ficpost: "Dirty Flight" Sirius/Remus
Title: "Dirty Flight"
Fandom: Harry Potter
Featured Characters: Sirius Black, Remus Lupin, and Sirius's many issues.
Featured Sexual Tensions: Sirius/Remus, Sirius/Mrs. Black
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Incestuous themes.
Spoilers/Timeline/Continuity: This fic may or may not have been jossed by Deathly Hallows; it was completed after I finished reading it, but I continued to write as I'd originally intended. There are some minor allusions to that book in this fic, however, so the very paranoid may wish to avoid.
Disclaimer: I have ideas about J.K. Rowling and her secret identity, but I'm fairly sure she's not I.
Notes: Cest-a-thon fic. For lottelita, who requested Blackcest and "deathbed." I sincerely hope there is enough incest mixed in with the boyslash.
Summary: Sirius is a bit funny about his mother.
Wordcount: 3104
Dirty Flight
Sirius Black used his foot (shod in a heavy black boot) to prop open the door that separated his home from Muggle Grimmauld Place. When he was quite sure no one was watching from behind or from the street, he slipped the rest of himself through then out the door, and felt with delight the small quiver of air as number twelve settled itself invisibly into its surroundings.
He walked quickly and aimlessly, sure that his mother would too soon discover his absence, by the same power that enabled her always to know when he hadn't eaten all his vegetables or when he'd locked his little brother in a cabinet. He would go as far as possible, farther than yesterday, farther than Mum would ever dare, testing the limits of his tether, watching the murky sky broaden overhead, watching the road disappear under his feet.
Muggle children stared, and he wished for a moment he'd bothered with trousers (contraband), but then a Muggle boy spotted him and tugged his hand free from his mother's -- she was distracted by infants and parcels, and had no magic to help her tote them, so it was all down to her son, Sirius's age, grinning. "Why're you wearing a dress?" he asked, friendly and contemptuous.
Sirius shrugged, then grinned back. "Want a chocolate frog?"
Fear, confusion, desire played across his face. Desire won. "Course I do."
Sirius slipped it into his hand just as the Muggle mum caught the boy by the scruff of his neck. "Geoff, I've warned you about strangers," she said, dragging him away from Sirius, whose mum had also warned him about strangers. Filthy beasts, subnormal humans, Muggle trash. He stamped the street, enjoying the echo, stamped again, enjoying the little hurt. He heard the hiss of a spell just graze him, and started running, passing big, empty houses and innocent pedestrians and accidentally tripping over a small dog on the end of a very long leash. His knee hit pavement and started to bleed the same moment that his mother's spell immobilized him; the dog licked his wounded knee and its owner demanded to know that he was going to be a brave boy. He sat, undignified and uncowed, and tried to smile. He managed a grimace.
"Sirius!"
Mother was strict and darling, dangling pleasantries, presents, from pursed lips. She held his hand, checked both ways for bad men and wild animals, scratched his cheek with a fingernail (entirely accidentally), kissed his forehead and said, ruefully, "I have no doubt you'll get as far as you want, Master Black, but I hope you learn to run in the right direction!" Sirius knew running away to Knockturn Alley, as cheerful family legend purported Father had done when he was eleven, would be better received than running into Muggle London.
He wanted Muggle London. Always. Wanted its embrace, vivid and ugly, wanted its stray dogs and homeless people, its children with dirty cheeks and its tired workers. When he got his wand, twelve inches and sturdy walnut, he wanted to throw it aside, to feel London unwarded and unprotected, unhampered by his mother's heavy perfumes and finger-breaking grip, free to be kidnapped and free to tussle with policemen, to twist away from -- her talons sunk into his shoulder. "I'm so proud," she whispered, though there was no reason to keep her pride from Ollivander, prissy and dull and used to overeager parents. "You will be a credit to Slytherin with that wand."
"I wish I was an orphan," Sirius told Remus Lupin four weeks later in a whisper that mimicked Mum's.
