Second Chances

Chapter Two: Of Missing Boots and Boxers

By Irish

Severus opened his eyes with a start, gasping and reaching for his wand, utterly disoriented. Where was he? He swiveled his head around swiftly, taking in his surroundings, grunting as a spike of pain lanced through his skull. The slanted ceiling and unfamiliar feel of the mattress reminded him. He was in a boarding house, in Russia. Only...

Severus squinted and tried to see around the pounding in his head. This wasn't his room. His room had been devoid of personality. Nothing but his trunk at the foot of his bed. His narrow, squeaky bed. This bed was not narrow, and this room was stuffed near to overflowing. Books, shelves and shelves and shelves of books. The dresser had an assortment of personal items, the bedside table had a small stack of books that mostly hid a framed photo. There was a comfortable looking wing backed chair and footstool in front of the hearth. His room had no hearth, no chair, just the bed, his trunk and the bedside table. Where the hell was he?

Mikki.

It hit him as hard as he had hit the floor earlier. Mikki, this must be Mikki's room. He had passed out at Mikki's feet like the drunken sot he was. Mikki must of gotten him up here, somehow, and put him to bed. Only, Severus now knew, this was not his bed, but Mikki's.

As if only waiting for acknowledgment of that, suddenly his senses were awash in all that was the man his once best friend had grown into. The sheets and pillows around him gave a soft scent of sandalwood and rose, with a second underscent that must have been purely Mikki, a masculine scent, and one that wasn't entirely unfamiliar to him. It made him think of Mikki hugging him, at the end of their third year, just before they got to the station and had to pretend not to know each other. Severus had pressed his face against where Mikki's slender shoulder met his neck. The smell of Mikki's skin.

"Oh God..." Severus groaned, his throat fisting in a sharp rise of emotions. More details leaped out at him. The top book on the stack by the bedside table was a copy of the Torah, and it appeared to be the very same copy Mikki had had in his Hogwarts years, the blue leather cover badly battered. A pair of wire rimmed glasses on the bedside table, smaller and sleeker than they had been years ago, but just as thick. A familiar jumble of potion and pill bottles on the dresser. Even had he not known Mikki had brought him up here, he would have known this was Mikki's room.

Severus slipped from the bed, his boots had been removed, but Mikki appeared to not have taken any other liberties with him. He should leave, Severus thought, terrified of having to actually speak to Mikki. Even if he hadn't passed out at his feet, what could he say to the man he had been having an imaginary love affair with for ten years? What could he say to a man he hadn't known since he was thirteen, who represented all that was good in the world to Severus's mind. What could he possibly say?

'I know we haven't spoken in ten years, but I'm in love with your memory, oh, and ah, I work for the Dark Lord. What do I do? Well, I torture people. Oh, and I'm about to create a potion to enslave man kind... So, what have you been up to?'

Yeah right, and maybe tomorrow he'd wake up beautiful, popular, and rich with a life partner and three cats. Oh no wait, that was Black, well, accept the cats.

"Note to self... castrate Black." He muttered absently. Now where were his boots?

A closer look around the room didn't turn them up. Nor did looking under the bed, dresser and chair. Nor were they in the conjoined bathroom, or anywhere that Severus was willing to look. Time was passing, and Severus had no idea how long Mikki would be gone. He considered simply leaving without his shoes, but then what? He didn't have a second pair, not even back at home. He had never needed one. Where could they have possibly gone?

Hesitantly, Severus started opening the drawers on Mikki's dresser, starting at the bottom, working his way up. Jeans, slacks, dress shirts, sweaters, tee shirts, all in neat rows and stacks. Socks, all folded and lined up. There was only one drawer left, and Severus knew what was sure to be in there, and it certainly wasn't his boots. His boots wouldn't even fit.

He knew he should stop, but it felt as though he was leaving something unfinished if he didn't look inside that narrow top drawer. Besides, maybe Mikki had shrunk the boots.

That was all the excuse Severus needed, and he opened the drawer slowly, palms sweating as though he were meeting Mikki's mother, not peeking at his underwear. The drawer slid open all too easily, almost an invitation.

He was shocked at the amount of color, so unlike his own underwear drawer, which was white briefs and boxers in a generic light blue. He didn't have anyone to impress with his underwear, why bother with anything fancy? Mikki did appear to have someone to impress with his underwear though. Severus certainly was. Boxers, silky and slinky in red and black and blue solids. Others with patterns of dragons or snitches and... smiley faces? Severus was surprised to hear himself laugh, just a little.

