Fic: Touch (Peter/Lucius, R)
This is the creepiest icon I have. Hence, even though it's an A Song of Ice and Fire icon, I'm using it for a dark HP story.
Title: Touch
Author: gehayi
Pairing: Peter/Lucius
Genre: Darkfic, Slash
Rating: R for torture, mindfuck, not-very-graphic foreplay and sex
Word Count: 3,235
Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by J.K. Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.
Summary: Torture can break a man. So can what looks like kindness.
Author's Notes: fleshdress requested Peter/Lucius for a comment fic. Only it refused to remain small enough for a comment fic.
Thanks to underlucius for the quick beta, and for her suggestions.
***
Peter was never exactly sure when it happened for the first time. He knew that it had been after 21 December, 1979, because that was the day that James had got married--the day Peter had been captured as he returned to the Apparation Point that Lily had insisted on for wedding guests.
When he awoke, he was in a room without windows. The walls were a sickly pea-soup green, and barren of anything approaching decoration. An illumination spell of sorts had been cast, but the light it gave was dim and greyish. It was like trying to peer through a fog. And the foggy light seemed to drain away from the corners of the room, leaving large, menacing shadows lurking there. Peter thought that he saw them moving once or twice, though he couldn't quite be sure.
He himself was lying naked on a lumpy hospital bed, locked in the Full-Body Bind--unable to move, unable to scream.
That, he was to discover, was how the Death Eaters liked it.
With neither sun nor moon nor clock to mark the passage of time, he grew disoriented very quickly. Terms like "day" and "night" became nonsensical terms. Mentally, he replaced them with "pain" and "the times when they leave me alone for awhile."
He couldn't understand why he was here at all. As he'd said during a session in which he'd been permitted to speak, he didn't know anything. He was just a nineteen-year-old Healer trainee. He was no one important.
That was when he discovered that they knew about the Order of the Phoenix. And that there were spies within it. A fair number, it seemed.
But why doesn't Dumbledore know? he wondered silently. He's a Legilimens. He should be able to read the spies' minds and get rid of them.
He'd asked that once. One of his tormentors--Avery or Jugson, he wasn't sure which--had laughed. "He's a fraud, that's how. If he could really read minds, don't you think he'd sic the whole Ministry on us? Don't you think he'd know who the spies were, instead of faffing about trying to find out by being clever? He's a fake, and he's got all you fools thinking that he's Merlin reborn."
Peter turned that answer over and over in his mind, like a terrier worrying a rat. He couldn't think of Dumbledore as a fake. He just couldn't.
The problem was, the theory made a lot more sense than he'd have liked.
He often wondered why it was taking so long for his friends to find him. They were looking. He knew that. They had to be. They had to be, because he couldn't endure being trapped here what now felt like forever and no one caring.
Bellatrix was the one who disabused him of that idea.
"Are you still hoping to be rescued?" she said at the beginning of one torture session, and then laughed that delightful, silvery laugh that set Peter's teeth on edge. "Such lovely naivete." She flicked her wand in the direction of his throat; for a moment, Peter tensed, fearing that this time she'd torn open his cartoid artery, or made his vocal cords vanish forever.
He sighed with relief when he felt the grip of the Full-Body Bind loosen from his tongue and throat. It was all right. Nothing horrible had happened. Nothing permanently horrible, anyway.
This time.
"N-naïve?" he said, staring up at Bellatrix. "I d-don't know what you mean."
He did know, of course. It was impossible not to know. But he'd learned, in the eternity since he'd been brought here, that contradicting any of the Death Eaters--even in what might be considered normal conversation--invariably led to punishment. The only way to get any information out of them was to play at being humble and stupid. The Death Eaters had no trouble talking to--or talking down to--a stupid person. Contradictions and direct questions, on the other hand, were seen as symptoms of defiance and rebellion, and were punished accordingly.
"They're not coming for you," said Bellatrix, gloating as if over a feast. "Your precious friends--the blood traitor, the sickly halfblood, and my stupid little cousin--will never come for you."
It was like hearing a dungeon door slam in his mind.
No, he thought. No. They will come. They have to.
Bellatrix glanced at him and seemed to divine his thoughts. "They won't," she repeated. "They don't even know you're gone. You've been replaced. And they haven't noticed the difference."
