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On the first Sunday, they cook lamb stew. Aromatic onions and garlic deglazed with red wine, layered with earthy mushrooms and fork—tender carrots, thyme and rosemary from the local market, and a too-expensive cut of lamb that Draco splurged for — the kind that came wrapped in brown parchment paper and not the shrink-wrapped cuts from the grocery’s butcher counter Harry would ordinarily cook with.
Harry snacks on raw carrots while he watches Draco work, offering tips and instructions occasionally as he dices onions, picks thyme leaves from the stem, and gazes occasionally into the pot as though waiting for it to spark with magic the way a potion would. It’s a little odd, at first, to have Draco in his flat at all, even though they’ve been working together for years. It’s stranger still to see him out of his Auror robes, in denim trousers and a soft jumper that looks like it’s been worn dozens of times, like he’s owned it since he was a teenager. But he fits into Harry’s flat with remarkable ease, works his way around the kitchen as if he’s been there a million times, and is only occasionally an utter prat.
“Your adherence to Muggle tedium borders on the absurd sometimes,” Draco says at one point, forehead creasing in concentration. “Does it really have to cook this slowly?”
“Not if you don’t care how it tastes,” Harry says. “Besides, if you wanted to learn how to cook with magic, you wouldn’t have come to me.”
Draco sits across from Harry at the kitchen island, rolling his eyes and smiling over at the stew like he’s in on a joke for one. “No, I suppose I wanted to make sure all of this was as torturous as possible.”
The pot bubbles, and Harry stands to turn the heat down before covering it. “It makes a difference, you know. The flavors never come out the same when you use magic,” he says. “Besides, you’re a fast learner.”
“It isn’t easy having remarkable talent at everything,” Draco says with a pathetic little sigh.
Harry snorts. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” he says. “Maybe see how the stew turns out first.”
But Draco isn’t wrong. He excels at the elements that require the most timing and patience: sauteeing aromatics or deglazing the richness gathered at the bottom of the pot, cooking down carrots until they’re perfectly tender but not overpoweringly sweet. It comes from the potioneering, Harry assumes, the way he seems to be so in tune with the timing of everything. But it’s a slow dish, and there’s a lot of waiting around — which is maybe why Harry chose it.
“So,” Harry says. “Remind me again why you can’t just tell him you don’t know how to cook.”
Draco props his head up in a hand and looks across the island at Harry like he’s a small child. “You really don’t know the first thing about dating, do you?”
Harry coughs around a sip of wine. “Not the way you do it.”
Draco looks back over to the stew. “I may have — erm — oversold my abilities on the first date,” he says. “There was a lot of firewhiskey,” he adds as Harry snickers. “And he’s really interested in cooking, and he knows too much about it, and I —”
“Can’t risk him knowing you’re a mere mortal with shortcomings like the rest of us.”
“Exactly,” Draco says. “You understand.”
Harry rolls his eyes. “Honestly, you should just come clean,” he says. “I’m sure Edward would be thrilled to teach you a thing or two.”
“It’s Edwin,” Draco says. “And anyway, that’s ridiculous. Everyone knows that the first month of a relationship is all about asserting dominance.” He crosses his arms. “You’d know this if you ever dated.”
“I date,” Harry says, though it’s really no use lying.
“Shagging that Prophet reporter a year ago at the Christmas party doesn’t count as dating.”
“I —” Harry stammers, flushing a bit despite himself. “She was — you don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Mhm,” Draco says, standing to stir the stew, which does not need to be stirred. “This is why you couldn’t hope to understand how complicated these things are.” He turns to lean against the counter, crossing his arms. “Not to mention Edwin’s a pure-blood, so he can smell weakness from a mile away.”
“This all sounds very romantic, Draco,” Harry says. “But you could — you know — just be honest.”
Draco chews a thumbnail for a moment as if pondering this, and then drops it. “He’d never believe it, anyway,” he says. “Because I know everything.”
“Right,” Harry says, and stands to lift the cover off of the stew. “Well, I think we may be finished.”
