Fic - And The Kitchen Table Exists Because I Scrub It - Remus/Sirius - NC-17
Title: And The Kitchen Table Exists Because I Scrub It
Prompt: Watch out for the broken glass / Put your shoes and socks on / And come along with me. From Kentucky Avenue by Tom Waits. Written for the rs_small_gifts fest 2010 for a_shadow_there
Fandom: Harry Potter
Characters/Pairing: Remus/Sirius
Summary: Remus and Sirius adjust to life with one another again. Post-Azkaban/Lost Years.
Rating: NC-17
Contains: Dubious consent, angst, swearing, graphic sex, rimming, unprotected sex outside the relationship (but not cheating).
Word Count: 3251
Notes: I’ve done a bit of fiddling around with canon - Sirius is lying low at Lupin’s a year earlier than he’s meant to be (oops) and the poem that’s quoted in the fic is W. H. Auden’s ‘Christmas Oratorio’, which is very good and definitely worth a read. Originally posted here.
And the kitchen table exists because I scrub it.
June, 1994
‘I’ve put the kettle on,’ Remus murmured when he heard footsteps in the doorway of his kitchen. His back was turned to the door and his eyes were fixed on the tiles above the hob, where his kettle, dented from a fight that had taken place thirteen years ago in this very kitchen and at the same time a whole world away, was resting above a flickering ring of blue flame.
He’d put the kettle on because he didn’t know what else to do, had no idea what to say.
‘Black still, two sugars?’
Still. Stupid thing to say; Sirius probably hadn’t had a cup of tea since that night, the night before James and Lily died, the last time they’d seen one another, when they’d both shouted and screamed and Sirius had thrown his mug of tea at Remus and Remus had thrown the kettle back and he’d grabbed Sirius and shoved him over the kitchen table and pulled his trousers halfway down his thighs and held him down and taken him, taken him dry, taken him, taken him, over and over and over and over until he began to weep and Sirius was growling and cursing under his breath and struggling against Remus’s grip and Remus had come with a sob, holding Sirius down by the back of his head, his hand fisted in Sirius’s hair that still had the smell of fags clinging to it and he’d pressed kisses to the back of Sirius’s neck and murmured how sorry, how fucking sorry he was against Sirius’s warm, salty skin, reaching a hand underneath Sirius’s body and stroked him until he came too, snarling Remus’s name, hissing, arching into and away from Remus simultaneously, and they’d stayed that way for a minute and Remus had opened his mouth to murmur I love you, but he’d never said it, never had the chance, because Sirius had shoved him back and pulled his trousers up and walked out the door and got on his bike and left and not come back for thirteen years.
‘Yeah,’ Sirius murmured. ‘Two sugars, please.’
*
And craving the sensation but ignoring the cause,
We look round for something, no matter what, to inhibit
Our self-reflection, and the obvious thing for that purpose
Would be some great suffering.
July, 1994
‘Hold still,’ Remus murmured, running a section of Sirius’s hair, wet from having washed it over the sink, through two of his long fingers.
‘Sorry,’ Sirius mumbled, sitting up straighter.
Remus’s glasses were perched on the end of his nose, and he was squinting as he tried to cut Sirius’s hair straight and even. He’d already worked the knots and tangles out with magic and washed it all by hand, carefully running his fingers through Sirius’s hair, giving it its first proper clean for God only knew how long. He’d hacked off the whole bottom half straight away and was now tidying it up, trimming carefully, letting the hair fall around Sirius’s shoulders, close to the style he’d sported at twenty.
‘Let me do the front?’ Remus asked quietly, brushing the snippets of dark hair off Sirius’s towel-clad shoulders.
‘Yeah,’ Sirius nodded, sitting up straight again as Remus moved round to his front and bent down. ‘I forgot about your glasses,’ he said, reaching out as if to touch them, but pulling his hand back. ‘Are they the-‘
‘Same ones, yes,’ Remus said without smiling, concentrating on getting the two front parts of Sirius’s hair at an equal length, trimming carefully, the steel scissors resting against Sirius’s skin.
‘Kept them all these years?’ Sirius said as Remus brushed his shoulders again, then his chest before standing up. He pulled a tub of shaving cream towards himself, hesitating before scooping some up with the four fingers of his right hand, breathing in and setting his jaw and then reaching forward, rubbing it carefully over Sirius’s cheek, his jaw, just onto his neck, his chin, his upper lip, his other cheek. He felt tense, his muscles tight as he spread the lather over Sirius’s face, which was ridiculous, he could do it himself, but it was done now, he’d finished.
