MA LUNE, MON HOMME.

Again, weirdly perceptive. You could talk to him like an adult.

Has a habit of standing behind you and fidgeting with your fingers when his dad scolded him.

Would slump onto the floor on purpose, cry and tell you Theo did it.

Makes the wickedest faces at you in the most serious situations. Like when you were the flower girl at a wedding, and he pulled the most atrocious face as you walked down the aisle—tongue out, hissing with his missing front teeth and all. You somehow managed to make an even uglier face back.

Then, as you walked away— "Doesn't she look beautiful, Draco?" "She's always just looked like that." Narcissa had to hide her smile at how matter-of-factly he said it, entirely unaware of how fond it sounded.

BABY THEO

Grabby—yanks at his mum's hair.

Also the kind of baby that would plop right onto your head and stay there.

Would use his mum's back as his mini Quidditch pitch, flying little toy brooms.

Expert at farm animals. Will judge you if you get their sounds wrong.

As a toddler/kid—

Whenever he accidentally swore, he would gasp, teeny hand clapping over his mouth, and look at his mum sheepishly until they both started giggling.

He's never full. Once ate a fistful of sand.

#1 Draco rage baiter. When he came to England, he would chase Draco around with snot in his hands to wipe it on him. Made fun of his accent too.

Put Narcissa's charmed lipstick on him in his sleep that wouldn't come off. Draco walked around with red lips for days.

You stood, wincing slightly as your underwear brushed against your sensitive clit.

"Take it off, I want to eat you."

After you slipped off your pants and underwear, he tugged at your hips, guiding you down toward his face. Up close, you could his lips stained a deep red.

You adjusted yourself, straddling him. As always, he started with a wet, lingering kiss—slow and sweet—before his tongue pressed in, finding your clit.

He ate viciously, he was not one to sample. He simply consumed.

You bit your lip, a soft whimper escaping at the rough friction. His eyes lifted to you, half-lidded beneath long lashes, his breath warm and intoxicating against you.

Then you felt his tongue slipping inside, thrusting, fucking you languidly. You writhed against him, your slick leaving a mess across his nose. The sticky sounds were so filthy.

He pulled away abruptly. His other hand came up with the lollipop. He twisted it between his fingers as if testing the motion.

“What are you doing?”

He pressed the hard candy against your tender clit, his eyes flicking up to watch your reaction.

“Oh—! Mm…” A sinful shudder ran through you as you moaned.

It was so hard—and sticky, already softening, turning almost into a creamy mess as it mixed with your slick.

You gripped the back of the couch, your mouth falling open at the raw, foreign sensation. He kept the pressure steady—so fucking brutal—rubbing the candy against you while his tongue slipped back inside, twisting against your walls.

“Fuck… so sweet, baby,” he murmured when he pulled away for a breath, licking at what he’d drawn from you.

You rocked against the rounded candy, chasing the feeling, your clit kept brushing against something different. You shifted your angle slightly.

Then felt it.

A mind-numbingly sharp edge. A place he’d bitten earlier.

You rocked your hips faster, each pass sending a sharper jolt through you, the rough contour nudging just right. You would be marked red in between your thighs.

“Mm! I—I’m coming!”

You came hard, his hand giving one last firm press—bullying the candy against you so viciously it stuttered against you. The rough edge dragged your orgasm out, pain and pleasure tangling together.

He pulled the lollipop away, now considerably smaller, the sensation of its adhesion to your puffy cunt made you sigh.

“You taste so fucking good,” he breathed, gathering your slick with his fingers, licking them clean.

He glanced up at you, a faint smirk on his lips. You were still catching your breath.

—

Draco despised how effortlessly Theo made himself at home with you. He was an outsider. He hadn't earned you. Who gave him the right to touch you like that—so casually, as if you hadn’t just met?

Like at lunch, when Theo would reach over without so much as a glance and wipe tomato sauce on your sleeve, using you as his personal serviette. Not that you were entirely blameless—you did eat messily. Hopelessly, endearingly so. Always some sauce escaping down your chin, or your fingers honeyed with something sticky, totally unbothered by it.

Theo would catch Draco's eye across the table with a crooked smile on his face and jerk a thumb at you. "Messy girl."

Draco would run his tongue slowly along his teeth and reach to wipe your mouth. "Don't call her that."

Your little disasters were his to make fun of—not Theo's.

Or the time he'd decided to imitate Draco—an open-mouthed goodbye kiss—theatrical, entirely too long. Poking something to see what it did. He'd been very pleased with himself for approximately one moment before Draco's hand connected with his back and sent him cleanly into the nearest bush.

—

Theo bothered Draco so much he catalogued every trace of him he found on you, like small offences.

There was the sitting. When you perched on your chair like the boyish way Theo sat—legs parted, swinging idly, with a lackadaisical posture on top of it. Draco's eye would twitch and press his loafer gently against your ankle, nudging your legs back together.

“Sit properly.”

Then there was the language. Theo's crassness—cazzo and merda slipping out of your mouth too easily, accompanied by some vulgar little hand gesture that he’d clearly had you practice. Draco would stare at you for a long moment. Waiting for you to shrink and redeem yourself, deciding how disappointed to be. Then his fingers would find your lips with a soft, idle flick.

"Watch it."

And there were drawings, too. Tucked into the margins of your notes—crude sketches that bore the unmistakable fingerprints of Theo's humour. Draco would look at them for exactly one second before ripping out the page, jaw set. He hated how Theo made you tactless. Hated how it diluted you.

