InsaneJournal

log, Hogwarts: Sirius B/James B
[After this.]

[Lavender. The spigot spewed it, lilac, lolling, bubbles bowing, the air rich with it and heavy with wetness. James floated in the miniature sky on his back, backstroking in a swath through white. His glasses were removed, set aside on the lip of the large stone tub, sunken into the tiles of the floor, shining as they were like the scales of a mermaid's tail. Not a real mermaid, mind. But the sort that lounged in sugar-dyed glass nearby, giggling and splashing about most enticingly in stained waves. Scaly blues, aquatic greens inlaid in the ancient room. It reminded the young man in the bubbles of a Turkish bath, and he closed his eyes.

He enjoyed the suspension of weight.

It was similar to flying, he thought. The weightlessness.

But that thought was overshadowed by the toss of journal and quill, by the prick of tears as he considered the harsh truth of mortality. His parents were dead. He wouldn't see them again, whatever Sirius said, and how was he supposed to cope with that? There would be no funeral, no procession or remembrance. They were gone, long gone, as he himself supposedly was. Perhaps he—or some version of him—knew them, in the Great Beyond. Perhaps they were together.

He breathed out his nose.

Tightness curled in his chest, around his heart.

There had been no progress made in dressing himself. James was having a bath, and Sirius' presence didn't change that. He'd bathed in the room before, as it was open to Quidditch captains, and he'd learned long ago to not care much about his own nudity (unless Evans was around). Sirius would simply have to deal with it.]