The Source of the Poison
Author: Bitterfig
Title: The Source of the Poison
Fandom: Harry Potter
Pairing: Remus Lupin/Sirius Black (Sirius Black/Regulus Black past)
Summary: Set on Halloween morning, 1981. Sirius believes that Remus is a Death Eater, but at the heart of his paranoia are his own guilty secrets.
Beta Reader: Nzomniac
Word Count: 1804
Rating: R
Warnings: This is Remus and Sirius, but it’s not puppy love. Yaoi, language, angst, violence, allusions to masturbation, incest and chan.
Author’s Note: This is my first post to
hp_spotlighting, I'm so pleased that I was asked to join. Because I originally wrote and posted this story a few days before Christmas I feel like it slipped through the cracks and received very little attention so I thought I’d give it another try as part of the “Everything Old is New Again” challenge.
The Source of the Poison
Sirius Black woke up to the hiss of the kettle, the rattle of a spoon against a cup. The familiar sounds of Remus making tea-a mug for himself and one for Sirius. When he heard the kitchen door creak open and shut, he knew Remus must have gone outside, cold as it was, to sit at the wrought iron table in the orchard and watch the sun burn away the morning mist.
These were the sounds of their morning routine. This was their life together.
Getting out of bed, he walked to the kitchen. As expected, his tea was waiting for him, hot and sweet. Even if he’d lingered in bed for an hour, it wouldn’t have gone cold-some little spell that Remus used that only Remus would think of. Remus always thought of him. He was sure Remus was thinking of him at that moment.
He looked out the window to the frost silvered orchard. It was the end of October, and the trees were bare of leaves though a few pieces of bird bitten fruit still hung from the branches. Remus was sitting in a garden chair, his legs pulled up to his chest, forehead resting on his knees in a posture of such despondency that he might have been decades older than his twenty-two years. He must have known he didn’t belong any more, that leaving the tea, going through the familiar motions as if nothing had changed would not make up for the reality that everything had changed.
Picking up his mug, Sirius stepped out into the chilly morning, frozen blades of grass crackling under his feet as he walked to the orchard. Remus looked up at him, so much hope and longing in those eyes.
And so many lies.
Sirius dashed the mug of hot tea in Remus’ face.
“Death Eater,” he said kicking over the chair his lover sat in.
*****
Sirius had thrown Remus out the week before-put him out with nothing but the clothes on his back and a warning never to come back. Sirius had changed the locks, warded the whole place against any kind of communication or intrusion. He’d been fully prepared to cut Remus Lupin out of his life completely.
It had to be done. Lily and James were going into hiding; they wanted Sirius to be their Secret Keeper, but he didn’t think he was a good choice. He was compromised. For months, he had been living with someone he didn’t trust.
Someone in the Order of the Phoenix was a traitor. Sly and elusive, no one had any idea who it could be, but Sirius was convinced it was Remus.
“If you really believe he’s a Death Eater, why are you still fucking him?” Lily whispered to him when James was tending to the baby. James had a sentimental view of his friends, but Lily knew how things were, and with death loaming over her, she didn’t mince words. Sirius hadn’t been able to answer her.
He did believe, with every fiber of his being, that Remus was the Death Eater in their midst. He had no proof, only an instinctual feeling. He recognized that Remus was corrupt, poisoned, tainted with evil in the same way his younger brother, Regulus, had been. That Remus carried inside him the same thing that had allowed Regulus to become a Death Eater.
Yet, even believing this, Sirius didn’t want things to end between them. What he wanted was to get to the truth. He had devoted the past weeks to trying to shout, shake, pound or cajole the truth from his lover to no avail, but he couldn’t tell Lily that. It made him seem like a bit of a madman.
Maybe he was a bit of a madman.
Something in him had come unhinged when Regulus was murdered the year before. He had seen his little brother’s corpse-naked on a slab, limbs turned at odd angles, gapping wounds showing layers of cold fat and pooled blood. Regulus’ porcelain angel face had been reduced to a series of eyeless, toothless holes, a torn mask of meat and bone.
