Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

2001

When Sirius Black was in the third grade, his parents bought him a Hello Kitty boombox.

Everything his parents bought for him between the time he was born and the last time he saw them was pink. Floral dresses, fluffy comforters with lace edges, even shiny patent leather mary janes in the palest powder pink. Rose-gold earrings with dull, off-white pearls - as expensive as they were useless. His parents tried really hard for all the wrong reasons - and it hadn’t made any difference, anyway, in the end.

It was the same when Regulus was born a few years later, of course - everything in shades of blue. He was signed up for every sport imaginable, encouraged to get his hands dirty. If anything they seemed to try even harder with him, aware from the very beginning that something was very different about their oldest child - something they wanted to stomp out like an errant spark from a campfire before it got out of hand and took the whole family down with it.

Orion and Walburga Black were not the kind of parents who had much patience to begin with - the result of generations of indifference, their children always an afterthought. As insignificant and annoying as gnats buzzing around their heads, always just out of their reach. And so, raising a child that didn’t bend to their every whim was not something they could allow, focusing all of their energy into the intentional withholding of affection.

From the time he was old enough to feel the sting of their disappointment, Sirius’s favorite hobby was skating on their thin ice, pushing every boundary they set for him in a desperate attempt to get them to pay attention.

Couldn’t they see how hard he was trying? Couldn’t they tell that he would do anything to soothe their anger? Anything to get a scrap of attention that he could twist into something that could pass for love.

Sirius was raised to be a shield, a nanny, a battering ram - never just a child. From the moment he was born he was taught to bear the weight of his mother’s expectations, his father’s indifference - to someday bear children. Sirius couldn’t pinpoint the age where he realized how deeply afraid he was of that future, just that it was so early the fear seemed to always live inside of him, growing with his changing body and magnifying with the wrongness of it.

There were parts of Sirius’s childhood that were impossible to forget, of course, huge chunks of crystal-clear pain amongst the sand in the hourglass - but all of Sirius’s memories of The Argument (capitalized even in his mind, the importance of that turning point) were hazy. Sirius was out of his body for most of it, floating somewhere safely just out of reach.

But he remembered the look on Regulus’s face when Sirius told him to go wait in his room.

He remembered running to the front door, out of breath, full of adrenaline and yelling, “It’s not too late to try again, maybe your next kid will be the kind of daughter you wanted.”

He remembered the way his mother’s face crumbled for just a moment before piling the walls back up with anger.

It was a delirious attempt at a joke, a last-ditch effort.

It wasn’t funny. Nothing was ever funny, then.

Just a handful of months before his eighteenth birthday, in the middle of the night - Sirius Black was leaving home.

Most of his belongings ended up on the lawn - it had rained all weekend, a typical northwest spring, and the ground was soaked through.

His parents stood in the open doorway and watched Sirius throw his house key into the yard, sunk in the wet grass among the wreckage of his old life. Sirius stood there, shaking like a leaf, looked up at the window of his bedroom and saw Regulus staring down at him. Sirius never wanted to be an older sibling, barely gave it a second thought, until Regulus’s tiny body was put in his own chubby arms for the first time.

Leaving him behind was impossible, but so was everything else.

Sirius learned very early that picking your battles often meant putting a few back when you chose too many, and his arms were always full.

It took him a few tries to get the key in the ignition, his shaking hands unable to put the pieces together. He pulled off the curb too fast, tires squealing in the rain - and left.

The first night, Sirius slept in his car.

Parked in the back of a 24hr rest stop using his jacket as a blanket, shivering and small in the backseat -he slept. Blissfully uninterrupted, with the radio playing softly.

The sun rising woke him up with a sore neck and a clear head, stumbling into the rest stop to take a shower and get dressed - a plain black skirt and t-shirt. Unassuming, nothing to draw too much attention. On the way out he bought a bitter cup of coffee and used the ATM, stuffing thick stacks of cash into his wallet. The paranoia was still so fresh that Sirius worried his parent’s bank would somehow recognize him, so he stopped at the first competing branch he saw and opened his own accounts.

He spent a long time at the library after that, using their dial-up and phonebook to find apartment complexes and drove to the first one listed.

