periculum

by the_invisibility_bloke

Summary:

Harry needs someone to take control.

Or maybe he just needs Sirius.

Notes:

This came to me in the shower, as all cursed things do. It wasn't supposed to get this groomy, but the road to hell, best laid plans, etc., heed the tags.

Takes place just before fifth year, because that's the Summer of Sirry.

Chapter 1: protego

27 August

Like every birth, it begins with blood.

Not the fresh, gleaming, liquid ruby rushing from the gash in Harry’s finger. No. Over a year ago, in a rickety shack with a phoenix-core wand at Sirius’ throat; Harry’s agile, youth-sharp body bracketing Sirius’ own. It was there, in the ripe crimson flowering beneath the boy’s cheeks, surging against his furious pulse, bloodlust blown out over green eyes.

That was the day the seed was planted; submerged in filthy, furtive soil. Today is the day it breaches the surface, a rare and delicate blossom among all the snarling weeds that choke the air from Sirius’ life.

It happens so fast, like untamed magic. A stab of lightning. Love at first sight. One second Harry is hunched over the counter, dutiful and rhythmic; next there’s a hiss and a swear, the clatter of a blade on the chopping board, a neat row of carrot discs stained red.

Sirius is up from the table, across the kitchen at Apparition speed with the calm and clarity of a still-water pond. A calculated antidote to the fussing and fretting he’s already tuning out. A staking of claim, of ownership—over the problem, of course. The problem at hand.

“Sirius, he needs—”

“I know what he needs.”

No faux decorum, no passive aggression. No Thank you, Molly, I’m rather well versed in healing spells, given the frequency of my mother’s lashings. Not necessary this time. It’s petty, perverse, the amount of pleasure he derives in rescuing Harry from something he can blame on her. She put them up to this, setting tasks to busy their brains, to keep Harry away from Sirius and his terribly un-paternal influence.

“Come here, sweetheart.” Soft as mist, for Harry’s ears only, but loud enough to be overheard. Harry melts easily into the command, submits to all its ensuing touches as Sirius whips out a clean handkerchief from his pocket, mutters the quickest blood-clotting charm, and wraps the cloth around Harry’s finger. “Let’s get you cleaned up, yeah?”

Harry nods, allowing himself to be led by the wrist (held aloft, keep it elevated, no other reason) up to the first-floor loo. It’s not the nearest loo, it’s the one least likely to invite interruption. They haven’t had a moment alone all day, and now they’re down to five.

Less than a week.

How many wordless ways can one say I know you can’t stay, but stay?

The hourglass sand suspended between them turns red as he guides Harry’s hand under the water. A tender stream, not tender enough. Sirius’ tongue would be better.

The fact he actually considers it—imagines lifting the wounded hand to his lips, lapping it clean, restoring the skin to unmarred porcelain—exposes the layers they’ve stripped away, and how very few remain. In the countdown, they’ve exhausted all pretence of propriety—stealing every free moment they can, and some they truly shouldn’t. Waiting for something to nudge them over the line Harry doesn’t seem to realise exists.

The looks have grown longer. Lingering. Loaded.

So have the touches.

That’s to be expected, isn’t it? Twelve parallel years, starved of contact. Who gets to say how they heal, how they love? How they love each other? Who dares judge, when all Harry’s anger and agitation dissolve in his godfather’s arms?

This is the mantra Sirius will chant, in the charred wasteland of his mangled mind. Night after night at this very sink. Baptising himself in the coldest water he can charm from the century-old tap.

But there is no salvation to be found, other than in this beautiful boy who looks at him like a deity.

In the quiet of Harry watching him, Sirius gathers the gauze and the dittany, uncaps the vial of anti-bac serum, and buries all his deviant thoughts in the same shallow grave he unearths every night.

“Thanks,” Harry says, because he doesn’t know.

“No need to thank me. It’s my pleasure.”

Harry’s lip quirks. “My pain is your pleasure?”

“Mm. Coincidentally, the motto of my favourite bondage club.”

“Yeah? That’s where you run off to while I’m asleep?”

“Everyone needs a hobby, darling.”

Sirius waggles an eyebrow, Harry huffs a laugh, and this is what they do. Banter. Half-truths camouflaged in jest. Flirting, Remus had warned, eyes and voice dark as a moonless night, before Sirius had told him, in no uncertain terms, to kindly fuck the hell off.

Harry swallows hard at the dittany’s sting, but doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t even blink. “Any other secrets you’re hiding from me?”

From me. “A fair few, perhaps.”

“Go on, then.”

“You first.” Too far, because Harry would. He’s more Gryffindor than Sirius ever was. Before he can prove it, Sirius’ fingers close around Harry’s wrist to steady his hand for inspection. Redirection. The bleeding has slowed to a lava crawl, but it’s deep. Too deep, reaching down for the bone. “Those carrots never stood a chance.”

“Suppose you’ll have to amputate.”

“Least it’s not your wand hand, eh?”

Harry snorts. “Is that a euphemism?”

Sirius stops and looks up—the first mistake. Hundredth, if he were brave enough to admit. Harry’s eyes are brighter and darker at once, like someone turned up the contrast.

Behave, Sirius nearly says—to Harry or himself, no telling which.

“Hold still,” he says instead, and that’s worse, because Harry obeys. Turns to clay in Sirius’ hands. A pliant statue, buttery, boneless, as Sirius unrolls the gauze. “Sorry. I prefer to do this bit without magic. Not giving that woman a reason to think I don’t bloody know what I’m doing.”

“I don’t give a fuck what she thinks about you.”

Of course he doesn’t, because he’s not the one on trial. Sirius tuts as sternly as he can manage. “Language.”

Harry smiles. “Arsehole buggering cocksucker.”

“Is that meant to be an insult?” Sirius smirks. “I should wash your mouth out with soap, young man.”

“Do it.”

Christ.

But it’s nothing compared to what Harry does next.

Here’s what he does. He waits for Sirius to look up, because of course Sirius is going to look up after that. Then—without moving a muscle below that delicate, grabbable neck—Harry opens his mouth, slow and slack, and extends his flat, pink, perfect tongue over his bottom lip.

And bloody well leaves it there.

If the warning bells are blaring—and Merlin knows they are—there’s no chance Sirius will hear them over the roar of blood in his spineless body surging down to his cock.

He’s grown used to it over the summer—the changes in Harry, after what happened. The brooding silences, peppered by outbursts. The anger and the audacity. How the trauma of the tournament seems to have aged him well beyond his years, but it hasn’t. Sirius knows. He knows. Fifteen is fifteen is fifteen, no matter what you’ve been through.

Remus’ words, not his. Not that Sirius had any defence.

With his last feeble pittance of self-control, Sirius cups Harry’s chin and gently pushes his mouth closed, watching his tongue retract and, regrettably, disappear. “Not today.”

As loaded as a rifle. No doubt Harry is at least mature enough to grasp a bit of subtext. The nascent flush of his cheeks confirms it.

Sirius gets to work while he can, while he still has the presence of mind for it—which, it turns out, isn’t long. As he binds the gauze in snug, careful layers, something happens. To Harry. Something invisible, thestral-like, that makes him tense up and turn away.

Sirius freezes, mid-motion. “Am I hurting you, love?”

Harry shakes his head, tight and curt, and doesn’t look up. “Keep going.”

Sirius does, just to speed things along—with greater care, mind, but for naught. Harry grows stiff as stone, every muscle seizing in succession, like a body-bind curse on a time delay. And bound he remains until Sirius finishes, pressing to seal the bandage in place. That’s when Sirius hears it.

Not a whimper, not a grunt, not a hiss of pain. In the muted, time-static eye of the storm, Harry gasps.

“Fuck. I’m sorry.”

Sirius takes hold of his chin, like before, and eases Harry back to him. “Tell me.”

Eyes firmly averted, Harry shakes his head, violent enough to dispel the demons only he can see.

“Harry.”

His fingers tighten around Harry’s wrist, just a little, just to lure back his attention, and it works. Catastrophically. A dozen years in Azkaban will teach you a thing or twenty about the look of fear, and this one is positively withering. Of course it is. A whole childhood of abuse and neglect—fuck, how had Sirius missed it?

He drops Harry’s wrist like a brick of hot coal. “I’m sorry.”

Harry snaps out of it, frowning. “For what?”

“I—I thought perhaps—” Perhaps I’d triggered your childhood trauma doesn’t quite roll off the tongue. “Does it make you uncomfortable when I hold you like that?”

Harry looks like he missed a step, or perhaps fell down the whole flight. “No.”

It’s adamant, assertive. No trace of deception. But it’s more than no. It’s subtext of his own. It’s hell no, are you mad? It’s don’t make me say it, practically a bid for Legilimency, and that’s when Sirius gets it.

The too-even cadence of Harry’s breath, like someone pretending to be asleep. The void of his pupils, rapidly erasing the ring of green. The colour spectrum across his cheeks, spring rose plummeting to Pinot burgundy.

It isn’t just fear. It’s guilt—cautiously layered over something else.

Something like—

God.

It is not an unfamiliar look; it’s unfamiliar on Harry. Obscene is what it bloody is, same as on every young, delicate, dark-haired thing Sirius has pulled from the pubs. That wanton look flung over their shoulder, arse reaching for the sky, a breathy yes sir torn from overworked lungs. That is the portrait of pleading surrender, of take me, break me, remake me—and now it’s crash-landed on his teenage godson’s precious face.

This is where Sirius should stop. He’s finished the job. Send him away, down to dinner. Let the boy hold onto the last of his dignity. This is where Sirius’ hand takes on a mind of its own instead, sleepwalking from Harry’s chin to his cheek. This is where Sirius convinces himself this is the right thing to do. Coax it out. Make sure he feels accepted, understood, safe. That is the job of a guardian.

“It feels good?” Sirius offers, silken support. “Is that what you’re trying to say?”

Harry’s eyes widen, then skim away. “That’s what I’m trying not to say.”

“Oh... oh, Harry.”

Duty kicks in, or something does. His hand drops to Harry’s shoulder, safe. Safer. He should stop. Or should he? Should he leave him like this, confused and crumbling under the weight of his own unfounded shame? Only a monster would do that, and Sirius is no monster. Not on the outside, at least.

“Is it about pain?” Sirius asks. “Is that... something you like?”

Harry’s struggle lies bare, exposed in the throes of dichotomy. He shakes his head, then nods. Opens his eyes, then shuts them. “I—I dunno.”

Sirius is no stranger to dichotomy; to the irreconcilable hell of cognitive dissonance. This concurrent need to protect and to ruin—this feral ache to gather Harry up, receive him into the unholy temple of Sirius’ arms—is so voracious, so compelling, that the only weapon effective against it is superficial comfort. Words so mild and hollow they might as well have come from someone else, because the only ones in his own warped mind are Darling, let me show you.

“It’s okay,” he manages. “You don’t have to know. And you don’t have to talk about it.”

Harry finally looks him in the eye, greets him with a swell of tears. “Am I a freak?”

“No.” Two hands now, a spider’s grip on each lean shoulder, hold him in place because he’s got to hear this. This is nonnegotiable. “Sweetheart, you are no such thing. There is nothing to be ashamed of. It’s quite common, actually.”

Harry isn’t convinced, but he trusts. It’s there in his eyes, as it always is. In the grip of his uninjured hand as it reaches up and latches, trembling, to Sirius’ forearm. That trust is innate, unshakable; there from the very beginning, not something they had to work at. Harry’s trusted Sirius from the moment Sirius told him the truth, and that’s all he’s told him ever since.

If not the whole, ugly truth.

Sirius squeezes his shoulders. “It’s all right to like things that don’t make sense. Things you don’t fully understand. All right?”

A fraction of the tension trickles out. Clipped breaths begin to lengthen, stabilise. Good. That’s good. It was the right thing to do, after all.

“I just...” Harry starts, and looks away. “I’m not... used to this.”

“To what?”

“To someone... taking care of me.”

A hole in Sirius’ heart bursts open. Harry fills it at once. He fills every valve, every crevice of that fractured organ; for now, it’s the only home Sirius can offer him.

“Harry. Look at me.”

Harry does, at once, with a hitch in his breath. Why so eager, so fast? Could this be part of it? Did that do something for him, too? That tiny flutter of a command? 

Sirius banishes every adjacent thought, but thoughts are far less obedient than Harry. Lovely, perfect Harry, whom he’s sworn to protect. That’s enough.

“I will always take care of you, however you need. Whatever is in my power to give you, I shall. You need only ask.”

Harry opens his mouth, perhaps to do just that, when the voice below calls them for dinner.

“Go,” Sirius urges, stepping back, out of the path of peril. “I’ll be along.”

Harry clings to Sirius’ sleeve, like a child. A child. That’s what he is, that’s what Sirius must believe he is, even if he isn’t. “Come with me,” Harry pleads.

“I’ll be right down.” Sirius forces a smile. The need for Harry to not be here is rapidly rising in urgency. “Call of nature. Go on.”

It’s not a lie. It’s not. But nature is a cruel master, wedded to fate, and Sirius knows when he’s lost. Harry has barely stepped out into the corridor, barely clicked the door shut behind him, before Sirius’ traitorous hand is storming into his straining pants, spilling his sin all over the tile before Harry would’ve even had time to make it down the stairs.

_


He’s survived this long. It has to be measured that way, in vague terms, like he isn’t constantly cutting himself open on the too-sharp memory of when it happened, down to the day-hour-minute.

This long. However long he pretends that is. Weeks. Months. He can’t say years, dear god, he can’t. Only in the sun-starved depths of his heaviest guilt can he admit that the first moment Harry’s anger touched him, ensnared him, consumed him at the start of last summer, was the moment Sirius awoke from one nightmare, only to fall into another. The worst one of all.

Love.

Sick, hungry, selfish love, not the love Harry deserved. Sirius had loved him that way, too—the fatherly way, the protective older brotherly way. That’s the first way he’d loved him, the right way—but right and wrong start to blur rather quickly when you’re falsely imprisoned for your lover’s murder.

He’d blamed James, at first. Seeing Harry in the flesh—writhing in his own primitive, youthful rage—unleashed in Sirius a resurgence of grief, and he’d clung to stage two like a lone branch at the edge of a waterfall. Anger at James for dying and leaving behind his fucking clone who was scarcely younger than James had been the first time Sirius kissed him.

It didn’t last, of course—the anger nor the blame. He couldn’t blame James for the way he loved Harry, because Harry was not a clone. Their differences eclipsed their parallels, and Sirius had tumbled right into love with every single one.

This is the inevitability of loving without limits. That’s what Azkaban does. Whatever limitations you think you have, you’re wrong. You will do and endure things you never thought possible. The moral compass you enter with will be ripped apart and reassembled the wrong way, if at all.

The fact Harry seems to know all this and love him anyway, trust him anyway, is motive enough to hold back. To chain himself down, bury his desire like bones at the bottom of an abandoned well. Not a proper burial, rather one steeped in secrets and shame, but it’s the best he can do, and he does it.

For over a year he’s moulded his love into something palatable; safe. He can survive another four days.

Or he could’ve, perhaps, if Harry weren’t pacing the corridor outside Sirius’ bedroom at two a.m.

He doesn’t know how he knows it’s Harry, but he does and it is. Barefoot and tousled, shivering in his baggy sleep shorts even though it’s August. He’s hunched in enough to make Sirius’ heart ache, hugging the fragile armour of his rib cage beneath the faded cotton tee he stole from Sirius weeks ago. The one with the stretched-out neckline that gapes open over his collarbone.

Sirius loves and hates that shirt now.

“Sorry, did I wake you?”

Sirius shakes his head. “You can, though. You can always wake me. I want you to.”

Harry doesn’t reply and doesn’t move. Even after a dozen times, he still needs the invitation.

“Nightmare?”

Harry nods.

The door yawns wider. Sirius steps back and opens his arms. Harry fords the threshold and seals their fates.

“You know you don’t ever need a reason to come here,” Sirius mutters into the crown of his head, one hand cradling the flushed, clammy nape of his neck. Harry’s scent is concentrated here, sleep-heat and cooling nightmare sweat and Sirius’ own shampoo. The one Harry asked, stammering, if he could use, days after he started using it. Sirius yearns to seal it all in his lungs and never exhale.

Harry burrows deeper into his chest, stress-brittle fingers clenching the worn-thin fabric of Sirius’ undershirt, tight enough to rip. “I don’t want to be a bother.”

“…Harry.” Sirius growls and peels him away and it’s agony, but he must say this to his face. “Every moment with you is a privilege.” Harry softens toward a smile. “I missed the whole of your childhood. Let me at least try to make up for it.”

The smile matures. “You already have.”

“Then let me be selfish. I sleep better when you’re beside me.”

It’s a safe confession, an innocent one, given Harry’s confessed the same. Said it first, in fact. Says it again, right now, limp and molten in Sirius’ arms: “Me too.”

