Found, by seeker.

PAIRING: SS/Remus Lupin

RATING: NC17

DISCLAIMER: no harm, no foul

SUMMARY: Snape stalks, and balks at what he finds.

NOTES: Part of the Severus Snape Fuh-Q Fest (Snape/Lupin pairing)

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It all began with a potion.

That could well be the story of his life, in the end tally, but for the moment, Severus Snape stared at the pitiful pile of belongings he was currently scrounging through and wondered if he'd always been so low, or if it was something he'd gained over time.

Privacy was a fallacy, particularly when one was a double agent for the good in the fight against evil. Even moreso when one was a teacher in charge of guiding and protecting vulnerable children against not only that evil, but also the well-meaning if particularly inept decisions of their elders nominally in charge of defending their welfare.

Dumbledore was always one to promote the Gryffindors over common sense, but really ... a werewolf to teach defense against the dark arts? There was a certain symmetry in a dark creature teaching defense against dark enemies, but there was also an unacceptable level of danger in such an arrangement. Snape assured himself that risk was the reason he strayed so often up to the Wolf's den, at times when he knew he could go undetected, once he cast a spell or three to wipe out all traces of his incursions.

He refused to entertain the notion it might be because he was obsessed with Remus Lupin. Had been since he was a boy. Hadn't lost the obsession even when he'd nearly been eaten for it. Found it just as bloody strong and compelling as ever it had been, even when he was no longer under the compulsion of teenage hormones.

Of course, a decade or so of celibacy might make a man a trifle unbalanced when it came to fascinating, attractive, gentle creatures of the dark. But he wasn't obsessed. No.

He wasn't a stalker, either.

Simply because he spent every spare moment he had watching Remus, following Remus, spying on Remus, sifting through his underthings when Remus was locked in a cage during full moons, working on ways to introduce suggestibility elements into wolfsbane potion without decreasing the effectiveness of either, dreaming about Remus, usually on his knees in front of Snape doing unmentionable things to his private parts ... no, Snape was not a stalker.

He was merely a very thorough man. Remus Lupin was a threat. To Hogwarts' security, the students' safety, Dumbledore's credibility, Snape's sanity ...

His fingers brushed across a crinkling object, a scroll where there shouldn't be one. Unable to stop himself, he pulled it from beneath the thin woolen sweater and spread it out to read it, ignoring the fact that it was addressed to Albus Dumbledore. His eyes narrowed in disbelief at what he found, and he re-read it three times before replacing it, with shaking hands, precisely where he'd found it.

No.

It would not happen.

Not while he could stop it, and not while he watched.

And he would always be watching.

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Lupin didn't have to look up from the essays he was marking to know that Snape was back. Staring at him from the doorway. Not saying a word, just standing there, exuding menace, black eyes glittering at him, breathing softly. Looming menacingly.

Smelling edible.

Not in a werewolf-way, either. Snape gave off the most incredible mixture of confused emotional smells Lupin had ever encountered. Strong emotions, so mingled it was nearly impossible to distinguish the individual scents. Anger was there, old and still fresh. An intensity of desire that nearly made Lupin stagger, but he couldn't tell its motivation. Desire to kill? To shun? To hurt? To fuck? The smells of blood lust and body lust were too closely twined to separate. Curiosity, too, enough to fell the stoutest cat. He tried not to smile.

Snape wouldn't understand.

"How may I help you?" he asked politely to the shadow glowering at him from the door. Snape cleared his throat.

"We're far from friends," Snape began in an oddly hesitant voice. Then his voice stalled.

Lupin glanced up at him, puzzled by the unaccustomed sight of Snape at a loss for words. The man's expression was closed and hard, as usual, but his hands twisted, fingers lacing together in an unusual outlet for nerves. Lupin lay his quill down and sat back in his chair, blinking up at Snape, giving him time to say whatever it was he was finding it so hard to spit out.

"I don't trust you."

Another non sequitur, equally obvious. Lupin clasped his hands atop the desk and kept blinking at Snape.

"I am watching you."

He couldn't let that one go by. "I noticed. Any particular reason?" Snape's mouth opened and Lupin hurried on, "Aside from the mistrust and lack of friendship issues."

