Eden (Revisited)
Title: Eden (Revisited.)
Pairing: H/D
Rating: NC-17
Summary: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. With knowledge comes suffering.
A/N: I dug up my first H/D fic, from at least five years ago. It is painful to read, it is so awful. I’m really, really fucking glad that you can’t find it anywhere on the net anymore.
If you ask nicely, I might link to the original privately. As it is, I’m completely rewriting. So here we go.
For bookshop, who loved the original and loved it well. Crazy bitch. There’s no accounting for taste.
Thanks to lovely France-bound esotericfrench for support on writing smut at 4 am, and for sending me "No Children".
Eden (Revisited.)
~+~
In Sunday school, they teach you how everybody is born a sinner.
In the beginning, there was Adam and Eve, and the most literal version of how Ignorance is Bliss. God told them that if they ate from the tree with knowledge of Good and Evil, they would die.
And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:
For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.
Of course, what the serpent neglected to mention is that Knowledge brings suffering.
Mother and Father never told Draco that he would die, or could die, in any way, or as a result from any of his actions. He supposed that even if they had, he would go and do whatever it was that could cause his death, for that could make him as a god. Mother and Father always insisted that they knew what was best for him, and they had given him life. He thinks about them a lot these days, days that, like his thoughts, are dark.
When Draco meets Harry Potter in the gardens before the edge of the Forbidden Forest, he does not think about dead things nor dry and scratchy barren terrain, not out there, where everything grows tangled and green. Skeletons lie in the ground, buried deep, and they do not rise from the dark and moist dirt, and they do not live in closets. He does, however, think about his hands a closed circle around Potter’s throat and then burying him with the fat earthworms, just to see if he would rise again. In his mouth, the taste of decay.
The year that Draco turned five, Father got him his first wand. It was a child’s toy, barely five inches, made of willow. They threw him a gala, and invited all his playmates and their parents. Father said to him, “I love you, Draco.” And Draco said, “I love you, Daddy.”
The year that Draco turned six, Father gave him a pony, a supposed Arabian-unicorn hybrid. One of those things, you know. At his party, Draco graciously let all his friends pet Sir Reginald, but only he could sit on the polished leather saddle with the gold braids. Father said to him, “I love you, Draco.” And Draco said, “I love you, Daddy.”
The year that Draco turned seven, Father bought him his own broom, not a racing broom (still too young for that), but a broom nonetheless. Vince and Greg watched in wonder when he rose from the ground for the first time, a whole two feet. Pansy shrieked. Father said to him, “I love you, Draco.” And Draco said, “I love you, Daddy.”
The year Draco turned eight, Father did not get him any presents at all. There was no party. Father said to him, “I love you, Son.” And Draco said, “Daddy, where are my presents?”
“Draco,” Father said, “you aren’t getting any presents this year.”
And Draco said, “Daddy, where are the guests?”
“Draco,” Father said, “there will be no guests this year.”
And Draco, although he was getting to be a Big Boy, did a very un-Big Boy thing, and threw a tantrum. His pale face pinked and purpled. He wanted presents. He stomped his feet. He wanted cake. He threw his books and chessmen and toy soldiers across the room. He demanded that his friends come and for there to be dancing bears - two, at the very least.
Father smiled his knowing smile and said, “But I love you, Son, isn’t that enough for you?”
NO, screamed Draco, because it was his birthday and it was a big one and he wanted Greg and Vince and Blaise to come play and they should have had an enchanted dragon and fireworks, too. He crossed his arms and pouted.
What Father said next, Draco would never forget: “Love means nothing without wealth and power.”
In the winter, when the trees were dead and their monstrous branches clawed the sky, Mother took Draco to Church. Jesus suffered beautifully on the cross, the wounds in his side painted wet. There were stained-glass windows with angels. There were angels carved into marble, candlelit. The angels were all large and muscular, with wings that were sharp and white and bigger than Draco could ever be.
He dreamed sometimes of an angry God, the one who sent floods and fires and told you that you could burn in Hell for eternity, which was a Really, Really Long Time.
At eight years old, Daddy became Father. When Draco was nine, Father held his hand and together they walked to a dark place in the city where he had never been before.
The buildings rose above him, crooked, looming, and he scraped his nice coat against the scratchy and crumbly brick. In all the long alleyways and all the tight spaces in between, he saw disgusting men. Men with dirty faces that reeked of dirty things - sour stomach smell like hot sick, and pee as if they wet themselves (and Draco had never wet himself ever, except for that one time one he was three and had had a bad dream). The cobblestones were cracked, rough underneath his patent leather shoes, and there were mysterious, foul, dark puddles in corners and shadowed places although it had not rained for a couple of days.
At their feet lay sprawled a man with big black dots moving slowly across his face. Thick and oily grime crusted in all the cracks and wrinkles of his skin. Draco couldn’t call him a man, creature seemed more accurate. On closer inspection, the dots were flies. His hair was a tangle like a bramble bush, all around his face, and there were things stuck in it. Draco thought he saw a worm, tiny, pearly pink, shiny, disappear deep inside. He felt sick.
“Is he dead, Father?” Draco asked, whispered, his voice smaller than he felt.
“No, Draco,” said Father, “he’s just sleeping. He’s dreaming.”
Sleeping. Dreaming. Draco repeated these words to himself, and kept them in his mind.
“Dreams are for fools and the poor,” Father said. Draco could only nod his head and agree.
Draco spent his summers in France, Holland, Italy, Iceland. Once they even visited India, so that he could see elephants and tigers in real life and not just in picture books or at the zoo. He had disliked the heat. Mother and Father knew exactly what Draco wanted before he knew he wanted it. His winter coats were lined with ermine. He had toys before they ever appeared in the shop windows, before all the other little boys could possibly stop in the street and tug on their parents’ hands and say, “I want that.”
If one Christmas morning, he opened up his presents to find the moon wrapped up in the box, nestled in wrinkled tissue paper, glowing and silver, he would not have been surprised.
At eleven years old, he met a really dumb boy. The boy was going to Hogwarts but didn’t play Quidditch and thought that a barbaric, half-giant groundskeeper was brilliant. He didn’t have parents. Draco liked the way that the boy had a kind of stupid look about him. Years later, he would learn that people called that ‘innocence’.
That boy was Harry Potter, and in the next couple of years, the wizarding world would put its future into his hands.