It wasn't the knowledge itself. He didn't want to keep you ignorant. It was this version of it—gutted, profane, all meaning flattened before it ever reached you. A facsimile of tenderness. Poetry unravelling back to prose. And you, with that open, unguarded curiosity of yours, absorbed the counterfeit.

The revulsion sat deeply in him. He didn't quite know why at the time—only that it was beneath you. Because you deserved the full weight of things. Deserved better than that shallow, careless, adolescence of boys who didn’t act with any semblance of intention.

Deserved better than the coarse company of Theo.

He wanted to bite you at the collar, drag you to his room and smother you until you never come out.

—

Still, Draco gritted his teeth through it all.

Because you seemed to have a particular fondness for him, the way you did with strays. Something you found charming about people who had absolutely nothing to lose and nothing to gain.

But just because he could not rid himself of Theodore Nott did not mean he could not make his life quietly, efficiently hell.

Draco had never needed his fists for that.

He was better at psychological attrition. He would make references—casually, conversationally—to the dense texts that formed the bedrock of any proper upper-echelon education. Wizengamot formation. Early British wizarding law. Political history that the two of you had been tutored through before you could properly write.

"It's the same problem Fernwick identifies in the founding charter. The language around hereditary magical integrity was deliberately vague—intentionally, so it could be applied selectively."

"The 1347 charter," you'd say.

Draco would glance at Theo then knowing he'd find that blank expression.

"Fernwick's treatise on early British wizarding law." A perfectly placed beat. "Thin book, green cover. Your tutor never assigned it?"

"I don’t think—"

"It's forty pages, Theo. It's not a commitment." A light-hearted laugh edged with mockery.

It was also, of course, a well-known fact—unspoken in polite company but known—that Theo was a child born out of wedlock. Which placed him considerably lower in the pecking order. Further from the money.

So Draco would command the house-elves to watch him. To peer at him through half-open doors and half-drawn curtains, to let themselves be caught doing it, to eye him suspiciously whenever he strayed too close to the Malfoy antiquities—the glass cases, framed correspondence, things that had provenance and value. Draco would also make a show of sliding his rings off when he arrived and pocketing the silver.

What seemed like little things reduced him to something furtive. Make the Manor itself treat him like an amateur thief who hadn't yet been caught.

Be so utterly, architecturally cruel that Theo could taste the distance between their lineages.

It was only after Draco had choked him within an inch of his life—that moment when Theo had decided to truly hurt you—that he thought better of being so familiar with you again.

SUMMER TERM, PRESENT

When you woke up, you felt his breath first.

Slow, lightly brushing against your stomach—his head rising with each inhale, as if you were the only thing keeping him afloat.

You had accidentally stayed the night at Draco’s dorm.

It felt rather strange. It had been a while since you’d slept on the same bed, yet he laid on you like nothing had changed, like he still weighed nothing at all. But he did and you could feel it now—the considerable length of him, the firm cords of muscle wrapped around your waist. You recall his growth spurt had hit him like a freight train.

You exhaled and traced the arch of your foot along his calf, noting the shape of him, the warmth seeping into your skin. Sending a faint shiver through you.

Then you felt a damp patch on your stomach.

Drool. Ew.

You glanced around. The others had already gone—no doubt chasing relief from their hangovers in the Great Hall. Only Theo remained, stirring faintly, rubbing sleep from his eyes. A head of long dark hair slipped from the far side of the bed and tiptoed out with hardly a sound.

You hadn’t noticed her last night, but that was definitely not Daphne.

Draco stirred. Lifted his head. Then laid it back down again—he wasn't ready to see you. His eyes were probably puffy. He was never his best hungover, you'd seen him in worse states, but he cared much for his vanity. Shy and embarrassed, too, for the way he acted the night before.

Then he lifted his head again. His hair had gotten long—you hadn't cut it in a while—and it fell loose around his face now, framing it softly.

For a moment he simply looked up at you. Sunlight caught his eyelashes and made his eyes glassy, pale. His lips still faintly wine-stained. He looked a little girlish like that. You had the sudden urge to run your hands through his face and ruin him.

He saw the look in your eyes and raised himself up fully, hovering above you.

Go on then.

You stared at him for a while. The calm on his face doing nothing to interrupt the reel running behind your eyes—and it was a reel, not a memory, because memory implied distance you didn't have yet. Footage of perfidy. Shots of bittersweet heat and want. Frames of defection you kept returning to the way your tongue finds a broken tooth.

Then you slapped him. Hard. A rapid flush crawling up his wintry cheek.

Your first words this fine morning were, "I hate you."

You shoved him off. Then went after him.

Fists at his chest—beating, graceless.

"Hate you! How dare you do this to me?"

How dare you not touch me the way I want? How dare you make yourself unavailable? How dare you choose—how dare you—and then, underneath everything, the thing that was really being said: don't you know who I am to you?

He had forgotten, it seemed, that the entitlement ran both ways in this particular arrangement.

Your hands found his throat.

Draco let you. Lay there and let you make him repent, nails and all, your weight on him, the wanting turned inside out and landing however it needed to. It felt like a kiss.

—

Theo surfaced from sleep to the crack of a slap and something that might have been a whimper.

He blinked. Registered the fervent movement to his right. Understood, in approximately two seconds, everything that was happening.

He exhaled a soundless whistle. Reached for his shoes. 

He did not want to get involved.

—

Eventually you tired from hitting him.

You collapsed against him, breathing hard, your anger spent. Your foreheads found each other the way they always had. Like old friends. Hello. How are you? It's been awhile. What a time we've wasted not doing this.

"I missed you," You confirmed.

His first words this fine morning were, "Kiss me again."

