What Everyone Knows by roozetter Title: What Everyone Knows Author:roozetter Pairing: Severus/Sirius, Harry Rating: Hard R Word Count: +/- 2300 Warnings: Misuse of Occlumency lessons, character death Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. The characters and their worlds belong to their original writers and no copyright infringement or offense is intended. No money was made from this story. Summary: In sixth year, Severus is asked to resume Occlumency lessons with Harry. He uses this as a way to exonerate his own personal demons regarding the death of one Sirius Black. A/N: Written for the 2012 severus_sighs #angst!fest. Proofed by atypicalsnowman and suitesamba Thank you, bb’s! xoxo
What Everyone Knows
The boy is on his knees before him. Thin chest heaving with each breath, tears making his eyes shimmer in the dimly-lit room.
It’s not enough.
So Severus pushes him harder, further, takes him deeper.
It wasn’t his idea to resume the Occlumency lessons with Potter during the boy’s sixth year, after all. So if he is going to be subjected to teaching the little shit, he will do it his way. Make the boy develop shields out of sheer self-defense instead of the gentle coddling the Headmaster undoubtedly prefers.
~*~
“Damn it, Snape, it isn’t like that!” Sirius’ hand is rough on his arm as he spins him around, his tone urgent, but there is something uncharacteristically vulnerable in his eyes that makes Severus want to forgive him. This pisses him off more.
“Oh, Black?” His tone is quiet, silky, with enough underlying menace that Sirius flinches and takes a step back. He doesn’t release his hold on Severus’ arm, though. “And what was it like, hmm? You thought it would be fun,” and here some spittle flies from his mouth at the word, so tightly is he holding himself under control, “to send the person fucking you into the den of a werewolf?”
“He wasn’t supposed to have transformed yet...” Sirius’ voice trails off as he bites his lip, left hand rising to unconsciously rub at the back of his neck.
Even now Severus wants to suck that lower lip into his mouth, thrust his thigh in-between Sirius’ legs, knowing how the muscles will clench at the gesture and his leg automatically lifts to wrap around his waist. He wants to fist his hands in Sirius’ hair, scrape his fingernails against his scalp just to hear that growling noise of pleasure Sirius makes at the sensation.
He does none of this however, simply stands there and absorbs the rush of self-hatred he feels over his own weaknesses.
“Look,” Sirius says, stepping closer and looking at Severus with wide, earnest grey eyes. “You’re always so suspicious about where we disappear to together. I wanted you to see that there’s nothing going on between Remus and me. That,” he smiles, a crooked lifting of his lip that is both somehow maddeningly kissable and impishly adorable, “I really am a big dog.”
“What you are,” Severus says, each word cold and precise, “is someone I fucked. Someone I was stupid enough to let fuck me.” Sirius loses his smile. Severus feels sick inside. “And now we are nothing to each other.”
It’s hard, painfully, ridiculously hard, to take that first step back. Sirius’ hand falls off his arm at the second step. By the third, those gray eyes are furious.
“So it’s like that, is it?” Sirius snarls. “The first time we really fight and you’re quit of me?”
“Yes, Black.” He wonders if this is how his father felt, toward the end, when he used to fight with Eileen about the bills; cold, tired, uncaring. “It is precisely like that.”
~*~*~
“If you will just tell me what to do,” Harry says tiredly, kneeling on the floor and rubbing at his temples. Severus is willing to bet they’re pounding, that the boy feels like his head is exploding.
“You are not trying,” Severus says quietly.
Harry opens his mouth to respond, and pauses, glancing at Severus warily through his fringe. Ah, so he has learned that the quieter Severus’ voice, the more he should be concerned.
“Really, sir,” he says, matching Severus’ quiet tone. “I am. I’ve been practicing clearing my mind every night before bed and everything. Just...” He trails off, bites his lip, rubs the back of his neck. And it’s so reminiscent of another gawky teenager, of a lifetime of bitterness ago, that Severus nearly misses Harry’s next, desperate words. “Can. Can you give me a hint, sir? Please?” Severus can tell by the half-lidded look to Harry’s eyes that his head is in pain, and he wonders how much begging cost him.
