Title: Darker Than You Think

Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this for fun and not profit.

Pairing: Harry/Draco

Rating: R

Wordcount: 7900

Warnings: Discussion of canonical child abuse, war trauma, arguable dub-con, dirty talk, manipulation, mindfuck.

Summary: Draco and Harry have been together for some time before Draco learns about the abuse Harry suffered at the hands of the Dursleys. Harry expected him to explode. But what he wants is to explode with Harry's permission—and he's perfectly willing to seduce that permission out of Harry if he doesn't get it any other way.

Author's Notes: The title is shamelessly stolen from a novel by the SF writer Jack Williamson. This is a pretty dark little fic, and disturbing on purpose. It will probably have a sequel.

Darker Than You Think

Draco didn't say anything until they got home. Then he waited until Harry had his head in the collar of his cloak and was struggling with it to murmur the question, so Harry didn't really hear him at first.

"What?" Harry asked in distraction as the cloak lodged around his neck. He gasped and clawed at the folds of cloth. "Stupid thing—"

Strong hands closed on the folds and pulled them back, Draco smoothing them down as he did so and hung the cloak on the peg. His eyes were locked on Harry the entire time, and Harry could feel the hair rising on the back of his neck. He tried to smile, but his mouth was dry enough that it made his lips crack. He licked them.

"Draco, what's the matter?" he asked softly. "What did you say?"

Draco cocked his head and moved closer. He could walk in absolute silence when he wanted to. Harry knew it came from sneaking around Malfoy Manor trying to avoid the wrath of Voldemort and the adult Death Eaters—by this point, there wasn't much he didn't know about Draco—and so it didn't usually unnerve him. This time, combined with the caressing hand that Draco laid along his cheek, it did.

The last time Draco had touched him like that had been right before he exploded at Rita Skeeter for asking Harry whether he couldn't have prevented Fred Weasley's death in the war if he'd tried hard enough. Harry reached up and ran his fingers gently down the back of Draco's hand, touching knuckles and tendons and trying to relax them. He knew that Draco only wanted to protect him, but sometimes he thought Draco was the one who more needed protection, from the trauma of the war that had left him this silent, this unlikely to smile, this needful to coil around Harry and hold him safe.

"What's wrong?" he asked softly.

That got a reaction this time. Draco shuddered a little and let his chin rest on Harry's shoulder, something he did rarely. "It was what Weasley said," he murmured. Harry sighed. After all this time, he knew that Draco was never going to call his friends by their first names, and so he wouldn't ask him to. At least he no longer sneered the surnames. "When he said that you ought to have done better with Alohomora on your current case because you had a lot of experience with locks on your doors. What did he mean by that?"

Harry froze despite himself. And that was a mistake, because Draco was sensitive to every nuance of Harry's body language. He lifted his head and turned it, and their foreheads brushed. This close, it was much harder to lie to him.

Not that I'm lying to him, Harry told himself hastily. I'm only shielding him from things that he can't change anyway, things that would make him more upset.

"What did he mean by that?" Draco asked, and his voice had changed, grown huskier. Hermione had once heard him speaking that way and teased Harry that she knew why he stayed with Draco, for his bedroom tones.

Harry had laughed, his spine crawling. No need to tell Hermione that that was what Draco sounded like when he wanted to rip someone limb from limb.

But if he could protect Draco from some unpalatable truths, it had never been an option to deliberately deceive him once he found out about them. Harry took a deep breath and plunged. "My relatives kept locks on my door when I was a kid," he said. "They didn't want me able to get out and do whatever I wanted." He shrugged. "Thought I'd magic them to death in their sleep or something."

Draco's head twisted to the side, as smooth as a snake's. "Your relatives," he said, and this time, his voice had achieved the deep creak of an iron portcullis falling across all different pathways of conversation.

Harry shivered. Well, he had always known it would come to this someday. He suspected that he had delayed telling Draco about the Dursleys for so long because—

Well, because it was something he didn't like to talk about. And because Draco had enough of his own ghouls to deal with, having been a torturer for Voldemort and derided as a Death Eater in the press and shunned by most of his peers on both sides after the war. He and Harry had drifted together in the first place because they both understood about pain, and being vilified by people who didn't know them personally.

But Draco was looking at him with shining eyes now. And Harry knew that he wanted to help, wanted to be treated as though he could make a contribution, and he reached out and took Draco's hand in his, squeezing tight.

"Why don't you put the kettle on?" he suggested.