Sirius hums and walks them across the dusty hardwood. Harry folds into his side of the bed, automatic, fluid. Like they’ve done it for years, not a few scattered nights in a few scant weeks. But they’ve always been effortless that way, together, falling into shared habits as naturally as falling asleep.

“It’s hard to get away,” Harry admits as they settle on their sides, face to face, close enough for all manner of unspeakable things. “When everyone’s... you know...”

Watching. Sirius knows. They talked about it, once, the intrusive eyes that swerve their way whenever the private exchanges linger too long for an outsider’s comfort. They’ve never talked about why, but the glowing sunrise on Harry’s face had made it clear they didn’t need to.

“There’s no one here now. You’re safe.” It’s as much a stern reminder to himself as it is reassurance to Harry.

Harry wriggles a sliver closer. “Could you…”

Sirius nods, lifting a hand to begin the ritual. Nothing so complex or dramatic, but that’s what he calls it, because rituals don’t change. There’s no chance of his touch straying anywhere it shouldn’t as he sifts through Harry’s hair; nails dragging soft, even rows across the scalp from hairline to the base of his skull. Another effortless habit, uncovered on Harry’s first night here. First night that found him in Sirius’ bed after Sirius had found him first—on the chilled, grimy bathroom floor, knees hugged into his hammering heart. Here is where Sirius had stroked away the horrors, longing to absorb them into his own as he waded fingers through untidy hair, just as he’d watched James do that first year. Praise Merlin, it still bloody works. Still slows his breath, dries his tears, leaks the tension from his slight frame.

Normally Harry closes his eyes, soothes himself on the hypnotic rhythm, but not tonight. Tonight his eyes stay open on Sirius’, half-lidded and glazed with comfort. Pleasure, Sirius dares not say, but yes. That’s what it looks like.

“Gonna miss you,” Harry whispers.

Sirius’ throat tightens. If he says it back, it’ll come out all wrong. “I’m just a floo call away.”

“Not the same.”

“I know. I know, come here.”

But it’s Harry who disrupts the ritual, reaching for him first. Tugging until Sirius is leaning over his side, too close, too aligned, too kiss-ready. The shift draws Sirius’ hand from the back of Harry’s neck to the side, thumb draped over his pulse. It jumps beneath the finger pad as Harry’s hand glides up Sirius’ chest, over the hill of his shoulder, down his bicep, elbow junction to ink-stained forearm. There his fingers settle and curl, holding him in place while Harry gazes into his eyes like Sirius hung a star in the sky and named it after him. Doesn’t he know Sirius would if he could?

“I’ll miss you every minute,” is what comes out all wrong. “I already do. Every second we’re apart.”

Harry smiles, lopsided. “Wasn’t sure if you would.”

Sirius huffs. “And they say I’m touched in the head.”

A weightless breath of laughter, like all of this is normal. Like they’re not a step away from fatal. Like Harry isn’t gripping him harder, the weight of it pulling Sirius’ hand to the front of Harry’s neck.

To his throat.

It happens like a dream sequence, the impossible disguised as reality: The syrup-slow tilt of Harry’s chin, offering better access. The first careful brush of Sirius’ thumb over his Adam’s apple. The spread of fingers, half-mooning around that pale, twitching marble column. A perfect fucking fit.

There he strokes him, easy and light. All he can get out is, “This?”

Is this what you want? Is this what you’re afraid to ask me for?

Harry nods. Squeezes Sirius’ forearm like a question and answer in one.

“Tell me,” Sirius chokes.

Harry swallows hard, and fuck, Sirius feels every bit of it.

“When you touch me,” Harry breathes, “it feels like nothing else can. Like… even pain feels good, because it’s with you.”

Fire tears through Sirius’ body. He quickly douses it with guilt, but not before it burns away a good chunk of his resolve. “You’re right,” he says. “Nothing will touch you while I’m around. Nothing and no one.” No one else. “I want you to feel safe.”

It’s true, it’s true, he does. Above everything else he wants.

“I do.” Harry smiles. “With you.”

Sirius leans down and kisses his forehead. Paternal. Platonic. They’re going to need it, for what he’s about to do next. Eyes on Harry’s, hand in place, he presses down on Harry’s throat in a tiny, dismissable increment.

It’s enough. Harry gasps. “Harder.”

Panic leaks in. “Harry.”

“Please.” The hand on Sirius’ forearm is gripping with purpose now, hard to the point of trembling. “It makes me feel safe.”

Sirius is swimming in ecstasy, and soon he’ll drown in it. Harry can’t possibly mean it like that, can’t possibly want the same thing Sirius wants, the other side of this shiny, forbidden coin—but if he does? If they fit in every other way, and they do, why would this be an exception?

If this is what Harry needs, how can Sirius deny him?

Sirius swallows the rest of the ashy guilt and settles against Harry’s side. “If you want me to stop, you let go of my arm.”

Harry nods, alert as a piece of prey who’s just spotted his predator. Another increment of pressure, and his eyes start to flutter shut. Sirius eases up.

“Eyes open, darling. Keep them on mine.” He smiles, gentle, and feels like a wolf in sheep’s clothing. “Can’t have you passing out on me.”

Harry nods again, and that’s it. They’re doing this. Line crossed, and crossed out. No return.

It can’t last more than a minute, two tops—the sweet, liquid increase of pressure until Harry’s eyes are nearly curse-black, breath shortening to bursts. He squirms a little, at first, but his hand never drops, nor his eyes. Not even when the edge draws near. It’s visible, exhilarating, terrifying—the moment his eyes lose focus and his body gives out into boneless bliss. Only then does Sirius start to back off, withdraw his touch, check for signs of distress and find none. Harry’s breath has settled into a meditative calm, muscles relaxed, face serene, but the residue of thrill is fresh, the ghost of stimulation still zinging over his body.

Afterglow would be the word, if this were something else. But it isn’t, so it’s fine. They’re fine. Harry’s fine. Look at him, he’s glorious. Renewed. And Sirius, in his wash of relief, realises he can withstand any shame, commit any questionable act, if it brings Harry some form of peace.

They stare for another moment, one too long to be written off as anything other than buildup, before Sirius remembers himself. Remembers what he’s here for. Gathers a dazed, loose-limbed Harry in his arms, holds him from behind, tight as he can with hips angled away, and wills his raging demon of a hard-on back into submission.

“All right?” he asks, light as he can, scared shitless of any answer.

“Perfect,” Harry yawns, pulling him closer, already halfway to sleep.

More like the perfect crime.

Notes:

Some absolutely stunning fan art for this chapter!

Chapter 2: incarcerous

Notes:

It’s been 0 days since I made a wand pun. :(

28 August

Harry wakes up like every other teenage bloke on summer hols: indecently late and obnoxiously hard.

But unlike every other bloke, there’s fuck all he can do about it. Even if he could whip out his wand (worst ever choice of words)—one, he’s pants at cleaning spells, and two, it’s not his bed.

Not his bed.

Harry smiles.

The thrill hasn’t waned: this secret high of sprawling toward sunlight in a grown man’s sheets, awash in a grown man’s scent—mature and spicy, clinging jealously to the pillows. To the air. To Harry, who clings jealously back.

He’s alone, but there’s freedom in alone. There's luxury and licence, a gilded coating over the shame. Alone, he can roll over onto Sirius’ pillow, inhale until his lungs catch fire. Until he’s dizzy from oxygen overdose, from the blood pooled low in his body. Until he’s rutting at the mattress like a bitch in heat, so fucking hard he has no choice but to stumble to the loo, jerk himself in stiff, sleepy strokes with his face suffocating in Sirius’ towel, damp and cedar-sharp with aftershave.

He trips halfway down the stairs to breakfast, jellyfish legs still trembling from the force of it. From the shaken effort of keeping quiet, the rush of leaving the door unlocked as he’d shot off into his fist, that grown man’s name climbing up his throat and over his lips in a cowardly prayer to be caught.

Oh, Sirius catches him—just not in the way he’d expected.

Sirius catches him on his way to the kitchen, through a sliver in the door of an Order meeting. The morning ones Harry’s not invited to, no matter Sirius’ protests. Sombre grey eyes, dulled from tedium, brighten upon meeting Harry’s, then narrow. Then sink an inch lower. Then an inch more. Then widen and stall, somewhere below Harry’s mouth.

Is it written all over Harry’s skin, what he just did in his godfather’s bathroom? What he’s done every morning since he arrived—twice, after nights they’re together? What he’s done on the daily for over a year, since they bloody first met? 

Sirius mutters what looks like an excuse to Lupin and bolts from his chair. Slow and controlled, but his eyes betray. Harry’s smile has wilted by the time Sirius joins him, grabs Harry’s hand without a glance and drags him down the corridor.

“What—” Harry starts.

“Quiet.”

Harry quiets. Lets himself be manhandled into the loo (the nearest one this time—urgency over privacy, then). Waits until the door ticks shut before making another attempt. A smile over the thud of his heart. A joke to cut the tension.

“Like cornering me in the toilets, do you?”

“Harry, please stop talking.”

Now he’s afraid, because Sirius is afraid. It’s not a voice he often hears, but a haphazard peek in the mirror gives it all away.

Lined up along one side of his neck are four fingerprint-shaped bruises.

A single blot mars the other side, unmistakable as a thumb. The final, mortifying piece of the puzzle. The seed of their sin, bloomed overnight. Crime on display, red-handed. Literally.

“Shit,” Harry mutters.

“Hold still, sweetheart.” Harry does. Sirius has fumbled his wand out now, after the first failed try. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry—”

“Don’t—”

Don’t be, he tries to say, but what he really wants to say is Don’t spell them away. Let everyone see I’m yours. Stupid, impossible, a show of his age. A fantasy.

Nonetheless...

But the worst part of it is this: the blissful, branch-solid weight of Sirius’ forearm across his chest, holding him in place as the wand tip grazes Harry’s throat. An incantation, unfamiliar, followed by a current of tingling heat. It doesn’t hurt. Harry wishes it did.

Piece by piece, the evidence is destroyed.

Harry resists the throbbing urge to liquefy into Sirius’ chest—to start up something else they’ll be forced to erase and deny—but he never gets the chance. Sirius steps back. Twice.

“Did anyone see you?”

Harry shakes his head.

Sirius scrubs at his face, but a layer of ice begins to thaw. “I’m sorry—’s my fault—should’ve known—should’ve been more careful—”

“Don’t. I asked you to.”

“That doesn’t matter. Harry, do you realise...”

“Yes.”

“Do you?”

“I understand.”

I understand what’s at stake. I’m not a child, I’m not your child, please don’t mistake me for that.

Sirius doesn’t. Sirius takes back those two gaping steps, zips up the chasm between them and pulls Harry into a hug. Full-body flush, shoulder to hip, thank god Harry’s already wanked—but it feels so good, so fucking good he might need another go before lunch.

Sirius unlocks in Harry’s arms, drawing them back to normalcy with a kiss in Harry’s hair. Another, another, his temple, his cheek. No further, never further.

Back in the tatty nest of Harry’s hair he murmurs, “We’re a bit fucked, aren’t we?”

Harry holds him tighter and smiles. “Yeah.”

Not nearly fucked enough.

_


Something changes, after that. The charge of particles in the air. Magic and physics and electricity all shift with the evidence gone. Like it never happened. Like they got away with something, which is precisely what they did. They have a dirty secret and Harry’s high on it, giddy from relief and the memory itself. Every look that flashes between them is weighed down by a message only they can read. By this thing they created together, that now belongs to both of them, locked in a vault they share.

This thing that, given the barest opportunity, Harry will ask for again.

For now he sows restraint and reaps patience, because that’s the adult thing to do. That’s what Sirius is doing, subtle as can be—unless you know what to look for, and no one knows better than Harry. To Harry, it’s obvious as a neon marquee: the uptick in fidgeting, the shortness of temper, but also the ring of his laughter. Freer. Brighter. Bolder.

Lupin might notice, too. But only Harry knows.

The energy of it feeds off itself as the day wears on, bleeding into lazy afternoon lemonades in the garden and—as brooms are too much of a risk in these parts—a lawless, after-dinner match of football at the indigo cusp of dusk. Sirius, Ron, Ginny and the twins against Harry and Hermione’s combined two decades of Muggle exposure.

Hermione protests. Harry doesn’t. Not after seeing the first star glint in Sirius’ eye, the first tight twitch of a smirk on his lips.

There’s laughter and shouting from every angle, enough chaos to drown out the ache. Enough rule-bending and contact fouls that Harry and Sirius can hide within it, camouflage their touches in the name of sport. In grass stains and knee scrapes and muddied jeans, in the streak of dirt on Sirius’ face that Harry yearns to wipe away. Lick away, fuck it, he doesn’t care. The filthier the better.

But he fights it and fights it and does it well, nearly until the end.

This is what happens at the end.

One point to victory, heat and mass crowd up behind him, their shape and scent well-known to his body. This isn’t George’s hapless groping at the back of his shirt, nor one of Ron’s scuffed trainers kicking out across his shin. This is a pair of lithe, confident hands clamping down on Harry’s wrists. Weaving his arms behind him with skilled, satin ease and pinning them, crossed, at the small of his back. This is a gruff voice panting in his ear, breath scorching over the sensitive juncture between his jaw and his pulse. Over flesh still sore with hidden bruises and already throbbing for more.

“Beg for it,” Sirius whispers.

It’s not the words that do it—no, it is. Fuck, it is. Those three words will brand themselves onto Harry’s psyche until the day he dies, but it’s more than that. It’s the hidden bruise behind the words—the unacknowledged acknowledgement that Sirius understands. He’s answered the question Harry couldn’t ask. He’s given what Harry couldn’t ask for.

The stage and all its players taper down to white-noise blur, tinny static outside the pinhole aperture of Sirius’ touch, the knot of their hands the only thing keeping their bodies apart.

“Harry!” Hermione’s laughter breaks the spell, far more effective than her attempt to break Ginny’s impressive chokehold. “Harry, now!”

A second figure is hurtling toward him; a third from the other side. Right before they enter earshot, Harry whispers, “Please.”

Sirius releases him, just enough that Harry’ll still get credit—for the escape, for the shot, for the win—before Harry’s wrestled into a patch of thistle by two hulking ginger bodies.

Harry doesn’t think he can bear to look up, but it turns out he can’t bear not to. Next thing he sees is Sirius peeling his sweat-sodden V-neck up his chest and wiping the dirt from his cheek. He doesn’t quite get it all and it smears, and Harry—

Harry wants.

Then Sirius looks him dead in the eye, abdominals flexed, and winks.

They’re fucked enough now, Harry reckons.

_


The high goes down with the sun.

The coordination of showers and bedtime rituals keeps them separated longer than Harry can bear—and when Harry is cleansed, body reset, ready to be stroked and choked back into filth, Sirius is nowhere to be found.

Harry makes dutiful excuses to the others, Be along soon, gonna read for a bit, and to validate the pretence, he does. Curls up in his joggers on the library sofa and stares at the same line of text for the longest hour of his life.

“Any good?”

Harry’s smile starts to spread before he turns, before he spots him. Cocksure and casual in bootcut denim, slanted against the oak door frame, snifter in hand, still-damp curls loosely curtained around a slow-budding grin.

It’s the sexiest thing Harry’s ever seen.

He grins back, sheepish. “Can’t remember the title.”

“Mm.” Sirius raises an eyebrow and the glass to his lips. “Something else on your mind?”

It could be innocent, could be ignorant, but Harry’s commitment to playing it safe is starting to wear thin, to rip; small holes widening in the fabric of control. Three days, then months of deprivation. He can’t afford safe much longer.

“Bastard,” he says easily.

Sirius laughs, immediate. Knows what he did, then. Neither innocent nor ignorant.

He sits down opposite, one ankle balanced over a knee, and Harry can smell him now. Faded footprints of woodsy cologne, snug black T-shirt freshly laundered, his (now Harry’s) posh shampoo. Scrubbed-clean traces of his last cigarette that Harry shouldn’t love and does anyway.

But up close, the veneer cracks. He’s looking at the fire, not at Harry, free hand toying with a frayed thread. Fingertips drumming on his thigh, arhythmic. Nails scraping over a seam.

Harry reaches out and takes his hand, brings him back into orbit. Gives him the yes they always need from each other in a world of no. Something else to lock his focus on as their hands unlock, folding over one another, unmooring only to dock again. Thumb hiking over a ridge of knuckles. The flip of a palm, upturned, vulnerable. A slow-motion catch and release of fingers. Stroking. Soothing. Nothing they haven’t done before, behind closed doors, under the table. It’s come to feel so natural, Harry’s nearly forgotten it isn’t. Not to the rest of the world, at least.

When Sirius finally looks at him, Harry realises why he hadn’t.

