Chapter Text
Severus Snape first met Sirius Black in the most American of places: a diner at 2 AM in Manhattan.
Severus had just finished a grueling eighteen-hour shift at the lab, stalled by a complex potion modification that remained just shy of perfection. His clothes were wrinkled, his hair falling out of its tie, and he'd walked past three closer restaurants because this particular diner made their coffee strong enough to strip paint.
He had long suspected they added a drop or two of Wide-Eye Potion to the brew, a suspicion that only grew the moment he realized the diner was wizard-owned—the salt shakers were charmed to never clog, and the menus never sticky.
It was there, amidst the smell of burnt toast and the sound of low-level magic humming in the air, that he had first met the walking enchantment—Sirius Black.
The man at the counter was impossible not to notice.
He had the kind of face that belonged on magazine covers—sharp cheekbones, gray eyes bright even under fluorescent lighting, hair that looked artfully messy in a way that probably took no effort at all. He was arguing cheerfully with the waitress about whether beans belonged on breakfast plates.
"I'm telling you, Debby, it's a proper English breakfast! Beans are essential—"
"Hon, this is America. We have freedom here. Freedom from beans at breakfast."
The man clutched his chest in mock devastation. "You wound me."
Severus found himself smiling despite his exhaustion. The stranger caught it, and his whole face lit up.
"Finally, someone who understands the tragedy I'm facing!" He gestured dramatically at the empty stool beside him. "Please, as a fellow person of taste, tell this wonderful lady that beans are a breakfast staple."
Severus slid onto the stool, surprising himself. "Actually, I'm American. I have no position on breakfast beans."
"American!" The man's face fell dramatically, then brightened again immediately. "Well, you can't help where you're born. I'm Sirius. Sirius Black."
"Severus Snape."
"Severus," Sirius repeated, like he was tasting the name. "That's gorgeous. Very dramatic. Very you." He gestured at Severus's all-black attire.
"You've known me for thirty seconds."
"Best thirty seconds of my trip so far." Sirius grinned. "What brings you to a diner at this ungodly hour? Let me guess—breakup? Existential crisis? Vampirism?"
Despite himself, Severus smiled. "Work."
"At 2 AM? That's criminal. What do you do?"
"Research. In Potions."
Sirius's eyes widened with genuine interest. "Really? That's brilliant. I'm completely rubbish at potions. But you must be amazing at it—precision and patience." He leaned closer, chin in hand. "Tell me everything."
And somehow, Severus did.
Not everything—he didn't mention the specifics of the potion his team was developing, or his responsibilities and frustrations as the head of a department but also the youngest person in the room.
But he talked about the beauty of the softly simmering cauldron with its shimmering fumes; the meditative precision of chopping, dicing, and mincing, bringing order to a crowded mind; the rhythmic stirring on beats with the slow pulse of blood traversing through the vein.
He described the singular, quiet moment when raw ingredients transformed into something far greater than the sum of their parts.
Sirius listened like it was the most interesting thing he'd ever heard.
"You light up when you talk about it," Sirius said softly. "It's lovely."
Severus felt heat creep up his neck. "What brings you to New York? Besides superior choices for breakfast."
"Oh, just traveling. I've been wandering a bit, seeing the world. Needed a change of scenery." Something flickered across Sirius's face, something almost melancholy, but it vanished quickly. "Best decision I ever made, clearly, since it led me here."
They talked until dawn broke over the city, painting the sky in shades of pink and gold. Debby kept refilling their coffee with increasingly fond exasperation.
When Severus finally checked his watch, he was horrified to discover it was nearly 6 AM.
"I should—I have to be back at work in less than three hours."
"That's inhumane," Sirius declared. "You need sleep. Let me walk you home at least?"
Severus should have said no. He'd learned young not to trust beautiful strangers, not to let people get close. But there was something about Sirius, something warm and open and safe, that made him nod.
They walked through the awakening city, and when they reached Severus's apartment building, Sirius turned to him with hopeful eyes.
"Can I see you again? Please say yes. I promise I'm not a serial killer."
"That, I can believe," Severus replied dryly. "Statistically speaking, the odds of us both being serial killers is remarkably low."
Sirius blinked, then barked out a laugh—a genuine, joyous sound that startled the quiet street. "I knew I liked you for a reason, Severus."
