But You Don't Really Care for Music, Do You?
By Stan Brianson
Pairing: Remus Lupin / Sirius Black
Rating: "R" – rated for language and depictions of male/male homosexual practice.
DISCLAIMER: This story is fictional – that's F-I-C-T-I-O-N. It never happened, and is not real. It is the product of my own imagination. It contains descriptions of male slash (that's male/male homosexual relations). If you do not like this type of content, or if you find homosexuality or its practice offensive, please click the "Back" button or close your Internet browser NOW, and do not read any further. All characters and copyrights are owned by J.K Rowling and Warner Brothers™ (AOL Time Warner), but this story is owned by me and is all my own work.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT: Lyrics taken from "Hallelujah", as performed by John Cale. Written by Leonard Cohen, published by Sony/ATV Songs LLC (BMI). For the purposes of this story, the pronouns "Her" and "She" in the second stanza have been changed to the masculine declension. Lyrics used here (and changed) without permission.
The cold November afternoon was drawing to a close as the werewolf lay on the ugly, cheap sofa, curled up in a tightly drawn ball. He was shivering uncontrollably, unable to transfer a single degree of heat into his tired, aching bones. 'Tonight,' he whispered to the empty bed-sit, pulling his sweat-sodden blanket tighter around him. Knowing that nobody would ever hear him. Of all the timing in the world, there would have to be a full moon looming around the corner, waiting to jump out at the poor soul who lay, helpless, in malaise and misery. Waiting to give him that final kick when he was down, shaking, on the ground. Waiting to devour him when he was feeling the most vulnerable that he had ever felt before.
He slowly pulled himself up and walked over to the writing desk in the corner of the room. Maybe work would help him keep his mind off things for a while. Unable to follow his lover's career path as an Auror due to the ridiculous discrimination laws that prevented him from any job in the wizarding world where he would be in contact with other people, he took in muggle work as a freelance composer. Pulling his current score towards him and picking up a quill, he chuckled mournfully. Sirius could never understand why he dove into music so much.
I've heard there was a secret chord
That David played and it pleased the Lord.
But you don't really care for music, do you?
He remembered, once, trying to explain how it worked, what all the little circles and squiggles he was scribbling down actually meant, and why they meant so much to him
It goes like this: the fourth, the fifth;
but stopped after he noticed Sirius's glazed expression. He hadn't asked out of interest. He only wanted to appear to be interested in his lover's greatest passion in life, to humour him. Because that would mean a nice big reward after bedtime.
All Sirius ever talked about was what the war effort was doing. About how important his work as an Auror was in trying to catch all of You-Know-Who's Death Eaters. Comments which never failed to spark a pang of guilt through Remus's heart. After all, Sirius was out there doing something, facing death in the face for the good of the World, with so many Aurors and members of the Order getting killed, or worse, and all the while he just sat there, writing his music.
The minor fall, the major lift;
The baffled king composing Hallelujah
He had been quite sure that Sirius had been playing away for a few months now. He was bound to – after all, they had surprisingly little in common out of school. As grown men, who couldn't get away with careless pranks and twisted schemes as their special way to have fun. That was probably why Sirius had started to spend more and more time "at work". One-night-stands were, after all, Sirius's style, not relationships.
Your faith was strong, but you needed proof
You saw him bathing on the roof:
His beauty and the moonlight overthrew you.
But, as anyone who lives by that philosophy knows only too well, it is inevitable that one night you will cop off with the wrong person.
He tied you to a kitchen chair,
He broke your throne; he cut your hair;
Why, why did Lily and James have to make Sirius their secret-keeper? Surely they should have thought that it was too obvious! That Remus himself – or better yet, why not Peter? – would make a much safer candidate?
And from your lips he drew the Hallelujah
Remus stared at the half-completed manuscript – an orchestral symphony that some muggle University professor had commissioned from him. 'Most composers treat each commission as the next rent instalment…' he thought sadly. Not Remus. Sirius could never understand just how much of his heart he poured into every single note inscribed on the quintuple lines that lay before him – how much every sound he instructed each player make reflected his bare soul, exposed for all to see.
He hadn't been Remus's first. Not by a long shot. And although he never cared to find out, he had a suspicion that he was Sirius's introduction to the stabbing, cut-throat world of love.
Baby, I've been here before.
I know this room, I've walked this floor -
I used to live alone before I knew you.
Yes, he had been burned before. But no matter how much he told himself that it wouldn't happen again, that the next man would come along and sweep him off his feet, he always ended up like this – ripped open, torn apart, and left to weep as his partner would repeatedly throw bucket after bucket full of TCP at his open, bleeding wounds.
