#sprout2012

“Do you really need to be doing that now?” Was probably the wrong thing to ask right now but that was sort of what Harry was banking on. He’d never get far if he said all the right ones, not with Draco like this.

“What?” Draco barks astride a stool.

“I said, do you really need to redecorating the tree again? You’ve already changed the bloody thing twice already, what’s wrong with how it was before?” He wriggled deeper into his seat and watched as Draco nearly resettled wrong on the stool and had to juggle the remaining tinsel he grasped onto as he righted himself.

Draco snorted. Then huffed.

“What?”

“It has to be perfect Potter!”

“Oh no, I’m Potter again.” Harry deadpanned, “I’m only Potter when you’re mad at me or horny and you don’t seem that horny.”

Draco turned round to consider him critically, “Congratulations, well observed.” Pausing, probably for dramatic effect. “No! I am not horny! I’m annoyed, annoyed that this tree is already withering on me. That the same place that sold the premium tinsel last year has given me this rubbish and that my favourite bauble has broken!”

“That’s ridiculous, you can’t have favourites, they’re basically all the same!”

“This one was red and silver!” Draco exclaimed, picking up and grasping onto said baubles shards. “And it swirled, really brought the whole motif together.”

“What’s this really about?” Harry leaned forward onto his knees. “Draco! Hey! What’s going on? It’s not the tree, the trees fine. So is the damn tinsel and the baubles. We’re ten days out of Christmas, if they were faulty and they aren’t, we could just buy new ones, so tell me.”

Nothing.

“This isn’t about your mother is it?”

“Merlin no! Harry, no.” Draco cried, slumping down onto his knees next to the ‘early’ arrived presents.

“Have I done something?” Harry offered, only slightly worried on what response that would bring him.

“Harry!” Draco sighed again, wiping away the fringe from his forehead. “It’s not you, it’s me. Sort of, not really- well.”

“Come here.” Harry beckoned, “Draco would you just- come here. Talk to me.”

And like that Draco gave in, rising off the floor, not to sit beside him like Harry expected but to slide into his lap, either leg wrap around his thighs. Wrapping his arms around Harry’s neck tightly. For a moment Harry worried it might be serious, but then with a sudden exhale of breath, Draco leaned back and composed himself. Like Harry’s embrace was a well needed antidote to some mysterious illness.

“Do you remember last Christmas?”

“Of course.” Harry whispered, his own traitorous hands venturing across Draco’s ever pristine skin, caressing his face and for the millionth time memorizing his features. “It was our first.”

“I told you I loved you for the first time.” Draco leaned closer, Harry in response had to squeeze at his hips to keep himself from kissing him. Draco wasn’t finished: “I was so afraid of what you’d say. That it’d change everything but you, you were so-”

“I was so damned relieved! I’d been aching to say it for months.” Harry would have laughed if it weren’t for the intensity of the situation, for the ache in his bones that called for Draco’s closeness.

Draco clamped his eyes shut and rested his head against Harry’s, and almost like a prayer he murmured, “It was the best Christmas both of us had ever had. Nothing else will ever compare.”

Ohhhhh.

“Fine! You know what? Marry me!”

“WHAT?!”

“You want an unforgettable Christmas? Marry me!” Harry explained, gripping onto Draco’s jaw with shaky palm.

Bounding up onto his feet in a very catlike motion, Draco was off again once more. “Don’t you dare pull that shit with me! Like you could just ask like that? Like that’s the quick fix? What about next year? Will we even get a next year?”

“Well I definitely see a next year! So marry me! We’ll even get a year after that!” Harry jumped up too, his adrenaline mounding.

“No!”

“No?! You don’t want to marry me?” Harry barked.

“You’re such a dick. You have no idea how to ask for someone’s hand. I’m quite glad you’re stuck with me. You’d be alone otherwise!” Draco started for the kitchen.

“Stuck with you? You’re the one who doesn’t want to marry me. Who thinks we’re so boring as a couple or something that we won’t even make it till next year!” Harry slammed his hands down onto the counted just as Draco set the kettle on with a flick of his wand.

He glared, almost-ALMOST viciously, but not quite. “That’s not what I said and you know it. I just wanted to do us both a service that’s all. You know your Christmas’s with the Dursley’s were awful, and how impersonal my parents soirees’ were.”

Draco pulled their mugs from the cabinet, his shoulders drawn tight with tension melted Harry into a puddle. He stalked his partner round the island bench, and drew his arms around Draco’s sides.

“This thing we have, started off so small. Something so casual people almost didn’t believe us when we told them we were seeing each other. Remember? You and I-” Here Harry squeezed, “- we’ve been through so much. We’ve seen horrible sides to each other. Don’t forget that! The fact that I get to sit down at the end of another giant Christmas Dinner from Molly, and sit with you in our home, by our Christmas tree… means more to me than you know. Alright? The fact I get to spend yet another Christmas with you, makes this coming Christmas special. Understand?”

Draco nodded but didn’t speak, thinking maybe he might be teary eyed, he let it go and didn’t even spin him around for the kiss he so desperately wanted to plant upon his boyfriend’s face. Draco Malfoy did not do well when people saw him crying.

Instead, he held Draco tight, his hands protectively roaming across Draco’s sweater, down to his belly, underneath it and against his skin, all the while rocking from side to side in what he hoped was a soothing motion.

Draco made the tea, they ignored the tree and went to bed.