A/N: Happy Christmas, everyone. Thought with all of this holiday shit and happy people you might need some good, solid, kinky slash.

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"Hey. You. Up." Hades nudged Harry in the ribs with a foot.

Blearily, Harry blinked up at him. Had he fallen asleep? Pain washed over him in a blinding rush, pain and memories, and Harry sat straight up, a stupid idea, and brought his knees to his chest. Yes, the pain was fucking excruciating, but he was naked, and he just didn't feel like lying helplessly on the floor right now.

Hades was dressed, which was usually a good sign. Sometimes. Occasionally. Harry mentally sighed. Fuck it, there just was no such thing as a good sign when it came to Hades.

Hades was wearing a long sleeved, flowing, white collared shirt that was tucked into black pants with a dark leather belt and a silver buckle. His hair was pulled back from his face in a casual ponytail that spilled down his back, leaving his face completely bare from the usual fall of hair. It left his face almost too beautiful to bear, giving him away as something other than human; he was too perfect to ever appear human, even when his eyes, like now, were almost human, only their extraordinary color truly giving them away. Humans had all kinds of imperfections, small and otherwise, but Hades had none. His outfit was almost simple, but when did simple ever make Hades look any less spectacular? The sight of him, standing just a few feet away, temporarily stunned Harry, and all he could do was stare, transfixed.

"Feel better? You got almost an entire minute of sleep this time," Hades said, smiling serenely. Several minutes passed. "Harry, this house could ignite and you would sit there, gawking at me as you burned and I didn't."

Well, that was one of the weirder ways Harry had heard in the stead of just saying, "You're staring."

Harry looked away, too much in pain to really be angry with himself, just to marvel that he had completely forgotten his pain, just looking at a fully clothed Hades that wasn't even trying to be seductive. This did not bode well for the future.

"May I ask why you are all dressed up, Master?" Harry asked with a throat still sore, saying the first thing that came to mind. Beyond Harry's polite tone it sounded suspicious even to his own ears.

"Dressed up? You call this 'dressed up'?" Hades snorted.

"You look sorta respectable," Harry said. "You know, not the whole kinky sadomasochistic look, and no jeans or anything."

"If I wanted to look respectable, I would cut my hair, not have a bite mark on the side of my neck," Hades said, touching the mark a struggling Harry had previously given him. "And make you dress up, too. As it is, and as you have proven by staring at me for a full five minutes like I'm some kind of sex god, I look good. Make sense?"

Harry resisted the urge to scowl at Hades, though he knew his face wasn't happy, and Hades smiled back. "Was I wrong?"

Shit. Say no, say no. It is not okay to think he looks amazing. He just raped you! He just…

"Are you really a demon? Because I will have absolutely no trouble believing that you're a sex god."

Way to come up with snappy comeback, Harry. Call him a sex god, yeah, he'll be crying over that one for days.

Hades grinned. "You know, you could have just said yes, Hades, you look good. But calling me a sex god, I like that, too."

Harry looked anywhere in the room but at Hades, trying to think of an excuse of why he'd said that.

"I'll let you pretend you hate me," Hades said with a knowing smile. "You still in agony, Harry? You must be, because you're being polite."

"Yes, actually," Harry said through gritted teeth, still lying flat on his back. Part of the anger in his next words came from confusion, and from more or less calling Hades a sex god. "Will you heal me, please?! I feel like someone shoved a battering ram up my ass, my back was put in a blender, and then someone decided that wasn't quite enough and beat the living shit out of me."

Well, I said please. It was almost polite.

Hades grinned. "Glad to hear it."

Fuck it. I'll go back to playing nice in a minute. If I bottle this up I'll just blow up at him and end up worse than I am now.

"Look, Hades, what was that all about last night? You had your fun and then you ignored me! Not to mention you being bitchy, which really never happens. I have honestly never once seen you angry, and that's just weird…"

"It's fun being bitchy with you. You get so frustrated, it's adorable."

"So you were just doing that for fun…" Harry paused. "Did you just call me 'adorable'?"

"Well, yeah, I never actually get bitchy, so sometimes I do it for fun, though why that comes as a surprise to you I have no idea. Second question: no. That was bullshit," Hades said matter-of-factly.

So weird…sometimes just out of the blue he'll say things like that, and he never means them, I know he doesn't, but it's so stupid; I want him to mean those words. I want him to, and I feel so stupid for almost believing them, and then for wanting him to really mean them.

"Please, Hades will you get me a potion now?" Harry said each word carefully, controlling his temper.

"What happened to Master?"

"….Please, Master," Harry said calmly, internally screaming at him.

"No. Get up."

Harry tried once again to stand. Not two minutes later he was lying on the floor, trying not to cry. Not just with pain, but with the pure frustration of being helpless. Of having to ask the cause of why he couldn't stand in the first place for help.

"Can you, um, help me up then?" he muttered.

"Of course." Hades seized him by his ribs and hauled him to his feet so fast the world spun.

"Hades!" Harry gasped, and he fell, or would have, if Hades hadn't caught him. He was lifted off of the ground, into his arms, head dangling over on arm so he saw the world practically upside-down.

