[RP LOG: Draco, Blaise. PG]
Date: January 11th. So, like. Backdated. Shut up.
Summary: Upon returning to Hogwarts after the winter holidays, Blaise senses that something is up with both Draco and Pansy. Having had enough of it, he demands an explanation. Draco gives him one. Sort of.
Rating: PG for swearing?
Comments.
Draco isn't entirely used to keeping things from Blaise. Not something this important, at any rate. Still, it's with a certain amount of hesitance that he sets down the journal and lies back on his bed, casually crossing his ankles and putting his hands behind his head to stare vacantly at the ceiling.
He still isn't quite sure how much he's willing to tell. It isn't that he doesn't trust Blaise -- he does. To an extent. There's a niggling premonition that Blaise will have something negative to say about it, however, and whether Draco lets on about it or not, he values his friend's opinion. If he tries to talk him out of it -- well, he won't succeed, naturally, because it isn't as if Draco has a choice, but.
But.
A quiet sigh flutters past Draco's lips, and he closes his eyes, quieting his thoughts for the moment.
Blaise slams the journal shut and jumps off the couch, heading for the stairs to their dorm. The nagging feeling that something is off which has been troubling him all day has crystallized to certainty. Not that it wasn't obvious, with the way Pansy and Draco have been circling each other, but even so...
He passes Crabbe and Goyle on the stairs, lumbering shadows who move sluggishly out of the way when he hisses at them impatiently -- Bloody gargoyles! -- and realizes then, for the first time, that he really is anxious about what Draco has to say.
Outside the door to the dorm, he pauses to steady his breathing, and when he opens the door his expression is merely one of polite inquisitiveness. Draco is lying calmly on his bed and opens his eyes as Blaise comes in. For a long moment, they look at each other and Blaise clenches his hands beneath his robes at what he sees in the other's eyes. But his voice is calm, with only a trace of coolness when he finally breaks the silence.
"Draco. You want to tell me what this is all about?"
At the sound of Blaise's voice, Draco can tell that he's in an agitated state, at the very least. He's had to endure that forcibly calm way of speaking more times than he cares to count, after all. A sense of foreboding settles itself in the pit of his stomach, and he thinks this is probably a bad idea, but he can't very well keep this from Blaise for much longer.
Grey eyes flick back to their thorough study of the room's ceiling, and everything about Draco in that moment is evasive, down to the deliberate nonchalance in his tone. "Depends. What do you want to know?"
Blaise narrows his eyes at Draco. He detests playing games, and Draco can be infuriatingly difficult if there is something he doesn't want to tell you. He's doing it now, watching the ceiling and lying there calmly as if there is really nothing at all out of the ordinary. But Blaise doesn't want to play. Not after a holiday of silence and a day of watching the grim, cold shadow that settles on Draco whenever he thinks no one is watching.
Disdainful of subterfuge, he crosses his arms agressively over his chest and answers softly, "The truth. What happened to you the past two weeks?"
It's with a morbidly amused sort of resignation that Draco sits up, just enough to look at Blaise properly, head resting on the pillows behind him. There's the elegant arch of an eyebrow as he regards his friend, a momentary lapse of silence before he speaks.
"Come now, Blaise. Care to venture a guess?" he asks in a tone that's deceptively light, knowing full well that Blaise isn't the type for guessing games. "Consider who my father is. Where he is." A twinge of something heavy and uncomfortable at that. Then, tone darkening, "Consider what's been in the cards for me since I was born."
It takes a moment for the full weight of Draco’s light, dry words to sink in, and then it is all vividly, painfully obvious.
"No. No! You didn’t ... "
He bites off the words with a wrenching effort and leans back against the stone wall, closing his eyes. I should have known. Because Draco is right, of course, and they have all known since bloody Potter and his foolish heroics landed Lucius Malfoy in prison, that the burden would pass to his only heir. To Draco. With bitter irony, he recalls himself telling Pansy earlier that evening that nothing can change what it means to be a pureblood, and he knows he is more right than he ever wanted to be.
Slowly, Blaise lets himself sink down so that he is sitting on the floor and only then does he open his eyes again to look at Draco.
