lomonaaeren | Chapter Three of "Changing of the Guard"- Brian

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Chapter Three—Brian

Draco cast a Tempus Charm, and then stopped and stared at the numbers floating in midair. He sighed. It was literally the same minute as it had been when he cast the last charm.

He banished the numbers with a flick of his wand and collapsed into his chair, casting a spell that would create the sensation of warm, massaging fingers down the back of his neck. He sighed in bliss as they worked, and kept himself focused only on that feeling for what he knew had to be several minutes.

Will Brian be willing to do this for me, I wonder?

And just like that, his thoughts were back with the man he was meeting tonight for the first time.

Draco opened his eyes and glanced around the room. It was a small, furnished flat he’d taken in North London to be closer to the city headquarters for his business. He was not enough of a fool to invite Brian to the Manor for their first meeting, and this was only the fourth of June, the night before his birthday celebration. Draco had been able to slip away from his parents easily enough; they were trying to surprise him, and didn’t want him around at the moment anyway.

Brian was supposed to be here at the dot of eight. And it was only seven-thirty, and already Draco felt like he was going to crawl out of his skin.

And wouldn’t that be a nice sight to greet him with as he walks through the door?

Draco grinned wryly and rubbed the back of his neck himself as the spells faded. He really had to calm down. He knew already that he was anxious to make a good impression on Brian. The man had certainly made a good impression on him, and had done it with no more than a photograph and words on a page.

But he wouldn’t make it snapping and dancing like a horse with a fly bothering it. Besides, why should he worry? He was Draco Malfoy.

Though not for much longer if the plan goes the way I want it to.

Draco leaned back and looked thoughtfully up at the ceiling. Perhaps he should think about that. What other than his money and his name would work to impress a man like Brian?

You mean, other than your dashing good looks and your ability to move like a god on a broom and on the ground and your ability to lie and your self-confidence?

Draco laughed at himself, silently. Yes, that sounded like a good start.

Despite his determination to exist free from his father’s shadow, he still wasn’t all that used to standing on his own. He hadn’t believed, until the moment when the Manager left the Hog’s Head promising that Brian would meet him for the first time in three days, that his plan was really going to succeed. At least, not this plan. He could have used Blaise.

But he had Brian.

Because no one was there to see him, Draco wriggled like a child in his chair from excitement.

*

Harry glanced at the photograph of Brian lying on the table, and frowned thoughtfully. The shade of blue in those eyes was one he’d achieved almost by accident, not through the usual color-changing spells; those had been early days, when he was still experimenting in the desperate hope of finding a mask that would make him comfortable enough to wear it for always. Of course he hadn’t found one. Of course he had found it was better (and more profitable) to slide from mask to mask like a butterfly constantly emerging from the chrysalis, and he had done so ever since. He just hoped he could recreate that blue.

But if he had thought it impossible, he would not have accepted this job.

Finally, he used the same incantation to alter his green eyes to blue that he usually did, but thought emphatically of the twilight color of Brian’s eyes as he did so.

And it worked, of course, the blue chasing out the green in a great wave, like the wave of color that flooded the sky when the sun was setting. Harry laid down his wand and smiled at himself in the mirror for a moment, then spun to face the sets of robes behind him.

He stood in the great closet at the back of the Metamorphosis shop, the one in which all the tools of his trade led their own quiet, independent lives until he called them together and assembled them into something new. Robes, wigs, shoe supports, wands of different woods, “characteristic” glasses and watches and monocles and brands of cigarettes, face makeup, portable glamours attached to a certain strand of hair that could be placed among his own, books to look studious, manuscripts of different lives and tips from voice acting lessons…Harry could feel his own gaze softening and turning fond as he looked around. When he had decided to open Metamorphosis, he had decided to commit. Maybe he could never quite find the identity he wanted for himself, but he could create thousands of attractive or interesting or wondrous ones, and to do that, he needed the best equipment possible.