Polyjuice, Peter thought, and felt like being sick. Of course no one would suspect he was missing if someone who looked and acted and sounded just like him was wandering around, talking to his friends--oh, God, what secrets had they babbled to the fake him?--and (he mentally winced at this thought) attending Order meetings.
Bellatrix smiled unpleasantly. "It's rather insulting, isn't it? Your best friends can't tell you from an imitation. Perhaps your friendship is the fake. What do you think, Peter?"
"That's enough, Bella," said Lucius Malfoy, who had entered while she was speaking. "You are not on duty today. I am. I appreciate your zeal"--his cool grey eyes said that he appreciated nothing of the sort--"but I do not think that this line of questioning is nearly as effective as you believe."
Bellatrix glared at Lucius. "I can make him scream."
"Oh, doubtless," said Lucius coolly. "However, I would hardly call that a notable achievement. And making him scream is hardly the point."
"Then," said Bellatrix, baring her teeth in what she no doubt thought was a smile, "I will leave him to you, cousin. For now." And with that, she swept out of the room.
There was pain after she left, of course. Peter had begun to think of pain as inevitable. But at least Lucius didn't make his hands and arms melt away, didn't strike him blind, didn't cause scales and feathers and skin to erupt from human skin, didn't force his body to assume the form of some grotesque beast that had never existed before, and threaten to leave him that way forever.
He didn't know what he looked like now. Most of the time, he tried not to imagine it.
But unlike the others, Lucius didn't look at him with horror or disgust or loathing. Lucius didn't taunt him. He didn't even appear to hate Peter. All right, so Lucius didn't like him, either, but Peter could live with that. There are worse things than having someone be indifferent to you. Lots worse.
People who were indifferent didn't generally want to torture him beyond human endurance. That was the way it had been with the gang of Slytherins at school, anyway. The sadists, like Bellatrix, had relished hurting him, and the more pain he suffered, the better. The ones who were more or less indifferent to him hexed and cursed him, sure. But they didn't make a religion out of it.
It was a hell of a thing when a man had to be grateful for indifference. But...he was.
He wasn't sure when the gratitude shifted into something more.
Perhaps it began because Lucius would gaze at him curiously, instead of grimacing with revulsion, like a cordon bleu chef forced to contemplate Cockroach Clusters. Perhaps it was because Lucius would meet his eyes and not punish him for having the temerity to look at a pureblood wizard without permission. Perhaps it was because Lucius was fastidious enough to command the house elf to keep Peter's bed and room clean, whereas the others let him lie there naked in his own filth, and found it funny.
Perhaps it was because Lucius alone called Peter by his name.
There were days that the pain was so bad that Peter couldn't think. Sometimes he couldn't remember a time before this room, these Death Eaters, this agony. On such days, he could scarcely remember that he was, let alone who he was.
But Lucius remembered.
And that was important, because no one else did.
He was estranged from his mother. He scarcely knew his older sisters and their families. His friends either didn't know what had happened to him or didn't care. Only one person seemed to remember that he was a human being, and that person was an enemy.
At least Lucius knows who I am, he would think. At least Lucius cares enough to remember. That's more than my so-called friends do. My friends, who can't even tell the difference between me and someone Polyjuiced into me. Eight, maybe nine years now, and they still can't tell the difference. But Lucius knows. And Lucius cares--at least a little.
It became a mantra, a lifeline. He clung to it, even though it hurt beyond imagining, because it was all he had to cling to.
Then one day, Lucius came into Peter's
(cell prison trap)
room and sat down on the bed. Even if Peter hadn't been paralysed by the Full-Body Bind, he'd have frozen out of sheer shock. Death Eaters did not risk contact with filthy Mudbloods. The few purebloods found such a notion repulsive and grotesque, like dancing in a cesspool. And the halfbloods spent most of their time trying to out-pureblood the purebloods.
To his astonishment, Lucius turned to him and smiled. "Hello, Peter," he said in a rich, silk-and-velvet voice. He surveyed Peter's frozen form. "That doesn't look very comfortable." And with that, he plucked his elderwood wand from his robe and waved it, saying, "Finite Incantatem."
For the first time since Peter had been captured, all of his muscles were free at the same time.
