Drabble Night!
We had ourselves a lovely time last night a-drabbling, though I fear the night passed far too quickly; we'll have to remedy that for next time.

I know I've been quite remiss on this journal as of late; life's been a fucknugget and a half, and fanfiction hasn't been first and foremost on my mind. However! Things look to be on the upswing again, and I'm eager to plunge back into the fold. I know I've a Remix challenge due soon, and the CCC as well; hopefully everything will work out in those regards.

In the meantime, my drabbles - such as they are. PLEASE go check out queerditch_pub for the other challenges. Everyone performed magnificently.

The theme was The Circus...

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Fire Eater - Severus/Harry

There is no fire in death. There is nothing of flame and fury in the silence Severus’s brand-kin seek to spend upon the innocent, the sheep, the creatures with no magic save what sparks they hold deep in their minds, in their stories, in their smiles.

Harry thinks he must indeed be his mother’s son, then, for when Severus wends an ember ache down his throat, tongue-thick and whiskey-stout, he races not for door or shelter, not for escape from the rasping press of woolen robes against scar-smudged skin, or from the burn that cleaves heavy and unyielding against him, but for the strange Muggle glow – bellows breathing life anew in his blustering, ashy heart – of fairy tales, and knights sheathed in armour and pride and righteousness, and kings and crowns and oh how happily ever… After.

And this he clings to, and clings and clings in the scorching dry heat to follow, the parting blow and the sharp inhalation of air finally his own, in Severus’s withdrawal. This is the magic he holds to, against the burn of a false Death Eater’s touch.

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Balancing Act - Sirius/James

“Steady there, old boy,” James calls up, chewing a bit of wheat between his teeth. “Wouldn’t want you breaking anything important!”

“Ah ah ah! You’re not going to scare me down, Prongs!” Sirius laughs and crouches against the rafter in Peter’s barn, the latter smelling distinctly of too much mouse and not enough barn-cat. Peter himself stands by one of the empty stalls, his fingers gripping tight to the wood, his eyes wide and uncertain against Sirius’s laughter, and James’s broad, unwavering grin in turn.

“Suppose it’s okay to be that stupid when you’ve got so little of importance to lose, eh?”

Sirius flips him off, shins flat against his tenuous perch. “Says the Chaser!”

“Says the Seeker,” James corrects, altogether too smoothly, and Sirius shares his smile.

“Wotchoo seeking, then?”

James shrugs, and stretches, resting head back on folded arms, crossing his legs and arching, ever so slightly, his hips over the hay. His grin is a smug and silent thing now, and Sirius’s face glows to see it.

And Peter, knowing this routine of give and take too well by now, this constant balancing and tumbling act of fools turned almost-men, can’t bear to watch when Sirius springs up and off, leaping from his tremendous height to the haystack where James reclines at leisure. Instead Peter scampers off as quick as he can so as not to hear the thump, the oof, and the sounds he knows will come next, in the breathless shifting of young man against man, straw and bodies tangling in the not-so accidental landing.

What’ve I sought, you mean, James will whisper, and thank Merlin, thinks Peter, wandering out into his family's fields, hands shoved in ratty pockets, shivering like a rodent under the eyes of a hawk: thank Merlin I never stay long enough to find out.

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'The summer sun sets a vicious circus, when shadows held the world in place.' - Sirius/Regulus

Meeting by horizon’s end, sun’s set and time’s eternity, they hold their faces up to the burn of waning day, to the circus of their lives now past, and pool their hands in the shadows of each other, shades of the same, erstwhile Black.

Do you forgive the failings of a child borne here by fear and ignorance? asks one, and his fringe of moppish hair, as much an echo as he, curls a forlorn wisp into his Veiled gaze, one long made uncertain and lonely in the multitude of years spent in wait for this somber reunion.

Do you forget, replies the other, soon after, his soul a-wearied by the paraded march of life he’s left behind, full of deeds undone and loves unmade, a mockery of All That Should Have Been. …Do you forget so easily the bonds of brotherhood?

And it cannot be, really, for there is not form enough left in their whispers, united at last at the close of existence, but in the voice of the long dead king-and-conquered, the newest star a-Blacked can almost envision, in this their shared Purgatory, a smile, and pretend that for all he’s had and lost and almost had again, that single twist of ghostly lip to grin - a brother's love too easily forgotten in his pursuit of the living - is reason enough for him to linger long in shadow, a welcome fade to Black.