Fic: Opus (Sirius/Regulus)
Title: Opus
Author: spessartine
Rating: NC-17/Adult
Disclaimer: JKR did it.
Pairing: Sirius/Regulus
Warnings: Incest. Dubious consent maybe. References to drug use.
A/N: Thanks to txilar for the beta
Opus
Paganini: Caprice No. 16 in G minor
‘Play for me,’ says Sirius. The green light slants through the thick green windows and spreads the shadows of leaves over everything. Smoke curling up, up.
Regulus: his hair unbound for once, smear of dirt on his neck, eyes slipping to the edge of focus. His slow laughter spreads like treacle and the afternoon settles around them. The house is empty, save for them, has been for weeks. Sirius falls back into velvet and sparks the pipe again. Smoke curling up, up into the hollows of the vaulted ceiling. The sunlight slicing in is warm in angles against their skin. And if they touch - if they accidentally touch (the back of Sirius’ fingers against Regulus’ arm) it is because opium has made their bodies slow and warm and nudged them into satiation.
Somewhere, water is dripping. Their handprints are in the dust that covers every surface. That the house elves have abandoned them is testament to Sirius’ treatment of them. In the hallway, there is a tiny, bloody handprint that no one has wiped from the wall.
They are in the dining room, and Sirius is lounging half-upright in the bay window, lying on piled cushions and one velvet curtain which he accidentally pulled down a week ago. His t-shirt has one sleeve missing and a burn mark over his heart, which he has made much of, claiming it happened in a duel, though Regulus knows he dropped his wand three days ago and cannot remember it.
Outside, in the grape vine trained along the veranda’s railings, two magpies spring from branch to branch; black, white, perfect against green. Sirius’ fingers stroke along one of Regulus’ ribs. His head rolls onto Regulus’ bare shoulder. Regulus can’t remember taking his shirt off, has been wandering the house in just his trousers for Merlin knows how long, but it doesn’t matter.
‘Go on,’ says Sirius. ‘Play for me.’ This year Sirius is finally broadening into his body: shoulders, chest, the muscles on his arms. His leather belt creaks quietly as he leans forward and picks up the bottle of wine propped between them. The liquid makes round, satisfied noises as he tips the bottle; swallows once, twice.
Regulus shrugs off the tousled head and crosses his legs. ‘I can’t,’ he says.
‘Why?’ says Sirius, his dark brows crumpling to a frown. ‘Why not? You used to. You always used to.’
There is silence as Regulus stares blankly at his brother; blankly, sternly, Sirius can’t tell. Then he smiles suddenly and says ‘I can’t feel my fingers.’
When Sirius laughs, it is like rolling down a hill: inevitable as gravity, slow but quick to gather speed. Regulus finds he is laughing too, though the sounds, as they reach him, are slowed to eerie bellows like those a slaughtered animal makes.
Eventually Sirius lurches to his feet and makes off through the house. Regulus can hear him walking around on the floor above the dining room, his footsteps heavy and irregular. There’s a thud, and a string of curses, then Sirius comes thundering down the stairs again.
His hand is hot around Regulus’ fingers as he yanks Regulus upright. ‘Come on,’ he says again. ‘You’ve no fucking excuse now.’
The violin case with its skin-smoothed catches and shining cover rests on the table. Regulus’ fingers remember the rest.
Dry click of the brass catches springing open; that rising scent of rosin; the dry softness of pasteboard and green felt that cradles the wooden body of the violin. There’s the ritual of it: tightening of the bow, testing its tautness against the heel of his hand; the paper-wrapped rosin stroked along the length of the tensed horsehair. Powdered resin, redolent with the scent of heat and frankincense, showers onto the polished, dusty table.
Then he takes out the violin itself. It’s old, and valuable. A Stradivarius that’s been in the family for centuries, nearly. The wood is honeyed and cold. It feels like holding an animal between his hands, silent but thrumming with potential, all nervous energy. He tosses the silk handkerchief onto his shoulder, though the underside of the chin rest is still shockingly cold against his collarbone. It will warm, though. This he knows.
He plucks each string with his forefinger, testing their tones, spelled to stay in tune. Then he takes up the bow (fingers placed just so - not bent, not straight, but loosely gripping, little finger angled against the grip for balance).
His fingers find their spacing on the ebony fingerboard. The bow hovers millimetres from the strings. He closes his eyes.
Then, he plays.
Notes swell their tremulous crescendos through him. Broken arpeggios coast his body, rifling over his skin. He is taut as the bow and wound to tone just as the strings are spiralled around their pegs. He opens with the music, and is swallowed in sound.
It’s a quick piece, over in a minute and a half: ninety seconds of blurred-fingered semitones which leap from string to string, his loose wrist guiding the bow. He breathes through his nose with each down-stroke. His hair falls forward over his face and hangs shimmering with each movement. Sweat forms on his upper lip, and his eyebrows draw together. The bow rasps fiercely across the thrumming strings as the music pirouettes from high to low registers and swoops back up again.
Then, and then: those final two notes which span two strings and hang in the air as he freezes, bow raised and shedding snapped hairs.
