Chapter Text
There's not been a letter in weeks. Such utter blackout drives him absolutely bonkers.
The silence bleeds into December until, finally, Sirius spies another mangy pigeon (a different one, where the fuck is Rem sourcing his inferi-ass pigeontry) a day before Christmas Eve.
This time, he doesn't wait for Charlie to come home to handle it for Sirius like he's in the evening crèche.
“Dear Saif,Have you finished renovating your guest room?
I've always wanted to see real snow at this time of year.
Yours,
E.Q.”
No work is able to take his mind away from the shock of Remus coming to visit. Why would he come? Why waste the time on half a stranger? It feels like stealing.
When Charlie gets home, Sirius is clutching the letter close to his chest, eyes fixed on the fresh crackle of firewood.
Shedding his hat and thick felt trousers, Charlie plants the kettle on the stove and approaches him, naked waist down save for his fireproof briefs. “Bad news?”
“No.”
“Good news?”
“No.”
Charlie sighs. There's a powerful eye roll in that sigh. It's the one he uses when Sirius holds back to tease him. It's a warm-up, Charlie knows it and likes it, because drawing blood is sweeter with a prelude.
“Remus is coming over for…” He frowns. “Do they do Christmas on the 7th here?”
“No.”
“Tomorrow then.”
Charlie is wary, as if in wait of some great gutting reveal. “What do you want to do?”
“About?”
“Us.”
“What do you want to do?”
Charlie shrugs. He must be a little jealous of Sirius reading the letter on his own, but there is more to it.
“Charlie,” he folds the single page into a neat square and slides it on the mantel, next to a tiny clay lighthouse striped like a candy stick, “Remus and I. We were never together.”
The kettle begins to boil from the feedback of their magic. Charlie rubs his face. “Fuck, it's so stupid.” He makes tea and falls deep in thought.
Sirius stands to follow him, “We can do whatever you want.”
“Will he understand?”
“Which part?”
“I don't know,” he picks at a loose hangnail long enough to make it bleed, so Sirius has to stop it and lick the wound clean. Charlie exhales, “Well, that.”
“Does it matter?”
“He matters to you.”
Sirius can't form a reply for himself, let alone for this anxious young man.
They eat in silence and spend the rest of the day apart. Charlie sleeps in his own bed and wakes him at fuck-you-o'clock with his infernal clanging, having decided to spend the entire morning in an obsessive cleaning fit. He scours everything by hand like he's about to receive Hassanal Bolkiah himself.
Sirius says so, to which Charlie replies, “Brunei regained independence in '84.”
“Your point?”
“Just keeping you abreast.”
“I mean, he could still come to a bloody meeting.”
“Listen, I'm a bit busy here.”
Rather heavy with irritation, this one. Properly pent-up, and a bit sex-mad.
Sirius smiles, “You could use your wand, you know.”
“Oh, for fuck's sake!”
Charlie throws the wash rag and cleans the rest with a few quick spells in a second.
Sirius shuffles to the kitchen corner, feeling guilty, though it doesn't stop him from a little: “Wasn't so hard, was it?”
Charlie runs his nails down his cheek, drawing welts on his winter-pale complexion. “I was doing it for you.”
“Why?”
“I know you can't, well, you can't use it.”
“I can use it.”
This gives Charlie pause. “Why don't you?”
“I can't explain it. I would if I could.” Sirius studies him, watches the three welts darken in colour. “Do me a favour, though, will you. Don't limit yourself. Not for me.”
Charlie reaches out and tugs him in by the shirt collar. “Would you do the same?”
“Yes. Well. Depends on the limit.”
“Mine or yours?”
“Do you have one?”
Charlie looks away. “You'd run if I told you.”
“Alright.”
They finish the rest of the house and the back porch together. This time, the silence is kinder in taste.
The sanctuary's strict policy around transportation means they can't know for sure when Remus is due to arrive. They carry on, pretending neither of them is climbing walls for undisclosed personal reasons.
