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Sunday, July 13th, 2003 03:36 am
wip: this is how (hp, nc-17)
I still am blocked--it's not that I don't know where it's going, it's that getting there is hard as hell. This isn't quite working and I'm not sure why.
Open to some lovely, brutal critique. Feel oh so free.
Anyway.
This Is How by jenn
Codes: Snape, Snape/Lupin, Black/Lupin
Spoilers: PoA, GoF, OotP
*****
Part I: ...it starts.
Severus remembers when it's silent in Hogwarts and the nights grow longer in winter, when there's nothing else to do and no one to do it with, students safe in their beds and classrooms silent. When he closes his eyes or when he opens them, when he wraps long fingers around the narrow neck of a bottle and thinks of Black in a far away place, hiding from himself as surely as he hides from the world.
Dumbledore's disappointed face and the slump of Lupin's shoulders beneath the ragged traveling cloak. A wash of images and murmured voices and thoughts that fill his mind, more inescapable than Voldemort, more powerful than magic, more binding than a broken promise.
There's a caldron of wolfsbane that boils in the corner. Like clockwork, he sends a bottle a month.
He wonders if Lupin ever gets them.
*****
This is how it starts.
Like this, beneath a tree that grew in one night, a prodigy, a wonder to behold (never seen anything like it, the professor murmured as they circled it during class, brilliant, prodigal, what can one expect from Potter, though?), grass the color of a summer dream and the lithe body that stretched beneath, prosaic with a frown of concentration and fingers scrabbling idly on the blanket like they'd tear through by will alone.
They might at that, but Severus isn't stupid enough to say what he can't prove.
Hours since Black and Potter abandoned their fun to find better game, and it's some comfort, beneath a Snape, beneath a Slytherin, to watch Evans turn her back when Potter slips through, oblivious of the sighs of the girls who surround him like flies to water. Bright, careless smile, wand in one lax hand, and one hex would throw him in the water before them all.
But. That's beneath a Snape, too. Always to the face, always watch their eyes, and always let them know who did it and why. Even when the why's nothing more than just because. I. Can.
They're far from the water's edge now, though, and Snape watches pale lips form words, the tremble of untouched power, moving, whispering for release. It's an attraction in itself, this feeling, that art, leashed inside mere words and beneath unquiet stillness.
Lupin fools them all with that surface that never moves, even when it does.
Severus knows how power feels, the ripening edge that begs for release.
"Picking up a few tips, are you?"
Lupin doesn't look up, and Snape wonders about that--ten feet and a bush between them, but the feeling of being watched doesn't dissipate to logic.
"Bored, maybe."
A sharp look up, book forgotten across bony, bent knees--Lupin plods like Black and Potter skim, like learning's more than a skill to master but something to be consumed whole.
Circling the bush, they're in easy view of each other--third of four learning the hard way by rote when his friends master at a glance, and Snape, who never fit with anyone and never would, never wanted to.
A sounds of splashing draw their eyes away, to the water, to the boys who play at war with wands raised and laughing, wet girls surrounding them. Black a careless, elegant sprawl on the ground, soaked to the skin, flipping dark hair back with a slim hand and grinning up at the hovering James. Evans walks away with a toss of her head, and Potter scrambles to his feet to watch her leave.
Black watches Potter like Lupin's watching Black, and that's a secret that Severus keeps close and smiles over often. There's little that can be hidden when you know what to look for.
"What do you want?" Lupin only sounds tired--it's like this sometimes, when the days seem to drag longer and Lupin's eyes fix on the sky at night like he wants to be anywhere but here. Another secret to file away and keep close. Restless beneath his skin, twitching fingers and a long, lean body vibrating with the need to *move*. I'll find out, Severus wants to tell him. You can't hide from me forever. I want to *know*.
"You're having problems with Transfigurations?" It's not his art, but he's seen Lupin's work. Someone who can call down curses and hexes without effort sweating through a teacup turned to turtle and the change from footstool to pig. Mastering potions without effort, almost gifted at charms, but that room, those spells, always just beyond his reach.
If Severus hadn't been curious before, he would have been after the last demonstration in class.
"Not so much that I'd need help from you." Lupin plays at the callousness of Black, but not quite. Tempered inside by something that Severus can't quite understand, that makes every cruelty something that can be seen written on Lupin's skin. Like even to inflict pain, he has to pay for it first.
Severus remembers late spring like this and a thousand times he's watched. Curious first, he wants to *know*. Lupin, slim and awkward when he shouldn't be, shadowing Black and Potter, forgettable even more than Pettigrew, little mushroom who hopped and clambered for attention, annoying and ceaseless, something you wanted to *swat*. Ducking into half-shadows made by Potter, always watching. Letting himself be pet by Black, eyes closed.
