“Are we really doing this? Are we really slow-dancing?” (mARY/Sirius)
They’ve been this way for what feels like hours; his grip tight around her, pulling Mary into him, her head settling against his chest with a content sigh. A gentle flurry whirls past their window as if in unison with their own movements. Clean hands lay gentle on hips and shoulders as they sway back and forth to the slow, stringy tune playing low through the speaker of their record player. Here and now, it seems so impossible – just the two of them with nothing outside to interrupt or pull them apart. No blood to stain the porcelain sink. No mission started with nothing more than locked gazed and a reassuring nod of the head. They’d stay like this forever if only the world would let them.
“Are we really doing this?” His voice breaks their silence, words raspy as a testament to how long it’s been since he’d spoken a single word; can almost hear the smile in his tone. “Are we really slow-dancing?”
“You know we’re not.” She replies, unwilling to move from this space until she feels him tighten, not to hold her closer, but in defense. Closed eyes tighten, as if in her own protest as to what’s to come. Their swaying stops, his arms move from her hips to her arms pushing her away to look at her, brows furrowed in confusion, searching her features for any sort of explanation.
But she doesn’t need to explain, because the moment he pulls away, like snowfall from moments prior, the façade around them falls. The cold from outside their window seeps in past metal bars, whipping around damp stone, scratching at his skin between tattered cloth. Soft melodies replaced with howling wind. An engulfing darkness that swallows what little light the stars provide.
Yet Mary remains untouched, unchanged, unaffected by the harsh elements of his cell. The realization brings pause, hands shake as he pulls them from her, now dirty and scabbed and frail, but she won’t let him go that easy. She never has. Moonlit fingers intertwine with his, the juxtaposition of war torn skin against angelic imagination cementing the fact that he is in solitude; meant to suffer here alone.
It isn’t the first time she’s watched his realization, and it never gets easier. The confusion, the anger that comes with it. How could I forget where I’ve been damned to? She watches quietly as it settles in him, doesn’t flinch when knuckles connect with one of four walls around him, each of them stained with crimson from similar moments from countless days prior. Acceptance comes quicker these days, but she isn’t summoned here time and time again to let him embrace what’s happened to him. To suffer for someone else’s crimes. Maybe I didn’t do what I was put here for, but I’ve done enough to earn my place here.
“You don’t belong here, Sirius.” The one constant is how he shudders away as she closes the gap between them; either because he no longer deserves her touch, or it’s too hard to subsist that it isn’t real. How he struggles to remember if her eyes were more green or more brown. The heat he feels when her lips press against his cheek is nothing more than a evocation of her warmth. She is alive, out there somewhere, waiting for him, but she is becoming a memory. She can’t stay and he can’t keep conjuring her back to a place she doesn’t belong. Every time is meant to be the last, but she won’t let her gaze move from him, even if he’s never been able to watch the ocean mist take her.
It had been, all told, an interesting night, and as Raleigh stood over the stove, carefully waiting for the water to simmer and the kettle to boil, he reflected on that. It wasn’t every full moon that the leader of the London packs showed up beneath your window and then let you outside to get close to him. That should be, if not a measure of trust, at least an acknowledgment that Raleigh wasn’t something to be feared. Which he would take.
Raleigh stood easily in his domain, razor sharp paring knife in one hand as he peeled potatoes, Inanna’s bell-like voice echoing clearly in his head. I got you two sets of knives for Christmas, Raleigh. One for each of your jobs. Please for the love of all that is good in this world do not mix them up. I do not want to taste a traitor’s liver on my breakfast sausage. Only Inanna had the ability to italicize words with her voice, and it was one of many things he loved about his dangerous mansion-mate. He allowed himself to get lost in his thoughts for a several minutes before he heard the sound of the door to the back garden open and shut quietly, and turned to find the same werewolf that had appeared in the gardens the night before now sitting in one of the rough chairs at the kitchen island.
“Alpha Greyback…” Raleigh kept his voice even and pleasant, half-fangs only slightly visible through his shadow of a smile, “You’re just in time for breakfast.” In the most beautiful display of domestic serendipity, the kettle began to howl at the end of his sentence, only quieting when Raleigh turned to pluck it from its perch above the flame. He filled the china kettle from the brass one and allowed the tea to steep just long enough before filling a china cup that cost more than the average London monthly rent and sliding it across the wood of the counter towards Fenrir.
“Not to be presumptuous but I assume you like your steak rare?”
