Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/1258831.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Underage
  Category:
      M/M
  Fandom:
      Harry_Potter_-_J._K._Rowling
  Relationship:
      Severus_Snape/Original_Character(s)
  Character:
      Severus_Snape, Original_Male_Character(s), Eileen_Prince
  Additional Tags:
      Drama, Alternate_Universe_-_Non-Magical, Dubious_Consent, Manipulation
  Series:
      Part 5 of Snape_of_St._Brutal's
  Stats:
      Published: 2014-03-02 Words: 2130
****** Dreaming from the Waist ******
by Delphi
Summary
     During his brief stint of freedom from St. Brutal’s, Severus
     discovers that buggery—while not the cure for boredom—is an
     acceptable stopgap measure.
The summer of 1975 was unreasonably hot. Temperatures hung sullenly in the high
twenties, and the days were sticky and slow. Severus squinted in the bright
sunlight as he made his way to the house on Miller Lane. A few of the
neighbours sat out on their front steps, their doors open behind them, but
otherwise the street was empty. Severus took the alley anyhow, and then reached
over the gate to unlatch it and crossed the narrow garden to the back door of
Ray Fothergill's house.
He knocked lightly. There was a spare key hidden under a flowerpot containing a
dried-up begonia plant, but he was not supposed to know that. Footsteps
approached from inside the house, and then the door opened—only a crack. Upon
seeing who it was, Ray quickly let him in.
The house was stifling. Everyone else had their windows open, and those that
had them were running electric fans night and day, but in here, everything was
sealed up and still. The walls were shiny with sweat, and so was Ray's
forehead.
"We've got orange squash," Ray said.
The 'we', Severus understood, did not refer to the two of them but to the
Fothergill family as a whole. Ray sounded particularly stupid when he said
things like that.
"All right," Severus said. There was only water at home, and even the cold tap
was running lukewarm.
The Fothergills had the same set of drinking glasses as Severus's parents,
green-tinted and heavy-bottomed, bought from Woolworth’s. Severus considered
this as he leaned against the counter and drank. The telephone rang, and Ray
jumped.
"I—" Ray faltered, looking from Severus to the telephone and back again.
Severus shrugged and went out of the kitchen into the sitting room, drink in
hand. He eavesdropped on Ray's side of the conversation just long enough to
ascertain that it was about a job and then lost interest. He wandered down the
corridor, glancing into the bathroom—thinking of how good a cool shower would
feel—and then into the daughter's room, and then into the son's.
He wondered what the son's name was and why he hadn't come home for the summer.
The room was at once tidy and dusty, as though someone had been in to clean up
weeks ago and had then let it sit. Severus wondered if something had happened:
if there had been a row or a dreadful accident. More likely, he supposed,
thinking of the postcard from Germany sitting on the kitchen table, the son had
only gone travelling.
Severus had never been any farther away than Ireland, but he thought he would
like to travel. France to start, although everyone went to France who didn't go
to Spain. Then, when he was older, somewhere more impressive, like Egypt or
America.
There were books on the shelf above the son's bed. Severus went inside and
examined them: The Jungle Book, Treasure Island, Lieutenant Hornblower,
Siddhartha, and a stack of back issues of The Eagle. He had stopped paying
attention to the phone call and was slightly startled to hear Ray clear his
throat behind him.
"Not in here, all right?" Ray said, hovering outside the bedroom, looking
uncomfortable.
Severus looked at him for a moment. Ray would not meet his eyes. He drank the
rest of his squash and set the empty glass down on the bedside table. Then he
sat at the edge of the bed. He watched as creases spread out across the
counterpane beneath him. Now Ray would have to straighten up again anyhow, if
he didn't want his wife to notice anything amiss.
"I like the posters," he said, lying back and looking at the walls from upside
down. Musicians and footballers.
In the corner of his eye, Ray's hand curled around the door jamb and his lips
pressed tight together.
Severus slipped a finger in between the buttons of his shirt. His knees shifted
apart. He didn't want to get up.
"I'll let you bugger me, if you like."
Ray hesitated. Severus thought he could hear him swallow. "Yeah?"
Severus made a face as though he were giving the matter careful consideration.
He had in fact been thinking about it for a while. He had never done it at
school, but here was his chance. Why not? He rubbed himself through his
trousers and then unfastened the button and unzipped.
"Yeah," he said, his heart beating faster. "Go on."
"Hold on," Ray said and hurried off.
Severus heard the floor in the bathroom squeak. A drawer opened hastily. They
had used butter at school, the boys enterprising enough to try buggery,
sneaking it into the toes of their shoes to smuggle back to the dormitories.
Severus pushed down his trousers and pants and kicked them off, letting them
crumple on the bedroom floor. The air felt good on his damp skin, and so he
took off his shirt and socks as well.
He lay there, wanking idly, until Ray returned with a jar of petroleum jelly
and a hand towel.
He had heard it done more often than he had seen it. Twice at school he had
taken payment in the form of a cigarette to stand watch while two older boys
did it in one of the lavatories. He had glimpsed other instances, brief, in the
dark, an undignified flurry of thrusting hips. The dirty Victorian novel he had
found as a boy described the act in detail that was at once lurid and
frustratingly unspecific, and Severus had read the homosexual interludes enough
times for the pages to fall out. They used to hang people for buggery; it was
as bad as theft and murder.
