Selkie - 8. Home Again

Selkie Chapter 8

Home Again

In the half-life that Lucius had lived for the entirety of his existence, to see Severus and yet know that he still could not have him was beyond agonising. Lucius spent the first weeks of his recovery inside the little room, communicating sullenly with the girl, whose name was Eir. She proudly told Lucius she was named after the healing goddess in Old Norse, all said with the lisp of a child who had just lost two milk teeth in a short period of time. She and Man had become fast friends, and the dog followed her wherever she went, only returning to sleep a Lucius' feet at night. It seemed that Lucius had lost even his animal to the Snape family.

When Severus entered the room to administer potions, Lucius turned from him, feigning sleep, using his bitter disappointment as a shield against the man's presence. He knew that his reaction was not right, not the adult way of handling his emotions, but it was what it was. Lucius had spent years in the bosom of a loving family. He had had a son and a wife for the majority of his adulthood. Shouldn't he have afforded Severus the same comforts? The resounding answer in Lucius' heart was no. He'd had to sacrifice his happiness for them as much as Severus had sacrificed his happiness for Evans.

It could never be said that Lucius was a fair man.

In the ledger of his life, his own system of checks and balances, Lucius had paid for Severus. He had given his heart, soul, and bloody body to have the last part of his life with the one person who had understood him. The one person who had never given a damn what Lucius could give him in the commerce of his social position, instead giving to Lucius what he needed. And now, he had to watch Severus live the life Lucius had wanted to give him.

Lucius longed for the feel of the cloak that he had lost at sea. It was a tangible reminder of his crushed desires and dreams.

Lucius was in bed for a fortnight, too weak to move. Each time Severus attempted to talk to him, Lucius turned away, feigned sleep, or merely stared straight ahead. When the time came for him to rise, he went only as far as the chair in the corner of the drab little room. Eir quit trying to speak to him, instead looking at him with a mournful countenance and knowing eyes. Her expression was well older than her seven or so years. Severus merely scowled and groused at him, and went about taking care of Lucius in his own inimical way.

Lucius never saw the silver-haired woman again. She had never shown any interest in her unexpected house guest and Lucius never expressed an interest in seeing her. It was a social blunder that he did not mean to rectify. He did not wish to see the woman that had stolen Snape ( His!) from him.

His fourth week brought Severus to his room, all scowls and coldness, the type he had reserved for his snakes during his tenure as Head of Slytherin. "Lucius, this attitude of yours is not becoming. It is time you came out of this room and joined us for at least meals."

Lucius turned from him, deciding that if he ignored the man, he would go away. Severus did not. He knelt in front of Lucius, taking his hand in his own. "I know you think all is lost... but it's not. Please, Lucius, let's just talk."

Lucius felt an embarrassing rush of tears and bit his tongue to keep from shedding them. He would not disgrace himself. "You married."

"Yes," Severus answered, the simple, brutal statement tearing at Lucius heart, cutting the battered flesh with the word.

Lucius nodded and then sneered as best he could, "I suppose you love her?"

"It's complicated." Severus' scowl deepened but his rasping voice softened, "Come out, Lucius. When you are ready, we will speak."

Lucius did come out, first sitting by the fire, and then venturing outside the confines of the cottage, but he did not speak. Instead, he occupied himself with the potions texts that sat in floor to ceiling shelves. The woman was never in attendance, and he breathed easier without her presence. Severus remained cool but solicitous, ever the gracious host with the materials he had available in the small cottage by the sea. He attempted to speak to Lucius time and again, but was rebuffed. The dark man finally retreated to his own version of hurt feelings, with snapping and vicious digs. Lucius acted as if the comments slid off of him, did not hurt him, but each cross word spoken left a scar on his shattered heart.

Lucius found that his boat had weathered the storm that had brought him to the island. Severus had moved the motor to an outbuilding and turned the skiff over next to his own sailboat, on the small sandy beach. Lucius inspected it, releasing the spells that had made it seaworthy, planning his end.

Man had followed him to the shore, curious about his master's work, sniffing for dormant mussels, bringing back great strings of kelp, and chasing terns. Once he was done, Lucius sat at the beach, watching the sea's churning as the sun sank low in the sky. The bitter tears that had clogged his throat so painfully the last four weeks, making breathing nearly impossible, fell then and Man butted up against him, lending him his warmth and his furry comfort.

Lucius did not return that night to the dwelling, and paid for it the next day with a rasping cough and blocked lungs. Severus was in a towering rage when he discovered Lucius on the beach at sunrise. It was the first time he had turned his wrath on Lucius in years.

