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The sea is rough, waves slapping the rocks like they’ve got murder on their mind.
Well, Harry can’t blame them; he’s got murder on his mind too. Not murder-murder, just, yeah, he’s angry. Pissed off at the world, like he was all those years ago. Except he’s not a sixteen-year-old boy who doesn’t know yet he’s slated to die; he’s a freshly-divorced thirty-something who has no one, nothing to blame. Okay, maybe he could blame himself, but he’s not quite ready for that yet, and Ginny, Hermione, and Ron said he shouldn't, so. There’s that.
After fifteen years together and three beautiful children, they’ve drifted apart – it happens, Hermione said.
“Not to you guys.”
“It could; we’re just lucky.”
And Harry isn’t, which, ha. Story of his life, yeah? Okay, it took them a few years until they actually went through with the divorce, but the children, right? You have to think of the children. But Molly just sat them down one Sunday afternoon while most other Weasleys were outside, enjoying the sunshine, and told them to just suck it up and stop waffling around.
At least they still expect him to visit; at least Molly still knits him jumpers. He is still an honorary Weasley.
But… But, well, all three kids are at Hogwarts, Ron and Hermione are busy with their jobs and their own offspring, Ginny has rekindled her Quidditch career after years in a small team and she’s doing great, and Harry.
Harry’s just lost.
He quit the Auror Corps after a few years, he declined McGonagall’s offer to come back to Hogwarts to teach (not as long as his own children are studying there, he told her), he put money in Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes. Then he put money in Fortescue’s, in Ollivander’s. So that’s what he does now: he helps businesses rebuild and expand, reinvests some, puts most of it in charities, lather, rinse, and repeat.
Now, he looks at himself, and he sees… he doesn’t know what he sees. Some guy, just some guy, with hair that won’t stay put and purple skin under green eyes, rattling around in a house meant for five while his kids are at Hogwarts.
He’s lonely is what he is, lonely and adrift.
That’s why is here, staying in this small crofthouse hidden behind an outcropping of cracked rocks, near rocky cliffs that tower above the angry, angry sea.
He’s angry too, but he has no rocks to bash. He wishes he had, but he thinks unleashing his magic at the cliffs themselves would not reassure people that Harry Potter, Most Eligible Bachelor again, wasn’t turning into a new, crazy Dark Lord. They don’t need to find and traumatise another kid to do that; they don’t need to have a civil war again. They don’t need to know how much power he has, kept in check but always at risk of flaring out in an emotional outburst. It hasn’t happened in years, but it could; it always could. He doesn’t want them to know.
So he walks along the cliff path, keeping too close to the edge, where pebbles keep rolling under his feet and threatening to make him stumble and lose his footing. Threatening to kill him. The pebbles fall into the sea when it’s high, on the pale sand beach when it’s low. Harry never falls. He walks, he runs, sometimes he takes his broom out and he flies and flies and flies against the wind that tries to bash him against the rocks. So far, he’s always won.
He thinks it’s because the wind knows he can’t die, because it won’t let his children grow up without a father. The wind knows better, because Harry’s ashamed to say he forgets, sometimes. He forgets other people love him, need him. He forgets he’s not all alone in the world.
Here, at least, he’s not reminded so much of it: he’s alone because the nearest village is so very small and an hour’s walk away. There are sheep and otters, gannets and puffins, but there aren’t a lot of people. Here, he’s alone because he wants to be. Right?
He’s not alone.
Down on the beach, someone’s just appeared. Someone who wasn’t here a moment ago. Harry knows; he’s been hoping to spot seals, not… well, not a human being. Especially not a witch or wizard. The wind is blowing back long, dark hair, but whoever it is, they’re not wearing robes. They Apparated in wearing dark trousers and a dark fisherman’s jacket. The figure kneels for a moment and when whoever it is stands back up, Harry realises they took their shoes off and rolled up their trousers; the pale skin looks almost as white as the sand. Harry watches them leave their boots on the sand and wade into the water.
Most witches and wizards left this place centuries ago, because there’s safety in Wizarding numbers but none in isolated and very Presbyterian Muggle communities. Harry himself came here to be away from… well, from Harry Potter, former Boy Who Lived, regular (and reluctant) front page material, a single and wealthy businessman. His peaceful retreat (his wallowing hidey-hole) is being invaded, and he won’t stand for it.
He wraps his hand around his wand and Apparates on the beach with a quiet pop.
It’s a man, Harry thinks. He can’t see much of the body shape, but from the way they move, he’s pretty sure the mystery stranger is a man. Harry wants to go and start a fight; he can feel his magic swirling and roiling and heaving, just like the sea when it wants to slam ships on the rocks, when it wants to kill. He shouldn’t let the man see him; he should at least spell his face unrecognisable, but then the man turns around and it’s.
