Birthday Fic for Ka-chan
Title: Where There's Smoke, There's Sirius Black
For: emo_wicca
Pairing: Sirius/Remus
Rating: PG-13 (sorry, again with the lack of porn!)
Prompt: Sirius/Remus, cake, tie porn
Word Count: 2153
Disclaimer: Not mine, not making money, don't sue.
Note: Please excuse all typos or weird formatting things, I typed this in Wordpad, haha.
Summary: "Remus made a note to never allow himself to get dragged out of bed on some wild pastry-chase again, no matter who was up for sacrifice."
Remus woke up and cracked an eye open to find a paper crane perched on his pillow and pecking rather viciously at his face. It took all of his willpower to drag his hand from under his pillow and close his fist around the little bird, while its wings continued to flap feebly in his grasp. He only knew one person who sent messages by origami, and that person was supposed to be in the bed a mere 3 steps to his left, rendering such an awakening quite unnecessary, but very Sirius nonetheless.
Remus sighed, raised himself up on an elbow, and began flattening out the struggling note. After a few moments of staring blankly at the page, he realized that he would need more light to read, and he reached up to shove back the heavy bed curtains. The crescent moon was still visible through the window and it lit the room with a silvery-blue glow, enough to read by and enough to see that the bed next to his was rumpled and noticeably empty.
Sirius' usually perfect script looked jagged and somehow raw in the moonlight, the random scatter of ink blots like cigarette burns or bullet holes on the page. 'How morbid,' Remus thought. 'Note to self: No more Eliot before bed.' He scanned the words, then leaned in closer to the page, sure that the remains of his strange dream of Tarot cards and dry thunder in desert mountains must be affecting his ability to make sense of written words. It seemed like the note read, "Captured by pastry. Held hostage at top of old south tower. If demands not met, will be executed at dawn. Only hope of rescue."
"Sirius, for pity's sake..." Remus trailed off. Knowing Sirius, there was no way of telling whether this was an elaborate practical joke or a genuine distress call. He stared at the note for a few more seconds, still trying to will the words into rearranging themselves into something resembling Earth logic, then crumpled the note again and sat up, wondering vaguely where he had left his shoes.
***\\\@@@///***
Remus had never heard of an "old south tower" in the castle before, but after throwing on his clothes from the day before and making a quick cross-reference of his copies of Hogwarts: A History and Thaumaturgical Architecture of the British Isles, he set off in what he hoped was the right direction. James had taken the map for a clandestine rendezvous with Evans,
leaving Remus to rely on his (admittedly sharp) senses and the mercy of whatever gods of fortune watched over castles in the small, dark hours of the night and teenage boys out past curfew. He passed through corridors and climbed innumerable staircases, his wand a dim beacon held before him. Some of these passages were well-traveled and almost seemed to echo with
the lives of now-absent teachers and students who had walked them every day for the last thousand years, but some were thick with a grey layer of dust that lay unbroken by any mark except for his own footprints. In these places, he wondered where Sirius' footprints were, and whether he was even following the right path at all.
After what seemed like an hour of walking punctuated by dodging the occasional ghost, Remus arrived at a corridor that dead ended at an ancient black door. Its surface reflected dully in his wandlight, and as he grasped the cold metal ring to pull it open, he discovered that it was made of solid iron, perfectly counterweighted so as to swing effortlessly on its hinges. The door swung
open to reveal a staircase, eerily lit by tiny witchlights that hovered about halfway up the wall. 'Sirius would pick the most menacing place possible to get kidnapped by a calzone,' Remus thought, extinguishing his wand. He walked through the doorway and began to climb.
The staircase ascended in a dizzying spiral, and Remus lost count somewhere around step 237. He was dusty and sweating from exertion, even though he was just in his shirtsleeves and the tower itself was cool and dry. It also smelled a bit of smoke, a smell that grew stronger as he climbed. He had a passing thought of Sirius tied to a pole and suspended over a bonfire as little cupcakes clutching spears danced around him in some kind of tribal sacrifice ritual, but he quickly revised the image to include a bundt cake
chieftain in a large feathered headdress presiding over the ceremony, which Remus could only assume was dedicated to some great chocolate eclair god in the sky; it would serve him right. Remus made a note to never allow himself to get dragged out of bed on some wild pastry-chase again, no matter who was up for sacrifice.