There’s something new in his eyes, a black-pearl mystery Harry can only think to register as intent. There it gleams while Sirius drags his thumbnail over the tender underside of Harry’s wrist and says, very softly, “Not here.”

Mystery solved.

Or deepened. Fuck.

The walk upstairs is too long and too short. Too quiet, too loud. Laden and lightened by the unspoken admission that whatever this is, whatever they’re going up there to do, has nothing to do with nightmares.

The exhilaration floors him. Literally, on the landing outside Ron’s door. Harry’s door. Harry’s supposed to be in there, asleep. Dreaming of girls and Quidditch and OWLs or at least the madman trying to kill him, and here he is instead. Listening for his best mate’s snores so he can follow his godfather up to his bedroom and do whatever unmentionable acts they couldn’t do in the library.

At the top of the stairs, Sirius pushes open the door to heaven and, hands in his pockets, steps aside.

He’s going to make Harry do it. Take the first step, be willing, be sure. No encouragement, no invitation. You want it, you take it.

Harry does. Whatever it is.

He moves to the unmade bed, intact in the shape of their sleep. He lays himself out like a sacrifice, arms at his sides, palms up. And waits.

But Sirius doesn’t make him wait. He stretches beside him, propped on his elbow, and says, “Tell me what you need.”

“Your hands. I mean—”

No, that’s exactly what he means. He just didn’t mean to say it. Because hands means something different than hand. The singular serves a specific function. Your hand in my hair. Your hand on my throat. Your hand because that’s the hand available. But hands means something else, the need for something nebulous only Sirius’ body can provide. Hands means everything, because Sirius’ hands are everything. Garnished with runes and heirloom rings, birthrights taken and taken back. His hands are elegant, strong, untameable. They beckon, tell stories, punctuate arguments, fit around a wand like it’s part of him. Fit around Harry like he’s part of him, too.

I need your hands means only one thing: I need your hands on me.

Sirius reacts the same as Harry—a brief, flashing, deniable thing—then lifts a hand to his hair. “This?”

There’s a time and place for that: not now. Harry shakes his head.

The hand melts down to his throat. “This?”

Harry nods.

“Say it.”

Harry swallows against the warm, broad palm and takes a shot in the dark. “Please.”

Bullseye.

This reaction cannot be hidden—neither brief, nor flashing, nor deniable. Silver eyes gleam into diamond, blotted out by coal. Ring-bearing fingers mould to Harry’s throat, not pressing yet, but there. The contrast of cool metal and fevered flesh, ice and fire, still not enough.

Then, soft and direct, to set it apart as a fourth-wall break, Sirius mouths one word: “Good?”

Harry nods, quick and precise. Consent, neatly carved with clean-cut edges. Let there be no doubt in this man’s mind: virgin or not, godson or not, Harry will take anything Sirius gives; give anything Sirius cares to take.

With a miles-deep look, Sirius gives. Gradual as crawling awake from a dream. The squeeze is familiar now, but different. A private thrill sparks through Harry to discover he’s sensitive, sore, still bruised from the night before. How was it only last night? How, when it feels like they’ve been at it forever, no before to speak of? How can it feel even better now, each nerve twice as reactive? How is it that pain can enhance the taste as a rare spice would, the steady constriction of Sirius’ grip like a delicate sprinkling of cardamom—sweet, foreign, impossible to describe?

But Sirius missed a step—in his own eagerness, Harry hopes. There’s been no proviso set this time, no instruction for what to do should Harry wish to stop—but he doesn’t, and he won’t, and when his hand settles on Sirius’ waist, he already knows that’s not where it’s going to stay.

He’s going to ask for more.

Right now, in fact. He’s doing it. Forcibly slow to show intent, to prove premeditation. Careful enough that Sirius won’t be startled into stopping, Harry slides one arm up the bed to rest above his head.

Then, just as slowly, the other.

Then he makes sure not to blink.

I did say hands, and you’ve still got one free.

Sirius’ eyes haven’t left his, but Harry can see the intrigue at play, the glow of curiosity. One more push is all he needs.

Harry crosses his wrists, one over the other. A handwritten invitation.

It works. Sirius’ eyes flit upward, then zip right back to Harry’s. Up again, back again. Jaw tense. Breath erratic, like a spinning top starting to wobble.

Harry’s imagining it, isn’t he? Sirius can’t possibly be as affected as Harry, as gripped by arousal as Harry—can he? It’s just that he’s nervous, afraid of hurting him, of crossing a line—

Cross it, cross it, cross—

“Close your eyes if you want me to stop.”

Oh god, oh shit, and he’s moving over Harry, one leg on each side, knees pressing inward against Harry’s hips, maybe to hold him in place, maybe, and then his free hand is no longer free, it’s closing around Harry’s bound wrists, binding them properly, tight, inescapable, and Harry can feel the earth’s rotation.

Harry can’t help it. His body takes over, led by the blood that’s filling his cock. His hips rise up, involuntary, embarrassing, screaming for friction, for mercy. Thank god he doesn’t get it, that Sirius is still high enough above him, because otherwise he’d feel it. He’d know what this means for Harry, and what if he doesn’t want it? What if he doesn’t want Harry?

If he doesn’t, then Harry will die from this: from Sirius’ knees squeezing into his thighs, harder now, wringing the last of Harry’s mobility. From both hands tightening around him with purpose—the purpose Harry’s not been able to voice, but Sirius figured out.

After all Harry’s faced, and is facing still, fate-bound by his name and his scar; beneath all pressure and expectation bearing down on him from a world approaching turmoil—

Harry needs someone to take control.

Or maybe he just needs Sirius.

Sirius, who’s bearing a gloss of sweat on his brow, looking at Harry like he’s all that exists.

“Stay still for me, love. Let go.”

Mind and body obey in tandem, plunging him into calm. Tension bleeds from every muscle until he’s limp and dizzy with it. He’s low on oxygen, high on sensation. Weightless. Better than flying. Better than anything.

Anything so far.

Sirius gives him a tiny smile and leans down, lips to ear. “Good boy.”

Harry can’t help it. The moan comes out, and what better use for the last of his air?

They both freeze, eyes skirting to the door. Was he really that loud? Did someone—what if someone—

But someone doesn’t. No creak of the stairs, no turn of the knob. Only them, and the thing they just did—again.

Sirius releases him, piece by piece. Lays on his back and pulls Harry to him, rough and gentle and needy and good. Harry burrows into the valley between solid torso and firm bicep, cheek to his saviour’s chest while he gulps greedy inhales—not for his lungs, but for his senses. Sirius pets his hair in broad brushstrokes, simple and safe, while Harry recovers. Time and place.

“How does it make you feel when I do that?” Sirius asks, much later, in the pin-drop silence.

“It feels... freeing, I think. Like...” He trails a shaky finger down the centre of Sirius’ chest. Reckons he’s earned that liberty. “When you’re in control, I don’t have to be.”

Sirius reaches down and tilts Harry’s chin up until they’re eye to eye. “You never have to be anything with me. Just yourself. Understood?”

Harry nods in place of confession: You make me feel like I could be so much more than myself.

Chapter 3: incendio

Notes:

I’m sorry for the unhinged detour into second person. It just called to me. Like a siren.

29 August

You are your deeds, not your thoughts. A fantasy for men of iron will. Not you, whose will has been rusted by fate, atoms away from disintegration.

This is the deed you must perform: Spell away the second, darker, lovelier patch of bruises on Harry’s throat—without forgetting the new, just-surfaced ones on the velvet-petal flesh along the underside of his wrists.

This is the thought that nearly stops you: Leave them all, then leave some more. Mark your territory like the rabid dog you are—all bark, all bite, all blood. 

This is the deed you ought to perform: Never touch him again. Get him out of your bed, tell him it’s wrong, even if you don’t believe it, and Merlin knows he won’t either. Keep him safe—safe contact at a safe distance, quick-release hugs and pats on the back and nothing, nothing else.

This is the thought that does stop you: Touch him more. Touch him everywhere. He wants it, asks for it, more every night, desire flooding his eyes. You know what he wants, plain as day, he wears it all on his bloody sleeve—heart and arousal alike.

The world has been wrong about everything else—why couldn’t it be wrong about this? Fifteen isn’t ten, godson isn’t son, and nothing about your lives is normal, nor fair, nor right. Why should you be expected to enforce morality in this one matter—why, among curses and prison and grief and war? Why, when a single glance from your beautiful boy, a single brush of his trusting hand, a single drift of his soap-sweat scent, is sweeter than manna from heaven? Why, when Harry begs to be touched, when his whole body bends to your guilty hands, a white rose craning for the sun?

But you—you are no sun.

So you grab your wand, try not to wake him. Watch him stir as first light breaks, hate yourself for being jealous of the dawn that kisses the skin you can’t. You spell away your claims of possession, press your lips to the crown of his head, and run to the furthest loo in the house to reward your corroded willpower.

_


It’s a loathsome day, crammed with business and thick with the season’s last-ditch wave of syrupy, skin-prickling heat.

It pains him to see Harry suffer it, worse for the fact the poor kid’s banned from half the meetings, and none of the empathetic looks Sirius offers when the door snips shut can soothe their mutual ache. He would have fought harder, before. Before he started spending nights with his hands all over his underage godson. Now paranoia keeps him on thin ice, hyper-vigilant for cracks. Not one more risk, not one slip-up. Nothing that might arouse suspicion or rock this sinking boat. Nothing that could take this away from them.

The brief time they share is scarce, unsatisfying, filled with purpose and planning and politics and nothing to do with spreading Harry out on his bed, uncovering what other questionable fantasies have gripped his curiosity. Indulging each one and waking up to hate himself all over again.

The last meeting leaks into dinnertime, and Harry squirms and squirms beside him, teenage metabolism in overdrive. The boy runs hot with energy overload even at the best of times, and Sirius sustains himself on the feeble thrill of this knowledge—that he’s this well-acquainted with Harry’s physicality, if not as well as he so fiercely wants.

The cooling charms never hold for long, and Sirius begins to cast localised ones over Harry whenever he can. Relishing in that tiny bit of power he has over Harry’s body; feeding off the grateful, adoring looks he gets in return.

But it’s not enough, and when talk shifts to Fudge and the Prophet and public sentiment and some tosser mentions the Diggory kid, Harry goes rigid in his chair, and for a moment, Sirius loses him.

Only a moment. That’s all it takes to realise what he should do.

One more risk, after all.

He can’t look, so he feels out the path. Beneath the table, beneath two dozen watchful eyes, Sirius slips his hand toward Harry’s. Finds it, clenched and trembling, nails carving into a threadbare hole high up in the thigh of his jeans. He softens a notch or two at Sirius’ touch, but it’s not enough. Not what he needs.

Sirius holds his quickening breath, curls his fingers around Harry’s wrist, and tightens them into a vise.

What happens next is a time-lapse capture—ice to liquid, liquid to ice. Where Harry melts, Sirius freezes. Harry goes under so dangerously fast, a whole lump of boy that dissolves against Sirius, relaxing into his side. Head tipped onto Sirius’ shoulder. Spare hand wrapped around Sirius’ bicep as far as it can reach. Halfway at most.

Warning bells scream through Sirius’ skull, red sparks crackling from the tip of a wand, before he slogs through his poisoned mind to remember this is normal.

A few looks scatter their way, a smile or two, then reconvene on Kingsley’s flip chart floating at the head of the table. Because their minds aren’t poisoned. Because this is innocent affection, look, Sirius will prove it—even to himself, if he must. Lean over like it’s nothing, a fatherly kiss to a child’s head, then nod along with the others. Narrow his eyes like he’s deep in thought over tactics and strategy.

He’s a felon on the run, it’s what he does best: hiding in plain sight.

_


“You asked about pain.”

Jesus H.

The scotch ripples faintly inside his glass. Sirius strangles it tighter, then sets it down on the nightstand before it can shatter in his palm. He’s shattered enough things, of late. Every boundary they ever had, for one.

“The other day, I mean,” Harry rushes on. Nervous, poor thing. “When I...”

The bed feels narrower, all of a sudden. The room hotter, the distance between them ever smaller, and there’s virtually none as it is. Slumped into pillows against the headboard, shoulder to shoulder, bent knee to bent knee, just as they’ve been for nigh on two hours. Talking tonight, only talking. Sharing secrets and stories and laughing, sweet, savoury, like it’s not a prologue to something sharper and richer on the tongue.

“I did,” Sirius says evenly, or so he hopes.

Harry fidgets with the edge of the duvet. “Is that... something people like?”

“Some people.”

“You?”

Sirius looks straight ahead at the wall and shuts his eyes for the briefest prayer. “I have... explored it. Yes.”

“What do you like about it?”

That one’s easy, at least. He’s been asked his opinion, not a fact, but that only makes his choice of words all the more important.

“I think...” Sirius smooths out the denim stretched over his thigh. “When you’re experiencing emotional pain, physical pain can sort of... ground you. Distract you. Bring you back to your body. Ease the ache a bit.”

“Don’t some people get off on it, too?”

This boy will be the death of him, and Sirius will kneel for his scythe, head bowed, without a second thought. He prays it happens before he can blurt out, Do you get off on it, Harry?

“For some people it can... heighten sensation. Pain and pleasure, opposite sides of the same coin, et cetera.” Sirius clears his throat. “The appeal is that it’s a type of pain you control. Or, in your case... the, er, satisfaction lies in the feeling you get from handing that control over to someone you trust.”

The friction of fabric; a shift in the angle of Harry’s voice. He’s turned to look at Sirius. “Would you show me?”

Duty overrides cowardice. Above all else, Sirius has a responsibility to encourage Harry’s thirst for knowledge. Adjacent enough, perhaps, to indulging his curiosity. That and nothing else is why Sirius turns to face him, restoring their parallel postures. A mockery of the balance he’s failed to maintain.

“What are you asking me, Harry?”

Harry swallows but doesn’t shirk. Doesn’t blink. Firelight quivers over his skin. How enviable it is.

“Darling, I need you to be very clear.”

Green eyes ink out to black. Good god, he took it as an order.

“Hurt me,” Harry says, feather-soft but no less distinct. “However you want. However... you think I might like it.”

Sirius leaves himself, for a moment. Drifts hazily away with the tide, then crashes back to shore. The pure, unearned faith this boy has placed in Sirius’ careworn hands is almost overwhelming enough to quiet what’s underneath.

Almost.

“Are you sure that’s what you want?”

“No,” Harry admits. “But I want to find out.”

An honesty so pure, so devastating, it nearly wrenches Sirius back from damnation to put an end to this once and for all. But they both know there’s nothing he’d deny this boy. He was damned from the night they met. Going to kill me, Harry? A self-fulfilling prophecy, and he’s gone down willingly.

Sirius’ eyes flicker to the door. Harry’s remain on him. “Silencing charms are rather easily detectable. If someone comes looking for you...” It would raise a flag as red as blood.

“Forget the charms. I can be quiet.”

Meeting his eyes is a grave mistake, though not the worst one he’ll make. Harry is stiff, still, but ablaze with energy—distilled into quiet, rapid breaths, the dart of his tongue out over his lip, eyes lasered onto Sirius’.

I can be quiet.

The fantasy takes hold like a virus: Harry, thrashing atop these very sheets, teeth sinking into his fist just to stop himself moaning as Sirius kneels in the spread of his trembling thighs, three fingers deep and a tongue between them, milking bliss from his writhing body before folding him in half and easing inside, first cock he’s ever taken and god willing the last, pain and pleasure, the hellbound answer to Would you show me?

The answer he cannot give.

You are your deeds, not your thoughts. Unless your thoughts are so vile there’s nothing short of external force to stop them turning into deeds.

Sirius climbs off the bed and extends a hand. External force. “Come with me.”

_


It’s just as he remembers. Untouched, all these years. Like him.

Like Harry.

“Where are we?” Harry asks, circling in place to take in the newly awakened candles and sconces Sirius had wand-waved to life. He looks dwarfed by the space, too young. Bare feet peeking out of too-long pyjamas. Aglow with wonder like it’s Christmas morning. Sirius strangles the thought.

“Duelling chamber.” He settles in a cushy corner of the oversized sectional and tips the scotch to his lips. “My mother never came in. Thought it dirty and uncouth. Hence the hidden door.”

“Brilliant.” Harry smiles. “Wondered if you were leading me down to some torture dungeon.”

“Depends on the duel.” Sirius smirks. No use mentioning his mother had hardly required a dungeon. Any room in the house had been fair game.

Harry tucks into the cushion beside him, knees up, frigid toes wriggling their way under Sirius’ thigh. An underrated intimacy, one that blossoms only in soil replete with deep-rooted trust. “Who knows about this place?”

“No one.” No one alive.

“Lupin?”

Sirius shakes his head. They are fast slipping towards thin ice, but Harry is owed the truth. If not now—when he’s moments from placing his safety in Sirius’ hands—then when?