They sat on the twin couches in the drawing room, facing each other and the fire that Draco had kindled with a careless wave of his wand. Harry leaned back and watched him as he set the saucers and the cups out, then poured the tea with a delicacy of hand that also informed his casting. Harry loved watching him do things like this.

Hell, he might as well admit that he liked watching Draco do most things. Cast spells, make tea, answer the door, slice through the air on a broom. He always carried a grace with him, delicate and strong as tempered steel. Harry thought he might have been different, once, but the war had forged him.

And me.

Draco leaned back on his own couch and lounged there, tilting his head. Harry took that for the invitation it was and sipped his tea, hot and sweet and with a slice of lemon perfectly placed on the side of the cup, the way he liked it. Draco, who did nothing for those he despised, would not neglect the smallest gestures he could make for someone he loved.

"All right," Harry said. "What I suffered was pretty bad, but not in the ways that you're thinking of. I have to tell you that first. I wasn't raped, wasn't beaten. They told me that they hated me constantly, but they never tried to kill me—which makes them a bloody sight better than Voldemort ever was."

He had hoped that would make Draco laugh, but Draco stirred soundlessly on the couch and gave him a direct look. Harry nodded. He understood. Stop talking about what it wasn't and tell me what it was.

"All right," Harry said again, and raked his hands through his hair until Draco reached over and touched his wrist. Harry nodded. "Right," he repeated. "Okay. First, they never told me I was a wizard. But they forbade me to say the word magic, and they told me that my parents were drunks who could never hold a job and died in a car accident. They had to explain to me somehow where that scar came from and why they were stuck with me."

Draco craned his head to the side and watched Harry's scar from the corner of his eyes, looking under the fringe.

"I used to think it was cool, you know," Harry said, with a faint, embarrassed smile. He already knew that he would tell this out of order. Well, so be it. "For most of the time I was with them, I slept in the cupboard under the stairs. But my Hogwarts letters were addressed to the cupboard, so after that, they moved me up to my cousin's second bedroom because they were afraid wizards were watching."

Draco went still and stared at him with wide eyes like undisturbed water. Harry winced. Oh, shit.

"How tall was the cupboard?" Draco said, in the ghost-voice that Harry usually only heard when he was whispering or whimpering after one of his nightmares.

Oh, double shit, Harry thought, and resisted the impulse to reach out to Draco. That would only hurt him more right now, because he would want to concentrate on Harry. "I don't know, exactly," Harry said. "I know that I never had enough space on the bed, and that I couldn't stand up in it comfortably by the time I was eleven."

Draco closed his eyes. He was probably calculating, from his memories, what Harry's height had been when he was eleven. Then he opened his eyes and gestured Harry to go on. His face was flat, closed-off.

Harry did reach out then, because this was one of the worst times, but Draco held up his hand, and Harry had to drop his. "All right," Harry whispered in a smaller voice. "They locked the cupboard because they could lock me up and most of the time, I was out of sight. They had the locks on my door once they moved me up to the second bedroom and the bars on my windows for the same reason. They also wanted me to keep Hedwig locked up in her cage, and that happened all the first summer after Hogwarts."

Draco nodded. No expression on his face, not a ripple to mar the serenity. Harry knew people who would think that was good. He was the one who had to shudder and clench his hands on the cushions, knowing it wasn't. "All right. What else?"

And he knew Harry well enough to spot that there was a "what else," that that wasn't the whole of it. Harry let go of the cushions and smiled at Draco, half-helplessly. Draco frightened him sometimes, but he knew the cause of his fear came out of a love so deep that it was hard for Harry to fathom sometimes. When Draco gave his heart, he gave it whole. "They didn't feed me much. A can of soup here, some toast there. It was worse when Dudley—my cousin—was on a diet, because we only got to eat what he did so it would be 'fair.'"

"And what did they call you?" Draco's voice was almost a drone, almost soothing. Harry knew the difference between "almost" and reality, though, and eased to the edge of his couch in case he had to catch Draco.

"Freak, mostly," Harry said. "Waste of space. Boy. That was a favorite one. I never really liked it when anyone called me that, even Dumbledore. And especially not Snape."

Draco nodded. That would become part of the mental file he carried on Harry, Harry was certain. "And what else?"

"My cousin bullied me," Harry said. "Beat me up. He frightened everyone away in school who would have been friends with me, at least until I came to Hogwarts. There was no way to escape him."

Draco jerked upright as though pulled on strings and stared at him. "You lied," he said eventually, probably because Harry stared back at him instead of collapsing in guilt. "You said they didn't beat you."

