Coils

Warning: non/dub-con, chan

Author's Note: A birthday ficlet for Lady Bastet in four scenes, set during Lucius's and Snape's schooldays.

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The boy's limbs tend to snake around Lucius' body in his sleep, as if he was burrowing for warmth, or protection. He shouldn't permit it, Lucius thinks as his critical eyes take in sallow skin and lank, oily black hair that positively screams for a wash and a proper cut.

But he's eager, is young Master Snape, promising with his mouth and the elegant row of vertebrae when his spine arches under thin skin as Lucius enters him bestows on him the sole kiss of gracefulness he will ever gain.

There's a forbidden thrill in lowering himself to fuck a halfblood, but this fragile, vicious little viper of his own house redeems his blood when he spills it under Lucius' nails, and around his cock.

Salazar Slytherin is said to have shared his bed with a serpent; Lucius settles for this.

***

"I hate them!"

Lucius has to revise his earlier judgement; the child is alluring also when it is trembling with rage, with fingers twisted into claws like an underfed woodland predator. But Lucius' own arts haven't managed to wring tears from that scrawny body, so he doubts that Sirius Black and James Potter will. His boy is a Slytherin, after all.

"What would you have me do?"

It's probably only the dark, and his refuge in the crook of Lucius' elbow, that gives the boy the courage to speak.

"I want you to fuck him." Him - Black, of course. It makes Lucius wonder whether his Severus is aware of the implications that layer his demand.

"That's not very flattering, little one," he chides lightly. "Wishing me on an enemy."

Even in the dark, Lucius can see the sallow face colouring. "He'd hate it."

That much Lucius readily concedes. He'd be inclined to doubt that this particular litter of Gryffindors would know what to do if piled together into the same bed.

"They insult you behind your back," the boy snarls fiercely, and really, it isn't hard to imagine what would be said with regard to his Snape – 'lapdog' would be among the more harmless epithets.

"Is that why you fought?" Lucius traces one of the jagged, now lanced boils they've cursed the child's face with.

"No!" the boy protests, which tells Lucius everything.

"Brew something for him, then, little Prince." Lucius smiles, very slowly. "A school leaving gift for me - for both of us?"

The boy's lower lip trembles, a mere shadow in the darkened room, then his face sets into resolved lines.

"After the Leaving Feast, then."

***

He has Black that final night, a plump, succulent morsel twisting in the coils of Lucius' smooth limbs, dazed and burning with the sweet poison on his lips.

And Lucius uses him hard, like he's promised his Snape, and like the little traitor deserves for having forsaken the duties of blood to follow the siren song of the Sorting Hat. And he's beautiful, young Black, all promising angles under soft skin, untamed night hair and a whiff of caramelised apples from the Leaving Feast still on his breath.

Severus, who crouches on a stool in the darkest corner, watches with eyes as black as coagulating tar. Pain flowers on his face as he observes beauty being ravished by beauty, his own shortcomings outlined in glaring detail in the interplay of bodies before his eyes.

Those eyes will be what Black remembers, even if the dose of Nightburning Heartsache will scramble the details and obscure the memories inside his mind. Just as Severus will remember that he has sacrificed his last night with Lucius on Black's altar, all for the double-edged sword of revenge.

Lucius doesn't need a Divination OWL to predict the spilling of blood in their future. He smiles against the frantic pulse of Sirius Black's throat and delves back into the pleasures of the moment.

***

He makes his final good-byes to his Snape in a light-filled corridor, not far from where the night before they've set pretty Sirius Black free to stumble back to his bed in a haze of pained, shameful confusion. It isn't the time for words; Lucius' friends are waiting in the courtyard amidst the coaches, and he's ready to abandon the stuffy castle and leave his own mark on the world outside.

"You brewed well."

The boy flinches, then nods, too well versed to expect acknowledgement, or a touch.

Lucius reaches into the pocket of his cloak and enlarges the parcel that has been contained inside. Severus' fingers spread defensively before he takes the gift-wrapped thing from Lucius' hands. Slytherin to the core, Lucius observes with pride as the boy unwraps it. The fine silk paper ripples and tears under potion-discoloured nails, and the boy cringes with shame.

Then he gasps when the slipping shreds reveal the leather-bound cover of a book. The boy's dull eyes start to glimmer like they only do when Lucius is sheathed inside him to the balls, and Lucius hand is wrapped around the wet mess of Snape's thin member.

For Lucius, ordering a limited slipcase edition of Borage's new masterpiece means next to nothing, but he's seen the boy work from battered, crumbling school texts for those too poor to afford their own – a mark of shame in Slytherin house. He doubts Snape has ever received a new spellbook. Certainly not from that disgusting Muggle who claims to have fathered him.

Of course Borage's Advanced Potion-Making is terribly, well, advanced even for this precocious child, but Lucius knows he has snared what will, in time, evolve into a master brewer.

He watches the boy's fingers caress the crisp parchment of the inlay as if to imprint his name by touch, and realises that Severus has never touched his skin with quite as much reverie.

"Don't forget who you are, little Prince," Lucius murmurs, and raises a gloved hand at last to lay along the curve of the boy's cheek. Snape turns his face, the potions book still clutched to his chest, until his thin lips touch Lucius' palm through the sheer white leather.

No, the boy will never forget, that much Lucius is sure of. Not who he is, not whom he belongs to. He's given his body for a few scraps of affection, and now, Lucius has snared his mind as well. Let Rodolphus and Walden mock that the proud heir of Malfoy has chosen a scrawny, ugly halfblood for his bed – Lucius knows he's made the most profitable choice of them all.

~ finis ~