[FIC] To Sit A Dead Man Between Us: Part II
Title: To Sit a Dead Man Between Us
Author: imochan
Pairing: Sirius/Remus
Rating: NC17
Summary: In the beginning, the middle, and something of an end.
Part I Part II Part III Part IV Part V Part VI
PART II
English Poetry Is Not Yet Fit To Speak Of Them
“It wasn’t awful,” says Sirius, after the first time, in the way which is entirely a question, but isn’t. His tongue is oddly heavy, and his thoughts are taking a very long time to wade their way to coherency.
“What,” says Remus, and sounds congested, with half his face still pressed into the blankets. “I - have no idea. I’d have no, er. Idea, really.”
“It wasn’t,” says Sirius, again. “Only you were - you made a face like - ”
“Oh my god,” says Remus. “Be quiet, it’s too dark to see my face be quiet.”
And Sirius feels his stomach crawling down into his thighs again, and it was so clearly, rightly, dangerous when it happened an hour ago, and now he is lying on a rumpled blanket between Remus’s old school trunk and an never-unpacked box that he knows contains moldy biscuits, because Remus complained about packing them up last year, and his heartbeat is doing very loud, unnatural things in his chest.
“Isn’t quite,” says Sirius, and Remus’s warm, bony body is shifting against his side, and he can feel the sweat on his jaw cool when Remus exhales. “Though I could hear perfectly, you know, and you - ”
“Oh my god,” says Remus, again, and tries to land a solid punch: all awkward unmovable limbs made numb and slow with something, thinks Sirius, something, and he ends up blindly pushing his open palm into Sirius’s cheek and nose, instead. “Augh.”
Sirius can’t help but laugh, that it is so familiar and so odd, that he is almost able to forget how he is now in possession of the most terrifying memory of his life: you know, he thinks, you know the one you know now, where you looked down and saw his face and his eyes were open, he thinks, he was watching you. And when he touched your mouth with his fingers, he thinks, he might have been shaking, might have been as utterly mad as you, or maybe not at all, and you’re really going to have to go this fucking alone, after all.
“Well,” he sighs, sharply, and sets about trying to rediscover if his thighs have feeling in them, yet.
“Wmph,” says Remus.
“Ha-ha-ha, so,” he mutters, and fumbles about with his trouser legs, and thoughts of tea, and Remus’s red-bitten mouth. “So, there’s that.”
WHERE ARE YOU, says the letter, in James's reckless scrawl. MY OWL WAS STARVING TO DEATH AT YOUR FLAT FOR 9 HOURS WHERE ARE YOU WHY AREN'T YOU THERE.
Your owl is intensely stupid, replies Sirius. Why would I be there.
"It is your flat," says James, when he Apparates into Remus’s audaciously tiny kitchen, a quarter of an hour later, because, thinks Sirius, that would be exactly when the kettle was boiling, when he'd just be finishing the first side of a cheese toastie, wouldn't it.
"If you fed your own fucking owl yourself, it wouldn't be an issue where I was," says Sirius, and gestures for the kettle to please just shut the hell up I heard you the first time. It squeals twice more, insolently, before settling on a quiet steam.
"Moony about?"
"Gone out," says Sirius. "He's a proper job and everything."
"Does not!" James grins. "Where now?"
Sirius shrugs, and jiggles the frying pan, a little. The air smells pleasantly like sizzling butter, subtly undercut by whatever doom it is that James has hanging on the tip of his tongue. “Some Muggle shop. Supposes he’s exhausted Diagon and all, what with that.”
“That and all,” James mutters. “Rotten business.”
“Convinced himself he needs the fucking money,” says Sirius. “Don’t know why he’s bothering, with all the bloody hassle it is. And, he’s just pants at lying, by now.”
“Lying to us,” grins James. “Poor unsuspecting fools’d be worth a few good Sick Aunties, though, eh?”
“Mm," says Sirius, because he's not sure if he agrees, anymore.
"And, what, he's employed you as full-time flat-watcher?" James leans over his shoulder; Sirius jabs him in the stomach with his elbow before he can reach for the toastie in the pan.
"Off, off! If you want this one, you’ll get your own bloody tea.” (He is glad, because he is only marginally less pants at lying, after all, and every sort of excuse he can think of seems sort of weak and sick-coloured and floppy next to the fact that his own bed is lumpy and cold and usually doesn't have Remus's bare thighs or Remus's mouth or Remus's funny, slightly-frowning sleeping-face in it. That makes a difference, he thinks.)
“Cheers,” James says, peering in the cupboard by Sirius’s head. “Listen, if you’ve got a few?”
Sirius glances at him, and there is that little movement where James pushes the bridge of his specs up his nose with one finger, that makes him want to burn the whole damn sandwich and shove it peevishly into the rubbish bin.
“We - he’s out of Darjeeling,” he says, instead.
“Shite, anyway,” mutters James, rummaging elbow-deep in the cupboard to find a mug. “Can’t even spell it. But listen, honestly, I’ve had another run-in with them.”
Bastard, thinks Sirius. You snuck that in there rather neatly, didn’t you.
“Mm,” he says, instead, and slides the toastie onto a plate.
James shifts, pouring the hot water. James shifts, wrists balancing on the countertop. James shifts, and takes the plate. James shifts, and his shirt makes a soft rustle at the elbows, at the collar, at the place where it bunches at his trousers. James shifts, and looks at him, out of the corner of his eye, and Sirius can still sense it, of course, but it makes his stomach turn, because it is an awful, unsteady mess of Right and Not Right, like trying to cram the moon into the sun’s place, but insisting oh no yes I don’t know what you’re on about mate it’s always been like that pip-pip!
“Was leaving the Ministry,” says James, and there is a curl in his lip, and the steam from the tea clouds his glasses. “Honestly, Malfoy did a right proper job of getting me cornered.”
“Malfoy?” Sirius’s nerves tweak all the way up his spine, and into his joints and eardrums. “Go on.”
“Complete crock, right?” says James, except he isn’t laughing, really. “Except.”
“You’d think the first time you told them off would’ve done it,” mutters Sirius, even though he doesn’t believe it, really.
“S’not what bothers me,” sighs James. He hooks one of the chairs with his ankle, and pulls it closer to sit down again: plate and cup beside him, one ankle propped over his knee, one elbow resting on the table, and Sirius pretends his is very good at not noticing any of this, at all. “The ones from school, they were a rotten lot with no brains - in Quidditch, too, ‘specially Rosier. I’d almost expect everything but what this sort of thing, you know, it’s almost civil.”
Sirius scoffs. “What, come-and-have-a-cuppa-and-would-you-like-to-be-a-Muggle-murdering-twat? Have we mentioned how fantastic the pay is?”
“Honestly, yeah,” says James, and looks down again, fingers tearing the toastie in half. “Yeah. And. Listen, mate, it was just him. None of that bluster, right. I mean, he was still that bloody peacock with his chest out to here, honestly, but there wasn’t anybody else. Not a soul. Which means.”
He pauses, licking crumbs from his thumb, and Sirius feels a heavy huff of a sigh building in his throat, tightening up his voice into an unpleasant sort of rasp when he speaks.
“Wasn’t for show, then,” he says, and feels like cursing because he’s positive that Remus took the jacket that had his last pack of Toogle’s Best Tobacco still stuffed in the pocket.
“We should know what’s an empty threat by now, eh?” agrees James. “Only.”
Sirius watches the frown form on James’s mouth - he can pinpoint the moment where a tiny wrinkle pulls at the corner of James’s left eye, and his hair suddenly looks a little thinner, and his skin a little paler, and there is a smudge, on his glasses.
“Fucking hell,” he says.
James laughs into his teacup, and it does sound more like porcelain than his voice should ever sound.
“They want Lily too,” he says. “She hasn’t said anything, mind, but it’s clear.”
“When?”
“Dunno,” says James. “Could have been years ago, honestly, only. If it were, I’ve a feeling the row she had with Snivellus wouldn’t have been kept quiet, much.”
Sirius feels his lip curl, automatically. “Christ. Don’t even. Has he?”
James shakes his head. “Not a greasy speck, not in months. Don’t know where exactly he’s naffed off to this time, but.”
“Couldn’t pay me to care,” Sirius grunts.
“You’re one to talk,” James grins, suddenly. “Couldn’t give a fuck about you either, could they?”
“Well, fucking why should they?” Sirius snaps, dumping the frying pan into the sink with a little more force than necessary, perhaps. The clatter is satisfying, and it masks whatever noise James makes in response. (The first time, Peter thought he was jealous of James, for Christ’s sake, because he was so furious.)
“Spoke to Dumbledore,” says James, after a pause.
Sirius looks at him over his shoulder; James is twisting the tea-bag string around his index finger. “Yeah?”
“Look,” James sighs, finally, and looks at him straight, with that steadfast little pullback in his shoulder-blades, so his spine is straighter and his shoulders look broader, which is what he started to do after Evans told him slouching made him look like a demented sort of chimpanzee (this was, of course, after it all Started To Matter). “Look, don’t tell Lily, all right, not until my say so? Normally it wouldn’t be a - I mean. I’m not trying to keep her locked in the attic, obviously, I just. It’s not quite sorted out, not yet.”
“She’ll pound you when she finds out,” Sirius grins.
James does not smile. “Better that,” he says.
"Hell," Sirius says again, but he says it to himself, to the frying pan under the water and the insolent kettle and the kitchen that isn't really his, but is, anyway, since it seems to know him pretty well by now.
“Er,” says Remus, from the kitchen doorway, a newspaper and a brown paper bag tucked into the crook of his arm. “Hullo. And you’ve both just come to make me tea, have you?”
James hooks his thumb at Sirius. “The irresistible siren song of butter, cheese and bread.”
“He burned up the drapes once, with those things,” Remus sighs, and shifts the bag in his arms.
“If those are groceries,” says Sirius. “I’m going to hex you, I’ve just gone.”
“Er,” says Remus. “Darjeeling, mostly. We were out of.”
“Excellent,” says James, rising. “S’my cue, I believe, as I’ve just exhausted your supply of Earl Grey as well, and I know not to incur the wrath of Lupin, most proper of Englishmen.”
"So glad you've noticed." Remus smiles, and Sirius can only seem to notice the slight pool of sweat just below his jaw.
"We've a pub date on Saturday, don't forget," James says, rising, hand to Remus's shoulder in passing.
"Oi, full moon before then," Sirius mutters. He's only planned it this way for two months, now. He's only been waiting to be the one to make sure everything is all right, still, again, after all. "I'm the only one with a calendar?"
"All he bloody thinks about," James rolls his eyes, and Disapparates.
"That's my calendar," says Remus, handing the bag off to Sirius, reaching automatically for the teakettle, which always liked him better, anyway. "By the way."
"Mm, yeah, do just carry on as if you don't appreciate my fine and thoughtful organization of your life."
Remus smiles, a little; his profile is vaguely blurred, his eyes and jawline and mess of hair all slightly out-of-focus. "The red ink is hard to miss, ta."
"Sort of the general idea," says Sirius, and takes his wrist (because he wants to touch him, because he has been accused of worse, after all, because if he doesn't, sometimes he thinks Remus will forget that there is supposed to be a significant difference between Then and Now.) "You'd be caught mid-step in the middle of Diagon otherwise, wouldn't you: 'Bollocks, do carry on without me, must turn into a slavering beast of darkness for a bit, Cheerio!'"
