Chasing Moonbeams. Ch31.

[pekeleke]

Title: Chasing Moonbeams.
Author: pekeleke
Pairing(s): Severus Snape/Harry Potter
Rating: NC-17, eventually.
Length: 82K+
Warnings: Extremely Slow burn. Pre-slash to slash. Enemies to friends to lovers. Pinning!Harry. Oblivious!Severus. Implied Bottom!Severus. EWE.
Disclaimer: Don't own these characters. I make no profit from writing fanfiction.
Summary: “Really?” Harry beams, green eyes wide and full of wonder. “You’re going to let me snog you to my heart’s content?”

“Of course not.” Severus replies contrarily, curling elegant digits around the brat’s neck and tugging him down low enough for a quick and dirty kiss before the Savior has a chance to protest. “I’m going to let you snog me to my heart’s content, Potter.”

Chapter 31.

 

Two weeks after their visit to Gringotts, Severus still finds it hard to come to terms with the undeniable fact that he feels like Harry Potter’s boyfriend. There’s no other word for it, is there? They haven’t made any official announcement yet, and Severus isn’t ready for that particular step, but he suspects Harry’s friends have been told to expect it someday soon. The brat doesn’t seem to hide anything from them, and he’s made no attempt whatsoever to curve all that obnoxious glowing with happiness thing he does all the bloody time, these days.

Even Nathaniel believes Harry is madly in love because he looks ‘floaty, like a princess.’ Severus had almost choked on the cookie he’d been nibbling when he’d heard that one. He’s surprised by how perfectly they fit. They click together, like pieces of the same puzzle, and with every lunch they share, with every brush of their fingertips and every heavy look of promise, Severus finds himself more and more enchanted.

He’s swaying lazily on his backyard’s hammock, staring dreamily towards the pristine blue sky through the branches of the trees that surround him when the very man he’s thinking about rounds the corner. “I thought I’d find you here. I tried knocking, but you didn’t answer. Then I remembered you telling me yesterday that it was time to re-pot the Slorsiwss-something-or-other, so I decided to check out the patio.”

“Slorsiwsschilea Purpurea Allegratta, Harry.” Severus corrects him automatically.

“That’s the one.” The brat grins, looking for all the world as if he is the one praising Severus for remembering the name of his own plant correctly. “What are you up to, moonbeam? You look sleepy.”

“It’s the heat. It makes me drowsy, but I’m too comfortable to head back inside. Or cast a Cooling Charm. I’m in the mood to stay right here and let this lovely sunshine roast me like a chicken. Merlin knows we don’t get enough days like this in this miserably rainy island.”

“You’re roasted already. Your nose is red like a tomato.”

“Bah! I’ll dab some burn salve on it later.”

“What about lunch? Are you going to keep dangling there and let me feed you tiny bits of whatever it is you’ve prepared? Please, consider me an unashamedly eager fan of that idea.”

“Of course you are.” Severus snorts, smiling up at the boy and feeling inexplicably flirty. “What would you do if I say I’d let you?”

Harry’s breath hitches and his green eyes go wide with surprise even as his stupid-looking grin becomes positively goofy; soft and gooey like a lava cake. “I don’t know. Faint? Dance for joy? Rush inside and get the plate before you change your mind and decide to feed yourself after all?”

“Go on then. It’s a simple shrimp salad. It’ll feel nice and fresh in this heat. Don’t forget to pick up forks. I may be willing to let you feed me, but I promise to bite you if you try to do it with your fingers.”

Harry whimpers and gulps loudly before hurrying towards the kitchen, making Severus chuckle darkly. He is starting to realize that Harry has a tone fetish of his own, and he can’t help but enjoy torturing the boy every now and then. It makes him feel powerful and desirable. It makes him feel things he hasn’t felt in a very long time.

“Gosh!” Harry sighs as he rushes back, salad bowl in tow. “You look so fine in there, all lazy smile, sleepy eyes, and that expectant expression. You look like a king waiting to be served.”

“So serve me then, Auror Potter. I’m starving.”

