Title: Conflict (Unbearable series)
Pairing: Lucius Malfoy/Severus Snape
Summary: One does not simply kiss Severus. One prepares for a test of wills. A war. Some people are too strong to ask for what they want. They are imprisoned in their decorum. Snape's imposing glare stops everyone from trespassing beyond his defenses. Thank god Lucius has no allegiance to right or wrong. His merciless disregard for rules, is what finally allows Snape some freedom. WARNING: Dub-Con/Non-Con, GENDER ISSUES!
Note: The 'Unbearable' curse is the only thing that connects the stories in this series.
Reader question: Why gender issues? That seems so silly.
Answer: It's a desire to explore males having to cope with female issues. Some of us live experiences that compel us not to take gender for granted, but to look at it. It only seems silly to people who have never had any issues with their gender. And if the human brain can accept magical spells and house elves named Dobby, it's not such a stretch. My most honest identity has always been a combination of all genders anyway. It's only natural that it would show up in my fiction.
WARNING: DUB-CON/NON-CON, GENDER ISSUES! Please protect your own mind and don't read if you're not into this. Peace.
Each of them relinquished their wands at the door. That was the rule.
Severus doesn't open his mouth. He doesn't want to be made to feel.
They've done this before, ages ago. Lucius gives him the opportunity to cooperate. He tries to get Snape to let him in. When that fails to inspire Snape, Lucius digs his way past Snape's lips. He chews through muscle and sheer will until Snape has to open or endure having his lips bitten in a frenzy that would keep passerby's ogling his bruises for days to come.
Luscius must be hard about this. There was no going tender with him. Snape couldn't stomach tender. He couldn't tolerate such patronizing treatment. In truth, Lucius is being kind, and they both know it.
They met in an old house. It's their turn to entertain the party. Both men are chosen because they hold no attraction for each other and Lucius excels at what Snape hates, physically manipulating the body and its corresponding emotions.
They are allowed to feel that they are alone. The house chosen for the party, is a Victorian relic, with lots of nooks and crannies for keeping out of sight. One got to see more when one kept out of sight. When participants were made comfortable, in cushioned seclusion, and given time to come to terms with the evening, they often accepted it.
Not Snape. Instructions were to be present, but delay activities until a half-hour past sunset. These were the kind of instructions that tested a Potions Master's restraint. He knew the Dark Lord was an idiot, but many lives, not just his own, connected him to magic that could not be undone.
Snape refused to sit, refused to remove his cloak, take comfort in the fire, or have a drink. When he does look at Lucius, his eyes are stabbing and cold, as if Lucius is to blame for their predicament. For some reason, he chooses the landing at the top of the stairs, the corner wall. Lucius suspects he wants to contain his magic within those confines. It doesn't matter where the act takes place, the entire house is charmed to allow this spectator's visibility.
They are in position. They appear alone.
It was an order. The Dark Lord was not pleased with Lucius and Snape. Their betrayal needed addressing. Lucius owed far more than this penance and Snape was too valuable to terminate at this time.
It was an order. He approaches Snape cautiously. Respectfully. At least, he was careful to make it look like respect. Snape's black eyes and unsmiling face made no effort to hide his jagged resentment. Lucius tried not to cut himself on it. "Let's make the best of it, shall we?"
If Snape's body language could close anymore, he'd fold himself into non-existence. He drew himself up and lifted his chin. Defiance erected his body. He looked like he wanted to spit in Lucius's face, but they both knew he wasn't the spitting type. Like this, what they were there for, the act disgusted him too much to do it. His silence dared Lucius to touch him.
Amusement lifted the corners of Lucius's mouth. "I wonder what would happen, if I stood here and did nothing? Are we agreed that everyone, including yourself, is counting on me to lead these… proceedings?"
When it comes to sex, Snape does not talk. His expression said it for him. Fuck you. If you think I'm going to contribute one word to this foolish waste of energy, you're mistaken.
"Very well. Since you're too good for this…"
There was nothing to do but settle into the mass of warm, dark challenge that Snape presented. Lucius found his resistance exciting. He smelled of lye soap, wool, and books. Each layer spoke volumes to Lucius of neglected portions of Snape. Solitary and inexperienced portions, hiding and heartbroken, refusing to participate in the human game. But would it hold out? Would Snape give him the fight he wanted, or was this to be another evening of predictable body fluids?
