Though the Night Yield No Glimmer

THOUGH THE NIGHT YIELD NO GLIMMER

The idea of forever was too slippery to grasp.

Draco had started to measure his life in steps. Fourteen steps from his camp bed to the communal bathroom. Three and a half steps from the shower to the toilet. Twenty-seven stairs to the ground floor, seven steps to the door, sixteen across the grubby, rubbish-strewn courtyard to the back of the restaurant. Four steps between sink and cooking peninsular, ducking his head to avoid the ornamental copper pans. But three, or even two, when the restaurant got busy.

Rewind, retrace, repeat as necessary.

* * *

There were times when he woke up with his heart racing and desperately attempting to claw its way out his body via his throat, leaving it raw and his voice scratchy. After a while, he realised that those were the times that he cried out in his sleep. One or two of the Eastern European waitresses, who came and went more often than the garbage truck, had complained about it and Draco initially had no idea what they were talking about. For most of them, however, the hours between six in the morning and six in the evening were not intended for sleep but merely an extra stretch of time that God had provided for working through. Mostly, they didn't notice his cries and wouldn't care if they did.

Gregory never complained. But then again, he wouldn't.

* * *

Gregory had never been 'Greg.' Vincent had morphed into 'Vince,' Theodore was 'Theo' -- or 'Dora' if he was being cheeky. This was most of the time, mainly because of the fact that he got called a girl's name for having an innate sarcastic streak. Even Pansy got 'Pan.'

For a short time, while Draco had been allowed to call Blaise 'Zab,' he'd called Draco 'Mal.' Zab-and-Mal was a configuration that haunted Draco, particularly in these later days when he'd been forced to assume the name David Marley.

'Gregory' fitted in just as easily in both worlds, much as Gregory himself did. If he held any yearning for the old life and the old people, if he hankered after what had been basely torn from him, he never said a word. He was just there, in the same way that mortar was just there. Vince had been a brick: A bit dim and boring but with certain desirable traits, such as being able to lift people up by their necks. The rest of them were tapestries, wallpaper, oil portraits. Decoration. Some of them -- Blaise -- were something you wanted because it made other people jealous.

Vince had done the talking, such as it was, in that friendship. Pansy chattered like a jay; Blaise had a way of speaking that put you in mind of verbal velvet, and Theo's nasal drawl never ceased. Gregory had sat there, sometimes with a quill. Perhaps he was listening. Although his comprehension would surely have been limited enough to negate any pleasure that could be obtained from such an occupation.

Now, it was so silent that Draco wanted to scream just to fill up the dead space.

* * *

There was no such thing as privacy in the hostel. The landlord of the place, who may or may not have been the owner of the restaurant, probably knew what the term meant but thought that it was a privilege solely reserved for the middle classes. Certainly immigrants from the ex-Communist states and other people who couldn't provide things like references or work permits didn't deserve privacy as well. Draco hoped the landlord believed in reincarnation. Draco would make a deal with any god willing to bring him back as a Latvian labourer, or, failing that, a stick insect.

The rent was low. It couldn't possibly be otherwise, given the quality of the accommodation. If pressed, 'nonexistent' covered pretty much all bases. At the same time, it was all that Draco and Gregory could afford. Draco had complained once, at the start, when he was still in the denial stage of his abject despair and thought that he'd wake up one morning and things would have gone back to how they should be, with pristine sheets and lovers and the scent of freshly-brewed coffee at breakfast.

"I'd like to see you find better," the landlord had retorted, sneering. "No CV, no work experience -- no exam results. Hell, boy, you don't even have a birth certificate! I'm doing you a favour, letting you work here. Anyone else would think you were on the run."

Draco had almost said, "Not any more," but he stopped himself in time. No use in adding 'Potential criminal record' to the illustrious list. He'd contented himself with a burning glare at the man, which had earned him a week of saucepan shifts.

Draco hadn't realised how easy it was to crush someone's spirit. Forget Cruciatus, forget killing your parents, the way to break someone, really break them, was to make them scrape congealed grease off fifty saucepans every night. At least with Cruciatus the tears you cried had some basis in noble suffering, at least rage at your parents' death could be excused and was even dignified; but scrubbing the dirty dishes of rich Muggles ended it for Draco. He was thoroughly shamed, completely demeaned and he handed over three-quarters of his wages to the man who supplied them without another quibble.

