Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and
situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not
limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner
Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is
intended.
Summary: A modern-day fairy tale in which Draco ponders his reason for
being.
Pairings: Draco/Snape, Draco/Lucius
Categories: Angst, Incest
Notes: Written for the second wave of the Malfoy
Fuh-Q Fest, using the following scenario: "(someone) learns another
meaning to family." Acknowledgments: Thank you very much to Erin and Haruka
for the beta.
.....
Draco swung one leg out over the edge of the balcony and leaned back against the wall behind him, looking down at the garden below. From this height, the trees looked impossibly far away, dizzying, while the sky looked close enough to touch. Perfect puffs of white cloud floated serenely against a backdrop of purest blue, touched golden by the light of the afternoon sun.
God, he loved summer.
"I'll be back tomorrow, Draco." His mother's voice drifted out from somewhere inside, sounding distracted. "The benefit shouldn't last more than a few hours, but Lady Marceaux will insist that I spend the night. I only hope she's had her parlor aired out since the last time I was there. I swear, sometimes that chateau of hers smells like a tomb...."
Narcissa appeared at the entrance to the balcony, looking ethereal against the open glass doors. A gust of breeze caught the long curtain hanging beside her, giving it the illusion of life as she passed it by.
"Draco." Narcissa's voice was disapproving. "Must you sit so close to the edge? You know I hate it when you tempt fate like that."
Draco smiled thinly, kicking a heel against the bare stone of the tower wall beneath him. "I'll be careful, Mum."
"Mmm." Already, Narcissa's attention was turning elsewhere, caught up in the multitude of details she had to deal with in preparing for that night's charity event. She reached up to remove one of the invisible hairpins in her long cascade of hair, returning it to an equally indiscernible spot on the other side of her head. In the reflection on the glass balcony door, her face looked like a china doll.
"You'd better hurry or you're going to be late." Draco leaned his head back again and closed his eyes, sighing at the breeze that danced lightly over his face. It stirred his hair against his forehead, making him shiver.
He didn't have to open his eyes again to know that Narcissa was gone.
It seemed wrong somehow that he should feel relieved by that. She was his mother after all, for all that she had given birth to him, and surely she deserved a small amount of compassion from him for that at least. But as usual, there was nothing. A token mother for a token child, and how long had it been since there was a point to any of it?
"What are you obsessing about now?" his father asked him that night at dinner. The long polished length of the formal dining table stretched between them, candles flickering duskily at the edges of the room. The fragrance of summer blossoms was heavy in the air, carried in on the breeze through the half-open windows.
Draco stared into his wine glass, swirling it slowly in one hand. The dark liquid spun in a counterclockwise direction, fragmenting as it caught the light. "Masks," he said, not truly considering the words before he said them. "Why do we bother wearing them?"
He could feel Lucius frowning, the weight of his father's displeasure like a physical presence entering into the room. "Perhaps you've had enough to drink, son."
The comment made Draco bite back a surge of bitter laughter. Of course whenever he said or did anything unexpected, it had to be because he'd had too much to drink. Heaven forbid that he was actually an individual, with thoughts and needs and feelings his father wouldn't understand.
"No, I'm serious." And there was absolutely no reason why he should press this matter tonight, except that it had been such a beautiful day and he was feeling giddy on the sheer joy of being alive. Not a very Malfoy-like reason to pursue a conversation, but there it was. "Why do you think we feel the need to hide who we truly are, even from each other?"
Lucius set down his fork with deliberate care and dabbed at one corner of his mouth with an edge of the napkin lying in his lap. "And who are we, Draco?" he asked, in a tone that made no effort not to sound patronizing.
And that was the question, wasn't it? "Who knows?" Draco glanced up from his wine and met his father's narrow-eyed gaze, separated from him by more than just a polished length of mahogany. The light from the chandelier above them seemed suddenly heavy, stifling. "How can any of us truly know? We've spent so long pretending to be what we're not that none us can remember what we really are."
"You're not making sense." Lucius sounded disappointed in him, which was enough to halt Draco's inner tirade for the moment. Nothing affected him quite so harshly as knowing that he'd disappointed his father. "What are you trying to say?"
Draco looked away, rubbing one thumb over the condensation gathered on the side of his glass. "Nothing," he said with a sigh.
