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He had bumped into Snape at one of those god awful memorial benefits that the Ministry insisted on holding every year. They all complained about going but went anyway, it was for charity after all, though when discussed on the night no one could ever remember which one.
He had panicked a bit when he realised he was the only one left with him and he would have to make conversation. Like pulling teeth it was, talking with that man, laborious and painful, and usually they all left him alone. He seemed to prefer it. But there he was and Lupin was nothing if not polite.
“Where’s your wife?” Snape asked and Remus flinched a bit out of habit. It was hard to say if he knew and was taunting him or he really hadn’t heard. Both were possible.
Remus decided to go with the most generous option. “Not my wife any longer, actually.” His now ex wife was at home with their son; they had decided, or rather she had decided, that at least one of them should make an appearance, and that person should be him.
“Oh dear I am surprised.” Snape said, sounding like he wasn’t. “I remember walking in on you two-“
“Yes, well,” Remus said quickly, willing himself not to turn red. “I suppose our relationship relied on the heat of the war to sustain it.”
That and the fact that, as it turns out, I’m as bent as a kitchen drain pipe, he thought but that at least he managed to keep to himself.
Snape smiled ungenerously, like he had heard him, which was of course impossible. That wasn’t how occlumency worked, was it?
Snape then appeared to think for a moment. “She always was a terrible student.” He said, like that in itself could be reason for divorce.
It was just like Snape to say something like that; mean, unsociable, tone deaf and it was probably more a dig at their age difference than anything else but some unkind thing inside of Lupin unfurled at hearing it. Ha! it thought, yes she was a bad student. How ridiculous of her when I was such a good one. Later he would be ashamed at himself for thinking that way and he would blame it on the two drinks he’d had and his discomfort at Snape’s presence. But he’d have to admit that it made him feel good, if only for a minute and he far preferred it to the pitying head tilt that usually accompanied these conversations. He wondered how on earth Severus Snape managed to respond the right way when everyone else had done it so horribly.
It wasn’t even as if their divorce had been acrimonious or even particularly messy. Neither of them had been happy for awhile, then there was a tearful confession (his) that was followed by a tentative suggestion of separation (hers). Through it all they had remained friends, for Teddy’s sake as much as their own, and they had promised each other that they would refrain from the petty jealousies and cruelties that they’d seen some of their friends display, a few of whom had had been through divorces in the preceding years. Let’s not be like Marcus and Julia they’d confide to each other smugly. Privately Remus wondered when he had got to an age where rather than getting invited to weddings he was helping newly divorced friends move or offering consolatory beers and a sympathetic ear. Of course he wouldn’t have said that to his now ex wife, your friends dear, she would have said, most of mine aren’t even married yet. And he would have been reminded that he was a terribly ancient relic whom to the surprise of everyone, most of all himself, was married to a young, brilliant woman, who had her whole life in front of her.
They shared care of their son, which had been the only thing he had pushed for, the rest was just stuff, he reasoned and he had let her decide what to do with it. In the end she had got the house and he a small payout, too small, his friend Marcus had insisted, she’s taken you to the cleaners mate, but he hadn’t minded, it had been her money that had bought the place after all, he had stayed home with Teddy mostly, between working a series of casual, low paying jobs, much as he had for most of his life. Yet during some of the initial discussions Nymphadora had suggested she take Teddy the bulk of the time and he on alternate weekends. It might be easier to manage what with, um, everything she had said. He had been so shocked he hadn’t been able to speak for a moment. “Absolutely not.” He managed finally.
“Just consider it.” She had said.
His hands had been shaking and he had said. “When have I ever put our son in danger? When? Tell me.”
Next time they spoke she had apologised but the damage had been done. Something had changed between the two of them. If she, the closest person to him in his life, saw him as a dangerous creature to be managed what did that say? He could be as kind, intelligent, reasonable, measured as he wanted and all anyone would ever really see was the wolf, violent and savage. That’s all he’d ever be. In the end he had got his shared custody but he knew without a shadow of a doubt that if she wished to revoke it there was nothing he could do about it. Nothing at all.
And sometimes he wondered if the ease by which they had both extricated each other from their lives said something about their relationship. Was he ever really in love with her? Or was he in love with the idea of her?