"What have you done?"
"What's necessary," is the reply, and Draco's tone is devoid of any emotion, expression carefully blank. He sits up completely, swinging his legs off of the side of the bed, but doesn't quite get up. Unable to hold Blaise's gaze for long (the anguish there, the resignation, they make it too real and too hopeless, and Draco doesn't want to think about that), he looks away, the line of his shoulders tense. "I'm not marked yet. I have -- an assignment, of sorts."
Yet. Blaise's eyes have gone very dark, sculpted lips set in a fierce line. He remains motionless, staring at Draco, the cold of the stone wall seeping into his back, but he hardly feels it. Icy fear wars with fury and makes his hands, clenched in their sleeves, tremble slightly. God, Draco, don't you dare look away! His friend (but that word doesn't even begin to describe what Blaise would lose, if -- no, don't even think about that!) sits tense and withdrawn, and Blaise feels his own control slipping though his fingers.
"Draco. Draco, look at me."
He can hear the sharp lash of anger in his own voice and underneath that something akin to desperation. He fights it down and wills his expression to stay calm and blank, needs to do that, because he can't let Draco know how terrified he is.
"Tell me everything."
And he does look at Blaise, because he can't not, no matter how tight his jaw is clenched or how hard he grinds his teeth together. Grey meets a brown that's impossibly dark, and Draco shivers a little at the intensity he finds there.
He can't tell everything, he shouldn't, but he has to say something; he can't possibly keep it all from Blaise, perceptive Blaise who can tell, with just one look, when something's off about him.
Draco exhales, and it's a shuddering breath that flutters past his lips.
"He wants me to kill."
Blaise sees the raw fear in Draco's eyes, belying the calm voice, the poised manner, and his stomach clenches. But he holds Draco's gaze, willing him silently to speak, because he has to know.
Draco breathes deeply, and fuck, he's practically trembling, and this is worse than he feared, even before Draco speaks, the faintest trace of a shiver now behind the words.
Blaise wants to close his eyes at that but knows that he can't. And when Draco hesitates, grey eyes haunted, he gets to his feet and goes to kneel down before Draco where he sits unmoving, still as a statue on the bed. Still holding his gaze, Blaise reaches out a hand and lays it lightly on Draco's left one. The skin is smooth and a little cold (but Draco is never cold), and Blaise feels with vague surprise that his own palm is sore where his nails have bitten into it.
"Don't," Draco says, but he can't bring himself to relinquish the warmth of that single touch, of Blaise simply being there and close and a solid, physical comfort. Fingers clench under the heat of Blaise's palm (stop shivering), and he closes his eyes, clenches his jaw. Suddenly, he finds himself feeling so very heavy.
"I'll do it." Soft at first, low, akin to a sigh. Eyelids open over a gaze of grey resolution, and his voice is firmer when he speaks this time. "I'll do it, and I'll make Father proud, make Mother proud, and he won't be able to fucking hurt them. Ever."
Blaise’s hand clenches on Draco’s, and he goes very still.
"That’s a lie," he says softly, because it has to be said, and no one else ever questions Draco’s choices. He looks straight into furious steel grey eyes, and continues, not giving his friend time to speak, "Nothing you do can protect them. The dark Lord is a madman, and you told me yourself he would be looking for a way to get back at your father after what happened in June! You can’t just ... you can’t do this!"
And then he looks down, because even though he has just spoken truth, there are other truths that lie unmentioned in their shared history together, the simple fact that sometimes Blaise fails to understand Draco, because Blaise’s father is dead and he thinks his mother hates him, and he never believed he could make anyone proud, no matter how hard he tried.
"What would you have me do, Blaise?" he snaps, slate grey flashing angrily, and he swallows against the flutter of something (panic?) that appears to be wedged in his throat. "Refuse him? Let him kill my family? My mother, my father, me? I haven't got a choice!"
Draco is breathing heavily now, eyes wide, limbs taut, too taut, but he knows that if they weren't tense, if his hands weren't clenched, if the line of his shoulders wasn't tight to the point of quivering, he'd be shaking, and he doesn't want that, can't have that. He needs to be strong right now. He can bear this.
