This Widening Bed (This Bed Has Seen It All Remix)
Title: This Widening Bed (This Bed Has Seen It All Remix)
Author: shaggydogstail
Summary: Sirius Black, his bed, and the people he shared it with.
Pairing: Sirius Black/Remus Lupin
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Not mine, no profit.
Original story: This Widening Bed by wildestranger
Notes: Remix subtitle taken from Live Bed Show by Pulp.
Many, many thanks to comtesse_sin, midnitemaraud_r, luzdeestrellas, and pre_raphaelite1 for beta help. Thanks also to wildestranger for writing such a wonderful fic to start with. Any remaining errors are mine.
Prologue
Hesham’s of London, founded in 1849 by the son of a mill owner and a lady from the lower branches of the aristocracy, was one of the first great success stories from the dawn of mass production. Specialists in brass and ironwork, they furnished the homes of the aspiring middle-classes with goods that were as long-lasting and practical as they were beautiful (or so the advertising literature boasted).
The firm specialised in the manufacture of beds, with fancy frames and nostalgic designs. One such bed - the one that provides the setting for our story - was purchased by the Langley family for their smart new home in Berkshire. Mrs Langley heaped the bed with damask and muslin, and a plethora of richly embroidered cushions, making it the centrepiece in her faux-Rococo lady’s boudoir.
After Mrs Langley’s passing, her son - who was a superstitious sort - did not like to use the room for himself, so it remained virtually undisturbed for many years, officially a guest room, although Mr Langley’s surly disposition and terrible taste in wine meant that house guests at the Langley home were rare indeed. When the Langley’s only daughter, Josephina, inherited the house, the room became a playroom for her five children, and the poor bed withstood much bouncing and use as a battlefield, castle, and adventure playground.
The children were a quarrelsome lot, even in adulthood, and when their mother died, they fought a furious battle over the division of her estate. Eventually the house was sold to a property developer and its contents auctioned off.
Gloria Smith, a furniture dealer from Notting Hill with an eye for a bargain and fondness for Victoriana, bought the bed for the princely sum of five pounds. It was delivered to her London shop within the week, where it stood amidst the jumble of not-quite-antiques and back-of-the-attic finds, until it was purchased by a young wizard by the name of Sirius Black.
James
The flat Sirius buys with his inheritance is pleasant and large, part of a converted Victorian town house with high ceilings and original features (original plumbing, too, if the sounds the shower makes are anything to go by). He furnishes it with the well-intentioned cast-offs of the Potters, Pettigrews and Lupins - a mish-mash decor that leaves him with three coffee tables and no bathroom cabinet.
No-one keeps a bed they don’t need, though, so Sirius takes some of those strange, rectangular pieces of paper with pictures of the Queen out of the jam jar on the kitchen windowsill and heads off to the second-hand furniture shop two streets away. He takes James with him, of course, although that’s only really for moral support, since James knows even less than Sirius does about shopping, and furniture, and dealing with Muggles.
James tries, unsuccessfully, to convince him to buy a hammock, a child’s bed in the shape of a racing car, and a complex contraption of wooden slates, metal hinges and ugly nylon that apparently serves alternately as a sofa or a bed, though it doesn’t look very comfortable as either. Sirius hisses at him to shut the fuck up, which only makes James laugh out loud at the notion of Sirius being all grown-up and domesticated. Sirius doesn’t have much of a comeback for that, so he waits until James has finished bouncing on the ‘Fairytale Dreams’ four-poster before flopping down beside him and whispering in his ear.
‘You know, people who see two blokes out buying a bed together are bound to get ideas...’
James is on his feet in a flash, standing up poker-straight and scowling at Sirius. ‘Sure that’s not wishful thinking, Padfoot?’
Sirius just laughs, jumping up and following James as he stalks off through the aisles. ‘You should be flattered, really,’ he says, nudging James with his shoulder, ‘and not worry so much about how the fact that I’m paying reflects on you.’
Somehow James resists the urge to hex him bloody, and Sirius buys a big, old-fashioned bed with a fancy brass frame and creaky springs. The woman behind the counter tells him it looks just like the one out of Bedknobs and Broomsticks, and Sirius nods enthusiastically, not that he’s got the least idea what she’s talking about.
It takes them the rest of the afternoon to carry the thing back to Sirius’ flat, in as many pieces as it’ll go, with only minimal breaches of the Statute of Secrecy (the odd charm to make it lighter, and some to help them up the stairs). It takes as long again to put the blasted thing back together, using the screwdriver James borrowed off his dad, some magic, some brute force and a lot of swearing. It looks good when they’re done, solid and impressive, though the brass on the headboard is tarnished, and the mattress (which is new) is damp from when they dropped it in a puddle. Sirius feels rightfully proud of himself.
He didn’t quite get around to managing any bedding, so he sleeps directly on the mattress, which is scratchy on his skin, with a towel rolled up as a pillow and James’ smelly feet in his face. He has every right to be cold and uncomfortable, because it’s hardly the luxury he’s been used to at Hogwarts, but he sleeps just fine, content and at peace.
Peter
They’ve been in the Order six months already, but none of them have seen much in the way of real fighting. Still, when the routine guard duty turns into a full-on street battle, they all know better than to take the injured to St Mungo’s if they can help it.
Peter’s not the only one hurt, but his injuries are the most obvious, blood pouring from a gaping wound on his leg and staining Sirius’ sheets brilliant scarlet. Sirius and James hold him down, while Speckleham - a friendly and discreet Healer - resets Peter’s dislocated shoulder. Peter screams in agony then twists, vomiting onto the clean pillowcase. Sirius Vanishes the mess before Peter can get it in his hair or on his face, but it takes all his willpower not to throw his guts up himself.
