Chapter Text
They did not kill each other that afternoon, as Snape finished work on a couple of potions that couldn't wait until the next day while Potter -- as good as his word -- chopped ingredients and cleaned up the cauldrons. Lily watched them from the bouncing chair, occasionally dozing and occasionally whimpering, though a few tricks with charms kept her happy when she didn't want her nappy changed or simply to be held and bounced by a person. Just as Snape had expected, Potter kept up a stream of inane dialogue, calling her princess and beautiful and any number of other appalling cliches. Snape refrained from complaining.
"We should go for a walk," Potter announced when they had finished working. "You've been indoors all day and some fresh air would do her good." He did not wait for Snape to agree, but went to retrieve a fuzzy pink jumper with bunny ears on the hood, which he pulled onto a squirming Lily, who whimpered at having her face covered momentarily.
"You do realize that she will probably vomit on all that pink," warned Snape.
Turning, Potter smiled at him. "She's been fine all day. Whatever you're putting in her bottles is working."
"I meant because it looks ridiculous." That only made Potter laugh out loud as he unfolded what had appeared to Snape to be a work apron but was, in fact, some sort of sling for carrying a baby. "You aren't actually going to walk around wearing that thing?"
"Why, did you want to wear it?" Potter held it out to him.
Snape tried to imagine what any of his neighbors or clients would think if they saw him carrying a fuzzy pink bunny in a sling. "When I take her, it will be in a stroller."
"Well, come with us anyway -- we can get fish and chips." Potter nodded in satisfaction, apparently certain that they key to Snape's heart lay in his stomach.
Lily fell asleep against Potter's chest practically the moment they walked out the door, and slept for nearly two hours, as they walked through the road and across the park and ate greasy fried food standing at an outdoor table as the sun set. "Doesn't she take proper naps?" Snape demanded.
Shrugging, Potter said, "Whenever I've left her alone in her crib, she's screamed for an hour. Even if I played music."
"She needs a routine. Regular sleeping hours. Scheduled feedings, once her stomach is..."
"Scheduled! She's a baby." Laughing, Potter peered down into Lily's scrunched face. "I don't think you can discipline her until she's old enough to sit up by herself, at least." He glanced at Snape. "You're not planning to be awful when she makes mistakes and keep her indoors filing detention slips, are you?"
Snape's eyes narrowed. "That punishment was particularly for you."
"Because you didn't like me."
"Because you never bothered to discipline yourself!"
Sighing, Potter jiggled Lily in the sling. "I know what you think, but I never played pranks like my father did or used magic to get other people into trouble. And when I snuck out of my dormitory, there was always a good reason." He looked at Snape defiantly. "You didn't answer me. Are you expecting to punish her every time she doesn't do what you want her to do?"
Snape studied the small face half hidden by a tiny fist. "Do you believe you can keep her safe -- the daughter of the Chosen One -- without proper discipline?"
He expected Potter to lash out at him but whether he feared upsetting the blissfully sleeping infant or had grown out of his childish temper, Potter looked thoughtful. His hand rested between the bunny ears, stroking absently. "I never thought about what my reputation -- what all that rubbish would mean to her, " he said with a sigh. "There will always be someone who'll remember though, won't there?"
"Someone who will want to curry favor, or worse," Snape agreed, feeling an odd sort of tightening in his chest. "No child is born knowing right or wrong or when to cry for attention and when to cry because something is wrong." Snape reached to wipe a bit of something clinging to Lily's cheek, his arm very close to Potter's. "If she has a routine, we'll know the difference, and so will she."
Potter was nodding. "But no punishment unless we both agree. I don't want her to ever be afraid of -- of either of us."
The hesitation made Snape look at him, but Potter was fiddling with one of the ears of the bunny suit, making a show of adjusting it to keep out the slanting rays of the setting sun. Snape couldn't imagine that Potter had ever been afraid of anything.
"You'd have made a good father," Potter said, looking up quickly, then back down. For a moment, given the line of his own thoughts, Snape wasn't certain if Potter meant for Lily or for Potter himself.
"I would not." Snape wrinkled his nose. "I was surrogate parent to sixteen years of Slytherins and I assure you not one of them ever felt the least bit paternal towards me."
That made Potter laugh, not loud enough to disturb Lily, then he too, wrinkled his nose. "Nappy time."
They started for home -- Snape's home. "Indeed."
There was, predictably another fuss over the sleeping arrangements. "Look, I can't keep taking over your bedroom," Potter protested. The walk and the fresh air had been invigorating, but Potter had been yawning since they'd settled down in the sitting room, while Lily was awake and eager for the attention she'd missed.