Safety's for the weak, Severus thinks, but he's not sure that's precisely what Lupin is doing.
"It's not that hard," Severus says, and Lupin stiffens, lazy sprawl abandoned. "I'd think, considering Potter and Black's proficiency--" Names like razors, but the only blood they draw is metaphorical, and Lupin can't see that.
"I don't require help." The book snaps closed and is pushed aside. "If you'll excuse me-" Lupin stands up, ungainly and awkward again, and it's too perfect to be real. A glance at the water shows the afternoon's wore away, and Potter and Black have disappeared.
"Abandoned?"
Those quiet nights, when Lupin and Black, Potter and Pettigrew sneak out and into the woods--the ones that Lupin comes back from, flushed and awake, filled with something bright, indefinable, when all his spells work and he glows like something incandescent, and no one else *sees*, even the teachers.
It fades, like now, but Severus thinks it's almost time for it again.
"I have work to do." Lupin grabs his bag from the ground, stuffing the book within, the glimpse of a wand. Severus doesn't know he'll do it until he does.
Lazy, even, so few defenses that Severus hasn't learned in five years how to breach. "Expelliarmus."
Even his wand feels different, like him--cold and bright, fitting into his palm with a slow burn, and Lupin takes an eternity to look up from the space in his bag the wand once lay, forever to meet Severus' gaze. A frown that lines his forehead, eyes wide. A singular glimpse into the future of the man he would become in this life, when they've all left school on the paths chosen before they even began.
It's almost sad, in a way that Severus won't appreciate for over a decade of living his choice.
"What do you *want*?"
"You're never going to be one of them." It slips out without thought, unforgivable when Severus chooses his words as carefully as he does his ingredients. But sometimes, it's the worst accidents that score the best hits, a stagger that doesn't go any farther than the skin, the widening of dark eyes that flare amber-bright, like the sun at dusk. "You'll never be what he wants." And why do you even try?
A tremored pause, and Lupin takes a slow step, awkwardness forgotten. Fast--so fucking fast, he hadn't expected that, no spell on his lips, nothing but surprise in his mind, and the touch--ah, that touch, a brush of long fingers when he grasps the wand, the shock of touching something that's seeped in magic, *what is that, how did he do that*, Slytherins know how dark magic tastes when it's acid-good on the back of their tongues, when they cast it in dorm beds and feel it rise around them. It tastes like *this*, like sex when it's good, like power when you wield it.
Seeped into the skin and being of this slim, pale boy who holds the wand to his chest and trembles like Severus knows his every secret when he's beginning to think he doesn't know anything at all.
Staring at each other before Lupin takes a stumbling step back.
"You don't know anything. Leave me alone."
Severus lets him go.
*****
Another day, five days later perhaps, hollow-eyed but almost glowing, and for once, he overshadows even Potter, energy cycling through him in palpable waves. No one sees except those three--Black, Potter, Pettigrew--and Lupin talks fast, expansive gestures that take in the room and everyone in it, loud and laughing and careless.
That's power, the kind that Severus feels like heat, and it calls him more than any magic any wand could create.
Black, with a slim hand on his thigh beneath the robe, leaning close enough to whisper, and the musical, wild laugh that follows when Lupin leans close, a hair beyond appropriate, to reach for a bowl of peas. The brush of soft brown hair against Sirius' face when he pulls away, and the heat that springs alive between them like that.
Severus, three tables and a world away, thinks Lupin could light up the sky tonight if he tried.
*****
Another week. It wanes, it always does, and there must be a pattern, but Severus can't quite find it. Lupin, bright at the table, brilliant in class. Fading by hour and hour into invisibility, like the moon above them, and there's something in that which plays in his mind just before sleep, but he never remembers when he wakes.
Something about a Gryffindor who wields dark magic like it's his birthright, and it's more than once that the Defense Against Dark Arts teacher has watched like Severus does. Narrowed eyes and tight lips, reports to Dumbledore, perhaps, wondering if they're breeding a dark magician in the most beloved of all the Houses of Hogwarts.
That fades too, though, and it's that time again, circle to the beginning, but it's not under a tree, it's on the roof and Lupin's walking off the night like he's running from time itself.
"What are you doing here?" It's snapped, seconds before Lupin should know he's here, seconds before any wizard *could*. A sharp, graceless turn and skid, staring at him from behind dark eyes, tight mouth, coiled energy with no outlet but this.
"Are you following me?"
Severus won't lower himself to stating the obvious. "Where do you go?"
Lupin perhaps didn't expect truth, and Severus files that away for later use. Truth is a weapon like any other.
