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Reality’s spinning, the air’s too close. Smoky and sticky and imbued with a sort of humid fury.
He’s off his face, in a way he doesn’t think he’s been for years. Drowning in the febrile atmosphere of the sort of dangerous night in a rundown pub he remembers from the sordid desperation of his youth. Nights that ended up with scuffed leather trousers shoved around ankles in the filth of the men’s room, or blood and bruises and broken ribs in the gutter outside. The sort of place he really ought to stay the fuck away from.
Doesn’t know how he’s back here, marinating in the rat-arsed swirling melee of lustful energy, the hazy musk of cigarettes and sweat and spilled beer. The thwarted midnight revolution of angry dreams that never had anywhere to go.
The sort of messy night he really should know, after everything, to stay the fuck away from.
But instead, he’s backed up in the shadows, against the dusty rough brick wall of a dingy back alleyway, trousers open and cock out. With an eager, gorgeous kid on his knees on the cracked concrete kerb in front of him.
Catastrophically stupid, all sense of self-preservation kicked to a whimpering pulp by frantic roaming hands and grinding hips on the dancefloor, clumsy paws grappling with his flies. The cheap scotch he’d tipped down his throat, glass after glass, at the bar; rocket fuel lubing up the urgent pulsing sophistry of his cock.
Harry, the kid had mumbled his name, all messy black hair and bright green eyes so enormous that Severus had wondered whether he was high, but he seems all there. Wrapped in an ironically-fashionable frayed and faded t-shirt and a hint of an arrogant swagger that ordinarily Severus would detest, but on this kid is irresistible.
Young; he can’t be more than eighteen, nineteen. A bloodless little white dent where he’s biting his lip, that says he hasn’t done this as many times as he’d like Severus to think. And skinny; swimming in the jacket Severus had shrugged off as they’d stumblerutted through the rusted door out to the alley, and draped insistently over the boy’s shoulders when he’d started to shiver.
But the cold’s the last thing on Severus’ mind, all his attention and traitorous bloodflow surging southward, toward the decadently red lips just millimetres from his straining cock, hot beery breath on sensitive skin.
And big green eyes, ringed with inexpertly-applied eyeliner, meeting his gaze like it’s a challenge.
One that Severus’ cock, rock hard and protesting all the handwringing pleasantries, is all too fucking happy to meet. He lets out a soft growl as the kid leans in and presses his tongue flat against the underside. Dragging it up to the tip in one long, agonisingly slow, exquisite glide.
It’s an instant line of pleasure stabbed straight into his veins, better than any drug. Draws a harsh ‘fuck’ from him, echoing in the gritty dark.
He’s on edge already. Blames the sweaty, crackling danger in the air, the biting November cold. The hornystupid adrenaline of the worstbest thing he could be doing, all his hard-won flagellant sanity being sucked out through his cock.
The serpent wrapped languorously around the trunk of an apple tree, dripping poison temptation onto the part of him that can’t ever see the daylight, can only exist in the shadows of dark alleyways like this one.
Messy hair flops sweatily over the strange lightning scar on the kid’s forehead as he hollows his cheeks and sucks hard, and fuck, that’s fucking gorgeous.
Severus hears himself hissing filthy words of encouragement. Barely knows what he’s saying; sometimes it’s like he slips into another language altogether, something sonorous and magical that he wishes he could remember.
This boy, though. Harry. This beautiful boy with the fuck-me gaze makes Severus want to write fucking poetry.
Long fingers tangle in soft black hair, his breath coming in tight puffs. Blood rushing in his ears, soaring on the sort of pure physical sensation it’s been so long since he’s given himself over to. No wonder he’s so fucking close, already.
Harry seems to sense it, too, the clever fucking tease. Pulls back, almost all the way off him, and Severus makes an inarticulate noise of protest that’s probably too loud for how public their tryst is. Looks down to meet a wickedly smug smile as the kid swirls his tongue around the head of Severus’ prick like it’s a fucking popsicle.
A movement out of the corner of his eye, in the half-light at the far end of the alleyway. Severus tenses; some security goon, no doubt, sent back here to beat the shit out of the deviants in the dark. He reaches instinctively for something in his pocket; a vague gasping terror to find it empty.
What did he expect; that he’d be carrying a fucking knife?
But the shadowy figure doesn’t approach any closer, when Severus turns his head. Registers, in a drunkenaroused swirl of confusion, that it doesn’t look like hired muscle. Thin and tall and ancient; Severus swears he sees the dim streetlight glisten off an impossibly long white beard. Some sort of fucking fuschia dressing gown.
Just a hobo drunk looking for somewhere to take a slash.
