multiversallogs | you had me several years ago, when i was quite naive

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you had me several years ago, when i was quite naive

Who: Antonin Dolohov, Severus Snape.
What: words words words
Where: Severus' Flag Hill home.
When: Little while after the riots.
Warnings: Medicinal drug use??

Though disdaining of social pursuits, Severus can't quite be called a homebody, either. He works, and he works a lot - he'd be bored otherwise, and considering the pace his mind works at, boredom is intolerable. When he isn't working he's studying, because Severus looks at learning like both an enjoyable leisure activity, and something vital to his existence. He'll never just be done.

Which makes tonight rather rare: sitting in the covered garden room of his house, one window open, a few books laid out before him but nothing that would give the pedestrian academic a headache. He's accompanied by a plate of leftovers, a pizza box with several pieces missing, an oversized plastic cup filled with what is apparently iced coffee, and a lazy golden-colored dog, currently laying dejectedly on the floor near him, in utter, bleak despair over not being permitted to eat anything.

His last few jobs have been intense - fascinating, difficult, different, but also draining. He needs some time off of commissions of that nature lest he burn himself out, and after a day of not having the stomach for anything even resembling food, he's taking an evening for himself.

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Antonin has made use of his relative liberty to wander around, investigating bars, mainly. (He stopped in at the Arena, but not on its big day.) The ability to come and go as he pleases without being checked or called away is still novel. Sometimes, though, he just seems to lose thrust, like a clock winding down.

He's back at home (Severus' home, at least) much earlier than he's probably expected, given that the sun's not even down yet. He wanders out and casually steals a piece of pizza, glancing over Severus' shoulder at his books.

He does a wonderful impression of his old self, sometimes, but Severus is the only one in Baedal who has spent enough time with him to be able to tell when the edges fray. (Bellatrix, arguably, but she isn't presumably looking.) This evening is one of those times, perhaps because he's on the side of the spectrum nearer to sober than not.

There's a moment when Antonin first steps in, in which Severus looks momentarily busted, a small echo of the reaction he used to have when one of his seniors caught him smoking at meetings. But it flickers away in an instant, and he ends up just looking bemused at himself. Antonin is, he feels, fairly low on the list of people who might be scandalized that he's sitting out here smoking a joint and forcing himself to eat.

Permitting pizza thievery without objection, Severus sets his book down - legends of the city, something that looks slightly more fanciful than factual.

"Getting thrown out earlier and earlier, I see." Of bars, of course; but his voice is subdued, not actually thinking Antonin's been up to any great efforts in that direction, today. But they aren't the sort to say How are you?

Antonin makes a face, briefly, and settles himself in a nearby chair. "They want you to pay them, in money." It seems a dubious system to Antonin. "And people keep trying to talk to me. You aren't working?" Because two can play the 'something is unusual' game.

"That does seem to be the case, seeing as I'm here." Dry, but not unfriendly. He takes another drag off his marijuana cigarette and sets it aside for now, investigating his coffee instead. Pot doesn't hit him like alcohol does, helpfully behaving in a much more medicinal fashion.

Then, as an explanation, "Too much working with the dead leaves me in need of the living."

Necromancy: banned at home for a reason.

"Are you saying you want company?" Antonin asks with a lazy grin. "I do technically qualify as 'the living.'"

Antonin's certainly not going to clutch his pearls over some mild drug use. He did go to parties with rich people who thought they were immortal in the late 60s and early 70s, after all. And Severus could use some unwinding, since he's resisted Antonin's affable peer pressure toward excessive drinking.

"And the dead, did they do anything interesting?"

He makes a noise that might be a laugh, but it's humorless - though relaxed. It's not so much company he needs as to just not be up to his eyeballs in things that corrode the soul, but he doesn't hate Antonin's company specifically. So.

"Mm. My client's grandmother placed a particularly awful curse on her family when she died, and she'd been demon-possessed at the time. I had to resurrect her to break the curse, then get her back down again." He rolls one shoulder, as if still sore from the ordeal. (He is.) "Academically fascinating, but..." he trails off, not for effect, merely trying to decide how to describe it. Eventually, "I have a headache." Flat.

Antonin laughs, and toasts Severus with the half-eaten slice of pizza. "You do keep yourself busy. For the money or for the academic fascination?" He is teasing, but just a little bit.

He shrugs, and then adjusts how he's sitting so that he can rub the shoulder he was flexing a moment ago. "Both. I don't see why I shouldn't be paid well for what I enjoy. And what I'm good at."

Severus manages not to add that there isn't much competition for work at his level - not because it would be a lie, as it wouldn't, but because Antonin is not actually someone who needs to be pettily reminded that Severus is as talented as he is. It's taken him a while to break the habit of being so defensive about it - being interred at Hogwarts has that effect.

"Besides, I can do whatever the hell I want here."

A quieter remark. That freedom is worth something unrelated to payment.

"Very true," Antonin says, and takes a thoughtful bite of the pizza. "Do anything but leave." He doesn't have to say I've had worse.

"What did you do when you very first arrived?" he asks instead.

Antonin Dolohov eating pizza is kind of hilarious. Of course, Severus doesn't react.

"I hate traveling, anyway." He likes it here, and is a little stubborn about it - it isn't patriotism, it isn't about the city itself, but about the context of him in it. It isn't perfect, it isn't paradise, in fact it's rather awful in more than just some places. And he fits here. He knows that he shouldn't want to stay, that he should want to go home and finish his task; he doesn't know why he prefers Baedal to the Nexus, where he could come and go as he pleased, and his rational mind finds that vaguely annoying.

(Severus is incapable of choosing not to act when he is obligated to. Baedal takes that choice away from him. His mental health better for it.)

