what could be better than serving up smiles?

pushdragon recs

2021-09-21T22:39:41Z

draco under glass | pushdragon | NC17

Malfoy only continues to watch him and wait. It occurs to Harry that uncomfortable questions come easier from the mouths of men in glasses. The lenses shelter Malfoy's eyes, taking the hardness out of them, and the fine silver frames with strands of white hair brushing over them by his temples put a scholarly cast on his face. With his stillness and the visual harmony of his white skin and simple black robes, Malfoy has put himself out of reach of Harry's anger. He wonders if Malfoy himself understands how effective a shield it is.

istanbul was | pushdragon | G

Byzantium, after all, took the name of one man upon itself and flourished.

nocturne for quill and ink | pushdragon | NC17

The note is written in Draco's sharp-edged scrawl. Its steep downward slant suggests negligence, as if he'd written it while holding something more important in the other hand. It lies on the dining room table - a battered hulk of oakwood run aground against the wall between the windows that look onto the laneway. Draco has shoved back the debris of stained teacups, discarded letters and slag-heaps of old Prophets to make a bare border around the note, so it can't be missed.

étude: a lesson in voice (sequel to nocturne for quill and ink) | pushdragon | NC17

On the mornings when Draco pulls things out of the cupboards, sorts out the piles in the hallway, and starts putting it all into boxes, Harry takes refuge in the bedroom. On the first day, Harry throws a mug at him when he opens the door, hard enough to shatter into splinters and keep him out for the whole day and night. On the second day, he pulls Draco onto the bed and subjects him to the sort of brutally thorough handjob that leaves him wrapping himself around Harry's body, panting and begging. The subsequent days fall somewhere in between.

The house is full of stacked boxes. Only the kitchen cupboards remain to be emptied.

A TALE OF HORNS SERIES:

1/4. a tale of horns: the inaugural tongues of fire photographic wall calendar | pushdragon | NC17

"Is that all you want to do? Fritter away the last of your family's money on crazy stunts?"

"Until I run out of challenges," Draco snapped back. He could feel his jaw going rigid, along with all the tendons in his face.

"Don't," Potter said and kissed him.

This time, concentrating, Potter was good at it. Better than good. He kissed like it was an erotic act in itself, more than just an introduction to something more carnal. His tongue lingered in Draco's mouth. His body raising itself over Draco's once more was a heat source in the cooling air.

In the end it was Draco who gave in to impatience and slid his hand back into the open front of Potter's trousers. Their murmurs met in Potter's mouth when he cradled Potter's slack length and worked it towards hardness. But Draco needed more than a grope this time. Needed to see everything that Potter had, get it out in the open, claim it, suck it, rub himself into it. Potter's hand followed his shoulder as he scrambled down the ottoman and guided the tip of Potter's cock between his lips. That got him a very satisfying shudder and, with it, a realisation. Once was never going to be enough, not for any of this. He liked the way Potter moved. He liked the way Potter smelled. He liked the way Potter didn't stop being Potter when he fucked.

2/4. mating rituals of the winged predator: how mr. february got almost everything he wanted (sequel to a tale of horns) | pushdragon | NC17

He knew how he wanted it to be. He wanted Potter like he'd got him by the end of that afternoon of the photo shoot – drunk on sex to the point where there was no glimmer of self-control left in him, drifting and trailing on Draco's whim. Holding nothing back. Giving himself over completely to pleasure. That's how Draco wanted him, and when he'd got him to that point, Draco was going to fuck him. And Potter would be so out of it he'd barely even remember how Draco had done it; all he'd know is that an hour later his hands were still shaking and his hips were still jerking to the rhythm of Draco's thrusts and he had never, ever felt so empty in his life as he did without the stroke of Draco's cock in him. That's how Draco wanted it. But he had to admit, there were about a hundred other ways he was prepared to accept it.

3/4. claws that catch: the fierce beast in his lair (sequel to mating rituals of the winged predator) | pushdragon | NC17

A couple of Potter's limbs cracked as he stretched out by Draco's side. He bent his face down close, questioning. Draco couldn't – he couldn't let Potter kiss him right now, not when he didn't have the slightest defence in place. He dragged one hand out from behind his head and laid his fingertips on Potter's lips. Potter's breath slipped between them, warm and slow. He took two of Draco's fingers gently between his teeth and let his eyes fall closed and seemed content with that. His eyebrows were a wretched mess and his lashes clumped together with moisture, the product of exertion and all that abuse of his gag reflex. He was really just a little bit pathetic in his eagerness. Draco drew his fingers free as Potter's forehead descended to rest in the crook of his neck. He even allowed the possessive drape of Potter's leg over his own.

4/4. dragon riding for beginners: how the cover boy finally got it (sequel to claws that catch) | pushdragon | NC17

This was a temporary arrangement, even if a mere two nights in a hotel bed in Brasov had been a long enough absence to make his pulse quicken just now as he approached Potter's front door. He could have come round the back way, through Toad's Eye Lane, like everybody else. But he liked this door with its short journey through Muggle streets in his slightly inappropriate clothes. He liked having a doorway that was all his own. He liked the little foyer inside the door, with the quiet company of Potter's coats on their pegs as Potter's arms slid around his neck and he got his first taste of a long night of Potter's mouth. He was even quite fond of the strips of blue and red stained glass that flanked the doorway, which, for a few select minutes in the early evening, might dapple Potter's left hip in colour as Draco backed him into the wall and undressed him.

images.

2017-12-23T03:03:05Z

scorpius, with his hair bleached nearly white by sun, wearing a handsewn linen shirt open down to the middle of his chest, perched atop a sand dune overlooking a ruin in the dessert, shaded by an honest to god oldfashioned white victorian sun parasol and utterly ignoring the hilarity james, sunburned and gorgeous, gets out of this every time he looks up at him from among the jumbled sandstone pillars.

james diving headlong and gracefully into what looks like simply a giant opening in the jungle floor - a cave with a deep lake in it, open to the sky, and scorpius dropping to his knees on the edge with his heart in his throat until james surfaces in the dark water below, waving and grinning like an idiot. come on, it’s great! - i am going to eviscerate you, potter! i hope there’s a giant lindwurm down there that eats you! - brightly; oh, you think there might be?

a grove of flowering wild apple and cherry trees at night on a mountainside somewhere, the air cold enough to bite, sleeping pressed close together under gloriously bright stars. every inch of ground covered by white flower leaves, like snow, and scorpius waking before dawn to press hot kisses to james’ chest and neck, his cheeks flushed with cold. james. wake up. i’m freezing. fuck me.

a raft on a river somewhere with bamboo, james enthusiastically steering it alongside a boy of ten, and scorpius sitting crosslegged in the middle of it, deep in conversation with a wizened old woman, who is showing him a complicated way to use small, carved statuettes of bone for something arcane, her gnarled fingers deft and clever with magic. his attention never strays from her words, but when james comes closer, dripping, scorpius reaches back a hand and touches him, featherlight.

a hut during the rainy season somewhere stiflingly hot, scorpius having contracted some tropical fever or other, talking james through making a potion for it because he can’t see straight enough to do it himself, voice a little hoarse but calm and patient, even when james makes a mess of it for the third time because his hands are shaking.

meeting wild cheetahs a late night somewhere in africa, and scorpius kneeling down among them, whispering praise and magic into their fur until the large felines cluster around him like kittens, lazy golden predator eyes blinking up at james. the uncomplicated joy in scorpius’ expression when he looks up, too, after a moment. come, come sit with me. aren’t they glorious?

working through the night translating an inscription on a stone tablet that will be buried in the next sandstorm, pressed close together in a small space, hands on top of one another tracing patterns that were ancient before the pyramids, torchlight, urgent whispers. james pulls scorpius away when the horizon disappears in the rising storm, the work unfinished. after he apparates them away, he holds scorpius for a long time, in silence.

riding the same horse, bareback, across a grassy plain that seems to stretch forever under an endless blue sky darkening into evening. scorpius has his arms wrapped tightly around james from behind, resting his cheek against a muscled back. the rhythm of the horse’s gait eventually makes him close his eyes, and he mouths silently into the dirty linen of the shirt, i love you, james potter. that night, in a strangely shaped tent, stretched out together on thick furs, he tells james again, out loud this time, his heart feeling like it will beat its way out of his chest.

james waking up under a mosquito net in the middle of the night, having reached out in his sleep and startled to find himself clutching a fistful of soft, silver hair. he has a vague memory of stroking his fingers through it hours ago in a dubious attempt at soothing scorpius’s vehement opposition to the intolerably thick, humid air, smiling as scorpius’s breaths slowly began to even out, his protestations dwindling as discomfort gave way to exhaustion. there’s a thin film of sweat glistening on scorpius’s brow and in the sunburned hollow of his throat, a tiny uncomfortable twist to his mouth that softens once james’s fingers quietly resume their gentle stroking.

a series of ancient underwater caves they navigate for hours, bubble-head charms rendering them mute, swimming through schools of glittering silver fish that congregate in hundreds and thousands. it’s pitch dark but for the glowing tips of their wands tied tightly to their wrists, scorpius’s hair trailing behind him in the water like an eerie, bright flame. when they surface, breathing in huge lungfuls of non-recycled air, james reaches for scorpius with a hand that’s very slightly shaking, overwhelmed by the sudden noise of the world—the bright, chorusing birdcall beyond the caves’ entrance, the insensate rush of wind, the tinkling music of water dripping down stalactites. it’s a while before james lets go, longer than that before he manages to shake off the near-crushing memory of that ageless, endless silence.

haggling for goods at an open air market in paraguay, james stumbling through broken spanish with an easy, self-deprecating smile, filling a small leather satchel with papayas and mangos and guava. at a neighboring stall, scorpius is peering at a palmful of colored beads while a woman with more teeth missing than present gestures over them with thick, brown fingers, scorpius nodding thoughtfully as though he understands, and maybe he does. he tips them over into a tiny brown bag, hands the woman a coin, and says a few words. james watches the shape of the language in scorpius’s mouth and knows what it means.

scorpius sitting on the edge of a sheer cliff face, legs dangling, looking fearless for all that james knows that, most of the time, he isn’t. he tilts his head very slightly as james approaches, a sign that he wants james to know that he’s heard him. james stops, looking down at his hands, which are holding a small, leatherbound journal as though it’s something very precious. without a word, he closes the distance between them and sits beside scorpius, peering at the landscape below, all jagged rock and canyon, crevices leading deep beneath the earth and, far off in the distance, the rumor of mountaintops. he opens the journal, careful of the pages, and of the things pressed inside the pages. he starts writing.

hours and hours and hours spent waiting for scorpius to finish looking at rocks, oh my god so many fucking rocks, the significance of which was lost on james after, oh, the first two hours of looking at rocks. scorpius's focus is unshakable, resisting james's best, most concerted efforts at distraction. james is lying on his back and has actually started banging the back of his head against the rocks, of which there are so many, when scorpius makes a small, familiar noise of victory that startles james into perfect stillness for the space of a heartbeat. then he stands, so quickly his head spins, and finds his approach forestalled by the adamant span of scorpius's palm pressing in the center of james's chest. "that's only the first half of the ritual," scorpius says seriously, and james isn't sure what his face is doing, but then scorpius is legitimately chortling with laughter, bright-eyed and impossible and the most hateful person on the planet, and, "james, stop, i'm only joking-- look, the clues were in the spaces between the stones the whole time, it really is quite--"

james fists a hand into the front of scorpius's dirt-stained shirt, heart heaving in his chest. "i don't care."

he crowds scorpius against, guess what, more rocks, mouthing along the long, pale line of his throat, overcome and overwhelmed and touching every part of scorpius he can reach, hands tearing at the waistband of scorpius's trousers, biting over a tendon in scorpius's neck almost tenderly, teeth sinking into the skin without making a mark. he fucks scorpius against the stones with a painstaking slowness that's only a little bit vengeful, cradling the vulnerable wings of his hips, drawing each trembling noise out of him with a similarly unshakable sort of focus, mind tight with every detail, every gasp and arch and sigh. it isn't, strictly speaking, a ritual, but it's the closest thing to a ritual that james ever holds himself to.

a very early memory of a very old place that wanted to keep them out, but didn’t. the joyful, inarticulate noise james made at that, the heady, incomparable feeling that always accompanied it, only this time—this time, it’s joined by the bright, beautiful sound of scorpius’s laughter. james turns to look at him, feeling strangely breathless, gut-punched and winded and suddenly quite off-center, as though he’s collided with something very large and very heavy. what is it? james? what’s wrong. scorpius sounds graver by the second, and james shakes his head, tries to salvage a smile and manages it, wondering with a feeling like sawdust in his chest how it is he’d never realized he was lonely.

bonus scenes.

2017-01-03T05:10:49Z

I.i.

Draco has been lying sleeplessly in his bed for hours, staring up at a dark, old ceiling, eyes adjusted to the lack of light enough to make out the beams, the jagged cracks in them. He hears the door slam a floor below, and then, more violent still, the sound of Blaise’s voice, raised in anger.

“—when you choose to.” The sound of something being thrown, a dull thump that shakes the wall. “When you think people deserve it.”

He’s tearing down the stairs before Blaise has finished speaking, pale hair mussed and shirt half undone, trousers hanging low on his hips.

Potter and Blaise are standing as far away from one another as the small space of the landing will allow them, pressed against their respective walls, shoulders tensed like a pair of predatory beasts bracing for a fatal sort of fight.

There is blood on Blaise’s sleeve. The sight of it stops Draco short for a moment, heart pounding fitfully in his chest.

“Pretty obvious when people don’t deserve it,” Potter says dryly, not quite managing to keep the venom out of it. “They’re usually the ones dangling Muggles by their ankles and bowing to a snake-faced git.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Draco spies a flickering movement, a soft shape in the kitchen doorway. He turns his head toward it, reluctantly, eyes meeting a pair of blue ones. Evidently he hadn’t been the only one losing sleep tonight.

Blaise sneers at the easy, arrogant tone. The temptation to throw a silent, violent spell at Potter is such that he has to cross his arms tightly over his chest to curb it, unsure even as he does it why, exactly, he is restraining himself. His arm hurts badly, but he can barely feel it through the anger that floods through his veins.

"How simple your world must be," he hisses, tone low and icy, "if you assume that everyone who follows a cruel leader is simply evil and deserves whatever they get. Are you that foolish, Potter? Do you really think that's how the world works? I expect once you heroically vanquish Voldemort, you'll line up every one of his followers, including the handful of Gryffindors there, and Avada them all?"

He digs his fingers into his own arms. He's sharply aware of Draco on the stairs, and Ginny caught in the doorway, watching them silently, but doesn't take his eyes from the coldly hostile gaze of the boy across from him.

Ginny edges out of the doorway, warily eyeing the two combatants.

None of them seem badly hurt. Yet. Nor particularly inclined to pay attention anything but each other. She has a sudden, odd sense of deja vu. She's seen Harry face off against Malfoy like this more times than she can count, before that enmity became something else.

Now Malfoy is poised on the stairs instead, looking like an unusually untidy version of his usual self, pale hair tangled around his cheekbones, ridiculously expensive shirt hanging off one shoulder. His expression is as smooth and cool as ever, but it's hard to mistake the guarded way he watches the two on the floor, the careful slant to his shoulders. Following an impulse she isn't certain of, she walks closer, carefully avoiding the shards of glass littering the floor.

"I didn't say that," Potter bites back, voice rising indignantly, hands clenched furiously at his sides. Draco is somewhat relieved to see that neither of his fists is closed around a wand length, though he isn't particularly eager to see the alternative play out either, should it come to blows. "I would never-- there'd be trials, I know it isn't always easy.”

Potter’s gaze leaves Blaise, once and for less than the space of a heartbeat, a jagged glance toward the stairs that doesn't quite land on Draco, because it catches on Ginny first.

Green eyes widen very marginally, then snap back to Blaise, too accustomed to battle to give up a target.

"I'm not saying they're all evil, but following someone like that becomes a choice. You can't-- slaughter innocent people forever claiming the bad man made you do it." Potter's breaths are tight, angry, but the lines of him are confident, relentlessly assured of the space he's taking up just now, in this moment, of the world and his place in it here. He does not look as though he believes he's in any real danger, or even could be. Draco frowns at it, a little. "And don't fucking tell me every Death Eater out there is a helpless victim, even you can't think I'm stupid enough to believe that."

Weasley is moving, inexplicably, toward Draco. He steps aside without looking at her, making room, an offer she can easily refuse without Draco having to admit that it was one. He can feel the weight of her thoughtful gaze on him, as though waiting to see what he might do.

After a moment's consideration, Draco leans his weight against the wooden banister, shrugging elegantly. He pitches his voice low, eyes never leaving the two boys squaring off against each other. "I'm really quite tired of refereeing, aren't you?"

Blaise shifts restlessly when Potter's glance strays towards Draco, some unspoken impulse making his hands clench hard, and there is almost a kind of triumph in it when Potter's eyes snap back to him unerringly, intent on their purpose.

"That isn't what I said. I said the world is not black and white. And when you throw yourself onto a pedestal where you can decide who lives and dies, who is worthy of saving and who isn't, you cannot afford to forget that. And yet here you are -- " Blaise drops his voice sharply, making it soft and cold where Potter's is loud, "Making careless judgements when you do not know what you're talking about."

He holds the other boy's hard, furious gaze, every muscle tensed, poised for a strike he keeps half-expecting. A part of him strains for Potter to give him a reason, an excuse, the barest provocation.

"Sometimes, Potter, sometimes there are no good choices. Not all of us are protected, not all of us are fortunate enough that the ones we love are all on the right side and safe. Have you ever considered how many people have no such assurance of protection? Or that the only way to take down a 'bad man' if he is strong enough is to get close?"

Ginny takes the few steps up to stand beside Draco, on the far end of the worn step, putting a little more distance between herself and the floor. There is a weary quality to the way she watches the two down there, as well as something a little unhappy in the curve of her mouth.

When she answers him, it's rather quiet. "Do you suppose it will be more effective to keep them from murdering each other if I throw myself in the way, or if you do?”

"I didn't throw myself onto anything," Potter says tightly. Even from where he's standing, paces away, Draco can see the muscles straining in his jaw. "I don't decide-- for fuck's sake, Zabini, we want the same thing!"

Broadly speaking, Draco supposes Potter's right about that. It says something about how little Potter actually knows Blaise that he seems to think it changes anything, or means they should get along. He sighs, leaning more heavily against the staircase, head tilting infinitesimally toward the sound of Weasley's voice, the folded, tired edge in it.

Before he can answer her, Potter adds, lowering his voice, "I don't want anyone to die. Just one person." He sounds gravely serious about it, and much older than he is. His eyes are lit up and furious on Blaise's, the lines of his face cut from stone, severe and imposing. "If you can tell me how to do that, I'm listening. You aren't an enemy, at least not to me. You can keep considering me one if you want, but this would be a hell of a lot easier if you realized I don't want to fight you." Potter's throat bobs over a hard swallow. "I offered to help you. You said no. That was a choice."

The air in the hallway feels impossibly thick with tension.

"I say we let them go at it," Draco says in an undertone, coolly and without much feeling, eyes flickering from Potter to Blaise, and lingering there.

He means it, mostly. To a point. Now that they're both back safe, every lost hour of sleep seems to be catching up to him, and he finds he doesn't quite have the energy to countenance yet another one of these displays between them. Blaise looks as though he's been hurt, though not badly.

Draco's heart aches at it anyway, the line of his mouth firming. "Care to place a wager?"

"Very fucking gracious of you, to give me a choice."

The words fall into the silence, sharp edged and taut with fury. Blaise has a sudden, vivid memory of a cool summer night not too long ago, facing this same boy in the darkness outside the school. How desperate it had been, to leave that place, believing he was leaving everything behind that might keep him alive.

"And you did not, as it were. You ordered me to stay in place, like one of your obedient friends, and we both know you wouldn't have cared one way or the other if Draco hadn't asked you to. You as much as told me I was evil."

The last word is a mockery. Blaise's eyes are dark and cold, all the color in them drowned out with black. His lips have thinned to narrow, cruel curves.

"You never ask why. It doesn't touch you. You don't care why I left, you only care that it wasn't what you happened to want. And you are terrifyingly good at getting your way, Potter. You just push until people fold." Blaise pushes off the wall, balancing on his feet, and lets his hands drop to his sides. "Of course you want to fight me. You want to fight the whole fucking world until it becomes exactly what you want it to be. You're just used to anyone that fights back being easily branded as evil. That's not noble, Potter, it's fanatic."

Ginny winces slightly, at the tone of Blaise's voice more than the words, which she has heard before albeit more softly spoken, and gives Draco a sidelong glance. She isn't sure what she expects to see. He is hard to read in a frustrating, uncertain kind of way, and rarely seems to say what he means. Right now, though, the weariness in the lines of his body seems genuine, and something she can wholeheartedly empathise with. She sighs, and follows the line of his gaze.

"My wager is on Blaise," she murmurs, reluctantly, but not without perhaps a touch of vindictiveness. "I think he's better at that sort of thing. Harry would try not to hurt him. Well. Too much.”

The curve of Draco's lips goes rueful, and he says nothing. She's right, after all.

Potter stays exactly where he is, back braced against the wall, holding his ground. Or perhaps-- not wanting to escalate it further, in spite of every sign to the contrary, the way the fingers of his right hand keep insistently twitching, as though already approximating the weight of a weapon in his hand. As though the ensuing fight is a foregone conclusion, but he's holding out some foolish hope to the contrary, cleaving to it by sheer, stubborn force of will. He stays quiet for longer than Draco expects, eyes locked on Blaise, barely blinking.

"I don't want to fight you," Potter repeats at length, voice even, and harder this time.

It jars something in Draco; this gilded calm isn't something inborn, it's something Potter has learned, and not very well yet. He wonders if their audience, he and Weasley, has something to do with it, wonders if this wouldn't have devolved into fisticuffs already were it not for the two of them, watching. The thought sours in his stomach, and Draco's mouth twists unhappily.

"You know what we're up against, we don't have time to-- I don't have time,” Potter says. “Not for this. You don't have to bloody like me, I don't care."

Potter isn't going to walk away. That fact alone undermines his words, somewhat, for all that he thinks he believes them. Blaise, Draco strongly suspects, isn't going to walk away either. For a moment, he wants to hit them both, badly.

"You're allowed to disagree. The Order will hear you," Potter continues, and Draco has to stifle a soft snort at that, eyes widening a little with bitter amusement, because, damn him, Potter actually does believe that one. He slides his gaze back across the narrow landing, regards their would-be savior thoughtfully. Potter's using a tone Draco keeps hearing more and more these days, a parody of restraint with steel behind it. The line of his jaw is twitching, hard. "But if you do that in the middle of an assignment again, you'll be answering to more than just me."

It's entirely the wrong thing to say. Draco looks down, hair falling softly into his face, curling his bare toes against the step.

Blaise curls his fingers sharply, nails digging into his palms. It's a bad idea. His palms sting with pain and silent magic, eager to be used. With an inward, brutal effort, he stays still.

"I do not answer to you. I don't answer to anyone here. Do you understand? I am not a part of this."

His hands are shaking. The right one is sticky with blood that's dripping onto the floor, drop by slow drop. He clenches it harder, feels it run down the inside of his wrist, warm against cold skin, kicking at his magic unsteadily.

"Everyone here knows I am not one of you. Who in the order will hear me if I speak out against you?" Blaise's voice has quieted again, to something soft and cold, taut with the strain of how he is keeping himself from moving. "Tell me. Who will listen? Is this the same Order that unhesitatingly agreed to question me under Veritaserum three consecutive times? Just to be certain I wasn't hiding Voldemort under my cloak. Are you aware that using it on anyone is categorically considered torture? Do you know how it feels? I noticed you didn't bother to stay past the first five minutes. I suppose you didn't have time for it."

He had been sick and shaking for hours and hours after, his body trying to rid itself of the insidious poison and the secrets and memories dragged up under its influence. The third time, he'd thought Lupin would object. He hadn't, so Blaise had made of point of watching him as he was questioned, and hadn't made any effort that time to suppress the way his hands were trembling as the potion took effect. They haven't suggested doing it again since he was wounded, but he is under no illusions. Everyone here, with the exception of Draco and Ginny, regard him with the careful wariness one affords a risk being taken.

And Potter -- try as he might not to, Potter looks at him like an enemy.

II.i.

When Draco opens the door to his room, it’s to pitch blackness. He blinks, unable to see a damn thing in front of him, and stands for a moment in the paltry rectangle of light thrown by one of the lit sconces in the hallway. Immediately, he knows two things: that Blaise is somewhere within these four walls, and that there isn’t a chance in hell he’s sleeping.

“Are you sitting alone in the dark?” he demands, equal parts exhaustion and exasperation making it come out harsher than he intends.

Blaise doesn’t know how much time has passed; has lost count, deliberately, of how many minutes - hours - it’s been since he slammed the door behind him, catching himself in the claustrophobically narrow little room in this broken house that is the only home he seems to have left.

Not long enough for exhaustion to overtake the heat in his blood, or even for the long gash along his forearm to start hurting in earnest, though he knows it will soon enough. Long enough for his heartbeat to start to settle, sitting still as he is on the one bed in the room, back pressed against the wall hard enough to feel the rough edges of wood against his spine, hard and unyielding. Long enough to feel the ache in his chest, hidden right beneath the anger, like the spell that nearly cut his throat earlier that night.

Long enough for Draco to have been here before now.

The room is wrecked, heavy wooden table and chair, the two lamps and even most of the old, blurry panes in the window having all fallen victim to his fury. Glass shards and splintered wood showered across the floor. If Draco can’t see it yet, he will in a moment.

“I’m here,” Blaise says, voice low and rough around the edges, only just loud enough for Draco hear. He has his eyes closed, head leaned back against the wall. The other boy’s footsteps on the stairs have given him sufficient warning that he could have perhaps salvaged some of the wreckage. Instead he has kept still in the darkness, listening to each step, uncertain right until the sound of the door whether Draco would enter, or find some other place in this cursed house to wait for daylight.

The line of Draco’s mouth thins as his eyes adjust to the darkness, taking in the state of the room, a thing broken to pieces. Aside from that, there is no other hint of expression on his face, a pale smoothness like marble, though thin in places, a faint, fragile flickering like light beneath the surface.

“I see that,” Draco says, inflectionless, gaze sliding over glittering glass to settle on Blaise’s outline, limned in the pale golden glow coming in through the doorway. He folds his arms over his chest and settles there, shoulder braced against the wooden door, silent for a long moment. It is altogether better, he supposes, for the room to have borne the brunt of Blaise’s anger rather than the true object of his ire. Draco can still feel the weight of Potter against his chest, though it’s fading, sense memory he’d quite like to be rid of.

The path to the bed is littered with sharp edges. Draco looks down at his bare feet and frowns, refusing to clean up the mess himself.

His voice comes out a little sharp. “You could at least clear a path.”

Blaise doesn’t open his eyes. He doesn’t need to; can hear from the tone of Draco’s voice exactly what his expression looks like; smooth and cool, the finely shaped mouth thin, the lines hardened. Looking like his father. Some dark remnant of anger somewhere in his chest wants him to say that out loud, and he curbs the impulse sharply, tightening his hands around each other enough to make the knuckles go white, and blood trickle sluggishly from the cut on his arm.

“Sorry,” he says instead, the word clumsy and strangely shaped in his mouth, like something in a foreign tongue.

