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Monday is as good a day as any to completely set fire to your comfortable little life, isn’t it? For once she’s grateful that James is off playing with Sirius, or whatever it is they’re up to, instead of hanging around the house and wanting her to hang around too. Yes, she knows she married a man that wouldn’t need to work a day in his life if he lived to a thousand to still have more than enough money to live comfortably, but it’s still uncomfortable.
She wishes he’d get a job. She wishes he’d stop whining about the fact that she has a job— only working behind the counter at the Apothecary, but— She wishes he’d stop going on about her getting herself apprenticed to become a Potion Master if she insists on working, like working is something offensive for his wife to want to do. She wishes a lot of things, but if wishes were fishes it sure would stink in here.
She doesn’t get dressed up. She doesn’t put on a dress, put on some makeup, do something nice with her hair— that would be. That would be wrong. Just jeans. Jeans and a nice white top, and over that a white jumper from Fair Isle, its pattern in soft shades of blue, green and grey. Her hair put back in a long plait.
The woman in the mirror looks like Lily Potter, James Potter’s wife.
The woman in the mirror does not look like Lily Evans. It’s been a while now since she’s seen Lily Evans anywhere she looked. She’s gotten lost.
Sometimes she wakes up in the night feeling the heavy weight of Jamie’s arm across her and wants to scream until her throat bleeds.
Monday is as good a day as any—
She Apparates to Devon from the pretty little terrace house in London her parents-in-law handed over to them— to James really— on their marriage. Just one of many. Growing up she was comfortably well off, but nothing like the Potters. Until she went to Hogwarts she’d never really brushed up against real wealth.
Now she’s married into it.
Here lies Lily Evans who set out to change the world.
She’d wanted things to be fairer. Now she’s part of the world she wanted to change.
The little Guest House is the same as when she came here as a kid, twelve, on the holidays. It sits in a pretty little garden full of flowers, a picturesque little place that even manages to make the kitchen garden behind it, the chickens and ducks and geese, and the pastures full of sheep and the occasional cow seem like something out of some sweet story for children, and not their smelly, dirty, mucky reality.
Back then she’d spent the entire time worried sick about Sev, if he was eating, if his father was beating him, if his mum was ignoring him, if he’d still be ok when she got home, and then, when the beauty of the place and the sheer delight of the clotted cream and homemade strawberry jam on the cream tea dragged her thoughts out of misery and fear, swearing to herself they’d come here together when they got older.
All those dreams she’d had. A thousand lives she’d lived in her head until that day he called her that horrid word, and in each of them he’d been right by her side.
After was hard. She’d had to remake herself.
Sometimes she thinks she didn’t do a very good job.
What is Lily without Sev?
Her heart catches in her chest when she sees him waiting for her, obviously afraid to go in without her there to lead the way. A slash of darkness in the picturesque countryside, like something other, something from some night world has crept its way into the day.
He looks up as she approaches, almost straightening out of his huddled, stooped, stance, before flinching back as if struck, shrinking in on himself.
So pretty, the parts of her she tries to kill whisper across her mind. His eyes are like onyx, perfectly black, hair silken, gotten longer than she’s ever seen it. Good for hiding behind, as he’s doing right now.
She wants to touch.
She wants to reach out and gather him close and— A strange impulse, almost a desire to sink her teeth in, to eat him whole, so he can never escape her— she bites it down, reminds herself how angry she is with him.
She shouldn’t be here.
He shouldn’t be here.
They wouldn’t be here— but last week, Thursday, she’d been at work, about to take her lunch break, but it had been a little chilly outside, so she’d gone back for her coat, heard Marcel behind the counter refusing to serve someone, tone snippy, superior— he’d even used the words your kind— and when she’d stuck her head around from the back she’d— Well. There he was, like being punched in the face.
Their eyes had met, just for a moment, before she’d forced herself to turn her back on all his obvious torment, embarrassment, anger, the way he was forcing himself to stand tall, even though she could see he wanted to sink in on himself, to flee— she’d fled. Left before the urge to intervene on his behalf got too strong and he called her something horrible again.
That evening though, when she was done with work for the day, he’d been there, outside, waiting for her. ‘Please,’ he’d said, after her first burst of anger and attempt to make him go away, ‘Please, Lils— Lily— I need to talk to you. Please—’ She actually doesn’t remember much of the conversation. She remembers being angry and thinking it was a trap and— And she remembers how he’d looked at her, his big, dark eyes, and what she thought might even been fear there, and she knew she was fucked, the moment he said please she knew she was—
She’s done everything in her power to avoid being alone with him since he called her that. To avoid him. Not to talk to him— no matter how hard he tried at first. She knew, she just knew, that if she did, that was it, she’d weaken, she’d back down, she’d forgive him for basically telling her and everyone else in the school that he didn’t care if she lived or died, didn’t care if she was murdered, if she was tortured to death via Cruciatus like she’s heard some who opposed Voldemort have been. Some just for being Muggleborns.
Mudbloods.
Sev, her Sev— to hear that word, that slur from between his little pink lips—
Maybe he did kill her, there and then. She certainly hasn’t quite felt herself since.
She agreed to talk to him. She agreed not there, not in the Wizarding world, then she suggested here, some malfunction somewhere deep inside remembering how much she’d wanted to bring him here, to show him things could be nice, be pretty, be sweet, be safe.
She’d just wanted him to be safe.
Well. That’s not quite true. But it was the want of hers she could have been satisfied with.
Now he’s no doubt gone and joined Voldemort and will never be safe again.
Her Sev— in the hands of a monster.
Her Sev, still looking at her with those dark, dark eyes.
She takes charge, the way she used to, because there’s always been an uneasiness in him around other people. She was lucky. She was blessed— and what a fucking blessing it turned out to be. More a curse. More—
Her rings, engagement and wedding, sit heavy on her finger.
Behind her, he follows behind her, through all her smiles and friendliness and fake names introducing him as her husband so she can get the key and they can go up to the room. This is the kind of thing they need privacy for, this conversation.
She’s going to ask him about it, the corruption she’s sure is curling its way around the pale, silken skin of his inner arm.
‘You shouldn’t have done that,’ is what he does say as she shuts the door behind them. ‘You’re Mrs James Potter— what do you think he’d say if he heard you calling yourself my wife?’
She snorts, bitter. ‘I’m me. I won’t have you of all people reducing me to some extra limb he’s grown, just because I married him.’ A mistake. A mistake. A mistake— Shh! She loves Jamie, she does. She does— But—
She’s still facing the door, she hasn’t brought herself to turn around, to take in the spare, dark figure of Sev in this pale, lacy room smelling intensely of rose potpourri. ‘Have you done it?’ she asks, even though she’s probably supposed to wait for him to speak. ‘Have you sold yourself to Voldemort?’
A pause, agonising, prickling under her skin as she imagines that blackness, ink or whatever it is, must prickle under his.
‘Does it matter if I have?’ he says eventually, that stepped on cat tone he gets, offended. Always offended so easily. ‘What do you even care Evans— Potter?’
‘I should leave,’ she says, not really a reply, just a truth she knows in her heart. ‘I don’t know why I agreed to talk to you. I don’t know why I suggested we come here. I should leave.’
