Springsmut fic: "Under His Skin" (Bill/Snape, NC17)

[florahart]

Title: Under His Skin
Recipient: chazpure
Pairing: Snape/Bill
Rating: NC17 for sex and general ouchiness
Words: 10,800
Summary: Everyone has known for a long time that Bill Weasley is sexually unusual. Now, he is sexually damaged, too.
Warnings: Anonymous sex, general ouchiness, and a very messed-up Bill. I swear it's not all dark, though.
A/N: Written for hp_springsmut 2006 for chazpure. Request was: hurt/comfort, angst, humor, plot, oral, frottage, foodsmut, sex magic, potions use, happy or hopeful ending preferred I got most of those in there. Thanks to marksykins, cordelia_v and bethbethbeth for beta work.


Under His Skin

Bill feels as though he rarely sees his skin any more; it's hidden and invisible to him most of the time, and when it's not, he can't explain why it's there. It isn't his. It's flesh, foreign flesh, that embraces his body, and if its needs are less foreign than its complexion, still, his mind can't recognize it as his own.

He glances down now, sees the thin lips and nothing more around his cock as he pushes it through the hole in the wall of the Muggle establishment, and wonders whether he'll ever heal. It isn't that the skin he had was exceptional, but he was comfortable in it, and now, comfort is rare, and well-being, fleeting.

~#~

Everyone has known for a long time that Bill Weasley is sexually …unusual. Everyone's known, because to an extent, this is part and parcel with the job he is so good at. Not really; one can be arrow-straight or gaudily bent and still break curses either way, but it's a help to be at least bisexual and not easily put off. It makes sense; so very many of the curses in this world have, at their root, sex (because the curse is performed either over jealousy or over desire, but in any case, it's all about sex), that the use of sex magic--in its many forms--is the biggest tool in a curse breaker's box, and the flexibility to do what needs doing is crucial. Even if it has often meant doing things Bill will never, never ever, be telling his mum about.

Not that she doesn't know; given how much she studied up about Charlie's dragons when he chose that passion to follow, she probably knows in theory everything he'll never tell her. However, having a job involving tombs, sex, and an ancient religion with animal totems all taken together sometimes leads into realms not discussed in polite company.

So. Unusual is the gentle word; many would call his needs and preferences deviant. Not to his face, of course, and not that everyone thinks deviant and wrong are synonymous, but the notion is there.

Fleur didn't know much about all of this, initially, and telling her was awkward, but it had to be done; he couldn't ask her to share his life without telling her that not only would she have to share him--both because his work often required it, and because his own needs dictated that one person, unless that person should be a particularly inhibition-free Metamorphmagus with a bit of a submissive streak and a wide swath of kink, could not possibly be all he would ever need--but she'd have to understand that sometimes whom or what she was sharing him with would be, well, unusual or deviant, depending on whom one asked.

When he explained, she thought about it for several days, taking the question as seriously as he could have hoped, and then told him she could live with that, if he could live with the fact that her own Veela heritage made her a frequent person of interest, and sometimes, if not often, she might choose to return the interest. She was clear that if he'd wanted a more traditional monogamous relationship, she would have agreed; but it felt unnatural to her, to suppress that basic part of herself when he couldn’t do the same.

He only wanted to know whether he might watch, and her instant response to the question served to reinforce his belief what they had could work for the long term.

Her second response, which was more physical in nature, didn't hurt, either, and when she looked him in the eye and didn't flinch when he came in three days later mussed and tired, then let him bring her to loud and convincing orgasm with his hands and lips because he was all shagged out, himself, he was sure.

As long as they loved each other first, they agreed, as long as this didn't damage them and they weren't hurting each other, then it would just be part of their relationship, and no one else's business. They went on planning a wedding, and ignored the way some of his family saw her, because they knew they were solid, knew they worked.

~#~

No one has figured out exactly why Bill's scars are as they are. It isn't as though no one else has ever been bit by a werewolf in human form; it's happened a time or two, but never in the particular circumstances in which Bill's bites occurred. The history and precedents they have doesn't seem to apply. They won't heal, but that part was expected; they are scars born of dark magic, and those don't tend to clean up nicely. But they also hurt, and they tend to drive Bill away from comfort and toward pain, as though they call to like sensation. And while Greyback's intent--to maim or kill--is certainly relevant, it doesn't explain everything. The best informed guess, the one that everyone has eventually concluded has to be right, is that the nature of the charm he was attempting to unravel when he was attacked has somehow mated to the curse of the bites, and that is the difference.

Whatever has caused it, Bill is no longer sure he and Fleur can marry. He isn't sure they will ever work again.

She has stood by him, and honestly, so it's not that. It's that his needs have gone darker and stranger yet, which is saying something, and he doesn't know how to begin to balance things again.

~#~

The lips around his dick are unlike Fleur's: they are harder, chapped, and somehow look as though they've never become familiar with smiling. Bill wonders momentarily whether the person--man, he thinks?--behind this wall would prefer a different kind of sex, whether it would be possible to coax a softened satisfaction from those lips, but then the teeth behind the lips close and scrape, as though the person on the other side knows, can tell he needs that, and as the slick tongue soothes just before the uneven teeth press and pull, Bill hears himself muttering, words in languages he doesn't speak, words that are shreds of old curse-breaking trances. He feels the meanings of them racing through his body like lightning, feels the yes and the hurt and the need as he pushes harder through the teeth that are scraping hard now.

~#~

He hasn't been able to make love with his fiancée since the bite. That's part of the problem.

It isn't exactly that they haven't fucked. That, he hasn't so much had trouble with, as long as it's dirty and nasty and in no way quiet or gentle. As long as she isn't perfect white skin and smooth silken hair because her luminous skin hurts too much, against the skin that isn't his any more.

Over the kitchen table with her belly and chest pressed into the remains of supper, gravy matting her hair, he pounded into her for hours, though he wasn't able to come until she dropped to her knees and sucked her own juices from him, and even then, even though she was willing, he needed to fuck her throat far too hard, choking her until she turned red, until her perfect skin mottled.