"I--don't go anywhere." And Gryffindors have yet to learn how to lie. "I don't know what you're talking about."
Lupin turns again, another wild pace of barely controlled limbs, nothing here of grace, raw and unfocused. Classes with him today had been studies in incompetence.
Vulnerable, without Potter and Black to hide him, to hide behind. Stripped to skin, bone, and plain robes. Even from here, Severus can feel it. Power. It's addictive, and he wants to *touch*. Just once, feel that strumming in his blood like the first time, the only time.
"You're lying. I'll find out, you know." He will. There's little he doesn't know, less that he doesn't care to. Information is just another kind of weapon.
"Fuck off!"
There. Like *that*. Shimmer in the air around them, something huge, like a charge in the air just before the biggest storms, electrical, like the second before adding the final ingredient. Potential.
Lupin's close enough to breathe--like the forest, the smells of the earth, like he's been rolling on the ground for hours wet and dirty, no Gryffindor's ever felt like this, no Slytherin would know what it was if they felt it. So close that the charge wraps around them both, and Severus' voice begins to murmur something--a charm, a hex, something, draw him out, and the ozone-taste of air on his tongue, it's what calls him, this, Lupin's like this all over, soaked into his skin, and Severus touches because he can't help himself.
Self-control is a memory when he gets *skin*.
And Lupin. Doesn't. Move.
"You feel--" Like everything we do in the dungeons that you never know about, any of you, but it's never been like this. Pale imitations of this reality when they take out their wands and forbidden books, pass on centuries of all the knowledge of every wizard who ever touched the dark side and came away with a taste for it. *Power*. Lupin's so filled with it. Living, breathing, so fucking *dangerous*, like those spells Malfoy calls up effortlessly in their chambers, blood magic's only a pale imitation of this. What they're all searching for those endless nights. God, he should have been Slytherin. The things we'd do with you, do to you, what you'd ask to do to us, you don't know, Lupin, but we'd want you more than anyone else could ever dream.
"Don't." But Lupin's breathless, and Severus pulls impatiently at the robe. More of that, a flare of cold heat with every touch. Smooth skin, so fine after coarse wool, chemical-roughened fingers instantly addicted. No scars, even when he pulls more cloth away, no one could be this perfect.
How could Black touch this and ever *stop*?
"Stop." The robe's puddled at his feet and Lupin's grasp on his wrist *hurts*, he'll have to go to the hospital wing and get this fixed tonight and he doesn't care. Strained muscles screaming, but he has another hand, has a mouth, can use both, and Lupin makes a low sound that can't be human (file that away for later), and the hand on his wrist loosens, sliding up his arm. "You--what *is* that--"
These flares of pure sensation. Like magic feels when you cast it. Lupin can feel it, too.
Gryffindors don't know about so many things. The things Snape murmurs beneath his breath, wand hot in his pocket when he pulls it out and presses it between them, power flaring and Lupin--growls, low and dark, so dark--fingers in his hair, pulling him close, and the kiss--
Electric, flow and ebb of air and nothing, but the goddamn *world's* got to be feeling this.
"What are you--what are you *doing*?" Lupin sounds drugged, kneeling on the rough stone, hands pressed into the stone like he could break through it, like if he stops, they'll be back on Severus' skin. Cold air and night between them, and Severus' mouth burns. He hadn't realized he'd lost his own robes "What did--what did you *do*?"
Severus has no idea, but he's staring at those long fingers and wondering if they can do it again.
*****
Part II: ...it happens.
Six days later. Circle around to the end, or the beginning, when Lupin comes back from wherever he doesn't go, and Severus wasn't looking for him, not this time. It's almost painful to be this close and not be able to touch, an entire hall between them, a ripple of feeling, when Severus woke every night feeling it, hard beneath his pajamas, no idea what it is but it tastes like Lupin's skin.
Acid, raw, bittersweet, *need*. He sometimes feels grass beneath his hands and grasps at his blankets to ground himself, and he can smell the forest around him in the dungeon every day Lupin is away.
His homework is suffering.
This time, though. Lupin, alone, as elegant as Black has ever been, incandescent that night as he waves Potter and Black ahead and goes to the library. Coiling exhaustion and energy in every step, like it's will alone that moves him but will is all he'll ever need. Severus thinks of earlier, outside the first floor bathroom that no one uses, Lupin pushing Black up against the wall, the slow, endless kiss that made Black shiver, and Lupin stepping back, sleepy-eyed and alive, like he never really seems to be except these times. Black, one hand touching bruised lips, wide eyes, suddenly younger, less jaded, less sure. This second where Lupin didn't seem to notice, then the second he did.
