Chapter One

-- I disclaim. Warnings: smut out the ears, silliness reigns supreme. Semi-DH compliant. --

From the desk of Lucius F. Malfoy:

Dear my son,
Remember these tenets as you move in public circles.
Speak not our Master's name.
Dare not act rashly or immaturely, but to avoid attention, hold yourself as an affable, lighthearted boy of seventeen normally would.
Fear not prying by the rabble concerning our activities. Answer only that you do not know, or care, about the larger world of politics and you are simply pleased to see your father's dear friend Mr. Thicknesse awarded such high honors for his Law Enforcement work.
For heavens' sake, Draco, be careful of your personal appearance. Another stain on your clothing and the only way you will get new clothes is if you are offered the Mark.

Warmly –
Your father.

From the mental checklist of Blaise L. Zabini:

Siphon off as much of the good liquor into Carry-All Flask as humanly possible.
Find hottest, most shaggable person at party.
Drag said hottie off to Tenerife, shag silly until school begins again.

"'scuse me…" Someone bumped Draco's elbow, and he jumped, startled. The person roughly brushed by him, making him worry he'd wind up smearing foie gras pate all over his shirt.

"Excuse you, indeed," he said in a cold tone.

"Oh, Dray. Poor silly sod. Here," and the tall, dark boy shoved an over-full cup into his hand. Wary again of his silk-ruffled shirt, Draco hastily sipped at the cup to get the water in it down to a safe level. The only shame of it was, it wasn't water at all.

"What on earth?!" he sputtered, grabbing Blaise Zabini by the sleeve. "Even the punch in the corner isn't that strong! Where'd you get that?"

Cool as a cucumber, Zabini chuckled, twisted out of Draco's grasp, and said before flitting away, "The punch in the corner."

Well. He was supposed to be concentrating on non-political affairs. The mystery of Zabini's liquor was non-political, right? He slipped away from the ring of adults his parents were talking to – they'd probably be glad he wasn't loafing around awkwardly behind them.

It took work to tail his yearmate through the crowd of dignitaries – he was tall and easy to spot, but also fast, and not too concerned with looking foolish while ducking and dodging all the Ministry functionaries, while Draco had to smile blandly, and nod pleasant greetings to all the ones he recognized. He caught up with Blaise by the champagne fountain. Blaise seemed to be idly waving his wand about in the air near the fountain, but Draco, eyes narrowing, was struck by a thought – if he had a… - he did, the bastard, Draco was sure of it!

Sliding between two fat blokes, he managed to sneak up on Blaise and accidently-on-purpose fall all over him. He caught himself by throwing a hand out, a hand that collided with Blaise's side. Sure enough, in the boy's robe pocket – the hard shapes of several shrunken-down flasks.

"Nice trick," Blaise murmured into Draco's ear, and Draco began to preen at his cleverness, till Blaise continued, "but if you wanted to grope me, you didn't need to concoct some elaborate ploy to do so – I'm very friendly."

Draco recoiled, hand snapping away as if Blaise's small, lithe waist was burning him. Blaise's full lips were excellent for pouts: "Aw, you're not feeling friendly? Too much time locked up in a house with some seriously unfriendly bastards would do that, I suppose…" he mused.

Draco froze mid-recoil at that. Blaise, Madam Zabini, and the rest of their family line, in fact, were all notoriously independent of the Dark Lord's control. "I haven't a clue what you're speaking of. And neither do you."

"You haven't a clue what to do, caught up in a fucked-up mess like you are, is what you mean," Blaise countered in a fierce whisper, while keeping his expression light and relaxed so as not to attract attention. For all that his family was completely above the cloak-and-dagger game the Malfoys played, he was amazingly tactful and subtle.