They finished the rest of their dinner in silence.
********
"Who am I?" he asked Professor Snape later that autumn, once he'd returned to Hogwarts to begin his seventh year. He was sitting in a comfortable armchair in his Head of House's private office, knees pulled up to his chest as he stared into the fire.
"You're Draco Malfoy," Snape told him, nudging his shoulder with the back of one hand. Draco accepted the small glass of brandy being handed to him without looking up. "Son of Lucius Malfoy, and eventual heir to the Malfoy fortunes." If he thought the question at all odd, he didn't let on.
Draco nodded, chewing absently on his lower lip. If he stared hard enough, the flames in the fireplace actually looked like they were dancing. A part of him wished he could jump in there and join them. "That's what I thought."
Snape sat in the chair opposite him and regarded him levelly for a long while. Draco wondered what he was thinking. Snape had become a kind of mentor to him over the years, ever since Draco had first come to Hogwarts. He and Lucius were old friends, so it only made sense that he would take his friend's son under his wing, offering him the benefit of a friendly ear whenever the occasion warranted. And unlike Lucius, Snape actually listened.
"What's bothering you, Draco?" Snape's tone was brusque, which made Draco smile. Snape never had been one to encourage other people's bad moods, especially when they were tainted with self-pity.
"I'm just wondering who I am, is all." He twirled his glass slowly between his palms, watching the liquid inside slosh against the edges. The idea didn't seem to make any more sense now than when he'd brought it up to his father earlier that year. "I mean, who I really am."
Snape seemed to consider the statement seriously for a moment. Then, "Who do you want to be?"
The question caught Draco off-guard. "What do you mean?" he said, bringing his head up sharply.
One of Snape's eyebrows rose in an expression that was curiously lacking in its usual bite of derision. "Surely you have some opinion in the matter."
He did, of course, but that didn't solve his immediate problem. He knew full well who he wanted to be -- a man on his own, apart from his father, loved and feared and held dear by those he dared care about in return. An impossible fantasy, it seemed sometimes. Because he was Draco Malfoy, son of Lucius Malfoy, eventual heir to the Malfoy fortunes. An image, an idol, an unobtainable dream. A physical representation of all his father expected him to be.
Sometimes he believed that if he ever took off his metaphorical mask, he would find nothing but another underneath. And another, and another, until ultimately he would remove the final one and find that there was nothing there. Nothing there at all.
Moistening his lips slightly, he said, "I don't want to be my father's son."
Snape nodded. "Understandable."
The fire crackled in the hearth, obscenely loud against the stillness of the room. The scent of the burning logs was thick and smoky, rich with the memory of the forest they'd been born of. Draco stretched his neck and sighed, taking a sip of his drink. The harsh liquor burned his throat when he swallowed.
"Not that it really matters. I am what I am, apparently."
"As are we all." Snape's voice was layered now. He never spoke about himself, not really, but Draco had learned enough about him over the years to know that his past was at least as interesting as Lucius'. There were painful memories buried there, which Draco didn't believe he'd ever come close to unearthing. Severus Snape was a man who preferred his walls intact.
Even so, the thought behind the words was distressing. "So you believe we can never be anything other than what we are?" He turned to look into the fire again, unable to bear the weight of the other man's gaze.
Snape breathed out sharply, sounding almost amused. "If I believed that...." His voice trailed off, and there was silence for so long Draco began to think that was the end of their conversation. Then Snape said, "I believe we make our own fate. Our own destiny. We are what we wish to be, and nothing more. And if we ever wish to become something different...." He paused, drawing his brows together thoughtfully. His voice when he spoke next was very soft. "Some changes are easier than others. But at the heart of it all, it is just change."
"Change." Draco leaned back slightly, settling himself more comfortably against the back of his chair. His father had some very opinionated views about the idea of change. Some changes were inevitable, like the eventual deliverance of the wizarding world into the hands of its rightful pureblood masters. Other changes were simply desirable, like Lucius' readmission onto the board of governors. There was, of course, the occasional undesired element to take into consideration, but those were few and far between. Especially for a Malfoy, who held all the power of the wizarding world at his fingertips.