"I'm not sleepy and you are. I'll stay up with her tonight and we can begin settling her routine this week." Lily clapped her hands as if approving the idea of a routine, though actually she was reaching for one of the dragon tails on the mobile. "I'll make some adjustments for when you visit next weekend."
"Next...weekend?" Potter's jaw snapped shut mid-yawn.
Snape pursed his lips and put down the notes he was working on. "Regular routine, remember?" Snape snapped, wondering whether his rash offer was about to be thrown back into his face.
"Oh, I remember," said Potter and there was enough light by the sitting room fire to see the spots of color in Potter's cheeks. "I just hadn't expected to, um..." He was rubbing the back of his neck again.
"To what? To come back so soon?" Snape should have known their truce would wither under--
"To leave."
Snape blinked.
"You're right, of course," Potter said quickly, trying to look nonchalant and managing only to look like a fourth year explaining how his cauldron had turned to pudding. "Next weekend, right. She'll like that." He sprang out of his armchair where he'd been dozing over The Theory and Practice of Auror Training, Level 1 and knelt by Lily's bouncing chair. "Won't you, princess?"
"Potter --" Snape began, frowning.
"I can't stay here, I know that," Potter rattled off over-brightly.
"Potter," Snape said again, more loudly.
"I just wasn't thinking," Potter said, clearly babbling now, "I do that, you know?"
"Harry!" Snape hadn't meant to say it but it had the effect of finally getting Potter's attention. Both Potter and Lily were looking at him now, though only one of them was drooling. "In the interest of a regular routine," Snape said, choosing his words with more care than he was used to. "Perhaps it might be best to keep the current arrangement until we've concluded we won't be upsetting her by trying to kill each other."
Potter's smile flared, bright and unguarded and something Snape never thought to see directed at himself. "All right, but then you should sleep in your bed," he said.
"Not this again. I should be allowed to make some rules in my own house..."
"Rules we both agreed upon, right. So Lily doesn't get contradictory messages." Potter looked at her, and then, as if they had rehearsed it for a comic play, they both yawned at precisely the same moment, even tilting their heads the same way. Snape had to press his lips together to keep from smiling. "I can sleep out here with her..."
"Perhaps if you both sleep in a dark room, she may even sleep through the night. No more arguments. We'll set up the crib in there, and you shall have the bed."
"You know, that bed is big enough that we could share it." Potter had spoken irritably -- without thinking, as usual -- so it took a moment for his own words to sink in.
Snape watched him blush, aware that his own mouth had curved into something like a sneer. "You should be careful who you go around inviting to your bed," he said.
"Your bed, you mean," Potter said dangerously. "I only invited myself. Considering that you've practically been begging me to sleep there..."
Lily made a gurgling noise. "Oh yes, you've uncovered my scheme," huffed Snape. "I agreed to take the baby in only to lure you to my bed."
Unexpectedly, Potter giggled. "It's a silly scheme. It's not like I can think about sex with a wailing baby in the room." Turning, he picked up Lily. "If I give you a bottle now, you'll let Daddy sleep for a few hours, won't you, princess?"
Lily made a coo of approval which probably owed more to the attention than the prospect of a bottle. Snape's first instinct was to insist that Potter toddle on off to bed, but Potter was already getting the bottle ready, apparently perfectly content with his one-sided conversation.
"Who's daddy's pretty girl?" he said, cooing every bit as much as she did over a brief but intense game of peek-a-boo while the formula warmed.
Snape tried to look like he was immersed in his notes when Potter, Lily in one arm and the bottle in the other, reclaimed the arm chair. "I don't know how to thank you," he said, once Lily settled down with the bottle.
"You can start by getting a proper night's sleep." He glanced at the fuzzy bundle in his arms. "You should have let me do that."
Wiping a stray drop of formula before it got onto the blanket, Potter shrugged. "I like doing this part. It was always the screaming after that made me feel..." He gave a little shudder and glanced up at Snape. "I faced down a Dark Lord and Death Eaters -- no offense --"
"None taken," Snape said, curious about where this was going.
"But I never felt as helpless and out of my league as when she started to cry and cry and there wasn't anything I could do to make her stop." He looked back down at the pink cheeks swathed in the blankets. "We won't be nuisances, I swear." He picked Lily up and maneuvered her over his shoulder. Once she'd burped, he laid her over his knees. "I'll change her nappy before I go --"
Snape held out his hands. "She doesn't need it. Go up to bed and I'll bring her up when she's ready." Potter looked uncertain, but as if acknowledging his own pledge not to be a nuisance, he nodded, lifting up carefully and crossing the space to Snape's armchair. He leaned down, placing Lily into Snape's outstretched arms. Her eyes were half-closed but she punched the air between them, kicking out against Snape's legs.
