Silk, silk everywhere. Thighs. Arms. Groin. The heavy wool of his robes dragged it across his skin in warm little shivers, and Draco bit his lip as he stirred in the ashwinder skin, shifting so that his classmates wouldn't notice just how... enjoyable he was finding this lesson.

Then a dark shadow fell across his desk, and a smoky voice murmured: 'The consistency of your potion is passable, Mr Malfoy, but the excess ashwinder will destabilize the potion for storage purposes.'

Draco shifted even further, pressing his front against the desk--and hence the silk against his erection. 'Yes, Professor,' he nearly moaned--and managed to curb it into a sullen cough when he noticed Pansy shoot him a puzzled glance.

'Perhaps,' said Snape, voice still lazy and warm and curling about Draco like smoke, 'you'd like to revise the theory later.'

Draco, who had read up beforehand on exactly how much ashwinder to add to a Nightsight potion in order to destabilize it without making it dangerous, knew that he didn't need instruction on theory. What he wanted, and what Snape was willing to give him, was instruction on certain applications instead.

'I'm afraid I'll need a little guidance, sir,' he managed, his own voice dangerously husky. Pansy, now struggling with the infuriatingly slippery frog's eyes, didn't notice.

'Very well then.' And suddenly Snape's voice was back to normal--cold and black as obsidian--and Draco nearly blinked as the heat between them evaporated. He still hadn't gotten the hang of how Snape did that--it was quite admirable, it was, to be able to mask oneself so quickly.

Snape was peering at his potion again, face oddly distracted. 'Come to my dungeons later, Malfoy. We can't allow your sterling performance to falter, can we?'

Draco saw Granger's back stiffen out of the corner of his eye--and his mouth curled in a smirk as he wondered exactly what had offended her the most--that his performance had been called 'sterling', or that he was getting private tutoring when she herself had been denied the same request only a few lessons ago.

But Snape had turned away now, and was looming over Finnigan's cauldron with an almost perfunctory sneer on his face. His sharp, harsh words cut through the quiet bubbling of their cauldrons, and Draco let himself close his eyes to the sound of that voice, captivating even when it was cold, and imagined it heating when he was alone with Snape again.

Alone.

With Snape.

His cock throbbed hotly against the cool clasp of silk, and his fingers tightened around the ladle in his hands.

'Time to add the frog eyes now,' Pansy said triumphantly, indicating the grey-white mess she'd spent the last few minutes pulverizing.

'Indeed,' Draco drawled, clearing his throat. He realized that he sounded rather like Snape.

* * *

When he knocked at Snape's door three hours later, strung up so tight he could barely breathe, he expected to thrown against the door the moment it closed, hard hands digging into his hips, hot tongue sweeping into his mouth.

What he didn't expect was for the door to swing open without a helping hand, for there to be no eager body flush against his.

He blinked.

The dungeon was somewhat... dimmer than usual, but not in an unpleasant way. The fire wasn't its usual, glaringly fierce blaze--it was... milder, somehow, softer. The dark walls glimmered in the firelight, casting flickering shadows over the couch.

Wait.

Over Snape.

Who was reclining against the couch with a supine grace that did something strange to Draco's pulse. Snape's eyes were shadowed, twin pools of gleaming darkness, and that little glitter in his hands was the rim of a glass, no, a chalice, filled with blood-red wine.

Oh.

If Draco had thought he was hard before, he had been... oh, Mordred. Sorely mistaken. Sorely.

The way Snape was waiting for him, curled like a dark snake on the couch, as watchful and easefully poised as a predator... Draco bit back a moan.

Snape indicated the empty place next to him. 'Won't you join me, Mr Malfoy?' Oh, his voice was doing that smoke-honey-silk thing again. 'I believe we still have those properties of ashwinder to revise.' The dark eyes glittered with amusement.

What? Oh, that. 'Um,' Draco said, and immediately hated himself. Who the hell was he, Potter? 'Of course,' he amended, standing up straighter, ignoring the decidedly southwards direction of his pulse. He strolled over to Snape's couch--hearing the barely-audible whisper of silk beneath the swish of his robes--and felt his courage return. Already his mind was coming up with possibilities, postures, positions... and that coffee table was just the right distance from the couch...

