Starts With A Spin, Staff Edition

"Oh no. Absolutely not."



Lupin smiled and continued to advance.



"Albus, surely you don\'t expect me to…us to…"



Dumbledore shrugged and nodded.



"But he\'s a…he\'s a…" Severus wasn\'t sure if the sentence should end with \'man\' or \'werewolf\', both being equally offensive, but since Lupin\'s \'condition\' was not common knowledge amongst the staff, Snape finished with a lame; "He\'s a …HE!"



Dumbledore nodded and continued to smile vacantly at him.



"Well, this wasn\'t part of the rules!"



"That\'s right. It wasn\'t. The rules only covered time limits and erroneous touching. If you would prefer that we leave that last rule out, I\'m sure no one would object."



You vacuous, smug, sodding prick! I\'ve half a mind to hex that bottle so you only get Filch from now on.



Lupin was now only inches away. He opened his hands in an amenable gesture.



"Come on Severus, for old time\'s sake."



Snape\'s eyes narrowed and he lowered his voice to a near growl.



"If I remember correctly, Lupin, the last time we were this close, you tried to eat me, not kiss me."



"I promise I won\'t bite...hard." He said, grinning.



Lupin grabbed him by the shoulders and leaned in to plant a kiss on his mouth. Severus jerked back in surprise and overbalanced. He slipped backwards and grabbed at Remus, who, already bending forward, was dragged down on top of him. Both men landed in an ungainly pile in the center of the circle.



"Get your malformed carcass off of me before I hex you into the next century."



"Severus!" Lupin purred, pushing his weight on top of him, "How incredibly forward of you! If you desired me so badly, you should have owled me stating your intentions."



Snape made a grab for his wand and Lupin pinned his arms down.



\'kiss…kiss…kiss…kiss…\' The chant began quietly but built in speed and volume until everyone in the room was shouting it in earnest.



\'KISS!...KISS!...KISS!...."



Remus raised an eyebrow at Severus as if to ask permission and the Potions Professor pursed his lips in resignation.



"Just do it and get it over with." He hissed, closing his eyes.



When nothing had transpired after a full minute, Snape opened his eyes to find Remus smiling down at him. The chanting was still going on around them and Severus was not accustomed to, nor did he relish, being made a spectacle of.



"What on earth are you waiting for?"



"Ask me nicely."



"Pardon?!"



"If you want me to kiss you, ask me nicely."



"How about instead I reach down your throat, remove your intestines, wrap them around your skinny neck and throttle you with them?"



"Now, now Severus, that wasn\'t close to nice and you didn\'t even say please."



Snape struggled to free himself from Lupin\'s grip, but he was outweighed and out muscled. He also realized that his body hadn\'t quite recovered from his fervent kiss with McGonagall and squirming underneath Lupin was putting pressure and friction on a place that he would rather not stimulate just now.



"Okay. I surrender. Either kiss me or end my suffering and kill me…Please."



"Well…okay, if you really want me to."



He smiled and leaned forward. Snape clenched his eyes and jaw in anticipation of something clumsy and unpleasant, but was quite surprised with Lupin\'s kiss. It was tender, yet firm and although short, it tasted like a dare. Severus opened his eyes to make sure it really was Remus kissing him. Remus pulled back slightly, gave a smug smile, and then went in for another. This one was also gentle but had an edge that the first one did not. Despite his best intentions, Severus found himself kissing back.



Remus\' mouth was stronger and more substantial that Minerva\'s and his fuller lips and confident tongue made him more a competitor than participant. Severus kissed back with more vigor, upping the ante, and Lupin matched his pace and raised him one. He released Snape\'s pinned arms and raised himself onto his elbows for better leverage. Severus snaked his freed hands into Lupin\'s hair and angled his head slightly to improve access to his mouth. Their lips crushed together with matched intensity, tongues probing and swirling around each other with growing desire.



Lupin shifted his weight slightly and grinned as the pressure on Severus made him groan. Not to be outdone, Snape twisted his hips beneath Lupin causing his own seismic reaction.



"Gentlemen," Dumbledore said, not a little huskily, "your time is up."



The two men locked eyes, but neither was willing to be the first to stop. Lupin pushed against Snape again, grinding him unmercifully, and he grimaced with the intensity. Severus twisted his hands in Remus\' hair and crushed his lips to his own until both men could taste blood.



"Goodness me," said McGonagall to no one in particular. "Perhaps we should give them a Privacy Charm and let them have at it." She delicately wiped at the perspiration collecting on her upper lip.



"No," said Dumbledore, not taking his eyes from the pair, "I think that they would both end up regretting their stubbornness…eventually."