Potter was leaning down, smiling with that same adoring smile that he had in unguarded moments looking at her. Then he was looking at Snape, leaning over -- it was just a few inches -- and Snape was looking up, about to ask what else he needed. Potter's mouth brushed his cheek before he got the words out. "Thanks," he said quietly.
Snape sat and glared after Potter long after he had disappeared to go to bed, until Lily's cranky whimper brought him back to himself. He shifted the baby, who still looked drowsy, though not quite asleep; she was peering at him from beneath lowered lids.
"This is your fault," Snape told her. She only wriggled and made a small creaky noise. With a sigh, Snape lifted her, resting her head against his shoulder as his arms wrapped around her back and legs. She fit very comfortably there, and though she hadn't had a bath in hours, she smelled good...like Potter's hair, Snape realized with chagrin.
Perhaps he wasn't being fair to her. While it was unquestionably true that she would be better off remaining with Potter than risking the effects of a broken Binding Spell, and while even Snape would likely make a better guardian than some of the people likely to take in an orphan whose magic might be damaged by losing the wizard to whom she'd been bound, Snape knew that he'd been evading any thoughts about his own motives. Potter had believed he'd let himself get attached to the baby because Potter had named her after Lily Evans, but Snape knew better. By the time the war had ended, he'd realized that his promise to keep Lily's son safe had become his excuse rather than his reason. Dumbledore had seen right through him.
So when Potter had come in here with a baby, begging for help, insinuating himself into Snape's life and overflowing with gratitude, of course Snape hadn't been able to help going along with him. He'd spent more time with Potter in the past day than he'd ever done before, and apparently Potter had either become so desperate or grown up sufficiently in the interim that he was treating Snape like a friend. But even though he now knew they shared the same orientation, that didn't mean Potter was or ever would be in any way interested in Snape beyond needing someone to share the unexpected responsibility of the child.
Snape had found a way to bind Potter to him, as surely as a Binding Spell, not truly for Lily's sake but for Snape's own.
The child had become a motionless weight in his arms, drooling on his unprotected shoulder. She had fallen asleep without making a sound. Was there any possibility that Potter had exaggerated the effects of her colic just so he had an excuse to ask Snape to...no, that was absurd. If Potter had wanted to see him, he could have found any of a dozen excuses. He'd had no desire to reconnect until he had urgent need of Snape's assistance, and now, as was Potter's wont, he was allowing himself to cling to this new source of support the same way he'd attached himself to Granger and then Lupin and then Black.
Carefully Snape worked a hand behind Lily's head so he could lower her into her crib, where she jerked as if startled when he set her down, yet did not cry. He glanced over at Potter, who appeared to be fast asleep, curled up on the far side of Snape's bed. Unable to face the prospect of an entire night on the sofa -- Potter had been right, it wasn't comfortable even with an inflation charm -- Snape sat on the edge of the bed and watched both Potter and the baby. After a few minutes he summoned his book. Rationalizing that if Lily fussed, he might be able to get to her before she woke Potter, he set a pillow against the headboard and settled back to read.
It must have been several hours later that he woke, still propped against his own headboard. There were soft fussing noises from the cot but Snape could not move. Potter had shifted, leaning against Snape's leg, one hand spread over his thigh.
The fact that Snape had an erection was not helping.
"Coming, prin --" Bugger it. "Coming, princess," he called out softly. As gently as he could he lifted Potter's hand and returned it. There wasn't really a good place to put it except back onto Potter's body, since he'd slid over so far in the bed.
"Wha --" Potter mumbled, sleepily.
"Go back to sleep," Snape ordered, still trying to be quiet lest Lily wake up more fully.
But Potter had never listened to any one of Snape's orders over the years, and apparently, even sleeping, he did not intend to start now. His eyes were fluttering open and he groaned, rolling over and shielding his eyes with one arm. "Fuck."
"Not in front of the baby," Snape hissed as Potter slid his arm away and started to sit up. "I said I'll take care of it. Go back to sleep." Snape was already summoning the bottle he'd left downstairs.
Potter hovered, still looking sleepy and grumpy and rumpled and kissable. He shook his head, then looked over to Snape's side of the bed. "Were you --"
The bottle arrived and Snape started the warming charm on it before reaching under the pink pile of blankets for Lily. Her eyes were crinkled as she reached for a stray lock of Snape's hair, fisting it happily as though he'd given her one of the silver rattles that Lucius Malfoy considered appropriate playthings for infants.
"Was I what?" Snape asked, testing the formula before offering it to Lily's eager mouth.
"You were," Potter said, sliding his hand over the indentation where Snape's bottom had been moments before. "You were in bed with me." He looked pleased by this.
