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Harry’s body slides through the water confidently, muscles flexing with each stroke. His mind quiets on the rooftop, in a way that it never has from anything but flying. He’s the only one up here at night. He can enjoy the sensuousness of it. He feels exposed, but safe. The rooftop is all contradictions: silent, with the bustling City below. Solitary, with millions of people teeming around him. The water hugs him close. The weight of it is a comfort, even when his muscles burn after hours of laps.
Hermione says it’s not healthy. Ron tells her to leave him be, but asks if Harry’s started looking for a new mind healer.
Harry ignores them both and keeps climbing the stairs to the roof every night.
He’s cooling down, a lazy backstroke, goggles tossed up on the pool’s edge, when he hears the roof door open. He frowns, but ignores it. It’s not a private pool, as much as it feels like it.
He flips and does a lazy kick turn; when he emerges, he sees movement.
A tall man stands with his back to the pool, adjusting his swim cap. He’s gorgeous, what Harry can see of him: perfect arse, in tiny blue swim briefs and nothing else. His skin is pale, shining orange in the sodium lights. His legs are tattooed from his ankles to his upper thighs. Harry squints, grateful once more for laser surgery. It’s a veritable garden: a riot of flowers in black and grey, with the occasional touch of colour here and there. Harry doesn’t know flowers; he sees a rose, a lily, a daffodil: countless others that he can’t name.
He nearly crashes into the edge of pool, and does a sloppy turn to correct. His throat is dry. He looks away.
The man heads to the far lane of the pool without so much as looking over. At least it will stay quiet, Harry thinks.
He hears a splash as the man dives in. Harry pulls himself out and allows himself a glance over. He can see tattooed legs kicking, but his stroke is clean, smooth. He cuts through the water like he’s done so many, many times.
Harry turns away. Another contradiction: he wants to be alone, but he hopes he sees the man again.
Harry’s routine shifts. For three weeks, every night as he’s cooling down, the stranger arrives. Harry doesn’t look up again. They don’t speak. They don’t so much as nod. They ignore one another, both, it seems, set on maintaining a spectre of solitude, even as they share the pool.
But Harry thinks the man might like their silent company as much as Harry does. One night, he doesn’t appear at the normal time; Harry continues his swim, anxiety mounting. Nearly forty minutes late, the man appears; he’s rushing. Harry keeps his head turned, but he thinks he sees the man slow. Perhaps he imagines the way his body is tense, then relaxes. Harry continues his laps, a slow, lazy crawl in the second lane—his lane—until the man dives smoothly into the fourth. Only then does Harry pull himself from the water.
He thinks about speaking to him, sometimes. Considers introducing himself. He doesn’t know anybody in the building. He hasn’t wanted to, before; he apparates directly in and out of his flat to avoid unneeded social interaction. He’s afraid: meeting people ruins things. The man is whatever Harry wants him to be, right now—Harry isn’t sure what he wants him to be—but the moment Harry meets him, he’ll be real.
As the man dives into the pool and begins swimming, Harry decides. The next day, he’ll be brave. Or stupid. He isn’t sure what the difference is. He’ll pull himself from the pool when the man arrives and introduce himself.
But the man isn’t there the next night. Harry swims for an extra hour before he gives up. Finally, he climbs out of the pool, pulling his robe over his dripping body and sliding his sandals onto wet feet.
It was too much, to hope for a connection.
It’s always too much.
As he walks towards the door, it slams open. Harry stares.
Standing there in an open robe, looking harried and nervous, biting his lip, is Draco Malfoy.
They stare, paradigms shifting beneath them. Then, Draco laughs.
He laughs.
His eyes are sparkling, his teeth bright and white. He shakes his head. He doesn’t speak. He laughs, warm and open, like he and Harry are old friends, and then he turns away.
Harry stands and stares. There is a part of him, broken, twisted, that wants to follow. To demand why Draco is in his apartment building. To accuse him of stalking Harry. To—what else, Harry doesn’t know.
Hermione and Ron are right, that Harry doesn’t take proper care of himself, but they’re wrong, because swimming has been healing something in him. And he feels that broken, twisted part of himself crying out to cause pain, and he shushes it, and it recedes. Harry stands by the door and watches as Draco sets down his things. He has a book, Harry sees. He must stay after to read. Harry watches him slide his robe from his shoulders to expose milky skin and his flower garden. He watches as Draco tugs on his swim cap, then adjusts his swim briefs and shakes out his arms before walking to the pool. Draco looks at him once before putting on his goggles and turning away.
When he dives in, there’s hardly a splash.
Harry turns and leaves the roof.
Harry’s routine shifts again. The man is real now, but it hasn’t ruined anything. It’s hardly changed anything. They don’t talk. They haven’t spoken a word. Draco doesn’t arrive earlier, and Harry doesn’t arrive later. He does stay, on the occasional day when Draco is late. He’s certain that Draco likes this, too. Draco’s always tense and rushed and worried on the days that he’s late. His eyes track to the pool. He only relaxes when he sees Harry.
That’s the only change: the looking.
They watch one another. Harry tries not to stare; he fails. His eyes track Draco from when he emerges onto the roof until he cuts into the pool. Sometimes he swims backstroke, sometimes a lazy breaststroke, barely dipping his face into the water. Once, he’s staring so hard he veers into the lane markers. He’d be embarrassed, except he knows that Draco’s watching him, too.
