Harry’s helter-skelter lifestyle had always driven John quietly nuts. He didn’t understand it: how could someone so meticulous and precise about magic consistently fail to remember what day of the week it was? Harry couldn’t use a PDA, true enough, but he could get the same result with a stack of index cards and a few hours with one of those Getting Things Done books. John had suggested it once, and netted himself a long, blank stare. He’d sighed and resigned himself to the absurdity of being blindingly attracted to a guy who could lose his wallet in his own pocket. Twice.
Apparently, he hadn’t seen anything yet.
Over the next few weeks, Harry lived in an expanding bubble of distraction and disorder. He put water on to boil for tea, then forgot it and went for a run. He took his pentacle off to clean it, dropped it down the sink in the master bathroom, and retrieved it with a summoning spell that sent every piece of silver in the house rattling frantically at its drawer, trying to get to him. He lost his keys, John’s spare set, his shoes, his handkerchiefs. He was erratic, too – cheerful and talkative one night, silently morose the next, or simply absent.
John had been so focused on Harry’s stubborn refusal to just fucking give and say yes to moving in that he’d never realized he’d effectively won already. Harry had been living with him in every way that counted except for his signature on the dotted line. At least until he suddenly . . . wasn’t.
When he was there at all, he seemed to have cut his sleep time in half. He stayed up into the small hours tweaking obscure potions, then vanished before dawn. And he brooded; he could stare blank-faced at nothing for a solid hour, John timed him, and then look irritated and say he wasn’t thinking about anything when asked.
It was all very frustrating. John didn’t understand any of it – the moods, the unhappiness, the distraction. This sort of thing didn’t happen with Hendricks; on those vanishingly rare occasions he had a problem he couldn’t handle on his own, he let John know and John fixed it for him. Then again, Harry had been irrationally, pathologically opposed to letting John fix his problems since day one. Which was a ridiculous boundary to maintain – John happened to be fantastic at fixing problems, to start with.
It ate at him. The illogic, and all Harry’s wasted energy. Harry was . . . suffering. It reflected onto John, something sharper than empathy. It made him angry, helplessly and without focus or purpose.
Harry emerged from a haze of bitter-smelling potion making when John got up one Sunday morning. He poured himself a cup of coffee in silence, doctored it, took a single sip, and promptly dropped it on the tile, spraying porcelain and boiling coffee everywhere.
“Don’t move,” John said sharply, grabbing his elbow before he could shift his bare feet. “Are you burned?”
“Not much,” Harry said. “Fuck.” He jerked a hand through his hair. It was shaking with reaction.
“Just a second.” John ducked into the laundry room and yanked on a pair of old sneakers he kept there. When he went back into the kitchen, Harry was crouching down, sweeping the broken pieces into a pile with his bare hands.
John pulled the trash can out from under the sink, reaching for the broom.
“I got it,” Harry said. He stood, eyes on the floor, and took one long-legged stride out of the danger zone. John surrendered the broom without comment. He watched Harry’s back, the curve of his spine as he bent to sweep, the unnaturally strict set to his shoulders. John exhaled a silent, exasperated breath, and went to pour Harry another cup of coffee.
“So,” Harry said over the clatter of broken porcelain. “I was thinking about that brochure. The one for Executive Priority.”
“Mmm?” John said, giving him an extra spoonful of sugar. No one’s ribs should look like that.
“Yeah,” Harry said. “And I was thinking we could try . . . you know?”
John was about to poke at him, tell him that if he couldn’t say it, they definitely couldn’t do any ‘you knowing’, because really. Then he remembered the one thing they’d actually talked about from that brochure, and bit back the pedantry so hard, he nearly choked on it. He set the full mug down with care and turned to stare at Harry.
“To be clear,” he said. “We’re discussing playing a game where I pretend to rape you?”
Hot color flooded the back of Harry’s neck, which was all John could see. “Yeah?” he said combatively into the trash can.
John cocked his head. “. . . All right,” he said. “I assume you didn’t mean right this second?”
Harry straightened up and turned to face him. He looked incredulous, still flushed red, and most of the way to pissed off. “What?” he said.
John frowned at him, wrong-footed. “Was I supposed to . . . say no?” he asked, wondering a little helplessly where he’d missed that cue.
“I don’t know,” Harry snapped. He gestured wildly with the broom. “But you could have!”
“. . . What?” John said, completely lost now.
Harry puffed out a harsh breath. “Have you ever done anything like that before?”
“No,” John said.
“Ever thought about it? Ever wanted to?”
“No.”
Harry rolled his eyes. “But you just say ‘sure’ like – hell’s bells.” He took two quick breaths, loud in the silent kitchen. “I am not some – some fucking problem that you’re the only one willing to get his hands dirty to fix,” he said. “If we do this, it’s because you actually want to.”