"Just to be close in case --" Snape began, sitting back down on the edge of the bed. Potter immediately peered over and offered a finger for her other hand, but she stubbornly held onto Snape's hair.
"Right." Potter had kissed his cheek before Snape even had time to rebut this. Even if he'd had the inclination. "I'll get the nappy."
They had Lily fed and changed and peek-a-booed until her eyes were drooping and they looked at each other with the sort of triumph only someone who has fed and changed a baby in the middle of the night can share.
"Back to bed," Potter said, taking a turn in the loo before collapsing back into Snape's bed. He exhaled heavily, voice already slowing. "No excuses." Snape sat back on the edge. "Bed," Potter said from the other side. He'd rolled away again, his back to Snape, which made it easier to lean back against the headboard the way he'd been before. "All the way," said Potter without looking over. "We can't both be exhausted in the morning. I promise not to molest you."
Snorting, Snape slid down, tugging the covers over his legs.
"Though I might kiss you again in the morning," Snape heard, very softly, the words starting to slur.
Snape thought about pointing out that that counted as molestation, but he also thought that Potter might not do it if he made such an observation. While he contemplated his conflicting responses to such a realization, Potter and Lily both sighed in their sleep simultaneously. In the dim room, Snape glanced from the cot to the back of the head of the boy -- no, the man -- beside him.
For someone who despised having his private space infringed upon, he felt ridiculously pleased.
Well, it wouldn't do to get used to this. Soon enough, Lily would sleep through the night, and Potter would want to return to his friends and the home he'd inherited from Black. He'd be busy with Auror training, he wouldn't want to stand around Snape's workroom cleaning up and making conversation. Snape would get to see him on occasion dropping Lily off and reclaiming her, perhaps once a week for dinner, but that was all it could ever be.
With a soft sigh, he closed his eyes and waited for the exhaustion of taking care of an infant to make him stop thinking.
The heat woke Snape. He thought at first that perhaps his need for sleep had tricked him into casting a heating charm, forgetting that it was no longer winter. Then he realized that something warm was pressing against his side.
It was Potter, whose face pressed against Snape's shoulder, one arm flung across Snape's side. From the steadiness of his breathing, Snape guessed that Potter was still asleep. From the quiet across the room, Snape guessed that Lily was as well.
He tried wriggling forward, but Potter made a small noise and flopped forward, his arm sliding further around Snape. That would not do at all, particularly since Snape had woken with his customary erection. From the feel of things, so had Potter. Bigger than Snape would have guessed, too...not that he had been thinking about the size of Potter's prick, much.
Somehow he had to escape before Potter woke up and they were both mortified. He tried to flatten himself and slip out from under Potter's arm, rolling carefully onto his back, but that just meant that he was looking at Potter's face when Potter's eyes fluttered open.
"She's still asleep, isn't she?" whispered Potter.
"She won't be if you don't shut up," Snape hissed, though his angry words sounded louder than Potter's inquiry had been.
"I'll keep us very quiet." Potter grinned at him. Before Snape could begin to guess what this might mean, Potter's mouth had descended over his. He made a small noise of surprise -- that was entirely Potter's fault -- before deciding that surrendering to the kiss would be a course of action less likely to wake the baby than pulling away and risking Potter's splutter of protest.
In spite of everything -- the awkwardness and unfamiliarity and the fact that neither of them had brushed his teeth yet -- it wasn't a bad kiss. In fact, Snape was forced to admit, it seemed to be quite a good kiss, in his limited experience that had seldom, no, never involved waking up with someone snuggled against him who wanted to kiss him good morning. He kissed Potter back before he remembered that it was a terrible idea.
"You promised not to molest me," he said aloud.
"I'm not touching anything molestable." Potter grinned down at him.
It was that grin that nearly undid him. "You know what will happen, whatever we do, Lily will wake up and have to stop and we'll never know --" Something bitter choked in the back of his throat.
Potter's grin didn't vanish entirely, but faded into a smile. "I think you already know." He kissed Snape again, still smiling, despite Snape being cross and barely kissing back, merely using his reluctance as a cue to kiss him more until Snape slid and arm around him and drew him down. Potter drew back for a shaky breath. "I may have to molest you if we go any further." They'd kept their voices low, their mouths close.
"I won't be this," Snape said, trying to find fault with his decision. "I won't be a convenient outlet for you, I can't." His fingers stroked the back of Potter's neck before sliding away.
"Convenient?" Potter laughed softly, obviously not taking him seriously. Truthfully, having an erection still poking into Potter's own was probably not helping Snape's case. "I practically had to order you to share your own bed with me." Potter shook his head, shifting down so he could rest his head against Snape's chest. "We can just do this if you like. I won't molest you, but I like being close to you." He rubbed a shock of his untidy hair against Snape's shoulder. "As close as you're comfortable with, this or...or more."
