FIC: "Eyes Open" for fluffyllama

[bethbethbeth]

Recipient: fluffyllama
Author: ???
Title: Eyes Open
Rating: NC-17
Pairings: Alastor Moody/Severus Snape
Word Count: 3500
Warnings/Content Information (Highlight to View): *References to abuse of authority*.
Summary: The first time Alastor Moody had Severus Snape in an interrogation room, Albus Dumbledore exercised his influence to end the questioning after only two hours. Now, Dumbledore is dead, and Alastor has all the time in the world.
Author's Notes: I cannot thank my generous beta readers enough for their time and insight. And a great big thank-you to fluffyllama for such a great set of prompts to work with.



"So here we are."

Severus Snape had the same smirking mouth at thirty-eight as he'd had at twenty, and his voice was just as smooth and mocking. He sat on the other side of the table with his hands folded and his back straight. His skin was sallow under the mercury vapour lamps, and his pale lips were dry and cracked, but his eyes were as bright and alert as ever.

"Here we are," Alastor said.

The interrogation room was ten feet by ten, built of granite bricks and kept cold and harshly lit by design. There was a heavy, windowless door that locked from the outside, and on the wall opposite was a large mirror. The only furnishings were two rickety folding chairs and the heavy steel table between them, upon which sat a file folder that Alastor proceeded to pick up and page idly through.

Somewhere outside the room, an unseen clock ticked faintly as Alastor made his way through the yellowed newspaper clippings, intake forms, and trial transcripts. All of these had long since been committed to memory, but the point of slowly examining each item wasn't review: it was to make Snape squirm.

Snape's hands unfolded, white spiders on the glinting table. They lay flat and then rose together in a steeple. His fingernails were short, two of them broken but none bitten down. This was the sort of thing an Auror couldn't help but notice.

"I don't suppose I'd be allowed to look at that?"

Alastor waited two beats before looking up. Snape sat with affected poise, his eyebrows raised in imitation of innocent inquiry.

"Yeah. Why not?" He slid the folder across the table.

Snape examined the contents one by one with an expression of mild interest. "Very thorough," he said, squaring a crime scene photograph between thumb and forefinger. "I'm surprised the chewing gum I stole from the corner shop at age seven isn't in here."

Alastor leaned forward. His gaze flickered over Snape's mouth before meeting his eyes. "Did you murder Albus Dumbledore?"

The last page was turned, and Snape examined it from all sides. He hummed thoughtfully. "I don't see anything about him in here. That leads me to think I haven't been formally charged with any such crime."

"Answer the question, Snape."

Snape pushed the folder towards the centre of the table and leaned back in his chair. The top button of his high collar was unfastened, baring the soft, pale place beneath his Adam's apple. This...now, this was the sort of thing a man like Alastor couldn't help but notice.

"On that, at least, my conscience is clear."

Alastor snorted. "Pull the other one, it's got bells on."

"Would that be the real one or the false one?"

Years ago, perhaps, Snape's face would have already been smashed into the table-cartilage crunching, airway gurgling with blood. Now, however, Alastor only smiled. "Why did you do it, after all the times he saved your sorry arse?"

Snape tilted his head to one side. It was a bird-like motion. Nothing graceful or delicate, but more akin to the way a canny raven might look as it gauged whether it could pluck out a lamb's eye while mother ewe wasn't watching. "You asked me that the last time you had me in here, didn't you? 'Why?' I thought it was one of those clumsy Auror tactics. 'When did you stop beating your wife?' or something like that."

"I don't ask questions I don't expect an answer to."

"Nonetheless. 'Why?' What possible use is that when it comes to murder, cold-blooded or hot? I killed Albus Dumbledore. I was culpable in the deaths of Brom McKinnon, Hildegard Brown, and Charity Burbage too, for that matter. I fully admit it."

"That's a start. So tell me why."

"I think you mean 'how,'" Snape said. "Which one would you like to start with? There's no use hiding it any longer, is there."

"I know the 'how.'" Alastor pulled a photograph out of the folder. In it, a fire-gutted house had smouldered silently for eighteen years. "What makes a person do a thing like this? Did you get off on it, watching Brom McKinnon burn to death? Hearing him scream for mercy?"

Snape did not so much as blink. His eyes held no glimmer. He slowly wet his lips. "No, I didn't. It disturbed me."

"But you did it again." He felt his mouth curl as he drew out the photographs from the Brown murder, sending them skittering across the table with a flick of his wrist.

"I did," Snape said evenly.

Alastor's hands curled around the edge of the table, his knuckles cracking with the force of his grip. "Why?"

