A/N: Written for bluemoon02 in fandom_stocking in 2010.

Warnings/Contains: Unbetaed and unBritpicked; present tense; bloodplay.

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A Line So Fine

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They arrive at the appointed place within moments of one another. It's just a little way into the Forbidden Forest, but that is a wood with many secrets, and this is one of them.

Severus leans against a tree, looking impatient, and draws his cloak more closely about himself. It's not all that cold, but these meetings always get him shivering almost as soon as he's left the staircase up from the dungeons. He has a makeshift lantern, a magical pale blue light conjured in a stoppered flask, in his hand. Severus pulls the stopper and the light floats out and upwards, hovering about ten feet above the small space between the trees and illuminating the place like moon- or star-light.

James swirls off his Invisibility Cloak and drapes it over a low-hanging branch. He seals it there with a warding charm only he can lift, at least without spending far more time untangling the magic than Snape would possibly have before James would Stun him into unconsciousness. But it's just a precaution, taking care of a family heirloom; he doubts that theft of the thing is seriously on Snape's mind at the moment.

Severus pushes himself away from the tree and stalks towards Potter. He may be shivering, but he can hear, now, that Potter's breathing is hardly calm and slow. The sound is quick and shallow, and his hazel eyes look as dark as Severus's own in the dim moon-like light. He imagines Potter's heart racing like a mouse's, and wonders if that makes him the pouncing cat. Ill luck, Potter, letting a black cat cross your path!

The faint smile on Snape's face is a little scary, and James wonders what he's thinking. Never one to back down, though, he looks Snape straight in the eyes and moves close enough to touch him. They posture at each other, subtle shifts of eyes and limbs, for a good twenty seconds. Then, unable to stand the anticipation any longer, James reaches out a hand to unfasten the clasp of Snape's cloak, glinting with the look of silver in the magical light. Snape bares a few teeth at him and says "Without so much as a 'Good evening, Snivellus'?" but he doesn't try to stop him.

James pushes the cloak off Snape's shoulders with both hands—he can feel the tremble in the other boy's body—and it falls to a black pool on the ground. Snape just stands there, lean and long, tense but graceful of bearing. At eighteen, he's rather taller than a name like ickle Snivellus would suggest, although a titch shorter than James himself. He's dressed in something plain and black that's not his school robes. The light gives him a faint bluish halo on his dark hair.

"Get on with it then," Potter breathes. Out of the corner of his eye, Severus sees Potter's hands fidgeting with the hem of his shirt, like he's itching to grab Severus's own and put them where he wants them. "Come on, do it."

Severus fingers his wand in its pocket, but he knows he won't need it for this. He's become so intimate with his lovely little razor of a spell by now that he can feel it prickling in his fingertips already, just by force of want and will. Practice made perfect.

"I'm warning you, if you don't—"

"You're warning me?" Severus snaps, and laughs darkly, and Potter shuts up with a thick swallow. "Don't forget that it's I who have something you want, Potter."

James seethes. That's not on; that's not in the agreement. "Don't call me that, Snape."

"Don't call me that, Potter."

He seethes some more. But then, the effort, the mental friction, is what's generating all this heat, isn't it?

"...Severus."

"James."

If James's utterance was a threat, Severus's is a curse in its own right. It's soft and drawn out and menacing, and James is sure he sees Severus run the tip of his tongue along his teeth like someone selecting a sweetmeat from a golden tray.

And now one of Severus's long pale fingers is tracing a line on his cheekbone and he can feel the sweet stinging slice of the skin, feel the warmth and stickiness of a thin line of blood. Severus has picked just the right spot, just the spot where there's still a faint line even James has a hard time seeing unless he examines himself very closely in the mirror, the exact spot where Severus hit him for the very first time with this secret spell of his. James's eyes drop closed; his mouth, open. A warm rush of sensual memory floods his brain, and a warm rush of blood fills his cock.

Severus's own breath and heartbeat have quickened now. He never, ever speaks the spell aloud when they do this. The secret of it is half the point: as he said, he has something James needs. It's beyond Severus's ken exactly why the favorite son of Gryffindor house has such a taste for the feel and sight of the drawing of his own blood, but far be it from Severus not to take advantage of a position of power.

Severus moves his hand over James's jaw, leaving a faint trail of blood. He unbuttons James's shirt and flickers the tiny cuts over his chest and shoulders. Just soft lines from his fingertips, minuscule slices, yielding only a few glistening drops each. Severus knows they don't hurt much; this cutting curse is as surgically sharp as his tongue. But from his experiments developing it he also knows the metallic taste in the mouth, the adrenaline—which James apparently gets off on.

Severus slashes his fingers across James's throat, leaving weeping lines that look like claw marks. He could kill James with a stroke here, should he drive the magic blade just deep enough, and they both know it.

But he doesn't.

Severus only goes on administering this strange pleasure, unbuttoning James's jeans for ease of movement but never straying further down than his hip-bones.

He starts whispering, murmuring, singing different magic over some of the marks to heal them. Severus's lips brush hot skin, his tongue tastes hot blood, and he and James both moan quietly and think why why why can he do this to me—

...Merlin, Severus hates Sirius Black, who can probably have this whenever he wants, and he could never hate Lily but oh, how he envies her. It must be true, there must be something better about purebloods because he can taste it on his tongue, he can sense the difference in Potter's lust-soaked magic curling around him – it is brilliant and shimmering in a way his own never is, there is a potency and a clearness of the note that he never can find in himself, and he wants that power and privilege for his own...

