Chapter Text
The sky’s a standard grey the day Sirius arrives at the cottage’s doorstep, a record clutched to his chest. Before shrugging off his coat, he pulls a shrunken record player out of one pocket.
“Think you’ll ever convert to CDs?” Harry asks, lifting it off Sirius’s palm.
“No.” Sirius shakes his head. “The lost artistry. I can’t stomach it.”
Sirius follows Harry down the hall into the sitting room, where he restores the player to full size. Sirius sets the record down beside it; as soon as his hands are free, he curls around Harry from behind, hooking a loose arm around his neck, finding the softest skin with his mouth.
“I missed you,” Sirius says into his ear, kissing that, too.
Harry turns to fully bury against Sirius, pressing forehead to shoulder, breathing in the mixed scent of Sirius and Grimmauld Place. It’s strange that he’s developed nostalgia for a place he never much liked.
When Severus sweeps into the room, Harry tries and fails to stay relaxed. Within a few seconds, he tugs himself out of Sirius’s arms, drawing a little huff of displease out of Sirius, though he says nothing.
“Black,” Severus greets.
“Snape.”
“Weren’t you going to bring wine?”
“Was I?”
Their mutual glares leave no room for the sex they had, for the admittance of feelings, for the relationship they’d said they’d try. It’s like that with them, a constant back and forth. The only thing that never changes is their willingness to share.
“I can run out and grab a bottle,” Harry says, and hurries out the front door before they can argue, plucking Sirius’s coat off the rack as he goes. It’s heavy and a bit oversized; Harry has to roll the cuffs.
At the shop, he buys two bottles, a white and a red, and a box of chocolate. He contemplates a package of oysters, vaguely remembering that they’re aphrodisiacs, wondering if they would benefit more from a libido boost or professional help.
It’s a coin toss what he’ll find back at home. It’s with a squeeze of relief that he finds them together on the sofa, Sirius reclined back, an arm stretched loosely out.The record spins beneath the needle, a woman’s voice crashing out over guitar.
Like a lover, I need a lover, lover.
“Very on the nose,” Severus tells Harry as he sets the wine and chocolate in the last bit of space on the coffee table.
“Like your quotes aren’t,” Sirius says. The tips of his fingers brush Severus’s shoulder. “You might as well just say, pretty words to say I love you.”
Severus stares at his knees, looking caught out. Harry has mentioned Severus’s love for literature maybe once in passing. It takes a bit of studying Severus’s embarrassment to understand.
“He uses quotes with both of us?” Harry asks, fighting a smile.
“Yeah,” Sirius says. “He taught me something about thou mayest and thou mayest not. That we all have a choice. Right, Snape?”
His hand brushes Severus’s throat, the way his mouth brushed Harry’s. Harry doesn’t understand it, how they can seem to despise each other one moment and nearly cuddle the next. After several long conversations, late-night bickering, and one particularly thorough night of sex, Harry resigned from his role as peacekeeper. They’re trying; they can figure the rest out themselves.
“It sounds terrible coming from you,” Severus says, and Sirius laughs.
“I’m terrible everything, I guess. Chocolate?”
“Before dinner?” Severus frowns when Harry chooses a truffle, though the lines around his mouth soften when Harry squeezes onto the last sofa cushion. His hand cups Harry’s knee and Harry regrets the caramel sticking to his teeth. He would much rather have the kiss Severus’s eyes are promising.
“It’s no—whatever that author was, but Need a Lover was not my intended message. Listen to this.”
Sirius moves the needle, and the silence scratches into more guitar playing.
I love myself, I want you to love me.
“Harry already—”
Sirius shushes Severus, flapping a hand at him.
“Don’t ruin this, listen to the good part.”
I don’t want anyone else. When I think about you, I touch myself.
Sirius grins; Harry laughs. Severus splits a withering look between them.
“Did you plan this?” he asks. “This is as atrocious as that Wonderwall song Harry sang.”
“You sang Wonderwall? And I wasn’t there? Please, I need an encore.”
“I didn’t, actually,” Harry says. “But if you get some wine in me…”
Sirius does, two in the sitting room and two more over dinner, Severus watching them both over the rim of the glass he never quite finishes. Harry does sing Wonderwall, warbling it over his last few green beans, and then they listen to I Touch Myself again, and then Sirius tips Harry’s head back and kisses him.
“He’s drunk,” Severus says at once.
“Yeah,” Sirius says, kissing Harry’s chin. “That was kind of the point.”
“Please,” Harry says, faster than Severus can spit something back. “Please, please don’t fight.”
“We’re not fighting,” Sirius says. “I’m not fighting.”
Severus seems like he is, or wants to be, but in the end he simply looks away. Sirius kisses Harry again, and Harry thinks about Severus watching. He’s sleepy with wine, dizzy with Sirius’s touch, but he forces his eyes open to check on Severus.
“You okay?”
“Actually.” Severus stands. “I’m tired.”
“Oh.” Harry tries to hide his disappointment, and Sirius goes very still against him.
“Don’t let that stop you,” he says.
“Snape, we don’t have to—”
“You’ve had sex without me before. I’m sure you’ll remember how to do it again. I’m not upset. I’m tired, as I said. I’ll be sleeping.”
He’s barely out of the room when Sirius sighs, collapsing.
“I can’t believe I came all the way here to be cockblocked.”
“All the way here?” Harry kicks at his calf. “It was, what, thirty seconds of Apparition?”
Severus is in the bathroom when Harry crawls into bed, Sirius right behind him. When he comes back, he stops short.