“There is a moment during orgasm,” Severus says in a silky voice that has Harry’s eyes widening and mouth parting in shock, “when the mind goes blank, vision white, and everything disappears except for the sound of your heart beating. Memorize that moment and keep it close at hand, always.”
“Org -” Harry gapes up at Severus for a solid minute before his eyes narrow in outrage. “That tells me nothing!”
“That tells you everything,” Severus corrects. He looks down and smirks as Harry glares at him. “Legilimens!”
~*~*~
“Can’t stand it, can you, Snape?” Sirius is half-drunk, eyes crazed and heavy lidded as he sits alone in the dark, unwelcoming kitchen of Grimmauld Place. “Can’t stand that I was running around Hogwarts right under your great beak of a nose for most of Harry’s third and fourth year, and you had no fucking clue.” He takes another drink, lips curling in a grimace or a sneer -- Severus can’t quite distinguish between the two anymore.
“Surprised would be a more apt term,” Severus says in amusement. He crosses the kitchen, snags the bottle from Sirius, and kicks out a chair. The whiskey burns going down, but it warms him up inside and gives him an excuse for his hands, so he considers it an even trade. “That you didn’t encourage young Mr. Potter to go play with the werewolf until the end of his third year. After all,” he smirks, knowing it will infuriate Sirius to no end, “you do profess to care about him.”
His words don’t have the effect he hopes for. Sirius’ face gets uncharacteristically serious, tired. “It feels like it did before,” Sirius says in a tight, strained voice, looking at Severus with shadowed eyes. “Cold and dark, and you never know if the ones you lov-” he looks away then “-the people you care for will be dead tomorrow.”
With the scars and lines on his face, the deep grooves on his forehead, the haggard weariness he wears like a permanent tattoo, Sirius is oddly beautiful, imperfectly real, and Severus silently passes the bottle back across the table. Sirius looks at the bottle blankly before letting out a rough bark of laughter and licking the rim.
“First time I’ve had your saliva in my mouth in over twenty years, Snape.” He wiggles his eyebrows suggestively. “Still hate me, then?”
“Of course,” Severus murmurs. And he does. But in a comfortable, familiar sort of way.
“Good.” Sirius slaps his hands on the table and stands, staggering only slightly. “Let’s go to bed then.”
A single eyebrow lifting is Severus’ only response.
“Come on,” Sirius says, turning his back and leaving the kitchen. “I know you’re just as tired of this madness as I am.”
~*~*~
A black dragon rearing, smoke pouring from her open mouth. The silhouette of a werewolf, howling to the moon. Running with Dudley while Dementors close in. Sirius, falling and falling and falling and falling.
“Stop it!”
Finally hearing the scream, Severus blinks himself back to the present and lifts his wand. Harry’s whole body is trembling and twitching, eyes squeezed tight with pain. Sweat darkens the neck and underarms of his t-shirt, arms collapsing underneath his own weight and sending him crashing gracelessly back to the ground as he tries to sit up.
But it’s still not enough. Not yet.
“Please,” Harry says hoarsely. “Just. I think I need to be done for the night.”
“You have five minutes to compose yourself,” Severus says coldly.
“Snape, please.” Harry’s voice breaks on the last word. Severus is not surprised; he looks close to coming undone. Severus says nothing, but kindly flicks his wand and sends the goblet of water to land directly in front of him.
The last time his name was said in such a desperate, pleading tone, was last Easter. Sinking into Sirius’ body, slowly, shallow thrusts of his hips with the tip of his cock just past the rim. He’s gotten distracted, watching the way Sirius’ pucker grows red and swollen as it hugs the head, only for the pucker to nearly close, fluttering unhappily as Severus withdraws.
“Snape, please,” Sirius finally grinds out, fingers clenching the bedsheets so tightly his knuckles turn white and the sheets rip from the mattress. His pupils are blown wide, cheeks stained with color, eyes utterly mad as they lock with his. Severus gives the closest approximation to a smile he is capable of as he sinks all the way into Sirius’ body and Sirius howls loud enough to annoy the portrait downstairs.
“Snape? Snape, please may we stop for the night?”