"Oh." Remus Lupin was a small boy, unremarkable, who clung very tightly to the handle of his suitcase when every other first year had brought a trunk. Sirius felt magnanimous towards him, wise, well-traveled, and a little superior. He was also pleased to realize, as Lupin tentatively offered biographical details, that he had encountered halfblood filth, exactly as his mother had warned he would. He swallowed hard to bite back a gleeful and shocked grin. Lupin wasn't exactly well-dressed, but his Muggle clothes were clean and, when he changed into his robe, Black saw that it was new and identical to his own.
"Black!" someone shouted as they struggled off the train. It was James Potter, smirking and arrogant in his own new robe. Sirius smirked back.
"Potter, this is my new friend Remus Lupin," Sirius said. "He's going to Slytherin with me." He wasn't sure what made him say it. His mother would be shocked, but his mother couldn't hear him, now, would never know. He hauled Lupin after him into a boat, and Potter clambered after them, joined by a round-faced boy who looked worse off than Lupin.
"Pettigrew," he said, reaching for Sirius's hand, but Sirius was already leaning over the edge of his boat, deciding whom he ought to splash first.
"Gryffindor has bested Slytherin in Quidditch two years running," said Potter, whose family had tainted Gryffindor for nearly as many years as the Blacks had graced Slytherin.
"Well, that'll change now that Lupin and I are in Slytherin," Black said, and Potter punched him. He pushed back, and somehow, Potter ended in the lake.
Laughing, he reached up to them, and Lupin grabbed one arm, Sirius the other, but Potter's sodden robes made him too heavy for them to lift, and they tumbled in after him, Lupin gracefully, Sirius messily. He produced quite a fountain of angry foam before the groundskeeper fished them out. "You're a right prat, you know," Potter told him.
"Am not. I'm just destined for Slytherin and greatness."
"One of them, anyhow," Potter said snidely. "I wouldn't wash my robes in Slytherin's drinking water. I heard it's right at the bottom of the castle, and you know which way shit flows."
An unexpected pressure on his hand prevented Sirius's retort; he looked down to see Lupin's hand, scratched and scrawny, covering his. "I don't want to end up in the water again," Lupin whispered, and Sirius smiled. Remus would be sorted Slytherin, he knew it.
He knew it, really, until the Sorting Hat was on his head, pondering. He hadn't heard of it ever pondering before. It looked in, saw that your blood was pure and your ambitions true, and there you were in the dungeon, meeting cousins you never knew you had, or in Professor Slughorn's study, eating partridge and making connections. The Sorting Hat, it seemed, didn't know that this was what Sirius wanted.
"A bit fierce, are you?" it asked politely.
"Just say Slytherin, you know you've got to." He felt his mother's voice speaking through him, as comfortable as old pajamas.
"I could say Gryffindor."
"I'd run away. I'd go to Hogsmeade Station tonight, I'd walk home, I'd live in the caves," Sirius threatened.
"Really?"
"I'll go right now! Just try it."
"Gryffindor!" the Hat announced, and Sirius nearly fell off the chair. He saw Potter's smirk, Lupin's puzzled, sad expression, and decided haughtily that he'd wait till he had some better companionship before he made a break for it.
"And then the Hat told me to keep an eye on Black," James Potter told them.
"You're lying," Sirius decided.
"Probably. But I know for myself you need looking out for. I bet you haven't been away from your mum for more than an hour before."
"I have."
"You haven't, and I bet the Hat meant to put you in Slytherin, no, worse, in Ravenclaw. You'll spend all your time revising for exams, I expect."
"I won't, and what's more, I won't open a book all term and I'll pass higher than you."
"That isn't a good idea, is it?" Remus asked quietly. "I mean, isn't it important that you learn all you can? Otherwise, your magic might... hurt someone. If it got loose."
A curious look appeared on Peter's face, but James just laughed. "I accept your terms, Sirius. More time for other occupations."
"Such as?"
"Corrupting you," James said with a smirk. "When you go home at Christmas, your mother won't recognize you."
