FEST FIC: I'd Rather Change Nappies (1/3)
Nov. 28th, 2010 04:22 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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bottom_dracoTitle: “I’d Rather Change Nappies Than Have My Cock Sucked” and Other Ravings of a Pregnant Wizard
Author: Frayach Ni Cuill![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
frayach
Pairing: Harry/Draco
Word Count: 24,500
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Mpreg, male lactation & breast-feeding, and a very fleeting scene of bottom!Harry
Prompt: After his pregnancy and the birth of Scorpius (who is Harry's and Draco's son), Draco has a hard time getting back into shape. Harry isn't helping with his awesome cooking skills and the delicious chocolate gifts. Also, he seems awfully keen on getting Draco pregnant again. Prefer flangsty.
Author’s Notes: Many thanks to [name redacted] for getting rid of my Americanisms and educating me on the facts of pregnancy.
MOD NOTE: This fic contains one small switching scene. We decided to allow it due to extenuating circumstances and the fact that it really is very brief. Just a heads-up to any watchers who are 100% squicked by top!Draco.
The pain came at night. Cruciatus couldn’t possibly be worse. He’d curled around his belly. The sheets were soaked with sweat, and his hair stuck to his face. He thinks he screamed, but he doesn’t remember. All he can recall is pain sawing through his consciousness like a serrated blade.
Suddenly, the light was on, and Harry was leaping out of bed, leaving the mattress jiggling. The movement made him feel ill, and he pushed up on his elbows and vomited feebly on his pillow. Fuck. Fuck the fucking midwife and her “spiritual mystical birth rituals.” Fuck the prenatal classes full of witches with their breathing mantras. There’d been one other homosexual couple, but they’d been through it all before. When the midwife spoke of contractions, they’d just smiled knowingly at each other. Fuck them. But then again, the pregnant partner had made Professor Slughorn look svelte. He looked like he’d had room in there for septuplets. Fat ugly Mudblood pig.
He hadn’t been in the mood to be socially sensitive.
“Shit! Draco, are you okay?”
Fuck Harry too. Long and hard with a hot poker.
“Yeah, I’m okay. You can go back to sleep.”
Harry laughed weakly as he struggled into his jeans.
“You stupid arse,” he said fondly. “Fuck, this is fucking scary.” He sat down on the edge of the bed to pull his socks on, and Draco threw up again, although this time on the floor, which was an improvement.
“Will you stop jiggling the bloody mattress?”
“Er, uh, sorry . . . I didn’t know . . . oh my God, I can’t believe this is finally happening! We’re going to be parents!”
Draco also would’ve preferred that Harry not shout. It was not helping. Plus, he wanted to correct Harry and tell him that he’d be a parent while he, Draco, would be six-feet under the sod pushing up daffodils.
But that would’ve required a sense of humour, and Draco had lost his sometime around the third contraction.
“Draco, love, tell me what to do . . . .”
Merlin’s purple butt plug. He could not be serious.
“Get. The. Bag. And. Call. Someone. Now.”
The bag was already packed. It even contained the book he’d been reading in case he . . . what? . . . got bored between contractions or something? The people they’d been when they’d gone to bed last night now seemed like the two stupidest people on the face of the planet. Had they also packed a quill and some parchment? Perhaps he’d like to start writing the birth announcements when he got tired of reading.
“Draco, can you stand up?”
All he could do was shake his head. Harry ran to the Floo.
“We need an ambulance!” he’d yelled. “. . . No, we can’t Apparate! We can’t Floo either! . . . What do you mean there’re no levitating ambulances available? Christ! Tell them it’s Harry Potter who’s asking for God’s sake!”
Draco had never heard him invoke his hero status before, and he doubted he ever would again. It was sobering. He’d leaned on Harry as he stood up, clutching his arm and feeling like an invalid. The pain was tearing him apart.
“It’s okay,” Harry kept saying over and over. “Put all your weight on me. They’ll be here soon. At least they bloody well better be.”
Draco was sure he’d held Harry’s arm so tightly he’d left bruises. Time had never passed so slowly. He was fighting to keep standing. He was fighting to stay conscious. He was quite literally fighting for two lives.
The thought of the baby inside him made him terrified. Only two thirds of the infants born from same sex unions survived. And when the babies died during delivery, the pregnant partner often died too.
“Don’t leave me!” he’d begged Harry. Both his courage and his pride had deserted him on the way to St. Mungo’s.
Harry grabbed his hand with both of his and kissed it.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he’d said fiercely. “I’ll be right here beside you when you wake up. Draco, you’re going to be all right. I love you too much to let anything happen to you . . .”
He’d smiled weakly as the Healer cast the sleeping spell. “My hero,” he’d said with affectionate sarcasm. And then even more weakly, “See you later.” The last thing he’d remembered was Harry clutching his hand and whispering a protective charm over and over.
* * * *
Harry loses control and begins thrusting erratically. His breath is warm and moist against the back Draco’s neck.
The Healers had told them on Monday that it was safe to resume “sexual intimacy” again. Harry had blushed, and Draco had thought it was due to the Healer’s words, but then he’d glanced down at Harry’s lap.
“So good . . . Draco,” he gasps. “Feels so . . . Oh God . . . I’m coming . . .”
Instead of losing his mind at Harry’s words as he used to, all he can think of is pain ripping at his guts, tearing him apart, making him wish he was dead.
He hadn’t come. He hadn’t even got hard.
Harry’s groan sounds like pure sweet release. His hips surge forward and slam up against Draco’s arse. As soon as his orgasm ends, he reaches down to seize Draco’s cock.
“Roll over,” he says breathlessly, and Draco reluctantly complies, careful to pull the sheet over his hideous belly. Harry swallows his cock and sucks. The sounds he makes are sloppy and urgent. He knows Harry is desperate to make him come. This will be the fifth night in a row that he hasn’t even got an erection.
After a while, Draco reaches down and touches Harry’s ear. Harry lets his cock slip from his lips. It doesn’t even twitch. Harry is very quiet for a moment before he gets up and goes into the bathroom. Draco hears the shower turn on.
Fuck.
Mercifully, their baby starts to cry. He pulls on his baggiest pyjama bottoms and goes to the room across the hall. Scorpius is fussing in his cot. Draco picks him up and rubs his back in little circles just as his mother had shown him.
“Are you hungry?” he asks, and has to bite his tongue before adding “again??”
He sits down in the leather armchair they’d bought when the pregnancy was in its third month and looked like it was viable. Neither of them wanted a nursery full of pastel colours and pictures of cuddly animals. Scorpius’s cot was plain wood and the mobile above him depicted Quidditch players and Quaffles and one shining Snitch. Of course the colours were Slytherin and Gryffindor. The only other whimsical thing in the nursery was a Black heirloom – a tapestry depicting a rearing unicorn in a garden. Harry had found it stuffed in an old trunk while he’d been cleaning out Grimmauld Place in preparation for selling it. It’d needed a lot of repair, but it was worth it. The colours were rich and intricate. His mother and aunt estimated it was worth as much as, if not more than, the entirety of Grimmauld Place and all it contained.
Scorpius scrunches up his tiny face and lets out a frustrated cry. Wrapping him in a blanket, Draco helps him latch onto his poor abused nipple. Thankfully, he hadn’t grown proper breasts as some wizards do, but the flesh around his nipples was slightly swollen and very tender. Growing breasts would’ve been the proverbial last straw in his already straw-bare broom.
After awhile Harry comes in and sits in the old ratty armchair. He doesn’t meet Draco’s eyes when he asks if Scorpius is okay.
“He’s fine, just hungry is all.”
“Listen, Draco . . .”
“I’m not having this conversation. Not now.”
Harry sighs and scrubs his face with his palms, making his damp hair stick up in spikes like a hedgehog.
“It’s weird making love to someone who’s just waiting for you to hurry up and get off so it’ll all be over.”
“I said I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Well then, when will we talk about it?”
Harry’s voice is tinged with frustration.
“I don’t know what your problem is,” Draco snaps. “You’re the one getting off.”
Harry flinches. “I feel like an arsehole making love to you when you’d rather be plucking your nose hair or scrubbing the bottom of the tub or something.”
Draco sighs. Apparently, they are going to have this conversation.
“Well excuse me for not wanting to be a receptacle for your semen when I’m exhausted and in pain.” He pulls a persistent Scorpius off his nipple and points at it. “You try to get it up when any and everything that touches your tits makes you want to bite your tongue off.”
“Fine, I won’t touch them. I haven’t even tried to. Listen, Draco, the Healers say it’s okay now.”
“Okay in theory, but not necessarily in practice.”
Harry tilts his head against the back of his chair.
“We haven’t had sex since you started your seventh month, and it’s been six weeks since Scorpius was born. That’s more than three months without being able to have sex with you. It’s killing me! I need you.”
If he wasn’t nursing their son, Draco would’ve got up and punched him. Hard.
“Wow,” he says. “Forgive me for giving you blue balls while I was having my liver slowly squashed and my kidneys squeezed to the size of marbles.”
Harry covers his face with his hands.
“But you’ve given birth! Nearly a month and a half ago!”
This – this – is the problem. Harry simply has no clue. After all, he hadn’t been the one vomiting nearly everyday. He hadn’t been the one struggling to make a virtually impossible pregnancy work by restricting his movements and surrendering his position as Seeker for the Magpies. He hadn’t been the one in constant discomfort. He hadn’t been the one who’d had to set aside fifteen minutes just to take a piss. He hadn’t been the one whose body was trying to produce nourishment for a foetus. He wasn’t the one who almost died during delivery. He wasn’t the one who was having his nipples chewed on every other hour.
And he wasn’t the one carrying around an extra stone and feeling slow and tired and repulsive.
The only response Draco can come up with that could express all of these thoughts at once is a nasty glare and a lip-curling sneer.
“You mean to tell me that you feel nothing – nothing at all?”
Nothing besides frustration and mortification?
“The only thing I feel is pressure.”
“Fine,” Harry says, standing up so fast that he almost tips over the chair. “I won’t pressure you anymore.”
Draco inhales sharply. This is why he hadn’t wanted to have this conversation. He and Harry took things to the brink – to the point where things can get unfixable.
“That’s what hands were made for,” he says recklessly. “Have you ever heard of wanking?”
“WHAT?! Did you just tell me to have a wank?! Fuck you, Draco! What do you think I’ve been doing? My dick is as chafed as your nipples from wanking!”
“I doubt that,” Draco mutters under his breath.
Scorpius starts to cry.
“Bloody hell! Now look what you’ve done!”
Harry’s expression immediately goes from enraged to contrite. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I shouldn’t have shouted like that.”
“No, you shouldn’t have,” Draco replies, trying to soothe their son and help him latch on again.
“I’m just so . . .”
“So what, Potter?”
