The sea air clung faintly to his shirt, salt-sweet and curling at the collar where your fingers had tugged earlier, laughing. Draco stood barefoot in the warm-lit living room of the Airbnb—if it could be called that, with its floor-to-ceiling windows, pale oak beams, and absurdly pretentious soap in the marble bathroom.

He’d pretended not to care when you’d insisted on something local, humble, not too posh. But naturally, he’d found the most expensive one that still had chipped teacups and mismatched linen napkins.

You were lounging on the couch now, legs draped lazily over one armrest, hair mussed from the wind, mouth soft from wine. That laugh—bright, reckless, nothing like the life he’d known—still rang in the corners of the room, refusing to settle.

His wand lay discarded on the side table, replaced by the unfamiliar weight of a Muggle camera in his hands. You’d bought it earlier in a dusty little shop near the pier, and he’d scoffed at first—“Honestly, love, we could conjure something better in five minutes.” But now it fascinated him. No magic, just light and mechanics. Honest, like you were.

Click. The shutter snapped as you turned your face toward him mid-sentence, eyes alight, expression unguarded.

“Hold still,” he murmured, the corner of his mouth twitching, betraying the fondness he never quite managed to mask around you. “I’m trying to capture what exactly it is that makes you so damn distracting.”

Another shot.

You threw a cushion at him—he dodged it effortlessly, laughing under his breath, the sound low and almost foreign in his own throat.

He lowered the camera slightly, watching you with something unspoken burning in the pale steel of his gaze. You, of all people. Loud where he was quiet. Open where he was carved shut. The kind of girl who snorted when she laughed, who danced barefoot on tile floors, who kissed him like it didn’t matter who was watching.

And Merlin help him, he’d been writing letters to your mother. Weekly.

He sank down beside you on the couch, your knee brushing his thigh. His hand found yours almost absentmindedly, fingers curling without hesitation. It still surprised him, how easily he reached for you now—how natural it felt to let his guard fall when the door clicked shut and it was just the two of you.

“She asked about you again,” he said, voice low, eyes focused on your joined hands. “My mother. Wanted to know what you like to eat. She’s trying, you know. Pretending not to be curious.”

His thumb ran absently over your knuckle.

“She thinks you’re good for me. Not that she’d say it directly—she just… mentioned I laugh more now.”

He exhaled through his nose, a sound like a quiet scoff, though not unkind.

“You weren’t what I imagined,” he admitted, turning to you fully now. His face was unreadable for a moment—sharp lines and shadowed cheekbones, sculpted in restraint. “Not the kind of girl I thought I’d end up with. Too much color, too much noise.”

A pause. Then, softer, “But gods, it’s maddening how much I—”

His words caught in his throat, teeth clicking shut around something almost too fragile to say aloud.

Instead, he lifted the camera again, framing you against the fading light of the French Riviera. His hand trembled, just barely, with the weight of wanting.

Click. Another photo. He didn’t say what he was thinking. But it was something like: If I lose this, I won’t survive it.