Kristmas Wish Fulfilled for: notearchiver
From:amand_r

Title: Life During Wartime
Characters/Pairings: Snape/Kingsley/Aberforth, Snape/Kingsley
Rating: NC-17
Kinks/Themes Included: cock caging, double penetration, during War (first).
Other Warnings/Content: Lol “Canadian Shack fic”, slight sad woob
Word Count: 5,900
Summary/Description: Heard of a broom that is loaded with weapons, packed up and ready to go. Heard of some grave-sites out in the forest, a place that nobody knows.
Author's Notes: I guessed at what kind of DP you wanted, so if you wanted double stuffing, sorry! Hope fingercuffs is okay. Don’t know what Pottermore canon might be, so I hope I didn’t inadvertently put any in! Omg I put so many lyrics in this story.



In heraldry, the shacklebolt symbolizes "victory; one who has taken prisoners or rescued prisoners of war." (HPL)

“Found them,” Kingsley says, lifting the wooden plank in the corner of the room. He pulls out the long wooden box and drops the board back into place. The wands thikket-thokket about inside the box when he shifts it in his hands—there must be at least twenty in here, and they’ll possibly need every one of them when this next raid goes down.

Snape disappears into the adjoining room, but Kingsley can still see the back of his robes, so it must be a very small room indeed. Then again, this is a very small shack. No, if there is one thing in the world that the shack is, it is not a shack. From the outside it looks like a shack, of course. A great deal of things look shabby from the outside and then are decidedly not on the inside.

This is also not the case with the shack. Inside it’s a hovel. A mess. Kingsley drops the box and props his hands on his hips, wondering how Molly Weasley and Lily Potter had ever helped to build this and been kept from adding all sorts of niceties tucked into the corners. Most way stations Molly has had a hand in at least have a wicker basket stuffed with preserved foods somewhere in an out of the way place. This place has…well it has—

“I believe I found the loo,” Snape mumbles as he comes out of the small attached…hovel room-thing. His hair is in front of his face, but Kingsley can hear the resentment in his voice. “Such as it is.”

So it has a loo. Beats going outside into the snow to dig a hole in the ground.

“Mind you, it’s just a hole in the ground,” Snape adds. “And a sitting box.”

Kingsley looks at his watch, then closes his eyes and tucks the fob and chain into his trouser pockets. He doesn’t like the trousers—sure they’re more effective in the cold, but he misses the flowing robes he used to wear. They’re freeing, let a man be what he is under there, not poured into material one leg at a time. Just the indecision of which way to tuck his kit is harrowing enough.

If he had to worry about tucking his kit. Instead, the cold metal is just starting to warm again, and it’s less of a reminder now that it’s returning to body temperature. He shifts from one foot to the other, while Snape leans against the wall, shuffling his feet just a little.

Everything sags in this moment here. It had taken them much longer than they had thought, just to get up here, and then to find the place. There had been a ring of free-range Dementors roaming the area, always a delight, and then the building had been so camouflaged that they’d missed it twice. The snow wasn’t heavy, but it was occasionally coming down sideways, and by the time they’d stumbled in here, they’d been so intent on finding the wand cache, that all fatigue had been pushed aside.

They could unload the box into the saddlebags of their brooms, equipped to run silent so that they could be spared the sound of Apparition to their next location, but once he has stopped, Kingsley realizes that he needs a few minutes to just be. He almost pulls his watch out again, but then he thinks better of it. Time will not move faster for the checking.

“I suppose there might be some food hidden in here,” Snape says, crossing his arms and tossing his hair just enough that his nose can peek out through the tangled lengths of it.

Kingsley snorts. “If we’re lucky, Aberforth will bring us something hot,” he says. He wishes that he was wearing robes now, because he could reach in and adjust the thing on his cock, but trousers pretty much null that idea, and he settles for turning away and looking to the window. It’s a single pane of glass, and it would never open at all. It’s probably only there so that the place can look more hovel-like. Sad windows are the pathetic eyeballs of the building world, or summat, as Hagrid might say.

“If we’re lucky, it won’t be goat,” Snape answers, his voice indicating that he is still across the room.

