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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It’s been over two weeks since Regulus’ attack, a week since the shop’s re-opened, but Severus still closes the store on his own. Because he is such a damned bleeding heart, he’s somehow in the store on a Friday even earlier, because something about weekends and young people and whatever.

He soft chime near the register sounds without a bell, someone stepping over the wards a few feet back from the front door, and he looks up from the book he’s reading. It’s not exactly been a busy day, and he prays it remains that way. Most customers are so painfully stupid that he simply cannot cope and he’s sure the entire business is going to go under if he has to do this much longer—

Oh.

Black eyes narrow in obvious disdain.

“What do you want?” he asks, voice flat.

The pale brown eyebrows slide up his forehead, just a little further.

And he slowly gets the courage to leave the entryway and walk closer to Snape with the kind of casual footsteps that are so casual that they belie the owner's efforts to be casual, to the trained eye. His whole body language is saying, but I'm making such an effort, Severus, see? Remus holds the bag out and waves it around a little before sliding around so that he can tilt his head down to the side and glance.

"Regulus Black, actually. I'm not stalking you or anything. What are you reading?"

“A book,” he says, the words biting out. Said reading material is promptly snapped shut and sent away from view. Because it’s none of Lupin’s damned business what he reads in his spare time or even his busy time, in fact, nothing Severus does is any of the werewolf’s business at any time at all.

“I’ve been closing the shop since the attack. He’s not here.”

Obviously, but see, what he’s really saying is So this means you can LEAVE now.

His brows knit together and he pulls away at the snap, opening his mouth with a small smile to say, in a voice that clearly suggests the silent 'and then we could have discussed it together,' "I guessed as much. I just wanted to know what the title of it was because I wondered if I'd read."

Remus turns to walk away again, but instead of actually leaving, he browses, which is possibly an even more consciously frustrating thing to do for the fact that he knows that he doesn't have a metaphorical knut on him and Snape no doubt knows this just as well as Lupin does. He browses anyway, thumbing through the shelves with the bag tucked under one arm, and in a preoccupied voice says:

"It's good of you to send him home like that, but who's got an eye stuck to your back?"

Because he's a Gryffindor, Snape.

“I am sure the City would not be in any dire peril if I were to be absent for twenty-four hours,” he snaps. He’s not going to rise to the bait and do the I-can-take-care-of-myself speech, because he doesn’t put it past Lupin to point out that he’s managed to die once already. “In fact I am positive that it would not suffer at all if I closed up early and went home for the day, either.”

He will kick your ass out, werewolf.

“And if you’re going to play at attempting to collect all the Black brothers to your fold of adorably loyal cowardice, don’t do it on my property. Go meet him for an ice cream and fountain drink, or whatever it is you do."

"And I get put back together in two or three, Severus," he says, voice still preoccupied and hands still turning bottles around and straightening things and pausing here and there to examine something that catches his interest; it's mostly basics, things a third year could do, but he doesn't doubt the things on the shelf would be useful to know for later. He would trust them over Harry's or, worse, Ronald's or his own any day.

"Still hurts. Do you sell to muggles?"

He clears his throat and steps away then, fingers lingering on the label of a basic blood-replenishing potion before he moves closer to Snape again, setting the bag of scones in front of him.

"As much as I'd love an egg cream, that's not at all what I was after. I have little to no deference for his last name. I have all of the questions in the world for him about them. But seeing as he's not here, won't you have a bite with me?"

A bite with him?

Severus gets very coiled and very quiet, anger boiling up immediately and twisting and snapping until for a moment it seems like he is going to immediately strike out with something far more damaging than mere words.

That moment hangs there until he slowly rises from the stool behind the counter and he gets up to put something back on a shelf. He does so delicately, the violent anger draining from him as he recited recipes in his head.

He turns back, at length, his expression blank. “I sell to whomever has the funds.”

And that is twice that Severus has ignored utterly Remus' question, even though it was an obvious and simple yes or no answer that was necessary. Perhaps even more than disliking being noticed, he dislikes being ignored, and Remus places both hands flat down on the service table and stares over at Snape, still smiling pleasantly, but in a way which drains any of the usual brightness out of his eyes.

"I'll remember that, when I have the funds. You never answered my question."

Despite the other man being taller, younger, alive, and probably significantly stronger and faster due to his disease, Severus isn’t intimidated. He moves back over to the service table and stands straight in front of Lupin, apparently casual.

“Are you asking me about being a Death Eater?” he inquires, voice soft, speaking as if they were conversing about anything at all but that.

When the subtle threat is ignored and Snape comes to face him from the other side of the counter, he lifts his hands again, shoving them deeply into the pockets of his sport jacket and leaning back with half-lidded eyes, wondering how far he should test the situation. No one is here to keep them balanced and in check; it's just them, them and a bunch of children (who, despite being of age for the most part, are still fresh-faced students in Remus' only memories.)

"Your words, Severus. Not mine. What if I am?"