The pace of their hips found a pattern that was slowly increasing in momentum and Severus could tell that Lupin was as close to an embarrassing public finale as himself.



"Stop," he hissed into his mouth.



"Huh?" moaned Lupin, not sure if he even could stop at this point.



"Stop it. I concede." Lupin just looked at him dumbly. "You win, now get off me."



He took his now free arms and pushed Remus away. Snape rolled out from under him and scrambled to his feet. Eleven sets of eyes and eleven gaping mouths surrounded him, and the heat in his groin was quickly replaced with the searing heat of shame on his face. His bruised lips trembled with a hundred unsaid insults, all of them boiling up inside him, but none of them sufficient to deal with the colossal humiliation he was now shouldering. He turned and stalked from the room, down the many staircases to the merciful anonymity of the Slytherin dungeons.





The bath was mediocre, the book lay unread beside the tub, but the booze was as welcome as an old lover. Severus sat forlornly in the bath, bubbles up to his armpits. Being made fun of was nothing new to him. If he\'d had a Knut for every time someone had laughed at him he wouldn\'t be trudging through eternity, filling up the sieve-like brains of the ungrateful masses of dunderheaded excuses for students.



The worst part of the evening had not been the public kissing, which was in and of itself quite humiliating, but it was his lack of control over his body and it\'s responses that he found so reprehensible. He eyed his miserable face in the mirror beside the tub. Traditionally, Snapes did not have much for money, and they had even less for looks. Their sense of humour was not widely accepted and, aside from abject cruelty (a specialty of Great-Grandfather Snape) and a penchant for poisoning each other, the Snapes had little else, aside from self control.



He sank down into the water so the bubbles hovered just under his nose, and his skinny knees emerged. He wrangled his toes to turn the hot water on again, when he sensed someone in the room with him. He sat up abruptly and looked around. Remus Lupin was standing in the doorway.



"How exceedingly discourteous! Have you never heard of knocking…or locked doors…or wards?"



Remus shrugged.



"Did and no one answered, Alahomora and anti-ward charms."



"And I suppose it might never occur to you that someone who would go through the trouble of blockading themselves in like that would not desire company? Especially yours!"



Remus nodded, smiling.



"Yes, Severus, the thought did occur to me but it\'s important."



"Well then, send me an owl." He dismissed Lupin with a flick of his wrist and sank back down into the warm water.



"It\'s funny," said Remus, not impressed with being summarily dismissed, "knowing what a greasy git you are, I\'m surprised to see you bathing."



Snape lifted enough of his head out of the water so he could talk. "Knowing what a flagrant homosexual you are, I\'m not surprised to see you eye-humping me in my bath."



Remus barked out a laugh. "I\'m not eye-humping you, Severus." He winked at the Potions master, and with a sly grin said, "And I\'m not \'flagrant\' either."



"But you ARE a homosexual?"



Remus shrugged. "I don\'t know. I think I\'m just \'sexual\'. Not homo, not hetero. I don\'t discriminate."



"Well I do." He grumbled into the fading suds. "And I don\'t \'do\' wolves."



There was a brief pause where both men sought new footing and Remus was the first to break the silence.



"I really did knock, Severus. It\'s just that," he pulled a pocket watch from his robes and flicked it open, "if I don\'t get my Wolfsbane in the next seven minutes I\'m going to be out of commission for the next few days."



Snape sat up abruptly, suds clinging to the scant hair on his chest. It was unlike him to forget about such things.



"Merlin, yes, that\'s tonight! I have it brewing next door. Hand me that towel, will you?"



Remus looked around and tentatively plucked a fluffy pink towel from the rack beside the tub. He politely averted his eyes while Snape stood and exited the bath, taking the pink towel from his extended hand and wrapping it around his slim hips.



He crossed in front of Remus and walked briskly down the corridor to his private work room.



Although he had noticed Remus look away when he had emerged from the tub, Snape now sensed the man\'s eyes wandering over the smooth plane of his back. His hair, still wet from the bath, hung lank and dark against his white shoulders and he felt the hot gaze following the small rivulets of water that ran down the valley of his spine to his narrow waist and beyond.



Severus turned around and caught him smiling. He did not mirror it back.



"What is it?" he asked, suspiciously.



"Nothing."



Severus turned back, disgusted.



"No, it\'s just that…I don\'t know, I suppose I never pegged you as a pink towel bloke." He paused a moment, smirking. "Do you have fuzzy slippers to match?"



Severus grabbed a dressing gown from a peg by the door and shrugged it on.



"For your information, Lupin, these towels were a gift."