There was a disarming sincerity in the way Sirius said his name. It felt like a gamble, but for the first time in years, Severus decided to take it.
Their second meeting was a proper dinner. Their third was a walk through Central Park. By their fifth, Sirius kissed him under a streetlight, and in that moment, Severus had forgotten why he'd ever believed in keeping people at arm's length.
"I'm not good at this," Severus whispered against Sirius's mouth.
"At kissing? Because I'd beg to differ."
"At... this. Relationships. People."
Sirius pulled back just enough to meet his eyes. "Lucky for you, I'm very good at people. And I think you're perfect exactly as you are."
It should have felt like a lie. Severus knew his own sharp edges, his tendency toward cynicism, the ruthlessness that made him excellent at his job and difficult to love.
But with Sirius, those edges seemed to soften.
Sirius never made him feel defensive.
Three months later, Sirius moved into Severus's apartment.
It wasn't planned.
At first, Sirius kept finding reasons to extend his stay in New York. The museums, the parks, the restaurants he hadn't tried yet. Later, he just extended his hotel reservation without offering explanations, and Severus stopped asking about his plan.
Until Sirius's hotel informed him that they needed his room for a conference booking.
"You're quiet today," Severus observed halfway through dinner. "Is everything okay?"
"The hotel needed my room back. A conference or something. They're taking over the entire hotel for the week."
Severus's fork paused halfway to his mouth. His expression didn't change, but Sirius had learned to read the almost imperceptible shifts—the slight tension in his shoulders, the way his fingers tightened just a fraction on the utensil.
"When?"
"Friday."
"Oh."
They ate in silence for a moment. Sirius pushed pasta around his plate, suddenly not hungry.
"I could find another hotel," he said finally, trying to sound casual. "Or I supposed I could finally move on. See California, maybe. Or Canada. I've heard Vancouver is—"
"You can still see the world while living in a city," Severus interrupted, his voice carefully neutral. "I'm not sure if the concept exists in Britain, but it's called a vacation here."
Sirius looked up sharply. Severus was studying his wine glass with intense focus.
"I—" Sirius faltered. "My plan was to travel. Don't stay anywhere too long."
"Do you want to leave or is it because you have nowhere to stay?" Severus finally met his eyes. "Because you can stay with me. If you want to."
The air between them shifted. Both of them knew Severus wasn't really talking about the apartment, or the city.
Sirius's heart was pounding. "Are you asking me to move in with you?"
"My apartment is big enough for two people. And I am not even there most of the time." Severus looked away again, back to the wine glass. "I don't want you to go. I know it's fast, and it's probably a terrible idea, but I really don't want you to go."
"Severus..."
"You don't have to answer now." Severus's voice was quieter. "You can think about it. Or you can just send me a postcard from California."
"Yes."
Severus blinked. "Yes to what?"
"Yes to move in with you. Yes to staying. Yes to you." Sirius's grin was incandescent, splitting his unfairly handsome face wide open. "I've been trying not to hope you'd ask."
"Really?" Severus looked genuinely shocked, like he'd prepared himself for rejection and didn't know what to do with acceptance.
"Really. I don't want to leave. I don't want to keep traveling. I want to stay here, with you, and see what happens next."
Severus's smile started small and grew until it transformed his usually serious face. "Okay." Then, with the hint of a smirk: "But I did say it could be a terrible idea."
"No take backs!" Sirius pointed his fork at him accusingly. "And I'm the master of terrible ideas anyway. This is my area of expertise."
"That's not the reassurance you think it is."
"Too late. You already asked. It's legally binding now."
"I am fairly certain, that isn't how it works, Sirius."
"It is in law of…" his eyes darted towards the wine glass that Severus was holding, "Pinot Noir."
"What, precisely, is law of Pinot Noir?"
Sirius opened his mouth, held the pose for a second, and then deflated. "I don't know. I panicked and said words."
He rubbed the back of his neck, a faint flush of sheepishness coloring his cheeks. "Damn. I really should have tried to convince you that’s a British thing, or a French thing. 'Oh, Sev, you have never heard about the law of Pinot Noir? Everyone in the continent knows about it but its origin was too old to be traced…'"
Severus laughed—that real laugh that Sirius had learned to treasure, the one that made his eyes crinkle at the corners.