Regulus’ body, Regulus’ face had always had a power over Sirius. Seeing them for what they were should have set him free, but it didn’t. After Regulus died, Sirius was haunted by memories he would not remember.
He began to see Regulus in Remus, to sense in his lover his little brother’s evil power. Yet, it did not frighten him; it made him want Remus like he never had before. He had always taken the werewolf for granted, but after Regulus died, he become possessive, jealous, needy as he had never been before. Even as his trust for Remus waned, Sirius began to feel … for the first time felt as if he might actually love him.
He couldn’t let Lily know this, not Lily or James or Dumbledore. So he did the simple, rational thing. If you suspect your boyfriend of being a Death Eater, you throw him out.
The hard part was living without him. Living uncompromised but alone. For five nights, he lay sleepless in their bed, jerking off as images of Remus became memories of Regulus, of grinding against his brother’s pale, lithe body. Regulus’ violet-grey eyes, Remus’ narrow gold eyes-always watching him, always thinking of him.
On the night of the 30th, the day before James and Lily were supposed to go into hiding, Sirius had broken. He’d ridden into London and gone looking for Remus, turned into a dog and tracked his scent. When he was a dog, everything became simple. His friend was missing; he had to find him.
He located Remus in a shabby corner of Knockturn Alley, sleeping huddled in a doorway with his overcoat pulled around him against the bitter cold.
“Moony…” Sirius called as he resumed his human form. Remus started awake, bitter anger playing across his features. “Don’t tell me you’ve been living on the streets all this time.”
“What do you care?” Remus snarled, rage and hatred in his voice, but he was fighting back tears. Sirius couldn’t help but smile. Remus wasn’t a brat like Regulus had been; he rarely lost his temper. He didn’t give Sirius a lot of opportunity to work his own particular kind of magic, but tonight he would.
“Your Death Eater friends haven’t taken very good care of you.” Sirius said lightly.
“Fuck you,” Remus said. “Just … fuck you.”
“Moony,” Sirius whispered, his hand trailing down Remus’ check.
“Don’t…”
“I’m here now, Moony. I came after you.”
When Sirius tried, he could be irresistible. He made promises and apologies; he said all the right things, and Remus came home with him. As they entered the house, Sirius stripped away the filthy clothing Remus had worn for the past week. Then he removed his own clothes.
“Please, Sirius, not yet,” Remus pleaded. “I haven’t bathed, I’m dirty, I smell...”
“I don’t care,” Sirius said. “I need you.”
Remus’ skin was icy cold, his eyes glazed from days without a decent meal or a night’s sleep. Still, he clung to Sirius with a feral strength, thrust against him ferociously before he finally came in violent convulsions.
Sirius had fucked him again in the bath, in the hallway, finally in bed. Remus was barely conscious by that time but still eager, almost desperate to be there for Sirius, to be needed, to be used. Wasn’t that love? Love at its most beautifully simple.
We are like brothers, Sirius thought.
*****
Things were much more complicated by the light of day.
Sirius straddled Remus, pinning his wrists to the ground; then, bending down, he roughly licked the sweet tea from his face.
“Death Eater,” he said again.
“Why didn’t you just leave me in Knockturn Alley last night?” Remus asked hollowly. “Why did you bring me back here?”
Why? Why was he convinced that his oldest friend, his lover, was infected with evil? Why did he feel the need to hurt everyone he touched? He licked Remus’ face again, gently this time, tongue flickering at his lips, between his lips, parrying into a kiss. Why?
Remus’ lips parted, yielded to him. Remus would always yield to him just as Regulus had. Maybe Remus wasn’t a Death Eater like Regulus had been, but he was like Regulus in that he had always yielded to Sirius. He had let Sirius take his innocence. He was corrupt, compromised.
