Art by Glockgal.
Disclaimer: All characters from the Harry Potter universe belong to J.K. Rowling, Bloomsbury Publishing, Scholastic Inc., AOL/Time Warner and associated companies. No offence, legal or otherwise, is intended by the online publication of this story. Neither is profit. Make love, not lawsuits!
Notes: Dedicated to Glockgal, and written for her wonderful work of art (below).
Butterfly
by
The sibilant slither of Harry's tie, loosened by Snape's fingers, sounds unbearably loud in the silence. Harry doesn't dare open his eyes--this is how it happens every time, every single time, with him pretending that he's not here, that he's not hard, that it isn't Snape doing this to him. That it isn't Snape's breath stirring the soft hair at the nape of his neck--that it isn't Snape's body, hot and rough with black wool, that presses behind him and around him and rustles its layer of robes like a crow. Feathers. This is how it happens, because Harry can't stop it happening, and it's never been his call, his fault, and he didn't ask for his Potions master to start this game when Harry's third year began. Harry didn't ask Snape to look at him like that during detentions, to burn up Harry's thoughts like paper--to drift too close in the brewing of a potion or the cleaning of a cauldron. Harry didn't ask for the fleeting touches that made him feel a little hot, a little ill. Harry didn't ask for the lengthening of those touches, for fingers that dug into his hip tightly--claws--as another hand unbuttoned his shirt and slipped within, or skated gently over the growing bulge in his trousers. Harry didn't ask for any of this, so it isn't his fault--and it's almost like a game of hide and seek with him closing his eyes and counting, because counting helps him forget, helps him pretend that he isn't here, helps him not to come too soon.
Breath whistles in and out of his nose in tight, warm circles--not enough oxygen here and the air feels stale--and Harry's sweating, a prickling on his scalp and under his shirt, when Snape finally pulls his tie loose and lets it fall to the floor. Harry feels fever-bright with heat and bile, as if he could just bend and throw up at any moment--but he remains still as a statue, not relaxing into Snape's embrace and not pulling away. He still doesn't open his eyes, seeing nothing but a fire-lit orange darkness. He already knows what Snape's face must look like--absorbed, eyes closed just like Harry's--reverent, the expression strange on a face that usually holds no reverence for anything. Harry knows because he's seen that look on Snape's face on the rare occasion that he's opened his eyes and glanced backwards--and it feels odd to know that this is some kind of worship, because Snape's fingers are both steadycareful and tremblinghot when they finally brush the bare skin of Harry's throat. Harry sucks in a breath and bites his lip as the fingers rest there, as though testing Harry's pulse--a mediwizard checking for signs of life--and the sigh of satisfaction Harry hears, drifting past his ear in a curl of hot breath, must mean that his racing pulse has proved the right kind of life indeed.
Robes rustle once more when Snape's other arm curls around him carefully, almost lovingly--such care from the man who flays him with vitriol during the day. Snape's says nothing, absolutely nothing, and some part of Harry understands that Snape's pretending too, because saying something will make this real, make this what it's not supposed to be, make it something that the both of them have to answer to. Neither of them opens their eyes or their mouths--see no evil, speak no evil--and when Snape's palm brushes the rough rise of denim between his legs Harry's hips buck suddenly, and his face heats with the hatred of it, the pathetic shame of it, when Snape's hand finally undoes the warm button there and slips inside.
How suddenly vulnerable and smooth his thighs feel under the brush of Snape's callused fingers--but Snape only lowers his jeans so that they cling to Harry's knees, stopped from slipping all the way down by the tight press of Snape's body behind him. Pinned here, hot and smothered and uncomfortable, he feels like a butterfly of thin muscle and pulse, fluttering fluttering, as Snape strokes his trembling wings. Lepidopterist. Hungry. Touch me touch me please, Harry's mind thinks without permission, but it's silly because Snape is touching him--just not there, where he needs it. But somehow Snape seems to hear his plea because those fingers find his penis, and at the first warm curl of them Harry breaks and loosens like a bone, out of its socket with a bright flare of hurt, of fire, and he hears himself whimpering stupidly through clenched teeth. Let me go let me go but Snape doesn't, although his mouth does whisper something that sounds like fuck, which also makes no sense. Harry still doesn't open his eyes, refuses to open his eyes and see what's going on--what's happening down there, the tip of his penis leaking and wet, the foreskin a moist, tender sheath that Snape manoeuvres around and around until Harry's panting, every secret laid bare in shivering skin along the backs of his knees and in his throat, which jumps wildly with pulse under Snape's mouth.
