𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐍𝐆𝐒 𝐓𝐇𝐀𝐓 𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐍𝐆𝐄

Part 24

1.

He should have let Potter do it.

Potter stood there in the doorway, his face a funeral mask. His eyes were hidden behind the reflected sheen in his lenses as he stepped forward, slowly walking across the carpet.

Draco had wanted to be alone. Lord knows in this house in the summers with all four children home, he can’t even brood in peace.

And then Potter was on him, forcing him to the bed with a knee between Draco’s legs, his hands pinned above his head as Potter tried to kiss him. Draco kicked back, wiggling and writhing and trying to get away, bashing his head to the side as Potter’s mouth met his skin in a flurry of teeth and saliva.

“Get off me!” he screamed, but Potter didn’t listen, he never did and he never does. He could feel Potter’s cock hard through his trousers. He almost wanted things to be normal in that moment, to arch back against Potter’s body, to rub his own cock into Potter’s hips, to moan Potter’s name like nothing had ever changed.

He let himself go.

And Potter noticed- he climbed off Draco and wrapped an arm around him, pulling him close. Draco wanted to flee, to stay, he didn’t know what he wanted as his body shuddered with the first few racking sobs.

He wasn’t supposed to cry. He didn’t intend for Potter to ever see him cry again.

He closes his eyes when he thinks of this, Potter seeing him cry, and he is always brought back over twenty years, to when Potter caught him in Moaning Myrtle’s loo, hunched over a sink and crying because he didn’t know what to do then, either. His family was in shambles and it was his fault.

And now it has come full circle, back to the same place.

He is never alone in the house, not now, not ever. It would be easier if Viola and Abraxas and Pyrrha were still at school- Draco doubts, even if James did see anything, that he would say much to Potter.

Potter never leaves him alone. After supper, when he’s silent and charming the dishes into the sink to be washed, Potter comes up behind him and puts a hand on his forearm.

“Are you all right?” he asks.

Draco grunts. “I’m fine.”

At night, when he’s in the bathroom, drowning himself in a hot, steamy shower, staring at his feet there is a knock on the door. Draco ignores it, pretending he can’t hear Potter’s voice over the spray of the water. He hates showers even more now, like he hates dressing and undressing, having to touch himself and know what his father knows now about him that his body isn’t all right. He almost can’t remember what it was like beforehand, when he could reach a hand behind his balls and feel nothing.

“Are you all right?” Potter asks when he finally emerges from the bathroom, his body too-warm and too-lethargic, his eyes drooping with sleep.

“I’m fine,” Draco says. He tightens the towel around his waist a little bit more.

He used to like Potter’s hols, to have Potter around more, to have Potter around more to shag at night when the children were in bed, a heavy net of charms around their bed for silence. Now, all he thinks is Go back to the bloody Ministry! Potter’s constant “All right?”s make his eye twitch and the lamps flutter behind him.