—
In spring he found a job at a small magical nursery walking distance from his little two bedroom flat in Chelsea that he could barely afford. The owner was quiet and surly and didn’t seem to mind about his lycanthropy, just wanted someone who was smart enough to figure things out on his own without bothering him with endless questions, he said and whom he could trust to leave the shop with a few times a week. He never said where he went but Remus thought he went somewhere to drink because he would come back in the late afternoon red cheeked, unsteady on his feet and even more bad-tempered than when he had left. Remus never let on that he noticed anything, it wasn’t his business after all, and who was he to comment? He liked the work and he even liked gruff old Mr Blum and he didn’t want anything to disturb that. In return he was left most days to sell moss to elderly witches who brewed illegal aphrodisiacs in their kitchen sinks and calendula and jewelweed to harried mothers who pleaded with excited preschoolers not to touch anything. He took pleasure in running his hands through the peaty earth and the first green buds that would push themselves through the soil after he had planted and carefully tended to the seeds and even the dirt that seemed to forever be under his fingernails even after he had scrubbed them in his small porcelain bathroom sink at night. It was the latter in fact that he took the most satisfaction in, secretly thinking of it as a signifier of good, honest work that he had not been coerced or forced into but had undertaken freely, by choice, though he would have never said it out loud to anyone.
—
It was a cold but bright morning later in the year when he had his second run in with Snape. It was the sort of morning where the grass would crunch under his feet as he crossed the park on the way to work and he would have to huff on his fingers to warm them but when he arrived at the nursery beads of dew would shine on leaves and still furled flower buds like shimmering diamonds under the still early sun.
He had been repotting rows of spiky succulents when he heard footsteps crunching on gravel and he looked up to see it was Snape. “Hello!” He called and he smiled warmly to disguise that he had been taken aback somewhat by seeing him.
“Lupin,” he nodded at him and Remus took off his gloves and held them at his hip and squinted into the sun.
As usual Snape cut a dark, swarthy figure, swaddled in black trousers and fitted matching jacket, he was slim, tall, and the years had been kind to him, unlike in his awkward younger years he was, if not handsome exactly, striking.
“I haven’t seen you here before.” Remus said good-naturedly.
“I’ve been coming here for years.” He said. “I’ve never seen you.”
“I started back in April.” He replied and Snape nodded and neither of them knew what to say next.
“What can I help you with?” Remus said, finally remembering that Snape was a customer and he worked there.
“I usually speak to Ignatius.”
“He’s in the office, I’ll get him.” Remus said. Some of the older customers preferred dealing with old Mr Blum directly, he didn’t mind. He’d done alright in Herbology at school but that was thirty years ago now.
“No need.” Snape said and nodded at him and Remus watched as Mr Blum came out of the small wooden annex to meet him. Remus tried not to stare too obviously but he couldn’t help stealing glances in their direction. His boss liked Snape, that he could tell even from his distance, he was attentive and deferential which he only managed to be with a very select subset of customers, (and sometimes not even then) and even, once or twice managed a smile, his lips stretching into a quick, even line.
He wasn’t sure what came over him but before he knew it he was darting after him as he rounded the exit.
“Severus!” He said and the man turned. “Er, I have my break in half an hour. There’s a coffee shop on the corner. Meet me?”
Snape gifted him with a succession of increasingly incredulous looks before saying, “Why?”
“I don’t know, why not? I could use the company.” He said, affecting a mildness he did not feel. “My treat.”
“Fine.” Snape said though he hadn’t expected him to.
When he arrived at the coffee shop Snape wasn’t there and he sat down at a small round table near the entrance to wait. He waved off the waitress even though he was quite sure the probability of Snape showing was low, though in the end it was just as he was beginning to resign himself to being stood up that he saw the familiar figure darken the entranceway. Snape stood in the doorway awkwardly, though Remus could tell by his scowl he was trying for menacing. It made him feel strangely tender all of a sudden and he caught his eye and smiled.
“I can’t sit with my back to the door, switch places.”
Remus did as he was told without comment, his generation had fought in two wars, Snape wasn’t the only person of his acquaintance with this particular habit.
