[Songs of Summer]: Wellspring, Harry/Blaise, R, 4/5

[lomonaaeren]

Blaise followed Harry inside Millicent’s house, blinking several times. He wasn’t blind to the way that Harry was looking at him, and he wanted to encourage it, but he didn’t understand that last thing Harry had said at all.

Not that I necessarily need to understand it. If he wants to thank me—

Then Blaise’s thoughts were chopped off short as he saw the house beyond the doorway.

“Millicent, what the hell?” he asked, staring around at the polished wooden ceilings and thick, comfortable furniture that filled the huge room. There were curtains strung up here and there that looked as if they perhaps divided the room into a bedchamber and kitchen and so on, but this was incredibly far from what Blaise had seen the last time he’d visited. “Why did you knock down all the walls?”

“I got tired of bumping into them.”

Blaise turned to look at Millicent, who stared back at him with her arms folded. He started to say, “But you didn’t have to,” and then realized that her gaze was directed past him, at Harry, waiting for the half-giant reaction.

Harry just turned around and shrugged. “I like it.”

Millicent squinted at him, then said, “Where’s the half-giant nonsense, Potter?”

“Blaise told me about the curse. I’m not affected by it. I was friends with Hagrid, you know. You’d have a long way to go to be as tall as he is.”

Millicent stared with her mouth slightly open, then snapped a look at Blaise. Blaise half-shrugged. Welcome to the world of Harry Potter.

“All right,” Millicent said abruptly, and turned away. Blaise was sure Harry didn’t recognize what a concession that was, but he did smile a little. “We’re going to have a good dinner. Let me make it.”

Harry sat down on one of the huge wooden couches heaped with red and black pillows and craned his neck backwards to look up at the ceiling. Blaise sat down next to him and followed his line of sight, smiling when he saw gargoyles carved into the wood.

“Did she do that?” Harry murmured.

“With her wand, not her hands. But yes.”

“Wow.”

Blaise studied Harry closely, but he seemed to have honest admiration in his face. And he leaned back to look up at the ceiling again, obviously searching for more carvings. He would find them, Blaise knew. The thing that had changed the least between this visit and Blaise’s previous one was the rafters.

“Dinner!”

Harry looked surprised that it was ready so quickly, but he stood and walked over to the portion of the room cut off with a blue curtain. Blaise followed, looking around in more admiration than he’d ever show in front of Millicent at first.

He had liked her old house, but this was pretty good. As close to being in the forest as someone could get inside walls.

*

“What kind of curse do you have, Potter?”

Harry nearly choked on the piece of chicken he was eating, and only managed to put it down just in time. Bulstrode was leaning across the table to stare at him, her face carved in harsh lines, her hand closed over her fork as if she were going to use it to stab him.

Harry blotted at his face to get the sauce the chicken was dripping in—delicious and thick—off, and then sat back and said, “So Blaise told you?”

“No. It’s just that he can only feed on people who are cursed—”

“That’s not true, Millicent. There’s also the sick and the poisoned.”

Bulstrode gave Blaise the kind of glare that would have shut Harry up, but Blaise just sat back and sipped the wine Bulstrode had given them with a grin. Harry had to admit he admired that.

And other things about Blaise, of course. Harry jerked his eyes up from where they were lingering on the man’s mouth again, and said, “All right, is it because he also makes friends with people who are cursed? Like you and Malfoy?”

“Yeah.”

Harry half-smiled. He didn’t know if he would have liked Bulstrode in school, probably not, but here her bluntness was refreshing. “My friends were dying of an incurable disease that the Healers didn’t even believe existed. I made a bargain with Death to save them and thought it would kill me. Instead, it made them forget about having close relationships with me and drove my magic chaotic.”

Bulstrode stared at him for long enough that Harry wondered if she didn’t believe him. Then she scowled and turned to Blaise. “You owe me six Galleons.”

“No, you owe me twelve. You were the one who didn’t believe he was the Master of Death.”

“But you were the one who said that it wasn’t going to have any major effects on his life.”

