Mature rating.
Chapter Six
Lily's been circling this moment for days. Not because it's somehow worse than anything else she's spied on, here in her imaginary house in the safety beyond death. She's been closing in upon it in long, sucking swirls of emotion, following the path that water travels down a drain, as her feelings about Severus have begun to fill the pristine, perfect shape in her heart that has always represented Harry, her fears for Harry, her dreams.
She hesitates because – well, if every choice, every moment, makes one future likelier than another, what effect will her watching this have upon her son's happiness?
Snape walks free, mostly thanks to Harry grandstanding on his behalf. His own dry, detailed account of Dumbledore's strategies and his role within them makes the rounds of the Wizengamot. The public is not best pleased. The tabloids, denied an exclusive, retaliate with endless snippy little articles about Snape's character and whereabouts. He promptly dumps Spinner's End on the market and disappears.
The meagre bit of cash he realizes from the sale enables him to buy a grey-stone, dilapidated cottage in the Scottish Highlands, tucked between braes where the water crashes and foams over rocks. Barren scarp felted with sheep-grazed foothills, boobytrapped in odd patches by a grimpen mire straight out of Conan Doyle (oh, the memory comes back: how her dad had loved Holmes), meet in a lee that helps to isolate and wind-break the house. A poorly-maintained track leads down to a village straggling along the trainline.
The cottage is so battered by wind and weather that, from the outside, it looks as if it hasn't seen a tenant since before Albus was born. Bittersweet grows up both sides of the door, its poisonous red berries hanging like fruit. Inside, Snape freshens the white paint above the dark wood wainscoting, and a modest hearth spits and crackles in the sitting room. In the bedroom, another grate sits piled with unlit kindling. If either is on the Floo network, Lily will eat Tuney's sandals.
It's all a bit cave-like, because the rooms are snug and the ceilings low. Lily wonders where Snape intends to brew, as she can't imagine him breaking the habits of a lifetime. But it appears there's a root cellar out back, built into the hill, and he uses wizard space to enlarge it.
Snape owns more cauldrons and decanters than he does cups and plates. His armchair, which takes a rather opinionated position at a determined angle when he deposits it in front of the fireplace, is comfy-looking if a bit tatty. His bed wins no prizes for luxuriousness, although it turns out that Sev has a charming weakness for pillows. They take up the space a bedmate would otherwise occupy, Lily thinks, and then is ashamed of herself.
Books, of course, form the bulk of his belongings. Multitudes of books, calfbound, morocco, blindstamped and slipcased, mouldering and magically venomous titles locked in iron receptacles and chained to the walls, cloth over boards in perfectly preserved dust jackets, pamphlets both recent and centuries-old, paperbacks that he stacks sideways onto shelves while handling the older volumes as if they're fabulously rare ingredients preserved in silk and cambric.
A rotted-out lambing shed on the property provides wood for a nifty bit of transfiguration; Snape makes short work of covering the walls in bookcases. He clearly has the dimensions of his collection memorized. Filling the newly designed shelves is a more leisurely pursuit. Some of the books fly to their places, propelled by an indifferent wand flick. Others, Snape excavates from a box and then wastes time puttering around the room, deciding. Occasionally, book in hand, he starts to read and ends up wandering to the armchair and sinking into it. The work of unpacking's postponed until he raises his head and yanks himself out of the private world of the printed page. Once or twice while organizing the shelves in his bedroom, he pokes his nose into one such book, gravitates to the bed, then curls over and flops down full-length on his stomach, cheek propped in one hand, reading steadily all the while and apparently unaware of his surroundings. Once, as Lily watches, enthralled against her will, he stretches out like this to read and first one, then the other, booted foot kicks into the air and remains there, waving with the rhythms of the words spiralling into his soul. When his legs cross at the ankle, robes falling in folds across his thighs, and he wedges his chin into the joined wings of his hands, reading onward through lowered lashes, Lily feels a strange flush in her cheeks and clicks off the telly before she's overwhelmed with regret.
