(no subject)
I'm not going to claim it's good, or worth the wait, but here it is. The Reg/Tree from last summer.
Fandom: Harry Potter
Rating: R
Pairing: Reg/Tree
Summary: Half of what had kept him sane was gone.
A/N:
For Laurel.
So going to hell
for this. *facepalm* Generally, I don't bother to dwell on that, but this just
brought it to the forefront.
I have no idea why I bothered trying to
make this all good. It's crack. It needs no explanation. It needs no
rationalizing. And this piece, my friends, is an example of why you should NOT
attempt to do either of those things. It's not even real crack anymore. It's
more squick. Which wasn't what I wanted. *le sigh*
I checked the HP Lexicon for dates, and they mostly
seem to agree with me: I figure Sirius and Regulus are roughly a year or so
apart.
Boy!Touching, in a manner of speaking. Spawned by these
comments.
Please read them. It wasn't my idea.
I also apologize--it seems like Reg
is reading stiff for me.
It's easy to feel worn out and musty in
that House of Permanent Fixtures of Standing and Antiquity. Even the people in
it feel that way most of the time--it's as though the house itself sucks the
life out of them, turning them into bitter, lifeless husks. Just look at my
mother, some time. She's too stubborn to actually die--but she doesn't do
anything, either. Just sits there all day, bemoaning the state of the world.
Sometimes, I think I hate her almost as much as Sirius does.
And
speaking of Sirius, he's one of two things that somehow escaped the
staleness of this blasted place. He, the first, was always chafing to get
away, and the second...
Well, somehow, the second always seemed calm,
and impossibly smug. Almost as though he only remained here out of spite
for my mother.
No, I'm not talking about my father; Orion bent to her
whim in nearly everything.
I'm talking about that old black alder that's
been growing up the back corner of the manor since before I can remember (though
I don't know why I think he's a 'him'; I guess he just always seemed impossibly
male to me). Mother tried to get him cut down several times, but magic
doesn't have any effect on him, and she obviously can't go to the muggles, even
if she wanted to. They wouldn't be able to find it, and even if she stooped so
low as to escort them here herself, they'd wonder where the hell the place had
sprung from.
And he'd probably just grow back anyway.
A bit of
luck, that. Sometimes, Sirius would want to sneak out, and he'd bribe me to let
him go out my window and into the alder (there's a substantial branch only a few
feet beneath the frame). How else do you think I'd have gotten him to
take that portrait of Phineas and put it in his room instead?
While the alder was useful, I liked him for more than his quantity as an
escape route--besides Sirius, he was the only thing in or around the manor that
felt even remotely alive.
Of course, I occasionally slipped out
in the middle of the night, as nearly all children do at some point, but more
often, I slid into the tree to scramble a bit further up and just sit for
awhile. It was amazingly calming, leaning against his trunk, seeing only
branches and leaves, and the occasional patch of starry sky.
On warm
summer nights, I sat out there more often than not, just listening to the
crickets and the wind (I miss that--it's been so long since I've heard something
that completely natural, that innocent). Occasionally, I talked to
him (and I wouldn't have been surprised if he'd started talking back--he felt
that alive).
'Mother says I can't play with the muggle children
down the street,' I remember telling him once. 'She says they aren't worth it,'
I sighed quietly, resting my small cheek against his bark, and I'd have sworn
that the rustle of leaves sounded vaguely indignant. Other times, the crackling
sounded almost like a whisper of laughter, or an impatient mutter, but no matter
what the response was, I somehow never felt he loathed me as much as the rest of
the family (of which I have no doubt. I knew he only held on so long to spite my
mother, and I'd seen him toss Sirius out of his branches more than once). It was
rather comforting to know that someone liked me better, even if that
'someone' happened to be an inanimate object. It didn't matter if he couldn't
(or just didn't) move on his own; I confided more in his bark than I
ever did to another's ears.
Having him around made me, by
association, feel like I was more alive, as well.