Once, Gregory had said out of the blue, "I could hit him. You know, really."

Draco knew what he meant by that. Gregory had always had a mean left hook. He'd knocked out one of team of the Aurors that had captured him; so far as Draco knew the man had never woken up.

"No," said Draco, too broken to even contemplate the pleasing image of the landlord in a pool of blood at Gregory's feet. Too weary to wonder if that would fix anything. Too heartsick to want anything, really, but a good long sleep on a real bed.

And that was the end of that.

* * *

There are five or six camp beds in the room, which Draco is convinced was once some kind of storage loft. The floors are unstripped wood, so they both learned not to walk around barefoot. The one bare light bulb only gets replaced if you're willing to pay an exorbitant amount out of your wages for it. Sometimes the waitresses snap and go to the local Waitrose to buy a replacement, but Gregory and Draco have found it far more cost-effective to learn to navigate in the dark.

They hardly ever trip over beds or each other any more. Draco hardly ever pretends he's lost any more, just so that Gregory, who has better night vision than he does, will creak out of his bed and lead Draco over to his own. Gregory doesn't seem to need real human contact, but Draco knows that if he can't touch another person at least occasionally he'll go mad.

Gregory doesn't realise his ruse. Or if he does, he doesn't object, so it works for everyone -- in the mean, crabbed little way that defines life now. Touching Gregory's thick palm in the dark constitutes an acceptable relationship; having only twenty-one soup bowls to wash instead of sixty makes for a good day.

The walls are sporting mould at their corners and large damp patches across their breasts. In the dark of very early morning, Draco makes shapes out of them using the weak light of the one streetlamp in the alley below. One edge makes a passable castle, if you squint. If you include certain parts of the mould you can make a sort of dragon, albeit one whose tail lies in three segments.

But the real picture is the one right in the middle, showing two bodies wrapped around each other. Draco doesn't even have to stare for that one to unfold from the lobes and tendrils of water-stain. It's just there, always, and Draco has to look at it differently so that it'll turn into something else. He can't bear to look at that shape for too long.

Draco had read about unbearable pain, during the homework assignments he had to do -- once, so long ago. It was always related to terrible curses or potions or spells, distanced from him by pages and print, with a beginning and an end. He'd never realised that you could suffer unbearable pain just by being alive.

* * *

The bathroom is the smallest battleground in the world. There are six people trying to wash themselves in a space just a bit taller than Draco's school trunk. Technically the boiler does exist, although it seems to have very little to do with heating water. At the start of its cycle, it produces a lukewarm spray which changes to an ice-cold dribble faster than Weasley could once lose points from Snape. One part of Draco -- the one that once luxuriated under boiling hot waterfalls for an hour or more a day -- is amazed at the pitched fury that centres around what is little more than a hose taped to the untiled walls with duct tape, in a bath that is stained brown with a slim ring of white around the rim.

All the same, it doesn't stop him from getting into violent tussles with some of the more aggressive Russians who think that they deserve the first and, on average, best shower. Gregory usually intervenes if it looks like Draco is losing, but Draco doesn't need him most of the time. He's got permanently healing scratches on his neck, which is where the women always go for, but he's becoming quicker at getting out of the way when they raise their knees. Women are predictable, but for some reason they don't expect him to try and bite their breasts or claw at their eyes.

Gregory has the last shower -- when it's in its spluttering death-by-asphyxiation stage -- without fail. It rather surprises Draco that he makes such an effort at all. Then again, Draco never noticed him much before this. He'd rather assumed that Gregory ate like a horse and had the same standard of personal hygiene.

He was unfair and he was also wrong. Acute suffering and living the life of a poverty-stricken Muggle haven't changed much.

* * *

Sometimes the women bring men back with them. They are always short or swarthy and as hairy and ugly as if they'd just dropped from trees. They fill the room with a miasma of cigarette smoke. Since Draco has never, despite much trying, beaten anyone in his life, he joins them. Soon what little remains of his wages after paying the rent are going on cigarettes. Gregory buys the food, but Draco eats very little of it; Draco's offered to share his fags, but Gregory never takes him up on it. Draco reckons he could survive on the scraps in the kitchen if Gregory did decide to stop shelling out on bread and apples -- food is utterly tasteless to him nowadays.