***\\\@@@///***
The staircase began to lighten around him, but Remus had become somewhat hypnotized by traveling in a constant revolution. He passed through the open door at the top barely realizing that he had emerged into the cool March night until a small explosion to his left made him almost jump clean out of his skin. He whipped around to face the noise and found Sirius crouched near the wall, wreathed in acrid smoke and blocking whatever he was working on from Remus' view.
"So you're not actually being held by a tribe of pygmy croissants then?" Remus asked, raising a bemused eyebrow.
At the sound of Remus' voice, Sirius gave a little jump of surprise, then turned with a triumphant grin and an unmistakably roguish look in his eyes. Remus' stomach clenched, but his expression remained unchanged. "Moony! The man of the hour!" Sirius proclaimed, wiping his hands on his trousers as he rose. He was still in his uniform, shirt untucked and tie loose at his throat, his hair artfully mussed and a streak of soot across his nose that reminded Remus absurdly of war paint. "Sorry about all the cloak and dagger, glad you found the place all right."
"Just you , then?" Remus asked, moving closer to Sirius in the hope of seeing whatever it was he was still keeping hidden on the ground behind him. "Here I was, all ready to execute a daring rescue from some primitive society of lemon tarts. I must admit, I'm underwhelmed."
Sirius laughed, but there was something brittle about it. "Better luck next time, eh? I assure you, if I am ever actually captured by baked goods, you will be the first to know." The moon was low in the sky, now giving only the barest light. Remus saw him shift his weight from foot to foot, a sure and unexpected sign of nerves. Remus' expression faltered; he suddenly had the sense that he didn't know exactly what he had walked into.
"So what is this, then?" Remus asked. He was an arms' length from Sirius now, and glancing around him, he found... a cake. A cake with white frosting and decorated with haphazard blue and green ropes of icing.
"What's today, Moony?" Sirius asked quietly.
And then Remus knew. He looked from the cake to Sirius, who was looking back at him with a question on his face that Remus could read even in the dying light. Their eyes met and held, and Remus suddenly felt reckless. Powerful. Entirely unlike himself. His throat felt entirely too tight for him to breathe.
A high-pitched whistle broke the moment, and Sirius launched himself forward and grabbed Remus by the shoulders, forcing him back almost to the doorway. Remus searched for the source of the sound and saw that the cake had begun to vibrate slightly, and a thin line of smoke was trickling out from a small hole in the very center.
Sirius took up a position beside him in the doorway, releasing his shoulders but staying close enough so that their arms were barely touching. "Watch," he said, and Remus did.
A fissure appeared in the center of the cake and tiny red, blue, and gold sparks erupted in a shower of light that grew taller and taller as Remus watched. He heard a deep boom like cannon fire and a falling whistle, and then the sky in front of the tower exploded in color. Lights bloomed like flowers, built great shimmering castles in the sky, chased on another across the darkness until they disappeared into nothingness again. The volleys went on and on, report after report hammering against Remus' eardrums as he watched massive stars flare in and out of existence, and a thousand midnight bonfires burned themselves out before his eyes.
As the last of the lights faded from from the sky, the world fell silent again. Remus stared out into the night, and the only thought in his head was a yearning for those beautiful, awful lights to come back.
"You like?" Sirius asked after a moment.
Remus turned, saw Sirius' expression: open, barest hint of worry drawing his brows together and pulling at the corner of his mouth. Sirius had always been taller, but Remus had gotten closer and closer every year. Now only the barest inch separated them and it felt like something between destiny and a promise. Remus feels like a different person entirely, as if those lights had burned away the last fearful part of him. The reckless feeling stirred in him again, low and hot in his belly. He felt dangerous and sharp and in control.
He reached out, grabbed Sirius's tie, and pulled him forward and down.
Sirius let out a little 'oh' of breath that Remus felt against his lips. He leaned forward a bit, rested his forehead against Remus' and brought up his hands to cup Remus' elbows, and Remus could feel the tension in his hands, in the posture of his neck against the taught grip he has on the silk, in the thrum and twitch of the muscles in his back where his other hand had come to rest. They stood there like that for what felt like forever, a moment like the time between the lightning and the thunder, the time it takes for a drop of rain to fall to earth, making the sea that much fuller.