In a stroke of good luck, it was surprisingly easy to get a fully-furnished apartment at seventeen - especially when you pay for a year’s lease upfront with a cash advance from the credit card your parents never thought you’d use. Sirius wore his hair down, binder off, batted his eyes and they didn’t even ask for his I.D.

They gave him the keys easily, shiny and new.

The first thing Sirius did in his apartment was use a pocket knife to take the closet door off of its hinges.

The whole place was musty from sitting empty, tiny and cramped. And it didn’t feel like home, but then - nothing ever had before, so how would he really know, anyway? The building was small, too - right on the outskirts of downtown. His unit was the bottom floor - just a living room, kitchen, bedroom and bathroom. The entire place would’ve fit inside his parent’s home across town half a dozen times, but this was the most space he’d ever had that was actually his.

Everything he owned fit neatly in two boxes and a duffle bag - hauled inside in one trip and set down on the kitchen counter, along with a takeout bag from the first Indian place he passed on the way from the property manager’s office.

Sirius leaned over the sink and ate lukewarm curry, allowing himself to feel overwhelmed for a minute or two. The pressure of the day finally settled itself firmly onto his shoulders. He was used to existing on auto-pilot, floating from one day to the next while never quite being present - but it was exhausting even on the best days, and even now he felt drained, empty of everything.

He tapped his flimsy plastic fork against the styrofoam container, grounding himself with the noise, but it was still too quiet, only the low hum of the refrigerator to break the silence.

His parent’s house was never loud but during the day there was always classical music playing from the radio, or a soap opera on the TV, or someone yelling in another room. It was only ever truly quiet at night, when Regulus would sneak into Sirius’s bed and ask for stories until Sirius’s voice was weak and they both fell asleep.

It had been years since the last time he’d done it, but now there was no one left for Regulus to turn to for comfort in that house.

Suddenly Sirius wasn’t hungry anymore.

The rice was placed in the empty fridge and Sirius dug around in the largest box for his boombox. He pulled it out from where it was tucked underneath his portable CD player, set it on the counter and sighed.

His expansive collection of CDs and cassettes had been left behind, but Sirius couldn’t bring himself to leave the Hello Kitty boombox. Chipped pink paint and peeling stars from Regulus’s sticker phase, splatters of paint on the speaker grates. It was supposed to be a reminder of what his parents expected him to be, and instead Sirius used it to listen to CDs and cassettes traded with classmates, albums they would never have allowed if they had known.

It stood out on the plain beige countertops, but just having it was a comfort - a tether to the childhood he desperately wanted to have. Sirius plugged it in and pressed play, and the last CD he listened to started up from where it left off.

And oh, there it was - the ache that Sirius had been swallowing around for days boiled in his stomach again, coming right up his throat. He sat on the floor, head in his hands, and tried to take deep breaths, to pull himself back down into his body.

But why bother keeping it all in? It hit Sirius all at once, a punch to the gut - he could let it all spill out onto the cheap vinyl floor. There was no mother to disappoint, no father to embarrass.

No brother to count on him.

Sirius let himself cry, hunched forward around heaving sobs. The harder he tried to breathe the tighter it made his binder - and then the tears turned into hysterical laughter. He didn’t need to wear it here, in his home, alone. He struggled out of his shirt and peeled the binder off - sank back against the cold floor, the laughter circling back around into tears.

The CD kept spinning and the night moved on around him until finally, when there was no more left to spill - he fell asleep, curled up tight around the heavy ball of pain inside his chest.

The next morning - Monday - Sirius woke up half-naked and tucked under the kitchen table, laying on his stomach, head propped up on his folded arms.

“Fuck.”

His chest was stuck to the floor with sweat and he had to peel himself off of it - a new low, which, considering his life up until that point, was really saying something.

Sirius dragged himself into the shower, and then spent another thirty minutes walking around the apartment topless, waving air at himself to try and dry off faster. Putting a binder on was impossible with even a drop of water or sweat - a lesson he had learned the hard way.

He ate cold rice from the fridge and switched the boombox over to the radio, turning the volume down low and humming along.

Sirius hopped up onto the counter and tore a flap of cardboard from an empty box, pulling a pen out of the otherwise empty drawer next to him to make a list. He started with plates and cups, utensils and pans - the basics. A dozen other things were added before he even thought about needing food.

