Chapter Eight | Decies repetita placebit
[Though ten times repeated, it will continue to please]
Sirius Black has always been one of those beautiful human beings. The sort of man that others look up to. The sort who can charm his way out of anything, with just the flash of a smile. Vivian's always known it, of course. Even back when she loathed the very ground he walked on, she'd have to be blind not to realize that Sirius has been blessed with a certain cavalier beauty that is impossible to deny. Yes, she knows it, but it's never quite struck her in the same way it does in this moment. There's just something about the way the sun gently captures his features that enraptures her, and the way his hair falls into his eyes as he breathes deeply in peace, and the softness of his expression as that peace overrides the usual fire that he exhibits in his waking hours. Or, perhaps, what really strikes her above all of these things is the fact that he is right there, so close to her that she can feel the warmth of his body radiating from his skin, as if that fire is still smoldering even now. Sirius Black really is beautiful, which, despite being aware of this, is something that Vivian Blair would have never admitted before he had so thoroughly overturned her life. Nor, she muses, would she admit it now, if only because she knows that it would stoke his ego far too much.
The thought makes her smile. She reaches out to touch a strand of his hair and threads it behind his ear. Her fingers are so tentative and her touch so slight that she doesn't expect him to feel it at all, which is why she's surprised when he reaches up to take her hand and presses her fingers against his lips.
"…I know I look gorgeous in the mornings, Vivian, but you don't have to stare," he mumbles into his pillow.
Upon realizing that he had actually been awake and not asleep as she had assumed, she feels her cheeks flush. The horror of blushing because of something Sirius Black said makes her flush all the more, and not even her immediate attempts to scoff off the situation helps her.
"You're so full of yourself," she mutters, making sure to set her features into a proper scowl just in case. The insurance policy against her own embarrassment hardly helps her either though, because the moment Sirius opens his eyes and catches sight of her reddened cheeks, a grin like no other begins to spread over his face.
Honestly, it's moments like these that Vivian remembers that he's got some Slytherin in him yet.
"Godric, you're blushing," he crows, releasing her hand so that he can push himself onto his elbows and subsequently get a better look at her face.
Vivian's scowl grows more pronounced. As does her blush.
"For the last time, don't call me that," she snaps, and promptly rolls over so that her back is facing him.
Sirius barks out a laugh. A moment later, he's shuffling closer and peering down at her with that annoying Slytherin grin still etched across his face. "See?" he gloats, "Since you were just admiring my good looks, you can admit that you like waking up next to each other. Don't you wish you hadn't been so stubborn about it before?"
She elbows him (rather gently, truth be told) and he cringes (rather dramatically, if you ask her) and she mutters, "You have an annoying tendency of making me regret being nice to you, Sirius."
He snickers and props his elbow onto the pillow before resting his head on his hand. In a sarcastic tone, he fires back, "Oh, so finally caving and letting me get a good night's sleep for the first time in what feels like ages is you being 'nice' now?"
She pauses at this and rolls onto her back to look up at him. After a moment's hesitation, Vivian asks, "Was it really that bad?"
He raises an eyebrow. "What, sleeping on a lumpy mattress? It wasn't exactly a walk in the park." When he sees her expression, which is just guilty enough to make her eyebrows furrow, he huffs out a laugh and adds, "It's fine, Vivian. I didn't really mind that much." Then, with a slightly more mischievous gleam in his eyes, he shuffles closer and murmurs, "But I like this particular arrangement a hell of a lot better."
Once again, she feels a flush come to her cheeks, but it's only the barest hint of warmth, and it's mainly because of the way he's looking at her. His eyes are open fields, drawn to her as if by some hidden force that dwells just beneath their surface. There is a quiet magnetism there that makes her reach for him. She feels a smile curving over her lips when she murmurs, "I do, too."
Sirius grins again, but this time there isn't anything Slytherin about it. No, this time, his smile is open and bathed in sincerity, and when she pulls him down, his eyes are absolutely shining.
"…Does that mean we can throw that mattress out?" he murmurs as his lips brush against hers. An expression, half tempered with mischief, sweeps over his face.
