from the palace to the riverside

[amourpropre]

Who: Lucius Malfoy (Sr) and Severus Snape α
What: Creepers will creep.
Where: Somewhere in Badside.
When: Now. Sundown.

Rain clings to steel and shakes off in earnest by the time heavy footsteps are coming down the zigzagged fire-escape-turned-main entranceway.

The sky has deigned not to open up its downpour for the moment, but the smell of water and ozone hangs in the cooling air and the sky remains angrily clouded. Lucius' coat is damp from earlier in the day, a black garment of too fine a make for this end of town, almost snagging on the grimy stairs as he descends, shoes finding asphalt, as does the end of his cane. He arrived with nothing and leaves with nothing, thus making whatever business he had inside the red-brick apartment complex somewhat mysterious, but wherever he is going to next, he is clearly in no rush.

He walks. Eventually, there will be somewhere interesting he can slither into. A bar. A bookstore. A quiet restaurant. A brothel. (No.)

Comments

[inkdamage]

If Lucius does go to a brothel, the man shadowing him will promptly give up and try again another day - or, well, maybe he'll just stun him and drag the (always, but now even more inexplicably) older man back to his blasted dungeon.

The rain hasn't bothered him, cloaked in more ways than one as he is, and when Lucius sets out, Severus departs from the ramshackle coffee stand he'd been lingering at and trails after him. Malfoy can't see him, can't even hear him him, wrapped in the spell he's in.

Maybe there's a sense. Maybe he realizes, with the nerves of an old soldier put through hell, that there's something just past his heels. Severus will wait until there's an appropriate - or at least safe - place. No corners, no unknown buildings, no alleyways. He must drift easily, ensure neutrality.

So for now, he merely follows.