Author's Note: I should be studying, so obviously this is the optimal time for a new chapter. Which was 80% done like a month ago and I'm sorry.
Lessons in the Dark
Lesson Three: Hunger
Lucius stood behind Harry as they stared at the stars, their bodies only a hairsbreadth apart, but the younger man was grateful for the miniscule space. It was a petty, pointless revenge, but he didn't want to feel Lucius' hands on him just now.
"I won't ask your forgiveness," the man started gently, carefully. And rightly so, Harry thought as he drew a little closer to the windows (and a little father from Lucius). "But I hope that you understand my motives…" He stroked a hand along Harry's arm, but the boy jerked away.
"I do understand, or at least, I did! You were trying to teach me about what it is to be a vampire. But that?" He gestured to the doorway, and he could almost see Vernon's freshly departed soul filling the frame. He shied away from the thought and covered his mouth to prevent the frightened noise, and took a breath to calm himself. There will always be ghosts in this house.
"That was over the line, Lucius," he said weakly.
"I only meant -"
"No matter what your point was, how did you expect me to react when you asked me to kill me uncle?"
"I admit, perhaps I should have -"
"- warned me first?" Harry snapped.
"- prepared you better." Lucius didn't look completely abashed, but that admission was a start. Harry relaxed when Lucius moved away from him. Though he couldn't hear Lucius moving, he could feel the man pacing the length of the room. "I've been picturing this night for so long and to think it could unravel so quickly…"
"It's your own fault," he mumbled, even as he realized Lucius would hear him just fine.
He gasped when Lucius, who he thought was on the other side of the small room, grasped his shoulders. "You're refusing to see what I am!"
"You are not cruel!"
"I bring death where I go, Harry. We bring death -" The angered look on his face lessened into something more annoyed, and he cocked his head towards the door. "Excuse me for a moment," he murmured and he glided away.
"You owe me a better explanation, Lucius!" he hissed after him, crossing his arms and planting himself against the wall, determined to wait there until Lucius returned.
The man looked back at him with a dark, amused look in his eyes, mouth finally settling in an apologetic line. "My wife would say the same thing when we fought… I suppose I'm just as graceless as I've always been."
Harry flushed, at first with indignation that he was being compared Lucius' wife - of whom he'd never spoken before - and then with a secret pleasure - he was being compared to Lucius' wife! As angry as he was still, the effect wasn't lost on him.
"Our first fight?" he offered with a crooked grin.
Lucius' face softened and he took a step forward, only to turn to the undetectable noise again. He sighed impatiently and promised, "I'll only be a minute," leaving only when Harry nodded his permission.
Harry was allowed a moment to himself to think, unburdened by Lucius' affecting presence. He wondered if he would always feel this way with Lucius, as if he was being wound higher and higher until he was fit to burst. Would he go mad from such living? In one night, he had seen Lucius feed for the first time (which wasn't too difficult) and he had killed his own uncle (which was more difficult than he'd care to admit), and now? He was almost frightened at the prospect of the next lesson, that it would be beyond him, and he'd fail Lucius - or worse, it would tear Harry apart irredeemably.
He moved to sit on the old, weathered sheet of his, the same one he had when Lucius first came to him. Nostalgia washed over him, and he was stuck again by the surrealism of his situation. People weren't meant to go through such moral strain, he was sure. Could he survive this?
The question would have to be answered another time; Lucius returned with a satisfied look on his face. Harry didn't hear anything from outside of the room which may have clued him in on what happened - but that look? It spoke volumes. There were only two other people left in the house, after all.
Rather than feeling frightened again, Harry found himself making light of the situation. Lucius wouldn't be so stupid as to kill them so soon, too. "Are the children tucked in, then?"
Lucius smirked an nodded, playing along. "Yes, dear."
Harry reached out, and Lucius came to him, bringing the slim hands to his lips and kissing them reverently.
"So, what are you going to have me do?" His voice was quiet, careful, afraid equally of breaking their moment of peace and of what the answer would be.