When I went to
Hogwarts, he was the one I missed. Sirius wouldn't speak to me anymore,
even when I saw him, and the rest of the family had only just started paying any
attention to me at all. Who else would I miss?
For the first
couple of weeks, it was almost to the point of pining, but then it started
getting chilly in the evenings, and I consoled myself with the thought that I'd
have mostly stopped visiting him anyway.
It went on like that for a long
while--leaving and managing to adjust with the season, then returning in the
summer. It was much like the bond between most students and their families. I
didn't need a family, though; I had Him.
I grew a great deal near
the end of fourth year, though I was still rather small for my age. I think I
was hurt, when I came home and his branches swayed dangerously for a moment, but
I sat in him anyway, though much more carefully than I was used to. When we'd
become accustomed to each other again, I scrambled around with as much abandon
as ever.
The summer preceding my sixth year, Sirius didn't come home.
Before that, I had been seeing Narvi Greengrass off and on, but when I got home,
I clung to the alder more tightly than ever before. Half of what kept me sane
had left me.
The idea that I would have to resume going to school was
almost unbearable. I would have to see Sirius again. I already knew I couldn't
possibly say anything--Mother had disowned him, for Merlin's sake!--but I would
have to pretend that I was perfectly alright with it.
It was worse than
I'd imagined. I returned to find that, in my absence, Narvi had thrown herself
at that sympathetic fool, Nott (who shot ridiculously smug little glances at me
every chance he got), and now fancied herself caught between us. I, myself,
would have only been mildly irritated, if she hadn't made such a revolting
melodrama of the entire affair. I finally told her so, just before the Yule
holidays, and threatened to hex her frigid.
After that episode, I
was nearly looking forward to my quiet (if gloomy) house, and missing the
alder's comfort even more than usual as I wandered toward my dormitory to begin
my packing (which I'd left rather late, but couldn't bring myself to care too
much about).
Unfortunately, on the way to the dungeons, I bumped into
Sirius, of all people, who'd barely said a handful of words to me since
my first year. For the first time in my memory, he seemed uncertain, and
then he told me that I should come with him, he had a place of his own, I should
get away from our parents, that the war was getting worse and they were going to
end up right in the middle of it and wouldn't I please just come with
him?
I called him an idiot and left him standing in the shadowy
corridor, looking lost for words for the first time in my memory. Merlin, it
felt good.
Generally, I didn't visit the alder over the winter; it was
cold, and I'd mostly gotten used to not seeing him anyway. That year, though, I
made it a point to go out on the first night and at least say hello.
After excusing myself to bed early and stashing my cloak beneath the
bed, I lit up and flopped on the bed to make sure my mother wasn't going to come
check on me at any time. She hadn't in years, but you can never be sure--and I
knew that if she found me out in the tree, she'd probably redouble her efforts
to get him down, just to have another hold on me. I didn't want to be the cause
of that, even if I didn't really believe it would work.
When I'd
satisfied myself that I wouldn't be disturbed, even to be told to 'go smoke
those filthy muggle things outside!' I retrieved my cloak and eased up the
window. I spent a moment brushing the snow off of his branch, then carefully
climbed out, leaning heavily on the sill and hoping he wasn't going to let me
step on an icy patch and fall the painful two stories into the garden (where
still more painful things lived--my family is above the Ban on Experimental
Breeding. That may explain why my alder was there in the first place, so
I can't really say I'm sorry).
Fortunately, I didn't have to wonder
which monstrous creation would be picking my bones out of its teeth, because he
didn't let me fall, though he gave a brittle creak as I shifted my weight to his
trunk. I thought it sounded rather glad to see me. I paused a moment, wondering
if I should chance it, then pulled myself a few branches higher, just high
enough that no one could see my feet if they just happened to look out my
window.
I sat back against his trunk, sighing in a puff of frost. I'd
missed him more than I thought, and told him so. The limb I was sitting on
shuddered delightedly, and I patted his bark with my ungloved hand.
