| Three Inconsequential Kisses (Plus One That Counts)
Author: Minervacat
Sirius has always been wicked. He likes the word, rolls it over in his mouth. Tastes it thoroughly before he decides that it's a word he can live under. Wicked suggests that you're devious. Not evil, but clever and mischievous. Wicked has an edge of humor that evil doesn't carry. Wicked implies that you'll twist the truth to get your way, but wicked does not suggest that you are manipulative. Wicked is a fag, a drink and a plan. Wicked says you'll do what you have to, but you'll have a little fun along the way. Sirius enjoys being wicked. Andromeda is the most fun of all his cousins, but Narcissa is the easiest to tease. Andromeda matches Sirius prank for prank, but Cissy is tiny, fragile and blond – she's like a china doll that he's terrified of breaking. Sirius is very fond of pushing Cissy just to see how far he can shove before she breaks. He kisses Narcissa because he is fifteen and she is thirteen and to him, girls are almost interesting and to her, boys are absolutely revolting. He kisses her because Bella would hex him and Andromeda would punch him and there aren't any other girls around to kiss but Cissy, and she is as repulsed by the idea as he is intrigued. It's not what he expects – too dry, too forced, too awkward, too everything, and when he's finished kissing her, Cissy cries and he feels sort of bad, but not bad enough. He tells her not to tell anyone and she keeps his secret, because even she knows that the ancient and most noble house of Black might marry distant cousins, but they don't kiss their first cousins, whatever the intent. She avoids him after that. He feels pleasantly wicked and naggingly guilty. Being wicked is not the same as being cruel. Even as he gets older and has more resources with which to be more wicked, it doesn't translate to cruelty – necessarily. He doesn't mean to almost kill Snivellus, not really, and the look on Remus's face when he found out what Sirius had done was enough to stay Sirius's hand for the rest of his life. It wasn't the fact that he'd almost killed Snivellus that stopps him in his tracks, but instead the way that Remus looks at him. Sirius thinks about giving up wickedness for good after that. He might have even done it if Regulus hadn't happened into his path one day when Sirius was in a black mood. He was sitting in the kitchen, flicking bits of scone at the house elves, and scowling fiercely at the cup of tea getting cold in front of him, when Regulus skittered into the kitchen, looking nervous and pathetic like always, and stopped in front of the table across from Sirius. "I heard," Regulus says, "that your little friend is a werewolf. Bad luck, that, especially if it were to get out." Sirius hates him more in that moment than he's ever hated Regulus before; Regulus, the good son, who should have been where Sirius is, heir to the House of Black. It doesn't matter that Remus still isn't speaking to Sirius, still hasn't forgiven him for giving away his secret so carelessly, because Remus is his best mate, and Sirius' awful, grasping younger brother won't get away with spreading the news further. "Shut up," Sirius growls, and he drags Regulus across the table to kiss his mouth closed. He finds himself wishing that it was Remus, because angry kissing has to be better than all this coldness between them. Bella kisses him. Sirius feels that it is necessary to explain this, because James walks out of the loo at the exact moment Bella has pinned Sirius against the wall and thrust her tongue down his throat, and James makes this shocked noise and looks as though he can't decide between falling to the floor in hysterical laughter or running off to tell everyone that they know that Sirius was kissing his cousin in the hallway of the third floor of Grimmauld Place. So Sirius flails a little and when Bella lets him go, she leans over and bites Sirius on the cheek. She bites hard, so that it leaves red, circular dents against his skin, and then later when those fade, it bruises purple and blue almost like a black eye. She leans over and says, "Do make the right choice, cousin," without explaining what she means, and then she disappears down the stairs, her laugh carrying up the stairs behind her and echoing off the high ceilings, and he doesn't see her again until they are both in Azkaban. Even then, he doesn't see her so much as he hears her laugh, resonating across the night while he tries not to go mad and she sounds like she already has. That laugh chills him to the bone, and he cannot hear it without thinking of that day in the hallway. When Bella's laugh has ceased to bounce of the walls, Sirius picks James up from the floor where he is lying, wheezing with slightly subdued laughter. "Your family is weird," James says. "Yeah," Sirius says. "I have to get out of here." "I'm going to tell everyone that Bella kissed you," James says. "Oh, fuck off," Sirius says, and the next week he gets an owl from Remus that asks about the kiss. It didn't mean anything, Sirius writes. Bella's just ... you know how my family is. Remus doesn't answer and Sirius survives another ten days in that house before he leaves, escapes for good and is disowned by his parents but welcomed by his friends. When Remus hugs him on the platform of the Hogwarts Express, all of Sirius' worldly possessions in his trunk besides their feet, Sirius decides that home is where the heart is. There's no heart in Grimmauld Place, but Remus has one big enough to forgive Sirius for even the worst transgressions. The night before Halloween in 1981, Sirius and Remus are sitting on the floor of their flat eating takeout Chinese because Sirius enjoys the Muggle kitsch of the chopsticks, the white cardboard boxes, the fact that it all tastes alike no matter what you order: like grease, unidentifiable meat, cheap happiness. They are sitting on the floor because they have no furniture, and they have no furniture because Remus can't get a job and Sirius doesn't want to. He knows he'll have to, but what's the point of having furniture if you're not sure that you're staying in a place? You'll just have to carry it down the stairs in the end, and Sirius still is not so fond of manual labor that doesn't end in explosions. He's thinking about moving because Remus has been keeping strange hours and coming home with strange packages, and James and Lily and Harry are hiding somewhere, a place he couldn't find, and they're gone, because a mad man wants to kill them. Dumbledore says that there's a spy, and it isn't in Sirius's nature to be suspicious, but he can't help but wonder – there's enough that Remus doesn't say these days and Sirius won't ask. He thinks that maybe it's Remus, but he doesn't want to think that all at the same time, and so he doesn't, but he is sitting on the floor of their flat with no furniture, his knees touching Remus' and the food spread out between them, and nothing makes sense anymore at all. He can't ask Remus where he goes and what he does, and he can't ask Remus if he is going to betray James and Lily and the baby. The world is falling down around their heads, and there are too many things that Sirius doesn't know and doesn't want to know. It's a life of indeterminate ends, and he knows enough to know that he could die any day now, at the hand of his cousin Bella or a stranger or Remus, sitting across from him with egg fried rice stuck to the corner of his mouth. The world is ending slowly, and there are many things that he doesn't know, but there is one thing that refuses to die without knowing, and so he leans across the boxes of greasy food and licks the fried rice from Remus' mouth. Then he kisses Remus, Remus kisses back, and they spend the night before Halloween answering questions without words, questions that Sirius couldn't and wouldn't have asked. They fall asleep on the floor, clothes scattered between upturned boxes of Chinese, and when Sirius wakes up the next morning, Remus is already gone. Sirius goes out and tries to find a job that afternoon and then he goes to the Leaky Cauldron and drinks, and when he comes home on Halloween night, the flat is dark and there is an owl waiting for him. The bottom of his world falls out before he ever sees Remus again. Author's notes: 1500 words, in sections of 100, 200, 300, 400 and 500 – in order. For Circe Tigana, who wanted to know more about Wicked Cousin Sirius, on her birthday. Love you bunches, kitten. I hope next year is amazing and fantastic and full of surprises and wickedness. ♥ |
|
|
|
|