Draco hates that pen of his. It’s a foreign sort of object, in Draco’s opinion, that has no business in a wizard school. He has no idea why Blaise insists on keeping it. For convenience, he recalls Blaise saying.
He stole it from Blaise’s bookbag once, intending to have it meet with an unfortunate accident. He’d turned the odd stick over in his hands, tracing the bite marks along the end for a few moments – and replaced it in the side pocket of the bag, unharmed. After all, as much as he’d like to, Draco had no business criticizing Blaise’s habits.
Sometimes, Draco would almost think Blaise did it just because it annoyed him, if he didn’t already know that that simply isn’t Blaise’s style. But then again, there are a number of things he’s never quite understood about Blaise.
So Draco tries to stop himself from commenting – since Blaise and Draco are good friends. Very good friends. They may not look it, but they really are. Of course, it’s a formal sort of friendship, Draco supposes. There’s no crying on each other’s shoulders, not a lot of confiding in each other; but Blaise is a friend of the family, and they share a lot of the same sort of experiences.
Blaise has more friends in Ravenclaw than Slytherin, and if Draco didn’t know his family, he’d believe Blaise would truly belong in Ravenclaw. It took a while, but most of the other Slytherins came to accept Blaise’s oddness – not that Blaise cared whether they did or not.
Draco can’t help thinking there’s an alternative motive for all that time he spends away from Slytherin. Pansy and Millicent caught him with Terry Boot once. And then there were rumours about the Irish Gryffindor, as well. And Blaise? Blaise said nearly nothing at all about the entire thing. No explanations, no elaborations.
Draco has many, many questions.
But he can wait until Blaise says something first.
Blaise likes the library. Draco doesn’t really care one way or the other, but he has homework to do, as well, and the library is quieter than most alternatives. Blaise studies his arithmancy textbook. Draco studies the other side of the room.
There are spiders in the library. Small, practically harmless arachnids that hide in the corners of the bookshelves and on the underside of the tables.
Blaise almost thinks the spiders are more interesting than the group gathered around the table across the room, but Draco obviously doesn’t think so.
He's clearly bored, and Blaise notices, of course. And then, he gets that evil glint in his eye – and Blaise can only hope that they’re not about to get thrown out of the library.
Draco leans on his open book and raises his wand in his left hand. Blaise can’t catch what he whispers, but he definitely sees the spider go flying across the room to land next to Weasley’s chair. No one notices, and the spider scurries around under Weasley’s seat and attempts to hide beside the chair leg.
Draco scowls and sends another spider. This one lands on the floor on the other side of the table, beside Potter’s chair. He doesn’t notice either.
But the next one lands true – right smack on the table between Weasley’s and Granger’s textbooks.
Weasley actually screams. Granger just looks generally annoyed as she banishes it from the table. Potter sends him an acid look.
And Draco can’t keep from laughing. If he had any less restraint, he would be rolling on the floor by now.
Blaise can see Madam Pince coming around the corner, and he tries to hide the smile peeking at the edges of his mouth.
It’s early June and already sticky hot outside. And Blaise digs out a chocolate frog from his trunk and doesn’t even bother to bite it, but places the entire thing in his mouth where it melts within a minute. He checks his trunk again, but there’s really, truly not any more.
So he checks Draco’s too, knowing he had at least one stored there the other day. But it seems that Draco has already eaten his as well.
He shrugs and goes off in search of the library, thinking of a nice shady nook.
It’s too sunny and hot, so Blaise wanders the halls to the library; he does have homework, after all. He turns out of another empty corridor to find a not-so-empty one. It’s Draco he sees first, and he almost calls out his name, when he notices that it’s Potter that Draco’s standing beside. And suddenly Blaise realizes that he’s – no, they’re standing very close. A little too close for an angry confrontation.
There’s a small daring smudge of chocolate at the corner of Potter’s mouth, and Draco leans even closer to remove it – with his tongue. And then, he blinks and suddenly they’re kissing.
Blaise blinks again and the scene is much the same. He decides he’ll have to raise an eyebrow at Draco over dinner that night, whether or not the rumours have started circulating the general contingent by then. He stops spying on them from around the corner after a couple of minutes and simply goes back the way he came to find an alternate route to the library.
And he knows that when Draco shows up back at the dorms long past curfew, tasting of chocolate, he’ll be waiting for him.
Potter is so very, very different from Blaise.
Potter hates him, for one. It’s the fire in his eyes that gives him away – a bright spark of defiance, usually.