Walburga Black never talked to her children about money - especially not to Sirius - but he knew they were wealthy, and that money was an afterthought. Sirius leaned back against the cupboards and realized he had no idea how much a bag of potatoes cost, or toilet paper. Sirius checked his wallet - after paying for the apartment he had taken out a second, smaller cash advance before cutting the credit card up and tossing the pieces in the trash. He had a few hundred dollars - just enough to float him until he found a job.

Even after paying for the apartment, it wasn’t likely enough for his parents to notice - Sirius knew they paid someone else to keep track of the bills anyway.

He lost some time figuring out what items were essential and which ones could wait, and still by the time he got dressed and out the door it was barely noon. The city was still waking up, the sky a hazy gray and the mall parking lot all but empty.

Sirius started with bedding, soft and lush and covered in moons and stars. Nothing like the bland black sheets back at his parent’s house. He also splurged on a new phone - a shiny pink thing with chrome detailing, and a set of star-shaped charms to attach to it. Sirius entered Regulus’s number from memory as the only contact. It would probably be hard for Regulus to hide from their parents - they had a habit of going through every phone and desktop in the house - but he always was the more secretive one. Sirius wore everything on his sleeve, his face gave everything away.

Sirius sent off a quick text.

[New SMS Message]

From: [Sirius]

To: [Little Star]

The reply came quickly:

[New SMS Message]

From: [Little Star]

To: [Sirius]

And then, immediately after:

[New SMS Message]

From: [Little Star]

To: [Sirius]

Sirius was not going to cry in the middle of Radioshack, but it was a very near thing.

The apartment felt more like home every time the key turned the lock.

A month passed and there were plants in every window sill, colorful mismatched tupperware in the cupboards, old paintings and mirrors in every shape and size on the walls. Every new addition was a stone taken from Sirius’s shoulders. He started wearing a thin silver chain around his neck, just long enough to brush his collarbones. He made friends with his neighbors, became a regular at the deli down the block. His 18th birthday came and went, with only a cupcake and one candle to mark the milestone. Sirius sat alone in his empty apartment and sang ’happy birthday’ to himself.

Regulus texted him that night, just shy of midnight.

[New SMS Message]

From: [Little Star]

To: [Sirius]

It was the best birthday he’d ever had.

The next morning he called around for an appointment, and then the next week picked up the vial of medicine, worth its weight in gold to him - as beautiful as a cut-glass prism, reflecting the infinite futures it opened up for him. The injections got easier every week - Sirius only let himself break down the first time when it really sunk in that he would be doing this by himself. He had always hoped to have Regulus in the next room, waiting to make fun of Sirius’s fear of needles or pass him a bandaid with those bright, rolling eyes.

Breathing got easier, too.

Sirius sold his car and started to explore downtown on foot, walking up and down every street until his feet were sore, until he had every store and tiny restaurant memorized and shop owners waved at him when he walked past.

Just a few blocks away from his apartment building was a tiny thrift store nestled in against an even tinier record store.

And on an ordinary Friday at the end of November, a lifetime away from his parent’s idea of what he was allowed to wear - Sirius let himself go shopping for clothes.

Potter Family Thrift was made up of one large room divided into two sections by a curtain that ran the length of the building. On one side were knick knacks and a solitary cash register - the other full to bursting with racks of clothing and boxes of shoes piled haphazardly on the floor.

Sirius had been wearing the same two pairs of jeans and half a dozen t-shirts since the night he left home - he’d never been allowed to pick out his own clothes, and his parents would literally rather die that dress their children in anything secondhand. The shirts were starting to fall apart in a way that no longer passed for fashionable, jeans no longer fitting on his ever-changing body, his sneakers more duct tape than canvas.

Under the fluorescent lights, staring at what must be thousands of items of clothing - Sirius had no idea where to begin. And even worse than that - there didn’t seem to be sections for “Men” and “Women” - skirts and dresses were mixed in with slacks and button-ups, arranged by color and then size. Sirius picked a section of black and gray - but the tags were gibberish. He didn’t even know what size he wore in women’s clothes and oh, this was going to be impossible.

He pulled a pair of faded black jeans from the rack and held them up to himself, looked at the tag again, frowned. The jeans he was wearing were the only pair left that still fit perfectly fine. Where before they were too loose, they now fit like a glove. It occurred to Sirius then to just - check the size of the jeans he was wearing. Sirius stuck the jeans under his armpit and unbuckled his belt, turning down the waist of his jeans until the faded tag was visible - 32 X 30. Inspected the jeans on the hanger - 34 X 31. Too big for him now, but who knew what he would look like in a month or two.