Potter's unexpected burst of maturity and restraint momentarily shook Snape's own resolve. He let Potter rest against him, let the erotic energy drain away until there was simply the comfort of holding someone close. "You know we shouldn't ever go any farther than this," he said, looking at his own fingers threading through Potter's hair as if they belonged to someone else.
"I don't know anything of the sort." Potter tilted his face up at him. "Unless you aren't attracted to me, in which case, yes, I'll just try to go back to admiring you from afar."
Potter knew enough to keep his voice hushed, but Snape let out a snort of disbelief that drew a snuffle from the cot in the corner. "You're confusing admiration with loathing again," he pointed out, even though Potter was shaking his head -- well, moving his chin over Snape's chest.
"If there is one thing I don't feel for you, it's loathing. Or do you think I'd let just anyone, even someone Lily likes, be responsible for her if anything should happen to me?" Potter rested his chin against Snape's chest, looking at him. "If I was just looking for that, I'm sure any one of the Weasleys, even, God help me, Ginny would agree to that. Or Hermione or Andromeda or Professor McGonagall. And I'm pretty sure they all like me, whereas you --" He sighed and turned to lay his head back against Snape's shoulder. "I can't ever tell what you're thinking."
"I'm thinking you're a charming young man, unexpectedly saddled with too many responsibilities at too young an age," Snape said, rubbing his cheek into Potter's hair. "I'm willing to help you, even hold you like this if you desire, but I can't be something you turn to when your libido has been left alone too long."
Potter's soft chuckle drifted up. "My libido is just fine, thank you. And it's been thinking of you for a lot longer than you would think was appropriate. If I can't molest you, I may have to convince you by other means, but I'm not going anywhere until then." He rubbed his cheek against Snape when Snape's fingers stopped stroking through his hair, much as Lily would have when deprived of attention. "Unless you aren't attracted to me, as I've said."
"I'm not...unattracted to you," Snape said, his voice sounding as though the words were not certain of their welcome.
That energized Potter, enough to have him turn, once more to peer down into Snape's face. "You're not?" Snape shook his head. "You know, coming from you, that's practically a declaration of, well, something." Potter kissed him with so much pent up exuberance it was impossible not to imagine all that energy directed at Snape himself.
No amount of telling himself this wasn't wise, or that Lily would wake and interrupt them, or that Potter's youthful enthusiasm was probably the result of finally getting several decent nights asleep and would fade, could convince his prick, which had never quite gone soft and had no chance of it now with Potter not-molesting him. Snape kissed him back, telling himself it was just curiosity -- on both their parts, for surely once Potter's momentary lusts were satisfied, he would come to his senses and tell Snape that this could never happen again.
"See, isn't this nice?" asked Potter with a happy sigh, pausing for breath.
"Nice?" Snape echoed incredulously.
"Well...hot," conceded Potter with another of those irrepressible grins. "Doesn't it put you in the mood for at least a bit of molesting?"
Snape strained to listen for Lily, but there was only soft, steady breathing from the direction of the cot. Apparently, for once, the child had gone back to sleep on her own. "What precisely did you have in mind?" he asked Potter guardedly.
"Maybe more of this, for starters..." Shifting, Potter slid up against Snape, turning more fully onto his side and rubbing their lower bodies together. It had been so long since anyone but Snape himself had touched his prick that merely the pressure of Potter's thigh had him fully hard again within seconds. He heard Potter hum approval, arching against Snape's hip. "See, that's really nice."
Now that he'd been forced to acknowledge that he wasn't in any hurry to put a stop to this, Snape decided that it gave him the right to make a few demands of his own. "What did you mean, your libido has been thinking of me for longer than I'd think was appropriate? You aren't saying you got an erection from watching me mix infant formula?"
Potter let out a startled laugh. "You're much too limited in your thinking," he said in the tone of a confession. "I meant completely inappropriate. As in teacher-student inappropriate."
Snape guffawed loudly enough to wake the baby, though when he realized it and silenced himself, he heard only a soft sigh, followed by more steady breathing. "Now I know you're making things up for a bit of entertainment," he hissed at Potter. "Even if you've ceased loathing me since you left school, since I've heard that absence makes the heart grow fonder, you aren't delusional enough to think I didn't know how much you despised me at Hogwarts. Don't lie to me, Potter -- I'm a far better Legilimens than you'll ever be."
"That's true," whispered Harry -- no, this was not the time to start thinking of him as Harry, Snape reminded himself. "So tell me a single time you caught me thinking about how much I hated you."
"You wanted me out of your thoughts. You were furious when I intruded on your memories..."