‘I don’t know why either,’ he snips, tone as cutting and contemptuous as he can make it, ‘You haven’t wanted to speak to me before— no matter how hard I tried. I suppose you got what you wanted when you decided to drop me, to stop being my friend. You got everyone cooing at you, sympathising with you for trying so hard to redeem the lost cause, the dark Wizard— and then you got James Potter— I thought you better than that, Evans. I thought you better than him.’
For a split second she feels sick with fury, whirling around to face him, to see him standing tall, head held high, sneering down his nose at her. ‘Me dropping you, as you put it,’ She hisses, Lily Evans free and loose and enraged, ‘Had nothing to do with anything more than me not wanting to be friends with a pathetic little wannabe Death Eater that could call me a slur like Mudblood and not even care. Did it occur to you that maybe, just maybe, the thought that you might one day turn around and cast the Killing Curse on me without even blinking might have something to do with it? What kind of idiot would I have to be, me, a Muggleborn, to want to stay friends with someone like that?’
‘I would never—!’ he squawks, puffing up like an offended crow. She ignores him, snarls over him, leaving the door and stalking towards him until he starts to back up.
‘I was your friend. I was your best friend, and I thought you were mine. I thought we had a future together. I thought it was going to be us against the world, like it always had been, but then you chose to throw it all away trying to impress a pack of inbred little squits like Avery and Mulciber— and you act like it’s my fault. You act like it’s my fault and then talk to me like I ceased to exist as a separate entity the minute I married James Potter. How often did we talk about him? Huh? How often did we talk about so many of the bloody boys at school and how much they think they own any girl they’re dating and how wrong that is? How those girls, those brilliant girls, will probably get married and disappear into their husband’s homes, all that promise gone to waste, and now you dare talk to me like you think I’m just the same. I should have known. I should have known better— They were always right about you. What I saw when I looked at you was a fucking illusion. You weren’t my friend. You weren’t on my side. It wasn’t us against them. It was just you against everyone, me included!’
‘Lily—’ he tries, pressed against the wall and staring at her with wide, wide eyes.
‘Shut up Severus Snape!’ she roars at him, heart racing, eyes watering, fury and sad sickness filling her, poisoning her, ‘You ruined everything! You ruined my fucking life! I wish I’d never met you!’ I miss you so much it feels like dying— ‘How dare you prove them all right?! How dare you— I thought you were better than that. I thought you were better than all of them— and then you go choose Voldemort, of all fucking people, over me!’
‘I didn’t!’ he yelps, ‘Lils, I didn’t! I didn’t mean it like that, and I didn’t even mean it, I just hated— I hated you seeing that, and I hated you for seeing that, just for a minute, not always, just right then, so I said— I said the most hurtful thing I could, and I regret it, have regretted it every day since— but I haven’t chosen the Dark Lord, I haven’t— I haven’t taken the Mark. They want me to, and I know I’m going to have to, soon, but I don’t want to, and— Fuck! Lils, I’m so fucking scared. I made a mistake and I can’t take it back and I’m so fucking scared—’
‘You haven’t taken it?’ that’s the thing that sticks with her. If it’s true, if his arm is still unmarred— He can be saved. He can be hers again—
He’s wearing a black jumper, worn and patched, and beneath that a black shirt fading into grey, but her hands make quick work of the buttons at the cuffs, at shoving fabric and wool up, rough, urgent, ignoring the tiny, almost startled grunt he makes, so she can expose his forearm. Blank. Pale and blank and marred only by a few round scars that still make her want to Apparate to Cokeworth to cast Cruciatus on his dad for daring to use him as an ashtray back so very, very long ago. Her thumb brushes one, feeling the slightly raised, shiny skin, feeling him go still—
The air feels thick. She— She feels aware of her body. Strange and aware—
Just in case she moved to the other arm, doing the same, and revealing its nakedness to her eyes.
His skin is so soft, so tender— He’s thin, too thin, too skinny, and his wrists are only about as wide as hers, even though his hands are larger— longer, mainly, his palms and fingers slender and delicate.
‘L-Lily,’ he stutters, and she realises she has him backed into the wall, her body pressing in close, too close. She is the only one he ever let get that close. He was supposed to be hers.
She had all these dreams.
All these fantasies.
All these futures.
She can feel the heat of him, this close, smell him, clean, that empty, blank clean scent of someone who uses charms instead of soap. He’s never been very good at being kind to himself. Warm water and sweet smelling things are not what he thinks he deserves.
Always fighting the world that he thinks believes he deserves to be hurt, all because somewhere deep inside he believes it too.
His dad, his mum, the kids growing up, the adults, then Hogwarts, her husband and his friends, the friends she lets in her house, has dinner with, talks and laugh and jokes with— Her.
She hurt him too, didn’t she?
Not. Not that day she walked away, let Jamie—
No. Before that.
Fifth year was a terrible year.
All these things she was realising about herself and all the ways they weren’t what she wanted to be and the want in her, terrible, aching, devouring, and the way he could never satisfy it.
The heat between her legs. The hunger waking, rising, with him so close.
His lovely face, his beautiful eyes, his long, slender neck, the narrowness of him, his tiny little waist, no wider than hers even though he’s taller than her, his delicate shoulders, his elegant hands, the wrists she could span with her own hands. She wants to bury those hands in the black silk of his long hair, to tug his head down, to hold him in place for her as she—
Hers.
That’s what beats in her blood.
That’s what always beat in her blood.
For a moment, a strange, twisted moment, she contemplates killing him, killing him so he can’t reject her again, can’t walk out of here and give himself to Voldemort, and then killing herself so she doesn’t have to go back to being Lily Potter.
I can’t do it, she almost says, I don’t know how to do it. I don’t want to do it.
There is no her without him, just some walking, talking mannequin that pretends it’s ok and happy and content in her pointless spoilt little life.
It’s so hard to pull back, to pull away, to let him have his space— but that’s what he wants, isn’t it? She’d been going to tell him she loved him, wanted him, and before she could he told her he thought he was gay— That was the beginning of the end. Stupid girl that she’d been, only fifteen, she’d taken it personally, taken it as rejection, started to pull away after that, started to listen to everyone else when they talked about him like he was—
All of a sudden she’s exhausted.
She totters backward, takes a heavy seat on the too soft and too frilly bed, hanging her head in her hands. She needs a cigarette. ‘Do you have a fag?’
‘I-I d-didn’t know you smoked,’ he stutters out, sounding terribly young and terribly unnerved.
She shrugs, ‘Sometimes. It makes dealing with Sirius Black easier—’ she looks up, crooks him a smile, ‘So does drinking, so I’ve picked up all sorts of bad habits while we were—’ she trails off, unsure how to put it, regretting mentioning that man.
He winces, but he must be offput and uncertain enough that the anger and outrage doesn’t come, instead he creeps closer to her with little, tentative footsteps, and finally pulls a crumpled packet of cigarettes out of his pocket to hesitantly offer her. She takes it, tapping one out, which she puts to her lips and lights with her wand.
She sees him looking, both at her but at the cigarette, and there's want there, but she thinks it’s only for one thing, so she takes the cylinder of tobacco from between her lips and holds it out to him. He hesitates, dark eyes flicking back and forth between her face and the cigarette, before he eventually takes it and places it between his own lips.