Vivian laughs. She curls her fingers into his hair and tugs him closer, urging him to kiss her more solidly. She doesn't respond to him in any way save for the urgency of her kiss, which Sirius rightfully takes as a response in itself. He sinks into the kiss with a low hum and mumbles, "…I knew you wouldn't be able to resist me for very long."
Vivian's only response to this is to thread her fingers into his hair and pull him closer, effectively shutting him up in a way that Sirius can't find any fault with whatsoever. The lingering sleep leaves him with every second that passes, until he is pressing her into the mattress with an exhaled sigh and reaching up to tangle his fingers into her hair, too. The strands are like silk against his fingertips.
There is something sacred about this morning, Vivian decides as her hands drift down his back to map out the curves and planes of it. She wonders why she had been so tentative about sharing a bed before. It seems so silly, now; a hesitance that she had clung to, unnecessarily, as if she had been trying to shield herself from surrendering to the life she had willingly decided to pursue. Why? Had she truly been that apprehensive? She supposes she had, but only because it had been such a large step to take.
Some pills are bitter to swallow. The realization that her path led irrevocably away from that of her family's had been difficult to accept. She doesn't regret her choice, but it hadn't been an easy one to make. Her parents may not be the most expressive where it concerns showing their love for her, but deep down, Vivian knows that they both do love her – yes, even her father, despite his actions and his direction. Blood is thicker than water, even when it has been tainted. Keeping some semblance of distance between herself and Sirius had perhaps been a sort of strategy to ensue that she didn't bite off more than she could chew, but she had been fooling herself to think that it had been the right course of action. There is nothing she wants more than Sirius Black, and she decides to stop pretending otherwise when she presses her hands against his chest and pushes him off of her. If for a split second, Sirius thinks that this move is a means to halt their kiss, he is proven very wrong when Vivian pushes him onto his back and promptly captures his lips once more in a kiss that is touched with more fire than it had been a moment before. He's hardly about to complain, though.
"Yeah, we're definitely throwing out that mattress," he murmurs, voice low and heady as Vivian fits her body against his and does her best to shut him up. She isn't really in the mood for words, which, to be frank, he also can't complain about.
He reaches for her hips to pull her against him, grasping the thin fabric of her nightshirt and tangling his fingers into it so tightly that it creases easily beneath his grasp. He isn't sure what he had been expecting the morning to bring, but it certainly hadn't been this. They've shared plenty of moments together since moving into the cottage, but Vivian has always put an end to those moments before they could grow too impassioned. He hadn't stopped her or complained about that, either. He's well aware how sudden this move had been for her. How quickly life can change and how you are sometimes left reeling in the wake of those changes. It feels as if you have been unmoored too quickly, swept off too swiftly. He knows that feeling well enough. He's been there before.
But now, as Vivian's hand shifts over his chest, as her kiss steals more than just his breath, he is reminded of the way she had kissed him before that unmooring had happened. Yes, before, back when she was still warring with herself and her choices; back during those detentions when she would pour out her indecisiveness into those kisses. He hadn't thought of it in those terms then, but it feels, oddly, as if a piece of the puzzle now drops into place, and it is only now that he realizes it had been missing at all.
The thought softens the passion that has filled him. He sits up, suddenly and without pausing to think on his actions. The kiss breaks as a result and Vivian's brows furrow with confusion, but Sirius is quick to quell it when he raises a hand to her face and pulls her back into him. Only, this time the kiss is different somehow, altered in such a way so as to imitate the softer version of his love for her.
If she notices the change, she doesn't show it, but there is something in her eyes that tells him she does. She stares at him for several heartbeats, and then she edges forward to encircle her arms around his neck in an almost tentative manner. He can't quite describe it, but it feels a bit like surrender.
"Tell me again," he whispers, folding his arms around her to keep her in place. His hand burns against her lower back. The warmth of his fingers is so poignant that it feels almost as if there is no barrier at all between their skin.
Vivian raises her eyebrows at him as if she isn't sure what he means, but that would be a lie and Sirius knows it. He can see the flash of understanding in her eyes. Vivian Blair can't fool him as well as she likes to believe.
"…Tell you what?" she whispers back, though her mouth is now quirking up just so and any attempt at pretending to be clueless is rather defeated by the expression.
Sirius rests his forehead against hers and quietly grins, "Do I really have to drag it out of you every damn time?"