He received only a sigh in response as he plucked the side of meat from where it had been coming to room temperature and started to season it with one hand, pulling down a cast-iron skillet with the other as he slid from quiet kitchenwork into more industriousness.
“You don’t have to call me Alpha Greyback, Raleigh… and thank you for the tea.”
“Titles have power, Greyback. You know this as well as I do. You fought for your position, and therefore must be honored for it.”
He slapped the steak down on one side of the skillet while thinly sliced potatoes went down on the other, the gigantic kitchen quickly filled with the aroma of a hearty breakfast. Only when everything was in its proper place, cooking as it should be, did Raleigh turn to look at his guest. Fenrir Greyback in werewolf form was intimidating and powerful, and that sensation did not go away simply because he had turned back into a human. The man seated across the island from him radiated control and demanded respect without doing anything, and Raleigh admired his ability to do that. But his face fell as he saw a bandage stained red wrapped around the other man’s forearm. He flipped the steak and shuffled the potatoes around, adding a sprinkling of salt to the pan before gesturing to Fenrir with a spatula, “You should let me take a look at that while you’re eating your breakfast. I know you heal fast, but that looks deep and wounds fester faster than you realize, werewolf biology or not.” He poured himself his own cup of tea and gestured to the first aid kit on the wall, “i’m trained in more than causing grievous bodily harm. I used to patch up my brothers and sisters when they got into scrapes back home.”
He plated the steak and the potatoes; presenting them with a minor flourish as he got his guest cutlery and steak sauce. “I’ll let you take a look at it,” He heard from behind him as he rooted through the refrigerator, “If and only if, you call me by my birth name.”
Raleigh couldn’t help but chuff and quiet laugh into the expanse of the kitchen, “Very well.” He set the bottle in front of Fenrir and slung a tea-towel over his shoulder, “Fenrir… you should let me take a look at that while you’re eating your breakfast.”
Even as a human, Fenrir’s smile was positively wolfish, and he rested his arm on the countertop while he attacked his breakfast with his other hand. “Was that so terribly difficult?” He drawled out from around a mouthful of steak.
Raleigh had no response, having been raised to believe that no response was a perfectly vaild response and indeed sometimes said more than a verbal response ever could, but instead busied himself grabbing the kit from the wall, a basin of warm water, and several clean towels before taking a seat next to Fenrir and pulling the other man’s arm down across his knees, “Good thing about always wearing black jeans,” he quipped as he started to unwrap the bandage around Fenrir’s forearm, “They don’t show blood. I find that useful in several portions of my life.”
He set the bandage on the ground and started cleaning out the wound with warm water and a towel, carefully washing away the dried blood so he could get a better look at whatever it was that had caused such a blood-stained wrapping. “I won’t ask you where you got this.” He let the towel he’d been using sink into the basin, dying the water a pale pink, as he dried the exterior of the wound, “but I will tell you it’s going to take a couple of stitches to close up. But, with your biology, that should help it heal overnight then. Less work for your body to do, closing the wound itself.”
There was no response aside from the sounds of quiet chewing and the sensation that Fenrir was watching him very carefully, “I’ll reiterate again,” Raleigh’s voice was quiet in the large emptiness of the kitchen as he carefully threaded a needle, “My offer to brew your pack all the wolfsbane potion it requires for the full moon. I have ample facilities here.” He shot the other demihuman an apologetic look and slid the needle through his skin, quickly and deftly tying off the first stitch with as little extraneous motion as he could manage.
“Human-brewed wolfsbane is a punishment.” The words were ground out through clenched teeth as Raleigh worked as quickly as he could. “Only we know the secret to a painless formula, and we don’t share it and don’t even say that we can trust you.”
Raleigh paused in his work long enough to look up at Fenrir and roll his eyes, “Do you take me for a total idiot, Alpha?” He bent his head back to his work, finishing the last several stitches quickly and starting to rewrap the wound, “If you have to say you’re trustworthy, then it defeats the purpose of becoming trustworthy. It isn’t accomplished with a simple declaration. It is proven with deeds.” He wiped the edges of the bandage, and then the small damp spot on his knees from where the arm had rested and bled before beginning to clean up the mess he’d made. He didn’t like mess.
“The offer stands until such a time as I am proven trustworthy to your pack.” He stood and retied the apron around his waist, moving back to the kitchen to start working on Inanna and Peter’s breakfasts, “What was it you said when we went out for that scotch? A modern day Beauty and the Beast?” He laughed and turned back to the stove, trusting Fenrir enough to have his back to him, “I’m good for more than torture and steak, Fenrir. When I’ve proven that to you, maybe we can move onto the next part of this partnership. But I’m a patient sort-of-man. We’ll get there in our own time.”
