This fragment is rated NC-17 (adults only). It includes explicit male/male sex. If this is what you came for, scroll down. If it isn't, hit the Back button.
Remission [unfinished]
by Resonant
Aurors captured Peter Pettigrew the same day that Hogsmeade fell to the Death Eaters. As a result, few readers noticed a small notice on page 26 of the Prophet, stating that researchers at ***** had developed a very promising treatment for lycanthropy.
If it had not been wartime, there would have been widespread controversy when the Sisters of Morrigan began distributing the cure anonymously outside the channels of the Werewolf Registry. But the news was overshadowed by the disappearance of Harry Potter and Lord Voldemort, and the subsequent reappearance of Potter with a small lump on his left hand which proved, upon examination by skilled magical analysts, to be all that was left of Voldemort, and from which Potter was later freed using a spell intended for the removal of warts.
As a minor contributor to the research leading to the cure, Severus Snape was naturally interested in its progress. However, the former Hogwarts potions master found it prudent to keep a low profile in the aftermath of the war, as the Ministry of Magic, in an effort to find someone to blame, turned itself inside-out, purged itself of four-fifths of its members, and re-emerged as a tricameral Parliament of Warlocks. Cornelius Fudge served for three days as Prime Minister before succumbing to a mysterious malady that left him with the delusion that he was King of the Leprechauns. It is not known how the leprechauns disabused him of this idea, but to this day it is unwise to utter his name west of the Isle of Man.
Snape had quietly taken ownership of Marley's Apothecary and Alchemical in (village? or neighborhood of Manchester?). As he never made any objection to answering to the name of Marley, he soon found himself with an entirely new identity with no further effort at disguise than making an attempt to smile occasionally.
[Remus shows up at Snape's cottage, hysterical]
"Here. Drink this. Calm down."
Lupin tilted the pottery cup experimentally, sniffed it. "What is it?"
"Admiral Redbeard's."
"Rum? Why?"
"To defy expectation. Drink it."
Lupin shrugged and upended the cup. "A little sweet," he said, grimacing.
"I'll try to have some wormwood and ashes for you the next time you drop by." With luck it would be another five years. He refilled the cup, and Lupin tossed it back again. "Now. To what crisis do I owe this unexpected visit?"
Lupin wiped his lower lip with the side of his forefinger; Snape suddenly recalled him doing the same after a glass of pumpkin juice when he was thirteen years old. "I need Wolfsbane."
Snape set down the glass jar of spurge. "You took the cure."
"Yes."
"You were under Ministry observation the last time the moon was full."
Lupin's mouth tightened. "Yes."
"Then why do you wish to monopolize several hours of my valuable time to make an entirely unnecessary potion? Are you merely nostalgic? Or did you actually come to enjoy the flavor? I understand that one can develop a taste for anything."
It was a feeble bait, and Lupin didn't rise to it. Instead he said softly, "It's still in there."
Snape raised his eyebrows.
"The wolf," Lupin clarified, impatiently and somewhat drunkenly. "It's still in there."
Snape set the jar down again, sighing. "That's ridiculous."
Lupin's hand clenched on the arm of the chair, and then loosened all at once, as though he'd forced all his muscles to relax. When he spoke, his voice had that patronizing calm he so often affected. "Werewolves -- *former* werewolves -- are required to undergo a Ministry examination at the start of each full moon," he said. "This morning I presented myself as required to the handlers at the Creature division, to be leashed and muzzled and sent to wait in a private compartment until the ministry Healer called my number -- nothing I haven't done a dozen times, during the cure and after."
Snape nodded for him to continue after a moment of silence.
"The Healer this time was *****. I taught her at Hogwarts -- a competent enough girl, though not oversupplied with patience. She lost Ravenclaw a great many points for jumping in without waiting for instructions."
Snape hadn't forgotten her; the same flaw had resulted in her losing two fingers in a Potions explosion, and Pomfrey had had a devil of a time regrowing them.