Still with his eyes closed, he pushes at the mess of sharp edges and broken things on the floor, and the debris moves with a sound like waves across small stones, coming up in miniature slopes against the walls. He should vanish it, but there is something strangely tranquil about the visible wreckage. An acknowledgement he doesn’t look at too closely.

“I wasn’t sure you’d come.”

Draco’s gaze doesn’t flicker away from Blaise for a moment. He takes several steps forward, blindly trusting that the floor beneath his feet has been cleared of anything that could hurt or draw blood, cursory as Blaise’s efforts may have seemed.

“This is my room,” he points out, arms still crossed, frown deepening at Blaise’s closed eyelids, the oddly serene set of his mouth. Annoyance makes Draco’s fingers twitch against his forearms, curling into the drawling edges of his voice. “I see you’ve beaten it to a pulp, well done. Take off your shirt.”

He waves a hand at the door to close it, plunging them back into a forgiving cloak of darkness, the soft sounds of their breathing. Draco gracefully lowers himself to sit on the edge of the bed, unseen, several handspans away, tilting his head at some subtle change in the rate and depth of Blaise’s breaths. He hadn’t been stupid enough to venture downstairs without a wand, firmly anticipating having to stun one or both of them. He reaches for it now, meaning to conjure a light source, and hesitates.

“Take off your shirt, Blaise,” he repeats, softly. He says nothing else, eyes blinking against the dark, and he thinks, or perhaps he only imagines, that he sees the glint of Blaise’s eyes opening.

Draco does it on purpose. Blaise is certain of it, and part of him chafes hard against that, fighting the immediate, visceral response to the way his name sounds on Draco’s lips, the answering leap in his pulse at the simple fact of the other boy’s nearness. He seems to have opened his eyes after all. The darkness is an unexpected velvet curtain around them, only offset by a dim lightness coming from the window, a distant streetlight whispering faintly across the cracked ceiling. Draco is barely a shadow, an almost imagined outline of pale hair and slender lines, everything else hidden. He might be a dream, conjured out of memory and desire; Blaise doesn’t need light to know the precise shape and angles of him. He bites down on a memory; lying in his own bed in the pitch black dorm and listening to Draco’s breaths from the other bed, the shallow tension there, seeing the other boy’s hair tangled across the pillow, the sharp lines of strain in his face as vividly as if he was touching them.

He moves, slowly, his body protesting the sudden rush of sensation after having been kept tautly in place for too long. He undoes the buttons slowly, fingers finding them one by one, and finally shrugs out of the ruined shirt, the muscles along his left side pulling painfully, still sore from the weeks-old hurt there. The feeling catches at his thought with memory like claws, and his heartbeat stutters uncertainly.

The broken windows have left the air in the room cool with nighttime chill, and he shivers when it touches his bare skin, very aware of Draco, silent and motionless and almost near enough to touch with a casual brush of his hand. The shirt’s fabric clings briefly to the dried blood on his arm, and he pulls at it, almost grateful for the simplicity of the pain when it tears free.

“I’m fine,” he murmurs, his voice coming out a little rougher and softer than he intended. It’s harder to stay angry with the darkness wrapped gently around them both, but the quiet in his chest leaves too much room for the mute, miserable ache lodged there. His next breath comes out a little unsteady.

“You’re tired. Go to sleep, Draco.”

Draco smiles a little, the curve of his mouth small and strained and not entirely humorless, lingering for a moment and gone.

“This is my bed,” he says, voice remote and flattening, without a hint of that smile to soften it. But when he reaches out it’s almost careful, fingers closing around Blaise’s wrist, the strong, beating pulse there, vitality and heat. He pulls on Blaise’s arm, less insistence and more persuasion, eyebrows drawn gently as though waiting for the inevitable resistance. There is none. Draco’s brows draw down more sharply at that, only for an instant, eyes flickering from Blaise’s upturned palm to the bow of his lips, the steady, watchful window of his gaze, lids just slightly lowered in defense.

The gash on Blaise’s arm is still trickling blood. He is waiting to see what Draco will do. Draco imagines, with a sharp, unpleasant twist beneath his ribs, that Blaise supposes there is a likely reality in which Draco takes the offered exit without further argument, leaves this room, the bed, leaves Blaise bleeding there against it without so much as a backwards glance. Even now. Perhaps especially now.

“I am tired,” Draco admits, and touches his fingers to the wound, a barely there pressure. “Do you know I’ve lost count of the number of times you’ve said ‘I’m fine’ while actively bleeding on me?” He looks up, lips drawing down. “I find that tiresome. I found that display downstairs positively exhausting,” he adds, a little archly, and then, sharp and preempting, “Don’t. I don’t want to talk about that now.”

He presses down lightly, stemming the sluggish flow of blood with only his fingertips.

Draco holds Blaise’s gaze. “Potter told me how this happened.”

Blaise can’t help it. The muscles in his arm tense under Draco’s fingers at the mention of Potter, and his gaze sharpens. He makes a small, commanding gesture with his other hand, and light blossoms in the one surviving lamp, throwing a warm glow and deep shadows across Draco’s face and the guarded, intent expression lingering there. It’s a familiar one. He’s seen it often enough when Potter is mentioned, or is in the room. If he dwells on it, Blaise thinks he could probably decipher it; Draco’s expressions are rarely what they seem at first glance, and it is the small details that give it away. Tension in the lines around his lips, a hint of something in his gaze that shifts too quickly to be certain of. The pulse in his throat. Potter told me.

It is fucking intolerable.

“Did he.” Blaise’s arm is still resting in Draco’s grasp, which is much too light to keep it there if he moves even a little. His expression twists, the delicately slanted eyes narrowing and he briefly and strikingly resembles his mother.

“And what was that? I’m a terrible soldier, I should be reprimanded, i should be interrogated, I should be locked in the dungeon pending further investigations into my traitorous activities? Potter seems to have willfully missed the fact that I am not here to fight for him.”

The last word is shaded with icy contempt. Blaise draws in a sharp breath and deliberately turns his gaze away, silencing the other words burning in his throat. The back of his hand rests against Draco’s thigh, shaking slightly.

A muscle in Draco’s jaw clenches very slightly, a slant to his expression that looks almost like rebuke before it softens into understanding, and then vanishes altogether, leaving behind a smooth, unyielding plane. He looks down at the blood staining his fingers, bright and gleaming in the low light. He sighs almost inaudibly, and raises his wand, frowning against some faint strain of corruption the waylaid spell left behind. It feels a bit like oil in water, other and strange, unruly. Draco sets his own magic against it, fighting the urge to recoil, the feeling crawling up his spine as he begins to siphon away the dregs of dark magic preventing the wound from healing.

"No, actually.” Draco’s tone isn’t as neutral as he wants it to be, clipped almost to the point of abruptness. “He said you fought well. And that he owes part of his intactness to you.” He lays a hand over Blaise’s palm to still the infinitesimal tremor, bleeding away the corruption like a slow, reluctant poison. His frown deepens, cloud cover darkening his expression. “You’re being stupid. Hold still.”

Draco’s grip tightens, eyes flashing. Blaise’s features tighten in challenge, stark and beautiful, but his arm remains motionless in Draco’s grasp, and Draco feels a breathless thrill at that, in the back of his throat.

“Think, for a moment. What good does it do you to make Potter your enemy? We’ve little enough room to stand here as it is.”

It’s a cynical thought, exacting and cruel. It feels wrong to think of Potter’s regard as an asset or liability and nothing else, but part of Draco does think it, though he has never before said it out loud. He can say it here. He can say it nowhere else.

Draco’s touch and the subtle, clever magic in it feels like the warmth of early spring sunlight against Blaise’s skin. He had been too preoccupied before to pay much heed to the remnants of the malevolent spell clinging to the wound, but now that it is drained away, relief shudders through him like a tremor under the skin. Paradoxically, the pain sharpens, his own body and magic now at liberty to call attention to the damage there. Draco’s expression shifts minutely, and for a few breaths there is quiet, Blaise’s attention caught and held by the bloodstained fingers against his skin and the delicately woven magic slowly mending the wound. Draco’s magic is elusive and complicated; Blaise can feel his own settle against it, and heat thrills up his arm, warming cold skin and muscles, catching at his breath.

He meets Draco’s eyes, but the other boy’s gaze is nearly opaque, his features carefully composed. There is a slight, unhappy draw to his mouth, though, that makes Blaise ache to reach out and brush his fingers over it, make some attempt to smooth out the tension and the quiet discomfort there. It’s tempting, to give in to the unspoken gentleness of the other’s boy’s touch. To lean into the partial truth Draco has offered him and pretend it is the whole story.

Blaise doesn’t know how to do that.

“That isn’t true, and you damn well know it. I have little room to stand on. I have you, and that’s all.” He pushes past an uncertain roughness in his voice, his shoulders set aggressively taut. His fingers curl up and twine tightly with Draco’s, the gesture precariously suspended between prayer and possession, a feeling like a stone lodged in his chest, stealing his breath.

“But you - there is nothing you could do short of handing the Dark Lord the key to the front door that would rattle Potter. Do you think I don’t see him watching you? Do you think I don’t see you watching him, and pretending not to? And don’t say you’re playing him, don’t. Don’t lie.”

Draco’s eyes narrow sharply. “I wasn’t going to. I only meant–”

A muscle in his jaw moves, and he looks away, blowing out a tight, frustrated breath, mindful of the half-finished healing spell, its progress arrested for the handful of seconds it takes him to gather himself. It’s strange to be called on something he had to defend not an hour ago. The difference gives him a faint sense of whiplash and, at the same time, soothes some small, shivering part of him that struggles to make itself known in ways he can understand.

He shakes his head, a small, contained movement. Resumes the spell, edges of flesh knitting themselves together at its quiet insistence. Draco’s gaze keeps pulling down to the sight of Blaise’s fingers interlocked with his, not tentative but strong, extinguishing the weak tremor from before. What Blaise says is partly true. Potter trusts Draco, or thinks he does. He trusts his feelings more than anything else, which has so far worked in Draco’s favor, and will likely be the first thing to work against it, if it comes to that.

Draco finishes the spell. Wordlessly, he lays his wand aside, on top of the threadbare coverlet, hand steady. Blaise’s grip on his other hand is unrelenting. Draco thinks, for a moment, that he feels it tighten, fine bones grinding, as though, task completed, Blaise expects Draco to pull away from him.

Again, the sense of whiplash, something leaden turning over heavily in the pit of Draco’s stomach, drawing the corners of his mouth farther down.

Draco swallows, and squeezes back, not gently.

I stand where you do, he thinks but doesn’t say, throat dry. He doesn’t imagine there is anything he can say that will keep Blaise from throwing himself against the invisible bonds of their current precarious arrangement, strategy and common sense be damned. So much for survival instinct. Draco can only plant his feet here, refuse to budge, and hope it’s enough of a tether to hold them both.

Draco looks up. Something in his gaze has hardened. “You promised.”

The quiet words take Blaise’s breath away for a moment. Draco’s tone isn’t particularly kind and there is more than a hint of challenge or rebuke in the firm set of his lips. As if he genuinely isn’t certain Blaise remembers, or thinks it is a promise he might seek to break.

The unfairness of it stings his throat.

Blaise says, "I haven’t forgotten.”

shecrows @ 2016-12-15T18:10:00

2016-12-15T23:10:28Z

IV.

"I know what you're doing."

Draco's hand in Harry’s hair goes motionless. Harry's mouth curves very slightly, without humor.

"Doing, I'm not doing anything," Draco says, heart thudding, every beat of it painful and heavy.

Harry opens his eyes. Draco's breath stills at the look in them.

He says, "You're doing what you do when you say goodbye."

"What is that," Draco manages, tight around a swallow, "exactly?"

Harry turns his head a little to look at him properly, even if it is sideways, cheek resting on his forearm. "Giving ground. Being kind." Draco's throat is so tight it's a wonder anything can get past. He doesn't think he can speak. "If I kissed you now, you'd let me."

Something lights in the center of Draco's chest and burns. He withdraws his hand, or starts to, fingers trembling like the shape of his mouth. Harry catches his wrist, pulls until Draco's knuckles brush against the hollow of his throat and rest there.

"Because it's the last time," Harry says, low. Something rough and dark scrapes in the cradle of his voice, a flint strike that fails to catch. He looks and looks at Draco, and Draco can't bring himself to look away, even though it feels as though that look is gently flaying him. "Isn't it?"

“Yes,” he says, quietly, on a breath.

The fingers around Draco's wrist flex and tighten.

Draco says, “I’ve been trying to tell you—”

“Don’t.”

Harry doesn’t look angry, exactly. He’s staring at Draco as though he’s some sort of bear trap Harry might like to fall into. Slowly, he sits up, not quite straightening his spine the whole way, shoulders slumped in a ripped gray t-shirt that seems slightly too big for him. The stretched out neck of it hangs loose over a collarbone, the sharp line of it, Draco’s fingers hovering just above, wrist still held in Harry’s grasp. A beat, and the draw of Harry’s mouth tightens. His other hand strays to Draco’s waist.

Draco swallows. “Harry.”

“Don’t,” he repeats, softer.

Harry tugs him forward without breaking eye contact, exerting a slow, insistent pressure on Draco’s hip. Reluctantly, Draco gives into it. Harry looks as though he might do – something. A bit like a cornered animal, or a captive one, straining against a too small cage, something at once wild and focused about the way he’s gazing up at Draco, calculating a strike.

But all Harry does is lean forward, resting his forehead against Draco’s ribs. He moves Draco’s captured hand gently to the back of his neck, and Draco makes a small sound, clenching his fingers into the short, unkempt hair there.

“I do want to kiss you,” Harry says, softly, after a moment.

“You can.”

The line of Harry’s shoulders rises and falls on a short, sharp breath.

“What if I don’t want it now? What if I want to kiss you three months from now instead?”

Draco’s heart twists and twists upon itself – at the hint of defiance, of challenge in Harry’s voice, the stubborn fold in it, as though he could bend the world into a different shape simply by throwing himself at it and refusing to back down. He manages, barely above a whisper, “It has to be now.”

Harry lifts his head, eyes bright behind the frames of his glasses.

The old safe house creaks audibly around them, boards of wood strewn thickly with all manner of enchantments to keep the outside world at bay. Draco imagines he can hear the crash of waves against the rocky Scottish coastline, but they’re too far inland for that, and he decides in a distant sort of way that it must be the sound of blood pounding in his arteries and veins, pushed forward by his violently beating heart. He scaled those cliffs only two days ago. They have been here, in this dire little house, only two days.

“Why did you kiss me, the first time?” Harry asks.

Draco blinks down at him. “The first time?”

It hadn’t been a very good kiss. In fact, it had been more or less a terrible one, compared to others in which Draco has played an active participant, clumsy and awkward and worsened by the fear that any moment Potter was going to haul off and punch Draco in the mouth. Draco had learned, not a week later, that it had been only the second kiss Harry had ever received, the horror of that admission mercifully mitigated by the fact that at the very least he hadn’t somehow managed, wildly and unimaginably, to become Harry Potter’s first kiss.

He doesn’t realize he’s smiling until the movement tears at the shallow little cut over his cheekbone, courtesy of a piece of crumbling Scottish cliffside. Instantly he arrests it, lessens it down to a rumor, the faintest curve of lips.

“Because I wanted you to trust me,” he says.

“Odd way to go about it,” Harry counters, in that flat, hard way Draco used to find intolerably arrogant.

“Because I was desperate,” Draco’s eyes move over Harry’s upturned face, lingering nowhere in particular, “and I couldn’t seem to get you to stop hating me.”

“I didn’t hate you.”

“Yes you did,” Draco corrects, not quite gently.

Harry’s mouth firms, a little. He doesn’t argue it. Instead, he turns his face into Draco’s forearm – his right one – braced against the side of his head, Draco’s fingers still curled into the hair at Harry’s nape. He brushes his lips softly over the inside of Draco’s wrist, barely a touch at all, and uncharacteristically careful, as though Draco might call it a kiss, were it anything more, and deny him the other one.

Draco touches his free hand to the side of Harry’s neck. The pulse flutters beneath his fingertips, wild and unsteady.

“Because I wanted to,” he says, and feels himself tremble at the confession.

Harry goes very still. Then he surges to his feet.

Both of Draco’s hands fall forcibly away, Harry gripping tight over either side of Draco’s waist before he flips them, hauling Draco bodily over until the backs of his thighs hit the edge of the table.

Draco shuts his eyes through it, breath like a wild bird scrabbling in his throat. His hands find the table’s edge, squeeze hard enough to imprint the pattern of the wood grain into his palms.

Harry’s breath is hot on the line of Draco’s jaw. For a moment neither of them speaks, both breathing so hard that they move with the force of it, swaying a little against each other.

“Why did you let me fuck you, the first time?” Harry asks, voice tight and chaotic.

Draco squeezes the table harder behind him.

“Stop.”

“No.” Harry pushes, bending the angle of Draco’s spine, holding onto Draco’s hips tightly, flush with Harry’s own so that Draco has to use his grip on the table to brace himself, the angle not a comfortable one. “Answer me.” His voice kicks up a little, hoarse. “You could have gotten me to trust you without doing that. Hell, by that point I was even starting to like you. I did like you.”

Draco keeps his eyes closed. His arms are trembling, and not from strain.

“What, did you whip up a love potion and think, maybe if I slather this over Harry Potter’s cock, the idiot will fall in—”

“Shut up.” It’s nearly a shout, bursting out of Draco’s mouth without warning. Gray eyes fly open, the look in them bright and eviscerating, appearing very much as though he’d like to rip out Harry’s throat. “Is that really all it took, Potter? Were you some lonely, pathetic virgin out of a bloody Victorian novel that all you needed was a good fuck to throw your heart away on?”

Harry makes an inarticulate sound of rage, a torn up thing that catches on the abruptly frenzied rhythm of his breaths. He slams Draco’s hips back against the table and follows, surging forward, pinning Draco to it, gasping into the vulnerable bend of Draco’s neck.

“You hate me a little bit now, don’t you?” Draco asks, breathless but eerily calm beneath that.

Harry lifts his head and exhales harshly, a searing burst against the shell of Draco’s ear. “Yes.”

“Good,” Draco replies, and there’s weight behind it.

Then he fists a hand into thick, black hair and pulls, grip ruthlessly tight enough that Harry makes a sound. He angles their mouths together and kisses him, hot and hard and nothing at all like the first time.

Harry groans like it’s being ripped out of him. He claws at Draco’s waist, lets Draco open him up with the sharp, insistent angle of his jaw, bearing the brunt of a kiss that he lets Draco control for all that their body language says different, painting Harry as the aggressor. He holds himself still for it, the flat, firm plane of his chest heaving wildly. Draco wonders at that for half a heartbeat, something in his gut aching furiously in protest at the curious sense of restraint, Harry’s arms held rigidly still on either side of Draco’s body. At the same time, he’s thankful. He doesn’t know if he could hold up against anything more.

He tears his mouth away from Harry’s with a punched out breath.

“There’s your kiss,” he says, an ugly, wretched note in his voice. “Let go of me.”

“Doesn’t count,” Harry rasps against the underside of Draco’s jaw, mouthing against the wildly hammering pulse there. “You kissed me.”

An exasperated noise. “Potter.”

It comes out a little hysterical, and Harry laughs, the sound a profoundly unhappy one. He presses his face into Draco’s neck, the metal frames of his glasses digging unpleasantly into Draco’s skin.

“Am I a joke to you?” he asks, low and muffled and fierce. “Is this funny?”

Draco tugs on his hair vindictively hard, heart in his throat. “Yes, I can’t breathe for laughing. What do you think of me.”

“I think you’re a vicious brat,” Harry says, nearly snarling. He leans hard into the long, tense line of Draco’s body, pressing him into the table with such force that Draco thinks he’ll have marks on the backs of his thighs. “I think… ” An audible swallow. Harry’s face nudges miserably into the side of Draco’s neck. “I think you touch me more gently than anyone I’ve ever known.”

Draco’s arm nearly buckles, either from the way Harry’s voice cracks a little on the admission or the physical strain of holding himself up. His other hand is still clenched in Harry’s hair, so tightly Draco wonders if Harry’s noticed it, that he could say something so diametrically opposed to the reality without stumbling.

“I think… ” Harry shudders against him. “I can’t think. I want you so much, I can’t think.”

Draco swallows, his heart an implacable drum, pounding and pounding.

“We’re pushing our luck as it is,” Draco says, unmoored, unsteady, unsure of himself in every way but the bounding beat of his pulse. “I’m leaving as soon as the sun hits the tree line.” Harry says nothing – doesn’t argue or throw himself against it, just stays right where he is, pressed up against Draco with his face hidden against Draco’s shoulder as though he has no intention of ever moving, or being moved. Draco turns his head slightly so that his mouth brushes Harry’s ear, and takes a deliberating breath. Very quietly, he says, “Until then, I’ll give you anything you want.”

For the second time that morning, Harry goes perfectly still.

Then he lets out a harsh, noisy breath like Draco has dealt him a blow to the stomach.

“That’s worse,” Harry says, so low and rough it’s almost animal. His palms are a sudden, hot slide over the skin beneath Draco’s shirt, as though they heard permission and couldn't do otherwise. “You know that’s worse.”

“I’m giving you the option,” Draco says, trying to speak past the heavy, possessive weight of Harry’s hands on his bare skin, the way all of his muscles clench in response.

Harry pulls back at last, looking Draco in the eye, face lightly flushed, gaze lit up and angry and so hungry Draco feels it like an ache in his own stomach.

He says, fierce and miserable, “No, you really aren’t,” and kisses him.

Harry doesn’t kiss with just with his mouth, but with his entire body. He slams up against Draco, so hard that Draco’s arm does buckle, and suddenly he’s lying flat on his back on the table, Harry braced over him, crushing Draco’s shoulderblades into the grain and branding himself into Draco’s mouth with lips and tongue and teeth. For a moment all Draco can do is withstand it, feeling himself flying apart and trying desperately not to, trying to hold on to – something, some lonely fucking piece of driftwood that might, by some miracle, keep him from drowning.

At last Draco manages to move his hands unsteadily to Harry’s waist, and this, apparently, is all it takes to draw Harry’s unshakeable focus away from trying to crawl inside of Draco through his mouth. Harry breaks the kiss, taking hold of both of Draco’s wrists and pinning them to the table on either side of Draco’s body. He stares down at him with a wild, hunted sort of look.

“For God’s sake,” Draco says, breathing hard, “you maniac. Are you planning to fuck me on this table?”

Harry doesn’t miss a beat. “Do you want me to?”

Draco’s pulse leaps at that, traitorously. He narrows his eyes, but it lacks his usual fervor; his gaze keeps going half-lidded, rather spoiling the effect.

“I’d prefer the bed.”

Harry draws back slowly. His gaze is watchful and dark, the faintest ring of green around blown pupils. It isn’t quite the response Draco expects. He’d been braced for something different, to be hauled off the table in a breathless rush, Harry’s hands a bold imperative. Harry’s fingers on Draco’s wrists flex and unflex, as though they, too, were expecting to be told to do something else, restless with dashed purpose.

“It doesn’t have to be anything I want,” Harry says. “Not just that.”

Draco slides his gaze up to the ceiling. “Harry.”

“I don’t want it to be just that,” Harry continues, firmly, as though Draco hadn’t spoken. His thumbs dig into the thin skin beneath which Draco’s pulse keeps leaping. He says nothing else.

It’s maddening.

“Can’t you just,” Draco says, grinding his teeth at how he sounds, the faint tremble in his voice, “take?”

“That’d be easier for you, wouldn't it,” Harry says after a moment. He doesn’t sound particularly happy.

Draco’s chest rises and falls shallowly. Yes.

“I don’t care.” Harry’s voice darkens. “I don’t want this to be easy for you.”

It hurts more and less than Draco expects. More, but there’s a relief to it, the almost pleasant rush before the cut starts to bleed.

“Fine. Alright. Once again and unsurprisingly, Harry Potter gets anything he wants, get off of me.”

“Are you insane? I don’t, ever, get anything I – ”

“I meant from me.”

“Especially not from you!”

Harry pushes off from the table at that precise moment – and, at that precise moment, Draco lifts himself up on his elbows, gaze bright and furious, locks a foot around Harry’s ankle and pushes with his entire body, hip crashing into Harry’s and propelling them both sideways. Harry catches himself on the table’s edge and Draco follows, chest pressing hard into the line of Harry’s spine, both hands on top of Harry’s where they’re clenched over the wood, squeezing ruthlessly. It occurs to him half a beat later that Harry isn’t fighting back – though every tensed up line of Harry’s body practically radiates with the intention. It isn’t, Draco notes, quite surrender. In a fair fight against Harry, he would lose.

Draco rests his forehead against the nape of Harry’s neck in defeat, breathing hard into the space between his shoulder blades. “I said anything you want.”

Harry shudders out a breath. “I want you to want it.”

He sounds miserable. It’s so infuriatingly stupid that Draco wants to kick him.

“Potter, you imbecile,” he says instead, a low, vehement curse, and releases him, turning on his heel and stalking into the other room.

It is, as it turns out, the room with the bed. Because Draco is practical, and not a savage, and his hands are shaking on the buttons of his shirt, and he is trying not to notice.

“What are you doing?”

Harry’s voice is soft from the doorway.

Draco clenches his jaw, turning his face in the other direction. His fingers keep fumbling. It’s only because Harry Potter makes him furious, turns him inside out and then has the gall to demand to be allowed to poke at every bleeding sore and weakness, demands an explicit invitation, as though the agony of it is something for which Draco should ask nicely.

“I’m moving this along,” Draco says tightly.

“Stop it.”

“If you’d rather waste time – ” Draco cuts himself off sharply, the unexpected urgency in it tightening his throat.

Across the room, Harry makes a soft noise. Draco freezes, his breath a wretched tangle, wondering if he’s given himself away. Very nearly hoping that he has.

“You said anything,” Harry says.

Draco grits his teeth. “I know what I said.”

“Then tell me.”

Draco drops his hands, half bared chest rising and falling unsteadily. From the corner of his eye he can see that Harry hasn’t moved away from the door, the stubborn lines of him perfectly still. Draco shakes out his sleeves, once, swallowing and staring at a single spot on the floor. The curve of his mouth flickers. Without thinking, he touches his left wrist, then his forearm, closing the fingers of his right hand around it.

“I want it,” he whispers, guilt splintering him, aimed in so many directions he can’t keep track. He shuts his eyes, fingers clenched tight over his arm, the sensitive marked skin underneath. On a ragged breath, he tears his hand away, eyes finding Harry like meathooks. “I want you to.”

The words scrape Draco’s throat, torn up and honest.

Harry stares at him, gaze focused and intense. Unchanged from before but for the way his eyes darken further still, pupil wholly eclipsing green. For a handful of moments, he's less a young man than a war wearing a young man’s clothing, soundless uprising in the tight, unhappy line of his mouth, silent battle in the shape of his hands, clenched at his sides into white-knuckled fists.

Draco waits, bruised and bloodied on his own battleground, and nowhere a victory.

“Fuck,” Harry says, quietly and with feeling.

Draco reads the surrender in it before Harry even moves. Thinks, as Harry’s mouth finds his, that perhaps the victory is happening to someone else.