Harry studies their surroundings for another moment—dusty turntable; liquor cart; seating good enough for a lie-down—then breaks out into a grin. It’s glaringly obvious the duelling floor is hardly the sole appeal.

“Is this where you used to bring your dates?”

Sirius holds his breath and sets down his glass. “It’s where I used to bring James.”

Harry blinks a few times, but that’s all. “So that’s a yes, then?”

Sirius stiffens. “You knew?”

“No. But it’s not a surprise.”

Fucking god, he’s—look at him. Collected, intuitive well beyond his years. Almost enough to justify—

That’s the last thing Sirius needs.

“Harry...”

“You don’t have to feel weird about it. Really.”

“I... doesn’t it make you uncomfortable?”

He looks almost offended at that, but it’s fleeting. Gone as soon as it’s come. Because he’s Harry, who’s too damn good for this world and never stays angry for long. Harry, his beautiful, beautiful Harry, who fits his injured, bandaged hand over Sirius’ thigh and looks into his eyes with all the confidence of a man who’s just won a war.

One day, Sirius knows, he will be.

“Nothing,” Harry says. “Nothing about you has ever made me uncomfortable.”

Relief and guilt fight to the death. The former wins, though it’s only one battle, it’s enough for now. Sirius peels Harry’s hand from his thigh and cradles it, kisses it, exhales against it, pours his apologies into the palm.

“You precious thing,” he breathes between rough, desperate smacks of his lips to Harry’s skin. “I’m sorry. I should’ve told you sooner.”

“Don’t say that. You don’t owe me your secrets, or your past, or... anything.”

“But this is different.”

“Why?”

It comes out before he can stop it, dark and heavy as a secret because that’s precisely what it is: “You know why.”

Whether Harry does or not is impossible to say. His face is unreadable, waiting. He’s not going to let Sirius off with that, a vague and gutless pseudo-admission—and for this, Sirius loves him all the more. 

“Harry.” Sirius squeezes his hand, careful to sidestep the injury. “No matter what anybody implies, I need you to know I don’t see you as your father, nor as a substitute. Truly, I don’t. You look alike, yes, but darling, you are so, so wonderfully different, and I love you madly, for everything you are.”

His lips melt into a smile. “I know. I love you, too.”

But he doesn’t know, not really. He can’t know that Sirius’ I love you is shorthand for I’m in love with you. He can’t know because no grown man has the right to place that burden on a boy.

“You can ask about—about him,” Sirius offers, forever unable to say about us, because Jamie was never his. “If you want. I’ll tell you anything.”

“Thanks.” Harry nods thoughtfully. “I do... but not tonight.”

Sirius can take a hint. “Do you still want…”

Harry nods, fervent. It’s obvious he’s trying to be patient, even demure, but a fire is licking at the underside of his skin, sparks flying across his eyes. Sirius sucks in a slow, even breath, careful not to douse the flame.

“We start small,” he says. Harry nods. “You want to stop, you say so.” Harry nods. Too young to know better. Sirius knows what he ought to do, he’s always insisted on safe words—but that would make it something else. Something it cannot be. So he simply lifts the hand to his lips and presses a kiss to the bandage. “How are we doing here?”

Harry swallows, eyes chasing each frame of movement. “All right.”

“May I check?”

Harry nods.

Carefully, Sirius unwraps the gauze he’d just replaced that morning. The wound has healed over, but the flesh is tender, a pink chasm over the cut. Without overthinking, he returns the finger to his parted lips and closes them gently around it. 

The squeak that leaps from Harry’s throat is nothing next to the serrated gasp when Sirius starts to swirl his tongue with just a shadow of suction. The deep-bass grunt that soars into a moan when Sirius licks over the wound, drags his teeth over the skin just below.

I can be quiet. Bless him.

But for all the confidence in his oral prowess, Sirius can’t bear to look at him. He knows what he’ll see if he does. He’s guided more than enough eager virgins to know what those noises mean: a marriage of shock and ecstasy, the discovery of something you didn’t know you needed.

When he does look up, it’s better and worse. Fevered cheeks and onyx eyes, heaving chest and shiny, swollen lips. Had Harry been licking them? Biting them? What other natural wonders had Sirius missed in his ten seconds of cowardice?

With a final lick and a spit-slicked pop, Sirius releases the digit. Gives him a moment to return to earth, then folds the hand into both of his, loose enough that Harry can pull away.

He doesn’t.

“How was that?” Sirius asks.

A few blinks, erratic. A jerky nod. “It was—fine. Good. Er, nice—really nice, I—ah. Yeah.”

Sirius smiles. “We seem to have found something you like.”

An awkward gust of laughter, before Harry looks up through his lashes. “Yeah.”

“Do you want to try something else?”

“Yes.”

Sirius places Harry’s hand safely back in his own lap, like there’s some fragment of redemption to be found in the seconds between contact. Enough to stop him considering all the something elses he’d risk another stint in Azkaban just to explore with Harry.

Fact is, there are only so many that don’t involve explicit sexual stimulation.

“Right, er—” Sirius twists around to grab the candle pulsing beside his glass. He snuffs it out with a cursory puff, then casts a stasis charm over the milky, molten substance. “Have you ever touched the wax while it’s still hot, like this?”

Harry wide-eyes it with interest. “I—I dunno. Probably. Yeah.”

“It’s a bit different when poured directly onto your skin.” Sirius tips the pool of paraffin to swirl around its basin. “The burn can be… quite lovely. A bit intense, no lasting damage.”

Harry follows the movement for all of three seconds before he decides. “Do it.”

“You sure?”

Harry nods, but the next breath hitches and his gaze derails to the side table. And when he leans over Sirius, reaches behind him, and seizes the glass of scotch, Sirius doesn’t stop him.

But he does grab hold of his wrist.

Harry looks down at him, dark and enthralled, half in Sirius’ lap. A smile perks up his lips.

“Slow,” Sirius says, releasing his hold. “Small sips. Find the flavours.”

Harry nods and settles back, closing the space between glass and parted mouth. The narrow rim rests on his lower lip—deep pink, still slick and plumped. A veritable portrait of debauchery.

Then, green eyes locked on Sirius’ grey, he flicks out his tongue for a taste.

But the angle hasn’t tilted the liquid far enough to drink. He’s not tasting the spirit. He’s tasting Sirius.

“Swirl it around on your tongue,” Sirius is somehow possessed to say. “Let your mouth adjust to the burn.”

Harry follows it with the precision and obedience demanded by the order it clearly was, tipping a trickle past his lips. He makes a face but doesn’t cough, just takes it in stride like he’s been told. Once he’s swallowed, he goes for another. Smoother this time, sour-lemon grimace replaced by intrigue. By the third sip (fourth?), he loosens up against the cushions and rolls his head toward Sirius.

“Am I a man now?”

Sirius raises an eyebrow and, with his last dying cell of godfatherly duty, takes the glass from his hand. “Do you want to be?”

Harry smiles.

Sirius thanks whatever demon’s possessed him for this one small act of mercy—for blocking the impulse rampaging through him. To pounce, feral, pin him to the cushions, bite and suckle and lick and push and fuck his way into Harry’s body at every entrance he can.

“Ready?” he asks on a shaky breath. Harry nods, sharpening. “Hold out your arm, sweetheart.”

Harry does him one better. He turns up his forearm to the creamy underside, palm open, fingers relaxed, then lays it down on Sirius’ thigh. Sirius takes hold of his wrist, both a reward and to hold him steady, then wills his own hand not to shake as he tips the wax over the edge.

Harry tenses, hissing when it hits his skin, but there’s no knee-jerk recoil. He’s stock-still, entranced, eyes on his flesh as the white fluid drizzles down the curve of his arm and starts to solidify.

“Okay?” Sirius whispers.

“More.”

This is a weak voice, a wrecked voice, new and alive, and Sirius wants to hear more of it. Wants to hear it forever.

“Other arm,” he says, and Harry obeys. Allows Sirius to coat him in parallel drips, cover his body in liquid fire until he’s fervid and quaking.

“More,” Harry pleads, dry and choked. Sirius wants to give him more, wants to give him the world, but there’s a problem.

They’ve run out of exposed skin.

Sirius tugs at the hem of Harry’s shirt with his free, unsteady hand. “Off.”

Harry nods, looking deep in his eyes, but makes no move to help. Oh. He wants—oh.

“Okay.”

A promise to himself, you will stop here, but he doesn’t. He sets down the candle and whips Harry’s shirt off with two willing, treacherous hands. Wads it up and tosses it into a corner like it’s personally offended him. Harry doesn’t even spare him a moment to consider the direction they’re headed, he lays himself flat on the sofa, arms up, muscles twitching from throat to hip, abdomen taut over his still-growing form, reedy and sharp and Quidditch-toned, skin pristine as a fresh snowfall. Sirius rakes over it all, eyes first, barely managing to stop his hands from following in their wake. He indulges only a little, his free palm sliding over Harry’s, entwining their fingers and pressing down. Suspending his weight on that point of connection as he leans over him, candle in hand, and slots one knee between Harry’s spread legs. One inch from contact. Less.

“Hold still,” he says, and Harry moans before the first drip falls.

He still goes slow to draw it out, but he’s stopped being careful and Harry doesn’t care and soon it’s everywhere, sloppy and chaotic, pearl streams weeping down his neck, over his chest and lower, fucking hell, lower—and maybe it’s on purpose, it probably is, when Sirius tips the last of it into the dip of Harry’s hipbone, and Harry wriggles beneath him just so, until it follows the dusting of hair in his middle and snakes down into his waistband.

They freeze, eyes locked, but Sirius knows. Harry’s hard, they both are, hard breath and hard cocks, but he can’t look down and he won’t and he doesn’t, and neither does Harry. They just stay, like this, in this thing beyond sex, while Sirius tosses the gutted candle aside, trails a single shaking finger through the white streak on Harry’s throat, and adamantly does not think of exactly what it looks like.

“I can’t,” he whispers, rippled with apology. Harry whimpers in reply. “I can’t go any further, darling.”

Because there’s no more skin left to corrupt. That’s what he means. Truly. Unless he flips him onto his stomach, or yanks off his trousers, or—

Christ almighty.

“I’m going to clean you up now.” Sirius forces himself to sit back, extending a hand to tug Harry up, but Harry doesn’t give up that easily. He lurches forward, nearly landing in Sirius’ lap, and Sirius catches him. Always will. “Hold onto me, love.” Harry does.

Sirius pulls him into a gentle embrace and Apparates them to his bed.

_


There is no spell or potion in the world he would turn to in place of this sacred ritual. Nothing that would deprive himself of another excuse to touch—to drag the warm, wet cloth over Harry’s half-sated body, over and over, far more thorough than necessary. To wipe away his latest sins, and worship the stains they left—a canvas of strawberry tributaries all over Harry’s torso. He spells away ones that will show over his clothes and leaves the rest. Do you want me to, he starts to ask, and Harry shakes his head.

Sirius should go straight back to the chamber, get Harry’s shirt, force him to wear it, but he’s only human. Less so, in fact, when Harry falls asleep in his arms, shirtless and dreamless, nightmare-free.

Until seven o’clock in the bloody morning, when someone raps on the door.

Chapter 4: revelio

Notes:

I’m sorry for the delay, I had some fest fics to write. Thanks for your lovely comments so far!

30 August

They don’t wake up together. Another unspoken rule. They seem to have a lot of those. Perhaps they aren’t rules at all, just fears.

Either way, rules can be broken and fears can be conquered and Harry’s done more than his share of both. So has Sirius.

But this is the sweetest break—a soft rebellion that rides in on the budding dawn, alights on their bodies, golden-warm, fresh as dew. This is a rule Harry wants to break every morning for the rest of his life—a hot, hard, solid chest, bare against his own, beating to the memory of when and how Harry lost his shirt and the mystery of when and how Sirius must have lost his own.

There’s more, too; there’s Sweetheart, wake up dripped into his ear, crisp nails scraping over his scalp, tingling and decadent and just so good, almost as good as the snug weight of two lean, whipcord thighs cradling Harry’s erection.

“Harry.” Less soft, more urgent. “Harry.”

Two hands fan away from his spine, gather his waist and lift him off like he weighs no more than vapour. Two hands twist him around in the sheets, roll him towards the edge of the bed, away from a noise that isn’t them. Isn’t part of their bubble of skin and fabric and sleep-heat. A hollow noise, wooden. Wood. Door. Knocking.

Someone is at the—fuck.

Harry vaults into consciousness. It’s one thing to be found in his godfather’s bed. It’s another to be found in his bed with a stiffy, half naked and covered in first-degree burns.

He doesn’t need to be told to scramble into hiding, oversized pyjama bottoms barely hanging onto his skinny arse. He follows survival instinct and goes, zips to the en suite and ticks the door shut—though not before swiping a glance at Sirius’ back, ashen ink rolling over muscle as he tunnels himself into a shirt and plods to the bedroom door.

And now Harry’s prick is dripping. Brilliant.

“Morning,” he hears Lupin say. “Have you seen Harry?”

Sirius grunts. “Yeah, he’s here. Been sick all night, spent most of it on the floor, poor thing.”

Smooth, seamless. Harry runs the tap, flushes the toilet, complicit, high on the rush of it. He’s not so young and foolish not to know what they’re doing is risky, reckless even, but that’s what they’re good at, isn’t it? Individually and—apparently—together.

The water drowns out the rest of it, but not the panicked jump of his heart. He perches on the edge of the tub and grabs a t-shirt slung over the towel hook. Lightly worn, smelling of Sirius and laundry liquid. He’s hugging it to his chest, gulping inhales of the cotton folds, when Sirius peeks through the door.

“He’s gone.”

Harry nods. He was going to smirk and say Quick thinking, but the vacant fear in Sirius’ eyes snuffs out any illusion that this was a game.

Sirius leans against the sink, arms pretzeled over his chest. Harry had hoped he’d sit down beside him, close enough that their knees would bump, but that’s just being greedy now. Seems when it comes to Sirius, the more Harry gets, the more he wants. A complete deviation from his life up to this, always content with the bare minimum and never asking for more.

Could he ask for more, now? And more, and more after that?

“Molly wants to know if you need supplies. She’s heading to Diagon after breakfast.”

“Right.” Harry nods. “Okay.”

“Has Ron noticed?“ Sirius looks up. “That you… sleep here, I mean.”

“Don’t think so. He wakes up after me.”

Sirius smiles, finally. “Lazy gits, the both of you.”

Harry smiles back. “I’m a growing boy, I need my sleep.”

“Terribly sorry. Thought you were a man now.”

“Do you want me to be?”

Sirius watches him so intensely it feels like physical touch, like being stripped. “I want you just as you are.”

For a moment, Harry believes. Believes that Sirius means it the way Harry does, but how could he? It’s Harry’s fantasy, stupid and childish, even in its obscenity. What exactly does he think will happen? That Sirius will abandon all vestige of reason, pin him down, stuff him full of cock right here on the tile while half the Order is downstairs at breakfast? Nothing that good has ever happened to him, and he heaves it out of his mind before he starts believing it could.

Sirius reaches out and sweeps a fingertip over one of the burns. “Does it hurt?”

Harry swallows and shakes his head. “Not enough.”

It’s the wrong thing to say, or perhaps the right thing, and all the more wrong for that. Sirius’ eyes swell dark. He doesn’t say a word.

Harry deflects, quick as a wink. “Did you and my dad ever hide in the loo?”

Sirius blinks, like he’s resetting himself, then snorts a quiet laugh. “I don’t imagine there’s a single room at Hogwarts we weren’t forced into at some point.”

“Entirely his fault, I presume?”

“Of course. I was a bloody saint.” He nudges Harry’s foot. “Actually, one time, James...”

James, always James and not your dad when he’s trying to create that distance. When it’s something too private or unsavoury. Like he wants to keep this separation for Harry, that his dad and James (Jamie, Harry’s overheard when he shouldn’t) are two separate people. Your dad was a good man but James was a scamp. A lovely, generous, if needless effort to give Harry a hero to worship. Doesn’t seem to realise Harry already has one, right in front of him, all the better for his imperfections.

“...not that he’d ever admit it, of course.” Sirius winks, and Harry melts. He shoves at the shirt Harry hadn’t realised he was still holding against his chest. “Put that on. Go to breakfast. Behave yourself.”

“Yes, sir.”

He doesn’t think the words—but out they come on the tail of a smirk, and they do not go unnoticed. They are noticed by the bunching of Sirius’ fingers in the thighs of his joggers; in the visible lump he swallows down and the brisk pivot of his gaze from Harry to the floor.

He can’t be, can he? He can’t be affected the way Harry is, the way Harry wants him to be. But there’s no denying he is affected. For better or worse, he is.

“Go,” Sirius says again.

Harry goes, wearing his secret shirt and his secret smile all the way to the kitchen before remembering he’s meant to be ill.