Severus must be close to forty, yet he still surrenders to books like a ten-year-old boy.
She resumes watching, hurrying ahead until it's daylight and teatime and a knock snaps Severus out of his droopy-lidded reverie. He pushes aside a rattling cup and saucer and drops the crusts of what appears to be a mayonnaise sandwich onto a chipped plate. Fine-fingered as a marsupial, he dabbles his hands in a paper napkin and rises silently, wand drawn. Lily guesses he's stayed up most of the night, and she wouldn't be surprised if he'd added a tincture of Firewhisky to the proceedings.
Sunlight warms the floorboards. He's going to need rugs before winter sets in. When he transpares the door and sees Harry standing on the other side, wearing Muggle togs and with a knapsack slung over his shoulders, his wariness shifts into something more brittle. He hugs himself, fingers twisting at his elbows as if he's trying to unscrew bottle caps. The violence of his stare is unnerving. Then Harry knocks again at empty air, and Severus cuts off the spell, strides forward, and flings open the door.
"No soliciting," he snarls, before Harry can utter a word. A brisk wind snakes his hair into Medusa-like tendrils.
To Lily's astonishment, Harry saves his breath and merely barges into the house, a move guaranteed to get on Snape's bad side. First, though, it foils him, since he'd evidently expected to spend time bickering on the threshold.
"Out," he says with asperity. "For Merlin's sake, I would have thought that relocating to the arse-crack between rockfalls and quagmire would alert my pursuers to the likelihood of an untimely end. Of course, I should have remembered that rules, laws, locked doors, and personal boundaries mean nothing to – "
Harry dumps his knapsack and spells the door shut so hard it slams. "Glad to see you're feeling better," he announces, clearly determined to sweep aside the preliminaries. His colour's heightened and his hands want something to do. Lily realizes why when he blurts, "Look, I'm here for a reason, so shut it and let me get to the point. You owe me a snog."
Lily waits for the riposte, but Snape, with unexpected resilience, says nothing. He merely glowers. Still bird-tracked with the sleep-marks of someone who's stayed up reading half the night and is therefore less than fresh, like a rumpled flannel spread out to dry, he strokes a finger along his lips. The hope with which Harry stares at his mouth seems to decide him.
"You're lying, Mr. Potter," he remarks. "You're not here for a kiss."
Harry gapes as he crosses the room, graceful and predatory. "If you'll allow me?" Without waiting for an answer, he unzips Harry's trousers and insinuates his long fingers under the waistband. He spreads the flat of his other hand along Harry's face, his fingers travelling from feature to feature, tracing them possessively. Harry's flustered, but his tongue snakes out and leaves a glistening trail the length of Snape's thumb.
"I shall suck the truth out of you, Potter, and you will be healed and go forth, relieved of your delusions."
Snape's legs fold under him, one hand dragging and squeezing all the way down Harry's torso, the other parting the tabs of his fly. Kneeling, he noses the slit of Harry's underpants, then hooks two fingers inside. Harry's erection more or less twangs out through the tented flaps. Oops. Lily should look away now. She doesn't, of course. Harry's cock flops forward, clubbing Snape in the face. Deftly, he catches the stubby mushroom-shaped head in his teeth, his lips drawn back to display the unnerving pinch of teeth on skin. He inhales, a long, wet hiss, not biting but doubtless sending Harry's nervous system into conniptions. Lily's not quite sure what he's doing – something with his tongue, she can tell that much, because Harry's breathing gets faster and faster. Snape's black gaze tilts devouringly up, and Lily envies Harry so much for the way Severus looks at him, brooding and evil and sexy as fuck.
Then his jaw relaxes and his mouth slides away, leaving spit all over the red tip of Harry's cock. Lily is impressed that Harry still has the presence of mind to gasp out, "I'm not sure we – this isn't how I – "
Fabric bunches on Harry's thighs as Snape tightens his grip. Lips delicate, puckered, he shapes a bite to the underside of Harry's prick, then rubs down its length, the angle of his cheek as ungentle as a cheese parer, the pressure of it clearly devastating. Harry's trousers hang open and his legs shake. Snape burrows into Harry's groin and Lily can hear the wet, doggy sounds as he licks his bollocks.