Kingsley reaches into his trouser pocket and feels the wire and meat through the thin cloth of the pocket itself—the mesh is malleable, not too stiff, but the framing of it is made of sterner stuff, and there’s no way he’s going to make it go anywhere.

Why he is even wearing it is something of a mystery to him, but only a mystery insofar as he would prefer to keep it on than parse the layered meanings behind it all. Sometimes, in wartime, when everything is so secret and terrifying and not a little bit insecure, the luxury of psychoanalysis is as far away as the moon. Much easier to stay in the hovel and pretend that it’s enough for now.

And it is, actually. This is life during wartime, when all they need is to hang on for about three more hours, and then the sun will be down. When they sleep in the daytime and work in the nighttime, and who knows when they’ll ever get a chance at a hot meal, a soft bed (a bed itself would suffice), let alone anything resembling a home. As it is, here they are—in a bare, wet, dark room in the middle of nowhere, in the snow, no food, no cloaks, and three Knuts to rub together for…whatever three Knuts would get you. Not even a shot of pumpkin juice.

“You ought to know not to stand by the window,” Snape says from behind him, and then the curtains swish closed. They aren’t really curtains, but a burlap sack—correct that, one half of a burlap sack—strung across the window with a bit of kinky wire. “Somebody will see you out there.”

Kingsley stares at the burlap, now, his hand in his pocket still. His other hand reaches for the dagger in the opposite pocket. At least it’s close at hand. He could move from the window, but there’s nothing else to see in the shack, maybe the loo, and so he’s better off where he is, Snape breathing down his neck. If he moves away, Snape will take that as a dismissal, and he’s not ready to dismiss the man yet.

Long fingertips dust his exposed wrist, and then slide like oil down his hand, tracing his skin into the pocket and then in between Kingsley’s fingers to tap on the wire mesh that surrounds his cock, and lower, his balls.

The cage is one of Snape’s construction—he’d made it three months ago when they’d been laid over for the night in Bristol, cramped in a Muggle basement with nothing but musty bits of metal and cloth to keep them company. Kingsley had spent the night trying to sleep cramped up in a ball next to the radiator, waking at moments to watch Snape as he tinkered and toyed with wires and mesh and bolts. When he had woken in the morning, Snape’s mouth was on his cock, and Kingsley’d nearly bitten his tongue trying not to alert the Muggles upstairs to their presence until he’d realized that Snape had Muffliato’d the whole basement.

Afterwards, Snape had licked him clean, shown him the cage, and then slipped it on without waiting for Kingsley’s assent. Sometimes when he thinks about it, Kingsley wonders if he’s been Imperiused. Why else would he wear this thing and wait, always wait, for Snape to come and undo it? He can’t even be near the other man unless he has a weapon on him, and yet, here it is, letting Snape, recent turncoat and former Death Eater, take the most sensitive bit of him inside his mouth, and then afterwards, confine it in a cage.

“How does it feel?” Snape asks him, drumming his fingers on the wire cage. The thing is flexible to a point, actually, and he doesn’t have a problem voiding himself while he wears it, but it’s pretty damn stiff for anything else, thanks to some sort of malleable detection charm that keeps his cock from doing the one thing it wants to do so very badly, like, right at this moment.

Kingsley lets his eyes fall closed, but his hand refuses to let go of the dagger’s hilt. It’s that way around Snape—he can keep his eyes open or have a weapon in his hand. Or both. Never neither.

“It’s…interesting,” he answers, trying not to say too much with words. If your body already speaks volumes about something, adding vocal veracity to them is just one more surrender you don’t need.

“You know it’s just a thing,” Snape says, resting his chin on Kingsley’s shoulder. In his peripheral, Kingsley can see the man’s nose—the tip and arch, and that bridge rising that makes him rather patrician. Or horrifying, depending on one’s sense of aesthetics. Kingsley doesn’t mind a bit of a nose, anyway—his is rather wide, a fact that his sister has never let him forget.

Had never let him forget.

