Team: Muggle
Title: Thinking About You
Rating: PG13
Warnings: War themes, internal monologuing, Sirius' foul mouth
Genres: angst, romance, drama, slice of life…touch of humor?
Word Count: 1520
Summary: Sometimes, waiting is the worst part.
Notes: "I rewrote this thing at least four times. No, really, I had no clue what to even do, just an impression of what I wanted. It was crazy, but I think I like what I have here. Thanks to my beta reader and all the friends who'll never read this but nonetheless put up with my ranting and writing-inspired craziness (as opposed to my everyday brand). Thanks. " …is what I wrote when I first finished this piece. A lot has changed since I wrote this for the 2014 RS Games. (Which was fantastically, amazingly fun, by the way. So grateful I got to participate.) Life kind of just…happened. I just want to thank one person in particular here, for being amazing and wonderful and for all that she's done for me. Thank you for all of your love and support through the years. I know life happened, but thanks. As super relevant here, thanks for reading through this and helping with this piece.
Prompt: 67
"Lying in bed with the radio on
Moonlight falls like rain
Soft summer nights spent thinking of you
When will I see you again
Soft and low the music moans
I can't stop thinking about you
Thinking about you"
~ from "Nights Are Forever Without You" by England Dan & John Ford Coley
"So the war swept over like a wave at the seashore, gathering power and size as it bore on us, overwhelming in its rush, seemingly inescapable, and then at the last moment eluded by a word from Phineas; I had simply ducked, that was all, and the wave's concentrated power had hurtled harmlessly overhead, no doubt throwing others roughly up on the beach, but leaving me peaceably treading water as before. I did not stop to think that one wave is inevitably followed by another even larger and more powerful, when the tide is coming in." An American man named John Knowles wrote that in a book. It rings true, Remus finds, as he stares blankly at the page in front of him. The page is a faint yellow and one corner is crinkled in, the tip on verge of falling off. The book is old and battered, the spine showing a sickly grey-brown under the cracks of the dusty goldish binding. The pages are yellow, the binding is yellow, the whole world has a nervous, sickly yellow tinge under the light of Remus' lamp.
The waves have missed us, Remus thinks, so far anyway. With a tired sigh, he closes his book with a soft thud as the pages fall closed. Another as he sits it next to him on the table with the nervous yellow lamp. He is terribly tired, too tired to even bother to pace, too tired to be nervous. Too nervous to sleep. He's spent all night waiting and praying that Sirius ducked. Praying for Sirius to come home.
The night drags on, a sticky kind of humidity hanging in the air, uncommonly warm. He could feel his clothes stick as he shifted, leaning back in the chair. The chair, for one, was not the sickly, nervous yellow of seemingly, frustratingly, everything else in the room. The chair was a worn, dusky blue. It was big and soft and messy and worn down and just like the man who bought it. It smelled like Sirius. (Warm and spices and grass and musk. Leather. Cigarettes.) That was a lot of why Remus sat in it. It could also see the front door to their apartment and, while waiting, Remus' nerves really just couldn't deal with not seeing it right then.
The radio was a low murmur in the air, some bittersweet rock song ringing thin in the air around him, his only company on the sticky yellow night. A mix of moans and reedy guitars hung suspended, the ticking of the clock, the smell of Sirius. The yellow. Remus was so tired. He let his head fall back and his eyes fall closed.
Tick. Tick. The clock. Tick. Remus' eyes quickly slipped back open to fall on the clock opposite him. Like everything else he and Sirius seemed to own, it was old, slowly falling apart, and secondhand—a commonsense combination. Like most everything else they owned, they had bought it from a neighboring Muggle shop upon Sirius first seeing it, then marveling, then turning it in his large, strong hands and looking down in wonder and saying, "Please, Moony?" It was made of some sort of pale wood with thin black hands. It hung on a wall between the front door and the kitchen. Its face was a greyish white and it always ran about five minutes slow. Remus had never really noticed it as being noisy. Now he couldn't help but do so. At least it wasn't yellow.
There were many things that Remus had never done before but did now. He had never thought clocks loud. He had never hated the color yellow (though he felt that this could well be a temporary condition and the color yellow redeemed at a later time). He had never had trouble sleeping. He had never spent half the night waiting nervously for Sirius to come home from some foreign place Remus had never set eyes on. He'd never wondered so much if Sirius felt the same when Remus did so himself. He'd never doubted Dumbledore. He'd never kept secrets. Never had Sirius keep secrets. Never had he doubted Sirius.
