Title: Don't Speak
Author: mintapotter
A/N: I LOVED writing this chapter...I really need a good dose of fluff after this, and I think our boys do too! Shout out this week to thrnbrooke for reviewing!
This weeks chapter title is from the song 'It's A Disaster' by Ok Go.
Enjoy.
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Chapter 36 - It's a disaster,
it's an incredible mess,
but it's all we've got now,
yeah it's all we got.
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"This," I whispered just before falling asleep, stroking his neck and back in smooth circles, "is bliss."
"I know." He murmurs so quietly that I could feel his breath on my skin more than I could hear his words. "Welcome home."
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After our meeting at the lake Harry and I were both so thoroughly tired that we barely dragged ourselves back to the Slytherin dorms in time to collapse into bed beside each other, curl up and fall asleep. It was not even past nine when fatigue caught up with us and it wasn't until nearly noon the next morning that I woke.
But Harry slept on, mouth agape and as helpless as a newborn baby in his slumber. So I got out of bed and quickly woke up properly once my feet hit the cold dungeon floors as I crossed them towards the bathroom. I poured some warm water and disinfectant potion into a cauldron and used that to carefully wash his scarring arm, taking special care both while removing his crusted sleeve from the cuts and while I bathed it. To tell the truth, I didn't think that I really had it in me to be gentle, the way kind people are. Harry barely stirred under my touch.
And he slept on.
And then I removed his trousers and set them with his sweater to be washed by the school house elves, leaving him shivering in the cold morning air in only his boxer shorts and a thin white top. You'd think that the movement and change in temperature would wake him? Oh no, not Harry.
And then a faint tinkling sound of falling silver on stone came from his pile of clothes and lo and behold, his ever faithful razor has fallen from one of his pockets, and landed not far from my foot. It looked to only be an innocuous shard of metal, nearly a mirror with its internal brilliance. Not two inches long and barely one wide, and thin as a strand of hair and this, this could slice through skin and tendon and muscle and even knick bone. If you really wanted to destroy a special someone, even yourself, I'm beginning to think that a razor is the way to go.
What did I first want to do with it? I wanted to cut so deep into his right wrist that there would be near permanent damage done to the nerves and then he would never even be able to hold a quill, a knife or fork or razor again, let alone control one enough to cut up his other arm. His left one was beginning to resemble a game of x's and o's played by a four year old with concentration problems. I wanted to cut through the tendons so deep that I ended up sawing through his poor, poor frail bones. I wanted them to snap under the pressure like an elastic band would; only splashing and spilling thick, rich blood as they did so.
Buckets and buckets of his blood and pain and ultimate suffering would suffice as a punishment for his intense stupidity, I would think.
But I had done so much work cleaning the sores and wrapping them tenderly with care…but the razor could be a part of my plan. It could play in role in my 'talk' with Harry; more like my lecture on how things were going to change and how our future together was going to be.
And then the idea came to me, so simple and beautiful in its eloquence.
Harry's little friend would be the perfect instrument to keep him quiet while I talked. I summoned a roll of Spellotape, kept a vial of freezing pain potion close at hand, and propped his sleeping from up against the wall to begin with my ingenious plan.
Oh, how he'd despise me when he awoke.
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Waking up in Draco's bed; nothing very new.
Waking up with my mouth taped shut; something new, and a little kinky.
Waking up to the sharp sting of a metal blade in your mouth and blood trickling down your throat; that's something awfully new and just a tad worrisome.
I spend moments probing at the something in my mouth, wondering what exactly it is and how it got to be there. My eyelids feel cemented together until a sharp sting, a thin slice from the roof of my mouth awakens me as only pain can. The flesh now hanging by a thin strip from the roof of my mouth feels like a ribbon peeling itself away from the palette on top. I lift my eyes to see Draco sitting at the foot of the bed I am propped up on and I stare into his eyes so grey they seem to be simply reflecting the colour of the stone surrounding us, questioning without using words. He smiles, catlike, and doesn't say a thing. He just sits at the foot of the bed, watching me slowly come back to consciousness, and smiling.
"Wakey, wakey, sunshine. You went out like a light after I brought you back here, didn't you? Had a nice sleep?" His voice is light as a feather and sharper than even the razor in my mouth. Yes, I now know it's a razor and yes, it's probably the one I've been using on my arms all this time.
That double edged blade that I left unceremoniously in my trousers pocket is now lying precariously on my tongue, neither blade quite cutting anything…as of now. It's a simple balancing act except that your tongue is always moving and it's surrounded by soft, pliable, soft-as-butter flesh. I can taste blood already; therefore the little razorblade is already nicking things up faster than a mouthful of nails. Oh and that ribbon of flesh? I can feel it just barely disconnecting and then slowly being swallowed along with all the blood that the now open wound is pouring.
