Title: A Touch of Colour
Author: Leela (leela_cat)
Characters: Snape/Harry
Rating: R
Themes/kinks chosen: masturbation, spectrophilia (arousal by sex with ghosts, spirits, angels, or gods)
Warnings: ghost!Snape, off-screen!Ginny
Word Count: ~1,560
Betas: angela_snape
Disclaimer: I don't own them. I don't make any money off them. I just have a little fun with them.
Summary: "Tab A into Slot B. Sex hasn't changed since Merlin was a babe."


The room where Sirius once slept is empty, preserved, pristine in its unmitigated mess. Clothes are strewn over furniture, tossed onto the floor, crumpled and creased, waiting their turn in the wash. His dressing gown lies across the bottom of the bed.

Harry reaches the doorway and stops. He can still hear Ginny downstairs, whining through the Floo at Molly about whatever or whoever got up her nose at work. Or maybe, even worse, about the fight that they just had over Harry's reluctance to take their relationship to what she calls the next stage.

"He simply refuses to understand." Ginny's voice, high-pitched and accusatory, rises up the stairs.

Grimacing, Harry leans against the doorjamb, hitting his head just a little too hard on the wood. Maybe she's right and he's over-thinking the whole thing. But so is she. Just because he hasn't had sex yet doesn't mean that he thinks that thrusting his prick inside her is the equivalent of a lifetime commitment and the precursor to a wedding ring.

He's barely been living on his own for a year; she's just left Hogwarts. What's wrong with wanting to enjoy themselves for a few more years? As far as he's concerned, the 'next stage' of their relationship is ending it.

"I don't know what else to do, Mom."

And that's it; he's heard that tone in her voice once too many times. Unless something happens, they'll conspire for hours, tying up his Floo and making him feel uncomfortable in his own home. And he'll let her do it, because he doesn't know what else to do.

He slips into the room and closes the door behind him, quietly. Once inside he casts privacy wards. Not so much because he doesn't want her to know where he is, but because he doesn't want to have to listen to her any longer.

The bed is soft, more comfortable than the one in his own room. He lies down with his bare feet on the pillows and his head on the dressing gown, resting on the exact spot where it went when Sirius hugged him. It doesn't smell like Sirius any longer, but that doesn't matter.

"I don't know what to do," he finally admits to the dressing gown. "You've all left me behind. There's no one to ask and definitely no one I trust to tell me that I'm making a mistake. Everyone's advice is aimed at getting me to do what they want."

"Whine, whine, moan, moan."

The deep dark voice coming from over by the window stills Harry's breathing for long enough to remind him that he needs air. Snape first appeared six months after the Battle of Hogwarts, and he's been showing up at random times ever since. Harry still can't work out how he feels about it, although he's pretty much decided that, given a choice, he wouldn't want to be haunted by Severus Snape.

"Did you expect perfection, Potter? Is the world not giving you what you think you deserve?"

"That's not it," Harry snaps. Bloody Snape leaping to conclusions again, he thinks but has the sense not to say out loud, even to a ghost.

"What is it, then? What catastrophe has brought the great Harry Potter, Saviour of the Known Universe, so low that he has to seek solace in a shrine to a dead man?"

Anger rises in Harry, and he protests, "I'm not—"

"Not what?" Snape interrupts him. "Not snivelling into Sirius Black's dressing gown like a widow trapped in her weeds?"

"Don't." Freezing cold air wafts past Harry's cheek, and he closes his eyes.

"Open them!"

Unable to resist the command, Harry blinks and stares at the figure perched on the edge of the bed. Death has improved Snape in Harry's opinion. He looks no more attractive, no less severe, and yet, paradoxically, the fading of his black robes to a semi-transparent grey makes him seem more human. Harry spends hours puzzling over this and other oddities about Snape's ghost.

"Am I to be your confessor again?"

The accusation buried in Snape's question stings Harry, sending him scrambling to a sitting position, his back against the bedpost and Sirius's dressing gown still clutched in one hand. "No one's forcing you to do anything," he grumbles.

"Nor you, I imagine."

"She wants to have sex." The words tumble out before Harry can stop them.

