That Time of the Month
Word Count: 1795
Author: Potty and Weasel
Pairing: SiriusxRemus
Warning: Slash (although it's so slight and so PG it's barely worth mentioning)
Disclaimer – Never did own, never will.
I was going to attempt to re-write this and turn it into some friendfic, but I really couldn't be bothered.
Shrugging off a black jacket onto the couch – he let himself in, Moony's parents were expecting him anyways – pulling off combat boots, creeping downstairs to the basement. He shuffles in socks downwards to the metal door, just round the corner. Smells like ozone and chlorine and something-not-quite-right cloak the door; spells against opening, against touching, against breaking the myriad of protective charms. Woven across the surface. He's quick to disarm them (he's had experience at this).
Once Prongs almost blundered in there without removing the spells. It was only very quick thinking that saved his hand from being ripped off. And questions from being asked.
Ever careful, easing back the bolt on the door. Move slowly. There's meat in the corner (he can smell it) and that'll lend him time. Time enough to slip in, close the door behind him (with his wand, of course, silly), then shift. He can feel his heart-beating thump thump against his chest. It'll speed up, he knows from experience, as he enters, as that foreign scent enters his nostrils (only human, for now) and his body will freeze in fear.
But it's only Remus, nothing to be frightened of.
Sirius knows he shouldn't ever think of Remus as the werewolf or the werewolf as Remus, because they're not the same. It's something Remus, with all his book smarts, can't grasp. Stupid, stupid boy. Stupid caring, loveable idiot.
Slipping in, a flick of the wrist and then that feeling of ripping, of indefinite change, stretch and pull and he's a dog (he knows the wolf could smell his human flesh, but now he's dog so it doesn't matter). Shaking his fur out – those can't be fleas? Oh, god – with a quick yip before running forwards to the werewolf. It hunkers over the rabbit carcasses, blood leaking over massive paws and down furry cheeks.
The wolf growls, a low-pitched timbre the shakes the dog to it's very bones. He edges forwards, eyes forwards and gleaming. Seeing the scratch running across the belly with blood mingling with blood to form an old mess stretched over fur. He can tell the wolf is hungry, knows it's eyes must be alight with the thrill of fresh meat. Ugh, it awful tastes awful the morning after. I hate finding rabbit in between my teeth whilst eating my cereal. Sirius wants to laugh, knowing he'll put up with complaints about why did you let me eat that? It's repulsive! And he won't mind.
Peter told him that when he laughs as Padfoot he sounds like a dying hyena.
The dog settles beside the wolf, happy to wait. Prongs and Wormtail are off holidaying with their parents (Ms. P wanted him to come but he has a summer job and Remus to watch) and it's blessedly quiet. They're normally a (loud) menagerie all by themselves (how do they end up with money sounds from wolf, stag, dog, rat?), but now it's just crunching and sighing and dripping. And an awful squelching sound.
Sirius thinks he should have some desire to eat the meat in front of him, but it's smelly and the wolf's eating it and urgh. He still has a human mind, after all. For all Prongs tells him he scratches in class, which drives me mad, honestly, Padfoot, and has an unresolved tendency to spontaneously change the subject he's mostly Sirius and a little bit Padfoot. But he's Remus until full moon. Then he's Moony and only Moony and it's frightening even if you leave it at that.
They may almost regard it as a bit of a laugh (sometimes, not often anymore, not with Voldemort and his bloody Deatheaters prowling around), but it's more than that. It's like some screwed up cosmic joke, that the least vicious boy that ever existed got bit. And Sirius knows he should be acting like some unfeeling bloke – hide your emotions, least you seem weak or (God forbid) seem less like some Pureblood tosser – but it's Remus. The boy-man-werewolf-friend who does that thing, the one where he stays behind in class when someone couldn't manage the spell because James'n'Sirius were, yet again, doing their very best to spend the entire lesson being as distracting as possible and the Professor ends up not so much teaching as doing damage control.
That thing where he's carefully toning down James'n'Sirius's boundless trickiness (then undoing it before it causes any harm) and you see why he's the Prefect, no matter that he's friends with the two worst (or best) pranksters to ever attend Hogwarts.
That thing where you see him curled over a desk in the library and he looks frail, like a summer wind could blow him over, but really he's stronger and faster and smarter than four men put together.
That thing where he's lying in a hospital bed and it doesn't matter that he's strongerbetterfastersmarter because the werewolf (Moony) is all that and some form of vicious.