It’s.
Harry yells; something primal and furious. There’s a great noise behind him, a deafening crack and then stones and pebbles fall around but not on them; a shimmering bubble is protecting them.
Once the rocks have settled, Severus Snape lowers his wand and the bubble disappears.
“Potter,” he says. His face is unreadable.
“You…”
Snape doesn’t pretend to misunderstand, but he also doesn’t reply to the question Harry didn’t ask. “I didn’t expect anyone would be around.”
He doesn’t move when Harry stalks forward and grabs his waxed jacket, black because of course it would be, and shakes him. He’s like a rock, unperturbed by Harry’s rage, and that in turn makes Harry even more furious.
“You died! You…” Harry looks at his fingers clenching in the fabric, fingers he remembers coated in slick, sticky blood. So much blood. “You…” His throat closes up and won’t let him finish the sentence. Instead, he grabs the collar and pulls it down, so violently he tears the jacket open. The sparks of magic he didn’t control or even summon fade, and he looks at Snape’s neck, at the scars there.
“I almost died,” Snape says.
Harry isn’t quite sure whether he wants to punch Snape or take him into his arms and squeeze, squeeze until he can feel his heartbeat. Then squeeze some more, until he can’t feel it. He deserves it.
“I hate you,” Harry spits in his face. He thinks of Fred, Colin, Remus… “Why are you alive?’”
“I don’t know.”
“I…” Harry leans forward, glares into Snape’s dark eyes. “I named my son after you!”
At this, finally, Snape loses some of his cool. His mouth slackens, and he’s genuinely surprised. “Your son?”
Harry releases Snape’s jacket and takes a step back before the temptation to smash his fist on Snape’s nose wins over. “Al. Albus Severus, but we call him Al.”
Snape blinks. Albus Severus, he mouths. The wind suddenly blows his hair over his face, and he lifts a hand to push it away.
“You were dead, and I thought…” He swallows. “I told him he was named after two men I admired.”
“You…” Snape looks shell-shocked but quickly recovers. “But… what, it’s not as convenient an explanation, now I’m not dead?” He sneers. “Don’t worry, Potter; I’m not planning on coming back into British Wizarding society. You can keep me dead, for your son’s sake.”
“For my son’s… And me? What about me?”
“You? What about you, then?”
“I mourned you, you and all the others who died and stayed dead! I mourned them all, and you’re the one coming back?”
At that, Snape looks away. “It was a war. People die, in wars. Those who live, move on. Or not,” he added, looking back at Harry. “But they should.”
“Move on? Like you did?”
“Yes.”
“What are you doing here? Are you following me?”
“You’re unhinged, Potter. Nothing new, of course; you’ve always been a few Knuts short of a Sickle.”
Harry’s world turns red. He launches himself at Snape, tackles him down into the wet sand; the sea that has been creeping up the beach for a while now is almost reaching Snape’s head and his long, dark hair is spread out into the water, like snakes, like tentacles, like poisonous seaweed.
Harry rests all his weight on him, bends his face to Snape’s so their noses almost touch. “I had so many questions; there’s so much I wanted to ask, and you were dead! You had no right to die!”
“I had every right; you know this. I expected it and, contrary to you, contrary to those you lost, I deserved it. But I can’t bring them back; no one can.” He pauses, gasping a little, but doesn’t try to get out from under Harry. Like being held down into wet sand by a former student is nothing strange, nothing unusual. Like having Harry Potter sitting on his chest and making it hard to speak, to breathe, is nothing to be worried about.
Maybe that’s how one gets, after dying and coming back to life. When you know what’s beyond the Veil, when you lifted it and looked in and turned away, and came back, what is there to be afraid of?
“Did you see my mum?” Harry hates how small his voice has got, suddenly. “Did you see Dumbledore?”
Snape wraps his hand around Harry’s wrist and tugs, gently; Harry leans back and feels Snape’s chest rise and fall more freely. “I didn’t die; I didn’t see anyone, Potter. I wish…” His Adam’s apple bobs. “I’m sorry.”
The sea is rising, but still Harry doesn’t move, and Snape stays put. A wave breaks over his face, then another; Harry’s trousers are drenched.
He doesn’t move.
“You’ll drown if you stay here.”
Snape raises an eyebrow. “You’re the one sitting on me.”
“You could escape.”
“Could I?” His eyes flick behind Harry for a second; he closes them against the water, opens them when it recedes again. In a minute or so, his mouth, his nose will be underwater. “You obliterated that cliff behind you.”
“You could fight me.”
“For what purpose?”
“Don’t you want to live?”