But Draco had his own ideas about change. It seemed to him that there was a certain risk in it, whatever the source. Because the truth was that whenever something changed, it could never again be quite the thing it had been before. Change, in its most basic form, was a terrifying thing. It meant that what had been had died, and given birth to something new... something unknown and unimaginable.
Was it reasonable to believe that such discoveries would always be benign?
"I don't know what I want," he admitted, staring into the fire until his eyes stung. He flexed his fist absently and glanced down at it in his lap, watching the supple movement of muscles under smooth, pale skin. Tendons and bone working together in concert, a tender testament to the miracle of life.
His father's hand, as much as it was his own.
Closing his eyes, he took another sip of his drink, wishing he dared drink enough to make all the world go away. He felt like he was sliding down an increasingly slippery slope into a destiny that he hadn't chosen, and there was absolutely nothing he could do to slow his descent. He was who he was, and change... wasn't as easy as Snape made it seem.
Without making a conscious decision to do so, he set down his drink and leaned forward, bracing himself with one hand on the arm of his chair as he brushed his lips over Snape's. Snape drew a startled-sounding breath at the contact but didn't withdraw, and Draco pressed his advantage by leaning in to kiss him again. He was a Malfoy, after all, who could supposedly have anything he wanted, when he wanted it. Right now he wanted to be loved, at least physically, and more than that he wanted not to be alone. It was amazing, how in a school filled near to the brim with witches and wizards, he could feel so utterly, bone-wrenchingly lonely so much of the time.
Snape seemed to feel his need and allowed the kiss, neither encouraging nor refusing it. Draco began to feel desperate, wondering if he was really there at all, knowing that if he turned and left now, Snape would act like nothing had happened the next morning, and all would go on the way it had been. And that wasn't enough for him suddenly; he wanted more, wanted something different, wanted to feel something more than the doubts and wonderings that had been all that was keeping him company at night. And perhaps Snape sensed that, because he lifted a hand to settle on Draco's shoulder and whispered, "Are you very sure?"
Draco nodded and leaned in to kiss him again, and this time Snape responded to him, tilting his head to the side slightly and opening his lips to him, teasing Draco's tongue with his own. And Draco closed his eyes and tried to believe that Snape was kissing him, was saying yes to him, and not just appeasing the transient desires of the Malfoy heir entrusted into his care.
Snape wasn't gentle with him, but he was thorough. Draco had never had sex with a man before, and while it hurt somewhat more than he'd been expecting, even that seemed right somehow, seemed good. He wanted it to hurt, needed it to, and as he sobbed out his release against Snape's pillow, knotting his hands in the sheets, he felt as if all of the doubts and insecurities he'd been wrestling with had been seared out of him by an inner fire, leaving him comfortingly hollow inside.
Snape gasped against the back of his neck as he finished pursuing his own orgasm, and then he collapsed panting against Draco's back, damp skin sliding against dampened skin. Draco curled against him, feeling sore and exhausted and miles away from anything a Malfoy should be, which was a feeling that seemed worth whatever he'd had to go through to achieve it.
"Severus," he said, trying the name on for size. It sounded alien on his tongue, and he let it go. "Professor." That seemed equally ludicrous, given the circumstances.
"Draco." Snape didn't seem to be having any trouble with names. He slid a palm over the curve of Draco's arm. After a minute pause, he said, "You know you can't stay here tonight."
Draco let his eyes fall closed with a small sigh. Of course he knew that.
He'd pieced together enough rumors over the years to guess that Snape enjoyed men in his bed even more than he liked women, and that he'd once had feelings for a certain Malfoy in particular. But Lucius had never returned those desires, and perhaps in some small way Snape had given in to the urge to touch Lucius in the only way he could this evening, by giving in to the desires of the son.
Draco tried hard not to feel betrayed by that thought as he slid out of the bed and reached for his clothes.
"Did you get what you needed?"
Snape's tone was grim, making Draco pause at the doorway of the room. He wondered suddenly if Snape felt like he'd been the one to be used tonight. Had Draco used him? It bothered him that he didn't know for sure.
He thought about lying, but then decided it wasn't worth the effort. "No."
Snape nodded, but mercifully didn't say anything further.
Draco headed back to his dormitory feeling a bit like a thief in the night, which was also a very un-Malfoy-like experience. He tried to enjoy it, but ended up feeling nothing more than that strange emptiness inside that had seemed comforting only a few short minutes ago.