A shudder runs through her, a wicked thrill, at seeing his mouth around something that’s been in hers.
Fuck, she needs to leave or get over this or just go mad and run screaming into the Devonshire countryside.
He sits next to her. Carefully and just as uncertainly as he’s done everything since she pinned him up against the wall, but he does, and she can smell him again and feel his warmth and her wicked, traitorous hand leaves the cigarette between her lips for the other one to handle as it creeps across the rose printed coverlet to cover his spare one, to worm her fingers between his own.
To touch him. To touch him—
‘You’re married to Potter,’ he says flatly, not looking at her, fingers twitching between hers.
‘I am,’ she agrees.
It’s not that she doesn’t like James. It’s not that she doesn’t love James. She does. She likes him. She loves him— and if she’d never met Sev she’d probably be happy with him— or maybe not, maybe there wouldn’t be that element of self-punishment to her, that need to run, that had helped her run straight into the arms of a man who had once been so very cruel to him.
But she does love James for all of that— Only, the thing she sometimes likes most about James is that he makes her feel normal. She wants James like a normal woman wants a man. She likes looking at him, his broad, strong body, his hairiness, his large hands, his cock. She likes lying underneath him as he fucks her, or kneeling over him, or being picked up and put on the kitchen counter in front of him, she likes spreading her legs and letting him lick her there, even doesn’t mind putting her own mouth on his cock. She feels cohesive, coherent, acceptable.
For a while that was enough. For a while she gloried in not feeling like Lily Evans, feeling like someone else instead, but soon enough the shine wore off, and now she doesn’t fit at all in this life she’s made for herself.
It’s not his fault, James, because he is, surprisingly, a good man, a loveable man, for all he’s spoilt and entitled and too used to things just working out for him— Still, a good man.
Now that he’s grown up a bit.
Sev— Sev she’s not sure is a good man, though she’s always hoped he is, somewhere deep down inside. He’s more complicated than James though, but then with Sev she’s more complicated too.
With Sev things are a mess. She’s a mess. She thinks she’s always wanted him, he was the first man she ever wanted, but she doesn’t want him like a woman wants a man. If anything she wants him like a man wants a woman— or like a man wants a man. Like those dirty, filthy stories in that gay magazine that Sirius Black somehow got a hold of and was reading out in the Gryffindor common room not that long before that horrible, wretched day when her life got rerouted.
She remembers coming in, stepping through the portrait, to everyone captured by Black, the way he likes best, everyone hanging on his every word, all those faces twisted in fascination and disgust, as he read out one of the stories, not very well written, but very— passionate.
It was from the perspective of some Professor— poorly concealed Oxbridge, she’d guess, though half the people in the room wouldn’t have really known what either Oxford or Cambridge were— in love with one of his students. His lust had been covetous, exploitative, objectifying, the beloved a thing, a beautiful thing he wanted to do things to, but she’d felt not a real person— or at least that was her perspective now, after having read the bloody story again and again, read it, and the others in that magazine so often she’d had to spell it repaired several times after the cheap paper gave out at the staples.
That’s in the now though, in the then she’d been too busy being captured by the deep clenching fist of want she’d felt between her legs, the way her knickers had gotten damp, the way the description of this object of the man’s obsession wasn’t so far from her Sev—
Feeling more the imposter than she’d ever felt before she’d marched over to Sirius Black and confiscated the magazine, pretending she was doing so as Prefect not as pervert, wanting the thing for herself. Her heart had been in her throat as she’d marched back up to her room, as she’d hidden it, to go over that story and the others in it again and again for years after lights out, hand shoved down the front of her knickers as she’d—
Worst, the worst thing, the most horrible thing she’s ever done to both of them, is imagine them together. Sev under James— sometimes she even imagines she’s Sev under James— or imagine she’s James with Sev under her. Or holding Sev close as James— They’d hate it though. They hate her if they knew.
Maybe if she hadn’t started to have these dark, shameful fantasies she wouldn’t have agreed to come here, to meet with Sev. Because the perfect façade of her life is starting to crack and seeing him again, meeting those lovely dark eyes, has only made the cracks spread and faster.
How was she going to go back to pretending she was content and everything was ok after seeing him again?
‘I don’t want you to join Voldemort,’ she says, because it has to be said. If he does, once he does, there really will be no going back. He’ll be lost to her. Irretrievable.
He takes a deep breath and she hears the shakiness there, something on the edge of tears, ‘I don’t want to,’ he says eventually, then repeats it, sounding stronger now these secret words are out in the light. ‘I don’t want to. Lils, I don’t want to.’
‘Then don’t,’ she says, not asking him to explain his change of heart, not wanting to hear anything that might take the shine of this moment. ‘Don’t.’
His hand twitches where it’s tangled with hers. He takes a deep puff from his cigarette. He crosses his legs, uncrosses them, crosses them— ‘What am I going to do?!’ he eventually bursts out with, glancing at her then quickly away, a moment later pulling his wand and using it to Accio a cut crystal ashtray from the bedside table so they can flick ash into it. ‘What am I going to do? Where am I going to go? The only people that will employ me are on his side, and only as long as I stay on his side. I can’t get myself an apprenticeship— I mean, I’ve even written to the old Slug, but he won’t help — but he, Voldemort, says he’ll arrange one for me, once I take the Mark— and I’m staying at Malfoy Manor. If I— If I run I’ll have nowhere to live. Nowhere to go. Anyone not on his side won’t rent me a room— and even if they would I won’t be able to afford one, because I’ll be entirely broke. I could go back to the Muggle world, I guess— I could— I could squat somewhere—’
‘I’ll take care of you,’ she’s saying before she’s thought it through. ‘I’ll keep you safe. I will— Please, Sev, don’t join Voldemort. Please.’
A flash of those dark eyes, before he’s once more looking away. ‘But you hate me.’
She’s been stabbed. She’s been killed. She’s furious and sick with it. Her heart’s broken. She’s only got herself to blame. It’s all his fault. She— ‘No. No, Sev, never. Never.’ But that’s not quite true, is it? She has hated him, hated him with her whole heart, in the way love tilts and twists when it all goes wrong. She’s not going to tell him that though. It’s too hard, too complicated, too easy to misunderstand, so instead she’ll swear, ‘I never hated you. Oh, you broke my heart, Sev, but how could I ever hate you?’