His delight lasted all of two seconds. Then the muscles, which had been forced to remain unnaturally taut for months, protested.
Peter doubled up in agony.
He didn't scream. He'd learned by now that no one wanted to hear him scream.
The fingertips of Lucius's right hand scarcely brushed Peter's left arm. The pressure, light as it was, increased the agony tenfold. Peter bit his tongue to keep from crying out. He couldn't bear to be punished for screaming, not now. Any more pain and he knew that he'd go permanently insane.
Lucius spoke, sounding--impossibly--sorry. "I should have known better," he murmured. "I should have realised that your muscles simply weren't ready for that."
'I'm sorry?' Peter thought. You're a Death Eater and one of my torturers and you're saying 'I'm sorry'?
Obviously he'd fallen down some mysterious rabbit hole. Or blundered into the Bizarro World.
Or gone mad at last.
Yes, that was a definite possibility.
He shoved that last notion away. Hard. Even if it was true, he couldn't deal with it. Not now. Maybe not ever.
He felt Lucius's hands close on each side of his neck. Gasping in terror, he tried to sit up. Anything to regain leverage. Anything to save his life, miserable though it was.
Unfortunately, his muscles were too busy shuddering in pain to help him sit up.
Wonderful, Peter thought bitterly at his body. Now you're betraying me, too.
Lucius spoke, sounding infinitely patient. "Peter, relax. I'm merely giving you a massage to relax your muscles." As he spoke, his hands continued to knead the sides of Peter's neck slowly, then progressed to Peter's shoulders.
Part of Peter wanted to cry out. This was wrong. Illogical. Death Eaters didn't act this way. Most of his mind, however, was basking in the bliss of absence-of-pain.
This is what heaven must be like, he thought. Warmth, and comfort, and no more pain.
Lucius was an efficient masseur, rolling Peter from side to side to massage his back, his hips, his legs. It wasn't until Lucius began massaging Peter's stomach that Peter, unexpectedly, became aroused.
He closed his eyes. Oh, this has to be a nightmare. It has to be.
"Peter." Lucius sounded amused, and Peter's heart sank even lower. "Peter, open your eyes."
He dared not disobey.
Lucius was smiling down on him from the lofty height of his twenty-five years. "You like the way this makes you feel?"
"Yes," Peter whispered, not daring to lie.
"And this?" Lucius stroked Peter's inner thighs with his fingers.
Peter gasped. "Yes…"
"And this?" Lucius's fingernail brushed the tip of Peter's cock.
Unable to speak, Peter groaned.
"You're so responsive," Lucius said. To Peter's ears, he sounded amazed, almost impressed. "It's hard to believe you're still a virgin."
Peter remained silent, less because he wanted to than because arousal was now making speech difficult. Nevertheless, Lucius was wrong. He wasn't a virgin. There had been girls at Hogwarts. A lot of girls, actually. None of them had mattered much. Most had thought that dating him would help them get closer to his three roommates. And that had been completely useless, because James had been mad for Lily since fourth year, Remus had been nervous about dating, lest the girl find out what he was once a month, and Sirius had been torn between being a romantic who wanted to be loved for himself and not his looks and money, and being…well, a god of chaos.
And now there was Dorcas Meadowes, the plump, dark-haired researcher for the Order. Bright-eyed, loving Dorcas.
And--all too briefly--there'd been a boy. A Slytherin boy. If there was anything they hadn't done together, Peter didn't know about it. They'd tried to break it off before things got complicated. That had been useless. Now they were apart, and things were still complicated.
Lucius, apparently taking Peter's silence for affirmation, smiled acquisitively, and--oh, this was impossible!--began stroking Peter's cock.
And oh Merlin, it felt good.
Peter closed his eyes again. If he was going to have a dream like this, then he wanted to enjoy it to the end. If he kept on staring up at Lucius (who obviously wasn't there), sooner or later his eyes would blink. They always did, after he stared at something for awhile. And once he blinked, he'd wake up.
If he kept his eyes closed, he could keep on dreaming.
Maybe he wouldn't even have to wake up.
There were worse things than dreaming about sex for the rest of eternity. By now, he'd experienced most of them.
Lucius stopped abruptly. "Are you sleeping?" he demanded in an incredulous voice. There was a distinctly menacing edge to that tone that Peter didn't like at all.
