"Potter. Potter. Wake up."

Harry was being prodded awake by rather pokey, insistent fingers. " Up , Potter. I need you gone. Actually, I need you to have never been here in the first place."

Harry blinked his eyes open, feeling rather groggy and hungover, which was usually how he felt when he slept over at Malfoy's house. Which he never actually meant to do."Fuck," he muttered. "Stop poking me."

"Then get up! Don't you have anything better to do today than ruin my morning?" Malfoy gave Harry one final shove and got out of the bed himself, giving Harry a fleeting glimpse of his long, pale back before putting on his robe, which looked so soft that Harry secretly wanted to try it on every time he came over. Or maybe slide his hands inside it to find Malfoy's soft skin, push it off his shoulders, and let it fall to the floor. Then he'd pull Malfoy back in bed and-

Harry blinked again. Not that he'd ever stick around long enough to do something like that. If he wanted that sort of thing, he should have kept sleeping with-well, someone who wasn't Malfoy. At least with Malfoy, he always knew where he stood.

Usually, Harry tried to leave before Malfoy woke at all. He grimaced at the realization that this was happening often enough for him to use words like usually.

"I'm up, I'm up," Harry grumbled. " You're the one who invited me here, if you care to remember."

"I don't care to remember," Malfoy said, picking Harry's crumpled shirt off the floor and tossing it to him with a pinched look on his face. "I try to forget, as a matter of fact. Because this is never happening again."

Right, Harry thought. Malfoy said the same thing every time they ended up together. Harry himself had said it a time or two. But the thing was, it always did happen again. He'd lost track of how many times he'd woken up at Malfoy's place in the last six months. Always naked. Always with Malfoy laying next to him, sometimes peacefully asleep, sometimes awake and glaring and pushing Harry out of the bed.

And it always happened after he ran into Malfoy at a particular Muggle bar.

Harry had started going to bars in Muggle London because it was less complicated for him there-or at least it used to be. The first time he saw Malfoy sitting at his favorite bar, chatting up a dark-haired Muggle bloke, Harry thought the bottom might drop out of his stomach. He'd been coming here for months and hadn't seen anyone he knew. That was the way he liked it.

Harry almost didn't recognize Malfoy at first. He had the same delicate cheekbones and jawline (not that Harry had ever noticed those, of course), but his lean, angled body had filled out just a bit, and the tight Muggle clothing he wore looked as natural on him as any expensive wizarding robes he'd worn back at school.

He looked good, but he was still the worst person Harry had ever met, and the last person he wanted to run into at his favorite bar.

Harry started slowly backing out the front door, but then Malfoy glanced up and looked him right in the eyes.

"What are you doing here, Potter?" Malfoy hissed, leaping off his barstool to grab Harry's arm. "Are you-are you following me?" To Harry's surprise, Malfoy looked just about as rattled as Harry felt.

Harry yanked his arm away. "What do you mean, following you? I come here all the time and I've never seen you here. Are you following me ?" He flushed; he shouldn't have mentioned how often he comes for. After all this time, Malfoy could still rattle him.

"That's idiotic," said Malfoy. "You expect me to believe that Harry Potter frequents this bar?"

Harry stared at him. "Maybe," he said at last, his mouth dry. "we're both here for the same reasons." He gestured to the bar, the dance floor, to the man Malfoy had been talking to when Harry came in.

Malfoy flushed. "Are you saying-"

"I'm saying-" Harry put his glass down on the bar so Malfoy wouldn't see his hand shaking. Malfoy was not supposed to be here. Nobody was supposed to be here. Nobody he knew was supposed to see him in a place like this. That was the whole point. He swallowed hard. "I'm saying that maybe we just pretend we didn't see each other here, and never speak of this again."

Malfoy considered Harry for a moment. "Fine, Potter. But if one word of this gets to the press-"

"The press!" An image of the Daily Prophet, with Harry's face and this bar on the front page, flashed across his mind. He thought he might throw up. "Are you mental ? I'm not calling the press. Are you ?"