Harry looks at him. From long years of experience, Draco knows his eyes are ice cold; he’d perfected the look by the time he was ten.
“Nothing.”
“Good answer.”
Harry turns and walks out of the room, leaving Draco feeling shaken. How long would it be before he drove Harry into someone else’s bed?
* * * *
For the first few months of the pregnancy, Harry had been a moving target. He was up at dawn every morning cooking breakfast for an army and then tidying up the flat like a one-person manorial staff of house-elves. Even when Draco had been feeling well enough to help, his attempts had been thwarted. It’d been both endearing and annoying. He’d hated being treated like an invalid.
“You do realise this bulge is a baby not a tumour,” he’d said one evening after Harry had rearranged the furniture so as to make it less likely that Draco’s movements would be impeded. He’d even shrunk and stored a sofa and coffee table and a large bronze urn, which (coincidently?) Harry had always disliked.
“Also this is my flat. You’re messing around with my impeccable decorating.”
He’d meant it teasingly, but he’d noticed Harry’s face tighten at his emphasis on “my flat.”
They’d started sleeping together (both literally and figuratively) almost immediately. Neither of them had the patience to “take it slow” like all of their friends had urged them. There were too many years of being stupid to make up for.
The one night he’d spent at Grimmauld Place had been enough for him to know he didn’t ever want to spend a second one there. Even though Harry had made some changes, it was still the house he’d visited when he was a child, and being in it brought back memories he’d much rather forget. So, it’d been decided very quickly that Harry should move in with him.
They’d gone from being tentative friends to lovers to flat-mates to spouses in less than a year.
And now, two years later, they were going to be parents. When Draco paused to think about it, he knew they were moving much too quickly. He hadn’t even needed his mother to tell him that, although she continued to do so long after the wedding. Sometimes Draco was still amazed to wake up and find Harry Potter in his bed. It still seemed like an impossible dream after all that time of wanting and not having.
Harry owned very few things he wasn’t willing to part with, and most of them fit into a single trunk. He’d practically been living in the Ministry building since he’d become an Auror. The only piece of furniture they’d had to buy when Harry moved in was a chest of drawers. Everything else had remained the same.
It’d only been relatively recently that Draco had realised this was not a good thing. Sometimes his life seemed like a perch that Harry could fly off of at any time with nothing to carry except a stupid trunk. Their relationship hadn’t yet (if it ever would) stopped being volatile. It was too easy for Harry to go away – and too easy for Draco to tell him to.
But the baby would change all of that. Their lives would finally settle down and weave together seamlessly. Draco would spend less time travelling with his team, and Harry would take on fewer international assignments, and when they were together, they wouldn’t have to fuck as though it was both their first and their last time. The baby would tame them and bring them together in less complicated ways.
At least that’s what he’d thought.
* * * *
“Merlin, Draco! Don’t let his head roll back like that! You’re handling a baby, not a sack of potatoes!”
His mother snatches Scorpius away as though he’s in mortal danger.
“Thank you, Mother. You’ll notice he’s not dead yet, so I must not be bollocksing things up completely.”
“Darling. Your language. The baby.”
Christ.
His aunt laughs and takes Scorpius from her sister and holds him up so she can rub his little nose with hers. He makes a sound that Draco is sure is a laugh even though everyone’s told him he won’t laugh until he’s at least 16 weeks old. But what did they know? Scorpius was his baby; of course he’d do everything ahead of schedule.
“She doesn’t mean any harm, dear. It’s just that this is her grandson we’re talking about. She’s like a Yeti with her yetlet.”
His mother focuses her laser-like attention on him.
“Why are you insisting on going back to that ridiculous team? Scorpius needs you. You can’t possibly be considering giving him to a house-elf to breast-feed.”
And there he’d been thinking that Muggle formula was an abomination.
“Do house-elves even have tits?”
“Of course they do! I am a lady of high society. How do you think you were fed?”
His mouth drops open.
His aunt laughs again. “Go on now. Scorpius will be fine with us. You left us enough milk for the day, didn’t you?”
He feels the blood rush to his face. He was never going to stop feeling like a freak. He’d already wrapped his chest in layers of tightly wound bandages to keep himself from leaking milk on his uniform. The horror. The sheer fucking horror.
“Yes,” he grumbles. “What do you think I spent the predawn hours doing? I can assure you it wasn’t sleeping.”
“Poor darling,” his mother says distractedly, her attention already returning to her grandson. “Don’t fly into a tree. The thought of that man . . . sorry, your ‘husband’. . . raising this poor wee babe is enough to keep me awake at nights.”
“Then perhaps we could keep each other company,” he says as he walks to the hearth after giving Scorpius his one-hundredth good-bye kiss.
“He’s hopelessly smitten,” he hears his aunt say just before the whoosh of the Floo sweeps him away. “Poor Harry.”
He hadn’t a clue what she’d meant. “Poor Harry”? It wasn’t Harry who was rubbing Kamillosan on his nipples and getting up five times a night. “Poor Harry.” Yeah, right.
Coach Devlin is ecstatic when Draco walks into the locker room.
“Thank God, you’re here,” he says clutching at Draco’s robe as though Draco was a saint who’d just come back from the dead. “Worthacrock . . . sorry, Crockaworth is injured. We need you to fly this weekend.”
“Uhm, well . . .”
“Whatever that stomach ailment was that you had, it must be gone by now,” Coach Devlin implores. “It’s been months since you’ve been in the air.”
Draco sighs. He’d admonished himself for weeks that when he started to show, he’d tell his team mates that he was pregnant. But then he’d thought of the shit he’d get and chickened out. Instead they thought he’d had a horrendous case of food poisoning. His daily vomiting had served to bolster the lie as did his voluminous robes. He’d convinced everyone he had fever and chills.
But now he was faced with a quandary. He couldn’t keep playing the food poisoning card forever, but he couldn’t belatedly admit he’d been pregnant. He also knew he shouldn’t be flying yet. Harry would kill him if he found out. The Healers had had to cut almost his entire abdomen open and wade through his innards (“the price of not having a vagina,” his mother had said) and stitched up three layers of muscle after Scorpius had been pulled out, bloody and screaming at the top of his lungs. Draco still had the scars to prove it. Also, all his innards had yet to settle back into place again. He was tired of feeling like his intestines were wrapped around his oesophagus.
“Uhm,” he says again.
“Great!” says Coach Devlin, slapping him on the back. “Now get out on the pitch and do some sit-ups.”
* * * *
The vomiting had been for real; it certainly wasn’t a ruse. He’d cut his hair short because he’d got tired of holding it back from his face. For weeks, the only things he’d been able to keep down were bread and some dreadful kind of orange Muggle soda.
If Harry was home, he’d come into the toilet with a cushion for Draco to kneel on so his knees wouldn’t bruise from the tile. Thankfully they rarely spoke, but Harry would rub his back and fetch damp cloths to wipe away the sweat from his face.
Contrary to its name, Draco didn’t get sick in the mornings; it was usually around lunchtime, perhaps the most inconvenient and embarrassing time of the day. He’d had to call a stop to his weekly get-togethers with Blaise and Pansy because the last time they’d had lunch, Draco had thrown up into his napkin and had to plead a stomach flu and Apparate home.
“The little parasite obviously wants to kill me by starvation,” he’d told Harry. “Or else sheer mortification. I look like I’ve swallowed a Quaffle.”
“Don’t be ridiculous; you look gorgeous,” Harry had replied. “And stop calling our baby a parasite.”
One afternoon, he’d been sure he was actually going to throw up their son. He didn’t see why such a thing would be impossible given the near-impossibility of the entire pregnancy.
“I wish I could share what you’re going through,” Harry had said. “I wish this didn’t have to be so hard and scary.”
Draco had merely nodded in acknowledgement of his statement in-between heaves. He’d had his chin resting on the toilet rim, drooling continuously from the nausea.
“Draco, love . . .” Harry had murmured, kissing the back of his neck. “You’re doing great. I’m so proud of you.”
He’d been referencing the Healer’s confirmation that the pregnancy had passed its second critical stage, and their baby was healthy and developing normally.
“You’re so strong. I don’t think I could do what you’re doing.”
“Bollocks. You defeated Voldemort. Don’t patronise me.”
“I’m not; I mean it. Defeating Voldemort was one single act. You’re living with this every minute of your day . . .”
He’d retched, and Harry had wiped his mouth with a cloth. They were quiet for awhile as Draco struggled to get his nausea under control.
“Do you ever wish we weren’t doing this?”
Harry’s voice had been so quiet, Draco almost hadn’t heard him.
“Because we can end this, you know . . . after all, you think it’s a parasite.”
Draco felt something instinctive and primal at Harry’s words.
“Don’t you dare even think about us ending this pregnancy!”
Harry had looked startled and then abashed. “It’s okay,” he’d said soothingly. “It’s okay. I’m just so worried about you . . .”
“I’m the grown wizard,” he said, pointing at his belly. “It’s defenceless and struggling to survive in an unnatural environment. Our job is to protect it . . .”
He’d been interrupted by more retching, but Harry had leaned against him as though he was trying to absorb Draco’s pain and discomfort through his skin.
“It’s okay,” he’d whispered in Draco’s ear. “It’s okay. I love you both. It’s going to be okay. I promise.”
* * * *
He lies on the grass sweating and dizzy. He used to be able to do a hundred sit-ups with no problem, but now twenty felt impossible. He’d worked so hard to get fit after his incarceration in Azkaban, and he’d eventually succeeded, winning World Star Seeker four years in a row. Now it felt as though he was back to square one again.
Why had he given into Harry’s pleas? They were only 28. There was plenty of time to have a baby and not nearly as much time to play professional Quidditch. But Harry had wanted a baby so much. He’d painted such sappy pictures of the three of them doing things together that Draco had been caught up in his enthusiasm, and the next thing he’d known, he was sitting on an examination table in a hospital gown having his hand shaken by a succession of Healers.
Last night, after his and Harry’s mortifying argument, he’d gone into the bathroom, stripped naked, and lit the most unflattering Lumos he was capable of. He’d wanted to see the ugly truth instead of just imagining it. He’d turned this way and that. There was no way to ignore it. He was fat and hideous. Even his bloody feet were fat. It was as though nothing had changed after Scorpius was born – he was still bloated and swollen like a giant blood-sucking eel.
“Looking a little winded there, Malfoy,” says Rumpsford as he jogs by.
Arsehole.
By the time practise was over, he’s drenched in sweat and panting for breath. Every step of their five kilometre run had felt like the last step he’d ever take on earth. In fact, he hadn’t been able to finish and had to walk the last few laps. By that point, people had stopped teasing him and started giving him pitying glances as they passed.
