Work Text:
Midsummer and the heat was relentless. He shut himself in the house and sweated through his shirt and aimed cooling charms at himself while he waited for the sun to set. Horrid, vampire of a man. Shunner of light, blood sucker, taker of souls. He’d been suspected of being one once, as a shaper of young minds. Not such a stretch to imagine why.
In the kitchen he opened the ice box, pushed his face inside and groaned. Sweat gathered at the hollow at the base of his throat and dripped down his chest.
Fucking summer.
Useless season.
There had been about a year there when he couldn’t open a paper without his face being plastered all over it and sometime in the middle of all that he’d sold his father’s house and bought a plot of land that came with an old farmer’s cottage and space to grow enough ingredients and keep enough creatures to be virtually self-reliant.
It was unplottable, and almost no-one knew he was here.
Which was why when he felt his wards shimmer, he pulled his head out of the freezer and grabbed his wand.
How does one as accustomed as he to the path of fire and damnation say no to it when it comes knocking at his door? What if you liked the fire? What if it had eyes that sparkled green? What if, despite everything you could not take your eyes off its beauty? What if you loved it?
He tried to open his mouth so that word would come out, that pesky little word, two letters, one syllable.
“Harry,” he gasped out instead. He had tried to shape the word into a warning but to his ears it only sounded like benediction.
He pushed a glass of water across the table. “How the fuck did you find me?”
“Don’t be stupid.”
Curse the boy and fuck all Potters forever.
“She cheated on me.”
“Good for her.”
“And then she left me.”
“As she should.”
“For Draco Malfoy … Severus, I swear, if you laugh.”
“It sounds like you got everything you deserved.”
“For some reason I thought you might not be such a prick about all this. You know I didn’t do it all on my own. You were in fact there.”
“I wasn’t married,” he said evenly.
“Technicality.” He traced a trail through the condensation on his glass. “Hermione says you’ve been publishing. Apparently you’re a big deal.”
Severus curled his top lip. “I always have been.”
“I almost forgot what you were like. Why no-one likes you. I think she chose him to get to me.”
“Not everything’s about you.”
“Since when,” Potter shot back.
Against his will he could feel a sheet of ice sluice away from his heart. A bead of sweat dripped down his nose and the clock on the wall ticked.
“You’re still beautiful.” The boy blinked at him owlishly from behind his glasses, his mouth a hopeful o. “I was hoping you’d got ugly,” he added.
Severus wondered what he had done. To keep this beautiful boy in his life. He’d never done anything good ever, yet here he was. He could have dreamt a thousand dreams and still have never come up with something he would covet as much. Oh, the ways he’d wanted that boy. Not sweet at all, not gentle, not loving but carnal and feral and greedy. Wrong.
Tick, agreed the clock accusingly.
“Why are you here, Potter?”
The boy — man now — appeared not to hear him. “You know, I tried sleeping with other men,” he mused and Severus tried not to clench his jaw. “Thought it might be the same.”
Severus swiped their empty glasses for something to do with all his twitchy restless energy and clattered them into the sink. “There’s no reality in which I would want to hear about other men fucking you, boy,” he growled. “Spare me that at least.”
“Sometimes I fucked them.”
“Potter.”
“It used to make you hard when I was smart to you.”
“And do you imagine I was neutered in the time I’ve seen you last? Potter, shut up.” He would give anything for him not to look at him like that. He would open his veins and bleed out onto the flagstones. “How are the children?” he barked.
“You know how kids are. Famously resilient. They despise me of course. Maybe when they’re older they’ll—” he stopped and looked at his hands. A short huff of laughter, far more cynical than his younger version would have managed. “Of course, I wouldn’t have. Sometimes I’m sorry I didn’t choose you. But then. The children.”
“Yes.”
“My mother didn’t choose you either, why do you think that was?”
His lip twitched. Little bastard. That was the thing about letting someone in. Letting them see you. They’d always know how to fuck you.
“Careful that you do not push me too far, Harry.”
His brave, brave boy. Never backed down in his life. Wouldn’t start now. “Well?”
“You know why,” he said quietly.
“Because you’re bad and she was good.”
“Yes.”
Harry stood and Severus backed away instinctively. Don’t, he thought. Stay away. I bite.
“I don’t think I’m good like her.”
“No, you are.”
“I think it’s clear I’m not.”
“You’re a good boy, Harry. Now fuck off home like a good boy.”
“Would a good boy do this?”
Severus gritted his teeth and gripped the counter. Lord save him from boys with pretty green eyes and poor judgement.
“You used to like it when I did this.” Severus sucked in air through his teeth. It shouldn’t be so easy to make him hard. He was a man well into his fifties. “I was so young, wasn’t I? Barely even a man and on my knees for you. My small mouth choking on you and pretending I was so grown up. And you were a man with a man’s needs. A man’s cock. God, I wanted to be yours so badly. I wanted to throw myself at you and cut myself open on you.”
Severus pushed his hand away roughly. “So that’s why you’re here then. You want an apology, is that it?”
“An apology? No, that’s not what I want from you.”
“What then?”
“If I were ugly would you not want me anymore?”
He huffed out a laugh. “Would that it were that easy boy, I would disfigure you myself.”
“I set my life on fire because of how you love me. And I think you’ve said it out loud to me maybe twice.”
“I never loved you, I was obligated to you.”
“You can’t imagine I still believe that.”
“What do you want?”
“What do you?”
“What I always want.” To possess you, utterly. “To take you to bed.”
“Then do it.”
Remember that word, Snape, he reminded himself. It’s small and easy to say - trips off the tongue. Even infants do it. Go on, you’ve practiced.
“Not in the fucking kitchen,” he growled then he took him upstairs.
