trigger warning: suicide, prejudice, homophobia, social shunning.


The bedroom was dark. Greg didn't have to live here anymore, not with Lucius Malfoy's generous pension checks, but he stayed out of habit. It was less lonely.

Vincent hadn't been here for over a year, but he went straight to Greg's room and collapsed face first on the bed. It was a homely affair in what had used to be a walk-in closet before Greg's mother had taken a fancy to the idea of her sons having separate bedrooms, since both Goyle boys fought a lot. In more recent years, Greg's older brother had long since left for Eastern Europe to escape his demons by chasing dragons or what-have-you, but Greg remained in his old room. The walls were covered in Screeching Snipers posters, one of the Chudley Cannons' major rivals.

Vincent remained flat and unmoving on the bed for some time. Meanwhile, feeling uncomfortable, Greg pulled the trundle out from underneath the bed and wrapped himself in the musty blankets from on top. They hadn't slept close together for years now, and some old feelings rose up again in Gregory's heart. The blankets also smelled vaguely of Vincent, his oily skin having seeped into the fabric after the aggregate months of sleeping on the trundle.

After some silence, Greg turned on a lamp. It was a child's decoration with silhouettes of Quidditch players that floated across its shade. The glow was cozy, and Vincent stirred. Greg saw his friend turn over, and Vincent's eyes were glistening.

"That was uncalled for," Greg said sympathetically, extending his hand. Vincent took it and held it tightly. His breathing was slow and measured, which Greg took as a sign of him trying to control his temper.

"It was," Vincent said after a few tense moments. "She had no right to mock someone for serving someone who could appreciate one's talents."

Greg didn't exactly feel like Eglantine had been mocking, per se. But he didn't argue. Greg realized he hadn't seen Vincent like this for a while. Then again, they had drifted somewhat apart in the wake of the aftermath from the war. Maybe he just never had quite gotten better since it all ended.

"How's Flora?" asked Greg, speaking of Vincent's on-and-off girlfriend, who was a former Hufflepuff student, four years younger than them.

Vincent just shook his head and buried his face in the pillows.

"Oh."

Greg might not have been as close to Vincent as he'd have liked in the past several years, but like a long lost twin brother, he read all the old signs. Vincent was in a very dark place indeed. And the incident at Eglantine's wasn't the half of it.

"Come on," Greg said, gently - hesitantly - doing the old comforting habit they'd shared, scratching the back of Vincent's neck with his nails. Vincent didn't shake him off, so he kept at it. "What happened?"

"I don't want to talk about it," Vincent said. "I suppose it was a long time coming."

Greg nodded sympathetically. There wasn't much one could say in this situation, after all.

"I... I don't want to be here anymore," Vincent confessed finally. "I want to be gone."

Greg felt a tug at his heartstrings. "Do you mean from wizarding Britain? Or do you mean... Like Draco?"

Vincent tried to pull himself together but it wasn't quite working. "Both. Either. I don't bloody know."

Gregory felt an overwhelming sadness. "I see," he said carefully, and held Vincent's hand tighter. "Well, how about for a start, maybe we can leave this place."

Vincent took notice of the subtly enclosed 'we,' and stared hard at Greg for a moment. Then, with a nod of acceptance, he went on, his throat tight, "Where could we go, though? I can't leave my mother. You know how she is."

Gregory of course did know what Lady Crabbe was like. She was sweet and pathetic, a mirror image for the harsh Lady Goyle.

"What if we don't leave England," Greg said, his voice uncertain. "You could still be close at hand if needed."

Vincent shook his head. "I... I don't know what you mean. Do you think we should... Become Muggles?"

Greg shook his head. "We will never be Muggles, never, ever. We are wizards. Our environment will never change that. But I think we could both do with a fresh start."

"...Yes," Vincent said with some hesitation. He sighed. "I... I'm glad you would want to do this," he said with a hint of confessionalism. "I have been thinking for a while that it might be best to just... Leave all this."

He sighed deeply. "It would be nice to be somewhere new. With you."

"I... feel the same way," Greg affirmed, and his heart leapt up in his chest. "I would like us to get back to how close we were, before... everything bad happened."

"Yes," said Vincent, and his chest rose and fell slowly, tentatively. Gregory knew that he was steadying himself for something.

"What are you thinking?" asked Greg curiously, feeling his own heartbeat quicken.

Vincent turned his head and looked at Greg, a sense of nervous anticipation in his eyes.

"Do you remember," he said, swallowing, "how we used to be, back before I started dating Millicent?"

Greg felt his throat choke up, as he re-experienced the fleeting memories of things that, in his cherishing of them, he had replayed far too many times to remember accurately. The ghost of a hand rested on his thighs as Vincent had once touched him there, then pulled on his member and…

He shuddered with pleasure. They had done things, together. Greg's mind wandered back to their first time. He vividly recalled how it all had gone.

One night at Hogwarts, Vincent introduced Gregory to things that Greg had been too timid to try before on his own, much less with someone else.

"You're so fat," he'd said, insensitive, looking over a shirtless Vincent. Reading the obvious fascination that played out on Gregory's face, Vincent had smiled grimly. He knew his weakness for food - and its inconvenient aftereffects - better than anyone else, after years of poking and prodding from his also-tubby brothers and father.

"That's why I've got to practice, don't you see?" Vincent had said, grinning with a shy vulnerability. "If you can't lure in pussy like a young Malfoy does, you better keep them coming back, right?"

It was news to Gregory that Malfoy had acquired any pussy whatsoever, but he supposed Vincent knew more about these sorts of things in general.

"I guess," Gregory had agreed, his heart sinking. Of course this had to be about girls, didn't it? The disappointment had been bitter, but he couldn't do anything about it.