Breakfast is sizzling away in full swing, almost blindingly so. The whole room swims with start-of-term anticipation that, for the first time, Harry is forced to fake.

Everyone’s a bit too happy to see him, shuffling to make extra space for him and asking after his health. Harry answers easily, dutifully. Yes, thanks, much better now. Should be able to keep down some toast. An homage to his quick-witted saviour. Deception in the name of protection.

“Is that Sirius’s shirt?” Ron asks, spearing a second sausage. Probably more like his seventh.

“What?” Harry looks down like he’d had no idea. “Oh. Yeah. Got sick all over mine.”

“D’you reckon it was the pork chops?”

“Yeah, must’ve done.”

“First the brat steals my heart and now my clothes.” Sirius grins from the doorway, a work of art in a shabby frame. He’s cleaned up remarkably fast—hair tamed, beard trimmed, jeans on the devastating side of too snug. “What’s next, darling? My motorbike?”

“Oh, Sirius.” Mrs. Weasley warms into a smile, still too high on Ron’s big news to remember she’d rather scold him. “You’re just a big softie, aren’t you?”

“Now, now, Molly.” Sirius plunges both hands in the sink and scrubs at a chopping board. “We can’t have my secrets getting out. It would ruin my image.”

She tuts and swats a dishcloth at him. Sirius turns to Harry the moment no one is looking, and winks at him. Just that.

Bloody hell, it was for him.

Harry is one of his secrets.

_

 

The thing is... the thing that’s so easy to forget... Harry isn’t his only secret.

It’s easy to forget because Sirius gives so much of himself already, more than Harry deserves—but he knows there are layers Sirius has not allowed him to peel away, no matter how badly Harry wants, and Harry wants. Badly. Wants to overturn him like a deep-seated stone on the forest floor, to peek at the messy world beneath, teeming with life, dirty and hidden.

One day, perhaps, Sirius will let him.

Today is not that day.

Sirius starts to go dark, after that. Light by light, a citywide blackout. He doesn’t sit next to Harry at breakfast, nor lunch, nor any other time. By the end of the day, when Harry’s banned from the last meeting, Sirius won’t even look at him.

It’s start of summer all over again. Ignored, dismissed, kept in the dark for reasons unexplained.

Meanwhile Harry’s pathetically counting the hours they’ve got left, like a firstie with a stupid crush, but they’re down to double digits now, doesn’t Sirius care? Isn’t he, like Harry, aching to spend every moment together, gulp every last drop from the reservoir? Doesn’t that visceral, violent need override the rest of it?

Apparently not, given he doesn’t show for dinner.

Harry checks the library, cursory. He knows where Sirius is. But he can’t claim a nightmare before he’s slept, and he can’t just show up at Sirius’ bedroom without a good excuse. Not anymore. Not after this morning.

Is starvation a good enough excuse? What about addiction?

If not, it doesn’t stop him.

Sirius doesn’t answer his knock with half-moon arms and a smile. He bids him entry with a croaked “Come in,” and Harry must do the rest.

The sting of liquor sours the air, but Harry doesn’t mind. He sits by Sirius on the edge of the bed. Grabs the moss-green neck of the bottle. Tips it back and swallows what he can. There. We’re in it together now.

“Stop that.” Sirius gestures vaguely at the mild act of rebellion.

Harry firms his grip on the smudged, sticky glass and looks him dead in the eye. “Make me.”

It’s an easy opening, ripe for the taking, just like him. He’s flirted harder, before, with exhilarating results. That’s what this is, isn’t it? Flirting? This dizzy, fluttery thing he doesn’t do with anyone else?

Does Sirius?

Is Harry so far out of his depth that he’s read it all wrong?

Is that why Sirius stares at him with bottomless eyes that live up to his surname and doesn’t even smirk, doesn’t retrieve the bottle by force, doesn’t pin him to the bed with a hand on his throat and one on his wrist, squeezing his grip loose, crushing new bruises into the flesh until Harry’s fingers weaken and surrender?

Without incantation or fanfare, Sirius summons the bottle to his palm and pushes himself to his feet.

Harry feels every embarrassing ounce of his age and inexperience as Sirius strides to the dormant hearth, finishes off the last of it and smacks the bottle down on the mantel. Harry knows, everyone knows, the man can toss back obscene amounts and hold himself together. Whatever this is has fuck-all to do with intoxication, which can only mean—

He’s uncomfortable. With Harry. Harry has made him uncomfortable.

He’s pushed too hard, made it too weird, and Sirius is pulling away.

Harry stares at the floor. “Have I done something wrong?”

“No. God. No, it’s. It’s me, I—”

Harry stifles the dozen follow-ups. This is a layer, about to be peeled.

“Harry...” His head bows low, face shrouded by drapes of midnight hair. “No one comes out of Azkaban as the person who went in.”

“I know.”

“Sweetheart, you don’t. You can’t.”

“Then tell me.”

Harry almost regrets it. He should regret it. It’s selfish to ask for more than love, to think himself worthy of carrying Sirius’ pain, but he wants to, god, he wants to. Wants to pry him open, crawl inside and love away the wounds. Presumptuous to think he ever could.

“Sometimes,” Sirius says, “it feels like I’m not all there. I say and do and… want things I shouldn’t.”

Harry’s heart stops. “What things do you want?”

That does it. That swivels Sirius’ eyes to his, scanning him head to toe. Harry doesn’t let himself dream that it’s an answer in itself, but it brews something inside him, a feeling he can’t identify, save for a few ingredients. There’s comfort. Protection. Most thrilling of all... exposure. Like he’s some precious, erotic thing to be cherished.

To be desired.

Sirius swallows and looks away. “Things I can’t have.”

“Why can’t you have them? Who says you can’t?”

Sirius strides right back to the bed to kneel at Harry’s feet, to clasp at his hands with wholly unnecessary desperation. A position of supplication, of begging. Doesn’t he know Harry would let him take whatever he wants? That Harry is the one begging for him to do exactly that?

“Harry... the man who was asked to be your godfather... he doesn’t exist anymore.”

“I don’t care about a stupid title.” Harry knits their fingers together. “I don’t care who you are. I love you.”

Sirius smiles, freeing one hand to cup Harry’s cheek. “You beautiful thing. I love you beyond all reason.”

A crack of deja vu, and Harry remembers. A bench in the courtyard, the night they met. Positioned exactly as they are now, moments before they were parted.

Harry will have to show him just how much he’s grown in over a year.

He covers Sirius’ hand with his own and nuzzles into the touch, lips pursed against the bowl of his palm to leave no doubt: This is a kiss, even if not the one he’d prefer. “You’re the greatest man I know.”

The light in Sirius’ eyes sparks out. “I’ve got you lying to your friends over breakfast.”

“That’s not your fault.”

“It’s my responsibility.”

“It’s not fair.” Harry’s brutally aware before it’s out, how young it makes him sound, and yet— “We shouldn’t have to—it’s not like we’re—”

But they are, aren’t they? In a way, they are, and if anyone knew, that would be it. Harry could lose him. Sirius could lose even more. Sirius could lose everything.

If he wants to prove he’s old enough for whatever the hell they’re doing, he must accept the cost.

“I should go back to my room, shouldn’t I?”

Sirius doesn’t speak, but he answers—in the miserable yes marbled across his fallen features. “You know what would happen if they—”

“Of course I know!” Harry snaps to his feet and drives a lunge of distance between them. “I’m not a bloody child!”

“I know you’re not.”

That drives him madder—the even tone, the passivity, almost approaching placation. Don’t be the rational adult. Be here with me. Be angry. But solidarity doesn’t come, no matter how hard he grips the mantel, blunt nails gouging into ebony. “I’m so fucking tired of being watched and judged all the time.”

“I understand.”

“I thought everything would be better, you know?” He’s pacing now, clipped-wing strides that build up static, inside and out. “Our world, magic, everything—but it’s not, maybe it’s even worse, and you’re the only one I—and I can’t even—”

The shriek of broken glass is more of a shock than it should be. He stares at the starburst of bottle-green shards across the mantel, unclaimed drops of scotch waterfalling onto the carpet. Doesn’t quite believe it. Tries to iron out his jagged pulses of oxygen into normal breaths. It’s been ages since he lost control of his magic this way, embarrassing as a wet dream.

Sirius bears only the mildest surprise when Harry meets his eyes. He doesn’t scold or fret or approach, but lifts his wand from the bedside table and raises a flight of wards: silencers, undetectables, a radius protection spell.

Jesus. Might as well cover the sofa in plastic. Does he think Harry’s starting to lose it?

Harry opens his mouth to apologise, when Sirius mutters, “Reparo.” The bottle skips back in time, righting itself without a trace. Then, “Geminio.”

Six more line up beside it, identical. The magic reaches far enough that Harry can feel it, warm and steady with rough edges and a wild core. Just like Sirius.

Harry’s heart jackrabbits away in their now soundproof cocoon. He looks at Sirius, expectant.

“Go on,” Sirius says.

Harry doesn’t know what this means, but through the kiss of their magic, he does. Or damn well hopes he does. He seizes a bottle with his bare hand and hurls it into the wall. Instant disintegration sings life into the room.

“That’s my boy. Again.”

Harry does. Again, and again, and again, reckless, hard enough to pull a muscle, to send shards ricocheting into their eyes if they’re not lucky, but they are. For just this moment in time, they are, and it feels incredible.

He aims the last at the door itself, a poorly veiled middle finger to the entire outside world, and collapses against the wall, breathless and tear-streaked, why is he crying, when did—

“I’ve got you.”

Sirius does, he has him, he’s right there, pinning Harry’s wrists to the wall overhead with one sure hand, the other spread over his abdomen, just above his pelvis, thumb and middle finger stretched from hip bone to hip bone, smoothing the crinkles from his nerves. Holding him up. Holding him down. He could hold Harry underwater and Harry wouldn’t stop him. Let him do whatever he pleases. God, Harry wants to please him.

“Look at me, sweetheart. You’re all right. I’m going to take over now.”

The joy of victory bullets through him. Harry knows what that means. He thinks he does. Oh fuck, he hopes, he hopes.

“Please,” he begs. “Please—”

Sirius whips him around in silken choreography, hauls him to the bed, shoves him down with no finesse and rolls him onto his stomach.

“Up.” He taps Harry’s wrists and up they go, crossed above his head. Sirius reclaims them, pressing down in an iron grip, pushing towards pain, like he’s trying to etch the shape of Harry’s submission into the mattress.

The bed dips, the old springs groan, and pressure flows on either side of Harry’s thighs. Sirius is straddling him. Not bearing down, letting none of his weight land on Harry, but the heat is there, the energy. If Harry pushes up, lifts his arse an inch in the air, he’ll feel him. Part of him. Which part, he can only guess.

Oh god he’s not really, is he—is he going to—

If Harry stays still enough, maybe he will.

Sirius drapes over Harry’s back, free hand fisting his hair. “Let’s give them something to worry about, shall we?”

Harry nearly sobs his consent when a hand smacks down on his arse. Hard.

He cries out, of course, an ungodly noise that has no place in a human throat. There’s a warm nose nudging the shell of his ear; the drug of his godfather's fiery voice. “Good or bad?”

“Good,” Harry pants. “Not—not enough.”

The pause feels fatal. Worse, his hands are freed. Then, a finger tugs the denim belt loop just above his tailbone. “You’ll feel it more without these.”

Harry has never unzipped so fast in his whole impossible life.

But Sirius doesn’t waver. If his hands are shaking, he hides it in careful, crawling movements. The slow-motion drag of Harry’s jeans over the swell of his bum, every increment an opportunity to change his mind if he wants.

Harry doesn’t. Harry is hard.

That’s as far as Sirius goes, leaving the waistband bunched up around the tops of Harry’s thighs. A firm hand returns to Harry’s obediently re-crossed wrists. “Stop means stop. Understood?”

Harry nods.

“Verbally, please.”

“Yes.”

“Good boy.” Deep breath. “Count for me.”

A shift of weight, and the hand returns—a sharp, sweet, vibrant sting that rockets up his quivering body, shoots off fireworks behind his eyes.

“One,” he whimpers.

Two comes harder; three harder still—

“Four” ruts him up the bed, smears the pre-come pooling in his pants. Smears it all over his prick and balls, forcing him to face himself, but he hardly gets the chance. The hand comes down again.

“Five,” he chokes, and flips a switch. His cock can’t take it, jumping against its prison wall, leaking, aching, threatening—

Sirius’ body spreads out flush against Harry’s side when he switches to the other cheek for six, seven—

“Eight.” He’s close. He’s close, yes that kind of close, one more and he might just— “Nine.”

Raindrop kisses to the top of his spine, damp and sticky against the glaze of his own traitorous sweat.

“Sirius...” he warns, he tries, he does.

Sirius nuzzles into his nape, utterly diabolical because he must know, he must, he must. He must because he tightens the grip on Harry’s wrists, whispers “I’ve got you, darling,” and that’s it.

Ten comes, and so does Harry.

Hard, fast, utterly unhideable. He comes as if possessed, hips in seizure against the bed, involuntary, staccato thrusts that bypass his brain’s approval process.

It’s never happened like this, every volt of pleasure concentrated into one heartstopping burst, unwarned and unexpected. Never, not since he was eleven or twelve and working it out those first few times, locked in his cupboard with nothing but imagination for company. Thoughts of a strong, wild, handsome man holding him down, wrapping his larger hand around Harry, showing him how, taking over, taking, taking, taking.

It’s the best and worst orgasm he’s ever had.

Best because it’s from Sirius.

Worst because Sirius knows.

Sirius gives him a moment, perhaps out of sympathy, but when he moves to peel him away and roll him onto his back, Harry doesn’t fight. What’s the point? Denial would make it worse.

Harry covers his face with his newly freed hands. “I’m sorry, I’m so—”

“Shh, shh. You’re all right.” Sirius pries his hands away, weaves their fingers together, presses them down on either side of Harry’s head. Light. Gentle. Harry could get away if he wanted. He doesn’t, but he does, he should.

“I’m sorry,” he repeats, angling his head as far away as he can. “Oh god, I’m so...”

“No, no, don’t. Come here.” Sirius stretches out for his wand, cleans him up with a flick and a wave, tugs his jeans up over his hips and gathers Harry to his chest. “You’re okay, love. It’s perfectly fine. The most normal thing in the world. Nothing to be ashamed of. Do not be sorry, do you understand me?”

Harry couldn’t disagree more. He nods anyway. Lets himself be held and arranged, halfway draped on top of Sirius, knee slung across both thighs. Cheek to heart, and what a heart, pounding away in his ear.

“Do you want me to go?”

Sirius’ arms tighten around him. Answer enough. “Not unless you want to.”

“I don’t.”

“Then don’t.”

What he does want, what he can’t have, is to hike his knee up a little higher and see if he was alone.

“What about...” Harry starts. “What if they...”

“I’ll deal with it. Don’t worry about a thing.”

Fingers sift through his hair, rough, patternless, constant motion. Another hand rubs at the small of his back until the fabric bunches up, then slips underneath. That’s when Harry realises Sirius’ hands are shaking. He’s trying to cover it with movement, but it’s not enough.

“Thank you,” Harry says. Half to distract him, put him at ease. Half because he owes it to him, at the very least.

“You shouldn’t thank me.” It’s dark and distant, not remotely comforting. Not you don’t have to thank me. Shouldn’t. Shouldn’t, because he regrets it?

Or shouldn’t because he enjoyed it?

Half an answer comes when Sirius parts his lips on the slope of Harry’s shoulder, then opens his teeth to the skin. Just for a moment. The lightest graze, a tickle more than a sting.

Harry gasps. Of course he fucking does.

“Sorry,” Sirius mutters and stills, but doesn’t move away.

“Don’t be.” Harry lifts his head, dives into the storm of his eyes. “Be sorry for stopping.”

Sirius’ hand beneath his shirt contracts to a claw, nails mauling over the skin. He looks positively withering, a man condemned and marching to the gallows. “Harry.”

Harry won’t have it. He tucks his head under Sirius’ chin and his hand under Sirius’ shirt, toying with the fletch of hair that leads downward, down beyond their limits.

“You haven’t done anything I don’t want,” Harry feels the need to say.

“Would you tell me if I did?”

Harry shrugs like it’s something casual, like he’s not playing Russian roulette. “There’s nothing you could do to me that I wouldn’t want, Sirius.”

A loaded gun, and Harry’s just pulled the trigger.

Chapter 5: descendo

Notes:

*quietly adds another chapter hoping no one will notice*

Decided to split the, er, climax in two. Forgive me. There’s a treat in this one, though.

Like every birth, it begins with blood.

