ROAD NOT TAKEN: FIC: Into A Bar Title: Into A Bar Author:elmyraemilie Other pairings/threesome: Ron/Hermione Rating: PG Word count: 4432 Content/Warning(s): (highlight for spoilers) Warning for warnings: reading these will reveal plot. *AU; Severus-Harry non-romantic relationship; character death--Harry* Summary: There are times when all you want is a cold beer and a quiet bartender. A/N: My thanks, as always, to alpha-reader FM and beta-reader BL. And to my muse, who put together something seen on Tumblr, a contemplation about non-magical potions experts, and a trip out of town and delivered in spades.
Into A Bar
The door slammed shut behind ex-Detective Harry Potter. He jumped at the noise it made; the door closer must have been crapped out. Any door that came between him and the pouring rain outside was okay, though. He spared it a glare and took a few steps into the bar.
There was light enough to drink by: a fancy Budweiser sign had pride of place over the mirror behind the bar, but Coors Light and Utica Club also lent their glow to the ambience, if you could call it that. His eyes adjusted by the time he pulled himself up onto a bar stool. ("The shortest detective in the entire NYPD," his captain chortled. Fuck his captain anyway.) From the red-curtained doorway at the right of the mirror, a man (about six feet tall, shoulder-length black hair, big hooked nose, scar on the left side of the neck) emerged, carrying a case of beer. He nodded at Potter. Potter nodded back.
"What can I get you?"
"Uh... Let me have a bottle of Rolling Rock."
In a process smoothed to poetry, the green bottle was pulled from the horizontal cooler, an opener produced from a vest pocket, the cap removed, and the beer set before him a split second after the landing of a beer mat advertising Genny Cream Ale.
"Glass?"
Ex-Detective Potter shook his head, and downed half the beer in one pull. The bartender evinced neither interest nor surprise at this, but turned and unloaded his four six-packs into the glass-fronted refrigeration unit by the register stand. He wore a typical bartender uniform: black vest over white dress shirt, no tie, dark trousers; though even in the dim light, Potter could tell those were jeans, not chinos. The little gold name-tag pinned to his vest read "Severus." His shirt sleeves were rolled up below the elbows in the military manner, with the cuffs turned back under the sleeve. They exposed six inches of skin writhing with multicolored tattoos. In the low light it was hard to see, but Potter was pretty sure at least one of them was a gang symbol.
"Another?" The flattened beer case was now stashed between the fridge unit and the wall, tidy and neat like everything else around. Run-down the place might be, yeah, but clean as a senator's girlfriend.
"Sure."
"Shall I run a tab?"
The man didn't talk like a gang-banger; that was one of the things that were bugging him, and he'd discover the others in time. Potter pulled out his credit card and slid it across the bar. "Yeah. Here you go."
What the hell, right? No job, but his card was paid off. He'd be all right for a couple months, anyhow.
About halfway through his second beer, it dawned on him: there was no TV in the bar. Not on the wall above the mirror, not shedding a glow over the narrow floor-space crowded with tables, not anywhere. There was a jukebox in the far corner next to the bathroom doors, but it was dark; must be unplugged. No radio either: silence, so far as you could get silence anyplace in the City.
Harry looked at his watch. It was after six. By this time, he'd be on the train headed for home, thinking about what to get out of the freezer for dinner and whether there was a game on. He'd be checking his fellow subway riders for weapons, intoxication, anything that pinged his Spidey-sense and made him keep an eye out.
Today, that wasn't going to happen. Not going to happen tomorrow, either, or the next day, though maybe when they finally scheduled his administrative hearing he'd be on that train from the precinct one more time. No, today he was here, and he was going to stay here until they threw him out.
"'Scuse me."
The bartender looked up from the Daily News. "Need another?"
"No, not yet. This is going to sound stupid, but what's the name of this place?"
"You have the pleasure of pursuing oblivion in The Twilight Room."
Harry snorted at the hoity-toity language, but covered with an insult, just to keep it real. "Stupid name for a bar. People want to go out at night, not at twilight. Wishy-washy."
The barman stood and gave him a cool side-eyed glance. "And yet, here you are." Without being asked, he uncapped another Rolling Rock and put it on a fresh mat in front of Harry, then disappeared into the back room.