“Do you drink coffee?”
“Tea.”
“Right.” He said and he waved the waitress over again and ordered them a pot of tea.
“Have you known Ignatius long?” Remus asked once the tea arrived.
“Since I was a student.”
“I see.” He offered no more, Remus really wanted to beg for more information about his enigmatic boss but he knew enough to know he wouldn’t get it from Snape. “Are you still at Hogwarts?” He asked instead.
“No.”
“Ah.” Remus said and took a sip of his tea. It was about this point that he regretted his invitation entirely. He could have been sitting in the park enjoying the feeling of the sun against his face and another chapter of his book. What on earth had he been thinking?
“I wouldn’t have returned there for all the money in the world. I have a shop. Off Knockturn. Blum usually supplies me with some of the more, ah, hard to find ingredients.”
The way he said ‘hard to find’ Remus understood him to mean illegal or at the very least Ministry controlled. Well at least he’d got him to produce more than a single syllable, that was a start. “What kind of shop?”
“Potions, obviously.”
“Obviously.”
Snape ripped the tops off two packs of sugar and upended them into his cup. “I suppose you asked me here to suck you off in the loos.”
Remus was quite proud of himself that he at least managed not to spit out his mouthful of tea. He swallowed audibly. “Excuse me?”
“That’s what you homosexuals do isn’t it?”
He supposed he should have been offended. It was offensive, dammit. But he’d known Snape since he was 11, maybe he’d forgotten how to be offended by him. Do you want to suck me off in the loos? was the first thing his brain told him to say. Luckily he still had enough sense not to say it. “Has anyone ever told you before you have a devastating conversational style?”
Snape looked at him and sniffed. “Yes.”
He thought of Snape sucking him off in the loos. “Have dinner with me.” He said. Shit, he thought.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m not a homosexual.”
“Does that matter?”
“I’d say so.”
“Fine.” He said huffily. “I have to get back to work anyway.”
—
Next week Snape turned up again while he was watering the adolescent Shrivelfig. It was the afternoon and Remus was on his own.
“Just me, I’m afraid.” He said turning off his hose. He probably sounded snotty but he was still a bit sore from last week. “Mr Blum is due back later this afternoon.”
He had thought about their conversation several times over the past week but was unable to make much sense of it.
Snape nodded. “I thought my order might be ready.”
“We owl when it is. Did you receive an owl?”
“No.”
“Well then.”
Suddenly Snape stepped closer to him and he sucked in a surprised breath. “You have something on your cheek, did you know?”
Remus shook his head wordlessly. Bloody Snape and that bloody voice. Should come with a warning. May induce unwanted erections in the sexually frustrated.
Before Remus could think of what to say Snape reached up and with a thumb swiped a firm line across his left cheek.
“What was it?” He was aware his voice was as rough as sandpaper.
Snape rubbed his thumb and forefinger together thoughtfully. “Soil I dare say.”
“I finish at 5. Meet me at Alejandro’s on Greene. I’ll buy you a drink.” He’d been meaning to act cold and aloof when he saw him next, and this was the opposite of that. Well, he’d never been very good at that sort of thing anyway.
“Fine.” Snape said.
This time Snape was waiting for him when he arrived. He ordered a Pinot Grigio for himself, and, predictably, Snape wanted scotch, neat.
He watched him wrap his long fingers around his glass. He noticed how straight and broad his shoulders were divested of his jacket. He thought of how during the past week when he wasn’t angrily grumbling to himself about Snape’s rudeness he had imagined them both in a toilet cubicle, Snape sliding to his knees and his head falling back hard against the partition.
He’d had sex with men before. Adolescent fumblings at Hogwarts, and then furtive, exciting wartime gropes in bathrooms and back alleys and once, disastrously, with Sirius that he’d imagined to be something when it wasn’t, and then there was only women for awhile and then he was married and then, when he wasn’t, he’d had one or two experimental flings that never led anywhere (never while he was married, he just didn’t have it in him for that). No he wasn’t overly experienced but he knew what he wanted, he thought. He just never thought he’d be so tediously self destructive as to pursue someone like Severus Snape. Is that what he was doing? Did Snape even want him to? Shouldn’t he be going after someone easier, more straight forward, better for his mental health?
