#the press conference is overrrr

[hogwartsfirebolt]

takes one to know one

I watched him go through many. Months after our groups merged, after I was forced to think of him when I thought of the word “friends”, I became used to it. I learned his moves, learned what desire looked like on his face. 

It happened around 1 am every time, once conversation swelled with drink. His eyes would settle on someone at the pub, intense, unwavering, his lips tilted on a smile, until they had no choice but to look back. He rarely had to seek them out, within minutes of having his attention they’d be at our table, insinuating themselves near him. A few minutes more and he’d have them locked down. Men, women, it didn’t matter when he sat with his legs spread and his arm draped over the back of their chair, mouth soft and eyebrows furrowed, listening intently to whatever inane conversation they attempted to make. 

Nobody stood a chance. They left with him every time. 

Sometimes they stuck around for a while, came to two or three pub nights hanging from his arm, providing some variety to our table, which otherwise remained unchanged: Ron and Pansy, who were in a surprisingly exclusive no-strings-attached arrangement, Viktor and Hermione, who were engaged, Harry and I. I never brought anyone to the table. My own flings weren’t like his. They weren’t sparse, but the number seemed insignificant in comparison, the encounters spaced out by months rather than days. A handsome man every once in a while, whose eyes I would seek at midnight and whom I’d never see again after dawn, nobody hanging from my arm when the next reunion rolled around. It was a simple affair. Out of us six, Harry was the one with the most conquests under his belt. 

Ron would tease him relentlessly, call him a cowboy, and, once he was well and truly drunk, a whore, in a satisfied, approving tone. It surprised a laugh out of Harry, who by then had warm fingers splayed over the shoulder of the handsome man he’d beckoned to our table using nothing but his eyes that night. His hands wandered often once they’d found a target. 

“Or isn’t he, Draco?” Ron asked me, and Harry’s laugh became even louder when I nodded.

“Can’t help it,” he said, mirth shining in his green eyes. The man at his side stared at him, jaw slack, desire plain on his face. There was something magnetic about his amusement. They left within the next half hour. 

I watched it play out, fortnight after fortnight. He had a type, that was undeniable, always seeming to go after the sharper ones, the ones who weren’t afraid to meet his gaze head on, no matter how intense. They were typically in their late twenties, around our own age, and they’d definitely more often than not hail from enough wealth that they’d carry an accent to show for it. The posh thing seemed to do it for Harry. But in the end it didn’t matter who they were, how beautiful or wealthy, it never lasted more than a handful of months. It would begin with longer silences, strained eye contact, less physicality in public. Then he would stop bringing them, no explanation provided, and the hunt would begin once again. 

He made quick, efficient work of his conquest, almost effortless. Dispatched them with the same efficiency. 

That was why the night I turned around and found his eyes trained on me, I felt my stomach drop to my feet. When he saw me notice, he raised a single eyebrow and didn’t look away. He was sitting at our table, the same one we sat at every fortnight, while I waited at the bar for a new round of drinks. Under the weight of his gaze it looked different. The seating had shifted while I was away, Ron and Pansy had arrived hand in hand, Hermione and Viktor had changed seats to make room for them and they’d left only one place free for me to return to. A chair next to Harry, pressed to his thigh, his arm heavy over the backrest. And his eyes were on me. I tasted it in the back of my throat, the sharp tang of terror. 

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. In the months of watching him, of wanting him, sometimes keeping it a secret even from myself, I’d never once considered him watching back. And the reality of my own want, heavy inside my chest, dwarfed in a second when compared to my fear.

I turned my back to him and leaned my elbows on the bar, stomach rising and falling swiftly with my breath. 

I’d watched him go through many. I’d been unable to look away for a lifetime. I’d wanted him and loathed him, never knowing which instinct was stronger. Could I forgive myself if I allowed him to make me a name on a list, a chip on his bedpost? Could I forgive myself if I didn’t? I didn’t know. I didn’t know why he was watching me. I didn’t know why now, when he had to know I would’ve let him, at any point. 

When I felt a hand on my shoulder, a warm body leaning against the bar next to me, I knew it was him. I took a deep breath, bracing for it, and when I turned I found his green eyes fixed on my face, his mouth soft. I knew what he looked like when he wanted it, I’d seen it for months, and it was this. 

“Wow, you’re miraculously not already off fucking someone tonight,” I said, and he laughed, head tilted back, neck exposed. 

His mouth said, “Yeah, who would’ve thought it possible?” His eyes said, you know exactly why I’m here. 