“Because of you,” he reminded him as he worked on the buttons of his cuffs, “I get to add home-wrecker to my list of public sobriquets. Murderer, Death Eater, spy. Home-wrecker.”
“They really went for you.”
“I fucked the chosen one while his wife was at home looking after his kids, it was to be expected. Turn over.”
“You don’t want to see my face?”
“No, I want you on your knees.”
He fingered him roughly with cheap off the shelf supermarket lube. Harry scowled the whole time and when Severus entered him there were tears wet on his cheeks.
“You’re a terrible lay,” Harry told him. “I’m not even hard.”
“You’re a spoilt little cunt,” he spat back.
Severus thought about what he always thought about when he was inside Harry Potter; there you go fucking Lily Evan’s kid again. You fucking monster. Then again, he hadn’t had sex in years and Harry felt like very heaven. Men would pay for him. Severus did in fact pay for him, just not with Sickles and Knuts.
“Pathetic old prick, still lusting after me after all these years. You could be my father you fucking pervert.” Apparently they were on the same page there.
“Mind me, boy.” One of the main things about Potter was that he’d always had a smart fucking mouth.
“Why? Why should I be afraid of you? I’m not afraid of you, I’ve never been afr—”
Oh, how it felt good to yank him back hard by the hair and hear his little sharp cry of surprise and pain. It felt better than the sex did, really. The other thing about Potter was that he irritated the living shit out of him. He was a fucking expert at that. His fingertips cut into Potter’s windpipe when he spoke softly into his ear. “I know exactly how hard to press to cut off oxygen to your brain, understand? I’ve warned you to mind me twice now. What do you think happens to fowl little boys who can’t keep their mouths shut? You think I won’t hurt you, Harry? How many ways do you suppose a man like me has of disposing of a body without raising suspicion?” Harry whimpered sweetly though they both knew the only way he was hurting that boy was with a lobotomy. “After all, who would miss a worthless orphan slut like you? The only time you are really of any use is when you’re getting pumped full of my seed. No wonder your wife left you. Now tell me,” he tongued the sworl of his ear and whispered into it darkly, “are you hard now, boy?”
He was lucky really, that he had his voice; he’d never get laid otherwise. Certainly no one was sleeping with him because of his scrawny white body or his fucking nose.
Potter sucked air through his nose then his head moved up and down as much as it could within the confines of Severus’s hands. “Yes,” he squeaked.
“Yes, sir.”
“Yes, sir. I’m so hard for you, sir. I love you, sir.”
He pushed him to the bed roughly. “Pathetic little bitch. Now lie there quietly while I fuck you.”
Now asking Potter to be quiet while he was getting fucked was a bit like asking him to mind his own business any other time and he hadn’t got any better at it in the years preceding but he was docile and minded his manners nicely. Every now and then he would try and touch himself and Severus would growl and slap his hand away and soon Potter was a writhing, panting mess of a thing underneath him. The room smelled of sex. The air was thick and heavy and still and sweat dripped from his brow onto Harry’s back.
“Don’t you dare come, boy, I’m warning you.”
God, he shouldn’t do this any more. He knew better. It wasn’t good for either of them.
“Can I see you, sir? Please — please just let me—“
“No.”
“Fuck you then. I fucking loathe you.”
“I loathe you more than I loathed your useless shit of a father. And that’s saying something.”
“Pity you want me so bad. Sir.”
Snape groaned; “God help me, I do.”
“Haven’t I been so good?”
“You have,” he said. “You’re my good boy.” And by god, he took care of his boy when he needed it. That was a habit he never intended to break. He would take just one taste of his lips. Just one. “Turn around. Quick. Before I change my mind.”
When they came together again it was urgent and hard and desperate and he knew it was a mistake right away. Invariably, unsurprisingly, the universe was contained in the boy’s eyes and a thousand sonnets in the sweetness of his lips. Soon the whole world dissolved away and the only thing that existed was Harry’s body over his knees and those fathomless green eyes. Oh fuck, Harry. Harry, Harry, Harry and he was saying it out loud and he loved him loved him loved him. And in that moment he was spilling over with love and he tried to hold it back, he tried tried tried but Harry cried out into his mouth and spilled warm into the space between them and Severus, blinded by a white bolt of ecstasy, whimpered those words into his skin where they would surely linger.
Bugger, he thought after as he stroked the soft, dewy hair from his still lovely face. Wasn’t supposed to go that way. Harry’s eyes fluttered closed and his cherub mouth turned upwards and it made Severus’s chest hurt.
“Sleep, angel,” he said softly. “Then I’m going to boot you out and see about fixing my wards.”
Harry’s mouth curled itself ever upwards. “I’ll probably move in,” he slurred sleepily. “And cook you meals and have your babies and I’ll leave mess everywhere but you’ll fuck me in our bed at night and when you’re having a bad day I’ll suck you off in the shower. Or even when you’re not.”
Severus lip twitched but he definitely did not smile. “You’re a terrible cook.”
Harry yawned. “Oh well, you’ll have to cook for me then. Fatten me up. Spoil me and give me everything I want. I’ll be your princess and you can show me off at parties.”
“I don’t go to parties.”
“You’ll have to start.”
“Later, we will talk about why none of this can happen while I’m shoving you unceremoniously out the door.”
“Shh, sleeping.”
He allowed himself one, exactly one, smile and a single kiss to the boy’s temple.
He could fix the boy some dinner, that surely couldn’t hurt. He had that thin, hungry sort of look he’d had when he was a child.
And while he cooked, he would construct an inscrutable, multi-point defence as to any argument Potter would pose vis a vis cohabitation. There was sweet summer fruit in his orchard that was ready to be picked and could be sliced for dessert and eaten with their hands with the windows open to the cool evening air. Oddly, something about having someone to clean up after sounded appealing. Must be the heat messing with his mind.