“Don’t you?”
Harry clenches his jaw so hard he thinks he’s going to crack a tooth.
Then, he Apparates them both to the crofthouse.
“Fuck you,” he snarls into Snape’s face.
Their clothes are waterlogged; a puddle of cold seawater came with them from the beach. Snape’s eyes dart to Harry’s mouth then back to his eyes, and he moves a leg to the side, lifts his knee. His bare foot – Merlin, he is barefoot; Harry forgot that – slaps wetly on the floor. An eyebrow goes up, challenging.
“I hate you,” Harry says.
“Where’s my namesake, Potter? Why are you living alone?”
Harry jerks back, jumps to his feet; Snape is still lying down, his legs obscenely spread, like he’s daring him to actually fuck him. He’s always been a sick bastard, right? A sneaky, slimy, self-serving Slytherin.
Harry closes his eyes and breathes out, then in, then out again. He’s angry, so angry; he so wants to take it out on Snape. He opens his eyes and he sees something else, on Snape’s face, something he didn’t expect: wariness. Snape is observing him, like he thinks Harry might go off at any moment. He’s not wrong; Harry feels brittle, angry. He’s always so angry, these days, like anger is the only thing that can fight the numbness in him.
And, yes, he did hear part of the cliff collapse when his wild magical outburst hit it. Snape, for all his faults, isn’t a fool; he knows a dangerous, powerful wizard when he sees one. He’s been up close and personal with two of them, and Harry, however much he pretends it’s not true, has way too much power at his fingertips than a single person should ever have.
He wonders how closely Snape knew Voldemort, Dumbledore. How intimately. He looks like he’s offering himself, and bile rises up in Harry’s throat: he’s not like them, not like any of them.
“Get up,” he mutters, and he whirls on his heel to go bang the kettle on the old Aga and glare at the sky through the window. He doesn’t look back as he makes tea, but after a minute he hears movement, and the soft sound of feet on the rough wooden floor of the small kitchen, then the rug in the main part of the house.
Harry turns around and watches Snape take stock of his surroundings. A brown couch, a thick, scarred dining table with four chairs tucked under it, a cold fireplace with a picture on the mantel. It’s the only personal thing Harry brought here. Al, James, and Lily, just the three of them, waving as they’re about to board the Hogwarts Express. It was taken in Lily’s first year.
“Three?”
“Yeah.” Harry joins him, careful to keep some distance between them. They’re about the same height now, and it’s disconcerting. He points: “That’s Al.”
“Your son’s in Slytherin?”
Harry smiles proudly. “Yeah. James and Lily sorted in Gryffindor, but Al… he’s his own little man.”
“Lily,” Snape whispers.
“Yeah.” He swallows. “They’re the best thing that ever happened to me.”
“You love them.”
“Of course I do!”
“I didn’t mean… with all you lived through, I am glad you still can.”
“They’re my kids; how can I not?” Harry tore his eyes away from the picture to look at Snape’s profile, and remembered a little boy from long ago, crying and cowering. “I’m sorry. You…”
“Don’t.”
Harry’s teeth click. He watches water drip from Snape’s hair, his clothes, seeping into the rug. “Why don’t you spell yourself dry?”
“You don’t seem to have the best reactions to surprises.”
“I don’t…”
Snape sighs, like he thinks Harry’s an idiot. Well, he probably thinks Harry’s an idiot; nothing new here. “You’re on edge, volatile; if your magic feels mine flare up as I cast, it might react badly.”
“You’re not a threat.”
He grimaces. “Flattering.”
“No, I mean… you’re not here to kill me or anything, are you?”
Another sigh. “No, Potter; I’m not here to kill you or anything.”
“Okay.”
They look at the picture side by side but far enough they can’t touch by accident, carefully avoiding each other’s eyes, each other’s body. They’re probably not thinking the same thoughts at all, looking at Harry’s three children.
“I wonder,” Snape says, after a long silence. “I wonder how much of ourselves is shaped by our names. Does your son look like your father because you named him James? Does your daughter…” He breathes in and out, slowly. “Did you marry the Weasley girl?”
“Yeah. Jury’s out on whether Lily’s hair comes from her side or mine. Maybe both.”
“Perhaps.”
There are fine lines on Snape’s face. The crow’s feet are new, Harry thinks. But, somehow, he looks better than he ever did at Hogwarts, twenty years ago: he’s pale but not waxy, his hair is lank but not particularly greasy. The difference, Harry realises, is that he’s healthier, while back then… well, back then, he was riding a very fine line in the middle of a war. And somehow, he lived to tell the tale.
“Stop staring at me, Potter; you’ve seen me before. There’s nothing new.”
