Chapter 10
The air was stiff, isolated, hardened. It seemed strange how little James could breath, think even, over this pressure. This harsh nature that clung to the air for James could feel every cell in his body held in place, silenced, inescapable of any movement or motion. He was there, in this hardened horrific pressure of air and body and yet he wasn't. For it seemed distant, amiss from this situation. All James seemed aware of was Snape.
In the doorway he stood. Still and silent just for that moment. A late essay held in his hand. The black of his school robes flittered in the doorway. Maybe from that window from before but maybe from each of his breathes. That rise and fall in his chest. It seemed faster than usual.
James, with a glance, caught his face for that second. That second. It seemed strange how a face could look so unlike attraction and yet be something on the verge of the very essence of perfection. For every odd angle of light, from shallow cheek to irregular feature, just seemed to merge as one becoming something only Snape had, something that was only truly Snape himself.
"Just on the desk then?" And then the pressure clawed its way back; away from Snape, away from James, away from emotion as Snape spoke those words.
James did not respond. He just stood, still leaning upon the desk behind, staring at nothing, feeling that presence emanate in the silence between them.
James trying not to hear the footsteps walking across the stone floor. He did not see the shadow that flittered across his view for he would not see it. The stones were enough, the stones with the edges of time and-
Snape had not left.
Head turned and Snape was just there. Leaning on the wooden frame of the blackboard. Staring, with those dark absorbing eyes toward James.
The kiss from yesterday sprung, contorting James's mind. James would not look at Snape's expression. There was no kiss from yesterday. James did not like Snape. James would not look at Snape's face. Why would he look at Snape's face? Just look down, anywhere. Snape's fingers wrapped around his arm. So pale upon his black robes. So thin they seemed, wrapped so tightly around his limb. Every joint, edge, bent so perfectly. They looked so stiff though, so strained under a pressure of an emotion within him. James just could not bare those fingers to feel that pain from somewhere else in that body. He just wanted those fingers to be happy, to leave such emotion behind for he could not bare such emotion to be a part of such a perfect thing.
The hand shifted. James looked away.
A blank stare to the door, still leaning upon that desk. The door continued to remain shut. It seemed to be finding it easier to endure this silent air which screamed every tiny action and every past motive.
"So…"Snape, with a long extended value to those words, crystallized the thick clogging air. Diamond though it was it still possessed on James's ears that cutting sensation of its sharp slashing quality, a quality that Snape's voice seemed to hold in those recent days.
A sharpness that cut James's senses to a more vivid reality. "There's the door." A soft slice of words with extended hand action in addition to help Snape to fully understand these helpful instructions.
Snape, however, seemed far from taking instructions. "Yes, that is indeed a door."
James, hand moving from table to face, keeping in this emotion while pretending to scratch his forehead. For there seemed to be a dial within James slowly increasing, pushing the room itself into a more heightened state. Snape's voice, however. There was something different in his voice.
Head turned. Snape unmovable from that frame, still hand around arm and still very much staring at James with those black, almost hidden by hair, curtained eyes.
James looked away. It wasn't fair. No, stupid brain thinking, seeing too deeply. No, no, why would James care, he didn't care there was no reason to care, he did not care, James had no emotional reaction to the fact that Snape, and that stupid fucking little face that doesn't fucking stop staring at him, didn't in any way look attracted to James. No, no, relief! Defiantly relief because James would be disgusted if he saw Snape staring at him like he fucking liked him or something because James did not like Snape and there was nothing in anything he thought or said or did or how he may for a second interpreted Snape's voice with its lack of malice to maybe mean that Snape liked James but no thank god because it didn't and everything is ok.
Everything is fine.
James stared at the door. Biting his lip. Feeling something cling deep behind his rib cage.
"Maybe," James voice thick with malice, sarcasm, yet seemingly suppressed into a tiny pin prick of a voice, almost a whisper in that silent room. "you should use said door."
"Well, you see I was wondering if anything else interesting might happen if we spent long enough in the same room together alone. I must admit I was very surprised by our last little… experience shall we call it."
Of course the sneer, twisting, entwining in Snape's every word. Festering, as if for only a game, to gouge its way into James's brain contorting his once healthy vision. For James knew he could not cope with Snape's voice full of the resonation that it carried before that day this sick little thought begun to multiply; but James could cope even less with this new, void of the malice of before, voice that spoke with Snape's sneer.
"What are you talking about?" James, chocking on words, laughter that smouldered on pain. Snape was stupid. What was he talking about?
"Oh, must be used to things like that I suppose. Shall I remind you? I can go into detail you like."