“I know,” Kingsley says, hoping that this will be the end of the conversation. He would prefer if Snape would run his hands along the mesh, find his hidden magical seam, and loose Kingsley’s cock. He wants to jack off into Snape’s palm while the knife is still stiff in his other hand, ready for whatever might happen. He wants to turn his face and catch Snape’s mouth in his, but he doesn’t, he never will. He doesn’t want to kiss Snape, not really. He wants some sort of clear signal that this has stepped out of the realm of, “espionage layover hideout time” and into “pent-up release fucking time”. A kiss would be a clear signal.

Instead, Snape begins to release the cage, his finger traveling along the seam Kingsley still has trouble finding, and even through the cloth of the pocket and the mesh, Kingsley can feel he warmth from the man’s hand, and the slight press of his fingernail. His breath is hot on Kingsley’s neck, and it doesn’t smell quite nice enough, but neither of them is likely to be too pleasant to the nose right now; skulking does that.

Kingsley reaches up with his free hand to grasp Snape’s hair, and it’s a little tug of war as to just what is going to happen. Snape is left with the last hand, and he slides it into Kingsley’s other trouser pocket, effectively bracketing him in so that he can hold the cage as it slides off Kingsley’s cock.

He’s hard almost instantly. The seal around him had been pressed against his groin, and he’d been soft for days. Kingsley likes to pretend that the cage helps him to think, makes him less erratic, makes him less of an animal or something, even though he knows that’s bollocks. Instead of being one less thing to think about, the cage makes it one more, and being distracted by Snape’s arse when they are supposed to be investigating a secret body dumping ground is not the wisest of choices he can make.

“How long?” Snape whispers.

The wind rattles the window, and the burlap shudders when Kingsley opens his eyes to stare at it. “Does it matter?”

This is Snape during wartime, he thinks, when Snape’s tongue, just the very tip of it, reaches out to touch his neck, and Kingsley lets go of Snape’s hair, his fingers slightly greasy like after handling sheep. When he pulls one of Snape’s hands from his pockets and turns then, finding Snape’s mouth with his own—he tastes like mint; his mouth is always clean, as if he has to wash it over and over to get through the lies he tells. When Snape’s tongue is on his and then there are teeth and lips and the gentle pressure of heads pressing and pushing each other this way and that. Kingsley feels his hat being knocked off, and the cold air on the top of his skull is like a solid smack.

Snape hand is still working in his trousers, and the cage slides off to the side, attached to the chain that is wrapped about his waist so that it will not fall down his trouser leg. Kingsley’s cock is so hard, almost impossibly so, and all he wants to do is grind into Snape’s front now, or maybe take off their clothes and grasp them both with one hand and squeeze, until Snape screams with the frustration that Kingsley feels when he wears this thing.

Snape’s hand is over his in the trousers, straining the seams of the pocket—there is even a little tearing noise at one of the corners. His fingers feel foreign through the cloth of the pocket material. The wind is rattling the window even more now, like a tea kettle ready to burst with steam, this building tension that he needs to eject sooner rather than later.

But Snape breaks the kiss and presses his forehead into Kingsley’s shoulder, and then takes a deep breath. His hand loosens over Kingsley’s, and he looks back up at him, his hair back over his face, unreadable, unknowable, possibly unforgivable.

“We have time, I think, for more than this,” Snape murmurs, lips ghosting Kingsley’s. His breath still smells like mint. His fingers drop the cage to dangle next to Kingsley’s thigh inside his trousers, and Kingsley sighs when he feels it, a satisfaction so strong in his gut that he isn’t sure whether he is disappointed or thrilled.

There is a pop outside, and then boots in the snow, and Snape’s hand disappears from Kingsley’s trousers and produces a wand. Kingsley finds his own, and they’re ready, arms towards the door when it opens and a cloaked figure marches in. It kicks the door shut behind it and then flings off the hood with a head toss.

Aberforth lifts up a parcel that looks like an animal haunch. “Brought you some smoked goat. Name’s Raquel.”

***

“I have more goat meat,” Aberforth says, rummaging through his sack. “Some apple butter. To last a couple of days.” He ties the sack shut, and then sits back down on the grizzled stump that he’d dragged in with him. It’s obviously been left outside for a long time, because it’s covered in sludge and ice and mud, but it’s better than sitting on the floor, and Kingsley wishes that he had it.