He tried to shake his head. "No," he whispered. "It just feels better this way. More--more intense."
"How was it?"
Cautiously, Peter opened his eyes a crack. "Fantastic." Well, until you stopped.
'Fantastic' was the right thing to say; Lucius beamed. Peter felt an abrupt jolt of happiness; it was so hard to please the Death Eaters.
He licked his lips. "More. Please, more."
And that seemed to delight Lucius even more.
To Peter's disappointment, Lucius didn't continue the handjob. Instead, he lifted his elderwood wand once more, and cast Scourgify twice--once on the bedclothes, and once on Peter himself. The spell rasped like sandpaper against Peter's skin, but Peter ignored it. At least he was clean for a change.
Once Peter and the bed were clean, Lucius bent low over him and began tasting him, his tongue flickering in and out of his navel with serpentine swiftness. With his tongue and lips, Lucius traced intricate patterns up and down Peter's torso. To Peter's surprise, Lucius skipped his nipples, concentrating on his ears instead--licking, nibbling, stroking, and darting his tongue into their interiors.
Peter, who no longer knew how to play this game of Lucius's at all and cared even less, lay back and moaned. He felt as drunk as if he'd consumed an entire vat of Firewhiskey. It wasn't merely a question of blissful pleasure after endless pain; it was the fact that someone was touching him, and not in anger or hatred or revulsion, but gently, kindly, lovingly. He'd never known how much that sort of touch meant, until now.
He struggled to hold back as long as he could. Anything, to prolong this. Anything, so that it would never have to end.
At last, however, he came. The jolt of pleasure was so intense that for a few minutes, he blacked out.
When he returned to consciousness, Lucius was standing once more. His robes, like the sheets, were as spotless as if they'd just been Scourgified. Peter looked at him, then hung his head.
"I'm sorry. I-I made a mess."
"Such things happen," Lucius said, waving a dismissive hand. "Particularly under circumstances like these. The question is, did you like it?"
There was only one possible answer to that. "Oh, yes! But..."
"But what?"
"Well...you didn't get a lot out of that."
Lucius smiled enigmatically. "On the contrary, I got a great deal out of it. More than you can possibly imagine." The smile became warmer. "Would you like to try that again, sometime soon?"
Peter nodded mutely.
"Good." Lucius's smile was both wicked and tempting. "And perhaps next time, you can do something that will please me as well. As long as you don't mind being a bit...imaginative."
"No," Peter said softly. "I don't mind that in the least."
Lucius nodded, then turned to go. Peter could almost see him donning the persona of the Death Eater as he drew near the door.
Not until Lucius had left did Peter realise that he hadn't been bound by Petrificus Totalus once more.
***
"I didn't see any point in binding him again," Lucius said to Bellatrix a half hour later, as he sipped a superb Chardonnay. "He's been cursed and confined to bed for more than two months. He can barely sit up. I doubt if he could stand without collapsing to the floor. And besides," he added with a sneer, "the Mudblood thinks that by not binding him, I'm being kind."
Bellatrix shuddered. "How you could bear to touch a Mudblood that way--"
Lucius grimaced. "When I get home, I shall burn these clothes. And then I believe I shall take a very long bath in carbolic acid. Scourgify was not cleansing enough." He sipped his wine. "Nevertheless, it worked. The boy is hungry to believe that someone--anyone--cares."
"Such as his friends?" Bellatrix said, a slightly mocking tone in her voice.
"Oh, I don't doubt he's been thinking of them since you mentioned the fact that no one would rescue him."
"I still don't think mere seduction is going to work."
Lucius chuckled deep in his throat. "There's far more to seduction than sex. I've convinced him, over the past six weeks or so, that I care for others. That I have compassion. That I can look at him and see someone of value. That a Death Eater, in short, need not be a monster.
"If he can believe that of me, how hard do you think it will be for him to believe that of himself?"
"He hasn't turned yet," Bella reminded him.
"He will."
"You're very sure."
Lucius shrugged. "He hates pain. And he's learned how vital it is to please us--and our Lord. He's ours already. He just doesn't know it yet.
"But he will. Oh, yes. He will."