...James would just bet all those pureblood-fanatic Slytherin prats Severus hangs round with think he's hardly better than Muggle-born, tainted, filthy, and maybe he is filthy, to listen to the sounds he's making right now, but if he's poisoned it's a poison James can't help but greedily swallow, wanting it to coil and slither and bloody burn its way through his veins. Lots of wizards are half-bloods to one degree or another, but Severus's true half-bloodedness is somehow fucking beautiful, a silken, twilight thread that Severus walks like a tightrope...

—and too soon, he's stopped. Severus has stopped and backed away. Why? It was never in the agreement that James should get to come, but then it was not prohibited, either. And something had clicked this time, something was new, James had felt it. Why would he want to stop? Just—

"Why?" He voices the question stupidly, the pitch of his arousal making him incapable of more articulate speech. He grunts uncomfortably and squeezes his prick through his pants. Damn it, he's tempted to wank right in front of Snape just to get it over with.

Severus is panting and looking back at him warily. "If the Head Girl only knew what her Head Boy was getting up to," he says, trying to deflect the line of inquiry from territory that could swiftly become very humiliating.

He's never bothered before about whether Potter would come, nor indeed particularly wanted it for himself. This is not to say his body hasn't ever offered, as now, the expected uncontrollable response to having an attractive and highly sexually aroused person in his vicinity, especially one who was aroused because of him. But the appropriate time to finish himself off is afterwards, in the privacy of his bed and his thoughts, not right in front of Potter.

This time, Severus does want it, and he wants to see Potter come too. No, worse: Severus cares whether he can bring Potter off! He wants to – to please him, to lap up his sounds like the rivulets of blood as he heals what he has wounded so no one else will ever know. It had taken a moment of supreme self-control to push Potter away like that rather than start to fondle his prick and produce his own for Potter's rough touch.

James glares as hard as he can, but his desire and his guilt—if Lily knew!—undermine the strength of it. "Why did you stop?" he repeats, hoping he doesn't sound petulant. "Don't I get to say when I've had enough?" James dabs at one of the cuts remaining on his flesh and presses the heel of his other hand against his cock again in frustration. He sees Snape's eyes flick towards the motion, then back up again. Oh ho...

James takes a few careful steps towards Snape, regarding him as a skittish animal that might bolt at any moment. Something has frightened him, he can tell, and he has a good guess what it might be, but right now James wants to share an orgasm with him like few things he has ever wanted in his life.

"Severus," he says carefully and slowly, reaching for one of the other boy's wrists. Severus looks skeptical, but allows the contact, and James places the hand between his legs, awkwardly cupping his cock and balls as best he can with the jeans still on. Severus's eyes roll up a little and James feels his fingers start to curl, wanting to grip.

He then says a word he promises himself he will try to never again say to this person, if he can help it:

"Please."

Severus's fingers do grip him then, and his thumb rubs up and down at the base of his aching shaft. James feels weak in the knees and leans close, gripping one of Severus's shoulders for support and leaning his head on the other.

Severus's fingers are hesitant but curiously skilled, and James breaks his promise almost immediately.

"Please!"

He has reached one hand down, too, and is fumbling for a way inside Severus's robes. Severus, thankfully, helps him, and there is a glorious moment when they are finally, finally, both touching each other's cocks for the first, and maybe only, time. They look up at each other in an erotic haze, eyes glazed and mouths gasping primal sounds and brains gibbering in pleasure and disbelief.

There's no way this is going to be the only time.

It's probably James that kisses Severus rather than the other way around. The kiss is fierce, but not cruel. Something tender lurks inside it, a not-quite-formed thought that the other is strange but amazing.

He is working Severus frantically with both hands now. One is on his shaft with fingers sometimes clumsily passing over the head; the other is trying not to squeeze Severus's balls too hard in his excitement. James is desperate to make Severus come first after a display like that.

Severus whimpers and bites James's lip gently, forgetting how to keep kissing. He's close now, thrusting erratically, making the oddest high-pitched, snuffling sort of pleasure-noises.

And so James loses the contest, and spills himself over Severus's hand to the music of Severus's most vulnerable sounds.

He feels that hand still stroking him, gently, slowly, when he comes back to earth. His own hands have stilled on Severus's cock. Severus ducks and looks him in the eyes, finally seeing the renewed spark of consciousness, and he smiles briefly. Then he places his hands over James's own, and starts to move them again.

It doesn't take long; Severus is as young as James, and incandescent with lust. A few strokes and gasps and Severus makes the most delicious noise James has ever heard. He wants to kiss him again and swallow it, keep it safe in his stomach like the stones some magical creatures have.

They part and face away from each other to clean up. It's somehow too intimate even given what has just passed between them. James examines his skin as he tidies his clothing, and sees that all the cuts have been healed except the one on his cheek, that special one, which is still weeping gently.

Severus, suddenly beside him, pulls James's hand away from his cheek and studies the wound, the bloodstained fingers. Then he licks two of his own fingers and strokes them over the line of blood, whispering the incantation under his breath so James can't quite make out the words in their musical cadence, and it's once again just a line so fine one needs to know it's there to see it.

"The usual, then? Three weeks?" James says, hefting his Cloak and preparing to drape it around himself.

Severus blinks, contemplating.

"Two," he says quietly. He's certain that's all he'll need to come up with a suitable revenge for all of this.

And James disappears.