“Wait, wait,” Draco says, springing up to peer down into the pot. “How do you know it’s done?”
Harry peers down at it next to him, and then shrugs. “I guess I know everything.” But he grabs a fork and spears a small chunk of lamb just to be sure, watching the steam coil off of it for a moment before taking a bite and handing the rest of it to Draco.
“Well?” Draco says, eyeing the offering for a moment before pulling it off the fork with his teeth.
“It’s fine,” Harry says. He glances at Draco, who is staring at him with a bizarre look in his eye, still chewing slowly, and laughs. “Okay, fine,” he says. “It’s bloody delicious.” He hands Draco a steaming bowl. “It’s some of the best I’ve had in a long time.”
“Of course it is,” Draco says, shrugging in a display of false humility. “I made it myself, after all.” He gazes into the pot like he’s never seen it before in his life, a home cooked meal. “What do we do now?”
Harry grabs two bowls and a ladle. “Now we eat.”
.
The lamb stew must have gone over well, because Draco is back at Harry’s flat the following week. This time around, Harry goes for chicken vindaloo, one of his favorites. It’s another slow dish, an infusion of herbs and spices that always make Harry nostalgic for something that was never quite his.
Draco watches studiously as Harry adds ingredients to his spice grinder: coriander and cumin seeds, cardamom pods and cloves. He holds up an earthy brown cinnamon stick. “Isn’t this going to make it sweet?”
“Trust me,” Harry says, taking it from his hand to add to the grinder. He hesitates over his sachet of dried chilies and glances at Draco. “Where would you rank your spice tolerance?”
Because it’s Draco, this could never be anything but a challenge. He furrows his brow, bottom lip sticking out just slightly. “I’m sure I can handle whatever you can,” he says, the familiar melody of boyhood rivalry playing in his voice.
Harry tries his best to stifle a chuckle. “Don’t take this the wrong way, Draco,” he says. “But I’m half Desi. I think we might be on different playing fields here.”
Draco crosses his arms. “Make it the way you’d make it for yourself.”
Harry bites his lip. He tosses a couple of chilies into the grinder, and Draco’s glare deepens.
“Fine, fine,” Harry says, adding in another bunch. “Your funeral.”
It’s a bit of a challenge to properly instruct Draco how to make the dish with his eyes watering from the fumes of the simmering chilies alone, but Harry does his best. His kitchen soon fills with the scents of intermingling spices, garlic and tamarind, sharp red onion and slowly stewed chicken.
Harry plates them each generous portions and sets a basket of roti between them. After two very stubborn forkfuls, there are tears streaming down Draco’s face.
“Alright there mate?” Harry asks around a mouthful of chicken. Just like the lamb stew, there’s something different about the way the meal came out, like the flavors are brighter or richer under Draco’s touch — though it could be a bit spicier for Harry’s taste.
Draco coughs. “Never better in my life,” he says, but his increasingly reddening face betrays him. He drops his fork onto his plate and wipes at his eyes with the back of his sleeve.
“You sure?” Harry says pleasantly. “You’ve hardly touched it. I wouldn’t want to send you off with a recipe that isn’t up to your standards.”
“You’re right,” Draco says, his voice raw as he wipes another tear from his eyes. “We should have added more chilies.”
He locks eyes with Harry, glares like a petulant child, and takes another bite. And then his face crumbles and he buckles over into a coughing fit.
Harry makes no effort to hide his laughter as he pushes the basket of roti toward Draco. “Bread will help,” he says, and stands to pour a glass of milk. Draco downs half of it and pushes tears out of his eyes, twists his face, and then downs the rest, panting out of his mouth like a dragon.
“Fucking hell,” he says after another coughing fit, face fading into a delicious shade of pink. “Could’ve killed Voldemort ten years earlier if you’d just fed him this.”
He pushes his plate across the table, and Harry tucks in.
.
On the third week, Harry goes for something a little more basic.
“It’s not exactly seductive,” Draco says, peering over Molly’s cottage pie recipe, the margins filled with handwritten adjustments Harry has made over the years.
Harry shrugs. “I reckon you’ve made it past the honeymoon phase.”