‘You wouldn’t talk to me,’ he wails, then flinches away from his own words, from the tone of them, too blatant and telling, too young and distressed. She can see pink start to suffuse his cheeks, the tips of his ears, ‘You wouldn’t let me explain. Apologize. I know what I said was horrible, appalling. A terrible thing— terrible for what it meant, yes? Because you thought it meant I thought like them, that I— but it was just the first thing that came to mind, the worst thing that came to mind, because you seeing me like that, seeing how weak I am, how— I couldn’t stand it. I hated it. I hated it so much it was like I hated you— but I didn’t mean it, and not just because it hurt you— the things I’ve seen, the things I’ve heard— even if the Dark— Voldemort— wins it won’t make his side right. It’s the sort of stuff we heard about, you know, why some of the men were the way they were when we were growing up. The things they saw in the war— Voldemort wants things like that here— and by the time I really thought about it, decided I didn’t want to ever see a world like that, not just because you were angry with me, but because it’s cruel and stupid, based on nothing, no reason, no scientific principle behind it, just hate— hate for people like you and me, not even for the fucking Marauders—’ he stops, flicks a glance at her, then tries to continue as if he hadn’t just kind of suggested he wouldn’t have an ethical issue with torturing and murdering her husband, ‘—o-or for any of the others. The ones in Slytherin, they were Purebloods. Stupid, stupider than pretty much any of the Muggleborns at school, and twice as cruel—’ he seems to realise he’s gotten off track, because he shakes his head, just a little, and she watches silky black hair fly, before he finally makes himself look at her and hold her gaze, ‘So, I’m sorry. I am sorry. I do mean it. I shouldn’t have said it and I’m ashamed of myself for the fact that word was the first thing that came to mind when I was trying to hurt you. I’m ashamed of myself for trying to hurt you in the first place. You were my best friend. You deserved better.’
‘I didn’t keep you safe though, did I?’ it hurts to admit. ‘I always swore to myself I would, not out of duty, or because I was a Prefect, but because you were my heart— and I didn’t. I should have done more. I should have done something, instead of—’ she hadn’t felt like she could do more at the time. About all there was to do more would have been to start throwing hexes— but she’d always believed the school should have acted to protect Sev, and when it didn’t, when the teachers and when Dumbledore didn’t do more to either keep him safe, or punish those that hurt him, she’d felt this horrible cognitive dissonance that she sometimes found paralysing.
It was easy too, when they weren’t in the same house, when she didn’t see so much of it. Out of sight and out of mind— and then he was alone, being tormented from every side. No wonder he slipped. Let himself fall a little, into his own Darkness.
‘Well,’ he says, going for rueful, but not able to fully hide the hurt, ‘You did marry James Potter.’
‘I know,’ she replies, all of a sudden faced with remembering all the things her husband has done to this man before her, the one she once would have sworn she loved like no other. ‘I’m not quite sure how it happened.’ He gives her the most appalled look, making her rush to add, ‘I mean, I remember everything that led up to it, but it all seemed to— I don’t remember consciously making a choice that one day I’d be Lily Potter, James Potter’s wife. It just seemed to happen. I’m not sure it was the best idea I’ve had, really—’
‘He’s not hurting you, is he?’ he demands, serious, intent, like he’ll Apparate out of here and cast the Killing Curse on her poor husband if she does anything to suggest the answer’s yes. Oh, she does still love him, doesn’t she? She wants to grab him, pull him in close, hold him to her, and never let him escape.
‘Of course not!’ she replies, ‘James is— Well. He’s not the sort to hurt a woman, even if he didn’t—’ it’s strangely distasteful, feels strangely wrong to say he loves me and mean James Potter, especially to Sev. ‘He’s really quite a good husband, I suspect.’
‘But you’re not happy?’ it’s not much of a question.
She shrugs, ‘Maybe I’m just bored.’ He doesn’t understand her, not like Sev does, and he doesn’t seem to like it when she gets intense about something, outraged, wants to change the world— but maybe that’s because every now and then she slips up and suggests the world could be changed by prying the wealth and influence out of the hands of the wealthy and influential who have done nothing to earn it— something that might make him, being one of said wealthy and influential, a bit nervous. Also he’s rubbish at potions and worse than that has no interest in them so she can‘t even discuss the latest developments with him. No interest in potions. How someone can just not care about what has to be the most interesting subject she’s ever encountered she has no idea. It boggles the mind.
‘You don’t have an Apprenticeship,’ he says, not asks. ‘You’re working at the Apothecary, behind the counter, and you don’t have an Apprenticeship— Why? Doesn’t he like the idea of you outshining him?’
She shakes her head, ‘It’s not James, it’s— I thought I knew where I was going and everything just, it got turned around, and I haven’t worked out how to right it yet.’ The dream, the main dream, the core of her dreams, was for them to get Apprenticeships at the same time, ideally together, to both become Potion Masters, and to open up a store together. She could have done that all by herself, but she has missed brewing with him. Oh, she still loves brewing, but some potions work best with two people and one thing she does hate is brewing with anyone else.
With him she could brew like they were the one animal, each completing the next action without speaking, each knowing exactly what the other needed at any moment— why should she have to brew with someone else? Why should she have to constantly say in however many minutes I need this amount of that prepared in such and such a way when with him he’d have, say, the three frog’s eyes minced just as the potion required them, no words exchanged?
He looks away, and she can guess he’s thinking of the plan too, because they’d talk about it, dream it together, suggest names, debate the Evans and Snape vs Snape and Evans part of whatever else they’d call the shop, talk about how they’d set up the store, what potions they’d stock, whether it’d be just potions or ingredients too— And all that went down the drain that stupid, stupid day. ‘I forgive you,’ she says then, because it seems the right moment, and because she means it. ‘For what you said, the name you called me, I forgive you— just don’t do it again, and don’t join Voldemort. Please Sev. We can work it out. I promise.’
His fingers tighten until he’s properly holding her hand back. He’s shaking. She can see him shaking, fine, delicate little quivers. He’s looks away again, dark hair fallen over his shoulder so she can see a glimpse, a flash, a peek at the nape of his neck— he’s so pretty. He was always so pretty.
Her cigarette’s burned down to ashes, so she grinds it into the crystal ashtray between them on the bed, just in front of their hands. She wants to take the cigarette butt from him, dispose of it likewise. She wants to run her fingers through the long fall of his hair. She wants to press a kiss to the nape of his neck. She wants to get him beneath her. She wants to—
‘You got very distant after I told you I thought I was gay—’ he says, seemingly out of nowhere, ‘Were you disgusted by me?’
It takes a moment for her mind to catch up, for the appropriate rejection of the idea to rush to her lips. ‘What?! No! No, of course not!’ but then the fact she said he thought he was gay not is gay also catches up to her, and her mind goes screeching off onto another track, ‘Do you still think that? Are you gay?’ Please say no. Please say— Be bisexual, please, Sev.
Give her hope. Let the hunger in her waken again. Let life regain some colour, some pleasure.
‘I-I-I don’t know. I’m not—’ he gives a helpless little shrug of his narrow shoulders, such an elegant movement, so seductive, though she doubts he’s ever realised the strange, ethereal grace he sometimes moves with and how much it moves her. ‘I’m not attracted to women, so—’
‘But you are to men?’ she asks, picking at the thought, what does he mean? If it’s simple surely there's a simple answer. She’s pushing it, pushing things— and he’s always been strangely modest, at least with her, so she shouldn’t, but she still does. ‘Is it that you’re not attracted to women, or is it the— I suppose, the sex act? Penetrating a woman?’
