FIC: Absence Makes
Absence Makes
Sirius/Lucius, Regulus. PG-13.
Offscreen rape.
Regulus takes responsibility for everyone else's actions. Sirius fails to receive a gift.
Absence Makes
Regulus just didn’t do strong emotion and barely tolerated sympathy for himself or anyone else. But sometimes circumstances required any rational person to rearrange his position on matters.
Pun thoroughly unintended.
The circumstance at the moment: he was quite sure that, through the papered walls, he’d heard Sirius scream last night. He had an unsettling idea that there had been words - namely, something along the lines of, "Lucius, please stop!"
No further vocalizations. Which was also unsettling.
Unsettling enough that Regulus had actually gone to look in on Sirius that morning. Sirius appeared fine. He was breathing and his limbs were at the correct angles. Asleep, by the look of him, not unconscious.
Sirius might have realized this would happen, Regulus told himself. After one summer’s attempt at behaving, he’d thrown over tradition, once again, and, well, tradition dictated that he deserved it.
When Sirius came to breakfast, he moved in the careful way of one who has bruises on his legs or perhaps lower back, a manner Regulus had learned to recognize in the occasionally violent years since he was five and Sirius seven. Sirius had left breakfast halfway through his melon compote, a bit melodramatically, throwing down his fork and fleeing as though it had all suddenly become too much for his delicate nerves. Ever since there had been a cold, tense atmosphere in the halls.
And what made it all so unsettling - that really was the word for it, not frightening or upsetting but unsettling - was that Regulus had begun to care. Not from empathy; Lucius had, of course, had his way with Regulus a few times while Sirius was being good, but never had he treated Regulus quite so harshly as he did Sirius. Certainly he’d never made the younger brother cry out in pain as Sirius had last night. Nonetheless Regulus cared; and it was because ...
Well, call a hag a hag. It was because his brother was human to him now; because Sirius, in a vulnerable moment, had asked him softly for his help. Not even help; advice; information. How to behave.
And while Sirius was the older brother, Regulus considered himself the wiser and more practical; perhaps it meant he was the responsible one. Of course, Regulus knew it was precisely that protective attitude that Sirius hated in Remus, but he did not care. And Sirius needed protection. As an objective observer, Regulus personally thought Remus was probably the best thing that had ever happened to his brother. Well - the worst thing too. Remus was why Sirius was in trouble right now. Remus and his furry little problem which was so highly objectionable to decent purebloods.
Regulus had found that the furry little problem did not repel him that much. Remus was intelligent enough to hold a conversation with; that was quite good enough for Regulus. He supposed that made him not a decent pureblood.
And that was not a good thing. Regulus honored the traditions. More than that, he truly respected them. As a smaller child, he had liked to sit with his father in the third-floor parlor, gazing at the great family-tree tapestry.
Of all times in his life, Regulus had felt the most deeply when he traced the lines at his father’s knee, and what he had felt was wonder. Reverence. What he supposed a Catholic might feel when kneeling in Westminster Abbey. What Regulus had considered the Holy of Holies was the stories told by those spidery gold lines woven into the fine tapestry. The history contained in those lines. The ancientness and dignity and mystery. His father loved it too, and seemed to enjoy telling him the stories he was so hungry to know.
Tradition ran in his blood. Only a family like his could have such history written into their very bones, their very name; but his own name was unique, unlike Sirius, who was the third to bear precisely the same name. No one had ever held it before, no one else had been Regulus Alphard Black; and yet it was steeped in tradition, entwined with the history of the family. He loved the home that would never break, the traditions that would never die, the line that would continue forever. As far as Regulus’s distant heart would allow him, he loved all of it.
Now he had to contend with loving his family members as well as the Family.
No, that wasn’t so. For his parents, it was a formal, filial feeling; he doubted many children really felt much more than that. And for Sirius ... well, he was growing rather formally fond of Sirius. He didn’t love his brother. It was Sirius who did emotions, not Regulus.
Did Sirius love Regulus? Regulus considered this and doubted it. No, Sirius was fond of him. He liked Regulus enough to call him "Reggie," or occasionally, in very informal moments, just "kid," which Regulus despised and didn’t mind, both at once. The way he imagined Sirius felt about being called "Siri." Enough for an occasional half-completed game of chess or to ask him what he was reading and at least pretend he was interested. And Sirius had tried to get Lucius to leave him alone. The only success Sirius got was by ending his obedience spectacularly, and distracting or placating Lucius with his own body, but Regulus supposed he might as well appreciate the gesture, since it had been made.
