InsaneJournal

Compunction (Confession) Contrition (ALTL 3)
Title: Compunction (Confession) Contrition
Pairing: Neville/James
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 2689
Warnings: DH spoilers, chan.
Disclaimer: Not mine. JKR's.
Summary: Neville teaches. James learns. (Neville learns.)
Notes: Third in the A Lot to Learn series. So much love and gratitude to freckles42 for being my "crazy idea lady" and constant source of inspiration.

Part One
Part Two


James arrived in the greenhouse at seven-thirty the next night.

"I didn't want to wait," he said, his green eyes wide and honest.

Neville nodded and worried his bottom lip between his teeth. He'd thought he had half an hour more to prepare and had been procrastinating his planning all day. And now the boy was standing in front of him, wearing robes that were too short in the wrist, and Neville had only the barest ghost of a plan in his head.

"Right," Neville said, and James nodded.

Neville crossed the greenhouse to the Dirigible Plum bush where he and James had come together two nights ago. (And was it really only two nights ago? My god, but it feels like forever.) James followed directly behind him, stepping on the heels of Neville's shoes twice on the way.

"Why'd you want to meet in the greenhouse, Professor?"

Neville sighed and sat on the low bench, gesturing for James to do likewise.

"I thought we'd work while we talked," Neville said, "That's why I asked you to wear old robes. It's not a very clean job, this."

"Oh," said James, and he slumped onto the bench, not quite touching Neville.

"What did you think we'd be doing?"

"Well, I—you said you'd teach me—things. I thought you wanted me to wear old robes because we'd be—well."

"Because we'd be what?" Neville knew what—of course he knew—but he couldn't say it.

But James, apparently, could.

"I thought we'd be—doing things. Sex things. You know. And I thought you wanted me to wear these robes because maybe we'd get, um, dirty." James moved a little on the bench so that his thigh pressed against Neville's.

Neville didn't move away.

He leaned forward, though, and put his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands.

"Professor? Are you all right?"

Neville sat up.

"All right. First of all, James, if we're going to be doing this—by which I mean talking like this—maybe you should call me Neville, like when we're at your house. All right?"

Please don't remind me of my perversity any more than you already do by simply existing.

"Okay, Neville. I can do that." James grinned and put a hand out as if to touch Neville's thigh, but he faltered, pulling it back at the last moment and running it through his already tousled hair.

"Okay, James. Now that we're on a first-name basis, maybe it'll be easier to talk."

James nodded, and Neville cast his eyes around the dim greenhouse. He'd said they would work while they talked, but there wasn't much to be done, really. Neville's gaze lit upon the bed of young Gurdyroots nearby. They needed to be thinned out. It would suffice as a chore. Anything to keep James's hands busy and away from Neville.

Anything to keep your own hands busy, you old pervert.

"Neville?" asked James approximately three minutes into the chore.

"Yes?" Neville sat back on his heels, watching James work. The boy really did have deft hands, pulling only the plants that absolutely needed to go. And they were gorgeous hands, too, long-fingered and pale, but Neville really didn't need to be thinking like that.

"Okay, well. I have some questions. Which is why I'm here. And, um. So."

"Go ahead, James." Neville's voice was gentle. The boy clearly didn't know where to begin, and Neville tried hard to remember how his own private lessons had begun.

"I just—okay. So I guess I'm—I think I'm done here."

Neville looked at the pile of small roots by James's feet and nodded. "You've done a fine job. Here, give those to me." James handed the roots over, his hand lingering in Neville's for a moment too long, and Neville banished them to the compost heap.

"What were you saying, James?"

"Right." James drew a deep breath and sat down in the dirt. "I was saying that I guess I'm—um, gay. Or something like. And—I mean, I like girls, I just don't want to do anything to them. Um. With them. They're pretty and all, but boys—um, men. Are so much more. Um."

Neville nodded. "I know. I understand." He sat cross-legged in front of James, taking his time to get into the position—his knees weren't what they used to be.

"James, there's no shame in being gay." The word, after so many years, still felt clumsy and foreign in Neville's mouth.

"My dad thinks there is—lots of people think there is. I don't want people to hate me just because of something I can't control." James began jabbing his finger into the soft earth by his right knee, and Neville watched as it drove in and out, in and out.

"If you only knew how like your father you sound right now, James," Neville replied, still watching James's plunging finger. "But I suppose that's not the point. James, someone's always going to hate you for something you can't control. I had a professor who hated me every moment I spent in his classroom because I was always clumsy and forgetful. It's not ever going to be an easy thing to accept, but unfortunately it's true."

"My dad—"

"James. I'm serious. Stop worrying about your dad. Do this one thing for me, or we can't continue. Please."