Draco glances at him. “Maybe,” he says. “I can’t really tell. I don’t usually make it this far.”
Harry hums. In the time he’s worked with Draco, he hasn’t seen him take up in anything vaguely resembling a relationship. In fact, his putting this much effort into impressing one particular person seems uncharacteristic. “He must be really special, then.”
Draco looks back down to the recipe, as if there are secrets scrawled within it. “I think so,” he murmurs.
Harry has only met Edwin once, at a pub night, and he seemed nice enough. Draco hadn’t mentioned that they were together, but he didn’t have to — Harry could see it in the way Edwin watched Draco when we went to the bar, like he was something delicious to eat. And it wasn’t until Harry left that he spotted them, off in the corner, pressed against a wall, pressed into one another.
Harry might have thought for a moment that Draco had been waiting for Harry to leave so he wouldn’t have to see it — but, then, that was ridiculous. Harry didn’t have any reason to care.
Draco is much more at ease in Harry’s kitchen this time. They work in tandem, Draco chopping vegetables while Harry seasons the ground beef and potatoes, and in glimpses, it can seem like it’s always been like that, the two of them cooking together on a Sunday afternoon like it had always been like that.
“I can’t believe you’ve never made cottage pie,” Harry says, mixing salt and butter into the mashed potatoes.
“I’m sure if my mother knew how much having house elves would disadvantage me in my dating life she’d have dismissed them all,” Draco murmurs absently as he chops onions. He always sticks his tongue out from between his lips when he’s concentrating on something, just slightly, like he doesn’t realize he’s doing it.
As he works, onions flit off of the chopping board onto the counter. “Hold on, hold on,” Harry says. “Look, you’re making a mess. You need to just —” Without thinking, Harry steps behind him, taking his wrist in one hand, gently guiding Draco’s free hand to the top of the knife.
“If you keep the knife balanced like this, you’ll stop flinging bits of everything everywhere,” Harry says. “Didn’t you chop loads of things in potions?”
Harry catches himself a moment too late. Draco is frozen under his touch, staring down at their hands, at the places where they meet. Harry feels petrified for a beat, like his feet are glued to the spot — then he manages to drop his hands and take a step back.
“Sorry,” he says. “Sorry. I —”
Draco is still for a moment, staring down at his own hands, which have stiffened in their newfound solitude. “No, it’s fine,” he says flatly. He pinches the bridge of his nose like he’s trying to wake himself up. “What was next?” he says. “Celery, right? Carrots?”
Draco is quiet as they finish the dish, and spends the majority of the time it takes to bake glancing expressionlessly out of Harry’s kitchen window. Harry thinks that Draco might leave when it’s done, abandon him with an entire batch of shepherd’s pie that Harry will have no choice but to eat directly from the tray with a fork over the course of several nights like he usually does with his leftovers. But when Harry finally pulls the dish from the oven, edges buttery and crisp, the warm smell of vegetables and seasoned meat wafting through the kitchen, Draco stares down at it like a new father.
“Merlin,” he says. “Maybe it is kind of seductive.”
By the time they’ve finished eating, they’ve nearly demolished the entire tray.
“How did you learn all of this, anyway?” Draco asks, leaning back in his chair and dropping his hands to his stomach. The gesture, along with the question, puts the untenable image of Vernon into Harry’s mind.
“Did a lot of it growing up,” Harry says. He doesn’t say: Did too much of it. He doesn’t say: Got good at it, sort of naturally, sort of because he had no choice, and it was the only time, really, that anyone ever seemed grateful he was around. “Guess it stuck with me.”
Draco is quiet for a moment, which is rare for him. He studies Harry with a scrutinizing look in his eye, and Harry straightens in his seat.
Finally, Draco nods. “It doesn’t surprise me.”
Harry laughs. “I’m not sure if I should feel insulted.”
Draco shakes his head. “No, I think I just —” he pauses. “There’s something to it, isn’t there? A generosity. Like you’re giving part of yourself.” His gaze falls back to Harry. “It suits you.”