Regulus wouldn’t have minded Lucius so much - a little discomfort and inconvenience, unpleasant, but bearable - except for the fact that Lucius would always tie his hands with whatever was reachable. Except for those humiliating, despicable "lessons" Lucius had insisted on giving at first, when Regulus had not known so well as Sirius what to do with his hands and legs, or how to use his mouth.
Well, even so. Bearable.
Lucius certainly hadn’t minded when Sirius threw over his lofty position once again. Sirius was more attractive than Regulus and they all knew it. This didn’t bother Regulus as much as it might have. Regulus sat down from his incessant pacing and looked at the mirror on the wall. Overall, he thought he was quite good-looking enough, thank you. His hair was not quite the same diamond black as his brother’s, somewhat wavy where Sirius had perfectly straight. Regulus’s eyes were cold, muddy green, not as striking as Sirius’s deep cobalt blue, and rather cynical. Sirius’s eyes always revealed either mischief, anger, or, in idle moments, something that might have been mistaken for innocence. Emphasis on mistaken. Sirius was blade-thin, a dancer’s body, and tall. Regulus was of average build, more a Quidditch player build than a dancer, just barely above average height. Their features were similar; strong and yet refined. Regulus came to the conclusion he always did; Sirius was better looking, what Lucius patronizingly called "pretty," and Regulus could see his point. But Regulus had a great deal of the family’s attractiveness for himself, and if it had kept him below the radar of his relatives for fourteen years, well, he was just as happy as a clam with this.
Please disregard cliche metaphor, he added apologetically to himself.
Regulus sometimes wondered why it was that Sirius was so attention-getting, and Regulus seemed to repel attention like the wrong end of a magnet. Which applied to everything; attention from peers, sexual attention, parental attention. Regulus was thrilled with the first two, and the last didn’t really bother him; if this was where attention got Sirius, well, then, he was quite happy without it.
He sometimes wondered what it was like to turn heads just walking normally down a corridor - although he decided he did turn them; but heads turned toward Sirius and away from Regulus. Not that he’d want it; but for intellectual reasons, it would be interesting to know what it was like to have people look at you and want you, want you at first glance.
All this was pointless, though, and Regulus needed to decide whether he was obligated to help his brother now.
He’d have said no ... their reluctant truce didn’t change the fact that Sirius had brought every bit of this upon himself. But ... well ...
... that cry of agony in the dark last night was making Regulus think otherwise. Sirius never cried; Regulus had only seen him cry once in all the time they had known each other. All Regulus’s life and most of Sirius’s, and he’d only seen his brother cry once, years ago. And that scream ... surely no one deserved to be made to cry out like that. Sirius hadn’t really done anything to deserve that much pain. He had violated tradition, yes ... but hurting him so badly was almost certainly the wrong way to go about it. Given half an hour to talk with Sirius, once Sirius had decided to suspend hating his brother for a bit, Regulus had accomplished more in that half hour than anyone else had accomplished in fifteen ... nearly sixteen years.
It was all just unsettling.
Regulus closed his eyes for a moment, thinking.
And then he unlocked his desk, first with spell and then with key, as was necessary to open it. In the bottom drawer, Regulus lifted the liner paper, fiddled with the lock on his compartment, and opened it.
He inhaled the dry, rich smells of old paper, old leather and new ink. He would let Sirius decide whether to ask for Regulus’s help. Regulus would help him along the way with a gift. A gift from the heart. The dry, half-dead formal garden that passed for Regulus’s heart.
He looked through the books - old, old tomes which he had found with their linen paper blank and their dusty tooled-leather covers inviting him to entrust the most precious things he had to these volumes.
He lifted out a book with a green leather cover, undid the brass clasps, and opened the thick and beautiful book. A block of text was perfectly centered on almost every page, in the neat, flowing, spidery handwriting which was so like Sirius’s, and yet not nearly as large or bold. Those that did not have writing had quill-and-ink drawings on them, landscapes mostly, sometimes abstracts.
Regulus carefully tore one sheet from the book. He glanced it over; with a quick refresher, maybe given the first line, he could recite by heart any one of his hundreds of carefully constructed verses (poetry was as much a pastime for pure-blood sons as music for pure-blood daughters). He would just copy this one back in later. He closed and reclasped the book, replaced it in the magically enlarged compartment, shut the compartment, spread the drawer liner again, and relocked his desk.
He lifted the sheet from the floor, got wax and his stamp (it bore the Black family crest and his monogram), and folded and sealed it. He would leave the poem on Sirius’s desk. It was a rich gift indeed; a gift Regulus had never given to anyone else. A way of saying to Sirius: To some extent, I trust you.
And from here on out, it was up to Sirius. Regulus washed his hands of the matter and towelled vigorously.
It was dinnertime before he finally understood the icy fury that had pervaded the air all day. Sirius was already long gone.