"So she got a grip of the leather harness, and she put out her other hand in front of the muzzle." He held out his hand, palm down, the way one would approach a feral crup. "Just the recommended technique for a Healer approaching a werewolf who isn't yet acquainted with her --"
He breathed deeply, another gesture Snape recalled from school. "And -- I could feel it. Rearing back --" He gestured at his midsection. "Tight, here. Hot. I remembered that foolish girl looking a hippogriff in the eye, and I wanted nothing more than to feel her neck breaking --"
Snape waited, but it seemed that this was the whole of the tale. Lupin was staring across the workroom at nothing. Poor fool.
"Lupin," he said at last. "That's you."
"Fine," Lupin spat. "If you're so confident, you won't mind if I go to sleep on your couch."
"Mind the journals; they're in order." He snatched up a pile of ***** seconds before Lupin's feet would have knocked them loose as Lupin stretched himself out, utterly uninvited, on Snape's couch.
It didn't seem at all likely that he would actually sleep -- he was so full of fear and anger that he was all but vibrating. But Snape had better things to do than offer counseling to an unbalanced ex-werewolf, so he ignored him in favor of going on with a series of experiments on the vision-disrupting properties of nightshade berries in various solutions. When at last he looked up from his work, rum and exhaustion had triumphed over fear and anger, and the man was in a twitching, restless sleep on his couch.
Toward one, Snape pulled the curtain to block out the beams of the full moon and went on working.
When he woke in the morning, Lupin was gone.
[next time, he's already drunk when he comes. threatens to leave.]
"Certainly. Apparate away. I'm sure a high percentage of your body will reach its destination eventually."
[how the cure was done]
"They had a wolf. Had to -- it was the only way to get a wolf's footprint. Not likely they'd just find one in the woods. They'd brought it in from Germany. Not zoo-bred, but it had been living around the fringes of villages for a long time, and it was almost tame. Severus, it sat there with its tongue hanging out looking like a big, bored dog."
resonant: Meanwhile, Lupin would briefly get hooked up with a student pro-werewolf league. resonant: But back out again when he discovered that they were mostly either wannabes, fascinated by violence, or weirdly avid for other people 's dark secrets.
It wasn't a kiss, precisely, More of a slow and surprisingly sensual nuzzle. Lupin's face, prickly-rough with morning beard, touched his cheek, and then his temple, and then his chin, waking nerve endings that usually did nothing but inform him when his hair had come loose. It was astonishing how quickly his skin could go from dormant to begging, after all this time.
"Lupin?" He said, voice gritty despite his best efforts. "I don't know what passes for politeness among the oafs and Gryffindors with whom you keep company --"
"Hush," Lupin said, breath stirring Snape's eyelashes. His fingers stroked down Snape's throat, just too hard to tickle, and against his will Snape raised his chin. Lupin chuckled.
After all, if he wanted to be touched -- and he did; now that his body had been reminded of the possibilities, it was responding with a craving so deep it shook him -- then Lupin was better than most of his prospects. Lupin had already been informed of Snape's limits, and while he ignored them with his usual blithe Gryffindor selfishness, at least his incursions were familiar. Snape's only other choices to satisfy his needs would be a customer -- who would thereby cease to be a customer, or else become a very difficult one -- or a stranger, which was too appalling to contemplate.
So be it, then. He caught the back of Lupin's head in his hands, and kissed him.
This maneuver didn't quite have the expected effect. Lupin responded to the touch the way one would respond to an accidental touch in a neutral spot, as though his lips had no particular meaning and generated no particular sensation. After tolerating the kiss for a moment, he returned to touching Snape's neck with his fingers and Snape's face with his own face.
Snape filed this away for later consideration. In the meantime, though, his lips and tongue had begun to demand sensation, so he satisfied them by ducking his head and catching two of Lupin's fingers in his mouth.
He heard Lupin's gasp and smiled internally. Oh, yes, no conflicts here, he thought, holding Lupin's hand still in his own as he licked and sucked them, then smoothed them wetly over his own lips.
"Fuck," Lupin breathed. Snape did smile at the Muggle crudity, though he doubted it was a very attractive smile. Lupin was looking at him, wide-mouthed, with a flush spreading over his cheeks, as Snape ran his tongue gently over the pads of all four fingers, then licked into the center of his palm. "Oh, fuck, Severus, that looks --"
Liked to watch, did he? Snape slide to his knees and began undoing those hideously unflattering trousers, feeling the involuntary buck of Lupin's hips that pushed his cock into Snape's palm. In his day, Snape had been told he was rather good with his mouth. He hoped it wasn't the sort of skill that one lost when one neglected to practice.