Snape seems unmoved by their seating arrangements. He picks at the small parcel of smoked meat in his hand, not really interested in it, but probably aware that he should put it into his stomach. He and Kingsley have been running hard for a few months, moving underground, undermining Voldemort’s allies with rumours and mysterious attacks. Voldemort is suspicious of Snape, and so he has had to put in many appearances at Death Eater meetings to keep his cover. They haven’t left him unscathed. He only tells Kingsley the pertinent details—any extra punishments or horrors go unmentioned.

“Would have been here sooner, but had trouble in transit,” Aberforth says. “Got through a flooblock.” He grins. “Blended right in with the crowd. Ollivander stood out too much, so they made him turn back at Swindon.”

Kingsley doesn’t understand how Aberforth could blend in with that ginger hair, but perhaps he’s less recognizable. Every witch or wizard is guaranteed to see Ollivander at least once in his or her lifetime, and the experience is usually a milestone, and sure to be remembered. He’s almost as memorable as Dumbledore.

“How did you get the intel?” Kingsley asks, because the thing they are here for is both macabre and very secret. They hadn’t even known about the body dumping site until Voldemort had mentioned it in passing in a meeting. Snape hadn’t known anything further, but by the time the Order had got hold of it, Aberforth and Fletcher were in cahoots, bribing informants and scouting possible locations. They execute at the site, so Snape and Kingsley are hopeful that they can get there in time to stop more killings.

Kingsley also has the order to identify any bodies, even if he has to crawl into the pit, and he’s not keen on that. Who would be? He’s tense and not a little unsettled, and more than anything he wants to just lie down with a warm body and sleep. For the warmth, most surely, but also, maybe, something more than that.

Snape crumples the paper over the rest of his uneaten goat and tucks it into his pocket. “And is it any good? I don’t want to chase another rumour.”

Aberforth sighs and pulls out a long pipe, but he doesn’t light it. Aberforth doesn’t smoke, not anymore, but the gesture is still required. “Lucibel Grandstaff has a cottage up there,” he tells them, raising his eyebrows. “Fairly terrified, she was. They might have snatched her, but that grandnephew of hers managed to sneak her out in the middle of the night before they got to the house.”

“He’s a Muggle,” Snape says derisively.

Kingsley ignores the comment. One cannot undo everything in a day.

They all stop for a second at a strange noise, a popping sound that’s like Apparition, but not. Kingsley pulls his wand out again and starts for the door, but Aberforth waves him away with an apathetic hand. “Muggle gunfire, off in the distance. I’ve got used to it now.”

“Gunfire?” Kingsley doesn’t want to have to deal with firearms. The Wizarding world is dangerous enough without having to dodge metal projectiles shot at speeds fast enough to punch through the body without being seen.

Aberforth waves a hand diffidently. “What were you two doing when I got here?”

Kingsley looks away, because his cock is throbbing a bit and he doesn’t want to shift on the floor, doesn’t want to look uncomfortable in the least.

The thing is, the last time it had been the three of them, things had happened. Aberforth is older, sure, but he’s a handsome man, in a rugged way, and while Kingsley might not have ever bothered with him under normal circumstances, Snape is surprisingly less restricted or repressed when it comes to having emotionless sex in stressful situations.

Merlin only knows what happens at Death Eater meetings.

Snape reaches out and takes Aberforth’s pipe from his hand, twirling it in his fingertips. “He’s still wearing it,” he says to Aberforth, and now Kingsley closes his eyes.

Aberforth chuckles. “Good grief, didn’t you put that on him two months ago?”

“I don’t always wear it,” Kingsley blurts out suddenly. He’s not keen on having this conversation, not really, because of course it leads to—

“So you wear it just for us?” Aberforth ventures, knowing just what buttons he is pressing. “Or for him?” He nods his head at Snape, who has tucked into himself, his hands stuffed into his sleeves for warmth, looking like a black ball of slink.

What can he say? Kingsley shrugs, listens to the wind hit the side of the shack and stares at the small fire in the fireplace. Aberforth started it as soon as he had come in, and the room is small enough that it’s now rather warm.

