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O Goddess! hear these tuneless numbers, wrung
By sweet enforcement and remembrance dear,
And pardon that thy secrets should be sung
Even into thine own soft-conched ear:
Surely I dreamt to-day, or did I see
The winged Psyche with awaken’d eyes?
—John Keats, “Ode to Psyche”
Snape didn’t want to notice the way Sirius Black stared at him throughout the Order meeting, but had no idea how not to. They were practicing talking Patroni, the room covered in dancing silver; Snape stood at the front of the room to take questions as Dumbledore sat and watched in obvious pride.
The whole time, Black’s eyes were on him, hot and heavy and following his every motion; he didn’t want to notice, much less to care, but found himself lingering past the Weasleys, past Tonks and Moody, past even Lupin, until at last the vast kitchen was entirely empty. “What do you want, Black?”
“I’ll show you mine if you show me yours,” Black said, and jerked down his sleeve to reveal a tattooed shoulder. For a minute, Snape didn’t know what he was talking about; he thought, Why on Earth would he want to see the Dark Mark?
Then he realized which Mark this must be, and why Black would care; he registered the rare potions ingredients surrounding the silver light of a prancing doe, and did his best not to recoil. “I will do no such thing.”
“What?”
Black looked crestfallen. Snape sneered. “Cover that back up. Now.”
When he obeyed, Snape felt himself relax, even as he ached to look at it again; Black searched his eyes, and trembled at whatever he found there. “You really won’t confirm or deny the match? You—aren’t you my soulmate?”
“There’s no such thing as soulmates,” Snape said, and turned around and left.
He had known, of course, that Black was the person represented by his Mark; that had been known to him since his sixteenth birthday, when he had had the customary flash of pain and looked to see, on his right forearm, the constellation Canis Major, the dog star glittering and glistening atop his skin. He had approached Black, and been rewarded by bullying before he could even broach the existence of Marks; and he had known that, somehow, fate had made a mistake.
Later, he’d grown to understand that there was no real evidence that soulmates were even what the Marks indicated, aside from a few people who’d gotten each other’s names inside hearts or their first words to one another or who had developed minor mental connections; Marks could mean anything, and for Snape probably meant that Black would be his most dogged enemy.
He pulled his sleeve down and examined it when he got home, tracing the glimmering stars; then he covered it back up and turned to his mercifully endless piles of grading.
The next time he saw Black, he avoided him; this worked for about three weeks, until he had to track down someone to deal with a spontaneous raid on a muggle village. Moody and Diggle, thank Merlin, were both at HQ; before Snape could leave to return to Hogwarts, Black’s hand was on him. “Remove that this instant, or I will remove your hand from your body.”
Black complied. Snape grimaced. “What do you want, Black?”
“We’re soulmates! I want to be around you.”
“No, you don’t.”
“You don’t know what I want.” Black’s eyes, charged, stared into his own. “You saw my Mark. You really won’t even talk to me?”
“That Mark could mean anything. Now get away from me.”
Black stiffened. “Or what?”
Snape drew his wand. Black recoiled. “It means that little to you?”
“Yes. I’m leaving now. Don’t you dare follow me.”
When he got home, he berated himself for his own cowardice for hours, wondering what Black might say if he knew.
But if he knew what? Snape’s Mark didn’t mean anything. It simply existed, a mockery of how others found love. Black, for all that he was wretched, deserved better.
The next time he saw Black was at the Order that Friday; he was so tired he could barely keep his eyes open, and when Black approached, all he could do was groan. “Don’t do this.”
“Do what?” Black asked, and took his arm and led him to a hideous sitting room. “You poor thing. Let me get you some tea.”
Snape sat there, telling himself to go home, until Black returned with tea; when he ran a hand along his shoulder, he gulped and drank, trying to ignore his pulsating Mark. “I’m not going to thank you.”
“I think you just did. Here, let me get you a blanket—”
Snape accepted it as ungracefully as he could, though he had a feeling it hadn’t been very; Black touched his hand, then sat down next to him and pressed their bodies together. “Why are you touching me?”
“I want you.” The words were almost painfully raw. “I have since I saw your Patronus.”
“Marks are a lousy reason to want someone.”
Black blinked, then laughed. “What? They’re the best reason!”
“Real love takes work.” Snape ignored his own hypocrisy as he spoke. “It takes time and effort and commitment. You want a shortcut, and you’ve decided that’s what I am.”
