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Dec. 10th, 2006 06:23 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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small_giftsTitle: three ways they didn't talk about the war
Author/Artist:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
eudaimon
Written for:liseuse
Rating: NC17
Summary and/or Prompt: They do not talk about the war.
Any other random notes, warnings, etc.: n/a
PACK YOUR BAGS, YOUR ROOM'S FOR LET
THEY'RE PUTTING UP THE BARRICADES
AND LAYING OFF ALL BETS
I'VE NEVER SEEN SO MANY PEOPLE SMOKE
SO MANY CIGARETTES.
- "Morning Rain", I Am Kloot
A coffee shop like any other in a city that could be any other, but this time, it's London near Christmas and Len McKinnon has just died. She is sitting opposite him at a little table cramped in a corner and she smooths her new coat over her knees, and she's trying to work out when it happened. She isn't quite sure when this became who he is, now...when he went from being that bruised but golden boy who she knew in school and became something very deeply else. She's nineteen and newly married and when she danced with him at her wedding he still looked like a boy in his dad's suit, but now he looks like a boy under a soldier's face, and, oh, that hurts her heart.
She leans in so that he can light her cigarette with his lighter. Her dad had one just like it. It occurs to her that they measure their lives in little things now, that they rail against the temptation to let war make everything bigger than it has to be. This is her eighth cigarette today, which means there are twelve left in the pack. They order two coffees. She thinks about cake.
"I'm worried about him, Lil," says Remus Lupin, with his fringe of golden hair and his jacket with leather patches and his cigarette not yet lit against his bottom lip. When he was younger he looked like an Angel. She always expected to fall in love with him, but it's funny, how life turns out.
"We all are."
"Are you, though?" he says, and what he means is you've got your own life to take care of, and you've forgotten all about us, Lily Potter. Shame on you.
"Yes, Remus. I am." He has Muggle badges on the lapel of his coat, slogans, rockbands, and it all means nothing. How easy it is to make ghosts, how easy it would be to make ghosts out of any of them, and, she wants to know where this angry young man, this firebrand, this hero sitting across the table from her came from. She knows that he bought the jacket in a charity shop (or Sirius bought it for him). She wants to know where all the belief came from.
She flicks ash from her cigarette, just as he lights his.
-
The sex is not always good. They leave each other notes scribbled on napkins; "I want you", "I need you", "come to bed when you get home", "fuck me". Never "I love you" though. That would be too much or not enough. Sirius has terrible handwriting and smokes too much. He lights one cigarette with the embers of the one before it, and he paces, and he rages. Sirius pours over lists of names and writes the dead on the corners of pages and Remus sits against the back of the couch and smokes and tries to count the pieces of his spine. Sirius has a scar from when he fell over the banister when he was three years old.
Sometimes, Remus fucks him to keep him quiet.
They do not talk about the war.
Spread out, slick and naked, Sirius is a work of art. He is a peace treaty. He is...Remus doesn't know quite what he is, but he does know that the sex will be good tonight because it has to be, because he got home to a note on a napkin in the middle of the table and came straight to be, and found Sirius like something from a painting, naked and smoking in the rumpled sheets. He looks like an album cover, the shiny wing of his black hair hanging in his eyes, and, oh, they were wicked boys when they were younger, and oh, he'd longed for this for years. He strips off his clothes while Sirius watches him, and it still makes him blush like it did when he was sixteen, even though he's an adult now, even though they've been dong this one way or another for years. Sirius has one scar and Remus has more scars than he can count, and some of them are mundane, and some of them aren't. He likes the mundane ones. They make him feel like something ordinary, like nothing special, like Sirius' boyfriend, getting into bed.
They do not talk about the war.
They do not talk at all, really, during. Sirius curls his arm over his head, fingers holding his cigarette twisted around the metal frame of the bed as Remus pushes into him, as his body arches. Sometimes, it's fast, hard, about something bigger them themselves. Sometimes it's about reminding themselves that they exist, and if that means scars and red marks and not quite looking each other in the eye at breakfast, then say be it. Sometimes, Remus wants Sirius to put his cigarette out on his shoulder, which means that he wants to remember that he's still alive.
They do not talk about the war.