Harry Potter didn’t want to be Draco’s friend. He chose Weasely, who was poor and probably dreamed a lot, and Granger, a Mudblood, instead. Father was right about everyone beneath you who stole your things away.
Father said words like “glory” and like “perfection.” He was a very impressive man: strong, tall, head held high. “One day, you will have power, great power,” Father had said. The sharp ink outlines on Father’s left forearm felt prickly underneath Draco’s fingertips.
Draco had always been a good boy, in his Father’s eyes.
At nine or ten or so, Draco learned that people hated his family. “Jealousy,” Father said. “Fear.” Fear was power. Those that hated or envied were lesser people, and lesser people died. Only the deserving survived. “Evolution,” Father called it. “Creation of a better world.”
And all people of the earth shall see that thou art called by the name of the LORD; and they shall be afraid of thee.
At eleven years old, Harry Potter played Seeker for Gryffindor. Draco could fly his broom twice as high, three times as fast, he knew it, but he wouldn’t be allowed on the Slytherin Quidditch team for at least another year.
Draco knew that he would be a good boy, go to school, graduate at the top of his class. He would marry a pretty, pureblooded girl from another old wizarding family and produce an heir. He would have wealth and power, and be able to do great things. He knew this to be true because Father said so.
But this was all in the future, which was a time that was Very Far Away.
When Draco was six, Father told him about the Mudbloods. They were like him, but not. Inferior beings pretending to be human. They were almost worse than Muggles, who knew nothing about magic and were afraid of power. They were treacherous in the worst way. They thought they were as good as he was, and there was no way that that could be right. They were less than him, and would do anything to undermine him. They first time that he saw Mudbloods, a little boy and girl, they looked just like him but he refused to be fooled. He stared hard at them and tried to see through their skin. Their veins were clogged with dirt, he was sure. Dirt and pebbles and bugs and slugs and crawly things.
Draco was a good boy, for the most part, clean, neat, and he didn’t sin. All this was according to Father, who wrote the rules on being bad and being good and being all the rest.
The LORD shall cause thine enemies that rise up against thee to be smitten before thy face…
At eleven years old, Harry Potter had admirers. They turned their smiling, sappy, hungry faces up to him, like flowers growing towards the sun. Draco had Crabbe and Goyle, sometimes Pansy, and they didn’t smile at him nearly as much. Well, Pansy did, but she was a girl and didn’t really count.
The papers and the grown-ups all talked about a saviour. How Draco hated that word. It was inappropriate. Anybody could be a hero - he had always thought he would grow up to be one himself, even if he was smarter than he was brave. If Potter were a saviour then he best be on a cross, with iron nails deep in his wrists and ankles.
They could have been friends. Draco liked him in the robe shop well enough, stupid and alone. But then there was that first time on the train, and Potter didn’t want to be friends.
They grew older. Draco grew meaner.
When he made Potter angry he was in control. Draco made Potter hate, and Potter’s anger made him flawed, weak. When hate was all that Potter could feel, Draco owned Harry Potter and that was like Christmas all over again.
He took his own hatred and he consecrated it, held it to himself at night. He fed it with angry words and black thoughts. He ate it and it made him stronger.
The year that he turned fourteen, Father gave him his presents and said, “Draco, I don’t love you.”
And Draco said, “Love means nothing next to wealth and power, Father.”
And Father smiled his knowing smile and said, “That’s my boy.”
No one is pure because purity does not exist. Good does not exist. Everyone is a sinner. There are those who repent, and those who do not. Those who are forgiven and those who are not. Those who believe, and those who do not.
Later he would understand that people were even easier divided: there are those with power, and those without. There are those who have, and those who do without.
When he understood power, he would also know the taste of skin, taste of mouth, the friction of flesh moving against flesh.
At one time, he had been afraid of the dark. He lay in bed when the candles were blown out, staring at the shadows that haunted his wall. Father came to him sometimes when he had nightmares, and Father was a hero.
He outgrew his fear of the dark, eventually.
People are always afraid of the things that they don’t understand.
Draco always washed his face carefully. When young, he slicked his hair back. When older, he combed through his hair with a fine-toothed comb. His nails were always neatly trimmed, with no dirt trapped underneath.
He discovered his own body when he was about twelve. The planes and angles of it were fascinating, the hair in places where there had been none disturbing, and the world between his legs - well, that was just whole lot of fun.
He thought of Potter a lot, and how stupid-looking and ugly he is. He picked at his thoughts, like peeling the dark dried blood from an itchy scab.
Sometimes Draco thinks there is no God. People kill each other and people starve to death and the world keeps on turning. But if there is no God, then people have all the power, and they should work even harder to keep the control.
The forest primeval is full of wet leaves. The smell is moist and of rot.
Purging the world is nothing new. God sent floods. Towers that reached up to the sky were toppled down. Cities were razed to the ground. Only the bad people die - it just so happens that you could call most people bad.
Time and time again, people are taught that the pursuit of knowledge is evil. Good might as well as be synonymous with idealism as with stupidity.
Harry Potter wants to save all that’s wrong with the world.
When he was sixteen, Draco pushed the Harry Potter up against a stone wall and crushed their lips together. Potter didn’t taste like apple at all, but rather like metal flowers, rust and marigolds: sour, bitter, slightly sweet. Draco bit him anyway, hard, because that was what you did with fruit.
Potter pushed back, but only in the way that you knew he wanted it. He moaned around the slick tongue in his mouth, the way it was wet and alive. His eyes were dark like the forest, and you couldn’t see the trees.
Potter wasn’t perfect. He was barely even good-looking. He was mortal, and could bleed and hurt and want and come and die. Just like anybody else. Just like Draco.
He cared about people and was weak. It filled Draco’s mouth with spit to think of it.
Angels and saviours shouldn’t sweat and smell. They should be sculpted and clean, not with a little too much hair in awkward places. Harry didn’t clean behind his ears and sometimes had lousy breath. Sometimes he didn’t shower right after Quidditch practise and he smelled like humidity and sour summer heat.
At night, when the sky is dark and the stars like the spit of millions across a sidewalk, Draco presses against Harry as if trying to leave an imprint on his skin. This skin is hard in places, soft in places, mostly hot. Sweat sticks them together.
He arches up. Draco arches away.
All over, Draco is prickly. Excited. Electric.
Here is control.
