This is a short one-shot.

Warnings: Character death, extreme language, explicit sexual content, M rated.

Disclaimer: JK owns the Harry Potter world and I make no claim to it. I merely like to burrow her characters and have them act out juicy little scenes from my own twisted mind. lol.

A/N: THIS IS SLASH!!! IF YOU DON"T LIKE SLASH DON"T GO ANY FURTHER!! To those that read on, hello. -Please review and enjoy! It would encourage me very much to write more of these if you leave me a kind word or two. Please...

Existence

by: hand2sorrow

His touch.

Long-fingered hands stroking a tan stretch of skin. A gasp as a skilled hand fastens over a hard shaft, insurmountable pleasure ripping a moan through pale pink lips.

The feel of his body against mine.

Chest against chest, coarse hair, heavy breathing, sensitive nipples bursting up nerves of pleasure and ripping cries of blessed euphoria as a finger fondles them to hardness.

Every moment like a flood of relief, a never ending ache for his presence.

His inky black hair falling over a pale shoulder, where nails make red half moons on the strong muscled smoothness, brush against a lightly muscled abdomen, concave as it shivers with sweet expectation. A tongue darts between thin lips and travels down, hot air cooling the beads of sweat collecting on unblemished skin. Bitter drops of precome pool at the slit as the hand moves to surround erect flesh, up and down, up and down, over and over, unraveling feelings long ago forgotten.

All just a memory…

I bow my head as I recall them, easing my body down to my knees. Every cry that he ripped from me then seems to crush my heart, his memory like a poison--vicious when it comes and sweet with what it delivers.

My fingers uncurl, releasing the Obsidian river stone I had clutched in my sweaty palm. My palm is bruised with how tightly wound my fists had been. I arrange it next to the ones I have already collected, pressing a kiss to the marble headstone, my hand stroking the side as if I could reach the one person I loved the most in my entire life.

He would have laughed if I had let flowers rot before his plot, claiming that I was being foolish and deliberately wasteful. So I leave stones, warded to be protected from thieves, and rare, just like his smiles and laughs were in life. Each stone resting before him is for every time I have allowed myself to remember him, to feel his absence. It's a good thing that I bought him his own private plot; there must be hundreds of irregular stones by now.

Shutting my eyes, the wind whistles, and I indulge in the utter silence that closely follows. Then a crunching of leaves distracts me and I open them to see a dark form towering over me.

"What are you d-?"

Dark eyes scrutinize me and then a pale hand, so cold, strokes my cheek. Eyes remain emotionless but I know that if I really look I'll find a presence of something there. The ungraspable familiarity hurts like a never healing wound within me.

"Don't…" my voice trails off in a sob and I stand, grabbing the cold hand and rubbing the palm with my thumb, as if I alone could instill within them warmth. The cold is too much, traveling from my fingers and collecting at my chest, so I step away from the dark, haunting man; he can't be mine—the man is incapable of it.

I remember the first time I realized that I had unknowingly fallen in love with him, the lover that lays buried here, separated not only by six feet of earth but by two separate planes of existence.

During the second war, the day I realized his importance, was when I raided Malfoy manor with Draco Malfoy himself, fed up with the Dark Lord's insanity and his father's unwavering loyalty to the monster who continued to steal his fortune. Ron and I killed Lucius, protecting the three wizards the pompous arse had acquired for hostages. Ron was struck down with a Cutting curse from Narcissa in that same split second.

He bled to death in my arms, Narcissa taking advantage of my shock and sending a Suffocation Hex at my back.

Blocking her spell, Draco killed his own mother with the most pained look on his face…

Though we still greatly disliked each other, inside I blamed myself. Having forced him to murder his own mother, who he had still loved despite her nature, I was never again able to meet his eyes.

Later, bloodied, I returned to him…my lover, though I had never though of him as much. Regardless, I had been sleeping with him for months, since my training sessions had begun. It had started with fondles, dry thrusting against a wall, not even a kiss. We detested ourselves, we murderers, forever plagued with our low self-worth. Our sexual releases were wrought with shame first, unable to deny ourselves, incapable of initiating a single word to describe what the hell we were up to.

