This work is part of the Seven Shades of Sin anthology, the first in a series of planned collaborative projects within the Seven Shades of Drarry collective. Each Sin has been written by a different author. Please see this account's Author Profile for more information on the anthology, the collective, and each individual author.

Summary: "Why does this dream have you more rattled than your prior ones?"

Because it wasn't just the dream. It was the dream…and the actions Draco had taken to go further than to just dream. But he shrugged, the movement a blatant lie; and delivered a carefully selected half-truth, "It's starting to take me longer to determine what was real and what was just my imagination."

Draco Malfoy has been dreaming about Harry Potter for exactly five-hundred and ninety-four days. He has dreamed of Harry Potter in every single position his brain could imagine…but dreams can only satisfy for so long.

Tags/Warnings: EWE, HP/DM, Polyjuice, Dreams, Obsession, Therapy, Smut, Mildly Dub-Con

Lust — the intense longing or desire, sexual or otherwise, e.g. for money or power.

Lust | Infatuation's Observation with a Cause

by Jessica-Doom

Part 1

"I see you haven't been sleeping."

Draco froze, halting his steps towards the couch. He kept his eyes trained to the floor. There was a new scratch in the hard wood — or was it even new? Had he just never noticed it before? He dragged the toe of his boot along its jagged path and breathed in — one, two, three, four, five — holding the air in his lungs until his head cleared of the muck. He pushed a breath out fast and hard before forcing a smile at the woman who waited patiently for him to acknowledge her observation. She would sit there all day if that's what it took. Afterall, they were operating on Draco's coin. Self-consciously, Draco touched the puffed and drooping skin beneath his left eye. He'd crafted this bruise from denying himself a good four nights of sleep. "I'm certain coffee has replaced the blood in my veins by now," he forced past his teeth, raising the paper cup in his other hand.

The woman, who Draco had been warmly instructed to call Cheryl during their first session only a month previous, wrinkled her brow in genuine worry. She gestured for him to continue his path to the familiar, jarring red couch and relaxed back into her chair across from it. Draco followed the suggestion, the weariness settling into his bones as he felt the comfort of the cushions beneath him.

"Did something happen since we met last week?" Cheryl asked gently, seemingly taking literal notes of how he jiggled his leg to keep awake.

"Nothing in particular happened," Draco lied. Draco lied a lot during their sessions. It was counterintuitive to their purpose of meeting, but there were things he just couldn't share with her. With anyone. There were internal battles he had to wage on his own. He was only here, seeing this therapist, to appease his mother. To work through his "issues" and become the son she "used to have". As if a war didn't just end less than two years previous, leaving every single person in their world fucked in the head in some way or another. "Nothing happened," Draco repeated in an attempt to convince himself. "I just…." Draco pushed the frustration from his taught nerves out on a sigh. "I needed a break from the dreams."

Cheryl nodded as if everything made perfect sense to her. "The erotic dreams?"

She always spoke of Draco's problem of the week in plain terms which made them sound so easy. She made them out to be merely a crack in the sidewalk to be stepped over rather than the natural disaster wiping away Draco's very self.

"Yes…those."

"Can you describe for me the last one you had? Perhaps you wrote it down this time, as I suggested?"

Draco set his cup on the coffee table between them and pulled the small journal from the pocket of his peacoat. He found the entry easily, having obsessed over it enough in the past week to have worn a crease into the binding. Draco never actually had a problem remembering the dreams. He could recall most details with vivid clarity. But he indulged Cheryl's request to put them on paper because it was easier than explaining to her that he had been holding back from the one person who wanted to help him work through them. "I did write it down," he mumbled, extending the book out over the table.

Instantly, Cheryl put up her hand in a "stop" motion and shook her head. "It really would make more sense to me if you could describe it for me in your own words. This is your private space and I do not wish to infringe upon it in such a way."

