The Effigy: Chapter Four (part 2, ends)

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Sirius laughed and slid the pants away, maddeningly slowly. The effigy bent forward and braced his hand on Sirius’ shoulder while he stepped out of them. Then he rose again and stood to his full height, completely nude, pale flesh gleaming in the dim light of the bedroom, smooth chest rising and falling rapidly, body visibly aroused.

“Good God,” Remus whispered. “God. Now do you see, Sirius? Do you see why I say you’re beautiful, even when I know you don’t like it? Even you have to admit …” He broke off and waved his hand at the effigy helplessly.

Sirius looked at his copy critically for a moment. “We-ell … objectively speaking … maybe you might have a point … but I have to tell you, from the neck up, he looks a whole hell of a lot like my mother.”

“Or like his horrid cousin,” the effigy added. “I seem to have some vaguely unpleasant memories about her, for some reason.”

“Let’s not discuss my family just now, if you don’t mind,” Sirius snapped. “All us inbred, pureblood genetic dead-ends look much too much alike, it’s a grotesque fact of life. Remus, you’re the director of this bizarre little psychodrama. What’s next?”

Remus rolled his eyes. “He always gets snippy if I mention his appearance,” he said to the effigy. “Maybe you can think of something to do to put him back in a pleasant temper?”

The effigy settled himself on the bed beside Sirius and kissed his cheek in a friendly sort of way.

“He’d just prefer to look like himself and not a dozen generations of other Blacks,” he said, and kissed Sirius again. “Wouldn’t you?”

“Can you blame me?” Sirius replied and leaned into the kiss a tiny touch.

“Oh, no worries, mate. I understand perfectly. Could you raise your arms? We’ll pull this robe off.”

Sirius smiled, apparently over his momentary fit of pique. “No, just open it. Moony likes me all undone, but partially clothed. It drives him a bit mental. You’ll see.”

“Oh, yes?” the effigy said, interested. He pulled the fabric away from Sirius' left side, baring one shoulder and most of Sirius’ chest. “Like this?”

“Yesssss,” Remus commented. “Like that.”

“Let’s see how much interest in this ‘bizarre little psychodrama’ you really have,” the effigy said into Sirius ear, and then licked it. “Shall we? Empirical evidence, don’t you know. Roll to the right, a bit.”

Sirius twisted to his right side and his magical copy pulled his robe more fully open and then kissed his hip once he’d gotten it cleared.

“Mmmm,” Sirius mumbled in response. “Nice. That’s … really nice. I like that. So, anyway, will you need a ruler and calipers to make your evaluation, or can you just … eyeball it?”

They both snickered like naughty little boys at the exact same time and the effigy rubbed Sirius’ bare belly in a circular motion, as though he was rubbing a magic lamp with a genie inside. Remus simply moaned outright.

Then Remus noticed something special and leaned forward toward them a bit.

“Oh. Oh, look, he has it too. Oh … my … umm …”

“Who has it?” the effigy asked, confused.

“Has what?” Sirius asked, equally confused.

“Your birthmark,” Remus explained to Sirius, suddenly unable to stop grinning like a maniac. “That little key-shaped spot you have. He’s got one too.”

Both Sirius and the effigy looked down at themselves, and then down at one another.

“Oh, oh I see,” the effigy said. “I hadn’t noticed that before. What a peculiar place for a birthmark.”

Sirius reached out and lightly touched the corresponding spot on his magical duplicate, a slightly intrigued look on his face. “How odd. I’ve never really seen it before…” he said. “It’s at a bad angle for me. Remus always makes such a fuss over it, though …”

“Only because it’s just about my favorite thing in the world,” Remus explained, still grinning madly.

“Is it really?” the effigy asked him, somewhat bemused. He put his own forefinger on Sirius’ spot. “This little thing?”

“Yours is a just a little bit to the left,” Sirius remarked to the effigy. He glanced at Remus. “Is that where it is on me?”

Remus grinned so much he was surprised the top of his head didn’t fall off. “No, no it isn’t, Sirius. Yours is a little to the right.”

“Oh, Merlin’s Whiskers!” said Sirius, and burst out laughing. “This is all just so … so incredibly odd. I’m all at sixes and sevens, truly I am!” He continued to laugh, hard, and in short order, the effigy also started laughing.

