Disclaimer: All characters from the Harry Potter universe belong to J.K. Rowling, Bloomsbury Publishing, Scholastic Inc., AOL/Time Warner and associated companies. No offence, legal or otherwise, is intended by the online publication of this story. Neither is profit. Make love, not lawsuits!

Notes: Dedicated to Bow, who asked for Snape/Bill.

Bill loved the idea of loving Fleur. Fleur was white and smooth and pliant, and she was soft and clean under his mouth, and her accent rolled wonderfully in his ear when Bill fucked her slowly in the mornings. Fleur was unfailingly polite to Mum, and Mum liked her. Dad had the uncomfortable habit of blushing whenever Fleur looked at him, but at least he didn't leer the way Fred and George did. Fleur was sharper and more dangerous than she let on, and she liked things to be as smooth and well-kept as she was--that's why her furniture had the same graceful curves that she did, and that's why the hexes she cast on the Death Eaters were swift and painless but almost always fatal.

Bill had never decided to start fucking Snape. It wasn't even something he thought about, something he wanted--it just happened, one night after a mission, when Snape was dabbing potions into Bill's wounds and Bill hissed--and something about that sound made Snape look up suddenly, sharply, as though Bill had said something he recognized.

Bill had never decided to start fucking Snape. The mere idea of it was ridiculous. Snape was dirty--dirty from his potion-stained fingers to his teeth to his oily, greasy hair--dirty in the taste of his mouth, bitter as poison, the slicking of his come over Bill's skin dirty and the way he grunted when he moved inside Bill dirty, and something about it made Bill feel cleaner somehow, rougher and scrubbed raw on the inside, so that Fleur felt even cleaner when he went back home and touched her the following night. After fucking Snape Bill felt clean the way he did after taking a hangover potion--suddenly everything was so much more brutally real, sharp edges and too much sunlight, even though he and Snape only ever fucked in the dark. Fleur was smooth edges and soft but Snape was irregular and sharp, arm hot and sweaty around Bill's chest as he fucked him deep and hard, palm hot and sweaty on Bill's cock until Bill came all over the sheets, dirtying them, skin hot and sweaty against Bill's back when they collapsed onto the sheets and Snape never bothered to clean up, not the way Fleur did, so that the next morning Bill woke up stinking of come.

Fleur was clean. So clean. Bill loved the idea of loving her. He tried to understand at first why he kept letting Snape touch him after missions, why he grew hard when he heard Snape's voice drawl during Order meetings, or saw Snape's eyes settle on him, heated and deep and there. But eventually Bill got used to it--taking it up the arse with Snape at night, stumbling home to make love to Fleur in the mornings--and it was nothing to worry about, because he still loved the idea of loving Fleur, and Fleur fucked other men too, Bill knew it, because Fleur had never been one for monogamy. So clean, Fleur's logic. There had been a time, in the beginning, when Bill used to be angry with her--but now, with Snape, he finally understood. What he and Fleur had was clean, and he and Fleur would get married one day, and he and Fleur would be smooth and right and everyone would look at them and think what a perfect couple they were. Because they were perfect--alone, together--and now Bill knew her even better, and it was so good, so good to feel her small cool hands on his skin after the heat of Snape's--so good to fuck Snape's mouth with his cock after a mission, Snape's tongue as liquid and hot as a potion.

It was all so very clean, this triangle--or perhaps square, if Fleur's absence some mornings was anything to go by.

Bill was as clean as Fleur now. And Snape, the more times he let Snape fuck him, seemed to become even dirtier. Snape held Bill afterwards, mouth open and wet against Bill's shoulder, not closed and demure like Fleur's. He started to pull Bill aside even when they didn't always have the time--before missions, not just afterwards, a quick cock-sucking in Grimmauld Place before the heady rush of the Portkey. He started to recognize what Bill liked and did it repeatedly--he made Bill come hard and quick when he needed to, or took his time if this was after a mission and they had all night to spare. Snape, Bill realized, didn't fuck anybody else--there was never any whiff on Snape's skin but that of potions, iron, acid and cloth.

Snape didn't look at Fleur when she occasionally came for meetings, almost as though she didn't exist--and even though he fucked Bill harder after those days, Bill didn't say anything. Snape never even glanced at Fleur--until the day she pulled Bill aside instead, gave him a long, slow kiss and told him to take care, Bill. He pulled away afterwards, blushing, but Fleur only smiled before she left, glancing calmly at Snape. Shacklebolt murmured something about young love, and the others in the meeting room coughed discreetly and smiled. Only Snape seemed frozen to the spot, paralysed; and Bill finally had to raise his eyebrows and step forward with the Portkey, reminding him that they had a mission to do.

The mission went well. Snape moved quick and dark as water, striking and hexing until there was little left of the cadre of young Death Eaters they had been assigned to ambush. The hexes Snape threw were messy and painful and not fatal until he wanted them to be. Dirty. Snape was fighting dirty. He would have been almost beautiful were it not for the essential imperfection of it, the fact that he was fighting dirty because he wanted to, not because it was part of the plan.

Afterwards Snape shoved him into the bedroom, as usual, but didn't clean any of Bill's wounds. He had a strange, tight look on his face--the way he did after someone landed him a particularly painful hex--but Bill knew that wasn't the case, because Snape had barely been hit tonight.

Bill almost knew what was going to happen. He almost did, but then he didn't, because Fleur was generous and didn't mind it if Bill showed interest in other women, if she knew he spent the night elsewhere, because she had her secrets too.

But Snape didn't smile like Fleur did, clean and gracious and smooth. Snape didn't speak any words of pretend. Snape only dug his fingers into Bill's wrists, deep enough to bruise, and hissed: 'If she touches you again I'll kill her.'

He meant it, too. Meant it like Fleur meant one of her swift, clean curses--except that Snape was dirty and Fleur was not, and Fleur made sense and Snape did not, and Snape was mad, completely mad, and Bill had been mad for letting this happen in the first place.

'Let go of me,' Bill said. You're being stupid, he wanted to say to Snape, and also, I want to fuck you now. Snape looked almost clean when he was angry--as though the inner heat could burn away the filth of him, his Mark.

Some little part of Bill was also afraid that Snape would walk away now, and never come back. But that would mean Bill was stupid too, and Bill wasn't. Bill wasn't.

Snape wasn't either. The anger in his eyes cooled, a flat dark sheen now, and he did end up fucking Bill after all. He didn't let Bill touch himself this time, and didn't touch Bill either--he made Bill come with nothing but Snape's cock in him, in long, hard, heavy strokes. It felt empty, it felt clean, like it did with Fleur. Bill thought he liked it, and came as hard as he usually did.

When Snape was done he drew out of Bill and lay on the bed a little away, not touching, until Bill had to wipe himself off and go to sleep. He woke up a few hours later, still in darkness, to see Snape standing by the window in nothing but a cold white shirt--staring out at the night, unmoving, his face turned so that Bill couldn't see it at all.