Then, we kissed. Our eyes met, expecting destruction.

We didn't shatter; our self-imposed loneliness was abandoned instead. Shame turned into wild lust, fucks started to change meaning, slower, less animalistic. That night, I tore down a wall and he watched it tumble without as much as a blink, his dark eyes hiding an intensity that made me finally see why we fit.

Thinking back, my reflection alone that night could have told a story: covered in blood, my expression dead, my jade eyes lost. Funny that I can recall that, when all I was capable of feeling then was the numbness, seeing the lost look in Hermione's eyes when I told her, showing her the terrible memory of glassy azure staring right through me, of lovers falling away through metaphorical veils.

Lovers…I don't see why her marriage was ever relevant. The fact that they were in love and had declared a legal union shouldn't give anyone the explicit right to be named a widow, as if her loss had been greater than anyone else's.

After all, on the grieving side of the veil, we were all left broken, a generation born to war, missing a part of ourselves that we dared not live without. Mortals die, we accepted this, but it didn't save us from our own precious delusions of the longevity of our life spans, our outright denial of our own coming ends that we never seemed to come to terms with. You don't recover from losing a loved one; you change and become someone you hardly recognize--a stranger.

My last remaining friend was unable to do this.

Utterly destroyed, Hermione drank poison after I had finally defeated Voldemort, her duty done, and unable to cope with the loss of her husband and paralysis due to spell damage to her spinal column. In life, when she had been happy, one would have never pinned her as a suicide.

War can be so devastating...

The night Ron died, my steps seemed endless, my throat aching, my heart so painful in my chest, walls stretching like arms to uncertain fates. I followed my feet, feeling hollow, refusing to even imagine what life would be like without Ron at my side, without his laughter.

It's unbelievable how grasping the concept of living the rest of my life missing my best friend eluded me then.

Walking the halls of Hogwarts, I raised my hand to a dark lacquered door, intending to knock, feeling so torn, the guilt of surviving clawing at my chest and telling me to return to my own cold bed, that I was undeserving of any comfort. There I stood, at the entrance of the dungeon chamber, standing there and looking down at my feet even as it slid open to reveal my lover's form frowning down at me. Eventually, without a word, he tugged me inside.

"Ron's…gone," I told him, feeling detached from the voice speaking the words so weakly, unable to call his death what it was.

For 'gone' had been a term used for when a lover goes out to the market, when a best friend leaves for work, not when he will never return, not when it can't be remedied with an owl or a Floo call, when it's possible to get him back, when there is still a chance to tell them what you have been meaning to. 'Gone' is not unbearable regret, hardly sufficient to describe such agony.

But 'gone' had been enough for my lover. The rest I can't recall but flashes as I was stripped, bathed, and washed carefully. He held me then and instead of the frenzied fuck of the norm, the wild build up to mutual release, mixtures of moans and cries that screamed of the pain and pleasure.

No, he had known the filth that I felt; the bitter cold of my best friend's blood as it soaked my robes. For that night, he became my lover, the embodiment of everything remotely decent that I had ever seen in him.

I loved the bastard.

The acknowledging words were unnecessary—we had always spoken with glances alone, both just as stubborn to confess that we had coincidentally fallen into our own trap. That our convenient arrangement had turned into something we would have never foreseen.

Nibbles were slow, kisses stolen, pale skin worshipped. The layers of my own self hatred and preoccupation were stripped and left me bare, making me feel whole and somehow raw even as he turned my body to my side, positioning my legs and spreading me open as he rubbed my pink nipples to pebbled peaks. My eyes watched his face as he prepared my entrance, intense onyx staring into mine as he dipped down my cleft, probing with slender fingers slicked with lubricant, entering me, thick cock eventually filling me completely and hips thrusting until I was sure I would be sent over the edge, just to have him pull back and start the slow build up all over again.