But the physical agony didn’t come close to the mental anguish. He’d found himself swallowing tears whenever he thought of Scorpius, which pretty much meant he was choked up all the time because Scorpius was all he could think of. This was the first time they’d been more than a hallway apart since he was born. Draco’s body wasn’t only pleading with him to stop working out; it was pleading with him to find his baby and hold him to his chest and watch him suckle contentedly.
Merlin. He was turning into a witch. He’d known this would happen! Harry had assured him it wouldn’t, but what did Harry know? Absolutely nothing. He was probably out at that very moment blithely jogging around in bogs or whatever the hell else he did when he was in the field.
“Um,” Coach Devlin says. He looks less thrilled than he had when Draco first arrived. “You gonna be ready to fly on Saturday?”
Draco desperately wants to say no, but his career was starting to look in jeopardy.
“Yeah,” he says, unlacing his muddy boots. “Of course.”
Harry has been cooking again. Draco can smell it from the street corner, and when he unlocks the door wearing a manky sweat-stained uniform and carrying Scorpius in his pouch, he can almost taste the gammon and onion. Merlin, he was hungry!
“I’m sorry,” Harry says. “For last night.” He puts his arms around Draco and their son and kisses both their cheeks before wrinkling his nose at Draco’s jersey. “I made your favourite quiche so you’ll forgive me.”
Draco would like not to. He was still crabby from his practice, and his mother had lectured him about his “priorities.” When he’d arrived at the Manor, he’d tried to feed Scorpius, but his milk wouldn’t come because of the exercise. Poor Scorpius had wailed with hunger. His mother was furious.
“Draco Malfoy! It’s Quidditch that’s the game, not caring for an infant! You need to reconsider your priorities! The Magpies may need you, but not as much as your baby does. Poor wee thing, he’s practically starving to death!”
She’d been pretty effective at making him feel like utter shit.
“How’d the first day back with the team go?” Harry asks, taking Scorpius from him and holding him against his chest so that his blond head rested on his shoulder.
Like so many other things in his life at the moment, Draco didn’t want to talk about it.
“Peachy,” he says. “How was your bog-jogging?”
Harry regards him with a furrowed brow. “Bog-jogging?”
Draco waves his hand at him dismissively and goes into the kitchen. White sauce is bubbling in a pot, and when he opens the oven, he finds a huge yellow cake. His mouth waters.
But, Merlin, he shouldn’t be eating rich foods! Not given how fat he’s become.
“This all looks lovely,” he says. “But I think I’d prefer a salad.”
Harry had been bouncing Scorpius and clucking and cooing at him like a giant lunatic chicken when he stopped and turned to Draco.
“What are you talking about?” he asks. “You’re supposed to be taking in at least 2,500 calories a day. Even more so now that you’ve started back with the team.”
“Well, what can I say? I’m not hungry.”
Harry just stares at him. Draco feels a twinge of remorse. Harry is trying to participate in the intense, nearly-exclusive relationship between him and Scorpius, but he couldn’t seem to figure out how. Draco can see it in Harry’s forlorn look.
“Okay,” he relents. “I’ll have one serving.”
If stomachs could weep with gratitude, his would be sobbing at that moment.
An hour later, he’d eaten three servings of quiche and two slices of the lemon sponge cake and now is unable to move. He’s horrified at his lack of self-control, but Harry looks happy, so it seems almost worth it. Draco stands to do the washing-up, but Harry stops him.
“Let me,” he says and hands over Scorpius. “He looks hungry.”
“Potter. That’s his normal expression.”
“Well, maybe he’s always hungry.”
“Ha ha,” Draco says and reaches out with his free hand to pinch and twist Harry’s nipple through his shirt. Harry yelps, and Draco grins.
“Feels great, doesn’t it?”
Harry glares at him before he retreats into the kitchen rubbing his chest.
As he feeds Scorpius, Draco watches the clock on the mantel. Every minute that passed, meant bedtime was closer. He could tell from the way Harry was sneaking glimpses of him that he wanted to have sex. He’d told Draco when they’d first come home with Scorpius that it turned him on to watch Scorpius breast-feed. Draco couldn’t fathom why – especially when breast-feeding made him feel uncomfortable and totally emasculated. But then again, everything turned Harry on. Even the sound of him pissing in the toilet or sitting in the bath drove Harry wild.
Scorpius is sleeping soundly when Harry casts a Finite, and the mops and brooms and dish cloths swoop away to their respective cupboards. He tip-toes over to them and pulls aside the blanket to watch Scorpius make his funny sleep faces.
“God, he is so beautiful,” Harry says, and then, less certainly, he asks if he can hold him for a little while.
“Careful,” Draco tells him when Harry fails to hold his head correctly. Merlin, he was sounding like his mother!
He stands and gestures for Harry to take his seat.
“You look tired,” Harry says, sitting down. “Go have a warm bath. I’ll change him and put him to bed.”
Draco is appalled to find that his instinct is to say no. No one could put Scorpius to bed but him. Harry will fuck something up, and Scorpius will cry, and then Draco will freak out and hex him.
“He’ll be okay, Draco. I don’t completely suck as a father. I know you think I do, but I don’t. I had practise with Teddy.”
It was true. Between the two of them, Harry had far more experience with babies, but then again, he hadn’t carried one around in his body for nine months, feeling every move he made – every heartbeat, or at least it had felt that way. Draco was still shocked that Scorpius wasn’t still a part of him.
Draco wanders into the bedroom wearing a towel wrapped around his head and the bathrobe he’d worn during his final weeks. This time, there are candles. He wants to cry. He’s exhausted and sore, and Scorpius would be waking again in a couple hours. He needed to sleep, not fuck.
Harry walks in the bedroom as Draco is changing into his pyjamas, and Draco squeaks with indignant alarm.
“Ever hear of privacy and giving a person some?”
Harry looks baffled. “You’re dressing. I’ve seen you naked a zillion times. Why are you being such a prude all of a sudden? You wouldn’t even let me in the bathroom to scrub your back like I always do. You don’t have to worry. I’m not lurking around waiting to pounce on you at the first opportunity.”
Really?
Draco gestures around to the candles. “I’m tired,” he says.
“I know,” Harry replies. “I’m not going to try to have sex with you; I just wanted to give you a backrub before you go to sleep.”
Draco smiles a sad fond smile. Harry is trying so hard to do the right thing. It’s just that he has no clue what the right thing is.
“All right. But just a little backrub. I really need some sleep.”
He settles into the nest of pillows Harry has created, and Harry straddles his bum. The oil is juniper and sandalwood (his favourite), and he groans in ecstasy when he feels Harry’s hands on his shoulders, kneading deep and working out the knots. For their first Christmas together, Harry had signed himself up for a course on massage. It was by far the best present Draco had ever received.
He sighs deeply and lets his eyes slip shut. The candles flicker; he can see their dancing light through his eyelids. Harry’s hands move down his back, his fingers working at relaxing the muscles attached to every vertebra all the way down to the tip of his tailbone. Harry even gives his bum a deep tissue massage without letting his fingers wander into his crack. The only thing that mars his enjoyment is the fear that his arse is as flabby and repulsive as his belly. When Harry attempts to move down to his thighs, Draco tells him his neck needs more attention.
He’s fallen half-asleep when he feels Harry get up and pull the duvet over him. Through squinted eyes, he watches Harry reach into his pants and adjust his hard on. Draco feels a surge of guilt. Every time Harry gave him a massage, Draco would reciprocate with a blow job, but he couldn’t think of anything he’d less rather do at that moment – except maybe fucking itself.
Harry’s bare chest is flushed and his breathing shallow. Draco listens to his feet pad their way to the toilet and then the click of the lock on the door. He knows Harry’s gone there to wank, and it alarms him that the realisation doesn’t make him jealous – or turned on. Instead it fills him with relief. He nestles deeper into the pillows, closes his eyes and falls asleep.
He wakes sometime later, feeling groggy and disoriented, when Harry crawls under the duvet holding Scorpius in his arms.
Draco is instantly awake.
“Potter! What on earth are you thinking? He’ll suffocate!”
“No, he won’t. I’ll lie on my back and hold him on my chest.”
“And then roll over and crush him!”
Harry sighs.
“I just thought it would be easier for you to feed him here rather than have to get up and go into the other room. Plus,” he added, “I want to hold him.”
Draco feels a surge of irrational jealousy, but whether he’s jealous of Harry or Scorpius, he can’t tell.
“I won’t be able to sleep if he stays in bed with us.”
Harry doesn’t argue. He merely gets up and carries Scorpius back to the nursery. As guilty as he feels, Draco feels even more tired and falls back asleep in an instant.
Something elemental wakes him just before dawn, and he immediately panics. Robins were singing, and the sky was turning lavender. He’d slept through the whole night! What was wrong with Scorpius? Was he dead? Kidnapped by fairies? What? He struggles out of the pillows, grabs his robe and runs to the nursery . . .
. . . only to find Harry asleep in the chair with Scorpius in his arms.
Draco can’t help himself. He may have broken more limbs (other people’s, of course) in the history of professional Quidditch, but he is no match for the sight of Harry’s head tilted to the side, his glasses askew, and Scorpius’s tiny hand holding onto the collar of his t-shirt.
They were his. What had he ever done to deserve them?
He walks over and kisses Harry’s forehead, right on the scar, and Harry opens his eyes.
“Fell asleep,” he murmurs.
“I noticed. It looks like he’s finally slept through his first night.”
“Teddy used to sleep most soundly when he could feel someone’s heartbeat. Scorpius misses yours. Here, do you want him?”
Draco did. More than anything in the world. He holds out his arms as Harry hands their son to him and is embarrassed by sudden tears. He sits in the chair, and Harry kneels beside him on the floor.
“You’re going to think I’m crazy, and you might even hate me when I tell you what I’ve been thinking about all night . . .”
Draco’s sunny little world is darkened by apprehension. What now? He wants to change careers? He wants an open marriage? He wants to buy that dreadful cottage . . . What?
“I think we should have another.”
Draco frowns at him. What was the berk talking about?
“Another what?”
Harry takes a deep breath. “Another baby.”
Draco almost falls out of his chair.
“Go to sleep, Harry,” he says evenly and with remarkable calm under the circumstances. “You’re deranged from a lack of sleep . . . or sex, or who-knows-what.”
“I’m not deranged. The Healers told us that if we wanted another child, it would be easiest to conceive now, while the Potion is still active in your system.”
Draco doesn’t respond. He can’t. Words were not invented to express how horrified he is. In fact, he isn’t even sure he’d heard correctly.
“I’m sorry, but I thought I just heard you say that we should have another baby.”
“Er, yeah, you did. I mean, that’s what I said.”
Harry’s life is spared only by the fact that Scorpius wakes and starts fussing, thus distracting Draco from murdering him.
“If this is just a ploy to get me to have sex with you again, then I think I hate you right now,” he says, opening his robe slightly and helping Scorpius latch onto his nipple.