Sirius wheels in fresh firewood for the oven, while Charlie throws together something that could be passed as festive. Remus wouldn't care. God, would he?
Remus is going to take one look and wonder at the mongrel before him. He'd look at Sirius and think, Who are you? What have you done with my friend?
Once the dinner is half-sorted, Charlie switches his focus to the surrounding energy. He seems to notice the general air of mild mania that follows Sirius like a cloud ready to burst open.
“Do you remember,” Charlie approaches him and slips the chunk of wood from his hand, “what we talked about on my birthday?”
The halved log drops from his hold with a thunk. He pushes Sirius into the nest on the floor and leaves him there. Sirius fiddles with the top button on his trousers, watching Charlie strip down bare and slowly face away.
He kneels. He's got a good back on him. Broad shoulders, thin waist, narrow hips, workable ass—all the best hits. Sirius traces down Charlie's spine, from neck to waist and up again. Again and again, bypassing the scars.
No longer fighting dizziness but still fully clothed, Sirius gets to his knees, grabs Charlie by the neck and pushes. Charlie goes down in a neat fold, forehead to the floor and hands at his sides, waiting for the next thing to come, but nothing does.
It's a miracle, it truly is, this boy's ability to become so firmly rooted and to perform the most seamless sinking.
When he folds (or is folded), he is supple but controlled from within. His breath carries a pattern of someone in deep sleep or meditation, maybe, but not this.
Sirius prepares him with hands. He's never liked using spells for this sort of shagging, especially when something callous is demanded of him. Charlie begins to strain inside his own wiry frame, his lips pressed together into whiteness to keep the sound in. He'd be fucking himself stupid by now, but practising restraint is an ache he's confessed he'd like to dabble in.
Charlie takes cock without moving a limb, but begins to struggle with stillness when the thrusts change speed. He's grunting deep in his throat, like a drowning man with a lungful of saltwater. The internal pressure is visible around his neck, thick with veins and red as a burn. All that to contain the noise he must not make when there's buggering afoot.
Sirius sees him break into full-body shivers. He's sweating from scalp to shins. It looks like he's crying. Sirius grips him by the hair to rub the tears into the rough floor, making him whine from the texture. Charlie stops when Sirius takes a firm hold of his throat and rubs his mouth into the planks until there is no sound left at all.
Charlie likes to feel capable, so he remains silent until he comes, untouched, allowing himself a soft puff of breath. He goes limp and grunts at the stickiness between his stomach and thighs.
Sirius pulls out and rolls him on his back, slaps his dazed blushing face. Charlie blinks at him and shines a smile of joy so filthy, so serene, as if saying, there is care in his pain. He looks happy, hooking his feet over Sirius' thighs to pull him closer.
“Thanks, mate.”
“Anything else?”
Charlie hums, considering the low neck of Sirius' shirt, his chest, his cock nestled in the zip of his waterproof Cotswolds. It should be profoundly unsexy. Charlie arches up into him, catching his cock between the thighs that shine with the foul mix of sweat and come.
Sirius lets him palm at it for a bit, watching Charlie gather pre-come and finger himself with it before guiding the whole length back home. He asks for a helping hand and places it around his throat. Sirius squeezes, feeling the sinews and soft tissue, and gives one lazy thrust.
“You're taking the piss,” Charlie rasps and traps his own palms under his back. His eyes are sure when he says, “Make me black out. And then finish.”
Sirius shifts the grip, probing at the right pressure points. Places so well-loved with others, from before, but completely new with Charlie. Sirius presses in with his hand and his hips. Normally, Charlie likes to go high in pitch from the type of pace they fall into, somewhere between a moan and a whimper that would then shift into a lewd, paper-thin staccato. This time he can only rasp through it. He never looks away, not once, even when his eyes begin to glaze over.
Next to the quidditch manuals and dialect dictionaries arranged by colour on the mantelpiece, Charlie keeps a battered textbook on psychological pathology, which he prefers to read over dinner.
