A/N: Steamy. Sexual Content Warning.
Thanks for all the reads, Sel!
Severus could hear her breathing, and he knew she was not asleep. He pushed his chin out and stared unseeing at the dark ceiling, as unwilling to break their silence as she was.
She insists she loves me, he thought, and wonders why it bothers me. She thinks I don't understand, that these types of human relationships are beyond my comprehension. She has accused me of not knowing how love works. But I do. And I know if she is fool enough to think she loves me, she will put herself in harm's way for nothing. Well, for me.
I had put such stock in her intellect, I had not thought she would be so ridiculous as to fall victim to her heart.
Sadly, she is not the only one playing the fool.
These distractions here will trip me. I can't think like this. Skeeter easily could have been someone else. Could have been a real threat. And there I was thinking about.... nothing. Left relying on instinct and adrenaline.
The time I spend with her, thinking about her and embarrassing myself with games, gifts, and poetry or purposeless talk? It's unseemly. The end of this war is coming, he thought. All of this was put in play so long ago. My promises. My errands won't wait while I play house.
And that is why this needs to stop now. I need to put an end to this idiocy. I need to think clearly again, if I am to do what I need to do.
I must tend this job Albus has given me. And I know how it likely ends. I have known for years and never cared. Minerva, Hermione, Poppy. These women who would keen over me before I am even dead. They think I have simply lost the will to live - that I just need some reason to stick it out. Do I court death? No. But who else will be there? Who can bring the beast down?
God, I want this done.
And if I can make a good end of things, I can finally stop being culpable. I can lay that burden down. Would that be so wrong, to leave this world feeling that all my debts were paid?
Clean. Finally, again, I would be clean. That was the promise Albus offered. I believed him then, believed that this was the way through. Surely nothing has changed. If I could just keep my thoughts focused, I would see that nothing has changed.
Tonight he could think it all, but he could not explain any of it to her. He knew he had been a silent, brooding mass in her flat for days.
Would it have helped if I had been able to say these things to her? What would it have changed if I had told her, "I don't want any entanglements... I have worked so hard to not feel anything. How can I do what the Headmaster requires, if I care for anyone? Even myself. Am attached to anything? Even just this retched life?"
Besides, she knew all that. He had said it all before and saying it again only risked earning her pity...
Unknowingly, he groaned, and in his frustration over his thoughts, he pushed roughly at his hair.
"I'm sorry," she said, as she turned to watch him. She didn't know what she was sorry for beyond the obvious suffering she saw in him, but it hurt nonetheless.
He closed his eyes and thought of the maps spread out on her desk and across her floor. Maps of northern Europe, maps of North America. All those books on battles, magic, and myths, and he knew she would not stay safe. That she was making plans to travel.
"You are going to leave here aren't you?" he asked in a peeved tone.
"Yes. As soon as I can make arrangements. Once you are back at school for term tomorrow, I'll work on that."
"What do you expect to find?" he complained.
"Maybe nothing," she said being purposely vague. "But I can't just sit here. My part in this is not over, I don't just turn into an incubator.... literally, and wait to hatch, do I? There is help out there, Severus. Forgotten secrets, perhaps. Or people and things. I don't know. I just want to try to find them. I'm feeling desperate, I guess because I don't want to lose," she told him, sounding agitated. It was leaving the thought incomplete that made her so agitated. Knowing that her thoughts were not ones she could share. Because what she had wanted to say was, "Loving you makes me desperate to see this war finished. I don't want to lose you. And I think a way of protecting you is out there."
Her hand reached out in the darkness and seemed to negotiate a truce. She held on to his forearm just as she had done in a testing way months before. He didn't flinch. He didn't pull away. Instead, he rolled to face her in the dark.
"This place is warded. You could be safe here." But he knew it was fruitless. And if he let it, worry over her would gnaw at him.
He turned away again and they lay in bed then like displaced statues ..... she curled up on her side facing him. He on his back, hands clasped across his stomach, eyes examining the distant ceiling plaster. He was the man on the proverbial couch. She was defensive, fetal, and withdrawing. The distance between them was miles more than the scant 4 inches between their bodies.
"Was it a mistake for you? The sex?" She lobbed in his direction after a long silence. But he didn't answer. "Since you pretty much heard my full confession on that subject when I was drugged, I just thought you might want to return the favor."
This was as good a time as any to chip away at that idea of romance, he decided. If he could get her to let go of some of that – wouldn't this transition be easier for her?
And so ruthlessly, he began. "You do not want to have this discussion, because you don't want sex, you want something lovely and meaningful," and his voice took on a queer quality that did not mock her, but the whole notion of love. "You want something beautiful to tie together the thudding of your heart with the reality that is...."
and his sing-songy mocking faltered... "well, me."
"So, I am deluded?" she challenged.
