Entry tags:

giftee: amanitamuscaria, rated: r

Fic: A Comedy of Errors
Title: A Comedy of Errors
Author: inoru_no_hoshi
Giftee: amanitamuscaria
Word Count: ~2,300
Rating: R-bordering-on-NC-17
Pairing: Severus/Harry
Warnings: BDSM||D/s, humour, knife play, crack, uhm. Did I mention crack?
Disclaimer: All Harry Potter characters herein are the property of J.K. Rowling and Bloomsbury/Scholastic. No copyright infringement is intended.
Summary: When the universe plays pranks, they are truly epic. However, they also cause a great deal of inconvenience. Especially where sex is concerned.
Author's Notes: First, I'd like to apologize for the excess of crack. Second, I'd like to apologize for pushing amanitamuscaria's requested max rating. (Then again, "R" might actually be the perfect rating for this. I'm absolute pants at figuring out proper ratings for my fics.) And also if the ending isn’t good.. I’m afraid I was rushing to try and get it in after getting an extension due to unexpected computer death. (I need to learn how NOT to procrastinate.) Anyway, I hope you like it, amanitamuscaria
A million thanks to N for the quick look-over, despite this not being her sort of thing at all. ♥!

~-~
It was a dark and stormy night - this being generally the norm for London, it has no further importance, save that Harry was hurrying through the downpour, shoulders hunched, and cursing fit to turn the waterlogged air blue instead of grey.

It wasn’t that he was late; actually, he was pretty sure he’d be there early. For once. It wasn’t exactly the rain, either; he wouldn’t really mind it much, save for having to walk through it. It was the fact that the Floo at the club was out of order, meaning he'd had to take a Muggle bus. The closest it came to the club was four blocks away, which was why he was sloshing through the far too moist night. He was also wondering whether it would be worth it to buy a car - if he’d had one, see, he’d have avoided his current close resemblance to a merperson.

He almost didn’t realize when he’d reached the club until he noticed that he was out of the direct line of he downpour. Small, fairly exclusive, and Wizarding to boot, he was let into the coatroom with little fuss. He discovered, then, another thing in favour of buying a car - his coat was easily as full of water as the Thames. He muttered several choice words in disgust as he wrestled it off, and handed it to the attendant with an apologetic smile.

Assured his river-masquerading-as-a-coat wouldn’t be too much hassle for her - “You’re not the only one to come in looking near drowned tonight.” - he cast a few drying spells on the rest of his clothing, and strolled into the club proper.

If the coat room was as simple and properly laid out as you could expect of any high-end business - even one of a particularly staid business - then the rooms beyond would shock a poor old centenarian out of a decade of their life. The colours were bold (but somehow tasteful; he’d never yet figured this out and figured it was simply him failing to live up to general expectations again - in this case, that of a gay man having excellent taste), the lighting strong and somewhat epileptic on the dance floor, moody at the bar, and whatever people wanted it to be in the dungeon and private playrooms. In actuality, he’d never paid more attention to the décor than that needed to register colour and lighting. (He didn’t particularly care, either; plus he was generally too busy with more interesting things to notice things like details.)

Harry worked his way around the edges of the dance floor (which was fuller than any well-bred, completely normal matronly witch would ever care to think about, let alone admit) to the bar, clambered onto a stool (designed for taller people), and ordered his usual (despite his longing for a nice shot of whiskey).

“You look like a drowned rat,” Severus commented from his left, where he sat nursing a pint (still more than half full).

“Amazing, that,” he replied, “considering it’s raining fit to drown England outside.”

“I’m aware. Why were you out in it in the first place?”

“The Floo’s out on this side of the connection, so I took a Muggle bus. Unfortunately, the closest stop was still a bit of a walk from here, so I still got pretty wet.” He paused, sipped the coke the bartender had given him, and added, wistfully, “I’d really like a whiskey, sir.”

“Your talent for understatement never fails to amaze me, boy,” was the wry reply. “Haven’t you heard of drying spells?”

