A/N: I have had this sitting around with me for too long. I need to post it, and move on. So here it is. And yes, I know that the scenes revolving around the Willow incident are the weakest part of the fic, at least in my opinion. But I absolutely despise the Willow incident, which unfortunately is a critical moment in the Marauders' lives. So, it couldn't be avoided, but that part came out in agonizing pieces. So yeah. I'm aware of it.
The writing is purposefully kind of choppy and distorted, to convey Remus's mental state, if you will. Italics indicate flashbacks, if you can't figure that out. The timeline is directly after Remus has been told the news about James and Lily dying and Sirius's supposed betrayal.
This could also be considered as something of a companion piece to "As Long as You Hold Me". Maybe.
WARNINGS: This is slash. Remus/Sirius pairing, but it's really mostly implied than anything. Nothing explicit. But I guess it's my civic duty to put this here. And there's also a bit about attempted suicide. Don't read if it offends you. And maybe there's swearing, but I don't remember rightly.
Disclaimer: Ha ha, you're funny, if you think I own Harry Potter. Oh, what I would do if that was true. Everything is JKR's, except the title, which is taken from a song of the same name.
Dedication: Even though he is never going to read this (as far as I know), I dedicate this to my own lovely Phoenix. This was written in spirit of you, because gay love is just as beautiful, and I don't know what I'd do without your friendship. I love you my darling. And thanks to RandomReader90, who did an excellent job as always betaing and giving me solid feedback. It might never have been posted without you!
Please review? Pretty please?
He stared unseeingly out of the window, muggy gray-clouded sky and buildings fading in the onslaught of his thoughts. They were a chaotic mix of memories, impressions and feelings, part of him still not understanding and replaying stabbing words in a loop, desperately searching for meaning, waiting for some sense to be made.
Eyes.
But they were his beautiful eyes.
Plunk, plunk, plunk. It had started to rain. Fat drops were falling and hitting the roof, smacking into the windowpane, rolling like tears down the glassy surface. It felt as if each one were dragging him closer to the reality he did not want to face. Thunder rumbled, accentuating the ominous feeling in the pit of his stomach that pain was inevitable.
Eyes were the first thing he had noticed about Sirius Black, when he had opened his own eyes from a nap to find the other's staring right at him, filling his vision until all he could see were those
Look away, look away, look AWAY.
Stay, stay, stay. DON'T look away. Never look away. Meet my eyes forever.
What was this feeling in his heart? Why was it tightening, as if stretching to the breaking point? The pressure was cracking it.
Voice.
The sound was like velvet, smooth with a husky undertone. And somehow, what was even more heavenly and appealing about it was that it was so human. His laugh was a harsh bark, energetic and raw with a heady sense of power. It cracked when dry, and refused to lose its hoarseness until an hour after he had woken up.
It follows him. Haunts him. It whispers in his dreams, tickles his auditory senses when awake.
He was better at masking his voice; lies could drip easily off of his tongue, like honey in its untouchable perfection. And, with a blink of those eyes, he could summon all the life out of it, leaving it cold, dead as fallen leaves. Even the softest whisper had the power to capture his attention, draw his eyes to its owner. It's hardly enough; his whole being wants to turn, to seek him out. He manages to master himself. No, no, no, he did not want to turn, and he hates himself for straining his ears, for his need to listen.
But it's his voice, and he doesn't want it to stop circling around and around in his mind.
His taste buds registered an odd, salty taste in his mouth. Tears? Why was he crying?
"You're awake!" he had crowed. His voice rang in his head, echoing over and over, as if the boy had continued to shout it. He still couldn't breathe.
He stared. "Who—who are you?" he managed to whisper, a crippling wave of shyness strangling his voice.
But the other boy still seemed to hear. He blinked, eyelids pulling down like shutters, hiding the stunning eyes. Don't do that, he wanted to tell him.
"Oh, right, sorry," said the boy contritely. "My name is Sirius. Sirius Black."
"Like the star?"
He was rewarded. The boy beamed back at him. "That's right! You know, you're the first person to ever get that right."
His eyes had shifted uneasily to look out the window, to avoid those breath-stealing eyes. They flickered back, catching the bright gray once again.
"What's your name?"
"Remus. Remus Lupin."
He rarely cried. There were so many times that he could have, but he didn't. He hadn't cried as hard as he was now since…well, ever. He had never cried like this before.
Skin.
It was what changed the most from their first meeting. Then it had been pale, marble white. Ethereal. A boy born to be a puppet, with skin like cold glass, a beautiful doll. But he was never meant to sit on a dusty shelf, to be one small piece of a collection. He was meant to live. This doll was able to breathe. Soft flesh corded into muscle, curves gave way to planes and angles, and alabaster skin became infused with the sun. Smooth, aristocratic hands were now rough with calluses, and pearly scars snake here and there, tokens of one escapade or another. No, he does not want to trace the lines with the barest brush of his fingertips, he does not want to grab the arm to feel the muscle bunch under his grip.
