FIC: Do and Do Not (S/R NC-17)
Somewhere, along the way, I turned into someone who actually finishes fics. Clearly, there is a problem here. ;)
Title: Do and Do Not
Author: Imochan
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 4, 416
Summary: Mmm... betrayal, fresh out of the oven.
Pairing: Sirius/Remus
Notes: Grew out of a drabble that never went anywhere except cynicism. \:D/ I swear to god that I am a devout puppyshipper forever and ever amen but uh. Don't take this fic as an indication. Also, I hate this fic with the power of thousand suns, but it needs to get off my hard-drive and out there before I delete it all in a fit of peaky authorial dramatics. :D A thousand-million thanks to blue_moony for the constant help and continual beta-ing. <3
For the first few weeks of living in Sirius’s old, cracked, dusty flat, Remus is very happy. Sirius “lets” him pay a quarter of the rent, and Remus only says let because it makes Sirius feel better, but he knows it was the fact that he threatened to hex Sirius’s eyeballs inside-out if he insisted on charity. Remus has a job, washing dishes at a coffee shop nearby, which is hardly engaging, but is very stable, and it means he can sleep in on Sunday mornings.
He likes coming back to something like this, after the day is out, and Sirius is sprawled on the ugly green chesterfield, reading one of Remus’s books (Remus just thinks Sirius does it so he can dog-ear the pages, even though, to Remus, this is a Thing You Do Not Do). And Remus throws his keys on the kitchen table and makes tea in the rusty kettle, and then they fight over who makes dinner and who clears up.
He likes this, and is happy, and no amount of official Ministry post, bearing his name and summons or a new list of Do’s and Do Not’s for the modern, law-abiding werewolf can possibly shake this safe, pleasing thing he has inside of him, and around him.
But Sirius finds a letter one day, which really means Sirius got too curious for his own good and opened Remus’s mail before he got home and had a chance to stow it safely in his sock drawer. This means that Remus opens the door of the flat and tosses his keys aside, and knows something is wrong from that moment, because Sirius is not on the couch or in the bedroom; Sirius is in the kitchen, with a piece of parchment in his hands, glaring at Remus.
“Hallo,” says Remus, and sheds his coat.
“Don’t you start,” says Sirius and his eyes narrow. “Don’t you dare start.”
He hangs his coat carefully, pulls off his gloves one finger at a time and slips them into the pocket. “Start what?” he asks, and goes to tap the kettle with his wand.
Sirius's face whips into anger, fist clenched around the paper. “What the hell is this shit?” He growls, and shakes his hand as if Remus can see it.
“Well, you’ve obviously read it,” he says - calm, calm, bite, retract - and pours the hot water into a chipped mug. “Why don’t you tell me?”
“Registration numbers?” growls Sirius, again. “Tattoos? They branding you now - is that it? You all stand up in a line and they stick a hot poker on your arm?”
“I don’t think so,” he says, and hopes it’s not at all like that, because his appointment is tomorrow and he hasn’t really gotten around to thinking about if pain might be involved.
“You don’t think so!” Sirius mocks him, grabbing at his gaze as he goes to sit down across the table.
“No, I don’t.”
“You’re going? Have you been doing all this shit they tell you to?!”
“Yes, I suppose I have.”
“Are you out of your mind?!”
Remus just sips his tea.
“I’m owling James,” growls Sirius. “He’ll put this straight - this is - ”
“James knows. And Lily, too,” he lies, and taps the side of his mug absently, watching the steam rise. “I asked them what they thought I should do, when I got the first one.”
Sirius’s eyes blaze, and Remus wants to take it back, because he thinks maybe he’s skewered an unfortunate feeling, but Remus knows that Sirius would have asked James first himself, so it isn’t really fair to be so hypocritical about it, especially when it’s not really true.
“And they told you what,” says Sirius, flatly, parchment crumpled on the table now.
“That it would probably be best not to cause a disturbance, in this case. Things being what they are, and the situation --”
“Don’t listen to them, listen to me!”
“You realize the last time I listened to you over Lily and James I ended up stranded outside our flat with neither key, wand, shoes, socks, robe, nor money, in the middle of a rainstorm, don’t you?”
“Aw, but that was -- ”
“Sirius, I’m fairly confident I had a mild case of hypothermia.”
Sirius snorts; his head tilts with the bow of a guilt he never really had the ability to deal with, and so rarely seems to notice. “Bloody drama queen.”
“Insulting me is not helping your case, Black.”
“Look -” Sirius stabs a finger in his direction, eyes haughty, exasperated, “-You’re only saying it ‘cause you’re scared, again!”
Remus knows - too well - how to deal with this. “Scared of what, exactly? Seems to me those who’d be scared would be the ones avoiding the registration process.”
“You’re just scared to fight back! It’s like you think you bloody deserve this or something!” Sirius’s cheeks are red, and he flings himself back against the chair.
“I beg your pardon, but this isn’t your problem, Sirius. In fact, this has nothing to do with you.” He doesn’t mean it, but there it is.
Sirius laughs - disgusted - and braces the heels of his hands against the edge of the table, as if to push away. But his shoulders hunch and he stays where he is, making it impossible not to meet that tremendous, searing gaze across the table. “Liar,” he growls. “Fuckin’ liar.”
“Yes, of course, please do swear at me. I’m already warming to the idea of deliberately skiving on the Ministry’s implicit order to report for Questionable Creature Registration, thus making myself even more of a social outcast and immediate suspect, because not only are you remarkably articulate and intelligent in your reasoning, you’re so polite, too,” he says, feeling his skin prickle.
