Children of the Eighth Day

It's the darkest hour of the night, and their laughter fills the stairwell.

Harry shushes Draco with an exaggerated gesture. "M'neighbours!" he hisses, slurring his words together with a grin that still manages to be cocky, despite his inebriation.

"Bugger your neighbours," Draco replies with a sweep of his arm that threatens to catastrophically destroy what remaining sense of balance he has. For a moment he's disoriented, confused, unsettled. Where is he? How did he get ...?

A pub. Red heads and laughter. Exploding sweets of some kind.

A hand extended in friendship.

A hand reaches out to steady him. "Right mate?" Harry asks, concern vying with focus for control of his gaze. Draco nods, uncertainly. Harry's hand lingers on his arm a moment too long. Too long. Too warm. Or maybe the alcohol only makes it seem so. Draco is suddenly nervous.

"I should go home," he says as they climb the last few steps to Harry's apartment.

"You'll splinch yourself," Harry replies, glancing over his shoulder as he fishes in the pocket of his trousers for his keys. His trousers are too tight. He can barely get his hand in his pocket. "You're drunk."

"Am not," Draco replies defensively as he hurriedly averts his gaze in what he hopes is a haughty gesture. The effect is ruined, however, when he trips gracelessly on the top stair and almost collides with Harry on the landing.

A quirking smile, a quick green glance, the casual bump of bodies loose with Firewhiskey--

"Well... you are too," Draco concedes at last.

"Indubitably," Harry says, stumbling a little over the syllables. "Which is why I'm not Apparating. And neither are you." He holds up a little silver key that glints in the flat eklectric lights of the hallway. "You're staying here. Chez Potter."

Draco snorts. "You're turning into a fucking Muggle, Potter. Dress like one. Drink like one. Even lock your bloody door like one," he observes as Harry tries desperately to fit the key into the lock. "If you were a proper wizard, you'd just charm it locked. Alakazam!" He waves his arm again, having forgotten what it did to him the first time, and inadvertently lurches forward until he is only a breath away from Harry's face...

And then, it is too much. Too late.

Their lips meet; soft, smooth, warm. A collision of bodies. A bump of skin. A huff of breath on his face. Hardly more than an accident, and yet... The sharp smell of alcohol and aftershave, of London rain and spicy sweet sweat all mingled.

Harry pulls away.

Eyes locking. A smoldering stare lit by the burn of Firewhisky in the blood--

Draco's limbs are not his own. Reason's left him completely and he's in some terrifying no-man's land of not caring that he's doing a very foolish thing.

But it doesn't stop him. Not now when he has come so far, when he has traversed the incomprehensible distance between them to stand only a hair's breadth away...

and ...

Rough. Scratchy against his palm.

This he knows. It is his never-more. The final piece of this clumsy puzzle. His last of course, and everything fits.

His hands seem to know their way across this last stretch of separation, fingers curving just so, tracing the bump of sinew, the strain of muscle over bone, the line of his jaw until -- there -- Harry tilts his head to meet Draco's palm, sighs into his touch, closes his eyes and -- oh god -- leans in . . .

And when at last they meet, it is as though a whole new yes is born. There's no longer hesitation between them, no guarded cool or reasonable doubt, and Draco is falling with sweet-tempered syllables against his lips that spell out here--

--parted with this new desire to drink him in, to know him all, to want all this.

He is falling, and Harry's fingers are playing rapid songs against wrist and cheekbone, collar and chest.

He is falling, but Harry catches him as they stumble into the darkened flat. They do not bother with the light, and when Draco opens his eyes again, he is alone under blankets, curled against cushions and tired beyond what his body can endure.

But he is not alone tonight.

Harry is always there when he falls.