"Open your mouth, and keep it open," Hades instructed. "If you choke and spit it all over me, you get to keep your pain for another day."

"Wh - ?" Harry started, and for a terrible second thought Hades was talking about something much different then what it was. Then hot, hot, liquid was pouring down his throat. Healing potion, he realized with a relief so large it felt like a drug. He tried to sit up some, and just kept swallowing, because he was so not going around like this for another day.

"Let go," Harry said, choking around the words. But he had kept it down, and would heal. Life was looking up, for now, at least. He fell to the floor, coughing madly, and then thanked whatever bastard was out there for quick healing potions.

He lay there on the floor for a few minutes, until he experienced the now almost alien sensation of not hurting in any place. He stood up, flexing his arms, rolling his shoulders, a hand to his back. His back was healed, but not entirely. The skin felt ridged, like it had been slashed, cut up some, rather than having it just be a mass of raw, bleeding meat and bones. Now he only felt some bone. So he had been wrong, it still hurt, though the potion dulled the pain some, it had just seemed like it hadn't compared to the way it had been.

"Thank you…Master," Harry said, forcing the words out of his mouth. Not so long ago he would have been furious with Hades and made that very clear. Not so long ago at all he had learned what a fucking stupid, what a terrible, idea that was. If he had to play nicely to keep all of his body parts intact and his blood inside of him, then he would.

"Can I have some clothes, please?" Harry asked. No matter how often he was forced to be without clothes, he could never get over the fact that he felt exposed, obviously, vulnerable, awkward. Now that the pain was gone, he could focus on how very uncomfortable he was with it.

Hades turned towards him and smiled. "Naturally."

Harry did not like that smile.

Clothes were tossed in his general direction, and Harry caught something black that almost slid through his hands.

This is not what I want…no…I want a nice, baggy T-shirt to throw over me and not brush against my back, and cover all of my chest.

Harry shrugged, though inside he was not feeling 'casual' at all, and without realizing it, reminded himself aloud, "I've had worse."

Hades laughed. "Yeah, you have."

Harry didn't want to remember some of the outfits he'd been forced to wear, in public, no less. Fucking kinky demons.

Harry slipped it over his head. It was skin tight and long sleeved, and sheer enough that there was really no point to wearing it anyhow. It hid nothing, though it was fairly soft against his back's cuts. The nearly-transparent black material seemed to be made of something like silk.

He picked up the pants from the floor, and pulled them on. They were Gothic pants, almost like jeans but black and with more added to them. Black, flat strips of material not quite an inch and a half in width attached to each of his back pockets with metal links, and then right below the pockets in front, to hang, criss-crossing, just over his thighs in back in a near perfect X. They weren't stiff, however, and could be removed; bondage pants, most called them. The black denim wasn't exactly tight, but it did fit very well. What stitching there was on the pants was an almost mercury-colored blue, and there were several other choice metal additions that didn't seem to serve any purpose.

Harry sighed. He had never appreciated the wonderful privilege of dressing himself, and he should have, now that it was completely gone. He also should have appreciated being able to wear something between him and his pants. Now, he had learned not to ask for underwear, because Hades' idea of such things were usually worse than nothing at all. He'd come to the conclusion that Hades only did that to get Harry to stop asking for it. It didn't seem like he'd ever actually wanted him to wear them, just to laugh at the look on Harry's face.

Harry took that moment to allow himself to be wistful and a little angry, too; to wish that Hades would just for once give him a non-ripped, perfectly normal pair of jeans and a regular T-shirt, or anything comfortable, loose, he actually wanted something plain, even ugly. To Harry, clothes were things that you wore so you weren't naked. They didn't have to match, or matter at all as long as they covered what they were meant to cover and were comfortable.

It was strange, the thousands of small things that he had never noticed, was never grateful for. If by some extraordinary miracle he ever got his life back, his freedom, he would never look at life the same way. He'd promised himself that. Harry would go through each day as though he were it were his first, as though he were drunk on every detail. As though up until that moment he had been walking around with his fingers jammed in his ears, humming loudly, eyes shut tight. And in a way, he had been.

"Stop day dreaming and get over here." Hades' voice brought Harry back to reality. Harry's head snapped up.

Fuck, he did not like that smile.

Yes, you're a kinky bastard, stop smiling, Harry thought. Well, it was true, he had had worse. This was almost (vaguely) mild for Hades' tastes.

Harry hesitated, just for half a second.

"Am I not being persuasive enough, Harry? Because I can be much more persuasive."

Harry was standing obediently in front of him at "not". Something about his voice, maybe, even though it never strayed from pleasant.

Then something was slipped around his neck, tightened until if it were just the tiniest bit tighter, he would have trouble breathing. It was smooth, yet very slightly rough. Leather. His fingers tested the collar, and found that the silver spikes on it were far sharper than any of the few others he'd ever seen in his life.

"No," Harry said flatly. "No. I will not go out like this."

"No, not like that," Hades agreed, and attached a chain to the collar. The sharp sound of metal on metal, and of the links of the chain clicking as Hades nimbly wove it through his fingers seemed louder than it should have been.

"Like this."

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A/N: Happy Christmas, guys, and please review. I love them all. You all rock.