ALL OF TUESDAY, Reece avoided everyone he could even potentially be on a first-name basis with the best he could. He didn't want to go over the same conversation over and over again because each time he had to attempt to explain it, it just made him feel worse.
( "Mate, what the fuck did you punch Dylan for?"
"Lost my temper."
"Since when do you even have one to lose?"
"Since now, I guess. I'm so tired of listening to you talk about my sister." )
By the time evening came, his brain felt like it had been replaced with a raisin, but he didn't want to return to the dorm where he knew more questions or jokes or comments awaited for him, so, of all things he could have done, he decided to head for the prefects' bathroom because as Quidditch captain, he also had the right to use it.
Maybe he really should relax. He should try to get rid of the anger that had been spilling over like tar from a boiling cauldron over the recent weeks before he took it out on someone he genuinely cared about.
But when he gave the password to the fourth door from the statue of Boris the Bewildered and opened it, there was already somebody inside and he halted halfway through stepping over the threshold. "What are you doing here?"
Sirius raised his eyebrows. "What people usually do in bathrooms; practising necromancy obviously." He chuckled to himself where he sat on a bench with nothing more than a towel tied around his waist as he painted his toenails.
"No," he said, watching him run the brush in even movements, "what, you know what I mean; what are you doing here? You're not a prefect or a Quidditch captain."
"Yeah, but I've got a mate who's Quidditch captain and another one who's prefect."
When he finished spreading the varnish, Sirius reached to grab the bottle and twist the brush back into it and Reece saw that he had something written across his ribs but the text was too small for him to make it out with the distance, though it didn't stop him for trying until Sirius dropped his foot onto the floor and turned around so that they were facing each other and the tattoo was hidden again. "What's that got to do with anything?" he asked.
"I get extended the right to use it through my mates," Sirius stated like it was a fact that couldn't be argued against simply because the words happened to fall from Siruis lips before he flashed Reece a grin.
The smell of jasmine and lemon – no, pink grapefruit – in the room enveloped him, rising to his head and Reece had to screw up his fact to try to string together words into a coherent sentence. "No, you don't, that's not a thing," he finally managed to say.
"Whatever." Sirius rolled his eyes. "Are you going to leave so that I can get dressed?"
Reece wasn't really paying attention. His palms were clammy and his fingers threatened to slip from the doorknob so he coiled them tighter around it but his eyes remained transfixed on Sirius, completely lost to the fact that he was looking at her expectantly.
His hair was still wet, though he had tousled it with a towel because strands stuck up out his head rather than matting down. Shimmering pearls of water collected at the strings of black hair that fell across his forehead much more beautiful than dew in a spiderweb caught in the delicate dawn light and his lips glistened like the insides of oyster shells.
Oyster shells collected from the depth of the seas, they would taste of salt. Jagged and rough but also a gleaming vortex of pearly colours, both simultaneously because Sirius, like an oyster shell, was not mutually exclusive with himself.
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Human Design | Sirius Black
Fanfic| Human Design | | OC x Sirius Black | | Maurades Era | | Harry Potter fan fic | In his final year at Hogwarts, Reece Cooper had two things he wanted to focus on: Quidditch and his schoolwork. He didn't have time for anything else, that was until Si...