His alabaster cheeks filling with blood, Draco recoiled and scanned the words again. "You told me writing them down would help," he started, pulling in another long breath. The oxygen around him felt thin which was a sure sign he was on the edge of cracking. Minutes away from a breakdown or a panic attack or full, complete shutdown. "It hasn't helped. I write them down and then they're…they're there, so I read them and read them and obsess over them. And then they repeat night after night…. They're worse, Cheryl. They're getting worse. They're becoming more vivid. And now you want me to read them to you so I can think about them some more?"

A sympathetic look can only go such a distance to seal cracks in a person's psyche. Cheryl could look as serene and soft as she wanted, but in the end it didn't help. It didn't keep the hyperventilation from sneaking up on him and it didn't stop his mind from racing with the very images he wanted to want to forget.

"Breathe," she reminded him. "Remember, five seconds in and five seconds out."

Her words were calming, but all Draco wanted in that moment was a touch. He just wanted to be held. He wanted someone to touch him and to love him in ways he had never known before. His limbs quaked, craving warmth. His heart ached, craving stillness.

Draco did as he was instructed, breathing in and out and in and out until his pulse began to slow. Until his head began to clear. Until he once again felt himself and in control. Embarrassment replacing the panic, Draco grabbed for his coffee and chugged down what remained just to keep himself busy. It wasn't as if the caffeine was actually doing anything at this point. It was just serving to make him feel buzzy and on edge. It was a bandage to the root of a persistent problem.

"Why does this dream have you more rattled than your prior ones?" Cheryl asked once she could see Draco had found his composure.

Because it wasn't just the dream. It was the dream…and the actions Draco had taken to go further than to just dream. But he shrugged, the movement a blatant lie; and he told her what she wanted to hear, a carefully selected half-truth, "It's starting to take me longer to determine what was real and what was just my imagination."

"I know I've said this before," Cheryl prefaced, and Draco had to bite his tongue to keep from rolling his eyes because he could quote word-for-word what she was about to say, "but I think that blurred line is feeding off your magic. It feels very much like the type of accidental magic often triggered in untrained young witches and wizards by strong emotions. So…subconsciously, you may be focusing and focusing and focusing on whatever it is you aren't getting in your day-to-day life from these dreams, right? And then you go to sleep at night and want them to be real…so they seem that way to you as if to appease you, perhaps?"

In plain terms, this meant that at Draco's very root, he was very broken. Something was missing and his magic — his very core — was supplicating with fantasies he could never fulfill. Draco nodded, helpless but to agree with her professional opinion.

"Draco…please share with me your last dream in as much or as little detail as you would like. It's uncomfortable, I know, but I do believe tricks like writing them down and sharing them aloud can help to alleviate the obsession even just a small amount."

Draco didn't need to read the words on the page before him, but it helped to have something to focus on besides his own quavering voice.

XxX

It started with the Room of Requirement. With the Fiendfyre and the death-defying and the taut muscles beneath his shaking fingers. In that moment, with the adrenaline pulsing through every nerve, he had never been more sure of anything in his life.

Draco would give his birthright to the Malfoy fortune and legacy for just one chance to be on the back of that broom again, clutching to this man for dear life. To feel his warm skin buzz with fear against his own. To know his gentle touch as well as his rushed and heavy hold. He spent too many nights lost in this particular nightmare. In this particular moment, surrounded and consumed by flame.

And the next moment was always the same, fueled by vivid memory and unhealed wounds. They touched down on solid ground outside of the room, safe for the moment. Malfoy mourned for the loss of his friend, clinging to the one he had left. Too blinded by that loss to see that they had rightfully earned such pain.

Draco knew the beginning so well, he could have painted a picture of every scene. He knew what to expect because he had lived it. It was what followed which usually changed from night-to-night. Oftentimes, the setting would shift completely and Draco would find himself somewhere so far removed it could shake him awake.

This time, however, nothing changed. That didn't happen too often. They weren't suddenly whisked away to a white sand beach or the back row of a Parisian theatre. In this dream, this particular and frustrating dream which had felt so real, they stayed in that hall just outside the Room of Requirement. The walls around them still shook with the violence of battle. All Draco could hear were screams and all he could feel was grief. From that day forward, nothing would ever be the same. This weighed just as heavily upon him in this supposed fantasy as it had that day.