When Sirius buried his lust, he buried it alive in a Poe-esque stronghold of stone and mortar, then waited for it to die. But he must’ve left a crack somewhere, maybe by accident, maybe not, but it was enough. Enough to let the oxygen in. To keep it alive and growing. Keep its blood pumping, and pumping, and pumping.

Whatever came to life tonight was born in the flow of it, roaring, violent. Sirius watches it try to escape, a pair of beating wings trapped in carotid pulse points; in vulnerable, cream-satin wrists. Harry has schooled his breath to mathematical uniformity, but the heart betrays. Blood betrays. No one knows this better than a Black.

It’ll be there now, too, crimson flowering on Harry’s cheeks beneath his black cotton pants. Sirius can’t see it, but he knows. He knows it’s there. Knows damn well what an arse looks like after he’s had a go at it. He’s out of practice, but his aim was steady. If he’d done it on bare skin, there would be two matching handprints, shiny and watermelon pink.

They still have tomorrow night.

That’s hardly the worst thought he’s had. You are your deeds, not your thoughts, but it’s here, now, in this guilty cesspool of rumination, that Harry invites the deed.

“There’s nothing you could do to me that I wouldn’t want, Sirius.”

Blood betrays, straight to his cock. If Harry’s knee climbs just an inch, he’ll know. Christ, he’ll know, and then what?

There’s little doubt left, what Harry wants. What Harry thinks he wants. Does he, can he truly know what vile deeds he’s consenting to by offering himself on a silver platter? Does he know this is an abuse of power as much as it is an act of love? Does he know that sex leaves handprints on the heart, for better or worse, and at fifteen it’s usually for worse? Does he know it will hurt and burn and leave him aching for days; that no matter how careful, it could make him bleed?

Or is that precisely what he wants?

Does he know how fucking good it can be, how Sirius would make him see more than stars? How he’d bring him to bliss before even getting his cock inside, soften him up and eat him out like Harry’s his last meal on earth? Finger him open until a whole constellation sprung to life behind his eyes?

Sirius’ fingertips skip like stones over the glass pond of Harry’s throat. He feels for the ripple of blood and presses down, light as air. “You shouldn’t trust people so easily.”

“I don’t. Only you.” That well-schooled breath begins to teeter. Harry lifts his head. “Do you think... we could try it again? What you... did tonight?”

Sirius can’t hide the smile, nor does he really want to. Feels safer this way, tension insulated by levity. “Spanking, Harry. It’s called spanking.”

Harry grins and shoves at him. “Piss off.”

“Or ‘impact play,’ if you want to be fancy.”

“I think I’d prefer that, honestly. Spanking makes me feel like I’ve got daddy issues.”

Sirius snorts. “You’ve definitely got daddy issues.”

“Spectacular.”

“Nothing to be ashamed of. I’ve got daddy issues.”

“Do you?”

“Oh, Merlin.” Sirius flings an arm over his face. “I fancied James’s dad for years.”

“Yeah?” Harry pries the arm away. “Got a thing for Potters, have you?”

Sirius tucks a runaway lock behind Harry’s ear. Like Harry, it rebels, bouncing back out of place. He’s so fucking gorgeous Sirius can’t even stop himself saying, “Suppose I do.”

Harry smiles. “Ever try anything?”

“With Fleamont?” Sirius laughs. “God no. Just wanked a lot.”

Harry’s smile ripens into something darker, singed around the edges. “I like older men, too.”

It’s no surprise, but it’s still a bombshell. Harry just came out to him. Sirius will treat this act of trust with all the care it deserves.

“Yeah?” He grins, warm and mild. “Anyone in particular I need to eviscerate?”

Harry ducks away. “No.”

Sirius strokes his cheek. “Are you out to anyone else, sweetheart?” Harry shakes his head. “Well. If... whenever... you decide to, just know... Remus is bi, I don’t think he’d mind me telling you... and obviously Molly and Arthur wouldn’t mind, you know about Charlie...” Harry nods. “You’re safe.”

“Thank you.” Faint as mist, not so much spoken as a shape on his lips. His perfect lips. Twin petals, pink, pure, begging to be mauled into swollen rubies.

Sirius severs the line of his eyes, snapping them back up to Harry’s. “Tomorrow.”

“What?”

“We can try it again. Tomorrow. If you want.”

Tomorrow, as though his self-control has any chance of strengthening over the next (the last) twenty-four hours, when it’s only been weakening since they met. Since Harry threatened his life and Sirius gave it, and he’s certain if he tries a lick of anything else with this fiery, savage boy tonight, Sirius will be the one coming in his pants, and that’s the best-case scenario. Far more likely he’ll lose himself in all the worst ways, pin him down at both ends, tongue in his throat, cock in his arse, fuck him however Harry will let him, and he’s so sure Harry will let him. So sure, he can barely think himself out of it.

Harry nods and echoes, “Tomorrow.”

Their last night. Unspeakable, like everything else, and who knows what happens after? At thirty-six, evolution has slowed to a glacier crawl, there’s no chance Sirius’ feelings will change, but Harry’s not even halfway there. At fifteen, he could go through a lover a month, be over Sirius by Halloween, regret him entirely by Christmas. There’s no way to stop it, and Sirius truly would be a monster for trying.

But then Harry does the things he does, and hope trickles back into Sirius’ veins, drop by drop from the emerald pool in Harry’s eyes, fathoms-deep, locked and loaded on Sirius’ own. His fingertips on Sirius’ jaw, tilling through the scratch of his beard. The gossamer breath that tingles over Sirius’ lips as Harry unfurls himself in a single, devastating question.

“What do you see when you look at me?”

The answer’s as easy as it is impossible. An opening straight to hell. Sirius steps willingly into the flames.

He touches him back, a mirror—calloused palm on the fine-grain stubble Harry’s just begun to shave. “I see the boy who saved me, growing into a man who could save anyone. I see the astonishing strength that’s bloomed from your pain... a strength rivalled only by kindness. I see... someone reflecting the very best of his parents. Someone who can and will do anything he sets his mind to, who’s set his mind to all the right things. Someone courageous beyond measure. I see my beautiful, brilliant godson, the love of my whole damn life.”

Harry stares at him, lustrous, enchanted. In a voice bearing none of that strength or courage, he simply whispers, “Sirius.” 

It couldn’t be any clearer if a Legilimens pried him open. Harry is waiting to be kissed.

Do it, sweetheart, the worst part of Sirius commands. You know it can’t be me.

But Harry doesn’t, and doesn’t, and won’t, because—

The epiphany strikes in cold blood. How had Sirius missed it?

Harry will never make the first move, because he knows what’s at stake. Not for himself, he wouldn't care less. He knows what’s at stake for Sirius.

He’s keeping Sirius safe.

Sirius rolls onto his back like a coward, unable to bear the fallout: “I don’t think you should stay here tonight.”

If he does, he will lose his virginity. Sirius will take it and never regret it, but Harry might, someday. And that’s enough reason to say no.

Harry’s weight dips, rustling over the dunes of unmade bedding. “Will you teach me another chord first?”

It sounds innocent, and it was, once. Maybe it was. It won’t be now. Harry’s back to Sirius’ front, Sirius’ fingers stretched over his, guiding between the frets. The safest outlet for unsafe touches.

Sirius reaches for his acoustic propped against the wall. Like nothing happened, but it did. Five minutes ago, Harry came in his pants with his jeans rucked down over his hips and his godfather’s hand on his arse, and Sirius wants nothing more than to make it happen again.

He grabs the Gibson’s elegant neck and tries not to pretend it’s Harry’s.

_

 

31 August

Among all things that haunt him, one exists in a class of its own: the mystery of which line he crossed was the point of no return.

Was it last night, watching Harry’s orgasm build under his seasoned ministrations and doing fuck-all to stop it?

Was it two nights ago, teaching him how to sip liquor like a man before ripping off his shirt on the same surface he’d bent James over at least a dozen times?

Three nights ago, holding him down in a pose that bled sex from every angle? Every squeeze of hands over wrists and throat, every vise of his knees into Harry hips, bearing down on him, gazing into his eyes like he would a lover, confessing, promising, threatening. A preview, or was it an overture? This is how I’d do it. This is how I’d fuck you, take you apart, make you mine, break you, mark you, hurt you, keep you.

Or four nights ago, when Harry said Please and Harder and Sirius didn’t say no? Sirius said Tell me and Eyes open, darling and gave him the equivalent of a safe word.

Was it the first night Harry slept in his bed, tear-stained and foetal in Sirius’ arms like the child he was never allowed to be, the child Sirius had never seen, would never be able to, after the night they met?

Was it that night, then? When Sirius ignored the wand at his throat and smiled up at his lovely Harry the way he’d smiled at James? The smile that made James kiss him the first time, the second, the seventy-fifth?

Or is it tonight, on the sofa in front of their friends and family, beneath one of Molly’s pilly knit blankets, when Harry’s hand lands on his thigh?

Sirius is no devotee, but tonight he believes in miracles. It’s a miracle everyone managed to pack their trunks before dinner. A miracle Arthur got one of his secret old tellies up and running in a house full of ancient magic. A miracle Harry and Sirius managed to snag the furthest seat to themselves, Harry’s bent knee overlapping Sirius’, a blanket tossed over their hip-joined laps while the VHS rolled on and on, their Muggle alibi.

There are plenty of other eyes in the room, but no witnesses. Not yet. Maybe it’s the dark that makes Harry do it. Maybe it’s hourglass desperation, knowing they’re out of time. Maybe it’s the spirit of Godric himself, or maybe, just maybe, Harry gets off on it, spring-loaded nerves and sky-high stakes. Just like Sirius.

Christ, they’re a match made in hell.

Whatever the motive, there it is, too many inches above his knee to pass for something innocent: Harry’s palm, hot with adrenaline. Bold, twitchy, teenage fingers. Thumbnail scraping over the denim in tight, intentional circles.

Sirius plays his part—the part of a sensible, principled man who harbours no untoward thoughts for the fifteen-year-old who’s nearly in his lap—but Harry plays it better. He laughs at all the jokes in the film. He challenges Hermione’s critique of the villain’s dubious morals and Sirius tries not to drop dead from the dripping irony. And then, then, Harry’s fingers crawl higher, high enough that if Sirius’ cock even starts to fill, it will fill his godson’s waiting hand.

And it is waiting, isn’t it? Oh, how badly he needs it, Sirius can smell it on him, poor thing—the sweat, the arousal, the pulse of it—a primal, subsonic bass that rattles their bones, throbbing along a frequency that is theirs and theirs alone.

If Sirius fails to act, he will lose the upper hand.

But stopping this boy hasn’t stopped him before, has it? Nor will it now, or ever. Harry Potter cannot be stopped, once he’s set his mind to it. The only way out is through—to best him at his own game.

Which is why, instead of shoving him off, Sirius’ own hand reaches out to alight on Harry’s knee.

There it is, a chemical reaction fit to tempt a potioneer. Harry goes rigid, as stiff as his cock undoubtedly is, when Sirius’ hand slides not only up, but in. Cupping the sculpt of soft inner thigh, bisected by a thick denim seam, but Sirius knows what’s beneath. That buttercream backdrop, spread out under a dusting of hair as dark as the mess on his head. Sirius has seen it, more than once, the toned stalks of bare legs under shorts, changing for bed, coming out of the shower—and when he can’t see it, he thinks of it. With his own calloused hand stripping his shaft, he’s imagined seizing it in handfuls, sinking fingers and teeth into Quidditch-ripe flesh and pushing those young limbs wide apart, spreading his darling boy open for all the unforgivable sins he has yet to commit.

Yet.

But shock is transient, and Harry’s recovery shines with all the resilience of his age. Five seconds and he’s on the move, one shaky finger navigating to the nearest rip in Sirius’ jeans—which, at this particular angle, bids entry to the crease of his thigh.

Almighty hell, he’s not actually going to—not here. Not Harry. He wouldn’t, he won’t—

Then he does. Merlin have mercy, he does. A second of half-arsed hesitation, then Harry slips inside. Not just a fingertip either, no, the whole bloody index, freshly unbandaged and nearly healed and already hungry for peril. Finds it, too: rubbing over the sensitive groove that would, if not for the confines of clothing, lead him right to victory. But there he stays, featherweight brushstrokes, back and forth, some sort of siren hypnosis. Like Sirius hasn’t been wrapped around this very finger since the moment they met.

Let him have it, for a moment at least, he’s earned it. Well done, you wicked boy, brave and foolish in equal amounts. Your father would be proud.

Your father. Who art in heaven. Jamie, Jamie, forgive me.

It is here at his lowest, begging mercy from his lover’s ghost, that Sirius tips the score, reclaims the helm, fingers clawing down on Harry’s thigh so hard it’ll bruise for weeks. Leave him limping, with any luck.

And there goes Sirius’ brain, fashionably late, so deprived of blood it forgot that’s what Harry wants.

Exactly what Harry wants.

If Sirius so much as looks at him, it’s over.

So he looks.

What a sight. Harry’s done for, eyes pinched shut, no rise and fall to his chest, oh darling, you’ll miss the credits, look, the film’s ended, hadn’t you noticed? Can’t even hold it together in a crowd anymore, how’s he expected to behave in the lawless wasteland of Sirius’ bedroom?

How merciless would Sirius have to be, to deny him, tonight of all nights?

“Well, I’m off.” A bodiless voice, the needle piercing their bubble. “You kids ought to head up as well.” Arthur. It’s Arthur. They’re not alone. “Big day tomorrow.” Big night tonight, dear man, you haven’t a clue, have you? “Early start, off you go.”

The lens of tunnel vision shatters. The room clears, and Harry with it. Doesn’t look back, doesn’t need to. Not with his fingers curled white-knuckled around the calling card Sirius left in his palm. Stiff but pliant, easily hidden. 

Guitar picks may be a Knut a dozen, but this one’s damn near priceless.

_

 

If you’re going through hell, they say, keep going—as if there’s an end, an exit. A pinprick of sunlight visible ahead, keep walking, you’ll get there.

No. There will be no exit, after this. His only sunlight is Harry, and Sirius will drag the whole flaming light of this boy down to the underworld with him, because Harry, beaming rays and all, has never told him no.

The first thing he does is change his shirt, some sort of purification ritual, like there’s absolution to be found in clean cotton. He’s rummaging for a fresh one when the door groans open, too soon.

Too soon, a late autumn sunset pulling him into the dark. What if someone’s still awake? Too soon for Harry to be here, gawking at Sirius’ naked chest with such unfiltered hunger Sirius has half a mind to call him out. Eyes up, darling.

But Harry finds his own way up, and there he stays, blinkless. Snips the door shut behind him and places the pick down on the credenza. Slow. Premeditated. RSVP accepted.

“Sorry. Forgot to knock.” Such a pretty liar. He once-overs Sirius, smirking. “Started without me, have you?”

Cheeky, insolent, shameless. Jamie would be proud—if horrified in equal measure.

“Sorry,” again, straight-faced, but Harry’s no match for his nerves, nor the pink abstract they paint on his cheeks—even when he peels his own shirt overhead, in that careless, boyish way that stretches out the neckline. “There,” when it pools on the floor, “now we’re even.”

Well fucking played.

So well that, for a moment, Sirius nearly considers throwing the game.

Nearly.

“On the bed. On your knees. Now.”

He doesn’t hear himself say it. Only the ghost of it, viscous, unpurgeable, suspended in the room’s blackened lungs, holding their breath in solidarity.

He waits for redemption in the next cheap joke, Not gonna buy me dinner first?—but there is no joke, only a swell of inkblot pupil, drowning the evergreen of Harry’s eyes and sawing away at Sirius’ frayed grip on reality, the thread he clings to as he dangles over the mouth of hell.

Worse, Harry hasn’t moved.

Fuck.

Fuck.

This wild dog has finally bitten off more than he had any right to chew, gone too far, got it all wrong, crossed the uncrossable boundary—

And then Harry’s marching straight to the frontlines, scrambling onto the bed as told, knelt in the centre, spectacles aside, hands crossed at the small of his bare fucking back, head bowed and facing away—vulnerable, one might call it, but vulnerability houses fear, and despite Harry’s vibrant magic pinging off the peeling walls, not one spark of it spells trepidation.

This is the point of no return—the ultimate act of trust.

Patience may be a virtue, but so is obedience. Merlin knows they’ve been patient enough, and Harry—defiant, audacious Harry—has been so very obedient. He doesn’t deserve to be kept waiting, does he? He deserves a reward, for Sirius to crowd up on the bed behind him, capture his clammy shaking hands and wrench them around to his front, sandwiched between his trouser fly and Sirius’ perilous fingers. Forced to guard his innocence against all that Sirius would do to him, if not for that trembling barrier.

Like a marionette, Sirius guides Harry’s hands as low as he dares, which apparently is all the way down to his fly.

“Off.”