Harry shook his head. "My aunt and uncle didn't. And Dudley—he didn't do it in the same way that they would have, Draco, as abuse. It was the same kind of thing I went through at Hogwarts, with the Slytherins. Except I could fight back at Hogwarts, and I couldn't at home, because Dudley was always bigger and stronger than me. And he changed," he felt he had to add, when Draco's eyes only became icier. "I saved his life the summer before our fifth year, from Dementors. After that, he really did stop attacking me and insulting me, and I think we were friends, sort of, the last time I saw him."

Draco looked at him, and then leaned forwards and let one hand rise and fall so that his fingers came to rest on the back of Harry's knuckles. He said nothing, but his eyes were relentless, and Harry squirmed.

If he looked away, though, the chance that something bad would happen to Dudley was increased. Or at least the chance that Draco would think something about Dudley that wasn't true. "No," he said. "Honestly, Draco. He was the only one who acted a little sad to see me go, and we all knew that we might never see each other again. I think my aunt and uncle were just worried about how the war would affect them and whether the wizards who were protecting them would be on time."

Draco watched him in silence that turned crystalline for some seconds. Then he nodded and leaned back.

"What else did they do?" he asked.

"That was it," Harry said.

Draco went unblinking.

Harry sighed and shook his head. He was wishing now that Ron had never made that stupid remark. It meant he had to confront something that he hadn't told Draco with no notion of how to soften the blow for Draco. Perhaps he should have told him the truth from the beginning, but the pain he suffered always seemed to cut Draco far deeper than it cut Harry himself.

"It really was," he said. "Insults, neglect, not giving me enough food, putting me in the cupboard, Dudley beating me up. And sometimes locking me up in my room when they thought I'd misbehaved. Ron and his brothers had to break me out of my room before second year."

Draco nodded. The motion of his neck was slow, but not dangerously so. Harry relaxed and stood up, moving behind him. He was the only one who could do that, the only one that Draco would let get into a position where Harry might be able to hit him in the back. He did tilt his head back on the couch now to watch him, but Harry kissed him between his eyes and ruffled his hair, and Draco blinked, the glaze in his eyes falling away.

"Do you want to go in the bedroom?" Harry whispered. Draco often did, when something like this had happened. All the things he couldn't say, all the things he was rotten at doing, would come out in the passion with which he and Harry rolled among the sheets, and touched each other, and thrust into each other.

Draco nodded. He stood and extended his hand. Harry took it back, and Draco almost waltzed him into the bedroom.

Harry shut the door behind him, and blinked. Draco sat in front of the low table in the drawing room, shifting papers around. Harry tried to look at it upside-down, but saw nothing familiar. It seemed to be maps and lists of locations.

He gave up on trying to understand it when Draco looked at him. Draco's job involved little paperwork, most of the time, but hasty questions and meetings in the dark and wounds he bore with tight lips. That didn't mean it couldn't change, though.

Harry tried to subdue the hope that Draco might be pursuing a more normal course. He didn't want to harass Draco to fit in with his expectations; he didn't want to change him. He'd had plenty of chances to walk away if his life with Draco wasn't what he wanted.

He kissed Draco between the eyes the way he had the other night and murmured, "You have a new project?"

"It's an important project," Draco said, and slid his fingers along Harry's wrist, lingering for a moment at the small bump of the bone. "But not as important as dinner. What would you like, spaghetti or sweet soup? Or we could go to that new restaurant that just opened in Diagon Alley."

"You would do that?" Harry stared, his cloak caught around one arm this time. Draco didn't like to go out in public. Harry couldn't blame him. Spat insults for dating the Chosen One were the least of it.

"I want to," Draco said, and leaned in to kiss Harry on the forehead in turn, then slid down towards his lips. His fingers were busy on Harry's shoulders, turning down his cloak collar and slipping it off him the way he had the other night, and then his hands were on Harry's waist and pinching and slipping suggestively.

Harry half-gasped and laughed. "If you don't stop touching me like that, then we won't be able to go anywhere."

"That's also important," Draco said, and kissed him with a single-minded intensity that made Harry want to drown. Draco made his head spin and his eyes shut and his Auror instincts forget about the exits in and out of the room. Draco dragged him down, and Harry didn't care if he never surfaced again.

Draco pulled him to the bed. He laid Harry out on it, and although Harry knew he'd lost the cloak, he couldn't remember when. Draco kissed him constantly, never pulling back except to let Harry pull in a few struggling breaths, while he undid Harry's robes, and shirt, and trousers. And his shoes were gone, too, and his socks, and Draco laid himself down on Harry for just a moment, so that Harry could feel the gleaming slickness of cloth and grabbed for it with a half-sob.