If it was possible to fuck his way to inner peace, the method was eluding him. Contemplating change was a terrifying thing, and in the end, he hadn't managed to change anything at all.
********
"I'm not what you need, Draco," Snape told him the next day, and Draco nodded, accepting the words. He'd already figured out that much for himself.
The season was falling fast into winter, as inevitable as fate, but still, the sky was clear as the Gryffindor and Ravenclaw Quidditch teams whirled together in intricate harmony above them. The sun was a golden coin burning a hole through a backdrop of purest blue-white, without a cloud in sight to spoil the tableau.
Snape's hand settled on Draco's shoulder briefly before he moved off to sit in the professors' bleachers, and the small gesture made something inside Draco loosen. Contrary to his fears, it seemed his friendship with Snape would survive last night's encounter intact.
It was more than a month before he got up the nerve to visit Snape in his office at night again. Snape let him in without comment, however, and motioned for Draco to sit in front of the fire while he poured him his usual drink.
For a long while, they sat together in silence, and Draco stared into the fire without blinking, feeling entranced by the steady popping of the flames. Finally he said, "Tell me about my father."
Snape took a long sip of his own drink before replying. "What would you like to know?"
It was a good question. "Anything, I guess. Everything. If I'm to become him someday, I'd like to know... know what I have to look forward to."
Snape frowned sharply at that. "Your destiny is what you make of it, Draco."
And that sounded so simple, coming from him. But Draco knew better. "And what am I to do, then?" He smiled slightly. "You can't tell me that you wouldn't do anything he asked of you, merely because he asked."
He could tell by the sudden tightening between Snape's brows that he'd struck a blow, although the rest of Snape's expression didn't change. "My relationship with your father is... complicated."
"Is that why you fucked me the other night?"
More silence, broken only by the crackling of the flames. Draco wondered if the cruel streak within him was something he'd been born with, or if it was something his father had nurtured in him over time.
"Your father was the Malfoy heir once." Snape's voice was low. "In many ways, you remind me of him." And Snape could be cruel, too, when it suited his purposes. "He was proud, and ambitious, and... beautiful. And he resented the strictures his station imposed upon him."
"But he wasn't strong enough to resist them." Draco felt the chasm within him deepen. If his father hadn't been strong enough to fight the destiny laid out before him, then what hope did he have against it?
"Not entirely." Snape's gaze was fixed on the fire now, and the flames cast his face in alternating patches of light and shadow that looked strangely eerie against the greater darkness of the room.
When several moments passed, Draco gave in to the pull of curiosity despite himself. "What do you mean?"
Snape smiled thinly. The expression was frightening on his too-sallow face, accenting the sharpness of his eyes. After a pause, he said, "He changed his destiny into one he preferred."
The words meant nothing to Draco. "I don't understand." Why did Snape always have to talk in riddles?
Responding to the sharpness in his tone, Snape turned toward him. His eyes gleamed ink-black in the shadows, as if they were sucking all the light out of the room. "More than anything, your father wanted to be in sole command of the Malfoy fortunes. Being merely the heir didn't sit well with him at all."
There was something important in what Snape was telling him, but Draco couldn't decipher what it might be. "I don't know what you--"
"He took what he wanted, Draco." And that seemed to be all he was willing to say on the subject.
Draco rubbed a hand over his eyes, feeling the coldness within him spread. He thought suddenly about Grandpa Malfoy, whose portrait was hung in the Hall of Ancestors at home along with all of the other departed Malfoys before him. A man Draco had never known, since he'd died when Lucius was only eighteen years old. Long before Draco had been conceived, and brought forth to make his own mark on the world.
"He killed him." Draco's tone was bleak. He was excruciatingly aware of every heartbeat that shuddered against his ribs, making him feel achingly fragile. He pulled his knees up to his chest in a reflexively defensive gesture.
Snape's expression turned suddenly harsh. "Voldemort killed him, as a gift to your father."
And that... explained a great deal, actually. Draco leaned his head back and tried this new information on for size, allowing it to reshape his view of the world. There was a curious lack of anything resembling a reaction in him at the news.
"My father wants me to take the Dark Mark at the end of the school year," he said quietly, watching the flames.