Regulus breathes in sharply through his nose, licks the sweat from his top lip. When he opens his eyes Sirius is standing right next to him; silent, wide eyed, breathing hard and fast through his mouth. Fingers loose around the neck of the violin, Regulus slowly lowers the instrument and lets it hang at his side. The silk handkerchief slips down his chest and falls to the floor. He carefully places the bow on the table with a click.
Sirius watches him smooth back his hair. Regulus can see his brother’s chest rising and falling beneath his faded t-shirt; see the muscles in his jaw clench. Then Sirius lowers his eyes and strides from the room. The door creaks behind him, but does not shut completely.
Regulus doesn’t move. He’s cold, suddenly.
Williams: Dives and Lazarus, 5th Variation
In that house acoustics mock him. They have shifted slightly, since he was a boy. The house has slumped, maybe, or it is empty of what had once made it as it was. There’s a tissue of echoes draped over everything like dust. He hears in it sounds which he should not hear:
Soft whispered breath in the dark spaces of the corridors; muffled, distant laughter coming from beneath that locked door. Once, he hears rough and desperate gasps that pull at his flesh as nothing has in too long a time. Once, once, he hears the quiet, intimate sound of Regulus tuning up his violin, and thinks of the soft skin on the tips of his brother’s fingers: soft, and etched, and perfect.
Tartini: Sonata in G Minor
‘This,’ says Regulus, ‘is my favourite piece.’ His fingers are already rippling along the strings in anticipation, but his right hand hangs at his side, bow tip resting on the floor. ‘I’ll play it for mother, I think. She wants me to play at her dinner, tonight.’ He shudders, then squares his shoulders. ‘All those people. I’m not sure I want to.’
‘Course you do,’ says Sirius from the doorway, throwing a grape into his mouth and popping it between his teeth. ‘You love all that stuff. You’re always at it: proper little Black.’
‘Fuck you,’ says Regulus. He puts down his violin and replaces it in its case; loosens his bow and clips it into place. ‘Why are you sneaking about, anyway, listening to me practicing? Thought you’d got better things to do.’
Sirius looks at his brother for a moment, eyebrows raised slightly. Then he flops down onto Regulus’ bed and rests his dish of grapes on his stomach. ‘Wrong again, Regulus.’ He throws another grape into the air and catches it between his teeth. When he bites down a dark bead of juice glistens on his bottom lip.
‘Sirius, get out of my room.’
Sirius doesn’t answer, but looks around him. His brother’s room is everything his isn’t: Black, through and through, from the dark velvet hangings around the ancient bed, to the shelves of antiquarian (and rather suspect, Sirius thinks) books that line Regulus’ shelves. The large desk in the corner is inlaid with ink-stained leather and piled with unravelling scrolls of parchment; a book propped open with a glass paperweight. The heavy curtains at the window are faded at the edges, and only half-open.
‘What are you practicing, anyway? What’s this favourite piece of yours?’ He rolls over and grabs the sheet music resting on top of the violin case, scattering grapes across Regulus’ bedspread. Regulus snatches it back, and shoves it into a leather case.
‘The Devils’ Thrill?’ says Sirius incredulously. Then he laughs. ‘Sounds bloody filthy, if I do say so myself. Didn’t think you had it in you.’
‘It’s the Devil’s Trill,’ says Regulus, but Sirius is grinning at him in an altogether disconcerting fashion, and he doesn’t say anything else.
It’s cold in Regulus’ room. The fire is unlit and white ashes have piled in the grate and begun to spill out onto the hearthstone. Regulus, in his heavy velvet robes, doesn’t seem to notice, but Sirius’ skin is tight with the chill of it. He’s about to get up and leave when Regulus, tugging more sheet music from under Sirius’ back, says ‘are you going to fuck off, now? I’ve got work to do.’
Sirius snorts. ‘Work? Since when have you had to work for anything?’ He grabs Regulus’ wrist and shoves it away, pulling out the music himself and standing, scattering fallen grapes to the floor. Regulus purses his lips, then turns away.
‘You wouldn’t fucking know, would you? You think it’s all going to parties and being Mother’s favourite. If you thought about it for a second you’d realise how much she fucking begrudges me it. How much I’ve had to do to get even that.’
Sirius laughs. ‘Poor little Reggie,’ he says. ‘What a sorry life you -’ he’s cut off by Regulus’ palm connecting with his cheek. ‘What the - you little fucker!’ He grabs Regulus’ wrist and rubs his cheek with his other hand, staring at his brother. Regulus tries to pull away, but Sirius tightens his hold. ‘That bloody hurt!’
‘Get off me,’ hisses Regulus. ‘Let go.’
Sirius kicks at Regulus’ feet until he backs up against the wall, cobwebs in his hair. ‘See how you fucking like it,’ he says, and slaps Regulus: once, twice; palm and then the back of his hand.
Regulus struggles, but can’t throw him off. He’s pale and breathing hard, little spots of colour high up on his cheeks. When he shakes his head to get his hair off his face, Sirius notices a small trickle of blood in the corner of Regulus’ mouth. Must have bitten his tongue, or something.
Regulus looks up at him defiantly and licks the blood from the corner of his mouth. His tongue is the colour of the roses that grow in the garden.
And later that night, Sirius, seething and buttoned into his high-collared dress robes, drinks three glasses of brandy and stands, silent and haughty, at the back of the salon, watching his brother play the violin.
