Title: Cynical Sins
Characters: Rodolphus Lestrange, Severus Snape
Rating:Â E
Warnings: Yaoi, snark
Notes: My apologies to Cat Black about the original story I meant to write her, but I hope a little bit of snarky smut will make up for it.
It was a late summer night at Spinner's End — curtains drawn, candles lit, and one exceptionally snarky professor of Potions sprawled across the sofa with a hefty tome in one hand, and a pencil in the other. "This man is indubitably the single most dunderheaded fool to ever write on the subject. That doesn't work at all," he muttered to himself, scratching notes into the book's margins. He had been reading the text for the last hour, and it was now thoroughly scrawled upon, his impatient and irritable commentary splashed across every page he'd read.
Snape twitched, nearly dropping the book as the floo flashed to life. A thin red-haired man stepped through, wearing skin-tight red leather pants and a loose black shirt that, in Snape's opinion, looked like a badly stitched sack. "Merlin's left testicle, Roddy, don't you ever knock? What if I'd been otherwise entertained?"
"Aww, but Sev, we both know that's never going to happen. And if it did, I'm sure I'd be more than content to just join the party," Rodolphus LeStrange grinned cheekily at his best friend.
Snape fought down a flustered blush, snarling, instead. "I didn't mean it like that, you stupid git. What if I'd had my hands full of volatile liquids?"
"Well, then, either way you'd have been surprised and splashed them, and this whole place would have gone up in a giant fireball. Isn't that why you have a lab?" Roddy walked to the couch and leaned over Snape, rubbing noses with him for a moment. "Wouldn't want my favourite greasy git to go up in flames, I'd not."
Snape flicked his fingers at Roddy and his face twisted in what appeared to be moderate disgust. "Get off me, you fool."
As Roddy stood back up, Snape tossed the book across the room, landing it atop a bookcase. He stabbed the pencil into the already perforated top of the couch, which looked as though this were a regular event, and sat up. "Bloody damned soup-for-brains researchers, these days. I want to know who paid that sodding fool to write that Morgan-blighted volume, so that I can go to his house and Crucio the life out of him."
It was actually an apology for Snape's earlier behaviour, and Roddy took it as such, making comforting noises as he extracted a bottle of Merlot from the tall cabinet beside the kitchen door, and opened it. "Here, lovey, drink up." He handed the bottle to Snape, but no glass. "You'll feel better with a bit of red in you, you will."
Snape snatched the bottle and glared, pointing his finger at Roddy and opening and closing his mouth a few times as words failed him. He settled on something simple. "Fuck you."
"Is that an offer? Oh, fab! I do wish you would!" Roddy was an incorrigible slut, but with Sev he was truly ridiculous. The two had been circling each other like alleycats for the better part of nearly twenty five years, and even after Roddy's first victory — and his second, and his fifteenth — they always came back to that state of companionable vindictive faux-distrust. In reality, they trusted each other implicitly, each freely willing to entrust his life and his secrets to the other — it had saved their lives and sanity more times that could be counted, but still they played this game.
Snape continued to glare as he brought the bottle to his lips and took a large swallow. "Take more than this to get me drunk enough for that," he grumbled, and the corner of his mouth twitched ever so slightly.
Roddy looked kittenishly predatory. "Does that mean I should go get the rum for you, then? You say the word and I'll do it, I will."
"Shut up and sit down. Your prancing and fluttering is making me jumpy."
Sev was jumpy anyway, but this didn't seem the time to mention it. Roddy slunk over to the couch, looking melodramatically defeated, and flopped down next to Snape. "Fiiiiine." He tossed his legs up over the arm of the couch and leaned back into Snape's lap.
Snape twitched, a half-hearted attempt to jerk away as Roddy leaned back, but in the end, he just ignored the head and shoulders in his lap and continued to drink the wine, gazing fascinatedly into the corner of the room. Surreptitiously, the hand that didn't hold the bottle began to stroke Roddy's hair.
Roddy stared upward. 'I can see up your nose from here,' his first instinct, was probably the wrong thing to say. The words that came out weren't much better. "Severus, do you love me?"
"I think the boys might have been right. I find an increasing amount of evidence that Irishmen really are halfwits." By which, of course, he meant 'yes'.
"I'm only stupid for you, Sev." Roddy nuzzled Snape's belly for one brief, torturous moment. "Did I tell you I finally finished that article on the Northern Wizards and the magico-political rioting at the border? Got picked up right away."
"I always said you belonged in historical criticism," Snape was about halfway down the bottle of wine when he realised that he couldn't remember if he'd eaten after breakfast. It didn't matter, he supposed — wine was a fruit. It counted as food.
"It's hardly historical, Sev. It's going on as we speak, it is, much as I'd wish it any way other." Roddy sighed and reached up to lay a hand on the side of the potions master's face. "There's something not right with you, tonight. And don't you dare tell me you're fine, because you're not."
"I'm not fine. I'm old and I'm tired. I'm everyone's scapegoat and everyone's traitor, and I've just had enough." Drinking the wine rather intently, Snape twisted his fingers in Roddy's hair, a nervous habit with more years behind it than he cared to think about.
"Give it up. Staying in England's like pissing down the dragon's throat. Run away with me to America." Smiling like a man who'd just discovered whisky, Roddy patted Snape on the cheek. "I'll be Rodney Singularity, travel writer and historical critic, and you can be Severen Bellamorte — you'd need some cranky gothic name, with that face — punk rock singer and Renaissance man."