“C’mere, handsome,” Sirius finally cackled to his effigy. “Might as well give us another kiss. I suppose Moony’ll never forgive me if you don’t.”

“No,” Remus confirmed. “I guarantee you I won’t.”

“All right, all right,” the effigy spluttered, through his own guffaws. “I’ll do it, Moony. But first he has to promise not to call me ‘handsome’ ever again!”

And then, of course, both Sirius and the effigy simply dissolved into crazed cackles like the rather eccentric creatures they both, via a slightly miscalculated spell, were.

Sirius made a great effort to stop laughing enough to talk. “Sorry,” he gasped to the effigy. “How about ‘glamour-puss’?”

“How about I tickle you dead?” the effigy replied. “Don’t think I can’t do it. I was born knowing all your ticklish places. Every last one of them.”

“That information could work both ways, you know,” Sirius growled through all his laughter and tackled the effigy in one fell swoop, long fingers instinctively seeking and finding all the most ticklish spots as he bore his copy to the mattress beneath him.  The effigy struggled wildly against the playful assault and tickled back and laughed so hard he choked. Their roughhousing almost bounced Remus right off the bed.

An odd thought occurred to Remus as he scrambled to maintain his place. He suddenly realized that Sirius had never and would never play so rough with him. He had never before seen such a clear demonstration of how much of that wild, manic spirit that imbued Sirius he customarily kept damped down. And then, Remus realized how good it made him feel to see Sirius with the one partner in the world with whom he could truly take the gloves off.

“Give up …yet … handsome?” Sirius was huffing to his temporary opponent.

“Fuck … you … and the … the bike you flew in on …” the effigy replied, still laughing his brains out.

Sirius tickled harder and mock-bit the enemy’s left flank, still laughing himself. “Surrender!” he demanded.

“You surrender!” The effigy heaved himself up and dumped Sirius onto his own back and then immediately pounced on him, trying to pin him in a wild tangle of flailing limbs.

A doomed attempt from the outset, Remus could see. They were, of course, much too evenly matched for one or the other to prevail. In the melee of white skin and flying black hair and wild peals of laughter, Remus would not have been able to guess which of them was which, were it not for the effigy’s state of total undress, compared to Sirius’ skewed and tangled robes.

Another insanely erotic sight, really. Remus waited patiently for the two of them to tire one another out.

In time, their struggles slowed and finally subsided, and they both lay panting and still laughing occasionally, across the bed, long legs still comfortably tangled.

“I think we’ll have to call it a draw…” Sirius admitted.

The effigy shrugged. “I have no objection. Could you move your elbow? You’ve got it in my ear.”

Sirius raised himself up enough to rest his shoulders against the headboard and propped his head in one hand. The effigy twisted himself around and rested his head lightly on Sirius’ stomach. Then they both languidly turned in the same moment to gaze at Remus.

“Oh, dear,” Sirius said. “We’ve gotten distracted and neglected you, Moony. How very rude of us.”

He reached out his free hand and stroked Remus’ cheek. The effigy put his hand on Remus’ knee.

“Well, we are terribly rude sometimes,” the effigy said. “That is, I’m all right, mostly, but Sirius here is an unmitigated boor. How you tolerate him is a mystery to me.”

Sirius smiled lazily, amused by the insult, and reached down to clamp his hand over the effigy’s mouth to shut it.

“How do you tolerate me, Moony?” he asked, softly.

Remus smiled. “Well, it is a bit difficult, to be quite honest, but you do have your strong points. And, of course, it doesn’t hurt that you’re the sexiest wizard alive.”

The effigy laughed so hard at that reply that he shook Sirius’ restraining hand off. “Oh … honestly! Of all the absurd nonsense…”

“What are you laughing at?” Sirius asked him, also laughing. “That makes you the sexiest wizard alive too, moron.”

“Only for a couple of hours or so,” the effigy reminded him lightly. Most of the laughter went out of Sirius’ face at once and he stared down at the effigy in his lap.

“Is that starting to … to make you unhappy?” Sirius asked.

“No … no, not really. I was … just thinking how much I’ve enjoyed being here, like this, with the two of you. That I’ll be sorry to leave when the time comes. You’ve both been so kind to me.”