The rhythm continued and I remember as tears finally flowed from my eyes as certain and unsteady as a breathy exhale, with the overwhelming sense of something I didn't think I deserved. Yet, he kept on, holding me, back to firm chest, pumping his hips as I thrust back over and over again, willing my mind to remember every single sensation, to burn his touch onto my skin.

It's misery, to feel that type of connection and to never be able to get it back.

There isn't a night that I don't feel like something is missing from my bed, from my chest. The weight that should be at my back, assuring me that even if the world is hell and living becomes torturous, that I still have a reason to keep going, is gone forever.

I ache every bloody day to get it back; so much feeling that it overwhelms me. The man had become my haven, my safe harbor. A steady constant of sharp, probing tongue and jabs, aligned to his selfish whims, ignorant of my mood or life. He saw what he believed as truth for so long that I realized he alone didn't change his opinion of me just by popular demand.

It was like freedom, sending my mind off to the task of convincing him to have me. To look at me without scorn or disdain; taste his curled lips and kiss away his sneers. Pleasure becoming his mind's new task, changing his insults to whispered promises as he swallowed me whole, using his skilled hands to touch me--he possessed me.

That night when he put his hands on me, stroking my cock as he kissed my neck slowly, was when I realized that I had lost my ability to see myself pulling through the war without him.

I suppose that was my ultimate ruin—loving him.

The next day, muddy footprints swirled with blood soaked his corpse, frantic healers stepping over a man few liked, missing a step and nearly falling over the still form. Alive, the black eyes would have enjoyed the sight of spiting those people who were shameless enough to stumble over him; he would have appeared unaffected as eyes barely strained to see his pallid face claimed in death even as they assisted the sobbing hero of wizard kind-- unscathed but in agony.

"Fucking pity that it was the last time you ever had a chance to touch me like that." I tell the still image beside the tombstone, dark eyes meeting mine as I recall the weight of my lover's thrusting form over me, making love to me. At least that's what I thought as I watched them bury him, as I kissed his cold lips and put my hand over his ice cold ones, wishing that we had been given just another day. Another day to listen to the deep tones of my lover's voice, to relish in that moment we were given, because I would have known then that the dead don't ever speak. That since my lover was gone, that not even my mind can offer up his voice for comfort.

It's no surprise that he died shielding my body with his own from the backlash of the spell I had cast to defeat the snake-faced bastard. He had saved me so many times in the last decade; it was just cruel enough that his life would be taken right after he had finally been freed of Voldemort. The curse hit his back and I left him resting upon me, feeling the warmth slip away, eyes staring into mine, no words, just another shared glance as I absorbed the enormity of the situation.

I had never known that surviving the war could be so wretched and empty.

My shaking hands remove a vial from my robes and I fall onto my knees, pained tears pouring from my eyes. "I love you, you bloody git…" I tell him softly as I drink the potion down.

It makes me forget until next weekend that I ever loved him, that he ever took my heart with him when he left me, leaving a shell behind.

My arms wrap around him. Touch is allowed. To me, not even death can take that from me. "Severus…" I whisper into the crook of his neck as he silently holds me. Then my mind begins to block out the memories of a chocolate experiment, a hard fuck against a wall, world shattering fellatio, and a pair of striking dark eyes meeting mine, no longer so cold in death. I squeeze my eyes shut, his long fingers entwined in my hair, holding on for dear life.

I want to scream, to beat his chest with my fist, to insult him for not uttering a single word as my lover. But I won't, our time is much too short, I simply burrow deeper, hating myself for having to block the memory of the man I loved. I don't even dare look into his eyes; I know what I'll find there.

The right git left the world while looking at me like he had after we had first made love…The look that said that he needed me to see him, to see past his walls, and to love him as much as he loved me. It's the type of feeling that makes you feel alive for once.

Seconds pass, the potion makes it's way into my blood stream, the illusion that followed me, that gives me strength, becomes another apparition of my old hated potion's master, my lover disappearing long enough for me to make it through the week. I release this man awkwardly, my eyes dimming, confused over the wetness that stings my cheeks.

