Twenty-Three
Sirius watches as the creature falls down. A crash loud enough to fracture the ice on the floor, now that neither he nor Snape focuses on keeping it steady.
His posture never changes. He stands still, wand raised, ready for another attack. The adrenaline makes his veins feel as though they're burning, beating all at once, an irregular rhythm that keeps him alive.
"It's dead." Snape says after a while. He takes a step, the soles of his shoes, a steady sound in the silence.
Sirius watches him approach the snake, sees him lean in front of its mouth, his hand searching the inside of his robes. A man in front of a beast.
The beating of his heart changes, a loud noise still, but this time it echoes anger.
"What the fuck was that?" Sirius takes three steps, four, a breath and he's standing beside Snape.
He's holding a knife, observes it in his hand, before he turns his gaze up to look at Sirius.
"A Basilisk." He says, and Sirius isn't sure if he wants to laugh hysterically, or push the man hard enough for him to fall down.
Sirius breathes fast, faster, as Snape frowns.
"What the fuck was that?" He yells, loud enough to make Snape rise.
"What the fuck was what?" He replies. A challenge. A tug at every restraint Sirius has left.
"You almost fucking died." Sirius says. "You stood there ready to be devoured."
"That's what you choose to focus on right now?" Snape almost mocks.
"Someone has to." Sirius yells, and it's mocking in response, it's angry.
Snape stares at him for a beat of his heart.
"Plans made on the spot tend to be messy." He tells him in the end.
Sirius grabs his torn robes, pulling hard, shaking him.
Snape flinches, just barely, making Sirius freeze. The frown on his face is intact, but his lips are a thin line.
"You came through in the end." He says, like a distraction-like it's all a performance.
Sirius stares at his body, searches for a wound he's sure must be there. Maybe more than one.
"Congratulations. You made my spell work." He says, and Sirius glares at him.
"Are you hurt?" Sirius asks, his voice as rough as his grip on Snape's robes. "Where?" He adds, before Snape can speak.
"I will deal with it in a while." He responds.
"I'm going to kill you. I'm serious. I'm going to hurt you." Sirius releases the front of his robes in an attempt to search for the answer.
"In my back. We have more pressing matters at hand." Snape steps back-as if he knows this is his chance to slip away.
"Snape." Sirius breathes in, out, rapidly. His fists are clenched to his side.
Snape ignores him, bends his knees on the floor, a raise of his wand as he aims the snake's mouth.
"As soon as I finish, we will leave." He says.
Sirius stands on his side, helplessly, vibrating with anger, with dread, trapped in a moment where he thought Snape would die.
A man in front of a beast.
Tall, proud, unyielding, even when death approached. Trusting that Sirius would finish the plan. Exchanging his life for a win, easily. As if it would be a win if he died.
"Fuck." Sirius says, his hand runs over his face in an attempt to ground himself. To erase the moment, to forget the dread.
The desperation with which he cast Snape's spell, the relief when it worked.
"Ready." Snape says, and Sirius pulls him up and away from the snake, from the ice, from this damn chamber.
"We have to confirm that the poison does destroy the Horcruxes as soon as we get back." Snape says, but his voice carries the exhaustion of the battle, of the days before. It carries a hint of pain.
"Stop talking." Sirius tells him, and for once Snape complies.
____
The corridor-the pipe-is a quiet ascent, even if Sirius mind is screaming. He can't focus either on the immediate win, nor on the fact that they finally found a way to damage Voldemort.
All he can think of is rage-rage, hot and brutal-anger deep in his bones, boiling in his blood.
All he can think of is Snape pushing him aside, a step, as if his life is a piece on a chessboard that he moves close to doom wherever it fits him.
Sirius spares him a glance. Snape's face is pinched, but he keeps walking, he allows Sirius drag him forward.
"We won't go to the infirmary. We are wanted men." He says. "We must leave immediately."
"Shut your mouth." Sirius tells him.
A breath. A moment of silence.
"I have a salve in my bag." He says with a tone implying that Sirius is the problem here.
If he wasn't already hurt, Sirius would have punched him.
The castle is quiet, sleepy. Sirius suppresses the urge to yell at the top of his lungs, to drag anyone who wakes to the bathroom at the second floor, then down, to make them see what lay waiting there. What they had to defeat. What was here the entire time. A beast ready to kill them.
He's jealous of them, irrational as it is. He's jealous of their ignorance.
He's jealous, because they didn't have to watch Snape standing at the thin line between life and death.