Nothing happened, for a short while. I sat quietly, looking through his
bare branches at the stars, just thinking.
"Can't believe that
Greengrass tart." I muttered aloud. I hadn't meant to mention her at all, but
now there was no way out of it; his branches chattered against each other
curiously.
Who? they seemed to ask.
"Narvi Greengrass," I
said reluctantly, but the branches kept clicking together.
Who's
she?
"The slag I'm no longer seeing."
The entire tree
lurched, bringing back my fear of the gardens when he nearly pitched me off.
I thought I was your favourite. Several of the twigs
higher up cracked mournfully.
"You are. Don't see me calling
you a slag, do you?" I was actually faintly amused by this show of his
possessive nature, but I couldn't let him know that. He'd probably toss me for
real, this time.
I guess not. Grudging shift beneath me.
"Believe me, the only thing she ever had on you, my friend, was a hole
between her legs." I teased, patting his bark again.
Sulky breeze
through the lower limbs. I have holes. More than she does.
"Unfortunately, no legs."
I got the feeling that if he had a
tongue, he would be poking it out at me for that particular remark.
Strike that. I felt something poke me in the back.
"Good thing,
that." I attempted to console him. "I'm rather bored with women anyway."
Good. I'm better than women. Arrogant shifting of branches all
around me, then they grabbed hold of me all at once.
"Bleeding--"
I started to shout, before finding out that the taste of bark is Not Pleasant.
The twigs poked me in uncomfortable places; he sounded very smug. Can
you be quiet, now? One of the limbs squeezed my leg, and I caught my breath,
reminding myself that the alder is, in fact, a tree, and generally,
trees can not make suggestive movements upon the people seated in their
branches.
That didn't stop me from thinking it was suggestive, anyway.
Well? It was almost as though the bleeding thing had grown
claws.
I only nodded to get him to stop the skeletal
creeper-vines that were, well, creeping up my trouser leg, the slightly
tingling scrape of their mostly-smooth surface making me sweat (it was
nervous sweat, I promise you. I did not want to know what they
could do to my bits). By accident, I'm certain.
The woody taste was
still in my mouth, and the vines were making their merry way across my inner
thigh by now, even if he had taken pity and let me have my mouth to
myself again.
The strangled kind of sound I made was a grunt. It
was not a whimper in any way, shape, or form, thank you very much. It did
not have anything to do with the fact that I was suddenly finding out
what those odd vines could do to my bits, and it was certainly not enjoyable.
I am certainly not becoming aroused by the memory. I am certainly
not blushing. And, I am certainly not lying to you through my
teeth.
Anyhow, I suppose I should dispense with defending myself (since
you most certainly believe me to be quite mad by now) and simply relate the rest
of this singularly peculiar experience.
He was no longer speaking (of
course, I mean 'speaking' in his way of rustles and creaks); he seemed to be
concentrating on keeping himself from separating any important body parts in his
eagerness to prove himself better than a woman. A groan escaped me as he
squeezed a little tighter, and I could have kicked myself, but several twigs had
worked their way beneath my shirt and were playing with my nipples, sufficiently
distracting me. Oddly, they were incredibly smooth twigs, and I could
almost imagine that they were hands (albeit chilly, knobbly hands).
I
tried to forget he was a tree, and rolled my hips forward experimentally. Under
any other circumstances, I would have fallen into the garden immediately, but
his branches were still clutching at me, so I figured it was safe to try it
again, a little harder. I bit back a moan, and I would have sworn that he did,
too (which I pointedly didn't think about, because it was rather
unnerving).
Now, away from his clinging branches, I find it vaguely disturbing that I was brought off by a
semi-sentient tree in the middle of the winter holidays, but all I knew at the time was that it felt damn
good.
Later that night, when I was relatively certain my legs wouldn't crumple and send me to my death
while trying to climb down, I reflected on the fact that fucking a tree was better than fucking
Greengrass had ever been.
