Intoxication for the Wayward Soul by regala_electra
Title: Intoxication for the Wayward Soul
Author: regala_electra
Summary: In need of forgetting the horrors faced while waging the war against Voldemort, Remus finds himself at Sirius's door.
Rating: R
Recipient: wildestranger
***
Intoxication for the Wayward Soul
Before the door even opens, he knows this to be a very bad idea. But after all, having a few mild drinks in his system and the weight of the world on his shoulders, there is not more that he can do besides knock on a friend's door and try to, for at least a few hours, forget the things that will later haunt his dreams.
Sirius, for all his energy and unpredictable ways, is a friend indeed when it comes to diversions. He welcomes Remus into the musty flat, easily making his way around piles of bed knobs and broomsticks. He is grinning in such a way that causes Remus to again ponder just what exactly he is doing here.
"Are we -" Remus hesitates, he knows he isn't supposed to question fellow Order members and their secret missions, but Sirius's current genial and erratic mood warrants such questions, mostly in protection of coming across some previously benign object now guaranteed to most certainly explode, "trafficking in stolen goods by any chance?"
"We," answers Sirius, rooting through a pile of empty wine bottles stacked in one corner of the living room "are a mite bit pissed. I have a perfectly - hic - good reason for these assorted...assortery."
"When you make up words, that is when I know fear," Remus states for no particular reason. He's going to stay anyway. The last transformation was brutal, the wolf still remembering that horrific scene he had witnessed just hours before the change, and no, he would not think about it anymore. He mustn't.
Sirius has become a horrible, though welcome, distraction from it all.
He brings the bottle of unopened wine up with a triumphant flourish. "A ha, see here, my dear friend, there's a method to the madness."
"There is a belief that even in the method, it remains madness, you know. Wouldn't you rather furniture than piles of suspicious, incriminating ill-gotten goods?"
"Moony," Sirius says, shaking his head in disappointment, "do you even have to ask?"
"Right. Thievery it is for the rebellious heir. Cheers."
Sirius is drunk enough that this banter is beginning to wear thin. He huffs a dark breath, backing up against the wall and slinking down, which on another person would appear ungainly, but he does it all with that impossible grace that makes you believe you were not in fact dealing with someone nearly out of all their senses. It is unfortunate that Sirius has always been somewhat mad and that the prolonged bouts of drinking - which had grown with alarming regularity after Sirius was sent on one of his own personal Order missions that, according to whispers, had ended 'very badly' - are now par for the course.
Remus is quite sure that this is not how their lives were supposed to be. He longs for that happy golden stretch of time before graduation, when they were all so sure of their own immortality, so sure of their integrity, so sure of the divisions between right and wrong, of the boundaries between good and evil.
Any werewolf found in the open was to be considered an enemy of the Ministry and was to be captured on sight. No questions asked. There was no coddling of them either; Remus had heard enough stories to know they treated the man no differently than the transformed wolf. Azkaban is not too far away from being the destination for all dark creatures and Remus will do anything he can to ensure that he does not get locked up in that dark prison.
The rest of them - James, Sirius, Peter, and Lily - they do not understand this fear. They think that it simply wouldn't happen. That the terrible and continuing violence will one day cease because of their actions.
Remus unfortunately is a realist. It would take something drastic, something he does not know to end this war.
He finds himself going towards Sirius, pivoting quickly around an pile of antique candlestick holders. Crouching down in front of Sirius, mostly concerned that even the floor is hazardous to his health, he takes the bottle away from Sirius. Keeping his eyes level with Sirius's, he opens with bottle without a flourish, for he has never possessed the grace of making the mundane beautiful, drinking the wine directly from the bottle. It is far better than expected.
"Knew you'd see things my way. Well, you'll be seeing them soon." He smiles but the sharp implications of the smile are muddled by the hazy, faraway glaze in his eyes. His eyelids are halfway closed and there's a calm expression to him that is far too unnerving - for Sirius is a being of action, the lack of animation, of restlessness, this should worry Remus.