They weren't forced to watch him exhausting himself for days, barely eating, barely sleeping, for the world to keep going. For Lily.
For a moment Sirius thinks that he hates her. Even if it's not her fault. Even if she would agree with him.
From the half-annoying, half-amusing girl that James liked, to the mother of his son, Sirius hates her for the first time.
He knows, Lily is not the problem, she isn't to blame that Snape is willing to die for her. He knows, and yet.
I have plenty of skin to spare.
"Fuck." Sirius says, as he opens the door to the room they're staying in.
He's been on edge for days.
Snape walks past him, perhaps in a way to find his bag, to open it. Perhaps he will try to destroy the Horcruxes first.
"Sit down." Sirius tells him.
But Snape doesn't comply, he can't, he's been defiant all his life, self-sufficient, a man against the world.
He takes his bag at least, not the diary and he sits on the edge of the bed. Perhaps because he knows Sirius can be as stubborn as him.
He moves to raise his wand, to light the fireplace, but Sirius is faster. It earns him a glare and a clenched jaw.
The room is cold, an afterthought Sirius has, because he's boiling still, from the fight, from the anger, for Snape.
He's walking to the bed, standing above him, as the man searches his bag, as the bottles and the tins inside rattle against each other.
"The supplies are shrinking." He says, as he takes a small container out.
"You are the one that keeps getting hurt." Sirius tells him, perhaps in a way to challenge him, to provoke him into stopping.
Snape looks at him once, and Sirius is sure he is going to say something infuriating again-something like, if that's what the plan dictates, so he takes the container out of his hands.
"Go on." He says.
"It's just a cut. Nothing life threatening." Snape responds irritated, as if this whole thing is a waste of his precious time, of grander things he should be doing right now.
"Great." Sirius says. "So let's get this over with."
Snape scoffs, leaving his bag on the floor. He is untying the buttons at the front of his robes, like he's doing Sirius a favour, like Sirius is a difficult child whose demands have finally worn him down.
Sirius rests a knee on the mattress, a quick cleaning spell on himself, because Snape is obsessed with cleanliness, before he helps him take out his robes. Sirius feels the damp fabric under his palm, he doesn't know if it's sweat or blood or both.
He looks at Snape, at the rigid body of his. He seems like he would prefer to be anywhere but here.
Sirius raises his wand, aiming a cleaning spell on him, which causes Snape to close his eyes, a slow gesture with no sound following it.
"Does it hurt?" Sirius asks, leaving the robes on the floor.
Snape nods, so Sirius doesn't try it again.
He takes a quick glance at his back, there and away. Enough for Snape to sit perfectly still, enough for Sirius to see the remnants of blood that his hasty spell didn't clean. Enough to see the wound still bleeding.
"We have to clean it." He says, and his voice is a little less rough, a little less angry.
He knows what makes Snape quiet, what makes his palms grab the end of the bed. It's not the new wound that he's afraid of.
It's the sight Sirius saw months before. But then Snape was out, then Sirius was a panicked mess.
Sirius gets up, bringing a towel from the bathroom, a quickly conjured basin of warm water.
Snape is still sitting on the bed, staring straight ahead at the wall.
Sirius walks, taking his previous position beside him. He wets the towel, just enough and he starts to clean the skin around the wound.
"We have to consider the fact that the Dark Lord might feel the destruction of his Horcruxes." Snape says flatly, as if they were sitting in an Order meeting, planning their next moves.
Sirius doesn't reply. He will get angry again, if he does, and he doesn't want to. He can't afford to. Not when anger stares back at him in a shape of a back, in red angry lines that have nothing to do with fight and survival.
Except maybe he is still, constantly, expect it's an anger that he can't express, he can't direct it to anyone, because the person who deserves it it's dead.
Snape's father died, and Sirius is uncontrollably angry with the fact that he cannot kill him himself.
"Speak." Snape says, commands, because he wants to control the narrative-how Sirius's thoughts might be forming, because he never accepted pity.
Sirius hears the fire burning across the room. He hears the sheets under Snape's fist crumbling.
"The spell." Sirius says. "Did you invent it for him?"
Sirius holds his breath. Snape's back is red, even if there is no more blood on it.
"Yes." Snape replies. A single word. Final and cutting.
Sirius takes the container, opens it, a salve of Snape's own making, almost warm on his hands.
A spell to cut a man in pieces, a salve to heal wounds-both made by the same hands.
Sirius applies the salve above the wound. Snape never flinches. A stroke, two, until Snape speaks again.