He goes bright red. He looks as far away from her as he can. Tries to pull his hand away. Tries to escape. Embarrassed, so embarrassed— and it’s some wicked, evil, something in her, that same old something, that same wrongness, that makes her throb with desire to see him like this. Delicate and discomposed. Flustered. Like she could just reach out and— it takes a moment to clear her throat, and she knows she’s being awful, unkind, but she has to know, ‘I mean, do you feel disgusted at the thought of a woman penetrating you? Like, if I had a cock and—’
‘Don’t!’ he snaps, ripping his hand away from hers as he turns to face her, his body propelling him back, away from her a little on the bed, ‘Don’t tease me! Even after everything I’ve done. It’s cruel! I didn’t think you were cruel,’ she’s rushing to apologize, to explain, to do something, but he’s still talking, not listening, and soon she’s grateful he didn’t stop, as he then says, ‘You know I’m in love with you. You know I always have been. I don’t understand it, I don’t understand myself, how I can love you but not— not— it’s like you said. How I can not want that, but want things— but you are a woman, and I’m— I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but I do know I am, I am wrong, but that doesn’t mean you need to tease me for it. Not you.’
‘No!’ she yelps, reaching for him, even as he resists, ‘No, no, no, no, no! I didn’t— I’m not— I’m not teasing. Sev. I’m not. I love you too. I always have. I always— and I want you like that, I want to fuck you, penetrate you, put my fingers and my tongue and— and I’ve thought about it, fantasised about it, for years— so I’m not teasing you. I love you. I want you. Please— please—’
‘But you’re married!’ he protests.
‘I don’t care,’ she yelps, still reaching for him, getting her hands on his upper arms, pulling herself across the bed towards him, ignoring the ashtray as it goes clattering to the floor. ‘I don’t care. It was— I married him because I felt like I couldn’t have you, and if I can have you then I don’t care. You’re what I want. You’re what I always wanted. First, last, always— I love you.’
He looks confused and like he can’t believe she can love him, and she thinks he probably believes no one can love him, and it hurts, and she wants to prove it, and that want, that determination, is why she scrambles that final little distance and presses her lips to his. He yelps, startled, and that opens his mouth enough that she can slip her tongue straight in. He flinches, tries to pull away, then they’re going over backwards, the two of them, her over him, until he’s on his back on the bed and she’s on top of him, her mouth still determinedly pressed to his.
Incendio, part of her thinks. This is it. There’s not going back now.
The rest of her is too preoccupied by how much she doesn’t want to go back.
Sorry Jamie—
Sev is breathing heavily, body tense, unmoving, his dark eyes open and staring at her. If she pulls back he might bolt. He might cry. He’ll certainly misunderstand something— so she stays where she is, moving her mouth gently, trying to encourage him into the kiss. She wonders if anyone has ever kissed him before— no one had when they stopped talking. He’d been pure, entirely virginal— and a dark part of her hopes he still is. He’s still all hers. Hers to conquer and to own, entirely.
His lower lip quivers. The tip of his tongue extends, meeting hers just behind his front teeth. His lips part a tiny bit more. She presses the advantage, deepening the kiss, feeling victory as he finally starts to relax and reciprocate, though his movements are clumsy and unpractised. If he’s ever kissed anyone, he hasn’t done it regularly.
It’s perverse, isn’t it, taking everything she ever learnt with Jamie and applying it to Sev? In the dark of long, sleepless nights, her heart racing, Jamie asleep beside her, she used to imagine kissing Sev, Jamie looking on. Telling Jamie he could look but not touch. Showing Sev off for her husband, forcing him to admit how pretty Sev is, how lovely, how wrong he was when he was so cruel.
She reaches up, brushes Sev’s long, silky hair back from his face, feeling the soft, fine strands run through her fingers, finer than her own, finer than James’— She touches the lobe of his ear, feels him shudder, then cups the side of his face, holds him in place, lets herself take.
It’s hard not to squirm, it’s hard not to squeeze her thighs together, she can feel her knickers slicking up, sticking to her uncomfortably. Between her legs it aches. She can feel his cock against her, twitching and filling up. She wants. She always wanted— she doesn’t care anymore. She doesn’t care if she’s wrong and a freak and a pervert. Touching him, kissing him, it’s all worth it. He was always worth it. She’s so sorry it all fell apart. She should have been better to him. She will be better to him. It’ll be better now—
Hands on her shoulders, but he’s not embracing her, pulling her close, instead he starts to gently push her back. She grunts out a complaint, resists— but if she pushes too hard, takes too much, he might— he might— He’s Sev, once bitten, twice shy. If she scares him she’s sure he’ll run. Oh, he’ll be bitter and biting and unlikeable about it, but it’ll be fear at the end of the day, won’t it? ‘Are you ok?’ she whispers against his lips.
‘You’re married,’ he whispers back, again, seeming stuck on the idea. ‘You married James Potter. You can’t want this. You can’t want me.’
‘I do though, Sev,’ she whispers back. ‘I should have talked to you back then, I should have let you apologize, I should have—’ she strokes her fingers through his hair again, peering at his pretty face, so long and elegant, his cheekbones so high, too prominent because he obviously hasn’t been taking care of himself, that Roman nose he used to get teased about for no good reason— a little crooked from that time his dad broke it and it never set right. She loves him. It fills her entire heart, her entire chest, her entire world. ‘It all got so fucked up, didn’t it? But we can fix it. We can. We can make it like nothing ever went wrong.’
‘And fixing it means this?’ he asks, ‘Even though I want you to— You can’t really want to— You should go back to your husband, have a normal life, be with a normal man.’
‘I’m not normal, though,’ she replies, ‘I tried to be, but I’m really not. I wasn’t lying when I said I wanted you like that. I think about it. I touch myself imagining putting my fingers up inside of you—’ he shudders at that, letting out a little helpless mewling sound. ‘Oh, Sev,’ she whispers, her hips grinding forward, ruing the lack of anything to rub against to soothe the hungry ache in her cunt. ‘Sev, can I? Can I? Would you let me?’
‘Can—?’ he echoes, sounding dazed, ‘Your fingers? You want to? Now?’
She nods, her fingers clenching into the soft wool of his jumper, clinging and desperate, praying he won’t say no. Won’t call her a pervert. Won’t say he’s changed his mind.
‘I-If this is some joke,’ he splutters out, redder than ever, dark eyes having trouble meeting hers, ‘If bloody Potter is about to jump out and— and—’
‘I wouldn’t, you have to know I wouldn’t—’ she argues, urgent, fingers kneading at the wool of his jumper.
‘I don’t understand what’s happening,’ he breathes out, and then, before she has to deal with the idea that maybe she should pull back and they should talk properly he nods, tentative, but it is a nod, and then it becomes a nod accompanied by, ‘If you really want to, you can.’
She can. That’s a yes. He’ll let her—
Urgent, probably too urgent, she pulls back, sits straddling his thighs, tries not to squirm, tries not to grind her cunt against his leg, instead grabbing at his clothes, trying to get them off him, eager and wanting to see. She’s seen it all before, so much of it, him held upside down in the air by her husband, his long, lovely legs there for everyone to see, and his poverty, his stained pants— and she knows he only has a couple of pairs and she knows he’s had them forever and she knows the house he grew up in, knows he grew up dirty and unwashed and unfed, uncared for, unloved— but at least James stopped before he stripped him completely bare. It doesn’t make it ok, though, does it? Her whirling maelstrom of thoughts and feelings didn’t help. The part of her that had wanted to see James complete the deed as much as she wanted to stop him, not because she wanted Sev humiliated, but because she wanted to see all there was to see— and her own guilt, her own self-disgust, her own greed and covetousness, and the way she’d objectified him like the man in her favourite story objectifies his beloved student— Then he said that and all of it whirled together, imploded, and she imploded.
