Well. That was unexpected. I sat down with the intent of working on something very different and instead wound up with this.
Muses are whimsical, capricious creatures.
More darkness and slash for your reading. Please let me know what you think!
Sincerely,
Chaos
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Algolagnia
Chapter 2
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"Feelings are not supposed to be logical. Dangerous is the man who has rationalized his emotions."
- David Borenstein.
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Humans have a need to touch and be touched, this is something Lucius Malfoy considered a basic fact. The skin, the largest organ of the body, has uncountable nerve endings oriented outward, to feel the contact of another living body. Touch could be soothing, arousing, electrifying, or painful. Touch evoked emotions and reactions more violently than any of the other senses.
A child in the womb exists in a world of touch. Wrapped securely in it, carried about for nine months in a warm, dark place, the child surrounded by the symphony of the body and swaddled in living flesh.
A smile tipped Lucius' thin lips upward – Narcissa might contend that if the sounds of blood, heart and gut were a symphony, then the violent morning sickness she had endured with Draco must have been the physical equivalent of punk rock.
Then one day, that living cradle contracts, pushing the babe out into a cold, sterile, brutally silent place. With the neurological development incomplete, the newly detached human is presented with pain, discomfort and the loss of its perceived safety. Lucius had a theory that all human desire for touch came from a need to capture just a fleeting moment of that safety and contentment. Muggle or wizard, people would go to extremes of behavior to feel that.
But touch could also be a weapon. As much as one needed to be touched, some touch remains unwelcome – a violation of borders, less about touch than about power. In time, touch could become painful and even while craving touch, the one so psychologically scarred would go to extremes to protect themselves from it. They would protect/imprison themselves behind walls of behavior, walls of flesh, or shun all contact with other beings.
Yet, the need would remain a gnawing hunger in the body, sinking into the soul, conflicting with the desperate reasoning of the waking mind and stirring the deep waters of the subconscious.
It was Lucius' art to both break and heal, his life's ambition to find that sweetly perfect synthesis of power and pleasure.
Sexual touch, the most obvious tool in his reach, was not the one that he would use tonight, and perhaps not for some few nights to come. As much as he might yearn for that ultimate culmination of touch, to apply this too soon would ruin what he was trying to achieve. Even as Severus had evidently desired that long-denied comfort, Lucius had to gently redirect that need – a very difficult task, even for one so experienced as Lucius.
Good lord, the man could kiss!
Yet Lucius had held Severus while grief tore chunks out of the man, soothed him, wiped tears and snot. He then dosed Severus with a draught of dreamless sleep, stripped him to his shorts and put him chastely into his empty bed.
What Lucius had managed tonight was a breach of Severus' walls, a simple a break in the first line of fortifications. That Severus' reaction to such was so violent simply showed the absolute necessity of Lucius' continued attentions.
The initial metaphor of sickness was an apt one. Now that the wound had been reopened and was draining, Lucius could tend to all the things that had been put wrong by the toxic buildup of years.
A deeply sensual smile lit his face; it was nothing less than a blessing to have such joy in one's work.
It was nothing less than ecstasy to have one's work able to love in return.
From the time that Severus was eleven, Lucius had suspected that the withdrawn and intense personality was the result of an absence of touch and affection. From what information he had gleaned concerning Severus' parents, it seemed that the boy was raised entirely by hirelings. Severus' father was a brilliant - if remote and austere – academic of great prominence, with a reputation as a hard taskmaster. His mother was a generally absent society butterfly who regarded her son as a living toy to be taken out and displayed or put away at whim.
A small amount of attention, affection, a little purposeful cultivation of boy-Severus repaid young Lucius with a heady and sweet bounty of dedication and adoration.
Tipping the glass of firewhiskey to his lips, Lucius thought that the most perfectly aged of vintage intoxicants could not compare to his first taste of Sev.
A chuckle escaped him - and nothing could ever compare to the consternation caused by his very blatant seduction of a very much underage Sev. Even within Slytherin – where house loyalty encouraged the keeping of silence even more thoroughly than Fildelius - it was the cause of some awkward comment.
Even after Lucius had left school, married and taken up the management of familial affairs, his love for Severus had not waned. They would meet whenever they could, and once Lucius' sharp-witted lady wife had noticed, she encouraged this. While Narcissa would not brook the presence of another woman in her marriage, she had always been terribly fond of Severus.
However, in the end, it hadn't been enough. By the time Sev was in his fifth year, he and Evan Rosier shared much more than a dormitory. By all the accounts that Lucius had heard, it was indeed love.
It was then that Lucius experienced a bout of sickness all his own. His brain hurt, his eyes were hot and grainy, his stomach churned with bile and his skin ached. He wanted to bite so much that his face cramped, wanted to scream, to howl in fury and agony. This sickness clouded Lucius' exacting mind, it reduced him – and that was something he could not tolerate.
With the ruthlessness of a gardener yanking out weeds, Lucius set out to rid himself of jealousy. Much of the malady had been allayed by the time Severus was out of school, and Lucius was a frequent visitor to the garret flat where Severus and Evan had taken up residence. Lucius had been welcomed with open arms – and open bed.
While it was good to know that both of his insane baby wizards adored him without question, there was still a nagging distance. The distance was closed one evening at a very bohemian club where the main intoxicant was heady conversation.
Sev had been expounding on his frustration at being denied access to a particular tome that he felt vital to his research. Evan was in much the same state and Lucius had had it to the teeth with the timid, tails-between-their-legs, Muggle-whipped curs of the Ministry.
"Knowledge isn't good or evil. Power isn't good or evil! It's the uses that both are put to that define it!" Sev growled, slamming his hand on the tabletop, "Are we so fearful, such cowards that we let some outdated morality made by fearful people make our choices for us?"