"I never used it." He says. "At him."
Why, Sirius wants to ask-and then: he deserved it. He deserved it.
He feels his heartbeat rising. He retreats the hand that touches Snape's skin. He stares at it.
"Ask." Snape says, with the same tone he says focus, enough. Proud, self-contained, dismissive of concern. Demanding.
"Why?" Sirius asks.
"My mother prevented me from doing so." He states. Then he leans down, opens his bag, takes a linen, a gauze from it and he gives it to Sirius. "Wrap it tight. The salve will do the rest."
Sirius follows the instructions, of course he does, Snape's wound has barely stopped bleeding.
But the silence gets to him, Snape's statements, the way his voice is so tight it might snap.
"Why?" Sirius asks again, because the words fail him. They always do.
Snape could cut a man open with just a sentence. He could -he did- save Lily, and James and Harry, with another.
Sirius lacks this ability.
He thinks Snape won't reply. That whatever has been said, whatever truth he let slip, ends as soon as Sirius finishes wrapping his wound.
"Because she loved him." Snape replies with the same cold detachment he reserves for everything else. The same restraint.
More than me, he doesn't say.
"Doomed as it was." He adds. A glance at Sirius. "A plain pure-blood girl married to a low-class worker. A Muggle one. One of them would snap. Both of them did."
He closes his bag with the broken handle. He looks at the floor. Sirius wants to fix it. The handle.
"It's tight enough." He says, and Sirius realises that he has wrapped him up. The wound is closed. Snape's self-made salve will do the rest.
He handled it. He probably would have, even if Sirius wasn't here. He probably has done it many times before.
Sirius wants to stop him from doing it again. From being in the position that he has to do so. But they are in the middle of the war, and Sirius knows it will happen again.
He thinks of saying that this is the last time he closes his wounds, but this is wrong too, Sirius helping him isn't the problem, he will do it again, again, as many times as he needs to.
Sirius lacks the words. He always did.
So he leans into Snape's back and he kisses it. There on one of the many lines, the many faded scars. On the next one. Onto the next.
Sirius doesn't know how to kiss for comfort, purely. He never learnt. He knows how to hug, because James taught him, how to touch a head, how to caress hair-because Remus did.
But a kiss was always something sexual, something erotic.
This is not it.
It's Sirius trying to show the words that he doesn't have.
He realises, perhaps too late, that Snape is frozen in place. He feels the tension of his body, in the muscles of his neck and hands.
A stretched wire, ready to snap, ready to cut.
Sirius closes his eyes, resting his forehead at the end of Snape's neck, at the start of his back.
"I'm sorry." Sirius speaks on Snape's skin, against the loose strands of his hair. For his scars, for making him freeze with his touch.
"I don't need pity." Snape replies. An accusation.
"I'm not offering it." Sirius says, and it's harsher than he intended. But his voice is still quiet, lips still linger on Snape's skin.
He doesn't move. Snape doesn't move either.
"How?" Sirius asks.
"Belt." Snape replies and the word almost echoes the sound of leather hitting on skin.
Sirius feels his body trembling, a vibration that shakes his being. A contrast to Snape's stillness.
"It was the alcohol, my mother used to say. Perhaps so she can believe it herself." Snape says, voice flat, a slight disgust, an evident disappointment. "I disagree. It was the decision to consume it."
Snape stays there, under Sirius's touch, under his mouth, and Sirius wants to say many things, but the words are still foreign.
"Look at it." Snape commands. "Remember that, the next time you think a superficial wound matters." Snape takes a breath. "I know my limits."
Sirius puts his hands on his back, tracing each line, a kiss on his neck, a rewrite.
"Black." Snape says. His breath hitches briefly, a small flutter, there and gone.
"I can't." Sirius tells him. Because Snape is alive-Sirius can feel it in the pulse beating beneath his fingertips, as he wraps his hands around Snape's wrists, tracing the warmth into the open palms. "Stop me."
He brushes Snape's hair to the side, slowly lifting his face without breaking contact. He doesn't dare; he doesn't want to. He plants a kiss on the mole just beneath Snape's ear.
And he doesn't mean to want for more, he doesn't mean to want at all, but Snape sighs and it sounds like a breath after long days of tiredness, like a relief. It feels like a breath held too long.
It sounds like a match that set Sirius ablaze.
Sirius licks the mole beneath his ear. Traces the shell of it with his tongue, and Snape leans into the touch-leans into him.