***
Back in his room/prison, Peter, who was dreaming of the glorious impossibility that had just happened, turned over in his sleep and smiled gently.
Finis
Title: Touch
Author: gehayi
Pairing: Peter/Lucius
Genre: Darkfic, Slash
Rating: R for torture, mindfuck, not-very-graphic foreplay and sex
Word Count: 3,235
Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by J.K. Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.
Summary: Torture can break a man. So can what looks like kindness.
Author's Notes: fleshdress requested Peter/Lucius for a comment fic. Only it refused to remain small enough for a comment fic.
Thanks to underlucius for the quick beta, and for her suggestions.
***
Peter was never exactly sure when it happened for the first time. He knew that it had been after 21 December, 1979, because that was the day that James had got married--the day Peter had been captured as he returned to the Apparation Point that Lily had insisted on for wedding guests.
When he awoke, he was in a room without windows. The walls were a sickly pea-soup green, and barren of anything approaching decoration. An illumination spell of sorts had been cast, but the light it gave was dim and greyish. It was like trying to peer through a fog. And the foggy light seemed to drain away from the corners of the room, leaving large, menacing shadows lurking there. Peter thought that he saw them moving once or twice, though he couldn't quite be sure.
He himself was lying naked on a lumpy hospital bed, locked in the Full-Body Bind--unable to move, unable to scream.
That, he was to discover, was how the Death Eaters liked it.
With neither sun nor moon nor clock to mark the passage of time, he grew disoriented very quickly. Terms like "day" and "night" became nonsensical terms. Mentally, he replaced them with "pain" and "the times when they leave me alone for awhile."
He couldn't understand why he was here at all. As he'd said during a session in which he'd been permitted to speak, he didn't know anything. He was just a nineteen-year-old Healer trainee. He was no one important.
That was when he discovered that they knew about the Order of the Phoenix. And that there were spies within it. A fair number, it seemed.
But why doesn't Dumbledore know? he wondered silently. He's a Legilimens. He should be able to read the spies' minds and get rid of them.
He'd asked that once. One of his tormentors--Avery or Jugson, he wasn't sure which--had laughed. "He's a fraud, that's how. If he could really read minds, don't you think he'd sic the whole Ministry on us? Don't you think he'd know who the spies were, instead of faffing about trying to find out by being clever? He's a fake, and he's got all you fools thinking that he's Merlin reborn."
Peter turned that answer over and over in his mind, like a terrier worrying a rat. He couldn't think of Dumbledore as a fake. He just couldn't.
The problem was, the theory made a lot more sense than he'd have liked.
He often wondered why it was taking so long for his friends to find him. They were looking. He knew that. They had to be. They had to be, because he couldn't endure being trapped here what now felt like forever and no one caring.
Bellatrix was the one who disabused him of that idea.
"Are you still hoping to be rescued?" she said at the beginning of one torture session, and then laughed that delightful, silvery laugh that set Peter's teeth on edge. "Such lovely naivete." She flicked her wand in the direction of his throat; for a moment, Peter tensed, fearing that this time she'd torn open his cartoid artery, or made his vocal cords vanish forever.
He sighed with relief when he felt the grip of the Full-Body Bind loosen from his tongue and throat. It was all right. Nothing horrible had happened. Nothing permanently horrible, anyway.
This time.
"N-naïve?" he said, staring up at Bellatrix. "I d-don't know what you mean."
He did know, of course. It was impossible not to know. But he'd learned, in the eternity since he'd been brought here, that contradicting any of the Death Eaters--even in what might be considered normal conversation--invariably led to punishment. The only way to get any information out of them was to play at being humble and stupid. The Death Eaters had no trouble talking to--or talking down to--a stupid person. Contradictions and direct questions, on the other hand, were seen as symptoms of defiance and rebellion, and were punished accordingly.
"They're not coming for you," said Bellatrix, gloating as if over a feast. "Your precious friends--the blood traitor, the sickly halfblood, and my stupid little cousin--will never come for you."
It was like hearing a dungeon door slam in his mind.
No, he thought. No. They will come. They have to.
Bellatrix glanced at him and seemed to divine his thoughts. "They won't," she repeated. "They don't even know you're gone. You've been replaced. And they haven't noticed the difference."