A shaky exhalation. "I haven't got a choice." Swallow, blink, look away. Draco shifts, tugs his hand out of Blaise's grip and runs it through fine strands of white blonde hair. Can't think about this anymore, can't talk, especially not to Blaise, who sees everything, knows everything. (It's difficult to fool himself when Blaise is here.) "I've got an essay to write. Where's my hair brush?"
"No, don’t you bloody dare, Draco!” Blaise grabs hold roughly of his friend’s shoulders, seeking eye contact. He feels the taut tension in Draco’s shoulders and digs in his fingers instinctively, trying to penetrate the polished shields, because he needs to keep him here. Because if Draco slips through his fingers now, there is more at stake than he dares to think of. He finds himself absently wishing that Pansy doesn’t show up after all. She shouldn’t see this.
He takes a deep breath, biting down the sick fear that seems to communicate itself like a current through his fingers where they touch Draco. "I ... we ... fuck, Draco, I don’t know what to do, but there is always a choice. We just have to find it."
Grey eyes studiously avoid brown, almost afraid of what he might find there (he's scared enough already, and if Blaise, unshakeable Blaise, can feel fear enough for the both of them, he thinks, then things are well and truly fucked). Draco shrugs his shoulders, a vain and rather half-hearted attempt to dislodge the vice-like grip threatening to cut off his circulation.
"Easier said than done, Blaise," he says, and his tone is remarkably level given the state of things, deceptively calm, a facade of dispassion learned from a very early age. Turns his head, but he still can't bring himself to meet the other's eye, instead focusing on Blaise's shoulder. "Let go of me."
Blaise loosens his grip and cups his hands instead around Draco's neck, more gently but still insisting, demanding to be let in, all but ignoring the mask of calm he knows too well how to look past.
"No," he says softly, just a hint of a tremor creeping into his voice as he leans closer. "I'm not letting go of you. And you're a fool for thinking I ever would."
Something in Draco's chest clenches, tightens, choking and uncomfortable, and he tries to swallow it away, but he can't (can't help it when he leans forward either, just a little, as if Blaise's heat were a magnet and he the helpless counterpart, unable to resist its pull).
"I don't want to talk about this anymore," he replies, and there's a waver in his voice this time, an unspoken please that he'll never be able to articulate. It's with an air that's almost resigned that Draco exhales, rests his brow against the crook of neck-and-shoulder, breathing in the shadows there. Tiredly, "Not now."
Blaise hesitates, tangling his fingers in Draco's hair as the other boy leans on him, caught between his unerring sense of Draco's need (comfort, warmth, peace) and a deep unwillingness to let his friend dodge this conversation. But the almost unheard tremble in Draco's voice and his own sudden need to just hold, to make sure that Draco is really there, decides for him.
Reluctantly, slowly, Blaise gives in. "All right," he whispers, bending his lips to Draco's ear. "But I will need to know soon. Don't keep secrets from me."
Moving smoothly, he slides onto the bed next to Draco, never breaking contact, and pulls him close. Draco is rigid and unwilling, tensing against his touch and Blaise runs his hands firmly down his shoulders, his back, willing him to relax.
"Draco. Come here."
A beat, and Draco's hesitance is an almost palpable thing, swaying and unwilling. He catches Blaise's eye (breathes an outward sigh of relief when he's met with fear, but not the earth-shattering sort; sharp and real but subdued, mingled with a quiet kind of fortitude, and Draco thinks, good, at least one of them is strong).
This isn't pity, and Draco knows it -- otherwise, his arm wouldn't be bending at the elbow, and he wouldn't be following the heat of Blaise's body (keep close, stay close) or heeding Blaise's words. This is comfort, simple and uncomplicated (unlike so very many things about them, a voice in the back of his mind says), and he's accustomed to giving and receiving it, despite everything.
He buries his face in the hollow of Blaise's neck, and everything is the rhythmic sound of breaths fluttering past their lips, of heartbeats (out of sync at first, but then they're slowing, matching, and Draco thinks that that's how it should always be).