Sirius was dangerously close to panicking, a wire fraying apart bit by bit. He thumbed through the rack and found a handful of plain black t-shirts in varying lengths, and then - a knee-length black velvet skirt that gave him pause.

As a child, he loved wearing heavy fabrics. They were the only thing his mother could get him to wear without it turning into a screaming match. It looked to be about the same size as the jeans, the black fabric so dark that it almost looked fake under the lights. Sirius thought about wearing it with thick socks and a soft sweater, pictured his legs with more hair and a flat chest underneath it all.

He added the skirt to his stack of clothes.

The box of shoes at the end of the rack was overflowing with boots and Siris grabbed the first pair on the top, chunky black platforms with long laces and scuffs on the toe box. They were a size or two too big, but most shoes were too big on Sirius and with the right pair of socks they could still be comfortable. Sirius grabbed them by the laces and headed to the register.

There was no one behind the counter, but a silk-lined box full of jewelry sat propped up against the front of the register. Sirius set his pile of things onto the counter and gently picked through rings and necklaces, letting the cool metal slide against his palms. The jewelry his mother picked for him was always gold - dainty chains and shining gems. Sirius sat still while his mother clasped necklaces around his neck, tight to his throat like a noose. Quiet and docile in the cage of her expectations, he let himself be decorated like a beautiful, haunted house.

In the very bottom of the box sat a thick silver ring - a crescent moon in the center surrounded by tiny sparkling stars. Sirius turned it over in his palm and dropped it on top of the pile.

“Sorry about the wait dude, I was on break and forgot to lock the door.”

Sirius jumped as a boy around age stepped into the cluttered area behind the counter, dodging piles of clutter with the ease of someone who thrived in controlled chaos. Taller than Sirius, with dark skin and black hair that stuck up in every direction, deep brown eyes behind a pair of gold aviator glasses with thin frames - they sat neatly above the curve of his nose. A nametag was pinned to his baggy red t-shirt - “James.” His smile was wide and warm, but not at all apologetic. Sirius felt immediately at ease, surprised to find himself smiling back.

James started to ring in Sirius’s items, and Sirius let his eyes wander. On the back wall, over the doorway James walked through, was a bright yellow sign that said, “Help Wanted.”

“So, you’re hiring?”

“Oh, yeah we’ve had loads of people ask about it,” James said, “But none of them have worked out.”

James stopped putting Sirius’s items into the large plastic bag he’d grabbed for them and stared at him, eyes narrowed.

“Can you make change?”

“Um, yeah, of course.”

“Do you promise to not get high literally right here, behind the counter, in front of customers?”

“I - um. Yes - has that been a problem?”

James adjusted his glasses with a grim look and leaned forward with his elbows on the counter, eyes still sparkling as if this was the most fun he’d had all day. Which, given how empty the store was, seemed likely.

“Like you wouldn’t believe, dude.”

There it was again - dude. No one had ever called Sirius that before, and he hadn’t known how desperate he was to hear it.

“Well, I’ve never gotten high before anywhere. I’m reasonably sure that I won’t try it for the first time here.”

“Great, that’s good enough for me - can you start tomorrow? 10am?” James dropped the heavy silver ring into the bag with a flourish and handed it to Sirius over the counter.

“Of course, yeah - how much? For the clothes, I mean?”

“Oh they’re on the house - employees get first pick before things go on the floor, consider this an advance of that privilege.” James beamed at Sirius, his eyes crinkling from the force of his smile.

“I - are you sure?” Sirius held the bag to his chest, arms wrapped around it like a little kid holding onto their backpack.

James cocked his head to the side and looked Sirius over, “You don’t look particularly dangerous.”

“Here’s the number to the store,” he continued, scribbling on a scrap piece of receipt paper, “And the number to my apartment.”

Sirius nodded, sure that if he opened his mouth something awful would fall out of it.

“You can just call me and I’ll get your number from the caller ID, yeah?” James didn’t seem put off by Sirius’s inability to respond with more than small movements of his head.

“Perfect. I’ll see you in the morning, then?” James prompted - Sirius continued to stare. James pointed to his own name tag.

