The Blackest of Rooms

That first morning when they realized they were in each other's dreams, they were so intoxicated with their new knowledge, so frantic with lips against lips and lips against skin and hands clutched together and bodies scraping and pressing and fusing that they fell against Remus's bed without pausing to pull the curtains back first. The heavy cloth ripped from its fastenings with a sound like what was going on in Remus's chest, tearing and reformation, and neither boy realized that the sound didn't come from inside himself and so they didn't notice until after. Later, Remus tried to put it back up again but Sirius watched him with drowsy eyes and wouldn't move to let him pull the cloth up, and so he laid back down with his cheek against Sirius's chest and covered them both with it. The only difference between the touch of the velvet and the touch of Sirius's skin was that Sirius was warm and vibrating with heartbeat, and Remus wanted more than he knew it was possible to want to stay wrapped up in him until the world ended and his heart stopped and it all went dark. Maybe even longer.

Remus's little house was dingy and the furniture broke easily, but he had curtains. They were the deep sinking blue of a starry sky and he kept them closed against the night as the moon got brighter and the stars faded infinitesimally. The wolfsbane potion gave him the presence of mind to keep from rending and ripping them. When Sirius came Remus tried to keep him indoors and away from the windows in the spirit of 'lie low,' but after so long in a place without any air at all Sirius couldn't help going back to them, clutching at the curtains, pulling them aside to peer out. "Do you want me to keep them open?" Remus asked him once. "No," Sirius said, "I just need to know that they can be."

The home of Sirius's childhood was hateful, filled with hate. Remus could see Sirius trembling in it all the time and he wanted to stop that, so he found the thick black velvet in one of the cupboards and draped it over all of the portraits, hiding the eyes of everyone who had ever hurt Sirius. Sirius found him doing it and was violent in his gratitude as he was in everything else that took place in that house. Remus kissed him over and over again as he allowed himself to be taken with his back against the velvet. Sirius's dead mother screamed with the pounding.

Remus went back to the Ministry, though it wasn't allowed and wasn't advisable. He walked around and around the archway, trying to see it from every side, trying to see what was on the other side. He stared into the veils. If he pressed his palm to the cloth, maybe Sirius would press back, close enough to touch, divided only by a curtain. He didn't know what was on the other side for Sirius, this time- the freedom he had craved, the horror he had spent his life trying to escape. Remus knew what was there for himself. A bed of love, the warm velvet skin he would one day wrap himself up in again. There was no difference between these and other curtains. Nothing had ended. It had just split apart, the fission that had to proceed fusion. Next time they saw each other, there would be no curtains. It was only a matter of time.