The wolf-man is like a joke because he's like – no, not even, he is – two completely different people. Moony and Remus. Remus and Moony. Two parts of a whole.
A whole, who's some form of a small adult who doesn't seem to have a handle on emotions, or something, who just doesn't understand that his friends-pack-brothers love him, not matter how girly and stupid and pathetic that sounds. But they know he needs it, this wolf-boy.
The one sitting on the floor, dead rabbit in his teeth and a feral grin on his face as he bounds into Sirius, well ready to start playing some games. Cavorting round and round the small room, chasing tails (their own or another's, it doesn't seem to matter), grappling, rolling. Good-natured kicks and bites – play-fighting – are delivered. They revel in this game, the one where Remus is a wolf and Sirius has turned into a dog for him.
This cosmic joke.
Eventually dog and wolf slow down, their energy abating, so they curl into each other and sleep.
The two bodies are entwined, fair skin on tan and brown hair with black. Wounds scab and hearts are slow and they know they need to wake up proper, but it seems too hard. It occurs to the both of them that Sirius must have shifted human to accommodate a human Remus (limbs soft, no fur) and that Remus isn't wearing anything, but that's never stopped them before. Creature comforts; it's warm and they're sleepy and Remus's parents know he can get himself out, so they rest.
This is different, though. Normally they're the great big Marauder Pile and they share one breath but it's just them and it's quiet and Sirius is aware of Remus curled around him.
Sirius knows he doesn't think things through; he just gets on with life and deals with it. So when he wraps his arm round Remus and cuddles him closer, he's not worried. It'll be Remus worrying about this and that and meanings and details.
But Remus is snuffling into Sirius and so he buries his head in the blond-brown almost-curls and they cling together. One step at a time, they think.
Remus knows what time it is, all the time – some effect of being a werewolf he thinks, maybe he's so in tune with the moon and it's phases that it's somehow affected his view of nature? Does explain why he's knows where North is – so he knows precisely when he should be getting up so his parents don't discover Sirius has been sleeping in the basement. He knows exactly how well that would go over. So he unwraps himself from Sirius and instead dons clothes (kept in a very high box with charms that only allow human-Remus to open it) and grabs his wand.
He then realises just how tangled his was with Sirius and what that's done to him – his body seems to be rejoicing and his happy-morning mood is rapidly declining into something more along the lines of self-inflicted pain, because no one wants to wake up wrapped around someone they fancy who also happens to be one of the very few who trusts him, is his friend and is a boy, who probably would be disgusted by the very thought of being with him.
He deserves to rot in Hell and these thoughts deserve to wait at least until breakfast.
As Sirius is out for the count and never a morning person by nature Remus is forced to carry him up the stairs and plonk him on his bed – his parents know Sirius knows (not so much about him being an Animagus), so there's no point setting up another bed as he'd have ignored it anyways – before heading down to make tea. And some fruit.
And deal with the Goddamn cuts he always, somehow, manages to pick up, even when he's not tearing himself apart due to lack of friends, by which he means lack of Padfoot.
Remus is reasonably sure that he's also dislocated some of his fingers this time; they were twinging on the way up.
Sirius meanders down well after Remus's parents have left for the market and finds Remus dealing to the last of his injuries. They're always worse at school because Moony feels caged up – he ends up tearing himself up fairly well before the other three come to distract him. Home is always home to Moony, it's where he had his first transformation; his first-blood-split-in-change brings calm.
Sirius has noticed Remus has become much better at not screaming in pain as he changes.
The balm he's using is thick and gloopy and extremely effective, but Remus can't seem to reach that one spot on his back where there's one bruise, which is giving him far too much bother. Another hand suddenly seems to appear and Sirius is rubbing it in and Remus is surprised – normally he smells Sirius far before he sees him.
And he's done and Remus has turned and suddenly there was a moment, tangible, hovering in the air. A choice, a decision. Remus thinks it smells like peppermint, but no, that's Sirius's teeth (he always was pedantic about cleaning them in the morning).
They're both remembering – every tiny memory of each other – and there's this pause before they suddenly come together (they both know it was Sirius, because, as Remus confesses later, Remus didn't want to force himself on him) and there's shock and then Remus is beaming against Sirius's mouth whilst Sirius attempts to distract him – he can feel Remus thinking – and Remus feels very thoroughly distracted in no time at all.
They pull apart and they both know it's like some puzzle piece they long gave up trying to fit in just fell into place.
Fuck this cosmic joke, they have each other, and that's enough for now.