When she somewhat desperately brought home one of the interested persons, a pretty boy no more than nineteen who was willing to let Bill have his arse as long as he got to put his own cock inside Fleur, he tore the boy and filled him up easily, then watched Fleur repair the boy (James? Jared? Something with a J.) and ride him while he stroked himself. He watched her come and thought about the feel of the boy's too-tight hole as he spilled over his fingers in spurts, and wondered whether the boy would need a memory charm, whether he should expect a visit from the Aurors for what worked out to be certainly more than James-or-Jared bargained for.

At the Burrow, when he took her on all fours in the bath directly across from Ginny's room, knees bruising on the tile, door open, thinking about his little sister discovering them, he had no trouble coming, but Fleur did, and he could tell it had bothered her, to be …used, he supposed, was what it felt like, and it was getting, if anything, worse.

Something was going to have to change.

And Bill has been beginning to wonder whether that's still possible.

His love life is a splintered wreck, and his work is suffering; he feels out of control and unable to know what would or wouldn't make him moan, and that makes him ineffective in those cases in which he needs to come to take apart a curse.

Although, when he thinks of it like that, when he considers the fluid coming out of him to be destructive, poisonous to the spell, that makes it easier.

He concludes, and tries not to think about, that he comes hardest when he thinks of fucking as a means to destroy.

~#~

His cock is suddenly gripped, hard, from the other side of the hole, and he can see part of a sallow long-fingered hand holding him firm around the base and squeezing his balls, pulling him tight against the wall as those teeth scrape back and forth over the head. It hurts and all at once it occurs to him that perhaps they are rending the flesh, making his dick look like the rest of his body, and as he thinks this, as it flashes through his mind that it could be Greyback on the other side of the wall, as he pictures his bleeding cock torn by sharp teeth, he comes. It's hard to come with the constriction around his balls, but he pushes pushes pushes hard, and when he pushes it through and out and into the wet mouth on the other side, he sees whitebright dots behind his eyelids and thinks he might faint.

He leans against the wall, cock still hanging through, breathing heavily and feeling his pulse pounding through him, hearing half-words of a whisper and feeling the hand on his cock give three or four more kneading strokes before it stops touching him. By the time it occurs to him to move, his cock is limp and a bit sore, but when he looks, he is entirely undamaged and, in fact, it's coated in something slick and smooth, something that's soothing what, when he looks, are scrapes that should be red and throbbing but aren't.

He glances down at the gap in the wall, half-expecting to find a different waiting hole to press into there, expecting this is for that, but there is no one there, no one when he speaks, no one to answer, and he buttons his jeans and Apparates home and doesn't fuck his girlfriend for a couple of days because really, nothing could compare.

~#~

They've put the wedding off twice--not calling it off, because it's not that. It's just, until Bill feels really well it seems wrong to tie her to him, even though she says it's all right.

She doesn't mean it's all right, he knows, and there's the problem. She won't leave him, and he can't break it off either because, well. She represents normal and family and continuity, and letting go of that will be hard and he's not exactly in the best state right now to be making that kind of call.

Now, the wedding is set for December, tentatively, and Bill is spending his days doing research because this mess hasn't altered his ability to follow a line of reasoning and at least that, he can still do. His nights, more often than not, are spent trying to find, once more, the teeth that made him come so hard.

He isn't even trying to fuck Fleur unless there's someone else there, someone for him to hurt, someone to be gentle with her, and he knows this probably means their relationship really is dead and it's just that neither of them can say it yet.

~#~

It's another wall and another hole, and another cock, hard and long, jutting forward from a thick thatch of blond hair. Bill kneels, feeling sure this isn't the man with the teeth, whose hair he imagines must be black and coarse to go with the dark sense of pain and pragmatism he associates with him.

Still, it's a pretty cock, and this is something else he needs, so he opens his lips and opens his flies, and drives his mouth forward over the cock as he takes his dick in his hand.

And then he bites, drags his teeth, draws a moan from behind the wall.

When the door opens, he ignores the person watching and drags his teeth again, then backs off, licking the head of this cock as he pumps his fist hard.

He is surprised when the person watching steps into the room and approaches behind him, but he isn't frightened; it isn't like he's here for any reason other than anonymous fucking, so for someone to come in and fuck him seems fair. He is surprised that the man doesn't go right back out, once he pushes up Bill's shirt and gets an up-close look at what he'll be fucking, what he'll be feeling, under his hands and against the fronts of his thighs, because Bill knows given a choice, no one chooses this. It's why he chooses places like this, where no one has to look at him to suck his cock.

Still, the man doesn't leave, doesn't even suck in a harsh breath that shows he's seen. Perhaps he gets off on scars, Bill thinks.

The anonymity of this would be rather ruined by turning around, so he doesn't, even as he wonders; he merely goes back to sucking, slower now because he wants to taste the come while the newcomer's cock is inside him, and helps get his jeans down to his knees.

He doesn't return his hand to his dick; he lets it rest on his thigh as he positions himself to take another cock. Oddly, he notes his freckles have faded; his skin is pale and uneven, even where there are no scars.

And then, as he is impaled--and honestly, that's not something done to him so much as something he forces done--he feels the blood rushing in his body and imagines his skin is flushing darker, bloodier, meatier, healthier.

He drags his teeth again and smiles as the blond's spunk drips down his chin, and he still doesn't turn around, not until his chin has dried, not until he's come himself and clenched around a spilling cock inside him, not until the man behind him has gone.

His skin tingles every place it has been touched, and his freckles stand out against the pale white beneath them.

He really should get out more, he supposes.

~#~

Finally, they give in and call the whole thing off.

Fleur isn't sleeping, now, either, and while there was a time both being awake in the night would have had advantages and benefits, been a reason to haul out manacles and a cock ring and see who could drive the other crazier, now it merely means they are both miserable, awake, and trying to be quiet so as not to disturb the other.

They've tried fucking to exhaustion, but he can tell--can't help but tell--that it weighs on her that she alone--her! With the Veela blood!--can't make him come, and in turn, it means she doesn't come easily with him either, and they've concluded all they're getting for an hour of hard frantic thrusting is chafing and a bruised cunt, and half the time they can't even manage that because he looks at her, so beautiful, and his erection wilts and then going on is a chore, not a joy. They can't go on bringing someone else in for him every time they want to fuck for the rest of their lives, and despite her earlier agreement, this is no longer what she signed on for.

She goes home to France, tearful and tired, and he hopes she can forget him and build herself a life there, hopes he hasn't damaged her by letting this go on too long.