Sirius sighed and drew his hands across the effigy’s temples, massaging gently with his fingertips.  Remus recognized the movement; it was something that Sirius had always particularly liked when Remus did it for him. Remus wondered if Sirius knew what he was doing, or if it was purely unconscious.

“Remus has been kind to you,” Sirius amended. “But me - I’m the one who put you in a severely limited existence and then accidentally made you aware enough to know it. I am clearly not qualified to be God. You shouldn’t thank me for anything.”

The effigy reached up to Sirius’ neck and pulled his head down, down close enough to kiss him.

“You’re too quick to take the dim view,” the effigy said, once he’d finished kissing Sirius and released him. “I told you - I don’t mind being aware and … alive. Especially considering the alternative - just being a brainless, emotionless … illusion.  It’s been a good life, Sirius. From my perspective, it really doesn’t much matter that you did it by mistake.”

“Or that it’s coming to an abrupt end?” Sirius asked.

“Isn’t your life coming to an abrupt end?” the effigy countered. “And Moony’s? And everyone else’s’? When your time comes, will you be saying ‘I wish I’d never lived at all’?”

“I hope not…” Sirius said quietly, more to himself than to the two of them.

Remus felt strangely troubled by the turn the conversation had taken and commented a bit more harshly than he’d intended. “It’s not the same thing! Sirius’ life isn’t coming to an end at six this morning!”

Sirius looked up into Remus’ eyes quickly, and then his face softened. “You can’t know that, though, Moony,” he said gently. “None of us knows the day or the hour.”

“I do,” the effigy reminded them softly.

Both Remus and Sirius stared at him, and he smiled at them. “See? I keep telling you silly gits that it’s a good life. But … you know, I don’t think I really can be the sexiest wizard alive. After all, Moony won’t even kiss me.”

Remus laughed. Perhaps the effigy, an ephemeral magical construction made only of smoke and mirrors, had somehow guessed more about the nature of existence than either he or Sirius ever would. The future would unfold as it unfolded. What truly mattered was the moment.

Seize the day…

“I never said I wouldn’t,” Remus argued, smiling. “Only that there were a few things I wanted to see first.”

Sirius heaved a great mock-sigh. “So now we’re back to his previously unknown voyeuristic kinks. Work, work, work!”

“But we can deny him nothing,” the effigy added in long-suffering tones. He turned his head in Sirius’ lap and, while gazing at Remus, deliberately licked Sirius’ key-shaped spot.

“…holy … fuck…” Sirius gasped, galvanized by the intimate touch. His hips arched upward and he blindly reached out and grasped one of the effigy’s slim hands, then brought it to his lips to kiss the fingertips.

“Is that the way, Moony?” the effigy asked, lightly stroking Sirius’ hip with his free hand as he gazed up at Remus.

Remus could only stare, fascinated to silence by the bizarre sight before him, a wash of subtle contrasts and colors: the effigy’s pale fingertips with the pink tip of Sirius’ tongue among them; the stark chiaroscuro of the effigy’s black hair flowing over the white skin of Sirius’ thighs; the dusky scarlet of the effigy’s lips so near the deepening rose of the living blood they had summoned to Sirius’ quickening cock, the cool, familiar grey of the effigy’s eyes and the warm, dark sable of the birthmark.

“Oh, yes,” Remus said at last. “Yes. That’s the way.”

The effigy took Sirius into both his hands, beautifully shaped hands that were achingly familiar to Remus. He looked up into his creator’s eyes and then kissed the birthmark again, almost as though he was saying hello.

“Would it be all right, then? More, I mean ..?” he said quietly to Sirius. “Do you want … would you like … how should I ..?”

Sirius’ eyes slid closed and his head slumped back against the headboard. His own hands slid gently over the effigy’s head and the sides of his face. “Only what you want - only if it’s what you want…”

“I want to please you … I …I’d like that … but I’m not sure how to…”

“I think you’ll just know…” Sirius whispered, voice faint.

Self-gratification, magically squared. As it turned out, Sirius was right. The effigy did know.

Remus had never seen a more perfectly synchronized sexual act. The effigy knew all that Sirius wanted before he could ask, even before he knew himself. Every movement, every desire, every slightest hitch of breath or twitch of muscle, anticipated and realized before the mental conception could even begin to take form. Even Remus, Sirius’ intimate since they had both been little more than children, was able to learn much from the unique demonstration. And in all the years that followed, Remus would never forget this bizarre and amazing and ultimately haunting vision, his beautiful, beloved Sirius - dancing with himself on the edge of doom.

