Substitute [Marauder Big Bang]

Title: Substitute
Author:

starstruck1986
Artists:

tortugax
Pairing(s): Remus/Severus, secondary Remus/Sirius, James/Lily, imagined Lily/Severus.
Rating and Warnings: NC-17, coarse language, slash, angst, mentions of torture, minor character death, a slightly dark!Severus.
Summary: Two men lost in memories they cannot fight find the perfect substitute in each other, but even their solace is tainted.
Word Count:~20,825
Notes: With huge thanks to my betas, S and K -your handholding made my first big bang so much easier!
Disclaimer: Harry Potter and all characters, places, objects, ideas, and related material are the property of JK Rowling and her various publishing entities. Neither the author, the artists, nor the

marauderbigbangare in any way making a monetary profit from this posting.

Substitute

With the wind rattling the windowpanes, and the rain sloshing them with a continual pattering rhythm, darkness crept into every corner of the tiny bedroom. Remus found himself even breathing quietly, flicking his eyes between the minute rise and fall of his own chest and the rumble of the weather beyond the curtains.

He swallowed, letting the absurdity of the situation sweep him up. Remus was worried by his own nudity, as he lay in sheets which, considering their hurried actions the night before, could have done with a strong soak in the wash. They smelt foreign, though not unwelcoming. He looked at the yellowing ceiling and wondered if he should say something.

Lying next to him was the most unlikely bedfellow he could ever have imagined. Long, painfully thin, his hair as lank as ever and as dark as night, was Severus Snape, who seemed to be existing in the same shroud of quietness that Remus himself had adopted. Together they lay in silence, though Remus didn't know if Severus was paying any attention at all to the harsh weather beyond the confines of the house like he was, simply for something to think about.

As it happened, Severus was. He had grown up in the North and was used to the rough weather, though it never stopped him from appreciating it. He turned his head on the pillow and looked out at the lashing rain. Next to him he heard the steady and peaceful drawing of breath from Remus, who somehow knew to be quiet, knew to keep his words to himself and not to ruin the subdued little bubble they had become submerged in.

Severus' fingers had begun to ache from their knotted position. Although Remus had made that move, the one of reaching across the mattress and picking up his hand, it made Severus uncomfortable; yet, the inclination to free up his bones, to wriggle life back into them, was absent.

He knew this was largely due to the fact that his inclination to do anything -or more succinctly everything- had deserted him. Lying there holding hands with a werewolf was far more satisfactory than the thought of moving his arm to prevent the contact. With a slight sniff, Severus wondered when he had become so idle. The pressure on his hand was tight and constant, and not for the first time he questioned quite what the wizard lying next to him was taking from their company.

Shifting slightly, Severus felt an ache rippling along his hamstrings from the new and challenging exercise they had been subjected to the evening before. It took a deep breath to force himself to peruse the memories, to see Remus' red face again, drum up the sexual moans and calls of his name which had filled his bedroom as they'd simply fucked out the tension which thrummed through both of their bodies.

Severus was at odds, however, to decide on the reason as to quite why his bed was still occupied. Dawn had come and gone with very little in the way of revelation, bringing nothing new except the aches in his body from his first experience of sleeping with a member of the same sex. Fighting hard to keep a blush from his face, Severus swallowed on his dry throat and turned his attention back to the rain.

Remus watched the shift of his head and the oily crease of his hair on the pillow. Not for the first time since six the evening before, a question regarding Severus' personal hygiene was on the tip of his tongue. Biting down hard on the wet muscle, Remus forced it away. His scars were horrific enough and Severus had barely even looked twice at them, and the least Remus felt he could do was neglect to mention the physical traits of the wizard that he found displeasing in return.

The night before was a disconcerting blur to him, and as he sifted through the memories he found himself unable to recount the moments between leaving the pub and arriving back at the place which Severus had called Spinner's End. He remembered the sex -of course he remembered that- but falling asleep was a similar whir in his mind of colour and quiet. Overriding everything was an increasingly curious tide of questions, which threatened to burst out of him. As far as he knew, Severus was straight, and therefore to have his advances not only accepted, but acted upon, had surprised him. Lying in the man's bed, in total silence, did not seem like the opportune moment to ask, however.

Still staring at the window, Severus wondered if it would be polite to request that the werewolf leave. He had things to be getting on with, books to study and household duties to attend to. He was not yet used to living alone, his mother only having been dead for five months. The thought of her sent a harsh pang through his gut which he immediately chased away. The curtains suddenly caught his eye and a snarl sprung to his lips.

The bedroom had been his since he was old enough for an adult-sized bed. He had always loathed the curtains.

August 31st, 1971

The house was too quiet as Severus placed another of his new textbooks on the bottom of his brand new trunk. He tried not to think about the argument their expense had caused, or the angry crashes that followed. Softly he smoothed his fingers over the top of one of them, letting the pads trail over the gilt lettering. He had already read it from cover to cover. He placed it next to the others and reached for the clothes his mother had left out for him.

His stomach gave a nervous wobble as he thumbed the plain black robe, as of yet without house insignia, though his mother had made several comments about Slytherin, and her expectations. Licking his lips, Severus considered the houses again. Other than Slytherin, his only real option seemed to be Ravenclaw, where his intelligence might, for the first time in his life, allow him to shine.

Hufflepuff is for people who only have their loyalty and Gryffindor... not brave enough for Gryffindor.

Blinking the thoughts away, he carefully folded the spare robe and set it down as though it was gold on top of his books. Knowing how odd he must look, Severus bent over the wooden box and shoved his face into it: the scents of freshly crafted wood, new books and new clothes wafted up to him, causing a smile to blossom onto his face. It was all new, and it was all his, and what was more, his father couldn't sell it, because the money had come from Severus' grandparents for his schooling.

Reaching for the selection of freshly washed pants, Severus laid them meticulously on top of the robes, knowing that nobody would care if his trunk was perfect or a mess, other than himself. Severus had quickly learnt that if anybody was going to care about him, it would have to be himself.

Or Lily.

The thought of her sent his smile wider as warmth flared in his belly. She would probably be packing her trunk at that moment, just like him, and Severus, though he was only eleven, felt the call of destiny just beyond the window. Glancing up he saw the horrible curtains, drab and heavy with dust.

It made him consider the rest of the room, which he tried not to do very often as it only made him hate it just that little bit more. The walls were bare, painted a horrible brown colour, which his mother had thought a good idea on moving in. The carpet was thin and overall there was nothing in the room he would be sorry to say goodbye to.

In fact, if he could have -and he had asked- he would have made his mother take him down to London on that very day, rather than travelling on the morning of the train by Floo to the city, and then travelling across it. The thought of missing the train made him anxious.

He couldn't miss it; he couldn't miss his one and only chance to escape the tiny, badly decorated room, and the barely larger, even more poorly decorated house.

A door suddenly slammed below him and he jumped, looking wildly around at all of the things he still had spread out on the bed, yet to be packed. He had hoped to complete his packing before his father returned home, so that he might not ruin any of his precious new belongings.

Hastily, Severus threw everything he could on top of the perfectly packed trunk, and slammed the lid shut. There were feet thudding clumsily along the hallway below him, and they fell in time to his thudding heart. Looking at his wand on the dresser, Severus wished he could lock the trunk with it to protect his possessions. He also wished he could lock the bedroom door, to protect himself.

A shiver ran through Severus' body as he jerked out of the memory. As hard as he could, he fought to keep the recollections of that last night at home locked up in his mind, to not leave them out any longer for perusal when another shared his bed. He shivered hard again, and that time, as though it knew it was being remembered, his right arm gave a low throb. Hissing slightly, he jumped when he looked up and met Remus' eye.

One light eyebrow rose slightly, as if asking him what was wrong. Severus shook his head, unwilling to speak and offer any insight into why he was shuddering in a pleasantly warm bed. Remus didn't ask again, and instead looked back up at the ceiling.

Remus kept quiet, acknowledging the fact that Severus appeared to be every bit as secretive in his adult life as he had been at Hogwarts. Their hands were still knotted together between their bodies and Remus couldn't help the light squeeze he gave the slender bones wrapped with his own. There was no response from Severus. Further unable to help his quick glance to the right, Remus looked at the pale, narrow face staring blankly at the walls. Dark eyes were impenetrable, meaning that they were so very unlike the first time he had ever seen them.

September 1st, 1971

“Gryffindor!”

Remus was too nervous to feel comforted by the hat's proclamation, but he was happy that his fingers had stopped shaking as he set the old, patched fate-decider down on the stool he'd vacated, and took his first steps to the right, to his future. However, the first real inklings of pleasure crept into his veins as he thought how his Dad would be pleased at his acceptance into Gryffindor, the house he himself had been in whilst at Hogwarts.

Making his way quietly to the table, Remus saw a dark-haired boy shift up for him, and a pretty girl with long red hair on the opposite side to them smiled.

“Hello,” the boy said, almost nervously. “I'm Sirius. Who are you?”

His blunt phrasing startled Remus, but he recovered himself to answer with his name and a light smile. He looked over the wood to the girl and opened his lips to ask, but she beat him to it.

“I'm Lily,” she held out her hand politely. “It's nice to meet you.”

“Pettigrew, Peter!” the elderly Deputy Head's voice called shrilly over the assembled students, and Remus watched thoughtfully as a plump, blond boy stepped forward and placed the hat on his head.
“Hufflepuff,” Sirius predicted quietly from behind him.

Remus ignored him, and caught the green eyes of Lily, who appeared to be doing the same. From the look on her face, it didn't appear that she thought much of the regal boy, who sat there straight-backed and glossy haired, looking bored with everything.

“Gryffindor!” the hat cried. Remus met his hands together politely, resisting the urge to turn and see whether Sirius had a surprised look on his face.

Suddenly, the hall felt very large and very busy, and Remus shrunk in the middle of them. The hat called forward its next sortee and he focussed on regulating his breathing. The people that surrounded him, from the haughty boy sitting next to him on the bench to the older, scarier looking Slytherins a few tables over, were people -peers, even- that he would have to conceal his secret from. Dumbledore had impressed upon him the importance of his care, and though he was party to some of the measures that had made his attendance at Hogwarts possible, Remus felt he had only scraped the surface of the strings pulled to allow him to sit there in the hallowed hall, and feel uncontrollably small.

“Potter, James,” the deputy continued. A boy with madly messy black hair strolled forward, a lazy grin on his lips to match the low ride of his glasses on his straight nose. Remus immediately felt a pang of jealousy in his gut and frowned slightly. The hat barely even touched James Potter's head before he was decided as Gryffindor, and the smug smile widened as he removed it and headed for their table.

“Hello again, then,” James raised his eyebrows in Sirius' direction. “What's your mum going to say about you being here, then?”
“I don't care,” Sirius shrugged nonchalantly, smoothing his fingertips over the polished wood in a way which told Remus that, actually, Sirius cared very much about his mother's reaction.
“And you are?” James suddenly demanded of him, and Remus stuttered over his own breath.
“Remus,” he murmured shyly.
“Where are you from?” James tilted his head. “I don't recognise your accent.”
“Oh... sort of... Gloucestershire way... you wouldn't know it...”
“That's why you sound all farmer, then,” James laughed.

Remus went red. He had never really questioned his accent before.

“I think you sound lovely,” Lily said loudly, causing all four of the boys to look at her, and unlike Remus, she did not blush at their attention. “I'm from near Manchester and I love it when boys sound like where they're from.”

James, who Remus thought sounded generically British, immediately looked put out.

“Snape, Severus,” the voice rang out, and Remus noticed how Lily's head jerked up so sharply that she must have hurt her neck. He noticed that her fingers curled into tight fists and the forefinger and middle fingers of each were crossed, as if wishing on something.
“Slytherin's welcome to him, creepy git,” James said, none too quietly, and Lily threw him a murderous look.