She is more complicit than she has ever wanted to admit to herself.
She had wronged him.
This time she’ll do better.
Except she won’t, will she? Because she can see how nervous he is. She can feel how he’s shaking. Because she knows him, knows how hard this must be— yet she keeps pushing forward, because she wants. She—
He catches her hands when she’s got his jumper off him, his shirt half undone, the delicate arch of his clavicles there in front of her eyes— ‘I can’t!’
‘What?!’ she demands, hating herself for her strident irritation, but unable to soften her tone, feeling like it’s all slipping away from her again. ‘Why?!’
‘I—’ he manages, but then can’t say anything more, just lies there, holding her hands and shaking.
‘Why?’ she demands again, ‘Sev, why?’ His mouth moves like he’s chewing on some ugly little thought. ‘Why?’ she demands yet again, tugging at her hands, trying to free them.
‘I’m ugly!’ he snaps, glaring at her. ‘I’m ugly, ok? We both know I’m ugly. Why are we pretending I’m not ugly? You’ll get my clothes off and you’ll be disgusted and you won’t be able to go through with it, so we might as well stop now, stop while we’ve both still got some dignity left.’
‘You’re not ugly!’ he’s not. He never has been. Always so very pretty— but he’s heard it all his life, hasn’t he? Heard it from those around him that look at him and see— and she’s never been able to work out what. Because he really isn’t ugly. He’s not classically handsome, sure, and there's something challenging to his looks, but he isn’t ugly. ‘You’re not. Sev you’re so pretty,’ she tells him, urgent, desperate he’ll believe her, ‘You’ve always driven me nuts, made me feel like I’m going insane, from how pretty you are. Sitting next to me in class and I knew you were barely wearing anything under your robes and you were so— fuck, you were so distracting. You’d look down at your books and your hair would fall forward like a curtain of black silk and— I wanted to touch. I wanted to— Even after we stopped talking I wanted to touch. I could barely stand looking at you because every time I did I wanted to crowd you up against something, the wall, and put my hands up under—’
‘Lily—’ he says, and she’s not sure if it’s an objection or embarrassment, so she just keeps going, fantasies flowing out of her.
‘I used to wish I was bigger, stronger. Sometimes I’d think about being a boy, being built like James or Black or even Malfoy— Big and strong so I could pick you up, hold you up against the wall so your feet weren’t touching the floor, so you had to rely on me to keep you up— or lifting you onto a table in the library, pushing you back and pulling up your robes so I could— or in the middle of the Quidditch Pitch, make them all see how lovely you are, make them all regret the things they did, said, because it would mean you’d never, ever, let them touch— If I was a boy I’d have a cock too, a cock I could fuck you with. A cock I could put up inside of you. Keep up inside of you. Keep you on it, never let you get away, never stop—’
‘Do you want to be a boy?’ blurts out, red and uncomfortable looking, probably as much to make her stop her flow of near filth as anything else.
It’s not a question she expected. It’s not something she’s thought about before. Does she want to be a boy, a man? — ‘No—’ she answers, tentatively, ‘Or, maybe, sometimes. Sometimes when I’m thinking of all the things I could do to you if I was—’ and sometimes, when she’s out and about in the world and people look over her, ignore her, talk to her husband instead of her, as if she doesn’t exist, all because she’s not— but for the most part she’s happy being a woman. It doesn’t bother her. Her body is comfortable, feels like hers, fits her— She just sometimes wishes she was a taller, stronger, woman with a detachable cock. ‘I don’t really know. No. No, I don’t want to be a man. I want to be me.’
He nods. Honestly he looks overwhelmed. He looks— he doesn’t look like the Severus Snape everyone else sees, forcefully composed, hostile, angry, doing his best to be intimidating. He looks like her Sev. Her sweet, little— ‘Do you believe me now, when I say I do want you? That I don’t find you ugly?’
‘I—’ he doesn’t look any less overwhelmed, but he does nod, looking like he can’t believe he’s doing so. ‘I guess I do.’
She gently pulls her hands free, then reached for his shirt, undoing the next button with her eyes on his face in case he objects. He doesn’t. he lies there, lets her strip him, flinching a little as she goes for his fly, the wool of his black trousers just as faded and threadbare as everything else he’s wearing. She kind of gets it in that moment, as she pulls the cloth aside to reveal a pair of starkly white pants, the only newish thing on him. She kind of gets why James wants to buy her things, dress her up, and encourage her to hang around being useless. She feels the impulse herself, the impulse to buy Sev new clothes, better clothes, clothes that show off his beauty, and then to encourage him to do so by hanging off her arm where everyone else is forced to admire.
He’d rather be working though, like her. The two of them would always be happier with their studies and their projects and their potions.
He’s too thin, is the first thing she really thinks, looking at him. She knew he would be though. His parents barely fed him and when he’s unhappy, which he is most of the time, he doesn’t have much of an appetite. She used to encourage him to eat, but of course he started to lose weight he couldn’t afford to lose in fifth year, when things went wrong between them, and she can see it’s only gotten worse since.
Poor love, it’ll be better now.
She runs a hand up his torso, from just above his waistband, where there’s some sparse black hair leading to his navel, silkier and straighter than anything that grows between her legs or James’, and up over his belly where the hair fades, then across his bony and surprisingly bare chest to his clavicles, for a moment bracketing the base of his throat with her hand.
He’s as pale as she is, except instead of her freckly, pinkish toned skin, his is a pure ivory, tinted just that little bit with sallowness like the material itself.
His cock is hardening again, and she can see it beneath the thin white cotton revealed in the v of his fly. It’s thinner than James’, and maybe around the same length or a little shorter— but then James is something of a monster in that department, or at least that’s what she’s gathered from holidays at his family pile, with its lovely, clear, crystalline lake where he and his friends like to swim. Them naked, for, she imagines, whatever reason it is that men like them always want to show the entire world their cocks, her in a plain, navy swimsuit. James is by far the biggest— and that’s soft. She can’t imagine any of the rest of them could get as large as he is when they were hard— but then cocks are hardly her area of expertise. Maybe the little nub Peter Pettigrew has swinging around in his trousers balloons in size when—
No. She’s not going to think about Pettigrew aroused. Not with Sev here in front of her. She doesn’t want to bank her own fires.
His skin’s so soft— far more so than James’. He’s got much less hair than her husband too, or any of his friends. She wonders if it’s because of whatever makes his hair so silky, some gene or something that makes his every surface more delicate than most people’s. ‘I-Is it ok?’ he asks, and she realises he’s talking about his body.
‘You really are lovely,’ she replies, sliding her hand back down his chest and a little to the left, so she can cover his heart.
Nervous, still so nervous, his own long, elegant hands go to his waistband and he starts to push down his trousers, giving an awkward little wiggle beneath her, body shifting beneath her with brief, tantalising bursts of pleasure. He stops when he reaches her thighs, nowhere left for his trousers to go unless she shifts off him. She does, sliding off the bed for a moment so she can stand over him and tug his trousers all the rest of the way down, stripping off his boots to get them off his legs, then going after his socks, leaving him just in his pants and open shirt.