All that light going out like a snuffed candle, and Black walking away.
It's five million fucking rows of books, but it shouldn't be a surprise where he finds him. A teacher's note beside him and Lupin cross-legged on the floor, a dusty black book in his lap. Fingers flicking down the page and turning fast, mumbled words.
"I won't even ask." The book closes with a snap. Snape glances at the cover, but the protections of the library doesn't let him read the words. "I'm not in the mood tonight."
Severus leans into the bookcase. "I told you that he'll never want you like you want him to."
The snarl's strangely appropriate on Lupin's face. "Fuck. Off."
"Did he finally toss you off?'
"Shut up." Not enough heat. Lupin must be wondering the same thing.
"I wouldn't." Keep him like a pet, perhaps. When Lupin looks up, Severus smirks, watching the long fingers freeze.
"Wouldn't what?" He sounds--tired. Severus wants him back, the boy downstairs who could light a universe, the one who no one seems to really *see*.
Slow, easy drop to his knees, watching Lupin watch him, wary and scared. "Toss you off."
It's appropriate that they're doing this here--surrounded by all the fruits of a thousand dark wizards and a thousand who fought them, Lupin shifting into a boneless crouch, like he'll run or leap or maybe just howl--(howl? remember that, don't forget)--but nothing like anything Severus says isn't interesting.
Isn't being weighed by that Gryffindor honor against the want that he's emanating like heat. A slip of skin on his throat, revealed by the gap in his robes, and Snape moves close enough to lean forward and taste.
Electric. Bitter. Chlorophyll and metal. Hands on his head that pull him up before he's had near enough, and Lupin kisses him.
Familiar, like being wrapped in spells in the dungeons, God, if they had him, the things they could do.... Drunk on his skin, the way he feels beneath Severus' palms, slick and silky and hard. He's rolled on his back, robes kicked aside, and Severus wraps his legs around lean hips and lets Lupin *take*--his mouth, his body, it's rippling through them both, and he's never been so hard in his life, grinding up to get those flares of energy off of him, hear guttural sounds against his mouth, his jaw, his neck, and Severus digs his nails in and holds on.
"God," Lupin whispers, shuddering, sucking hard on his pulse, but it's only pain that's just too good to share, keeps his teeth locked on his lip and his fingers curled into claws, rocking up, imagining this as skin on skin, nothing to dull the pressure or the connection. He wants *more*.
"Yes." Voice raw, wanting more of this, Severus has done so much but never done this. Lupin holding himself up on one arm and messy, wet sucks across his collarbone, thrusting against him through wool and cotton, too many clothes but it's too good to matter. "*More*."
"We can't...." Shaking above him, coming apart, and he can *feel* it. A forest at night, a hunt across a grassy stretch of land beneath the moonlight, the scent of prey, the sound of water running close, Severus opens wide eyes on Lupin and stops breathing.
"*Remus*--"
The world explodes in brilliant, cold white light that burns through to the bone.
Nothing's ever been this good.
Open to some lovely, brutal critique. Feel oh so free.
Anyway.
This Is How by jenn
Codes: Snape, Snape/Lupin, Black/Lupin
Spoilers: PoA, GoF, OotP
*****
Part I: ...it starts.
Severus remembers when it's silent in Hogwarts and the nights grow longer in winter, when there's nothing else to do and no one to do it with, students safe in their beds and classrooms silent. When he closes his eyes or when he opens them, when he wraps long fingers around the narrow neck of a bottle and thinks of Black in a far away place, hiding from himself as surely as he hides from the world.
Dumbledore's disappointed face and the slump of Lupin's shoulders beneath the ragged traveling cloak. A wash of images and murmured voices and thoughts that fill his mind, more inescapable than Voldemort, more powerful than magic, more binding than a broken promise.
There's a caldron of wolfsbane that boils in the corner. Like clockwork, he sends a bottle a month.
He wonders if Lupin ever gets them.
*****
This is how it starts.
Like this, beneath a tree that grew in one night, a prodigy, a wonder to behold (never seen anything like it, the professor murmured as they circled it during class, brilliant, prodigal, what can one expect from Potter, though?), grass the color of a summer dream and the lithe body that stretched beneath, prosaic with a frown of concentration and fingers scrabbling idly on the blanket like they'd tear through by will alone.
They might at that, but Severus isn't stupid enough to say what he can't prove.
Hours since Black and Potter abandoned their fun to find better game, and it's some comfort, beneath a Snape, beneath a Slytherin, to watch Evans turn her back when Potter slips through, oblivious of the sighs of the girls who surround him like flies to water. Bright, careless smile, wand in one lax hand, and one hex would throw him in the water before them all.
