Fic: Mine Eyes Dazzle (LM/SS) R
"Mine Eyes Dazzle" (LM/SS) R
Beta-ed by gehayi with thanks
Written on an idea that a lot of people (including me) have Lucius being the seducer - what if it was the other way around
Mine Eyes Dazzle
Severus has spent his life in the shadows. He loves the half-light, the half-life of the patchwork. He dapples his life so he's part of the scenery, part of the woodwork, part of the light and shade that are an integral part of the penumbra. It's something in the way he holds himself, not too tall, never his full height, something in the way he moves, fluidly sliding into a crowd, staying out of the way, staying out of trouble.
Camouflage; perfected under the quilt of a chequered childhood, split asunder by the duality of his parents. One too kind, and the other… On autumn nights when the chill of winter drifts its frosted promise across the Hogwarts grounds, bones long broken, bones long mended, remember the other side of the parental coin.
Love and violence; as random as a flip of a galleon, as quicksilver as the blade of a sickle.
When Sirius Black decided that bullying was a life choice, Severus was already as slippery as a sand eel, insubstantial smoke in fog. Black's vendetta was all the more vitriolic for having his prey harder to find.
Camouflage, once mastered, can be a deceptive refuge, no respecter of those it hides you from. For all the safety it provides, it may be too late to unlearn the lessons of obscurity if you then long to be noticed. Severus found that his sanctuary had become a trap in the darkness.
For one swallow-winged year, there had been a brightness, a beacon, which was so far up the spectrum that it seemed to hurt to watch it with the naked eye. But Severus had watched it, captivated, as did the countless nameless, the moths who burned themselves out on his infernal flame. Named for the spotlight Severus hid from, Lucius burned with an inner fire of a strength and a confidence of which Severus could only dream
He shadowed the older boy, hardly noticed, barely acknowledged, made his bed, ran his errands, banned the Elves working for him, worked for no praise, no consideration. He bathed in the Head Boy's radiance, he swam in the wake of the comet and for too brief an instant, he felt the warmth of a reflected sun. Undeterred, he chased his dreams with a doggedness that made the prefects laugh, earned him more than one nickname, (one of which, at least, he harboured with fierce pride).
When the sun went out, shifted its orbit and autumn was all there was in a Scottish landscape, Severus drifted, mourning in the chill of the corridors, where only artificial light glowed with no discernible warmth. The daylight was poor substitute, and shunning it, he retreated into the dungeons of his House, relearned the art of the half-light, and spent six years cursing the day he'd learned what he'd been missing, his bitterness of the child shaping the man he became.
Emerging from Hogwarts, top of his classes, (the bile of being denied the honour of treading in those aureate footsteps stolen from him by the casual arrogance of Potter, burning his throat and heart) he set himself a task, to do the impossible. To pin down the light, and make it his own.
Potions are a measure of a man. If the man is slapdash and reckless he will never make a good potion maker. He will not have the patience required to cut up his ingredients just so, or to wait the required months before a harvest moon coincides with a foggy night to capture the dew on the grass. If a man is inattentive he will never be able to remember to change the direction of the stirring on the right beat, or to add the sprinkle of powdered doxy ten seconds before certain death.
A man needs concentration, determination, patience, and above all, an immense amount of preparation. Severus Snape was born to be a potions master.
Three months. With the pathetic remnants of his family "fortune" and the little he'd saved from school, every scrap his father had sent him, every reward for homework done for other boys, (every coin hoarded in a jealous manner that would bring a tear to Fagin's eye,) he calculated he had three months. Ninety whirlwind days to infiltrate the highest echelons of society, and…
Most days he couldn't bear think beyond that. He did not have the arrogant confidence of a Black, or a Potter, men who danced through life, missing the obstacles that Severus never failed to hit, men who knew they would never fail at life or love.
He soon discovered that a foetid bed-sit in Knockturn was not the best place to launch an offensive upon the glitterati. He'd scour the society pages, living on cream crackers and water, spraying his clothes with home made sprays of rosemary to negate the stench of ever-pervasive cabbage that floated up from downstairs. Every day he would find his target with the precision of a military campaign.