Christ, but he’s beautiful: savage and unearthly; blurred with merciless grace and the movement of music; his eyes shut, his hair shaken loose from its braid and shivering across his stern brow. White skin and those flushed cheeks again, and as his bow strokes those final, beautiful, high notes, a sneer that is almost a snarl blooms into being on his dark lips, and Sirius thinks that maybe, just maybe, the piece should have been called the devil’s thrill, after all.
He slips into the corridor when Regulus finishes, feeling unwieldy with drink and the heady music he can still feel washing over him. When Regulus comes out of the salon, violin cradled under one arm, glass of wine gathering condensation in his left hand, Sirius has him by the wrist and is pulling him along before he realises it.
Upstairs, in the dark hallway, he pushes Regulus against a wall and covers his mouth with a hand. He lowers his head and breathes against his brother’s neck. Regulus doesn’t move. His breath ghosts over Sirius’ knuckles. From downstairs, the sound of people talking, laughing, permeates the house. Sirius gulps down the rest of Regulus’ wine, throws the glass over his shoulder, and pushes Regulus before him into his bedroom, slamming the door behind them.
In the room, one lit lamp casts golden shadows. Regulus is standing against the wall as he had earlier that day, when Sirius had hit him. ‘Be careful,’ he says, swallowing, ‘be careful of my violin.’
Sirius takes it from him and snaps it in two. The pieces of wood drop onto the carpet with quiet, sad, dissonant noises. Regulus shuts his eyes for a long moment.
He runs the rosined strings of the bow across Regulus’ throat, then pulls open his robes so he can stroke it across his collar bone, down over his chest. Regulus’ breath heaves in and out of him; the bow leaves streaks of powdered white against his skin.
He slaps his brother again; hot skin soft against his knuckles. Regulus says nothing, does nothing, only clenches his fists and leans back against the wall so the rough stones dig into his back.
‘You like it, don’t you,’ says Sirius, a slow smile creeping across his face. ‘You like it.’ He drops the bow and pushes his fingers into Regulus’ hair, tugging it slightly, so his brother’s head is pulled forward. ‘You like it,’ he whispers into Regulus’ ear. Regulus arches his body forward, and his eyelids flutter closed. Between them, layers of rich velvet are crushed and heated. Sirius brings his mouth down onto Regulus’ neck and licks along the twitching tendon there.
His brother gasps and whimpers. ‘Shut up,’ mouths Sirius against his throat. Regulus’ hands are in his hair, tugging, stroking, pulling. When he trails his tongue down over the hollow of Regulus’ throat and over to his nipple, Regulus moans and tosses his head. He shoves his thigh between Regulus’ legs, and his brother bucks against it hard, jarring their bodies together.
Sirius pulls back and stares down at Regulus for a moment. Then he roughly strips the velvet away from Regulus’ body and waits as Regulus undoes his robes with shaking fingers. When they’re both naked he twists his fingers in Regulus’ dark hair and forces him to his knees.
Regulus wraps his arms around Sirius’ waist and takes him into his mouth faster than Sirius can think, so that in a split second his cock is nudging at the back of Regulus’ throat and his fingers are tangled in Regulus’ hair, and Regulus’ arms are so tight around his hips he can hardly move.
With each twist of his fingers in his brother’s hair, he can make Regulus whimper and moan; little noises that reverberate through his whole body and make him weak-kneed with lust. Oh god, it’s good. He almost does not have the strength to pull Regulus away from him before he comes. But he does, and looking down at Regulus panting open-mouthed and licking his lips like that is reward enough.
‘Why?’ gasps Regulus. ‘Why? I want to make you come.’
‘You will,’ says Sirius, his voice hoarse.
He uses his body to push Regulus flat onto his back, hair spread out around him in the puddled velvet of their discarded robes. He licks and bites his way down the tracks of resin marking his brother’s body, and when he finishes with a lick along the length of Regulus’ cock, Regulus’ cry is harsh, broken. He bends Regulus’ knees himself, putting his brother’s feet flat on the floor, then sucks two fingers to wet them. Regulus is watching him, sweat glistening over his body, his legs sagging open.
‘You want me to touch you, don’t you?’ says Sirius softly. Regulus nods his head desperately. ‘Touch yourself,’ he says. When Regulus does, he pushes his fingers inside his brother, and is rewarded with a ragged groan that makes Regulus’ whole body shake, for a second. ‘Slowly,’ he says, and begins to move his fingers in time with Regulus’ hand, sliding them slowly, slowly, as Regulus moans and tosses his head and makes little noises in the back of his throat that make Sirius want to hurt him, to break him, to have him, wholly possess him. He adds another finger and thrusts in cruelly, twisting his fingers, and Regulus yells out harshly.
‘You like it,’ says Sirius, ‘you want it, don’t you? You want me to hurt you, don’t you, don’t you?’
‘Please,’ gasps out Regulus. His eyes are fluttering half-shut, and his cheeks and lips are flushed red against his white skin. Sirius withdraws his fingers, positions his cock against Regulus and thrusts inside, one harsh, hard thrust.
Regulus is silent, instantly.
He looks up at Sirius, his lips and nostrils trembling, not breathing. Sirius doesn’t move. Then Regulus takes a shallow breath, another, another, and Sirius grabs his wrists and holds them against the floor out at his sides. ‘Oh, fuck,’ whispers Regulus. ‘Oh, fuck, fuck.’ His voice is shaky. He rolls his head from side to side as Sirius looks down at him.