But. That's beneath a Snape, too. Always to the face, always watch their eyes, and always let them know who did it and why. Even when the why's nothing more than just because. I. Can.
They're far from the water's edge now, though, and Snape watches pale lips form words, the tremble of untouched power, moving, whispering for release. It's an attraction in itself, this feeling, that art, leashed inside mere words and beneath unquiet stillness.
Lupin fools them all with that surface that never moves, even when it does.
Severus knows how power feels, the ripening edge that begs for release.
"Picking up a few tips, are you?"
Lupin doesn't look up, and Snape wonders about that--ten feet and a bush between them, but the feeling of being watched doesn't dissipate to logic.
"Bored, maybe."
A sharp look up, book forgotten across bony, bent knees--Lupin plods like Black and Potter skim, like learning's more than a skill to master but something to be consumed whole.
Circling the bush, they're in easy view of each other--third of four learning the hard way by rote when his friends master at a glance, and Snape, who never fit with anyone and never would, never wanted to.
A sounds of splashing draw their eyes away, to the water, to the boys who play at war with wands raised and laughing, wet girls surrounding them. Black a careless, elegant sprawl on the ground, soaked to the skin, flipping dark hair back with a slim hand and grinning up at the hovering James. Evans walks away with a toss of her head, and Potter scrambles to his feet to watch her leave.
Black watches Potter like Lupin's watching Black, and that's a secret that Severus keeps close and smiles over often. There's little that can be hidden when you know what to look for.
"What do you want?" Lupin only sounds tired--it's like this sometimes, when the days seem to drag longer and Lupin's eyes fix on the sky at night like he wants to be anywhere but here. Another secret to file away and keep close. Restless beneath his skin, twitching fingers and a long, lean body vibrating with the need to *move*. I'll find out, Severus wants to tell him. You can't hide from me forever. I want to *know*.
"You're having problems with Transfigurations?" It's not his art, but he's seen Lupin's work. Someone who can call down curses and hexes without effort sweating through a teacup turned to turtle and the change from footstool to pig. Mastering potions without effort, almost gifted at charms, but that room, those spells, always just beyond his reach.
If Severus hadn't been curious before, he would have been after the last demonstration in class.
"Not so much that I'd need help from you." Lupin plays at the callousness of Black, but not quite. Tempered inside by something that Severus can't quite understand, that makes every cruelty something that can be seen written on Lupin's skin. Like even to inflict pain, he has to pay for it first.
Severus remembers late spring like this and a thousand times he's watched. Curious first, he wants to *know*. Lupin, slim and awkward when he shouldn't be, shadowing Black and Potter, forgettable even more than Pettigrew, little mushroom who hopped and clambered for attention, annoying and ceaseless, something you wanted to *swat*. Ducking into half-shadows made by Potter, always watching. Letting himself be pet by Black, eyes closed.
Safety's for the weak, Severus thinks, but he's not sure that's precisely what Lupin is doing.
"It's not that hard," Severus says, and Lupin stiffens, lazy sprawl abandoned. "I'd think, considering Potter and Black's proficiency--" Names like razors, but the only blood they draw is metaphorical, and Lupin can't see that.
"I don't require help." The book snaps closed and is pushed aside. "If you'll excuse me-" Lupin stands up, ungainly and awkward again, and it's too perfect to be real. A glance at the water shows the afternoon's wore away, and Potter and Black have disappeared.
"Abandoned?"
Those quiet nights, when Lupin and Black, Potter and Pettigrew sneak out and into the woods--the ones that Lupin comes back from, flushed and awake, filled with something bright, indefinable, when all his spells work and he glows like something incandescent, and no one else *sees*, even the teachers.
It fades, like now, but Severus thinks it's almost time for it again.
"I have work to do." Lupin grabs his bag from the ground, stuffing the book within, the glimpse of a wand. Severus doesn't know he'll do it until he does.
Lazy, even, so few defenses that Severus hasn't learned in five years how to breach. "Expelliarmus."
Even his wand feels different, like him--cold and bright, fitting into his palm with a slow burn, and Lupin takes an eternity to look up from the space in his bag the wand once lay, forever to meet Severus' gaze. A frown that lines his forehead, eyes wide. A singular glimpse into the future of the man he would become in this life, when they've all left school on the paths chosen before they even began.
It's almost sad, in a way that Severus won't appreciate for over a decade of living his choice.
"What do you *want*?"
"You're never going to be one of them." It slips out without thought, unforgivable when Severus chooses his words as carefully as he does his ingredients. But sometimes, it's the worst accidents that score the best hits, a stagger that doesn't go any farther than the skin, the widening of dark eyes that flare amber-bright, like the sun at dusk. "You'll never be what he wants." And why do you even try?
