Vera
As inspried by Golden Years: A roleplaying game.
First Year
Sirius crawled into his bedroom. His bed was only a meter away, but his body was finally betraying him. It complained bitterly about the treatment it had just received and couldn't manage the last effort to get into the sumptuous four poster that had dominated his childhood sleep.
He lay panting for a long while, staring up at the slowly shifting patterns on the ceiling. They were meant to be soothing for restless children. Instead, they were making him feel ill and he wondered if he could get a house elf in fast enough to clean up his vomit before morning.
"Siri?" A soft voice called from the door and he cursed internally.
"Go 'way, Regs." He ordered.
"What are you doing on the floor?" A small white oval appeared, capped with night mussed black hair. He focused briefly and caught the worry in the gray eyes, the stupid snakes on still childish pajamas.
"I'm thinking. Now go away."
"I can't sleep." The younger boy whined instead, plopping to sit next to him on the floor. "Had a nightmare. You were screaming again."
Welcome to my nightmare, you stupid brat. He thought, but never said. Regulus' room was right above his father's office and it was far from the first time that the younger boy had mistaken his tortured cries as a hideous dream. He dreaded the day Regulus realized it was more then his own sleep addled mind producing those sounds.
"Sounds like a bad one." He admitted gently and finally, found the strength to stand. He swayed slightly, remained upright long enough to stumble into bed. "C'mon brat, get in."
With a soft sigh, Regulus clamored in next to him taking up barely any room as he curled into the space between Sirius and the wall. Neither of them fell asleep quickly. After some long minutes passed, Sirius reached up to stroke gently at his brother's soft hair. Another soft sigh and this time Regulus fell into a deep sleep. The even breaths convinced Sirius' over stressed body to follow suit.
First Year/Third Year
"I hate you!" Sirius screamed at his parents, before slamming the back door and running out into the backyard. There wasn't much to hide behind there, he knew that from long experience.
The trees that lined the back of the property were usually his best bet and he clamored up the branches of one and hid there until he was sure that everyone in the house had gone to bed. He passed the long hours thinking up pranks, how he could do them, persuade Remus and Peter to go along with them....when that paled he thought about what he would do when he graduated school. Maybe he would be an auror. No one told aurors they were worthless. And no one dared to send them curses they didn't know how to defend. Aurors knew how to defend against everything.
The house was long dark when he crept back in, careful to avoid even the house elves nocturnal rummaging. The last barrier to his own room was Regulus' and he tiptoed extra softly, but still...
"Siri?" A sleepy voice called out.
"Go back to sleep." He hissed, pausing to make sure the order was followed.
Instead he heard footsteps and then the press of fingers on his arm.
"You're cold."
"Of course I'm bloody cold!" He snapped back, wrestling his arm away.
"Come on then." Regulus turned back around.
"Not now, Regulus. I have to get back to bed before..."
"They already went to bed and you're cold. Come on." The hand reappeared, tugging him into the dark humidity of his room. Sirius sometimes worried about Regulus who was so often cold. What was living in the dungeons doing to that fragile layers of meat that barely protected him in the best of times?
"You're no Slytherin." He had said it to himself nearly every night since Regulus had been sorted. He'd been avoiding his brother like the plague since the school year began.
"I am, Siri. I've got friends there." They hadn't spoken of it yet, but already it sounded like a well worn argument.
"You're too good for them." He insisted. "Too smart. Should have been a Ravenclaw."
"You know better then that."
Curling small, huddled against Sirius side, they could have been infants again and a part of Sirius longed for that time. He had been the favored eldest then. Coddled and made much of. Then it was Regulus who was forgotten, pushed to one side. Playing the good brother, he'd protected him and kept his parents from picking at his faults. When had that changed? He'd been about eight, he figured. And now with Regulus safely in Slytherin, it was completely flipped.
But they were the same. Sirius protected Regulus...who knew why? There was just something about the other boy that asked for it, without every actually saying a word. The slight sheen of weakness in his eyes, the easy way he capitulated to any request.
"They'll turn on you. You're much too soft for that set." He warned.
"I know how to take care of myself."
No, you don't. He'd seen to that, along with his parents. Figures, the one time they even accidentally worked together and it would all end in tears.
"Whatever, brat. Just be a good bed warmer and shut up."
"You've gotten mean." The boy observed, only burrowing closer. "I've heard the rumors. Mad and mean. Maybe it was you that got sorted wrong."
"Don't ever say that again." He squeezed one of the clinging arms tightly enough to bruise. "Gryffindor is my home."
"Siri! You're hurting me!" The struggle was minimal and Sirius finally loosened his grip. "This is your home."
"Not anymore."
"Maybe you don't have one then." The smaller boy moved to put space between them.