I was glad it was only the first night of holidays.
Now with commentary!
Fandom: Harry Potter
Rating: R
Pairing: Reg/Tree
Summary: Half of what had kept him sane was gone.
A/N:
For Laurel.
So going to hell
for this. *facepalm* Generally, I don't bother to dwell on that, but this just
brought it to the forefront.
I have no idea why I bothered trying to
make this all good. It's crack. It needs no explanation. It needs no
rationalizing. And this piece, my friends, is an example of why you should NOT
attempt to do either of those things. It's not even real crack anymore. It's
more squick. Which wasn't what I wanted. *le sigh*
I checked the HP Lexicon for dates, and they mostly
seem to agree with me: I figure Sirius and Regulus are roughly a year or so
apart.
Boy!Touching, in a manner of speaking. Spawned by these
comments.
Please read them. It wasn't my idea.
I also apologize--it seems like Reg
is reading stiff for me.
It's easy to feel worn out and musty in
that House of Permanent Fixtures of Standing and Antiquity. Even the people in
it feel that way most of the time--it's as though the house itself sucks the
life out of them, turning them into bitter, lifeless husks. Just look at my
mother, some time. She's too stubborn to actually die--but she doesn't do
anything, either. Just sits there all day, bemoaning the state of the world.
Sometimes, I think I hate her almost as much as Sirius does.
And
speaking of Sirius, he's one of two things that somehow escaped the
staleness of this blasted place. He, the first, was always chafing to get
away, and the second...
Well, somehow, the second always seemed calm,
and impossibly smug. Almost as though he only remained here out of spite
for my mother.
No, I'm not talking about my father; Orion bent to her
whim in nearly everything.
I'm talking about that old black alder that's
been growing up the back corner of the manor since before I can remember (though
I don't know why I think he's a 'him'; I guess he just always seemed impossibly
male to me). Mother tried to get him cut down several times, but magic
doesn't have any effect on him, and she obviously can't go to the muggles, even
if she wanted to. They wouldn't be able to find it, and even if she stooped so
low as to escort them here herself, they'd wonder where the hell the place had
sprung from.
And he'd probably just grow back anyway.
A bit of
luck, that. Sometimes, Sirius would want to sneak out, and he'd bribe me to let
him go out my window and into the alder (there's a substantial branch only a few
feet beneath the frame). How else do you think I'd have gotten him to
take that portrait of Phineas and put it in his room instead?
While the alder was useful, I liked him for more than his quantity as an
escape route--besides Sirius, he was the only thing in or around the manor that
felt even remotely alive.
Of course, I occasionally slipped out
in the middle of the night, as nearly all children do at some point, but more
often, I slid into the tree to scramble a bit further up and just sit for
awhile. It was amazingly calming, leaning against his trunk, seeing only
branches and leaves, and the occasional patch of starry sky.
On warm
summer nights, I sat out there more often than not, just listening to the
crickets and the wind (I miss that--it's been so long since I've heard something
that completely natural, that innocent). Occasionally, I talked to
him (and I wouldn't have been surprised if he'd started talking back--he felt
that alive).
'Mother says I can't play with the muggle children
down the street,' I remember telling him once. 'She says they aren't worth it,'
I sighed quietly, resting my small cheek against his bark, and I'd have sworn
that the rustle of leaves sounded vaguely indignant. Other times, the crackling
sounded almost like a whisper of laughter, or an impatient mutter, but no matter
what the response was, I somehow never felt he loathed me as much as the rest of
the family (of which I have no doubt. I knew he only held on so long to spite my
mother, and I'd seen him toss Sirius out of his branches more than once). It was
rather comforting to know that someone liked me better, even if that
'someone' happened to be an inanimate object. It didn't matter if he couldn't
(or just didn't) move on his own; I confided more in his bark than I
ever did to another's ears.
Having him around made me, by
association, feel like I was more alive, as well.