But it's his skin, rough and smooth, defined and unique, a tapestry upon which their stories is told.
Why was he still crying? Why wasn't he stopping?
Lips pulled into a grin. A hand is held out.
"It's nice to meet you, Remus."
Remus hesitates before reaching out his own hand, sickly pale skin stretched taut over the bones. Sirius doesn't seem to notice or mind as he holds Remus's in a firm grasp. Remus still can't help but stare. The boy was almost abnormally handsome, handsome when he should have been called cute. His hand is cool, pleasant against Remus's feverish skin. The palm is soft to the touch, fingers supple rather than bony.
Remus abruptly realizes that the other boy—Sirius—has been scrutinizing him too. Their eyes meet again, and Sirius smiles.
"I think we're going to be great friends," he says.
Friends? Remus has never had a friend before.
And Remus couldn't help but smile too.
"I'd like that."
The tears were still coming down. They wouldn't stop…
Scent.
He smelled like eucalyptus. Cool and sharp, but not so that the scent burned his delicate nostrils. It was so damn refreshing, and he couldn't get enough of it. That eucalyptus scent actually seemed to make it easier for him to breathe; it cleared his lungs and nose and he could relax as he inhaled. Just one whiff of that distinct scent managed to brighten his whole day, and it enabled him to bring the world into a clearer focus. He couldn't imagine living without that piercing, eucalyptus smell. It's like air; he needs it to breathe. His chest tightens, airways constrict, bringing oxygen into deprived lungs becomes laborious, until he can smell him again.
The scent was addictive, like his own personal drug.
No, no, no, you can't use him like this. It's bad for you, bad for him.
But it's his scent, and it makes him feel more alive than he ever has before.
His ears picked up an anguished sort of howl that yanked on his horribly tight heartstrings. Was it the wolf? Who was making that sound? Was it Moony?
"Hey! Sleepy's awake!" broke in a new voice suddenly. Remus looks over and sees a mop of messy black hair, and twinkling hazel eyes staring at him from behind the lenses of his crooked glasses, accompanied by a Cheshire Cat grin. The boy sporting these disheveled features bounced into the compartment, seeming as energetic as Remus was tired. His name, 'James', was tossed his way as he tore into a box of Every Flavor Beans from the pile between him and Sirius.
"Remus," he replied to James' inquisitive look that he shot at him before examining a bean.
"That's cool," he said, popping the candy into his mouth, and promptly spitting it back out. Sirius snickered at him before turning to Remus.
"You want something to eat? We have plenty of stuff. What do you like?"
He involuntarily cringed. "It's okay, I'm good," Remus muttered, avoiding those narrowing eyes.
"Come on, just have some," Sirius wheedled. "You won't get to eat for a while."
"I can't pay you back," he whispered, sinking a little into his seat in humiliation.
"That's okay, don't worry about that," said Sirius, waving his hand as if it were nothing. "You don't have to pay me back."
"But I—"
Sirius leveled him with his eyes. "Remus. I'm not taking no for an answer," he said firmly. "Now what do you want?"
"Anything with chocolate's good," he relented, taking a sharp intake of breath.
It seemed like hundreds of odors assaulted his sensitive nose. The hodge-podge universally sweet smell of the candy. The smell of concealed books, the smells of the different kinds of fabric; both of these boys' belongings carried a hint of expensiveness behind it. There was a warm, sort of woodsy scent, mixed with cinnamon toothpaste; a confirming glance in its direction told him that it belonged to James.
But those were all just background scents. The most powerful one was unlike anything Remus had smelled before. Eucalyptus, cold and sharp, demanding his attention, with the contrasting, underlying smell of warm skin. It was intoxicating, this scent.
He turned his head in the direction his nose told him it was coming from. His eyes locked with Sirius's as Sirius leaned over to hand him a chocolate frog. The scent was his.
"There you go," said Sirius cheerfully, already turning back to select something for himself from the pile of treats. Remus barely paid attention. His breath, when it had wafted in his direction, had smelled like mint toothpaste with the leftover hint of pumpkin juice he must have drunk earlier.
Remus mechanically ate the chocolate, and put the card in his pocket without looking at it.
"I'm going back to sleep," he muttered, settling himself against the window. His ears picked up their murmurs of assent. The movement of the train and the scent of eucalyptus, dulled a little bit by the other myriad of smells, lulled him back to sleep.
It was him. That anguished howl was coming from him.
Heat.