James stopped moving his finger, leaving it buried in the cool dark earth, and looked up at Neville.

"Okay."

"Really?" Neville hadn't meant to sound so surprised, but he was used to the boy being as stubborn as his father ever had been.

"Yeah. Okay. I mean, I'll try. If my mind starts worrying about it, I can—I can try to think of something else. Is that all right?"

Neville smiled. "It's a deal."

James smiled back and withdrew his finger from the earth. Though he was looking at the boy's face, Neville caught the movement in his peripheral vision and bit his lip.

Neville loved his plants, and the earth they grew in, but James was making it all positively—probably unintentionally—erotic. And Neville, despite his best efforts, was getting—dammit—hard.

Come on, you're not the first.

"I'll just think about you," said James, suddenly overbold, and Neville blinked at him.

"Well—" said Neville, but James was already up on his knees, then down on all fours, and moving forward.

Crawling forward.

"You really want this." It wasn't a question. Neville knew he didn't have to question the boy's intentions. James was in his lap, his mouth against Neville's neck, his hands on Neville's back, and the boy was breathing, just breathing against Neville's skin, his lips millimetres away.

Neville encircled James with his arms and they sat there together, warm and unmoving, on the earthen floor of the greenhouse until Neville couldn't stay still any longer.

"James, here, move just a moment—" He was hardly old, but the years of the physical work of being the Herbology professor had taken their toll on Neville's joints. Sitting on the floor was simply not a good idea.

Sitting on the floor embracing your student is a worse idea.

James moved and knelt before Neville, then they rose together, Neville stretching and cracking his neck.

"You all right, Neville?"

Neville regarded the boy there before him, only an inch or two shorter than Neville himself, and put his hands on James's shoulders.

"Just a bit creaky," he said, and the flicker of concern that had washed over James's face melted something inside Neville, and he drew the boy to him. James's arms went around Neville immediately and he buried his face in Neville's chest.

"I care for you, James," Neville told him, "I care for you quite a lot. And your family as well. All of them." He dipped his head down and put his lips against James's forehead, just breathing in the scent of earth-smelling boy for a long moment, tasting the condensation of his own breath on James's skin.

James pressed his whole body against Neville and tipped his head up.

Their lips met.

And Neville didn't hold back.

His eyes closed of their own accord and Neville kissed James there in the greenhouse again, opening his mouth and tangling their tongues together, pushing the screech of conscience to a dusty corner of his mind.

Conscience could wait.

For James's hands were running up and down Neville's back and Neville was tangling a hand in James's hair and weren't they supposed to be talking?

"James—" Neville broke the kiss, panting.

"Neville!" James's eyes flew wide, his breath came in hot spurts.

"James, just promise me you won't regret this. If I teach you—not tell you, but show you—"

"I won't. I won't." And James surged forward and kissed Neville again, his arms around Neville's neck, and Neville stumbled backwards and bumped into the worktable, but he didn't stop kissing the young wet mouth that was on his.

"Here, James—up on the table." And James, with the agility of a fifteen-year-old (god, stop reminding me) did, and together they unfastened James's robes and trousers, and Neville stood between James's legs and reached inside, palming the erection that bulged in James's y-fronts.

James leaned forward, but Neville pushed him back, laid him across the worktable and tugged his trousers and pants down to his ankles. James's erection bobbed before him, a prize that gleamed with precome.

"Spread your legs."

James began to sit up, but Neville put a strong yet gentle hand on his chest and laid the boy back down again.

"Spread your legs a bit for me, James."

"Wh—what are you going to do?"

But Neville didn't answer, only guided James's legs apart and ran a finger over the boy's balls and up his cock. James shuddered and Neville followed the finger with a swipe of his tongue, following the shaft to its very tip. He dipped his tongue in the slit to taste the drop of fluid that glistened there.

"Oh, my god, Profess—Neville—"

"Enjoy it, James. Just feel. And enjoy. Do you trust me?"

"I—yes?"

Neville kissed the inside of James's thigh, near the top, inhaling the boy's sweet musky scent.

"James, do you trust me? I'll never hurt you."

James let out a shaky breath.

"I trust you."

Neville kissed the boy again, higher up on his thigh.

"Thank you."

And something in those two words sent a shudder through James, and then the boy relaxed, spreading his legs further of his own accord, displaying himself to his professor.

Neville licked the crease where James's thigh met his body, collecting the boy's sweat on his tongue and causing the muscles in James's thigh to tense. He mouthed his way over the skin there, over the still-soft, still-sparse black hairs to James's balls, dipping just below them—but not too far.

Not yet.

"We've done this before," Neville soothed, "You can do this."

You can do this, Neville.