But Sirius is right. It is an incredibly powerful drink, with notes of smoke, cinnamon, and something distinctly autumn, a dark sweetness that fills his mouth. When he wipes his mouth, he is shocked by the near black-purple droplets clinging to his fingertips. They are thick and barely move and he has to lick them off his fingers, savoring the taste. He must have more, but before he again takes a draught, he exclaims, "Dear God, what is this?"
"An experiment," Sirius laughs then, that terrible bark. Something in his brain has snapped awake and there's a slight manic tone in his delivery. "An awful experiment gone rotten, a wine that was supposed to have all the lovely bouts of giddy intoxication without any of the nasty hangovers. They got the first part right by about ten fold over."
This takes far too long to sink in, which is a very bad sign.
"You. Are. A Right. Bastard. I am drunk," he said with the profound air that is only managed by a person who is incredibly drunk. "I've managed nearly as much firewhiskey as you can on your best day, and I'm drunk."
"Yes. It's a miracle. Drunk Moony." Sirius has returned to the more playful, friendly voice of the easygoing intoxicated friend. "We shall drink and be drunk together."
"Someone's going to be drinking us?"
"Only if we're very good." Sirius says this far too close and Remus, who is still in something of a pantomime of a crouch, moves to keep Sirius's mouth from brushing his ear. As he is incredibly drunk despite the fact that he had only a little of the wine by his best estimation, he wavers and falls against Sirius, the bottle slipping out of his hand. It rolls away, only a few drops spilling onto the bare floor.
He's more surprised than he should be. "Did I drink that all?"
"I mentioned that the moment it touches your lips, you'll soon imbibe it all, right?"
"Damn you. May all your hair turn as grey as mine."
"Ah, but while you look ragged and unseemly, I'll look dashing and charming. Women will throw themselves at my feet, and I'll have to invest in stilts to manage a path around the adoring, maddening-aning crowd."
"I've never thought a crowd could be adoring and maddening. Madding. Maddening-aning. Whatever it bloody well is, a crowd can't be both."
Sirius pats the top of Remus's head. "You have so much still to learn, Moony. All the bookish brains going to slushy waste pondering impossible questions."
This, Remus realizes, is strangely comforting. He is still too close to Sirius, their chests pressed together. Remus is very nearly straddling Sirius. However if he attempts to move, he is quite sure he is going to lose his very tenuous grip on gravity.
Sirius would then always bring up the story of when Moony Simply Floated Away In a Drunken Stupor whenever they were at the few gatherings now held in these dark days and because the story didn't have words or phrases such as death, so many bodies, torture, I'd never seen something so terrible, it would be told again and again. Each time, the story would be a bit brighter, a bit more hopeful. Yes, they would strive for this happiness because it was possible, even in light of utter horror.
So that's his rationale for not moving. The other is a stranger desire, one that never went away during hesitant moments at school, fumbling for some sort of grand experiment, a secret experiment that was never discussed out in the open for the same reason that neither he nor Sirius is breaking this too familiar touch. This is theirs alone and to speak of it would let the world creak in between them and ruin it all.
He counts the breaths between them and eventually loses count. He wonders if they are mourning something, if they are just living, if this is something more than what it really is - two blokes quite wonderfully bereft of the heavier crush of guilt, lost in a wave of drunken selfishness.
Just as he's about to - do something which he does not name, for they have never named it, never given it a true word - Sirius cocks his head to the side and says fondly, "Remember when that hippogriff attacked you?"
Remus blinks, unable to decipher the indescribable expression on Sirius's face. "No," he bites out. "After all, who could remember the pleasure of being bandied about by a hippogriff? In the end, it was simply an event bolstered by the hippogriff's distrust of my intentions."
"Distrust of my intentions," Sirius repeated in an exaggerated approximation of Remus's voice. "No, no, no, no."
Sirius pauses for a long time to shake his head in disagreement. No, no, no, no, no, he says with each shake and just when Remus expects another string of vaguely sing-song "no's," Sirius insists, "He didn't like you. Different perspective that. Like putting on trousers over your head and wearing robes in the bathtub."
