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TITLE A Short Stroll Before Dying (a little death) pt 2/2
AUTHOR islington road
PAIRING SS/HP
RATING R
SUMMARY Wherein a certain professor discovers what The-Boy-Who-Lived really keeps under his robe ...
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I am so fucked.
The thought reverberated across Harry's mind and back again. Halfway across it hit the words 'Take it off' going in the other direction. Their collision was unpleasant and made him feel sick. Looking at Snape didn't help matters any - the man was tensely on the edge at the best of times, but in the face of flagrant disobedience he looked positively tortured.
It was unsurprising then that Harry was utterly unable to make any noise at all. After all, that would have required him to actually be able to breath, an activity that, despite decades of scientific understanding, proved at this point and time to be unnecessary. It took vital concentration away from being scared rigid. Harry could not move. He couldn't even blink.
Snape's stare had shifted up a few gears from 'glare' to 'penetrative glare' and was now red-lining it all the way to a full-throttled 'scowl'.
All Harry could do was stare at him dumbly.
'Potter. I said. Take. It. Off.'
Mute disobedience was all that Potter presented him with.
'Have you gone deaf, boy?' Sarcasm never boded well for Snape's victims. It struck home somewhere in Harry's brain, in an area that dealt with survival, and a message was urgently telegraphed along a nerve.
Harry's head flinched.
It was sort of a shake of his head.
The Potions master raised one eyebrow. It was directly connected to Harry's adam's apple, causing the boy to swallow.
'Potter...', this time Harry's name was growled menacingly. Sweat beads sprang out and dotted Harry's forehead, when they got too crowded for space their friends and family appeared above his upper lip. Harry suddenly realised he was in that hyperaware state that frequently precedes death by misadventure. He could smell the beads of sweat underneath his nose.
That one realisation was like a red flag before a bull that's already had a pretty pissed-off day, it opened the floodgates, and all his other nerves began sending minutely detailed reports to their respective receptors in his brain.
Bloody hell.
Here he was. Stark, bollocky naked, except for a pair of grubby socks. Petrified into immobility. And all his sodding body could do was say 'Hey, you're about to die in a painful and humiliating way but not before you serve three lifetimes' worth of detentions. And by the way, there's a cold draught sneaking around under your cloak, your arms, legs and belly are singing with goosebumps, your nipples are as hard and peaking as Giza's pyramids. You're undergoing textbook symptoms of the fight-or-flight response so you're exuding adrenaline which is making you sweat and go all musky, and you're heart is pounding like an irate baker kneading stubborn sourdough. In case this isn't enough infomation for you, you didn't really wipe up earlier and all that come's dried up a bit and is pulling at the skin of your tummy and prick'.
Come. Prick
.The words circled the previous wreckage in his head like carrion-eaters before diving in to join 'I'm so fucked' and 'take it off'.
I'm standing here, Harry thought hysterically, thinking of my prick and my come. In front of Snape. And I'm naked.
Harry blushed. From his bellybutton all the way up to his ears.
Snape was getting more frustrated by the second. Potter was not conforming to type by ranting and raving and carrying on. He was being still and silent. But now, a tide of red swooped up his neck and filled up his cheeks.
Snape noticed, as he noticed most everything. And like most everything, it was filed away in the To Be Considered Later cabinet of his mind. What mattered here and now was punishing Potter. And punishing Potter meant taking away that cursed cloak of his.
'Potter. Give me that cloak. Now,' said Snape in his Even-Gods-Obey-This-Tone-Of-Voice tone of voice.
Harry trembled.
The flood of blood had reawakened his body but he was still pinned by the towering professor and his ferocious scowl. However, he had the presence of mind to unlock his jaw and force out a croaky 'No'.
Going by the look on Snape's face it did not appear to effect an improvement.
'What?'
'No. Sir.' This talking thing was getting a bit easier, mulled Harry.
Ah, the cat's no longer holding the brat's tongue, this is the way it should be, thought Snape. However, the professor was unable to shake the nagging feeling that irrespective of the Potter boy's defiance, the very fact that he, Snape, was conversing with a bodiless head and pair of be-socked feet was a deliberate attempt by the boy to undermine his, Snape's, authority.
Now it was Snape who thought Bloody hell.
Determined to effect some sort of cower in the brat in front of him, Snape loomed as menacingly as he'd been able to perfect in front of his mirror during term breaks. It brought him even closer to Potter's face, close enough that he could see minute reflections in the beads of sweat slowly making their way down his temples to join their brethren further south.
