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crack_van2011-02-28 12:41 am
perverse-idyll.livejournal.com) wrote in crack_van2011-02-28 12:41 am
Entry tags:
The Shadow of Misery's Wings by Femmequixotic (NC-17)
Fandom: HARRY POTTER
Pairing: Severus Snape/Viktor Krum
Length: ~5,400
Author on LJ:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
femmequixotic
Author Website: Femme's page on Archive of Our Own
Why this must be read:
Are you in the mood for raw, dirty, emotionally unflinching smut between two survivors battered by war's aftermath? The kind of storytelling likely to shock you out of your readerly apathy? This may be the fic for you. It's a dark, sexually explicit love song about people broken by loss but still clawing shards of meaning out of life's ruins. The setting is snow-bound half-derelict Sofia, Krum's hometown, where Snape has set up shop as a brothel-keeper, scarred and beaten down, with no pretensions and no future to speak of. The same could be said of Viktor Krum, crippled ex-Quidditch star and current Auror, haunted by unhealed wounds and the corruption of post-Soviet Bulgaria. To the local law enforcement, Snape is rubbish at the bottom of the social ladder. But not to Viktor. Their connection is practically a collision, gaspingly intense, and as searing as a torch lit at the bottom of a cold, dark, bottomless pit.
It's cheating, but I'm behind on my recs, so I'm going to quote parts of a comment I left to Femme. It's a paean to her characters, Snape most of all: "What a strangely dignified, unapologetic, crude, indomitable spirit he is, every last molecule of sentimentality burned away … Snape's vulgarity, his refusal to back down, his borderline depravity and suicidal sense of honor, his terse intelligence, his endurance in the face of yet another attempt to break him, his lack of sexual restraint and his extreme appetite for being possessed and driven to his limits – my God. I love the way you linger on physical descriptions of his – I'm not even sure 'submissiveness' is the word, because he's so powerful, so insatiable, so gloriously filthy in his demand for more.
"The two men's mutual greediness, their disillusionment and absolute hunger, so brutal and visceral and utterly absorbed in each other, is both exhilarating in its lack of control and also heartbreaking, because they've lost so much and they need so violently, and they will half-kill each other fulfilling that need. Because they're trapped by their pasts, and the horizon is dark and snowed under."
So, yes. *clears throat* That's how this fic made me feel.
~*~
I lift the cigarette to my mouth. I can almost taste him on it. The urge to kiss him, to bend him over the cot and have him here, writhing beneath me, is almost unbearable. Instead I stand again, moving around the table, away from him.
"Do you want me?" I ask. It's not a fair question. The potion requires him to answer.
He fights it, but it's too strong, even for someone as practiced at resistance as he. "Yes," he spits out.
I could ask him anything, have all my questions answered. He knows it, and he lifts his chin, daring me.
I won't.
That's not how I want him.
He watches me pace. "Your leg is bothering you," he says finally.
I glance at him. "Yes."
"You haven't taken the potion I gave you."
I shrug and stub the cigarette out against the wall. It leaves a mark. "You warned me not to overuse it--"
Severus's snort cuts me off. "I doubt there's any danger of that. Take the damned potion. Your brother wouldn't wish pain on you."
I look away. I know he's right, and I can't help wishing I'd not told him about Mila. About the flying accident. It'd been covered up, mostly, save for a few whispers here and there. Officially I'd injured myself in a practise game, ending my Quidditch career. In reality I'd flown after my brother late one December night. He'd been high on Alihotsy and certain he could reach the moon--when I'd caught up with him, high above the tree line on Vihren, he'd pushed me away, angrily and with incredible, potion-enhanced force.
We'd both fallen. Mila had died, hitting his head on the same boulder that had cracked my spine and severed two vertebrae. I hadn't walked for a year.
I still blame myself for his death.
Severus is watching me. "Vitya," he says, almost gently, and when I look at him, I'm angry, angrier than I've been all evening.
"Don't call me that," I snarl, and I grab his robe, jerking him halfway across the cot. A smug smile flickers across his face, and my mouth catches his, rough and furious, my teeth scraping across his lip, biting hard.
