Fic: As We Are Wont, 16
Severus,
I am with her, she says I am a good man, and I believe it. That I am good, that I am a man. She restores me. I can't lie to you-- I love her. I don't know what I did to deserve this chance. It feels like an affirmation. Don't be angry. I can't lie to you. You strip me.
I am with you, you undress me and press into my skin, my body knows you. I feel you everywhere. Your tongue reduces me, your fingers curse me. Your nose is obscene and the palm of your hands callused. You use me, I let myself be used, you write to me, I let the words penetrate. Deep, further. Faster, filling. Harder, words in my mouth, I taste your ideas, you empty yourself of the commands of two lords and I willingly swallow. I would take anything you give me because it is true.
Severus, I want you to know that I have been confused. I have been muddled. I was clever enough to contend for Ravenclaw but cleverness does not teach how to see color in shifting sand. I have tried to be red and I strove to be gold, but even green and silver I would not have been able to manage. The colors I see are brown, burnt orange, the pale and blue of the sky reflected in puddles of water. I want to you know that with you, the world is contrasted. You define so clearly the boundaries that the air around you smells of ammonia. I know your choices are deliberate. I know your betrayals are calculated. I know you have burned my letters, and that the ashes perfume your robes.
You strip me. You blind me, tie me and hit me. You pour wrath and anger, your avarice, greed, hatred, the slights, the memory, the torture, your fear, your foundations, your fury, cruciatus, sectumsempra, veritaserum-- it pours into me. I ride, you overpower, the wave recedes, I know you do this for yourself. And somehow, there is intimacy. Somehow, there is touch. We are not gentle. You are not loving. But you leave me with no doubt. I can never deny that you do not love me. I can never deny that your love transforms.
I am not a stronger man for you and you do not ask it of me. I am simply who I am-- neither/nor. I will never leave you. You might murder a thousand children and eat their carcasses. I still could not leave you.
I am with her, she says I am a good man, and I believe it. You make me good, she makes me man, and in the light I remember your fingers under my skin, pushing.
I make you no promises. You know I cannot keep them. You don't want to be tied anyway.
I am your nor, Severus. I submit to every neither.
Yours,
RJ Lupin