Work Text:
On the day of Bellatrix's wedding, Sirius is seventeen and she is in her early twenties. She is still recognisable as the strange, solemn little girl who used to reproach Sirius for cursing his baby brother, then take him aside to teach him how to cast the hex properly.
That same girl-child lingers in Bella's black shadow when she moves, and she slips in her own words sometimes when Bella speaks, but the body belongs now to Bella the woman.
Bellatrix is a perfect Black and a perfect lady. Sirius hates her for it. She excelled at those lessons he never understood: genealogies and etiquette. She bows to her parents' wishes, knows the proper way to address members of the Ministry and can speak intelligently on current affairs. Her manner of speech would lead one to believe that she wouldn't recognise expletives if she heard them, and when dinner is finished, she leaves the gentlemen to their conversation without a backward glance.
Sirius knows it is all a lie.
He would despise her if he did not know that deep down in black lace heart, she is the same as him.
It was Bellatrix who insisted that Sirius receive an invitation to her wedding, despite his recent disinheritance. And it is the knowledge that Bellatrix always gives Regulus the first dance at any ball, and Sirius the last, that brings Sirius to the country house on the bright blue-yellow day at the end of June.
He is surprised to find her alone. It unsettles something he thought he knew of her. Their own company is too full of uncertainties, and difficult decisions can only be approached under the deafening smog of other people. Whenever Sirius is unsure or anxious, he seeks James out so that he does not have to listen to his own voice.
Bellatrix is standing alone in the sunshine, like a shard of glass hanging from the dark frame of a broken mirror. The wedding dress hangs from her frame as if carved from marble. Her dark hair is worked into a jewelled knot, and her slender wrists and neck glitter with jewellery. When she turns to look at him, where he lingers in the shadows of the doorway, the two fat diamonds that hang from her ears swing like raindrops.
"No Aunt Druella? No Cissy?" Sirius asks.
He closes the door and crosses to the four-poster bed. The sheets are neat as the edge of paper, and he knows Bellatrix will never sleep in the bed again. It will stand cold and stark, a white grave in the bedroom of the girl she was.
"I asked them to leave," says Bellatrix. "I wanted to be alone."
"Very understandable," he agrees, a smile playing at his lips, and sits down on the end of the bed.
She has turned to watch him, and her eyes are full of that dark hunger that Sirius remembers from the silvery hours before dawn, when he held her in his arms and they went through the prescribed pattern of the dance while quietly quarrelling their way through philosophy and ethics. What is right, what is wrong, and what feels good. What is allowed.
They could fight. Sirius can see her lips tighten and the small frown that settles on her brow for a second. She could poke at him with some elaborately sarcastic jibe, and he could respond with something charmingly obnoxious, telling her he'd do as he pleased, just as he always did. They could bicker about whether Sirius should stay or go until it was time for her to be at the altar.
Maybe he could draw her into an argument so deep she'd forget her fiancé. She'd stay here, in her pristine room, and fight with Sirius. They could fight, just as they had always done.
She catches her sides of her skirt and spreads it wide, letting the fabric fall like butterfly wings from her fingertips.
"Well?" she asks. "How do I look?"
"You'll do," he says.
It is grudgingly given, and received with a frustrated smile. She is beautiful, she knows it; it's simply never mattered before. The men who tilted their heads to watch her pass have been laughed off by Sirius just as Bellatrix has teased him over the gaggle of girls who follow him hopelessly about the ballroom.
She turns back to her dressing table and Sirius watches her fuss at the mirror. Her hands move in brisk little flutters, fixing their lace trim of her neckline and twisting a diamond hairpin back into place. He can see the reflection as she moves, a jagged view in the angle between her sharp jaw and the white curve of her shoulder.
He approaches her, coming to stand behind her without conscious thought. He doesn't touch her, but even though she doesn't look at him, he can see the ripple of her spine above the backline of her dress. He can hear the quiet tension in her breathing. She's wearing the perfume Regulus gave her last Christmas. He can smell it on her skin: light and sweet and everything she's not.
"Are you going to go through with it?" he asks. "Really?"
She half-turns to him, and he studies the curves and angles of her profile, her lashes and lips, her jawline and cheekbones.
"Of course I am. How could you think I'd do otherwise?"
Sirius laughs but he doesn't know where the sound comes from.
"Of course," he agrees. "Just like a good Black. I expect you'll be a good little wifey too. You'll be popping out brats in no time. What kind of fuck is old Rodolphus then?"