They dickered back and forth for a few moments, while Harry watched them and blinked and blinked again. He wasn’t upset that they’d apparently bet on his Master of Death status. Couldn’t be, really. It was just—well, it was less offensive than half the things people said to him on a regular basis.

In the end, Blaise handed three Galleons to Bulstrode, because of some method they’d worked out that Harry hadn’t paid attention to. Then Bulstrode turned to Harry. “Would you be willing to be friends with someone like me?”

“Like you? Blunt? Tall? Cursed? Former Slytherin?”

“All of those.”

“Sure. If you don’t believe in the Boy-Who-Lived nonsense, and if you include me in any bets you make in the future, so that I can profit from them as well as you.”

Bulstrode squinted at him long enough that Harry thought he must have said something to offend her without meaning to. And then she gave a deep laugh and darted a look at Blaise that made him grin.

“Yeah, I like you, Potter. So tell me, have you ever ridden a winged horse?”

*

Potter hadn’t, of course, given the lack of them in most places in Britain and the complete lack in the Muggle world, but he was willing to learn.

Millicent boosted Harry onto a gentler, sleeker black mare than the white Starridden and then stood back and studied him for a second. “You need a better seat.”

“Well, a saddle would help.”

“No, I mean, don’t sit on the horse like a sack of potatoes in a cart, Potter. Ride her.”

“You going to tell me how to do that or not?”

Blaise leaned one elbow on the stone wall beside him and watched as Millicent dragged Harry around on the horse’s back until he was arranged to her satisfaction. Then Millicent nodded and slapped the mare’s arse.

Harry yelped as the mare cantered forwards and took off, her great wings opening on either side of her. Blaise watched him go, smiling. He had no fear that Harry would fall off. Not only were Millicent’s horses trained to be careful of their riders, but Harry had ridden a broom the first time he’d seen one, and he’d ridden that hippogriff in third year.

“You want him.”

Blaise gave Millicent a half-smile. He did enjoy the wordplay he did with Draco and some of his other Slytherin friends, but Millicent’s honesty was refreshing. “Yeah, I do. Part of the curse makes me prefer my victims.”

“But you haven’t bedded him yet.”

Blaise blinked. “Is it that obvious?”

“You wouldn’t look at him like you want to drink him down if you had.”

Blaise shrugged, although inwardly he was reeling. He’d had no idea that Milicent had paid that much attention to him and what he looked like when he wanted someone. “Well, he lost his friends and his girlfriend and his adopted family and even his colleagues at work to Death’s curse. I can’t just pressure him to sleep with me.”

“He looks at you like he wants to.”

“Did you hear my previous statement or not?”

Millicent cocked her head and started to say something, but then Harry’s whoop drifted down through the warm starry evening.

Blaise cocked his head back and watched Harry angle the mare down towards them. He was already riding her better than he had been when Millicent drove the horse into the air, Blaise thought. Harry laughed aloud, squeezing the mare’s sides with his thighs, as she landed and cantered towards them.

“She’s magnificent!”

“I know something else he could squeeze with those thighs,” Millicent muttered, voice not low enough to keep Harry’s ears from turning red.

Blaise deliberately turned his shoulder towards Millicent and held out his hand to Harry. Harry stared at him as if he thought Blaise would be reacting to what Millicent had said, and then he took a deep breath, grabbed Blaise’s hand, and hopped off the horse.

“Could we stay here for a few days?” he asked, reaching out to run one hand down the mare’s silken dark mane. The horse and Millicent were both looking at Harry indulgently, although Blaise didn’t know if he saw that. “I’d like to ride her again.”

“And not a more challenging horse from my stables, Potter?”

“Trying to kill me, Bulstrode?”

They bickered almost like Blaise and Millicent did, sometimes. Blaise, standing there and watching them, felt his heart fill.

I want this. I want this to be my reality, and I want it to go on and on.

*

Harry yawned as he walked towards the blue blanket that Bulstrode had told him hid the bedroom. His stomach was full of good food and the settled excitement of riding that Granian mare. He hadn’t realized how much he missed flying, and the mare was more responsive and exciting than a broom any day.