"That's the terrible thing that has you moaning into old clothes?" Snape's mouth twitches and Harry wishes, not for the first time since the ghost appeared, that he could hex the git.

"It's not that simple." The resentful whinge in Harry's voice makes him wince.

"Tab A into Slot B. Sex hasn't changed since Merlin was a babe."

"God, you're an arse."

"I am, aren't I?"

That smile curves Snape's lips. The one filled with filthy promises that make Harry squirm and curl his toes into the duvet. In self-defence, he snarls, "Just fuck off and go bugger someone who wants you hanging around."

In the split second that follows, when he realises that he didn't say 'bother', Harry buries his flaming face into his knees and covers his head with his arms.

"Bugger someone?" Snape's voice caresses the words, stretches them out, and strokes them, turning them into a promise that singes Harry's nervous system. "Is that what you want?"

"No."

"Really?"

"No."

Cold licks at Harry's overheated chin. "Raise your head, Potter."

Harry ignores Snape and his annoyingly long fingers.

"Potter, look at me."

At the repetition of those words, Harry jerks his head up. It's all he can do not to berate himself for being so predictable, so controllable. "Don't," he says instead. "Just don't."

Snape's in front of him, hovering above the bed, and Harry can't help being fascinated by the way he can just see the pattern of Sirius's dressing gown through Snape. But then Snape leans forward and Harry is caught by the fact that even though the ghost doesn't breathe, he's sure that he can feel Snape exhale.

"What do you want, Potter?"

Harry shakes his head. If only it were that simple.

"You don't want her. If you did, you wouldn't be up here, angsting for the ages."

"I'm not..." The protest dies on Harry's lips; even he can't deny this accusation.

"Oh, but you are." An odd expression flashes across Snape's face as he examines Harry. Then he settles back, looking avaricious. "Spread your legs."

Before Harry can think, he's obeying the command and exposing his cloth-trapped erection to Snape's gaze. He must be losing what little sense Voldemort left him, doing this. Before he can change his mind, Snape continues.

"Touch yourself."

"Are you mad?" asks Harry, and hope flares at the thought that his sanity might not be in question.

"No more than you." Snape brushes a finger across his lips, then licks it with a long, pointed tongue before repeating, "Touch yourself."

"No," Harry says, but the denial is automatic. His hands are already moving, undoing his jeans, wiggling them and his pants down, and easing the pressure on his prick.

There's a pause, long enough to make Harry shift under the pressure of Snape's unblinking gaze. He curls a hand around his prick, and all of his worries about Ginny evaporate.

"Rub your thumb over the head. Gather some of that... yes, like that."

Closing his eyes, Harry listens to Snape's voice, lets it wrap around his prick along with his hand. He's aching inside, but unwilling to stop and get his jeans down far enough to finger himself.

"Tug once, short and sharp, then a gentle slide with a twist at the end," Snape says. "And add more pre-come."

His head back, his knees bent and his feet flat on the bed, Harry clutches the duvet. Behind his closed eyes, in his imagination, it's Snape's hand that moves over him and inside him.

"Pinch your nipple," Snape says. "Touch yourself for me."

"Please," Harry moans, even as he's twisting his nipple with one hand and bucking into the other. His fingers move constantly, but he needs more. He doesn't know what, not exactly, until something freezing cold sweeps over his prick, gliding under his bollocks, pressing on his perineum.

His back pushing against the bedpost, his heels digging in, Harry's hips rise and fall and rise again. He's panting, air rasping in and out of his lungs, pumping his prick, squeezing and twisting on command, when a spike of ice slides into him.

"Ngh." The sound seems to come from Harry's toes, racing through him, making him feel what he cannot feel.

And he comes, biting his lip to hold it in, to keep it for himself. He flicks his eyes open in time to see a splash of white hit Snape, sending a ripple of colour through the ghostly form.

Harry squeezes, involuntarily. His prick jerks again, dribbling over his hand, and he hisses.

When he's able to talk again, when he can feel the ache left behind by the sharp edge of the bedpost, Harry stares at Snape. "You just—"

"Quite," Snape agrees, looking as disconcerted as Harry.

They're still gazing at the spot that had been colour when the front door slams behind Ginny, and all Harry can feel is relief... and hope.