Remus turned to watch on the stage at the boy who had divided their table so quickly. He saw nothing special -in fact, Severus Snape looked to be ridiculously thin and pale, with badly cut shoulder-length hair. His face was torn up in concentration as the hat clearly spoke to him within his mind.

“Slytherin!”
“Oh, no,” Lily's words were an almost silent breath, but Remus heard them, and he turned back to her to see her sad face.
“Are you friends?” he asked perceptively. “Did you want to be in the same house?”

Lily didn't answer him, choosing instead to try and make eye contact with the new Slytherin as he made his way from the stage. A floating candle caught Severus Snape's face and Remus still found nothing remarkable, except perhaps his eyes. They were impossibly black, cold looking, Remus thought, but at that moment there was no denying the emotion behind them. They fixed on the girl with the long, red plait hanging over her shoulder, and gave the boy a look of desperation.

In a flash, however, the emotion vanished, and narrow shoulders broadened as much as they possibly could; the boy continued on his way to meet his new housemates. Lily slumped in her seat, looking miserable, and Remus watched her throughout the rest of the sorting, and dinner, where she never managed to look any happier.

Remus found himself absently smiling at the recollection of his first night at Hogwarts. Everything had seemed so large, so impressive. It all glittered and shone, including Sirius' hair, and was perfect. Remus knew that he hadn't thought Sirius so then, but he couldn't have predicted then that the boy would become his lover.

Licking his lips, he wondered how they had ever ended up together. That first night, Sirius had acted so pompously with James as they had all undressed for the first night of the next seven years together, Remus was considering asking to be re-sorted and choosing, when the hat offered again, to go into Ravenclaw.

They were nothing like the reserved man in the bed next to him. Not for the first time, Remus' face grew hot thinking of the obscenity that would be flying from Sirius' mouth if he could see the pair of them. As ever, the flames were doused by the big wall of truth which reared in front of him, a wall that looked suspiciously like the outer wall of Azkaban, as he had always imagined it.

An inventive mind had always been a part of Remus' curse, to some extent. He saw the wall again as he lay there, dark with slimy moss and the stone beaten by the harsh salty air of the North Sea. The thought of the man he loved, behind it, feeding the Dementors, made him shudder. It only drove him to be further at odds with himself; he loathed the thought of Sirius alone, depressed, maybe even mad -who knew? And yet, the man, his lover, his everything, had supposedly murdered twelve muggles and decimated Peter to nothing.

Remus had given up trying to guess the truth. He was intelligent enough to know that it would only hurt him when he found it. All he could do was to wait, and to hope, even if it seemed hard to come by.

During his musing, Remus did not notice that he was under surveillance. Severus watched him with an interested expression, but it was not for any great wondering what the werewolf might be thinking about. No, Severus watched because the distant facial features, the slight fogginess of the man's eyes, reminded him of Lily. It reminded him of how she looked when he talked, when she wasn't really listening, and her mind was instead far away. But Lily was never rude enough to say as much -and thus the look gave her away when she wanted to listen, and wanted to think at the same time.

November, 1973

Severus idly watched as Lily's quill flew across the page. Her eyes were down-turned to her parchment, yet they were not focussed. Wetting his lips, Severus turned a page in his book for good measure, to at least give the outward appearance of working.

It was unlike him to slack, and he knew it, but that day, with the weather so miserable outside the window, and Lily so radiant in front of it, had him uneasy. Her hair was for once loose, falling in an auburn wave over her shoulders, and the feather of her quill caught on it as she feverishly wrote. Severus had already completed the History of Magic essay but she had refused to let him help her.

“Sev?” her voice startled him, and his first thought was to look busy.
“Mm?”
“Why are you staring at me?”
“I'm not,” he inwardly cursed the blush rising in his cheeks.

She stared at him, a smile curving up her lips, and her eyebrows rose in question. “Looks like you are.”
“I'm not,” he protested.
“It's... if you are, then that's alright,” she blushed herself then, dropping her eyes and taking up her essay again.

Severus fought for breath in the dry air of the library. Suddenly the books were his enemy, sapping the moisture from the oxygen he needed to keep his composure, and he hated them.

“But it puts me off a bit,” she continued, and her tongue, pink and glistening, darted out to sit in the corner of her mouth. He had seen her make the move so many times that he had grown used to thinking nothing of it; but that day it sent tingles down into the pit of his belly. “You're being weird today,” she laughed suddenly, throwing down her quill. “What's the matter?”

“Nothing,” Severus blinked quickly and looked down at his parchment. “I... I'm fine.”
“Then why are you staring and being all... clingy?”
“I'm not,” he looked at her in horror. “I'm sorry.”
“There's nothing to be sorry about,” she shook her head. “It's just unusual for you... you're Sev, and you're all strong and.... you.”

“Does that... do you want me to stop? Because I will,” Severus looked at her, worried, scared rigid that she might tell him that she didn't want to be friends any more, that she was going to take up with Potter and his group of fools.
“No,” she huffed, exasperated. “Sev...”

He barely held in his gasp as her hand found his right knee beneath the library table. It was gentle and warm, seeping through the fabric of his baggy robe -an overly large robe that Severus suddenly found himself extraordinarily glad of as he felt his body respond to her touch. He was only thirteen, but he knew what it meant, and he knew he enjoyed what happened when his cock stiffened. It twitched in his pants, and all of a sudden he was so caught up in the sensation of it throbbing between his legs and her hand on his knee, that he completely forgot that she had been speaking to him.

“You know that you're my best friend,” she smiled warmly, jerking him out of the happy stupor he'd fallen in to. It threatened to rise again when she reached up and picked some fluff from his shoulder, and the back of her hand brushed against his jawline. “And always will be.”

His sexual tension slipped away and Severus managed a smile for her on hearing the words which he craved to hear the most. The withdrawal of her hand was a far greater loss than it ever should have been, and Severus grew dark inside, wondering how long it would be before 'friend' was not enough, and 'love' became what he craved to hear.

Lily sighed and put away her essay, before pulling out what looked to be the notes she'd taken during their lessons. She set down a fresh piece of parchment and set to copying them out.

“What are you doing?” Severus frowned, unable to see her logic in needing two sets of notes. “There are spells for that, you know?”
“Oh, I know, but I'm not very good at them yet, and these are for Remus.”
“Lupin?” Severus clarified, jealousy eviscerating any remnants of randy ambience still floating in his body. “Why can't his friends take his notes when he's off faking being sick?”
“He's not faking, Sev,” she frowned. “He's really ill. And he's nice, so don't be mean, alright?”

Severus didn't want to argue with her, but he folded his arms over his chest. “I can't see why Potter and Black can't do it, I mean, it's not like he's your responsibility.”
“Would you trust anything those idiots had written down?” Lily laughed. “Do you really blame Remus for asking someone else?”
“No,” Severus had to concede, and picked up his wand. “Stop, Lils.”

She obeyed and withdrew her hand, and Severus pointed his wand at the parchment. It immediately filled with an exact copy of Lily's neat script, and he continued until everything had been copied. Her face, when he looked up at it, was openly awed, and her smile warped into a beam as she met his eye.

“You're a genius,” she threw her hands up. “My clever, wonderful best friend.”

Her words lit him up inside, and, as he opened his Herbology textbook, Severus felt better than he had all week.

A crack of thunder outside made Severus jerk humiliatingly in the bed, and he didn't miss the slight snort of laughter Remus let out. Taking a deep breath, he tried to shake off the feeling of Lily's hand touching his leg, which was maddeningly still present in the skin and bone.

The more he considered it, the stronger it grew, and it quickly became unbearable, that phantom touch which he would never, ever feel again. Desperate, Severus threw his leg out to the side so that it crashed hard into Remus', and though it was all wrong, his skin touching scratchy hair and too much muscle and none of the smoothness he desired, the phantom touch was no longer phantom. Remus was warm, and that was enough.

Remus bit into his lip as the touch jostled him, and he felt the hairs of Severus' leg mingle with his own. Light would mingle with dark, as it had done once before, and his throat thickened. Sirius had long legs, and the knees were not knobbly, only strong, like his thighs. His feet were always hot; warm enough to heat Remus when he was frozen.

Seized by confusion, Remus didn't know what Severus expected of him, whether he wanted more touch. The other wizard's movement had stirred the sheets, and Remus smelt Severus then. The mixture of tea and herbs settled oddly in his nostrils. It made his stomach lurch as it drove away the memory he so carefully clung to -of Sirius, and his scent.

March, 1974

Sitting on his bed, watching James play-wrestle Peter around the dormitory, Remus grinned and, all over again, couldn't believe his luck. The boys whom he had disliked at first, who played rough and teased and endlessly jibed, had become his friends, and Remus had never had friends before. The secret keeping part had gone awry, and it shamed him to admit it.

A crackle of excess horror travelled down his spine and he wondered why they had all not run screaming. There was, sometimes, in the glint of his watery eyes, something which told Remus that Peter of the three of them trusted him the least. But James and Sirius, as roguish and over-confident as they were, had sat with serious faces and listened, probably for the first time in their lives, and then they had stayed.

It was perfect. Sirius had even begun sneaking out to him on the morning after the full moon to check he had transformed back properly. The four of them formed a 'merry band of trouble', as one of their teachers had put it, and Remus had never felt more included, or more appreciated, in his entire life. Peter squawked for mercy and James crowed triumphantly, and Remus laughed at their resultant tussle.

However, they both jumped when the dormitory door burst open and hit the wall with a resounding bang. Sirius' face was a mask of thunder, and his eyes were flashing dangerously in the candlelight.

“What now?” James picked himself up off the floor.
“Oh, who do you think?” Sirius snarled, reaching up to loosen the neck of his robes, half-strangling himself in the process.
“Maybe Prince Regulus?” Peter offered, though he stayed well away from Sirius and his infamous Black temper.
“Who fucking else?!” Sirius erupted, lobbing his bag onto his bed and kicking the base for good measure. “Bloody Slytherin knob can't keep his nose in his own business long enough to let me live my life!”

The three boys sat in silence, waiting for Sirius to continue his tirade. Remus watched the harsh rise and fall of his chest and wondered if the others saw the true distress in his expression.

“I mean she's... I'll get another howler in the morning, all because he saw me talking to someone with Muggle blood... I mean... come on! It's not...” frustrated, Sirius broke off and closed his eyes, and then began to tear at his school robes desperately, as though they were a painful burden.

Remus couldn't take his eyes from the slim frame that appeared, covered in olive-toned skin to offset glossy black hair perfectly.

“I hate them,” Sirius threw contemptuously from the depths of his t-shirt, which was borrowed from Remus due to the fact that Walburga Black had never allowed her sons to dress in Muggle clothing for longer than necessary. It was old, and slightly holey along one seam, but Sirius worked it like he worked everything else, even though the muscles of his arms cut into the tight sleeves. Long legs were hastily stuffed into brown corduroys and then Sirius reached up and scrubbed at his hair.

When his hands pulled away, Remus thought he saw moisture in Sirius' grey eyes.

“Stop whinging,” James said finally, throwing himself on his bed. “I know he's a brat but he's your little brother. Aren't they supposed to be?”
“You haven't got a clue,” Sirius whirled to face him. “None of you. None of you know what it's like to have someone reporting your every little move back home to Mummy.”

His voice choked slightly on the last word, and, alarmed, Remus sat up straight, prepared to talk it through with him rationally. However, he was too late, and the dorm door clattered shut again as Sirius left.

“Well done,” Remus muttered sarcastically, as he eased off the bed to follow when James made no effort to move.
“He's such a bloody queen,” James protested.

Remus didn't wait to hear the rest of it as he headed for the stairs. He didn't have to go far.

Sirius was only two revolutions below on the twisting staircase, and Remus came to a halt as he took in the painful sight. The tall boy had his head bowed and his face in his hands, and there was definite sniffling. Sirius Black, so regal, so proud and strong, was crying.