“Oh - Sirius - my name is Sirius. Black.”

“Cool name, my parents were not nearly as creative.”

The ache in Sirius’s chest pulsed against his ribs, but it was weak. He laughed, a sad puff of sound. James picked up on the change in mood and didn’t say anything else, only waved as Sirius stepped out of the store and back onto the sidewalk.

The record store that shared a block with Sirius’s new job, Static Age, was smaller than Potter Family Thrift, but only slightly.

Stood in front of it with his bag of jeans and jewelry, newly employed and hopeful - Sirius finally let himself push open the double doors and take a look inside. He’d avoided Static Age up until that point, fully aware of how easy it would be to spend well above his allotted monthly budget trying to replace his collection of cassettes and CDs.

Sirius still only had the one CD that made it out of his parent’s house - and the local radio stations didn’t pick up very well inside of his apartment.

And he deserved a present, after all.

Now that he had a job, the stress of money had shrunken into a shape small enough to breathe around.

There was music playing softly overhead, of course - Sirius didn’t recognize it, but he picked up a few lines.

CDs filled the tiered shelves, arranged alphabetically by genre. Sirius started at indie - a genre his parents hated - thumbing through the cases. The clack of plastic was soothing, familiar. There were records too, on the other side of the room - but Sirius’s record player was too big to fit in the car and so it had been left behind too. Another relic of a past life.

A small display was set up in the middle of the shelves with a handmade sign - glittery arrows pointing inwards in a circle and a banner that said: “Now Playing.”

Sirius picked up the CD inside the circle of arrows and read the cover, “Oh, inverted world,“ with the artist’s name underneath - The Shins.

He flipped it around to read the tracklist, and then - his skin bristled, the hairs on the back of his neck raised. A childhood of constant scrutiny had taught Sirius to be hyper-aware of anyone who might be looking for cracks in the veneer of him and he had the distinct feeling that he was being watched.

He turned his head just slightly to the left, barely a degree of movement and - oh. He was being watched, but not in a way that he had any experience with.

There was a boy, maybe a little younger than Sirius - his bright eyes fixed on Sirius’s startled face. The boy smiled, small and guarded, and looked away.

Sirius forgot what to do with his hands - he put the CD back on the display, picked it up again. Walked to the register in a daze and pulled cash out of his wallet with unsteady fingers.

The sidewalk was busier when he stepped out onto it this time, and he stopped to lean against the brick wall to get his bearings. Sirius dug through his backpack for his cd player and headphones. He slipped the headphones over his ears, popped the new CD into place and pressed play.

Sirius had never given any thought to the idea of being attracted to anyone of any gender. There was always so much else going on, too many other things to worry about - and what were the odds of finding anyone, really, who could take everything Sirius shoved deep down and want to stick around and untangle it? Sirius thought about the chest under his binder, the ache in his shoulders, the curve of his hips hidden by baggy jeans.

No one had ever looked at him like he was something other than a problem to be solved - but then it happened twice, in the same day. Minutes apart.

The way that boy looked at him made Sirius want to be looked at and known, to be split open. It was an entirely new feeling that he was absolutely unprepared for.

It was terrifying. It was thrilling - it was a dream come true.

Sirius almost walked back into the store, made up some excuse to find the boy and talk to him.

But his feet moved on their own, in the other direction - back towards his apartment.

Sirius matched his steps to the beat, tried to slow his heart down along with it. He twisted the thin chain around his neck, breathing in and pulling it taut, letting the air out when it went slack.

He just needed to get home. Call James. Go to work in the morning.

His parents had never expected him to work, had never allowed it. Classmates and casual friends teased him for it, going on about how lucky he was to not have to drag himself into a job after school or on weekends. Sirius laughed with them, made up a wonderful new set of parents to lie about. The parents in his head would pick him up from his summer job and listen to him complain on the drive home, let him wear jeans and loose shirts and never ask him, “Could you at least try to act like a lady?”

In another universe, maybe those parents were taking him and Regulus to get ice cream in the market, or to a movie with big bags of popcorn and boxes of candy.

In this one, Sirius stopped to dig the ring out of his backpack, twisted it onto a thumb and held his hand up to the light to watch the stones shine.

He turned the volume up, took a deep breath, and walked home.