Then one of them moved, impossible to say which, and when their mouths come together, it's that sky full of light all over again. Sirius was tentative at first, but Remus bit at his lip and he gave a sound like a whimper as he opened his mouth to let Remus lick his way inside. Sirius' hands came up to cup Remus' face, his fingers settling behind his ears. Remus dropped the hand not gripping the tie to Sirius' hip, tracing the hard jut of bone he found there just begging for his touch. He stroked over the thin skin and Sirius' hips jerked forward, bringing their bodies up flush, and it all felt so new and so strange and so good.
Then there was a loud bang from below, and they broke apart, hearts hammering, breath fast. "Front doors," Sirius said, his voice a bit strangled and breathy all at once. They turned towards the edge of the tower and peered over and saw vague, shadowy outlines crossing the grounds, pointing up at the sky.
"Guess we've been found out," Remus said, and his own voice sounded unnaturally deep to his ears. Sirius huffed out a laugh, still watching
the tiny figures below. Remus looked at him for a moment, profile against the dark sky, then reached out and touched his hand. Sirius turned back to him, and his expression was no longer questioning. "We better go before they start investigating."
"Yeah," Sirius said. "I'm sure they would invent a new 'no pyrotechnic displays on school ground after curfew' rule just for me."
Both of them turned and started down the stairs, Remus a step ahead. They were going to have to be especially careful getting back to their beds now that the school was likely to be crawling with professors. It was certainly not the time to be distracted by this new found and still unspoken thing between them. Certainly not the time to be thinking about making a detour into an empty classroom or hidden corridor or...
Remus' thoughts were brought up short when he realized that Sirius was no longer behind him. He started to call after him when he appeared again at the top of the stairs, his descend more careful than before. "What are you doing?" Remus asked.
Sirius came down a few more steps and Remus he had gone back for; it had a crack running down the center of it and the once-white icing was now a bit blackened around the edges, but the outer sides were untouched. Sirius smirked and waggled his eyebrows in mock suggestion. "Wouldn't want to let a perfectly good birthday cake go to waste now, do we?"
For: emo_wicca
Pairing: Sirius/Remus
Rating: PG-13 (sorry, again with the lack of porn!)
Prompt: Sirius/Remus, cake, tie porn
Word Count: 2153
Disclaimer: Not mine, not making money, don't sue.
Note: Please excuse all typos or weird formatting things, I typed this in Wordpad, haha.
Summary: "Remus made a note to never allow himself to get dragged out of bed on some wild pastry-chase again, no matter who was up for sacrifice."
Remus woke up and cracked an eye open to find a paper crane perched on his pillow and pecking rather viciously at his face. It took all of his willpower to drag his hand from under his pillow and close his fist around the little bird, while its wings continued to flap feebly in his grasp. He only knew one person who sent messages by origami, and that person was supposed to be in the bed a mere 3 steps to his left, rendering such an awakening quite unnecessary, but very Sirius nonetheless.
Remus sighed, raised himself up on an elbow, and began flattening out the struggling note. After a few moments of staring blankly at the page, he realized that he would need more light to read, and he reached up to shove back the heavy bed curtains. The crescent moon was still visible through the window and it lit the room with a silvery-blue glow, enough to read by and enough to see that the bed next to his was rumpled and noticeably empty.
Sirius' usually perfect script looked jagged and somehow raw in the moonlight, the random scatter of ink blots like cigarette burns or bullet holes on the page. 'How morbid,' Remus thought. 'Note to self: No more Eliot before bed.' He scanned the words, then leaned in closer to the page, sure that the remains of his strange dream of Tarot cards and dry thunder in desert mountains must be affecting his ability to make sense of written words. It seemed like the note read, "Captured by pastry. Held hostage at top of old south tower. If demands not met, will be executed at dawn. Only hope of rescue."
"Sirius, for pity's sake..." Remus trailed off. Knowing Sirius, there was no way of telling whether this was an elaborate practical joke or a genuine distress call. He stared at the note for a few more seconds, still trying to will the words into rearranging themselves into something resembling Earth logic, then crumpled the note again and sat up, wondering vaguely where he had left his shoes.
