FIC: Lay Down, by taffetablue (R/S, PG13)
Fic: Lay Down
Author: La
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Remus/Sirius
Summary: After, they Apparate home, saturated with rain and blood, and the oily slide of dark magic skidding along Remus’s skin like unfamiliar hands. (post-Hogwarts and a bit angsty.)
Thanks to: setissma, miraielle, and statelines
For the shacking_up Summer 2006 Minimalist Fic Exchange.
Recipient: sheafrotherdon, with this prompt.
After, they Apparate home, saturated with rain and blood, and the oily slide of dark magic skidding along Remus’s skin like unfamiliar hands, skirting the collar of his robes and lingering about his ankles. He drops his robes on the floor of the foyer; watches Sirius do the same, shoving his boots off and disappearing silently into their bedroom, back held stiff and straight.
Remus waits before following, counting slowly -- one, one-thousand, two, one-thousand, three, one-thousand all the way to seventy-three before he crosses to the door, the one with their dirty shoeprints along the bottom, with a nicked metal doorknob rubbed smooth from wear, with Sirius sitting inside, just out of view of the partially-open door. He leans against the jamb and waits a while longer, still counting.
“Sirius?” he murmurs, and finally pushes the door, lets it hit the wall with a dull thunk, settling into the dents left from where hardware crashed into cheap plaster, during fights and screaming matches and hard, angry fucks.
Sirius is huddled, curled over like the curved edge of a dried leaf or some other fragile thing, trembling and looking out the window. It’s raining; the lights from the cafe across the way are obscured by the drops on the glass, and at night they shine through to wash Sirius’s pale skin startling red.
Now, though, he looks thin and worn through - a page too often turned, a photograph left in the sun, and Remus can’t help thinking that he’s just a boy (Sirius is two months and thirteen days older; spent the entire time reminding Remus of this the year they came of age. Two weeks after that, they crept out of the castle with butterbeer and a pair of brooms, spent the night chasing each other around the Quidditch pitch and grounds until finally Remus let Sirius catch up to him, until finally he let Sirius tug him from his broom, and until finally he let Sirius kiss him as they'd both been wanting for ages, messy and warm and wet until they pulled back from each other, blinking as their breath drifted upward into the night.) They’re both just boys, and Sirius is shivering and filthy on their bed, soaking the unmade sheets through with dirty water.
“Sirius,” Remus says again, and he won’t turn around. Remus takes the one, two, three steps over to him, pressing a palm flat between sharp shoulderblades. His hand rises and falls with each of Sirius’s breaths.
(The door to the house was open just so, and everything was too quiet as they stepped over the threshold, floorboards creaking even under their careful boots, but it didn’t matter. Their bodies were laid out on the bed, on top of the coverlet quilted with squares of old wedding gowns and baby blankets and work trousers, this person’s hope and that person’s hurt and this person’s labor stained brownish-red with their blood. A daughter on either side, holding their father’s hands, all three gaping up at a white ceiling in death, and the negative space of their chests, gaping too. Anne Kinney leaned over and vomited in the corner. Sirius went downstairs alone and found the fourth body in the basement; came back up carrying a boy with black hair and hollows around his eyes and Sirius’s nose, uncovered by the death mask fallen off to hang around his bruised neck.)
“Sirius.” He slips his arms around, sits on the bed with his chest pressed to Sirius’s back, buries his lips in dark, wet hair, kisses trembling shoulders and the back of Sirius’s neck with its raised red scar, new from three weeks past, and holds on until the shaking stops and Sirius turns into his arms.
“I-“ Sirius starts, “I,” but Remus whispers softly and kisses him, shh, shh. Their lips still taste of rainwater and faintly of the tea they shared earlier, still laughing; Remus licks the taste of it out from the corners of Sirius’s mouth, gently stroking across the roof with his tongue until Sirius finally breaks, crumpling under Remus’s hands. He captures Sirius’s quiet sobs with his lips, murmuring low between kisses the color of first snow, of new sheets, of static, of ice and china and mourning: shh.
Sirius kisses back fiercely, with teeth and grasping, angry hands, urging Remus closer and harder, please, a plea into his open lips to forget, to remember, and Remus soothes him with gentle hands, lays him down and presses kisses to collarbone, chest, stomach. He shivers under the touch, unfolding to the scrape of blunt nails over his ribs, small bites to his hipbones, and lets Remus piece him back together only to break him apart again with a low, wild cry, and after, together, they listen to the rain, hands clasped, staring up at the ceiling and breathing.
(The first day that summer they moved in with second-hand furniture, too many spoons and not enough chairs. Peter and James stayed late to drink cheap Muggle liquor from mismatched teacups, and when Sirius tugged Remus down to the bed the red light from across the street flashed across his skin, and they came together sharp and alive, everything a beginning, everything new, and the promise of every day after laid down before them.)