Lily's pretty certain Harry's eyes have crossed. She's absolutely certain her own legs are tied in a knot.
"I assume this is how you picture me?" Snape retreats just far enough to spit out curlicues of pubic hair. "On my knees before you, giving you what you want? Shall I skip the preliminaries and get down to the business of calling you master?" "
Eyes and nostrils dilated, Harry snaps out of his trance. "Don't," he chokes. "Don't do that. Make it ugly." Snape hooks his chin sideways, tilting and smearing his face all over Harry's jutting cock. His tongue curls out, but Harry pushes his head aside before he can lick the smear of precome. "Damn it, why don't you understand? All right, yes, I want - someone. Not just scraps from my mother's table, but someone who's mine." He tangles one hand in Snape's hair to hold him still. "And I'd – I'd do the same for you. But if the thought of giving yourself to me makes you sick, then just," he swallows, "just stop."
"Stop sucking your cock? Is that what you want? Tell me. Either way, I will oblige." Snape's hunched down as if about to pounce, every molecule in his body refusing to yield.
"Of course I want it," Harry breathes, forehead crinkled as he studies Snape's face. "More than anything. But I still don't have a clue what it is you want."
That sepulchral pallor wells up in Snape again, and it hits Lily that he's fighting his desire to give in. To give himself. This is what Snape's face - no, Sev's face looks like with the light driven from it. He's fighting the hope Harry's brought into the house, because for Severus, hope's always been a prelude to betrayal.
"What I want, Mr. Potter, is to be left alone. Beholden to no one. Cared for by no one. Remembered by no one. A kind of death in life, if that's what it takes."
Shocked, Harry lets the crimped handful of hair by which he's been steering the dark head trickle from his fist. It dangles root-like into Snape's white face. Smiling hatefully, Snape wraps his fingers around Harry's shaft before he can step away. In that moment, Lily despises him with the full force of memory, of the days when she would have paid to see him suffer.
But then the camera retreats, revealing him on his knees, not graceful at all but hunted, hunched over, holding onto Harry's legs like a supplicant, someone bent into servility. He takes a deep breath and bows his head, black hair parting at the nape, and Lily sees the vulnerable bump of his vertebrae.
Oh, Sev, she thinks. If you can't even allow yourself to be touched, what was the bloody point in coming back to life?
Harry's leagues ahead of her. Voice wavering, he says, "Don't kneel to me. That's not – you've got it wrong. That's not what I want." He places a palm flat on Snape's forehead. "Snape. It's just me. I would never – for God's sake, don't kneel."
Snape tilts his head up, and for a second Lily thinks he's going to kiss Harry's hand, but he's only trying to see past it. "Ah, but I should," he says quietly. "I'm well aware. But if you ask it of me, I will fight you to the death."
"Tell you what, then," Harry replies, "we'll kneel together," and when she can bring herself to think about it later, Lily suspects this was the moment, for all he's cold as stone, that catches Snape unprepared; the moment, for all that he's brutally trying to protect himself, when the cliff edge crumbles underfoot and there's nothing he can do to stop himself from falling.
But it's in falling that the angel's forced to open its wings.
Once, Sev had chased after hope in the guise of a young girl who could fly. Now a grown man who's known and dealt death, he falls for Harry, not because Harry's special, the saviour of the world, but because he lowers himself, kneels to show Severus that kneeling doesn't make him a slave.
Unknowing, Harry grips his head, straddles him, slides down and surrounds him, knees hard against his ribs. "You still owe me," he says. "Or maybe I owe you, I'm tired of keeping track." His mouth is angry, and Lily flinches in dismay as Harry bites a ragged path across Snape's cheeks. Snape allows it, and ugly marks break out on his sallow skin. There's a smear of blood at the corner of his mouth. Damn it. Lily hates seeing Harry driven to this.