Snape's mouth snapped shut again, and for a fleeting instant Lupin thought he saw pain in the depths of the dark eyes. It was gone so fast he decided it must have been an illusion.

"Don't waste your chances." With that cryptic utterance, he turned in a swirl of fine black robes and disappeared again.

"How exceedingly odd," Lupin mused aloud. Odder even than the norm with Snape, and that was quite odd indeed. Putting the strange visit aside to think on later, he bent back to the essays.

It wasn't until much later that night that he recalled the strange visit. Rinsing his socks out, hanging them along the bricks in front of the fireplace to dry by morning, he padded barefoot over to his small chest and reached in for his spare pair. The nights were chilly and his toes were never warm enough. A stray scent caught his nose and he froze in place.

Snape.

In his quarters.

In his *underwear drawer*, for god's sake.

Reading his private correspondence.

For an instant, hot anger flared, and with it, the almost irresistible urge to hunt Snape down and tear him to pieces. His usual heavy remorse for allowing the wolf inside to roar to the surface was absent. But on the heels of the urge to destroy was an even stronger urge.

To claim.

Snape's scent was on Lupin's clothing, and Lupin wanted more than he needed his next breath to find Snape and leave his scent all over Snape.

That startling revelation knocked the animal impulse right out of him, landed him flat on his arse in the middle of the floor when his knees gave out, and left him, an extremely befuddled man, sitting wondering what on earth he was going to do next. He couldn't want Snape. For heaven's sake, the man was unbalanced, always had been, and for a werewolf to turn from a human because the human was unstable, it had to be a very deep instability indeed.

On the other hand, Lupin himself wasn't all that well knit together, emotionally, mentally, OR physically.

Staring blindly at the drawer, still gaping open, and the corner of parchment poking out of it, Lupin came to the bizarre conclusion that he might very well want Snape after all.

And if his actions were anything to go by, as well as the cryptic warning that now made much more sense, the feeling was mutual.

His lips twitched, then stretched, until a full-fledged grin brightened his face. Oh, my, this could be good.

Maybe good enough to allow him to burn that scroll before anyone else had to read it.

Being naturally optimistic and trained by life to be pessimist, Lupin tried not to think about it too much. Instead, he dwelled on thoughts of Snape, and turning not-friendship into not-hatred, and maybe getting naked together along the way.

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Perhaps the veiled warning hadn't been his brightest idea, Snape reluctantly conceded, watching Lupin watch him back at breakfast the next morning. But he'd simply had to do *something*. It was intolerable, that Lupin should have such a contingency plan. Snape knew from past experience the werewolf had the resolve to do it, if need be.

The need would NOT be.

He only knew he was growling under his breath when Flitwick gave him a strange look and Lupin got heavy-lidded and began to breathe heavily. He stopped the sub-vocalization so abruptly he choked and had to cough to clear his throat.

Flitwick levitated his chair a few inches further away. Lupin's eyes opened all the way again and he looked vaguely disappointed. Snape ate the rest of his breakfast, what he could force down past the lump in his throat, as quickly as possible.

Then he sat there playing with the cold dead remains of egg and toast, reluctant to leave before Lupin did. It came to him slowly that while he refused to believe he was obsessed with the man ... creature ... whatever one chose to call him, Snape felt the same compulsion to protect him that he did with the children under his care. He would do whatever he had to do to protect him, even if it meant hurting him. He got just as irritable, just as demanding, and just as sarcastic with Lupin as he did with the students. With one additional element he'd never felt toward any of the children.

He desperately wanted to rip Lupin's robes off and touch every inch of him.

With his tongue.

The vividly-colored fully-detailed mental image that accompanied that realization caused him to drop his fork. It clattered, bounced against the plate, rebounded off the table, rattled off the chair leg and finally landed, echoing, on the floor next to his left foot. Snape stared straight ahead, pretending he couldn't see the way every person in the hall seemed to be staring at him, particularly Lupin, and waited for the unaccustomed blush to die from his cheeks.

He didn't bother to retrieve the fork.

