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“60 dollars,” Draco says. “What can I get?”
Harry ruffles through the buckets of flowers in the cooler. “What are you looking for?”
“Something special. It is a note.”
Harry pauses. For days Draco has visited his flower shop, but not once has he ordered anything with a message. Usually it is four different shades of purple, or something classically romantic, or something simple but elegant, fragrant—hyacinths, roses, lily-of-the-valleys. Dahlias, accompanied with white-button poms and greens.
Harry turns to face him. Draco looks away, flushed, shifting back and forth on his feet.
“Well,” Harry asks, “What is it you want to say?”
“Let’s elope.”
Harry blushes crimson. Silly, because Draco is not saying the words to him—but to his lover, for whom he has come and visited Harry’s shop for days on end, arriving early to avoid the morning rush and bring them the flowers before the day starts. The flowers are always the freshest, the leaves still wet with dew, and Harry picks the best of them for Draco because Draco’s lover deserves the best. Because Draco deserves the best.
And it is harder and harder to fool himself every day, to tell himself that they’ve had history, that Draco already belongs to someone else—to watch Draco come in every day with a faint smile, the bell tinkling as he greets Harry good morning with two cups of coffee. His hair is soft in the morning light, white-gold amidst the exuberant flowers as he looks around—Harry wrapping his bouquet, trying to steal a glance or two—footsteps slow, bending as he sniffs at the buckets of flowers from the lower shelves. A laugh escapes and Harry pretends it is a cough when Draco turns, narrowing his eyes.
But there is no malice. There is only banter, witty and fast and sending a rush down Harry’s spine.
“Well,” Harry says, turning around. His face burns in the cool, moist air of the cooler. “The cleomes just came in today. I’ll pair them with some baby’s-breaths, if you’d like.”
“That would be prefect.”
And this is new, too—for Harry to hear the smile in Draco’s voice, a secret victory at every one of them, knowing they are there because of him. He picks out the cleomes with the most vibrant purples, the ones with their petals spread the fullest—cuts off the excess leaves, the motion familiar with ease. Spreads out the wrapping paper on the working table, smooths its edges.
“So,” he coughs, “you’re leaving.”
Draco pauses his sniffing at a hanging pot of petunias and looks at him.
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Tomorrow,” he says. “Or so I hope. I am going to ask them today, whether they will come with me.”
“Oh.” Harry focuses on cutting the paper so he doesn’t have to meet Draco’s eyes. “So the bouquet. It’s a question.”
“It is.”
“Well, it’s not like you need to ask,” Harry laughs, dry, “of course they’ll come with you.”
“How do you know?”
Briefly, Harry lifts his gaze. Draco has tilted his head. Against the sunlight, Harry cannot quite make out his face, but it seems like his cheeks have flushed—a tinge of pink in the shadows.
“Well,” Harry looks back down again, swallowing, “it’s you. Who wouldn’t want to go with you?”
Silence. A while later, Harry raises his head. Draco is watching him still, his head tilted.
Harry finishes the bouquet in silence. Wraps it carefully, makes a couple last adjustments so the cleomes are shown to their fullest, the baby’s-breaths a lovely white. He hands the bouquet to Draco. “Sixty dollars.”
Draco takes the bouquet.
The last bouquet Harry would ever make for him. He wants to say goodbye, in a way however small: a hug, a handshake, a squeeze on the shoulder. Some proof that all these mornings weren’t nothing, hadn’t simply existed in his half-baked dreams—that Draco had enjoyed them, too, had enjoyed his little shop and the flowers and, perhaps, his company.
He might never see Draco again.
“Are you busy?” Draco asks.
Harry blinks.
“Do you have anything to do this moment?”
Harry blinks again. “I’m working.”
“Right,” Draco rolls his eyes, “and this is your shop. You are your own boss. Are you busy at the moment?”