Draco whisked himself away again and kissed Harry enough to make him snatch and whimper with need. Then he pulled back and lay down next to Harry, stroking his chest. Harry tried to reach him. Draco seized his wrist and held it above his head, on the pillow. Harry gasped and thrashed and held still only when Draco leaned towards him and rested his chin on Harry's, eyes half-shut as he gazed at him.

"I want to fuck you," Draco whispered. "I want it so much that I'm thrusting into the bed." His hips moved, and Harry's thrust back into thin air in response. "I want to hold you there on the edge until you fall off because you're too exhausted to do anything else."

Harry groaned and had to shut his eyes, because his eyes were burning along with all the rest of his body. "I'm—open to that," he managed to whisper.

But Draco didn't move, let alone take off his clothes and fuck Harry the way he said he would. Harry finally opened his eyes, not wanting to hurry him but wanting to know what was going on.

Draco smiled at him, and stroked the bump of his wristbone the way he had a few minutes ago. Was it only a few minutes? Harry's sense of time was exploding like fireworks made of flour. He had no idea. "I'll do it," Draco whispered. "I want to do it. I've never wanted to make you feel this good."

"Yes." Harry strained towards him, but only managed to get close enough to leave a small wet streak on the side of Draco's leg.

Draco moved the leg smoothly out of reach, and then bent down to whisper in Harry's ear. "I'll do that, all that and more, if you give me permission to take revenge on your relatives for you."

Harry's throat was crowded. He had to swallow and gasp and say, "What?" before the words came down.

Then he tried to stand up. Draco moved quickly, hovering over him and dipping down again so Harry could feel the wet cloth covering Draco's groin before he rolled back and stared at him again. All the time, he kept Harry's arms pinned.

Harry swallowed again. He was a good fighter with his wand, but this close, and with a lot of leverage already, Draco was going to overpower him. Harry shut his eyes and counted to ten, trying to regain his rationality and, with it, his mastery of the situation.

Draco licked his wrist, rolling his tongue up and down as thoughtfully as though he'd never tasted salt before. Harry quivered and then despised himself for quivering. He knew Draco, with his quick eyes, his quick mind, would see that and know how to use it.

Draco licked again, this time wrapping his tongue around one of Harry's fingers. Harry felt himself flush all up and down his chest, and his legs spread. Draco shifted enough so that his clothed hip settled briefly between Harry's legs. Then he pulled back again.

"What do you want?" Harry whispered. His mind swam. It wasn't supposed to be like this; he wanted to stand up and walk away from Draco. But at the same time, he wanted what Draco promised, and his body was hot and trembling, and it hurt, it was good, it was full of need, he wanted to come.

"I want permission." Draco's voice was so low and sane that Harry had the crazy idea that someone listening to their conversation would think Harry was the stupid or mental one. "I want to destroy them for what they did to you. And I'm going to make you feel so good when you let me that you'll faint. And then I'll bring you back up and do it again."

Harry opened his eyes. Maybe it would be better if he saw the mad expression on Draco's face, to reassure himself that this wasn't at all a good idea, and he would be better off refusing—

It didn't make it better. Draco's face hovered above his, and his eyes were locked on Harry, and they shone with a fire that Harry hadn't seen before. Draco's hand, locking his to the pillow, shook and then stilled. It could have been the passion of revenge, but Harry knew what Draco looked like when he was aroused. This was several degrees past arousal.

Harry was the only one Draco trusted with this, the only one who got to see him like this, with the need making him vulnerable. Harry writhed, and his legs spread wider. Draco gave him a smile like lightning and then went back to his still watching.

But as good as this was, as wonderful as it was, it would be wrong to give in. Harry knew that. His eyes opened, his eyes shut, and he started to struggle back up to the surface that he had to reach, because if he let Draco do this, it would only end up hurting Draco in the end. And that was something Harry wanted to avoid more than anything else in the world, even more than he wanted to protect his relatives from mistaken revenge.

"I forgave them," he dry-whispered. "Dudley more than my aunt and uncle, but I forgave them, too. It's over with. It's done."

"Tell me they were punished," Draco whispered back, his voice as dry. "Tell me someone already took revenge for you."

"No," Harry said. "Wizards took them away to protect them during the war, because Voldemort might have tried to harm them to use them against me. That was the last I ever saw of them."

Then he saw the maps and the lists on Draco's table again, and he tried to sit up. "You're trying to find them—"

"I know where they are," Draco said, his voice vibrating against Harry as their chests briefly pressed together. Draco rolled, and Harry found himself on his back once more, both hands imprisoned this time, Draco still sprawled beside him and looking at him from above. "But I won't destroy them without your permission. They aren't worth losing your trust."