Sirius reached across the gap, dragging the warm body back.
"Maybe, I don't." And maybe it's you. My brother. The only person still nearly wholly his.
Third Year/Fifth Year
Regulus locked his door the entire break, when he was home at all. Staring blankly at the door after it resisted his attempts at opening, Sirius would drift off to his own room and send an owl out to one of his friends, did research, drew out eleborate maps. Anything but think about the locked door at the end of the hall.
On the last night before they went back to school, Sirius lay in bed wide awake, humming with anticipation. The ceiling images had long ago been gotten rid of and he found himself missing them. Too late to ask for them back, he'd thrown to much of a stink to get rid of them. He stretched his arm, content that the bone had healed properly. It had impressed Father that he could repel the shattering hex though it hadn't been quite a full block. The praise fell on pain deafened ears, but pleased him now.
Lost in these musings, it wasn't until Regulus was in bed with him that he even registered the other boy's presence.
"Hullo, Siri."
"Fuck you." He said promptly. Cursing was a new and shiny toy, one he used liberally.
"I told you to leave my friends alone." The whisper was so soft it barely existed.
"You ratted me out to a professor." Not that it mattered, they all knew that Sirius was to blame, but it was the principal of the thing.
"You made me. Why can't you ever leave anything alone?"
"Why couldn't you be on my side?"
They were silent with these heavy questions hanging in the air. Uncomfortable and out of sorts, suddenly too pleased with the company, Sirius moved closer.
"You smell like the dungeons."
"And what is that smell?"
"Wet. Hard. Dead." He moved closer, sniffing. Trying to find the warm, milky smell underneath that. Trying to find Regulus. Unconsciously, Regulus tilted his head to accommodate his hunting nose.
"It's safe there. I like it. Buried under all that stone."
"Too safe. Life's not that safe." Sirius protested, finding a spot at the base of his neck investigating and finally, placing the softest of kisses.
"What are you doing?" There was no anger or disgust in his voice, just uncertainty.
"Shhhh..." He soothed, continuing his path. Smelling and kissing his neck and face. Reclaiming Regulus inch by inch. The body beneath his was stiff, but with gentle stroking he persuaded it to unravel. Too young to know anything else, Regulus' body betrayed him, opening to those warm questing hands that drove away the cold that sent him here in the first place.
He had always found Sirius to be a human furnace, a wonderful place to curl up and draw warmth until morning sought them wrapped close. Trying to summon the will to force him away, he thought of all the things that made him hate his older brother. Too late, far too late. Sirius was pouring over him like a fascinating text. His hands and mouth were everywhere, never quite pushing, but not asking for permission either.
A single finger drew on arc over his sparse pubic line and Regulus let out a hiss.
Words ended there as small, lily white hands threaded over Sirius' shoulders, drew him close. The kiss, when it came was clumsy, wet and horrifying. Everything in Regulus felt ill, shivering and ready to tear. But it was Sirius. Sirius who filled his every sense, rode roughshod over his mind and devoured him. Sirius, who kissed him now as thoroughly as he'd once healed his minor cuts and bruises.
"Mine." The older boys whispered in Russian, that doomed tragic language that would become their secret code for these things.
"Yours." And he arched to the foreign touch, the first not his own.
In that bed, where they had shared so many dark and frightening nights, they wrote their own doom.
Fifth Year/Seventh Year
It was cold. Desperately, Regulus piled on layers and muttered heating charms, but to no avail. He knew it was only his head that it was only imaginings. It had nothing to do with the very warm comfortable bedroom in his warm comfortable house. It was only that it was night, it was winter and there was an ugly howl of wind biting outside.
He wanted Sirius so badly that tears came to his eyes until they betrayed him, raining them down. Dashing them away violently, he cursed his own weak mind, heart and body. Sirius had left, should have gone. He was no fit for the Black's, no fit for the life they wanted him to lead.
And for his own peace of mind...
Laughing bitterly to one's self was surely a sign of insanity, he told himself sternly. But he did it anyway. Sirius was surely not sulking over the loss of his pesky brother. He willed himself to kill that part of him that would never forget, that would always long for his other half. But he lacked that capacity as surely as he lacked the ability to betray Severus or yell back at his mother.
And somewhere, Sirius stared out at the falling snow, cursing James' weakness in falling asleep too early. Now, left to his own devices, his mind wandered without his permission until it landed...he would be cold on a night like tonight. And a part of him was glad. Freeze to death, he wanted to snarl to the boy who wasn't there. It was what he deserved for his rampant stupidity. But the other, that traitorous part of him that was still a Black, that did not allow him to give up the surname....no.
"Mine." He said bitterly. And it was too true. Regulus was well and truly his.
Only to late did he see that he was Regulus' too. And that was a marker that could not be removed.
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