Remus is still on another job, and Lily and James are elected to give statements to the Ministry, which leaves Sirius alone as Peter’s nursemaid.
‘Sorry about messing up your bed,’ mumbles Peter, when the pain-killing potions kick in and he’s up to talking at all.
Sirius shrugs. ‘Don’t worry about it,’ he says. ‘What’s a bit of blood and vomit between friends?’
Peter’d pissed himself as well, but Sirius thinks he could do without knowing that just now. He’s reserving the right to bring it up for future torment at a later date, though.
Peter smiles weakly, looking pained but grateful.
‘Get some sleep,’ Sirius tells him, and Peter obediently closes his eyes, his breathing slowing to a low, rhythmic hum within moments.
He’s sprawled out across the centre of the bed, so Sirius perches on the edge, one arm entwined into the ornate metalwork of the bedstead to keep from sliding onto the floor. Part of him feels like a right soft bastard for not just leaving Peter to it - Sirius could sleep quite comfortably on the sofa in dog form, or even on the floor. Still, he stays where he is and tells himself there’s nothing wrong with not wanting one of your mates to die in their sleep in your bed.
Lily
It’s a hot summer, the pavements burning from late June onwards and the air muggy and damp. The Healers at St Mungo’s are a bunch of insufferable fusspots, or so Lily says when she’s confined to bed rest after passing out from heat and tedium at an Order meeting. They never said whose bed, she insists when she invites herself into Sirius’ flat, adding that she’d got so bored sitting at home that she’d considered switching to the Death Eaters just to shake things up a bit.
Sirius sits cross-legged on the pillows, while Lily lounges across the foot of the bed, flat on her back and eating peaches, with the punnet of fruit balanced on the enormous swell of her belly. The hem of her sundress flutters occasionally in the breeze from the open window, though the fabric sticks to her breasts and torso, pale blue cotton made flat and damp with perspiration. She’s frecklier than ever, and her shoulders and the bridge of her nose are tinged pink from the sunshine, which has added golden streaks to her mane of red hair. It makes her look particularly lion-like, though she waddles too much now to be truly threatening, a fact that Sirius reminds her of only in moments of extreme provocation or recklessness (he’s averaging about once a week, these days).
Lily’s sick of reading, of the WWN, of waiting, so she entertains herself by dripping fruit juice over Sirius’ bed and making him tell her stories from the scandalous history of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black. She says his stories are better than the soaps. Sirius doesn’t actually know what that means, but he likes the way she laughs at his jokes and lets out scandalised gasps in all the right places.
He’s in a good mood today, so he tells Lily about the time Grandfather Pollux and Great Uncle Lycoris got drunk on mead at a Gala Dinner in aid of some worthy cause or other, and were nearly arrested by the Muggle police after they tried to transfigure the water from the fountains in Trafalgar Square into wine. Lily’s looking dubious already, and when Sirius tries to embellish the story with an account of how the MLE had to be called out to break up a nude wrestling match, she calls him a filthy liar and pelts him with stones from her peaches.
They’re breathless with laughter when James arrives to survey the room with mock-disapproval.
‘Just once,’ he says, as he throws himself down between them, ‘I’d like to come home from work and not find my wife and my best friend in bed together.’
‘Just once you’d like to get here before we finish putting our clothes back on,’ Sirius retorts, and Lily laughs so hard she upsets the punnet of peaches, sending over-ripe fruit tumbling across the bedspread.
James feigns outrage and threatens to run away with Professor McGonagall to get his own back on the pair of them, but he can’t quite hide the delighted twinkle in his eye when Lily laughs, and his expression says thank you for looking after her, as he helps Lily to her feet and escorts her out the door, one hand nestled protectively on the small of her back. Sirius doesn’t think Lily needs looking after any more than she does, but he just grins and winks, calling warnings not to work late after James’ retreating back.
Sirius doesn’t sleep till late, the stifling heat of summer in the city making it difficult to do more than doze fitfully. The whole room still smells ripe and sweet, from the peaches, and he knows he ought to clean the sheets before the lumps of squishy fruit-flesh on the eiderdown go brown and bad. But for now the scent of peach is pleasant, and it reminds him of Lily; sweet and wholesome, and it’s too comforting to wash away just yet.
Remus
Another late night, another Death Eater attack, and Sirius finds himself coming home to a silent, too-still flat again, stumbling and cursing in the darkness. He’d like to collapse straight into bed, but there’s dirt, and sweat, and blood, and fuck-knows-what else on his clothes, his skin, in his hair and under his fingernails, so he forces himself towards the bathroom, tripping over his boots as he goes.
The shower spurts and gurgles like always, as the antediluvian plumbing creaks reluctantly into gear. The water’s warm enough to quell the worst of Sirius’ shivering, though, and it soothes some of the pain from his muscles, whilst sluicing the filth off his skin. He shakes instinctively when he steps out of the shower - he’d swear he always did that, even before he learnt to change shape - and rubs the worst of the wetness off his skin before wrapping the towel around his waist and tip-toeing into the bedroom
‘Moony?’ he whispers into the darkness. ‘You awake?’
The sound Remus makes is barely coherent, and Sirius senses, more than hears, his response. He takes a step closer, though Remus still doesn’t move.
‘How was it?’ Remus asks.
He always asks, and even though Sirius knows full well why he does it, the question makes him twitch each time. Sometimes he wants to shout at Remus for his facile, banal attempts at civilised conversation, or to shoot back some sarcastic response. Sometimes, just sometimes, he wants to tell the truth: it was fucking awful, Moony, and I don’t think I can stand it much longer. Or perhaps: I was so afraid and there was blood and I think I got part of someone’s brain on my sleeve and I don’t even know whose it is. Maybe just the précis: he’s dead, she’s alive, we’re all fucked.
