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“The nineteen twenty-one service to Meadowhall Interchange is delayed by seven minutes.”
The worst part about surviving the war, other than the fact that he was so sure he was going to die he didn’t actually plan for that outcome, is that Severus can’t walk more than three steps down Diagon Alley without some smarmy well-wisher asking to shake his hand. When Nagini’s venom finally worked its way through his system and he woke up in the shrieking shack of all places, he’d been two parts confused and one part dismayed. His death had seemed a certainty, even before The Dark Lord had turned on him. He’d played (and betrayed) both sides so damn well that he assumed that neither would hesitate to kill him on sight. That Potter had won the war was a given, but that he would devote so much of his fame to clearing Severus’ name had come as a surprise.
Severus’ first instinct had been to run and hide, to flee the country and let everyone continue to think that he actually was dead, find somewhere to lay low and live out the rest of his years in peace. Of course, Miss Granger could always be counted on to ruin his day. He had no sooner limped into his home at Spinner’s End than she had appeared at his side, apparating into his living room with a loud pop and a petulant glare in utter defiance of the many wards protecting the place. Severus had protested her presence, then pleaded his case onto deaf ears, and Granger’s exit was swiftly followed by a tear-stricken Minerva, then a sentimentally awkward Potter, and finally a formal Kingsley Shacklebolt, acting Minister for Magic, with a whole host of papers including an official pardon and an Order of Merlin, First Class. There was a time that such an award would have meant something to Severus, but now, in the face of all he’s done, it’s merely a reminder of everything he’s lost.
“The nineteen twenty-one service to Meadowhall Interchange is now arriving.”
Severus pushes off from the metal fence he was leaning on in the shadows and steps forward onto the fluorescently lit platform as the red and blue tram pulls into the station. Muggle transportation is so loud, so ungainly, so damn unclean, but old habits die hard and Severus finds himself travelling aimlessly at times on public transport, wanting to be near other people but desperately needing the cloak of anonymity that keeps anyone from trying to stop and talk to him. There's nowhere in the magical world that he can do this, walk around freely and unnoticed, so he sticks to familiar muggle places. When he woke up this morning, he was overwhelmed with a need to visit Kelham Island, somewhere his parents had taken him on a rare day trip during some summer holiday. It was a good day to start off with, both his parents were happy and his dad had been sober long enough to get and keep a job. It must have been payday because Severus remembers his dad ordering him a knickerbocker glory at a local pub, layers of cheap vanilla ice cream and sickly-sweet raspberry syrup, a cherry on top of mounds of whipped cream that his mum ate and a wafer that his dad stole with a grin.
What Severus remembers most from that day is the look on his mum’s face when his dad ordered a pint of something local in a frosted glass dripping with condensation. Her pursed mouth as he took a swallow and smacked his lips, the rest of the day a strained, polite silence ending in the mother of all screaming matches after his mum put him to bed, like the brick walls were thick enough to keep him from hearing every word, every insult they were hurling at each other. It was the beginning of the end of everything, the last chance to save their marriage pissed away on something that didn’t even make his dad happy. The years that followed are clouded in Severus’ mind, marked with vivid snippets of violence and abuse, but there, in the middle of it all, are memories of Lily and Hogwarts and magic, happy moments that he’s clung onto all his life.
It’s those memories that Severus chooses to dwell on as he steps onto the tram, the muted senses of joy and comfort and belonging that they afford. It’s Lily’s smile that he sees in his mind when he sits down on an empty seat, the bubbling surface of the first potion he ever mastered in the textured teal of the felted fabric of the seat opposite him. His reflection in the window is glaring against the darkness outside but somewhat blurry; the face staring back at him looks deceptively young and healthy and not at all like a man who has fought and survived not one but two wizarding wars. More like the man he used to be, back before Death Eaters and dark magic tainted his soul, when his entire being was devoted to experimentation in the furthering of the profession of potions making, a vastly underappreciated magic whose entire doctrine stalled somewhere in the Dark Ages. Severus felt a kinship with the discipline and was blessed with an ease in mastering it.