“Oh,” Harry says, caught off guard by the sudden authenticity. “Erm. Thanks.”
As if compelled by his words, Harry sends Draco home with all of the leftovers. When he closes the door to his flat, he sinks down onto the floor and thinks about it, all of the giving. What of himself he’s giving to Draco. Who Draco is giving that to.
.
The fourth week, it’s red thai curry. This time around, Harry goes easy on the chilies.
His flat fills with the rich scents of prawns simmering alongside bell peppers, kaffir lime leaves, and ginger. Draco seems more and more scattered as the dish comes together, watching the rich red curry paste bloom pink into the coconut milk.
Eventually, Harry stops to shake a bundle of bright green herbs in Draco’s face. “Draco. Did you hear a word I said?”
Draco is leaning one hip against the counter, arms crossed, and staring into the curry as if it holds all of the secrets to the universe. He blinks as if out of a haze, glancing around as if he’s just remembering where they are. “Pretend like I didn’t.”
Harry pushes onion skins off of his cutting board with one hand and grabs his knife with the other. “I was asking if you know whether he likes coriander.”
Draco just stares at him.
“Edwin,” Harry says. “Your boyfriend?”
“Ah,” Draco says, eyes refocusing onto Harry’s fingers as he starts to chop the coriander. “Right. Erm. Is that something I should know?”
“People tend to really like or really hate coriander,” Harry says. “Tastes like soap to a lot of people.” He turns to Draco. “Seems like something he may have mentioned if he cares about food so much.”
Draco frowns. “If it tastes like soap, then why are we cooking with it?”
“We’re not cooking with it,” Harry says. “You’re watching me cook with it. I don’t think you’re going to learn much like this, by the way.”
Draco rolls his eyes. “I’m cooking the rice.” He lifts the cover of the rice pot and then replaces it immediately. “Fuck.”
Harry laughs and inspects the pot himself, finding that the rice has cooked down to a slightly scorched brick at the bottom of the pot. “This was supposed to be the easiest part.”
Draco is uncharacteristically devoid of a retort as he watches Harry cheat a little, magically expediting the new batch of rice. He serves them both a bowl, sprinkling them each with coriander before placing one in front of each of them. “Just leave it off if he doesn’t like it.”
“Right,” Draco says airily as he watches Harry place a bowl in front of each of them. But something in his first bite of curry seems to bring him back into his body. “Fuck,” he says, eyes rolling back to the ceiling, and Harry thinks maybe it’s too hot or too spicy, but Draco just looks down at the bowl like it’s something sacred. “This is bloody delicious.”
Harry laughs. “That’s something we can definitely agree on.”
After they’ve finished tidying up — a process they mercifully use magic for — Draco lingers at the door of Harry’s flat. He looks out into the night, and then back into Harry’s flat, like he can’t quite decide if he’s ready to go.
“Everything alright?” Harry asks.
“It’s just — I’m not sure I know how to find out,” Draco says slowly. “If he likes th— If he likes it. How can you tell?”
Harry squints. “What are we talking about?”
Draco crosses his arms and leans against the wall. “Coriander. How can you tell if people like coriander or parsley? Can you tell just by looking at them?”
“Erm,” Harry says. “You could just ask.”
Draco rolls his eyes. “I can’t just ask,” he says. “That’s far too forward.” He runs a hand through his hair, suddenly vexed. “But then — some people seem like they like coriander, but they really like parsley. And sometimes you think you have someone completely pegged as a parsley fiend, but really they can’t get enough of coriander.”
Harry pauses, taking in Draco’s apparent misery over the mere prospect of garnishes. Then he shrugs. “I like both.”
Draco’s eyes widen slightly at him, and then he snorts. “That figures.”
Harry studies him, the knit of his brow, the slight pink cast upon his cheeks. “Are we talking about herbs right now?”
Draco pushes off the wall, straightens. “Herbs are important,” he says stubbornly. “I’m just trying to get this right,” he adds quietly, as if to himself.
And there it is, stitched across his face, the expression he gets sometimes on the rare occasions they talk about his relationship. A yearning, like he’s holding a fragile bird that he doesn’t want to hurt.