"Like you would fare better," Draco said wearily, then cursed himself for such a revealing remark, and for the obvious crack he'd left open for Blaise – the same cracks he'd gotten all summer. 'Did the little wannabe Death Eater wet his robes, seeing a real-life murder?' 'Did Narcissa's baby boy get scared out in the big wide world?' His Aunt Bellatrix had said nothing at all, only spat on the hem of his robes whenever she'd seen him. He'd taken to hiding in the Manor's library quite a bit after that.

"I'm sure I wouldn't," Blaise said with a compassionate note in his voice. Looking around to see that they were unobserved, he leaned closer to Draco, and with two fingers under his chin, tilted his head up, forcing the shorter boy to stop gazing at the floor and meet his eyes. They were, Draco noticed with a shock, nearly violet blue.

Blaise, meanwhile, was studying Draco's face in turn. "Such a shame," he whispered, voice husky. "Such gorgeous features, the perfect aristocratic face… all pale from being shut up all summer, and so stressed from life at home…"

Draco jerked back, and cracked his head on a wall. He realized only then that he'd been backing up into a corner as Blaise advanced on him. "Dammit!" he cursed uncharacteristically, less from the way his head stung from the blow, and more because he was frightened that his glamour charms to appear fresh and well-rested had worn off already.

Blaise mistook the curse – "Shit. I'm sorry!" and the boy seized his elbow in a surprisingly secure grasp, steering him out the room, down the hall, and into the loo. Faced with a mirror, Draco could see just how bad he looked – too-thin cheeks, since he pinched leftovers rather than dine with Bella or Yaxley or other powerful Death Eaters, shadows round his eyes from exhaustion, and yellow splotches of fading bruises on his forehead and cheek. Blaise, meanwhile, was fussily tending to his newest wound, dabbing his head with wet paper towels, and probably mussing his hair to boot.

"I've got it," Draco cut him off with a dull tone and a stony look, turning his back on the mirror, drawing his wand and healing the knot on his skull easily. He'd learned that one the first week, when he had to take charge of the prisoners…

They faced each other in silence for a moment. Predictably, Blaise soon broke it: "My mother's an… 'interesting' woman when it comes to her personal life, but politically? I'm eternally thankful for growing up her way. No political threats, or loyalties and allegiances. No tattoos marring hot bodies-" he eyed Draco's arms, and Draco was keenly aware of how his sleeveless silk tunic emphasized not only what little muscling he had, but also his pure, unMarked skin. "Even as far as her love-life goes…" and he trailed off, inky blue eyes fixed on Draco's.

"Oh?" Draco prompted when he didn't seem about to continue.

Blaise smiled, eyes glittering, looking like he had a tremendous secret. That expression made the two steps he took closer to Draco seem almost natural. "She's found a much better currency than the fear your family and your master rely on…"

"What-" Draco tried to ask, but Blaise interrupted.

"What currency? Is it that difficult to guess?" It wasn't, really – Blaise had inherited his mother's amazing genes.

His mouth was too dry to answer, but Blaise knew that he knew, apparently, because he leaned in, nose-to-nose with Draco. "I'll share some of it with you…" and his lips engulfed Draco's.

He let out a sort of snuffling gasp against Blaise's cheek, but the boy whose lips were sealed to his and whose tongue was pillaging his mouth didn't notice a bit.

Draco had coldly dissected the more confusing of his adolescent feelings and yearnings, inevitably leading to certain irrefutable conclusions about just how broad his personal preferences ranged. Till now, though, he had only acted on his feelings for females. Kissing Blaise was a revelation on every level, and they were broken apart only when a fuddy-duddy Law Enforcement official let out a very appalled noise. Smooth as anything, Blaise reached around Draco, fingers grazing his bum, and snagging Draco's wand from his back pocket, whipped it out and quickly cast a Silencio, an Oblivio, and a Repelling spell to send the man back out into the corridor.

"Now," he drew back a step from Draco, hands on Draco's shoulders, "where were we?"

