locked down
Beautiful things don’t ask for attention, Sirius, is what his mother had always told him. And really, that was just a kick in the teeth ( a honeyed dagger between the ribs, a blown kiss, a perfect metaphor), because Sirius had spent his whole gloomy childhood doing nothing but. Being a Black, it was the only thing he’d ever beg for.
This happened whether he was aware of it or not.
Sirius survived loudly, spitefully, dramatically, angrily, obnoxiously joyfully. At five,he would tug on his mother’s skirts like a child who daydreamed of inspiring his mother’s smile ( like a toddler in a store about to ask socially inappropriate questions) ( such as why won’t you look at me). At six, he was excelling under his private tutor. French, English, Latin. And their whole goddamn family history, of course. At seven, things became colder; tugging on his mother’s skirts a little too hard, elbowing his brother where she would see. Once, at eight, Sirius had kicked at a pile of cans in a grocery store, his little heeled sneaker catching and flying off amongst the string beans. The clanging echoed through the store. People stopped and stared, but Walburga was nothing but grace as she apologized, laughed it off ( ‘children, mischievous little things, aren’t they?’) and then she had taken him and Regulus home and locked them in a hidden crawl space for three days and three nights.
Needless to say, Sirius in the current day was not fond of small spaces. But the worst part? Well, Regulus had spent the night staring at the wall in the darkness, but nothing was as dark as the realization that he wasn’t fond of Sirius anymore. Being punished for your brother’s crimes will have that effect. Avoiding your brother’s desperate, broken gaze in favor of the wall will have that effect. Watching your brother wearing that same blank mask as he climbs right out of his bedroom window and out of your life forever, will have that effect. (Sirius will tell himself forever afterwards that he never looked back, but Regulus will always know better.)
And sure, the fucked up memory of his fucked up brother and the rest of his fucked up family haunts him at night, but really, it doesn’t have as much presence in his current day to day life. After his mother sent Regulus off to Beauxbatons instead (just another betrayal, just another blank stare), when Sirius reaches for his blood relatives, he hears nothing but silence. This is a good thing, he reminds himself.
But his mother was just too thorough to only disrupt his nights, and Sirius knows that the refrain wriggling around his brain at all hours of the daytime is one that she planted there.
Beautiful things don’t ask for attention, Sirius.
They don’t, they don’t; but Sirius does.
And therein lies the issue, because, really, if he isn’t beautiful, what does he have left? Dramatic irony? His many facades? The anger that lives deep in his bones, or worse, the desperation? Beauty is the only worthwhile thing he ever received from his parents, and Sirius will cling to it, even if when he looks in the mirror, he sees the family line he had to memorize at age six. He will tell himself that surely, he is still beautiful, still something to admire, even as he begs for people to look at him ( Remus, James, Peter, his little brother, but nobody can see across oceans.)
The comforting thing is that James has been looking back for as long as he can remember knowing him. Peter has too, the observant little bugger. But recently? Oh, that’s all Remus. This specific king of looking is driving Sirius insane. It perseveres even when Sirius has not done anything that asks for it, and this fact sends a little thrill down his spine every time.
Remus has honey eyes. Gold and brown and warm; they can rake heat across his skin and liquefy his anger in their softness. Most of the time they are focused on his own grey eyes, and the eye contact tingles across his skin, daring him to break it, compelling him to keep it. (Remus always looks away first.) However, sometimes, when Remus thinks Sirius does not notice him, he allows his gaze to run over Sirius’s collar bones, through his hair; here, his fingers twitch oddly, as though he would like to run his fingers through it - and by Merlin, would Sirius let him. But most of the time, he’s admiring Sirius’s throat. Sirius himself has no idea what to make of this; all he knows is that he would let Remus close his long fingers around it and squeeze.
He’d smirked to himself when on his birthday just the day before, Remus had gifted him a choker. Oh, it all fit so perfectly. The endearing bastard truly thought he was being smooth, clearly all tangled up in the assumption that Sirius wasn’t looking hard enough to see the hunger in his eyes.