“I’m not staring.”
He snorts. “I’m aware my nose is a convenient target for angry fists.”
“Yeah, it looks like it was broken.”
“A few times.”
“I’m divorced,” Harry blurts out.
At that, finally, Snape turns his head. “I beg your pardon?”
“I’m… Ginny and me. We’re divorced.”
“You’re…” Snape blinks, glances at the picture again before going back to focusing on Harry. “I didn’t know you had it in you. I thought – well, before Dumbledore told me…” His lips tighten for a moment. “I thought that you’d be the ultimate family man, when you grew up.”
“I am. I was. I don’t know.”
“Eloquent, Potter.”
“I loved her. Love her, just not like that. We were not… like that.”
“Is that why you’re all alone in this place? Did she kick you out?”
“No. I kept the house.” She’s often on the move with her team, and when she’s not she crashes wherever she can: sometimes at the Burrow, sometimes at a teammate’s, sometimes at Harry’s, usually when the children are there. She's not sentimental, not about this; she’s never been a homemaker like Molly. She goes where her life takes her, and she’s happier for it; Harry… well, Harry’s adrift, even though he’s the one who kept the house.
“You’ll find someone else, Potter. You’re not the kind to do well on your own, but you’re young, rich, and I’m sure still the Wizarding World’s darling.”
“Are you giving me a pep talk? Severus Snape, giving pep talks?”
“I was Head of House for years and I, Severus Snape, as you say, had to deal with broken-hearted Slytherins more often than you’d think.”
“Wow.”
“Indeed.”
“That’s… I thought they wouldn’t have dared.”
“Who else would have listened to them? What other adult, in that blasted school?”
“Oh.”
“Oh, indeed.”
“Ginny’s got a new boyfriend.”
“I can’t say I care.”
“I found out I liked boys too.”
“A momentous revelation; I’m sure.”
“Do you have to be such an arse?”
Snape gives him a sardonic smile. “Have you ever known me not to be?”
“Yes! No!” Frustration overwhelms Harry; he can see the dining table move and rattle behind Snape. He’s always been more volatile, around Snape. “I know you, I know how you can be; I’ve seen it all!”
“Not all, Potter.”
“Enough! I’ve seen enough.” The windowpane cracks and Snape’s head whirls to it; his lips part. He looks surprised and his eyes dart around, looking for escape routes perhaps; it’s not like the wards would let him Apparate out. Sparks are coming out of Harry’s fingertips and, he thinks, his hair. He can see a few out of the corner of his eye.
“You’re so angry,” Snape murmurs. Colour is rising on his cheeks, and he hasn’t made a move to leave.
“It’s your fault!”
“Is it?”
Harry boils over; he shoves Snape against the wall and pins him here, one arm on his throat forcing Snape’s chin up, one leg between Snape’s thighs. “Yes,” he hisses. “It is.”
Snape swallows against Harry’s forearm. He looks… he looks aroused. He’s not fighting back; but he’s still glaring; challenging Harry to, what – go further? Get a hold of himself?
“You’re an arsehole,” Harry growls in his face.
The only answer he gets is Snape’s mouth quirking up.
“You make me so angry; you always have. I hated you back then; you can’t even imagine how much.” He watches an eyebrow rise up. “Maybe you can; you’ve always been a spiteful bastard, haven’t you?”
Snape’s eyes flutter and Harry realises they’re not quite black, that there’s a darker pond right in the middle. It’s growing wider, until his eyes are almost all pupil.
“You like that,” Harry whispers. He likes it too; he’s looming over Snape now, over Snape’s thrown-back head, his half-closed eyes, the slight panting he’s trying to hide, but can’t. “I could do whatever I wanted – anything, anything at all.” He moves his leg, slightly. Snape bites back on a whimper. “Merlin.”
“He was powerful, too,” Snape mumbles.
Powerful, too? Is that… “Is that what turns you on, then? Power?”
He snarls, tries to shake his head. “Gerroff me.” The words are bitten off, curt, furious; his hips are twitching towards Harry’s.
“Uh huh. I think you meant Get me off, didn’t you?” Harry presses on a little more, watches a crooked tooth bite into Snape’s thin lip. But he’s not fighting Harry, not even trying to push him away. Harry feels hot all over; his anger turned into something else. He knows what he wants; he’s pretty sure he’s figured out what Snape wants. “You’re hard for me,” he says.
Snape bares his teeth.
“Tell me to stop. Tell me to stop, and I will.” Harry isn't sure if he’s asking because he’s afraid of turning into another Dark Lord, using people for his own pleasure, or because he wants to assert his power over a Snape who can’t tell him to stop. Both options make him slightly sick. He eases up a little on Snape’s throat.