Then Sirius starts to move and both of them fall silent, and there is only the smooth sound of skin against skin, and their mingled breathing, the spiralling crescendo of their bodies crashing towards completion.
Afterwards, Sirius fixes the violin with a flick of his wand. He pulls Regulus up onto his bed and lies next to him for a while, both of them naked but not touching.
‘You wanted to, before, didn’t you?’ says Regulus.
Sirius says nothing. He turns the violin, now whole again, over in his hands, stroking his fingers over the polished wood. It is never quite the same again. At the end of that summer, Sirius leaves the house and does not return.
(twelve years, eight months, and seventeen days of silence)
Those were the times of gaping silence. His voice was stopped with solitude. Sounds fell broken and malformed from his lips. Even his laughter was whittled hollow.
Blind with silence, he crawled the blank space of his cell and felt out the grubby, flat tones of its shape, but could not hear them. He could hear nothing. After a while, even the screams of the other prisoners had deadened and been swallowed by the quiet, growing kernel of hardness at the heart of him.
The days grew into weeks, the weeks into months, the months - oh god, the months stretched into years and still he lingered - blind, deaf, dumb: a vessel for rough-dripped hatred.
See it in silence: his face, thinning; his eyes rolling shut as the dementors come, again, again, again. In silence he yells, rants, screams, laughs. Calls out silent names and speaks the silence of the dead. Silence has him in its grip when he scratches his fingers raw against the walls, the door, and silence hurls him once, again, again, against the wall until he falls in silence to the floor, blood spreading dark as lacquer around him.
This is the caesura.
This is that gap of knowledge at the heart of everything; the second of silence that holds within its curve the moment of his eternity.
See it in silence: these years that roar past him are stripping him of who he was. And he knows. He knows.
Bach: Concerto for Two Violins in D Minor
Once, as a child, Sirius had been told he too would take up the violin. His tutor had presented him with the Stradivarius long before Regulus was allowed to touch it. He had taken to playing it easily, quickly, and had mastered it to a reasonable degree within a year. After that he refused to touch it. It was not that he had grown bored with the instrument - though of course that was what he said - more that sometimes his own nature frightened him. He did not like the wild passion that spiralled within him as he played, and played correctly. He did not like the ease with which the notes came to him. It seemed to him a subtle seduction, and he did not trust it.
Everything had always come easily to him. He could have anything he wanted, take anything he wanted. And there were moments when he realised he did not like the person this had made him into.
There are times, when he is alone in this house now, when he is alone and the house weighs dark around him, when he wonders if he is still that same person. There are times when he wonders if it matters.
The house remembers. Sometimes, it tries to remind him: in the upstairs hallway there’s a stain, suddenly, where the glass he tossed over his shoulder that night had landed and spilled its trickle of wine onto the floorboards. Sometimes he thinks he sees the faded shadow of a small and bloody handprint on the wall. And sometimes in the dining room, he can smell the rich and serpentine scent of the opium they had smoked together that summer.
Sometimes when he’s alone in the house he takes Remus’ box of hash and papers and goes to sit in there, under the bay window, and smoke himself into oblivion. The vine outside has died, and the light is grimy as it comes through the window, but no matter, no matter.
He sits with a book on his lap rolling spliffs which Remus would call too strong entirely and smoking them, watching the smoke curling up, up. And he thinks of those ninety seconds of music that made him realise, made him see.
And he thinks of Regulus: thinks of him playing that day in the shifting green light with the shadows of leaves playing over his chest, the glint of sweat on his top lip and the concentration that came into his face. It was as if Sirius had vanished, for those ninety seconds, and Regulus had only then come fully into existence. What had that afternoon conjured up? He doesn’t know.
He feels a ghost in this house. And he knows he is not the only one to haunt it.
They move together, he and Regulus. They slip between the shadows of the place, the two sons of the ancient house of Black, they become each other in darkness and in the silence of each night. He wonders that no one else sees his brother, hears the whisper of his robes, spots the wing of tossed black hair. Those long white hands moving, moving in the dim, secretive spaces of the house. He wonders that no one notices. But they do not. He is already a host to ghosts, the plaything of the spirits.
Sirius leans his head back against the windowsill and exhales. Smoke curls from between his lips. In front of him, Regulus is standing, violin in one hand, bow in the other. The sunlight catches the sweat beaded along his collarbone. Sirius smiles. The boy he once was is walking out of the room, leaving, and Regulus turns to watch him go. But this Sirius stays, and watches Regulus pack up his violin, his hands as careful and as reverent as they were when they unpacked it. And then he’s gone, and never was: only a wisp of smoke in grimy sunlight. Sirius reaches out his hand, and his fingers part the curtains of hanging smoke, veil after veil after veil.
Barber: Adagio
Beyond, there is no difference between smoke and skin, a shadow and a beating heart. Dust sifts softly in a slow room. Silence and the shadows of leaves, the air is green with them. Smoke spirals up, up -
‘Play for me,’ he whispers.
The scent of powdered resin, heat and frankincense. Faint click of the bow taken up.
Regulus’ fingers find their spacing on the ebony fingerboard. The bow hovers millimetres from the strings. He closes his eyes.
