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

[dontbegoofy.livejournal.com]

*If it had been November, this meeting would be a great deal more impressive. A chilled, empty park and a premature sunset, ensuring the presence of flickering street lights and plenty of opportunities to hide his clumsier reactions in shadow. But nothing works so smoothly - especially not in the presence of Severus Snape. In what is easily the most predictable scenario just in its sheer inconvenience, he arrives five minute late to a sunny, warm evening crawling with ill-mannered children and formidably large mosquitoes. With uncomfortable conspicuousness he's forced towards his destination, each foot taking him closer to snickering pre-pubescents and particularly difficult social interaction.*

[scarletskirt.livejournal.com]

*The children milling about the playground don't bother her, as only a few venture towards her while she rocks back and forth on the swing. An odd football or child playing tag zips between the swing set, but there is something that feels as if she is far enough away from the hubbub to play spectator. As she watches the children running, laughing, and getting skinned knees and elbows, she can't help but think of Harry one day zooming about the green. He'd be older, of course, able to walk and talk and beg her or James to chase him around. For now, however, she was content on his wobbly attempts to walk on his own, incoherent squeals, and splashing in bathtubs while donning a bubble bath hat.

A sudden burst of laughter interrupts her musings and her head jerks up to spot Snape awkwardly ambling towards her. She stiffens and her lower lip predictably curls between her teeth.*

You're late.

[dontbegoofy.livejournal.com]

*There's a half-hearted, only-almost attempt at something snide and boorish. A near muttering of at least I came at all that never quite manages to fit through the crooked, triangular holes between his top and bottom teeth. After all, the key to a good lie, the really hurtful sort, is something vaguely likely. Instead, there's only an unaffected grunt, ineloquent and inadequate and only expected.

He comes to halt just slightly off to her left, as if refusing to sit will make any of this go faster.*

[scarletskirt.livejournal.com]

I don't have cooties, you know.

[dontbegoofy.livejournal.com]

*Like two expired grapes, Snape's eyes are small, shrivelled and off-colour - dry, waxy fish eggs in fleshy sleeves. They've always been particularly good at staring, at being cold and sustained, at being dilated little patches of dry unpleasantly on an oil-slicked, slightly twitchy face. He tries to fill them with insinuations of impatience and tension, but only comes away with something embarrassingly forced and half-way to river troll.*

I think I figured that one out.

[scarletskirt.livejournal.com]

Yeah?

*Lily grasps his hand, managing to steer Snape towards the swing seat.*

I wanted to talk, not watch you loom over me like a fucking shadow. Sit, will you?

[dontbegoofy.livejournal.com]

*Something sparks at a cellular level, a ruffling ignition of his pores that only Snape can see and feel. The hyper-awareness of his hand doesn't fade even as he's led to his seat and released. Appendages now doomed to over-thought and restless movement.*

And talking will achieve what, exactly? Maybe you haven't been keeping track, but every time we try this it only gets worse.

[scarletskirt.livejournal.com]

*There is a sudden burst of recollection, like an alarm sounding through her nerve endings. Just as suddenly as she grasped his hand, she lets go, and muscle memory leaves behind a throbbing chill coursing through her palm.

She remembers the last time their hands touched. She swallows, willing the wave of nausea to pass.*

Closure. I hope.

*Lily grasps the swing's chain with two hands and angles her body towards him. She tries to keep her expression even, but her eyes are wide, and her lips are parted, and her head is tilted ever so slightly to the left.*

I've realized something.

[dontbegoofy.livejournal.com]

*Even an optimistic man would realize that the chances of Lily's next sentence being "I've realized my husband is a anthropomorphic sea slug with an ego the size of the pacific" is relatively low. And Snape is not an optimistic man. Instead, he considers her even gaze and one-ups it, offering the expressionistic equivalent of a shelving unit.*


Well? I'm not going to guess.

[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.