Smoke

smoke

A HP slash!fic by Abaddon.

“Why, bleeding is breathing

You're hiding, underneath the smoke in the room

Try, bleeding is believing”

~Smoke, Natalie Imbruglia.

Sitting on the ruffled teal sheets, the young man looked around dully, making no attempt to move.  Finally he sighed and, running a hand through red hair, he looked down at the spot on the sheets.  It was wet due to recent sex, and he swore, letting fly a string of curse words: they seemed to hang heavy in the air, as if it were some kind of gelatin.

He’d have to change the sheets before he slept.

The man seemed in his early twenties, still showing freckles that made him look even younger.  His body was lean without being thin, and lanky, as if he wasn’t entirely sure how to use all his limbs.  He looked dishevelled, hair askew, and well and truly fucked.  There were bite marks all along the curve of his neck and jaw, across nipples, stomach, and thighs.  His armpits and upper arms were bruising already, as if the pressure used to lick and nip was immense.  Along his stomach and pectorals, fine lines of red gleamed, protesting, amongst the fine orange-red chest hair, evidence of nails raking the flesh.

Worst of all was the obvious pain whenever he moved, the spread of his legs and position of the wet spot making it plainly clear he had been fucked well into next week by someone for whom gentility was neither a concern nor a virtue.

Reaching over with trembling hands, he grabbed a cigarette lighter from the small nightstand, nearly knocking over a half-full glass of whiskey.  He rolled over, whimpering in the process, and opened up the nightstand drawer, quickly withdrawing a tatty packet of cigarettes and slammed the drawer shut.  As he opened them up, the only sounds were of the scrunching foil and the slowly turning fan above as it attempted to shift the fetid air, with it’s smell of sex and sweat.

Flicking open the lighter with a small movement, he drew out a cigarette and stuck it in mouth, lighting it quickly.  Puffing on it for a few moments, Ron Weasley exhaled smoke into the already murky atmosphere, and seemed closer to deadened peace than before, the cigarette resting in his right hand.

Of course, when he realised what he was doing, Ron couldn’t help but laugh.

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It’s so damn cliché, really.  Isn’t it?  The post-sex smoke.  Although usually it’s shared by both parties…and he doesn’t even stay long enough to leave an impression in the sheets.

You’d think I’d have gotten used to it by now: six years of quiet fucking on-the-side, a cold, empty bed my only reminder.  But then, I know how important this day is to him: he couldn’t afford to linger, after all.  He has to go home and get ready – it’s not every day you celebrate your first wedding anniversary.

Which reminds me.  I should get going myself; I can’t afford to be too late, really, and I want to be there for him.  Not the him I’ve been having sex with, of course, not Draco.  But his husband.  My best friend.  Harry.

I should feel something, I know.

Guilt, or remorse, or just plain…self-loathing.  I don’t though; I did, at first perhaps, but it became…routine, and in a sense it doesn’t feel wrong.

Because it’s just sex.  It’s never been anything else.  For a few hours, Draco wants…needs someone to control, to dominate, to…break.  And I…need to be broken and dominated, I guess.

It started….six years ago, come to think of it.  I was aimlessly wandering the corridors before bedtime; just one of those moments where you have an itch to do something, except you don’t know what it is, and so you go damn near insane in the finding.

Finally, I decide to take a bath.  That would mean sneaking into the Prefect’s bathroom, but I’ve done it before. 

And so, making sure that no-one is following me, I creep inside…only to find Draco Malfoy reclining in the bath, buck naked.

I stand there, transfixed.  He’s pale, and somehow it doesn’t look like he’s ill…it just looks right.  He’s muscled, but not overly so…just definition from all that Quidditch practice I guess.  I’ve been somewhat unfair to him; it seems he really does put a lot of effort in, instead of relying on Daddy’s payouts.

But no amount of money…could buy a body like that.

He rises from the water, the clear liquid beading off his smooth skin, curling down the faint lines of muscle on arms and chest…and my gaze moves down as if caught, ever down and….

Oh Merlin.

“Like the view, Weasley?  Or have you decided to be a statue?”

I jump, startled from my reverie, and slide on the wet tiled floor, falling over on my arse.  He starts laughing, and I think I hate him more than I ever did.  Stupid prat, really.  I mean, he’s always been that way.  Determined to show his control, how easy he can rile us.

And I’ve always been an easy target: Harry is more likely to just ignore it or tell him to go away.  I’m the one who tells him to fuck off and then thumps him.

Usually just when Snape can see me.