I opened my mouth, trying to come up with more banter on the fly, anything to distract, so he wouldn’t be able to see how scared I was. Perhaps he already saw it. I swallowed down hard, and his eyes followed the rise and fall of my throat. 

“Two shots of vodka, two firewhiskeys, two blueberry gin and tonic,” said the bartender, placing a tray in front of me and saving me from having to come up with something to say. Before I could attempt to balance the six drinks in my hands, Harry flicked his fingers and they floated, steady, next to our heads. 

“Which one’s yours?” He asked. 

“One of the blueberry gins.” 

“Fitting. Which one’s mine?” 

“One of the whiskeys.” 

He smiled like that meant something. 

Our seats were too close. I felt the warm line of his thigh against mine, his eyes heavy on me whenever I said something, the back of his fingers brushing my back where his hand rested on my chair. I saw the group catching on, Ron pretending not to smile, Pansy trying to make eye contact with me. All I could do was swallow and pretend nothing was happening as I was swept in the intoxicating current of his interest. 

But I’d watched it happen. No matter what it meant to me, I knew what it was to him. The pub emptied out, my watch struck 2 and then 3 am. He’d usually be gone by now, with whoever his conquest of the night had been. But here we both were, watching Pansy drink Ron under the table. His hand was fully on my back now, his shoulder close to mine. 

We hadn’t talked much. My heart had been in my throat all night. 

Ron and Pansy stood to dance, Hermione and Viktor were long gone. He leaned close to my ear and whispered with whiskey-warm breath, “how much longer until you say yes?” 

Some unnamable feeling pulsed through me, hot and terrifying. 

“What makes you think I will?” 

He pulled away, his eyes traveled from the top of my head, down my neck, my chest, all the way to my feet. Then back into my eyes. 

“Please?” It came out like it was the easiest thing in the world, like it cost him nothing. If I’d been standing, I would’ve fallen to my knees. 

Nobody stood a chance, and I wasn’t the exception. It was gonna be one of those things. 

When I leaned in to kiss him, I saw the next few weeks play out in my head, pictured all kinds of moments, kisses like this one, and I knew I would risk it even if I had to go back to watching, after. We were in a bedroom within one moment and the next, he apparated us wandless, wordless, mid-kiss. 

“Finally,” he whispered into my neck, while his hands made quick work of the first buttons of my shirt and his magic took care of the second half, delicate and fine as fingers. My mind was scattered with his power, his hunger, the heat of his lips dancing over my clavicles. 

He got me down to my pants before I pushed him off and onto his back, unwilling to let him be the only one to taste. If I had him for a night or a couple, I’d use every moment to do the things I’d spent my whole life imagining. 

I kissed his neck, his chest, the short hair there, the peak of his nipples and the fall of his sternum. I kissed the shallow pit of his belly button, started to make my way down before he held my chin and brought me firmly up, back into another mind-bending kiss. 

“Finally,” he said again, voice splintering. “I’ve wanted you for some time.”

I pulled back, hands around his hips, legs bracketing his body, a powerful line of heat against the insides of my thighs. 

“Do you say that to everyone?” I asked, couldn’t help it, even though it laid me bare in a way I wasn’t prepared for. 

His breath was shallow on his chest, his nipples hard, pink lips parted. He sat up a little, rough hands cupping my shoulder blades, my lower back. He’d lost his glasses at some point, and his eyes were a blaze. 

“I’m saying it to you.” 

His words sent a pulse through my belly, but I knew him, I’d watched him, and knew I couldn’t hold him to the things he said here, in the small space between us, tangled in his bed. I swallowed and he followed the movement with his eyes, then with his hand, palm to the side of my neck, thumb pressed to the heart of my Adam’s apple. I watched him between half lidded eyes, waiting, at his mercy. He closed the distance between us, pulling me into the kiss by the neck, tongue-first, slow and wet. 

“You don’t have to do that,” I whispered. “I’m already here”

Again, like he needed to make sure I heard, “I’ve wanted you for some time.” 

He pointed the statement with a thrust, working his hips, making sure I could feel how much he wanted it. It traveled through me like an electric current, and I let my head fall forward, laid my forehead on his shoulder, panting as I moved with him, a slow back and forth. 

“Why now, then?” I breathed out, mouth open against his salty skin. One of his hands braced harder around my body, the other behind himself on the bed, balancing as he came up to his knees with me still in his lap. He didn’t stop there, kept pushing forward until I was on my back, watching him hover over me. His hair dripped sweat onto my chest, and there was something in the way he looked at me, a hunger that reminded me why I’d been so scared in the first place, the scope of his want so transparent and electric that I feared I would simply disappear, stop being real the second he looked away from me. 