Long and lean and lovely—
Her hand flies to her cunt, cupping it through denim, grinding the heel of her hand momentarily into her clit, the heart of the ache. Fuck, she could get off just like this— No. No. She wants her fingers up in him. He said she could, so she will. She drags her hand away and reaches for his pants instead, grabbing at the elastic waistband, then hesitates, meets his eyes, tries to see if there's a no there— ‘Do you still want to?’ she asks.
He nods, hesitant, hands crossed over his belly as he stares down at where she’s touching him. He looks helpless. He looks like he’s in her power— and that, that, oh that sends a thrill through her.
Gently she starts to pull the white cloth down, easing it gently over the head of his cock in its nest of midnight hair, then down further, down his thighs, him wriggling a little to help her ease it out from under him.
Oh— Oh, he really is pretty. He’s something else. He’s nothing like Jamie, for all they’re both men. Sev has a delicacy completely absent from her husband. All of him, from his slender feet all the way up to his silky hair.
Jamie, for all his good breeding, is big, he’s tall and broad and strong and hairy and there’s something just a little rough about him. Masculine and piggish and entitled.
She’d love to watch him touch Sev, to kneel before the other man, to touch him gently, worshipfully, to see the contrast between their bodies, all for her. For her.
She climbs back onto the bed, holding Sev’s gaze, pushing aside his right thigh so she can crawl in there, kneel between his legs so that the all of him, naked and vulnerable, is there for her to touch.
He twitches, his hands flutter, he swallows, his dark eyes avert. He’s still nervous. Still embarrassed. She reaches out, fingers hesitating just a moment, hovering over his cock, before she lays her palm over it. It twitches beneath her hand as he gasps, squirming.
If he was James she’d feel the urge to get her jeans off, her knickers, to climb onto him, to hold it upright so she could sink down, down, down onto it, so it could spread her apart, fuck its way into her— but with Sev the urge isn’t there. She wants to see him fall apart. She wants to touch him— but she wants to be inside of him, not the other way around.
It’s greed again, greed and haste, that makes her pull her hand away, makes her shove her first two fingers in her mouth to get them spit-slick, so she can slide them up between his legs and start searching for— ‘Wait!’ he squawks, grabbing her wrist, and then, before she can ask for what, or possibly lose her patience, he’s grabbing his wand where it lies on the bed beside them and pointing it at his body. ‘Scourgify,’ he says, shuddering, skin pinkening from the roughness of the charm, then, again, before she can stop him, ‘Scourgify.’
She grabs his wand hand before he can attempt it again, gently prying the thing from his grasp and depositing it back on the bed. You can use Scourgify to clean yourself, people do, but it’s not the first choice of charm because it’s not gentle. It’s punitive. It’s the sort of thing you hear about coming from the kind of orphanages where sometimes the children don’t get adopted but simply disappear— or tend to come out a bit peculiar, if they don’t.
‘Sev,’ she says, half sorry and half admonition. He’s clean. He was clean when he walked into this room. He doesn’t need to— but she knows why. She’s heard it all over the years, the things people have said. She raises his hand to her lips, presses a kiss to his knuckles, and then gently lowers it back to his side. ‘You’re fine. You don’t need to do that to yourself.’
For a moment she thinks he might actually start crying— and right then she hates her husband, hates James, hates his stupid bloody friends— Sirius Black, especially— hates every horrible, cruel, thoughtless person that ever commented on his hygiene. They had no idea what he grew up with. They had no idea that he didn’t even know people did bathe until he went to school, and then wasn’t sure how they did it until he met her and she explained it to him. Neither of his parents ever washed. The laundry was maybe done every few months. No one told him what a toothbrush was, told him how to brush his teeth— and they were poor, not hopelessly so, but hardly well off, and what money they made his dad spent at the pub or on the horses, and if his mum got hold of any she spent it on herself.
He wasn’t dirty because he wanted to be, he was dirty because he had no choice.
Gently she leans down, cups the sides of his face, and kisses him. A soft kiss. A sweet kiss. Not taking but trying to give.
A fluttering touch on her shoulders, and when she makes a mumble of appreciation, he finally does reach for her, he finally wraps his arms around her and pulls her close as they kiss and kiss and kiss. A wriggle here, a shift there, and she worms her way until she’s lying on him with his long, long legs wrapped around her waist. She wishes she was taller. This would be more comfortable if she was taller— still, she is tall for a woman, so that helps. What doesn’t is that he’s a tall man.
His cock is pressed to her belly. She can feel it, hard and urgent, even through her jumper, feel him rubbing it a little against her, just tiny shifts of his hips. She could get naked. She won’t get naked. She doesn’t want to pull away from him enough to get naked. Not when he’s where she’s always wanted him, naked, beneath her, legs spread for her.
She smooths her left hand down his side, feeling the dip of ribs, the way his waist dips in, the bony span of his pelvis— and then back, over the spare swell of his arse. There’s a little flesh there, he’s not totally flat, nor does he have that almost inverted arse like Pettigrew, where the flesh just above it juts out more than it does and his trousers always fall down unless he spells them up. Sev does have an arse, a small, graceful swell of an arse. One she’s now getting a good fondle of.
He moans, quiet, but he does, his hips making an anxious circle. It makes her own hips grind forward, even though the closest to anything she has to grind up against it the uncomfortable centre seam of her jeans. She’s so wet. She’s sure she must have soaked through them. Fuck, her cunt aches.
Getting her other hand on his arse too, so she can grab and grope and squeeze feels even better, makes him moan again, and let out these sweet little sighs. She does her best to ignore the faint lines there from the few times his dad’s belt drew blood and things didn’t heal right, focusing on the feel of him, the way he squirms beneath her, what she wants— Ok. Ok, yes— right hand free, back up, pulling away from his lips long enough to wet those two fingers again, then— then—
There’s a little silky hair there, up in the crack of his arse. She bumps his balls, which makes him jump, then slides her fingers over the smooth skin behind them, then— They both shudder when she touches it, fingertips brushing over that little furl, before— A little pressure, her index finger first, and she feels him twitch and pulse there, hears him gasp— a little more pressure, more— pop.
His hole clenches around the very tip of her finger.
She can’t catch her breath, her heart is racing. Oh— Oh—
She pushes, pushes— it slides forward, slides in, and he’s so hot inside, so hot and tight and clenching and—
Other hand pulled away, wormed between them, jeans fighting her as she struggles with the button, then zip, then down the front, the diamond of her engagement ring catching against cloth, her hand trapped between denim and the softer cotton of her knickers but she doesn’t care. She’s so wet it’s seeped all the way into the cloth way up above her slit. Fingers burrowing there at the top, searching, seeking— She pushes into him, feeling him swallow her up to the knuckle, just as she rubs across the swollen nub of her clit in rough circles, everything tingling, face, fingers, toes, cunt—
Pleasure clenches inside of her like a fist, her breath stopping, catching, gasping and spluttering out of her as her body shakes and spasms.
