Notes: For the "Out Of Your Comfort Zone" Challenge.
Pairing: Voldemort/Crabbe Jr.
Prompts: "There's a fire starting in my heart/Reaching a fever pitch, it's bringing me out the dark" (Adele: "Rolling in the Deep"), purple, "It hurts to become"-Andrea Gibson
"Make your family proud," his father tells him, but his father isn't the one going to the Dark Lord's bed every night. His father isn't the one unbuttoning the man's trousers with shaky fingers, learning how to kiss and lick and suck until he chokes. His father isn't the one Voldemort pins against the wall every night, mouth vicious against his, bathing him in the Cruciatus Curse just to hear his screams. No, that dubious pleasure belongs all to Vincent. And sometimes, when his father tells him to make him proud, he has to bite his lips until they bleed to stop from telling his da that if he's so concerned about pride, perhaps he should be the one on his knees.
But he doesn't say it. He doesn't say anything as his father roughly tousles his short hair, leaving without a single glance behind at the son already petrified in fear and something more. Sometimes Voldemort doesn't even wait until Crabbe Sr has gone before he pounces on Vincent, hands wrapped around his throat, leaving mottled purple bruises in the shape of claws.
Sometimes Voldemort calls him beautiful, caresses him with spidery white fingers, coaxes arousal up until Vincent writhes beneath him, ashamed and perversely aroused more because of the shame. The Dark Lord's maroon eyes glitter as he Crucio's his toy, as he sinks his teeth into the hollow of Vincent's collarbone until the boy keens beneath him.
"Are you proud now, Father?" Vincent whispers to himself when he's left alone, picking up the pieces of his shattered soul like splinters of red-tinged glass. He doesn't want to do this anymore. He doesn't want to be this anymore.
But there's no other choice, not for him, and so he remains at the Dark Lord's side, chains of obligation and pain wrapped as tight as any physical bonds. And if his eyes are empty, it's only what happens to become.