‘I kept everything, Sirius,’ Remus murmured, picking up his razor.
‘Everything?’ Sirius said, his pink lips stark against the white of the shaving cream.
‘Everything,’ Remus sighed, closing his eyes tight for just a moment before dragging the razor slowly down Sirius’s cheek.
‘Even my leather-‘
‘I kept everything, Sirius,’ Remus repeated, his voice harder.
Everything was packed into one old suitcase with an extension charm on it and stashed inside the wardrobe, and everything hadn’t come out of there for thirteen years. On the first of November, 1981, everything had been gathered up in a blind fit of rage and grief and shame and oh God, the guilt, and everything had been shoved into the suitcase, all the photographs, the notes, Sirius’s toothbrush, his shampoo, their pillowcases, Sirius’s side of the wardrobe, his shot glasses, his records, those stupid boots of his, and finally, the leather jacket, stuffed in and buckled shut and hidden away and then, and only then, had Remus cried.
And God, he’d cried. He’d cried and he’d drank, curling in on himself in the middle of the kitchen floor, clutching at his hair, clawing at the stone floor because he had nothing to hold on to, because everything had been rounded up and locked away, out of sight, out of mind. Or so he told himself; he told himself that everything was gone, that Sirius was gone, that Sirius didn’t exist anymore. Some days he almost convinced himself, but then he caught sight of the dent in the wall that the kettle had made when he’d thrown it at Sirius, when he found a long, black hair lying in between the pages of a book, when Sirius’s name and sometimes his face appeared in the Prophet. Sirius was everywhere Remus didn’t want him to be. And that was hard, and it hurt.
*
...The happy morning is over,
The night of agony still to come.
September, 1994
It was an unusually cold night for September, cold enough to warrant Remus lighting a fire in the grate in the living room of his cottage. Sirius, looking somewhat healthier and cleaner after a summer of decent-ish meals and regular baths, was sitting on the sofa, watching Remus prod at the kindling with his wand, making sure the fire didn’t die out as soon as it was lit. He pulled a packet of fags out of the pocket of his trousers - a luxury he wasn’t really able to afford but was, embarrassingly enough, increasingly dependent on - and tapped two out, putting both in his mouth and lighting them with the tip of his wand, passing one to Sirius.
Both made sure their fingers didn’t brush during the transaction.
Remus closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, holding the cigarette in between his fingers. He pulled it away from his lips and breathed in again, sighing the smoke out through his nose.
It was quiet.
Sirius slowly slid down to lie on his side, his head resting on the worn leather arm of the settee, his knees pulled up to his chest. Remus looked at him, trying not to look as though he was looking, and noted sadly how dull Sirius’s eyes were, how vulnerable he looked. He bit back a sigh and turned to inspect the fire again, remembering all the times he’d curled in on himself on the sofa like that, usually after he’d done something he’d regretted, filled with self-loathing and nothing but disgust and contempt for himself. In the mid-eighties it had become something of a habit, a bit like his smoking now: going out, doing something stupid, hating himself for it and then going out and doing it again a day later, a week later, never more than a fortnight.
He remembered one night in particular. It had been the first of November, 1985, and he’d spent the day at work in a muggle office, filing, doing whatever he could to buy some food, and maybe a new jumper. He would have done anything to not think about Peter, and Harry, and James and Lily, and Sirius, and he’d tried, he’d tried so hard not to. Nothing had worked, and he knew nothing would, so he’d resolved to go and sit in a muggle pub and drink.
He’d ended up in a pub in Clapham, using the muggle cash he kept in a jar in the kitchen for emergencies to buy pints and then whiskey chasers. Had he not felt so serious about everything, he’d have laughed at his melodrama; sat in the corner of a dingy pub with a sticky, burgundy-patterned carpet, giving his liver a kicking. He knew people were looking at him, the other blokes in there who’d been nursing one pint for four hours, the barmaid who kept on serving him, looking increasingly worried every time he went over to the bar and ordered the same again. He’d been about to give in and go home when he’d walked in. The boy who looked exactly like Sirius.