After the rush, there is quiet. They lie side by side together, not quite touching, breathing slightly out of sync. Draco feels laid out, laid open, a bruised, tender ache where his heart is supposed to be. He is trying to rein it in. He is trying not to feel it, trying not to remember the times he has felt this before.

Harry breaks the silence first, voice rough from being foolhardy and determined enough to try to take Draco down his throat, but sounding as though, underneath that, it might be soft.

“What’s it like?”

Draco tries to look at him without turning his head, not quite managing to see anything and giving it up as a bad job. He blows out a breath, which catches unsteadily toward the end. Narrowly, he asks, “Are you fishing for compliments?”

“No.” A low note like amusement in it, or tenderness. Harry turns onto his side, facing Draco, a blur of hard lines in his periphery. “It was pretty obvious you enjoyed it.”

The bastard doesn’t even sound smug, just matter of fact. Also in a way Draco used to find intolerably arrogant.

Draco says, eloquently, “Hm.”

“I’m just asking.”

Draco deliberates a moment, the tread of his heart slowly returning to something within the realm of normal. It still aches. Every so often it flares hurt sharp enough to scatter his breathing.

“I don’t know,” Draco says. “I’ve never done it the other way.”

A pause. “Never?”

Draco shakes his head. Closes his eyes when Harry, after a beat, moves closer, laying a warm hand over the plane of Draco’s chest, still moving a little unsteadily with each breath. Harry rubs over the flushed skin with his palm, up and down, once, twice, as though Draco is some animal he’s gentling. Draco can’t stand it, throat fiercely tight, knowing with bone deep certainty that Harry learned that from Draco doing it to him.

Draco keeps still beneath the touch. He swallows several times before he speaks, voice calm and steady, if a little bit halting.

“It’s… too much at first. It always feels like… much more than I can take. But then it’s different.” He swallows again, eyes on the ceiling, rough stonework and broad wooden beams. “I feel it everywhere. And then it’s my body that feels too small, like I’ve… outgrown it. Because you’re part of it.” His cheeks heat a little. “And then it doesn’t feel like enough, because you aren’t.”

Another pause, lengthier. “That doesn’t sound entirely pleasant.”

Draco smiles a little, hearing the frown in it.

“It isn’t, entirely,” he says. He reaches for Harry’s wrist, arresting the slow, clumsy stroking. “What is it like for you?”

“You’re the only one I’ve been with.”

“I know that.”

“I have nothing to compare it to,” Harry says, a little protestingly.

Draco considers that before turning onto his side, mirroring Harry’s position. Harry’s glasses are missing, knocked clean off sometime during the heavy, frenzied push-pull of limbs and clothing and mouths seeking the sweet shock of skin wherever they could find it, hands everywhere and overwhelming with the task of getting closer. His eyes look smaller without them, his eyelashes longer. Draco is still holding on to Harry’s wrist, on the bed in the small space between them.

“Do you need something to compare it to, to tell me how it feels?”

Harry flushes. “I meant… I wouldn’t know how much of it is sex, and how much of it is just… you.”

The ache in Draco’s heart swells hugely for an instant – and then lessens. Like tide drawing in and out, dragging something new on its return, warm and nudging into the space, mixing with the rest of it. It pulls at the careful line of his mouth; he lets it happen.

“You can refuse to answer the question, you know,” Draco says. “It’s allowed.”

Harry looks at him, and licks his lips, that thoughtless habit. “I don’t know. It feels… powerful? But also like everything I do is up to you. The way you move.” His gaze moves over Draco’s face, darkening a fraction. “The sounds you make.”

“A bit like sucking cock, then,” Draco says.

Harry laughs softly. “No. I mean… I suppose, that part of it, yeah.”

Draco props himself up on one forearm, mouth tightening in faint rebuke. “You’re leaving things out.”

“I’m trying to figure out how to say them, Malfoy, you idiot.”

Draco casts his eyes over the length of Harry’s body – once, then again, slower, lingering on the dip of the thin, white sheet at his hip, the sharp, vulnerable divot there, flesh joined with muscle and leading down in a sharp diagonal. He lets go of Harry’s wrist, not looking him in the eye as he reaches and grabs hold of the sheet over Harry’s thigh between his fingers, tugs it down a fraction, and another.

“Figure it out faster,” Draco says, voice steady and twice as soft.

“What do you want?”

Draco’s eyes dart up to Harry’s, then swiftly away, heartbeat quickening. “I’m sure it will be obvious in a moment,” he says, pulling the sheet down far enough that his mouth goes dry, because Harry is already – Draco exhales noisily and glares up at him. “Keep talking.”

With that, Draco scoots closer, sideways toward Harry and then pointedly down, eyes level with the rough, dark line of hair on his abdomen. He sees more than hears Harry’s breath catch. There’s a faint taste of salt on Harry’s hipbone, over which Draco lingers, mouthing softly against it. He moves a hand up to hold Harry lightly in his fist, and Harry stops breathing then altogether.

Draco bites over his hip, hard. “Talk.”

“What – and say what, Draco, for fuck’s sake – ” He breaks off abruptly when Draco tightens his grip, makes a low, heavy sound in his throat.

Neither of them speak for several moments, Draco’s breaths tight as he works Harry with his hand, a relentlessly slow rhythm that has Harry’s hips seeking, or struggling to with Draco’s weight pinning them down on one side, one of Draco’s legs thrown over his.

“Tell me what it feels like,” Draco says, very clearly, “to fuck me.”

“It feels like – ” Harry touches a hand to the back of Draco’s head, not quite lingering. Touching, and falling away, and touching again as though he doesn’t quite know whether he's allowed to hold on.

Draco kisses his hip again, then lower.

“Like?”

He breathes the word out so close to his mark that Harry shudders, all the way down the length of his body. It matters, somehow, to wring this from him, this honest confession, to know it before he never has it again.

Harry sounds like he’s speaking through gritted teeth. “It feels like – fuck, Draco, I don’t know. Like I could tear the world down for you if you asked me. Because you asked me.”

“Even if I didn’t have a good reason?”

“Even then.”

Draco stops. Harry makes a quiet, punched out sound of protest but nothing else, holding biddably still as though unsure what will make Draco pull away and not wanting to find out.

“Pity you don’t feel that way all the time,” Draco says, managing to sound almost conversational through the ache and heave of his heart. He wants to turn his face into Harry’s stomach and breathe low against it until it passes, slams against the impulse. His voice rises a little, thinning. “It would save me a lot of trouble.”

“Are you angry with me?”

“Shut up,” Draco says, “and keep still.”

Harry’s hand is a sudden tight fist in Draco’s hair, not painful but firm. “I’m not sure you should do that when you’re angry.”

The smile Draco levels up at him is not an entirely pleasant one. “I’m best at this when I’m angry,” he drawls and, wholly ignoring the pull on his hair, swallows Harry down to the root.

As far as blowjobs go, it’s ruthless. Draco works him with his mouth and the muscles of his throat, establishes a tight, unrelenting rhythm that brings Harry to the edge only to hold him there, backing off just enough at every telltale tremble while Harry shakes and swears in broken, bitten off syllables, sounding gut-punched and desperate and like he truly would do anything Draco asked. Draco feels overheated and desperate himself by the end, wringing Harry’s orgasm from him brutally and without warning, as though it belongs to him and not to Harry at all. He rides out the helpless movements of Harry’s hips until they stutter and stop, dwindling down to jerking, involuntary tremors. Harry makes a sound almost like pain, and at that, Draco finally lets him go, mouth swollen and obscenely wet, eyelashes damp and clinging.

“That’s how you deep throat someone,” Draco says, breathing hard against the inside of Harry’s thigh.

Harry gasps out an incredulous laugh. “Is everything a competition to you?”

“With you it is,” Draco says, and bites him softly.

Harry’s hand in Draco’s hair clenches. Draco had barely noticed it, during, couldn’t say whether Harry’s touch when he came down Draco’s throat had been violent or gentle.

“You sound like hell,” Harry says.

“You sound pleased,” Draco counters.

Harry doesn’t refute it. Instead, he strokes Draco’s hair, smoothing it clumsily away from his forehead. He says, “I think I want you to fuck me.”

Draco’s heart briefly stops, a swift, bruising pressure in his chest.

“I’ve never,” he starts, and can’t say anything more.

“I know,” Harry says, hand stilling.

Draco pushes himself up on his forearms, angling his face carefully away. The sweat drying on the back of his neck makes him feel, suddenly, very cold. He is aware of Harry watching him, aware of the air between them going taut with something very different from before. He is aware that he should say something else. He can’t. What he’s said feels like enough, and too much already. I’ve never.

Harry’s voice is soft, knowing. A touch bitter. “I can’t have that either, can I.”

Draco rolls off of him, lying on his back on the mattress, legs tangled in the sheets. Still tasting Harry in his mouth. Still feeling him. He turns his face toward the window, studying the light beyond the thin curtains.

“It’s nearly sundown,” he says.

The sun has all but disappeared behind the trees. Draco studies the tree line carefully, as though it might yield a different truth, a different telling. Harry is standing in the doorway to the safe house, shower damp and mostly dressed. He is looking at Draco. For the last hour or more, he has looked nowhere else.

“If you’re not here when they come, he’s dead,” Draco says, colorless and remote, needing to say it. Fearful of the answer, or the lie within the answer. Hating that a part of him refuses to trust it, whatever it is. Not with this.

“I know,” Harry says. “I’ll be here.”

A sharp, frustrated exhale. Draco glances at him, sidelong, and then away. “That also worries me.”

“You wouldn’t like the plan if I told it to you.”

Draco’s jaw tightens, but in the end he’s too tired to hold himself to it. Fury fades to exasperation and then not even that, the fight going out of him like a guttering candle. “I know that. You’re terrible at plans.” He swallows. His heart feels like a closed fist, clenching and unclenching. The sky is beginning to turn, light fading into bruised purple. “Don’t get yourself killed,” he says, nearly choking on it.

“I won’t,” Harry says.

The odd, low note in it makes Draco look, and keep looking. Harry is wearing the unreadable expression Draco hates, the one he’s learned in these last few months, only it seems more natural every time, less a mimicry and more a part of him.

Something locks tightly in Draco’s chest. “Harry.”

“Go,” Harry says roughly.

The expression flickers, showing Draco enough to know that it is taking considerable effort on Harry’s part to keep still. Draco doesn't want to find out what would happen if he didn't.

He goes.

unfortunate.

2016-12-15T22:54:36Z

note: hey welcome to sad harry/draco stuffs i wrote based on an old rp storyline from years ago, because my heart is harry/draco garbage. context? what context! the context is, roughly, canon divergent storyline set at the end of sixth year, during which harry and draco had a Thing, it was Complicated, blaise and draco also have a Thing, it is Complicated and years old and heartbreaking and they are each other's first everythings which is Important, draco is stupid and doesn't understand his own heart well enough to know he's in love with either of them, and basically harry gets the order to give draco sanctuary, blaise goes to the death eaters because he'd rather die than accept potter's help and anyway draco is Safe now so whatever, and draco does the only thing blaise can't ignore, aka puts himself in mortal peril by going to the death eaters ANYWAY and saying oh by the way here are all of potter's secrets i can spy for you now, and it's a good thing draco is crazy good at occlumency because that is a pack of lies.

but the point here isn't any of that because the point is i've been suffering over this for years. since it is a mangle of rp related stuffs it will never otherwise see the light of day. i do this solely to torture my own damn self while the poor patient person who plays blaise thinks of creative ways to kill harry potter and also sometimes me. this is what i do for fun.

ADDENDUM: i added a couple of links to bonus scenes (well, rp logs) that fit chronologically with these. featuring the formidable talents of cat, who writes blaise and ginny. <333

I.

Harry’s eyes gleam strangely behind the lenses of his glasses, the low, flickering light of the fireplace catching on the easy shield of them. He lowers his gaze to Draco’s forearm without releasing it from his too tight grip, the line of his mouth severe, brows furrowed in a way that looks like pain.

Draco is holding his breath. The skin around the brand is still pink and angry and sore.

“What’s the matter, Potter?” Draco smiles humorlessly into the fraught, uncomfortable silence. “Never seen a Dark Mark before?”

A muscle moves in Harry’s jaw. The cage of Harry’s fingers tightens around Draco’s wrist.

Then he pulls.

Draco catches himself against Harry’s chest rather than crashing into it, blinking quickly at the rapid shift, the feeling of Harry’s face tucking itself into the bend of Draco’s neck, the hot, too-quick burst of breath there. He finds himself encircling Harry's waist with his unmarked arm, stunned and a little off center, heart thudding insistently behind his breastbone. Harry’s fingers have gone vise-like around his forearm, relentless, and it hurts, the mark still fresh and achingly sensitive, but Draco clamps his lips down tight over a noise and shuts his eyes, swaying into him.

“Potter,” Draco says unsteadily.

Harry’s grip cinches tighter, stealing the breath from Draco’s lungs in one great, stinging rush.

His mouth is very warm against Draco’s neck. “You’re an idiot.”

His voice shakes, a little, though with what particular emotion, Draco can’t quite tell. Anger, or fear. Possibly the urge to pummel Draco into the wall for having the gall to act in ways unseemly to one Harry James Potter, secret control freak and avid hater of the word ‘no’. Privately, Draco thinks he’s doing the world a favor by forcibly familiarizing Potter with that word more often. It’s good for him, really. It’s—

“Potter, you brute, that does still smart a little,” he says, tugging ineffectually against Harry’s dire hold.

Harry goes very still. Then he lets go of Draco’s arm, not quickly but deliberately, as though he’d known what he was doing the entire time.

“Sorry.” Harry pulls back, expression shadowed and difficult to read.

Draco can’t make anything out with those damned hideous glasses catching the light and throwing it back, so he bites the inside of his cheek and removes them, tucking them thoughtlessly into the collar of Harry’s shirt. Harry blinks at the intrusion but says nothing, not even when Draco catches the angle of his chin in his palm to steady it, unflinchingly meeting his gaze.

Calmly, Draco says, “I’m not.”

Harry’s eyes harden a little, throat bobbing a tight swallow. “If he hadn’t been so bloody stubborn—”

“Careful,” Draco interrupts, voice deceptively mild. “You really don’t have room to be throwing stones, there.”

Harry is silent for a long moment. “Did you find him, at least?”

A narrow look. Draco releases Harry’s chin, arm settling carefully at his side. With that one movement, they are no longer touching, and he tries not to feel anything about that at all.

“I wouldn’t have come back otherwise,” he says, like it’s simple. Probably it’s one of the few things in Draco’s life now that is.

The line of Harry’s mouth tightens, remote.

“What do you want me to tell the Order?”

“I don’t need you to tell them anything,” Draco says evenly. “I’m perfectly able to pull my own weight. I have something to offer them now.”

Harry frowns, looking as though the idea is thoroughly distasteful to him.

“Disappointed?” Draco asks, lips curling unpleasantly. “Did you want me beholden to you a while longer?”

Harry starts, as though the words have made a physical impact. His eyes flash hurt that he isn’t quite quick enough to cover. “That wasn’t—it was never like that.”

“Wasn’t it?”

“For fuck’s sake, Malfoy, wanting you safe is the same as wanting you beholden to me?” Harry demands, voice rising a little. “Who thinks like that?”

Draco tilts his head. “Everyone, Potter, whether you like it or not. Perhaps it isn’t something you wanted outright, but you certainly didn’t lose sleep over it.”

Harry blinks at him strangely. “And you did?”

It isn’t pleasant, exactly, the twinge Draco’s heart gives at that—at the vulnerable look in Harry’s eyes, bared quite totally for Draco to see, the way his tone shades more toward sadness than anger. He steels himself against it, fingers clenching and unclenching at his sides.

Draco opens his mouth to speak.

A firm rap on the door pulls Harry’s gaze away. Draco’s is less quick to follow, lingering in the hollow of Harry’s throat and lower, noticing, for the first time, the fresh bruise peeking out over his collarbone.

“Harry?” calls a voice Draco recognizes. The line of Harry’s jaw softens as Ginny pokes her bright head into the room, though his eyes keep squinting at the doorway, glasses still tucked uselessly into his shirt collar. “Oh.” Ginny’s voice cools considerably. “Hello, Malfoy.”

“Weasley,” Draco says with absolutely no inflection.

Ginny turns her attention to Harry, quite through acknowledging Draco for the moment. “Dad’s here. He’s waiting for the two of you downstairs.”

Harry smiles at her softly. “Thanks. Tell him we’ll be down?”

She nods but hesitates, opening the door a little further. “You know you’re blind as a bat without those, don’t you?”

“Really?” Harry asks, amusement smoothing out the rough, unhappy edges of his voice. Draco frowns at that without meaning to. “No one’s transfigured you into a red-orange blur while I was gone?”

“Might have,” Ginny allows ruefully. “Fred and George keep trying to feed me prototypes. They snuck one into my breakfast last week.” She grins a little. Harry grins back. “I’ll see you down there.”

To Draco’s idle surprise, she glances at him, once and shortly, before she leaves.

“She asked to come, when she heard you were here,” Harry tells him.

“Why on earth would she do that?” he asks. And then, upon further consideration: “Ah.” His expression snags a little over something uncomfortable, eyes on the now empty doorway. “Blaise won’t have expected that, probably.”

“Was he expecting you?”

Draco lets the question linger for a moment, throat oddly constricted.

“No,” he says, frowning faintly. “No, he wasn’t.”

Harry rubs his eyes with the heel of his palm, looking tired. He mutters, “Then he’s an idiot.”

“That’s not necessary,” Draco says, sharp. Then, softer, “Come here.”

Harry stops what he’s doing, blinking rather owlishly, and holds himself biddably still while Draco unhooks the glasses from his shirt, murmuring a cleaning spell over them before replacing them carefully on Harry’s face.

Harry catches Draco’s wrist on the retreat, eyes once again obscured behind the lenses.

“I missed you,” Harry says, the words simple but heavy, without artifice. “What if you hadn't-- You just left.”

Draco's gaze is firm, and gives little.

“I told you," he drawls, "I was going to."

Harry frowns darkly. “How did you know they wouldn’t kill you on the spot?”

“Because I have something they want now, too.”

“And if they don’t believe you?” Harry argues. “If they start to suspect—”

Draco huffs something close to a laugh. “They already suspect.” The grip on his wrist is implacable, Harry’s expression tight and troubled, gathering heat like a storm. Draco regards him steadily, without a hint of apology. “You understand why I had to do it. Why I had to leave.”

“Yeah.” Harry pulls him closer. There’s a stubborn twist to his mouth, as though the admission isn’t one he particularly enjoys giving voice to—or as though he asked the world to change and it refused him, which Draco knows, from personal experience, annoys Harry considerably more than most things. “I do.”

Draco touches the bruise he’d glimpsed earlier, frowning rather pointedly at it. “Granger doesn’t know any basic healing spells?”

“Not that sort of bruise,” Harry murmurs.

Draco’s eyes dart up to catch his, concerned. A smile flickers over Harry’s lips, nothing like the bright, easy grin with which he’d favored Weasley a minute ago.

And then Draco isn’t thinking about Weasley at all, because Harry’s kissing him, slow and solid and expecting permission rather than asking for it. It shouldn’t make Draco’s stomach hollow out and swoop like that, shouldn’t make him want Harry to take more, and he bites a little meanly at Harry’s mouth, annoyed with himself, feels more than hears Harry’s breath trip in response. Harry hooks a hand around Draco’s neck, hauling him closer, pushing against the palm Draco has splayed over his chest. Draco’s fingers twitch and curl, uncertain whether they want to clutch at Harry or push him away, but knowing he should do one or the other, and soon.

“Potter,” he gasps against his mouth. His heart is a rapid drumbeat in his ears.

Harry makes a sound but doesn’t quite stop, breaking each kiss only to claim another, lips warm and soft and open against Draco’s, making Draco’s breath snag hotly in his throat.

“Potter,” he tries again, touch firming infinitesimally on Harry’s chest.

Harry does stop, then, swaying into him and breathing heavily. Draco closes his eyes, realizing with an inward curse that he’d been hoping, on some level, that he wouldn’t, and feeling distantly and properly horrified by that bit of self-knowledge.

“I don’t,” Draco says, mouth very dry. “I’m not,” he swallows hard, “entirely sure that’s a good idea.”

Harry shakes his head, nudging gently into the side of Draco’s face. “Why not?”

“I can’t,” Draco tries, thrown off at once and badly by the low note of tenderness in Harry’s voice, the way it curls there unselfconsciously. His own voice catches a little, the pitch of it rising. “I don’t think I can give you what you want.”

Harry’s breath is a warm burst against Draco’s ear.

“What is it you think I want?” he asks, palm still heavy over Draco’s nape, curling into the soft hair there.

Draco shivers.

“Potter,” he says a third time, flinching when Harry’s teeth graze over his jaw in rebuke. “You have to admit, the timing isn’t—” Lips brush over the bite, gentle. Draco’s heart shudders and seizes, the word catching in his throat. “Ideal. And there’s—”

Harry pauses, pulls back, eyes searching Draco’s face.

“There's what?”

Draco’s heart gives an unsteady kick. He doesn’t, can’t, know how to say it.

“They’re waiting for us downstairs,” Draco says instead.

Harry’s expression narrows, almost exasperated. But he drops the hand on Draco’s neck and steps reluctantly away, giving Draco what feels like utterly necessary space to breathe. His mouth moves uncertainly, a hard line, hurt buried in it. “We’re not done having this conversation.”

Draco doesn’t argue, mind clearing with the sudden distance, pulse steadying by degrees. He turns on his heel and heads for the door, not bothering to make it look like anything but what it is: a hasty retreat.

I.i. bonus scene.

II.

Draco is steeping a strong cup of tea when Potter’s distinctive footsteps make their way into the kitchen. Noisy, overconfident, purposeful. They stop about a table length away, and Draco dips his head fractionally toward his cup, cradled between both hands, feeling the steam of the drink on his nose.

“What happened?” Draco’s voice is cool.

“I thought you were listening.”

Draco turns in one smooth movement, the cup still held in front of him. The tea is very hot. Even with the polished ceramic as a barrier, it burns his palms; Draco grips it tighter.

“I don't mean that,” he says calmly, gaze moving over Potter, once, from head to toe and back again. He forms the words carefully, trying to sound neutral. “Blaise. There was blood on his sleeve.”

Potter doesn’t blink at that, but his expression darkens a fraction. After a beat, it clears.

“Why don’t you ask him about it?” is all Potter says.

Draco puts the cup down on the table and crosses his arms over his chest, more to keep something between them. “Because I don’t always believe him, when it comes to that.”

It’s a worrying commonality between the two of them, Blaise and Potter, but Draco doesn’t voice that thought out loud. Potter scrubs a hand artlessly through his unkempt mane of hair, which, for a wonder, actually does seem to settle it, for some bastardized definition of settled.

“Disemboweling Hex,” Potter grunts more than says, blowing a noisy breath out through his mouth. He’s looking at the wall clock over the stove with little in the way of expression, an uncharacteristic dispassion that extends to his tone. “He blocked it. Really well, actually.” Potter’s tone is matter of fact. “He’s good. But there was a scythe jinx piggybacked onto it. Nearly got him.”

Draco very consciously does not grit his teeth, or allow himself to consider the image of what would have happened if it had.

“I see.” He taps the fingers of one hand against his upper arm and tries not to be angry. The feeling pulls at the corner of his mouth anyway, contained to that small space. “You’re in one piece, I trust.”

Potter’s gaze flickers toward Draco, then away. Draco’s hand twitches, as though wanting to find the string to which it belongs and pull it back.

“I’m fine,” Potter says. “I owe him a few for that.”

Draco’s eyebrow arches, unbidden, the rest of his expression unchanged.

“Well,” Draco says. “You did dispense of a scythe jinx for him.” A hint of ill humor, dry as bone. “Most of one.”

Potter looks at him then, direct and unblinking, for the first time since he stepped into the room. It hits Draco a bit like a train, and his arms stiffen, muscles pulling taut, barely perceptible through the thin, white material of his shirt. There’s a twist to Potter’s mouth that’s almost wry. It doesn’t quite gentle him.

“I thought if a Searing Spell didn’t kill me, you would,” he says, tone falling short of playful. Draco says nothing, regarding him blandly even as Potter takes several steps closer, not tearing his gaze away from Draco for a second. “You’ve steeped your tea too long,” he murmurs. “It’s going to taste disgusting.”

“Never you mind my tea, Potter,” Draco answers, aiming for dismissal and managing it. But the line of his mouth goes strange and wavering, and Potter is close enough that Draco can see dirt smudged in the hollow of his throat, the rumor of sleeplessness beneath his eyes. The small distance between them feels chasmic until, incredibly, Draco reaches out. He glances down at his own hand, clenched in the front of Potter’s shirt, feeling as though it doesn’t quite belong to him.

Potter breathes out, very slowly, but doesn’t move.

“Thank you,” Draco says, a little too firmly. He swallows, lifting his gaze and finding Potter’s expectant, dark – almost patient if Draco didn’t know better. For a moment Draco wants to say more, but the words crowd in his throat, obstructive.

Potter’s smile is a faint, humorless curve. “Sure,” he says quietly.

“You’re right, of course.”

“I am?”

Draco nods. “Killing you would have been very unpleasant. It would have irritated me immensely, not to mention the questions. Why Draco, the Dark Lord would say, if you could have done that the whole time, why the bloody hell didn’t you save us all the trouble? Mother, knowing of my deep and abiding respect for dramatic timing, would say nothing, but would shame me silently with a look that curdles the soul.” Mouth curling into an unpleasant smile, he drawls, voice dripping irony, “Aunt Bellatrix would probably suggest executing me, on the off chance I’m a traitor.”

“Now I know you’re feeling better,” Potter says dryly.

“I’m not feeling better,” Draco counters, eyes narrowing. “I’m extremely annoyed. And I intend to go back to sleep, so do keep the theatrics to a minimum.”

“Are you the pot,” Potter asks, “or the kettle?”

Draco makes a disparaging noise in his throat and lets go of him, shoving lightly at Potter’s chest for good measure.

“Tea, yes, thank you,” he says, retrieving the cup, its contents nearly black now, for how long it’s been steeping. “I’d forgotten it entirely.”

The drink is bitter, grounding, too strong to be pleasant. Draco focuses on that instead of the fact that Potter hasn’t moved, still encroaching on Draco’s space, trapping him against the side of the table and a countertop. He’ll have to brush up against Potter if he wants to extricate himself, so Draco stays put, and sips his tea, and waits, trying not to respond to the heavy, present weight of Potter’s stare on him, willing the tread of his heart not to kick up at it like an animal.

“Are we going to talk about anything?”

There is a new, rough edge to Potter's voice.

“We talk frequently,” Draco says vaguely, “about all sorts of things.”

“Why is kissing me a bad idea?”

Draco sets his cup down with a vicious clatter. “You want to do that now?”

“What, kiss you?” Potter shoots back, the volume of his voice rising in the room for the first time.

Draco’s rises to match it. “Yes, if you like!”

“If I— " A short, disbelieving silence. "You know I do! It’s you who’s—”

Potter cuts himself off with what appears to be great effort, eyes flashing with some awful, jagged sort of hurt that makes Draco’s heart thud sickeningly in his chest. The studied lack of expression from earlier is gone, blown away as though it had only ever been a thin film of dust over the real thing, and for a moment, Draco badly wants it back, wants Potter to stop looking at Draco as though he’s run him through.

