lomonaaeren

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Title: Corybantes (11/12)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Draco
Rating: R
Warnings: Violence, OC character death, profanity, sex, mentions of random fetishes and suicide. Ignores the DH epilogue.
Summary: A mysterious death has occurred at Draco Malfoy’s club, Corybantes, which specializes in using magic to make its clients’ deepest fantasies come true. As Auror Harry Potter investigates, he finds himself admiring Malfoy’s courage and determination in achieving success. Which could be a problem, as there’s a fairly large chance that Malfoy is the murderer.
Author’s Notes: Corybantes were servants of the goddess Cybele who worked themselves up into ecstatic trances with drumming and dancing. Though applying to a different kind of ecstasy, it seemed a fairly good name for Draco’s club. This story will be about ten or twelve chapters long.

Chapter One.

Chapter Eleven—Pleasures and Perceptions

Harry swallowed. It was the thirteenth time he’d done that in the past two minutes.

He was lying face-down on a table that Malfoy had Transfigured into a comfortable bed without a headboard or footboard, and he wore nothing except a pair of pants. He had wanted to go further, to be completely naked, but his fingers had started trembling when he tried to pull the pants off, and Malfoy had shaken his head and whispered that it was fine, that he understood and that Harry was willing to try and fulfill this fantasy was enough.

Harry shut his eyes. A blush crowded his face, the heat in his cheeks reminding him it was there whenever he tried to forget.

Not that he could forget, when Malfoy was in the other room preparing to fulfill his fantasy.

Such a stupid fantasy. Harry shifted and nearly got off the table, but sheer stubbornness in the end, and the fact that he had confessed his desires to Malfoy and Malfoy hadn’t laughed, kept him there. Nothing exotic about it. I don’t want to have sex with animals or turn other people into my servants. I want a massage, someone I trust to touch me and make me feel good in a simple way. I want the feeling that I can utterly relax with someone else, and not have that person judge me as weak for my loss of control.

It was a stupid thing to be so nervous about. That was the reason he had expected Malfoy to laugh. He must have heard much sexier things, things that he would have preferred to do with Harry.

But Malfoy had nodded and smiled faintly, the kind of expression that said many things about Harry made sense now, and kissed his forehead. “Then I’ll go into the other room and consider what kind of oil I should use,” he said. “Unless oil isn’t part of your fantasies?”

Harry had scanned his face anxiously. He knew that Malfoy wasn’t the perfect statue he pretended to be, because he clenched his hands together with impatience now and then in his desire to get on with things. But Harry was more interested in whether he was biting his cheek, which would indicate that he was trying to hold back laughter.

There was nothing like that. If anything, the little movements Malfoy made that broke through his façade seemed to say that he was having trouble holding himself back, rather than holding himself back from walking away.

“Oil will work fine,” Harry had whispered. His fantasy hadn’t got further than the thought of warm hands rubbing over his skin and the fact that those warm hands would belong to someone he trusted not to make fun of him.

Now, he shifted and pressed his face into the Transfigured mattress as he stifled a groan. The mere thought was arousing him. How childish was it that the thought of being with someone he trusted could arouse him?

“Are you all right, Harry?”

Harry gasped and gripped the sides of the bed, or massage table, or whatever it was, tightly. His thoughts were sliding and blending again the way they had when he was in the throes of a breakdown. “I’ll be all right,” he muttered. “But I think I’m going to die of embarrassment before we finish here.”

“Are you?” Malfoy had moved nearer, Harry knew that from the sound of his footsteps, but his voice still sounded too near and shockingly intimate. There was no laughter in that voice, no matter how hard Harry listened for it. “I hope that you don’t. I hope I can show you that there’s nothing to be embarrassed about, just as there’s nothing to fear, in this room.”

“But it’s so small,” Harry said, burying his face completely so that he wouldn’t be tempted to turn his head around and try to speak to Malfoy. “I don’t—it was so small a thing to want, and it was so small that I shouldn’t have been afraid of it. Why would you want to help someone who’s as cowardly as I am?”

Malfoy’s hands shocked him into silence, or God knew how long his nervous babbling would have continued. Harry’s mouth dropped open when he felt how warm they were. Maybe they were warmer than normal because of the sparkling oil that coated the palms and fingers, but he didn’t care. He tilted his head back and closed his eyes, shaking.

Malfoy was rubbing his shoulders in broad, firm strokes, traveling towards the middle of his back. His thumbs touched in the middle and dug deep, making Harry arch in pain as they found a knot of tension there. Malfoy probed at it until the tension faded and Harry found himself flopping forwards onto the massage table.

He might have tried to hang onto his control and present a stern face, but nothing could have stilled the shudders traveling through his body or the way his toes and his fingers flexed and curled. Malfoy wasn’t going to be fooled about his reaction.

