From the Dead to the Living, for celandineb Title: From the Dead to the Living Author:stonegrad Giftee:celandineb Word Count: 6,896 Rating: NC-17 Pairing: Severus/Harry Warnings: AU, DH spoilers, Parselsmut, slight dark!fic Disclaimer: This is not my novel; I'm just playing in JKR's sandbox of Potterdom. All quotes (centered and in italics) are from the poem 'Please Master' by Allen Ginsberg. Summary: Harry becomes convinced that Snape didn't die after all, and after finishing his seventh year, goes out to find him. A/N: I had so much fun writing this it was actually somewhat absurd. Many hugs for the excellent prompt, and a huge thank-you to my beta - she knows who she is!
From the Dead to the Living
“Please master can I have your thighs bare to my eyes?”
I knew he wasn’t dead.
Yet, I could not have said why I felt that way – only that I did, only that it seemed right; only that men like him just don’t die like that, with their last breath rattling between blue lips and blood already congealing around them. Men like him don’t stop because of such petty, mortal restraints such as blood-loss and venom.
Men like him kill, but cannot be killed – not even by Voldemort.
Or, at least, that’s what I started to think; not that I told anyone, not for months, because of course I’d seen him die, hadn’t I? For all I knew, I could have been delusional – it wouldn’t have been much of a stretch for me; after all, my mind was in such turmoil after the war ended that not even Ron or Hermione would come near me for weeks.
That was good… who knows what I might have done to them, had they tried.
In the end, though, I think it might have been Malfoy who finally knocked the idea firmly from the realm of the absurd into an absolute reality, at least in my mind. Malfoy, or Lucius… who knows? Maybe it was both.
Maybe I was mad, and I just made that part up too.
But I started thinking, once the Great Hall had calmed down enough for me to see the three of them together, that it was funny how such light people could be so decidedly dark inside… and how such dark people, like Snape, could be so brilliantly light after all. Then, it was just a flitting thought, pausing briefly before passing on.
A few weeks later, I started seeing things in terms of shades of grey; and that’s where things got a bit more complicated.
It was the day of Lucius Malfoy’s trial, so perhaps it was fitting – the man dealt in infinite shades of the grey, as I later found out. I really shouldn’t have been surprised by it, but I was.
He sat there, in that cold stone chair with the shackles around his wrists and ankles, as if he was some king on a crumbling throne; he never pleaded, only talked in that soft, impassionate voice – and he didn’t tell us everything, but he told us enough, and I think that’s what helped set the idea in my head.
The Malfoys could tell me where Snape was, I was certain of it.
Except, of course, that Lucius was sentenced to ten years in Azkaban and Draco was an explosive terror of a person afterwards – he would sooner take my head off than talk to me, and for all my Gryffindor courage I still retained the very Slytherin ability of knowing when it was just better to quit, lie down, and hope nobody ever noticed my absence.
I tried, but Draco Malfoy might as well have been made out of ice, or stone, or some other detached component from the greater machine of life… except if someone said anything about a jail, in which case you were lucky not to be plastered to a wall - teacher, student, or random passer-by.
The professors tried to pretend like they still wanted him there, but they didn’t, no one did – not even Malfoy himself wanted to stay stuck within Hogwarts’ walls, but that’s exactly what he did; and I never asked him why, but I figured it was another family thing, and that had been dangerous territory even before the war turned it into a wasteland full of landmines.
At the end of the year, he seemed to disappear off the edge of the world – no matter how hard I tried, and I did try, I couldn’t find him anywhere. Couldn’t find the Manor anywhere in Wiltshire, either… it was as if every trace of him had turned into smoke and been whisked away.
So, I went by the other route, and hoped that Lucius wouldn’t just lie through his teeth at me - a foolish wish, perhaps, but I had to try. I had to do something.
The Dementors were gone, of course, but any wizarding prison is bound to be a grotesque thing; without the soul-sucking monsters to dampen the fire of imprisonment, the Ministry had come to rely on more conventional methods of beating the prisoners down – torture was a big one, I knew, as well as forced starvation and inducing hypothermia.