Polyjuice, Peter thought, and felt like being sick. Of course no one would suspect he was missing if someone who looked and acted and sounded just like him was wandering around, talking to his friends--oh, God, what secrets had they babbled to the fake him?--and (he mentally winced at this thought) attending Order meetings.
Bellatrix smiled unpleasantly. "It's rather insulting, isn't it? Your best friends can't tell you from an imitation. Perhaps your friendship is the fake. What do you think, Peter?"
"That's enough, Bella," said Lucius Malfoy, who had entered while she was speaking. "You are not on duty today. I am. I appreciate your zeal"--his cool grey eyes said that he appreciated nothing of the sort--"but I do not think that this line of questioning is nearly as effective as you believe."
Bellatrix glared at Lucius. "I can make him scream."
"Oh, doubtless," said Lucius coolly. "However, I would hardly call that a notable achievement. And making him scream is hardly the point."
"Then," said Bellatrix, baring her teeth in what she no doubt thought was a smile, "I will leave him to you, cousin. For now." And with that, she swept out of the room.
There was pain after she left, of course. Peter had begun to think of pain as inevitable. But at least Lucius didn't make his hands and arms melt away, didn't strike him blind, didn't cause scales and feathers and skin to erupt from human skin, didn't force his body to assume the form of some grotesque beast that had never existed before, and threaten to leave him that way forever.
He didn't know what he looked like now. Most of the time, he tried not to imagine it.
But unlike the others, Lucius didn't look at him with horror or disgust or loathing. Lucius didn't taunt him. He didn't even appear to hate Peter. All right, so Lucius didn't like him, either, but Peter could live with that. There are worse things than having someone be indifferent to you. Lots worse.
People who were indifferent didn't generally want to torture him beyond human endurance. That was the way it had been with the gang of Slytherins at school, anyway. The sadists, like Bellatrix, had relished hurting him, and the more pain he suffered, the better. The ones who were more or less indifferent to him hexed and cursed him, sure. But they didn't make a religion out of it.
It was a hell of a thing when a man had to be grateful for indifference. But...he was.
He wasn't sure when the gratitude shifted into something more.
Perhaps it began because Lucius would gaze at him curiously, instead of grimacing with revulsion, like a cordon bleu chef forced to contemplate Cockroach Clusters. Perhaps it was because Lucius would meet his eyes and not punish him for having the temerity to look at a pureblood wizard without permission. Perhaps it was because Lucius was fastidious enough to command the house elf to keep Peter's bed and room clean, whereas the others let him lie there naked in his own filth, and found it funny.
Perhaps it was because Lucius alone called Peter by his name.
There were days that the pain was so bad that Peter couldn't think. Sometimes he couldn't remember a time before this room, these Death Eaters, this agony. On such days, he could scarcely remember that he was, let alone who he was.
But Lucius remembered.
And that was important, because no one else did.
He was estranged from his mother. He scarcely knew his older sisters and their families. His friends either didn't know what had happened to him or didn't care. Only one person seemed to remember that he was a human being, and that person was an enemy.
At least Lucius knows who I am, he would think. At least Lucius cares enough to remember. That's more than my so-called friends do. My friends, who can't even tell the difference between me and someone Polyjuiced into me. Eight, maybe nine years now, and they still can't tell the difference. But Lucius knows. And Lucius cares--at least a little.
It became a mantra, a lifeline. He clung to it, even though it hurt beyond imagining, because it was all he had to cling to.
Then one day, Lucius came into Peter's
(cell prison trap)
room and sat down on the bed. Even if Peter hadn't been paralysed by the Full-Body Bind, he'd have frozen out of sheer shock. Death Eaters did not risk contact with filthy Mudbloods. The few purebloods found such a notion repulsive and grotesque, like dancing in a cesspool. And the halfbloods spent most of their time trying to out-pureblood the purebloods.
To his astonishment, Lucius turned to him and smiled. "Hello, Peter," he said in a rich, silk-and-velvet voice. He surveyed Peter's frozen form. "That doesn't look very comfortable." And with that, he plucked his elderwood wand from his robe and waved it, saying, "Finite Incantatem."
For the first time since Peter had been captured, all of his muscles were free at the same time.
His delight lasted all of two seconds. Then the muscles, which had been forced to remain unnaturally taut for months, protested.