“Ah, good,” Malfoy whispered. He was standing back from Harry at least a little—he had to be, to have his hands at that certain angle, Harry thought—but his voice still sounded as warm and close as though he were whispering in Harry’s ear. “I wondered what you would look like when you finally let go and allowed yourself to feel. I dare say that I knew you would look magnificent, but it’s always nice to see one’s visions come true.”

Harry shook his head. When he looked at the walls in front of him, even though they were the familiar walls of his sitting room, they sparkled and shifted through a red and blue haze. He tried to say something, but his breath escaped in long sighs instead of the words he wanted to use.

Then he had to lower his head again as Malfoy’s hands traveled down to the middle of his back and concentrated there, and words were useless.

Tension he hadn’t known he still carried, tension that seemed four or five years old, was flooding out of him. His mind roamed around the way it did before he went to sleep, touching on thoughts of work and torture and Auror training and the fact of his quiet but constant disagreements with Ron and Hermione, but nothing distressed him. The thoughts sparked once, as if they were going to light on fire, and then tumbled down and vanished in a shower of falling embers. When his eyes slid shut, Harry hardly noticed at first, because his mind was so busy becoming a more serene place.

“Oh,” Malfoy said, his voice deep and guttural. “Yes.” He turned to the side so that he could reach Harry’s flank, and the whole skin of his bare arm swept down the middle of Harry’s spine.

Harry grunted and twitched his head restlessly back and forth. The mere touch of naked skin was like the touch of fire. And it didn’t help that the skin Malfoy was touching now, along his ribs, was probably the most sensitive skin on his body.

“Laugh, if you need to and I’m tickling you.” Malfoy’s voice had deepened again, and Harry would have teased him about sounding so animal if he had any breath left. “I don’t mind. I’m not going to take it as a comment on my massage skills.”

Harry found the strength to power words again from somewhere at the bottom of his being. “Not—wanting to laugh,” he said. His neck had relaxed to the point where he found it hard to lift his head, so he didn’t, but turned it to the side so that his lips could move free of the pillow and Malfoy had a better chance of understanding him. “Wanting to moan.”

“What’s stopping you, then?” Malfoy’s voice was a breathless challenge. He dug in with his fingers on the right and swept his fingers down in a light, strumming motion along Harry’s ribs on the left.

The soft, hoarse sound that Harry made in response seemed to tear open his mouth and work his lungs on its own. Harry was floating again, relinquishing control over his body the way he had when he was mumbling nonsense to Malfoy last night, but this time, he didn’t mind, because he knew there was someone who would take care of him and make sure that his lack of control didn’t force him to fall apart.

Someone to take care of him.

Malfoy repeated the stroking motion, this time on both of Harry’s sides, and Harry sighed and all but sang in response. More than one fantasy was coming true right now, though he didn’t know if Malfoy knew that. The knowledge sank into his head and fused with the pleasure of the massage and being able to trust Malfoy. That pleasure turned slowly through him, like some pinwheel spinning alone in the middle of space, and then exploded and extended all down his limbs.

Harry shifted in restless, growing desire. His cock was hard enough that the mere cradling touch of the cloth against it felt intolerable. His hips flexed, and he didn’t know if he thrust or not. His body was heavy and languorous, as well as ready and eager. He was alert but deeply relaxed in the way that he sometimes felt when he woke up early but didn’t want to get out of bed.

He had never known he could feel like this.

And it was Malfoy who made him feel it.

Wonder complemented the pleasure. Harry found himself wanting to turn over to look at Malfoy, so that Malfoy could at least see his expression. Merlin knew that Harry could never find all the words that would embody his feelings.

But rolling over would disrupt the massage, and now Malfoy had moved his hands down, his fingertips lightly stroking Harry’s arse. Harry’s breath caught in his throat. He spread his legs, and then waited.

“Harry?” Malfoy whispered. “Is it all right if I touch you here?” One finger touched down, finally, caressing a line up the cloth of his pants that was almost, but not quite, identical to the line up to his hole.

“Yes,” Harry said, and wondered for a moment if he had sounded too eager, but when Malfoy stroked him again, the question faded, and he was left with nothing but need. “Yes, please.”

He thought he could hear a subdued smile in Malfoy’s voice when he spoke again, saying, “All right, thank you,” but there was still no laughter, and then his fingers were working into Harry’s buttocks, spreading them apart, dipping between them, bending the cloth. Harry dropped his head forwards on his arms and groaned blissfully.

And then time seemed to melt or fly away, and there was nothing in the world but Malfoy’s fingers and the way his hands made Harry feel. He sank further into the haze than he had when Malfoy was simply massaging his back, his breaths deepening until he sounded as if he was hypnotized, his head lolling to the side. His eyes alternately opened and fluttered shut. He seemed to have no strength to keep them in one particular position.