Snape shifted in his chair and glanced towards the mirror. Alastor followed his gaze, and their eyes met briefly in the glass.

"Surely you of all people know what it's like to want revenge against those who've wronged you."

"What did Brom McKinnon and Hildegard Brown ever do to you?"

"Them? Not a thing. But Hogwarts and the Ministry? Now there's another story." Snape's hand waved gracefully in the air, as elegant and facetious as his voice. "We were ground beneath the heels of those in power. We were denied the legacy owed to us, and we were filled with righteous anger."

"'We?'" Alastor shook his head. "You didn't have a thing in common with the others. You think I don't know about you?"

Ah. He'd ruffled feathers with that one. Something dark flickered across Snape's face before a wry smile dispelled it. Snape spread his hands agreeably. "Then perhaps we were-I was-merely bored."

"No."

The smile faded, and Snape sighed impatiently. "You asked a question. I'm giving you answers. This isn't going to be a very effective interrogation if you refuse to take a confession when it's given in good faith."

He stood up suddenly, and Alastor's hand twitched down to the wand that wasn't at his hip. Weapons weren't allowed, not in here. If Snape saw the furtive motion, he gave no sign of it, pushing his chair back smoothly and approaching the mirror. Hands folded behind his back, he bent slightly at the waist and peered at his own reflection.

"Do you think there's anyone back there, Auror Moody?"

"Of course there is."

"How do you know?"

"It's one-way glass. There's always someone behind it. That's the point."

"Ah," Snape said. He seemed pleased by something.

Alastor frowned. "What's that supposed to mean?"

Snape touched the mirror, fingertips against fingertips. "It means...you're a man who has lived his life as if there were always someone watching. I understand now. How unimaginative."

"This isn't about me."

"Isn't it?" Snape looked at himself from both sides in the mirror and then straightened his collar. "If you say so. Still, that's a perfectly plausible answer. We did it because we thought we could get away with it. We lived like gods, unseen, perceived only by the marks we left on lesser creatures and the scorched earth."

Alastor made a rude sound. "Is that supposed to be poetic?"

Snape shrugged. "Evan Rosier said something like that to me once. He was always writing bad poetry. You remember Evan Rosier, don't you?" He glanced over his shoulder, looking Alastor over baldly, gaze lingering on his ruined nose. "Of course you do."

Alastor met his eyes, unflinching. "I remember him."

For a moment, Snape's expression seemed to drift into fond reminiscence. "He was beautiful, wasn't he? I never properly appreciated that when he was alive. I knew he was handsome, of course, and I hated him a little for it, but it wasn't until I looked back at photographs that I realised how stunning he was. What is it about youth, Auror Moody? You can't fully see it when you're young yourself, but when you grow older, there is something so alluring and repulsive about it all at once."

"I wouldn't know," Alastor said.

Snape turned around, one eyebrow raised sharply. "No? That's surprising. I always assumed you did to him what you did to me."

Alastor blinked. Gooseflesh prickled down the back of his neck. He was silent for a moment-inadvertently this time, distantly aware that he was losing the rhythm of the interrogation-and then said, quietly: "What the hell are you talking about?"

"Rosier was a terrible shot. He was near-sighted, you know, but far too vain to wear his spectacles. How close do you suppose you would have had to be for him to take off half your nose?"

"I had him cornered."

Snape nodded as if that confirmed some inner supposition, and when he spoke, his voice was soft and compelling. "Yes. You had him cornered. And he was so beautiful, wasn't he, with those golden curls and big blue eyes. That little dandy, smelling of perfume and fear. You offered him a deal, didn't you. Suck your cock and maybe you'd never seen him. Be a good boy. Don't tell anyone. Or maybe you were going to arrest him anyhow. Maybe you had him pinned down, and your hand was under his shirt, and you could feel his heart pounding, and you knew you'd have to kill him when you were finished."

Alastor's hands snapped into fists, and he took a steadying breath, fighting to keep his voice level. "You've got a sick imagination, Snape."

"Do I? You nearly did the same thing to me, after all."

"I never laid a finger on you!" Heat flooded his face, and he swallowed back the sick burn that rose in his throat. "Now sit your arse down."

"That's not how I remember it." Snape closed the distance between them and leaned over him, his hands pressed flat on the table and the heat of his touch making faint haloes on the smooth steel.

"Sit your arse down or I will put it down."

"Right here on this very table." Snape stroked the metal tenderly. "You bent me over. I chipped my tooth. Your hand was on the back of my neck. You pulled my drawers down, and you spat-"

"I never."

