FIC: Nothing Left to Release, Severus/Lucius
I know, what am I doing writing fic instead of sleeping? Actually, this was already written, I just decided to edit the sucker and post it before the challenge was up. And also ::gasp:: it's not Snupin!
Title: Nothing Left to Release
Author: Rose_Whispers
Rating: R
Pairing: Severus/Lucius
Summary: Severus reflects on his life and his interactions with Lucius Malfoy
Challenge: Unrequited from hp_literotica
Disclaimer: Neither the Harry Potter universe nor anything by David Bowie are mine. Please don’t sue me!
Warnings: Angst, remembered character death, a smackerel of violence in the form of omophagia
Word Count: 3323
A/N: Atmospherically inspired by David Bowie’s “Bring Me the Disco King”, from which the title is also taken. Posted separately to my journal, slither_in and hp_literotica.
Severus watches the flames trip over each other, throwing his sharp features into sharper relief. He sees the fire without seeing the fire, thoughts focused instead on one face, on one person whose iciness is almost a match for the blaze. And as he watches, he remembers. The heat melts away years, and he is once again eighteen.
Lucius never kissed him. A strange matter of principle, as though it wasn’t really adultery if such intimacies were forsaken. As though the empty yet overwhelming friction of skin on skin and hissed words and flashing, demanding eyes meant absolutely nothing. Which Severus supposed was true.
It was Lucius Malfoy, of course, who had suggested the dark young man from Hogwarts as a likely Death Eater. Dark of feature, dark of thought. Lucius, who had looked like light but whose core was black. Lucius, four years older than Severus, who had mentioned to the Dark Lord the budding talent at potions, the craving for knowledge of the Dark Arts, who had promised Severus free reign at potions development, who had hinted at power and respect, who had insinuated so much more. Too much more for Severus to say no.
And less than a month after graduation, Severus found himself in the bowels of a castle somewhere on the Moors, brewing illegal and experimental draughts, fed by academic fervour, surrounded by smoke and the aroma of his own creativity and aptitude. Drunk on the power and the promises and Lucius’ weekly visits, Severus created. And the Dark Lord was pleased. Each Monday, Lucius relayed the Dark Lord’s wishes to the young disciple, and Severus presented him with the latest lot of potions. As the weeks progressed, Lucius’ visits extended. He spoke of his wife, of her pregnancy, of the glorious future under the Dark Lord’s mantel.
Severus felt awkward in Lucius’ presence, all ungraceful angles and jutting joints and too-long legs. He was acutely aware of his hair hanging in oily strings, of the jaundiced cast of his skin next to Lucius’ ivory, patrician complexion and flawless mane. Lucius had always fascinated him, an example of what a pureblood wizard should look like.
Severus became aware as the summer progressed that his burning jealousy for the man was mingled with something else entirely, something else that burned just as brightly. Lucius stayed for tea or lunch and spoke of his bloody wife and the bloody heir she carried within her and sometimes let his gaze linger just a little too long on Severus’ lips. And then came an evening in late August when he arrived at seven o’clock, the first time he’d ever visited after dusk.
“Narcissa is too weak to do much but lay in bed these days,” Lucius commented. He set his wineglass down deliberately and reached out, tracing the back of Severus’ hand with the lightest, coldest touch. Severus drew in a breath but kept very still.
“You intrigue me, Severus,” Lucius continued, eyes focused once more on the younger man’s lips. “So much latent... talent.”
Severus desperately wanted to snatch his hand away but the flames kindling in him shot sparks through his nerve endings that short-circuited any possible movement he might make. Instead, he tried to speak. “Lucius, what...”
Lucius stood, leading Severus to his feet as well, continuing to sketch patterns across Severus’ hand. He stepped forward, a breath away, as if considering the situation. Lucius always thought things through to see what would benefit him best.
For such a frosty man, Lucius could send heat crackling through Severus’ body and he moaned involuntarily and parted his lips. Something akin to triumph flickered across Lucius’ normally frozen face and he leaned the rest of the way forward to take Severus’ earlobe between his teeth. Severus could sense an unpleasant, gleeful smile stealing across Lucius’ countenance, but he didn’t care. Not when those princely fingers were efficiently doing away with Severus’ robes, not when that haughty tone was whispering the most lurid words into his ear, into his soul.
Severus dragged himself back, panting, searching Lucius’ face for any clue as to what Lucius was thinking. He couldn’t read anything there at all. He wanted to run, he wanted to scream, but his muscles wouldn’t let him. His traitorous body could only lean in for more.
“Fuck.”
“Indeed,” Lucius agreed as he divested the potion maker of the rest of his clothing.