There was, however, no Snape to see this night.  No Harry to hold me back, either.

I’ve always hated Malfoy, for so many reasons.  Mainly for having everything I never had and still being a total wanker.  I mean, honestly! He’s got more money then God, he’s smart, he’s capable of vaguely intelligent conversation (well, his insults are kinda snappy), and he’s got a body that I swear is criminal in parts of Kent.

Not that I’d checked of course.

Not that one of the reasons I laughed at him in first year was it seemed so…impossible that an eleven year old could be sex on a stick.

Don’t get me wrong.  It was never like, or affection.  It was just lust.

And I guess as I lay panting on the floor, Malfoy standing over me, naked, he must have seen it in my eyes.  And it amused him. The idea that he could never beat the Boy Who Lived, but he could seduce his best friend and fuck him senseless.

Which he then proceeded to do.

And I needed it, more than even I knew.  He was almost gentle in a way, when we were together, kissing me softly and calling me his whore.  There was no point in him forcing me; the greatest victory would be to make want it, make me want him.

I did.  I just wanted him.  Wanted him inside me.  Filled by him.  Wanted to hear him, a Malfoy, moan with pleasure as he got sucked off by a Weasley.  It was…my victory, I guess.  The fact that I had the tight little virgin arse that he liked fucking so much.  That my lips and tongue could do things to him neither of us had dreamed of.  Of course, it felt fucking good as well.  For both of us.  I…began to need him, like an addiction.   Like he was a God.  And I had to worship him.

Yes, I’m fully aware of the implications of that phrase.

For one year, it was brilliant sex, with mockery and fights in between.  We certainly weren’t any better behaved for the fucking, but then, he knew he had me.  Knew I was addicted to his form, even if it meant being late for Divination cause I was kneeling in from of him in some god forsaken corridor, feeling his fingers in my hair, pulling me forward – and I loved every minute of it.  There was a kind of…perverse pride in knowing that I did a job well done; that someone wanted me for some other reason than just a friend, or a ‘sidekick’.

He wanted me; he didn’t like me but he wanted me, and that was enough.

He always asked about Harry, or Potter as he called him.  I thought he was searching for weaknesses, vulnerabilities – a way to break Harry as he was breaking me.

I should have known better, really.  I mean, Draco’s never been the self-aware type.  He pretends different, but really, when to do otherwise would be to admit he actually has emotions, he looks the other way.

So after nearly a year of us quietly fucking on the side (well, sometimes not so quietly; silencing charms had to be used on several occasions), I drifted apart somewhat from my friends.  Certainly I didn’t have a clue what was about to happen.  Harry arranged for Draco to meet him before curfew one night – he told Draco that he’d fancied the pants off him for the past three years.  Draco, of course, couldn’t resist.  Cue the snog to end all snogs, and the bloody violins.

It wasn’t that I was jealous; Merlin, no.  It was just that when Harry found someone, it made me realise how I didn’t have that someone.  Which made it easier for me to keep seeing Draco, because although he wasn’t everything, and he was quite probably in love with someone else (ie. Harry), he still needed me.

Don’t get me wrong.  It wasn’t as if Harry and Draco didn’t end up having really great sex – in fact, they did it about a month after they were officially ‘going out’.  Truth be told, Harry came to me the day afterwards and started telling me about it.  In his joy of sexual discovery, it seems he wanted everyone to be as happy as he was.  He was halfway through describing how he’d lost his virginity in disturbing detail before I made him stop.  I certainly didn’t want to have that image in my head, and yet I couldn’t escape it.

I couldn’t sleep that night, pursued by the disturbing image of Harry and Draco in bed, constantly invigorating each other with hungry kisses, or making love to each other, wrapped in the other’s embrace.

Draco and I…never made love.  And the only touching we did was the purely sexual kind; if it didn’t get us off, there was no point.  Besides, it was the only time I’d ever heard of…Draco not being in control.  To put it bluntly, Draco had always been top.  He’d nearly belted me when I suggested otherwise; not for me, per se, but the idea of anyone dominating him seemed to fill Draco with a mixture of fear and disgust.

Yet, from what Harry was telling me, they spent the entire night sliding gently into one another, each in turn bringing the other slowly to the blinding point, and beyond.

It sounded almost…sacred.

And that’s why I think Draco kept needing me.  It wasn’t a question of want anymore; he wanted Harry – he had Harry.  But he couldn’t control Harry, and rather than admit that – rather than admit part of him would rather die than try to control Harry, he needed me.  To convince him that he was still the same old emotionally abusive user as always.

