Owl to Severus Snape

[scarletskirt.livejournal.com]

We need to talk.

Meet me at the old playground at half past six, don't be late.

Lots of love,

Lily

Comments

[scarletskirt.livejournal.com]

I've realized that you're good at hiding it.

*A steady warming sensation floods her cheeks. As much as she wants to direct her attention to the sand beneath her feet, her eyes don't leave his.*

I know about the escort. I know...well I fucking know almost everything now, I reckon.

[dontbegoofy.livejournal.com]

*Snape has lived his entire life knowing more than he understands. Hoarding and dealing the arcane, the esoteric, the confidential, never once pausing to examine implications. He has no answers to Lily's politics and movements - mostly because he's never bothered with the questions. She's a mystery, an unfathomable agent of pain and arousal, a creature created to punish and reward and entrap him. It isn't particularly strange then that his shelf-like gaze turns livid, scuffed boot digging into the sand of the park until he's perfectly still. It's incomprehension imploding inwards, collapsing into itself until it's turned inside-out and transformed into a singularity of indignation and annoyance. A cold little core of why is this even being discussed rising in his throat with all the speed of a pinball. This conversation is something he's both wished for and dreaded since childhood, outcome and realization - feelings manifested and recognized - but now that he's having it, it rings untrue, not so much in content as in context.*

Your people could be hunting me down as we speak, and you expect me to sit here on a fucking swing-set and talk to you about an escort?

[scarletskirt.livejournal.com]

*Lily continues, frank in her delivery.*

I don't know why you didn't tell me before, in school or...what? Were you embarrassed to have feelings for me or—

[dontbegoofy.livejournal.com]

*Lily is interrupted by a rock. It's a good rock. Round and flat - perfectly fitted for the clenched fists of children, for summer lakes, for sailing right past Lily's ear and landing squarely above Snape's own. It falls into his lap, its lengthening distance, its subjection to gravity, leaving space for the pre-pubescent roars and a flowering, expanding sort of pain.

He wobbles then clenches, a reaction delayed by awkward seconds and humiliation.*

[scarletskirt.livejournal.com]

*The moment the rock flies past her cheek, Lily rounds on the boys, overpowering their giggles with a sharp shout.*

OY! Either quit it or piss off, will you?

*She turns back around, gaze resting on Snape once more. Her knitted brow relaxes as Lily picks at her already chipped nail polish.*

You know, secrets eat you alive. From the inside out, just gnawing away until that moment when something triggers panic. And that's all I can see right now, panic.