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“Did you think I wouldn’t find out?”
Voldemort pauses in the doorway, a wide-eyed look on his face as he takes in the way Harry is sprawled across his bed, dressed only in a sheer half-robe that does little to protect his modesty. He lets the door shut softly behind him and comes closer.
“Perhaps,” Voldemort says. He doesn’t bother attempting to hide the way he drinks in the sight of his consort, laid out so invitingly. “What did you find?”
Harry turns onto his side, props his head up on one hand and waits for Voldemort’s gaze to works its way up his body. “Three days ago, Dolores Umbridge was found dead in her home.”
“Ah, yes.” Voldemort is close enough to touch, and he does, tracing the hem of Harry’s robe with one finger. Harry forces himself not to react. “Such a tragedy—”
Harry interrupts, uninterested in being lied to. “You had her killed.”
Voldemort raises one dark eyebrow. He looks amused by the accusation. “Did I?” he asks. He slips one hand beneath Harry’s robe—his broad palm is warm against Harry’s thigh. “Is that what this is for, then? Have you come to thank your Lord?”
Harry lets himself be pushed onto his back, and the bed dips as Voldemort rests one knee by his hip, looming over him with a hungry look.
“So you admit it,” Harry says.
Voldemort leans down to press an open-mouthed kiss to his chest; Harry holds himself still. Voldemort kisses up his chest and neck, sucking a lovebite beneath his jaw, and Harry lifts one hand to bury his fingers in Voldemort’s hair, holding him in place.
Voldemort chuckles into the skin of his throat, and Harry tightens his grip until it’s sure to sting.
“If I say yes?” Voldemort asks as he moves to straddle Harry on the bed, breaking Harry’s grip on his hair. “What then?”
“That depends.”
“On?”
Harry arches beneath him; the robe slips open even more across his chest. As Voldemort eagerly takes in the sight, Harry asks, “Would it be true?”
Voldemort trails one hand over Harry’s newly exposed skin. He says, “It would.”
He rubs his thumb across Harry’s nipple and leans down again. This time, he bites Harry’s lip before kissing the sting away. Harry kisses him back, enjoying the weight of Voldemort’s body pressing down against him, the scrape of too-sharp teeth.
Then he turns his head, sighing with pleasure when Voldemort nuzzles his cheek, when he bites at the lobe of his ear.
He says, “That’s what I thought.”
Before Voldemort can realize what he’s about to do, he plants one foot and rolls them over, holding Voldemort’s wrists to the bed. For a long moment, Voldemort only stares up at him, a startled flush blooming over his cheeks and the bridge of his nose.
“What—?” Voldemort begins to ask, as close to breathless as he gets.
“We had a deal, my lord,” Harry tells him.
At the title, Voldemort hisses, clenching his eyes shut. Harry is willing to bet that if he leaned back, settled his weight more firmly over Voldemort’s pelvis, he’d be hard. Through gritted teeth, Voldemort hisses, “Cheater.”
Harry grins.
His lover doesn’t often slip into parseltongue in the bedroom—he’s usually too controlled—but it’s always a pleasure when he does.
“We had a deal,” Harry repeats himself, because he doubts Voldemort was paying attention the first time. “Last I recall, killing random Ministry workers wasn’t part of it.”
Voldemort opens his eyes to glare, though it’s weaker than usual. “That woman,” he says, shuddering when Harry presses harder against his wrists. “Was not random. She—"
Harry leans down and bites at Voldemort’s jaw, cutting him short. He says, “This isn’t about her.”
Voldemort snarls. Harry feels his muscles tense, as if he’s about to roll them over again, and digs his knees into Voldemort’s waist, holding him still. Thwarted, his lover sneers and says, “Enlighten me, then—what is this about?”
“This is about you,” Harry tells him. He presses a kiss to the skin behind Voldemort’s ear. “And me.”
Voldemort bares his neck.
When he speaks, he sounds as if he’s out of breath. “How so?”
Harry releases his hold on Voldemort wrists and grips his throat with one hand, holds his thumb over his carotid and feels the heavy beat of his pulse. He says, “This is the third time you’ve killed like this.”
Voldemort shivers beneath him.
“Such concern,” he drawls, and he sounds remarkably composed, considering. “I was under the impression that you hated Madam Umbridge.”
“Like I said, this isn’t about her.” Harry rises to sit back on his heels, resting his weight over Voldemort’s thighs. He ignores the way Voldemort hisses in displeasure at the loss of his mouth against his skin. “I’m not upset because you killed Dolores Umbridge.”
