He’d thought he’d given himself honestly and truthfully, and at worst had only been struggling with how to get the words out — not with the emotion itself.
Draco pinched the fabric of Harry’s shirt, tugged, asked, "Is this mine?"
Harry looked down at himself. "Yes," he said, and then laughed at Draco’s blushing outrage. He asked Draco whether or not it looked good on him, and Draco said that wasn’t the point.
Then watching Draco congratulate Hermione by the Christmas tree, a pretty blush on his cheeks, his hair pulled back from his face. His breath-taking heart attack of a face.
When Draco arrived, walking into the kitchen with a small suitcase in hand — checking for mail, chewing on an apple — he took one look at the small party in his garden, put down his suitcase and his apple, and walked right back out.
"I’m sorry, am I boring you?"
Draco had come to stand by the hearth. His hair was a mess, his sleeves rolled up. Desire coiled tight at the pit of Harry’s stomach. There was no hum, no tug, no foreign magic.
Harry smiled, slow and tired, and said, "No. I like it when you talk."
He kissed him, a smiling press of lips, and Draco laughed into it, lips moving as he still talked, muffled, saying,
"—embarrassing, every word that comes out of your mouth, I—"
He’d thought he’d given himself honestly and truthfully, and at worst had only been struggling with how to get the words out — not with the emotion itself.
Low in his stomach, the Bond surged up ugly and loud — an acidic lash up his spine, demanding he move, that he stride, that he break and destroy whatever was happening between Malfoy and Charlie. Harry had to close his eyes at it, breathe.
"There was a part of me, I’ll tell you — a small, twisted part that thought: now he’ll have to want me. Now he won’t have a choice but to want me. But you never did, did you? It was never you."
How could love be proven in the span of a sentence? How could he use words, slippery things that they were, when what he needed was to tread carefully, lightly? He only knew how to walk through a wall. He only knew how to fall, how to crash.
He timed it so that just as he shot a quick glance back, Monty was swinging the door closed — his hand on the small of Draco’s back, moving to place a kiss on Draco’s neck.