“Bollocks, Remus,” Sirius snarls. “Fuck you, and the safe little horse you rode in on! I can’t believe you’re actually even con-considering this insa -- ”
“Yes, safe,” he snaps back, and he can feel fingers at his throat, as if urging him to stop the words already there, because this is it, this is the last straw, and if he has to know to get him to stop, then it will be said. “Safe, exactly. I am safe, here, outside Hogwarts, I’m happy, and safe. I don’t have to worry about a job, or wondering who knows, who even what the moon will be like, because I know. And it may be predictable, but at least it’s something - it’s what I want! And if that’s what you call bollocks, then --”
Sirius has hardly heard a word, Remus thinks, before leaping in. “What you want?!”
He feels exhausted, and the words are dragged out of him. “To be here, Sirius. For God’s sake - just to be here.”
“Here - …”
“Here with - ”
Sirius, mercurial, has narrowed his eyes, pinpointing - Remus feels - the rip in his sleeve where his heart has suddenly leapt through.
“And you think...” Sirius starts, and his face softens.
“That if I don’t do this...” He feels pitied, and does not think he can stomach the weight in Sirius’s eyes, and so he does not look.
“Right,” says Sirius, briskly, business-like - that’s that then carry on carry on - “Then I’ll come with you tomorrow, how’s that? That way, here can be wherever we are together, eh?”
He nods, fights the swelling, bitter sigh, and does his best to look pleased. He never wanted to win an argument this way.
“There, now,” says Sirius, and Remus tries very hard not to realize that he has, quite simply, bared his heart to the one person in the world who has the ability to crush it between idle fingers. “Isn’t that better?”
It isn’t. Because now Sirius knows, and Sirius watches, and Sirius could do any number of things about it, but isn’t - not even cracking jokes - and that makes Remus on edge. It sends him frayed and choked out into every single morning, when he wakes up and hears Sirius singing in the shower or Sirius scraping a pan of slightly burnt eggs. He thinks, today will be the day. But it isn’t.
And then it is the Moon, and Padfoot is nearby, and everything seems very simple again, for a short breath of time, in-between teeth and fangs and hands and claws, like a wash of epiphany before the fall. Things are not so cluttered up, when his mind is keen for things in black and white.
He wakes in the afternoon with a note from Sirius - who has training - and a pot of tea, charmed to keep warm, on a chair pulled up to his bedside. He sits up and drinks, and then goes to wash the faint traces of blood from under his fingernails, and takes up sentry on the ugly green chesterfield, with the pot of tea and a dog-eared book, and lets his muscles unknot slowly, and ache, and lets his mind wander before he falls asleep again.
It is evening when he wakes for a second time, and Sirius is sitting against the crook of his hip on the couch, and his arm is across Sirius’s thighs, and Sirius’s fingers are running over the tattoo, the crisp black numbers, and Sirius’s face looks blank, a little, not quite engaged enough to be thoughtful.
Sirius’s palm covers his wrist, and blurry-eyed, he sees Sirius shift, head rising to look at him.
“Hurt?” Sirius asks, and looks down again, heartbeat against beat, palm on skin, and Remus tries not to shiver as he shakes his head, no.
Sirius frowns, fingers pressing briefly. “Bet it did,” he says.
Remus tries to sit up, but his muscles are too tight, and too slow, and so he only shifts slightly, looking away.
“You can say, you know,” says Sirius, still so quiet, and it draws his eyes back. “You can say if it does.”
“I wouldn’t - ” Sirius starts again, and stops, shifts his palm over Remus’s wrist again. “You shouldn’t be afraid of that.”
Remus frowns, tries to pull away, to sit up, and reach for his book or the edge of the couch, but Sirius holds his wrist, holds him very still, and suddenly he’s forgotten the mechanics of breathing.
“Don’t be,” says Sirius. “Bet you think no one cares about that, huh? Bet you think you can beat yourself up like this, and no one will spare a look enough to give a shit?”
He doesn’t think that, he doesn’t, not like that anyway, when Sirius makes it sound so ugly, but he knows that it’s just not worth it sometimes to think that he’d any chance at all, and then he’s thinking very little because Sirius has pressed his wrist to the cushions, by his head, and Sirius’s other palm is pressed to his ribs, his knees against his hip, and Sirius’s lips are against his ear.
“I give a shit,” whispers Sirius, fiercely.
"You -" says Remus, heart thudding, but Sirius makes an impatient thrum of air and kisses him.
Remus is smothered, tongue in his mouth trying to steal every exhale he attempts, fingers crushing his wrists to the cushions, Sirius's chest over his, pressing down, nudging up, shifting, heaving, and aching, and Sirius straddles his hips, and makes a low 'nnh' sound when Remus puts his hand on Sirius's neck.
"Don't -" Sirius tries, panting, when Remus pulls back to speak, and he slips two fingers into Remus's mouth, his lips by Remus's ear again. "Shh - " he pants " - Moony..." his hips shift, and Remus bites, because the fleshy pads are pressing against his teeth and oh, Remus's mind is watery with incoherence, oh, how that feels.
"..nnh... Remus - " Sirius is making hard, sharp sounds in the back of his throat; they spread over Remus's skin and make his skin ache, make his spine stretch and arch with the want of it all, and he squeezes his eyes shut, tightly, and Sirius's fingers pry at his mouth, wetly, and he sucks them in, biting again, biting against.
"I just want to..." Sirius pants, fingers squeezing his wrist. "I'll - be here, swear to god, Moony - I'll..."
Then Sirius is scrabbling at his clothes, at the hem of the sweater, and his fingers are leaving damp streaks on his skin, on his ribs, and Sirius's other hand is on his trousers, on the inside of his thigh, rough and pushing and kneading hard and oh -- that makes Remus strain, arch, shudder. He struggles, overwhelmed, puts both hands to Sirius's shoulders and makes to push him away, but only his fingers cooperate, squeezing.
"Don't," says Sirius, into his mouth, wet, panting, hand rubbing him through the fabric, almost frantic. "Just - let me, Moony... "
Remus can't breathe, and he buries his face against Sirius's shoulder, gasping, gnawing, leaving a damp circle of his mouth on the fabric of Sirius's shirt.