His hands on Harry’s wrists, Harry’s wrists indenting the bed, Harry’s arms spread out, he kisses Harry, fiercely. Dig his nails straight through and he'd crucify him, like so.
Harry’s mouth opens under his, trying to breathe, trying to communicate, trying to eat. He swallows his own name from Harry’s lips, rolls it soft and sticky between their mouths. He doesn’t want to hear words, so he swallows them up before they can reach his ears and wriggle around inside his brain. It’s too soon. They're slippery, treacherous things and they bother him in their serpentine way. It's not time for that yet.
Draco licks Harry’s lips and the corner of his mouth and kisses the point behind the jaw and just under the ear. He still doesn’t taste quite nice.
Draco slides his tongue down, down, then he scrapes his teeth over the contours of Harry’s Adam’s apple, raggedly. Harry shudders, and tries to twist away.
Underneath Draco’s lips, Harry’s blood pulses in time to his staccato heart. This racing blood is red just like the blood of everyone else, not black like ink or white with holy fire or shit brown. Not even green. Poison.
Here is every hateful word, sliding, buried, underneath his skin. They hide from Draco’s touch, shrink like violets, but sometimes, sometimes, they bloom and grow and press back to meet his fingers, his teeth, his open mouth.
He bites down on Harry's throat. He sucks hard. He breaks the blood vessels on Harry’s neck, and hopes that there will be bruises, red marks, looking infected and accusing. Harry will have to wear his red and yellow scarf all the time or his friends will ask questions. He will be red and yellow all over, those colours he's so proud of, that always made Draco think happily of blood and pus.
Harry moans under him, the way that things that belong to you find their way back to you in the end. Or you find a way to get them back.
Against Draco’s tongue, there is the salt of Harry’s skin, and his veins buzz with it. His body hums, too, and the song goes that this is right and everything is going to be all right and that’s how you do it.
He has to admit he had never thought it out this far. It was just going to be that one time, really. Just once, to see what it was like.
And then there was the second time and the third time.
It was hot, they had to say. Really hot. Who had time for stupid words like love, when there were such better words as hate and want and hurt. They pushed and they pulled. Pushing up white school uniform shirts, pulling on ties in house colours, empty classrooms, bending over desks and suck me off in detention. If we get caught, if we get caught, everyone will be horrified and ashamed and all our friends will leave us but there are worse things, like dying.
They’ve lost count of all the times now, but it doesn't mean that they don't keep score.
Draco licks trails down Harry’s neck, down his chest, that are shining and wet. Harry’s cheeks are flushed, stained, like crushing berries up underneath his skin. His hair is a dark tangle against the sheets and he squeezes his eyes shut tight. Everybody knows that they are green.
His tongue traces down over skin. He can feel muscles under skin and ribs under muscle. And between the bones and muscles, here is every insult and curse.
He takes one nipple into his mouth. There's a gasp in the dark, ten fingers squeezing, short nails biting down on his shoulders. He wants to chew it that nub in his mouth, bite it off soft and brown like a salt-water taffy. He sucks it hard, irritates it and the whole chest arches up to him and one hand pulls at his hair.
Next he moves down the planes of the stomach, the muscles that ripple under his touch; he lets his mouth travel the way the hands travel down his back, encouraging him further, lower, faster.
The moonlight pouring in from the window splatters the curves and contours of Harry’s body with patches of silver. A splotch on his raised bicep and his elbow. A patch on the curve of his hip. A splash on his nipple, his knee, the tips of his toes. The moonlight makes his cock against his stomach, leaking precum, glisten.
Draco dips his tongue into the shallow well in the middle of the stomach. Harry gasps, pleasured. Draco nibbles at the edge of a bellybutton and wonders about the network of intestines just underneath. Potter has no power at all like this and if Draco had a knife, he could spill them open, just so.
Both hands on those flinty hips now, pressing down just hard enough. Potter would deny that he ever whimpered, so when Draco has him pinned and licks up the side of his cock --slow...wet…---, Harry trembles, not-whimpering.
The sound always gets to him. Those little noises just crawl inside his head, skip all the body parts in between and roll in waves straight to his cock. Maybe if he were deaf then he wouldn't have this desire twisting around in his stomach, messing up his insides like thorns and leaves and rot.
But Harry is vocal like that. Draco's teeth catch on his lips and then he silences himself the way most people, he would imagine, would like to see him silenced -with a mouth full of cock.
In hair that grows a bit too thick, Harry’s cock is something firm and warm and alive. He wraps his fingers around the base of it while he works his mouth on the tip, now lapping, now sucking. Thrill always shivers up Draco’s spine; it would be so easy to just hurt him here. Badly.
He licks up the underside of his cock, lets his tongue follow the ridges and veins of it, licks up all sides, wet and hot. He laps around the flushed head of it, tongues the slit, sucks hard when it slides past his lips and he feels it bump against the back of his throat.
Harry twists Draco’s hair in his fingers, his fingers in Draco’s hair.
There’s more power in reducing him.
He pulls off, backwards, lips sliding slick against the hot skin every centimetre of the way. He links at the juncture of thigh, curls brushing his cheek, and sucks hard on the inner thigh, leaves teeth marks and watches Harry convulse.
Harry’s feet now planted on the bed, he spreads his legs. His balls hang heavy. Somewhat dark.
Draco cups the balls and rolls them, marvels at the weight of them in his hand, squeezes hard but not overmuch just to see Potter writhe. With one hand on his own erection, the other hand strokes the area between Harry's balls and his hole. He pulls him up, pulls him open, spreads him with both hands and then he puts his face close, his mouth open and ready and he swipes his tongue up his crack.
He presses his tongue flat against his hole. Then licks - wet and digging and wriggling, face buried against him, stabbing into the soft inside like searching out the centre of the earth.
There’s power in unravelling him, all wound together, spun tight around wrinkled seed heart. He would make him spin the wrong way, reverse the centrifugal force, shatter him to bits.
A groan, “I’m going to-“
He grabs his cock, squeezes hard at the base. Holds it tight.
“Don’t.”
Harry shudders, hard, but does not come. This is, after all, how they always do it.
Draco is so hard. He allows himself one squeeze, almost painful, can feel his erection weeping after it and then he lets go. So precious and so rotten, Harry whining and writhing for him. The noises and twitches are all splintered and crisp.