Laugh admitted from James, yet less so a laugh. A laugh held some light to it.
His eyes seemed burnt from some fire that ground on deep within him. Restless it ground on and on. The thick smoke clogging, chocking his lungs. So deep and heavy it chocked. His bones seemed tainted by this black mist. Heavy so very heavy, his fingers felt the heat of the blaze as they seemed to turn slowly to ash beneath his skin. Snape's voice was sarcastic yes but the extent of the malice from before was gone. Why was it gone?
It didn't happen. What happened in that store room didn't happen. Snape shouldn't be acting differently because nothing happened. Snape was so stupid to be acting differently when nothing had happened.
"Nothing happened."
James could hear Snape shift his position after James spoke those toneless words. Everything was flat, inept of emotion for those emotions within him, so breaking they seemed, could not be real because James did not like Snape.
Every movement Snape made, every breath he took, every syllable that mouth spoke; it conjured something too wonderful, so beautiful. It was like a light that dabbled the smoke in James body. A light that allowed air, allowed freedom, allowed James's fingers to feel less deadened and ash filled and therefore seemingly allowed them the need to just gently touch that cheek of Snape's.
James didn't like Snape so obviously those emotions were not true. So James ignored them as having no emotion was truer than those emotions.
"Why do you keep saying that?" That glistening essence of a voice asked from James's left. The fire began to ground its course, flaming into James's chest. Burning with the fury because nothing happened. "Nothing happened."
"Yes it did."
The fire seemed to begin tearing through James's rib cage. It was hurting. It was physically hurting. The smoke from those flames clogging his throat, lungs. Hardly breathing. Hardly seeing through the flames.
"Nothing happened."
"Potter, you kis-"
"NO I FUCKING DIDN'T!"
And James was staring at his face. And he saw him. And suddenly he lost everything.
The fire suddenly gone for suddenly Snape's features focused through that anger. That tilt of jaw unhidden by hair. So smooth it skirt its course caressing that thin face in a frame. The harsh features softening as if blurring anything unnecessary, anything unattractive for that didn't matter. Not when James could just stare, with this pureness that moulded within his chest, at all those handsome features.
Snape's face suddenly fear to confusion.
James suddenly drenched by another emotion. Why did James feel that? How could he feel that? The aching beginning once more within James's frame.
"Are you ok Potter?"
"Why wouldn't I be Snivellus?"
James had found himself in front of the desk facing Snape rather than away toward the door. No recollection of movement. Only that memory of that searing blaze of fire engulfing all thought. James must have moved in his anger and suddenly lost all anger and stopped upon seeing Snape's complexion.
Snape, rather than leaning on the frame now stood, wearingly watching James's movements. James watched back, different reasons.
Why did Snape have to look so handsome?
James could feel this ache. It seemed hollow, desolate within those fragile bones of his rib cage. It was as if that fire suddenly smouldered, died, from a wave of water. All that was left was the smoke. Heavy achy smoke still clogging his body, absorbed only by his ever increasingly heavy limbs.
All for simply liking someone. It did seem strange when uttered like that. It didn't matter he was a boy. No, it didn't matter that it was someone he used to hate.
This then shifted James's eyes. Up, out, around him. Toward Snape. Those dark eyes touching his. Snape's eyes held no attraction toward James.
No, this was wrong. This was weird. The smoke leaving that burnt fire, absorbed only by his flesh and bones, leaving this empty space, desolation of nothing. James never wanted to feel anything. For his feelings were wrong. That was the only truth.
"Potter, I'm going to be honest with you."
Still silence lay within James's frame. He just stared, emotionless, bones, skin heavy from the ache of that fire.
Snape shifted in his frame, uncomfortable by this stare perhaps. Yet he continued. Continued with the tone of before. Void of malice. "I'm not here to taunt you. I want to know why."
"Why what?"
Snape, James was sure, would have contorted to anger before. Maybe he caught something within James's voice. Maybe that essence of vacant emptiness. For Snape himself seemed to recognize it. He did shift his position, eyes slowly moving upon James's face. James himself trying to dissolve the twists of affection festering in his stomach at this intensity.
Maybe this was the reason that Snape responded with "Ok, nothing happened."
James suddenly still. Light in his chest. His body suddenly allowing ash to evaporate. Still that heaviness lay but his body, his heart, seemed to breathe if even only slightly.
James could allow this to happen couldn't he? This lightness of touch that Snape gave. It didn't mean anything. He still had no feelings for Snape. He still hated Snape. This now awareness of the pace of his heart that thundered within his chest, creating this circle of warmth in that place, embracing all mass within him, that didn't mean that James had feelings for Snape. It was all just fine.