Thank you, Draco doesn't say.
Summary: Upon returning to Hogwarts after the winter holidays, Blaise senses that something is up with both Draco and Pansy. Having had enough of it, he demands an explanation. Draco gives him one. Sort of.
Rating: PG for swearing?
Comments.
Draco isn't entirely used to keeping things from Blaise. Not something this important, at any rate. Still, it's with a certain amount of hesitance that he sets down the journal and lies back on his bed, casually crossing his ankles and putting his hands behind his head to stare vacantly at the ceiling.
He still isn't quite sure how much he's willing to tell. It isn't that he doesn't trust Blaise -- he does. To an extent. There's a niggling premonition that Blaise will have something negative to say about it, however, and whether Draco lets on about it or not, he values his friend's opinion. If he tries to talk him out of it -- well, he won't succeed, naturally, because it isn't as if Draco has a choice, but.
But.
A quiet sigh flutters past Draco's lips, and he closes his eyes, quieting his thoughts for the moment.
Blaise slams the journal shut and jumps off the couch, heading for the stairs to their dorm. The nagging feeling that something is off which has been troubling him all day has crystallized to certainty. Not that it wasn't obvious, with the way Pansy and Draco have been circling each other, but even so...
He passes Crabbe and Goyle on the stairs, lumbering shadows who move sluggishly out of the way when he hisses at them impatiently -- Bloody gargoyles! -- and realizes then, for the first time, that he really is anxious about what Draco has to say.
Outside the door to the dorm, he pauses to steady his breathing, and when he opens the door his expression is merely one of polite inquisitiveness. Draco is lying calmly on his bed and opens his eyes as Blaise comes in. For a long moment, they look at each other and Blaise clenches his hands beneath his robes at what he sees in the other's eyes. But his voice is calm, with only a trace of coolness when he finally breaks the silence.
"Draco. You want to tell me what this is all about?"
At the sound of Blaise's voice, Draco can tell that he's in an agitated state, at the very least. He's had to endure that forcibly calm way of speaking more times than he cares to count, after all. A sense of foreboding settles itself in the pit of his stomach, and he thinks this is probably a bad idea, but he can't very well keep this from Blaise for much longer.
Grey eyes flick back to their thorough study of the room's ceiling, and everything about Draco in that moment is evasive, down to the deliberate nonchalance in his tone. "Depends. What do you want to know?"
Blaise narrows his eyes at Draco. He detests playing games, and Draco can be infuriatingly difficult if there is something he doesn't want to tell you. He's doing it now, watching the ceiling and lying there calmly as if there is really nothing at all out of the ordinary. But Blaise doesn't want to play. Not after a holiday of silence and a day of watching the grim, cold shadow that settles on Draco whenever he thinks no one is watching.
Disdainful of subterfuge, he crosses his arms agressively over his chest and answers softly, "The truth. What happened to you the past two weeks?"
It's with a morbidly amused sort of resignation that Draco sits up, just enough to look at Blaise properly, head resting on the pillows behind him. There's the elegant arch of an eyebrow as he regards his friend, a momentary lapse of silence before he speaks.
"Come now, Blaise. Care to venture a guess?" he asks in a tone that's deceptively light, knowing full well that Blaise isn't the type for guessing games. "Consider who my father is. Where he is." A twinge of something heavy and uncomfortable at that. Then, tone darkening, "Consider what's been in the cards for me since I was born."
It takes a moment for the full weight of Draco’s light, dry words to sink in, and then it is all vividly, painfully obvious.
"No. No! You didn’t ... "
He bites off the words with a wrenching effort and leans back against the stone wall, closing his eyes. I should have known. Because Draco is right, of course, and they have all known since bloody Potter and his foolish heroics landed Lucius Malfoy in prison, that the burden would pass to his only heir. To Draco. With bitter irony, he recalls himself telling Pansy earlier that evening that nothing can change what it means to be a pureblood, and he knows he is more right than he ever wanted to be.
Slowly, Blaise lets himself sink down so that he is sitting on the floor and only then does he open his eyes again to look at Draco.
"What have you done?"