He gives him his fingers, next, slick with lubricant. Massaging, circling the small opening, then pressing in. Language is lost. He’s clean - there are spells you can learn for that sort of thing. Draco’s fingers could come away dirty and he’d dig them in deep anyway.
He wishes he could go deeper, reach up all the way inside of him, fell his stomach and lungs and heart from the inside, come out through his throat. He jabs them all the way he can, at the image, twists them sharply once they're inside and clenched and it's slick. His nails scrape the soft tissue of his insides. A gasp. A gasp. His fingers press against his prostate, rub and reach probe the small gland, Harry's flesh clinging to him. Draco can feel the shivers wrack Harry’s body and run up through his hand, up through his arm.
Then all there is is a mass of quivering nerve and sensation, completely reduced to. This is the way that perfection is achieved not when there’s nothing more to add, but nothing more to take away.
Harry moans, again. He thrusts himself back on those fingers, that are so long and meant for elegant things, says words that don't need to be understood.
His body shakes.
“Beg.”
“No-“
“Say it.”
“Please.”
“More.”
And then Harry’s voice is a cruel caress, the words all sliding out so easily because he knows, he's got to know, that bastard, what this does to Draco.
“Put it inside me. You’re so hard that you're dripping and you want it so bad, and I'll be hot and good around you. I need to be fucked, hard. Give it to me. I need it.”
Fuck. Draco’s voice vibrates, tremors, his hand on his own cock trembling, ready to press, to overcome “Say that again.”
“I need it.”
Again
I need it
Oh God
He presses against him pushes him against him. Feels him give, and give up to him.
Draco watches the pain flicker across his face, the brows drawing together, the eyes squeezing tight. Both groan “God”. It’s tight it’s hot and Draco thinks words like “complete” and “perfection” but not necessarily in that order.
He thrusts once, slowly, twice, back and forth, slow, but then holds himself, feeling the sweat bead on the back of his neck. Harry pushes back, asking for more, rocks himself onto his cock, trying to get him to move. Whines, writhes.
“Oh, God, just -“
Hisses, “say it.”
“Fuck me.”
Fuck. His guts are soft and hot around his cock. He wants to fuck him open. Cleave him in twain. Break him. He thrusts hard and works up a rhythm, steady and pounding and good, imagining that he can see his cock, rearranging his insides.
Snakebite whispering hormones whispering you want this you need this you need this. Desire is black venom.
“I-“
“Don’t say it.” Draco shushes him.
Harry turns his face away. His eyes flutter like insects.
He fucks him frantically with short stabbing motions. Inside of his own body, he hurts. He wants it to hurt. He wants to make it hurt. Wants to make Harry hurt.
Harry pulls him deeper. Reaching with hands and legs, body jackknifed. It can’t possibly be comfortable.
Here in this space between them, the thrusts and wet sounds of flesh on flesh, the erection painting his stomach and the sweat on their chests, there is no room for thoughts of war and death, future and separation.
It's all just heat and that’s right, faster, harder. The headboard bangs against the wall in discordant symphony, keeping time.
So close.
Harry rakes his nails down his back, leaving white scratch-mark trails. Bits of Draco’s skin and sweat are trapped underneath Harry’s nails now. Draco hisses.
So close.
“Oh God, Draco, oh God, Draco Draco,” Harry prays.
Draco reaches down between them with one hand, leaving only one to support himself. He wraps his fingers around that flushes cock again, squeezes it and feels the wetness between his fingers. He strokes him erratically with a shaking hand, rough and not so expertly. He can’t concentrate enough to make it in time with his thrusts, but that doesn’t matter as long as it’s pressure on aching, oozing flesh.
So close.
When Harry comes, quick as a heart attack, splattering hot on Draco’s stomach, mostly all over his own stomach and chest, white drops around his navel, one sliding down his hipbone, Draco watches his face. His eyes break when he comes; he goes somewhere inside. But Draco can’t wonder where for long, because Harry’s still clenching around him and it’s unrelentingsqueezingpressure griptight and then Harry surges forward, bites his lip too much oh god
Trying to twist away, hum in his cock and in his balls all the way up to behind his eyes and all the way down to his pinkie toe, and he wants to moan and he wants to scream but instead he bites down on his own lip. Hard. He tumbles, tumbling. Hard. His balls tighten, his own asshole clenches. His guts are cramping, gushing. The rush, the joy, the pulsing release.
Light explodes behind his eyes like biting down on a lemon full of stars and blood.
He’s close to God but God closes His eyes.
He thinks nirvana but really it’s just orgasm. Physical reaction to continued stimulation. Forget about the world for a couple thirty seconds before you’re panting and temporarily euphoric and then coming down.
He thrusts a couple more times just to hear Harry moan. Just to see him limp, strokes him just because he’s oversensitised. He can’t keep it up, it shakes him inside, and he collapses on top of him, eventually.
It’s over.
They're breathless and subsiding. Draco rolls off, slips out with an audible awkward wet sound.
They lie together. They lie apart.
Harry takes Draco’s left arm. He looks at the inside of it. Blank, clean, smooth, pure. He runs his fingers over tight skin, over blue veins, where the bone juts out. He presses his mouth to it.
Then Harry bites down. He closes his teeth over the skin on inside, hard and sudden. Draco cries out, “Fuck what are you-” It’s hard enough to break skin, and in the imprint of his teeth, he bleeds.
Draco holds his arm to himself, his eyes accusing, painful.
“You're fucking mental!” he says. “What the hell was that?”
Harry wipes his mouth with the back of one hand.
“I just don’t want...It's not going to be my fault. When you die.”
Draco informs him, “Everything’s your fault. Always.”
“I-“
“Don’t say it.”
Harry looks him in the eye. “I hate you,” he says, suddenly, vehemently.
This is the way that things that belong to you will always be yours.
“I hate you, too," says Draco, relieved. “And you know what? I hope you die.” He reaches out and brushes Potter's hair away from his forehead, “I hope we both die.”
Draco likes to feel nothing. When they kiss, lips meeting each other softly, emptiness twinges inside. Somewhere, someone else’s heart beats for him so that his doesn’t have to.
In his mouth, salt and bitterness and pedestal dust.
~finis~
References:
"Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.
The Book of Genesis. Deuteronomy 28.
I am drowning.
There is no sign of land.
You are coming down with me,
hand in unlovable hand.
And I hope you die,
I hope we both die.
