Your Scorn Became A God

Title: Your Scorn Became A God
Author: Anath de Malfoy
Written for the Merry Smutmas LJ Community as a gift fic for Tiadawn
Rating: Hard R/NC-17
Pairing: Snape/Black
Summary: Post OOtP AU. Sirius Black has survived - but can Severus Snape ever forget the past?
Disclaimer: All characters and profits belong to J.K. Rowling. I\'m just borrowing them for a while.
Warnings: M/M slash, slight angst, AU, some possible slight OOCness
Author\'s notes: The poetry quoted is by Federico Garcia Lorca (1898-1936); the poems are \"Ghazal of Dark Death\". \"Night of Sleepless Love\" and \"Fable of Three Friends To Be Sung In Rounds\" respectively. Quoted without permission but with much respect, devotion and love.

\"I don\'t want to hear that the dead lose no blood
that the decomposed mouth is still begging for water.
I don\'t want to find out about grass-given martyrdoms
or the snake-mouthed moon that works before dawn.\"

- Federico Garcia Lorca, from \"Ghazal of Dark Death\"

Seeing Sirius Black stripped bare, helpless as a child, frail and pallid as he was sponged free of whatever that clammy preternatural substance was that had clung to his body after he emerged from the realm behind the veil... it was a strangely poignant experience, inspiring a raw, emergent tenderness in Severus Snape. Black seemed more real now, more human, less like the conceited, heartbreakingly beautiful youth who had once been his tormentor. Lightly soaping the last of the sticky grey matter from Black\'s naked flesh, Snape pulled a light silk night-robe over the comatose man\'s limbs and carried him to the comfortable quilted bed that awaited him, deep in this hidden chamber of Hogwarts Castle. A room so secret that no living soul other than Dumbledore had known of its existence before now.

Snape was to be Black\'s sole caretaker, nursing him back to health until such time as he woke from his coma and recovered enough to make his return to the Order of the Phoenix. Nobody was to be told that Black had survived his jourbeyobeyond the veil at the Department of Mysteries - not even Black\'s godson Harry Potter. Severus had thought this stipulation most peculiar - although Snape disliked the Potter boy, surely he had a right to know the fate of his beloved godfather. But Albus Dumbledore had been adamant. No one must know for the time being that Sirius Black was still alive. Harry Potter was no longer a child, to be sure, but he was still not yet a fully fledged wizard. He was still young and vulnerable, and that youth and vulnerability could easily be exploited by the unscrupulous.

\"I may sound like Alastor Moody in saying this, Severus, but we must be constantly on our guard,\" Dumbledore had pronounced sternly, his usually twinkling eyes staring cold and hard with a sense of determination. \"We know not where our enemies may emerge from - for all we know, foes may already lurk amongst us. Secrecy is of the utmost importance. Sirius will have a vital role in the upcoming battles against Voldemort. His safety is therefore our paramount concern, and I am entrusting him to your exclusivre.\re.\"

\"Why me?\" Snape had answered, striving to keep the distaste from his voice with little success.
\"Because you are the one the Death Eaters would least suspect to be shielding Black,\" Albus had replied, transfixing Snape with that unflinching gaze. \"Your history of mutual animosity guarantees that. Besides, your potion-making skills are necessary to aid his recovery. Loath as I am to compel you to do something against your will, Severus, you must tend to Sirius. There is no other way.\"

And so it went. Snape performed his normal teaching duties by day, but at night he returned to the secret room to sponge-bath Black and smear healing and nourishing balms that he himself had concocted upon the man who still breathed but lay deep in his unearthly swoon.

It was not merely Black\'s body that Snape was to attempt to heal. Dumbledore had recommended music, and books read aloud to help re-awaken Black\'s slumbering mind. To that effect, Dumbledore had supplied Snape with a little Celtic harp that played by itself, and any number of literary collections - prose, poetry and plays, both wizard and Muggle. Dry Potions texts, Dumbledore had said with a droll little smile, would not do at all. They would probably serve to put Black into an even deeper sleep.

