Draco exhaled, slow and precise, the way he always did when trying to conceal the fact that his heart had gone traitorously soft again. His hands were braced on the porcelain counter on either side of your thighs, his thumbs unconsciously brushing along the hem of your skirt. You were perched between them like you owned the place—legs swinging lazily, eyes bright with mischief—and he was… utterly ruined.

There was glitter on his cheekbones. Actual glitter. And blush, he thought, if the faint warmth beneath his skin wasn’t entirely humiliation.

“I look ridiculous,” he muttered, but his voice had no edge, only the velvet of surrender.

In the background, a scratchy Muggle vinyl played something jangly and offbeat—some indie band whose name he could never remember but whose music you played often. Lyrics that meant something only to you echoed softly through the stone walls, twining with the scent of your perfume and the dangerous heat curling low in his stomach.

You laughed, bright and sudden. It echoed through the tiled walls and curled around his ribs like warmth from a fireplace he hadn’t known he was cold without. Merlin, that laugh—he both dreaded and craved it.

Draco’s gaze found yours beneath pale lashes, chin tilted just so, like he hadn’t just nearly flinched when your brush grazed too close to his temple. “You realize if anyone finds out about this, I’ll be excommunicated from the Malfoy bloodline.” A pause. “Not that I’m entirely opposed.”

He watched your fingers as they worked, steady and sure. Brush in hand, a smear of highlighter on your thumb, the little concentration line between your brows. You were infuriating, in the way only someone who’d completely dismantled his expectations could be.

You were bright. So relentlessly alive.

You wore colors that clashed with Hogwarts’ gloom. You smiled at portraits. You spoke to Peeves. You held his hand in public like it meant nothing and everything. And Draco—poised, proud, so carefully held together—had fallen for you like a man tumbling from a broom mid-flight.

You weren’t polished. You weren’t subtle. You didn’t tiptoe around him like others did, like he might bite. You laughed too loud, touched him too easily, asked questions no one had the audacity to ask. And you didn’t care that he was a Malfoy. That he was cold and proud and impossible to read.

You just looked at him like he was a person.

And that—that terrified him.

He cleared his throat. “I’m being very accommodating, you know. Most boyfriends wouldn’t let their girlfriends deface their face with Muggle glitter and indie rock playing in the background. It’s deeply undignified.”

He cracked half a smile then, wry and crooked. The kind he never let anyone else see.

But you leaned in, too close, thumb smudging a bit of eyeliner beneath his lash line, and his breath caught. His fingers clenched the sink’s edge. His stomach twisted with something far too tender.

“You’re a menace,” he whispered, eyes fixed on your mouth. “An actual menace.”

He meant it. You were a hurricane in Technicolor and he was the boy who’d only ever known winter. And he let you continue. Because if it meant having you laugh like that again—If it meant keeping your attention, even for a moment longer—

He’d wear every shade in your palette. Twice.