A chapter on serials has wicked men claiming that the high is in the light that fades from their eyes. He knows Charlie would disagree, because Charlie told him the light is brightest when all is dark. So do this for me, make it black for me. Fuck me up, mate. Make me happy.
There is no resistance when Charlie goes slack. This moment of blackness is only seconds for Charlie, but it's enough to make Sirius come when the slide is so smooth and the body is a gift of such generosity.
He slaps Charlie a little until he shudders into being and smiles. The smile is followed by a moment of confusion—Charlie calls it swamp water; warm, safe, all-loving, but an unholy cunt to see through nonetheless.
“Nice,” Charlie croaks. “Don't pull out.”
“I need a piss.”
“Just a little longer. Just a little bit.”
They stay on the floor until the evening bells announce a shift change. Sirius pulls out and crawls to the fireplace to give them some light. Charlie winces at the dried come sticking to every crease like overbrewed potion-glue.
Neither of them is good at basic planning. Sirius can admit it's rather stupid to cock about ahead of visitors and make a mess.
He cleans them up with Charlie's wand and focuses on the mess left on the floor. Easier said than done, with Charlie's sudden need to suck on his fingers. Sirius lets him go at it, his own mind busy with trying to recall a better scouring spell.
“Fuck,” Charlie muffles, mouth too full, “I forgot about pudding.”
It's moments like this that he is reminded of Charlie being twenty-two—the boy is up and skittering around bare-assed in search of ingredients, throwing spells at the stove. He sends another to flick on the wireless.
Variable becoming westerly 2 or 3. Mainly fair. Moderate or good.
Shipping forecast is, strangely, the only thing that makes Charlie long for home. He's never lived directly by the shore, but it hardly mattered when the prayer of it could cast a spell so strong.
Sirius flops on his back and wipes his spit-covered hand on the covers. He listens to the kitchenware sing and sinks into sleep.
⸺⸺⸺
As a houseguest, Remus is a benevolent, steady presence.
He arrives with gifts of booze on the Eve of, compliments Charlie's cooking efforts, asks for seconds (Sirius remembers, if vaguely, that his friend wasn't a big fan of pudding and always preferred mince pies), and even helps with dishes.
They go on the tour of the sanctuary sans Padfoot where Remus meets Charlie's best mates from the day shift.
There isn’t much to talk about if you wish to avoid awkward situations, so the three of them go to bed early after Remus has transformed an old chair into a passable cot to avoid putting Charlie out.
Sirius sleeps in his dog spot.
It must look pathetic to Remus, having a dog spot for a bed, and find it more comfortable and comforting than a real one.
Remus didn't initiate any conversation. Quiet, storm, sundries.
The next morning is clear and sunless, which Sirius likes, but Charlie is nowhere to be seen, which Sirius doesn't.
Remus is waiting for him at the table with coffee steeped directly in mugs. They sip at the slosh in silence, watching the snow fall. It's weightless.
“Now this is proper winter,” Remus tells the window. “Did you fast?”
Sirius shakes his head, “Pretty rubbish at abstaining these days.”
He shouldn't be surprised that Remus would track the holy month the same as he would the moon.
“I don't feel so guilty about it now.”
“Not judging, Paddy.”
“Jamie's mum would.” He winces. “Ah, not really.”
She helped him understand where he fit into all of this, the two of them coming to a conclusion that the energy driving Sirius' homage to the Roots was better redirected towards scholarly appreciation.
“You look,” Remus pauses, unsure, “I don't know.”
Who the fuck are you, is that what you're hedging at here.
“You look the same,” Sirius tells him. “Old man must be running you ragged.”
Remus gives him a nasty look, “Not any more.”
Sirius smiles, failing to understand why it startles his friend, and says, “Well, look at you, professor.”
“Don't patronise me. Actually, no. It's nice to…” He trails off, ashamed.
"To see me play a human?"
Remus is lost in the ethics, it looks like.
