Tonight

Tonight

by Katja

They met in the dungeons; they always did. Lucius had suggested some time ago that they relocate, perhaps to the seldom-used North Tower, because someone was bound to find this dungeon room eventually, but Tom had immediately vetoed that suggestion. "Snakes prefer the ground to the sky," he'd said, and that had been the end of that.

The little room reminded Lucius of a snake's den, actually: dark, dry, completely familiar to the owner. There was never any doubt concerning which snake this lair belonged to. Tom had discovered the room long ago, and they'd used it for two years now, and no one had found it, though it was hidden in plain sight.

Tom liked deceiving the rest of Slytherin, getting away with things before their very eyes. He might not have had liked humor much, as Lucius had learned rapidly and painfully their first year, but he did have a highly developed taste for irony. He particularly enjoyed that Lucius, who by every standard of unwritten wizarding law ever imagined should have been Tom's master, found himself instead at Tom's every beck and call.

Lucius tried not to think of Tom's ironies too often.

He stood outside their meeting place, debating whether he would enter or not. Their meetings always followed the same format: Tom would arrive late, insult Lucius for a few minutes, take what he wanted, and leave. As usual, Lucius saw no reason to show up. As usual, his argumentative side didn't stand a chance. He murmured the password and turned the knob.

He blinked in surprise.

Tom sat in the chair nearest the fire, a green armchair. That was Lucius's chair, the one he sat in while waiting for Tom. Tom always arrived after Lucius. Always. Tom had never told him that he expected Lucius to arrive first; he hadn't needed to. Had Tom been anyone but himself, Lucius would have considered his tardiness an advantage. He would have been entering Lucius's carefully controlled situation. He wouldn't have lasted three minutes.

But Tom was Tom, and currently Tom was occupying Lucius's armchair.

Lucius found his unexpected arrival unnerving. Very few things could unsettle Lucius--as a Malfoy he was bred to take pleasure in things the vast majority of people avoided at all costs--but Lucius could not handle surprises. Ordinarily he would have known better than to allow Tom to surprise him--he knew that Tom thrived off of chucking people's expectations out the window and rewriting the rules--but Tom had never shown any inclination toward changing their routine. He enjoyed his dominion over Lucius, he told him so often: when Lucius was slick with sweat, screaming Tom's name over and over, Tom would whisper in his ear, "You're mine, Lucius. You belong to me," and Lucius would agree hungrily, yes, of course, anything--

He wished Tom would leave. Or perhaps not, as the shadows the flickering flames were casting on his face brought out a devastating chiseled edge in Tom's features that Lucius certainly didn't want to disappear--but Lucius did wish that Tom had arrived after him, as usual. He should have remembered that when you were lulled into complacency, Tom most took it upon himself to turn your world upside down. Or rather right side up: Tom liked to say he was awakening people to the truth, that they had lived in fantasy so long that they had convinced themselves that reality was the lie. So it was really Lucius's fault that he felt uneasy, not Tom's. Tom had always been good at shifting blame.

Lucius paused just inside the doorway to admire Tom's silhouette before announcing his presence. He did not doubt that Tom already knew he was there, had known he would be there, had seen him every time he had ever been there and would ever be there, but Tom always waited for Lucius to speak before acknowledging him. So Lucius granted himself a few fleeting moments to savor Tom's fallen-angel beauty in the firelight.

Tom wrote in a book, Lucius saw, a small black leather tome. His name was emblazoned on the back cover. Lucius had seen it before; Tom wrote in it often. Lucius presumed it to be a diary, but knew better than to ask.

Tom dipped his quill into the ink and wrote a few lines, the tip of his tongue dragging along the edge of his lip as the quill moved across the page. He put down the quill and stared at the wall.

"Tom," Lucius said.

Tom looked up. He smiled. He had a very disarming smile.

"Lucius," he replied.

"I'm sorry I'm late," Lucius said. Malfoys did not apologize, but he felt an uneasy obligation to do so now. Arriving after Tom felt like some sort of sin.

Tom waved a hand dismissively. "Your life is too short to apologize," he said, and Lucius wondered just what Tom did in his workshop. Tom liked to drop hints, but always stopped short of revealing enough for Lucius to understand.

Lucius did not know how to respond, and Tom had never been one to speak when nothing needed saying, so silence choked the room. Lucius hunted for words to drown it, but Tom spoke first.

"We have things to do," he said, and Lucius did not ask which things he referred to. Lucius would get no more invitation than that. He shed his cloak as he walked into the room, heading towards the fire, almost forgetting to stop at the armchair. He wondered briefly if he might have walked straight into the fireplace. He wondered if Tom would have pulled him back or watched him as he burned.

But he stopped in front of the armchair and looked down at Tom, and felt horrendously out of place: Tom ordinarily found him in the armchair, and Tom stood two inches taller than Lucius. Lucius had never looked down on Tom, and found it disconcerting. In this position, Tom always engulfed Lucius before Lucius could even think of a different course of action. Lucius, however, stood there in his uncertainty as endless moments flickered past.

Tom met Lucius's eyes, blue so dark it passed for black regarding silver coolly. "Kiss me," he said, and Lucius did. He tried to retain his control, because Tom did; he tried to keep the kiss cool, methodical, but he could taste the frustration seeping into his mouth almost immediately, and his control galloped away. He fell forward onto Tom and pressed his tongue into Tom's mouth, knowing Tom would allow it, because he always did, because he found Lucius's loss of control amusing. Lucius did not expect to feel Tom's tongue entangled with his own, Tom's hands on his back, pressing him down, or to see Tom's blue-black eyes open as they kissed, looking at Lucius with an emotion too strong to be defined, and it disappeared quickly but the eyes stayed open, and Tom was present in a way he never was with Lucius, not far away pretending he was with someone else doing something else, but really here, here for this moment in this place with this boy. And maybe for tonight, Lucius could believe that Tom was here because he wanted to be here, that he wanted this, that he wanted Lucius. Maybe tonight, the night before Christmas, they could be friends, equals, as the moon glittered on falling snow outside, and inside, as a dying flame illuminated a little black book and two boys in a dungeon armchair.