“You’re not like them,” Snape rasps out. “They wouldn’t even think to ask.”
Harry’s throat constricts.
“They’d take, and take. They took, nothing else.”
Harry’s mind stutters; he remembers Voldemort, Dumbledore, all the too-powerful wizards who took, and took, and never asked Snape. Not really. “Did they ever… Did you…”
“Does it matter?”
Harry leans into Snape’s throat once more. “I want to make you scream,” he says. “I want to be the only one to make you scream.”
“Good luck,” is the breathed out answer.
Harry loses it. His magic flares again and he grips the rain jacket in one hand, tearing it away and leaving Snape in a charcoal grey Aran jumper; Snape tries to stifle a moan and fails. Harry has never been so hard in his life; his magic never so alive. He can feel it overflowing, coming out of him in waves, all coming to crash on Snape; ebb and flow, and and flow, it’s like it’s trying to drown him, and Snape is welcoming it. His own magic is reaching out to Harry’s, not as showy, not as wild, but subtly filling out all the nooks and crannies, all the cracks in Harry’s own. Like it’s the sea, and Harry’s magic its rock.
They slide down to the floor and Harry banishes most of their clothes to the other end of the house with a thought; he grips Snape’s damp, salt-and-seaweed smelling hair and pulls on it to force Snape to bare his neck. The scars are long healed, but they’re so extensive it’s hard to believe he survived them. Harry pushes Snape’s shirt out of the way and bites that point where throat and shoulder meet, right where the scars are thickest; Snape jerks and sobs, and his nipples harden when Harry touches them. Snape’s skin is damp, tastes like the sea; Harry moves and their cocks slide against each other.
“Potter.” It’s more a groan than a word.
“Harry.” He raises on his elbows, frowns. “I want you to know it’s me, Harry, not any other Potter.” Snape’s got history with several Potters, and Harry’s suddenly jealous. Snape is his; spread out naked on the floor for him, and no one else.
“It couldn't be any other.”
“Fuck.” This sense of ownership, of possession – it feels so wrong, and so right at the same time. “Say my name.”
Snape clenches his jaw, glares up at Harry.
Harry moves his hips slowly, agonisingly. Lifts them. He doesn’t need to speak. He digs his nails in Snape’s flank, breathes right against his tight lips. Not touching.
“Fuck you.”
“The other way around, I think.” Harry has plans.
“I hate you.”
“Uh huh.” He waits.
Snape’s almost vibrating; he wants to be touched, he wants to be fucked, but he won’t get it as long as he doesn’t say it. And finally: “Harry…”
So Harry rewards him with a slow grind; watches the flush spread over Snape’s pale chest, a dull red framed by his open, off-white shirt that shouts what he won’t say. “Should I call you Severus, once I’ve got my prick up your arse?”
Snape shudders. “Promises.”
“The name, or the prick?” Snape reminds him of the teacher who loomed over him, but Severus feels too intimate. Harry bites back on a whimper when long fingers wrap around said prick and gives it a light squeeze. “Both,” he manages. “You’re getting both, and I decide when you get it.”
He grips Snape’s thin wrist and pins it above his head with magic, does the same thing with the other. Snape’s back arches into Harry, and he tries to push his hips into Harry’s again.
“Nuh uh.”
Snape stills; only his chest is moving as he breathes. Pants. His eyes open and they’re daring Harry to go through with whatever he’s planned; his body is aching for it. He’s flushed, his nostrils wide; Harry can see a pink tongue beyond the parted lips.
“You want this. You want me.”
“Don’t flatter yourself.”
Harry ignores him. “I’m going to make you scream; I’m going to make you forget you’ve ever been with anyone else. You won’t ever want anyone else after I’m through with you.” The idea that other hands have touched this skin, that, perhaps, Malfoy had him, or Karkaroff, or… or worse. “I want you to think of me and only me when you wank.”
“Who do you think of?”
From now on, he’s going to think of this: Snape pinned on the brown rug by Harry’s body, his arms above his head, the shirt open and making his pale, scarred chest more obscene than if he’d been simply naked. His hair is wild, damp, like thick, viscous oil coating the sand and rocks, swallowing all life. Harry’s eyes follow the line of the neck, a shoulder, a biceps; further up he finds an open shirt cuff, a tattoo – the tattoo – peeking out from under it. Just a plain tattoo now, Draco says, now that Voldemort’s truly dead and gone.
It floated over his parents’ house, when they died. When they were murdered. Soon, Harry will be twice the age they ever were. Snape’s fingers twitch, and he raises his knees so Harry’s cradled between his thighs; it throws Harry back in the present right away.