Glancing around guiltily, he reached into the drawer and picked up the pair of black and yellow smiley face boxers, made of some sort of faux silk that felt smooth and cool against his fingers. That was... cute, and amusing. Severus shook his head and reached in once again to put them away, another row of color caught his eye though. He paused and looked closer. They were folded, carefully, but clearly briefs, and not just any briefs... Severus felt his mouth go dry and the pounding in his head became worse. Not thongs, that would have been tacky, and judging by the rest of the clothes Severus had seen, Mikki was class in high caliber. High cut bikini briefs.

His throat clicked his he tried to swallow, the hand holding the smiley boxers dropping slowly to his side, as his mind filled with visions of smooth china flesh, and the elastic of those briefs being sorely tested.

In the next moment, Severus heard the doorknob turning. With a gasp, he shoved the drawer shut as the door started to open. Belatedly he remembered the boxers clutched in his hand. Too late to shoved them back in the drawer. Out of options, he simply stuffed them in a robe pocket.

"Severus? Are you awake?"

"Erm," Severus managed, stumbling backwards a couple steps, feeling for the bed and sitting down on it hard as the door opened fully and Mikki slipped in.

"Erm? I'm not sure I know that word. Do you know the Russian translation?" Mikki's voice was teasing, so was the smile on his lips as he maneuvered his chair further into the room. It was different than the one he had had as a child, Severus realized, then felt stupid for being surprised at that. Of course it was. That wheelchair had been for a child, and slender as Mikki still was, he wouldn't have fit in it. This one looked far more practical as well, it looked light weight, the wheels tilted slightly inward at the top, only the merest suggestion of handle bars.

"Russian translation?" Severus said stupidly, unable to take his eyes from Mikki, trying to reconcile the boy he remembered to the man sitting before him. The wheelchair wasn't the only change. Mikki the boy had looked like an invalid, had looked very much like he needed to be in his wheelchair. Mikki the man looked like he should be astride a broom with a quaffle in hand. His legs no longer canted a little to the side, as though he couldn't keep them quite straight, which he couldn't, back then. Now his feet rested squarely on the foot bar, knees bent at a perfect right angle, toes directly forward, hips dead center. The hands that rested lightly on his wheels were still long fingered and dove pale, but they looked strong, as did the forearms revealed but the rolled up sleeves of his dress shirt. And those shoulders... Severus was pretty sure he could have wet dreams about those shoulders.

"I-i-its, ah, a filler-filler word. M-m-meaningless." Severus stammered, blinking, trying to make his brain work around the vodka headache and lack of blood.

"I know," Mikki chuckled again, wheeling closer, and easy flick of his wrists. "I was teasing you. I bet you were looking for these." He reached behind him, and lifted Severus's boots for him to see, laces tied together and draped over his handlebar.

"Yes!" Severus reached for them, desperate to escape this beautiful man and his gentle teasing. It was one thing to have memories. Severus was quickly realizing that memories were nothing compared to reality. He had no idea how to talk to the very real man in front of him.

Mikki dropped the boots back over his handlebar, and with another flick of his wrist angled his chair so that Severus would practically have to crawl onto his lap to reach them.

"Sorry, I'm not going to give them back." Mikki's English was flawless, though the accent was a little different than Severus remembered it. Not as thick, not as harsh.

"What? Why?"

"I may have not seen you for ten years, my friend, but I suspect I still know you well, da? The minute I give them to you, you will run off."

"So I should have just stolen your boots ten years ago?" Severus had not meant to say that, and his eyes widened with surprise, a blush coloring his cheeks at how biting his tone had been.

"Ouch. Alright, that was fair." Mikki sighed losing his smile, looking away from Severus a moment. "I'm sorry about that... It was out of my control."

"What was? Where did you go? You didn't even write!" Severus had no idea where the words were coming from, but the hurt he had buried under nostalgia was surfacing, and running away with his tongue. He had to know.

"We moved, my mother, brother and I. Suddenly. We moved to Israel, to get away from my father. I couldn't write, my mother wouldn't let me at first, and then I got sick..."

From anyone else 'I got sick' would be about as much of an excuse as 'my niffler ate my homework', but Severus remembered how sick Mikki could get. In second year, mikki had spent an entire month in the Hospital Wing at Hogwarts with pneumonia.