And he'd never noticed how loud that clock was. Remus sighed and rubbed one eye. He glanced over at his book, considering another attempt at reading. Sirius, of all the crazy things, had suggested the book. Sirius had finally seemed to decide that he liked reading, given the right book, something Remus had been telling him for about the last eight years or so. Sirius had smirked, shrugged his broad shoulders and asked, "So?" before tossing the book—actually throwing a book, the blasphemy—at him and restating that Remus should read it. The book was good. Remus could easily agree to that already. He just was in no mood for books about war right now.
War. This war was the root of most of their problems, if not the problem directly. The stress turning his hair grey, the lying, and the secrets. Lying and secrets. Lycanthropy, Sirius, now missions, when would he ever get to stop lying? All the secrets to keep, all the lies to cover them. Remus had kept secrets since he was ten years old; he knew how. He'd never had to keep them from someone he loved, though. Never from people on his side, his friends. Never from Sirius, not since he was twelve years old.
Sirius had never taken that secret as hard as he was taking these either. Last time that Remus had kept secrets, Sirius had understood, big heart that the man had. He had sympathized, warm grey eyes crinkled in concern—the same expression on a face of twelve or twenty-two. He had changed, gone through hell to help him. Never asked for anything in return.
That was a testament to friendship. That was love. That was love under the sharp white light of a rising moon. …Tonight was waxing, that sickly yellow streaming in through the window and out from the lamp. Yellow.
When would Sirius be home? He should have been home by now, long ago. Remus was a patient man and, unlike Sirius, he was pretty good about waiting. This infuriatingly slow slippage of time had even his patience on edge. Sirius should be home, should be here and safe and complaining about the winds over the coast or something, safe. Hadn't he ducked?
A commercial chimed from the radio, a grating sound that only served to heighten the agitation of Remus' already antsy mind. He was tempted to pace, but was already too tired, still too tired. He should be home.
He was home. Remus eyes snapped from contemplating the book beside him to where the doorknob was turning and rattling, a noise so loud in the room that the clock was the merest nothing in comparison, outsounding the whine of the radio. Remus was immediately on his feet and at the door, fatigue forgotten. A large figure in the doorway, a shadow against moon and lamp, and Sirius could barely do more than close the door behind him before Remus enveloped him in his arms.
Sirius was soaking wet, leathers sprinkled in irregular dots of precipitation. They shined near where Remus buried his nose in Sirius' neck, long black hair scraping against his face. Sirius froze a second before wrapping his arms around Remus in turn. His motorcycle helmet fell to the floor with a muted clatter.
Sirius was warm, alive. He had always radiated heat, a curse for anyone within five feet in hot weather, should have been now, sticky night. Remus couldn't help it, though, he relished it now. Warm meant alive. Corpses were cold; live men warm and soft and smelling of motorcycles and disgusting gassy fumes and laughing hoarsely against the top of his head, burying his nose into Remus' hair in turn. A baritone bark that Remus could feel as much as hear. Alive.
"I couldn't stop thinking about you," Remus muttered into his collar, hair, t-shirt. Sirius' hand came up to cradle the back of his head. Warm. Alive. Smelling absolutely foul but alive.
"It's alright, Moony. 'M fine. Tired. But fine." Remus looked up to take in Sirius' smile. Sirius did indeed look tired. His full lips pulled oddly, stretched with weariness and dark shadows sat under his eyes. One sharp cheekbone sported a yellowing bruise. Remus' hand came up and ghosted over it. Yellow. God, but Remus hated yellow.
Sirius softly took Remus' hand in his own. "I'm fine, Moony," he repeated, more gently. Remus sighed and looked away, giving in. That's all he'd ever get out of Sirius' about this mission. This secret. This lie.
Sirius yanked off his coat, throwing it down haphazardly to collapse beside his helmet. "Let's get some sleep, yeah? You look as bad as I do. And I look like shit." Sirius wrapped one warm arm over Remus' shoulders and started leading him down the hall, towards the bedrooms. He reached out one hand and clicked off the light. Just that quickly, yellow could fall to blackness.