“Sirius?” Remus asked softly, trying not to startle him into running again.

His friend turned, and peeked through his fingers. Remus saw wet, reddened skin, and was immediately struck by the beauty in Sirius' face. Following that revelation, he was also hit by the absurdity of his thought -boys didn't find other boys beautiful.

“I'm fine,” Sirius lied, sniffing hard and wiping his face. “Please don't...”
“Tell the others?” Remus stepped down the last two stairs separating them. “I'm too good at keeping secrets for my own good.”
“We still found you out,” Sirius whispered, and Remus blushed.
“True.”

Moving without really considering his actions, Remus reached and put his arms around Sirius' torso, happily sliding into comforting mode. It surprised him when Sirius did not push him away, and seemed to relish the offer.

Holding him close felt far more pleasurable than Remus had thought it might -not that he had ever thought about it before- and the smell of Sirius' skin and hair rose into his nostrils. There was a rich aroma of coffee, like the scent that wafted from the staff table at breakfast, and something sweeter. Not daring to sniff harder lest Sirius notice his interest, Remus contented himself with the coffee. Sirius was warm against him and some of the wetness on his face transferred onto Remus' neck. He wondered why he enjoyed it.

The coffee was rife in his nose and Remus shuddered. It was both unavoidable and unnoticeable, and he felt Severus' dark eyes on him in question. Trying to bridge the tension, Remus dragged his hand out from beneath the warm duvet and pinched at the bridge of his nose, closing his eyes. The move did nothing, and it certainly didn't drive Sirius' mouthwatering aroma out of his senses, although he did feel better sheltered beneath the shadow of his hand.

Severus watched him silently, wondering what had flickered through the man's mind to make him hide. He knew that Remus was hiding, purely because Severus had spent so much time hiding himself. He let out a tiny sigh and watched it lift the fine hairs which trailed down onto Remus' shoulder. The hair was longer than he had ever known it at Hogwarts. It rather suited the werewolf, he decided. But the pale skin, which was littered with vicious scratches, did not suit. It was enough to make any man wince. Severus merely looked away. Lily had always cared for Remus, they had been firm friends. The thought that, perhaps, her gentle hands might have healed those scratches immediately after they were inflicted made him nauseous. Lily had never touched his bare skin beyond his hands.

He was madly envious.

July, 1976

Severus sighed and closed the book, running his thumb along the spine. The leather encased pages were banned within the walls of the Hogwarts library. It had probably never even so much as graced a shelf. The copy was his own, passed down from his Mother's father. It was falling apart, and the pages were spotted with age and use. It was the book which enabled him to beat Potter and Black in every Potions lesson. Looking around on the bed, his other favourites were spread out. It was so boring and lonely without Lily to see every day that he had taken to reading his old books again, the books about Dark Magic, books his teachers would cringe to see him read.

A satisfied sneer twisted his lips and Severus fell back on the bed with one hand cradling the base of his skull. The ceiling of his room was yellowed and old, not repainted from when his parents had been given the house by the council. The bed beneath his back was uncomfortable, but at least he wasn't too tall for it just yet. Idly he reached down and scratched at his stomach, eyes trailing to the clock. It had been three hours since he'd last been out, lingering in the places he thought Lily might be.

Severus didn't care that hanging around to see her made him look sad. That, as a sixteen-year-old boy he had better things to do, such as wanking, just like the rest of the boys in his year. But he didn't care about that, not when the person he wanted to wank about had told him she was done with him. Swallowing on a hot throat, Severus got to his feet and anxiously paced up and down in front of the window.

Outside the weather was glaringly hot, bouncing off the pavements and stinging dark eyes like his. But the lure of finding her, and perhaps making her talk to him, was too strong; it had him reaching for the battered old trainers which were too small for him.

***
You could use that hex to turn him inside out... Severus mused, mooching along the riverbed and kicking sticks out of his way as he thought of horrific things to do to James Potter.

Break his leg with a tripping jinx.

Severus paused, raking his foot over something in the dirt. What came into view was a freshly deceased mouse, and grotesquely interested, he crouched to look at it. It had clearly been caught and killed by a bird and then dropped from the trees. Its death had been in vain when the bird hadn't even thought to find it again to eat. Glancing around for any sign of life, Severus put his hands to the earth and scooped out a shallow grave, and he nudged the mouse's dead, sad little body into it before covering it again.

Does imagining doing those things to him make you any better than Dad?

His own mind betrayed him and Severus got abruptly to his feet, brushing the earth from his fingers and scowling down at the impromptu grave. His mother had acquired several painful looking trails over her skin in his absence. Severus wondered what she had done to deserve them that time -it was never anything much. Spine rigid, he set off along the riverbank, staring moodily at the gently flowing water.

Shame it isn't deep enough to drown him in.

He was sure that boys of his age weren't meant to make glib comments about drowning their fathers, like the ones he thought and even fantasised about daily, at least during the holidays when he was faced with the man on a continual basis. At Hogwarts they faded, only spiking with a tense and tellingly non-descriptive letter from his mother, which were few and far between.

Without Lily to keep him occupied, the thoughts had been thicker, faster, and realer -he could almost see the bloated shape of his father's face in the water, the dark hair he had inherited swirling around his drenched face.

A shudder ricocheted down his spine and Severus stopped, shaking his limbs slightly to force out the ill-feeling which had swept him. Only then did he catch sight of the red hair and pensive expression which, for all he knew, might have been on him since burying the mouse.

“Lily,” he breathed, taking an eager step forward. It sparked life in his chest that she did not take a step back from him. “Please talk to me?”
“What's there to talk about?” she shrugged, turning away, and Severus couldn't help it; he leapt forward and laid his hand on her shoulder. The skin of his palm burned with a fervent desire he was sure hadn't been there the last time he'd touched Lily Evans.
“I can't be apart from you,” he pleaded. “I can't, Lils, I need you...”
“Well you should have thought of that-”
“Whilst I was dangling upside down showing everyone my drawers... and...” he knew he flushed then, and another shudder passed through his body remembering the terrifying moment he'd felt the breeze on his cock, and understood quite what James Potter had done to him. “Everything on show?”

With his shudder came something new, which Severus hadn't previously felt in his self-pity. It was anger, prickling through his veins and out of his skin.

“What would you have done?” he asked finally. “If they'd done that to you?”
“I wouldn't have lashed out at somebody who tried to help me,” she folded her arms over her beautifully developing chest. Severus couldn't help the way that his eyes dipped down to it for a second before he spoke again.
“But I... it was them... and you know what he does to me, Lily, he drives me mad.”
“Because you're pathetic enough to let him!” she cried. “Severus, this isn't just about that... you've chosen your friends and I can't... feel the same way about you knowing that you want to know that kind of person.”
“What kind of person?” Severus challenged, his hackles rising further.
“You know,” Lily lowered her voice. “You know what they're going to do after school and I think... I think you will too, Severus, and I don't want you to.”

He stared at her, his mouth immediately parching, and didn't know what to say. He had spent so long looking for her, for them only to have a conversation that they struggled through several times before.

“I can't help what house I was sorted into,” he said finally. “They're my house mates... and I have to be with them in the evening whether I like it or not.”
“Do you like them?” Lily challenged.
“Not all of them,” Severus answered carefully. “Some of them are bigger idiots than Potter and Black.”
“But the ones you like are just evil,” she laughed.
“Why are you doing this?!” His voice rose with frustration, and he kicked hard at the ground, sending a shower of dirt over the white canvas shoes Lily was wearing.

The anger built inside of him until Severus felt something which scared him. It was not often that he was scared. He had grown up with a monster and was used to dealing with other monsters, but fear, when it gripped him, gripped him tight.

And so, when his hand started to twitch, the bones bending with longing to reach up and strike the girl he adored around the face for her lack of understanding, Severus felt sick. He took a huge gulp of air and found it only made his problem worse.

“Severus?” Lily's voice finally softened with concern, but at that moment he was too traumatised to listen.

Without another word he turned and ran back along the riverbed, his feet slipping when he got too close to the water. There were no worried shouts of his name behind him, no nothing, just silence, and he thought he would vomit if he had to be outside in the fresh air for one second longer. He didn't bother to stop and wipe his shoes on the mat as he barrelled through the back door, which would probably earn him a few blows with his father's belt later that evening, but all he needed was to get to the sanctity of his room. Slamming the door shut, Severus launched himself at the bed, where his face hit one of his beloved books, and he moaned as he slumped into the mattress.

As much as he hated his bedroom, and its awful décor, it was still his safe haven. The haven Tobias Snape rarely entered, and where his mother only kissed him goodnight at the door. Lily had never been inside it. His fingers twitched again and he bit into the blanket on top of the mattress, afraid of the fact that his father had passed on more than just a gene relating to his hair.

Without knowingly moving, Severus rolled onto his side and shifted into Remus' body. The heat was grounding and he needed to feel the other man beside him, no matter how alien the idea was. He tentatively lifted an arm and placed it over the man's belly, simply to touch and not be alone. Remus glanced at him but said nothing, which surprised Severus when he remembered all the times that Remus had tried to talk to him in their youth.

Remus licked his lips nervously and considered the feel of Severus wrapping around him. The heat was lovely and comforting, but he loathed the nervousness in the onyx eyes and pale countenance. Severus' face screamed fear of rejection, that, after everything they had done the night before, the bodily fluids that they had shared and words they had panted at one another, Remus would push him away and leave. To combat the tension slightly, Remus worked his arm around Severus' shoulders and placed his hand tentatively in the small of the man's back, where he felt the bumps of his spine. Now that he was the one fearing rejection, Remus closed his eyes. His lips tightened. Rejection had always scared him.

July, 1976

No matter how many times he told himself sternly to stop, Remus couldn't help but feel put out that Sirius had run away from home straight to James, rather than himself. He wondered if it was because his parents weren't well off, or because they didn't have a big house in which to accommodate him, or anything like the type that Sirius was used to. He hadn't voiced his discomfort, but it was very real, throbbing in his chest every time he saw them together.

It didn't help that something else was constantly throbbing, too. His mother had suggested inviting his friends over for a few days, despite their cramped little house. Remus had agreed to keep her happy, knowing that in reality she just wanted assurance that her little boy wasn't lonely at school, but had good friends who looked after him when she could not. The summer heat was fierce, with the news reporting droughts, hosepipe bans and dangerous warmth every day. As such, none of them were wearing very much, and the sight of Sirius' toned chest was sending his cock into overdrive. Remus had been forced to duck into the bathroom, the airing cupboard, the shed at short notice, to hide anywhere just to relieve his discomfort.

His attraction to Sirius had been growing with intense speed for over a year. True to form, Remus had kept his secret. He hadn't uttered a word, never shown any inclination towards men, which he had known since he was fifteen that he had. James and Sirius had been with them for two days -Peter was away on holiday with his family- and Remus wondered if his dick might actually fall off with exhaustion.

Snorting at the very idea, he made his way down to the kitchen to hunt out breakfast.
“Morning,” his father grunted from behind the paper. “Your mother's beside herself. It finally rained on the day of her garden party. Look out of the window, Remus.”

Remus did and saw an azure sky and scorching sun. “Oh dear.”
“Mmhmm, best make yourself scarce, last I heard she was thinking of holding a second one.”
“We'll head for the hills then,” Remus rolled his eyes and set some toast to brown under the grill. “Dad... do you think I might be able to have a bath today?”
“No!” his father dropped the paper, a mildly frantic look coming over his face.
“But it rained yesterday...”
“If the water company are snooping around the pipes, Remus, they'll see ours are wetter and then we'll get it in the neck for over-using during a drought. We're wizards but we have to fit in!”
“But I actually stink,” Remus lifted up an arm as if to prove it.
“Well, we all stink.”
“Shame, I felt so special,” he rolled his eyes.
“Go swimming with your friends, that'll make you smell a bit better.”
“Or I could just have a bath,” Remus muttered, yanking the toast off the grill and scraping as minimal butter as he could over the crunchy surface.