Harry can hardly stand to look at it.
“It seems like it’s going well,” Harry offers halfheartedly. “It seems like he’s enjoying your cooking.”
Draco nods. “He is.”
“And it seems like things are going well between you.”
Draco nods again, this time more slowly. “I think they are.” His eyes trace down Harry’s face. “It’s hard to tell sometimes.”
Harry shakes his head. “Then I don’t see what the problem is.”
Draco gets another one of those smiles, like he’s in on some joke that Harry is missing. “No,” he says, turning to leave. “I don’t suppose you would.”
.
Draco doesn’t come by the next week, or the next, and Harry cooks on his own: beef wellington one week and chana masala the next, a steaming pot of beef pho that takes him an entire Sunday to make. He reckons that whatever Draco has been picking up from their lessons and passing along has been well received — but any time his mind begins to imagine it, Draco standing in someone else’s kitchen, weaving around someone else as they work, sitting down to a well-earned meal afterwards — he has to bat it away.
It’s really none of his business, anyway.
Harry tries his best not to think about it, but keeps doing it, cooking too much, cooking enough for two, storing away leftovers that he forgets in the back of his fridge.
Draco knocks on his door the following Sunday, hoisting a brown paper bag from on his hip.
“Err, hi?” Harry says as Draco pushes past him directly into the kitchen and starts pulling groceries out of the bag: a sack of flour, sugar, a block of expensive Irish butter.
Draco whirls on him. “Hi,” he says, and pulls in a breath. “I may have overexaggerated my baking skills to some degree as well.”
“You could have owled, you know,” Harry says. “I could have had plans today.”
Draco smirks. “Did you?”
Harry crosses his arms. “No,” he says. “But I could have.”
Draco produces an ancient-looking scroll and unfurls it onto the counter. “I thought we’d start with something simple.”
Harry laughs at the recipe, which, judging from the worn parchment, has been in the Malfoy family for generations. “Pain au chocolat is not simple,” he says. “And also, I have no idea how to bake.”
Draco frowns at him. “Is it really all that different from cooking?”
Harry studies him for a moment, the petulant look on his face, his cheeks slightly reddened from the cold. It’s not good, he knows, how relieved Harry is to see him here, how badly he wants him to stay. “I dunno, Draco,” He says quietly. “Maybe it’s not such a great idea.”
Something softens in Draco’s eye for just a flicker, and Harry can tell that they’re not talking about pastries anymore. But then he corrects, like he always does, eyes rolling up into a taunt. “Well, if you don’t think you can handle it…”
Harry sighs. “Fine,” he says. “Mixing bowls are above the fridge.” He rakes his eyes down Draco’s body, just once. “You chose an interesting day to wear black.”
As it turns out, baking is nothing like cooking after all. There’s no room for the usual guessing and eyeballing that Harry does, the room for nuance that makes recipes feel like something all his own. In its place is the complete precision that Draco thrives in, the carefully weighed ingredients, the precisely measured cuts, the numerous layers of butter laminating the dough that Harry watches Draco roll out with a wine bottle since Harry doesn’t have a rolling pin.
At some point, Harry ends up just snacking on the bittersweet chocolate sticks as he watches. Draco gets swept up in the process of it, a line of flour on his forehead, dustings of it clouding his black shirt white. That tongue peeking out between his lips when he’s trying to get something just right. The way his eyes narrow and his face twists in ridiculous contortions when he’s trying to concentrate, like he’s forgotten Harry is even there.
“There,” he says over a tray of twelve perfect unbaked pastries. He glances up at Harry, who isn’t able to drop his gaze quickly enough, his overt staring. Draco’s face falls. “What?”
“Nothing,” Harry says, glancing away. “You’re a natural.”
They open the wine rolling pin while they wait for the pastries to bake, the scents of caramelizing sugar, warm butter, and melting chocolate slowly winding out of the oven.
“See?” Draco says. “That wasn’t so hard.”
“It wasn’t,” Harry says. “Honestly, it felt like you were teaching me that whole time.”