Remus glances at him, glances at his wrist in the circle of Sirius's fingers. When he starts to smile, Sirius curls his other hand in the rumpled fold of Remus's collar, and leans across the counter and the sink and the newly-steaming kettle, and kisses him on the mouth. He knows that, eventually, if he lets his forehead rest on the slight dip of Remus's temple, if he takes Remus's bottom lip between his teeth, if he runs his thumb up into the soft and oddly put-together joint of Remus's elbow and maybe if he pulls Remus onto his lap with his palms high on the back of Remus's thighs, Remus will close his eyes, eventually. He knows that now, if he just presses his mouth to Remus's in the tiny space of the kitchen, across the counter and the sink and all that and the etcetera, with three points of pressure on their skin, he will feel the rasp of Remus's eyelashes against his cheekbones, where Remus will be watching how they continue to fumble through it, from under half-closed, analytical lids.
"Er," says Remus, and turns his head. "Everything all right?"
"What?" he mutters, nose pressed into Remus's temple.
"With James," says Remus. "Is everything.”
"Nothing. No, it's fine. Why?" Sirius mumbles, because his mouth is against Remus's hair, and it's fuzzy on his lips, and he knows it's the best way to not have to answer.
Remus shrugs, and tugs himself away, gently. "Didn't finish his - " he gestures, at the table with a point of his chin.
Sirius rolls his eyes. "Paranoid, aren't you?" he grins, and tries to hook his fingers into the front-right pocket of Remus's trousers.
Remus glances at him, narrowly. "I've been gone six hours," he says, quiet, and has that little shift in his weight like he's not sure which way would be the faster escape or the best vantage point, and he just has to think about it for just a little longer.
"I know," he says, and curls his fingers so his knuckles press against Remus's hipbone.
"I mean, you saw me six hours ago."
"I know," says Sirius again, and leans back against the counter so Remus has something sturdy to fall against when he finally loses patience and hooks an ankle against the back of Remus's calf, to trip him into a kiss or into his hands or his hips (which will be soon, he thinks).
“When was the last time you were even in your own flat?” asks Remus, reaching around him for the newly-bought tin of tea, cupping it in his palm.
“I hate my flat,” he says. “Everyone hates my flat, it’s awful, it’s an asylum of hatred, I don’t even know why people ask me that.”
“Oh, only because you pay rent on it,” Remus rolls his eyes, holding the tea tin in front of his chest with both hands, as if it were emitting low heat, or subtle protection. “The usual expectations, do forgive us.”
“Shut it,” he shuffles a foot forward, knocking it against Remus’s ankle. “It’s no one’s business anyway, where that ill-gotten gain goes. All right?”
“You know,” says Remus. “It’s not that I. I don’t mind.”
“You’d better not,” he says. And he plucks the tin from Remus’s hands, when he kisses him.
"Unbelievable," mutters Remus, against his mouth.
But because there is colour in his cheeks, and his has his shirt sleeves rolled up to just above the elbow, so Sirius can see his freckles and odd, knobby wrists, and he sometimes has this incredulous sort of smile (after he raises his voice, after Sirius manages to get him sort of drunk and rolls him around on the bedroom floor, for a while, after Sirius thinks enough of him, enough to leave him a note saying DON'T GO ANYWHERE I'LL BE RIGHT BACK DON'T MOVE SO HELP ME MERLIN I WILL HEX YOU IF YOU MOVE, enough to kiss him on the stairwell or in the kitchen, well, thinks Sirius, of course, why wouldn't I, and no, he thinks, it's not, at all.
The house is quiet. Mother is in Wales to visit her aunt, and Father met him at the Station. He was wearing the cufflinks Regulus got him for Christmas last year, and all Regulus could think of was that it was odd: he hadn't seen Sirius on the train, not once, at all. He looked back through the steam before they left, with Father's big hand on his shoulder, and saw nothing but nothing at all.
The house is quiet, and he finds Kreacher at the top of the stairs.
"Hello Kreacher," he says.
"Master Regulus has grown taller again," says Kreacher.
He touches the top of his own head. "Have I?" he says.
"Old Kreacher heard the Mistress say," says Kreacher, his tiny, leather-thick fingers wrapped around the banister spools, his big eyes like heavy ink. "Kreacher heard her say to Mistress Lestrange that she was very proud. That Master Regulus did very well in his exams this year. That Master Regulus did very well, this year."
He sits, on the top step, and presses his palms flat to his knees, and Kreacher stands by his shoulder.
"Oh," he says, again.
"Thank you, Kreacher," he says.
And he wonders, have I.
There are clouds rolling over the sunset; the wind higher than the rooftops is at roaring broil, sweeping the sky out to the west, a great purple-bruised blanket over their heads. Sirius clutches at the concrete under his fingers, his legs swinging out over the ledge of the roof, and the air is eerily gentle around them, when he looks up and imagines just how fast the world is turning above them.
"Don't fall," Remus whispers, tilting his head back so Sirius can feel the soft curls on his bare, bent elbow.
"I can fly, y'know," Sirius mutters, glancing down at the way Remus's head is tipped back, drunk and glossy-pink cheeks just showing from under his hair, his back to the ledge, knees drawn up with a patch of skin poking through a hole in his trousers. He is holding the last bottle of beer in sleepy fingers, hooking just-so around the slender neck, and Sirius's eyes follow the rub of Remus's thumb over the wet rim.
"Not without a great deal of help from machinery or magic," says Remus, and grins up at him. "I should point out."
"Gimme that," Sirius glares, and swipes the bottle. "So drunk you're getting shirty."
"S'mine," protests Remus, twisting, knuckles pressed to Sirius's thigh.
"I bought it."
"For me. You remember?"
"Yesterday," says Sirius. "Today, every man for himself. All bets off!"
"So generous," Remus murmurs, letting his head tip back to rest on the ledge, nose brushing Sirius's thigh. "Give it over." His fingers reach and curl over Sirius's hip, and the simple tuck of his thumb in the belt loop makes Sirius's throat go thick and dry, a sharp sizzle of heat curling all the way from the backs of his knees to his belly. There is a breeze on the back of his neck, it ruffles his hair, cools his sweat; Remus closes his eyes. He's felt it too, thinks Sirius.
"Give," Remus mumbles again.
Sirius presses a pad of his thumb to Remus's bottom lip, instead. "Lupin," he says.
"Not now," Remus grins, lashes still heavy and dark over his cheekbones, dry mouth sliding over Sirius's thumb. "'m still tired out."
"Tease."
Remus laughs, and hoists himself up to his knees with a grunt, twisting to let his elbows rest on the ledge, nabbing the almost-empty bottle from Sirius's hands. "Why ruin the moment, hm?" he drinks, flushed.
"Mm, ruination," Sirius grins, soppy with the memory of Remus's bare thighs under his mouth.
Remus rolls his eyes, head tilted away from the wind, from Sirius's body. "Forget it," he mumbles. "Incorrigible."
"And you're a prude," Sirius says to the sky, legs swinging. "Your point?"
"Oh, finish it," Remus mutters, thrusting the bottle into Sirius's hands again, hauling himself up to sit with his back to the horizon, feet firmly planted on the gravel of the rooftop. "You're not nearly drunk enough if you're still insulting me."
"Well, if I can't fuck you - "
Remus punches him in the arm.
"What?" Sirius yelps, laughing, teetering with the wind, and Remus hooks two fingers in Sirius's sleeve to pull him back.
"Ridiculous," he mutters, eyes averted.
"Oh, because it's such a novelty by this point," Sirius tips the bottle back to his lips, leaning into Remus's knuckles. "Christ, you think with how hard I worked for it in the beginning you'd cut me some slack by now."
"And more charming by the second," Remus sighs; Sirius feels his body shift and resettle, shoulders rolling back like he does in the morning after the Moon, a stretch and shedding of the skin, blood fresh and cuts shining like silver and rubies on the surface of his flesh.
Sirius sneers in frustration. "Right, c'mere," he says, resolute, bottle forgotten on the ledge, rim whistling in the wind, and he leans over to bury his nose in the bared crook of Remus's neck. "You shut the fuck up, right now," he grins. "With all of this - this - "
"This what," Remus whispers, breathing still, jaw brushing Sirius's temple.
"We don't have time for this," says Sirius.
"What?"
"The world could end tomorrow."
Remus laughs; the wind catches it and makes it tight. "So dramatic."
Sirius pinches his thigh, mouth sliding against the bunched tendons of Remus's shoulder. "It could. It could, and you’d be fucking sorry you ever said no, wouldn’t you.”
"I won't - " says Remus, eyes half-closed. "I'm not going to - you know that - "
"I don't - why the hell should I force it out of you?"
"You stupid - " Remus whispers. "You stupid bastard."
"Bastard yourself," says Sirius. The sounds, he realizes, coming from his own throat, are vaguely terrifying when they are genuine: dark and sad and edging on a mute desperation. "You. You're fantastic. All right?"
And Remus sighs, a little, like the world is awfully hard on him. "So, it's something you do a lot now, is it?"
"What - that," says Sirius, and bumps his nose on Remus's jaw.
"Saying things," says Remus, and tips a knuckle against Sirius's chin, and Sirius is acutely aware of how much smaller Remus is when his voice is even, his eyes are steady, and he's absolutely petrified. "Because no one else will say them?"
"Drunk," Sirius whispers, and finds his mouth (it's easy because of Remus's fingers, a bridge in the impending dark), close enough to almost. "I'm drunk, not - "
"Oh, just - " Remus whispers, and Sirius tastes the command on his own tongue, when he finally kisses him.
And when the world goes dark outside, they retreat down to the warmth of Remus’s flat, with the red teakettle, the flimsy curtains and mice in the walls and the threadbare couch and the mattress on the floor in lieu of a bed. And when Sirius is splaying Remus's bare body open with his hands, three wet fingers inside and both of them gasping for air and every muscle straining for that glossy and quaking second, Sirius wants to speak - say, oh, if, if you, oh beautiful - and Remus presses two shaking fingers to his mouth, eyes desperate for silence when they come.
Sirius thinks he should have known better than to think anything now would be the same as it was before, ever. Even if they were still together, even if they were still generally, mostly, happy, and young, and even if they were still crowding into the Potters’ summer house in Brighton, trying to fill up the bright, dusty kitchen and the paisley bedrooms and the dark, hot attic and the pine-wood porch and the coves and stretches of sand along the water with bodies and voices not big enough to fill in the things that were missing. He thinks he should have been more alert, shouldn’t have spent weeks purposefully drowning himself in sunshine and choking on sand and blue skies and the odd, triangle-shaped tan that Remus developed at the back of his neck, after the initial burn peeled away. (That was new, he thinks, it doesn’t count. You should have known that too.)
He should have known, he thinks, that just because they had been oblivious to how life was inclined to make them grow older, grow taller, fight less, fight more, it didn’t mean they were ever safe from it.
Because in the late, late afternoon, on the beach, James says, Er listen up for a bit won’t you mates, and Sirius feels the hot peak of wariness shoot up his spine, and he is almost furious.
Remus makes a non-committal sound from the picnic blanket, from underneath the oversized pinkstraw sunhat they found underneath some netting in the Potter’s overturned rowboat. (Mr Potter had turned it over with Sirius’s help last summer, before the funeral, before they died, before all that, you know, to help it dry and keep the wood and paint from cracking when everyone had left for London again, when autumn and winter came into Brighton. James gave Sirius the hat, silently, when he found it. Sirius wore it for six days, and then decided Remus’s red and peeling nose was just painful to look at, and passed it on.)
“Oi, I mean it,” says James, and Sirius is nauseated by the sound. “Lupin.”
“He’s awake,” says Sirius, scratching at the underside of his calf where the sun and sand have crusted. He squints into the sky. He doesn’t want to have to look at anyone, because they are suddenly all very old now and Evans is swimming in the ocean far out in front of them, her white arms and ankles dipping in and out of the dark like the flashing bellies of jumping fish.