“Will you touch the Mark? Confirm it isn’t you? I’ve heard—”
“That’s an urban legend.”
Black looked at him sideways. “You won’t mind confirming, then.”
“I think you mean denying. I’m not going to touch your Mark. You shouldn’t have even showed me.”
“Can I see yours?”
“That isn’t something you can just ask people, Black.”
“It is in this circumstance.”
“What circumstance?”
“Ha ha.” Black ran a hand through his unfairly roguish hair. Snape felt himself sway a little into exhaustion, and did his best not to lean into the warm body next to him. “Is it just not reciprocal?”
“I’m incapable of love,” Snape said plainly. “I shouldn’t have a Mark at all. You don’t want me.”
“I do so.”
“I’m disgusting. I’m a thing. You can’t.”
“You aren’t disgusting.” Black sighed and leaned his head against Snape’s shoulder. Snape tried to stiffen instead of melting into the touch, with little to no success. “I want you so bad it’s a little bit sad.”
“And you’re glad?”
Black’s laughter rumbled through him. “I was horrified. But the more I thought about it—if it isn’t reciprocal, can I still be around you? It almost makes sense. I guess—if I’m going to be a prisoner forever—”
“What?”
“I hate this house,” Black said, his tone a bit violent. “It’s as much a prison as Azkaban was. But if I’m supposed to—to help and serve and care for you—well, you’re right enough that you do a lot more for the war.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. You personify HQ. You coordinate everyone. I’m just Dumbledore’s lapdog.” Snape sighed and resisted the urge to run a hand through Black’s hair or wrap an arm around his shoulder. “Your Mark is reciprocal. Mine isn’t. You just don’t know who it is yet.” He sighed again. “It could be anyone. And anyway, I don’t even believe in that stuff. It’s just a magic tattoo.”
“You know it isn’t.”
“I know no such thing. What I know is that accidents of fate are the wont of life.”
“That’s bleak as hell, Severus.”
“Is it, Sirius?”
Black sat up in obvious hopefulness; Snape cursed himself. There was an odd moment where he seemed to be outside his body where he realized what had just happened, and he neatly deposited the tea on the coffee table and the blanket on Black’s lap. “Anyway, erm, goodbye,” Snape said, and fled.
Snape spent days tormenting himself over the cuddling session, then weeks; he avoided Black after the Order, leaving at the same time Dumbledore did. But as usual, the Dark Lord ruined his finely-laid plan of never revealing his Mark to Black or even talking about or acknowledging the fact that they might be soulmates of a kind, insofar as such a thing even existed. Which it didn’t.
When Tonks and Doge and Podmore left for the raid, Snape turned to leave too; before he could, Black’s hand was on him. “Unhand me. Now.”
Black obeyed, thank Merlin; Snape continued to leave without looking back when Black said, “You really won’t even let me be around you? Get to know you? What if I’m meant to make your life a little easier? Why won’t you show me your Mark?”
Snape turned around, wand upraised. “It’s personal. The most personal thing you could possibly ask.”
Black’s hands were raised above his head. “I could ask to see you naked.”
“Very funny.” Snape lowered his wand, then sheathed it. Black relaxed visibly. The pull was still there, insistent and grating, as it had been since his childhood. “You aren’t meant for me, Black, because Marks don’t mean anything. They’re just a way of—of pushing us towards people, if they mean anything at all. Which they don’t. I’m not the kind of person who good things happen to.”
He only realized what a monumental slip this really was when Black’s eyes widened. “Merlin, Severus, that’s just sad. You—I would be a good thing?”
Snape felt himself swaying towards him. “You have no idea, do you?”
“About what?”
“About anything.”
Black pouted. Snape sighed. “You’ll meet your match after the war. You’ll find a nice woman—”
“I’m gay.”
“Oh.” Snape shook himself. “You’ll find a nice man—”
Black started laughing. “I’m not interested in nice. I’m interested in you. Will you please let me help you somehow? What do you need? Can I get to know you? Be around you? Please?”
“There’s nothing to know. No way to be. I’m nothing in the shape of a man. You can’t want me. You have to move on.”
“From my Mark?”
“I did.”
“What?”
Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck—
“Forget it.”
“Not hardly. You already know who yours is?”
“No.”
“You could give me tips on moving on.”
Snape tilted his head. “Get brutally rejected. Then live your life.”
“What?”