Her skin burns and her eyes widen and are suddenly full of clawed shadows. Sirius prepares to duck as Bellatrix's fingers close around the silver-backed hairbrush. But the rage retreats and anyone who didn't make a habit of taunting wild animals as Sirius does would think it had gone entirely. Bellatrix is still flushed but her eyes are empty once more.
"Even if that had the slightest bearing on my marrying him," she says as she dusts a little shimmering powder over her blushing cheeks, "what makes you think I'd tell you?"
Sirius leans past her, his arms brushing hers, and lifts the lid on a small pot of cosmetics. He replaces it in favour of picking up a bottle of perfume and spraying a cloud of it into the air. He wrinkles his nose at the smell, then straightens again with a grin.
"Pride. Boasting over the sexual prowess of your husband-to-be. You'd want me to know, wouldn't you?"
"I really couldn't care whether you-"
"Unless," Sirius interrupts her, struck by a sudden, glorious idea. "Unless you don't know."
He only has to look at her to have it confirmed. She's blushing furiously and her eyes are narrowed to dangerous, glittering slits. Sirius can't stop staring at her as she tries so hard not to let the fire rage out of control. A slow, victorious smile grows with each second of her ever increasing anger.
"Naturally you don't know," says Sirius. "How could you? Good girls don't spread their legs before they're married, and only under protest after. A virgin bride. Why didn't I realise?"
"Teenage boys may focus on nothing beyond sexual conquests, but I can assure you that-"
He skates a fingertip along the sweep of her collarbone to her shoulder, and she stills instantly. She seems trapped in the reflection of the mirror, her eyes fixed unblinkingly on Sirius. Her skin is soft and smooth like polished willow, and just as cool.
"You can't even lie to me about it, Bella?"
His hand skates down the sweet-white icing fall of her dress. He gathers the material like so many handfuls of slippery paper. She's watching him in the mirror and there is a moment when he both doesn't recognise her and knows her as the moon to his sun at once.
"There isn't enough time for this," she says, even as she's leaning forward and bracing herself on the dressing table.
"There's still time."
His blunt nails scratch up the clinging gauze of her stockings, feeling the shape of the firm flesh within, and then tug at the lace trim about the top of her thighs. He feels something snag and tear, and he's grinning as he slips his hand between her legs.
The mirror still shows her face, her eyes locked onto him, even as she's bent over, the full curves of her breasts threatening to overspill the corset and her dress rumpled up her back.
She fits perfectly in the curve of his hand. His palm cups the slick satin mound of her cunt. Her knickers are already wet. When he flexes his fingers the panties sink into the shape of her. The smooth tightness of her thighs traps his hand place and he can only finger her through the flimsy scrap of her underwear. So he kicks her ankles further apart, spreading her legs wider.
He can see her better like this. The high sweep of her buttocks and v of her cunt covered and framed by the lace and ribbons and silk trims of her stocking tops and corsetry and damp white satin knickers. It is an exquisite picture, like a neatly turned out doll, and is something he cannot bear to send to the altar so pristine.
He yanks her knickers to one side and sinks a finger deep into her.
The sound she makes when he penetrates her is a low, harsh noise: the kind of animal noise he'd never believed her capable of. She is hot and slick and she clenches about his finger in something that could as easily be resistance as provocation. One look at her face though, soft-lipped and dark-eyed with want, and Sirius clings on to his moral high ground. It is only in this that she lets herself be known. He’s been open in his every look. Not like her.
The dressing table creaks as she readjusts her grip. Her knuckles are white and the ring Regulus gave her, its tiny sparkling ruby on her little finger, is biting into her skin.
Sirius goes on fucking her with his finger while he frees his cock. He doesn’t remember getting hard, though he is sure he was more sickened than aroused when he came into her room. He’s hard now though. He pulls his finger free from her, leaving her slumped over and gasping, and rubs it over the glistening head of his cock.
Bellatrix starts to turn to him. There are damp black strands of her hair clinging to her forehead. Her skin is shining with sweat and seems strained over the Black lines of her bones, making her gaunt with lust.
“Sirius,” she begins, but he pushes her back down with a gentle but unyielding hand.
“Bella?” he says, half-teasing half-mocking.
