Chapter Eleven of 'Business Meetings'- Serious, Now
Chapter Ten.
Title: Business Meetings (11/15 or 16)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Draco, mentions of others
Rating: R
Warnings: Creature!fic, angst, violence, sex, ignores the epilogue.
Summary: Draco leads a powerful group of vampires. Harry is their Ministry-appointed negotiator. Cue a series of once-monthly meetings where Harry and Draco argue about the various virtues of attacking the Ministry versus holding back from doing so, and, eventually, other things.
Author's Notes: This is going to be a fic with very short chapters, probably close to 1000 words each. I'm not sure yet how long it will be, but probably 15 or 16 chapters.
Chapter One.
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Eleven-Serious, Now
“You will not do me the discourtesy of lying this time.”
Draco spoke his words with a drawl, because the only other option was to snap them, leap off the throne, and force Potter to the ground so that he wouldn’t walk, and that would hurt him further. So Draco lounged on the throne and barely opened his mouth to speak. Someone who did not know him well, or thought all his humanity abandoned for the beast, would not think he cared.
Potter knew him, and paused with one foot over the threshold of the throne room, his eyelashes fluttering. Then he sighed and moved further into the room, his head half-hanging as if he thought that would make his throat less attractive to Draco. Draco splayed his nails out to scratch flakes of stone from the chair arms and rose to his feet, movements his iron control still demanded.
“There’s no blood to smell,” Potter said, and limped carefully to the chair Draco kept for him. Draco thought for a moment of summoning Amelia and the others to bring a bed instead, but rejected the notion. Potter would misread the gesture, and Draco was not in the mood to spend time combatting his mistaken perceptions. “The Healers at St. Mungo’s cleared me for duty. I honestly thought you wouldn’t-I thought you wouldn’t care all that much, as long as I was here and surviving.”
Draco strolled down the steps off the dais, concentrating. His foot thumped on the stairs with more force than a human being’s, but not sufficient to crack the rock. His toenails, he knew if he drew off the soft shoes that protected his feet, would look like transparent talons, gleaming fit to rival moonlight. He could shear skin with those nails, as he could with the ones on his hands. He could tear through steel. He could bite out the throats of a dozen victims in a minute, if he did not give himself time to linger and taste the blood.
He focused on those things because it was easier to do than think about the fact that he could not protect Potter from himself.
“Potter,” he said quietly, and Potter cocked his head at him, smile faint and wearing out in lines around his eyes. “If you believed that I cared for nothing more than your survival, then you would not have looked at me as you did last time.”
“Damn,” Potter said, and leaned back on his chair. That movement seemed to jostle something inside him, and he winced. Draco crossed the distance between them, but ended up behind the chair, his hand resting on Potter’s shoulder. Potter turned his head so his cheek rested against Draco’s arm, and sighed. “There were times in the last month when I thought it was a dream,” he said at last. “Not the news I discovered or the way you refused to leave. But the-the rest of it.”
“Why?” Draco asked, bending down and exhaling into Potter’s hair. “Because everyone else tells you that vampires are not to be trusted, that you should find something else, someone else, to feed your fantasies?” He smiled, and tapped the edge of one fang against Potter’s earlobe, then had to stop. Even that close, the scent of the skin, the blood, the warmth, overwhelmed him. “Give me names. They will not say such things for long.”
“It wasn’t anything they did,” Potter said shortly, though the rush of blood through his veins faster than normal said that yes, there existed people who would tell him such things about Draco. Draco smiled, and thought of skin tearing. “It was something I did to myself. I’ve-I’ve been involved in situations this month that showed me an uglier side of myself, something I never thought I could do. I’ve learned that I’m not honest and honorable and all the rest of the rot that I try to sell people. I don’t know why I would be attractive to someone like you.” He whispered the last words.
Draco would have heard them if he stood on the other side of the world, if there was an ocean of blood between them. This time, he extended his tongue and licked the side of Potter’s neck. Potter went still, but not before he had turned his head slightly to the side, in an unmistakable gesture of welcome.
“You have stood in front of me,” Draco said. “You have killed for me. You have admitted that you try to treat vampires like humans when you can, and that you have fought legislation that aims to control my flock. If the position of negotiator was meant to punish you, you reacted against it by making sure that you took it over yourself and treated it seriously.” He brought his other hand into play, touching Harry’s other shoulder, massaging them as a way to force him to relax. Harry closed his eyes and tilted his head back, letting Draco do as he would. “I tried, once, before I thought about it as deeply as I should have, to claim you as mine. Your blood tastes good to me.”
Harry snorted weakly. “But a lot of people’s blood might taste good to you. You’re a vampire.”
“You think I have lost my sense of taste since I died?” Draco asked him, into his hair. “That is not true. In any way I can think of. I would not take a lover who endangered myself or the flock, a lover who was not attractive, a lover whose blood was mere sustenance to me.” He touched Harry’s face beneath the eye with a single sharp nail, and Harry’s fingers came up and curled around his finger, pressing indentations into Draco’s hard skin. Draco closed his eyes and hummed. “Now. Tell me what you did that convinced you of this.”
“You spend a lot of time telling me to tell you shit,” Harry mumbled. “Sometimes I think you say that more often than any other order combined.”
“If you would tell me what concerned you the moment you entered the room,” Draco murmured back, “I would not need to issue that order. And if you believe that your wounds are of less interest to me than attempts to attack my flock, I would say that the mistake is yours, and a sad one.”
Harry spent a few moments in silence, gathering his strength. Draco knew it was so, and did not press him to speak, but contented himself with learning the scent of Harry’s hair and the places on his scalp that made him murmur and turn his head.
