Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/9286220.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Underage
  Category:
      M/M
  Fandom:
      Fantastic_Beasts_and_Where_to_Find_Them_(Movies)
  Relationship:
      Credence_Barebone/Percival_Graves
  Character:
      Credence_Barebone, Percival_Graves
  Additional Tags:
      Alternate_Universe_-_Non-Magical, by_maryana
  Stats:
      Published: 2017-01-13 Words: 3567
****** Samarra ******
by filistinist, Vinmar
Summary
     Death waits for you in Samarra.
     There was no way this boy could be the son of Hugh Barebone, are you
     kidding? He could have been Judas, or Lucifer. Leonardo da Vinci used
     to paint such faces...
  This work was inspired by
      Самарра by Vinmar
The dinner promised to be boring; just as boring as the friend who'd invited
Percival Graves to it.
And actually, you couldn't even consider them friends—they met under
circumstances that don't predispose to friendship. Graves was a tax auditor,
and he had come in to review the corporate law firm where Hugh Barebone labored
as one of its lawyers. He found out later that it was Barebone's dream to work
his way up to junior partner (the senior partner position never even figured in
his fantasies), but Graves could see that the man had no more of a chance of
reaching that post than pulling a star from the sky.
Hugh Barebone was a flabby, pudgy blond of about fifty, and somehow reminded
Percival Graves of cheese.
Percival's own reflection in the mirror was still something to envy. He was
lucky with his face and body, regardless of how thoroughly he abused them with
alcohol, drugs, and random hookups. Good genes, what can you say. And letting
loose occasionally was a necessity for him—you can't imagine how much, and how
hard, tax auditors have to work. Sometimes he had to spend twenty-four hours in
other people's offices, for months on end, feeling the dark energy of
everyone's collective hatred trickling down his back. Because no one likes an
auditor. But Percival didn't give a damn about that, not for a long time. Other
people's emotions just rolled off his back like water.
Whereas Barebone was probably too naive to be working in law. Naive,
conservative, and almost innocent. Graves would have bet he was a virgin, if it
wasn't for Olivia, the man's energetic redhead of a wife.
It all started with Olivia, actually. She was the exuberant artistic type, a
housewife who fancied herself a free-spirited artist, and regularly attended
watercolor lessons from some smarmy Italian. Somehow, very suddenly and very
rapidly, she and Graves's own wife Donna became thick as thieves. Donna, a
pretty blonde, was a lot more modest than her new friend, but she'd always
dreamed of being attached to a bohemian crowd, and Graves decided not to
disillusion her. Now the ladies paid visits to the Italian together, and Graves
didn't object. Nowadays even his children couldn't melt the ice over his heart.
Both his son and daughter were away at college.
Graves himself had just turned forty-two. There were some advantages to an
early marriage and fatherhood, after all.
He thought that he'd simply forgotten how to feel. Was it possible to become a
sociopath halfway through your life? Definitely possible, if you were a tax
auditor.
The Barebones lived in Oakland, in a two-story house which looked just as
boring they did: big and white, like winter. Although the drive up to the Bay
Bridge, which connected San Francisco to Oakland, made a pretty good
impression. Lately, it's been easy on the eyes, decorated with a myriad of
white LED lights, which could form any pattern imaginable. On this quiet
September evening, Graves felt like he was driving his posh Chrysler
convertible into a lacy web of pearls.
Donna was sitting next to him and yakking non-stop on the phone with
Olivia—goddammit, couldn't she give it rest, they were on their way to see
Olivia as it was!
But Graves stayed silent. It seemed to him that in reality, Donna was far away
from him, and he was in the car alone. Just him and the white lights of the
bridge shining through the blue twilight. And the breaklights of the cars in
front of him, looking like the eyes of some fantastical creatures.
The guests supposedly had a home-made dinner to look forward to, but culinary
arts were clearly not Olivia's strong suit. The clam chowder was sour, the meat
rubbery, the beans devoid of salt, the salad greens had seen fresher days. But
Hugh did get lucky with his wine purchase.
To be honest, they lay on the alcohol quite a bit, in honor of finishing a
difficult period at work—both had just closed a case with complicated clients.
They must have drunk a couple bottles between the two of them, and then went
outside to get some fresh air. Donna and Olivia were so absorbed by their
conversation that they no longer noticed anything around them. They were too
busy exuding mutual admiration, which was oozing like honey out of their every
pore.
Oh, and the Barebone's fifteen-year-old daughter was also sitting at the table,
bland and quiet as a mouse. She looked very much like her father: the same skin
the color of cheese, the same gelatinous body parts. She was poking at the
beans listlessly with her fork.