Harry giggles like a girl. Green eyes soft, and huge smile bright and happy and gentle. He dutifully dips a fork into the bowl of shrimp salad he is clutching against his chest and takes his bloody sweet time selecting the right piece to spear. When he raises the fork back out, probably the biggest shrimp in the bowl is dangling from the twines. Severus eyes the thing and lifts an eyebrow as the boy moves the fork closer.

“Come on. Open wide, you, skinny thing. It’s time to fill that empty belly of yours with something other than black tea and buttered toast. I can’t believe you don’t even put jam on your bread, moonbeam. What sort of Briton are you?”

Severus rolls his eyes in response. Too busy concentrating on chewing to bother with actual words. Harry uses the exact same fork Severus has just eaten from to feed himself a random bite of salad. Severus feels himself grow hot in the face upon realizing the boy only bothered to bring a single piece of cutlery.

“I could be nursing the flu, you know?” He complains, but the irreverent brat doesn’t seem the slightest bit concerned.

“Are you?”

“I can’t be certain,” Severus insists and feels fluttery and self-conscious when his companion licks his lips oh-so-slowly as if attempting to recapture Severus’s taste in a bid to decide for himself whether it had ‘flu-flavor’ or not. Eventually, the boy shrugs those broad shoulders of his in a thoroughly dismissive way.

“I don’t care either way, to be honest. I’d probably share your fork even if your nose was dripping with snot. The Flu is one Pepper-Up dose away from perfect health.”

“Eewww! You say the sweetest things, my dear.” Severus grouses, opening his mouth once more to allow Harry to feed him another carefully selected morsel. The idiot snorts, chomps brutishly on his own mouthful and stares at him thoughtfully.

“You are finally ready, aren’t you?” Harry asks softly, empty fork swirling distractedly inside the bowl without catching onto anything.

Severus swallows his food, frowns with increasingly familiar confusion and then glares at Harry sideways. The boy tends to converse in fits and starts that make sense only to him, and Severus finds the habit utterly frustrating. “Ready for what, precisely?”

Harry ignores the testy tone and searches for only Salazar knows what on his face. Severus can not imagine he’d find any answers there, but that has never stopped the idiot from attempting to read him so far. “I don’t know. Kissing, maybe? You are comfortable enough to be trying your hand at flirting, which I like a great deal by the way. And you’re looking at me all hungry-like. It’s nice.”

“Hasn’t it occurred to you that I may be looking at you ‘all hungry-like’ because I’m actually starving, and you’ve only fed me two pieces of shrimp so far?”

“Maybe I’m hoping that brilliant brain of yours is finally ready to understand that I’m a hell of a lot tastier than shrimp.” Harry points out with a mischievous grin, loading the fork once more.

“I bet you are.” Severus deadpans before his boyfriend has enough time to shut him up with a well-timed forkful of salad. They eye one another smugly and fall into companionable silence until they’ve polished off the entire bowl.

“The food’s all done, beautiful,” Harry says, setting the dirty container, along with the fork, on a nearby bench. “And you’re still eyeing me up, all hungry-like.”

“A-am I?” Severus stutters, wondering how it is possible that they’re both still alive, that neither of them has been suffocated already by the intense energy that currently thickens the very air that surrounds them.

“You most definitely are,” Harry responds. Tone gone rumbly and deep and bone-meltingly sexy. Severus feels himself tremble with nerves. He hasn’t kissed, genuinely kissed, anyone who mattered so much to him since Regulus. The back of his throat becomes sandpaper-dry, and he wouldn’t be able to utter a single word to save his life. His limbs feel heavy and achy with desire, his thought process is sluggish, but his every sense is on high alert, eagerly relaying to him the heady brightness of Harry’s gaze, the smell of his aftershave, the sound of his ragged breaths mixed with the random melee of insect life and birdsong that fills the garden.

Severus inhales shakily and bites his bottom lip when Harry’s callused palm settles upon his chest, heavy and reassuring. He suspects the boy can probably feel his heart pounding through the thin cotton of the simple t-shirt he is wearing.