'Potter, if you give me cause to strip that robe from your person I can assure you that I will rip into tiny, little shreds.'
Harry was certain that every single word that Snape had said had gone in one ear and out the other. Except one. Strip seem to have lodged into his mind. And it bonded like long lost brothers with Prick and Come.
prickstripcomeprickstripcomeprickstripcomeprickstripcomeprickstripcomeprickstripcome
The words became background music to the sudden and startling image of Professor Snape's hands, carefully and deliberately and methodically and thoroughly rending the soft fabric of the invisibility cloak.
He became agonisingly hard. Instantly.
Harry took a deep breath, his first in what felt like forever. He got a lungful of his own sweaty, musky scent and his arousal doubled.
Oh fucking hell
!Snape could read the panic in his prey's eyes the way a composer could read the notes of Mahler's Fifth Symphony. And it was as sweet to his eyes as the adagietto was to his ears.
'Potter. I have been fair and reasonable beyond patience. If you do not obey me in this, I will make your life such an unpleasant, hellish thing you will beg Voldemort for mercy!'
Such dire threats may have had a cold shower-like effect on Harry's hormones if Snape hadn't placed his hands on his hips during his tirade. The movement had caught Harry's eye and the sight of those sensuous, pale hands outlining the professor's own body instantly made the Horny Harry wonder, in explicit detail, what those hands would feel like firmly grasping his own hips. His own naked hips. And under what circumstances that situation might arise.
It really didn't help when his mind suggested 'It might arise when he discovers just what exactly you have on under your cloak'. When not If.
I wonder what else might arise in that situation?
Bad Harry! Bad Harry!
The boy blushed even more. 'P-please...,' he stuttered.
Snape was unsure when his joy began revolving around... dominating the Potter boy. But he had to acknowledge that it was distressing when Potter strayed from their previously established script, and so... rewarding when he didn't. The stammered pleading, the flush of anger, the thrill of the hunt and the demand, the push, for more at every encounter, they were all... rewarding.
Snape's heart was pounding. Too late he realised his palms were damp. And he was... excited.
It was excruciating.
It was terrifying.
It was electrifying.
His breath quickened.
Snape realised he had leant in so close to the boy that he could see the darkened flecks in his eyes and how they encircled the pupils.
This is so patently ridiculous that... But Snape's thought trailed off. He'd made the mistake of taking a deep, steadying breath and he was overwhelmed by the smell of the boy. He took a step back.
It was sweat and it was musk, balanced on a hard to register undertone that brought back memories of his own days in an all-boy's dorm.
Oh fuck.
Exactly, Snape's mind agreed.
He could not be being turned on by The-Sodding-Whelp-Who-Had-Bloody-Well-Not-Died-Yet. He couldn't even see him for starters. Snape also liked to believe he was not so far gone that he fixated on adolescent boys.
Not boys, his subconscious pointed out consciously, adolescent boy.
That doesn't really help, Snape despaired.
Harry was just staring helplessly and hopelessly up at his professor.
It's inevitable, thought Harry, he's going to reach out with those hands of his
-Ohmygod, those HANDS -
and snatch the cloak away, and before I can curl up into a protective ball somewhere on the floor, he'll look.
And he'll see everything.
Oh shit
.Somehow that thought had ceased to be fatally mortifying. Instead, it had become mortifyingly exciting.
Harry had never thought that the mere idea of flashing his hard-on to his Potions professor would ever, could ever, be a turn-on.
But, oh boy, was it ever.
Harry could feel sweat starting to break out on his chest, in prickly, rash-type waves.
He shuddered.
Oh bloody. Fucking. Hell.
I'm hard for Snape. I'm naked but he doesn't know it and he's standing so close he can probably smell exactly how I'm feeling. And I want... I want...
Somehow, Harry couldn't convince himself that what he wanted was for Snape to sneer 'We'll deal with this tomorrow, Potter. For now, we'll just leave things as they are. You're dismissed'.
A gibbering part of Harry's sadly underused brain madly began trying to calculate the points this whole thing was going to cost him and Gryffindor. He could hear it now 'Nine thousand points from Gryffindor for your cheek, Potter, at daring to get hard at the mere thought of a professor's hands. There are special circles of Hell reserved for people like you. We can never hope to punish them enough on the mortal plane, Potter, your punishment will continue on into the next world. You make me sick'.