“I swear it’s not,” Harry says gently, soothingly, as though Draco is a rabid dog. “I just think Scorpius deserves a brother or sister. That’s all.”
“Oh. Hell. No. End of discussion. If you want another baby, then you’re going to have to be the one who carries it.”
Harry cringes, and Draco wants to kick him.
“I would,” he says unconvincingly, “except the Healers said that you getting pregnant again would make the most sense. They said you’re already stretched out . . . .”
Draco sees red. If it wasn’t for Scorpius, he’d get up, walk down the stairs, out the front door and not stop until there was at least a continent between his bum and Harry’s dick. “Stretched out.” Harry couldn’t have picked a worse word if he’d tried. He suddenly pictures his belly as a partially deflated balloon, all soft and disgusting like a rotting apple. Instinctively, he pulls Scorpius closer to cover any possible glimpse Harry might have of his naked body beneath his robe. That was it. “Stretched out.” Harry wasn’t going to see him without clothes on again until he got fit – not just as fit as he used to be, but even more fit. A veritable god of muscle and sinew and graceful lean lines. Like he used to be. Shit! He’d made the cover of Witch Weekly exactly seventeen times, and it was his centrefold that caused the “Men of Quidditch” calendar to sell out within a day of hitting the stores. He’d been gorgeous once. A long time ago. Before he’d turned into a jiggling blob of jelly with cracked nipples and a limp dick.
Stretched out.
He wants to cry and actually might have done so given his hormonally unbalanced state.
Scorpius begins to whimper. Obviously, he could sense Draco’s distress, and Draco fights to calm himself and clear his mind. But it’s easier said than done.
He looks Harry straight in his stupid green eyes. “I am not getting pregnant again,” he says. “Now or ever. Deal with it, Potter.”
* * * *
He’d known immediately when he’d conceived. True, his mother said it was impossible, and when he’d mentioned it to the Healer, she’d smiled indulgently, but he’d known. Instantly.
It was the only time in a long while that they’d made love spontaneously and hadn’t engaged in their post-sex ritual of bum propping and finger crossing.
Ah, the irony. Scorpius would appreciate it when he was older. Or not. Actually, probably not. No kid wants to think of their parents fucking.
It’d been raining. The kind of rain that breaks a heat wave and makes you feel like you can breathe again after weeks of suffocating in a stew of humidity. They’d been walking to a party when the first drops began to fall and decided not to cast an Impervius. It’d felt like heaven – the rain on his face and Harry’s hand in his. He’d stopped suddenly, and Harry had looked back questioningly. His fringe was sticking to his forehead and there were drops on his glasses. His t-shirt clung to his skin, and Draco had been able to see his peaked nipples and even the shallow indentation of his navel. He’d stepped forward and seized Harry’s shoulders, pulling him into a kiss. Harry had moaned, and before they knew it, they were in an alley with Harry’s jeans around his knees and his bare thighs squeezing Harry’s hips as tight as they could.
They’d never fucked up against a wall before. Despite what stories and movies might lead one to believe, it was neither comfortable nor convenient. It’d taken a number of tries before Harry had been able to enter him, and even then, he couldn’t go very deep and kept slipping out. Which was what made it the hottest sex Draco had ever had. They were schoolboys, fumbling in a broom closet, trying to figure out how, exactly, cocks get into arseholes. Every time that Harry managed to get inside of him, he’d struggled to sink down onto his cock without sliding out of Harry’s arms and onto the cobblestones.
“Fuck, you’re heavy,” Harry had said, but then he’d found Draco’s entrance and his voice broke around a groan. He’d practically crushed Draco’s back against the wall, he started fucking him so hard, and all the while the rain poured down on them. He’d come first, and Harry had had to struggle to stay inside him as his body’s spasms tried to push him out.
“Oh, sweet God,” Harry had gasped against his neck, thrusting savagely. “Sweet fucking God.” He’d been completely lost. Undone. In one final fierce thrust, he’d found himself balls deep and came with a long shuddering groan.
That’s when Scorpius was conceived. Draco had felt it. A twinge of magic deep in his belly as Harry’s cock pulsed inside him. Some of Harry’s come slipped out of him when Harry pulled out, but it hadn’t mattered. Draco had known he was already pregnant. It’d been terrifying and wildly sexy at the same time. All that evening, he was in a daze, barely acknowledging people when they tried to talk to him. He could feel the magic doing what it needed to do.
“Wine or beer?” Harry had asked on his way to the bar, and Draco had said neither. Harry had frowned. Draco liked to get tipsy at parties.
“What’s wrong? Aren’t you feeling well?”
He’d shaken his head and grinned from ear to ear.
“I feel fine,” he’d said. “It’s just that I’m pregnant, and I don’t think our baby wants a gin and tonic.”
Harry had almost fallen over, and Draco grabbed his hand. When he’d pulled Harry into his arms, he’d felt Harry’s whole body shaking.
“Let’s get out of here,” Harry whispered fiercely, and they’d run back to their flat, getting soaked and laughing like lunatics. When they finally closed their door on the world, Harry had dropped to his knees, shoved up Draco’s shirt and pressed an open-mouthed kiss to his belly. He’d never asked how Draco had known. He’d just believed.
* * * *
Harry leaves for work early, kissing Scorpius where he lies against Draco’s chest, but not Draco himself.
Draco tries to convince himself he doesn’t care.
Scorpius grouses and kicks his little legs when Draco tries to dress him. When he hands Scorpius to his mother, it’s with a feeling of “good riddance.” But close after the relief followed guilt and then, even worse, separation anxiety.
“I think he’s still hungry,” he says, reaching out to take him back.
“I thought you said he’d fed right before you Flooed here.”
“Yes, but that doesn’t mean he’s not still hungry.”
“He’s sleeping.”
“I won’t wake him; he knows how to eat in his sleep.”
“You’re all kitted out.”
“It’s not that hard to get out of Quidditch gear.”
“Speaking of which: Draco, you need to lose some weight.”
Draco glares at her.
“My weight is none of your business.”
His mother looks at him with an arched eyebrow. It’s enough to convey her belief that anything involving Draco was her business.
“Harry keeps making enormous meals and buying me chocolates and pastries and what-not.”
“I always knew he’d try to kill you one day.”
Draco rolls his eyes. Scorpius shifts in his mother’s arms and makes a soft cooing sound.
“Give him back.”
“Go to your ludicrous so-called ‘job.’”
“I can be late. Mother, he’s asking for me.”
“No, he’s not; he’s having a bowel movement.”
His aunt laughs so hard she nearly chokes on her tea.
“It’s alright, Draco,” she says. “You’ll only be apart for a few hours. It’s good for you. You hover more than any witch I’ve ever known.”
Draco scowls and reluctantly turns to leave.
This day is the same as the last. He suffers through the morning drills, sweating like a pig and unable to finish the laps around the pitch. But once he’s in the air, he feels much better.
“Your form’s a little off,” Coach Devlin yells up at him. “But basically you’re looking good.”
He grins to himself and weaves figure eights around the goal posts. It’s going to be okay after all. He’ll play on Saturday, and everything will be fine.
He spots the Snitch within minutes of its release and catches it easily. Coach Devlin lets out a “whoop!”
“There’s my star Seeker,” he shouts. “You’re going to kick Racim’s arse!”
Adrien Racim was the second best Seeker in the world, and Draco had actually (and humiliatingly) lost to him once. The two teams had played late into the night, and everyone was exhausted. Except for Draco and Racim. They’d flown as though they were invincible, their Lumoses lit as bright as possible – both to see the Snitch and to blind each other when the opportunity presented itself.
They’d spotted the Snitch in exactly the same instant and flown for it like hawks. It’d become physical quickly, and Draco had got in several blows before Racim elbowed him in the face, breaking his nose. The next thing he knew, he was falling through darkness and seeing Harry’s face as though in a dream. That was when he’d known he was going to die. The only wizard strong enough to catch him at this late stage of a fall was Harry, and Draco was sure he must’ve gone home at some point earlier in the evening.
Except Harry hadn’t gone home, and he’d stopped Draco’s fall within inches of the ground with a bellowed Decido Subsisto! from the stands. And then he’d run onto the pitch ignoring the yells and whistles of both players and referees. Clearly, Racim hadn’t caught the Snitch yet, and when he’d realised the match wasn’t over, Draco had struggled in Harry’s arms. He’d eventually had to punch Harry in the face, but by then Racim had caught the Snitch.
“Stopping my fall was enough, you bloody idiot!” Draco had raged at him once they were home. “Thanks for losing the match for us!”
Harry hadn’t said anything. He’d simply put on his coat and left. Draco hadn’t seen him again for a week. It’d been the worst week of his life, which was saying something, and when Harry had walked through the door one evening as though he’d only been at work for a day, Draco had literally wept with relief. They’d made love that night, long and tenderly, and Draco had apologised a dozen times. Even then it hadn’t felt like enough.
“Looking good, Malfoy,” says Crawford as Draco flies by.
Draco grins at him. He feels good, and the late spring air is brisk and refreshing. This is why he did what he does. His mother would never understand, but Harry did, and that was what mattered.
He catches the Snitch a second time. It gleams like a star in his glove. He’s elated and breathless, but in a good healthy way.
“That – that right there – is why you’re the best Seeker in the world,” says his coach when he lands on the grass. “You make it look effortless. Still, you really should lose a few pounds.”
Draco’s mood immediately goes from elated to shit.
“I don’t know how someone with ‘life-threatening’ food poisoning manages to gain weight.”
Draco doesn’t respond, but he knows his flushed face advertises his humiliation better than words ever could.
“Never mind,” says his coach, slapping him on the back. “After the match this weekend, I’ll set you up with the best personal trainer in London. He’ll have you fit again in no time.”
Draco cringes. He’d never needed anyone’s assistance before. Plus, the last thing in the world he wanted was some fit bloke watching him huff and strain with exercises he used to be able to do without breaking a sweat.
Fuck.
“Great,” he says. “Thanks for the chance to feel like a fat loser.”
Coach Devlin puts an arm around his shoulders.
“You’ll be in great shape by the World Cup next summer, and that’s what really matters.”
Not if Harry has his way. If he does, then Draco would probably be so pregnant by then, he’d be unable to see his feet, let alone fly a broom.
He smiles wanly. “Yeah,” he says. “That’s what really matters.”
Next part
Author: Frayach Ni Cuill
frayachPairing: Harry/Draco
Word Count: 24,500
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Mpreg, male lactation & breast-feeding, and a very fleeting scene of bottom!Harry
Prompt: After his pregnancy and the birth of Scorpius (who is Harry's and Draco's son), Draco has a hard time getting back into shape. Harry isn't helping with his awesome cooking skills and the delicious chocolate gifts. Also, he seems awfully keen on getting Draco pregnant again. Prefer flangsty.
