
Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/333222.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      No_Archive_Warnings_Apply, Underage
  Category:
      M/M
  Fandom:
      Harry_Potter_-_J._K._Rowling
  Relationship:
      Remus_Lupin/Severus_Snape
  Character:
      Remus_Lupin, Severus_Snape
  Additional Tags:
      Masturbation, Angry_Sex, lupin-snape:Fantasy_Fest_06
  Stats:
      Published: 2006-04-28 Words: 1956
****** Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking ******
by busaikko
Summary
     Fantasy: odogoddess wanted "Snape comes in his tights/hose/boxers.
     Remus makes him. Tell us/show us why & how. Teen or adult. Shame,
     guilt, dub-con, non-con elements okay. Bonus for: tattoo/s (dark mark
     counts), near-public, against the wall, &/or Hogwarts Express."
Notes
     Betas: I made schemingreader tense and broke liseuse's heart.
See the end of the work for more notes
Riding the train, the rhythm is memory, the sway of the carriage an embrace.
Feet clamour up and down the corridor, walking, running, dragging trunks and
cages. Students shout greetings to friends after the holidays. Remus remembers
that fierce joy well. Going back to school was the resumption of the great
adventures. Boyfriends, girlfriends, new clothes, new brooms, new breasts,
awkward new height and even more awkward erections and clumsiness.
The door slams open then shut, and Remus tightens his hands under the
travelling cloak that he purchased as his one vanity with Dumbledore's advance
on his salary. He lets the students' words flow over him, glad that one of them
is Harry Potter. Now he won't need to force his aching bones up and find the
boy. He does not doubt that he could find Harry amongst all the students. He
looks just like James. He has Lily's eyes, Dumbledore wrote. James. Lily. Remus
will not open his eyes. Dead Peter and mad murdering Sirius. He will pretend to
be asleep as long as he can, if it allows him to reweave the past in his
dreams. From the past, one more name.
Severus Snape is Potions master here, as perhaps you recall.
===============================================================================
You're not touching me, Severus says, not ever again, not you.
Remus freezes, back to the door of the prefects' compartment, even though he is
not a prefect anymore. He is glad that no one changed the password. He prefers
to be crushed and humiliated in private. Especially by Severus, who has
distilled vengeance to a potent spirit.
You never had any right to touch me, he says again, but Remus puts more trust
in his blurring eyes than in his ears. Comfort, no, he never expects comfort,
but he knows the warmth of being held in those strong, thin arms. He knows how
to win, if not love, admiration and respect from those bottomless black eyes--
or he did, he did.
He can remember begging three times in his life. Begging for his life; begging
for release; begging for someone to tell him that what had happened had not
happened. He is sixteen: he thinks now that no one that age should be so
familiar with debasement.
Severus eats humiliation daily, but will never beg, Remus thinks. Why are you
in Slytherin? he'd asked once in the lazy aftermath of sex, and Severus had
smiled. Because I asked to be, he said, and at least it's a better answer than
Remus could have given. Why Gryffindor? Because he hadn't wanted to be
separated from the shy and clever boy who'd shared his sweets on the train. All
the Pettigrews have been in Gryffindor, Peter'd said, I'm sure I'll be too. So
Remus had taken a leap of faith and fallen hard.
Now an adult, awake and daydreaming on the train, he unravels the past to that
wild evening in the Great Hall. Rain lashed them mercilessly from the moment
they got off the train; every new first year stood shivering in puddles until
the prefects were finally sent to take care of them with careless drying spells
that sometimes scorched. He imagines how it would have been if both of them had
been sorted into Ravenclaw. Imagines that Severus would have harnessed his mind
to something broader than ambition; that Remus would have had the backbone to
not follow just anyone's lead. That Remus could have confessed what he is, and
Severus could have reacted with curiosity instead of fear. That there would
have been something exquisite, hopeful and painful, about watching Severus
strip daily in the dorm, and then one day having their eyes meet....