I think that was part of his fantasy: look, I don’t love Harry, because if I did I certainly wouldn’t be screwing his best friend.  In fact, this is part of my dastardly plan.  Screw the Weasel, tell Potter, and break his heart.  Right.  Just like I could walk away from this any time I want.

Draco.  Meet self-denial.  You’ll get along famously.

And so he fucked me, and loved Harry.  While I noticed that our sex happened less often, and previously when we might have chatted…we didn’t.  The chat was hardly deep and meaningful: totally inconsequential, but still there, about homework or Quidditch or….well, not much else than homework or Quidditch.  But it existed, and then it slipped away.  It was as if we couldn’t talk, because talk reminded him of mundane things.  Like Harry.  And why he shouldn’t be here with me, and why he should be with Harry.  Why he wanted to be with Harry.  I mean, we did see them in public.  It was bloody obvious.  Draco would get this puppy-dog look and totally fixate on him.  We were never awkward around each other because when Harry was around, that’s all Draco thought about.  He could barely remember the fact we’d been fucking in a supplies cupboard, say, the previous night.  Because although Draco might have spent 6 out of 7 nights with Harry – not even having sex, but just talking and laughing and holding – the one night he wasn’t with Harry, he was with me.

And the sex itself got more brutal, as Draco had more and more to prove, more and more to hide from.  He couldn’t afford to be gentle, or even fondly mocking.  By the time we’d graduated, he was barely touching me, just fucking me: making it all about his pleasure and his needs.  I still came though, and so I guess I got something out of it.

But in the end, I think I started doing it for Harry.  It seems….bizarre, doesn’t it?  That I see fucking his boyfriend (and then his fiancé, and now his husband) as some kind of benefit.  You see, if Draco was sating that side of him by breaking me, again and again, revelling in the fact I wanted it…then he wasn’t trying to break Harry.

He could still look at Harry as if he was perfect, eternal, unconquerable.  That look he gets when he forgets to be nasty and brushes a lock of hair off Harry’s forehead, almost enraptured he gets to touch the black messy locks, or the satisfied smirk we see when Harry tells Draco he loves him, for no particular reason other than it being true, and Draco makes some smart comment about how “Potter is falling right into my trap,” and yet looks fit enough to burst with happiness.

Funny idea, really.  Draco Malfoy and happiness.  He is, though he’d never admit it.  Happy I mean.  Equates it with weakness, and therefore A. Bad. Thing.  Like love, or compassion, or kindness.  Or losing.  All one and the same, to him.

Yet he can’t help trying to break something, because it’s all he’s known.  There’s either victory or nothing, even when the conquest is hollow.  He doesn’t care of course, as long as he wins.  And without me, he’d try to break Harry.  Not that he’d succeed; I think Harry’s too strong for that – but it would be a betrayal of both Harry’s feelings and his own, and Draco knows that, so he buries that part of himself.

And releases it with me.  Yet….the sex has gotten harsher, more brutal…and at the same time, more distant.  It’s like even when he’s fucking me senseless, almost so hard I can’t walk, his mind is elsewhere.  Dreaming of Harry, and love, and the blissful intimacy of holding, and being held.

He’s slipping away from me, I can tell.  Coming quietly to the realisation that he is indeed, totally and completely in love with one Harold James Potter, and wants nothing more than to make him happy.  Because in doing so, it makes Draco happy.  Wants nothing more than to hold Harry safe against all his demons and protect him from the world, and himself.   The rest of the world can go to hell: Draco only needs Harry, and nothing else.

When he realises it, of course, he’ll have two choices: escape or acceptance.  He could run, of course.  Leave everything behind, tell Harry he’s been fucking his best friend, tell him it was all a lie.  All to see that hollow victory, to see the broken heart and know that he’s finally won.  Him.  Draco Malfoy.  Beat.  Harry Potter.  Or, he could accept.  Know that Harry is the one thing that holds him together.  And vice versa.  Understand that it doesn’t make him weak at all, and that if he accepts he’s lost this battle, and should just surrender, then the surrender will be sweeter than any victory.

For his own sake, if not Harry’s, I hope that Draco makes the right decision.  I think he will, you know.  I think he’d tear down everything that is, everything he thought he could be – just to keep looking at Harry the way he does.

When that day comes, he won’t need me anymore.

Ron Weasley took one last drag of the dying cigarette and exhaled, before scrabbling off the bed.  He had to get ready.

I wonder if today is that day?

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Fin.