There was no response from behind him save the sound of the garden door closing again and Raleigh chuckled under his breath, “In our own time…”
who starts putting up decorations in october?-Cass... Drew is too focused on the autumn harvest, but smiles every time he comes in from a long day outside to see another small part of the house transformed.
who buys the advent calendars?-Drew... His parents used to do it for him so now he does it for Cass. He always picks the most over the top elaborate ones he can find.
who places mistletoes all around the house?-Drew... he grumbles that it’s a weed and he needs it out of the yard and he’s just hanging it up to dry for sale... but he manages to corner Cass under it at every opportunity.
who wraps the presents for other people?-Cass... Drew is far too much of a recluse to do it.
who puts the final star/angel on the top of the christmas tree?-The first couple of christmases they fight about it... but now they do it together.
who’s the one that hates eggnog?-Drew!!! Way too cloying and sweet. Can’t stand it.
who’s the one that bakes christmas cookies for guests?-Drew. He knows he’ll never live it down if he doesn’t bring cookies to Christmas with Molly he’ll never live it down.
who sends out the christmas cards?-Cass... Drew signs his name at the bottom but never reads them. He trusts his partner to say the best things.
who knows all the words to twelve days of christmas?-They both do. They have little dances for all the verses.
who’s the better snowman builder?-They both say that they do. It’s a contest every year. They’re both so tall that the snowmen are behemoths and it always dissolves into a snowball fight.
who starts snowball fights?-Drew. Always.
who’s the one that wakes the other on christmas morning by playing christmas songs really loudly?-Cass... well he tries to. Drew is usually already awake off to do some kind of work. But he hears it through the walls and smiles and sings along.
“Everyone else reported in... four hours ago... when the deadline was.”
The soft swoosh of magic behind him, filtered through headphones that hadn’t played any music for the last hour, made him sure he wasn’t just talking to himself. His fingers drummed against the magically-locked tome on his lap and as he looked out over the lights of the city he took a deep breath; tasting the smell of money and power that made him doubly sure that Rod had walked up closer behind him. Strong hands kneaded his shoulders for a moment before one of his earbuds was plucked out.
“Silence? Mmm. Well we can’t have you talking to yourself interrupted by anything so simple and plebeian as music can we?” A barking laugh cut through the night, startling a family of pigeons from their roost next to the chimney, “Really, Petty? The Book of the Dead? I had you that concerned?”
“Either you were going to turn up dead, or I was going to kill you myself. We have protocols for a reason, Lestrange. You can play at revolution all you want until you get bored and go back to your giant mansion... but for some of us this is real.”
The sharp line of Rod’s chin pressed into the crook of his neck, lips barely brushing the edge of his ear, and it took every single ounce of Peter’s meticulously crafted self-control to keep from shivering, “Admit it, Peter. You were worried. About little old me. Sitting up here like some sailor’s wife waiting and watching the tide.”
This was the game they played; the cat and mouse where Rod always won and the only way Peter could keep from outright losing was to try to play the one card he’d never successfully been dealt; seduction. He could feel Sirius’ long-distance disapproval as he stood up and tucked the book under his arm, planting thin fingers in the center of Rod’s chest and pushing backwards until the man’s back was flush against the cold brick of the Headquarters and their chests were nearly touching.
“If you want to flirt, Rod, I’ll gladly fuck you senseless against one of these chimneys. But if you actually want to be useful to me, you’ll do what your fucking told when you go out on a mission, come back when you’re supposed to, and be a good little soldier and let those of us with brains do the actual thinking.”
He caressed Rod’s cheek for a moment before brushing past him and through the door back to his library dominion; heart pounding in his chest. He knew they played a dangerous game, and the minute he stopped surprising Rod the other man would vanish, but he found himself unable to let the useless flirtation, both physical and mental, go.
“I really need to let Sirius get me laid.” He muttered, locking the library door behind me, “The water bill from all the cold showers is ridiculous.”
vas-ncrmandy replied to your post: “Wanna go out sometime?” (Gideon/Emma lol)
I AM S C R E A M I N G these absolute idiots because OF COURSE it takes him drunk to be even the slightest bit vulnerable about her shooting him down and OF COURSE it’s his vulnerability that takes her saying yes!!!
It’s literally been seven months since I’ve given you anything to yell about and It’s added 10 years to my life