--The Mountain Goats, "No Children"
Pairing: H/D
Rating: NC-17
Summary: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. With knowledge comes suffering.
A/N: I dug up my first H/D fic, from at least five years ago. It is painful to read, it is so awful. I’m really, really fucking glad that you can’t find it anywhere on the net anymore.
If you ask nicely, I might link to the original privately. As it is, I’m completely rewriting. So here we go.
For bookshop, who loved the original and loved it well. Crazy bitch. There’s no accounting for taste.
Thanks to lovely France-bound esotericfrench for support on writing smut at 4 am, and for sending me "No Children".
Eden (Revisited.)
~+~
In Sunday school, they teach you how everybody is born a sinner.
In the beginning, there was Adam and Eve, and the most literal version of how Ignorance is Bliss. God told them that if they ate from the tree with knowledge of Good and Evil, they would die.
And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:
For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.
Of course, what the serpent neglected to mention is that Knowledge brings suffering.
Mother and Father never told Draco that he would die, or could die, in any way, or as a result from any of his actions. He supposed that even if they had, he would go and do whatever it was that could cause his death, for that could make him as a god. Mother and Father always insisted that they knew what was best for him, and they had given him life. He thinks about them a lot these days, days that, like his thoughts, are dark.
When Draco meets Harry Potter in the gardens before the edge of the Forbidden Forest, he does not think about dead things nor dry and scratchy barren terrain, not out there, where everything grows tangled and green. Skeletons lie in the ground, buried deep, and they do not rise from the dark and moist dirt, and they do not live in closets. He does, however, think about his hands a closed circle around Potter’s throat and then burying him with the fat earthworms, just to see if he would rise again. In his mouth, the taste of decay.
The year that Draco turned five, Father got him his first wand. It was a child’s toy, barely five inches, made of willow. They threw him a gala, and invited all his playmates and their parents. Father said to him, “I love you, Draco.” And Draco said, “I love you, Daddy.”
The year that Draco turned six, Father gave him a pony, a supposed Arabian-unicorn hybrid. One of those things, you know. At his party, Draco graciously let all his friends pet Sir Reginald, but only he could sit on the polished leather saddle with the gold braids. Father said to him, “I love you, Draco.” And Draco said, “I love you, Daddy.”
The year that Draco turned seven, Father bought him his own broom, not a racing broom (still too young for that), but a broom nonetheless. Vince and Greg watched in wonder when he rose from the ground for the first time, a whole two feet. Pansy shrieked. Father said to him, “I love you, Draco.” And Draco said, “I love you, Daddy.”
The year Draco turned eight, Father did not get him any presents at all. There was no party. Father said to him, “I love you, Son.” And Draco said, “Daddy, where are my presents?”
“Draco,” Father said, “you aren’t getting any presents this year.”
And Draco said, “Daddy, where are the guests?”
“Draco,” Father said, “there will be no guests this year.”
And Draco, although he was getting to be a Big Boy, did a very un-Big Boy thing, and threw a tantrum. His pale face pinked and purpled. He wanted presents. He stomped his feet. He wanted cake. He threw his books and chessmen and toy soldiers across the room. He demanded that his friends come and for there to be dancing bears - two, at the very least.
Father smiled his knowing smile and said, “But I love you, Son, isn’t that enough for you?”
NO, screamed Draco, because it was his birthday and it was a big one and he wanted Greg and Vince and Blaise to come play and they should have had an enchanted dragon and fireworks, too. He crossed his arms and pouted.
What Father said next, Draco would never forget: “Love means nothing without wealth and power.”
In the winter, when the trees were dead and their monstrous branches clawed the sky, Mother took Draco to Church. Jesus suffered beautifully on the cross, the wounds in his side painted wet. There were stained-glass windows with angels. There were angels carved into marble, candlelit. The angels were all large and muscular, with wings that were sharp and white and bigger than Draco could ever be.
He dreamed sometimes of an angry God, the one who sent floods and fires and told you that you could burn in Hell for eternity, which was a Really, Really Long Time.
At eight years old, Daddy became Father. When Draco was nine, Father held his hand and together they walked to a dark place in the city where he had never been before.
The buildings rose above him, crooked, looming, and he scraped his nice coat against the scratchy and crumbly brick. In all the long alleyways and all the tight spaces in between, he saw disgusting men. Men with dirty faces that reeked of dirty things - sour stomach smell like hot sick, and pee as if they wet themselves (and Draco had never wet himself ever, except for that one time one he was three and had had a bad dream). The cobblestones were cracked, rough underneath his patent leather shoes, and there were mysterious, foul, dark puddles in corners and shadowed places although it had not rained for a couple of days.
At their feet lay sprawled a man with big black dots moving slowly across his face. Thick and oily grime crusted in all the cracks and wrinkles of his skin. Draco couldn’t call him a man, creature seemed more accurate. On closer inspection, the dots were flies. His hair was a tangle like a bramble bush, all around his face, and there were things stuck in it. Draco thought he saw a worm, tiny, pearly pink, shiny, disappear deep inside. He felt sick.
“Is he dead, Father?” Draco asked, whispered, his voice smaller than he felt.
“No, Draco,” said Father, “he’s just sleeping. He’s dreaming.”
Sleeping. Dreaming. Draco repeated these words to himself, and kept them in his mind.
“Dreams are for fools and the poor,” Father said. Draco could only nod his head and agree.
Draco spent his summers in France, Holland, Italy, Iceland. Once they even visited India, so that he could see elephants and tigers in real life and not just in picture books or at the zoo. He had disliked the heat. Mother and Father knew exactly what Draco wanted before he knew he wanted it. His winter coats were lined with ermine. He had toys before they ever appeared in the shop windows, before all the other little boys could possibly stop in the street and tug on their parents’ hands and say, “I want that.”
If one Christmas morning, he opened up his presents to find the moon wrapped up in the box, nestled in wrinkled tissue paper, glowing and silver, he would not have been surprised.
At eleven years old, he met a really dumb boy. The boy was going to Hogwarts but didn’t play Quidditch and thought that a barbaric, half-giant groundskeeper was brilliant. He didn’t have parents. Draco liked the way that the boy had a kind of stupid look about him. Years later, he would learn that people called that ‘innocence’.
That boy was Harry Potter, and in the next couple of years, the wizarding world would put its future into his hands.