Lupin left the hall before he did. He paused behind Snape's chair, as if to say something, and Snape tensed from his scalp to his toes. He could hear the soft breathing behind him for a long moment, and to his utter mortification felt himself becoming aroused. There was the ghost of a movement, as if Lupin's hand had hovered over his shoulder for an instant, then Lupin finally went on his way.

If there'd been a convenient way to remain in his seat for the rest of his life, Snape would have grasped at the opportunity. As it was, he bent his mind on determined thoughts of icebergs and Trelawney in pink lace until he could rise from the table without embarrassing himself any further.

The day passed in a blur. The students were idiots, no one poisoned himself or blew anything up that couldn't be replaced, and dinner found him sitting at the table again, playing with his food, staring under his lashes at Lupin. Who looked disgustingly healthy for a man only a day past his moon change.

Too healthy to do what he threatened to do. Although it was impossible to tell, with Lupin. He'd always been the cheerful one, the smile on his lips covering the heartbreak in his eyes. Snape closed his own at the soppy poetry his mind insisted on springing on him when he was least expecting it, and sighed. A chair scraped beside him. Flitwick was eyeing him nervously again.

Twenty five days before he would have an excuse to return to Lupin's chambers. Three and a half weeks of watching.

He shouldn't look forward to it so much. It couldn't be healthy.

In its own way, it was sinfully enjoyable, though. Lupin was oddly beautiful, in the pared-down, thin-edged, planed way of one who suffers chronic pain with inner grace. His skin was luminous when it wasn't flushed with fever before the change; his eyes a mutable sky overwritten with emotions too complex to quantify; his movements not quite human in their easy flowing strength. Days flew by too quickly, nights took much too long, and even his beloved experiments couldn't calm his mind.

Something had to be done. Soon, before he lost what semblance of sanity remained to him.

Before he had the chance, the moon filled, and the change was upon Lupin. Snape found himself back where his self-revelation had begun, staring dully down at the scroll, still in the drawer. Barely hidden, as if the writer knew no one would care enough to look, no one would find it until it was too late to do anything about it.

To stop it.

Snape would.

Resolve burned brighter than before, the evidence not disappearing in the intervening month. Lupin had never struck him as a coward, and so the scroll must be an indication of a man at wit's end, the end play he had no hope to avoid. Lupin didn't have all the facts, however. He assumed he was alone.

He assumed the note would not be found until too late.

He assumed wrongly.

For Snape had found it, and Snape would do everything in his power to ensure what it promised never came to pass.

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Three nights later, the curse of the moon had waned, and Lupin dragged himself wearily back from the secured quarters in the infirmary wing to his own much-desired bed. Too exhausted to think, all his natural defenses worn past the point of numbness, he pulled off his robe, dropped it over the back of the chair, kicked off his shoes, toed off his socks, yanked half-heartedly at his shorts and fell into bed.

Strong long arms looping around him would have shocked him right back out if he hadn't been so blasted tired he almost couldn't feel them. Still, instinct reacted, and he tried to struggle. His weak movements were easily overcome and he lay in the prison of the embrace, panting lightly.

"Shh," a soft voice whispered low in his ear. "Sleep now. Rest."

Unable to do otherwise, his eyelids drifted shut and he settled deeper against the warm body holding him, asleep before the final syllable dissipated in silence.

Unnaturally fast recuperative powers were one of the few benefits of being a werewolf, and so it was that less than two hours later, Lupin's eyes popped open. Wide awake, he lay completely still, memories of the last few moments before he'd fallen asleep unfolding in his mind. It was barely midnight, several hours to go until dawn.

He was not alone in the bed.

Sniffing stealthily, he recognized the scent of his bed partner at once, at the same moment his mind supplied the name to go with the rich whisper that had seduced him to sleep. So, it appeared Snape had made up his mind to act on his impulses after all. It rather surprised Lupin, who'd decided the man was much too comfortable stalking after him in the shadows to ever actually DO anything about his attraction. He wondered how much weight the discovery in the drawer had leant the decision, and found himself smiling wryly. The last resort was always just that, and he had some way to go before he took it, but if Snape thought he could save Lupin from himself, Lupin wouldn't do anything to discourage him.

Particularly if such saving included naked bodies in bed together, his head nestled against Snape's slow-beating heart, and Snape's arms locked about him as if he'd never let him go.

