Plots Have I Laid, Inductions Dangerous (blanketforts Day 18)

[rosie_rues]

Title: Plots Have I Laid, Inductions Dangerous
Rating: R, for multiple reasons
Disclaimer: They're not mine. I'm just borrowing them because I like them.
Wordcount: 1893
Prompt: Trees against the sky
Notes: Remus deliberately sets out to melt Sirius' brain. Oh, and there some gritty plot stuff as well. Bit of a fic of two halves I'm afraid. Title from Richard III



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“Remus? Remus, wake up.”

Remus muttered and grabbed for the blankets, dragging them over his head. It was still dark. He was in London. He didn’t have to get up in the dark when he was in London.

“Remus. Come on, mate.” A warm hand slid under the blankets and cupped his shoulder, shaking his gently. Mmm. Warm. Sirius.

Remus cracked his eyes open enough to see Sirius’ silhouette above him, his wand glowing. He reached up and wrapped his hand around Sirius’ wrist, tugging him forward.

“Moony,” Sirius said hoarsely, resisting the pull. “Wake up.”

“Early.”

“We’re on call. Wake up.”

Remus sat up, blinking at Sirius. The blankets slid down to his waist and he whimpered at the cold on his bare skin and burrowed down again.

Sirius said sharply, “Don’t go back to sleep. Why aren’t you wearing anything?”

“Cause I’m in bed,” Remus said, biting back to urge to add something sarcastic. He had a plan. It was even working, if Sirius’ increasingly wild-eyed looks were anything to go by.

“Pajamas!” Sirius said. “You have pajamas! Stripey ones! Blue and white and stripey!”

“I didn’t feel like wearing them,” Remus said, smiling at him. Then he stretched, deliberately arching backwards until the blanket slid down towards his hips.

“Tea!” yelped Sirius. “Made you tea! Wake you up! Hyde Park! Half an hour.”

“Thanks,” Remus said cautiously. Sirius’ cups of tea were either perfect or atrocious. He sat up, swinging his legs out of the bed.

Sirius fled.

Remus picked up his tea and sipped it carefully. It was one of the perfect ones. Today was going well so far. He wasn’t going to think about what might be waiting in Hyde Park. Not until he was awake.

He thought about Sirius instead. Sleeping naked could obviously stay on the list. He wondered if he could find a seductive way to drink tea. There was nothing like killing two birds with one stone.

He took another sip, letting the flavour linger on his tongue. Better not. Some things were sacred.

The project seemed to be going well. It would involve shouting before he was done, of course, and quite possibly slammed doors and thrown ornaments and intervention by James or Lily. He didn’t care. He had had enough. After New Year and that morning last week and then, most of all, the moon, he had made his decision. Sirius was not, despite all his pretence, indifferent for him. Remus thought that, maybe, when he’d brought Sirius back to his senses, he’d be quite angry about those wasted months. For the moment, though, he had to focus.

Now he was looking again, he could see Sirius’ feelings in everything he did. Of course, being Sirius, that didn’t mean he’d admit it or even deal with whatever irrationally noble reason he had for being stubborn.

So Remus would just have to seduce him.

He would have to do it carefully. If he was too obvious Sirius would bolt. He would have to just wear away at his defences until he was too flustered to resist.

He thought he’d made a good start at Andromeda’s party the night before last. He made an effort to keep touching Sirius all day yesterday. He loved the way Sirius’ eyes widened when he was fighting temptation and the little flush that appeared high on his cheekbones. He’d seen that blush before, when Sirius was lost in his touch, and he missed it.

He had slipped his hand down beneath the blanket without realising it. With the memory of Sirius in the front of his mind, he sank back onto the bed, wrapping his hand around his hard cock. He remembered Sirius grinding against him, eyes half-closed with concentration and lips parted. He remembered the way his hair, sweat-wet, had clung to both their foreheads and the way he had tasted.

His door swung open and Sirius burst in. “Moony, do you want – erk.”

Remus forced down his immediate instinct to hide behind his mug and said, “Want what, Padfoot?”

Sirius grabbed the door frame, and squeaked, “Toast! Toast! You – toast – want?”

“Mmm,” Remus mumbled. “I don’t think so. I think I need to wake up a little more. No, definitely no toast. But thank you for offering.”

“I-” Sirius started, waving his free hand in front of his face. “I- um. Going to go.”

“Thank you for the tea,” Remus said, to keep him in the room. “It was – lovely.”

“Tea?” Sirius whispered.

“I’d love another cup if you’re making more.” Remus pushed his hips up, as blatantly as he could, and let his head tip back. “My mug’s right here.”

The door slammed shut behind Sirius. Remus sighed wistfully and began to pump his fist. It didn’t feel as good without Sirius watching.

He came quickly, in a bone-melting rush, and had to force himself out of bed to clean himself off and find some warm clothes. The frost had come down before he was asleep last night and Hyde Park would be chilly.

Sirius was in the kitchen, leaning into the fridge, shoulders shaking.

Remus blinked at his back. “Have we run out of milk again?”

Sirius turned to glare at him reproachfully. After a moment he said, “Moony.”

“How long have we got?”

“Ten minutes.”

“Damn,” Remus muttered. “I wanted more tea. Have you seen my shoes?”

“They’re beside the sofa,” Sirius said accusingly. “Where you kicked them off. While you were reading.”