Harry Potter didn’t want to be Draco’s friend. He chose Weasely, who was poor and probably dreamed a lot, and Granger, a Mudblood, instead. Father was right about everyone beneath you who stole your things away.
Father said words like “glory” and like “perfection.” He was a very impressive man: strong, tall, head held high. “One day, you will have power, great power,” Father had said. The sharp ink outlines on Father’s left forearm felt prickly underneath Draco’s fingertips.
Draco had always been a good boy, in his Father’s eyes.
At nine or ten or so, Draco learned that people hated his family. “Jealousy,” Father said. “Fear.” Fear was power. Those that hated or envied were lesser people, and lesser people died. Only the deserving survived. “Evolution,” Father called it. “Creation of a better world.”
And all people of the earth shall see that thou art called by the name of the LORD; and they shall be afraid of thee.
At eleven years old, Harry Potter played Seeker for Gryffindor. Draco could fly his broom twice as high, three times as fast, he knew it, but he wouldn’t be allowed on the Slytherin Quidditch team for at least another year.
Draco knew that he would be a good boy, go to school, graduate at the top of his class. He would marry a pretty, pureblooded girl from another old wizarding family and produce an heir. He would have wealth and power, and be able to do great things. He knew this to be true because Father said so.
But this was all in the future, which was a time that was Very Far Away.
When Draco was six, Father told him about the Mudbloods. They were like him, but not. Inferior beings pretending to be human. They were almost worse than Muggles, who knew nothing about magic and were afraid of power. They were treacherous in the worst way. They thought they were as good as he was, and there was no way that that could be right. They were less than him, and would do anything to undermine him. They first time that he saw Mudbloods, a little boy and girl, they looked just like him but he refused to be fooled. He stared hard at them and tried to see through their skin. Their veins were clogged with dirt, he was sure. Dirt and pebbles and bugs and slugs and crawly things.
Draco was a good boy, for the most part, clean, neat, and he didn’t sin. All this was according to Father, who wrote the rules on being bad and being good and being all the rest.
The LORD shall cause thine enemies that rise up against thee to be smitten before thy face…
At eleven years old, Harry Potter had admirers. They turned their smiling, sappy, hungry faces up to him, like flowers growing towards the sun. Draco had Crabbe and Goyle, sometimes Pansy, and they didn’t smile at him nearly as much. Well, Pansy did, but she was a girl and didn’t really count.
The papers and the grown-ups all talked about a saviour. How Draco hated that word. It was inappropriate. Anybody could be a hero - he had always thought he would grow up to be one himself, even if he was smarter than he was brave. If Potter were a saviour then he best be on a cross, with iron nails deep in his wrists and ankles.
They could have been friends. Draco liked him in the robe shop well enough, stupid and alone. But then there was that first time on the train, and Potter didn’t want to be friends.
They grew older. Draco grew meaner.
When he made Potter angry he was in control. Draco made Potter hate, and Potter’s anger made him flawed, weak. When hate was all that Potter could feel, Draco owned Harry Potter and that was like Christmas all over again.
He took his own hatred and he consecrated it, held it to himself at night. He fed it with angry words and black thoughts. He ate it and it made him stronger.
The year that he turned fourteen, Father gave him his presents and said, “Draco, I don’t love you.”
And Draco said, “Love means nothing next to wealth and power, Father.”
And Father smiled his knowing smile and said, “That’s my boy.”
No one is pure because purity does not exist. Good does not exist. Everyone is a sinner. There are those who repent, and those who do not. Those who are forgiven and those who are not. Those who believe, and those who do not.
Later he would understand that people were even easier divided: there are those with power, and those without. There are those who have, and those who do without.
When he understood power, he would also know the taste of skin, taste of mouth, the friction of flesh moving against flesh.
At one time, he had been afraid of the dark. He lay in bed when the candles were blown out, staring at the shadows that haunted his wall. Father came to him sometimes when he had nightmares, and Father was a hero.
He outgrew his fear of the dark, eventually.
People are always afraid of the things that they don’t understand.
Draco always washed his face carefully. When young, he slicked his hair back. When older, he combed through his hair with a fine-toothed comb. His nails were always neatly trimmed, with no dirt trapped underneath.
He discovered his own body when he was about twelve. The planes and angles of it were fascinating, the hair in places where there had been none disturbing, and the world between his legs - well, that was just whole lot of fun.
He thought of Potter a lot, and how stupid-looking and ugly he is. He picked at his thoughts, like peeling the dark dried blood from an itchy scab.
Sometimes Draco thinks there is no God. People kill each other and people starve to death and the world keeps on turning. But if there is no God, then people have all the power, and they should work even harder to keep the control.
The forest primeval is full of wet leaves. The smell is moist and of rot.
Purging the world is nothing new. God sent floods. Towers that reached up to the sky were toppled down. Cities were razed to the ground. Only the bad people die - it just so happens that you could call most people bad.
Time and time again, people are taught that the pursuit of knowledge is evil. Good might as well as be synonymous with idealism as with stupidity.
Harry Potter wants to save all that’s wrong with the world.
When he was sixteen, Draco pushed the Harry Potter up against a stone wall and crushed their lips together. Potter didn’t taste like apple at all, but rather like metal flowers, rust and marigolds: sour, bitter, slightly sweet. Draco bit him anyway, hard, because that was what you did with fruit.
Potter pushed back, but only in the way that you knew he wanted it. He moaned around the slick tongue in his mouth, the way it was wet and alive. His eyes were dark like the forest, and you couldn’t see the trees.
Potter wasn’t perfect. He was barely even good-looking. He was mortal, and could bleed and hurt and want and come and die. Just like anybody else. Just like Draco.
He cared about people and was weak. It filled Draco’s mouth with spit to think of it.
Angels and saviours shouldn’t sweat and smell. They should be sculpted and clean, not with a little too much hair in awkward places. Harry didn’t clean behind his ears and sometimes had lousy breath. Sometimes he didn’t shower right after Quidditch practise and he smelled like humidity and sour summer heat.
At night, when the sky is dark and the stars like the spit of millions across a sidewalk, Draco presses against Harry as if trying to leave an imprint on his skin. This skin is hard in places, soft in places, mostly hot. Sweat sticks them together.
He arches up. Draco arches away.
All over, Draco is prickly. Excited. Electric.
Here is control.