Author’s Notes: Many thanks to [name redacted] for getting rid of my Americanisms and educating me on the facts of pregnancy.
MOD NOTE: This fic contains one small switching scene. We decided to allow it due to extenuating circumstances and the fact that it really is very brief. Just a heads-up to any watchers who are 100% squicked by top!Draco.
The pain came at night. Cruciatus couldn’t possibly be worse. He’d curled around his belly. The sheets were soaked with sweat, and his hair stuck to his face. He thinks he screamed, but he doesn’t remember. All he can recall is pain sawing through his consciousness like a serrated blade.
Suddenly, the light was on, and Harry was leaping out of bed, leaving the mattress jiggling. The movement made him feel ill, and he pushed up on his elbows and vomited feebly on his pillow. Fuck. Fuck the fucking midwife and her “spiritual mystical birth rituals.” Fuck the prenatal classes full of witches with their breathing mantras. There’d been one other homosexual couple, but they’d been through it all before. When the midwife spoke of contractions, they’d just smiled knowingly at each other. Fuck them. But then again, the pregnant partner had made Professor Slughorn look svelte. He looked like he’d had room in there for septuplets. Fat ugly Mudblood pig.
He hadn’t been in the mood to be socially sensitive.
“Shit! Draco, are you okay?”
Fuck Harry too. Long and hard with a hot poker.
“Yeah, I’m okay. You can go back to sleep.”
Harry laughed weakly as he struggled into his jeans.
“You stupid arse,” he said fondly. “Fuck, this is fucking scary.” He sat down on the edge of the bed to pull his socks on, and Draco threw up again, although this time on the floor, which was an improvement.
“Will you stop jiggling the bloody mattress?”
“Er, uh, sorry . . . I didn’t know . . . oh my God, I can’t believe this is finally happening! We’re going to be parents!”
Draco also would’ve preferred that Harry not shout. It was not helping. Plus, he wanted to correct Harry and tell him that he’d be a parent while he, Draco, would be six-feet under the sod pushing up daffodils.
But that would’ve required a sense of humour, and Draco had lost his sometime around the third contraction.
“Draco, love, tell me what to do . . . .”
Merlin’s purple butt plug. He could not be serious.
“Get. The. Bag. And. Call. Someone. Now.”
The bag was already packed. It even contained the book he’d been reading in case he . . . what? . . . got bored between contractions or something? The people they’d been when they’d gone to bed last night now seemed like the two stupidest people on the face of the planet. Had they also packed a quill and some parchment? Perhaps he’d like to start writing the birth announcements when he got tired of reading.
“Draco, can you stand up?”
All he could do was shake his head. Harry ran to the Floo.
“We need an ambulance!” he’d yelled. “. . . No, we can’t Apparate! We can’t Floo either! . . . What do you mean there’re no levitating ambulances available? Christ! Tell them it’s Harry Potter who’s asking for God’s sake!”
Draco had never heard him invoke his hero status before, and he doubted he ever would again. It was sobering. He’d leaned on Harry as he stood up, clutching his arm and feeling like an invalid. The pain was tearing him apart.
“It’s okay,” Harry kept saying over and over. “Put all your weight on me. They’ll be here soon. At least they bloody well better be.”
Draco was sure he’d held Harry’s arm so tightly he’d left bruises. Time had never passed so slowly. He was fighting to keep standing. He was fighting to stay conscious. He was quite literally fighting for two lives.
The thought of the baby inside him made him terrified. Only two thirds of the infants born from same sex unions survived. And when the babies died during delivery, the pregnant partner often died too.
“Don’t leave me!” he’d begged Harry. Both his courage and his pride had deserted him on the way to St. Mungo’s.
Harry grabbed his hand with both of his and kissed it.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he’d said fiercely. “I’ll be right here beside you when you wake up. Draco, you’re going to be all right. I love you too much to let anything happen to you . . .”
He’d smiled weakly as the Healer cast the sleeping spell. “My hero,” he’d said with affectionate sarcasm. And then even more weakly, “See you later.” The last thing he’d remembered was Harry clutching his hand and whispering a protective charm over and over.
* * * *
Harry loses control and begins thrusting erratically. His breath is warm and moist against the back Draco’s neck.
The Healers had told them on Monday that it was safe to resume “sexual intimacy” again. Harry had blushed, and Draco had thought it was due to the Healer’s words, but then he’d glanced down at Harry’s lap.
“So good . . . Draco,” he gasps. “Feels so . . . Oh God . . . I’m coming . . .”
Instead of losing his mind at Harry’s words as he used to, all he can think of is pain ripping at his guts, tearing him apart, making him wish he was dead.
He hadn’t come. He hadn’t even got hard.
Harry’s groan sounds like pure sweet release. His hips surge forward and slam up against Draco’s arse. As soon as his orgasm ends, he reaches down to seize Draco’s cock.
“Roll over,” he says breathlessly, and Draco reluctantly complies, careful to pull the sheet over his hideous belly. Harry swallows his cock and sucks. The sounds he makes are sloppy and urgent. He knows Harry is desperate to make him come. This will be the fifth night in a row that he hasn’t even got an erection.
After a while, Draco reaches down and touches Harry’s ear. Harry lets his cock slip from his lips. It doesn’t even twitch. Harry is very quiet for a moment before he gets up and goes into the bathroom. Draco hears the shower turn on.
Fuck.
Mercifully, their baby starts to cry. He pulls on his baggiest pyjama bottoms and goes to the room across the hall. Scorpius is fussing in his cot. Draco picks him up and rubs his back in little circles just as his mother had shown him.
“Are you hungry?” he asks, and has to bite his tongue before adding “again??”
He sits down in the leather armchair they’d bought when the pregnancy was in its third month and looked like it was viable. Neither of them wanted a nursery full of pastel colours and pictures of cuddly animals. Scorpius’s cot was plain wood and the mobile above him depicted Quidditch players and Quaffles and one shining Snitch. Of course the colours were Slytherin and Gryffindor. The only other whimsical thing in the nursery was a Black heirloom – a tapestry depicting a rearing unicorn in a garden. Harry had found it stuffed in an old trunk while he’d been cleaning out Grimmauld Place in preparation for selling it. It’d needed a lot of repair, but it was worth it. The colours were rich and intricate. His mother and aunt estimated it was worth as much as, if not more than, the entirety of Grimmauld Place and all it contained.
Scorpius scrunches up his tiny face and lets out a frustrated cry. Wrapping him in a blanket, Draco helps him latch onto his poor abused nipple. Thankfully, he hadn’t grown proper breasts as some wizards do, but the flesh around his nipples was slightly swollen and very tender. Growing breasts would’ve been the proverbial last straw in his already straw-bare broom.
After awhile Harry comes in and sits in the old ratty armchair. He doesn’t meet Draco’s eyes when he asks if Scorpius is okay.
“He’s fine, just hungry is all.”
“Listen, Draco . . .”
“I’m not having this conversation. Not now.”
Harry sighs and scrubs his face with his palms, making his damp hair stick up in spikes like a hedgehog.
“It’s weird making love to someone who’s just waiting for you to hurry up and get off so it’ll all be over.”
“I said I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Well then, when will we talk about it?”
Harry’s voice is tinged with frustration.
“I don’t know what your problem is,” Draco snaps. “You’re the one getting off.”
Harry flinches. “I feel like an arsehole making love to you when you’d rather be plucking your nose hair or scrubbing the bottom of the tub or something.”
Draco sighs. Apparently, they are going to have this conversation.
“Well excuse me for not wanting to be a receptacle for your semen when I’m exhausted and in pain.” He pulls a persistent Scorpius off his nipple and points at it. “You try to get it up when any and everything that touches your tits makes you want to bite your tongue off.”
“Fine, I won’t touch them. I haven’t even tried to. Listen, Draco, the Healers say it’s okay now.”
“Okay in theory, but not necessarily in practice.”
Harry tilts his head against the back of his chair.
“We haven’t had sex since you started your seventh month, and it’s been six weeks since Scorpius was born. That’s more than three months without being able to have sex with you. It’s killing me! I need you.”
If he wasn’t nursing their son, Draco would’ve got up and punched him. Hard.
“Wow,” he says. “Forgive me for giving you blue balls while I was having my liver slowly squashed and my kidneys squeezed to the size of marbles.”
Harry covers his face with his hands.
“But you’ve given birth! Nearly a month and a half ago!”
This – this – is the problem. Harry simply has no clue. After all, he hadn’t been the one vomiting nearly everyday. He hadn’t been the one struggling to make a virtually impossible pregnancy work by restricting his movements and surrendering his position as Seeker for the Magpies. He hadn’t been the one in constant discomfort. He hadn’t been the one who’d had to set aside fifteen minutes just to take a piss. He hadn’t been the one whose body was trying to produce nourishment for a foetus. He wasn’t the one who almost died during delivery. He wasn’t the one who was having his nipples chewed on every other hour.
And he wasn’t the one carrying around an extra stone and feeling slow and tired and repulsive.
The only response Draco can come up with that could express all of these thoughts at once is a nasty glare and a lip-curling sneer.
“You mean to tell me that you feel nothing – nothing at all?”
Nothing besides frustration and mortification?
“The only thing I feel is pressure.”
“Fine,” Harry says, standing up so fast that he almost tips over the chair. “I won’t pressure you anymore.”
Draco inhales sharply. This is why he hadn’t wanted to have this conversation. He and Harry took things to the brink – to the point where things can get unfixable.
“That’s what hands were made for,” he says recklessly. “Have you ever heard of wanking?”
“WHAT?! Did you just tell me to have a wank?! Fuck you, Draco! What do you think I’ve been doing? My dick is as chafed as your nipples from wanking!”
“I doubt that,” Draco mutters under his breath.
Scorpius starts to cry.
“Bloody hell! Now look what you’ve done!”
Harry’s expression immediately goes from enraged to contrite. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I shouldn’t have shouted like that.”
“No, you shouldn’t have,” Draco replies, trying to soothe their son and help him latch on again.
“I’m just so . . .”
“So what, Potter?”
Harry looks at him. From long years of experience, Draco knows his eyes are ice cold; he’d perfected the look by the time he was ten.
“Nothing.”
“Good answer.”
Harry turns and walks out of the room, leaving Draco feeling shaken. How long would it be before he drove Harry into someone else’s bed?
* * * *
For the first few months of the pregnancy, Harry had been a moving target. He was up at dawn every morning cooking breakfast for an army and then tidying up the flat like a one-person manorial staff of house-elves. Even when Draco had been feeling well enough to help, his attempts had been thwarted. It’d been both endearing and annoying. He’d hated being treated like an invalid.
“You do realise this bulge is a baby not a tumour,” he’d said one evening after Harry had rearranged the furniture so as to make it less likely that Draco’s movements would be impeded. He’d even shrunk and stored a sofa and coffee table and a large bronze urn, which (coincidently?) Harry had always disliked.