Madam Honoria Gullspittle will be hosting the opening promenade at the Crystal ballroom this evening in aid of …
Or
Lady Thomlinson Mackneady announces the coming out of her daughter, Alberta, at the ball tonight the expected guests are:-…
He would sally forth, in clothes so expensive they shocked him, clothes that were uncomfortable and restrictive, too high in the neck, or cut so he had to walk slower than his norm, but notably, clothes that he had no idea how to wear with confidence, and when his confidence was threatened, Severus disappeared into the background.
He'd had little success so far. Ten weeks had passed and he had only managed to inveigle himself into three balls, a regatta and several concerts. Although his "hit" rate was good at the latter, he soon found that it availed him nothing, for although he could see Lucius, (shining out of reach at the front, and usually taking little notice of the music,) the static arrangement of these affairs meant that so far, he had been unable to waylay the object of his affections. Ten weeks and he was no further on with his task than he was at the beginning.
Every man needs luck, and history may show whether Severus was serendipitous or born under a cursed star. His luck came one night at a benefit for a local orphanage. The star in question was Sirius Black, grabbing a little of the society he'd abandoned, a bottle of champagne in one hand.
"Snivellus!" Severus spun around, almost snarling, bringing a fist up - not fast enough. "What the fuck have you come as?" His eyes raked the unaccustomed finery, and laughed long and loud. "Who died and left you the second hand clothes?"
"Apart from my parents?" Severus spat back at him, walking off. Sirius caught hold of his arm again,
"I'd heard you've been trying to better yourself," Sirius said, aggressively, "pathetic. Trying for an heiress perhaps? Buying back some of the mouldering ruins that used to be the Snape empire? What girl would look at you?"
"Get. Off. Me." Severus growled and he turned to face Sirius, his hand moving slowly to the wand pleat in his jacket.
"Or what, Snivellus…? No fag loving prefects to protect you here. You've stepped into my world now, and I don't need…"
Sirius stopped as if he'd been magically silenced. Sirius' head snapped round to the snake's head cane on his shoulder.
"Sirius?" Lucius had appeared, with the speed of a sunbeam, all velvet and a fixed smile, which gave the impression that he wasn't sure if he was going to keep it or not. "If you must gatecrash these events, you could at least be civil to the guests." Sirius glared and Apparated out, taking the champagne with him,
Severus knew he had one chance, and morality flew out of the window. With the eye contact in place he slid into Lucius' mind and warmed the place where his curiosity sat, large and unmissable at the front of his consciousness.
"You won't remember me," Snape lied, knowing he'd just nudged the memory of himself. He held out a hand, marvelling in the colour of Lucius' eyes. Not blue, too pale for blue, the pupils expanding as the memory kicked in. Severus withdrew the contact, worried he had done too much, or not enough.
"Severusss…." The man said, the syllables sliding from his mouth as if he'd never said them before. "Sev-er-us." Lucius' thumb was gently circling the back of his hand and Severus dared not look down, caught in his own trap, hardly able to breathe. "I remember you. You fagged for me at school." Severus' stomach jolted as Lucius broke his gaze and looked him over from head to toe, with a look that had nothing in common with Sirius' alienating scorn. All the same, Severus felt a little like a horse being appraised. "And you are here for?"
"You," Severus said, wondering where the courage had come from. "I came for you."
What Lucius did next had not happened in any rehearsed scenario.
He laughed; and Severus went cold and hot all at once, feeling himself blush with self-loathing, hardly able to look up into those eyes.
"My dear boy, I suppose I should be flattered…but…"
Severus couldn't let him continue, couldn't let him tell him what he already knew, that he was marrying that vision on the far side of the room, that he was following his family dynasty and making an heir, he couldn't.
So he leaned up and forward. Gambled on a kiss. Risked the world on a half smile.