They finished dinner in giddy silence, and when the check came, Sirius grabbed it before Severus could, and he gave a very generous tip.
"I'm celebrating," he explained.
"Celebrating what?"
"Not being homeless on Friday."
Severus arched an eyebrow. "You were never going to be homeless, Sirius. You have the look of someone who has never truly had to worry about making ends meet."
"Semantics. I'm celebrating having a home. With you."
Severus's expression softened into something so tender it made Sirius's chest ache.
"Home," he repeated, like he was testing the word. "I like the sound of that."
Their domestic life fell into an easy rhythm.
Severus had to leave early for work, sometimes before dawn. Sirius would wake with him, no matter the hours, drifting through the morning routine and sharing breakfast before retreating back to bed for a few more hours of sleep. He spent his days exploring the city, talking to strangers, or prepping elaborate meals that were often hit-or-miss but always made with relentless enthusiasm.
Whenever Severus came home to Sirius’s guilty puppy eyes, a mess in the kitchen, and a dinner that was somehow simultaneously burned and undercooked, he would simply offer a tired smile. "You are not much of a chef, but you are an excellent emotional-support-boyfriend. That is all I truly need to come home to."
And he meant it. When Severus dragged himself through the door after twelve, fourteen, sixteen-hour days, Sirius was always there. Sometimes with food, sometimes with anecdotes, and always with open arms and infinite patience.
"Rough day?" Sirius would ask, and Severus would nod and let himself be held.
When Sirius asked about his work, Severus spoke only of the potions and the research. He never mentioned the cruelty of his professional world—the shark-tank corporate politics, the way he'd eviscerated a colleague's flawed research in a meeting, the cold precision with which he'd negotiated contracts. That wasn't who he wanted to be in this space they'd created.
Here, he could just be Severus. Tired, perhaps, but soft around the edges. Safe.
Sirius made him want to forget why he had to fight.
Sirius seemed to bloom in their apartment. He laughed easily, moved through the world with the effortless confidence of someone who'd never had to worry about anything, and treated everyone from doormen to baristas like beloved friends.
"You're so good with people," Severus marveled, watching Sirius charm their elderly neighbor into accepting help with her groceries.
"Guess that's my thing, huh?" Sirius said with a shrug. "Most people are lovely if you allow them to be."
Severus, who had built his career on the assumption that most people were obstacles to be navigated, just shook his head in wonder.
Sometimes, late at night, Sirius would mention things from his past—fragments about his family, always vague, always quickly brushed aside.
"They didn't really understand me," he'd said once. "Wanted me to be someone I wasn't. It's why I left."
"Do you miss them?"
"Some of them. Sometimes. Mostly I'm just grateful I found you instead." Sirius smiled, but there was something behind it. Something almost sad. "You make me feel like the person I always wanted to be."
Severus understood that completely. Because Sirius made him feel the same way.
Sirius had the rare ability to make everyone feel like the best version of themselves.
It was a throwaway conversation at the time.
"Okay, random question: if you'd gone to Hogwarts instead of Ilvermorny, which house do you think you'd have been in?"
Severus was used to Sirius’s non-sequiturs. "I have no idea. I don’t really understand the British obsession with school houses."
"Humor me, please? There's Gryffindor—that's for the brave and daring. Hufflepuff is loyal, hardworking. Ravenclaw is clever, intellectual." Sirius counted them off on his fingers. "And Slytherin is... well, ambitious, I suppose. Cunning."
Something in his tone when he said Slytherin caught Severus's attention. A slight distaste, quickly masked.
"You don't like Slytherin," Severus observed.
"I—it's not that I don't like them, exactly. It's just... they tend to be a bit ruthless, you know? All about pedigree and winning at any cost." Sirius waved a hand dismissively. "You'd definitely be Ravenclaw. You're brilliant, you love knowledge, you're thoughtful about everything."
Severus looked at his boyfriend—sweet, kind Sirius, who thought the best of everyone, who assumed Severus was made of better things than ambition and carefully calculated moves.
The truth was, Severus knew exactly where he'd have been sorted. He'd spent his whole life being ambitious, cunning, willing to do whatever it took to climb out of poverty. His successful career wasn't because of intellect alone—it was because he knew how to play the game, how to be ruthless when necessary.
But Sirius saw him as something else. Something better.
And Severus felt that was who he was, at least when he was with Sirius.
