tampered | ongoing log;

ongoing log;

When; Friday afternoon.
Rating; idk up to R, I mean it's Snape
Characters; Severus Snape, Remus Lupin, any of Snape's employees if the muns hate themselves that much c:
Summary; He had meant to come bother Regulus at the shop, but you're here, and you never gave him an answer to his question, Severus. Now suffer.
Log;

He's planning to see Regulus today, to ask him a few more carefully worded questions which he knows when he quietly slips out of the cabin that he's staying in, that he doesn't necessarily demand or even expect answers for. But it will be comforting to ask them, nevertheless.

He makes sure to pick up some orange scones because that's polite, and maybe he can distract the other man with low tea in order to loosen him up, and if that won't work, then he supposes he could properly introduce himself to that young girl who's working at the place (which is still a shock to Remus, as she's a muggle and that's clearly not the half of it, but this whole place is a mild shock to him.) He also supposes that he should get a job, some job, any job as soon as possible, and stop living off of the others.

He doesn't expect to see Severus Snape there when he arrives, squinting after coming in from the cool air and clean light of outside. His back straightens, just a little, and he offers a nervous glance to the brown bag in his hands. Maybe this is a bad idea after all; but then again, maybe this will work out in his favor. He gives his eyebrows one pacifying wag.

"Afternoon, Severus."

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At that response, Severus is very unhappy that Lupin is so close, because there’s some strange emotional twinge at that – something like pain. He moves away, expression hardening. The idea that this man of all people could be someone who prefers his constant company in life is far too close to his deeply entrenched emotional issues than he cares to see admitted.

“Your need for satisfaction is not entitled to my private affairs,” he says, all but recoiling.

He feels tired, then, because he never wanted to be having a conversation like this, he just wanted some goddamn tea, Severus, and because he is always tired because he is Remus Lupin. Perhaps he should leave, but he doesn't, he just observes Snape pull away and leaves that convenient physical divider and takes a place, in the chair that Snape had been sitting in.

It ought to still be slightly warm, but instead it's disturbingly chilly, and he disguises his surprise as muscle aches with a rattling sort of sigh. He places his forehead in his hands.

"I didn't say I got satisfaction out of it or even wanted satisfaction. I said I wanted something that was a little bit more permanent. If that's hatred from someone who I by all rights should leave alone for the rest of time, so be it."

Remus says it with the smile back on his face, but with the certain cruel voice that he so often used on Harry Potter recently. One that said without saying, 'I don't give a shit about what you want or what you think either of us deserves.'

That’s about as much as he can take.

Remus Lupin in his shop, sitting in his chair, using that patronizing tone on him like he was some stupid child. Something goes completely cold in him and he whirls back around, blank and dark. The part of his brain that would tell him that his is very bad idea is not functioning any longer - he's voluntarily told it to shut up because he is that angry.

“Would you like to know how Sirius Black dies?”

Edited 2008-10-24 09:31 (UTC)

His hands stop working at the muscles in his forehead immediately, expression growing frozen, smile camping on his face frigidly, like a defense mechanism, which is what it is when his eyes refuse to meet the other man's. He smoothes his tie down against his chest and leans forward, resting his forearms on his knees almost casually.

"Severus," he says, voice quiet but forcibly pleasant and conversational. There's even a small chuckle after that drop of Snape's first name.

"If Sirius Black was really dead, you'd think that Harry would have told me, knowing that we have a history and a rapport."

Edited 2008-10-24 09:37 (UTC)

"But it's been years when he's from," Severus tells him, watching him, hawk-like. "You're quite adjusted to it by then... Potter is far more concerned with the death of another figure in his life... oh don't worry, not you, you become a bit busy for the boy. Your demise is meant for further on. I'm not sure Potter's even aware of it, yet. Though my only messengers from time after me have been inbred madwomen and children, so it's possible their reports were merely wishful thinking."

Severus, stop talking.

He looks up then, startled, whites of his eyes round like a nervous dog, staring at Snape out of the very corner of them. He concentrates carefully on keeping his hands so very still and not wrapped into the well-worn and thinning fabric of the knees of his charcoal grey slacks. Slowly, as he speaks, his eyes trail around the room, faced slightly away from Snape as they are. But it's possible he knows what Remus is looking for. Anything around Snape that glints.

Because he's been around the block a few times out in the world where nobody cares if he's Albus' pet project, he's no little boy, and that means something.

"You're telling me that Sirius Black dies only soon after my experiences end? And that I do as well, Snape? In that war?"

Edited 2008-10-24 09:48 (UTC)

"Did you really think any of us would make it out alive?" he hisses at him, leaning forward again, trying to force the werewolf to look into his eyes. It's a control issue, it's a dominance issue - he's gone so long being so supremely powerful in mental magic that it's become an addiction. He can slip in between the cracks of the Dark Lord and Albus Dumbledore, and so he can with such ease sneak into the mind of one broken ex-professor and see what makes him squirm.