"They aren't worth anything," Harry said forthrightly. "I forgave them, I told you. They're nothing."

"I saw your eyes when you were talking to me," Draco said softly, and moved close, until only a centimeter separated their mouths and Harry had to feel as well as hear his every word. "You're worth more than they are. You're worth everything. And I know that you want someone to punish them for you, deep down. You were never rescued. You need to be."

Harry shut his eyes, while Draco's warm breath raked his mouth and kindled embers that really should have been left to burn out. Because the truth was, part of him agreed with Draco's characterization of him. Part of him did want the revenge that Draco seemed to promise, and he could acknowledge that to himself when he was involved in old memories and reflecting bitterly on all the things his friends' families had done for them.

But that was only part of him, and the rest of the time, he was free.

Draco had pulled back. Harry hoped that meant he had given up, although the disquiet stirring in his stomach told him to remember how many times that had actually happened.

"I don't," he said, opening his eyes.

Draco kissed him. He'd lowered himself so that his chest pressed into Harry's, and he rocked back and forth, hips brushing down, his groin sliding along Harry's so that Harry arched up with a stuttering little gasp. Fire flashed the length of Harry's body, and he felt all his muscles pull tight.

This was what Draco did to him. Silent mouth and shining eyes and abrupt, cold manners, they all lit Harry up like he'd never been lit before.

And Draco was lapping and kissing at his mouth, and he said something that made his hand on Harry's left wrist suddenly slick, and he moved his hand down and slid his fingers into Harry.

Harry snarled and twisted, wanting the fingers deeper. They would have to go deeper, they would have to touch him and bring him pleasure that he'd never admitted he liked so much before he was with Draco, and Draco was so good at knowing what he wanted almost before he did and giving it to him—

But a moment later, he realized something was wrong. Draco had twisted with him, but not to bring his fingers deeper. They stayed exactly where they were, lightly pressed inside Harry, but not touching any of the places he wanted them to touch. When he tried to clench down, Draco retracted his hand. Now Harry could only feel the fingertips.

He clenched again, and reached nothing. Harry arched his head back and whispered, "Please."

"I'll touch you," Draco promised his ear, with a kiss on the lobe. "Make you writhe."

"Now." Harry couldn't believe that he had somehow found himself in this awkward position where he couldn't press up or down, where Draco somehow had him trapped. It seemed that Draco was much stronger than Harry had ever given him credit for. "What—you can't expect me to—what are you waiting for?"

"You know what I'm waiting for."

A cold shudder rippled up Harry's spine, but Draco moved his hand sideways and a hot shudder followed that one. Harry's heels kicked up despite himself. Draco had let go of his wrist with his other hand and was stroking Harry's back soothingly with it, but because of the way he lay on top of Harry, Harry still couldn't struggle free.

It was ridiculous. Draco wasn't this strong—

Unless he'd never needed to show his strength forth before, because he'd never had the motive.

Or because my weakness is betraying me, Harry thought, and bowed his head, and squeezed his eyes shut. The Dursleys' lives were worth more than his pleasure.

"I can touch you," Draco said, softly, simply. His fingers didn't move, but he seemed to flex them anyway. Perhaps he was. Could he flex them without getting them deeper? Harry thought he could. He tried to feel them, but Draco had moved them back so that only by the barest brushes of skin did Harry know they were there. "Hold you here so long that you'll crack. That you'll beg. And then I'll roll you over, and you'll sob when I pull out. And how long can I keep you like that? I wonder."

"Draco." Harry arched his head back. Draco was there in instants, breathing into the nape of his neck, sliding one hand into Harry's hair, and God knew where he'd got the hand. Perhaps he knew Dark spells that could make him grow new limbs, Harry thought crazily.

"Touching you," Draco said, and made every inch of skin count without shifting a muscle, from his fingers to the way that his chin was touching Harry's skull. "I could do this all day. Nothing would get tired. I'd never notice the pain. Because of you." This time, the hand that he slid into Harry's hair was reverent, and even the sharp pinch as his fingers clenched down felt natural. Wonderful.

Harry sobbed. "You want to kill them. I won't let you."

"Torture them." Draco shifted position again, carrying Harry with him, and ended up with Harry sprawled between his legs and on his chest, his fingers still firmly in place in Harry's arse. But not firmly enough, Harry thought, and bucked. Draco was ready for that, too, and the hand withdrew still further. "Not kill them. They'll be alive. You'll be avenged. If I killed them, they wouldn't know, and you would torment yourself."