The door creaked open and two people tumbled in, exclaiming at the weather. The man had his jacket held over the woman's head; now he was shaking it out like a throw rug, rain flying around to land on the bar and the floor, little drops shining in the light from the beer signs. The door banged shut behind them. In the clouded mirror, Harry watched as they settled at a corner table, like that was where they always sat.
Their arrival brought the barman back out. As he approached, the woman (five-five, maybe, long brown curls, a bit of money, or maybe that handbag was a knock-off) said, "How are things going?" Harry couldn't hear the guy's reply, but then the red-headed man said, "All right. We appreciate it, thanks. We'll get something to eat, too." Guy was from overseas someplace; not unusual in New York, but it always made Harry mad that he couldn't tell a British accent from an Australian one.
The place served food. Should he have a sandwich? Harry couldn't decide. If he ate, that would delay the effect of getting completely hammered, and after all, that's why he was here. Still, if he didn't eat, getting sick in the morning would really, really suck. He wondered how far he was from his own building; he'd wandered from street to street for almost two hours after the captain was done with him and they'd escorted him out of the station. Pulling out his phone, he hit the GPS icon, but when the map opened, he couldn't get a location.
"You'll have trouble with that in here," said the barman. "Reception is terrible." He'd just come back from what must be the kitchen, through the curtains there. Harry grunted in frustration and started to get off the stool, but there was another icy Rolling Rock in front of him. Instead of walking outside to see if he could get a cell signal, he turned back toward the men's room. No need to figure out where he was; he'd have to get a cab to go home anyhow. Besides, he was still walking far too steadily for a man who'd been fired for disobeying Departmental regulations and endangering civilians. He'd better get to it and drink that lovely cold beer.
XOXOX
The next day, Potter let the door slam, but this time he was ready for the sharp "thunk." He sauntered up to the bar (feeling much better now; he could hardly remember the morning) and hopped up onto the same stool he used yesterday.
Severus regarded Harry out of the corner of his eye, then unfolded himself from elbows that propped him on the bar above the Daily News. "Good afternoon, Mr. Potter."
Harry frowned. He didn't remember giving his name yesterday. But, oh—he'd paid with his credit card, and this smooth operator had picked the name up in case he came in again. Maybe he'd better check that account, make sure it was still secure. He reached for his phone, then put it back in his pocket. No service, remember?
That would mean the captain couldn't get hold of him. The inconvenience of not having cell service seemed suddenly less onerous. "Rolling Rock, please. And a shot."
"A shot of what? Vodka? Bourbon?"
Harry squinted at the bottles lined up on the shelves that surrounded the mirror. "I dunno. Can't decide, I guess. What do you like?"
Severus' lips laid out a smile, served with a side of derision. He turned to the shelves, pulled off a number of bottles, and combined them according to some esoteric formula held in deep in his brain. Then he put the brimming two-ounce glass on the bar in front of Harry and snapped his fingers. Tall blue and yellow flames curled up from the surface of the alcohol.
"How the hell did you do that?"
With a quirk of his brow, Severus said, "I am a bartender, you know."
That made no sense, but there were tricks to every trade, right? There'd be time later to figure it out. He moved on to, "How do you expect me to drink it?" It was mesmerizing, in a weird way, but that fire was eating all the alcohol in his shot.
"You asked me what I liked. This is what I like."
"What, you like watching people set their eyebrows on fire?"
One unblemished black brow moved up that alabaster forehead. Harry looked around the bar. The straws were plastic, so they'd melt. What the hell? The flames flickered in the dim light of the Budweiser sign, and Snape's watching eyes were getting on his nerves. "Don't you have something else to do?" Harry snapped.
"Not at the moment, no." There he stood.
Then Harry had an idea. He drew in a big breath and blew.
Splashes of flaming alcohol spattered everywhere. Some got on his arm, where he'd rested it next to the glass. He yelled and smacked at his burning skin, jumping down from the stool, staring at the disaster he'd caused with just one breath.
Severus was unperturbed. The damp bar mop he was already holding quenched every tiny flame before it so much as blistered the scarred black bar-top. Without a word, without so much as a glance, he held out another towel, filled with ice.