“Wasn’t,” Remus murmurs, and does not remove the hat. “This had better be important.”
“Ugh, Sirius,” Peter mumbles, from beside him, as he lifts himself up onto his elbows. “You still have that seaweed in your hair.”
“It’s not seaweed, I only found it in your mum’s fanny last night, didn’t I?” Sirius fishes it out and flicks it at Peter’s sunburnt thigh.
Peter makes a noise like a strangled bull, and tries to get as much sand in Sirius’s eyes as possible before James rips the slimy-crust of seaweed off his leg and holds it up between them like a weapon, black and rattling and wriggling with dried seawater.
“Right,” he says sharply. “The next bloke to make a move that isn’t raptly listening what I’m about to say gets to eat this for supper, courtesy of my raging fists.”
“Delightful,” murmurs Remus, and lifts the brim of the sunhat with his wrist.
“Just try it,” Sirius snaps, and focuses instead, hazily, on the way Remus’s belly has fewer scars and more freckles than his back.
“Fuck off, Black, I mean it,” says James, quietly.
“This is one of those things,” says Peter, which Sirius knows means that James has two red spots on his cheeks and his neck flushes and he pushes his specs up onto his nose with his index finger. Which means that James looks guilty. “Oh, no.”
“Er,” says James, and adjusts his glasses again. “Yes.”
“It’s impossible for it to be that bad,” Remus says, quietly, with his pale, chapped lips and his stupid, bleary, salt-water, sun-squinted, heavy-lidded eyes, and Sirius wants to punch him, or just roll him under the dock again where tiny bird-bones and beach lichen and clam shells snapped under their palms and thighs, and Remus’s hair was wet, and curling on the edges, and Sirius tasted salt there when he panted against the curve of Remus’s ear.
“I,” says James. “Don’t know.”
“If you’ve killed someone,” Peter hisses. “That’s definitely bad.”
Sirius barks a laugh, and hopes they could be so lucky.
“Ta, Pete,” James grinds out. “I’ll keep that in mind for when you wankers all up and abandon me for good, since you seem to be getting some awfully good practice at it right now.” The seaweed shakes once, limply, and drips something cold and vomit-coloured onto the top of Sirius’s foot.
Sirius wipes at it, half-heartedly, and looks out at the ocean, at the frothy edge of the beach, at the dimming sky and the clouds and the fat, heavy sun. He looks at the water, and sees her body shaped and hidden by the tide and mostly the momentum of her own power and he thinks, well. Maybe that’s not so unfamiliar. After all.
“If it’s - ” he says, and stops. Sirius decides he’ll wait for him, first, and hopes, vaguely, that someone will notice his nobility and self-sacrifice and compassion, later, he thinks, when this isn’t such a thing, anymore.
“Look, it’s just,” says James. “It’s not that I’m scared of it. I want it. It’s no question. No bloody question. It’s just,” he says. “I know what to do. Everyone knows what to do.”
I understand that, thinks Sirius. We always understood that. You haven’t changed at all, have you.
And then - “I just don’t know how to ask her.”
“Oh,” says Remus, suddenly. “Wait - ”
“Really?” Peter blinks. “You mean, you’re. Are you going to today?”
James looks Sirius dead on, mouth twisted a little, that half-apology of a face that always meant he didn’t really feel very sorry at all, because he’d come out on top or won all the points himself or saved the day or drank the most whiskey and thrown up the least or took the best grades, or, as they said, gotten the girl.
“I could,” says James. “Technically.”
“Technically,” repeats Remus, shifting to look over Sirius’s bent knees. “Technically what?”
“Technically,” says James, and pulls the little black box from his pocket, gingerly. He puts it on the blanket, between his hips and Sirius’s ankles and they all stare at it, warily, and Sirius thinks it might be better if it did explode.
“Hell,” says Peter, blinking. “Have you really been hiding that down the front of your trunks all day?”
“That is so far from important,” James groans, sitting back on his heels, seaweed flopping in his fist, against his knee. “Look. Look. What the hell am I doing with that?”
Sirius snorts, and squints at the sun.
“Oh, shut it,” James mutters, sharply. “If I have to think about this for one day longer I’m going to give up the ghost and just off myself, all right? So just. Just be smart fucking blokes, for once, you know? I must’ve hired you for something, didn’t I?”
“Er,” says Peter.
“Prongs,” Remus sighs, and lays back again, a hand over his eyes. He is smiling.
James makes a wretched noise. “I tried to. I even did the - that thing, the mirror thing. I fucking stood in front of the mirror and practiced. I practiced talking. Talking. I couldn’t do it - couldn’t even ask myself, myself, and the mirror told me it didn’t even have the heart to laugh. I was that, that awful. What the hell.”
But it’s been so brilliant, thinks Sirius, because I could be full of sun and sand and salt water just the way I was before all of these awful Older People things started to happen to me and to us, he thinks. We were almost perfect, again, he thinks, except that Wormtail isn’t quite so fat anymore. And those other things, he thinks, the ones you can’t ignore. Why would you do this, he wants to snap. Why would you ruin this for everyone?
“You just ask her,” he says. “Don’t you?”
James rolls his eyes. “Unhelpful, prick.”
Sirius narrows his eyes. “It’s what I would do,” he snaps. “You asked.”
“And your running tally of women-who-are-going-to-marry-you speaks so highly of your expertise,” James bites, sharper than it was probably meant, thinks Sirius, since he has no idea, really, and is so deep into the stewing panic of his own head, thinks Sirius, that at this point he might actually vomit.
“He’s right,” says Remus, sunhat held between his fingers again, loosely drooping in the sand, sun shielded from his eyes with his forearm. He looks at them from underneath his wrist, and Sirius thinks, oh you shut up I’ve never told you properly anyway so what do you know about how much anybody needs you.
“I mean,” says Remus. “He has a point. Once you get the first word out, it’s only three more until the end, and it sort of gets the idea across enough to distract her until you can think again to say something more, er. Explanatory. Doesn’t it?”
“Well. Yeah. But it’s not very,” James rubs at his forehead, before he realizes his palm is still coated with the remnants of the seaweed, and the grey-green smear runs the length of his nose. “Ugh. Romantic.”
“What isn’t?” says Lily, shaking clotting, wet sand from her feet, dripping at the edge of the picnic blanket, her footprints a dark trail behind her from the edge of the waves. There is a sharp, thick moment of silence, and James twists where he is sitting, eyes wide. Remus stills, Peter makes a strange and fumbling sound in the back of his throat, and the waves quietly soak up her presence from the sand.
Sirius thinks about the tiny black box sitting next to his ankle, and looks at her, slowly, carefully, and tries to gather together all the things that Lily Evans is and how they might be something that would fit into a container that small, hidden in James’s pocket, or set gently on a picnic blanket on a beach in the end of August. He watches her when she twists her wet hair up into a knot, and the first licks of the sunset paint her lifted cheekbones and her left clavicle and the underside of his elbow and her waist and the curve of her thigh right above her knee, and her ankles. Her skin is pink, her hair is red, and she is wearing a blue plaid swimming costume, with one of the bows missing from her left shoulder strap, and she is smiling and tired from her swim.
And Sirius looks at Remus’s skinny, sandy knees and strange, small body with transmutable bones and skin like some inhuman tissue (thin enough to see though, deep enough to ridge into the muscles when it heals). He looks at Remus’s pointed chin and bony wrist and the careful stillness of his whole being and he thinks about how tight his chest had been the night he pinned Remus to the stairwell wall and felt as though he had really left his last bit of sanity behind him, for a moment. And he thinks that he wants to be good enough.
I want to be good enough, he thinks, and feels the panic like a scraping, emptying ache, like an echo of the helpless edge in James’s voice. For everything you want. Like that. So, maybe.
“What isn’t romantic?” says Lily again, and she bends down to pick up her folded towel.
“Euh,” says James.
“-- are those fish guts on your face?” asks Lily, hands stilled over her hips.
“Seaweed!” says Peter, loudly.
Oh, bugger, thinks Sirius.
“Marry me,” says James.
And because she thinks he’s joking, he has to ask her again three more times, and once again, after supper.
But he didn’t really ask her, says Sirius, later, on the veranda steps, with the stars sparking off the water and the sound of old boat bones creaking in the distance.
"I don’t know. He didn’t really need to?" says Remus, and folds his arms over his knees.
"She didn’t believe him," Sirius says, pointedly.
"She does now," says Remus, and tucks his smile against the inside of his bent elbow.
Sirius turns his head and looks at him. His hair has dried with a matted curl, and a stubborn cowlick by his temple and he still looks utterly silly, most of the time, in his white oxford and his short trousers and his over-present Old Man eyes. He still has sand under his fingernails, and stuck to his bare legs and he scratches at his sunburned shoulder through his shirt. His nose is vaguely crooked and his neck has that long white scar that arcs lazily up behind his ear, into the hair at his nape.
"What," says Remus, lifting his chin above his arms.
"Do you believe me?" he asks.
Remus places one hand, palm down, on the steps between them, and leans over. He pauses, like an odd and overmeasured heartbeat, like the press and yield of a wave, before he pulls at the hem of Sirius's jumper; hooks two fingers in it and gathers it up in his fist. He kisses the side of Sirius’s mouth. And his eyes are only just half-closed.
Strange creature, thinks Sirius. You look so harmless, I forget. Sometimes.
In September, he falls ill for the last time in his life. He wakes with heavy, edgy nerves, one morning, and by the next day he has a headache and a fever, and a cough dreadful-sounding enough to make Slughorn stop him in the halls with a genuine sort of frown, and a genuinely firm palm on his shoulder.
Here now you're looking awfully rough along the edges aren't you Reg.
That was a very silly thing to say, thinks Regulus, and: how on earth would you know?
Here now, says Slughorn, again. Here now Rodolphus take old Reg here up to see Poppy now won't you there's a good lad.
He's a foreigner to the Hospital Wing, because he's never bruised his knuckles on someone else's face, or been launched sideways through the air by a badly-cast sixth-year spell. He avoids that sort of thing; he avoids doctors, most of his childhood was a sickbed, he thinks, anyway. He has learned not to complain, because when Sirius was still here, he would be silently furious at Regulus's runny nose or red eyes or clammy skin, from across the Great Hall; because now that Sirius is not here, there is no one to be furious at all.
Madam Promfrey does not know him, but she knows where his face is from. She is unamused, and fussy, and she pokes at his throat and temples and ribs.
Had a boy die, she says, in the quiet, with a funny, flat piece of wood pressed firmly against his tongue. Had a boy die, you know, not too long ago. Just a plain sort of Muggle flu. Plain sort of thing.
He nods, with his fingers gripping at the edge of the mattress, because there is a funny, flat piece of wood holding his jaw open, and she presses the back of her wrist to his forehead. And he thinks that is an absolutely awful thing to say to a sick person.
Fever, she scolds.
She makes him a drink hot tea that smells strongly of lemons and ginger, and wraps him up tightly in the comforters and orders him to sleep, which he does, because the blankets are white, and rather fluffy, and feel entirely unlike what he always believed they would.
Fever, she says. Poor old duck.
It is just so silly, he thinks. What people think they know. It is so unfamiliar, he thinks, that he decides that, later, he will think of it as a dream.
