"The Avarice of Angels"
Author: Ganni
Pairing: Harry Potter / Draco Malfoy
((Set in their seventh year, with Harry as Head Boy; VERY OOC))
Ch. 1 Rating: PG-13
Chapter One: Tasting Ambrosia
"Damnit." Harry swore, sitting heavily down on the bed, oblivious to the papers strewn around him that were being crumpled. His face was hot, and tiny pinpricks of sweat had broken out along his hairline. His robes suddenly felt too heavy, like they were smothering him, and too tight by far. The room was swimming dizzily and there was a faint humming in his ears.
He'd almost lost his cool. Lost his perfect stoic mask, his constant composure. Betrayed his vow of indifference and revealed to the world what he felt inside.
Damnit.
It hadn't been going on for long. Only a few months or so ago, it had started. When he had, dizzy with Quidditch practice and tired to the bone, stumbled into the locker rooms covered in a fine sheen of sweat. Of course he had known that the Slytherin team had booked the Pitch for practice only twenty minutes after the Gryffindor team was supposed to finish. He always knew these things, he was always up-to-date with this kind of stuff. He had merely let himself go- stayed too long up in the air, perfecting a new technique, waving Ron's protests off as the girl insisted he come in as practice was over and he refused; temporarily forgotten that by the time he had this new technique perfected, the Slytherin teams would be in the locker room changing already.
And so he burst into before mentioned place, his team long ago showered and gone, still covered in sweat and panting from a hard workout, cheeks red and burning from windlash and blond hair mussed up and damp. He went straight to his locker, flung open the metal door, and began violently yanking off his boots and knee pads.
"What are you doing here, Potter?"
Harry spun around instantly, then reeled with dizziness. He caught the edge of the bench and steadied himself, then glared in the general direction of the speaker, who was currently peach-fuzzy with fatigue.
It was Draco Malfoy. Naked but for a towel. Wet.
Harry was sure, when looking back on it now, that the unclad disarray of the boy, the flippant tone used when addressing him- it all would've made him mad in normal circumstances- if only if he hadn't been so light-headed, blood rushing with adrenaline. Those were surely the reasons what happened had actually happened. Certainly not anything he would've felt normally. It seemed that the adrenaline was red-hot to froth through his body after such a vigorous workout, and it obviously wasn't on its way to his brain, as his vision was slipping more and more out of focus. In fact, it was doing something dreadfully unneeded at the time- rushing towards his groin. And so quickly it was almost painful. No WONDER he was dizzy.
"What does it appear to look like? I am showering after practice." He managed, still clutching at the bench rail for support, but trying to appear nonchalant.
It seemed the world was in slow motion. He returned his attention to relieving his person of shin guards and elbow pads, leather gloves, a thick linen vest- but out of the corner of an eye, Draco was there. Still standing, staring, as Harry undressed, his eyes lingering longer than they should. The Head Boy did his best to ignore the Slytherin, yet felt two emotions mounting in intensity, both equally powerful- a sudden fascination with this beautiful blond who he'd never given a second thought to in several years, except to hate him or just be irritated, and the rush of arousal coming from being under such an intense and unwavering gaze; and then the irritation of being watched, given no privacy while he undressed, given no respect.
And yet, deep down inside, something hidden, buried under thousands of leaflets of parchment, smothered by knowledge, something forbidden- stirred. He liked it. He liked being watched. And he was clever enough to know that the fury he felt right now was only a cover-up for denial. Damn intelligence level. Depriving him of the fool's blissful ignorance.
Harry finally turned to Draco, fed up, as he unbuttoned his shirt. "Is there something you need?" His voice was bitter and cold. His vision was slowly coming back into focus as his more rational side suppressed the feelings of arousal and forced the fact that he was a Gryffindor, proud and honest and brave and God it was a sickening description for a dating service, down his throat. It burned like bile.
Draco smiled, a thin slit that in one moment, two milliseconds, three, thousand and one, shattered the image of innocence. Left the angelic wings and glowing halo in ruins around elegant feet. That porcelain skin, those baby blue eyes- all a lie. Draco was quite the fashionable Slytherin- draped in the finest cloak possible, the most chic, the most lovely and the most painful- a cloak of lies. What glamour magic he worked.
"Not really. Just enjoying the view." The Slytherin slunk towards him, hips swaying with the gyrating rock of waves in the ocean that could only come naturally. The towel seemed like it would fall off any minute, tugged down by Harry's eyes, by the hands of the sea reaching up and grabbing blindly, rocking the boat, rocking his boat, bringing that razor to his throat.
Draco stopped. He was only a few feet away from Harry now, still staring, gaze sweeping up and down appreciatively, taking it all in, relishing whatever beauty he might possibly find there. The Gryffindor was frozen, eyes fixated on the other's, hands paused where they rested absently on the faux-pearl buttons of his Quidditch shirt, unable to tear his eyes away. The moment was frozen in time; the merry-go-round had stopped, the children had all fallen off into a pit of blankness that had somehow replaced his conscious mind with nothing but feeling, feeling and heart pounding and blood rushing to below and the children had all dropped and lost their ticket stubs with them as they fell, and it was a shame, they couldn't get back on the ride without those.
"Tell me..." The moment shattered, Draco's gaze broke free of the drift and rushed back out with the tide surrounding the boat, landing on the far wall as he realized he'd been staring and heat flushed his face, his cheeks. "...just how clever are you?" Draco was saying, all in a blur, like strobe lights on the garden path, cobblestones illuminated briefly, one at a time, in red, and blue, and the sprinklers were on, green, and then yellow, and the water from those sprinklers was covering this boy cloaked in lies, little dewdrops of it that rolled down his glistening skin. Harry's eyes followed a drop from cheek to shoulder, splash, then drip, and down, down the chest, curving around a dusky nipple, down and down and down and soaked, nevermore, forevermore, into the waist of the damned towel. Draco was saying something. He should be listening. It was his job to know everything.