She stops then, everything too much, hands uncoordinated, body still stuttering with aftershocks. Her finger still up inside of him. Her other hands trapped in her jeans.
‘Did you just—’ he whispers, sounding awed. She grunts, the closest thing she can manage to an affirmative right then. ‘O-oh—’ he breathes.
When she regains herself enough she pulls her hand out of her jeans, shuddering at the movement so close to oversensitive parts of her. He wriggles beneath her, reminding her— her finger is still inside of him. She moves it, just a gentle back and forth shift, and feels his breath catch in his throat, feels him tremble.
Oh—
Gently she pulls back until her fingertip sits just inside his hole, then she wriggles the middle one in close to it, hoping it’ll be ok, won’t hurt, and— He gasps as she pushes forward with both, feeling his body resist for a moment, before they suddenly both pop inside.
It’s not quite wet enough, but she doesn’t have the patience to pull out and go searching for something slicker— though the idea of stuffing the fingers of her other hand up her sopping cunt and then shoving them up him briefly crosses her mind in an incendiary burst. Later. Next time. Now she wants to—
Back and forth, back and forth, she starts up a thrust motion, feeling him react, hearing his breath deepen, the occasional moan slipping out, feeling him wriggle and clench and twitch and— ‘Where’s your sweet spot?’ she asks him, ‘Have I brushed it yet?’
‘My what?’ he asks, sounding bleary, dazed.
‘Prostate,’ she clarifies. ‘It’s supposed to feel good.’
‘Is it?’ he sounds so totally confused, like he doesn’t know— maybe he doesn’t know. If she hadn’t confiscated that magazine off Black she probably wouldn’t know either. She’s never heard anyone talk about it otherwise, even though she has heard all sorts of disgusting, cruel jokes about homosexual sex.
She can show him. She can teach him about his body— and it’s hot, erotic, to think of herself awakening him to this possibility of pleasure— and at the same time it’s exactly like one those things that sometimes so disgust her about some men, how they seem to get off on the idea of taking an entirely ignorant, naïve girl, and remaking her as a sexual animal to suit his pleasure. It’s not about the girl, about her wants and needs, it’s about making her a receptacle.
A hole.
At least James was never like that. He didn’t care that she’d learnt how to get herself off long before he ever laid a hand on her.
Now she feels like she’s making Sev into a hole just for her. It should make her feel more guilty.
She pulls her fingers back, until they’re only just inside of him, then pushes them forward, crooking them a little so their tips run across the front of his insides, feeling him squirm when she brushes past somewhere, feeling something swollen beneath, readjusting her fingers and focussing in, pressing and rubbing and—
He jerks beneath her, a long, low moan slipping free, his legs clenching around her, his head throwing back, ‘W-what’s—’ he gasps, but she keeps it up and words soon escape him.
‘Your sweet spot,’ she tells him, ‘Your prostate. Does it feel good? It looks like it feels good. It looks like you were made for this—’
‘Oh, God, Lils,’ he whines, hips pushing up towards her. ‘Oh— Oh fuck— Oh— I didn’t— I didn’t—’
‘Do you think you can cum from it?’ she asks. It only would be hottest— a man does in one of the other stories in the magazine.
He doesn’t answer for a moment, too caught up in the feel of it, hips circling, pushing up towards her, head back, little quivers of pleasure running through him, but eventually he manages a ‘No. No, I need more. Bigger— Oh God, Lils. Put more in me. Spread me open. Fuck me.’
Her ring finger. It’ll have to be her ring finger— Oh, she wishes she had a cock right now, but she doesn’t, so her fingers will have to do. She spits on her free hand, wriggles it down there, smearing the scant slick across where her fingers disappear into his body, then pulls back to thrust forward with three, feeling his hips jump as she does. ‘Like that, like that—’ he moans. ‘You’re inside of me. Lils. You’re spreading me— Oh. Oh— Oh fuck— Oh —’
For a moment she can’t find it again, that spot, but he doesn’t seem to care, body seeming to delight just in the penetration, but then she does find it, and he jacknifes beneath her, hunching up, clinging to her with legs and arms as he moves with her, thrusting back against her hand as she grings her fingers there, ‘Gonna cum, gonna cum, gonna cum—’ he breathes, desperate and wanting and—
And he doesn’t, it keeps going, him riding the edge but not quite able to slip over, and sobs start to slip out, frustrated, desperate sobs, and he starts begging, ‘Please, please, please, please, please, Lils please—’
Maybe he can’t. Maybe it’s not enough. Maybe her fingers aren’t big enough or maybe he’s just not made that way, but— She pushes up against him, gets her other hand between them, grabs for his cock and starts to stroke, feeling her engagement rings scrape along his belly as she does. He whines at the first touch, shudders, hips jumping, then—
He clings tight to her as he shudders through his orgasm, spunk squirting up between them, slicking his skin and seeping into her jumper.
He remains clinging to her for long moments after, quiet and still, before he sinks backwards on the bed, body relaxing. Slowly, carefully, she pulls her fingers out, hearing him swallow back a whimper as she does. She pulls back, sits up, kneels between his legs and looks at him, the mess she’s made of him, spunk smeared and red lipped and—
And lassitude gives way to anxiety on his face, and she sees the rejection he’s anticipating in his eyes. Quick, before he can talk himself into saying something stupid, she leans down and kisses him, not caring about the spunk she’s smearing on the coverlet as she balances herself.
He relaxes again, arms going back around her as they kiss for a long, long time, before his grip starts to falter, his mouth starts to slow— and she realises he’s falling asleep. Love bursts in her heart. He’s always so wary— true, it might be a stereotypical male thing to do, but she knows Sev. If he didn’t feel safe he’d force himself to stay awake no matter what his body wanted.
She pulls back then, smiling down at him as he blinks slow and bleary up at her, each time his eyes close lasting a little longer. Soon he’s drifted off, and once he has she charms away the spunk, charms clean the fingers that have been up his arse, then stands, stretches.
She could go again, her body not quite quietened, arousal low and but not urgent still running through her. If James was here she could climb aboard him, get him to fuck her, make him tell her how lovely Sev is the entire time— But James isn’t here. James will never be here—
The truth is she won’t be seeing much of James from now on. The divorce will have to be organised, of course, but after that— Even before that she doesn’t want to see him. Doesn’t want to weaken. She might weaken, a little— she really does love him— but weakening means no Sev— and that is not an option. Now that she has the capacity to choose between them there really is no choice.
She’s not sure what to do. She feels— there’s grief there, and she feels a little at loose ends, but looking down at the lovely form before her she doesn’t regret. She feels like herself. She feels like the part missing has finally returned.
So it’s all something she can deal with later. Let her enjoy the moment.
Finally she strips off her clothes, charmed clean once more, and folds them up, placing them on the Jacobean style chair with the frilly cover in the corner of the room. She keeps on her knickers. It seems like too much to expect Sev to cope with her fully naked when he wakes once more— still, she charms them clean too, dry, magicking away all the slick that’s seeped out of her.
Padding over to the bed she peers down at the sleeping man for a moment, before using magic again, this time to gently extract the covers from beneath him so she can lie down beside him and cover them both up, snuggling in close as she does. He really is so pretty. So very pretty, and so very hers.