Severus runs a finger along his collar, remembering that first time. Remembering the disappointment merging with addiction, the skillful hands and adroit tongue and total lack of emotion. Remembering it happened three more times before he was brought before the Dark Lord. And each time after Lucius left, he couldn’t decide whether to weep or to laugh.
They stood in a circle, as was customary. So many layers of meaning in that shape- the inner sanctum, the core followers, the cyclical nature of the world and of magic. Of equality within the ranks, like a mirror of King Arthur’s knights, no one quester placed above another. Though of course within the circle some were more equal than others. Those who stood closest to the Dark Lord were his most trusted. The LeStranges, the Notts. The Malfoys, represented only by Lucius because Naricissa’s pregnancy was draining her of all energy.
And Severus at the centre, the nucleus of the circle, the focal point of the intensely curious stares, faces naked before the days they wore masks to these meetings. Severus kneeling before the Dark Lord, feeling the energy of the chanting figures thrumming around him, magic pulsating into his blood, into his being, marking him as the Dark Lord’s own. The Mark they would place upon his wrist would be nothing but a visual emblem of the far deeper claiming of his services and his soul. That claiming would give him over completely, allow the Dark Lord access to his thoughts, to his powers, securing his obedience in a way no oath could. Severus should have been frightened. Possibly was, just a bit.
It shouldn’t have surprised him when he was invited to join the inner circle. The Dark Lord’s power was still too new, too untested, to be picky about recruitment. In the coming years, potential Death Eaters would have their loyalty examined, meted out through the flesh and blood of those they should have loved, through the torture of strangers they should never have met. But in the early years the Dark Lord thirsted after his talents too much to set him through the trials to come.
Perhaps if he had, Severus’ eyes would have opened. Perhaps if he’d been asked to perform ritual murder, he’d have stepped away. Too many perhapses.
The chanting grew more frenzied, sound overlapping sound, so thick in the air it almost seemed visible, wrapping Severus in abnormal warmth, imparting a conflicting sense of becoming an equal part of something greater and being lowered, given over in submission. He fought the urge to shiver, then did shiver when Lucius stepped forward.
The Dark Lord, of course, never touched anyone then, not even his most devout followers. Instead, a representative, imbued just for a moment with his power, would make the physical claim for him, completing the ritual and binding him body and soul to the Dark Lord. Severus hadn’t expected Lucius. His heartbeat accelerated and now he was afraid. For if Lucius had volunteered for this, it must mean something. The man never acted without reason. If it meant that he cared, even a little, beyond the perfunctory availability of Severus’ agile body...
He turned his face up wonderingly, trying not to blush. Squelching the horrifying disappointment at the expression on Lucius’ face. No love, not even lust. As though he couldn’t even see Severus, as though they were simply two marionettes without thoughts of their own, dancing to the Dark Lord’s wicked song. Which of course they were.
Severus held out his left wrist as he’d been instructed, and Lucius pointed his wand at it, the energy of the Dark Lord’s will and the chanting circle’s power converging and intensifying, searing Severus with exquisite, abhorrent pain as he felt himself being opened wide to the Dark Lord’s mind, felt himself ripped open, left raw and quivering and remade into nothing at that lightest of brushes of mind on mind. Now he truly was frightened. He looked up desperately at Lucius, who bent down at last to administer the kiss. No words were necessary in this ritual. Words could be broken. A claim could not. And so Lucius cemented it with a kiss, cool lips and cool exterior feeding the fire that only flared brighter in Severus.
The electricity from Lucius’ lips and the dark magic surrounding them mingled in his blood. But for the beautiful face shrouded by a black hood, Lucius’ kiss was indistinguishable from a Dementor’s, cruel and lifeless and soul-destroying. No, not destroying. Soul-seizing. For as Lucius’ lips descended and connected with Severus’, Severus lost himself utterly as he gave his soul to Lucius, becoming nothing more in that moment but the kiss, becoming Lucius’ completely and entirely.
The violent chorus around him climaxed and died down, and Lucius drew back, returning to the circle, leaving Severus alone and feeling surprisingly windswept. He stumbled to his own place within the circle, six away from the Dark Lord, and managed to avoid collapsing until after the ceremony drew to a close and he apparated to his workshop.
Severus knows he is not so much a fool as to become a slave to love. But he will not fool himself either into believing that he was not in love with Lucius Malfoy. He takes a long sip from the flask at his waist as recollections dance unbidden across his mind, flashes of image and sound and scent. Lucius’ hair running through his fingers or tickling his chest as Lucius’ cadence propelled them both into an ecstasy of merging flesh and panting moans. The way Lucius would appear when it pleased him and take Severus with little preparation, for his own pleasure. Severus never objecting, reminding himself that Lucius was lonely, that Narcissa’s miscarriage had driven her into a separate bedroom, that she wouldn’t suffer Lucius’ cherished touch, that Lucius needed this, needed him. Severus shakes his head ruefully at the beautiful, needful lies he would spin for his own disbelieving mind, through four pregnancies and three miscarriages and the nursing of an heir, as Narcissa spurned her husband’s physical advances while hoarding his love. Because Lucius, for all of his flaws, loved Narcissa. Always had.
