Unpeaceful Quiet
Finished Thread: Sirius Black & Lily Evans
Head's Common Room - 24 September 1977
Sirius was miserable, that was the only word for it. He’d forced himself in to isolation, both for his own good and for the good of those around him. He knew he would keep blowing things up accidentally - he did that when he got like this and James’ possessions had already borne the brunt of some of it - and he didn’t think picking fights with everyone he saw was a terribly good way to sort through his feelings despite how much he wanted to do it.
The first two days had been a mess where he paced and tried not to scream and destroy everything he touched. But that was days ago. It had been a week now since his fight with Marlene and since Amycus had broken his heart and he didn’t want to do anything at all. He was camped out on the couch in the Heads’ common room, his arms crossed over his chest as he stared at nothing. He always did this, withdrew in to himself when he got too emotional so he could try to sort it out, but he never did this when he was around anyone else. He always ran so no one ever saw him get like this, but it wasn’t an option this time. He couldn’t do that to James, not so soon. So he just lay there and did nothing, said nothing, and hoped he’d be left alone.
Lily had been worried about Sirius since the first fight he’d had with Marlene. She’d looked at him with concerned eyes, tried to give him space, whatever she could think to help him. But in the week since the party, since the second fight and the way things had quite literally exploded between he and Marlene, Lily was beyond worried. It had been better when he was ranting, when he paced with furious energy and she took to casting strengthening charms on anything in the common room she was worried about. At least then she’d had an idea what was going on in her head.
This pushed her well past worry. She was downright scared as she walked in and out of the common room every day to see Sirius had barely moved from the couch. They didn’t speak in the mornings anymore and some days she stayed in bed rather than intrude on his melancholy before she had to. She wanted to help him, wanted to do something to break up this terrible, silent nothing that had inhabited the common room. Finally she decided she had to try something. Anything. Even if it didn’t work, maybe she’d come up with a better idea just by trying. She went out that morning as she’d become used to doing. He hadn’t moved even to make coffee so she did it for him, making it strong and awful just the way he preferred, and made herself tea to go along with it. Once both were done, she carried them to the couch where he lay. She set them on the table and without a word she lifted his arm so she could lie on the couch beside him. She draped the arm across her stomach, her back to his chest and her fingers lacing with his. “Morning.”
The last thing he wanted in the world was to be touched. He didn’t want to be pulled out of this thoughts, not when he was finally allowed to sink in to them to try to sort all of this out. He was a mess, a fucking chaotic mess of emotional turmoil he didn’t know what to even begin to do with. He was always best left alone at these times until he had sorted himself at least part of the way out, and he thought most people knew that. Lily, however, was not most people. She’d let him be for a couple of days, but it seemed enough was enough as far as she was concerned. He said nothing even when he smelled the coffee brewing from across the room and didn’t move when she came over to him. He grunted softly in protested when she moved him and crawled under his arm, but he couldn’t bring himself to pull away from her no matter how much he might want to. He didn’t want to feel calmer, to feel peace of mind when it wouldn’t get him anywhere in fixing this, but that’s what she brought him. She forced it on him and he didn’t want it.
But more than anything, he didn’t want to tell her no. He didn’t want to speak at all, so he didn’t. But he didn’t tighten his arm around her like he would have any other time. He didn’t squeeze her hand. He didn’t move at all, only continued lying there, staring at nothing, trying to get back to where he’d been in his head before she pulled him out of it. He didn’t know what to do; all of these emotions were too big for him, too complex for him to unpack in to simpler components that he knew how to wrap his head around. Wading through it was proving to be impossible, and not for the first time he wished desperately for Marlene. She never needed words to understand, but Lily didn’t speak his language, not well enough that he wouldn’t have to tell her. He didn’t know how to explain that he was afraid of loving people, that he was terrified of the words all over again, of having them thrown in his face. That he was afraid of doing nothing while he was forced to stand aside. He didn’t know how to walk away, only push, and when he didn’t want to be pushed away himself, he didn’t know how to let go. And none of it was helping, so he just said nothing. It was easier that way.
Lily couldn’t pretend to know what was going on in Sirius’ head. She wished she had a clue, had some idea what he was thinking so she would know what to say to help him. Or at least comfort him. Instead, she had to just try blindly to find something that would work. When she curled up against him, he didn’t move to hold her as he normally did, he didn’t even squeeze her hand, and she ached for how dark a place he must be that even things like that were gone from their interaction. A part of her wondered if she shouldn’t have left him alone, have stayed in her room and left him to his thoughts as long as he needed. Unfortunately, though, she discarded those thoughts quickly. She wasn’t built that way, didn’t have it in her to see someone she cared for in so much pain and to do nothing.
She didn’t force him to speak, though. She could at least manage that. He was a mess and she didn’t force him to try and sort it out in a way he wasn’t already doing. When he said nothing to her greeting, she let silence lapse between them. She had time, she had the whole morning to lie there with him and as long as he didn’t tell her to go, ask to be alone, she planned on doing just that. If they sat in silence until she had to get ready for the day, so be it. She brought the hand that she held to her lips, kissing his knuckles before she settled his arm around herself again, as if she could tell him with just that gesture that it was alright. That she didn’t mind if he said nothing, that she wasn’t asking anything of him but to let her be there for him. She wasn’t sure he could understand it, just from that, but she hoped perhaps that he would.