He heard his father's sigh behind him and didn't look at him.

“Remus, you couldn't feed a sparrow with what you've just made yourself for breakfast. We aren't that... poor,” his father struggled to get the word out.
“It's fine,” Remus lied. “Too much butter makes me ill anyway, so...”

He had to turn and look at his father to exit the kitchen, and when he did he hated the look of sadness he saw on the older wizard's face. It was just habit to him to use as little of everything as possible to save money. He hated the burden his illness put on his parents, who both worked hard for their earnings and had to use it to help him every month. The least he felt he could do was to try and be economical with the food.

“You're a growing lad,” his father muttered bitterly, then got up and left the kitchen, shaking his head.

Remus watched his retreating back and lost all appetite for the toast in his hand. He took a bite of it and a shower of crumbs sprayed over his bare top half. He trod them into the floor and headed back to his bedroom, wondering if another wash of his armpits in the sink would do without causing him to kill everyone when he needed a stretch.

His father was being overly pedantic. Wizards could produce water, and Remus was ninety-nine point nine percent sure that the water board were not sticking their heads down stinking waste pipes in the middle of a drought summer. But he only knew that the fastidiousness was down to his curse. They couldn't move, they didn't have the money, and so their Muggle neighbours couldn't be alerted to his and his father's abilities. Alongside that, his father was terrified of upsetting the Ministry in case it put Remus himself in jeopardy. There had only been another call for his death the year before from a health expert.

Shuddering, Remus passed the bathroom and then stopped dead. He could hear gushing, running water through the door. Gingerly he reached out for the handle and depressed it. The sight that met his eyes made him gape. Sirius was kneeling in the bath, completely naked, using his wand to shower water over his sweaty body.

“Sirius,” Remus breathed, closing the door and leaning against it. “My Dad's going to do his nut.”
“Your Dad will never know,” Sirius looked up at him, with the usual patented Black smile for I-can-do-anything-I-want.

Remus looked at the huddled form of Sirius' body, and how there was not one imperfection on his olive skin. It made him insanely jealous, considering the myriad of scars and scratches littering Remus' own flesh. He knew that if his fantasies ever came true, he would never match up to Sirius' staggering appeal.

“Get in,” Sirius whispered.
“What?” Remus jumped, sure he had heard wrong.
“Get your bloody clothes off and get in before your mad Dad finds us,” Sirius lifted his eyebrows. “Seriously, Remus, he's cracked, I swear.”
“You don't have to tell me that,” Remus was already kicking off his pyjama bottoms. “I've lived with him for seventeen years.”

Sirius had to work hard to keep his laugh low, and it turned into more of an adorable snort.

“Um.”
“Just take your pants off,” Sirius rolled his eyes.

Remus froze, unsure of what to do.

“Moony, I swear to Godric, get in the bloody bath!” Sirius cried, and they both jumped when his voice echoed off the tiles. “And if we're caught you can just say that it was all my fault and then you won't get bollocked, will you?”

Remus stepped into the bath, which was cool beneath his bare feet, all too aware of his swinging cock and balls. He quickly hid them from view as he folded down into the bottom of the tub. The first sweep of tepid water was heaven. The second was even better. Soon he was drenched and Sirius was sending water over him in rolling motions. When everything was clean, Remus looked up.

The motion clocked together two noses, one of which was his and the other Sirius'. They both groaned in pain and shifted, but that did something even worse. Remus suddenly wished he'd remained downstairs as their lips, wet and slippery from the water they had decadently poured over their faces, met. Sirius tasted sweet enough against his mouth and his blood began to pound through his veins. Blood flooded south to his groin and Remus wanted to die. There had never been a worse time to be naked.

But when Sirius' lips parted, mouthing against him, and a tongue folded out to tickle the crease of his closed counterparts, Remus went wide-eyed. A gentle smirk curved up Sirius' busy mouth, and Remus was frozen.

“Is one of you using an Aguamenti in there?!” a thump came on the bathroom door, and they both jumped guiltily apart.

Remus' throat had parched and he flung his lips open to gasp at the air, but it only stuck to the insides of his cheeks and furred his tongue, making the discomfort worse. Remembering his first ever kiss with Sirius Black had been a mistake. He had told himself he wouldn't remember it, and yet, there it had jumped into his subconscious with no more provocation than Severus cuddling desperately into his side. Remus let out a ragged breath, craving a drink. Yet he found that he could not muster the energy to ask Severus for one. For the first time since he had woken, Remus felt the need to return to his own empty flat, where he could gulp and gulp until the taste was gone from his mouth and the randy blood had drained from his cock.

His distress, however, seemed to go unnoticed by Severus, who remained by his side, staring dead ahead at the doorway, as though frightened of who might charge through it. Remus took a chance in lifting his hand and threading into dark strands of black. It was greasy to the touch, but he didn't care. He caressed Severus' scalp and held it tenderly. When there was no response, he began to worry.

January, 1978

Severus idled slowly along the corridor, ignoring the pain in his arm caused by the books clutched beneath it. He had spent the night in the library and not only did his hand ache from writing ten scrolls of research for his NEWT Potions coursework, he was slightly cross-eyed from squinting in the candlelight.

He wasn't sure why he was putting off heading back to the dormitory and giving up for the night. Bed beckoned like a favoured lover, into which he wanted to sink and touch, enjoy and fall asleep with. His feet, however, simply would not lead him down to the dungeons, and Severus didn't know why. He had been growing increasingly restless, if he was honest, with no real reason for his anxiety. He found himself unable to sleep, unable to talk to anybody. He had submersed himself in his homework and his spell development.

Shame you can't find anybody mad enough to let you try out Sectumsempra on them... Severus was particularly proud of the cutting spell that he had cornered. He'd tested it out on several old pillows and ignored the questions of his dorm mates when they asked why the floor was covered in feathers.

If he could have picked his test subject, Severus would have had a choice of two. He sneered at the flagstones as he walked, the candles in their ornate brackets lighting his way with shadowy flickers.

A loud giggle up ahead set him on edge. He knew that giggle -it was Lily's. He had heard it thousands of times in their childhood, because Lily was a giggler, and he would have known it anywhere. He had the good fortune to find a suit of armour to duck behind as the voices became louder.

“I know about Muggle things,” James Potter's voice was coy and persuading. “I know about that David Bowie bloke you like... and the Bay City Rollers.”
“How do you know about me liking the Bay City Rollers?” Lily laughed.

The breathlessness in her tone sent nausea creeping into Severus' belly.

“I saw the picture in your bag,” James' voice was smug.
“You went through my things?” Lily's tone took on a dangerous note and Severus hoped that Potter was about to see himself hexed.
“No... Mary did,” he answered. “I asked her what music you liked and she found out for me...”
“Oh. So... you went to all that trouble just to find out what I liked?” she asked hopefully.
“For you,” he answered with a simper.

Severus wished there was a receptacle big enough for the large amount of vomit brewing in his body. He stood and listened as Potter muttered something to the girl they both seemed to want, and heard her laugh again. It was no longer the pitying, unkind laugh that he had sometimes heard Lily use in Potter's direction. It was a laugh of happiness, a laugh of excitement -in short, one Severus had not heard her use in years, and especially not in his direction.

Wrapping one arm around his gut, Severus tried desperately to hold himself together and only just managed as he heard approaching footsteps. He thought they might pass him by, but when the suit of armour suddenly clunked and moved against his back, he went rigid with disgust.

“James, we can't kiss here,” Lily protested half-heartedly. “We're the Head Boy and Girl... this'll look a bit...”
“It'll look like two people who love each other kissing in a corridor.”

Severus wondered when love had come into the equation.

“Love? It's a bit soon for all that, James... I don't...”
“I've loved you since I was eleven,” he said earnestly. “Everything I ever did I did to try and impress you... and I feel such a dickhead for knowing I didn't have to do anything... I just had to be...” he trailed off. Severus thought he might die.

However, the feeling was nothing compared to what slammed into him only seconds later. The sound of wet kisses and gentle moans filtered around the suit to him. They were kissing and he was listening. Moving numbly, Severus propped his books in the alcove and slipped to sitting on the floor. When the smooching stepped up a notch he went as far as to cover his ears with his hands and shove his face into his knees.

You'll take what Lucius is offering.

The decision made his lips tremble. He had been putting off the blond for weeks. Now he had made his decision he already regretted it.

***
“Snape,” Avery got to his feet. “Slughorn was looking for you earlier, something about a message from home. I said I'd send you as soon as I found you.”

Severus froze, wondering if there was the possibility that his day could get any worse.

Please let it be him. Let it be him.

He knew there was only one real reason why there would be a message from home. As sure as he knew the sun would rise the next morning, Severus knew that either his mother or his father was dead. He knew which he would prefer it to be, as well. Nodding his thanks to his class mate, who sat back down and even looked at him with a vague expression of worry, Severus headed back to the entrance of the Slytherin common room and walked slowly, with his feet dragging, up through the castle to Professor Slughorn's office. Hope and despair mingled in his bloodstream, pulling him in every which direction, and Severus didn't know what to think or do.

He finally reached the office and knocked once, entering when beckoned. He knew from the look on Slughorn's face that he had been right.

“Which one?” he asked dully, and a moment of surprise lifted the older man's brows.
“Sit down, Severus, please.”
“No, I'm fine. Which one of them is dead?” he asked bluntly, stepping closer to the fire only to keep the shivers pawing at him away.
“Your father.”

Whereas his Head of House had looked surprised at his readiness before, Severus thought that perhaps the flash of relief in his eyes was not a shock to Horace Slughorn. He had never admitted anything, never admitted what he went through when his father was in a rage or even just a light temper. He had never let on about the abuse of his mother, of the many instruments his father used to try and keep them, and their 'freakish' magic, in check.

Severus swallowed and looked down at the carpet. “Does my mother need me at home to help arrange the funeral?”
“Severus, sit down, and I'll get you a drink. This must be a...”
“Shock?” he laughed mirthlessly. “No. It's not. And I'm not upset, either. All I want to know is when my mother wants me to go home.”
“She has requested you travel by Floo tomorrow.”
“So she's already unblocked it then,” Severus snorted, his head tipping back causing the greasy ends of his hair to tickle his neck. Slughorn frowned. “I'll go tomorrow,” he nodded.

Severus immediately departed the office and made his way back to the common room, but once there he headed straight for his dorm. He slipped out of his clothes, a human ghost in the pitch black of the room, and passed between the velvet green hangings of his four-poster. There he curled into a ball beneath the blankets, and with trembling lips, smiled.

Severus swallowed, closing his eyes and unable to deny the relief that the memory still brought him, years later. It was the only day, he knew, that Merlin had ever seen fit to answer his prayers. Up until then Severus had doubted the existence of justice, the existence of anything good in his life -until the sensation of freedom had spread through him as he lay in that four-poster. He had been alone then, and he had remained curled into a ball unable to shed a single tear for his father. He remembered that at one point it had struck him that he hadn't even asked how it had happened; he remembered hoping that his mother had finally grown a spine and murdered the old monster.

To that day, having never found out the truth, Severus still found himself hoping that she had, too. He nudged his face further into the skin of Remus' chest and smelt him, smelt freshness from the man's clothes and musky sex from the night before.

As nice as it was to smell another human being, an experience which Severus had very little of, it was a bitter reminder that, no matter how free he had felt on the night of his father's death, he had never been free. It was likely that his actions would never see him be it in the future, either. In continual servitude, it seemed, for a mistakes and sins Severus deeply regretted. His regret was a constant thorn in his side, stabbing him, torturing him, twisting his guts and snatching sleep away when he needed it the most.