"From the Tooth Fairy?"



"No, from…" Severus stopped a moment, thinking, and Remus almost ran into him. "Minerva? Albus? I don\'t recall. The colour is atrocious, but they\'re quite absorbent." He started toward the workroom again and Remus followed.



"Actually, Severus, pink is your colour."



"I\'m more comfortable in simple black, thank you very much." He tapped his wand against the door and it swung open to allow the two men access. As promised, the Wolfsbane was bubbling merrily away on the cooktop. Snape took a graduated ladle and carefully measured out the proper dose before handing the phial to Remus.



Steam or smoke or both billowed from the phial and Remus\' face set in a look of grim determination.



"Bottoms up," he toasted, then placed the potion to his lips and let it slide down his throat with just a scarce shudder of revulsion. Snape watched his distaste with a small thrill, although he really did have to give the man credit. Wolfsbane was a nasty, vile potion. Not only did it assault the senses with its acrid taste and slippery texture, but it also tended to skulk around in one\'s stomach like a lost earthworm seeking exit until it was finally absorbed.



When Remus was positive the liquid would not make a reappearance, he replaced the phial on the cooktop and gave Snape a curt nod.



"Well, I\'ll not keep you any longer."



"Sit," said Snape, and it was clearly not a request. "You know the conditions."



Remus sighed and resignedly pulled out a stool for himself. Albus had made it abundantly clear that there be no room for error. Wolfsbane was to be taken on a nearly empty stomach, and there could be no eating or drinking for a minimum of thirty minutes after ingestion, lest the potion become diluted and not retain its full potency. Both men had agreed to spend that time together to ensure it did not happen.



Snape tapped his wand on a small black hourglass, and the sands rearranged themselves to time out the thirty minutes. He then seated himself behind his workdesk and opened a large potions manual. The message was as clear to Remus as if he had posted a \'Quiet Please\' sign.



He wandered around the room a bit, peering into the cabinets and examining the different bottles and ingredients. This made Snape unable to concentrate fully on his book. Instead, he watched Remus from the corner of one eye as he manhandled Severus\' prized and rare ingredients as if they were for whipping up batches of brownies instead of saving lives…or taking them.



After the third sigh of displeasure, Remus abandoned the tiny bottles and turned to the other man.



"You should have stayed."



"Yes, I\'m sure my presence was missed greatly."



Remus shrugged noncommittally. "There was quite a spectacle, Filch\'s turn landed on Flitwick."



Severus smiled despite himself. "Spectacle indeed."



Remus continued, "I\'m not sure who was more disgusted, them kissing, or us watching it."



Snape\'s nose bent back to his book. "Yes, it sounds outstandingly repellant."



There was a moment of quiet where Snape reread the same paragraph for the tenth time, then Remus spoke again.



"Next week should be interesting; I\'m told it will be Truth or Dare."



Snape\'s head snapped up. "Next week? Surely not."



Remus nodded. It was true.



Snape\'s shoulders slumped. "And I suppose that attendance is mandatory?"



Remus nodded again. "Have you ever played Truth or Dare?"



The black-eyed indignant stare was his answer.



"Well," Remus began, "when it\'s your turn, you can choose Truth, where you must answer a question asked by the person who chose you, but beware: whether you want to tell the truth or not, you are bound by the game and will be unable to lie."



"And if I choose Dare?" Snape asked suspiciously.



Remus smiled. "Well, it depends on the dare. Generally, it\'s a kissing thing again, but I haven\'t played this game since I was a kid. Who knows what adult wizards will come up with?" He shrugged and Snape shuddered.



Another silence fell between them, this one more comfortable. Snape\'s head was bent back in his book, his now barely damp hair brushing the pages when Remus spoke again.



"He was right, you know."



Snape barely glanced up from the page. "Hmm?"



"Dumbledore. He was right."



Snape blinked, not comprehending.



"About Slytherins and their…talents," Remus continued.



Snape snapped his book shut, just as a chime from the hourglass announced that the thirty minutes had passed.



"You were, I mean ARE a good kisser, Severus."



Snape stood up abruptly. "Time\'s up, you\'re free to go. I wouldn\'t want to keep you." He ushered Remus out with a wave of his hand and Remus complied.



When he was finally alone, Snape went back to the bath, but the water was cold and book had lost its appeal. The booze, however, was plenty fresh enough.



Good kisser. He made an indelicate noise. You don\'t know the half of it.





