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So Lonely Without Me (1/5)
FIC: So Lonely Without Me (1/?)
Author: Calligraphy
Pairing: SS/HP
Rating: To NC-17, this part R.
Summary: Two men, two rooms. Takes place several years in the future, during the
war.
Warning: If you see a glaring error in content or grammar, please drop me a line
and I'll be happy to fix it. The same goes for kind suggestions of the literary variety.
Think of it as one big party-beta. (Or don't read it. Or read it, print it, and take out a
nice, fat, red pen.)
*****
“You’re up first.”
“Am I…?” Severus Snape finally glances up from the yellowed edges of the Daily
Prophet. He has read it six times, cover to cover, including the advertisements.
There are seven spelling mistakes in the culture section. He has marked each one
with a ring of red ink. Each time he sees the crossword, he laments having finished
it the first day.
Potter nods and takes the newspaper. “It’s ready when you are.” The younger man
sinks into the armchair after Severus rises. It is the only chair in the room. Potter
usually lies on the bed or stretches on the floor, bare toes wriggling.
“You know, Potter, if you wanted to sit in the chair, you might’ve simply asked,” he
says, working apart the buttons on his outer robes. He faces away. Snape never
looks while Potter undresses, and knows the same courtesy is extended.
“I don’t like the chair. It hurts my back.” The newspaper rustles. Potter always flips
to the sports section. He seems to enjoy staring at the tiny Quidditch players
whizzing from one side of the picture to the other.
Once he had stared for seven hours at the same picture. Snape had hidden the
wands that night.
“Everything hurts your back.”
“Everything hurts your knee,” Potter sniffs.
“It is quite one thing for a man of my age to have stiff joints—“
“If you bloody well whine at me about how old you are again, I’m leaving,” he
huffed.
“Dramatic, Potter, as always.” Snape tosses his robe on the peg by the door. He
looses two buttons on his shirt and pulls it over his head. “Some days I think it is a
wonder you’ve ended up here and not in the Royal Shakespeare Company.”
“Didn’t pass the audition.”
Snape catches his grin, then, and peels it away, tucking it out of sight until he can
get into the bath. “The competition must’ve been possessed of an even more
revolting flair for melodrama.”
“Nah, they were just taller.”
The grin threatens to return. “Is that what it is, Mister Potter?”
“I hate it when you call me that—what?”
“Is it as simple as a Napoleon Complex?”
“What.” The reply is flat. The newspaper folds.
“This desire to fulfill your destiny as the Savior of the Wizarding World—does it
come from a sense of duty, or is it simply Short Man’s Disease?”
“Sod off, Snape,” Potter growls, glaring up at the half-bare Potions Master.
Severus allows the smile then, forcing it to be a little cooler than it wants. “See
something you like?” The question slips off his tongue in honeyed, venomous
tones. For just a split-second, he wonders how Potter would react to a serious offer.
Then he sees the disdaining curl of soft, pink lips. Perhaps twenty years ago, his
body might’ve held some interest. Now… “No peeking, Potter.”
A slight intake of breath, angry and strangled. A few muttered words.
“What was that?”
“A hex.”
“Your wand is on the nightstand.”
“I don’t need a wand to hex you.”
“Potter—“
“Water’s getting cold,” he cuts in suddenly, the younger wizard’s voice soft and lost.
“Just go. I don’t want—I don’t want to do this tonight.”
*****
Potter uses too much soap and takes his time lolling about in the water like an
aquarium fish. Severus never does. He wets his hair, scrubs the smell of close
quarters off his body, uses a small amount of the inexplicably orange shampoo to
lather his hair, and he rinses. By the time he finishes bathing, the water is still fairly
warm.
Tonight, though, he decides not to get out of the bath just yet. Severus draws his
knees up out of the water and lays his head back against the rim of the tub. The
silence is not precious. The solitude is. He misses solitude, misses loneliness—the
way it slips on like an old robe. Misses having his own chambers and a bath that
could fill up over a dozen times in a night with near to scalding water. Misses being
able to cast warming charms, cleansing charms. Misses the way he can’t pace and
speak aloud to himself anymore—now there is someone to hear it.
They figured out early on that the bath would give them as much water as they
wanted, but the furnace (assuredly as old as the house itself) only enough hot water
to fill the tub once a day. Severus can’t remember whose idea it had been to share.
Of course it had been a practical suggestion, a reasonable suggestion. The first in
got the hot water, the second at least got water that wasn’t ice cold—and it isn’t as
if either of them is especially dirty, anyway. It is impossible when your living space
is limited to two rooms. But there is something… disconcerting… about sharing the
water. It is another forced intimacy in an already awkward situation.
Already Severus knows more about Potter than he ever wanted. He knows that
Potter can only sleep with his back against a wall. He knows that Potter snores
when he isn’t feeling well. He knows that Potter waits for him to fall asleep before
he cries. He knows what Potter’s bare, slim legs look like—and the lean line of his
stomach. He knows that some nights Potter gets cold and lonely in the bed and
seeks out the other body for a bit of heat and comfort, his form tucking close
against Snape as if using his Potions Master as a windbreak. He knows that Potter
usually wakes up in the morning with an eager erection.
Severus Snape knows all this.
And he knows he is going mad.
He stays in the bath for several more minutes. The water will only be tepid, but
there won’t be a remark. Potter could probably soak for hours in near freezing
temperatures without batting an eyelash. Snape listens to the sloshing through the
closed bathroom door when Potter bathes. The young wizard makes an incredible
amount of noise for a process as fundamentally simple as a bath.
“Potter the otter,” Severus says quietly to himself, and sinks deep in the water.
*****
The door opens and closes with a soft click. “…Are you awake?” Potter whispers.
“Yes.” Severus can hear the rustle of cloth as Potter dries and dresses. He does not
look. His eyes are closed—his face buried in the pillow. The double bed is
comfortable enough, if a bit too firm for discerning tastes.
“Sorry.”
He opens one eye, but does not look. “Why?”
“Keeping you awake.”
“Yes—because I have so many important appointments in the morning.”
Potter sighs. “Why is it you always have to be so… you?”
“If I were anyone else, you would’ve killed me.”
“I still might.”
“You might try.” Severus burrows deeper into the pillow. The room is already
uncomfortably cold, and the blankets aren’t warm yet.
“You wouldn’t know what hit you,” Potter shoots back, a few seconds too late.
“Shut up, Potter, it’s late. Get in.”
“You’re the one who complains if my hair leaves a puddle.”
He looks up then at Potter, dressed in his hideous Gryffindor gold pajamas. His
glasses lie on the night table next to the clock that they’d finally turned toward the
wall. That means those green eyes are unprotected, unfocused. The scar is
inflamed. It always is, these days, but Severus can only see it after Potter takes his
bath and pushes the wet hair away from his face. He rubs it with a towel—
Gryffindor red—and it is only a moment before Potter realizes he is being watched.
“What? Am I doing something wrong? Is there a proper hair-drying technique I
haven’t learned?”
“No.”
“Then what?”
“Nothing, Potter, just get in.” Severus watches as Potter slings the damp towel over
the arm of the chair and approaches the bed. He crawls easily over Severus and
scoots underneath the blankets, arranging himself with a generous amount of
sighing and flopping. Finally, he stills.
“Night, Snape.”
“You are the loudest boy in the entire Wizarding World.”
“I’m twenty-four, stop calling me ‘boy.’”
“Good night, Potter. …No dreams.”
“No dreams.”
*****
Severus wakes in the middle of the night, his forehead damp with sweat, his hands
shaking, his tongue thick in his mouth. He hopes he hasn't been screaming; that

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