Ray undressed hurriedly and then tugged on his prick until he was hard. The bed
wheezed as he knelt between Severus’s legs. Severus ended up scrunched
uncomfortably in two. He should have turned over, he thought, but he had wanted
to see what was happening. Ray’s hands were clammy and cool on his thighs as he
bent him further.
The muscles in his legs shook. He wasn't sure he liked the position, but he did
not intend to admit that he hadn't done this before. He could have, if he'd
wanted to. He could have even been paid for it.
He watched with interest as Ray slathered his prick with what seemed like half
the jar of petroleum jelly. The smell of it made him think of the sick room
back at St. Brutal's, and of sterile gauze and bleached linens. He flinched
when his arsehole was smeared with a cold, greasy pat of the stuff. Ray didn't
seem to notice, breathing hard.
It didn't hurt, or not really. The first push was strange and slippery, and the
feeling of opening up for it was...alarming. He felt a hot, twitching pressure,
like when you stuck your fingers down your throat to make yourself sick up. It
increased as Ray got all the way inside him, and for a moment he thought maybe
he was going to sick up, but not in an altogether bad way. More like the way
his stomach had dipped and lurched when he'd ridden the Waltzer at Blackpool.
He liked it, he decided. It wasn't like how the book had made it sound, not
pleasurable exactly, but he liked the way it was a little hard to breathe, and
he liked the way Ray grunted and the bed creaked—slowly at first, and then
faster, until it was the sound he knew from the other side of closed doors and
thin walls. The pressure didn't let up, but he found it felt interesting, good
even, to touch himself at the same time. He wondered if his organs were moving
around inside him.
"Fuck," Ray spat, his voice lower and rougher than Severus had ever heard it,
even the first time he'd sucked his prick. He pushed hard, jamming in deeper.
The petroleum jelly was melting, dripping down to Severus's tailbone and
mingling with sweat. He closed his eyes and wanked himself off, chewing on his
lip. It took longer than it usually did, but he thought he came harder for it
when he finished, a groan in his throat and his shoulders digging down into the
bed.
He lay still afterwards, feeling his pulse in his fingertips and deep in his
stomach. He let himself be jostled and counted the seconds, seventy-two, until
Ray's red face screwed up in completion. The bed squealed loudly one more time
and then whimpered twice.
"Fuck," Ray said again, panting.
Having a prick pulled out of his arse proved unexpectedly worse than having one
put in him. The pressure eased when Ray withdrew but left behind a dull ache
and a disconcertingly wet feeling. Severus lowered his shaking legs and rubbed
his eyes.
The telephone rang.
"Shit," Ray said, nearly upsetting the bed with how fast he leapt to his feet.
He idiotically pulled his trousers most of the way on before hurrying to the
kitchen.
Severus half-listened, supposing there would be no more midday diversions if
Ray got a new job. His hand was covered in spunk, and he wiped it off in a
sticky smear onto the inside of the pillow-case. He gathered his clothes and
got dressed, frowning as the ache grew worse. He then walked back into the
kitchen and past Ray—who had the telephone cradled between his ear and shoulder
as he tried to take a note on a scrap of paper pressed to the wall—and went out
into the garden.
He paused for a moment on the back step, glaring at the brightness of the sun.
His fingers drummed against his thigh. The urge to take the key from under the
begonia pot sunk its teeth in. But no, he thought, forcing his hands into his
pocket and his feet down the walkway. They would only change the locks if they
noticed it gone.
The sun beat miserably down on him as he walked home. He felt strange, not
least down there, where the slick feeling of petroleum jelly and spunk smearing
between his upper thighs distracted him with every step. He spit into his palm
and rubbed his hands together and then wiped them off on his trousers. His
steps slowed outside the corner shop. He wanted an ice cream or a soft drink,
but he didn't have any money and they knew him well enough in there to watch
him, and so he continued past.
At home, the door was propped open to let the breeze through, and his mother
was in the sitting room. It was dim in there, the heavy curtains drawn and the
flickering light from the telly flashing across her pale face. Severus could
smell the dry scent of white wine. His mother glanced away from the screen as
he entered and then returned her attention to the programme.
Severus leaned in the doorway, watching her.
"What's the matter?" she asked.
He shrugged. "I don't feel well."
She looked at him again, with rather more suspicion this time. He wondered if
she could smell Ray's aftershave as strongly as he could.
"Are you taking drugs?" she asked. Her tone was less angry than he thought the
question warranted.
"No."
"Don't lie to me," she said.
He rolled his eyes. "I'm not."
Her expression softened. "You've probably gone and given yourself sun-stroke.
Go put a cold cloth on your head and lie down until lunch."
He said nothing, closing his eyes and feeling the faint breeze from the open
door stirring at his back. Maybe he should cut his hair off, he thought. Or
maybe he only had a fever. He thought of his mother’s cold hand on his
brow—some memory of Before when he was small and she could still stand to touch
him. He wanted to lie down on the floor and listen to the telly for a while.
"Severus," his mother said tiredly, "you're either ill or you’re not.”
He opened his eyes. He wondered what she would say if he told her that a
strange man had forced himself on him. She would have to feel terrible—if she
believed him, that is. He wasn't certain she would. She wasn't stupid, and he
might just find himself packed off to Grimmauld Children's Home, where there
were no doors on the toilets.
Holding his tongue for lack of anything worth saying, he peeled himself off the
wall and went upstairs to his sweltering bedroom. There, he took his clothes
off and lay down in his pants on top of the covers, and he watched the flies
buzz around on the ceiling until his eyes grew heavy and sleep took the rest of
the morning away.
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