He is not threatened by his own incompetence, in this case, he thinks. He counts it as another notch under the heading Sirius Black Is Roguishly Handsome And Rebellious And Has Very Little Time For You Common People, and lights another cigarette. He is not at all bothered by the fact that it is still only 9 o'clock in the evening and he's already shut himself in the lavatory, and didn't even bother to turn on the lights. It's a pleasant room, after all, he thinks, and it has all the touches of the vestiges of the Potters that he liked best, after all. The tangible ones, he thinks: the clean surfaces, the lemon-smelling soap bubbles in a clear-lime bottle, the mirror that was generally quite kind, even at six in the morning, the window covered with ivy that peeked out onto the very edge of the vegetable garden, when they had one, the bathtoy broomstick, made of cheery yellow rubber, even the soft pink tiling on the edge of the tub. He likes that there are no flowers or white crepe ribbons or champagne bottles or pretty redheads or Best Mates in Dress Robes or Drunk Muggles. And there are no vows, here, he thinks, except the ones We made. Everything on the outside is muffled and tinkling and faraway and he is completely free to lie fully clothed in the bottom of the dry bathtub, and prop his boots up on the spigot, and smoke, and add one more thing to his list of Afraids, because no one is here to see him do it.
He counts them in a closed fist, tapping a one-two-three against his folded palm: here, here, here - here you were weak, here you were stupid, here you were helpless and wanted to cry. Here, one, you did, in the fourth stall from the left in the second-floor toilets, in the early hours of the dawn, with your stomach churning, your knees raw. Night, and a moon, and a row with mouths stretched wide with hatred, slobbering with thoughtlessness, with the worst kinds of truths, and you were petrified, he thinks. Coward, you could have lost it all. So you vomited by yourself in the dark, and didn't make a sound. And then you washed your face, he thinks. And then, somehow, weeks later, you kissed Remus Lupin on the stairwell.
And here, two, you were so tired. Too stretched thin, he thinks, too pink and red and Black with a beating, too wet and cold with lost London rain to find your own mind, let leave where James could be. You ran, a moment of enough, of knowing freedom and love and never finding it where one should. And you slept in the doorway of a sandwich shop, and felt the scrape of concrete under your spine and thighs, and fear was so like mindless bravery, he thinks, like the rush of adrenaline, the crackling snap of a wooden bat in the rushing air, shouting delirious, UP LIONS UP, the run of wild dogs and animals, the tingling scrape of the moon on his fur. And fear was like waking up to Remus: in his bed, in the sunshine, and thinking, oh.
So here it is, the third. He counts it out and pauses at the edge of it, at the point of its existence, where his boots are propped up against the rim of the bathtub, and his dress robes are rumpled underneath his back, and the smoke curls up to the ceiling, and he can hear laughter through the door. So they were married, he thinks, and your stupid life still carries on. So everyone is drunk, he thinks, and might not notice you've been missing. So everyone is absolutely soppy with this perfect match and perfect love, and maybe I'll fit right in again tomorrow, after all, he thinks. Or maybe not, he thinks, and finds the sharp point of it, like the heat burning slowly towards his fingertips, and the cool porcelain on his wrist.
Or maybe - he thinks, before the door squeaks open, the saturated sounds and buttery light spilling over each other in their rush to flood the quiet and bounce off the porcelain.
Peter slips in, sideways, and shuts the door behind him again with both palms. When he sighs, and rests his forehead against the wood, Sirius resists the urge to roll his eyes, because he can see the high spots of colour on Peter’s cheeks, and he’s been well aware that the only other people at this bloody stupid thing, tonight, matching him bloody stupid drink for bloody stupid drink have been Remus, who is apparently invincible and could down four barrels of vodka before even considering an ill-placed stumble, if he chose, and Peter, who drinks four glasses of red wine and passes out in the pumpkin patch.
“Oi, occupied,” Sirius mutters, grimly.
“Christ,” Peter starts, exhaling sharply. “Sirius. Give a mate a heart attack, eh?”
“Hunh,” Sirius snorts; he rolls his eyes, and scrapes his boot against the rust pooled faintly at the edge of the drain.
“Oh - ” says Peter, as if he’s just noticed that it might be odd to find someone sitting in a dry tub, fully clothed and steadily smoking through a full pack of Toogle’s Best Tobaccos. “What are you - in here?”
“Just finished with your mum, thanks,” Sirius grins.
“Oi, come off it,” Peter sighs, and Sirius feels the sharp snap of distaste - it doesn’t matter who’s doing the condescending, he thinks. It doesn’t matter if I think they’re beautiful, or hardly think of them at all.
“Christ, well, if I’m so boring, there are plenty of other fucking loos to wank off in, you miserable git,” he hisses, and plants one boot firmly on the bottom of the tub, raising his upper body.
“Padfoot,” Peter laughs, and raises his hands, palms out, and Sirius relishes the sweet little surge of power, setting everything right again, when Peter’s voice warbles on that happy nervous laugh he has.
“Forget it,” Sirius murmurs, and rests his shoulders against the slope of the tub, again. “Muggles?” he asks.
“Muggles, “ says Peter, and glances at the mirror, running his hands through his hair. “Did you know, Lily’s, er. Sister, that - she’s. She’s awful.”
“Drunk, too,” Sirius grins, watching Peter stick out his tongue at himself in the mirror.
“Doubt I’d ever be sober, if I had a face like that,” Peter mumbled, and Sirius can’t help it, he laughs, genuinely, and the sound is sharp, and ricochets off the tile, and Peter gives him a grin, over his shoulder.
“They get to you too?” asks Peter, leaning back against the wash basin, gesturing at Sirius’s cigarette.
“Sure,” Sirius shrugs, and tosses Peter his pack. “Don’t tell Evans. She’ll have your hide, and I’ll just blame it all on you.”
“She already smelled it on you, though, didn’t she?” Peter winks, knowingly, and lights his, with a flick of his wand, exhaling to the ceiling. “You’ve been banished, proper. That’s why you’re sitting in the tub, in the dark, and not dancing with Auntie Muriel.”
“Pete,” Sirius pulls a face. “Eugh.”
“She was asking after you,” Peter leers.
Sirius resists the urge to throw a bar of soap at him. “Only ‘cause your tiny pecker didn’t satisfy her, mate, sorry.”
Peter rolls his small, bright eyes, and crosses his arms. “Prongs was, though,” he says, and his face is that round portrait of earnestness again, the soft cheeks and trusting smile, and the folded posture and unassuming lift of his eyebrows.
Sirius decides that he doesn’t have an inclination to answer that, after all, and contemplates the rust marks on the showerhead.
“He said, if I found you, to - ” Peter sighs. “I mean, aren’t you being just a bit. Er.”
Sirius looks directly at Peter when he exhales, and thinks he is entitled to feel a little flattered, to still inspire that much of a stutter, after all these years.
“Er, look. It was a brilliant speech, Padfoot,” says Peter. “Really just - ”
“Fine. Stuff it,” Sirius snaps, hoisting himself up with a small grunt, and grinding his cigarette down the drain.
Peter sighs. “I know he wasn’t just like that,” he says. “You know, because of all the toasting. He really. You know.”
Sirius pauses, elbows resting on the rim of the tub, chin on his wrists. It’s not every day, he thinks, that Pettigrew makes a note of Weakness in James, even if soppy, hopeless, over-active tear glands and too much champagne aren’t really a sign of weakness, at all. But it’s not every day, he thinks. At least, he thinks, he’s not picking out the Weakness in you.
“He’d skin you alive to hear you say it,” he says, finally, and looks up.
Peter chuckles. “Our secret,” he says.
“Oh?” Sirius murmurs, lifting himself out of the tub, to standing, brushing some of the last ash from the front of his robes.
“Locked up,” promises Peter, and unloops his arms, leaning back against the basin again. “Only if you promise to take your turn and brave the mad Muggle fires yourself, eh?”
Sirius flips him off when he slips out the door.
He stands in the narrow corridor, which still smells like roses and the lingering edge of talcum powder, and the sour edge of red wine, and the surprised mulch of earth overturned by too many people tromping through the garden and dancing on the place where the wildflower bed used to be.
He puts his hand on the corner of the wall, where a tiny blue stripe of wallpaper is curling at his thumb, and thinks that if James and Lily are going to be married, they should never be married and living in this house. He thinks, who on earth would want to be happy and in love in a place where you turn the corner and suddenly you see her again like she was alive, kneeling to plant yellow-tufted weeds in the ground and calling them beautiful, with her sundress pooled at her ankles, and her dark-and-silver hair tied up in a knot, and the firm way her small fingers pressed his forehead to her shoulder, and let him Not Cry. Or maybe one day you come down in the stairs on morning and it's Da-in-the-kitchen-Sunday, suddenly, and you can smell the eggs and toast and rich tea, and hear the rustle of the Prophet and the squeak of his slippers on the tiles. Who the hell, he thinks, would fucking want that.
He thinks he has enough money to buy them a flat. One with proper ghosts, he thinks, and feels like he shouldn’t have left his smokes with Peter, after all, before he turns the corner, and sees Remus halfway up the stairs, hand paused on the banister.
“Oh,” says Remus. “There you are. I was just - ”
“I don’t care,” says Sirius; takes the three steps down to put his hand over Remus’s, firmly.
“Er,” says Remus, and his eyes dart around the corner, to the living room, where there is a loud tinkling of glass and the tide of voices and the happy lurch and scratch of gramophone. “Weren’t you just - ”
“Shut up,” says Sirius, and presses his other palm to Remus’s jaw, and kisses his mouth. He feels the moment when Remus’s head tilts, just a little, when Remus’s spine slumps back again, slowly, when Remus’s knuckles touch his chest, between the dip-vee of his collarbones, where his tie-knot would be, if he were wearing one. If he ever wore one, anymore.
He can’t help it - he grins against Remus’s mouth. Got you, he thinks. At least.
“What?” mumbles Remus.
“I,” says Sirius. “Don’t need to say it. Do I?”
"Er," says Remus. "Probably not." His eyes are narrowed in sly confusion. "Though depending on what it is, you'd say it anyway?"
Sirius looks at his face, at his dark eyes and the lines at the corners of his lips, and the tufts of grey hair on his temples and in the curls behind his ears, and decides he likes a lot of things better, like this, if they are, you know, he thinks, locked up.
"No," he says. "Not if I don't need to."
It is a secret, after all.
The house is quiet. Regulus has forgotten that it was never not quiet before; it's only that it's very quiet now. He will expect to hear Sirius's voice floating up the spiral of a staircase, or the clatters and thuds of his movement down the corridor. He expects to hear the ringing of the bell or the silk-whispers of conversations around half-propped doors. He expects, some days, to hear Mother's humming (the kind she does at tea, on Sundays, with a book and no one watching). He expects to hear the crisp wrinkle-and-release of her skirts, the puff of Father's pipe and the clink of ice in a glass and the metal snick of a spectacles case being tapped shut. He expects to hear someone say, Oh. Regulus? He takes an inventory, some days, because it is cold, and he has been told to ask more questions, be more assertive. He is following advice.
Places where there are not sounds, he writes.
He stands in stocking feet in the foyer in the sickly light of a thin winter, on the marble floor with the arches of ebony over his head. He stands at the end of a long, uncertain corridor, dark with musk and choked with threads of tapestries and groaning flakes of paint. He stands - still, with his arms at his sides and his legs straight and his eyes open, so as not to miss anything - in the middle of the dead garden, the December cornucopia of rotting vines and dirty sky and grey-black spindlethin branches of the willow trees. He stands once in the doorway to Sirius's bedroom, with his hand on the doorknob because he is waiting to be told, something. But everywhere, all it is - in the house - is silent. He can hear three things in all of them, and none of them unique to a corridor, to an empty room, to a garden clawing the icy ground with its nails. He can hear his own breath. He can hear the scrape of his own feet, the rustle of his own clothing in the air. He can hear his own heartbeat, thunderous, sometimes. And he frightens himself by wanting to muffle it dead with his own hands.
Tomorrow it will be Christmas Eve, and they will have a Guest. It is his turn, after all.
Places where there are sounds, he writes, and stops; because he realizes it's not the kind of list anyone would ever want to finish.
