A random assortment of things

Fingers slipped into his matted black hair and lifted his head just enough so Harry could down a full glass of water. He gasped for more air afterwards, let his eyes fall shut, and his head fall back onto the mattress.

The mattress was wet. The sheets, too, were wet. Harry moved his arm sluggishly and felt for the fabric. Sodden, everywhere, rumpled, and one corner had come undone. Merlin, Harry had come undone. A single little giggle escaped his roughened throat. It made the muscles in his abdomen tighten, which led to—oh, fuck, he was leaking come, adding more to the mess. It shouldn't feel so hot. How could it feel so hot? It had been nothing like this with Ginny. Never.

Harry moaned, clenched his hole to keep it inside, then huffed another breathless, blissed-out laugh.

The bed beside him dipped. A warm washcloth touched his come-stained middle. Twice. He had come all over himself twice. After coming down Draco's demanding throat.

"You're not losing your mind, are you?" Draco asked, cleaning him without magic, taking his time. "Not that anyone would be able to tell the difference if that head of yours had finally emptied itself entirely."

"You could," Harry said, then swallowed. Draco's words were mean, as always, but his touches with the warm, soft washcloth were so tender. It smelled like lavender. Soothing.

"Ah, that would be because I'm the only one paying actual attention to you." Draco lifted one of Harry's limp legs off the bed and wiped him down from taint to rim, humming with pleasure when he saw Harry's puffed, used entrance twitch from it.

"Is that why it felt like this?"

"Elaborate," Draco prompted, repeating his gentle ministrations on the other side.

Harry sighed, blinked his eyes back open, and watched the patches of light scattered through the tree in front of the bedroom window dance. "I don't know how to describe it."

"With generous praise, obviously," Draco drawled expectantly.

"Vain prat," Harry laughed, because he felt high from what had happened and couldn't even begin to get mad.

"Try again," Draco instructed him, rinsed the cloth, then bent over Harry to wipe his sweaty face.

Harry locked eyes with him and lost himself for a moment in the silver, the tiny creases proving Draco was smiling earnestly. At Harry. Cleaning him. After he had kissed Harry until his knees had given out, his mind reeling, his hands clinging. Draco had got them upstairs, into bed, naked. He had talked Harry through it, step by step, explaining what he was about to do to him, knowing Harry had no experience with men, only wet dreams.

"I—" Harry started, then stopped, unsure how to put into words what was a tangled heap of confusing feelings sticking to an epiphany or two, wrapped in regret for taking so long. The timing was all wrong. "I think," he started again.

"Can you?" Draco grinned at him, set the cloth aside, and lay down next to Harry, head propped on one hand, starkers and beautiful, and Harry lost his train of thought again.

"No." Harry looked away from him, then tried a third time. "It was so good."

"I know."

"Shut up." Harry attempted to smack him, but his arms were still all gooey. "You were probably showing off anyway."

"Quite the contrary. I was holding back," Draco told him, one hand stroking up Harry's stomach, up through his chest hair, caressing him.

"You were?" Harry whimpered.

"You already seemed quite overwhelmed," Draco said, low and smug, but also fond. "I have to admit, I like the look on you."

Harry took a deep breath—Merlin, even all the muscles around his ribs ached—then grabbed for words swimming in his head and exhaled. Maybe he had the right ones now. "I didn't think it could feel this way."

"You really ought to elaborate," Draco replied.

"Fine. Er." Harry twitched when Draco traced a nipple with one finger. "Stop that. It's distracting."

"To the weak of mind."

"You made me weak, you git." Harry lazily slapped at Draco's hand and let his tired forearm rest on his chest after missing him.

"Hm, yes." Draco smiled at him. Harry couldn't breathe again.

"I didn't know," Harry scrambled to gain linguistic ground, "that this was real?" He sounded unsure, and Draco's frown told him to elaborate. "I thought this, this, I dunno. This feeling like melting inside, forgetting your own name, the whole thing about seeing stars and your mind going blank was all bodice ripper rubbish."

"You finally learnt to read, and that's what you chose?"

"Draco," Harry groaned. "What does sex feel like to you?"

Draco raised his brows and blinked several times.

"Do you always enjoy it?"

"That's the whole point of carnal pleasures, isn't it?"

"Is it?"

"Harry," he said, using his given name for the first time that day. He used it sparingly, to get Harry's full attention. It worked, always, like a charm. "What is sex like for you?"