Remus didn’t recall exactly how they’d got talking, but he did remember the boy’s leather jacket, his pale skin, his dark hair that fell in his eyes - brown, not grey, that was the only difference that Remus, drunk as he was, could pick out - he’d remembered the boy’s lips and he’d remembered touching the boy’s cheek, running his fingertips across his cheekbone, down his long, straight nose, then brushing his fingers over the boy’s mouth. He’d remembered telling the boy to meet him in the toilet and he’d remembered leaving, shutting himself in the end cubicle in the gents’, performing a few spells that he wasn’t entirely sure he hadn’t botched before the boy squeezed in next to him, grinning and bright-eyed.
‘Fuck,’ Remus had murmured, shoving his lips against the boy’s, then his hips, closing his eyes and imagining, wishing...
He’d squeezed the boy’s arse through his tight black jeans and being as drunk as he was, it was easier to pretend. He’d pushed his hips forward, the sound of denim scraping against denim and their breathing, the occasional moan from the boy - his voice was higher than Sirius’s - loud in the silence of the toilet. It was filthy; it stank, Remus had been fairly certain they were standing in piss, but he hadn’t cared, hadn’t cared at all as he’d turned the boy round with a growl, shoving him against the cold tiled wall, hard, tugging the boy’s jeans down as he’d fallen to his knees and spread the boy’s arsecheeks, pressing his tongue against the boy’s hole like he used to do to Sirius, opening him up with spit and his fingers, licking around them in broad stripes, groaning as the boy whimpered and his legs buckled.
‘Please,’ the boy gasped, and Remus had surged to his feet, freeing his own cock, fisting it quickly to bring himself to hardness, working three fingers of his left hand inside the boy, taken over with want and need and pure, unadulterated desperation, cursing under his breath until he’d spread the boy’s arse again and shoved inside with a grunt, pushing upwards, standing on tiptoe until he was buried balls-deep, pinning the boy against the wall with his body. He tugged the boy back by his hair and growled with pleasure at the look on the boy’s face, somewhere midway between pain and ecstasy as Remus had started to thrust.
‘Fuck,’ he’d snarled again, sinking his teeth into the boy’s pale neck, spitting into his right hand and reaching round to stroke the boy, who’d whined and begged, though what for, Remus wasn’t sure. He’d bitten the boy’s neck again and reached to grab his wrists, pinning them against the wall with his left hand, pushing up as he thrust in and squeezing the boy’s cock tightly, coming a few minutes later with nothing, no-one but Sirius in his head, and if he’d closed his eyes and didn’t breathe in the boy’s own unique scent, if he only smelt the stale piss that all men’s toilets seemed to smell of, if he angled his head just so and let the boy’s hair brush across his face and felt the boy’s damp, flushed skin, it was almost, almost...
Remus blinked slowly and took one last deep drag on his cigarette, throwing it into the fire. Thankfully, it hadn’t died. He glanced over at Sirius and gently took his cigarette, almost burnt down to his fingers, off him, throwing that onto the fire as well, not worrying about the ash dropping onto the carpet. He’d fallen asleep. Remus smiled slightly and got the blanket his mum used to tuck him up in off the back of his chair and laid it gently over Sirius, tucking him in as best he could without waking him.
He sat back down on the stool next to the fire and observed Sirius, his chest moving up and down slowly as he slept, his lips slightly parted, his hair falling into his face. Remus reached out to brush it back and hesitated, his hand stalling in midair for a moment before he completed the gesture, tucking the stray lock behind Sirius’s ear.
‘I’ve missed you so much,’ he murmured.
*
In the meantime
There are bills to be paid, machines to keep in repair...
the Time Being to redeem from insignificance
December, 1994
‘What is it you’re doing?’ Sirius asked one afternoon, sitting down next to Remus at the kitchen table, watching him print neatly in a bound book of parchment.
‘My accounts,’ Remus mumbled, sounding distracted as he pushed his glasses up his nose, frowning down at the parchment in front of him.
Sirius nodded and stayed quiet until Remus put his quill down five minutes later and took his glasses off, rubbing his eyes. ‘Already getting dark, look,’ he said, glancing outside, twitching the net curtain back.
Both men had grown used to banal conversations over the past few months. Remus stood and stretched, moving the kettle to the sink with his wand and filling it with water. ‘Anything you want?’ he asked as he put the kettle on the hob, lighting it with a prod of his wand.