To be honest, he’d only started to notice the way he was being admired by Remus earlier this year. It had felt like the shock of a lifetime slamming into him, after the months of nothing but vague suspicions, of aborted glances, of charged touches. He still doesn’t know when it actually began. Is this a new feeling for Remus? He simply doesn't know.
He does know that Remus never needs to find out just how long ago his own fascination with the curly haired boy had kicked in. (Third year. It was third year and he took two full years to realize, Merlin help him.)
So, yes. Sirius is asking, once again, for attention, specifically from Remus. Fuck his mother and the rest of his terrible family, because he will be beautiful enough for Remus, he will be. And the first step of this plan? Well, it seems almost laughably easy. Everything fell right into place as soon as Sirius did up the clasp of that choker, with Remus watching.
Of course, before this plan can be put properly into action, he obviously has to consult the one person who treats every plan of Sirius’s with the seriousness (har har har) and thoughtful appreciation it deserves.
*
James is laughing at his plan.
“Are you fucking serious right now?” he chokes out, wiping a tear from his eye. They’re stood right on the boundary of the forbidden forest, because the plan requires absolute secrecy.
“No, but Remus could be, if you would shut up enough to actually give me some decent feedback!” At this, James doubles over, merely laughing harder.
“What the hell, prongs?” Sirius is so confused.
The wanker just throws out a hand against a tree, to hold himself up. God, must everyone in his life be so dramatic? It takes him a minute, but finally, James is taking some deep breaths, calming enough to begin his questioning. “So. You think you like Remus?”
“Yeah, I think. And, y’know, I’m kinda hoping he likes me back, a little bit,” he mumbles, suddenly feeling as though every piece of evidence he’s gathered in support of this conclusion has vanished into thin air. Leaving him looking very foolish, and very infatuated with their best friend.
A muscle in James’s eye twitches.
“Right.” It’s a little creepy how fast James’s hysterical laughter has disappeared. Instead, he’s now staring owlishly at Sirius like he simply cannot believe what he is hearing. It’s annoying.
“What, you think I’m not good enough for him, is that it?” he snaps.
James blinks violently. “What? Pads, I didn’t say that!”
“Then quit looking so weird about it!”
James, looking weary, just steps forwards and pulls Sirius into a hug. It’s all encompassing, much like the rest of James. Here, in the circle of his best mate’s arms, Sirius never feels ‘too much’. He just feels.
“Sorry, mate.” he murmurs into his neck. “It’s just that I thought that was obvious.”
Sirius jolts back as though he’s been hit with a stinging hex. Was he that obvious?
“No, no, I just know you, is all,” James is quick to reassure, because apparently he’s lost control of his brain to mouth connection and just said that out loud.
He truly has no idea how to respond to that statement If he was anyone other than the perpetually unflustered Sirius Black, he’d probably feel a bit foolish right now. Just a little bit.
“Er, so will you help with the plan? I need it to work.” Again, James blinks owlishly at him, before shaking his head as though evicting demons. “Yeah, I sure can mate,” he says, ruffling Sirius’s hair. He shoves at him (gently) indignantly, and then they half walk, half wrestle their way back up to the castle.
Sirius is left with the vague, entirely unusual feeling that perhaps James finally knows something he doesn’t.
*
The next weekend is a Hogsmeade weekend, and Sirius and James leave Peter and Remus to their book and candy shopping ( five points for guessing which is which) and head to a shop that James has never set foot into before, although he’s heard countless expressions of admiration from Sirius for the beautiful craftsmanship of it’s products.
It's a jewelry store.
The plan has grown and morphed into something that Sirius feels is stupendously efficient, containing multitudes of dramatic flair, and much room for heartfelt confessions that he really hopes will not fall flat. He is refusing to properly consider this, because if it blows up in his face, things are sure to get stupendously awkward, the future will contain multitudes of awkward interactions, and there will definitely be room for Sirius to spiral over his terrible decision making.
