Chapter 2

~~~~~

Chapter Two

It wasn't until after dinner and another round of potions and chamber pots that they returned to the subject of Moody's career as a stuffed rhinoceros.

"It was Muggles got to me first...a kid," Moody said, grimacing as he tried to find a comfortable position on the bed. "I'd lost my magic eye when I fell. My broom, too. Once I changed into the rhino, I was bloody helpless, but at least I wasn't dead. This Muggle kid happened along and spotted me. Took me home and kept me on a goddamn shelf in his room for what must have been months. Thought I was going to bleeding rot there. But finally his mum cleaned house, and I ended up on some kind of display table. Jumble sale or something. Mostly Muggles around, but every now and then I could sense a prickle of magic when someone passed by."

His face grew grim. "Then I felt the dark ones. Unmistakable. They could sense me, too. Picked me up. Two of them, man and a woman. Apparated home with me. In the end, I just exchanged one shelf for another. But I wasn't the only dark item they owned, not by a long chalk. Could feel others all around me."

"And the boy?" Snape prompted.

"The couple's son, I'd guess. They fought, the man and the woman did. I could feel the anger, the spite. Could feel the boy, too. He was afraid, sometimes. But cunning, crafty. He'd come in and mess with the dark things. They came and went, the dark items; I could sense the different magics. Then one day it was my turn to go. I could tell that it was the boy who brought me here; he was anxious and excited both."

Snape nodded. "He must have learned about me from his parents. He knew that I was in the market for dark artifacts. I wonder if I've met the parents on any of my buying trips? I'll have to track them down, go after their other dark objects. I don't suppose you have any sense of their location?"

Moody shook his head but didn't speak; he was clearly exhausted. His face was pale enough to be almost indistinguishable from the pillow, and Snape rose, dimming the candles with his wand. "I'll leave you to your rest. The pot is within easy reach, and I will return to administer your potions in another few hours."

"I can take my own damned potions," Moody growled.

"You are under my care, and you will do as I say," Snape replied, heading towards the door.

Moody's eye glinted suddenly. "I'll take my medicine and like it, is that what you're saying? Like to be on top, do you, boy?"

Snape turned. His face was shadowed as he stood framed in the light from the passageway, and his shoulders were tight. But he said only, "Go to sleep, old man."

~~~~~

Moody gained strength slowly but surely over the next few days. He slept a great deal and spent his waking hours carving a new wooden leg, the old one having been a casualty of the rhino transfiguration. When Snape offered to construct the new one magically, Moody declined.

"It needs my own touch," he said, "and it occupies my time. But I'm not going to stay cooped up here much longer, Snape. I've got to get moving, do something. Otherwise, I might as well still be on a shelf with a horn on my head."

"I believe it was your own decision to be a rhinoceros," Snape reminded him. "A joke for Minerva, isn't that what you said? So you've only yourself to blame."

"Fuck off," said Moody, but there was no heat in it. He'd been sitting up, but now he leaned back against the pillows, and a streak of red appeared on the linen behind him.

"What's this?" Snape demanded, striding to the bed. "You're bleeding. How long were you planning to keep this a secret?"

"Didn't know about it, did I?" retorted Moody, leaning forward so that Snape could examine him. "This is a yet another new pleasure for the invalid."

Snape ran gentle fingers over Moody's back. "Your skin is cracking," he said. "I should have expected this; stasis dehydrates you. I'll heat some oil and give you a massage."

"The hell you will!" Moody roared. "I've never had a massage in my damned life."

"Just consider it yet another new pleasure," said Snape.

~~~~~

Not many who had known Alastor "Mad-Eye" Moody in his Auror days would have been prepared for the sight of him lying face down on a bed, a towel folded over his naked backside and his head on a face cradle that had been transfigured from some of the junk in the shop. But beyond muttering, "I feel like a bloody wanker," he raised no fuss as Snape tipped warm oil onto his back and began to smooth it in with deft strokes of his long fingers.

And although Moody tensed visibly when Snape removed the towel and the long fingers slid onto his buttocks, he said nothing.

"The skin damage is extensive, but not deep," Snape noted, moving down to scarred thighs. "One or two oil treatments should be sufficient."

If he also noticed Moody's straining erection, he gave no sign of it.