His tongue grazed your top lip. You took him into your mouth and suckled on it. His hands cradled your head, keeping you there, moaning lightly at the sensation.

He never quite pulled away, instead breathing into your mouth. You kiss like me, he thought delightfully, as your teeth clattered against his.

—

On the other side of the dormitory door, Theo found a weedy fourth year haunting the corridor like he'd been there a while.

"Theo—"

"It's Nott to you." Theo clicked his tongue, rolling his shoulder into his jacket.

"Sorry—Nott. Is Malfoy in?"

"Busy."

"I'd only be a moment." The boy's eyes shifted with the eagerness of someone who had rehearsed this. "I wanted to ask him about yesterday's game—"

"Busy."

—

You felt his length throb against you. That familiar warm firmness of him. You reached in between you.

Draco caught your hand. Intertwined his fingers with yours and held it still.

“Don’t you want to—“

“Mm.” A slight shake of his head. Eyes still closed, mouth still moving against you.

No—don’t you feel it too? When I kiss you, I don’t just want sex. I expect everything that comes with it.

Your Pepperup potion beside my bed when I’m sick. You dragging me to the kitchen in the middle of the night because you’re craving something. Your ears, your mind, when I play the pianoforte. Your shoes beside mine at the lake. Even your hair in my drain.

Can’t we stay there forever? Maybe you’ll work on your research and I can make you come when you get frustrated. Maybe I’ll try cooking for you, and you’ll return the favour when I lose my patience. Maybe something we’ll take care of, someday. I haven’t thought it through. Only that it would have your temper—and my jealousy.

I only want your future. Plainly. I want it for myself.

—

“I'm participating in the tryouts this year, I just want to know—”

Theo leaned back slightly, peering through the narrow gap in the door as he rambled on.

Inside, Draco kissing you, hand buried in your hair, the other at the small of your back. Entirely absorbed.

Theo stared back at the prattling boy.

“…the exercises for those maneuvers near the end—”

“Actually, you know what?"

Theo sucked his teeth.

"It’s your funeral.”

He opened the door and shoved the student inside.

—

Draco pulled back from you at the skidding sound—limply—and looked down at the fifth year now on all fours on the dormitory floor, blinking up at him.

A long cathedral silence.

You felt the shift in the air before you turned around. Draco eyes piercing at something.

Heat crashed into your face like a wall.

“Who—“ You started.

The boy scrambled upright, already flushing to his ears. "Um—! I'm Collin, I just wanted to—"

Draco’s eyebrows lifted, as if he couldn’t quite believe the boy had managed to keep talking.

“Sorry! I’ll—yes, I'll go.” the boy blurted, shuffling toward the door, deciding he’d gotten more than he’d bargained for.

The door clicked shut, through it, you could hear a sharp cackle.

You turned back to Draco.

Opened your mouth. Closed it. Horrified.

—

You had known, vaguely, what this would entail.

Names and scandal passed through the school like sweets—plentiful, irresistible. You had rolled them against your own tongue often enough to know. You just hadn't considered what it felt like to be the flavour. The way it barrelled forward. The way it twisted and melted into something unrecognisable—a cruel, runaway game of broken telephone, worst among the lower years who had the most enthusiasm.

You couldn’t get a grip on it. It left you reeling.

Because it wasn’t as simple as being caught snogging Slytherin’s star player.

No, not given your recent alignment with Harry Potter. Duelling at night. Constant dinners. The Slughorn party, where you had arrived at his side and people filed it away for exactly this kind of occasion.

This wasn't just gossip. It was sacrilege.

An offence of the highest order against Hogwarts' golden boy—and never mind that Draco was your confidante, that this was a moment with an entire history behind it. Never mind that nothing really transpired between you and Harry. None of that was the story. The story was simpler and more satisfying and rolled off the tongue.

Did you hear about—yes, her, Potter's—well apparently she and Malfoy—No. The next day. The next day they lost! She didn't. She did.

She's so—I know. 

Everyone knows.

Merlin. Bold.

That's an understatement.

It had tasted too sweet.

—

You'd tried Harry first.

But it was Hermione and Ron that met you at the Gryffindor common room entrance when you asked for him, shoulder to shoulder, his united front assembled.

"Sorry." Hermione's voice was understanding, though you still couldn’t help but feel ashamed. "It’s better he not be seen with you. Not right now."

—

Draco, then. He will say something—clarify something, offer something that might restore a version of the narrative you could actually live in. You knew his capacity for reframing a situation when it suited him.

What you had miscalculated was how thoroughly this one already suited him.

You heard it in class. Someone leaned toward him, trying to be subtle.

Is it true she cheated on Potter with you?

Draco failed to disguise the quirk of a smile on his face.

I don't kiss and tell. He turned a page. But, who would blame her, really.

Then that childish, arrogant laugh.

There it was. Hauteur, cresting. In his version of events you had both emerged from this gloriously, Harry Potter diminished by association. Arranged into a triumph without considering what shape it was taking around you.

It seems he hadn't heard what they were saying about you specifically, that they had avoided telling him.

You wanted to explode on him. But the anger kept snagging on the same thing. How certain, you had been, without ever saying so, that you were the one person in his world he would never speak about that way, no matter the audience. Yet, he had affirmed you were a mere prize in his story. That you weren't his equal.

—

It was the oldest feeling in the world.

Eclipsed under the big reputations of two self-absorbed, strong-willed boys—teenagers, no less, which made it worse. You felt suddenly, sourly diminished. Stripped of everything that usually distinguished you—the composure, the mind, the self-possession—and reduced to something embarrassingly hormonal and ordinary.