Snape's eyes seemed to turn inward, and he bent his head to take another sip of his brandy. "The decision is, of course, yours."
Draco smiled slightly. "Of course."
They sat together in companionable silence for a while longer, lulled by the company of friends and by the steady dancing of the flames. Finally, Draco set his glass aside and stood up from his chair, leaning down to kiss Snape on the lips in silent invitation. He shivered when Snape's hand lifted to trace lightly over his hair, and somehow it didn't surprise him in the least when Snape followed him into the bedroom without protesting.
While this might not be what he needed, it was what he wanted, and there was a certain comfort in it for all that.
********
On Christmas Eve, the Malfoy ballroom was the very picture of opulence. Glittering chandeliers hung from a beveled ceiling enchanted to look like a clear night sky, giving a blush of life to the lavish frescos that decorated the walls of the room. Wax hung in thick ropy tendrils off candles situated on tall bronze stands, leaving no corner of the room unlit.
Draco stood in an isolated corner and watched the dancers move around him.
The dancers watched him in return, from behind their masks. Young and old, they were the purest of the pureblood wizards and witches, hand-chosen by his father to attend this most illustrious of galas. The men wore sweeping robes with upturned collars, over silken shirts open to the waist and tight black breeches. The women's gowns left their shoulders bare and swept low between their breasts, showing off the sparkling array of jewels at throat and wrist, ear and fingers. Their hair was piled high on their heads in elegant coiffures, and many wore long gloves.
There was a quiet frenzy to the way they danced that Draco found unnerving. Their laughter rang high and false through the confines of the room, and there was a glitter in their eyes that seemed almost predatory. Odd how he'd never noticed it before. Their gazes as they raked over him felt probing, intrusive, as if they were weighing him for some unknown purpose, and found him strangely lacking. Moving together or elegantly reclined, they watched him and watched each other, laughing and drinking and smiling at each other like knives.
A movement at his side drew his attention, and he glanced up to see Professor Snape, dressed in his usual draping black. The older man's eyes were carefully unreadable against the backdrop of the ballroom's glitter, and his face was shadowed. It was interesting to note how the scarce shadows in the room seemed to cling around him, as if they were attempting to claim him for their own.
"Are you enjoying yourself, Draco?" Snape's tone was faultlessly polite. He accepted a drink from the tray of a passing servant and took a careful sip.
Draco smiled tightly. "Of course. And you?"
Snape's lips pressed together briefly. "These formal gatherings are not to my liking. But it would have been rude to refuse your father's invitation."
"There aren't many who would dare refuse him anything," Draco agreed. Letting his gaze sweep over the assembled celebrants again, he wondered how many of them actually considered his family among their friends, and not just a means to achieve a higher rung on the wizarding world's social ladder. Not many, he'd guess.
Did his father even have friends who weren't out to use him in some fashion?
"You don't sound like someone who's enjoying his evening's claim to fame." As usual, the brittle irony in Snape's words almost managed to shield the perception behind them.
"It feels like a dream," Draco admitted after a moment, folding his arms over his chest in a consciously defensive gesture. A short distance away, a pair of elegantly bedecked, sequined beauties giggled at him from behind their fans. He frowned at them and looked away.
"I can't recall ever having dreams like this." Snape's tone was dry.
A corner of Draco's mouth twitched in what was almost a smile. "Nightmare, is more like."
They stood together for a moment longer before Snape took his leave, bowing his head deferentially in Draco's direction before venturing once again into the carrion crowd. While Draco recognized the necessity of maintaining a public distance between them, he couldn't help feeling cheated by Snape's sudden absence.
Impossible to tell how much time passed before a second figure appeared at his side. This time, Draco didn't look up.
"You're fucking him, aren't you?" Lucius said, running a thumb over the elegant serpentine head of his walking staff. He was resplendent in midnight blue robes, diamanté at the neck and cuffs, with ruffs of pale grey silk showing at his wrists and throat. His platinum blond hair hung loose around his shoulders, unabashedly long in a society of short-haired men.
"Not at the moment, no," Draco answered calmly, without meeting his father's gaze.
He could feel Lucius smile at that, sharp as razor blades in the small pocket of stillness that surrounded them. "I trust I don't need to mention how much of an embarrassment this could be to the family if word were to get out at Hogwarts."