Shooting a death glare into the gloom, and for a moment it’s met by bright blue eyes, twinkling with knowing amusement. Filthy fucking voyeur.
But when he looks back, the alleyway’s empty.
Dragged back to the moment – and what a fucking moment – by the glide of soft lips all the way down to the base of his cock, so that the head nudges the back of the kid’s throat. Has to fight to keep his knees from buckling, flickers of light dancing in front of his vision. Shoves the prickling of disquiet down into the pit of his stomach, to drown in the fires of arousal.
Feels the boy’s gag reflex rippling around him; raw, animal pride that he’s too big to take all of. Allows himself a few, gentle thrusts, bruising up red lips; a reminder that, for all the catastrophically stupid decisions he’s made tonight, Severus Snape is in control.
The kids chokes and swears – something ridiculous that sounds like hippogriff, which isn’t a word – and looks so fucking messy that it’s all Severus can do not to come on the fucking spot.
Doesn’t know what’s gotten into him. Back-alley blowjobs and falling in lust at first sight. It must be the scotch.
His head thumps back against the wall and his hips buck involuntarily, at a particularly indulgent twist of the kid’s talented tongue. Everything’s tight, his balls ready to burst, toes curled, thigh muscles burning.
Distantly, as though he’s underwater, he’s aware of the noise of the crowd in the bar. What sounds like a riot spilling out onto the filthy puddles and windswept litter of the midnight streets.
He lets himself start thrusting faster and harder, fists clenching and unclenching in dark hair. Chasing that animal urge to bury himself as deep as he can. The kid moans around him – the vibrations send Severus to another plane of the Heaven he stopped believing in as a trembling bruised kid in the hypocritical chill of Cokeworth’s crumbling church – and meets his rhythm, sucking harder.
Fireworks explode behind his eyelids, furious blinding sparks. Freebasing pleasure off a masochist’s knife edge of taunting fear. Like he’s riding a rollercoaster on fucking acid.
Thinks, for a moment, about pulling out, coming all over the boy’s face. A shaky groan at the image of his cum dripping from gorgeous, pouting lips.
But the temptation of a perfect warm mouth is too much, and he’s past the point of no return. Careering into base, primal oblivion, and coming with a snarl down the kid’s throat, instead.
His vision whites out, even though he’s got his eyes screwed shut. All he can see is the burning afterimage of beautiful bright green eyes.
Everything’s spinning, all his nerve endings still sparking with static electricity as the kid lets him fall from his lips with an obscene ‘pop’ and a lopsided smirk. Severus hisses, as overheated, oversensitive flesh meets the cool air. Heart pounding an unhinged rhythm beneath the scars that mar his chest, and fighting a losing battle to wrestle his breathing back into submission.
Orgasm-scrambled brain struggling to click back into gear, greasy sweaty hair obscuring his vision. He shoves it out of his eyes so that he can look down at the flushed face in front of him.
The kid’s a fucking state, eyeliner smudged and eyes still watery from where he’d choked on Severus’ cock. The hard bulge of his erection unmistakable through scuffed, faded jeans.
He looks debauched, fucking beautiful, and the sight hits Severus with a confused bodyblow of possessiveprotectiveness.
The presumptuous git hauls himself up from his knees, using Severus’ body like it’s a bloody climbing frame. A good few inches shorter than him, and skinny in the same way – of an underfed boy who’s stayed stubbornly scrawny, no matter how many hot meals he scarfs down when he has the chance.
Severus doesn’t know if he wants to fuck him, or hug him.
Straightjacketed in the seductive nutters' ward of the afterglow, he can’t keep himself from dipping his head, for a sloppy kiss that tastes of cheap vodka and cigarettes and himself, saltybitter on red lips.
Reality’s packed its bags for the coast; the air's smoky and sticky and filled with the sound of breaking glass and unstable, anarchic fury, and Severus should shove the kid back into the shadows and stagger away, back into the safety of the anonymous dark.
But he’s drunk, so drunk, on big, green eyes he knows that he’ll regret in the morning.
“Harry,” he hears himself breathe. His own voice, but another, stupider, man’s weakness caressing around the name like it's a prayer. “Come home with me.”
Somehow, they’ve found their way back to Spinner’s End, and Severus is shoved up against his own front door. The kid – Harry - pinning him against rough wood and brick, and kissing him like it’s a fucking cage fight.
Severus wouldn’t be able to explain, even if fucking government spooks showed up with a vial of truth serum, how the two of them got here from the dingy alley behind the pub. Wouldn’t be able to muster two fucks to give, either. Some sort of dark magic, he snorts, drunk on the unholy spell of scotch and bright green eyes and messy hair, and a sensual insouciant smirk that should be illegal.