When he’d found the set of dark, practical robes he wanted, he faced the mirror again, took another look at Brian’s photograph, and felt a slight shiver of both danger and delight as he realized that he need not alter anything else, at least as far as looks went. He had already changed his face so that it bent at the required narrow angles and his lightning bolt scar was thinned to a narrow line. The man looking back at him from the mirror was Brian.

In appearance.

But then, Brian was dangerously close to the real Harry Potter in personality, too—or at least to Harry Potter as he had become over the last ten years, in those flitting moments when he was trying on masks and had not yet gone to exist behind one.

He frowned thoughtfully at himself in the mirror. “Are you sure you want this job?” he asked aloud. “You like being Brian too much, and you’re not even on stage yet. That could be a problem.”

But of course he was taking the job, because he had already taken the job, and Metamorphosis never failed in its commitments. Harry laid his doubts aside as casually and easily as he had laid aside his loneliness for years, because they were Harry Potter’s doubts, and he was not Harry Potter right now. He picked up Brian’s wand, ash with a core of Antipodean Opaleye scale—they made wands differently in New Zealand—and smiled into the mirror.

“Ready?” he asked in Brian’s voice, slightly deeper and huskier than his own normal one. “We have a pure-blood to go stun.”

*

At the dot of eight, a knock came on the door of the flat. Draco jumped up, and then swore viciously under his breath. He was not nervous. No, damn it, he was not.

And just like that, the nervousness drained away. For some reason, Draco usually did shake right before a major event—such as closing a business deal—and right after, but never during. His body reacted to the imminent danger as it should, with steel.

Coolly, he checked the hang of his robe sleeves and conjured a small mirror to check the expression on his face, all the while waiting for Brian to knock again. He didn’t, and Draco’s reflection in the mirror gave a slow smile.

He liked that.

He strolled casually across the room to the door, and opened it equally casually. He caught Brian aiming his wand at the door, halfway through the spell that would have created a peephole in it.

Brian straightened up at once, but didn’t bother trying to look guilty. He was smiling. “You must be Draco Malfoy,” he said. “I’ve heard of the hair.”

Draco felt an immediate thrill tingle straight through to his gut, where it tightened. Brian was the walking, breathing emblem of his photograph, and more. No picture could have captured how he looked Draco directly in the eye, smiling slightly, making the action not seem rude, as it would have from most people, but the natural thing to do, because it was the way one interesting person would look at another. And they were both fantastically interesting, weren’t they?

Draco put his hand out without knowing consciously that he was going to do so. Brian clasped it and shook it heartily, looking around the room in interest as Draco escorted him inside. He only stopped and stared at the artwork on the opposite wall, though, a combination of marble sculpture and bodies executed in ivory paint, all of which rotated slowly back and forth to reveal couples embracing each other. Since the couples included men with men and women with women, it was fantastically scandalous, of course, and one of the many reasons that Draco had never invited his parents to this flat.

Draco tensed, wondering if Brian would reveal his own discomfort with the idea of two men having sex after all. But Brian only whistled slowly and glanced back at him over his shoulder. “You have an original Peccadillo,” he said happily. “That must have cost a hell of a lot.”

The tingle in Draco’s gut became a warm throb. He was startled to realize that he was regarding the man not only with excitement, which of course he’d felt since he saw the photograph, but with affection. No one Draco knew save one or two of his friends would have recognized the artwork’s origin, and then only because they’d heard Draco talking it up for months before he bought it.

Of course, Brian had studied the pure-blood culture of wizarding Britain, and spent a small fortune doing so.

And he’s a bloody brilliant liar, remember? Time to slow this down a bit, I think, so I don’t fall headlong into a trap.

“Would you care for something to drink?” he asked, keeping his tone as cool as the slowly turning marble bodies of the picture across the way. “Or should we act as the businessmen we are and forego such simple pleasures?”

*

Draco was controlled, but Harry could read him. That was probably only because he was stunned and worried by his own response to Brian, so he was reacting more slowly to cover his emotions than he otherwise would have.

Which meant Harry had about half a second’s lead-time, realistically.

And he knew exactly how Brian would respond to an offer like the one Draco had just made, because Brian could banter with the best of them. He looked straight into Draco’s eyes and said earnestly, “Oh, I hope there’ll be nothing simple about the pleasures we enjoy.”