He resisted the urge to slide his hand up Snape’s long thigh. Shouldn’t he know better by now than to be thinking with, well, at any rate he didn’t think he was thinking with his head.
He pushed his hair back from his face, he should probably get a hair cut, he thought, Dora had preferred it short and he’d been used to getting it cut regularly but now he found he liked it grown out a bit. It was probably a bit scruffy, admittedly but he’d been enjoying making these small decisions for himself, having only himself to please.
“How do you know Blum?” He asked, not really expecting an answer.
Snape appeared to consider, he looked around himself lazily. “Ask me something else.” He said.
“Okay. What did you think of me, when we were in school?”
Snape looked at him and his lips stretched into a secretive smile, not quite cruel but not kind either, it was almost like they were sharing a joke but Remus didn’t know the punchline. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”
“I would.” He stretched his calf into Snape’s and held it there and for a moment Snape pressed back.
“Thanks for the drink,” he said, which Remus was supposed to read as a goodbye. Then he had got up and he’d left and Remus was sat sipping at his wine alone until it was nothing but air.
—
He didn’t see Snape at the nursery the following week, although, embarrassingly, he looked out for him every day. It was his week without Ted and he slouched around his too quiet flat aimlessly, feeing lost and out of sorts. On Thursday he had a beer with Marcus, when asked if he was seeing anyone he said no but when Marcus wants to set him up with a man from his office; forties, newly single, a catch, he said, he put him off. He didn’t want Snape thinking he wasn’t available. Which was excruciatingly, exquisitely pathetic especially considering he’d given him no real indication he was interested. When he didn’t see him again the following week or the week after that he felt like an even bigger idiot. He contemplated writing him, composed whole letters in his head, even as he knew he’d never send them.
Severus, he’d say, isn’t it odd that I can’t stop thinking about coming inside you?
Or, Snape, I don’t even know if I even like you very much, you’re arrogant and a terrific bore and I’ve only ever gone for people I was friends with first but, here’s the thing: I don’t remember wanting them as much as I do you.
When Snape’s order came in he waited nervously and thought about what he’d say when he saw him. He’d affect an aloof charm that he’d never managed before in his life, he decides. I don’t even need you, it’s you that wants me, he’ll convey with a tilt of the head. He thought of Sirius, what would he have done? He’d have pushed his hair back from his face and looked like a movie star and smiled like he knew you wanted him and was mildly amused by it. Oh shush you old fool, he chided himself, you’re a middle aged dad with a bland, uninteresting face, stay in your lane.
“I need to you to deliver this to the customer.” Mr Blum told him.
“This is Snape’s,” he said. “We don’t do deliveries.”
“It’s none of your business who’s it is. And you do what I tell you to do.”
The address took him to a narrow cobbled lane at the far end of Knockturn. Apothecary, said a small discrete sign over the door. Creative, Remus thought. Inside the shop was small, almost cramped and darkly lit, devoid of any decoration save for shelves that stretched to the ceiling crammed with row after row of amber flasks labelled with what he recognised to be Snape’s spiky, illegible handwriting.
Snape emerged from a door behind the counter wiping his hands on his apron. If he was surprised to see Remus he didn’t show it.
“Nice place.” Remus said. He placed his box on the counter. He wondered if Snape knew by ‘nice place’ he meant, you look good all sweaty with your hair pulled back like that, I want to bend you over that countertop.
Snape nodded. “Thank you Remus.” He said.
“Are you going to show me around?”
Snape gestured outwards. “This is the shop.”
“What about out the back?”
His eyes creased at the edges and Remus thought, there’s that joke again. He shook his head slowly. “Not this time.”
Remus pushed down a smile. “Next time then.” He agreed.
The air felt thick between them. It had never been like this with anyone before, heady and confusing and cloying like honey. Is this what other people felt? This shivery excitement, the sleepless nights, the breathless sweet anticipation of something that might not even be there? It seemed almost too much to bear.
Remus pulled a ball point pen from his apron, came around to Snape’s side of the counter while Snape eyed him cautiously.