Sirius didn’t say anything for a long moment.
‘Can we open the suitcase?’ he asked eventually, sounding nervous and not at all like himself.
Remus stiffened. ‘Not... not today,’ he murmured, sighing, putting teabags in two mugs, spooning sugar into both.
‘Why not today?’ Sirius said, sounding determined and decidedly more Sirius.
Because I’m scared, Remus thought. Because I don’t want to think about what’s in there, I don’t want to think about thirteen years ago, it’s a can of worms we don’t need opening and I’m scared, Sirius, I’m scared.
Sirius continued when Remus didn’t reply. ‘I want my clothes back, Remus,’ he said quietly. ‘I want to... I want to play my records and... and look at pictures and read my books, I want to feel like me again, Remus,’ he said, and something in his tone made Remus crack. Silently, he moved the kettle off the ring that was on and went into the bedroom that used to be theirs but was now his, reaching right to the back of the wardrobe and pulling out the large, brown suitcase, the charm keeping it light still intact even after all those years. Steeling himself, he took it through to the kitchen and pushed his accounts to one side, placing it on the table, murmuring the special charm he’d put on it to lock and unlock it. The locks sprung open, four of them, one after the other, and with another sigh, Remus lifted the lid and pushed it back, his stomach twisting at the contents.
‘My jacket,’ Sirius said, sounding surprised, even though Remus had told him that he’d kept it, that he’d kept everything. Sirius pulled the jacket off the top of the pile and smiled as he put it on, the leather still moulding to his form after thirteen years of being locked away, out of sight, out of mind. Remus smiled too.
‘I remember the day you got that,’ he said, and Sirius looked up, and nodded.
‘Me too,’ he said, his smile widening as he ran his hands over the leather, reaching into the pockets, pulling out a crumpled betting slip and another piece of paper, unfolding them both. ‘That’s from that time when you convinced me to bet on that dragon race we listened to on the wireless in Knockturn Alley while we were doing Order stuff, remember?’ he said, his memory clearly jogged by the slip that evidently hadn’t won, seeing as it hadn’t been torn in half. ‘Said we’d look less suspect.’
Remus huffed a laugh and nodded, his hands tight around the edges of the suitcase. Sirius kept the jacket on and reached in again, pulling out a framed photo of the two of them, sat on a stone wall at the beach, their jeans rolled up to their knees. Both of them were laughing, looking young, and happy.
‘That was a good day,’ Remus murmured, reaching over to take the photograph, his hand accidentally brushing against Sirius’s. His stomach tightened involuntarily. Sirius didn’t let go of the photograph, or move his hand. Remus didn’t move his either.
‘Did you ever...’ Sirius cleared his throat and frowned. ‘Did you ever think about...?’
‘Every day,’ Remus replied without hesitation. ‘Every single day.’ He hadn’t wanted to, but he had, he’d thought about Sirius and about the two of them and what they’d had and lost. He closed his eyes and dropped his hand. Sirius caught it again, running the tip of his index finger across the thin network of scars that ran across the back of Remus’s hand and wrist, up the part of his forearm that was exposed before it disappeared up the arm of his jumper. Remus breathed in deeply and opened his eyes again. Sirius was still looking at the photo, his hand still resting on Remus’s forearm.
‘We were good together, me and you,’ he said quietly.
Remus smiled, just slightly, and nodded. ‘When we weren’t trying to kill each other.’
‘Ancient history, now, that,’ Sirius said.
‘Along with everything else,’ Remus muttered, looking away, refusing to even think about the could-haves and what-might-have-beens. ‘Do you want a cup of tea? I can put the kettle-‘
Sirius grabbed his chin and kissed him.
‘It won’t be like it was before,’ Remus said when Sirius pulled back, though even as he said it he ached for more, for another chance, for them to at least try.
‘I know,’ Sirius said.
‘And... and we can’t... we can’t just slip back into what we used to be like, that’s not going to happen, it won’t work that way, you can’t even leave the house, Sirius, there’s so much more... shit than there used to be and I...’
‘I’m not asking for then, Remus, we’re not getting that back,’ Sirius said, and Remus stared at the collar of his leather jacket. ‘I just want now.’
Remus nodded. ‘We could try,’ he murmured.
‘We can try,’ Sirius agreed.