“I don’t know,” he said, painfully honest. He hooked his fingers into the waistband of my pants and pulled, a few inches down before the garment disappeared into thin air as though it never had existed, willed away by his wordless command. I made an embarrassing little sound, and he smiled, a tiny, amused thing. “I think I hadn’t been fully honest with myself about it.” 

My breath caught. I closed my eyes, trying to work through it, opened them again and ran a hand down his chest, pulling lightly at the hair at the center. I thought it, and tried not to say it, but it was out before I could stop, “I knew you’d be like this” 

His thigh had found its way between my legs, and he pressed forward, drawing a sharp breath out of me. 

“Yeah?” He muttered, eyes never straying from my face. “Like what?” 

“All-encompassing,” I whispered, and felt a hot blush immediately gather in my cheeks and neck. He noticed, too, and followed its path with his lips, the mere suggestion of a kiss against my skin, delicate and slow. 

“Tell me your pleasure,” he said, nose brushing my neck. “What do you like?” 

It was hard to think of what I wanted when it seemed like I was getting armfuls of it already, without asking. I came up on an elbow, slid a hand down his chest, between his legs. He responded beautifully, a moan leaving his lips, all warm breath against my throat. 

“I like it deep, and hard.” I let my fingers slow down, matching the rhythm of his breath. “Slow. I like it slow.” 

“I can do that,” he said, but he didn’t stop me, instead allowing himself to move into my hand, find a rhythm too, pressing open-mouthed kisses to my neck. 

I spread my legs, giving him more room, and like this, holding him between my thighs, allowing him to take what he needed from my hands, it felt like doing it already. He lifted his head, coming in for a kiss in the last moments, and it was into my lips that he groaned his release, warm puffs of breath as his hips worked, then slowed to a still. 

It took him a moment to readjust, and he spent it against my lips, catching his breath. He kissed me, my chin. 

“I can still do that,” he assured, sounding pleased. Then, “I just… might need a minute.” 

A sudden laugh bubbled out of me, not having expected him to be like this, too, the intensity and power of a few moments ago taking the shape of someone who, at the end of the day, was just a guy. He lifted himself up and then dropped down beside me, his head cupped in a propped hand so he could keep on watching me. 

“Why do you always do that?” I whispered after a couple seconds of silence. 

“Do what?”

“This.” I furrowed my eyebrows and gave him my most intense look, trying to emulate the way his gaze just would not let up. He laughed, and let his head fall on the bed properly, unruly hair spread around his head in a dark halo. 

“I know I’m intense. I’ve heard it before,” he said, gaze trained upwards as though speaking to the ceiling. “It’s just the way I — It’s not —,” he stopped, backtracked. “I was trying to say it’s not personal, but I bet it’s even worse with you, actually. It’s always been. I’m sorry.” 

“No, I know,” I replied immediately, because I did know, and I didn’t want him to get the wrong idea. “I don’t mind.”  

“When I want something, it’s the only thing I can think about,” he whispered, rolling his head to the side, eyes finally on me again, as though pulled by a magnet. “I guess it shows.”

“I watch you too,” I confessed, a half-voice almost afraid of itself. Fear warring with truth. 

But he said, “I know,” low into the space between us. “I’ve realized. That is the real answer. That is why now.”

I took it in, felt it like a fire-tipped arrow straight to the chest, the acknowledgement that no matter if this was a one-time thing, I wouldn’t, after all, be a name on a list. The possibility that this wouldn’t be a one-time thing at all. He saw it in me, and his gaze changed, took on the hunger again. 

“I thought you needed a minute,” I said, not looking away. 

His eyes moved between my legs, then back up. “But you don’t.” 

He was already moving, his hands searching skin, but I stopped him with a fist to the center of his chest, gentle, one last sliver of self-preservation, the need to know for sure that he knew what I meant. 

“You knew I would’ve let you, at any point,” I said, no point hiding it anymore. “But you didn’t try.” 

“Draco,” he whispered, “I didn’t know. I would’ve been trying the whole time.” 

It was one of those things. A gamble. I’d watched him go through many, I couldn’t know that he was being truthful. And yet, I realized, he couldn’t know that about me either. He’d watched me with others, watched me follow them home, come back and do it again weeks later. He’d been a friend, and he’d watched. He’d watched me go through many. 

I began to smile. 

“Takes one to know one,” I whispered.

His hands found my hips, the side of my neck. I let him fall onto me like a rainstorm, and we met each other in the middle.