No, he doesn't need to see--because it's not even really a part of him, it's just something that happens when he's here, something that he lets happen without meaning to, every time, and he can't back away now because it'd be unsportsmanlike in some way Harry doesn't quite understand, and why should he anyway and Snape's hand is too hot too fast and Harry's squirming back, away from that hand and into Snape, back into Snape as if to bury himself there, wrap himself in Snape's black robes like a worm in a pupa. But Snape holds him and shushes him and does it good, that twist he does with his hand, a warm corkscrew opening Harry up like a bottle, releasing a hot, bitter scent. Snape moves and lifts that thing down there that isn't Harry's own--it's just this throbbing hurting creature that happens to feel every brush of Snape's fingers as though it were a shudder wracking along the whole of Harry's body, so that Harry's hips pump helplessly, so stupid and forceful and fast that his thighs hurt with it, muscle stretched like string, and when Snape finally whispers yes, still not daring to speak aloud, Harry thrusts into that slick grip and comes, eyes squeezed shut so tight he sees flashes of purple, his cock pulsing so hard he thinks he'll break it, tear it, explode out of his own skin and leave nothing but a sift of ash.
The bruised purple behind his eyes fades when Snape lets him go. He can hear Snape breathing harshly, just behind his ear--repeated blasts of hot air that make Harry whimper and turn his head away from them. Snape steps away then, suddenly, and Harry almost falls before he manages to steady his shaking legs. He doesn't look back, doesn't look at Snape at all, because he knows that the evening is over. Snape never asks Harry to touch him, as though that would be going one step too far. Harry knows the rules of this game by now, and so he bends down--hears Snape catch his breath behind him--and pulls up his jeans, no longer bothering to wonder why his skin is clean and his shirt unrumpled--why he doesn't smell like sex, that heavy, bitter scent from before. He no longer needs to look back to see Snape pocketing his wand--and he doesn't want to see Snape's face anyway, flushed and filled with a sort of hungry, sick hesitation that always makes Harry's stomach turn.
Harry only stumbles to the door on what feel like knees of water--bones and mind both melted, gone--and he doesn't hear Snape stop him, because Snape never does, and Snape no longer has to say Go in that trembling, hateful voice for Harry to understand.
He heads back up to Gryffindor unsteadily, feeling like a puppet, something made of paper and string--unreal, a simulacrum, not the real thing. Hermione will be up finishing her Potions homework for tomorrow, and Ron will be asleep to thoughts of Quidditch and girls--but Harry will only crawl into bed and lie there until he has to wank off, because he'll be hard again at the memory of what just happened, because it never happened, because Harry never opened his eyes, and since it never happened it wasn't real, and it's okay to dream about it.
He doesn't think about tomorrow, or how he'll blow another potion up despite his best intentions to the contrary--how he'll flinch when Snape will tell him, in a cold, indifferent voice, to come to detention.
Eight sharp, Potter.
Eight sharp. Eight legs for a spider. Ron hates spiders. Sharp for a knife, for Snape's voice, his hands. Harry hates Snape. It's so awfully simple now. It's always simple now, afterwards, and it would be so simple to veer to the left and go to Dumbledore's office, to tell him everything, but somehow Harry never does. He'll be hard by the time he goes for detention tomorrow, and he'll be counting already by the time he reaches the door, and he'll count until Snape takes some excuse to step closer to him, to touch him, and then Harry'll close his eyes and count count count, pinned like a butterfly and trembling, and it won't be simple again until he comes.