"Moony..." Sirius is panting in his ear, pushing against his thigh, against the couch as he shoves at him with his hand. "Oh, Christ -- Remus..."
He comes, shuddering, arms wrapped around Sirius's shaking shoulders; he buries his face in Sirius's neck and chokes on the way Sirius's skin tastes when he cries out against it.
Later, Sirius tugs him into bed and under the covers, and rubs him to orgasm again. His hand is sweaty and wet and hot and he plasters his body up against Remus's back, cock shoving up against the damp skin above Remus's backside, rubbing wetly into the crease below. Remus closes his eyes and feels lazy, aching suffocation; he pants into the pillow, bites it when Sirius grabs his hips and comes, sticky and breathless and gasping into his ear and neck.
Sirius is sleeping when Remus wakes, again, and the sky outside the window is an eerie seashell, silver-pink, blue around the edges. It rained, when they slept, because Remus can see the darkened brick of the sill outside, of the spatters on the concrete on the pavement on the street, and the way the streetlamps, flickering against dawn, catch the droplets on the glass. There is black hair spread and tangled over the pillows, in Sirius's mouth, in Remus's fingers, and Remus bites his tongue when he sits up, pulls away, as if waking Sirius would hurt like a bolt of pain up his spine.
His head throbs, vaguely, a full, dull sort of thud at the top of his spine, in his ears. He tries not to think, but all he can see behind closed eyelids, on the wall, in the reflection of the window, is the way Sirius looked when his mouth was swollen and red and whispering those things.
A thing you do not do is sleep with Sirius Black, he thinks, hazy, dull, panicking quietly. Because Sirius Black hurts you. This is common knowledge, he thinks, and yet he’s always been so stupid about it. Always so stupid. Because Sirius Black is always so stupid about it.
Remus frowns, and stares at his hands in his lap, palms cupping the slip of dawn-light over the sheets. He frowns, because out of the corner of his eye, he can see Sirius’s hand, fingers splayed in sleep, half-curled where they slipped from his hip. This is worse, he thinks, than the numbers printed on the inside of his wrist; this is something so indelible it makes his gut ache.
If you can’t say no to him, Remus thinks and wants to disappear, you masochistic, stupid wretch, if you can’t say no, what on earth are you even pretending for?
He Apparates to Godric's Hollow, which is a sleepy sort of fairy tale at six in the morning, and he spends a few moments at the top of the road, thinking every other second might be a better one to start moving than the one before. But eventually he gives up waiting, because his muscles are aching, and he really rather would sit down.
He has a key, and he uses it, after a few guilty seconds of hovering like a strange sort of friendly criminal outside their side door. Inside, the house still has that smell, of lumpy blankets, of day-old laundry, that half-asleep yawning that buildings sometimes have before anyone wakes up. Remus stands in the hallway, and breathes for a while, trying to remember the last time he woke up and felt the way this house does now. There is a light he can see at the end of the hallway, where the bathroom is, just off the kitchen.
"Lily," he calls, softly, and knocks a knuckle on the frame of the bathroom door. "It's me."
Lily is bent over the toilet, holding a loose fistful of her hair up and out of the way, wearing a pair of James's Hogwarts pajamas rolled up at the cuffs.
"Lily," he says, when she turns to look at him. "Hi. I."
"Oh, hell," says Lily, and wipes her mouth. "He didn’t."
Remus holds Lily's hair for her, sitting on the edge of the bathtub, and passes her a wet cloth from the sink when she's finished. She pats the side of his neck, absently, grimacing only slightly.
"Sorry you had to see that," she smiles.
"I don't mind," Remus says, truthfully. "All right?"
"Oh, it's fine," Lily tosses the cloth back into the sink and settles back against the toilet, knees drawn up to her chest. "But Remus..."
"It was a bad idea," says Remus, and is vaguely frightened by how she already seems to know.
"What was?" Lily folds her arms over her knees and watches him. She has three freckles on her left wrist. Remus stares at them and thinks, help me.
"Moving in," says Remus. "I think."
"Do you want to know what I think?" asks Lily, and he nods. "I think," she says, "that you both made a mistake."
Remus swallows down something sour, but Lily is smiling.
"And I think that's fine," she continues, "because at least you can admit it, which, in all honesty isn't really a male trait, but even that lump seems to have grasped the concept - " she points a pink finger at the wall dividing them from the bedroom. " - but Sirius hasn't."
"Sirius - "
" - is an immature prick, basically," says Lily. "Basically. And we love him, but he's a cock-up. Basically, a right, perfect arsehole."
"Basically," Remus tries, and finds the word sticks in his throat.
"Oh, you," says Lily, and smiles, and touches her palm to his neck, and Remus thinks, my god, that child is the luckiest child in the entire universe. He closes his eyes.
"Tired?" asks Lily, and her hand is lifting aches from his skin, in little half-breaths.
"Sort of," he whispers. "I'm in love with him."
Lily's thumb touches his jaw. "Hurt?" she asks.
"Yes," he admits. "Yes."
"What do you think?" she asks him, and the flannel rubs against his neck.
"I think," he tries; then tries again. "I think, no."
"You'll be all right," says Lily, and smoothes the hair from his forehead. "I promise."
James stumbles in, unshaven, bed-wild and eyes more swollen than shut, looking a little like the things Remus used to have nightmares about before he became one. He kisses Lily on the cheek, and Lily pats his wild head patiently as he gropes his way to the sink. Remus waits where he is, watching in the mirror as James finds a toothbrush and shoves it in his mouth, until his eyes open a little and he seems to notice that the maximum capacity of the bathroom is rather stressed.