Hands fumbling behind him for the doorhandle; people don’t do this in the street in Cokeworth. Severus doesn’t do this anywhere.
He doesn’t think he’s ever brought anyone back here, before. Not even- his thoughts trail off.
But for once, he doesn’t have the chance to feel embarrassed by the sad little terrace house, musting under its thick coat of dust and ghosts. By the curtains stained yellow from decades of cigarette smoke, the damp seeping through the ceiling, the threadbare carpets, Severus’ precious books crammed carefullyhaphazardly into every free space.
Not with the kid’s weight boxing him urgently against the hallway wall, body heat a blistering furnace at war with the sombre midnight cold. Trying to shove Severus’ coat off his shoulders, like some sort of feral woodland creature in rut.
Sharp teeth and scrabbling paws and the scratch of stubble; vicious, sloppy kisses that taste like cheap sugary vodka and youthful swagger. Ardent, honest, so straightforward it takes Severus’ breath away.
A blinding pain throbs behind his temple for a moment, and Severus reels.
A stone room, thick with perfumed pastel smoke and the crackling of wood fires and bubbling liquid. Rows of desks. Black robes.
A boy laughing; catching Severus’ attention. Whispering as he shows something off to his deskmate. A small box; Severus squints to see it’s adorned with a handsome man and a swooning girl on a pirate ship, decorative curlicue script he can’t quite read.
Stalking toward the disturbance like a hungry bat.
A gasp of fearful surprise, the slip of a hand. The box, as if in slow motion, falling toward the surface of the pearlescent liquid in the cauldron in front of the boy.
When Severus comes to, clumsy drunken fists are wrestling with his shirt, yanking at the buttons. He feels one ping off into the dark corners of the hallway, can’t even summon a growl of irritation.
Harry gives a messy-haired grin. “Sorry.” He doesn’t sound sorry at all, and Severus despairs of the hold his own traitorous cock has over him.
A hard thigh between his, warm hands running up his bare chest.
The kid’s probably fucking blinded by how pale Severus’ skin is, his creature-of-the-night way of looking like he’s never seen the sun. The notches of his ribs, the chequerboard of clawed scars he can’t remember how he came by, except that it must have fucking hurt.
This is the point, Severus steels himself for the blow, that the kid flees a fucking mile.
But green eyes flick up to meet his, sparkling with something that looks impossibly like desire.
Severus must be hallucinating. He’s probably still at the bar, slumped over a sticky table in a drooling stupor like a skinnier, even more pathetic copy of his father. Or maybe he’s having the shit kicked out of him in the gutter, for looking at the wrong man the wrong way, and this is a last, pitiful lie his fading psyche’s feeding him, anaesthetising his final breaths.
For a moment, he imagines a grim dank shack with broken floorboards and scratches down the walls. Hissing terror and warm blood pooling, dark red and ironsticky, beneath his cheek.
But if this is death, Severus can’t find it in himself to care. Doesn’t have anything to live for that he wants more than to tug the kid’s t-shirt over his head, ruffling ridiculous dark hair askew in a way that shouldn’t make his insides flip so painfully. To run his hands down the smooth planes of Harry’s chest, tanned skin and skinny ribs and lean muscle. A smattering of dark chest hair, a few scars – too many, for one so young; the kid squirms as Severus’ hands roam over them.
An indefinable ache, like something’s been carved out of Severus’ chest where his soul might be, lodged next to his wildly-thumping heart. He bites down on the pain, shoves Harry back onto the thin cushions of the sagging sofa, with a solid thunk.
Sprawled out before him, like the most beautiful rent boy Severus has ever seen.
His insistent cock pulses, begging him to get on with it, before either of them comes to whatever’s passing for their senses, tonight. Rock hard in his trousers, the teeth of his zipper biting into overheated, sensitive flesh.
He bites his lip, hard, to wrangle himself back to some semblance of control. It ought to take more than a guilelessly gorgeous pair of big green eyes to make his brain short-circuit. God knows he’s had enough practice at self-denial.
But something about this kid, Harry, sends him back to a simpler time. To a slouching sullen sixteen-year-old in too-big clothes, who hasn’t grown into his sarcasm or his nose, and who nearly comes in his trousers the moment a beautiful boy looks at him.
No, he thinks, he’s Severus bloody Snape. He can ignore the urgent sophistry of his cock for just a while longer, while he takes his time making the kid fall apart for him.
Sinking down onto the sofa next to him, hand coming to rest at the straining button of Harry’s faded jeans.