Snape uncoils then, slipping the stem of the pipe in his mouth and sighing. His bottom lip catches on the dryness of it, and Kingsley thinks about how that would feel on his (re)hardening cock. Probably quite good. Aberforth rolls his eyes, but they look darker than they had before.

This is life during wartime, he thinks, when Snape pushes the pipe into his mouth as far as he can take it, and Aberforth grunts. When Kingsley holds out one hand and catches Aberforth’s in his, tugging the man onto the floor. When Snape slides the pipe out with a ‘pop’ and draws the wet stem across his lips before biting it in his teeth so that he can carry it to them like a dog fetching the paper as he crawls on all fours.

Aberforth’s cloak is lined with some sort of fur, and it spreads out around them on the floor, but Snape’s many buttons undo themselves with a charm that he probably invented because the Dark Lord is too impatient to wait for anything that he thinks is already his. Kingsley isn’t as cold as he thinks he should be when he disrobes, but his head has been bare for a while, and it has got used to the air.

This is skin during wartime, he thinks, when Snape’s back is turned to them, and he can see the puckered pink skin of recent scars that have healed without Dittany. When Aberforth slides off his boots and both feet are purple with pooled blood from recently broken (and thankfully healed) ankles that had shattered jumping from a bridge into too little water. When Kingsley tries to bend his elbow and feels the stiffness pull at him like a marionette string.

Snape’s hands unfasten the chain about Kingsley’s waist so that he can set the free hanging cage aside—there’s no use for it now—he’s hard and upright and ready for hands, teeth, fingers, arse, tongue, whatever might come his way. He reaches out with one hand to run it under Snape’s chin and bring his face up, into the light. Aberforth tosses his outer robe into the corner but leaves his shirt on. Who knows what that looks like under there—he doesn’t show anyone.

The wind picks up again, and the fire in the little hearth gutters for a second, flipping the flames in such a way that Snape’s face is drowned in darkness, and when Kingsley can see him again, his hand is grasping Kingsley’s cock and he draws the head of it across his lips, his breath, his sigh so strong that Kingsley shivers. Aberforth creeps closer to Snape’s back, his eyes riveted to the dark hair, and his massive hands slide up and over Snape’s shoulders. His red fall of hair trails down his back—all the grey has been coloured out, but his pale eyebrows remain so that they are almost invisible.

Snape smiles at the contact, or something else, perhaps. He flicks the head of Kingsley’s cock with his tongue and rolls his eyes up to meet Kingsley’s. The shadows under his eyes show how tired he is, and the bruising on his face is fresh and vivid when the firelight washes out the general sallowness of his skin. Kingsley hasn’t even asked how he got those; it seems an invasion to question something that’s not offered.

Aberforth has lubricated his fingers, and with a few light kisses on Snape’s shoulder, he reaches around to the man’s cock, palming it in his hand. Snape isn’t even hard. Aberforth’s other hand is working behind Snape, possibly in him, and Kingsley can’t tell until Snape lets go of his cock and bends down, almost as if in worship, but in reality to grant Aberforth better access. Aberforth already has three fingers inside, and he curls them, Kingsley knows, with an expertise one might not assume from him.

This is Aberforth in wartime, all gruffness and candor, a weapon for the Order that does what he’s told (and sometimes what he isn’t); but in these moments, in the softness and the quiet of absolutely nothing to do at all, he is a different man. Perhaps the man he is meant to be, if they are all ever meant to be anything when they are not killing something, stopping something, saving something.

“Don’t rush it,” Kingsley says, not able to consult his watch, because it is in his pile of discarded clothes. “We have plenty of time to kill.”

Aberforth twists his fingers in Snape’s arse and grimaces when one of his bare feet lands in a black slushy footprint. “I suppose three hours is enough, trapped here in a shack with you lot,” he grumbles, but his voice is a little more husky than put-out.

He uses his free hand to slap Snape’s rear, and the man jolts upright again, eyes wide. Kingsley thinks that this might be too far, but Snape pushes back against Aberforth, trying to mold his back to the man’s front, and then he sees Kingsley standing there, memory dawning in his eyes. His hand follows him, grabbing Kingsley’s cock and tugging until Kingsley is forced to be led, forward, straight into the man’s mouth.

