WILD CARD

Author: Queen Nightingale

Rating: M (Sexual Content/Language)

Pairing: SSMM

Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.
- William Butler Yeats, The Stolen Child

My veins are clotted with the wreckage of scattered Moons. As you twist and turn in the dark, your laughter phosphorescent against the night sky, something pounds, hard and blunt, in the middle of my chest.

"Oh, Sirius, isn't it beautiful?"

Your head is tilted back and I watch in awe as your pale white skin rises and falls by your collarbone, your hands flashing back and forth with your mouth on fire.

There is something in my throat.

"If I could have anything in the world," you say suddenly, ripping your body towards me, glow-in-the-dark and electric, your veins ricocheting with fluorescent emotion and bedazzling joy, "If I could have anything in the world, I'd want to freeze this moment."

"Which moment?"

"The one right there." You point somewhere to your left, and I try to picture what you are saying, all big-little-girl-grin and hair that looks like someone tried to smash it into the sky.

"It's gone now."

"Yes," you roll your eyes, and I can feel a smirk creeping up my face as you turn away from me, head towards the stars, "Yes, Sirius, it is gone now."

"You're wild, Marlene baby."

You turn back towards me, languidly, and I feel as if you have coated me in the stardust that no doubt lingers behind your closed eyelids.

"Of course, sugar. I'm not just wild, though."

"No?"

You smirk back at me, and I try to absorb the image of your beautiful dark red lips curling into a smirk, your frizzy static black hair curling above your head, your tongue curling, no doubt, in between the back molars of your teeth.

"I'm the wild card. And you picked me."

You're right, sweetheart. I did pick you. I picked the girl who walked like a stutter in between her classes, her feet barely touching the ground. I often wondered if your heart grew wings and lifted you slightly on your tippy-toes – your body an exclamation point, your eyes a sentence that I needed a dictionary for.

I stared at you because I liked your too-thick eyebrows and I liked the ring of acne around the bottom of your jaw and I liked the way that your lips stuck out when you pronounced the word "prof-fessor" when talking to Minnie in class.

Sometimes you turned back towards me and my boys in the back and winked at me, slowly and seductively, and I bit my fist and groaned when you turned back around, your hair sashaying, your body posture the same as an arched eyebrow.

Fuck. Me.

"Hey Black."

You're standing in front of me in the hallway, and I pause for a second. I drop my eyes down and then bring them up to meet your electric pale blue ones, fizzing and humming like hydro-wires in a hot summer breeze.

I grin at you, making sure to bear my canines. I've never met a girl quite as bold as you before.

"How's it going, Marlene?"

You start walking beside me, bouncing up and down, glancing at me like a child would their mother.

"Do you have class?"

"No, I dropped out of Divination, fucking bollocks anyways you know."

"Divination is my favourite class."

I snort and turn towards you, my long black hair tumbling past my face.

"Divination is your favourite class?"

You are smirking, grinning at me with a hand on your hip, your black hair (I swear it is moving) curling around your throat. I want to press my lips to your throat. I clench my fists against my notebook, and stare at you harder.

"Do you want to know what prophecy I learned in class the other day, Black?" You pose the question and suddenly I am frozen a bit, staring at your red open mouth and the coy smile lighting up the corners of your face like a flickering Halloween decoration. There is dangerous territory near, and suddenly you are too close to me and I am starting to realize that I am the prey.

My voice is like sandpaper.

"What did you learn, Marlene?"

You have long nails that are painted an abrupt shade of turquoise, and I glance at them as they begin to wrap around my neck.

"I learned," your open mouth is by my ear, and I press my large palm against your waist as you lean into me, "I learned that your lips are going to be in between my legs."

"When." The word crawls out of my mouth, hoarse and hungry, as I press my other hand against your waist, encircling you near my core.

My notebook clatters to the ground. I didn't even realize I dropped it. My mouth is exactly three quarters of a second away from the vein pulsing in your neck, and my hands are love drunk on the curve in your back.

You wait for two seconds. I can hear you breathing. It sounds like … it sounds like the best thing I have ever heard in the word, the light and dark and hot and hard noise against my ear.

"Tonight," you whisper, suddenly shy, your face buried in the crook of my shoulder.

I can't help myself and suddenly I have lifted you into the wall and suddenly my lips are on your satin ones and suddenly your hips are doing that crazy samba and suddenly there is something dainty and wet in between my teeth and it tastes a lot like drunken teenagers running down a dark street at two in the morning.

You lean back and say my name darkly, your white teeth flashing like dying iridescent lightbulbs, and then I sink my teeth into your neck because you are the apple and I am Eve.