Draco’s eyebrows crept up. He didn’t blush. Harry hadn’t expected him to; still, he had to admire such fine masking.

“Let me understand a few things,” Draco said softly, taking a step towards him. Harry recognized it as his attempt to take charge of the situation. In most personas, Harry would have backed down and let him do so, in order to make him feel more comfortable. But ultimately, such an action would backfire with the Brian persona. Draco needed someone fiery enough to stand up to his parents. He must be convinced that Brian could do so. “Exactly how eager are you to go to bed with me? And do you understand the finer points of your assignment?”

Harry rose to his full height, which in both his own body and Brian’s was almost exactly the same as Draco’s. Maybe a hair of difference separated them, and Harry couldn’t even have told which way it ran. His entire attention was focused on the man across from him, focused and throbbing like his blood.

“I understand everything about my assignment,” he said, and let a tone of faint contempt through, because Brian didn’t take well to attempts to bully him. “And of course I’m eager to go to bed with you. You’re an attractive man. I don’t quite see, though, how you took a bit of flirting as a strip-tease.”

Draco’s nostrils flared. He was not grinding his teeth together, Harry knew, but only because of his exquisite control. He licked his lips, already thinking of ways he could test that control.

Then he reminded himself that he was supposed to be thinking Brian’s thoughts. Well, those probably were Brian’s thoughts, so Harry believed he was still all right.

Draco began speaking again, and Harry snapped his attention back to him; it would be fatal, with a client, a partner, an opponent like this, to miss anything he said. “We will do other things on this assignment than sleep together. Do you understand?”

“No need to treat me like I’m stupid, Draco.” Brian dropped the teasing banter and faced Draco full-on, since he apparently needed to be reminded of what Metamorphosis had provided him. “I understand that the primary goal here is to help you win free of your parents. If sex comes along with that, it’s a nice bonus, but not something central. I’ll do my job, and I’ll have fun doing it. I won’t let you make me feel guilty for having fun. And I don’t like it when someone attempts to condescend to me. Got it?” Harry allowed just a tiny bit of a New Zealander accent to leak through on those last words, and he made his whole face firm and challenging. Draco had to understand that Brian would insist on an equal footing throughout this whole case, or their partnership was likely to collapse in ruins before it faced its first test.

*

Draco could hear the blood buzzing in his ears. The only thing clearer than that sound was the voice of the man across from him.

The infuriating, stubborn, wonderful man across from him.

Draco had never felt a push and pull like this. No one had ever figured out so quickly exactly what he was doing when he tried to intimidate them and thrown it back in his face. Those who could figure it out were too concerned with pleasing him, mostly to hold onto the money he’d invested in their businesses, to object.

But this man could and did object.

No doubt the Galleons I’ve already handed over to the Manager have something to do with that, Draco thought, but the flash of Brian’s eyes burned his cynicism to death. Yes, this man would have fit into Gryffindor. He was unamused by Draco’s attempt to take over their interaction, and unafraid of challenging him.

Draco cleared his throat and inclined his head. “It appears that we’ve got off on the wrong foot,” he said. “I do apologize. I suppose I needed to see what you would do if I pushed.”

Brian grinned at him, emotions apparently shifting like a whirlwind with Draco’s simple apology. “Push back.”

Draco was glad he wasn’t near a piece of furniture at the moment. The words and the grin in combination had given him the most delicious images, and he would have been tempted to grip the back of a chair or a couch—a weakness he couldn’t afford in front of someone like Brian.

“I’d like to discuss what will happen when we arrive at the Manor tomorrow,” he said, and motioned Brian towards the chair he’d been sitting in before the other man knocked. Brian nodded and sat down, looking grateful even for that favor. It was the least servile gratitude Draco had ever seen, and he wondered how the man managed it. “You know we’ll need different strategies to handle my mother and my father—what are you doing?”

Because Brian was sniffing the chair, a rapturous expression on his face. He looked up, his lips parted in a silent laugh. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I got distracted. This is where you were sitting before I arrived, right?”