Author: spessartine
Rating: NC-17/Adult
Disclaimer: JKR did it.
Pairing: Sirius/Regulus
Warnings: Incest. Dubious consent maybe. References to drug use.
A/N: Thanks to txilar for the beta
Opus
Paganini: Caprice No. 16 in G minor
‘Play for me,’ says Sirius. The green light slants through the thick green windows and spreads the shadows of leaves over everything. Smoke curling up, up.
Regulus: his hair unbound for once, smear of dirt on his neck, eyes slipping to the edge of focus. His slow laughter spreads like treacle and the afternoon settles around them. The house is empty, save for them, has been for weeks. Sirius falls back into velvet and sparks the pipe again. Smoke curling up, up into the hollows of the vaulted ceiling. The sunlight slicing in is warm in angles against their skin. And if they touch - if they accidentally touch (the back of Sirius’ fingers against Regulus’ arm) it is because opium has made their bodies slow and warm and nudged them into satiation.
Somewhere, water is dripping. Their handprints are in the dust that covers every surface. That the house elves have abandoned them is testament to Sirius’ treatment of them. In the hallway, there is a tiny, bloody handprint that no one has wiped from the wall.
They are in the dining room, and Sirius is lounging half-upright in the bay window, lying on piled cushions and one velvet curtain which he accidentally pulled down a week ago. His t-shirt has one sleeve missing and a burn mark over his heart, which he has made much of, claiming it happened in a duel, though Regulus knows he dropped his wand three days ago and cannot remember it.
Outside, in the grape vine trained along the veranda’s railings, two magpies spring from branch to branch; black, white, perfect against green. Sirius’ fingers stroke along one of Regulus’ ribs. His head rolls onto Regulus’ bare shoulder. Regulus can’t remember taking his shirt off, has been wandering the house in just his trousers for Merlin knows how long, but it doesn’t matter.
‘Go on,’ says Sirius. ‘Play for me.’ This year Sirius is finally broadening into his body: shoulders, chest, the muscles on his arms. His leather belt creaks quietly as he leans forward and picks up the bottle of wine propped between them. The liquid makes round, satisfied noises as he tips the bottle; swallows once, twice.
Regulus shrugs off the tousled head and crosses his legs. ‘I can’t,’ he says.
‘Why?’ says Sirius, his dark brows crumpling to a frown. ‘Why not? You used to. You always used to.’
There is silence as Regulus stares blankly at his brother; blankly, sternly, Sirius can’t tell. Then he smiles suddenly and says ‘I can’t feel my fingers.’
When Sirius laughs, it is like rolling down a hill: inevitable as gravity, slow but quick to gather speed. Regulus finds he is laughing too, though the sounds, as they reach him, are slowed to eerie bellows like those a slaughtered animal makes.
Eventually Sirius lurches to his feet and makes off through the house. Regulus can hear him walking around on the floor above the dining room, his footsteps heavy and irregular. There’s a thud, and a string of curses, then Sirius comes thundering down the stairs again.
His hand is hot around Regulus’ fingers as he yanks Regulus upright. ‘Come on,’ he says again. ‘You’ve no fucking excuse now.’
The violin case with its skin-smoothed catches and shining cover rests on the table. Regulus’ fingers remember the rest.
Dry click of the brass catches springing open; that rising scent of rosin; the dry softness of pasteboard and green felt that cradles the wooden body of the violin. There’s the ritual of it: tightening of the bow, testing its tautness against the heel of his hand; the paper-wrapped rosin stroked along the length of the tensed horsehair. Powdered resin, redolent with the scent of heat and frankincense, showers onto the polished, dusty table.
Then he takes out the violin itself. It’s old, and valuable. A Stradivarius that’s been in the family for centuries, nearly. The wood is honeyed and cold. It feels like holding an animal between his hands, silent but thrumming with potential, all nervous energy. He tosses the silk handkerchief onto his shoulder, though the underside of the chin rest is still shockingly cold against his collarbone. It will warm, though. This he knows.
He plucks each string with his forefinger, testing their tones, spelled to stay in tune. Then he takes up the bow (fingers placed just so - not bent, not straight, but loosely gripping, little finger angled against the grip for balance).
His fingers find their spacing on the ebony fingerboard. The bow hovers millimetres from the strings. He closes his eyes.
Then, he plays.
Notes swell their tremulous crescendos through him. Broken arpeggios coast his body, rifling over his skin. He is taut as the bow and wound to tone just as the strings are spiralled around their pegs. He opens with the music, and is swallowed in sound.
It’s a quick piece, over in a minute and a half: ninety seconds of blurred-fingered semitones which leap from string to string, his loose wrist guiding the bow. He breathes through his nose with each down-stroke. His hair falls forward over his face and hangs shimmering with each movement. Sweat forms on his upper lip, and his eyebrows draw together. The bow rasps fiercely across the thrumming strings as the music pirouettes from high to low registers and swoops back up again.
Then, and then: those final two notes which span two strings and hang in the air as he freezes, bow raised and shedding snapped hairs.
Regulus breathes in sharply through his nose, licks the sweat from his top lip. When he opens his eyes Sirius is standing right next to him; silent, wide eyed, breathing hard and fast through his mouth. Fingers loose around the neck of the violin, Regulus slowly lowers the instrument and lets it hang at his side. The silk handkerchief slips down his chest and falls to the floor. He carefully places the bow on the table with a click.
