Work Text:
the disappointing sons who transformed
their surnames, hunted over acres
of hinges, cogs, calluses, hidden whiskey,
mustaches a breath from feral,
poured an ocean of fortune
into fabrications of brass and iron,
spent entire seasons strumming
massive harps of wire into perfect
calibrations of invisibility,
prayed to the gods of adjustable mirrors[]
—Nicky Beer, “The Magicians at Work”
Severus sighed as he sat down at the edge of the bed, burying his head in his hands, clutching his hair like if he tugged hard enough, the answers to his problems would seep out of his head strand by strand.
The problem was that he had too many thoughts, spiraling out in every direction. There was the thought that said he had no right to want the things he wanted, and the thought that said he was being absurd for doubting himself, and the thought that it was about time, and the thought that said it was far too soon, and the thought that said he was mistaking Sirius’s intent; and there was the memory, vivid and irrepressible, of the look in his husband’s eyes: smoldering and smug, fiery and voracious, aimed directly at Severus, unable to imagine a “no” in return.
But the thought of actually being with Sirius physically, of lying down with a husband who knew nothing of the contours and responses of his body, was so alienating that he recoiled from imagining anything but that initial touch. How was he supposed to make love with a husband who didn’t even recognize him? How was he supposed to be able to live through that?
“Hey,” came a voice, and Severus looked up and directly into perky pink nipples, taunting him from his husband’s chest. “Alright?”
“Hi,” Severus said, and dragged his gaze back up to meet punishingly mischievous eyes. “Er—shirt.”
“I’m good, thanks.” Sirius yawned an affected yawn and stretched, his bare neck on tantalizing display. “Mm… it’s so… so hot in here…”
“Quite,” Severus blustered. “I’ll, er—er, let you—excuse me.”
And he fled.
He retreated to his lab, flipping his sign to “busy,” burying his head in his hands again as he sat. He wasn’t stupid; he knew what Sirius wanted. He’d grown increasingly pointed and blatant over the past week and a half. It had started with an innocuous comment, a compliment to Severus’s appearance that hadn’t even really registered until Sirius had stepped in close and said, low and intent, “You always look good. Dignified. Like you know something everyone else doesn’t. It makes me want to eat your heart.”
“Oh,” Severus squeaked. “Er.”
“But then,” Sirius murmured. “I already hold it in my hands, don’t I?”
Severus swayed closer. “Unequivocally.”
“Yeah.” And Sirius had seized him and kissed him.
But he’d let Severus make his excuses after a certain point, waving him away with a sigh.
And then he’d ramped up the touching. He’d always done it, ever since the first day he’d moved in, but it had been absent, unconscious, the manifestation of some bone-deep proprietary instinct that Severus hadn’t been stupid enough to call attention to or question. But after that kiss, he’d found every possible excuse to touch Severus, and the touches had lingered, becoming tender, exploratory caresses, burning against Severus’s skin.
How was he supposed to live with Sirius? How was he supposed to bear him? He was still Sirius Black, and Severus still loved him, but he’d been robbed of their shared history. All he remembered was the hate; and then he’d woken up twenty years later to find Severus devoted to him. What if there was someone out there who was better for him than Severus, someone with whom he could actually feel safe? Severus knew Sirius didn’t trust him anymore. He’d destroyed that trust, or at least Sirius had lost the memory of building it. For him, it had never even existed.
He tried to wrench his thoughts away, and failed, and was haunted by memories of touching his husband all the way up through that night, when, as they were turning down for bed, Sirius gave him a look that was both gentle and acerbic, something alien in his gaze that stole Severus’s breath clean out of his lungs. He strode over to Severus, took his face firmly in his hands, and kissed him, long and slow, and then more intensely, the familiarity borne not of decades together but of a few scant weeks.
Severus pulled back, grateful he was already sitting down, the edge of the bed an anchor beneath him. “Sirius—”
Sirius leaned forward and nipped his lip, and Severus sighed as he pulled away. “Sirius, listen—”
His husband took a long, deep breath, then let out a shuddering exhale. “I want you,” Sirius said, something painfully earnest in the words. “I want you so bloody bad, Snape.”
Severus looked away. “I know.”
“You do?”
“You’re not subtle.”
Sirius pulled away, his face almost stricken. “So why haven’t you ravished me already?”
“I just…”
Severus looked away. “I don’t know that I could bear doing anything other than making love with you. And for that to happen, it has to be mutual. I’m sorry. I can sleep in the same bed with you. But I think… I think to sleep with you and not… I’m afraid, even more than of you not remembering, of feeling the absence of that love. I’m sorry. But I—”
“Severus,” Sirius said. Severus cut off. “I understand. But there’s no universe in which I could do anything other than make love to you.”
Severus felt himself go still. “What?”
“Of course I love you,” Sirius said. Severus blinked, then blinked again, then felt his throat dry out and his eyes well up. “I’m sorry I haven’t—I couldn’t figure out how to tell you. I’ve never said it before. I was thinking—I guess I’ve been so relentless about this because I was hoping to just show you.”
Severus felt his eyes widen. Sirius let out a rueful chuckle. “I’m sorry. I still don’t—that’s not how you and he operated, is it? You talked to each other. You just… talked. You were open about everything.”