A tremored pause, and Lupin takes a slow step, awkwardness forgotten. Fast--so fucking fast, he hadn't expected that, no spell on his lips, nothing but surprise in his mind, and the touch--ah, that touch, a brush of long fingers when he grasps the wand, the shock of touching something that's seeped in magic, *what is that, how did he do that*, Slytherins know how dark magic tastes when it's acid-good on the back of their tongues, when they cast it in dorm beds and feel it rise around them. It tastes like *this*, like sex when it's good, like power when you wield it.
Seeped into the skin and being of this slim, pale boy who holds the wand to his chest and trembles like Severus knows his every secret when he's beginning to think he doesn't know anything at all.
Staring at each other before Lupin takes a stumbling step back.
"You don't know anything. Leave me alone."
Severus lets him go.
*****
Another day, five days later perhaps, hollow-eyed but almost glowing, and for once, he overshadows even Potter, energy cycling through him in palpable waves. No one sees except those three--Black, Potter, Pettigrew--and Lupin talks fast, expansive gestures that take in the room and everyone in it, loud and laughing and careless.
That's power, the kind that Severus feels like heat, and it calls him more than any magic any wand could create.
Black, with a slim hand on his thigh beneath the robe, leaning close enough to whisper, and the musical, wild laugh that follows when Lupin leans close, a hair beyond appropriate, to reach for a bowl of peas. The brush of soft brown hair against Sirius' face when he pulls away, and the heat that springs alive between them like that.
Severus, three tables and a world away, thinks Lupin could light up the sky tonight if he tried.
*****
Another week. It wanes, it always does, and there must be a pattern, but Severus can't quite find it. Lupin, bright at the table, brilliant in class. Fading by hour and hour into invisibility, like the moon above them, and there's something in that which plays in his mind just before sleep, but he never remembers when he wakes.
Something about a Gryffindor who wields dark magic like it's his birthright, and it's more than once that the Defense Against Dark Arts teacher has watched like Severus does. Narrowed eyes and tight lips, reports to Dumbledore, perhaps, wondering if they're breeding a dark magician in the most beloved of all the Houses of Hogwarts.
That fades too, though, and it's that time again, circle to the beginning, but it's not under a tree, it's on the roof and Lupin's walking off the night like he's running from time itself.
"What are you doing here?" It's snapped, seconds before Lupin should know he's here, seconds before any wizard *could*. A sharp, graceless turn and skid, staring at him from behind dark eyes, tight mouth, coiled energy with no outlet but this.
"Are you following me?"
Severus won't lower himself to stating the obvious. "Where do you go?"
Lupin perhaps didn't expect truth, and Severus files that away for later use. Truth is a weapon like any other.
"I--don't go anywhere." And Gryffindors have yet to learn how to lie. "I don't know what you're talking about."
Lupin turns again, another wild pace of barely controlled limbs, nothing here of grace, raw and unfocused. Classes with him today had been studies in incompetence.
Vulnerable, without Potter and Black to hide him, to hide behind. Stripped to skin, bone, and plain robes. Even from here, Severus can feel it. Power. It's addictive, and he wants to *touch*. Just once, feel that strumming in his blood like the first time, the only time.
"You're lying. I'll find out, you know." He will. There's little he doesn't know, less that he doesn't care to. Information is just another kind of weapon.
"Fuck off!"
There. Like *that*. Shimmer in the air around them, something huge, like a charge in the air just before the biggest storms, electrical, like the second before adding the final ingredient. Potential.
Lupin's close enough to breathe--like the forest, the smells of the earth, like he's been rolling on the ground for hours wet and dirty, no Gryffindor's ever felt like this, no Slytherin would know what it was if they felt it. So close that the charge wraps around them both, and Severus' voice begins to murmur something--a charm, a hex, something, draw him out, and the ozone-taste of air on his tongue, it's what calls him, this, Lupin's like this all over, soaked into his skin, and Severus touches because he can't help himself.
Self-control is a memory when he gets *skin*.
And Lupin. Doesn't. Move.
"You feel--" Like everything we do in the dungeons that you never know about, any of you, but it's never been like this. Pale imitations of this reality when they take out their wands and forbidden books, pass on centuries of all the knowledge of every wizard who ever touched the dark side and came away with a taste for it. *Power*. Lupin's so filled with it. Living, breathing, so fucking *dangerous*, like those spells Malfoy calls up effortlessly in their chambers, blood magic's only a pale imitation of this. What they're all searching for those endless nights. God, he should have been Slytherin. The things we'd do with you, do to you, what you'd ask to do to us, you don't know, Lupin, but we'd want you more than anyone else could ever dream.
