prompt: "like a game of pick up sticks."
word-count: 306
beta: Tonkswyrada. She's wonderful.
disclaimer: Quite obviously not mine. Did JKR even consider this pairing in her wildest dreams while writing her books? Somehow i doubt it.
A/N: This will be a collection of thirteen Remus/Narcissa drabbles for my rarepair_shorts table on live journal. This, so far, is the first one i've written, it's also the first thing i've written in quite a while. I hope you enjoy it!
A Simple Game of Pick-up Sticks
He belonged to them, and only when it was deemed safe would he be cast to the side. To be pulled out from the darkness of the crowd, to hang in suspension before beginning to plummet back down into the deepest clutches of life. To be singled from the crowd only to join another.
A simple game of pick up sticks.
The way their eyes shone when they met him for the first time. Male or female; for him it no longer mattered. To be their brightness in the dark, if only for a moment. He was different. He wasn't Sirius with his ego, he wasn't James with him humour. He wasn't Peter with his understanding. He was different. For a moment they enjoyed it, and for a moment, Remus did too.
And then they let go and Remus plummeted.
They were all a week of his life spent held up within one apartment or another. A weeks worth of booze and sex. A week of his life only to end with a single hair being brushed from a pillow. That last single glass drained and washed.
A simple game of pick up sticks.
Only in one game was he never picked. The game won yet lacking in the victory. A single game where he hadn't even been one of the crowd. A game that wouldn't of ended with a single strand of moonlit hair being swept onto the floor. A game that, if truly played to the end, could have been the single glass that was washed and refilled.
Sampson and Delilah. Bonnie and Clyde. Napoleon and Josephine. Narcissa and Remus. To soar among the stars, if only he had been the singe stick chosen.
He was the one left to last, the single stick never chosen. His life a simple game of pick up sticks.