Title: Close your eyes, dear.
Pairing: Remus/Sirius
Disclaimer: I wish.
Summary: Sirius has never been very good at sharing.

Sirius had never been very good at sharing - and that's where it had all gone wrong, really. Five years old, heavy strides across the garden to stand with his arms folded and a scowl on his face; towering over his little brother, expectantly.

"That's mine." he hissed, under his breath and possessive. Not claiming just that one innocent little cauldron but everything Reguluus planned to take, everything he was eyeing up. Territorial and succint. "That's mine." and his father had commended him. Sirius had been sure, if he squinted, if he pushed his top lip as far against his nose as it could go - the way his father's eyes had creased together tightly or the way his jaw twisted, almostalmost it could have been mistaken for a smile.

Reguluus just sat there, tapping his chubby fingers against the concrete and trying to avoid the glare of the sun from hitting the edge of the grass as he stumbled across concrete to line rocks up like soldiers.

"They're mine too, you know." Sirius muttered before turning on his heel and running to the edge of the fence where an ice cream truck slowly faded in the distance. "What a stupid song." - rash and blunt, offhandedly. A flock of dungarees with skimmed knees and shoelaces trailing behind, a swarm of kids, all running after it. His mother ruffled his hair awkwardly and gave him two helpings of dessert. He didn't understand why but she said they were proud of him, all the same.

At seventeen, his gut clenched when he thought about it.
At fourteen, he still had lines of angry howlers pushed under his bed.
At twelve, he was a disappointment.

"What's wrong with muggles?" he asked his Uncle, the one with the shaggy beard and long hair that Sirius thought made him look like it'd all been cut around a dotted line to make room for his face to breathe. He never asked, but he always tilted his head curiously when a loose hairtie dangled at the bottom.

"Muggles?" his Uncle would reply and glance around. At nine years old, he thought it was to check none were hiding under the stairs or in the back of the broom closet, right behind the box of family photographs his parents had deemed unsuitable. Mostly of his cousin, Andromeda, and he still didn't really get it because he thought she looked quite pretty in them. As pretty as an eight year old boy could admit to thinking, anyway, but he still knew she probably had cooties.

("They make your head grow twice the size of your body!" he'd explained to Reguluus, "And your skin turns purple. But it's okay for girls because it's dormant. It only effects us if we touch them.")

"There's nothing wrong with muggles --" his Uncle said softly, pressed right down against his ear, "But don't tell your mother I said that. Lets call it our secret okay?" And Sirius didn't think about anything else then. He didn't think about girls or about his brother. He thought about what it was like to have something that only belonged to him. Something nobody else could take and something he didn't have to push his way into claiming.

All the brooms and chess sets and books hiding under his bed - they didn't seem as important when he had a secret. A secret for just him and his uncle.

His grin pulled his lips taut against his teeth and he nodded emphatically, "Our secret."

At ten, his mother told him stories - how muggles would cram eight people into a rough little house and breed and breed until the sweat bled through the walls and all the children had to share a tiny little bed in the attic. How the muggles would try and force their way into their world, the wizarding world, how they all wanted a better life and a more magical life and - how they'd breed with wizards, how a muggle girl might try to breed with him. And then he'd be dirty.

"What about muggle boys?" he bit his lip and his brother's face pulled itself into a look of disgust.

"That's just weird."

His mother compsed herself and continued whilst Sirius watched the traces of daylight disappearing along the hardwood floor, creeping beneath the doorframe and into the garden. He wanted to chase them. To ignore this, to ignore them and keep running until he was out of breath and his lungs burnt.

"You have no reason to ever be involved with muggle boys." he was told and he shrugged, "Hogwarts is a wonderful place to find an appropriate, pureblood, female."

At the station with his shoes digging into his ankles and his laces pressing down too hard, he'd smiled at a blonde girl with chipped pink nailpolish and a big green suitcase. He'd waved at a broad-shouldered brunette rolling her eyes at her parents.

"Remember --" his father whispered as he leaned down to give him a hug, "Your character is determined by who you mix with, who you meet. Not by which house you're sorted into. No matter what your mother says."

As the engine of the train shook the carriages, Sirius pressed himself awkwardly against a window - two older boys pushing past, running. Robes tugged between them.

"Ignore them --" a small boy laughed from the doorway opposite and Sirius looked up, for the first time, noticing an open carriage with a huddle of small children in a variety of lopsided clothing. Thick black glasses sat on the boy's face and he leaned his shoulder out against the frame, aiming a polished wand down the hall.

"That should do it." he smirked, "He'll look like he got his cornflakes stuck on his face now. I'm James by the way."

Sirius nodded, looking around like he remembered his Uncle doing nervously and paused.

"Sirius Black."

He thought that must have been the turning point, remembering what his father had said, that must have been when he made the wrong decision that still felt like the right one. But he was thirteen then and completely besotted with the idea of teenage rebellion. It should have been a sign when he got sorted into Gyrffindor. When he went back for summer and all of his stuff had been moved to Reguluus's room and when he'd tried to take it back, his brother had cocked his head; "It's mine."