Aberforth isn’t into filthy talk, more like filthy actions, and he doesn’t deviate from his modus operandi when he removes his fingers and obviously replaces them with his cock. Kingsley could lean forward to watch over Snape’s shoulder, but Snape is sucking on his head, not deepthroating. It’s not clear how he has learned these skills, but Kingsley remembers from his days at Hogwarts that Snape had always managed to study himself into excellence, no matter the subject.

The fire is roasting Kingsley on his left side, but it’s a cursory sensation, because his cock, free of the cage for the first time in a week, is in the mouth of the man who’d made that cage in the first place. Snape’s fingers trace down his cock much in the same manner that he used to excise it from the cage earlier, and if Kingsley could get even harder, he might have.

Aberforth reaches up Snape’s chest, to grasp his throat from the front. His other hand stays on Snape’s hip for leverage as he draws himself out of Snape’s arse, his eyes focused on the action between them. One long strand of red hair trails over Snape’s shoulder and curls about his right nipple, sticking to the sweat there.

When Aberforth pushes back in, Snape moves with him, and his hands rise up to hold Kingsley’s hips, his fingers pressing, clenching for dear life. He all but swallows Kingsley, who can see the tears spring in his eyes, just in the corner. He would stop to feel for the man, but it’s probably nothing to do with him, at least, not emotionally.

Snape moves, almost writhes at the waist so that he can control the movement in and out of him on both sides. His breath whistles a little through his nose when he presses it against Kingsley’s groin. His tongue rasps the underside of Kingsley’s cock, pure liquid want on the skin there. The wind howls down the chimney and spits on the fire, the window scrapes in the wooden frame, spidering minutely with a sound like walking on ice. Suddenly, over Aberforth’s shoulder, Kingsley can see the box of wands lying on the floor, and he has to close his eyes, because in less than three hours one of them could be dead.

He grabs Snape’s head and thrusts then, looking for the back of the man’s throat with his cock. Snape’s hands flutter over his, but they don’t try to pry them away, only control the speed of the movements so that they match better with Aberforth’s pumping, which had begun slow, but is getting faster and faster with every withdrawal.

Snape’s molars scrape against his cock, his tongue laves the underside, and he manages a bit of suction when the angle is right. Aberforth pounds into Snape’s arse, their bodies slapping together more frantically the closer Aberforth is to coming. His brow is wrinkled in concentration, and Kingsley almost starts to wonder what he is thinking when his own thoughts are derailed by a cold hand on his balls, a hand as cold as wire mesh enclosing them and kneading. He fists Snape’s hair and torques it, looking for another angle to fuck, the palm of his hand butting into Snape’s temple.

When Kingsley comes, Aberforth is reaching his end, and Snape’s hands turn to his own cock, over Aberforth’s ever-present hand there, working it with such a ragged wrenching force, it’s a wonder he doesn’t sustain some sort of tearing. Perhaps he does. Perhaps he will carry that pain with him all night, after they leave this room and go into the cold, to find a bunch of dead bodies. Kingsley’s elbows throb where the joints are still healing from a particularly nasty fight that had ended in a torture session he’d had to guile his way out of. Sometimes that pain carries him out into the rain and snow to end another battle in a war that is beginning to stretch on way too long.

Snape pushes away from him, swallowing and hunching over when he comes soundlessly onto his own chest. Aberforth is still inside him, but only for the barest of moments, because as soon as he can get free, he wipes his mouth and rolls his jaw, then turns for his clothes. Already his sweaty skin is pricked with goose bumps, and he’s shivering—there’s almost nothing on his bones.

Kingsley considers offering him some more smoked goat and apple butter, but thinks better of it.

Aberforth lies back, pulling the cloak from the floor and wrapping it about himself, and Kingsley has replaced his trousers, tucking the cage into a pocket for later. Someday, he’s going to get Snape to take this off him in a less squalid location. Perhaps when this all ends, if this ever ends.

“Right then,” Aberforth says, and then yanks his robes over his head. No trousers for that man, never, not even when it was freezing out and his balls were probably covered in hoarfrost. Kingsley shrugs his robes on and fastens them—they’re warm but still damp, and that’s never pleasant. The fire is dying, but Aberforth revives it wandlessly, leaving Kingsley to wonder just how much ability he possesses but leaves to his brother. He creaks to standing, groaning and grunting with fake effort. Kingsley stuffs his feet into his boots and feels them lace themselves, a luxury he still allows himself.