“I suppose I’ll have to set up a guest room,” he says, thin and steely.
“Shut up,” Sirius says, pulling Harry tight against him to make space for Severus on the other side. “You’re tired, Harry’s drunk—”
“I am not!”
“—let’s all just go to bed. We’ll have plenty of other nights fuck each other in all sorts of configurations.”
“How many syllables is that? Five? I didn’t think you had it in you.”
“You’re mean,” Harry says, nuzzling into Severus’s shoulder.
“Cruel,” Sirius says, his voice soft with affection.
“I think this is a tragedy being written,” Severus says. When Harry tilts his head back, he finds Severus staring up at the ceiling.
“You can think that,” Harry says. “I’ll have enough optimism for all of us.”
Severus doesn’t argue further, and Sirius is the first to fall asleep. Severus joins him not long after and Harry is left awake, squished, contemplating the same ceiling that held Severus’s attention.
The room is an explosion of balloons and streamers and charmed trinkets. Harry’s least favourite decorations are the dozen miniature plastic babies bobbing over each table.
“Fred and George,” Ginny tells Harry when she catches him staring at them with what must be an obvious look of repulsion.
The guests are an assortment of Weasleys, former classmates, and current coworkers. Hermione has her own heart-shaped table, which she mostly avoids until George grabs her and propels her into the chair for games.
Severus isn’t there. He claimed the wedding drained his reservoir of social niceties. Sirius is there, though Ron still won’t look at him with anything less than contempt.
It was Ron that asked Harry to give a toast, and it’s Ron that brings Harry the microphone while everyone is eating sandwiches and drinking Bloody Marys.
“Quick,” Sirius says. “Sing Wonderwall again.”
It’s been four years since the tipsy concert, and Sirius has yet to let it go. Harry would grin if he wasn’t so nervous to start speaking. Even though he’s researched and planned and written, even though he’s used to stares and holding attention, nothing about standing up and clearing his throat feels natural. He’s about to speak to many of the same people that whispered about him in the halls, called him evil or stuck up or mad depending on the year. He’s seven years away since the last time he’s seen any of them and he’s very conscious of the ways he’s changed, that he’s nearing his threshold for noise, that he’s accompanied by his much older lover who is not his soulmate.
He looks only at Hermione when he speaks.
“I know today we’re here for the baby,” he says, forcing himself to smile at her despite his nerves. “But before there was Hermione and Rose, there was Hermione and Ron. My best friends. Each other’s best friends, even at times when they could barely stand to be in the same room. Soulmates.
“The soulmates part is funny. For anyone who was in our fifth year lesson, you might remember what Hermione said. Chemistry and attraction are a complication of factors, but relationships are a choice. Love is a choice.
“I hope that is what Rose grows up knowing about her parents. They aren’t forced together. They choose each other, over and over. And she’s very lucky to come from a love like that.”
Harry lifts his glass, and it’s Hermione and Ron that he picks out among everyone else.
“After that speech, I kind of want to get you pregnant,” Sirius says later, while Molly weeps into the microphone.
“Ha. Yeah. Good luck with that.”
Sirius squeezes his hand under the table.
“Can I at least try?”
He does, that evening, when they’re back home, Severus downstairs working on a rush order. Sirius is pressing Harry into the bed, rubbing his cock along Harry’s slicked crack, when Severus appears in the doorway.
“Damn,” Sirius says, after he’s jumped out of his skin. “A little knock would be nice.”
“I could hear Harry’s moans across the house,” Severus says. He left his robe in the lab, a casualness he rarely allows. Harry loves him in his white shirt, buttoned up to the throat, sleeves rolled to the elbows. Harry loves him all ways, but this view is particularly nice.
“Shut him up, then,” Sirius says and then, remembering Severus’s softness about sex, adds a quick, “Please.”
Severus comes to the head of the bed, taking in Harry, half-naked, jeans pushed down and legs pushed up. Sirius goes back to dragging himself over and around Harry’s hole, and Harry whimpers, reaching for Severus’s thigh.
Severus ignores Harry’s wordless demand, opting instead to kneel at the bed and cup a hand to Harry’s forehead.
“You look beautiful,” Severus says. “I missed you.”
“Love the romance,” Sirius says. “But watch this.”
Sirius pushes forward, sliding inside Harry in one full movement, drawing a gasp out of Harry. The hand on Severus’s thigh fists.
“Look at beautiful Harry and his beautiful mouth,” Sirius says. “He’s begging you to fill it. Don’t let him down.”
Severus doesn’t. He never would.
Every time Sirius goes shopping, he brings something back for Harry.
A chocolate bar. A plucked flower. A book.
“It made me think of you,” he’d say about each thing. “Not that I ever stop.”
Severus comes out of the lab smelling of mugwort and smoke. When he sees Harry at the kitchen table, he goes straight to him, kissing the top of his head, then picking up his hand and kissing each knuckle.
“You won’t distract me,” Harry says. “This issue has a feature on Viktor Krum. Look, an open-robe shot. Witch Weekly is pushing buttons.”
“Your first crush,” Severus says, peering at the glossy photos, humouring him. Harry doesn’t mind. Actually, it’s flattering, Severus looking at what he considers trash just to make Harry happy.
Harry’s not said as much; he’s not sure he ever will. But he thinks, on the nights when he can’t sleep and in the hours where he has nothing else to do, that this might be what makes Severus his perfect match. That Severus loves him, and his love is not the kind that constricts. Severus doesn’t want to hold Harry. He wants to open his hands and let Harry fly free, up and up to the dizzying heights of happiness.