Remus should think this through - not the last comment, it would be nonsense to put trousers on one's head or go mucking about in a bath with one's robes, he knows that much for sure, and the fact that he has just informed himself how ridiculous it is, is further proof that he is ever so drunk, drunk, drunk - yet this chatting about a fairly rotten experience, this is an obvious deflection of a larger matter. Worse of all, this has never quite happened before. Sirius, for all his flaws, can be depended on for reckless behavior that he will engage in without a thought or reject wholly and he wouldn't ever bother with an evasive tactic. That is Remus's skill.
However his skills have all but lost him and he blurts out before his brain can fully conquer his mouth, "If you don't want me to kiss you, don't-"
But he never finishes whatever he doesn't even know he was going to say because at that moment, Sirius, all of Sirius, even under the drunken spell, snaps awake and his mouth is on Remus's, demanding everything and shockingly more. It is an escalation that should be hampered by their current states, but it isn't. It is something fierce and awful and all-encompassing. Remus is knocked backwards on that possibly (probably) cursed hard floor and Sirius is clawing at his clothes, not giving a damn as to whether he's ruining them beyond despair and this, yes this, is Sirius. Completely and utterly.
Selfish, dangerous, reliable Sirius.
This should be slow going, there shouldn't be the instant fire burning when Sirius's mouth grazes over Remus's skin, his fingers and the whole of his hand pressing down, creating a sensation that he has missed, even though there is no real word for it.
When their cocks are finally pressed together, it sends a jolt more intoxicating than that damned wine. Sirius's mouth is that bittersweet taste of autumn, but darker still, like the beginning of winter, though his mouth is hot, there is a cool authority which explores all of Remus with determined precision.
This should not last long. He would have counted their breaths, but they have grown rough, have sped up and slowed down, and done all that and more, and Remus lost count the moment he attempted to try. With Sirius, he is forgetting, is ignoring that there is a world beyond this room, this moment, and it is a horrid thing to do, yet he too is selfish and needs all this and more.
When he comes, he does not say anything, but lets out a long sigh, releases the fear that has been gnawing at him. It will return, piece by piece, like dust floating back down to earth, but for the moment, it has been vanquished.
Sirius flops down next to Remus, the only clothing left on him is an unbuttoned shirt, which he pushes away to leave his chest bare. "You're not going to say anything about this."
It was not a question, not even a demand, but a flat, hollow statement, quite blank of the varied emotions that Sirius carried in his words. If there is anything that is notable about it, it is the slight tinge of dare, as though Sirius wants desperately for Remus to say, Damn you, this has always been between us and always shall be.
Sirius wants this to become something that has a name.
Remus says nothing.
Sirius smiles at the ceiling, again with that indiscernible expression. It worries Remus.
"Well then," and he takes Remus's hand, bringing it up to bestow the kind of gentle kiss that would mean something quite significant if they were perhaps different people, "you're going to say now that you have to be going, and I'll nod and act like we haven't just fucked. Best stick to the plan."
"You're not drunk."
"Oh, I'm drunk," Sirius says with great enthusiasm, "but I'm not stupid. You only come over to stare at me and think about shagging me - well congratulations, we've finally shagged again. Have you been counting the minutes?"
Remus, to all the best of his weakened facilities, begins to dress as best he can, knowing he is going to have to take a rather long shower to rid himself of the mess. "I do have to leave."
Sirius crosses his arms, still staring at the ceiling. "Do I say 'Goodbye Remus' or 'Goodbye Moony'? I wouldn't want to deviate from the standard procedures."
Remus is at the door, once again questioning whether to pass over the threshold. "Either one will do," he says quietly. Then, in a different voice, something finally clearing itself in his muddled brain, something that he knows he must say, damn the consequences, "We both wanted this to happen. We need this."