Draco tried to give him an icy glare. To his alarm, it came out about as strong as a kitten's. Blaise's declaration against the Dark Lord, his kiss, and that blindingly fast wand-work, combined with the very erotic feel of Blaise's hands on his arse and the terribly phallic symbolism of Blaise grabbing Draco's wand…

The pounding pulse of a headache was gone, as was the typical constant background drone in his mind as he repeated his father's instructions to himself. It was bliss.

Giving up completely, he suggested, "More snog-" and then broke off into a cough when the bathroom door swung open.

Blaise used a spell, "Muffliato," that Draco had never heard before – all the noise of the party outside, and the shuffling of the Ministry official, dropped off to a low murmur. "Go on," Blaise nodded to him.

With a quick look to the Ministry man, who was paying no mind to them, Draco continued in a low tone. "More snogging." It came out demanding, needy.

Blaise teasingly shook a finger at him. "Now, Draco, I hardly think this is the place…" Draco wanted to scream – who had bloody started it in the first place? "I think," Blaise continued, "that we need to continue this elsewhere."

"Hah," Draco scoffed, hollowly, "don't I wish."

"I've got a place in the Canary Islands if you're interested…"

"What, you think I'm not?" Draco asked bitterly. "I can't think of anything that sounds more incredible than getting out from under the eye of –" he gulped, and smoothly continued, "my relatives…"

Blaise acquired a frighteningly wicked look. "I've an idea."

"Three scarier words the world has not yet heard," Draco said dryly, forcing himself to be distant, sarcastic, to get this incredible, divine-tasting boy to stop teasing him with visions of escape. There was no escape for anyone at Malfoy Manor, he'd seen that well enough last month, with Professor Burbage. Not unexpectedly, bile rose in his throat and he gave his thoughts a hard tug away from those gory thoughts.

Of course, that left him standing in a bathroom with Blaise's blue eyes centimeters from his own. "You with me, Dray?"

"Tell me the idea," he said in an exhausted tone.

If he'd been sensible he'd probably have waited to present this idea to Lucius formally, in his library, but that course of action meant returning to Malfoy Manor, and, clinging to Blaise's scheme with all his might, Draco couldn't bear that thought.

"Father, I may have over-stepped my mandate slightly, but I believe you'll find my actions to be commendable in the course of the Cause."

Immediate displeasure flashed across Lucius's face like lightening, but as Draco described his discovery that the son of the Widow Zabini was sympathetic to their Lord's cause, and proposed retreating to the boy's villa to work on 'turning him,' Lucius's face sank into inscrutable thoughtfulness.

Besides, if he'd done it formally, Narcissa wouldn't have been present. Lucius was frowning, about to lay down his edict on the situation. "Dearest," Narcissa murmured, and he leaned down to give her his ear. His parents had perfected, over the course of their double life, the art of speaking nearly inaudibly, but that had only presented to Draco a new challenge – learning to read lips.

His parents were canny – Narcissa bent her face so that to any onlookers she could have simply been whispering some simpering thought to his father, and so Draco's line of sight was less than perfect. He caught important scraps, at least: 'ideal change of scenery' – 'his own safety, and a chance to do something' – 'my sister' – (Lucius's lips thinned, at that point, and Draco was minutely cheered to think his father had as much distaste for Aunt Bella as he himself did.) – 'prove himself,' Narcissa said, with a determined look on her face, and Draco saw his father let out a breath.

Draco let one out as well, and waited impatiently for his father to officially approve so he could go grab up Blaise, tell him the good news, and high-tail it out of the Ministry.

Life in Tenerife Island was idyllic. Draco floated through his time there in a haze of blissful peace. He had forgotten what living like a normal boy entailed, forgotten that it was possible to spend a summer by the pool, without keeping half an ear cocked for the sounds of someone sneaking up on him, or of blood-curdling screams. Every night was spent chugging beers, throwing each other into the pool, or playing endless games of strip Exploding Snap.