“I'm all inward,” Sirius says, taking pity on him. “This noise, it’s murder. It never stops. Even when I get numb. Clean, you know?”
“Clean?”
“When my head gets wiped, like. I'm still buzzing with noise. Even then.”
“And now?”
Sirius nods. “Yeah. It's a bit mental. You know, to be so blank and so busy at the same time.”
“Mmm. It's not very you.”
“There is no me.”
“Don't say that.”
Sirius feels desperation emerge from nothing. He leans across the table, not hiding the tremble of his hands, “Can't you see?”
Remus pushes away the mug. “I see a you. That's someone. I'm sorry for— comparing. I'm glad you look the way you look.”
“Do I look like a person?”
“Yes. You're a real boy now.”
They share a laugh which hasn't happened in, well, fourteen years. Sirius scraps at the frost pattern on the window. His hands are steady once more. He wonders.
“Why are you here, Rem?”
The sound of his name seems to soften Remus enough to speak. He puts both palms on the table, swiping at the surface: “My work's done. I am done, and it's been years, Paddy, fucking hell it's half of my miserable life. Shit he had me do and not do, what to ask and not ask, doing my head in. Wasn't anything painful, research mostly, some tracking, all harmless, really. But it's done.”
“And now?”
“Now we just wait.”
“For what?”
“For him to do his job. And then for your fire.”
Would he be able to feel it, Sirius wonders, if that part of him was taken as well? He'd need a wand to see, to get stronger.
“Oh, Paddy,” Remus sighs and reaches out to rub at the bone in Sirius' wrist. “I promise you, it's not a punishment. There's just, there's nobody else, I swear. The old man is sick. It's his hand, it's— doesn't matter. What matters is, I am sorry for asking this. I will tell you everything. And I will help you.”
Somewhere in the middle of it all, Sirius falls out of the present. He is cold again. It's dark in here and in the room of his head and he can't see a thing.
He’s blind for so long, the world might as well have ended with a great last plunge into absolute darkness.That'd be the day.
When he comes back, it looks like noon.
“...the Kalb-Ramond-like third rank antisymmetric tensor field…”
Remus, unlike Charlie, is not a thespian about his reading cadence.
“...shown that there exists a consistent coupling of a closed supermembrane to eleven-dimensional supergravity…”
They are on the bed, Remus leaning against the headboard with a thin paperback in his lap. Physics Letters B, Volume 189, Issues 1-2. Charlie, honest to God…
Remus turns the page, “Alright?”
“It happens. Not when it matters, though. Promise.”
“Wasn't worried about that. But,” he flips the book shut, and slips down to lie on his side, “you scared me. I've seen it before, in other… you know.”
“Were they better? Worse?”
“Different.”
Sirius nods and tries to calm his skin. He begins to squirm.
“What's wrong, Paddy?”
“I don't. I don't sleep here.”
“Mmm, I hear a hard floor is good for the back.”
“Where'd you hear that.”
Remus smiles, “Around.” He rolls off the bed with a failed attempt at dignity and pads to the fireplace. “Come on then.”
Sirius doesn't know what to expect, but it's not anywhere close to Remus braiding his hair by the fire.
His fingers remember it well as he braids and undoes it and re-braids it again while getting Sirius up to speed; in re things on the frontline, the old man's hunt for dark artefacts (‘Moody didn't get my Indiana Jones bit’ ‘probably cos it wasn’t funny’), and Harry's school year.
Though he's been passing the letters between Harry and Snuffles, it's much too slow. Sirius doesn't know that boy, and he won't for a while, not until there's a clean end to it all, and when it does end, he will do his best. Now he can only wait.
“Do you think,” Sirius tries, clears his throat. “If me and the old man destroy them. What's the survival rate of that, d'you reckon?”
“Not all of them.”
“Remus.”
He sighs, “I don't know. We can make assumptions, that's all we can do, like it's ever led us anywhere good before.” He rubs his nose at the base of Sirius's neck, the way he used to. Which one of them is the lost stray here. “I don't know. I want to say I won't let you get hurt, but I won't lie this time.”