He stepped past the blanket, and blinked when he saw Blaise taking his own robes off near the bed.

The single bed.

“Um.”

Blaise looked up, blinked, then followed Harry’s gaze to the bed. He snorted a second later. “This is Millicent’s idea of subtlety. She knows we want to sleep together, so she thinks that shoving one bed at us will do it.”

“Um.”

Blaise rolled his eyes. “I’m not going to force you to sleep with me, Harry, don’t be ridiculous.”

“I didn’t think that!”

“Then what?” Blaise paused, but before Harry could think of a good answer, he had turned away, shaking his head. “Some of those couches Millicent has in her front room are as thick and inviting as this—”

“No. Wait. Stay?”

Blaise looked at him with his lips twitching. “If I do, are you going to be able to speak in words of more than one syllable?”

Harry took a deep breath, but he relaxed. This was one reason he liked Blaise, he reminded himself. There was less delicate history between them, and Harry could say what he wanted and not drive Blaise off.

“I’d like you to stay,” he said quietly. “And not because I want to take one of the couches myself,” he added, when Blaise opened his mouth as if to object to the idea of Harry sleeping there. “I’d like to—could you hold me while we sleep? Just sleep? Please.”

He would have felt horrible begging like this even a month ago. He’d thought he would have to bear the consequences of his bargain with Death alone, and there was no way to calm his chaotic magic or his grief or any of it.

But Blaise had shown him things could be different. And so, Harry was willing to ask, without worrying whether or not Blaise would hear it as begging.

Blaise moved a step towards him. His eyes were very dark. Harry stared at him. He thought that Blaise wasn’t angry, but Harry still wasn’t very good at reading him yet. Maybe what he’d asked for had caused offense.

“This is what you’re asking for?” Blaise whispered. “Just for me to hold you as you sleep?”

“It doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t want to ask for other things later,” Harry said, driven to honesty by his own irritation. “It just means that this is what I’m asking for now.” He was tired, and he didn’t want to sleep on a couch, and he didn’t want Blaise to sleep on a couch as some imaginary way of fixing Bulstrode’s idiocy, and he wanted—

He wanted arms around him. Someone to hold him. Given that Ginny and Ron and Hermione had been sick for months before Harry had made his sacrifice, he hadn’t had someone sleep with their arms around him in almost a year.

Blaise lifted his hand. Harry watched it travel towards his lips in slow motion. Blaise’s fingers came to rest on Harry’s mouth.

“Done,” Blaise said, so softly that Harry’s ears ached listening for him.

Then Blaise stepped back and went on pulling off his robes.

Harry wanted to swallow, but he thought it would make the silence between them less sacred. He started to pull off his own robes, not bothering to look away or turn his back as he watched Blaise’s naked chest emerge.

Merlin, he was beautiful, all dark skin and shining strength.

“I always sleep half-naked,” Blaise said, his voice emerging almost as a purr. “I hope you don’t mind.”

“Not at all,” Harry whispered, his voice hoarse. He finished getting his own shirt off and nearly got into bed before he realized that he still wore his boots. He kicked them off, his feet hurting and his face blazing.

But it didn’t matter when Blaise murmured a word Harry couldn’t hear and all the lights behind the curtain flicked off at once. What mattered was the darkness, and how there were only soft rustlings and the like before Harry’s eyes started to adjust to that darkness, and the warmth of Blaise’s arms closing around him.

Harry melted.

He could feel it, feel his muscles losing their strength and his body tumbling into Blaise’s embrace as though he were made of butter. It didn’t matter, though. Blaise wasn’t going to make fun of him, and wasn’t going to suddenly roll back and abandon him. Harry knew it. He didn’t know how he knew it, but he did.

He pressed closer, closer. Blaise still didn’t try to pull back, even though the warmth might have been uncomfortable for him.

Harry finally relaxed enough to loop his own arms around Blaise, and heard his bedmate’s startled inbreath.

He was here. He was warm. He was real.

Harry slid into the best sleep he’d enjoyed in months, better than right after Blaise had fed on him.