"What's necessary," is the reply, and Draco's tone is devoid of any emotion, expression carefully blank. He sits up completely, swinging his legs off of the side of the bed, but doesn't quite get up. Unable to hold Blaise's gaze for long (the anguish there, the resignation, they make it too real and too hopeless, and Draco doesn't want to think about that), he looks away, the line of his shoulders tense. "I'm not marked yet. I have -- an assignment, of sorts."
Yet. Blaise's eyes have gone very dark, sculpted lips set in a fierce line. He remains motionless, staring at Draco, the cold of the stone wall seeping into his back, but he hardly feels it. Icy fear wars with fury and makes his hands, clenched in their sleeves, tremble slightly. God, Draco, don't you dare look away! His friend (but that word doesn't even begin to describe what Blaise would lose, if -- no, don't even think about that!) sits tense and withdrawn, and Blaise feels his own control slipping though his fingers.
"Draco. Draco, look at me."
He can hear the sharp lash of anger in his own voice and underneath that something akin to desperation. He fights it down and wills his expression to stay calm and blank, needs to do that, because he can't let Draco know how terrified he is.
"Tell me everything."
And he does look at Blaise, because he can't not, no matter how tight his jaw is clenched or how hard he grinds his teeth together. Grey meets a brown that's impossibly dark, and Draco shivers a little at the intensity he finds there.
He can't tell everything, he shouldn't, but he has to say something; he can't possibly keep it all from Blaise, perceptive Blaise who can tell, with just one look, when something's off about him.
Draco exhales, and it's a shuddering breath that flutters past his lips.
"He wants me to kill."
Blaise sees the raw fear in Draco's eyes, belying the calm voice, the poised manner, and his stomach clenches. But he holds Draco's gaze, willing him silently to speak, because he has to know.
Draco breathes deeply, and fuck, he's practically trembling, and this is worse than he feared, even before Draco speaks, the faintest trace of a shiver now behind the words.
Blaise wants to close his eyes at that but knows that he can't. And when Draco hesitates, grey eyes haunted, he gets to his feet and goes to kneel down before Draco where he sits unmoving, still as a statue on the bed. Still holding his gaze, Blaise reaches out a hand and lays it lightly on Draco's left one. The skin is smooth and a little cold (but Draco is never cold), and Blaise feels with vague surprise that his own palm is sore where his nails have bitten into it.
"Don't," Draco says, but he can't bring himself to relinquish the warmth of that single touch, of Blaise simply being there and close and a solid, physical comfort. Fingers clench under the heat of Blaise's palm (stop shivering), and he closes his eyes, clenches his jaw. Suddenly, he finds himself feeling so very heavy.
"I'll do it." Soft at first, low, akin to a sigh. Eyelids open over a gaze of grey resolution, and his voice is firmer when he speaks this time. "I'll do it, and I'll make Father proud, make Mother proud, and he won't be able to fucking hurt them. Ever."
Blaise’s hand clenches on Draco’s, and he goes very still.
"That’s a lie," he says softly, because it has to be said, and no one else ever questions Draco’s choices. He looks straight into furious steel grey eyes, and continues, not giving his friend time to speak, "Nothing you do can protect them. The dark Lord is a madman, and you told me yourself he would be looking for a way to get back at your father after what happened in June! You can’t just ... you can’t do this!"
And then he looks down, because even though he has just spoken truth, there are other truths that lie unmentioned in their shared history together, the simple fact that sometimes Blaise fails to understand Draco, because Blaise’s father is dead and he thinks his mother hates him, and he never believed he could make anyone proud, no matter how hard he tried.
"What would you have me do, Blaise?" he snaps, slate grey flashing angrily, and he swallows against the flutter of something (panic?) that appears to be wedged in his throat. "Refuse him? Let him kill my family? My mother, my father, me? I haven't got a choice!"
Draco is breathing heavily now, eyes wide, limbs taut, too taut, but he knows that if they weren't tense, if his hands weren't clenched, if the line of his shoulders wasn't tight to the point of quivering, he'd be shaking, and he doesn't want that, can't have that. He needs to be strong right now. He can bear this.