*
Watch out for the broken glass
Put your shoes and socks on
And come along with me.
Prompt: Watch out for the broken glass / Put your shoes and socks on / And come along with me. From Kentucky Avenue by Tom Waits. Written for the rs_small_gifts fest 2010 for a_shadow_there
Fandom: Harry Potter
Characters/Pairing: Remus/Sirius
Summary: Remus and Sirius adjust to life with one another again. Post-Azkaban/Lost Years.
Rating: NC-17
Contains: Dubious consent, angst, swearing, graphic sex, rimming, unprotected sex outside the relationship (but not cheating).
Word Count: 3251
Notes: I’ve done a bit of fiddling around with canon - Sirius is lying low at Lupin’s a year earlier than he’s meant to be (oops) and the poem that’s quoted in the fic is W. H. Auden’s ‘Christmas Oratorio’, which is very good and definitely worth a read. Originally posted here.
And the kitchen table exists because I scrub it.
June, 1994
‘I’ve put the kettle on,’ Remus murmured when he heard footsteps in the doorway of his kitchen. His back was turned to the door and his eyes were fixed on the tiles above the hob, where his kettle, dented from a fight that had taken place thirteen years ago in this very kitchen and at the same time a whole world away, was resting above a flickering ring of blue flame.
He’d put the kettle on because he didn’t know what else to do, had no idea what to say.
‘Black still, two sugars?’
Still. Stupid thing to say; Sirius probably hadn’t had a cup of tea since that night, the night before James and Lily died, the last time they’d seen one another, when they’d both shouted and screamed and Sirius had thrown his mug of tea at Remus and Remus had thrown the kettle back and he’d grabbed Sirius and shoved him over the kitchen table and pulled his trousers halfway down his thighs and held him down and taken him, taken him dry, taken him, taken him, over and over and over and over until he began to weep and Sirius was growling and cursing under his breath and struggling against Remus’s grip and Remus had come with a sob, holding Sirius down by the back of his head, his hand fisted in Sirius’s hair that still had the smell of fags clinging to it and he’d pressed kisses to the back of Sirius’s neck and murmured how sorry, how fucking sorry he was against Sirius’s warm, salty skin, reaching a hand underneath Sirius’s body and stroked him until he came too, snarling Remus’s name, hissing, arching into and away from Remus simultaneously, and they’d stayed that way for a minute and Remus had opened his mouth to murmur I love you, but he’d never said it, never had the chance, because Sirius had shoved him back and pulled his trousers up and walked out the door and got on his bike and left and not come back for thirteen years.
‘Yeah,’ Sirius murmured. ‘Two sugars, please.’
*
And craving the sensation but ignoring the cause,
We look round for something, no matter what, to inhibit
Our self-reflection, and the obvious thing for that purpose
Would be some great suffering.
July, 1994
‘Hold still,’ Remus murmured, running a section of Sirius’s hair, wet from having washed it over the sink, through two of his long fingers.
‘Sorry,’ Sirius mumbled, sitting up straighter.
Remus’s glasses were perched on the end of his nose, and he was squinting as he tried to cut Sirius’s hair straight and even. He’d already worked the knots and tangles out with magic and washed it all by hand, carefully running his fingers through Sirius’s hair, giving it its first proper clean for God only knew how long. He’d hacked off the whole bottom half straight away and was now tidying it up, trimming carefully, letting the hair fall around Sirius’s shoulders, close to the style he’d sported at twenty.
‘Let me do the front?’ Remus asked quietly, brushing the snippets of dark hair off Sirius’s towel-clad shoulders.
‘Yeah,’ Sirius nodded, sitting up straight again as Remus moved round to his front and bent down. ‘I forgot about your glasses,’ he said, reaching out as if to touch them, but pulling his hand back. ‘Are they the-‘
‘Same ones, yes,’ Remus said without smiling, concentrating on getting the two front parts of Sirius’s hair at an equal length, trimming carefully, the steel scissors resting against Sirius’s skin.
‘Kept them all these years?’ Sirius said as Remus brushed his shoulders again, then his chest before standing up. He pulled a tub of shaving cream towards himself, hesitating before scooping some up with the four fingers of his right hand, breathing in and setting his jaw and then reaching forward, rubbing it carefully over Sirius’s cheek, his jaw, just onto his neck, his chin, his upper lip, his other cheek. He felt tense, his muscles tight as he spread the lather over Sirius’s face, which was ridiculous, he could do it himself, but it was done now, he’d finished.
