& every song’s about love or drinking too much
[ boys being wintry & wily & warm. ⋆꙳❅‧*₊⋆ ❆ | for @hodgepodgebooks — i hope this lil story brings you a smile this festive season! ⋆˙⟡ | inspired by the prompts: peppermint & “everybody’s lonely” by jukebox the ghost. as part of the @drarrymicrofic wheel of drarry exchange 2025. ♡ ]
drarry | word count: 1,000 | rating: t
Draco’s near ready to make his polite departure.
The clink of glasses, the tine of silverware over bulk-quality china, has slowed; the swell of the music from the invisible orchestra softens its shape into something swaying, sleepy.
The duos on the dance floor are more certainly coupled— not the polite pairings of early evening. No, the granite tiles have given way to those who, from here, hand-holding, will follow each other home.
Draco polishes off the last of his champagne (his second glass— careful, professional— not at liberty to match the indulgence of a few over-eager colleagues, not here).
In the cloak room, he draws his ticket stub, folded careful in his pocket— his Chesterfield coat comes, summoning itself into the waiting heft of his hand.
At the doorway, Potter lingers, leather jacket slung over his shoulders, plaid scarf cozied up around his throat. Draco pretends not to be surprised at him, the ease and assuredness of him, waiting like it’s simple— like it doesn’t have to mean anything, or like he wouldn’t mind if it did.
“Heading home?” he hums, and Draco ducks his head in a quick nod.
“Indeed. I think I’ve had enough Ministry small talk to last me well into Spring.”
Harry chuckles. “Did Bridgewater corner you about the Wolfsbane legislation?”
“Only half a dozen times,” Draco answers, drawling, a grin on its heels, and it’s odd, to be almost-smiling over potions transport law, but of course, that’s not really the reason.
Harry hasn’t ceased his hovering, holds open the door to the hall.
They pass through the elevator, the atrium, and fold into the street, blanketed in the sort of quiet that the early dark of winter deigns.
They could part, now, on the pavement, both possessing the faculties to apparate.
Instead, Harry says: “I was thinking about popping into Tesco. You could—?”
The Muggle part of London is a few street turns away, a quick cross through a charmed courtyard.
The mini-market blares fluorescence into the brisk December air, and they slip in through the glass double-doors, shoulders knocking faintly.
Harry retrieves a basket. Draco tries not to think about what to do with his hands, settles on tucking them into his pockets.
There, a minor obstruction.
His fingers find the candy, curling carefully around the cellophane. He offers Potter a peppermint without preamble. Takes one for himself.
The store radio plays something brassy and bright, festive in an old-fashioned way that makes the aisles one part warmer, one part lonely, even crammed as they are with other shoppers.
Draco keeps close to Harry’s side— gets to see him pick over the pastas, land on a farfalle. Deliberate between the Jammie Dodgers and the Hobnobs before tucking both in.
In the liquor lane, he considers a prosecco, lifts a sauv blanc for Draco’s inspection.
“More of a pinot man, myself,” he concedes, and he watches, too pleased, as Harry swaps the bottles.
Harry rings his groceries.
Back through the doors, the temperature’s dipped. The subtle spell wrapped around the evening feels near to breaking.
“I should—” Draco says, as Harry begins, “Would you—”
“Always interrupting,” Draco murmurs, and Harry huffs a laugh, the shape of it sticking in the air.
Harry studies him, and Draco steadies himself against that gaze.
“Come have a drink,” Harry decides, seeing whatever he’s seen. “My flat’s a short walk.”
“Hm,” Draco drones, pretending to consider an answer that isn’t a yes.
Harry holds up the brown paper bag they’d given him in the shop, shape distinct.
“I’ve got pinot,” he says, smiling.
“It’s awfully late,” Draco demurs, and finds himself drifting forward, drawn in. They’re too close— just close enough. “Though I suppose I could be convinced.”
“Malfoy,” Harry says, helpless, “don’t make me say please.”
His voice, when he answers, is lower than they have a right to.
Feet planted on the busy pavement, Christmas lights strung around them, across the buildings, down the street— pale yellow, twinkling. People pass, and they can’t bother with being polite, in spite of how very public the proceedings.
They’re angling inward like evergreen trees, like they’ve been growing that way for an age, for as long as grace and gravity have granted. It’s inopportune— pedestrian, perhaps.
And what else is Harry to do?
When they kiss, the taste is simple, mint and cold air— that and the memory of rosemary from dinner, the soft edge of champagne.
Harry intends to drown it in white wine, to find out how the flavor fares once they’ve folded into his bedsheets. To discover if Draco’s lips and the words that slip them go uninhibited in soft Lumos, in lamplight. To see if in the morning his mouth holds the shape— if sleep does something subtle else, or if Draco’d cast a cheeky mouthwash charm (deeply unsubtle, entirely unsurprising). What he’d taste like coffeed and pressed against kitchen counters, how buttered toast would settle on his tongue.
But for now, this: peppermint, and a chill crisp like starlight.
Harry’s hands fist into the edge of his poncy Muggle coat, holding him steady as he endeavors to memorize it, all of it, to keep it for himself.
Draco, for his part, is lost to most sensation— taste, sight, even feel faltering, failing him in any cognizant way— instead the kiss goes on igniting a raucous heartkick, torsal, interior, (intense, insane), everything else inevitably superseded by the roar of its beating, an uptempo thing that seems to insist upon Potter Potter Potter.
“Potter,” he says, quietly, to quiet it, (the results inconclusive, insubstantial, in—), “you promised me a drink.”
Harry grins against his mouth. “You taste like December.”
Draco tangles his fingers in the scarf, wooly red-and-orange tartan, horrid, pulse thrumming below in the careful hollow of his throat. He pulls him impossibly closer.