Kingsley looks at Snape, his face ruddy and sweating, cheek flush with the wall while he fastens his flies, and he wonders if this is all that the man will ever get—hovel after hovel, from Spinner’s End to the Shrieking Shack, from Voldemort’s planning cottages, to now, with them, in their shacks and hovels. Different side, same view. Different side, same touches. Different side, same fucking, maybe.

He’d like to hold him, someday, maybe even kiss him again, but they don’t have time for that now.

Or—Kingsley checks his watch again—they have two more hours before they can even think about moving or sending word to Dumbledore. Snape’s face is still pretty bruised, and he moves stiffly. If Kingsley had known just how damaged he was, he might not have been so brusque with him a little while ago. Indeed, he might have simply let Snape fuck his mouth and get off, and then wrapped him up in a cloak for some shut-eye.

Aberforth has always been a bad influence on him.

“Merlin’s balls,” Aberforth says as he runs a hand through his hair. “Forgot it was this long.” He pulls a handful of red hair in front of his face and gapes. “And ginger, too.”

Kingsley nods. “I’ve changed my hair so many times in the past few months, I don’t know what I look like.”

Aberforth laughs and pings a finger off of Kingsley’s pate.

“You look exhausted,” Aberforth says finally, clapping a hand on Snape’s shoulder, and then transfiguring the stump he’d dragged in with him into a bed, or something like one. It isn’t soft-looking at all—pretty much a long flat wooden bench, but it’s elevated from the floor. “I’ll do some look-out. You ought to get you some sleep.”

And there, another order, another reminder that he’s a little older, a little wiser, maybe, a little crazier (truthfully), than Kingsley or Snape, and there’s nothing to do but steer Snape towards the bed and get him to lie down. Kingsley drapes his cloak over him, and then dons his own before stretching out behind him, furthest from the wall. If they both lie on their sides, they can fit. Just the act of being horizontal releases energy from Kingsley, and he can feel his limbs, now drained of adrenaline, desire, passion, become heavier by the second. The shack wall creaks when Aberforth leans against it, and there’s a rustle of paper when he pulls out the Prophet and shakes it open. Seconds later, Kingsley hears him mutter, “Bleeding arseholes, you lot.” And then he closes his eyes, presses his face a little bit closer to Snape’s hair, and breathes deep.

It’s a little later, perhaps thirty minutes, when he wakes from a light doze to hear Snape sniffing. Not crying, no, not him, but something like a bit of sadness, or dissatisfaction. He winds his arm over Snape’s waist, ignoring the flinch. Aberforth rustles his papers again, probably to cover the noise more out of consideration than annoyance.

“I burned all my notebooks,” Snape whispers to the wall, and Kingsley tightens his arm around the man’s waist as much as he dares. Snape will only say this to the wall, and apparently it’s important that he gets this out now. “Everything. What good are notebooks? They won’t help us survive.”

Kingsley feels something in his chest, and for a moment it startles him, because it’s hot. He almost thinks that hot cinders from the fire have flicked all the way over here to touch down on his skin, but they couldn’t have come this far, and they wouldn’t have got all the way under his clothes into his rib cage. It’s burning, like a fire, like a deep hatred or fear. No, hatred. Fear is cold. Hate is hot for him, white, slow and coiling, like the moment he’d found Alice and Frank (what is left of them), and everything had slowed to a crawl. And then four days later, he’d found his sister and her kids dead in the pond behind the house, and it had been a miracle he hadn’t combusted.

This is him, Kingsley, in wartime, then, he thinks, just a living flame of revenge and sourness, smouldering for vengeance, desperate for identity closeness, afraid of nothing but failure. The burning keeps him alive.

“No,” he says into Snape’s ear after a long pause, in which he waits for the fire to ebb in him, enough that he can open his mouth to make a sound more than the crackle of another log being thrown onto the bonfire he carries. “No, Severus, we’re not just going to survive. We’re going to win.”

END