He leans his weight on Snape’s chest just to make him choke, revels in the heated glare he gets in return. He backs away until he can grab the bony hips and drag them to him, making Snape’s shirt ride up and forcing a cry out of him. Harry wonders how badly the rug scraped his back. He likes the idea that he made him bleed.
“You can try to hold it in,” he says. “But you’ll scream anyway.”
Snape looks like he wants to kill him; whether it’s because Harry’s manhandling him or because Harry still hasn’t touched his dick is still up in the air. Harry looks down; something else is up in the air, of course. He leans forward, slides his hands under Snape’s arse, glides them up behind his thighs, and breathes on his dick. Snape bites his lips, tries to move his hips again but Harry moves and pins them down, too. He’ll have to take it, take everything Harry's going to dish out. How the tables have turned, Harry thinks.
And then he goes to town.
Snape gives a full-body jerk and throws his head back; his breathing turns into harsh pants; the more Harry licks and sucks the closer every exhale sounds like a whine. He’s heavy on Harry’s tongue, every twitch echoing the way his stomach muscles quiver. Harry wraps a hand around the base, moves it up and down a few times before cradling the balls. He’s never been so assertive in bed (or on the floor), and he's never been so turned on in his entire life. And, he decides, it’s only the beginning.
With one hand flat on the floor to hold himself up and away from Snape’s dick, he whispers a spell at the other, rubs the fingers together to check how slick they are, and rests them just behind the balls.
Snape’s definitely whining now, and when he looks up Harry can see he’s fighting the magical restraints keeping his arms above his head, although Harry’s not sure he’s aware of it. He’s desperate for something, anything to touch him again.
“Told you I’d make you scream, uh?”
And then Harry circles his hole, feels it start to give; he goes down on Snape again right as he pushes a slippery finger inside.
This time, Snape screams.
There’s a small flare of magic and one hand clamps around the wrist Harry’s using to brace himself; when he looks up he sees Snape’s other arm is flung over his face. All he can see is an open mouth, a nose, a lot of fabric. He’s not trying to touch Harry’s head, to push him down on his dick, but his fingers are like a vice, and Harry’s wrist is turning white from the strength of the grip. Harry smiles, and adds a second finger; he barely moves them – a fraction in, a fraction out, a minute change in angle every time, until – the dick jumps in his mouth and Snape’s so loud Harry wonders for a moment if the roof isn’t going to crash down on them. If his mouth wasn’t full, he’d tell Snape to ask politely. Maybe next time, he thinks. Because he’s already thinking of next times.
He keeps sucking, he keeps sliding his fingers in and out; he can’t feel his arm anymore, the one that Snape is clutching so tightly he’s cut off all blood flow. All he’s interested in are the noises, the way Snape’s body is arching, his head is jerking to one side, then another. His pants grow faster, until he freezes and stops breathing altogether, caught up like lightning is piercing him through and through and he’s dying, all his body tight and airless.
Then he slumps, his arms falling away from his face, from Harry’s wrist; he shudders when Harry gives a last lick to his dick and slides his fingers out. Harry crawls over him and stares at the glassy eyes, the lips that are redder and plumper than he’s ever seen them. Bitten.
“I win,” he whispers. “You screamed.”
Snape doesn’t really seem to register anything: not Harry’s words, not Harry’s presence hovering above him.
“I’m going to fuck you now.” Right now, because it’s going to be uncomfortable, because he wants Snape to feel him. Good or bad, it doesn’t matter – he wants Snape to feel him. “And you’ll scream again.” He touches the scarred neck, pushes in a little in the divot right above the collarbone, where the skin is thinner, softer. Snape lets him, even lifts his chin a little; when Harry rests his palm flat over the throat, not choking but hinting that he can, that he just has to want it and he will, Snape relaxes into it. He’s welcoming it.
Harry raises himself on his knees to move down Snape’s body but before he’s gone anywhere Snape sighs and rolls over; Harry has to stop him with a hand on his shoulder. He pushes him back to lie down on his back and frowns.
“Did I tell you to do that?”
Snape glares up at him; he looks like he’s about to call Harry a brainless idiot.
“I want to see your face as I fuck you.”
A blink, and Snape’s face blanks.
“I want to watch you when you scream again. Which you will.”
Harry brushes his hand down Snape’s chest; he lets it catch on a nipple and smiles at the shudder this gets him. He skirts around the softening dick, still red, the skin looser now; then just because, he gives it a stroke. Snape hisses, but he doesn’t say anything. Lets Harry do what he will, and Harry wills a lot.
