Pairing: Snape/Narcissa.
Warnings: Reference child abuse, hinted polyamory. Set during HBP.
His floor is a scratched hardwood, brown, almost black, always dusty. He'd torn the carpet up at twenty. Hadn't bothered with magic in his wild-eyed, sleep deprived state; he'd just wanted it gone. Or rather, he'd wanted the memories gone: the blood splatter at the bottom of the stairs, the patches stained brown with whiskey, the built up grime from years of neglect.
Narcissa's heels clack against it now, as she walks the length of his sitting room. Entirely out of place. "You've heard, of course," she'd said upon her arrival, stepping past the threshold of his front door and pacing, his old, rotted home morphing to her domain no sooner than the door had shut behind her, as if it recognised her authority. Superiority.
"Of course," Severus answers. No need to ask for clarification; Lucius Malfoy's arrest wasn't exactly something one could miss. "It's not going well, I take it?"
She halts, mid-movement. Catches his eye across the room. He recognises the glare and can't help the way his mouth twitches: amusement, apology. And/or.
"Do you want a drink?" is what he says.
She sighs, the aggression draining with the slow exhale. "Please," she tells him, and promptly drops to his old, threadbare couch.
He has elf-made wine stocked specifically for her. It's her favourite, or so Lucius had said, years ago, when he still gave a damn about impressing either of them. The bottles are dusty, now. Stacked haphazardly in the corner cupboard, grouped with half-empty bottles of whiskey: souvenirs from when his parents were still alive.
He spells the dust from the first glass he can find and fills it with the deep, crimson liquid, only preparing the one. He doesn't drink if he can help it; doesn't like the taste, is what he's always said, but it's more to do with the ghosts that stay dormant inside yellow-stained glass, never far enough away when he's confined to his childhood home.
Narcissa takes the drink from him with a quiet thanks, and he sits beside her as she brings it to her mouth. He watches as she downs half the glass, little, blood-like drops clinging to her bottom lip. She looks as immaculate as she always does, which is to say that she looks beautiful. Haughty. An elegance bred into her. But even still, he can see the fatigue in the turn of her mouth, the corner of her eye. Notices the way icy blue glistens with something lost: an awareness born from familiarity.
He doesn't mention it.
"The Dark Lord—" he starts to say, but her voice interrupts before he can finish: clear and cold, quiet.
"I didn't come to talk about the Dark Lord, Severus."
She looks at him, then, earnest in a way that's rare for both of them. He is acutely aware of where he decided to sit, of the heat of her body beside him, the press of her thigh, her arm, her shoulder. Of the way her eyes meet his: suggestive and yet doleful, sparkling with the candlelight's reflection.
He twitches to peek inside her mind but refrains.
"What did you come here for?"
There'd been a pathetic drizzle when he'd heard her knock, Spinner's End continually damp, dreary. It's morphed into a full-blown storm by the time he has her in his bed.
"Lucius always said…" Narcissa is saying, words muffled, spoken against his skin, "if something happened – " A crack of thunder, a flash of lightning. " – to come to you."
Severus slips a hand beneath the slit of her robe, moves it across silky-soft skin, flesh warm against his calloused palm. "I don't think this is what he meant," he says.
She laughs, a huff of a thing. Breath hot where it ghosts across his cheek. "You'd be surprised," she tells him. She grabs him by the chin, the grip tight, almost harsh, her tongue sharing the taste of his wine when she kisses him. "You always were our free pass."
It's a strange statement, Severus thinks. Brimming with an old intimacy. Multiple replies flash though his mind, the lot of them discarded before they're properly formed. Thankfully he doesn't need one; Narcissa seizes the moment to push him down against the mattress, her body a solid, welcome weight above his.
She doesn't leave immediately after, though it's a near thing.
"I'll see you," Narcissa says, her hand brushing his shoulder. There's no additional promise of when or for what, but she at least looks satisfied, Severus thinks. A little less lost.
It's the best he could've hoped for.