Summary: Sirius, sleepless and twisted inside; and Remus, feeling down on himself again; and the summer, heat waves and Death Eater attacks and letters from home.
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, any of its characters, or any of its settings.
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Sirius, sleepless and twisted inside; and Remus, feeling down on himself again; they sit on opposite ends of the couch. Wizard radio playing; maps spread out on the table. The news is about heat waves and the surveillance law the Ministry can't get passed, and when Remus turns to Sirius, just for a moment, Sirius sees something in his expression to make him think, without quite realizing why, He can't sleep either.
At James and Lily's last night, in the middle of Harry's first birthday, he slipped out the back door and stood smoking one of Sirius's cigarettes under the tree at the edge of the yard. And later he said he felt dead inside and Sirius told him to stop being so overdramatic. And he'd smiled and said Well you're right I suppose and even though an hour had passed Sirius still bothered to drag him back inside, where they sat with James and Lily and a few straggling adults, Harry himself put to bed, and Remus had been very silent.
The thing is that Remus has turned him. Not in the usual ways. Not into a werewolf, no, and not queer. He's not the first boy Sirius has wanted, nor the first boy he's had, but in some other way, some indescribable way, Remus has turned him. Sirius is someone else now, someone else when they slump next to each other on the beat up sofa or when they fly through the streets at night on Order missions or on their own missions, someone else when they bump into each other accidentally in doorways or sit across from each other at the table drinking tea. Not Sirius Black anymore. Not his mother's son, not a student, not a Marauder.
Whatever he is now, it's something he can't name.
He says, there are no words for what you do to me, and Remus's skin turns a faint pink as if this were a compliment. Or maybe it's the wind and the way it hits his face. He leans in a little farther over the balcony railing.
When they were animals, it was like this: colors human beings don't see. Tastes human beings can't fathom. A rawness to the earth.
Remus leans a little farther over the railing.
That night they lie on the bed in the first August heat, much like July heat but with that flicker of the end of summer burning straight down the middle of it, and sweat into the sheets instead of casting cooling charms because they don't do wand magic now if they can help it.
Remus tells him:
—Close your eyes.
—Imagine you are somewhere else.
—This place is calm. It is cool. It is empty—wait, just listen, it's empty at first.
(A hand is placed on his stomach, but only for a moment and it's gone. He feels hesitation there.)
—You can be anyone you want here.
—Don't be afraid.
Then for a long time Remus doesn't speak.
Sirius is in a room. Like his first flat but empty, emptier even than the first day he moved in and almost threw up in the bathroom he felt so alone. He still had a fading bruise on his arm from fighting with Snape—a fist fight that time like Muggles. It had felt good. But standing in the flat with his stomach turning it was like he was twelve and eighteen and eighty two all at the same time. That's what this room is like. It's like he's everything at once.
—Stay calm.
He's very far away. This is not summer this is not the city this is not Remus, his hand on his arm this time, moving down moving down, his fingers through his fingers.
—What do you see?
Sirius opens his eyes. I don't know he says, a bit sadly now. This isn't working. I still feel terrible.
And Remus answers So do I.
For a moment they both hate each other.
And Remus answers I feel very alone.
Sirius would take him in his arms but it's too hot.
In the morning they are both tired and admit to not sleeping. They eat toast and Remus tells Sirius that he dreamt, last night, that he was in school again and about to take a big test but every time he gathered his books to leave the library and go to class, for this test, you know, his books would start to fall. Just an endless cylce of falling and catching and falling, and panic that he was going to miss this test. He says it was quite horrible and Sirius, standing at the window and untying the letter from the owl's leg, says this is a letter from my father. This is truly horrible—more than quite.
Remus asks him what it says, but he sits back down first before he opens it.
For a moment he just reads. Then he says Apparently, he's dying. And sets the letter on fire. He doesn't believe it.
This is a war and any day they might die and today they are in Diagon Alley and then, they are in a battle. Death Eaters sifting out from the walls. For a long time, there is nothing but smoke and he is lost and he could be anyone, because no one can see him and no one who catches sight of him recognizes him, and certainly, he doesn't recognize himself, far from it. He can't even see around him. He is nothing. He is a mist.
In the room, in the empty room, there is mist. And Remus's voice calling his name.
I thought we were all going to die James says later. I thought, this must be what it feels like when the world ends. Not what it's like to die—see—because when I die the world's going down with me.
You can't imagine a world without James Potter in it? Lily asks like she's mocking.
James nods and his face is set in serious lines and he answers Can you? Imagine a world after you die? With whose eyes would you watch it?
Well if your soul survives your body Remus starts but
Soul? Sirius asks. Catches Remus's eye for a moment. Moony. No. When we die that's it. The end.
He's thinking about the letter, about Regulus, about Order funerals, and James's parents, and about Remus's.
