Glory Hole Confessional
“It’s not proper, you know,” he said, tipping his beer so that it emptied into the plant pot next to their table, wetting cracked dirt and discarded cigarette butts, “a woman drinking from a bottle.”
Millicent sat back in her chair, dark eyes bright with amusement. She was sort of attractive in the dim pub light. Tapping the last fag from the battered Embassy carton, she said, “If you weren’t going to drink that, you could’ve given it to me. Besides, don’t you think it’s a bit hypocritical to be speaking of what’s proper when you’re here to fool around with Muggle men?”
“For fuck’s sake...” He exhaled heavily, wiping a clammy palm over his face. “I can’t do this. I don’t know why I let you talk me into this.”
“You let me talk you into this because you don’t know if you’re a poof or not.”
“Millicent-” he started, voice tense with agitation and colour rising in his pale face.
She waved him off. “So what if you want to have a little raunchy fun? No one knows you here, and I certainly won’t tell anyone. It’s the safest way to figure things out, I think. You’re just going to watch a dirty film, and it’s up to you if you want to get off with someone else. What could be better?”
“Being undoubtedly heterosexual would be a lot better,” he muttered, staring through the window and across the street at the adult cinema; inconspicuously squashed between a dinky snooker club and a soulless warehouse as though it deserved a place in normal society. His stomach churned with an unpleasant greasiness, and he could almost taste the acid-sour tang of vomit. He turned his gaze onto the polished tabletop.
“You’re too bloody sober for this. If I get you another drink, will you actually drink it this time?” Millicent stood, gesturing toward the bar with the cigarette in her mouth.
He looked up at her, sickly green and unimpressed. “You honestly think it’s a good idea for me to undertake this life altering endeavour pissed off my arse?”
“I’m not saying you should get pissed; just a little Dutch courage.”
He buried his fingers in the unpleasantly damp roots of his hair, his heartbeat as arrhythmic as his breathing. “I can’t do this,” he repeated.
“Merlin, a shot of whisky will really do you some good.” She shook her head and walked away, and he had to admit that the burn of whisky in the back of his throat and the subsequent warmth in his belly sounded appealing. He dabbed a paper napkin against his sweaty forehead and tried to regain composure.
Millicent made something of a home away from home in Muggle England, and they often spent Saturday nights in pubs where she flirted free drinks for them both out of men and danced and sang and led rowdy discussions about sports into the wee hours of the morning. Draco had got used to this strange world, and whilst the beer was vile and their ways strange, there was something to be said about no one being able to judge him for his past mistakes. It was something akin to a fresh start, where he could truly enjoy and forget himself, if only for a few hours. At the bar, Millicent was carrying on a lively conversation with the tattooed bartender, her body poised in such a way that her large breasts were pushed out and her boxy hips cocked to one side, her paisley dress falling in all the right places. Draco already knew she wouldn’t have to pay for their drinks. Millicent wasn’t pretty by anyone’s standards, but she’d developed a rough confidence which ensured that she never longed for company.
She was a regular at this particular pub; almost everyone called to her as ‘Millie’, and a few of them even knew his name, too. He hoped no one would notice when he left for the adult cinema. He couldn’t handle persecution here, as well. Not after it became his refuge. The first night he’d come here, Millicent had pointed out the cinema, telling him of her visit there and all the things she’d seen. It was really no wonder men chased after her; the woman was depraved. Draco had been mildly disgusted, but hadn’t given it another thought until his awkward fumbling with Pansy came up in drunken conversation, along with ponderings of asexuality and homosexuality. And that was when Millicent told him in explicit terms that he had to figure out what he liked and she knew just the place to do it.
“Here’s your whisky.” Millicent placed the glass before him and then took a seat, this time nursing a frothy pint.
“I can’t believe you’re drinking more of that shite,” he said with a small smile.
“Oh shut up and drink.” She raised her pint glass in toast, and Draco did the same with quiet scepticism. “To self discovery,” she declared, promptly swallowing hearty mouthfuls of beer.
“To self discovery,” Draco quietly acquiesced. He took a deep breath and downed the whisky in one go.
~*~
The cinema smelled heavily of antiseptic agents, sweat and come and cigarette smoke lingering underneath as if seeped deep into the shadowed walls. The film had already begun: two men with American accents carrying boxes up a flight of stairs and into an empty flat as they partook in splintery, wooden conversation and played a game of cat and mouse with subtly appraising looks.