Peter doubled up in agony.
He didn't scream. He'd learned by now that no one wanted to hear him scream.
The fingertips of Lucius's right hand scarcely brushed Peter's left arm. The pressure, light as it was, increased the agony tenfold. Peter bit his tongue to keep from crying out. He couldn't bear to be punished for screaming, not now. Any more pain and he knew that he'd go permanently insane.
Lucius spoke, sounding--impossibly--sorry. "I should have known better," he murmured. "I should have realised that your muscles simply weren't ready for that."
'I'm sorry?' Peter thought. You're a Death Eater and one of my torturers and you're saying 'I'm sorry'?
Obviously he'd fallen down some mysterious rabbit hole. Or blundered into the Bizarro World.
Or gone mad at last.
Yes, that was a definite possibility.
He shoved that last notion away. Hard. Even if it was true, he couldn't deal with it. Not now. Maybe not ever.
He felt Lucius's hands close on each side of his neck. Gasping in terror, he tried to sit up. Anything to regain leverage. Anything to save his life, miserable though it was.
Unfortunately, his muscles were too busy shuddering in pain to help him sit up.
Wonderful, Peter thought bitterly at his body. Now you're betraying me, too.
Lucius spoke, sounding infinitely patient. "Peter, relax. I'm merely giving you a massage to relax your muscles." As he spoke, his hands continued to knead the sides of Peter's neck slowly, then progressed to Peter's shoulders.
Part of Peter wanted to cry out. This was wrong. Illogical. Death Eaters didn't act this way. Most of his mind, however, was basking in the bliss of absence-of-pain.
This is what heaven must be like, he thought. Warmth, and comfort, and no more pain.
Lucius was an efficient masseur, rolling Peter from side to side to massage his back, his hips, his legs. It wasn't until Lucius began massaging Peter's stomach that Peter, unexpectedly, became aroused.
He closed his eyes. Oh, this has to be a nightmare. It has to be.
"Peter." Lucius sounded amused, and Peter's heart sank even lower. "Peter, open your eyes."
He dared not disobey.
Lucius was smiling down on him from the lofty height of his twenty-five years. "You like the way this makes you feel?"
"Yes," Peter whispered, not daring to lie.
"And this?" Lucius stroked Peter's inner thighs with his fingers.
Peter gasped. "Yes…"
"And this?" Lucius's fingernail brushed the tip of Peter's cock.
Unable to speak, Peter groaned.
"You're so responsive," Lucius said. To Peter's ears, he sounded amazed, almost impressed. "It's hard to believe you're still a virgin."
Peter remained silent, less because he wanted to than because arousal was now making speech difficult. Nevertheless, Lucius was wrong. He wasn't a virgin. There had been girls at Hogwarts. A lot of girls, actually. None of them had mattered much. Most had thought that dating him would help them get closer to his three roommates. And that had been completely useless, because James had been mad for Lily since fourth year, Remus had been nervous about dating, lest the girl find out what he was once a month, and Sirius had been torn between being a romantic who wanted to be loved for himself and not his looks and money, and being…well, a god of chaos.
And now there was Dorcas Meadowes, the plump, dark-haired researcher for the Order. Bright-eyed, loving Dorcas.
And--all too briefly--there'd been a boy. A Slytherin boy. If there was anything they hadn't done together, Peter didn't know about it. They'd tried to break it off before things got complicated. That had been useless. Now they were apart, and things were still complicated.
Lucius, apparently taking Peter's silence for affirmation, smiled acquisitively, and--oh, this was impossible!--began stroking Peter's cock.
And oh Merlin, it felt good.
Peter closed his eyes again. If he was going to have a dream like this, then he wanted to enjoy it to the end. If he kept on staring up at Lucius (who obviously wasn't there), sooner or later his eyes would blink. They always did, after he stared at something for awhile. And once he blinked, he'd wake up.
If he kept his eyes closed, he could keep on dreaming.
Maybe he wouldn't even have to wake up.
There were worse things than dreaming about sex for the rest of eternity. By now, he'd experienced most of them.
Lucius stopped abruptly. "Are you sleeping?" he demanded in an incredulous voice. There was a distinctly menacing edge to that tone that Peter didn't like at all.
