know that now only because of you. We had shitty childhoods! We need to admit that! And maybe, just maybe, people with shitty childhoods who may have been shitty children can grow up to be not-so-shitty adults. And maybe those not-so-shitty adults can find things in common and fall in really not shitty love. I mean that- that's plausible! ...Right?"

"I just-" Draco paused, stared at the oceans of pasta. "If I ruin this.... If I lost you, I'd have nothing."

"And the same goes for me. So we can take a risk and let ourselves love, and maybe fall apart someday, or we can pretend this never happened and pretend to be happy as friends and secretly live in agony." Harry took a step towards Draco, pasta crunching under an old sneaker. "We deserve happily ever afters." Another step. "I have a feeling mine is with you." Crunch. "And if you're willing to try..."

Harry's hands grasped Draco's lower back gently, awaiting reciprocation. The blond hesitated, then wrapped his fingers in the dark masses of Harry's hair, closing the gap. They kissed with frustrations that had aged for decades and passions that had only surfaced within the year, the complexity of affection shown only in soft lips and gentle touches.

A shop attendant cleared her throat, and the boys drew apart like speeding cars on opposite sides of a freeway. She raised an eyebrow, intrigued but quiet. "Are you two going to need someone to clean up this..." She gestured to the noodles, some shattered across the aisle. "...mess?"

Draco coughed, awkward. "Um, yeah. Yes please. Thanks."

She giggled before leaving for a broom as the two of them met eyes, laughed, and then drew back together.

"That was awkward," Harry mumbled against the cool skin of Draco's neck.

"Scared, Potter?"

"With you?" Harry smirked. "Never."