"As soon as I was well enough, I had surgery on my legs. By the time I had enough of a mind to think to write to you, it had been a year, Severus. I was sure you hated me for leaving you without a word." Mikki's voice was soft, and he still hadn't looked back to Severus. "The more time passed, the more sure I was you would never want to hear from me. I'm sorry, Severus."

Severus stared at him, unsure how to respond to that. It was such a simple answer, both a good reason and a pathetic excuse. How different would have things been, if Mikki had stayed, or even just written? Would he be here today, with the downfall of humanity in his trunk? Severus doubted it.

"I thought of you, every day." Severus found himself whispering, and wondered if someone had slipped him veriteserum. 'Leave, leave now you idiot! Before you admit too much, before he figures out what a pathetic fuck up you are!' cried the mindvoice that sounded suspiciously like his father.

"I'm sorry," Mikki said again, looking at him finally. "I thought of you too, every day."

"You did?" Mikki's admission started Severus out of his mental argument with his father.

"Yes, of course! You were my best friend!" Mikki snorted slightly "My only friend, actually. No one understood me like you did." He shrugged. "I don't know if its divine providence, or luck, or coincident that crossed our paths again, but I'm glad they have, if for no other reason that now I've had a chance to apologize to you."

Severus stared at him, blinking. He should go, leave and never look back. If he stayed, he would let Mikki close to him. There was no keeping his distance in Mikki's presence, he found. Severus couldn't afford liabilities or weaknesses. Weaknesses, loved ones, could be used against him, would be used against him. One mistake in the service of the Dark Lord, and Mikki would be found stone cold with a Dark Mark over his head, for Severus's mistake. Even worse, Mikki may simply be killed so that Severus had no distractions or divided attentions.

"It doesn't matter now," Severus whispered. "Our paths have crossed again. I'm glad they have too. I... I thought surely you were dead by now. You were always so ill," Severus felt his eyes rake over the form that didn't seem to belong in the chair it was folded into. "That seems to be less the case." A faint smiled turned up Severus's lips.

"Not so much," Mikki smiled widely again, and Severus felt his own smile widen to something a bit goofy as he sighed deeply.

"I can see, you look... really good." Severus admitted.

"I wish I could say the same to you, my friend. You rather look like you've spent your evening at the bottom of the bottle. Maybe a few of them."

"I have," he sighed deeply again. He knew he looked terrible. He had never been even slightly attractive, hung over, Severus was sure a sixty year old transvestite in stage make up would look better. "Should I put a paper bag over my head and spare your eyes?" Severus tried to make a joke out of it.

"Hardly. I brought you something to eat, and something for the headache I'm sure you have." Mikki paused, and the kindness of his next words almost brought tears to Severus's eyes. "You look like you've got the world on your shoulders."

"No, nothing like that," Severus forced a chuckle, then pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes. Mikki felt like a second chance thrown in his path, a rope ladder to salvation, and Severus badly wanted to throw himself at Mikki's feet, and beg for help, for forgiveness of the transgressions he'd already committed. He wanted to confess all his sins, and plead for sanctuary.

There was no sanctuary from the Dark Lord though. No help, no forgiveness, no second chances.

"Here, drink this."

He felt a hand on his knee, and a smooth decanter pressed into his hand. He drank it back without a thought, recognizing the taste as a headache relieving draught immediately. It burned going down a bit and he cleared his throat, finally taking his other hand away from his face and looking at Mikki again.

"Thanks."

"Gladly, why don't you shower? Clean up a little, that will help too. Thank you for not running off." Mikki smiled.

"Alright." Severus could no more resist the suggestion than he could stop a stampeding hippogryff. Mikki's kindness had been what had made him the one shining beacon in Severus's life, and being confronted with the reality of it once more, Severus was utterly helpless. He had so little kindness, he yearned for what Mikki was giving him.

"Don't look so sad my friend, whatever is wrong... it will be okay."

And just for the moment, Severus let himself believe that.

Author's Note: Well, I did it again folks, I've had this chapter for months and didn't realize I hadn't posted it. I don't kow how I manage to do that, but somehow I do. How retarded. Anyway, here this is. No reviews yet, but I know some of you are reading this anyway. I hope you enjoy, it really is a good story. Don't let an OC scare you off!