Potter’s breaths aren’t quite even anymore, and he spits the next words out as though he’s eager to be rid of them. “You told me that part wasn’t a lie.”

“It wasn’t.”

“Then why—”

“I can’t.” Mortifyingly, Draco’s voice actually hitches a little. “It isn’t—obviously I—I care about you—”

“Is it?”

Draco blinks. “Pardon?”

“Is it obvious?”

Lead lines the inside of Draco’s stomach. He stares mutely at Potter for several moments and genuinely doesn’t know what to say.

At length he asks, tone dangerously even, “Just how much of me are you doubting, Potter?”

“I didn’t mean,” Potter starts, looking stricken.

“Do you suppose I’m playing your whole side?”

“No. I—”

Draco’s voice is deceptively mild, slicing through the air with the ease of a flaying knife. “Just you, then? Which of the—Salazar, how many is it? I didn’t think to keep an exact count. Which of the times we fucked do you suppose had an ulterior motive attached? Because that first time, I’ll admit, I still rather hated you—”

“Will you stop.”

Potter slams both palms down on the table on either side of Draco, crowding him up against it. Like this, Potter almost seems the taller, Draco’s spine bending just slightly backwards to keep their bodies from touching. There’s something wild about the light in Potter’s eyes, almost feral, a hungry thing glimpsed and then gone, as though Draco were a bone and Potter the junkyard dog who’d been denied it. Draco remembers seeing that look, once, the first time he woke Potter up by carding fingers gently through his hair, a late evening in the library, Potter slumped over in a doze on top of his blank scroll. It was as though no one had ever touched Potter quite that way before.

“Damn it, Draco,” Potter says, and he sounds wretched enough that Draco almost forgets to be cross. “I just miss you.” He tips forward as he says it, as though the admission carried weight, tilting his face into the bend of Draco’s neck and shoulder and slotting into place there.

Neither of them moves for several moments, Potter's breaths loud against Draco’s throat.

Draco swallows reflexively until it feels like he might be able to speak.

“I’m sorry,” Draco finally says. He touches the back of Potter’s neck. There’s an immediate warning hunch in the line of Potter’s shoulders that Draco wilfully ignores, stroking fingers over Potter’s nape. Little by little it relaxes. “I’m here. It will be alright.” The assurance is awkward in Draco’s mouth, the way words of comfort always have been. He frowns, thumbing over the top notch of Potter’s spine, fingertips digging lightly into his hairline, feeling the tension slowly ribboning out of Potter by degrees. It's a bit like calming an animal, some great beast that might buck him at any moment. Draco never quite figured out how to pitch his voice to make it sound soothing, so he doesn't bother trying. “The littlest Weasley and I had a talk, you know. It was very illuminating.”

Potter doesn’t respond for some time. When he does, it's muffled. “A talk?”

“Mm.”

Potter turns his head slightly, so that he’s speaking less directly into Draco’s neck. “Since when do you and Ginny talk?”

“Since, of the three of you out in the hallway just now, she earned the honor of annoying me the least.”

Potter grunts, but doesn’t argue the point. Draco keeps touching him, rubbing small circles behind the shell of his ear.

“What did you talk about?” Potter's voice is soft.

“You and Blaise, in single combat. We placed bets.” Brightly, “Care to know who she thought would lose?”

“You’re really awful.”

Draco dips his head a fraction. “Miss that, too, do you?”

Potter is silent for a long moment. “Yes.”

The line of Draco’s mouth sobers. On a blink, his eyes close, and he waits several seconds to open them.

Without another word, Potter turns his head, mouth angling once more into Draco’s skin.

II.i. bonus scene.

III.

There’s an impromptu standoff happening in the kitchen. It’s either very late, or very early, and the kitchen table has been turned into a stage for military planning, a single large map covering scratches in the wood, one corner heavily torn, parts of it marked up in blue and red. Nobody in the room is older than eighteen.

Draco’s gaze his locked with Harry’s. His shirt has ripped along the shoulder, exposing a healing cut underneath, angry red and raised along the edges. He feels it pull with every breath. “You have to give me something to tell them.”

“Why should he?” Weasley asks, and Draco grits his teeth, a little. Miracle of miracles, he truly does prefer the youngest Weasley to any of her brothers. “You lot haven’t brought back anything useful in weeks!”

“And the only way we will is if you give me something. Potter.” He swallows. “Harry.” Something in Harry’s eyes flares and sharpens, the line of his mouth softening unconsciously. Draco almost feels guilty for it. Almost. “It doesn’t have to be much. We’re close, I know we are. I’ll bring you something back this time.”

Granger's voice is hesitant. “I don’t know, Harry…”

Draco has to give her credit; she tries hard to be fair. She tries much harder than he would, were their roles reversed.

Harry is looking at no one but Draco. There may as well be nobody else in the room.

“Tell them…” Harry’s tongue darts out to wet his lips, a bad habit that leaves them perpetually chapped and dry. Draco’s heart pangs a little, that he knows that. That he’s gotten this close. A beat, and something in Harry’s gaze settles, sure and sound as steel. “Tell them Inverness.”

Draco blinks. “What’s in Inverness?”

“I am,” Harry says, low and decisive. “I will be. They want something? You can tell them Harry Potter will be there, and that he’ll be alone.”

Draco’s voice has gone brutally cold. “Oh, lovely. Shall I come back when you’re ready to be serious? You idiot. I’m not telling them that. I meant something small.”

“Ron’s right,” Harry says, in that calm, collected way he’s started to, lately, since they began playing at war. It grates, every time, twists something in Draco’s chest, because Harry shouldn’t have to sound like that. None of them should. “Something small hasn’t gotten us anything in weeks.”

“You’re not doing it,” Draco says, the muscles in his jaw pulling painfully tight.

“I know how to defend myself,” Harry says, and adds, dryly, “I’ve had a bit of practice.”

Draco ignores the sorry attempt at humor, eyes hard, mouth a forbiddingly thin line. Draco’s hands, at his sides, turn into fists. “You’re not doing it, and I’m not telling them that.”

Harry looks at him for a long time.

“Mate,” Weasley says at length, uncharacteristically tentative. He sounds distinctly uncomfortable, well and truly put off by the novelty of having to take Draco’s side in anything. “No offense, but that sounds a bit mental.”

Harry doesn’t respond for several moments. When he does, he is speaking to Draco.

“Zabini will,” he says and, to his credit, doesn’t look or sound the slightest bit sorry.

Draco’s stomach drops into his toes.

→ part iv aka goodbye aka i wrecked myself

fic: wherefore art thou cantankerous bastard

2011-12-21T20:26:48Z

title: wherefore art thou cantankerous bastard (sequel to not a big deal (tm)) | read on AO3 or listen to the podfic by the wonderful fire_juggler!
author: camille shecrows
pairing: kirk/mccoy
rating: NC17
word count: 7,905
notes: THE BIG DEAL SEQUEL. reading the first is recommended if you want this to make sense. thank you to romancandles for the read-through, and for meta-ing incessantly with me about these two assholes, and for the "you broke my face with your dick" line, because yeah, that would be hers. thank you also to redinteriors for being born on this day, twenty-two years ago - or, well, not quite, because australia and time zones.
disclaimer: mot nine. not mine. i need coffee, sorry.

Jim knows that, despite being a genius, he can be kind of a complete idiot.

Don’t get him wrong: he knows people. He knows how to work them, mostly, knows how to get a read on them almost immediately, just enough of one that he can figure out how to get them to do what he wants when he knows what that is. It’s not about figuring out how they’re wired so much as the general instrument of the thing and what they’re capable of, what they can do and where they’d be best doing it. It’s probably part of what makes him a really great captain.

Apparently it also makes him a pretty shitty friend.

Or whatever – not that Bones will stay in a room with him long enough to tell him what he did.

Scratch that, Jim knows what he did. And yeah, he knew what he was likely to get in terms of an immediate reaction, that’s why he did it, because it was hilarious, but the silent avoidance treatment is so not even remotely amusing anymore.

Jim was willing to let it slide for the first day or two, because fine, sometimes Bones just gets like that, and Jim doesn’t actually have to push all the time. He can totally back off and give Bones space, or whatever, time to fashion a dartboard out of Jim’s face and let off some steam even though Jim still doesn’t fully understand what there is to be so goddamn angry about. It was a joke, and yeah, Bones is a little manic about privacy, and so maybe the entire crew thinks they’re fucking on a regular basis, but it’s not like it’s true, not like it’s an actual real secret Jim has just flagrantly and gleefully exposed to the entire bridge. Jim’s not a total asshole, and he’s not sure he’d be even remotely capable of doing that to Bones.

Jim knows his hang-ups. He’s got several. After five years, he’s starting to know Bones’s, too. He’s not an easy guy, neither of them are, and they’ve butted heads so often Jim’s got a permanent bruise on his skull he likes to call Wherefore Art Thou Cantankerous Bastard, but their arguments usually blow over as quickly and completely as they come up, and even when they’re yelling themselves hoarse in each other’s faces, they’re never more than a room’s length apart.

It’s been five days – which doesn’t seem like a whole lot, in the grand scheme of things, but Jim isn’t in the mood to give a shit. It’s been five days of trawling through Delta Quadrant, which Jim has privately categorized as Most Boring Place Ever, When Do We Leave. The most interesting thing they found was a stream of astral eddies hovering on the edge of space-subspace interfold layer, to the fascination of no one apart from a few space geeks on the science decks who Jim’s pretty sure peed themselves a little. Spock, the traitorous bastard, wrangles Jim into a conference room to “discuss the matter of emanating plasma particles left in their wake, Captain,” and Jim has to weather the enthusiasm of about twenty dewy-eyed blue shirts for the approximate duration of a glacial age.

He practically flees to medbay afterward, because if Bones doesn’t hook him up with some actual booze, Jim will be forced to resort to whatever piss-tasting concoction Scotty’s replicated down in engineering, and that just never ends well.

Also, he misses the obstinate son of a bitch.

Sickbay is stocked to bursting. When he gets there, Nurse Chapel is overseeing the medical personnel, PADD in hand, as they unload crates and crates of whatever shit Bones thought they might need for a month-long stint in Boring Why Are You So Boring Quadrant, which it turns out is pretty much everything. They wiped out the first Starfleet outpost they went to, and Jim had to delay the voyage almost a week so they could get the rest of the stuff shipped in. Command hadn’t been entirely happy, but honestly, they could go fuck themselves. They didn’t have to deal with the brunt of Bones’s truly impressive paranoia.

“Hey, is he – ”

“In his office,” Chapel says without looking up from the inventory list.

“And on a scale of – ”

“Seven,” she says breezily. “He hates inventory, and someone mislabeled the cytoglobin.”

“Noted,” Jim replies, and keys in the code to Bones’s office. Predictably, it’s been changed. Jim’s not sure why Bones even bothers at this point, punches in the override, and gapes when the computer tells him that Doctor McCoy has, in literally the last five minutes, initiated the medical bypass and categorized Jim as not being in his right mind. Jim very briefly sees overwhelming amounts of red. “Unfit for duty, are you fucking kidding me? Bones, open the door!”

It remains impassive and unyielding.

Jim really hopes Klingons are around the corner, because he really needs to shoot something.

He finds Spock on the bridge, corners him and waves his PADD around like if he does that hard enough, it’ll erase the offensive message from the screen. “Did you know about this?”

Spock blinks. “If you are referring to Doctor McCoy’s pronouncement as of approximately seven minutes ago – ”

“Well, I’m not referring to his perfectly dimpled ass, Spock, so yes!”

The bridge is so quiet Jim’s pretty sure you could hear a yeoman’s hair pin drop. Spock regards him with the kind of perfect serenity Jim is starting to know means he never in his life wanted to hear the words that just came out of Jim’s mouth.

“Follow me,” Spock says after a moment, and herds Jim into his office. Jim goes, still seething, and flops into a chair before deciding a split second later that no, actually, and stands so abruptly he almost knocks the chair off its legs. He paces the length of the room twice, then stops short when Spock says, in exceedingly calm tones: “The gesture was merely symbolic. It is not valid until it bears my signature, which I, of course, withheld.”

Jim waves a hand, because that is so not even the point, but the words register, and he does manage to say, “Thanks,” and mean it.

Spock inclines his head. Then, with all the solemn enthusiasm of a man at the scaffold, he says, “Your relationship with Doctor McCoy is platonic.” Which is not even the point either, but it’s closer, so Jim nods. “You are aware that this runs counter to the general consensus among the crew.”

“Yeah,” Jim says slowly.

“Have you purposely and knowingly encouraged the pretense?”

“A little,” Jim admits.

“And Doctor McCoy possessed no knowledge of this.”

Spock is speaking to Jim in tones so patient they suggest the impossible task of trying to impart information to someone with an intracranial bleed. Jim thinks that’s a bit much, but then he also doesn’t know what Spock is getting at that’s oh, so obvious, so he shakes his head.

Spock sighs. It’s almost pitying. Jim opens his mouth to ask Spock if he could for, like, one second stop getting off on being so fucking withholding and actually tell him something, and then Spock says: “Doctor McCoy is not angry, Jim. He is hurt.”

The words take a second to settle around Jim’s heart. And then they squeeze.

He finds himself sinking down into a chair and backpedaling furiously to point out that no, Jim knows this guy, he knows Bones’s anger like he knows his own, knows what it looks like in every degree and configuration, knows when it shifts to cover something else, flaring over something raw and vulnerable. And that’s when the distance hits him squarely in the chest, stunning him quietly into the realization that he hasn’t seen Bones at all, and he actually knows nothing, and Jim is a total fucking moron. Awesome. Go team.

“Spock, I need a favor,” he says.

The look in Spock’s eyes is calm and wholly free of judgment, and Jim feels it like a warm, steadying touch on his shoulder. He listens, nods his head once, and simply says, “Of course.”

Bones is there a few minutes later, hovering on the other side of the threshold and looking so haggard Jim actually wants to derail the mission just to go find several hundred incompetent interns for Bones to dismember until he feels better. It’s, like, an embarrassingly near thing.

“You wanted to see – oh, goddamn it.”

Jim gets the briefest glimpse of Bones’s expression completely shuttering before the man turns to leave, and then he’s on his feet, crossing the room in three long strides and halting at the door, telling Bones’s retreating back that: “I will chase you down these hallways, Bones. You’ve got a head start, but your endurance sucks.”

Bones keeps walking, one, two, three steps, and then stops abruptly. Jim watches the rise and fall of his shoulders as he heaves a whole-hearted sigh. He makes no move otherwise, and Jim worries the inside of his cheek with his teeth, casting around for the right thing to say to get Bones to come back.

“You’re an asshole, you know,” is what comes out of his mouth in a drawl that’s half petulance. Bones twists his head so quickly it has to twinge, glares at Jim over his shoulder with a mixture of genuine vitriol and stunned disbelief, eyebrow so far up the side of his face and at such an alarming angle that he actually looks more Vulcan than human. Bingo.

“I’m an asshole?”

Jim leans against the door and crosses his arms. “Yeah, that’s what I said.”

It’s flat and uncompromising and for a fractional, heartbeat moment, the fury in Bones’s eyes dims, overwhelmed by something sharp and wretched that tears into Jim in all the wrong ways and fills him swiftly with leaden remorse. It weighs down his ribs, makes it hard to breathe, and he opens his mouth unthinkingly to take it back, because Bones is supposed to get angry. He isn’t supposed to look at Jim like that.

And then Bones turns, and he isn’t looking at Jim at all, and that’s worse.

“Permission to be dismissed,” Bones bites out, the lines of his body as stiff as his voice. “Sir.”

“Denied,” Jim says thoughtlessly, and advances. “Bones – ”

Bones spins around completely, the look in his eyes cementing Jim’s heels to the floor. “Fine!” he shouts, two spots of vivid color high in his cheeks, and the little mid-brow dent makes an appearance, giving Jim the totally inappropriate, strangled urge to laugh. Jim poked it once and swears he saw his life flash before his eyes. “Fine, Jim, you want to talk? By all goddamn means!”

He storms past, knocking Jim’s shoulder hard with his own, into Spock’s office.

“Okay,” Jim says, stomach flipping, and follows.

The automated door slides shut, sealing them inside. There’s a pinched quality to the way Bones is holding himself that’s at odds with how this usually works, like he’s struggling to keep himself in. Normally Bones is all wild gesticulation and a touch of drawl that makes his voice sound bigger, stretches the syllables and gives them girth. Bones’s anger takes up space, fills the room and pushes up against the sides of it, demanding either a hasty retreat or, for those brave or stupid enough, a firm push back.

This is not that.

This is what Bones didn’t want Jim to see.

“I’m sorry,” Jim blurts. The words spark a series of painful collapses in his chest, leave him feeling hollowed out and cavernous. Bones looks like he’s too big for himself suddenly, like he’s retreated as far into his body as he can and somehow run out of room. Jim wants to take the excess and house it in the spaces between his ribs. “Bones. I’m sorry.”

Bones stares at him, mouth a jagged line on his face. “Do you even know what you’re apologizing for?”

The laughter bubbles up, hysterical, but gets trapped in Jim’s throat. Whatever I did to make you look like that, he wants to say in all earnestness, but at least he knows not to. He’s learning. Bones sighs, a narrow thing that snags on hooks in the air, not quite impatience. The distance between them is stubborn, a few glaring feet that make the inside of Jim’s skull buzz angrily.

“Okay.” Bones bites off the word, and the swarm of bees goes quiet.

“Okay?” Jim can’t help it, the laugh bursts out, scratching the roof of his mouth. “Worst apology ever, and you’re, like. Okay?”

“I’ve heard worse from you.” There’s a frayed edge to it that spools out onto the floor, missing its mark. The words are bigger than they’re meant to be, truer in a way that makes Jim’s chest hurt. Jim grunts, frustrated, because words: what even are they, and takes two steps toward him, stopping cold when Bones edges back. It stings. “Leave it, Jim, it’s fine.”

“Bullshit it’s fine,” Jim says, a little coldly. “Look, you wanna know what I’m apologizing for, you want specifics? I don’t have them. I’m sorry – about that, and about the other thing, whichever part of it that is, I don’t – I’m not a mind reader, Bones, will you look at me or something? Jesus.”

His heart’s pounding sluggishly in his chest, and for several long moments, neither of them moves. Jim’s hand twitches with the effort it takes not to reach out and fix the stubborn angling of their bodies, Bones’s turned so resolutely away, an unforgiving perpendicular. He watches as Bones pulls his lower lip in between his teeth: it glistens faintly when it’s released, reddened like he’d bitten down hard. Bones is curled in on himself in a way he never is except in sleep, and even then Jim knows that sometimes all it takes is an ankle hooking around one of Bones’s calves for the man to murmur indecipherably and roll onto his back, hair plastered to his forehead like the cowl of sleep made manifest. It’s not uncommon, if Jim drifts off again, to wake up with Bones’s hand curled protectively around the back of his neck, thumb pressed into the fleshy junction beneath his ear.

Bones snores, and loudly. There was a time when Jim couldn’t sleep through it.

His chest feels tight.

“Fuck,” he says, letting go of the breath he’d been inadvertently holding, off balance and wide-eyed and feeling more acutely inept than he has in basically ever.

A muscle in Bones’s jaw tics, and he looks up, misinterpreting some integral aspect of Jim’s tone. His face falls, leaving him hopelessly exposed, and Jim responds impulsively, making quick work of the space separating them – fists a hand in Bones’s sleeve before the bastard can even think of moving away. Bones doesn’t, and maybe it’s a testament to how effectively caught he is, because he’s suddenly drawing himself up and filling Jim’s vision, so close Jim can’t see anything else. He meets Jim’s gaze like a challenge, mouth tight and eyes blazing, and it might have worked on anyone but him.

“It’s not a joke to you,” Jim says, fingers tightening, bracing for a violent retreat that never comes.

Bones’s eyes flash, a crack of lightning that illuminates the landscape for a single standstill moment. It singes the air, and Jim’s throat feels thick, like he’s breathing smoke.

“Bones.” It’s small, stunned, and so completely and desperately fond in the face of Bones’s raw posturing that Jim nearly buckles under it. He takes McCoy’s face in his hands, thumbs over his cheekbones, and feels the man swallow. Earnestly, Jim whispers: “You are so stupid.”

“Fuck you.” Bones glares, whole-hearted and actually kind of terrifying, in defiance of the hitch in his breathing. It’s so utterly, quintessentially him that Jim kind of wants to die, the smile tearing into his face and Jim helpless to stop it. Bones shifts, dials the glare up several notches and pushes ineffectively at the center of Jim’s chest. “Jim, damn it, let go.”

“No,” Jim says, buoyant. His thumb slides down, brushing over the corner of Bones’s mouth, and Bones shudders visibly. Jim’s vision rattles, or maybe it’s his breath. The momentary giddiness turns over in his gut, showing a new face that’s faintly mocking. Soberly, Jim extends the touch to sweep over the generous swell of Bones’s bottom lip, and it’s input for output, the exhalation falling harshly from Bones’s mouth, the fingers on Jim’s chest twitching.

Bones’s eyes have gone downcast, hovering around Jim’s throat.

“Wow,” Jim says thoughtfully, his mouth a helpless curve. “There are so many elephants in this room we’re practically on safari.”

“Jim, I swear to god, if you make one more joke – ”

“Bones, I am so serious,” he says, leaning in close enough to feel McCoy’s breath against his face.

It’s the strangest thing, being on the other side of this, Bones saying I’m fine when he’s anything but, Jim seeing through it so easily he wonders why either of them even bothers. It’s counter-intuitive: Jim’s always believed in limiting his losses, but with Bones it’s always been something else. There was a moment, he thinks, when it could have gone either way, when he could have listened to the voice in his head telling him no fucking further instead of adding to the pile of things Bones does for him. Jim’s gotten pretty good at deciding when that voice is full of shit; in his experience, those are the times when it sounds most like him.

Jim uses the hand still cupping the side of Bones’s face to tilt it towards him. Bones lets him, stubborn reluctance written in the bow of his lips, and casts his eyes searchingly over Jim’s face. Jim bears it without trying to meet his gaze, thumb still poised on the edge of Bones’s mouth, close but not touching.

“You’re an asshole,” Bones says thickly and without much heat.

“Yeah.” Their foreheads are almost brushing. “But I don’t mean it.”

The next part is crucial. Jim knows beyond the shadow of a doubt that whatever lead Jim throws him, Bones will pick it up and follow. Jim figured that out right after he realized that Bones lets himself be defined by the needs of others instead of his own. The latter he buries in a place just out of reach, where they won’t tie up his hands. It’s where he’s comfortable, but it’s not what Jim wants, and maybe that’s just continuing the trend, a bizarre catch-22 carved into the spaces Jim makes that Bones fills.

“Whatever you want,” Jim says, almost a murmur. “Do it.”

A jerk in the line of McCoy’s broad shoulders, and the hand on Jim’s chest is very slightly shaking.

“Jim,” he says in a low growl, the syllable cut short by the hard clench of his fingers. “You are a font of bad ideas. Let it go.”

It sounds tight, the kind of thing a person says with their eyes closed, toes curled over a precipice. Bones’s eyes are wide open.

“Bones,” Jim says warmly. “When do I ever – ”

Suddenly there’s a hand on his waist and a fist in his shirt, and Jim hits the edge of the conference table with bruising force, breath catching on impact. For a moment his entire body tenses, instinctively bracing for a fight, but then Bones’s hands are on his thighs, pushing them apart, and it just as instinctively relaxes, becomes pliant to the touch. Jim molds himself into the shape Bones demands the same way he does after his body has taken a battering, Bones busy with the task of putting Jim back together. His stomach clenches with the certain knowledge that he’d let Bones take him apart, too. Without thinking, he’d let him.

Bones curves his hands around Jim’s hips, pulls him in close, Jim’s ass resting on the very edge of the table. His legs are bracketing Bones’s body, and he clenches them. Bones pulls in a breath.

“Jim,” he says again, and it sounds so torn and abjectly miserable that Jim’s heart jumps, settles heavily in his throat.

He brings a hand up to Bones’s face, fingers skirting gently over the apple of his cheek. The touch shifts, blunt nails dragging along jaw muscles that clench in its wake. “You’re really not supposed to sound like that,” Jim tries, surprised by the unsteadiness of his voice.

“What the hell am I supposed to sound like?”

Jim hones in on the flare of irritation like a homing beacon, so familiar and close and welcome that it practically curls his toes. Bones’s mouth is a taut, angry line on his face, there’s an edge to his gaze that’s skittish, but his grip on Jim’s hips is so tight it’s probably cutting off some circulation. Everyone has a tell: with Bones it’s his hands. The man is one incongruity after another, but his hands give him away every time. Jim tilts his hips, a fractional upward movement, lips parting at the snag it puts in Bones’s breathing.

It’s balancing on the head of a pin.

“Bones, are you hyperventilating?” Jim asks with a sudden excess of gravitas, voice dropping. “Bones, breathe. Bones – ”

“Unbelievable pain in my ass,” Bones growls in a rush, then surges forward and kisses him.

It’s chaste, a firm press of lips on lips designed to shut Jim up and nothing more. It’s a new method, but the ending’s the same, and immediately Jim is smiling against Bones’s mouth, swears he feels an answering twitch in return.

A heartbeat, maybe two before it’s no longer familiar, a shift of intent made manifest by the careful movement of Bones’s mouth against his. Jim responds without thinking, easy and warm, and then Bones’s tongue flickers over Jim’s bottom lip, and Jim’s entire world narrows down to the slick, searing touch, there and all too quickly gone.

Jim’s got a hand clutched in the hem of Bones’s undershirt, breath quickening. Bones is frozen suddenly, but there’s a thrum underneath, like it’s hurting him to keep still. Jim grazes his teeth carefully against the swell of his top lip, just enough pressure toward the end to make it sting.

The exhalation sounds torn from Bones’s throat. Then, in a voice so low it drags against Jim’s nerve endings, he says: “Okay.”

The pin drops.

He kisses Jim like he’s trying to crawl inside of him through his mouth – bruising, opening him up with teeth and tongue and the strong, demanding angle of his jaw. For one brief instant it aligns every vertebra and tugs, jerking Jim straight, bringing him flush against Bones’s chest. Jim’s mind blanks, world going muted except for the blood rushing to his ears and the splintered breaths Bones is pulling through his nose. He can feel the stuttering of Bones’s heart, and it turns something over in his chest, aching.

“Okay,” Bones says again, voice edged in glass, and Jim shivers, breath knocking around in his lungs, fingers scrabbling on Bones’s elbow. The hold on his hips tightens.

He tilts his face up and kisses him, and it’s the easiest thing in the world. One of Bones’s hands comes up to clutch the side of Jim’s face. There’s a noise in there that Jim swallows: it hits every rib on the way down, catching on the last and fusing to the bone. He gives back what he gets but waits for Bones to make the next move, sucks lightly around Bones’s tongue and uses his teeth, exploiting every inch of track Bones lays down but never more than that. Bones may not know how to shape his voice around his needs worth a damn, but he can use his hands. He can take. It’s an admission, enough of one, and Jim lets everything hinge on that instead.

Doesn’t mean he can’t help it along a little.

He hooks his ankles around Bones’s calves, securing the lock of their bodies, and spares a thought for how this would feel if they were considerably less clothed, maybe with Bones inside of him. His hips jerk once, helplessly, at the idea. Bones’s mouth goes slack in response, eyes half-lidded and out of focus, lips flushed and shining.