"You're probably right," Severus agreed softly. "Ravenclaws sounds like Horned Serpent—the house of minds and scholars. And which house were you in?"
"Gryffindor. The brave and reckless one." Sirius grinned. "First one in generations of family history not to be in Slytherin, actually."
Severus didn't know the weight of that statement then.
He only thought, of course he was. Of course Sirius—bright, bold, warm-hearted Sirius—had been a Gryffindor.
Sirius, for his part, had his own secrets.
He never talked about money, but sometimes Severus caught glimpses—the way Sirius's casual robes were made of silk that could support a family for a year, how he'd once mentioned his family's estate in passing, then quickly changed the subject.
"Do you need to work?" Severus had asked once, carefully. "I mean—are you independently wealthy, or...?"
"Something like that," Sirius admitted, looking uncomfortable. "My family has money. Quite a lot of it. But I don't really... I'm not part of that world anymore."
"You could tell me about it. Your past, your family."
"I know." Sirius kissed his forehead. "But I like this better. Just being Sirius, your slightly useless boyfriend who burns dinner and makes terrible puns. Not the person they wanted me to be."
Severus understood that too well. He let the topic drop with a smoldering kiss, whispering against Sirius’s lips, "Nonsense. You can be very useful to me, and I am going to show you exactly how."
Sometimes, however, Severus would catch glimpses of something else in Sirius. A sharpness that appeared and vanished like lightning.
There was the time a colleague at a company dinner had made a snide comment about Severus’s inability to land anyone more than a kept man. Sirius had smiled—a real, predatory smile—and said something so devastatingly polite and cutting that the man had actually flinched.
Then there was the day their landlord tried to raise the rent illegally. Sirius had written a single letter that ended with the landlord calling back to apologize profusely.
"What did you do?" Severus asked afterward.
"Oh, just reminded him of relevant tenant law. Paraphrased some things I learned from my family's solicitors." Sirius shrugged, easy and casual again. "No one messes with my people."
Severus knew Sirius only turned aggressive because he thought Severus needed defending, and Severus was more than happy to let him believe it. Even though Severus was perfectly capable of making anyone who underestimated him pay, and pay dearly, he found he preferred the version of the world where Sirius played his protector.
It was adorable, really. Like a chihuahua baring its teeth at anyone who dared to look at the wolf behind it the wrong way.
But those moments were rare. Mostly, Sirius was sunshine and laughter and gentle hands after long days.
Mostly, they were exactly who they appeared to be with each other.
Mostly.
They were both aware, in some unspoken way, that they were being perceived through a rose-tinted lens.
Severus knew he was sharper than the man who came home to Sirius each night. He knew there was a part of him—the part that had grown up poor, that had fought for every scrap of success—that would shock Sirius if he ever saw it.
And Sirius had told Severus, more than once, that he wasn’t the same man he had been before New York.
But it didn't really matter. Because the truth was, those rose-tinted versions weren't false. They were real. They were simply who they became when they were together.
Severus was gentler. The ruthless ambition that drove him at work melted away at the sight of Sirius. He found himself being patient, being kind, being soft in ways he'd never been before.
Sirius made their home a place where Severus could set down his armor.
Similarly, Sirius seemed lighter in America, away from the crushing weight his family had placed on him. The easy charm, the golden retriever energy—it wasn't an act. It was who Sirius was when he felt free.
So they let each other believe.
They held onto these softer versions of themselves, because those versions were precious. It felt like the only thing that's real.
They'd built something beautiful in that apartment. A sanctuary where they could both be their best selves.
Neither of them wanted to break the spell by acknowledging the sides of them that weren't relevant in this life—the sides they hoped might never become relevant, not in this relationship.
Two years into their relationship, Sirius received a letter.
It was actual parchment, delivered by an owl that caused absolute chaos in their apartment building. Severus heard the commotion from the bedroom and emerged to find Sirius standing in the middle of the living room, staring at an envelope with a heavy wax seal.
"What's that?"
Sirius looked up, and his expression was uncharacteristically complicated. "A wedding invitation. James—my best friend from school—he's getting married."
"Do you want to go?" Severus moved closer, observing the tension in Sirius's shoulders.
"It's in England."
"I assumed as much."
Sirius worried his bottom lip, still staring at the invitation. "Would you... I mean, you probably can't take time off work at a moment's notice, but would you want to come with me?"
