The man who fell in love with the moon

by jennygiraffadil

Remus supposed he did fall in love with it a little bit. With that part of him. But only when he fell in love with Sirius. And he'd never tell. On both accounts.

Title: The man who fell in love with the moon.
Pairing: Remus/Sirius.
Disclaimer: I wish.
Summary: He supposed he did fall in love with it a little bit. With that part of him. But only when he fell in love with Sirius. And he'd never tell. On both accounts.

It was all fragmented now, but Remus still remembered the last time he looked up into the night sky and felt nothing. A slight chill digging into his neck between the fibres of a thick woolen scarf and a sort of childish awe that he would have grown out of anyway. But, as he stared up blindly into the fading stars and dim glow of the moon spiralling around itself like coffee cup stains - his father holding onto him tightly. Nothing. Nothing at all.
But that's how it always started.

Dark and grainy like an old muggle movie looping through the best bits.

The runny nose, rubbed red from the November air. The long sleeves catching sneezes. And the smell of his mother's perfume against his face.

The same lines that never seemed to fit together in a sentence.

Moving lips and the dew soaked grass, crunching under loose laces and a hole in the bottom of his shoe. Tilted until his socks grew damp, just on the left, just enough to entice a child to keep doing it.

And his mother's brisk smile when she hugged him tight.

"What did you see?" but he couldn't recall if she asked that before or after he'd returned with his father to a cup of steaming hot cocoa and an open fire.

"It was like being blind -" but he was older then, a lot older, staring fixatedly at the grey hairs gathered around the front of her curling fringe. And she nodded.

"And every star was a gap - light piercing through. Glimpses, you know?"

"What did you see?" but no, he'd only been young. Rosy cheeks, a kiss on the forehead.
"There was a squirrel!" he grinned brightly and she ruffled his hair.
"What about in the sky?"
And Remus's five-year-old brows knit together in the middle.
"I don't think squirrels can climb that high."

Somewhere, it all fit together - semantics be damned. A running order that he liked to believe when he flipped through astronomy charts and dotted in white on a dark background. Pencil first. Ink. With red drapes closing him in.

Half-eaten biscuits left idly on the kitchen table - the old one with the broken leg.
Browning around the edges and crumbs lining the edge of the plate. Right next to three empty glasses. And he could hear the angry voices from the next room.

"It has nothing to do with you!" "It has everything to do with me - I'm his mother!" "You may be, but you're just a muggle. I have to protect you both --" "Excuse me, just a muggle?" "Don't you start aswell --"

At eight, he wondered if they even remembered it was his birthday.
Or anything else, for that matter.
He doesn't think he had a cake. But he remembers the ends of his fingers grimy with dust.
Maybe he drew one.
Or he just wishes he did.

Sirius told him, when they all found out, that he thought it was "bloody brilliant" - all arched eyebrows and a lopsided smile.
"Don't half wish I had something like that. You know. Werewolf. Reckon them lot might stay away from me then. Once a month at least."
Remus didn't even have to ask who "them lot" were. It was in Sirius's eyes like static, barely passing between them. But everpresent.
"I think -" Remus grimaced, " - that they'd be more likely to disassociate themselves from you".
He didn't expect the large, hopeful grin or the bouncing on the souls of his boots.
Sirius wrung his hands together tightly.
"Oh goody. Bite me, Remus. Go on. Please."

He walked off.
Shoulders hunched. Eyes half closed.

Sirius's lips closed into a pout and he shrugged before heading back down the corridor.

It felt a lot like love, sometimes, staring wistfully out of windows as the familiar tightening in his stomach caused his teeth to clench. His mind was already working at twice it's usual pace and it wasn't like an internal battle or anything. Nothing like James seemed to suggest with the theatrics and high-pitched voices. Nor was it like two brains merging together every now and then.

It was - he sighed, sort of like it was part of him, splitting off from the rest and growing into this big ugly apparition of something else entirely. Something angry and vicious and terribly terribly afraid.

On those nights, he didn't know how to explain it to the others, but he was six-years-old all over again. He hadn't aged. He hadn't grown up.

His heart pounding furiously in his head.

Six. His one claim to immortality lay in the one thing he resented the most.

Because, effectively, he had died back then. To make way for this whole other person. Whole other Remus, who had no choice but to sit in corners and read books and think about the 'what if' and laugh at jokes in his head because his parents were too afraid to let him mix with other kids. And he was too afraid of himself to try.

Two weeks, every two weeks, he'd mourn and it'd ache in all the wrong places.

Then he'd lose his appetite. He'd seclude himself, lock himself away for a few days - before being overly gratuitous and affectionate.