“You’ve got a great mouth,” Jim says honestly, a touch hoarse, so close their lips brush when he speaks. “Evidence suggests you know how to use it.”

“Evidence suggests? What are you,” Bones mutters acidly, but hitches Jim in closer, widening his stance a little so it’s groin to groin, and oh shit, this is happening. It’s blessed, inadequate friction, and Jim’s eyelids droop at it, smiling in a way he knows is stupid. He can’t help it: it’s an automatic response, his brain all fired up and lazily giddy with the knowledge that You Are About to Get Laid, Jim Kirk and he’s all yeah, I know.

“Let me rephrase. From the way you just kissed me like you were trying to creatively rearrange my ribs, I’d be really interested to see what that mouth could do wrapped around my dick.”

So, fuck, that probably counts as more than ‘a little’, but Jim is full-blooded and male and human, and Bones doesn’t so much embody the word obstinate as takes it out back and schools it until it’s crying.

From the way Bones’s breath catches, though, it more than hits its mark.

“Who allowed you to happen to my life?” Bones asks, the kind of dark rhetorical Jim’s come to expect as his due, hand relinquishing its crushing grip on Jim’s hip to tear at the front of his pants. Jim bites his lip, maybe forgets to breathe, and then McCoy’s hand is on his dick, large and warm and capable, squeezing once, lightly, before stroking him from root to tip. Jim’s forehead hits Bones’s shoulder, breath stamped out of him as his eyes slide shut.

The hand on the back of Jim’s neck is gentle, steadying in counterpoint to the rough slide of Bones’s thumb. Jim mouths at the fabric of Bones’s shirt, over his pounding heart, one hand braced on the table and the other hooked into the waistband of Bones’s pants. Jim’s felt those hands on him a thousand times, but the naked intent here is staggering. His breath twists to mirror the movement of Bones’s wrist, and then there’s a mouth at his ear, hovering over the shell. Jim turns into it thoughtlessly.

“Both hands on the table,” Bones says, hot against the side of his face, and Jim almost moans. He lifts his head and blinks up at him, takes in the slight flush creeping along Bones’s neck and does as he’s told, tightening his legs around Bones to offset the distance it puts between them. “Lean back,” Bones murmurs, and jerks Jim roughly, so good it almost makes Jim’s elbows buckle.

Jim turns his head into the hand at his shoulder, nosing against the underside of Bones’s wrist. He licks at the thin skin, eyes closing at the way it makes the fingers on his cock clench, delivers wet, open-mouthed kisses and tries to suck a bruise into it even though the angle’s all wrong. McCoy’s pulse jumps against his mouth, and that in itself is almost better than the palm sliding over the slick head of his dick, trying to ease the burn of that dry grip. Bones grunts, frustrated, and Jim’s eyes snap open in time to see Bones lick a wide stripe over his palm and spit into it.

“Fuck,” Jim says, breath tripping.

Bones leans forward, hand dropping from Jim’s shoulder to lie flat on the table as his spit-wet hand encircles him. Their mouths brush, Jim’s falling open as Bones starts to stroke him in earnest, long, slow pulls that twist around the glans and make the muscles in his thighs contract.

“Knew you’d be good at this,” he says, the edges of it cracking. “Your hands, fuck.”

Bones’s pupils are blown wide. “Jim.”

It sounds shattered. Jim blinks, pushes himself up to close the distance, biting and licking at Bones’s lips until he’s moaning, a short, aborted noise that settles in Jim’s throat. He slides his hand over the table until it meets flesh, lays it over Bones’s fingers and curls his own around his wrist. Bones closes his eyes, shoulders quaking a little as though under some invisible onslaught, hand stilling. For a second he looks almost brittle. It puts hooks in Jim’s skin, makes him want to lash out at whatever caused it, but the answer’s obvious.

“Bones,” he says, soft, and kisses the underside of Bones’s jaw, half wordless apology. The silence makes him frown, encroaching and ominous, and he doesn’t so much kiss as continue to brush his mouth over Bones’s skin, a mindless, repetitive gesture that has nothing to do with memorizing the feel.

Jim’s legs relax, or start to.

“Said something about my mouth,” Bones says, and Jim’s heart rate doubles.

“It – ” He gasps at the teeth grazing against his jugular, surgically precise. “It’s a good mouth.”

“Around your dick,” Bones continues, a low rasp that lights every one of Jim’s nerve endings, singes them. He punctuates the phrase with a sharp twist of his wrist, strokes down and brushes his knuckles lightly against Jim’s balls. Jim lifts his hips, cursing, tightens his fingers around the hand not currently punching holes in his breathing. A harsh exhale against his neck, and the hand underneath Jim’s twitches. “Jesus, Jim, you can’t say shit like that.”

“What?” Jim asks, swallowing. “Mild dirty talk?” Whatever, Bones doesn’t have to be into that, he’s perfect, that hand – fuck, that hand is perfect.

“No,” Bones says roughly. “The other thing.”

Jim thinks, dials it back and tries to remember, but it’s always hard to keep track of the things he says when someone’s paying special attention to his dick, mind tight and obsessed with the sheer physical sensation of it. Bones doesn’t really give him much of a chance. He’s got his hands on Jim’s waistband, tugging firmly, and Jim uses his hold on Bones’s legs for leverage, lifts his hips so Bones can slide pants and underwear down his thighs.

Then it clicks.

“Little late to pretend I’ve never thought about this, isn’t it?”

The look Bones levels him is severe. “That’s not what this is.”

It’s a challenge issued by someone who knows they’ve already lost, and it pings every single alarm bell until the inside of Jim’s head is blaring. He frowns, reaches out, but Bones is already dropping to his knees. It’s a sight he wanted to savor: instead he feels like he’s been punched in the gut. Bones slides his pants the remainder of the way down, hands resolute and steady. Jim bats at them ineffectually and gets a quelling glare for his trouble. He sees the cracks in it, genuine concern battling with just how fucking badly he wants this to continue – settles for wrapping his legs around Bones’s torso, arousal spiking at how easily Bones accommodates him, shuffling in close between the protective bracket of Jim’s thighs.

He runs a hand through Bones’s hair without thinking. It sticks up ridiculously, making something twinge in his chest, heady and for an instant excruciating.

“I have, you know,” Jim says, hollowed out and bare.

Something in Bones’s eyes shatters, and then slowly, deliberately rearranges itself. All Jim can think, deliriously, is that it makes him look younger and older at the same time.

“Come here,” Bones says.

He slides his hands under Jim’s thighs, hooking around and settling them on Jim’s waist where he rubs small circles into the skin with his thumbs. Jim’s fingers clench in his hair, stomach muscles shuddering as Bones leans in, painfully slowly, and closes his mouth loosely over the head of Jim’s dick, warm and slick and suction-less. It puts an itch under his skin, makes his chest feel tight, and when he tilts his hips he encounters no resistance, watches his cock push past the relaxed circle of Bones’s mouth, a leisurely inch or two before Bones sucks lightly.

Jim bites the inside of his mouth, hard.

He keeps up the slow, shallow thrusts, eyes trained obsessively on Bones’s lips, the way they stretch around him and start to shine, spit gathering at the corners. His mind lazily entertains the notion of tracing the shape of it, touching the flesh boundary where Jim’s cock disappears into Bones’s mouth, a flash of imagery that makes his hips stutter and stokes the coiling heat in his gut. It’s still too little suction, not enough friction, and for some reason Jim isn’t surprised that Bones would be a mean bastard about this, slow and withholding and so fucking perfect it makes Jim want to crawl inside of him and never leave.

Bones sucks in short, intense bursts, staggers them so Jim doesn’t know when to expect it, cruelly evading any kind of rhythm. Jim’s stupid with it, with whatever Bones wants to give him, keeps pushing into that warm, unhurried mouth, fingers tight in Bones’s hair – he loosens them when he notices, pets apologetically, but that only makes Bones take him in further, changing the angle so that the head of Jim’s cock hits and drags over the roof of his mouth. It tears a guttural sound from Jim’s throat, weighs his eyelids down, and he wonders with what little higher cognitive function he has at this point if Bones is really going to bring him off just with this. The man’s hands haven’t budged from his waist.

When Jim’s dick nudges the back of Bones’s throat, he tugs Bones’s hair sharply enough to earn a low grunt.

“Sorry,” Jim breathes, a little chagrined but smiling anyway, carding his fingers gently through Bones’s hair as he bites his lip and fights the muscles in his thighs screaming at him to thrust until one of them breaks. Bones groans and swallows around him, and Jim almost yells, head bowing, fingers scrabbling against his scalp. “Fuck, Bones.”

Bones looks up at him, eyes searing with his mouth full of Jim’s cock, and Jim feels wrecked, hips pumping involuntarily, Bones’s hands steadying but doing nothing to impede. He’s overheated, sticky with it, shirt clinging to his shoulders and back, shaking with the effort of containing his thrusts. Bones gags once and breathes through it like a fucking professional, grip tightening on Jim’s hips when he tries to pull away, and fuck, there’s no way he’s going to last. Bones sucks in counterpoint to the slide of Jim’s dick, cheeks hollowing around the head and tonguing the slit right before Jim slams back home. He works Jim with the muscles of his throat on every upthrust, sure and steady like he was fucking born to do it, and Jim can’t breathe. He tries desperately to gentle the touch in Bones’s hair, shifts his hand to clutch the back of Bones’s neck, but it always edges toward violence.

Jim says his name in a stranger’s voice, a rough thing with dents in it, blunt nails digging into Bones’s skin.

That mouth pops off of him, heaves a breath against Jim’s leg. Jim can’t see straight, can’t fucking focus, cock jumping as Bones licks and bites his way along the inside of Jim’s thigh. The arm holding him up is shaking, almost buckles when Bones tongues along the crease, lips hovering near Jim’s balls, and then he’s nosing against the underside of Jim’s dick, breath hot against his perineum, and sucking. Jim’s entire world goes white around the edges as he comes, barely cresting before Bones dislodges one hand from his hip to wrap it around him, mouthing impossibly against Jim’s clenching balls.

“Holy shit,” Jim says right before his arm gives out. He catches himself on his elbow as Bones works him through the trembling aftershocks, makes a torn, disbelieving noise when Bones takes him in his mouth again and catches one last pathetic string of come on his tongue, eyes closed in a way Jim’s not sure isn’t defensive. “Holy shit.”

The moan might come from either of them. Jim stares down the length of his heaving chest and watches Bones pull off of him, achingly slow.

“I think you broke my face with your dick,” Bones says, a rough, ruined scrape that does its level best to force one last sad twitch from Jim’s softening cock. He’s rubbing at his jaw, mouth hopelessly swollen and red, shiny with a slick mixture of spit and come. Jim can’t even handle this guy. He laughs incredulously and, when he thinks he can manage it for more than two seconds, pushes himself up to sitting, lowering his legs and settling each foot firmly on either side of him.

“Mind-blowing orgasms and compliments? Bones, seriously, what am I going to do with you?” he asks in a tone that very clearly suggests he knows exactly what he’s going to do with him and could provide detailed reference diagrams if necessary.

Bones’s expression goes skittish the way it does when he’s blushing, but his cheeks are so flushed already that it’s hard to tell. “Not a compliment,” he growls. “Asshole.”

“You’re cranky when you haven’t come yet,” Jim says, atrociously fond. Bones’s hair is sticking up in all sorts of horrifying directions. It puts a desperate kind of pressure in his chest that Jim’s convinced can only be assuaged by eliminating the distance between them. He grabs hold of Bones’s arm, just below the shoulder, and pulls. “Come here.”

Bones stands, shaky, sways into and looks hard at him, a jagged edge under the glaze that makes the smile wilt on Jim’s face. Jim hooks fingers into his shirt collar, tugging, still stupid with the warm buzz of a truly fantastic – if not mind-blowing, but they’ve got time – orgasm, slides off the table to prop his bare ass on the edge and licks into Bones’s unresisting mouth, chasing the taste of himself on his tongue. Bones sighs, stiff-shouldered, and curls one hand securely into the hem of Jim’s shirt.

“You know you’re stuck with me now, right?” Jim asks, sliding his mouth over Bones’s chin and worrying it with his teeth. The words are light, but his heart’s pounding, making them rattle in his ears. He has a desperate thought that Bones is going to say no, looming specters of the issues Bones punched his way through in the five years Jim’s known him: he feels cracked open suddenly and shudders with it, disguising it with a roll of his shoulders. “Not that you so weren’t before, but Bones – the things I wanna do to you.”

A small catch in Bones’s breath: it jangles against the inside of Jim’s skull. When he speaks, there’s a breathlessness underlying the deadpan that Jim could get used to. “I had a horrifying vision, but it was just my life, flashing before my eyes. I’ve unleashed a monster.”

“Yeah,” Jim says, mouth curving against the shadows at the base of Bones’s throat. “The monster of my dick.”

“I hate you,” he groans. “So much.”

“So cranky.” Jim snaps open the buttons on Bones’s pants, quick and efficient, lives briefly for the broken sound Bones makes over his head when he slides his hand down and cups him, squeezing.

He closes his eyes and maps him out gently, thumbs the divot of his hip and tests the weight of his balls in his hand, rolling them. Bones grunts, slides his fingers underneath Jim’s shirt and grips the small of his back while Jim presses his face into Bones’s chest and circles his dick loosely with his fist. He doesn’t have to work him up to anything, Bones is already there, full and flushed and heavy in Jim’s hand, thick drops of pre-ejaculate glistening at the tip. His neck smells warm and human and just a little bit like antiseptic, the need in him coiled so tight Jim wants to run his hands along his sides and soothe, if only to allay the ache in his chest.

“I got you,” he says instead, mouthing against the skin below his ear as he works him in long, slow, steady jerks. Bones shudders and locks his hips like he’s holding back. His head falls to rest on Jim’s shoulder, face turning into the side of Jim’s neck. Jim imagines his eyes are firmly shut. “Bones, relax. Or don’t, but – ” He rolls his thumb over the head, digs in a little, just enough to make him buck. Jim bites his lip. “Yeah, like that. Focus here.”

“What the hell else d’you think I’m focusing on?” His voice has crags in it and a hint of drawl, and Jim inadvertently speeds up the hand on his dick, because Jesus, the ideas it puts into his brain. He may actually need diagrams for some of them.

Jim laughs shakily, breath gusting. “You’re fighting, you stubborn asshole.”

“Fuck you, Jim,” he says tightly, and Jim sucks an angry bruise into his neck, goes over and over it with his tongue in time with the rhythm he’s setting with his hand.

“Absolutely,” Jim promises against the fresh mark on Bones’s skin, and Bones jerks his hips, muffling a sound into the curve of Jim’s shoulder. “Later. Right now. Whenever. Seriously, you might as well take the next five shifts off, because I want you spread out and naked and ready to fuck into me, Bones. And then I want to make you come for hours.”

Bones makes a low sound in his throat that’s half defeat, and suddenly he’s pushing at Jim’s shoulders, knocking him onto his back so quickly Jim only narrowly avoids slamming the back of his head against the surface of the table. Bones climbs on top of him like a parched man at a well, half possessed, breaths heavy and tight. He swats Jim’s unoccupied hand away when it goes for his pants, trying to shuck them down further, grabs him by the wrist and pushes it up, Jesus, over his head, digging his thumb into Jim’s hammering pulse and raking his other hand roughly through Jim’s hair, anchoring.

When Bones kisses him, though, it’s slow, deep and thorough, steady sweeps of his tongue that take apart without taking, almost careful, like a line someone draws in the sand. It’s diametrically opposed to the desperate, staccato movements of his hips, the way he rocks into Jim’s fist like he’s being jolted each time. Jim twists his wrist and Bones falters, scrapes his teeth against Jim’s bottom lip. Their eyes meet for one charged, breathless moment before the hand in his hair tugs and Bones closes his eyes, forehead resting against Jim’s, breath hot against Jim’s mouth.

You really didn’t think this through, says the voice in his head, the one that mocks. The inside of Jim’s skull feels padded in gauze, absorbing the thought and trapping it. Bones is mouthing something against the side of his face, damagingly silent, and No shit. Jim leaps without looking and if he winds up in pieces, Bones is there to put them in their proper place. The tremble in Bones’s spine tells him everything that’s different about this.

It’s a dam that can’t – won’t – hold.

“Bones,” Jim murmurs, and the man’s mouth finds his thoughtlessly, as though obeying a summons. Jim licks and sucks at it without ever initiating a kiss, and Bones lets him, groaning once in protest when Jim lets go of his dick to press two slick fingers behind his balls, rubbing the skin and applying pressure. Protest dissolves into a stuttered breath against Jim’s throat, Bones pushing into it, sliding Jim’s fingers over his hole, and then he’s gasping, body jerking as he bears down and comes, dick sliding messily along the crease of Jim’s hip and thigh.

Jim is pinned. Bones is solid and everywhere, clutching with both hands, nosing into the side of Jim’s face and pressing down with his whole body – as steady a weight as ever, grounding him like ballast. But he’s shaking, too, and Jim hurts with the need to cover him. He bumps Bones’s face with his own, seeking out his mouth, and finds his brow instead. It’s warm against his lips. Jim hums against the damp skin at his hairline and feels Bones relax by degrees, starting with the slow, measured exhale against Jim’s throat and traveling outwards.

It’s a moment, a feeling Jim thinks he might want to hold on to. The thought is foreign enough in itself, though maybe not where Bones is concerned. One more, Jim thinks greedily, each breath against his neck a small justification. The thumb over his wrist is moving, stroking absently over his pulse.

“Think Spock’ll be pissed our first time was in his office?” Jim asks, sotto voce. It gets exactly the response he’s aiming for, a groan punched through with a laugh and a helpless quaking of broad shoulders that brings Bones closer.

“He won’t be anything, because you are not going to tell him, Jim, you idiot,” Bones says, voice scratching at his abused throat. The jolt of sensual memory combined with Bones’s warm weight on top of him makes Jim’s heartbeat stumble.

“Yeah, because that’s the first thing I was gonna do.” Jim briefly tries to imagine that conversation, Spock’s expression growing more and more impassive with every word that comes of Jim’s mouth like a man making his peace with death. He grins. “I’m not totally sure how I feel about the fact that you think Spock and I swap, like, sex stories. First of all, I think Nyota would kill him. And me, on principle.”

“Then I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Bones, it’s going to be pretty obvious.”

McCoy pulls back and looks at him in a way that sobers Jim instantly. It’s the look of someone trying for careful neutrality and failing.

“Thought it was already obvious,” Bones says, a twist to his mouth that Jim intensely wants gone. The dismay must show on Jim’s face, because Bones looks regretful not a moment later, eyes softening, thumb resuming its slow, steady movements on the underside of Jim’s wrist like it never stopped. All he’s done is turn the knifepoint inward, the fucking martyr, aimed it at a place that looks like stone but isn’t.

“You’re a hazard,” Jim says, bumping Bones’s hip with his own. “Unto yourself.”

Bones looks at him oddly, probably because his own words sound strange in Jim’s mouth. He pulls back, taking Jim with him. A little shifting and fumbling have Jim in a position that could roughly be called sitting, legs dangling off the edge of the table with Bones in his lap, straddling his thighs, a small mess between them. Jim kisses him, and Bones grunts, surprised, grips Jim’s shoulder like he can’t decide whether he’s going to push him away or bring him closer. His mouth chooses for him, opening up to Jim with no deliberation at all.

Jim’s almost sure, but he needs to be dead certain.

“If you don’t want – ”

“I’m stupid?” Bones asks exasperatedly. The hand shifts, moves to the back of Jim’s neck, and pulls.

Jim follows.

stranger in my own land

2011-12-11T08:30:02Z

HOLIDAY LOVE MEME
~*~*~*~my thread~*~*~*~

wow there are cobwebs on this thing, does no one dust around here.

i don't do this stuff often, but, uh. HAPPY HOLIDAYS AND SHIT.

fic: not a big deal (tm)

2011-11-12T17:17:50Z

title: not a big deal (tm) | read on AO3 or listen to the podfic by the wonderful fire_juggler!
author: camille shecrows
pairing: kirk/mccoy (AOS, reboot, whatever the kids are using these days) preslash? but really just kirk/mccoy, because is there anything else.
rating: PG
word count: 2,550
notes: or that one time everyone on the enterprise thought jim and bones were fucking or even damn it, jim, i'm a doctor, not a decoy. i'm all porn'd out, guys, sorry this is so tame. i'll post the 15K one i finished at some point, but for now you can have this lighthearted jaunt. one of the lines popped into my head while i was writing the other one, and i typed it up in a flurry today instead of studying for exams. there'll probably be a sequel in the works soon, because it so is a big deal.
disclaimer: if this were mine, we'd have a sequel by now.

He and Jim are close, sure. They’re best friends. It’s known. Grass is green in springtime, Klingon is another word for attitude problem, Vulcans are where jokes go to die slow, grisly, painstakingly dissected deaths, and if anyone but Jim calls him Bones there’s likely to be a surprise inoculation booster in their immediate future.

So, whatever. It’s not a big deal.

Only it sort of is, in a way. McCoy doesn’t have too many friends besides Jim. Colleagues, sure, or what Jim likes to refer to as minions. (“Because those people fear you, Bones,” Jim says once, wide-eyed and a little awed. “You didn’t even have to say anything and that dude started crying. I think he peed.”) The occasional – all right, very occasional – romantic something while he was still at the Academy, or more to the point a handful of very awkward dates that never really seemed to go anywhere and ended with the woman surreptitiously changing her number, or McCoy simply never calling again. It wasn’t fair, but every woman he went out with made him panic like she was going to litigate the shirt off his back when he wasn’t looking. He’d had perfunctory relationships with his instructors, and now equally perfunctory relationships with all but one of the Enterprise’s eleven hundred crew.

But really, it’s not for lack of trying. Jim Kirk just happens to have this genetic abnormality where if he decides he likes your face, he thinks it entitles him to stick to you like an annoying, hands-y parasite until he’s something that you’re used to.

McCoy never thought much of it. Apparently he’s one of the few who hasn't.

It’s Sulu, the first time. He’s a plants guy, Sulu, when he isn’t steering them casually through most of McCoy’s biggest fears, which include life-extinguishing vacuums, electromagnetic radiation, rogue solar flares, meteor storms, and all amount to a single thing: space. Apparently he was in the research lab, innocently investigating a specimen they found in the Bolarus star system, when one of the spores exploded in his face and had him stumbling into sickbay a few minutes later with an engorged penis.

Some days McCoy really doesn’t think the Federation could ever pay him enough to do this job.

Turns out, alien sex pollen isn’t as sexy as it sounds. There’s a lot of pain and a lot of fumbling and then, after a generous dose of anesthesia, a lot of, “I get that this is kind of an awkward time to say this, but I want you to know that I think you are so cool, Leonard, can I call you Leonard? I’m usually on first name terms with people at this point, wow. It’s, like, purple, is that permanent?”

McCoy grits his teeth and gets on with it, employing the basic rule of disregarding ninety percent of anything that comes out of patients' mouths when they’re doped up on painkillers.

Then Sulu says, “So I bet you’re really glad I’m not Jim right now, huh?” and McCoy almost snaps his dick off in surprise.

“Excuse me?”

“Not that you won’t be able to fix me, though, right?” It’s buoyant, overly so, and then Sulu goes awfully quiet. His eyes, McCoy notices with something akin to dread, are shining at him through a thin film of tears. “I promised my mom I’d make her a grandmother someday.”

Sulu hasn’t really been able to look him in the eye since that, but that’s not the part McCoy takes issue with. He forgets it, though, and moves on, because painkillers.

Then there’s the time he spends a week hunting Jim down, trying to keep him in one place long enough to vaccinate the son of a bitch in preparation for their planned month-long exploratory voyage into Delta Quadrant. It’s like the kid’s got sensors in the back of his head, and every time McCoy gets within range of him he’s suddenly deep in Very Important Conversation, Bones, Can It Wait?, clapping McCoy jovially on the shoulder and running off at the mouth to some stunned engineer about quantum theorems or nacelle capacity.

It’s just this side of enough one day. McCoy is up to his ears in backlog what with ensuring his medical bay is stocked with enough supplies to cover any and every foreseeable disaster, and he’s just thrown up his breakfast and lunch because Scotty’s been testing the warp engines all day and rattling them around the ship like grains of rice in a tin can. He marches onto the bridge, fists a hand into the back of Jim’s shirt before his eyes have had so much as a chance to widen, and says, “Jim. My office. Now.”

‘Says’ is a loose term. ‘Bellows’ would be a touch more apt. In any case, McCoy is not above making a scene when necessary, on this of all days.

Jim looks a bit stunned for a moment, mouth oddly slack, but then he resumes some semblance of that irritating shit-eating grin and says, “Sure, Bones,” like he was just waiting for McCoy to ask.

McCoy doesn’t loosen his grip for a second, not even after he’s frog-marched Jim right into the turbolift, all too familiar with the inherent danger of Jim Kirk surrendering so easily. He glares at the assembled bridge crew as though daring them to protest his manhandling of their chosen leader, though they all look fairly cowed.

All except for Uhura, who looks faintly impressed, and Spock, who looks faintly green beside her.

Then Uhura winks.

The lift doors close before he can analyze the implications.

Scotty has a disturbing tendency to wink as well, but McCoy’s pretty sure that’s just a general thing. The man drinks like he wants to make a religion out of it, more than McCoy does and without the darker edge of self-destruction, casually reverent as he croons delicately over a bottle of scotch one moment, rattles off theories of quantum mechanics the next. Jim’s the only one who seems to keep up, but then McCoy’s seen him do astrophysics calculations in his head while perusing the porn collection on his data padd.

He sees how they might be kindred souls.

McCoy happens on a two man booze-fueled poker game once when they’re waiting out orders off Casperia Prime. The chips are spread all over the table, making it impossible to tell who’s winning, and half the cards have somehow ended up spilling among long coils of copper wires on the floor. Jim’s wiping tears of laughter from his eyes, cheeks red and eyes bright, and McCoy watches them with the side of his hip propped against the doorway, a look on his face that’s stupidly fond.

“And so the nuclear physicist says to the waiter,” pants the flushed Scotsman, gesturing expansively with the cards in his hand, his mind no longer on the game. Jim doubles over the table with renewed laughter. McCoy feels his own lips twitch. “He says no, thank you kindly, I’ll just have the fission chips!”

Keenser appears from under a metal crate, glaring at the pair of them and boxing his head with both arms. He and McCoy share a long look. McCoy shrugs.

“Doctor!” exclaims Scott, and Jim looks over and wipes at his eyes again, chest heaving as the peals of laughter fade away into giddy little hiccups. “Fancy a game?”

“Thanks, no,” McCoy says, not unkindly. “I actually thought I might borrow our captain for a moment, given he isn’t too busy captaining.” He infuses the last word with as much rueful sarcasm as he can muster, which, considering that for him it almost doubles as a second language, is nothing to scoff at.

Scott interprets it entirely the wrong way, grinning manically as his gaze falls blearily on one, then the other. He waves his half empty bottle around like a punctuation mark made manifest, though McCoy notices he never spills a drop. “Aye, ‘course! Cannae get in the way of young love, an’ all. Well,” he adds, slanting a look at McCoy. “Youngish.”

Jim’s laughter renews itself, full-bodied and brilliant, while McCoy stares.

