They never finish their sentences when they're in bed. It's been this way for years, through the bad times, the mad times, and the best of the good times. As though the press of skin to skin transfers any words they could say by direct osmotic process. Fluid adhesion. Primal language of touch and sigh that transcends the power to shape any sound beyond a moan.
Even after the fire's filled up their veins and they're spiraling down like ashes entwined, even as the thundering hearts ease back to a lope and the sweat begins to dry on their skin -- even then the words that pass between them are perfunctory, incomplete, unnecessary. Understanding's more often had in a glance or grin, a stretch and a stroke, or a disbelieving laugh.
"Again?"
"Yes. You?"
"Oh yes..."
And two lifetime's understanding lies there shining like pearl in the atom-thin slice of the world between palm and palm, lip and skin, tongue and tongue. There will never be words for this -- the sacred silences they whisper like the names of God. Unto thee only, my own, my evermore... in the inward surge, the kindling breath, the clutch, the arch. Sacred geometries beyond the telling curl there where they join, and the sacrament defies the hollow paean of words.
And so finally, replete with stunned amazement that never fails to be new, the wicked spark from grey eye to gold takes on another meaning. Sirius slips from the silence of the tangled sheets, painted in streaks and swirls of violet and pearl, like a Celt from the battlefield. Skins of crushed berries curl blackly, flaking from his belly as he stretches, grins, and holds out a demanding hand. A groan is his reply, but laughing, he does not yield.
"Tired..." the word's almost too feeble to escape the pillow's event horizon.
Sirius grabs a foot and hauls. "Come on, you."
"Sticky..." a moue as he peels up the sheet glued down to his thigh in sweet, blue gore.
"Which is why," Sirius insists, hauling Remus out of the silence at last, "we're going to go try out the new bathtub now."
And tasting blueberries and the rest of his life in the sweat along Sirius' collarbone, Remus finds that he's got nothing much to say about that. Nothing much at all.
Angels of the Silences by clue
Author's Notes:
This was written as a 'get well' present for Spider, who plays Sirius to my Remus in HP_dungeons.
Skin design by Femme