“Sure I have. I just figured that if two consecutive spells per item didn’t do the job, it was a lost cause.” He shrugged and finished his coke. Severus ignoring his request for whiskey meant that he wasn’t going to get it, but at least he wasn’t going to be reprimanded for asking for something Severus never let him have while they were out on the town.

The tall, dark man shook his head. Some days he wondered about his boy. (Other days he completely skipped the wondering and just </i>knew</i>.) He pulled out his wand, and flicked it at the petite male, thoroughly drying his clothing (and hair, but it didn’t make much difference, save that it poofed up most alarmingly for several seconds). He received a quirky smile in thanks, and then Harry managed to hitch his stool closer to Severus’s in order to lay his head against the taller man’s upper arm. Severus sighed, shook him off, then rolled his eyes heavenward when Harry’s head promptly returned to the same spot.

And there it stayed while Severus finished off his pint (or as much of it as he ever drank), Harry bringing things up at random, but mostly amusing himself by mentally narrating the lives of random dancers he saw reflected in the mirror behind the bar. As always, he speculated as to whether he actually knew any of the people dancing out there in a manner that would even scandalize some open-minded Muggles.

He had just enough warning before Severus left his stool that he didn’t over-balance and topple to the floor in a spectacular display of wind milling limbs, but he still had to grab onto the bar quickly to prevent said display. As always, he pouted at his tall and completely unrepentant lover.

“You do that just to see me make a fool of myself, don’t you?” he accused as he hopped off of the stool more gracefully than he’d gotten onto it.

“Perhaps you wouldn’t make a fool of yourself, as you say, if you didn’t insist on leaning on me,” Severus replied, turning his back and leading the way around the dance floor to the stairs that led to the playrooms.

“Tell your arm to stop being so strong and comfortable, then,” Harry retorted, hurrying to catch up and grab his sir’s hand so that they wouldn’t get separated. (That had happened once. Harry had ended up lost and confused in the middle of the dance floor with no idea of which way he should go to get out of the mess, still less how to find Severus.)

“You’re ridiculous,” was all Severus said to that. It was the way the argument usually went - that is, it wasn’t much of an argument at all. The deviations from an easily recognizable routine happened once they were in the dungeon (or behind the doors of a playroom; it depended wholly on Severus‘s mood).

Severus sneered at the wildly undulating figures nearby, as he always did; some of them were close to having sex right there in the middle of the floor. A dance floor certainly wasn‘t the place for that. (A certain brat insisted on demonstrating his feelings publicly now and again, but at least it wasn’t anything on the scale of those dancers. And while he was one the subject, only a schizophrenic leprechaun ought to consider it dancing…) The accompanying music wasn’t quite to his tastes, either. Far too loud, and again, likely composed by a schizophrenic leprechaun (which, he was convinced, would explain a great deal about it, including its ridiculous popularity).

The first sign that the night probably wasn’t an auspicious one (as if the torrential rain wasn’t enough) was the loud, thumping and generally obscene music fading out and being switched to a dainty piece full of light flute and piano and a great deal of bells. Which then crescendoed into a strong brass and string bit with even more bells weaving in and out. Almost as one, the dance floor stopped undulating, and everyone turned to stare at the sheepish looking DJ, who shrugged and pointed at the lone couple waltzing to the music.

Severus snorted, and hurried down the stairs. He was actually rather proud of Harry holding in his snickers until after they were out of general earshot; it was just as well, though, that people in the dungeon often paid little attention to new arrivals on the floor.

Harry’s amusement subsided slowly as Severus pulled him along by the hand. This probably garnered some strange looks, but Harry only responded well to a leash (read: didn’t linger so long in one place that he inevitably got choked) when the only other person around was Severus. Severus had learned this the hard way, and after due frustration, gave up on public leashing and simply dragged him about by hand. Less choking and more attentiveness all around, which was rather the point.

Harry was quiet, though his lips kept randomly twitching, by the time Severus reached the area he wanted.