His hands on Harry’s wrists, Harry’s wrists indenting the bed, Harry’s arms spread out, he kisses Harry, fiercely. Dig his nails straight through and he'd crucify him, like so.
Harry’s mouth opens under his, trying to breathe, trying to communicate, trying to eat. He swallows his own name from Harry’s lips, rolls it soft and sticky between their mouths. He doesn’t want to hear words, so he swallows them up before they can reach his ears and wriggle around inside his brain. It’s too soon. They're slippery, treacherous things and they bother him in their serpentine way. It's not time for that yet.
Draco licks Harry’s lips and the corner of his mouth and kisses the point behind the jaw and just under the ear. He still doesn’t taste quite nice.
Draco slides his tongue down, down, then he scrapes his teeth over the contours of Harry’s Adam’s apple, raggedly. Harry shudders, and tries to twist away.
Underneath Draco’s lips, Harry’s blood pulses in time to his staccato heart. This racing blood is red just like the blood of everyone else, not black like ink or white with holy fire or shit brown. Not even green. Poison.
Here is every hateful word, sliding, buried, underneath his skin. They hide from Draco’s touch, shrink like violets, but sometimes, sometimes, they bloom and grow and press back to meet his fingers, his teeth, his open mouth.
He bites down on Harry's throat. He sucks hard. He breaks the blood vessels on Harry’s neck, and hopes that there will be bruises, red marks, looking infected and accusing. Harry will have to wear his red and yellow scarf all the time or his friends will ask questions. He will be red and yellow all over, those colours he's so proud of, that always made Draco think happily of blood and pus.
Harry moans under him, the way that things that belong to you find their way back to you in the end. Or you find a way to get them back.
Against Draco’s tongue, there is the salt of Harry’s skin, and his veins buzz with it. His body hums, too, and the song goes that this is right and everything is going to be all right and that’s how you do it.
He has to admit he had never thought it out this far. It was just going to be that one time, really. Just once, to see what it was like.
And then there was the second time and the third time.
It was hot, they had to say. Really hot. Who had time for stupid words like love, when there were such better words as hate and want and hurt. They pushed and they pulled. Pushing up white school uniform shirts, pulling on ties in house colours, empty classrooms, bending over desks and suck me off in detention. If we get caught, if we get caught, everyone will be horrified and ashamed and all our friends will leave us but there are worse things, like dying.
They’ve lost count of all the times now, but it doesn't mean that they don't keep score.
Draco licks trails down Harry’s neck, down his chest, that are shining and wet. Harry’s cheeks are flushed, stained, like crushing berries up underneath his skin. His hair is a dark tangle against the sheets and he squeezes his eyes shut tight. Everybody knows that they are green.
His tongue traces down over skin. He can feel muscles under skin and ribs under muscle. And between the bones and muscles, here is every insult and curse.
He takes one nipple into his mouth. There's a gasp in the dark, ten fingers squeezing, short nails biting down on his shoulders. He wants to chew it that nub in his mouth, bite it off soft and brown like a salt-water taffy. He sucks it hard, irritates it and the whole chest arches up to him and one hand pulls at his hair.
Next he moves down the planes of the stomach, the muscles that ripple under his touch; he lets his mouth travel the way the hands travel down his back, encouraging him further, lower, faster.
The moonlight pouring in from the window splatters the curves and contours of Harry’s body with patches of silver. A splotch on his raised bicep and his elbow. A patch on the curve of his hip. A splash on his nipple, his knee, the tips of his toes. The moonlight makes his cock against his stomach, leaking precum, glisten.
Draco dips his tongue into the shallow well in the middle of the stomach. Harry gasps, pleasured. Draco nibbles at the edge of a bellybutton and wonders about the network of intestines just underneath. Potter has no power at all like this and if Draco had a knife, he could spill them open, just so.
Both hands on those flinty hips now, pressing down just hard enough. Potter would deny that he ever whimpered, so when Draco has him pinned and licks up the side of his cock --slow...wet…---, Harry trembles, not-whimpering.
The sound always gets to him. Those little noises just crawl inside his head, skip all the body parts in between and roll in waves straight to his cock. Maybe if he were deaf then he wouldn't have this desire twisting around in his stomach, messing up his insides like thorns and leaves and rot.
But Harry is vocal like that. Draco's teeth catch on his lips and then he silences himself the way most people, he would imagine, would like to see him silenced -with a mouth full of cock.
In hair that grows a bit too thick, Harry’s cock is something firm and warm and alive. He wraps his fingers around the base of it while he works his mouth on the tip, now lapping, now sucking. Thrill always shivers up Draco’s spine; it would be so easy to just hurt him here. Badly.
He licks up the underside of his cock, lets his tongue follow the ridges and veins of it, licks up all sides, wet and hot. He laps around the flushed head of it, tongues the slit, sucks hard when it slides past his lips and he feels it bump against the back of his throat.
Harry twists Draco’s hair in his fingers, his fingers in Draco’s hair.
There’s more power in reducing him.
He pulls off, backwards, lips sliding slick against the hot skin every centimetre of the way. He links at the juncture of thigh, curls brushing his cheek, and sucks hard on the inner thigh, leaves teeth marks and watches Harry convulse.
Harry’s feet now planted on the bed, he spreads his legs. His balls hang heavy. Somewhat dark.
Draco cups the balls and rolls them, marvels at the weight of them in his hand, squeezes hard but not overmuch just to see Potter writhe. With one hand on his own erection, the other hand strokes the area between Harry's balls and his hole. He pulls him up, pulls him open, spreads him with both hands and then he puts his face close, his mouth open and ready and he swipes his tongue up his crack.
He presses his tongue flat against his hole. Then licks - wet and digging and wriggling, face buried against him, stabbing into the soft inside like searching out the centre of the earth.
There’s power in unravelling him, all wound together, spun tight around wrinkled seed heart. He would make him spin the wrong way, reverse the centrifugal force, shatter him to bits.
A groan, “I’m going to-“
He grabs his cock, squeezes hard at the base. Holds it tight.
“Don’t.”
Harry shudders, hard, but does not come. This is, after all, how they always do it.
Draco is so hard. He allows himself one squeeze, almost painful, can feel his erection weeping after it and then he lets go. So precious and so rotten, Harry whining and writhing for him. The noises and twitches are all splintered and crisp.