Regulus was a dark little thing, sexually precocious. He’d given himself to Sirius body and soul by the age of ten. Sirius had taken everything he was offered, used his brother as he pleased, then walked away.
Now Regulus was dead. Tortured beyond recognition, murdered. They’d never found his pretty purple eye. Somewhere, it was still watching Sirius. He could feel it staring through him, through all the stories he made up about himself, penetrating the hidden core, the truth at the heart of everything.
The truth. Wasn’t that what Sirius wanted so badly to get at?
“I’m going to tell you my darkest secret, Moony,” Sirius said. “Then you can tell me yours, and I’ll understand. Whatever it is, I’ll understand. My brother Regulus and I … we were together, like you and I were together last night. We fucked from the time I could. I thought it was okay then. Our parents knew about it: they let it happen, they thought it was appropriate, something that happened in powerful magic families. The pharaohs in Egypt always married their siblings; Arthur and Morgan le Fay were half-brother and sister. When I got older, I realized it was wrong, that it was abnormal, that if people knew they’d be disgusted. I was disgusted. I wouldn’t talk to Regulus any more; I didn’t want to have anything to do with him, but I didn’t stop fucking him. Even after I left home, even after I graduated, even after he became a Death Eater. For years I was cruel to him, I hurt him, but I think I loved him. I think I loved him all along, Moony, but I never let him know it.”
He released Remus, slumped against him on the frozen ground, each leaf outlined in crystals of ice. He had infected them. He was the one who was tainted, the source of the poison. He couldn’t be anyone’s Secret Keeper. Remus turned his face to Sirius. A bruise was rising on his temple where the mug had struck him, and his golden eyes glowed with a strange light.
“I knew, Padfoot.” he whispered. “I knew about Regulus.”
“Tell me your secret,” Sirius said. Remus’ cold, wet hand found his. Their clumsy, frozen fingers linked.
“My darkest secret,” he said, “the thing that destroys me, the thing I’m most ashamed of, is that I love you.”
Title: The Source of the Poison
Fandom: Harry Potter
Pairing: Remus Lupin/Sirius Black (Sirius Black/Regulus Black past)
Summary: Set on Halloween morning, 1981. Sirius believes that Remus is a Death Eater, but at the heart of his paranoia are his own guilty secrets.
Beta Reader: Nzomniac
Word Count: 1804
Rating: R
Warnings: This is Remus and Sirius, but it’s not puppy love. Yaoi, language, angst, violence, allusions to masturbation, incest and chan.
Author’s Note: This is my first post to
hp_spotlighting, I'm so pleased that I was asked to join. Because I originally wrote and posted this story a few days before Christmas I feel like it slipped through the cracks and received very little attention so I thought I’d give it another try as part of the “Everything Old is New Again” challenge.
The Source of the Poison
Sirius Black woke up to the hiss of the kettle, the rattle of a spoon against a cup. The familiar sounds of Remus making tea-a mug for himself and one for Sirius. When he heard the kitchen door creak open and shut, he knew Remus must have gone outside, cold as it was, to sit at the wrought iron table in the orchard and watch the sun burn away the morning mist.
These were the sounds of their morning routine. This was their life together.
Getting out of bed, he walked to the kitchen. As expected, his tea was waiting for him, hot and sweet. Even if he’d lingered in bed for an hour, it wouldn’t have gone cold-some little spell that Remus used that only Remus would think of. Remus always thought of him. He was sure Remus was thinking of him at that moment.
He looked out the window to the frost silvered orchard. It was the end of October, and the trees were bare of leaves though a few pieces of bird bitten fruit still hung from the branches. Remus was sitting in a garden chair, his legs pulled up to his chest, forehead resting on his knees in a posture of such despondency that he might have been decades older than his twenty-two years. He must have known he didn’t belong any more, that leaving the tea, going through the familiar motions as if nothing had changed would not make up for the reality that everything had changed.