He knows it is a fantasy found in any number of cheap paperbacks, and he is
grateful for the cloak over his knees because just the steady black gaze of his
fantasy Severus has got him hard, here in the railway carriage, surrounded by
students.
Hopeless, he thinks, and tries to keep happy thoughts at hand (he has a job to
do), but he has too many memories.
The train in his memory sways, as well. He sees himself and sees Severus at
sixteen, as clearly as if they had shed ghosts here long ago.
I want you, he says, one hand going to the luggage rack for balance. He means
to continue: I want you to trust me, I want you to forgive me, I want you to
hold me again.
You want me, Remus hears his younger self say instead, and cringes for him.
It's not that simple. It never has been, and it never will be.
I want to watch you, Severus says, with unreadable blank eyes. Drop your
trousers.
Don't do it, Remus thinks. Glare at him and walk out the door. Make him come to
you. Live with it if he doesn't. People's hearts break all the time: have some
dignity.
He pictures himself walking down the corridor, swaying as though drunk. In the
carriage with James and Peter and Sirius, there would have been the exhausting
effort of false smiles and denial, but over the long break he would have
written bad poetry, got another tattoo, would have shaved the left side of his
head for no reason or locked himself in his room with the Victrola and stayed
there for days. And then it would have been done, the boil lanced, and the next
time he saw Severus his eyes could have slipped past without lingering.
He cannot, on the train, as it rocks in darkness and danger, deny what did
happen. Above the tawdry backdrop of might have, should have, could have, ought
to have he sees the past replay.
He sees himself. His hands are at his waist, gaining resolve as he fumbles with
his belt and flies. He shoves down boxes and trousers together. He is too thin,
he thinks, as the heavy material pools around his ankles. He grew up but not
out. He hates his knees, scabby and scarred. It's nothing that Severus hasn't
seen before, he knows, but this is different.
Bring yourself off, Severus says, and Remus tells his younger self to just do
it then, demean yourself, make Severus happy. He just wants to prove that
you're a beast. Don't make him want you. He'll hate you for it. He'll hate me,
years later. Stupid bastard, he thinks, watching himself unbuttoning his shirt
deliberately, stroking his nipples, watching Severus. It's obvious that he is
fantasizing about Severus: how those long, cool fingers feel on his skin,
Severus' smile like sin at the way their bodies fit together.
Remus tries to remember that he hadn't known that his horrible awkwardness, his
inability to think around Severus, his daydreams and his wet dreams meant that
he was in love. By the time he did realise it he knew Severus despised him, and
that they'd never see each other again.
Years and years under the bridge, and then the letter from Dumbledore came.
One of sixteen-year-old Remus' hands slides down into the thatch of hair that
still surprises him (puberty came late for him: unlike Severus, he still
doesn't need to shave more than every third day). His pubic hair curls around
and over his balls as he cups them, trying to imitate the moving pictures in
James' dirty books but afraid that he just looks foolish.
He chances a look up at Severus through his fringe. Severus stands perfectly
still, watching; it takes a moment to realise how very quickly he is breathing,
and then Remus smiles, faintly, as he touches himself. His cock is hardening;
he leans back against the door, not caring that anyone passing in the corridor
will have a perfect view of his arse through the window. He can't spread his
legs without awkward messing about with shoes and socks, and he wants to be
able to run away quickly if necessary, but he thinks Severus likes it when he
is immobilised, anyway.
Severus shifts, almost imperceptibly, as Remus raises his hand and wets his
palm. His mouth is going dry: he has to lick four or five times before it is as
slick as he likes. As he tightens his fingers around his cock he stares at
Severus. Is he thinking about my mouth on his cock? Remus was terrified the
first time, because he had wanted to do it, and he had never formulated his
thoughts quite so clearly before. I want cock. I want Severus' cock. In my
hands (yes, many times), rubbing up against me (furtive desperation in the
loo), in my mouth. He'd half-expected Severus to hex him the second he sat back
on his heels, mouth tasting of Severus' come. He'd crossed the line into
perversion; he had been so very very grateful when Severus made it clear that
they were crossing together.