At the end of it, when Sirius was trembling with pleasure and gasping for breath and laughing as he always did in his furthest extremity of physical joy, Remus suddenly moved over close to both of them and pulled the effigy to himself, smoothing the sheaves of inky hair out of his face and holding him close.

“Oh, Moony,” the effigy said, staring up at his alter-ego’s transported face. “Is it always like this? Do I … does he… do we always laugh that way?”

“Every single time,” Remus assured him.

“No wonder you love him,” the effigy said, now gazing directly into Remus’ eyes.

“No wonder I love you both,” Remus corrected, and kissed the effigy deeply. He could still taste the essence of Sirius in the effigy’s warm, soft mouth. “How could I not?”

“Ah,” the effigy breathed, that familiar, weirdly beautiful smile on his much-loved face. “A promise fulfilled. Thank you, Moony.”

Sirius stirred then and wriggled down a bit to curl himself more fully into both of them, Remus and the effigy. He lazily kissed his magical copy’s cheekbone and then stroked Remus’ hair. “He always keeps his promises,” he said to the effigy. “I’ve never known him not to.”

It was Remus’ pleasure, then, to kiss them both in turn, first Sirius and then the effigy, then Sirius and then the effigy once again, over and over until he had lost track of whose mouth he was sounding or of whose breath he shared. It was the oddest, most dizzying sensation for Remus, overwhelmingly pleasurable and yet, at the same time, indefinably bittersweet.

There was something so fragile about it, and Remus was caught in a vivid sense of having somehow captured a momentary glimpse through a temporary and purely accidental loophole in the normal fabric of space, or of having pulled a single perfect moment out of the general wrack of time.

And he was aware of a great desire to make the effigy’s last hours in the world as full and as rich and as complete as he could.

After all, wasn’t that really all that he wanted for Sirius too?

Remus looked away from the effigy and Sirius met his eyes. What he saw there assured him that Sirius too wanted what he wanted. They had been partners for far too long for Remus to ever mistake the message of agreement in Sirius’ gaze. Sirius would do all he could to help Remus ensure that the effigy would never have cause to regret being made alive, for as long as he was alive.

While Remus bent to kiss the effigy’s throat and chest, Sirius raised himself to his knees and pulled the effigy against him, until his backside was resting on Sirius’ bent knees, his back against Sirius’ midsection, his head rolling into the hollow of Sirius shoulder. Sirius dipped his own head down to kiss the effigy’s ears, to whisper in them, to massage his temples again, to run his hands lightly over the effigy’s shoulders and down his sides.

“Now let us please you,” Sirius murmured to his magical duplicate.

Remus was struck anew by the sight of Sirius’ face just behind his mirror image’s face, his lips against the effigy’s ear, the sheaves of their hair commingling. Sirius raised his eyes to Remus’ again as he tugged gently at the effigy’s earlobe with his teeth and the effigy moaned softly and rolled his head once more, eyes closed.

Remus took the nonverbal cue. He put his hands on the effigy’s knees and slowly pulled his legs apart, then raised himself up slightly and knelt between them. He opened his own pajama shirt, hands trembling on the buttons, and then slid the bottoms down off his hips.

“Look,” Sirius was saying into the effigy’s ear. “Look at him. See how beautiful he is, our Moony? How superb? How singular?”

The effigy had opened his eyes and was taking in the unclothed Remus, head to toe, pillar to post, scars and all. He reached out a hand toward Remus, long fingers outstretched to touch him, then hesitated.

“Your scars,” he whispered, a bit awestruck. “All your scars. Do they hurt?”

Remus took the effigy’s outstretched hand and laid it on his own belly, on the long hooked scar that zigzagged down into his abdomen. “Not always,” he answered, and smiled.

Sirius kissed behind the effigy’s ears and swept his hair aside to blow on the back of his neck while Remus kissed the palms of his hands and let him familiarize himself, through touch, with the visible history of lycanthropy etched on Remus’ skin. While the effigy, by magical proxy, had Sirius’ memories, not the simple touch of a hand and nor the poignant warmth of living flesh could ever be truly recreated in memory alone. The present reality of these things, these sensations, was entirely new to the effigy, a magical entity only a few hours old. He accepted and marveled at and treasured the marks on Remus’ flesh in exactly the same way Sirius once had, the first time Remus had permitted him to touch however and wherever he wished.