It wasn’t nice… after hearing McGonagall talk I was at least prepared for that; and it wasn’t the cold that hit me as I was ushered through the heavy doors, or the smell of salt and death – it was the pain.
For anyone who has never been there, it is a hard thing to describe; the very air itself seems to steal the breath from your lungs and leave you desolate, trapped between blocks of stone that soak up the terror like sponges in water – but even the mortar couldn’t hold it, couldn’t keep it in… it was overflowing, it was everywhere.
Absolutely everywhere.
I willed my stomach down, and followed my hard-faced guide down through a series of long, winding corridors that smelt increasingly of dampness and rot; the Death Eaters had been locked up far down in the lower levels, where the only light came in the form of flickering torches placed evenly along the walls – it was a gray, faint illumination, but enough for my eyes to dissect every rut in the stone floor under my feet.
How undignified it would have been, had I fallen… and it kept my mind off the cells on either side and the occasional white face that appeared between the grates, images of men and women long since dead to the world.
Dead like Snape was supposed to be, and I didn’t know why that mattered, didn’t know why I couldn’t bear the thought of him being gone.
Didn’t know, and didn’t care.
One more broad, ragged corridor of stone before we paused in front of a heavy wooden door, with the grill perfectly level with my eyes – it was dark inside, and I could see nothing; but something was moving in the black, the sound like fingers tapping on stone.
And it got to me.
I took a breath, and nodded shortly to my guard – the keys jangled as he removed them from the hook in his belt, and the muscles in my shoulders tightened as he placed one into the lock before pausing and peering up at me through a film of filthy brown hair.
“He’s all tied up for you, Mr. Potter. Knock on the door when you’re ready to leave,” the man said, slurring his words until they were almost indecipherable – again, I gave a sharp, imperative nod; he eyed me a moment more, before turning the key and stepping to one side.
The lights flared up as soon as I stepped through the door – and in that dim cell, something struck me dumb.
It wasn't the shackles, his hands strapped together wrist-over-wrist, rings of chafed skin... it was the colour - the blatant bruising that mottled his flesh; purple smeared across one cheekbone, split through with a savage furrow of angry red, as if the skin had opened up under the combined pressure of a blow from above and the razorblade bones beneath. Black down his neck and in his hair, where the blood had dried and flaked away in thin slivers; brown and yellow at the base of his throat and down beneath the ragged collar of his prison uniform... red, thick and wet, making the shirt cling to his back and his sides - and I was horrified, suddenly, at the very thought of what lay beneath the grimy fabric.
Lucius Malfoy, sitting on the battered cot and watching me as if he hadn't been beaten to within an inch of his life; the masquerade of calm unbroken though his skin gleamed waxy in the light and his lips were blue from blood loss - and they formed words, but I couldn't catch them, didn't want to hear them.
Because it all made sense, then, where the hell I had gone so wrong... where everything had gone wrong.
"Is Snape alive?" and I'd blurted it out once the door was closed behind me, but if he was surprised then he never showed it; only smiled slightly, wetting his lower lip with his tongue - his voice was a near rasp, like sandpaper on bone, and I was not so good at withholding my shock as he was.
I never had been.
"Yes," he said, while my eyes were still wide and my ears still did not believe that he could have lost that wicked, honeyed drawl... from screaming, perhaps. I'd never know.
When his reply sunk in, I felt like a weight had been lifted from me that I had never even been aware of; my knees weakened fractionally in the face of it, despite my best efforts to convince myself that Lucius was simply lying to me – but he had no reason to, not then.
“How?” I demanded, stepping forwards further into the cell – it was seven feet by seven feet of bare stone and stagnated air that tasted of old, blackened meat; it was sickening, but I managed to bare it, for a while at least.
That smile thinned, and Lucius’ gray eyes hardened, suddenly sharp enough to slice me apart. “I went back,” he said coldly, and shifted his manacled hands in his lap, baring the thick strips of raw skin further. “I have some skill with healing, and Severus had anticipated his attack; there was time enough to get him out before the Dark Lord called us to march.”
