MOONLIGHT TORMENTS (sparkly euphoria)
or: the cruel, cruel yolk

Remus Lupin's moonwet eyes glistened in the darkling dusk. His sadlong howl echoed eerily in the dusky tendrils of the night. Desperately, he glanced up at the palebright sphere of the moon. Its face was cold to him, hatingdark and fearsome. He could feel it calling the fierce, cruel Wolf inside of him, ripping it from the darkest depths of his soul, tearing it from the most hidden corners of himself.

The Wolf!

Now it spoke; now it whispered; now it hissed; now it howled.

And in the darkness, it beckoned to him. He fought, he struggled against its sharpvicious voice and tried to suppress it, to lock it away forever. But he felt the blackness of the Wolf engulfing him, tearing him from Humanity. From Humanity. From Sirius.

Then the bounding Dog, large and shaggyblack. It was as though it spoke words of softlove without even opening its toothylarge mouth. Bright eyes! Damp tongue! Musky scent! The Wolf rejoiced in every aspect of the Dog, simply, wolvishly. Thick with love for the animal companion, so close to its own heart and yet so different.

The Wolf and the Dog. Like brothers, and yet not so.

Like lovers, yet not quite.

But the simple Wolf did not worry himself with such details. The barks and howls intertwining beneath the luxurious moon were enough to satisfy, to turn the painwound into joy. He knew only desire, joy, and the tendersharp bittersweet jolts in his lupine stomach that he felt whenever his golden eyes locked in on Sirius's pale blue ones. Pale like the edges of a knife, releasing him from his life, sending him skyrocketing into love and abandon beneath the heaving sky.

Pale, like the moon.

The moon. The Dog's eyes stirred Remus from deep within the Wolf just as the Moon stirred the Wolf from Remus. They stirred desire, they stirred longing, they stirred a thousand different sparklydamp emotions that he had never felt before. Euphoria overtook him.

But though he knew that he loved Sirius, the Dog, the Man, the beautiful, roguish creature, his dearest friend, his heartsecret love, he also knew that theirs was a love that could never truly be accepted. It was too strange and animal-like. Too damn strange. Too tangy.

Damn, he thought to himself, before the sweeping moon overtook him once more.

*

The light of the sun flickers on skin. It is morning.

The cruel moon has been replaced by the glistening sun, a sun that shines, goldenly, butterwarm but with a cruel yolk deep inside of it, belying the moon that will soon take its turn on the circling arc of the fateful sky.

They awake on the bank of a river, hot light sparkling off the cool edge of the water. The light cuts like an angry knife; it knows of the yolk within! The cruel, cruel yolk.

They do not speak words that will damage the fragile, bright glory of the night before, but splash their faces with the crisp silver water. Refreshed again. Pure.

Remus can still smell the earthydark scent of the Dog in Sirius's shiny black mane. This scent excites his urges, but as Remus, as the Man, he has to swallow them. Swallow them bitterly.

It is an unpleasant gulp, but necessary.

He knows that Sirius, glancing at him behind a cupped hand, a sheet of dripping, tangled hair, is wondering where the Wolf has gone. Sirius does not know the tug of the moon, the way it pitches and turns and writhes within the insides of one Remus Lupin. He is free to flow into the Dog at will, to be what he would, not to have it forced upon him. Perhaps he sees it as a game, a sport, an amusement.

He does not understand me, Remus thinks. He cannot.

Remus thinks back to the night before, when he had almost slid the sweetlysharp razor down his wrist. It would have made everything so much simpler.

But then Sirius is laughing, the bark laugh of the Dog, and splashing up flashing water like tiny silver fishes. And Remus is unconcerned with the night. It is the day. It is the light.

FIN