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| Fic: Death Eaters At The Malfoy Estate
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To get to the bathroom Severus had to wade through the dance floor. He was so angry that he had half a mind to draw his wand and bust a path open between all these people, these sloppy, opiate driven assholes, rubbing and feeling on each other like Myra had rubbed and felt on him a few nights ago.
A lot like that, actually.
Someone clapped a hand over his shoulder. He turned to meet eye to eye with a smiling latin man about a head shorter than him. “I saw you dancing upstairs,” he said. ‘You’re amazing. And I love your pants.” He winked.
“Thanks,” Severus said, trying to leave.
“My name’s Mike.”
“Great.”
Another man, blonde this time, approached him from the side. ‘Hey sexy,” he said, grabbing Severus around the waist. “That little show you put on made me hot. Dance with me, Mr. Pants.”
Severus gasped, shoving the man off him.
“Um, excuse me,” Mike said. “I believe I was speaking to him.”
Severus felt hands in his hair. He whirled about to see a soft-faced asian. “I love your hair, so soft.”
“Get off him, bitch, he’s mine!” said the blonde man.
“Excuse me!”
“Oh oh oh!” A guy wearing a feather boa rushed at Severus with his arms extended. There was nothing he could do avoid being trapped in a cologney hug.
“You are just bloody brilliant! I saw you and I was just like, yes please! The pants, the pants are fabulous!” He kissed Severus on the cheek. Severus struck out with his arms, wriggling out of his grasp. He was surrounded by amorous men, their hands all over him, under his shirt, on his ass, enclosed by an ocean of desirous, bickering queens.
“All of you, get the fuck OFF me!” he yelled.
They jumped back from him, eyes wide. .
“Well excuse me, Miss Thing,” the asian man said.
“That’s pretty unsexy talk from someone wearing the Pants of Erised.”
“Yeah hon, you wear those in here and expect not to get hit on? Shit.”
“The pants of....” Severus’s eyes widened. He beat his way through the crowd, leaving his admirers in the dust.
***
Severus, upon finally gaining the surprisingly empty bathroom, felt as though he could sympathize with ex-P.O.W.’s. He splashed his face with water. The bathroom was made of stone with medieval looking wooden doors on the stalls. There was a thin coating of water on the floor emitting from a leaky sink, and a small brown lizard on one of the mirrors.
Severus caught himself in the mirror, holding his hands on either side of his dripping face. He saw, suddenly, himself at many ages, as though watching a slide show. Five year old Severus with wide eyes and endless curiosity, eleven year old Severus at his first year at Hogwarts, brilliant and shy, friendless except for one nasty blonde boy; Fifteen year old, oily Severus, bright and bitter, reading everything he could get his hands on, terrified of his nearest acquaintance's social power; seventeen year old Severus with so much potential he was told regularly by his professors he could get a job anywhere but cooked drugs for his friend instead, and now lower-twenties Severus, fending off chickens, speaking in rhyme, dancing, singing, anything to satisfy Lucius’s Malfoy’s little whims from hell.
Severus punched the wall. What kind of fucking clown had he been reduced to? What kind of ridiculous creature of public spectacle? Why did he let Lucius do it, all these years?
As if on cue, Lucius burst through the door. “There you are! Would you get back upstairs, we’re about to land a big deal!”
“Fuck you,” Severus said without looking up.
“Excuse-moi?”
“I said, fuck you, Lucius. Fuck you and fuck your metamorphine. You’ve just lost yourself a cook.”
“Whatever do you mean?”
“I mean I’m tired. I want out.”
“You don’t get out. You still owe me.”
“For what.”
“The Distillator.”
“That was a bloody long time ago.”
“A deal’s a deal.”
“A deals a - Lucius, you treat me with less dignity than a skid mark. I won’t do it anymore. No more performances on demand, no more berets, no more orders in the middle of the night, no more sleepless weeks. I’m done with it.”
Severus realized he was shaking.
Lucius rolled his eyes. “Okay, Severus, could we please stop this drama queen business and get back to the rather pressing matter upstairs?”
Severus straightened and looked Lucius directly in the eye. “I could kill you.”
Lucius raised an eyebrow. “Is that so?”
“Quite easily. You have no idea the extent of my powers. I could make your insides rot, I could make your skin crawl right off your body. One day you will push me too far, and you will die.”
Lucius sighed and lit a cigarette. “I will not. You’re nothing without me. You’ve never been anything without me. And you know it. You would have had no friends in high school, you never would have joined the Death Eaters, everything in your life has been due to me, me, me. If I were you, I’d be a little more grateful. I even lent you my pants for Christ’s sake.”
“Speaking of which, how dare you give me these...gay pants?”
“The Pants of Erised? Because I wanted you to have a good time.”
“How would these help me have a good time? By deluging me with really, really unwanted attention?”
Lucius sighed, smiled, and shook his head. ‘Oh, Severus, Severus, Severus.” He walked towards him with a disarming smirk, running the back of his hand along Severus’s cheek.
Severus froze.
Lucius looked coyly at him with big, blue eyes, and stroked Severus’s hair with such intense tenderness that Severus’s heart skipped a beat. He couldn’t move. He never hated Lucius at intensely as he hated him at that moment yet he was completely paralyzed by something so powerful and desperate he felt nearly sick.