He watched surprise and helpless arousal mingle on Lupin's face as he rubbed his cheek and lips against the hot, silky shaft of Lupin's cock, mouthed around the base. He'd forgotten how intoxicating the scent was, how strangely comforting. He inhaled deeply, feeling Lupin's sac tightening and loosening against the corner of his mouth, hearing Lupin's sigh from above him.
And then he opened his mouth and remembered the rest -- the sweet smooth heat against his tongue, the sight of Lupin's hands in a white-knuckle grip on the sofa, the welling of salt wetness that was his reward for a successful experiment. His fingers stroked and pressed, finding by memory all the usual sensitive places.
But after only a few short moments in that reverie of anonymous pleasure, hands descended to caress his ears and neck and face, and then it ceased to be an uncomplicated mouthful of sensitive human skin in his mouth and resolved itself into specificity: Remus Lupin's cock, Remus Lupin's fingertips, Remus Lupin's voice above him not groaning but whispering, with painfully perfect articulation: "Severus, yes, Severus, so good, your mouth, so sweet, I need, I need, give me, let me, please, please --"
As if he needed permission, Snape thought as he worked. As if I weren't perfectly capable of getting my mouth out of the path of anything I didn't wish to ingest. He gave Lupin's thigh what he thought might be a reassuring pat, and then went back to tickling Lupin's sac with his fingertips, and Lupin choked and lost the power of words, whispering, "Se -- Seve --" and coming into his mouth.
There was less of it than Snape had been braced for, and for the first time he wondered how premeditated this act had been, whether Lupin had perhaps anticipated refusal and relieved his own pressure last night, while Snape slept in the next room. He found, to his surprise, that he was more aroused than annoyed by the idea of Lupin taking such a liberty.
"Oh, my," Lupin said, and the teacherly phrase would have earned Snape's derision if the huskiness of his voice hadn't been so exciting. "I think you enjoyed that." Lupin was sprawled on the couch, fully dressed except for his not-yet-softened cock framed in the V of his open trousers. From the state of his hair, he had been disarranging it before he had turned his hand to putting Snape's in the same state. His eyes were bright and his face was flushed and he seemed barely able to lift his head from the back of the couch, and Snape, judging that reciprocation was going to take longer than he cared to wait for it, put one knee on the couch and flipped back the privacy panel of his robe.
He took his cock in his hand and was gratified to see the flush on Lupin's face deepen. It was mystifying how this act could be so much more pleasurable with an interested audience, though in fairness, he was so far out of the habit of indulging himself that it was possible he had simply forgotten how good his own hand could feel.
He considered finesse and rejected it, instead choosing the rolling grip and the quick jerking motion that he knew would bring him the fastest satisfaction. Lupin watched Snape's hand and Snape watched Lupin's face until his eyes unfocused and fell shut.
He was a few breaths from climax, could already feel the sweetness of it gathering and vibrating, when he felt Lupin's hand over his, tilting his cock out slightly, and Lupin said softly, urgently, "Put it in my hand," and then Snape's eyes were open again and he was watching his own cock pulse and spit messily into Lupin's cupped palm, putting out a couple of unexpected spurts over his own fingers when he saw Lupin raise his shirt and smear his handful over his belly.
"Why did you do that?" he panted when he could speak again, because if he kept on picturing it over and over he was going to need to come again too soon, while it still hurt to be touched.
Lupin raised his face from where it had been pressed into his hand. He'd been inhaling deeply, apparently smelling his hand through both nose and mouth. He seemed to realize only then what he was doing, and he dropped his hand hastily. "I -- I don't know," he said, brown wrinkling. "I apologize." He pulled his shirt down hastily.
Tonight, Snape thought, when you remove that hideous garment, your body will smell of me. "No apologies necessary," he said.
[next month]
"You don't care for kissing, then."