Suddenly Snape rocks forward, knees bending and twisting as he staggers to his feet, Harry's limbs still pretzeled around him, the way a young monkey clamps around its mother. Snape hauls them both upright with a physical strength that startles Lily. Weaving under the extra weight, he humps Harry's centre of gravity a few inches higher, spine arched to steady himself, sways backward, then carries him smack into a bookcase. The rubber heels of Harry's trainers hook themselves at the top of Snape's arse, and he's going to rip out a hank of hair soon if he doesn't loosen his death grip, but Snape takes him at his word and starts kissing back. He slams the boy's tailbone against a shelf; Harry curses, his voice changing in pitch when Snape's pelvis grinds between his legs. Snape goes for his mouth with a ferocity that has Lily expecting blood to start dripping down their chins.
Harry thrashes, kicks Snape in the kidneys, and yanks away briefly. Lily hears him pant, "Don't you ever," but Snape effectively gags him by pushing his tongue back inside Harry's mouth. Their teeth scrape in an extremely unsexy way. Lily winces, and Harry starts muttering, "Don't you ever stop wanting me, you fucking arsehole. Don't you ever walk away. Don't you try to tell me it doesn't matter."
Snape bares his teeth. His face is bruised and his eyes are like the inverse of stars, piercingly black in his white face. "Stop thinking with your groin, Potter. There's no evidence that we can stand each other's company beyond a passing fuck. And mark this. I've been a possession nearly all my life, passed from hand to hand by Lily Evans and Tom Riddle and Albus Dumbledore. I will never be yours."
The litany of shame, Lily thinks, and resists the urge to go pick up Tom.
Harry won't let go, like a swimmer being rescued from drowning, the kind who pulls his rescuer down with him into the suck of the tide. "I get that," he pants. "I know, you fucking distrustful git. Get over it already. I don't want to own you, I just want – "
"Potter." It's not so much the way Snape says it as the way he rests his forehead against Harry's fringe and closes his eyes. "Stop wanting so much. It never ends well."
Harry's trainers slide to the ground. They continue clinging to each other for a moment, crowded against the bookcases. Then Snape pulls away. "Right," Harry says, swallowing repeatedly. "Right, then. Can we start over? I mean, with this visit."
Snape wipes a smear of blood from Harry's lips – his own blood, Lily supposes – then turns and walks away.
Looking panicked, Harry pulls his trousers shut and stumbles after. "You know what? Kissing you is weird."
"The feeling is entirely mutual." Snape motions the tea things off the table and sends them speeding toward the kitchen.
Checking again that his fly is secure, Harry waits for Snape to turn around, and when he doesn't, trudges over to his knapsack and swings his foot against it. "Look, just because I saved your life – you don't owe me anything."
"The same applies to you, Potter." Turning at last, Snape leans against the table and crosses his arms as if erecting a roadblock. "By which I mean, just because you saved my life, you don't have to go on trying to save it."
"Yeah, so Hermione keeps telling me."
A corner of Snape's mouth quirks. "You do realize that dragging Miss Granger into the conversation is guaranteed to send my libido screaming from the room?" He reaches behind him for the paper napkin, which he presses to his bruised lips.
The word 'libido' brings Harry around like a shot. "Yeah, well, insulting my friends isn't likely to get me hard, either." His quick blush and spiky hair rather contradict that statement. He squirms a little under Snape's scrutiny.
"No insult intended, Mr. Potter." The longer the black eyes stare at Harry without blinking, the more they smoulder. "Unless you expect me to lie about the fact that I'm not the least bit interested in sucking off Miss Granger." He shudders dramatically, and Harry looks a bit green. "As to the point I was actually trying to make, the ever-intrusive Miss Granger was very recently my student. Which is a depressing reminder that so, in fact, were you."
"Not anymore," Harry says, adding fervently, "And if I have to sacrifice small animals to keep it that way, I'll do it."