This was his opening and he took it. He rolled to face her and told her too eagerly, "Yes, about me. You are. Because this bitter, regrettable man who will leave you tomorrow is who I really am, Hermione. There are no amazing, romantic depths. I will never say the right thing. Never do the right thing. I don't lead some pitiable solitary life that I need to be rescued from. I live the way I have to. This focus. The distance I maintain? It is not easy, but it is necessary." He blew out a frustrated breath then and turned his anger to the ceiling, "People do not understand. Not Minerva with her meddling. Not anyone who suggests that things could change There is no room in what I do for distraction. We are so close to the end. Don't ask that I deviate Don't pretend I can change who I am. This absorption is critical to my success. There has been enough distraction," he complained.
"I've been a distraction? Did I get you tangled up in something?"
He forced a laugh. "You are worried you've seduced me, taken advantage of me?" he said half joking. And he rolled to lay a hand quickly to her back, comforting in contrast to his words. Then feeling the traitor given what he was going to say, he as quickly removed his touch. "It doesn't matter if the sex was a mistake or if being with you is a distraction."
"It matters to ME!" she told him.
"The point is. It all still leads nowhere. You want it to mean something," he warned, purposely trying to limit her expectations. "You want it to lead somewhere... to a future."
"Oh, yes, 'future.' What a dirty word," she said with a bit of a sneer.
She would not be lectured. Not when it came to her heart and her emotions. "You've been quite clear. Why don't we agree to let the future take care of itself, all right? There is enough to worry about - here and now. Personally, I can't even imagine that June will come and this baby will be living on the OUTSIDE. A lot of things will change between now and then, Severus. You think I'm being an idiot, walking around with my heart on my sleeve, feeling all these things. I know. But I can't just turn that off. God knows how you ever learned to....
"Severus, I don't want to interfere with what you need to do. But I wouldn't just stop loving you, even if I could! You want no distractions. Fine, I get it. But maybe someday, when all this madness is done and you wake up alone, you might find that there is room in you for just ... half a life. That's all. Is it so wrong to hope?"
"That we could be happy?" he spat, as if it was a slur.
"Yes," she said firmly. And she placed a hand over his heart.
He was too tired, too depressed, to actually feel it, but he snorted the disapproval expected. And then he let himself fall into the comfort of her possessiveness. Because to Severus Snape, it could feel remarkably good - although completely foreign - to have someone sane lay claim to you.
"You have done nothing wrong. Remember that," he finally said. It wasn't the words. It was the tone. To Hermione it was undeniably good-bye.
"After you leave tomorrow, when will I see you?"
"This tired carcass belongs to a dozen people before it belongs to you," he tried. That should have been enough to say, why did he suddenly want to soften it? "It's not because of you that I'm leaving," he whispered then. "And I was not just using you for the sex."
"The sex was great, obviously," she told him, surprised that this seemed to have turned into a past tense, postmortem on the subject. "But mostly, it was just about loving you. There was fondness and regard ... on one side if not on the other," she whispered.
"Infatuation is not only pointless, but dangerous. Enchantment makes us dull witted. You see only what you want and not the risk," he complained.
"I know that the danger is with us either way," she countered, "and that loving you makes it easier for me to face it."
He shook his head at her to end the argument. "I was here because I wanted to be. All right?" God, he thought. Well that is Minerva's dearest wish fulfilled. I have admitted that I wanted to be with her.
They settled into silence while she considered what he had given her – the tense admission that he voluntarily spent time with her. Frankly, she had hoped for more. And it being Severus Snape, she was surprised she had gotten what she had without a door slammed in her face.
They had not had sex since the night she had first told him she loved him. He'd returned to her not to apologize for walking out on her, but to drag her before Voldemort. And they had spent the next few days together numbly avoiding any talk of a future. Every day she had expected him to leave and every day he had stayed. But with the Hogwarts term starting soon that was over now.
He would be leaving in the morning. And pride or no, she wanted him now. She wanted one more night with him to remember, even if the relationship was horribly one sided.
But she couldn't ask for sex now, not after they had dissected it.
And although he was tracing his finger tips over her arms now, he would not dare initiate it, not after berating her for her attachment to him.
"How is your back?" he asked, lightly. "Sore?" Already her center of gravity was hopelessly displaced. And already she had some pains at the end of each day.
"I'm fine. Once I'm curled up and I stretch it out a bit... really, it's all right."
But already, his hand was reaching around her and pulling up her nightgown. His fingers pressed low into her spine where the ache invariably settled. And she betrayed herself, let out a very satisfied groan as she shifted her head against his collar bone.
Pitiful, she thought to herself. A slave to hormones, those hands, and the sweet smell of this man.
Soon he was running his finger tips along her arm in a rhythm before traveling once up and down the outside of her leg. Even she knew that in the history of foreplay, this was a pittance and, yet she was melting for him.
But she wouldn't let him know just how easily he could make her want him. She wouldn't moan. She refused to grind against him. There would be no begging. She could negotiate this. Make it all his idea.
"If you wanted to..." she tried to say flatly. And she was embarrassed at the thick heave to her breath that came with it.