~#~

He's found a new place; he's not sure where he heard about it, but then, it's the sort of establishment that tends not to advertise in mainstream press.

The wall is green, this time, green and dirty and damp with unchecked mildew spreading on the surface. Bill doesn't hesitate; lips are waiting and his cock is hard. He lets his forehead fall forward against the dank smelly tile and thinks about how despite the warm mouth, what he's snuggled up to is decay.

He fucks the decay and feels his orgasm building, then jolts aware, stepping back, pulling his dick out of the hole. The teeth have bitten down again, the teeth that he needs, the ones that make him come perfectly, and he needs to know. "Who are you?"

There is no answer, and this wall, this hole, the arrangement isn't like that first time; he can't see more of the face, can't see any thing.

He Apparates, cock still poking hard out from his trousers, behind the wall.

There is no one there, and the door is locked.

He blinks.

Either the mouth belongs to a wizard, or he really gets off on fucking a hole in a wall.

Not that he hasn't done anything that strange before, but that was for work. That was because he was allowing flexibility of desire, not because he desperately liked fucking a wall.

He curses and goes home, goes to bed, stares at the crack in the ceiling as he fucks his hand, which is at least slightly less insane than fucking a wall, and thinks about teeth on torn skin as he spatters come on the shirt he can't be bothered to remove.

~#~

Nothing arouses him any more.

Well. Not nothing. He sometimes wakes hard in the mornings, the memory of hot breath against his skin fresh in his mind, the remembered feel of trickling blood from a fresh bite or gouge making him throb against his belly.

Sometimes he stays there, half-asleep, rubbing against the sheets, until his erection goes away. Sometimes he rolls onto his back and jerks off, holding onto those images and considering shattering the mirror he hates looking in anyway, for pieces with which to create actual fresh gouges in this foreign skin, new scars that would be of his own design. Sometimes he gets up and goes looking for a suitable hole in a suitable wall.

Sometimes he does nothing at all, letting his erection wilt to nothing while he thinks about how he used to be. He tries not to indulge this too often; he knows his mother is worried abut him, all alone in this flat he used to share, still working only when it's dangerous and rough or when it's a different kind of curse entirely because his boss has realized he is unreliable with 'ordinary' sexual concerns, still shying away from social interests, still doing nothing productive but occasionally seeking rough blowjobs from anonymous Muggles or the wizard whose name he doesn't know.

Well. She's not worried about that last bit, most likely, but the point is the same.

And nothing especially arouses him while he is awake because he won't seek out the things that would. He has always been unbothered by his sexuality or for that matter, anyone else's, but he doesn't want to be aroused by pain, wants to stop that, wants to be easy-going and solid again.

Which won't be accomplished by bleeding.

He only comes when he chooses to roll out of bed and find a hole, and that is his choice less and less often.

~#~

He should never have taken off his clothes.

He doesn't know why he did it, why he this time wanted his skin bare as he waited for someone to take his cock, but he can't stop staring at the scars he never looks at, not even when he showers, where he uses a soaping charm to lather his body so he won't have to run his fingers over the flaws. They are puckered pink-white, anything but smooth, pits and eroded valleys in flesh that once was tan and freckled and muscular. The muscles have largely wasted away, though he knows if he could just think of a reason, he could build them back. Most of them, anyway; the depth of the damage to his left shoulder probably means that will always be a bit weak.

He traces the scar at his hip, the one on his nose he can't see and avoids in the mirror, the parallel claw-marks across his belly that were probably meant to eviscerate, and today is one of the days he wishes, greatly, that they had, and he sits on the floor of this dingy little room and tries to figure out how to get up and put on his trousers and keep on living.

"Weasley."

He jolts, his whole body jerking, his hands coming unclasped where they are around his drawn-up knees as he lifts his head and looks around. There is no one here.

No, that's not true.

There is someone here. On the other side of the wall, where a familiar mouth opens, not to pull at his flesh but to speak. "Weasley."

The voice is familiar, and Bill wonders if he has forgotten the man speaking during their previous encounters, but that's not it. That's not what's tugging at him.

Either way, the voice saying his name is tugging at his cock, low and quiet and subtly nasty, and he can't stop himself getting up, crossing to the wall half-hard, looking down to watch his body responding. The rush of blood into his cock, the pink flush of it and smooth solidity makes for a jolting contrast to the pallid soft flesh surrounding, to the jagged scars that interrupt his field of vision, but still, he has to watch himself respond to the call of his name.

He moves to wrap his fingers around his shaft, but then stops; the network of lines in the web between his finger and thumb feel good, rough and rubbing, but he doesn't want scars to touch him, not now.

He is so busy looking down that when he gets to the wall he blinks in startled surprise; the wizard apparently wants something different this time. He drops down and opens his mouth, but his name is repeated, and he stops.

"Weasley. Use your hands."

Again, he feels the maddening sense he knows this voice, and this time, he thinks that perhaps it has said those words to him before, but he would remember stroking this cock, and he knows he hasn't--he sucks cocks, he fucks and gets fucked, he lets hands touch him, but he knows he hasn't brought anyone off by hand since his injury.

He hesitates, and the hesitation is answered. "It's not an issue. I want your hands."

It's not an issue? He doesn't know what that means, but the tone of command is clear and he knows if he waits longer, the wizard might leave, might deny him this, might, in fact, give up on him and not return.

He grips the hot flesh and squeezes as he lets the roughened skin slide back and forth and catch and pull.

"That's it. That's good. Good, Weasley. Just like that."

The praise is unexpected. Here, people put their dicks in the hands and bodies of others, and they moan and groan and say oh yes and oh fuck, but they don't give praise, just direction. He finds his left hand on his own cock and he wants… he wants to bring the man through the wall and stand up against him, wrap his one hand around both cocks until he comes on the other one and feels his spurt send the other man over the edge. He wants to stand close, feel their balls brush as they push against each other's bellies and he slides his tongue into the mouth he knows bites. He wants to suck this cock wet and lie back and look up at the man fucking him.

He can't wait. He keeps stroking but licks the tip, tasting the fluid there, smelling the sex, feeling the slick sticky strand stretching from his lip back to the slit until it snaps.

That does get a groan, and a murmur, and he has know.