Turning as carefully as possible, he managed to move until he could see past the sharp line of Snape's jaw up into his face. He appeared deeply asleep, holding Lupin fast, and half-hard, so his dreams must have been good ones. Lupin edged his thigh over until Snape's prick lay against his balls, up between his legs, and gently closed down until the sweating flesh was trapped up against his perineum. The top of the shaft felt delicious against his balls, and the crinkled hair felt just as good when he nudged his own leaking prick against it.

A little rocking, a little squeezing, and Snape instinctively took over, hands curling down to clench against Lupin's arse, pulling him up close as their hips pumped against one another. The movement of his belly against Lupin's erection was enough on its own to get him off, and the saw of Snape's prick between his legs, sliding past his balls, was a bonus. Lupin tensed and shuddered, flooding Snape's skin with spunk, biting down on his lip to keep from crying out.

Snape muttered, still more asleep than awake, his fingers digging in hard enough to leave bruises. Then he bucked hard against Lupin, his prick jumping in its cage, hot liquid splashing against Lupin's arse and thighs. With a sigh that was more than half moan, Snape relaxed completely, hands curling limply against Lupin's back, face nuzzling into Lupin's hair.

Nicely relaxed himself, Lupin briefly considered leaving them lie as they were, but knew the morning would be much more pleasant without them glued together at the pubic line. Muttering a short, efficient cleaning spell, he held still until it was over, eyes never leaving Snape's face. If the man ever woke up, they had to talk. Lupin wasn't going to take the chance on Snape waking up, realizing what happened, then sneaking out and never facing facts.

Even if Lupin was somewhat confused himself over what those facts might be.

He was still determinedly keeping watch when he fell sound asleep half an hour later.

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Snape knew the moment the wary regard faded, as all the tension drained out of Lupin's body and he slumped bonelessly against Snape's chest. Sex could certainly muck up the senses. The werewolf hadn't had a clue Snape had been awake for their clumsy little grope-fest.

Not that the clumsiness detracted at all from the satisfaction. The urge to run in the face of satiation was immense, but the knowledge of the scroll in the drawer kept him right where he was at. Lupin might have some stupid idea that they would have to thrash it all out once they were awake, but Snape had his own plan, and thrashing would only come into it if Lupin was idiotic enough to protest.

His plan was simple. Shag the hell out of Lupin until he was too tired to do anything insane. Then when he was properly pliable, explain why doing anything insane was a bad idea, and the consequences if he ever even thought of it. Then shag him again until he couldn't walk.

It sounded like a good plan to Snape. There was no better time to commence such a good plan than the present. In deference to his companion's recent bout of moon madness and attendant fatigue, however, he did allow another hour's sleep before he began.

Exactly one hour.

To the second.

At which time, he stopped yanking his balls down to keep himself from coming and slathered his rampant prick with enough lubricant to get it through a knot hole with no slivers. Then he slipped out from under Lupin's warm weight, splayed the werewolf face down on the bed (making sure his face was propped so he didn't smother himself in the pillow, as fucking corpses wasn't really something for which Snape ever acquired a taste), crawled up between his spread thighs and shoved his prick as far up Lupin's arse as he could reach.

Nirvana.

Lupin woke with a yowl as Snape plunged in, his instinctive reaction drawing him up to his hands and knees, burying Snape further still. Snape snaked his arms around Lupin's waist, conveniently close now, and wrapped one hand around Lupin's prick and the other around his balls. Holding him still with the balls and squeezing his prick rhythmically, Snape got on with it.

If the breathy howls were any measure, Lupin was enthusiastically in favor of the motion. Snape found himself growling in concert, as Lupin's arse rippled around him, the prick in his hands jumped and twitched, and the entirety of the muscular body beneath him shuddered and shook. Altogether a most satisfactory commencement to his plan.

Snape came first, hard enough to nearly unseat himself if he hadn't been buried to the balls and trying to crawl in deeper when he came. He remained draped over Lupin's back afterward, as the howls took on a frustrated whine, until he got the feeling back in his hands and was able to tug Lupin's prick until it was empty. The spasms around his still-buried prick were painfully pleasurable, and he found himself thrusting involuntarily in response to Lupin's orgasm.