&*&*&

Severus bundled him off to bed, and then sat in the room as Lucius alternately shivered and burned with renewed fever. The man began by uttering muffled oaths as he Accio'ed Pepper Up and fever reducing potion. Lucius swallowed the potions, spluttering and pulling a face at their combined tastes. Severus merely left, returning with another vial of thick, red syrup. "It's for your cough. Drink it, you bloody imbecile. Though I don't know why I'm trying."

Lucius drank the potion down in two swallows, stopping to cough weakly between the first and the second portion. When he was through, Severus jerked the bottle from his weak grasp and threw it against the wall. It shattered wetly, leaving a patch on the plaster that looked like blood. "I want to know what you expected when you came here, looking for me after... I take it Narcissa has asked for a divorce, and so you've come running to me to pick up the emotional pieces as I've always done with you."

Lucius turned away only to feel Severus lean over him, the dark man's hands on either side of his head. He loomed over Lucius, and as he spoke, his breath stirred the fine hairs on the older man's face. "I am sick to death of being the last resort, Lucius."

"You... are my only..." Lucius bit off his words, his voice sounding as broken as his heart. "When it was reported that you had died... I couldn't believe..."

Severus sat back suddenly, his face a mask of shock. He laughed, a brittle sound that crashed and clattered against Lucius' buzzing ears. "Dead? I thought... All these years I assumed... she said she had told the Aurors..." he ended the stuttering series ineffectually with, "I don't take the Prophet anymore."

Severus covered his face with his hands. Lucius watched as his shoulders hunched and he once again assumed the shape of the ugly little boy that he had been all those years ago. Love swelled in Lucius' heart, with the same knife-like intensity it had in their youths. He suppressed a croupy cough and found that whatever Severus' emotional state, he was still as much a bastard as he had always been. That fact made Lucius warm to him more than if Severus had used kind words and soft caresses. It was familiar. He fixed Lucius with his black gaze, making him feel like a crawling insect. "So, how is the family, Lucius?"

"Draco is married, and I wasn't invited to attend the nuptials," he said. "Narcissa died in June, and I wish I had gone with her."

Severus recoiled as if slapped and then rose, his face white. He swept out of the room without a backwards glance, the only thing missing was the swish of his black cloak. Lucius did not see him the rest of the day.

&*&*&

In the end, it was the girl who told Lucius the story of her parents. It seemed that the only way a Prince could produce magical offspring was to take a Selkie to wife or to husband. The girl was proud of her Selkie blood and her eyes glinted as she said it, their dark surface so like her father's. She related to Lucius that a long time ago, before Eir was even born, Great-grandfather Prince had died, leaving instructions to his only grandchild ("Da said he hated him"), that he would replenish the Princes on the island. He was to return and be tied to the land, or the land would die. Severus had complied in his own way, marrying his silver-haired Selkie bride and creating Eir, before returning to his duties. He had sickened then, during his time away, but continued his tooth and nails fight against 'the bad man' (whose name Eir always forgot) by force of will alone. When the war ended, the Selkie-bride had taken her dying husband from the Shrieking Shack, having given some of her own magic to save him, and returned to the island. Eir's mother had been dying from lack of contact with her own kind when Lucius showed up on shore, but miraculously got better when her Selkie skin washed up with him. The girl said, in a tone of the gravest confidence, that her mummy had returned to her family in the sea, and that she wasn't to be sad. Especially now that Father was happy and Man had come to their island. Lucius too, she said, after a moment's consideration.

Eir told the story of her parents as if it were an oft-repeated fairytale, charming Lucius with the narrative, even as he realised that it changed little and everything all at once. It was as if the story had somehow encompassed him, and he could not help to wonder how the skin had washed up with him. He had read that Selkies kept their skins close by so that they would not endanger their lives.

The girl had crawled up on the bed during the telling, nestling in Lucius' arms as if she had a right to do so, and he didn't have the strength of will to push her away. She felt right in his arms, half-sprawled on the bed, her stockinged feet tucked under her woollen robes. He fell asleep as she babbled on about her day, Man's antics, and her studies.

Lucius woke to a cramping arm and a sticky child clinging to him. Severus stood in the doorway, his shirtsleeves rolled to the elbows, the twin of Lucius' own scar exposed. His expression gelled into the more familiar cautious disdain that he usually wore as he noticed Lucius looking back at him. "I thought the girl might be bothering you."