Lupin gave an awkward sort of horizontal shrug. "I've never entirely felt that my mouth belonged to me."
"You eat with it well enough." Even as he said it, he realized it wasn't true. He'd never observed Lupin eating for pleasure, and his frame certainly showed evidence that he was taking in the bare minimum required to sustain life. "And you certainly have no difficulty in using it for talking."
Lupin looked amused at that. Even his smile, Snape realized, was mostly in the muscles around his eyes.
Snape propped himself up on one elbow and touched the notch in Lupin's upper lip with a fingertip. Lupin flinched. "Don't."
"Hush." He ran his fingertip along Lupin's top lip. "If you're going to go about with an imaginary muzzle on, I can't be bothered to bed you at all." The muzzle for a lycanthrope in human form fitted snugly over the entire lower half of the face; magic gave it enough flexibility to make speech possible, if not comfortable. Snape's finger traced the outline of where it would fall: cheekbone, bridge of nose, cheekbone, point of jaw, soft underside of chin, other side of jaw and up to cheekbone again. He leaned forward and began running his mouth gently over the skin that would be covered.
Lupin's breath was speeding up. Snape didn't bother to look up to see whether it was from fear or arousal or discomfort.
When their lips touched, Lupin tried to respond, puckering up his mouth as though he'd learned about kissing from books. "Don't," Snape murmured against his mouth. "Open." Lupin obediently parted his lips, and Snape took one of them between his teeth. Lupin made a high-pitched questioning noise.
"Because it feels good," Snape said, releasing his lip but not moving away. "Doesn't it?"
"I don't know." Lupin pulled back far enough to look at him, forehead wrinkled with -- confusion? curiosity? fear?
"Lupin," Snape said, "you are aware, are you not, that you can bite me without harming me?"
"I -- suppose so," Lupin said.
Snape leaned closer and bit gently at his cheek. When Lupin didn't protest, Snape put his teeth into his jaw, his earlobe, his neck. Lupin moved restlessly beneath him.
When he raised his head, a softness had come into Lupin's features. Snape brushed their lips together, and felt a surge of renewed arousal when Lupin's tongue came out to taste him briefly, when Lupin's hands pulled him down to lie beside him for more clumsy, oddly exciting kisses.
When Lupin leaned down to bit him sharply on the neck, it took him by surprise, and it was just a bit too hard to be comfortable. "Ouch," he complained, but at the same time he was grinding against Lupin's thigh, unmistakably hard again and a good way along the road toward desperate. It had really been far too long.
Lupin pushed his thigh against Snape and raised his head to give him a knowing look, then rolled on top of him again.
[elsewhere?]
Hearing those stories is so frustrating because it makes me want to kill somebody but I don't know who.
Whom.
Maybe you.
"Every 14-year-old boy is a werewolf, Harry."
When you're a wolf, where's the man?
Inside, somewhere. Deep.
And when you're a man, where's the wolf?
Don't get mad.
I won't get mad.
I mean it. It's an incredibly stupid question. Don't get mad.
Sirius --
All right. Just -- wolves pair-bond, right? Lifetime mating?
Yes?
Well?
Oh, for -- Well, the fact is, nobody knows.
How can nobody know?
Sirius. Do you know how short "lifetime" is when applied to a werewolf?
Remus was always very careful not to bite.
A pity, really. Snape rather liked being bitten.
"Were they ...?"
"I don't know. I shouldn't think so. It doesn't matter very much, does it. Even Lily was on the outside."
R is very careful to articulate during sex. "Oh," "ah," "yes." No moans. No whimpers. No growls.
resonant8: Lupin's cured, and he goes on some sort of wolfy odyssey. resonant8: You know. resonant8: The wolf is gone resonant8: The wolf was half of who he was. resonant8: Who is he now? resonant8: So he goes in search of wolf stuff. resonant8: Studies actual wolves. resonant8: Studies werewolves. resonant8: Finds himself involved briefly in a pro-werewolf underground. resonant8: "Baby," she whispered. "Bite me. Bite me hard." resonant8: Somebody like Trelawney is offering a class in Tapping the Wolf Within.