He casts the spell on his hand again, touches his own prick, which suddenly reminds Harry that he’s been ignoring it for way too long, and that it’s really very angry about it. Harry thinks very hard about Mandrake roots and starts pushing in; Snape’s still slick, and Harry goes in like he’s going home, where it’s warm and welcoming and everything is just right. Snape hisses again, squirms, and it’s all making it even harder to hold on, not move, not just lose it and chase his orgasm like Harry wants to.
He lifts Snape’s arse a little to slide closer, nudges until one leg is hitched up over Harry's hip, the other wrapped around his waist. He slides almost entirely out, slides back in. Snape moans, half-way between pain and pleasure. He’s not getting hard again, but the flush on his body is not going away.
And Harry has an idea.
“Open your eyes,” he says. Nothing happens. “C’mon, open your eyes.”
Snape sneers, and he opens his eyes so that just enough of a sliver shows. It’s an angry stare, full of knives and curses, and it disappears as quickly as it’s appeared.
“Snape – Severus.” He’s got his prick in the man, after all, and he’s made promises about that. He pushes in a bit more. “Severus, look at me.” He tries to put the memory of the Shrieking Shack aside as he repeats Snape’s words from years ago.
It works; using his given name works. He looks surprised, a little bit curious, and Harry bends so close he can see the blown pupils, the hair-thin vessels in the sclera.
“Don’t fight me,” he says, and he opens up his mind, pours his sensations and his desires and the urgency he feels building up in him straight into Severus. Harry sees his eyes widen, his mouth open, and that’s it; he can’t stop it anymore.
He pulls out, slams back in, and feels the echo of it in his own body, through his mind, through Severus’s mind; Severus himself is like a ragdoll, buffeted between Harry’s hips and the hand he’s put back on his throat, pushing down just enough that he can cut off his moans with only a twitch of his fingers; the tension builds in the both of them, and it’s bouncing back and forth between them, reflecting further and further like an endless house of mirrors that they’re lost in.
Until the mirrors crack and explode out and there’s a loud rush of sound in Harry’s ears, and he feels like all his life-force is pouring out of him in long, hot pulses. He collapses forward, his forehead on Severus’s chest; there’s a heart pounding right under his brow. He likes it. Harry’s palm moves to lay flat on Severus’s stomach, and he’s surprised, pleased, proud to feel wetness there. He’s made him come again, somehow.
A hand lands heavily on his head and he closes his eyes, revels in the feeling of fingers carding through his hair.
“Fuck,” he says.
“Quite.” The voice is rough, closer to a rasp than a voice, really.
Harry moves and kisses the skin that’s right here, damp now with sweat instead of seawater. Still salty. The hand in his hair pauses, starts again. Harry kisses his chest again, just as an experiment, and the hand stutters, though it doesn't entirely stop. Harry smiles. He thinks it’s going to be strange to keep calling him Snape, but also strange to call him Severus, now their minds are their own again. But Severus got him pretty good results, so he’s going to try it on for size, including when he doesn’t have his prick up Severus’s arse. Harry pulls out and props his head on his arm, looking at Severus’s profile. It’s sharp; it’s always been sharp, but now all he can see is how so very human it is. He doesn’t look like a vampire, a monster, or some evil spirit risen from Hell; he’s just a man, with a broken nose and a scarred body. Just a man like any other.
He brushes his hand against Severus’s dick, his balls, then further down; he pushes two fingers inside again and Severus spreads his thighs again even as he hisses. It’s obviously uncomfortable, but he lets Harry do what he wants, welcomes it even. He closes his eyes and clenches his fists, but that’s all. Harry’s fingers find his own come and he pushes it further inside; Severus bites his lip, but he still doesn’t stop him. Harry pulls his fingers out and smiles down at Severus, who still won’t look at him.
“That was something,” Harry says.
A shrug.
“Wanna talk about it?”
“Fuck no.”
They’re going to have to; Harry wants to do this again, wants to make Severus acknowledge he wants it, too. He twirls a finger in the small pool of come he’s managed to wring out of Severus, draws a jagged line in it before realising what it also looks like. Oops.
“We should do this again,” he says.
Severus snorts. “I’m not that young, Potter.”
“Not right now; later.” He pauses. “Also, it’s Harry.”
“There’s no later. This,” he waves a hand above them, “is happenstance, nothing more.”
“I don’t think so. It’s too – look, I’ve had sex with strangers before, and it’s never been…”
“We’re not strangers, Potter.”
“Harry.”
At that, Severus finally opens his eyes. “I can’t give you what you want. I can’t give you that familiarity; you know I’m just going to leave.”
“Stay, then. It’s not complicated.”
“You are who you are, and I am what I am. Dead, among many other things.”
“Pretty sure you’re not.”
“You don’t want to be associated with a me who’s alive.”
“I named my son after you, you berk.”