It took all he had in him not to recoil from her gentle touch, from the press of her lips against his skin. He didn’t deserve it. He didn’t deserve her kindness or her affection or anything at all but her spite and her scorn. Those he could swallow, those he knew how to handle. They were things woven in to the fabric of his being, but this…. this undeserved forgiveness for the things he’d done, for the damage he had caused? He didn’t know what to do with it. He started to pull away from her out of instinct, his hand tensing and twitching in her hold until he forced himself to be still. It took everything he had in him, but he didn’t move. She could force herself on him and he couldn’t force himself away from her.
He pressed his face against the cushion under his head, his eyes closing. it felt like there was pounding in his skull and fire in his veins but not the kind that made him feel alive. This was the kind that made him feel like he should crawl beneath the earth and rot there. He’d never meant to hurt Marlene, not like that. Not the way he clearly had. She’d been vulnerable and frightened, and he couldn’t get the memory of her face out of his mind when the candles behind her had exploded. It looked to everyone else like anger, white-hot and uncontrollable, but he knew better. She’d lashed out with magic beyond her control out of pain, and she had told him not to touch her. He wasn’t allowed near her now and he deserved it but he had never known the kind of emptiness and agony those words would leave him with. Don’t touch me. He thought he might have whimpered, the sound muffled by the couch he was trying to disappear in to, but he couldn’t be sure. He felt it rather than hurt it reverberating in the back of his throat, sticking and catching where it didn’t belong. He squeezed his eyes shut but it didn’t make it better. Nothing did.
She could feel his muscles tense as she kissed his hand, the way his arm began to pull back before he stopped himself and the way his hand shook in her hold. She hadn’t been close to him long but this was so very far from normal even she recognized it. A part of her felt like she was pushing him harder than he ought. She hadn’t thought he would be like this when she’d crawled into his arms. He’d been silent the past few days, had avoided the world, but she’d not imagined it would be like this. It didn’t hurt her feelings, if anything it made her heart cry out for him even more. Now that she felt how hard it was for him to even with her just there with him, she wondered if she shouldn’t just go.
The whimper was quiet, even with how close to him she was, and her face fell at the sound. His pain was so easy to see and feel, she longed to do something, anything, to lessen it. So much had gone so terribly wrong between he and Marlene, and though Marlene was her friend and Lily hated how much she was hurting, Sirius was so dear to her too. She couldn’t stand seeing either one of them do this to each other or to themselves. She shifted around so she was facing him now and she pressed a light kiss to his forehead. ”I can go, if you want,” she offered, scared that she was making it worse when she wast trying only to help. She wanted to be there for him but she didn’t know how. She opened her mouth, to say more, to give him words and comforts but closed it again without saying anything. There was nothing she could say that would make this hurt less or would solve this for him.
She turned to face him but he couldn’t look at her. He was ashamed of himself, ashamed of what he’d done and the way he’d lashed out. He was ashamed of his insecurities and instabilities and all the ways that he was wrong, but he didn’t know how to tell her. He knew she would stay if he asked her to, would stay as long as he needed her but he didn’t deserve that kindness n the least. Lily was too good for him. Fuck, they all were and that only made it worse. Her lips pressed against his forehead and he had to fight everything in him that begged him to tell her no. He wanted to tell her what was going on more than anything he could remember wanting since everything had happened, but he couldn’t. He didn’t have any words to give her at all, let alone words sufficient enough to explain the weight inside his chest.
He looked up at her, his expression soft and pleading and he wished with everything left in him that he could explain everything to her without having to find the words. No one understood him the way Marlene did and it ached that she was the only one, that no one else was on their level of raw emotional whatever to understand without it being molded to the level and sophistication of words. But they were those people, they never had been and he ached for her. He wanted someone to understand, to translate what he couldn’t say in to something that made sense, but there wasn’t anyone. There never would be. Sirius bent forward and pressed his head to Lily’s chest, barely applying any pressure at all. He still wouldn’t hold her, was barely touching her, but this was something he could do. It was hiding, but it was something. He didn’t know if it would be harder for him if she stayed like this or left, and he had no idea which to try to convey. He wasn’t sure he could manage to explain either way.
The pleading expression on his face, the look in his eyes, it told her a lot but didn’t tell her everything. Luckily, a lot was enough. She knew she couldn’t help him but that look at least told her that someone could. Someone who understood him better, maybe, who knew what each different silence Sirius was capable of meant. Lily was learning that there were many and one day she would know him well enough for all that. But for now, she didn’t have the time to try and learn. He buried his face against her chest and she tilted her head to rest over his, her lips pressing against his hair.
She laid there a moment longer, simply holding him and wishing with all her heart that it hurt. ”Love you,” she whispered against his hair finally, before she disentangled herself from the arm she had wrapped around her, the arm he hadn’t tightened and now he could have back. She took her tea from the table, leaving his coffee, and retreated to her room to get ready for the day and leave him to his thoughts.
[ Finished Thread ]