"Remus," says James, toothpaste spit dribbling down his chin, and Lily dabs a washcloth to his stubble. "It's seven in the bloody morning; what are you doing in my washroom?!"
"Morning sickness," says Lily. "All better now." And Remus counts himself lucky that James isn't awake enough before a cup of coffee to even think about what that could have meant.
Remus comes back to Sirius's flat with two styrofoam cups of coffee and a paper bag of cheese danishes from the bakery down the street. The door's unlocked, and Peter's shoes are by the fireplace.
He isn't sure what to think of Peter these days. He comes by, like he always did. But then and now are different. It seems like every time Peter and Sirius speak, now, the world is a little more cold, and Sirius seems to remember all the unfortunates in his life a little more clearly. It seems like Peter and James walk a little farther ahead of him, now. It seems like Peter is afraid of him.
"Remus?"
"Yes," he calls, and wonders, rather vacantly, whether he should give Peter his danish or his coffee. "I'm back."
"Where were you? Bloody early to be going off, eh?"
"At James and Lily's," he says, and decides on the coffee, because his stomach aches somehow, in the strange sort of disturbed silence that follows. He hears it like some people see Those Looks, see the way people Look at him, at the way he drifts, sometimes. Been hearing it for most of his life, and he can't help it when it happens. He decides to give Peter his coffee.
"What for?" continues Sirius, when he slips into the kitchen and hands Sirius the paper bag and a cup. Sirius's fingers sort of grab after his, but Remus feels sort of dirty all over, and ends it at a passing touch. "Ta."
"See Lily," says Remus, around a mouthful of danish, because he's tired of lying. "Hi, Pete."
"Hiya - that for me - ah, thanks tons, Moony."
"She okay?"
"For a pregnant Lily," Remus chews, and swallows, and tries to get the kettle to boil. "She's just fine."
"Pete's just here to catch up, you know," says Sirius, awkward, and Remus wants to shout I know what you think I don't care!, but he nods at the kettle, which gives a feeble sort of a toot. "Leaving for Romania this afternoon."
"Order things?" asks Remus, quietly.
"Eh," says Peter, and oh, Remus thinks, if only Sirius were as good of a liar as you. "Not really. More of a vacation, eh!"
"You hate dragons, Peter," says Remus, because it's true; he remembers when Peter was eleven and an opened dark trunk in the boys' dorm revealed a raging Chinese Fireball and Peter had cried a little even though he swore he wasn't, while a fiendishly happy James wrestled eleven-year-old fears into laughter.
Peter laughs into his coffee, because he remembers, too, and Sirius is grinning like he can't stop, tight and ugly, Remus thinks.
"Somehow, Moony, old boy," winks Peter. "I think I'll be all right. Boggarts aren't with us forever, eh?"
Remus stays in the kitchen when Peter floos and leaves the flat smelling vaguely of sulphur. He braces himself against the counter and counts to ten while Sirius tries to act absent and rearranges the kitchen chairs.
"So," says Sirius.
"Sorry," says Remus, and they both stop, pause; Remus wants to take it back.
"No," says Sirius and he's schooling a glare, Remus can tell. "Don't."
"All right. But."
"Are you -"
"I'm fine."
"If - "
"No," Remus sets down his teacup. "Don't."
"You don't even know what I was going to say," Sirius takes a few steps in, and Remus feels his stomach want to burrow into his spine.
"No," says Remus, and there is sunlight falling across Sirius's face. So beautiful, in their stupid, ugly, dusty kitchen, it makes him ache, because he knows what it's like, to touch his jaw there, and to feel his thigh like that and what it's like when Sirius's sweaty palm is against his and they're pressed so tight together neither of them can breathe, unless it's yes. "No."
"Moony," says Sirius, and wrinkles his nose as if he's smelled something horrible. "If you'd just - "
"Ifs are a bad idea. Now," Remus says, and he thought he'd never find pain comparable to the rip tide of the full moon, but there it is. "I can't. I shouldn't stay."
"Don't," Sirius snaps, like a violin string pulled too hard, heartstring twang. "Don't you dare walk out on me."
"Don't I what?" Remus feels something ugly bubble hotly in his gut.
"Remus, please," Sirius has his hands out, as if praying; he is unintelligible. "If you do this, things won't - Pete - he'll be - I'll have to beli -- Moony. We need to stick together."
"We," says Remus, and makes it true -what I say three times. "We never stuck. Much."
"We do," says Sirius, and he looks scared. "We stick just fine. We will. Bloody hell, Moony - you can't."
Remus stays silent, because he can, and he's going to. He's biting his tongue so hard he thinks he's going to slice right through.
"Fucking coward!" Sirius shoves a chair, suddenly, and Remus blinks because he knows that tone of voice, those words, self-hatred like only a Black can hate, and it doesn't make sense, because this time it's his fault, not Sirius's, and this time he was the one who didn't know when to stop, not Sirius, and this time he should be -
"I'm sorry," he says. "It wasn't -"
But Sirius has gone silent; has turned away.
"I'm sorry," he says, again.
Sirius stays where he is, with both hands to the table, proud aristocrat back bent with tension, perfect elegance, even in that ugly, broiling rage. Remus wants to put a hand on his shoulder, put things back, shelving books or organizing papers, it should be so easy, but there's something in the way, and his body feels too heavy.
He puts his hands in his pockets.
Sirius is gone when he comes out of his room. Sirius's shoes are not beside his at the door.
I'll find my own place, he thinks, and his suitcase bumps his knees. I'm doing the right thing, he thinks. Somehow, he thinks.
Somehow, Moony, old boy, I think I'll be all right.
He stands at the door, facing in. The flat smells like ice, before it cracks. The walls are big, too far apart; the space feels like the peeling tingle of moonlight, he's afraid, he can't move.
"No," he says, to the empty rooms, and again. "No."
And he closes the door behind him.
