Rating: PG-13
Warnings: There's some m/m, a tiny bit of f/f, m/f, talk about sex, talk about suicide, implications of rape… and a helluva lot of internal monologue. Act Two is has an R rating, as it contains the explicit sexual/suicidal stuff. None of it is PWP or smut, though. It's disturbing stuff, but a mature, not depressed 15 year old could handle it (mature being the operative word). Act Five has some vaguely suicidal like stuff too. All the others are PG-13.
Spoilers: All 5 books
Genre: Angst, Angst, Angst, Angst, did I mention angst? Some romance thrown in too.
Pairings: Remus/Sirius, Ron/Hermione, Ginny/Tom(kinda) Ginny/Hermione (kinda) Ginny/Harry (again, kinda)
Summary: After the events of GOF, a stranger weeps at Remus's table. After OOTP Ginny finds the past often lingers into the future, Ron and Hermione try to take comfort in each other, Luna fends off reality with a vengeance, and Harry buys a lemon ice cream. R rating people.
Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter. Nyah!
A/N: Inspired by the songs of Paolo Conte. Angsty slashiness ahead! Happy endings are, for the most part, not. Hope you enjoy it!
Act One: Raincoats- Forgotten Love "E ricomincera Come da un rendezvousParlando piano tra noi du.
Scendo giuA prendermi un caffe
Scusami un attimo…
Passa un mano qui,
Cosi, sopra I miei lividi.
Ma come piove bene
Sugl'impermeablili…"
-Paolo Conte "Raincoats"
(translation: And it'll start again / like a secret meeting / where we speak quietly between the two of us .// I'm going downstairs/to have a coffee / excuse me a moment… / A hand brushes past here / just like that, over my bruises // My goodness how hard it is raining / on the raincoats)
The silence grows long and heavy between them. They have exhausted all the convenient topics. The urgent messages have been delivered. Updates on the well-being of others have been exchanged. Inquiries about each other's health duly answered. They sit at the kitchen table, each unwilling to look at the other. Rather, they clutch their mugs tightly, with whitened knuckles, watching the rain flow down the window glass, listening to the distant roll of afternoon thunder. They do not discuss the weather. No, they would rather die than discuss the weather, no matter how oppressive their awkwardness becomes. It would be too much of an affront to what they had. Better to waste away in silence, trying to imagine it companionable, than to give up and fall into small talk.
He sighs very softly, rubbing his forehead where a bruise still lingers, like a smudge of dust. The tea has gone cold by now, surely, he thinks, examining it. He sips it anyway. It washes like moss and stone and icy water on his tongue. He shudders and puts it abruptly down, the clink of the china uncomfortably loud on the wood. Thunder reverberates around the kitchen that is lit only by the gray light from the window and then disappears into the trickling rain. He used to have a monopoly on suffering, he thinks. The wrinkles around his eyes are not new. His scars are old, etched into his flesh decades ago. But the man who sits across from him, his eyes possess a darkness that they never held before. His mouth is straight and grim, framed by deep lines. It forms no sweetly reckless words, nor does it flash brightly over brilliant, straight teeth. It is not the soft, warm, elastic redness he remembers from his youth. It is hard for him to imagine what this man has been through. It is what has turned the man across the table from him into a stranger. He has changed so much.
"I never imagined you living like this, Remus," says the stranger, gesturing about the kitchen. The movement and speech come awkwardly, unpracticed.
There seems to be no answer to this. Remus finds he still cannot meet his eyes, so he concentrates on the vase of drooping tulips that lies between them. Red fading to pink. Pink turning to gray. Life dropping petals and turning to ash. Present slipping imperceptibly, inevitably into past.
"Like an old maid, I mean," he elaborates clumsily. "You live like Arabella. I knew you weren't a manly man, but even for a queer this is a bit much! Honestly, floral curtains? Tulips on your table, Moony?" He tries to grin, like he used to, but it falls short of his eyes. "Moony?" It is not the same. For some reason, it infuriates Remus.
"Don't call me that! My flowers all wilted years ago!" Remus cries with sudden violence, spilling the tea into a great flood on the table top. The stranger jumps, taken aback. Remus winces at the strangeness of his words. The silence falls again, but it now crackles and sways with a new, inexplicable urgency. They stare at each other, the tea sliding down the table leg and falling to a puddle on the tiles. Then, very slowly, deliberately, the stranger leans across the table, his gaze focused very intently on Remus's.
"I had no flowers," he whispers very harshly. Remus thinks for a moment that the stranger is going to laugh wildly, but his voice breaks mid-sentence. And he starts to weep.
Remus stares at him, helpless and silent. The hoarse sobs echo in the kitchen, melding with the falling rain, threading through the cheery rose cotton curtains. He sobs into the table, unkempt hair concealing his face. Remus does not know what to do. He'd never seen him cry before. The cold tea is dripping on the floor. He wonders if it would be insensitive to get a towel to mop it up while the stranger was crying. Crying… He has changed, he has changed… The stranger's hand is sprawled across the table, unconsciously crushing a fallen petal so that the dust swims and vanishes on the wet tabletop. Remus studies the hand vaguely. His mind seems to have deserted him. He notes, with curious detachment, that he does not remember the thin, pale lines that crisscross his knuckles. His hand is much older, he decides. He can see each pumping vein underneath the translucent skin.
However, Remus thinks, he cannot just let this stranger that has come to sit at his table cry. He ought to do something. He takes the hand gently and soothingly strokes the scars with his thumb.
"C'mon," he hears himself whisper. "Don't do this… It's okay, it's okay… Don't cry, please…"
The sobs halt. The fingers that have intertwined with his shudder briefly. The stranger lifts his head. No tears, Remus thinks. No tears…They are all spent in the rock of Azkaban…They are all soaked in the rock in Azkaban…
He does not protest when the stranger stands with a start, knocking over his chair. He is quiet as they crash savagely to the tile, the stranger's lips moving hungrily against his own. He is unaware that the stranger whose cold, unfamiliar hands are fumbling fervently for buttons will fall into darkness. He cannot know that this man who ought to have been his friend and his lover and the life he always wanted will go uncried for, that he will be consumed with numbness when he sees what happened, that the tears that should have streamed will refuse to come, as if they all poured down the misty window glass on a gray afternoon that should have been happy.