Title: Ensnare the Senses
Author: icefalcon
Rating:
PG
Pairing: Snape/Harry.
Warnings: Sort of
deathfic.
Spoilers: None
Disclaimer: Not mine!
A/N: Written pre HBP.
If pressed, the one thing that Severus Snape could say that he prided himself on, it was his sense of smell. No true Potions Master was left with any real sense of taste after their apprenticeship – foolish pranks and ill-advised concoctions were a by-word in the field. No, the sense that a Potions adept used to filter their world and work was the sense of smell, and Severus possessed what had been acknowledged rather ungraciously by his peers as an unusually sensitive one, even for a Master. A well brewed Vehementi Potion could send him to the heights of hedonistic delight – and a failed student disaster that offended his sense was the fastest way to blacken his mood, something that went a long way to explain the deep loathing he held for Longbottom.
Severus was not aware of the moment his superior sensitivity had carried over into investing certain scents with shadings of emotion. He was not aware of the moment when the wood polish, clean sweat, Quidditch-wool and the underlying unique smell of - that boy - began to evoke hatred. The merest tendril of that… scent… sent him over the edge into simmering rage. And so to, as the angrier he became, the stronger he could smell it – him! – the rich scent thickening and curling through his nostrils, choking out all else.
Nor was Severus aware of the moment that hatred lost its stench, and that distinctive smell became tinged with blood and singed hair, shifting from hate to duty. He was aware of the precise moment when duty slipped into the aroma of respect, the precise moment when it – he! – was on all fours on his office, struggling to stand just as the odors of pensieve liquid, blended with crisp air, wood and the medical hint that spoke of long stays in the hospital wing were struggling to imprint themselves onto Severus' senses.
Much later, respect became admiration; weariness and smoke, sacrifices made in the dark, the heavy, metallic scent of sour sweat, ingrained dirt and encrusted blood, battle scent: hard earned and dearly bought. Underneath all this was the pure aroma of him, the sensory taste that had quietly and unassumingly become part of his own personal fight against the dark. And so, admiration had slipped easily into the perfume of lust, an awkward, fumbling scent: arousal, oil – Severus had never been quite sure what they had used – and the smell of his skin, their skin, at its most basic level, stripped of protections and peripheries.
Looking back, he could pinpoint the moment when the velvet over sin tang of lust had bled into the comforting aroma of love. Severus had not grasped the change at the moment itself - awareness came much later - a quiet touch on the shoulder, steady and reassuring, a comforting half-embrace, inhaling the all pervasive scent of the boy – no, the man, now, whose scent was a blend of curse-seared flesh, blood, tears and Severus' own skin.
And it was this phantom scent that now trailed through their quarters, until he finally fled from it. Fled from it, to end up facing the scent of despair: decaying flowers, cold stone, damp earth and the absolute and unyielding lack of the underlying scent that would always and had always utterly ensnared him.