“May I?” he smirks, toying with the zip.
Harry nods, desperately, his cheeks flushed red, and the temperature in the room climbs twenty degrees hotter as Severus tugs the jeans down his thighs.
The kid fumbles himself out of his boxers, as though his hands are moving far faster than his brain, and Severus has to squeeze his eyes shut for a moment to drag his veneer of calm back into place and keep from coming there and then, at the sight of Harry’s cock, thick and hard and leaking.
Hard, for him. It’s like he’s drowning in the most impossible wet daydream he’s ever had.
Reaches out, swipes his thumb over the head, spreading pre-cum in a sticky circle. Other hand resting on Harry’s hip to hold him steady, feels him trembling with anticipation.
Christ, that’s hot.
Teasing light strokes, up and down his length. Black eyes and green both staring down at Severus’ hand, as if transfixed by the tendons flexing in his thin wrist, the faded tattoo of the grotesque skull and snake that he must’ve been too drunk to remember getting, years ago.
The feel of Harry, velvety hard and desperately rocking his hips into Severus’ grip. Severus has missed this, the adrenaline rush of bringing another man to his knees, whimpering with pleasure. It’s been so fucking long, he can barely remember through the swirling fog of his memory.
A sandy, freckled boy, scarred and serious.
Chiselled cheekbones, hauntedly handsome. Grey eyes, full of regret, locked on Severus’ as though pleading for help, for a way out.
Long blond hair, fine silk clothes, an aristocratic sneer. The resentful gaze of a beautiful woman as Severus stumbles, shirt rumpled and breathless, out of the oak-panelled private study.
Can’t remember; his mind’s too busy cataloguing the rhythm, the pressure, everything that makes Harry shiver and buck against him. So perfect, so responsive. Learning what he likes, as though that information will ever be relevant again. As though it isn’t a one-night lapse into reckless stupidity.
Overwhelmed by the nearness of the solid warm body half-straddling his thighs; Harry’s everywhere in his senses. Severus can barely breathe, the scar tissue around his throat choking tight, because God, he smells so good. Freshly-cut grass and sandalwood and the honey-warmth of butterbeer, whatever the fuck that is, and Severus wants it imbued into the collars of all his shirts and into his pillows at night.
He recognises the scent. From… an explosion, he thinks, impossibly. The little box, falling into the cauldron. Drenched in pearlescent geyser of hot, shimmering liquid that smelt… of Harry.
Shakes the madness out of his head; all the blood’s abandoned his brain for his cock. That, or they're putting something hallucinogenic in fucking Ballantine's these days.
Harry’s hands have come up to tangle in Severus’ hair; ordinarily, he’d bat them away, ashamed of the greasiness. Instead, he looks up, meets the kid’s gaze.
It’s so intimate that he can barely breathe, green eyes locked on his. Far too much for a drunken fumble. He doesn’t fuck like this. Barely fucks at all, but this is spiritual; as though it’s knitting together all the tangled, half-remembered fuzzypainful debris of his life into something that might make sense. Like he’s brewed up some crazy drug in a lab that makes his soul reel.
The kid’s so warm, so smooth. Things Severus can’t remember ever having been. And so alive, more than Severus has ever felt, and bursting with all the vibrancy and vulnerability that comes with it. He feels like a double agent, torn between wrong and right. Between wanting all of this beautiful boy and being deathly afraid of sullying him with his touch.
Doesn’t get a chance to even try to save his soul, as badger-sharp teeth capture his lower lip.
He growls, returns the favour, soft bites along a downy jawline. Across an exposed throat that’s milky-white and vulnerable, and a deep dark part of Severus thinks of fangs, and shivers.
Compromises by nipping at the tempting skin, not as gently as he probably should, but Harry doesn’t seem to mind; swears softly – something about fucking Merlin, this time, and if Severus had any sense left at all, he’d stop, because the kid’s obviously high as a hippogriff.
Hippo-?
“Language,” he teases, instead, with an indulgent twist of his wrist.
The only answer he gets is a hard prick rutting even more impatiently into his grip, bitten-nailed fingers digging bruisingly into his collarbone. Considers making the kid beg; wonders how it’d sound.
Perfect, probably, and Severus would be the one to break, in the end; because there’s something about Harry that makes him weak.
Speeding up his strokes, chasing those gorgeous noises Harry’s making. They mix with the lewd sounds of skin on skin, the creaking protest of the sofa springs, and it’s the most beautiful music Severus has ever heard – like phoenix song bathing his soul.
Phoenix song?