Draco finishes scouring the bowls and stacks them on the side of the sink. “May have done this recipe once or twice with my mother growing up,” he says to the stack, and then turns to Harry. “Or three times.” He shrugs. “I dunno. Four.”
Harry bursts a laugh. “You know, you don’t have to pretend to be bad at baking to see me, Draco. You could just ask.”
Harry’s tone is pitched into teasing, but it’s as if Draco doesn’t pick up on it. His face falls. “I know,” he says. “I’m sorry for barging in on you like that. It’s just —”
He leans against the counter and picks up his wine, staring into it. Harry had poured the wine into rocks glasses, because he’d never gotten around to buying wine glasses for his flat. It seems like the kind of lack of etiquette that Draco would love to tease him about, but he doesn’t — he just stares into the tumbler like he can’t get enough of it, all the mess of it, and Harry thinks he understands.
When he looks up at Harry, his eyes are clouded with that familiar expression — the yearning Harry can’t stomach, stitched with a trace of pain. “I really don’t want to fuck it up.”
“You aren’t going to fuck it up,” Harry says. “Or, if you are, it’s not going to be because you can’t cook.”
Draco scoffs, but it’s not enough to break the spell he seems trapped in. “I think I knew that.”
“You aren’t going to fuck it up at all,” Harry says softly, though the words feel too jagged, like a blessing for Draco, like a curse for him. “Because you care about it. You care about him. I can tell.”
Draco hums. “Maybe I care too much.”
Harry laughs. “I don’t think you need to worry about that.”
Draco puts his glass on the counter, still full. “Harry,” he says. “I need to —”
Draco winces as his sentence is interrupted by Harry’s oven dinging. He drops down to peer in the oven and then grabs a dish towel, taking out the tray of perfectly risen, flaky golden pastries. Harry nearly swoons at the smell alone.
“Merlin,” Harry murmurs, mouth watering. “They’re perfect.”
“They need to cool so they finish —” Draco starts, but Harry has already snatched one off of the tray, ignoring the sting of its heat at his fingertips.
He sinks his teeth into it, warm, flaky pastry, perfectly sweet, rich chocolate spilling into his mouth. By the time he registers Draco staring at him, he’s nearly devoured the entire thing.
“I really don’t think you have anything to worry about,” Harry says, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “I think anyone who tried one of these would fall in love with you immediately.”
Draco lets out a dry chuckle and makes a face down at the pain au chocolats, somewhere between a grin and a grimace. “Do you think so?”
“Try one,” Harry says, nodding to the tray.
Draco hesitates. “They really need to cool.”
Harry isn’t sure why he does it — it’s Draco’s stubbornness, or his pout, or that yearning look on his face, the one that Harry can’t stand seeing. He doesn’t think about it at all, actually; he just tears a piece of the pastry, reaches over and pushes it into Draco’s lips, all its sweetness, all its warmth. Draco lets out a small sound of indignance, eyes locking onto Harry’s as he chews slowly, his eyes brimming with something unrecognizable.
Harry drops his hand. He finds his tumbler of wine empty, and he refills it before downing half of it in one gulp. All the while, Draco just stares into the empty air, like maybe he’s never actually had a warm pastry in his entire life, like he’s always sat around for things to cool properly, never let himself take what was there, even if it meant that things weren’t quite perfect.
“I — actually,” Draco says, scrubbing his face, swallowing hard. “Think I’m going to —” He glances down at the pastries, and then up to Harry. “I should go.”
“Don’t you —” Harry stammers, watching Draco brush flour off of his shirt. “Did I do something wrong?”
Draco pauses, hands still pressed against his shirt, his chest rising once as he sucks in a breath and lets it out. He squints slightly at Harry, like he’s trying to make him out in a fog, and then drops his hands.
“Yes,” he says. “Merlin, you’ve done so much wrong.”
“I —” Harry stammers. “What?”
“You always overcrowd your pan,” Draco says. “You add garlic to the pan far too early. You wash your mushrooms with water. Don’t even get me started on your knife techniques. I don’t think you’d know julienning if it came down through your Floo.”