Sirius leans away from him, “I wanted to die that summer. When I had to go on the run. I'm not sure I want to any more.”
“Paddy.” Remus sighs. “Can I hold you?”
He nods, and welcomes the circle of arms (he needs to learn them again) around his waist. They pull him close. Remus is breathing all weird. He is crying. “Fuck this. You don't have to do it, we'll find something else, we always do, don't we.”
“No lying now.”
Remus nods into his neck. “You'll do everything you can. And I'll do anything for you, you know that.”
“I'm a new boy, Remus, so I'm not sure I do.”
Remus pulls him down and curls around him atop the sheepskin. His hold is tight. “I'm sorry. You're so young.”
“So're you.”
“Fucking hell, just what is wrong with me,” Remus' laugh is a tad hysterical, “look at me being a right cunt, and you being a poorer one; you're not dead.”
Sirius used to tell him, all the time, that they'd die young. He'd talk of it with a smile, we'll die young, moonshine, and we'll do it well, but now he knows that every child of twenty-some is a loud sack of bone and jelly cruising on chemicals and illusions of exceptionalism.
No, you haven't pioneered this feeling and that thought. No, you are not the trailblazer of emotional truth, able to rock the world order and the collective psyche and cure lambs from their trance. There is no ripple in the noosphere. Wipe your mouth, child, and carry on.
“You've always had a penchant for drama,” says Remus, breaking their artful misery, “but I never thought it catching.”
“Oh, are you diseased now? Sick with histrionics? Ailed with theatrics? Why I never, Mr. Lupin.”
Remus laughs deep in his chest, “You don't need to sound like—” He looks uncomfortable.
“Like I used to?”
“Yeah. Is that you?”
“Sometimes,” Sirius kisses his hand and pats it to let the sentiment sink in. “When the mood fits.”
Remus accepts that. “What else do you do when the mood fits?”
“Charlie.”
“Oh, for fuck…”
“You asked.”
Remus flicks a wand at the wireless, letting the slow surf of sound fill the room.
“Is he good?”
Shine eye gal is a trouble to a man, shine eye gal is a trouble to a man…
“Mate,” Sirius huffs. “I mean, I didn't even know If I was still the sort to, you know, function that way. In the sense of needing it, you know.”
“So he’s good?”
“I mean, fuck. Yeah. Suppose he is.”
Shine eye gal is a trouble, trouble…
“High praise.”
He bleeds on me, you know. He never kisses me. Something daft in his head about convenient fucking or being a spare, about love or dating or marriage or what have you.
“I feel,” Sirius begins and stops. “I feel this space inside of me, you know, there's this cold thing. An endless thing. I want to say it's in my chest, but not exactly. It's the… being, it's just being. When it heats, it feels full. Like I'm real. Like I'm here. You need to understand, after I escaped, nothing would touch me. Nothing made it work. I was cold for so long, iced to bollocks, but my head wasn’t anything. I dunno, it was just a— an absence. Now, I… sense things when I touch them, like—”
Remus pets the length of his inked arm.
“—the hide of a living animal, I touch it and I feel life, I feel that in every rock out here, and the air when it gets to that temperature, you know the one I mean?”
It can only feel this way at absolute fuck o'clock, when all else is empty, and you're the only beast left alive.
Remus hums. “Okay.”
Sirius laughs at himself, “Fuck you too. I'm saying, I haven't felt a resonance like this since. Well, since. It's not an echo any more. It feels like I'm capable. A capable vessel. Maybe I can understand again, or begin to.”
Feel it, Paddy, let it happen.
“Hell,” Remus presses the heels of his palms into his eyes, “I'm actually, well I'm proud, don't look at me that way, but I am.”
“Fuck off.”
“Will you let me be nice to you. Look at how proud I'm being.”
“I said fuck off, go on, jog on.”
Remus chuckles, then turns to face him. “Tell me you'll do it and that you'll be alright, can you do that.”