“Malfoy,” he whispered, and rolled the name around on his tongue, adding a length to the last vowel and then to the first one.

“My other name,” Malfoy whispered at last, when so much time had passed that Harry thought his hands must surely be getting tired, except that they never faltered and never stopped stroking. “Say it.”

Harry smiled. Malfoy was doing so much to make him feel good, and it seemed to him that he would like to do this small thing to make Malfoy feel good in return.

Besides, it had vowels the way Malfoy’s other name did, so that he could stretch it.

“Draco,” he said. This time, his eyes happened to be open, and he managed to turn his head so that his cheek was resting on his piled arms and he could look directly at Malfoy’s face. “Draaaco.”

Malfoy’s face was violently flushed. His lips were parted, his eyes so dark that Harry thought the pupil had taken them over entirely. His cool mask was shattered, and Harry felt a flash of pride that he had managed to affect Malfoy as much as Malfoy had managed to affect him.

Of course, Malfoy had looked at him like this before. But there had been hints of madness to his gaze and expression then, and Harry didn’t think they were there this time. He just looked very lustful and very—

Harry pulled himself back from the direction that his thoughts would have taken, because there were still some things that he didn’t think he could say, even to himself. He lowered his eyes to the mattress, and Malfoy’s fingers promptly stiffened and dug harder into his arse. Harry gasped and found himself lifting it towards those fingers. He hadn’t even known that he liked the sensation of someone touching him like that. It felt so good that he thought it was a terrible thing he had gone this long not knowing that about himself.

“Look at me again.” Malfoy’s voice had always been perfectly pitched, but now it wavered and trembled and had a sound of uncertain heat that Harry recognized from those first moments when he was giving in to his fantasy and had thought Malfoy might laugh at him. “Please.”

Harry twisted his head, the pleasure seeming to give extra strength to his muscles this time instead of take it away, and met Malfoy’s eyes.

Malfoy stared back at him, blinking only rarely and reluctantly. Then he took his hands away from Harry’s arse—Harry shifted in protest—and bent down, putting them on his shoulders. Harry let himself be rolled over before he thought about it.

Then he thought about what else Malfoy was likely to see, and blushed and tried to bring his hands together over his swollen groin.

Malfoy caught his wrists, with a delicacy that made Harry lose his breath all over again. He ducked his head under their joined hands, his eyes searching Harry’s face. When he breathed out, the air seemed to touch every part of Harry’s bare chest, which he knew wasn’t physically possible and must be an exaggeration of his imagination, but it was the way he felt.

“Let me see,” Malfoy whispered. “Be undisguised in front of me. That’s been a fantasy of mine as long as I’ve thought about you. Please?”

Harry shuddered. Even though the flush in his cheeks urged him to cover up and keep Malfoy from seeing him—if he could do that when Malfoy had already seen so much—the thick voice of the pleasure in his head kept pointing out that someone he trusted and who cared for him would be able to see every part of him.

And so far, Malfoy hadn’t laughed.

He nodded and then lay back, spreading his legs the way he had when he was lying on his front. His cheeks were so red that he thought he was going to scorch himself if he tried to cover up the blush, so he dropped his hands to his sides the moment Malfoy released them and kept them resolutely there.

Now I only have to survive the next few minutes.

Malfoy stared at him, his cheeks flushing even more. Harry didn’t look down. He had a good idea about what Malfoy would see, and it wasn’t that impressive—certainly nothing worth looking at with that eager gaze.

Then Malfoy reached down and stroked a thin line up the middle of Harry’s cock, the same way he had touched his arse.

Harry cried out softly, so shocked by the sensations flooding through him that he couldn’t move. He hadn’t given Malfoy permission to do that. Still, as Malfoy closed his fingers around Harry’s cock, it didn’t seem to matter. Malfoy was being pushed faster and farther than he’d probably planned to go by his own desire, and that was flattering as fuck.

Besides, if Harry didn’t get to be in control of himself anymore, than he didn’t see why Malfoy should get to be in control of himself, either.

Malfoy simply stared, now and then licking his lips. Then he said, his words so fast that it took Harry a minute to understand what he was saying, “Harry, can I touch you? Let me bring you off. Please.”

“You’re already touching me,” Harry said through dry lips, but Malfoy didn’t appear to have heard him, and Harry was glad. He didn’t want Malfoy to back off, he didn’t want to ruin his confidence, but it seemed that part of Harry was determined to sabotage his pleasure at the same time he experienced it.

“Yes,” he said.

Malfoy gave his own cry of pleasure and relief, and started to stroke. Harry closed his eyes, because with the drag of fabric over his erection, he could do nothing else.