Draco slowly nodded, wondering how in the world he could have known that; the chair didn’t keep an impression. Perhaps he had managed to create a peephole in the door after all. That was something Draco would have to check before he left the flat.

“It smells like you.” Brian shrugged. “Which is to say, good.”

Draco barely held back from licking his lips. The man is an actor, he reminded himself.

But the chair really didn’t keep an impression, and it wasn’t unknown for wizards to have such keen senses. Particularly if they’d cast charms to enhance them, which Draco would not have put past Brian. He raised an eyebrow. “With such a good nose,” he said, “I’m surprised you didn’t do better at Potions.”

Brian ducked his head and muttered something.

“Pardon?”

Brian sighed dramatically. “The real reason I didn’t do better at Potions was this adorable boy in my class,” he said. “I had a crush on him years before I knew what a crush was, or that having one on a boy meant I was probably gay. He hated my guts, of course, and regularly thrashed me at Quidditch, which I joined just to impress him; I’m not very good at flying. I shouldn’t have mooned after him that way.” Every line of his face reflected both regret and a nostalgia that kept the regret from being real as he peered up at Draco. “I promise I’m past that stage now.”

Draco relaxed a little. A weakness. Brian did have a weakness, then, but one that shouldn’t affect the way they handled his parents. “Let me get you something to drink.”

“Oh, you don’t have to get it yourself—“ Brian started to stand.

Draco reached out and put his hand on the other man’s for the second time. Now he could pause to enjoy the contact, the warmth and a sharper kind of lightning cutting into him through the fingers.

His magic.

Holy God, Brian’s was the strongest magic Draco had ever felt. He had evidently placed it under shields, probably not wanting to overwhelm Draco in the first moments of their meeting, but a touch left him no place to hide. Draco shuddered and shivered, caught between fear and desire. Such power provoked ideas of fighting or surrendering to it, with no in-between. Of course, Draco would make sure there was a middle ground where he could comfortably exist. He did not surrender.

And then Brian covered Draco’s hand with both of his, and bent to kiss his wrist.

The lightning coursing up Draco’s arm changed its flavor. Now it was sweet, gentle, protective—and fragile in places, as though Brian were showing Draco where he didn’t have many skills and someone could punch through his defenses. Of course, someone would only show their defenses like that if they were utterly confident they could win the contest anyway.

But at the moment, Draco hardly cared. He withdrew his hand slowly and gave Brian his first genuine smile since the other man had walked through the door.

“No, please,” he said. “Let me.”

*

Harry was just as happy to let Draco fetch him a drink from the neat, sparkling kitchen that lay off to one side of this room. He needed a moment to lean back in the chair and recover his breath.

Merlin, he was taking risks like an idiot. Once he got completely into a character, he spoke and acted like that character to cover any unanticipated gaps in the biography that might arise. So, though he hadn’t thought Draco would really ask why a good nose would correlate with poor Potions ability, he had let the “Brian” part of himself answer without thought.

And of course the story was one that could have belonged to Harry Potter—in part, anyway. Harry honestly hadn’t noticed the younger Draco the way that Brian claimed to have noticed his crush. But he had been rivals and competed at Quidditch with him, and that was closer to the true story than he would usually put in a persona’s mouth.

And then he had let Draco feel the full strength of his magic, not only through the touch but through the kiss—and that was something he never did. Most of his clients didn’t care about magical strength, so Harry simply shielded it, or they wanted someone they could overwhelm. When Harry acted as a bodyguard, then his clients wanted someone who could protect them, but that required only moderate force. Knowledge and experience were more important to the frightened than sheer strength; they were always the ones who questioned him most extensively about his characters’ backgrounds.

But Draco had wanted someone powerful, and Harry had reached out the way Brian would have: full-hearted, impulsive, showing him what was there, who exactly he had to conflict with and get aroused by.

It was in-character. But it was so close to his real identity as to make Harry worried. He was not Harry Potter in a mask to Draco. He was Brian. And he must remain Brian no matter what, no matter the temptation to be otherwise.