Doesn’t have time to question his scotch-and-lust-addled delusion, because he can feel Harry spiralling upward. Hot breath against Severus’ scarred neck, fingernails clawing down his skinny chest, pleasurepainful red tracks in their wake. The kid’s whole body taut like a bowstring, fucking Severus’ fist, his eyes squeezed shut.
“Look at me,” Severus whispers, and it’s suddenly the most important thing in the world. “Harry, look at me.”
Harry does. Green eyes hold his gaze as he spills into Severus’ hand, and Severus feels lost forever.
The sight’s burned into his memory for eternity, he knows. Fucking beautiful, debauched, and Severus, fool that he is, wants to see it a thousand times more.
Milking him through the aftershocks, coaxing every last shiver from him. Tracing patterns against across his skin, he doesn’t know what they mean, just silly little symbols that feel important, somehow.
Like he’s telling him something secret, and that, finally, the stars are in the right place.
There’s a commotion outside the front door; a hammering on the rusted knocker, the whisper of worried voices.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Severus growls through gritted teeth; every muscle tensed and ready to unload on whatever unfortunate Cokeworth drug-hungry lowlife is interrupting the most mind-fuckingly perfect shag he’s had in as long as he can remember. The only shag he’s had in as long as he can remember.
“What the fuck do you want?” he shouts down the dark hallway; an apologetic glance down Harry, who’s dazed and orgasm-addled by his side.
The knocker thumps again, and Severus has a sickening vision of being on the other side of an innocuous suburban front door. Dressed in a mask and robes from some sort of fucked-up horror movie, and laughing cruelly at the cries of terror from inside the house. Memories he can’t have, of a door being blasted through. Of green light, acrid smoke, a burn in his left forearm.
Maybe his reckoning’s finally found him.
The static in his head grows louder, like his whole being’s in the grip of a fiendish jackhammer; a jolt of terror as the lock clicks open of its own accord and the door creaks open.
Shielding Harry, instinctively, as-
A sodding Mad Hatter’s tea party prances into the silence, like it’s the waiting room at a nutters’ ward.
Severus gapes.
A tiny little man with a shock of white hair and an absurd moustache, escaped from the pages of the worst kids’ fairytale. A tall thin woman in a tartan dressing gown, with pursed lips that could suck a shrivelfig dry.
A what-?
And the hundred-year-old hobo pervert who’d blundered across Harry and Severus in the alleyway earlier, still wearing that eyewateringly hideous fuchsia silk.
The pain behind Severus’ temple blazes as though his head’s being held under the surface of a boiling bubbling cauldron. Cock deflating like someone’s let the air out of a party balloon, sticky and uncomfortable beneath the wet patch spreading across the front of his trousers.
“What do you think that you’re doing?” As icy as he can make his voice, with his head pounding like it is. Hand twitching at his belt, again, as he squints at the am-dram goon squad. Some sort of psycho hippie folk band?
“The Daydream Charm and the Amortentia must have interacted," the overgrown garden gnome squeaks, practically levitating with delight. “Created a shared hallucination that fulfilled both of their deepest desires.”
The Scottish woman – it must be the tartan, because Severus knows she’s Scottish – looks as though she might faint, right there on the stained carpet.
Which is fucking rich, given that the frigid bitch and her freaky friends are the ones that stormed into Severus’ house.
“Severus would never-?”
How in Merlin’s herniated haemorrhoids do they know his name?
And who the fuck is Merlin?
The beardy weirdo smiles, wandering over to examine Severus’ mother’s faded books of knitting patterns, which Severus has never found it in himself to throw away. “It is often revealing, Minerva, what can happen when inhibition and memory are stripped away.”
“What in Hufflepuff’s horny hippogriffs are you on about?” Harry - flushed and debauched and beautiful - jumps up, spent cock flopping against his thigh, to glare down the intruders. Severus is struck again by how young he looks. Like a schoolboy standing up to a teacher over a missing homework essay.
Feels ashamed, in the face of the boy’s stupid bravery. Scrambles up to rest a hand on his shoulder, frantically rebuttoning his shirt with his other hand.
There’s a silent exchange between the three freaks, while Severus wonders, pointlessly, who the fuck Hufflepuff is, and what he’s been smoking.
“Mr. Potter.” The Scottish woman takes a hesitant step toward them, eyes determinedly fixed on a point over their shoulders. “Harry.”
It feels as though all the blood drains from Severus’ body when he glances sideways and sees the look of stunned recognition and guilt and horror in beautiful green eyes.
Gentle-but-firm hands curl around his shoulders; surprisingly strong, from the ancient-looking Tolkien-wannabe cunt.
“Severus, Harry. This is a daydream. Both of you are in the hospital wing. You need to wake up.”