The only difference between them being…he wasn't about to process any of that alone this time. There were fingers slipping between his and there was a soft voice telling him he was okay. He was safe. He wasn't alone and he had this strong shoulder to cry on.

Without hesitation, Draco allowed those steady hands to pull him to his feet. This was what he wanted! He wanted to be in someone's arms and he wanted that someone to be this man. But he wanted more than just that present, gentle hold.

He wanted everything.

He initiated the contact. He always initiated. It was always his hands down this man's trousers and it was always a surprise to them both. A surprise which half of the time seemed welcome by the way he could bring the man to gasping life and the other half…. Well, those versions of the dream never lasted long. After all, a person usually wakes up once they've died in a dream.

"Draco…." His name — his first name, his given name, the name which only passed the lips of those who cared — on this particular man's lips was the most heavenly sound. He could have come right then and there without stimulation merely from hearing his name said so breathlessly.

"Say it again," Draco begged. His back hit the wall which rumbled from the spells cast by both sides, keeping him aware of where they were. As if he could ever forget. The literal man of his dreams shook, too. He shook with laughter and he shook with need and he shook because his skin just could not contain the conflict inside of him.

He didn't hear his name again. The screams of those who died and those who mourned replaced whatever words might have passed those lips. They filled his head and made it difficult to see anything but blood or murder. "I need you to make me feel again." Draco slammed his eyes shut in a fruitless effort to halt the world around them.

In the darkness, every sensation felt ten-times more electric. The scrape of battle-torn nails down his suddenly bare chest. The perfectly rough pawing at his hips and down his pelvis. There were teeth on his neck, biting a line of bruises to the sharp jut of his collarbone. He was being fully and wholly claimed one body part at a time. Lip between teeth, nipple under tongue, cock taken deepdeepdeep against back of throat.

"You're the only one," Draco gasped and he meant it and he hated himself more than he ever had.

XxX

"I think that's what woke me up," Draco whispered, ashamed to admit any of this aloud when he was hardly ready to admit it to himself. "Hearing myself say…that…."

Cheryl nodded slowly, her gaze trained on her paper as her quill worked furiously to capture the heavy weight of Draco's confession. "So…," she processed. Her eyes flicked quickly up to the clock on the wall above her client's head before settling back upon her quick scrawl. Draco's knee bounced even more vigorously as the seconds passed in that expectant silence. "Done, sorry," Cheryl said with that same, soft smile she always wore as she finally set down her notepad. "So, Draco, I really want to unpack all of this. The settings of these dreams — this one in particular, since you noted it was different — as well as the eroticism. However, I think we will have to focus on this in our next session. We appear to be nearly out of time. For the moment, let's try to get through to the heart of this.

"Do you always dream of the same person?"

"Yes…."

"And are they…. Are you close to this person you dream of?"

"Certainly not."

"Your frustration is beginning to make more sense to me." Cheryl sighed, the gears working behind her eyes before she could speak again. "First of all, I want to thank you for sharing with me. I commend your bravery — I know none of this is easy. Second— And I don't want you to answer me now, okay?" She waited for Draco's hesitant nod before continuing. "Second, I want you to come prepared to answer this question next week: What is it exactly that you want this person, this solitary person, to make you feel?"

With his "homework" in mind, adding to the already muddled mess and making him woozy, Draco left the office for another week. He left and went about life as was expected. As if he had never been there in the first place. His seeking therapy wasn't exactly a secret amongst those who knew him, however it was expected for him not to speak of it. They, most especially his mother, wanted him better. But they did not want to hear about his progress or even what his problems may be. They wanted him to skip right over the whole thing and "become himself" once more.

They wanted the boy they knew before the war to suddenly wake up in his bed, whole and unscarred.

They wanted a ghost who was never going to find his way back home.

