Doctor's Orders

"You do, too!"

"I do not!"

"Yes, you do! You whimper in your sleep!"

"I have bad dreams, you arsehole!"

"Well, keep them in your bloody head, because I don't want to hear about them while I'm trying to sleep!"

Harry gasped. "You are such an unfeeling bastard! See, Hermione, didn't I tell you he was an unfeeling bastard?"

Hermione Granger rolled her eyes at the two men seated on the leather couch across from her. "Honestly, I don't know how I let you talk me into this! I didn't need to be any more involved in your personal lives than I already was."

Harry narrowed his eyes. "We're paying you for this, Doctor Granger--eighty bloody galleons a session! So you'll listen, and you'll like it!"

"Well," huffed Draco, crossing his arms over his chest, "if I am an unfeeling bastard, it's only because I've had to put up with all this ridiculous maudlin crap from you for the past four years! Why do you expect me to fall apart every time you do?"

"Because that's what boyfriends are supposed to do!"

Draco pursed his lips. "Well, if I'd known that four years ago, I'd have thought twice before shagging you senseless!"

"Boys," said Hermione in a warning tone.

"Bollocks!" shouted Harry, ignoring Hermione altogether. "You would've shagged me senseless regardless, you bloody nymphomaniac! And while we're on the subject of sex, do you know that you make the most horrible faces in bed?"

Draco appeared scandalized, his wide eyes darting back and forth from Hermione to Harry to Hermione again. "I DO NOT!"

"You do," Harry insisted, smirking. He then proceeded to screw up his eyes and bite hard on his bottom lip in imitation of Draco's mid-coitus expression. It was all Hermione could do to suppress a chuckle; it was funny after all. Laughing, however, hardly seemed like the professional thing to do.

"I don't look like that, you prat!" Draco insisted. "And even if I do, it's only because you have a tendency to be too damn rough in bed. Do whatever you like when it's just you and your bloody right hand, but I'm a human being with nerve endings! It bleeding hurts, you barbarian!"

"Boys!" said Hermione again, her tone more forceful. Harry and Draco both snapped their heads toward her. "Why don't you take a break from all the bickering and petty insults? You're both twenty-two years old, for Merlin's sake! Let's talk about some more...substantial issues you have with one another."

Silently, Harry and Draco seethed. And then, after a moment--

"Draco always makes decisions without me."

"Do not!"

Hermione rolled her eyes for what felt like the twelve millionth time that day. How had they talked her into this? "Draco, you can't get all defensive every time Harry says something negative about you. And Harry, can you please expound upon your accusation?"

Harry made a sour face. Did Hermione always have to talk like a bleeding rocket scientist? Expound upon your accusation, for crying out loud! Would it not have been easier to say What do you mean? "Right. Well, for example, I come home from work last week, and Draco's got the whole damned living room painted green, which was something we had never discussed!"

Draco shrugged. "So I thought I'd surprise you. What's so bad about that?"

"You know I hate green!" groaned Harry. "Especially Slytherin green! And besides, that's not the point. The point was that the decision affected us both, and you never bothered to ask my opinion about it. You're always doing stuff like that!"

"Well, you invite people over all the time without asking me!" Draco turned to Hermione. "I wake up at nine o'clock Saturday morning to Lupin, Severus, and McGonagall in my kitchen chatting over tea!"

"We were reviewing O.W.L. testing formats!"

"And you couldn't have done that at Hogwarts?"

Harry huffed. "Draco, don't be such a baby about it."

"I could have come out of the bedroom stark naked!" Draco retorted. "Merlin knows it would've done McGonagall some good, doubt that woman's seen a healthy naked man in years, but you should have told me they were coming!"

"Alright, sorry," Harry muttered half-heartedly. "From here on out I'll tell you when I'm having company over."

"And that's another thing," snapped Draco. "You're always apologizing for everything. In this case, I guess it's warranted, but you apologize for things even when you aren't at fault."

"Sorry!"

"See?!" said Draco, wide-eyed. "Hermione, what do you make of this?"

Harry eyed her warily, as if demanding she not side with Draco on this issue. "Well," she began tentatively, "Harry, in the past, did have a lot of weight stacked on his shoulders, and I think maybe he--"

"I'm right here, Hermione," growled Harry, his wary gaze morphing dangerously into an angry one. "Don't bloody talk about me like I'm not in the room!"

Hermione took a deep breath before continuing. "I think that maybe you feel like your still carrying those burdens and therefore feel responsible for things that aren't your fault."

Harry gritted his teeth. Why did Hermione have to be so damn right about everything? And judging by the moronic smirk he saw in his peripheral vision, Draco had realized it, too. What did he have to be so damned smug about?

After a long moment, Hermione spoke up. "Alright, this is getting too ugly. I have a better idea."

"What?" muttered Draco. "Letting us out of here so we can go kill each other in the privacy of our own home, where we don't have to pay eighty galleons to do it?"

Hermione hardly seemed amused. "That idea would save me having to clean the bloodstains off of my office floor, but that's not what I had in mind. Here's my idea: How about each of you take turns naming something you love about the other person, something they do for you that makes you smile and makes you happy to be with them."

Surely there were plenty of reasons, thought Harry, why he and Draco had been together these four long years, but for the moment he was too angry to call up a single one of them.

"Harry," Draco murmured, breaking the silence as he laughed quietly and shifted his eyes to his lap, "he gets home late from Hogwarts some nights, been grading papers or whatever, and I'm already in bed. He'll crawl under the covers, snuggle up behind me, and wake me up just to kiss me on the cheek and say, 'Love you'. It's...sweet, I guess."

Oh. Harry felt a flush spread heavily over his skin. He did do that, didn't he?

A smile came slowly across Hermione's face. "There we go!" she exclaimed. "Now you're turn, Harry."