He didn't mean to want anything, not here, not now, but he does. He wants this. Wants him.
"This..." Snape starts, but Sirius puts his hand on his jaw, turning his face just enough to kiss him.
Sirius doesn't want to hear about the nothing this means. He doesn't care. Not now.
Maybe Snape is right, maybe after all this is over, the war, the madness, the close proximity, this would mean nothing. It doesn't now. Now it feels like everything.
"Stop me." Sirius says against his lips, at the breath that leaves his mouth. "Stop me." He says and he kisses him again.
Snape tries to bite into the kiss, and Sirius lets him-once-before he pulls back, before he looks at him.
He doesn't want hard. Fast. Punishing.
He wants... something else. Something he isn't sure he's capable of.
He wants to lay him on the bed, to trace every scar. He wants to look at him.
If this is it-if it's a fleeting moment that'll pass, a dot in both their futures-Sirius wants to remember.
He smooths Snape's permanent frown with his thumb, caresses the curve of his cheek.
Because even if this is it, they've been together for months. They've held each other's lives in their hands.
An earned trust. A partnership hard-won.
Snape is staring at him. Sirius wants to ask what he's thinking. A difficult equation behind his eyes, a flicker left, then right. A glance that catches on Sirius's own.
Then a downward look-as Sirius moves his hands to Snape's trousers, as he undoes the button.
A shallow breath, visible in the shift of his stomach. That's what he's offering. That's all-a quickened pulse. Alive.
And that's more than Sirius could ever ask for.
Sirius undresses him slowly, removing what's left of his clothes.
Snape moves to rush it-fingers quick, a hasty tug at his trousers, his pants. As if, since he can't stop it, he can at least control it.
As if setting the pace is still a way to hold the rules.
There are no rules. This is a dot in their lives.
"Do you want me to stop?" Sirius asks, his hands resting at Snape's bare knees.
He asks because he can't say what he truly means-that he needs the moment to last, that he needs to remember this.
He and Snape might be nothing more than a passing nod in James's hall one day.
But right now, they are more than that.
Right now, they are partners.
Sirius trusts him with his life. With himself.
And he needs Snape close enough-so Sirius can protect his.
The hold on his knees tightens.
Snape stares down at him. Black eyes like the darkest of magic, like his spell, like a sky in the middle of the night that holds a star with Sirius's name on it. A spot in the endless.
He is sure Snape won't answer him.
He is afraid he will.
Snape does neither. He lets go-his hands retreat from the waistband, settle flat on the bed.
An answer without words. A permission.
Sirius kisses his knees, the skin on his thighs. He lingers. An extension of borrowed time. A worship of a body that deserves as much.
Sirius wants to speak. So he does-with his mouth. A kiss to Snape's stomach, then his ribs-visible now, more than before.
A mirror of Sirius's own.
Skin thinned by exhaustion, by running, by fighting. By brutality.
He knows Snape is watching him-he can feel it.
Forced comrades in a war too big, bound by a mission to protect something precious.
Forced, then chosen.
But this isn't a battle. It's a mapping. A careful catalog of everything visible, of anything hidden.
The first strike of ink on a map long forgotten.
That same acceleration-of discovery, of knowing some places will never be fully unraveled.
Sirius traces his teeth over Snape's nipple-because he can. Because he's allowed to.
And isn't that valuable? Isn't that enough to ignite him, to burn him whole?
Snape's hand is in his hair now, fingers tangled tight.
Quick breaths. A heartbeat beneath Sirius's lips.
Sirius raises his gaze, looks at him. The frown is still there, and Sirius wants to ask-wants to know what Snape is thinking, when all he can think of is him.
A bite-quick, deliberate, there and gone.
Enough to demand attention.
Enough for Snape to pull him closer, to keep him there.
Sirius almost puts his hands on his chest, to lay him down, to be closer.
He almost forgets about the wound on his back-and he thinks that Snape would let him.
A choice. A sacrifice. A trade.
Sirius doesn't want any of it.
He slides one hand under Snape's arm, careful to avoid the wound, the other to the small of his back, to the softer skin there.
And he lifts him-just enough-to guide him from the edge of the bed, just enough to hold him, to move between his legs.
That's when Sirius realizes he's still fully clothed.
An afterthought-because Snape isn't. Snape has only a fold of fabric left around him.
He thinks it's fine—as long as he holds Snape close.
As long as he can press open-mouthed kisses to his neck, to the curve of his shoulder.