It took several weeks for Severus to understand what had happened. He caught on before anyone else did, which he knew saved his life. They would never have permitted him to live if they knew. He wouldn’t admit that he was in love, of course, could barely acknowledge the lust that drove him to accept Lucius’ visits. But the love blistered within him, scalding him from the inside out with each passing day. It was worse, far worse than it had been before his acceptance into the Dark Lord’s inner circle. He supposed it was because he’d been allowed a kiss, one kiss that he clung to and played over in his mind, one kiss that meant less than nothing to Lucius and all of creation to Severus.
The night of his first summons, the Dark Lord brought in those lesser followers he suspected of betrayal and then flicked his will through all of his Death Eaters and sent them into a violent delirium. Out of their minds, under worse than the Imperius, they tore the cowering traitors to pieces with their bare hands. No wands, no magic. Blood flowing from their fingernails, from their teeth, coating their skin, matting their hair. These most aristocratic of wizards, reduced to savage, soiled puppets. And Severus was entirely unaffected. Of course he’d felt the brush of the Dark Lord’s mind, had understood what was being asked of him. But he certainly hadn’t felt compelled to follow the suggestion.
At home the next morning, vomiting out his disgust and horror, curling into a fetal position and shaking viciously, Severus tried to process what had happened. He’d watched Lucius and the inhuman light of fevered insanity in his eyes, had understood implicitly what was going on. Only his basest instinct of self-preservation had saved him, automatically kicking him into motion, to the furthest corner of the room with the remains of two already-dead acolytes, frolicking in their blood, holding above his head the remains of liver, of lungs. Hiding behind a façade so that the Dark Lord wouldn’t suspect.
Severus paid attention at each subsequent summons. All the Death Eaters were under the Dark Lord’s influence, body and soul. Severus alone was autonomous. Being eaten alive by his own desires for Lucius Malfoy, but free.
And then he understood. Lucius Malfoy. When he’d been kissed during the ceremony, it should have bound him to the Dark Lord inextricably. Instead, he’d been bound to Lucius. And that overriding love shielded him from the Dark Lord’s compelling whims, kept the Dark Lord out of his innermost thoughts. Love of Lucius alone allowed him to betray the Death Eaters. And Lucius never knew.
The bourbon burns through him, a baptism by fire and alcohol and memories, and a lifelong, persistent ache that no potion can rid him of. Though he has tried. All manner of substances and faceless encounters that provide a warm body but achieve only a further icing over of whatever heart he is still in possession of. He remembers, strangely, that Lucius’ hair smelled like lotus blossoms. Odd, something so holy emanating from someone so impure. Impure, and yet shaped of pure darkness, a purity that has drawn Severus all through the years.
Lucius’ visits had grown no less frequent in the days following the claiming. Severus taught himself to wait patiently for the sound of boot heels on stone, for the customary dimming of the torches and the cool fingers curling around his neck from behind, drawing him backward in a gesture that could be caress or garroting. And then robes were whisked away and lips patterned meaningless runes across too-prominent ribs and the taut peaks of nipples, and fingers splayed across thighs while nails raked the ashen, sun-starved skin, leaving designs of sanguineous predication like a signature across his back and buttocks.
Severus bent over the work desk. Severus up against the wall, hanging on to an extinguished sconce with legs wrapped around faultless, bucking hips. Severus on the floor, his back arching into a U as sensation overwhelmed him, caught between the glacial cool of the granite below and the wizard above. His own heat, his own passion, being slowly leeched away, a little more with each visit.
Lucius only came to him when he needed release. When Narcissa allowed him close to her again, he would forget Severus’ existence, leaving the younger man brooding and bitter and hateful, brewing potions that wrought the most extravagant powers, the most lavish deaths. Severus didn’t know which he hated more- Lucius looking at him as though he was invisible while also ignoring him, or Lucius looking at him as though he was invisible while he fucked him.
Lucius never stayed, of course. Collected himself and melted into the night, leaving the potion maker beyond empty, just an envelope of skin and bone and sinew with nothing left still named “Severus”. He would sit before the fire and loathe himself for this one weakness. For no matter how many times he swore to say no, when piercing eyes and probing fingers and self-assured tilt of chin presented themselves in a Lucius-shaped package, he was powerless to refuse.