That was a lie. Mrs. Black not only recognized Sirius, she made quite certain he recognized himself for who he was -- a pureblood wizard gone tragically astray, whose true heritage would shine through if he gave up his mangy friends, accepted Slughorn's invitation, and, "Write to me, dear, if there is anything -- anything -- that gives you worry or pause. Your school days should be the happiest of your life, and I don't want you to be miserable even if you must be away from your people." She knelt to kiss him goodbye, wet on his cheek. For the first time, he wiped away the kiss, not thinking of anything except the humiliation if his friends saw. She replaced it with a slap.
++
"Hey," whispered Remus, over the top of a very large library book.
"Hey as in let's nick some food, or hey as in you're still working on that essay for Flitwick and can't be bothered?"
"Hey, as in, dirty pictures."
Sirius checked that Peter and James were indeed serving the detention McGonagall set for them and hadn't skived off; Remus could now habitually find the very best sort of pictures, the kind that made Sirius wonder, hard, what his motivation really was for inviting Remus home for the Christmas hols, the kind that made him wonder whether anyone really could accidentally find so many images of male nudes while supposedly writing a lengthy and dull essay about the history of flight.
He leaned a hand on the desk, spread with Remus's dense notes, and the other he placed roughly on Remus's shoulder. "Golden," he said of the picture, eyes wide (though Remus couldn't see).
"It's not very nice, is it? Teaching your son to fly but not telling him how to land."
"Oh, I think I know why Daedalus did it," Sirius said, very carefully not touching his cock. He wanted to teach his son to fly, to give him advantages he hadn't had, to hold him close for just a moment before he escaped the thralls of gravity and history. The artist understood this too, and was a little too in love with Daedalus's hand on his son's shoulders, with the proximity of thighs, with that wistful look that might mean jealousy, might mean regret. Depended, really, whether you were looking at Peter or at Remus. Sirius was looking at Remus, too hard, too often. He removed his hand from Remus's shoulder, stepped back, and said, lightly, "Know what I'm going to do?"
"What?" Remus abandoned his work.
"I'm going to charm a motorcycle to fly," he said, and he could have licked up Remus's bewildered expression, the lost, happy, intrigued smile that was his favorite of Remus's looks, as it meant he could expound on subjects dear to his heart, educate and enlighten Moony, who had been unlucky enough to spend the first eleven years of his life without any Blacks to teach him.
"Why?"
"Because it will drive Mother absolutely mad," Sirius explained, fully expecting a round of applause, or at least a smirk of approval.
"Have you considered that you might be a bit funny about your mum?"
"He's a pureblood," Lily Evans interjected on her way upstairs. "Funny about Mum is in the job description."
"I'm not funny about her," Sirius insisted. "Gone off her a bit since I realized she hates all my friends, but that's not funny, that's normal. Also, if I'm gone on anyone, it's you." He didn't realize until the words escaped his mouth that he was going to say them.
Possibly for the first time in their friendship, Sirius couldn't read Remus's expression. His smile was always, enchantingly, a little crooked, but now it was downright twisted. "I think you fancy knowing it will upset your mother more than you fancy me," he said, in what was clearly a well-practiced monotone. "I'm going up to bed now."
"Without me?"
Very firmly, Remus said, "Alone." It hurt surprisingly, like a Stinging Hex when you were expecting a hug.
++
"Nothing could make this better," Sirius told the place where Remus's shoulder blade was sharpest. "Almost nothing."
"Mmm?" Remus muttered into the pillow.
When Sirius stretched his hand across the relaxed muscles of Remus's thigh, he could feel Remus's pulse all the way down to his own toes, and when he just touched Remus's cock, Remus released a great, shuddering gasp. "If Mum could see this. If she knew -- shagging a bloke, a half-blood, a half-breed -- her words, mate, you know I don't care if you have fur or fangs or tentacles..." But Remus had gone tense all over, disappeared in Sirius's arms and been replaced by someone foreign and afraid. He rolled out of Sirius's loose embrace.
"You are sick about your mother."
"I'm not."
"You are," Remus said, reaching for his trousers. "And I have things to do."