Remembering, Remus wonders why it never occurred to him that Severus must have
been just as blind terrified ignorant as he was, expecting rejection for the
way his hands tangled in Remus' hair, the way he thrust into Remus' mouth. A
secret's no good if another person knows it, Remus thinks. He has a history of
betrayed secrets; all the ones that remain with him, he thinks, will die with
him, unspoken. That much he can do.
Remus' awkward young self sometimes dreams about kissing Severus the way his
friends kiss girls. He never expects sweet words or gifts, he can't comprehend
wanting to hold hands, of all things. But after letting Severus finally fuck
him, both of them drunk in the room of the Muggle Studies professor (gone away
for a wedding), he thinks about kissing, with tongue. That would be nice.
His mouth is still dry; he keeps licking his lips, and he is sure that this is
not sexy, but he can't stop. He is caught up with wanking, hard and fast now,
audible above the rhythm of the train wheels; his other hand has gone back to
his nipples. Severus likes to bite them, roll them between his teeth, hold them
captive and tease them with his tongue. Remus twists one nipple between his
fingers, bites back a moan, and stares imploringly at Severus. And licks his
lips again.
Severus shudders, bending over, takes one step forward to keep from falling.
Remus thinks for one glorious second that Severus has forgiven him. Will
embrace him. It sends him over the brink and his come hits the floor hard. But
when he opens his eyes Severus is still standing there, out of reach.
Werewolf, Severus says, and spits. Dirty, dangerous, and depraved. Get out,
Severus says, and that it is his after-sex voice makes Remus want to cry. He
pulls his clothes back on hastily, realising that he has completely lost
control of time. He stumbles back to his friends, empty-hearted, broken-souled,
makes some excuse about feeling ill, and pulls his robes up over his head. He
pretends to sleep all the way to King's Cross Station, and manages not to let
the tears come until he is under the crisp lilac-smelling sheets at his
grandmother's house.
He wonders what Severus would say if he knew. In a few hours, he could tell him
himself. He could stand behind Severus' chair at the head of the Great Hall,
lean down to speak privately, and say the words. I still love you, he could
say, and he allows himself a brief fantasy of that, and it is all hand-holding
and kissing with tongue, because he is older now and knows what he wants.
But he still, he reflects, doesn't know how to get what he wants.
He wonders how he's going to screw things up this time.
End Notes
     Title from the following poem:
          OUT of the cradle endlessly rocking,
          Out of the mocking-bird&#x2019;s throat, the musical
          shuttle,
          Out of the Ninth-month midnight,
          Over the sterile sands, and the fields beyond, where the
          child, leaving his bed, wander&#x2019;d alone, bare-headed,
          barefoot,
          Down from the shower&#x2019;d halo,
          Up from the mystic play of shadows, twining and twisting as
          if they were alive,
          Out from the patches of briers and blackberries,
          From the memories of the bird that chanted to me,
          From your memories, sad brother&#x2014;from the fitful
          risings and fallings I heard,
          From under that yellow half-moon, late-risen, and swollen
          as if with tears,
          From those beginning notes of sickness and love, there in
          the transparent mist,
          From the thousand responses of my heart, never to cease,
          From the myriad thence-arous&#x2019;d words,
          From the word stronger and more delicious than any,
          From such, as now they start, the scene revisiting,
          As a flock, twittering, rising, or overhead passing,
          Borne hither&#x2014;ere all eludes me, hurriedly,
          A man&#x2014;yet by these tears a little boy again,
          Throwing myself on the sand, confronting the waves,
          I, chanter of pains and joys, uniter of here and hereafter,
          Taking all hints to use them&#x2014;but swiftly leaping
          beyond them,
          A reminiscence sing.
          Out_of_the_Cradle,_Endlessly_Rocking, Walt Whitman
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