Severus paused. In two years, he'd learned remarkably little about Sirius's life before America. He knew there was a family that Sirius didn't speak to, friends he missed, a whole history that Sirius had left behind.
He'd never pushed. It felt like an unspoken agreement—they were building something new, something theirs, and anything else didn't matter inside this apartment.
But now Sirius was asking him to step outside the sanctuary.
"Are you sure?" Severus asked carefully. "If you left because of your family..."
"James is nothing like my family. I mean, he is my real family. He's family family, you know? Not family by blood." Sirius's fingers fidgeted with the envelope. "I'm probably making a mess explaining it. Anyway, James is great, and his fiancée, Lily, is brilliant. You'd like them both. And I—I'd really like them to meet you."
There was something profoundly vulnerable in Sirius's expression, a quiet plea that said this mattered more than he could put into words.
"Then yes," Severus covered Sirius's fidgeting hand with his own. "I'll come with you."
The smile that broke across Sirius's face was worth the hassle of clearing his schedule at such a critical juncture.
Sirius finally found the words for what had been bothering him, after three weeks of brooding when he thought Severus wasn't paying attention.
"There are going to be a lot of people at this wedding, Sev. Society people. My family will be there." Sirius ran a hand through his hair. "They're going to be... they can be quite judgmental about... certain things. And they'll be extra merciless because you're with me."
"Such as?"
"Such as the fact that you didn't go to Hogwarts. That you're American. That you work for a living. That your last name is... common." Sirius said the last part with particular distaste. "They're snobs, basically. The worst kind."
"I can handle snobs," Severus said mildly. He'd dealt with plenty of them growing up, he was still dealing with them now.
"I know you can handle anything, love." Sirius's voice was soft, carrying a trace of gentle, protective patronization, as if he thought Severus was being naively brave. He took Severus's hands in his. "I just don't want you to think... whatever they say, however they act, it doesn't matter to me. You know that, right? You're the best thing that's ever happened to me."
Severus's gaze softened. "I know. And you are the best thing that has happened to me."
"Even though I can't cook and I’m essentially a high-maintenance house pet?"
"Especially because you're essentially a high-maintenance house pet."
Sirius looked somber despite his attempt at levity. He looked down at their joined hands."I don't want to lose you because my family are horrible people. And I don't want to lose you because... because of who they turn me into when I'm around them."
"You won't." Severus squeezed his hands, his voice grounding and firm. "We will handle them with perfect politeness. We will ignore everything they say because we know whose opinions actually matter, and then we will come back here and everything will be exactly the same. I promise you."
Sirius took a breath, clutching that promise like a lifeline, resolving then and there that he would follow Severus's lead. He wouldn't shout, he wouldn't fight, and he wouldn't let his family turn him back into the angry, volatile boy he used to be. He would be the man Severus thought he was.
And Severus knew that dealing with horrible people was just another Tuesday for him; the real challenge would be resisting the urge to eviscerate them when they inevitably poked at him. But he could stay indifferently civil—for Sirius.
Sirius finally let out a small, relieved laugh and leaned in to kiss him. "I really don't deserve you."
"Trust me," Severus murmured against his lips. "You really do."
Severus had spent the last seventy-two hours in a caffeine-fueled blur of finalizing patent applications and delegating department oversight. He had promised the shareholders that this wasn't entirely a leisure trip—he would handle some peripheral work while visiting Britain.
Sirius was in charge of the traveling logistics, but Severus had assumed their travel would be a pragmatic affair—perhaps a muggle flight to Heathrow, or a grueling combination of Apparition hubs and Floo travel through Canada, Greenland, and Iceland.
When Sirius walked into the living room holding a singular, battered old pocket watch, Severus didn't even look up; he was uncharacteristically resting his head against the back of the sofa, realizing with a trace of annoyance that he wasn't as young as he used to be.
"Is that a Portkey to the airport?"
"Not exactly," Sirius said, his voice a bit tight. "It's to London, Ministry of Magic. Direct. A one-jump transit."
Severus froze. He slowly looked up, his brow furrowed in genuine disbelief. "Sirius, that's over three thousand miles. Do you have any idea the amount of raw magical energy required to stabilize a Portkey for a single jump of that distance? The power requirement isn't linearly proportional to the distance. The spatial folding alone would require—"
"A lot of paperwork and a very old, very expensive Ministry connection," Sirius finished for him, looking sheepishly at the watch. "My family has a standing arrangement. They don't... they don't really do layovers."