Sirius grabbed his hand, pulled him to the bed. The Remus of Hogwarts, who'd trotted easily after them and accepted that things Were As They Were in the Wizarding World, had gone. The new Remus was stiff, resistant, secretive. He seemed to have forgotten how to breathe. He didn't bother James about setting off fireworks when Harry was born, giving away their location and singeing half their friends, but buried his face in a junky magazine and ignored the exploding streaks of red and gold. One hit the ground at Remus's feet, and Remus extinguished it carelessly, as if even house fires didn't matter very much.
Remus didn't respond to caresses, didn't rise to bait. Sirius had been long convinced that when he got Remus into bed with him, he'd have his triumph, would own Remus's smile, could make him growl fiercely and mew like a pup, would subdue him and would make him fight. But it wasn't that way at all, and Sirius thought he knew why, although he couldn't quite admit, yet, that it was true, that Remus had not just changed but switched, that their pillowtalk might worm its way into the Dark Lord's ear.
"You might think it would be the pure-bred wizard who went dark," he said, half to himself. "You might think that the boy who loved his mother," -- who'd last seen his mother summoning curses to haunt him till he died -- "and not the one who spent all his holidays away from home," -- with him, with James, with Peter once, with real wizarding families...
"I'll be back this evening," Remus told him, from the door. Sirius didn't know where he was going, didn't want to.
"Don't bother. I think we're done." He didn't wait but Apparated instantly, sure that if he hesitated, the look on Remus's face would match his mother's curses in ability to haunt.
++
Sirius opened the door cautiously, although he trusted without question Dumbledore's pathological ability to keep a secret. Though no one unexpected could come to call, unpleasant people certainly could. And so could Remus.
"You look cold."
"You don't want to know where I've been," Remus told him, stepping over the threshold with a careful backward glance. No one but Muggles too busy to notice the house that still wasn't there.
It was true, he didn't. Every casual word about guard duty and danger was a little knife of jealousy; secret missions to werewolf encampments were out of the question. "You're not wrong that I'd rather not talk," he told Remus's backside as they carefully slipped past the painting of his mother, who made Sirius feel awkward, a little ashamed. He'd given up boasting about his family tree after he was pruned from it, but there were certain things that one could say about one's own mother -- callous bitch and senile racist -- that one didn't like demonstrated to anyone who happened into the vestibule. And since Remus frequently... happened... the question was not academic.
His mother's portrait was a bit of a mood-killer.
They started upstairs, and as soon as they were out of Mother's earshot, Remus said, "It's a bit unsettling that I'm at home in a sixteen year old's bedroom. I feel positively friendly with Miss July," making small talk or flirting, it was all the inflection. His hands dangled in Sirius's airspace, and Sirius smiled.
"There's loads of rooms in the house."
"Nice and casual, that's it."
"She died, Remus."
"Then honor her memory by living for the things you wish she'd cared for."
"If you're trying not to speak ill of the dead, you could try a little hardert."
"You have plenty of relatives still living to speak ill of. We'll leave her be."
"Would be easier if she didn't spend half the night shrieking about how I've betrayed her and her honor, how I'm a disgrace and a disappointment."
Remus gave him a scorching but unreadable look, then nodded. "Just once. And just because you won't enjoy it."
He was determined he would. His heart sped up as he opened her door, discarded his wand. Her bed had been disinfected, of course (the whole house had been) but (like the rest of the house) it still smelled like dirty things that were safer in graves than living quarters. Every evil thought his mother had possessed lingered, trapped by the drawn shades and coddled by shrieking charms that, predictably, objected to the bed (and Black) being used by a werewolf.
If Mum could see. It had nibbled at him since the damned Hat had called his bluff, half she'd disown me and be done with it, the other she'd know just how wrong she's been.
If Mother had seen him tackle Remus to the bed, if Mother had known the rasp of breath that meant arousal, if Mother had ever loved anything that wasn't familial and sickly, then she'd laugh, smile, forgive. Understand.
Remus closed his eyes, clearly saying, This is a favor to you because you've had a rough decade, but Sirius couldn't look away from the walls and ceiling, charmed and angry, from the bedposts, nicked with daggers in long-ago skirmishes for power, from Remus's white hands, which slid around Sirius's face as gently as he dared, as if each kiss, dear, wet, willing, would make him forget his mother's face when he last slapped her, bitterly, with, "I'm never coming home again."