Blinking himself back to the present, yet again, Severus turns his eyes to Harry and gives the boy a flat stare as he collects himself. Harry is still trembling, but has gathered the energy to pick up the goblet of water, droplets sliding down his chin as his hands tremble.
“Your time is up,” he says emotionlessly. “Clear your mind.”
“I can’t,” Harry says weakly. Yet he drops the goblet and picks up his wand. It takes him three tries to wrap his fingers tightly enough around the stick to hold it in place.
“Then you die.”
~*~*~
“Who do you think you are?” Sirius spits at him, eyes bright with laughter, “coming in to my house and thinking you can order my godson around?”
“Sirius...” Harry’s voice is tentative from his position next to Sirius at the table.
“Occlumency lessons will begin after Christmas,” Severus says, fingers steepled in front of his face. His voice is cold, but the tip of his middle finger brushes against his lower lip as he speaks. The same finger he sucked on two nights ago before plunging it inside Sirius’ body. He sees the way Sirius’ gaze sharpens, the way his smile turns feral, and feels himself harden in his pants at the knowledge his message has been received.
“And you think you’re the one to teach him, Snape?” Always impulsive, Sirius surges out of his seat and rounds the table. Severus stands as well, wand drawn, and for a moment he loses track of the words they hurl at each other.
Their bodies press together from the waist down, wands at each other’s throat. Sirius has brought his hand up to the base of Severus’ left shoulder, fingers pressing into the mark he bit into him. They’re both hard, Severus’ left hand twitching with the urge to grab Sirius’ hip, let those long legs twine around him, bend him over the table right here and now.
He has been obsessed with this man since he was sixteen years old. He doubts he’ll ever get enough.
Maybe after the war they won’t need to hide anymore, and will shock everyone by moving in together.
Only then Harry is pushing them apart. “Stop it!” His green eyes are wide with shock. Severus suddenly realizes how hard they’re all breathing.
The door is flung open, loud-mouthed, chattering Weasleys pushing through the doorway. Severus shares a look with Sirius, a silent acknowledgement that now is not the time for foreplay. Sirius squeezes his shoulder briefly, with regret, and then lets go.
~*~*~
He’s standing in front of a mirror gazing with broken-hearted longing at the image of his parents and family.
“Stop it!”
A basilisk is rearing before him, fangs gleaming sharp and deadly in the green-cast room. One hundred Dementors are circling above him, preparing to strike.
“Get out of my head!”
Sirius is there, grin cocky and warm and wild. He tosses his head, raises his wand, looking fierce and slightly insane and alive. The veil flutters in the breeze, a thousand voices whispering a seductive siren’s call. Sirius is falling and falling and falling and falling.
“Damn it, Snape! Stop it!”
Sirius is falling and falling and falling and falling. Sirius is falling and falling and falling and.
His wrist hurts.
Murmuring the charm to soothe the Stinging Hex on his wrist, Severus stares across the room. Harry has dropped his wand, is lying boneless and sobbing against the cold stone floor. The faded blue shirt he wears is so soaked with sweat it looks gray, and he is shaking so badly Severus doubts he’ll be able to lift himself from the floor for quite some time.
He’s beautiful in his pain.
And now Severus can see it, in the shuddering line of his back, in the awkward angle of his hip as he lays against the floor and simultaneously tries to ease the pressure. Small, distressed noises escape him, stomach quivering as he tries to pull himself back together. Harry’s fingers scrabble uselessly against the stones, silently pleading for someone to make this better, to ease the pain in his soul from the memories he will never be able to forget.
“Did you mean to cast the Stinging Hex at me?” He barely recognizes the tone of his voice, but Harry seems to even through his haze of devastation, and manages to lift his head long enough to nod.
It’s enough. Finally.
In this moment, with Harry laying like a sobbing, wailing, broken doll before him, Severus can finally see the merest hint of the depth of his pain over losing Sirius. Every howl of anguish and spasm of muscle a representation of the agony he cannot express.
Appearances must be maintained, after all. And everyone knows that Severus Snape, spy extraordinaire, hates Sirius Black.
“You are dismissed,” he says hoarsely, finally lowering his wand. Harry doesn’t move, just continues to sob on the floor.
Severus leaves him to their pain and quietly leaves the room.