The world ground to a bone-cracking silence, blood roared, and every Gryffindor in the world laughed in derision as they waited for Lucius to push Snivellus off in disgust. The world concentrated to one event horizon, hushed as the babble of conversation in the ballroom. Lucius' lips were cool, dry - Lucius' body heat, unmistakable through his robes, felt at least ten degrees warmer than natural. Lucius' hand snaked round his waist, pulled him tight, and Severus' flesh scalded, boiled, under the heat of the connection. He could feel the skin sear where Lucius' hand held the small of his back, feel it char and burn. With a blur of the universe shifting he was only half-aware they had Apparated to another place, a room soft with incense and cushions.
Lucius still had his arm around him, and Severus hoped he'd not let go, for he wasn't sure, now he was so close to getting what he wanted, that his legs would support him. Lucius lowered him onto something soft and pulled back, as Severus opened his eyes.
"Never let it be said," Lucius said, still with a look of mocking amusement in his eyes, "that I was not willing to accept what I was freely offered." His wand travelled between them, banishing their clothes to Severus cared-not-where. "What you have to consider now," he continued, bending down and trailing a tongue over his collarbone, leaving trails of cool silver-fire behind, "is whether you are still willing to offer it."
Severus could do no more than nod; instead, he reached out, touching the hair he had only imagined to be spun silk, which, like Lucius himself, proved to be more real than the cobwebs of his imagination.
The logistics of what was to come were known, in theory, to Severus, but the breathless intensity of it was something that he had not expected. Lucius gathered him in, wove a net of sensation around them, and with murmuring kisses, searching, teaching hands, replaced lusts and need with desire, and an aching want that Lucius' touch, and only Lucius' touch, would ever be able to fulfil.
Severus learned, as slowly as the sunshine crept across one afternoon of forever, and surely as passion flared time and time again, that Lucius' brilliance was spoiling him for any other. He was also fully aware, in some dim recess of his mind, that Lucius knew this too.
When reality shadowed back in a tide of awareness and a jumble of limbs, lips promised impossible things. It didn't matter that Lucius' future was somewhere in the house, probably crying or throwing things. Nothing mattered.
Severus clung to the shipwreck moment, blinded by the glitter of the present
Beta-ed by gehayi with thanks
Written on an idea that a lot of people (including me) have Lucius being the seducer - what if it was the other way around
Mine Eyes Dazzle
Severus has spent his life in the shadows. He loves the half-light, the half-life of the patchwork. He dapples his life so he's part of the scenery, part of the woodwork, part of the light and shade that are an integral part of the penumbra. It's something in the way he holds himself, not too tall, never his full height, something in the way he moves, fluidly sliding into a crowd, staying out of the way, staying out of trouble.
Camouflage; perfected under the quilt of a chequered childhood, split asunder by the duality of his parents. One too kind, and the other… On autumn nights when the chill of winter drifts its frosted promise across the Hogwarts grounds, bones long broken, bones long mended, remember the other side of the parental coin.
Love and violence; as random as a flip of a galleon, as quicksilver as the blade of a sickle.
When Sirius Black decided that bullying was a life choice, Severus was already as slippery as a sand eel, insubstantial smoke in fog. Black's vendetta was all the more vitriolic for having his prey harder to find.
Camouflage, once mastered, can be a deceptive refuge, no respecter of those it hides you from. For all the safety it provides, it may be too late to unlearn the lessons of obscurity if you then long to be noticed. Severus found that his sanctuary had become a trap in the darkness.
For one swallow-winged year, there had been a brightness, a beacon, which was so far up the spectrum that it seemed to hurt to watch it with the naked eye. But Severus had watched it, captivated, as did the countless nameless, the moths who burned themselves out on his infernal flame. Named for the spotlight Severus hid from, Lucius burned with an inner fire of a strength and a confidence of which Severus could only dream
He shadowed the older boy, hardly noticed, barely acknowledged, made his bed, ran his errands, banned the Elves working for him, worked for no praise, no consideration. He bathed in the Head Boy's radiance, he swam in the wake of the comet and for too brief an instant, he felt the warmth of a reflected sun. Undeterred, he chased his dreams with a doggedness that made the prefects laugh, earned him more than one nickname, (one of which, at least, he harboured with fierce pride).