What's Snape's arc? This is the first year after V's defeat, and thus the first year he's away from Hogwarts. If Lupin is finding his temper, then Snape ought to be giving his a rest.
Book Snape is motivated by:
- Old hatreds
- Desire for redress. Not justice, but revenge, repayment. A one-man karma machine.
So -- the past, basically.
If he lets go of the past -- maybe at first he just wants to wipe it all out; permit no contact, not even use the same name. Lupin's visits will be an uncontrollable exception, so he'll probably hate them.
Probably he views their relationship, at first, in light of the past. Has he come to apologize? Am I to get a bit of my own back?
If so, eventually Lupin will need to fit into his present somehow. In fact, he himself will probably be doing some fitting it. At first he has only professional contact with the townspeople. Lives out back of the shop, gives no name so that they all call him by the name over the door. rebuffs all efforts at friendliness (or, in fact, doesn't even notice them). Eventually he accepts some sort of professional overture -- by the end of the year, he actually knows some of his neighbors, watches World Cup with them, consults with someone on a potion-based solution to a pest-control problem (old Marley just sold packaged stuff and a handful of easy, non-customized home mixes -- couldn't customize, certainly couldn't experiment).
How does the title apply to him? Mark? The whole of Dark activity? The Mark might be barely visible, and everyone claiming the title of DE cleaned up (there's a war crimes tribunal, but Snape doesn't follow it; he himself will have been dramatically revealed as a spy by Voldemort himself after he takes control of W. Wireless, so he's not under official suspicion, but he is Marked) but there's an infinite supply of would-be despots.
On the other hand, he doesn't strike me as a naturally political person; his motivations will be more personal.
Perhaps it describes his attitude toward his own past (still neatly symbolized by the Mark) -- not "over" or not, but simply plus or minus "actively causing pain at the moment."
Lupin notices and comments upon changes in Snape's quarters every visit.
Rumor goes around that Snape's an ex-werewolf, since he's never available during full moon.
So for Snape you've got a gradual re-engagement with humanity and everyday life. Possibly he takes the view that life itself is a disease.
"Why, Severus. No furious reminders that I once nearly killed you?'
"Well, it no longer places you in very select company, I'm afraid."
"I met a feral."
"A Warg." At his uncomprehending glance: "That's what Tolkein called them. Muggle writer. Never mind. Not recently, surely?"
"What? Oh, no. Years ago, now. After Potter killed the Dark Lord, before the Malfoys went to prison. It's not something one easily forgets."
"I should think not."
"You've never met one?"
Lupin shuddered.
Over the following weeks, Snape discovered that the phase of the moon was always at the back of his consciousness. This so infuriated him that when he received an announcement of a village event occurring on the full moon -- a ridiculous Muggle-inspired "get-together" for "local businessmen" -- he ignored his impulse to set it aflame and instead made plans actually to attend the wretched thing.
At the end of the evening, he had consumed inferior wine and insipid cheese and crackers, had been forced to make conversation with any number of gladhanders and popinjays, had submitted to scowling for the camera for the Chamber of Commerce newsletter, and had reluctantly agreed to return the following month, and his boots pinched. He mentally laid all these discomforts at Lupin's door, as he attempted to satisfy his hunger with small out-of-season fruits stabbed with toothpicks, since he would have spent the evening in the splendid comfort of his own rooms if the unspeakable werewolf hadn't been in the habit of disturbing his solitude every twenty-eighth day. So he took a certain savage satisfaction at the thought of Lupin's showing up at his house, disconsolately lingering about the locked door, and at last wandering away disappointed.
When at length he did arrive home, hungry and irritable, he was stunned into momentary speechlessness at the sight of the werewolf asleep in his bed like a pile of shabby washing waiting to be folded.
He stared for a moment, considering the effort it would require to conjure this uninvited guest out the door, then gave it up. The bed, a museum piece which had been left behind because it was too large to be moved, was more than large enough for two.
When Lupin opened his eyes in the dark and murmured, "Severus," Snape was forced to admit that he had spent the month anticipating the low intimacy of Lupin's bedroom voice, the rare pleasure of uncomplicated and undemanding touch. The revelation put him in a savage temper, and he loomed over Lupin and scowled down at him. "Are you so bereft of human contact that you must impose upon my hospitality? Am I the only person willing to tolerate your presence at all?"