***\\\@@@///***
Remus had never heard of an "old south tower" in the castle before, but after throwing on his clothes from the day before and making a quick cross-reference of his copies of Hogwarts: A History and Thaumaturgical Architecture of the British Isles, he set off in what he hoped was the right direction. James had taken the map for a clandestine rendezvous with Evans,
leaving Remus to rely on his (admittedly sharp) senses and the mercy of whatever gods of fortune watched over castles in the small, dark hours of the night and teenage boys out past curfew. He passed through corridors and climbed innumerable staircases, his wand a dim beacon held before him. Some of these passages were well-traveled and almost seemed to echo with
the lives of now-absent teachers and students who had walked them every day for the last thousand years, but some were thick with a grey layer of dust that lay unbroken by any mark except for his own footprints. In these places, he wondered where Sirius' footprints were, and whether he was even following the right path at all.
After what seemed like an hour of walking punctuated by dodging the occasional ghost, Remus arrived at a corridor that dead ended at an ancient black door. Its surface reflected dully in his wandlight, and as he grasped the cold metal ring to pull it open, he discovered that it was made of solid iron, perfectly counterweighted so as to swing effortlessly on its hinges. The door swung
open to reveal a staircase, eerily lit by tiny witchlights that hovered about halfway up the wall. 'Sirius would pick the most menacing place possible to get kidnapped by a calzone,' Remus thought, extinguishing his wand. He walked through the doorway and began to climb.
The staircase ascended in a dizzying spiral, and Remus lost count somewhere around step 237. He was dusty and sweating from exertion, even though he was just in his shirtsleeves and the tower itself was cool and dry. It also smelled a bit of smoke, a smell that grew stronger as he climbed. He had a passing thought of Sirius tied to a pole and suspended over a bonfire as little cupcakes clutching spears danced around him in some kind of tribal sacrifice ritual, but he quickly revised the image to include a bundt cake
chieftain in a large feathered headdress presiding over the ceremony, which Remus could only assume was dedicated to some great chocolate eclair god in the sky; it would serve him right. Remus made a note to never allow himself to get dragged out of bed on some wild pastry-chase again, no matter who was up for sacrifice.
***\\\@@@///***
The staircase began to lighten around him, but Remus had become somewhat hypnotized by traveling in a constant revolution. He passed through the open door at the top barely realizing that he had emerged into the cool March night until a small explosion to his left made him almost jump clean out of his skin. He whipped around to face the noise and found Sirius crouched near the wall, wreathed in acrid smoke and blocking whatever he was working on from Remus' view.
"So you're not actually being held by a tribe of pygmy croissants then?" Remus asked, raising a bemused eyebrow.
At the sound of Remus' voice, Sirius gave a little jump of surprise, then turned with a triumphant grin and an unmistakably roguish look in his eyes. Remus' stomach clenched, but his expression remained unchanged. "Moony! The man of the hour!" Sirius proclaimed, wiping his hands on his trousers as he rose. He was still in his uniform, shirt untucked and tie loose at his throat, his hair artfully mussed and a streak of soot across his nose that reminded Remus absurdly of war paint. "Sorry about all the cloak and dagger, glad you found the place all right."
"Just you , then?" Remus asked, moving closer to Sirius in the hope of seeing whatever it was he was still keeping hidden on the ground behind him. "Here I was, all ready to execute a daring rescue from some primitive society of lemon tarts. I must admit, I'm underwhelmed."
Sirius laughed, but there was something brittle about it. "Better luck next time, eh? I assure you, if I am ever actually captured by baked goods, you will be the first to know." The moon was low in the sky, now giving only the barest light. Remus saw him shift his weight from foot to foot, a sure and unexpected sign of nerves. Remus' expression faltered; he suddenly had the sense that he didn't know exactly what he had walked into.
"So what is this, then?" Remus asked. He was an arms' length from Sirius now, and glancing around him, he found... a cake. A cake with white frosting and decorated with haphazard blue and green ropes of icing.
"What's today, Moony?" Sirius asked quietly.
And then Remus knew. He looked from the cake to Sirius, who was looking back at him with a question on his face that Remus could read even in the dying light. Their eyes met and held, and Remus suddenly felt reckless. Powerful. Entirely unlike himself. His throat felt entirely too tight for him to breathe.