Draco managed through the rest of his day on no less than ten shots of espresso and two Invigoration Draughts. By the time the sun was setting, he knew he was going to crash. It was inevitable. At this point, there was only the matter of where it was going to happen — safe at home in his bed or….

"You're going out?" Narcissa sounded so concerned. She even managed an expression which almost matched. If only she could find a way to force genuineness into her eyes.

Draco smiled softly and bit back yet another yawn. "Just for a bit, Mother." He cradled the back of her head as he kissed her cheek goodbye.

When his mother frowned, her wrinkles betrayed her age. "Please don't make it too late," she whispered, veiling the words she wanted to say — "Please come sleep in your own bed tonight."

When the dreams first came to Draco, back in the beginning when he thought them almost laughable, he had tried to cure them with company. It seemed the only logical solution — fuck someone else. So he would go out, hair slicked and smelling of expense. Cocksure and dripping with wealth. His confident stride easily attracted all eyes — men, women, whatever. It didn't matter back then. Draco could find satisfaction in a perfectly slick pussy or in feeling deliriously full. Since it was all momentary, anyway, why should it matter where he was finding his pleasure? He ended up feeling the same after all of the encounters, regardless — empty.

Draco would go out and he wouldn't come back until the next morning. He would strut up to the breakfast table in those same, sweaty clothes his parents had seen him leave in — wearing the suckled bruises on his neck or ache in his backside like a badge of honor. Proud to have conquered not only his subconscious for the night but also a person who found him palatable enough to spend a night with.

Even still, Draco found himself waking in a cold sweat the very next morning, that name still clinging to his lips like a promise and a prayer. He was infected with a sickness which couldn't be soothed, no matter how many people he had laid himself bare for.

Since overindulgence hadn't worked, Draco had settled instead for merely not sleeping. It was easier.

It was easier not to dream.

It was easier not to want.

It was easier not to fall prey to the hope which flourishes in that moment between asleep and awake. When everything seems so vivid and so real. When Draco could still feel the kindest lips upon his own. When the words clogging his mind were only his own pathetic fantasy.

Not knowing any better, Narcissa still thought he went prowling on these nights he didn't come home. He could never fathom correcting her with the truth. "I promise to be home in a few hours. There's just something I need to take care of."

It felt like all Draco did was lie these days. He lied to his therapist, which defeated the point of seeking help. He lied to his mother, who really probably did care for his mental stability. He lied to the reclamation board about finding purpose and solace in the mandated community service. He now lied to the men and women who tried to pick him up at the bars and cafés about having a husband or a wife waiting for him at home. He lied to everyone about everything possible because it was easy not to feel the guilt and shame any more than he already had to.

Guilt and shame — that was the root of it. Of all of it. Draco didn't need to fess up to Cheryl in order for her to tell him what he already knew. Not when he could feel those perfectly matched tumors nestled deep in his chest already. Not when he had already been carrying the weight of them since he was merely a boy.

The weight of his twinned sins had bred something entirely new since the day which ended the war. Draco had long since resigned to label this new and spreading cancer inside of him as deep-seated lust. Lust in the sexual, perverse definition, of course. But also lust for life and for normalcy and for something and someone. Lust for the reassurance of a consistently warm bed. Lust for somewhere to call home. Lust for stability and wholeness.

And, yes, lust as in lust. As in a psychological need to be (ful)filled by the most basic and carnal act of sex with another red-blooded human being.

But not just any human being. The one human being who was almost the antithesis of Draco in that he had saved just as many lives as Draco had likely tried to destroy.

Draco Malfoy had been dreaming about Harry Potter for exactly five-hundred and ninety-four days. He had dreamed of Harry Potter sucking his cock. He had dreamed of Harry Potter fucking him over Albus Dumbledore's grave. He had dreamed of riding Harry Potter to a swift and messy orgasm. He had dreamed of teasing Harry Potter to the edge and back again for hours upon hours of the sweetest delayed pleasure ever experienced. He had dreamed of Harry Potter in every single position his brain could imagine — top, bottom, orgy, masturbation.

But dreams could only satisfy for so long.