Sirius doesn’t say any of that, of course. He just says, ‘OK.’
It’s only when he’s under the covers, wrapped up in a warm duvet and a warmer Moony, that Sirius realises how cold he was. He shivers beneath Remus’ palms, because he’s chilled to the marrow, and tired, and touched by the horror of it all. Remus’ mouth is soft and dry as he presses gentle kisses to Sirius’ neck, and his nose tickles the sensitive skin behind Sirius’ ear. The tender touches and warm caresses are enough to smooth away the nightmares of the daytime, and Sirius unwinds as he entangles himself with Remus beneath the bedcovers.
He still feels a giddy rush of excitement every time Remus reaches out to him, touches him, pulls him close. It took many months of careful plotting and a seemingly endless to-and-fro dance before Remus would even allow such contact between them, far less initiate it. Now, though, Remus doesn’t just acquiesce to Sirius’ demands to be held and petted and fucked and loved; he reaches out and makes it happen, every brush of fingertips and slide of flesh making Sirius feel like he’s won some fantastic prize in a competition he doesn’t remember entering.
Sirius relaxes as Remus presses him into the mattress, content and triumphant in equal measure, and Remus smiles at him, that special late-night smile Sirius knows without asking no-one else has ever seen. He can feel himself grinning in response, mouth turned up as his back arches and his arms settle around Remus’ waist. Remus isn’t much of a talker, either in bed or out of it, though he says enough with heady, greedy little gasps and a million different touches. Sometimes he even says I love you with words - not as often as Sirius would like, but more often than Remus probably really wants to, so he can’t complain. Remus thinks declarations of love are corny; Sirius knows, but can’t quite say why, that it’s not corny if you really mean it - he suspects Remus would find that corny as well.
Sirius is almost asleep, loose-limbed and sated, when Remus draws him closer again, his fingertips dancing down Sirius’ cheek and his mouth placing a butterfly kiss on Sirius’ ear.
‘I missed you,’ Remus whispers, soft and warm, without embarrassment.
Sirius just smiles and kisses Remus on his lovely, slightly-too-long nose. ‘N’you,’ he mutters into the crook of Remus’ neck. The knowledge comforts him, warm and sweet like cocoa, and it’s reason enough to make sure he keeps coming home alive.
Harry
Sirius minds Harry on his own only the once, part of a diversionary tactic that involves keeping the boy out of sight, while Lily and James are sure to let themselves be seen in Cardiff and Lyme Regis respectively. It’s mid-afternoon nap time, and Lily assured him that Harry would drift off to sleep of his own accord if Sirius just put him down in the carrycot with a full stomach and a clean nappy, but Sirius is too paranoid and jumpy to let him go even for a second. His imagination is full of Dark Wizards breaking down the plethora of anti-Apparition spells around the flat, Dark spells creeping through the windows or up through the floor, and Dark potions mysteriously materialising in Harry’s bottle.
Instead, he wanders from room to room with Harry in his arms, jiggling him up and down and singing Quidditch anthems, Hobgoblins tracks and the school song: Hogwarts, Hogwarts, Hoggy-Warty-Hogwarts, teach us something, please...
Harry gurgles and dribbles down the front of Sirius’ robes, so Sirius decides he can risk laying him down. He places Harry carefully on his own bed, and then lies down beside him, one arm wrapped protectively around Harry’s tiny, vulnerable form. Harry whimpers and opens his eyes, babbling a stream of consonants and something that, in Sirius’ considered and objective opinion, is easily discernable as ‘Padfoot.’ (Child’s a genius, after all, any fool can see that.)
It almost frightens him sometimes, the fierce love he feels for this soggy little bundle of milk-burps and saliva. It wells up, hot and tight in his chest, and Sirius knows without question that there’s nothing he wouldn’t do for him, no sacrifice to great to endure on Harry’s behalf, and no punishment that’s too high a price to pay for anyone who harms a single one of those damp, downy hairs on his head.
This overwhelming, primal love wasn’t something Sirius had ever expected, and it seems to have crept up on him when he wasn’t looking. He’d been indifferent to the news of Lily’s pregnancy, offering hearty congratulations for James’ sake, but secretly wondering if they’d lost their minds. Even when Harry was first born, Sirius had been too busy making sure he didn’t break the baby to form any sort of bond with him. Somewhere along the line, though, his bemused indifference had developed into absolute devotion, and he wasn’t sure himself how that had happened.
If Sirius had surprised himself, it was nothing to the way his friends had taken his enthusiastic godfathering. Peter looked at him curiously, no doubt astonished at how easily Sirius’ veneer of cool had fallen beneath sticky fingers. Lily joked that she always suspected Sirius was a right soft bastard on the sly, but she seemed delighted, beaming at Sirius in a way that told him that anyone who loved her baby even half as much as she did would never fall out of favour. James slapped Sirius on the back and said he was glad he wasn’t the only one who’d lost his mind, and just like that another bond in their complex, tightly woven kinship was formed.
Now Harry wriggles his toes and flings his arms out wide, blowing wet raspberries down his bib. Sirius says, ‘quite so,’ and blows raspberries in return on Harry’s warm, squishy little belly. Harry’s laughter is like bells ringing, like spring water gurgling over rocks, and Sirius is sure it’s the best thing he’s ever heard.
He’ll be in trouble if he over-excites the baby, though, so Sirius stops tickling and gently hushes Harry, willing him to sleep. He pretends to close his own eyes, just peeking through his lashes to see that Harry’s OK. It’s either a genius piece of deception, or Harry’s just very tired, because he seems to get the message, rubbing his eyes and yawning in wide, milky breaths.