Which also handily deflected the attention onto John and what he did or didn’t want. Still, it wasn’t a completely invalid point.
“All right,” John said. “Hang on a minute, let me think.” Harry nodded. He crossed his arms, balancing the broom like it was his staff, and leaned back against the opposite counter.
Oddly, John found it was easier to think it through when he wasn’t looking at Harry. He shut his eyes. Christ, but he was an eternal well of surprises. Where had this even come from? Focus. Could he do it?
Hendricks’s habit of formulating his thoughts into if/then statements was catching. If Harry wanted something, John had a vested interest in seeing that he got it; if Harry needed something, then . . . well.
What John wanted just didn’t seem as relevant. But Harry cared, so all right.
Stated bluntly -- do I want to rape him -- the question was meaningless, too much associative baggage, an automatic reflex of denial.
So, take it apart: did he want to hold Harry down? Did he want to fuck him without care or consideration – did he want to use him? Make him take anything John dished out? He’d done most of that already, in pieces, and enjoyed it. But so had Harry, then – he’d been egging John on the whole time, asking for more. Not saying no.
But he was asking now, too, wasn’t he? He was asking to be able to say no later, and to not have it count.
The entire idea reordered itself. John breathed in sharply, thinking of Harry’s defensiveness, his deflection. Thinking of him twisting up all his ample chutzpa to the sticking point to ask for this thing that clearly shamed him, made him angry. How deeply buried was this want, how secret, how old? And here he was, showing it to John, asking--
“Yes,” John said, opening his eyes. “I want to.”
Harry had been staring up at the ceiling, a determinedly blank look on his face. He snapped his chin down, visibly startled. “. . . Oh,” he said, swallowing audibly. “Um. Okay?” He eyed John, his mouth twisting down a little.
John sighed. “Harry,” he said. “If you start giving me that squinty look because I agreed to do something you asked me to do, I swear to God I will throw this coffee.”
Harry’s face cracked in a surprised grin. “Okay, fair,” he said, and laughed with a touch of hysteria.
“So,” John said. “My original question – you don’t mean right now?”
“No,” Harry said. He turned quickly, began sweeping again.
“Okay,” John said slowly. “You do realize . . . we’re going to have to have an actual conversation about this, right?”
“Thought we just did,” Harry grunted, loudly rattling shards of mug into the trash can.
John pressed two fingers to the bridge of his nose. “You’re going to need a safeword, for starters,” he said.
Harry was shaking his head, immediately put off by this suggestion of procedure and planning. “If I don’t like it, I can toss you across the room,” he said. “Pretty sure you’ll get the message.”
John calculated briefly, decided to let that one go. “Just try not to break me or anything else, please,” he said. “When do you want to do this?”
Harry straightened, leaning forward on the broom. “Look, I don’t want a whole . . . plan,” he said, making a terrible face on the last word. “Can’t we just . . . y’know?”
No, they could not. But. “You want me to surprise you?”
Harry nodded, relaxing. “Yeah, exactly.”
“All right,” John said, nodding thoughtfully. “And are there things you particularly want me to do? Or not do?”
“I just said—“ Harry started, exasperated. Then he shook his head, set his mouth, and met John’s eyes. “You can do anything you want to me,” he said.
John felt his pulse pick up, the blood flowing faster under his skin, the abrupt flush of response. He found himself leaning into Harry’s space, close but not touching. Harry was still red; he breathed fast through his nose, holding the eye contact.
“We’re done talking about this now,” Harry said after a long, crowded pause.
“All right,” John said. He nodded, eased back. Harry exhaled a huge breath, his shoulders dropping three inches just like that. John smiled at him, making it as benign and harmless as possible. “More coffee?” he said, offering the full mug.
1. I start humming Leonard Cohen to myself. 2. Hey, these are the lyrics that genderswapped Leonard Cohen would write. 3. OMG GENDERSWAP LEONARD COHEN/HARRY DRESDEN FTW.
And then, because I am me:
4. Dude, genderswap Leonard Cohen/Waldo Butters, for the awesome Jew porn.
One of the things I love about your stories is the balance between moments of (seemingly) irrelevant character development with the angst and the porn. All of the Hendricks moments in here are that but more: they are also absolutely charming humor in what is otherwise a fairly heavy chapter. Gorgeous.
I waited to reply to this in the hope that I could be coherent. But I can't. All I have is massive, massive love for this and all the tiny details and the general creepy and yet awesome depths of Marcone's need for Harry.
I'm in love with this, and I <3 that Marcone's only frame of reference for normal-behaviour-for-people-I-have-spent-meaningful-time-with is Hendricks, because yeah, so very unlike Harry that Harry's peculiarities are even more so.
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Fill (3/?)
Apparently, he hadn’t seen anything yet.