When they came back in from the patio, Graves felt it—something had changed.
Now there was a kind of dark energy hovering in the room, prickling at the skin
on the back of his neck and the tips of his fingers. As if the air was suddenly
filled with electricity and an ocean wind blew right into the dining room.
“So this is your new friend, Dad, the one you talk about so much? That badass
Mr. Graves, who succeeds at everything in life, unlike you?”
Two brown eyes with a foxy slant were staring at Graves point blank, and the
eyelashes fluttering above them were so long that they cast shadows across half
his cheeks, and those unbelievable eyebrows... clownish, Graves thought at
first, but after a moment, he came to appreciate their shape and placement.
Like a swallow spreading its narrow wings against the marble of that forehead.
Delicate.. such delicate facial features... sharp cheekbones... There was no
way this boy could be the son of Hugh Barebone, are you kidding? He could have
been Judas, or Lucifer, Leonardo da Vinci used to paint such faces. But the
Barebones?
“Percival, meet my son, Credence. He can have a very sharp tongue sometimes.”
“Stepson.” Credence made a mocking bow, rising a little from the table and
pressing a hand to his chest. “What can you expect from us difficult teenagers.
It's our age. The absolutism of a transitional period, you understand.”
“Credence is seventeen,” Olivia surfaced for a moment from her conversation.
“He's not really the child he sometimes pretends to be.”
“Thanks, Mom.” Credence gave her a wide smile, and this smile gleamed like a
gift from the Magi—meant for the king of kings, for a god... or for someone who
was destined to perish.
Maybe there was something in the wine.
“Mom, does the soup seem a bit sour to you? What do you think, Mr. Graves?”
“Credence, leave Mr. Graves alone,” Olivia waved him off. “Donna and I were
just discussing how nice it would be to visit the new gallery on Monday.
Luigi's friend opened it. Will you come with us?”
“No, no, no,” Credence raised his hands, palms up. “All your affairs with these
pseudo-luminaries of the art world... leave me out of them.”
“But Cesare really does paint very well,” Donna interceded timidly.
Credence seemed to dumbfound her.
“I won't argue with that, but I would still rather go to the Walt Disney
Museum. Have you ever been there, Mr. Graves? Do they really have movies that
no one's ever seen?”
“Never got around to it,” shrugged Percival.
He caught himself chewing the beans mechanically, not even feeling the taste.
“That's too bad. You probably never lift your head from your paperwork. Have
you always lived in San Francisco?”
“No, we moved here five years ago. Donna and I like it here.”
“And I'm sure you've never even seen the city properly. Always working and
working. Just like my father. No wonder you became such good friends. You're
probably just as boring as he is. Stand on left, walk on right, anyone
attempting to escape will be shot... am I right?”
Graves was slowly simmering to a boil. The eyes across from him scattered
fiendish sparks, pierced him like daggers, burned with a dark flame. He kept
forgetting that the person in front of him was just a boy, a boy in faded jeans
and a funny t-shirt with some pretentious writing on it, with scratches on his
arms, skinny and awkward.
Although he should stop lying to himself—there was nothing awkward about
Credence Barebone. He looked like he'd never been the product of Olivia's
pedestrian womb, but was lovingly painted by one smooth sweep of an angel's
wing.
“I really don't see why my father admires you so much,” said Credence, more
quietly, when Hugh joined the heated discussion about the newly-opened gallery,
and the mousy daughter made herself scarce. “Other than the fact that you're
smoking hot, like a live wire, but that's not in my dad's line. So it couldn't
be your dark eyes, or your expressive eyebrows, or your clever fingers, that
drew him in. Or your strong chin, or the biceps under that Prada sweater. It
must be that you radiate, what's it called, an aura of success. My parents
believe in that bullshit.”
“Credence, hon, are you sure you won't come with us to see Cesare on Monday?
You have to do that project on contemporary art! This seems like a good topic!”
“I'll think about it, Mom, maybe you're right,” Credence replied in a
studiously sweet tone, without ever taking his eyes off Graves.
Graves was shivering visibly.
In the end, they all drank another six bottles or so, and the Graves spent the
night at the Barebone house, as they'd planned from the beginning. Donna had
even packed her husband a t-shirt to sleep in, and pajama pants. The pants
sported a stretched-out print of chess pieces, while the t-shirt was plain
white, thank god.
Graves felt a little uncomfortable: he and Donna ended up in the same bed for
the first time in months, and she even suggested that they have sex, but then
rejected her own idea, allowing that it would be “just plain disrespectful to
Olivia and her husband.” Then they both fell into a drunken sleep, and in that
sleep, Graves was once again driving over the bridge, but it was covered in a
tangle of white spiderwebs.