“Your son… your children. Your entire life, you’d throw it all away because you’ve had a good fuck, because you want another fuck? And when you’ve had your fill, what then? You’ll keep that taint long after we’ve parted ways. They might think you’re unfit as a father; they might…”
Harry stops him with a finger over his mouth, waits until it stops moving to remove it. “You’re really a dramatic bastard; you know that, right?”
Severus’s lips twitch. “I may have heard this before. Perhaps.”
“I just… as you said, we’re not strangers. What’s the problem then? Do you have a wife and kids waiting for you at home? Do you even have a home somewhere?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” He rubs his throat, frowning a little. “I don’t stay long anywhere; I have no reason to.”
“What, then? What’s keeping you from staying here for a while, see how it goes?”
“Potter…”
Harry clears his throat, though he knows Severus is too stubborn to take the hint.
“You’re powerful. Do they all know how powerful you are? The Ministry, the Aurors, your friends… do they?”
“My close friends, yes. It’s not something I advertise.”
“Wiser not to.”
“I know. What’s that got to do with anything?”
“You let me feel it.”
“I doubt you’re going to run to the Minister and tattle on me. Also, it got me pretty good results, so…”
Severus looks away. “I’ve associated with powerful wizards before. I can’t say it’s ever ended well for me.”
“It has today, though, right?” Harry tugs on a strand of black hair. “Power turns you on, doesn't it?”
“It leads me to make unwise choices, and I’m not going to gamble all I’ve built just for…”
“Oh, shut up! Gamble all you’ve built? What is it you’ve built, then, since you’ve died?”
“I don’t need another master!” Severus’s voice breaks on the last word and he rolls aside to lean on his elbows, his hair hanging on either side of his head. “I had two. Never again.” His voice is hoarse but he pushes the words out anyway, like the stubborn bastard he is.
Harry reaches out to tuck some hair behind an ear. “Your voice… It’s really rough.”
“The scars might be a clue,” he grits out. Why he insists on full sentences is – well, it’s not a big mystery. Severus has always been too proud for his own good.
“Not just the scars.” Harry grins. “Did I make you scream too much?”
Severus flips him off before rubbing his throat again. “Strangled me.”
“Aw, just a little. You liked it.”
Severus doesn’t reply.
“Is it painful?”
That gets him a glare.
“Okay, okay. Let’s see…” Harry focuses his magic, wandlessly, wordlessly, and feels it surround Severus’s throat, seep into it. The faint sheen it gives off will disappear in a few minutes, but for now it looks like he’s put a collar on Severus, and it satisfies something deep in him. The dark eyes Severus pins him with are a bit too knowing, but he only smiles, bland as you please.
“The Dark Lord didn’t stand a chance,” Severus says, more easily now. “And I think Dumbledore would be scared of you, if he could see you now.”
“But you’re not.” He wiggles closer, looks at the scrapes on Severus’s back. He heals them with a pass of his hand, feeling his magic flow gently out and mend the abraded skin. It took him years to control it finely enough to do this and not use a blunt force that would put all Aurors around on alert. He’s glad he can show it off to someone who can appreciate it, appreciate the skill and the power and not be afraid. “You’re not scared, or awed, or anything like that; you don’t pretend. You let me see you. You know I won’t take and take, and never ask.”
“Do I?”
Harry rolls his eyes and prods Severus until he’s lying on his back again. “You do. You wouldn’t have stayed, if you didn’t.” He is skilled enough, experienced enough that Harry doesn’t doubt he’d have managed to escape, but he hadn’t. He hadn’t even tried to. “I wouldn’t have stopped you, if you’d left.”
Severus sighs. “I know.”
“So, will you stay?”
“I… You’ve seen my worst already; I don’t have anything left worth hiding.”
“It’s a good thing,” Harry says. “I promise.”
“Is it?” Severus’s fingertips gently touch Harry’s lips; his eyes are on Harry’s mouth.
“Yeah,” Harry answers. “Yeah, I think it is.”
They kiss at last, slow and languid; they have all the time in the world.
“There’s a huge bathtub, big enough for two; want to give it a try?”
Severus tilts his head, like he’s thinking about it. Probably thinking about more than the bathtub, but Harry’s fairly certain of what he’ll say. Severus’s magic is weaving in and around his, like he’s letting it speak for him. It’s soothing, familiar. Welcome.
Harry pokes him with a finger. “The bed’s really big too. And I have lots of food in the larder.”
“You owe me a pair of good boots; mine are probably lost to the tide by now.”
Harry laughs and pulls Severus along as he stands up, leading him to the bathroom and, he hopes, a bed that won’t feel so empty now. A life that won’t feel so empty, now.