Lasting Comfort

Title: Lasting Comfort
Author: aerynalexander
Rating: Hard-R
Character(s): Snape, Remus (Snape/Remus)
Objects/Places/Animals: in Azkaban with Lupin's cardigan
Summary: Severus ends up in Azkaban with only one source of comfort.
Disclaimer: These characters belong to JKR.
Warnings: wanking, clothing fetish?
Notes: I am a magnet for plot bunnies. Please ignore my plot hole(s). Sorry it isn't pure smut.



"Here, Severus, take this. We'll get you out as soon as possible. I promise. Just hold on to this in the meantime. Hold on to it and think of us ... of what we have for as long as you can."

~


Days passed. And days became weeks. Which in turn became the better part of two months. In all of that time Severus Snape, locked in a cell in Azkaban, heard nothing from the outside world. He thought he might have received owls, but they never came, and neither did any visitors ... save for the guardians of Azkaban, the dementors, which lingered all-too-often outside him dank cell, draining from him every happiness, every good memory he had ever known without mercy or pity. What was merely meant to be formality following the defeat of Voldemort had turned into an eternity for him.

The human guards had not understood that he wasn't a Death Eater when he had been brought to the prison. They had stripped the black robes from his back and given him nothing to wear in their place, tossing him naked into the cell, not caring about the cold and the damp. For whatever reason, possibly instructions from someone who knew better, he had been allow to keep one thing.

Severus pressed the jumper to his face and inhaled. Even after so long it still smelled like its former owner, like Remus Lupin. He breathed in the scent of his lover, both gained and now lost in the final year of the war, and tried to remember his words, his eyes, his touch. The memory of them was becoming so faint that the cardigan and the scent of his after-shave, the smell of him, hardly brought it back to him anymore. Severus suppressed a sob as he realized that everything he had experienced with Remus would soon be gone, and his sanity with it.

His skin turned to gooseflesh as he felt a dementor approaching the door. He moaned and crawled into the farthest corner of the tiny cell, wedging himself into the corner with the jumper still clutched to his chest. His heart pounded in fear, but he had found a way to keep them from getting at some of his memories. And it didn't involve Occlumency, which had proved quite useless against dementors.

Severus wrapped one hand around his flaccid cock and held Lupin's cardigan to his face with the other. He closed his eyes and prayed that he could still manage an erection. Just enough to give the dementor something else, another sort of happiness, enough pleasure to feed upon so that he could keep his memories. So that he could keep Remus.

At first he had simply been able to picture Remus, sweaty and aroused, and that had been enough, but then those memories had been drained first of color and clarity and then of meaning so that all their nights of passion had become one gray blur in his much abused mind. Then he had imagined Remus doing more mundane things like dressing or bathing or shaving in front of the mirror. Then those too were leeched from him. Severus had tried to fantasize about his lover, but without being able to remember the curve of his body, which he had looked upon so often and had known so well... the fantasies were empty and hollow.

But after losing all of those memories, nearly every moment of passion they had known together, Severus was desperate to protect the other memories he had of Remus. Of his lover reading in bed. Of him pouring them glasses of brandy to share by the fire. Of all those times they had walked the castle grounds by the light of the waning moon. So many memories that he never wanted to lose, even more so than their intimate experience because those moments were so much more important ... so much more to Severus in many ways.

Severus cursed between his teeth as struggled to make himself hard through long, frenzied strokes that normally would have brought him off in just minutes. The dementor was lingering there at the bars to his cell. He could feel that loathsome creature there like it was watching him. He fisted himself harder and pressed his face into the jumper. Coldness was starting to pervade his body.

Remus, help me, he begged silently, almost attempting to draw the jumper itself into his lungs as he inhaled.

He shivered as he grasped his cock in a firm, almost rough grip, feeling the dementor beginning to suck out his precious memories. Severus knew that he was never going to be touched by Remus again and was never going to touch him. They would never even speak to one another again. He was never going to leave Azkaban. He was going to die there in utter despair. He threw back his head and let out a keening cry of desperation, letting the cardigan fall into his lap.

The closest he would ever come to making love to Remus again was his jumper, the only lasting comfort he had taken with him into the cell. Remus had been wearing it when he had escorted the captured Dark Wizards to Azkaban, and Severus with them by unfortunate necessity -- one of the risks of working on the inside. After the skirmish, he couldn't simply have been set free. That afternoon Remus had hastily unbuttoned the cardigan, stuffed it into Severus' hands, and told him to hold on to it. He could scarcely remember the words.

Severus rubbed it against his cock, reveling in the strangeness of the sensation, but then imagining that beneath the fuzzy wool, was Remus' stomach with his soft skin that had so often rubbed against his. This time when he moaned, it was not one of discomfort or loneliness, but of pleasure. He teased the tip of his cock with the garment while fisting with his other hand and felt his cock begin to come to life. Rubbing himself against the cardigan, he felt one of the buttons underneath the fabric and imagined that he was rubbing his length against one of Remus' nipples as they changed positions.

He could still feel the presence of the dementor, but it seemed much farther away as he tried to lose himself in the pleasure he was able to give himself, thanks to Remus. He leaned back against the chilly stone wall behind him and continued rubbing the cardigan against the slit his weeping head, not minding that he was sullying the garment, just thinking about the wool-clad chest of his Remus and the waves of pleasure that were starting to emanate from his groin.

Panting raggedly, Severus arched his back as he dampened the jumper with his semen just moments later. He could feel the dementor retreating, just as sated as he was, by the experience. Maybe that should have bothered him, but Severus found that he didn't care. He merely lay there gasping for breath with Remus's cardigan still pressed to his softening cock. After a few moments, he nodded off with his fingers tangled in the woolly fabric.



Hours later Severus to awoke to the sensation of someone gently pulling the cardigan from his grasp. He moaned in protest and opened his eyes. Warm breath ghosted over his face as he was tenderly shushed. He blinked at the amber eyes, full of tears, that looked so penetratingly into his own. Severus knew those eyes ... those kind and wonderful eyes that could look so deeply into the soul.

"We've come to get you, Severus," he said softly.

"Remus? Is it you?" he asked, furrowing his brow as he tried to remember the face he had known so well before being imprisoned in Azkaban.

"Of course it's me, Severus. Sorry it's taken so long. You were never supposed to be here more than a few days," said Remus as he combed Severus' hair away from his face before kissing him on the corner of the mouth.

"They were making me forget you, Remus," Severus whispered.

Remus hushed him again and reached into a concealed pocket for his wand. "Later. We'll talk about everything later. Let's get you out of here first. All right?" Severus merely nodded. "I see you put this to good use," he said, holding up the stained cardigan. He spoke a quick cleaning spell and said, "Kingsley has some clothes for you, but they would only let one of us in at a time. I didn't want to wait while they searched the robes for contraband... Can you wear this until we get out of here?"

Severus nodded mutely and tried to help as Remus pulled the jumper over his head and began maneuvering his arms into the sleeves. He had lost so much weight that it hung from his shoulders.

"Let's stand you up," said Remus before carefully hauling him to his feet. He tugged the hem of the cardigan over Severus' hips and buttoned a button that had come undone. "Better than naught, I suspect," he said with a nod as he wrapped an arm around his waist to help him walk from the cell.

"Much better," Severus murmured, leaning against Remus and breathing in his soft, familiar scent.