“Well…I mean, no—”
“Great,” Draco says, turning to walk towards the door, “there’s something I need to show you. Just to get an opinion. Very convenient, won’t take long, my flat is a five-minute walk from here so we won’t even need to Apparate—”
“Wait, what—” Harry struggles to untie his apron as he stumbles over the register, “Draco, wait—”
“We can chat on our way. Have I told you about this person I’ve been buying flowers for? An idiot, let me tell you. An absolute idiot.”
The walk was brisk, the morning air crisp. Harry cannot keep up with Draco’s long legs. Draco walks rapidly, as though he has an appointment, the heels of his shoes clicking against the pavement as he rattles on without losing his breath. Harry stumbles along, bumps into Draco when he turns a corner—and there they were, in front of the doors of Draco’s flat.
“I haven’t tidied it,” Draco says, working the keys, flushed. “But I don’t think you need to close your eyes—”
A loud clack. The doors open.
Harry toes off his shoes and, gingerly, follows Draco past the parlor. The air smells of a soft fragrance, smells faintly of something familiar…
He stops, shocked, at the edge of the living room.
Vases and vases full of flowers. Familiar arrangements, all having come from his hands: the hydrangeas, the gerberas, the lilacs. The hyacinths draping from a tall vase, the dahlias in full bloom in a small pot on the windowsill. The roses, sitting in a tiny vase on the coffee table beside the armchair, a brimming array of red.
Beside him, Draco has flushed down his neck.
“But I don’t…” Harry trails off, looking at the room full of flowers again. “I don’t—”
“I preserved them. I learned the cooling charms.”
“But—”
“Harry James Potter. I buy you coffee every morning.”
Harry stares incredulously at him. “Friends buy each other coffee!”
“Oh my god,” Draco says, and kisses him.
Harry startles at it—then sinks into it, his eyes fluttering shut and his mouth falling open. Draco kisses him slowly, deeply, his hands coming around Harry’s waist—helpless, helpless in the heat of Harry’s mouth, wanting to pull away but unable to—Harry’s arms coming around his, pulling him close. He tastes like the coffee they’d had this morning, faintly bitter and sweet with too much sugar. The coffee Draco had bought for both of them.
Draco’s breath is cool on his lips. Harry hadn’t even noticed them parting, his eyes still shut, their mouths still close. He could feel Draco’s lips. He wanted to lean back in.
“What do you say?” Draco murmurs. Something rustles between them; Harry looks down, and there is the bouquet of cleomes he’d wrapped this morning, a lovely purple.
Draco laughs, breathless. “Elope with me?”
Three years later
They still come back every year. On the same day, to the same cliffs; they walk along the same rocky path near the ocean, laughing as they pull each other on, the waves crashing into the rocks and bursting into sprays, into the salty air.
At the bottom of the cliffs blooms a field of wild sea thrifts.
Harry can see it, now, from the balcony of their tiny hotel room: a hint of pink from behind the rocks, appearing and disappearing behind the relentless waves. It is barely visible in the dusk. The sky is darkening, into the color of a ripened plum.
Draco sneaks an arm around his waist, pulls him close. Harry leans into his touch. Noses at the hollow of Draco’s throat, the soft skin, the intimate warmth.
Murmurs, “What are you looking at?”
Draco hums. “Take a guess.”
“I don’t need to.”
Draco laughs. “Why did you ask, then?”
“I want to hear you say it.”
Draco laughs again and turns Harry around. Three years later Harry still does not tire of it, watching Draco smile, the lines at the corner of his eyes crinkling as his cheeks fold—his face blossoming into the happiness. His pale eyes glint in the dusk. In the quietness of the moments before night there is only the sea, waves crashing ashore and breaking into thin foams.
Slowly, gently, in a low voice, Draco says, “I love you.”
The words glow warm and golden in the dark. Leaning in, Harry catches his lips; they are soft and sweet, just as three years ago when they first kissed.
On the nightstand by the bed, the vase of cleomes blooms in the young night.