Summersmut Mod (summersmutmod) wrote in hp_summersmut, @ 2008-08-20 12:00:00 |
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Entry tags: | 2008, blaise zabini, blaise/draco, draco malfoy |
[FIC] A Simple Matter of Trust : Draco/Blaise :: gift for mr_mercutio
Title: A Simple Matter of Trust
Author:
Recipient: mr_mercutio
Pairing: Draco/Blaise
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 6,285
Warnings: (if Any) Rimming, atypical openness from Slytherins, semi-public sex.
Disclaimer: All Harry Potter characters herein are the property of J.K. Rowling and Bloomsbury/Scholastic. No copyright infringement is intended.
Summary: Draco resorted to honesty when his relationship with Blaise hit rocky waters. Now neither knows if their romance will ever recover.
Author's Notes: Many thanks to L and T for the beta and the encouragement.
“What did you just say?”
Frowning, Draco glanced at Blaise’s reflection in their bedroom mirror. Try as he might, Draco could not read his stiff-backed, blank-faced lover, but he could sense the sudden strain in the atmosphere. It worried him. The same awful tension had been rearing its unwelcome head ever since he moved in with Blaise and nothing Draco did seemed to prevent it from recurring. He wondered if they would fight tonight or if Blaise would leave without a word.
Tearing his gaze from Blaise’s, Draco turned his attention back to rubbing lotion into his hands. His parents had drilled the importance of a good skin care routine into him and he found his nightly routine relaxing. Turning his thoughts to the matter at hand, he tried to think of the best way to navigate the situation—complete honesty was the only approach he hadn’t tried yet. He could use it now—lay all his cards out on the table, as it were, and hope it didn’t backfire on him. “Harry joked that I should take him to bed.”
Silence followed his murmured statement. Draco chanced another peek at Blaise in the mirror and glimpsed the same impassive expression as before. Draco almost thought Blaise hadn’t heard him but then noticed the tick in his jaw.
“What did you tell him?” Blaise asked, his voice disturbingly quiet.
“What do you mean, what did I tell him?” Exasperated, Draco finally turned and faced his lover. “I told him that would only ever happen in his dreams and laughed it off. What else would I tell him? I have a boyfriend, remember?”
“Do you regret that?”
“What?” Shock and indignation coursed through Draco’s voice. He knew they’d been having problems lately but he couldn’t believe Blaise would ask him such a thing. “Of course not.”
“I see,” Blaise said.
“Surely you don’t believe I’m lusting after Harry.”
Blaise didn’t respond. Dark, fathomless eyes stared back at him, a surprising undercurrent of doubt swimming through them.
Draco gaped at Blaise. Though they’d been together for two years now, he was no closer to understanding the enigma that was Blaise Zabini. Usually he found that wonderful and exciting, an indication that Blaise would never bore him. At the moment, however, Draco couldn’t help wishing the man were a little less inscrutable. “Blaise.”
“What?”
“I’m not.”
“All right.”
“I swear it. I am not lusting after him.”
“Then why tell me about it?” Blaise countered.
“I was just making conversation. I didn’t expect you to take it so seriously.” Draco sighed as he crossed the room and sat beside his boyfriend on the bed. “I don’t know what’s going on in that head of yours, but I’m not interested in Harry. I’m…in love with you, Blaise. You make me happy. As maddening as you are, my life is better with you in it. Merlin help me, I hate the thought of it being any other way and one day you’re going to believe that. You’re going to accept that. But you won’t if you believe I’m keeping things from you. So, I told you about a ridiculous conversation I had at work today. It was just a lark. It didn’t mean anything.”
Silence surrounded them for several long moments. Finally, Blaise cleared his throat. “Prove it.”
Draco blinked, a bit confused. He’d just delivered the most nauseatingly sincere spiel he’d ever uttered. How was that an appropriate response to his declaration of love? “Did you hear what I just s…”
“Yes, I did, but that can be dealt with later,” Blaise snapped brusquely.
“Excuse me?”
“You say you’re not lusting after Potter. Prove it.”
“What are you talking about? Why should I have to prove anything?” Draco asked, bewildered by the turn in the conversation. “I haven’t done anything to make you doubt me and you’re acting like I’m some sort of Potter-obsessed whore.”
Blaise shot off the bed and began to pace the length of the bedroom, hands clasped behind his back. For a moment, Draco allowed himself to be distracted by the taut pull of dark gold robes across broad shoulders and the long, swaggering stride that emphasized Blaise’s powerful legs. Even though he’d grown up with Blaise, had been exposed to that flawless skin and graceful stride and those glorious eyes for years, Draco often found himself caught off-guard by Blaise’s beauty. It was shallow, he knew, and not at all appropriate but Draco itched to touch him, wished this ludicrous row would end before one of them said something they’d both regret. He wished they could just forget the whole thing and shag like they used to before he’d moved in.
“I went to school with you,” Blaise said, his voice cutting through Draco’s reverie and drawing his attention back to the quarrel. “I remember your hysterical rants about him.”
“I loathed him in school,” Draco protested.
“The entire House was convinced you were in love with him, Draco!” Blaise bellowed.
They both paused, blinking into the ringing silence. Blaise was usually preternaturally calm. He never raised his voice. For him to shout about this immaterial thing with Potter meant it really bothered him.