How very Slytherin of them…
“Where is he?” – I could not have said if I expected an answer, but I certainly wanted one, needed one… I had to find him.
I had to.
But I was dealing with Lucius Malfoy, and he was not a man to fold just because I desired him to – a pair of eyebrows rose, and his smile finally disappeared, though I could still feel traces of it in the space between us; his enjoyment was nearly tangible, though whether because he was baiting me, or simply because he was starved of conversation, I wouldn’t hazard to guess.
“Somewhere safe;” and his voice was a barbed rasp, a low whiplash of sound that sent my temper flaring – but there was something more, I could tell. Something in the way he looked at me, the way I saw him… and I didn’t like him, not at all, but I wanted to help him if it meant he got to me to Snape.
So I took a deep breath, managed not to retch at the taste of it, and nodded – “If I swear to get you out, will you take me to him?”
Lucius wet his lip again, turning his head away; I had a full view of the bruising down the left side of his face, but I could not find it in me to offer to heal him, and he wouldn’t have agreed to it anyway.
“Yes,” he answered slowly, before pulling himself to his feet and stepping forwards – he still towered over me, but there was cold sweat on the back of his neck and barely any flesh on his bones; up close, he looked like some sort of animated skeleton, though I could still see fine threads of muscle moving under his near-translucent skin as he extended both hands towards me.
“On my name;” and he didn’t smile, not even when I choked back a sudden thrill of hysterical laughter and coughed wetly into the thick air – his hands were deathly cold as I gripped them in mine, though still startlingly soft and smooth.
Aristocratic hands.
“On my honor,” I said, and saw his eyes light up like the crematorium furnaces, bleak wastelands of the dead.
For the first time in my life, I allowed myself the liberty of believing him completely.
“Master push my shoulders away and stare in my eyes & make me bend over the table”
Two weeks later he stood in the center of my living room like a cold, avenging angel, and my heart was in my throat, my mind full to the brim with only one thought – Snape.
Now that the time had come, I did not know what I would say to him - what I could possibly say to him. We were never friends, barely even polite to each other… what would he do, when he saw me? Could I just walk up to him and thank him, and tell him I didn’t mind that he loved my mother, that I had released Lucius Malfoy from jail just so I could say those few short sentences?
Because I just didn’t know why I needed to find him, why it mattered to me beyond just being able to say that I was so impossibly sorry that I’d ever doubted him.
That I’d always doubted him.
Except I didn’t have time to think it over, because Lucius was there; had he retained less of his poise, I might have expected him to be pacing the room, but it was no surprise to find him still waiting by the thick oak desk – his eyes were the only part of him that betrayed any emotion, and it was irritation rather than excitement.
“Mr. Potter,” he said, flicking a few strands of hair out his eyes; having been in my bathroom for more time than I could remember, he looked very much like his old self, albeit starved and wearing robes that were slightly worn and a little too big. “I believe I told you that contact would be necessary in order for you to get past the wards on my Manor.”
There was a sardonic little smile on his lips as I took his proffered hand, glaring darkly up at him as I did so – I could feel my own wards go off as the tight constriction of Apparation took hold, and my stomach lurched unpleasantly at the sensation of the world spinning out from right under my feet.
I felt the moment the Manor defenses washed over me, as well. They fizzed along my nerves; an usual sensation, like running into a brick wall that held, just for a second, before disintegrating around me. My grip on Lucius tightened involuntarily, but he did not seem to care – or, at least, he chose not to comment on it when the ground had finally stabilized beneath us.
Of all the rooms in the Manor, I could say I was familiar only with two – the drawing room where Hermione had been tortured and Dobby had been struck by the knife, and the cellar in which Wormtail had strangled himself to death with his own hand. Thankfully, Lucius had bought us to neither of them – the room was wide, but almost bare of furnishings save for a pair of portraits hung over either door, set in the walls at opposite ends.