‘I kept everything, Sirius,’ Remus murmured, picking up his razor.
‘Everything?’ Sirius said, his pink lips stark against the white of the shaving cream.
‘Everything,’ Remus sighed, closing his eyes tight for just a moment before dragging the razor slowly down Sirius’s cheek.
‘Even my leather-‘
‘I kept everything, Sirius,’ Remus repeated, his voice harder.
Everything was packed into one old suitcase with an extension charm on it and stashed inside the wardrobe, and everything hadn’t come out of there for thirteen years. On the first of November, 1981, everything had been gathered up in a blind fit of rage and grief and shame and oh God, the guilt, and everything had been shoved into the suitcase, all the photographs, the notes, Sirius’s toothbrush, his shampoo, their pillowcases, Sirius’s side of the wardrobe, his shot glasses, his records, those stupid boots of his, and finally, the leather jacket, stuffed in and buckled shut and hidden away and then, and only then, had Remus cried.
And God, he’d cried. He’d cried and he’d drank, curling in on himself in the middle of the kitchen floor, clutching at his hair, clawing at the stone floor because he had nothing to hold on to, because everything had been rounded up and locked away, out of sight, out of mind. Or so he told himself; he told himself that everything was gone, that Sirius was gone, that Sirius didn’t exist anymore. Some days he almost convinced himself, but then he caught sight of the dent in the wall that the kettle had made when he’d thrown it at Sirius, when he found a long, black hair lying in between the pages of a book, when Sirius’s name and sometimes his face appeared in the Prophet. Sirius was everywhere Remus didn’t want him to be. And that was hard, and it hurt.
*
...The happy morning is over,
The night of agony still to come.
September, 1994
It was an unusually cold night for September, cold enough to warrant Remus lighting a fire in the grate in the living room of his cottage. Sirius, looking somewhat healthier and cleaner after a summer of decent-ish meals and regular baths, was sitting on the sofa, watching Remus prod at the kindling with his wand, making sure the fire didn’t die out as soon as it was lit. He pulled a packet of fags out of the pocket of his trousers - a luxury he wasn’t really able to afford but was, embarrassingly enough, increasingly dependent on - and tapped two out, putting both in his mouth and lighting them with the tip of his wand, passing one to Sirius.
Both made sure their fingers didn’t brush during the transaction.
Remus closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, holding the cigarette in between his fingers. He pulled it away from his lips and breathed in again, sighing the smoke out through his nose.
It was quiet.
Sirius slowly slid down to lie on his side, his head resting on the worn leather arm of the settee, his knees pulled up to his chest. Remus looked at him, trying not to look as though he was looking, and noted sadly how dull Sirius’s eyes were, how vulnerable he looked. He bit back a sigh and turned to inspect the fire again, remembering all the times he’d curled in on himself on the sofa like that, usually after he’d done something he’d regretted, filled with self-loathing and nothing but disgust and contempt for himself. In the mid-eighties it had become something of a habit, a bit like his smoking now: going out, doing something stupid, hating himself for it and then going out and doing it again a day later, a week later, never more than a fortnight.
He remembered one night in particular. It had been the first of November, 1985, and he’d spent the day at work in a muggle office, filing, doing whatever he could to buy some food, and maybe a new jumper. He would have done anything to not think about Peter, and Harry, and James and Lily, and Sirius, and he’d tried, he’d tried so hard not to. Nothing had worked, and he knew nothing would, so he’d resolved to go and sit in a muggle pub and drink.
He’d ended up in a pub in Clapham, using the muggle cash he kept in a jar in the kitchen for emergencies to buy pints and then whiskey chasers. Had he not felt so serious about everything, he’d have laughed at his melodrama; sat in the corner of a dingy pub with a sticky, burgundy-patterned carpet, giving his liver a kicking. He knew people were looking at him, the other blokes in there who’d been nursing one pint for four hours, the barmaid who kept on serving him, looking increasingly worried every time he went over to the bar and ordered the same again. He’d been about to give in and go home when he’d walked in. The boy who looked exactly like Sirius.