The action isn’t immediate, but the reaction is. The ice-cream melt of Harry’s head, tipping back onto Sirius’ shoulder; the searching slant of his torso sagging against Sirius’ chest—and the noise, whimper wrapped in gasp, a sonic texture that should be criminal.

But it’s not, it’s not, Harry asked for this and it isn’t sexual, doesn’t have to be, doesn’t have to be anything but theirs. They are the ones who get to define it, what it is, what it means, what it feels, and if it feels dirty, the dirtiest thing he’s ever done, Harry never has to know. Sirius can tame himself, for Harry. Cage his perversions in the parasitic bit of Azkaban lodged in his chest, rotting him from the inside—but if Harry doesn’t stop him, it could become something uncageable.

Harry doesn’t stop him. As soon as Sirius frees his hands, the only sound is the slow-slow-tick-tick drag of his zip, splitting open his jeans.

Sirius retreats an inch or two, if only to give him the space to comply. And oh, how Harry complies, goes the extra mile, in fact, hooks both hands in the stiff denim waist and peels it over his rear.

And right along with it, his pants.

Rustled halfway down his thighs to expose the twin moon globes of his arse.

Sweet, miserable hell on earth.

Now Harry’s heaving, now he’s in doubt. There’s the fear, crept in at last, and this is where Sirius comes in, or should—this is his duty, his vow. To reassure, to comfort, protect, but all he can do is look and look because looking is safer than touching, look at the ivory cheeks so exquisite they would lure an archangel to eternal damnation.

“Harry—” Choked and dry like he’s swallowed ash, but Harry simply bows his head, an ancient symbol with far too many interpretations: shame, supplication, subservience.

“I want to feel more.”

Not a question, then. Not a will you, won’t you, Sirius, please? Would he even know how to ask for it, at this age, this level of inexperience, hormones and hunger with no words for it but want, need, more?

But there’s still a chance it’s only this—what he’s asked for from the start. To trade control for peace, nothing more. To feel, and for that feeling to be out of his hands. These are acts of power, not sex, and Sirius must keep those spheres discrete for as long as his failing resolve permits.

“There are other... methods, if you’d prefer.” Clinical, didactic, as if some myopic focus on technique will sanitise it, quell the undercurrent. “When it comes to... I mean, there’s floggers, paddles, riding crops...”

Harry makes a noise that could pass for a laugh. Maybe it is. All those muddled teenage emotions, glitching into hysterics. “Do you have those?”

“I... some, yes.”

Harry has no words for that, but the image is worth a thousand: slow, perhaps to make a show of it, he lowers his torso, arms folded neatly beneath his cheek, arse in the air like a goddamn beacon, and thank fuck he can’t see behind him, can’t see the war in Sirius’ trousers, a battlefield’s worth of blood spilling into his cock, fighting its denim cage.

“Can I just have your hand? For now?”

Sirius is only flesh, and like attracts like, after all. One rogue fingertip ebbs down the chainlink ridge of Harry’s spine, riding out the faultline shiver that billows over his body. “You can have whatever you want.” Then, closer, confidential: “If you can be a good boy for me.”

Sirius catches the moan in his hand, fingers closing around Harry’s throat as the other palm crashes down on the supple dome of his right arse cheek.

“Oh god—”

“Wrong.”

Harry sucks a thin, laboured dose of oxygen past the vise at his throat. “One.”

“That’s better.”

Two and three come down like hailstones, fast and hard to throw him off. By four he’s shaking, a leaf in a rainstorm.

“Five.”

No mercy tonight. Six and seven layer upon the same glorious handprint, shining and inflamed, an impossible rose unfurling in snow. Fingers tighten into his pulse, his later-bruised windpipe, the bulge of his Adam’s apple, leaving just enough space for the Stop that isn’t coming.

You want to feel more? So be it.

“Eight,” shattered. “Sirius—”

“You’re doing so well,” don’t come, not yet, not like this, don’t you know how good it could be? “Can you hold out for me, darling?”

A gleaming, bulbous tear zig-zags down his cheek. “Yes, sir.”

Heavenly fuck, he’s a natural.

Perhaps it’s genetic is not a thought to be having just now, nor the fact he hasn’t been this hard since the last time James was inside him, tears raining down onto Sirius’ face as he thrust and thrust to the beat of This is the last time, we have to stop. Thanks to their new Secret Keeper, they did.

Nine hits with tempestuous force—grief and anger and remorse and guilt both old and new, gusting through Sirius’ palm. Harry’s shout is aborted, reined in by his last vestige of restraint—but at the strike of ten, restraint flatlines. Balance topples like a rickety shack. Knees give out and there he lies, flat down in a pool of his own tremors. Better than a pool of his seed.

For now.

But he might as well have. The comedown is a brutal drop, hard and cold as they nosedive back to reality. Back to what they’ve done, what they’re doing, what Sirius will continue to do at the slightest encouragement. The unsavoury facts of the case piece together, bolstering that ornamental morality that’s stopping Sirius from spreading his virgin godson’s cheeks—one a furious crimson, now—to gaze upon his unclaimed entrance, pry it open with a swipe of his tongue, lick inside until Harry is his, fluids and flavours exchanged, every inch of his body debauched.

He unlocks the clamp around Harry’s throat, expecting the deep, rattling breath. Not expecting the plea:

“More.”

Sirius shuts his eyes. The last defensive spell in his arsenal. “Do you think you’re in any position to be making demands, my love?”

Harry twitches, and only then does Sirius realise they’re still touching—that he’s touching Harry, Harry’s pert arse, in fact, Sirius’ hand still snugly entrenched in the flesh of his last blow.

“N-no,” Harry admits, then for good measure, “Sir. But you said... if I was good...”

God in heaven, how is this boy even real?

“I did,” Sirius says with eye-of-the-storm calm—ephemeral, untrustworthy. “Do you think you deserve it?”

“Yes.” A well-sorted Gryffindor, there.

No choice but for Sirius to open his eyes, to watch the aim as he lashes attention to the other cheek, faster than Harry can count. The sooner he breaks him, the sooner this ends—with a bang or a whimper, but end it must.

“F-fifteen,” Harry pants at the breaking point.

“Good boy.” Maybe the praise will placate him, sufficient enough to—

“More.”

Sirius stares at the cheek in question. Can’t look at the whole of him, can’t face what his periphery has been teasing—the microscopic rut of Harry’s hips against the sheets, a slag for even the barest friction, driven mad by restraint.

It’s duty that drives him onward now, perverted but duty nonetheless. If he can’t use it to protect this boy, he will use it at least to indulge him.

“Sixteen.”

“Seventeen.”

“Eighteen.”

He’s stopping at twenty no matter what, for there’s no chance Harry will let him heal this, let him spell the evidence away—

“Nineteen.”

—No, he’ll want to feel it on the train tomorrow, squirm when he sits, and too much is too much and they whizzed passed enough ages ago—

“Twenty.”

All breath, the word beat out of him—quite literally, a thought concerning enough for Sirius to widen the lens, drink him in, the half-defiled sight of him. More naked than not and practically vibrating, incandescent beneath his own sweat.

“More.”

No, Sirius nearly says, automatic and prepared—until it occurs what a terribly versatile word that is. More, more, more of what? Of this precise, singular act?

Or—(thumb caressing the tenderised skin, soothing, soothing only)—of something just beyond it?

“More what?”

An apocalypse burgeons in the unspoken; erupts when the words are out: “You know what.”

Time doesn’t stall, it marches onward, every ruthless second of silence more incriminating than the last.

“Harry.”

A failed warning, so misunderstood it incurs the opposite effect. At the sound of his name, Harry’s legs spread apart, arse pushing up into Sirius’ touch because Sirius is still touching him, and short of divine intervention, he’s not sure he can stop. Been playing with fire for so long now, he hadn’t counted on the fire playing back, so here he is in purgatory, torn between praying for rain and tossing paraffin onto the flames.

By the time it happens, by the time his middle finger glides easy and sweat-slicked into the crevice between Harry’s cheeks, the tremors have made prisoners of them both, Sirius’ hands are shaking so hard it’s a miracle he doesn’t slip inside, a miracle he doesn’t push inside, given—

“Ohgodyesplease, please, please—”

To hell with restraint, say Harry’s hips, arse writhing up in the air, chasing whatever filthy contact he can tempt from Sirius’ hands, oh Harry, Harry, bless him, does he know? Does he know what’s about to happen to him, if he doesn’t say no?

“Harry,” another attempt, another failure, he’s already stroking over his hole and Harry’s all but gagging for it, no, is gagging for it, still a virgin and moaning like a whore, sputtering sounds that are pure sex, raw and undiluted. “Tell me you don’t want this. Tell me no.”

“I can’t,” he sobs, “I can’t, I can’t—”

But can’t is not in the Potter vocabulary, and that’s what does it—that’s what subdues the ethical quandary long enough to give in.

To plunge between his open legs, pry apart his welted cheeks, and dive inside him, tongue first.

Notes:

Shoutout to my dear friend Alex for the stunning artwork (and for screaming at all my shitty first drafts).

We’re so close (but not as close as Harry). Thanks for being patient.

Chapter 6: ascendio

Summary:

This was written in manic bursts, so... erm. Good luck?

When you learn the Patronus, you think you understand happiness.

Being wrong never felt so good.

The highest rapture known to man is here in the last precious hours of summer, spread-eagled and starkers and pinned to the bed with his godfather’s tongue in his arse.

He spares a thought for the lesser emotions—shock, relief, a tinge of embarrassment—he hadn’t asked for this, exactly, can hardly believe it’s happening, that it’s actually a thing people do to each other outside the hush of dirty magazines shared beneath the Great Hall tables and tucked under dorm mattresses—but pleasure sweeps it all away: the insecurity of his own exposure, the doubt that he’s merely being indulged, the 24-carat filth of the act. All of it dies in seconds, burned by the raw, wet, scorching muscle delving into the only part of his body he’s scarcely dared to explore himself. Whatever forces they call magic have bugger-all on this—this is bloody sorcery, somehow floating and grounding together, the opposite of an out-of-body experience. One wild smear of Sirius’ tongue has turned him inside out, rupturing his deepest nerves with the barest breach of flesh.

A moment of silence in memory of innocence; another for Sirius’ self-control—for this, surely, is no indulgence. This is the fall of a man long starved, devouring any feeble modesty Harry might’ve retained. In gratitude, Harry writhes back into the searing heat as best he can, held down by the hands and mouth that started it all with their gentle touches and gentle words. To these hands and this mouth he offers himself, any part of him Sirius may wish to feast upon.

And feast he does.

At some point Harry cries out, decibels beyond the first gagging whimpers. Must do, given Sirius’ “Fuck” of awareness before he sends a spellwork missile whizzing wandless towards the door. Dimly, Harry registers the ward’s syrupy coating—a silencer and a locking charm, gracefully spun into one.

Pride surges through him on the tail of Sirius’ next swipe (broad and flat, drenched in fire, then firm and pointed, inside again, oh shit oh fuck oh god), and it’s silly to think at a time like this, but truly, his godfather is as brilliant with magic as he is with his deviled tongue.

It’s here in this ridiculous thought that Harry’s whole world turns—literally, as Sirius wrenches back with a growl, yanks him across the bed by his hips, then flips him onto his back and moves in for the kill.

But Harry’s ready for it, ready for him, already twisting into the kiss, with utterly no thought spared for where Sirius’ mouth has been, except to realise he doesn’t mind but is spurred on by it, wants to taste it, wants the proof of what they’ve started, to hold it for safekeeping in his own mouth, so Sirius can’t take it back, can’t deny what he’s done. The proof is here in the sweaty saline taste of himself, mingled with Sirius, fuck, he’s tasting Sirius, his scotch and the fags he tries to hide and the buttered popcorn they made for the film and Sirius, oh god, he tastes like heaven, that’s all there is to it. Just heaven. Heaven’s tongue dragging over his lips, pushing inside and battling Harry’s, sharp teeth clacking against his own, nothing he imagined his first kiss would be, and everything it should be. A kiss that takes no prisoners, yet Harry is wholly captive, held down by this alone, a kiss that carries within its current all the power Sirius has over him.

And then Sirius is peeling away, but Harry can’t bring himself to mind, because he’s dying to see it—dying to see how Sirius looks, here on the other side.

And he looks—he looks.

He looks like a door’s flung open inside him, a door to a room where he’s stored the heart of himself until now, and now it’s here, unleashed upon Harry, but still he’s trying to rein it in, gather it back into his palms like liquid spilled through fingers.

Let go, Harry begs from his core.

“Tell me,” Sirius pants above him, body caged around Harry’s, “if I got it wrong, tell me now, Harry, please—”

Harry wraps both arms around his neck and shows him how very right he got it, pulling him down where he belongs. Where Harry belongs, too: tunnelled between his godfather’s limbs, anchored under the tome of his body, pinned by mouth and hips and frantic questing hands that turn everything they touch to gold, transforming Harry into gleaming aureate, piece by worshipped piece. It’s here in this touch that Harry rises, away from his doubt, his inexperience, from everything that held him back. Now he is only held down, held down by the sugared agony of denim against his sobbing erection, held at the mercy of Sirius’ whims, and how blissfully easy it is to submit, driven by something beyond sheer will. Instinct or fate or starvation, perhaps, how long has he been starving now? At least as long as Sirius has, over a year of it, this need and its messy roots that grew beyond their container’s capacity, pushed at the walls until it burst. This need to run his hands all over, memorise each working muscle, trace every inky perimeter, crest over shoulders and slope down his back, to touch him forever, feel him forever, strip him as bare as Harry is, oh, and Harry is—finally—they’ve managed to wriggle him out of his jeans, a tandem effort he nearly missed in the druggy haze of Sirius’ clever tongue in his throat.

“This all right?” Sirius asks, belated, almost hilariously so as the denim thwacks onto the carpet, and Harry laughs, because nothing has ever been more right. Nothing, save for the bulge that jumps against his palm when he moves to finish the job he started under that pilly knit blanket—but, as before, Sirius bats him away. “Tart,” he accuses, all warmth and affection, then snaps Harry’s wrists down to the mattress on either side of his head.

Harry smiles, broad and open and gasping, gasping like he’s won the Cup, flown for hours, resplendent. “Only for you.”

“Goddamn right,” and Harry’s being kissed again, if you could call it kissing, and he’s fairly sure you couldn’t. Not that he’s got squat to compare it to, but this, whatever this dirty possessive consumption is must be closer to climax than kissing, and it doesn’t stop, the feel of it, not even when Sirius pulls away to stare right through him, flay him open and pry out his secrets. “Gods, the way you look at me.”

Harry goes still, arousal taking a miraculous backseat to curiosity. “How do I look at you?”

“You know bloody well.”

“I want to know what it looks like to you.”

So very gentle, the hand on his cheek. A balancing act for the words: “Like you want me to tear you apart, leave you in pieces. Ruin you for life.”

Harry swallows hard. “I do.”

“Harry...”

“Do it, then put me back together. Like you always have.”

Sirius shakes his head like he doesn’t believe he always has; that he could be so noble. “Is this what you wanted, all along?”

For the first time, Harry feels shy. Shy at being called out so easily, shy at the fang-snapping truth of it. But shy is no match for lust, especially when Sirius’ thumb is tracing his lower lip.

Harry nods.

“Tell me the truth.” First command in the here and now. “Tell me exactly what you need, before I lose my mind.”

“Lose it. Go mad. Take me, use me, devour me, that’s what I need, please—” He can’t quite say it yet, fuck me, which makes him feel every bit of his age, but surely he’s covered the bases. “Do whatever you want, if...” A step past shy, insecurity, not so easily tempered. “If you want me.”

“If I—” Half laugh, half bark. “You mad, gorgeous creature. I’ve never wanted anything more.”

And Harry can hardly find reason to doubt, being snogged to an inch of his life before Sirius pulls back again, eases the pressure off his wrists, and says, very softly, “Stay.”

Oh, god.

Harry must say it aloud, because Sirius absently whispers “Indeed” and sits back on his heels, prick marqueed in all its glory beneath that horrid denim. He’s huge, it’ll hurt no matter where he puts it, and Harry is proper drooling for it.

“Look at you,” as if he’s not looking at Harry already, looking so hard he could crush him. “Do you have any idea...” Mercury eyes peeling him open, leaving him doubly naked. “How sexy you are…” A blunt nail roving down his thigh. “How utterly irresistible?”

Harry shivers from the strain of compliance, from keeping his hands where they were placed and not in Sirius’ pants. Stay.

In retaliation, he smirks. “You did resist, though.”

He’ll pay for that one. Now he shivers for different reasons.

“As long as I could, you dirty brat.” That’s Harry’s warning, which is to say none, before he’s hauled up by his waist like a weightless child and tugged into Sirius’ lap. And that’s—oh, that’s nice, that’s good, very good, close and hot, recycled breaths in each other’s lungs, the push-pull tide of grinding hips and the sneaky migration of Sirius’ hands to Harry’s bare arse, kneading and prying and torturing. “It killed me to resist you.”