++++
Fandom: Harry Potter
Featured Characters: Sirius Black, Remus Lupin, and Sirius's many issues.
Featured Sexual Tensions: Sirius/Remus, Sirius/Mrs. Black
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Incestuous themes.
Spoilers/Timeline/Continuity: This fic may or may not have been jossed by Deathly Hallows; it was completed after I finished reading it, but I continued to write as I'd originally intended. There are some minor allusions to that book in this fic, however, so the very paranoid may wish to avoid.
Disclaimer: I have ideas about J.K. Rowling and her secret identity, but I'm fairly sure she's not I.
Notes: Cest-a-thon fic. For lottelita, who requested Blackcest and "deathbed." I sincerely hope there is enough incest mixed in with the boyslash.
Summary: Sirius is a bit funny about his mother.
Wordcount: 3104
Dirty Flight
Sirius Black used his foot (shod in a heavy black boot) to prop open the door that separated his home from Muggle Grimmauld Place. When he was quite sure no one was watching from behind or from the street, he slipped the rest of himself through then out the door, and felt with delight the small quiver of air as number twelve settled itself invisibly into its surroundings.
He walked quickly and aimlessly, sure that his mother would too soon discover his absence, by the same power that enabled her always to know when he hadn't eaten all his vegetables or when he'd locked his little brother in a cabinet. He would go as far as possible, farther than yesterday, farther than Mum would ever dare, testing the limits of his tether, watching the murky sky broaden overhead, watching the road disappear under his feet.
Muggle children stared, and he wished for a moment he'd bothered with trousers (contraband), but then a Muggle boy spotted him and tugged his hand free from his mother's -- she was distracted by infants and parcels, and had no magic to help her tote them, so it was all down to her son, Sirius's age, grinning. "Why're you wearing a dress?" he asked, friendly and contemptuous.
Sirius shrugged, then grinned back. "Want a chocolate frog?"
Fear, confusion, desire played across his face. Desire won. "Course I do."
Sirius slipped it into his hand just as the Muggle mum caught the boy by the scruff of his neck. "Geoff, I've warned you about strangers," she said, dragging him away from Sirius, whose mum had also warned him about strangers. Filthy beasts, subnormal humans, Muggle trash. He stamped the street, enjoying the echo, stamped again, enjoying the little hurt. He heard the hiss of a spell just graze him, and started running, passing big, empty houses and innocent pedestrians and accidentally tripping over a small dog on the end of a very long leash. His knee hit pavement and started to bleed the same moment that his mother's spell immobilized him; the dog licked his wounded knee and its owner demanded to know that he was going to be a brave boy. He sat, undignified and uncowed, and tried to smile. He managed a grimace.
"Sirius!"
Mother was strict and darling, dangling pleasantries, presents, from pursed lips. She held his hand, checked both ways for bad men and wild animals, scratched his cheek with a fingernail (entirely accidentally), kissed his forehead and said, ruefully, "I have no doubt you'll get as far as you want, Master Black, but I hope you learn to run in the right direction!" Sirius knew running away to Knockturn Alley, as cheerful family legend purported Father had done when he was eleven, would be better received than running into Muggle London.
He wanted Muggle London. Always. Wanted its embrace, vivid and ugly, wanted its stray dogs and homeless people, its children with dirty cheeks and its tired workers. When he got his wand, twelve inches and sturdy walnut, he wanted to throw it aside, to feel London unwarded and unprotected, unhampered by his mother's heavy perfumes and finger-breaking grip, free to be kidnapped and free to tussle with policemen, to twist away from -- her talons sunk into his shoulder. "I'm so proud," she whispered, though there was no reason to keep her pride from Ollivander, prissy and dull and used to overeager parents. "You will be a credit to Slytherin with that wand."
"I wish I was an orphan," Sirius told Remus Lupin four weeks later in a whisper that mimicked Mum's.