"We," he corrected, so occupied with the tips of Harry's fingers that he didn't elaborate. Harry drew his hands back, and Lucius chased them to Harry's waiting mouth. Lucius continued to bestow his gentle kisses uninterrupted. The brunet reached up to lock his fingers behind Lucius' neck, half from motivation to forestall the revelation of the impending trial, and half from the pleasure he derived at having such intent attention on him.
He felt Lucius' hands moved from his shoulders down to the backs of his thighs, startled when the man grasped him and hoisted him up waist-level. Harry wrapped his legs around Lucius automatically, tilting his head back when the man's nose nudged at his jaw. Though his eyes were shut, he felt the sway of legs below his, and was less surprised when he and Lucius fell to the bed. Even the change from vertical to horizontal didn't stir the vampire from his single-minded focus, seeming determined to kiss every section of skin above Harry's collarbone. On his part, Harry didn't mind in the slightest. He threaded his hands in Lucius' hair, cradling him, lulled by the quietest kisses and the whispers of their clothes brushing.
Once Lucius deemed his first task finished, he proceeded to trail his nose along random paths, still contained to only Harry's neck and up.
"Not that I'm complaining…" the young man finally murmured, "But what are you doing?"
"Just trying to take my fill of you," he whispered, a hint of breathlessness in his voice.
With a final kiss on the tip of Harry's nose, the man sat up. When he brushed Harry's hair back from his face, he sighed gently.
"I don't know where I would be if I didn't come to you those years ago, my love… But I'm still doing so many things all wrong… If I cannot control myself, I have no hope in helping you in your first years as a fledging. This is as much a lesson for me as it is for you."
"What are you going to do?" He felt that Lucius was bracing himself for something, and Harry only hoped it wasn't a goodbye.
"We," Lucius corrected gently, much to Harry's relief, "are moving too quickly. Once I change you, all you will know is hunger. Even in my years, there are times when it seems my hunger will be too much for me." He stroked Harry's cheek. "And I must remember that to yield to my hunger can be detrimental."
"You haven't hurt me," Harry protested, holding Lucius' hand to his face.
"But I could have. Before, when he hit you. I almost-" He broke off, pursing his lips and turning his head as if in shame. "It was selfish, thoughtless, and I could have hurt you more than I did. I must not allow myself to lose control again, especially when your well-being is at risk."
"And how do you intend to have us slow down?"
"We are going to abstain."
What a strange notion for Harry, who had so little vices in his life from which to abstain. Yet now, filled with the sensation of Lucius on him so solidly, there was only one thing on his mind.
"Unfair," he choked out, grabbing Lucius' had and pressing it to his hardness.
"Not so unfair." Lucius took Harry's free hand and mirrored the gesture. The young man groaned, feeling the thrill again at knowing he had aroused Lucius. He began to rub the heel of his hand against Lucius, loving the sudden sharp intake of breath.
"Harry!" he reprimanded from the edge of the room, disappearing from their comfortable hold.
"Sorry, sorry," Harry sat up and tried to look guilty.
"You're a minx." Yet as Harry watched, the man visibly pieced his together his self-control.
"It is unfair… it's so easy for you to fight your desire," he complained.
"Come, now, do you think my control is so simply won? This is something I've learned over years of error after error. It is a part of what I am… it is something you must learn."
He recognized that almost-apologetic tone and he blanched. "You're going to make me do something dreadful again, aren't you?"
"We're going to push ourselves as far as we can, Harry… and I do mean we. I won't make you do this alone."
"What is it?" he finally asked, a note of panic sharp in his voice.
It looked like Lucius wanted to go to him, to calm him with a touch as he so easily could, but he held his fists to his sides. "We are going to starve, Harry."
Harry was used to being hungry. He was used to having to carry around an achingly empty stomach for days and pretending he was alright. When Lucius finally answered his question, he was so relieved, he laughed.
"Where do we start?" he asked, as if it was an exercise he could be over with before the night finished.
But Lucius had other plans in mind.
It started simply. For week, he and Lucius stayed in that room together. He allowed the boy water when he asked, but neither of them were allowed sustenance.