Little did Harry know that similar thoughts were passing rapidly through Snape's own mind. Only, they were aimed completely at himself and sprang from the same well of self-judging castigation that said 'Yes, you are completely sane - you who voluntarily joined the Death Eaters! Of course your judgement is entirely trustworthy!'
Snape willed that irritating voice to pack its bags and take a trip to Timbuktu or some other delightfully remote place if it wasn't going to offer any helpful suggestions.
Heart still pounding and palms still sweaty and mind still reeling, Snape gathered his wretched dignity, as much as he was able, determined to maintain his position of authority despite his state of arousal.
After all, Snape told himself, the boy doesn't have to know that you're as hard as seasoned timber. Try to maintain your position.
No not that position you pervert!
The air did not thrum with tension.
A plucked string thrums. This tension coalesced like candied molasses and was sliding over Harry like maple syrup and melting ice-cream slides over fresh, hot pancakes.
I am so fucking doomed, Harry mentally wailed. I'm going to come right here. As soon as he opens his mouth and The Voice comes out again.
Oh shit. I shouldn't have thought of that word!
Snape wanted to say 'Potter, you have exhausted my patience the way a vampire exhausts a victim of blood. Unless you want your house to be in negative points for the rest of this year you will hand over that accursed cloak this instant!'.
But he didn't. He couldn't. His head was swimming and all he said was 'Potter' in a tight, strained voice.
Harry's eyes closed involuntarily. I can't bear it any more, he thought desperately. The-Boy-Who-Lived is going to be remembered as The-Boy-Who-Died-With-A-Hard-On. I'm sure that'll make the Wizarding world very proud, they'll be able to say that I did not wilt in the face of death. That I stood up to the challenge till the very end. Oh god.
Snape raised a hand from where it bunched tightly on his hip and reached out to where he suspected a shoulder to be. The professor carefully reminded himself that it would all be over soon, the boy would be appropriately dealt with and dismissed and no one need ever know about what passed through his mind. Just a little bit more, he thought.
Snape's fingers brushed against cool cloth, he gathered a handful and began to pull.
He didn't really notice the bare throat that was exposed as the cloak began to slide off, but his hand released the soft fabric.
The bare shoulder than came next was unusual.
The bare upper arm was certainly not normal.
As was the creamy line of the collar bone.
The nipple was unexpected.
The skin that was displayed as the cloak was besieged by gravity did not seem to end in pyjamas or clothes of any kind.
Snape's mind had been stuttering to a halt for the best part of the last ten minutes. But the pale lines of faint ribs and musculature and toned arm made his mind slam to a sudden standstill. And then start back-pedalling.
One half of the boy's torso was completely exposed. As was most of one arm. The cloak had snagged on the lower forearm and hip, but the weight of the fabric inevitably dragged it onwards.
Suddenly, Snape could see a bare hip. Which meant there was not going to be any modesty-saving, loosely tied pyjama pants. Not unless they did up at the knees and ended before the ankles at any rate.
For all that Snape had despised many people over the course of his lifetime, himself included, he had never thought any one so deserving as he himself was going to be when this whole situation was blabbed to Dumbledore. His mind fast-forwarded to the interview with the board of governors under Veritaserum -
-So you ordered the boy to strip?
-Yes.
-For reasons of punishment?
-Yes.
-And he was so cowed by you that he obeyed?
-Yes.
-You did not think to appraise his head of house?
-No.
-So you were alone, the two of? Just you and the boy?
-Yes.
-Tell us, professor, were you, uh, excited in any way..?
There was no way he would appear as anything other than a deranged pervert. No claiming eleventh hour spying this time - No really, I entreat the board, it was on orders from Voldemort, I was doing it to prove my loyalty and maintain my position of trust for our worthy cause!
A soft 'whump' diverted Snape's attention back to his student. His now completely-naked-except-for-socks student. The soft sound had been the invisibility cloak dropping on to the stone floor, where it pooled around the boy's socked feet.
Snape' quirked his mouth in amusement, apparently the boy's tide of anger rose all the way from his navel to stain his cheeks. It was a passing amusement but it lead his eyes down the neck and the sternum and the torso and the abdomen where it ricochet suddenly back to the boy's eyes.
Harry had scrunched his eyes closed. It didn't help, but then nothing could. He'd felt so exposed when the damn cloak had been sliding off, but when it had snagged on his hip and arm he'd felt as if the entire world was watching. I can't bear it, I can't bear it, became his mantra, and so he'd closed his eyes tightly in some vain hope to avoid making it worse.