Lupin didn't so much as flinch. "You could say that, yes," he said, and reached up his arm, and without quite understanding how, Snape found himself lowering his body on top of his uninvited guest.
Snape could think of no good reason not to indulge his desire to have his mouth engaged, despite Lupin's odd response to being kissed. Lupin at once surged up against him, muttering something too low to hear, and Snape's qualms and Snape's arousal both grew at the same time, each seeming in some odd way to feed the other. He was hungry for tongue and skin and hands, and told himself it was no matter to whom they belonged, and directed his anger at the lie back at Lupin.
Lupin had removed his robe before lying down -- it hung over the back of Snape's straight-backed bedroom chair like a silent observer of their folly -- but he still had on layer after layer of shirts and jumpers. "Surely," Snape said, pushing up something that felt worn to threads and finding skin at last, "you're now able to find employment so that you can afford a decent coat or a cloak."
"Can find work," Lupin said. "Can't -- ah! -- keep it. Registry only seems to list jobs in animal care, for some reason, and animals still view me with suspicion and -- ah, Severus, do that again."
When Snape did it again, Lupin pushed him off and began hauling his clothing over his head. He made as if to stop when he'd bared his upper torso, but Snape said, "The rest."
He was as thin as ever, and the scars that crisscrossed his torso made him look as though he were covered in something other than skin. Under Snape's fingers, some of them felt puckered and jagged, others ropy; still others made their presence known only by being slightly smoother than the surrounding skin. His shoulders and arms were relatively unmarked and his neck was entirely free of scars; Snape leaned down and licked the pale, smooth skin there, following Lupin's sighs and whispers, until he found he had Lupin kneeling against the headboard, face to the wall, while Snape licked his nape and the long sweeps of muscle from neck to shoulder. Lupin spread his knees wider, making Snape hunch to stay in contact, and when Snape rubbed his cock against Lupin's hole, Lupin hissed, "Yes. Do it."
"Get yourself ready," Snape said through gritted teeth.
"Already -- Severus, please --"
Snape pushed into him as slowly as he could manage, which wasn't very; Lupin panted, openmouthed, and his knuckles went white where he gripped the headboard, but he didn't say to stop, so Snape didn't.
The pace of the encounter rapidly escaped Snape's control as he drew back and hurled his cock into the muscular fist of Lupin's body, over and over. Lupin hissed and shuddered in something that might have been either pleasure or pain, and a flush spread over his neck and shoulders, making the silvery scars stand out in livid contrast. Snape could easily imagine adding new ones, laying Lupin's flesh open with his teeth -- "Fuck," he grunted, and shoved in deeper as he came.
Small movements extended the pleasure, and for a time he was aware of nothing else, and then he came back to himself enough to realize that Lupin was jerking himself off, head thrown back onto Snape's shoulder and left hand still clenched onto the headboard. The contact was becoming painful, so Snape withdrew, collapsing onto the bed; after a moment he reached between Lupin's legs and gathered his sac up in his palm, and Lupin grunted loudly and hauled faster until he spurted all over the heavily carven wood.
He was still leaning against the headboard, panting, when Snape slipped into sleep. When he woke, Lupin was gone.
but though Lupin presided over Snape's orgasm with every appearance of satisfaction, he himself seemed to be unable to reach climax.
Snape raised his eyebrows at Lupin, and Lupin shook his head. "Never mind it."
"A touch too much [bertwald's], Lupin?" he sneered.
Lupin gave him a smile which was patently false, even more so than his other smiles. "Something like that."
"Or perhaps you've been stricken with a belated recognition of what you are doing and with whom."
"Let it go, Severus."
That tone of voice -- of one who was, with wearying effort, maintaining his civility in the face of overwhelming temptation -- always set Snape's temper on edge, but never more than now, when Lupin was lying all unfastened on Snape's bed, his still-hard cock protruding from his threadbare trousers as if to mock his apparent indifference. How dared the man come here, full moon after full moon, and make use of Snape's pleasure for whatever obscure satisfaction it might provide, and think he could withhold his own?