Sirius slipped both his hands under the effigy’s arms to slide his palms over the effigy’s chest and belly, down past his navel and up again to his pectoral muscles, fingertips just barely skimming the nipples in the light, almost not-there way that Remus knew from experience Sirius himself most preferred.

Remus was shaken with delight, watching Sirius, in effect, touching himself, pleasing himself, loving himself. Remus hoped that somehow, through that extra degree of magical separation, Sirius had begun to understand all the good that Remus saw in him, even if only in fleeting hints.  Remus was very aware of the realization that he would never see or feel anything quite like this again.

Sirius slid his hands down his magical copy’s belly and then gently took himself in hand, stroking and softly kneading the effigy’s trembling cock in his hands. The effigy moaned and writhed in response and his eyes went heavy-lidded and unfocussed, showing that same complete sensual abandon that Remus had so often rejoiced in with the real Sirius. The sight of Sirius’ elegant hands between the effigy’s trembling thighs ignited a blaze of hunger in Remus’ own heart, and he surged forward to lie between the effigy’s outstretched legs, pressing his own hips against the effigy’s, pressing Sirius’ still-working hands inside the small, warm interstice between their bodies. He could feel the pulses of the effigy’s heartbeat and Sirius’ against his own skin, in Sirius’ wrists, in the effigy’s throbbing member, in the answering pulse deep down inside his own belly. A compelling rhythm and pace that was, in all three cases, perfectly matched.

“He can be closer to you still…” Sirius was murmuring into the effigy’s ears. “There can still be more. Moony, cast the charm, yes?”

Remus nodded jerkily and fumbled about in the bedclothes until he found his previously discarded wand while the effigy continued to utter soft, pleased cries at Sirius’ uniquely knowledgeable ministrations. Remus could barely summon the stillness of mind he needed to cast the simple household spell that Sirius had adapted for this intimate purpose when they had first become lovers, and that they had continued to use for all the years since. Practice and repetition had refined their application of the charm over the years, and though Sirius had overdone it the first time and had rendered both of them as slippery as glass, Remus now cast the charm perfectly, and felt the familiar warm, mild tingling along the surface of his skin. The effigy’s skin and Sirius’ hands took on an easy silk-like slide against the flesh of Remus’ belly.

Remus parted the effigy’s legs still further and slid his own hands along the insides of his thighs, stopping for a moment to lay his hands atop Sirius’ and pressing lightly, and then sliding them under the effigy’s buttocks, fingers splayed out.

“Raise your hips a bit,” Sirius was whispering to the effigy, taking the intended words right out of Remus’ mouth. “Do you want to? Raise your hips for him.”

The effigy opened his eyes and looked up at both of them for a moment, seeking out their eyes with an expression of mild wonder for both. “Like this?” he asked, raising his hips to a new, more convenient angle.

“Just like that,” Remus answered softly and kissed him while he settled himself more comfortably between the effigy’s long legs. He angled his own hips upward and began to slowly press himself forward, gently nudging for entrance.

“Closer still…” Sirius was whispering, working the effigy’s cock with his hands and licking and nipping at his ears. “Always closer - I always want him closer. And he can be closer; he can be inside you … inside and outside and all around you if you want him to.”

“Ohhh …” the effigy gasped, shaking with pleasure and thrusting forward into Sirius’ hands. “Yes. I want … I want …”

The effigy’s voice trailed off into incoherent moans and he could not go on, but it didn’t matter, because Remus knew what he wanted anyway. He pushed forward himself and fell into that familiar and well-loved sweetness that was absolute access to Sirius’ body, to every part of it, inside and out. That was Sirius’ body, and yet, in this one peculiar instance, was not.

“Yesssss,” Sirius was breathing, still talking, still murmuring into his magical mirror-image’s ear. “Like that. Like that. He feels so good, doesn’t he? So good …”

“…so good …” the effigy echoed, trembling.

So good, Remus scrambled mind echoed them both, and he rocked forward, forward and back, forward and back. And both Sirius and his effigy rose to meet him naturally, completing the circuit he’d established.