Remus' cock, Sirius thinks, is perfect. If you ever needed an excuse to be in love with someone, a cock like that would be it. He laughs but it gets lost in Remus' mouth and becomes a moan, and the kiss tastes of cigarettes and firewhiskey sneaked in sips behind a greenhouse, and the cake at Lily and James' wedding and gunpowder. Oh, it's going to be lonely after you turn me in, traitor, lover, fucking bastard, but I love you I love you I love you I love your cock and the way you look at me and the way you fuck me and the way you hold me together. I love you and that you don't care what I have or what I don't. You don't care that I'm ruined and neither do I I don't I don't oh give me my fucking sin again. Just don't talk to me about the fucking war.
The sex isn't always good, sometimes it's horrible, dry, a drought, but it's best when they're not talking about the war.
They come almost together, and Sirius almost drops his cigarette, but in the end he doesn't.
And he almost says I love you, but in the end, he doesn't.
In the middle of the kitchen table there's a note written on a napkin crumpled by a hand.
"You remind me that I'm real."
Which means, I love you, and don't talk to me about the war.
-
A coffee shop like any other in a city that could be any other, but this time, it's Leeds near Christmas and Len McKinnon has just died. Andromeda is looking at him, and she's trying to work out where he went, her beautiful baby cousin, who had freckled in the sun. This boy sitting opposite her has shadows under his eyes and a battered leather jacket that she thinks that she remembers and he lights one cigarette with the dying end of the one before it.
"You smoke too much," she says, but, when he offers her a cigarette, she takes one. Ted's been gone for three months or four now, and the taste of the cigarette reminds her of Ted sitting on the steps and smoking, and she suddenly wants to scream about what war took from them, and what she wants back.
"I know I do," he says. "You didn't have to go, Andy. You didn't have to leave."
"Yes, I did," she says. "He was here. I didn't have anything to stay for. You know what I mean, Sirius." You, with your golden boy and your too short time. Don't you dare tell me that you don't know what I mean.
"Yeah," he says, and then he bends his head, a cigarette still between his lips as he scrawls something on a napkin and presses it into her hand. She doesn't look at it until he's gone.
"I hate this fucking war," he's written. Sirius has terrible handwriting.
She knows exactly what he means.
Author/Artist:
eudaimonWritten for:
liseuseRating: NC17
Summary and/or Prompt: They do not talk about the war.
Any other random notes, warnings, etc.: n/a
PACK YOUR BAGS, YOUR ROOM'S FOR LET
THEY'RE PUTTING UP THE BARRICADES
AND LAYING OFF ALL BETS
I'VE NEVER SEEN SO MANY PEOPLE SMOKE
SO MANY CIGARETTES.
- "Morning Rain", I Am Kloot
A coffee shop like any other in a city that could be any other, but this time, it's London near Christmas and Len McKinnon has just died. She is sitting opposite him at a little table cramped in a corner and she smooths her new coat over her knees, and she's trying to work out when it happened. She isn't quite sure when this became who he is, now...when he went from being that bruised but golden boy who she knew in school and became something very deeply else. She's nineteen and newly married and when she danced with him at her wedding he still looked like a boy in his dad's suit, but now he looks like a boy under a soldier's face, and, oh, that hurts her heart.
She leans in so that he can light her cigarette with his lighter. Her dad had one just like it. It occurs to her that they measure their lives in little things now, that they rail against the temptation to let war make everything bigger than it has to be. This is her eighth cigarette today, which means there are twelve left in the pack. They order two coffees. She thinks about cake.
"I'm worried about him, Lil," says Remus Lupin, with his fringe of golden hair and his jacket with leather patches and his cigarette not yet lit against his bottom lip. When he was younger he looked like an Angel. She always expected to fall in love with him, but it's funny, how life turns out.
"We all are."
"Are you, though?" he says, and what he means is you've got your own life to take care of, and you've forgotten all about us, Lily Potter. Shame on you.
"Yes, Remus. I am." He has Muggle badges on the lapel of his coat, slogans, rockbands, and it all means nothing. How easy it is to make ghosts, how easy it would be to make ghosts out of any of them, and, she wants to know where this angry young man, this firebrand, this hero sitting across the table from her came from. She knows that he bought the jacket in a charity shop (or Sirius bought it for him). She wants to know where all the belief came from.