Remus didn’t recall exactly how they’d got talking, but he did remember the boy’s leather jacket, his pale skin, his dark hair that fell in his eyes - brown, not grey, that was the only difference that Remus, drunk as he was, could pick out - he’d remembered the boy’s lips and he’d remembered touching the boy’s cheek, running his fingertips across his cheekbone, down his long, straight nose, then brushing his fingers over the boy’s mouth. He’d remembered telling the boy to meet him in the toilet and he’d remembered leaving, shutting himself in the end cubicle in the gents’, performing a few spells that he wasn’t entirely sure he hadn’t botched before the boy squeezed in next to him, grinning and bright-eyed.
‘Fuck,’ Remus had murmured, shoving his lips against the boy’s, then his hips, closing his eyes and imagining, wishing...
He’d squeezed the boy’s arse through his tight black jeans and being as drunk as he was, it was easier to pretend. He’d pushed his hips forward, the sound of denim scraping against denim and their breathing, the occasional moan from the boy - his voice was higher than Sirius’s - loud in the silence of the toilet. It was filthy; it stank, Remus had been fairly certain they were standing in piss, but he hadn’t cared, hadn’t cared at all as he’d turned the boy round with a growl, shoving him against the cold tiled wall, hard, tugging the boy’s jeans down as he’d fallen to his knees and spread the boy’s arsecheeks, pressing his tongue against the boy’s hole like he used to do to Sirius, opening him up with spit and his fingers, licking around them in broad stripes, groaning as the boy whimpered and his legs buckled.
‘Please,’ the boy gasped, and Remus had surged to his feet, freeing his own cock, fisting it quickly to bring himself to hardness, working three fingers of his left hand inside the boy, taken over with want and need and pure, unadulterated desperation, cursing under his breath until he’d spread the boy’s arse again and shoved inside with a grunt, pushing upwards, standing on tiptoe until he was buried balls-deep, pinning the boy against the wall with his body. He tugged the boy back by his hair and growled with pleasure at the look on the boy’s face, somewhere midway between pain and ecstasy as Remus had started to thrust.
‘Fuck,’ he’d snarled again, sinking his teeth into the boy’s pale neck, spitting into his right hand and reaching round to stroke the boy, who’d whined and begged, though what for, Remus wasn’t sure. He’d bitten the boy’s neck again and reached to grab his wrists, pinning them against the wall with his left hand, pushing up as he thrust in and squeezing the boy’s cock tightly, coming a few minutes later with nothing, no-one but Sirius in his head, and if he’d closed his eyes and didn’t breathe in the boy’s own unique scent, if he only smelt the stale piss that all men’s toilets seemed to smell of, if he angled his head just so and let the boy’s hair brush across his face and felt the boy’s damp, flushed skin, it was almost, almost...
Remus blinked slowly and took one last deep drag on his cigarette, throwing it into the fire. Thankfully, it hadn’t died. He glanced over at Sirius and gently took his cigarette, almost burnt down to his fingers, off him, throwing that onto the fire as well, not worrying about the ash dropping onto the carpet. He’d fallen asleep. Remus smiled slightly and got the blanket his mum used to tuck him up in off the back of his chair and laid it gently over Sirius, tucking him in as best he could without waking him.
He sat back down on the stool next to the fire and observed Sirius, his chest moving up and down slowly as he slept, his lips slightly parted, his hair falling into his face. Remus reached out to brush it back and hesitated, his hand stalling in midair for a moment before he completed the gesture, tucking the stray lock behind Sirius’s ear.
‘I’ve missed you so much,’ he murmured.
*
In the meantime
There are bills to be paid, machines to keep in repair...
the Time Being to redeem from insignificance
December, 1994
‘What is it you’re doing?’ Sirius asked one afternoon, sitting down next to Remus at the kitchen table, watching him print neatly in a bound book of parchment.
‘My accounts,’ Remus mumbled, sounding distracted as he pushed his glasses up his nose, frowning down at the parchment in front of him.
Sirius nodded and stayed quiet until Remus put his quill down five minutes later and took his glasses off, rubbing his eyes. ‘Already getting dark, look,’ he said, glancing outside, twitching the net curtain back.
Both men had grown used to banal conversations over the past few months. Remus stood and stretched, moving the kettle to the sink with his wand and filling it with water. ‘Anything you want?’ he asked as he put the kettle on the hob, lighting it with a prod of his wand.
Sirius didn’t say anything for a long moment.