( PART III)
Author: imochan
Pairing: Sirius/Remus
Rating: NC17
Summary: In the beginning, the middle, and something of an end.
Part I Part II Part III Part IV Part V Part VI
PART II
English Poetry Is Not Yet Fit To Speak Of Them
“It wasn’t awful,” says Sirius, after the first time, in the way which is entirely a question, but isn’t. His tongue is oddly heavy, and his thoughts are taking a very long time to wade their way to coherency.
“What,” says Remus, and sounds congested, with half his face still pressed into the blankets. “I - have no idea. I’d have no, er. Idea, really.”
“It wasn’t,” says Sirius, again. “Only you were - you made a face like - ”
“Oh my god,” says Remus. “Be quiet, it’s too dark to see my face be quiet.”
And Sirius feels his stomach crawling down into his thighs again, and it was so clearly, rightly, dangerous when it happened an hour ago, and now he is lying on a rumpled blanket between Remus’s old school trunk and an never-unpacked box that he knows contains moldy biscuits, because Remus complained about packing them up last year, and his heartbeat is doing very loud, unnatural things in his chest.
“Isn’t quite,” says Sirius, and Remus’s warm, bony body is shifting against his side, and he can feel the sweat on his jaw cool when Remus exhales. “Though I could hear perfectly, you know, and you - ”
“Oh my god,” says Remus, again, and tries to land a solid punch: all awkward unmovable limbs made numb and slow with something, thinks Sirius, something, and he ends up blindly pushing his open palm into Sirius’s cheek and nose, instead. “Augh.”
Sirius can’t help but laugh, that it is so familiar and so odd, that he is almost able to forget how he is now in possession of the most terrifying memory of his life: you know, he thinks, you know the one you know now, where you looked down and saw his face and his eyes were open, he thinks, he was watching you. And when he touched your mouth with his fingers, he thinks, he might have been shaking, might have been as utterly mad as you, or maybe not at all, and you’re really going to have to go this fucking alone, after all.
“Well,” he sighs, sharply, and sets about trying to rediscover if his thighs have feeling in them, yet.
“Wmph,” says Remus.
“Ha-ha-ha, so,” he mutters, and fumbles about with his trouser legs, and thoughts of tea, and Remus’s red-bitten mouth. “So, there’s that.”
WHERE ARE YOU, says the letter, in James's reckless scrawl. MY OWL WAS STARVING TO DEATH AT YOUR FLAT FOR 9 HOURS WHERE ARE YOU WHY AREN'T YOU THERE.
Your owl is intensely stupid, replies Sirius. Why would I be there.
"It is your flat," says James, when he Apparates into Remus’s audaciously tiny kitchen, a quarter of an hour later, because, thinks Sirius, that would be exactly when the kettle was boiling, when he'd just be finishing the first side of a cheese toastie, wouldn't it.
"If you fed your own fucking owl yourself, it wouldn't be an issue where I was," says Sirius, and gestures for the kettle to please just shut the hell up I heard you the first time. It squeals twice more, insolently, before settling on a quiet steam.
"Moony about?"
"Gone out," says Sirius. "He's a proper job and everything."
"Does not!" James grins. "Where now?"
Sirius shrugs, and jiggles the frying pan, a little. The air smells pleasantly like sizzling butter, subtly undercut by whatever doom it is that James has hanging on the tip of his tongue. “Some Muggle shop. Supposes he’s exhausted Diagon and all, what with that.”
“That and all,” James mutters. “Rotten business.”
“Convinced himself he needs the fucking money,” says Sirius. “Don’t know why he’s bothering, with all the bloody hassle it is. And, he’s just pants at lying, by now.”
“Lying to us,” grins James. “Poor unsuspecting fools’d be worth a few good Sick Aunties, though, eh?”
“Mm," says Sirius, because he's not sure if he agrees, anymore.
"And, what, he's employed you as full-time flat-watcher?" James leans over his shoulder; Sirius jabs him in the stomach with his elbow before he can reach for the toastie in the pan.
"Off, off! If you want this one, you’ll get your own bloody tea.” (He is glad, because he is only marginally less pants at lying, after all, and every sort of excuse he can think of seems sort of weak and sick-coloured and floppy next to the fact that his own bed is lumpy and cold and usually doesn't have Remus's bare thighs or Remus's mouth or Remus's funny, slightly-frowning sleeping-face in it. That makes a difference, he thinks.)
“Cheers,” James says, peering in the cupboard by Sirius’s head. “Listen, if you’ve got a few?”
Sirius glances at him, and there is that little movement where James pushes the bridge of his specs up his nose with one finger, that makes him want to burn the whole damn sandwich and shove it peevishly into the rubbish bin.
“We - he’s out of Darjeeling,” he says, instead.
“Shite, anyway,” mutters James, rummaging elbow-deep in the cupboard to find a mug. “Can’t even spell it. But listen, honestly, I’ve had another run-in with them.”
Bastard, thinks Sirius. You snuck that in there rather neatly, didn’t you.
“Mm,” he says, instead, and slides the toastie onto a plate.
James shifts, pouring the hot water. James shifts, wrists balancing on the countertop. James shifts, and takes the plate. James shifts, and his shirt makes a soft rustle at the elbows, at the collar, at the place where it bunches at his trousers. James shifts, and looks at him, out of the corner of his eye, and Sirius can still sense it, of course, but it makes his stomach turn, because it is an awful, unsteady mess of Right and Not Right, like trying to cram the moon into the sun’s place, but insisting oh no yes I don’t know what you’re on about mate it’s always been like that pip-pip!
“Was leaving the Ministry,” says James, and there is a curl in his lip, and the steam from the tea clouds his glasses. “Honestly, Malfoy did a right proper job of getting me cornered.”
“Malfoy?” Sirius’s nerves tweak all the way up his spine, and into his joints and eardrums. “Go on.”
“Complete crock, right?” says James, except he isn’t laughing, really. “Except.”
“You’d think the first time you told them off would’ve done it,” mutters Sirius, even though he doesn’t believe it, really.
“S’not what bothers me,” sighs James. He hooks one of the chairs with his ankle, and pulls it closer to sit down again: plate and cup beside him, one ankle propped over his knee, one elbow resting on the table, and Sirius pretends his is very good at not noticing any of this, at all. “The ones from school, they were a rotten lot with no brains - in Quidditch, too, ‘specially Rosier. I’d almost expect everything but what this sort of thing, you know, it’s almost civil.”
Sirius scoffs. “What, come-and-have-a-cuppa-and-would-you-like-to-be-a-Muggle-murdering-twat? Have we mentioned how fantastic the pay is?”
“Honestly, yeah,” says James, and looks down again, fingers tearing the toastie in half. “Yeah. And. Listen, mate, it was just him. None of that bluster, right. I mean, he was still that bloody peacock with his chest out to here, honestly, but there wasn’t anybody else. Not a soul. Which means.”
He pauses, licking crumbs from his thumb, and Sirius feels a heavy huff of a sigh building in his throat, tightening up his voice into an unpleasant sort of rasp when he speaks.
“Wasn’t for show, then,” he says, and feels like cursing because he’s positive that Remus took the jacket that had his last pack of Toogle’s Best Tobacco still stuffed in the pocket.
“We should know what’s an empty threat by now, eh?” agrees James. “Only.”
Sirius watches the frown form on James’s mouth - he can pinpoint the moment where a tiny wrinkle pulls at the corner of James’s left eye, and his hair suddenly looks a little thinner, and his skin a little paler, and there is a smudge, on his glasses.
“Fucking hell,” he says.
James laughs into his teacup, and it does sound more like porcelain than his voice should ever sound.
“They want Lily too,” he says. “She hasn’t said anything, mind, but it’s clear.”
“When?”
“Dunno,” says James. “Could have been years ago, honestly, only. If it were, I’ve a feeling the row she had with Snivellus wouldn’t have been kept quiet, much.”
Sirius feels his lip curl, automatically. “Christ. Don’t even. Has he?”
James shakes his head. “Not a greasy speck, not in months. Don’t know where exactly he’s naffed off to this time, but.”
“Couldn’t pay me to care,” Sirius grunts.
“You’re one to talk,” James grins, suddenly. “Couldn’t give a fuck about you either, could they?”
“Well, fucking why should they?” Sirius snaps, dumping the frying pan into the sink with a little more force than necessary, perhaps. The clatter is satisfying, and it masks whatever noise James makes in response. (The first time, Peter thought he was jealous of James, for Christ’s sake, because he was so furious.)
“Spoke to Dumbledore,” says James, after a pause.
Sirius looks at him over his shoulder; James is twisting the tea-bag string around his index finger. “Yeah?”
“Look,” James sighs, finally, and looks at him straight, with that steadfast little pullback in his shoulder-blades, so his spine is straighter and his shoulders look broader, which is what he started to do after Evans told him slouching made him look like a demented sort of chimpanzee (this was, of course, after it all Started To Matter). “Look, don’t tell Lily, all right, not until my say so? Normally it wouldn’t be a - I mean. I’m not trying to keep her locked in the attic, obviously, I just. It’s not quite sorted out, not yet.”
“She’ll pound you when she finds out,” Sirius grins.
James does not smile. “Better that,” he says.
"Hell," Sirius says again, but he says it to himself, to the frying pan under the water and the insolent kettle and the kitchen that isn't really his, but is, anyway, since it seems to know him pretty well by now.
“Er,” says Remus, from the kitchen doorway, a newspaper and a brown paper bag tucked into the crook of his arm. “Hullo. And you’ve both just come to make me tea, have you?”
James hooks his thumb at Sirius. “The irresistible siren song of butter, cheese and bread.”
“He burned up the drapes once, with those things,” Remus sighs, and shifts the bag in his arms.
“If those are groceries,” says Sirius. “I’m going to hex you, I’ve just gone.”
“Er,” says Remus. “Darjeeling, mostly. We were out of.”
“Excellent,” says James, rising. “S’my cue, I believe, as I’ve just exhausted your supply of Earl Grey as well, and I know not to incur the wrath of Lupin, most proper of Englishmen.”
"So glad you've noticed." Remus smiles, and Sirius can only seem to notice the slight pool of sweat just below his jaw.
"We've a pub date on Saturday, don't forget," James says, rising, hand to Remus's shoulder in passing.
"Oi, full moon before then," Sirius mutters. He's only planned it this way for two months, now. He's only been waiting to be the one to make sure everything is all right, still, again, after all. "I'm the only one with a calendar?"
"All he bloody thinks about," James rolls his eyes, and Disapparates.
"That's my calendar," says Remus, handing the bag off to Sirius, reaching automatically for the teakettle, which always liked him better, anyway. "By the way."
"Mm, yeah, do just carry on as if you don't appreciate my fine and thoughtful organization of your life."
Remus smiles, a little; his profile is vaguely blurred, his eyes and jawline and mess of hair all slightly out-of-focus. "The red ink is hard to miss, ta."
"Sort of the general idea," says Sirius, and takes his wrist (because he wants to touch him, because he has been accused of worse, after all, because if he doesn't, sometimes he thinks Remus will forget that there is supposed to be a significant difference between Then and Now.) "You'd be caught mid-step in the middle of Diagon otherwise, wouldn't you: 'Bollocks, do carry on without me, must turn into a slavering beast of darkness for a bit, Cheerio!'"