She flicks ash from her cigarette, just as he lights his.
-
The sex is not always good. They leave each other notes scribbled on napkins; "I want you", "I need you", "come to bed when you get home", "fuck me". Never "I love you" though. That would be too much or not enough. Sirius has terrible handwriting and smokes too much. He lights one cigarette with the embers of the one before it, and he paces, and he rages. Sirius pours over lists of names and writes the dead on the corners of pages and Remus sits against the back of the couch and smokes and tries to count the pieces of his spine. Sirius has a scar from when he fell over the banister when he was three years old.
Sometimes, Remus fucks him to keep him quiet.
They do not talk about the war.
Spread out, slick and naked, Sirius is a work of art. He is a peace treaty. He is...Remus doesn't know quite what he is, but he does know that the sex will be good tonight because it has to be, because he got home to a note on a napkin in the middle of the table and came straight to be, and found Sirius like something from a painting, naked and smoking in the rumpled sheets. He looks like an album cover, the shiny wing of his black hair hanging in his eyes, and, oh, they were wicked boys when they were younger, and oh, he'd longed for this for years. He strips off his clothes while Sirius watches him, and it still makes him blush like it did when he was sixteen, even though he's an adult now, even though they've been dong this one way or another for years. Sirius has one scar and Remus has more scars than he can count, and some of them are mundane, and some of them aren't. He likes the mundane ones. They make him feel like something ordinary, like nothing special, like Sirius' boyfriend, getting into bed.
They do not talk about the war.
They do not talk at all, really, during. Sirius curls his arm over his head, fingers holding his cigarette twisted around the metal frame of the bed as Remus pushes into him, as his body arches. Sometimes, it's fast, hard, about something bigger them themselves. Sometimes it's about reminding themselves that they exist, and if that means scars and red marks and not quite looking each other in the eye at breakfast, then say be it. Sometimes, Remus wants Sirius to put his cigarette out on his shoulder, which means that he wants to remember that he's still alive.
They do not talk about the war.
Remus' cock, Sirius thinks, is perfect. If you ever needed an excuse to be in love with someone, a cock like that would be it. He laughs but it gets lost in Remus' mouth and becomes a moan, and the kiss tastes of cigarettes and firewhiskey sneaked in sips behind a greenhouse, and the cake at Lily and James' wedding and gunpowder. Oh, it's going to be lonely after you turn me in, traitor, lover, fucking bastard, but I love you I love you I love you I love your cock and the way you look at me and the way you fuck me and the way you hold me together. I love you and that you don't care what I have or what I don't. You don't care that I'm ruined and neither do I I don't I don't oh give me my fucking sin again. Just don't talk to me about the fucking war.
The sex isn't always good, sometimes it's horrible, dry, a drought, but it's best when they're not talking about the war.
They come almost together, and Sirius almost drops his cigarette, but in the end he doesn't.
And he almost says I love you, but in the end, he doesn't.
In the middle of the kitchen table there's a note written on a napkin crumpled by a hand.
"You remind me that I'm real."
Which means, I love you, and don't talk to me about the war.
-
A coffee shop like any other in a city that could be any other, but this time, it's Leeds near Christmas and Len McKinnon has just died. Andromeda is looking at him, and she's trying to work out where he went, her beautiful baby cousin, who had freckled in the sun. This boy sitting opposite her has shadows under his eyes and a battered leather jacket that she thinks that she remembers and he lights one cigarette with the dying end of the one before it.
"You smoke too much," she says, but, when he offers her a cigarette, she takes one. Ted's been gone for three months or four now, and the taste of the cigarette reminds her of Ted sitting on the steps and smoking, and she suddenly wants to scream about what war took from them, and what she wants back.
"I know I do," he says. "You didn't have to go, Andy. You didn't have to leave."
"Yes, I did," she says. "He was here. I didn't have anything to stay for. You know what I mean, Sirius." You, with your golden boy and your too short time. Don't you dare tell me that you don't know what I mean.
"Yeah," he says, and then he bends his head, a cigarette still between his lips as he scrawls something on a napkin and presses it into her hand. She doesn't look at it until he's gone.
"I hate this fucking war," he's written. Sirius has terrible handwriting.
She knows exactly what he means.
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