‘Can we open the suitcase?’ he asked eventually, sounding nervous and not at all like himself.
Remus stiffened. ‘Not... not today,’ he murmured, sighing, putting teabags in two mugs, spooning sugar into both.
‘Why not today?’ Sirius said, sounding determined and decidedly more Sirius.
Because I’m scared, Remus thought. Because I don’t want to think about what’s in there, I don’t want to think about thirteen years ago, it’s a can of worms we don’t need opening and I’m scared, Sirius, I’m scared.
Sirius continued when Remus didn’t reply. ‘I want my clothes back, Remus,’ he said quietly. ‘I want to... I want to play my records and... and look at pictures and read my books, I want to feel like me again, Remus,’ he said, and something in his tone made Remus crack. Silently, he moved the kettle off the ring that was on and went into the bedroom that used to be theirs but was now his, reaching right to the back of the wardrobe and pulling out the large, brown suitcase, the charm keeping it light still intact even after all those years. Steeling himself, he took it through to the kitchen and pushed his accounts to one side, placing it on the table, murmuring the special charm he’d put on it to lock and unlock it. The locks sprung open, four of them, one after the other, and with another sigh, Remus lifted the lid and pushed it back, his stomach twisting at the contents.
‘My jacket,’ Sirius said, sounding surprised, even though Remus had told him that he’d kept it, that he’d kept everything. Sirius pulled the jacket off the top of the pile and smiled as he put it on, the leather still moulding to his form after thirteen years of being locked away, out of sight, out of mind. Remus smiled too.
‘I remember the day you got that,’ he said, and Sirius looked up, and nodded.
‘Me too,’ he said, his smile widening as he ran his hands over the leather, reaching into the pockets, pulling out a crumpled betting slip and another piece of paper, unfolding them both. ‘That’s from that time when you convinced me to bet on that dragon race we listened to on the wireless in Knockturn Alley while we were doing Order stuff, remember?’ he said, his memory clearly jogged by the slip that evidently hadn’t won, seeing as it hadn’t been torn in half. ‘Said we’d look less suspect.’
Remus huffed a laugh and nodded, his hands tight around the edges of the suitcase. Sirius kept the jacket on and reached in again, pulling out a framed photo of the two of them, sat on a stone wall at the beach, their jeans rolled up to their knees. Both of them were laughing, looking young, and happy.
‘That was a good day,’ Remus murmured, reaching over to take the photograph, his hand accidentally brushing against Sirius’s. His stomach tightened involuntarily. Sirius didn’t let go of the photograph, or move his hand. Remus didn’t move his either.
‘Did you ever...’ Sirius cleared his throat and frowned. ‘Did you ever think about...?’
‘Every day,’ Remus replied without hesitation. ‘Every single day.’ He hadn’t wanted to, but he had, he’d thought about Sirius and about the two of them and what they’d had and lost. He closed his eyes and dropped his hand. Sirius caught it again, running the tip of his index finger across the thin network of scars that ran across the back of Remus’s hand and wrist, up the part of his forearm that was exposed before it disappeared up the arm of his jumper. Remus breathed in deeply and opened his eyes again. Sirius was still looking at the photo, his hand still resting on Remus’s forearm.
‘We were good together, me and you,’ he said quietly.
Remus smiled, just slightly, and nodded. ‘When we weren’t trying to kill each other.’
‘Ancient history, now, that,’ Sirius said.
‘Along with everything else,’ Remus muttered, looking away, refusing to even think about the could-haves and what-might-have-beens. ‘Do you want a cup of tea? I can put the kettle-‘
Sirius grabbed his chin and kissed him.
‘It won’t be like it was before,’ Remus said when Sirius pulled back, though even as he said it he ached for more, for another chance, for them to at least try.
‘I know,’ Sirius said.
‘And... and we can’t... we can’t just slip back into what we used to be like, that’s not going to happen, it won’t work that way, you can’t even leave the house, Sirius, there’s so much more... shit than there used to be and I...’
‘I’m not asking for then, Remus, we’re not getting that back,’ Sirius said, and Remus stared at the collar of his leather jacket. ‘I just want now.’
Remus nodded. ‘We could try,’ he murmured.
‘We can try,’ Sirius agreed.
*
Watch out for the broken glass
Put your shoes and socks on
And come along with me.