The tea left to sweat itself out on the sticky table, Severus instead took a sip of the cold orange juice he'd had to berate the house elves to send to the Great Hall. He looked up from the Prophet as he rolled an ice cube on his tongue, lazily contemplating the Arithmancy professor strolling languorously toward the breakfast table. To walk more purposefully in this atmosphere was impossible; to do anything more than allow thoughts to leisurely meander was equally impossible.
The young man had been teaching at Hogwarts for a year now, and in that year, Severus had barely uttered two words to him. Of course, he felt badly that this was how it had turned out, and of course, he had his reasons for not speaking to him. What did one say to an abhorred former student whose unforeseen and unbidden reappearance in one's life at a mundane staff meeting last June resulted in an entirely unwelcome response on one's part, consisting primarily of a pooling of blood in an area ignored for years and to a lesser, though more noticeable, extent of a sharp intake of breath through teeth clenched in ill-repressed arousal? No, after the embarrassment that followed-Minerva had noticed and remarked upon the gasp then, and still teased him from time to time about his "crush"-Severus was content to spend the year ignoring the young man and his easy charm.
Easier said than done, naturally. Oh, he didn't actually say much of anything to him but Severus, long accustomed to the life of a spy and and subsequently an expert in communication of all sorts, could articulate and discern more through the movements of eyebrows and twitches of noses than most could hope to achieve in a lifetime of formal discourse. And with such an expressive visage, the young man had provided Severus with hours of scrutiny to fill the previously empty span of the early morning. Severus had soon come to the easy conclusion that the man was teasing him with his playful stare. So the year had passed, in silent, cryptic flirtation, Severus doing nothing to end it and, in a rather masochistic move, even encouraging it.
By the end of the year, after months of sidelong, suggestive glances, the tension had reached breaking point, ricocheting higher and higher, demanding release. Severus had no intentions of ending the little game, and certainly no plans of actually talking to the young man-their age difference alone, not to mention their less-than-benign history and thoroughly awkward and embarrassing reacquaintance, were enough to deter any such flights of fancy he might occasionally entertain. But at the same time, if Severus had to endure one more sleepless night spent cataloguing the day's encounters with the young man only to doze off around dawn to fitful, fantasy-fueled dreams that inevitably concluded with him jerking awake to a sticky, sweaty mess of sheets and limbs…
Despite the languid, humid air and the oppressive heat it carried, perfumed and encouraged by the tropical plants Dumbledore had conjured for the summer, their eyes met from across the hall in just such a look, one of startlingly acute intensity and heavy with unspoken significance, a moment that sent Severus' blood pounding through his veins and the ice cube down his throat in a desperate gulp of fresh air. The brief interlude ended abruptly with Severus choking gracelessly and the young man hiding his smile behind a hand raised ostensibly to brush his sweaty hair from his eyes.
Reaching the table at last, the young man slid into his customary spot next to Dumbledore three seats away from Severus, and tucked into an abbreviated breakfast of scrambled eggs and orange juice. Speaking with Dumbledore in low tones about his plans for the imminent holiday (intentions to return to Hermione's lab for the summer were mentioned) the young man stole glances down the length of the table at Severus.
The year was coming to a close-the only students left at this point were those for whom the Hogwarts Express was not an option-and, surprised as he was at the notion, he was disappointed with the way everything had turned out. When he had first arrived at Hogwarts last June, after years of being away from both the castle and its residents, he had expected the status quo. He had expected Dumbledore to be dressed in his garish robes, eyes twinkling madly away. He had expected McGonagall to be seated primly next to Dumbledore, lips pursed, hair pulled severely back from her stern face. All this had been there, that day. But next to McGonagall, he had expected Snape, dour and surly as ever, perfectly communicating his contempt for the young man before him without saying a word.
What he hadn't expected was… well, he still wasn't sure what exactly had happened when he'd walked in that day, but the look on Snape's face was certainly not the status quo. For one thing, it was somehow more intense than anything he could remember, although the truly strange part about it was that there seemed to be no animosity whatsoever in his gaze. No, there was something else there, something he hadn't quite been able to put a finger on at the time. And even more surprisingly than this, he had definitely not expected to feel the, clichéd as it was, jolt of arousal that hit him when he looked into Snape's eyes. If anything, given the calamitous circumstances with which they had last parted ways, he had expected a surge of resentment, of hatred, years buried with nowhere to go, to flow through his veins.
The only thing that he had, perhaps, expected was Snape's silence. Leave it to Snape to throw him off balance and, rather than level criticism after criticism at him, ignore him completely. He had considered trying to draw the man out, just to get some sort of a reaction, but had thought better of it after receiving another devastating stare in his direction. Far better these confounding glances than the man's acerbic wit, he had reasoned at the time. And as the year passed silently between them, somewhere along the way the "not speaking" had turned into a game, or so it seemed to him, trying to outlast the other and at the same time upping the ante with every look shared between them.
The very last thing he had expected upon returning to Hogwarts was finding himself entangled in a strange flirtation and obsession with Professor Snape, a man he had previously considered as less worthy of his attention than the dirt beneath his feet. And yet here he was, on the last day of term, disappointed that their little game was not resolved. He was desperate for the man to take notice of him, to glance just once more in his direction, to give him some sort of sign that the game they were playing would soon come to an end…