When I went to
Hogwarts, he was the one I missed. Sirius wouldn't speak to me anymore,
even when I saw him, and the rest of the family had only just started paying any
attention to me at all. Who else would I miss?
For the first
couple of weeks, it was almost to the point of pining, but then it started
getting chilly in the evenings, and I consoled myself with the thought that I'd
have mostly stopped visiting him anyway.
It went on like that for a long
while--leaving and managing to adjust with the season, then returning in the
summer. It was much like the bond between most students and their families. I
didn't need a family, though; I had Him.
I grew a great deal near
the end of fourth year, though I was still rather small for my age. I think I
was hurt, when I came home and his branches swayed dangerously for a moment, but
I sat in him anyway, though much more carefully than I was used to. When we'd
become accustomed to each other again, I scrambled around with as much abandon
as ever.
The summer preceding my sixth year, Sirius didn't come home.
Before that, I had been seeing Narvi Greengrass off and on, but when I got home,
I clung to the alder more tightly than ever before. Half of what kept me sane
had left me.
The idea that I would have to resume going to school was
almost unbearable. I would have to see Sirius again. I already knew I couldn't
possibly say anything--Mother had disowned him, for Merlin's sake!--but I would
have to pretend that I was perfectly alright with it.
It was worse than
I'd imagined. I returned to find that, in my absence, Narvi had thrown herself
at that sympathetic fool, Nott (who shot ridiculously smug little glances at me
every chance he got), and now fancied herself caught between us. I, myself,
would have only been mildly irritated, if she hadn't made such a revolting
melodrama of the entire affair. I finally told her so, just before the Yule
holidays, and threatened to hex her frigid.
After that episode, I
was nearly looking forward to my quiet (if gloomy) house, and missing the
alder's comfort even more than usual as I wandered toward my dormitory to begin
my packing (which I'd left rather late, but couldn't bring myself to care too
much about).
Unfortunately, on the way to the dungeons, I bumped into
Sirius, of all people, who'd barely said a handful of words to me since
my first year. For the first time in my memory, he seemed uncertain, and
then he told me that I should come with him, he had a place of his own, I should
get away from our parents, that the war was getting worse and they were going to
end up right in the middle of it and wouldn't I please just come with
him?
I called him an idiot and left him standing in the shadowy
corridor, looking lost for words for the first time in my memory. Merlin, it
felt good.
Generally, I didn't visit the alder over the winter; it was
cold, and I'd mostly gotten used to not seeing him anyway. That year, though, I
made it a point to go out on the first night and at least say hello.
After excusing myself to bed early and stashing my cloak beneath the
bed, I lit up and flopped on the bed to make sure my mother wasn't going to come
check on me at any time. She hadn't in years, but you can never be sure--and I
knew that if she found me out in the tree, she'd probably redouble her efforts
to get him down, just to have another hold on me. I didn't want to be the cause
of that, even if I didn't really believe it would work.
When I'd
satisfied myself that I wouldn't be disturbed, even to be told to 'go smoke
those filthy muggle things outside!' I retrieved my cloak and eased up the
window. I spent a moment brushing the snow off of his branch, then carefully
climbed out, leaning heavily on the sill and hoping he wasn't going to let me
step on an icy patch and fall the painful two stories into the garden (where
still more painful things lived--my family is above the Ban on Experimental
Breeding. That may explain why my alder was there in the first place, so
I can't really say I'm sorry).
Fortunately, I didn't have to wonder
which monstrous creation would be picking my bones out of its teeth, because he
didn't let me fall, though he gave a brittle creak as I shifted my weight to his
trunk. I thought it sounded rather glad to see me. I paused a moment, wondering
if I should chance it, then pulled myself a few branches higher, just high
enough that no one could see my feet if they just happened to look out my
window.
I sat back against his trunk, sighing in a puff of frost. I'd
missed him more than I thought, and told him so. The limb I was sitting on
shuddered delightedly, and I patted his bark with my ungloved hand.