The comment made Draco give a small, bitter smile of his own. "Don't worry. I don't plan on telling anyone."
Which brought up the question of how Lucius had found out about it. Draco wondered fleetingly whether Snape had been the one to tell him, or if Lucius had discovered their affair through other means.
"See that you don't." Lucius sounded irritated with him, which made Draco's smirk deepen.
Far be it from him to let on that a Malfoy was getting his arse fucked by a common schoolteacher.
Standing there surrounded by the trappings of his family's Christmas Eve finery, he was struck by the sudden urge to scream his secret aloud for all the room to hear, just to see the looks it would cause on all those perfectly painted faces around him. If he didn't know the action would have resulted in Snape losing his job at the school, he might have done it, regardless of the consequences it would cause.
"I hate it here," he told his father, and he felt Lucius frown beside him.
"This is your home, Draco." And there was the disappointment again, sharp as a bared knife between them. Lucius settled a hand on Draco's shoulder and squeezed gently, stroking lightly with his thumb. "This is where you belong."
"I don't want to be here." Don't want to be you, Draco added silently. He closed his eyes and thought about Lucius attending a Christmas Eve gala at around the same age that he was now, slowly falling under Voldemort's seduction of a father's murder to gain him access to his family's fortunes. The thought sickened him.
"You are what you are," Lucius told him, and it seemed eerie that he appeared to be answering the thought Draco hadn't spoken. Draco wondered if the words were meant to be reassuring.
It was almost dawn when the last of the guests left, and Draco found his father sitting alone in his study drinking cognac in front of the fire. The room yawned like a cavern around him, flickering dark with shadows at its edges, lit by orange flame at its heart. Against that greater darkness, Lucius looked very small.
"Where's Mum?" Draco asked, hovering in the doorway to the room. The house seemed excruciatingly silent around him, like a living creature that had had its spirit removed.
"Upstairs sleeping in her room." Lucius didn't look up from the fire. He looked achingly fragile suddenly for reasons that Draco couldn't describe, and older than Draco could ever remember seeing him.
Feeling faintly dizzy from the wine he'd drunk throughout the night, Draco moved forward into the room. "Why did you never sleep with him?" he asked, knowing Lucius would understand full well who he was referring to.
Lucius smiled thinly. "It seems I am not quite so much the whore as you."
The words were meant to hurt, and Draco paused, wondering why they didn't affect him more than they did. Shrugging inwardly, he perched on the arm of his father's chair. "He fancies you, you know. Even after all this time."
Lucius didn't respond, but then Draco hadn't expected him to. And it seemed suddenly significant that he would find his father sitting here, after all his colleagues and admirers had departed.
Alone.
Draco wondered then just how willingly that younger Lucius had gone along with Voldemort's plan to murder his father, if perhaps it was a choice he had come to regret in later years. If it was perhaps a choice he regretted now, when he sat alone with his brandy and his thoughts in the latter hours of winter nights.
Once changed, a thing could never again go back to what it had been.
I pity you, Draco realized with some degree of astonishment, but had enough sense to keep the thought to himself.
And swift on the heels of that thought came another: that his father was fully aware of the feelings Snape harbored for him, and that this knowledge had formed the basis for their strangely enduring friendship over the years. Sex was power, as Draco was beginning to learn, and perhaps the withholding of sex could be a power greater still.
The thought was disturbingly appealing.
Balancing himself with one hand on the back of the tall armchair, he leaned down to touch his lips to Lucius'. Lucius' eyes flickered up to meet his, and the pure astonishment in them sent a current of giddy triumph sparking through Draco's veins. It seemed a small enough victory that he would still be able to shock his father, jaded bastard that he was.
"Draco." Lucius pulled away from him slightly, eyes searching his face. "What are you doing?"
Draco felt his smile twist, as a jolt of pure wild recklessness sang through him. He licked his lips deliberately, visibly savoring the taste of his father there. "Taking a part of you with me, Father. So the next time he fucks me, he'll be able to kiss me and in some small way, be touching you."