Remus was careful to choose the unmarked arm. Something told him Snape wouldn’t allow otherwise. He pushed the sleeve up and wrote on the soft skin of his inner forearm. As he wrote his spare hand held the arm steady and his thumb caressed a firm path over his skin, back and forth, back and forth. Snape stared. Good.
“That’s where I live. I get home at four on weekdays. If you wanted to come by sometime that would be ok.”
He didn’t wait for an answer. He didn’t think there’d be one anyway. He let go of the arm gently and left, not looking back.
—
He didn’t see Snape that week, or the week that followed, and then there was a full moon and then another. Snape was clearly avoiding him. I’m not a homosexual, Snape had said and you couldn’t get any clearer than that. And yet Remus had pursued him. He’d never thought of himself as the aggressor before, he'd been bullheaded and wilfully myopic. He promised himself he’d back off, he’d be happier on his own anyway. That idea had appealed to him once and it started to again. What alternative was there for a man like him?
After the full he lay on his couch in an old t-shirt and track pants with a full pack of cigarettes taking swigs of orange juice from the bottle and watching crap daytime muggle telly.
There was a knock on the door and he grumbled to himself. Assuming Dora come to check on him he yelled, “It’s open!” without bothering to get up.
The door opened and he shifted his eye-line upward, an arched eyebrow greeted him, swarths of black and rows of tiny buttons arranged like armour.
“Lupin I’d prefer it if you would lock your door from now on. I really must insist.”
“Get stuffed.”
“I see you’re in a fine mood.” Snape merely observed, taking a seat in an opposing armchair.
“I’ve got a good excuse,” he said around a cigarette. He groped between the couch cushions for his wand and lit it.
“What are you doing here?” He asked, then exhaled a long plume of comforting smoke.
“You asked me.”
“I mean today.”
Snape ignored him and said, “You look terrible by the way.”
Remus gave a quick sarcastic smile. “Thanks ever so.”
Snape reached into his robes and pulled out a handful of small vials. “Sit up.” He said. “I brought you these.”
“What are they?” He asked gruffly but struggled into a sitting position anyway.
Snape smirked and came and sat down next to him. “Don’t you trust me?”
Remus pretended to think about it. “No.”
“I’ll have you know I’m the foremost Potion Master in Europe.”
“Just Europe?”
“Oh fine, the rest of the world too probably, I haven’t bothered to check.”
Remus screwed the tiny lid off the first and upended it into his mouth. “Are you poisoning me?”
“Would it be that easy to poison you, Remus?”
“Other people? Probably not. You? Yes, maybe.”
“And why is that?”
“You know why.” Remus said. He swiped the other two vials out of his hand and drank them down, one by one.
“Do I, Remus?”
“Stop saying my name.”
“Why?”
“Because it turns me on.”
“Does it indeed, Remus.”
“Stuff you.”
“What’s with you today?” Snape said, smiling. He was the only person he knew who could be put in a good mood by someone else’s bad one.
Remus looked at him incredulously. “Well, let’s see. I spent the previous night in a cage. I’ve stuffed up my marriage. And to top it off I can’t get you to sleep with me.”
Snape appeared to think. “None of that sounds too bad. Why don’t you just eat some chocolate or something, isn’t that what you normally do?”
“Fucking chocolate isn’t going to help, Severus.” He snapped, then, “Why? Do you have some?”
Snape smirked and dug about in his robes. He threw a small foil package at Remus and Remus shoved his fag in his lips and caught it.
“I like you like this.”
“Don’t say that shit to me unless you’re going to fuck me.” Remus said, except he didn’t mean it. Snape could say stuff like that to him any day.
“You really don’t know what you’re asking, do you?”
“I have a fair idea.” Remus mumbled.
“Do you think it would be easy, Remus Lupin? To be with a man like me? I’m not interested in casual sex, that’s not my style.”
“That’s not what—“
Snape waived him off. “I know that’s not what, you wouldn’t be trying so hard if that were the case. I am aware you could have your pick of sexual partners. I’m not blind. Assuming we’re on the same page then, how enjoyable do you think this would be for you? Sustained profound trauma manifesting as antisocial behaviour, self-isolation, and long fits of dishumour, or so I’m told. Does that sound good to you, Lupin? Would that fit into your nice normal life, with your friends, and your job. With your child?”