You shouldn't do this, Neville.

He smoothed his hands over James's thighs and took the teenaged cock into his mouth, and if James lasted even a minute, it was a short minute, because it was almost immediate that the boy was crying out and sitting up and clutching two fistfuls of Neville's hair and spurting into Neville's mouth, jerking his slim hips forward.

Neville had always hated swallowing. He let James's come dribble back out of his mouth, and it ran down the boy's cock, coating James in his own release as James shuddered through the last tremors of his orgasm.

"Neville, I, I, I—" James was chanting, and Neville gathered the boy into his arms and stroked his hair, wilfully ignoring his own obstinate erection.

"James?" The boy was shaking.

"James?" Neville asked again, "What's going on?"

James buried his head in Neville's shoulder. His words were muffled by the fabric of Neville's robes, but he could just make them out.

"'M really queer, aren't I?"

For a long moment, Neville said nothing. The boy had confessed earlier that he was indeed queer—gay, he had said—so why now was he trembling at the thought, his head on Neville's shoulder, his arms around Neville's neck as if he was clinging to a life preserver?

Neville put a hand in James's hair.

"Let's get you cleaned up," he murmured, and he extracted himself from James's embrace and spelled the boy clean with his wand, tucking him back into his pants and trousers and buttoning each button on James's old robes, noting on the way that one was different from its fellows, sewn on with large, hasty stitches. Neville pressed his hand against the mismatched button, in the centre of James's chest, and drew a breath.

James's own breathing had slowed while Neville dressed him, though he still wouldn't look at Neville. The boy played with the sleeve of his robe where it was fraying, and Neville gently extracted it from James's worrying fingers.

"Come on down," he said, and James slid off the table and stared at the door.

"James," Neville said, putting his hands manfully on the boy's shoulders, "Look at me."

James did, after a moment, and his eyes pierced right through Neville.

Neville tried not to cringe.

"James, why are you suddenly so unsure?"

James gave the sort of sullen shrug that only a fifteen-year-old boy could get away with, the sort of shrug that says I don't know and even if I do I'm not going to tell you, Old Man.

Neville drew a breath and nodded resignedly.

"When you're ready to talk, James, you know you can talk to me." Neville slumped onto the stool, exhaustion and guilt and arousal battling for dominance inside him.

James shoved his hands in his pockets and mumbled something that might have been an apology, or a confession, or an insult, or any number of other things, but Neville didn't care anymore. He'd known this was a bad idea, and, like the old pervert that he was, he'd ignored conscience and followed his cock.

(Like the Gryffindor that he was, he'd ignored reason and followed his heart.)

"James," Neville said suddenly, interrupting the boy's mutterings, "Go back to Gryffindor tower. Brush your teeth and take a shower and go to bed." Neville waved a weary hand in James's direction.

"Nev—Profess—I—"

"Never mind, James. It's all right. Come and see me tomorrow if you have a free period." Neville squeezed his thighs together—he was still hard—and closed his eyes, rubbing a hand over them.

When Neville opened his eyes again, James had moved to the greenhouse door.

"Professor?" he asked, his hands on the doorknob, "You won't tell anyone, will you?"

Neville bit back a laugh.

"No, James, I won't tell a soul. And I trust you to do the same."

James nodded and bit his lip.

"That, um—that includes my dad, right?"

Neville drew a shuddering breath. God, Harry…

"Of course. Of course."

James licked his lips and nodded. "Okay," he said then, "Okay, Professor. I'll see you tomorrow." The confidence was returning to James's voice, and he opened the door and left, a bit of the familiar swagger in his step.

Neville spread his thighs and pressed the heel of his hand against his erection, wondering what exactly he'd just agreed to.

He opened his robes and licked his palm and rested his back against the worktable, closing his eyes and giving in to thoughts of James. He was going to hell anyway—maybe he should just enjoy the ride.

That includes my dad, right?

"Harry," Neville choked as he came, "Dammit." There was no stopping his orgasm, and Neville bent forward, heavy with guilt, his release doing nothing to lighten his shame, his seed spilling onto the earth at his feet, sinking in and leaving no trace.

After a moment, Neville went back to his quarters. He brushed his teeth and took his shower and went to bed.

He hoped James was doing the same.

They weren't going to do this again. Neville had seen the toll it took on James (the toll it takes on you) and he couldn't be the cause of that anymore. Neville folded his hands together between his thighs and drew his knees to his chest.

He wanted nothing more than to whisper James's name into the darkness—no, that was a lie. He wanted the boy, he wanted him. What the hell was wrong with Neville's brain that he wanted his student?

"You don't want the boy," he said aloud, blinking into the darkness, "You want the idea of the boy."

He almost believed himself.