So when he settled next to Snape, neither too far nor too close, his face wasn't burning any longer--well, except for a slight flush that surely had the right to be there--and his pulse was calm. Relatively. Snape was handing him a chalice too, warm fingers brushing his, and Draco took it, mouth curving gamely. He watched Snape's eyes follow the movement of that shining rim to his mouth, follow the movement of that wine down his throat--oh red-rich wonderful--follow the moist sweep of his tongue over warm, wine-darkened lips.

Snape swallowed.

Draco smiled.

And set his chalice down, carefully, on the floor--lifting his foot to rest it on the table instead. Yes. Just the right distance apart.

Snape raised an eyebrow at the presumption.

Draco lowered his lashes apologetically. 'I think I twisted my ankle on the way over here, sir.' He was quite proud not to have bungled that sentence.

A muscle in Snape's jaw twitched. 'Did you now?' His mouth seemed to be threatening to break out of its usual stern line.

Draco nodded. 'Perhaps you should have a look at it, sir?' He reached across with steady hands to lift the hem of his robe, ever-so-slightly, baring an ankle that wasn't covered with something as decent as a sock. No. For above the regulation school shoes that shone blackly in the firelight was something even more devious, even more eye-catching, than bare skin. Not more bare skin, no. But a stocking.

A black silk stocking.

Snape's eyes widened.

Draco, who hadn't played this game with Snape too often, felt his heart thrill with delight. That expression. Yes. That one. Was worth it. Worth all of it. Hours spent half-hard in class. At lunch. At dinner. Wondering what Snape's hands would feel like, warming to the static of that silk. Wondering how Snape would work it off, one stocking at a time, fingers gliding across his thighs and tongue wetly devouring every inch of pale skin revealed.

Oh, yes. That look. The look that promised everything.

Snape cleared his throat. 'Perhaps I should,' he said unevenly, eyes fixed unerringly on the delicate silhouette of Draco's ankle against the tight black silk. 'Have a look at your ankle, that is.'

Draco leaned back against the couch, victory curling his mouth. Snape wasn't looking at his face anyway, so...

But all thoughts of victory promptly scattered from his mind, like loose scrolls in the wind, the moment Snape's hand touched his thigh.

His thigh.

Draco exhaled in a rush of breath.

That hand slid down, still over the frustrating weight of robes, until it reached his ankle--and then curled under it gently, lifting it as though it truly were wounded. Fragile. Precious.

Draco's heart stopped beating.

Snape worked his shoe off, carefully, precisely, not a single flick of his fingers wasted. Laces came undone and were pushed aside, and the shoe slipped off easily into Snape's waiting hand, which lowered to place it gently on the floor.

Draco's foot, encased in black silk and suddenly excruciatingly hot, twitched.

Snape smiled.

His hands ran under the arch of Draco's foot, so sensitive that it made Draco hiss--and up over the finely shaped ankle, tracing its shape in delicate little circles that had Draco's blood pounding--before sliding, finally, daringly, a little further up. Warm fingers squeezed his calf, bare skin meeting bare skin in oddly uneven places as the silk of Draco's stockings gave way to fishnet--and Draco gasped, biting his lip, watching Snape's hands push his robes up and up and up.

'Nothing wrong here,' Snape's smooth voice was saying, but Draco wasn't listening, not really, not when Snape's warm mouth was suddenly so close and his breath was so moist and...

Kiss me, Draco thought, and, wonder of wonders, he didn't even have to say it--because Snape's eyes darted up to his, warm and dark and suddenly intent--and that's just what Snape did.

Draco registered, distantly, that Snape's fingers were fumbling at the fastenings of Draco's robe--strange, Snape didn't usually fumble--because all he was really paying attention to was Snape's tongue, rich and thick as velvet and just as warm, wrapping around his own with the taste of plums and wine, slightly sour and slightly sweet. It was a luxurious carpet of sensations, rough and wet and hungry, and Snape's voice was here, right where it belonged, echoing inside his mouth.

He barely noticed lifting his arms to have the robe sloughed off--barely noticed the cool air that greeted his bare arms, and his thighs, yes, right there, when silk finally ended and skin began.