“The Apparation Hall,” Lucius said dismissively, already moving towards one set of heavy wooden doors – the portrait over it could have been his twin, if not for the sharp blue eyes that watched his progress with such a wealth of interest than even the famous Malfoy façade could not completely hide it all.
“Lucius,” it said in a strong French accent, eyes raking over me as if I was a choice cut of meat laid out on a silver platter; I tried to ignore it, and trailed after Lucius – his fingers had just touched the handle before he acknowledged the greeting, looking back up with a perfectly bland expression.
“Evanon;” and he barely even paused for the answering smirk before sweeping out through the doors and leading me into a maze of hallways, through a lavish ballroom that, I admit, left me breathless, and down a series of winding staircases - until we came, at last, to a long stone tunnel seemingly situated somewhere beneath the Manor itself.
If my heart plummeted into my stomach with the nerves, then it was only natural.
Lucius led me along in silence, black robes swirling about his ankles, ripples in the water, and I studied him as we went - he had not exaggerated his healing skills, but there was still a pained set to his shoulders and his wrists were rubbed raw from the shackles, thin strips of crimson on that pale skin. Faint bruises still littered what little of his body I could see… he must have been magically drained.
For some reason, the thought did not console me.
Two minutes, six, ten… the air was heavy, and my lungs were full of stale air – I took a breath, then broke the hush; the lack of conversation had long since become disconcerting.
“Is this the only way?” I asked, curious, nervous. The question made sense, at least; why take an underground route?
“No,” he replied, without looking back. “But it is the only way you will be able to get there… the wards in this wing can be, temperamental at times.”
Deadly, in other words – Dark.
I said nothing.
A minute more, and Lucius stopped – his fingers had barely touched the wall before a large portion of it dissolved into a grayish mist, just transparent enough for me to make out a tidy dining room with a large wooden table in the center.
“He knows you’re here,” my guide said, gray eyes flicking over me; I nodded, just once, and his thin lips pulled into a smirk.
“Enjoy yourself.”
The mist was cool, but not unpleasant – behind me, Lucius had Disapparated with a muted ‘crack’; before me, the room was coming into sharper focus by the second.
It was not as big as I had initially thought – the living room was more the size of the Gryffindor dormitory, and, though the room retained an air of richness typically connected to expensive and tasteful decorations, nearly all the furnishing had been stripped away. Indeed, it was almost Spartan.
Which was fitting, I thought, considering who had been living there.
I almost missed him the first time, he blended with the shadows so well; that sallow skin, that familiar hair that always fell in his eyes – such a hard, brutal gaze than pinned me to the spot when I finally managed to feel it crawling over my skin, millions of tiny little scorpions all willing to sting.
My throat, for a moment, was utterly constricted; what could I say?
But of course, he took all the options from me.
“To what do I owe the pleasure of your company, Mr. Potter?”
Ah, just as viciously coarse as always… and once again, I had the oddest feeling of a weight being lifted from my shoulders; one I had not been aware of until it was gone.
“You’re alive!” I said, and stepped forwards until I could pick out the glint of firelight in his eyes, so dark and black you could drown in them – they narrowed at my approach.
“And you’ve come to thank me?” he asked scathingly; when he tilted his head like that, I could just make out the mashing of scars on his neck. A thrill of adrenaline rushed through me at the sight, hot and perfect – I hadn’t felt as alive for the past year and a half.
I wished he knew it.
Well, it wasn’t as if I couldn’t tell him; Voldemort was long dead, and I’d grown up, I’d overcome my dislike (overcome it by far)… where once had been a seething hatred, I had only respect.
Respect… and desire.
He would have killed me, had he known, I’m absolutely sure of it - but he didn’t know, not then.
“I’ve come to apologize,” I said firmly, and ignored the way his lips twitched into that familiar sneer as I settled myself down into one of the three chairs clustered around the table. “For ever doubting you.”
I could taste the biting retort on his tongue before he even drew in the air to speak – I cut him off.
“And this has absolutely nothing to do with you and my mother.”