\"Very amusing, Headmaster,\" Snape had muttered darkly to hlf alf as he had left Dumbledore\'s office. \"You may think that this situation is funny - I, however, most certainly do not.\"

The harp\'s merry tinkling began to irritate Snape severely after a while, so he dispensed with its services and turned instead to the books. To his surprise, he found himself starting to enjoy some of them. Especially the poetry; he found himself particularly charmed by the works of one Federico Garcia Lorca, a Muggle poet. A man of almost mystical innocence and sensuality, cruelly killed before his time for daring to speak against tyranny and daring to passionately love other men. His words were mesmerising. As a proud, pure-blooded wizard, Snape had been raised to despise things Muggle, but there seemed to be almost as much magic in the poems of Lorca as there was in the most arcane of spells. Reciting these haunting lines, Snape found himself transported back to the tender moments of his own youth. Those childhood days when he had first seen Sirius Black and been entranced by his graceful form, his roguish smile. The days before James Potter, Lupin and Pettigrew had turned Black into a bitter enemy of Snape\'s like themselves. The words were soothing, pure, as much a balm as the potions with which Snape poured all his buried and forgotten love back into Black, hoping against hope that when he awoke things would change for the better between them.

\"We two, the night ahead, the full moon looming:
I began to weep while you laughed.
Your scorn became a god, and my complaints
Were little doves and moments in a chain.\"

This was the verse on Snape\'s lips the night he heard Black sigh, and saw his eyelids flutter open. Snape was swiftly at Black\'s side, administering water and restoratives, but Black was more interested in the poem.

\"It\'s beautiful,\" he whispered raptly, his eyes wide as a child\'s as he tried to raise himself on one thin elbow. \"Did you write it?\"
\"Of course not,\" Snape retorted, a sudden rush of sentiment making him feel very awkward; he sought the familiar refuge of sarcasm instead. \"It\'s by a Muggle poet named Lorca. He\'s a favourite of Moody\'s - the Headmaster borrowed the book from Moody. Apparently, that\'s how Alastor got Kingsley Shacklebolt to fall in love with him. Reciting Lorca.\"

Black managed a weak laugh. \"Not exactly what I needed to make a full recovery, Snape - the thought of Mad-Eye Moody having a sex life,\" he began flippantly, but stopped as he saw cold fury hardening Snape\'s face into a snarl.

\"That is exactly the sort of shallow, childish thing I would have expected you to say twenty years ago, Black,\" Snape snapped icily. \"I had hoped that the near-death state I have single-handedly pulled you back from would have endowed you with some humility, compassion or common sense, but apparently I was naïve to believe that.\" His eyes bored like two fiery dark stars into Black\'s as he continued, \"I\'ll have you know that Alastor Moody got every scar on him fighting against evil. Protecting ingrates like you from Dark wizardry...\" He was breathing hard and fast now, the dam of pent-up anger, frustration and hidden lust cracking at last. \"Do you want to know why I was so fascinated by the Dark Arts when I was a boy? The real reason? I wanted to be an Auror, just like Moody. But at Careers Advice they said I didn\'t have the right temperament. Too introverted, withdrawn, self-centred... due in large part to you and your sadistic, bullying friends, I believe! I never wanted to stray from the Light, but Rosier, Wilkes and the rest of them were the closest things I ever had to friends. I wasn\'t good enough for you finely evolved taste, was I?\" Snape found himself turning away to hide the unwelcome sting of tears as he sneered bitterly, \"No, only Mudblood-lovers, werewolves and whimpering little traitors were good enough to associate with the high and mighty Sirius Black!\"

Drawing himself up to his full height, Snape swept from the room, ignoring Black\'s shocked expression and his cry of, \"Hey, Snape! I\'m sorry - I was joking - I didn\'t mean...\"

Caring for Black would never be the same again, Snape told himself grimly as he hurried away. Gone was the joy in poetry, the sensual, secret thrill of caressing Sirius, watching him sleep, daydreaming of what might have been. He would visit Black in the wee small hours of the morning from now on, bringing what the patient\'s physical wellbeing required and slipping out again unnoticed. No admonitions from Dumbledore about Black being starved for human contact could ever make him look into Black\'s eyes again. All those fragile hopes and dreams, memories of how he had touched Sirius and wished he could be lovingly stroked in return, now made him feel merely ashamed and aggrieved.

Day after day, Snape steadfastly kept his resolve. His bitter mood grew ever worse; he found himself more intolerant than ever of the students, even stripping fifty points from his own House, Slytherin, when Gregory Goyle knocked over a jar of leeches in the classroom. In the hours before each hellish dawn lightened the sky, Snape would flee from Black\'s chamber back to his own abode, fling himself down upon his lonely bed in a tangle of hitched-up robes, stroke himself to hardness and cry Black\'s name as he climaxed, pleasure and mortification and guilt swamping him. Yes, guilt - and the regret that adult vengeance was being exacted for a childhood grudge.

But Black would never understand that Snape bore scars every bit as grievous as Alastor Moody\'s; not upon his body, but upon his mind and soul. The wounds of being told and shown time and time again that he was unlovable, never good enough, until he almost came to believe it himself.