Lucius wouldn't call him beautiful. He was, but not for the obvious reasons one would think. The appeal lay far deeper than flesh. It lay in his secrets. It lay in his discomfort to have Lucius so near. Severus uses age the way he uses all those layers of black, all those layers of restraint. It camouflages something of great secrecy, something most people grow beyond. To spy it within him, is to see his greatest weakness. He does not show people that. But he presents enough of a challenge to Lucius, that Lucius has figured it out, stared it down, and cornered it. The last time they were made to do this, years ago, Lucius saw what Snape was hiding, and kept his secret.
Time has taught Snape to use his mature body like a shield, deflecting the interest and opinions of others by sheer mass and attitude. It keeps him safe. There was a time when he was not safe.
Snape doesn't give anything up. Lucius has to take it. To touch him, is to fight for that privilege. So Lucius came prepared to fight. And Snape came armored in impenetrable resistance. Orders from Voldemort may have Snape present and tolerating, but no order could make him accepting. If anything was going to happen this evening, Lucius was going to have to battle wills for it, which was precisely why he was chosen. Who else could stand up to Snapes's self-righteousness, or stare down his rigid disapproval? The very tension in his breathing promised death to anyone stupid enough to touch him, orders be damned.
When Lucius stood with only inches between their chests, and raised his hands to Snape's sleeves, he could feel bristling magic stop him. It spiked from Snape, like hairs standing up in warning. This chemical electricity forced the edge of Lucius's mouth to turn up in a smile. Snape was ripe with stored magic. Between his genetic heritage and his prim affinity with his craft, he possessed old veins of sorcery that ran like glowing fire, in the hidden reserves of his psyche. One was usually never permitted to get this close to sense it. To confirm it.
Lucius almost hated to do it, as much as any sadistic Death Eater could. Snape was almost a friend. That is, he presented an unusual challenge. Most people loved themselves enough to look for the positive, to take some pleasure, or at least to get it over with, with as little conflict as possible. Snape held no such affections. He did, however, have principles that stood their ground in the face of exploitation. All had agreed to becoming carnal puppets as a show of loyalty. The parties were rare, and some relied upon never being called upon. Snape was one of those. There were always younger and more willing participants readily available, after all. He preferred to stick to his expertise and forgo the silliness. He and Lucius both understood that this was exactly why he was chosen as this evening's centerpiece.
Whether he displeased the Dark Lord or not, his granite demeanor made him an acquired taste. His drawn, locked mouth did not soften for anyone. Like the shiny black bottles he laboriously poured his elixirs into, he possessed a value that he kept hidden from the sight of others, hidden behind layers of black and buttons, from neck to toe. His love of mastery, of his own genius, compensated for any self-love that would give him the right to enjoy his body.
That was the illusion anyway. Lucius knew better. As one who could stare trauma in the face and study it while inflicting it, he wasn't buying Snape's disinterest in his own pleasure. He sensed Snape's magic and knew that the most distrusting wizards hid themselves behind lackluster robes and unadornment, to deflect interest. That meant they had something to hide. Something worth taking. Snape's magic exuded from his robes, drenching them in a concentration of black that drank through the fabric. His robes expressed the vanity of his mastery and he could not hide his magic from one who knew how to see it.
Lucius's hands froze over Snape's sleeve, without touching him. He let Snape's auric field pulse against the pads of his fingers, then pressed each palm against the wall on either side of Snape. He leaned in. It was no surprise to him that Snape turned his head. To show him how predictable he was behaving, Lucius, brushed the most tender kiss against the side of his mouth. And another, and another. Snape's revulsion shoved him, slamming into him. To keep from stumbling back, Lucius dug his heels into the carpet and used the momentum to wrestle his way to Snape's mouth. Once he was locked on, the trick was to stay locked on.
Even if Snape resisted whole-heartedly, the lava river of magic within him, could not. It would rise up and answer him, and it would tear Snape apart to do it. Didn't Snape understand his lineage? Didn't he understand where his magic came from? It came from wizards and witches who wanted power over their own fate more than they wanted anything else. Such blood wanted every right owed to it. But Snape was too good for that. His clerical dress and restraint was an endless source of secret amusement to Lucius. Lucius turning Snape's mouth into an open gorge, was one way to let him know it. Snape's attempt to hold Lucius at bay, and Lucius's determination, became a test of strength.
In a stalemate of arousal, thick intrusive tongue, and smeared saliva, Luscius knew exactly how he would tip the scales in his favor. He drew upon Snape's secret. Wishing the walls had handles so that he could trap Snape where he stood, Lucius summoned his coldest will and drove it into Snape's body. Snape knew how to play cruel. Lucius knew how to be cruel and to enjoy it. He was rewarded with Snape's wince. This was the button and he pushed it. He lay on it. His grip slid down into the fold's of Snape's clothing, tearing and popping the ridiculous frontline of defense fastenings. He found his way inside, only to encounter the thinnest of fabric between himself and what he wanted.
