Peat Heart
"So." Sirius is on his doorstep and Remus looks at him, tries to disguise the automatic nature of his smile, when faced with his old friend. Distrust and anger still fight at him but, childishly, all he really feels when faced with those grey eyes is joy.Sirius grins.
"Well." Remus says back, and moves aside so that Sirius can enter. Sirius eyes the house appreciatively, dragging his suitcase, and looks back at Remus from the middle of the living room.
"Nice digs, Professor. Did you buy all this on a teacher's salary, or is there something you're not telling me?"
Remus isn't sure what he means, but he shrugs. "It's not much, but it's home." Sirius nods. He is the same, but different. Remus didn't get much of a look at him the night he returned, too concerned (and rightfully so) with murder and the unfortunate habit he had of turning into a werewolf when it was least opportune. There is still the boy in Sirius' eyes but of course, now, he is thirty-odd, as is Remus. They have both changed. Sirius gives the bookcase in the corner a cynical eye.
"Still a great big swot, eh, Moony?" He crosses the room, leaving his case, and crouches by the shelves. He touches the spines of the books and Remus feels strangely protective, embarrassed. "Hey, I remember this. Bright Lights, Big City. What's it about?"
"I'm sure I've told you before."
"I don't remember." Sirius says, with a hard edge to his voice that Remus doesn't much want to question. He closes the front door, finally, and crosses to Sirius.
"It's about an American writer whose wife leaves him."
Sirius snorts. "And right next to Anna Karenina, too. You really have a penchant for the upbeat."
"Do you want me to show you where you're sleeping?" Remus is ignoring him because Bright Lights,Big City is the book Remus read when he was alone, when Sirius was working and their shared flat was big and empty. Looking at the book used to make him angry; now it just makes him miss the old flat, in Camden town, among the pot-smokers and the tiny, kitschy shops. In retrospect, though it never did at the time, it feels like it was a wonderland. Now he lives in St. Albans, near his mother's grave, and it is alien and unlovable, though not horrible. Sirius nods, and follows him upstairs, and they talk no more of the book.
XxX
Once, when they were teenagers and Remus loved Sirius and Sirius didn't know, Remus lay in his bed at home over the holidays and penned him a letter that he never posted. He still has the letter – a rambling, too-open miasma of 'feelings' and utterances he has never thought seriously since – but the letter is embarrassing. The feeling, however, of keeping something so intimate so private has never left him.
He feels this way when he treads into Sirius' room in the morning, under the pretence of cleaning. Sirius is awake and reading, and Remus can stand in the doorway watching him for a few moments until Sirius looks up and he is embarrassed, but not to the extent where he will leave. They are no longer lovers, a fact Remus often has to remind himself of, but they are still friends. Sirius, however, does not look at him like he is a friend. The book in his hands is Bright Lights, Big city.His eyes are sombre, dark. He pats the bed beside where his legs tent the covers. "I like this." He says quietly, and Remus murmurs and sits beside him, peering over Sirius' hands at the book.
"I'm glad."
"It's sort of – quiet. And a bit – frightening. It reminds me of you."
"Why?"
"Because of what it's about."
Remus isn't sure of how to respond, because Bright Lights, Big City, to him, was about loss, but books are subjective and he's not yet ready to take Sirius' words as read. "What do you mean?"
"Just – you know." Sirius mutters vaguely, and Remus wonders what has changed between them – wonders what has made them scared.
XxX
After Sirius has lived with him for a week, they are outside in the garden together in the June evening, watching as midges throw themselves at the charmed lanterns Remus has made, in silence. The magic flames sizzle and wink as the creatures continually fall into them, dying. Remus watches them absently. Sirius smokes.
"I think what went wrong here, Moons, was time."
Remus laughs. "What on earth are you on about?"
"I mean, you and me. Always trying to make it work through wars and school and – all that shit all over us in-between. Time was wrong, not us."
Remus is surprised by his candid words, and tries not to indicate it. "That's a bold statement, Sirius. Can you back it up?"
"Not really. I've just been thinking about it for awhile."
"Me, too."
Sirius looks as him as if he is being endearing, or naïve. "We had it pretty good, I suppose, in school. But living together, after, was-"
"Sad."
"I was going to say, 'badly timed', but yes. Sad, too. Mostly sad."
"I missed you all the time."
"I missed you, too – with your missions and your gallivanting off-"
Remus cuts him off. "No, I mean, after James and Lily died." Remus takes the cigarette from Sirius' hand and lights one of his own with its tip – passes the original back to Sirius and inhales from his own. Blowing out blue-grey smoke in the half-darkness, he says, "I hated myself."
Sirius laughs derisively. "Tell me about it." They sit in silence for a few more moments, Sirius blowing smoke-rings that get more and more imaginative as he goes on, becoming ships, and cars, and dogs, and wolves, and stags. Eventually, this man who is-but-isn't Sirius looks Remus right in the eyes, a look Remus has never seen before. "How are we now?"
"For what?"
"For timing."
"Not good." Remus says truthfully, and Sirius nods, stubbing his cigarette out on the table they're sat at. He leaves it, crumpled, beside the ashes. Remus holds his own as it burns down, not having smoked for years and bored with it.
"Just like always, then."
Remus laughs despite himself and they smile at eachother wryly. "Just like always."
XxX
In the night, Sirius is a dog when he crawls into Remus' bed. In the morning, he is not. Remus accepts this with the ease of someone who is, honestly, used to it, the memory of Sirius being like riding a bicycle. When Sirius presses a kiss to his temple and gets up for a shower, Remus almost believes they are immersed in their poverty again, lying in their old flat, listening to the shouts of drunken Sunday-morning revellers through the open window.