He tried to shake his head. "No," he whispered. "It just feels better this way. More--more intense."
"How was it?"
Cautiously, Peter opened his eyes a crack. "Fantastic." Well, until you stopped.
'Fantastic' was the right thing to say; Lucius beamed. Peter felt an abrupt jolt of happiness; it was so hard to please the Death Eaters.
He licked his lips. "More. Please, more."
And that seemed to delight Lucius even more.
To Peter's disappointment, Lucius didn't continue the handjob. Instead, he lifted his elderwood wand once more, and cast Scourgify twice--once on the bedclothes, and once on Peter himself. The spell rasped like sandpaper against Peter's skin, but Peter ignored it. At least he was clean for a change.
Once Peter and the bed were clean, Lucius bent low over him and began tasting him, his tongue flickering in and out of his navel with serpentine swiftness. With his tongue and lips, Lucius traced intricate patterns up and down Peter's torso. To Peter's surprise, Lucius skipped his nipples, concentrating on his ears instead--licking, nibbling, stroking, and darting his tongue into their interiors.
Peter, who no longer knew how to play this game of Lucius's at all and cared even less, lay back and moaned. He felt as drunk as if he'd consumed an entire vat of Firewhiskey. It wasn't merely a question of blissful pleasure after endless pain; it was the fact that someone was touching him, and not in anger or hatred or revulsion, but gently, kindly, lovingly. He'd never known how much that sort of touch meant, until now.
He struggled to hold back as long as he could. Anything, to prolong this. Anything, so that it would never have to end.
At last, however, he came. The jolt of pleasure was so intense that for a few minutes, he blacked out.
When he returned to consciousness, Lucius was standing once more. His robes, like the sheets, were as spotless as if they'd just been Scourgified. Peter looked at him, then hung his head.
"I'm sorry. I-I made a mess."
"Such things happen," Lucius said, waving a dismissive hand. "Particularly under circumstances like these. The question is, did you like it?"
There was only one possible answer to that. "Oh, yes! But..."
"But what?"
"Well...you didn't get a lot out of that."
Lucius smiled enigmatically. "On the contrary, I got a great deal out of it. More than you can possibly imagine." The smile became warmer. "Would you like to try that again, sometime soon?"
Peter nodded mutely.
"Good." Lucius's smile was both wicked and tempting. "And perhaps next time, you can do something that will please me as well. As long as you don't mind being a bit...imaginative."
"No," Peter said softly. "I don't mind that in the least."
Lucius nodded, then turned to go. Peter could almost see him donning the persona of the Death Eater as he drew near the door.
Not until Lucius had left did Peter realise that he hadn't been bound by Petrificus Totalus once more.
***
"I didn't see any point in binding him again," Lucius said to Bellatrix a half hour later, as he sipped a superb Chardonnay. "He's been cursed and confined to bed for more than two months. He can barely sit up. I doubt if he could stand without collapsing to the floor. And besides," he added with a sneer, "the Mudblood thinks that by not binding him, I'm being kind."
Bellatrix shuddered. "How you could bear to touch a Mudblood that way--"
Lucius grimaced. "When I get home, I shall burn these clothes. And then I believe I shall take a very long bath in carbolic acid. Scourgify was not cleansing enough." He sipped his wine. "Nevertheless, it worked. The boy is hungry to believe that someone--anyone--cares."
"Such as his friends?" Bellatrix said, a slightly mocking tone in her voice.
"Oh, I don't doubt he's been thinking of them since you mentioned the fact that no one would rescue him."
"I still don't think mere seduction is going to work."
Lucius chuckled deep in his throat. "There's far more to seduction than sex. I've convinced him, over the past six weeks or so, that I care for others. That I have compassion. That I can look at him and see someone of value. That a Death Eater, in short, need not be a monster.
"If he can believe that of me, how hard do you think it will be for him to believe that of himself?"
"He hasn't turned yet," Bella reminded him.
"He will."
"You're very sure."
Lucius shrugged. "He hates pain. And he's learned how vital it is to please us--and our Lord. He's ours already. He just doesn't know it yet.
"But he will. Oh, yes. He will."
***
Back in his room/prison, Peter, who was dreaming of the glorious impossibility that had just happened, turned over in his sleep and smiled gently.
Finis