Panic began to rise in his chest, panic at lying in bed with another man, panic for his ruined life, and Severus didn't know what to do. He would burn in torment before he let Remus witness the sorry state of his mind. He did the only plausible thing; he heaved his body to rest on top of the werewolf, and kissed him. But when their lips met, no tension left his body, and he pressed harder to try and force it away.

When he realised why his attempt failed, it alarmed him. Remus Lupin was far away, and though his mouth moved in gentle compliance, he was not there. He was not kissing Severus Snape in return. The blankness in his eyes, much to Severus' surprise, hurt.

Easter Holidays, 1978

“Sirius, shut the window,” Remus sighed, shivering in what was only a light breeze.

His last Moon had been a bad one, his inner wolf riled by the stress of their upcoming exams, and, though Remus had not admitted it, the fear of what would happen when school finished. After all, he had his non-existent future to consider. He couldn't get a job due to his curse, and the work Dumbledore was offering him had made his mother cry and his father grow tight-lipped and pale. Remus understood their worry; they had spent hundreds of galleons and an equal amount of time trying to keep him alive and safe. His intention to join the Order seemed to undermine that. Sirius didn't understand his reluctance to hurt them.

If he tells me they don't rule my life one more time...

Remus sighed and rubbed at his eyes, which were tired from all the hardcore reading he'd been doing, trying to catch up on the revision he'd missed during his recovery. Sirius closed the window with a bang and sauntered towards his bed, a smoking cigarette still in his fingers, and flopped over the end of the mattress. Remus couldn't help but appreciate the defined swell of his bottom in the Muggle jeans that Sirius was wearing, those which were finally his own and not borrowed -he had bought them with the money his Uncle Alphard had left him.

“See something pretty?” Sirius arched a dark eyebrow and grinned.
“If I answer in the positive your head won't fit through the door,” Remus made a face and chucked the book he held to one side. “I can't do it any more,” he groaned. “No more reading. No more revision. My head's going to explode.”
“And that would make me sad,” the brunet pouted, and rose to his knees, leaning over for a kiss.

Remus flushed, as he always flushed when Sirius instigated a kiss, and willingly opened his mouth to it. They were alone, having the run of the dormitory for the entire Easter break, which was surprising. Remus knew that Sirius was worried about James, whose father was ill and not looking positive. Peter had decided to go home, too, and Frank was on holiday with his family in the Lake District. It left them very alone, and very randy, and taking advantage of every single minute without company in their dormitory when Remus' health allowed.

“You know, I know a good way to make it better,” Sirius grinned lustily, reaching up to take a final drag from the stick between his fingers, which he then stubbed out on one of the posts of Remus' bed, and tossed into the heater in the middle of the circular room.

His hands immediately transferred to Remus' shoulders, and they pushed him backwards until his head landed on his pillows. With enviously deft grace, Sirius straddled his hips and ground down. Remus didn't bother to fight back his groan. They knew each other inside and out and Sirius knew exactly what he was doing by summoning a school tie from the end of James' bed and grabbing Remus' hands.

“Don't tell him we used his tie,” Sirius winked, hooking it through the headboard of the bed and then securing Remus' wrists within the fabric. “He might just lose it.”

Remus grinned widely and arched his spine, eager for more touch. They hadn't been exactly discrete within the walls of their dormitory about what was going on between them. After the third morning of James finding Sirius in Remus' bed, it had been rather hard to hide. They trusted their friends not to divulge the grisly details to the entire school, though they tried to keep a lid on their affection in front of them.

“He'd never forgive us,” Sirius kissed down Remus' throat, sucking lightly as he reached the hollow between his collarbones.

The wicked lips lifted away then, taking flight over his t-shirt, and not until nimble fingers had unbuttoned his trousers did they reappear, brushing light kisses over his belly. Sirius moaned happily and ducked south to nose at the bulge in Remus' briefs. Holding his breath, Remus waited, feeling the strain in his tired arms and finding it delicious. As much as he was afraid of leaving Hogwarts, he also couldn't wait for the freedom it would afford them. They planned to move in together, not that they had told anybody as much, but the plan was in action. Sirius was already eagerly scanning the property section of The Prophet with his breakfast, nudging the paper across the wood for Remus to look at when he found a possible rental.

Remus loved that Sirius wanted to live with him. He loved that Sirius cared enough to tease him and whip him into a panting frenzy, as he was currently doing. Remus just loved Sirius, if he was honest, but he hadn't said that and neither had the eldest Black heir.

“Shit!” he cried, as wet heat clamped around his cock. He curled his fingers at the air, wanting something to grab onto. To torture him, his mind imagined the silk of Sirius' hair sliding through his digits, which made him moan harder. Sirius laughed around his shaft, hot and rumbling, and Remus shuddered. He wouldn't last long at all.

Looking down the plane of his stomach, Remus jolted again when he looked straight into laughing grey eyes. Sirius was staring at him, red, wicked lips stretched wide around his girth, whilst his tongue unleashed merry heaven on the erection twitching against it.

“Why do you do this,” Remus whimpered. “You know I can't... last... unngh...”

A harder suck stole his breath away and fingers caressed his sac. Remus knew his time was limited to only seconds.

“I'm going to... c-come,” he choked, feeling his climax peak in his belly, pulling hard and gushing far too quickly through his penis. He moaned at the loss, hating the way Sirius could make him lose control so easily, and poured into the waiting mouth.

Sirius sucked until he was dry and then released him, pressing a gentle kiss to the tip before sitting up and wiping his mouth bluntly. “Well, there's lunch,” he winked, as he loosened the tie binding Remus to the bed.

Remus summoned energy he didn't have, drawing on reserves he should have been keeping for his exams, and jumped onto his knees, ready to pounce and return the favour, to make Sirius whimper and beg and shudder to a finish. It surprised him, perhaps more than anything about what had transpired between them in the past year, that he even could.

Sirius, however, clearly had other ideas, and when the tight arms wrapped around Remus' torso, so too did a little thrill. Sirius was a terrible flirt, Sirius seemed to have a high enough sperm production to start selling it -but Sirius was also something that Remus had never expected, only hoped: protective, loving and determined to save Remus from himself. They fell back against the pillows again and Remus didn't fight as the strong arms pulled him close. He put his face to the young wizard's throat and inhaled, coffee overpowered both his sense of smell and taste. Gentle fingers, he realised, were caressing his hair.

“Mm, nice,” he murmured, and tilted his head up to look into Sirius' face. “But unlike you to turn down a suck...”
“I know, I'm wondering if I'm ill,” Sirius rolled his eyes. “No. You're too... big shadows under your eyes. I don't want them any bigger.”
“You can't worry about me all the time,” Remus chewed the inside of his cheek.

He was thrilled that they were doing it, that they were together. How it had happened, he couldn't really remember, but the day in the bath stuck out in his mind and how, the night before James and Sirius had been due to return back to the Potters', Sirius had crept into his room and touched him until he came, sticky and mewling, into his hand. Remus had gasped it out, recovered, and repaid the favour.

Everything since was a beautiful blur, which he didn't want to examine too closely in case he discovered it had never happened.

Yet, that happiness didn't mean he wasn't riddled with fear that Sirius would decide to toss him away, like he had the multitude of girls in previous years. Sirius had a reputation. Sirius was the eldest Black heir even if he had been disowned and run away from home. Remus knew he would be a risk for the man to take. They had even discussed it, but it had not been enough to allay his fears.

“Stop thinking about it,” Sirius murmured into his ear suddenly. “I know you are.”
“I'm not,” Remus shook his head defiantly. “I'm just... if you were me, you'd think about it.”
“Ah, so you are thinking about it then?” Sirius grinned smugly. “I can read you like a book, Moony.”

There was no point in denying the truth, Remus knew, so he remained quiet.

“Has anybody ever actually left you?” Sirius asked quietly. “I mean... you're so afraid, Remus... that people will leave you when they know... has anybody before?”
“No,” he answered truthfully. “But my Mum and Dad always told me that people might... and when you're little, and you want friends... they weren't trying to scare me, Sirius, they were just preparing me.”
“You say that a lot about them,” Sirius' tone implied exactly what he thought of Remus' explanation. “I just think that you worry so much about things you don't need to. Why would I leave you, if I haven't already done it?”
“Because... when... if we live together-”
“When,” Sirius corrected firmly.
“When,” Remus went along with it for argument's sake, “When we live together... it'll just be you... you dealing with the aches and pains, with the transformation, healing me afterwards... it will be you living with the fact that I can be nothing but a continual drain on your resources. I won't be able to have a good enough job... If I can get Muggle work it'll never last long because they won't accept my illness absences every month...”
“You're going to work for the Order, like me,” Sirius pointed out. “And Dumbledore has said that he can pay us when we're doing that... not that he should have to. And anyway, I've got loads of money left from Uncle Alfie, so... it won't be a problem for ages. Stop worrying.”

Remus thought that was rather like telling James not to preen his hair, or Peter to stop chewing his quills -both pointless wastes of breath, because both things would happen forever.

“You don't think I'm going to do it, do you?” Sirius whispered. “You don't think I've got the balls to move you in with me?”

Remus didn't want to answer, because he knew that what he had to say would hurt them both.

“Well, you should probably know,” Sirius went on, his tone turning that subtle shade of obnoxious which set Remus' teeth on edge, “This weekend just gone, when I went down to London... I secured us a flat.”
“You've what?” Remus asked incredulously, sitting up properly to look into Sirius' face. “Where?”
“Nice part of Muggle London. It's a bit... crappy,” he made an embarrassed face. “But we can manage the rent... I had to put a retainer down to get him to keep it for us until school finishes, but he's going to paint it and stuff, put new carpets in. And then it'll be all ours, as soon as we're done here. There's even a parking space outside for the bike.”

Speechless, Remus sat and gaped at him whilst an easy, arrogant smile spread over Sirius' lips.

“You should have more faith in me,” Sirius challenged. “When it comes to you, Remus, I'll never go back on my word, and you should remember that, because I love you.”
“Oh,” Remus breathed, the word plunging into his chest and heating up his lungs until further inhalation seemed impossible. “I...”
“I know you won't be able to contribute much,” Sirius shrugged. “It won't be a problem, alright? I'm going to get a job as well as my Order work, and we'll live off beans on toast if we have to.”
“Yeah, right,” Remus laughed. “Mr-I-Need-Two-Types-Of-Sausage-For-Breakfast.”

Sirius actually looked hurt and Remus felt guilty as he looked at him.

“Just because we had different upbringings,” Sirius said quietly, “Doesn't mean I can't knuckle down and get on with it, Remus, and I will for you.”
“I love you too,” Remus blurted stiffly, and they both froze, looking at one another.

Remus blinked once, twice and leant forward for a kiss. Sirius granted him it and they sat together, joined at the lip but barely kissing.

“Be a house werewolf if you want,” Sirius shattered the romantic moment suddenly. “As long as you're alright at putting the kettle on and making a good stew. Oh, and you're potty trained, of course.”
“Git,” Remus growled, and grabbed him in a rougher snog, unable to hide the massive grin on his face.

“You aren't here, are you?”

Severus' voice dragged Remus from the mire and he jumped tellingly at being caught in the act. Another man had been kissing him and he had been thinking about Sirius. Remus had already known he was lost, but that really sealed the bargain for him. There was a warm, reasonably attractive body on top of his, and he could only remained lodged in the past. His body was reacting for him -his groin was subtly throbbing and he was hard, but the heat didn't reach his heart.

Dark eyes narrowed and he looked up at Severus. “No,” he admitted quietly. “But then I don't really think you are, either, are you Severus?”

The man said nothing in reply, he merely stared back. He was so open hovering there, with his pale throat bared, screaming out to be bitten, and his nipples pink and so willing to be pinched. Severus was desperate, and naked, and right there and yet Remus could barely feel his body weight pressing him into the mattress.

