WARNING: This is a slash story, which means it contains male/male erotic content involving consenting adults. If you're not of legal age or are offended by such material, please go find something else to read.

Title: Fingertips
Author: Shanna Seanachai
Email: miredinthemarrow@email.com
Rating: PG - 13
Disclaimer: You know it.
Summary: A sequel, of sorts, to my RL/SS story, "Padre Fear". However, this story actually takes place before "Padre Fear", in the days of MWPP...still, I wouldn't recommend reading this before reading "Padre Fear", as you might get confused on some points. Anyway, this is classic teenaged Snape, as I've always seen him. Just a pleasure to write ^_^ Um, POV skips around a lot, same as in "Padre Fear"...1st person (Snape) to third person narrative, back to 1st person (Snape). "Fingertips" is by Poe. (the singer, not the dead guy.)

{sometimes I feel it burning, that deep and primal yearning}

It's true, isn't it? Control is relative. No matter how hard you try, you can never really have full command of anything. Least of all yourself.

I wish I had control of myself right now. I wish I was "the captain of my soul". I wish I didn't resort to this silliness. I suppose it's natural. Average. But I don't want to be average. I want to be ... exceptional. I want to be pure. I want to be perfect.

It would be easy to blame this terrible crack in my self-perception on him, but I'm too smart for that. So I have to admit it, as painful as it is - I am not perfect and I never will be. Self-control has been thrown out the window. Especially when it comes to love.

Especially when it comes to Remus Lupin.

{I try to live without it but then I think about...}

How predictable. How insipid. But if this isn't love, I can't really say what is. I think about him all the time. The smallest aspects of his person fascinate me. The smooth, perfect curves of his eyebrows. The shape of his mouth when he's thinking. The slant of his hair, shadowing his face...the way he sits at his desk when he thinks no one is looking - his shoulders resting against the back of his chair, his whole body slumped, his legs sprawled.

{those fingertips}

The intensity these simple things - along with a million supposedly insignificant others - summon up in me is frightening. But I've always known that I am a passionate person. I suppose when people like me fall in love, we just don't go halfway. And that's the part that scares me.

I know who I am. I know what I am. I'm not someone Remus Lupin would be interested in.

So I don't intend to let it be known. I'm not going to set myself up for an attack. When you give your heart to someone, and they don't want it, you can't take it back. It's gone forever. I'm going to keep mine well-guarded.

It will fade. In time.

{it's in the way they move they catch that simple groove}

If only it had been so easy.

Chugging home on the Express for the summer holidays, during that last, eternal season before his final year of school, Severus couldn't help but laugh.

He felt tired, and used. When he closed his eyes, he could see two hungry yellow ones smiling back at him. He'd walked through that dark tunnel, so nervous and yet so excited that the sound of his own breathing startled him, and emerged, finally, to see those eyes - so alien and yet so familiar. He'd known right then who he was staring at.

But he was far, far away from all of it, he told himself. Never mind that Lupin was on the train, as well. His escape was going well. He leaned back against the seat, and watched the rapidly passing landscape through slitted eyes. He was all alone in the car. He pressed his hand against the glass pane of the window, and held it there, spread wide. Watched the trees and fields pass through his fingers. Far, far away, bleeding off into the past.

{they tell a story all their own about the human heart alone}

That summer he was reckless. The lie he'd told his parents about Lupin was nothing. It was a passing fancy; he hadn't really expected them to pick up on it so emphatically. Really, they didn't pick up on much. That used to bother him - but now he found himself relying on it. Relying on the fact that no one would notice if he snuck out of the house at night. The trick, he learned, was to walk normally, as though he was just going down the hall to use the bathroom. Creep down the stairs, skipping the second to last step that squeaked, and then slowly, carefully, open the front door, as little as possible, and slip through.

God, it was so liberating, those dark hours, all to himself. At first he just wandered. He'd walk down to the Muggle town, passing stores that wouldn't open for another few hours, rarely coming across anyone. And sometimes he would walk all the way down to the docks, where the breeze was so cool and sweet on a hot summer night.

He got more daring. He left earlier. He came back later.

"Want a smoke?" a man asked him one time while he was sitting on the dock, his legs dangling off the edge. He sat down next to him and held out a cigarette; Severus took it, put it between his lips and held it there while he lit it with his Muggle lighter. He drew in a breath, the acrid taste filling his mouth; took the cigarette from his mouth and blew it out slowly, forcing himself not to cough.

After that, he would go into Muggle stores and steal cigarettes. He smoked them only at night at first, and then later on he started smoking them during the daytime, leaning out his bedroom window, squinting in the sunlight. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale...

{whatever, whoever you are, I've got my light on}

It was just that he felt so ... desperate sometimes. Like if he wasn't careful, he'd lose it. He'd just go crazy. The soft, rhythmic breathing soothed him. Exhale. Inhale. Oh, blessed inhale. Exhale. Inhale...

Control it. Control it.

Don't think of it; it's just that simple. Don't think of it. Yes, maybe you liked him. Loved. Liked him. It's over now. He's a monster. A monster.

Exhale...

{whenever, wherever you can, I'll be there I swear}

You don't need him. This craving is silly. And you can control it - no matter what you thought before. You can control it.

He found that if he added just enough water to his father's bottle of whiskey, the amount he sipped from it was indiscernible. Though, he supposed, it would start tasting weak after awhile. No matter. The sour taste was just nasty enough to distract him; and the mellowness it eventually produced was worth the headache he got later on.

"Hi," a girl said to him. "I've seen you here before, haven't I?"

{anyone will do}

"Yes," he answered. Just exhale. The hand on his arm was warm. He leaned into it. Beneath their feet, the old, tired, wet boards creaked, and the sea crashed and whistled.

"Have you been drinking?" Those lips were awfully close. It seemed if he focused on one part of the girl's body at a time, the full picture of what she was insinuating, with every gesture and smile, didn't seem quite so frightening. "You smell like it..."

"Like what?"

The mouth was on him, tasting him. "Like lemons."

Sour lemons.

{I know I'm just a fool because they're writing all the rules...}

Ah, there's no point, I suppose. Even I don't understand what's going on beneath my skin sometimes - bubbling and burning and fighting to get out.

How is it that, despite being in the highest year, I feel so lowly and small? I don't feel seventeen years old. Sometimes I take out my schoolwork and stare at it like it's not quite real. A dream. I have to pinch myself hard just to wake up and get to work. I need to keep up my good grades. But I never seem to do as well as James Potter, though I work twice as hard. I've got the bruises to prove it.

Lupin is so calm. I wonder how he can do it. He just floats along, never doing badly in his classes, but never doing off-the-charts-well, either, and he doesn't seem to mind it at all. He does his best and that's all that matters to him. How? Sometimes I make myself sick at night before an examination, I'm so nervous. I go outside and sneak a smoke to calm my nerves. I run laps around the Quidditch field in the dark, pound all my anxiety out into the ground. I'm a night creature these days. But I stay in on full moons.

I stay in, no matter how keyed up I am, and I look out my dormitory window and wonder where he is. I wonder if he's as free as he pretends to be.

I know he's not.

{those fingertips...anyone will do}

-end-