He squeezed, just to force Snape to acknowledge his erection. Mostly, he kneaded Snape under his weight, careful to keep a savage pace of thrusts that hammered Snape's strong thighs further open. Snape's hands, large and digging, shoveled mounds of Lucius's overcoat and tore into his muscle. Lucius dared not give his arms enough freedom to draw back. His fists could not gain the momentum they wanted for punching, but they did damage to Lucius's ribs and wrenched the tendons in his back. Lucius's skin tore beneath his shirt and coat. The pain was just enough to make him hungry to hurt Snape. When Snape's fingers caught in his hair, Lucius could not afford to waste time on foreplay.
Snape was too strong and truly believed he didn't want this. Just like before. Lucius was supposed to, expected to, shove him face-first into the wall and divest his meaty haunches of their modest covering. His eyes did glaze at the thought of seeing the ample ass, hair-lined, that Snape showed to no one. He wanted it helpless in his hands. He was expected to expose Snape and enter him as obscenely as he could. But when the moment came, Lucius chose to do something different. Snape's secret whispered like a lover's lips in his ear. This was, perhaps, the worst information he could use against Snape. Or the best, his cock insisted. Do it.
His wand could've had the threads of Snape's pants dissolving and unraveling in strategic places. But instead, he had to fight his way past the fabric. It gave him the chance to risk hearing more grunts and winces driven from Snape. It let Snape fight. Lucius believed that Snape wasn't fighting him, entirely. He was fighting the demons responsible for his choices, for his solitude, and for the bottomless ache that placed him under Lucius's hands.
He was not kind to Snape's penis. This had to be quick and it had to be viscous. That was the kindest thing he could do, rather than give Snape time to think about it. He had to maneuver it out of the way. The minute he touched it, Snape strained from his reach, but Lucius knew this wasn't what Snape didn't want him to find.
It was nothing for him to firmly slide Snape's skin into a fisted ejaculate. Snape possessed a body that was not accustomed to it, and so displayed an array of shocked and angry reactions that had Lucius greedy to get more from him. When Snape could not close his mouth against his crashing convulsions, Lucius inserted himself into it and sucked as much of it into himself as he could.
He used the weakness in Snape's fight, to target that little, unknown spot behind Snape's most obvious male parts. While Snape stewed in his own boiling blood, Lucius positioned himself and rammed through Snape's defenses. Not fast and harsh, but careful and steady. He ignored Snape's cry and his body locking around him. He ignored the shuddere that hitched Snape's breathing. He listened to curses melt into deep-bowel sobs. When he used his fingers to delve and rub his way inside, those sounds escalated into wet hysteria. Snape could not drive him out and could not close his legs against him. For an obscene amount of seconds, Lucius's hand exploited parts of Snape that Snape himself had never felt comfortable enough to explore. How could he? He couldn't even admit this was here. But Lucius would make him admit it.
Here he was, walking around with the mastery of a genius, and the balls of a bull. All hiding a terrible, wonderful curse. At its core, the Unbearable, uses one's own genetics to realign the cells to their opposite gender expression. In its most rudimentary form, the curse usually left its victim as one gender or the other, not both.
Could that account for why such a good-sized man, had the soft skin of a pale cheese rind? Even his hands, while spanning a masculine width and thickness, were as smooth and elegant as Lucius had ever observed with suspicion. Watch the hands carefully, he had once heard James Potter snicker. An inside joke, spoken by the ringleader responsible. They were just boys, out for a laugh, and perhaps something more sinister. Did they know that Snape had never recovered from their pranks? Did they know that it had nearly killed him, and haunted his lonely life for the next twenty years after? Did they know that's why he trusted his body to no one and kept himself in exile when it came to intimacy?
It was for that reason, that Lucius put purpose behind each lifting thrust. His mouth went tight as he watched Snape's eyes squeeze tight to take him in. He bore witness to tears that were as much grateful as they were humiliated. He listened to winces that were as much a sign of pain as they were an indulgence in quivering sweetness. To someone whose strength did not allow them to cry, Snape's undignified sobs were a luxury. Where a kinder man would not have taken so much from Snape, Lucius drank them.
His thrusts rocked Snape against the wall. Wrought iron sconces shook, candles rattled. Either the paneling was cheaply applied or dry rot had the wall caving from Lucius's building momentum. Either way, Snape's thick body lay pinned, black-clad, and splayed as Lucius took what he wanted. Dust shook from the ceiling rafters above them.