There is something wrong with me, Harry thought in despair, because those words, puffed out soft and warm against him, still made him burn. "No," he whispered.

Draco paused. Harry wondered for a moment if he would carry out his threat to hold Harry spitted on his fingers like that until Harry gave in.

Not that I can. I can't. Harry leaned his head forwards, against an arm that he didn't know if it was Draco's or his own, and closed his eyes.

Then Draco rolled. Harry tried to guess where they were going next, to regain some control of his limbs and simply drive himself down onto Draco's cock in the process if necessary. His arse wasn't ready, but the rest of him was, and burning so much that he wanted to weep.

This time, though, Draco got him up onto his hands and knees. He returned his hand to Harry's arse, but instead of sliding his fingers inside this time, he simply pushed with his thumb and his last two fingers, sliding Harry's cheeks apart. He held him there, and Harry knew he was looking, looking at the place that no one but the two of them had ever touched, had ever been.

Harry sobbed. He tried to shove himself back into Draco's face, but Draco was alert for that, too, and moved lightly, fleetly as a predator, backwards, before returning to separate Harry's cheeks again. His other hand began to move at the same time, tracing long, light, skimming strokes down Harry's sides, above his ribs.

"That's not fair," Harry gasped. He wasn't ticklish there, but he was absurdly sensitive, and his skin contracted away from Draco's fingers at the same time as he pushed forwards, yearning for more of it.

Draco let Harry make more contact with his hands than he had so far, and licked him behind the ear. "I'm going to fuck you so fast that your hips will bruise from my hips," he whispered. "And I'll decide when you fall."

"Please," Harry said. He didn't think he could make it more eloquent than that.

"You know what I want."

Harry shut his eyes and shivered. Draco's hand on his side kept moving, smooth, almost mechanical in its skill, and tendrils of need spread away from his flanks and down into his arse, where Draco's other hand remained motionless and poised. The burn of his eyes on Harry's entrance, Harry thought, was nearly worse than his hand.

"We can stay here like this all night," Draco murmured. "Would you like that?"

"I'd hate it."

"So simple, then," Draco said, and his voice was filled with light. Harry knew he would be smiling, and knew the way his lips would tilt up without looking, the way he would gaze at Harry with the pride and possessiveness of someone who knew he had done a good job. "Say the words you know I want to hear."

Harry shook his head. "I can't."

"Then I'm afraid I can't change anything," Draco said peacefully, and his hand slid up and down.

Harry tried to press into the fingers; they traveled with him, and maintained the same distance. He tried to escape the way that Draco was looking at him by thinking about something else. He tried to imagine that Draco was going to murder the Dursleys, he tried to imagine the torture, and thought that would deflate his cock.

It didn't. Harry was harder than he had ever been, and it hurt. And the thought of what Draco would do to the Dursleys…

It made him harder.

Harry sobbed again. Draco knew what it was about without asking. When they were in bed together, they moved in tune. Harry usually loved it, but he shivered now as Draco bowed his head towards him and whispered.

"I would leave your cousin alone. It sounded sincere to me, when you said that you forgave him. But your aunt and uncle would suffer. The spite would come from voices in the walls. I know curses that do that. The Dark Lord showed them to me, and this is a good use for them. Everything they used or touched would whisper to them, and show them the truth, and they would not be able to escape it in their dreams.

"Their food would become hunger. And they would hunger more and more, the more they ate. Would you like to see them, Harry? Their swollen bellies, their wasted faces, their feet as they shuffle around starving?"

Harry closed his eyes and ducked his head against his arm, last fragile refuge. Because he was swollen like Draco's words, dripping, and Draco's hand dipped down from his side to run his fingers over the head.

Harry made a sound that was halfway between a groan and gurgle, and thrust into Draco's grip. But it had gone, and he penetrated only air, and panted heat and light and ruin.

"I can fuck you if I want to," Draco told him, gentle as the touch that had returned to Harry's arse. He was using both hands to hold him open now, and Harry's body was all one long flush as Draco looked. "But I choose to wait. Can you wait?" He bowed his head, and Harry held his breath, but all Draco did was rest one of his cheeks against Harry's cheeks, softest touch, and stay.

Harry panted, and told himself that it couldn't happen, it couldn't be allowed to matter. This was one thing, this was a moment in time, but what Draco wanted to do to the Dursleys would last for the rest of their lives. And one part of his mind, clear as a stained-glass window, could think about that.

The rest strained and burned and dripped and just wanted.

"No one need ever know," Draco whispered into his arsehole. "You're here. I'm here. I'm going to enter you, and you're going to promise me. No one else need ever know."