"No," Lucius answered in a low voice. "She told me some interesting stories today."

Severus crossed his arms over his chest. "Should I be concerned?"

"Should I?" Lucius returned, not able to meet Severus' intense gaze.

In two strides, Severus traversed the room and claimed Lucius' mouth in a searing kiss, his mouth rough and hard in the taking. Eir stirred, and Severus broke their contact. He traced his stained fingers over Lucius' mouth, his touch almost reverent. "God's I've wanted to do that for so long, at least since you washed up on shore."

Lucius gave a shaky laugh. "It's been longer for me. I am older than you, you know."

"Da?" Eir said, stretching like a kitten, her pink lips forming a perfect 'O' as she yawned. She hugged Lucius before slipping from the bed. "I like Mr. Malfoy, can he stay with us?"

"I've left my old life behind. Draco will inherit if I don't return in a year. I will be presumed dead." Severus hesitated as he looked over his daughter's head to Lucius. Malfoy smiled as innocently as he could. "You don't want to disappoint the girl, Severus."

Severus quirked his brow in question, but then gave a swift, almost imperceptible nod, his eyes on Lucius'. "We shall see, Eir. If Lucius wants to remain with us, he is certainly welcome. Unless he wishes to carry out his more final plans." Severus' eyes shuttered for a moment, glinting with dark light. Lucius looked away, but took Severus' hand in his. Snape turned his attention to his daughter, saying, "Now, go wash up. Dinner is ready."

&*&*&

They spent weeks getting to know each other again, exchanging details that had had to go unsaid between them during the war. Every moment was an exploration of their desire as they resisted giving into the physical side of their relationship. They had both been wounded by one another over the years and had never had the time to explore each other properly. It seemed like a honeymoon to them both, though they did not make love in that time. Instead, their caresses became a contest, a titillating game to see which lover would beg for the other first. Lucius spent most of his nights in an agonising state of arousal, and Severus, he suspected, was in much the same state.

There was much work to complete on the island. Kelp had to be gathered and dried for sale to the potions market in England, and for to fuel the house in the winter.

One evening as they lay abed, after a day of kelp gathering, Severus asked, "Were you disappointed that I fought against the Dark Lord?"

"No," Lucius answered after some consideration. "I was glad. It meant that I had not ruined the best that was in you."

Severus, who held Lucius in his arms, gave a ghost of a smile in the gloom. "You ruined me long before I became a Death Eater, Lucius. I knew on some level, even as a first year, that you pursued me. I grew up in a neighbourhood where more predatory relationships between older and younger boys were condoned. It was the price of protection for the younger boys."

"Were you ever used like that?" Lucius felt a hot rush of hatred at the thought.

Severus gave a husky deprecating laugh, "No. You were my first, Lucius. I never understood what you saw in me."

Lucius remained silent. How could he tell this dark, homely man that he was Lucius' world and make Severus believe it? How did one put that into words without sounding maudlin and overwrought? Instead Lucius kissed him, putting the force of the emotions that welled up behind the action. Severus stilled, and then began exploring Lucius' body, his hands repeating his question as they coursed over Lucius' skin. Lucius brought his hand to Severus' cloth covered cock, brushing his palm across the tip of it before he took the shaft in his fist, pumping and twisting slightly it until Severus moaned. Lucius lifted the nightshirt the man wore, ridiculous old-fashioned thing. Even Abraxas Malfoy had given them up before his hastened death. Lucius resolved to buy Severus pyjamas sometime, though cotton, not silk. The softest thing he wanted touching Severus' body was Lucius' own. He lifted the shirt past Severus' pale chest, bringing his lips into play as he seized a taut nipple between them, sucking at it, then nipping.

Severus hissed, "Luciusss, pleassse..."

Lucius positioned himself over Severus, engulfing the dark man with ease. Severus made love to him sweetly, his caresses and kisses filling the gaping chasm that had been in Lucius' heart for so long. Severus completed him as no other person had. It seemed like hours before they both reached culmination. They had made love as they never had in their youth, without the desperation and fear, without the ticking clock. As Lucius lay sated in Severus' arms afterwards he said, "You were my first in one thing too, Severus."

His shy admission garnered a kiss to Lucius' temple. Severus' husky baritone rumbled against Lucius ear as he asked, his tone bemused, "I was?"

"Yes." Lucius felt his eyes drift closed as Severus' breathing deepened. Lucius whispered against his lover's chest, "You were my first love."