"Sure you're okay?" James had asked him and he'd nodded, "- cos it seems like you're lovesick or something to me, you big pansy."

And they'd laughed. They'd both laughed.
Before he realised just how right James had been.

But it wasn't the same. Not entirely.
It was like being in love with the one thing you hated about someone else, but all internalised. And he didn't really love it at all.
Except for the times Sirius loved it for him.

"It's like - there's this whole other part of you," Sirius had whispered to him, "I dunno, it's kind of weird and I'm not good with this whole 'talking to people' thing. But, like, you're Remus, which is pretty cool and then you're a wolf too. And I just want to ask you everything but you're looking at me like you're going to hit me if I try --"
At fourteen, it didn't matter, and the tension melted from Remus's spine.
He jumped when Sirius's knuckles brushed his wrist.

"But, see, it's also cool because even though you hate it and I can appreciate why. You have to go through all that changing and stuff. So I'm on the outside. I get to hate it with you, but also tell you how awesome you look when you lunge at Peter with those big snarling fangs."

He could still recall the good bits, the harsh bits, sitting at twenty-eight on his own in an apartment that was barely furnished (and barely his).
Like a loop, still, a reel that never stopped playing.
Over and over and over until it slowly drove him crazy and he was quoting lines in his sleep or to the postman or to old lady Greggory downstairs.
"I get to hate it with you. Big snarling fangs. Whole other part. Everything."

He supposed he did fall in love with it a little bit. With the moon. With that part of him. But only when he fell in love with Sirius.
And he'd never tell.
On both accounts.

Not even when they were both growing wrinkles under their eyes and hearts and their hands slipped almostnotquite together downstairs, on the old oilsmacked sofa of the place Sirius had tried running away from.

Really, Remus thought, he'd never stopped running. Only paused. Temporarily.
And that he, himself, was a bit of a hypocrite with his rapidly rising pulse rate and teeth pressing sharply into his bottom lip.
"I still think you being a werewolf is pretty damn cool."
And their laughter was tainted then, worn, but he still smiled back.
"Well, so long as you think so." he exhaled in a long drawn out breath, "Let me get right on it and call the Ministry. Tell them all those old Werewolf laws can go out the window now. Sirius Black thinks it's cool. Yes, the same Sirius Black who escaped from Azkaban and --"
"You're such a prick sometimes, nothing changes."
Remus's read rolled back against the cushion and he cast Sirius a sort of lazy smirk.
"Thank you, I'm glad you appreciate me giving up my entire life to come and stay in the box room your brother used to keep his illegal pets in just so you're not bored."

There was a silence then. Different. And Sirius met his gaze.
"Come on -" he whispered, "You know I love you, Moony."

Remus almost choked on a breath but caught himself just in time and pressed a hand subtly against his stomach to rage the knot of air trying to make him splutter indecently.
"Yeah?" he wanted to say, "I love you too" or even "Not likely" or something bitter and scathing and too longlived.
But he tilted his head to the side.

"Say, Pads, I ever tell you about the first time I saw the moon?"
Sirius shook his head and moved closer.

As a baby it had been a big glowing diamond, except he never knew what it meant to describe something as glowing back then. Nor what a diamond was. But it looked expensive and primitive and he stared up with it reflecting sharply in his eyes.
At two, he'd turned to his mother with a toothy grin and said, "It looks like a big butter biscuit. But better. Like it'd keep forever and never go off."
At three, he'd ignored it in favour of chasing butterflies around their old backyard and far into the woods until it was no longer in sight.
At four it was sitting out on the grass with his father, hearing stories of aliens and muggle news reports and cheddar-but-not-mozarella "because the colour is wrong --" cheese. And lunar nodes that he thought were a special delicacy until he asked his mother to buy some for dessert.

Sirius smiled the whole way through and had his lips pressing to Remus's neck when he finished talking. Trailing off into a shallow gulp and uncomfortable silence.
"Tell me something else." Sirius whispered in hot, damp breath. "Anything."

Remus paused for a moment, not daring to move.
"Sometimes -" he half grinned to himself, "Sometimes I really do love the moon."

Sirius studied him carefully then, running fingers under his jaw before something stirred in the back of his mind. And he seemed satisfied with that.
"Good."
The dull white circles in the centre of Sirius's eyes were better though.
Like gaps, piercing through.

--

Remus pulled back, straightening his shoulders and taking a deep breath. Right down until he felt his lungs starting to burn.

"I think there's one more thing I haven't told you --" he started.
And Sirius sat up too, his whole attention on Remus and his worry lines and hard eyes.

"I'm listening."

He inhaled once more, shakily.
"Well --"