Remus glances at him, glances at his wrist in the circle of Sirius's fingers. When he starts to smile, Sirius curls his other hand in the rumpled fold of Remus's collar, and leans across the counter and the sink and the newly-steaming kettle, and kisses him on the mouth. He knows that, eventually, if he lets his forehead rest on the slight dip of Remus's temple, if he takes Remus's bottom lip between his teeth, if he runs his thumb up into the soft and oddly put-together joint of Remus's elbow and maybe if he pulls Remus onto his lap with his palms high on the back of Remus's thighs, Remus will close his eyes, eventually. He knows that now, if he just presses his mouth to Remus's in the tiny space of the kitchen, across the counter and the sink and all that and the etcetera, with three points of pressure on their skin, he will feel the rasp of Remus's eyelashes against his cheekbones, where Remus will be watching how they continue to fumble through it, from under half-closed, analytical lids.
"Er," says Remus, and turns his head. "Everything all right?"
"What?" he mutters, nose pressed into Remus's temple.
"With James," says Remus. "Is everything.”
"Nothing. No, it's fine. Why?" Sirius mumbles, because his mouth is against Remus's hair, and it's fuzzy on his lips, and he knows it's the best way to not have to answer.
Remus shrugs, and tugs himself away, gently. "Didn't finish his - " he gestures, at the table with a point of his chin.
Sirius rolls his eyes. "Paranoid, aren't you?" he grins, and tries to hook his fingers into the front-right pocket of Remus's trousers.
Remus glances at him, narrowly. "I've been gone six hours," he says, quiet, and has that little shift in his weight like he's not sure which way would be the faster escape or the best vantage point, and he just has to think about it for just a little longer.
"I know," he says, and curls his fingers so his knuckles press against Remus's hipbone.
"I mean, you saw me six hours ago."
"I know," says Sirius again, and leans back against the counter so Remus has something sturdy to fall against when he finally loses patience and hooks an ankle against the back of Remus's calf, to trip him into a kiss or into his hands or his hips (which will be soon, he thinks).
“When was the last time you were even in your own flat?” asks Remus, reaching around him for the newly-bought tin of tea, cupping it in his palm.
“I hate my flat,” he says. “Everyone hates my flat, it’s awful, it’s an asylum of hatred, I don’t even know why people ask me that.”
“Oh, only because you pay rent on it,” Remus rolls his eyes, holding the tea tin in front of his chest with both hands, as if it were emitting low heat, or subtle protection. “The usual expectations, do forgive us.”
“Shut it,” he shuffles a foot forward, knocking it against Remus’s ankle. “It’s no one’s business anyway, where that ill-gotten gain goes. All right?”
“You know,” says Remus. “It’s not that I. I don’t mind.”
“You’d better not,” he says. And he plucks the tin from Remus’s hands, when he kisses him.
"Unbelievable," mutters Remus, against his mouth.
But because there is colour in his cheeks, and his has his shirt sleeves rolled up to just above the elbow, so Sirius can see his freckles and odd, knobby wrists, and he sometimes has this incredulous sort of smile (after he raises his voice, after Sirius manages to get him sort of drunk and rolls him around on the bedroom floor, for a while, after Sirius thinks enough of him, enough to leave him a note saying DON'T GO ANYWHERE I'LL BE RIGHT BACK DON'T MOVE SO HELP ME MERLIN I WILL HEX YOU IF YOU MOVE, enough to kiss him on the stairwell or in the kitchen, well, thinks Sirius, of course, why wouldn't I, and no, he thinks, it's not, at all.
The house is quiet. Mother is in Wales to visit her aunt, and Father met him at the Station. He was wearing the cufflinks Regulus got him for Christmas last year, and all Regulus could think of was that it was odd: he hadn't seen Sirius on the train, not once, at all. He looked back through the steam before they left, with Father's big hand on his shoulder, and saw nothing but nothing at all.
The house is quiet, and he finds Kreacher at the top of the stairs.
"Hello Kreacher," he says.
"Master Regulus has grown taller again," says Kreacher.
He touches the top of his own head. "Have I?" he says.
"Old Kreacher heard the Mistress say," says Kreacher, his tiny, leather-thick fingers wrapped around the banister spools, his big eyes like heavy ink. "Kreacher heard her say to Mistress Lestrange that she was very proud. That Master Regulus did very well in his exams this year. That Master Regulus did very well, this year."
He sits, on the top step, and presses his palms flat to his knees, and Kreacher stands by his shoulder.
"Oh," he says, again.
"Thank you, Kreacher," he says.
And he wonders, have I.
There are clouds rolling over the sunset; the wind higher than the rooftops is at roaring broil, sweeping the sky out to the west, a great purple-bruised blanket over their heads. Sirius clutches at the concrete under his fingers, his legs swinging out over the ledge of the roof, and the air is eerily gentle around them, when he looks up and imagines just how fast the world is turning above them.
"Don't fall," Remus whispers, tilting his head back so Sirius can feel the soft curls on his bare, bent elbow.
"I can fly, y'know," Sirius mutters, glancing down at the way Remus's head is tipped back, drunk and glossy-pink cheeks just showing from under his hair, his back to the ledge, knees drawn up with a patch of skin poking through a hole in his trousers. He is holding the last bottle of beer in sleepy fingers, hooking just-so around the slender neck, and Sirius's eyes follow the rub of Remus's thumb over the wet rim.
"Not without a great deal of help from machinery or magic," says Remus, and grins up at him. "I should point out."
"Gimme that," Sirius glares, and swipes the bottle. "So drunk you're getting shirty."
"S'mine," protests Remus, twisting, knuckles pressed to Sirius's thigh.
"I bought it."
"For me. You remember?"
"Yesterday," says Sirius. "Today, every man for himself. All bets off!"
"So generous," Remus murmurs, letting his head tip back to rest on the ledge, nose brushing Sirius's thigh. "Give it over." His fingers reach and curl over Sirius's hip, and the simple tuck of his thumb in the belt loop makes Sirius's throat go thick and dry, a sharp sizzle of heat curling all the way from the backs of his knees to his belly. There is a breeze on the back of his neck, it ruffles his hair, cools his sweat; Remus closes his eyes. He's felt it too, thinks Sirius.
"Give," Remus mumbles again.
Sirius presses a pad of his thumb to Remus's bottom lip, instead. "Lupin," he says.
"Not now," Remus grins, lashes still heavy and dark over his cheekbones, dry mouth sliding over Sirius's thumb. "'m still tired out."
"Tease."
Remus laughs, and hoists himself up to his knees with a grunt, twisting to let his elbows rest on the ledge, nabbing the almost-empty bottle from Sirius's hands. "Why ruin the moment, hm?" he drinks, flushed.
"Mm, ruination," Sirius grins, soppy with the memory of Remus's bare thighs under his mouth.
Remus rolls his eyes, head tilted away from the wind, from Sirius's body. "Forget it," he mumbles. "Incorrigible."
"And you're a prude," Sirius says to the sky, legs swinging. "Your point?"
"Oh, finish it," Remus mutters, thrusting the bottle into Sirius's hands again, hauling himself up to sit with his back to the horizon, feet firmly planted on the gravel of the rooftop. "You're not nearly drunk enough if you're still insulting me."
"Well, if I can't fuck you - "
Remus punches him in the arm.
"What?" Sirius yelps, laughing, teetering with the wind, and Remus hooks two fingers in Sirius's sleeve to pull him back.
"Ridiculous," he mutters, eyes averted.
"Oh, because it's such a novelty by this point," Sirius tips the bottle back to his lips, leaning into Remus's knuckles. "Christ, you think with how hard I worked for it in the beginning you'd cut me some slack by now."
"And more charming by the second," Remus sighs; Sirius feels his body shift and resettle, shoulders rolling back like he does in the morning after the Moon, a stretch and shedding of the skin, blood fresh and cuts shining like silver and rubies on the surface of his flesh.
Sirius sneers in frustration. "Right, c'mere," he says, resolute, bottle forgotten on the ledge, rim whistling in the wind, and he leans over to bury his nose in the bared crook of Remus's neck. "You shut the fuck up, right now," he grins. "With all of this - this - "
"This what," Remus whispers, breathing still, jaw brushing Sirius's temple.
"We don't have time for this," says Sirius.
"What?"
"The world could end tomorrow."
Remus laughs; the wind catches it and makes it tight. "So dramatic."
Sirius pinches his thigh, mouth sliding against the bunched tendons of Remus's shoulder. "It could. It could, and you’d be fucking sorry you ever said no, wouldn’t you.”
"I won't - " says Remus, eyes half-closed. "I'm not going to - you know that - "
"I don't - why the hell should I force it out of you?"
"You stupid - " Remus whispers. "You stupid bastard."
"Bastard yourself," says Sirius. The sounds, he realizes, coming from his own throat, are vaguely terrifying when they are genuine: dark and sad and edging on a mute desperation. "You. You're fantastic. All right?"
And Remus sighs, a little, like the world is awfully hard on him. "So, it's something you do a lot now, is it?"
"What - that," says Sirius, and bumps his nose on Remus's jaw.
"Saying things," says Remus, and tips a knuckle against Sirius's chin, and Sirius is acutely aware of how much smaller Remus is when his voice is even, his eyes are steady, and he's absolutely petrified. "Because no one else will say them?"
"Drunk," Sirius whispers, and finds his mouth (it's easy because of Remus's fingers, a bridge in the impending dark), close enough to almost. "I'm drunk, not - "
"Oh, just - " Remus whispers, and Sirius tastes the command on his own tongue, when he finally kisses him.
And when the world goes dark outside, they retreat down to the warmth of Remus’s flat, with the red teakettle, the flimsy curtains and mice in the walls and the threadbare couch and the mattress on the floor in lieu of a bed. And when Sirius is splaying Remus's bare body open with his hands, three wet fingers inside and both of them gasping for air and every muscle straining for that glossy and quaking second, Sirius wants to speak - say, oh, if, if you, oh beautiful - and Remus presses two shaking fingers to his mouth, eyes desperate for silence when they come.
Sirius thinks he should have known better than to think anything now would be the same as it was before, ever. Even if they were still together, even if they were still generally, mostly, happy, and young, and even if they were still crowding into the Potters’ summer house in Brighton, trying to fill up the bright, dusty kitchen and the paisley bedrooms and the dark, hot attic and the pine-wood porch and the coves and stretches of sand along the water with bodies and voices not big enough to fill in the things that were missing. He thinks he should have been more alert, shouldn’t have spent weeks purposefully drowning himself in sunshine and choking on sand and blue skies and the odd, triangle-shaped tan that Remus developed at the back of his neck, after the initial burn peeled away. (That was new, he thinks, it doesn’t count. You should have known that too.)
He should have known, he thinks, that just because they had been oblivious to how life was inclined to make them grow older, grow taller, fight less, fight more, it didn’t mean they were ever safe from it.
Because in the late, late afternoon, on the beach, James says, Er listen up for a bit won’t you mates, and Sirius feels the hot peak of wariness shoot up his spine, and he is almost furious.
Remus makes a non-committal sound from the picnic blanket, from underneath the oversized pinkstraw sunhat they found underneath some netting in the Potter’s overturned rowboat. (Mr Potter had turned it over with Sirius’s help last summer, before the funeral, before they died, before all that, you know, to help it dry and keep the wood and paint from cracking when everyone had left for London again, when autumn and winter came into Brighton. James gave Sirius the hat, silently, when he found it. Sirius wore it for six days, and then decided Remus’s red and peeling nose was just painful to look at, and passed it on.)
“Oi, I mean it,” says James, and Sirius is nauseated by the sound. “Lupin.”
“He’s awake,” says Sirius, scratching at the underside of his calf where the sun and sand have crusted. He squints into the sky. He doesn’t want to have to look at anyone, because they are suddenly all very old now and Evans is swimming in the ocean far out in front of them, her white arms and ankles dipping in and out of the dark like the flashing bellies of jumping fish.
“Wasn’t,” Remus murmurs, and does not remove the hat. “This had better be important.”