He doesn't let himself wait for an answer. Remus can't rely on Sirius responding with something that will be appealing to him, something that will not change things, for either better or worse. There is no forgetting Sirius, but at least he will never haunt Remus's dreams.
end
***
Author: regala_electra
Summary: In need of forgetting the horrors faced while waging the war against Voldemort, Remus finds himself at Sirius's door.
Rating: R
Recipient: wildestranger
***
Intoxication for the Wayward Soul
Before the door even opens, he knows this to be a very bad idea. But after all, having a few mild drinks in his system and the weight of the world on his shoulders, there is not more that he can do besides knock on a friend's door and try to, for at least a few hours, forget the things that will later haunt his dreams.
Sirius, for all his energy and unpredictable ways, is a friend indeed when it comes to diversions. He welcomes Remus into the musty flat, easily making his way around piles of bed knobs and broomsticks. He is grinning in such a way that causes Remus to again ponder just what exactly he is doing here.
"Are we -" Remus hesitates, he knows he isn't supposed to question fellow Order members and their secret missions, but Sirius's current genial and erratic mood warrants such questions, mostly in protection of coming across some previously benign object now guaranteed to most certainly explode, "trafficking in stolen goods by any chance?"
"We," answers Sirius, rooting through a pile of empty wine bottles stacked in one corner of the living room "are a mite bit pissed. I have a perfectly - hic - good reason for these assorted...assortery."
"When you make up words, that is when I know fear," Remus states for no particular reason. He's going to stay anyway. The last transformation was brutal, the wolf still remembering that horrific scene he had witnessed just hours before the change, and no, he would not think about it anymore. He mustn't.
Sirius has become a horrible, though welcome, distraction from it all.
He brings the bottle of unopened wine up with a triumphant flourish. "A ha, see here, my dear friend, there's a method to the madness."
"There is a belief that even in the method, it remains madness, you know. Wouldn't you rather furniture than piles of suspicious, incriminating ill-gotten goods?"
"Moony," Sirius says, shaking his head in disappointment, "do you even have to ask?"
"Right. Thievery it is for the rebellious heir. Cheers."
Sirius is drunk enough that this banter is beginning to wear thin. He huffs a dark breath, backing up against the wall and slinking down, which on another person would appear ungainly, but he does it all with that impossible grace that makes you believe you were not in fact dealing with someone nearly out of all their senses. It is unfortunate that Sirius has always been somewhat mad and that the prolonged bouts of drinking - which had grown with alarming regularity after Sirius was sent on one of his own personal Order missions that, according to whispers, had ended 'very badly' - are now par for the course.
Remus is quite sure that this is not how their lives were supposed to be. He longs for that happy golden stretch of time before graduation, when they were all so sure of their own immortality, so sure of their integrity, so sure of the divisions between right and wrong, of the boundaries between good and evil.
Any werewolf found in the open was to be considered an enemy of the Ministry and was to be captured on sight. No questions asked. There was no coddling of them either; Remus had heard enough stories to know they treated the man no differently than the transformed wolf. Azkaban is not too far away from being the destination for all dark creatures and Remus will do anything he can to ensure that he does not get locked up in that dark prison.
The rest of them - James, Sirius, Peter, and Lily - they do not understand this fear. They think that it simply wouldn't happen. That the terrible and continuing violence will one day cease because of their actions.
Remus unfortunately is a realist. It would take something drastic, something he does not know to end this war.
He finds himself going towards Sirius, pivoting quickly around an pile of antique candlestick holders. Crouching down in front of Sirius, mostly concerned that even the floor is hazardous to his health, he takes the bottle away from Sirius. Keeping his eyes level with Sirius's, he opens with bottle without a flourish, for he has never possessed the grace of making the mundane beautiful, drinking the wine directly from the bottle. It is far better than expected.
"Knew you'd see things my way. Well, you'll be seeing them soon." He smiles but the sharp implications of the smile are muddled by the hazy, faraway glaze in his eyes. His eyelids are halfway closed and there's a calm expression to him that is far too unnerving - for Sirius is a being of action, the lack of animation, of restlessness, this should worry Remus.