Sirius stays where he is, partly worried any movement will wake Harry and partly reluctant to break the moment. There’s nothing quite so soporific as a sleeping baby, so Sirius soon finds himself drifting off to sleep, too, curled at an odd angle to protect his godson, the fingers of his hand splayed open on Harry’s chest.
Sirius
The room is cold, and grey, with long shadows advancing across the carpet as evening falls. Sirius lies sleepless on top of the rumpled blankets of his unmade bed, limbs twitching and eyes sore with exhaustion. He rarely sleeps now, surviving on fitful naps plagued with visions of his brother’s corpse and his godson’s cries.
Sirius knows that 22 is far too young for nostalgia, but he finds himself longing for the days when he could joke with Lily and James without the undercurrent of fear and trepidation, when Peter was still the one they half-grudgingly protected, instead of using as a secret weapon. Shamefully, he misses the days when he thought he knew Remus, and trusted him, before bitterness or bad judgement or the Imperius Curse took Moony away from him forever.
Still, there’s no point dwelling on what might have been. Sirius shakes his head and scolds himself for his self pity. He can worry about Remus - and himself, for that matter - later. For now, the important thing is keeping Harry safe - so long as he does that, nothing else matters, least of all Sirius’ own self-doubts and loneliness.
The clock on the bedside table reads a quarter-to-nine. Sirius sighs and hauls himself up off the bed. Time to go and check on Peter.
Epilogue
Sirius never came back, of course, and the bed stood cold and empty for weeks. As the first snow-flurries of winter filled the sky outside the window, a man with brown hair and a broken heart came with cardboard boxes to clear away the worldly goods of his one-time best friend and former lover, the traitor Black.
The bed is sturdy, and there’s life in it yet: it escapes the tip because Remus has an elderly aunt with a bad hip and only a battered divan to sleep on, and because he’s a kind-hearted lad who learnt the merits of practicality the hard way.
Auntie Violet’s 92, but fanciful enough to tell anyone who’ll listen that the curlicues and finery of the bedstand make her feel like a princess. The thick-sprung mattress is kind on her old bones and when, years later, she dies in the bed, she does so in comfort at least. She’s grateful enough to change her will a week before her death: it’s a blow to the cat’s home, certainly, but a new home for a dutiful nephew.
Remus moves into the house with quiet gratitude and a hint of resignation. The sofa and the kitchen table, the claw-footed bath and the dusty old bookcase all get plenty of careful use, but the old bed gets a dustsheet. Remus knows he’s being foolish - it’s just a piece of furniture, he tells himself, and a fine one at that. Sirius wasn’t its first occupant nor even the last, and there’s no physical trace of him left. But the weight of happy memories, of nights spent curled up safe and warm, is too much to bear, so Remus sets up a camp bed in the dining room and airs the bedroom once a fortnight.
~*~
Sirius runs a bony, calloused hand along the foot of the bed, staring at it in wonderment. Quite possibly he recognises the eiderdown.
‘You kept it all this time?’
Remus just nods, and refrains from mentioning Auntie Violet or the shame of waste.
Sirius throws caution to the wind and flops down on his back, bouncing on the bed. The mattress springs creak a little in protest, but it carries his slender weight easily.
‘Had some good times on this old bed,’ he says, patting the covers fondly. He looks up at Remus and grins. ‘We had some good times on this bed.’
Remus’ smile is indulgent, like the smile of an avuncular relative humouring the children, and wistful. ‘Yeah,’ he agrees, perching on the edge of the bed and giving an experimental bounce. ‘Yes, we did.’
Sirius stretches out on one side of the bed, water from the hair-wash of a decade dripping onto the musty pillow. Remus lies beside him, not touching, and they both stare up at the ceiling.
‘Feels odd,’ Sirius says at last. ‘I’m not really used to a bed anymore.’
‘No?’ Remus asks, not objecting, just encouraging Sirius to continue.
‘Been sleeping as a dog for as long as I can remember,’ says Sirius. ‘In the cave, a beach, the forest...and, well, it wasn’t exactly five star accommodation...’ He trails off, the unspoken ‘Azkaban’ hanging in the air like a storm cloud.
Remus stays silent for a long moment, watching the water drip from Sirius’ hair onto his borrowed pyjamas, the unfamiliar lines and hollows on his face, the way Sirius’ eyes flit around the room, constantly alert, like he isn’t ready - isn’t able - to settle.
‘You should sleep,’ he says softly. He reaches for one of the blankets folded at the foot of the bed and unfurls it over Sirius’ shoulders, tucking him in like an infant.
Sirius yawns widely and doesn’t argue his own exhaustion, just looks up at Remus. Sirius’ eyes are dark, still haunted by prison and witnessing his worst fears made real. But there’s something else there too - hope, perhaps, and a trace of the old intimacy that in anyone less stubborn would surely have died years ago. Longing.
Remus slides under the blanket next to him without saying a word. He remembers how he used to press his nose to the spot beneath Sirius’ ear (it used to tickle Sirius, then, when Remus wore his hair a little longer). He does it again now, and rubs his face against Sirius’ neck, pressing chaste, closed-mouthed kisses that speak more of affection than passion.
The combination of aching familiarity and horrible difference is disorientating, but Remus can be brave, so he tangles his fingers in the damp strands of Sirius’ hair, pulling him closer. A muffled half-laugh rumbles in Sirius’ chest as they twist and shuffle, bodies moving closer together.
Sirius’ skin, clammy from the shower and cool in the night breeze from the window, warms gradually under Remus’ touch. The ragged contours of his face soften as he smiles, eased with sleepy contentment. He curves around Remus, and leans over to kiss his ear and whisper, ‘I missed you.’
The mattress springs creak and the bedstead clanks against the plaster on the wall, but they both sleep well, enjoying a peaceful night at last - safe and warm and contented.