“Ugh, Sirius,” Peter mumbles, from beside him, as he lifts himself up onto his elbows. “You still have that seaweed in your hair.”
“It’s not seaweed, I only found it in your mum’s fanny last night, didn’t I?” Sirius fishes it out and flicks it at Peter’s sunburnt thigh.
Peter makes a noise like a strangled bull, and tries to get as much sand in Sirius’s eyes as possible before James rips the slimy-crust of seaweed off his leg and holds it up between them like a weapon, black and rattling and wriggling with dried seawater.
“Right,” he says sharply. “The next bloke to make a move that isn’t raptly listening what I’m about to say gets to eat this for supper, courtesy of my raging fists.”
“Delightful,” murmurs Remus, and lifts the brim of the sunhat with his wrist.
“Just try it,” Sirius snaps, and focuses instead, hazily, on the way Remus’s belly has fewer scars and more freckles than his back.
“Fuck off, Black, I mean it,” says James, quietly.
“This is one of those things,” says Peter, which Sirius knows means that James has two red spots on his cheeks and his neck flushes and he pushes his specs up onto his nose with his index finger. Which means that James looks guilty. “Oh, no.”
“Er,” says James, and adjusts his glasses again. “Yes.”
“It’s impossible for it to be that bad,” Remus says, quietly, with his pale, chapped lips and his stupid, bleary, salt-water, sun-squinted, heavy-lidded eyes, and Sirius wants to punch him, or just roll him under the dock again where tiny bird-bones and beach lichen and clam shells snapped under their palms and thighs, and Remus’s hair was wet, and curling on the edges, and Sirius tasted salt there when he panted against the curve of Remus’s ear.
“I,” says James. “Don’t know.”
“If you’ve killed someone,” Peter hisses. “That’s definitely bad.”
Sirius barks a laugh, and hopes they could be so lucky.
“Ta, Pete,” James grinds out. “I’ll keep that in mind for when you wankers all up and abandon me for good, since you seem to be getting some awfully good practice at it right now.” The seaweed shakes once, limply, and drips something cold and vomit-coloured onto the top of Sirius’s foot.
Sirius wipes at it, half-heartedly, and looks out at the ocean, at the frothy edge of the beach, at the dimming sky and the clouds and the fat, heavy sun. He looks at the water, and sees her body shaped and hidden by the tide and mostly the momentum of her own power and he thinks, well. Maybe that’s not so unfamiliar. After all.
“If it’s - ” he says, and stops. Sirius decides he’ll wait for him, first, and hopes, vaguely, that someone will notice his nobility and self-sacrifice and compassion, later, he thinks, when this isn’t such a thing, anymore.
“Look, it’s just,” says James. “It’s not that I’m scared of it. I want it. It’s no question. No bloody question. It’s just,” he says. “I know what to do. Everyone knows what to do.”
I understand that, thinks Sirius. We always understood that. You haven’t changed at all, have you.
And then - “I just don’t know how to ask her.”
“Oh,” says Remus, suddenly. “Wait - ”
“Really?” Peter blinks. “You mean, you’re. Are you going to today?”
James looks Sirius dead on, mouth twisted a little, that half-apology of a face that always meant he didn’t really feel very sorry at all, because he’d come out on top or won all the points himself or saved the day or drank the most whiskey and thrown up the least or took the best grades, or, as they said, gotten the girl.
“I could,” says James. “Technically.”
“Technically,” repeats Remus, shifting to look over Sirius’s bent knees. “Technically what?”
“Technically,” says James, and pulls the little black box from his pocket, gingerly. He puts it on the blanket, between his hips and Sirius’s ankles and they all stare at it, warily, and Sirius thinks it might be better if it did explode.
“Hell,” says Peter, blinking. “Have you really been hiding that down the front of your trunks all day?”
“That is so far from important,” James groans, sitting back on his heels, seaweed flopping in his fist, against his knee. “Look. Look. What the hell am I doing with that?”
Sirius snorts, and squints at the sun.
“Oh, shut it,” James mutters, sharply. “If I have to think about this for one day longer I’m going to give up the ghost and just off myself, all right? So just. Just be smart fucking blokes, for once, you know? I must’ve hired you for something, didn’t I?”
“Er,” says Peter.
“Prongs,” Remus sighs, and lays back again, a hand over his eyes. He is smiling.
James makes a wretched noise. “I tried to. I even did the - that thing, the mirror thing. I fucking stood in front of the mirror and practiced. I practiced talking. Talking. I couldn’t do it - couldn’t even ask myself, myself, and the mirror told me it didn’t even have the heart to laugh. I was that, that awful. What the hell.”
But it’s been so brilliant, thinks Sirius, because I could be full of sun and sand and salt water just the way I was before all of these awful Older People things started to happen to me and to us, he thinks. We were almost perfect, again, he thinks, except that Wormtail isn’t quite so fat anymore. And those other things, he thinks, the ones you can’t ignore. Why would you do this, he wants to snap. Why would you ruin this for everyone?
“You just ask her,” he says. “Don’t you?”
James rolls his eyes. “Unhelpful, prick.”
Sirius narrows his eyes. “It’s what I would do,” he snaps. “You asked.”
“And your running tally of women-who-are-going-to-marry-you speaks so highly of your expertise,” James bites, sharper than it was probably meant, thinks Sirius, since he has no idea, really, and is so deep into the stewing panic of his own head, thinks Sirius, that at this point he might actually vomit.
“He’s right,” says Remus, sunhat held between his fingers again, loosely drooping in the sand, sun shielded from his eyes with his forearm. He looks at them from underneath his wrist, and Sirius thinks, oh you shut up I’ve never told you properly anyway so what do you know about how much anybody needs you.
“I mean,” says Remus. “He has a point. Once you get the first word out, it’s only three more until the end, and it sort of gets the idea across enough to distract her until you can think again to say something more, er. Explanatory. Doesn’t it?”
“Well. Yeah. But it’s not very,” James rubs at his forehead, before he realizes his palm is still coated with the remnants of the seaweed, and the grey-green smear runs the length of his nose. “Ugh. Romantic.”
“What isn’t?” says Lily, shaking clotting, wet sand from her feet, dripping at the edge of the picnic blanket, her footprints a dark trail behind her from the edge of the waves. There is a sharp, thick moment of silence, and James twists where he is sitting, eyes wide. Remus stills, Peter makes a strange and fumbling sound in the back of his throat, and the waves quietly soak up her presence from the sand.
Sirius thinks about the tiny black box sitting next to his ankle, and looks at her, slowly, carefully, and tries to gather together all the things that Lily Evans is and how they might be something that would fit into a container that small, hidden in James’s pocket, or set gently on a picnic blanket on a beach in the end of August. He watches her when she twists her wet hair up into a knot, and the first licks of the sunset paint her lifted cheekbones and her left clavicle and the underside of his elbow and her waist and the curve of her thigh right above her knee, and her ankles. Her skin is pink, her hair is red, and she is wearing a blue plaid swimming costume, with one of the bows missing from her left shoulder strap, and she is smiling and tired from her swim.
And Sirius looks at Remus’s skinny, sandy knees and strange, small body with transmutable bones and skin like some inhuman tissue (thin enough to see though, deep enough to ridge into the muscles when it heals). He looks at Remus’s pointed chin and bony wrist and the careful stillness of his whole being and he thinks about how tight his chest had been the night he pinned Remus to the stairwell wall and felt as though he had really left his last bit of sanity behind him, for a moment. And he thinks that he wants to be good enough.
I want to be good enough, he thinks, and feels the panic like a scraping, emptying ache, like an echo of the helpless edge in James’s voice. For everything you want. Like that. So, maybe.
“What isn’t romantic?” says Lily again, and she bends down to pick up her folded towel.
“Euh,” says James.
“-- are those fish guts on your face?” asks Lily, hands stilled over her hips.
“Seaweed!” says Peter, loudly.
Oh, bugger, thinks Sirius.
“Marry me,” says James.
And because she thinks he’s joking, he has to ask her again three more times, and once again, after supper.
But he didn’t really ask her, says Sirius, later, on the veranda steps, with the stars sparking off the water and the sound of old boat bones creaking in the distance.
"I don’t know. He didn’t really need to?" says Remus, and folds his arms over his knees.
"She didn’t believe him," Sirius says, pointedly.
"She does now," says Remus, and tucks his smile against the inside of his bent elbow.
Sirius turns his head and looks at him. His hair has dried with a matted curl, and a stubborn cowlick by his temple and he still looks utterly silly, most of the time, in his white oxford and his short trousers and his over-present Old Man eyes. He still has sand under his fingernails, and stuck to his bare legs and he scratches at his sunburned shoulder through his shirt. His nose is vaguely crooked and his neck has that long white scar that arcs lazily up behind his ear, into the hair at his nape.
"What," says Remus, lifting his chin above his arms.
"Do you believe me?" he asks.
Remus places one hand, palm down, on the steps between them, and leans over. He pauses, like an odd and overmeasured heartbeat, like the press and yield of a wave, before he pulls at the hem of Sirius's jumper; hooks two fingers in it and gathers it up in his fist. He kisses the side of Sirius’s mouth. And his eyes are only just half-closed.
Strange creature, thinks Sirius. You look so harmless, I forget. Sometimes.
In September, he falls ill for the last time in his life. He wakes with heavy, edgy nerves, one morning, and by the next day he has a headache and a fever, and a cough dreadful-sounding enough to make Slughorn stop him in the halls with a genuine sort of frown, and a genuinely firm palm on his shoulder.
Here now you're looking awfully rough along the edges aren't you Reg.
That was a very silly thing to say, thinks Regulus, and: how on earth would you know?
Here now, says Slughorn, again. Here now Rodolphus take old Reg here up to see Poppy now won't you there's a good lad.
He's a foreigner to the Hospital Wing, because he's never bruised his knuckles on someone else's face, or been launched sideways through the air by a badly-cast sixth-year spell. He avoids that sort of thing; he avoids doctors, most of his childhood was a sickbed, he thinks, anyway. He has learned not to complain, because when Sirius was still here, he would be silently furious at Regulus's runny nose or red eyes or clammy skin, from across the Great Hall; because now that Sirius is not here, there is no one to be furious at all.
Madam Promfrey does not know him, but she knows where his face is from. She is unamused, and fussy, and she pokes at his throat and temples and ribs.
Had a boy die, she says, in the quiet, with a funny, flat piece of wood pressed firmly against his tongue. Had a boy die, you know, not too long ago. Just a plain sort of Muggle flu. Plain sort of thing.
He nods, with his fingers gripping at the edge of the mattress, because there is a funny, flat piece of wood holding his jaw open, and she presses the back of her wrist to his forehead. And he thinks that is an absolutely awful thing to say to a sick person.
Fever, she scolds.
She makes him a drink hot tea that smells strongly of lemons and ginger, and wraps him up tightly in the comforters and orders him to sleep, which he does, because the blankets are white, and rather fluffy, and feel entirely unlike what he always believed they would.
Fever, she says. Poor old duck.
It is just so silly, he thinks. What people think they know. It is so unfamiliar, he thinks, that he decides that, later, he will think of it as a dream.
