Vignette
Will be a sheep and do the favorite fic meme later, but thinking about it reminded me of a little Lucius/Severus vignette I wrote. It wasn't anything special--it wasn't even very good--but there was one section I rather liked, even if it was overwritten as hell.
Snape looked up from his own bed to meet his eyes, pausing from his work, and Lucius stopped near the foot of the bed and regarded him solemnly. Snape was in love with him, of course. Everyone was; it’s how things *were*. But he had never before considered Snape as anything more than an amusing diversion with a sometimes-remarkable wit. He wasn’t for touching or kissing or tumbling in his bed at night, no matter how he could read the desire in Snape’s eyes, for one very simple reason.
Snape was ugly.
Snape always looked nervous, cagey, sallow cheeks flushed and hands like brittle birds swallowed by the blackest night. He was too dark, too gutted, skin like dripped wax and hair a lank fall of black on black. He never wore his robes well, cloth hanging from sharp shoulders and cutting straight down in two parallel lines to brush the floor. A scent hung about him, too, acrid and disagreeable. He smelled, Lucius decided, like the pickled livers and dried flesh he cut and mixed and melded into potions, old and dead and *sharp*.
He was, on the whole, an unpleasant specter, stuck somewhere between life and death like the grim guard of the gates to hell, hooked nose casting shadows and thin lips pulled into a twisted, mocking sneer. His hands were the worst of it, though. Slim and pretty and long-fingered in contrast to the scarecrow rest of him: girl's hands, down to the manicured nails and soft, soft skin.
It was macabre, those hands. Lucius often wondered if he had chopped them off some pretty young thing, jealous of her beauty. He could image it so clearly; her yellow curled hair snarled along the ground, streaked red from the blood that poured from her pouty pink mouth. Her hands would be folded over her chest, delicately shaped arms tapering down to rings of red like jelly bracelets, black stitches making irregular Xs against her wrists. And then, perched on the sugar-plum pink stumps of the girl's arms, large and dark and shriveled would be those *hands*. Horrible hands, nightmarish hands, twisted in shape. Nails would be risen like yellow slates, jutting out in rolls and gnots and people would see her lying there and stop and stare and not *dare* to move forward to help because oh those monstrous *hands*. They would see them and wonder what beast had traded flesh for flesh.
Who is the monster with the little girl hands? people would whisper to their children. Who will come to get you and touch you with those soft rose-scented fingers?
Sevvie, Sevvie, Sevvie.
Snape looked up from his own bed to meet his eyes, pausing from his work, and Lucius stopped near the foot of the bed and regarded him solemnly. Snape was in love with him, of course. Everyone was; it’s how things *were*. But he had never before considered Snape as anything more than an amusing diversion with a sometimes-remarkable wit. He wasn’t for touching or kissing or tumbling in his bed at night, no matter how he could read the desire in Snape’s eyes, for one very simple reason.
Snape was ugly.
Snape always looked nervous, cagey, sallow cheeks flushed and hands like brittle birds swallowed by the blackest night. He was too dark, too gutted, skin like dripped wax and hair a lank fall of black on black. He never wore his robes well, cloth hanging from sharp shoulders and cutting straight down in two parallel lines to brush the floor. A scent hung about him, too, acrid and disagreeable. He smelled, Lucius decided, like the pickled livers and dried flesh he cut and mixed and melded into potions, old and dead and *sharp*.
He was, on the whole, an unpleasant specter, stuck somewhere between life and death like the grim guard of the gates to hell, hooked nose casting shadows and thin lips pulled into a twisted, mocking sneer. His hands were the worst of it, though. Slim and pretty and long-fingered in contrast to the scarecrow rest of him: girl's hands, down to the manicured nails and soft, soft skin.
It was macabre, those hands. Lucius often wondered if he had chopped them off some pretty young thing, jealous of her beauty. He could image it so clearly; her yellow curled hair snarled along the ground, streaked red from the blood that poured from her pouty pink mouth. Her hands would be folded over her chest, delicately shaped arms tapering down to rings of red like jelly bracelets, black stitches making irregular Xs against her wrists. And then, perched on the sugar-plum pink stumps of the girl's arms, large and dark and shriveled would be those *hands*. Horrible hands, nightmarish hands, twisted in shape. Nails would be risen like yellow slates, jutting out in rolls and gnots and people would see her lying there and stop and stare and not *dare* to move forward to help because oh those monstrous *hands*. They would see them and wonder what beast had traded flesh for flesh.
Who is the monster with the little girl hands? people would whisper to their children. Who will come to get you and touch you with those soft rose-scented fingers?
Sevvie, Sevvie, Sevvie.