What he feels now, though, is uneasy. There’s a sudden sense that his attempts to remain unnoticed have failed. He keeps his gaze fixed out the window as the world passes by in reverse and tries to observe the carriage through the reflection. There are a number of people, though it’s not so busy as to be crowded. A family sits in the seats in front of him; two women in love, blatant in their affections - and isn’t that a warming sight in this day and age (fuck you, dad) - their children kicking their legs and looking out the window even though it’s too dark to see anything. Behind them, by the doors, are a couple of solo passengers getting ready to step off at the next stop. Most of the rest of the carriage is empty, except for a figure that Severus can’t make out sitting in the forward-facing seat of the benches next to him. His gut tells him that it’s not a former Death Eater. They wouldn’t care, after all, that they have a muggle audience if they wanted to take their revenge. They don’t have the magical air of a wizard or a witch either, and the fact that they haven’t come over and made a scene, good or bad, testifies to that.
Whoever they are, Severus isn’t interested in any kind of interaction, so he keeps his head pressed against the window and doesn’t let his curiosity turn his gaze. They stay like that, the two of them, locked in a battle of wills as the tram pulls into the next stop, and the next, and the next, until eventually they are the only two people left in the carriage; the lesbian family finally gets off at City Hall and it feels like a loss to Severus, who hadn’t realised he was basking in their queer glory. As the tram sets off again, there’s a quiet, masculine cough from the person across the aisle. Severus’s eyes twitch to the side automatically, but he manages to stop himself from turning his head and giving away the fact that all his attention, his entire being, is focused on the presence next to him. He regulates his breath, reminding himself that he only has three stops to go until he switches to the blue line tram that will take him to the train station, where he’ll escape this tête-à-tête and catch a late train back down south to Cokeworth.
Another quiet but pointed cough has him grinding his teeth, and he closes his eyes and listens to the announcement declaring the next stop, Cathedral, to keep himself from bringing out his wand and sending the interloper hurling to the other end of the carriage. There’s a dejected sigh and the sounds of someone rustling in a bag, followed by the irritating crunching sounds of vegetable mastication and the acidic smell of some kind of salad dressing. The drifting scents of tart balsamic vinegar and warm mustard fill Severus’ nose, reminding him that he hasn’t eaten all day. His stomach audibly rumbles and a low chuckle assaults his ears from across the tram, followed shortly by a man’s voice with an accent that Severus recognises; it’s the very accent he has spent almost all of his life training himself to drop.
“Long day?”
It’s as though Severus’ entire awareness narrows down to that voice, blocking out all other sounds and sights as his brain tries to make sense of those two words in that accent. There’s something...familiar, something stirring in the back of his mind, a feeling of déjà vu. Severus tugs his sleeves down over his wrists nervously, and makes a non-committal “hmmm” sound, but doesn’t dare turn to look at his companion.
“Must be, if you’re so hungry.”
Severus sighs his irritation at being disturbed, but the man doesn’t seem to notice.
“Want some?”
There’s an earnestness in the voice that pushes Severus to the limit of his ability to ignore the man, and he spins around to face him. There are so many sharp words on the tip of his tongue, but he swallows them down as his dark eyes meet the stranger’s light ones, a rush of some deeply-buried and long-lost feeling of intimacy rippling to the surface. The man is pallid and flushed, his light brown hair short and neat with a receding widow’s peak. He’s wearing a cheap, grey, muggle suit that strains over his meaty thighs, a green lanyard with the silhouette of a rearing horse hanging down over his slightly rounded belly. It’s the hole in his nose that draws Severus’s undivided attention, visible even from across the aisle, which once must have housed a piercing. It's a sign of a very different life to the one the man is currently leading.
What ties it all together for Severus, the thing that swiftly pulls recognition to the fore, is the orange Tupperware tub on the man’s lap filled with salad, a plastic fork sticking out the top. Merlin, Severus hasn’t seen those since the eighties.
“Just a box innit.”