He is not threatened by his own incompetence, in this case, he thinks. He counts it as another notch under the heading Sirius Black Is Roguishly Handsome And Rebellious And Has Very Little Time For You Common People, and lights another cigarette. He is not at all bothered by the fact that it is still only 9 o'clock in the evening and he's already shut himself in the lavatory, and didn't even bother to turn on the lights. It's a pleasant room, after all, he thinks, and it has all the touches of the vestiges of the Potters that he liked best, after all. The tangible ones, he thinks: the clean surfaces, the lemon-smelling soap bubbles in a clear-lime bottle, the mirror that was generally quite kind, even at six in the morning, the window covered with ivy that peeked out onto the very edge of the vegetable garden, when they had one, the bathtoy broomstick, made of cheery yellow rubber, even the soft pink tiling on the edge of the tub. He likes that there are no flowers or white crepe ribbons or champagne bottles or pretty redheads or Best Mates in Dress Robes or Drunk Muggles. And there are no vows, here, he thinks, except the ones We made. Everything on the outside is muffled and tinkling and faraway and he is completely free to lie fully clothed in the bottom of the dry bathtub, and prop his boots up on the spigot, and smoke, and add one more thing to his list of Afraids, because no one is here to see him do it.
He counts them in a closed fist, tapping a one-two-three against his folded palm: here, here, here - here you were weak, here you were stupid, here you were helpless and wanted to cry. Here, one, you did, in the fourth stall from the left in the second-floor toilets, in the early hours of the dawn, with your stomach churning, your knees raw. Night, and a moon, and a row with mouths stretched wide with hatred, slobbering with thoughtlessness, with the worst kinds of truths, and you were petrified, he thinks. Coward, you could have lost it all. So you vomited by yourself in the dark, and didn't make a sound. And then you washed your face, he thinks. And then, somehow, weeks later, you kissed Remus Lupin on the stairwell.
And here, two, you were so tired. Too stretched thin, he thinks, too pink and red and Black with a beating, too wet and cold with lost London rain to find your own mind, let leave where James could be. You ran, a moment of enough, of knowing freedom and love and never finding it where one should. And you slept in the doorway of a sandwich shop, and felt the scrape of concrete under your spine and thighs, and fear was so like mindless bravery, he thinks, like the rush of adrenaline, the crackling snap of a wooden bat in the rushing air, shouting delirious, UP LIONS UP, the run of wild dogs and animals, the tingling scrape of the moon on his fur. And fear was like waking up to Remus: in his bed, in the sunshine, and thinking, oh.
So here it is, the third. He counts it out and pauses at the edge of it, at the point of its existence, where his boots are propped up against the rim of the bathtub, and his dress robes are rumpled underneath his back, and the smoke curls up to the ceiling, and he can hear laughter through the door. So they were married, he thinks, and your stupid life still carries on. So everyone is drunk, he thinks, and might not notice you've been missing. So everyone is absolutely soppy with this perfect match and perfect love, and maybe I'll fit right in again tomorrow, after all, he thinks. Or maybe not, he thinks, and finds the sharp point of it, like the heat burning slowly towards his fingertips, and the cool porcelain on his wrist.
Or maybe - he thinks, before the door squeaks open, the saturated sounds and buttery light spilling over each other in their rush to flood the quiet and bounce off the porcelain.
Peter slips in, sideways, and shuts the door behind him again with both palms. When he sighs, and rests his forehead against the wood, Sirius resists the urge to roll his eyes, because he can see the high spots of colour on Peter’s cheeks, and he’s been well aware that the only other people at this bloody stupid thing, tonight, matching him bloody stupid drink for bloody stupid drink have been Remus, who is apparently invincible and could down four barrels of vodka before even considering an ill-placed stumble, if he chose, and Peter, who drinks four glasses of red wine and passes out in the pumpkin patch.
“Oi, occupied,” Sirius mutters, grimly.
“Christ,” Peter starts, exhaling sharply. “Sirius. Give a mate a heart attack, eh?”
“Hunh,” Sirius snorts; he rolls his eyes, and scrapes his boot against the rust pooled faintly at the edge of the drain.
“Oh - ” says Peter, as if he’s just noticed that it might be odd to find someone sitting in a dry tub, fully clothed and steadily smoking through a full pack of Toogle’s Best Tobaccos. “What are you - in here?”
“Just finished with your mum, thanks,” Sirius grins.
“Oi, come off it,” Peter sighs, and Sirius feels the sharp snap of distaste - it doesn’t matter who’s doing the condescending, he thinks. It doesn’t matter if I think they’re beautiful, or hardly think of them at all.
“Christ, well, if I’m so boring, there are plenty of other fucking loos to wank off in, you miserable git,” he hisses, and plants one boot firmly on the bottom of the tub, raising his upper body.
“Padfoot,” Peter laughs, and raises his hands, palms out, and Sirius relishes the sweet little surge of power, setting everything right again, when Peter’s voice warbles on that happy nervous laugh he has.
“Forget it,” Sirius murmurs, and rests his shoulders against the slope of the tub, again. “Muggles?” he asks.
“Muggles, “ says Peter, and glances at the mirror, running his hands through his hair. “Did you know, Lily’s, er. Sister, that - she’s. She’s awful.”
“Drunk, too,” Sirius grins, watching Peter stick out his tongue at himself in the mirror.
“Doubt I’d ever be sober, if I had a face like that,” Peter mumbled, and Sirius can’t help it, he laughs, genuinely, and the sound is sharp, and ricochets off the tile, and Peter gives him a grin, over his shoulder.
“They get to you too?” asks Peter, leaning back against the wash basin, gesturing at Sirius’s cigarette.
“Sure,” Sirius shrugs, and tosses Peter his pack. “Don’t tell Evans. She’ll have your hide, and I’ll just blame it all on you.”
“She already smelled it on you, though, didn’t she?” Peter winks, knowingly, and lights his, with a flick of his wand, exhaling to the ceiling. “You’ve been banished, proper. That’s why you’re sitting in the tub, in the dark, and not dancing with Auntie Muriel.”
“Pete,” Sirius pulls a face. “Eugh.”
“She was asking after you,” Peter leers.
Sirius resists the urge to throw a bar of soap at him. “Only ‘cause your tiny pecker didn’t satisfy her, mate, sorry.”
Peter rolls his small, bright eyes, and crosses his arms. “Prongs was, though,” he says, and his face is that round portrait of earnestness again, the soft cheeks and trusting smile, and the folded posture and unassuming lift of his eyebrows.
Sirius decides that he doesn’t have an inclination to answer that, after all, and contemplates the rust marks on the showerhead.
“He said, if I found you, to - ” Peter sighs. “I mean, aren’t you being just a bit. Er.”
Sirius looks directly at Peter when he exhales, and thinks he is entitled to feel a little flattered, to still inspire that much of a stutter, after all these years.
“Er, look. It was a brilliant speech, Padfoot,” says Peter. “Really just - ”
“Fine. Stuff it,” Sirius snaps, hoisting himself up with a small grunt, and grinding his cigarette down the drain.
Peter sighs. “I know he wasn’t just like that,” he says. “You know, because of all the toasting. He really. You know.”
Sirius pauses, elbows resting on the rim of the tub, chin on his wrists. It’s not every day, he thinks, that Pettigrew makes a note of Weakness in James, even if soppy, hopeless, over-active tear glands and too much champagne aren’t really a sign of weakness, at all. But it’s not every day, he thinks. At least, he thinks, he’s not picking out the Weakness in you.
“He’d skin you alive to hear you say it,” he says, finally, and looks up.
Peter chuckles. “Our secret,” he says.
“Oh?” Sirius murmurs, lifting himself out of the tub, to standing, brushing some of the last ash from the front of his robes.
“Locked up,” promises Peter, and unloops his arms, leaning back against the basin again. “Only if you promise to take your turn and brave the mad Muggle fires yourself, eh?”
Sirius flips him off when he slips out the door.
He stands in the narrow corridor, which still smells like roses and the lingering edge of talcum powder, and the sour edge of red wine, and the surprised mulch of earth overturned by too many people tromping through the garden and dancing on the place where the wildflower bed used to be.
He puts his hand on the corner of the wall, where a tiny blue stripe of wallpaper is curling at his thumb, and thinks that if James and Lily are going to be married, they should never be married and living in this house. He thinks, who on earth would want to be happy and in love in a place where you turn the corner and suddenly you see her again like she was alive, kneeling to plant yellow-tufted weeds in the ground and calling them beautiful, with her sundress pooled at her ankles, and her dark-and-silver hair tied up in a knot, and the firm way her small fingers pressed his forehead to her shoulder, and let him Not Cry. Or maybe one day you come down in the stairs on morning and it's Da-in-the-kitchen-Sunday, suddenly, and you can smell the eggs and toast and rich tea, and hear the rustle of the Prophet and the squeak of his slippers on the tiles. Who the hell, he thinks, would fucking want that.
He thinks he has enough money to buy them a flat. One with proper ghosts, he thinks, and feels like he shouldn’t have left his smokes with Peter, after all, before he turns the corner, and sees Remus halfway up the stairs, hand paused on the banister.
“Oh,” says Remus. “There you are. I was just - ”
“I don’t care,” says Sirius; takes the three steps down to put his hand over Remus’s, firmly.
“Er,” says Remus, and his eyes dart around the corner, to the living room, where there is a loud tinkling of glass and the tide of voices and the happy lurch and scratch of gramophone. “Weren’t you just - ”
“Shut up,” says Sirius, and presses his other palm to Remus’s jaw, and kisses his mouth. He feels the moment when Remus’s head tilts, just a little, when Remus’s spine slumps back again, slowly, when Remus’s knuckles touch his chest, between the dip-vee of his collarbones, where his tie-knot would be, if he were wearing one. If he ever wore one, anymore.
He can’t help it - he grins against Remus’s mouth. Got you, he thinks. At least.
“What?” mumbles Remus.
“I,” says Sirius. “Don’t need to say it. Do I?”
"Er," says Remus. "Probably not." His eyes are narrowed in sly confusion. "Though depending on what it is, you'd say it anyway?"
Sirius looks at his face, at his dark eyes and the lines at the corners of his lips, and the tufts of grey hair on his temples and in the curls behind his ears, and decides he likes a lot of things better, like this, if they are, you know, he thinks, locked up.
"No," he says. "Not if I don't need to."
It is a secret, after all.
The house is quiet. Regulus has forgotten that it was never not quiet before; it's only that it's very quiet now. He will expect to hear Sirius's voice floating up the spiral of a staircase, or the clatters and thuds of his movement down the corridor. He expects to hear the ringing of the bell or the silk-whispers of conversations around half-propped doors. He expects, some days, to hear Mother's humming (the kind she does at tea, on Sundays, with a book and no one watching). He expects to hear the crisp wrinkle-and-release of her skirts, the puff of Father's pipe and the clink of ice in a glass and the metal snick of a spectacles case being tapped shut. He expects to hear someone say, Oh. Regulus? He takes an inventory, some days, because it is cold, and he has been told to ask more questions, be more assertive. He is following advice.
Places where there are not sounds, he writes.
He stands in stocking feet in the foyer in the sickly light of a thin winter, on the marble floor with the arches of ebony over his head. He stands at the end of a long, uncertain corridor, dark with musk and choked with threads of tapestries and groaning flakes of paint. He stands - still, with his arms at his sides and his legs straight and his eyes open, so as not to miss anything - in the middle of the dead garden, the December cornucopia of rotting vines and dirty sky and grey-black spindlethin branches of the willow trees. He stands once in the doorway to Sirius's bedroom, with his hand on the doorknob because he is waiting to be told, something. But everywhere, all it is - in the house - is silent. He can hear three things in all of them, and none of them unique to a corridor, to an empty room, to a garden clawing the icy ground with its nails. He can hear his own breath. He can hear the scrape of his own feet, the rustle of his own clothing in the air. He can hear his own heartbeat, thunderous, sometimes. And he frightens himself by wanting to muffle it dead with his own hands.
Tomorrow it will be Christmas Eve, and they will have a Guest. It is his turn, after all.
Places where there are sounds, he writes, and stops; because he realizes it's not the kind of list anyone would ever want to finish.
( PART III)