They hadn't meant to, it had just slipped out.

Coming back to light folded in a tangle of damp limbs and crumpled robes and Harry's flushed face hovering worriedly over his, Draco made for his mouth like a drowning man speeding toward air.

Craving and panting and starving for more of anything, of everything, so long as it was Draco's, Harry had only a split second to realize that this was going to be their very first kiss before it actually was.

And now, the awestruck gasp that rose in each of them as their lips met were trapped softly in the wet prison of their locked mouths; Draco's prompted by the taste of his own semen on Harry's lips, Harry's by- what? He didn't even know. The impossible perfection of feeling Draco's tongue for the first time? The heady knowledge that he had made him come, made him scream, made him call his given name so loudly that the echo was only now dying down in the winding hallway? The frightening-wonderful thought that it would happen again and again?

Somehow, the muffled gasps had transformed themselves into words as the boys reluctantly pulled apart for a breath, because there it was, coming out of each of them at the exact same moment.

Those three little words that changed everything.

They would say it to each other countless times in the coming years - sometimes playfully, sometimes huskily, sometimes sweetly, always truthfully. But here, now, on the cool floor of the corridor, wrapped in soft light and the sharp scent of their bodies, they had blurted it out in unison. Not knowing whether to laugh or cry at the coincidence, nor at the disconcerting implications of those spontaneous words, they opted for the nearest alternative. Seizing Harry's tie, Draco shoved him backward to supine, his deft fingers quickly revealing a growing expanse of bare skin as buttons yielded and Gryffindor finery fell away piece by piece. His wolf-like grazing tilted Harry's world off its axis, and when that ruthless mouth crossed the hard line of muscle rippling just above his navel, he thought he saw a glint of mischief in the lust-darkened grey eyes a moment before Draco taunted him with the last coherent sentence either of them would manage that night.

"Time for you to say my name."