"I want to be brilliant. Fucking brilliant." The Slytherin was saying now, and Harry reluctantly tore his eyes away and up to meet the withering blue. "I'm tired of failing. And I have a proposition for you."
Harry felt reality come crashing slowly back. He was swimming up, out of the sea, things were no longer in slow motion. The light was getting closer. He fought and kicked and then found air, and the blood wasn't around him anymore, in the water, dyeing it purple-gray, but back in his mind, illuminating the path, and the hands in the boat pulled him up into the cold air and took away the razor at his throat. "What... what are you saying?" He breathed, gripping the rail, fingers long since fallen from the buttons of his shirt. The bitterness was back in his voice. It seemed the taste of denial, of bile, had turned his words more sour than they ever were before.
Draco didn't smile, not this time. He had already smiled once. And it was a good thing he hadn't because Harry didn't want to be thrown overboard again. The water had been nice, but when he was in the water he knew, unconsciously, that he was not himself. And the Head Boy must not be led into temptation, but delivered from evil, for thou is the Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory, Draco. Amen.
And..... damnit.
"What am I saying?" Harry read the words that flowed off of those pink, glistening lips before the sounds reached his ears. "I want you to help me."
Voices from far away were calling. Angels' voices, bearing down upon him with the terrible roar of God fucking Almighty, pointing, screaming, proclaiming him a sinner. Oh, banish yon foul thoughts from thy mind, or call thou self sinner and be shunned from thy life. But he couldn't.
Harry barely nodded, motioning for Draco to elaborate. The action was not his own. It was governed by the principles of discipline, by years of responses and reactions seared into the inside of his flesh from repetition. In a shorter word, they were automatic. And thank God for automatic responses, because of right now he was unable to formulate a more up-to-date one that was still proper, and did not involve ripping off that elusive towel.
"You teach me. Help me pass, help me make good grades- bring me to the top of the charts, right up there beside you. And I'll reimburse the favor."
Harry formed the words on his lips and tongue, taking longer than he intended to, then pushed them out, hoping it was right. "What makes you think there is anything you can do to repay me for something like that?"
Draco took one step back, and Harry almost reached out, a sudden panic rising then quickly falling as the golden thing drew further away and the swells on the ocean rocked his boat turbulently. Don't go. Come back. I'm sorry I said that. I wish I hadn't. But the air doesn't have a return button, it doesn't give back what it swallows.
The Slytherin boy seemed to be studying him. Harry was like stone, unable to move or form a fairly coherent sentence, relying solely on his mask, hoping it was still in place, praying that it wouldn't fall. Of course, nothing could be helped when the mask was taken away.
And that's exactly what Draco did. He stepped forward again, hips swaying gracefully, hair brushing his shoulders tenderly, water droplets from a cold shower tracing paths down sun-kissed skin, lips curling into a smile fit to drown a boy and hands coming up, reaching up, flying it seemed to Harry's face in morbid slow motion. They just kept coming, like fate, and the other body drew closer, engulfing him, forcing the bile down his throat and into his gut, causing the blood to rush back to his groin and the little children to hop back onto the merry-go-round and take off, kicking the sides of the plastic ponies and laughing and screaming and drowning out all with their voices like water down his windpipe, stealing his breath and then-
Draco was the angel, lips placed gently over his, with the voice like the roar of God's wrath, full of sin, and stealing his, goddamn, his breath, like that sweet ocean water that tinkled with strobe-lights. Full soft lips that pressed in on his own, sharing his dirty secrets and giving away the taste of the Gods' nectar, of Ambrosia, on his tongue.
Harry melted. All thoughts of right and wrong, all feelings of guilt, all knowledge of sin, of what he, as the Head Boy, should do, of what a Gryffindor would do, of what his friends would say if they ever should know- flew out the window. All of it was gone and all Harry could do was /feel/, something he'd ceased to do since the days that eluded him in memory. And feeling was wonderful. It was the blissful ignorance that he had so long been deprived. It was relief from the pain that haunted him day and night, the bitter denial, the pressure and stress, the work to be done, the rules to be obeyed, the light of life that had been snuffed out for him by those cruel fingers of God. Calling him a sinner. Taking away the children's ticket stubs. Casting an angel like Draco out of Heaven.
Suddenly the warmth rushed away, his breath rushed out, the light fluttered to ashes on the candle stub and Draco was gone. The lips were gone and the heat and dampness pressed against his half-buttoned shirt- all gone. Harry didn't need to open his eyes to look for where they had went to. He had kissed with his eyes open.
Draco stood there, glowing almost, with that insufferable smile dancing across swollen lips and porcelain skin, recloaked in his web of lies. He was watching Harry with an intensity that Harry had once been able to muster himself.
"Well? How is that for your payment? Every time you help me. Every time a little more."
It was all Harry could do to nod.
-continued in chapter two, coming soon….
Author's Note: Very very sorry for the OOC-ness. I think Harry would grow up to be very smart, and become kind of cold and distant after all the bad and terrible things that have happened to him, and probably become Head Boy too. So yeah. By the way, this story is based off a another one written with original characters, where their names were Matthew and Drake.
(ff.net strips these tags so the internet address has to be spaced) homepage:
ht tp: // pink sushi .keenspace .com (just delete the spaces when copying into browser bar)
email: fuufuu@bellsouth.net