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The wind that cuts across the street and whips his skin pink makes Harry take a deep breath, the first in a few hours. His deep-seated feeling of self-pity and misery comes and goes, leaving him either hyperactive, feeling like he has to, needs to do something, anything, or else he feels empty, despair seeping under his skin without any one cause to point at. The wind is good. The wind is strong and so Harry feels tonight, for the first time in a long time.
Granted, he also thinks that same wind could push him down with one gust too strong the way he's shaking on his legs, but that's the good kind of shaking. Anticipation. Something he hasn't experienced in a few years at least.
Moving to the Muggle world indefinitely and letting go of everything else, of everyone else but himself, has been the single scariest decision Harry's had to make since the war ended, but it's also the most freeing one, he's come to realise.
Being alone for the first time in his life, truly alone, the past year has been filled with Harry discovering himself, from what he actually likes for breakfast, to his taste in clothes when it isn't dictated by a school dress code or what rags he can hope to get from Petunia, and finally, to more intimate elements of his life that he'd never had time to really question before.
One thing the Muggle world is much more advanced in than the Wizarding one, very outdated and traditional in that sense, is the matter of sexuality. Although he has learned easily through the years that wizards do not much care for the genders of any given couple, he knows how people can spend their entire wizard existence without ever learning a single thing about sex that they don't teach themselves.
In a lot of ways, Harry has been teaching himself what a healthy sex life can look like since he's got to the Muggle world. He's anonymous here, truly unknown by anyone but his neighbours, and even then, they only know of him what he's showed them which isn't much.
It makes it easier to accept that this or that girl, or boy for that matter, wants him for some god-knows-what appeal they see in him, and only that. It makes it easier to let himself be pulled into the shadows of a club and kissed, and fucked until he stumbles out of there, grinning, satisfied. It makes it so much easier, to just go with the flow and not feel like he should be making all kinds of decisions, for anyone and everyone, and especially for himself.
Harry's been drifting on a wave of freedom for a few months now, falling into a routine that keeps being interrupted by random bursts of lust, but also sometimes depression, he knows. He likes it well enough, even if it does get lonely late at night when he's not drunk. But he's also discovered something else about himself, something he cannot get in any regular pub, and certainly not by staying home alone staring at his half-dead ficus.
All those decisions he does not have to make, all those calls he needn't think about, all those moments where he manages to find someone who just pulls him one way or another and takes what they want without consulting him further than by looking straight into his eyes and whispering an occasional "Are you with me?" - he craves it.
He craves it so much he researched ways to make it happen more officially, ways to make it so the people he’d meet would know that's what he wants without him having to articulate it - talking about his needs has never been Harry's strong suit, Hermione's told him that enough for him to know, but thinking someone could even care without an ulterior motive of their own is out of the question.
BDSM. That's what he's been learning about lately. He's never been this focused on learning anything in his life, but this seems to fit him like a glove, or like it could, at least, be a reprieve from his mind, something that would assuage the want inside him. The need for guidance, the need for oblivion. The need for a hand at the back of his neck like in the static photographs he's stared at so many times. The need too, to try out the one thing in all of his research that has stuck out to him the most, rope.
So that's where Harry's going tonight, at the kink club he found on Google after a few clumsy tries, that so happens to only be 10 minutes away from his flat and which is hosting regular ropework nights. Hence the shaking legs. Hence the grin he can't quite keep to a simple smile and which makes people stare at him a little bit as they cross path with him.
Harry doesn't care, he's gone through enough staring in his life not to.
The night is already settled, dark; the streets lit up by the neon signs and lampposts and it gives everything a quality Harry can almost touch, can almost taste, can feel in every fiber of his body as he takes stride after stride towards his destination. He's memorised the Google Maps instructions, he hasn't bought himself a phone yet, figures he doesn't need one, so he follows his memory of the step-by-step itinerary.
It's a wonder, but he doesn't get lost on the way, and sure enough, it took him about ten minutes to get to the club, as planned. Another thing Harry has discovered since he's been alone is being punctual is something he enjoys - the look of appraisal in the few people he's had to meet at a precise time when he arrives right on the dot gives him tingles in places they shouldn't reach, but it does. So he's made it a new thing for himself. Harry Potter is now always on time.
And Harry Potter needs to get inside the club before the session starts, needs to take it all in start to finish.
It's thrilling, walking into the club. The door is heavy and in a pitch perfect rendition of what he's seen photographed, the inside of it is padded with dark blue fabric. It feels cool to the touch, yet the air past that door strikes Harry as quite warm, but not enough that he feels hot under the cotton v-neck he chose for tonight, not enough that he fears his dark jeans will stick to his skin if he moves about too much.
He doesn't think he'll be doing much of anything tonight, save for observing, but you never know.
You never know.
How true, how laughably true that is, Harry will reflect not too long after he gets settled at the bar, right after a man named Leon takes his name and jacket and gives him a pastel purple bracelet when he says he's not a dom, no, has no interest in tying people up himself, that's not why he's here, and the man smiles at him and clasps the bracelet around his wrist before sending him on his way.
There's quite a few people packed in the club already when Harry gets to the main room. The show room.
What happens next is more unexpected than anything else Harry's experienced in months.
His eyes follow the gazes of others around him, trying his best not to stare at the varied attire people are wearing, and fall, first on a man clad in nothing but his pants, pale skin lit with the light pink overheads centered on the stage he's kneeling on. He's quite beautiful like this, his wrists bound together and held to a column of knots that splays around his chest and up to his shoulders. His head is bowed, letting his long ginger hair fall to hide most of his face. Harry feels entranced, his eyes stuck on the exhibition he's being treated to, and something in his stomach pangs, his heartbeat gets wilder the more he looks. He's jealous.
And then he's shocked.