For two years he was at the call of the one he served and the whim of the one he loved, never sure which of them left him feeling more used up. Comforting himself with the fact that he was helping Lucius deal with his frustrations, assuring himself that he was necessary, recognizing somewhere deep that to Lucius he was merely willing and functional.
Severus is beginning to sweat from the heat of the blaze, but he will not turn away, not until it has burned down to its embers. His fingers flex and unflex as he considers his past. No one epiphany had sent him to Dumbledore to begin life as a double agent. It was a slow swelling of pain and yearning and dismay and disgust, paired with the realization that if the Dark Lord could not control Severus’ thoughts, neither could he read them. He’d seen enough of the plans that lay ahead for the Death Eaters to know that this was not a future he wanted any part of. He was sufficiently shrewd to comprehend that Dumbledore would lead the charge against the Dark Lord. And so he’d presented himself to Dumbledore and explained that he was not under the Dark Lord’s influence, that he could be of assistance, that he would trade his services for absolution in the years to come. And Dumbledore hadn’t asked questions. He’d acceded and sent Severus back to commit mayhem in the name of the greater good.
In the years following the Dark Lord’s first demise, as Severus set up as a professor of Hogwarts, Lucius’ visitations became less common but never ceased altogether. Sometimes he’d awaken with Lucius in his rooms, crawling over him and tearing away his nightshirt. His body would thrill to the remembered sensuality, devoid of feeling but overflowing with physical release. He would still tell himself that it was enough, that it would do. And it had to. Lucius never offered anything more. Lucius, through all the years, remained loyally in love with his wife.
Severus knew that his situation was infinitely worse than those mooning morons who yearned chastely after someone they couldn’t have. He was not one of those pitiable souls whose beloved was ignorant of his devotion, who was never allowed to touch and taste. The one he loved was absolutely aware of Severus’ ardor, had been for twenty years, had exploited those feelings thoroughly, taking from Severus what physical gratification he could and leaving an empty husk in his wake. That Severus’ feelings were unreturned while his body was taken wounded him more than simple longing for an unattainable sweetheart ever could.
And so the Dark Lord rose again, and Severus spied again, and Lucius descended like an incubus to use him again and again and again. Rather than spinning himself the fabrication that he was needed, that one day Lucius might return his love, he instead insisted that to terminate the trysts would arouse suspicion and be detrimental to the Order. He continued to live at the mercy of that mouth desecrating his body and his sanity, at the punishing frame that left him aching and defeated.
The Dark Lord fell and took his Death Eaters along with him. All but Severus, who remained secretly impervious to the Dark Lord’s will. And Severus was free after two decades.
The flames are scant intimations of their former glory, the heat long since faded as Severus finally comes back to himself in the present. No hint of the corpse that fuelled the fire is visible. No showy blond hair, no contemptuous curl of lip. Lucius Malfoy is gone at last. Nothing remains but deceptively sedate ash the colour of Lucius’ complexion when Severus had found him on the battlefield. Lifeless. As lifeless as he had left Severus.
And Severus breathes, perceiving nothing in the air of the sweetness he imagined freedom would be, tasting instead something bitter and acrid and empty. He draws his robes around his gaunt frame and turns away from the remains of Lucius and of his own life, not happy but disconnectedly satisfied that the fire has at last been extinguished.
Fin
Bring Me the Disco King, by David Bowie
You promised me the ending would be clear
You'd let me know when the time was now
Don't let me know when you're opening the door
Stab me in the dark, let me disappear
Memories that flutter like bats out of hell
Stab you from the city spires
Life wasn't worth the balance
Or the crumpled paper it was written on
Don't let me know we're invisible
Don't let me know we're invisible
Hot cash days that you trailed around
Cold cold nights under chrome and glass
Led me downriver of perfumed limbs
Sent me to the streets with the good time girls
Don't let me know we're invisible
Don't let me know we're invisible
We could dance, dance, dance thru' the fire
Dance, dance, dance thru' the fire
Feed me no lies
I don't know about you, I don't know about you
Breathe through the years
I don't know about you, I don't know about you
Bring me the disco king
I don't know about you, I don't know about you
Dead or alive, feed me no lies
Bring me the disco king, bring me the disco king
Bring me the disco king, bring me the head of the disco king
Spin-offs with those who slept like corpses
Damp morning rays in the stiff bad clubs
Killing time in the '70s
Smelling of love through the moist winds
Don't let me know when you're opening the door
Close me in the dark, let me disappear
Soon there'll be nothing left of me
Nothing left to release
Dance, dance, dance thru' the fire
Dance, dance, dance thru' the fire
Tell me no lies
I don't know about you, I don't know about you
Breathe through the years
I don't know about you, I don't know about you
Bring me the disco king
I don't know about you, I don't know about you
Breathe through the years
Dead or alive
Bring me the disco king
Bring me the disco king, bring me the disco king
Bring me the disco king, bring me the disco king
Bring me the disco king, bring me the disco king
Bring me the disco king
Title: Nothing Left to Release
Author: Rose_Whispers
Rating: R
Pairing: Severus/Lucius
Summary: Severus reflects on his life and his interactions with Lucius Malfoy
Challenge: Unrequited from hp_literotica
Disclaimer: Neither the Harry Potter universe nor anything by David Bowie are mine. Please don’t sue me!