XxX
When Albus tells Sirius, by owl, that they are moving to Grimmauld place and Sirius' face darkens, Remus is torn between selfish horror and gladness. Moving, for the Order, means they are back in business, but moving also means the loss of these slow days, where Sirius creeps about the house like a cat or a shadow, sometimes dog, sometimes man, sometimes talking, sometimes not. They lie together, not touching, in the mornings, Sirius with his face turned towards Remus, Remus with his eyes on the ceiling. Talking.
Sirius talks to him about Bright Lights, Big City because they've never both read the same book before – that Remus knows of. He talks about loss. About how he felt when they were apart, honestly, moving his hands across the mattress. He does not talk about Askaban, but Remus doesn't really want to. It is fine, having Sirius back in his life. It feels like a holiday, almost. Like one day he will turn over and Sirius will be gone, and he'll have been talking to a dog, a real dog, this entire time.
He lives not in fear, but on borrowed moments. When Albus gives them a week in the letter, Remus is agitated and doesn't talk to Sirius when they eat together, makes excuses to leave the house. When he comes back the other man is in his own bed and Remus returns to his, with unspent energy and a frustration that is all too easy to place.
He places it, in his head, in Sirius' hands, and remembers all night, shaken.
He is unsurprised one morning that he has gotten out of bed without a thought, and gone across the house, and wrapped his arms around Sirius' now-slim shoulders. He is even less surprised when Sirius lets him.
Suddenly sleeping in separate beds feels like pretending, and with five days left together, Remus begins to orchestrate their evenings as a unit. He stays in. He gets lazy, lying opposite Sirius, watching his new face, until midday. They do not touch, beyond that one-sided hug, but Remus feels, as always, Sirius' eyes on him whenever he moves. It is a comfort like nothing else.
XxX
With four days left, Sirius says, leaning on the front door with a cigarette between his lips and his hands shielding it from the wind, "I really did. Love you." And Remus doesn't know how to reply; they've been living on implied mutual feeling, subsisting on silence. He doesn't really know any words, anymore. He lights his own cigarette from Sirius'. Sirius curses when his goes out.
XxX
With three days left, they talk about Askaban.
Not on purpose, of course; Sirius is throwing up in the bathroom and despite himself, Remus laughs and says "Do you remember…?" But Sirius is in no mood and he has been crying and Remus has never seen this happen before. They do not, usually, cry. He cannot stop himself becoming Sirius' mother in that moment and crouches, eyes levelled at him. "Are you alright?"
Sirius mumbles something, meaning no, and sits on the floor haphazardly. They are lost, for a moment, in in-betweens. Between eachother, between time, between losses. Sirius is still living in the time where James has just died and he, all of him, has been washed away. Remus is living somewhere else.
Sirius tells him about Askaban in a detached, offhand sort of way, like it is a story he's repeating from someone else's experience. Remus listens, but does not nod or murmur, because he cannot pretend to understand. He says, instead, "We've both known hell." And Sirius, head thrown back, just laughs.
XxX
With two days left they speak, but Sirius is somehow wild despite it, throwing his weight around. Remus is starting to get a tremble back from the full moon, and Sirius knows it, and is watching. They collide at one point in the living room when Remus asks him "What's wrong with you?" and Sirius starts, "I could say the same-" but stops abruptly and just looks at the floor.
He doesn't, really, want to fight. Instead he crosses the room with intent and kisses Remus on the mouth and says "I'm so sorry." And Remus feels empty, knowing that the week built to this. Back to before. How easy it is to be back again, loved again, safe. They kiss and Sirius apologises and Remus doesn't really know why, but feels, somehow, it would be pointless to ask.
This part is easy, the new intimacy, and when the last day dawns and Remus wakes cold to sunlight, breathing in sweat, he knows that this is their last hurrah. Their forever, until the new war and the new generation and the new Sirius is over.
This newness is old, like a book read again with more experience, later in life, and finding it to mean more than ever before. It is a greater understanding and also a loss, that lifts itself heavily from the ground and shakes itself off.
The loss in knowing what you will never get back; the gain in knowing that it doesn't really make a difference.
XxX
On their last day they are almost perfect. Sirius kisses him and they make love differently to the night before; instead of feeling, physically, what a long time it has been – for them both – Remus feels together. Balanced. He remembers them as boys and thinks it odd that he has never loved the same, before or since. Thinks it is strange, but not unlikeable. Strange, but not completely surprising. Sirius finishes Bright Lights, Big City that day and lies for a moment with the last page pressed between thumb and forefinger, flicking at the edge of the paper absently, reading the last line over and over again.
When they prepare to leave, Sirius kisses him at the door and Remus knows that it is over as it is now, but not over. Just like before, when it was over but not over; never over. It used to be a cage but now it is a comfort, something warm to return to when he is, inevitably, alone again. A gift.
Leaving the door, Sirius says "I really did –" again, and Remus shushes him and closes his eyes and just – holds him close, breathes his skeleton out in his mind. He can build Sirius from memory; he has, many times. He is empty now of youth but full of love, and this is a thing he can deal with. Youth never really fit him, anyhow.
He remembers that last line, picking up the book after Sirius left it, the line that obviously resonated so much.
You will have to go slowly.
You will have to learn everything all over again.
the last, chronologically, in a trypytch of stories based on the same canon as 'Feet of Clay'. I chose the title 'Peat Heart' because 'Feet of Clay' means to be grounded, to be human, and peat is from the ground but is more rural; sweeter, i think. This is 'Peat Heart' because it's involved with that soft, sweet loss of youth that comes before a life. I hope i got that conveyed! As always, reviews are not just encouraged but deeply appreciated, and i love you all. the second chronological 'part' will be posted soon - title is still in progress while i pull the plot back from the bog that is my language. Again, love to you all, please review! kisses. xxx