"I have sacrificed small animals, Potter. Mostly students. You may direct your gratitude to me. But it underscores," he snorts and paces a few steps toward the bedroom door, "your extreme youth. And therein lies the rub."
Harry snickers. When Snape just looks at him, he makes a faintly obscene gesture. "You said 'rub.'"
Snape pauses in the doorway, still uncommitted. "Please do not feel obliged to demonstrate your puerility simply because I pointed it out."
Harry follows him, arguing. "Can't a bloke try to lighten the mood? Right, look at it this way. In exchange for indulging my infatuated lust, you get sex and a little protection. It's going to take a while for the Wizarding World to stop seeing you as Voldemort's lackey. So, hanging about with me would be good public relations."
Snape turns one of those serpent-eyed stares on him, as if watching a hitherto-undiscovered species of moron procreate before his eyes. "Are you really suggesting that I fuck you in order to cement my reputation within Wizarding society?" With a silent step, he leaves the threshold and enters the room, luring Harry deeper. The curtains are drawn back, and pale light falls across the unmade bed. "What kind of a fool do you take me for?"
Even Lily has to admit that Harry's common sense is of a kind rarely seen in nature, because those who possess it would quickly die off.
Her son stalks up to Snape. "I take you for the sort of inside-out Slytherin who's so sodding paranoid, he won't do what he wants precisely because he wants it. You insist on having a better reason than the simple fact that you've thought about ripping my clothes off and, uh . . . " Harry's voice fails him as he realizes where they're standing.
"Very promising, Potter. Go on. And?"
"Erm, you," Harry stammers, and nervously bobs his head, "you get my drift."
"So you're not worried that engaging in wild, illicit sodomy with an unpleasant and totally inappropriate object of desire will reduce you to the world's most embarrassing cliché?"
Harry needs a second to sort out the syntax. Then he grins. "Oh, well, the fact that I'm here kind of proves I don't care what people think of me, right? And it's not a cliché if," he clears his throat, "if, uh, you've never done it before." Snape smirks, and Harry edges further into the room. "Could you please say 'wild, illicit sodomy' again?"
"Your friends will be delighted to know that you've decided on a high-risk career of banging your old potions master into a state of respectability," Snape says, removing Harry's glasses with deliberate care. "I expect that will go over like a lead Dementor."
Harry's laugh jumps half an octave. "You know bloody well that as soon as word of this gets out, my friends will practically be shitting Puffskeins."
Snape's hand returns to enclose the blush on Harry's face, with the caution he would use to test a warming cauldron. "This vulgarity's new, Potter. When did your vocabulary start branching out?" He runs a speculative thumb along Harry's lips and tugs the lower one down as if examining his teeth. His gaze is sly. "I like it."
Goggling like a stunned fish, Harry opens his mouth to respond, and Snape takes that as an invitation to slide his thumb inside. He – Merlin, he pets Harry's tongue. Intrigued, Lily sticks a finger in her own mouth and strokes the soft, slippery cushion. It's wet and it tickles. Harry makes a gurgling noise. Well, so would she, in his shoes.
With a veiled expression that implies he'd be smiling if he weren't such a monumental prick, Snape dries his wet thumb by slowly circling the pliant ring of Harry's lips. The boy's mouth looks ruddier and fuller by the time he's finished, as if he's applied lipstick instead of spit.
Harry stares at Snape. Snape keeps his lowered eyes on Harry's mouth.
"Uh." Harry sounds suddenly rather squeaky and young. "What does it take for a bloke to get you into bed?"
"Initiative," Snape purrs back, and Lily blinks in astonishment because – who the hell is this? Not the Severus she knows.
The bastard makes Harry do all the heavy lifting. Harry takes his Gryffindor courage in hand and slides it up under Snape's robes. Alert to any twitch that declares some part of him off-limits, he walks his hands up and down Snape's chest, steps closer, hooks one arm over his shoulders and one around his waist. It's awkward, but ineffably sweet. Snape pulls Harry closer, feeling his way around her son's body. With a frustrated whimper, Harry tugs at Snape in a wordless demand for kiss, now, the sound altering to accommodate the thrust of tongue as Snape bends his head and complies.