"Bellamorte? Are you daft? It's pretentious and it reminds me of your wife." Notably, Snape failed to reject the proposal, outright. "What about something a bit less melodramatic, like Avignon?"
"Aside from the French military jokes, how is that not melodramatic?" Roddy squinted up suspiciously. "Besides, you're truly smashing at melodrama, you are, and melodrama sells. Have you turned on the radio lately?"
"Can't say I have. I've been avoiding the idiot-box, and the idiots who listen to it. There are no children, here. If I want music, I'll switch on the turntable." More of the wine vanished down Snape's throat. Significantly more. The bottle was becoming noticeably light. "In fact, you've inspired me. Get off me, I want to put on some music."
Roddy sat up, but pushed Snape back onto the sofa. "I'd rather get you off than get off you, but if you insist on music…" He stood and bent down, kissing Snape softly on the cheek. "What do you want? I'll do it, since I'm already up."
The potions master, not being a stupid man, immediately caught the innuendo. "Yes, I'd noticed. Just about eye level. Hard to miss." He smirked up at Roddy. "Go put on Downward Spiral. I have a sudden urge to do regrettable things."
"You want regrettable, I'm putting on Sin. I promise you'll regret not being able to walk tomorrow." Roddy purred enticingly.
Even after all these years, it still made Snape nervous when Roddy said things like that. It was a difficult change to move from being an avowedly asexual individual to realising that he was, in fact, madly in love with his best friend, who seemed to be, at times, entirely composed of whoredom. His knuckles whitened around the bottle as he guzzled the rest of the wine.
He set the bottle on the floor and leaned back into the sofa as though he could hide himself in the cushions. As much as he tended to dress similarly to his sofa, Snape still tended to stand out from it, not the least because he was significantly lumpy to sit upon. Returning from across the room to the faint hiss that preceded the music, Roddy was not fooled for an instant. He knelt over Sev's lap with a giddy grin on his face, and the grin slid away as he leaned closer to press his lips against the potions master's. "Regrettable?" Roddy murmured, "Am I still that after all this time?"
"My only regret is not living my own life sooner." Snape kissed back viciously and demandingly as the music filled the house. He wrapped his arms around Roddy, pinning his old friend in his lap.
Roddy giggled, but the sound was muffled by the potions master's tongue. He writhed and squirmed in Sev's lap as he began to unbutton the perpetual melodramatic robes, letting his fingers dart under the cloth to stroke the pale skin as it was bared, one tiny button at a time.
Digging his fingers into Roddy's slim frame, instead of helping with the buttons, Snape continued to enjoy the passionate kiss. He was less clumsy, now, with his tongue than he had been that first — well, second — time. Not as good as Roddy by any stretch of the imagination, but the bouncy little Irishman had more years of practice under him. A lot more years. And he put them to what Snape quietly thought was awfully good use. Once Roddy had wrestled the robes off his shoulders, Snape slid his hands under the Irishman's shirt, avoiding the scar that crossed his belly, and cautiously caressed the slim man's chest. The kiss broke for a brief moment and with a flutter of cloth Roddy's shirt met the floor, and Snape's hands became a little less cautious, roving across the Irishman's skin.
Roddy shivered under the touch, huddling closer to his equally slim compatriot. "Don't let me get cold, Sev…" he teased, breathing the words into the potions master's ear. Sev shuddered beneath him, knees parting to balance Roddy precariously over the floor as he stripped his robes off completely and draped them over the slim Irishman.
"I don't think you get cold, Roddy. I don't think you ever sink below the boiling point." The tips of Snape's fingers dipped into Roddy's pants, fiddling with the catch as he continued to speak, dark eyes upturned to meet Roddy's green ones. "Have you forgotten how very many of your misadventures I was present for? How many I watched and listened to as they went on in the room where Lucky and I were trying to get properly intoxicated?" The pants opened easily in Snape's dexterous hands. "No, I don't think you do get cold."
Roddy laughed and kissed Sev again, lapping at the potions master's reluctant tongue. Sev was nothing like beautiful in any traditional sense of the word, but Roddy was, in his own opinion, pretty enough for both of them — and Sev was all he needed or wanted from the world, aside, of course, from the continued safety of his son, but young Master Prince seemed to have that well in hand. Now, it was time for Roddy to worry about himself — to take what he wanted, what he had wanted for so very long and so rarely got a taste of. He gripped the back of Sev's neck with one hand, holding the potions master in place as he kissed that much harder and more passionately, splitting his lip on the crooked teeth. The other hand caught and twisted a nipple in its slim fingers, and it was purely the inherent speed of the Lestrange line that let Roddy catch himself instead of toppling to the floor as Sev's hips bucked suddenly.
"Well, I seem to be warming you up," Roddy teased, nipping at Sev's lips. Any further commentary that might have been intended was cut off in a stunned gasp as the potions master's hand closed around the Irishman's cock.
"Not nearly as much as I appear to warm you," Snape purred, looking wholly wicked and entirely self-satisfied.
The thing about Sev, Roddy had noticed, was that it was hard to get him started, but once he got wound up, he could fend for himself pretty well. Roddy just still found it difficult to see where the line was. He didn't really suppose it mattered as he rocked his hips, thrusting into Sev's palm.
—-
"Severus, why do you never let me call you my lover?"
"Because we've been friends far too long."