Lucius drew his body close to Severus, resting against him.
“Severus,” Lucius whispered.
“Stop it,’ Severus said weakly. “I’m not - you know I’m not- “
Lucius gently kissed the underside of Severus’s chin.
“No.”
Lucius’s tilted Severus’s head down and covered his lips with his, slipping his tongue into Severus’s mouth. Severus made a sound of surprise before his mind dissolved into haze, and he kissed back with a need he didn’t know he possessed.
Lucius broke from the kiss with a sharp inhale.
Severus, mindless, tilted his head down for more, but Lucius dodged it.
“Oh, Sev,” he said. “See? You always were a fool for me.”
Standing there, holding Lucius, Severus felt his entire being stop, as though every last atom came to a complete pause as years and years of something became very, sickeningly clear.
Severus did the first thing he thought to.
He kneed Lucius in the balls.
“No means no,” Severus said as Lucius doubled over to the floor. The blonde bombshell's mouth was open in a silent scream. Severus kicked him in the ribs, hard. Lucius jerked, grabbing for Severus's shoe; Severus wrenched his foot free and gave Lucius another sound kick.
"You piece of shit," Severus said. "You teasing, prissy little fuck. All these years," kick, "all these years!" kick.
Lucius arched and retched up blood.
“You...you....” Lucius chortled, holding himself. He squirmed, pulling his wand. Severus went for his, but it was too late; the last thing he heard was “Crucio!” before he fell to the floor in white-hot agony.
***
He awoke to silence, and Myra’s concerned face. One of her ringlets brushed his cheek.
“Hey,” she said. “You okay?”
His limbs still burned. He couldn’t move. “Ughhh god, “ he said. “What happened?”
“Lucius Crucioed you.”
“Oh. Jesus.”
Myra smiled. “That’s my line,” she said softly, and stroked his head. Severus closed his eyes, allowing, in pain, for that small bit of comfort. “You poor, poor bastard.”
Severus looked around. They were still in the bathroom.
“Myra, I’ll have you know this is the men’s, “ he said. “Wait a second...what are you doing here? I thought I left you back at the lab.”
“Do you remember the little brown lizard on the mirror?”
“Little brown....” Severus searched for it, and suddenly recalled there being a reptile on one of the mirrors.
Myra pointed to herself.
Severus sat up with a little assistance. “Oh what, you’re an animagus now?”
“I always have been. Unregistered.”
Severus’s mouth drooped. “You shit me.”
“I shit you not.”
“You never told me that. It could have come in handy numerous times.”
“Yeah, well...a girl has her secrets.”
“Wait...if you were on the mirror, than....” Severus went quiet, realizing that she had seen everything. He inhaled deeply, turning his head away. “Shit. Shit shit shit.”
Myra put her arms around Severus and leaned her head on his shoulder, rocking him as if he were a child, there in the bathroom of Bob’s Big Boomshanka. He was too weak to resist her, and he found he really didn’t want to. He let his head tilt to rest against hers and closed his eyes.
“You’re here selling Stunner, aren’t you?” he said.
She grinned and pulled a sack from her robe, and from it spilled over three hundred galleons onto Severus’s lap.
“Holy shit,” Severus said. “This is just tonight?”
“Yes. You should have seen Lucius, he was so pissed. Come outside and look.”
She helped Severus up from the floor and led him outside. The club, once filled with light and movement, was now filled with people writhing on the floor. The music had stopped because even the DJ was Stunned. He glanced upstairs, where Narcissa and Loverboy lay on a table, Loverboy licking Narcissa’s arms to her very vocal satisfaction. There was no sign of Lucius.
Severus felt as though he had entered some kind of otherworld. Perhaps it was the after-effects f the Critatius curse, but he felt light and alive, as though he had felt the worst pain imaginable and was now free from all pain. As though he had paid his dues.
Myra turned the shell-shocked Severus to face her.
“Sev, if you had a choice, would you stay with the Death Eaters?”
“Absolutely hell no..”
“I’m glad to hear you say that. I have a plan.”
“A plan?”
“An escape plan,” she said. “And I want you to come with me.”
She took him by the hand and led him out of the club.
Outside it was cool and incredibly still, as though the whole world was at pause just for him. El Pollo sat in the bouncer’s seat, the bouncer having fallen over Stunned. He had taken off his chicken hat and held it on his lap, looking almost sober.
“Hey. El Pollo,” Severus said. “What’re you doing?”
El Pollo jerked his feathered thumb over his shoulder. “Waiting for th-the boss,” he said.
“He won’t be out of there till morning,” Myra said. “You may as well go home.”
“Yeah. I would have thought you’d be first to be Stunned.,” Severus said.
El Pollo shrugged. “B-boss t-tasted it before I did, you know? And I thought maybe...maybe I don’t want to be someone’s chicken, you know, just for a night.” He looked up into the sky. “Just wondering what it’d be like to be free range I g-guess.” He chuckled softly. “You have a good night, Severus.”
“Yeah. Yeah you too,” Severus said, and walked with Myra into the night.