Snape's hands were massaging that skin now, slowly, gracefully, long swipes of long fingers in long, elegant curves. Draco arched helplessly, feeling his erection rise in its soft silk prison as Snape's fingers roamed on his thighs, so close--but Snape's mouth pinned him down, sucking at his tongue thoroughly, mercilessly, leaving no taste unturned. It was only when Draco moaned--a sound so sudden and deep that it startled them both--that Snape pulled away, panting, eyes dark and face flushed.

'Oh, God, you--' Snape muttered, then stopped, staring at what Draco had been wearing under his robes.

Draco blushed suddenly--fiercely--but that was all right, because Snape was flushing too.

'You--' And Snape fell silent, as though words failed him.

Draco looked down: for there, stretching for miles and miles, were his long legs--slender and golden-skinned, criss-crossed with glistening dark silk--a silk that gathered into an uninterrupted, inky night only when it reached his lower calves. Black lace trimmed the fishnet when it came to an end on his upper thighs--casting sharp shadows against flushed, pale skin--and his erection throbbed wetly in its scarlet confines, a damp patch darkening the lighter silk there. The same scarlet silk, black-edged with more lace, rose up his torso to finish in sweeping curves just underneath his nipples--and Draco realized what he looked like, what the corset and the stockings made him look like, but it didn't bother him because judging by the look in Snape's eyes, this was exactly what Snape wanted.

Exactly.

'Beautiful,' Snape murmured, voice so heavy and broken it didn't even sound like himself--and Draco was startled to hear him so moved, startled when the hands on his thighs gentled, curving around them, lifting them so that Snape could place a kiss on each silk-clad knee.

Beautiful, Draco thought to himself, dizzily, as Snape's sharply angled face lifted back up to his--beautiful when Snape kissed him again, tenderly--beautiful when Snape's palm, warm and careful, cupped his silk-clad cock. Snape's mouth moved away to lick down his throat in long wet movements, a warm serpent's tongue, a snake's, until it finally found his nipples and sucked on them, slowly and excruciatingly and relentlessly, until Draco was writhing in slow undulations against Snape's palm, and his nipples, when Snape pulled away, were just as flushed and red as the silk underneath them.

'A rather Gryffindor shade, don't you think?' Snape whispered into his ear, and Draco barely gathered enough indignation to respond.

'It's not Gryffindor red,' Draco said easily, hips still rising and falling slowly under Snape's caress. 'It's...'

'... Slytherin red.' Snape finished, moving his mouth along Draco's ear now. Lazy and warm and--'Ah!' Draco exclaimed, as Snape's fingers rubbed the silk into his slit, wet and heavy with pre-come.

'Darker, sweeter, more poisonous...' Snape was whispering, still whispering, voice heavy and hoarse and hot against his ear. 'Your shade of red, isn't it, Draco?'

The shade of the Compulsion potion. The shade of Snape's wine. The shade of Draco's skin when it flushed too dark to distinguish from scarlet, the shade Snape's mouth was now, heated with wine and kisses. Draco lifted his fingers, slowly, to trail along that thin mouth--shivering when hot breath moistened his fingertips. He reached down, then, for Snape's own waistcoat--but before Draco could move to kiss him again, Snape's eyes narrowed, like a cat's, and he purred: 'How long did you study the properties of ashwinder?'

Draco nearly laughed, but he was too busy panting. 'All last night... and the night before that.' His fingers were taking far too long on Snape's buttons. 'I knew just... ah... the right... oh... amount to... add.'

Snape's hand tightened against his cock, as if in reward, and Draco suddenly found himself thrusting helplessly. The ease of just a few moments past seemed to have vanished--Snape's palm was snug around him, hot, moving the silk against his heated skin in a way that made Draco sob. He could feel it coming, coming... Stop, he wanted to plead, wait, but Snape's hand only sped up, as if daring him, daring him to come here, on his Potions master's couch, dressed in stockings and corset and lace.

'Not a Gryffindor red at all,' Snape was saying to him, but Draco barely heard him--the murmur was smothered against his throat, Snape's mouth curved in a smile.

Snape's hand twisted.