He was going to murder me for saying that, but it had to be said – if his scowl was anything to go by, though, that was a point that really didn’t matter. “Because I am not having any urges to go all mushy on you, or to bombard you with questions.” I drew a breath. “And I really, really don’t want to pry; it’s personal, I get that.”
Did I always ramble so much, or was it just my sudden rush of nerves?
“But I like you… I know, I know, you’d like to cut me up into little bitty pieces and feed me to a Thestral – but I still like you.”
His left eyebrow twitched slightly.
“And I just wanted you to know that, because without you I would be dead.” I looked up uncertainly – his expression hadn’t changed at all. “So yeah… thanks.”
There was a thick, stilted silence between us; when he spoke, it was in a voice so soft I could barely hear.
“As intriguing as your inane ramblings may sometimes be, Mr. Potter, this means absolutely nothing to me.”
Liar…
I resisted the urge to laugh – barely – and gave a sharp nod, watching him intently as he looked over me and then settled into one of the other chairs, reaching for a book lying on the polished table – he appeared to be content to simply ignore me and, though it should have annoyed me, I only settled in to wait in silence.
That night, I left after two hours – Snape offered me nothing but a cold glance when I finally got to my feet, but I still felt lighter than air.
He hadn’t killed me, after all.
I did not see Lucius on my way out, or Draco either, but I was suitably content that I wouldn’t be barred from returning; the Manor was settled, and its master, while still as imposing and criminal as ever, did not seem unduly bothered to allow me to wander the halls alone.
There were always the House Elves, if I ever got lost.
“Please master, make me go moan on the table Go moan. O please master do fuck me like that!”
I returned the day after – the house was airy and open, and the wards had obviously been fixed to allow my presence; I was glad of the fact.
Having found Snape, I would not allow anyone to take him away from me.
Yet, I still could not have said exactly why I felt that way, except that I was somehow drawn to him in a manner that was not entirely innocent, and which I severely doubted anyone would ever approve of – it was just that I could not forget the way his hands moved over the book the night before, the way his eyes had risen to catch mine just as I got to my feet, in almost a mockery of our last meeting, where his blood had stained the floor and covered my fingers.
Perhaps, out of everyone I knew, only the darkest of them could possibly know or understand it – Lucius certainly hinted as much, and he was one of the most dangerous men I had ever met.
Snape was also, but I could not decide if that meant he would get where I was coming from or miss it entirely.
Things were always different as far as he was concerned, anyway.
He was reading at the table again – another Dark Arts text I absently memorized the title of, as I slipped into the chair I had occupied the other night and reached out to drag a tray of food across the table, inspecting the untouched plate of sandwiches before picking one up and putting it in my mouth.
“I’m sure the House Elves would be glad to pile you with food if you managed to find the kitchens, Potter – without the trial of having your presence inflicted upon me.”
Snape hadn’t even looked up, the wonderful bastard.
I shrugged and grabbed another one, watching him out of the corner of my eye – he didn’t kill me, or curse me, or tear me apart with his words; in fact, it seemed his approach had officially changed into pretending I simply didn’t exist and thus, couldn’t bother him.
Which made my plan so much better.
It was an utterly insane idea, and I knew that – but for all my Slytherin traits, the Sorting Hat placed me in Gryffindor for a very good reason. Bravery, in my case, can quite often be equated to simple stupidity.
He would never see it coming at least, because who on earth could ever believe I would follow it through?
Not that anyone knew – not then. I wasn’t quite that foolish.
Snape – Severus - was scowling at me, just a little bit. I smiled, and slid out of my chair, walking around the table towards him; and I felt like I was walking on the air, like I was floating. Lightheaded and utterly unworried, even though I was about to sign my own death warrant.
I reached down, plucked the book from his fingers – his mouth opened (to curse me?); I bent down.
No thought – I just kissed him, hard, on the lips.
Even I didn’t know what I expected him to do… and he probably never, ever, thought I would do it - he was utterly stiff, perfectly still; but his mouth was warm and I should have stopped, but I wouldn’t, I couldn’t…
And it didn’t matter, just then, that it was like kissing a statue – that he didn’t even twitch as I pried his lips apart with my tongue and caught him around the biceps, digging my fingers into the heavy black fabric of his robes.