Harry snatched it out of his hand. "You asshole! You knew I was going to do that and you didn't stop me!"
That brought the barman's head up. In tones colder than the compress Harry held to his arm, he hissed, "I am responsible for my actions, not yours. There were several possible outcomes. I was ready for all of them. Unlike you, Mr. Potter, I think ahead."
"How do you know I don't? You jerk. Just because I fell for your trick" (how did he set fire to the shot, then?) "you don't get to judge me. You know nothing about me and my plans. Nothing." The voice in his head that sounded like his captain reminded him of the number of times he had rushed in, unangelic; he shushed it with bitter satisfaction as he dumped the ice-filled towel onto the bar. The barman's derisive snort followed him to the men's room.
In the marginally better light that settled from the fixture in the high, cracked ceiling, he saw his arm was decorated with four little blisters, each set like a tiny pearl in a ring of red, irritated skin. It was time to leave this place. He should settle his tab and go, and by damn, that shot had better not be on the bill. He washed his hands and his arm with the pink soap that smelled of flowers never grown in any garden and marched back out to the bar.
There was a cold Rolling Rock in front of his place; the barman and the shot glass were gone. He sat on his stool and took a long drink, savoring the common beer-ness of it; with no cash in his pocket, he couldn't leave until the guy came back to take his card. Might as well drink up in the meantime.
The door opened to admit the couple from the day before. They were quiet as they walked to their table, and the man caught the door and closed it without a sound. He heard the woman say, "It's hard, just sitting and wondering." As he watched in the mirror, her companion nodded and spoke to her in a low voice, their faces so close they were almost touching. She dabbed at her eyes and gave him a sad smile. Severus pushed through the red curtain and, ignoring Harry's wave, cruised over to their table. It seemed to Harry that they were all friends; something about the way the barman approached them, the way they reacted to him.
Harry's friends were going to be really mad. He knew it. He just didn't know who they were going to be mad at: his captain, for firing him for doing what anyone would have done in his shoes, or Harry himself, for being the kind of idiot that didn't know when to stop pushing. His ex would scream at him because the alimony would dry up, at least for a while. The rest of the squad—well, there was some chance that they might be a little bit relieved to be rid of the drama between Harry and the captain. It didn't matter to Harry. None of that was his problem, now that he was among the ranks of the unemployed.
Might as well drink up, since he was here. He finished his beer and caught Severus' eye. In no time, there was another one in front of him. He had to hand it to the guy: he was sure good at his job.
XOXOX
The next afternoon, Harry got in late; he thought of it that way, like drinking at the Twilight Room was his job, and he needed to be on time. The other couple was already there. They sat with their backs to the room this time, though. He couldn't see their faces in the mirror when he climbed into his usual spot.
The barman glided over and, without a word, put a Rolling Rock on the bar. Harry met his eyes; there was neither blame nor forgiveness in them, just that professional distance that made him such a puzzle. With no acknowledgment at all, Severus rounded the bar and went over to his two pals at the corner table. Their voices rippled the quiet of the bar, but Harry couldn't make out any of the conversation.
Harry was still thinking about what kind of person would want a jerk like Severus for a friend when he was startled by a glass half-full of bilious green stuff that slid into place in front of him. On top rested a slotted spoon bearing a sugar cube; a tiny pitcher of ice water followed. The set-up tickled his memory; hadn't he seen it in a movie or a documentary someplace? He poured the water over the sugar until it melted into the green and then drank the mixture down.
"Do I pass this time?" he asked, just to dig at the guy.
"What makes you think any of this is a test?" came the reply.
Harry relaxed a little. Maybe it was the absinthe, but he was starting to feel a bit better. The couple at the table behind him were talking, their heads together; he felt bad for them, since it looked like they had some kind of trouble. Hell, he felt bad for himself, too, but he was actively pursuing a course of treatment to reconcile himself to his loss, as the pamphlet in the separation packet said. He doubted that getting drunk every day was quite what they meant, but still.
The barman (what kind of a name was Severus, anyhow?) was back to his newspaper. Harry drank his beer and soaked up the quiet, but after a while, he felt like he had to say something.
"How come all the tattoos?"