"What the…" he murmurs, thankfully low enough that only the two people closest to him spare him a glance of amusement - he must look as new as he is.
The long fingers that are curled around the submissive's shoulders, that are linked to hands lined with the black hem of a sweater which happens to be turtle-necked, lead Harry's gaze up, and up again, until he first sees a jet black strand of hair falling over a well-defined jaw, and then his brain stalls. He knows his mouth must be comically stuck open, but this is Severus Snape.
The spy. The ex-Death Eater whose freedom Harry fought in court for. The man who disappeared from the public eye, and the Wizarding world altogether, the second the charges against him were dropped and he was pardoned.
This is Severus Snape, focused on the ginger man who kneels for him, his body covered in the same black he always favoured, yet in Muggle clothes still, and his hair tied back in a long and low ponytail.
Harry's never thought of himself as particularly dense. But he still struggles, in this moment, with the very concept of breathing.
The people around him start to sit down, and when Harry glances at his watch he notices the time of the actual session has arrived. Some stay standing though, and it's easy to see who, of all these people, came with partners, and further than that, who's assuming what role between them. Harry bites his lip just catching the sight of a large man holding onto the back of his sub's neck gently, then blinks back to stare at Snape some more.
He can't believe it. Can't believe that of all the people he could have found in here from his old life, it would be him, and in what circumstances.
Someone pushes a stool behind him and Harry gratefully accepts it.
"Bondage, 101," the low voice Harry hasn't heard in years echoes around the room, "I hope for your sake and that of all the submissives present in this room tonight that you are all listening attentively, for I will not repeat myself."
Harry floats through the presentation, his gaze only straying from Snape's face to look at the dexterity and experience that his hands showcase. He stops existing out of this, out of the scene he's witnessing and the words he only half-hears. Words like column ties and suspension and anchor. Words like safety and deep space and all sorts of Japanese words he's googled before but which take a whole other layer of meaning and appeal in Snape's mouth, with Snape's hands wrapped in a piece of jute which he tenses and coils and straightens again as he demonstrates.
It's only when the people around him start moving again that Harry realises it's over, and how hard he is, and how hard it is to focus. But he can't be seen here, can't have Snape know he was here.
He's not really aware of where he's going, nor if people are watching him as he does but Harry flees when the many couples around him get up and walk closer to the stage area. He flees, bumps into a few chairs and even a wall before he finds a door marked private and doesn't give a second thought to opening it before he's through and panting on the floor. All he can hear is his own breathing, and the racing of his thoughts. Time passes at a rate Harry can't measure.
His knees drawn to his chest and his arms looped around his legs, his chin on his knees and his eyes blinking to chase away the fog that's covered them throughout the night, Harry startles when the door opens. It takes him another few seconds to even look up, but not to realise who's standing there once he does.
Mustering up the words he'd need to explain his presence here and the state he's in is too much though, he can't.
Snape's eyebrow scants up his forehead as it so often did, and the man stares at him even as he closes the door behind him. He stays put, doesn't move at first, but then he huffs and moves further into the room, until he can sit on the little stool by the mirror Harry only half-acknowledged before, facing away from him.
"You should not be here." Snape says slowly, but where Harry expected scorn, anger, disgust maybe, all he hears is caution, and surprise, and fatigue. The slimmer of hostility almost feels fake, it's just enough to make Harry feel almost nostalgic of the past, in yet another way he wouldn't have expected things could turn.
"And you should?" He says once he thinks he can talk - his voice still squeaks out the word rather than smoothly letting them out but it will do.
Snape doesn't respond right away. His already tight shoulders go another notch up his neck, and then he's looking at Harry through the mirror. Harry can't look away. He doesn't really want to either, the fascination he felt in the showroom is back, blooming past the wave of anxiety he just rode out.
Snape's eyes are just as dark as Harry remembers, obsidian of careful study taking him in inside and out it feels like. Harry's surprised to realise he doesn't want to escape that gaze… that where in the past he would've acted up as a way to shrug it off without seeming like he flinched away, he's now looking right back into the other man's eyes, searching too.
There's a shift, almost imperceptible, a moment where Snape's eyes glance down at Harry's wrist and it changes the way the lines around his eyes are formed. They're rounder, and the thin strips of his lips loosen.
"Purple?" He says simply, and Harry feels his own eyes widening.
He nods, his cheeks feeling hotter than they have any right to as he blushes furiously. He's not ashamed, not really, but if he'd had to guess who of his past life would be the first - the only ? - one to know about his orientation and preferences in kinks, he wouldn't have put his money on Snape now, that's for sure.
"What do you want, Potter?"
Harry looks at the careful non-expression Snape is sporting, hoping his own face isn't giving away just how lost he feels. Just how wanting he finds himself. Just how shaken the session he just watched has left him. The only thing he knows is how wrong it suddenly feels to be called by his last name. No one ever calls him that anymore, it's not his life, hasn't been in a long time and it's jarring.
"My name's Harry,"
It's a whisper, but it seems to take Snape by surprise, enough so that the man has his stool swirling to look at him directly. Harry squirms in place under the weight and depth of the man's gaze on him, taking him all in, studying every single part of him. He can't hear his breathing anymore, and just as he thinks it, Harry takes a big gulp of air in, distantly wondering why his lungs burn as he does.
Snape rests his elbows on his thighs, then leans down. He's not that much closer, but it's still a lot more scrutiny added to the mix. It's a whole other level of unnerving, but it's only when the man speaks again that Harry remembers the thrill he felt coming here, and sees how much of how he feels in this moment matches that.
"Well, Harry, I do not like repeating myself, but just this once, what do you want?"
Every word the man utters will be branded into Harry's memory forever, just like the thought that comes through his mind next, and what it leads him to answer.
"What if I said you?"