I turn over in my bed and you are lying on the other side, splayed out like a giant pale white stain in the middle of my bed sheets. The curtains are closed and for a second when I stare at you I pretend that you are mine.

You bat your spider eyelashes sleepily and I press my finger to the hot pink lipstick smeared across the side of your face, neon and flashing with the remnants of the glittering magic that you used to make your lips incandescent.

"What time is it." Your voice is bleary and I watch your eyes open, the pale blue hidden by the thick black fringe.

"Fuck if I know, Marlene."

You sit up drearily, pushing your hair back from your face with a weak twist of your wrist. You are missing your shirt, and when you stretch your arms up I watch your small breasts rise and fall, quiet, yawning. You noisily let your hands drop, and turn your twinkling, mocking gaze on me.

"Enjoying the view?" Your voice purrs.

"Nice armpits," I retort, stifling a chuckle.

You grin, hard, in response.

We are silent for a few seconds, just staring at each other, and then I lean over, brushing my thumb against the remnants of wizarding make-up bedazzling your face.

"Why do you wear this stuff," I ask softly.

"So that I end up in bed with you," you reply, sharply honest.

You're the first person that I show my flying motorcycle to. Not James, not Remus, not Peter – you. You walk around it in the alleyway where I stashed it near Hogsmeade, your eyes wide, all bundled up behind scarves upon layers upon layers.

"Sirius," you gasp, slightly breathless, "It's beautiful."

Your fingers curl around the handles, and you turn your head back towards me, your eyes beautiful and open and prettier than the sky.

I wrap my arms around your shoulders and press a kiss to your forehead, my wild darkling girl.

"Do you want to go on it?"

It's one of those sharp and cold and cloudless glimmering winter days, your breath exploding out of your mouth like a dragon, all perfect light blue sky that mirrors your perfect light blue eyes. You are wrapped up under my leather jacket and hoodie, and when you peek up at me from under the explosion of cheveux noirs there is a small smile on your face that I try to memorize.

You drum on my chest with your mitts.

"Do I ever."

I rev up the engine and you clamber on behind me, tightly grabbing my back.

"Where to, Mademoiselle?" I ask over the thrum of the engine, reveling in the feeling of your small arms around my waist.

There is a tinkering of sunny giggles from behind me, and I hear your lungs expand before you speak loudly.

"To the sky. Never to come back!"

You are looking up at the sky, and my body is turned towards you in the long grass before the Forbidden Forest, my hand around yours.

"Did you know the funny thing about stars? Lily told me about what the muggles say."

I scoff. Lily Evans is too much of a know-it-all for my tastes.

"No, I'm serious, Sirius." You turn towards me and blast me with a glossy smile. I roll my eyes and let some laughter tear out of my mouth.

"What did Lily Evans say about the stars, Marlene."

"She said this crazy thing," you continue, "This absolutely crazy whacked out thing that the muggles think, which is that the stars are dead."

I look at you in disbelief. Your long red nails curl around mine, and I watch you absentmindedly blow a large bubble from the chewing gum you were biting on. It pops loudly. The night smells like abrasive watermelon.

"What are you talking about, baby."

"I'm talking about the stars, sugar."

"Marlene."

You turn towards me and grin again, your lips a pomegranate red, so thick and rich that they look like they are about to burst.

"I don't really know, sugar. She was rambling on – you know Evans – something about how the light that we see is already hundreds of thousands of years old. So technically we see light from stars that are already dead. So what we are looking at right now - " you sweep your hand above you, unlinking it from mine before returning it to my palm, "What we are looking at is a vast graveyard of light. All of the prophecies of the world that we make based off of these flashing things, it's all been predestined. Because the stars are already dead."

I'm silent. I'm looking at the curve of your jaw under your ear.

"Do you get what I'm saying? Isn't that absolutely bloody bizarre? The things these muggles come up with, you know. Like think about all of the sailors who use these stars to guide them home. They are sailing by dead light, by dead things, by these strange dead lighthouses that somebody has plastered up there in the darkness. If the stars are empty lighthouses, where did their keepers go?"

I am silent. I do not know.

You are quiet, and then you crawl over to me, sliding one of your legs over my torso so that you are sitting up on my horizontal body. Your hair is lit up by the moon, and your eyes are that luminous, eery shade of light blue.

I run my fingertips up the inside of your arms and watch you shiver against the backdrop of the long grass. The long grass, and the dead stars.

At your funeral, I drop your hot pink lipstick into the casket. I do not stay for the service.