"Because I didn't have the luxury of a Pensieve to stop you from seeing things that were really embarrassing or incriminating. If you'd found out I had fantasies about you, you'd have used them to humiliate me."
It was inconceivable to Snape that the boy who'd stared at him with such revulsion could have been hiding erotic thoughts about him. "I'd have assumed they were lies created by you to distract me," he retorted.
"Exactly. Then you'd have gone digging deeper, and you'd have figured out that they were real, and that I was always more interested in men than women, and you wouldn't only have ridiculed me, you'd have told me all the ways the Dark Lord could use that against me and how I'd personally be responsible for the destruction of the world as we knew it." Preposterously, Potter smiled at him. "That's what I always assumed, anyway, so I tried very hard to get excited about dating Cho and then Ginny. It just didn't really work. I was still thinking about this." He thrust his hips to demonstrate precisely what he meant.
"And before you ask, no, I am not using my unexpected fatherhood as an excuse to relive my schoolboy fantasies about you," Potter added, so close to what Snape actually had been thinking that he briefly considered Occluding his mind in case Potter had developed a set of skills he'd lacked as such a schoolboy. "I didn't even know you were gay until you told me a few days ago." Potter rubbed his mouth over Snape's. "Happily, blissfully, unapologetically gay." He looked up, eyes sparkling."Now, do we spend the time until Lily wakes up with me trying to convince you verbally or--"
Potter's mouth shifted to his throat, his tongue swirling over the place where Snape's pulse was suddenly thudding and Snape momentarily forgot the dangling question. "Or?" he managed around a gasp.
"Or we can see if we can be quiet enough to do this without waking her," Potter pointed out, transferring his mouth back up to Snape's.
"Yes," Snape moaned, though he was uncertain which part of which question that was the answer to, except yes seemed exactly the right answer to whatever Potter was doing with his mouth. It must have been enough of an answer for Potter, who kissed parts of his neck that had only before ever seemed a place to cover up with a high collar.
"I don't think I can last long anyway," Potter murmured around a nipple. "What with you being so agreeable."
Snape didn't bother pointing out that it was impossible to be disagreeable when having one's nipple sucked, but he thought the best way to make his point was to demonstrate. Potter shifted to accommodate him, kissing many places on Snape's body that had probably never been kissed -- oh yes, definitely, he would have remembered that. Potter's evident delight in his responses -- as quiet as he could make them -- presented a gauntlet Snape had no intention of letting alone. Slytherins were, if nothing else, very competitive.
Potter moaned, and Snape nearly cried out in pure triumph. Potter's soft cries increased the closer Snape's mouth got to his prick, never loud enough to cause any discontented snuffling from the cot. They were nearly at opposite ends of the bed now, Potter's head near the top and Snape kissing down one of Potter's legs. The prick quivering before his face was quite hard, perfectly erect, and it was probably true that Potter would not last long, having a young man's libido. Snape determined to make the short span of rather frantic fellatio memorable, wrapping his mouth around Potter's cock and letting his mouth slide all the way down.
"Fuck!" Potter wailed, loudly enough that Snape immediately lifted his head in anticipation of the cry from the cot. But Lily apparently intended to catch up on all the sleep she'd missed out on during her weeks of screaming with colic, for after a brief sputtering noise that might just as easily have been intended to reassure them that she was all right, she fell silent again.
"Do something useful with your mouth, Harry," Snape whispered, bucking his hips a bit to make his point clear.
Potter laughed softly. "Did you just call me 'Harry'?"
Snape started to deny it, except that he knew he had. With a quiet harrumph, he slid his mouth back over the prick that was nudging against his chin. He had begun to suck it again when he realized that Potter was more creative, licking down the base of Snape's cock and over his balls, wrapping his mouth gently around one.
That wouldn't do -- Potter was not going to give Snape the finest blow job of his life unless Snape could claim the same privilege. He urged Potter's legs more widely apart and used his fingers where Potter was using his tongue, stroking around and behind Potter's balls, teasing the spot between them and the pucker that Snape could just feel brushing his fingertip as he stroked.
Potter muffled his whimper around Snape prick, though he pushed down on the finger. His head was bobbing over Snape, who realized that it would be mortifying if he were to finish before someone twenty years younger than himself. So he renewed his attention to the head of Potter's cock, teasing the foreskin with his tongue before sliding his mouth down and swallowing around it.
"Oh fuck, yes --" Smugly Snape thought that he was going to have to have a talk with Potter about using profanities around the baby. At present, at least, she was both too young and too tired to be paying attention, though they were also going to have to have a talk about moving her into her own room sooner rather than later.
Because if Potter was serious about wanting to continue this, Snape realized, he would have to be a fool to find any more reasons to put him off.
