Let's dig holes everywhere.
"How to Like It"
Snape/Harry
All this is just duty.
as requested by agarfuith: "Deatheaters break into Grimmauld place and Snape saves Harry just a split second before"
He's not thankful, but you've never bothered to care about his lack of social graces. He resents you, he spits at you, he stomps around your flat with theatrical adolescent anger; he seethes and sneers and glares, he pushes away his food, he locks himself in his room, he treats you like a leper.
You're never bothered by it. You do what you do because it's what you have to do, not because you're looking for praise. He's done nothing you wouldn't have done yourself, anyway. He resents you for saving his life, you resent him for being too much of his parents. A fair trade.
And he's a boy, he's just a boy, he's still growing up and you never finished growing up yourself. He is a boy, with all the beauty and ugliness of the young, all the energy (the time and passion he wastes hating you, you wouldn't believe it if you hadn't done it yourself), all the searching earnestness. You are a mess of sallow skin and mismatched features, you have only ugliness. All children have the right to rage at the universe for simply saying 'No'. You're never bothered.
He is angry, he is always angry, he's forgotten how to be anything but angry (he writes letters to the Weasley boy and that mudblood girl, full of nothing much other than variations of 'I am being ruined'); you've forgotten how to be anything but bitter. A fair coupling. This is what you are supposed to do, you are doing it and you are never bothered. If you are upset it is because he reminds you of yourself.
Just a boy, you say to yourself as he throws plates and books to the ground, so self-assured, so self-rightious. Just a goddamned boy, who may or may not be ruining what's left of your life, but this is what you are supposed to do, step aside while that boy runs roughshod over your privacy and personality, over the entirety of (what's left of) your life.
Just a boy, you say to youself when you wrap your charcoal-dirty fingers around his wrists and hold tight; just a boy looking up at you with such terrible self-confidence and narcissism, just a boy that you're pushing into a wall, just a boy who has ruined your life and you can ruin his too.
"You really do wish you'd died," you say, words gasped out with what's left of your verbal self-control as he scrabbles thin scarred hands over your ribcage.
"I do," he says. He looks disinterested at best. "Yeah, I do. Yeah. I mean I - "
And apparently he decides against completing that sentence, or maybe just against completing it with words: he bites down hard on his lip and jerks you off as quick as both of you can go, all brusque business and callouses.
Just a fucking boy.
Cut text and title taken from (and fic based loosely upon) "How to Like It", by Stephen Dobyns:
How is it possible to want so many things
and still want nothing? The man wants to sleep
and wants to hit his head again and again
against a wall. Why is it all so difficult?
But the dog says, Let's go make a sandwich.
Let's make the tallest sandwich anyone's ever seen.
And that's what they do and that's where the man's
wife finds him, staring into the refrigerator
as if into the place where the answers are kept-
the ones telling why you get up in the morning
and how it is possible to sleep at night,
answers to what comes next and how to like it.
Snape/Harry
All this is just duty.
as requested by agarfuith: "Deatheaters break into Grimmauld place and Snape saves Harry just a split second before"
He's not thankful, but you've never bothered to care about his lack of social graces. He resents you, he spits at you, he stomps around your flat with theatrical adolescent anger; he seethes and sneers and glares, he pushes away his food, he locks himself in his room, he treats you like a leper.
You're never bothered by it. You do what you do because it's what you have to do, not because you're looking for praise. He's done nothing you wouldn't have done yourself, anyway. He resents you for saving his life, you resent him for being too much of his parents. A fair trade.
And he's a boy, he's just a boy, he's still growing up and you never finished growing up yourself. He is a boy, with all the beauty and ugliness of the young, all the energy (the time and passion he wastes hating you, you wouldn't believe it if you hadn't done it yourself), all the searching earnestness. You are a mess of sallow skin and mismatched features, you have only ugliness. All children have the right to rage at the universe for simply saying 'No'. You're never bothered.
He is angry, he is always angry, he's forgotten how to be anything but angry (he writes letters to the Weasley boy and that mudblood girl, full of nothing much other than variations of 'I am being ruined'); you've forgotten how to be anything but bitter. A fair coupling. This is what you are supposed to do, you are doing it and you are never bothered. If you are upset it is because he reminds you of yourself.
Just a boy, you say to yourself as he throws plates and books to the ground, so self-assured, so self-rightious. Just a goddamned boy, who may or may not be ruining what's left of your life, but this is what you are supposed to do, step aside while that boy runs roughshod over your privacy and personality, over the entirety of (what's left of) your life.
Just a boy, you say to youself when you wrap your charcoal-dirty fingers around his wrists and hold tight; just a boy looking up at you with such terrible self-confidence and narcissism, just a boy that you're pushing into a wall, just a boy who has ruined your life and you can ruin his too.
"You really do wish you'd died," you say, words gasped out with what's left of your verbal self-control as he scrabbles thin scarred hands over your ribcage.
"I do," he says. He looks disinterested at best. "Yeah, I do. Yeah. I mean I - "
And apparently he decides against completing that sentence, or maybe just against completing it with words: he bites down hard on his lip and jerks you off as quick as both of you can go, all brusque business and callouses.
Just a fucking boy.
Cut text and title taken from (and fic based loosely upon) "How to Like It", by Stephen Dobyns:
How is it possible to want so many things
and still want nothing? The man wants to sleep
and wants to hit his head again and again
against a wall. Why is it all so difficult?
But the dog says, Let's go make a sandwich.
Let's make the tallest sandwich anyone's ever seen.
And that's what they do and that's where the man's
wife finds him, staring into the refrigerator
as if into the place where the answers are kept-
the ones telling why you get up in the morning
and how it is possible to sleep at night,
answers to what comes next and how to like it.