You could almost watch it from outside yourself. Some ancient, recurring humiliation finding its feet again with your name attached to it this time. She was a girl. Full stop. End of analysis. She was a girl and he was Harry Potter and the other one was a Malfoy and really, what did you expect, you know how girls are when there are boys like that involved—soft things, girls, porous, impressionable, ruled by wanting in ways they can't quite govern.

The boys would walk out of this mythology intact. Draco gilded by it. Harry sympathetic within it. And you—the girl—would walk out of it as a lesson to both of them.

"He didn't send me."

Theo arrived sideways as always, his hands up when he found you buried under a stack of books in the library. You were well into your examination revision and what appeared to be your fifth draft folded and waiting to be sent to Potter.

"I come in peace." He set a wrapped package on top of your notes. "Concessionary sandwich?"

"You can't eat in here."

"Mm." He unwrapped it and took a bite anyway.

The alluring smell hit you immediately—rich, salty. Prosciutto, maybe. Mozzarella. Something sharp and sweet—balsamic. It was bachelor food made premium.

You swallowed drily.

—

You hadn't been eating properly. Finals gnawed at you. You'd also shut yourself in your room and started actively rerouting your entire daily existence to avoid being seen with Draco. Arriving and leaving before him for every class. The library at lunch and dinner.

Anything not to stoke the rumours.

He’d taken the hint. Or something like it. Now, one lay crumpled on your table.

Minou —

Send me the questions you're not sure about. I'll go through them.

Beseechingly, Draco.

—

"Try it." Theo angled it toward you, seeing your expression. "You look a bit tragic."

"Thank you, Theo. Truly."

You took a generous bite anyway, not registering that you were being fed by hand.

“S’good,” you admitted. “Too salty, though.”

"It’s not my problem you prefer guys that don’t season their food."

"Spice intolerant?"

"English."

You laughed at that.

"He seasons his food just fine."

"M'kay."

“What did you put in this, though?”

"I'll teach you." He tore off another piece. "Even do it from scratch. Just take me off cake-decorating duty."

Oh, Draco's birthday.

You drifted, setting your pen down. In three weeks. You're too furious to even look at him. But you still have to celebrate his birthday. You must, he won't do it otherwise, would spend the whole day pretending it wasn't happening. But, how do you—when it hurt to—

A voice behind interrupted your thoughts, not quite bothering to lower itself.

"—haven't seen her in a while. Gone into hiding, apparently." A girlish giggle.

"Slytherins. Who's next? Nott?"

A chuckle. "It would only be fitting."

"How noisy." Theo's voice, quiet and flat, beside you. He raised his wand lazily. "Langlock."

The girls' mouths sealed mid-laugh. Their eyes went wide. They looked at each other, then found Theo and you through the bookcase, then decided collectively that this particular corner of the library was no longer worth their time and left.

In the quiet, a raw sob came out of you.

Theo stared at you.

"Gods." A pause. "Are you crying."

Another one. You pressed your hands to your face.

"Stop that." His expression shifted into something between distaste and mild alarm. He reached over and patted your back twice—the way you'd pat a surface to check if it was sturdy. "Right now. Stop."

You could not.

"I expected more from you, you know." His eyes swept the library once—calculating whether any of this could be traced back to him.

"Shut up," you said into your hands.

"You're not that special. Everyone screws around." It was not the least bit meant to comfort you but somehow it was the most effective. "Nobody's going to care in a month."

You looked up, eyes red. 

"So dramatic. Who cares?" A shrug, the full-body kind. "Do whatever you want.”

You wiped your face with your sleeve. Looked at him properly.

"...Why are you being nice to me?"

Theo who would pull your ear, lean in like he had a secret, and instead bellow something filthy directly into your eardrum.

Theo who would glare beneath your chandelier—run his fingers along the crystal drops—and then yank.

Theo who would knock you clean off your bike and then crouch down and press his thumb into the bruise. That single dimple appearing when you yelped. Like he'd won something.

“Because I know how it feels—” He stopped. To feel Draco’s personal brand of belittlement. To feel limited against him. Tried again. "To have people decide what something means before you've decided yourself."

His eyes held you in it softly. For the first time.

Your opalescent tears. The way you curved inward and made yourself smaller. The glassy quality of your eyes. The frailty swelled something inside him.

You had always existed, in his particular arithmetic, as something adjacent to Draco—which meant adjacent to poison, kept at bay, never fully trusted with anything. Teeth he might one day find at his throat. Or ammunition.

Now, you were just someone who was hurting.

Just someone he wanted, instinctively, to stop hurting.

He bit his lip.

"Eat the rest," he said instead.

And he stayed. Asked nothing, offered nothing further. Just sat in the library in the middle of a Tuesday with his head resting on the table and watched, peripherally, until your last bite and your tears long since dried.

THREE WEEKS LATER

Do you want to come for tea?

I'm leaving the house. Without sunscreen.

What did I do? You're being annoying.

Do you have my toothbrush? Give it back.

I bet I did better on Herbology than you. I’m telling your mum.

You are a horrible kisser.

You glared at the Malfoy owl. It had lost some of its severity over the past few days—fluffed from the relentless back and forth between the summer house and your estate, less large intimidating bird of prey and more something resembling a disgruntled house pet. Its abyss-black eyes regarded the letter in your hand with its head tilted at an angle that was almost unbearably reminiscent of a dog urging you to throw something.

You had not written back to any of them. This latest one read:

I'm sorry. Please hate me from here.

You hadn't shown.

For the three days before his birthday—when everyone would usually begin arriving—you had not shown up.

A letter from Blaise arrived for Draco on the first morning instead.

Can't come. Called away to Marseille. Back in time for the formal. Don't ruin my rackets.