As long as Snape’s hands stay gripping his arms—tight, tighter with every inhale.
But then—Snape’s skin. His thighs.
They’re rubbing against the rough fabric of Sirius’s jeans, and Sirius thinks it might leave a mark. Might turn the skin red. Might hurt him.
He puts him down—just a friction, just enough.
Snape’s face does something—barely a movement, indecipherable and quick—and his frown disappears.
Sirius doesn’t feel it like a win. Not a victory.
It feels like… loss.
Maybe that’s why he’s fast—hasty hands fumbling with the button of his jeans, a push that feels almost comical.
He doesn’t care. Even if it looks ridiculous.
He yanks his blouse over his head—it catches at his neck, snags a strand of his hair.
Sirius groans—frustration, need, all of it tangled together.
"I didn't know you were that desperate." Snape speaks for the first time, as he moves Sirius hair out of the way, precisely, carefully. As he helps him take his shirt off.
"I am." Sirius tells him. And the frown reappears.
Sirius doesn’t give him the chance to react—to retreat into some smart-ass comment or spiral into the million thoughts that come with every breath.
He puts his hands on the last piece of cloth either of them has left. A pull. A tear. A gift offered.
He draws Snape close—or lets himself be drawn in—and they’re skin to skin again. Thighs pressed to thighs. There. Urgent. Like time is suddenly slipping away.
Their bodies are flush now, no space left between them.
Snape shifts, and Sirius feels the weight of him settle—across his thighs, against his chest, like gravity is finally choosing sides.
It's grounding. It's unbearable.
Sirius reaches for him—touches his cock, the last thing left to hold, to handle with care. A slow stroke. Two.
But it’s too much now—Snape’s hand moves to cover his. Touches Sirius too. Holds them both.
"Fuck," Sirius breathes against his mouth. "Fuck."
Snape’s forehead presses to his. A touch of their noses.
A nod—like Snape agrees. Like this is burning. Insane.
His right hand, still cradling Snape’s back, begins to slide lower—downward, into soft skin that softens more with every descent.
His fingers drift lower, down the curve of Snape’s spine, between— there, where the skin is warmer, hidden.
A space Sirius has never touched before, and still—Snape doesn’t stop him.
A brush—and Snape falters, his movements fluttering. He leans forward, a weight Sirius catches and holds.
Another, and his eyes close. His hands find Sirius’s arms, fingers pressing tight into skin
Parted lips and ragged breaths—Sirius feels like the first time he touched his wand
"I want..." Sirius tells him. "Can I...Can I?"
Snape opens his eyes. Looks at him.
"Is this… is it something you’ve done?” Sirius asks—like he’s sixteen again, inexperienced, like he would’ve been then if he hadn’t spent so long pretending otherwise.
Sirius has stopped moving his hands. Still. There.
"It is something I do." Snape says. Mocking. But tense. Breathless.
It’s him, Sirius thinks. The tension, the edge of breathlessness—it’s a kind of knowing. A victory that feels personal.
Snape blinks—slowly. A controlled breath, like he’s deciding something. Then he tries to move away. Sirius doesn’t let him. Hands still on him, steady.
"I need my wand," Snape says, glaring.
He kisses him to make Sirius let go.
It’s all very…
Snape sits back, knees on the mattress. Wand in hand.
A flick of his wrist—elegant, efficient. It never stops fascinating Sirius.
Maybe it’s the hands. The fingers. The way they move in such deliberate way.
He mutters a spell—the same as last time, when they...
Sirius wants to ask him to—
But then Snape’s knees are against his again. He moves his arm—slowly—until it disappears behind his back.
He sighs, long and low. Sirius forgets how to form a sentence.
He could stay like this—watching.
The rise and fall of Snape’s chest, the shift of his body, the sighs that leave his lips, growing heavier, deeper.
But Sirius doesn’t just want to watch.
"Show me?" he asks, rough and pleading at once.
_____
This will end, Severus knows—and still, he lets it happen. No—he does more than that.
Lets it happen implies passivity, a lie he can’t hide behind.
Not when he's the one who takes Black’s hand.
Not when he guides him.
Not when he—
He presses his lips together, mouth closed—a resemblance of control.
As if control isn’t something already discarded, already forgotten, like the pile of clothes on the floor.
"Like that?" Black asks. A question. Two words—odd, unfitting in the slow way they’re spoken, when he’s breathing too fast, like his lungs hold too much air. Too little.