The least fleeting look of approval brushed across Severus' face. It was so quick that Harry thought maybe it was the booze playing with his head; he remembered hearing that absinthe did that. He didn't have time to follow that line of thought, because he was actually being gifted with an answer.
"It is my body. I decorated it once at someone else's behest. After that, I took back control. I began by camouflaging the original mark, and I have continued to add to the work ever since."
So, that was a gang symbol on his right inner arm. "Let me see?" Harry was careful to phrase it as a question. The guy was serious about his body art; it wouldn't do to insult him now.
There was only a slight hesitation between the question and the long-fingered hand reaching to further roll back one sleeve.
"Severus?"
"Excuse me," the barman said, and headed for the couple at the table. After some murmured conversation, they rose; the man shook Severus' hand and the woman hugged his neck briefly before they moved for the door. It smacked closed behind them, and the barman returned to his side of the bar. He laid his arms down, hands palm up, on either side of Harry's place.
Harry moved the bottle and the absinthe set-up to get a better look. The original tattoo was easy to spot. It was crude, a skull with a tongue that turned into a snake, looping around in a figure eight and ending with the fanged head hanging below the jaw. The line was thick, like it had been drawn with a wide-tip marker, and the detail was nonexistent. It was a far cry from the talent that had inked the fix: fine, even line-work that turned the skull into a full skeleton and stood it, fig-leafed and fruit in hand, next to an apple tree, from which the snake now appeared to dangle. Behind this bony Eve was an equally bony Adam, jaunty in his useless leafy loincloth. Animals, not skeletal but whole, gamboled about their feet, and birds of all species soared above, coiling in procession around the lower bicep before disappearing beneath that white shirt sleeve. There was sun in the sky on one side of the elbow and moon on the other, and down toward the wrist dug moles and earthworms, things that dwelt underground.
The other arm was done by the same hand: planets with their symbols, all nine (Harry didn't care what they said about Pluto, and clearly neither did Severus), comets in their orbits, moons and asteroids, etched in brilliant color on the curving canvas of the lower arm. At the elbow, the thick ink of space, spangled with stars, thinned, and rays came down from some source hidden beneath crisp, starched cotton. Unthinking, Harry traced his finger along one of the beams of light, tracing it upward, along the sensitive skin of the inner elbow.
Severus moved slightly, and Harry realized what he was doing. He yanked his hand away.
"Oh, ah, sorry. It's just...that's amazing work. It's like it's all alive. What's the rest like? How far does it go?"
Severus did that thing with the beer again, that smooth sleight-of-hand that put the cold bottle in front of Harry before he even registered the opening of the cooler door.
"Both sleeves, as you see, and my shoulders, front and back. One piece on my chest."
With sudden thirst, Harry took a deep drink of his Rolling Rock. "Are you..." He paused, thought about what he was asking, and stopped. Severus stopped adjusting his sleeves and gestured, palms up. Harry took a deep breath and continued. "Are you the only one who ever gets to see them?"
The face that had almost approached mobility for a few moments stilled, con-man cool. "That is a personal question, Mr. Potter."
"I did stop, you know. You're the one that told me to keep going."
Severus pursed his lips; Harry thought, Ha! Got you! but did his best not to betray his glee. He sipped the beer and gazed into the big glass cooler like it was a sixty-inch flat-screen and the Rangers were playing on home ice.
After a moment, Severus placed another shot of absinthe next to the green beer bottle. As Harry prepared it (he liked this little ritual, he thought; he'd drink it more often) the barman stepped back a bit and said, "No." Then he raised his hands to the black buttons of his black vest and began to open them, one at a time.
Harry's breath caught in his throat. He hadn't meant—he didn't want to—but maybe the guy was only going to let him see the tattoos, maybe that was all. He'd done it again, asking the question he wasn't supposed to ask, doing the thing he knew damned well he shouldn't have done. That's why he was here, wasn't it?
The many small buttons on the vest had been slipped free, and now those nimble hands were starting at the bottom of the shirt buttons. White plastic pearl, sliding past tight machine-stitched holes. Harry could see shadows through the shirt, like he was looking into a brightly lit house with the blinds drawn. The tattoo on Severus' chest blended into the work on the left shoulder somehow. The birds on the right spiraled up into a sky with clouds. There was something else there, but he couldn't make it out.