I am mucho wibbly about this fic, so any and all reviews/crits/comments will be welcomed and gobbled up greedily. <3
Title: Do and Do Not
Author: Imochan
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 4, 416
Summary: Mmm... betrayal, fresh out of the oven.
Pairing: Sirius/Remus
Notes: Grew out of a drabble that never went anywhere except cynicism. \:D/ I swear to god that I am a devout puppyshipper forever and ever amen but uh. Don't take this fic as an indication. Also, I hate this fic with the power of thousand suns, but it needs to get off my hard-drive and out there before I delete it all in a fit of peaky authorial dramatics. :D A thousand-million thanks to blue_moony for the constant help and continual beta-ing. <3
For the first few weeks of living in Sirius’s old, cracked, dusty flat, Remus is very happy. Sirius “lets” him pay a quarter of the rent, and Remus only says let because it makes Sirius feel better, but he knows it was the fact that he threatened to hex Sirius’s eyeballs inside-out if he insisted on charity. Remus has a job, washing dishes at a coffee shop nearby, which is hardly engaging, but is very stable, and it means he can sleep in on Sunday mornings.
He likes coming back to something like this, after the day is out, and Sirius is sprawled on the ugly green chesterfield, reading one of Remus’s books (Remus just thinks Sirius does it so he can dog-ear the pages, even though, to Remus, this is a Thing You Do Not Do). And Remus throws his keys on the kitchen table and makes tea in the rusty kettle, and then they fight over who makes dinner and who clears up.
He likes this, and is happy, and no amount of official Ministry post, bearing his name and summons or a new list of Do’s and Do Not’s for the modern, law-abiding werewolf can possibly shake this safe, pleasing thing he has inside of him, and around him.
But Sirius finds a letter one day, which really means Sirius got too curious for his own good and opened Remus’s mail before he got home and had a chance to stow it safely in his sock drawer. This means that Remus opens the door of the flat and tosses his keys aside, and knows something is wrong from that moment, because Sirius is not on the couch or in the bedroom; Sirius is in the kitchen, with a piece of parchment in his hands, glaring at Remus.
“Hallo,” says Remus, and sheds his coat.
“Don’t you start,” says Sirius and his eyes narrow. “Don’t you dare start.”
He hangs his coat carefully, pulls off his gloves one finger at a time and slips them into the pocket. “Start what?” he asks, and goes to tap the kettle with his wand.
Sirius's face whips into anger, fist clenched around the paper. “What the hell is this shit?” He growls, and shakes his hand as if Remus can see it.
“Well, you’ve obviously read it,” he says - calm, calm, bite, retract - and pours the hot water into a chipped mug. “Why don’t you tell me?”
“Registration numbers?” growls Sirius, again. “Tattoos? They branding you now - is that it? You all stand up in a line and they stick a hot poker on your arm?”
“I don’t think so,” he says, and hopes it’s not at all like that, because his appointment is tomorrow and he hasn’t really gotten around to thinking about if pain might be involved.
“You don’t think so!” Sirius mocks him, grabbing at his gaze as he goes to sit down across the table.
“No, I don’t.”
“You’re going? Have you been doing all this shit they tell you to?!”
“Yes, I suppose I have.”
“Are you out of your mind?!”
Remus just sips his tea.
“I’m owling James,” growls Sirius. “He’ll put this straight - this is - ”
“James knows. And Lily, too,” he lies, and taps the side of his mug absently, watching the steam rise. “I asked them what they thought I should do, when I got the first one.”
Sirius’s eyes blaze, and Remus wants to take it back, because he thinks maybe he’s skewered an unfortunate feeling, but Remus knows that Sirius would have asked James first himself, so it isn’t really fair to be so hypocritical about it, especially when it’s not really true.
“And they told you what,” says Sirius, flatly, parchment crumpled on the table now.
“That it would probably be best not to cause a disturbance, in this case. Things being what they are, and the situation --”
“Don’t listen to them, listen to me!”
“You realize the last time I listened to you over Lily and James I ended up stranded outside our flat with neither key, wand, shoes, socks, robe, nor money, in the middle of a rainstorm, don’t you?”
“Aw, but that was -- ”
“Sirius, I’m fairly confident I had a mild case of hypothermia.”
Sirius snorts; his head tilts with the bow of a guilt he never really had the ability to deal with, and so rarely seems to notice. “Bloody drama queen.”
“Insulting me is not helping your case, Black.”
“Look -” Sirius stabs a finger in his direction, eyes haughty, exasperated, “-You’re only saying it ‘cause you’re scared, again!”
Remus knows - too well - how to deal with this. “Scared of what, exactly? Seems to me those who’d be scared would be the ones avoiding the registration process.”
“You’re just scared to fight back! It’s like you think you bloody deserve this or something!” Sirius’s cheeks are red, and he flings himself back against the chair.
“I beg your pardon, but this isn’t your problem, Sirius. In fact, this has nothing to do with you.” He doesn’t mean it, but there it is.
Sirius laughs - disgusted - and braces the heels of his hands against the edge of the table, as if to push away. But his shoulders hunch and he stays where he is, making it impossible not to meet that tremendous, searing gaze across the table. “Liar,” he growls. “Fuckin’ liar.”
“Yes, of course, please do swear at me. I’m already warming to the idea of deliberately skiving on the Ministry’s implicit order to report for Questionable Creature Registration, thus making myself even more of a social outcast and immediate suspect, because not only are you remarkably articulate and intelligent in your reasoning, you’re so polite, too,” he says, feeling his skin prickle.