“Here you are.”

Draco brought out a glass of a delicate wine, and Harry took it, sniffed it, and sipped it gratefully. Draco’s eyes challenged him to identify the year, flickering back and forth between Harry’s face and the wine like that, so Brian said, “South le Fay, 1967.”

Draco laughed and dropped into a chair opposite from Harry. “You are good. Tell me, will you be as good when we confront my parents tomorrow?”

Between one sentence and the next, he could slide from humor to seriousness. Harry admired that. He folded Brian’s face into an earnest smile. “I hope so. But why don’t you tell me more about them? I only know what the Manager told me. Will they go as far as hexes and tears the first night?”

Draco shook his head and sipped his wine. “My father will ask me what I’m doing with a man, but he’ll do it privately. He won’t want to ruin the party no matter how much of a public spectacle I make of myself.” He shot Brian a warning glance. “Stay out of it.”

Harry nodded and sipped his wine.

“Then he’ll try to bribe you,” Draco said calmly. “He’ll think that I hired you for some low amount of money, and if he can double it, you’ll just go away.”

“Which won’t work,” Harry muttered.

Draco flung him a challenging glance. “Even if he offers you more than what you’re picking up working for Metamorphosis on this case? He’s capable of it.”

“Money doesn’t matter to me much.” Brian met his eyes again. “You’ve felt my magic. I could be rich if I wanted to. I don’t want that.”

“Lack of forethought?” Draco’s face wore the startled, half-pitying expression that many rich people used around those who didn’t particularly value Galleons.

“Lack of ambition.” Brian smiled. “I won’t succumb. Is it threats yet?”

“It will be. I have no doubt that you can handle yourself, particularly if you let him feel just a bit of your magic. Don’t display all your surprises the first time, of course.” Draco settled back, eyes half-closed.

“Of course not,” Harry snapped, and let Brian sound just a bit offended.

Draco smiled lazily, and shut his eyes fully. “Then comes my mother. She’ll have confronted me alone by that time. Almost surely she’ll ask for a dance with you, hoping to show you up in front of her guests. Then it’ll be time for sparkling wit and conversation. I hope you’re up on the latest pure-blood scandals.”

“Always.” And that happened to be true for Harry as well as Brian. He read the newspapers both to give credence to a variety of his personas and because it often gave him advance warning of what cases might come to him next.

“That will be all they try for tomorrow night. It will become more serious later.” Draco opened his eyes, and Harry was pinned by the intent gaze, sharp and gray as a needle. “And of course, you’ll accompany me in dancing, in talking, in doing whatever’s needed to convince them you and I are happy lovers.”

Harry smiled. “That won’t be a problem at all.” And he let his gaze turn appraising, delighted when Draco returned it.

*

Draco leaned against the door of the flat when he’d shut it behind Brian—after the conversation about what they’d do at Malfoy Manor tomorrow night, they’d exchanged only a few inconsequential pleasantries—and shook his head.

His heart was pounding. His body was alive, alert, aware, in a way he’d never noticed before. Thoughts scattered through his head like shooting stars.

Brian was not the most handsome man he’d met, nor the most fit, nor the most talented at witty banter. He was the most powerful, but that meant little—beyond increasing Draco’s personal enjoyment—when he wouldn’t use that power to win money and fame for himself.

But he was the most interesting man Draco had ever met.

And Draco was now wildly grateful for the charms he’d cast a few hours before Brian arrived, to keep himself from showing visible signs of arousal. He strode towards the loo now, removing them as he went, and sighing as his blood resumed its natural flow.

Things were going so well, he thought they called for a celebratory wank.

Mind full of blue eyes and messy hair and a stubbornness that wouldn’t back down, he started the shower with a tap of his wand.

Chapter 4.

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From:

marguerite-26.livejournal.com

This chapter was electric! Sparks everywhere!

And they were both fantastically interesting, weren’t they?
Oh my, aren't they!

I loved the back and forth, testing the waters... It was great to see Draco question Brian's flirting right off the bat. I'm dieing for more.

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Chapter Three of "Changing of the Guard"- Brian

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