He woke up from a horrible thirst and, creaking down the wooden stairs, went to
the kitchen for a drink of water. Then he washed his face at the sink, and for
some reason didn't go back up to the bedroom, but took a lime from the table,
cut it into circles, and chewed a couple of them slowly, wincing at their sour
freshness.
The kitchen had one door leading out to the rest of the house, and one outside
onto the patio. The patio was now completely swallowed in darkness, and the
smell of the wild grapevines which clung to the wall outside wafted in through
the half-open window.
Percival Graves just stood there, waiting for something.
And when the second door creaked, he realized what he was waiting for.
“Mr. Graves,” a voice drawled mockingly behind him. “Couldn't sleep? You're so
modest, really... Mom gave you the bedroom in the furthest corner of the house,
on purpose, so you could fuck in peace. But you didn't take advantage of her
generosity. And didn't give me an opportunity to jerk off.”
“You like to listen to grownups having sex?”
“Oh, no, usually that doesn't interest me.”
“So what drew your interest this time?”
“I wanted to listen to you moan. That I could've jerked off to. Do you actually
moan, Mr. Graves? Or are you so inhumanly masculine that you do everything
silently? No, you're not that much of a brute. There's a certain vulnerability
in your eyes. A weakness, you know, which is so sweet. As if you're just
waiting for someone to come into your life, so you can let them torment you.
But it never seems to turn out that way, does it? You always end up in the role
of the tormentor yourself, don't you? Though I don't claim to be a prophet or
anything...”
“Do you ever shut up?”
They were standing face to face now. Credence was still in the same soft gray
t-shirt with the red sign on the front: Death waits for you in Samarra. His
hair was tangled, his bare feet looked like they belonged to a dervish
wandering in the desert: narrow, tanned, and dusty. As if Credence had been
walking in circles outside the house with no shoes on, and never went to bed at
all.
He wondered, was it Jewish or Eastern blood which gave him that unlikely
combination of the most striking features? Most likely Jewish, thought Graves
fitfully as he forced his own hands behind his back and locked his fingers
together til they hurt.
Only someone from Judea could be like this. Like the reflection of a white rose
in a silver mirror.
“But you gave me a gift, Mr. Graves. The thing I wished for the most. Not the
echo of your moans, but you yourself, alive and warm, under my fingers.”
And lightly, weightlessly, Credence traced the contour of Graves's cheek with
the palm of his hand, then ran it down his chest, barely touching. The white t-
shirt, packed so thoughtfully by his wife, now played a cruel trick on
Percival: it was too thin, much too thin to conceal the instant tightening of
his nipples. And the pants turned out to be too flimsy as well. Everything was
as obvious as it could possibly get.
But even if Percival had been standing there in a down parka, it wouldn't have
saved him—he was shivering so hard that the glasses on a tray behind him shook
and tinkled, as if a train was passing nearby.
And that asshole was smiling. Oh, how he smiled, as no man or woman had even
smiled at Graves in his entire promiscuous secret life. He never even knew that
people could smile like that. Like an angel offering you cocaine.
“So will you kiss me, Mr. Graves, or will I have to wait forever?”
After that, Percival Graves plunged into pitch darkness for a good five
minutes. When he resurfaced, he was pressing the boy against the door and
holding his wrists above his head. And rubbing up against him with his whole
body as he savaged his mouth like he was trying to ease a deadly thirst, to
extract nectar from a flower, to squeeze the juice from a ripe fruit to the
last drop. As if he was drowning and this was the only way he could breathe.
And Credence's lips were far from unskilled. They were savaging him right back.
No one had ever kissed Percival like that, as if now he belonged to them
completely, with nothing held back, as if he'd become a thing, an object they
owned.
Credence was the first to tear away from the kiss, wrenching a groan out of
Graves.
He shouldn't have looked at him for that long. There may be women with painted
eyes and blush on their cheekbones, but still, his eyes were darker and his
cheekbones more delicate than theirs. Nothing will be the same as before,
Percival, because if this young man so much as glances at you through a cold
fall mist, or maybe smiles at you, you would do anything for him. Because he
has the eyes of a fox, a cat, luminous like amber, darker than the darkest
night.
“We're making too much noise,” Credence whispered, untangling his hands from
his grip and placing them on Percival's neck, with a practiced gesture, as if
he'd done it a thousand times before.
Percival pressed their foreheads together and tried to catch his breath.