So Gregory had accepted Vincent's desire as it was. It was hard, but he managed to shove away his own conflicted feelings. Because, after all, Vincent was here, doing this with him right now - not with a girl. At the very least, Vincent would show him how things were done - these deeply confusing, befuddling things. His apparatus made no sense.

Vincent was very well practiced with his own apparatus, however, and soon with Vincent showing him the way it was done, it had all finally made sense to poor Gregory. Letting Vincent's hands go over him… that had been ravishing. And Vincent had, upon realizing it was Gregory's first time, made a special effort to teach Gregory, pressing Gregory's own hands with his pudgy fingers, guiding Gregory's hands up and down.

Gregory had been overcome with the adrenaline of fear - was his body supposed to feel this good? But Vincent had kept at it, and then torn off his own pants, and gently offered himself up for Greg to touch.

As time went on, they touched each other in ways Gregory had scarcely dreamed anyone would. Also in ways he'd never even thought of, creative though he was.

As weeks went on, it felt like the practice-for-the-girls excuse was merely that - an excuse. Vincent certainly seemed to enjoy himself during their clandestine moments of triumph.

It just didn't feel good to spend the rest of their time together talking ad nauseum about the fairer sex with such fruitless abandon. When they went out and about their business, Vincent was the first to point out the shape of a girl's bum or evidence of someone not wearing underpants. Even Draco was sufficiently disgusted by Vincent's vulgar interests, and he certainly wasn't a queer.

Queer. Yes, after a while, Greg realized that's what he himself was. He couldn't muster an interest in girls like all the other boys could. And, it seemed, Vincent wasn't. queer, because he did like girls. But at the same time, based on the evidence, it was also impossible that Vincent wasn't queer. Because who else but a queer would enjoy the kind of touches that they shared?

And, it was unquestionable in Greg's mind that Vincent enjoyed it. The same kind of radiant joy that came when Vincent was presented with a Malfoy feast also showed in his eyes when they were together. That was definitely a sign of a queer, Greg thought.

But whether or not Vincent was queer was one question that certainly didn't ruin their relationship. Instead, Greg had to go and ruin a good thing when he had it. One day he had protested when Vincent was pontificating on the beauty of one particular girl's rear end, describing doing to it something that he had, repeatedly, done to Gregory. He called it 'picking flowers.'

Gregory had looked in Vincent's eyes, and, at that moment, seen a kind of hatred that he realized had been there all along - a kind of desire to punish, to plunder, to dominate. It was unsettling, and very scary.

And Gregory realized that Vincent's feelings about the things they did together... They weren't entirely as pure and innocent as Greg's own feelings on the matter. Of course, it felt a bit odd to call such lustful thoughts innocent, but they were pure, unadulterated, vehement, emphatic desire. The look in Vincent's eyes showed that he saw these acts in a different way - as something twisted, like digging into an open, infected wound with a rusty nail.

Greg knew it was somehow tied up in Vincent's obsession with serving. While Greg took his role in the attachee in stride, a role that was meaningful and important, but ultimately just a role, Vincent's identity was deeply intertwined with the idea that he must be an optimal protector, a perfect impasse, a mountain of immovability. Only then did Gregory see that there was a darker flip side, in the bedroom. As he looked at Vincent, he saw how Vincent's role as the protector was dangerously close to subverting, how Vincent desired to become the aggressor, the inflictor of pain, the abusive master. It had never come out in Vincent's actions, but in that moment, Greg caught a glimpse of the ruthlessness in Vincent's eyes.

It was terrifying to see. And Greg had privately decided, then and there, that what they had been doing in the dark wasn't healthy. Of course they'd always known it wasn't healthy from the start - sex with blokes wasn't healthy no matter how you sliced it - but there was something even darker in Vincent's desire than just an appreciation of Greg's taut behind. There was something almost malevolent, almost monstrous, lurking beneath those urges.

And that night, when Vincent's hands came wandering that night, Gregory pushed his friend out of the bed and said, with heartbreak in his voice, "Sod off."

He'd been hoping Vincent would protest, ask what was wrong, kiss away the doubts that were poisoning him.

But Malfoy's voice had come out of the darkness: "Let's not quarrel over trifles, gentlemen," in a lofty, knowing way that startled Greg quite a lot because Malfoy had never given the impression of either knowing or caring about their trysts.

And, sheepishly, Vincent had crawled away, the darker part of him coiled tighter by his servant's instincts, and had never come back again or acknowledged what had happened.

Until that moment, as they lay in Greg's old bedroom after Eglantine's terrible party.

Gregory felt his throat grow tight. "I do remember." He let the words sit there, unemphasized, and he realized that there were wheels turning in Vincent's mind.

"I... I wish we hadn't stopped," Vincent said. He seemed to be biting back his own viciousness, trying desperately to be simple and forthright, but that terrifying desire to overpower was there in his voice.

There was a deeply contemplative pause as Gregory's hands began shaking with anticipation. Perhaps, as an adult, he didn't mind that darker power that Vincent had. He'd certainly thought about it a lot, over the years. Maybe it would even be exciting.

Soon he realized that he couldn't wait, and his wiry fingers reached between Vincent's plumper ones. They were soft, and cold.

Gregory said nothing, but brought Vincent's hands to his lips, and gracefully gave them kisses. Unravel yourself. Let yourself be free. Let me serve you.

Vincent's body began shaking, and Gregory realized with a bewildering shock that Vincent was crying.

"Let's... bugger it," Vincent said between gasps, "Let's just take off. No one will miss us anyhow."

Gregory opened his mouth to protest, but realized he couldn't, not without lying to them both.