Scotty winks, or maybe his eye just twitches, it’s hard to tell. The words hang in the air all wrong, and McCoy wants to comment, but Jim just keeps laughing his fool head off, stumbling to his feet and slinging an arm over McCoy’s shoulders.

“Scotty, my man,” he says, gesturing to the empty bottles, chips, and playing cards. It looks like a small ball casino threw up on the table and died. “We’ll call it a draw?”

“Go on, then,” the man says magnanimously. His eye twitches again. McCoy thinks about ordering him to sickbay just to check for head trauma. “Don’t let me keep ye two lovebirds.”

Jim laughs again, more sober up close. He never really gets drunk on the ship, not even when he’s technically off duty, saves it instead for shore leave when McCoy gets saddled with the unparalleled privilege (five years running, which is to say their entire acquaintance) of being the one to haul his majesty’s ass back to something resembling a bed.

McCoy pitches his voice low. “Did he just – ”

“Nope,” Jim says, swaying a little, decidedly into him and not away, the hard consonant popping off of his lips. He smiles, slow and easy. “Come on, Bones. I’m all yours.”

Jim gets respect from his crew, in part because he gives it, and in part because he’s done everything in his power to earn it. They’ve learned to trust him, and he trusts them right back in a way that makes something twinge, not entirely unpleasantly, in McCoy’s gut. It’s even, balanced, with the exception of Chekov, whose expression when Jim’s back is turned is one of such transparent adoration it kind of borders on hero worship.

He’s not sure if Jim notices, and probably it wouldn’t matter if he did. The kid’s nineteen now but he’s still practically a fetus, albeit a fetus with a genius IQ, all baby skin and soft blue eyes and a face that could probably send McCoy’s nine year old daughter into a fit of girlish squealing quicker than any box of kittens.

He lights up under Jim’s attention, talking rapidly about things McCoy couldn’t be paid to understand, and Jim responds with equal enthusiasm, always kind but carefully removed. McCoy feels old just looking at them, honestly, not just because it’s the one time Jim isn’t automatically shafted into the role of “kid.” McCoy can see the smile lines around Jim’s eyes more clearly, the absence of scrapes and bruises on his knuckles when he clasps an encouraging hand on Chekov’s shoulder, the touch brief, warm but reserved. His chest, oddly, aches at it.

It’s when Chekov looks up and catches him staring that the kid starts tripping over his sentences, and for a fleeting moment the expression on his face is one of sheer panic. McCoy frowns, which just compels Chekov to put an abrupt foot or two of added distance between himself and the captain before darting a sheepish, terrified look at McCoy and turning back to his console.

“I think the kid’s scared of me,” he says to Jim later over a steaming plate of replicated lunch.

“Who?” Jim asks around a mouthful. “Bones, you scare a lot of people.”

“Chekov, and no, I don’t.”

Jim looks thoughtful. “That’s not on purpose?”

“What’s not?”

“Scaring the shit out of people.”

“I don’t – why would I purposely do that? They’re my patients, Jim.”

“Yeah, but,” Jim says, dragging out the vowel in the second word and waving his fork in a slow circle, “I don’t know, I mean, I think it works. People so much as sneeze around here and they come straight to you for a consult, because they know if it turns out to be some kind of alien space disease that turns them inside out through their assho – ”

“Eating, Jim. I’m eating.”

“ – it’d only be half as bad as dealing with how pissed off you’d be that they didn’t come to you sooner.”

McCoy scowls. “It’s not on purpose.”

“Whatever, man.” Jim grins widely. “Keep it up.”

McCoy doesn’t mention that it's never worked on him.

Spock is the worst, because Spock doesn’t do nuance.

He misinterprets McCoy’s question in the utmost way possible, and McCoy can only stare at him in blank horror as he says, in that smooth, inflectionless timbre, “It is indeed likely that young Ensign Chekov harbors something of an infatuation with our captain, but I sincerely doubt that he will act upon it as he is very much aware of the fact that you are, to use one of Jim’s colorful earth colloquialisms, striking that.”

McCoy feels a distinct pounding in his temple, and Spock’s serene expression of calm benevolence only serves to send his blood pressure skyrocketing practically through the roof.

“We’re – I’m not,” he manages to choke out.

Something like surprise actually registers on Spock’s face. If McCoy were in a frame of mind to appreciate it, he might take pleasure in the rare lapse.

“Fascinating.”

The hell it is.

Of course Jim notices. His radar for innuendo is accurate to, like, a hundredth of a degree. The thing is, he doesn’t mind. It maybe even kind of works for them. Take into account A: the preconceived notion that he and Bones are, whatever, an item, B: the fact that Bones is personally responsible for the health of everyone onboard and could easily slip, say, a temporary strain of some alien STI into someone’s monthly inoculation, and C: the crew’s glorious ignorance to the fact that Bones is all fucking bark covering layers of total marshmallow.

It simplifies things, keeps the relationships with his crew firmly platonic and professional. Jim’s aware of his reputation for harlotry at the Academy as was, having spent many a fruitful hour cultivating it personally, but it wouldn’t have done him any favors as captain.

It’s nothing that takes special effort to maintain. When he slips into Bones’s quarters after hours to share a drink and maybe pass out on the side of his bed with a data padd dangling from his hand, it isn’t with any hidden agenda. He’d be here anyway, waking up on a bed too small for two, Bones’s back pressing warmly against his spine.

So, whatever. It’s not a big deal.

So maybe he helps it along a little sometimes.

It’s just that when the opportunity presents itself so beautifully, it isn’t in him to resist.

He’s on the bridge when Bones puts a hand on his arm, looking like he might be angry, and it might be at Jim, but his case isn’t as developed as he’d like so he’s giving him the chance to either incriminate or absolve himself. Well, here’s nothing.

“Jim,” he says, voice low and pointed and well out of earshot of anyone else, eyebrow twitching in the way Jim privately finds adorable. “Why the hell does everyone on this ship think we’re having sex?”

“Whoa, Bones! Stop undressing me with your eyes!”

The bridge goes quiet, Bones draws a murderous breath, and the vein in his neck looks like it’s going to explode.

It’s beautiful.

sequel: Wherefore Art Thou Cantankerous Bastard

reclist: kirk/mccoy (reboot trek)

2011-11-12T17:01:26Z

so i had one of these, right, but my confidence in any rec list of mine tends to wane after a couple years. "i can't possibly have thought it was okay to rec this," i mutter to myself in blank horror as i scroll through a cringe-worthy sex scene. "i have standards!" well, i don't. but you should. especially with this pairing.

this is me giving it another go.

these are all personal, quality faves. most of them were written in '09 or thereabouts, because i haven't actually read much new kirk/mccoy recently. if you read all of these and then decide you want more and aren't afraid to resort to more questionable means, you could try trolling my delicious tag. there might be some awesome ones in there that i just haven't had the time to reread or whatever (spoiler alert, MOSTLY I AM JUST SUPER LAZY WHEN IT COMES TO UPDATING THIS REC LIST). anything tagged with an asterisk or two means i really enjoyed it.

updated: 1st january 2013 - this list still feels really incomplete to me so, uh, WATCH THIS SPACE. or don't.

title. 40 Days of One Night Stands
author. silverlining_99
rating. NC17
comments. i love hilarious, light-hearted academy shenanigans as much as the next person, but this fic touches more on how beat up these characters are when they meet one another, with an edge of the emerging visceral codependency that i feel is so them. it isn't sugar coated, and it isn't sweet, though there are hints of gut-punching tenderness and vulnerability woven into this that make me ache. this is a great fic, and a great take on their early relationship.

He's never tried to fool himself about what he and Jim do with each other. To each other and possibly even for each other, either, in the rare moments when he's in the mood for that sort of honesty. He's never bothered thinking he even understands the half of it; he just goes with the simplest truth that resounds for him each time he wakes and doesn't allow himself to reach for the emptiness on the other side of his bed, that he and Jim have a friendship carved out of the isolation of their ruined lives.

It's an unpredictable beast of a thing, to be taken as it comes.

title. Awake
author. the_dala
rating. NC17
comments. The story of the Kelvin had meant a lot of things to a lot of people, but to McCoy it meant Jim Kirk in his life.

“Easy, Jim, easy,” he whispered, curling his fingers over Jim’s white knuckles. He was speaking in the same low, even tone Jim used to talk him down from a flight-induced panic attack. Later he would realize that the words were the same as well. “You’re safe in here. We’re safe. She’s built strong.”

His lips started to regain some color. McCoy rubbed the back of his hand until it relaxed, leaving the arm he'd clutched red. He took one breath by force and held it, letting it out slowly.

“That’s it.” McCoy pressed two fingers under his jaw, taking his pulse.

Jim closed his eyes. “And anyway,” he murmured with a touch of bitter humor, “there’s not a damn thing you can do about it now.”

title. The best-laid plans of Starfleet Captains.
author. ethrosdemon
rating. PG
comments. this fic pains me only because there's no sequel. basically the fleet wants to assign bones somewhere other than the enterprise, and jim's like, "hell no, what," and comes up with a totally sensible plan.

The paperwork to declare yourself legally partnered basically consists of registering altered wills, living wills, property manifests and the like with the Federation. The Fleet paperwork is way worse because you have to fill out like ten different forms for each level of hierarchy. Bones is protesting the entire situation by making Jim spend his precious precious R&R time with this shitty paperwork. Jim retaliates by doing it while drunk.

“Fuck yooooooooooouu,” Jim sings and throws rude gestures at the computer screen. “Fuck everyone you ever knew, fucking Starfleet motherfuckers!”

title. Comprehension (sequel to Misunderstanding)
author. canis_takahari
rating. hard R
comments. the last part of the excerpt is one of my fave lines about reboot jim kirk that i've ever read in a fic.

"Shit, you are serious," breathes Jim. His hand grips McCoy's back harder. "Bones. This is not reconciling with my image of you at all - someone paid you for sex, so you could get to the shuttle? You do know what that's called, right?"

"Desperation?" McCoy suggests, raising an eyebrow Jim probably can't even see.

"No. Prostitution," Jim corrects, sounding amazed. "Whoring. Hooking. Hustling! Escorting."

"Nobody called me up on a goddamned sex-line and asked me to show up in heels and fishnets, Jim," McCoy says firmly, as he sits up a bit on his elbows, ignoring the burn of abused nerves, and turns his head slightly to glance at Jim.

"Then how did it go down?" asks Jim. He's staring down at McCoy with a completely unreadable expression. Normally, McCoy can read every thought passing through Jim's head, not because Jim Kirk is naturally the open, trusting type, but because he's prone to wearing his heart on his sleeve if you know which side of his shirt to check on.

title. Cowboys Lost At Sea
author. ayalesca
rating. NC17
comments. Jim and McCoy are trapped, together and alone, in a strange world made up of their memories and desires. this fic's got some seriously beautiful, character-driven moments.

The bedroom was painted white. Maple wood bookshelves lined the walls, the varnish on the hardwood floor was scratched from years of use, and the desk in the sunny corner was piled with papers and textbooks. Yellow curtains rested closed over the windows.

He was getting old, he realized, because it took him a full two minutes to recognize this as his old room in his mother's house in Georgia.

McCoy looked down to see that he was sitting on a patchwork quilt; the yellow, blue, and red squares of fabric were bright with color. The bed was neatly made.

The bedroom door opened without preamble and Jim Kirk was there, staring. He was wearing a faded t-shirt and a pair of worn blue jeans. His feet were bare, and his eyes had a wild look to them.

"So," Jim said, "are we dead or something?"

title. The Day and the Hour
author. wrenton
rating. PG13
comments. the premise of this is devastating and expertly handled, and i honestly couldn't love this fic more if i tried. i legitimately teared up the first time i read this.

First of all, it was only good manners to not ask people what they knew about their own death. And Eleanora McCoy had made sure to raise a polite boy. Second, it was practically a catechism in med school, reinforced through constant repetition: “A physician will never violate a patient’s privacy by asking about his end.”

These things combined have resulted in Leonard H. McCoy never asking a single soul—not even Jocelyn—when or how they were going to die.

Of course, it took James T. Kirk less than two weeks after meeting Leonard to drag him to the closest bar, drain an inhuman amount of liquor, and declare: “So I’m gonna die young and alone,” Kirk thumped his chest over his heart, “With pain right here. How ‘bout you?”

Leonard—although he was starting to think of himself as ‘McCoy’ thanks to Starfleet and sometimes even ‘Bones’ due to the insufferable cadet across from him—huffed into his beer, “I’ll be around a good while yet, kid. Don’t you worry about me.”

Kirk just grinned and clapped a hand on his shoulder, “Glad to hear it, buddy.”

title. Delta Delta Vega (or Dude, Bro)
author. zarathuse
rating. PG
comments. jim kirk starts a frat. it's as hilarious as it sounds. douchebag. the word you're looking for is douchebag.

When Bones grabs Jim’s jaw and leans in for a better look at his eyes, though, Jim pulls back and bats his hand away.

“Dude, bro,” he says. “Lay off the shades, man. It took me a whole week of rations to replicate ‘em just right.”

Bones takes a step back, baffled. “Dude? Shades?”

“Yeah, bro. My sunglasses. My ‘bans.”

Jim stretches his arms out to either side and does a slow turn, posing. The move allows Bones to notice, now that he’s no longer distracted by the thought that his best friend had gone and gotten himself blinded, the rest of Jim’s outfit.

“Your shirt is pink,” Bones says, because dear sweet God in heaven, it is pink.

“I know. I tried to do the laundry the other night while I was schwasted, and like half my shirts are faded to pink now. I kinda like it, though, you know?”

No, Bones doesn’t know.

title. Elephant in the room? More like an entire goddamned space station.
author. ethrosdemon
rating. NC17
comments. wow i cannot even deal with my feelings re: this fic. it legit slays me. in a word: daaaaaamn.

Bones looks down at him, hand still resting against Jim's throat. "Please tell me you don't let other people do this to you."

Bones, it turns out, will actually go there if Jim begs. Jim has suspected for years that Bones has no actual limits when it comes to Jim, which is both excellent and tragic at the same time. "Then I won't tell you."

Bones's hand tightens again. Just enough, just to the point where the floaters appear. "Goddamn it, how did you twist me up so that I find this hot?" Bones slides against him, skin on skin, his voice low and degraded from sucking cock. He knows how to squeeze without leaving fingerprint bruises, knows the exact second to back off before Jim passes out. "You've wrecked me," Bones breathes into his ear just as Jim's about to fade to black, and Jim comes.

The wrecking is double-sided.

Jim slides his fingers over the slickness of Bones's fingernails. He opens his eyes and stares right back into the black of Bones's pupils.

There is no dissipation through fulfillment, Jim doesn't want this less because he's had it. Looking up at Bones is still a shock, still enough to make him rub up, press down, groan low in his throat and say "please."

title. i'm gonna find you at the end of the world
author. cascades
rating. R
comments. five ways leonard mccoy could have met jim kirk. in which there is drinking, copious innuendo, a sexually transmitted disease, a Seat That Should Be Empty But Isn't, and a near shot through the heart.

“Sorry, Your Highness. Could you at least tell me what I did to piss you off so royally?”

“You sat down,” McCoy snaps.

“Wow. Okay then. I had no idea my ass hitting a seat could get someone so incensed. I’ll make sure to be careful of that from now on,” he says sarcastically, letting out an incredulous laugh. He’s quiet for a moment, and then he says, “Is that seriously all I did? Usually it’s more than that. Did I fuck your girlfriend or something?”

“No, you did not—where do you get off asking something like that?” McCoy splutters.

“Not in your girlfriend’s bed, evidently,” he says with a snicker.

“I’m guessing you get your ass kicked a lot?”

“About once a week, yeah.”

“I can see why.”

title. i'm just a jealous guy
author. londondrowning
rating. PG13/R
comments. i love this fic to death for several reasons. first of all, the jim-voice is spot on. secondly, it addresses the balance that has to be struck between the two biggest relationships in jim's life (the long-standing one, jim and bones, and the new one with spock), and it balances them just right. also the dialogue is brilliant.

“Yeah, okay, there was a mind-meld and it’s not that easy to forget. Yeah, we understand each other. Yeah, it’s all pretty easy, but Bones, you know me, too. From way back, you know me. We earned where we are, that it didn’t happen so easily.”

McCoy exhales sharply, because it’s such a familiar feeling with Jim, never knowing if you want to slug him or stick your tongue in his mouth. “And where are we?”

Jim shrugs, looking uncomfortable for the first time since he pinned McCoy to the side of the Navigation building. “We’re here, Bones. I don’t know. Destiny’s a pretty big word. There should still be room to account for choice. A lot of room for that.”

His mouth is twitching, he’s starting to smile and he doesn’t mean to. “Uh, Jim. Did you just say you choose me?”

“Shoot yourself. Right in the face.”

“Be a lot of work getting a new medic, wouldn’t it?”

Jim rolls his eyes, cups McCoy’s face in his hands to kiss him again, a firm, ‘stop your talking’ kind of kiss. “I lo - I - ugh. Don’t make me fucking say it, okay? You know. God, you get cranky when I go two months without sucking your dick. Will you stop being such a girl if I tell you to move your shit into captain’s quarters?”

title. i. icarus in retrospect | ii. the pugilists | iii. skeleton men
author. green_postit
rating. NC17
comments. warning: mirror!verse. if you're unfamiliar with mirror!verse, you should, uh, probably google it or something as it may not be your cup of tea. as sisi put it, MU is ANGST BUT CRANKED UP TO 100 WITH A DECIDEDLY FUCKED UP AND VIOLENT FLAVOUR. that said, this 3-part fic is perfect and gr8 and soul-destroying and makes me feel way too many feels.

Jim called him Bones. For eighty-two days, he watched a man who looked exactly like him respond to the morbid name like it was a term of endearment.

Kirk laughed when he told him, called him a skeleton man.

Leonard still doesn't get either nickname.

title. home in the lowlands
author. green_postit
rating. NC17
comments. warning: mirror!verse again. i'm breaking my alphabetical streak and putting this after GP's 3-parter, because i feel like that one should be read first even though the two fics are not necessarily related. the 3-parter gives you a more complete, comprehensive idea of the author's kirk/mccoy MU relationship, whereas this particular fic expounds on it with a specific scenario, kind of pushes up against the boundaries and tests it in a way that would probably have more impact with the 3-part fic as background.

Now, fresh and clean, McCoy looks so young, so little and powerless. McCoy wasn't raised like most Empire children, had the unfortunate luck of falling in love with one and marrying into one of the more savage Southern families. McCoy had grown up cared for and loved and coddled. He wouldn't last a day in the orphanages.

The crew was going to come sniffing McCoy out, fresh blood in a stagnant sea. It would be an act of mercy to kill him where he stood.

Kirk's hand is on his dagger. It's not the first time he's killed an officer. By all rights, ending McCoy's life should be the easiest thing he's ever done.

McCoy stares up at Kirk like he's waiting for orders.

Kirk dismisses Chapel, watches as she pleads silently, salutes with a quiver and rushes back to Sickbay. Kirk waits till he can no longer hear the click of her boots before he takes his hand off his knife.

He drops down to look McCoy in the eyes.

"There are a lot of bad people on this ship," Kirk starts, realizes that's all he has to say.

McCoy looks confused.

"What about you?"

"Kid, I'm the worst."

title. If You're Into It
author. canis_takahari
rating. NC17
comments. Five things Jim didn’t know about Bones (and one thing he already did).

“For the love of God!” cries Jim, rubbing his forehead where it just collided with the back of McCoy’s skull. “Jesus fuck you have a hard head. Are your spidey senses tingling? Is someone out there Being An Idiot?”

title. Jim befriends hot people for a reason
author. ethrosdemon
rating. NC17
comments. is it too early to tell you all that i stan this author? k.

Bones turns towards him slowly, he's slumped down with a casual air he rarely exudes. Jim braces his fists on his hips and takes the scene in fully. "Are you stoned?"

Bones laughs. When most people laugh, it's not remarkable at all, just the normal day to day of human existence. But when Bones laughs? It's the end of the world, glacial, monumental, something to gather up in your heart and remember. Jim stands there in Bones's living room watching him laugh with his jaw unhinged, staring. When the laughter peters out, Jim marches over to the couch and flops down loose-limbed next to Bones.

"Hi," he breathes about six inches from Bones's smiling face.

title. Jim might have the rep, but you'd be surprised.
author. ethrosdemon
rating. NC17
comments. early or not, it's going to become pretty evident given the amount of times this author crops up on this list.

Jim gets the brunt of Bones's temper, and he's cool with that.

title. Joanna
author. ethrosdemon
rating. PG
comments. reboot joanna!

"What were you thinking?" Jim blurts at the Thelans. Jim points at Bones and the baby. "We're a military force..."

"We come in peace..." Spock interjects.

"We don't have berths for children!" Jim shouts.

"However we respect life in all its forms," Spock supplies.

"Your family was incomplete," one of the Thelans tilts her head and looks at him with a soft expression, maybe sympathy, maybe pity. Jim has an urge for violence.

"WHAT?" he shouts.

The baby makes hiccupping distress noises. "Jim," Bones glares at him. "Dial it back to six."

Jim subsides when he and Bones make eye contact.

"Your family is now complete," another Thelan intones.

Yeah, thanks, great.

title. knives in the water
author. green_postit
rating. NC17
comments. MOBSTER AU!!! this fic is so fabulous it pains me. um, WARNING for some pretty graphic torture in the last part. really did not even know where to begin quoting from this fic, so have an ambiguous excerpt.

"It'll be alright." Kirk leans back, grins. "You're Family now."

title. Misunderstanding (sequel: Comprehension)
author. canis_takahari
rating. NC17
comments. EVS. i'd totally pay to hit that. also i'm sort of in love with the first line: Leonard McCoy – Lenny to his mother, Len to his friends, McCoy to his peers in residency, and not yet Bones to Jim Kirk – has just turned the apparent milestone age of twenty one. not yet bones to jim kirk, like it's defining (because it is!). ugh shut up. also warning for bones getting it on with people who are not jim.

“Bones,” Jim says, half a year later. They’re sitting on McCoy’s bed, studying (or, rather, McCoy is studying, and Jim is entertaining himself by watching McCoy study), and Jim asks, curiously, “You looked like hell, the first time I saw you. Did you hitchhike to Iowa, or what?”

McCoy blinks at him over the PADD he has in his hand, and says, deadpan, “Whored myself out for the cash to book passage on a shuttle from Georgia, Jim. I told you the ex-wife took everything in the divorce.”

title. reinvent and believe
author. fell_from_grace
rating. NC17
comments. i am so here for this it's not even funny.

“You don't have bad days, Bones. You have bad weeks that pile up on you and make you more inclined to stab me with hypos when I get in your way. I'm here now. I had to hack my way in because you felt it salient to use your medical override...but I'm here. So spill.”

It's the oddest thing; sometimes, hearing Jim say things like that – it causes a shortness of breath and tightening of McCoy's gut.

“Is it...?” Jim says, and there's unmistakeably something new in the air. Not new as in unfamiliar, but there's undoubtedly something heavier between them than McCoy's snappish mood and Jim's concern.

McCoy nods, can't bring himself to really meet Jim's eyes yet. The buzz reawakens, becomes that same itch that he can never get rid of on his own. His stomach feels leaden, and the telltale warmth of a flush paints his neck.

A hand on his shoulder, then, another in his hair. The response is instantaneous; he tips back and sighs shakily, allows a moan to be chased from his lips when Jim leans down and breathes heavy against his ear. “You don't even have to ask,” Jim murmurs, the weight of trust and promise in the distance between them. “I just have to know, okay?”

title. star to every wandering bark (or five times jim got shakespearean, and one time he didn't)
author. beastofaburden
rating. PG
comments. to reiterate the comment i left on the post itself, i basically want to take this entire fic and, like, eat it.

Jim has gone far beyond the point of pretending that it’s not insanely fun to press different combinations of Bones’ buttons and see what happens.

“You have a language of insults,” Gaila says to him in the mess one day, twirling spaghetti on her fork. “Cursing and insults. Tone is measured in exasperation. It’s as intricate as Vulcan, and rude as Klingon.”

“That literally sounds like the worst thing ever.”

“Maybe it is,” she shrugs. “But it’s yours.”

He plucks a tomato from her plate and tries to ignore the way his thoughts stutter over those words.

title. These Are the Voyages of Dunder-Enterprise
author. spikeface
rating. PG
comments. the office-inspired AU. the first time i read this fic, i literally cried laughing.

“And so he said to me, ‘Premium beige cardstock at this price? That’s madness!’ And I was like, ‘No, it’s Sparta!’”

title. These Kids, They Lost Their Graces
author. affectingly
rating. NC17
comments. There are moments in Jim's life that act as axis points.

"Fine, you win. Not mad anymore."

Jim breathes out as he lets go of the last bit of giddiness, the mood suddenly shifting despite the comedic conversation. "Just like that."

Bones stands and walks to his dresser, opening the top drawer and pulling at the bottle of bourbon he keeps stashed there. Jim watches as he pours himself a glass, downs it in one swallow before he tops it off again and walks back. "Sure, just like that."

Jim reaches out, catches him by the wrist. "Bones," he says quietly.

The simple contact already has Jim's heart tripping. The delicate skin is warm, and he can feel the jump of the veins just below the surface as Bones's pulse quickens, too. Jim doesn't even look up at Bones's face, just focuses on where his fingers are wrapped tightly around his wrist. He can feel Bones's eyes on him, studying.

"All right," Bones says and there's an edge to his voice that wrecks Jim so completely, he doesn't even want to be put back together.

title. Transferral
author. canis_takahari
rating. PG
comments. inspired by texts from last night.

>>RECEIVED FROM JAMES TIBERIUS FUCKHEAD THE THIRD @ (20:45):
I'm not even planning on drinking that much tonight, but I'm writing "emergency contact number" and your comm frequency on my hand just in case

>>LEONARD H. MCCOY SENT @ (20:49):
My pants are off and I’m not answering any messages after 22:00 hours. Good luck, try not to die.

>>RECEIVED FROM JAMES TIBERIUS FUCKHEAD THE THIRD @ (20:56):
Harsh, Bones. Harsh.

title. Unlisted Side Effects of Metacetamin-Derived Opiates
author. fahye
rating. R
comments. i love everything about this fic, ugh.

And there's that about McCoy, too: he follows Jim without hesitation, always has. Sure, he might be following him while bitching at the top of his lungs, or following him while waving a hypospray in a threatening manner, or following him with the sole intention of dragging him back, but there's no question of him digging in his heels. Jim's learning the value of that. He's still finding his feet and sometimes he feels the weight of all the souls under his command, pressing tight at the back of his throat, treatening to choke him with the gravity of his new responsibility. He'll take care of them if it kills him. It's good to know that his best friend is around to make sure it doesn’t.

McCoy looks worn, and stretched, and his eyes are quick with concern and old jokes.

Jim dances a smirk onto his own face and starts concocting plans.

title. What I Did On My Summer Vacation, by James T. Kirk (and its prequel, Learning on the Fly)
author. silverlining_99
rating. NC17
comments. can i just wrap myself up in this fic and never leave? is that a viable life decision? hilarious and hot and so in character it makes me want to punch things.

Jim hates not being the one to come up with the really good shit, seriously. But no matter.

The result's all the same in the end.

title. where i lay my hat
author. romancandles
rating. PG
comments. every time i read this fic i just get angry that morgan has not written more of these two. (or rather, she has, but she is hoarding it like some withholding dragon, and i know i said dragon, but that is not a compliment.)