Harry's tortured mind bent itself around and presented him with an image of what the Potions professor must be seeing, the inevitable slide of fabric, the revelation of skin, the panting breath, the steamy cheeks, the tensed body. An inch of skin followed by another. His mind matched the image to the sensations of the sliding cloak, sensations his mind enhanced and presented to him anew.
Fucking hell, I'm turning myself on!
It was not the best time to have such a realisation, it was echoed by the cloak's final defeat by gravity. And Harry saw himself standing naked in front of Snape. Naked and hot and sweaty and painfully erect.
Awaiting his nemesis' reaction made Harry quake anxiously and... expectantly. For what, his mind was silent on for once.
Snape's double take was worthy of Charlie Chaplin at his comic best. His gaze had followed the tide of red down the boy's body and seen something so unexpected and outrageous that that it had sent his gaze shooting back up to safety. But disbelief had hauled it down again, and down was where his gaze locked.
No matter how inappropriate, how invasive, how wrong it was to stare at his student's flushed cock, Snape was incapable of looking away.
It cannot be... was all his wretched mind could babble. The realisation of his own arousal had been a horrifying event, but to see its twin upright and staring at him... And the boy so obviously aware of it and the implied meaning...
The musky smell of sweat and arousal, the dusty socks, the flushed face, the boy's initial recalcitrance - all the pieces fit together. The picture itself did not make sense, but it was a whole image. The boy out of bed, out of dorms, wandering the halls, naked, aroused - then or did it come later? Was it anticipation of an illicit tryst among the shadows? Was it the memory of a dream? But why was the blood still filling it so, keeping it so hard, so eager?
Was the boy hard for him?
All this time he'd been standing here reprimanding himself for unbridled perversion had the boy been as insolent as to be turned on by him?
Did it matter?
Snape's eyes drifted upwards once more and his focus widened. Potter's erection was attention-grabbing, yes, but the picture as whole - the limp socks, flushed face, pale skin and oh so much of it and its pink tide rising up to his ears, the sweat on his face, in his hair - he looks positively debauched already.
Could I possibly make a difference?
Could my touch make a difference?
The hand that had been guilty of grabbing the boy and grabbing the cloak drifted upwards once more but this time hesitantly, unsure.
It reached out tentatively to a damp, red cheek, stilled there, still unsure, and then touched ever so softly.
Harry's eyes flew open. He had been expecting scorn, anger, derision, violence, humiliation - anything.
He hadn't been expecting touch.
When he did he get so close? Harry's mind whimpered.
His Potions master's hands were so warm. Snape's hands were so warm. And they're touching my face, thought Harry, bewildered.
The boy whimpered. Snape wasn't sure if it was with need or disgust or even if the boy knew himself. But Snape knew what he needed. It might not be proper, it might not be honourable, it might not even be long-lived, but then and there he needed to touch the boy more.
He needed to caress his skin. Needed to feel his dampened hair. Needed to stroke those red lips…
With my tongue
…Snape raised his other hand up and cupped Harry's face. He was so close already that it seemed quite easy to bend down and press his lips against the boy's lips. Easy to swipe his tongue and lick his way inside. Easy to become familiar with the taste and to fall back into the rhythm of breathing through his nose.
It was easy to accept the fumbling of uncertain hands at his shoulders, and oh so easy to let one of his own hands slide lazily down the naked, silky back, to let it glide to a stop right on the uppermost swell of the boy's arse.
Harry was lost. He was lost because his professor was touching him. Lost because there was a tongue in his mouth. Lost because he couldn't seem to catch his breath, and then lost because his spine liquefied as a broad palm slipped down his back. Harry centred suddenly when sparks from that broad palm leapt straight through his middle and into his cock. His hips had jerked forward instinctively and suddenly his cock-head was no longer kissing cool air but rubbing tightly against the tight woollen weave of the professor's black cloak.
Sensation flared through his body once more, like a rescue beacon on a dark night, all fire and sparks and requesting assistance. Pleading. Imploring. Begging.
Harry realised it was his voice, husky and whispery. His lips had slipped form Snape's and he was mouthing desperately against his cheek, whimpering his pleas as the man's tongue danced wickedly around his ear.
Snape couldn't bear to ask if the boy was sure, if this was what he wanted. He was writhing and whimpering and rubbing his pre-come all over the front of Snape's own robe. And dammit! He wanted too.
Intense and fierce arousal leaked from every pore of Snape's body. He had found himself teetering on a precipice of morals but that one look at the boy's glorious, debauched form and Snape had thrown himself over the edge -consequences be damned.
