InsaneJournal

[drabble] Lines - Harry/Severus, PG
Title: Lines
Author: la_dissonance
Summary: With Harry he was distant, removed, always demanding more of Harry and keeping one step ahead of Harry's efforts to satisfy him.
Rating/Warnings: PG, possibly young chan (or possibly not any chan at all, depending on how you want to read it).
Word Count: 299
Notes: AU in which Harry is randomly in Slytherin. Thanks to L for the insta-beta of awesome!

Snape's hand was cold on Harry's wrist, as cold as the dungeon classroom he ushered Harry into. Harry didn't shiver as he slid into the seat nearest the Professor's desk; he had grown accustomed to coldness of all kinds in the years since his Sorting.

Snape didn't speak as he swooped to his desk, only waved his wand at the blackboard to make Harry's assignment appear. Lines tonight. Hardly a punishment, but the infraction had been a minor one, barely enough to merit a warning.

But that was to be expected. Snape was harder on Harry than he was on the other Slytherins: less indulgent and more demanding. He didn't dote on any of his students, not hardly, but with Harry he was distant, removed, always demanding more of Harry and keeping one step ahead of Harry's efforts to satisfy him. Harry wanted to satisfy him, earn his approval just once, get a little closer and then a little closer until he was right inside Snape's impenetrable defences, as close as he could get.

Harry was long past been naïve enough to remain ignorant of the signs of his own desire. It would have been hard, especially when he spent every waking moment scrutinizing Snape for signs of the same, cultivating it with the graceful curve of his bared neck and the way he sucked on the end of his quill.

Tonight, Harry wasn't writing lines. I know you'll say this can't be true, but you have to believe me. I'm always thinking about you – the sound of your voice, the shape of your hands, I want to know, want you . . .

Harry glanced up through his eyelashes and caught the professor's stony gaze lingering on him. He kept writing.

This coldness, this distance, it wouldn't last for long.