Sirius was all-consuming, fiery heat. He was like the sun, like that bright star he was named after, burning so intensely that surely you would be scorched if you stood too close, for too long.
And yet, he couldn't get enough of it. The knowledge just made him wrap around Sirius and hold him tighter.
He groaned as spiking pain clawed its way into his consciousness. It felt as if the slightest movement would pop his bones out of their joints, and his skin felt raw as if sunburned. But maybe it only felt so bad because the full moons hadn't been so bad recent times, due to certain…distractions. But no…his transformations had never been this bad. What had gone wrong?
"Moony?" said a soft voice, distorted through the torrential pain.
"Prongs?" he croaked, his voice coming out barely audible, hoarse and raspy as if someone had scraped and rubbed his vocal cords with sand paper. He tried to open his eyes, but they were gummed shut, by exhaustion or something else, he couldn't tell.
"Yeah. It's me. Us. We're here." There was something wrong with his voice. Remus knew that it went sometimes tight as he forced himself to be cheerful when faced with the more worse aftermaths of his transformations, but this was something else. It was…anger. The more alert he became, the more aware he was of the tightly-coiled tension that was now finishing the job of shooting his nerve endings to dust.
"What happened?" he managed to voice. His voice still sounded horribly weak. "What's wrong?" Then something that had been niggling at the back of his mind suddenly came home to him. "Where were you last night? You never showed up."
There was no mistaking it this time. He could feel James' anger radiating out of him, but the brunt of it wasn't directed at him. He cast out his other senses, trying to understand, trying to focus on something other than the pain that wouldn't seem to budge.
Peter was…anxious. Nervous and tense to the point of collapse. And there was fear. Peter was afraid. It was like…he was watching the ending of something.
When his senses touched upon Sirius, his heart seemed to recoil, clenching into a tight fist, understanding something that his brain had not time to comprehend. Guilt. That was all he could feel from him, an overwhelming sense of guilt. And pain. Pain, pain, pain.
"Why don't you ask Sirius where we were last night?" asked James, his voice clenched and still tight with that unfamiliar anger.
Remus finally managed to wrench his eyes open. When his vision had settled and the blurred shapes had coalesced, he only sought Sirius, and his eyes were drawn to him as if by some great magnet. Remus involuntarily flinched at the agony in those eyes. It was like seeing a physical, mirror reflection of his own pain.
James and Peter left, clearly displaying that Sirius had no support from them. Sirius wet his lips before he began to speak. The words tripped out of his mouth, his teeth clutching his bottom lip as if holding onto a last lifeline.
Snape…I was so stupid…Willow…told him…knot that freezes…James…you…pulled him back…just a stupid prank…nothing bad happened…
"Nothing bad happened?" His voice suddenly broke in, loud and clear. "NOTHING BAD HAPPENED? Yes it did! You…you betrayed me! I trusted you, Sirius, and you…you used me! I…you…I…" He couldn't speak anymore, the words wouldn't come, his throat failing him. The pain had just worsened, his throat convulsing and choking in the grip of a steel fist. The new burn of pain was in his chest, in the center of his heart.
"I'm sorry," came Sirius's rough whisper. "Oh, God, Remus, I'm so, so, sorry. You have no idea…"
Remus couldn't listen to this, not now in the moment he could feel his heart shattering. And it was funny, as he usually would have gone to Sirius for comfort in this. Sirius eased his pain when no one else could. But not this time. This time…this time it was Sirius who was driving the knife into his heart, over and over again.
"Get out." He said it quietly at first, barely above a whisper, but then he was screaming it, trying to find some way to relieve the pain, to siphon off some small portion of it. "GET OUT, GET OUT! I NEVER WANT TO SEE YOU AGAIN! I HATE YOU, I HATE YOU, I HATE YOU!"
Sirius had run out as if fire was licking his heels, and Madame Pomfrey, alarmed, had forced a sedative down his throat in an attempt to calm him down. But all it did was just focus the pain and turn it inward.
There were no tears. Aside from the pain, a horrible sense of nothingness had cloaked over him. It was as if all brilliance of life had been sucked out. Colors were dull and drab now, everything feeling strange and far away. The only thing that was real was the pain.
And it hurt. It hurt so bad, and he didn't know why. All he could think was Sirius, Sirius, Sirius, and betrayed, betrayed, betrayed.
The only thing he did know was that it wouldn't have hurt nearly so bad if it had been James or Peter.
But judging by the sickening feeling in his stomach, he was starting to realize why.
He could feel it. Something was closing in on him.
It was so ironic. Wasn't his life just full of it like that? He must be fate's idea of an intellectual joke. What was it about him that made them decide, "Hey, look, here's someone that can be the perfect representation of irony!"
His name was Remus Lupin and he had turned out to be a werewolf.
