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Courage and loyalty are pretty words, but Sirius Black is a fucking maniac, and there's nothing he wouldn't do for a hit right now; everything in the world is violence, but he could throw some real good punches tonight, he thinks, as he leans against the wall and flicks his lighter open and shut. The metal cap is all hot and grabby and stained against his finger and he wipes it on his jeans to get the fingerprints on the top off. James got it for him for Christmas and it's Sirius' favourite thing in the whole world.
This bit of London is dogshit. It's like this: Grimmauld is sat square in the middle of Haringey, which is a greyish sort of yellow this time of year, thick with the smells of road tar and Acapulco Gold, and he is hovering in the liminal space between his home borough and Hackney, reclined against the wall like he'd take a chunk out of you if you got too close with muggle denim hanging around him like funeral draperies. He likes to think he looks intimidating and in reality he probably looks tired and angry and a bit like a rat.
Hurricane Walburga is waiting for him back home, angry enough to tear off the roof. And fuck that, honestly. Sirius darts a hand overtop of the bright orange flame and it leaves little red scuffs over the meaty bit of his palm, streaky like stings or poison or something. Fuck that, and fuck her too, and he hopes she dies, he thinks darkly, kicking a stone against the wall and watching it clatter into the drainpipe. There's a poster for some funk band on the wall and they grin down at him, and Sirius hopes she dies.
Movement down the end of the street, northish. The dog in Sirius sticks its head up and asks, not politely, for a bone.
"They want you back," Regulus calls to him, then, from down the alleyway. "Mother's angry."
"She can suck my dick," Sirius says, not turning to look at him.
"Maybe, but I doubt she would."
Sirius scowls at the ground. "Go back home."
"No. She sent for you."
"And you do her dirty work now?"
"I always have."
Sirius looks up, then. Regulus is still in his dress robes, standing out-of-place in the brick maze of Sirius' far-flung north London ends and the summer evening light. The sky is still sort of orange over him even though it's ten pm and he's looking at Sirius like Sirius killed his fucking owl.
"She's angry," Regulus says. "Come back?"
"I could actually run away this time," Sirius tells him. He shoves the lighter into his back pocket and saunters down the cobblestone to stand in front of Regulus. "I could go. None of you could fucking stop me."
"She'd kill you. You know it.”
"At least I'd die free," he replies valiantly.
Regulus sighs like Sirius is a misbehaving child, and maybe he sort of is. "Didn't take you for suicidal."
"There's lots you don't know about me."
"Piss off."
"You piss off."
"Not going home without you. Unlike you," Regulus sniffs contemptuously, "I rather like being alive."
"I'm not going back with you. Tail between my fucking legs. What do you take me for?"
"I take you for an idiot who doesn't know how to keep his mouth shut."
"I take you for a bootlicker who would eat out Slytherin bitch pussy to prove your loyalty to the fuckin', institution of purebloodism, or whatever, you fucking creep."
"Not all of us are so unambitious as to disregard what we're born with."
"Not all of us are fucking freaky fucking nerds who talk in the Queen's English, but you don't seem me complaining."
Regulus stares. "You spend lots of time complaining about me."
"Then just fuck off and I'll find something else to talk about."
"I've got half a bottle of firewhiskey left from my birthday. In my trunk."
Sirius considers that. "One of the big one-ell ones? Not the piddly shit."
"Yeah. 'Course. I'm a Slytherin."
"I'm surprised you people even get gifts for each other."
Regulus shrugs. "You can have it. I don't like to drink. Just come back with me."
Sirius considers that. "Leave me alone for a bit longer, right? Nice night. Pretty. Don't want to spend it around the likes of you, init."
When he does make it home, Sirius makes it three steps over the doorstep and has to duck under a flying lamp, which shatters against the wall above him, bits of stupid expensive terracotta or porcelain or whatever showering all over the floor and his back. It was probably wizard-made and pretty expensive. A chunk of it goes down the back of his jacket.
His mother's shouting, and Regulus' dark form is already halfway up the stairs ahead of him, running away from the crossfire with his robes splashing out behind him. Sirius holds himself up against the banister. The portraits murmur and caw. Set into the ceiling, the hanging lightbulbs sway.