Harry could roll in pleasure. The pleasure of having Draco touch him, the pleasure of knowing that the Dursleys had suffered some part of the torment they'd given him. Because there was that small, dark, coiled thing inside him, even now, that wanted them to suffer.

But…

"No," he whispered, breathless gasp.

Draco heard him. They had always been in tune.

Draco moved backwards. For a moment, Harry thought he would keep him like that, trembling on the edge, his warm body straining towards Draco, his limbs shaking, and he wanted to cry out. Even though that was a good thing, because it meant that he wouldn't have his relatives killed.

Or wouldn't they be killed?

Everything was melting.

Draco said something, something so full of purring and blurring vowels that Harry didn't think he'd ever hear it correctly. Then Draco touched him again, opening his arse, breathing on it, rearing back, and pushing inside.

Harry shuddered. It felt so good not to be empty just then. He thought he should have moved a hand, touched Draco or touched himself or touched both of them at once, but he couldn't move. He had to shudder and bow his head even to get back to normal.

He waited for Draco to thrust.

Draco didn't move.

Harry tried to clench down, tried to fuck himself, but Draco was once again moving fluidly, keeping them in the exact same position no matter what Harry tried, and Harry caught nothing more than a faint scrape of cloth. Draco had his trousers and pants open, then, but nothing else, and he was still dressed. That made Harry's head spin. He tried to turn his head, tried to see, but his vision was hazed with darkness as it was, and he still had to give most of his attention to holding himself on all fours.

"Do you see?" Draco whispered into his ear. "I will hold you like this. And that is all it will ever be, unless you give me permission."

"No," Harry said back, but he had the strong feeling that only his lips moved.

He tried to say that Draco would get tired, but he already knew that Draco didn't get tired when he was after something he really wanted to happen. And he could kneel there for longer than Harry, already tired and wanting and dazed, could stay on his hands and knees. And he would.

Harry tried to clench his jaw, tried to tell himself that other people's lives were worth more than a few minutes of fucking. They had to be.

Draco remained motionless, aside from a single, shallow thrust that teased Harry with a picture of what would never be.

Harry groaned. The sound broke from him, shaking his chest, and he hadn't known it would do that, or even that it was coming. This time, the way Draco's hands swept up and down his sides was probably meant to be soothing.

"Imagine someone else looking at us," Draco whispered, his voice filling the soft, small space around them the way Harry's panting breath did. "The way your skin shines, with that sweat creeping down it. The red of your chest. The red of your face. I don't think I've ever seen it so red." Draco thoughtfully touched the back of his neck, so soft that Harry didn't know whether it was his hand or his tongue that had done it. "And the way I look, kneeling here, inside you and wanting to be inside you…"

"You'll have to give up soon," Harry said. He didn't know where he found the words. They seemed to build up inside him, rattle around in his chest, and finally fall out of his mouth like spit. "You can't keep this up forever."

"Oh, Harry." Draco's voice was tender and dazzling, the slightest scratch of his fingernails on Harry's flanks still so much wonderful sensation that Harry rocked and arched into it. "I can stay like this as long as I need to. Just wanting to be inside you is enough. And I am."

Harry counted to three inside his head—under his breath might still mean Draco could hear it—and thrust his arse backwards. Draco moved away from him, and laughed for the first time since this had started, a little chuckle of contentment.

"I can get myself off like this," he whispered. "Or pull out of you and wank if I want. But I don't think you'll get off now, except by me fucking you."

Harry's arse clenched involuntarily. Yes, he wanted that; he could imagine the way Draco would pound him, the way the bed would press up against him and hurt him when he finally collapsed to his belly, how he could easily get enough to come from the fucking alone.

That was the real reason he didn't simply reach under his belly and wank right now. It wouldn't be satisfying enough. He wanted something else.

"I know what you want."

Draco's voice was in his head. Winding through his ears, touching his brain. Fucking his brain, Harry imagined, and he was so far gone that even that sounded good. He moaned, and wondered if he could ever take Draco by surprise the way he'd planned to do a few minutes ago.

"You can have it." Draco's voice was so gentle that Harry wondered if he'd given up. No, that was a stupid question. He never would, not as long as he thought there was some chance of winning. "That's what I want, Harry, to give you what you want. A good fucking, vengeance that you never had the chance to taste. All of it. It's all yours, and you have to speak one little word." His voice deepened to the kind of pleased rumble that had made Harry's nights wonderful in the last two years. "Yes instead of no. Doesn't that sound simple?"