Severus could see the confusion in Remus' eyes, but didn't offer any words to soothe it away; he found himself incapable of offering comfort, especially when he himself was wading through the same. Ignoring how his fingers shook, he traced the curve of the werewolf's shoulder, letting them settle on the side of his neck. Beneath the flesh he felt a strong pulse beating, pushing life through his body even though Remus could have been dead beneath him, he was so very still.

Idly Severus wondered whether Remus had ever really desired him, or whether, like he had felt, the call of a sexual union was just too tempting to pass up, no matter who was on the other end. Severus hadn't been with another man before, despite the advances of some of the pushier Death Eaters. The closest he'd come was Lucius Malfoy's fingertips scraping through his pubic hair in a dark alleyway. That was all it had taken to have Severus running, breath gusting out of his mouth as he fought back the sick.

That had been before Lily's death, before the truth came up to slam into his face like a brick wall, to make him realise that he could never have her and that he should have realised that long before her death. Severus knew his face twisted in disgust, disgust at himself, mostly. To chase it away he dropped his head and captured Remus' lips in a punishing kiss. He rammed his eyes shut and temptation pulled at him, as it had pulled so many times during the drunken blur of the evening before, to imagine it was her. He had never really kissed anybody else, he imagined it would be easy to take out Remus' kind, soft face and replace it with her emerald eyes and fiery hair.

As the taste of man slicked over his tongue, Severus knew once again he had been a fool. There were prickles against his chin, making the kiss far too masculine. The smell at his nostrils was too thick to belong to a woman. Remus pervaded his senses, even with his eyes closed.

It made absolutely no sense to him, Severus found, as he rolled his hips, that his cock was hard. He had never wanted a man before, but as Remus' fingertips coursed up his back, maybe it was that he wanted the touch and nothing else. He gasped slightly against the man's mouth and Remus turned his chin away, looking up with a worried expression.

“Where are you, Severus?” he whispered.

March, 1980

Severus hated that he had jumped into the alleyway and hidden. Seeing her, however, with her hair flowing and her belly round, made him feel nauseous. There had been something in the back of his mind which had told him that getting out of bed that morning would have been a disaster -and standing there, hiding, Severus knew why. He swallowed slightly and peered out into the sunshine, happy in his dark little corner.

As if she knew, as if she was torturing him on purpose, Lily had stopped to browse in the window of the Quidditch shop opposite the way.

No doubt thinking of buying something for the foul cunt who put that thing in her belly.

Severus felt his own lip twist with malice as he looked at her. Lily had always been so slight in frame that to see her carrying more weight --to see her carrying her baby-- upset him for reasons he knew were associated to the man who had provided the necessary sperm to put it there.

She's having his child. Why can't you let go?

He was tired of questioning himself. He was tired of being afraid to walk out in public in case he was confronted with her, and on a mission be unable to scurry home and howl it out to his pillow. He would die before admitted quite how frequently that happened, even without seeing her. Clenching his fingers into fists, Severus leant back against the wall, unable to tear his eyes away. Her hair was even longer, thick right to the ends. Her skin positively glowed. She looked happy.

Severus knew what kind of man it made him that the very sight made him utterly miserable. The last he had heard they were married and she had taken his worthless little name which he thought so grand, and now she was carrying his child. Being bitter would solve nothing, it didn't even particularly make him feel better. But Severus was beyond it, beyond questioning his rationality.

He had accepted that, when it came to Lily Evans, as she would always be to him, he had none. Not one scrap of sense remained in his head for her. If it did then he wouldn't have still been in love. He wouldn't have still been touching himself to the thought of her, imagining her softness around him and hearing her pleasured cries in his head as he brought himself to orgasm.

A shiver ran down his spine as the repulsion set in. He had never thought it possible to dislike himself more than he had at Hogwarts, but leaving the castle and its protective stone walls had done nothing for him. Lily was flourishing with Potter, and apparently the gay lovebirds of Black and Lupin were happy too.

It felt, as it had so often in his youth, like Severus was standing outside a glass bubble, and nobody would let him in.

“Mawkish little fool,” he muttered softly to himself, and then he gasped.

As if she had heard him, as though her ears were trained to the delicate cadence of his voice, Lily's head snapped up, her eyes narrowing in the direction of the dark alleyway in which he stood. Severus instinctively retreated further into it, hoping the darkness would swallow him up and Lily wouldn't be stupid enough to investigate.

They were on different sides. She was his enemy. If it got out that he had been alone with her, when he could have easily have killed her or stolen her for ransom, then he would pay with his blood. That was the way the sick organisation he had willingly walked into worked. He had seen grown men sob and did not intend to be joining them, at least in public, at any point in the near future.

Severus held his breath and saw her take a step across the cobbles. She was still listening, he knew, for another breath, a rustle, a heartbeat. She was good at her job. He saw her fingers reach for her wand and Severus prepared to disapparate, but someone saved him at the last moment.

“Lily!” he recognised the werewolf's voice, light and happy. “What are you doing out? Shouldn't you be at home... resting and stuff?”
“Shut up,” her face burst into a grin as she enveloped him in a hug. Severus watched with jealousy emanating out of every pore he possessed. Lily swayed Remus from side to side. “And how are you? Everything alright? How're you feeling after the winter?”

She was off, with question after question, which Lupin patiently answered. Severus knew he should leave but he couldn't, not when her facial expressions kept him so entranced. The caring poured from her eyes, and Severus felt a fool for acknowledging that he would have given anything she wanted for her to just look at him like that again. It had been years. He missed those eyes more than anything else.

“You'll have to come over for dinner at some point,” Lily was saying, her happy voice carrying all the way into the darkness. “James misses you both like mad... but you're so holed up being all lovey-dovey it's hard to keep up with you.”
“We aren't,” Lupin blushed, obviously lying.
“I hear wedding bells,” Lily teased. “Have you got time for lunch?”
“Actually... about that wedding bells thing,” Lupin lowered his voice -Severus loathed that he leant forward to try and catch the end of the sentence.

Whatever it was, it was enough to evoke a delighted squeal out of the pregnant woman with red hair, and made her throw her arms around Remus' neck.

“Well now you have to have lunch with me,” she grabbed his arm and laced her arm through it. “You never told us... I'm going to have you over a barrel, Remus Lupin, if you don't tell me right now-”
“Sirius might have something to say about any barrels.”

It was the last thing Severus heard before Lupin was frogmarched out of sight by Lily. He was left standing cold and alone in the alleyway, the conversation thrumming through his head.

He would pass on that the werewolf and the Black mutt were bonded. It would probably be enough to provoke Bellatrix, Lucius and Narcissa into an entertaining enough rage to prevent the Dark Lord from going ahead with the planned revel for that evening. Severus' guts squirmed as he thought of it. He hated the revels and the needless pain they caused for the Muggle victims. He hated, if it he was honest, it all.

“You and Black,” Severus breathed, looking down into Remus' eyes. “You were bonded, weren't you?”

Remus' jaw loosened and his eyes widened, as he tried to speak no words came out. Severus patiently waited, wondering how he had ever forgotten that news. The ensuing ire from Black's family had been as satisfying as he had predicted.

“I... didn't know that was common knowledge,” Remus breathed into Severus' face, coating the skin with warm, worried air.
“It isn't,” Severus shook his head. “But... there are things I've heard...” his eyes flicked, unstoppably, to the dark, ugly tattoo carved into his arm. Severus shivered as Remus' eyes followed his gaze.
“Why did you do it?” Remus whispered. “Why did you join?”
“That is none of your business,” Severus hissed, lowering his face so that their lips were a millimetre apart. “I have secrets. You would do well to respect that.”
“I will if you respect mine,” Remus choked, his eyes filling with moisture.

Early October, 1981

“Oh, God!” Remus cried, throwing himself out of his armchair and into Sirius' arms. “Where have you been? You were due home fucking hours ago, Sirius!”

He began to assault his partner's face with peppered kisses, feeling coarse stubble beneath his lips and not caring as it abraded his skin. He held Sirius' face tight between his hands and finally landed on the man's lips. He thrust his tongue into the mouth he'd missed for a whole month and moaned. “Oh God.”

Sirius broke the kiss and leant back. “You missed me, eh?”
“Every time you walk out the door I convince myself you're never walking back through it again,” Remus choked. “Do you know what it's like waiting here to see if you're dead, if they've got you?”
“Stop being a woman,” Sirius said gruffly, and shrugged out of his jacket, flinging it over the back of the armchair that Remus had just vacated. “I'm fine, and I'm here, aren't I?”
“But where have you been?”

Sirius' guilty look -a look which Remus had rarely seen since their departure from Hogwarts- suddenly flashed, and he stiffened. “Have you been in the pub?”
“One drink,” Sirius shrugged. “I needed a little... what is it your Mum always says? Dutch Courage?”
“For what?” Remus frowned.
“To come back here and tell you that Dumbledore's given me another mission and that I have to leave tomorrow?”

Remus felt the anger, true and unusual, bubbling in his gut. He couldn't bear another five weeks or however many more alone in their poky, dingy little flat. The sun only shone in it when Sirius was there, making the generic wallpaper look cheerful and the grey carpet less depressing.

“Remus, please, let's just sit down and have a cuddle, eh?” Sirius pleaded. “I know you're angry, but this is for your own good. The werewolves aren't going to join our side. You did the best you could. But they injured you and you have to recover before you can do anything else.”
“Fuck off,” Remus hurled moodily over his shoulder as he limped to their bedroom, leg stiff and unforgiving, and slammed the door shut behind him.

***
“I can't believe we only have tonight together and you're wasting it sulking!” Sirius bellowed through the door. “I mean, what the fuck is wrong with you, Remus? Can't you save your little strop until tomorrow night when I'm gone?”

Remus wrenched the door open so hard that it hit the wall with a bang. “Stop talking.”
“No, you're being a wanker,” Sirius stamped his foot. Remus nearly laughed.

They both stopped and looked at one another. Sirius' hair was on end for all the times he had run his fingers through it with frustration, and his skin lacked its usual lustre.

“This is stupid,” the dark-haired man muttered. “You're stupid, and the war is stupid, and I just want to pick you up,” he grabbed Remus about the waist and hoisted him off the floor, testimony to how light Remus had become in his recovery, “And throw you on the bed.”

Remus bounced as Sirius did exactly that, and a second later his body had been covered. There were hot kisses, probing touches. Remus laid still and let Sirius work. His muscles ached and he shivered happily as Sirius tugged slightly on his pyjama bottoms.

“I missed you,” Sirius breathed, his eyes closed. “Missed you so fucking much.”
“You didn't write,” Remus murmured. “Why not?”
“I'm... I was asked not to,” Sirius' voice wavered on the first word and Remus blinked. Sirius had no reason to lie to him.

Something had changed.

“What's happened?” he asked stiffly. “What's going on? Does this have to do with James and Lily just disappearing, and only sending letters?”

Sirius stared at him for a moment, where his eyes narrowed just for a second, and then were normal again. “Remus, don't worry about it. Nothing's wrong, we're fine, and James and Lily and Harry are fine.”
“You hope,” Remus scoffed.
“If we don't hope we have nothing,” Sirius muttered bleakly, and then he sighed and flopped onto his back.

Remus felt fingers scrabbling for his own and they met on the blanket, clinging tightly to each other.

“I just get so worried that one day you won't come back,” Remus said again. “The thought of... after all this time... being without you...”
“Shut up, Moony,” Sirius said firmly. “We've had this discussion a thousand times. Let it go.”

Hurt, Remus did as requested, but his mind ached with the suppressed worry.

“Love you,” Sirius rolled onto his side and kissed Remus' ear. “A lot.”
“Oh, well, nothing to worry about then,” Remus joked, and tilted his chin down, taking his forehead close to Sirius' lips. It was kissed, just as he'd wanted it to be. He glanced up and saw the fearful expression on Sirius' face.