Harry takes a shaky breath too. Licks his lips nervously and starts to lean forward so slowly that Severus loses patience. He needs the bloody git to kiss him stupid this very second and, the way Potter is going about it, it’ll take about a thousand years of cow-eyed foreplay before their lips so much as align.

“Merlin’s saggy bollocks, Potter, come here, you idiot,” Severus grumbles and, sneaking his long arms around the startled boy’s neck, tugs him down firmly and plants one on rather surprised and chapped lips. The contact is dry, unfamiliar, and about as un-toe-curling as a mosquito bite. Severus frowns, pulls back and stares in confusion right into the laughing green eyes of the moronic creature still in his arms.

“That’s why patience is a virtue, you, prat,” Harry whispers against his mouth, teasing and fond in equal measure. Severus huffs but swallows a snarky response as soon as Harry’s calloused hands find their way to the back of his head and, cradling it carefully, turn his face slightly to the side. Loving fingertips tangle in his hair, brush tenderly against his jaw, and then Harry’s chapped lips are back upon his, and this time they’re open and bold, demanding an entrance Severus has no intention of denying them.

Their tongues finally meet and, dear Salazar! This is the sort of thing he remembers. Severus shudders from the top of his dark head to the very tips of his toes and moans into the kiss, shocked and hungry, utterly pleased with his lot. His eyes are closed in bliss, and when his neck turns to jelly, he simply sags against the cloth of the hammock, humming encouragingly when Harry follows him down, covering his upper body like a protective blanket.

Severus’s arms tighten around the boy’s neck, greedily, demandingly. Harry chuckles into their kiss and presses against Severus’s mouth more confidently, daring tongue cleverly winding around his and making Severus feel both breathless and lightheaded. Their passionate kiss turns Severus’s touch-starved skin into a sensitive, tingling, aching, selfish thing that wants this, wants more, wants all of Harry Potter’s kisses until the very end of time. Severus holds on for dear life and pours everything he has into kissing his boyfriend back until he can no longer ignore the ringing in his ears and the burning in his lungs. He is running out of air, they both are, but oh! how he wishes they could simply bypass a need as ridiculously mundane as breathing and remain thus forever, snogging each other senseless in his sun-dappled backyard.

They break apart with equal reluctance, adding their heavy panting to the garden’s natural soundtrack. Their gazes collide. They’re both heavy-lidded, both stunned, and instead of saying something absurdly mushy and grandly romantic, Harry breaks out in nervous giggles, the utter buffoon. ‘At least he sounds delighted’ Severus muses and smiles up at the brat, combing fondly through the messy hair at the back of Harry’s neck. It’s silky-soft, and it tickles the very tips of his fingers, and that’s the only reason why Severus bursts into giggles too. The hammock shakes with their combined weight, with the weight of the happiness that’s settling upon them. Their joy may be simple in its existence, but, to them, it feels exquisite. Wondrous, even. They both have walked a very long path indeed to reach this hammock.

“That was— I don’t even know how to describe it.” Harry rambles, sagging heavily against Severus’s chest and making no move to straighten up at all.

“It was marvelous.” Severus agrees softly and smiles even more widely when the warm puff of Harry’s smug ‘humm’ caresses the side of his neck.

“I like the sound of that. My kisses are ‘marvelous.’ You said so yourself, moonbeam. I hope that means you’re suitably impressed now.”

Severus tries to laugh but finds it hard to do with half an Auror draped across his chest, so he pushes the idiot away. Harry straightens up with a groan, looking pouty and satisfyingly reluctant. “I am impressed,” Severus says, cupping the Gryffindor's jaw as the boy hovers above him. “In fact, I demand you return here the moment your shift ends, Mr. Potter. I’ve been an unmitigated moron. We could’ve been doing that for weeks. We must make up for lost time.”

“Really?” Harry beams, green eyes wide and full of wonder. “You’re going to let me snog you to my heart’s content?”

“Of course not,” Severus replies contrarily, curling elegant digits around the brat’s neck and tugging him down low enough for a quick and dirty kiss before the Savior has a chance to protest. “I’m going to let you snog me to my heart’s content, Potter.”


Next.

Back.