During the early morning when they try to sleep, there comes the clink of bedsprings, horrible slick skin sounds and guttural moans. Draco recites spells backwards, thinks up ways of killing Potter, remembers all the times his father brought him presents, recalls even that day of his trial and expulsion from the wizarding world. They are all as painful as hell but far better than actively listening to what's going on around him. Gregory snores through every one. The only good thing, if it can be called that, is that none of these men last long.

The last vestige of his old life is that Draco feels smug by comparison. Mostly thanks to Blaise, he could stay on the edge for hours.

The women and their horrible, desolate sex depress him. The rest of his life is like a grey fog. When he gets an erection, it's inexplicable -- a surprise and also a nuisance. What has he got to be aroused by? Pansy was the first proof that women did nothing for him, so hearing the waitresses in their desperate mimicry of true passion is a more effective dampener than being caught out by a naked house elf.

Still, it happens. Usually when he is as warm as he got in his excuse for a bed, when Gregory is padding back across the floor from his late shower -- surprisingly quiet despite his size-ten boots -- and when dawn is starting to bleed into the sky.

Gregory is often awake, his eyes gleaming in the half-darkness as he stared up at the ceiling at ... what? The ceiling, most likely. Gregory doesn't have the imagination to see troubling pictures there.

After a while Draco gets used to it. It's like being at school, without the oft-heard "Silencio" and the other useful spells and the thick curtains. Insofar as it can be, it's comforting. Draco's teeth find a groove in his lower lip to bite down on and although he can't help the fact that his breathing gets harsh and ragged in the stillness or that his digging heels scrape along the sheets, he feels he does his best.

It's also quite possible that Gregory doesn't realise what he's doing, of course. He's as sexless as a dead log.

* * *

Draco grasps one day just how much Gregory has saved him. Washing dishes is a thankless, monotonous task, but Gregory's taken to it like a fish to dirty dishwater. He's methodical and he's also fast, once he'd got the hang of not dropping the plates on to the draining board from the height of a foot.

Draco, on the other hand, has been cursed with an active imagination. It wants to be away from this hot, dank place with the strip lighting and the lifeless gleam of metal. Even if 'away' is only a featureless fog deep in the depths of Draco's subconscious, then that's fine. That's better. That means that Draco can be left scrubbing the same plate for half-an-hour, while the dirty cutlery and crockery pile up around him like teetering sculptures.

That's where Gregory quietly stops Draco from losing his job and what livelihood he has by tipping the extra plates into his own sink and washing them at an even more accelerated rate. There are complaints about food particles stuck to the plates, but there's always complaints about that. Some sous-chefs have nothing better to do than rub clean plates with their grubby fingers, it seems, and send them back to be rewashed.

Gregory appears to realise that this is better than complaints about a lack of plates because one plongeur isn't washing them fast enough.

Draco remembers to thank him one day. All he gets in return is a flat-eyed stare and an expression that suggests -- if Gregory's still, planed face can suggest anything -- that Draco doesn't know what he's talking about.

Draco's starting to think that Gregory's right.

* * *

The day he found Gregory in bed with the newest, blondest Estonian waitress was the second worst of his life.

His shift had been torturous. The cold water taps weren't working and the constant refilling of the sinks with scalding water had made Draco's hands swell and redden like two bloated apples. There was a critic eating at the restaurant, so the chefs were in uproar, abandoning perfectly acceptable dishes because they didn't have the right kind of garnish.

In addition to his usual washing duties, Draco was suddenly a dish-scraper as well and there was far more scraping than there should have been. When he got back to the loft, he found that the bread had been nibbled at by some kind of rodent. Gregory had disappeared, as he often did -- 'walks' was his alibi for what he did during those excursions, which for him was singularly illuminating -- so Draco had scrabbled together some money to buy more bread. When he got back, he realised he'd dropped his half-full cigarette packet somewhere along the way.

Exhausted, dispirited and more near tears than he'd admit to anyone, least of all himself, Draco didn't register the familiar sounds until he kicked open the door, which had a tendency to stick when it rained.