When the wards clatter again, I shove him away from me. He falls back against the stone wall with a grunt.
The Shadow of Misery's Wings
Pairing: Severus Snape/Viktor Krum
Length: ~5,400
Author on LJ:
femmequixoticAuthor Website: Femme's page on Archive of Our Own
Why this must be read:
Are you in the mood for raw, dirty, emotionally unflinching smut between two survivors battered by war's aftermath? The kind of storytelling likely to shock you out of your readerly apathy? This may be the fic for you. It's a dark, sexually explicit love song about people broken by loss but still clawing shards of meaning out of life's ruins. The setting is snow-bound half-derelict Sofia, Krum's hometown, where Snape has set up shop as a brothel-keeper, scarred and beaten down, with no pretensions and no future to speak of. The same could be said of Viktor Krum, crippled ex-Quidditch star and current Auror, haunted by unhealed wounds and the corruption of post-Soviet Bulgaria. To the local law enforcement, Snape is rubbish at the bottom of the social ladder. But not to Viktor. Their connection is practically a collision, gaspingly intense, and as searing as a torch lit at the bottom of a cold, dark, bottomless pit.
It's cheating, but I'm behind on my recs, so I'm going to quote parts of a comment I left to Femme. It's a paean to her characters, Snape most of all: "What a strangely dignified, unapologetic, crude, indomitable spirit he is, every last molecule of sentimentality burned away … Snape's vulgarity, his refusal to back down, his borderline depravity and suicidal sense of honor, his terse intelligence, his endurance in the face of yet another attempt to break him, his lack of sexual restraint and his extreme appetite for being possessed and driven to his limits – my God. I love the way you linger on physical descriptions of his – I'm not even sure 'submissiveness' is the word, because he's so powerful, so insatiable, so gloriously filthy in his demand for more.
"The two men's mutual greediness, their disillusionment and absolute hunger, so brutal and visceral and utterly absorbed in each other, is both exhilarating in its lack of control and also heartbreaking, because they've lost so much and they need so violently, and they will half-kill each other fulfilling that need. Because they're trapped by their pasts, and the horizon is dark and snowed under."
So, yes. *clears throat* That's how this fic made me feel.
I lift the cigarette to my mouth. I can almost taste him on it. The urge to kiss him, to bend him over the cot and have him here, writhing beneath me, is almost unbearable. Instead I stand again, moving around the table, away from him.
"Do you want me?" I ask. It's not a fair question. The potion requires him to answer.
He fights it, but it's too strong, even for someone as practiced at resistance as he. "Yes," he spits out.
I could ask him anything, have all my questions answered. He knows it, and he lifts his chin, daring me.
I won't.
That's not how I want him.
He watches me pace. "Your leg is bothering you," he says finally.
I glance at him. "Yes."
"You haven't taken the potion I gave you."
I shrug and stub the cigarette out against the wall. It leaves a mark. "You warned me not to overuse it--"
Severus's snort cuts me off. "I doubt there's any danger of that. Take the damned potion. Your brother wouldn't wish pain on you."
I look away. I know he's right, and I can't help wishing I'd not told him about Mila. About the flying accident. It'd been covered up, mostly, save for a few whispers here and there. Officially I'd injured myself in a practise game, ending my Quidditch career. In reality I'd flown after my brother late one December night. He'd been high on Alihotsy and certain he could reach the moon--when I'd caught up with him, high above the tree line on Vihren, he'd pushed me away, angrily and with incredible, potion-enhanced force.
We'd both fallen. Mila had died, hitting his head on the same boulder that had cracked my spine and severed two vertebrae. I hadn't walked for a year.
I still blame myself for his death.
Severus is watching me. "Vitya," he says, almost gently, and when I look at him, I'm angry, angrier than I've been all evening.
"Don't call me that," I snarl, and I grab his robe, jerking him halfway across the cot. A smug smile flickers across his face, and my mouth catches his, rough and furious, my teeth scraping across his lip, biting hard.
When the wards clatter again, I shove him away from me. He falls back against the stone wall with a grunt.
The Shadow of Misery's Wings