Nothing happened, for a short while. I sat quietly, looking through his
bare branches at the stars, just thinking.
"Can't believe that
Greengrass tart." I muttered aloud. I hadn't meant to mention her at all, but
now there was no way out of it; his branches chattered against each other
curiously.
Who? they seemed to ask.
"Narvi Greengrass," I
said reluctantly, but the branches kept clicking together.
Who's
she?
"The slag I'm no longer seeing."
The entire tree
lurched, bringing back my fear of the gardens when he nearly pitched me off.
I thought I was your favourite. Several of the twigs
higher up cracked mournfully.
"You are. Don't see me calling
you a slag, do you?" I was actually faintly amused by this show of his
possessive nature, but I couldn't let him know that. He'd probably toss me for
real, this time.
I guess not. Grudging shift beneath me.
"Believe me, the only thing she ever had on you, my friend, was a hole
between her legs." I teased, patting his bark again.
Sulky breeze
through the lower limbs. I have holes. More than she does.
"Unfortunately, no legs."
I got the feeling that if he had a
tongue, he would be poking it out at me for that particular remark.
Strike that. I felt something poke me in the back.
"Good thing,
that." I attempted to console him. "I'm rather bored with women anyway."
Good. I'm better than women. Arrogant shifting of branches all
around me, then they grabbed hold of me all at once.
"Bleeding--"
I started to shout, before finding out that the taste of bark is Not Pleasant.
The twigs poked me in uncomfortable places; he sounded very smug. Can
you be quiet, now? One of the limbs squeezed my leg, and I caught my breath,
reminding myself that the alder is, in fact, a tree, and generally,
trees can not make suggestive movements upon the people seated in their
branches.
That didn't stop me from thinking it was suggestive, anyway.
Well? It was almost as though the bleeding thing had grown
claws.
I only nodded to get him to stop the skeletal
creeper-vines that were, well, creeping up my trouser leg, the slightly
tingling scrape of their mostly-smooth surface making me sweat (it was
nervous sweat, I promise you. I did not want to know what they
could do to my bits). By accident, I'm certain.
The woody taste was
still in my mouth, and the vines were making their merry way across my inner
thigh by now, even if he had taken pity and let me have my mouth to
myself again.
The strangled kind of sound I made was a grunt. It
was not a whimper in any way, shape, or form, thank you very much. It did
not have anything to do with the fact that I was suddenly finding out
what those odd vines could do to my bits, and it was certainly not enjoyable.
I am certainly not becoming aroused by the memory. I am certainly
not blushing. And, I am certainly not lying to you through my
teeth.
Anyhow, I suppose I should dispense with defending myself (since
you most certainly believe me to be quite mad by now) and simply relate the rest
of this singularly peculiar experience.
He was no longer speaking (of
course, I mean 'speaking' in his way of rustles and creaks); he seemed to be
concentrating on keeping himself from separating any important body parts in his
eagerness to prove himself better than a woman. A groan escaped me as he
squeezed a little tighter, and I could have kicked myself, but several twigs had
worked their way beneath my shirt and were playing with my nipples, sufficiently
distracting me. Oddly, they were incredibly smooth twigs, and I could
almost imagine that they were hands (albeit chilly, knobbly hands).
I
tried to forget he was a tree, and rolled my hips forward experimentally. Under
any other circumstances, I would have fallen into the garden immediately, but
his branches were still clutching at me, so I figured it was safe to try it
again, a little harder. I bit back a moan, and I would have sworn that he did,
too (which I pointedly didn't think about, because it was rather
unnerving).
Now, away from his clinging branches, I find it vaguely disturbing that I was brought off by a
semi-sentient tree in the middle of the winter holidays, but all I knew at the time was that it felt damn
good.
Later that night, when I was relatively certain my legs wouldn't crumple and send me to my death
while trying to climb down, I reflected on the fact that fucking a tree was better than fucking
Greengrass had ever been.
I was glad it was only the first night of holidays.
Now with commentary!