All at once he realizes he breaks magics for a living, that the wall between them can be dispensed with, and yes this breaks the unspoken rules of the place, but he doesn't care.

"No, Weasley. Don't even think about--" The rebuke is in his ears even as the thought forms in his mind, and at once, it is familiar.

The cock in his hand vanishes even as he raises an arm to Vanish the wall, and the man has Apparated away.

But.

Bill knows who he is now, and hampered as he is in his work right now, he is very very good at his job. He knows the man by sight and sound, by taste and smell and touch, and by name and character, and that's a trail a curse-breaking intern could follow. Well. Not an intern, maybe, but Bill knows he could have done this at twenty. He doesn't spend the time to fix the room, nor to dress; he just grabs his wand and sets off after Severus Snape.

~#~

They pass through half a dozen stops, and Bill is dizzied by the distance and speed at which he jumps from point to point, but he's determined and he's good, and on the seventh Apparation he grabs an arm and hangs on, imposing automatically the refusal to Apparate. "Do it, you'll Splinch us both," he says, and he feels the intent but then there is hesitation, and they stay.

Bill looks around, not letting go, and laughs. "This is appropriate."

They are at the train station at Hogsmeade, just a few feet from the path to where Bill's life went mad.

And Severus's, he supposes; he knows the man is a fugitive, and knows what others think, but he also has more than the average amount of experience with the ambiguity that comes with certain kinds of devotions and callings, and he's willing to make up his own mind. "You can't want to stay here."

"Why ever not? I'm well-known, and how could it possibly create difficulty for me to be seen here with a naked demiwolf on the night of the full moon?"

Bill looks up, startled, and notes the moon is full, which is of course the cause of his paradoxical blurred initial perception and sharp realization regarding Snape's identity. He doesn't change into a wolf, so there's no need for the kind of attention and caution someone like Remus Lupin uses, and someone like Greyback doesn't, but the subtler changes do confuse his senses somewhat.

"Where to, then?"

Snape holds very still for a moment, then relents. Either he knows Bill has him, or he wants Bill to think he does. Not that Bill has any intention of letting any of his attention wander. Finally, he names a location, and Bill lets up the refusal that is acting as anti-Apparation charm.

"Take us," he says, and Snape does.

~#~

This basement is cool but not frigid, with bare stone walls and a pair of plain green chairs before the fire. Bill finds it soothing, but he doesn't release his hold on Snape until he spends several minutes setting up anti-Apparation wards and looking for pre-existing Portkeys.

There are none, which only means he hasn't found it; he has a hard time imagining that Snape wouldn't have one. However, whatever it is, it isn't here in these two chairs, so they both sit down, watching each other.

After a moment, Snape sighs and summons a bathrobe from a hook on the back of the door. "It's clean," he says, but Bill waves him off; he doesn't care about the laundering status of the robe.

A long five minutes elapses, and finally, Bill opens his mouth to speak.

"Why?"

"Why, what?"

"Why do you hang about--"

"I would imagine my reasons are not so very different from yours, though at first, I believe you had a lovely Veela at home."

"Leave Fleur out of it."

"I have no intent to offend."

Bill nods. There is no lie, there, and even if there were, he realizes his need to defend Fleur is a matter of habit rather than actual offense. Finally, he adds, "I did. I don't now. I gather you read that."

Snape nods as well, mirroring Bill's earlier move. "You seem quite calm for a man of your …proclivities who has just commented on my intrusion into his mind."

Bill shrugs, and the robe gaps open off his shoulder. "You've looked and seen, and yet, there you were, today."

"I might have intended to blackmail you."

"Would have done, already. You seem remarkably calm for a wanted man who's been caught by someone who would know."

"You don't believe I am entirely guilty. I am, you know."

Bill shrugs. "Not of the crime most people think, I believe. Snape?"

"Weasley."

"May I finish what I started?" He gestures, crudely, for Snape to know what he has in mind.

Snape stares at him, then shakes his head. "I think not."

He doesn't know why he is being refused, but the refusal isn't like any other, isn't like Fleur's fear or sad effort, isn't like a shudder at the gouges in his skin, isn't like anything, and Bill doesn't know what to do, but all at once, he is angry, and for the first time in a long time, he lets himself feel it, feel the feral wolf in anger.

Somehow, despite everything, he's confined that bit of himself up to now into himself, directing his anger inward and his hurt outward and the rushing feeling of almost-vertigo that ensues when he lets it go is heady and confusing, and altogether unmanageable. He leans forward out of his chair before he considers, pinning Snape in his chair.

He's startled all over again when he winds up sprawled on his arse on the floor, pushed back and away from a man who ought not to have a particularly great deal of physical strength in any case, and certainly not enough to take on the solidity and power imposed upon Bill by the bite. He looks up, feels his eyes widen. "What?"

The word comes out a low growl, chilly and deep, but Snape appears unfazed. "I said, I think not. It isn't time, and you and I are not going to do that. Not now."

"Why not?"

"It isn't the time, and while doing so anonymously would have been one thing, this is not that. No."

He seems quite sure, and Bill knows he is still, at heart, deviant, so it's possible Snape is right. Still, he doesn't think he agrees. "It seems to me the physical release, the activity, would be the same regardless, and I'm reasonably sure I know many who will take their pleasure with a willing friend, so--"

"Also, not the same."

"Why not? I'm willing."

"I am not. That is why."

Bill frowns and tries to follow. "It isn't willing sex you are willing to have, because you aren't willing?"

"Yes."

"…Oh."

Bill pushes up and moves to lean against the table where he sits quiet for a moment, then looks around, at a loss as to where to take this conversation. "I don't suppose you have any tea?" he finally ventures.

"I do." Snape makes no move to fetch it, and Bill rolls his eyes.

"Are you going to invite me to have some? Or tell me where it is?"

"Do have some tea, Weasley. Leaves in the kitchen, kettle too."

"Come on, then. I'll make you some, too."

"I don't want any."

"Right. Well. I do, and as I haven't had time to look for your escape hatch, well."

Snape sighs and stands, offers Bill a hand up.