Voldemort frowns. He’s confused, though he hates to admit it. “But you are upset.”
Harry snorts. “Thank you for noticing,” he says dryly.
Voldemort sighs, as if this entire conversation is some great inconvenience. “Why are you upset?”
There it is. Harry grins, pleased. A year ago, Voldemort wouldn’t have asked.
They’re making progress.
He says, “You tried to hide it from me.”
Voldemort narrows his eyes, considering. “I did,” he admits. Then he bends his knees, and Harry lets out a startled breath when he’s forced to shuffle forward, until he can feel the line of his lover’s cock against his arse. Voldemort’s hands curl over his thighs. “I wished to spare you.”
Harry scoffs. “You wished to spare yourself,” he says with a glare, “because you knew I wouldn’t like it.”
He doesn’t care that Umbridge was killed, it’s true. But Voldemort swore to him that he was done with this mindless, lawless killing.
Maybe Umbridge deserved it.
But that isn’t the point, and Voldemort knows it.
Voldemort’s fingers dig into his thighs. Then his grip relaxes, and he moves his hands higher beneath Harry’s robe, baring even more of his skin when his hands settle just below Harry’s waist. “Shall I make it up to you?” he asks with a grin that promises hours of pleasure.
And Harry is tempted.
He really is.
“Hmm.” He grinds down, just once, and smirks when Voldemort’s breath hitches and his eyes clench shut. He does it again, slower this time, harder. Then, rising onto his knees, he says, “No, I don’t think so.”
Voldemort’s eyes snap open. His hold on Harry turns bruising.
But Harry is already moving.
He digs one knuckle into Voldemort’s ribs, and his lover grunts in surprised pain as his grip falters. As soon as Voldemort’s hands fall away, Harry rolls away and off of the bed. He takes one step back. At the dark look on his lover’s face, he takes another.
Voldemort recovers quickly, rising onto his knees on the bed.
“Harry,” he says, and Harry feels a thrill of anticipation, of pleasure, at the anger in his voice, at the way it makes his name sound.
Voldemort has never taken denial well.
“I’m upset,” he reminds his lover, putting on a false pout. “I don’t think I’m in the mood for sex.”
Voldemort launches himself off the bed, and Harry yelps as he just barely ducks out of reach. He stumbles back, until he’s flush against the door. Voldemort stands before him, poised to tackle him to the floor.
Harry swallows heavily, waiting.
“Not in the mood,” Voldemort echoes, his voice dangerously soft. “Tell me, when will you be in the mood?”
Harry lets out a breathless laugh, delighted that Voldemort caught on so quickly. “Oh, I don’t know,” he says lightly. He shrugs. “Maybe tomorrow. Maybe… a month from now.”
Voldemort lunges forward. This time, Harry can’t escape.
He’s grabbed firmly around the waist and thrown back against the wall beside the door, so hard the breath is punched from his lungs and he feels briefly dizzy. In the time it takes for him to recover, Voldemort strikes, gathering Harry’s wrists in one hand above his head as he bites, just shy of breaking skin, where his neck meets his shoulder.
Harry shudders in his hold, a whine building in the back of his throat at the pain.
Voldemort ignores him, sucking a line of bruises up his neck as he fumbles with his spare hand to free his cock from his robes. “I could do it,” Voldemort tells him, panting into Harry’s neck with one hand around his cock. With each slick stroke, his fist knocks against Harry’s stomach. “I could take it.”
Harry arches against him, his head thrown back against the wall behind him. He considers his own rising arousal then dismisses it.
This isn’t about him.
“You could,” he says, because it’s true, though he wouldn’t give without a fight. He works one hand free from Voldemort’s hold and wraps it around his lover’s neck—pulling him closer. His robe sticks to his skin where the head of Voldemort’s cock presses against it. “But you won’t; you’ll stop.”
He feels the threat of Voldemort’s teeth against the skin of his throat. “And why is that?”
“Because I want you to.”
And Voldemort’s hand stills. For a long moment, Voldemort’s harsh breaths are the only sound in the room, and Harry feels something like triumph bloom hot in his chest—something like power. He turns his head, nuzzles at the skin behind his lover’s ear.
He says, “Because I told you to.”
Voldemort’s body is tense against his own; Harry wonders how the tension will break.
His lover lasts two days before he tries again. Harry is almost impressed by his restraint.
But not impressed enough.
This time, it takes more than words to keep Voldemort at bay. In the resulting duel, Harry almost loses an arm, and he has to sit with Voldemort for three hours after, helping him regrow his left foot.