Blaise was here.

*

Blaise woke up early, as he tended to do unless there was some reason for him to sleep in, and turned his head to stare at the man in his arms.

Potter—Harry—had slept more easily next to Blaise than anyone ever had, even those people Blaise had seduced with his magic.

Blaise reached out, and then pulled back his hand. His fingers were trembling. That would never do. He needed…

He needed.

Blaise could feel part of himself rising to the surface that was nowhere near as common as the part that simply needed to feed on wild magic. He squeezed his eyes shut and fought it back. He couldn’t let it out now. It would drain the warmth from Harry’s body, his personality, his soul, as it fought desperately to simply be closer.

Blaise didn’t take lovers outside his curse because this part of him would come forwards. It was magical, but it was also his own soul. He just wanted to consume and hold and swallow and take. No one could stand that.

“Blaise.”

He snapped his eyes open. Harry was lying there, looking at him, his eyes bright and his face open.

“You can. It’s all right.”

“This isn’t just feeding on magic,” Blaise said, ignoring the way that his own voice sounded, thick, and his mother’s imagined voice screaming at him that he sounded weak. “I need—something more. It would drain you.”

“Would it?”

“Yes, of course it would,” Blaise snapped.

“Let’s find out.”

Before Blaise could stop the insane man, Harry leaned forwards and kissed Blaise gently, softly, his arm looped around the back of Blaise’s neck.

Blaise gasped as he rolled onto his back, pulling Harry with him, onto his chest, and lay there, cradling him and kissing him and drinking. He could feel his magic pulling on Harry. It was so greedy, yanking and tugging and unraveling.

Except, when Harry lifted his head and smiled at Blaise, he looked no worse for wear. Just a bit dazed, and happy.

“Again?” Harry asked.

Blaise blurted it out before he could think better of it. “Why aren’t you dying?”

Harry grinned at him. “Maybe the people you kissed before this were already affected by your magic and they couldn’t really give you themselves?” He shifted closer, pressing against Blaise from his shoulders to his thighs. “But I’m not. I’m here, and I’m not going anywhere unless you tell me to, Blaise.”

Blaise shuddered all over. Despite the fact that he was the one with the curse that could suppress chaotic magic, and Harry was the victim of the bargain with Death, the way they were looking at each other made Blaise feel as if Harry had all the strength in the world.

He at least has enough for this. And he knows what he wants.

Blaise lunged up and kissed him.

Harry kissed back, so hot and desperate that Blaise had to clasp Harry in his arms and roll on top of him. Harry went with it, not showing any fear or wariness, still smiling up at Blaise, his eyes bright and shining.

“Merlin, I want you,” Blaise whispered.

“So have me.”

Blaise shuddered for a different reason and pulled back to stare into Harry’s eyes. “Are you sure? It’s still so soon after your breakup with Weasley—”

“I know, I thought that, too. But.” Harry took a deep breath that it seemed he would never let out. Blaise lay on top of him, staring into his face. He finally felt Harry’s chest relax underneath him, and then Harry met his eyes.

“I lived through half a dozen lifetimes of fear and anger and pain and grief after what Death took away from me,” Harry said quietly. “I think I’m due one that’s filled with what I want.”

Blaise leaned down and kissed him again.

Harry arched up against him, as sleek and full of strength as a dolphin, and Blaise became aware that they were both still wearing trousers and pants. He wriggled impatiently against Harry, concentrating, and their clothes split at the seam and fell away.

“Blaise.”

Blaise wasn’t about to explain that Mother had taught him to do that so he wouldn’t have to stop and strip in the heat of the moment, which might ruin the mood of his prey. He met Harry’s eyes and shrugged. “We can repair them.”

“Damn right,” Harry said, and then tugged Blaise on top of him.

Blaise kind of wanted to stop and see, view Harry’s cock, stroke his arms, admire his body. But at the moment, the desperation Harry hadn’t felt to escape was surging up all around them like a pool of invisible hot water, and Blaise lowered his head and his erection and succumbed to it.