He was flighty, skittish as a horse; unobtainable, inaccessible – and even if I had him, for those few pounding heartbeats, then it didn’t mean that he was mine; it didn’t mean that at all.
I pulled away, panting, unsure of myself so suddenly it made my head reel; and my hands tightened on his arms as I closed my eyes against the confliction of my own morbid fascination with what sort of death he would deal to me, and my struggling demand to just survive.
There was movement – I could hear him draw in a breath, felt the muscles move around and under my fingertips, curled like claws; and he was far too thin, with his sunken cheeks and his waxy skin.
Black eyes… black, dead eyes.
I could feel his anger, thrumming through the air between us; the electric jolts of his displeasure that made me cringe inside, waiting, waiting…
But I’m not patient. I won’t wait for him.
My eyes opened, I kissed him again – caught him just before the curse left his tongue, sealed my lips over his, swallowed the words down until I could feel them rebounding inside me; and my blood boiled up like mercury, utterly, totally out of control in the face of his revulsion. It boiled up, overflowed, until the only thing I knew was the engulfing heat of his surely poisonous mouth… and I couldn’t have cared less as my hands scrambled at the fastenings of his strict black robes, popping the small silver buttons apart one by one.
Walls, millions of them – all built up around him; and if I could get him out of the robes, then I could break some of them down, find the doors.
Peel away the layers, because there had to be something underneath.
He was unresisting, completely frozen beneath me as I tore his robes apart – too long to get all those buttons undone, far too long and I’d already waited long enough – and kissed him, kissed him hard and hot and furious for him being able to live on without me.
I spared a moment to gather my breath, to wonder if Lily had tasted him even once, if Lucius had ever torn his clothes apart; if anyone, anyone had ever fastened their lips onto that huge scar on his neck, just as I was doing – if perhaps I was the only one to have felt the ridges of it, pressed against my tongue as my thoughts scattered away again and my fingers frantically loosened his trousers.
Desperate, desperate… and I didn’t know why.
A single sound, as I pried the soft fabric open and skittered my fingers down to curl about his exposed flesh, not quite half-hard in my hand – a simple, muted hiss that made me shiver, sliding down his body inch by glorious, devastating inch. The floor was hard on my knees, but I barely noticed; there was only Severus…
At long last.
‘Severus’ I hissed, and looked up through heavy eyelashes to see the sudden flush of colour through his sallow cheeks; the one tiny little hitch in his breathing, as I grinned toothily and said it again. ‘Severus…’
I could feel the muscles in his thighs tense around me, held apart by my torso as he hardened between my fingers – and I stroked my thumb up his cock (long but not that thick… menacing, but in the way that made my body ache), reveling in the way he dropped his head back onto the chair; the way he twitched, a statue bought ever so slowly to life by the sheer force of my self-proclaimed stubbornness and sensation.
My tongue darted to wet my lower lip, and I bent my head down until I could press my lips to the tip – he shivered, and I smiled softly to myself.
‘I know you want it,’ I whispered, watching in fascination the way his pupils dilated under the combined effect of my breath and the Parseltongue (I always knew Slytherins liked the snakes, those kinky bastards) – the way he swallowed, and growled under his breath as I withdrew ever so slightly. ‘You want it, you want it… I know you do.’
His hands found my shoulders, gripped me tightly enough to bruise – I laughed, just a little, and angled my head to take him between my lips at the same moment that he twitched beneath me, hips arching upwards ever so slightly.
I’d done it before… down on my knees in the changing rooms, feeling the heavy, suffocating slide of a fully engorged cock in my mouth; did it until I could take it all the way down into my throat, and swallow around it, never mind the taste.
I knew how to do it – I knew I was good.
He knew it too… he must have, for all that the only things I got out of him were heavy breaths and the gradual numbing pain of his fingers stabbing into my shoulders, the subtle thrust of his hips up into my mouth as I worked my throat around him, swallowing, licking – sucking until, for a moment, I thought he was going to say something; he only groaned under his breath, tipping his head to one side and exposing the dark bites I had left on his scarred neck, but that was enough for me.