But as Draco holds his chin firmly and licks the side of his mouth, he sees something change – watches it melt just a little, like the chocolate on the tip of his tongue. Potter clearly doesn’t know how to hide the emotions from his eyes, from his face, from the nervous little gestures of his hands with those awful fingernails.
This particular expression, though, is one he doesn’t recall ever having seen on Potter’s face before. But it won’t be long before he finds out precisely what it means.
Blaise knows that it will never work. But he says nothing to Draco. Every once in a while he’ll raise an eyebrow at him over a spoon of mashed potatoes – when there’s just the lightest tint of pink in Draco’s cheeks, or when Potter wears a turtleneck to breakfast. And Draco only looks at him oddly, has pulled him aside several times to ask him what’s wrong. Yet every time, Blaise only shrugs, and says nothing at all, because there’s nothing actually wrong per say.
At least, it’s not for him to determine.
He’s known there’s really been something wrong for at least a week now. Draco’s been irritable, snapping at Pansy last night over dinner for brushing his arm. He’s pacing the east wall of the common room now, and Blaise can sense that he’ll snap any minute. He thinks he has a fairly good idea of what the problem is, but as he officially isn’t supposed to know about any of it at all, he’ll just have to wait for Draco to say something first.
He bites the end of his pen and scans another couple pages of his History of Magic textbook, jotting notes down from time to time.
He lowers his hand to the page to list off the causes of yet another goblin rebellion that would best be forgotten in his opinion, and suddenly the parchment isn’t there. It’s been a while since he’s heard the sound of paper tearing – and he doesn’t like it anymore than he recalls. It’s destructive, primal – an uncomfortable ripping sound that barely grates on the edge of his patience – but he expects it. The firelight dances over the sharp edges of torn paper in the other’s hands, flitting over lost words. And he waits expectantly to hear what Draco has to bring to his attention.
“What is wrong with you?”
Draco has decided that it’s the complacency that disturbs him, the quiet acceptance of anything and everything that comes his way – the false nonchalance implying that nothing really bothers him one way or the other.
He wants to see something – anything – that indicates what Blaise Zabini actually feels for once.
He drops the fragments of parchment before he feels the urge to tear them into even smaller pieces. At least he has Blaise’s attention now – perhaps not his full attention – but he can work on that.
Blaise’s hair is soft beneath his hand, weaving between and over his fingers – and then, he pulls.
But, there is no flinch, no “ow” muttered irritably under his breath, and his eyes aren’t that bright.
“Do you have a problem, Draco?” His voice just as flat and cold as his eyes.
“Yes.” Blaise’s throat is pale, asking to be marked, bruised, bitten.
“Oh. Would you like to talk about it?”
“No.”
And he bites.
“What are you doing?”
Draco doesn’t want to stop, but he does – he has to in order to answer, although he thinks it’s a rather stupid question to begin with, since it was rather obvious what he was doing. He takes a step back because more space is a good thing right now, or he’ll be far too tempted to yank at those strands of hair again.
Draco reluctantly releases his grip on his hair - strands that cling to his fingers like melted chocolate - and gazes down at him as he steps back, a little short of breath – but still, there’s no fire in those eyes of his. He doesn’t see the bright spark of challenge, misses the firm set of another, less angular jaw. And yet, it is all mildly reminiscent of himself to some degree.
He remembers – hiding together under the tablecloth in the dining room while their parents chatted in the parlor – sitting in the window seat of the west attic in the late afternoon, not talking or laughing, but merely enjoying a companionable silence that only Blaise understood as well as himself. And only then does he realize that perhaps this is what he has been looking for all along.
“Well?”
That infernal pen has been tucked behind his ear, peeking out from beneath his hair; and Draco wants desperately to remove it.
“I want you. Is that a problem?”
He looks away from Blaise’s ear, eyes darting away to fall across his pale forearms – upturned as his hands lift the remains of his deceased parchment from the floor.
Blaise’s eyes are cool and collected, just like their owner, as they squint up at him; and he has to pay attention when Blaise starts talking again.
“It’s a problem if you’re going to make a habit of ripping up my essays. I’ve got Binns tomorrow and the silly sod’s going to go corporeal if I don’t hand this in.”
Draco pauses a moment to make sense of it, not expecting an answer beyond a single word. And then he remembers what Blaise is talking about – the parchment, right. It was a rather rash thing to do, he admits to himself, as he gathers up the last few stray pieces. Yet, he still can’t make such an admission to Blaise – to anyone.
“Er. Well, I-” he starts awkwardly. But he really doesn’t know what to say. “You know,” he finishes helplessly.
And all it takes is a simple nod.
Because, of course, Blaise knows.