There’s a hole in the back of the manor, now. Harry isn’t sure which of them blasted through the wall, but he supposes it doesn’t matter.
The only casualty he really cares about is the garden. He’d been looking forward to seeing the roses bloom.
In the next week, they duel four more times.
Each time, Harry wonders if this will be the moment he slips, where Voldemort wins control back—holds him to the floor and fucks him the way he wants to.
But he doesn’t slip.
Voldemort is furious at being deprived, and in his fury, he makes mistakes. Harry only grows more vicious in his defense, because he has a point to prove and it’s worth the danger. He doesn’t lose.
He doesn’t lose, and Voldemort doesn’t touch him.
Harry makes sure of it.
“I’ve had enough of this game,” Voldemort tells him one day.
He’s summoned Harry to the gathering hall, and Harry wonders if he’s supposed to be intimidated. Only, it isn’t intimidation that he feels. It bites at him, to be summoned this way, as if he’s just another follower. But he doesn’t let it show.
He lets nothing show. “What game?”
“This… tantrum.” Voldemort narrows his eyes. “It has gone on long enough.”
Harry glares back.
He knows what this is, now. He recognizes the pattern. Voldemort in his seat of power—putting on one last display, one last show. He’ll give in any moment now.
He always does.
“We had a deal,” Harry reminds him. He walks forward, away from the doorway. The stone floor is cold against his bare feet. “You broke it because you thought I wouldn’t hold you to it. You don’t get to be mad just because you were wrong.”
Voldemort hisses in displeasure. “You vowed yourself to me. What of that deal?”
“I made myself your consort,” Harry corrects. “Nothing less.”
He halts, only a short distance from the dais where Voldemort’s throne sits.
He wonders if this, too, will become a duel. He thinks it probably won’t.
“But you think you deserve it,” Harry continues. He shifts his body, just enough that his robe slips further open without becoming utterly indecent—another practiced tease. “You think you deserve me—wherever you want, whenever you want it.”
Voldemort rises from his throne.
He steps down from his dais, his strides measured. “I am Lord Voldemort,” he says, and for all that his voice is cold, his eyes are burning. “I, who brought the Ministry to heel. I, who delivered our world into a new era. I deserve everything.”
“Oh,” Harry says, his voice flat. “Is that all?”
Voldemort raises one imperious brow and stays silent, as if Harry isn’t worth addressing.
Harry wonders how much of this is real, how much is performance meant to provoke.
When Voldemort is close enough to touch, Harry steps lightly away, turning just so, and his robe slides down one bare shoulder, flares out just enough to brush against his lover’s thigh. He says, “You’ve forgotten something.”
Voldemort doesn’t lunge for him, but he wants to. “Enlighten me.”
“You’re all that you said, it’s true.” He circles behind his lover, careful not to touch him again. “But you’re mine, too.”
Voldemort’s spine shifts, straightens.
Harry stops walking, just beyond his field of vision. He steps closer, enough that Voldemort can surely feel the heat of his body through his robe.
“You’re mine,” he says again, softer this time. Voldemort holds himself utterly still, and Harry breathes in, closes his eyes and savors the moment. He holds one hand to the small of Voldemort’s back. His touch is firm, unyielding. “Aren’t you?”
As he always does, Voldemort attempts to protest. “You dare—”
Harry presses closer, until his chest is flush against Voldemort’s body. He says, “I do.”
“I am your Lord.” Voldemort tries again, the words on the edge of becoming a hiss.
Harry hides his grin against Voldemort’s shoulder. He presses his other hand to Voldemort’s chest—drags it lower, until he can cup his hand over his lover’s hardening cock. He says, “You’re so hard for me, my lord.”
And Voldemort shudders in his hold.
“Harry—” he says, the beginning of his surrender.
It’s always this.
His name, every time.
Harry bites his lover’s shoulder through his robes, and Voldemort groans, deep in his throat. “You want it so much it hurts,” he says, and Voldemort’s hips twitch forward into his hand. “I see the way you look at me, you know, the way you think about it.” He grips Voldemort’s cock through his robes, squeezing. “You’d make it hurt, wouldn’t you? You’d punish me for taking away what’s yours, for denying you. You’d make me cry.”
“Harry—”
Harry bites again. Harder.
Voldemort doesn’t try to speak again.
“It’s been two weeks since you've fucked me,” Harry tells him.
Voldemort is breathing heavy, now. Harry can almost taste his lover’s magic; it thrums so violently through the air.
He presses closer.