“Strip,” Severus ordered, letting go of him. He complied; the order was so expected that he almost started whistling while he carried it out. Once his clothes were in a neat little pile, Severus shrunk them and put them, along with Harry’s wand, in a pocket in his robes. Then he blindfolded his boy with a tripled-over piece of red silk (Harry had the nasty habit of trying to peek, which would rather ruin the mood of that night’s play), and led him over to where manacles on long chains dangled from the ceiling.

Slender wrists were shackled, and chain length adjusted until Harry looked like he was balancing on a pair of four-inch heels, only without the limited stability of actual heels. (Actually, Harry figured he was steadier like this. The one time he’d worn such exaggerated heels, he’d ended up breaking both of his legs.) Severus added nipple clamps to Harry’s nipples, spent a moment admiring the effect, gagged him, and then moved behind him on quiet footsteps.

Though the wait wasn’t long, Severus tended to move so quietly that the first fall of the tawse on his rear made him jump and nearly lose his balance. His shoulders protested, and he regained himself just in time for another blow to land. Expecting it that time, he didn’t so much jump as full-body shiver, which itself did interesting things to his ability to stay balanced. (He figured Severus posed him like that on purpose, just to see him wiggle and twitch after every blow. And considering what a nice whipping generally led to, he wasn’t about to complain.)

The blows stopped as suddenly as they’d begun, and the return of silence brought with it the question of what would come next. The answer came in the form of the clamps being removed, followed by the touch of cool steel along his collarbone. He moaned as it moved across and then up his neck, and let his head loll back against Severus.

The sudden, and admittedly rather operatic, scream of, “I’m on the moon, I’m on the moon!” made Severus jerk the knife away from Harry’s neck before he could accidentally cut it.

He stared in the direction it came from, and after several moments, he shook his head. “And that, boy, is why gags were invented,” he muttered in Harry’s ear. Harry giggled in reply, the sound muffled by the gag, and Severus got the impression that he would’ve gotten a conciliatory pat if Harry hadn’t been rather incapable of it at that moment.

He waited until Harry had stilled before continuing on with what he’d been doing, alternating between the flat and the edge of the blade. (That Harry enjoyed being teased with a knife had come as a surprise, and had actually been discovered by accident one day when Harry had interrupted his potion making. A threat and a knife pressed precariously close to his neck and Harry had just ended up on his knees with no argument whatsoever. The promise of a knife, Severus had learned, sometimes made an excellent bribe.)

He drew the knife over Harry’s skin, with no discernable pattern at first, then slowly started a pattern with the blunted tip. Then, to distract the boy and remind him that he wasn’t to come, he began narrating some of the activities going on around them. A whipping, a threesome, a couple of ladies doing some truly intriguing things with some toys and bits of leather, and a couple playing with heated bits of iron.

“What do you think? Should I try that on you?” he queried as he dragged the flat of the blade over Harry’s thigh. “The sizzle of flames and coal, the hot metal scarring your pretty skin, playing with the burns that result- Sensation play at its finest, don’t you think?”

Harry shook his head; cold metal was fine, hot metal didn’t sound appealing at all.

“No? Too bad. The boy appears to be enjoying himself. Ah, look at that. She’s been heating a nice looking brand for a while now, and she’s just pulled it out. And, there-”

“Moooooo!”

Severus actually jumped at the loud, completely incongruous low that the freshly branded man made, and dropped the knife. After a moment of complete silence, Harry started to shake, giggling madly, and Severus hid his face in one hand and shook his head, snickering quietly.

Other people started to laugh, including the woman who’d been holding the brand. She apologized, trying (and completely not succeeding) to muffle her own amusement. (The poor man who’d been branded had promptly blushed a brilliant red.)

“It appears,” Severus commented as he removed Harry’s gag so he could breathe more easily, “that the universe is against us tonight.”

“I’m sorry,” Harry gasped out, trying (and completely failing) to stop laughing.

A few flicks of Severus’s wand, and Harry was unbound and dressed. “I think we shall simply label tonight as a comedy of errors,” he replied as he removed the silk blindfold, a rueful smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. “I believe the mood has been quite ruined.”

Harry just nodded, laughing helplessly.
Fin