The hand that cuffed the side of his face was painfully abrupt, but not entirely unexpected. "Do you value yourself so cheaply?" Lucius whispered, voice trembling with rage. His fingers closed vise-like over the back of Draco's neck. "That you would whore yourself to my memory, for a man who cares nothing for you?"
The words cut deep, as they were intended to, but Draco refused to back down. He refused to believe that there wasn't some small part of Snape that cared for him, no matter what his father might say.
"I'll shag whoever I want," he said, thrilling at the small lance of pain the words sparked in Lucius' eyes. And was this what his relationship with his father had been reduced to, seeing who could lay down the deepest wounds between them? "I'll shag the whole fucking school if that's what it takes to feel human again."
"And what are you hoping to prove?" Lucius' voice was icy. "That you're independent? That you're not subject to my rules? I would have thought this kind of adolescent rebellion was beneath you, Draco."
"I'm not a child," Draco responded, feeling stung by the accusation. Perhaps later he would find it funny that this would have the power to hurt him, when spiteful allegations against his sexual choices didn't. "And maybe I don't want to be the perfect Malfoy anymore."
"You. Are. My. Son." Lucius' fingers pressed tighter around the sides of his neck, refusing to relinquish their grip when Draco tried to pull away.
"Let go of me." For the first time, Draco thought he understood what might have motivated his father to agree to his own father's murder all those years ago. Hatred and love, fury and compassion.... The conflict alone was enough to tear a lesser man apart.
Lucius regarded him in stony silence for a long moment. And then, "Did you suck his cock?"
Draco stared at him slack-jawed, pride forgotten. "What?"
"His cock, Draco." There was a light in Lucius' eyes now that Draco didn't like. His voice when he spoke was quietly vicious. "Did you put it in your mouth and suck it? Is that something he taught you how to do?"
This time Draco stiffened as a flush of resentment moved through him. His father had learned cruelty from the best of them, and Draco was a mere amateur in comparison. "None of your bloody business."
"I think it is." Lucius stroked hard with his thumb up the side of Draco's neck, prickling the hair across his skin. "If my son is to become Hogwarts' new student whore, I think I have a right to know how good he is at his job."
Draco shuddered deeply, feeling as if something deep inside of him were cracking open. A part of him wanted to tuck tail and flee the room, granting his father the victory -- this relationship he had with Snape was too new, too fragile to be held up to Lucius' vindictive scrutiny. But for the first time ever, there was an equally strong part of him that wanted to stay and hold his ground, taking whatever cruelties Lucius could dish out to him and proving once and for all that he was his own man.
"I'm not afraid of you anymore," he murmured, closing his eyes. Which was surprisingly true. "But I still...." He couldn't finish the sentence. Love was too strong a word, which was perhaps something he and Snape had in common when it came to this man. Admire? Revere? Fear? Draco didn't believe there were words to describe the feelings he felt for his father. But that was okay; words weren't always necessary, and more often than not, they only got in the way.
That was something Snape had taught him, too.
Without truly thinking of what he was doing, he lifted a hand and settled it on Lucius' thigh. He felt the muscles there tense under his palm, and he stroked lightly with his fingers, silently urging them to loosen. Lucius' breath caught sharply somewhere beside his face, but Draco didn't open his eyes, didn't dare look to see the changes his newfound independence was wreaking.
"Draco." Lucius' voice sounded broken. "What do you think you're doing?"
Draco didn't answer him. Eyes still closed, he slid down off the arm of the chair, and the hand on the back of his neck let him go. He had a hand on each of Lucius' thighs now, rubbing gently, and that wild recklessness he'd felt earlier was back again, singing underneath his skin.
"Draco--"
"Shh." Draco leaned in to brush their lips together again, breathing in the scent of warm skin and sweet brandy. He kept waiting for a blow to fall, for Lucius to push him away, but it kept not happening. "Just let me...."
He had his hand in Lucius' trousers now, curled around the hardening length of his cock. Lucius gasped against Draco's lips, hands clenching abruptly over his shoulders, but still he made no move to push him away.
"Whore," Lucius whispered, but Draco chortled inwardly, because Lucius was letting him, was allowing this to happen. And it was a kind of triumph that he would be able to reduce his father to this, this kind of gasping, heaving creature who needed Draco to give him what his body wanted.