Over the next few weeks, Harry lived in an expanding bubble of distraction and disorder. He put water on to boil for tea, then forgot it and went for a run. He took his pentacle off to clean it, dropped it down the sink in the master bathroom, and retrieved it with a summoning spell that sent every piece of silver in the house rattling frantically at its drawer, trying to get to him. He lost his keys, John’s spare set, his shoes, his handkerchiefs. He was erratic, too – cheerful and talkative one night, silently morose the next, or simply absent.
John had been so focused on Harry’s stubborn refusal to just fucking give and say yes to moving in that he’d never realized he’d effectively won already. Harry had been living with him in every way that counted except for his signature on the dotted line. At least until he suddenly . . . wasn’t.
When he was there at all, he seemed to have cut his sleep time in half. He stayed up into the small hours tweaking obscure potions, then vanished before dawn. And he brooded; he could stare blank-faced at nothing for a solid hour, John timed him, and then look irritated and say he wasn’t thinking about anything when asked.
It was all very frustrating. John didn’t understand any of it – the moods, the unhappiness, the distraction. This sort of thing didn’t happen with Hendricks; on those vanishingly rare occasions he had a problem he couldn’t handle on his own, he let John know and John fixed it for him. Then again, Harry had been irrationally, pathologically opposed to letting John fix his problems since day one. Which was a ridiculous boundary to maintain – John happened to be fantastic at fixing problems, to start with.
It ate at him. The illogic, and all Harry’s wasted energy. Harry was . . . suffering. It reflected onto John, something sharper than empathy. It made him angry, helplessly and without focus or purpose.
Harry emerged from a haze of bitter-smelling potion making when John got up one Sunday morning. He poured himself a cup of coffee in silence, doctored it, took a single sip, and promptly dropped it on the tile, spraying porcelain and boiling coffee everywhere.
“Don’t move,” John said sharply, grabbing his elbow before he could shift his bare feet. “Are you burned?”
“Not much,” Harry said. “Fuck.” He jerked a hand through his hair. It was shaking with reaction.
“Just a second.” John ducked into the laundry room and yanked on a pair of old sneakers he kept there. When he went back into the kitchen, Harry was crouching down, sweeping the broken pieces into a pile with his bare hands.
John pulled the trash can out from under the sink, reaching for the broom.
“I got it,” Harry said. He stood, eyes on the floor, and took one long-legged stride out of the danger zone. John surrendered the broom without comment. He watched Harry’s back, the curve of his spine as he bent to sweep, the unnaturally strict set to his shoulders. John exhaled a silent, exasperated breath, and went to pour Harry another cup of coffee.
“So,” Harry said over the clatter of broken porcelain. “I was thinking about that brochure. The one for Executive Priority.”
“Mmm?” John said, giving him an extra spoonful of sugar. No one’s ribs should look like that.
“Yeah,” Harry said. “And I was thinking we could try . . . you know?”
John was about to poke at him, tell him that if he couldn’t say it, they definitely couldn’t do any ‘you knowing’, because really. Then he remembered the one thing they’d actually talked about from that brochure, and bit back the pedantry so hard, he nearly choked on it. He set the full mug down with care and turned to stare at Harry.
“To be clear,” he said. “We’re discussing playing a game where I pretend to rape you?”
Hot color flooded the back of Harry’s neck, which was all John could see. “Yeah?” he said combatively into the trash can.
John cocked his head. “. . . All right,” he said. “I assume you didn’t mean right this second?”
Harry straightened up and turned to face him. He looked incredulous, still flushed red, and most of the way to pissed off. “What?” he said.
John frowned at him, wrong-footed. “Was I supposed to . . . say no?” he asked, wondering a little helplessly where he’d missed that cue.
“I don’t know,” Harry snapped. He gestured wildly with the broom. “But you could have!”
“. . . What?” John said, completely lost now.
Harry puffed out a harsh breath. “Have you ever done anything like that before?”
“No,” John said.
“Ever thought about it? Ever wanted to?”
“No.”
Harry rolled his eyes. “But you just say ‘sure’ like – hell’s bells.” He took two quick breaths, loud in the silent kitchen. “I am not some – some fucking problem that you’re the only one willing to get his hands dirty to fix,” he said. “If we do this, it’s because you actually want to.”
Which also handily deflected the attention onto John and what he did or didn’t want. Still, it wasn’t a completely invalid point.
“All right,” John said. “Hang on a minute, let me think.” Harry nodded. He crossed his arms, balancing the broom like it was his staff, and leaned back against the opposite counter.
Oddly, John found it was easier to think it through when he wasn’t looking at Harry. He shut his eyes. Christ, but he was an eternal well of surprises. Where had this even come from? Focus. Could he do it?
Hendricks’s habit of formulating his thoughts into if/then statements was catching. If Harry wanted something, John had a vested interest in seeing that he got it; if Harry needed something, then . . . well.
What John wanted just didn’t seem as relevant. But Harry cared, so all right.
