the day before you came - severus snape x reader

Chapter 30 - I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do

hi! My brain decided to work today which is a rare event nowadays. I didn't proof read this one so apologies in advance as I just wanted to get a new chapter out. It's taken me loooong enough. Hope y'all are doing alright. ily x

Friday. The day bubbling with plans and schemes, suffused with a collective Christmas spirit; not surprising given it is the penultimate Friday the majority of students and staff will spend at Hogwarts, and considering the decorations with which Professor Flitwick, nearly exploding with joy and zest you wouldn't expect to be hidden in such a tiny creature, lavishes rooms and corridors, while the scent of warm, tangy pine branches, mulled mead and oven-fresh, spiced biscuits lingers in the air.

Half of your detention is over after tonight, though you'd restrain yourself from calling it that – the nature of your detention would arouse pure envy in everyone who's going to spend regular detention with the gruff Potions Master in the future.

Snape is sitting at his desk, probably correcting some work, or planning the schedule for the coming semester (and you snicker inwardly because it's way too easy to imagine him contriving new ways to torture his students, a thought he hears and he acknowledges with a warning growl), and you lounge around on the sofa, reading a novel you nicked from one of his overflowing shelves.

It's another quiet evening, just how both of you prefer it, although you purposefully tried to disgruntle him when you sauntered into his office, asking him about the previous evening with Lucius Malfoy, and he narrowed his eyes at you, jealous and admonishing charcoal, and his baritone snarled a sharp, brusque "Fine."

You turn another page of your book, the crackling fire warming your outstretched toes, but you stopped absorbing the words a while ago.

With every scratch of his quill and every bewildered little huff of breath, your mind and eyes wander to the focused, candlelit face scowling over parchments galore, book forgotten in your hand, the turning solely an automatism.

In the peaceful solitude, your thoughts zero in rather loudly on the thing between you and him, again – not a surprise, really, for it is the main sentiment haunting your every waking hour, and almost every dream, too.

It really shouldn't be this complicated, thinking about it now, in the light of recent events. The secrets he shared, the things he does to you, with you; it should be a clear indicator that you're more – well, more than friends, right? It should even transcend the benefits part; given this is a friendship, which you very much hope it is at least.

You steal another look at him, glancing over the cover of your book – The Picture of Dorian Gray. And Snape might just as well have fallen out of one of those Victorian era books – somber, mysterious, daring, an alluring, dark concoction that holds you captive like a spider its prey, caught in a web of sticky clutches through nobody's fault but your own.

Your eyes dart down to his elegantly curved lips, slightly puckered in disbelief before his tongue sweeps over his bottom lip, casting a kissable gleam on it.

The tension arising in you still feels like a fulminating punch to your guts even after all these months you've tackled it, and it sweeps you off your feet when it hits you, triggered by nothing but his stupid lips. His eyes flicker up to meet yours, inquiring. Intense. Charcoals burning into you.

Your mind makes a U-turn at his stare, as if by command, laser focusing on the essential component of your relationship: Sexual, passionate desire.

The book almost drops to the floor as a firecracker of sudden need erupts in your center, a need to touch him, feel him, closer, all over you – the arousal so familiar yet so strong and overpowering it surprises you each time anew.