“Why won't you tell me what's going on?” Remus asked quietly.
“Because I'm too afraid, Remus, that you'll tell me you already know...”

Sirius climbed off the bed and exited the bedroom, leaving Remus alone and completely confused on their bed.

“Oh, God,” Remus groaned. “I don't... how could he... mmph.”

He couldn't think any more, Remus found. He couldn't think about Sirius and what that cryptic little line had meant. That night he had been terrified that Sirius thought he was a spy, but in light of the recent actions he assumed that Sirius thought Remus suspected him of passing information to the other side. Shuddering, hard, Remus locked his limbs around Severus' body, which was thin to the point of malnourishment. He met every kiss with new-found ferocity, unable to hold back after abandoning coherent thought.

“Severus,” he gasped, mouthing against the wizard who was plundering his mouth. “This is... you...”

Finding Severus slumped over the bar of the Leaky Cauldron the night before had been both a surprise and a blessing. Remus had needed company before he found it in an illegal whore, or became one himself for the money, and there Severus had been. It hadn't been hard to deduce that the Slytherin had never been with a man before -his kisses were too stiff and formal, but Remus had loosened him up in no time.

That Severus was a fast learner was something that Remus had always known, and was glad of at that moment. The kisses punishing his lips were hard and relentless, and he knew they would be sore by the time that they were finished. He yanked the man down so that they flat against one another, skin-on-skin and cock-on-cock. Both of them groaned.

What had brought them together, Remus wasn't sure. Was it simply fate that had led him to the lonely pub in which he had found the man, or coincidence? Was it their miserable histories which had brought them together, leaving them entwined and the only two survivors in a long line of destruction? Was it inevitable, Remus wondered, that they might end up sharing bedsheets, kisses and much, much more?

“Yes!” he bucked his hips wildly, as Severus rolled his own. “Oh... Jesus... Severus... please don't....”
“Don't what?” the question was loud as both of them stilled.
“Don't change your mind,” Remus panted. “I need this. I can't sit here and think about the past any more. I need a present. I need something to stop me from looking back and wondering what I missed, why I was so... blind...”

Onyx eyes widened slightly and Severus' lips tightened into a line. But then his resolve shattered, his face relaxed, and they met in another kiss, yet it was totally different.

It was searching for a solace, Remus found, as he tickled the roof of Severus' mouth with his tongue. It was a solace that they probably wouldn't find, but they could search, and if together made it easier then he would put aside his reservations and simply do it.

Severus didn't even grunt as he was rolled onto his back and flattened.

“You taste so good,” Remus muttered against his lips, capturing them between his own and sucking, probably painfully, on the silken flesh.

Running his lips downwards, over Severus' chin, over his windpipe and over his breastbone, Remus was burning. Every inch of him was desperate to meet alternative flesh, to feel and grab and bruise, to feel more than what had become normality. There was no complaint as he harshly sealed his lips around one nipple, lapping it into a peaked state. When he gave up and suckled instead, he actually felt Severus' body arch off the mattress beneath him.

Severus thought the whole sensation divine. Remus knew how to play his body and whilst he resented the implication of being played at all, he couldn't deny that it felt like nothing he'd ever felt before. Attention switched to the other nipple and he hissed that time, rising up all over again, unable to control his bodily reactions to the werewolf's ministrations. It had been that way the night before, all grunts and moans he couldn't remember forming, clutches in which he could not recall instructing his muscles to tighten.

Sex was far too spontaneous for a man obsessed with control like himself, it seemed.

Remus' weight was heavy on top of him, despite his slender stature, and Severus quickly found himself fighting for breath. He was at a loss as to why the tightness in his lungs made everything better, making nearly every touch stronger and more intense; his enjoyment was even more unclear.

“Gods, please...”

What was he asking? Severus had no idea, but Remus unlatched from his nipple and sucked down his chest, dipping a talented tongue into his navel, which it began to fuck. Squirming, Severus found himself pinned to the bed, something else he couldn't find the inclination to protest about, and so he lay there, wincing and hissing as Remus tongue fucked his belly button. It was damp and absurd, unlike anything he had ever felt before, and it caused his erection to throb like never before, too.

“If you don't...” his threat was empty, but still successfully loud. Remus heard, laughed over the dampness he had created, and continued on his path. Severus held his breath with his head spinning, waiting for the first lick or the first caress which would steal him away from reality again.

When it happened, he loathed the way his knees fell open and his toes curled with the pleasure. Remus licked a blunt path over his shaft and Severus keened to it, invoking the move over and over until the werewolf between his thighs let out a breath of exhaustion and had to pull up to rest his jaw. They looked at one another in the interim, and while both had found the other tragically absent from their affair thus far, their faces now told a very different story.

Remus' chocolate brown eyes were burning. Severus' were narrowed with pained concentration as he attempted to keep a hold on his climax. He nearly failed as Remus leant over him and whispered in his ear.

“What do you want from me, Severus? What do you want me to do to you?”

Hot hands coursed up the sides of his rib cage, but Severus would have shuddered without the added tickling sensation. Remus' words were plenty enough. “I want you to fuck me hard enough to make me forget it all.”
“And you're fine with the fact that... that all we are to one another are substitutes?” Remus whispered with his warm breath curling all around the shell of Severus' ear and trickling into the canal. “It's just sex?”
“Just sex is something I've been looking for nearly all my life,” Severus muttered lowly, glowering, daring Remus to make a pitying face, to make a comment which implied how very awful that was.

Severus didn't need to be told just how awful that fact was -he already knew and would likely never forget it. He gently arched one eyebrow, as if to ask Remus his final question. He was no fool and wouldn't repeat it again, because he had drawn a line.

Drawing lines was the one thing Severus was apparently good at. When he had first got the idea to truly defect, he had acted within the hour. When his father had died, there were no tears and no remorse for lost time or lost bodies. There was only cold, hard steel. Emotion was for later, when he was alone and nobody heard the pain.

Severus wondered if Remus was the same, but he highly doubted it.

“You miss him,” Severus tested the water, lifting his chin to return the wispy favour that the wizard had paid him. “You want to be fucking him, don't you? Or was it the other way around?”
“Don't,” Remus ground out, pain flaring to life again in his eyes. “Don't you dare mention him, Severus.”
“You can't bury it forever,” Severus pointed out.

“Like you can hide your repressed love for a girl who never loved you back?” Remus hissed, pulling up with a twisted grimace on his face.
“You dare-”
“I do,” he said simply. “I'm not going to lie here and take you taunting me. I've lost my soulmate.”
“I don't believe in soulmates,” Severus laughed.
“Only because you've never found one, and if you did, you were stupid enough to chase her away!”

Severus stared, heart pounding excruciatingly in his chest. Words wouldn't flow through his parched mouth. Remus looked down at him with a nervous swallow. There was regret in his expression, but no apology.

“Get out,” Severus said, and the numbness of his own voice did not surprise him. “Get out and don't talk about what you will never understand.”
“If you do the same,” Remus didn't move from the bed. Weakly, Severus gave him a shove, but it only caused the werewolf to lie back down again. “You want me,” Remus nosed against his jawline. “You want me because this is new, and it's sex, and there's nothing for you to lose here. You only have everything to gain and you don't care that I really won't get anything from this.”
“You will,” Severus threaded his fingers into greying hair against his better judgement. “Fuck it, Remus. You'll get something.”
“Worthwhile?”
“You sound like him,” Severus faltered. “You were never like this at school... you always wanted to be my friend...”
“Well, I'm not a fool,” Remus shrugged, carrying the bony arm closer to Severus' mouth; he kissed it. “A man gets rejected enough times he'll just give up.”

The words struck a horrible resonance through Severus. Everybody had given up on him. Everyone. Even the sweet, caring boy he had once known who was now a man on top of him. He froze, not knowing that his gaze had clouded over, that he was staring with slack-mouthed horror.

“You never wanted me to care for you,” Remus pointed out. “You never wanted my help, my friendship... you were horrible to me... do you want it now, Severus?”

His conscience nodded for him. Severus immediately hated it.

“Thank God,” Remus shook his head. “I've... oh...”

They sank into a kiss, which was clumsy and full of groans too deep to be graceful. Severus tugged on the hair he held and enjoyed Remus' squirm of pain. He shouldn't have, but he did. He wrapped his legs around the man's waist and held him with his thighs, keeping him tightly between them without hope of escape. When Severus rolled his hips it was a thrill to realise that he held all the power in their exchange. Remus bucked against him, grinding their cocks together. It was a while before Severus realised the skin had grown slippery, that one or the other, possibly both of them, had begun leaking with anticipation of what was to come.

It made him feel dirty, like he wanted to scourgify his own skin simply to make it stop. But with the next hot kiss from Remus, the revulsion was gone, replaced only with lust.

“Let me fuck you,” Remus begged, his eyes clamped tightly shut. “Let me show you how good this can be...”

Severus dropped his legs and his hips ached badly as feeling rushed back into the bones.

“On your knees.”

Remus was halfway to spelling him open before Severus could properly arrange himself as instructed. The spell roiled and pushed and probed and oiled his rectum, making him gasp and jerk awkwardly as he arranged himself on his hands and knees, facing the headboard. Remus' hands ghosted the globes of his buttocks and squeezed. Severus moaned in surprise as a fingertip traced over his entrance, which he hadn't expected on account of the spell. As it wormed into his body he bit hard into his lip, the intrusion foreign but entrancing at the same time. Remus stroked him internally, skilled in a way which hardened Severus' cock, and it added a beautiful sense of intimacy to their mating. The spell had been too clinical, he decided, but Remus' physical ministrations soothed him and made him shiver. When the digit slid out, he found he missed it.

Seconds later a dripping head circled his entrance; Severus steeled himself, fisting his fingers into the bedsheets and gritting his teeth. Alcohol had dulled the pain of the evening before, but he had no such luxury that morning. Remus pushed in and they both cried out.

The pain, he knew, was enhanced by his hangover, creeping up his spine, setting flame to bone and skin, stinging around his entrance and into his body. Severus couldn't help the tiny whimper which escaped, and another afterwards, and another, and another, until they were no longer whimpers but full blown cries for it to stop, cries for more, and cries for Remus to do anything other than the slow, maddening entrance he was currently performing.

“Shh,” Remus whispered suddenly, his arms coiling around Severus' torso, bringing more heat, which he felt was the last thing he needed.

The kisses that peppered his shoulders, however, were another matter. They brought softness and a tender care to chase away the discomfort. Severus lost himself in them, enjoying the wet sucks Remus laid upon his skin. They ran up his neck and between his shoulder blades, maddeningly pressing until he thought he might moan at their beauty.

“Now,” Severus hissed, and thrust back. The resulting pressure made him see stars and ache to his very core, but the pain was nothing and everything all at once. It was new pain, and it was good pain. It made the only items in his consciousness Remus Lupin, the bed he clung to, and the ache.

Remus didn't wait for an invitation to start thrusting, he simply moved, with a delirious little groan. It was undignified and animalistic, the way they began to rut with one another, the masculine sounds from their mouths nowhere near beautiful. Severus knew it could be beautiful, but he wasn't sure that was what he needed, and he didn't presume to think for Remus, either. Beautiful had gone between the man and his lover. Severus was simply his whore.

It didn't hurt to think of himself that way, he found. Remus was as much Severus' whore as he was Remus', a one-time fuck to take away reality. There was nothing else to be said about it.

Thus it was easy to give himself over. Severus felt his orgasm swelling hard in the pit of his belly, a storm which he couldn't find the inclination to stop. It left everything it touched alive -his guts, his cock, his thighs; when Remus' fingers wrapped around his shaft, Severus didn't hold on. He let go, clenching his eyes shut, dropping his jaw to cry out as he came hard over the bed linen. Remus was not far behind him. Narrow hips ground against his body, almost knocking him flat to the bed, but Severus managed to retain his hold. Remus moaned throatily into the air and bucked once. At the first wave of heat in his backside, Severus' stomach clenched, and nausea replaced the pleasant hum of his orgasm.