Warnings: Angst, remembered character death, a smackerel of violence in the form of omophagia
Word Count: 3323
A/N: Atmospherically inspired by David Bowie’s “Bring Me the Disco King”, from which the title is also taken. Posted separately to my journal, slither_in and hp_literotica.
Severus watches the flames trip over each other, throwing his sharp features into sharper relief. He sees the fire without seeing the fire, thoughts focused instead on one face, on one person whose iciness is almost a match for the blaze. And as he watches, he remembers. The heat melts away years, and he is once again eighteen.
Lucius never kissed him. A strange matter of principle, as though it wasn’t really adultery if such intimacies were forsaken. As though the empty yet overwhelming friction of skin on skin and hissed words and flashing, demanding eyes meant absolutely nothing. Which Severus supposed was true.
It was Lucius Malfoy, of course, who had suggested the dark young man from Hogwarts as a likely Death Eater. Dark of feature, dark of thought. Lucius, who had looked like light but whose core was black. Lucius, four years older than Severus, who had mentioned to the Dark Lord the budding talent at potions, the craving for knowledge of the Dark Arts, who had promised Severus free reign at potions development, who had hinted at power and respect, who had insinuated so much more. Too much more for Severus to say no.
And less than a month after graduation, Severus found himself in the bowels of a castle somewhere on the Moors, brewing illegal and experimental draughts, fed by academic fervour, surrounded by smoke and the aroma of his own creativity and aptitude. Drunk on the power and the promises and Lucius’ weekly visits, Severus created. And the Dark Lord was pleased. Each Monday, Lucius relayed the Dark Lord’s wishes to the young disciple, and Severus presented him with the latest lot of potions. As the weeks progressed, Lucius’ visits extended. He spoke of his wife, of her pregnancy, of the glorious future under the Dark Lord’s mantel.
Severus felt awkward in Lucius’ presence, all ungraceful angles and jutting joints and too-long legs. He was acutely aware of his hair hanging in oily strings, of the jaundiced cast of his skin next to Lucius’ ivory, patrician complexion and flawless mane. Lucius had always fascinated him, an example of what a pureblood wizard should look like.
Severus became aware as the summer progressed that his burning jealousy for the man was mingled with something else entirely, something else that burned just as brightly. Lucius stayed for tea or lunch and spoke of his bloody wife and the bloody heir she carried within her and sometimes let his gaze linger just a little too long on Severus’ lips. And then came an evening in late August when he arrived at seven o’clock, the first time he’d ever visited after dusk.
“Narcissa is too weak to do much but lay in bed these days,” Lucius commented. He set his wineglass down deliberately and reached out, tracing the back of Severus’ hand with the lightest, coldest touch. Severus drew in a breath but kept very still.
“You intrigue me, Severus,” Lucius continued, eyes focused once more on the younger man’s lips. “So much latent... talent.”
Severus desperately wanted to snatch his hand away but the flames kindling in him shot sparks through his nerve endings that short-circuited any possible movement he might make. Instead, he tried to speak. “Lucius, what...”
Lucius stood, leading Severus to his feet as well, continuing to sketch patterns across Severus’ hand. He stepped forward, a breath away, as if considering the situation. Lucius always thought things through to see what would benefit him best.
For such a frosty man, Lucius could send heat crackling through Severus’ body and he moaned involuntarily and parted his lips. Something akin to triumph flickered across Lucius’ normally frozen face and he leaned the rest of the way forward to take Severus’ earlobe between his teeth. Severus could sense an unpleasant, gleeful smile stealing across Lucius’ countenance, but he didn’t care. Not when those princely fingers were efficiently doing away with Severus’ robes, not when that haughty tone was whispering the most lurid words into his ear, into his soul.
Severus dragged himself back, panting, searching Lucius’ face for any clue as to what Lucius was thinking. He couldn’t read anything there at all. He wanted to run, he wanted to scream, but his muscles wouldn’t let him. His traitorous body could only lean in for more.
“Fuck.”
“Indeed,” Lucius agreed as he divested the potion maker of the rest of his clothing.
Severus runs a finger along his collar, remembering that first time. Remembering the disappointment merging with addiction, the skillful hands and adroit tongue and total lack of emotion. Remembering it happened three more times before he was brought before the Dark Lord. And each time after Lucius left, he couldn’t decide whether to weep or to laugh.