Tea it is. The touch as he levers himself upright sparks against his skin, makes him want it all the more, and they go into the kitchen as Bill considers, all but muttering under his breath, the bizarre refusal that has finally sunk in; after all, a fuck is a fuck is a fuck, and a mouth is a mouth is a mouth. He knows this. And it would be good, and he knows that, too

Finally, as Snape points at the tea and supplies, he controls the ramble in his mind and asks the question. "What, exactly, is the down side to a good fuck with someone you know? Someone you know isn't going to expect something else, I mean?"

"Nothing, in general; however, just now I wish not to do any such thing with you."

"You did, just a bit--"

"That was different. I did not, at that point, realize today was going to be today."

Bill chews on this as watches the water heat and move in the kettle. The steam unfurls and he shakes his head. "Nothing has changed, and I just want a mouth--or any other hole. I fail to see the difficulty."

"You've been looking for me, ever since--"

"Right, but another mouth would do as well. But as long as I'm here…"

"That's a lie, and you know it. You've been looking for me in particular."

"Because you bite."

"So you want more. You want persistent biting."

"And you don't persistently bite?"

"That, Weasley, is quite beside the point. Watch the boiling over."

"No it's not! If I want to be bit, and you want to bite, how does that translate into me wanting something you're unwilling to give?"

"I repeat, that isn't the point. You've confused what you're doing here now with what we've done before, and they aren't the same."

Bill watches his hand, his unscarred and perfectly ordinary left hand, as he stirs the tea, and hands over the cup Snape had said he didn't want; it was as easy to make two cups as one. "Then what is the point?"

"I shall explain in time," Snape says. "But I don't believe I am ready to have the conversation this evening."

Bill frowns as all at once he realizes there's really only one reason he is here at this time in the first place. He wouldn't have been able to follow without identification, and he wouldn't have been able to identify, at least, not fast enough, had Snape not called him by name.

"You wanted me to know and to follow you. How can you be unready?"

Snape's expression changes, and it's just a fraction of nearly nothing, but Bill is paying attention, and with a puzzle to solve, he has focus. He rephrases the question.

"You wanted me to come here. Why?"

"No. I thought I could get far enough ahead to evade you. But then, I also expected you to be wearing trousers."

Bill snorts and shakes his head. "No. You know what I am, and you know what I need, and I don't believe you thought I'd stop to get dressed. I'm just better than you thought."

There is a long pause. "Perhaps."

It's hard to know what to say to that, so Bill shrugs and leans back in his chair. "It's true. And you failed to anticipate it. Failed to anticipate me." All right, it isn't in fact, hard to know what to say. He feels oddly light inside as he …teases. He can't recall the last time he has teased anyone about anything, really. "You did a crap job of realizing what I'd do."

"I generally refrain from attempting to assess the inner workings of Weasleys."

Bill flushes, hating that this lightness has gone heated again, hating that he is so mercurial. "Fuck you."

"Have."

That earns a pause. "What? When? Oh! That was you, the time--"

Snape lifts the one brow high and Bill feels his flush deepening redder before he speaks. "You're able to distinguish a particular event among your many anonymous encounters?"

"I…" Bill stops and looks down into his cup of tea. "That was different. That was. I haven't usually made anyone look at--"

"Oh, stop it."

Bill's chin jolts up. "What?" There goes his mood again, damn it, from light to angry to startled and uncertain.

"Stop it. You have scars. They aren't all of you, and they aren't abhorrent. And, to be perfectly blunt, you're being an idiot."

"You …like scars?"

"Not especially. However, I have scars. More than a few. They sometimes ache, sometimes get irritated by touch, and generally don't much bother me."

"Mine ache a lot."

"They're new. Relatively. And deep, and cursed, and you've let them take control of you."

His tone is matter-of-fact, and Bill feels his temper rising to match his face. He's telling Snape personal things, and in exchange he's getting advised to stop allowing such things? This is entirely unacceptable, and he surges to his feet. "I didn't ask for any of this!"

Snape is unmoved. Entirely calm, in fact, sitting unflinching in his chair. "Of course you did. As did I. Though I imagine you didn't expect the control problem."

His rage cuts itself short, which both helps and hurts. He is too puzzled to shout, but too angry to think. Finally, he shakes his head. "What the fuck is that supposed to mean?"

"You chose to engage in dangerous behavior. Are none of your scars from prior to last spring?"

"What? Yes. I have a couple that I got breaking curses. But that's not the same thing." Snape isn't commenting on that last bit, but the first is enough to try to parse.

"Because you got those from dark creatures or objects, they are related to a curse--or several--and you got them in the act of trying to help, protect, serve, and cleanse?"

"Uh." Bill knows where this is going, but it's not the same. It's just not.

"Tell me about one." Snape waves one long hand toward the emptied chair, and Bill finds himself falling back, sitting down, slumping over, head in his hands. He thinks a long time, trying to work out how he can explain the difference, but a cleared throat draws his attention: there is a relatively impatient man waiting quietly, and it would probably be counterproductive to hold off until the impatience comes to the fore.

"Well. There's one on my thigh--"

"Left or right?"

"What? Why would you care? Left. Anyway. I got it dissolving an Ondeviato charm. You know what those are?"

"I would care, because it would seem we are going to have this conversation this evening. And yes, I know what one is, but I'm sure I don't know how one is a curse."

"Well. They're intended to force a continuation of an intended path. They can be used to force someone unwilling to finish a task when one doesn't have time or whatever to see to it they do, and of course, the innocuous use is a parent requiring a child to finish cleaning or room or something. However, this one, along with a couple of other fairly nasty blocking and magnifying charms, was tied to what turned out to be a knife--thankfully ancient and relatively dull, but also disguised to appear to be essentially a rock--and it had been got hold of by a toddler bent on throwing it at his brother. You can imagine it got remarkably unfunny remarkably fast when the child couldn't stop flinging the knife at his brother--"

"Sounds reasonable to me," Snape mutters, dark humor causing Bill to smile back.

"Right, well, when I was ten or so I might have agreed pretty profoundly. But the child couldn't let go of the knife, and couldn’t stop flinging it, which meant he was throwing himself onto his brother, or, when the brother ducked, onto the ground, over and over. By the time I got there both boys had broken bones and bleeding gashes, and no one had been able to do anything to improve the situation. " Bill stops, knowing he's got far too absorbed in retelling this tale, and shakes his head. "I don't know why you want to know this."

Snape goes serious all at once. "Show me the scar in question?"