A shaky exhalation. "I haven't got a choice." Swallow, blink, look away. Draco shifts, tugs his hand out of Blaise's grip and runs it through fine strands of white blonde hair. Can't think about this anymore, can't talk, especially not to Blaise, who sees everything, knows everything. (It's difficult to fool himself when Blaise is here.) "I've got an essay to write. Where's my hair brush?"
"No, don’t you bloody dare, Draco!” Blaise grabs hold roughly of his friend’s shoulders, seeking eye contact. He feels the taut tension in Draco’s shoulders and digs in his fingers instinctively, trying to penetrate the polished shields, because he needs to keep him here. Because if Draco slips through his fingers now, there is more at stake than he dares to think of. He finds himself absently wishing that Pansy doesn’t show up after all. She shouldn’t see this.
He takes a deep breath, biting down the sick fear that seems to communicate itself like a current through his fingers where they touch Draco. "I ... we ... fuck, Draco, I don’t know what to do, but there is always a choice. We just have to find it."
Grey eyes studiously avoid brown, almost afraid of what he might find there (he's scared enough already, and if Blaise, unshakeable Blaise, can feel fear enough for the both of them, he thinks, then things are well and truly fucked). Draco shrugs his shoulders, a vain and rather half-hearted attempt to dislodge the vice-like grip threatening to cut off his circulation.
"Easier said than done, Blaise," he says, and his tone is remarkably level given the state of things, deceptively calm, a facade of dispassion learned from a very early age. Turns his head, but he still can't bring himself to meet the other's eye, instead focusing on Blaise's shoulder. "Let go of me."
Blaise loosens his grip and cups his hands instead around Draco's neck, more gently but still insisting, demanding to be let in, all but ignoring the mask of calm he knows too well how to look past.
"No," he says softly, just a hint of a tremor creeping into his voice as he leans closer. "I'm not letting go of you. And you're a fool for thinking I ever would."
Something in Draco's chest clenches, tightens, choking and uncomfortable, and he tries to swallow it away, but he can't (can't help it when he leans forward either, just a little, as if Blaise's heat were a magnet and he the helpless counterpart, unable to resist its pull).
"I don't want to talk about this anymore," he replies, and there's a waver in his voice this time, an unspoken please that he'll never be able to articulate. It's with an air that's almost resigned that Draco exhales, rests his brow against the crook of neck-and-shoulder, breathing in the shadows there. Tiredly, "Not now."
Blaise hesitates, tangling his fingers in Draco's hair as the other boy leans on him, caught between his unerring sense of Draco's need (comfort, warmth, peace) and a deep unwillingness to let his friend dodge this conversation. But the almost unheard tremble in Draco's voice and his own sudden need to just hold, to make sure that Draco is really there, decides for him.
Reluctantly, slowly, Blaise gives in. "All right," he whispers, bending his lips to Draco's ear. "But I will need to know soon. Don't keep secrets from me."
Moving smoothly, he slides onto the bed next to Draco, never breaking contact, and pulls him close. Draco is rigid and unwilling, tensing against his touch and Blaise runs his hands firmly down his shoulders, his back, willing him to relax.
"Draco. Come here."
A beat, and Draco's hesitance is an almost palpable thing, swaying and unwilling. He catches Blaise's eye (breathes an outward sigh of relief when he's met with fear, but not the earth-shattering sort; sharp and real but subdued, mingled with a quiet kind of fortitude, and Draco thinks, good, at least one of them is strong).
This isn't pity, and Draco knows it -- otherwise, his arm wouldn't be bending at the elbow, and he wouldn't be following the heat of Blaise's body (keep close, stay close) or heeding Blaise's words. This is comfort, simple and uncomplicated (unlike so very many things about them, a voice in the back of his mind says), and he's accustomed to giving and receiving it, despite everything.
He buries his face in the hollow of Blaise's neck, and everything is the rhythmic sound of breaths fluttering past their lips, of heartbeats (out of sync at first, but then they're slowing, matching, and Draco thinks that that's how it should always be).
Thank you, Draco doesn't say.