"I liked that lamp," Sirius sighs. "One of the only decent pieces of decor in this whole place. Lush, that one."
Down the corridor beside the stairs, mother is dark like a thunderstorm and twice as electric, hair in a mess around her face. Already, she is picking up something else to throw. Sirius doesn't know whether he should be glad that he's taller than her now; it makes fights easier to win, but it makes him a larger, easier to hit target when she starts chucking shit around.
"I don't know why you do this!" she screams, and hurtles a goblin-made silver ornament in the shape of a potion vial at him.
Sirius smacks it out of the air with the flat of his arm, plucks an empty fag box out of his jacket and hurls it back at her. It smacks her on the nose. "If I want to go for a fucking smoke, I will!"
"Mixing with the rabble, contaminating the house of my fathers--" She throws an ornate plate at him a bit like a frisbee. Sirius tries to headbutt it like a football and it shatters against the flat bit of his forehead and he doesn't even fucking stagger, he could kill god if he wanted to, he thinks, fuck this, even that funk shit would be better.
"Ah, fuck," he says, and plucks a piece of glass out of the fleshy bit of his brow. "Fuck. Fuck you. Ow."
Mother sweeps at him and grabs the front of Sirius' jacket in both of her hands, rattling him back and forth like muggles shake their radios. Ha. They both stagger against the wall. "I've half a mind to kick you out!"
"Oh, that'd improve my weekend," Sirius laughs, sort of manic, when he hears it. "Fuck off. I can go if you want me to. No loss on me."
Her dark, mad eyes pierce into his. Black fucking pits. One of these days, Sirius is going to properly lose it, he's sure of that, but he's got to make it longer than her, and he’s on track to win that one, by the looks of mother.
"You," she says, hisses more than says, it comes scratchy out of the back of her throat like velcro. "You make me want to die."
"That makes two of us."
She spits in his face and a bit of it gets in his eye. Sirius shakes his head back and forth like a dog. They're breathing the same putrid air, hot between them. She looks like if they were at the top of a flight of stairs she would've already chucked him down them.
"You will break this family," she spits. It gets out of her like air from a tyre. "You will break us. You're already doing it."
"Fucking great," Sirius snaps back. "See if I care. You can all die for all I care, I don't give a shit, frankly." And he shoves her hard enough that she cracks her back against the banister.
She grunts with pain and rights herself, hands splayed out around her like she’s going to claw him out of the air. The both of them stare at each other. Sirius bares his teeth like an animal. She bears hers right back and it carves deep lines around her mouth, deep enough that they might have cracked her face wide open.
"Go, then!" she shouts, loud enough that it feels like the house rattles. Despite himself, Sirius goes just a little numb. His head rushes. "Go! Leave!"
"Maybe I will!" he bellows back. "Watch me!"
Mother's hands find the wall and she holds herself against it. Her face was beautiful once -- Sirius has seen the portraits of her in her youth -- but she's a husk there, all sallow and wrung out like a towel.
"Sirius Orion," she starts.
"Fuck you," Sirius snaps, cutting over her. He takes to the stairs and runs up them two at a time. A framed glass ornament shatters up against the wooden steps in his wake and pieces flutter over the first floor landing at his feet, glinting in the dim light. Sirius darts up the next set of steps and to his room and, in a hurricane of panic, a fury of it, wrenches his trunk open and throws everything he can find into it; books, socks, robes, muggle trainers, potions supplies.
Footsteps thunder up the stairs behind him. Sirius kicks the door shut and kicks it again and again and again until he's not sure why he's doing it and he thinks he's probably broken his toes. "Fuck," he says and kicks it again, and then kicks his trunk and then the wall and then the side of the dresser, and then the bed, and then trips over on his way to kick the wardrobe, too, and smacks his knee on the fucking floor. "Fuck."
The great, dark star system Orion hurls the door open and Sirius gets up and tries to kick him, too. Father grabs a fistful of his robes and chucks him into the wall. Sirius bites him, right at the little fleshy bit inside the elbow. Blood fills the back of his mouth and sticks in his teeth, and Sirius feels like a vampire. They're both shouting and he can't really make out what either of them is saying.
"Just piss off!" he thinks he shouts at some point, and then picks up his wand and another pack of cigarettes and shoves past father onto the landing. "I'm leaving!"