"Going to come," Potter moaned urgently, thrashing a bit, using his hand on Snape's prick while his mouth was busy talking.
"No shouting," Snape admonished him, taking a deep breath before taking Potter's cock all the way back into his throat. There was a barely perceptible nod of acknowledgment and Snape realized he was going to be hard pressed to follow his own advice. He felt the shudder go through Potter's body even before the spatters of seed flooded into his mouth. Snape let it coat his tongue before coaxing more out with increasingly gentle sucks until Potter's groans stilled.
He hadn't disgraced himself by coming first.
His smugness lasted only as long as it took for Potter to wrap his mouth back around Snape's prick and start to suck. It owed nothing to finesse and everything to enthusiasm but it felt so bloody good, oh yes --
Snape did forget not to shout, but it was a rather strangled cry that seemed to rise up from the balls that were being delightfully emptied by Potter's mouth.
Potter was breathing hard, leaning his cheek against Snape's leg as the convulsions stopped. There was a moment when they both listened for the soft regular breaths from the corner and when they heard those and no cries, they exhaled nearly in one breath.
"Do you believe me now?" Potter asked, his voice rougher now than it had been when they'd first discussed it. Snape didn't bother to point out that a bout of mutual fellatio, even satisfyingly frantic fellatio, did not prove anything.
"Yes," he said, in the hope rather than the belief, because Potter did believe it and Potter's beliefs had a way of becoming truth and Snape was willing to be convinced. Potter further tried to convince him by pulling into Snape's arms, as unselfconsciously certain of his welcome as Lily when either of them picked her up.
"You probably don't," said Potter with a small husky laugh. "But I know ways to convince you and I'm very determined. I never thought --" He turned his face up to look at Snape, studying his profile for so long that Snape felt like turning away.
"Well, I'm aware of that," Snape said, with much less venom than he'd been hoping for.
Potter laughed again. "Git." He kissed the underside of Snape's chin, stretching out against him. "I never thought you'd let me into your home, into your bed. I swear I didn't bring Lily here with the idea of seducing you."
"So you've said," Snape affirmed. He knew Potter was waiting for more and in a rare moment of generosity he gave it to him, and not just because of the sensual lassitude still coursing through his body. "I believe you," he said and he meant it.
They managed another hour of dozing before the insistent wail brought them upright. "Your daughter is awake," Snape announced as his feet reached the floor -- unnecessarily, since the neighbors could probably hear her.
Potter had already stumbled upright as well, but he paused to look back at Snape. "Our daughter," he corrected. "Coming, princess!"
Snape realized that neither of them had washed their hands since all of the sweating and groping and coming earlier. He cast a quick charm on both of them before Potter reached the cot. Lily continued to wail even after Potter had lifted her.
"She must be really hungry."
"Either that, or she is feeling neglected after a few full hours of neglect." But Snape was holding back a smile, watching Potter dance around with Lily over his shoulder, as he went to get a bottle.
"Let me do that. She's always calmer for you."
While Snape spluttered, Potter handed him the baby and pulled on a robe. Strangely enough, Potter was right; the crying ceased, though enormous tears still hung on Lily's lashes as if she'd suspended them there to remind Snape of her plight. "Hurry up," he called after Potter, the fixed Lily with a look. "I need to put you down to get dressed. Will you be silent, please?"
He set her on the bed. Immediately Lily's lip began to tremble and a soft whimper emerged.
"None of that," Snape admonished her, tugging on his clothes as quickly as possible. He did a lot of whooshing with his arms to keep her distracted. After a few cranky noises, she fell silent, watching him. Snape was leaning over her imitating a bat with his oversized sleeves flapping when he became aware that Potter had returned and was watching from the doorway.
"If you say one word..." Snape began in his most threatening tone. Lily interrupted him with a soft cry, and Snape rolled his eyes. "Give me that bottle."
"Yes...Daddy." Potter's grin was positively wicked.
The appellation wasn't as abhorrent as it might have been a few days ago, or even a few hours ago, especially not with the memory of Potter's enthusiastic lovemaking still quite fresh. And to judge by the looks they were exchanging over the bottle, Potter was as anxious to have another go as Snape was. Anything of the sort, however, would have to wait.
"Everyone needs a proper wash," Snape decreed. "I'll take care of her while you get cleaned up."
"She doesn't like baths," Potter said in warning, but with a grin.
"Neither did Goyle," Snape replied firmly and Potter laughed and even better, didn't argue, taking over burping duties while Snape got her bath things ready. Potter had a wide assortment of them, as well as toys, mostly of the Muggle variety, to keep her busy while Snape did the work. "Now, miss," he said, carrying her downstairs, "no arguments." While he got the water ready in the sink he sent the array of toys whizzing over her head, so it looked like a rubber frog had adopted several sizes of bright yellow ducks and several improbably colored fish. The diversion worked. She fussed but relented when offered the ultimate prize -- a bit of Snape's hair to cling to while he applied the powder.