They spent the whole time sitting in the night. The shutters were sealed and draped, and he had no sense of the passage of time. In the thick of darkness, Lucius could be with him for hours and hours - longer than an actual night, Harry was sure. Once in a while, the man disappeared for a time - fetching water, emptying Harry's chamber pot, and "taking care" of the two remaining Dursleys (Harry hoped that meant he was feeding them - daily, at least).
It was okay, really. Until Lucius started to bring the food.
Having determined early in his life that the best way to escape pain or discomfort was to be asleep, he split his time between that and talking to Lucius. That first day it happened (or night, whichever it happened to be), he woke up to see a plate on the floor within his range of sight. On it was any normal loaf of bread, and when Harry reached for it and held it, it didn't feel oven-warm, it didn't smell freshly-baked…
But, God, Harry must have gone without anything solid in his stomach for days.
He glanced up at the door. Unsurprisingly, Lucius was there without Harry realizing it.
"Why would you…?" he started, the words feeling heavy in his salivating mouth. Even though the bread wasn't warm enough to actually give off a scent, close to his nose, he could smell the purity of grain.
"Because our hunger is not a quiet thing. You will be surrounded by mortals, and you will want to drain every single one of them."
"So you're taunting me with something I can't have," he summarized flatly.
Lucius plucked the loaf from Harry's loose grasp. "And it will only get worse," he whispered.
He wasn't lying.
A few days later, Harry woke to the smell of very fresh, very warm bread - he held it in his hands until it grew cold. In a few more days, they progressed to soups, stews, slices of meat. The forbidden meals grew more and more decadent (Lucius started to bring food from outside the village, it was too deliciously exotic to be local). Fruits and vegetables of all different colors and meats he couldn't name - Lucius left the food for half a day. When ignoring it wasn't enough for Harry, he tried to distract himself. While he waited for Lucius to deem their period of abstinence complete, or for the hunger to take him (whichever came first), the two spoke.
Admittedly, their first few attempts didn't end well, with both parties starving and moving towards the ends of the tethers. Soon, though, Harry managed to approach the topic without volatility.
They lay on their sides facing each other, and the only point of contact was Harry's hand resting against Lucius' face, as if ensuring Lucius didn't move from his sight (he wouldn't).
"It could have been anyone else, you know."
The conversation was almost worn out at this point, and Lucius didn't need to question what - or who - "it" was.
"Is that what you think? Could you really have watched anyone else die and understand what you do now?" His eyebrow raised slightly in challenge.
"Just what am I to understand?"
"Death is not just for the anonymous, Harry." He brought his hand up to cover Harry's, gently stroking the pattern of bones under taut skin. "You didn't feel any sympathy for the man I drank from in that darkened alley that first night, but death won't always be so easy. Mortal are meant to die, and your love for them will not change that fact. You must know with certainty that death has no boundary."
Ah, is that all? He knew now what exactly it was Lucius was trying to frighten into him.
"As hard as you try, you can't try to throw mortality in my face and expect me to embrace it, Lucius. I'm seventeen, I'm being offered immortality, and since we met when I was a child, your blood, what little of it you gave me, it changed me. If it's death you want me to fear," the stoic grey eyes only confirmed his guess, "you can't force me to understand."
"You've grown up with immortal blood in you…" he said uncertainly, as if he only just realized that truth in that. "How do you know it affected you even after I left?"
Harry smiled bitterly. "For one, I don't remember the last time I felt this much pain. After you… Uncle Vernon never seemed to hurt me as much. Or when he did, the pain never lasted as long. I thought for a while… I thought that you were coming in secret." He vaguely recalled the pain of his grief when he realized, after the week of sleepless nights, Lucius was gone. "I never had so much as a cough again, I thought- "
He trailed off when he saw the stricken look on Lucius' face.
"You're already half-changed, aren't you? I killed you the moment I sensed you."
In a flash of movement, he was at the edge of the bed, out of Harry's reach, his head in his hands. Harry spared a moment to scowl at Lucius' maintained dexterity, while he struggled to right himself beside the man. The dizziness last for a moment, but after a deep breath, he said gently, "You're not making any sense."
"I didn't notice before - how could I? - but you smell like me, if only faintly. My- The man who made me would have found you, and killed you for my… indiscretion. I should have drained you the night I found you."