He gives him his fingers, next, slick with lubricant. Massaging, circling the small opening, then pressing in. Language is lost. He’s clean - there are spells you can learn for that sort of thing. Draco’s fingers could come away dirty and he’d dig them in deep anyway.
He wishes he could go deeper, reach up all the way inside of him, fell his stomach and lungs and heart from the inside, come out through his throat. He jabs them all the way he can, at the image, twists them sharply once they're inside and clenched and it's slick. His nails scrape the soft tissue of his insides. A gasp. A gasp. His fingers press against his prostate, rub and reach probe the small gland, Harry's flesh clinging to him. Draco can feel the shivers wrack Harry’s body and run up through his hand, up through his arm.
Then all there is is a mass of quivering nerve and sensation, completely reduced to. This is the way that perfection is achieved not when there’s nothing more to add, but nothing more to take away.
Harry moans, again. He thrusts himself back on those fingers, that are so long and meant for elegant things, says words that don't need to be understood.
His body shakes.
“Beg.”
“No-“
“Say it.”
“Please.”
“More.”
And then Harry’s voice is a cruel caress, the words all sliding out so easily because he knows, he's got to know, that bastard, what this does to Draco.
“Put it inside me. You’re so hard that you're dripping and you want it so bad, and I'll be hot and good around you. I need to be fucked, hard. Give it to me. I need it.”
Fuck. Draco’s voice vibrates, tremors, his hand on his own cock trembling, ready to press, to overcome “Say that again.”
“I need it.”
Again
I need it
Oh God
He presses against him pushes him against him. Feels him give, and give up to him.
Draco watches the pain flicker across his face, the brows drawing together, the eyes squeezing tight. Both groan “God”. It’s tight it’s hot and Draco thinks words like “complete” and “perfection” but not necessarily in that order.
He thrusts once, slowly, twice, back and forth, slow, but then holds himself, feeling the sweat bead on the back of his neck. Harry pushes back, asking for more, rocks himself onto his cock, trying to get him to move. Whines, writhes.
“Oh, God, just -“
Hisses, “say it.”
“Fuck me.”
Fuck. His guts are soft and hot around his cock. He wants to fuck him open. Cleave him in twain. Break him. He thrusts hard and works up a rhythm, steady and pounding and good, imagining that he can see his cock, rearranging his insides.
Snakebite whispering hormones whispering you want this you need this you need this. Desire is black venom.
“I-“
“Don’t say it.” Draco shushes him.
Harry turns his face away. His eyes flutter like insects.
He fucks him frantically with short stabbing motions. Inside of his own body, he hurts. He wants it to hurt. He wants to make it hurt. Wants to make Harry hurt.
Harry pulls him deeper. Reaching with hands and legs, body jackknifed. It can’t possibly be comfortable.
Here in this space between them, the thrusts and wet sounds of flesh on flesh, the erection painting his stomach and the sweat on their chests, there is no room for thoughts of war and death, future and separation.
It's all just heat and that’s right, faster, harder. The headboard bangs against the wall in discordant symphony, keeping time.
So close.
Harry rakes his nails down his back, leaving white scratch-mark trails. Bits of Draco’s skin and sweat are trapped underneath Harry’s nails now. Draco hisses.
So close.
“Oh God, Draco, oh God, Draco Draco,” Harry prays.
Draco reaches down between them with one hand, leaving only one to support himself. He wraps his fingers around that flushes cock again, squeezes it and feels the wetness between his fingers. He strokes him erratically with a shaking hand, rough and not so expertly. He can’t concentrate enough to make it in time with his thrusts, but that doesn’t matter as long as it’s pressure on aching, oozing flesh.
So close.
When Harry comes, quick as a heart attack, splattering hot on Draco’s stomach, mostly all over his own stomach and chest, white drops around his navel, one sliding down his hipbone, Draco watches his face. His eyes break when he comes; he goes somewhere inside. But Draco can’t wonder where for long, because Harry’s still clenching around him and it’s unrelentingsqueezingpressure griptight and then Harry surges forward, bites his lip too much oh god
Trying to twist away, hum in his cock and in his balls all the way up to behind his eyes and all the way down to his pinkie toe, and he wants to moan and he wants to scream but instead he bites down on his own lip. Hard. He tumbles, tumbling. Hard. His balls tighten, his own asshole clenches. His guts are cramping, gushing. The rush, the joy, the pulsing release.
Light explodes behind his eyes like biting down on a lemon full of stars and blood.
He’s close to God but God closes His eyes.
He thinks nirvana but really it’s just orgasm. Physical reaction to continued stimulation. Forget about the world for a couple thirty seconds before you’re panting and temporarily euphoric and then coming down.
He thrusts a couple more times just to hear Harry moan. Just to see him limp, strokes him just because he’s oversensitised. He can’t keep it up, it shakes him inside, and he collapses on top of him, eventually.
It’s over.
They're breathless and subsiding. Draco rolls off, slips out with an audible awkward wet sound.
They lie together. They lie apart.
Harry takes Draco’s left arm. He looks at the inside of it. Blank, clean, smooth, pure. He runs his fingers over tight skin, over blue veins, where the bone juts out. He presses his mouth to it.
Then Harry bites down. He closes his teeth over the skin on inside, hard and sudden. Draco cries out, “Fuck what are you-” It’s hard enough to break skin, and in the imprint of his teeth, he bleeds.
Draco holds his arm to himself, his eyes accusing, painful.
“You're fucking mental!” he says. “What the hell was that?”
Harry wipes his mouth with the back of one hand.
“I just don’t want...It's not going to be my fault. When you die.”
Draco informs him, “Everything’s your fault. Always.”
“I-“
“Don’t say it.”
Harry looks him in the eye. “I hate you,” he says, suddenly, vehemently.
This is the way that things that belong to you will always be yours.
“I hate you, too," says Draco, relieved. “And you know what? I hope you die.” He reaches out and brushes Potter's hair away from his forehead, “I hope we both die.”
Draco likes to feel nothing. When they kiss, lips meeting each other softly, emptiness twinges inside. Somewhere, someone else’s heart beats for him so that his doesn’t have to.
In his mouth, salt and bitterness and pedestal dust.
~finis~
References:
"Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.
The Book of Genesis. Deuteronomy 28.
I am drowning.
There is no sign of land.
You are coming down with me,
hand in unlovable hand.
And I hope you die,
I hope we both die.
--The Mountain Goats, "No Children"