Fabulous.
My fingers reach groggily to my lips to pull the sticky tape from them, but Draco tuts them away. My fingernails scratch raggedly and leave burning scratches before I stop though, and they're shaking with a will of their own. This is something that can go very, very wrong very, very fast.
"Now come on Harry, you think I'd let you off that easy? So simple? No, no, no…" He crawls up the satin bedspread, his each movement shifting the bed and me with it, making it more difficult to keep still.
"That is Spellotape dearest and it will only unstuck itself from your beautiful mouth when I want it to, and you know that as well as I do. Now listen me out and sit very still and swallow…delicately around your little intrusion and everything will be just fine."
His voice is a low, cutting whisper, the words barely travailing the distance between his petal soft lips and my ears. I concentrate on them and his delicate throat, wishing that I could throttle him for this. That this razor was not balancing on my tongue, but instead stuck somewhere halfway down his throat. I'd cut out his darling little voice box, if only I could.
"Now seeing as how you've already let yourself get nicked up a little in there," he comments unhurriedly, tracing a thin finger along the corners of my mouth where saliva and blood are no doubt pooling and spilling out. He wipes it away and smiles again, a toothy, vicious smile. "I think I should get on with my speech. You can only balance the thing so long before that wicked tongue of yours eventually cuts itself to pieces."
Oh, how he loves his little power plays.
"Now Harry, I've taught you that when I say no, no goes. There is no compromise here. That is a rule that you will follow to the letter or you will lose everything. I will hurt you worse than this, I will leave you alone, and I will arrange it so that you will die in an inordinate amount of pain if you ever make the stupid mistake of crossing me again. Understood?"
I'm not in much of a position to refuse, but I wouldn't even if I could. Draco is a person to keep promises, most especially when they involve revenge or better yet, maiming and murder.
I nod carefully, barely tipping back my head to let it fall again.
I can count the wet, smooth edges of every sharp tooth this time, when he smirks in triumph.
"If we are to be together, I don't want any talk of us being apart, ever again. This is a contract Harry, and not one to be taken lightly. You will come when I ask and leave when I want you to. You will always remember who you are to be faithful to, and you will never question me. Not ever. When we play games Harry, there will be rules and both of us will follow them. Is that all understood by you? That from now on I own as much of you as you do. I have a part and say in your free will, in your choices, in everything?"
I want to remark that I will own a bit of him back, that I should get to eat a bit of his soul if he gets to nibble on mine, but his eyes look a little mad; delirious, even. I nod again.
He leans in closer to me, stopping so that just his soft lips brush my cheek, and he begins to whisper. My eyes snap permanently open, watching and waiting for him to slap me or push my cheeks in together, towards the destructive shard of metal nestled between my teeth. I begin to count to ten slowly and try and calm my breathing, to pray that he won't come any closer to me. I pray that my stupid throat won't swallow from fear, and that I won't anger him in any way.
"You will change Harry, for me, if you want me back. I love you, I really do, but you have to understand that there is a time and place for everything and it's not always the right time to hurt me, or control me, or overpower me. Sometimes I need a break, a nap, a rest. Sometimes I will ask for something normal because I need a hint of sanity in my life. That's the way it's going to be from now on."
He kisses my lips softly, my mouth only registering the dangerous pressure and not the kindness in the gesture. My eyes have been open wide so long that they water on their own and two streams of fat tears push past the barrier of my eyelids, sliding down the hollows of my cheeks and he delicately licks them up, studying me with his head cocked to the side.
The edge of the razor suddenly slits a line down my tongue, the blood flowing swiftly and painfully from the probing muscle. I want to scream and tear at the tape, and I need to swallow or cry or sob…but I can't. I pull away from Draco and sit up strait against his knobby headboard, every muscle in my body rigid with concentration. My spine is arching so far that I might just snap something, but I can't care about that now. Caught somewhere between agony and terror my fingers clutch at the satin bedspread beneath me, my knuckles white as the pearly bones stretching just beneath the skin.
The bleeding won't stop until he wants it to. I have no wand at my fingertips, and he has no words of sympathy to breathe upon me. He instead watches me a moment, probably to savor the morbid picture I'm painting in his mind and then brushes the back of my hand with his until I calm down and breathe in and out once more, each breath labored slowly through my nose.