Picking up his mug, Sirius stepped out into the chilly morning, frozen blades of grass crackling under his feet as he walked to the orchard. Remus looked up at him, so much hope and longing in those eyes.
And so many lies.
Sirius dashed the mug of hot tea in Remus’ face.
“Death Eater,” he said kicking over the chair his lover sat in.
*****
Sirius had thrown Remus out the week before-put him out with nothing but the clothes on his back and a warning never to come back. Sirius had changed the locks, warded the whole place against any kind of communication or intrusion. He’d been fully prepared to cut Remus Lupin out of his life completely.
It had to be done. Lily and James were going into hiding; they wanted Sirius to be their Secret Keeper, but he didn’t think he was a good choice. He was compromised. For months, he had been living with someone he didn’t trust.
Someone in the Order of the Phoenix was a traitor. Sly and elusive, no one had any idea who it could be, but Sirius was convinced it was Remus.
“If you really believe he’s a Death Eater, why are you still fucking him?” Lily whispered to him when James was tending to the baby. James had a sentimental view of his friends, but Lily knew how things were, and with death loaming over her, she didn’t mince words. Sirius hadn’t been able to answer her.
He did believe, with every fiber of his being, that Remus was the Death Eater in their midst. He had no proof, only an instinctual feeling. He recognized that Remus was corrupt, poisoned, tainted with evil in the same way his younger brother, Regulus, had been. That Remus carried inside him the same thing that had allowed Regulus to become a Death Eater.
Yet, even believing this, Sirius didn’t want things to end between them. What he wanted was to get to the truth. He had devoted the past weeks to trying to shout, shake, pound or cajole the truth from his lover to no avail, but he couldn’t tell Lily that. It made him seem like a bit of a madman.
Maybe he was a bit of a madman.
Something in him had come unhinged when Regulus was murdered the year before. He had seen his little brother’s corpse-naked on a slab, limbs turned at odd angles, gapping wounds showing layers of cold fat and pooled blood. Regulus’ porcelain angel face had been reduced to a series of eyeless, toothless holes, a torn mask of meat and bone.
Regulus’ body, Regulus’ face had always had a power over Sirius. Seeing them for what they were should have set him free, but it didn’t. After Regulus died, Sirius was haunted by memories he would not remember.
He began to see Regulus in Remus, to sense in his lover his little brother’s evil power. Yet, it did not frighten him; it made him want Remus like he never had before. He had always taken the werewolf for granted, but after Regulus died, he become possessive, jealous, needy as he had never been before. Even as his trust for Remus waned, Sirius began to feel … for the first time felt as if he might actually love him.
He couldn’t let Lily know this, not Lily or James or Dumbledore. So he did the simple, rational thing. If you suspect your boyfriend of being a Death Eater, you throw him out.
The hard part was living without him. Living uncompromised but alone. For five nights, he lay sleepless in their bed, jerking off as images of Remus became memories of Regulus, of grinding against his brother’s pale, lithe body. Regulus’ violet-grey eyes, Remus’ narrow gold eyes-always watching him, always thinking of him.
On the night of the 30th, the day before James and Lily were supposed to go into hiding, Sirius had broken. He’d ridden into London and gone looking for Remus, turned into a dog and tracked his scent. When he was a dog, everything became simple. His friend was missing; he had to find him.
He located Remus in a shabby corner of Knockturn Alley, sleeping huddled in a doorway with his overcoat pulled around him against the bitter cold.
“Moony…” Sirius called as he resumed his human form. Remus started awake, bitter anger playing across his features. “Don’t tell me you’ve been living on the streets all this time.”
“What do you care?” Remus snarled, rage and hatred in his voice, but he was fighting back tears. Sirius couldn’t help but smile. Remus wasn’t a brat like Regulus had been; he rarely lost his temper. He didn’t give Sirius a lot of opportunity to work his own particular kind of magic, but tonight he would.