“You know I'll do it. It won't kill me. It'll be done.”
They spend the rest of the day by the fire.
The hut is a bubble of soft music and Remus' voice, who's talking of everything at once. His life after, fucking around and doing uppers (mostly) until he puked blood and had to wrap that nonsense up. Then the research position in Kilquane and his brief career as a dog owner.
“A greyhound?”
“Imagine that.”
“What'd you call him?”
“Kenny. For Ken Loach.”
“Course you fucking did.”
It sounds far from happiness or contentment, but Remus has had a life. Has been a person.
Which makes Sirius wonder: “What'll you do, after? D'you know, Rem?”
“I, well. I wanted to wait, but.” There is a long pause. “You think you'd want to live with me again?”
“Where? Doesn't matter. Yeah, I would. I do.”
“What about…”
“His life is here. And I'm not fit for this whole. Fresh mountain air thing. Trees. Vistas.”
“Oh, come off it. You could make it work.”
Maybe, he thinks. It's the matter of getting Sir Charles to agree.
The door creaks open. Speak of the pup and he'll come running with his stick. Charlie stumbles in and spells the latch to ward against the growing blizzard.
“Fuck me,” he pants, and notices the two of them lounging. “Evening.”
“What’s that you got there in your poofy little bag, Charlie?”
“You can piss off.” He dumps the gym bag by the table and begins to unwrap his layers, spell-drying the weight of melted snow from each piece he sheds. “Gifts.”
“Pour nous?” Sirius gasps. “Pas moyen, St. Nicholas in the flesh.”
He hoists himself off the floor and goes to inspect. Remus follows, peering inside the lime-green Adidas. It's got sequins. Charlie shoos them away as if they were a pair of stray cats out on the prowl to maraud some herring.
Remus is kind enough to heat dinner while Sirius sets the table to let Charlie rest and sip ginger tea.
“How was your shift?” Remus asks, pouring him a bowl of stew.
“Long. We had a new batch of eggs come in. Fireballs, the lot of them, so it's about to get hot.”
Remus coaxes more out of Charlie as they share the table. Sirius is eating on the floor with his back against the stove. He eats with his hands and ignores every judgemental look Remus directs at his plastic plate.
Charlie is quick to talk about everything from fireball care routine to diet regimen. It's a whole different brand of enthusiasm. Sirius notices that Charlie doesn't mention Palahna.
After dinner, they each get a helping of the most peculiar thing called colivă of which Charlie got a whole bucket from the muggle woman down in Ruscova that runs a guest house and a novelty pub. Remus dislikes the honey and the raisins in the dish, the nonbeliever, so they move to the fire for a drink.
It's one of those spiced sugar rums Remus likes so much, its bottle adorned with a magical-ink rendition of the oldest sea beast known to man. Its tentacles slither across the clear glass as if swimming through the depths of the black spirit within.
Charlie goes to fetch more covers and drags his sparkly bag to their improvised picnic spread. It contains zero factual gifts. There are snacks, though, and fancy glassware for the booze.
They ask Remus to speak of the cold war back home. When he does, his voice is strained from grim recollections, but his demeanour is not that of a man who's lost all hope. If Remus, the absolute legend of the pessimism Olympics, can look like this, well, Sirius will allow himself a sliver of belief.
Charlie asks him whether Harry is handling the year well, what's with the off season and all. Remus laughs at that, says, oi-oi, and informs him that yes, Harry is a cloud of misery and broom-deprivation, the absolute lad.
“You're such a pleb, Lupin,” says Charlie.
“Au contraire. To reject sport is very patrician.”
“Oh, leave it out. Just because you don't have the balance to play yourself…”
“You never told me,” Sirius interrupts their game of kicks, “which position you played.”
“Seeker.”
Remus raises his glass, “Captain, wouldn't you know.”
And Charlie, honest to holy mother and her land, flushes to his neck. He pokes Sirius in the thigh, “You were a beater, is that right?”