“Also this is my flat. You’re messing around with my impeccable decorating.”
He’d meant it teasingly, but he’d noticed Harry’s face tighten at his emphasis on “my flat.”
They’d started sleeping together (both literally and figuratively) almost immediately. Neither of them had the patience to “take it slow” like all of their friends had urged them. There were too many years of being stupid to make up for.
The one night he’d spent at Grimmauld Place had been enough for him to know he didn’t ever want to spend a second one there. Even though Harry had made some changes, it was still the house he’d visited when he was a child, and being in it brought back memories he’d much rather forget. So, it’d been decided very quickly that Harry should move in with him.
They’d gone from being tentative friends to lovers to flat-mates to spouses in less than a year.
And now, two years later, they were going to be parents. When Draco paused to think about it, he knew they were moving much too quickly. He hadn’t even needed his mother to tell him that, although she continued to do so long after the wedding. Sometimes Draco was still amazed to wake up and find Harry Potter in his bed. It still seemed like an impossible dream after all that time of wanting and not having.
Harry owned very few things he wasn’t willing to part with, and most of them fit into a single trunk. He’d practically been living in the Ministry building since he’d become an Auror. The only piece of furniture they’d had to buy when Harry moved in was a chest of drawers. Everything else had remained the same.
It’d only been relatively recently that Draco had realised this was not a good thing. Sometimes his life seemed like a perch that Harry could fly off of at any time with nothing to carry except a stupid trunk. Their relationship hadn’t yet (if it ever would) stopped being volatile. It was too easy for Harry to go away – and too easy for Draco to tell him to.
But the baby would change all of that. Their lives would finally settle down and weave together seamlessly. Draco would spend less time travelling with his team, and Harry would take on fewer international assignments, and when they were together, they wouldn’t have to fuck as though it was both their first and their last time. The baby would tame them and bring them together in less complicated ways.
At least that’s what he’d thought.
* * * *
“Merlin, Draco! Don’t let his head roll back like that! You’re handling a baby, not a sack of potatoes!”
His mother snatches Scorpius away as though he’s in mortal danger.
“Thank you, Mother. You’ll notice he’s not dead yet, so I must not be bollocksing things up completely.”
“Darling. Your language. The baby.”
Christ.
His aunt laughs and takes Scorpius from her sister and holds him up so she can rub his little nose with hers. He makes a sound that Draco is sure is a laugh even though everyone’s told him he won’t laugh until he’s at least 16 weeks old. But what did they know? Scorpius was his baby; of course he’d do everything ahead of schedule.
“She doesn’t mean any harm, dear. It’s just that this is her grandson we’re talking about. She’s like a Yeti with her yetlet.”
His mother focuses her laser-like attention on him.
“Why are you insisting on going back to that ridiculous team? Scorpius needs you. You can’t possibly be considering giving him to a house-elf to breast-feed.”
And there he’d been thinking that Muggle formula was an abomination.
“Do house-elves even have tits?”
“Of course they do! I am a lady of high society. How do you think you were fed?”
His mouth drops open.
His aunt laughs again. “Go on now. Scorpius will be fine with us. You left us enough milk for the day, didn’t you?”
He feels the blood rush to his face. He was never going to stop feeling like a freak. He’d already wrapped his chest in layers of tightly wound bandages to keep himself from leaking milk on his uniform. The horror. The sheer fucking horror.
“Yes,” he grumbles. “What do you think I spent the predawn hours doing? I can assure you it wasn’t sleeping.”
“Poor darling,” his mother says distractedly, her attention already returning to her grandson. “Don’t fly into a tree. The thought of that man . . . sorry, your ‘husband’. . . raising this poor wee babe is enough to keep me awake at nights.”
“Then perhaps we could keep each other company,” he says as he walks to the hearth after giving Scorpius his one-hundredth good-bye kiss.
“He’s hopelessly smitten,” he hears his aunt say just before the whoosh of the Floo sweeps him away. “Poor Harry.”
He hadn’t a clue what she’d meant. “Poor Harry”? It wasn’t Harry who was rubbing Kamillosan on his nipples and getting up five times a night. “Poor Harry.” Yeah, right.
Coach Devlin is ecstatic when Draco walks into the locker room.
“Thank God, you’re here,” he says clutching at Draco’s robe as though Draco was a saint who’d just come back from the dead. “Worthacrock . . . sorry, Crockaworth is injured. We need you to fly this weekend.”
“Uhm, well . . .”
“Whatever that stomach ailment was that you had, it must be gone by now,” Coach Devlin implores. “It’s been months since you’ve been in the air.”
Draco sighs. He’d admonished himself for weeks that when he started to show, he’d tell his team mates that he was pregnant. But then he’d thought of the shit he’d get and chickened out. Instead they thought he’d had a horrendous case of food poisoning. His daily vomiting had served to bolster the lie as did his voluminous robes. He’d convinced everyone he had fever and chills.
But now he was faced with a quandary. He couldn’t keep playing the food poisoning card forever, but he couldn’t belatedly admit he’d been pregnant. He also knew he shouldn’t be flying yet. Harry would kill him if he found out. The Healers had had to cut almost his entire abdomen open and wade through his innards (“the price of not having a vagina,” his mother had said) and stitched up three layers of muscle after Scorpius had been pulled out, bloody and screaming at the top of his lungs. Draco still had the scars to prove it. Also, all his innards had yet to settle back into place again. He was tired of feeling like his intestines were wrapped around his oesophagus.
“Uhm,” he says again.
“Great!” says Coach Devlin, slapping him on the back. “Now get out on the pitch and do some sit-ups.”
* * * *
The vomiting had been for real; it certainly wasn’t a ruse. He’d cut his hair short because he’d got tired of holding it back from his face. For weeks, the only things he’d been able to keep down were bread and some dreadful kind of orange Muggle soda.
If Harry was home, he’d come into the toilet with a cushion for Draco to kneel on so his knees wouldn’t bruise from the tile. Thankfully they rarely spoke, but Harry would rub his back and fetch damp cloths to wipe away the sweat from his face.
Contrary to its name, Draco didn’t get sick in the mornings; it was usually around lunchtime, perhaps the most inconvenient and embarrassing time of the day. He’d had to call a stop to his weekly get-togethers with Blaise and Pansy because the last time they’d had lunch, Draco had thrown up into his napkin and had to plead a stomach flu and Apparate home.
“The little parasite obviously wants to kill me by starvation,” he’d told Harry. “Or else sheer mortification. I look like I’ve swallowed a Quaffle.”
“Don’t be ridiculous; you look gorgeous,” Harry had replied. “And stop calling our baby a parasite.”
One afternoon, he’d been sure he was actually going to throw up their son. He didn’t see why such a thing would be impossible given the near-impossibility of the entire pregnancy.
“I wish I could share what you’re going through,” Harry had said. “I wish this didn’t have to be so hard and scary.”
Draco had merely nodded in acknowledgement of his statement in-between heaves. He’d had his chin resting on the toilet rim, drooling continuously from the nausea.
“Draco, love . . .” Harry had murmured, kissing the back of his neck. “You’re doing great. I’m so proud of you.”
He’d been referencing the Healer’s confirmation that the pregnancy had passed its second critical stage, and their baby was healthy and developing normally.
“You’re so strong. I don’t think I could do what you’re doing.”
“Bollocks. You defeated Voldemort. Don’t patronise me.”
“I’m not; I mean it. Defeating Voldemort was one single act. You’re living with this every minute of your day . . .”
He’d retched, and Harry had wiped his mouth with a cloth. They were quiet for awhile as Draco struggled to get his nausea under control.
“Do you ever wish we weren’t doing this?”
Harry’s voice had been so quiet, Draco almost hadn’t heard him.
“Because we can end this, you know . . . after all, you think it’s a parasite.”
Draco felt something instinctive and primal at Harry’s words.
“Don’t you dare even think about us ending this pregnancy!”
Harry had looked startled and then abashed. “It’s okay,” he’d said soothingly. “It’s okay. I’m just so worried about you . . .”
“I’m the grown wizard,” he said, pointing at his belly. “It’s defenceless and struggling to survive in an unnatural environment. Our job is to protect it . . .”
He’d been interrupted by more retching, but Harry had leaned against him as though he was trying to absorb Draco’s pain and discomfort through his skin.
“It’s okay,” he’d whispered in Draco’s ear. “It’s okay. I love you both. It’s going to be okay. I promise.”
* * * *
He lies on the grass sweating and dizzy. He used to be able to do a hundred sit-ups with no problem, but now twenty felt impossible. He’d worked so hard to get fit after his incarceration in Azkaban, and he’d eventually succeeded, winning World Star Seeker four years in a row. Now it felt as though he was back to square one again.
Why had he given into Harry’s pleas? They were only 28. There was plenty of time to have a baby and not nearly as much time to play professional Quidditch. But Harry had wanted a baby so much. He’d painted such sappy pictures of the three of them doing things together that Draco had been caught up in his enthusiasm, and the next thing he’d known, he was sitting on an examination table in a hospital gown having his hand shaken by a succession of Healers.
Last night, after his and Harry’s mortifying argument, he’d gone into the bathroom, stripped naked, and lit the most unflattering Lumos he was capable of. He’d wanted to see the ugly truth instead of just imagining it. He’d turned this way and that. There was no way to ignore it. He was fat and hideous. Even his bloody feet were fat. It was as though nothing had changed after Scorpius was born – he was still bloated and swollen like a giant blood-sucking eel.
“Looking a little winded there, Malfoy,” says Rumpsford as he jogs by.
Arsehole.
By the time practise was over, he’s drenched in sweat and panting for breath. Every step of their five kilometre run had felt like the last step he’d ever take on earth. In fact, he hadn’t been able to finish and had to walk the last few laps. By that point, people had stopped teasing him and started giving him pitying glances as they passed.
But the physical agony didn’t come close to the mental anguish. He’d found himself swallowing tears whenever he thought of Scorpius, which pretty much meant he was choked up all the time because Scorpius was all he could think of. This was the first time they’d been more than a hallway apart since he was born. Draco’s body wasn’t only pleading with him to stop working out; it was pleading with him to find his baby and hold him to his chest and watch him suckle contentedly.
Merlin. He was turning into a witch. He’d known this would happen! Harry had assured him it wouldn’t, but what did Harry know? Absolutely nothing. He was probably out at that very moment blithely jogging around in bogs or whatever the hell else he did when he was in the field.
“Um,” Coach Devlin says. He looks less thrilled than he had when Draco first arrived. “You gonna be ready to fly on Saturday?”
Draco desperately wants to say no, but his career was starting to look in jeopardy.
“Yeah,” he says, unlacing his muddy boots. “Of course.”
