Disclaimer: The world of Harry Potter and its characters are not mine.
Warning: Sexual content, unhealthy obsession
A/N: Happy Valentine's Day. This is written for My Blood Valentine 2016, a comment fest hosted by HP Darkarts.
Towards Silence
Sirius died a little when James was near, but he felt worse when James was not there. Even when James was not by his side, Sirius could somehow feel his presence with him, beneath his skin, inside his mind. This ghost could not be exorcised, except James was hardly a ghost: substantial, tangible, and more material than the rest of the world.
A wisp of James' scent coiled around Sirius' memory, and his voice echoed in Sirius' head. Were he to close his eyes, he could see the wry smile on James' lips, a smile that at once held too much meaning and too little. The dark-haired man occupied a corner of Sirius' heart, and however hard Sirius might try, he could not banish James out of his life. He was possessed by the spirit of James Potter.
One autumnal afternoon, while James was out on a date with Lily, Sirius was alone in the flat he shared with James. The day was long, and nothing could stave off his loneliness or his jealousy—nothing except a sojourn to James' bedroom.
Sirius' fingers danced along the various decorations and joke shop goods on the shelf, but nothing caught his eye. The posters on the wall could only remain interesting for so long before he started seeing cryptic patterns that were not there. He sat down at James' desk and went through the drawers. When he came upon a bundle of letters from Lily, he bit his lip and returned the letters to where they belonged.
Sirius crossed the room and opened the wardrobe, knowing what he would find. He knew about the dirty magazines that James had transfigured into old textbooks and stashed away in a box on the top shelf. He knew about the box of condoms James had stuffed amongst his underwear in the drawer. He knew about the sex toy James had hidden beneath the false bottom of the wardrobe. There were no more secrets left for him to discover, unless it was a secret hidden inside James' head.
He pressed his lips together. He—or his guilty conscience—was merely delaying the inevitable.
After closing the wardrobe door, Sirius went into the bathroom, his gaze fixing upon the laundry basket in the corner. A thorough search yielded nothing suspicious or untoward; the only untoward part was his own action. Ignoring his own clothes, he picked up a pair of James' boxers, took a sniff, and dropped them into the basket. He repeated the same ritual to James' jeans and trousers, pressing his nose to the crotch and imagining it was James' naked crotch he was smelling.
In the end, Sirius took James' jumper and changed into it, letting the smooth fabric glide over his bare torso. The jumper had looked a little large on James, but it fit Sirius just fine. Saturated with James' scent, the jumper was the next best thing to being embraced by James in reality.
Distracted by the scent that had always made him feel giddy, Sirius stuffed the rest of the clothes back into the basket, returned to James' room, and discarded his trousers on the floor. He climbed onto the bed and buried his face in James' pillow, which smelled of James' hair. As the memory of James' naked body rose to the forefront of his mind, the hollow inside him widened ever so slightly.
Loneliness mingling with desire, Sirius pulled the blanket over his head and lay on his stomach. After wetting his fingers, he reached down and rubbed himself against the cotton bed sheet. James would be annoyed if he found out about this, Sirius thought absently as his body moved with the rhythm of his hands, his heart pounding in his chest and his breathing growing heavy. Enveloped in James' scent, he imagined those were James' hands that were stroking him; he imagined pressing up against James and giving as much pleasure as he took; he imagined seeing the same desire he felt reflected upon James' flushed face.
The session inside the little cocoon was over more quickly than Sirius had expected. Suffocating, he poked his head out of the blanket and took a gulp of fresh air. In fiction, this would be the moment when the owner of the room caught him in the act. Nevertheless, there was no one standing at the door; no one was staring at him in shock or disgust or embarrassment or arousal.
He was alone.
A bitter laugh escaped Sirius' mouth; there was no reason for him to expect anything from James. He doubted James remembered that certain drunken night when they were rolling around in bed, sweating and panting and losing themselves in each other. He doubted James was even aware of his best friend's unwholesome feelings for him.
Without ceremony Sirius threw the blanket aside and lay on his back. Somewhere deep inside him, a sense of emptiness began to spread. The ceiling stared back at him; the chill in the air cooled his feverish body; the silence was almost unbearable. His fingers glided down James' jumper and felt a splotch of wetness on the fabric. He heaved a breath. If he were to throw the jumper back into the basket and leave it there, would James notice the stain that was not there before?
Did he want James to notice? Did he want James to remember what happened that night?
Once his legs stopped shaking, Sirius got out of bed, changed back into his own clothes, and changed the sheet. Everything else was returned to its proper place. After gathering the stained jumper and the dirty sheet in his arms, he went to the bathroom, dropped the whole bundle into the basket, and took the basket full of laundry with him to be washed.
By the time James came home, the hour was late. The door to Sirius' room was closed, and there was no light creeping out from within. Assuming Sirius was asleep, James returned to his own room. There was a faint whiff of Sirius' favourite scent in the air. The new bed sheet and the pile of freshly laundered clothes gave James the answer he sought.
As James got ready for bed, he found a strand of black hair on the pillowcase. When he picked it up, it occurred to him that it was not his: his hair was thicker and coarser. After twirling the hair this way and that between his fingers for a beat or two, he dropped it into the waste basket, not knowing that in the room adjacent to his, someone was thinking about him in the dark.
Finis.