Title: A cup of Coffee
Author: Arnica
Archive: Azkaban's Lair, Fanfiction.net
Summary: Remus angsts out and wishes he were anythign to Sirius but what he really is.
Spoilers: None
Rating: Pg-13
Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended. In Layman's terms, Sirius, Remus and their friends and family are not my toys. I've just taken them down off the shelf to play with them and I promise to put them back, although in vaguely crude positions, when I'm done.
Originally posted:2-27-02
Notes: Yeah, by reading this you've all become my shrinks.
Warnings: Bitterness. Does that count?
Dedications: Yeah. To Zoe for thinking this is beautiful and Cal because without him, it couldn't be written adn for everyone who knows him for *not* sending him this story.
Feedback: Negvse1@aol.co,

A cup of Coffee

Most people wake up and have a nice cup of coffee. Sirius Black wakes up and has me...but sometimes I think he'd care more about the coffee. People are very particular about their coffee you see. It has to be just right...people turn coffee into a tiny ritual fit for worship.

What we do when dawn tumbles across us is a far cry from the gentle hands that add perfect amounts of sugar adn cream at the table in the great hall. Hands that can snag the sugar in a flash creep slowly across my back and arse when he thinks i still sleep and lips that sip reverently at liquid slip hungrily and almost indiffrently across my skin before my eyes even open. I let the tounge that's been burnt by coffee handled to carelessly dip into my mouth without even the cursory sip he gives the liquid.

Because after all, I'm only Moony, just Remus, and I may whimper and want or lie there and go through the motions but I never burn.

You know what's stupid...sometimes I'd rather be a cup of fucking coffee than myself. A cup of coffee can't feel used. A cup of coffee doesn't care that you just pick it up and put it down. It doesn't care that one moment your close enough to take it's scent through your fucking mouth and then the next you're just another thing in their life. A cup of coffee doesn't know the ripping emptiness of being the breath and the core and the center of a world in the silence between night and day one second and then just... another friend and not even a best friend the next.

A cup of coffee can't bring things upon itsself. A cup of coffee can't mistake a friendly glance for more. It can't seek you out just because when you touch it it forgets everything. Forgets that you're about to make it a little more empty, a little less than what it used to be every time you put your mouth to it. A cup of coffee doesn't care that it gets slowly destroyed with every sip and a cup of fucking coffee doesn't try to pretend this is all over dramatic prose and not the truth because a cup of coffee doesn't care.

But I'm not a cup of coffee. I'm Remus Lupin and I did mistake that glance and I did crawl to his side first because he did make me forget it all. The lycanthropy, the fact that I don't know if I can afford to keep comming to Hogwarts, that no matter how hard I try to keep up with a million things in a broken down home with a sick mother it keeps piling up until I can't breathe and see and worst of all that I unless i'm curled to him, the only thing that does make me forget is the ripping pain that I can't admit ot anyone almost feels good when the moon takes me. His skin made me forget all this...so I went to him at night and he seemed so content to let me curl to his side and sleep, while he talked to James through a gap in the bed hangings and to sleep with me so innocently until dawn came and for the first time, he woke himself up with me, and not a cup of coffee and oh I was silly and stupid and eager to please adn thank and he tasted so good on my tongue and his hands knew so much and we even fell asleep giggling.

And then morning came and nothing was diffrent. His life hadn't changed, not in the least. That fact that I'd never been kissed, that I'd done things to him I could joke about but had never really considered, none of it mattered to him. He was back to being James' best friend and my good friend, but nothing more, dispite the days i spent hovering outside the doors to the classes we didn't share waiting for that one moment when Sirius Black would be alone.

But it never came. I should know, I'm still waiting for it. The only time that comes close are those whispered muttered silvered dawns and when his hands touch me, I forget why I want to tell him No

I can hear them rustling around to get dressed for class in the dorm. James sticks a head in the hangings and grins at me. James who thinks he knows and has no idea. James who Sirius always loved so much better and who I can't deny that right too.

" Hey Moony, Hurry up. Padfoot's already on his second cup of coffee. You're never going to get any at this rate." And his voice is teasing because you want to know the funny thing?

I hate coffee.