7 days - 7 fics Challenge: Harry Potter, Sirius/Harry, Sirius/James
Phew. Day 5. Too busy today so I had to look in my archive. I wrote this two years ago, but never posted it. It'll be interesting to compare it with the other pieces in the challenge. Enjoy!
Title: Double Act
Author: Lullabylily
Fandom: Harry Potter
Characters/Pairing:: Sirius/Harry, Sirius/James
Rating: R
Warnings: angst, sex
Summary: He breathed in deep to take in the smell. It didn’t smell like James. Part of him was saddened by that realization. But it didn’t put him to halt.
Double Act
Love
He breathed in deep to take in the smell. It didn’t smell like James. Part of him was saddened by that realization. But it didn’t put him to halt. Instead his hands tightened around the chestnut locks of youth before him. If he closed his eyes tight, as not to look into those emerald eyes, maybe he could believe.
Did he feel guilty, for taking the youth of a confused boy in his stride? Filling an uncorrupted heart with notions of desires so foreign to the youngster that he could not help being swept away by them? Harry’s tongue flicked over his teeth. A confused seeking of truth. Only innocence believed that the course of hands on a bare chest working their way downwards would answer burning questions of love and belonging. They were both shipwrecked and holding on to illusions.
It hadn’t been like that with James. James always knew what he wanted and where he was headed for. James’s hands had worked with a determination that was maddening. The air in the lone room at Grimmauld Place was suffocating him with memories of midnight meetings through the fireplace, the solace of a ‘popping’ sound and a pair of arms wrapping around him.
“Sirius,” Harry’s voice was thick and slurry between swollen lips. Sirius forced himself to open his eyes and look into the emerald ones. “Harry…” a big lump was in his throat. Relishing in the reminiscent sound of a different Potter uttering his name in the same breathless fashion. “I love you.” His heart stopped. He bit away tears. How could hearing those words make him feel so empty? Did he not wait years to hear them?
“I love you…” James had said in the same voice on their first night together. They had been boys, hiding in and empty classroom after curfew. In partly undressed state; the night had already been filled with kisses and feverish eyes. They had said it to each other. The last reassurance needed. James never said it again.
“I love you,” Sirirus did reply. The sincerity of the words shook the declarer himself. For a moment realisation hit Sirius. Love. Protection. I can’t hurt him.
For a moment he wanted to back away and run and for once live up to the role of godfather that James had intended for him. But knowing better and acting upon it were miles apart. And as he felt the arms around his neck drawing him closer, he melted down. He needed this. He had craved this. Harry had reached the age of consent. The boy could turn away if he wanted to. Or so Sirius tried to convince himself.
He was lost in the feel of soft fingertips moving along his body; their tenderness sent shivers down his spine. His own gestures seemed rough and harsh in comparison. Teach me, was Sirius’ unspoken plea: teach me how to be gentle again. I’ve forgotten. Teach me how to love and not hurt. Don’t let me hurt you.
As the boy’s tongue and lips passed over Sirius’s they no longer felt chaffed and broken. He could now lay soft kisses one by one upon Harry’s chest. Proceeding towards lower areas, the remaining garments were quickly removed. Forgive me James..
In the end it did not matter who it was that brought every inch of his body to life, bringing a sense of happiness that he had long believed never to feel again. He called out Harry’s name as he reached completion even though a different name lay treacherously on his lips.
Harry’s arms wrapped around him, the youngster whispering his name. Whispering words of love and Sirius pressed his face against Harry’s shoulder, ashamed of the tears behind his eyes.
Jealousy
He had accidentally called Ginny ‘Lily’ once. She had laughed in confusion but had not spoken about it to anyone. Sirius convinced himself she could have no understanding of what had caused the mistake. Ginny had Lily’s locks and fiery spirit, but it was the way she looked at Harry that made the resemblance complete. He had heard mentioning, mockingly, of Ginny’s crush, her teenage love poetry and idolatry. Though young she was, they way her look appraised Harry had a calmness and maturity of affection Sirius had only once seen before in a fourteen year old. He could have no doubt her emotions were well beyond childish admiration, or in Lily’s case teenage rivalry. These women had a will of their own and she could have Harry winded around her little finger before long.
Maybe it was too easy to blame Lily for the sudden halt of his nightly meetings with James. For ages he had blamed himself. The Whomping Willow, Snape and his own stupidity had caused James to not as much as glance in his direction for months. He would never forget the loneliness of a Christmas without presents. But the prank would have effects lasting longer than the time of the freeze-out, as James had turned to Lily in his search for comforting.
Maybe it was closer to the truth James had just grown up. Their romantic flings only part of a youthful wish to break rules, a teenage rebellion against boundaries. With a large, friendly bear hug James had closed Sirius back into his heart. But from this moment on, in James’s mind, boundaries were set. Friendship and love, but for Sirius the lines would keep blurring.
Maybe Lily was aware. Perhaps that is why she suggested Sirius as the ‘best man’. With all my heart I give you away, James, to the women you have chosen to love and who loves you in return. Giving up what was left of his dreams behind a façade of smiles.
Insanity
He killed them. He had blood on his hands. James’s blood. James’s dead body, pale and perfect as ever. Not one little spot of blemish or blood, only death’s dark shadow on an empty face. There was no blame in his eyes. Not even the terror of a deadly battle struck in his traces. He looked peaceful. Let me join you. Sirius grinded his fingers deep into the stone-cluttered earth of Azkaban. He couldn’t find the strength to transform. Why didn’t those monsters just kill him?
Dead eyes would open and look at him in disgust. James. He would reach out but was rejected. No! He couldn’t remember James like that! He had to cherish the good memories he had left. But they were slipping away. Harry! He tried to fill himself with the happiness he had felt when he was named Harry’s godfather. It had been as if he and James shared something again, their bond going deeper than brotherly friendship. It was a beautiful gift and even James was happy to see Sirius smiling so genuinely. The war had been raging around them. It was spoken about in soft whispers as not to break the spell of happiness. But already a threat was growing. It was fuelled by the birth of Harry. Voldemort had chosen his target. Harry was barely two months old when talk of the Fidelius charm began, in hushed voices and dark corridors. It was in one of those whispered conversations that doom was set in motion.
“I trust you. You know I would not trust anyone else with my life and the lives of my family.” Sirius could only cringe as he sensed the weight of the responsibility on him. But he hadn’t felt so loved by James in a very long time. The way James looked at him in that moment, eyes wide and hopeful, a slight trace of fear quickly covered by determination. He impulsively took James’s hand. “I’ll die before I let the slightest harm befall you.”
Neither of them had foreseen it. Neither could even tell who initiated it. It lasted seconds before it was broken off. Was it the proximity? The cold of the first frost outside? A memory from years before of hands holding hands, of skin touching skin? Their lips were locked. Tongues remembering their path as if no time had ever passed. Sirius felt cold fingers in his neck and realised his own hands were in the same place on the young boy that had become a man in the time between two kisses. How had they gotten there? But he couldn’t think.
James broke away abruptly. Sirius opened his eyes reluctantly at the sudden loss of warmth. James had taken a step backwards; looking ahead with big confused eyes. Sirius was sure this time the fear was unadulterated. A look of incomprehension behind the spectacles; he could not grasp where the fire had come from. They had felt it; the reminiscence of a flame long thought burnt out. It had escaped his control and it scared him. Fear quickly turned to anger.
“What is this nonsense you speak about?” It all happened too quickly for Sirius to interject.
“Get away…” It sounded hesitantly the first time, but he repeated it with more aim and purpose; “Get away from me.” It was James who left.