Severus stared at the watch, then at his boyfriend. To Severus, this was a feat of high-level magical engineering that should have cost a small fortune and months of planning. To Sirius, it was just how you got home for a wedding.
"A standing arrangement," Severus repeated flatly. "I see. And here I was thinking the most outrageous thing you could do was to tell me you own a private airplane."
"Well, you'll have a much better night of sleep in my flat than on a private plane. You look exhausted." Sirius kissed his head softly. "Everything is set. Just... hold on tight, and we're there."
Severus stood, holding tight to his suitcase. He felt the first flicker of uneasiness. Sirius might be right to think he was naively brave if even the method of travel could catch him off guard.
"Very well," Severus said, his voice deliberately calm. "Though I’d like to see the arithmancy behind the stabilizing charms later. It's an absurd waste of energy."
"Tell that to the House of Black," Sirius muttered, offering him the watch. "They've never been big on conservation."
The sensation of a trans-Atlantic Portkey was less like travel and more like being dismantled, each piece of him sucked through a narrow tube, and reassembled by a cold, indifferent force. When the world stopped spinning, the warm, cedar-scented air of their New York apartment had been replaced by the sterile, damp chill of a private arrival terminal in the British Ministry.
Severus swayed, his head throbbing from the magical displacement, but Sirius caught him. Sirius's grip was firm, but his face had gone pale—not from the travel, but from the sudden, sharp reality of where they were.
They didn't stay long. Within a single side-along Apparition, they were stepping into Sirius's London flat—a place that felt less like a home and more like a museum of a life Sirius had tried to flee.
"Go to bed, Sev," Sirius murmured, helping him with his coat. "You can barely keep your eyes open. I'll handle the luggage."
Severus didn't argue. He crashed into the bed, the silence of London feeling heavy and ancient compared to the constant hum of Manhattan.
He woke hours later to the sound of tapping against glass.
He found Sirius in the kitchen, staring at a thick piece of parchment on the table. An owl was perched on the windowsill, its yellow eyes judging them both.
Severus had never seen Sirius look so utterly despairing.
"What is it?" Severus asked, his voice gravelly from sleep.
"My parents," Sirius whispered. He didn't look up. "They know we're here. They want us for dinner at Grimmauld Place. Tomorrow night."
Severus frowned, rubbing his eyes. "I thought the plan was to stay incognito until the wedding. A brief hello in a crowd of hundreds."
"It was." Sirius finally looked at him, his expression crumbling into deep, agonizing guilt. "But I used the Portkey, Sev. I didn't think... I just saw how tired you were, and I wanted you to have a good rest. I didn't want you cramped on a plane for seven hours."
He let out a shaky breath, gesturing to the letter.
"I didn't realize my mother would be notified the moment I pulled the strings to get the authorization. I invited a pack of wolves because I wanted you to have a few more hours of sleep." Sirius's voice broke. "I traded a long flight for a formal interrogation. I'm so sorry, Severus."
Severus looked at the letter, then at the man who had swallowed his pride and used a hated family connection just to spare him some exhaustion. Sirius looked like a man walking to his own execution.
"It's just a dinner, Sirius," Severus said, stepping forward to pull him into a grounding embrace. "We will be perfectly polite. Remember?"
Sirius clung to him like a man drowning, but Severus's eyes remained fixed on the crest of "The Noble and Most Ancient House of Black" on the envelope.
He wasn't thinking about politeness anymore. He was thinking about the shareholders he had managed, the rivals he had ruined, and the obstacles that had looked like mountains before he flattened them.
He would be civil if they tried to provoke him—but they would wish they had never sent that invitation if they tried to hurt Sirius.
Severus wasn't usually one for levity, but he said lightly, "If you keep that face, James and Lily will think I make you miserable when we have lunch with them."
"I've never been happier than when I’m with you," Sirius murmured, his voice muffled in the crook of Severus's neck.
"Then trust me," Severus said, his hand coming up to stroke the back of Sirius's head. "Let me make you happy again."
He meant it. No mountain would be too high for him to flatten if it meant keeping this man whole.