~~~~~

In the evenings, while Moody carved, he and Snape talked. Of war details at first; Moody had a good deal of history to catch up on. Old warrior that he was, he heard the casualty lists in stoic silence and nodded his approval of Snape's descriptions of some of Minister Shacklebolt's new policies.

And he listened without interruption on the night that Snape finally explained the story behind the death of Albus Dumbledore. When the younger man's voice broke on the words, "he begged me," Moody still said nothing. But he reached out to grasp Snape's sinewy arm.

~~~~~

Gradually their talks moved on to other topics, Moody regaling Snape with lurid tales of his younger days in the Auror corps, and Snape eventually unbending enough to mention one or two of the difficulties of his own long tenure as Dumbledore's spy. They were more alike than either had realised: loners both, not given to trusting, but loyal to their very few real friends. Snape was intellectual and brooding, Moody practical and straightforward, yet both, in their own ways, were deeply thoughtful men. Though neither would have admitted it, they ended each evening's conversation feeling something suspiciously like regard.

The new leg was ready after about a week, and though Moody attempted to maintain his usual irascible expression, he couldn't completely conceal his joy at the chance, after two years of enforced paralysis, to move under his own power.

"Go on about your business, mother hen," he snapped when Snape positioned himself to walk beside him. "We're talking about, what? ten metres here? I can manage."

Snape rolled his eyes. "What you'll most likely manage is to fall flat on your face. And I don't feel like spending the rest of the day healing whatever bones you break when you do. Now I walk with you, or you don't walk at all."

Moody glared but gave in. "Suit yourself," he shrugged. "Far be it from me to keep you from showing your dom side." He grinned sideways at Snape. "Doubt that you get much chance to."

Snape's own grin was positively feral. "You've no idea."

Moody was still smiling, or perhaps just grimacing, when he took his first step.

~~~~~

Yet the walk across the narrow room was difficult, and the trip down the corridor was even worse. Moody made it only halfway to the loo before he had to lean against the wall, blinking sweat from his eyes. He waved away Snape's offered arm with a snarl, but the very next step proved to be too much for him. He slumped into the other man's arms, and both pretended not to notice the support charm Snape was forced to cast.

Moody kept his head down as he stood there, breathing hard, and when Snape brushed a hand over his hair, he didn't shake it off.

~~~~~

It was during the third massage that Snape took things into his own hands, so to speak, and moved Moody's convalescence to a new level entirely.

The late-afternoon sun had turned the small spare room into a warm, ochre-coloured cocoon when Snape entered carrying his beaker of warm oil. Moody was waiting for him, already lying face-down and apparently close to nodding off.

"Your skin is almost back to normal," Snape said as he smoothed the first handful of oil over Moody's back. His fingers dug deep into the knotted muscles, eliciting a moan or two of approval or pain from Moody, but Snape didn't react; he just continued, silently, to work his way down the battered body until he reached the joining of buttock and thigh. Then he paused. He touched the inner thighs lightly but deliberately and then paused again.

"I can stop here, if you like," he said, his voice as smooth as the golden liquid in his hand. "Or I can go on. Your choice."

He waited another moment and then said softly, "old man."

A long minute passed, and then, slowly, Moody opened his legs, exposing soft balls and a glimpse of hard cock above them.

"You'd best finished what you started," he growled. "Wouldn't want to impede my recovery, would you? Boy."

He sucked in his breath as Snape's slick hand grasped his cock and slid slowly along its length. Up, and down, and up again, the rhythm in counterpoint to the other hand now circling Moody's arse.

Time seemed to stop in the yellow-flooded room; there was only silence, and heat, and the soft sound of skin on skin, and then, at length, the jerk of Moody's hips as he groaned and came.

The silence returned and stretched out until finally, Snape straightened from his kneeling position and stood up. Only then did Moody turn and look at him.

"You...?" he questioned, but Snape shook his head.

"Another time," he said, and with an oddly-formal half-bow, strode quickly from the room.