Potter appeared, freshly shaved and dressed and looking more like the young man from Snape's fantasies, er, from more recent baby-free photographs. Strangely the sight was more dispiriting than Snape expected. Surely such a handsome young man could not be long content with the likes of Snape. Then Potter leaned over and kissed him on the cheek, as though they woke up this way and exchanged pleasantries over baby baths every morning.
"Your turn," Potter said, opening admiring Lily with exaggerated looks. "Who's a pretty princess? The prettiest princess in the land? Miss Lily, my Lilybell." There was much more in this vein as they exchanged chores, Potter electing to take over the very exacting task of getting her fitted out in clothing. Snape escaped upstairs, but there was much less grumbling about Lilybells and princesses than he expected his conscience to pummel him with.
He did opt for a long soak, to mull over the odd turn his life had taken, and to examine his recent bout of carnality. Surprisingly the idea that it had been Potter wringing those cries from him was not as troubling as it might have been before they'd taken over care of Potter's -- their -- daughter. Tomorrow Potter would go back to his Auror classes and Snape would go back to work, but everything had changed. They would have to owl Molly Weasley of course, and let her know Potter would not be dropping Lily off -- Snape could set up a playpen in the corner of his shop quite easily. If things did not work out--and they seldom did for Snape -- his life would not be disrupted any further once Potter, and Lily, were gone.
And yet -- it was ridiculously easy to imagine the tiny bundle becoming a toddling thing on tiny feet, learning to speak -- calling Snape something besides "Uncle Severus" -- getting a letter from Hogwarts, going off to school --
Would Potter want him for as long as that? Snape already knew what he wanted, had known it as soon as he agreed to become her next of kin.
There was a knock on the door, very soft, as if a man holding a baby stood outside. "May we come in?"
Snape draped the washcloth over his groin just as the door was pushing open. Potter held a ridiculously pink-swathed Lily, both of them looking very pleased with themselves. "Can't a man have a little peace in his own home?" Snape grumbled.
Potter sat down on the closed toilet seat, grinning, not looking the least bit contrite that he'd interrupted Snape's bath. "Well, that's sort of what I wanted to talk to you about."
Dread clawed up in Snape's chest and he pushed upright in the tub. But Potter looked too cheerful to have anything that might cause Snape to want to hex him on his mind. He had always drawn the wrong conclusions about Potter and his motives. Snape had realized only too late how strong Potter's loyalties were to his friends and to those he loved. He had, if he needed it, evidence wrapped up in pink right here in his own bathroom. He let Potter speak.
"She was fussing a bit without you, so I brought her along," Potter said, settling Lily on his lap. "I was thinking, if you really want us to move in here, we might need, er, a bit more space. For..." His confident grin was belied by the tiny flushes of color spotting his cheeks. "Well, you know, she should have her own room. And I'll have to bring over the rest of my things." He bounced her a few times, watching the wild joy on her face. "There isn't much, really. She's got more stuff than I do."
"Are you going to let your house sit empty?" Snape asked, watching Lily rather than Potter.
"Kreacher is just as happy without me. I suppose I could let it out, or we can keep it in case we outgrow this place. There's plenty of room for you to put in a potions lab, if you wanted. Or you could live there and work here."
"Outgrow?" Snape did not believe that reorganizing to give Lily her own room would present too much trouble. "She'll be at Hogwarts before she starts demanding canopy beds and dressing tables, I should think."
Laughing, Potter nodded. "I don't think there's any doubt that she's destined for Hogwarts." He smiled mischievously. "But we might decide we want another child. I'd love to have a son."
Snape was saved by Lily's cranky grunt and the unmistakable, unpleasant smell that filled the room. "May we please deal with just one catastrophe at a time?" he asked plaintively.
"Sorry. I'll go change her." Still grinning, Potter shifted Lily's weight and stood up. He waved his wand as he left, leaving the bathroom perfumed with charmed bubbles that floated suspended in the air. Lily grabbed at one, cooing.
"We're not naming him James," Snape called out after Potter, whose voice floated back from the other room.
"Is that your only condition?"
"Or Sirius."
"What about Albus?"
"You would actually do that to your own child?" He heard Potter laugh, which made Lily giggle. Both sounds were followed by a crash, as if something had been knocked on the floor while Potter got out a clean diaper. "You had better not be breaking my things."
"Blame your daughter," Potter called back. Then his tone changed. "Who's the prettiest girl in the world?"
So this was how it was going to be. Alone in the tub, Snape allowed himself to smile.