"Hm?" His face showed amusement for an instant, followed by practiced disinterest. "Ah. You might be right. It wasn't the table. It was the corner, and you were patient enough to undress me first."

"You were strip-searched."

"Now that is an interesting use of the passive. You took my clothes off," Snape said. "Right there. In that corner. You did it slowly. You touched my chest. I heard your breathing quicken. And when you pulled down my drawers-"

Alastor's jaw set stubbornly. "I never touched your drawers."

Snape hummed thoughtfully again. "Perhaps. But you looked. There I sat, in my drawers, and you stared at me like a sad old lecher."

The image flashed in his mind: a narrow, pale chest. Dark, puckered nipples. Gooseflesh on skinny arms. He shook, and the chair betrayed him with a groan.

Footsteps clicked smartly on the stone floor as Snape slowly circled the table and halted directly behind him. The overhead lights made for short shadows, but Alastor could feel a cool, palpable darkness at his back. One smooth hand curled around his neck.

He shuddered.

"You touched me here," Snape said softly.

He had.

Snape's other hand came to rest across the back of his own. "And here."

He had.

Snape's breath touched his ear. "And you told me everything would be all right if I just came clean."

God help him, he had.

"And then..."

Snape's lips brushed his neck.

Alastor twisted his hand out from under Snape's, grabbed his wrist and slammed it against the table.

"That, I never did."

He felt the curve of Snape's mouth against his skin. Heard the smugness in his voice. "But you wanted to. And as you keep insisting, intent matters."

A hot swell of nausea rose in him. "Shut your filthy mouth."

"What else did you want to do, Auror Moody? Did you want to break my teeth? Did you want to fuck me?" He paused, and then he laughed. "Oh my. Did you want to save me?"

Alastor's throat tightened. "Shut up."

"But you didn't. You didn't do anything. Because someone behind the mirror was watching you."

He surged to his feet. "Shut up!"

Snape hit the wall with a hollow thump of bone and a strangled cry as Alastor pinned him with a hand around his throat. He laughed, the bastard, his head thrown back and his teeth bared. The sound of it reverberated through Alastor's hand.

"Now there's the Auror Moody I remember!"

'Shut up,' he meant to say again, but the words wouldn't form, and all that came out was a desperate hushing sound. He braced himself when Snape's hand rose, but there was no attempt to shove him away. Instead, a single finger drew a slow, straight line down his chest and over his stomach.

"Here's something I've always wondered." Snape's voice was hoarse but steady.

Alastor said nothing, his breath coming quickly and his fingers flexing. He felt Snape swallow.

"When the mutual acquaintances who last saw your eye had you at their mercy..."

Snape's fingertip ventured further down, over the buttons of his trousers. "...did Bellatrix castrate you, by chance?"

His breath caught hard as Snape traced the outline of his cock.

"She did favour the tactic. Talked about it incessantly."

Alastor's hips pushed forward of their own accord, a grunt startled from him as he began to stir.

"No?" Snape asked. His smile grew sharp as he began plucking open each button. "I think you're lying."

Alastor held still as Snape's fingers slipped inside and stroked him idly. Then they crept down to his naked thigh, following the leather strap that held on his prosthesis, then down, to where flesh met wood-

His hand tightened around Snape's throat as he slammed forward. Their mouths clashed together. His teeth sank viciously into flesh. The low sound it earned him was more pleased than pained, and Snape's hand wrapped around his cock, pulling urgently.

He growled, hardening in a painful, pounding rush within Snape's careless grasp. His free hand bashed knuckles with Snape's as he groped for him, grabbing him roughly by the bollocks.

"Bastard!" Snape croaked, spreading his legs with a soft, high cry, but that was all he had to say before Alastor shut him up.

Thread popped as he ripped the buttons off Snape's robes, forcing his way inside. He clawed at hot skin and swollen flesh, the thick scent of arousal filling his nose. It hadn't been like this then. Snape at twenty had smelled sour with nervous sweat, his hands still soft as a girl's and his eyes alight with intelligence-not cunning or cruelty, but something undeniably, unexpectedly human.

Now, their hands grappled and their mouths tore at each other as they ground violently together. He didn't dare shut his eyes, not trusting any part of Severus Snape that wasn't pinned beneath him, and Snape stared back with heavy-lidded amusement, his own eyes giving up nothing but Alastor's wild reflection. The taste of blood drew a starving groan from him, and he felt the ghost of bruises rising up as Snape clung to him with tooth and nail.