"You insolent, traitorous," his father starts.
Sirius hits the stairs and his ankle twists on the first one and goes slipping and tumbles all the way down to the landing, clunk, clunk, clunk, clunk. He bounces his forehead off one of the banisters and crunches his wrist beneath him on one of the steps and lands in a pile at the bottom, full of pain and able to feel none of it, blood rushing so hot and fast in his ears that he's not sure how his heart is keeping up.
The world shifts off its axis. There is shouting and yelling and fighting, hands on him, hands off him, faces blurring into pale smudges all around. The dark walls distort like an ocean. Sirius finds himself on his feet, hits a wall, another wall, finds the next set of stairs and thunders down them, and hits the ground beside the front door almost fully on his knees, panting and gasping, body half out of his control. Vertigo swings him in big stupid lazy circles like he's on the dance floor.
A hand grapples into his hair and Sirius is spinning. The force against the back of his head lunges him forwards and cracks his face against wooden tailoring along the side of the stairs. He kicks out and roars and the hand lets go, and then he and mother are both falling back, back. The light changes. Somebody's smashed a lightbulb and they're on the floor, grappling at one another in a tangle of dark hair and sharp elbows, neither of them worthy of anything, let alone a title.
"Die," Sirius tries to shout. It comes out all weird and slurry through the blood in his mouth. "Just fucking die!"
Mother tries to grab his face. Her claws rake his cheek. She's saying his name, over and over. First and middle. A beginning and a centre and no end to it.
Sirius crunches his boot into her face and something in it snaps. She yells out and rolls back onto the floor, clutching at her face. Spots of blood spatter the carpet.
The portraits murmur and shout and howl, an unholy chorus. Sirius wrenches himself up against the banister.
"Die," he tells her again, without feeling. Then, he steps out of the door.
London is big. Sirius has a busted ankle and a broken wrist and he thinks he broke something in his face but he's not particularly sure. Muggles keep giving him weird looks. One of his boots is steadily filling up with blood, which is a shame, since these were his favourite socks.
He stops to smoke halfway through Kensington, sitting down on one of the hard, uncomfortable metal seats in an out-of-service bus shelter and lighting up. The lighter's going to need more fluid soon. Sirius should've asked James to charm it not to need it before they all stopped talking to him.
As Sirius perches there, hands shoved into his pockets, the darkness of early morning (it must be, like, two, he thinks, maybe three) all around, he wonders where he should go. James would take him in; James would do it and wouldn't even ask if it was okay, if they were okay. Sirius thinks James wouldn't even tell Remus, if Sirius asked him not to. James is just like that.
Apart from him, Sirius can't really think of anywhere to go. Andromeda's in hiding somewhere, moving every few months, and Peter's got no room (and would probably refuse him), and Remus is a whole other story. James it is, Sirius thinks, and then stops and thinks, no.
If he goes to James', it's just gonna make everything worse. Remus will get more angry and more quiet, and James will get more torn, and Peter will fade into the wallpaper. They'll all crack further apart, and Sirius thinks tiredly that he doesn't want to bloody put up with that, he doesn't have the energy or the space.
Not James', then.
In the end, Sirius picks a spot behind a couple of muggle portabins on the edge of Fulham, still close to the centre of the city but far-flung enough that they won't find him easily. He wants to make it an irritant for them, the bastards, if nothing else. He transforms and curls up on a piece of cardboard and sleeps there, bleeding into the gutter and feeling very sorry for himself, and that's life, he supposes; one stupid mistake after the other and no respite between them, unless you want to sleep in an alleyway in muggle London with half your toes broken.
Sirius spends those two weeks, late July and early August, sleeping mostly in Ealing, under shop awnings and in rubbish bins and in the tube slide at a local park. He spends most of that time as a dog and transforms only to eat and smoke. He doesn't speak to anybody, except a teenager once, who calls him a dosser and takes his last three fags. Sirius is too tired to really fight back. He gets a good swing in, though. The guy breaks two of his teeth for the trouble.
The taunting possibility of going to see James hangs in front of him all the time. Sirius imagines turning up and being fawned over, and how James would fret and fuss over all his bruises. It would be nice, in an indulgent sort of way, to be cared for like that for a while. The human bit of him likes it very much, and he very nearly calls the Knight Bus for it, but the dog wants to stay in London, and the dog doesn't mind the cold, and the dog's got a hunger for Black flesh between its teeth and so Sirius listens to the dog.