“Snape, you do realise I’m a fucking werewolf?”
“Excuse me?”
“It’s not a fucking picnic either, being with me.”
Snape flapped his hand at him. “Oh, I’m not worried about that.”
“You’re not worried about that.”
“No. It’s not me it would be happening to. And I’m not in any danger from you.”
“You’re not in any danger.” Remus repeated.
“Lupin if you think i don’t know my way around a bloody werewolf you haven’t been paying attention.”
Remus couldn’t help it, he grinned. Had he just found the one person who wasn’t scared of him? “Severus,” he said, “I believe you when you say it won’t be easy. But... I think perhaps — I just have the strangest feeling you would be worth it.”
Snape said nothing but stared at him intensely.
“Actually can we just circle back to you saying I could have my pick of partners? You know it really sounded like you were saying —”
“Oh for— stupid man, just look—“ Snape lunged suddenly and grabbed Remus’s wrist, he placed Remus’s hand under his robes on the bare skin of his chest and held it there. Then he gripped Remus’s shoulder tight with his other hand. Their heads were inches apart and as soon as Remus met Snape’s eyes his thoughts slammed into him at full force sending his head reeling backwards.
There Remus was as a teenager, all gangly limbs and scruffy hair as he stood behind his friends smiling softly, except he didn’t look gangly or awkward or any of those things Remus remembers himself as, he looked, well, tall, relaxed, mysterious, sexy. There he is again, in the library, at a desk by himself surrounded by open books, brow furrowed. There’s his open collar, his long pale throat, its collection of scars and the dip between his clavicle.
They shift and there he is again, at number 12 this time, now in his thirties, no longer as gangly perhaps, a few more scars certainly. He’s laughing at someone, he can’t see who, though if he had to guess he’d say Sirius, he looks around then and he smiles, warmly, crookedly, eyes crinkling at the edges, hair falling in face.
Remus is older now, standing in a rented tux, drink in hand, smiling, nodding while others chat around him. He’d scrubbed up ok, towering as he does above everyone around him, he looks almost... handsome. He didn’t remember looking that good in the mirror before leaving that evening.
Once again, the scene shifts and there’s Remus just moments earlier, ensconced on the couch, hair a mess and too long like he prefers, in desperate need of a shave, cigarette hanging limply between his lips, exhausted and grumpy and ... beautiful. He’d never seen himself like that before.
Then, with a stomach churning jolt, he was back on the couch, Severus sitting opposite him again. Snape toyed with a frayed bit on the cushion, “There. I thought it would have been obvious.”
“Oh, babe.” He said, “That wasn’t obvious at all. Not even a little bit."
Remus didn’t wait for a reply, he leapt at him in a tangle of limbs, he pressed Snape’s back to the arm of the couch, took his face in his hands and kissed him. Then, amazingly, wonderfully, Snape’s hands came up to frame his face and he kissed back with a fierceness that surprised him. Remus moaned and crushed him to the couch and deepened the kiss, sliding his tongue wetly against Severus’s and losing himself in the sensation.
“You can really just do that huh?” He murmured against his lips.
“I can really just do that.”
“It’s sexy.”
“Is it? Most people say terrifying.”
“Most people are idiots.”
Snape raised one of his eyebrows.
“I thought you didn’t want me because I’m a werewolf.” Remus admitted.
“Not that, no. In fact...”
“... in fact you think I’m desperately attractive.”
He sighed heavily. “Yes. Despite myself.”
“You like me.” Remus whispered.
“Yes well, what about you? Throwing yourself at me like an overeager adolescent.”
“Oh yes, I like you very much. I have an enormous crush on you, Professor Snape.”
“Well that’s obvious if your hard prick is anything to go by.” He said pressing upwards into his stiffy.
“Ngh.” Remus said articulately and bit Snape’s bottom lip.
“I suppose,” Snape said, unbuttoning his robes, “you asked me here to your pathetic little flat so you could fuck me on your disgusting old sofa?”
“I did, actually.”
“Good.” Snape replied.