They stand wrapped around each other, backlit by high-altitude Scottish sunlight. They're entangled now, and the kiss seems to go on and on, while the pink and purple streaks of heather outside the window smudge the view with colour.
Lily cannot fathom it. Harry seems undeterred by anything: the texture of Snape's hair, the size of his nose, his pallor or his age. This is horribly wrong, but it doesn't stop them doing their damnedest to suck each other's lungs out.
After a moment, Snape leaves off trying to hump Harry standing up and growls, "Was that weird enough for you?"
"No," Harry gasps back. He's grinning, grinding himself on Snape's leg, grabbing his arse. "Not nearly weird enough. I know you're a devious bastard, you can do better than that. Come on, weird me out."
They wrestle their way to the bed. Lily is astonished by the look of exhilaration on Harry's face. He wants this. He wants Snape to push him against the wall, bite him, tear at his clothes, do everything in his power to knock him sideways to the bed. And he fights back with the same sexual ferocity. Snape has Harry's shirt off and his trousers halfway down his legs, but has yet to shed a single article of clothing. Exasperated, Harry pants a command that sucks Snape's robes from his body and flings them across the room. The bundle of black material lands atop a Craftsman lamp. The geometry of amber glass and copper piping topples, and there's a muffled crack. With an irritable flick of his fingers, Snape sends the robes flapping into the air to disentangle and rearrange contritely on a dresser.
"For every item you demolish," he snarls at Harry, "expect to pay."
"Bring it on," Harry gasps, one hand in Snape's hair, one leg trying and failing to get him in a hip-lock. "Cripes, Snape, don't tell me you want to play nice?"
Snape staggers, peels Harry off his body, and dumps him heavily on the bed. Under his robes he wears an exasperating number of layers.
"Nice," he hisses, kneeling over Harry, who hisses back at him, half-drugged with lust. "What has nice ever done for me?"
He vanishes Harry's trousers contemptuously. Lily has no idea where he sends them, because they're certainly not in the room anymore. But it's hardly the point, because Snape proceeds to bend Harry in half, pushing his knees apart and up toward his chest. The position puts a strain on Harry's inner thighs, that shallow dip between the large tendons, right below the groin. And it's to this silken hollow that Snape fastens his predator's mouth, skin tender in the ring of his teeth. He rolls and sucks, not flinching from the crude, succulent, slurping noises, his cheeks working, fluttering like gills, his eyes closed in the lascivious bliss of indulging a long-held fantasy. Saliva glistens on Harry's thigh and wets the leg band of his underpants. Harry, whose first response had been to bleat indignantly, arches his head into the pillow, fists the bedsheet, and undergoes some sort of carnal epiphany.
"Come up here," he begs hoarsely as Snape pulls back to examine the darkening bruise. In response, Snape delicately tongues the stressed skin, and Harry invents a new language on the spur of the moment, yowling bizarre syllables. Ignoring him, Snape settles back gracefully on his haunches. Like a hunting cat waiting for its prey to make a move, he gazes hungrily down at Harry, sprawled out naked except for his Y-fronts. The white cotton is pulled so taut, one could use it to make a plaster cast of his cock.
"You're still dressed," Harry whinges, as if just noticing. "That's not bloody fair."
"I take an aesthetic pleasure in contrasts," Snape retorts, reaching out to lay one enveloping palm on Harry's erection. He half-closes his eyes. "Coarse cloth rubbing on naked skin. The precise imprint of buttons. It's a pity wool trousers are too scratchy for everyday wear, because I imagine you would find this," he hooks a finger in Harry's waistband and stretches the material down below his scrotum, "interesting." With this last word, he leans forcefully over Harry, and Lily jumps, although only his crotch makes physical contact. Pushed upright on his arms, he looms over the boy, rocking his hips and watching as each stroke of sensation registers on Harry's face. The bed squeaks.