There was so much heat, trapped between them and rolling around them and easing the slide of their bodies. Harry panted into Blaise’s face, little pained pants, and Blaise kissed him again and pressed down and rubbed himself frantically against Harry’s erection.

It didn’t last long. There was no way it could, not at that pitch. Blaise felt the final rush of heat through him, and Harry cried out, a harsh noise like a wolf’s howl, and then they both came at what felt like the same time.

It probably wasn’t. But it felt that way.

Blaise sagged slowly down Harry’s side in the aftermath, his eyes closed. The pleasure streaking through him had been nice, of course, but the physical side of it was augmented by pure relief that Harry was here, Harry wanted him, and Harry hadn’t run away.

And Blaise hadn’t drained him dry, either.

“I don’t…understand,” he whispered drowsily, his head tilted back so that he could see Harry’s eyes.

Harry stroked his hair and smiled. “Did you ever sleep with someone who wasn’t one of your curse victims?”

“Not since…before the curse awakened.”

Harry leaned down and kissed him. “Then I think that you don’t necessarily know what would happen to someone who isn’t under the influence of your magic, or theirs, and really wants to sleep with you.”

Blaise clung to Harry. There were lots of things he wanted to say, things he had imagined saying if and when he found someone who could resist the curse. But all he could do was whisper, “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

Blaise felt the brush of another kiss on his temple, and then he sank into slumber again, worn out by sheer relief.

*

“You don’t look like someone who would walk away from him.”

Harry turned his head and blinked. Bulstrode was marching towards him down the stone path. She had been gone when Harry and Blaise woke up (the second time), and so they’d prepared their own breakfast from things they found in the kitchen, then gone out to the stables. Blaise was aloft on Starridden now.

“No. I’m not.”

“Is it just because you want someone to cling to after what happened with your friends? Because Blaise deserves more than that.”

Harry managed to avoid snorting, but it was difficult. He shook his head when Bulstrode narrowed her eyes at him. “Blaise also soothed my grief and did his best to introduce me to people he hopes will become my friends. He took me abroad for the first time in my life. Believe me, Bulstrode, I know how lucky I am.”

Bulstrode’s eyes narrowed further, and Harry wondered what in his little speech had been offensive. He shifted so that his hand was near his wand.

Then Bulstrode smiled abruptly. “Call me Millicent.”

Maybe it had been a test, and he had passed? Harry supposed he wouldn’t know for certain. He nodded, keeping his face pleasant without that much effort. “Please call me Harry.”

“Oh, I will,” Millicent said, making it sound like a threat, and then turned and marched away to tend to one of the other horses.

Harry tilted his head back and watched the white Granian circling overhead, with his lover laughing in the middle of his back. Blaise hadn’t bothered with a saddle, which was his choice, but which Harry thought might leave him with some stiffness in his legs.

Well, then I can help him…massage it out.

Harry smiled, and Blaise looked down as if feeling the smile. He beamed at Harry and waved wildly. Harry waved back.

To think that he could soothe Blaise and give him something he wanted along with Blaise soothing him and giving him the things he wanted?

It made Harry all the more determined to stay with Blaise. He could help his lover, instead of distressing him the way that he had with Ron and Hermione and Ginny. Harry had tried to insist on their prior relationships being real, and his friends and girlfriend had been upset and embarrassed that he remembered things they didn’t.

Harry shook his head and banished the thoughts. Yes, he had suffered, and so had they. And Blaise had suffered in the past. But here they were with each other, and they wouldn’t have to be alone again.

He looked up, and Blaise waved at him again, the white horse he rode glowing in the Italian sun.

*

Blaise sighed as he closed the door of his flat behind him and Harry. They had stayed almost a week with Millicent, while Harry rode the horses and learned to care for them and developed almost the same bantering relationship with Millicent that she and Blaise had. And they had gone to a few Italian magical districts and eaten enormous helpings of food.

Harry’s magic had started to tremble yesterday, and although even Millicent seemed sorry to cut the visit short, Blaise knew they should go home.

“Do you think it’ll hurt this time?”