He wondered, through the haze descending on him again, if he should have asked Malfoy to take the pants off, but then he decided that he liked this better. The way the cloth shifted and rested Malfoy’s stroking fingers was like the way the tension in Harry’s muscles had resisted the massage. Harry squirmed and spread his legs and dug into the mattress with his shoulders and reached down to circle his fingers around Malfoy’s wrist so that he could feel the rhythm of the stroking better, and the movements were all instinctive, not done because he thought he had to or because he was wondering if they would make Malfoy like him better.

He’d never felt like this with a lover. Never. He’d never had the feeling that they stopped seeing him as a hero or a savior. He’d never had the feeling of just being in one body and responding to someone in another.

He cried out even though his orgasm hadn’t arrived yet, his body so limp and loose he wasn’t sure if he could come. There was only one source of delicious tightening in him, and it was in his groin. But that wasn’t much, just enough to keep his attention focused and sweetly alert, like the light way that Malfoy had touched his arse at first.

“So beautiful,” Malfoy whispered. “I have so many fantasies, but so many of them come down to you, being open like this. Giving me what I want, what no other person has ever seen.”

Harry pried his eyes open and stared up at Malfoy. Or maybe he should call this brilliant, wet-eyed, slack-mouthed creature Draco.

He did feel a distant amusement that, even now, Draco’s fantasies mingled sheer desire with the longing to possess something that other people didn’t have—

Then the orgasm came and burned him to silence, taking his self-consciousness and fear with it.

Harry had long known that it was possible to pass out from pain. He hadn’t experienced the blankness that gripped him the moment his pleasure finished, so that it was like the falling of white sparks off a darkened cliff.

*

His waking was much more comfortable than the last one. This time, he woke up in the warm arms that had held him the last time he drifted off to sleep, and his body felt as rested and relaxed as it had when Draco was massaging him. Harry turned his head and buried his nose in the blond hair.

Draco was talking, and his voice was soft and low, and Harry thought he could have listened to it forever, for the sound and the content. It was strange, and exhilarating, that in this moment, Draco had become a person he wanted to listen to. Maybe that would change in a short time, but for right now, there was this.

“…wanted so much to do things for other people. It’s strange, how much after the war I found out that I wanted to have power over others by offering them things. Gifts, space, privacy, the fulfillment of their fetishes.

“I would be happier if I knew where it came from, because of course my father taught me that a Malfoy always had to know himself and bad things would happen if he didn’t.” Draco snorted. The sound moved Harry’s hair around. “If my father had followed his own advice, he would know that he didn’t really want to serve the Dark Lord. But anyway.

“But it’s there. I gain power, but I also gain pleasure, and I give power and pleasure. The exchange is unbalanced, and it’s equal, and there are horrible aspects to what I do and wonderful aspects. The problem is that I think most of the people who come to Corybantes only see the one and ignore the other.” Draco turned towards him; Harry could tell from the way his nose was now nudging Harry’s cheek. “I thought that was the problem with you at first. That you sensed my desire to be in power as well as give people what they want, and were disgusted by it.”

“I wasn’t thinking that clearly then,” Harry said, from a lulled, warm place where he could speak the truth. “I was disgusted by my own desire to surrender and indulge.”

“I know that now.” Draco stroked his hair again. His hand was trembling, and his words had become slurred and fast, as they had when he first touched Harry. “I would do anything for my clients. I try so hard to find the spells that will give them what they want, even if I don’t know what those spells are when they first come to me or if they’ve done research and failed to find what they were looking for. I want to give them a safe place, and a place to act out their desires, and a place that is the living embodiment of their dreams. Take all that, and multiply it sixty times, and that’s what I feel for you, Harry. Don’t ever worry about me being selfless, please. To give you what you want is what I want.”

“I know,” Harry whispered, closing his eyes. “I know that now.” He’d heard Draco say the same sort of thing before, but he hadn’t paid much attention. Now he knew. Draco couldn’t have held himself back so long before stroking Harry if part of him hadn’t also found the massage satisfying.

There was a quiet, warm time when he drifted in motionlessness, and then he half-woke and heard Draco breathing and knew he’d gone to sleep.

And then he felt two thoughts arc across his mind like falling stars and meet in a burst of splendor that birthed a new star entirely.

I would do anything for my clients. Draco’s voice.

Everything here is his. Under his control, produced from his mind, executed—or not—at his command. Leon’s voice.

And the new thought:

Keatson wanted to taste the sharp edge of death. That’s not safe. It’s not something that the fantasy rooms of Corybantes could truly give him as long as they only gave him illusions and left him alive afterwards. It’s not something that his family would have let him do if they knew about it.

Draco would do anything for his clients, and everything in the club is under his control.

The fantasies normally never hurt anyone. No one can get past the wards on the rooms. No one can bring a weapon into them.

Unless Draco wants them to.

And Draco wants what his clients want.

Under the starlight in his mind, Harry shivered.

And then, because he had to, he put a hand on Draco’s shoulder and shook him awake.

Chapter Twelve.