"Don't." But Lupin's breathless, and Severus pulls impatiently at the robe. More of that, a flare of cold heat with every touch. Smooth skin, so fine after coarse wool, chemical-roughened fingers instantly addicted. No scars, even when he pulls more cloth away, no one could be this perfect.
How could Black touch this and ever *stop*?
"Stop." The robe's puddled at his feet and Lupin's grasp on his wrist *hurts*, he'll have to go to the hospital wing and get this fixed tonight and he doesn't care. Strained muscles screaming, but he has another hand, has a mouth, can use both, and Lupin makes a low sound that can't be human (file that away for later), and the hand on his wrist loosens, sliding up his arm. "You--what *is* that--"
These flares of pure sensation. Like magic feels when you cast it. Lupin can feel it, too.
Gryffindors don't know about so many things. The things Snape murmurs beneath his breath, wand hot in his pocket when he pulls it out and presses it between them, power flaring and Lupin--growls, low and dark, so dark--fingers in his hair, pulling him close, and the kiss--
Electric, flow and ebb of air and nothing, but the goddamn *world's* got to be feeling this.
"What are you--what are you *doing*?" Lupin sounds drugged, kneeling on the rough stone, hands pressed into the stone like he could break through it, like if he stops, they'll be back on Severus' skin. Cold air and night between them, and Severus' mouth burns. He hadn't realized he'd lost his own robes "What did--what did you *do*?"
Severus has no idea, but he's staring at those long fingers and wondering if they can do it again.
*****
Part II: ...it happens.
Six days later. Circle around to the end, or the beginning, when Lupin comes back from wherever he doesn't go, and Severus wasn't looking for him, not this time. It's almost painful to be this close and not be able to touch, an entire hall between them, a ripple of feeling, when Severus woke every night feeling it, hard beneath his pajamas, no idea what it is but it tastes like Lupin's skin.
Acid, raw, bittersweet, *need*. He sometimes feels grass beneath his hands and grasps at his blankets to ground himself, and he can smell the forest around him in the dungeon every day Lupin is away.
His homework is suffering.
This time, though. Lupin, alone, as elegant as Black has ever been, incandescent that night as he waves Potter and Black ahead and goes to the library. Coiling exhaustion and energy in every step, like it's will alone that moves him but will is all he'll ever need. Severus thinks of earlier, outside the first floor bathroom that no one uses, Lupin pushing Black up against the wall, the slow, endless kiss that made Black shiver, and Lupin stepping back, sleepy-eyed and alive, like he never really seems to be except these times. Black, one hand touching bruised lips, wide eyes, suddenly younger, less jaded, less sure. This second where Lupin didn't seem to notice, then the second he did.
All that light going out like a snuffed candle, and Black walking away.
It's five million fucking rows of books, but it shouldn't be a surprise where he finds him. A teacher's note beside him and Lupin cross-legged on the floor, a dusty black book in his lap. Fingers flicking down the page and turning fast, mumbled words.
"I won't even ask." The book closes with a snap. Snape glances at the cover, but the protections of the library doesn't let him read the words. "I'm not in the mood tonight."
Severus leans into the bookcase. "I told you that he'll never want you like you want him to."
The snarl's strangely appropriate on Lupin's face. "Fuck. Off."
"Did he finally toss you off?'
"Shut up." Not enough heat. Lupin must be wondering the same thing.
"I wouldn't." Keep him like a pet, perhaps. When Lupin looks up, Severus smirks, watching the long fingers freeze.
"Wouldn't what?" He sounds--tired. Severus wants him back, the boy downstairs who could light a universe, the one who no one seems to really *see*.
Slow, easy drop to his knees, watching Lupin watch him, wary and scared. "Toss you off."
It's appropriate that they're doing this here--surrounded by all the fruits of a thousand dark wizards and a thousand who fought them, Lupin shifting into a boneless crouch, like he'll run or leap or maybe just howl--(howl? remember that, don't forget)--but nothing like anything Severus says isn't interesting.
Isn't being weighed by that Gryffindor honor against the want that he's emanating like heat. A slip of skin on his throat, revealed by the gap in his robes, and Snape moves close enough to lean forward and taste.
Electric. Bitter. Chlorophyll and metal. Hands on his head that pull him up before he's had near enough, and Lupin kisses him.
Familiar, like being wrapped in spells in the dungeons, God, if they had him, the things they could do.... Drunk on his skin, the way he feels beneath Severus' palms, slick and silky and hard. He's rolled on his back, robes kicked aside, and Severus wraps his legs around lean hips and lets Lupin *take*--his mouth, his body, it's rippling through them both, and he's never been so hard in his life, grinding up to get those flares of energy off of him, hear guttural sounds against his mouth, his jaw, his neck, and Severus digs his nails in and holds on.