Happy birthday, you little prat. Don't do anything I wouldn't do.

— B.

Draco had laughed at that. Blaise had been born four months earlier and considered this gap a permanent evidence of his superior wisdom. He mentioned it regularly.

You had been suspended between going and not going when the owl returned late that night.

Another letter tucked in its beak. Only this time it didn't land.

It simply hovered. And hovered.

Just far enough that you couldn't reach it from the window.

You watched it. It watched you back.

Then it turned and disappeared into the dark, the letter still in its beak.

You stared at the empty window for a long moment—it felt like skin bracing before the pierce of shrapnel.

Then you started packing.

—

"You surely took your time. He's driving me nuts."

Theo appeared at your bedroom door, leaning lazily against the frame.

"Is he at the lake?"

“Mm.” He tilted his head slightly. “Hate how eerie he gets when he’s mad.”

You sighed into your closet, stuffing the last of your underwear into a drawer with slightly more force than necessary.

Then you turned to him. Sunkissed. Chiseled. Loose brown curls nearly brushing the top of your door frame. After the little snippet of sympathy at the library, it seemed Theo felt more tangible. More defined.

“You’re tanned more than usual.”

“I started my summer early.” He pushed himself off the frame and wandered in, dropping onto your bed with a self-satisfied grin.

“Where?”

“It began at Les Ambassadeurs, then Annabel's—ended in someone’s cellar, if I recall correctly.” He droned the itinerary like exhaling smoke.

Your brows knit together. “With?”

“The Browns. Palmer. Davie Whitmore.”

Muggle-borns.

"You know I don't particularly care about blood purity," you raised an eyebrow, crossing your arms. "But you ought to be more careful about where you're seen. And with whom."

He shifted onto his side, propping his head up with one hand. His linen shirt slipped slightly as he did.

“Well, they prove far more stimulating company."

The movement exposed the line of his collarbone—and just beneath it, faint marks. Two small bruises, violet against gold.

You stared without meaning to.

Theo followed your gaze, then looked back at you, that one dimple denting his face.

“Might’ve been your best friend's cellar.” Daphne.

You bit the inside of your cheek.

How easy it must be, to be so unruly.

To surrender to vices, amours and never be faulted for them—never admonished, never reduced by them. To be a man was, apparently, to move through the world without the specific tithe levied on everything ‘she’ did.

You had to pay and you had not even indulged in them.

To hell with it.

You crossed the room.

Theo straightened at once, your sudden movement sharpening his attention. His eyes flickered. Throat working as he swallowed, rising back to sitting as you closed the distance—until your shadow fell over him and his long legs bracketed yours. Close enough to catch the scent of him: woody, musky, the familiar ghost of his Luckies.

Close enough to make out the particular texture of the bruises on his skin. It left too much to the imagination. Had she pressed her mouth there to consume him, or only to consecrate him as hers—briefly, carelessly, the way you might fold the corner of a page in a book you never meant to finish?

Here he was. Someone's almost. You could take him into your mouth, taste him and spit him back out if you wanted.

If everyone already considers me a libertine too—why not?

"Tell me what you want."

He whispered carefully.

You became suddenly aware of the warmth radiating from his thighs, the large hands that had found their way to yours, sliding upward.

You looked down at his amber eyes. There was something unusually warm, almost wounded in them, it made your stomach churn. It reminded you he belonged in piazzas and lemon groves and oh, has he always been this tender?

He licked his rosy lips. “Let me make you feel better.”

Before you could answer, he pulled you in by the waist and pressed a soft peck to your mouth.

"This is okay?" he murmured against you. "We've done this before."

You nodded once.

"Mhm?" He kisses you again slowly as you savour the faint bitterness of cigarettes on his tongue.

His hand slid higher, your dress whispering along your thighs.

His fingers reached the fabric of your underwear. He swallowed, it felt like he was running a hand through dew-wet petals.

You moaned softly into his mouth, at the sensation of him thumbing your clit through your underwear.

"It's okay. Just feel good, baby." He cooed as he took in your pleasured expression.

He drew the fabric aside. One long finger pressing into you, as you gripped his forearm. Nails grazing the firm muscle and the little fuzz of his body hair—the masculinity unmistakeable.

"Mmm…”

I might not be the one you want, he thought. But I can be good for you tonight.

Your breath stuttered as his fingers moved. They were long enough to reach deep, his palm rolling against your clit with every slow stroke. You steadied yourself with a hand on his shoulder, his angular nose tipping to nuzzle at your neck.

"See?" he breathed. "It doesn't have to mean anything."

It felt like he threw cold water at you.

The moment it left his mouth it didn’t reassure you like how he’d intended. It hollowed. The truth of what this was. And the truth was that you wanted it to mean something. You felt it in how suddenly the pleasure drained out of you—disruptive now, where it had been tender a moment ago.

Your mind went back to the girl who had slipped from his bed a few weeks ago—dark hair, bare feet, gone by morning. It didn't feel like it was for you. You didn’t want relief, didn’t want to be baby just for tonight.

"Stop." You stepped back, drawing his hand away. "I—I can’t."

He looked at you—hands at your sides rumpling your dress, cheeks flushed.

You weren't sure of much when you'd kissed him last summer. But you were sure of this. This one you could not let slip by.

"I can't, Theo."

He held your gaze for a moment. Then, quietly: "Okay—"

But you were already gone.

—

Draco smelled you before he saw you. The smell of your hair when it weaved with the damp scent of the lake. Only now why did you smell like smoke, too?

He sat up slowly, eyes gleaming up at you in the night.

"You."