It is, after all, a very good bed.
THE END
Author: shaggydogstail
Summary: Sirius Black, his bed, and the people he shared it with.
Pairing: Sirius Black/Remus Lupin
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Not mine, no profit.
Original story: This Widening Bed by wildestranger
Notes: Remix subtitle taken from Live Bed Show by Pulp.
Many, many thanks to comtesse_sin, midnitemaraud_r, luzdeestrellas, and pre_raphaelite1 for beta help. Thanks also to wildestranger for writing such a wonderful fic to start with. Any remaining errors are mine.
Prologue
Hesham’s of London, founded in 1849 by the son of a mill owner and a lady from the lower branches of the aristocracy, was one of the first great success stories from the dawn of mass production. Specialists in brass and ironwork, they furnished the homes of the aspiring middle-classes with goods that were as long-lasting and practical as they were beautiful (or so the advertising literature boasted).
The firm specialised in the manufacture of beds, with fancy frames and nostalgic designs. One such bed - the one that provides the setting for our story - was purchased by the Langley family for their smart new home in Berkshire. Mrs Langley heaped the bed with damask and muslin, and a plethora of richly embroidered cushions, making it the centrepiece in her faux-Rococo lady’s boudoir.
After Mrs Langley’s passing, her son - who was a superstitious sort - did not like to use the room for himself, so it remained virtually undisturbed for many years, officially a guest room, although Mr Langley’s surly disposition and terrible taste in wine meant that house guests at the Langley home were rare indeed. When the Langley’s only daughter, Josephina, inherited the house, the room became a playroom for her five children, and the poor bed withstood much bouncing and use as a battlefield, castle, and adventure playground.
The children were a quarrelsome lot, even in adulthood, and when their mother died, they fought a furious battle over the division of her estate. Eventually the house was sold to a property developer and its contents auctioned off.
Gloria Smith, a furniture dealer from Notting Hill with an eye for a bargain and fondness for Victoriana, bought the bed for the princely sum of five pounds. It was delivered to her London shop within the week, where it stood amidst the jumble of not-quite-antiques and back-of-the-attic finds, until it was purchased by a young wizard by the name of Sirius Black.
James
The flat Sirius buys with his inheritance is pleasant and large, part of a converted Victorian town house with high ceilings and original features (original plumbing, too, if the sounds the shower makes are anything to go by). He furnishes it with the well-intentioned cast-offs of the Potters, Pettigrews and Lupins - a mish-mash decor that leaves him with three coffee tables and no bathroom cabinet.
No-one keeps a bed they don’t need, though, so Sirius takes some of those strange, rectangular pieces of paper with pictures of the Queen out of the jam jar on the kitchen windowsill and heads off to the second-hand furniture shop two streets away. He takes James with him, of course, although that’s only really for moral support, since James knows even less than Sirius does about shopping, and furniture, and dealing with Muggles.
James tries, unsuccessfully, to convince him to buy a hammock, a child’s bed in the shape of a racing car, and a complex contraption of wooden slates, metal hinges and ugly nylon that apparently serves alternately as a sofa or a bed, though it doesn’t look very comfortable as either. Sirius hisses at him to shut the fuck up, which only makes James laugh out loud at the notion of Sirius being all grown-up and domesticated. Sirius doesn’t have much of a comeback for that, so he waits until James has finished bouncing on the ‘Fairytale Dreams’ four-poster before flopping down beside him and whispering in his ear.
‘You know, people who see two blokes out buying a bed together are bound to get ideas...’
James is on his feet in a flash, standing up poker-straight and scowling at Sirius. ‘Sure that’s not wishful thinking, Padfoot?’
Sirius just laughs, jumping up and following James as he stalks off through the aisles. ‘You should be flattered, really,’ he says, nudging James with his shoulder, ‘and not worry so much about how the fact that I’m paying reflects on you.’
Somehow James resists the urge to hex him bloody, and Sirius buys a big, old-fashioned bed with a fancy brass frame and creaky springs. The woman behind the counter tells him it looks just like the one out of Bedknobs and Broomsticks, and Sirius nods enthusiastically, not that he’s got the least idea what she’s talking about.
It takes them the rest of the afternoon to carry the thing back to Sirius’ flat, in as many pieces as it’ll go, with only minimal breaches of the Statute of Secrecy (the odd charm to make it lighter, and some to help them up the stairs). It takes as long again to put the blasted thing back together, using the screwdriver James borrowed off his dad, some magic, some brute force and a lot of swearing. It looks good when they’re done, solid and impressive, though the brass on the headboard is tarnished, and the mattress (which is new) is damp from when they dropped it in a puddle. Sirius feels rightfully proud of himself.
He didn’t quite get around to managing any bedding, so he sleeps directly on the mattress, which is scratchy on his skin, with a towel rolled up as a pillow and James’ smelly feet in his face. He has every right to be cold and uncomfortable, because it’s hardly the luxury he’s been used to at Hogwarts, but he sleeps just fine, content and at peace.
Peter
They’ve been in the Order six months already, but none of them have seen much in the way of real fighting. Still, when the routine guard duty turns into a full-on street battle, they all know better than to take the injured to St Mungo’s if they can help it.
Peter’s not the only one hurt, but his injuries are the most obvious, blood pouring from a gaping wound on his leg and staining Sirius’ sheets brilliant scarlet. Sirius and James hold him down, while Speckleham - a friendly and discreet Healer - resets Peter’s dislocated shoulder. Peter screams in agony then twists, vomiting onto the clean pillowcase. Sirius Vanishes the mess before Peter can get it in his hair or on his face, but it takes all his willpower not to throw his guts up himself.
Remus is still on another job, and Lily and James are elected to give statements to the Ministry, which leaves Sirius alone as Peter’s nursemaid.