Sirius watches him smooth back his hair. Regulus can see his brother’s chest rising and falling beneath his faded t-shirt; see the muscles in his jaw clench. Then Sirius lowers his eyes and strides from the room. The door creaks behind him, but does not shut completely.
Regulus doesn’t move. He’s cold, suddenly.
Williams: Dives and Lazarus, 5th Variation
In that house acoustics mock him. They have shifted slightly, since he was a boy. The house has slumped, maybe, or it is empty of what had once made it as it was. There’s a tissue of echoes draped over everything like dust. He hears in it sounds which he should not hear:
Soft whispered breath in the dark spaces of the corridors; muffled, distant laughter coming from beneath that locked door. Once, he hears rough and desperate gasps that pull at his flesh as nothing has in too long a time. Once, once, he hears the quiet, intimate sound of Regulus tuning up his violin, and thinks of the soft skin on the tips of his brother’s fingers: soft, and etched, and perfect.
Tartini: Sonata in G Minor
‘This,’ says Regulus, ‘is my favourite piece.’ His fingers are already rippling along the strings in anticipation, but his right hand hangs at his side, bow tip resting on the floor. ‘I’ll play it for mother, I think. She wants me to play at her dinner, tonight.’ He shudders, then squares his shoulders. ‘All those people. I’m not sure I want to.’
‘Course you do,’ says Sirius from the doorway, throwing a grape into his mouth and popping it between his teeth. ‘You love all that stuff. You’re always at it: proper little Black.’
‘Fuck you,’ says Regulus. He puts down his violin and replaces it in its case; loosens his bow and clips it into place. ‘Why are you sneaking about, anyway, listening to me practicing? Thought you’d got better things to do.’
Sirius looks at his brother for a moment, eyebrows raised slightly. Then he flops down onto Regulus’ bed and rests his dish of grapes on his stomach. ‘Wrong again, Regulus.’ He throws another grape into the air and catches it between his teeth. When he bites down a dark bead of juice glistens on his bottom lip.
‘Sirius, get out of my room.’
Sirius doesn’t answer, but looks around him. His brother’s room is everything his isn’t: Black, through and through, from the dark velvet hangings around the ancient bed, to the shelves of antiquarian (and rather suspect, Sirius thinks) books that line Regulus’ shelves. The large desk in the corner is inlaid with ink-stained leather and piled with unravelling scrolls of parchment; a book propped open with a glass paperweight. The heavy curtains at the window are faded at the edges, and only half-open.
‘What are you practicing, anyway? What’s this favourite piece of yours?’ He rolls over and grabs the sheet music resting on top of the violin case, scattering grapes across Regulus’ bedspread. Regulus snatches it back, and shoves it into a leather case.
‘The Devils’ Thrill?’ says Sirius incredulously. Then he laughs. ‘Sounds bloody filthy, if I do say so myself. Didn’t think you had it in you.’
‘It’s the Devil’s Trill,’ says Regulus, but Sirius is grinning at him in an altogether disconcerting fashion, and he doesn’t say anything else.
It’s cold in Regulus’ room. The fire is unlit and white ashes have piled in the grate and begun to spill out onto the hearthstone. Regulus, in his heavy velvet robes, doesn’t seem to notice, but Sirius’ skin is tight with the chill of it. He’s about to get up and leave when Regulus, tugging more sheet music from under Sirius’ back, says ‘are you going to fuck off, now? I’ve got work to do.’
Sirius snorts. ‘Work? Since when have you had to work for anything?’ He grabs Regulus’ wrist and shoves it away, pulling out the music himself and standing, scattering fallen grapes to the floor. Regulus purses his lips, then turns away.
‘You wouldn’t fucking know, would you? You think it’s all going to parties and being Mother’s favourite. If you thought about it for a second you’d realise how much she fucking begrudges me it. How much I’ve had to do to get even that.’
Sirius laughs. ‘Poor little Reggie,’ he says. ‘What a sorry life you -’ he’s cut off by Regulus’ palm connecting with his cheek. ‘What the - you little fucker!’ He grabs Regulus’ wrist and rubs his cheek with his other hand, staring at his brother. Regulus tries to pull away, but Sirius tightens his hold. ‘That bloody hurt!’
‘Get off me,’ hisses Regulus. ‘Let go.’
Sirius kicks at Regulus’ feet until he backs up against the wall, cobwebs in his hair. ‘See how you fucking like it,’ he says, and slaps Regulus: once, twice; palm and then the back of his hand.
Regulus struggles, but can’t throw him off. He’s pale and breathing hard, little spots of colour high up on his cheeks. When he shakes his head to get his hair off his face, Sirius notices a small trickle of blood in the corner of Regulus’ mouth. Must have bitten his tongue, or something.
Regulus looks up at him defiantly and licks the blood from the corner of his mouth. His tongue is the colour of the roses that grow in the garden.
And later that night, Sirius, seething and buttoned into his high-collared dress robes, drinks three glasses of brandy and stands, silent and haughty, at the back of the salon, watching his brother play the violin.