Harry was standing in the middle of Blaise’s sitting room, so resigned to the pain that it made Blaise’s heart ache. He stepped forwards and pulled Harry into his arms. “I hope not,” he said bluntly. “But I’ve only ever engaged with lovers who couldn’t really tell me one way or the other.”

Harry nodded, took a deep breath, and dropped the cloak he’d been using to carry some of the packaged and Preserved food Millicent had sent with them. “I’m ready.”

Blaise smiled and stepped forwards. His own magic was reaching out, but not with the gaping hunger that he’d felt so often. It licked at the edges of Harry’s wild magic and drank it in.

Harry gasped a little. Blaise angled his arm to support Harry if he fainted again. It had only been sheer good luck that he hadn’t shattered his head open the first time.

“No, it’s…”

Blaise almost pulled his magic back, but he looked at Harry’s flushing cheeks and wide eyes and decided to take a chance. “It feels good?”

Harry shuddered and ducked his head, snuggling into Blaise. “It feels soft and gentle, like that bath we took in the heated springs.”

Blaise kissed the top of Harry’s head and cradled him close as he pulled gently, steadily, at Harry’s chaotic magic. The power swirled forwards and danced in anxious eddies, but Blaise continued to drain it at the same calm pace, and Harry’s breathing was quiet, too. He pushed so close to Blaise that Blaise thought he had fallen asleep.

But he opened his eyes long enough to blink at Blaise, smile, and murmur, “‘S good,” before he closed his eyes again.

Blaise had just arranged Harry on the couch when his Floo shone in the way that meant his mother was calling. Blaise frowned and debated just not accepting.

But in the end, that would make his mother furious and suspicious, and might make her think he was plotting something against her. Blaise sighed and made his way to the Floo to kneel down in front of it, unlocking it with a wave of his hand.

“Blaise, my darling.”

Mother’s eyes were shining. Blaise restrained a shudder and inclined his head. “Good evening, Mother. I trust you’re well?”

“I am. But imagine my distress when I heard that my son was in the same country for nearly a week and never came to visit me.”

They had probably been recognized at one of the magical shopping areas they’d gone to in Rome. Blaise cocked his head a little. “Well, I was seducing someone powerful and important, Mother. I was a bit concerned that he would bolt if he realized we were close.”

“And who is this powerful, important person, my dear?”

He would have to tell her sooner or later. “Harry Potter.”

His mother’s eyes widened. Then she pursed her lips. “And you’re sure that he won’t go and report on you to the Ministry, my love? That he won’t call you an unnatural predator or a foreign element or the like?”

Blaise had to restrain his laughter as he answered. His mother had never really understood that the British Ministry didn’t care about witches and wizards from other countries if they were rich purebloods. Those kinds of people were regarded with more suspicion in Italy, since several Death Eaters had chosen that country as a refuge from persecution in Britain. “I’m sure, Mother.”

“Then perhaps he can help me with a favor I intended to ask you. May I come through?”

Blaise hid an impatient sigh and nodded as he picked up his wand. “Just let me unlock the Floo, Mother.”

“So untrusting, my darling.”

Blaise didn’t bother replying as he lifted the shield around the couch that would keep Harry safe from any form of detection, including the kind that could see through Invisibility Cloaks. Then he unlocked the Floo and stepped back as Mother came through.

As always, being in the same room with her was unnerving. She was so commanding, absorbing, more.

“I am sorry for this, darling.”

Blaise forced a smile onto his face. “You know you’re always welcome in my homes, Mother.”

“Oh, no, I didn’t mean that.” Mother shook her head, the golden earrings she wore gently clinking. “You see, when I asked you about a mage you might know named Alexander Alexandros, I didn’t realize how well-connected he was.”

Blaise blinked. “You need shelter because people are pursuing you?”

“Not in the least,” Mother said cheerfully. “Dear Alexander has been the recipient of many gifts from alchemists and fellow researchers, and he has developed a cure for the bloodline curse that plagues me. But it does require a sacrifice. I’m sorry, my dear.”

Blaise had no chance to react before the Stunner hit him.