It's a matter of half a second to tug up his borrowed robe and show his thigh, so Bill does.

He doesn't know where this is going; however, when Snape rises, still entirely calm, and steps forward, then bends and crouches between his thighs, he hopes somehow they've come back around to sex and tugs the hem higher. Snape stays his hand. "No, I merely wish to see this scar. This is it?"

The back of his finger is cold going across from inner to outer thigh, but the pad is warm coming back the other way because he has been holding a mug of tea.

Bill doesn't expect him to rub back and forth over the scar twice, three times, but it's strangely hypnotic. Fleur has touched this scar--had touched it, before, has touched it, since--but never with specific and deliberate concentration only on it, only related to the story he's just told, only touching this one thing.

He takes in a long breath and watches Snape's fingers cross and cross again.

"Why didn't you get it healed?"

"What?"

"It scarred. Why--"

"You could have had it healed, though?"

"Well. No, actually. The kind of work I had to do to break the knot--"

"So, this scar is curse-born, permanent, and was acquired in the protection of children."

"Yes, but--"

"And this one?" Snape's hand moves up, suddenly, unerringly, and he grips Bill's hip, his thumb just falling into the rough pebbly dip of the scar there, one of many carved by sharp claws. Bill shudders.

"You know where that one came from."

"And it could be described the same way."

"It isn't--"

"Weasley." Snape waits until Bill looks up. "I have more than a passing familiarity with scars and curses, and how the two work together.

Bill shakes his head, and Snape rolls his eyes and yanks up his sleeve. "There is this one, to begin."

He pauses again, then lets out a sharp puff of air. "Look."

Bill wonders whether, if he refuses to look, Snape will discontinue this futile discussion, but he decides it's more likely he will simply employ some obscene twist of Legilimency to force Bill to see anyway, and it will just take longer.

He looks.

The scar isn't the one he expects.

Well. It is; that one is there, black and awful on his forearm and just as shocking now as its giant twin in the sky when Bill was a boy and again over the campground some three years ago. However, there is a second scar there, one that is a deep gouge, a half-moon with a jagged edge and a texture Bill knows he would feel if he were to touch his own body.

He can't stop the hand that reaches forward to touch this scar; where his own are repellant, this one draws him. "How--"

"Perhaps you are aware I have spent no small amount of time associating with dark creatures."

"Yes, but you--"

"And some of them aren't kind regardless of one's affiliations. Greyback is one such."

"Why would he--"

"He called it an accident. It wasn't, but it's never been a wise maneuver to argue with the …man." He shifts his weight, crouching back on one haunch, and yanks up one trouser leg. "This one, on the other hand, scarred when a dog bit me, and then I had a run-in with Voldemort himself--not that I knew that for certain at the time. It wasn't exactly a curse scar, but proximity was enough. Healing didn't take."

"But none of those--"

"No. None of mine had the advantage of being in the presence of cleansing magic."

"Yes, but the theory is that the reason they've healed so badly, and made me so…"

"Twisted?"

"That would be one word. Is because of what I was doing."

"Could be. Or, it could be that your own mind is troubling you."

"You think I pushed my own fiancée away over… what?"

"Guilt. Trauma. Inability to see yourself the same way as before. Choose as you will."

"But--"

"I have no intention of making a case to absolve Greyback. I am saying your downward trend is probably not irreversible."

Bill groans. "I suppose you have a suggestion?"

"I may."

"Of what nature?" The nearness of Snape is making Bill's belly squirm with both lust and fear: he craves touch, hard, tearing, biting touch; however, he fears nearness of flesh and isn't sure whether he will tolerate it well. He isn't sure which it is that makes him shudder.

"Of a nature to redirect some of that mess you've got tangled in your heart."

That's not an answer at all, but Bill finds himself intrigued, so he shrugs. "As you know, I'm easy. Do what you will." It isn't until he's offered this, freely, that he considers that he both does and does not care about the outcome. He does, because he needs many things: sex, direction, trust, change. But he does not, because he can't, any more. Can't make himself care about what he needs. His needs, like his body, are out of control and not worth dealing with.

Snape lifts a brow and re-shifts his weight, pushing up to his feet and stepping to the far wall. As he nears it, the door cut into it becomes apparent, and Bill curses and vaults to his own feet; Snape is going to get away. But then, he is not. Then the door opens, into a room that is evidently a bedchamber of sorts, though at a glance, it likely isn't the room Snape sleeps in, assuming he sleeps here. He steps through just behind Snape, and gasps.

This room would be a fitting playground for the likes of Argus Filch in many ways, but there is no sense of horror or anger in the walls. He'd feel it if these things had been used against the unwilling, and they have not.

He doesn't know what to say. He blinks and makes a full turn, then comes to rest facing Snape. "This is what you have in mind?"

" Are you prepared to trust me?"

Bill has nothing to lose, and he already knows he wouldn't be here if he weren't prepared to carry this through. Whatever this is. He nods, and in a startling instant he is wrapped round with a blindfold as the robe comes off. He is naked, blinded, and willing.

And he waits.

~#~

He doesn't think to start counting time until nothing happens for what feels like an hour, so he isn't sure how long he's been here, barefoot, chilly, skin crawling against currents in the air. He knows he could get the blindfold off; it isn't as though he'd need a wand, and again, this room doesn't hold fright.

So he waits as the door closes, and again as it opens, and when he feet are pushed apart and a scorching heating charm, one he doesn't know and which feels metallic and odd, licks his belly and thighs, he shudders and groans at the good pain of blood returning to the surface. "What are you--"

"I told you, Weasley. You are to trust me."

"And you'll fix me?" He is both horrified and still unable to care at the quaver of his voice, asking such a pathetic question. It's not so much that he's embarrassed to be pathetic, as that he's afraid this will push the balance, change Snape's mind from do this to don't do this, and he feels straws slipping through his fingers. His stomach clenches and twists as he waits for an answer.

"I will. I've made myself ready to do so while you've waited here. Now leave me to work."

Bill closes his lips and lets his body feel the heat and the chill, and the startling pressure of a wide strap above and between his balls, heavy and pulling them down tight from his body. The skin of them tautens to thin sensitive skin, and his own pubic hair ticklehurts with every breath or shift.

It's good.