With the eye for detail that sheer panic bestows, Draco took in Gregory's large, square hands resting in the dip of the woman's hips, and her tangled hair whipping over her shoulder blades as she writhed. A continuous babble of encouragement and appreciation was spilling from her lips; it was unintelligible, either due to the language barrier or ecstasy. Gregory was silent and damn near motionless, staring up at her with the same limpid gaze he always wore.

Draco did the first thing that leapt to mind. He dropped the bread and trod on it as he stepped forward to scream, "Stop it! Stopitstopitstopit! Get off him, you trollop!"

Whether the woman understood him was debatable, but she scrambled away with all haste, hightailing into the bathroom. Gregory scrabbled for the sheet, looking embarrassed for the first time Draco could remember since he'd accidentally Transfigured Pansy's Astrology homework into a pair of lacy suspenders in third year.

Draco dropped to his knees, gathering up the spoiled bread with trembling fingers to give Gregory some time to garb himself. When at last he stood before Draco, the jeans too short and the jumper far too long in the sleeves, giving him the look of a blushing orang-utan, Draco deigned to acknowledge him.

"Don't touch that whore again." Draco struggled to keep his voice even. He looked up to see if Gregory registered this; he had to crook his neck, because Gregory was six foot two and Draco barely scraped in at five eight. Gregory's face was blank, but the skin under the dark stubble was flushed with heat.

"Okay," said Gregory. He shrugged.

Later that day, before their shift started, the woman tried to ingratiate herself with Gregory, stroking his arm and leaning up to press a kiss into his wide neck.

He pushed her away, shaking his head. When she tried again, he gently took her by the arms and set her aside, saying, "No," for good measure.

A few days later, she moved on with one of the swarthy, chain-smoking men. Gregory didn't appear to notice.

There was one slow night when Draco's curiosity got the better of him. "Was she any good?" he asked, after hissing to get Gregory's attention. Gregory approached freeing dishes of dirt like someone else would approach making war, directing every scrap of attention and every spare muscle towards it and obliterating it. There wouldn't have been any idle chitchat even if Gregory knew what that was.

Gregory said, "Who?"

* * *

When Draco realises he can't summon up Pansy's face, he panics. After a moment it comes back: Haughty, dark, with an upturned nose and framed by all that slick, shining hair.

It's a shock, all the same, so he decides to do something about it. He retrieves some empty sugar packets from the bins and steals one of the cook's Biro pens. He finds it difficult to fit his fingers around after a quill. Writing is awkward for a time, not least because he's almost forgotten how to shape the letters. But he perseveres, trying to make a roll call of the dead and the living dead.

Theo Nott: used to be short and weedy. Habit of teasing Blaise about his lavender parchment. Was killed in an Auror raid led by the Weasel (I think).

Vince Crabbe: One of my best friends. Used to be able to make Gregory laugh. (?) Used to put a bowl around his head and cut off the hair. Died of Killing Curse. Neville Longbottom did it. Was aiming for Bellatrix. I was there.

After that, the memories come thick and fast. They are more painful when they revolve around the living instead of the dead. Pansy even spent some time with them in the loft, working as a waitress, sleeping with the landlord, eventually working her way out. Pansy could ingratiate like she meant it. Draco didn't blame her for abandoning them, him and Gregory, even though he resented it. Pansy hadn't lost the will to fight; Draco had. It was as simple as that. Pansy was a Slytherin, after all.

Blaise was harder to forgive. Not that Draco would have found it easy to be charitable towards a lover who'd deserted him in any case, but the fact that Blaise had turned traitor to the other side rubbed an ocean's worth of salt into the wound.

All his mind wants to bring back, though, is the way Blaise's talented fingers had been able to wring cries of pleasure from him, and the taste of his mouth after he'd eaten plums.

Draco drops the sugar bags in the bin as he walks across to work the next morning.

* * *

Little by little, simply by staying when everyone left, Gregory and 'David' became part of the furniture. People even started calling Draco 'Dave,' which didn't bother him one way or another. It wasn't like they were calling him Mal. Gregory remained Gregory, as ever.

They got a promotion. They were now part-time waiters, with a raise that meant Draco could afford a twenty-a-day habit and Gregory could afford chocolate, most of which Draco ate. After the first night, when they had both finger-combed their hair in the hazy reflections the window provided, the landlord turned up with a mirror. It was a foot square, shipped in three places and rimed with rust, but Draco was very glad that it wasn't more revealing. What he saw was bad enough.