So does Harry. "Jesus." His hands tremble at Snape's buttons. He looks appallingly young and full of greed, arching his pelvis to meet each thrust. "Can't you at least take your boots off?"
"Make me," Snape whispers, and the suddenness with which the rest of the world falls away and that profound, secret accord flashes over their faces astounds Lily. Because Snape, of all people, has entered that trance where only the beloved exists; where it's possible to believe that nothing else matters.
Then Harry body-slams him, and the fight is on. They roll back and forth, constantly trading who has the upper hand. Snape's got the longer body and the erotic know-how, but Harry's like an obsessed terrier who keeps flinging himself back into the fray. Lily's impressed and a tad embarrassed by her son's singleminded frenzy. Wandless, Snape spells the mattress to widen and roll them back to the middle each time they're in danger of falling off. The extra pillows mass together to form blockades. Almost at once, the expanding bed knocks an end table over with a great crash. A book slaps the floor. Their tussle freezes momentarily, then Snape shoots Harry an evil smile, his hair in lank, unkempt tatters, and triumphantly strips him of his last scrap of modesty, dropping his pants off the side of the bed.
Harry confines himself to non-magical attacks on Snape's clothing, but it seems to be a losing battle. Severus is remarkably uncooperative about getting naked. Well, Lily could have told him that. In frustration, finally, Harry pins Snape's head to the pillow, one hand trapping the length of his hair. With his free hand, he balls up the front of Snape's shirt and wrestles with it until buttons pop away like miniature champagne corks.
The shirt rips open, and for a wonder there's no vest underneath, just Sev's slightly broader, slightly hairier, but still rather spindly sternum, with its pale skin and dark nipple, sensitive, Lily thinks, because it's standing out like a bead. And Harry goes for it, makes a mindless dive and starts licking frantically, his whole head moving up and down like an eager puppy's.
An odd shock crosses Snape's haggard features, tentative, disbelieving. And then it's as if a potion hits his system and he all but liquefies into the mattress, head bent at an awkward angle because Harry's still leaning on his hair. Harry catches the expression and shifts his weight, scrambling to get Snape's shirt entirely open as if he's pulling the wrapping from a present. Then he cups his hands over Snape's bare shoulders and gives him a little "stay there" push that makes the bed bounce. Snape's eyes follow him, but apart from that he doesn't move. Harry starts planting kisses at random, covering Snape's torso with wet spots and small bites, lingering, lapping, drawing the poison out of Snape's soul, sucking the loneliness through his skin as Snape had threatened to suck the truth from Harry's.
Lily stares at Sev's face and her heart almost breaks.
Harry works his way upward, and almost bends to the disfiguring scars on Snape's throat, only to be stopped by a peremptory hand. Urged higher, he obeys, crawling up Snape's body to seal their mouths together. Snape gathers Harry to him, and they curl around each other, pressing and rocking, totally intertwined. Harry's bare leg is hooked over Snape's trousered thigh, and Snape is stroking Harry's white arse and plum-ripe bollocks with one hand, the other black-sleeved arm yoking him tight, his elegant fingers twisted in Harry's bird's nest of hair. Harry rides Snape's sinuous body – yes, sinuous, all angles to the contrary – like a pogo stick, up and down, and they're kissing, addicted, as if kissing is their drug and they need each other's mouths to survive. When one of them breaks for air, the other waits, seductively afloat on the surface tension of a powerful sexual undertow. They lift to each other's mouths and go under time after time. Yet neither of them drowns.
As they sink deeper into their erotic rapport, Harry makes a soft sound, like a startled bird, and Lily becomes aware of a third presence in the room with them. Not fused between them, as it had seemed that night in the restaurant, a barrier as much as a conducting medium. No, it's all around them now, surrounds them, filling the air. Each clap of its wings exalts and destroys, thundering and exquisitely silent. It's the angel, invisible and undeniable, hanging over them. They've brought it into being, and Snape's bedroom rings with it, the embodiment of passion.