But Sirius is right. It is an incredibly powerful drink, with notes of smoke, cinnamon, and something distinctly autumn, a dark sweetness that fills his mouth. When he wipes his mouth, he is shocked by the near black-purple droplets clinging to his fingertips. They are thick and barely move and he has to lick them off his fingers, savoring the taste. He must have more, but before he again takes a draught, he exclaims, "Dear God, what is this?"
"An experiment," Sirius laughs then, that terrible bark. Something in his brain has snapped awake and there's a slight manic tone in his delivery. "An awful experiment gone rotten, a wine that was supposed to have all the lovely bouts of giddy intoxication without any of the nasty hangovers. They got the first part right by about ten fold over."
This takes far too long to sink in, which is a very bad sign.
"You. Are. A Right. Bastard. I am drunk," he said with the profound air that is only managed by a person who is incredibly drunk. "I've managed nearly as much firewhiskey as you can on your best day, and I'm drunk."
"Yes. It's a miracle. Drunk Moony." Sirius has returned to the more playful, friendly voice of the easygoing intoxicated friend. "We shall drink and be drunk together."
"Someone's going to be drinking us?"
"Only if we're very good." Sirius says this far too close and Remus, who is still in something of a pantomime of a crouch, moves to keep Sirius's mouth from brushing his ear. As he is incredibly drunk despite the fact that he had only a little of the wine by his best estimation, he wavers and falls against Sirius, the bottle slipping out of his hand. It rolls away, only a few drops spilling onto the bare floor.
He's more surprised than he should be. "Did I drink that all?"
"I mentioned that the moment it touches your lips, you'll soon imbibe it all, right?"
"Damn you. May all your hair turn as grey as mine."
"Ah, but while you look ragged and unseemly, I'll look dashing and charming. Women will throw themselves at my feet, and I'll have to invest in stilts to manage a path around the adoring, maddening-aning crowd."
"I've never thought a crowd could be adoring and maddening. Madding. Maddening-aning. Whatever it bloody well is, a crowd can't be both."
Sirius pats the top of Remus's head. "You have so much still to learn, Moony. All the bookish brains going to slushy waste pondering impossible questions."
This, Remus realizes, is strangely comforting. He is still too close to Sirius, their chests pressed together. Remus is very nearly straddling Sirius. However if he attempts to move, he is quite sure he is going to lose his very tenuous grip on gravity.
Sirius would then always bring up the story of when Moony Simply Floated Away In a Drunken Stupor whenever they were at the few gatherings now held in these dark days and because the story didn't have words or phrases such as death, so many bodies, torture, I'd never seen something so terrible, it would be told again and again. Each time, the story would be a bit brighter, a bit more hopeful. Yes, they would strive for this happiness because it was possible, even in light of utter horror.
So that's his rationale for not moving. The other is a stranger desire, one that never went away during hesitant moments at school, fumbling for some sort of grand experiment, a secret experiment that was never discussed out in the open for the same reason that neither he nor Sirius is breaking this too familiar touch. This is theirs alone and to speak of it would let the world creak in between them and ruin it all.
He counts the breaths between them and eventually loses count. He wonders if they are mourning something, if they are just living, if this is something more than what it really is - two blokes quite wonderfully bereft of the heavier crush of guilt, lost in a wave of drunken selfishness.
Just as he's about to - do something which he does not name, for they have never named it, never given it a true word - Sirius cocks his head to the side and says fondly, "Remember when that hippogriff attacked you?"
Remus blinks, unable to decipher the indescribable expression on Sirius's face. "No," he bites out. "After all, who could remember the pleasure of being bandied about by a hippogriff? In the end, it was simply an event bolstered by the hippogriff's distrust of my intentions."
"Distrust of my intentions," Sirius repeated in an exaggerated approximation of Remus's voice. "No, no, no, no."
Sirius pauses for a long time to shake his head in disagreement. No, no, no, no, no, he says with each shake and just when Remus expects another string of vaguely sing-song "no's," Sirius insists, "He didn't like you. Different perspective that. Like putting on trousers over your head and wearing robes in the bathtub."