They stood in a circle, as was customary. So many layers of meaning in that shape- the inner sanctum, the core followers, the cyclical nature of the world and of magic. Of equality within the ranks, like a mirror of King Arthur’s knights, no one quester placed above another. Though of course within the circle some were more equal than others. Those who stood closest to the Dark Lord were his most trusted. The LeStranges, the Notts. The Malfoys, represented only by Lucius because Naricissa’s pregnancy was draining her of all energy.
And Severus at the centre, the nucleus of the circle, the focal point of the intensely curious stares, faces naked before the days they wore masks to these meetings. Severus kneeling before the Dark Lord, feeling the energy of the chanting figures thrumming around him, magic pulsating into his blood, into his being, marking him as the Dark Lord’s own. The Mark they would place upon his wrist would be nothing but a visual emblem of the far deeper claiming of his services and his soul. That claiming would give him over completely, allow the Dark Lord access to his thoughts, to his powers, securing his obedience in a way no oath could. Severus should have been frightened. Possibly was, just a bit.
It shouldn’t have surprised him when he was invited to join the inner circle. The Dark Lord’s power was still too new, too untested, to be picky about recruitment. In the coming years, potential Death Eaters would have their loyalty examined, meted out through the flesh and blood of those they should have loved, through the torture of strangers they should never have met. But in the early years the Dark Lord thirsted after his talents too much to set him through the trials to come.
Perhaps if he had, Severus’ eyes would have opened. Perhaps if he’d been asked to perform ritual murder, he’d have stepped away. Too many perhapses.
The chanting grew more frenzied, sound overlapping sound, so thick in the air it almost seemed visible, wrapping Severus in abnormal warmth, imparting a conflicting sense of becoming an equal part of something greater and being lowered, given over in submission. He fought the urge to shiver, then did shiver when Lucius stepped forward.
The Dark Lord, of course, never touched anyone then, not even his most devout followers. Instead, a representative, imbued just for a moment with his power, would make the physical claim for him, completing the ritual and binding him body and soul to the Dark Lord. Severus hadn’t expected Lucius. His heartbeat accelerated and now he was afraid. For if Lucius had volunteered for this, it must mean something. The man never acted without reason. If it meant that he cared, even a little, beyond the perfunctory availability of Severus’ agile body...
He turned his face up wonderingly, trying not to blush. Squelching the horrifying disappointment at the expression on Lucius’ face. No love, not even lust. As though he couldn’t even see Severus, as though they were simply two marionettes without thoughts of their own, dancing to the Dark Lord’s wicked song. Which of course they were.
Severus held out his left wrist as he’d been instructed, and Lucius pointed his wand at it, the energy of the Dark Lord’s will and the chanting circle’s power converging and intensifying, searing Severus with exquisite, abhorrent pain as he felt himself being opened wide to the Dark Lord’s mind, felt himself ripped open, left raw and quivering and remade into nothing at that lightest of brushes of mind on mind. Now he truly was frightened. He looked up desperately at Lucius, who bent down at last to administer the kiss. No words were necessary in this ritual. Words could be broken. A claim could not. And so Lucius cemented it with a kiss, cool lips and cool exterior feeding the fire that only flared brighter in Severus.
The electricity from Lucius’ lips and the dark magic surrounding them mingled in his blood. But for the beautiful face shrouded by a black hood, Lucius’ kiss was indistinguishable from a Dementor’s, cruel and lifeless and soul-destroying. No, not destroying. Soul-seizing. For as Lucius’ lips descended and connected with Severus’, Severus lost himself utterly as he gave his soul to Lucius, becoming nothing more in that moment but the kiss, becoming Lucius’ completely and entirely.
The violent chorus around him climaxed and died down, and Lucius drew back, returning to the circle, leaving Severus alone and feeling surprisingly windswept. He stumbled to his own place within the circle, six away from the Dark Lord, and managed to avoid collapsing until after the ceremony drew to a close and he apparated to his workshop.
Severus knows he is not so much a fool as to become a slave to love. But he will not fool himself either into believing that he was not in love with Lucius Malfoy. He takes a long sip from the flask at his waist as recollections dance unbidden across his mind, flashes of image and sound and scent. Lucius’ hair running through his fingers or tickling his chest as Lucius’ cadence propelled them both into an ecstasy of merging flesh and panting moans. The way Lucius would appear when it pleased him and take Severus with little preparation, for his own pleasure. Severus never objecting, reminding himself that Lucius was lonely, that Narcissa’s miscarriage had driven her into a separate bedroom, that she wouldn’t suffer Lucius’ cherished touch, that Lucius needed this, needed him. Severus shakes his head ruefully at the beautiful, needful lies he would spin for his own disbelieving mind, through four pregnancies and three miscarriages and the nursing of an heir, as Narcissa spurned her husband’s physical advances while hoarding his love. Because Lucius, for all of his flaws, loved Narcissa. Always had.
