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 there's any visible relief, it's slim; Severus isn't inclined to be terribly emotive unless he's furious, and he's far from it now. (Paranoid, yes, but that's the default state of things.) He's made a bit more easy by that, anyway - while he might not hate seeing Narcissa, or even her husband, of his contemporary age, and it isn't as if he ever hated Rosier, there's just... too much, already, welled up in his life like dried blood waiting to crackle back open. He must stay apart still.

It helps that he can tell Lucius isn't lying.

(Because he can tell when anyone isn't lying.)

"As you say." They. He knows where this man stands, at least. "I'm not inclined to it." Under some bizarre Muggle woman's thumb, leashed along with her pet monsters.

[amourpropre]

"To their credit," because for all that Lucius has a special resentment for them being what they are and his own being what he is, they are Malfoys, "I suspect it is simply an adaptation. There was a time when I had to pander to a government full of officials besotted with the very agendas I opposed, but one retains their status or one hears nothing, acts on nothing."

He is careful, mid-sentence, not to speak specifically of Muggles. Severus' agency was a point of contention, in the end, with some saying one thing and others saying quite differently, but as far as Lucius was concerned, the other man was simply dead and he delved no further. Now, one wonders.

But there is time to figure it out. "However. That is simply one way." And he's very tired.

[inkdamage]

The way Severus reacts to Lucius' remarks concerning his extensive duplicity is... interesting. Halfway between watching a science project and trying to puzzle something more personal out. Severus doesn't wear human interest well, and for a moment it's plain that he's considering something - whatever it is, he doesn't speak of it.

"I have my own research to attend to," he tells him. "Unpleasantly, it's what landed me here." C'est la vie. "It needs funded, obviously, so I work." He tilts his head. "I hear you went into the fog."

'I hear' is a very curious way of phrasing 'I've viciously stalked all of you to the fullest extent of my long distance capabilities', for the record.

[amourpropre]

'I hear' gets a raised eyebrow, but considering what was mentioned earlier, about Lucius' taking time to leave the boundaries of Hellsing, it seems a little late to complain about the complete lack of rumours that Severus is working from. Lucius' fingers lace together across silver snake head, breaking eye contact to crawl study over the room as he responds.

"And here I am, quite whole and unharmed. Yes, I went into the fog. You've a mind to scavenge for spare change too, have you?" Well. Spare change by Malfoy standards.

[inkdamage]

Just because he doesn't appear to use the cohort network doesn't mean he isn't fully capable of observing what goes on over it, Lucius.

And here Severus falters a bit, looking (and feeling) much more like one might expect him to at his age.

"-No, I went, some weeks ago, but just to look at it." ... Yeah that sounds awesomely safe, okay. "When you knew me in school, after you'd graduated and I hadn't, near when I was first marked-"

Subject veer, then- "Did you know anything of what I was doing in between terms?"

[amourpropre]

And Lucius goes picking down memory lane, head at a contemplative cant as he tries to figure out anything particularly remarkable about this time, for Severus, or what he did between school terms. All the same, he follows the direction of subject veer - he doesn't have much remarkable to say about ink monsters and teasets.

"Studying for the next year, I wouldn't wonder. No, nothing stands out to me."

[inkdamage]

Ahahaha.

(Severus does not actually laugh.)

A smile, slightly forced and seeming to imply Oh Merlin if only you knew- well, at least he has the good graces to seem somewhat incredulous at himself.

"Different universes, then." Because not even Severus in all his disdain for the world at large would imagine Lucius to be that unobservant. "Which we could spend the next several hours discussing and getting a headache over, if that interests you."

[amourpropre]

Well let Lucius think about that for j--

"No thank you."

It wasn't overly interesting, or painless, when discussed with LeMat, so why should it be now? "I've been introduced to the concept." And maybe that, the question of Harry Potter, is a thing Lucius knows and Severus does not, but who can tell? It is set aside, for now. "Rather, I wouldn't mind getting to the heart of it, which I presume lies in what you did when you weren't at school." Inexplicably.

[inkdamage]

This is his surprised face. (Spoilers: he's not surprised.)

"I thought that I was very clever," and it's a little funny to hear him, at the ripe old age of twenty-five, looking back on his absurd youth, "and developed a few practices mostly out of boredom that accidentally became profitable when aimed at certain populations."