“Do you know what it has been like watching you develop a relationship with him?” Blaise asked, his voice a raw whisper. “Watching a rapport grow? Listening as Potter’s romance with the Weasley girl imploded? Waiting to see if you’d seize your opportunity to have a go with him? Have you any idea how difficult, how utterly disheartening, it is to wonder if the man you’re involved with is merely biding his time until his true love is available?”
Yes, he did. He knew exactly what it was like to feel insecure about the depth of someone’s love for him. He knew how it felt to wonder if someone he loved and respected felt the same about him. He knew what it was to hope that one day he’d measure up to someone else’s expectations only to fail. The thought that he had done anything to make Blaise feel like that disturbed Draco. He rose from the bed and stood directly in front of his boyfriend. “You don’t have to doubt me,” Draco reassured, laying a hand on Blaise’s cheek. “I don’t want Harry.”
“But you felt you had to bring it up.”
“I told you—I was just making conversation, telling you about a stupid joke. It’s not serious.”
“It’s serious to me,” Blaise retorted. “If Potter’s trying to get in your pants, it’s serious to me.”
“Fair enough,” Draco conceded as he toyed with one of the clasps on Blaise’s robe. It slipped free. “But you need to start trusting me, love.”
“Draco…” Blaise began, his hands coming to a rest on Draco’s hips, seemingly of their own accord.
“You’re going to have to trust that my mad obsession with Harry in school was not, in fact, love,” Draco continued as he freed a few more clasps. “You need to believe that I’m happy with you.”
Just as Draco freed the last clasp on his robe, Blaise brushed his hands away and stepped back, chest heaving. His previous blankness had been replaced with haunted anguish. “No,” Blaise spat.
Draco stepped forward, his hand reaching out to him. Blaise shook his head and backed away, a fine tremor running through his body. “I know you, Draco. I know what you like, what you want: money, status, power. Potter can give you those things even better than I can. How much longer am I supposed to expect you to resist?”
Draco dropped his hand. He couldn’t believe what he’d just heard. “Is that what you think of me?” he murmured. “That I’m a social-climbing whore? You think that I’d like nothing better than for Harry to suddenly realize that I’m what he’s been missing all his life. Is that it? I’ve just been wasting my time with you for two bloody years all the while waiting for Harry to decide he’d like a piece of my arse. Is that it? Is that what you think of me?” Draco was shaking. Why hadn’t he realized this? How had he missed this? How could Blaise think this of him?
Blaise lifted his chin, suddenly defiant. “What am I supposed to think, Draco? You work all the time—with him. I barely see you anymore.”
“Don’t you dare,” Draco snapped. “You’re just as busy as I am, busier in fact, and unlike me, you don’t always make it home at night.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“It means I make it a point to come home, to spend time with you, only you aren’t guaranteed to be here. If anyone is likely to have an affair in this relationship, it’s you!”
“I have never cheated on you, Draco, and I never will. Besides, I’m not the one who wants someone else!”
“Fuck you, Blaise. I’m the one who asked you out. I’m the one who made the first move. I’m the one who suggested we move in together. I’m the one who disappointed his family to be with you. I’m the one who, for the sake of keeping the peace, hasn’t made a fuss while you spend all of your free time with Theodore instead me. I am not the one spending all of my time with someone else.”
“Not yet, perhaps,” Blaise shot back. He didn’t resemble the Blaise Draco had always known—the rational, quiet-spoken man with the dry sense of humor. This Blaise was feral and loud, radiating confused emotions faster than Draco could decipher them. “Don’t forget I know all about your relationship with Pansy. You led her on for years because she was your willing slave before you broke her heart. Well, I’m nobody’s slave and I’ll be damned before I let you do to me what you did to her.”
“I never asked you be my slave!” Draco cried. “I’ve never asked you to serve me. In fact, I’ve only ever asked you to trust me. I didn’t think I had to ask you to love me, too.”
“Love you?” Blaise exclaimed incredulously.
Draco hadn’t thought it possible, but he could swear his heart stopped at Blaise’s words. Loss, deep and aching, reverberated through him. “Obviously, I asked too much of you. How foolish of me to think that the respectable Blaise Zabini could possibly love a manipulative slut like me.” He shoved his feet into his shoes and snatched a cloak from the closet.
“We are not done.”
“Oh, I think we are,” Draco snarled as he stalked out of their bedroom.
He hadn’t even made it down the hall before Blaise shoved him against the wall and glared down at him. “Are you going to him?”
“Why do you care?” Draco demanded, pushing Blaise away from him. “I’ll have proven you right. After all, I’m nothing but a shallow, self-centered bastard who’ll spread his legs for anyone with a flush bank account and the right social credentials. I should go fuck Harry and the entire Weasley clan with a side of the Minister, right? Isn’t that what you expect of me? Isn’t that who you think I am?”
Blaise stepped into Draco again. “You aren’t fucking anyone else,” he growled harshly. “Don’t you get it? You are mine. Not his. Not anyone else’s. Mine!”
“Don’t you get it?” Draco snapped back. “I know that already. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. You just refuse to listen.”
“I’m not the one who wants someone else!”
Draco just stared at Blaise, his entire relationship crumbling before his eyes. How had he been so blind? How had he not realized that his big romance didn’t really exist? “After all this time, it should be so easy for you to believe me,” Draco said sadly, “but apparently you’re incapable of that. I can’t be with someone who won’t trust me, Blaise. Goodbye.”
He Apparated before Blaise could try to stop him.