If their hidden spectators wondered at the angle that Lucius aimed his pelvis, wondered at what pleasure Snape's open thighs afforded him, they were still enthralled by the mastery that worked Lucius's lower back and shoulders. Even over the cover of his coat, the precise shifts of spine and muscle, used to elicit such whines from a Potions Master who was always in control, were clearly visible to those whose eyes trained upon it.
When Lucius was no longer in control, but his pleasure was, it was too late to slow down or be careful. It was too late to feel sorry for Snape's unpracticed body. Momentum took him and Snape was left to bear the violence of his discharge. As if this too, was the intimacy denied him, Snape's fingers gripped Lucius's back and his mind recorded every detail of the eruption drenching up and into him.
When Lucius peeled off of him, he sank, bending forward and clutching himself at the withdrawal. Lucius caught him, keeping him from sliding to the floor. Neither said a word. Lucius attempted to look into his eyes and face whatever attack he found there, but Snape did not give him the satisfaction. Instead, Snape suppressed his breathing and straightened. He pulled his coat about him and strode away from Lucius with enough indifference that Lucius felt the breeze of his exit. Only the slightest hitch in his step, clued Lucius to his real state. Lucius had seen that subterfuge walk before. That grimace, and red wet eyes. He'd done this to others and caused them to walk exactly that way. He let Snape have his dignified exit, taking greater pleasure in it than any other kind of exit.
This was the point where spectators made their pleasure, or displeasure, known. They were just coming from the shadows, from beneath stairs and the kitchen, polluting the silence with thin, sparse applause, when Snape slammed the door behind him. Lucius took the Scotch presented to him, and watched Snape's coat trail away through the window.
Notes: This is not the real story I want to tell about Snape, it's just the one that cropped up while I was writing 'Unbearable - Draco.' It took me so long to find this story within myself, because Snape is such a strong character to me, and perceiving a weakness in him, felt almost sacrilege. Certainly distasteful. In the movie, his death scene was so violent and unacceptable to me, that I'm sure my imagination piled on much more horror to the scene than was actually filmed. Couldn't watch that scene again for years after the first time. Then I let HP go. Then I found it again through fan videos. I let myself see how beautiful Snape's tears were. For a man who never let himself show weakness, he deserves the release that tears can bring.
Then I began feeling stories that were worth writing. Every writer knows there's an endurance issue involved with stories that take more than a week or two to write. I'm always working on my epic, so allowing new and shorter stories, felt like a challenge I could balance. The itch to actually finish something I'm proud of, had me creating the Unbearable series, which stem from my love of Severus Snape. Even the Draco story, was a kind of practice to working myself up to the story I want to tell with Snape. The idea is so strong and so unformed, I'm walking around it trying to figure out how to tackle it. That alone, feels exciting, and if you write, you know the story is in that excitement somewhere. It's incubating. Love that feeling. Writers, realize that you are fulltime writers since your imaginations never stop weaving your stories together, whether you write them down or not. ***
[Look carefully at the series of expressions that play across Snape's face when he's confronted by McGonagall. It had to be pointed out to me, because the scene goes by too quickly, that Snape actually uses McGonagall's attack to deflect it towards the two Death Eaters behind him and take them out. Ensuring they cannot harm the students when he makes his escape, was what held him there. He never tries to harm McGonagall or Harry, and his anguish at losing her friendship is very evident on his face. When I saw this, I was ready to let him cry and give into the stress. I was ready to let him be strong enough to show what is, inaccurately, perceived as weakness. Crying can sometimes be a luxury that strong people do not feel they have. The body has a right to cry, for all that it is put through. ]
End Note: Some people are too imprisoned in themselves to let themselves go. Some people are too imprisoned in their pain to receive another's touch. The body is created with the right to feel good. But people who feel bad, sabotage any opportunity to feel good. They use the cares of the world to hide the issue of self-worth that lies at the bottom of their day to day excuses. For Lucius and Snape, a war of wills is fought behind their eyes. Snape cannot receive another's touch without great conflict within himself. It is an issue of self-worth. In an effort to rise above petty desires, he keeps his body in constant denial. But the body has rights and he knows this. His body will fight him in order to be touched. This, combined with an inability to allow his vulnerability to be seen, creates an involuntary pushing away exactly what he wants to feel. Not many people can interpret his behavior accurately. Lucius is one of the few who can. Lucius provides the only way Snape can find release, and that's through being forced to do so. There are few people who can force him to do anything, so he is on the same level, actually grateful that Lucius has this kind of internal strength, even if he is a bully.