A Man Cannot Control His Dreams

A/N: I pretty sure i can't apologize sufficiently for being gone so long, so instead, i'll just try not to do it again.
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Severus considered what Potter was panting for. The boy didn’t deserve such treatment – never had. Perhaps he would earn it eventually, but not tonight.

“Something to say?” he prompted, rubbing small circles on trembling hips with his thumbs. The Gryffindor shuddered, and threw an arm over his face: a gesture that Severus had just about had enough of. “Don’t you dare.” The Potions Master at once rose up on one knee and grabbed Harry’s willowy wrist, jerking his arm back. “No hiding, Potter.”

Harry’s expression was, at that moment, nothing short of desperate, and Snape maintained his unforgiving grip on the boy’s wrist as he stood, pulling them both to their feet. Harry went reluctantly, even as he yielded to Severus’ kiss. It was not, as such things never were with the Potions Master, tender or comforting in the least. It seemed almost to mock him with its cool control – something Harry wished, as of late, he had a little more of. It was a kiss that didn’t say, “I care for you,” or even, “I want you,” but instead, “I own you.” Harry felt his blood rush – heard it in his ears.

“So eager and yet so afraid,” Severus’ murmured against his obedient mouth. It was stated as fact – and Harry could have… would have resented it, had it not been so undeniably true. He’d been the one lurking about in the hallway, practically stalking the man. One way or another, he always asked for it.

Snape’s hand, vice-like around Harry’s wrist, twisted him to face the bed. Then, hissed like a threat into Harry’s ear: “On the bed, Mr. Potter. On your back.”

As Harry did as he was told, Severus retrieved his wand, but paused before moving to join him on the bed. The boy really was quite elegant – in a degenerate sort of way – lying white against the dark quilt, cock demandingly upright and begging for attention. And not a mark on him. Severus’ hands itched again at the renewed purity, just as one longs to stamp through the virgin snow – leave one’s footprints behind.

“You, my little Gryffindor, look like a dessert,” he growled with a somewhat unexpected surge of possessiveness. Harry looked up nervously from beneath his eyelashes, and Severus could tell clear as day that the boy longed to cover himself. At that, a wickedly brilliant idea came to him, and he tapped his wand thoughtfully against his palm. “Shame of you to miss such a sight.”

****

“Animadverto.” As the word passed Severus’ lips, a silver mist burst forth from his wand and began to solidify before him. It roiled for a moment, amoeba-like, before spreading out thinly in mind-air. A mirror, Harry realized. It rotated leisurely beside the bed as it hardened, becoming perfectly flat and smooth. Then, with a flick of his wrist, Severus directed it above the bed, where it hung, facing straight down.

“What are you doing?” Harry yelped, and finally gave in to his shyness, moving to curl into himself.

“Look at yourself,” Severus commanded at once, voice leaving no room for argument or disobedience. “See what you are at this moment.” Harry went red from his cheeks to his navel, but didn’t dare refuse. So, he looked up into his reflection, and saw with singular shock something only Snape had ever seen before:

He was glistening with sweat, tousle-headed, flushed with humiliation, his eyes a wide-open luminous greed. He looked… wanting. Decadent.

A soft, “Oh,” was all he could manage.

“Indeed,” Severus replied, and sat lightly on the edge of the bed. “Quite a transformation from your day to day, hmm?” Harry nodded dumbly. He hardly recognized himself. But he couldn’t really be surprised – he was a different person here with Snape. They both knew that. It was Severus who never changed. The man’d never even fully undressed, for Merlin’s sake, not once – never given up more than a sliver of skin at his throat and forearms. Ever the Potions Master; ever the Deatheater spy. But Harry Potter…

He was either Harry, great hope of the Wizarding world, protégé of Albus Dumbledore, minor miscreant of Hogwarts; or he was Potter, submissive plaything, reluctant concubine. He belonged to the world, or he belonged to Severus. He was never his own.

“Potter,” Snape said again, pulling his attention away from the mirror. The Potions Master’s long, slender fingers gripped his jaw. “You chose this,” he said, meeting Harry’s eyes. “There is always the choice.”

It was a strange thing to say, Harry thought, and accompanied by a look he couldn’t identify. But then he was kissed, and suddenly the import of those few words hit him, as if transferred through the meeting of lips – the brush of tongues. ‘There is always a choice. In this, if nothing else.’ Even when his whole life was planned out and kept secret from him – when he couldn’t tell who to trust or which path to take – he could stop this if he so chose. Snape pulled back just enough then, dark eyes still focused on Harry’s, and simply paused there, waiting. Harry’s eyes flickered briefly back up towards the mirror.

“What if I don’t want the choice?” They were not the words he’d intended to say, seemed almost to come from someone else, and even Snape was taken aback by them.

“Then may God help us both.”

****

There was something almost poetic about the pale flesh of his legs cutting across the unbroken swathe of black that made up Snape’s body: something almost… beautiful about how his hands looked braced on the antique brass headboard. And the deep ripple of their motion was erotic beyond reason – starting at Snape’s hips and twining its way up through them both to peak in the arch of Harry’s neck. It was unlike anything Harry had ever imagined, let alone seen before, and he clutched the headboard harder for it, felt the motion more sharply. He could feel Severus’ dark eyes on his face, but didn’t look away from the mirror above. He was entranced.

And when Severus’ lips brushed his ear, and that liquid voice started to flow, it was to do what it always did: to play on the dynamic, to mercilessly twist Harry’s understanding of the world and bring him to new heights. Or, more likely, new depths. And Harry drank it in like one of Snape’s potions – never asking – never daring to question whether or not it was poison.

Before long, however, Severus abandoned his whispers in favor of fulfilling an earlier desire, still bent as he was on leaving as many marks as possible across Harry’s skin. And the Gryffindor could hardly muster any sort of protest – could hardly muster anything, in fact, but increasingly whimper-like moans of “Professor,” and a kind of desperation reserved specifically for the Potions Master’s eyes.

****

Harry managed not to lose sight of himself in the mirror until the very instant of orgasm, and even then it was for hardly a moment. He was quick to recover it, too, in an effort to see what Snape’s body did when he lost control – when he made that sound that struck Harry to the very marrow. And oh, the sight of that guarded body going taut and those long, powerful hands turning to fists in the bedclothes… the image would never leave his mind.

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TBC sooner than last time