Word Count: 311

Challenge/Competition: None

Warnings: There's a swear word in there somewhere!

Disclaimer: I don't claim to own Harry Potter, it's all JKR's.


Time is just water, it slips through their fingers and all they do is waste it. Remus tries to be all or nothing, but Sirius is always drunk or nothing.

It's playful smiles and shoving, keeping with the group and never maintaining eye contact of any sort. Until it's not, and the evening comes and Sirius' pores are saturated with alcohol, it's flirty smiles, rough kisses, faint whisperings of the truth (I love you, I need you, please don't leave me).

"Just stop thinking," Sirius says one night. No, you start thinking, Remus thinks, but never says.

And he always thinks, and rarely says, because it's Sirius. It's Sirius - broken but perfect, blowing smoke rings, playing pranks, screwing up family letters, knocking back alcohol. Zigzagging through life, he is always enough for Remus, yet he has never even considered himself to be enough for Sirius.

The world keeps on spinning, and they get lost in time. They can't keep up.

Everything falls apart, before it has the time to fall together. It's that they don't understand each other, they're too different, they don't trust each other. They want separate things.

Remus always thought and never said, Sirius always said and never thought, and every small thought that wasn't spoken and phrase that wasn't thought adds to their unravelling, and it is their undoing.

It tears Remus apart, he doesn't see how it tears Sirius apart, and they let it happen. They let time win, and they just stop. Stop smiling, kissing, looking, talking. But they long and they pine, for the days that seemed the worst at the time; the days when they needed alcohol or excuses to love, the days where they couldn't accept themselves.

"It's all fucked, isn't it?" Sirius says, and Remus doesn't reply, just looks at him, and he thinks: it doesn't have to be, but he never says so.


AN: Trying to write a Remus/Sirius fic based on prompts and this came out instead so... there will be another one later too! Enjoy :) X