He feels blood rushing--into his cock, away from his head, into his balls which feel hot and tight and swollen already.

He doesn't know what else to expect, so he continues to wait, and an instant later, the strap is joined by another, and this one is …sharp. He flinches, but doesn't move away as tiny points--almost like teeth--bite into his cock from the inside of the wide leather as it fastens around.

He says nothing, then gasps when the heat spreads, warming his whole body. His muscles shudder with reaction and he feels all the places his skin pulls tight from straps or from scars, thinks he can feel every single one.

"Are you ready for me to help you?"

The words are startling; even though Bill is fully aware--almost hyperaware--of what is being done to him and by whom, and he shudders again before he can answer. "Yes."

"Kneel"

He doesn't question, just drops.

The blindfold is in a way even better than a wall as he can't even see his own motion. He opens his mouth and is unsurprised to feel the head of Snape's cock right there immediately, pushing between his lips again. His own cock stiffens impossibly further at the intrusion, and he whines in the back of his throat as minute spikes press into his skin.

It's brilliant.

Snape grips his hair in one hand, the back of his head with the other, and Bill can tell he is gritting his teeth as he speaks. "Don't come."

He isn't sure he can anyway; the straps squeeze the path between balls and cock and it feels like come is backing up beneath them. But he nods, agrees, complies with the order and sucks enthusiastically.

"Good."

As before, the praise goes straight to his crotch. He isn't certain whether he's allowed to touch himself, and he whimpers but doesn't, keeps sucking, jaw aching, knees bruising, balls throbbing, as Snape fucks his mouth and praises him, tells him he's doing an excellent job.

And then, his cock thrums with his heartbeat as Snape pulls away.

He whimpers again at the loss. "What--"

"Don't panic," Snape says dryly and too late; Bill is already blinking back startling tears at having had this taken away. "I'm just moving around behind you."

The warning is needed, with the blindfold, but it doesn't make Bill any more prepared to be firmly pushed forward, and he is outright surprised when Snape chooses not to push into his arse, when he chooses, instead, to thrust between his legs, cock forcing its way along the skin of his inner thighs to bump and push his stretched and heated balls.

It's almost more than he can take; even the smooth touch of a slick soft cockhead is painful and brilliant and Bill clamps his teeth shut and tries not to whine.

Snape's hands, moving up and down his back as he almost-fucks him, aren't a focus of attention at all, though in one vague corner of his mind he thinks he might feel something …new, strange, soft, against his back and ribs, his shoulders and arms and hips.

Finally, he speaks. He can't not, can't wait another instant, and he begs. "Please?"

"Please what, Bill?" Snape's voice is quiet, almost tender, very near his ear, and he turns toward it.

"Please make me… whole." He wants to come, wants to ask to come, but that isn't all he wants as he pushes back, welcoming the pressure on his balls and the way this moves his cock, moves the little teeth.

"Almost," Snape says. "Another moment," and Bill doesn't have time to work out that he might ask for what he must wait before he feels a long cold wash from his hands up, elbows and shoulders, throat and face and spine. It leaves gooseflesh in its wake, but then Snape is speaking again. "There."

He thrusts again, then speaks a word in a language Bill doesn't recognize, and three things happen. Every scar on his body tightens, clenching and sore as the stuff absorbs or burns off or otherwise acts. The straps confining his cock and balls release and spring free. And Snape comes, wet-hot, nudging Bill's balls, his semen dripping from Bill's body. It's all too much and Bill comes too, and comes and comes, all that he has felt desperate inside him and all that he has wanted and all that he needs.

He drops his head but otherwise doesn't move; if he unlocks his elbows or allows his back to slump he will collapse here, and he can't just fall to the ground.

And he doesn't have to.

Snape's hands are as smooth as before, but no longer slick, as he keeps one under Bill's chest, supporting him with just the slightest gentle pressure as he cleans them both, then urging Bill to stand. "It's nearly done," he says, unknotting the blindfold and half-supporting, half-dragging Bill to the bed. "Come along."

Bill has no choice. He can't not follow along, and in fact, if Snape does want to escape him now, there's not a bloody thing he could do, no matter how much his heart hates the existence of any such possibility.

"You might call me Severus," Snape says from inches away.

Bill realizes he is on a bed, lying back, covered in a worn soft quilt. It isn't the bed in the room they've just been in, and he has no recollection of getting here, although his head and his stomach are spinning as though he's just come in from a great journey. "What?"

"You just thought of me as Snape. It seems appropriate, at this point, for us to refer to each other by given name." He slides into bed next to Bill, and Bill thinks something has gone on, here, something he can't see or hear, but he's too tired to try to work out what.

"'Kay, Severus," he mumbles. He feels the fresh spark of a teeth-cleaning charm as he falls asleep, like when he was small and his mum would wash him up after he'd already lost his battle to stay awake.

He doesn't even have time to wonder why Severus would cast it.

~#~

He wakes with three days' growth of beard and a cramp in his back, along with a desperate need to relieve himself and a nearly equal desperation to find Severus. Aside from all of that, he feels …whole. Rested and hearty and almost cheerful.

He gets up and attends to the first, wondering how he unerringly knows where to look for the loo; this isn't the place they were before. He doesn't take the time to shave.

"Here." Severus puts a cup of strong tea in his hands as he exits the toilet. "I believe you aren't going back to bed?"

They sit down, Bill in the nightshirt he has apparently been sleeping in, and Severus fully dressed, with buttons to burn. "God, no."

Bill blinks. He doesn't want to go back to bed, and while he hasn't been lying about all day, not exactly, it occurs to him that this is the first time in months that he doesn't fundamentally want to get in bed and pull up the covers.

He sips before he speaks again. "What did you do?"

"What you asked." Severus shrugs, but Bill sees the tension and in one instant he understands. Severus doesn't offer comfort easily or often, and when he has before, his overtures have been rejected.

"Thank you," he says, buying time. He doesn't know what else to say, and can't even begin to formulate the questions he wants to ask.

"I tried once before, but it needed more than I could manage in that context, you know. Were you able to feel what I was doing?"

Bill pauses and tries to put events in order in his mind, tries to break down what obviously was a ritual. "You bound me and hurt me--no, I needed that. I needed you to. Then you made me… I don't know what, exactly."