Remus doesn't try to argue with him. When they get home, he asks if Sirius is going to visit his father and he answers Why should I? I'm no son of his.
Then Remus starts to talk about things like how Sirius gives up on people, how Sirius uses people, how Sirius Black thinks he's above people, and all of this is a laugh anyway. A big laugh and he says so. First because Remus is just as bad if not worse, and second because, this Sirius Black person, well, who is he anyway?
They spend the rest of the day apart. At the Order meeting, James reports on the attack. Sirius stands in the corner with his back against the stone. There's a fireplace but they don't use it. They are a lonely crowd. Later he sees: Peter talking to Lily, and James nodding his head to something Arthur Weasley is telling him. Remus is standing by that empty and cold fireplace with a too small space between him and Beny Fenwick—Benjy and his square glasses, Benjy and the high lines of his face, Benjy and that slow understanding nod of his head like he knows Remus. But. Sirius says that he's beyond jealousy. This is petty. He hates himself.
Night again, August night. But they're stubborn and they open up the windows instead of taking out their wands. I just don't get Remus says. What you see in me.
I don't get Sirius answers. How you know you love me, when you can't even know who I am.
Remus knows a lot about hiding, lying, keeping himself secret. But they were in crazy love once and said they'd tell each other everything—long Hogwarts nights in the dorm or the Shack, that big sinking Shack bed, telling each other secrets, telling themselves they weren't alone, making up a truth to cloak around them. One night it snowed, while they were sleeping. And the next morning was a Sunday and in the clear thin winter light Remus made a snowman.
In those days no one watched them. They made themselves invisible. Whenever they wanted; it was a new magic. One that existed more within themselves than without.
Tell me one thing Remus asks, shifting himself to his side, catching Sirius's eyes again. Sirius touches a hand gently to his face. Moony face. Tell me one thing.
On a condition.
Remus's shining eyes stare at him in the dim light.
We try it again.
—Close your eyes.
—You are somewhere else.
Remus says.
—You are far away.
Sirius is in a room. It is as empty as he is inside. He is not afraid.
—Don't be afraid.
He is not alone.
—You are not alone.
He breathes in as deeply as he can and he feels that Remus has touched his shoulder, is moving his hand down his chest to his stomach. There is hesitation there. He is so far away. Sirius scrapes his fingers against the sheets of the bed.
—Who is there?
This is magic too. But of a subtle sort, a sort they will allow themselves. This at least. Remus's fingers fluttering against the rise and fall of his stomach. Who is there?
When he wakes up Remus is already awake, shifted slightly on his side, away from Sirius, staring out the window at the sky, his arms crossed against his chest. Sirius shifts next to him and Remus, knowing now that he's awake says Tell me one thing.
Yeah?
Did you ever love me?
This is what Sirius should be asking him. He should be asking him about love, about distance, about Benjy Fenwick and how Sirius isn't jealous, it's just, some things—but Remus has asked him first.
He waits to answer because he wants to make sure that he has the truth all figured out first. And before he speaks he shifts a little closer, and wraps one arm around Remus's stomach and pulls himself up closer still, buries his nose and his lips into the dip of Remus's shoulder. I loved you terribly.
And now? Remus asks cooly, asks coldly, gripping Sirius's hand under his own hand.
Yes. And now. Whatever this is it's love.
He feels Remus nod against the pillow.
On his eighteenth birthday he kissed Remus in the common room, and even though it was empty Remus pushed him away and hissed that he was stupid STOP. And it was, in those days, so much easier and so much harder to be reasonable. He'd pulled Remus close. Said Moony, you know—that I'm yours, you know this.
Sirius Black, orphan whose parents live, no history, no home, no tethers. Drifting in the clouds, looking for something. Lost.
I'm yours, you know this.
Padfoot—no. This isn't about ownership.
He'd been so insistent. Love isn't about ownership. And though they'd never called it love before, by using the word, that was what it became. Whatever this is, it is love.
Whatever he is now, he is, if not Remus's, if not belonging to Remus, than of Remus, created somehow through him. Turned. Changed. Transformed. It twists his stomach up in knots. In the room, you're always alone. If you find someone else, it's because you let him in.
Remus's hand on his stomach.
—You're not alone. Breathe. In. Out. The room is calm. It is cool.
—You are not afraid.
—And you are not alone.
—Open your eyes.
And Remus's hand still on his stomach. Hesitation there. He'd opened his eyes and he had been afraid again, but it didn't matter. He'd come to feel that nothing mattered. Somewhere along the way he'd left himself behind, and some day his father would die, and he himself would die, and he wasn't afraid of death and yet he didn't know how to fear something that was not death. He'd looked into Remus's face and found the expression sad, almost scared, and lonely. He'd found himself unable to make a difference for him. For a while they had held hands and even though Sirius would have liked, in some abstract way, to fall asleep that way, in the end it was too hot and they'd pulled away from each other, and slept facing opposite sides of the room.