‘Sorry about messing up your bed,’ mumbles Peter, when the pain-killing potions kick in and he’s up to talking at all.
Sirius shrugs. ‘Don’t worry about it,’ he says. ‘What’s a bit of blood and vomit between friends?’
Peter’d pissed himself as well, but Sirius thinks he could do without knowing that just now. He’s reserving the right to bring it up for future torment at a later date, though.
Peter smiles weakly, looking pained but grateful.
‘Get some sleep,’ Sirius tells him, and Peter obediently closes his eyes, his breathing slowing to a low, rhythmic hum within moments.
He’s sprawled out across the centre of the bed, so Sirius perches on the edge, one arm entwined into the ornate metalwork of the bedstead to keep from sliding onto the floor. Part of him feels like a right soft bastard for not just leaving Peter to it - Sirius could sleep quite comfortably on the sofa in dog form, or even on the floor. Still, he stays where he is and tells himself there’s nothing wrong with not wanting one of your mates to die in their sleep in your bed.
Lily
It’s a hot summer, the pavements burning from late June onwards and the air muggy and damp. The Healers at St Mungo’s are a bunch of insufferable fusspots, or so Lily says when she’s confined to bed rest after passing out from heat and tedium at an Order meeting. They never said whose bed, she insists when she invites herself into Sirius’ flat, adding that she’d got so bored sitting at home that she’d considered switching to the Death Eaters just to shake things up a bit.
Sirius sits cross-legged on the pillows, while Lily lounges across the foot of the bed, flat on her back and eating peaches, with the punnet of fruit balanced on the enormous swell of her belly. The hem of her sundress flutters occasionally in the breeze from the open window, though the fabric sticks to her breasts and torso, pale blue cotton made flat and damp with perspiration. She’s frecklier than ever, and her shoulders and the bridge of her nose are tinged pink from the sunshine, which has added golden streaks to her mane of red hair. It makes her look particularly lion-like, though she waddles too much now to be truly threatening, a fact that Sirius reminds her of only in moments of extreme provocation or recklessness (he’s averaging about once a week, these days).
Lily’s sick of reading, of the WWN, of waiting, so she entertains herself by dripping fruit juice over Sirius’ bed and making him tell her stories from the scandalous history of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black. She says his stories are better than the soaps. Sirius doesn’t actually know what that means, but he likes the way she laughs at his jokes and lets out scandalised gasps in all the right places.
He’s in a good mood today, so he tells Lily about the time Grandfather Pollux and Great Uncle Lycoris got drunk on mead at a Gala Dinner in aid of some worthy cause or other, and were nearly arrested by the Muggle police after they tried to transfigure the water from the fountains in Trafalgar Square into wine. Lily’s looking dubious already, and when Sirius tries to embellish the story with an account of how the MLE had to be called out to break up a nude wrestling match, she calls him a filthy liar and pelts him with stones from her peaches.
They’re breathless with laughter when James arrives to survey the room with mock-disapproval.
‘Just once,’ he says, as he throws himself down between them, ‘I’d like to come home from work and not find my wife and my best friend in bed together.’
‘Just once you’d like to get here before we finish putting our clothes back on,’ Sirius retorts, and Lily laughs so hard she upsets the punnet of peaches, sending over-ripe fruit tumbling across the bedspread.
James feigns outrage and threatens to run away with Professor McGonagall to get his own back on the pair of them, but he can’t quite hide the delighted twinkle in his eye when Lily laughs, and his expression says thank you for looking after her, as he helps Lily to her feet and escorts her out the door, one hand nestled protectively on the small of her back. Sirius doesn’t think Lily needs looking after any more than she does, but he just grins and winks, calling warnings not to work late after James’ retreating back.
Sirius doesn’t sleep till late, the stifling heat of summer in the city making it difficult to do more than doze fitfully. The whole room still smells ripe and sweet, from the peaches, and he knows he ought to clean the sheets before the lumps of squishy fruit-flesh on the eiderdown go brown and bad. But for now the scent of peach is pleasant, and it reminds him of Lily; sweet and wholesome, and it’s too comforting to wash away just yet.
Remus
Another late night, another Death Eater attack, and Sirius finds himself coming home to a silent, too-still flat again, stumbling and cursing in the darkness. He’d like to collapse straight into bed, but there’s dirt, and sweat, and blood, and fuck-knows-what else on his clothes, his skin, in his hair and under his fingernails, so he forces himself towards the bathroom, tripping over his boots as he goes.
The shower spurts and gurgles like always, as the antediluvian plumbing creaks reluctantly into gear. The water’s warm enough to quell the worst of Sirius’ shivering, though, and it soothes some of the pain from his muscles, whilst sluicing the filth off his skin. He shakes instinctively when he steps out of the shower - he’d swear he always did that, even before he learnt to change shape - and rubs the worst of the wetness off his skin before wrapping the towel around his waist and tip-toeing into the bedroom
‘Moony?’ he whispers into the darkness. ‘You awake?’
The sound Remus makes is barely coherent, and Sirius senses, more than hears, his response. He takes a step closer, though Remus still doesn’t move.
‘How was it?’ Remus asks.
He always asks, and even though Sirius knows full well why he does it, the question makes him twitch each time. Sometimes he wants to shout at Remus for his facile, banal attempts at civilised conversation, or to shoot back some sarcastic response. Sometimes, just sometimes, he wants to tell the truth: it was fucking awful, Moony, and I don’t think I can stand it much longer. Or perhaps: I was so afraid and there was blood and I think I got part of someone’s brain on my sleeve and I don’t even know whose it is. Maybe just the précis: he’s dead, she’s alive, we’re all fucked.