"Take your clothes off?" Snape said.
"Really, there's no need to --"
If he wasn't mistaken, that was a note of discomfort coming into Lupin's voice, and Snape began to feel more certain that the difficulty here wasn't simply overindulgence or exhaustion. Whatever it was that Lupin wanted to deprive him of, he was more than ever determined to have it.
"I've already had intimate knowledge of your scrawny carcass, Lupin," he said, though he was fairly certain that Lupin's problem was more complex than simple self-consciousness. Regardless, the admonition had the desired effect of spurring Lupin into motion, and Snape watched with a certain proprietary pleasure as Lupin bared his lean limbs under Snape's gaze and leaned back against the headboard. He looked wary but not frightened, though reading such emotions as Lupin deigned to feel was never an easy feat. Well, if he had a strong objection to anything, he would no doubt make it known; he had always been able to be pushed scandalously far beyond his better judgment, but when once he dug in his heels, he was immovable.
Operating on an instinct for weakness that he had honed to razor sharpness during his years as a teacher, he sat down just out of reach, folded his hands, and said, "Touch yourself."
A flush stained Lupin's skin, spreading slowly from cheeks to neck, and his breathing speeded up. "I -- why?"
Because I may not know how to make you come, but I'm sure you do. "I want to watch you," Snape said instead, and found, rather to his surprise, that it was true.
Lupin's eyes fluttered when his hand touched his cock, and his rapid pulse was visible in the hollow of his throat. He handled himself roughly, like a person faced with an unpleasant task and doing it in the fastest way possible. Snape himself was hardly oversupplied with luxuriant sensuality, but his own self-pleasuring technique appeared positively sybaritic by comparison.
"Without doing yourself permanent damage, if you please. Contrary to what you might have heard, not every Death Eater is a sadist."
Lupin glared at him, face still flushed with embarrassment, but he loosened his grip and slowed his strokes -- still workmanlike and efficient, but no longer hasty and brutal. Snape supposed it would have to do, though it was unlikely that he was going to learn anything about Lupin's particular preferences this way. But he was, for reasons he didn't care to examine too closely, determined not to let Lupin walk away without coming.
Lupin's mouth was open now, though he was still looking at Snape with more sullenness than arousal. Snape brushed his fingers over Lupin's thin lips, and Lupin jerked his head irritably to the side.
"Be still," Snape said, and pushed his thumb into Lupin's mouth.
Any normal man would have sucked, at least a little, instinctively. Lupin went on breathing openmouthed, watching Snape's face, as Snape slid his thumb in and out of his mouth, until on the fourth stroke he pressed up with his tongue, as though tasting Snape's skin. Progress at last. Snape withdrew his hand -- Lupin's head moved a fraction, as though to follow it and bring it back -- and dropped his dampened thumb against Lupin's left nipple. His skin was just wet enough to increase the friction; it caught and dragged Lupin's skin, and Lupin dropped his head back against the headboard and closed his eyes. Snape smiled and did it again, and Lupin gasped audibly.
[elsewhere
Snape's sexual experience had been, on the whole, indifferent; he certainly couldn't consider himself unusually experienced, either in number or length of relationships. Still, he had both memories and fantasies that still had the power to arouse. It seemed to him that Lupin had neither, at least that he was willing to acknowledge. Possibly he had desires he considered unacceptable. Or perhaps it was simply that the sex impulse itself seemed to him to belong to the wolf rather than to the man. ]
Snape licked his other thumb and used both hands, and Lupin began to pant. "Good?" Snape asked. "Perhaps I can offer you additional assistance." He dropped his hand to push Lupin's legs apart.
"God," Lupin said thickly as Snape looked at everything the position exposed for his gaze. It excited him, at some deep level, to have Lupin thus displayed for him. From the heavy breathing and the quickening strokes, it excited Lupin as well.
"Why do you enjoy having me watch you?" Snape said. "You don't even know, do you?"
Lupin shook his head, catching his lower lip between his teeth and then releasing it so that he could breathe.
