La Belle Reve
"They told me to take a street-car named Desire, and then transfer to one called Cemeteries and ride six blocks and get off at--Elysian Fields!"--
Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire
Part Two: Champion
He returned home on the brightest of all possible days a hero. His hair shone in the sun, blue-black, whipped around the justifiably proud lines of his face in the wind. There were no badges pinned, emblazoned upon the broad lines of his chest but there did not need to be. The sparkle of such badges were deep in his eyes, enriching the dark blue depths, straightening the line of his back. He was proud, and you could feel it; he was comfort itself, and you knew it; but there was also that slight sense of modesty in there, a man bragging because he wanted so badly to feel the part of the hero, despite his heart saying hey, you're not good enough, and his own inability to believe that praise which he still craved so.
He had defeated single-handedly the evil that had spread corruption throughout his treasured world, had saved his friends from death and the future generation from such misery as he prayed they would never have to fear when they were protecting their own children, the generation that would follow them. Every baby would soon know his name; every child knew his face already; everyone over the age of twenty knew in the depths of their hearts all that he had done, all that he had preserved and all that he had vanquished, and though he was so, so proud, all the insides of him were stained with a deep, hot blush he could not push away, no matter how he tried. It was nice, on the one hand, to have children whisper grand, exaggerated things as he passed by them, but it was terribly embarrassing, on the other, despite all his pride.
When he returned home, home smelled of afternoon tea and there were arms waiting for him, and then home smelled of cotton sheets and chocolate and memories.
"Welcome home," Remus said as they embraced, and moments after that they kissed, and they broke the kiss off some time later with the both of them oddly breathless in a way they had not been since childhood, since youth invigorated them and they knew nothing of Death Eaters and men who were so terrible that to give them ordinary names was to cultivate such incredible hubris inside yourself, hubris that would destroy you in seconds, hubris that could not be afforded.
"It's -- damn, it's good to be back," Sirius said softly, and he pulled away just enough so he could look around the apartment. Kept neat, of course, fastidiously so, and clean as always, with the sunlight streaming in through the window, bathing everything in its gentle warmth. Remus's hair caught that sunlight and glowed golden.
"Though I could have put it much more profoundly, I certainly can't disagree." Sirius laughed softly.
They kissed each other again.
And it was nice, Sirius learned, to be a hero returning to your own home, a place where you had not changed, and the one you loved was still waiting for you with arms opened to you. Here, Remus looked on him in the same way, touched him in the same way, kissed him in the same way.
"Bet," Sirius murmured softly, in that way he had, "the bed's just as nice as it was, before I went away, too."
"It's still as creaky and sagging and cramped as it's always been," Remus replied, pressing his cheek up against Sirius's jaw, breathing in deeply. Sirius still smelled the same, a scent tinged with the places he'd been and the people he'd met, but still the same fundamental scent that made him Sirius, untouched, unchanged. A hero or just a man, just a friend, just a lover, it didn't matter, so long as he smelled and felt of Sirius. This was the animal in Remus thinking -- and sometimes, the animal was much more intelligent than the man could ever hope to be, with all the complications of books and jumbled feelings and incompetent words.
You figured things out by smell -- this was the easiest way. Wolves knew things men did not.
"Sounds perfect," Sirius was whispering against Remus's cheek, his arms tightening around Remus's waist. They took a step backwards in unison.
"Why Mr. Black," Remus said, "let me take your coat and hat."
"Don't wear a hat, Monsieur," Sirius muttered, low in his throat. They kissed once more, and then found the door from the kitchen to the living room, Sirius still moving backwards. The furniture had been kept in all the same places, so he knew perfectly how to maneuver his way around the coffee table, past the chair, keep from tripping over the footstool, and where to go on from there to get to the bedroom door. He didn't even have to break the kiss as he fumbled at the doorknob, twisting it quickly open once he had it in his grasp.
They fell against the bed and it groaned out a creak of protest. They hadn't, unfortunately, been together on this bed, their bed, in quite a long time.
It was a nice way to say I missed you.
They'd missed each other very much.
In their kisses were murmurs, perhaps wordless, perhaps making no sense at all, little mumbles of love, secret intimacies and sweet nothings against skin and lips. They caressed freshly bared flesh, seeking out the places on each other's bodies they remembered as sensitive, that would cause a gasp or a soft, wonderful cry to pass between the junction of their mouths. As the afternoon sunlight faded from gold to burnished, darker bronze, the early afternoon passing away into late afternoon, a time where the sun was about to sink below the horizon and bathe all things in darkness, they made love in a way that had nothing to do with the animals in them that wanted sheer physical satisfaction; rather, it was the packmates in them that desired so greatly to never be separated beneath sun or moon or clouds.
The back of Remus's knee was a weak spot.
The insides of Sirius's thighs, if you kissed them just so, could send his back arching and his eyes squeezed shut and little yelps of pleasure into the air above him, like some sort of beautiful prayer.
When you pulled Remus up onto your lap and stroked the back of his neck, his face bowed over your shoulder and kissing there absently, parting his hair, you could feel the shivers running down the center of his back, convulsing deep in his stomach.
When you kneaded at Sirius's lower back you could feel a scar here and a scar there but the ultimate softness of his tanned skin, the ultimate firmness of his muscles beneath, and the little vertebrae beneath the muscles, and the nerve endings beneath the vertebrae, so strong but so, so vulnerable it made you want to cry, only perhaps you really shouldn't, not in this exquisite moment.
And when they orgasmed it was quiet but blinding, moments that came together as if timed, so perfectly like that, and as the stars flooded their eyesight they were silent, bodies crushed close, as they belonged.
A hero, when he returned, could fall asleep satisfied and whole in the embrace of his lover's arms, muscles relaxed, dreams unnecessary for all that he would wake to was all he could ever hope to dream about.