Not that he doesn't already know.

"You're there," he says, almost idle. "You're there when Black dies and you don't stop it. I've no idea why, I wasn't present- much my dismay. Maybe you slipped up. Maybe you stopped caring. Maybe he didn't trust you to have his back." His voice drops to a whisper. "But you were there and he still died."

Edited 2008-10-24 09:56 (UTC)

"Nobody wants to hear about their own death--" Remus mutters, almost defensively, eyes slowly turning in their sockets to meet Snape's, Lupin's head following in turn, until he is once again facing his old schoolmate. The defensive voice almost continues, but then Snape keeps talking, and Remus' face slowly falls, starting with his mouth, until there is a vicious, almost angry, denial coupled with blame in the expression in his eyes. One which is, curiously enough, or perhaps not so curiously, not meant for Severus Snape.

He's out of the chair in less than a second, almost unnaturally so; in fact naturally so. It's clear that the other man is his intellectual and mental superior, and more than Lupin he is in a hundred ways, but there's no doubt that both of them are aware that Lupin has the upper hand on the offensive. Flashy magic or otherwise.

His fingers wrap in Snape's lapels rather than his own slacks, not as tight as they might have been expected to grip. Because although his breath is on the other man's face, purposefully, hoping to evoke certain things perhaps, it's also quite clear that he wants to leave Snape ample opportunity to rush away in the next moment.

"He's a good friend of mine, and you can't possibly understand how upset the news of his death hurts me, but he was dead to me in that prison for years. I didn't even know if he had a soul in there still. If I could have done something to keep him alive, I don't doubt that I would have."

He sucks in a breath, voice hoarse, the thought I don't have a temper, I don't fluttering past and forcing some calm into the second half of the statement.

"I am not responsible for Sirius Black. And if he's gone and made another STUPID decision for himself and the people around him, I am not going to take that responsibility for it again."

Edited 2008-10-24 10:10 (UTC)

For a second he's terrified and he hates himself for it - with all he's been through and with all he's done, the moment in his life that truly and deeply terrified him with absolute mortal horror was the moment when he was sure that the werewolf Remus Lupin was going to kill him in fifth year in the Shrieking Shack. At that moment he had forgotten everything, his mind and body had frozen, and he'd had to be dragged away in the most humiliating fashion he could conceive. It still gave him a trigger of reaction, a tiny flicker back to that moment.

It's gone when Lupin's hands are on him and he realizes the taller man is giving him the opportunity to break free - he's won. A fire lights in his eyes and Severus stares at him, so close he can see himself in Lupin's gaze. Severus knows that Lupin doesn't want to rise to his bait and that he doesn't want to be angry or violent. This is a victory, getting this out of him. And look where they are, so nearly intimately linked. Severus could do anything - anything - and he'd be trapped. He could whisper a million words, spells and curses and hexes, and steal his will away.

Surely Lupin must know it, especially when Severus' hands go to his, fingers digging into the back of his hands, dry and cold, keeping him in place.

He doesn't speak - but it's a deadly and very real threat as it is.

His throat and mouth go dry almost immediately when Snape's blunt nails dig into the backs of Remus' hands, into the much too thin skin that covers all of those dainty, old before their time bones. His tongue darts out and licks at his lip as he gives one last, suddenly accidental, pant before pulling his head slowly back. His eyes never leave Severus', though.

And Remus can hear the hammering in his own ears, but there are no answering hard heartbeats because Snape is dead, and that feeling is returned again, raising the hairs on his arms and the back of his neck. Stagnant blood pinata. Big lump of dead meat.

When he speaks, his voice is still a challenge, but very small.

"You say something."

Edited 2008-10-24 10:33 (UTC)

Severus still doesn't let him go because he thinks he sees where this is going and it's sickening and fascinating all at once. He considers breaking away, perhaps even ripping at his eyes, something, anything, to teach him a lesson but then-- oh, but then.

It was a challenge, yes. A dare. And certainly Lupin knew the danger.

His eyes are clear and his voice is high and cold when he whispers it.

"Legilimens."

He has a sinking feeling of realization at first, almost immediately, cold and dark, and Snape's eyes keep his own trained on them, like they're the surface, and the only way to bring himself back to breathing is to follow that indistinct underwater light. Those damn black eyes. It turns to a terrible weight in his stomach when he realizes what is going on, and that he's been in this situation before, with Albus Dumbledore.

"Snape--" he manages to hiss as a threat, before he knows what is going on, and that Snape is snatching up all of those little relevant memories, the ones related to the blame he was feeling.

Blame his father for speaking his mind. Blame the Death Eaters for turning him and for knowing that they would be waiting for him to grow up nice and monstrous and angry and violent. Blame Albus for knowing it all and sheltering him at Hogwarts and not the other ones. Blame Snape for being a coward. Blame Sirius for being selfish and stupid. Blame himself for having no backbone.