His fingers clenched around Snape's throat. Snape's hips, rolling, jabbed forward to the sound of a ragged gasp, and then wetness spilled against Alastor's stomach, dripping down. He managed nothing more than a strangled curse before his own orgasm cut into him like a dull knife, twisting him up inside and wrenching loose something that made his leg shake and his eyes go blind.

The clock ticked steadily, far away.

Slowly, slowly, Alastor's hand uncurled. Snape sucked in a deep breath, and it was only then that Alastor realised the pathetic panting in the air was his own. He braced himself against the wall and unsteadily turned, putting his back to the cold bricks before slumping to the floor in ungainly stages.

Snape stood where he was, his knees trembling. His head was tilted back, and the palms of both hands were pressed to the wall. His lower lip was bitten nearly bloody. There was a red crescent below it, swollen and chapped, like the kind little children got in the winter. He looked up at the ceiling and breathed in deeply again. Then he let his breath out and began, almost lazily, to fasten what buttons were left on his robes.

The flask in Alastor's pocket still had a little in the bottom, and he unscrewed the cap and swallowed down a mouthful of whisky. From the corner of his eye, he watched as Snape took three steps to the door. There was a muted click as he tried the knob.

Alastor refrained from asking him why he really thought it would be unlocked this time. Instead, he held up the flask and shook it. "Thirsty?"

Snape turned, and for a moment he looked as he had at twenty-until his eyes narrowed and the lines around them restored two decades of suspicion. "If I say yes, will you actually let me drink?"

He considered that and then snorted. "Why not? We're going to be here awhile."

Snape took the flask warily, keeping his eyes on him as he drank. His throat bobbed, red and darkening where it wasn't white. Then he sank down gracefully and sat with his long legs outstretched and his ankles crossed. It bared a ribbon of naked skin between the tops of his boots and the bottom of his robes.

Alastor looked and then looked away. The mirror reflected the empty chairs and the table. Someone was watching. Someone was always watching. What was the point otherwise?

"When I heard you'd died," Snape said, the smugness momentarily faded from his voice, "I imagined that hordes of Valkyries must have descended upon Surrey and carried you off to wherever it is that Aurors go. And yet here you are, in this room, with me. It's almost funny, don't you think?"

"No," Alastor said. "It's not."

Snape looked amused anyhow and took another drink.

Alastor scowled, but when he spoke, his voice was too worn down with weariness to muster much bite. "You're the only one..." he said, then paused, and tried again. "I never could figure you out, Snape. You weren't like the rest of them-you knew better, I could see it. You were clever enough to recognise Riddle for what he was. You weren't mad, and you weren't a sadist, and you weren't a coward. You could have been something special. So why weren't you?"

"Is that really what you think this is?" Snape asked. "Unfinished business?"

That tone was back, knowing and darkly pleased, and it made Alastor's jaw set and his shoulders stiffen. "What else would it be?"

Snape laughed-a brief, voiceless sound. "I had no illusions of where I'd find myself."

The taste of whisky soured in Alastor's mouth. "I never laid a finger on you," he said again.

"No. You didn't."

Alastor peered at him, searching for facetiousness, but Snape was gazing neutrally at the far wall. His eyes looked tired, and his lips were very slightly pursed, as though he were shaping some word he didn't dare say.

He never touched him. Instead, he had let him walk out with Dumbledore eighteen years ago. Afraid of what he might do otherwise. Hurt him, maybe. Break his smug face in, almost certainly.

God forbid, try to save him.

For a moment, his thoughts nearly ventured off the well-travelled road of who and where and what and why, of the here and now, into the dark, formless void.

A treacherous whisper: 'What if?'

He shook his head stubbornly. "It's like I said, boy. You tell me the truth, and that door opens. That's how it works."

"And so we come back again to the 'why,'" Snape said, and the corner of his mouth lifted wryly. "If I knew that..." He held out the flask. "...do you really think I'd be here, in this room, with you?"

Alastor took the flask back with a grunt. He gave it a shake and found yet again that there was still a little at the bottom, and he helped himself to a long swallow, the mouth of it still warm and damp against his lips.

Then, with a sigh, he gathered his strength and began to haul himself back to his feet. Snape rose smoothly beside him and grabbed him by the arm, pulling him up. Alastor grumbled but let him, and for a moment they stood together, nearly brow to brow, with the devil's own amusement on Snape's lips and a rusty, humourless chuckle lodged in his own throat.

Alastor gestured a gallant 'after you' in the direction of the gleaming table and its two rickety chairs. "Come on," he said. "Let's get on with it."

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