Harry has been cooking again. Draco can smell it from the street corner, and when he unlocks the door wearing a manky sweat-stained uniform and carrying Scorpius in his pouch, he can almost taste the gammon and onion. Merlin, he was hungry!
“I’m sorry,” Harry says. “For last night.” He puts his arms around Draco and their son and kisses both their cheeks before wrinkling his nose at Draco’s jersey. “I made your favourite quiche so you’ll forgive me.”
Draco would like not to. He was still crabby from his practice, and his mother had lectured him about his “priorities.” When he’d arrived at the Manor, he’d tried to feed Scorpius, but his milk wouldn’t come because of the exercise. Poor Scorpius had wailed with hunger. His mother was furious.
“Draco Malfoy! It’s Quidditch that’s the game, not caring for an infant! You need to reconsider your priorities! The Magpies may need you, but not as much as your baby does. Poor wee thing, he’s practically starving to death!”
She’d been pretty effective at making him feel like utter shit.
“How’d the first day back with the team go?” Harry asks, taking Scorpius from him and holding him against his chest so that his blond head rested on his shoulder.
Like so many other things in his life at the moment, Draco didn’t want to talk about it.
“Peachy,” he says. “How was your bog-jogging?”
Harry regards him with a furrowed brow. “Bog-jogging?”
Draco waves his hand at him dismissively and goes into the kitchen. White sauce is bubbling in a pot, and when he opens the oven, he finds a huge yellow cake. His mouth waters.
But, Merlin, he shouldn’t be eating rich foods! Not given how fat he’s become.
“This all looks lovely,” he says. “But I think I’d prefer a salad.”
Harry had been bouncing Scorpius and clucking and cooing at him like a giant lunatic chicken when he stopped and turned to Draco.
“What are you talking about?” he asks. “You’re supposed to be taking in at least 2,500 calories a day. Even more so now that you’ve started back with the team.”
“Well, what can I say? I’m not hungry.”
Harry just stares at him. Draco feels a twinge of remorse. Harry is trying to participate in the intense, nearly-exclusive relationship between him and Scorpius, but he couldn’t seem to figure out how. Draco can see it in Harry’s forlorn look.
“Okay,” he relents. “I’ll have one serving.”
If stomachs could weep with gratitude, his would be sobbing at that moment.
An hour later, he’d eaten three servings of quiche and two slices of the lemon sponge cake and now is unable to move. He’s horrified at his lack of self-control, but Harry looks happy, so it seems almost worth it. Draco stands to do the washing-up, but Harry stops him.
“Let me,” he says and hands over Scorpius. “He looks hungry.”
“Potter. That’s his normal expression.”
“Well, maybe he’s always hungry.”
“Ha ha,” Draco says and reaches out with his free hand to pinch and twist Harry’s nipple through his shirt. Harry yelps, and Draco grins.
“Feels great, doesn’t it?”
Harry glares at him before he retreats into the kitchen rubbing his chest.
As he feeds Scorpius, Draco watches the clock on the mantel. Every minute that passed, meant bedtime was closer. He could tell from the way Harry was sneaking glimpses of him that he wanted to have sex. He’d told Draco when they’d first come home with Scorpius that it turned him on to watch Scorpius breast-feed. Draco couldn’t fathom why – especially when breast-feeding made him feel uncomfortable and totally emasculated. But then again, everything turned Harry on. Even the sound of him pissing in the toilet or sitting in the bath drove Harry wild.
Scorpius is sleeping soundly when Harry casts a Finite, and the mops and brooms and dish cloths swoop away to their respective cupboards. He tip-toes over to them and pulls aside the blanket to watch Scorpius make his funny sleep faces.
“God, he is so beautiful,” Harry says, and then, less certainly, he asks if he can hold him for a little while.
“Careful,” Draco tells him when Harry fails to hold his head correctly. Merlin, he was sounding like his mother!
He stands and gestures for Harry to take his seat.
“You look tired,” Harry says, sitting down. “Go have a warm bath. I’ll change him and put him to bed.”
Draco is appalled to find that his instinct is to say no. No one could put Scorpius to bed but him. Harry will fuck something up, and Scorpius will cry, and then Draco will freak out and hex him.
“He’ll be okay, Draco. I don’t completely suck as a father. I know you think I do, but I don’t. I had practise with Teddy.”
It was true. Between the two of them, Harry had far more experience with babies, but then again, he hadn’t carried one around in his body for nine months, feeling every move he made – every heartbeat, or at least it had felt that way. Draco was still shocked that Scorpius wasn’t still a part of him.
Draco wanders into the bedroom wearing a towel wrapped around his head and the bathrobe he’d worn during his final weeks. This time, there are candles. He wants to cry. He’s exhausted and sore, and Scorpius would be waking again in a couple hours. He needed to sleep, not fuck.
Harry walks in the bedroom as Draco is changing into his pyjamas, and Draco squeaks with indignant alarm.
“Ever hear of privacy and giving a person some?”
Harry looks baffled. “You’re dressing. I’ve seen you naked a zillion times. Why are you being such a prude all of a sudden? You wouldn’t even let me in the bathroom to scrub your back like I always do. You don’t have to worry. I’m not lurking around waiting to pounce on you at the first opportunity.”
Really?
Draco gestures around to the candles. “I’m tired,” he says.
“I know,” Harry replies. “I’m not going to try to have sex with you; I just wanted to give you a backrub before you go to sleep.”
Draco smiles a sad fond smile. Harry is trying so hard to do the right thing. It’s just that he has no clue what the right thing is.
“All right. But just a little backrub. I really need some sleep.”
He settles into the nest of pillows Harry has created, and Harry straddles his bum. The oil is juniper and sandalwood (his favourite), and he groans in ecstasy when he feels Harry’s hands on his shoulders, kneading deep and working out the knots. For their first Christmas together, Harry had signed himself up for a course on massage. It was by far the best present Draco had ever received.
He sighs deeply and lets his eyes slip shut. The candles flicker; he can see their dancing light through his eyelids. Harry’s hands move down his back, his fingers working at relaxing the muscles attached to every vertebra all the way down to the tip of his tailbone. Harry even gives his bum a deep tissue massage without letting his fingers wander into his crack. The only thing that mars his enjoyment is the fear that his arse is as flabby and repulsive as his belly. When Harry attempts to move down to his thighs, Draco tells him his neck needs more attention.
He’s fallen half-asleep when he feels Harry get up and pull the duvet over him. Through squinted eyes, he watches Harry reach into his pants and adjust his hard on. Draco feels a surge of guilt. Every time Harry gave him a massage, Draco would reciprocate with a blow job, but he couldn’t think of anything he’d less rather do at that moment – except maybe fucking itself.
Harry’s bare chest is flushed and his breathing shallow. Draco listens to his feet pad their way to the toilet and then the click of the lock on the door. He knows Harry’s gone there to wank, and it alarms him that the realisation doesn’t make him jealous – or turned on. Instead it fills him with relief. He nestles deeper into the pillows, closes his eyes and falls asleep.
He wakes sometime later, feeling groggy and disoriented, when Harry crawls under the duvet holding Scorpius in his arms.
Draco is instantly awake.
“Potter! What on earth are you thinking? He’ll suffocate!”
“No, he won’t. I’ll lie on my back and hold him on my chest.”
“And then roll over and crush him!”
Harry sighs.
“I just thought it would be easier for you to feed him here rather than have to get up and go into the other room. Plus,” he added, “I want to hold him.”
Draco feels a surge of irrational jealousy, but whether he’s jealous of Harry or Scorpius, he can’t tell.
“I won’t be able to sleep if he stays in bed with us.”
Harry doesn’t argue. He merely gets up and carries Scorpius back to the nursery. As guilty as he feels, Draco feels even more tired and falls back asleep in an instant.
Something elemental wakes him just before dawn, and he immediately panics. Robins were singing, and the sky was turning lavender. He’d slept through the whole night! What was wrong with Scorpius? Was he dead? Kidnapped by fairies? What? He struggles out of the pillows, grabs his robe and runs to the nursery . . .
. . . only to find Harry asleep in the chair with Scorpius in his arms.
Draco can’t help himself. He may have broken more limbs (other people’s, of course) in the history of professional Quidditch, but he is no match for the sight of Harry’s head tilted to the side, his glasses askew, and Scorpius’s tiny hand holding onto the collar of his t-shirt.
They were his. What had he ever done to deserve them?
He walks over and kisses Harry’s forehead, right on the scar, and Harry opens his eyes.
“Fell asleep,” he murmurs.
“I noticed. It looks like he’s finally slept through his first night.”
“Teddy used to sleep most soundly when he could feel someone’s heartbeat. Scorpius misses yours. Here, do you want him?”
Draco did. More than anything in the world. He holds out his arms as Harry hands their son to him and is embarrassed by sudden tears. He sits in the chair, and Harry kneels beside him on the floor.
“You’re going to think I’m crazy, and you might even hate me when I tell you what I’ve been thinking about all night . . .”
Draco’s sunny little world is darkened by apprehension. What now? He wants to change careers? He wants an open marriage? He wants to buy that dreadful cottage . . . What?
“I think we should have another.”
Draco frowns at him. What was the berk talking about?
“Another what?”
Harry takes a deep breath. “Another baby.”
Draco almost falls out of his chair.
“Go to sleep, Harry,” he says evenly and with remarkable calm under the circumstances. “You’re deranged from a lack of sleep . . . or sex, or who-knows-what.”
“I’m not deranged. The Healers told us that if we wanted another child, it would be easiest to conceive now, while the Potion is still active in your system.”
Draco doesn’t respond. He can’t. Words were not invented to express how horrified he is. In fact, he isn’t even sure he’d heard correctly.
“I’m sorry, but I thought I just heard you say that we should have another baby.”
“Er, yeah, you did. I mean, that’s what I said.”
Harry’s life is spared only by the fact that Scorpius wakes and starts fussing, thus distracting Draco from murdering him.
“If this is just a ploy to get me to have sex with you again, then I think I hate you right now,” he says, opening his robe slightly and helping Scorpius latch onto his nipple.
“I swear it’s not,” Harry says gently, soothingly, as though Draco is a rabid dog. “I just think Scorpius deserves a brother or sister. That’s all.”
“Oh. Hell. No. End of discussion. If you want another baby, then you’re going to have to be the one who carries it.”
Harry cringes, and Draco wants to kick him.
“I would,” he says unconvincingly, “except the Healers said that you getting pregnant again would make the most sense. They said you’re already stretched out . . . .”