The week passed much like any other. Dumbledore\'s game hadn\'t made much of a difference with the house divisions, although Snape had noticed some of the other professors looking at him a bit differently. Their gaze seemed to linger on him where before, anyone caught looking would quickly avert their eyes. Now he got a hint of a smile and perhaps a polite nod. He did not feel the need to return in kind, instead opting for his usual dark scowl, but somehow it seemed to have lost some of its potency.



Minerva in particular was quite chatty and since they sat next to each other at the head table she had continuously asked him to pass her items that just a few days prior she would have managed to reach on her own. Or was she always this chatty and Snape had just now noticed? Not that he cared. Some witches were chatty and some were not, it had little bearing on his life. And even when said witch seemed to be staring at his mouth instead of his eyes when they spoke and he himself was inclined to watch hers as it animatedly prattled on about disrespectful students or a particularly arsed up transfiguration, it probably didn\'t mean a thing. He had most likely always looked at her mouth when she spoke, and was only just now noticing it because those lips had been on his. That little pink tongue that flicked between her teeth when she laughed had been inside his own mouth, tasting him, licking at his neck and sliding over the hollow of his jaw. It hadn\'t changed a bit over the last week, just his perception of it had.



"Severus?"



"Hmmm?" he said, pulling his gaze upward.



"Have you given any thought to tonight?"



Snape sighed heavily and rubbed his eyes.



"Only how I could perhaps end up in the infirmary instead of that sodding staff room."



"And disappoint everyone? That would never do."



His eyes clouded with suspicion and when he said nothing, she continued.



"Your kiss has been the subject of much whispering, and dare I say, swooning amongst the female staff."



"Minerva, although the kiss that we shared was more than…pleasurable, I highly doubt it made any witches swoon."



Minerva put a slim hand over his.



"It\'s not OUR kiss that caused the swooning, Severus."



He sharply drew his hand away from hers, shocked.



"That was nothing more than a tawdry, peepshow spectacle. I have no intention of repeating such a thing, and I can\'t imagine anyone finding that…arousing. GUH!"



He took a long swig of pumpkin juice, as if to wash the taste from his mouth. When he looked back to Minerva, she was flushed.



"Severus, I hate to burst your prudish bubble, but watching you and Remus cop off like that was the hottest thing Hogwarts has seen since the East Tower caught on fire in \'52." She lowered her eyes shyly. "I must say that it was the cause of a few sleepless nights in my chambers this week."



The hinge of his jaw dropped open and he was powerless to shut it. He sputtered unintelligibly a few times, but every ounce of his normally eloquent vocabulary had taken leave of him. Minerva patted his hand again, and closed his mouth for him.



"All I\'m saying, Severus," she said, getting up, "is that you shouldn\'t be surprised if you are asked to do something like that again. We witches here at Hogwarts have been looking forward to it all week." And with that she picked up her hat and left. Severus sputtered a few more times before taking his leave as well.





Although his feet felt the need to take the steps two at a time, Severus forced himself to walk slowly and deliberately up the many winding staircases to the Gryffindor towers. Saturday afternoons were not a busy time for students in the corridors, but nonetheless it would never do to draw any more attention to himself than was completely necessary. The staff witches might be having a gossiping heyday at his expense but there would be no need to give the students fodder for rumours as well.



Remus was in his office with a student so Severus paced outside the door. When a full 30 seconds had passed, he poked his generous nose in the room and caught the professor\'s eye.



"A word?" he asked.



If Remus was surprised to see him in Gryffindor tower he did not show it. Instead, he spoke quietly and kindly to the young student at his desk and she smiled as she packed up her books.



"Right then, Pirroette. Monday morning."



"Thanks, Professor," she said warmly, then practically leapt past Snape and did a stunt roll into the corridor to avoid touching him. Snape eyed the maneuver appreciatively.



"Lithe," he said.



Remus smiled and raised an eyebrow. "Aren\'t all kids?" He began to organize the clutter on his desk. "What can I do for you, Professor?"



Snape sighed and kicked the door shut with his foot.



"Minerva has informed me that many of the staff witches got their jollies during our…erm…performance last week, and that they will most likely demand a repeat kiss."



Remus chuckled openly. "I always knew they were corrupted old bints."



"You may find this amusing, Lupin, but I most certainly do not. I have not actively championed my personal space for the past forty years to have it disintegrate into a public buggering for the amusement of a group of horny witches. Furthermore, if you try to pin me down or dry-hump me like you did last week you can be sure that your next dose of Wolfsbane will contain a virtual cocktail of stool softeners, gas enhancers, penis shrivellers and worse."



Lupin\'s eyes widened with surprise. "You have a penis shriveling potion?" he asked.



Snape leaned in close enough to be kissed again. "Try me."