Askbox Fic: Wine (1/10)

Severus Snape woke with a start, but not even a sharp breath betrayed him. He breathed the same deep, slow breaths as when he had slept, but now the faint scent of artificial grape crept through the air.

"Rodolphus, it is the middle of the night." There's no question. There's no need for a question.

"You live in a magical school, Sev. Is there another time I know I'm not going to step into a student conference, or another professor?" Definitely Roddy. Right down to that touch of an Irish accent he'd never quite shaken. Not like his brother. "That's not the point. The point is that you're not drunk enough."

"According to you and Lucky, I will never be drunk enough," Severus deadpanned, pulling the blanket over his head.

"Nawp." Roddy dropped onto the bed, ass first, hard enough to bounce. "Get up. I brought a bottle of something I'm not drinking alone."

Severus squinted over the top of the blanket as it slid down. "Then why are you not at the Manor, with Lucky?"

"Because it's your bottle." Roddy took a moment to stretch out on the bed, lying on his side, a little closer than Severus particularly liked him to be. "Look, I know seventy-eight wasn't your best year, but some of it must have stayed with you. You buried that bottle of amontillado—"

"— and told you to drink it for me when He killed me." The inflection was still there, even after so long.

"Unless you're sitting on another stunning prophecy, that's not going to happen. Figured it was time to bring it up again." The bottle appeared in Roddy's hand from places unknown and likely best unconsidered, and he smacked it into the tiny gap between them, shedding some of the dirt that still clung to the bottle.

Severus stared at the bottle. "Rodolphus." The name hung between them like a warning sign. "In my bed? I have slept on your 'good Irish earth', but never in my bed, and until this moment, I never realised how much I had hoped to maintain that state of affairs."

He paused, eyes drifting up to Roddy's. "You're already drunk, aren't you." It's not a question. It never is, with them.

"I'm not!" Roddy actually manages outrage, for a split second. "I dug it up last night. I was drunk, then. It just didn't seem right that I'd started without you, so I waited another night."

Severus shrugged out from under the blanket and put his hand over Roddy's on the bottle. "War's over, Roddy."

It was a conversation they'd had before. So many times that Severus knew there were only two sentences that could come next. 'Not for me,' or 'He's still in my head'.

Roddy surprised him, this time. "I know. That's why I'm here."

"You dug it up so we could bury this." He understood, suddenly.

"I did. We'll pour it down us and piss away the war, and tomorrow? Take tomorrow. It's a Saturday. We'll go see Lucky, yeah? And we'll be alive." It's the most honest thing Severus has heard out of a sober Roddy in more years than he wants to think about.

"So, you've decided you want to live?"

"I sure as shit don't want to die. And I'm fuck-tired of just surviving, Sev. The lights are all gone out. I can't keep this up." Roddy looked back at the bottle. It wasn't the sort of thing a man could say looking someone in the eye.

"Open the bottle."

"Wha—"

"Look, I've not got pants on, so I'm not getting out of this bed. So, just open the bottle. I'm not drunk enough for this. And I'm not nearly drunk enough to go get pants with your lecherous eye on me." The words just spilled out in what was, perhaps, the least-thought-out torrent of verbiage that had come from him in the last twenty-five years, and the accent was one neither had heard out of him since he was maybe thirteen.

Roddy stared for a long moment. And then he blinked. And then he stared. "You're in bed with no pants on, and I'm going to get you drunk." The corner of his mouth twisted up, devilishly smug. "I'll need a lot more than a bottle of amontillado, but there's nothing wrong with starting easy."

Severus laughed, pressing the heel of his palm between his eyes. "If you get me drunk enough that I am still conscious, and I don't tell you no, I will count that as a fair win."

"After twenty-odd years, that's about as likely as me sticking my cock in a unicorn, and we both know it. Doesn't mean I'm not going to try."

"I'm not a virgin. You can't use me to summon a unicorn."

Their eyes locked, neither of them speaking, lips thinning with the strain of staying closed, until they both dissolved into mad cackles.

"Where's your corkscrew?" Roddy panted, after a stretch.

"You came here to get me drunk on a bottle of sherry, and you didn't bring a corkscrew?"

"I was sober at the time!" For Roddy, that tended to mean he wasn't quite in control of his faculties.

"How long?" Severus asked, taking the bottle out of his friend's hand. Roddy's drinking had gotten a good deal more consistent, after Azkaban.

"How many years have I known you? About that many hours."

"You get the first drink," Severus offered, running his finger around the rim of the bottle, and then aiming it away from them, as the cork popped out.

"Show-off." Roddy snagged the bottle and took a swig, before handing it back, with a bit of a shiver. "That's a sherry, it is."

"You know that's why I picked amontillado, don't you? I know neither of you can stand it." He took a long, slow sip. "I knew you'd never forget me, if I could get the two of you to drink a whole bottle of it."

"Asshole."

"One point from Slytherin. Stating the obvious."

"Well, since you're not dead, you twat, do you have anything in this place that doesn't taste like centaur piss?"

"Promise me something, Roddy. Promise me you will never tell me why you know what centaur piss tastes like."