“I went on a typical raid,” Harry said, his voice quiet. “We had all the information we should have needed about the people who were inside the building, how they were positioned, what they had done.” His voice slipped for a moment, and then recovered. “I was supposed to go in through the front doors-it was a small house with a large room on the ground floor where they’d knocked out all the walls-and I would have line of sight on the other Aurors as well as the Dark wizards.
“It started going wrong the instant we went in there. Someone used Peruvian Darkness Powder-and someone has to have a long talk with George about his clients-” He opened one eye so he could catch Draco’s.
Draco smiled back, not minding the reference to his own use of the powder at all. The moment when he had let Death Eaters into Hogwarts seemed so long ago, belonging to a part of his life when he was still human, a part of his life before he discovered his appreciation for Harry.
“And we couldn’t fucking see.” Potter’s voice descended. “I cast a Lumos, but that only goes so far in powder like that. I heard people blundering and cursing, and I recognized some of them by their voices, but the criminals weren’t cursing, they were trying to slip away as fast as they possibly could.
“I heard someone scream, then. Not Ron-another Auror, Hawthorn, a bloke who might make something of himself one day, if he survives this. Last I knew, he was in hospital and still trying to recover use of his limbs.” Harry tensed up again.
Draco leaned down and rested his cheek on Harry’s hair, heavily enough to drive him into the chair. It was a less violent response than he might have showed when Harry expressed concern about someone else, and he hoped Harry understood that.
Harry seemed to take the hint, since he reached up and rested a hand on Draco’s temple before continuing. “So. Um. I cast a spell that cleared away some of the Darkness Powder, and I saw Hawthorn down in the middle of it all with a spell that was eating away his nerves. Standing over him was one of the Dark wizards who’d been-God, it sounds so stupid to talk about it now-changing people into animals that they could sell at high prices.
“She looked at me, and she smiled. She was torturing Hawthorn to death right in front of me, and she smiled. I-Draco, I set her on fire.”
Draco purred at him. “Perhaps it is because fire would consume me quickly instead of slowly, but that does not seem like such a horrible way to die.”
Harry shook his head, nearly hard enough to dislodge Draco. Draco held him down again. If this was the only way he could embrace Harry for the moment, then he would take it. Harry would, sooner or later, calm down enough that Draco could hold him more easily. “Tell me what happened,” he said, closer to a question this time.
Harry gave a dutiful chuckle before he closed his eyes, and Draco could almost feel the currents dancing in his brain as he sought for the words. “Draco, it was-it was horrible. Burning isn’t a quick way to die for humans. It’s horribly painful. And I followed her. I kept the flames alive when she would have put them out. Then I-I hoisted her into the air and used her as a torch for everyone, to overcome the Darkness Powder and light up what they were doing. And I did all that before I even thought of helping Hawthorn.”
He lapsed into silence. Draco stood with him and used the silence to listen to his blood, the rise and rush of it through his veins.
“Did the other Aurors recoil in horror?” Draco whispered at last, and he knew what answer those other Aurors should hope for, if Harry did not.
“All except Ron,” Harry said, and Draco shifted. Harry twisted around to look at him and added hastily, “Don’t hurt them. Please. They were right too. I wasn’t-I wasn’t sane right then, and I felt horrible afterwards.”
Draco moved around in front of the chair to kneel before Harry. Harry followed him with his eyes, his hands clenching and holding each other. Draco forced the fingers gently apart so that he could hold them smooth and flat on Harry’s knees, petting the knuckles and the skin in between. When that didn’t seem to distract Harry, he bowed his head and kissed them, pushing his tongue against the webs of Harry’s fingers. Harry relaxed with a small gasp.
“I do not think you are a horrible person,” Draco said. “I think you can be a killer. Violent in protection of those you determine need your protection. I am a predator myself, Harry. A killer. Did you think I would reject you because of that?”
Harry sat still. To his credit, he seemed to be thinking deeply. Draco let him think, but kept his fangs near Harry’s hands. Now and then, he turned his head to the side so that one or the other fang would brush, lightly, so lightly, against Harry’s skin. Test and temptation for him, reassurance for Harry that Draco still wanted him no matter what he had done.
“I-thought you might,” Harry said quietly. “Because I burned someone. Because that’s the way that a lot of people kill vampires.”
“Knowing that you can burn someone does not mean that you will burn me,” Draco said. “And I will not reject you unless you betray me or the flock. Now. What would make you turn against me?”
“If I discovered you drained a human who was unwilling to donate his blood to you, and it wasn’t an accident,” Harry said, after another few moments of thought, his voice thick and heavy.
“And nothing else?” Draco rose to his feet and reached out to lay his hand gently along the side of Harry’s neck. “Not if I killed someone else, someone who was violent to you or threatened you? Not if I ventured out to defend myself, to carry the war to the Ministry?”
Harry shook his head. Draco smiled and drew him to his feet this time, and bowed his head so that his mouth lay near Harry’s throat. He drew Harry’s head down a moment later, so his mouth was in the same position along Draco’s throat.
“This is how dominant vampires stand when they want to seal an alliance,” he said. “I don’t ask you to drink. I want you to stand like this with me.”
And Harry did, with his eyes closed and his breath rushing along. Draco closed his eyes and did much the same thing, with the absence of the breath. In that silence, Harry passed through grief and self-hatred and perhaps understood that there was absolute acceptance for him here, if he wanted it. Unflinching, that facing of what he was, that acknowledgment of his power and his gifts.
And Draco felt, and was, and had, the same thing.
There is nothing on earth that would make me yield this. Nothing that he would ever do, even if he could.
Chapter Twelve.
This entry was originally posted at http://lomonaaeren.dreamwidth.org/416853.html. Comment wherever you like.