"Did it make you hot to think of the two of us together?" Draco breathed against Lucius' lips, stroking hard with his hand. Lucius' head fell back against the upper edge of his chair, and Draco leaned forward to follow him, refusing to let him go. "Is that why you wanted to hear what we did together? Shall I tell you, Father? How he fucked me, how he opened me up with his fingers and put his cock inside me and just fucked--"
Lucius kissed him, hard. More to stop the stream of words, Draco thought, than out of any desire for further intimacy, but still, the effects were mind-blowing. He'd never given much thought to what Lucius would be like as a lover, but there was a hunger involved that felt like it was going to devour him whole. It was almost frightening, riding the lightning edge of this kind of forbidden passion, but there was exhilaration in it, too. He felt wilder and freer than he could ever remember feeling, even when he'd been fucking with Snape.
"God," Lucius gasped, clutching at him, and he was writhing now, in a way that made Draco want to laugh his joy aloud. If only the board of governors could see his prim and proper father now.... He lowered his head and licked at the head of Lucius' cock, feeling pierced through by the sudden sharp taste of him on his tongue. Lucius' hands were knotting in the back of his hair now, urging him down, and Draco went after the barest of pauses, opening his mouth to swallow his father's cock to the root.
Afterwards, he could never entirely recall just how it ended, but he did remember the sudden bitter splash of Lucius' seed across his tongue, the taut strain of the thigh muscles under his gripping fingers, the dull throb of pain where his father's cock thrust against the raw constriction of his throat. But it was a good pain, and there was triumph in it, in whatever strange fashion he measured his victories these days.
He sat back on his heels with a smug smile and wiped at his mouth with the back of one hand. Lucius was sitting slumped in his chair, looking disheveled, and there was a glitter in his eyes that could have signified anything from outright hatred to raging lust. Draco had never been particularly adept at judging his father's moods.
"Looks like I'm not the only whore in the family," he said, before he could censor the words. They sounded unnaturally loud in the stillness of the room, making him wince inwardly. It was an ingrained habit, to lash out when he was feeling insecure.
He was, as it turned out, his father's son.
But he was not his father.
The thought was freeing, and he closed his eyes against the power of it, feeling giddy. Maybe it was just the wine he'd drunk earlier or the lateness of the hour, but he felt freer at that moment than he'd ever felt in his life.
"You surprise me," Lucius murmured, reaching out to slide his fingers down Draco's cheek. The caress was warm and unexpectedly gentle, and Draco found himself turning his face into it without thinking. Uncomfortably, he wondered which one of them had actually been the victor in this particular battle of wills.
This was not an experience he'd be sharing with Snape when he returned to Hogwarts in January, he decided.
"Good night, Father." Mustering as much dignity as he could, Draco stood and turned to head upstairs. He was so hard he ached, but he could take care of that easily enough in the privacy of his room.
"Good night, son." Lucius' eyes looked like open wounds against the paleness of his face.
Tearing his eyes away, Draco turned and walked out of the room. He could feel his father's gaze burning holes in his back long after he was gone.
And perhaps it shouldn't surprise him that the emptiness he'd felt for so long finally felt as if it had been filled. He'd known for a long while that family was synonymous with possession, and competition, and submission, and pride. But for the first time, it occurred to him that maybe -- just maybe -- it didn't have to mean destiny as well. Perhaps it could mean something completely different, something undefined, something he wasn't sure he would ever fully understand....
The memory of his father's voice groaning in orgasm, fingers clenched taut in his hair, was something Draco didn't believe he'd ever forget.
The sight of his father, for once in his life, without any masks at all.
He was struck suddenly with the fleeting echo of Snape's hand on his face, eyes dark as coals as they sat together at night discussing the fears and hopes Draco couldn't bring himself to share with anyone else. That low, purring voice murmuring to him in reassurance, in admonition, in the heat of orgasm.... Encouraging him, in Snape's understated way, not to follow in his father's footsteps.
And could it be as easy as that? Just make a choice, and the change was made, as effortless as breathing. Draco had to stifle the urge to laugh aloud, caught up in the memory of illicit after-hours sex, echoed by the ghost of his father's guilt-tainted kisses.
Perhaps, between the two of them, he would find his inner peace yet.
Feeling truly liberated for perhaps the first time in his life, Draco closed his eyes and smiled.