"No, it's mine." Sirius had argued and he still wasn't very good at sharing but his mother had given him a piece of parchment and a quill telling himself to 'make it all better'. Dinner, every night, had him sitting in his best dress robes with ink stained fingers and the words "I should have been in Slytherin" covering his walls.

And Reguluus was better than him, then. The one thing he couldn't handle. His brother was better than him because he wasn't a fucking Gryffindor.

At sixteen he put posters of muggle girls all over his bedroom at home, scantily clad - breasts and hips and thighs jutted out at odd angles with alluring 'come to bed' eyes and thick mascara. At sixteen his mother locked him in until he took them down and he ran away to James's after going three days without food.

At sixteen, in the middle of summer, he decided he wanted to fall in love.
At sixteen, in the middle of summer, he kissed Remus.

It was everything his parents were against, he was everything his parents were against and as their lips pressed together hastily by the giant oak in the Potter's backyard he couldn't help the sharp shudder his heart gave as he reeled with the force of what he'd done.

People would see them at school. His brother would see them. Hands down pants by the potions classroom, yes, and they'd all know then. The biggest 'fuck you' he could give them but they wouldn't get it. Because, he realised, they didn't know. They didn't know about Remus.

Letters and letters, reams of ink, and it had been a hiss under his breath to Snape in the corridor because, even though he was supposed to hate him now, Reguluus was still his brother. And he didn't want to be the golden child without competition.

James punched him. Hard. Peter backed away and Remus wouldn't talk to him.

"But you don't understand --" he'd started, rocking back and forth on his heels in the infirmary.

"No, Sirius --" Remus shot back hollowly and neither dared look at the other, "I understand perfectly. You may not be part of the family anymore, but you'll always be a bloody Black."

He didn't share. He didn't.
A hanging pressure of remorse shook the back of his eyes and inched its way down his spine as he lay restlessly in bed. Behind thick red curtains - his wand pressed against the bedsheets turning tiny squares a sharp green colour until he couldn't see anything but splintered wood. He read all of the letters then. Every last one telling him he'd shown so much hope with the scribbled signature of his mother or father at the bottom.

And he'd done it. They knew. They knew how much of a fucking failure he was and they could see exactly what they'd turned him into. He'd pushed and pushed and pushed and he wondered, vageuly, if those posters were still hanging limply in his room or if they'd found a way to cover them with some kind of reminder as to how much they hated him now. Or if his name was even still on the door.

"You're such a wanker." James told him, "Remus bloody worshipped you. Don't know why. He was right, you know, you're still one of them."

But he didn't apologise. He didn't say anything. He started climbing in Remus's bed when he was asleep and it wasn't any sort of gratitude, it was embarrassment, if anything.

At eighteen, fresh out of Hogwarts, he realised they were right. Remus moved in with Amelia from the apartment below and Sirius's anger flared enough to tell her. To tell her everything.

"You're mine." he hissed, one hand pressing an icepack to his eye where James had, once again, socked him hard. "You're fucking mine." Sirius whimpered, collapsing in front of Remus and half hugging him because he really didn't know how else he was supposed to deal with something like that.

About five minutes later, when Remus's hand half knotted in his hair and edged him back, Sirius realised he was incapable of real love and he told Peter via firecall at four in the morning.

"It's just - I'd have been quite happy for him to be with her but she was a fucking Slytherin -- he -- she -- they shouldn't be able to waltz in and just take everything they want, saying damn the consequences."

"She isn't Reguluus, you know." Peter told him calmly and he grit his teeth together and slammed a bottle of firewhisky down on the table.

"Well. Fuck."

He was almost nineteen before him and Remus slept together. He was pretty sure it wasn't just because he couldn't have him but he was also damn certain it had nothing to do with loving him either. It was attraction. It was -- it was claiming, it was all about claiming him. "Mine --" he breathed damply against Remus's bare neck as it arched up in the moonlight, "Fucking -- mine --" and his hands clumsily tugged at Remus's belt and pressed his hands against the wall, pinning their bodies still with his hips until Remus started to moan.

At James's and Lily's wedding he dragged him off to the bathroom and shoved his tongue so far back in Remus's throat they both started to gag.

"Actively -- looking -- my arse --" he spat out before bending Remus over the toilet and fucking him until he was sick from having his face pressed up against the peeling rim.

"It's not what you think." he told Lily when she caught them and she shook her head.

"No, Sirius, I'm pretty sure it's not what you think."

And then he had a secret again. A bigger secret, and he still had the one between him and his Uncle nestled safely in the back of his throat. He had a secret when him and Remus slurred drunkenly into one another's mouths.

"Muggles aren't that bad --" he laughed, pausing, "You're not that bad. Even if you are a fucking pathetic werewolf."

At twenty one, he couldn't remember anything past being sixteen and that one summer by the oak tree. At twenty one, he had no secrets and he realised, pressed against the inside of a cell, Remus really had been the fucking love of his life.

Because, really, as a Black, that had been the closest he could ever expect to get to it.

"Mine --" he mumbled in his sleep, "--mine--" because for all he hated Peter now, for everything, Sirius didn't share. And just like he hadn't shared Remus (still didn't), he wasn't going to let anyone else beat the fucker down for what he'd done.