Well, there was one thing he could think of, and surely it would embarrass Draco just as much as the last comment had embarrassed him. A voice inside him nagged that these little intimacies were really none of Hermione's business, but for the sake of embarrassing Draco....

"I love that silly little face you make at me all the time," he said almost too quietly, beaming at the very thought of the face in question. He turned to Hermione. "See, anytime our conversations get too serious or we share a really intense kiss or something, Draco'll look at me and narrow his eyes and stick his tongue out from between his teeth. I guess it's just to lighten the mood, but I really do love it."

Harry glanced sideways and grinned triumphantly when he noted that Draco's face was tinted an appropriate shade of pink. This was just too good to give up.

"And sometimes," continued Harry in flagrant disregard to the notion of taking turns, "if we're together with a lot of people, he'll find ways to touch me. Not sexually, I mean. Just, like.... Say we're sitting at dinner with a group of friends. He'll reach under the table and grab my hand or put his hand on my knee or...just something little like that."

Hermione nodded satisfactorily. "And how does that make you feel?"

"Safe," Harry answered, a little surprised by the truth in the words. He fixed his gaze on Draco, who was stealing small glances at him out of the corner of his eye. "It's like his way of saying, 'You're mine, whether all these people like it or not'."

"Draco?"

"Mmm?" Draco grunted before shaking his head clear of all thought, as if terrified Harry might invade his mind. "Oh, my turn. Right.... Well, this hardly suffices after loverboy's gushy little speech, but I love when Harry cooks for me."

Hermione appeared mildly surprised. "I didn't know you could cook, Harry!" she remarked. "I mean, you always did so horribly in Potions--"

"Thanks for reminding me," muttered Harry, only to be ignored by Hermione.

"Tell me, Draco," she continued on, "what's so special to you about Harry cooking?"

Draco huffed, and Harry smiled; Harry knew just how much the other man hated having to explain his feelings. "Well, obviously, Harry's a pretty busy guy. But sometimes, just out of the blue, he'll throw together...well, not 'throw together', because he puts a lot of energy into it...but he'll cook up a big meal and set the table and put out candles, and we'll have dinner together, just the two of us."

Hermione couldn't help but smile dreamily at the thought. Draco rolled his eyes.

"It's just...I mean, it's nice. And not just the cooking or the atmosphere, or whatever. It's nice knowing that Harry's spent all that time cooking and preparing things, not just to put food on the table, but for us. Harry's spends that time for us. Sometimes, I just wish I could do something as big for us."

Harry laughed uncertainly and grinned. "It's not that big," he murmured, placing a hand on Draco's shoulder. Draco glanced down at the hand and then up at Harry, whose eyes met his. "Besides, you do plenty for us."

Draco shook his head. "Nah," he said softly. "Not really."

"What about last year, when you took a week off at the Ministry for an 'impromptu holiday' in France, just so you could be with me when I had to go give a lecture at Beauxbatons?"

Draco shrugged. "Didn't want to be bored all week, did I?"

"Or how 'bout my birthday?" Harry went on. "You transfigured the shower stall into an enormous bath, charmed the bubbles to sparkle, and covered the entire bathroom floor with rose petals."

"Big deal," muttered Draco. "Just a simple 'swish and flick'."

Harry chuckled. "Bollocks!" he exclaimed. "You stayed up half the night to do it! In fact, you woke me up several times with all your frustrated cursing, but I never said anything about it."

Draco sighed defeatedly; he had stayed up half the night to do all that for Harry.

"It was a nice bath, wasn't it?" he said quietly, the merest trace of a smile on his lips.

"Very nice, as I recall," Harry replied, snuggling closer to Draco. "Although, if I remember correctly, we didn't do much bathing, did we?"

"Oh no, looks like time's up!" said Hermione quickly, looking more than a bit flustered as she rose from her wingback chair. "Sorry, boys, but it's been an hour."

Hurriedly, she motioned Harry and Draco up off the couch. "Now," she huffed, "for the time being, my advice to you two is to keep these things you've revealed, the things you love about each other, in the forefront of your mind, and stop dwelling on the little things that bother you. In the next few weeks, we'll work on taking care of the bad spots, but for now, I think the temporary solution is to focus on the good in your relationship."

The boys were propelled toward the door, narrowly avoiding being trampled by Hermione's incoming client, and in a matter of seconds, without so much as a "Thank you! Goodbye! Have a nice day!" from their friend, were left alone in the empty corridor outside Hermione's office.

"Well," sighed Harry as he rested the back of his head against the wall, "that was...enlightening, to say the least."

"Indeed," muttered Draco, sealing his body against Harry's and circling his arms around Harry's waist. "So...we're supposed to be focusing on the good things, eh? You wanna go home and cook for me?"

Harry grinned wickedly. "Cooking is the last thing on my mind. Actually, there was another 'good thing' I thought we might focus on...."

Draco raised an eyebrow. "Bathing?"

Harry shook his head. "Not exactly," he said before leaning forward to nip lightly at Draco's neck. "But with bathing, we're at least out of our clothes, so you're getting warmer."

"Ohhh," mewed Draco. "You want to have your way with me, do you, Mister Potter?"

"You bet I do," Harry chuckled. "But only if you promise to make those horrible faces I'm so fond of."

Draco wasted no time in crushing his mouth to Harry's, declaring a veritable war on the other man with lips and tongue. If every stupid therapy session ended this way, he would have no objection to giving up eighty galleons a week.

"Count on it, 'Chef Harry'," he whispered breathily.

Harry smiled. "Keep kissing me like that, and I'll be favoring the bedroom over the kitchen for a very long time. We'll may never eat again."

"I've got something you can eat...."

"Nympho...."

"Whiner...."

"Arsehole...."

"Prat...."

FIN