Always, always, Draco watches Harry watching him. He observes Harry’s movements with a possessive gaze. When Harry does something out of his routine, Draco’s eyes widen, just a bit.
So, of course, Harry starts doing things out of the routine. Sometimes he pauses, arms slung over the lane marker, and stares openly as Draco readies himself. Draco smirks, running his fingers along the waistband of his swim briefs in a way that makes Harry’s heart race. Sometimes Harry lets himself sink deeper at the edge of the pool, arms overhead to hold the lip, and he sees the way Draco’s eyes trace the shape of his arms. Draco licks his lips.
One night, Harry does something different again: he ducks under the lane markers and approaches; pulls himself from the pool, water streaming in rivulets from his body. Draco watches and waits. Harry wonders if this is a game. He wonders what the rules are.
He waits. Draco turns to him. They look at one another, and Harry sees it: they’re both scarred, both exhausted, both able, for the first time, in this place, to be quiet. To just be. Even together.
Draco doesn’t speak. The only sound Harry has heard from him was that one musical laugh.
“Draco,” Harry says, and his voice catches. Draco’s eyes widen. Harry swallows, clears his throat, tries again. “Draco, I just want to—”
Draco steps forwards and presses a finger to Harry’s lips. Shushes him. “No talking. That’s not what this. Harry.”
Harry feels breathless. What is it, then? he wants to ask.
He steps closer. Slowly, slowly, places one hand on Draco’s neck. Draco stares. He never stops watching. He waits.
Harry kisses him. Another contradiction: it’s gentle, but all he can feel inside is a roaring flame. One hand soft on Draco’s cheek. The other balled into a fist to hold himself back.
He pulls away. Draco stares. He looks stunned. Still, he doesn’t speak.
Harry steps back. Turns. Flees.
* * *
Harry spends the next day distracted, stomach roiling. He’d thought meeting the strange man would ruin everything, but it hadn’t. Harry had, weeks later.
He doesn’t know why he kissed Draco.
He knows why he wanted to, he thinks. Draco’s different now. Quiet, confident. Still with an edge—Harry wants to feel it under his fingertips, find out if it’s as rough as Harry’s are.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
He stands at his door for three hours the next night, swim cap, goggles, and towel in hand. All he wants is to be on the roof. He doesn’t know how to exist without it. He wants.
Oh, how he wants. Harry hasn’t wanted like this in years. Ever, maybe.
He’s wanted things before: a family; safety; to be left the fuck alone. But the things that he wants have always been things he’s been so sure that he deserves. This is different. Does he deserve it?
What is ‘it’?
Feet sore, heart pounding, Harry finally gives in and slumps, sleepless, on the sofa.
The next day is spent in brittle silence. His coworkers avoid his path. He skips dinner with Ron and Hermione, blocks his Floo to prevent their enquiries, texts once to say he’s fine.
He is not fine.
He pulls himself together. He needs his swim. He can’t bear it, thinking of Draco not coming. But he can’t stay away.
When he pushes open the door of the roof, Draco’s already there. He’s in the second lane—Harry’s lane, facing the door. His elbows are propped on the edge of the pool, his goggles and cap next to him.
He’s reading.
Harry stops and stares. Draco glances up, eyes flicking down Harry’s form, then turns back to his book. He flips the page.
Harry doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do, so he does what he wants. He strides forwards, drops his robe, kicks off his sandals, and slides into the pool next to Draco. He’s careful not to splash the book.
Draco doesn’t look up, at first. His finger hovers over the edge of the page, waiting to turn. Harry watches his eyes: he’s reading, eyes flicking down the lines with fervour. He reads like Hermione, like he only has so much time and he needs to fit in as many words as he can.
Harry waits.
Another page turns; he sees the white expanse of the end of a chapter. Draco peers down at the page number—committing it to memory, Harry thinks—then closes the book. Sets it down, solicitous. Sinks deeper into the pool; turns.
They’re both waiting now.
The moment hangs heavy like the moon on the horizon. Harry doesn’t want to ruin this, whatever it is. But even ruined, he thinks he’ll want to hold it close, even in tatters.
Draco swallows. “Well?”
A swimming pool is not the ocean; there are no tides, no rip currents, no undertow. But Harry thinks the moon might pull him, anyway. Draco laughs again, the melody dripping into Harry’s mouth. He tastes of chlorine and sickening, desperate hope.
* * *
Draco’s body slides through the water confidently, muscles flexing with each stroke. Still, they don’t speak—they gasp, they laugh, they moan. Harry weeps, he thinks, but he doesn’t spare a moment to be embarrassed. Harry has never wanted anything more than this in his life. He’s never really known what it felt like, to get something he wished for.
Draco looks up at him, eyes bright and blazing. He kisses the tears from Harry’s face. Shushes him. Pulls him close and guides their movements, slow now, languid. He’s passionate, yes, but also kind. So kind. Harry cannot bear the kindness, but Draco is unrelenting.
He holds Harry, after, strokes his hair and hums wordless murmurs of comfort into his neck.
“What are you reading?” Harry finally asks. It’s not the question he expected to ask.
“To the Lighthouse.”
“What’s it about?”
“Everything. Nothing. Everything.”
Harry feels tears welling again. He lets them fall and presses his face to Draco’s neck.
“Will you tell me about it?”
Fingers trace the lines of Harry’s back. Tighten; loosen. He hears one slow, shuddering sigh.
“Of course I will.”