There weren’t many people scattered about, merely sparse silhouettes giving audience in the whitish-blue pale cast off by the screen, and Draco wanted nothing more than to turn on his heel and return to the safety of Millicent and the pub and another glass of whisky. But that would be running away, and running was a dirty habit that he desperately needed to quit. His life was in shambles, but here he was in the Muggle world trying to run from his problems instead of working through the debris, and wanting to run farther still. It seemed he could never run far enough.
He was pathetic and he knew it.
Biting his bottom lip raw, he continued down the short steps, his unease growing as he absorbed his surroundings: a couple snogging in the back row, the man’s hand working fervently beneath the woman’s skirt; an unkempt, middle aged bloke rubbing his cock through his trousers… Draco looked away.
He sat in the front, as alone as possible in the cramped cinema, where he could turn a blind eye to the rampant exhibitionism clearly favoured by the other patrons. It was all too much, too soon, and he was dizzyingly overwhelmed and disgusted with himself, disgusted at how far he’d fallen and what he’d allowed himself to become. Most days he blended against the white marble walls of the Manor like a melancholy albino chameleon, only leaving when Pansy or Millicent forced him to see the sun. In a way, they were all he had, the only thing keeping him going. He was no one and he was only sinking lower, surrounded by degenerate Muggles and getting hard off the sight of a man’s lips wrapped around a thick cock.
The film left him cotton-mouthed; unable to think clearly. It was everything sex should be, and everything he’d never experienced. There was so much saliva and delicious, guttural obscenities and it was just in so deep. There were no pretentious displays of modesty, no timid ploys; just desperate, raw, gritty need as the man stared boldly into the camera with a cock in his mouth and masculine fingers knotted in his chestnut hair. The few times he’d had sex with Pansy had been reserved and almost ritualistic, as though she was trying to leave the impression that she’d be the kind of wife he was expected to have. She was pliant and gentle and so fucking wrong that he’d learned how to let his mind go blank just to get through it. He’d never been as achingly hard with her as he was now-he didn’t think he’d ever been.
His fingernails dug into the scuffed armrests, the tendons in the back of his hands strained and bulging and his knuckles bone-white. He wanted to touch himself, relieve the maddening pressure which was beginning to border on pain, but he couldn’t. He wasn’t an animal; he wasn’t going to masturbate in the company of strangers-some morals were too deeply embedded for that. He closed his eyes, squeezing them tightly shut like a child who didn’t want to see his father send his mother crashing into the china cabinet, but he couldn’t escape the meaty, smacking noises or the savage grunts.
Pre-ejaculate dampened the cotton of his underwear, and it clung wetly to his cock, sticky, cold, and taunting. He was so bloody uncomfortable and his face burned with shame. There was no doubt in his mind now: he was queer. He, Draco Malfoy, was a fucking faggot. He could already see the disappointment in his mother’s eyes, Millicent’s platitudes, be damned. It was just what he needed; another nail in the casket, another reason for people to avoid him like plague, like some rotting, diseased pariah. He wanted to cry.
“Are you alright?” It was the scruffy man he’d seen earlier, fondling himself before the actual pornography had even begun. Draco didn’t know when he’d got beside him, but he found himself unable to do anything but stare with large, pathetic deer eyes.
The man wasn’t deterred; an oily, malicious ghost of a smile stretching across weather-beaten lips. He leaned closer, all cider and marijuana and hot, stale breath. “First time, is it?”
Draco swallowed noisily, his windpipe suddenly constricted and his throat too dry. He managed a curt nod as his eyes drifted from the man’s wizened face, down to the vulgar shape of his erection, pushing taut against the woollen fabric of his trousers.
“You’re in the same state as I am,” the man continued, blatantly staring into Draco’s lap with greedy eyes and twitching fingers. “We could help each other out, I think; something mutually beneficial. What say you, Blondie? Fancy a quick shag?”
The abrupt ‘I have to go’ spilled clumsily from Draco’s mouth, his tongue feeling thick and alien and his head swimming with the speed at which he got to his feet. He felt utterly lost, so disoriented that he didn’t know where he was going, barely aware of the fact that he was moving at all.
His brain had disconnected, leaving him a hollow, rapidly unravelling husk of a man, adrenaline flooding his bloodstream and propelling him to run just like he always did. He remembered stumbling up the steps and crashing into someone, but it was all a blur by the time he reached the restroom, tumbling into the first stall and locking it behind him with a mildly satisfying click.