"Oh." Remus Lupin was a small boy, unremarkable, who clung very tightly to the handle of his suitcase when every other first year had brought a trunk. Sirius felt magnanimous towards him, wise, well-traveled, and a little superior. He was also pleased to realize, as Lupin tentatively offered biographical details, that he had encountered halfblood filth, exactly as his mother had warned he would. He swallowed hard to bite back a gleeful and shocked grin. Lupin wasn't exactly well-dressed, but his Muggle clothes were clean and, when he changed into his robe, Black saw that it was new and identical to his own.
"Black!" someone shouted as they struggled off the train. It was James Potter, smirking and arrogant in his own new robe. Sirius smirked back.
"Potter, this is my new friend Remus Lupin," Sirius said. "He's going to Slytherin with me." He wasn't sure what made him say it. His mother would be shocked, but his mother couldn't hear him, now, would never know. He hauled Lupin after him into a boat, and Potter clambered after them, joined by a round-faced boy who looked worse off than Lupin.
"Pettigrew," he said, reaching for Sirius's hand, but Sirius was already leaning over the edge of his boat, deciding whom he ought to splash first.
"Gryffindor has bested Slytherin in Quidditch two years running," said Potter, whose family had tainted Gryffindor for nearly as many years as the Blacks had graced Slytherin.
"Well, that'll change now that Lupin and I are in Slytherin," Black said, and Potter punched him. He pushed back, and somehow, Potter ended in the lake.
Laughing, he reached up to them, and Lupin grabbed one arm, Sirius the other, but Potter's sodden robes made him too heavy for them to lift, and they tumbled in after him, Lupin gracefully, Sirius messily. He produced quite a fountain of angry foam before the groundskeeper fished them out. "You're a right prat, you know," Potter told him.
"Am not. I'm just destined for Slytherin and greatness."
"One of them, anyhow," Potter said snidely. "I wouldn't wash my robes in Slytherin's drinking water. I heard it's right at the bottom of the castle, and you know which way shit flows."
An unexpected pressure on his hand prevented Sirius's retort; he looked down to see Lupin's hand, scratched and scrawny, covering his. "I don't want to end up in the water again," Lupin whispered, and Sirius smiled. Remus would be sorted Slytherin, he knew it.
He knew it, really, until the Sorting Hat was on his head, pondering. He hadn't heard of it ever pondering before. It looked in, saw that your blood was pure and your ambitions true, and there you were in the dungeon, meeting cousins you never knew you had, or in Professor Slughorn's study, eating partridge and making connections. The Sorting Hat, it seemed, didn't know that this was what Sirius wanted.
"A bit fierce, are you?" it asked politely.
"Just say Slytherin, you know you've got to." He felt his mother's voice speaking through him, as comfortable as old pajamas.
"I could say Gryffindor."
"I'd run away. I'd go to Hogsmeade Station tonight, I'd walk home, I'd live in the caves," Sirius threatened.
"Really?"
"I'll go right now! Just try it."
"Gryffindor!" the Hat announced, and Sirius nearly fell off the chair. He saw Potter's smirk, Lupin's puzzled, sad expression, and decided haughtily that he'd wait till he had some better companionship before he made a break for it.
"And then the Hat told me to keep an eye on Black," James Potter told them.
"You're lying," Sirius decided.
"Probably. But I know for myself you need looking out for. I bet you haven't been away from your mum for more than an hour before."
"I have."
"You haven't, and I bet the Hat meant to put you in Slytherin, no, worse, in Ravenclaw. You'll spend all your time revising for exams, I expect."
"I won't, and what's more, I won't open a book all term and I'll pass higher than you."
"That isn't a good idea, is it?" Remus asked quietly. "I mean, isn't it important that you learn all you can? Otherwise, your magic might... hurt someone. If it got loose."
A curious look appeared on Peter's face, but James just laughed. "I accept your terms, Sirius. More time for other occupations."
"Such as?"
"Corrupting you," James said with a smirk. "When you go home at Christmas, your mother won't recognize you."