A mop of hair like fraying knots, for starters. It seemed to have been sapped of colour, drained away by the heat of the kitchen, turning it into a sort of dirty grey that matched his face. Nicotine stained his teeth into yellow fangs and his waxy skin produced several new, throbbing spots every day.

Gregory's face was squashed-up and brutish, his forehead non-existent and his hair like a bristle brush no matter how long he let it grow, but his frequent 'walks' and lack of food had made him lean and mean-looking. Draco, by comparison, just looked dead.

One night, after slipping his hand under his waistband not because he felt aroused, but because touching himself was the only thing he could think of that would let him escape his despair for a while, he whispered to the hateful dark, "I'm so ugly."

There was a rustle as Gregory shifted his bulk. The faint gleam of the lone street lamp gilded his features, giving him for a moment the look of a Greek statue hacked out of hard oak. Draco stared at him, wondering when Gregory's nose had turned aquiline. Had it always been like that? Draco shuddered because he realised he didn't know. His hands. resting on his bare stomach, felt ice cold.

Gregory's mouth opened, to Draco's surprise. It was a while before he said anything, though -- some things could always be relied on -- and Draco was nearly asleep when Gregory said, "You're beautiful."

So maybe he dreamed it.

* * *

On March 28, 2001 Draco laughed for the first time in four years.

The restaurant was holding a banquet for an intelligentsia sot who'd won some kind of literary award. Draco wasn't familiar with the works of the great Muggle writers and he thought it a bit of cheek to be calling anything that was Muggle 'great' in the first place, but in any case it seemed that a lot of alcohol was involved.

In addition to their usual white shirts, black trousers and white aprons -- supplied by the management, taken out of their wages -- they'd had to borrow black tailcoats and bow ties for the event. A whole swarm of extra staff were on duty. Draco was rather surprised that he and Gregory hadn't been relegated to dish-washing when there was such a crowd. Still, it was one of their serving nights and the place liked its routine, and liked not following it even better, on occasion.

Draco had no problem being obsequious. It was just a natural progression from the flattery he'd once used on teachers, except hollow. The punters lapped it up but Draco's mind was far, far away. Every so often he'd return to earth to find himself holding a wine bottle that cost more than he'd earn and squander in two months, fingers flared around the fluted neck and base tipping back on his palm and he'd wonder, not for the first time, how he'd sunk so low.

He'd look for Gregory during those times as well; Gregory who was always posted to the lovers' nooks and shaded booths, because he displayed so little interest in the customers and never bothered those who were more hungry for each other than for the food he was serving.

So it was during that night, when the swish of the tailcoat just, just let Draco imagine robes again, that Gregory pulled him aside, somewhere in the midst of one of the main courses.

"Show you something," he said. Draco obligingly let himself be led along by one arm to a lowered dais ringed by potted ferns. It was an area that was used in turn to seat customers waiting for tables, serve coffee to those who were finished, or as a dancing floor as occasion or the level of drunkenness required.

The conversation was a muted roar behind them as one hundred people drank their way through some of the finest food on offer. The dais was empty, or so Draco thought. Gregory brushed aside some fern fronds and beckoned him closer. Draco checked that no one was looking their way and leaned in next to Gregory, so close his stubble tickled Draco's cheek, and looked.

A bright young thing was sprawled on the floor, clearly so drunk that she'd passed out. Her silver dress, never a contender for the world's longest frock in the first place, had ridden up to the level of indecency at both ends. Draco wondered if that was what Gregory had dragged him over here to show off and nearly rolled his eyes. Gregory was slower to catch on than a blind baseball player, but surely even he had realised by now that Draco wasn't interested in girls that way?

Then he spotted the elderly gentleman, dressed in a very familiar grey double-breasted suit with a gold watch chain and extremely small spectacles. His photograph had been mounted on an easel in the lobby because he was the celebrated author.

Who was currently sitting with his fat little legs splayed near the girl's head, fumbling with a lobster trumpet. As Draco watched, he managed to co-ordinate getting the trumpet near the girl's ear and hallooed down it, "I say, I say! My dear, are you quite all right?"