Lily breaks down. She doesn't know if it's the telly, if it's that filter between life and death, but she can see it so clearly even while knowing perfectly well nothing's there. As Harry buries his face in Snape's neck and spasms with release, clawing at his back, crying out, Lily weeps into her hands.
After a moment, the rocking stops, and they lie together catching their breath. Harry rests his head on Snape's shoulder, and Snape's long hand rises and crooks its way into Harry's hair, stroking gently. His shirttails hang open to both sides, and his long, sallow torso gleams. That private, impossible beauty brims in his face, tempered by time but kindled nonetheless. All it needs is a cigarette and the echo will be complete.
Lily lights one in his memory and blows smoke at the screen, not in derision, but in case the faint whiff of it reaches Severus and recalls to mind the girl he once loved.
But then Harry, clever Harry, reaches down and undoes Snape's trousers, pulling out his dark, slender erection and petting it flat against Snape's belly. "It's not necessary," Snape starts to say, but Harry only snorts, "You're having me on." Then, his voice unsteady: "Let me. Please." Snape says nothing, merely trails his hand over whatever part he encounters as Harry wiggles down, tucks his cheek against Snape's chest (Lily shivers at this scarcely endurable re-enactment), and proceeds to use Snape's nearest nipple as a counter-sensation to the hand on his cock. He makes a ring and presses Snape's rigid flesh through it, while his teeth nip and his tongue washes away the sting. When Snape squirms suddenly, Harry snickers into his chest hair. He continues pumping slowly, easily. Once or twice Snape starts to arch like a cat, clearly trying to keep himself under control. This goes on for a while, languorous, sensual, maddening, until Snape is breathing like someone who's been climbing for miles, higher and steeper. He makes a ragged sound, and Harry sits up. His hand speeds the milking.
Bare-chested, trousers plundered, Snape twists and pants and turns his face away, unable to lie still. His eyes are screwed shut, and Lily's reminded of the childish belief that closing your eyes will make you invisible. That no one can see you if you can't see them. Or in Sev's case, yourself.
"Look at me," Harry says, but Snape shakes his head. Harry straddles him and insists, "Look at me," and Snape groans, "Potter," one hand blindly outstretched. Harry grips it and says, "Right, then, hold on," and positions himself, fingers pulling the tip of Snape's cock between his arse cheeks. Snape whips his head around and starts to sit up, but too late, he falls back and wrenches Harry's hand and digs his fingers into the sheets, bucking against Harry with a shouted, "Fuck!" Semen squirts against Harry's backside, but he's squeezing the love-bite inside his thigh and staring at Snape; Snape, his knuckles white around Harry's, shaken hard in the grip of erotic imperative, bursting free of years of self-denial, with the strength of the strong man in a circus who snaps bands of iron with his bulging chest.
But this is something greater than brute strength. It's courage, and hope, and the bands around Snape's heart have been more than twenty years in the making.
Lily watches Harry cast Scourgify, watches him drag Snape's boots off and drop them on the floor. With that very Harryish combination of compassion and stubbornness, he nags Snape, who is clearly befuddled in the aftermath of a shattering experience, until Snape is picked clean of his clothing and as naked as he is. She waits until the two men fold up together, spent, and the wings of their passion, of their extraordinary good fortune, fold down around them, no brighter, but no less bright, than the late sun on the Scottish hillsides, no less real for being imperceptible.
Then she turns off the telly and lies down on the floor, thinking, What can I do? What can I possibly do? Over by the sofa, she hears a loud sniffle, and then Tom starts in wailing, the kind of sham crying that means he wants to be coddled. Lily rolls over, and there he is, standing up in his bassinet, naked and pink as a piglet. He's never done that before. When he sees her staring, his wails grow piteous.
She gets to her feet, cleans her face, takes one last drag before vanishing her cig, then goes to lift him into her arms.