That was a lie. Mrs. Black not only recognized Sirius, she made quite certain he recognized himself for who he was -- a pureblood wizard gone tragically astray, whose true heritage would shine through if he gave up his mangy friends, accepted Slughorn's invitation, and, "Write to me, dear, if there is anything -- anything -- that gives you worry or pause. Your school days should be the happiest of your life, and I don't want you to be miserable even if you must be away from your people." She knelt to kiss him goodbye, wet on his cheek. For the first time, he wiped away the kiss, not thinking of anything except the humiliation if his friends saw. She replaced it with a slap.
++
"Hey," whispered Remus, over the top of a very large library book.
"Hey as in let's nick some food, or hey as in you're still working on that essay for Flitwick and can't be bothered?"
"Hey, as in, dirty pictures."
Sirius checked that Peter and James were indeed serving the detention McGonagall set for them and hadn't skived off; Remus could now habitually find the very best sort of pictures, the kind that made Sirius wonder, hard, what his motivation really was for inviting Remus home for the Christmas hols, the kind that made him wonder whether anyone really could accidentally find so many images of male nudes while supposedly writing a lengthy and dull essay about the history of flight.
He leaned a hand on the desk, spread with Remus's dense notes, and the other he placed roughly on Remus's shoulder. "Golden," he said of the picture, eyes wide (though Remus couldn't see).
"It's not very nice, is it? Teaching your son to fly but not telling him how to land."
"Oh, I think I know why Daedalus did it," Sirius said, very carefully not touching his cock. He wanted to teach his son to fly, to give him advantages he hadn't had, to hold him close for just a moment before he escaped the thralls of gravity and history. The artist understood this too, and was a little too in love with Daedalus's hand on his son's shoulders, with the proximity of thighs, with that wistful look that might mean jealousy, might mean regret. Depended, really, whether you were looking at Peter or at Remus. Sirius was looking at Remus, too hard, too often. He removed his hand from Remus's shoulder, stepped back, and said, lightly, "Know what I'm going to do?"
"What?" Remus abandoned his work.
"I'm going to charm a motorcycle to fly," he said, and he could have licked up Remus's bewildered expression, the lost, happy, intrigued smile that was his favorite of Remus's looks, as it meant he could expound on subjects dear to his heart, educate and enlighten Moony, who had been unlucky enough to spend the first eleven years of his life without any Blacks to teach him.
"Why?"
"Because it will drive Mother absolutely mad," Sirius explained, fully expecting a round of applause, or at least a smirk of approval.
"Have you considered that you might be a bit funny about your mum?"
"He's a pureblood," Lily Evans interjected on her way upstairs. "Funny about Mum is in the job description."
"I'm not funny about her," Sirius insisted. "Gone off her a bit since I realized she hates all my friends, but that's not funny, that's normal. Also, if I'm gone on anyone, it's you." He didn't realize until the words escaped his mouth that he was going to say them.
Possibly for the first time in their friendship, Sirius couldn't read Remus's expression. His smile was always, enchantingly, a little crooked, but now it was downright twisted. "I think you fancy knowing it will upset your mother more than you fancy me," he said, in what was clearly a well-practiced monotone. "I'm going up to bed now."
"Without me?"
Very firmly, Remus said, "Alone." It hurt surprisingly, like a Stinging Hex when you were expecting a hug.
++
"Nothing could make this better," Sirius told the place where Remus's shoulder blade was sharpest. "Almost nothing."
"Mmm?" Remus muttered into the pillow.
When Sirius stretched his hand across the relaxed muscles of Remus's thigh, he could feel Remus's pulse all the way down to his own toes, and when he just touched Remus's cock, Remus released a great, shuddering gasp. "If Mum could see this. If she knew -- shagging a bloke, a half-blood, a half-breed -- her words, mate, you know I don't care if you have fur or fangs or tentacles..." But Remus had gone tense all over, disappeared in Sirius's arms and been replaced by someone foreign and afraid. He rolled out of Sirius's loose embrace.
"You are sick about your mother."
"I'm not."
"You are," Remus said, reaching for his trousers. "And I have things to do."
Sirius grabbed his hand, pulled him to the bed. The Remus of Hogwarts, who'd trotted easily after them and accepted that things Were As They Were in the Wizarding World, had gone. The new Remus was stiff, resistant, secretive. He seemed to have forgotten how to breathe. He didn't bother James about setting off fireworks when Harry was born, giving away their location and singeing half their friends, but buried his face in a junky magazine and ignored the exploding streaks of red and gold. One hit the ground at Remus's feet, and Remus extinguished it carelessly, as if even house fires didn't matter very much.