It was completely and utterly ludicrous. Draco forgot how long he'd been on his feet and the cold shower he'd been forced to endure because of the craftiness of the current waitresses and the fact that his life was a black hole of despair; he laughed.

Gregory's hand touched his shoulder to pull him back to his duties. Every time he caught his friend's eye that night, however, Draco couldn't help but smile. One of the customers drunkenly offered to take his photograph, telling him he had a "ver' feline face, indeed, ver' unusual, I could get you excellent coverage." He pressed a card into Draco's hand before his irate wife pulled him away.

That night, in bed, Draco looked and looked but couldn't find the entwined bodies anywhere in the damp stain.

* * *

There were more black tie parties after that. The restaurant had got Michelin stars. Draco realised that this was all he ever knew. The hot, steamy kitchen ringed in silver metal. The lush surrounds of the restaurant. His bow tie and apron. Gregory's shovel-like hands, holding three or four plates up his arm. All these thoughts of wizards and wands, dark laughing mouths and the touch of another's hands, that was just a waking dream.

Draco grew more tired. He smoked more, ate less. Gregory picked up even more slack. He took to pointing Draco towards the bathroom and laying out his clothes on the bed. Reminding him to eat by throwing apples at him. Hiding his cigarettes. Bringing out his orders while Draco caught his breath by the oven.

The day Gregory had to dress him was the day Draco woke up. To everything.

Draco had managed as far as trousers and socks and one arm of his shirt, but that was as far as he'd got. He'd drifted into a dream, where there was sun and a lakeside and people laughed. Why did Draco think it actually existed? It couldn't have.

Gregory's hands were like landing flies, plucking at him, putting his arm in a sleeve, pulling buttons through holes, threading a bow tie under his collar.

His hands, on the back of Draco's neck.

His hands, on the back, Draco's neck, trembling.

Trembling against skin, Draco's neck, Gregory's fingers.

Draco blinked and his eyes opened on to a world he didn't know. In fear, he turned, stumbled, and Gregory's hard arm caught him. Draco clung to it like a buoy, and because he couldn't see a better way of dragging air into his protesting lungs, shoved his lips against Gregory's and stole his oxygen.

It was a kiss that lasted the smallest measurement of time possible. In that time, a new world was made.

Gregory's body was desperate and ungainly against Draco's, which was no surprise, but it fitted against it, which was a surprise. But Draco was desperate and ungainly too, and Gregory's mouth was warm and the strangled cries he made were so sweet.

It was afterwards that Draco remembered how Blaise had talked always, words honey-sweet and tormenting, turning Draco's mind into a giddy whirl of lust.

Gregory didn't say a word, although his moans were more eloquent than anything Blaise had ever been able to create.

And Draco finally understood.

* * *

Then one day Blaise came back for him.

"Pansy told me where to find you." Louche, dapper, leaning against the door-frame as if every opening was a place to pose. Draco looked up from his shirt buttons, fag hanging out of his mouth, and wrinkled his nose.

He thought: Six years.

He thought: Why now?

Once, those thoughts could have gone on and on and driven Draco wild with jealousy and the knowledge that there was nothing he could do to control the beautiful human panther before him.

Now, Draco knew about the claws.

Gregory lumbered out of the bathroom, his towel slung about his narrow hips, which were the one beautiful thing about him. More so because the rest of him was crude, rough, lacking in any grace of detail except where it couldn't be seen. His boots were unlaced and he nearly tripped on one, eyes fixed on the vision in the doorframe.

Draco's shot of jealousy was familiar. The cause, not so much.

"God, you're still keeping this oaf around?" Blaise's laugh was sleek and cruel as the wind rushing past a guillotine. "Has he grown any more brain cells yet?"

Draco thought about gems. How they were rare. But how the rarity only made them more precious.

He thought about the warm nights and how Gregory would touch his face, with expression of such stupid wonder, and say, "I love you."

He remembered how many times Blaise hadn't said that.

He wondered if there was much point in saying anything.

He ground the cigarette under his toe -- waste of half a good one, pity, but the gesture was necessary. "C'mon, Gregory," he said. Hand cupped for one second over tight, round arm muscle. "We have dishes to wash."

The End