Draco sees red. If it wasn’t for Scorpius, he’d get up, walk down the stairs, out the front door and not stop until there was at least a continent between his bum and Harry’s dick. “Stretched out.” Harry couldn’t have picked a worse word if he’d tried. He suddenly pictures his belly as a partially deflated balloon, all soft and disgusting like a rotting apple. Instinctively, he pulls Scorpius closer to cover any possible glimpse Harry might have of his naked body beneath his robe. That was it. “Stretched out.” Harry wasn’t going to see him without clothes on again until he got fit – not just as fit as he used to be, but even more fit. A veritable god of muscle and sinew and graceful lean lines. Like he used to be. Shit! He’d made the cover of Witch Weekly exactly seventeen times, and it was his centrefold that caused the “Men of Quidditch” calendar to sell out within a day of hitting the stores. He’d been gorgeous once. A long time ago. Before he’d turned into a jiggling blob of jelly with cracked nipples and a limp dick.
Stretched out.
He wants to cry and actually might have done so given his hormonally unbalanced state.
Scorpius begins to whimper. Obviously, he could sense Draco’s distress, and Draco fights to calm himself and clear his mind. But it’s easier said than done.
He looks Harry straight in his stupid green eyes. “I am not getting pregnant again,” he says. “Now or ever. Deal with it, Potter.”
* * * *
He’d known immediately when he’d conceived. True, his mother said it was impossible, and when he’d mentioned it to the Healer, she’d smiled indulgently, but he’d known. Instantly.
It was the only time in a long while that they’d made love spontaneously and hadn’t engaged in their post-sex ritual of bum propping and finger crossing.
Ah, the irony. Scorpius would appreciate it when he was older. Or not. Actually, probably not. No kid wants to think of their parents fucking.
It’d been raining. The kind of rain that breaks a heat wave and makes you feel like you can breathe again after weeks of suffocating in a stew of humidity. They’d been walking to a party when the first drops began to fall and decided not to cast an Impervius. It’d felt like heaven – the rain on his face and Harry’s hand in his. He’d stopped suddenly, and Harry had looked back questioningly. His fringe was sticking to his forehead and there were drops on his glasses. His t-shirt clung to his skin, and Draco had been able to see his peaked nipples and even the shallow indentation of his navel. He’d stepped forward and seized Harry’s shoulders, pulling him into a kiss. Harry had moaned, and before they knew it, they were in an alley with Harry’s jeans around his knees and his bare thighs squeezing Harry’s hips as tight as they could.
They’d never fucked up against a wall before. Despite what stories and movies might lead one to believe, it was neither comfortable nor convenient. It’d taken a number of tries before Harry had been able to enter him, and even then, he couldn’t go very deep and kept slipping out. Which was what made it the hottest sex Draco had ever had. They were schoolboys, fumbling in a broom closet, trying to figure out how, exactly, cocks get into arseholes. Every time that Harry managed to get inside of him, he’d struggled to sink down onto his cock without sliding out of Harry’s arms and onto the cobblestones.
“Fuck, you’re heavy,” Harry had said, but then he’d found Draco’s entrance and his voice broke around a groan. He’d practically crushed Draco’s back against the wall, he started fucking him so hard, and all the while the rain poured down on them. He’d come first, and Harry had had to struggle to stay inside him as his body’s spasms tried to push him out.
“Oh, sweet God,” Harry had gasped against his neck, thrusting savagely. “Sweet fucking God.” He’d been completely lost. Undone. In one final fierce thrust, he’d found himself balls deep and came with a long shuddering groan.
That’s when Scorpius was conceived. Draco had felt it. A twinge of magic deep in his belly as Harry’s cock pulsed inside him. Some of Harry’s come slipped out of him when Harry pulled out, but it hadn’t mattered. Draco had known he was already pregnant. It’d been terrifying and wildly sexy at the same time. All that evening, he was in a daze, barely acknowledging people when they tried to talk to him. He could feel the magic doing what it needed to do.
“Wine or beer?” Harry had asked on his way to the bar, and Draco had said neither. Harry had frowned. Draco liked to get tipsy at parties.
“What’s wrong? Aren’t you feeling well?”
He’d shaken his head and grinned from ear to ear.
“I feel fine,” he’d said. “It’s just that I’m pregnant, and I don’t think our baby wants a gin and tonic.”
Harry had almost fallen over, and Draco grabbed his hand. When he’d pulled Harry into his arms, he’d felt Harry’s whole body shaking.
“Let’s get out of here,” Harry whispered fiercely, and they’d run back to their flat, getting soaked and laughing like lunatics. When they finally closed their door on the world, Harry had dropped to his knees, shoved up Draco’s shirt and pressed an open-mouthed kiss to his belly. He’d never asked how Draco had known. He’d just believed.
* * * *
Harry leaves for work early, kissing Scorpius where he lies against Draco’s chest, but not Draco himself.
Draco tries to convince himself he doesn’t care.
Scorpius grouses and kicks his little legs when Draco tries to dress him. When he hands Scorpius to his mother, it’s with a feeling of “good riddance.” But close after the relief followed guilt and then, even worse, separation anxiety.
“I think he’s still hungry,” he says, reaching out to take him back.
“I thought you said he’d fed right before you Flooed here.”
“Yes, but that doesn’t mean he’s not still hungry.”
“He’s sleeping.”
“I won’t wake him; he knows how to eat in his sleep.”
“You’re all kitted out.”
“It’s not that hard to get out of Quidditch gear.”
“Speaking of which: Draco, you need to lose some weight.”
Draco glares at her.
“My weight is none of your business.”
His mother looks at him with an arched eyebrow. It’s enough to convey her belief that anything involving Draco was her business.
“Harry keeps making enormous meals and buying me chocolates and pastries and what-not.”
“I always knew he’d try to kill you one day.”
Draco rolls his eyes. Scorpius shifts in his mother’s arms and makes a soft cooing sound.
“Give him back.”
“Go to your ludicrous so-called ‘job.’”
“I can be late. Mother, he’s asking for me.”
“No, he’s not; he’s having a bowel movement.”
His aunt laughs so hard she nearly chokes on her tea.
“It’s alright, Draco,” she says. “You’ll only be apart for a few hours. It’s good for you. You hover more than any witch I’ve ever known.”
Draco scowls and reluctantly turns to leave.
This day is the same as the last. He suffers through the morning drills, sweating like a pig and unable to finish the laps around the pitch. But once he’s in the air, he feels much better.
“Your form’s a little off,” Coach Devlin yells up at him. “But basically you’re looking good.”
He grins to himself and weaves figure eights around the goal posts. It’s going to be okay after all. He’ll play on Saturday, and everything will be fine.
He spots the Snitch within minutes of its release and catches it easily. Coach Devlin lets out a “whoop!”
“There’s my star Seeker,” he shouts. “You’re going to kick Racim’s arse!”
Adrien Racim was the second best Seeker in the world, and Draco had actually (and humiliatingly) lost to him once. The two teams had played late into the night, and everyone was exhausted. Except for Draco and Racim. They’d flown as though they were invincible, their Lumoses lit as bright as possible – both to see the Snitch and to blind each other when the opportunity presented itself.
They’d spotted the Snitch in exactly the same instant and flown for it like hawks. It’d become physical quickly, and Draco had got in several blows before Racim elbowed him in the face, breaking his nose. The next thing he knew, he was falling through darkness and seeing Harry’s face as though in a dream. That was when he’d known he was going to die. The only wizard strong enough to catch him at this late stage of a fall was Harry, and Draco was sure he must’ve gone home at some point earlier in the evening.
Except Harry hadn’t gone home, and he’d stopped Draco’s fall within inches of the ground with a bellowed Decido Subsisto! from the stands. And then he’d run onto the pitch ignoring the yells and whistles of both players and referees. Clearly, Racim hadn’t caught the Snitch yet, and when he’d realised the match wasn’t over, Draco had struggled in Harry’s arms. He’d eventually had to punch Harry in the face, but by then Racim had caught the Snitch.
“Stopping my fall was enough, you bloody idiot!” Draco had raged at him once they were home. “Thanks for losing the match for us!”
Harry hadn’t said anything. He’d simply put on his coat and left. Draco hadn’t seen him again for a week. It’d been the worst week of his life, which was saying something, and when Harry had walked through the door one evening as though he’d only been at work for a day, Draco had literally wept with relief. They’d made love that night, long and tenderly, and Draco had apologised a dozen times. Even then it hadn’t felt like enough.
“Looking good, Malfoy,” says Crawford as Draco flies by.
Draco grins at him. He feels good, and the late spring air is brisk and refreshing. This is why he did what he does. His mother would never understand, but Harry did, and that was what mattered.
He catches the Snitch a second time. It gleams like a star in his glove. He’s elated and breathless, but in a good healthy way.
“That – that right there – is why you’re the best Seeker in the world,” says his coach when he lands on the grass. “You make it look effortless. Still, you really should lose a few pounds.”
Draco’s mood immediately goes from elated to shit.
“I don’t know how someone with ‘life-threatening’ food poisoning manages to gain weight.”
Draco doesn’t respond, but he knows his flushed face advertises his humiliation better than words ever could.
“Never mind,” says his coach, slapping him on the back. “After the match this weekend, I’ll set you up with the best personal trainer in London. He’ll have you fit again in no time.”
Draco cringes. He’d never needed anyone’s assistance before. Plus, the last thing in the world he wanted was some fit bloke watching him huff and strain with exercises he used to be able to do without breaking a sweat.
Fuck.
“Great,” he says. “Thanks for the chance to feel like a fat loser.”
Coach Devlin puts an arm around his shoulders.
“You’ll be in great shape by the World Cup next summer, and that’s what really matters.”
Not if Harry has his way. If he does, then Draco would probably be so pregnant by then, he’d be unable to see his feet, let alone fly a broom.
He smiles wanly. “Yeah,” he says. “That’s what really matters.”
Next part
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re: I'd Rather Change Nappies
Date: 2010-11-28 11:39 pm (UTC)sickweird prompt of mine! ♥ And oh, Salazar, What. A. Fucking. Brilliant. Story. I should be workingworkingworking, but I can't pull myself away from this. Poor Draco! Poor Harry!no subject
Date: 2010-11-30 04:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-30 10:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-30 02:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-30 03:55 pm (UTC)Gosh, this is very, um, realistic? Breath of fresh air actually and it's amazing so far! Enjoying it immensely!
"But then again, everything turned Harry on. Even the sound of him pissing in the toilet or sitting in the bath drove Harry wild. " this line? Love right there.
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Date: 2010-12-05 01:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-05 12:52 am (UTC)Going to hazard a wild guess here: Draco will be pregnant asap. Guaranteed.
That was...amazing, stunning, accurate, and so razor sharp and dead on that I'm reeling after reading it. And I want to read it again and again. That effing excellent--*that* memorable.
Thank you, 'mystery' author. You do excel, as always:)
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Date: 2010-12-08 12:13 pm (UTC)Brilliant! Hilarious!
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Date: 2010-12-08 08:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-24 02:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-21 12:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-17 09:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-06-20 06:09 pm (UTC)Quite well written.