Title: Catamites
Fandom: Potterverse
Characters: Severus Snape ♂, Rodolphus Lestrange ♂, Lucius Malfoy ♂
Rating: T (L2Â N0 S0 V0 D2)
Warnings: Drunken teenage deatheaters, buttsex jokes, narrowly averted violence
Notes: "Number two out of three, in a matched set of catamites!" Severus Snape objects strongly to this characterisation — not of his two best friends, but of himself.
"Number two out of three, in a matched set of catamites!" Rodolphus chirped, tipping his head to the side, toward Lucius, over Severus's head. The kid was getting taller, but he hadn't quite caught up yet.
"Two of two, in a matched pair of catamites," Severus grumbled. "I don't have your pretty face, Roddy, and there are no cocks near my arse."
Lucius and Rodolphus dropped back a step, in unison, without a word spoken, and cracked their hips together, soundly, as they both thrust toward Severus. They leaned their heads together, drunkenly sniggering.
"And if you two becocked cocks get any closer to my arse, you'll be half-cocked at best, when it's over." He knew them so well. They were, after all, his best friends. And what in the jackal's teeth he was doing with an elegant pureblood from one of England's most pretentious pureblood families and his pet Paddy, he hadn't quite figured out yet, and it had been a couple of years. Or, more to the point, what they were doing with him. He had no illusions about his worth, as these things were usually measured — he was angry, loudmouthed, ugly, and worst of all, a mudblood. Of course, Roddy was Irish and took it in the arse, so that wasn't really a step up. But, they were funny and took him to the pub, and Lucius was funding his education a bit, so he wasn't about to start bitching. Much. Except those times Roddy started pawing at him.
Severus reached behind him and snatched Roddy's beer, drinking more of it than he'd quite meant, in the first swallow. It kept him from having to say anything else for a bit. He finished coughing, and they were still cackling quietly to each other, faces distorted with amusement, whispering, because neither could inhale enough between laughs for more.
"You two giggling dandies good to walk, or have I got to go back to the house and send Finnegan to get you?" Finnegan was, in Sev's opinion, the least terrifying of Roddy's multitude of strange family members. Finney made proper sense, most of the time. Bad jokes, good drinks, and backslapping. The occasional good-humoured knock-down, roll-about brawl in the great room — with someone else.
Roddy turned forward, suddenly, holding his hands out in the universal gesture for 'oh my god, that's a horrible idea'. "No no no no. Don't go get Finney."
Lucius stumbled against the sudden absence of Roddy's shoulder. "Why the hell not?" he panted, still chuckling. "Finnegan can carry me home, anytime!"
"Because he'll wake up Murphy. Or Sullivan."
Before that moment, if anyone had suggested to Severus that Lucius Malfoy could get paler, he'd have laughed, but it was that subtle difference between milk and snow.
"Oh, shit. No. Don't go get Finney." Lucius froze. "I'm too English for Sullivan, at this hour." He grabbed the front of Roddy's shirt, with one hand, and smacked the back of his other hand against his forehead. "I'm too young to die!"
Roddy started laughing again, leaning forward to hold onto his knees, as Lucky's hand slipped off him. It wasn't that Sullivan wouldn't actually kill Lucky, because at this hour, he most certainly would. It was just the ridiculousness of the entire situation, and that last bit of perfectly timed melodrama. Lucky was a master of overdramatizing serious situations, for a laugh. And just so, Severus started laughing first, and then Lucius fell in with the bout of barely-contained hysterical amusement.
Roddy heaved himself upright, with a wheeze, and draped an arm across Sev's shoulders. "You're really missing out on the cocks in your arse thing, though, Sev. Nothing like it."
Lucky's arm dropped across his shoulders from the other side. "Trust him. He'd know."
"You'd know, Lucius. Don't think I can't hear the two of you."
"Yes. Yes, I would." He said it proudly, and there was that shit-eating grin that made Severus want to punch him right in his perfect, white teeth. "You say that like it's a bad thing, which means you don't believe him at all."
"There's this very simple thing you two keep forgetting: That would involve me letting someone touch me." Severus rolled his shoulders and stepped out from under their arms. "That is, therefore, a completely revolting idea." He finished Roddy's beer and lobbed the bottle into a field. It really had nothing to do with the number of cocks involved in the scenario. He didn't much want girls touching him, either. People touching him tended to end poorly for him, and he figured to save himself the trouble, by just putting a stop to it. It's not like he had any driving urges to do elsewise, unlike … apparently everyone else in the world, after third year.
"You'll get over that. You will. One of these years. Maybe once you're out of that house." Roddy sounded sure of it, like he always did. "It's the stress making you weird."
"Once everything calms down, and you get used to the idea that everything doesn't go wrong, all the time, you'll embrace it. Or him. Or her. Or all of the above." Lucius looked down the road, contemplatively. "Do either of you have another beer, do I have to go get more?"
"We're only a mile or so out, Lucky. Don't be daft. You'll splinch yourself." Roddy shoved Lucius's shoulder.
They staggered and stumbled back toward the Lestrange holdings, shoving each other and laughing over stupid jokes. Severus wondered if maybe they were right — if he'd change when things settled down. He didn't know if it would matter, even if he didn't. They cared, but they didn't mind. He was weird, they knew it, they gave him a hard time, he gave it right back, and it never ended in a fight. And if somehow, that made him a default third catamite, in this proposed matched set, he'd take that. Without the extra cocks.