Author: La
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Remus/Sirius
Summary: After, they Apparate home, saturated with rain and blood, and the oily slide of dark magic skidding along Remus’s skin like unfamiliar hands. (post-Hogwarts and a bit angsty.)
Thanks to: setissma, miraielle, and statelines
For the shacking_up Summer 2006 Minimalist Fic Exchange.
Recipient: sheafrotherdon, with this prompt.
After, they Apparate home, saturated with rain and blood, and the oily slide of dark magic skidding along Remus’s skin like unfamiliar hands, skirting the collar of his robes and lingering about his ankles. He drops his robes on the floor of the foyer; watches Sirius do the same, shoving his boots off and disappearing silently into their bedroom, back held stiff and straight.
Remus waits before following, counting slowly -- one, one-thousand, two, one-thousand, three, one-thousand all the way to seventy-three before he crosses to the door, the one with their dirty shoeprints along the bottom, with a nicked metal doorknob rubbed smooth from wear, with Sirius sitting inside, just out of view of the partially-open door. He leans against the jamb and waits a while longer, still counting.
“Sirius?” he murmurs, and finally pushes the door, lets it hit the wall with a dull thunk, settling into the dents left from where hardware crashed into cheap plaster, during fights and screaming matches and hard, angry fucks.
Sirius is huddled, curled over like the curved edge of a dried leaf or some other fragile thing, trembling and looking out the window. It’s raining; the lights from the cafe across the way are obscured by the drops on the glass, and at night they shine through to wash Sirius’s pale skin startling red.
Now, though, he looks thin and worn through - a page too often turned, a photograph left in the sun, and Remus can’t help thinking that he’s just a boy (Sirius is two months and thirteen days older; spent the entire time reminding Remus of this the year they came of age. Two weeks after that, they crept out of the castle with butterbeer and a pair of brooms, spent the night chasing each other around the Quidditch pitch and grounds until finally Remus let Sirius catch up to him, until finally he let Sirius tug him from his broom, and until finally he let Sirius kiss him as they'd both been wanting for ages, messy and warm and wet until they pulled back from each other, blinking as their breath drifted upward into the night.) They’re both just boys, and Sirius is shivering and filthy on their bed, soaking the unmade sheets through with dirty water.
“Sirius,” Remus says again, and he won’t turn around. Remus takes the one, two, three steps over to him, pressing a palm flat between sharp shoulderblades. His hand rises and falls with each of Sirius’s breaths.
(The door to the house was open just so, and everything was too quiet as they stepped over the threshold, floorboards creaking even under their careful boots, but it didn’t matter. Their bodies were laid out on the bed, on top of the coverlet quilted with squares of old wedding gowns and baby blankets and work trousers, this person’s hope and that person’s hurt and this person’s labor stained brownish-red with their blood. A daughter on either side, holding their father’s hands, all three gaping up at a white ceiling in death, and the negative space of their chests, gaping too. Anne Kinney leaned over and vomited in the corner. Sirius went downstairs alone and found the fourth body in the basement; came back up carrying a boy with black hair and hollows around his eyes and Sirius’s nose, uncovered by the death mask fallen off to hang around his bruised neck.)
“Sirius.” He slips his arms around, sits on the bed with his chest pressed to Sirius’s back, buries his lips in dark, wet hair, kisses trembling shoulders and the back of Sirius’s neck with its raised red scar, new from three weeks past, and holds on until the shaking stops and Sirius turns into his arms.
“I-“ Sirius starts, “I,” but Remus whispers softly and kisses him, shh, shh. Their lips still taste of rainwater and faintly of the tea they shared earlier, still laughing; Remus licks the taste of it out from the corners of Sirius’s mouth, gently stroking across the roof with his tongue until Sirius finally breaks, crumpling under Remus’s hands. He captures Sirius’s quiet sobs with his lips, murmuring low between kisses the color of first snow, of new sheets, of static, of ice and china and mourning: shh.
Sirius kisses back fiercely, with teeth and grasping, angry hands, urging Remus closer and harder, please, a plea into his open lips to forget, to remember, and Remus soothes him with gentle hands, lays him down and presses kisses to collarbone, chest, stomach. He shivers under the touch, unfolding to the scrape of blunt nails over his ribs, small bites to his hipbones, and lets Remus piece him back together only to break him apart again with a low, wild cry, and after, together, they listen to the rain, hands clasped, staring up at the ceiling and breathing.
(The first day that summer they moved in with second-hand furniture, too many spoons and not enough chairs. Peter and James stayed late to drink cheap Muggle liquor from mismatched teacups, and when Sirius tugged Remus down to the bed the red light from across the street flashed across his skin, and they came together sharp and alive, everything a beginning, everything new, and the promise of every day after laid down before them.)