She’s goes back to watching him in the glass. She can’t touch him in the mirror; she can only watch him touch her. He directs a smile at her reflected face as he works her frilly knickers down her legs and goes back to fingering her, long slippery strokes down the length of her cunt, dipping in and out, and sliding to the crease of her thigh. He guides his cock between her legs and she arches further forward for him. The tautness of her frame is an odd contrast to the softness of her body and Sirius curls an arm about her waist to bring her flush against him.
His cock rubs damply, blindly at her cunt then he gives a sharp jerk of his hips and feels himself sink into her. She makes that same quiet, inhuman noise, laced with discomfort, but holds still against his body.
He wonders if she is in pain, even if she won't show it. The first time hurts for girls, he's told. The pain is fleeting, they say, but definite. It suits Bella, he thinks, to suffer the pain before she can have her pleasure. The two worlds collide in her all too often. He wonders if she will bleed, virgin-red dribbles down her leg and soiling her white stockings. He would like her to bleed for him, just as he does not want her to bleed for Rodolphus. He will not let Rodolphus have his trophy of blood-stained sheets.
It isn’t fucking for a long moment; it’s nothing but that thought and the sensation of having Bellatrix’s legs spread wide and his cock poking into her.
“Is that it, Sirius?” she asks, and though her voice is breathless he can still catch the note of disdain. He knows Bellatrix must be the same as him because she always knows exactly what will make him act. He is grateful for those girls at school who made such willing practice material.
He gathers her body tight in his arms and then thrusts hard. Her head falls back, brushing black curls and the sharp heads of diamond pins against his cheek. The air is slammed from her chest in a guttural moan. She doesn’t sound anything like the pureblood princess she plays for the rest of their family. She sounds like a hot, languid summer’s night with the air full of dirt. He knew she could be like this, because he is just the same.
The next slam of his hips drives his cock even deeper into her. He feels her twisting in his arms and grips her tighter. His hand slides over the corseted flatness of her stomach, up over the embroidered bodice, to the lace-trimmed edge that her breasts strain against. He keeps on fucking her with short, rough thrusts and feels his laughter rolling up in his throat with each of her shameless half-cries.
His fingers wriggle down into her dress and tugs until her breasts are free from the stiff material. He catches a glimpse of them in the mirror: pale skin and wild black hair on both, her wedding dress pulled this way and that until she can be fucked and fingered by him, and his smile such a perfect curve of victory and revelation.
He pinches her rose-pink nipple, his fingertips digging into the warm, rounded flesh, and catches her gaze in the mirror.
“Touch yourself, Bella,” he says. “Put your hand between your legs and touch yourself.”
He knows it can’t be long. Her cunt is tight about his cock and every thrust makes it more difficult for him to remember why he hates her and how many minutes it is until her wedding. All he can think of is coming. But she looks startled by the command so he catches her hand and drags it down to her cunt, where his cock is slamming into her. He sees the flex of her fingers, uncertain and shaky, then he can see the moment she realizes what she’s meant to do. Her eyes sink shut and her chin juts forward in a way he’s only ever seen her do at times of great defiance.
Her wrist snaps steadily and it is the fleeting brush of her fingertips as his cock slides into her that makes him come. The arm he has curled about her tightens reflexively and he can hear her breath catch as she tries to gasp. He keeps on thrusting, feeling his come spill out into her and start dribbling down her legs. The strings of thin white fluid seep into her knickers and Sirius thinks of the look on Rodolphus’s face on his wedding night, when he flips his new wife’s skirts up and finds her underwear already stained with another man.
He holds her as she reaches her own climax and watches her in the mirror. Her cunt ripples about him and the expression on her face as she comes makes her more beautiful than Sirius ever realized she could be; he wonders if others have watched him as he comes and seen the same unearthly bliss.
When her shudders subside to trembling, and Sirius feels steady on his feet once more, he lets her go. She crumples at the dressing table for a second, before she catches herself. Sirius steps back to take a look at the creature he has uncovered. He has theorized it was there, and now he has found it: a debauched bride in ripped stockings and her breasts pushed high over the neckline of her dress, the nipples still flushed dark red. She glances round at him, through the mess of her hair, and her eyes are rimmed with smudged kohl.
He kneels at her side and strokes her cheek gently.
“Soon we won’t even share a name,” he tells her. “But you’ll still be the same as me, even when you change that. Impure.”
She smiles at him, the same lazy smile she has given him over late-night cocktails as the party grows old.
“It was never the name that made you mine.” She pushes him back and rises. She studies herself in the mirror and then begins to repair the damage done to her make-up. “It’s that you’re the same as me.”
END