When the sun went out, shifted its orbit and autumn was all there was in a Scottish landscape, Severus drifted, mourning in the chill of the corridors, where only artificial light glowed with no discernible warmth. The daylight was poor substitute, and shunning it, he retreated into the dungeons of his House, relearned the art of the half-light, and spent six years cursing the day he'd learned what he'd been missing, his bitterness of the child shaping the man he became.
Emerging from Hogwarts, top of his classes, (the bile of being denied the honour of treading in those aureate footsteps stolen from him by the casual arrogance of Potter, burning his throat and heart) he set himself a task, to do the impossible. To pin down the light, and make it his own.
Potions are a measure of a man. If the man is slapdash and reckless he will never make a good potion maker. He will not have the patience required to cut up his ingredients just so, or to wait the required months before a harvest moon coincides with a foggy night to capture the dew on the grass. If a man is inattentive he will never be able to remember to change the direction of the stirring on the right beat, or to add the sprinkle of powdered doxy ten seconds before certain death.
A man needs concentration, determination, patience, and above all, an immense amount of preparation. Severus Snape was born to be a potions master.
Three months. With the pathetic remnants of his family "fortune" and the little he'd saved from school, every scrap his father had sent him, every reward for homework done for other boys, (every coin hoarded in a jealous manner that would bring a tear to Fagin's eye,) he calculated he had three months. Ninety whirlwind days to infiltrate the highest echelons of society, and…
Most days he couldn't bear think beyond that. He did not have the arrogant confidence of a Black, or a Potter, men who danced through life, missing the obstacles that Severus never failed to hit, men who knew they would never fail at life or love.
He soon discovered that a foetid bed-sit in Knockturn was not the best place to launch an offensive upon the glitterati. He'd scour the society pages, living on cream crackers and water, spraying his clothes with home made sprays of rosemary to negate the stench of ever-pervasive cabbage that floated up from downstairs. Every day he would find his target with the precision of a military campaign.
Madam Honoria Gullspittle will be hosting the opening promenade at the Crystal ballroom this evening in aid of …
Or
Lady Thomlinson Mackneady announces the coming out of her daughter, Alberta, at the ball tonight the expected guests are:-…
He would sally forth, in clothes so expensive they shocked him, clothes that were uncomfortable and restrictive, too high in the neck, or cut so he had to walk slower than his norm, but notably, clothes that he had no idea how to wear with confidence, and when his confidence was threatened, Severus disappeared into the background.
He'd had little success so far. Ten weeks had passed and he had only managed to inveigle himself into three balls, a regatta and several concerts. Although his "hit" rate was good at the latter, he soon found that it availed him nothing, for although he could see Lucius, (shining out of reach at the front, and usually taking little notice of the music,) the static arrangement of these affairs meant that so far, he had been unable to waylay the object of his affections. Ten weeks and he was no further on with his task than he was at the beginning.
Every man needs luck, and history may show whether Severus was serendipitous or born under a cursed star. His luck came one night at a benefit for a local orphanage. The star in question was Sirius Black, grabbing a little of the society he'd abandoned, a bottle of champagne in one hand.
"Snivellus!" Severus spun around, almost snarling, bringing a fist up - not fast enough. "What the fuck have you come as?" His eyes raked the unaccustomed finery, and laughed long and loud. "Who died and left you the second hand clothes?"
"Apart from my parents?" Severus spat back at him, walking off. Sirius caught hold of his arm again,
"I'd heard you've been trying to better yourself," Sirius said, aggressively, "pathetic. Trying for an heiress perhaps? Buying back some of the mouldering ruins that used to be the Snape empire? What girl would look at you?"
"Get. Off. Me." Severus growled and he turned to face Sirius, his hand moving slowly to the wand pleat in his jacket.
"Or what, Snivellus…? No fag loving prefects to protect you here. You've stepped into my world now, and I don't need…"
Sirius stopped as if he'd been magically silenced. Sirius' head snapped round to the snake's head cane on his shoulder.