And that was the other thing – it was incredible enough to live normally, but with Blaise, 'normal' wasn't the right word to describe their day-to-day life. Heavenly, or paradisiacal, might come closer. Blaise's villa was luxurious where a Malfoy vacation house – if Malfoys took vacations – would have been ostentatious. The entire complex was dotted with courtyards, the better to soak up the African sun, and each courtyard was filled with silken hammocks, delicately tinkling fountains, double-wide chaise lounges put to good use by the two boys… which brought Draco up against the issue of Blaise himself.

His conversation was as sparkling as champagne, and as deft as his wizard's chess skills. His constant ideas for mischief would have been wearying, if they weren't just so compellingly amusing. His body was to die for, all slimness and paleness crowned with darkness, and muscles, muscles that made Draco shiver, for once glorying at the thought of being under someone else's power. Blaise was an expert at making Draco shiver, and knew it, and would get that infuriating smirk right before he was about to make Draco gasp for mercy, right before he was going to laugh and laugh at the shorter blonde writhing beneath him.

And the day, about a week after arriving, when Blaise spontaneously Transfigured bales of driftwood into planks, and with a handful of little thin pointy things and a hammer, constructed a raft with seemingly no magic at all – another of the bizarre habits the boy had that fascinated Draco. Then he summoned a pod of dolphins – who did that kind of thing? – and had them tow the raft out to sea, where Draco and Blaise floated, lulled by waves and baking sun, into a strangely peaceful, almost meditative state. After than afternoon, Draco's nightmares became a great deal less frequent. Then the sun went down, Blaise summoned a few beers from shore, and when they finally arrived, the boys got a good deal rowdier, stripping to leave themselves exposed to the cool night air, and, with little else to do out at sea, exploring each other far more thoroughly than they had yet.

Draco didn't mind losing his virginity, in that sense, to Blaise, and he thought doing so at sea was a rather nice lark. But it was a bit disconcerting that the loon insisted on being called "Lord Neptune, Ruler of the Oceans," the whole time.

Fun, was the simplest, and most strangely apt, way to describe the boy that Draco was falling for. And 'falling for him' was the only way he could phrase it that didn't sound completely… 'wet-blanket-ish,' in his head. Until the day they conjured a tiger cub for the amusement of it, realized it had escaped, and discovered tigers' love of swimming. They'd had to swim so far around the coast, chasing it, that Blaise's villa was out of sight around the side of the mountain. By the time they caught the cursed thing, neither Draco nor the cub could move, lying exhausted on the sand as twilight set in.

Blaise, as always, still hadn't burned up all his energy, and teased the now-cranky cub into playing – playing that quickly turned into the tiger taking swipes at him. When Draco, panicked at a slash of red on Blaise's ribcage, pelted over to his friend and turned the tiger into a canary easy as blinking, and Blaise chuckled at the look on his face, used Draco's healing charm to vanish his scratches, and tackled him into the sand…

Draco knew it was time to get used to the idea of 'falling' for someone, because the only other words that fit now were completely beyond the pale of sappiness.

A.N. - And we're off into the land of complete absurdity! And by absurdity I mean serious deliciousness. Ginny enters the story next chapter. And while I've got your attention in my preliminary author's note, I'd like to let out a quick little rant - this is NOT going to be one of those - "And the minute their eyes met they realized they were fated to be together for all eternity in a beautiful three-way symmetry." Ginny, Draco and Blaise are NOT long-lost-fated-soulmates, they're just in love, which is plenty awesome enough on its own, people! And HELL NO, they're not vampires or elementals or bonded Three Musketeers. (Not that I don't love "Unexpected" as much as the next Dracademented fangirl!! But reading story after story in which this magic switch goes off and from then on they walk with mysterious synchronous movements through life together and have trippy mind-reading powers... NO.) We're going to do this the hard way. They're three wildly different people and it's sooooo much more fun that way because then they hex the hell out of each other. And maybe have Angry Sex.