Jim looks around. “You want a lamp? I don’t think they even make bulbs like this anymore.”

Bones exhales through his nose. “No.” You dick is implied. He hops off his little throne. “This table.” Jim realizes that the lamps are actually all clustered on a thick slab of wood that is actually part of an old farmhouse-style table. Jim glances at Bones. “It looks like something you’d buy. You know,” Bones waves his hand around, “rustic or whatever.”

Jim bites his lip, feels a weird strange laugh bubbling up inside him. “Bones. I buy that stuff because it reminds me of you.”

Bones looks at him incredulously. “Atlanta has 40 million goddamn people. I grew up in a highrise. You were the first person I met that had ever even seen a farm.”

Jim stares at Bones for a second, then lifts his arms and uses all his strength to shove Bones backward. He hits the table tailbone first, arms windmilling. “Jim! What the fuck!”

Jim studies the unmoving lamps. Not a shudder. “It’ll do.”

title. The World Keeps Spinning On
author. philote_auctor
rating. PG
comments. missing scene fic. takes place after the destruction of the narada but before enterprise's arrival back to earth.

There’s a beat of silence before Bones sighs again, this one more resigned concern. “You want a sedative?”

“Not particularly.” He will if he has to, because he’s no good to anyone in his current state. But he knows from experience that a sedative will take him completely out for an amount of time he can’t control. The still-unfamiliar weight of responsibility makes him balk at that.

The room is silent for a long moment before he hears Bones start to move around. Soon there’s a warm presence at his back, familiar enough that he has a strange urge to just lean back. He feels a hand on his back briefly before a thumb rubs over the taut muscles in the back of his neck. “C’mere, kid.”

title. Wonderland
author. canis_takahari
rating. PG13
comments. SPACE PIRATE AU. um, i don't know what that title's about, it reminds me of that awful john mayer song, but this fic is hilarious. also, SPACE PIRATE AU.

Good God, he’s been kidnapped by a bleeding-heart rebel pirate man-child captain with a martyr complex.

McCoy needs a drink.

plus: the pirate AU porn coda! read this after.

h/d recs (aka i do actually read shit not written by maya)

2011-07-17T06:39:07Z

OKAY, I OFFICIALLY WANT THIS REC LIST TAKEN OUT OF MY HANDS. so i'm posting it.

maya is conspicuously absent from this list, because i'd meant for it to be H/D FIC OTHER THAN MAYA THAT PEOPLE SHOULD READ, but if you haven't read maya's h/d stuff, do it now, go, scram, get outta here, you'll thank me later. don't know where to start? here are my suggestions. also, here's a list of main pairings for each fic so that you don't end up reading mcgonagall/flitwick without meaning to.

and we are at our apogee | angelgazing | PG13

Draco thinks about the hard parts of revenge.

comments: an old favorite. i mostly love this one for the idea.

but not for love | fictualities | PG

"You're dead," Harry observes.

"All the best people are."

Harry knows he is supposed to laugh, but he just nods. "Yeah. They are," he says. He has a list. It's a long list.

Draco rolls his eyes. "You used to be more fun."

comments: kill me. that's an order, not a request.

draco under glass | pushdragon | NC17

Malfoy only continues to watch him and wait. It occurs to Harry that uncomfortable questions come easier from the mouths of men in glasses. The lenses shelter Malfoy's eyes, taking the hardness out of them, and the fine silver frames with strands of white hair brushing over them by his temples put a scholarly cast on his face. With his stillness and the visual harmony of his white skin and simple black robes, Malfoy has put himself out of reach of Harry's anger. He wonders if Malfoy himself understands how effective a shield it is.

comments: HELLO, PUSHDRAGON FIC. you will see this author crop up on this list a lot, because their work is uh-may-zing, and fiercely and exquisitely character driven. oh, and the porn is first rate.

étude: a lesson in voice (sequel to nocturne for quill and ink) | pushdragon | NC17

On the mornings when Draco pulls things out of the cupboards, sorts out the piles in the hallway, and starts putting it all into boxes, Harry takes refuge in the bedroom. On the first day, Harry throws a mug at him when he opens the door, hard enough to shatter into splinters and keep him out for the whole day and night. On the second day, he pulls Draco onto the bed and subjects him to the sort of brutally thorough handjob that leaves him wrapping himself around Harry's body, panting and begging. The subsequent days fall somewhere in between.

The house is full of stacked boxes. Only the kitchen cupboards remain to be emptied.

comments: i was nervous when i read this because its predecessor, nocturne for quill and ink, is one of my favorite h/d fics ever, and i was loathe to see the fragile ambiguity of the ending give way to something too light, or too neat. i really needn't have worried.

harry potter and the inconvenient condition | mirabella | R

"You're at St. Mungo's," Malfoy told him. "Granger drafted me to sit with you at night, seeing as how I'm a day or so from being released anyway - well, and I think she hopes you'll kill me -"

Harry shook his head, wishing he knew where his glasses were. "Wait, that I'll what? What in buggery have you done now, Malfoy? And why am I strapped to the bed?"

Malfoy looked vaguely annoyed. "I haven't done anything, Potter. You were the one stupid enough to get drunk and go wandering around alone at night in the shadow of the Carpathians. And as to why you're strapped to the bed…" Malfoy smirked and tossed Harry his glasses, waited while Harry fumbled them onto his face, and then lifted his wrist and turned it toward the candlelight. His skin was so very pale, transparent as alabaster, and underneath it, limned with faint blue lines…

Thirsty. Oh, Jesus, Harry was thirsty, and Draco was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen. His hand shot out before he could stop it, yanked to a halt by the straps with Malfoy's wrist half an inch from his outstretched fingertips.

"That's why," Malfoy said quietly, and for once he didn't sound mocking.

comments: LOL THIS FIC. harry, through an unfortunate turn of events, is a vampire. with a special thirst for draco's blood. no, shut up, it's enjoyable! also i've always been a fan of mirabella's characterization, particularly her draco.

istanbul was | pushdragon | G

Byzantium, after all, took the name of one man upon itself and flourished.

comments: mostly throwing this in here because it's the most exquisite "proposal fic" i've ever read.

lamp in the cooling room | libby_drew | PG13

"Leave it to you to see divinity in a bedraggled child."

"What better place? You tell me."

comments: FUCK THIS FIC. i read it once when i was hormonal and basically curled up into a sniveling ball afterwards and wanted to die. then i read it again when i was feeling more level-headed to make sure my reaction the first time wasn't a fluke. (it wasn't.) it's sort of sparse, but it holds up.

never mind the bollocks, it's draco/harry (shake your groove thing) | duinn fionn | PG13

"You... you're a Veela," Harry exclaimed, deeply worried at the obvious direction this story was taking.

"Half-Veela, actually. And half-dragon. And half-ferret Animagus."

"That's three halves."

"Well, they don't teach maths at Hogwarts, so don't blame me. Anyway, you're very astute, Potter. Was it the fact that my milkshake brought all the boys to the yard?"

comments: PURE, SHAMELESS CRACK/PARODY FIC.

nocturne for quill and ink | pushdragon | NC17

The note is written in Draco's sharp-edged scrawl. Its steep downward slant suggests negligence, as if he'd written it while holding something more important in the other hand. It lies on the dining room table - a battered hulk of oakwood run aground against the wall between the windows that look onto the laneway. Draco has shoved back the debris of stained teacups, discarded letters and slag-heaps of old Prophets to make a bare border around the note, so it can't be missed.

comments: hands down one of my favorite h/d fics ever. i could say this about pretty much every fic written by this author, but seriously, it is exquisite. the characterization is so good it makes me want to weep.

...so this is where mirabella's shadow of his wings would go if her fic archive site were still active (even the wayback machine won't work, believe me, i tried). since it's not on her dreamwidth account either (which is where i managed to find "inconvenient condition," listed above) and she's expressly asked people not to repost her fic (which i assume includes providing a download link), we are tragically out of luck. R.I.P. THAT BEAUTIFUL UNFINISHED WIP.

still life | monochromal | PG

"I want to know if you'll follow me," he whispers, and slips out to his left—sideways, moonlit, like a flash of silver. For once in this twisted frame-to-frame existence, he is alive. He can already feel the heat, the fire. And maybe, for the first time since he opened his eyes to the dim stone of the memorial, since he felt the disconcerting feeling of waking in a world of nothing but paint, maybe he forgives Draco.

comments: absolutely had to include this one. the author has long since deleted their journal, hence why i put it up over at my box.net account. it's a very, very early fic, written years ago, so it's not really compliant with a lot of the canon. harry and draco are dead, but immortalized as portraits, much to harry's distaste. if i had to sum this fic up in one word it'd be: poignant.

A TALE OF HORNS SERIES:

1/4. a tale of horns: the inaugural tongues of fire photographic wall calendar | pushdragon | NC17

"Is that all you want to do? Fritter away the last of your family's money on crazy stunts?"

"Until I run out of challenges," Draco snapped back. He could feel his jaw going rigid, along with all the tendons in his face.

"Don't," Potter said and kissed him.

This time, concentrating, Potter was good at it. Better than good. He kissed like it was an erotic act in itself, more than just an introduction to something more carnal. His tongue lingered in Draco's mouth. His body raising itself over Draco's once more was a heat source in the cooling air.

In the end it was Draco who gave in to impatience and slid his hand back into the open front of Potter's trousers. Their murmurs met in Potter's mouth when he cradled Potter's slack length and worked it towards hardness. But Draco needed more than a grope this time. Needed to see everything that Potter had, get it out in the open, claim it, suck it, rub himself into it. Potter's hand followed his shoulder as he scrambled down the ottoman and guided the tip of Potter's cock between his lips. That got him a very satisfying shudder and, with it, a realisation. Once was never going to be enough, not for any of this. He liked the way Potter moved. He liked the way Potter smelled. He liked the way Potter didn't stop being Potter when he fucked.

2/4. mating rituals of the winged predator: how mr. february got almost everything he wanted (sequel to a tale of horns) | pushdragon | NC17

He knew how he wanted it to be. He wanted Potter like he'd got him by the end of that afternoon of the photo shoot – drunk on sex to the point where there was no glimmer of self-control left in him, drifting and trailing on Draco's whim. Holding nothing back. Giving himself over completely to pleasure. That's how Draco wanted him, and when he'd got him to that point, Draco was going to fuck him. And Potter would be so out of it he'd barely even remember how Draco had done it; all he'd know is that an hour later his hands were still shaking and his hips were still jerking to the rhythm of Draco's thrusts and he had never, ever felt so empty in his life as he did without the stroke of Draco's cock in him. That's how Draco wanted it. But he had to admit, there were about a hundred other ways he was prepared to accept it.

3/4. claws that catch: the fierce beast in his lair (sequel to mating rituals of the winged predator) | pushdragon | NC17

A couple of Potter's limbs cracked as he stretched out by Draco's side. He bent his face down close, questioning. Draco couldn't – he couldn't let Potter kiss him right now, not when he didn't have the slightest defence in place. He dragged one hand out from behind his head and laid his fingertips on Potter's lips. Potter's breath slipped between them, warm and slow. He took two of Draco's fingers gently between his teeth and let his eyes fall closed and seemed content with that. His eyebrows were a wretched mess and his lashes clumped together with moisture, the product of exertion and all that abuse of his gag reflex. He was really just a little bit pathetic in his eagerness. Draco drew his fingers free as Potter's forehead descended to rest in the crook of his neck. He even allowed the possessive drape of Potter's leg over his own.

4/4. dragon riding for beginners: how the cover boy finally got it (sequel to claws that catch) | pushdragon | NC17

This was a temporary arrangement, even if a mere two nights in a hotel bed in Brasov had been a long enough absence to make his pulse quicken just now as he approached Potter's front door. He could have come round the back way, through Toad's Eye Lane, like everybody else. But he liked this door with its short journey through Muggle streets in his slightly inappropriate clothes. He liked having a doorway that was all his own. He liked the little foyer inside the door, with the quiet company of Potter's coats on their pegs as Potter's arms slid around his neck and he got his first taste of a long night of Potter's mouth. He was even quite fond of the strips of blue and red stained glass that flanked the doorway, which, for a few select minutes in the early evening, might dapple Potter's left hip in colour as Draco backed him into the wall and undressed him.

comments: A TALE OF HORNS SERIES. THE MOST CHARACTER-DRIVEN EXCUSE FOR PORN YOU WILL EVER READ. seriously, like i said, this author sets the standard for porn (5,000 word blowjobs, etc), and yet it isn't just porn for the sake of porn - it drives the story forward in a very real way because it's so rooted in character. UGH. JUST, SO GREAT.

trajectories | bookshop | PG

"You don't know where he is, do you," said Harry.

Malfoy shrugged. "He's somewhere in the castle," he said. "He's got to be. There's only the one painting."

Harry thought about how many paintings there were in the castle, how many places there were to hide if you were a painting who didn't want to be found, and only one person in the whole world wanted to find you.

"He wanted to kill you," Harry said. "Before he started the fire."

"Get lost, Potter," said Malfoy, without much heat. He reached out and ran his finger along the edge of the empty portrait, collecting dust from the frame. "I've wanted to kill you plenty of times."

comments: this is really gen fic with a side of h/d, but it's amazing, and a little haunting, and a little heartbreaking, and very poignant.

the virtues of the common cold | sheafrotherdon | PG

“Please don’t leave wet spots on my plasterwork,” he asked, pushing Harry into the bedroom. “Find something to wear. Pyjamas are in the third drawer down. I’m making tea.”

“Pyjamas?” asked Harry fuzzily.

Draco sighed. “You have a cold, Potter. Should you attempt to Apparate now you’ll only splinch yourself, so you clearly can’t go home. You’re freezing and soaked to the skin and I refuse to have my somewhat-significant-other die because he was insane enough to actually walk. In public. Among the working classes.” He gestured with an elegant hand. “Find clothes. Never wear corduroy to my house again. And shut up.”

“Snob,” muttered Harry, without any real rancour.

comments: another one of my favorite authors back in the day, though chiefly for her sirius/remus stuff (yeah, go check that shit out).

wheels of fire (the official autobiography of harry potter) | captain_tulip | R

"What do you want?"

Harry sighs. "I don't want embellishments. I don't want to be shown as — as the hero. I mean, strangely enough, I sort of want what you said." Malfoy raises an eyebrow but Harry keeps pushing through, determined to get his point across. "I want people to know that I didn't have friends as a child, that I was a spindly backwards boy. That when I arrived at Hogwarts I was weird and crap at Potions and didn't get on with people. I want people to know that there was a lot of luck involved in what happened with my life, that I was helped extraordinarily by other people, that there's stuff about me that isn't amazing and marvellous. That I fumbled through life just like everyone else, and there were plenty of people who were smarter than me and stronger than me and who deserved to live more than I did but died anyway. I want people to see that I'm just a person."

"But at the same time maintain that sense of superiority so that they don't come up to you in the street and try to relate, right?"

"No!" Harry says, scandalised. Then. "Wait, can you do that?"

Malfoy shrugs. "Sure. If you want." He places his quill on his lap and leans forward. "Because honestly, Potter, you think things are bad now? Wait till they discover you're a 'real person'. You'll never get away." This thought appears to amuse Malfoy, and with a sudden start he throws his head back and lets out a raucous laugh.

comments: this fic is just straight up cute. again, a little more rushed in terms of build up than i like (as with most stories written for h/d fic fests, frankly), but good!

NOTE: this is in no way a comprehensive h/d rec list. these are a few i enjoy (a couple of them i'd like to take with me to my grave). generally you can find pretty good fare on comms such as hd_holidays, hd_worldcup, and the_eros_affair.

shh. watch this.

2011-05-15T15:03:25Z

Sun Day from Derek Spencer on Vimeo.

A young boy and his sister, alone on a cold moon, experience light for their first time.

Not gay, Jon, aristocratic.

2008-04-24T05:53:19Z

this ... is pure crack. it is utterly plotless, and basically just an excuse for me to write lots and lots of dialogue. also, there's jon stewart and stephen colbert. i'm posting this at two in the morning, because i would never let it see the light of day if i were in my right mind, i.e. not sleep deprived.

so. harry potter, draco malfoy, stephen colbert and jon stewart in a forest in shropshire! based off of the daily show segment regarding the prince charles scandal back in '03. here's the quote:

"Now if you'll excuse me, I've been invited to a grouse hunting party in Shropshire. It's just a few dozen men, some stable boys ... all of us in kilts, naturally! Drinking a few yards of ale, and here's the fun part, Jon. Whoever shoots the fewest grouse has to go through the spanking machine!"

somewhat edited, because stephen was cracking up all through the part about shooting the fewest grouse. see, it already doesn't make sense, because stephen has already tried to put himself on the south carolina ballot in the thing i wrote. like i said, pure crack. it isn't supposed to make sense. i would have thrown john oliver in here as well, but there are only so many 'he's a person can deal with.

"I suppose you think this is funny."

"Oh, absolutely. Hysterical. I can't breathe for laughing."

Harry scowled. "You know, Malfoy, I'm not even going to get started on how much this is your fault."

Malfoy spit out part of what must have been a leaf, examining the cuts on his hands and looking generally put out. Seeing Malfoy in pain made Harry feel only slightly better. "It was a lead. You and I, Potter, we investigate those leads."

"We investigate legitimate leads, Malfoy."

"I had a source!" he said defensively. Then, quite firmly: "Blame the source." He picked himself up off the ground and dusted his knees. When that didn't do anything, he sighed and waved his wand at his trousers. Only then did he look at Harry. "Well, get up. We might as well do this thoroughly."

"You actually want to - "

"We have to put something in the report, Potter. What do you want to say? 'Stupid forest in the middle of Shropshire, would have checked it out further but I don't waste my time on assignments that don't involve immediate danger, I suspect I am either suicidal or an adrenaline junkie.'"

Harry got up mid-tirade and started walking. Annoyingly, Malfoy followed.

"Are you done?" Harry asked. Malfoy glanced at him, eyes narrowed. He took a measured breath, then nodded.

"Yes." His tone changed to one of curt efficiency. "Why are we going this way?"

"A feeling," said Harry.

Instead of stopping short and demanding a better explanation, Malfoy kept walking. It was probably because Harry's feelings were either very right or very wrong, and he found the odds worth braving in this situation. Draco glanced at him out of the corner of his eye.

Then, under his breath: "'Addendum. Decided it was okay to investigate as I have a feeling. No immediate danger, but at least the mission is still about me. Perhaps evil will find us after all!'"

Harry wanted to ask him why he didn't just talk normally, since it was obvious that Malfoy wanted him to hear every word. They'd been walking in the forest for hours now, and every time they tried to Apparate out, they got thrown right back in. It was all very painful and annoying, and Malfoy wasn't making it any more bearable.

"Fuck," Harry snapped eloquently as one of his sleeves got caught on a branch. Draco aimed a spell his way, and the wood seemed to burn from the inside out, almost instantly dissolving and falling to the ground in a heap of ash. Grudgingly, Harry muttered, "Thanks."

"Not at all," said Draco, tone somewhat mocking. Harry chose to ignore it. "So something is obviously trying to keep us in here. Apparition doesn't work, and we just tried the emergency Portkey. Do you get any plans along with those feelings, Potter? Plans would help."

"I'm fresh out, how about you?" he asked dryly. "Oh wait, it was your plan to come here, wasn't -- "

A shiver of movement in the trees caught his eye, and immediately Malfoy tensed beside him, knocking Harry's shoulder with his own.

"Barking," Malfoy said, head tilted in the direction of the sound. Harry raised his eyebrows.

"Well, I know our situations are never exactly normal, but -- "

An impatient glance. "No, Potter," he snapped. "Barking. As in, dogs. Or -- "

He cut himself off, and this time Harry recognized it as well. It sounded closer than before, a flurry of high-pitched yipping from somewhere beyond the trees. There were no paths to follow, and in fact most of the forest was strictly underbrush, which made it difficult to discern anything more than a few yards away.

"I think I see something!"

Harry and Malfoy looked at each other, then turned in the direction of the shout, wands raised. Leaves shook, and Harry redirected his gaze to a point considerably nearer to the ground, just in time to see a snarling dog skid to a halt a foot or two away from him, tail upright and ears flattened against its head. Another two joined the first, alternately growling at the two wizards and turning to bark in the direction from whence they'd come.

Malfoy shifted beside him, and Harry spared him a glance. From the looks of it, he was supremely unimpressed.

"How obnoxious," he drawled, and Harry realized with some trepidation that he was speaking to the dogs. "Do I look like a grouse?"

Harry was about to ask, but just then there was another volley of shaking leaves. He redirected his gaze and saw a man in a much abused kilt emerge, batting at the twigs in his dark mess of hair. He looked up at them and paused, blinking in surprise. He wore glasses, Harry noted. One of the lenses had a long crack in it.

"Gentlemen, you're disrupting," the man informed them clearly, arms crossing over his chest authoritatively as if there really wasn't a veritable nest of twigs in his hair.

Malfoy scoffed. "Disrupting what, your hunting party?"

"Yes." He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose, arching a brow in a way of which Harry had previously believed only Malfoy was capable. "Actually, I decided grouse weren't a real threat to America, so I've got my sights set on something bigger."

"Great," Malfoy announced. "Perfect. Figures, your lot always make a hash of things."

The man's eyes narrowed. "Excuse me?"

"What are you hunting?" Harry intervened quickly. "Are you hunting?"

He answered while eyeing Malfoy skeptically. "The town folk seemed pretty superstitious about this place." The way he said 'town folk' reminded Harry of the way Malfoy said 'Muggles', and he felt a sinking in his stomach. "Said I shouldn't come out here. I asked them why, they said something about witchcraft and disappearances, I asked if they were worshippers of Satan, they threw me out." He inclined his head, peering at them intently over his glasses. "I'll deal with them later."

"Um," Harry said intelligently. "Who are you?"

"Besides a lunatic?" Malfoy asked.

"You can just call me America," the man said, trying to sound humble and failing. Harry recognized this, because Malfoy did it all the time.

"America," said Malfoy in a light tone, "get stuffed -- "

"America's a country," Harry intelligently broke in, and both men looked at him with almost identical expressions of disdain. His own words rang in his head for a moment, and at length, Harry had to concede their point.

"Look," the man said slowly, drawing out the word and casting his eyes from one to the other. "All I'm saying is I'm going to need you two to move your little gay soirée somewhere else."

He fluttered his fingers in the general direction that was Elsewhere.

"What." Harry was suddenly in complete agreement with Malfoy. The man was a lunatic.

"I get it, two grown men loitering in the woods with sticks," the lunatic went on placatingly, though there was something chiding in his expression, as if he and Malfoy were children who had been caught stealing sweets. "Don't try to push your gay agenda on me, and I won't tell God."

The man winked. Harry officially didn't know what to make of him. Luckily, Malfoy had recovered from the momentary lapse into silence for which, at any other time, Harry would have been grateful. But instead of saying anything that made sense, Malfoy asked: "Is that Code Blue?"

Harry shot him a confused look. What the fuck was a code blue? That wasn't even part of Auror training.

"It is, actually," the lunatic replied, brightening. The look froze, and he eyed Malfoy with an expression that somehow managed to be both wary and pitying. "Hey, listen, you're not my type. I get it, I do, I have my allure. A certain je ne sais quoi, am I right? But don't get any ideas, I'd hate to have to tell the big guy. He and I are like this."

A pause during which the man crossed two of his fingers, clearly demonstrating his close bond with divinity.

"You," Malfoy said dryly, "have an enormous ego."

Harry laughed. It was a loud, slightly hysterical sound. Luckily, the lunatic ignored it in favor of giving Malfoy a look that should have been sympathetic, but came off more as a way of saying, 'I'm so sorry you feel that way about your inferiority complex, which, by the way, is wholly justified'. Harry thought he and Malfoy were probably soulmates.

"The Revolution was, what? Two centuries ago? America's a long way away from being done gloating, my friend."

"An enormous ego," Malfoy repeated, eyebrows raised, any vitriol overshadowed by sincere bemusement, "but good taste in cologne. I know Armani personally, myself."

"Oh my God," Harry groaned, realizing that they were talking about designer fragrances, and resisted the urge to put his face in his hands.

"Is he okay?" the man asked, not sounding like he particularly cared.

"He's allergic to class," Malfoy explained dismissively. "Potter, what do you suggest we do with him?"

"Do with -- ? Settle down, gentlemen. I'm sure we can resolve this in a calm, heterosexual manner."

Harry looked at both of them helplessly, then settled his gaze on the lunatic. "Who are you? Give me a name. A real one."

"America's about as real as it gets, buddy. But fine, you want a name? Stephen Col-bair." When neither of them responded with anything but blank looks, he went on. "The Colbert Report. The Colbert Nation." Harry looked at Malfoy, who was regarding Stephen as if he were an interesting arithmancy problem. Stephen rolled his eyes. "Wriststrong?"

He lifted a hand, pointing to a red band encircling his wrist.

"Er," Harry said.

"I was also a correspondent on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart," he offered quickly, not looking particularly pleased about having to do so.

"That's the one!" Malfoy broke in, and Harry shot him an incredulous look. Malfoy shrugged, rather quickly deciding that the foliage held more interest than Harry's face. Probably, for Malfoy, it did. "He's funny."

Stephen brightened considerably. "Thank you."

"I meant Stewart."

He frowned, annoyed. "Actually, he's kind of a pussy."

"He's hilarious," Malfoy went on, perking up at the obvious opportunity. Apparently Malfoy liked baiting everyone, including absolute and very insane strangers. Harry didn't know why he hadn't been kicked out of the Auror department yet. He so very clearly had issues.

"I still don't know what you're talking about."

"Jon Stewart," Malfoy smirked, arms crossing over his chest, eyes flicking every so often to gauge Stephen's reaction, "is a very successful television host. The face of American television, really, if you think about it -- "

"Pussy," Stephen reaffirmed.

"You watch television?" Harry asked blankly.

Malfoy shot him an innocent look, but Harry knew better. "But of course, Potter. I simply have to watch Jon Stewart."

"You're lying," Harry said dully. "You have no idea who that even is."

"I do so." He bristled. "He's that funny Jewish man. Tiny."

This assessment seemed to cheer Stephen up. "Microscopic, actually."

"Okay," said Harry. "I don't care. Look, you said the village people knew about -- said something about witches?"

"Uh huh," the man returned blandly.

"And you were planning to, what, sniff them out?" Malfoy raised a skeptical brow. "With hunting dogs?"

"No, not really, I think they just like me better than the other guys. Bunch of raunchy, kilt-wearing sex maniacs, you probably know them. 'Come with us, Stephen, we're going grouse hunting, it should be ripping fun, and by the way, here's a skirt you can wear.' That wasn't a huge tip off or anything."

Harry frowned. The man did an appalling imitation of a British accent. "Other guys?"

"My hunting party," Stephen explained, making quotation marks with his fingers. "I saw one of them being put through the spanking machine? Let me tell you, not what I signed up for."

"Okay," Harry said. "Okay."

Malfoy made an impatient sound. "Potter, snap out of it, it's not like we've never dealt with a raving lunatic before."

"Right," Harry nodded, collecting himself. "Stephen? It's Stephen, right? My partner -- "

"Work partner," Malfoy clarified.

" -- and I should probably get you out of here."

"Oh, I'm sure you'd love that," said Stephen, eyebrows nearly touching his hairline.