Remus should think this through - not the last comment, it would be nonsense to put trousers on one's head or go mucking about in a bath with one's robes, he knows that much for sure, and the fact that he has just informed himself how ridiculous it is, is further proof that he is ever so drunk, drunk, drunk - yet this chatting about a fairly rotten experience, this is an obvious deflection of a larger matter. Worse of all, this has never quite happened before. Sirius, for all his flaws, can be depended on for reckless behavior that he will engage in without a thought or reject wholly and he wouldn't ever bother with an evasive tactic. That is Remus's skill.
However his skills have all but lost him and he blurts out before his brain can fully conquer his mouth, "If you don't want me to kiss you, don't-"
But he never finishes whatever he doesn't even know he was going to say because at that moment, Sirius, all of Sirius, even under the drunken spell, snaps awake and his mouth is on Remus's, demanding everything and shockingly more. It is an escalation that should be hampered by their current states, but it isn't. It is something fierce and awful and all-encompassing. Remus is knocked backwards on that possibly (probably) cursed hard floor and Sirius is clawing at his clothes, not giving a damn as to whether he's ruining them beyond despair and this, yes this, is Sirius. Completely and utterly.
Selfish, dangerous, reliable Sirius.
This should be slow going, there shouldn't be the instant fire burning when Sirius's mouth grazes over Remus's skin, his fingers and the whole of his hand pressing down, creating a sensation that he has missed, even though there is no real word for it.
When their cocks are finally pressed together, it sends a jolt more intoxicating than that damned wine. Sirius's mouth is that bittersweet taste of autumn, but darker still, like the beginning of winter, though his mouth is hot, there is a cool authority which explores all of Remus with determined precision.
This should not last long. He would have counted their breaths, but they have grown rough, have sped up and slowed down, and done all that and more, and Remus lost count the moment he attempted to try. With Sirius, he is forgetting, is ignoring that there is a world beyond this room, this moment, and it is a horrid thing to do, yet he too is selfish and needs all this and more.
When he comes, he does not say anything, but lets out a long sigh, releases the fear that has been gnawing at him. It will return, piece by piece, like dust floating back down to earth, but for the moment, it has been vanquished.
Sirius flops down next to Remus, the only clothing left on him is an unbuttoned shirt, which he pushes away to leave his chest bare. "You're not going to say anything about this."
It was not a question, not even a demand, but a flat, hollow statement, quite blank of the varied emotions that Sirius carried in his words. If there is anything that is notable about it, it is the slight tinge of dare, as though Sirius wants desperately for Remus to say, Damn you, this has always been between us and always shall be.
Sirius wants this to become something that has a name.
Remus says nothing.
Sirius smiles at the ceiling, again with that indiscernible expression. It worries Remus.
"Well then," and he takes Remus's hand, bringing it up to bestow the kind of gentle kiss that would mean something quite significant if they were perhaps different people, "you're going to say now that you have to be going, and I'll nod and act like we haven't just fucked. Best stick to the plan."
"You're not drunk."
"Oh, I'm drunk," Sirius says with great enthusiasm, "but I'm not stupid. You only come over to stare at me and think about shagging me - well congratulations, we've finally shagged again. Have you been counting the minutes?"
Remus, to all the best of his weakened facilities, begins to dress as best he can, knowing he is going to have to take a rather long shower to rid himself of the mess. "I do have to leave."
Sirius crosses his arms, still staring at the ceiling. "Do I say 'Goodbye Remus' or 'Goodbye Moony'? I wouldn't want to deviate from the standard procedures."
Remus is at the door, once again questioning whether to pass over the threshold. "Either one will do," he says quietly. Then, in a different voice, something finally clearing itself in his muddled brain, something that he knows he must say, damn the consequences, "We both wanted this to happen. We need this."
He doesn't let himself wait for an answer. Remus can't rely on Sirius responding with something that will be appealing to him, something that will not change things, for either better or worse. There is no forgetting Sirius, but at least he will never haunt Remus's dreams.
end
***