The thin man in his arms had arched his back like a cat when he'd come, Remus observed. The total devastation of the body he held caused him to thrust deeper, harder and listen to the sounds coming out of Severus' mouth. That was what finished him off, eventually, as he stuffed his face into the man's spine and poured into the tightest arse he had ever had. The floor and bed were shaking, he thought, as he pulsed through the aftershocks.

Or was that them, trembling so hard that they obscured their own vision?

Feeling nauseous, Remus closed his eyes, pressing a dry, soft kiss to Severus' back.

“Get off,” the whisper was broken. “Get out.”
“Severus-”
“Go!” the voice rose, but was still too cracked to be strong. Remus froze, softening quickly within the wizard's body, wondering what had changed so quickly between them that he was immediately unwelcome.
“Did I hurt you?” he asked in horror.
“No more than I wanted you to.”

The cryptic answer sent a chill down Remus' spine.

“Get dressed, get out. I will contact you when I want to see you again.”

The cold voice was becoming more practised, but Remus didn't believe it. They had shared a bed all night long, cuddled, kissed, taunted one another and finally fucked again. To be asked to leave so abruptly confused him.

“I don't want you here,” Severus said. “Get off me.”

Remus withdrew with a final soft touch to the man's back. He extricated himself from the tangled bedsheets and began to throw on his clothes, which stank of smoke and alcohol from their long evening in the pub. He ignored it, buttoning his unfavoured body away, unable to tear his eyes from Severus lying flat on the bed, his face hidden from sight.

Opening his mouth to say goodbye, even to thank Severus for the night they had shared, for the distraction if nothing else, Remus stopped himself. Instead he turned for the bedroom door, and was halfway down the stairs before he heard it. It was a rough sound, a sound which might have cracked his heart if it hadn't already been irreparably damaged.

It wasn't an ordinary sob, but one of a too-tortured soul, one which might crack itself before too long, if, again, the damage had not already been done.

But Remus did not stop, he kept walking; with shaking fingers he unlatched the front door, looking around at the dingy hallway he had paid little attention to as they had entered the house the night before. It was miserable, just like the man he had left sobbing in bed.

Remus had never thought he would be a person to stand by and watch suffering such as that. But Severus had sent him away, left him to his own suffering, and Remus found, sickeningly, that he had nothing else left to give to someone else who would only hurt him.

Epilogue

1st November, 1993

“I do not believe a single person inside this castle would have helped Black enter it,” said Dumbledore, and his tone made it so clear that the subject was closed that Snape didn't reply. “I must go down to the Dementors,” said Dumbledore. “I said I would inform them when our search was complete.”

Severus had to work hard to keep the sarcasm out of his expression. Percy Weasley stood in front of them both, a boy hoping to be included in a man's discussion purely because of the badge on his robes, and Severus was too tired to act any longer. Dumbledore walked away, his robes billowing around his feet as he quietly left the hall, and Weasley too strolled away, heading back to his own sleeping bag.

Potter was on the floor at his feet in a sleeping bag, clearly not asleep, with the youngest Weasley boy and the Granger know-it-all equally engrossed in their conversation. Resentment prickled through him then; he fought his will not to look down and scowl at the little earwigging whelp, and managing it, Severus walked away.

He slipped out of the Great Hall, and headed to his quarters.

***
The whiskey could have been swill as he poured it down his throat, but it was actually a fine malt. Severus had thought twice about wasting it on himself when he was clearly in no mood to appreciate it, nor did he believe that getting drunk was a safe idea when the school had been so easily breached.

But again he topped up the glass and lifted it to his lips, knocking the straight liquid back and enjoying the burn in his throat.

He drank his way through a quarter of the bottle before he stopped again. Severus looked at the fire, which was gathering strength, crackling merrily in the grate where he had angrily thrown the flames. He roughly slammed the tumbler down and threw his fingers up in his hair to rake through the lankness, feeling grease beneath his touch -grease which had made him the subject of ridicule throughout his thirteen years of teaching.

“You've always been a subject of ridicule, wherever you've been,” he muttered angrily to himself, his eyes catching sight of himself in the spotted old mirror above the fireplace. “Always. Nobody has ever taken me seriously, except perhaps Albus, and he knows me far too well, my grudges, idiosyncrasies... he can play me like his Stradivarius and enjoy it, the old swine.”

He was sneering at himself and began to pace up and down as he muttered. He snatched up the glass again and sipped broodingly from it.

Despite all the very good reasons there were for him not to fall into inebriation, Severus could only see the one thing which kept the glass lifting to his lips. He drank because regardless of whether Remus Lupin was at that moment aiding Sirius Black into Hogwarts, there was only one inevitable outcome that Severus could find.

Remus would have his lover back, and would never again have need of a substitute.

Christmas 1984

Severus looked at him across the table, at the coat that he had watched grow increasingly shabby over the two years they had been meeting together. The cuffs were fraying, the fabric a sorry shade of grey which made Remus look even paler than he actually was.

He didn't have to stop using his money. Severus had no sympathy. He had been poor and found he couldn't comprehend a man who had access to galleons and refused to use them because of the attached sentiment.

What on earth is attached sentiment when you're starving hungry?

Apparently a lot to him.

Severus set down his drained wine glass and swallowed. “No more.”
“I knew you were going to say that,” Remus replied blankly, with a slight shake of his head. “I knew you'd stop it soon.”
“I don't need it any more,” Severus lied. “I've moved on.”
“Got yourself a partner, then? Male or female?” Remus called his bluff.
“Moving on doesn't have to mean to somebody else's bed. But enough is enough. We can't carry on like this.”
“Why not?”

There was a gentle pleading Severus had not hoped to hear, because he was not convinced he was strong enough to resist it.

“I can't,” he answered simply, loathing the way his voice croaked. Yet that emotion was inevitable where Remus was concerned.

For two years they had meet up when the mood took them, and though Severus told himself often enough that it meant nothing, he was fooling himself. The fact that it now meant something, and his heart had recognised it and begun to thrum whenever Remus walked into a room meant that he had to end it.

Severus found himself on the precipice again, another person he could love, who might just love him back and yet circumstance dictated that he could not have it, that he could not be happy.

Circumstances you made for yourself... his mind pointed out, and Severus shook his head to clear it.

“I guess it was inevitable, really... I've been half expecting it,” Remus sighed, curling his hands into his armpits seeing as he had no money to buy himself a drink, and had refused Severus' offer, as ever.
“More inevitable than you know.” Severus couldn't ruin another life as he had Lily's. He had too much at stake in the years to come, there would be too much to lose. Remus had already lost enough.

“You'll be alright?” Remus looked up at him with narrowed eyes.
“I always am,” Severus said tightly, and rose to his feet. He had never taken his coat off, but put his hand into his pocket and pulled out a wad of Muggle money that he was in half a mind to give.

He placed it softly down on the table in front of Remus. “I don't want to hear how you don't want it,” he muttered in a low voice. “Just take it. And if our paths never cross again, then that will be fine by me, do you understand?”
“Why do you have to chase everyone away from you?” Remus' chair scraped back over the wooden floor of the pub. “Why can't you just let somebody love you, Severus?”
“Because nobody can,” he laughed, shrugged his shoulders, and stepped away.

It felt, like Severus had known it would, like he had paid his whore. Shivers crept through his skin and made him nauseous as he pushed into cold December wind and headed for the apparition point.

His fingers curled around the newspaper, upon which Sirius Black's face yelled in a silent scream. Severus glared at it, so hard that his temples began to ache with the strain. The cheap parchment creased beneath his grip and he scrunched it up, hearing satisfying rips; he imagined them creeping into the printed face of a man he had always loathed.

It had been fine when, he realised, he and Remus stood on equal footing. They had both lost, and had come together to eliminate the tension, drink together and in a few embarrassing memories which stiffened his cock and made him shudder, they had made love. Those slow, soul torching times when they melted together so closely that it was impossible to tell where Severus Snape ended and Remus Lupin began, because they were a single unit, haunted him. If he tried hard enough he could still drum up the scent of the man's chocolate-grey hair. It had been nothing when they were at school, almost mousey and certainly unmentionable. But that scent overpowered him every time he considered it, and as such, Remus overpowered him.

Having the wizard at Hogwarts was torture. It was lucky that he could thinly veil his madness beneath a shift of childhood enmity; Dumbledore certainly believed that the tension between them was born of their own days shuffling through the draughty school corridors.

It was not. Remus was pleasant, battered, pretty and warm, as he had always been, and Severus was as cold and hurt as he had ever been, but the sexual intermission of their companionship was gone. Remus had not knocked on his door, and Severus had not knocked on his.

He had spent two months thus far occupying his hands when the urge took him, when the urge took him to take Remus to whatever quiet space he could find and re-ignite something which he had so willingly murdered years before.

It was there, a subtle burn flickering in the pit of his belly. Lily was dead and he still loved her. Remus was alive, and Severus loved him, though he would never breathe a word of it to a soul.

The paper stamped on the flame; it sputtered and died at the mention of Black's freedom. Severus viciously screwed the paper up into a tighter ball and flung it into the fire. Orange engulfed it, he kept his eyes on the cream as it began to blacken, as it turned to ashes and was cremated into dust.

He could find no satisfaction in the sight, however, because the man himself still existed. The man himself was trying desperately to get into the castle, and whether that was to reach Harry Potter or Remus, Severus didn't care.

Sirius Black's return meant one thing, and that was that Remus would get his happy ending, and Severus would not. It should not have been a competition, but it was.

And if ruining it meant that Severus won then he was more than willing to give it his best effort. Remus might hurt, but they had both hurt enough that a little more would not kill the man.

June, 1994

“Get out, and don't come back.”

Severus' hiss was threatening, but Remus didn't flinch. The man had announced his secret, which Remus had worked tirelessly to keep from his pupils, at breakfast, as though he were telling them of a Hogsmeade visit or a change in the Gobstones club schedule.

It hurt more than Remus could have imagined.

“Do you hear me?” Severus asked, his eyes a storm of emotion.
“I heard you,” Remus breathed, looking down at the floor.
“And when you run back to him,” Severus took a step closer, his fingers very obviously shaking. “I hope you feel guilty about everything we did together, when you believed that he was the guilty one, that the love of your bloody life, your soulmate, had betrayed you.”
“Why do you have to be this way?” Remus whispered. “I know you're upset, Severus, this is...”
“I am nothing of the sort.”

Cold indifference made Remus wince, but he still knew better. Severus had opened up to him, warm and almost softly, during the two years that they had been in regular contact. He knew the wizard better than Severus would ever admit.

“She wouldn't want you to be like this,” he laid down his last card, willing to fight.

It instantaneously worked: Severus' spine straightened and the skin of his face paled.

“Don't you dare-”
“Well don't you dare, either,” Remus said simply, and turned on his heel, wishing something -anything- akin to satisfaction would pump through his veins.

All he felt was tired, far too tired for the likes of the war which was heading their way. He didn't understand Severus. He didn't understand Dumbledore's reasoning. He didn't understand anything.

Remus shook his head bitterly, slamming his hand against the stone entrance of an alcove that he and Sirius had once kissed in as teenagers. Leaving the castle again would break his heart; he had hoped to stay and watch Harry grow up, to get to know his friends and try to protect them.

Severus had put paid to that for him.

And to fucking Sirius again, too.

It would never be the same, Remus knew. Nothing would be the same. He had had plenty of years to deal with the fact, and yet he still hadn't.

“And probably never will,” he muttered unhappily beneath his breath, before unlocking his office door with his wand to face the saddening task of packing up his life, yet again.

-fin-

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