Sirius nods, choosing to ignore the light tease in his voice. They sure won't be engaging in any cute gags of sex and violence around the table, never you mind that it's only fur, dried figs, and squid rum.
“So, professor,” change of subject, “how's your game these days?”
“Sirius, I'll piss in your soup.”
They end up chatting football despite Sirius knowing fuck all about it and Remus finding all forms of spectator sport repugnant. Charlie, bless him, follows the Premier League and is deeply devoted to Chelsea. Somehow, it's enough for Remus (Remus) to slag him off (two whole minutes) for lacking taste.
Later, they listen to the holiday broadcast (both PMs, chorals, muggle pop) and finish the bottle. Sirius is still munching on a fig when Remus bids them goodnight to climb in his cot, knees creaking like cogs pulled apart by rust, and casts a silencing charm on his blanket. He hides under it.
Sirius chuckles, but Charlie's got that look about him when he thinks really hard but chooses to ignore reason. Which means Charlie climbs in his lap. Sirius holds him by the hips, thinking, how quaint. Charlie nuzzles in the soft place under his ear and sniffs when the braid tickles his face.
“Got you something,” Charlie whispers, reaching blindly for the bag. It's something small, a bottle with a pump. “Oil for your hair.”
Sirius kisses him.
It's a long time to be kissing someone, he supposes, but he can't unglue himself from the slow and wet pace of it. His arms long to contain this boy who's melting right into him.
Charlie leans back, licks his red mouth, “Are you sure?”
“Don't be silly.”
Charlie dives in for another. They soak in it for a while, with Charlie rutting into his hip and wordlessly asking to be pulled by the hair.
“Not here, don't be asking mad things,” Sirius rolls them over and keeps on kissing.
Charlie responds for a while, then pulls back. “In my office.”
“Your office?”
“In the staff building. Everyone's gone now. Night shift's got their own hut.”
Don't let him drag you into this. It sounds like a sweet way to close the day. For fuck's sake, old man.
They go.
He's still thinking loud thoughts as Charlie tugs him through the thin forest undergrowth, ankle-deep in snow, all the way to the main building. They enter through the back, wards undisturbed.
Charlie's office has got a lock. The engraving on the door reads Charles L. Weasley, B.Sc., (“L?” “Lapdog. Come on.”) and something else in Romanian, with a miniature chalk-drawn horntail dozing between the lines.
The table's cluttered with parchment rolls and quills. There's a textile lampshade with dusty tassel and leopard print. A mountain of paper folders, glitter pens, a bowl of household crystals. A massive box on top of another box.
“Is that a computer?” Sirius points at its off-grey body while Charlie adjusts the brightness of the lamp with his wand. He then pushes Sirius to the wall and drops to his knees. “They're so different. What’s it called?”
“Your bedside manner,” Charlie undoes the zip, takes his cock out. He looks up, says, Gateway 2000 P5-120, and sucks.
Charlie likes to be sloppy, as weeks of study have shown, so he might as well give him that.
“Hands,” Sirius tells him, and the boy crosses his wrists at the small of his back.
There is a pause, an expectation, so Sirius grips at the long hair at the nape of his neck and fucks into him. It's a fairly brutal but pleasant ride conducted in eerie silence. Hush of nature, pastoral lechery.
The spit-wet slap of Charlie's mouth makes him think of sopping mud after a violent rain shower. He can see nothing but the sweat on Charlie's cheeks, on his face and bulging throat.
A fox barks somewhere beyond the shored window, and Sirius laughs, then grips the back of his neck and drills in. Charlie chokes, convulsing. He told Sirius once that he loves it when the tears are disconnected from self because then they are the product of a purely physical reaction, nothing more. He's crying like that now.
Sirius lets him breathe for a short moment before stuffing him full of it and staying there for a while. Charlie warms him for a good minute without gagging, but still chokes when Sirius grinds into it. Is rutting like this extremely dog-like behaviour, or is it just them?