“You keep asking me about Muggles,” he says, that conversational tone of voice barely hiding the dangerous edge – an edge that could slip to anything, at any time. “As if you’re amazed that I would converse with them, much less do business with them.. employ them.”

A pause, and he tilts his head, faux-pleasantness on him. “You’re so very observant and you find me so… interesting… I was curious… what, exactly, I’ve said or done besides the simple fact of being a Death Eater to give you that impression. You assume, really, that such was my motivational aspiration.”

He purses his lips slightly, feeling an urge to step away for whatever reason, but he ignores it and stays near, with the piece of furniture between them. It won't be the first or last time he is put on the spot by that man, that much Remus is certain. He speaks in measured tones and at length, not nearly as faux pleasant himself as he had been a few minutes ago, but the smile is still there.

"You're a Slytherin. You sold me up a river recently. You shouldn't be surprised that I would cast suspicion on someone, not when they cast suspicion on me and myself on Sirius Black. And I am not particularly ashamed to say so. It's a fact. But it may very well also be a fact that I've assumed far too much of you."

He shakes his head then, moving his hands in his pockets in a half-shrug.

"I would say that I'm pleasantly surprised, but would you even want to hear it from me, Severus?"

“You know, if we were playing martyr, I could say I only did it to save you from some other less comfortable means of vacating your position,” Severus explains, all soft words and sharp looks. There’s amusement in his eyes, and a faint not-quite-smirk of a smile on his face. The professor that Lupin knew just a handful of days prior in his own timeline would have never said anything like that – particularly not like that. Teasing in a dark way with vicious undercurrents. But the man that stands before him now is a man who has spent years buried against the heart of the Dark Lord himself, and he’s come out a little more off than normal.

“And you’re a Gryffindor.”

He resents that Lupin is even remarking on it, on his position on Muggles, because he’s done his damn time.

"...less comfortable means?"

For as hard as he tries, he can't pin Snape's deeper meaning, or his goal for saying something like this, or even just the implications of his obvious entertainment. His own eyes shake back and forth slightly, right to left, so quickly it's like a vibration as he just thinks over the other man's words, exactly as deeply as he was meant to consider them. The hands go to the counter-top again, fingers curling around the edges. His eyes narrow then, face growing tight at the nasty, striking tones of Severus' voice.

"I passed out as a Gryffindor decades ago. I haven't been one in a very long time, as a matter of fact. You know what I am, sure enough as James Potter did."

He looks particularly unimpressed at the drop of a dead man’s name – just more corpses, ones he’s not mourning over. Severus has long since moved past flinching at the topic of the death of certain parties. One cannot stand before Voldemort and tremble over dead mudbloods.

“The position is cursed. No one’s held it for more than a year in ages, you know that. Or else they wouldn’t have hired you. Did you know I held it, a few years after you? Want to guess how it ended?”

Yes, he is doing this On Purpose.

"They gave it to me because who better to teach that subject matter, hm? Albus probably had some strange ideas in his head about myself and Sirius Black and James' boy, who knew what he was thinking. Who knew what he was thinking when he let my parents send me there in the first place. I was there because that's where they wanted me, and I don't regret it. I'm not an idiot, Severus Snape. And I don't believe in some silly curse."

He turns around then, not liking the way Snape's face can stay coolly unemotional, even cattish, while making these kinds of implications.

"We've already covered the fact that you're...no longer living. But I have been away from that school and that teaching position for months, and I am still as alive as I can be."

“Temper.”

One side of his mouth twitches in a mock-smile, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. He looks and feels intense, like he’s waiting for something. He’s angry that Lupin is here, angry that his privacy and his quiet life – already violated with murder and curses - is being invaded by ghosts of his childhood. He’s so angry that he could snap at any moment, but he’s too well trained – brainwashed, perhaps – to let it happen.

“What do you want from me?”

His voice is barely above a whisper, now, and it’s obvious that he’s reigning in his own temper.

“You’re in my shop. I’ve asked you before to leave me alone. I’ve told you why. I’m done. I’ve died. I’ve died to suffer this divide. What. Do you. Want?”

"I don't have a temper," he says, almost subconsciously regretting it a moment later. It's the same pattern as it's always been between himself and Severus Snape. Baiting and running. His jaw clicks shut after he speaks, audibly, and he whirls back around because he refuses to answer questions like these without looking a man in the eyes, even if they're murky, terrible black ones. He leans closer, no matter how much of a bad idea it may be, because he needs to make sure that if Snape speaks, he hears.

He would hear anyway-- curse and all. But it's a social habit of intimacy, and this sort of conversation requires either intimacy or shouting. Remus would rather the whole neighbourhood not hear his and Snape's business.

"I have never had anything for keeps in my entire life. For all I know, the truth is that I would like to hold on to bloody something, even if it's just your ugly nose and personality. Or more practically, because I want answers."

Edited 2008-10-24 09:05 (UTC)

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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