“The answer,” Snape sneered, “is no. No, your Mark does not represent me. No, you may not help me. You cannot help me, because you are useless. I don’t need anything except to be left alone. If you ask to see my Mark again, I’ll curse you.” He realized he was panting a little, and snarled, “Do you get it yet? The only thing I want from this life is solitude to keep my vigil!”
“Maybe I’m supposed to find a way to break through that bleakness,” Black mused. Snape waited until he’d gotten home to break down and sob over that one.
The thing was that of course he was attracted to Sirius Black. He had believed in Marks as religiously as anyone else when he had gotten his own, and had wanted to find a way to tell him. He had approached Black over and over with reconciliation in mind, until Black had tried to kill him at Lupin’s hand; then, all at once, he had given up. He’d even considered tattooing over his Mark, but the only thing he could think of to replace it was a wolf, which he wanted even less on his body. The stars were subtle, and so beautiful it ached; the thought of removing them was repugnant, even as he was perpetually reminded of who they represented.
He saw Black again at the next Order meeting, which he did his best to leave early; unfortunately, Vance cornered him before he had the chance, cross-comparing an extremely competent chart of the Dark Lord’s movements for nearly an hour before she departed in cheer. Snape paused for just a moment to pinch the bridge of his nose and pray for a timely death; when he looked up, Black was near, watching him with overwhelming and intolerable gentleness. “Hard day?”
“Aren’t you ever going to give up?”
“So you have a non-reciprocal Mark too.” Black sighed. “You know who it is, and they have someone else’s Mark.”
Snape was seized by the wild urge to see his Mark again, that doe representing Snape branded onto his body, but managed, barely, to hold his tongue. “And you won’t let me be around you outside of petty conflicts like this one.”
“Is this a conflict?”
“It isn’t?”
Snape looked away, and Black laughed. “So where does that leave us? You really won’t even give me the time of day? I know there’s more inside of you than mourning.”
Snape felt himself go very still. “Mourning?”
“I can see it in your eyes,” Black said, and gazed into them. “A sea of grief. But there’s more, too. A lot more. There are whole oceans behind them.”
Snape shivered, and some vague look of triumph passed across Black’s features. “Let me know you. What’s your favorite color?”
“Favorites are for children.”
“What was it, then?”
“Green,” Snape blurted, and Black laughed. It had been, of course, the color of Lily’s eyes. “Then gray.”
The color of Black’s. Black tilted his head, smiled, and gestured at him to sit, moving over to prepare two cups of tea. “Tell me about yourself. What do you love? Hate? Fear? Dream of? What are your plans for after the war?”
“I intend to die during it.”
Black made a horrid choked noise and spilled scalding tea everywhere; Snape didn’t help him heal, or help him clean up. “You intend to—to die during the war?”
“Towards the end, probably,” Snape said. “I understand how valuable an asset I am to Dumbledore. But I’ve done enough. I’m tired of living. When I’m ready, I will out myself to the Dark Lord, and it will all be over.”
“You’re going to get Voldemort to—oh, Severus.”
Snape had, of course, flinched. “You shouldn’t say his name. Last time he put a taboo on it. Anyone who said his name was gathered up by snatchers and processed for killing.”
“They never found us.”
“Dumb luck, I suppose.”
Black laughed. “Now that I think about it, I did get attacked outside my flat an awful lot. You don’t have any dreams for afterwards?”
“Being dead.”
“I want to help Fred and George with their joke shop,” Black confided, though his tone wavered. “I guess you wouldn’t want to participate in that. What about the beach? Would you go to the beach with me? I think that’s what I miss most about Spain.”
“I shouldn’t be here,” Snape realized, and stood. “I’m giving you hope.”
“Severus, wait, please—”
Black’s entreaties trailed him all the way to the floo.
The following week, Black followed him into the hall when he tried to leave with Dumbledore; he met Dumbledore’s curious gaze and said, “Sorry, I need Severus, sorry—”
“Give him what he asks,” Dumbledore said sternly, and, well, bugger. Snape followed Black back into the kitchen, watching as stragglers departed and Tonks and Lupin and Moody all stayed, settling just outside the circle and loathing Black every time he attempted to include him.
Eventually, it was just him and Black and Lupin; Lupin looked back and forth between Snape and Black, then met Snape’s eyes. “I keep telling him it’s got to be someone else,” Lupin said, and Snape felt his face grow hot. “But he always has been fucking obsessed with you. Am I supposed to mediate?”