Severus laughed, sure it was choked. “It took us a long time to get there.”
“Yeah.” Sirius gave him a hesitant smile. “Why don’t we just start by… would it be ridiculous to just take off our clothes and just… lay together? Holding each other?”
“No,” Severus said thickly, trying to swallow the lump in his throat. “It’s not ridiculous.”
“Okay.” Sirius abruptly looked very shy. “Erm—may I undress you?”
“Okay,” Severus whispered. Sirius raised a slow hand to his shoulder, and Severus thought: I know what reverence looks like on my own husband, and watched it characterize his body, his movements, felt it press into his own bare flesh. “Sirius?”
“Yeah?”
“I love you, too.”
Sirius’s hand stilled, and then he scrambled back, so suddenly and violently Severus recoiled. “Sirius?”
Sirius grasped the nightstand, panting, sliding down it and to the floor. Severus felt thick nausea rise in his stomach, acidic and irrepressible. “Sirius, I’m sorry, I don’t know what I—”
“It’s him,” Sirius said, and laughed a harsh, uncontrolled laugh. “God, it’s him for both of us.”
“Sirius?”
Sirius closed his eyes and let his head hit the nightstand. “I didn’t realize… I didn’t want to talk about it because I—as much as you don’t want—I don’t want to feel you make love to him.”
“Oh.”
They sat in silence for a while, and then Sirius laughed a far calmer, somewhat rueful laugh. “You know me so much better than I know myself. I don’t know how to… I’ll never be able to live up to him. Not if I spend the whole rest of my life trying.”
“You don’t have to.”
“You know how to make him feel good,” Sirius said. “But I don’t know what I like. Nobody’s touched me since 1980.”
Oh, Severus thought, and climbed down and sat down adjacent to Sirius, leaning against the bed, keeping his posture as open as he could. “You’re afraid you’ll be overwhelmed?”
“I’m afraid I’ll feel like a stranger in my own body.” He blew out a harsh breath. “I want to take the nose piercing out.”
“You can do that.”
“I can?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh.” Sirius blinked. “I—I want us both to get new rings, too. I don’t want to use the old ones. You can keep them, but I don’t want us to wear them.”
“Okay.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
Sirius seemed to collapse, all at once. “I want to pick out new clothes, too. And grow out my beard. And dye my hair. And the beard if it grows in gray. And I want to get new bedding and—and new bloody shampoo and—I don’t want to smell like him or look like him when we—” He laughed. This one was weak. “Merlin, I’m not ready either.”
“That’s alright.”
“What did you two… do together?”
“Honestly, we only did it once a week at most,” Severus said, and Sirius blinked, then laughed. “We can figure out how it works for us, together. I think… I think you’re right that some change would help.” He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, then another. Then he reached for his hand and, slowly but deliberately, eased his wedding band off his left ring finger.
Sirius let out a harsh exhalation of breath. Severus felt dizzy. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” Severus pursed his lips, waved his wand, and conjured a silver chain, slipping the ring onto it and fastening it around his neck. Sirius watched it disappear under his robes, sighing a little. “Sorry.”
“No, I… I understand. You can put his on it too. As long as you don’t wear it when we…”
“Yeah.”
“I couldn’t take that.”
“You don’t have to.”
“Okay.”
They sat in silence, digesting, Severus trying not to feel the open air on his open finger as an open wound. His husband was right here, in front of him, needing him. He hadn’t gone anywhere.
He tried not to let the thought come, the one that kept pressing at him over and over, the worst thought, the irrepressible one, the one that kept him awake at night, wracked with guilt, gasping with misplaced grief.
“Severus?”
“Yeah?”
“What are you thinking?”
It’d be easier if you had just died.
“My husband is dead,” Severus said, after a very long pause, and Sirius flinched. “It’s not fair to you to treat you like the same person. I think… I think everything you talked about will help. If I look at you and you look like… do you want to get the deer tracks removed too?”
“No!”
It was so emphatic and violent that Severus flinched. “No,” Sirius said. “No. No, I don’t. That’s different.”
“How?”
Sirius was silent for a long, agonizing moment. “I don’t know. It just is. It’s…” He sighed. “Maybe I should get them removed.”
“You can if you want to.”
“I know.” Sirius laughed. “I know. I just…” He rubbed his forehead. “Merlin, Severus, I thought I was ready.”
“It’s okay. I’m not ready either.”
“I don’t know how to listen for you,” Sirius said. “The way you’re always listening for me. I don’t know how to talk to you without words. I don’t know how to know what you’re thinking just by looking at you.”
“You don’t have to.”
“He could.”
“So what?”
“So what?”
“So what? You don’t have to.” Severus shook his head, looking Sirius dead in the eye. “You don’t have to be him, Sirius. It’s okay.”
“Okay,” Sirius whispered, and crawled to him and buried his head in his lap. Severus stroked his hair, and Sirius sighed and pressed a sexless kiss into his thigh.
“You still want to sleep in our bed? To live here.”
“Yeah.”
“Okay.” Severus sighed, rubbing Sirius’s shoulder. “Can we get up off the floor, then?”
Sirius laughed, shook himself, and accepted Severus’s hand.