The ghostly imprint that my mind creates both tortures and allows me to go on.

It's a trick you see, the image can't be my lover, the man I loved most in the whole entire world—the Snape I see now is truly incapable of it. My eyes close and I tilt my head up, the sun warming my face.

I think I'll go flying again, escape in the clouds, disappearing from the image of the Boy-Who-Lived—lived to die, I add to the ridiculous head line.

Next time, the vial may be different, I usually decide after the potion fades from my system and I find that I can't stand from the sheer agony of loss that erupts through my chest, realizing that I am merely existing, that I have no purpose. I am alone, and for the most part, I accept this.

"Get off the ground, foolish, sentimental Gryffindor," Snape snarls. His ghostly form sneers down at me and I glare.

"If you would please stop following me around, sir, you won't have to see me do anything," I respond scathingly, my cheeks flushing at his condescending manner.

"Splendid, the idiot boy is still embarrassed that I came upon him touching himself in the shower two days ago," he drawls, lip curling. "Do grow up, Potter!" The maddening man turns abruptly and stalks off, the hem of his robes look like tendrils of see-through black caressed by wind.

Frowning, I follow him and just know he's scowling. "And I'm thirty-fucking-years-old!" I call out after him, irritated that he still has the power to make me feel like an adolescent.

This is the Snape I can deal with and for some reason the snarky remarks keep me going. He never pities me, just tells me to get off my lazy arse. How unexpected it is that I don't think I can survive without him here.

"Twenty points from Gryffindor! For your insolence," Snape drawls lazily.

"Hogwarts doesn't exist anymore, remember," I reply smugly, glad to see his back stiffen as I goad him.

He looks over his shoulder and sends me an evil smirk, looking entirely too smug. "Two hours then."

"Oh gods no…" I plead, "anything but that. Please…"

"You have left me very little choice, Potter." Snape isn't even feigning being regretful.

"But…"

"Aconite plant is a hardy perennial," Snape begins in his usual 'I hate you and I can't believe you have the audacity to be this stupid' tone.

"You cruel…sadistic bastard," I mutter under my breath.

He doesn't appear to have heard me and merely continues, "-with a fleshy, spindle-shaped root, pale-colored when young, but subsequently acquiring a dark brown skin. The stem is approximately three feet high, with dark green, glossy leaves, deeply divided in palmate manner and flowers in erect clusters of a dark blue color. The leaves and flowering tops are of less importance, they are employed for preparing Extract of Aconitum, and for this purpose are cut when the flowers are just breaking into blossom and the leaves are in their best condition, which is in June…"

Unable to ignore him, I growl and stalk past him, my hands fisted. Some days I wake up just to contradict his insults about my lifestyle. Maybe that's not so bad after all, seeing as the man is the only one who it would never occur to but to see the Harry Potter he imagines exist, even if my deceased father has more weight in that department than my own actions.

Pity that I'm the only one mad enough to make my mind conjure up such a strange wizard, a man who lived most of his unnatural existence as a double-agent. He always did play the part of two men, two parallel existences just as miserable, the only difference being some personal driving force. Maybe I feel some detached sense of guilt for never having known this man, always the never-ending constant in my twisted life.

A/N: you like? don't like? Te gusto mucho o poco? Tell me! Dimelo! One word or two? Una palabra or dos? Que? What! Porfavor! Please!

Yay! I gave you free Spanish lesson, focused on appealing to my fellow latinos as well as my most fluent language(english, duh, I was kind of raised here), and ended up sounding completely desperate for your review, how much better can it get? Like a day at the beach, stretching out on the sand as you warily gaze at the rip current and fear the eventual hurricane season, and the sun goes down as soon as you get there and your forced to study for a Biology final and are afraid the seagulls will become the crazy airborne killers of The Birds( a very scary movie). Anyway, sorry about that, went to the beach last week and my procrastinating nature made my imagination run wild. lol. bottom lip quivers Please review...