"Nor do I," Snape admitted. "But I wish to see this. You will not deny me this." Lupin's hand flew over his cock, and his face. and chest were faintly shiny with sweat, and he gasped and gasped again, clearly seconds from his peak.
"Come," Snape said in a low voice, and Lupin's body jerked as he striped his hand and belly.
[snape needs to do something with it]
Having achieved his desire, Snape discovered a new one. Leaning between Lupin's spread knees, he kissed his dry lips until Lupin, hesitantly, responded.
During Lupin's demonstration, fresh arousal had stirred him to thoughts of demanding further favors from Lupin. Now, though, he found that he wished merely to rest. He encouraged the stunned-looking Lupin to lie down, and pulled the cover over both of them.
In the moments before dawn, he awoke to find Lupin, fully clothed, leaning over him. Lupin's hand hovered close to his hair, then lifted without touching him.
"Goodbye, Lupin," he murmured.
"I didn't mean to wake you," Lupin said. "I've got --"
"Politeness doesn't require that you linger," Snape said. "It simply encourages the use of the proper verbal forms of farewell, rather than slinking out under cover of darkness."
That almost-smile narrowed Lupin's eyes without touching his mouth. "Goodbye, Severus," he said, and stroked his fingertips over Snape's cheek.
We need some corresponding change happening to Snape, too.
October. First full moon: It's still there. He has an outburst, drinks too much rum, falls asleep on the couch, and leaves before dawn.
November: Meets a feral (one who refused treatment and is kept in a "reservation" with rangers with guns.
December: Goes to the wildlife preserve and spends a month studying a colony of timber wolves in Germany.
January: Joins a support group for recovering lycanthropes. All AA-therapy-speak.
February: Meets werewolf groupies, who want him to be fierce and wild. Girl whispers, "Bite me."
March: Goes to a counselor who specializes in post-lycanthropy recovery. Cancer-recovery model? Need research.
April: Convenes a family reunion. Discovers that his extended family is all rather wild. Loud feuds, emotional scenes of forgiveness, loud laughter, women all cry at the drop of a hat, pranks -- they're a lot like James and Sirius.
May: Goes to Azkaban to visit some werewolves who worked for LV. They have to be given wolfsbane intravenously -- won't take it voluntarily. "it's sin our nature to be monsters, to destroy."
June: Meets the author of "Running With the Pack: Lessons from the Wolf Within." An immensely popular speaker who wants to free people from the curse of "overcivilization." His research is dubious; he's essentially advocating total selfishness, which Remus' observations of the timber wolves does not support. When Remus tells him so, he sneers: "You have no inner wolf. You're sheep through and through."
July: Begins Animagus training. Becomes a glimry -- a magical relative of the raven, with a magically calming song. Can talk, in rather an ill-tempered croak. Snape: "A raven. How delightfully original." Remus (in bird form): "I'm not a raven, you idiot, I'm a Glimry." Sings a phrase of the enchanted song, which soothes everyone and can stop wild beasts from attacking. Snape waves a hand irritably and says, "I had read in Wizard Naturalist that Glimries were all but hunted to extinction in Britain." Remus: "I didn't arrive in Britain in the usual way, did I." They're hunted because legend has it that a Glimry's voice box can restore victims of many malevolent curses, including the Dementor's Kiss. Snape: "Is it true?" Remus: "How should I know? Do I look like a Healer?" Snape: "You look like a bad-tempered feather duster, actually." Remus: "This place could use a good dust."
August: Undergoes a series of treatments with a celebrated Healer to remove the scars. Yes, even That scar. Discovers he has a thigh fetish. turn his hair back to brown; the gray-and-brown isn't age but wolfishness.
September: Moves out of Grimmauld Place (he's been keeping it for Harry, the owner, who travels a lot and is having a belated adolescence.). Quits his job w/Dumbledore. Enrolls in graduate study in Astronomy.
He needs to have a Ministry check-up -- they're monitoring levels of some sort of Dark magic. "If you put a muzzle on me, I will bite you." Healer: "You'd turn me?" Remus: "No, but a human bite is a nasty thing."
October: Comes and tells Snape, "My turn to be host."
-end-
July 17, 2007
http://trickster.org/res/remission.html