"No!" said Malfoy, irritated. "No, Potter. That's why I-okay, whatever. Just…move along then. Go somewhere else. Be gone from here. Never come here again."

No way," Harry said, his desire to beat Malfoy flaring up against his desire to never see the prat again. "I told you, I come here all the time. You leave."

"You are insufferable ," Malfoy said, waving to the bartender for another drink. "I'm not going anywhere."

"Well, neither am I," said Harry, turning to the bartender, who looked at them uneasily, as though waiting for a fight. "Another for me as well."

Hours later, they were both still there at the end of the night, glaring at one another from opposite ends of the bar.

"Order one more or get out," the bartender told them. "You've been scaring away my clientele all night."

Malfoy stumbled toward Harry, jabbing him in the chest with one pale finger. "Fuck off, Potter," he slurred. " You're the problem. You've been following me for years ."

"I'm not...I'm not following you," Harry said again, putting a hand on the bar to steady himself. Merlin, he'd had too much to drink. "I'm here to fucking get laid, which you've thoroughly ruined." His face flushed, and he drained his drink to hide his embarrassment. "I thought we established that earlier. We're both here for the same reasons, remember?"

Malfoy laughed. "Are you really that dense, Potter?" Malfoy said. "This is a gay bar. I thought you would have noticed after sitting at the bar all fucking night. A gay Muggle bar. None of your fawning admirers who read Witch Weekly are here. They're back at the Leaky, waiting for a glimpse of their fucking Savior-"

And then Harry kissed him.

Half to shut him up, half to prove him wrong. And maybe also a little bit because he looked so good in those Muggle jeans. Malfoy's lips were soft and his face was smooth, and Harry wasn't sure which of them was more surprised by the whole thing.

It was a rough kiss, and Malfoy stumbled backwards onto the counter stool behind him.

"Fuck, Potter," Malfoy muttered, and then he kissed him back, nipping at Harry's lip with his teeth. "You're the goddamned worst- "

"Shut up, Malfoy," Harry's head felt a little woozy, but he pushed Malfoy back against the bar, hands on his hips. "Do you ever shut up?" Harry could feel the length of Malfoy's body against him, the hard bulge of his cock in those jeans, and he still wanted to kill Malfoy, but he wanted to do about fifty other things to him first.

They both jumped at the sound of a glass slamming down on the counter behind them. "All right, that's enough," the bartender said. ""I don't care whether you fight or fuck, but you gotta do it somewhere else. Out, the both of you. I'm closing up."

"Potter," Malfoy spat, and for a second, Harry thought he was going to spin on his heel and walk away. But he didn't. "Take this to my place?" he murmured in Harry's ear.

" Yes ," Harry said, and he kept his grip on Malfoy's hips as he was Apparated away.

Thirty seconds later, Malfoy was peeling off Harry's black t-shirt. "Potter," he muttered against Harry's neck.

"Yeah?" Harry panted.

"This is never happening again."

But it did happen again, and again, and again, and now it was almost Christmas, and Harry was here on yet another Saturday morning, six months after he first met Malfoy at the bar.

By the time Harry got dressed and went out to the kitchen, Malfoy was there, putting on a kettle of tea, moving along with whatever he did after Harry left. He was still wearing that damned robe, and Harry knew for a fact that he was naked underneath. His put his hand on the doorknob, but his mind was under that robe. He wondered what Malfoy would do if he went over there and untied it, sliding his mouth down Malfoy's torso till he was on his knees, right there in the kitchen-but their arrangement, or whatever it was, absolutely did not extend to the morning.

"I'll-er-see you at the pub sometime," he said, hand on the doorknob.

"Sure," Malfoy said dryly, without looking at Harry. He took a single teacup from the cupboard.

"I'll be a little busy though-Christmas and all, so I probably won't be out much."

"Potter," Malfoy said, shaking his head. "Do I look like I care about your holiday plans? Trust me-this is never happening again."