Fic: You Only Say I Love You When You're Drunk
Author: Siobhán Rose
Pairing: Remus/Sirius
Note: Post Azkaban, Spoilers for OOTP.
DISCLAIMER: Sadly I didn't create Harry Potter, Hogwarts or any of the characters in the following fic – J.K. Rowling did, that's why she's the multi-millionaire (and I'm struggling on a student loan) and that's why they are all copyrighted to her (and Warner Bros. of course!). I DO NOT know J.K. Rowling, anyone at Bloomsbury or Warner Bros. and I AM NOT making any money out of this so please no suing! I'm broke! The plot IS mine by the way, so please don't nick it. A FICTIONAL SLASH plot, I might add, featuring a male/male homosexual relationship. If you are too young or easily offended by this, there is the back button, you know how to use it. Please don't read any further.
Anyway…
You only say 'I Love You' when you're drunk.
I heard those three words for the first time in a week tonight, as I took the empty Firewhiskey bottle from your hand, and helped you into bed to sleep it off.
I used to hear those words several times a day.
What changed?
Why is it, the only time I hear them now is when you're about to pass out from the drink?
Twelve years happened.
You spent twelve years battling the Dementors. I spent twelve years battling my own demons.
Trying to forget.
I never could.
I never believed you did it. Not deep down. My head believed it – my heart never did. Never could. Deep down I always knew.
I used to tell myself I was just a fool, a fool in love. Look at the proof – the single finger sent to Mrs Pettigrew, the obituaries in the Daily Prophet – Pettigrew, Peter; Potter, James; Potter, Lily (neé Evans), a lighting bolt scar on young Harry's forehead…
I threw myself into work – if I could get it. Then Dumbledore called with a teaching post… A year flew by… I learned the truth, my heart was proved right and I got you back…
Or at least, I thought I did…
I wasn't expecting you to be the same… twelve years is a long time. People change – I know I have…
After Azkaban, you were bound to be different…
But deep down, I'm the same Remus Lupin….under the surface I'm the same man I was twelve years ago…
I barely recognise you, Sirius… where are you?
Where is the man who woke me with a soft kiss on the nose, a wide smile, and those three little words?
I love you.
Why do I only hear those words now when you're drunk?
When you're sober, you're pulling away from me… I can feel it…
Since the Order was reactivated, since movingheadquarters toTwelve Grimmauld Place, it's got worse…
True, I've seen shades of the old Sirius, the Sirius I used to know – you were never one for sitting on your arse doing nothing.
And I know how much you hated your mother's house.
You used to tell me all the time, as you held me as the moon started its wane, trying to transfer some of your own body heat to my freezing, aching bones…
You don't do that anymore.
You hide in your mother's room with Buckbeak.
You don't talk to me anymore.
I watch you with young Harry – I know you forget.
Molly is right to remind you, right to point out.
He isn't James.
The Marauders will never cause havoc again – it's only a memory.
A memory.
I remember…
I remember meeting you for the first time on the train, how you and James stole the book I was reading, and started throwing it up and down the carriage…
You brought it back though, and you said "sorry, can we be friends?"
Can we be friends?
I remember how even you saying "Morning, Remus" would send my stomach into somersaults, and a sly smile meant I would have to excuse myself for half an hour.
I remember thinking I shouldn't feel like this, not about you… not about a boy…
I remember when you found out about my … monthly problem – you just laughed and said "That explains a lot…" Later you told me that you would sort something out – you didn't like me being in that hut on my own.
I remember when you realised why I wasn't chasing after the girls like all the other boys in our year – it's OK to be different, you said as you swore never to tell anyone.
Not even James.
I remember our first kiss, by the fire in the Gryffindor common room, on Halloween night in our sixth year, after everyone else went to bed. My first kiss.
It would take all the Dementors in Azkaban to make me forget that for a second.
I remember when you ran away from home, when your mother got too much.
You would always have me, I promised myself…
I remember our first time, that first night in that little flat you bought with your inheritance from your uncle. We were seventeen. We had just come of age…
I remember leaving school, us starting out, buying our first cottage together – the 'Love Nest' James jokingly called it before Lily would cuff him around the ear…
I remember…
Sometimes I wonder if you do.
Maybe that's why you cling to Harry so tightly.
You're trying to bring back James.
Or maybe you remember too much.
You had twelve years to dwell on the worst memories of your life.
Maybe that's why you spend so much time in Buckbeak's room.
Maybe that's why that about once a week, you drink yourself into a stupor…
The Sirius Black I once knew was a drinking man – but he never got drunk.
Apart from once when we were at school. Once was enough.
I don't know anymore.
I really don't.
I love you, Sirius.
I always have, you know that.
I just don't know how I'm going to keep this relationship together anymore.
In case you haven't noticed, we're in trouble here, Sirius.
And I feel like that I'm the only one fighting to keep this thing we've got going.
You're sleeping like a baby now, as I lie awake beside you.
I know I'm not going to get any sleep tonight.
The moon is waxing fuller and fuller.
In a few days it will be the full moon, and I will be on my own for it again.
I remember when you used to curl up beside me, as that great black dog.
You haven't that done that since…
I can smell the Firewhiskey fumes from your breath.
What's changed so much?
Why do you only say 'I Love You' when you're drunk?