“On Tuesday... Tuesday, because on Monday I'll drag my ass to that Italian
guy's stupid gallery show, my mother is right, I'll need it for my project...
You'll pick me up at school and drive me away in your pimped-out ride... And
don't even think about renting some nondescript car, it has to be the
convertible... Because I want you to risk everything for me, got it?... You'll
drive me somewhere downtown. And then, Mr. Graves, you'll get your chance to
explore all the museums of this wonderful city... Museums are a good place to
indulge in depravity, and there will be depravity, Mr. Graves, I promise
you...”
“Three days,” said Graves hollowly. “I can't stand it. I can't wait that long.
You know I can't.”
“I can't make it any earlier,” said Credence mildly, and blew gently on his
sweaty temple. “But then on Tuesday, I'll suck you off in the car. How do you
want it?”
Percival shut his eyes.
“I think I'll be completely out of it,” he said, “just like that, my brain will
shut down completely.”
“And that's good. You'll grab me by the hair and force me down on your cock,
and when you come to your senses, you'll see that you've been fucking my
throat, long and hard, like an animal, and spilled deep inside it. And I'll
have tears in my eyes and a ridiculously swollen mouth. And you'll think that
you've never let yourself go that much with any woman. Ever.”
“You little bitch,” whispered Percival with agonized tenderness.
“And how do you want to fuck me?”
Percival started to feel queasy. He swallowed.
“I would... I would lie on top of you, to feel you with my whole body, and
grind my hips, obscene and greedy, like a beast gorging on something forbidden.
And then I'll put you on your hands and knees and hold you down by your hair,
while I plow into you to the balls... while I pound all your stupid crap out of
you...”
“I sincerely hope you act like a complete douchebag in bed. Like an egotistic
pig,” Credence singsonged into his ear. “I'll be disappointed if you don't.”
“No, you won't be disappointed.”
“You can find out my school's address yourself, I won't spoil your fun.”
“You're such an asshole.”
“In California, relations with a minor are penalized severely, Mr. Graves.”
“Such an unbelievable asshole.”
“I'm the son of your friend.”
“He's not my friend. And you're not his son. And I want you now, do you hear
me? Do you hear? Or are you deaf? Everything, right now!”
Credence slipped out of his arms delicately, like a cat, blew him a kiss, and
vanished behind the door. Percival's hands were shaking as he picked up a pack
of cigarettes from the table and went out on the patio. He was swaying on his
feet, even though the wine was long gone from his blood. Now he had poison in
his blood instead.
In the morning he drank coffee with Donna and Olivia—the kids were still
sleeping and Hugh had gone out on some errand of his own. Later on, Percival
called his daughter at her university, washed the convertible, mowed the lawn,
played tennis with a neighbor, and performed hundreds of other pointless
movements to kill time over that unimaginably long weekend, endless like the
tortures of hell. On Monday he was shuffling from foot to foot at the gallery
of Cesare Sarto, who looked like the twin brother of Gianluca Vacchi, the
dancing millionaire. His paintings were just as vacuous as his sleek,
spraytanned face.
Olivia informed them that Credence decided a gallery visit would be “a totally
pointless waste of time.” But Cesare was kind enough to let him use images of
his latest conceptual pieces from his website, so the school project was coming
along.
On Tuesday, Graves lied his ass off at work so that on that bright, cool
afternoon pierced by ocean breezes, he could sit in his gold convertible near
the school football field and watch all the exits, hiding his face behind giant
sunglasses. He was already starting to despair when the convertible rocked
lightly—Credence had jumped in, agile as a street thief.
He immediately laid a proprietary hand on Graves's knee, then slid his palm
higher, making his eyes roll back with pleasure.
They barely drove behind the cover of some bushes, when Credence fulfilled his
first promise—before Percival could say a word, his cock was covered by a hot
mouth. And then it all happened just as Credence had described. Graves pounded
up into that silky throat like he was living out the last day of his fucking
life. He moaned, made the leather seat squeak as he rocked his hips, and yanked
roughly on the thick black curls of Credence's hair. Salome must have had curls
just like that. The color, and even the feel of them—like night itself.
When he came, it felt as if the sun had poured its heat all over him and
embedded a solar storm in his eyes, despite the dark sunglasses.
But even half-blinded, he could clearly make out the second part of the
inscription on Credence's t-shirt, when he leaned over the convertible's side
to spit the semen out on the ground. It was the same gray t-shirt. Graves
remembered very well what it said on the front:
Death waits for you in Samarra.
The hopeless conclusion of the phrase stretched in blood-spatter lettering over
his back. Graves shut his eyes in resignation. He knew it already.
You can't avoid Samarra.
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