"I worked at an absolute shit apothecary for months, and avoided everyone who would recognize me. Eventually I mucked around with something that triggered the Marks. Narcissa broke my nose for not telling her I was here."

That last is said in a faintly accusatory tone, because it's not like his nose needs any help, thank you Narcissa. But he also gives Antonin a brief, barely-there look, and if the older man happens to catch it he should probably start planning an escape route, because it's the look Severus gets when he's strategizing something.

Antonin remembers that look, and he's caught between being amused and wary. (What Narcissa could have prompted.) "I still say it is a shame I missed her. She is the only Malfoy I ever found interesting for very long." And even then... Narcissa in short spurts was all well and good, but she liked to use him a stick to prod her husband too often for it to be amusing.

"What are you plotting?" he asks, direct, finishing the slice.

Severus is not jostled by the blunt inquiry, though he does take a moment to reflect that maybe he's a bit more stoned than he thought, if he was being obvious. Oh, well.

"It takes a bit to get Lucius to be honest." About anything. Smoking again now; Severus was always closer to the Malfoy patriarch than perhaps anyone else, and perhaps seemingly inexplicably. They have a rapport, even though Severus is well aware that oftentimes when Lucius is looking at him, he's thinking how much better he'd like the younger man if his family wasn't dirt fucking poor.

"What do you want to do?" Here. Anywhere. At all. (Yes, that is an answer to Antonin's question.)

Antonin gives this some thought. (He resists the urge to suggest 'drugs with you,' amusing as that would be.)

"I don't know," he finally says, frankly. "I did not expect to live this long." In all fairness, he hadn't expected to live through the first war. He sometimes feels everyone would have been better off (him included) if he'd been right and just died a proper death instead of whatever Azkaban was.

(Well, he has more.)

"I don't think many of us did."

Severus doesn't have the bleakness about him that those who've experienced Azkaban have - and he wouldn't suggest their trials were equal - but he sounds pragmatic. He did not expect victory from the start, and once the Dark Lord began to grow paranoid and irrational, hiding plans, diving his followers, turning them against each other to test their loyalty... No, he did not expect any of them to survive.

"But you have. Whether you like it or not, I suppose."

(Evidence suggests Antonin will never say no if offered various substances. Even considering Severus' profession.)

"I do not know." Whether he liked it or not, he means. "I have, though, yes. I will need to do something, I suppose." He had no desire to stop drinking, but he wasn't actively trying to drink himself to death. "You are getting at something."

(Well, perhaps when he finishes this one and digs another out of the tin on the table, he'll offer.)

"If I am, I don't know what it is," he admits. "Just that you look miserable."

Which is different than Antonin looking like shit, or old, or like an ex-con; it's Severus noticing.

Antonin's first instinct is to laugh and shrug it off. Another night - most other nights - he probably would. But he's tired, and he doesn't feel like he has the energy to pretend he doesn't know what Severus is talking about. "I did not realize it was apparent," he says, instead, after a moment. He sounds almost resigned.

He stubs out the useless end of his joint, which is all paper.

"It's not, really." Not to anyone who isn't in his very specific position - knowing Antonin, knowing about Azkaban, knowing about what happens when Dementors hang around a person for more than half a moment. He can tell.

Antonin shrugs then. "As you say, I am alive. Now I must think of what to do with it." He hadn't had to plan, at home. When he'd gotten out of Azkaban, he was bound to a powerful lunatic, and he just reacted to whatever was most immediate, and drank and slept in between. He'd avoided the Malfoys, avoided Severus - avoided everyone who looked at him and saw the man he'd used to be.

Here, in Baedal, it was different, but he was the same still. He didn't know what to do with it.

In Antonin's time at home, Severus Snape will have had a million other more pressing things to see to than his old comrade's mental health. It isn't a surprise he didn't notice, or ignored it if he did. Here, however, is another story.

"Have you considered starting with getting treatment for the damage?"

He asks quietly, and doesn't look at Antonin meanwhile, instead choosing to pick up that aforementioned tin and go about procuring another joint. He doesn't avoid looking at him because he's embarrassed - rather, he doesn't want Antonin to have to deal with being observed in the wake of a question like that, or have reason to worry about the risks that come with looking Severus in the eyes.

He's fine with the risk of Antonin punching him for asking, though.

Edited 2012-10-13 04:23 (UTC)

Antonin doesn't punch him, but he does snot derisively. "I do not think chocolate will do much good, Severus, though your concern is touching."

In fairness, any sort of healing that isn't field medicine is healing Antonin has long forgotten if he knew.

"Not if you aren't eating any," Severus says, because he highly doubts Antonin is - even though, honestly, as utterly whimsical and pointless as that remedy seems, the older man should be choking down a block of it a day, and should have been since the second he got out.

"But that isn't what I meant."

He offers Antonin the rolled bit of not-actually-illegal-here herb, intent on making his own after.

Antonin reaches over to take the offering, which is evidently more palatable than chocolate, from the face he makes. "What did you mean, then, as I am clearly too dense to follow." He doesn't seem offended, but he's too tired to play.

"There are other ways to recover. Just like there are other ways to fight Dementors."

(In some far-off future that this Severus will never reach, his alternate self will teach Defense Against the Dark Arts, and instruct students on some of these ways - the result is that several, including young Harry Potter, will turn in essays disagreeing with him. But what do they know?)

But then- "Well. In theory, at least for the first. I've had enough Dementors to experiment with-" that's great, Severus, really, "but people seem somewhat more unwilling to be lab rats." Flatly.

Antonin laughs, at that, though the subject isn't terribly funny. "Oddly enough, it strikes me that most English wizards thought we weren't meant to recover from what they did to us." No one was ever falsely sent to Azkaban. Surely. "What theory, though? I don't suppose your experimenting could make it worse."

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