lesbian yellow sour fruit (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} chairs) wrote,@ 2009-07-17 20:25:00 |
|
| Current mood: |  lethargic |
| Current music: | Nicholas Hooper - Harry & Hermione | Powered by Last.fm |
| Entry tags: | # public, fic, fic: harry potter |
fic: and on thy cheek a fading rose (bellatrix/narcissa, r)
title. and on thy cheek a fading rose
rating. R
fandom. harry potter
ship. bellatrix/narcissa
word count. 1080
warnings. blackcest (AGAIN, oy), sex.
notes. So, this just sort of came to me over the course of the day. I feel like I should have spent more than a day on it, but in general I'm very pleased with it and whenever I write anything I wind up being remotely proud of I feel the need to post it promptly. As always where Blacks are concerned, the chronology may be a bit wonky, I don't really know. I just wanted to stick Bella and Cissy in a gorgeous manor in Paris and see what I could do. I tried to explore a different side of Bella in this one, as opposed to the crazed post-Azkaban Bella which I often feel inclined to favor in my writing. ONE DAY I WILL WRITE SOMETHING OTHER THAN BLACKCEST, I PROMISE.
summary. Beads of sweat surface and settle in the hollow of Bellatrix's throat. Narcissa's upper lip is salty to taste when she touches her tongue to it.
With anguish moist and fever dew,
And on thy cheek a fading rose
Fast withereth too.
— John Keats
Paris is exceptionally warm throughout the summer of 1977.
(1977, she will say out loud to herself when she recalls so many years later, when time has taken her looks and her husband. She traces the date on a crinkled, time-worn piece of parchment with a finger and feels more distant from her deceased sister now than ever before.)
They hide away behind the walls of the vast and unoccupied Black family château and wait for word. The Dark Lord insists that it is for the best, but Bellatrix is ever-restless. Narcissa tries to soothe her with assurances of 'soon' and soft, tight-lipped kisses on her cheek.
~
August comes and goes. September arrives and sits lazily on its haunches. Unbearable heat settles in. They shed heavy robes to sun themselves in only their undergarments, shielded from the prying eyes of any neighbors by enchanted oak trees that grow beyond the height of the garden walls.
Beads of sweat surface and settle in the hollow of Bellatrix's throat.
Narcissa's upper lip is salty to taste when she touches her tongue to it. Her heated and hazy mind barely registers the sensation of Bella curving a lacquered nail along her inner thigh.
~
Narcissa watches her sister bathe in the moonlight streaming through the sitting room's grand stained glass window, a patchwork of colors tinting the planes of her bare skin. She watches Bellatrix splayed out stark naked with fingers between her legs and wicked blood now runs through her veins. She can count several of her sister's ribs as they protrude with distinction, more than she remembers having seen before (before, before when it was the garden and the pollen that made her head spin and the late-afternoon's red sunlight had filtered away some of Bella's intensity when she gazed at her without shading her eyes). She imagines pressing a finger deep between each rib until the skin gave way and she could take her sister's murderous heart between pale fingers.
She does not have any particular penchant for being morbid, nor much of a stomach for violence, unlike Bella, but it is a cold, cold January and her favorite robes have worn a little thinner since Lucius last saw her in them.
~
March means snowfall comes only in brief bouts now, but a fresh, cutting wind rattles the windows in the night. Narcissa traces patterns in the condensation on the windows when she cannot sleep. The city below is a muted sea of greys and blues with thousands of little puncture-holes of light, like a paved sky.
The sound of soft, padding footfalls makes her start. But hush, it is only Bella, your Bella.
With her face pressed against the glass and Bellatrix's fingers working inside her, the stars (or are those city lights?) seem to flicker and extinguish.
They leave whorls of fingerprints on the glass that Narcissa later magics away. Wouldn't do to have the House Elves suspect.
~
Bellatrix and Rodolphus are wed quietly, quickly. She wears their mother's old wedding gown though it has turned an eggshell white with age and neglect. Narcissa is the only guest and witness, apart from the priest, who trembles in the morning chill throughout the ceremony.
Bellatrix delights in hexing him and erasing his memories, watching his face flicker between pain and blankness as each one slips away and leaves him shivering with an inexplicable emptiness.
7th April, 1978, the would-be invitations would-be proclaim. Narcissa can't remember ever feeling so old.
Later, she listens as Rodolphus takes Bella against the bureau in the next room, hears the piercing shatter of priceless heirlooms as they fall to the floor, and touches herself, trying not to think of Lucius.
~
Rodolphus does not stay. He steals away the following evening with promises of news and a swift return and after that Bellatrix grows crueler and crueler when she has been in the house for more than a few days, bound by protective spells and barred from stealing away through the streets of Paris with a hood to shroud her countenance.
Narcissa dismisses all but one of the House Elves.
Rain falls through most of May. Bellatrix destroys lilies and gardenias and peonies at the touch of her fingertips, replacing them with a garden of deadly plants and herbs that she tends to like the child she would and will never bear. Oleanders and foxgloves and belladonna; she leaves a toxic blossom at Narcissa's bedside every morning.
Narcissa dreams in black-and-white of sipping oleander tea in the shade of an oak tree.
~
Sometimes, Narcissa paints Bellatrix. Her talent with the brush has gone mostly uncultivated in her lifetime, but her sister is beautiful and terrible and Narcissa wants to capture her, hold her captive on canvas the way she cannot in reality. The first time, it has been so long the brush feels awkward and foreign pressed between her fingers. Bellatrix refuses to model for her, so she paints mostly from memory and familiarity, drawing out the strong curve her jaw, a lock of near-ebony hair hanging stray against high cheekbones.
When it is finished, the painting frightens her. The Bellatrix on canvas has eyes the color of ashes that glint wildly, dark but somehow full of fight and flames and void of lucidity.
She feels strangely foreboded of something.
She burns the painting.
Bellatrix will scold her for lighting the fireplace when the sun has only just set and the summer day's heat still lingers.
~
The July days and nights melt and drip lazily into one another.
It is thirty degrees Celcius and they lie unclothed and draped across plush, velvet divans, wishing they were made of cool, merciful marble.
It is thirty-nine degrees Celcius and Bellatrix bends her sister over the kitchen counter top (merciful, merciful marble), hearing her hiss with slight shock and eager relief.
It has been twelve months.
~
The sun sinks behind their garden facing the West, and Narcissa watches its progress, leaning at the waist against the grand balustrade of their balcony. She stands cast in the dusky purple-orange glow and wishes someone were there to capture her in this light.
She does not hear Bella approach from behind. Hands take her by the waist, too tightly to suggest good intentions, then move up and up to ghost over her breasts before Bella's whole body is pressing into Narcissa's and she is kissing and nipping at the nape of her neck.
"Cissy. My Cissy."
Narcissa only wonders if the fall might kill her.