Sirius doesn’t say any of that, of course. He just says, ‘OK.’
It’s only when he’s under the covers, wrapped up in a warm duvet and a warmer Moony, that Sirius realises how cold he was. He shivers beneath Remus’ palms, because he’s chilled to the marrow, and tired, and touched by the horror of it all. Remus’ mouth is soft and dry as he presses gentle kisses to Sirius’ neck, and his nose tickles the sensitive skin behind Sirius’ ear. The tender touches and warm caresses are enough to smooth away the nightmares of the daytime, and Sirius unwinds as he entangles himself with Remus beneath the bedcovers.
He still feels a giddy rush of excitement every time Remus reaches out to him, touches him, pulls him close. It took many months of careful plotting and a seemingly endless to-and-fro dance before Remus would even allow such contact between them, far less initiate it. Now, though, Remus doesn’t just acquiesce to Sirius’ demands to be held and petted and fucked and loved; he reaches out and makes it happen, every brush of fingertips and slide of flesh making Sirius feel like he’s won some fantastic prize in a competition he doesn’t remember entering.
Sirius relaxes as Remus presses him into the mattress, content and triumphant in equal measure, and Remus smiles at him, that special late-night smile Sirius knows without asking no-one else has ever seen. He can feel himself grinning in response, mouth turned up as his back arches and his arms settle around Remus’ waist. Remus isn’t much of a talker, either in bed or out of it, though he says enough with heady, greedy little gasps and a million different touches. Sometimes he even says I love you with words - not as often as Sirius would like, but more often than Remus probably really wants to, so he can’t complain. Remus thinks declarations of love are corny; Sirius knows, but can’t quite say why, that it’s not corny if you really mean it - he suspects Remus would find that corny as well.
Sirius is almost asleep, loose-limbed and sated, when Remus draws him closer again, his fingertips dancing down Sirius’ cheek and his mouth placing a butterfly kiss on Sirius’ ear.
‘I missed you,’ Remus whispers, soft and warm, without embarrassment.
Sirius just smiles and kisses Remus on his lovely, slightly-too-long nose. ‘N’you,’ he mutters into the crook of Remus’ neck. The knowledge comforts him, warm and sweet like cocoa, and it’s reason enough to make sure he keeps coming home alive.
Harry
Sirius minds Harry on his own only the once, part of a diversionary tactic that involves keeping the boy out of sight, while Lily and James are sure to let themselves be seen in Cardiff and Lyme Regis respectively. It’s mid-afternoon nap time, and Lily assured him that Harry would drift off to sleep of his own accord if Sirius just put him down in the carrycot with a full stomach and a clean nappy, but Sirius is too paranoid and jumpy to let him go even for a second. His imagination is full of Dark Wizards breaking down the plethora of anti-Apparition spells around the flat, Dark spells creeping through the windows or up through the floor, and Dark potions mysteriously materialising in Harry’s bottle.
Instead, he wanders from room to room with Harry in his arms, jiggling him up and down and singing Quidditch anthems, Hobgoblins tracks and the school song: Hogwarts, Hogwarts, Hoggy-Warty-Hogwarts, teach us something, please...
Harry gurgles and dribbles down the front of Sirius’ robes, so Sirius decides he can risk laying him down. He places Harry carefully on his own bed, and then lies down beside him, one arm wrapped protectively around Harry’s tiny, vulnerable form. Harry whimpers and opens his eyes, babbling a stream of consonants and something that, in Sirius’ considered and objective opinion, is easily discernable as ‘Padfoot.’ (Child’s a genius, after all, any fool can see that.)
It almost frightens him sometimes, the fierce love he feels for this soggy little bundle of milk-burps and saliva. It wells up, hot and tight in his chest, and Sirius knows without question that there’s nothing he wouldn’t do for him, no sacrifice to great to endure on Harry’s behalf, and no punishment that’s too high a price to pay for anyone who harms a single one of those damp, downy hairs on his head.
This overwhelming, primal love wasn’t something Sirius had ever expected, and it seems to have crept up on him when he wasn’t looking. He’d been indifferent to the news of Lily’s pregnancy, offering hearty congratulations for James’ sake, but secretly wondering if they’d lost their minds. Even when Harry was first born, Sirius had been too busy making sure he didn’t break the baby to form any sort of bond with him. Somewhere along the line, though, his bemused indifference had developed into absolute devotion, and he wasn’t sure himself how that had happened.
If Sirius had surprised himself, it was nothing to the way his friends had taken his enthusiastic godfathering. Peter looked at him curiously, no doubt astonished at how easily Sirius’ veneer of cool had fallen beneath sticky fingers. Lily joked that she always suspected Sirius was a right soft bastard on the sly, but she seemed delighted, beaming at Sirius in a way that told him that anyone who loved her baby even half as much as she did would never fall out of favour. James slapped Sirius on the back and said he was glad he wasn’t the only one who’d lost his mind, and just like that another bond in their complex, tightly woven kinship was formed.
Now Harry wriggles his toes and flings his arms out wide, blowing wet raspberries down his bib. Sirius says, ‘quite so,’ and blows raspberries in return on Harry’s warm, squishy little belly. Harry’s laughter is like bells ringing, like spring water gurgling over rocks, and Sirius is sure it’s the best thing he’s ever heard.
He’ll be in trouble if he over-excites the baby, though, so Sirius stops tickling and gently hushes Harry, willing him to sleep. He pretends to close his own eyes, just peeking through his lashes to see that Harry’s OK. It’s either a genius piece of deception, or Harry’s just very tired, because he seems to get the message, rubbing his eyes and yawning in wide, milky breaths.