A rough kick at his groin.

"Fuck—" His hands flew between his legs, curling forward.

"Don't ever talk about me like that again."

All at once Draco felt ten years old again—hitting the carpet, the ire on your face, the silence that had followed the first time the word bitch had escaped his mouth.

"What are you—what are you on about—"

"Like I'm something you conquered."

He went still.

You stood over him, your gaze searing, the calm waters swishing behind you. "You. Out of everyone. Belittle me?"

“Who could blame her, really?” You repeated mockingly. “Like I was nothing to you.”

The realisation moved through him slowly. Then all at once. His ears burned, an ache in his chest. How fragile the craving had been—he saw that now—how quietly it had curdled into the franticness of taking, so effortless, that it was beneath his notice.

"I'm sorry." His voice came out quieter than he intended. "I wasn't—I didn't think."

A sob came out of you. His eyes fractured at the sound.

Your heart felt raw. With wanting him to talk about you the way you talked about him—like you were telling them come outside, come look at the moon. It's consuming and unnerving but isn't it beautiful?

"I hate this," you said finally. "I'm all messed up inside."

He was quiet for a moment. Then he shifted—propped himself on his knees, wrapped his arms around your thighs, pressed his face against them. It reminded you of how he'd help putting your shoes on for you. How, before the incandescence of intimacy blurred everything, before the roll of the dice, before the winter night, it had been this. Just this.

"I love when you scream those annoying songs in my ear." He kissed your thigh.

A tear slipped down your face.

"I love when you leave crumbs on my bed."

You lowered yourself slowly, the grass cool beneath you.

"I love how you outsmart me in Astronomy every single time."

You laid on top of him, knees knocking against yours.

"I love when I only have to look at you and you already know what I'm thinking." His hands cradled your face.

A beat. His thumb traced your cheekbone.

"You are half of me. I love you." Come back to me.

The syllables of your name rolled slowly off his tongue, cementing it was all for you.

You pouted, tears teeming down your cheeks. "Don't ever embarrass me like that again."

He shook his head, kissing them away.

"I’ll make it right in school. Swear it." Breathless against your mouth. "How do I make it right here, now?"

His lips moved to your jaw, your throat.

He squeezed your waist. “Tell me how.”

"Those earrings you were eyeing?" A kiss at the shell of your ear.

"New vinyl? Box seats?" Kiss.

"Tell me, princess." Kiss.

Against your thigh, he didn’t seem to realise he had gotten hard.

You loosed a breath, eyes trailing downward.

He caught your face with his hands immediately.

"Ignore it.”

Draco thought, you cannot mistake this.

You cannot reinvent this moment.

You cannot mistake this for simple pleasure.

It is so much more.

You nudged your forehead against his. “I want to."

Still, he waited. One beat. Two. Searching for any sign of a flicker.

Instead, your pupils swelled. “Show me, Draco. Please.” Properly, lovingly, wholly this time.

It made his length feel heftier in between his legs. He flipped you, spreading you beneath him. “I’ll show you exactly how sorry I am.”

Soft kisses pressed along your collarbones. Then, you could suddenly feel a sniffing sensation against your skin. His nose tickling you, tracing something.

“What is it?”

“Hm. Nothing.”

He quietly filed the bitter smell away. The way it intruded rudely with your natural balmy scent. Later.

He lowered himself to your supple breasts, licking his lips at the way it swelled out of your wispy barely-there dress—one of your summer’s greatest blessings—as he tugged at the neckline.

Under him, you preened without meaning to, searching his eyes as his hands moved over you—so large and mannish—tracing the soft curve, the femininity you were still not accustomed to.

He drew his lips over your nipple, squeezing and testing. His mouth felt unfairly cold, like he had been chewing ice, causing your nipples to pebble. You sighed as the wet muscle of his tongue worked circles around the bud, how he suckled harder as your back arched.

His grey eyes flickered to yours mid-motion as he ran your other nipple along his row of teeth, saliva running down the mound.

If you didn’t know how he felt about them, you knew now. He sucked them like he was hungry—like he wanted to draw something out. Committing the taste of your skin, the distinct salt of your sweat to memory.

Your hands grappled at his messy hair—the heat had given it texture—as he moved down your stomach, kissing moles, marks as he went.

He licked long, ardent stripes onto your slick underwear, the wet cotton sticking transparently onto your cunt. You moaned, your thighs pressing together instinctively while his hands held your hips steady. Your vision blurred with sensation, only the sight of your best friend’s head in between your legs and the sweet, sweet sounds he made, grounding you.

The moon as a boy—with his white linens and translucent skin—was eating you.

He finally slipped your underwear away, pocketing them and drawing your hips forward a little too eagerly, your fingers curling into the grass beneath you.

This time, his soft lips clamped onto your clit, while his fingers traced your folds, patient, gathering. Once he collected enough of your slick, he pumped them slowly inside you, your walls now better at taking them in than before.

“Mhm? Like that?” He purred into you as your nails dug onto his scalp. You rolled your hips into him, roughly dragging at his nose, both of your exertions needy and feverish like the night had casted an opium haze. Draco’s eyes once so striking now glazed over from intoxication.

He tested one more finger—his ring finger—throat bobbing at the tightness at your entrance. Despite how slippery you were inside, his prodding had stuttered. He tucked it away. Not yet.

The familiar churn rose in your stomach, the still woods upside down above you, turning and turning each time you blinked—your vision trying and failing to right itself, the world tilting pleasantly off its axis.

"I love you. I love you. Come in my mouth."

It was all you heard before your eyes squeezed shut, his name dissolving behind your teeth as the feeling crested—his tongue and fingers merciless, your orgasm damn near agonising.