He was quite sure that Sirius had lost his boyhood charm to him that one night where he had got Remus drunk and seduced (well, that's what Sirius had said. "Taken advantage of" was how Remus would have described it) him. That was Sirius. Always in control. 'Well,' thought the werewolf, 'that time, that night, you weren't in control. Because although you say it was all your idea, that you were giving me something I wanted, it was really the other way, wasn't it?. I took something of yours. For once. Something I neither wanted nor required. It took your innocence, Mr Black. And that is something you can never get back.'
No matter how much you want it back.
I've seen your flag on the marble arch
And love is not a victory march!
When would Sirius learn? That he wasn't some trophy he could brag about winning in the pub after work, that he wasn't a token, an inanimate thing that could be won in a competition. That it wasn't about scores and winning, it was about closeness, respect…
It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah
… love…
Remus closed his eyes tightly and pressed the balls of his hands into them, until the swirling pink and purple patterns in the darkness behind his eyelids made him feel nauseous. The prickling sensation had started. The sensation of his hair trying to grow into fur, trying to grow about a hundred times faster than it even grew when he was becoming a man. He knew that the year's eleventh full moon was but a few hours away.
It was true that the pair had extremely little in common other than their respective sexualities. Remus had always been the quiet, studious boy who liked nothing better than to sit down with a good book or some of his favourite jazz records. Sirius, on the other hand, was the exact opposite. Not caring for his schoolwork, having no time for "that insatiable bloody noise" that was Remus's one passion; he wanted to run around causing havoc and chaos. A side-effect from living in Grimmauld Place with that awful, prim and proper family of his, no doubt, but still…
In Remus's mind's eye, Sirius was definitely having an affaire. Multiple affaires. That part of the relationship just didn't seem to exist anymore. Not for a while. He could hardly even remember the last time that the couple had made love. Why should they? If Sirius was getting his kicks elsewhere, then why would he need to bother having even the quickest fumble in the dark with him?
There was a time you let me know
What's really going on below.
But now you never show it to me, do you?
Even when they did go through with it, Sirius always insisted on having sex in the dark, under the covers, from behind where he couldn't see the ecstatic face of his lover during the act that had become so sordid, so impersonal. That made Remus feel dirty and devalued. 'But I remember… I remember…' he thought,
I remember when I moved in you
And the Holy Dove was moving too,
And every breath we drew was Hallelujah
'I remember a time when we were really making love. Even if it was only that one first time. When I was in control, although you seemed to be so. When it was I that took you. Just that one time, when it was not just a physical need. When we did it because we both wanted to. When it wasn't the only thing that we had in common. When it hadn't become a necessity just to hold our relationship together. When we were not just fucking, we were not just fucking, we were not… just… fucking…'
What was the point of falling in love, he asked himself. What was the point if all that ever happened was that you got hurt?
Maybe there's a God above.
But all I ever learned from love
Was how to shoot at someone who outdrew you.
Was it possible that Sirius had ever loved him? Ever even valued him as a friend? After all, if Sirius had gone and betrayed his friends like that, if he had had Lily and James killed, if he had left little Harry for dead before he had even begun to live, if he had slaughtered poor Peter… If he had systematically destroyed everyone that he held dear to him, everyone who mattered… why was he still here, sitting in their home ("Love Nest", Sirius had joked)? Wasn't he important enough to him? Didn't he matter, too?
The pain, steadily getting worse. The urge to throw things, to smash everything in the room, to wail, to gnash his teeth, to cry, to weep, to scream at the top of his lungs just how badly he was hurting. But then the bastard would have won, wouldn't he? Wasn't that just what Sirius would be laughing about as he rotted away in prison? No. He wouldn't give him the satisfaction. He wouldn't weep, he wouldn't cry, he wouldn't…
Wouldn't…
And it's not the cry that you hear tonight,
And if he had succumbed to the most basic, the strongest, most powerful emotion it is possible for anyone, or anything, to feel, what then? What about it? "Because that's life," he told the room where nobody was there to listen to him, where nobody would smile grimly and nod in apathetic agreement.
It's not somebody who's seen the light,
It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah
"That's life. Where nobody comes to comfort you when you've been knocked down. They could, but they don't. Because nobody ever does…"
He didn't even have to look out of the window to see the tired blue sky draw to an oppressive black conclusion to know that dusk had fallen. The pain through his bones and skin informed him on behalf of the brightly shining moon.
"Nobody ever does," he whispered into the emptiness as he felt the first major pains of a bad transformation envelope his entire body like a tight, crushing vice. A single tear slowly trailed down his sweating, shivering cheek and fell onto the abandoned, half-empty score in front of him, smudging the dried ink of his final written note, rendering it illegible forever. Lupin's symphony would never be finished.