Lucius had been about to reply when a cultured voice spoke from one of the deep wing chairs near the fire. "Such sense from the young, but then fresh eyes often read the same page differently from the tired eyes of age."
The voice had been that of the man who was now their Lord.
Lucius had corralled his wayward wizards, with the three of them taking the Dark Mark together a few months later. As long as he could be near Severus, Lucius was content. Drawing the younger man back to him was easier in proximity, with the added bonus of finally throwing off the tyranny of the ever-breeding Muggles and teaching the Mudbloods their proper place.
Then disaster.
Evan and Charles died at the hands of the Aurors, becoming martyrs to the Cause. Of course Lucius had mourned for Evan, vowed bloody revenge, and naturally swore that he would take care of his dear, grief-stricken Severus. Then Dumbledore stole a devastated and malleable Severus right out from under Lucius' very hands.
When Severus finally returned to the circle after a month under Dumbledore's care, he was changed. Unless one knew him very well, it might pass unnoticed, but to Lucius it was as visible as a Morsmordre. The stone walls of Hogwarts were paper next to the walls around Severus' soul.
Though still obviously loyal – the Dark Lord was adept at Cruciatus and Imperius – Severus was so deeply withdrawn that he could disappear in a room full of people. Attempts to draw him out occasionally resulted in open bloodshed, and his emotional state was so violently unstable that Voldemort kept Severus at his side rather than send him into the field – the inner circle could not afford to lose any more members.
By that time, Lucius had other distractions. Narcissa – after many miscarriages and stillbirths – was near to term. Selflessly, Sev produced nutritive, strengthening potions to help her sustain her pregnancy. At dawn on a February morning, Draco Severus Malfoy came howling lustily into the larger world.
Lucius gently placed the swaddled infant in Severus' arms, and knew instantly that he had made the correct choice. The blank eyes sparked with determination, and Severus' face was once more that of a living man rather than that of a walking corpse.
But still, the walls.
Even after… well, whatever that bloody Potter spawn had done, after Voldemort's not-quite-death, the walls remained. A year after that, Dumbledore came seeking someone to replace Professor Boulstridge – the old Potions master was finally retiring. Would Severus take his place?
Sev accepted and his retreat from the rest of the world was complete. Severus left the school only for the summer holidays, and then it was to go to the far corners of the world in pursuit of his cardinal ambition – knowledge.
It wasn't until Draco's second year that Lucius had been able to come up with an acceptable pretext for visiting Hogwarts. He was on the board of Governors for the school, and his boy was Seeker for his house Quidditch team, it was perfectly plausible that he would turn up a good bit.
Severus had seemed delighted to see him, a rare smile gracing his face when Lucius turned up at the first game of the season. But Lucius' efforts to crack the self-imposed isolation came to naught.
Lucius tipped the last amber drop of firewhiskey into his mouth, swirling it about his tongue as he regarded cold fireplace. What had tipped the balance this evening? Was it simple serendipity? Was Severus feeling his isolation just as Lucius went in search of something he could not define?
Whatever cosmic hiccup had altered their orbits, Lucius was not going to argue with it. He would have Sev back, and Sev would come willingly – and then…
Narcissa expected him when he returned. Draco was at the Pucey's for a week. Young Adrian – whom Draco had succeeded as Slytherin's Seeker – had offered not only tickets to a Falmouth Falcon's game but a very intense course of Seeker training. Draco had been gone almost before his bags were packed.
Lucius set the empty glass on the side table. He could spend a few days insuring that the careful work he had done tonight would take. The first few days could be critical and Lucius always hated rush jobs – to take one's time and watch the gradual shaping of the work was deeply satisfying.
His loins stirred in anticipation, lust's sharp blade cutting through him, and Lucius petted his incipient tumescence as if to soothe it. There was time enough for that, patience and self-restraint on his part would make the consummation of desire all the sweeter.
In the end, even Severus would agree that it had been worth the pain. After all, pain given in love was not really pain, was it? Pain could be pleasure and pleasure could be pain – if given in love and care.
Lucius' arousal agreed with great enthusiasm, raising his trousers in vigorous salute.
As controlled as he was, Lucius knew that getting anywhere near Severus whilst in this state would cause him to abandon reason - the man was temptation wrapped in smooth, white, salty-sweet skin.
No, Lucius would have to take care of this himself.
Unbuttoning his trousers, he wrapped his hand around his overeager anatomy and abandoned himself to the easy pleasure of self-touch. With a familiar, steady rhythm, he thrust into his hand, each stroke building his urgency, inflaming his skin until he swore that he could feel each tiny impulse along each nerve. Finally, Lucius abandoned rhythm altogether, stroking and thrusting, clawing for and shuddering silently through his release.
He lay panting with eyes closed for a long moment before taking a silk handkerchief from his pocket and cleaning up his seed.
Rising, Lucius went into the bedroom and stripped down to his shorts. There was a tightly curled lump under the blankets in the middle of the bed. Even under the influence of one of his own potions, Severus was wound far too tight. He slipped under the covers, the cotton of the sheets so tightly woven that they were velvety against his skin.
Even under the forbidding exterior, Sev retained his sensual nature. It would make things much easier.
Wrapping himself around Severus, Lucius buried his nose in the black hair, inhaling with unabashed delight as one might a particularly rare and fragrant bloom. He feathered quick light kisses down the vertebrae of the neck and sighed.
It would be a great effort, for both of them, but he was equal to the task. He would break Severus very gently, with every care and put him back together again just the way he used to be.
Just before sleep claimed him, he caressed an ear with a fingertip and a whisper. "It will be all right again, Sev. I promise not to hurt you more than I must."
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TBC?
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