You sighed up to the void. At the stars, hanging like holier-than-thou eye witnesses to the act. You could hardly care. Let the cosmos know Draco Malfoy could put his mean mouth to good use.

When you came back to yourself, Draco was sitting up—pale hair pressed flat against his forehead, cheeks flushed like he’d just went on a run. Except he was sucking his fingers clean, eyes on you.

"We can stop here—" he loosed a breath.

Your feet lifted to his bulge before he could even think you were finished. Kneading hard onto the firm length with the ball of your feet.

He groaned. His hand caught your ankle.

“Take it out.” You whined. He was right, you were a spoiled brat. How could you not be? When you knew he would always bow to you like this.

You wanted soil under your nails, leaves caught in your hair, the lake watching. The woods watching. For him to take you here in the open summer air, to press your body into the soft earth and make a thumbprint out of you. Wanted him to make a mess of you.

You nudged at his trousers with your foot, teasing, until the waistband caught awkwardly against the print beneath. A faint dampness showed through.

You laughed as he swatted your foot away with a huff, half amused, half flustered.

For a moment, he hesitated, then pushed his boxers down. His pale cock sprung free, the tip flushed and dewy—nearly purple from the ichor rushing through it. He reached for your hand where it rested in the grass and guided it around his girth, his fingers closing firmly over yours.

A broken whimper slips out of him as he began to slide himself from the thick, veiny shaft to the sensitive head with your fingers—spreading the thick spurts through the length.

His eyes flickered to yours, searching.

“How is it?” he asked so quietly you nearly missed it.

You drew yourself closer, flush with his thighs, guiding his length against your stomach. A sharp breath caught in your chest as you realized just how much of him there was—how far he would go if you meant to take him fully. It nearly reached your belly button.

“I want it inside me,” you said as steadily you could, though you couldn’t tell if your core pulsed from apprehension or want.

He slipped the dress away from you and paused, taking you in where you lay against the grass. All softness and curve. So pliant and kneadable in his hands. Laid upon the grass like you were one of those marble muses at his estate, left beneath an open sky to be worshipped.

Then his focus shifted—to his six-foot self, to the length in his hands. The clean lines of his stomach, the masculine sharpness in his hips, the strength in the angles of his body. You were equals in every way that mattered—and yet here, the cruel truth of your bodies, of your biology. How easily he might hurt you. And not even intend to. His chest ached.

You saw the shift in his eyes. The drunkenness receding, replaced by brooding. His thoughts had turned, from the urge to please to caution, the awareness that it might impale you instead.

You had to remind him you wanted it as much as he did, that it still ended in pleasure.

You caressed his cheek, guiding his gaze back to yours.

“You’re not hurting me.”

He caught his lower lip between his teeth, eyes flickering over your face. “Tell me,” he said. “and I’ll stop.”

You nodded.

“I need to hear it.” He brushed a strand of hair from where it clung to your cheek.

“Yes, Draco.”

He began sliding his plump tip through your folds. An involuntary jolt each time the raw, fleshy texture met with your clit. Your breath hitched, turning uneven as sensation built in quiet, insistent waves.

The air felt thick with it—the musky, heady scent of skin, of him, of you. The lake as the overarching note. You wanted to bottle it up.

You pushed yourself up onto your elbows, needing to see. The sight alone made your breath catch again—the creamy head spearing through you slit. He was leaking so much you'd thought he came already.

“Bit wider.” He spread your legs, trying to ease in the rounded tip.

He winced at the squeeze of your entrance. In his manoeuvres to fulfil your wishes and have him inside you—he alternated between gathering slick and fisting it in little by little. But for the life of him, your poor hole could not even accomodate the tip. His cock bending, surrendering each time he tried to press into you.

While he was concerned for your pain, you were trying not to come from him simply rubbing and trying to enter you.

You took him back into your hands before you could, guiding him inside. This time, you pressed more firmly, groaning at the chafing sensation—pain and pleasure blurring together as he finally began to give, the tip breaking into you.

He arched forward, moaning with you, the pressure undoing him. He mumbled against your lips—soft, breathless I love you's and I'm sorry's, repeated like a mantra. His fingers crushing your hips.

Oh, you, he thought, as you strained to take him. Everyone was wrong. I’m not empty—my heart is right here, in my hands.

A tear slipped from the corner of your eye, and he caught it instantly, brushing it away with a kiss.

He was nearly all the way in now, your bodies folding into one another, closing the distance inch by inch—like two hands reaching for each other. His face nuzzled the curve of your neck, licking apologetically.

“Love you. You’re doing so well.”

He breathed slowly into your hair, the life pulsing through you now thrumming against his cock—the warmth, the wetness. How it had all been his doing.

You laid back onto the grass, your arms rising to clasp around his neck.

“I’ll start moving, okay?”

He began moving his hips, the tiniest of increments, as your hole bore the girth, the shape of him. Feeling every heartbeat from his veins. Gods, you could not bear it.

You searched his face, finding the same tension there—the same furrow in his brow, as though the feeling was almost painful.

“Deeper, Draco.”

“Mm. It will hurt.”

“I want all of you inside me.” How could he ever say no to you when you talk to him like that?

He drew you closer, pressing you flush against him, fingers stuttering at your hips. You felt a sharp stab of pleasure go through you from the spot he reached deep inside, you were dripping so much now it seemed to slip him in without trying.

“Taking it so well,” He whimpered as you squeezed around him again.

Only because you fit inside me so perfectly.

He found a rhythm then, deeper, steadier, each thrust accompanied by a stroke of your clit. Though, just the snap of the mound of his pubic bone could make you come.