Sirius stops thinking about it when he comes. He holds Charlie in place to rut himself dry. Charlie gargles through it, his nose buried in pubic hair. He's shaking again, his arms gone limp. Some of their mess dribbles out, and Sirius tugs him closer by the withers. Charlie allows himself to grow very still and take it. He manages long enough to swallow, struggling out a cough through his stuffed, cracked mouth.
Sirius pushes him off and grips his chin. Charlie is panting, absolutely drenched and wearing a dazzling smile.
“You can go, boy.”
Charlie shoves a hand down his unwieldy winter layers and wanks himself off just like that.
Afterwards, they bundle in transfigured blankets under the table. Sleepover it is, then. We're a bit wank stupid at the moment, Sirius tells himself, what can you do really.
He touches Charlie's mouth. At the corners where the skin split rather badly, and on the inside of his bottom lip. It seeps blood. Charlie hums in delight.
“Hold still, please,” Sirius whispers.
His favourite magic from home works through touch. Closing his eyes, Sirius pictures a well. It cuts deep through the guts of the wadi. He blinks under his eyelids—a complete wipe of blackness—and sees a river. A woman draws from it with a bowl. She glances at him over her shoulder. Seybouse. Sirius breathes in and tastes mountain air.
He opens his eyes. Charlie is watching him, intense and alight. The scars of his face are white in the shadows. As pearly as the whites of his eyes. Lips, now healed, press a kiss to the tips of Sirius' mending fingers.
“L for Leander,” Charlie says. “Can't bloody stand it.”
They get lost in a doze like newborns, and Sirius swears they must be sharing the same dream. Of pinewoods and dogs running through the trees to chase a warm black nothing. It's viscous. Black dogs, vicious.
He startles awake about an hour in and rolls onto his side to face Charlie.
Who is awake because he has to be, he has to wake early and keep watch. Sirius touches the thick scar under his right ear.
Charlie yawns, “What is it?”
Sirius prepares to read him when he asks, “You were supposed to handle the dragons. For the tournament.”
“Mmm. I was.”
“You didn't.”
“I did not.”
“Old man's doing?”
“No,” Charlie shifts so close they breathe the same stale air, “mine.”
They leave at three bells before the early morning shift. Remus is still lost to the world in the cocoon of his soundproof blanket.
The need to get warm is rather urgent (on their jog back, Charlie tackled the dog into the largest snow mound he’s ever seen), but they can’t be patient enough for homoeopathy, so Charlie dries them with a spell. Sirius sorts out some peanuts and dates for breakfast, while Charlie makes coffee in a small cooking pot.
They sit and drink, sharing the quiet. Charlie watches the snow for so long that Sirius realises, here we go. A question up ahead. Land ahoy.
Charlie takes a deep breath, “Are you leaving?”
“Not yet.”
“Did he say when?”
Sirius shrugs, “It’s like you said. Maybe not until spring. Not really up to me, mate.”
“And after?”
“After what?”
“Don’t insult me.”
Sirius sighs. “Remus asked me to live with him.”
Charlie nods, smiling. He stares at the bottom of his mug.
Sirius has no idea what he’s thinking, what Remus is thinking either, and he hates that he's lost his eye for people reading, that he can’t do it the way he used to. There’s much left to learn.
Charlie sips his coffee, then finally looks at him, “Can I visit?”
“Don’t you need to check your schedule? Where’s your little planner?”
“Yes or no?”
Sirius doesn’t know what to tell him.
“Sirius. Yes or no?”
He sighs, “Charlie, I don’t know what it is you want to hear. I don’t know how to tell you that a few months from now I might not be alive.”
When Charlie says nothing, Sirius adds, “So you can do whatever it is you want, mate.” And thinks, You might not know now, not for sure, but you’ll figure it out.
“What about today,” Charlie asks him, “are you alive? Today?”
Sirius nods, and it seems like, for Charlie, this is good enough. Sirius the man is enough. Today, he is enough.