“Your Death Eater friends haven’t taken very good care of you.” Sirius said lightly.
“Fuck you,” Remus said. “Just … fuck you.”
“Moony,” Sirius whispered, his hand trailing down Remus’ check.
“Don’t…”
“I’m here now, Moony. I came after you.”
When Sirius tried, he could be irresistible. He made promises and apologies; he said all the right things, and Remus came home with him. As they entered the house, Sirius stripped away the filthy clothing Remus had worn for the past week. Then he removed his own clothes.
“Please, Sirius, not yet,” Remus pleaded. “I haven’t bathed, I’m dirty, I smell...”
“I don’t care,” Sirius said. “I need you.”
Remus’ skin was icy cold, his eyes glazed from days without a decent meal or a night’s sleep. Still, he clung to Sirius with a feral strength, thrust against him ferociously before he finally came in violent convulsions.
Sirius had fucked him again in the bath, in the hallway, finally in bed. Remus was barely conscious by that time but still eager, almost desperate to be there for Sirius, to be needed, to be used. Wasn’t that love? Love at its most beautifully simple.
We are like brothers, Sirius thought.
*****
Things were much more complicated by the light of day.
Sirius straddled Remus, pinning his wrists to the ground; then, bending down, he roughly licked the sweet tea from his face.
“Death Eater,” he said again.
“Why didn’t you just leave me in Knockturn Alley last night?” Remus asked hollowly. “Why did you bring me back here?”
Why? Why was he convinced that his oldest friend, his lover, was infected with evil? Why did he feel the need to hurt everyone he touched? He licked Remus’ face again, gently this time, tongue flickering at his lips, between his lips, parrying into a kiss. Why?
Remus’ lips parted, yielded to him. Remus would always yield to him just as Regulus had. Maybe Remus wasn’t a Death Eater like Regulus had been, but he was like Regulus in that he had always yielded to Sirius. He had let Sirius take his innocence. He was corrupt, compromised.
Regulus was a dark little thing, sexually precocious. He’d given himself to Sirius body and soul by the age of ten. Sirius had taken everything he was offered, used his brother as he pleased, then walked away.
Now Regulus was dead. Tortured beyond recognition, murdered. They’d never found his pretty purple eye. Somewhere, it was still watching Sirius. He could feel it staring through him, through all the stories he made up about himself, penetrating the hidden core, the truth at the heart of everything.
The truth. Wasn’t that what Sirius wanted so badly to get at?
“I’m going to tell you my darkest secret, Moony,” Sirius said. “Then you can tell me yours, and I’ll understand. Whatever it is, I’ll understand. My brother Regulus and I … we were together, like you and I were together last night. We fucked from the time I could. I thought it was okay then. Our parents knew about it: they let it happen, they thought it was appropriate, something that happened in powerful magic families. The pharaohs in Egypt always married their siblings; Arthur and Morgan le Fay were half-brother and sister. When I got older, I realized it was wrong, that it was abnormal, that if people knew they’d be disgusted. I was disgusted. I wouldn’t talk to Regulus any more; I didn’t want to have anything to do with him, but I didn’t stop fucking him. Even after I left home, even after I graduated, even after he became a Death Eater. For years I was cruel to him, I hurt him, but I think I loved him. I think I loved him all along, Moony, but I never let him know it.”
He released Remus, slumped against him on the frozen ground, each leaf outlined in crystals of ice. He had infected them. He was the one who was tainted, the source of the poison. He couldn’t be anyone’s Secret Keeper. Remus turned his face to Sirius. A bruise was rising on his temple where the mug had struck him, and his golden eyes glowed with a strange light.
“I knew, Padfoot.” he whispered. “I knew about Regulus.”
“Tell me your secret,” Sirius said. Remus’ cold, wet hand found his. Their clumsy, frozen fingers linked.
“My darkest secret,” he said, “the thing that destroys me, the thing I’m most ashamed of, is that I love you.”