For Fire the Canon's 2012 Hogwarts Games. Event: Men's Boxing. 500-1000 words.
Participants of this event must write a one shot or drabble using a slash pairing of their choice.
Optional prompt: Home is where the heart is.
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Inspired by a quote from "Prepare to be Unstuck" on HPFC: "I don't think of the past. The only thing that matters is the everlasting present." W. Somerset Maugham
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For Gamma's OTP Boot Camp prompt 49 - Practical.
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Remus had never thought he'd be the type of person to attempt to ignore the past. He knows that ignoring things can never make them go away. Oh, Merlin knows he's tried. It doesn't work. Not with lycanthropy, and not with something like this.
After all, the past can never truly be forgotten – except, perhaps, by an amnesiac, which Remus is clearly not. And if it cannot be forgotten, then Remus believes that the only way to live in spite of it is to confront it.
Except, not right now. Right now, he doesn't want to – or, perhaps, cannot – confront the past.
Because Sirius is here, for the first time in what feels like an eternity but has really only been just over a decade. Here, in his arms. And bringing up the past will only create a gulf between them, make things awkward, because they really don't need the reminder. The reminder of things they did, things they thought in those days. Those dark days of doubt.
So, really, he's only being practical when he ignores the past – for now, at least.
He does not forget – oh, no, it isn't that easy – but instead he allows himself to be fully enveloped in all that is Sirius: the familiar scent of rain, because Sirius has always smelled like rain, but with just a little bit of canine aroma mixed in. He allows himself to feel only the tingle of sensation where their skin meets, the electricity when their lips touch.
"Sirius," he breathes, his voice a whisper of air, and they are close enough that he can feel Sirius shudder in response.
And, for this moment, it's like nothing has changed. It's like the doubt, the feelings of betrayal, the twelve years apart – it's like all of that never even happened. They're seventeen again, perfectly in tune with each other's every movement, every breath.
They are, as they have always been, Remus&Sirius, one entity in two bodies – separate, but always connected, always together.
And yet, no matter how much he wants to believe that nothing has changed, no matter how much he wants to believe that everything can go back to how it was, Remus knows that believing this would be believing in a lie. It's nothing tangible that's different, rather, something elusive, something abstract. It's in the subtle atmosphere of desperation surrounding them, the rawness.
They are both broken, now, and Remus has known that, but now he can see it in the way they fit together – still, as always, like puzzle pieces, only now they are puzzle pieces with jagged edges that jostle and scrape together. Still undeniably a perfect fit, but a perfect fit with friction.
And the desperate intensity that was never there before feels like it should be scary, intimidating. Something to back away from, steer clear of. But Remus is like an addict, and Sirius has always been his drug – no matter how much he may feel that they are dangerous together, better off apart, Remus can never stay away.
Sirius is intoxicating.
And Remus cannot bring himself to be ashamed of his addiction.
So it ceases to matter that something's different, it ceases to matter that everything has changed.
They are still Remus&Sirius, and, for this moment, that's all that matters.