"What?" he asked, feigning ignorance. His hands never stilling. "Hmmm?" came his voice humming on her neck.
"We could have sex. It wouldn't make me love you any more than I already do. If you wanted to. If it wouldn't be a distraction," she said.
"If you need me," he said in offer. "I could...."
And then she stopped his hands, feeling the sleight. "Maybe you are right. Maybe since it is all meaningless." And she pushed his hands away gently. But they returned to crawl along her skin.
It became a game to see how quickly she could remove them and how they would come back to her. Again and again.
"If it is meaningless....." she said, seeming to question him. But he silenced her with his tongue, "...then we shouldn't, Severus." The last bit came out in a gasp as he backed away. She had lost her willingness for this banter, the idea that it was meaningless to him was too bruising.
"Hermione..." he whispered. His eyes held hers like he wanted so desperately for her to understand.
And she tried to hold him still. With a hand to his arm and one to his chest, she stared back at him. "Talk to me," she implored him.
She could have sworn the man was going to say something, but no, he just wriggled free. Tried to entice her, distract her from her questioning.
Slowly, carefully, he wrestled his arm loose, so that he could trace a single finger from her chin, down her throat, between her breasts and then back up.
"Let me," he growled. "I will fuck you right now, and I will well and truly mean it," he told her. And just then his finger travelled up to play with her mouth. She pulled it inside. Held it there with her hand in a swift motion. Licked it. Sucked it. Left him with one obvious thought. And then she released him. Pushed him away.
She seethed then as she held him at arm's length. "You'd 'mean it'? that's it? That's your idea of 'not meaningless' That you 'mean to fuck me?' I can get a dozen men in here to 'fuck' me."
"It wouldn't be the same. You don't love them." He was hovering over her now, his eyes searing into hers. "And they wouldn't be with you..."
He let her push him off her.
"What is that supposed to mean? 'they wouldn't be with you?'" she asked him.
"The way I am," he said completing his thought.
She thought she was beginning to understand him, but his impossible emotions were too much work to navigate. He could be more plain or he could do without, she decided.
"You have work tomorrow. You should go to sleep," she said, lightly.
"You're right," he admitted in a strained voice.
But he didn't go to sleep. She felt his hand on her, and she let him gently tug her legs apart. He trailed a single finger up her leg and then down the other, making her squirm. As he removed his touch from her, he told her, "I don't know how to say it, but it isn't 'meaningless.'"
And for a while the knowledge he gave her -it isn't meaningless - being with me means something to him – was so significant, it shut out the sensations he had created in her.
Then she felt that balance tip. That finger trailed up her inner thigh and down the other again, for just a moment. She twitched as she imagined all the things she wanted, his tongue on her, his fingers pushing inside her. But none of it came, he had stopped touching her. She moaned, sure that he would climb on top of her. But he didn't. And he didn't need to lay a finger on her to drive her insane, because between his admission of feeling and the desire he'd created in her, she was already there.
With effort she stopped waiting for him and moved her legs together. "I understand," she told him, fully playing his game now. She rolled onto her side, so she could touch him, and she found him out like an expert. With sleek movements she managed to remove his shorts. He didn't resist, and said nothing, but the sharp pull to his breathing was telling.
She moved from cupping him lightly to drawing him up and toward her. "Tell me what you need," she prompted.
"Oh. Don't worry about me," he tried as she stroked him. "I'm a big boy. I don't need any thing," he said, stubbornly.
But as her fingers lingered there, they found the tip wet. She said nothing, but let her fingers remind him with slow circles that he had been found out, that his lies were transparent.
Delaying gratification was proving to be an incredible, but nearly maddening contest. For Hermione, it became all about where he was not touching her. And the slowness that she used on him, Severus would have described as exquisite, but merciless.
"It would be okay to give in," she coo'd.
"So give in," he said.
"You want me."
"Obviously," he trilled in her ear.
"Only me," she stated, feeling more confident now.
"Yes," he agreed, simply and readily. The way it seemed to spring from his chest, she thought it the most beautiful word she had ever heard. She kissed him heartily in response. She didn't care if she meant only a little to him. No woman meant more, he was saying.
"Severus," she began and then faltered.
"Tell me..." he groaned.
"You're amazing."
"Not that," he said, his restraint choking him. "Tell me that it can stay that simple?" Could a woman manage with that? He doubted it, had certainly never witnessed it.
But he heard her promise, "Yes."
"Please," her voice caught, as he tested her with a single finger. But he would not continue, would not appease them both until she asked him plainly. Until his restraint had met with her approval, outlasted her, shown her the man he could be.
"Hermione. Tell me. God, Hermione. Tell me to do it."
And she did. She screamed it out. Begging him to do it.
"Perfect," she told him as she came. "Perfect."
I don't want to let go of you. Not tomorrow. Not ever, her brain was screaming. I am scared, so scared you'll never come back to me, was all that she could think. But she just kissed him, held him, and told him, "Perfect."
...