“I’m not cruel, my lord,” he says. He rubs his palm over Voldemort’s cock through his robes. “I can give you a choice.”
Voldemort snarls, and Harry delights in the way he trembles, torn between such warring desires. He wants to take, Harry knows, but even more, he wants to give.
When Voldemort next speaks, he sounds almost composed. “What will you ask of me?”
“You know my terms,” Harry says. “We could follow them through, or…”
“Or?”
Harry releases Voldemort’s cock—holds his hand over Voldemort’s heart instead. “Will you kneel for me, my lord?” he asks. He thinks he knows the answer, but he wants Voldemort to know it too. He wants Voldemort to think about it. “Will you beg?”
His lover’s silence is answer enough.
He doesn’t sigh the way he wants to. He knew it was coming, after all; he knew his lover’s pride would allow nothing else. He thinks he might be disappointed anyway.
He lifts his hands from Voldemort’s body, steps away. He says, “Alright.”
“Harry—”
He wonders what it says about him, this disappointment. He’d wanted so badly for Voldemort to give in.
Patience, he reminds himself.
“It’s alright,” he says, and Voldemort flinches at the loss of his title. “One month; two weeks, now.”
Not long at all.
Except it is.
When he walks into the room, Voldemort is aware of him in a way he never was before, paying attention, intensely aware of the distance between them.
Even his Death Eaters notice.
They look at him differently, now, echoing the change in their Lord, though they don’t quite understand it. There’s a new regard to their attention. Harry hasn’t felt so seen since the war.
He likes it.
He wonders how he went so long without it.
One night, Voldemort comes to his door. When he speaks, he begins with a question. This, more than anything, is what makes Harry let him in. “May I sleep here?”
Harry takes a moment just to look at him. “You look tired, my lord.”
Voldemort only bows his head.
Harry doesn’t touch him, because he promised himself he wouldn’t, and he owes it to himself to keep it. He thinks Voldemort might need it, too. “Come in,” Harry says. He steps aside, lets Voldemort in. “Rest with me.”
They haven’t been so close in weeks.
Harry can’t bear to look at him, so he lies there in the dark and stares up at the ceiling, counting his lover’s breaths. Somewhere down the hall, a clock chimes. Midnight. He hears Voldemort shift, the slide of his skin against Harry’s sheets.
“You asked if I would kneel.”
Harry feels as if his heart skips a beat, and he has to remind himself to breathe. He licks his lips, nervous. “I did.”
He waits.
“I would,” Voldemort tells him. When Harry looks over at his lover, surprised to hear it said aloud, Voldemort feigns disinterest and adds, as if it doesn’t matter, “If it would please you.”
And Harry can’t help himself.
He rolls to face Voldemort and then keeps going, until he’s straddling his hips. He touches one hand to Voldemort’s bare stomach and grins when he feels the muscles there jump beneath his touch.
“You please me,” he says.
Voldemort stills, looking up at him with wide eyes. In the pale light that spills through the curtains, they gleam. There’s a question in that look, but Harry doesn’t know the words to it. He doesn’t need to.
He leans down, until he can feel Voldemort’s startled exhale against his lips.
“What day is it, my love?” he asks.
Another startled breath—inhaled this time. A touch of familiar magic, and he doesn’t need to look to know what the spell tells them. He’s been tracking the days since the beginning.
Voldemort says, voice soft, wondering, “Thirty days.”
“Thirty days,” Harry echoes.
He draws his hand up Voldemort’s chest, over his neck, higher. He lifts the other—cradles his lover’s face in both hands. When he shifts closer, Voldemort lets out a soft, hurt little noise, torn from the back of his throat. He clutches at the sheets beneath him.
Harry nuzzles against Voldemort’s cheek, brushes his lips over the corner of his mouth.
Voldemort’s hold on the sheets twists; his face screws up as if he’s in pain. Harry kisses that grimacing mouth, soft and sweet, and Voldemort shudders, relaxes, meets him in kind.
“You can touch me,” he says, and Voldemort does.
One hand cups the back of his head, holding him in place as Voldemort kisses him back. The other curls over his waist, dragging his body lower, until there’s no space between them at all.
“What do you want?” Harry asks against Voldemort’s mouth.
The hand in his hair clutches tight. “What can I have?”
The question lands heavy in his chest—a weight he didn’t expect. His eyes sting. He says, “Anything.” He says, “Whatever you want.”
He means it.
“Just this, then,” Voldemort says, and Harry kisses him again because he can’t stand not to. The next time his lover speaks, he’s smiling, and his lips are bitten red. “This is enough.”