“Bollocks, Remus,” Sirius snarls. “Fuck you, and the safe little horse you rode in on! I can’t believe you’re actually even con-considering this insa -- ”
“Yes, safe,” he snaps back, and he can feel fingers at his throat, as if urging him to stop the words already there, because this is it, this is the last straw, and if he has to know to get him to stop, then it will be said. “Safe, exactly. I am safe, here, outside Hogwarts, I’m happy, and safe. I don’t have to worry about a job, or wondering who knows, who even what the moon will be like, because I know. And it may be predictable, but at least it’s something - it’s what I want! And if that’s what you call bollocks, then --”
Sirius has hardly heard a word, Remus thinks, before leaping in. “What you want?!”
He feels exhausted, and the words are dragged out of him. “To be here, Sirius. For God’s sake - just to be here.”
“Here - …”
“Here with - ”
Sirius, mercurial, has narrowed his eyes, pinpointing - Remus feels - the rip in his sleeve where his heart has suddenly leapt through.
“And you think...” Sirius starts, and his face softens.
“That if I don’t do this...” He feels pitied, and does not think he can stomach the weight in Sirius’s eyes, and so he does not look.
“Right,” says Sirius, briskly, business-like - that’s that then carry on carry on - “Then I’ll come with you tomorrow, how’s that? That way, here can be wherever we are together, eh?”
He nods, fights the swelling, bitter sigh, and does his best to look pleased. He never wanted to win an argument this way.
“There, now,” says Sirius, and Remus tries very hard not to realize that he has, quite simply, bared his heart to the one person in the world who has the ability to crush it between idle fingers. “Isn’t that better?”
It isn’t. Because now Sirius knows, and Sirius watches, and Sirius could do any number of things about it, but isn’t - not even cracking jokes - and that makes Remus on edge. It sends him frayed and choked out into every single morning, when he wakes up and hears Sirius singing in the shower or Sirius scraping a pan of slightly burnt eggs. He thinks, today will be the day. But it isn’t.
And then it is the Moon, and Padfoot is nearby, and everything seems very simple again, for a short breath of time, in-between teeth and fangs and hands and claws, like a wash of epiphany before the fall. Things are not so cluttered up, when his mind is keen for things in black and white.
He wakes in the afternoon with a note from Sirius - who has training - and a pot of tea, charmed to keep warm, on a chair pulled up to his bedside. He sits up and drinks, and then goes to wash the faint traces of blood from under his fingernails, and takes up sentry on the ugly green chesterfield, with the pot of tea and a dog-eared book, and lets his muscles unknot slowly, and ache, and lets his mind wander before he falls asleep again.
It is evening when he wakes for a second time, and Sirius is sitting against the crook of his hip on the couch, and his arm is across Sirius’s thighs, and Sirius’s fingers are running over the tattoo, the crisp black numbers, and Sirius’s face looks blank, a little, not quite engaged enough to be thoughtful.
Sirius’s palm covers his wrist, and blurry-eyed, he sees Sirius shift, head rising to look at him.
“Hurt?” Sirius asks, and looks down again, heartbeat against beat, palm on skin, and Remus tries not to shiver as he shakes his head, no.
Sirius frowns, fingers pressing briefly. “Bet it did,” he says.
Remus tries to sit up, but his muscles are too tight, and too slow, and so he only shifts slightly, looking away.
“You can say, you know,” says Sirius, still so quiet, and it draws his eyes back. “You can say if it does.”
“I wouldn’t - ” Sirius starts again, and stops, shifts his palm over Remus’s wrist again. “You shouldn’t be afraid of that.”
Remus frowns, tries to pull away, to sit up, and reach for his book or the edge of the couch, but Sirius holds his wrist, holds him very still, and suddenly he’s forgotten the mechanics of breathing.
“Don’t be,” says Sirius. “Bet you think no one cares about that, huh? Bet you think you can beat yourself up like this, and no one will spare a look enough to give a shit?”
He doesn’t think that, he doesn’t, not like that anyway, when Sirius makes it sound so ugly, but he knows that it’s just not worth it sometimes to think that he’d any chance at all, and then he’s thinking very little because Sirius has pressed his wrist to the cushions, by his head, and Sirius’s other palm is pressed to his ribs, his knees against his hip, and Sirius’s lips are against his ear.
“I give a shit,” whispers Sirius, fiercely.
"You -" says Remus, heart thudding, but Sirius makes an impatient thrum of air and kisses him.
Remus is smothered, tongue in his mouth trying to steal every exhale he attempts, fingers crushing his wrists to the cushions, Sirius's chest over his, pressing down, nudging up, shifting, heaving, and aching, and Sirius straddles his hips, and makes a low 'nnh' sound when Remus puts his hand on Sirius's neck.
"Don't -" Sirius tries, panting, when Remus pulls back to speak, and he slips two fingers into Remus's mouth, his lips by Remus's ear again. "Shh - " he pants " - Moony..." his hips shift, and Remus bites, because the fleshy pads are pressing against his teeth and oh, Remus's mind is watery with incoherence, oh, how that feels.
"..nnh... Remus - " Sirius is making hard, sharp sounds in the back of his throat; they spread over Remus's skin and make his skin ache, make his spine stretch and arch with the want of it all, and he squeezes his eyes shut, tightly, and Sirius's fingers pry at his mouth, wetly, and he sucks them in, biting again, biting against.
"I just want to..." Sirius pants, fingers squeezing his wrist. "I'll - be here, swear to god, Moony - I'll..."
Then Sirius is scrabbling at his clothes, at the hem of the sweater, and his fingers are leaving damp streaks on his skin, on his ribs, and Sirius's other hand is on his trousers, on the inside of his thigh, rough and pushing and kneading hard and oh -- that makes Remus strain, arch, shudder. He struggles, overwhelmed, puts both hands to Sirius's shoulders and makes to push him away, but only his fingers cooperate, squeezing.
"Don't," says Sirius, into his mouth, wet, panting, hand rubbing him through the fabric, almost frantic. "Just - let me, Moony... "
Remus can't breathe, and he buries his face against Sirius's shoulder, gasping, gnawing, leaving a damp circle of his mouth on the fabric of Sirius's shirt.