Black is watching him. Severus doesn’t answer. Instead, he reaches again—finds Black’s hand, presses down. Not stopping him. Guiding him. A second. And his breath hitches like it costs something.
Because it does. And it’s not the pain—pain is never the issue, nor the stretch.
It’s the intensity of Black’s stare. The way his other hand grips Severus’s thigh.
The way he watches, like this is a lesson he can’t afford to fail.
Because Severus lets it happen. Because it’s laughable in its inevitability—pathetic in the way Severus knows himself too well to be surprised.
Because when Severus chooses, that choice is permanent. And even now—even after everything, after a war that’s pushed him to his limits—that hasn’t changed.
He shifts, a breath leaving his lips, a second, as he closes his eyes. An aversion to something that cannot be hidden.
Because he lets it happen.
Black groans—rough, like the stubble on his chin—as Severus lifts a hand, resting his palm against Black’s cheek.
"Another," Severus says. A command—because he can’t afford it to sound like anything else.
Not when he moves against Black’s chest—there and away, again and again.
Not when he feels Black’s fingers inside him.
"Another," he says again. Black complies.
It feels desperate. It feels like exposure.
It's enough. It's a line.
Severus takes Black’s hand—draws it out, away.
"Now." He says, and he opens his eyes.
He isn't a coward. He never was.
Black stares at him—helpless, eager.
And it’s an expression Severus cannot afford to look at.
He doesn’t stare. He shifts instead—forward, one hand on Black’s shoulder.
Balance. Leverage. A decision made.
He sinks down slowly, and it’s unbearable—not the stretch, not the intrusion, but the silence.
The way Black holds his breath.
The way Severus feels watched.
His breath stutters. His fingers press harder to Black’s shoulder.
Severus shifts again, deliberately this time. His hips press forward—not much, just enough for friction, enough to say more without words.
Black's breath stutters too. He starts moving—his hands on Severus's skin, at the end of his thighs.
A rhythm matched. A meeting in the middle. A collide.
Severus tries to breathe evenly. But his fingers curl against Black’s shoulder. His head tips back.
The quiet stretches—as Severus wraps his legs around Black’s waist. A hold. A pull.
It’s not silence, not really.
It’s a breath, too loud. But breath only—not words.
As if the room exists in its own gravity.
As if Black’s open mouth leaves no words, so he won’t disturb the imbalance.
As if Severus’s kiss—there, where he lingers—is a nothing.
Nothing at all.
"Fuck, I'm..." A pull, a pull. "I will...Can I?"
Severus feels the urgency of Black's words—an urgency that moves through his body, through the way Severus’s hands grab onto him.
"Tell me," Black says. "Can I... Severus, can I?"
And his name sounds like a demand. An ultimatum of presence. A testament.
"Yes." A single word, sharp. Outwards and within.
"Say my name,” Black says. “Tell me. Tell me.”
A move of his hips—an answer to Severus’s own.
Severus has both hands on him, one on each side of his face.
Black will reach his high either way.
“Fuck—tell me."
Severus stares at him.
Silver-blue eyes. Ice that burns. Defiant, even in this.
"Clear your head," Severus says. "Focus."
"Fuck. Fuck," Black moans. "Yes." Even if Severus isn't sure Black is realising what he agreed to.
"Legilimens." Severus tries. Succeeds.
It’s devastating.
Sirius.
He feels Black’s palm on him—the wrap of fingers.
Sirius. Sirius.
A thought that comes as a word, as a name—
as if it takes effort. An echo of it to the mind across.
Sirius.
Final—Severus closes his eyes, severs the connection.
A cracked shield. A loss he masks as victory.
The evidence of it: the unravel in Black’s palm, at the end of his stomach.
Black shouts his name—once, twice.
The release of it. The branding.
A sound that echoes through the walls of this room—there, then gone.
Fleeting, as it should be. As it is.
Kept in the body.
Black breathes against his shoulder. Still for a moment, energy released—for now.
Severus mirrors him. Allows himself a breath, too.
Until it's too much. Too reckless.
He unwraps his legs, shifts back, untangles himself.
Black helps, without words.
A foot touches the floor. Then another. Three steps to the couch, where Black’s pack of cigarettes rests.
He takes two. Lights them. Returns to the bed and sits at its edge. Offers one over.
They don’t speak. There’s nothing left to say.
The rules—the script of this—were written long before. The way that it ends.
They smoke into the silence, like old comrades of a war no one remembers.
Like old friends.
Even if they had never been that.
A stolen moment in time.