Remus didn't respond to caresses, didn't rise to bait. Sirius had been long convinced that when he got Remus into bed with him, he'd have his triumph, would own Remus's smile, could make him growl fiercely and mew like a pup, would subdue him and would make him fight. But it wasn't that way at all, and Sirius thought he knew why, although he couldn't quite admit, yet, that it was true, that Remus had not just changed but switched, that their pillowtalk might worm its way into the Dark Lord's ear.
"You might think it would be the pure-bred wizard who went dark," he said, half to himself. "You might think that the boy who loved his mother," -- who'd last seen his mother summoning curses to haunt him till he died -- "and not the one who spent all his holidays away from home," -- with him, with James, with Peter once, with real wizarding families...
"I'll be back this evening," Remus told him, from the door. Sirius didn't know where he was going, didn't want to.
"Don't bother. I think we're done." He didn't wait but Apparated instantly, sure that if he hesitated, the look on Remus's face would match his mother's curses in ability to haunt.
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Sirius opened the door cautiously, although he trusted without question Dumbledore's pathological ability to keep a secret. Though no one unexpected could come to call, unpleasant people certainly could. And so could Remus.
"You look cold."
"You don't want to know where I've been," Remus told him, stepping over the threshold with a careful backward glance. No one but Muggles too busy to notice the house that still wasn't there.
It was true, he didn't. Every casual word about guard duty and danger was a little knife of jealousy; secret missions to werewolf encampments were out of the question. "You're not wrong that I'd rather not talk," he told Remus's backside as they carefully slipped past the painting of his mother, who made Sirius feel awkward, a little ashamed. He'd given up boasting about his family tree after he was pruned from it, but there were certain things that one could say about one's own mother -- callous bitch and senile racist -- that one didn't like demonstrated to anyone who happened into the vestibule. And since Remus frequently... happened... the question was not academic.
His mother's portrait was a bit of a mood-killer.
They started upstairs, and as soon as they were out of Mother's earshot, Remus said, "It's a bit unsettling that I'm at home in a sixteen year old's bedroom. I feel positively friendly with Miss July," making small talk or flirting, it was all the inflection. His hands dangled in Sirius's airspace, and Sirius smiled.
"There's loads of rooms in the house."
"Nice and casual, that's it."
"She died, Remus."
"Then honor her memory by living for the things you wish she'd cared for."
"If you're trying not to speak ill of the dead, you could try a little hardert."
"You have plenty of relatives still living to speak ill of. We'll leave her be."
"Would be easier if she didn't spend half the night shrieking about how I've betrayed her and her honor, how I'm a disgrace and a disappointment."
Remus gave him a scorching but unreadable look, then nodded. "Just once. And just because you won't enjoy it."
He was determined he would. His heart sped up as he opened her door, discarded his wand. Her bed had been disinfected, of course (the whole house had been) but (like the rest of the house) it still smelled like dirty things that were safer in graves than living quarters. Every evil thought his mother had possessed lingered, trapped by the drawn shades and coddled by shrieking charms that, predictably, objected to the bed (and Black) being used by a werewolf.
If Mum could see. It had nibbled at him since the damned Hat had called his bluff, half she'd disown me and be done with it, the other she'd know just how wrong she's been.
If Mother had seen him tackle Remus to the bed, if Mother had known the rasp of breath that meant arousal, if Mother had ever loved anything that wasn't familial and sickly, then she'd laugh, smile, forgive. Understand.
Remus closed his eyes, clearly saying, This is a favor to you because you've had a rough decade, but Sirius couldn't look away from the walls and ceiling, charmed and angry, from the bedposts, nicked with daggers in long-ago skirmishes for power, from Remus's white hands, which slid around Sirius's face as gently as he dared, as if each kiss, dear, wet, willing, would make him forget his mother's face when he last slapped her, bitterly, with, "I'm never coming home again."
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