He slumped against the partition, staring up at the chipped paint on the ceiling as though a solution would slip through one of the cracks and into his clammy palms. The world ceased to exist for a little while in his little, white stall, and in spite of himself, he released a watery laugh under his breath. He never learned from his mistakes; having another breakdown in a bloody bathroom. The scars on his chest should’ve been a reminder that this could never end well. Imagine that; his own personal symbolism in the form of a loo. He was laughing in earnest now, a crazed laugh that he just couldn’t smother. He doubled over; the tremors racking his body so powerful that he could no longer remain upright, and somewhere along the line his laughter morphed into bitter, choking sobs.
Why couldn’t he have one measly drop of happiness? Why couldn’t he live up to any of the expectations placed on him? Why couldn’t he be normal in the most basic sense? He’d been prepared for a loveless marriage and tepid fucks with the lights off until an heir had been produced. He’d grown to accept this future with a slightly cumbersome indifference, the future shaped by generations of pureblood families from years past, but now it seemed suddenly unbearable, like the tentacles of the Giant Squid were wrapped around him, dragging him under the frigid depths of the Hogwarts Lake.
Hopelessness became him. He cried and cried and cried until his eyes were red and puffy and his head throbbed and his nose dribbled thick snot. He cried until he could cry no more, until his body felt drained and he was too exhausted to care. He was so, so, so tired. He wanted to go home, take his clothes off, and slip into bed where he’d sleep and never wake up.
He wiped at his eyes with the sleeve of his shirt, the wetness leaving transparent spots in the thin material and allowing the sickly pinkish grey of the Dark Mark to show through unsullied white cotton. From a tumultuous past to an unhappy future-he’d never felt this fucking depressed. He righted his posture and went about fixing himself; straightening his rumpled clothing and blowing his nose into a wad of toilet paper.
He wasn’t going to let these…tendencies ruin his life.
He would leave here and leave these awful memories behind. He had to, for the sake of his sanity. He’d lived twenty-two years without the intimate touch of another man, and he was going to live the rest of his days without it. In his heart of hearts, he knew that was an empty promise. It was impossible to return to foggy ignorance now that this need had risen to the surface like a bruise. He’d finally encountered the one thing he couldn’t run from: himself. Perhaps he’d known all along, known running from his shadow had been an exercise in futility, but denial was a potent and addictive anaesthetic, and it gave him the audacity to hope for a panacea.
That hope was dead now, shattered like glass around his feet. He didn’t know what to think anymore. He felt cornered and acutely aware of how utterly alone he was. He imagined what it would feel like: the warmth of being in another man’s arms; kissing his lips, feeling a hard cock against his own. It made his face flush and set his stomach aflutter in the most decadent of ways.
He had to experience it, just once. Get it out of his system so that he could move on with his life-marry a suitable woman and live the way he was meant to. No one would ever know what he’d done; he wouldn’t utter it to another living soul, not even to Millicent.
He thought about the man who’d propositioned him earlier, wondered if he’d still be interested. He wasn’t at all attracted to him, but that could work in his favour; ensure that he’d never think of doing anything as sick and perverse again-
No. NO. NO.
He fell to his knees, Galleons spilling from his pocket and onto the tiled floor in a terrifyingly loud clatter. He was losing his fucking mind, swept away in some irrational panic, every fibre of his being screaming at him to run from this bedlam before he was contaminated. He made a desperate grab for the shimmering gold coins, slamming his forehead into the toilet’s cruel porcelain in his frantic rush. Everything went pitch black for a moment, nothing but stinging pain and a rattling between his ears. He lost track of time, crouched on the dirty bathroom floor with his pounding head cradled in his hands and his body trembling.
Sweat trickled down his spine like thousands of spindly spider legs; vile and grotesque. He slowly opened his bleary eyes, peering through splayed, white fingers at the hard cock jutting from a hole in the partition which he’d failed to notice. He was taken aback, almost toppling over from his sharp intake of breath.
It was thick and curved slightly upward, dark and reddish with arousal. The foreskin had retracted, rolled beneath the wet pink-violet head, and Draco couldn’t take his eyes off it no matter how his conscience shrieked until it dwindled to a hoarse afterthought. He’d never been this near to another man’s cock; hadn’t seen any other but his own outside of communal showers after a game of Quidditch at Hogwarts. He could feel himself hardening again, his heart thumping madly, anxious and excited.
He crawled nearer; close enough to smell heady musk and sweat and a hint of generic soap, see the blue-green network of veins beneath tightly stretched skin. Draco wasn’t an idiot. He might’ve been somewhat naïve to this level of degeneracy, but the hole was perfectly aligned with his mouth while genuflected, too convenient; too tempting.