“Thank you,” Remus said and deliberately brushed past him on his way out of the kitchen. By the time he returned, shoes in hand, Sirius had closed the fridge and was leaning against the row of magnets, eyes closed. Remus did his laces up and then looked at him, doing his best to sound puzzled as he asked, “Padfoot? Are you alright? You seem a little distracted.”

Sirius gaped at him. Remus amended his mental list again. Anything that could shut Sirius up this thoroughly was worth repeating.

Sirius was still silent when they Apparated from the stairwell.

They arrived in the middle of the park. The snow was crunchy beneath their feet and the air was still. Remus could see the bare trees straining into the flat, white sky.

Alice Longbottom ushered them through the Disillusionment charm, her face grim. “Keep clear of Ted, my lovelies. He’s raging. Go and see the body and then get tracking charms going. We need a record of every creature that passed through here tonight.”

Sirius was staring around, wide-eyed. “What happened here?”

The ground was strewn with feathers, red and orange and yellow, some as short as his finger, some as long as his arm.

“We’re working on it,” Alice said sharply.

“Who is it?” Remus asked, dreading the answer.

Alice set her lips and then said, “Alan Radcliffe. He was Jack Yarwood’s partner.”

“One of us,” Sirius said, voice hard.

Alice hunched her shoulders unhappily. “Probably. There’s a chance, just a chance, that he sold out Yarwood. He’s been on the run for weeks. Due to contact us tomorrow. He can’t tell us now. Now, go on. Get a move on. We need to get the scene cleared before the Muggles realise something’s up.”

Sirius nodded and began to pick his way through the feathers. Remus followed him, thinking. Did this have anything to do with the Order of the Phoenix? They couldn’t be phoenix feathers – there were too many of them. He crouched down to look, lowering his wand for extra light, and saw the smudge of dye on the quill. Goose or turkey, then.

Sirius was waiting for him. The floating white lights blanched the colour from him, recasting him in monochrome, fierce and impatient.

“Dyed feathers,” Remus said apologetically in explanation.

Sirius nodded sharply and turned towards the body.

For a moment Remus thought that somebody had painted red wings beneath Radcliffe’s corpse. Then he realised it was blood. Radcliffe’s throat had been cut.

“Damn,” Sirius muttered. “That’ll mask any scents.”

Remus shuddered. He couldn’t see the dead man’s face. It was completely hidden behind a mask of fire-hued feathers.

“That’s what the Order of the Phoenix wear,” Sirius said softly. “The mask.”

“How do you know?” Remus said, worried. He thought he knew what Sirius was doing with his life these days.

“Because, unlike some people, I don’t just buy The Prophet for the crossword. Map?”

“It’s what we’re good at.” Remus dug into his bag for parchment and a pen. Doing the Marauders’ Map had taught them that biro worked best for the preliminary spells. They wouldn’t need any of the fancy flourishes here. “You draw, I’ll charm.”

“Let’s move back a bit,” Sirius murmured. “I need a tree to lean on.”

He found one and Remus provided a light and then stood behind his shoulder, preparing the words of the spell. Sirius pressed the pen to the page, and Remus started the first spell.

As Sirius sketched trees and paths, glancing quickly at the land around them, they grew on the page, gathering inky detail as Remus slowly released the spell. When the landscape was complete, he ducked to his knees and shoved his hand down through the snow.

Sirius crouched beside him, laying the sketch flat. Remus dragged a handful of soil out of the snow, readying his wand. As he dropped the soil they both hissed, “Describio!”

The soil sank into the page, vanishing. For a moment there was only ink and parchment. Then the page burst into colour, little flashing dots for everyone there. There were no names on this but every person there was marked in a different colour.

“Need to do a retrospective,” Sirius muttered, chewing his lip.

“All yours,” Remus said. “I’m crap at time spells.”

“That’s because you always set them to match the moon. Let’s see.”

The page flashed white and then a thin line of footsteps appeared from the edge, two sets of pawprints dancing around them swiftly.

“Twelve hours back,” Sirius said. “Walking the dogs after work.”

“Nice,” Ted said, behind them. “How long will it take to run in full?”

“About six hours,” Sirius said ruefully. “It’s only an ordinary bit of paper.”

“Get back to Headquarters and monitor it. Cover each other’s breaks so you don’t miss anything. I want notes on everything that’s crossed this ground since dusk.”

“Not before?” Remus asked.

“Frank’s sweet-talking the Muggle park keeper. Nothing they noticed on their last round through here. These people weren’t trying to be subtle, whoever they were.”

“What do you think the feathers mean?” Sirius asked. Remus wasn’t sure if that was just recklessness or the confidence that Andromeda would be irritated if Ted hexed him.

Ted scowled. “Don’t have a fucking clue, mate. I needed Radcliffe’s report. I’ll tell you something, though – I always wondered if Radcliffe was in the fucking Order. Bloody reckless wanker.”

“Had you known him long?” Remus asked.

“Almost fifteen years,” Ted said bitterly. “Fifteen years and he never learnt when it was better to keep running. Bastard.” He looked older than his years, worn and hollow.

“I’m sorry,” Remus said awkwardly.

“Nothing you could do about it, mate. Now get that map back.”

Remus pushed back to his feet and met Sirius’ gaze.

Sirius nodded grimly, cradling the page.

Then they Apparated, in the same breath.