In the silence that followed his speech, Harry could make out the slight plop of liquid dripping from his cock to the bedsheets. He pushed back involuntarily, but Draco was still out of reach, and still talking in a voice that chattered like a running stream.

"I told you, I won't kill them. Only make it hard for them to forget you, or forgive themselves for what they did. They'll live. And you haven't heard anything about them since they left. You don't know whether their lives are pleasant or not, whether they're suffering or not. Why should this matter more to you? You'll get a bit of satisfaction from it, and otherwise, it will be exactly the same."

He rocked. Harry rocked with him. By now, he was so far gone that he felt as if was drowning in a luminous haze, panting with his mouth open. He was so warm, and he was starting to think of what Draco offered as a cool drink of water just out of reach.

Draco's fingers curled into his hair, and tugged. For the first time since this began, Harry's head tilted backwards, and he saw Draco's face.

Draco smiled at him and cocked his head to the side. His eyes were wide and gentle and completely implacable. He would keep doing this, Harry knew with warm despair, doing this until he got what he wanted.

And Merlin, Harry was so empty.

"It's all right," Draco soothed, at the same moment as his fingernails dug down and left long scrapes on Harry's scalp. Harry arched again. Draco was right there with him, covering him, binding him down, whispering contentedly. "I won't kill them. You can have what you want. I think you should. How many things did you lack in that house? Comfort. Food. Friends. Family. Love. You should have it."

Harry still had that clear patch in his mind that told him what he would be agreeing to and that he shouldn't do it.

But at the same time, there was the roiling darkness under that that Draco had sensed, the darkness that was tired of yielding everything to everyone else, that wanted to be selfish and petty and have what it wanted for once.

It whispered in Harry's ears, its words formless and shushing, but joining Draco's, in the same tone as Draco's. What would it matter? He had Draco's promise that he wouldn't kill the Dursleys, even that he would spare Dudley, and Draco had always kept his promises since they got together.

Part of Harry still wanted something after all these years.

And sometimes, he could have what he wanted.

"Yes," he whispered, so lost in a dream that he almost expected no response from Draco, crouched above him.

But Draco heard him. They had always been in tune.

Immediately came the slam that Harry wanted. It drove him flat to the bed, and he clawed at the blankets and cried out his satisfaction as Draco fucked him, thrusting home, driving his hips in multiple directions so that Harry never knew what direction it would come from next, and making him want to expire right then, because there would never be anything better than this.

Pleasure rocked him, hit him, traveled through him. And didn't stop. Harry recognized Draco's hoarse voice whispering charms, the thick way Draco's fingers tightened around him, and knew that they were charms to heighten sensation. Invisible fingers played with Harry's hair and stroked his cock and caressed his sides, and he knew that some of them were Draco's, and he couldn't tell the difference.

He opened his eyes and turned his head. Draco was fucking him with his own eyes fixed on Harry's face, hair ruffled around him, his mouth parted as he panted, his eyelids fluttering wild and uncoordinated.

It took a little more time, more minutes of fucking, but Harry came with that expression imprinted on his memory.

Draco held him flat when Harry had finished shuddering and fucked him some more, eyes fixed on Harry's arse now. Harry hid his face in his arms and let him. He felt warm and contented and sated and sleepy, and he knew what would happen when Draco came.

Yes. It was the flooding of warmth, the quiet minute of recovery and breathing, and then Draco sliding sideways to take him in his arms. Harry felt the cloth against his back, and would have stirred and said something about how Draco should take his clothes off so that they didn't stain them.

But he had wanted to do this, and Harry felt too good to object.

Even to object when he remembered what Draco had tricked him into.

"I'm going to regret this in the morning," he muttered.

"No, you're not," Draco said, calm and steady. "Because I won't let you." His hands were on Harry's back and shoulders, and he kissed Harry on the back, licked his spine, and said, "Because I'll give you what you want."

Harry did roll his head back to look at him, hard as that was when there seemed to be no bones in his neck. "What do you want?" he asked.

Draco smiled at him, wild as a jaguar, from centimeters away and said, "You've given it to me, Harry. Two things I wanted. Three, if you count pleasing you." His fingernails scratched another reminder on Harry's sides. "Go to sleep."

Harry could feel thoughts bubbling around outside their little cocoon. Thoughts about how could he have done this?, and how fucked-up this was, and how could he have betrayed his relatives for a little pleasure?...

But he didn't think them. He didn't want to think them. For once, he wanted to be here, and he wanted to do what felt good, and he wanted to worry about the consequences later. The way that Draco did, and so many other people they knew did.

And he closed his eyes, and Draco held him.

The End.