Severus isn't ashamed of what he did, specifically or generally; it was the seventies and everyone used, at least. He's just not sure how to explain it without using broader Muggle terms. It takes him a moment.

"Modified sensory enhancement potions, reconfigured chemically, out of liquid form; magical narcotics aren't so rare here on their own, but good ones are. Apparently it sold, and extremely well.

I've not the temperament to deal with the distributor."

[amourpropre]

Sitting back as Severus elaborates, it's clear that for a little while during this explanation, Lucius really has no idea what he's talking about, pallid eyes clear of much except scrutiny and puzzlement. But when one starts on about magical narcotics, it's a little difficult to miss the point no matter who is saying it.

His eyebrows go up, and he hesitates, before commenting;

"How very enterprising of you."

Which is code for that's awful and hilarious, but mostly due to knowing the Snape he knows, making this thing both different and yet strangely credible in a very off-beat, morbid way that would otherwise never happen. The injoke is clear in the comma of expression next to his mouth, the beginnings of smirk, but that's where it remains. "You sold to Muggles?"

[inkdamage]

It is awful and hilarious, even with this Severus; the reactions from certain people who found out as it was happening were priceless - he'd never set out to be some kind of sixteen year old wizard cartel king, it was just a few holidays gone in a very bizarre direction. Eventually he got bored of it and that was that, there'd been a war on and even the perverse entertainment of it was utterly uninteresting in comparison.

"...Well, and Barty."

[amourpropre]

Well, at least that's possibly a source of amusement in any universe, and this time, Lucius does allow non-smirk to get to a half state of being, the smallest sound of mirth at the back of his throat.

The present presents itself again, consideration paid in a look away from Severus as he winds himself back towards the implication about how Severus has not the temperament to deal with the distributor and fill in the blank.

Rather than ask outright, the glance back silently demands more information.

[inkdamage]

It's the little things.

Severus is vaguely comforted by the notion that Lucius finds that funny - both because it means that their worlds are not so different as to be wholly alien, and because it means Lucius hasn't been so strangled by the war as to leave him dead inside. (The latter is a concept Severus has difficulty articulating to himself; as if he knows anything about the psychological aspect, there. But it's re-assuring to hear him pretend not to laugh all the same.)

Down to business, then.

"Negotiations - politics, the bureaucracy that exists even in the underground - is not anything that I am equipped to navigate. When someone argues with me I want to give them detention or kill them, I don't know what any of these people trying to negotiate with me expect."

A beat. "It's fairly lucrative; I don't care to engage someone I don't... know."

It's not a favor - not him giving one, nor asking for one. But he does need help, and the twin pressures of not caring to explain himself to an outsider and knowing the clock was ticking on needing to out himself to this man at the very least have led him here.

[amourpropre]

"I understand."

Which feels weird. That Lucius should understand. Not that dealings with the Ministry were ever particularly wholesome, from strategic donations of galleons through to threatening the right families to achieve an end, but those were politicians. He folds one leg over the other. "You caught me on my way back to Sobek Croix from a meeting. Two gentlemen-- fences, interested in the purchase of fog items-- in an apartment I'm quite sure wasn't theirs. I've a notion it went well enough.

"I've been trying at this." Already, he means. Talking to the natives, or the not-so-natives who've been here a trifle longer than himself. "And I would prefer to work, additionally, with a commodity of higher value," and he tips cane in a subtle lean to indicate the conversation at hand.

Time is money, and all, and more money means a little more time before things are terrible again.

[inkdamage]

In another world, Severus will develop subterfuge skill beyond anyone's imagination; in this world, in his lifetime, that capacity has been re-directed into assassination. He is still eloquent, smart, sharp - but that ability to manipulate words is so deeply entrenched in a viciousness that he can't fake it, and though he's got a better-than-expected handle on his temper, that handle doesn't extend to the impulses.

Very calmly murdering someone who's offended or frustrated him him is worse than yelling at them for it; neither are constructive. Severus realizes this. Thus, they are here.

(Not... that he's some kind of mindless killer, just that shit happens, and he'd rather be left unbothered.)