"Yeah, it's just hypothetical." Snape's voice rang through the now slowly gaining layers of warmth inside James's body. "It didn't happen."
"Yeah, yeah." It was like James was now allowed to gaze at that beautiful face. It glistened like a reflection, simmering this image he knew so well, but in such a new and beautiful concept.
"Why do you keep looking at me like that?"
It was like the image suddenly shifted, disturbed by another force.
"Like what?"
"Hypothetically! Why do you hypothetically look at me like that?"
Yet James's new found wariness did not quite leave. "I don't know."
"Also, hypothetically, why would you kiss me?"
"Hypothetically?" James body still ridged yet Snape's corporation, tone of voice, seemed somehow settling.
"Yeah, hypothetically. I mean," Snape's tone shifted. James looking up, into those dark eyes, a search. His voice seemed tinged with something. Oh, that was what lay deep within Snape's thought. Subtle yet still Snape was scared. "did you because of some joke? Dare?"
"I don't think so."
Snape still shifting, flittering of some suppressed and hidden emotion behind those eyes. "You were trying to mess with my head then?"
"I don't think I would have gone that far just to torment you."
"No; you wouldn't would you."
Then Snape's words left nothing but silence. Absence of any sound. Yet the room was speaking on a level so large only the beginning of this very convocation could compare. Yet this silence was so very different. It felt so very much purer.
"If I-" Snape, as if caught by his very words, silenced himself. Looking still with that tinge in his eyes.
"Hm?"
"If I-" again he stopped but something within James's look must have allowed the next words to fall from those lips. "If I kissed you now what would you do?"
"What?" All went blank. Well, all but something within his chest.
"Hypothetically."
"I don't know why would you do that?"
"In this hypothetical world you had already kissed me."
Very erringly blank. Very aware of his arms. Very aware of his breath, how it beat fast within his throat. "Do you fancy me in this hypothetical world?"
"No."
An emotion twisted within James's chest at Snape's reply but he was far too blank to register what it meant. All he could give was the reply of "Why would you kiss me then if you didn't fancy me?"
"The same reason you did maybe."
"I don't think so."
"Why did you do it?"
"It doesn't matter."
"It does."
"Why didn't you tell Lily?"
"What?"
"She was asking me before I started detention about it and she doesn't seem to know."
"I- She doesn't need to know."
"You could have taunted me. You could have told the whole school."
"It didn't happen remember."
Silence.
James could not answer what Snape had just said.
Snape looked back.
James could not bare to see his face.
Snape spoke, "If I kissed you now what would you do?"
And James turned. Head to the side, facing far from Snape. Looking toward the floor. James replied, for this was true, for he did not want to think about it so "How would I know." how James would react if ever Snape kissed him.
Then James, head still toward the floor, felt a presence approaching him.
A weird panic. He wanted him closer but no, please not closer. No no closer.
"No I can't."
James looked up. Snape was there. Staring at James's features.
"No, no, I can't." Snape repeated. His head shaking. Something in those eyes. James stood up properly. He knew that pain. He had seen it once before. That day Snape woke up from trying to end his life.
Snape seemed aware. Trying to shift this pain away from notice.
James just leaned forward. His hands placing themselves upon Snape's frame. "It's ok. I don't mind."
Snape's head tilting, looking James in those eyes of his.
"I don't want to kiss you, Potter."
"You don't have to."
Finding themselves stepping closer.
Snape still staring. His mask breaking, trying to hold it together, yet it was breaking.
This pain, tainting James. That face. Please don't feel like that.
Arms, feeling the essence of Snape. Moving around. Holding that frame. Anything to comfort, to protect because that pain was too harsh and James didn't want Snape to feel such harshness.
A hand around waist, a hand within hair. Snape was still staring, trying to hold it back.
"I don't want to kiss you." That voice whispered.
"You don't have to, as long as you're ok you never have to do anything again."
Snape, leaning onto that hand on waist, head almost caressing James's hand back.
"I like you holding me like this."
"I like holding you like this too."
Then Snape smiled. Suddenly, like this allowance of emotion was made, pain just suddenly released. Snape trying to look down, anywhere other than James.
No, please don't feel sad.
James suddenly pulling him closer. Holding him.
"It's ok, it's fine, I promise. I promise."
Snape's sudden weight. His arms suddenly held about James's body. Snape's face eased within James's shoulder and neck.
His body so heavy as he just hang there, holding on to this presence that James gave, as James himself, one arm still wrapped about his waist, as the other slowly stroked into Snape's dark hair.