Relatable.

Gooseflesh rises toward the words, chasing their shape on Harry’s neck. He tilts back, offers it up for bruise or bite like the virgin sacrifice that he is. “I’ll bring you back to life.”

“Oh, my love...” Bite first, bite hard, the bruise will follow. A tongue up his throat for good measure. “You already have.”

And here Sirius returns the favour—one finger slipping between Harry’s cheeks, a sweat-slick glissade into his crack and over the sucked-soft rim, sucked soft by Sirius’ tongue, can’t forget that, and Harry stops trying to hold it together, to roll his hips like he knows what he’s doing—a smokescreen for inexperience, cleared away by a mild tease at his eager, twitching entrance.

Hell of a summer awakening, to learn you’re a slag for arseplay.

Strings cut, he keens, humid breath huffed into Sirius’ neck. “That’s so... so…”

“A bit good, I hope?” Rhetorical, pitched with mischief. He knows what he’s doing to his poor godson, that swirling legato cadence over his needy hole, but Harry nods all the same, limp and flightless, arms around Sirius’ neck, loose, just for the contact, the closeness. Sirius is doing all the work, holding him up while he whispers the incant right into Harry’s ear, the bastard, and Harry floods with slick.

“Fuck.”

Sirius hums, content as Harry’s ever heard him. The cat who’s about to get the cream—rather too soon, if he keeps this up. “Seems you know that one, eh? Part of the after-hours curriculum?”

Harry grins into the shifting ink at the trench of Sirius’ throat. “Maybe if you were the teacher.”

“Insolent.” Sirius tuts. “Perhaps you don’t deserve this.”

“Deserve wha—oh.”

Deep, a silken drag to the knuckle, the probing blade of Sirius’ finger cleaving him in two, opening him up to whatever perversions he has in mind, and Harry will take it, anything, he’ll take it, nurture it in his body, consume it and feed it back tenfold, an ouroboros of sustenance. The burn is just enough, clean and bright as a winter sun, nothing he hasn’t done to himself but immaculately better, distilling all his untamed need to this single cluster of bodily tissue. He’s rutting blind now, humping whatever his hips can reach, content to rub himself raw on that godforsaken pair of jeans, sand away the last limit between them, if that’s all he’s going to get.

“Shh, shh. Let me, darling.” And then it’s Sirius’ free hand on his prick while he twists a second finger up inside him with all the precision of a true marksman, pumping pleasure from him, into him, front and back, his whole body under Sirius’ command, speared in place by this touch so sublime, so deep it’s pushing the moans right up and out, loud enough to embarrass him, had he room to feel anything else. But he doesn’t, it’s this, it’s only this, Harry has become the pleasure, can do little more than tighten his arms around Sirius’ neck and hold on for dear life as he’s filled and stroked, dizzy and swaying, an inch from death, wrapped in the shroud of Sirius’ voice. “Oh, Harry, Harry, you beautiful thing. The way you feel in my hands, the way you move... do you know what you’re doing to me?”

He can only answer in violent tremors, whimpers shot to shameful octaves, a mindless mantra of “Good, so good, Sirius, please...”

“Good,” Sirius echoes back, smearing a thumb through the pearly spread over Harry’s dripping crown. “All I want is to make you feel good.”

Harry can’t help it, not that he tries. He wriggles up against Sirius’ bulge, best as he can with no leverage. “I don’t think that’s all you want.”

Dawn-grey eyes pinch narrow, but not quick enough. He’s affected. “I will stop if you give me cheek.”

Fuck’s sake. “Sirius—”

“Tell me, has anyone done this to you?”

“Just—ah, fuck—just to myself.”

That dawn-grey perimeter shrinks away, swallowed whole by pupil. “Thank you for the image.”

Harry smiles. Like that, do you? “Have you pictured it before?”

“No comment.”

Like hell. Harry just found the chink in his armour. How many licks to the centre?

“Do you know...” Harder now, grinding hard, a pestle with no mortar. “You’re the only one I think about, when...” Head slung back, throat bow-taut, inexperience be damned, he’s seen enough porn. “When I...”

“When you what, dearest?” Three fingers now, crooked to perfection, wringing a mewl from his throat and all the blood from his brain. “Goodness, Harry James. You’re riding a grown man’s hand like a well-trained rent boy and you can’t speak of masturbation?”

Fingers crossed that blushing maiden is a good look on Harry, because fuck. Lunacy to think he could flip the game, especially given riding is a generous classification of whatever you’d call his erratic, graceless bearing-down on this divine if unholy intrusion—but the devil’s trident of Sirius’ fingers is the sweetest burn this side of heaven and if Harry doesn’t say it soon, words will fail him entirely.

“Tell me all the things you imagined doing to me.”

The rhythm hiccups. “Harry...”

“Please. I don’t care if it’s dirty or sick or—or—illegal, I just want to know.”

A storm brews over the dawn. He’s pushed too far, asked too much, failed to consider how guilty Sirius must feel already, what he’s already risking, bringing Harry’s every fantasy to life—how could Harry have been so selfish?

He opens his mouth to take it back when the fingers drag all the way out to their tips, then surge back into his body.

“You want me to incriminate myself?” Black velvet pouring into his ear, sealing the words inside. “Want me to tell you how I’ve never managed to see you as a son no matter how hard I tried? How I can’t even be in the same room as you without getting so hard I could burst? How badly I want to split you open, make you come on my cock alone, pound you until you’re bruised and boneless, until you can’t sit a broom? Want to take you on every surface in the house, on the train, in your dormitory, under the cloak, even while you’re asleep, if you’ll let me, wherever whenever however you’ll let me, want to come so deep inside you so many times your body will be half mine. Is that what you want to hear?”

“Yes,” all his remaining breath, stratosphere-thin, pitching him forward into Sirius’ chest. “God, yes, do it, all of it, Sirius, please—”

“Look at me.” Harry’s chin snaps up as if the words had bodily wrenched him into it, but looking at him after that is like looking at the sun, if the sun were finger-fucking him in the back and polishing his prick in the front. “You know I don’t actually want to hurt you.”

“Not—” Can’t bloody catch his breath, but somehow he’s able to smile. “Not even a little?”

The smile kicks right back to him, a star-bright thing, glittering up to his eyes. “How are you this perfect?”

“’Mm not,” not even close. Just perfect for you, I hope. It sounds so juvenile, might as well carve their initials in a tree, and yet—

“You are. Merlin, you are.” Sirius kisses him, sea-deep and just as fluid, an anchor for the carnal dissonance, pumping and thrusting below—and there it is, the shrewd twist of a slender wrist and he’s close, he’s close, he’s inches away from it, seconds away— “Now be a good boy and come for me.”

Casual, offhand, just like that, like it’s not the hottest thing ever said, like Harry’s nails aren’t gouging half-moons into Sirius’ flexing shoulders. “Want—want to come with your cock in me.”

“You will,” a baritone snarl at his throat. “I’ll make you come as many times as your body can take.” A nip of teeth, percussive, then he’s staring into Harry’s eyes, tuned in for the show, director and audience in one. “Let go for me, you lovely thing, that’s it. Do as you’re told.”

He’s already doing it, or rather his body’s doing it for him, condensing itself to an over-wound coil and then—pop the latch, unbound, release. The only effort Harry put in was the feeble attempt to stave it off, and never has failure felt better, oh, never has anything felt better than gushing into his godfather’s hand, defiling the signet heirloom rings and drowning the runes in cream. Ink and seed, black and white, old and new.

And there’s something else in the comedown, something the rising heat in his cheeks would never let him voice. Something that feels almost... paternal, being held so sweetly in the aftershocks. Not that he’s got any point of reference, daddy issues and all, but if he had to guess, this is as close as it comes, filthy only in context: cradled, cocooned, with a susurrus of lullaby crooned into his ear, Beautiful, so beautiful, Harry, my angel, I’m so proud of you, do you know how perfect you are, but Harry is far from perfect, can barely lift his head to watch that sweetly crooning tongue slurp between the bars of his fingers, lapping at Harry’s spend before he glances down at the spunk-spattered denim and back at Harry, smirking.

“Best take these off, I suppose.”

Finally, but Harry doesn’t get the privilege of participation. Instead he’s thrown back flat on the bed while Sirius rips off the offending fabric and descends upon him like a hawk on a titmouse before Harry’s even got a good look at him—flushed, heavy, thick and hard, a veritable beam of masculine flesh, ready to impale.

Harry is ready, too.

Then he aims Harry’s refilling cock at his mouth and starts to lick him clean—the splashes that dribbled down to his bollocks, pooled in his navel, embedded sticky in wire-black curls, all of it claimed by Sirius’ tongue and Sirius’ death grip on his hips and Sirius’ diamond gaze on Harry’s, so many layers beyond intense that by the time he’s done, Harry’s already dripping a fresh batch.

Sirius claims that, too, licks the pearl ribbon out of his slit, then streaks up Harry’s body, slots their cocks into alignment, and kisses him, open and wet.

Too wet.

Oh. Oh, oh.

Now this he knows is a thing people do, a thing half his classmates brag about while the other half pretends to retch, but Harry isn’t retching. Harry is spellbound and rutting up into Sirius’ cock while he sucks away on Sirius’ tongue, tasting the part of him Sirius had held in his mouth, his own fucking load fed back to him—just a trickle at first, careful to clock his reaction.

Harry’s reaction is as accused—well-trained rent boy, apparently—to moan and swallow each drop he’s given, then reach down and wrap his jittery fingers around Sirius’ iron-hot prick.

Sirius bucks in his hand, then pries it away. “Keep your hands to yourself, you gorgeous fuck.”

“But—I want to touch you.”

“Yeah? Want me to come in your hand or in that pretty arse of yours?” The smile is three times wicked. “We’re not all teenagers here, darling.”

Harry grins and reaches for him again. Batted away, again. “If you’re so old, where’s your stamina?”

“Gone, the moment you look at me.” Dark, dark as his eyes, dark as his name, starless and sombre. “Arms overhead. Crossed at the wrist. Make a sound and I stop.”

Fair enough and well deserved. Harry obeys with a grateful thought: he didn’t say don’t move.

“You turn me on like nothing else, Harry. I’ll come in seconds if you touch me. Even this has me on edge—” This, as it happens, is two fingers shoved back up inside him with a greedy tongue lapping fire between the gap, bathing his rim, relentless. “Can’t begrudge me another taste, though,” calm as a stillwater pond while Harry squirms and chokes back every indecent noise he never knew was inside him. “Food of the gods, this is.”

A final sweep of his tongue and he climbs up Harry’s body again, kissing him back to life, “Good, good boy, you did so well. Now hold onto me and let me hear you.”

It’s such a relief Harry fears it’s nearly too much relief, that he’s gone and spilled over the edge again, but it’s not, he hasn’t, he won’t, he’s too alert now, because Sirius is starting to move him around, pushing Harry’s knees to his chest, slicking himself and lining up and kissing Harry’s lips, soft as the heated head of his cock is kissing Harry’s entrance.

“Breathe,” is the last command he gets, and one he can barely follow.

It does hurt, but it hurts right, like the first time you fall off a broom. A splash of hot wax; a palm slamming down on a shiny red arse; fingers clamping around a throat. It’s that kind of pain, rebuilding Harry from the inside out, and he doesn’t blink for the whole slide in, refusing to miss a moment. It’s Sirius whose eyes clip shut, brief, like he can’t bear the stimulus of Harry as witness, watching him commit this indelible act, this slow descent into Harry’s inferno, slow as either of them can bear, but the gravity between them is doing its job too well—so well it starts to feel like there’s no space left in Harry to fit him, but there is and he does, he takes him and takes him, fuller and deeper until there’s a shift, and it’s no longer Harry letting him in, but his body’s hunger sucking him in, pulling Sirius down to the root, to the core of him, the seat of his power—the vibrant, crackling hum of it, every volt restrained for Harry’s sake.

What will it take to release?

Sirius’ forehead thumps into his. The final breath before a dive.

“Can you feel what you do to me, Harry? What you’ve done to my body, how hard I am for you, my darling, you absolute miracle, do you feel it?”

Harry nods. It’s all he can do.

The first thrusts feel involuntary, a few volts making a break for it, and Harry does his best to match them, welcome them, convince him it’s all right, yes, yes, I want this, no I won’t break, wouldn’t care if I did, but Harry has no power here, no upper hand to speak of.

“I know what you want,” Sirius pants, gravelly in his ear, “but...”

“I can take it.”

“I know you can.”

“Then do it, fuck me the way you imagined,” arms knit tight around Sirius’ shoulders, “want to feel you when I’m back at school.”

“Bloody Christ, don’t talk about school when I’m inside you.”

Harry grins. “What, don’t have a thing for pretty schoolboys?”

“Not as a rule,” Sirius groans, gnashing his teeth into Harry’s neck and aiming straight for his prostate. “Just the one, and he ought to be gagged.”

“Do it, then,” Harry gasps.

“And miss you screaming my name? No chance.”

But Sirius does him one better. He levers up onto one flat palm, wrestles Harry’s wrists overhead and locks a hand around them, supporting his weight on the press of it. Then he plants the other hand where it started—back on Harry’s throat. Hard enough to hold him in place, but not enough to silence him.

Then, Sirius fucks him.

That’s the word. Not thrusting or rocking or sinking inside, but fucking, how Harry imagines a man would fuck when he’s got nothing to lose but his mind—exactly what seems to be happening now, bit by bit, on every driving piston forward, Sirius fucks away his own reservations and the last of Harry’s control, babbling drivel against Harry’s lips, the foulest dirt and purest endearments, and not the respectable ones, no, not darling and sweetheart, not anymore. Harry is baby now, in the heat of it, Good, baby, you’re so good for me, and he’s thrown by it, thrilled by its intimacy, by how safe and cherished it makes him feel, and oh—there it is again, paternal, but Harry’s not surprised this time—nor by the fleeting urge to indulge it, a passing thought of calling him daddy, of how Sirius might react. Would he hate it? Find it disgusting? Or would he pound into Harry even harder until they’re both a little less broken? Would he hiss in his ear, That’s right, baby, there’s my good boy, go on, come for Daddy—

“Come with me, Harry. Come.”

Close enough, and so is Harry, before Sirius’ hand even reaches him. Untouched, untethered, he obeys and ascends, held aloft by the bursting dam of Sirius’ release flowing through him, surging the power back to him, shared voltage, the magic and the material. Control spun out of control.

And Harry, spun alongside it.

And he doesn’t have the words, not yet, to quiet Sirius’ quaking pulse as he trembles down on top of him. No words, so instead he guides Sirius to lay on his chest, sandpaper cheek to Harry’s heart, and thinks up a way to tell him—to make sure he knows that Harry doesn’t feel like a ruined boy, he feels like a sated man. Well-fucked and luminous, transformed. Bubbling over with popped-cork energy, champagne effervescence.

“I love you,” Harry says.

Sirius lifts his head, searching, always searching. Harry smiles and hopes that’s what he was looking for.

“I love you, too.” But there’s still fear in it, uncertainty, like he wants to ask. He shouldn’t have to.

“Lie down,” Harry says softly, guiding Sirius back to his chest and running a hand through his hair. “Relax. Everything’s fine.”

“I’m supposed to take care of you.”

“I don’t need it. Let me.”

Sirius stiffens, then unwinds. “How do you feel?”

“Brilliant. How do I look?”

He lifts his head again. Harry’s waiting for him, beaming. “Proper fucked out, I reckon.”

“Good.” Harry bites his lip. “Can we go again?”

Sirius snorts. “Bit indisposed at the moment.”

“I can be patient.”

“Doubtful.”

Harry shoves his head back down. “Rest up and fuck me again.”

“Case in point.” Sirius laughs, silent and rumbling, but doesn’t argue. Doesn’t move. Oh, he’s brewing something. “You like when I call you a good boy.”

There it is. Harry begins to heat. “Don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Mm. Praise kink or daddy kink?”

Harry sniggers. “First it was issues, now it’s a kink?”

“Ah, what is any kink but a reinvention of our scars?”

Harry rakes through sweat-sleek locks, tucking a rogue black strand around the shell of Sirius’ ear. Stalling. Idling. “You wouldn’t mind, then... if... sometime... I called you...”

Don’t make me say it. Not yet.

“No, sweetheart. I wouldn’t mind.”

Harry smiles, this one just for himself.

“Strong,” Sirius murmurs, suddenly, against Harry’s chest.

“Hm?”

“You have a strong heartbeat.”

Harry holds him tighter. “That’s because it beats for you.”

Like every birth, it begins with blood—and in that beat after beat of it, they are reborn together.

Notes:

Thanks for joining me on the road to hell! Hope you enjoyed the ride. :) You can find me on Tumblr.