Roughly, Snape urged one clothed thigh between the boy's naked ones, and tried to find purchase on the uneven stone wall with his foot for stability. Harry's hips cantered upwards, pressing him line-to-line against Snape's own. Harry wildly ran his hands along Snape's arms, his shoulders, and his back. Sometimes scrabbling for something to steady himself with and other times for the sheer pleasure of touching.
Snape wrapped one arm around the boy's back and tangled his other hand in the unruly, sweaty black hair. He needed to anchor that head, tilt it just so and then he could slot his mouth against Harry's just so and try to feed his hunger for the boy's taste mingled with his own.
Their taste.
Oh fuck.
They were rocking against each other now. Rubbing and sliding. Tilting and twisting. Snape thrust up strongly, seeking firmer contact through the deadening layers of fabric.
It was too much for Harry, riding his professor's thigh, having the rough cloth slide across his cleft and oh so teasingly close to his opening. He could feel the heat spiralling tighter behind his belly-button and he lost control of his mouth's co-ordination. It was too much to feel all of this and kiss at the same time, so he settled for burying his face into the crook of Snape's neck and breathing in the concentrated musk he found there mingling with some strands of fine, dark hair. And he was gone, exploding in waves and pulses. Stars behind his eyes, sparks throughout his body, and wet heat all across his front.
Snape was so close to his own climax that the pants of warm, moist air against his neck and the shuddering of the coming boy in his arms pushed him just that little bit further. He pulled Harry's hips into his once last time and the heat flooded out of him.
Unsteadily, Snape lowered his foot to the floor. The dead weight of the spent boy he still held in his arms dragged the odd pair down onto the cold stone amidst the folds of the invisibility cloak, breaths huffing and limbs tangled.
Harry was content to stay right where he was, and Snape kept his arms around the boy.
Eventually Harry's brain rebooted itself, and while the enormity of the situation remained reassuringly out of reach, the irony that he was in even worse shape now than when he'd in been in bed earlier circled his head like cartoon tweety-birds.
He was still sweaty, even the backs of his knees. He was still sticky. And he'd still humped himself to orgasm on a bizarre object for an incomprehensible reason. But his mattress was unlikely to get him expelled, however, his mattress also didn't have arms to cradle him… So, Harry snuggled in closer to the warm body around him, happy that at least one aspect of this was better than his regular nightly sessions.
Snape, for his part, could find no explanation for his own conduct and even less explanation as to why the student he'd just unforgivably molested by most people's standards, including his own, was burrowing in closer to him like he was nesting for the winter and never wanted to leave.
However, uncomfortable stone floors triumph over even the most exhausted and confused souls, and eventually the pair rose awkwardly to their feet, Harry clutching his father's cloak nervously.
Snape was comprehensively tongue-tied, and refused to listen to his inner-voice's amusing limericks as to why that might be the case. Instead, he calmly waved his wand over boy and cloak, easily removing tell-tale marks and smears.
I've done enough to the boy for one night, Snape thought, last thing he needs is a hickey to explain in the morning.
Harry, having run the full gamut of emotions, settled tentatively on 'shy'. It was, after all, his first 'morning after' experience and the sun wasn't even up yet. He appreciated the gesture of the cleaning charms Snape had cast but was unable to show that or say so. He settled on draping the invisibility cloak around his shoulders.
Snape was still uncertain as to which way was up, and he took the boy's action as his own cue and stepped forward, raising his hands to Harry shoulders.
A small hope was born inside Harry, thinking he might just be in for one more taste of Snape's exquisite mouth. But it sputtered out quietly when the sensuous hands went over his shoulders and drew the cloak's cowl up and over his head.
Snape turned to his office door, but before he opened it he found himself saying to the invisible boy behind him, 'Potter, now you know what happens when I catch you roaming the corridors at night. You should be more careful in the future.' Snape hoped that was ambiguous enough, he found it truly impossible to commit to tantalisingly inviting the boy back or banning him outright.
Snape opened his office door, then stood aside to let the boy leave.
Harry understood the message, or thought he did. He knew he should be more careful in the future, but didn't actually know if he would be…
Somehow, he rather thought he would not.
---oO THE END Oo---
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AUTHOR'S NOTE
I wrote this as a personal response to an image that leapt into my head one day - namely that of a flushed Harry in sagging socks, and nothing else, awaiting punishment at Snape's hands…
Fan art anyone?