Sirius/Lucius, Regulus. PG-13.
Offscreen rape.
Regulus takes responsibility for everyone else's actions. Sirius fails to receive a gift.
Absence Makes
Regulus just didn’t do strong emotion and barely tolerated sympathy for himself or anyone else. But sometimes circumstances required any rational person to rearrange his position on matters.
Pun thoroughly unintended.
The circumstance at the moment: he was quite sure that, through the papered walls, he’d heard Sirius scream last night. He had an unsettling idea that there had been words - namely, something along the lines of, "Lucius, please stop!"
No further vocalizations. Which was also unsettling.
Unsettling enough that Regulus had actually gone to look in on Sirius that morning. Sirius appeared fine. He was breathing and his limbs were at the correct angles. Asleep, by the look of him, not unconscious.
Sirius might have realized this would happen, Regulus told himself. After one summer’s attempt at behaving, he’d thrown over tradition, once again, and, well, tradition dictated that he deserved it.
When Sirius came to breakfast, he moved in the careful way of one who has bruises on his legs or perhaps lower back, a manner Regulus had learned to recognize in the occasionally violent years since he was five and Sirius seven. Sirius had left breakfast halfway through his melon compote, a bit melodramatically, throwing down his fork and fleeing as though it had all suddenly become too much for his delicate nerves. Ever since there had been a cold, tense atmosphere in the halls.
And what made it all so unsettling - that really was the word for it, not frightening or upsetting but unsettling - was that Regulus had begun to care. Not from empathy; Lucius had, of course, had his way with Regulus a few times while Sirius was being good, but never had he treated Regulus quite so harshly as he did Sirius. Certainly he’d never made the younger brother cry out in pain as Sirius had last night. Nonetheless Regulus cared; and it was because ...
Well, call a hag a hag. It was because his brother was human to him now; because Sirius, in a vulnerable moment, had asked him softly for his help. Not even help; advice; information. How to behave.
And while Sirius was the older brother, Regulus considered himself the wiser and more practical; perhaps it meant he was the responsible one. Of course, Regulus knew it was precisely that protective attitude that Sirius hated in Remus, but he did not care. And Sirius needed protection. As an objective observer, Regulus personally thought Remus was probably the best thing that had ever happened to his brother. Well - the worst thing too. Remus was why Sirius was in trouble right now. Remus and his furry little problem which was so highly objectionable to decent purebloods.
Regulus had found that the furry little problem did not repel him that much. Remus was intelligent enough to hold a conversation with; that was quite good enough for Regulus. He supposed that made him not a decent pureblood.
And that was not a good thing. Regulus honored the traditions. More than that, he truly respected them. As a smaller child, he had liked to sit with his father in the third-floor parlor, gazing at the great family-tree tapestry.
Of all times in his life, Regulus had felt the most deeply when he traced the lines at his father’s knee, and what he had felt was wonder. Reverence. What he supposed a Catholic might feel when kneeling in Westminster Abbey. What Regulus had considered the Holy of Holies was the stories told by those spidery gold lines woven into the fine tapestry. The history contained in those lines. The ancientness and dignity and mystery. His father loved it too, and seemed to enjoy telling him the stories he was so hungry to know.
Tradition ran in his blood. Only a family like his could have such history written into their very bones, their very name; but his own name was unique, unlike Sirius, who was the third to bear precisely the same name. No one had ever held it before, no one else had been Regulus Alphard Black; and yet it was steeped in tradition, entwined with the history of the family. He loved the home that would never break, the traditions that would never die, the line that would continue forever. As far as Regulus’s distant heart would allow him, he loved all of it.
Now he had to contend with loving his family members as well as the Family.
No, that wasn’t so. For his parents, it was a formal, filial feeling; he doubted many children really felt much more than that. And for Sirius ... well, he was growing rather formally fond of Sirius. He didn’t love his brother. It was Sirius who did emotions, not Regulus.
Did Sirius love Regulus? Regulus considered this and doubted it. No, Sirius was fond of him. He liked Regulus enough to call him "Reggie," or occasionally, in very informal moments, just "kid," which Regulus despised and didn’t mind, both at once. The way he imagined Sirius felt about being called "Siri." Enough for an occasional half-completed game of chess or to ask him what he was reading and at least pretend he was interested. And Sirius had tried to get Lucius to leave him alone. The only success Sirius got was by ending his obedience spectacularly, and distracting or placating Lucius with his own body, but Regulus supposed he might as well appreciate the gesture, since it had been made.