Christ, but he’s beautiful: savage and unearthly; blurred with merciless grace and the movement of music; his eyes shut, his hair shaken loose from its braid and shivering across his stern brow. White skin and those flushed cheeks again, and as his bow strokes those final, beautiful, high notes, a sneer that is almost a snarl blooms into being on his dark lips, and Sirius thinks that maybe, just maybe, the piece should have been called the devil’s thrill, after all.
He slips into the corridor when Regulus finishes, feeling unwieldy with drink and the heady music he can still feel washing over him. When Regulus comes out of the salon, violin cradled under one arm, glass of wine gathering condensation in his left hand, Sirius has him by the wrist and is pulling him along before he realises it.
Upstairs, in the dark hallway, he pushes Regulus against a wall and covers his mouth with a hand. He lowers his head and breathes against his brother’s neck. Regulus doesn’t move. His breath ghosts over Sirius’ knuckles. From downstairs, the sound of people talking, laughing, permeates the house. Sirius gulps down the rest of Regulus’ wine, throws the glass over his shoulder, and pushes Regulus before him into his bedroom, slamming the door behind them.
In the room, one lit lamp casts golden shadows. Regulus is standing against the wall as he had earlier that day, when Sirius had hit him. ‘Be careful,’ he says, swallowing, ‘be careful of my violin.’
Sirius takes it from him and snaps it in two. The pieces of wood drop onto the carpet with quiet, sad, dissonant noises. Regulus shuts his eyes for a long moment.
He runs the rosined strings of the bow across Regulus’ throat, then pulls open his robes so he can stroke it across his collar bone, down over his chest. Regulus’ breath heaves in and out of him; the bow leaves streaks of powdered white against his skin.
He slaps his brother again; hot skin soft against his knuckles. Regulus says nothing, does nothing, only clenches his fists and leans back against the wall so the rough stones dig into his back.
‘You like it, don’t you,’ says Sirius, a slow smile creeping across his face. ‘You like it.’ He drops the bow and pushes his fingers into Regulus’ hair, tugging it slightly, so his brother’s head is pulled forward. ‘You like it,’ he whispers into Regulus’ ear. Regulus arches his body forward, and his eyelids flutter closed. Between them, layers of rich velvet are crushed and heated. Sirius brings his mouth down onto Regulus’ neck and licks along the twitching tendon there.
His brother gasps and whimpers. ‘Shut up,’ mouths Sirius against his throat. Regulus’ hands are in his hair, tugging, stroking, pulling. When he trails his tongue down over the hollow of Regulus’ throat and over to his nipple, Regulus moans and tosses his head. He shoves his thigh between Regulus’ legs, and his brother bucks against it hard, jarring their bodies together.
Sirius pulls back and stares down at Regulus for a moment. Then he roughly strips the velvet away from Regulus’ body and waits as Regulus undoes his robes with shaking fingers. When they’re both naked he twists his fingers in Regulus’ dark hair and forces him to his knees.
Regulus wraps his arms around Sirius’ waist and takes him into his mouth faster than Sirius can think, so that in a split second his cock is nudging at the back of Regulus’ throat and his fingers are tangled in Regulus’ hair, and Regulus’ arms are so tight around his hips he can hardly move.
With each twist of his fingers in his brother’s hair, he can make Regulus whimper and moan; little noises that reverberate through his whole body and make him weak-kneed with lust. Oh god, it’s good. He almost does not have the strength to pull Regulus away from him before he comes. But he does, and looking down at Regulus panting open-mouthed and licking his lips like that is reward enough.
‘Why?’ gasps Regulus. ‘Why? I want to make you come.’
‘You will,’ says Sirius, his voice hoarse.
He uses his body to push Regulus flat onto his back, hair spread out around him in the puddled velvet of their discarded robes. He licks and bites his way down the tracks of resin marking his brother’s body, and when he finishes with a lick along the length of Regulus’ cock, Regulus’ cry is harsh, broken. He bends Regulus’ knees himself, putting his brother’s feet flat on the floor, then sucks two fingers to wet them. Regulus is watching him, sweat glistening over his body, his legs sagging open.
‘You want me to touch you, don’t you?’ says Sirius softly. Regulus nods his head desperately. ‘Touch yourself,’ he says. When Regulus does, he pushes his fingers inside his brother, and is rewarded with a ragged groan that makes Regulus’ whole body shake, for a second. ‘Slowly,’ he says, and begins to move his fingers in time with Regulus’ hand, sliding them slowly, slowly, as Regulus moans and tosses his head and makes little noises in the back of his throat that make Sirius want to hurt him, to break him, to have him, wholly possess him. He adds another finger and thrusts in cruelly, twisting his fingers, and Regulus yells out harshly.
‘You like it,’ says Sirius, ‘you want it, don’t you? You want me to hurt you, don’t you, don’t you?’
‘Please,’ gasps out Regulus. His eyes are fluttering half-shut, and his cheeks and lips are flushed red against his white skin. Sirius withdraws his fingers, positions his cock against Regulus and thrusts inside, one harsh, hard thrust.
Regulus is silent, instantly.
He looks up at Sirius, his lips and nostrils trembling, not breathing. Sirius doesn’t move. Then Regulus takes a shallow breath, another, another, and Sirius grabs his wrists and holds them against the floor out at his sides. ‘Oh, fuck,’ whispers Regulus. ‘Oh, fuck, fuck.’ His voice is shaky. He rolls his head from side to side as Sirius looks down at him.