Remnants of the film flickered behind his eyes: the enthusiastic blowjob; the brown haired man’s hot mouth wrapped around a stiff prick. He hadn’t thought of himself in this position; hadn’t thought he’d be the active partner if he were to engage in oral sex with another man. He was startled to find how excruciatingly hard the thought of it made him. He wanted this so badly that he fucking hated himself for it. He had to try it; he’d never have this kind of anonymity again; wouldn’t allow himself to seek it a second time.
The stranger’s cock twitched under the incorporeal gust of his breath, bobbing, becoming impossibly harder and taking on the purple hue of a worsening bruise. It made Draco giddy with a bizarre sort of power. He craved more reactions; the thrill of knowing he could affect someone so much making him feel alive for the first time in a long time. He thought of Pansy and how she’d done this to him before, tried to discern what actions would drive his stranger toward temporary insanity.
Palms braced against the partition, he dipped his tongue into the slit, widening it a fraction, tasting more of the natural salty damp. His stranger made a hushed, strangled noise and canted his hips forward, his pelvis coming to rest flush against the other side of the partition with a solid thud. Draco bit his lip, his underwear once again uncomfortably slimy and constricting. But he wouldn’t touch himself; he had to remain grounded, he had to remind himself that this was something to be ashamed of.
He tongued the sensitive glans beneath the violently darkened head, leaving a trail of shining saliva as he licked under the crinkled foreskin and along those pulsing veins. He curled his fingers around the shaft, marvelling at how it felt so hard and yet so humanly soft, so like his own and yet completely otherworldly. He pressed into the firm flesh with experimental fingers, like he was working through the theory of some pseudo-science and applying it for the first time.
His stranger’s breathing had become laboured, and he showed his impatience by making a failed attempt at forcing more of himself into Draco’s hand. His franticness proved itself infectious, because Draco wanted the same thing just as much. He was gagging for it, his underwear so wet with pre-come that he was absolutely certain it seeped through to his trousers.
He almost choked the way he’d attacked his stranger’s cock, the head hitting the back of his throat and knocking the air from his lungs. He couldn’t cram the entire thing into his greedy mouth, but he wanted to make this good for his stranger; something inside him compelled him to make it good.
He closed his mouth tightly around it, cheeks gone gaunt as he sucked, careful to mind his teeth because he’d learnt from experience how unpleasant they felt scraping against a swollen cock. The stranger fucked his mouth with strong, steady strokes, perhaps taking Draco’s amateur skill into consideration. But Draco wasn’t content with that; his ego wouldn’t let him be anything but memorable. His worked his mouth up and down, his head bobbing in time with his stranger’s thrusts. He became enraptured, lost in the perfect-wrong feel of a cock in his mouth, the taste-salty and exquisite, the smell intoxicating and real. He hadn’t noticed he was tossing himself off until he came all over the partition, his stranger coming moments later down his gulping throat.
He pulled away abruptly; the stranger’s spent cock slipping from his mouth with a crude and slippery pop; realisation hitting him like a fist to the gut. He’d just wanked himself raw while sucking another man’s cock; a man he didn’t even know. He wouldn’t drink Muggle beer, but he’d suck filthy Muggle cock in a disgusting public bathroom. He was falling apart quicker than a poorly assembled ship in a bottle.
The stranger tucked himself back through the hole and fidgeted with his fly, the noise of his zipper cutting through the gauzy quiet. Draco sat still as death, listening to the stranger open the creaking door of the neighbouring stall, his footsteps a barely audible shuffle and his trainers occasionally scuffing against tile.
And then it was quiet again.
Draco went about pocketing the fallen Galleons, trying his best to remain composed, keep his thoughts neutral. He got to his feet and spat into the toilet, rubbing at his mouth despite the fact that he already knew he’d swallowed every last drop of bitter come.
He pushed the stall door open with vindictive force, determined to break something other than his own miserable heart on the way out. But his rage died a premature death, replaced by debilitating shock. Leaning against the countertop was none other than Harry Potter, the Wizarding World’s dishevelled messiah; all wild, finger-worried hair and startlingly green eyes and rumpled flannel and loose jeans. He pushed himself upright, stepping on the untied laces of his canvas trainers.
“Malfoy-” he started, but Draco wouldn’t let him finish; he had to strike first.
“What are you doing here, Potter? I didn’t think your precious Weasley would’ve let you wander into a place like this.” He folded his arms across his chest and observed Potter with frank indifference, stony-faced despite his madly beating heart.