"Sirius?" Lucius had appeared, with the speed of a sunbeam, all velvet and a fixed smile, which gave the impression that he wasn't sure if he was going to keep it or not. "If you must gatecrash these events, you could at least be civil to the guests." Sirius glared and Apparated out, taking the champagne with him,
Severus knew he had one chance, and morality flew out of the window. With the eye contact in place he slid into Lucius' mind and warmed the place where his curiosity sat, large and unmissable at the front of his consciousness.
"You won't remember me," Snape lied, knowing he'd just nudged the memory of himself. He held out a hand, marvelling in the colour of Lucius' eyes. Not blue, too pale for blue, the pupils expanding as the memory kicked in. Severus withdrew the contact, worried he had done too much, or not enough.
"Severusss…." The man said, the syllables sliding from his mouth as if he'd never said them before. "Sev-er-us." Lucius' thumb was gently circling the back of his hand and Severus dared not look down, caught in his own trap, hardly able to breathe. "I remember you. You fagged for me at school." Severus' stomach jolted as Lucius broke his gaze and looked him over from head to toe, with a look that had nothing in common with Sirius' alienating scorn. All the same, Severus felt a little like a horse being appraised. "And you are here for?"
"You," Severus said, wondering where the courage had come from. "I came for you."
What Lucius did next had not happened in any rehearsed scenario.
He laughed; and Severus went cold and hot all at once, feeling himself blush with self-loathing, hardly able to look up into those eyes.
"My dear boy, I suppose I should be flattered…but…"
Severus couldn't let him continue, couldn't let him tell him what he already knew, that he was marrying that vision on the far side of the room, that he was following his family dynasty and making an heir, he couldn't.
So he leaned up and forward. Gambled on a kiss. Risked the world on a half smile.
The world ground to a bone-cracking silence, blood roared, and every Gryffindor in the world laughed in derision as they waited for Lucius to push Snivellus off in disgust. The world concentrated to one event horizon, hushed as the babble of conversation in the ballroom. Lucius' lips were cool, dry - Lucius' body heat, unmistakable through his robes, felt at least ten degrees warmer than natural. Lucius' hand snaked round his waist, pulled him tight, and Severus' flesh scalded, boiled, under the heat of the connection. He could feel the skin sear where Lucius' hand held the small of his back, feel it char and burn. With a blur of the universe shifting he was only half-aware they had Apparated to another place, a room soft with incense and cushions.
Lucius still had his arm around him, and Severus hoped he'd not let go, for he wasn't sure, now he was so close to getting what he wanted, that his legs would support him. Lucius lowered him onto something soft and pulled back, as Severus opened his eyes.
"Never let it be said," Lucius said, still with a look of mocking amusement in his eyes, "that I was not willing to accept what I was freely offered." His wand travelled between them, banishing their clothes to Severus cared-not-where. "What you have to consider now," he continued, bending down and trailing a tongue over his collarbone, leaving trails of cool silver-fire behind, "is whether you are still willing to offer it."
Severus could do no more than nod; instead, he reached out, touching the hair he had only imagined to be spun silk, which, like Lucius himself, proved to be more real than the cobwebs of his imagination.
The logistics of what was to come were known, in theory, to Severus, but the breathless intensity of it was something that he had not expected. Lucius gathered him in, wove a net of sensation around them, and with murmuring kisses, searching, teaching hands, replaced lusts and need with desire, and an aching want that Lucius' touch, and only Lucius' touch, would ever be able to fulfil.
Severus learned, as slowly as the sunshine crept across one afternoon of forever, and surely as passion flared time and time again, that Lucius' brilliance was spoiling him for any other. He was also fully aware, in some dim recess of his mind, that Lucius knew this too.
When reality shadowed back in a tide of awareness and a jumble of limbs, lips promised impossible things. It didn't matter that Lucius' future was somewhere in the house, probably crying or throwing things. Nothing mattered.
Severus clung to the shipwreck moment, blinded by the glitter of the present