Without his mohawk, the man isn’t nearly as tall as Severus remembers, but even without the leather and the spikes there’s no mistaking the heavy frame and the sturdy shoulders and the amused, curious gaze. Time stands still for a moment as their eyes lock, mutual recognition assured and acknowledged through subtle facial movements. The man breaks first, his eyes ducking down as he gestures at Severus with his Tupperware bowl, and Severus belatedly remembers that he’d offered up his dinner.
“Uh, that’s very...” he begins. “I mean, no, thank you.”
The man shrugs and starts eating again, stabbing a tomato slice with his plastic fork as though it’s no big deal to be turned down. There’s something telling in his body language though, and it occurs to Severus that a soggy salad might not actually have been what he was offering. The spark of interest that flickers to life inside his chest takes him by surprise; he had thought himself too far removed from the world to yearn for any kind of meaningful human contact, but this is significant, that that first real interaction he’s had with another person since Kingsley’s hand patted him on the knee so many weeks ago is with the man at the heart of the one memory he’s treasured almost above all others, a single evening in his life that hasn’t been tainted by the (very justifiable) guilt that has contaminated all others. It was something he could turn to in his darkest moments, something utterly without remorse or regret, a moment of pure hedonism that was healthy and entirely consensual and as necessary as oxygen.
Severus wonders what that evening meant to the other man as he looks him over now, his hunched shoulders flexing as he shovels his salad into his thin-lipped mouth, nose narrow and pointed and slightly upturned, one hand holding the fork and the other cradling the Tupperware tub securely. Those hands...Severus remembers the gentle strength of them holding onto his hips as the man thrust into him from behind, remembers the faint bruises left from fingertips that dug in briefly as things came to a hot, sticky end. It was an illicit fuck in the back alley of a supermarket, but it wasn’t quick or awkward or rough or impersonal or rushed. Severus may have been the bold one, suggesting they skip the preliminaries and “get right to it”, but the man before him was the one who set the pace, and he was slow and careful and determined to make it as good as he could for both of them.
In hindsight, it’s a miracle that they weren’t caught.
Maybe they were.
A drop of salad dressing escapes from a forkful of lettuce and plummets rapidly down landing silently on the man’s tie. He sighs quietly. The Tupperware gets placed on the seat next to him, and his hands reach up and remove his lanyard and then his tie. He frowns at the stain then stuffs them both into his satchel, and Severus’ gaze is rapt as he opens the top two buttons of his shirt, revealing the inked skin underneath. He can’t quite make out the shape of the tattoos, only that they’re colourful and utterly motionless. Were they there the last time they met? There wasn’t much in the way of undressing, just a loosening of belts and an opening of zips. They could be decades old, the permanent stain of a youthful fixation with non-conformity, but they could be newer, a hidden tribute to beliefs that haven’t waned but have been camouflaged in order to navigate middle-age muggle life without hassle. Severus doesn't know which answer he prefers, but he finds that he wants to know more about this man with whom he has a shared experience. But the man hasn’t looked back over at him, has apparently taken Severus’ rejection of his dinner as a rejection of his person, and that really won’t do.
“The, uh...” begins Severus, but he pauses, realising that he’s so rusty when it comes to starting up a conversation that he can’t think what to say. Should he comment on the weather? He looks around for something more interesting, but the only thing that stands out is the orange Tupperware on the seat. “You, uh...took my advice then.”
The man looks up at him, forehead crinkled in confusion. “Eh?” Severus looks pointedly at the box and the man follows his gaze. “Oh, yeah. You were right about the seal. Keeps things good for an age, that does.” His eyes drop to Severus’ feet and make their way slowly up. There’s nothing judgemental about it, it’s not mocking or even heated, it’s like he’s simply taking Severus in. “How about you?” he asks when he reaches his face. “Your bat spleens still fresh?”
“I don't have much use for them these days.”
The man nods his head, knowingly. “Ain’t that the truth,” he says. This time when the man’s eyes look him up and down there’s an air of interest, and the way his tongue wets his lips hints to a hunger for something more substantial than a hasty meal on a public tram. Severus doesn't have to be skilled in legilimency to know that he’s thinking about their first encounter, and contemplating a second. The man hesitates for a moment, then visibly steels himself to be brave.
“So, uh, fancy getting that drink?”