"This isn't an industry I'd like to remain in entrenched in," he admits, with all the icy aloofness one might expect of him. "But it's something that can be very profitable very quickly, and leave the both of us with more time and means to move forward with."

[amourpropre]

"Naturally. A project to wile away the summer."

Figuratively speaking, tone dry. It's getting colder, actually, which was never a concern before.

Lucius lists back into silence, then, studying the polish on his cane for lack of anywhere better to look. Not quite the same thing as what Severus Snape, in another universe, did with his chemistry set to fund his school things. But pride would probably twinge more if it hadn't already kept irritating himself whenever he spent necessary funds accumulated by his younger self and his pretty wife, or contemplated the blasted employment office which he wound up. Not bringing himself to do.

Possibly at the mercy of the people that work there, really.

"What ground have you made thus far?"

[inkdamage]

"To be fair, it's not like this is explicitly illegal."

Yes, yes... because undermining authority by way of abusing the fact that Baedal merely does not have a fully developed anti-narcotics task force in their government makes it better.

... Maybe it does.

"I've no idea. I proved what effects it had and that it doesn't kill people, sold the lot that I had to three people, and judging from what I've heard they've made, I rather think I've rather been ripped off. Now there's some fucking-" oh, he does that in this universe, does he? "-vampire lord who wants to talk to me about not going through ... whatever all that was."

[amourpropre]

Occasionally, Lucius peers at Severus like he is an interesting insect that needs study. Fortunately, this isn't unusual for Lucius, and he manages to refrain from it when it's actually his turn to speak.

"Vampires," he says, with a flat sort of cynicism. "They do seem to make a culture here, don't they?"

[inkdamage]

Severus shrugs, spreads his hands.

"I believe it's the same one that oversaw those executions before all that unpleasantness." Well, they're still English. "So there's a certain familiarity with them, anyhow."

Back-stabbing, circular victimization, eating their own; the drugs he makes are addictive tenfold to supernatural beings, and much of his prospective users are not at all human. It shouldn't be a humorous remark.

[amourpropre]

This is all profoundly unwise. But it's a difficult thing, to shake the idea that Snape tends to know what he's doing. Even twenty-five-year-old drug dealing Snape.

"Well, if you were after a demographic known for their more addictive personalities, I can't say you didn't find it," he notes, after a lengthy enough pause of consideration at all of the everything that is coming out of Severus' mouth.

If he ever meets his contemporary-- "You wish me to be diplomatic at a vampire lord."

[inkdamage]

"You've been diplomatic to far less, and far worse."

Which is which? He doesn't say.

But he's got a point, Lucius.

[amourpropre]

Well.

Yes.

But if it seems like it's been a while, that would be because it has.

Still, Lucius doesn't allow hesitation there. "Not to those who would consider me food, but I take your point. Assuming fair terms are named between us, then yes, I can help you." Dryer, he adds; "Left to your own devices, I'd hate to think the outcome."

Because Lucius is the picture of all things capable and responsible, left to his own devices.

[inkdamage]

A sharp smile. They're both so well behaved anyway, of course.

"Pending you don't tell anyone who you're working with, and I never have to deal with the business end, I'll go half with you."

He's not a moron - Severus knows full well the value of someone skilled in these arts, as well of the value of silence. He knows Lucius Malfoy isn't going to accept anything less than that, and so he's not even going to try to work him down to something.

[amourpropre]

It's good, sometimes, when your reputation precedes you. Across alternate realities, even.

Severus won't push going lower and Lucius doesn't desire to aim for higher than half, accord wordlessly reached as he tips his chin in at a nod, satisfied and almost pleased with the other man for not trying anything so silly as squabbling over what is clearly rightfully Lucius'. "That suits me," he confirms. It had want to.

[inkdamage]

Sometimes, there are concessions that Severus is willing to make - this is one of the rare ones. It's not so much that he doesn't think he could deal with Lucius otherwise, just. He knows better, and you get what you pay for.

So he nods. They have an accord.

... And then he looks like he doesn't know what to do with himself for a moment, because he doesn't. In a way, they'd been friends, once; who knows what these two men are to each other now, besides semi-familiar opportunity.

"I'll contact you - with the CiD. The old fashioned way doesn't offer much privacy."

He flexes his left hand, nearly subconscious, when he says so.