“I can feel you,” you mewled, a faint metallic taste on your lips—you had bitten your lips too hard.

"Does it feel good?" he asked despite everything.

"Yes, gods, keep going."

He was unraveling. His face had turned completely red. You could see it in the way he rutted sloppily inside you, how desperately he grasped your body, the stutter of his navel. He was straining not to come first.

You realised, for all his ego, this was his first time too. That he, himself, could not bear it.

And then—

Like last summer. Something caught at the edge of your vision.

That pale gossamer hovered on the lake again. Breathing light. It drifted, gathering itself, no longer just a fleeting shimmer but something more defined. Something forming. A ghostly creature.

A broken moan drew you back to Draco.

You reached up instinctively, inserting two fingers into his mouth. He took them in without hesitation, sucking, placating himself. He looked like he might cry.

“Come with me,” you whispered.

He moved faster then, his rhythm faltering at the edges as the moment overtook him. The earth pressed against your back, re-moulded with every thrust.

“I—I’m close,” he breathed.

You could almost feel the thumping, the rush of his orgasm course through his cock inside you.

Every time he tore the grass from his exertions, he had to move his palms to another patch, and ground himself anew.

You had the oddest compulsion to wrap your legs around his waist to keep him there, and hold his come inside you. You filed the thought away for later.

His thumb kept steady work on your clit, squeezing your orgasm out of you, willing you to come around his cock.

He gnawed on your fingers now, barely holding himself together. Your other hand gripped his bicep tightly, nails pressing into the muscle as you reached your limit too.

All of a sudden it felt like you could identify you and him everywhere.

A pair of lungs unfurling. A double egg yolk merging.

You broke first.

And it might have been the hardest thing Draco had ever done—to hold back, to stay present through the overwhelming pull of your cunt, your walls nearly emptying him clean.

You were still mid-orgasm, when he pulled out so quickly it felt like a part of you was yanked with him.

He came in thick ropes, the pale pigment like spilled milk on the grass. He hadn't wanted to come on you, but some of it still landed and glazed your puffy folds.

“Oh, fuck,” he murmured roughly—spent, as he stroked himself through his orgasm.

You curled in on yourself, the aftershocks still moving through you, your fingers desperately pressing down hard on your clit, trying to counter the blinding pleasure with pain. For a sensation that felt like you weren't falling through the sky.

But you couldn’t help it. You grabbed his tender cock, still flinching from the last of his seed and squeezed, inclining more of it to come out.

He fell against you with a low groan, a teeth impression carving itself deeply into your collarbone. His hands piercing your sides as you continued to apply pressure.

“Fuck! Fuck—please I can’t anymore.”

You ceased your torment, satisfied with his overstimulation.

“Mm—it’s not a toy.” He huffed, still panting.

You laughed breathlessly. Always a tally with you.

For a while, you simply heaved against each other, letting the heartbeats speak for themselves. Before your breath could catch up to you, the little moonlit creature fizzled back into the lake. You sighed exasperatedly.

Slowly, your senses began to return.

He had given it to you. Something lasting. You and him eternally embedded into the earth like a root finding its depth.

The orgasm faded gradually, though you couldn’t quite tell when it ended. It felt as though your body was still aching from being carved.

Draco remained melting over you, his breathing shallow, still caught in that moment. The soft gauze dirtied from where his knees dug the earth.

You scratched his back lightly, nails grazing him back to you. How he had shattered already made it apparent, but you wanted to hear it from his mouth. Wanted to know if he held this moment as preciously as you did.

"Draco," you said finally, cradling him against you.

"Hm?"

"Did you ever—" You paused. "Did you sleep with Parkinson?"

You felt his smirk form against your shoulder. Parkinson. Until now she had never been Pansy—you hadn't been able to afford the familiarity.

"I did." His voice was low. "You should have heard her."

He shifted against you, pitching his voice high and breathless. "Yes—fuck me, Draco—Oh! Fuck me harder—" Grinding into you as he said it, the faux moans so committed it was almost impressive.

You shoved him off and hit him—open palm, hard enough that his head turned with it.

He laughed, "I love when you do that."

You said nothing, your expression souring.

"Did you know your neck is exactly ten kisses long?" He asked suddenly. "Or that your nipples harden from just my breath? Or that when you come, you make this little—"

"I get it." Your face was hot.

He bumped his nose against yours, gentle. "I'm all yours. Always."

Life becomes more bearable when you look as crazy as me, he thought.

You stared up at him, searching for the words. You wanted to offer something, too.

"I kissed Theo," you said. "Last summer."

Oh.

Draco's lashes fell.

Like a grand curtain, the eyes of someone retracting to a place they do not speak of. That same place last winter. But this time the quiet didn't feel solemn. It was older. Predated language, predated the names you had for things like love and want and mine.

And then he laughed nervously, too lightly, making your stomach churn. Because he laughed like that when he was buying time. Had heard it once before, in the pretty palace that was your room, on the pristine carpet with his hand at Theo's throat and Theo's face going the colour of something dying, and you had said stop it, Draco, what are you doing and he had laughed exactly like this and said, he's fine—

The glint of your locket against your skin drew his gaze down, a small silver mercy. His hand came to your neck, large and warm, nearly swallowing it whole.

"How did it make you feel?" His thumb moved, barely.

"Don't look at me like that."

"What else?"

"Nothing else." A beat. "Nothing."

Draco hated that he could tell when you lied.

a/n: Thank you for being patient and the check-ins in my inbox I will get to them soon. 🤍 I'm all good, just busy and didn't want to post anything half-hearted.