A/N: Another one for Shira Lansys Word Count Drabble. This one is 298 and my prompts were "darkness" and "flight". These really short little drabbles are so much fun!
Title taken from the beautiful Bon Iver song "Wolves Act I & II".
He and James are the Kings of the school and you, you're just a little boy with a furry little problem and a painted on grin. For so many years, you just sit in their shadows and you smile.
You never did like people watching you.
(Except for him.)
;x;
When you've grown up, finished school, moved into a little flat with draughty windows and clanging pipes, you find yourself in a different, unfamiliar darkness.
Loneliness.
Sirius comes and goes like a restless bird. He flutters to your door in the dead of night and perches next to you chirping words of horror, terror, fear. What can you do but sit there in your stupid flat and hope the real darkness does not come to claim you?
;x;
The whispers come on a cold October night.
The sky is black as your old, worn cloak but the stars twinkle even after all that has happened. You find him curled up with ash on his hands and a lump in his throat, and you kiss him because you don't know how else to tell him that you understand, that you're sorry that this has happened, that it's okay.
You expect him to recoil, to flitter away like the flighty slip of a boy that he is. You do not expect his rough hands twisting in your hair or the growl that jumps from his throat to yours. His lips are warm and the smell of burning rubble clings to his skin, but you don't stop.
Until he whispers, "I'm sorry," and leaves.
(That night he becomes a murderer.)
;x;
(The next time you face darkness with a smile, it is in an old shack with a rat at the end of your wand and twelve years of regret slipping from your words.)