Friday morning, 28 August 1942, at Malfoy Manor...

[darklingboy]

Mercutio hadn’t slept well-he’d even got up once to write in his diary, which was now shoved under a pillow, and wasn’t he glad he’d managed not to get ink all over the sheets-so when he heard the knock, he picked a towel up from the floor, wrapped it around his waist, then groaned and opened the door, muttering in Italian. He expected to see his older brother standing there demanding he present himself at breakfast in proper order. Instead it was Tom, and he’d hardly expected that.

“I’m sorry,” said Tom. He looked drawn and tired, still wearing the rumpled clothes he’d thrown on in the middle of the night. “Can I come in?”

“Of course,” said Mercutio, running a hand through his curls even though he knew it was hopeless-he always looked like hell in the morning.

Tom followed him in and closed the door behind them. “I shouldn’t have gone,” he said, and bit his lip. “It was-I was upset, but…” He trailed off, awkwardly, and frowned again. “It was a bad dream, and I wanted to be alone. I’m sorry.”

Mercutio nodded. “People do strange things when they’re upset,” he said, patting the bed as he sat down with a thud. He reached under the pillow, still looking at Tom, and pushed the diary down between the bed and the headboard, working by feel: he didn’t want Tom to see it, or to notice him hiding it.

Tom sat beside him, hugged his knees to his chest. “I shouldn’t have woken you,” he mumbled. “It’s early.”

“Better you than Marco,” said Mercutio with a crooked, sleepy grin.

Tom smiled back, a flickering anxious expression. “Is he coming soon?”

“Mille dii, I hope not,” Mercutio said fervently. “I wish Melina would keep him entertained more often of a morning.”

“All right,” said Tom, relaxing a little. “Listen, Mercutio-I shouldn’t have done that, last night. I liked it,” he added, with sudden candour, “but it wasn’t…I’m not an invert.”

“Well, no,” said Mercutio, confused again, “lots of people like it both ways, or any way they can get it. But why shouldn’t you-? There isn’t someone else, is there?” If there was someone else, he was just going to give up on things for a while. First Dylan had been in love with Moody all along, and Hadrian with Endymion…

“No!” Tom exclaimed, startled. “But-for people who aren’t inverted, it’s not normal.”

Mercutio blinked at him. “Who told you that?” Moral objections he had heard of before but this was a new one entirely.

Tom looked confused. “Well, it isn’t, is it?”

“It’s normal to do it with whoever you want, as long as they want it too,” said Mercutio. “Though, most people don’t want as much or as many as Pappa,” he allowed with a grin.

“But it’s not normal to want boys, not unless your kundalini is inverted,” Tom insisted. He was sure that he had read that in a book at school. Or perhaps it was something that Rosier had said.

“I don’t know that word,” said Mercutio, blinking, “but I know that people want all sorts of things, and as long as they can find a willing partner, there’s not any reason why they shouldn’t have what they want. Only benandanti think otherwise.”

“Kundalini is your sexual energy,” Tom explained, and added patiently, “but I don’t know what benandanti are.”

“Benandanti,” said Mercutio, because he’d never heard them called anything else-it was even what they called themselves-and then, realising what it was that made them different from streghe, he added: “Christians.”

Tom flushed. “I’m not a Christian,” he hissed, although a calmer person might have pointed out that anyone who spent as much time hating the Christians’ God as Tom did had probably not entirely stopped believing.

“Then it doesn’t matter, what’s this ‘normal’,” said Mercutio gently. After a moment he yawned. “I envy you,” he admitted. “I wish I could do it with both boys and girls! Like Pappa.”

“I suppose you think I’m being silly,” Tom said quietly, and felt very stupid. He had always known how much Mercutio admired his father and he ought to have realised that Mercutio would not understand.

Mercutio studied him, his brow furrowed. “No,” he said after a moment, “you seem to care a great deal about this. I just don’t understand it. When I want something, and I can have it, I take it. Perhaps you can tell me where you see the harm in it?”

“It’s no harm to you, but it’s as though-it’s not natural,” Tom insisted. “It’s as though I wanted Fiammetta, or-or Lucius!” Tom did not want Lucius. That was sick and disgusting and wrong and why had he even been able to think of it? He did not, he absolutely did not, want to touch Lucius like that, to feel that soft skin and that long blond hair.

“No, it isn’t,” said Mercutio. “They’re children.”

“And you’re a boy,” said Tom.

“Yes, well, there’s no harm in boys fucking each other, as long as they’re old enough. And you said it would be all right to have sex with boys if that was the only thing you wanted. But even if you only wanted to have sex with children, it would still be wrong, because it hurts them,” said Mercutio. “Boys together don’t hurt anyone or anything. In fact it’s more dangerous for boys with girls, unless they’re married. If I were a girl you could get me pregnant, ruin my honour, all sorts of things!”

“I’m not saying that it would hurt you, but it’s not right. I shouldn’t want to do it.” Tom looked utterly miserable, pale and worried and hunched over on the bed.

“Why not?” Mercutio put his hand on Tom’s shoulder. “I like it. I’m good at it.”

“Because I’m not an invert.” Tom started to pull away from his hand, then slumped tiredly against Mercutio. “And people aren’t in the middle.”

“Yes they are, all the time,” said Mercutio, who thought that was the silliest thing he had ever heard. “I don’t know about Britain, but in Italy it’s very common.” He thought for a moment. Who was the most British person he knew who was ‘in the middle’? “You admire him. Kyteler. Zia Lavinia’s man, yes?”

“Yes,” Tom said slowly, because he couldn’t see what Kyteler had to do with this, and a lot of people admired him.