It's not the violation that really bothers him; of his trust or of his mind. It's the knowledge that Severus Snape can and will, eventually, use every one of those fleeting little memories and feelings against him. His fingers release the fabric of Snape's shirt, still trapped under the other man's own fingers, like claws.

"Stop."

This is what you get he thinks viciously, known that Lupin will sense the intent as his consciousness shoves through his mind like a knife, rifling through and ripping out all the tender parts and violating them. He isn't being sneaky and he isn't being coy, he's brutalizing him because he wants this man to know what happens when he pushes Severus Snape too far and underestimates him.

"Beg me to stop you monster," he demands, his voice acid, hands and fingers gripping as hard as he can, painful. "Or I'll do it again."

Edited 2008-10-24 11:02 (UTC)

For just a moment, Remus' eyes, still trapped in Snape's cobra gaze, narrow intently, little slits, and what floats up from his pre-consciousness but never quite makes it out of his mouth, for the better of the both of them, is that my mind is not a book to be rifled through at your convenience, because it makes me very angry and it will come back and bite you one day because that is my nature and we both know it. He gasps in pain instead, eyes finally forced closed by the burn of the thin fingers ripping at his skin.

"Stop, please. I am begging you to stop, Severus."

Edited 2008-10-24 11:10 (UTC)

He gets what he demanded and so he breaks eye contact and pulls his hands away, letting Lupin stumble or drop or whatever suits him and stepping back himself. Severus takes several paces to one side, walking backward, putting space between them, keeping close watch on him. His wand isn't visible, but he can have it in hand in the blink of an eye.

It's a defensive stance, and the message is clear: If you come at me again I will retaliate lethally.

Silence ticks by as he lets the stolen glimpses of memory settle in his own mind. Later, he'll remove them for inspection, like so many bits of collected potion ingredients. When he finally speaks, his voice is calm, thought almost far-off sounding.

"Why do you push me the way that you do?"

Remus slides to his knees almost immediately and falls into the routine easily enough, even with Snape-- look at me, Albus' tame werewolf. He doesn't face the other man again for a long while, licking his thumb and carefully wiping the little beads of blood off of the back of his hands so that they don't stain his clothes, because he honestly can't afford to let that happen. He glances at the wand once, twice, before scooting back to sit on the seat of his pants and stare up at Snape bonelessly, still only half-meeting his eyes. A legilimens, he ought to have figured.

Eventually his face finds a way into a shaky smile, and Remus thinks perhaps he should be less anxious, after all he's been through, a war veteran and everything. But he's always been anxious, ever since he was a boy.

"Because we're both fools. Because I get tired of having two choices, shut my trap and act mostly harmless or terrify the living daylights out of a man as soon as I raise my voice. Even Sirius Black didn't fully trust me. I don't have any notion that you ever did or could. Maybe it's refreshing."

"You know that's simply unhealthy, Lupin," he points out. "To supplement proper stability in your life with someone that hates you."

There is something deeply ironic about Severus Snape talking to anybody else, ever, about mental health. He seems to know it, too, because the soft tone of his voice is ever-so-twisted, self-depreciating in its mocking.

Apparently after hovering on the brink of an all-out battle, he can be perfectly civil.

Edited 2008-10-24 11:51 (UTC)

It's easy enough to fall into civility with Severus, maybe because they both recognize in a way that civility is easier and less of a stress in the end for both of them, and Remus had never had much personally against the other man to begin with. It's easier still to fall into civility when you are sitting in a pile with scratches on your arms on another man's floor during business hours in broad daylight.

Well, oops.

The smile is much more honest now, and he's clearly still never going to forgive what just happened, the same as Severus will no doubt never deal with hot, bloody breath on his face. He needs Snape for certain things, either way, and need will domesticate a man to any purpose, even if it's being jovial toward a man who just violated your privacy.

He wonders if Snape would kill him if he asked for a hand up.

"You're probably right, I'm simply mentally unwell. Keep it from Harry, won't you?"

"I'm sure he manages to make time to notice all on his own, don't you worry," Snape murmurs, keeping his eyes on him. He leans back slightly on the counter, arms crossed over his chest. Did they really think he didn't know about the going-ons inside the Black house, or that quaint little radio show? He knows all of your dark, shameful secrets of the future-past, Lupin. Enjoy.

Severus fixes an entirely fake half-smile on his face. "I have orders to process," he says. "Buy something or get out."

It was the same as always, which was of course what he'd come around for, sameness and routine that didn't come once every lunar cycle. Something to hold on to. Other very much not well-adjusted things, but Remus isn't particularly well-adjusted, and he thinks this afternoon was a good day's work. Even with the abuse.

Remus pats his pockets.

"I'll buy something eventually. I promise. I suppose this means 'get out.'"

So he stands as quickly as he can, which isn't very, because he's got problems, doesn't he Snape? There's something weird about him. Curiosity almost killed the Slytherin, maybe. It decidedly might kill the cat. He thinks in big metaphors like that as he turns (nervously), to leave and heads to the door.

"Evening, Severus."

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