Burn It
Title: Burn It
Author: kanella
Disclaimer: not mine
Word Count: 598
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Remus is domestic, Sirius is foolish, and everybody pays.
Notes: blanketforts Day 10 (Prompt).  All feedback is snuggled - I'm especially curious to see what you all think of this one.



You come home from work to see Remus standing at the stove, meticulously stirring something in a large metal pot.  He's wearing that ridiculous apron that James gave you when you moved into the flat, the one that says, I'd tell you the recipe, but then I'd have to kill you.  Remus has lost yet another job, and he's probably just trying to make himself useful, so you come up behind him and rest your chin on his shoulder and say, Mmm, you know what domesticity does to me in your best throaty whisper.  You can feel his smile in the way his cheek moves against yours, and you gently pull on the apron ties until the careful bow comes undone, sliding your hands around to rest on Remus's stomach and dropping slow kisses to his jawbone.  The soup will burn, he says and you say, Soup doesn't burn, Remus, but he gently swats you on the thigh with a wooden spoon and laughs, Twat. Do you ever think about anything besides sex? and you stop for a second, because you do, you do.  You think about dragging Remus away to Jamaica or Greece or New York City, and you think about painting a fence around a little blue house and teaching the sprog to fly when Lily isn't looking and being able to nod a friendly hello to strangers on the street without being scared and a million other things, but none of them are very Sirius Black things to think and so you don't say them.  Instead you say Oh, but you are just too irresistible in that dashing apron, I cannot be blamed, and you hope the levity in your words doesn't sound too forced.  Remus twists in your arms and says, I have a meeting, and he really does look sorry so you forgive him for his stupid bloody meeting and you promise yourself that you won't get angry later when he says he can't tell you what half-cocked assignment Dumbledore has asked of him.

...And when you finally realize that although Peter's not quite as dim-witted as you've always made him out to be, he hardly has the gumption or know-how to be trading in secrets and lies, you wish you could go back to that day and kiss Remus breathless against the stove and drag him to your tiny bedroom and let the soup burn, and burn, and show him with your hands that there is love enough in you for both of you and maybe that would stop him from doing the things you know he must be doing.

...And then, a whispered spell, and the world is exploding around you and you are laughing, laughing, and you no longer care much about the sex, but you wish you had given voice to all of those desires floating around in your head, because now you're sure that Remus probably had them too.  Your good, brave Remus, and you should have known because now you'll pay for your foolishness, and he will too.  Remus, who pays for everyone's foolishness and doesn't ever complain.  The memory of that day with the soup rolls through your head and you wish and you wish and you can't feel the warmth of Remus's stomach or the dull scratch of his cheek against yours -- the whole memory is tainted and colored with regret, regret, regret.

...And when they come for you in your cell they burn it into your brain until the edges of the memory crinkle and curl like the borders of a yellowed photograph.