"I made you submit, and then--"

"And then you made me beg. But what was the rest? There was something slick, and something …familiar."

"Three things."

"Something on my skin? And what else?"

"A sigil on your back--I assume you didn't have reason to look at it in the mirror?"

"No."

"And the release of pain along with your orgasm."

"And what, exactly, was the purpose of all of that?" Bill is arranging pieces in his head, but the maths aren't working, or rather, they are, but he isn't understanding the sum. "Also, what's the sigil?"

"You can probably lose it now, should you choose. It had to happen as part of--where are you going?"

Bill stands and goes back into the bath, yanking up the shirt over his shoulders and looking. "You weren't answering. Severus, that's a binding sigil. You bound me to you."

"It made you whole."

"No, I don't have a problem with it," Bill says slowly, realizing that in fact this is true. "I mean. It would be of interest to know what it does."

"It…" Severus stops and shakes his head. "You know about rituals; you tell me what you see."

"I see a bond, a sex ritual, and something on my skin."

"Yes. I removed the control in those scars, and tied it to me. You can tie it to something else later, should you wish."

His words are casual, but Bill remembers, if fuzzily, the request to call him by name. "We'll worry about that another time. If we want to undo it. So, I'm in your control?"

"Not precisely."

"Well, then? What, precisely?" Before Severus can answer, Bill draws in a sharp breath. "Oh!"

"You see it, then."

"Yes. You tied what the scars do to me to you." He narrows his eyes as clarity and problem-solving skills return once again, in something of the same kind of rush as they did on the journey here. "Are they hurting you?"

"…No."

"What does that mean, that pause?"

"They don't as long as we let them back into control some of the time. The scars aren't mine, so I have distance from them, and they won't damage me the way they were you, but unless you choose to find a different solution, you will need to submit, let me hurt you, hurt me…"

"Often?"

"That remains to be seen. However, you have been asleep four days--"

"Four? I'd have guessed three." Bill gestures to his beard

"I performed a depilatory charm when I washed you the first day. You were rather …rank."

"Sorry. Go on."

"You have been asleep four days, and I'm not suffering. And no, I didn't--"

"Please."

"What?"

"You were going to tell me you didn't assault me while I was asleep. Right?"

"…Yes."

"To which I say, please. I didn't think you had. So no more often than every four or five days?"

"Possibly much less often."

Bill bites his lip. "Is it fair to assume, because you did this voluntarily, that you don't hate this idea?"

"You saw the room."

Bill snorts. "Yes. So, to sum up, I am your frequent …subject, I suppose, and in exchange I function. You get a victim, and …what is the cost to you?" He refuses to believe there isn't one. "Wait. The room is deliberately for me?"

"Yes, effectively. And, the cost is that I take care of you."

"Why?"

"Why do I take--"

"No. Why the room?"

"Ah. I'd rather hoped to come to this point, between us, I mean, in a more leisurely manner. It's been clear to me for some time what you need and, as much as I know this has been doubted, I am a pragmatic man. I wish for the kind of bond that ties me to another, and we suit. Which doesn't mean we cannot later arrange to dissolve the bond. My inclination is merely that, and yours can be tied out elsewhere, now that the damaging hold is broken from you."

"You said the cost was that you would take care of me. In what way?"

"That's the exchange, yes. I take this kind of control of the relationship, but I can't abuse you, and I …this sounds utterly illogical, but, I can't hurt you. Not in ways that don't feed you as well." He looks Bill right in the eye. "I know what you do, and I know you need the capacity to do it, but I have no such need. I can't take my pleasure elsewhere."

"Oh. No more trips into seedy Muggle establishments, then? Well. Unless I'm with you? But I can still do my job? Still being a relative concept--more like again." Bill shakes his head. "Do you want out now?"

"I am content." He takes a calm slow sip. "Do you?"

"I'll tell you, if I do. Deal?"

"I believe we have agreement."

"Why did we have to have this conversation? You've demonstrated you can listen to me thinking."

"No, I. Not as well as I may have led you to believe. Sleight of hand."

"Ah. Good show, even if I was less than alert. You aren't hurting, yet?"

"No."

"At all?"

Severus sets down his cup. "What are you trying to ask?"

"Just checking."

"Because if you were hoping for sex--"

Bill surprises himself with a broad grin that feels wrong and right on his stubbled face. "I always hope for sex. But actually, I just wanted to make sure if I wanted to go tell my mother I'm not dead, it wouldn't cause you harm."

"It won't, if you must go."

"…Were you hoping for sex?"

Severus lifts a slim eyebrow. "Do you suppose your mother needs you popping around at half seven on a Sunday?"

Bill looks at the clock. "Point. Perhaps we should try out the non-curse-related features of this relationship before we go. And have some waffles."

Severus nods, stands, and walks toward the room in which Bill awoke, then stops still. "…We?"

"You've met my mother. You know I can't just waltz in alone and tell her I'm all fixed and oh, by the way, I more or less married Severus Snape."

"So, don't. Actually, no, I mean to be considerably less flippant than that. You can't tell her. Not until such time as you can be sure she won't react badly to me.

"What?"

"It doesn't matter what you tell her, but Bill, if she reacts as you and I both expect and causes me to be captured, we'll both …hurt, not to put too fine a point on it. And much as your mother irritates me beyond reason, she is …formidable."

"Oh, God."

"Sorry. Yes, you'll have to tell her something else. I don't know what; you know her better than I do."

"But." Bill stops, uncertain. "What else does the bond do?"

"Nothing."

"Honestly?"

Severus looks up. "Why?"

"Because. I want to take you home and, I don't know, show you off."

"No."

"Well, yes, I understand that, but I'm curious as to what--"

"That's not the bond. That's standard Weasley sappiness, if you ask me."

"Fuck you." Severus lifts a brow, and Bill chuckles. "Yes, I know. Did."

"Quite."

"Well. Fine. I'll tell Mum …something. I suppose I'll need a few minutes to work out what."

"I have a thought," Severus begins, standing and moving toward the bedroom.

Bill laughs. "Fine. First a brief or possibly extended exploration of non-scar-related sex, and then I'll go tell Mum I'm not dead."

"Good. Although, I'd prefer you refrained from mentioning your mother, during."

Bill follows him into the room that is only the bedroom and not the room for control of pain, and closes the door.