"Moony..." Sirius is panting in his ear, pushing against his thigh, against the couch as he shoves at him with his hand. "Oh, Christ -- Remus..."
He comes, shuddering, arms wrapped around Sirius's shaking shoulders; he buries his face in Sirius's neck and chokes on the way Sirius's skin tastes when he cries out against it.
Later, Sirius tugs him into bed and under the covers, and rubs him to orgasm again. His hand is sweaty and wet and hot and he plasters his body up against Remus's back, cock shoving up against the damp skin above Remus's backside, rubbing wetly into the crease below. Remus closes his eyes and feels lazy, aching suffocation; he pants into the pillow, bites it when Sirius grabs his hips and comes, sticky and breathless and gasping into his ear and neck.
Sirius is sleeping when Remus wakes, again, and the sky outside the window is an eerie seashell, silver-pink, blue around the edges. It rained, when they slept, because Remus can see the darkened brick of the sill outside, of the spatters on the concrete on the pavement on the street, and the way the streetlamps, flickering against dawn, catch the droplets on the glass. There is black hair spread and tangled over the pillows, in Sirius's mouth, in Remus's fingers, and Remus bites his tongue when he sits up, pulls away, as if waking Sirius would hurt like a bolt of pain up his spine.
His head throbs, vaguely, a full, dull sort of thud at the top of his spine, in his ears. He tries not to think, but all he can see behind closed eyelids, on the wall, in the reflection of the window, is the way Sirius looked when his mouth was swollen and red and whispering those things.
A thing you do not do is sleep with Sirius Black, he thinks, hazy, dull, panicking quietly. Because Sirius Black hurts you. This is common knowledge, he thinks, and yet he’s always been so stupid about it. Always so stupid. Because Sirius Black is always so stupid about it.
Remus frowns, and stares at his hands in his lap, palms cupping the slip of dawn-light over the sheets. He frowns, because out of the corner of his eye, he can see Sirius’s hand, fingers splayed in sleep, half-curled where they slipped from his hip. This is worse, he thinks, than the numbers printed on the inside of his wrist; this is something so indelible it makes his gut ache.
If you can’t say no to him, Remus thinks and wants to disappear, you masochistic, stupid wretch, if you can’t say no, what on earth are you even pretending for?
He Apparates to Godric's Hollow, which is a sleepy sort of fairy tale at six in the morning, and he spends a few moments at the top of the road, thinking every other second might be a better one to start moving than the one before. But eventually he gives up waiting, because his muscles are aching, and he really rather would sit down.
He has a key, and he uses it, after a few guilty seconds of hovering like a strange sort of friendly criminal outside their side door. Inside, the house still has that smell, of lumpy blankets, of day-old laundry, that half-asleep yawning that buildings sometimes have before anyone wakes up. Remus stands in the hallway, and breathes for a while, trying to remember the last time he woke up and felt the way this house does now. There is a light he can see at the end of the hallway, where the bathroom is, just off the kitchen.
"Lily," he calls, softly, and knocks a knuckle on the frame of the bathroom door. "It's me."
Lily is bent over the toilet, holding a loose fistful of her hair up and out of the way, wearing a pair of James's Hogwarts pajamas rolled up at the cuffs.
"Lily," he says, when she turns to look at him. "Hi. I."
"Oh, hell," says Lily, and wipes her mouth. "He didn’t."
Remus holds Lily's hair for her, sitting on the edge of the bathtub, and passes her a wet cloth from the sink when she's finished. She pats the side of his neck, absently, grimacing only slightly.
"Sorry you had to see that," she smiles.
"I don't mind," Remus says, truthfully. "All right?"
"Oh, it's fine," Lily tosses the cloth back into the sink and settles back against the toilet, knees drawn up to her chest. "But Remus..."
"It was a bad idea," says Remus, and is vaguely frightened by how she already seems to know.
"What was?" Lily folds her arms over her knees and watches him. She has three freckles on her left wrist. Remus stares at them and thinks, help me.
"Moving in," says Remus. "I think."
"Do you want to know what I think?" asks Lily, and he nods. "I think," she says, "that you both made a mistake."
Remus swallows down something sour, but Lily is smiling.
"And I think that's fine," she continues, "because at least you can admit it, which, in all honesty isn't really a male trait, but even that lump seems to have grasped the concept - " she points a pink finger at the wall dividing them from the bedroom. " - but Sirius hasn't."
"Sirius - "
" - is an immature prick, basically," says Lily. "Basically. And we love him, but he's a cock-up. Basically, a right, perfect arsehole."
"Basically," Remus tries, and finds the word sticks in his throat.
"Oh, you," says Lily, and smiles, and touches her palm to his neck, and Remus thinks, my god, that child is the luckiest child in the entire universe. He closes his eyes.
"Tired?" asks Lily, and her hand is lifting aches from his skin, in little half-breaths.
"Sort of," he whispers. "I'm in love with him."
Lily's thumb touches his jaw. "Hurt?" she asks.
"Yes," he admits. "Yes."
"What do you think?" she asks him, and the flannel rubs against his neck.
"I think," he tries; then tries again. "I think, no."
"You'll be all right," says Lily, and smoothes the hair from his forehead. "I promise."
James stumbles in, unshaven, bed-wild and eyes more swollen than shut, looking a little like the things Remus used to have nightmares about before he became one. He kisses Lily on the cheek, and Lily pats his wild head patiently as he gropes his way to the sink. Remus waits where he is, watching in the mirror as James finds a toothbrush and shoves it in his mouth, until his eyes open a little and he seems to notice that the maximum capacity of the bathroom is rather stressed.
"Remus," says James, toothpaste spit dribbling down his chin, and Lily dabs a washcloth to his stubble. "It's seven in the bloody morning; what are you doing in my washroom?!"