“I just didn’t want him to leave,” Black said, and the raw plainness of it made Snape’s desiccated heart ache. “You don’t have to stay.”
“Okay.” Lupin leaned down and hugged Black as he departed, giving Snape the evil eye the whole time; when they were alone, he sat still.
“Black?”
“Yeah?”
“What do you ask?”
“What?”
“Albus said to give you what you ask. I cannot disobey my master. What is it that you want from me?”
Black opened his mouth, then closed it. “Just be near me for a while.”
They ended up sitting in perfect silence for almost an hour after that; Snape got up to make some tea, and Black led him to the nearest sitting room, tentatively leaning into his side as they sipped their tea without speaking. After a while, Black made more tea, and they sat together again, Black’s face buried in his shoulder without even the blanket to protect him. It was only when Black began snoring softly that Snape shook him. “Black. Wake up.”
“What?”
“You fell asleep on me. Have I been near you for long enough?”
Black stretched, yawned, and laughed. “Ah, hell. You’re a good sport, Sev.”
Oh, fuck, Snape thought, and Black said, “Thank you. Really. I know it must seem like my Mark has turned me into a crazy person, but I—did you feel a pull towards the recipient of your Mark? Once you knew?”
Snape nodded, just barely. “And she didn’t feel it back.”
“No.”
Black gave him a bleak look, and Snape looked away. “You know they’re about soulmates. That’s what Marks are for. There’s so much literature—”
“I know.” Snape looked down. “It can’t be me, Black. It just can’t. You have to learn to accept that.”
“A doe surrounded by Potions ingredients. Green and silver, just like Slytherin. It’s even in your favorite colors.” Black shook his head. “Who on Earth’s favorite color is gray, anyway?”
Snape kissed him. Black was perfectly still for a second, then kissed back. “You already made your choice,” Snape said, and Black recoiled. “Back in school you made your choice. It isn’t fair to change your mind now.”
“What?”
Snape pulled down his sleeve. “It was a long time ago,” he said. “I’ve learned to accept—”
“You tried to talk to me about it?” Snape nodded. “And I bullied you. Didn’t I?”
Another nod, and Black went utterly still. “It’s Canis Major.”
“I know.”
“Will you—is this a no? There’s too much bad blood?”
“I don’t… know.” Snape looked away. “What is it that you want from me?”
“Love. Partnership. Life. Especially life.”
“Well,” Snape said. “I suppose I have no choice but to do my best to oblige.”
The next time he saw Black, he was visiting HQ just to visit; Black was alone in the kitchen, dueling with dummies on all sides. Snape leaned against the doorway and, after a moment of deliberation, wolf-whistled.
Black looked up and paused the dummies, then gave him a smile so blinding that Snape looked away. “Severus! What brings you here?”
Snape shrugged. “I didn’t have anywhere better to be.” He let Black come to him and touch his face with a hesitant hand, and let himself be kissed. Black pulled away after a moment, frowning. “What?”
“You aren’t kissing back.”
“I don’t want this,” Snape said, and Black slumped. “Or at least I don’t want to want it.” He gripped his own right forearm, ignoring the way Black perked back up. “You were right about the pull. I don’t know how to make myself avoid you when you try this hard.”
“Good,” Black said, and stepped forwards and wrapped his hand around Snape’s clothed forearm. “That’s good.”
They retreated to the nearest sitting room with tea to cuddle, though Snape would never admit his intentions; Black laughed and buried his face in Snape’s shoulder, shaking a little as he laughed. “What?”
“I knew all along it was you,” Black said. “I fucking knew it. Will you try touching my Mark now?”
“I guess so.” Snape turned to him as he unbuttoned his top few buttons and pulled down his shirt over his shoulder. “But nothing’s going to happen.”
“Uh-huh.” Black rolled his eyes, then gasped as Snape pressed a tentative hand to the doe. “Oh.”
“What?”
“Feels like—like—I can’t explain this. Let me touch yours.”
“What?”
“Please.”
Snape deliberated for a minute, then pulled away, looked away, and tugged down his sleeve. Black’s touch, when it met the Mark, was gentle, but it exploded into something like grace; Snape swore for a second he heard music, and then it melted into the feeling of liquid sunlight, trickling along his veins.
Black, when he looked up, wore an unbearably smug expression. “Was I worth the wait?”
“I guess so,” Snape said, and Black kissed him.