Such a large part of his personality was dominant and primal, was the wolf. And he had turned out to be gay. Wasn't that just like him, he was the only gay werewolf, ever? And he was one of the few who struggled to be good, to prove that he was something beyond a monster? And now he had perverted sexual tastes as well, at least in the eyes of many?
So of course it tallied up just perfectly, that the first time he realized he was in love with Sirius Black, one of his best friends, was when Sirius had betrayed him in the Willow incident. And if that was where they started, how much promise could it hold for the future?
He could never properly remember the next months that passed. But he knew that he was scaring everyone, that everyone was alarmed and on the edge as some rift tore the Marauders from the inside out and they continued to drift farther and farther apart.
There was just nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing. Nothing mattered anymore, you see, when you were just a pile of cinders.
The only definite memory he could tune in to was one of Lily, of a conversation that afterwards he would swear to never forget.
It had been about the ever-expanding rift of the Marauders. It had caught his attention because Lily had never taken an interest in their affairs before, and had always told him that he could do better as friends went.
"You were right," he said as bitter hysteria welled out of him. "I should have gotten better friends.
Her eyes had taken on that eerie cast to them, the green regarding him almost coldly. "You said that they'd done things for you that no one else would, and that they had accepted every part of you, parts of you that you couldn't show me."
He stared at her. "Are you saying this is my fault?"
"It's your fault it's continuing."
Her bluntness stung. "He—"
"I know it was Black's fault in the first place," she interrupted him quietly. "I'm not saying that is your fault. I'm just saying that you have the power to restore your friendship."
"But—"
"The best of friends stick together through thick and thin, don't they? And if they can forgive you for your faults, then you should forgive them of theirs."
Remus couldn't speak.
She eyed him for a moment before speaking again in her most gentle voice. "People always talk of the phoenix rising from the ashes. But the thing is, the phoenix had to burn into those ashes in the first place."
She had walked away, but before she exited completely, she said over her shoulder. "I don't care either way. But you do."
Betrayal?
Their first kiss had been a kiss of life. Literally.
The stairs, he had noticed lately, were so long. But tonight there was an urgency that pulled him up them when his feet usually flagged.
The dormitory was empty, but his worry and sense that something was wrong was still spiking. The wolf shifted, growling and pacing as encroaching panic loosened his hold on it.
His eyes zeroed in on the bathroom door, to a trickle of something leaking out from under it. A dark something, that reached his nose with a metallic, rusty tang.
His feet were moving, and the door was opened with a bang, and his stomach almost immediately rebelled, a dry retch heaving in his throat as the wolf surged forward. He pushed it back down viciously.
Blood. There was just blood, everywhere. And in the center of it all, leaning limply against the bathroom cabinets, was Sirius. Dark sticky red bracelets encircled his wrists held in his lap, and his shoulders were shaking, his lips forming weak, almost unconscious giggles.
"NO! Sirius, no!" Remus's wand whips out, sealing the slits still sluggish with blood. He forces his lips onto Sirius's, pumping air back into him even as a small corner of his mind registers the jolt of hair-raising electricity that zips along his veins. His hands push and pound into the flat chest underneath them, because damn it, Sirius is going to breathe.
Pound. Pound. Pound. Pound. Eternity, and then a gasping weak breath of air. Sirius's eyelids flicker, wild glazed orbs staring up at him.
"Why, Sirius? Why? Don't do this to me…"
"You…no…forgive…no point…"
It hit Remus then, a wrecking ball of cataclysmic proportions.
"NO! That's not true! I forgive you, okay? I forgive you! Just don't die, please don't die, I don't know what I'd do if you did…"
Remus could almost swear he heard a choir of angels singing of salvation when he hears James's quick footsteps on the stairs.
"…Lily and James are dead…Peter's dead too…killed twelve Muggles…he did it…Remus I'm so sorry…Sirius betrayed us all…"
The voice disappeared into a rushing, howling vortex.
Remus had never been able to describe his feelings for Sirius. It was so easy to just say love, but that one word wasn't nearly enough. It didn't encompass everything. He never knew what to call it, because it just blended into one big huge mess of emotion.
Sirius was everything.
"I'll kill you eventually," he whispered. "It's what I always end up doing to the things I love."
Remus didn't say anything. There was nothing left to say.
He stumbled down the hall, away from the raindrops that brought hateful reality, just away, away, away. He wanted to be nothing.
He fell back against the pillows, curling into a fetal ball as the full assault of the pain crashed into him.
The pillows still smelled of eucalyptus.
Tomorrow. He was moving out tomorrow.
Far away, laughter rang out over a dark and stormy sea.
Sirius Black was the kind of person that killed you slowly, killed you softly.