It took several weeks for Severus to understand what had happened. He caught on before anyone else did, which he knew saved his life. They would never have permitted him to live if they knew. He wouldn’t admit that he was in love, of course, could barely acknowledge the lust that drove him to accept Lucius’ visits. But the love blistered within him, scalding him from the inside out with each passing day. It was worse, far worse than it had been before his acceptance into the Dark Lord’s inner circle. He supposed it was because he’d been allowed a kiss, one kiss that he clung to and played over in his mind, one kiss that meant less than nothing to Lucius and all of creation to Severus.
The night of his first summons, the Dark Lord brought in those lesser followers he suspected of betrayal and then flicked his will through all of his Death Eaters and sent them into a violent delirium. Out of their minds, under worse than the Imperius, they tore the cowering traitors to pieces with their bare hands. No wands, no magic. Blood flowing from their fingernails, from their teeth, coating their skin, matting their hair. These most aristocratic of wizards, reduced to savage, soiled puppets. And Severus was entirely unaffected. Of course he’d felt the brush of the Dark Lord’s mind, had understood what was being asked of him. But he certainly hadn’t felt compelled to follow the suggestion.
At home the next morning, vomiting out his disgust and horror, curling into a fetal position and shaking viciously, Severus tried to process what had happened. He’d watched Lucius and the inhuman light of fevered insanity in his eyes, had understood implicitly what was going on. Only his basest instinct of self-preservation had saved him, automatically kicking him into motion, to the furthest corner of the room with the remains of two already-dead acolytes, frolicking in their blood, holding above his head the remains of liver, of lungs. Hiding behind a façade so that the Dark Lord wouldn’t suspect.
Severus paid attention at each subsequent summons. All the Death Eaters were under the Dark Lord’s influence, body and soul. Severus alone was autonomous. Being eaten alive by his own desires for Lucius Malfoy, but free.
And then he understood. Lucius Malfoy. When he’d been kissed during the ceremony, it should have bound him to the Dark Lord inextricably. Instead, he’d been bound to Lucius. And that overriding love shielded him from the Dark Lord’s compelling whims, kept the Dark Lord out of his innermost thoughts. Love of Lucius alone allowed him to betray the Death Eaters. And Lucius never knew.
The bourbon burns through him, a baptism by fire and alcohol and memories, and a lifelong, persistent ache that no potion can rid him of. Though he has tried. All manner of substances and faceless encounters that provide a warm body but achieve only a further icing over of whatever heart he is still in possession of. He remembers, strangely, that Lucius’ hair smelled like lotus blossoms. Odd, something so holy emanating from someone so impure. Impure, and yet shaped of pure darkness, a purity that has drawn Severus all through the years.
Lucius’ visits had grown no less frequent in the days following the claiming. Severus taught himself to wait patiently for the sound of boot heels on stone, for the customary dimming of the torches and the cool fingers curling around his neck from behind, drawing him backward in a gesture that could be caress or garroting. And then robes were whisked away and lips patterned meaningless runes across too-prominent ribs and the taut peaks of nipples, and fingers splayed across thighs while nails raked the ashen, sun-starved skin, leaving designs of sanguineous predication like a signature across his back and buttocks.
Severus bent over the work desk. Severus up against the wall, hanging on to an extinguished sconce with legs wrapped around faultless, bucking hips. Severus on the floor, his back arching into a U as sensation overwhelmed him, caught between the glacial cool of the granite below and the wizard above. His own heat, his own passion, being slowly leeched away, a little more with each visit.
Lucius only came to him when he needed release. When Narcissa allowed him close to her again, he would forget Severus’ existence, leaving the younger man brooding and bitter and hateful, brewing potions that wrought the most extravagant powers, the most lavish deaths. Severus didn’t know which he hated more- Lucius looking at him as though he was invisible while also ignoring him, or Lucius looking at him as though he was invisible while he fucked him.
Lucius never stayed, of course. Collected himself and melted into the night, leaving the potion maker beyond empty, just an envelope of skin and bone and sinew with nothing left still named “Severus”. He would sit before the fire and loathe himself for this one weakness. For no matter how many times he swore to say no, when piercing eyes and probing fingers and self-assured tilt of chin presented themselves in a Lucius-shaped package, he was powerless to refuse.
For two years he was at the call of the one he served and the whim of the one he loved, never sure which of them left him feeling more used up. Comforting himself with the fact that he was helping Lucius deal with his frustrations, assuring himself that he was necessary, recognizing somewhere deep that to Lucius he was merely willing and functional.