When he does have nightmares (three times), Sirius dreams about Remus. The last thing Remus said to him was hey, you know what, just fuck off, fuck off and never speak to me again, I hate you, and Sirius replied, sure, fuck you too, you selfish prick, stay angry for all I care, I didn't even do anything. And then Remus slammed the dorm door and that was that. It's stupid to think about it and stupider to dream about it. Sirius does his best to put it from his mind but it stays there insistently, like something that needs examination. Like something that needs thinking about.
And that fucking sucks.
In the second week of August, that’s when he’s found.
Sirius is asleep on the gravel under the swings in his park when he hears the gate creak open. He raises his head and chuffs in the back of his throat.
He can't make out the figure for a bit. Then, James steps across an orange streak of streetlamp light and it casts his narrow features into sharp relief, the brightness flinching over the front of his glasses.
Sirius doesn't get up or transform back. He ducks his head down between his paws and whines.
"Hey, Pads," James sighs, looking very tired. "That you?"
Sirius whines again. He tries to roll onto his back and play dead. Maybe that'll work.
"Course it's you." James sits down on one of the swings, feet dangling near Sirius' ribs. One of his heels scuffs over the fur of Sirius' dark midriff and, quite pathetically, Sirius wants a hug, then, so desperately that it almost kills him.
He whines again, shifting over to nose his snout against James' leg.
Prongs snorts. He rubs a hand over the top of Sirius' head and scratches him behind the ears. "They've been looking for you. Your family."
Sirius growls a bit, kicking out his back leg. A bit of gravel catches in the pads of his paw and hurts like a bitch.
"Yeah, I know. Don't worry. We're not gonna take you back there." James' hand, still rubbing over his ears, wriggles down under Sirius' chin. Searching for an injury.
And so Sirius whines again and shuffles up to sit, resting his great head on James' knee. Tries to say with his eyes, sorry. And also tries to say, I'm not sorry, pay attention to me, I'm hurt.
James snorts. "Change back?"
Sirius shakes his head resolutely.
"You stink."
I stink as a person, too, he tries to reply without actually saying it.
James pins him with a serious look, which is rare for him. If there's anybody in the world James is usually willing to abate to in arguments, it's Sirius.
But that look means business, so Sirius sighs and shifts back, moving in the same motion to sit on the swing beside James’.
"Hey," he rasps. "Sorry."
"You're not sorry," James sighs. "You're a fucking dickhead sometimes, you know that, Padfoot? You suck. You can be so awful. You didn't even tell me you were still alive."
"Well, I am," Sirius supplies.
"I can see that."
They stare at one another a bit. Then, James sighs again, harder and lower this time, more of a huff .
"Come here," he says.
Obediently, Sirius shuffles into the circle of his arms. The chains of their swings get all criss-crossed, caught in hard, cold lines between them. James pats the back of his head with one hand. Sirius grips so tightly at the back of his shirt that it must hurt. James doesn't complain.
"You do stink," James remarks over his shoulder.
Sirius snorts, the first time he's laughed in weeks. "I know. I haven't showered."
"All so you could give me a nasty surprise."
"Of course. I put in the effort."
James tries to pull away and Sirius doesn't let him, so he sighs and stays.
"I haven't told Remus," he says lowly, into Sirius' ear. "His family don't get the prophet, so they, ah, I don't know. He doesn't know anyway."
"Good."
"Good?"
Sirius nods. "I don't want to cause him anymore trouble."
"Shut up, Pads. All you do is cause people trouble."
"Maybe. But he deserves a break."
"Til you get tired of it and drag him back in?"
"Til he comes back."
James sighs like he knows that's bullshit. He does pull away, then, pushing Sirius back onto his own swing. They both sway with the motion. Sirius' legs are longer, and his feet scuff in the gravel and the woodchips.
"And if he doesn't come back?" James asks. "You hurt him, you know."
"He hurt me," Sirius contends. "I've been living on the streets of fuckin', fuckin', fucken', Ealing. Ealing's a shithole, Jamie. I got mugged. He took my fags and knocked my teeth out."