Stated bluntly -- do I want to rape him -- the question was meaningless, too much associative baggage, an automatic reflex of denial.
So, take it apart: did he want to hold Harry down? Did he want to fuck him without care or consideration – did he want to use him? Make him take anything John dished out? He’d done most of that already, in pieces, and enjoyed it. But so had Harry, then – he’d been egging John on the whole time, asking for more. Not saying no.
But he was asking now, too, wasn’t he? He was asking to be able to say no later, and to not have it count.
The entire idea reordered itself. John breathed in sharply, thinking of Harry’s defensiveness, his deflection. Thinking of him twisting up all his ample chutzpa to the sticking point to ask for this thing that clearly shamed him, made him angry. How deeply buried was this want, how secret, how old? And here he was, showing it to John, asking--
“Yes,” John said, opening his eyes. “I want to.”
Harry had been staring up at the ceiling, a determinedly blank look on his face. He snapped his chin down, visibly startled. “. . . Oh,” he said, swallowing audibly. “Um. Okay?” He eyed John, his mouth twisting down a little.
John sighed. “Harry,” he said. “If you start giving me that squinty look because I agreed to do something you asked me to do, I swear to God I will throw this coffee.”
Harry’s face cracked in a surprised grin. “Okay, fair,” he said, and laughed with a touch of hysteria.
“So,” John said. “My original question – you don’t mean right now?”
“No,” Harry said. He turned quickly, began sweeping again.
“Okay,” John said slowly. “You do realize . . . we’re going to have to have an actual conversation about this, right?”
“Thought we just did,” Harry grunted, loudly rattling shards of mug into the trash can.
John pressed two fingers to the bridge of his nose. “You’re going to need a safeword, for starters,” he said.
Harry was shaking his head, immediately put off by this suggestion of procedure and planning. “If I don’t like it, I can toss you across the room,” he said. “Pretty sure you’ll get the message.”
John calculated briefly, decided to let that one go. “Just try not to break me or anything else, please,” he said. “When do you want to do this?”
Harry straightened, leaning forward on the broom. “Look, I don’t want a whole . . . plan,” he said, making a terrible face on the last word. “Can’t we just . . . y’know?”
No, they could not. But. “You want me to surprise you?”
Harry nodded, relaxing. “Yeah, exactly.”
“All right,” John said, nodding thoughtfully. “And are there things you particularly want me to do? Or not do?”
“I just said—“ Harry started, exasperated. Then he shook his head, set his mouth, and met John’s eyes. “You can do anything you want to me,” he said.
John felt his pulse pick up, the blood flowing faster under his skin, the abrupt flush of response. He found himself leaning into Harry’s space, close but not touching. Harry was still red; he breathed fast through his nose, holding the eye contact.
“We’re done talking about this now,” Harry said after a long, crowded pause.
“All right,” John said. He nodded, eased back. Harry exhaled a huge breath, his shoulders dropping three inches just like that. John smiled at him, making it as benign and harmless as possible. “More coffee?” he said, offering the full mug.
Re: Fill (3/?)
(Anonymous) 2011-02-22 03:29 am (UTC)(link)Re: Fill (3/?)
The fact you're even pulling this off is astounding me.
Re: Fill (3/?)
(Anonymous) 2011-02-22 03:41 am (UTC)(link)Just sayin'.
Re: Fill (3/?)
(Anonymous) 2011-02-22 03:48 am (UTC)(link)1. I start humming Leonard Cohen to myself.
2. Hey, these are the lyrics that genderswapped Leonard Cohen would write.
3. OMG GENDERSWAP LEONARD COHEN/HARRY DRESDEN FTW.
And then, because I am me:
4. Dude, genderswap Leonard Cohen/Waldo Butters, for the awesome Jew porn.
Re: Fill (3/?)
(Anonymous) 2011-02-22 03:46 am (UTC)(link)One of the things I love about your stories is the balance between moments of (seemingly) irrelevant character development with the angst and the porn. All of the Hendricks moments in here are that but more: they are also absolutely charming humor in what is otherwise a fairly heavy chapter. Gorgeous.
OP
(Anonymous) 2011-02-22 03:57 am (UTC)(link)Dammit, Harry. I have a terrible feeling you're so not ready for this. But knowing John, he'll handle it well.
Re: Fill (3/?)
(Anonymous) 2011-02-22 09:55 am (UTC)(link)Re: Fill (3/?)
(Anonymous) 2011-02-22 02:44 pm (UTC)(link)Re: Fill (3/?)
(Anonymous) 2011-02-22 03:20 pm (UTC)(link)Re: Fill (3/?)
Re: Fill (3/?)
Oh god I didn't even realize that.
:adds to headcanon:
Re: Fill (3/?)
(Anonymous) 2011-02-22 09:29 pm (UTC)(link)I love that line.