It was the sixth, maybe the seventh, night of Snape\'s condemning Sirius Black to the hell of loneliness. Snape had sneaked into the secret chamber again, as silently as he could, laying down his tray of food, drink and medicine. But as he turned to leave as discreetly as he had come, he saw a lit wand held aloft, a figure draped in white, and heard a voice lovingly chanting the words of a Lorca poem:

\"When the pure shapes sank
under the chirping of daisies
I knew that they had murdered me.
They combed the cafes, graveyards, and churches for me,
pried open casks and cabinets,
destroyed three skeletons in order to rip out their gold teeth.
But they couldn\'t find me anymore.
They couldn\'t.
No, they couldn\'t find me...\"

Snape halted and gasped as Black approached him. Sirius\' white silk robe hung open, revealing the ghostly, archangelic beauty of his luminous flesh. What remained of his musculature was tense and damp with feverish sweat, and his eyes were wet.

\"You found me,\" he whispered hoarsely. \"Your voice pulled me from that deatsleesleep, and I was too caught up in my own selfishness to realise it.\"

Snape felt flustered and taken aback. He struggled not to show it, attempting to camouflage his feelings with his customary dourness.

\"I\'m glad you think so,\" he said stiffly, and was about to make his exit when he felt Black\'s light touch upon his arm. For some reason it held him to the spot more firmly than the tightest grip as Black stared into his eyes and said quietly:

\"I hurt you badly all those years ago, I know it. I\'m not proud of what I did. There was never any excuse. I don\'t expect you to understand or forgive me, as I probably don\'t deserve it. But I want you to know this, Severus. I was just a kid. Confused and scared as hell and wanting to impress my friends... trying so hard to deny that I wasn\'t the same as them. Hiding what I truly was from them every single day. Pretending to despise the one I could have easily learned to love. Never daring to admit to myself how much I wanted you...\"

\"You what - ?\" Snape found himself gasping incredulously, but ceased immediately as he felt himself enveloped in the strength of Black\'s arms, and Black\'s mouth fiercely, possessively claiming his. Their robes were soon but a memory as they fell and tussled on the unmade bed, Black\'s tongue entwined with Snape\'s, his hands all over the Potions Master\'s aching, needing body. Snape moaned as Black\'s mouth moved down towards his nipples, lightly grazing them with sharp teeth, Black growling like the beast he became in Animagus form as he licked along Snape\'s sternum and further downwards, dusting butterfly kisses across Snape\'s stomach, caressing Snape\'s erection with an eager tongue before swallowing the length of Snape, deep-throating him with sensuous motions of his lips that had Snape so excited that his hips were soon lifting involuntarily, and he came into Black\'s mouth the very moment the other man\'s hand began to rub along the sensitive flesh of his balls, cradling them gently.

\"Sorry...\" Snape mumbled as Sirius swallowed his seed and looked up, gently smiling.
\"Don\'t worry about it, Sev, just let me handle this... I\'m the one with a lifetime\'s worth of amends to make, after all,\" Black whispered. Snape, his head reeling, fell back and allowed his legs to be raised and pushed back, his knees against his chest, as he felt the tip of Black\'s wand press against his anus and heard the lubrication spell pronounced. With firm but tender strokes, Black soon had his cock fully sheathed in Snape, and softly moved in and out, lovingly teasing the other\'s prostate, whispering words of tenderness, encouragement and praise until Snape found himself aroused again. His eyes never left Black\'s face for an instant; he could hardly believe this was real. The two of them locked as one, Black thrusting and Snape taking in all of not not rushed or frenzied or guilty but slow and gentle and just so perfect... \"Gods, you\'re tight,\" Snape heard Black gasp as he pushed in deeper; the sweetness of heat and friction and the merging of their bodies so delicious that both men soon lost all reason, the only sounds being flesh on flesh and their animal moans. The glorious pressure of Snape\'s inner muscles deliciously gripped Black as he flooded the luscious channel with seed; as he slowly pulled out, Black\'s hand clenched around Snape\'s still swollen hardness and began to stroke it firmly, sensually, until Snape\'s own pleasure was released a second time. Black lovingly licked the hot, delectably salty droplets from his hand and pulled Snape close, kissing his hair as both men collapsed against each other.

Snape looked upon the sated Black and smiled a strange little half-smile. He did not know how many steps it would be to saying \"I forgive you.\" But the journey to \"I love you\" would most likely not be so long or arduous, though it would take a little time, and a great deal of thought. Maybe something in Lorca\'s magic words would help them on their way.

~ Fin.