Sirius stays where he is, partly worried any movement will wake Harry and partly reluctant to break the moment. There’s nothing quite so soporific as a sleeping baby, so Sirius soon finds himself drifting off to sleep, too, curled at an odd angle to protect his godson, the fingers of his hand splayed open on Harry’s chest.
Sirius
The room is cold, and grey, with long shadows advancing across the carpet as evening falls. Sirius lies sleepless on top of the rumpled blankets of his unmade bed, limbs twitching and eyes sore with exhaustion. He rarely sleeps now, surviving on fitful naps plagued with visions of his brother’s corpse and his godson’s cries.
Sirius knows that 22 is far too young for nostalgia, but he finds himself longing for the days when he could joke with Lily and James without the undercurrent of fear and trepidation, when Peter was still the one they half-grudgingly protected, instead of using as a secret weapon. Shamefully, he misses the days when he thought he knew Remus, and trusted him, before bitterness or bad judgement or the Imperius Curse took Moony away from him forever.
Still, there’s no point dwelling on what might have been. Sirius shakes his head and scolds himself for his self pity. He can worry about Remus - and himself, for that matter - later. For now, the important thing is keeping Harry safe - so long as he does that, nothing else matters, least of all Sirius’ own self-doubts and loneliness.
The clock on the bedside table reads a quarter-to-nine. Sirius sighs and hauls himself up off the bed. Time to go and check on Peter.
Epilogue
Sirius never came back, of course, and the bed stood cold and empty for weeks. As the first snow-flurries of winter filled the sky outside the window, a man with brown hair and a broken heart came with cardboard boxes to clear away the worldly goods of his one-time best friend and former lover, the traitor Black.
The bed is sturdy, and there’s life in it yet: it escapes the tip because Remus has an elderly aunt with a bad hip and only a battered divan to sleep on, and because he’s a kind-hearted lad who learnt the merits of practicality the hard way.
Auntie Violet’s 92, but fanciful enough to tell anyone who’ll listen that the curlicues and finery of the bedstand make her feel like a princess. The thick-sprung mattress is kind on her old bones and when, years later, she dies in the bed, she does so in comfort at least. She’s grateful enough to change her will a week before her death: it’s a blow to the cat’s home, certainly, but a new home for a dutiful nephew.
Remus moves into the house with quiet gratitude and a hint of resignation. The sofa and the kitchen table, the claw-footed bath and the dusty old bookcase all get plenty of careful use, but the old bed gets a dustsheet. Remus knows he’s being foolish - it’s just a piece of furniture, he tells himself, and a fine one at that. Sirius wasn’t its first occupant nor even the last, and there’s no physical trace of him left. But the weight of happy memories, of nights spent curled up safe and warm, is too much to bear, so Remus sets up a camp bed in the dining room and airs the bedroom once a fortnight.
~*~
Sirius runs a bony, calloused hand along the foot of the bed, staring at it in wonderment. Quite possibly he recognises the eiderdown.
‘You kept it all this time?’
Remus just nods, and refrains from mentioning Auntie Violet or the shame of waste.
Sirius throws caution to the wind and flops down on his back, bouncing on the bed. The mattress springs creak a little in protest, but it carries his slender weight easily.
‘Had some good times on this old bed,’ he says, patting the covers fondly. He looks up at Remus and grins. ‘We had some good times on this bed.’
Remus’ smile is indulgent, like the smile of an avuncular relative humouring the children, and wistful. ‘Yeah,’ he agrees, perching on the edge of the bed and giving an experimental bounce. ‘Yes, we did.’
Sirius stretches out on one side of the bed, water from the hair-wash of a decade dripping onto the musty pillow. Remus lies beside him, not touching, and they both stare up at the ceiling.
‘Feels odd,’ Sirius says at last. ‘I’m not really used to a bed anymore.’
‘No?’ Remus asks, not objecting, just encouraging Sirius to continue.
‘Been sleeping as a dog for as long as I can remember,’ says Sirius. ‘In the cave, a beach, the forest...and, well, it wasn’t exactly five star accommodation...’ He trails off, the unspoken ‘Azkaban’ hanging in the air like a storm cloud.
Remus stays silent for a long moment, watching the water drip from Sirius’ hair onto his borrowed pyjamas, the unfamiliar lines and hollows on his face, the way Sirius’ eyes flit around the room, constantly alert, like he isn’t ready - isn’t able - to settle.
‘You should sleep,’ he says softly. He reaches for one of the blankets folded at the foot of the bed and unfurls it over Sirius’ shoulders, tucking him in like an infant.
Sirius yawns widely and doesn’t argue his own exhaustion, just looks up at Remus. Sirius’ eyes are dark, still haunted by prison and witnessing his worst fears made real. But there’s something else there too - hope, perhaps, and a trace of the old intimacy that in anyone less stubborn would surely have died years ago. Longing.
Remus slides under the blanket next to him without saying a word. He remembers how he used to press his nose to the spot beneath Sirius’ ear (it used to tickle Sirius, then, when Remus wore his hair a little longer). He does it again now, and rubs his face against Sirius’ neck, pressing chaste, closed-mouthed kisses that speak more of affection than passion.
The combination of aching familiarity and horrible difference is disorientating, but Remus can be brave, so he tangles his fingers in the damp strands of Sirius’ hair, pulling him closer. A muffled half-laugh rumbles in Sirius’ chest as they twist and shuffle, bodies moving closer together.
Sirius’ skin, clammy from the shower and cool in the night breeze from the window, warms gradually under Remus’ touch. The ragged contours of his face soften as he smiles, eased with sleepy contentment. He curves around Remus, and leans over to kiss his ear and whisper, ‘I missed you.’
The mattress springs creak and the bedstead clanks against the plaster on the wall, but they both sleep well, enjoying a peaceful night at last - safe and warm and contented.
It is, after all, a very good bed.
THE END