“He’s in the middle,” said Mercutio. “He’s with Zia Lavinia now, and he was married for many years, but he had a great love affair once with a man, one of the Auror-Commandants. And Pappa’s in the middle and all over it. He loved Donna Dracaena before she was changed and all through her changes.”

Tom had rather ascribed Don Zabini’s peculiarities to being a decadent aristocrat, but he’d never imagined Kyteler in love with a man, and wrinkled his brow. “Magister Kyteler? Really?”

“Yes, with Delgardie,” said Mercutio. “They were walking arm-in-arm last Sunday with Zia Lavinia, and Donna Dracaena told me about it when I asked her why.”

“I don’t know,” Tom said hesitantly, though he had seen Delgardie in the papers and what shocked him was not that he couldn’t imagine it at all, but that he could. “It still seems…I like you, I want to be your friend, but…”

“But?” Mercutio shrugged. “It’s not wrong to be in the middle. I don’t think people can help it any more than they can help being on one side or the other. Those boys who were hand-fast last night, one of them used to walk out with girls, Bella said so.”

“But how can your kundalini be only partly inverted?” Tom asked, blinking. “It’s either normal or it’s not.”

“I don’t think that is what they mean, though I have not read this book about the kundalini,” said Mercutio. “Maybe you should ask Pappa, he knows about things like that. There are books by priests that say all sorts of things are unnatural, and they use all sorts of perverse logic to prove it, but what is natural is what’s in nature, and what’s in nature is…everything.”

Tom shook his head. “I…don’t think so,” he demurred, and yawned widely. He didn’t think Don Zabini liked him. He knew that Don Zabini had disliked his mother.

“I can ask him,” said Mercutio. “If you are too embarrassed, and it bothers you so much. It seems to bother you a great deal. I don’t understand. You seem to be saying that what we did would be all right only if you were capable of nothing else, but I can’t understand why you think so.”

“I didn’t use to want things like this,” Tom said carefully. “It isn’t…normal.”

“You keep saying that word,” said Mercutio. shaking his head. “I thought it meant the same thing as ‘common’. But it is actually very common for people to want both kinds of sex. Or any kind of sex they can get!”

“It means the same as naturale, I think,” Tom said.

“But it’s perfectly natural,” Mercutio objected. “If it weren’t natural, people wouldn’t do it.”

“People do lots of things that aren’t natural,” Tom objected. “If we only did natural things we’d be eating our meat raw and living in caves. But those are things that make our lives better-if everyone did that there wouldn’t be any more people.”

“Sex makes my life better!” Mercutio stared at Tom in disbelief. “It’s natural for humans to use tools and invent things. That’s what our nature is. Nature doesn’t mean to behave like the animals! It would be no more natural for you to behave like a cat than for a cat to go to school!”

“People are meant to be together as men and women, and sometimes they’re born different so that all they can do is be with their own sex and it’s not their fault,” Tom said carefully. “But if you can do it the right way you should, shouldn’t you?”

Mercutio bit his lip. “Who do you suppose decided how it is meant to be?” There seemed an obvious hidden antecedent to that line of reasoning, and he was determined to make Tom notice it. As far as Mercutio was concerned, the only wrong ways to have sex were the unsatisfying ones. And doing it with someone who didn’t want it was wrong, but he wouldn’t have called that ‘unnatural’ either, given how sadly common it was.

Tom blinked. “It’s obvious.” Men and women fit together. Men and men…could be made to fit together, but only by using parts of the body that were not intended to be used that way.

“No,” said Mercutio, “it really isn’t. People can do all kinds of things that are pleasurable together, so all of them are clearly intended to be pleasurable. The things that are wrong, are not pleasurable, at least not for both parties. Some things that are pleasurable can produce children, and some things that are pleasurable cannot. And some people are unable to enjoy all of those things, but there is no reason that those who can enjoy them all should not do so.” He was rather proud of this logical reasoning.

“You can’t just do things because they feel good!” Tom objected fiercely.

“Why not?” said Mercutio, who thought this was a very reasonable question. “If they are not harmful to anyone else, what possible objection can there be?”

“But if it means there’s something wrong,” Tom insisted.

“Wrong how?” Mercutio asked in utter bewilderment. “I think that if one of us has something wrong, it’s me, because there are things that I cannot enjoy!”

“If something feels good because you’re-sick, or mad.” Tom bit his lip.

Mercutio realised he was staring at Tom as if he were a very strange insect, or one of the odd beings that lived in the castle, and tried very hard not to stare, but he had to look away and that seemed worse. “Nobody’s mad here. And I don’t think that you are sick.”

“Good,” said Tom, and shook his head. “I’m not making any sense,” he said, because he knew that both he and Mercutio were rational people, and he had explained it several times, so he must not have done it very well. “I’m tired.”

“Perhaps you have been given bad information,” Mercutio suggested gently. Tom was a rational person. There was no way that he would believe something so very bizarre unless he was working from incorrect first principles.

“Perhaps,” Tom agreed, and sighed.

Mercutio stroked his back. “Do you want to lie down and get some more sleep? Marco has probably gone to work by now so I think we are safe. And they will probably hold breakfast rather late since I doubt the happy couple will be out of bed either.”

“That would be nice,” Tom said. He wasn’t sure he’d be able to fall asleep-he had a lot to think about.

Mercutio kissed his cheek and pulled him down back into the bed.

Tom curled up around him, grateful for the other boy’s warmth against his chest. If there was something wrong with him, it was nice to be here anyway.

Mercutio smiled and pulled the covers up over them, then fell fast asleep; he hadn’t slept well after Tom had left, and from the look of him Tom hadn’t either.

theoktonic and darklingboy