A high-pitched whistle broke the moment, and Sirius launched himself forward and grabbed Remus by the shoulders, forcing him back almost to the doorway. Remus searched for the source of the sound and saw that the cake had begun to vibrate slightly, and a thin line of smoke was trickling out from a small hole in the very center.
Sirius took up a position beside him in the doorway, releasing his shoulders but staying close enough so that their arms were barely touching. "Watch," he said, and Remus did.
A fissure appeared in the center of the cake and tiny red, blue, and gold sparks erupted in a shower of light that grew taller and taller as Remus watched. He heard a deep boom like cannon fire and a falling whistle, and then the sky in front of the tower exploded in color. Lights bloomed like flowers, built great shimmering castles in the sky, chased on another across the darkness until they disappeared into nothingness again. The volleys went on and on, report after report hammering against Remus' eardrums as he watched massive stars flare in and out of existence, and a thousand midnight bonfires burned themselves out before his eyes.
As the last of the lights faded from from the sky, the world fell silent again. Remus stared out into the night, and the only thought in his head was a yearning for those beautiful, awful lights to come back.
"You like?" Sirius asked after a moment.
Remus turned, saw Sirius' expression: open, barest hint of worry drawing his brows together and pulling at the corner of his mouth. Sirius had always been taller, but Remus had gotten closer and closer every year. Now only the barest inch separated them and it felt like something between destiny and a promise. Remus feels like a different person entirely, as if those lights had burned away the last fearful part of him. The reckless feeling stirred in him again, low and hot in his belly. He felt dangerous and sharp and in control.
He reached out, grabbed Sirius's tie, and pulled him forward and down.
Sirius let out a little 'oh' of breath that Remus felt against his lips. He leaned forward a bit, rested his forehead against Remus' and brought up his hands to cup Remus' elbows, and Remus could feel the tension in his hands, in the posture of his neck against the taught grip he has on the silk, in the thrum and twitch of the muscles in his back where his other hand had come to rest. They stood there like that for what felt like forever, a moment like the time between the lightning and the thunder, the time it takes for a drop of rain to fall to earth, making the sea that much fuller.
Then one of them moved, impossible to say which, and when their mouths come together, it's that sky full of light all over again. Sirius was tentative at first, but Remus bit at his lip and he gave a sound like a whimper as he opened his mouth to let Remus lick his way inside. Sirius' hands came up to cup Remus' face, his fingers settling behind his ears. Remus dropped the hand not gripping the tie to Sirius' hip, tracing the hard jut of bone he found there just begging for his touch. He stroked over the thin skin and Sirius' hips jerked forward, bringing their bodies up flush, and it all felt so new and so strange and so good.
Then there was a loud bang from below, and they broke apart, hearts hammering, breath fast. "Front doors," Sirius said, his voice a bit strangled and breathy all at once. They turned towards the edge of the tower and peered over and saw vague, shadowy outlines crossing the grounds, pointing up at the sky.
"Guess we've been found out," Remus said, and his own voice sounded unnaturally deep to his ears. Sirius huffed out a laugh, still watching
the tiny figures below. Remus looked at him for a moment, profile against the dark sky, then reached out and touched his hand. Sirius turned back to him, and his expression was no longer questioning. "We better go before they start investigating."
"Yeah," Sirius said. "I'm sure they would invent a new 'no pyrotechnic displays on school ground after curfew' rule just for me."
Both of them turned and started down the stairs, Remus a step ahead. They were going to have to be especially careful getting back to their beds now that the school was likely to be crawling with professors. It was certainly not the time to be distracted by this new found and still unspoken thing between them. Certainly not the time to be thinking about making a detour into an empty classroom or hidden corridor or...
Remus' thoughts were brought up short when he realized that Sirius was no longer behind him. He started to call after him when he appeared again at the top of the stairs, his descend more careful than before. "What are you doing?" Remus asked.
Sirius came down a few more steps and Remus he had gone back for; it had a crack running down the center of it and the once-white icing was now a bit blackened around the edges, but the outer sides were untouched. Sirius smirked and waggled his eyebrows in mock suggestion. "Wouldn't want to let a perfectly good birthday cake go to waste now, do we?"