witching hour
rated g, wc 738 | thanks @lou-isfake as always for endless cheer reading 💕 | read on ao3
“Do you think you could fall in love with me?” Harry whispers, quiet in the silk-dark twist of night.
“What?” Draco murmurs. He opens his eyes, finding heavy nothingness. The moon is covered tonight.
“In a different life,” Harry clarifies, or maybe amends.
“Oh.” The bond pulls tight as Draco shifts, red string cutting into the delicate skin of his wrist. He turns toward Harry, mouth open to respond, inhaling a lungful of wildflower-honey sweet shampoo. He looks back up at the faraway ceiling. “In a different life, I wouldn’t be me, and you wouldn’t be you.”
Harry hums. “You don’t think?”
“Maybe we wouldn’t even be friends, or coworkers. Maybe we’d never have hurt each other during a war. Maybe we’d never even have met.”
Harry falls quiet at that. Draco drifts, the sleep-worn sheets of Harry’s bed soft on his bare arms. The silence stretches long before Harry speaks again.
“I’ve been thinking about how the specialists said some bonds make you fall in love. I… I don’t think it would be so bad to be loved by me.” Then, quieter, “I would be very kind.”
A shift in the air– Harry’s smile. “Not always.”
“Not always,” Draco concedes. A fist in the nose of someone who comments on the Dark Mark, canine-sharp grin while puzzling through a nasty curse. Not always kind. “You asked if I could love you.”
“In another life. And the reciprocation would be– well, it would be inevitable, wouldn’t it?”
“Of course,” Harry says, his soft earnestness tangible, bearing down on Draco’s chest.
“Of course.” Draco closes his eyes, wishes he could be alone, coughs on his guilt. He’d have given anything to be in Harry’s mess of sheets before this, before they were stitched together with an unbreakable length of thread, but now Harry is too close. Harry smells like flowers and sorbet in the summer, and he’s too close.
Harry shifts, quiet again. The space between their bodies is magnetized, unknown, terra incognita. They don’t have to touch. The bond doesn’t require them to touch. The bond doesn't fabricate love, or slip insidious under their desires. The bond doesn’t require anything other than the inevitability of their bodies occupying adjacent spaces.
“Do you think you could? Love me. Be in love with me,” Harry asks again.
Let me sleep, Draco wants to say. Let me sleep. Don’t coax secrets off my tongue. Instead: “In another life?”
“Here.” Harry sounds muzzy, half-asleep. “Now.”
“I don’t think I could,” Draco whispers carefully, “if I already am.”
“Yeah?” Harry breathes, turning to face Draco; the mattress dips steeply, surrendering to his shoulder. Draco shifts to his side too, and even in the dark he pretends to find the shape of Harry’s face, blinking it into existence. The curve of his jaw, the nick of a scar above his cupid’s bow, the soft fuzz between his dark brows. Freckles, only visible in bright sunlight. Bright irises, one milk-glass jade from that crackling scar, the other polished emerald. A faintly crooked nose, Draco’s own doing. Dark, silky curls. Lips that curve up a specific way when Draco strides into a room.
“Yeah,” Draco replies. Harry breathes evenly, too steady for the wake of a love confession, and Draco twists away fitfully. In this velvet cradle of night he doesn’t know how to bite his tongue; he’s too comfortable, too warm in Harry’s bed.
Whispering sheets, then Harry’s hand tentatively around Draco’s wrist. “Hey.”
“Let me sleep,” Draco finally says, too small and too late. Harry’s hand remains.
“It’s inevitable in this life too,” Harry whispers. The air stills around them, anticipating. “The reciprocation.”
“Yeah?” Draco says, his body tight and weightless all at once. Harry laughs a puff of air onto the back of Draco’s neck, squeezes his wrist.
“Yeah. You– you’re something inevitable.”
“I’m a person,” Draco says, still fitful, still tightly wound.
“I love you,” Harry replies plainly, scattering the words into the dark with a surety that soothes Draco. “I know this. I have known this. I just thought you wouldn’t–”
“Okay,” Harry whispers, joyful. The sheets shush as Harry rests a tentative arm over Draco’s waist. “Will you in the morning too?”
“Yes,” Draco tells him, sinking into the warmth of Harry’s chest, because he will, he does. Inevitability lies rooted deep in both of them. “Yes, I will.”