"Er." Now it was Harry's turn to blink. Thinking was still hard. "A more intimate way to take the edge off than wanking?"

"The edge off?" Draco repeated slowly.

"Yeah." Harry nodded sheepishly. "You can't pretend you don't feel that too. Bit like pressure, and then you need to get it out or you start biting at the furniture."

"You animal." Draco snorted and pinched him.

"My edge is now so far off I can't even tell where it is. Over the horizon, maybe, or in a different dimension. I feel all floaty and buzzing, and—" His words dissolved when Draco began to shake his head with a broad smile. "Er, I... Like this. Chest all full, and like I can't move and I don't want to move, and I feel, I feel—how do I feel?"

Harry was getting emotional, and it got worse the longer he looked into Draco's eyes. Or it got better. He couldn't tell. He needed someone to tell him.

Draco didn't say anything, only held his gaze, his hand wandering over Harry's body without cease, his fingertips causing goosebumps with their tenderness.

"How do I feel?" Harry asked, and suddenly his eyes were stinging, welling up with tears. "I've never felt—this—all of this," he admitted, still unable to label what this was, feeling embarrassed for crying.

"Harry," Draco said again, his hand sliding up the column of Harry's throat as he swallowed a growing knot in it, then further up, cupping his cheek. "Have you never had sex with someone you were in love with before?"

Something in Harry shattered, fell entirely apart, and he couldn't even see Draco's pretty face anymore. He was crying too hard. Merlin, fuck, he was such a mess. He was ruining it. Draco would wrinkle his nose and push him away and be done with this and leave and—

"Shh, darling," Harry heard him say, and a thumb stroked his cheekbone. "How can you not know what love feels like?"

Harry only shook his head and turned onto his side, pulling his legs up. Draco kissed his forehead, his wet cheeks, his trembling shoulders, stroked his back.

"You have to admit, it is a little silly, considering the way you've always looked at me," Draco told him quietly, pulling him closer. "I rather thought you knew you were in love with me."

"I'm an idiot," Harry wept.

"You are, yes, but it seems you only needed a little educational experience."

Nothing about this was little. His entire world had shifted a step to the left, and Harry was stumbling to keep up.

"You can be mine, if you want," Draco whispered. "Do you want that?"

Harry nodded, never having been more sure of anything, even if he couldn't put it into words himself. He wanted Draco. Always.

He had spent years pretending the little jump in his stomach whenever Draco entered his office was irritation. Then came the chats in the Ministry cafeteria. The glances in the lift that made him blush. He learnt which days Draco worked late because those were the evenings Harry somehow found reasons to linger.

Then there were the stolen kisses in dark pub corridors when Harry got separated from his pack of Gryffindor friends on the way to the loo—kisses Harry never drew away from, blaming the beer each time and never once his heart.

Draco had always been there too.

"Do you want to feel this again? Letting go of all your worries, giving in to pleasure? Knowing you'll be properly cared for?" Draco continued, pulling Harry flush against him, his hand halting its wandering so he could hold him tightly around the waist.

Harry nodded again, wheezed a yes between sobs.

"I can love you the way you deserve," Draco said, nuzzling into Harry's hair. "You deserve so much better. I'll be that. I can do it." He inhaled deeply. "I love you more than anyone else."

Harry believed it, saw it now. It had been in every touch, in the way Draco had reverently kissed every inch of his body. In his unguarded face. In every breathless word murmured against Harry's skin as he pushed inside: so good, so perfect for me, made for me.

"Be mine," Draco said. "Let me take you to restaurants worth dressing for, show you off, holding my hand, only mine, you gorgeous, sweet man." His voice was growing more possessive, and, inexplicably, it was what Harry needed for the tears to ebb.

Harry could see it: them, side by side, walking tall, all eyes on them, bearing the scandal of it with their heads held high. "I'm not a trophy," Harry said with a sniff.

Draco pulled back so he could look Harry in the eyes. "Say the word and you never have to come home wishing you were somewhere else. I'll make sure you never mistake being wanted for being loved again."

Harry looked at him and nervously bit his lip as his heart jumped into his throat, since his chest lacked the space to keep it. He thought about how Draco had been brave enough to hold his gaze like this for years.

And Harry had been blind, so unfathomably blind.

"Yours," Harry replied.