“I don’t —” Harry starts. “Julienning?”
“If you ever set up the most basic mise en place, maybe your kitchen wouldn’t be such a disaster every time we’ve finished,” Draco says, throwing his hands up with sudden exasperation. “And I don’t even know why you bother with recipes — you never follow them at all. But everything comes out bloody delicious anyway, which is the most infuriating part.”
Harry gawps at him. “Since when do you know so much about cooking?”
“Practically since I could walk,” Draco huffs, as if Harry is a child. “I’m a pure-blood, for Salazar’s sake. We get lessons in everything.”
Harry’s mind races to catch up. “Then why have you been coming here every week?”
Draco lets out a groan, eyes tipping to the ceiling in irritation. Then, like he’s been waiting to do it for years, he closes the distance between them, bunches his hands into Harry’s collar, and pulls him into a kiss.
Harry lets out a little noise of shock and pulls away instinctively; Draco’s eyes are wild, scanning his face, but his hands don’t leave Harry’s shirt.
“Harry, I’ve —” Draco murmurs.
Harry never hears the end of that sentence. He grabs Draco by the arm, and then Draco has him pushed against the wall, a cautious hand cupping his jaw, soft lips pressed against his, still sugar—sweet.
Harry’s mind works through it slowly, but something juts into his addled thoughts and he pulls back. “What — aren’t you with — what about Edwin?”
Draco’s eyes are slightly glossy, his lips kissed into a brighter shade of pink. He blinks into focus, and then laughs. “No,” he says. “No. God. No. Merlin, he was insufferable. It lasted all of two weeks.”
“Then what was all of this about?” Harry asks, breaths still coming uneven. “Why didn’t you just —”
Draco bites his lip. “Maybe I was trying to find out,” he says. “Whether you were — more of a parsley type.”
Harry leans back, laughing. Suddenly, it all clicks together. “You thought I was straight.”
“Or — or that maybe it was one sided,” Draco says quietly.
“No,” Harry says, a near-giddy laughter carrying his voice as everything falls into place in his mind. “Resoundingly not. Not on either count.”
Draco rolls his eyes. “I guess all of the cooking should have tipped me off.”
Harry snorts. “Straight men can’t cook?”
“Not the way you do.”
Draco’s eyes are fixed down, toying lightly with the bottom of Harry’s shirt, that small smile stitched on his face, his own private joke. And now, Harry finally understands the punchline.
“This is ridiculous,” Harry murmurs, quietly, half to himself, and drops his hands down to Draco’s waist — finally allowed to touch, finally allowed to admit to himself what he’s wanted so desperately and for so long. “You could have said, Draco. You could have told me.”
The smile drops from Draco’s lips. “It’s not that I haven’t wanted to,” he murmurs. “Merlin, do you have any idea how badly I’ve wanted to? Do you have any idea how —” He trails off. “You aren’t exactly the easiest to read.”
“I’m actually quite a simple person, Draco,” Harry says, shaking his head in bewilderment.
Draco lets out a low chuckle. “You really believe that, don’t you?”
Harry studies him, and he thinks he can understand it — how opaque it seems at times, how incomprehensible. “Don’t try to read me, then. Let me just tell you.” He weaves his fingers through Draco’s, his hand warming beneath Harry’s touch. “I’m pretty easy to please. I don’t want much. Just a good meal — maybe a pastry now and then — and this,” he murmurs. “You. I think I’ve wanted it for a long time.”
Draco pulls in a breath and holds it like he’s forgotten how to exhale. “We’ll have to work on your knife work,” he breathes. “I’m afraid it simply won’t do in its current state.”
Harry laughs. “Fine,” he says. “You can teach me.”
Draco kisses Harry’s cheek, right next to his lips, his body warm and flush against Harry’s. “We have a lot of ground to cover,” he murmurs, dropping his hand down to Harry’s waist and slipping his fingers under his shirt. “We’ll have to get started right away. Maybe tomorrow — with breakfast.”
And Harry doesn’t need any help understanding that.