Potter gave a half-hearted shrug. “We’re not together at the moment; taking a break and all that…” he paused uncertainly and then continued, “she’s on tour with the Holyhead Harpies-in Sydney today. It’s always been her dream to play for them. I couldn’t stand in the way of that. And then I’ve been busy with Auror training, as well…”
“I’m glad both of you were able to attain your dreams,” Draco spat, defensive and sarcastic. “Well, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got better things to do than converse with you in a bathroom. You know that never ends well for me.”
He wanted to go over to the sink and rinse his mouth out, but he couldn’t do that in front of Potter. It would be too obvious, too fucking humiliating. He made for the exit, but Potter grabbed him by the elbow and he involuntarily spun on his heel.
“What do you want, Potter; a thank-you?” His voice was loud and reedy even to his own ears.
“I don’t want to fight you!” Potter snapped. His face had gone red with frustration, and his eyes flashed dangerously bright beneath his glasses.
Draco sighed tiredly. He just wanted to go home.
“What do you want from me, Potter?” It was almost a whisper, a fading ghost of his earlier haughty pretences.
“I heard you crying,” Potter said quietly.
Draco’s blood ran cold.
But Potter kept on talking. “You nearly knocked me over when you were going to the bathroom; didn’t even stop. You looked rather distraught… I had to make sure you were alright...”
Draco could feel his tenuous grasp on sanity slipping through his fingers. “Let me go.”
“You were crying when I got here. I didn’t know what to do-”
“Potter, let me go.”
“And then you stopped, and I wasn’t thinking-”
Draco hadn’t realised he’d punched Potter until he saw the blackening bruise on Potter’s jaw and felt the dull, painful throb in his knuckles. He was breathing heavily; they both were, as if suffocating on the tense air.
Potter adjusted his lopsided glasses with shaky hands; slowly turning his neck from the awkward angle it had been forced into so that he looked Draco straight in the face. “I guess I deserved that,” he said quietly.
“How the fuck could you do that?” Draco exploded. “You knew it was me! Why the fuck would you do that? Was it some kind of sick joke to you?”
“No! It wasn’t like that!”
Draco narrowed his eyes, but the glare wasn’t threatening; his eyes were too empty, too wet. “Then explain it to me, Potter, because I’m not amused.”
Potter ran his fingers through his hair, pulling at the messy fringe. “I’ve never done anything like this before. Ginny and I aren’t taking a break just because of our schedules. I’ve been having these thoughts lately, and I needed to figure things out. When I saw you, I didn’t plan for that to happen, especially not after I heard you crying.”
“Then why did you do it?” Draco shoved him with all the strength left in his thin arms.
“Because that’s one of the thoughts I’ve been having!” Potter yelled, grabbing Draco’s shoulders, holding him still. “I didn’t think I’d ever have the chance again. I wasn’t thinking clearly, and I’m sorry.”
“Do you think I would’ve done that if I’d known it was you?”
“Draco, I could’ve been anyone. That’s the only reason anyone comes here,” Potter said gently, his eyes focused on Draco’s mouth.
“But you’re not just ‘anyone’.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No, you’re not. You got your dick sucked; what do you have to feel sorry about?”
Potter grimaced, and Draco felt a bit of satisfaction when he imagined the bruised jaw was responsible for it.
“But what if I sucked you off, too?” Potter’s words were so rushed and sudden that Draco wasn’t entirely certain he’d understood him until his trousers were being undone.
“Potter-”
“Just let me do this.”
Draco’s head was spinning as Potter fell to his knees before him. It was surreal, something which had never crossed his mind but felt like a fulfilled prophecy. Potter’s hands were on his hardening cock, warm and alive and frighteningly gentle as they freed his prick from the confines of his clothing. The elastic of his underwear was tight, cutting into his bollocks and squashing them against his thigh, but he barely noticed, not with Potter’s hot, slick mouth on his cock.
He wanted to moan, wanted to tangle his fingers in Potter’s thick mop of hair, wanted to fuck Potter’s mouth until Potter went hoarse. But he didn’t do any of those things; he couldn’t let Potter know how deep he’d wormed his way under Draco’s skin, into his brain like a recurring nightmare.
But Potter must’ve known, because Draco came embarrassingly quickly with a breathy ‘Fuck!’, so sudden that Potter couldn’t swallow it all and it dribbled down his chin and onto his shirt. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, staring through flesh and bone and sinew and into Draco’s soul with those big fucking green eyes; eyes which had stared death in the face, but were now darkened with unbridled lust. Draco couldn’t think of anything he’d wanted more, and the thought alone terrified him.
And so, he ran, into pouring summer rain, the sound of Potter’s trainers slapping wet pavement behind him.
~*~
Fin.