Which only made the werewolf happier, leading to still more yelps, until they both collapsed against the mattress, quaking, Snape wrapped around Lupin like a blanket. A blanket with hands. Still securely wrapped around a tender prick.

He wasn't going to let go, either. It had taken twenty years and a terminal threat for him to get up the nerve to do what he was doing, and he wasn't about to stop now.

Eventually, Lupin's raspy voice floated up to him from the muffling confines of the pillow. "What now, Severus?" He sounded curious but not the least apprehensive. Snape tightened his fingers.

Lupin moaned.

"Now you know."

It made perfect sense to Snape. None whatsoever to Lupin, as evidenced by his confused, "Eh?"

"You have people who care about you, you unmitigated moron, and you damned well better take that into consideration if you ever decide to do anything noble and stupid and Gryffindorishly insane. I will be watching you. And if there is ANY indication such an action is in your mind, I WILL take steps!"

Lupin rocked against him. Snape stroked the flesh he'd recently been squeezing, then slid his hand down further until Lupin's vulnerable sac rested in his palm. He tugged, firmly, and Lupin gasped, the air leaving his lungs again immediately in a moan as Snape rolled the balls in his fingers. Above his grip he could feel the heat as Lupin's prick began to fill.

"Yes," Snape hissed, mind going blank as the need to claim came over him again, washing away words in a flood of need. Shoving Lupin further over onto his side, Snape pushed back into the loosened hole, his spilt seed easing the way.

Under his fingers, Lupin's prick twitched, then Lupin's hand came down over his, lacing their fingers together. Using Snape's hand, Lupin stroked himself in time to Snape's thrusts inside him. Snape lowered his head and nuzzled the nape of Lupin's neck before trailing kisses down to the side of his throat. Once there, he opened his mouth and bit him.

Lupin tensed, his arse clenching around Snape's prick, then he relaxed and Snape bit a little harder. With a drawn-out groan, Lupin clenched again, setting a rhythm neither could resist for long. Snape pulled hard at the prick in his hand, harder even than Lupin would have requested, and Lupin shook, coming from the brutal touch on his overly-sensitive prick. Not that he complained.

He was too busy writhing like a madman and screaming for more.

Snape locked his jaw on Lupin's skin and pushed in as hard as he could, lost in the way Lupin's body dissolved for him, in the vise-grip of Lupin's arse sucking the come out of him, in the cries Lupin gave that sounded as much like a wounded animal as a man in the throes of passion. He left his mark on and in Lupin, deeply enough that it would never fade, would always be felt. Would always be a reminder that what Snape had found was never to be allowed to come to pass, because Snape would never let it happen.

By the time he left Lupin's bed several hours later, they both knew the lengths to which Snape would go to ensure Lupin's obedience. Neither man walked easily for the next two days.

It set a pattern not deviated from by either ... until Sirius Black returned to Hogwarts.

And Snape proved he would do whatever he had to do to protect Remus Lupin. Even if it meant taking everything he had away from him, and sending him into the cold.

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Lupin stared at the tattered scroll. He'd meant to burn it ages ago, but had never gotten round to it. In the months since Snape had found it, Lupin had come to terms with the fact that his final resort wouldn't work. Not for him. It wasn't that Snape could stop him; no one could stop him if he set his mind to it. It was the fact that if he did it, someone would be hurt. Someone would care. Someone had found him in the midst of his wilderness and someone would shatter if he let himself be lost again.

Damn Snape, after all. It would have been so much easier if he'd never found it.

So much easier to leave. So much easier to quit.

So much easier to die.

He tossed the scroll in the fireplace, gathered up his things, and left the room.

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From a window along the west battlement of the castle, Snape watched the figure until it was too small to see. His eyes burned. But he didn't cry. Because he'd won. Lupin left on his own two feet, not in a box, and one day when things were settled again, when the war was over, when life might attain some semblance of normality ... he would come back.

Until he did, Snape would wait. And watch. He would not lose what it had taken him so long to find.

END

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note: the contents of the scroll are open to reader's interpretation. In my mind, it is a suicide note, written against the day when the man loses the battle to the beast.