Title: Pretending For Real Part 5
Author: Constant Vigilance
Status: WIP
Email: tirel@pcnuthut.com

Website: https://www.angelfire.com/tv2/firebird_ascending/
Rating: Dunno yet.
Pairing: Harry/Oliver
Spoilers: AU. Characters aged up to age of consent.
Warnings: Slash
Disclaimer: I own nothing. JKR is God.
Summary: Oliver needs a boyfriend to parade in front of his family. Harry offers to fill in.
Notes: For Cassy. Cause she’s a damn good pester-er.

*Smash!*

 

Oliver glared at the shattered bits of the wine glass as though they might deliver the answers to his problem. When none were forthcoming, he flipped a two-fingered salute to the hearth on which they lay and dropped back onto the couch. “Fuck!” he screamed into the silence, bringing his hands up to grind the heels of his palms into his gritty and swollen eyes.

 

“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” he dropped his hands and stared at the ceiling seeing, not the lines of the cream colored tiles, but rather the hurt and angry eyes of one Harry J. Potter. That same Harry J. Potter who refused to take his fire-calls, his owls, or his groveling requests presented through acquaintances. One week. One whole goddamn week and not a sign of him.

 

He remembered back to last Saturday. After Harry had apparated away, Oliver had lain in shock where the younger man had deposited him. He’d looked up into his family’s faces for the answers and saw none. He saw pity, anger, disappointment…~Wow,~ he snorted. ~Sounds like a lot of what I’ve got going on right now.~

 

He’d tried to talk to them. He held up a hand to Logan, looking for help to stand. Logan shook his head sadly and walked out of the room. He pushed himself to his own feet and looked imploringly at Kyla. She too shook her head. However, as was typical for Kyla, she felt the need to share the term “idiot” with him before walking off. Even his mother had no kind words, no soft embrace for him. She just burst into tears and the last he saw of her was his father leading her upstairs.

 

He’d apparated away quickly at that point, not wanting to ask what they were most angry about: his deception…or hurting Harry. He rather thought he already knew. Suddenly infuriated again, he kicked at his coffee table, shoving it halfway across the room.

 

He’d thought it would all be okay on Monday. He’d go to work. Harry’d be there. Oliver would apologize. Harry might be a bit difficult to convince, but in the end, he would understand and everything would go back to what they were before. Except…Oliver really didn’t want it to. Harry had admitted to being in love with him. And wasn’t that just the culmination of every fantasy Oliver had had for the last fucking decade?

 

Christ, what a fucking mess.

 

He’d gone to practice only to find that Harry wouldn’t be in that day. Or the next. Or possibly til the next time he was forced to play the actual goddamn game. Apparently Harry, as a member of a ‘special team’ had the option not to train with the others unless he actually wanted to. His job wasn’t to coordinate the bludgers and the quaffle. It was to flit about all by his lonesome looking for a bright gold ball no one else on the team cared about. How nice that he could practice for that anywhere.

 

Lovely.

 

The coach felt ‘really bad’ about the rift between Oliver and Harry. He didn’t like bad feelings amongst team members and especially between the two who were his biggest draws. That was why he okayed Harry taking a few weeks off of team practice to sort himself out. What it boiled down to, as far as Oliver could see was that, as long as Harry continued to practice, the coach didn’t give a rat’s arse where the hell he did it.

 

And again…. lovely.

 

Oliver begged the man to tell him where Harry was practicing. The coach said he could understand lover’s quarrels, but Harry was up for a contract renewal at the end of the year and since Potter had demanded his location be kept quiet, there was no way in hell that Oliver was getting any information from him.

 

And so, here he sat. Well, lay actually. Okay, here he sulked. As he had been doing for the last fucking week. He’d searched everywhere for Harry. He’d asked everyone he knew. He’d begged, he’d pleaded, and he’d even gone crawling to Ron and Hermione looking for him. Hermione demanded to know if he really loved Harry or if he was just screwing with his emotions. When he’d sworn that he loved him, she sighed and told him to think about it. Where could Harry go to practice Quidditch that had a pitch and prevented owls from finding it?

 

While he pondered that, Ron just punched him. All in all, Oliver decided he was better off pondering (read: sulking and drinking) in his own home where no one was likely to call him an idiot or punch him.

 

“Wood? Oliver Wood?”

 

Oliver cocked his ear. What the…?

 

“Wood! Are you there?”

 

He lifted his head up from the pillow and stared blurrily around the room. “Who’s there?” he demanded irritably.

 

“The fire, idiot. Check the bloody fire,” returned an equally irritated voice.

 

“Fucking can’t even hide out in my own house now without being called an idiot,” he grumbled as he pushed himself up into a sitting position. Staggering slightly, he stepped to the fire and peered into the flames. What the…?

 

“Good, you’re up,” Draco Malfoy said, pleased. “Now move over. I’m coming through.”

 

Oliver shuffled over a few steps, barely out of the way when Malfoy stepped out of the flames. He watched the blonde bastard who shagged Harry…er, the blonde man brush himself off and then turn to look at him distastefully. Well, in all actuality, he looked in distaste at the crushed glass, the dirty dishes, and the overturned furniture and then at Oliver standing…barely…in the middle of it all.