Regulus wouldn’t have minded Lucius so much - a little discomfort and inconvenience, unpleasant, but bearable - except for the fact that Lucius would always tie his hands with whatever was reachable. Except for those humiliating, despicable "lessons" Lucius had insisted on giving at first, when Regulus had not known so well as Sirius what to do with his hands and legs, or how to use his mouth.
Well, even so. Bearable.
Lucius certainly hadn’t minded when Sirius threw over his lofty position once again. Sirius was more attractive than Regulus and they all knew it. This didn’t bother Regulus as much as it might have. Regulus sat down from his incessant pacing and looked at the mirror on the wall. Overall, he thought he was quite good-looking enough, thank you. His hair was not quite the same diamond black as his brother’s, somewhat wavy where Sirius had perfectly straight. Regulus’s eyes were cold, muddy green, not as striking as Sirius’s deep cobalt blue, and rather cynical. Sirius’s eyes always revealed either mischief, anger, or, in idle moments, something that might have been mistaken for innocence. Emphasis on mistaken. Sirius was blade-thin, a dancer’s body, and tall. Regulus was of average build, more a Quidditch player build than a dancer, just barely above average height. Their features were similar; strong and yet refined. Regulus came to the conclusion he always did; Sirius was better looking, what Lucius patronizingly called "pretty," and Regulus could see his point. But Regulus had a great deal of the family’s attractiveness for himself, and if it had kept him below the radar of his relatives for fourteen years, well, he was just as happy as a clam with this.
Please disregard cliche metaphor, he added apologetically to himself.
Regulus sometimes wondered why it was that Sirius was so attention-getting, and Regulus seemed to repel attention like the wrong end of a magnet. Which applied to everything; attention from peers, sexual attention, parental attention. Regulus was thrilled with the first two, and the last didn’t really bother him; if this was where attention got Sirius, well, then, he was quite happy without it.
He sometimes wondered what it was like to turn heads just walking normally down a corridor - although he decided he did turn them; but heads turned toward Sirius and away from Regulus. Not that he’d want it; but for intellectual reasons, it would be interesting to know what it was like to have people look at you and want you, want you at first glance.
All this was pointless, though, and Regulus needed to decide whether he was obligated to help his brother now.
He’d have said no ... their reluctant truce didn’t change the fact that Sirius had brought every bit of this upon himself. But ... well ...
... that cry of agony in the dark last night was making Regulus think otherwise. Sirius never cried; Regulus had only seen him cry once in all the time they had known each other. All Regulus’s life and most of Sirius’s, and he’d only seen his brother cry once, years ago. And that scream ... surely no one deserved to be made to cry out like that. Sirius hadn’t really done anything to deserve that much pain. He had violated tradition, yes ... but hurting him so badly was almost certainly the wrong way to go about it. Given half an hour to talk with Sirius, once Sirius had decided to suspend hating his brother for a bit, Regulus had accomplished more in that half hour than anyone else had accomplished in fifteen ... nearly sixteen years.
It was all just unsettling.
Regulus closed his eyes for a moment, thinking.
And then he unlocked his desk, first with spell and then with key, as was necessary to open it. In the bottom drawer, Regulus lifted the liner paper, fiddled with the lock on his compartment, and opened it.
He inhaled the dry, rich smells of old paper, old leather and new ink. He would let Sirius decide whether to ask for Regulus’s help. Regulus would help him along the way with a gift. A gift from the heart. The dry, half-dead formal garden that passed for Regulus’s heart.
He looked through the books - old, old tomes which he had found with their linen paper blank and their dusty tooled-leather covers inviting him to entrust the most precious things he had to these volumes.
He lifted out a book with a green leather cover, undid the brass clasps, and opened the thick and beautiful book. A block of text was perfectly centered on almost every page, in the neat, flowing, spidery handwriting which was so like Sirius’s, and yet not nearly as large or bold. Those that did not have writing had quill-and-ink drawings on them, landscapes mostly, sometimes abstracts.
Regulus carefully tore one sheet from the book. He glanced it over; with a quick refresher, maybe given the first line, he could recite by heart any one of his hundreds of carefully constructed verses (poetry was as much a pastime for pure-blood sons as music for pure-blood daughters). He would just copy this one back in later. He closed and reclasped the book, replaced it in the magically enlarged compartment, shut the compartment, spread the drawer liner again, and relocked his desk.
He lifted the sheet from the floor, got wax and his stamp (it bore the Black family crest and his monogram), and folded and sealed it. He would leave the poem on Sirius’s desk. It was a rich gift indeed; a gift Regulus had never given to anyone else. A way of saying to Sirius: To some extent, I trust you.
And from here on out, it was up to Sirius. Regulus washed his hands of the matter and towelled vigorously.
It was dinnertime before he finally understood the icy fury that had pervaded the air all day. Sirius was already long gone.