Basically, the show must go on!
Wind chimes jingle when they open the door; and as always, Sirius's first impression is that the shop is rather stunning. Cabinets upon cabinets decorate the walls, containing finely crafted necklaces, pendants, bracelets, and hundreds of rings (Sirius has been known to spend afternoons staring at them). There is silver, gold, rose gold, soft pinks. Brilliant diamonds to garnets to intricately engraved metal. Muggle to magical to something in between. Basically, it’s a sexy man’s heaven, or so Sirius has always said.
James, as always, ruffles Sirius’s hair and agrees.
“Hello, boys.” the middle aged woman steps out from the backroom, seemingly not noticing the billowing cloud of smoke that follows her.
“Morning, Ms Orner,” Sirius smiles his most charming smile. He can see James rolling his eyes out of the corner of his eyes, but he does so fondly. Sirius will allow it.
Ms Orner smiles back at him indulgently. What can he say? He has that effect on women.
“Are you back here to ogle my ring collection, Sirius?”
He sighs and bats his lashes, “Have I really become that predictable in my old age?”
Ms Orner looks him up and down and says wryly, “I’m afraid so, lad” just as James chimes in, “very,” and Sirius huffs. The shopkeeper, still smiling graciously, lets them know to tell her if they want to look at something from the cabinets, before disappearing back to the storeroom.
“Why is it that everywhere we go in this town, the middle aged lady shopkeepers adore you?” James asks him as he fiddles with a crystal pendant hanging from a hook on the ceiling.
Sirius smirks. “Well, it helps if you’re smoking buddies.”
There’s a small tinkle as the crystal necklace goes careening into the others from where James loosened his grip, as he yelps, “What?”
Sirius does not get the chance to reply as he would like to, because the second the crystal makes contact with the others on the hook, the room is filled with a blinding white light. In their sudden blindness, Sirius winds himself on a hefty corner of a glass cabinet, (“oof”) and James , grasping blindly at anything he can reach, manages to yank a hook clean out of the wall, burying himself in a pile of magical glowing crystals (CRASH).
In the silence, the dust settles.
“Well, boys,” comes the voice of Ms Orner, “I didn’t quite predict the destruction of my shop in the space of three minutes.”
It takes them a mere ten more minutes to execute their rambling apologies ( to which Ms Orner accepts in an extraordinarily calm, mellow fashion - “smoking buddies” Sirius hisses in James’s ear-), help clean up, and select the piece that they’d originally come in here for, before hightailing it out of the door with a wink and a grimace of apology ( 5 points for guessing which is which).
In the end, Sirius had chosen from the ‘magical’ section of the shop. It was perfect for the Wooing Remus Plan, James had confirmed.
“Let me see it again,” he asks now. Sirius hands it over, and they both stop in the middle of the street to stare at the small silver lock nestled in his palms. It’s pretty. Engraved on the front at Sirius’s tentative request is the outline of a new moon, and a star.
“Yeah, it’s pretty perfect, mate.”
“You reckon this will push him over the edge?”
James sighs a long suffering sounding sigh, which Sirius does not understand at all, but will indulge, because it’s James.
“I would say so, yes.”
“Excellent. Could you help me put it on?”
James nods his assent, and repeats the charms the shopkeeper had taught them. Once the little lock has been affixed to the chain link in the center of Sirius’s choker necklace, he stands back to admire his handiwork.
Sirius reaches up a hand to cover the charm. It’s nestled right in the little hollow at the base of his throat. He smirks.
“I think this is going to work,” he says, and James smiles back at him.
They walk back up the main street; Sirius chattering excitedly about the delightful simplicity of the charmwork placed on the little lock, and James adding in supportive comments like, ‘he’s gonna wet himself Pads, can’t wait for you to tell him what it is,’ and, ‘can i be in the wedding party?’ and the whole time, Sirius is tracing the outline of the second, tiny package placed deep in the pocket of his robes.
He grins.
It’s time for phase two.