"I can see that your good friend the razorblade has finally betrayed you my darling. Perhaps this will cure you of your cutting habit for once and all, yes?" I close my eyes, too scared to nod. He chuckles lowly to himself.
"My last demand is…" his voice trails off into a long pause, his hand still stroking mine, "well actually…I like the sex as it is. That we can keep without any grand changes because I like it just fine. And you agree to change what I want and keep what I like I think that perhaps we can make this work."
I open my eyes and stare directly in his, nodding with all the honor I can, trying to tell him through my eyes that I have learnt my lesson and I will change if only for him, to make him happy. And to get him to take this goddamned tape off my mouth.
He studies me a moment longer and then with a flick of his hand the tape falls from my lips, freeing them from their bloody prison. I peel it off carefully and lean just over the edge of his bed, opening my mouth wide and letting the blood and spit drenched razor fall from its depths. A long trail of blood continues to flow, but because I won't swallow any of it I don't have the overwhelming nausea that drinking ones own blood tends to cause.
Across the bed from me I can feel the mattress shifting under Draco as he leans to his bedside table to retrieve a small vial filled with a clear lime coloured liquid. I watch him with sore, tired eyes as he smoothly uncorks the vial and swigs it in one go, but doesn't swallow a single drop. With an ease only he could possibly muster he slides up into my lap and forces me to sit up again, leaning against the headboard and wall for support. His lips are pursed around the potion but just the edges of them are curled up into an unmistakable smirk around whatever poison he is holding in store for me.
And then his pewter eyes close and he gently leans in to kiss me with both his fine porcelain hands wrapped around the back of my head and all I can think is that my tongue is cut in numerous places and that my cheeks are marred with tiny little pocks and holes from the blade, and that this will no doubt hurt. Me, that is. But his lips connect with mine and I have no choice but to kiss him back and then that pleasantly flavored potion fills in my mouth with its sweet release from all the stinging and burning pain.
A pain potion. He's kissing me with a mouthful of numbing pain potion, and in the process is getting a mouthful of my freshly spilt blood.
After a delicious moment of bliss, the release from the throbbing, stinging pain, I push him away from me with angry hands, wiping at my jaw and marveling at the scarlet mess dripping from his lips and shining on his grinning sharp little teeth. He doesn't even seem to notice curling out of the corners of his mouth and dribbling down his chin because he makes no move to wipe it away. He just sits straddling me, smirking his softly tainted smile and looking like he owns the whole world just because he owns me.
It proves that I am his whole world. I matter to him more than anything else and even though he's probably a little evil and very tainted and mostly crazy he is still madly, deeply in love with me.
It's giving me the warm and fuzzies.
"You dirty fucking slut." I murmur in the moment, thinking of nothing else to suit the situation but that comment. I wipe my mouth absently on my shoulder, leaving a warm wet streak there that cools rapidly in the frigid dungeon air.
"Your one and only." He responds gently, moving slowly closer and closer back to me, his hands warm on my chest as he leans in. And I'm tired and hungry and most definitely not up to any sort of raucous activity at the moment, but I'm still incredibly turned on. So what if there's no way that the two of us have enough energy for sex right, right now? There's always an hour from now. Tomorrow night. The weekend. In between classes and after meals, or whenever class gets boring and the two of us manage to skive it off.
"Now just give me a goodnight kiss." I whisper once before we kiss again, the feeling cold and tingly because of the potions slow moving numbing of our mouths and throats and lips. The kiss slows and eventually stops, Draco resting his head just under my chin and letting his eyes flutter shut on their own accord, his breathing matching mine and his heartbeat slowing down to almost the same tempo.
We lay in the quiet for I don't know how long, enjoying the silence and solitude, neither of us moving perhaps out of fear of ruining the moment, or maybe because it was so warm and comfortable, or maybe just because we were both far too fatigued to be bothering to get up and move. I like to think that it was because we needed to stay close, skin to skin and ear to heart, just enjoying the moment.
It was cold in the dungeon and my mouth was numb and everything tasted the metallic smell of blood. But Draco was warm and his skin smelled like soap and lavender and his hair tickled my chin and he loved me.
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"This," I whispered just before falling asleep, stroking his neck and back in smooth circles, "is bliss."
"I know." He murmurs so quietly that I could feel his breath on my skin more than I could hear his words. "Welcome home."
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A/N: THANKS to:
JPhinala, iamanevilgenius, Julia, blazville, x Tommy x S x, pureangel86, harrydracoyaoichix22, emeraud.silver, Asato Sohma, thrnbrooke, MimiTaylor, mordechaimalachai, txcalbud, Bad fairy, bananagirl & doralinda !