I was hard – painfully, achingly hard; but as I went to reach for the zip on my trousers, he shoved my head up and away from his cock, dragging me up by the shoulders as he went to his feet. He tugged me in, till our faces were inches apart and I could see the almost mad gleam in his eyes, hazed over with desire.
“You shouldn’t have pushed me,” he growled, and slid one hand down my torso to press against my cock through the fabric of my jeans. I cursed and squirmed under the merciless pressure of his fingers digging in around me, until he smirked and said “Language, Potter,” as if I was still a child in need of reprimanding.
It was cruel, so very, very cruel – I was far too close to the edge to be played with like that.
His grip tightened, and I could barely comprehend the fact that he was pushing me backwards – that tight, wonderful friction was all I could think about; it was everything.
Absolutely fucking everything.
Ecstasy had a face; perfect completion had eyes that bored into me – had fingers that bought me, choking, to orgasm even without a single touch on my bare skin. My eyes snapped shut, and I shuddered as warm stickiness gathered in my trousers.
It wasn’t like he was beautiful – he wasn’t, and he isn’t. Severus is too thin, too dark to be considered in words like that.
He just was; and I didn’t care that he was stick thin, and that his ribs were razor-sharp under my fingers as I stroked them up under his shirt. None of that mattered – not when the back of my knees hit the bed, and I collapsed down onto it, tugging frantically at his remaining clothes even as he whispered the spell that laid me bare and had my rapidly-recovering cock pressed against clean, crisp fabric.
I ripped his shirt apart, threw the shreds of it away; he was dramatically skinny, my own personal Devil’s Snare as I tangled my fingers in his hair (soft, slightly greasy, and black, so black) and tugged him down into a fierce, open-mouthed kiss imbued with all the passion I could conjure – and he snarled against me, and dug his teeth into my lower lip until it bled, throbbing and hot and aching; just like every other part of me, every single inch of me.
“I wouldn’t have, you know,” he said to the hollow of my throat, running his fingers across my nipples – I grunted noncommittally, arching against him in an attempt to bring our erections into contact, though he eluded me easily.
“Mmmph?”
“The Thestral,” he clarified, loosing the last few centimeters of his trousers as he settled his knees on either side of my hips, staying just up high enough to avoid my attempts at gaining some sort of contact. “I wouldn’t have cut you into pieces.”
He pinched my left nipple, twisting it harshly and making my voice rise in a snarl even as I spat my reply through clenched teeth. “Oh no?”
It sounded more aggressive than I wanted it too… I couldn’t help it.
“No,” he echoed, nipping the curve of my neck; his hot breath fluttered against my ear. “I would have fed you to it whole…”
I cursed again, colorfully, as his fingers brushed past my aching cock to trail along my thighs – I squirmed and cursed and wanted him as he drew strange little designs on my flushed skin.
“And alive,” he added after a moment, throwing one leg over my body so that he crouched by my side, hands settling on my hips. “Bleeding…” as he flipped me onto my stomach in one quick moment, cutting off my voice mid-snarl as I gave a startled ‘umpf’ into the black fabric of his bed sheets. His lips were hot on my back, his voice a low, throaty growl.
“Screaming, of course.”
What else? I am nothing more than an impudent brat, after all…
‘Of course,’ I hissed, and twisted my head to one side, intent on pressing back into the near-intangible ghosting of his fingers over my arse and rubbing into the sheets bunched up around my thighs, providing a delicious, irresistible friction against my weeping cock.
Those thin jolts of pleasure made the sweat pool on my back, and I could feel his body fitting into the curve of it; the sharp press of his ribcage against my spine and the thick, heavy heat of his erection as he pried me open with two slick fingers (a spell, no doubt…).
‘Want it, do it, damn you, fuck me!’