"Shut up," James says, and seems to mean it.
"Right," Sirius sighs. "Shutting up."
They sit in quiet for a while. James doesn't hug him again, and Sirius burns with loneliness like it's 1971 and the world is ending because Regulus is staying home. A great distance seems to stretch between them, broad and broadening.
"I just," James starts. "I know. I just know. Okay? That it sucks. Not talking to him. I know it does. And I know you two are complicated and whatever. And you're upset 'cos you're angry at him, and you're upset 'cos you feel guilty and you apologised and he didn’t accept it. And you never apologise for bloody anything."
"It isn't just that."
"Yes, it is."
Sirius chews the flesh of the inside of his cheek. "Maybe it is," he admits.
"You can't get him back by being angry," James jabs, on an out-breath. "You can't get him back by getting hurt, either. You can break as many ribs as you like, won't stop him from hating you."
That stings. "It's not my ribs that's broken."
"Yeah, well. Whatever."
Sirius fiddles with his fingers in his lap. "I'm sorry," he whispers, to fill the silence.
"Yeah, mate. I know you are."
"I'll make things right with him."
"I know."
"And I'm sorry I didn't come to you."
James shrugs one shoulder. "Did you really get mugged?"
"Yeah." Sirius tugs his lips apart with two fingers to show off his missing teeth. "I think I swallowed one of them."
James peers at him. "God, you look fucked."
"Ha."
"No, seriously. We should go home."
"Can we stay out here for a bit longer? Just a bit." Sirius hesitates. "It's a nice night."
James sighs. "C'mon." And he gets up.
Sirius thinks he's going to lead them both out of the park, but James clambers up the steps to the top of the slide and sits on the little sandpaper platform on the top, legs dangling down to the dark orange earth. Sirius sits beside him. Without the chains suspending the swings between them, James puts an arm around him. It's nice, Sirius thinks, and leans into the touch heavily enough that he thinks he might go crumpling off the side and hit the ground and break something else.
It's surprisingly cold for summer. Maybe winter's on its way already. Sirius thinks about Remus and how cold he gets over Christmas. He thinks about how they might both stay at Hogwarts this time. He thinks things might be okay.
James lets out a breathy laugh. It fogs up in front of him like a ghost. "Cheer up, Pads. I'm not angry with you."
Sirius glances up. "What?"
James reaches over and wipes at his face with the sleeve of his sweatshirt, scratchy and warm, and Sirius realises, sort of blind, that he's been crying. That it's dripping down off his chin and into his lap.
"Oh," he says.
"Never seen you cry before," James comments, wiping again, sleeved hand coming down around Sirius' jaw to wipe there, too. "Ah, fuck. Fucking stop. It's okay."
"Sorry," Sirius says. And then he can't stop saying it. "Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Fuck."
"It's okay!" James assures, sounding a little frantic now. "Please stop."
But Sirius can't draw breath around it now; he curls his arms around his stomach and sobs hard once, twice, three times, all in quick succession like coughs. He tries hard to keep the rattle of them inside his chest and they explode out through his mouth, wet and gaspy and weird.
"I'll cry if you cry," James moans. He puts both of his arms around Sirius' shoulder and squeezes, sort of like you might squeeze a car seat as you try to pull it forwards into the right position. "Hey. Stop. Please stop."
"Sorry." And Sirius tries to calm down. "Sorry. Shit."
"You're okay," James promises him. "We're okay."
Sirius nods miserably. "I know."
"Everything's gonna be fine." James wipes his face again, clumsy. A bit of his jumper sleeve gets in Sirius' eye. It stings, but not like the cold does.
"I know."
"Should we go home?"
Sirius nods. "I have to write to Remus," he chokes out.
And James nods back. "You do," he confirms. "Come on."
As they shuffle down the slide together, James first and then Sirius after, and as they hobble together out of the park and down the road, towards central London and the Leaky Cauldron, where James' family are waiting after another long day of searching, Sirius wonders if he will spend his whole life like this; not loving people back enough, hating them and shoving them until they just fuck off and give up. It's not exactly a comforting thought. He sort of wants to voice it. To get some sort of reassurance.
"I've got a few broken toes," is what he says instead.
James sighs in the side of his neck. "Course you do," he replies. "Of course you do."