~~~~~

A few days passed without either man referring to their afternoon encounter in the sunlit bedroom. Moody continued to practice with his new leg, and despite the disappointing beginning, was able to improve each day. It wasn't too long before he could walk from bedroom to toilet to kitchen on his own, using only the antique walking stick that Snape had fetched him from the shop.

"Not dark, just old," Snape had said as he'd put the ivory-headed cane in Moody's hand.

"Where'd you get this, then?" Moody'd asked, squinting at it. "Fashions for Fops?" But he had hefted the stick in his fist appraisingly and thereafter didn't stir without it.

He'd been fairly steady on his pins for almost a week and had taken to joining Snape for breakfast in the small kitchen when Snape, sitting down one day with the black coffee that was his only concession to the morning meal, said, "I'll be going out later, but I'm confident you can manage on your own. I should return by dinner."

"Where do you think you're going?" Moody demanded. He'd leant his wooden leg and stick against the counter and was massaging his stump as he talked.

Snape's lip curled slightly. "What I think," he said, "is that where I go is none of your business."

"Yeah? Well, what I think is that you're going after that kid who brought me in here, to try to get a line on his family's dark artifacts. And if you think you're going to do that without me, you've got another think coming."

Had Moody been a con man trying to sell blatantly-forged antiques, Snape couldn't have looked at him with greater disdain. "As I believe I once told you," he said icily, "I prefer to work alone."

"Balls to that. If you're going to dig into the dirt of dark arts, you're going to do it according to basic Auror procedure. We work in pairs."

"I think not." Snape sent his coffee cup to the sink with a wave of one hand, and with his wand in the other, he Summoned Moody's leg and walking stick to himself, shrank them, and placed them in the pockets of his frock coat.

"What the... ? Accio leg!" Moody roared, whipping his wand from his own pocket. To the evident surprise of both men, the miniaturized leg actually soared out of Snape's coat to hover in the air briefly before clattering to the floor.

Snape bent unhurriedly to retrieve it. "Well, it seems that your magic is on the mend," he observed coolly. "It often happens that way...strong emotion will energise it."

"Dammit, boy. Give me back my fucking leg."

"Do I have your word...as man and Auror...that you will stay here until I return?"

Moody slammed his fist on the table. "Aye," he snarled finally. "My word."

"Excellent," Snape said, returning leg and walking stick to their proper size and placing them next to Moody's chair. "Until this evening, then."

~~~~~

If Snape had expected Moody to be sullen or angry when he returned, he would have been disappointed. The old Auror met him in the shop, having negotiated the stairs for the first time since his recovery, and was frankly gleeful.

"Watch!" he called, and began Summoning objects large and small from the counters and shelves. He sent them whizzing mere inches past Snape's head, shouting with approval as Snape stood unflinching, not moving even when an antique awl went sailing point-first within millimetres of his nose.

When everything had returned tidily to its original place, Snape started calmly towards the rear of the shop. "You've been practising," was all he said.

Moody roared with laughter. "You're a right Slytherin bastard, you know that?"

He stood for several moments looking at the door through which Snape had disappeared before he, too, started for the staircase to the upper rooms.

Snape was in his own bedroom untying his cravat when Moody clumped up behind him and stood within touching distance. Then he did touch, stretching out a hand to loosen the cravat himself. He let his fingers graze Snape's lightly and moved his mouth close to Snape's ear. The younger man was standing very still, breathing deeply, and into the silence Moody whispered,

"Ever been fucked by a man?"

There was a pause as their eyes met in the wavy mirror over the bureau. Then Snape smiled his feral smile.

"Care to find out?"