Vivian's smile quirks up a touch more.
"Drag what out of me?" she wonders. Then, when Sirius sends her a look, she laughs, threads her fingers into his hair, and drags his head back. To her delight, his breath catches when she lowers her mouth to his neck and says in a clear voice, "I love you."
His breath catches again when her tongue darts against his skin.
"I love you," he hears her say.
He swallows, grasps her tightly, and nearly groans when her teeth scrapes against his collar.
"I love you, Sirius," she tells him, low and fierce. And really, it's the way she says his name that really topples the rest of his self-control. The way she nearly growls it. The way it's bathed with wildfire.
"Vivian, you make me crazy," he hoarsely informs her, and pulls her down once more to the mattress. This time, it's her breath that catches when Sirius kisses her with so much fire that she swears she feels it in every part of her, like one unending wave.
Unfortunately, though, that's about the time when their morning comes to an abrupt and aggravating halt, courtesy of one James Potter, whose favorite hobby just so happens to be making Vivian's life much more challenging than it need be.
"GOOD MORNING!" comes a very loud, very obnoxious voice, and the very next moment, the bedroom door is slamming open and that voice crows, "Get your mind out of the gutter, you two. I brought bagels!"
Upon hearing the loud and obnoxious shout, Sirius had jumped almost comically. Now, he turns to the bedroom doorway to send his friend a ridiculously baffled look, complete with wide eyes and mussed up hair. As for Vivian, her gaze narrows so quickly that it can only be from the result of years spent honing her Slytherin Glare, which is quite useful every now and again, especially when dealing with Potter.
"Prongs?" Sirius asks, sounding incredibly confused.
Vivian rolls her eyes and scowls at James, thoroughly annoyed that he had interrupted such a promising moment. "What the hell are you doing here and why did you bring bagels, Potter," she demands, not even bothering to lift her voice at the end of her question. To be honest, while James's appearance is a bit of a shock (this is their house, after all), she can't exactly claim to be that surprised (this is James Potter, you know).
James's expression shifts into the smirk he often gets whenever he's in a particularly strong Marauding mood. He shrugs innocently and eyes the scene before him. The innocent shrug doesn't lessen the mischief of his smirk at all. In fact, it only increases it.
"Oh, I'm sorry," he says, "I'm not interrupting anything, am I?"
He sounds so sarcastic that the first response Vivian thinks of is to reach behind her, grab her pillow, and throw it at him. It doesn't do much good, but it does make her feel somewhat mollified.
"I will hex you," she warns, which makes her feel even better.
James, though, just laughs, "You've threatened to hex me so many times but you never ha – " his words are cut off with a yelp as Vivian grabs her wand, and the rest of his sentence is muffled because James knows better than to allow himself to be such an easy target, thank you, and it's much safer to move to the hallway. "Okay, okay!" he calls, "I only came to tell you that the next Order meeting is being rescheduled to tomorrow evening."
Sirius, who appears to have stopped reeling from James's sudden appearance and is now feeling a bit more frustrated with said appearance, barks, "You interrupted us to tell us that?"
Vivian tilts her head back in exasperation and goes to stand up. Sirius frowns and looks as if he'd like to complain, but seeing as James is poking his head into the room, he ultimately doesn't.
"Moody told me that Dumbledore's concocting a better way to send messages between us, but he hasn't perfected it yet," James says, then clears his throat when he realizes that Vivian is still glowering at him and ducks back into the hallway. He calls, "Besides, it's not as if you can't go back to snogging each other's brains out once I leave!"
Vivian turns to Sirius and growls, "Go get rid of him, Sirius."
James, pouting, calls, "Oi, I don't appreciate that, Pride. I brought you bagels."
"You can take your bagels and shove them up your – "
Sirius coughs, "Prongs, the next time you decide to drop by for a visit, warn us beforehand."
Out in the hallway, James snorts out a laugh. "Alright, fine. See if I buy you bagels ever again."
"We don't give a shite about your fucking bagels – "
Sirius sighs, "Let's just have breakfast, Vivian."
She glowers at him and, after a moment spent eyeing his mussed up appearance and inwardly bemoaning the unreached potential of the morning, mumbles, "…Fine. But then I'm kicking Potter out."
Sirius sighs and nods.