"Jesus Christ," snapped Harry, turning to Malfoy and running a hand through his hair.

"Your name's Jesus Christ?" Stephen asked Malfoy, looking delighted. "Seriously?"

Malfoy threw his head back and laughed, because Malfoy found humor in all the wrong places.

"Fine, look, I don't care," Harry bit out. "We're going. Malfoy, come on, let's just finish investigating and find a way to get the hell out of here."

"But Potter, that's not my name," Malfoy grinned, clearly finding himself hilarious.

"Wait, wait, wait," Stephen broke in as Harry gripped a chortling Malfoy hard by the elbow and began to drag him away. He stopped, shoulders tense, and turned to shoot the man a hard look. Stephen actually blinked in the face of it. "I may have -- that is, I might be a bit lost."

"Oh, brilliant," Harry said harshly. "Maybe your dogs can sniff a way out."

"Potter, don't be cruel," said Malfoy, still grinning crookedly. "This is a man in need."

"Of a map, yes," Stephen returned.

"Well, we don't have one." It sounded surprisingly close to a snarl. Malfoy's hand tightened on his elbow, and Harry took a steadying breath. "Fine. Okay. Look, we've been trying to get out for hours, so if you want to tag along, keep up."

Harry turned around and started walking away, vaguely aware of Malfoy grunting before falling into step behind him. That was when they heard a shout.

"Stephen!"

Oh God please no, Harry thought to himself, turning in the direction of the new voice. This mission was Malfoy's worst idea ever. In the past month, anyway. Past week, tops.

The man had come out of nowhere; Harry hadn't heard a single rustle of leaves or a single twig snap. He wore a dark blue suit that was in remarkably pristine condition for having walked this deep into the forest. He was shorter than Stephen by a few inches, and his hair was graying in a way that rather suited him.

"Jon?" Stephen sounded a bit like a giddy school girl. Harry slanted a quick look at Malfoy, who raised a brow.

"What -- Stephen, what are you doing here?" the man panted, stopping short in front of him. Stephen looked as if Christmas had come early. "Your party said you took the dogs and ran -- "

"I didn't run, Jon, I fled. It was a strategic move," Stephen corrected patiently.

"You weren't messing around about the spanking machine, were you."

Stephen spoke quickly. "I had no idea it was going to be like that."

"Like what?" asked Jon, looking on the verge of laughter. "Did the name not give it away? And you were all but deep throating a banana in front of them, I think you gave them a pretty distinct impression."

"Jon, that's how I eat all of my bananas," he clarified. "I was trying to be accepting and nonjudgmental, like you said I should be, because that would get me so far, so I went along with these strange people and their foreign jargon, and -- " He paused, looking grave. "You don't even want to know what almost happened to me out there ... "

The conversation turned into terse mutterings that went from sounding amused to plaintive. Harry slid closer to Malfoy, not quite able to bring himself to look away. Malfoy, for his part, was smiling.

"I think they're cute," he told Harry, arms folded over his chest.

"You have to say that. This was your idea."

"But think of the report we'll be able to write after this," Malfoy went on, undeterred. "Jon Stewart and what's-his-name Colbert, found in a forest in Shropshire. Of course, we'll have to Obliviate them." He actually sounded a bit put out. "Do you think he'll tell us a joke first?"

"I'm not going to answer that, because you're ridiculous."

"I do so like his Judaism jokes," said Malfoy with something like fondness. "Funny little Jewish man. The other one's kind of a tool, though."

Even without looking, Harry could tell he was frowning. This made his lips twitch. "He reminds me of you."

"People always say that when I don't like someone," Malfoy mused. "Tell me, Potter, did I remind you of the Dark Lord?"

"Only after I got to know you," Harry assured him, thinking about lunatics and how they seemed to follow him everywhere.

" -- and then there's these guys," Stephen was saying loudly, glancing sharply in Harry and Malfoy's direction. He lowered his voice, nudging Jon with his shoulder in a way he must have thought was subtle. "Jon, I think they're homosexuals."

Jon looked at him blankly. "So?"

Stephen just gave him a long look. Then he shrugged, tapping the side of his nose with one finger.

"What?"

"Oh, Jon." Stephen smiled at him fondly. "You're so naive. Anyway, I've got witches to track down and no time to waste."

Jon grabbed his arm, shooting an apologetic glance in Harry and Malfoy's direction. It was the first direct acknowledgment he'd given to anyone else. Stephen, for his part, was rooted to the spot, staring at the hand on his arm like he wasn't sure what to think about it.

"Thanks for finding him, I think," he told them, eyes on Harry, who started. They were very kind eyes, and very blue.

"We didn't -- he sort of found us."

"Well, you kept him in one place long enough for the tracking spell to settle, so -- "

"Hang on, what?" Harry blinked.

"What?" Stephen choked.

Malfoy brightened even further. "Really?"

"We don't, ah," said Jon, suddenly looking quite sheepish. He let go of Stephen's arm to straighten the collar of his shirt. "We don't use wands in America."

"I knew it!" Malfoy carolled. "There is no way that giggle is natural. It's too fucking cute. It isn't, is it?"

"My -- ?"

"You use magic to giggle?" Stephen asked, looking betrayed.

"No!" Jon combed a hand through his hair, looking flustered. "No, that's -- look, Stephen, I'm sorry, it's not like I could tell you I was -- "

"Hang on," Harry said again, feeling a vague throbbing in his temples. "You're the reason we can't get out of here, aren't you? The tracking spell, you followed it up with a confinement charm."

"I really am sorry about that," he said, sounding so very sincere that Harry almost didn't care that he'd wandered through a forest with bloody Malfoy for four hours because of him. "His party lost him hours ago. I got worried."

"Oh good, so we won't have to Obliviate you," Malfoy said in a surprisingly light tone. His eyes were bright, and he looked almost as excited about Jon's appearance as Stephen had. Harry frowned, feeling an oddly fierce tugging in his stomach.

"Sorry?" The man's look of confusion smoothed into one of realization. "Oh, right, that. We don't use that in America either."

Malfoy blinked. "You don't use memory charms?"

"No, no, we do. I meant the term. We call it a Roofie. It's, you know, when you ... " The words trailed off, the amusement bleeding out of his voice at the blank looks on Harry and Malfoy's faces. He cleared his throat."It's a vulgar and disgusting term, yes. We Americans are vulgar and disgusting."

A pause.

"Jon, about this spell thing," Stephen slowly began.

"You've got it wrong," Jon insisted, ignoring the incredulous look Stephen shot him, probably as a result of being told that he was wrong about something. Harry figured him the type. "We don't -- that is, there aren't any pacts with Satan, or whatever -- "

"Oh, obviously." Stephen rolled his eyes, waving him off. "It's just the witches who marry themselves to the Prince of Darkness. The Eve effect, we call it. Gandalf was a wizard. It's totally cool." A frown. "I just wish you would have told me. We could have magically fixed the ballots in South Carolina."

Jon was blinking rather rapidly. "Are you -- seriously?"

Stephen smiled. "I accept your apology. Go on, Jon, pull a bunny out of a hat. Give PETA something to really bitch about."

There were a few beats of silence, and the surreality of the situation made Harry want to wake up from whatever dream he was having. It also made him want to strangle his subconscious for giving him dreams about Malfoy and American television hosts, all of whom were insane. Jon cleared his throat. Stephen looked on, arms crossed over his chest expectantly. Harry decided he hated Shropshire and all of its forests.

"Look, Stewart, can you just lift the charm?" he asked, voice strained. "Malfoy, come on, we're going."

But Malfoy was already walking toward the American pair, a spring in his step.

"Can you make a joke about the rabbit as well? As you pull it out of the hat? Can it be a Jewish rabbit?"

i have a headache but this makes it better.

2007-12-06T19:41:01Z

so i'm a teacher aide for my creative writing teacher, who is also the director of the one-act play and the spring play. his name's mr. livingston and he's an aquarius and i love him way too much to be considered appropriate.

anyway, i've been typing one-act things for him on his computer, and usually the class he teaches during the period i TA for him (mythology) is hilarious and very quote-able, but since i had a laptop right there at my disposal, i had the chance to rapidly type out everything that these kids were saying.

these are kids in my class, by the way. seniors.

COLIN: you look like you're dying.
MIKE: i am dying. of a broken heart, because livingston doesn't like me.
LIVINGSTON: oh god.
MIKE: i'm like, you're my hero, man! i just wanna hang out with you. play basketball.
TYLER: maybe get some coffee?
MIKE: maybe move in together.
LIVINGSTON: this is getting eerie. this is getting eerier and eerier.
CHRIS: you'd have your son -- who's your son?
LIVINGSTON: knox and phinneas.
CHRIS: which one runs around naked?
LIV: phinneas.
CHRIS: you'd have phinneas and mike running around your house naked.
MIKE: i'd fit right in, i'm always naked.

CHRIS: will you explain to me what 'away in a manger' is?
LIV: it's about when jesus christ was born.
CHRIS: what about it.
LIV: [bursts out laughing] what about it?
CHRIS: i don't know anything about jesus.
LIV: [dying of laughter] what about it.
CHRIS: he was given life by adam and eve, right?
LIV: [dying]
CHRIS: no, really, something about the crusades, right?
Liv: [laughs and laughs.]
CHRIS: the crusades and the jews. no, seriously, i don't disbelieve in him, but i don't know his story.
LIV: [laughs and laughs and laughs.]
MIKE: CHRIST, CHRIS, COME ON.
CHRIS: what's a manger? that's my question, what's a manger?
ME: a barn.
CHRIS: THANK YOU. i'm in maine, i don't call it a manger.
LIV: haven't you ever seen a nativity scene?
CHRIS: what?
LIV: you know, with the baby jesus and the cows --
CHRIS: oh, and the sheep!
LIV: yeah.
CHRIS: so that's a manger?
LIV: it's a representation of the -- yeah.

KARA: i got to play mary once.
CHRIS: she did what?
LIV: she was there when jesus was born.

CHRIS: what's away in a manger? why is it 'away'? what's bethleham?

CHRIS: so what makes this one kid so important? he's god's kid?
LIV: yes.
CHRIS: aren't we all god's children?
LIV: [doubles over laughing]
CHRIS: so what did jesus do?
MIKE: he died for our sins, man.
CHRIS: he died for -- for the jewish people, right?
MIKE: he sacrificed himself for mankind.
CHRIS: wait i don't understand, what did he sacrifice for -- what?
KATELYN: he started a thing, a --
CHRIS: a crusade! that's what i said, a crusade!
MIKE: no, he said he was the son of god, which was bad. 'cause god was a big thing, and if people went around saying they were the son of god, it'd be like what the hell, dude.
CHRIS: so he died for saying he was the son of god. you know, when i hear 'jesus' i think of forrest gump when he has the beard and he's running and has a following--
LIV: [nodding] yeah. no, that's not jesus.
CHRIS: i know that's not jesus.
LIV: okay. think of jesus as a baby in a manger.
CHRIS: that doesn't make sense. how many babies are born in a manger?
LIV: ... what?
KARA: i was born in a manger.
CHRIS: no you -- really?

CHRIS: so christmas, we celebrate jesus, right? that's sad, i'm eighteen years old and i didn't know that. is that bad?

i'm going to start doing this every day, seriously.

no lo sé.

2007-07-08T22:09:09Z

I -- have no idea what this is. I was just in the middle of writing something more conventional, and when I went to save it, I came across this little something-or-other and realized I hadn't posted it. There's more to it, but I cut that out. At the time, it seemed unfinished. It probably still is. No story's ever finished, anyway, hm?

Thing is, I'm fond of scenes. The last scene here I'm particularly fond of, and I was going to just post that, but I figured, what the hell. I don't know what makes more sense. Scenes make such good stories. Snapshots. There's a line here that I've used in another bit of H/D, because that was actually part of this, but then I changed it. A lot. Anyway.

I wonder if I'll finish this new thing I started. Probably not.

title: the boy must be a maniac
rating: oh, PG13.
pairing: harry/draco
notes: i repeat: i have no idea.

You wonder how many needles it would take to cover the flesh of your thumb if you stood them all on point. You've just woken up from a dream, and you're lying in bed, sweat damp and surprised, because you haven't dreamt about the graveyard in a while. You imagine a needle small enough and thin enough going into your skin and disappearing completely. There wouldn't even be any blood.

Malfoy's lying next to you, breathing. You turn over and contemplate his pale blonde hair, reach over and pluck one out. He stirs, cracks an eye open, but you're holding the strand of hair up to your face. It's certainly thin, made to look even more so by its colouring. Almost translucent.

"Potter, what the fuck?"

You hold it against your thumb, but of course, nothing happens, so you turn and bury your nose in Malfoy's hair, ignoring the sleepy scowl on his face. "Never mind. Your hair's not sharp enough."

His mouth tickles against your ankle, but you keep still, turning your head against the pillow to watch as he kisses his way up the inside of your leg. A hand comes down to brush blonde fringe out of his eyes, but Malfoy doesn't even look at you, just continues his journey along warm skin, pressing an open mouthed kiss to the inside of your knee (you squirm), and up.

You don't know Malfoy's place in all this, but there is no mark on his arm, and that's enough for you, you think.

"A rage," he murmurs to your hipbone, breath hushing over the jutting geography of the area, and his fingers trace the ridge. "A rage to live?"

You turn your head so you're looking down at him instead of sideways, a slight furrow in your brow. Turn your palm and cup his cheek, but he doesn't lean into it, merely allows the gesture. Slithers up your body and inhales the shadows along the hollow of your jaw, murmurs in your ear. "Can't shut up."

"Malfoy."

His eyes are glittering. You aren't really sure why, but your heart is beating faster. "Don't move."

You open your mouth to ask, but he swallows the question.

Sometimes, he whispers a name while you're half asleep.

Oran.

Sometimes, you catch it.

Oran is a city in Algeria. If Hermione is surprised by your asking, she doesn't show it. You tell her you think there might be something there, and she looks at you strangely, then nods and makes a note of it, marking the location on the map and promising to do some research.

Of the seven hundred thousand people living there, less than an eighth of them are of the wizarding variety. The Order is able to contact someone who lives in the old quarter, where the highest concentration of magic seems to be, and a team of Aurors is sent to investigate the area.

You aren't allowed to go, of course. Danger, danger. Harry must stay safe until the very last.

At least they're humouring you.

Four of the five Aurors come back. You ask what happened, wish you hadn't, and then are glad you did. The anger and repulsion help when you go out and cast the spell to destroy the Horcrux they managed to find interred in winding passageways beneath an eighteenth century mosque.

Two left, you think. It's about time you started doing things.

But something still doesn't make sense.

You plan to ask him about it the next time you see him. Problem is, you don't see him. All your usual places, usual haunts, he isn't there. And you're angry.

There comes a point when you don't have the time to be angry, though, because all you're thinking about is the green and the green and the red between the green, but you aren't nearly ready to lie down yet. Blood is still coursing through your veins, a mindless roar, and if you're doomed, then you're doomed, but you're going to do this first.

A laugh and slitted red. You again.

It's the wrong color, you think, as you watch him fall. It's all wrong for this. Rage is all consuming. The stuff of suffocating black, choking red. Not green.

It's been a month.

If you strain yourself, you can almost remember a dark alleyway about a year ago, the rain and the pale skin to which it clung, small droplets like braille that made him look even more translucent than usual. He looked like a ghost. You had touched him to make sure.

Hermione reads over obituaries. You don't bother.

Funny, how this one finds you. The edges of it fluttering in the wind, dirty and weighed down with mud. You pick it up, and your throat goes dry.

... although his position in the war was never known for certain, it can be gathered that Draco Malfoy, son of known Death Eater Lucius Malfoy, was not in You-Know-Who's favour. His death appears to have been brought on, in part, by members of that society ...

You think about the needle. You think about the pale blonde thread.

You think about a pattern.

There's mud between your fingers. You smear it over his name, frowning. Out of sight, out of mind. You don't like the way it feels after a while, though, gritty instead of smooth and slimy and wet, but the damage is done. You wipe it off on your clothes, your hair, anything. You wonder why you don't feel the desperation. You wonder if it's shock. Something's clawing at your chest. You look down, and it's just you. You're still wiping off the mud.

You kick open the door to a room you used to meet in, not knowing what's going to happen.

And then you sleep.

"You're filthy," he says as soon as you open your eyes. The same. He's the same, and you love him, so you curl your fingers against the mattress and think that it's about time you went insane.

You don't trust yourself to say much, so you settle for one word. "Why?"

He looks at you, stares at you, and you want so badly just to touch, but you can't move.

"I knew you'd win." An easy, matter-of-fact statement, accompanied with a wave of his hand. "I wasn't about to end up on the losing side."

You frown. "You're dead."

Malfoy lets his hand hang in the air, regarding you differently now. Consideringly.

"Yes." A slow nod. "I suppose I lost after all."

It's hard to tell how you end up on the other side of the room, how you manage to stand up at all given the circumstances, but suddenly he's in front of you, and you're in front of him, and you can feel the warmth radiating from him, and you think it isn't right, it isn't right, but god, you're going to take this.

"Potter." He tries to meet your gaze, but you rest your forehead against his and close your eyes, biting your lip so hard you taste blood. You feel a hand at your waist. "Potter, you're -- are you shaking?"

"Fuck. You." You say it fiercely, pulling him forward just to slam him back into the wall again, and he expels a breath. The sound makes you feel somehow vulnerable, and you wish you could hate him, but you're so far from it, you're afraid you'll do something stupid.

"Fuck you," you say again, this time with your mouth a hair's width away from his, and he raises his eyebrows, as if he's not quite sure what to make of you. Good, you think, as you move your grip to his forearms and bruise the skin underneath (or doesn't it work that way anymore?). "Fuck you. Fuck."

It's just a word. Replace it. Four letters for four other letters, you think. You don't want to think. You hope he doesn't notice.

A pause, almost like he's hesitating. "Harry."

"Did you even ... do you just ... did you ever stop to think?" There's a hysterical edge to your voice, but it's tired, and then again it's angry, and then again there's a sob somewhere in the back of your throat that you won't let through, and you open your eyes. His fingers tighten against you, pull you that much closer. You let out a breath across his mouth. "God, Malfoy, you bastard."

He regards you for a moment, expression changing from mildly concerned to carefully neutral to softer than you've ever seen it. And then he's kissing you with a gentleness that's startling, so much so that you give a low whimper even as you feel him smile against your lips.

"Rage, rage, rage," he murmurs, voice low, fingers slipping underneath your shirt.

"Shut up," you say, and kiss him.

Later, he puts his mouth to your ear and tells you that it could be worse.

Preludes and Prologues [HxD, R]

2005-05-21T09:17:17Z

Title: Preludes and Prologues
Author: Cami (shecrows)
Rating: R
Genre: Angsty. Ish.
Feedback: Makes me do happy dances. Seriously.
Disclaimer: ...rub it in, why don't you. No own, no sue.
Beta: Thank you so much, Moonyface surrealiste. As always. ♥

There’s a loud crack as skull makes contact with solid wall.

“What do you think you’re doing, Malfoy?”

Nip, lick, bite. An arctic gaze, leering up at him from beneath lowered lashes.

“I should think that’d be rather obvious.” A smirk.

Harry swallows. Draco’s eyes follow the movement of his Adam’s apple from where he is kneeling in front of him.

“You know what I mean.” He tries to keep his tone firm, but the tremor in his hands betrays him. He clenches them.

“And you think entirely too much.”

Then Draco’s lips are stretching around his cock, and Harry stops trying to hold on.

*

Harry loved sunsets. When the clouds were blankets of stained glass, and the dying sunlight shone through them, coloring the lake so that it seemed to glow red under the glare. It was as if the day knew its time was drawing to a close and conjured this last spectacle to leave its audiences in awe. This last display before the blues and blacks swallowed up the pinks and reds and golds.

A final, dying breath, this dark metamorphosis, and then night was hushing over the land, leaving a raven-haired boy sitting alone by the edge of the lake, glasses reflecting the light of the stars.

He breathed in unison with this part of the world as it fell into its slumber.

Harry loved sunsets. They spoke of finality, of rest, of endings.

And he so very much wanted an ending.

*

On his knees, mouth on Harry, eyes burning with a rare sort of fire as he licks, sucks, swirls his tongue along Harry’s length, Draco Malfoy is the most beautiful thing Harry has ever had the pleasure (teeth scrape the underside of his cock just so, and it’s perfect) of gazing upon.

He gasps when he comes.

But then his knees are buckling, and he is falling, falling, and he might have panicked if Draco hadn’t caught him, steadied him, hands gentle but firm as they trace soothing circles into the small of Harry’s back.

Inhale, and the crook of Draco’s neck smells of sweat and soap.

“I want you to stop.” He sounds breathless, hardly as firm or demanding or in control as he’d like to sound, and he knows it. Draco knows it, too. There’s a surety in his voice when he speaks.

“No, you don’t.”

*

He never really understood all the fuss about sunrises until January of sixth year.

He’d come back to Hogwarts before the end of winter holidays. It wasn’t that he’d wanted to come back so soon. Not a year since Lucius Malfoy had been put in Azkaban, Narcissa Malfoy was speaking in a monotone, walking as if in a trance, eyes glazed, lips parted, giggling to herself while she stared blankly out of the library window at grim, cloudy skies.

Draco had never heard his mother giggle. Not his mother. Not his.

Not my mother, too, you son of a bitch, I’ll kill you for this, I’ll fucking kill you, I’ll –-

She’d sent him off to school with a wave and an empty smile. He hadn’t been able to look her in the eye, let alone argue, as he climbed into a black carriage, its door marked with a glittering, silver M.

He didn’t sleep that night when he got back to the castle, nor the next. Instead, he wandered. On that second night out, wrapped in a long, black cloak to shield him from the chill, January winds, Draco sat down by the edge of the lake and watched.

The sky lightened. Tentative rays of light peeked over the horizon, tiptoeing on the still surface of the water. A particularly strong gust of wind passed by, and the light began to dance. He kept watching, suddenly hesitant to blink. He could miss it. He might miss it. He felt it, it was there, it was coming, he couldn’t –-

And there it was. Beginning.

The word was woven into the light, subtle, the gentlest of breaths, but it was there, and Draco’s eyes were stinging (he still hadn’t blinked), and the world was waking, which was rather ironic, seeing as an hour or so later, Draco stood up, walked down to the Slytherin dungeons, and collapsed onto his bed.

All day, he slept. And that night, Draco dreamt.

*

Harry wants to hit him. Instead, he pushes Draco away, fumbling a little as he buckles his belt and stands up on a pair of slightly unsteady legs.

“You don’t know what I want,” he snarls. Draco’s eyes flash, but his lips twist themselves into an unpleasant smirk, far more potent than the one he had worn minutes before.

“I know you weren’t putting up much of a fight half a second ago.”

“What are you playing at, Malfoy?” he demands, the blonde’s cool behavior infuriating, as always. “Is this some sort of mind game? Did Voldemort decide the best way to get at me was through psychological warfare? Is that it?”

His voice is only growing in volume with every word that manages to find its way past clenched teeth, and both men know that someone, anyone, could very well be listening in, but Harry is past the point of caring, and Draco is far too caught up in his contemplation of the curious shade of purple Harry is turning.

“Well, congratulations!” Harry continues, shouting the last word for emphasis. “You’ve managed to completely fuck me up! Run along and tell the Dark Lord so that he can wet himself in sadistic glee.”

At this, Draco stands up. “All right, Potter, listen carefully, because I’m only going to say this once.” His tone is so light that it makes Harry wince inwardly. His gaze, however, turns cold and stony. “There’s a difference between fucking someone and fucking someone up. I didn’t fuck you up. You managed that all on your own.”

Harry glares. Draco glares back.

“Secondly, if you think all of this happened because I’ve been going about following some unhinged maniac’s orders to indulge his unhealthy desire of seeing your head put on a pike, you’re dafter than I ever gave you credit for.”

“Then why?” His voice comes out hoarse. A plea. "Why?"

It’s here that Draco snaps.

“Because!” His hands clench, and there will be tiny specks of blood on his palms when he opens them later. “Because you –- you and your fucking light and your fucking hope and every single one of your fucking Auror friends, thinking it’s all going to end, and that everything will be all right soon, that everything will be all right, and I don’t care, I just want him dead. You haven’t seen my mother, Potter, you haven’t seen the way she –- ”

He cuts off, and his nose is almost brushing the tip of Harry’s. Neither knows how they ever got this close.

“I want him dead, Potter. He fucking ruined my life, did you know that? I had a life, I had –- I had beliefs, and I was sure of things, I knew things, and now I don’t know anymore, I’m never sure, and all I know is that I want –- ” He puts his hands on Harry’s shoulders. “ –- him –- ” Harry’s back is suddenly pressed flat against the wall. “ –- dead.”

“Welcome to the club,” Harry can’t help but say. This, obviously, is a mistake.

“You think this is funny now?” It sounds slightly hysterical. Harry tries to look at him evenly, but it’s hard when Draco’s so close.

“No.”

*

Five weeks later, seven Death Eaters are spotted within miles of Order Headquarters.

No one’s worried. Not about their sanctuary there, in Grimmauld Place, being discovered. There are too many spells in place to protect them.

*

“Then why are you smiling?”

*

A week and three days after that, Mundungus Fletcher doesn’t report in.

Mrs. Weasley scoffs. Lupin is uneasy. Mad-Eye is well on his way to having a coronary.

*

“Because you still haven’t answered my question.”

*

It isn’t even light yet when the Order of the Pheonix is stormed the very next morning.

Good, Harry thinks. He’s tired of waiting. He wants it to end. He just wants it to end.

*

“Remind me.”

*

The storming of their Headquarters is the proverbial powder keg that sets off the entire war.

There’s no blood.

Well, almost. True, when two wizards have their wands knocked from their hands, they don’t play nice and call it truce. But that doesn’t happen often. Why bother with flesh on flesh? It’s just a reminder of how human the other side is –- not alien, not another species. Human.

They can’t afford to think of that.

When you’re dodging hexes left and right, aiming your own while being careful not to aim for your friends, it’s hardly convenient to have to resort of physical combat, anyway. There are two words in existence that work just as well.

There’s almost no blood. Just a green light that’s reflected in every pair of lifeless eyes before the bodies even hit the ground.

*

“Why this? You. Me.” A pause. “Why are you here?”

*

When it’s over, Harry turns and sees Draco.

They don’t smile. It’s hardly a victory when more than three quarters of your side has been decimated.

They look up at the sky, and neither of them can tell if the day is ending or if it’s just beginning. Sunrise and sunset suddenly don’t seem all that different.

Then Draco’s at his side. He’s clasping his hand.

And Harry finds himself hoping –- not an urgent hope, but an almost lazy, tired one – that it isn’t just his imagination, and that the rays are, in fact, growing steadily brighter.

*

His voice is low, and quiet, and soft, and everything Draco isn’t.

“Because I don’t know where else to be.”

partially none o' yo bidnis.

2003-12-10T10:13:57Z

❧ hi, i'm camille.

new england, usa. not a soft-souled free spirit.

i'm more active on tumblr and twitter lately, but here's good, too.

most posts are locked. not really adding new people these days (unless i know you from some other place, cesspool websites etc.), but feel free to add and/or introduce yourself! if i don't add you back, please don't take it personally. lj is one of the few online places where i delve into anything deeply personal anymore, so i tend not to add people unless i know them pretty well beforehand.