Then Sirius starts to move and both of them fall silent, and there is only the smooth sound of skin against skin, and their mingled breathing, the spiralling crescendo of their bodies crashing towards completion.
Afterwards, Sirius fixes the violin with a flick of his wand. He pulls Regulus up onto his bed and lies next to him for a while, both of them naked but not touching.
‘You wanted to, before, didn’t you?’ says Regulus.
Sirius says nothing. He turns the violin, now whole again, over in his hands, stroking his fingers over the polished wood. It is never quite the same again. At the end of that summer, Sirius leaves the house and does not return.
(twelve years, eight months, and seventeen days of silence)
Those were the times of gaping silence. His voice was stopped with solitude. Sounds fell broken and malformed from his lips. Even his laughter was whittled hollow.
Blind with silence, he crawled the blank space of his cell and felt out the grubby, flat tones of its shape, but could not hear them. He could hear nothing. After a while, even the screams of the other prisoners had deadened and been swallowed by the quiet, growing kernel of hardness at the heart of him.
The days grew into weeks, the weeks into months, the months - oh god, the months stretched into years and still he lingered - blind, deaf, dumb: a vessel for rough-dripped hatred.
See it in silence: his face, thinning; his eyes rolling shut as the dementors come, again, again, again. In silence he yells, rants, screams, laughs. Calls out silent names and speaks the silence of the dead. Silence has him in its grip when he scratches his fingers raw against the walls, the door, and silence hurls him once, again, again, against the wall until he falls in silence to the floor, blood spreading dark as lacquer around him.
This is the caesura.
This is that gap of knowledge at the heart of everything; the second of silence that holds within its curve the moment of his eternity.
See it in silence: these years that roar past him are stripping him of who he was. And he knows. He knows.
Bach: Concerto for Two Violins in D Minor
Once, as a child, Sirius had been told he too would take up the violin. His tutor had presented him with the Stradivarius long before Regulus was allowed to touch it. He had taken to playing it easily, quickly, and had mastered it to a reasonable degree within a year. After that he refused to touch it. It was not that he had grown bored with the instrument - though of course that was what he said - more that sometimes his own nature frightened him. He did not like the wild passion that spiralled within him as he played, and played correctly. He did not like the ease with which the notes came to him. It seemed to him a subtle seduction, and he did not trust it.
Everything had always come easily to him. He could have anything he wanted, take anything he wanted. And there were moments when he realised he did not like the person this had made him into.
There are times, when he is alone in this house now, when he is alone and the house weighs dark around him, when he wonders if he is still that same person. There are times when he wonders if it matters.
The house remembers. Sometimes, it tries to remind him: in the upstairs hallway there’s a stain, suddenly, where the glass he tossed over his shoulder that night had landed and spilled its trickle of wine onto the floorboards. Sometimes he thinks he sees the faded shadow of a small and bloody handprint on the wall. And sometimes in the dining room, he can smell the rich and serpentine scent of the opium they had smoked together that summer.
Sometimes when he’s alone in the house he takes Remus’ box of hash and papers and goes to sit in there, under the bay window, and smoke himself into oblivion. The vine outside has died, and the light is grimy as it comes through the window, but no matter, no matter.
He sits with a book on his lap rolling spliffs which Remus would call too strong entirely and smoking them, watching the smoke curling up, up. And he thinks of those ninety seconds of music that made him realise, made him see.
And he thinks of Regulus: thinks of him playing that day in the shifting green light with the shadows of leaves playing over his chest, the glint of sweat on his top lip and the concentration that came into his face. It was as if Sirius had vanished, for those ninety seconds, and Regulus had only then come fully into existence. What had that afternoon conjured up? He doesn’t know.
He feels a ghost in this house. And he knows he is not the only one to haunt it.
They move together, he and Regulus. They slip between the shadows of the place, the two sons of the ancient house of Black, they become each other in darkness and in the silence of each night. He wonders that no one else sees his brother, hears the whisper of his robes, spots the wing of tossed black hair. Those long white hands moving, moving in the dim, secretive spaces of the house. He wonders that no one notices. But they do not. He is already a host to ghosts, the plaything of the spirits.
Sirius leans his head back against the windowsill and exhales. Smoke curls from between his lips. In front of him, Regulus is standing, violin in one hand, bow in the other. The sunlight catches the sweat beaded along his collarbone. Sirius smiles. The boy he once was is walking out of the room, leaving, and Regulus turns to watch him go. But this Sirius stays, and watches Regulus pack up his violin, his hands as careful and as reverent as they were when they unpacked it. And then he’s gone, and never was: only a wisp of smoke in grimy sunlight. Sirius reaches out his hand, and his fingers part the curtains of hanging smoke, veil after veil after veil.
Barber: Adagio
Beyond, there is no difference between smoke and skin, a shadow and a beating heart. Dust sifts softly in a slow room. Silence and the shadows of leaves, the air is green with them. Smoke spirals up, up -
‘Play for me,’ he whispers.
The scent of powdered resin, heat and frankincense. Faint click of the bow taken up.
Regulus’ fingers find their spacing on the ebony fingerboard. The bow hovers millimetres from the strings. He closes his eyes.