Not that Harry didn't feel half dead just then, stomach aching and body seeming to decay even as he breathed. But the thought that this strange vampire would do violence against Harry, and that he could hear the fear in Lucius' voice… He shuddered and shook the thought away.
"This man, your maker…?" he stopped when he saw Lucius shake his head minutely behind the cover of his hands. More secrets. "Some day?" he asked automatically. Lucius nodded after a hesitation.
"What does it matter, any way? You're changing me now. He never found me."
"And yet a few drops of my blood in your childhood seems to have disrupted your entire life," he said, still talking into his wrists.
"You're overreacting. I thought you'd be happy that I had your protection for all these years. Frankly, I don't understand what the problem is. It's not as if I put myself at unnecessary risk, or I flaunted the fact that I recover quickly. What is it you're afraid of?"
Lucius finally surfaced from behind his hands to turn his head and look at Harry. Though he didn't lay a hand on the boy, Harry still felt like Lucius held his head, so compelled was he not to look away from the gaze.
"I just want to make sure that I won't lose you, not to him… or to yourself. I won't let you become a monster."
And that admission opened Harry to radiant, awful moment understanding. "You want me to fear what I might become."
Silence.
"What exactly happened to you, the first time you fed?" he asked, remembering the halted conversation from the first night.
Silence.
Then: "It pains me to think of it. I can't… not yet."
"We never stop thinking of blood, do we?" The words tumbled out of him unconsciously.
Lucius pressed hard lips to Harry's temple.
Lucius was weakening. His eyes were wide and wild, the lids as if lined in pink; there were circles under his eyes, his cheeks were sallow… He was not himself.
Yet he always seemed to have complete control.
It was perhaps that fact that blinded Harry to the sorry truth that immortal did not mean invulnerability.
During one of the painful silences in what must have been their third week that Harry heard Lucius' rapid breathing. That he could hear the man at all should have been worrying enough; but that tempo was familiar. He had heard that precursory beat from men and beasts alike before the end.
He raised his eyes from the plate of food in front of him he had been studying, and he finally saw what he had not seen before. Lucius' skin seemed tight against his bones, is hair looked dull and lifeless, his teeth seemed longer - and Harry realized it was because his gums seemed to be drawn back. He looked like a nightmare Harry never wanted to remember.
He realized how much more difficult it must have been for Lucius, who had likely never gone hungry a day in his life. Harry, at least, had the cold comfort of death to look forward to. What must it be like to suffer this hunger for eternity?
"How do you do it?"
Lucius stared at him hungrily for a moment from his position against the door, his eyes roving over his face like it was the last time he would have the chance to. (Won't it be? Harry was sure his last breaths were in the air.)
"Would you like me to show you?" Without waiting for an answer, he went to Harry, pulling him to his feet and steadying him. The starving vampire buried his nose in Harry's neck, and the weakened human stiffened.
"You're torturing yourself," he whispered. Was this the equivalent of Harry's untouchable meals?.
"No, love; I'm rewarding myself… Every time I inhale you," he breathed in deeply and sighed, "I've bested the beast for another moment. Your heart is still beating, your blood is still warm -"
"Not for much longer," he mumbled, feeling himself falling apart in Lucius' arms. Darkness was started to creep at the edge of his vision and his head felt stuffed with cotton.
Lucius suddenly grabbed a fist full of his hair, and jerked the boy's head back. Harry gave a small sigh of relief, believing Lucius had finally broken. But Lucius' lips made little contact with his skin; instead, he buried his nose in the taut skin and sniffed, running his nose up and down the length of his neck.
He was lightheaded, leaning heavily on Lucius because he knew he couldn't stand on his own, and Lucius' body felt so good against him though he was so cold.
"If I die like this," Harry tried to say, though he couldn't know whether Lucius heard him, "I won't mind. I used to fear hunger before."
He could count his last breaths, he knew. He felt Death's harsh and impatient sighs at his back. As much as it hurt, he needed to use these fading moments of his to tell Lucius he loved him, to tell him how happy he was to die in his arms, to beg for him to drink and deny his own hunger the chance of ending him.
"I want it to be you," was all he managed before he blacked out.
AN: Reviews always appreciated!