These buttons were taking much longer to unfasten, and Harry found himself squinting at the patterns showing through the cotton. Two more buttons; one. The shirt shrugged back from shoulders of surprising strength, and then it was all revealed.
Along the ball of the shoulder and across the right collar bone, stopping just at the place the placket of the shirt still covered them, the birds were transformed into other creatures with wings: six wings, a pair to fly, a pair each to cover faces and feet. They processed across to the left and changed again, now two wings stretched out to stay aloft, like sphinxes, great paws and long claws on their lions' bodies, eyes in human faces averted from the left bicep. There, a woman, beautiful, puissant, clothed only in light and dignity, held court.
The light from her hands and feet poured out, rays reaching down the arm to the place Harry had traced with his finger. Her right hand, outstretched, spilled light across the space between arm and chest to be taken in, absorbed by a light more brilliant still, implied by the absence of ink, which illuminated all the creatures and places and plants and planets and beings that moved over Severus' body.
The light rose and fell; breath, the beginning and end of life. Harry found himself leaning across the bar, propped on one hand while the other wiped tears from his cheeks. He didn't know; he couldn't know what to do next. He looked up at Severus' eyes, fathomless black and shining. The room was brighter now, lit by some source Harry could not see. He looked again at Severus' heart and back at his face.
Severus smiled, a slight smile, but a true one. "Mr. Potter, it is time to leave the twilight room." He twitched aside the red curtain, and a brilliance greater than any spotlight, any searchlight, any light of Earth or Sun poured out. "Please step this way. You will recognize the path."
Slipping down from the stool, Harry took a step, and then another, around the end of the bar. There were birds in flight, and far ahead, perhaps those six-winged creatures. He wanted to see them, and the sphinxes, and that lovely woman who showed the way. He wanted to know that place, more than he'd ever wanted anything.
Just before he took the last step into the rising light, he looked at Severus. "You're a hell of a bartender, Severus."
"Precisely what I am trying to avoid, Mr. Potter." He pulled the curtain back a little further in invitation.
"Godspeed, Mr. Potter."
"You too, Severus." Harry smiled and stepped through the door, on the way to the heart of that light.
XOXOX
There was a high-pitched whine from the monitors. Hermione jumped up from her seat and shouted, "No!" and Ron grabbed her arms to keep her from leaping forward. The ICU staff rushed in; the two of them were hustled out of the room to stand in the corridor.
But not for long.
When the doctor came out, that serious, unhappy look on her face, Ron and Hermione already knew.
"Why now?" Ron asked, after the doctor had extended sympathy. "After three days in a coma, why now?"
The doctor shook her head. "We never know, do we? Four gunshot wounds. They should have killed him outright, but he stuck around. Medically, I can say that his systems continued to labor until they finally exhausted themselves, trying to survive. Spiritually? Mentally? There just aren't any answers."
After she confirmed the arrangements and gave them contact numbers, she went back to her duties. They stood in the hall, clinging to each other until their tears ebbed for a time. "At least," Ron said, "at least he won't have to go through the inquiry and the administrative hearing. He was wrong--"
"Ron, how can you say that?"
"It's true, 'Mione, it's true. He was wrong, by Department standards, but he was right, as a human being, to defend that woman. I don't know what would have happened."
They started toward the elevator. "No more pain, no more loneliness," 'Mione said, and covered her mouth with her hand.
"No more bad jokes, no more borrowing twenty bucks before payday." The door opened and they got in. Ron pushed the button for the lobby. "Do you think it's true, that they know you're there, even when they're in a coma?"
"I have to believe that, Ron. I can't even consider that he thought he was alone when he..." She shut her eyes and tears leaked out.
The doors opened on the lobby. A man, tall, with long black hair, was waiting to board.
"He had to know. You're right. And the tunnel everyone talks about, and the white light? Yeah. He'd go right for it. Harry never could resist a mystery."
They brushed past the waiting passenger; he got on the elevator and held the door open for a moment to watch them leave the hospital. His eyes were tired, but his mouth was curved in a small, acknowledging smile.