"God," Lupin whispers, shuddering, sucking hard on his pulse, but it's only pain that's just too good to share, keeps his teeth locked on his lip and his fingers curled into claws, rocking up, imagining this as skin on skin, nothing to dull the pressure or the connection. He wants *more*.
"Yes." Voice raw, wanting more of this, Severus has done so much but never done this. Lupin holding himself up on one arm and messy, wet sucks across his collarbone, thrusting against him through wool and cotton, too many clothes but it's too good to matter. "*More*."
"We can't...." Shaking above him, coming apart, and he can *feel* it. A forest at night, a hunt across a grassy stretch of land beneath the moonlight, the scent of prey, the sound of water running close, Severus opens wide eyes on Lupin and stops breathing.
"*Remus*--"
The world explodes in brilliant, cold white light that burns through to the bone.
Nothing's ever been this good.
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From:My only querie would be the name "Lupus" that pops up in the last few paragraphs. Feel free to point and laugh if this is some canon name/nickname that I should know (I will read the books someday, I will), but I was just wondering if it was a typo. *g*
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From:*kicks* Fixed.
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From:I absolutely LOVE that Severus is seeing Lupin's power and vibrancy fading with the moon. Close to figuring out the secret, but not quite there. Drawn to the raw power he has, wants it, but just doesn't get it. Yet.
I'm so excited you're writing HP. You haven't done this before, have you?
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From:I probably ought to wait until my thoughts haves settled before I comment, but I don't want to.
I just realized I had been sporadically holding my breath through the entire thing, and when I got to that last sentence I finally let myself take a full breath. Your writing always holds me in thrall, and this one is perhaps the most tense of them all.
I love your descriptions of the Slytherins. I love your characterization of Snape. The triangle between Snape and the Marauders is incredibly resonant-- the Marauders rarely interest me, but you have really made me love them. It's possible that this story has turned me into a Marauders shipper in one fell blow.
So, yeah. Wow.
And!! I am just SO FUCKING HAPPY to see HPfic from you!
*incoherent*
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From:Black has never seen Remus as anything but fragile after the full moon, while Snape see him as powerful. In fact, the Marauders have never seen Remus as powerful at all. Remus has tried to hide himself in the illusion of helplessness, but his maturation requires that he allow himself to be confident of his power -- for one thing, I truly doubt the master classes for DADA leave room for the hesitant or insecure. Add unusual sexual orientation to the mix, and Remus is way off his balance. What he needs now is a chance to control the others for his pathway to maturity.
Probably no help at all, but fortunately there are much better writers who read your journal.
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From:Those quiet nights, when Lupin and Black, Potter and Pettigrew sneak out and into the woods--the ones that Lupin comes back from, flushed and awake, filled with something bright, indefinable, when all his spells work and he glows like something incandescent, and no one else *sees*, even the teachers.
I adore this---taking the idea of Lupin hiding himself on purpose and showing what he hides, what no one seems to see. It's all so rich, so descriptive, and my only criticism, as such, is one I've been noticing lately in many authors whose work I admire. And this part is purely theoretical, not specific to anyone:
It almost feels as though they want to do something new, something more complex and difficult, so they twist the fictional knots tighter and tighter, saying less, explaining less, keeping things hidden and complicated. I've been reading more and more fiction that feels overfull, like too much information half-expressed in too-few words. I have to wriggle my way in, guess and play catch-up, and sometimes the stories feel...almost -hostile- to readers.
Now, I'm not getting this here, really, but it does feel a bit cryptic. I can see why, with Severus even speaking to himself in half-truths, only revealing bits, not having to explain because every line has weight and meaning -to him-, but I had to reread and puzzle things out. And I'm one pretty familiar with canon. *g*
It could, of course, be just my perception, but this story feels a bit cramped, a bit hesitant to just explode everywhere, get lusher and richer, almost too reined-in by what you aren't fully saying. It's quite wonderful already, as I think I've said, really visual and raw and intense, but if any of my 'critique' makes sense, I hope it helps.
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From:-Silverkyst
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WIP are my 3 favorite letters
From:This is brilliant stuff - The best Snape/Lupin I've read, and your insight into Snape instantly warms me to him. I also like that you don't ignore the Lupin-Sirius dynamic - I like your take on Sirius and on his hero-worship of James. My favorite line: Black watches Potter like Lupin's watching Black, and that's a secret that Severus keeps close and smiles over often.
Wonderful!
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From:<3
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From:http://seperis.illuminatedtext.com/other/thisishow.html
Hope you enjoy!
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