innerslytherin (innerslytherin) wrote in lupin_snape, @ 2008-02-14 22:09:00 |
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Current mood: | sleepy |
Trading Places FIC for Cacophony
Title: Benefits
For: cacopheny
WC: 520
Challenge: Trading Places
Rating: PG-13?
Notes: Thanks to severity_softly for rush beta-reading. Also, this is actually double-drabble, drabble, drabble, drabble, coda. *grin* But they fit together as a whole.
Art is here.
There were benefits, Severus Snape thought, to being a wizard. The charms to levitate one's book, for instance, because one's lap was occupied with one's lover's head. The exotic plants for use in research when one's lover needed a new pain potion. The ability to shroud in mystery and hide in plain sight the existence of such monsters as werewolves and spies. The second, miraculous chance at love.
There were benefits to being an expert potioner. The ability to minister to the needs of one's werewolf lover, by way of one's brewing: Wolfsbane, Balm of Gilead, Dreamless Sleep. The potions and unguents needed to repair his beautiful, broken body every month, to ease the stresses and comfort the hurts. And after...to create the ointments and lubricants necessary to enjoy that beautiful, agile body.
There were benefits to having a werewolf lover. The ability to run one's fingers through his hair, for example, without being forced to admit to one's ridiculously soppish feelings for him. He had to have his hair stroked and his back scratched: it was a deep-seated instinctive need. And if Severus took luxurious pleasure in running his palms over Remus' skin...well, Remus didn't need to know that.
***
Severus liked knowing that the relaxing rituals of dicing, shredding, and crushing made his lover's life easier. He counted his stirs placidly, secure in the knowledge that no one could brew the Wolfsbane as well as he did. Remus had told him this often enough, over the course of many years, that Severus actually believed in the gratitude he saw in those amber eyes. He trusted the words spoken by those full, smiling lips. He responded eagerly to the touch of those calloused fingers in his hair, against his skin...
But he never let those fingers touch his potions ingredients.
***
There were benefits, Remus Lupin thought, to being a werewolf. He could get away with all sorts of things by blaming them on his lycanthropy. Curling up on the sofa with his head in Severus' lap, for example. It was just lupine instinct, of course...and yet it gave Severus an excellent excuse to run tapered, elegant fingers through the grizzled hair, without being forced to acknowledge the deeper, softer emotions behind the gesture. Nuzzling Severus' jaw, throat, chest...and occasionally other portions of his anatomy...could be excused as just another way wolves communicate.
Remus liked to think it comforted them both.
***
Remus whimpered and sighed. Severus' fingers curled through his hair.
"All right?"
"Mmm. Just aching a bit, that's all."
Severus' voice, when he replied, was sulky, unlike his hushed, exciting-part-of-the-story tone from a moment before. "You should have let me try the peppermint with the belladonna."
"You might poison yourself, love. I can't let that happen."
Severus didn't speak, but his fingers began stroking the soft hair again. Remus' eyes drooped shut again.
"Go on. You were at the part where she's about to open the garden door."
Severus cleared his throat and began reading aloud again.
Remus' smile widened.
***
There were benefits to being a Slytherin. Most notably, thought Severus, the ability to twist every situation to one's personal benefit.