The grey vision, the spike of pain that flashed up through my muscles in a chain-reaction, the snarl and mangled slide of the Parseltongue over my bruised lips; all of it was just so good. I felt so very dangerously alive.
So forbidden, so wanton, so real for the first time in years.
He played with me – he teased me, with the unforgiving rhythm of his fingers; in-out-push-pull-twist-slide-repeat-repeat-repeat…
Repeated until I bit my lip right through (same place he had done it - just harder, deeper, fiercer) and bled upon the black fabric beneath me, down my chin, in my mouth – my sweat made his body slip over me is if we were underwater, as I snarled and cursed and almost, almost screamed; and always his breath fluttered against my neck as he pried me open like a book, read me cover to cover in a few fluttering, pounding heartbeats.
Bastard.
Desire… desire and hunger that drew us together like two moths to the flame, as I arched my back and drew deep, gasping breaths past my torn and bloodied lip – and he was like a strangling vine, until all I could feel was the constriction of his body pressing into me and the brutal, brilliant lack of air that made me dizzy (or was that the pleasure, the dieing-star blast of violet and crimson just behind my eyes whenever he crooked his fingers?) and confused and, overall, lost just when I wanted to be so perfectly misplaced.
‘Do it, you bastard – fuck me, fuck me!’
I wanted him, hard and fast and violent and demanding – and he was saying something to me, whispering it to my hair as he pulled his fingers out; harsh, razorblade words that I couldn’t quite catch but that I understood none the less.
Burn me alive, peel my skin away… kill me, kill us both and let us lie together in the damp earth (although perhaps that was only me – perhaps he said something else, but I didn’t want to hear it?). Down in the dark, the rot, and the worms, where nearly everyone thinks he is.
Maybe he just wanted to feel alive too…
A pause, and I heard the soft, slick sounds of lubricant being applied before he leant forwards again, arching over me and pressing forwards with the thick, blunt head of his cock – pressed forwards as I twitched and moaned, rubbing myself against the sheets in an attempt to hasten the casual cruelty of the tortoise-slow speed in which he buried himself to the balls.
Too slow…
Too slow by far.
‘Faster, damn you!’ and the syllables fell off my tongue in a single slurred breath as colour slid across my vision in an intricate spiders-web of sensation, making me twist and shove myself back up into him as he rocked forwards lightly, growling against my spine.
My fingers curled in the bedclothes, bunched them together to give me some form of stability as he withdrew all the way and then slammed back in, so that there was barely any difference between the pain of his intrusion and the pleasure that turned my muscles ridged for that single moment, half-howling into the fabric so soft against my face as I shoved my hips up harder – and it didn’t matter that it I couldn’t pick the ecstasy out from the agony…
Or that, to me, they had become one and the same for the length of that single throbbing heartbeat.
He knew – of course he knew, because he licked the shell of my ear and said something else in that dark, lecturing voice of his… perhaps it wouldn’t have been a Thestral after all. (maybe, maybe? I didn’t know then, and I don’t know now.)
So I hissed again ‘Hard, you bastard! Fast, fast!’ until all I could taste was blood and words, blood and the last traces of the flavor of his cock sliding between my lips…
Hard, so that the bed shuddered underneath me and the friction made my skin burn – the ruthless, violent smash of his hips and the clawed curl of his fingers into my sides, the rough slide of his ribs against the nubs of my spine.
Fast, so that I nearly screamed every time he pulled out and came back in again… fast, so that the hot, agonizing rush of orgasm spread up as from my toes in a tidal wave, until it all just coalesced into a heady flash of something so much like vertigo and a swirl of colours as I writhed against the sheets; the wet, clinging sheets.
I closed my eyes when it hit – I screamed, perhaps, into the fabric beneath my face (screamed, or growled like a feral dog… who knows?) as he bit savagely on the back of my neck, shuddering against me as he came; that wet heat that seemed to fill me top to toe.
Panting and inertia… instability.
“You shouldn’t have pushed me,” he said again, and kissed me between the shoulders blades – such a warm, welcome heat.
“A dog on the table yelping with terror, delight to be loved Please master call me a dog…”