Severus is beginning to sweat from the heat of the blaze, but he will not turn away, not until it has burned down to its embers. His fingers flex and unflex as he considers his past. No one epiphany had sent him to Dumbledore to begin life as a double agent. It was a slow swelling of pain and yearning and dismay and disgust, paired with the realization that if the Dark Lord could not control Severus’ thoughts, neither could he read them. He’d seen enough of the plans that lay ahead for the Death Eaters to know that this was not a future he wanted any part of. He was sufficiently shrewd to comprehend that Dumbledore would lead the charge against the Dark Lord. And so he’d presented himself to Dumbledore and explained that he was not under the Dark Lord’s influence, that he could be of assistance, that he would trade his services for absolution in the years to come. And Dumbledore hadn’t asked questions. He’d acceded and sent Severus back to commit mayhem in the name of the greater good.
In the years following the Dark Lord’s first demise, as Severus set up as a professor of Hogwarts, Lucius’ visitations became less common but never ceased altogether. Sometimes he’d awaken with Lucius in his rooms, crawling over him and tearing away his nightshirt. His body would thrill to the remembered sensuality, devoid of feeling but overflowing with physical release. He would still tell himself that it was enough, that it would do. And it had to. Lucius never offered anything more. Lucius, through all the years, remained loyally in love with his wife.
Severus knew that his situation was infinitely worse than those mooning morons who yearned chastely after someone they couldn’t have. He was not one of those pitiable souls whose beloved was ignorant of his devotion, who was never allowed to touch and taste. The one he loved was absolutely aware of Severus’ ardor, had been for twenty years, had exploited those feelings thoroughly, taking from Severus what physical gratification he could and leaving an empty husk in his wake. That Severus’ feelings were unreturned while his body was taken wounded him more than simple longing for an unattainable sweetheart ever could.
And so the Dark Lord rose again, and Severus spied again, and Lucius descended like an incubus to use him again and again and again. Rather than spinning himself the fabrication that he was needed, that one day Lucius might return his love, he instead insisted that to terminate the trysts would arouse suspicion and be detrimental to the Order. He continued to live at the mercy of that mouth desecrating his body and his sanity, at the punishing frame that left him aching and defeated.
The Dark Lord fell and took his Death Eaters along with him. All but Severus, who remained secretly impervious to the Dark Lord’s will. And Severus was free after two decades.
The flames are scant intimations of their former glory, the heat long since faded as Severus finally comes back to himself in the present. No hint of the corpse that fuelled the fire is visible. No showy blond hair, no contemptuous curl of lip. Lucius Malfoy is gone at last. Nothing remains but deceptively sedate ash the colour of Lucius’ complexion when Severus had found him on the battlefield. Lifeless. As lifeless as he had left Severus.
And Severus breathes, perceiving nothing in the air of the sweetness he imagined freedom would be, tasting instead something bitter and acrid and empty. He draws his robes around his gaunt frame and turns away from the remains of Lucius and of his own life, not happy but disconnectedly satisfied that the fire has at last been extinguished.
Fin
Bring Me the Disco King, by David Bowie
You promised me the ending would be clear
You'd let me know when the time was now
Don't let me know when you're opening the door
Stab me in the dark, let me disappear
Memories that flutter like bats out of hell
Stab you from the city spires
Life wasn't worth the balance
Or the crumpled paper it was written on
Don't let me know we're invisible
Don't let me know we're invisible
Hot cash days that you trailed around
Cold cold nights under chrome and glass
Led me downriver of perfumed limbs
Sent me to the streets with the good time girls
Don't let me know we're invisible
Don't let me know we're invisible
We could dance, dance, dance thru' the fire
Dance, dance, dance thru' the fire
Feed me no lies
I don't know about you, I don't know about you
Breathe through the years
I don't know about you, I don't know about you
Bring me the disco king
I don't know about you, I don't know about you
Dead or alive, feed me no lies
Bring me the disco king, bring me the disco king
Bring me the disco king, bring me the head of the disco king
Spin-offs with those who slept like corpses
Damp morning rays in the stiff bad clubs
Killing time in the '70s
Smelling of love through the moist winds
Don't let me know when you're opening the door
Close me in the dark, let me disappear
Soon there'll be nothing left of me
Nothing left to release
Dance, dance, dance thru' the fire
Dance, dance, dance thru' the fire
Tell me no lies
I don't know about you, I don't know about you
Breathe through the years
I don't know about you, I don't know about you
Bring me the disco king
I don't know about you, I don't know about you
Breathe through the years
Dead or alive
Bring me the disco king
Bring me the disco king, bring me the disco king
Bring me the disco king, bring me the disco king
Bring me the disco king, bring me the disco king
Bring me the disco king