The three of them found their rhythm easily, a rhythm and a perfect three-part cycle of movement that was both old and well-worn and wonderfully familiar, and yet was also entirely new. It seemed too strong and effortless and strangely fitting a pattern to ever cease or come to an end, but the exquisite pleasure of it seemed to increase exponentially with every thrust and counter-thrust, far too fragile to last, and Remus thought crazily that all three of them could be heading toward a magical cataclysm of such unbearable beauty that it might fuse them all into some new and unknown single entity.

But the furthest heights of orgasm, however heart-expanding, are always experienced alone. The coming critical mass of pleasure that Remus had guessed might overwhelm them all did occur, and it split the three of them off from one another momentarily, casting each temporarily adrift in his own private ecstasy. Remus could hear the effigy laughing somewhere through his dumbstruck haze, and a few moments later he heard Sirius laughing too, the way he always did. He himself took his own path third, silently, as was his particular inclination.

Some small breath of time after that, Remus heard the effigy laughing anew, laughing in both joy and almost childlike astonishment. Remus felt himself smiling. Sometimes … sometimes when things had been especially perfect between Sirius and himself, their combined pleasure would somehow exceed the sum of its parts, and all their delight would rush past the fleshly boundaries of their physical bodies. There was a delightful variety of surprising magical side effects; Remus’ favorite was the spontaneous levitation.

Remus, listening to the effigy’s gasping peals of astounded laughter, wondered if he and Sirius might have forgotten to mention that odd little idiosyncrasy to him in advance. Certainly it must seem a bit strange  - even to a magical chimera-gone-wrong like the effigy - to come drifting out of the daze of orgasm only to find himself floating in midair about three feet above the bed. It was one thing to see a vague outline of that peculiar effect in the memories the effigy had borrowed from his creator; it must be another thing entirely for him to actually do it in the flesh.

They all drifted back down toward the soft surface beneath them in time, sinking back into the mattress together in a warm welter of entangled limbs and the faint diminishing laughter of both Sirius and his copy. All bundled together like lazy kittens in a basket, Sirius on one side and Remus on the other, with the effigy sheltered between them. The three of them spent a peaceful stretch just resting, with the occasional soft grunt of satisfaction or pleased sigh being the only quiet communication among them. Eventually the effigy laughed aloud.

“What?” Sirius asked him, gently stroking his hair off of his forehead. “What’s got you tickled?” Remus turned onto his side and raised his head a bit, so that he could see both of them.

The effigy smiled. “I was just thinking that you both could teach a class in Advanced Fucking at Hogwarts.”

Sirius laughed so hard that they could feel the bed shaking under them, and Remus, who was struck by a vivid vision of himself being introduced at the traditional Opening Day Feast as the school’s new Fucking Master, could not help but laugh as well.

“Good heavens,” Sirius said, sitting up a bit and still laughing. “Just imagine the NEWTS!”

The three laughed together some more, and then subsided once again into a comfortable, sated, peace. Remus, despite his own pleased body and contented mind, could not quite shake the awareness that this peace too was as ephemeral as the effigy himself. That the clock, despite all they had done and perhaps would do later to fill the hours, was still ticking.

How many permutations of three-times-three were there?

Remus wondered if they could discover them all in the time they had. How many perfect hours were actually needed to make up a single proper life?

The effigy, nestled in the combined curves of their bodies, his magical, fleeting flesh surrounded by their flesh, looked up again at both of them, Remus and Sirius.

“What will we do now, Moony - Sirius?” he asked them, visibly trusting completely.

Sirius himself, Remus knew to his own mild regret, could never quite bring himself to do that. Though he was, to Remus’ thinking, essentially a creature of absolutes, absolute trust had ever remained just a touch out of his reach. But Sirius’ magical duplicate, perhaps by virtue of having no history of his own, had managed to correct this flaw in his maker’s nature.

“What will we do next?” the effigy repeated, still completely relaxed and still clearly content to leave himself in their hands.

We’ll cushion your advent and your passing too, with all the love we have, Remus thought silently.

But it was Sirius who spoke it aloud, thus delighting Remus and startling him badly at the same time.

“Why, what else can we do? We’ll fill the time we have the best way we can,” Sirius said, and kissed the effigy again. “We’ll seize the day.”

Story Continues