"Morning sickness," says Lily. "All better now." And Remus counts himself lucky that James isn't awake enough before a cup of coffee to even think about what that could have meant.
Remus comes back to Sirius's flat with two styrofoam cups of coffee and a paper bag of cheese danishes from the bakery down the street. The door's unlocked, and Peter's shoes are by the fireplace.
He isn't sure what to think of Peter these days. He comes by, like he always did. But then and now are different. It seems like every time Peter and Sirius speak, now, the world is a little more cold, and Sirius seems to remember all the unfortunates in his life a little more clearly. It seems like Peter and James walk a little farther ahead of him, now. It seems like Peter is afraid of him.
"Remus?"
"Yes," he calls, and wonders, rather vacantly, whether he should give Peter his danish or his coffee. "I'm back."
"Where were you? Bloody early to be going off, eh?"
"At James and Lily's," he says, and decides on the coffee, because his stomach aches somehow, in the strange sort of disturbed silence that follows. He hears it like some people see Those Looks, see the way people Look at him, at the way he drifts, sometimes. Been hearing it for most of his life, and he can't help it when it happens. He decides to give Peter his coffee.
"What for?" continues Sirius, when he slips into the kitchen and hands Sirius the paper bag and a cup. Sirius's fingers sort of grab after his, but Remus feels sort of dirty all over, and ends it at a passing touch. "Ta."
"See Lily," says Remus, around a mouthful of danish, because he's tired of lying. "Hi, Pete."
"Hiya - that for me - ah, thanks tons, Moony."
"She okay?"
"For a pregnant Lily," Remus chews, and swallows, and tries to get the kettle to boil. "She's just fine."
"Pete's just here to catch up, you know," says Sirius, awkward, and Remus wants to shout I know what you think I don't care!, but he nods at the kettle, which gives a feeble sort of a toot. "Leaving for Romania this afternoon."
"Order things?" asks Remus, quietly.
"Eh," says Peter, and oh, Remus thinks, if only Sirius were as good of a liar as you. "Not really. More of a vacation, eh!"
"You hate dragons, Peter," says Remus, because it's true; he remembers when Peter was eleven and an opened dark trunk in the boys' dorm revealed a raging Chinese Fireball and Peter had cried a little even though he swore he wasn't, while a fiendishly happy James wrestled eleven-year-old fears into laughter.
Peter laughs into his coffee, because he remembers, too, and Sirius is grinning like he can't stop, tight and ugly, Remus thinks.
"Somehow, Moony, old boy," winks Peter. "I think I'll be all right. Boggarts aren't with us forever, eh?"
Remus stays in the kitchen when Peter floos and leaves the flat smelling vaguely of sulphur. He braces himself against the counter and counts to ten while Sirius tries to act absent and rearranges the kitchen chairs.
"So," says Sirius.
"Sorry," says Remus, and they both stop, pause; Remus wants to take it back.
"No," says Sirius and he's schooling a glare, Remus can tell. "Don't."
"All right. But."
"Are you -"
"I'm fine."
"If - "
"No," Remus sets down his teacup. "Don't."
"You don't even know what I was going to say," Sirius takes a few steps in, and Remus feels his stomach want to burrow into his spine.
"No," says Remus, and there is sunlight falling across Sirius's face. So beautiful, in their stupid, ugly, dusty kitchen, it makes him ache, because he knows what it's like, to touch his jaw there, and to feel his thigh like that and what it's like when Sirius's sweaty palm is against his and they're pressed so tight together neither of them can breathe, unless it's yes. "No."
"Moony," says Sirius, and wrinkles his nose as if he's smelled something horrible. "If you'd just - "
"Ifs are a bad idea. Now," Remus says, and he thought he'd never find pain comparable to the rip tide of the full moon, but there it is. "I can't. I shouldn't stay."
"Don't," Sirius snaps, like a violin string pulled too hard, heartstring twang. "Don't you dare walk out on me."
"Don't I what?" Remus feels something ugly bubble hotly in his gut.
"Remus, please," Sirius has his hands out, as if praying; he is unintelligible. "If you do this, things won't - Pete - he'll be - I'll have to beli -- Moony. We need to stick together."
"We," says Remus, and makes it true -what I say three times. "We never stuck. Much."
"We do," says Sirius, and he looks scared. "We stick just fine. We will. Bloody hell, Moony - you can't."
Remus stays silent, because he can, and he's going to. He's biting his tongue so hard he thinks he's going to slice right through.
"Fucking coward!" Sirius shoves a chair, suddenly, and Remus blinks because he knows that tone of voice, those words, self-hatred like only a Black can hate, and it doesn't make sense, because this time it's his fault, not Sirius's, and this time he was the one who didn't know when to stop, not Sirius, and this time he should be -
"I'm sorry," he says. "It wasn't -"
But Sirius has gone silent; has turned away.
"I'm sorry," he says, again.
Sirius stays where he is, with both hands to the table, proud aristocrat back bent with tension, perfect elegance, even in that ugly, broiling rage. Remus wants to put a hand on his shoulder, put things back, shelving books or organizing papers, it should be so easy, but there's something in the way, and his body feels too heavy.
He puts his hands in his pockets.
Sirius is gone when he comes out of his room. Sirius's shoes are not beside his at the door.
I'll find my own place, he thinks, and his suitcase bumps his knees. I'm doing the right thing, he thinks. Somehow, he thinks.
Somehow, Moony, old boy, I think I'll be all right.
He stands at the door, facing in. The flat smells like ice, before it cracks. The walls are big, too far apart; the space feels like the peeling tingle of moonlight, he's afraid, he can't move.
"No," he says, to the empty rooms, and again. "No."
And he closes the door behind him.
I am mucho wibbly about this fic, so any and all reviews/crits/comments will be welcomed and gobbled up greedily. <3