 

“Well, we certainly take rejection poorly, don’t we?” Malfoy sneered.

 

“F’ck ‘ff,” Oliver managed before staggering back to the couch and falling into it. Malfoy sighed and picked a path through the broken glass over to the couch. He eyed the brown material with pursed lips before gingerly sitting on it. “Wha’ y’ wan’?” Oliver asked, face down on the armrest.

 

“Well, I thought you might be interested to know that Harry apparated to Malfoy Manor last Saturday where he has been wallowing in his own misery ever since.”

 

Oliver’s head shot up. “He went to you?” he gritted out, feeling more sober by the second.

 

Draco leaned back and placed his arm on the back of the couch. “Of course he did. Where else would he go?” A smirk wound it’s way over his lips…bloody perfect fucking touching Harry’s skin…er, lips.

 

“I dunno, his apartment maybe?” Oliver snapped.

 

Draco looked incredulously at him. “You can’t be serious?” He eyed the drunken keeper with something akin to a bug collector investigating a new species of butterfly. “You are!” he crowed. “You are serious! How bloody stupid are you, Wood?”

 

Oliver was in his face in less time than it took to finish the sentence. “You know, I’m getting pretty fucking tired of people calling me names this week, Malfoy,” he growled.

 

Draco lost his smirk and his expression became something that caused a shiver to go down Oliver’s spine, even in his drunken state. “Then stop being so fucking deserving, Wood,” he whispered menacingly, driving Oliver back into his previous spot on the arm of the couch. “I don’t know how much Harry told you about our relationship,” he continued calmly. “I don’t even know if he told you we had one.”

 

Oliver nodded. “He said you were his first,” he admitted grudgingly.

 

Draco smiled, a genuine smile this time. “Yes, I was. And he was amazing. But then, he’s always been amazing,” he lost the smile again. “Unfortunately, the one person he’d have like to agree with me couldn’t seem to pull his head out of his arse to notice.”

 

Oliver flushed and he stared down at his fingers. “I noticed,” he whispered back, petulantly.

 

Draco frowned. “Did you now. Well, it doesn’t bloody seem that way to me. Or more importantly, to him. Look at me, Wood,” he demanded.

 

Oliver resisted for a short moment before sighing and meeting Malfoy’s eyes. “What?”

 

Draco leaned forward, deadly serious in his intent. “I am in love with Harry Potter,” he stated. Oliver fought back a growl. “I have always been in love with Harry Potter. For as long as I can remember. I suspect for as long as he’s been in love with you. And in as much as I can tell, I will be in love with Harry Potter until death takes me.” He held Oliver’s gaze unflinchingly. Oliver had to admire his determination. He had a hard time admitting to the mirror that he was in love with Harry.

 

“So why are you telling me this?” he tried to drop his eyes. Malfoy grabbed his chin and forced his gaze back.

 

“If there’s one thing I’ve learned from being in love, Wood, it’s that you take happiness where you can get it. And you give it to the one you love when you can. I know you’re really into this whole fuckwit thing, Wood, but pay attention will you?” Oliver opened his mouth to snap at Draco again but the blonde man increased his grip on Oliver’s chin.

 

“Harry loves you. He’s always loved you. And you love him as well. I get that…really I do. You blew it really big with the whole Boy-Who-Lived crap. I know for a fact that, growing up, you had a bigger hard on for Harry’s skill as a seeker than you did for his luck at staying alive or his neat-o keen ability to kill Dark Lords. I’m hoping that now, your respect for Harry the person, the normal fucking person who happens to have the bad taste to be in love with you, is even bigger than your appreciation for his seeker skills.”

 

“Cause that’s what he needs, Wood,” Draco’s hand dropped from Oliver’s chin. “It’s what he’s always looked for. It’s the only thing that keeps him going sometimes…the hope that there will be someone out there who loves Harry for Harry.”

 

Oliver frowned. “If you know so much about what Harry wants and needs and you love him so much, why are you trying to foist him off on someone else?”

 

Draco actually chuckled. “I’m ‘foisting him off’ because I love him, Wood. Because I want to see him happy, even if it’s with a fuckwit like you. And,” Draco hesitated, a sad smile playing on his lips, “Harry has no idea that I’m in love with him. He never has. It’s always been about the sex with us. And that’s fine, I suppose. At least I got to have him somehow, right?”

 

Oliver didn’t know what to say. He just stared into the sad grey eyes. Draco smiled suddenly, but Oliver noticed that it came nowhere close to those eyes. “Now. He’s moping around in my gardens right now. I have some ‘important business’ to take care of…well, somewhere, I suppose. You have the rest of the afternoon to grovel and beg for forgiveness, to tell him you love him, shag him senseless and make plans for a bonding which will quickly be followed by the conception and birth of my godchild.”

 

He stood, hands smoothing out nonexistent streaks in his slacks. “Don’t waste it, Wood. Oh, and for fuck’s sake…do scourgify anything you cum on.”

 

*Crack! *

 

And Malfoy was gone. Leaving more questions for Oliver than he’d had before the man had shown up.