a/n. This story was never supposed to happen. I'm supposed to be focused on my latest project, and dutifully searching for a beta. Too bad RemusSirius likes to haunt me. Damn them.
Written for 'Glittering Cloud', a song by the talented Imogen Heap. When I really read the lyrics, all I thought was RemusSirius.
Disclaimer: I don't own most of this, JK Rowling does. LGSnow owns the correct grammar. The errors belong to me.
I'm not always like this, it's something I become.
A terrible weakness, in my nature, in my blood.
To Remus, sometimes it seems lycanthropy isn't the only curse that runs through his veins. Although it pains him to think that he could possibly be something worse, it is a reality that is beginning to show. Of course, the fury that rages so heatedly within his fragile human skin could be just another one of those woolfy attributes he has come to both expect and despise.
Emotions, like flames, lick at his insides, coaxing the furnace inside his chest. The feeling is so intense he wishes someone with cool hands would come and rest them over his skin, calm down his fire-hungry heart and soothe him into some kind of normalcy. It just isn't normal to feel so angry. Even for someone who grotesquely transforms into a monster every month.
Trying to control it is even harder. With teeth mashed hard together he tenses his jaw muscles, straining his tongue back into his throat. It would be an effort to talk to someone without snapping at them, or perhaps biting them, which Remus thinks may have a slightly detrimental effect on his public image. He wonders what would be considered worse: a werewolf or a bloodthirsty vampire?
His skin still prickles in his itchy dress robes and he thinks about leaving the stupid Yule Ball just to take them off and stop feeling so goddamn hot, amongst other things. Hot as in overheating, that is. Remus thinks his angry face is so very far from being attractive. In fact, Remus secretly looks at his figure in the mirror sometimes and thinks he's pretty. Pretty ugly.
James, always with impeccable timing, chooses that moment to sneak up behind him and push of his shoulders unexpectedly. Naturally, with instincts as sharp as Remus', James finds himself flung to the ground.
(He knew what he was in for, suicidal berk.)
'Shit Moony' he moans, picking himself off the hard marble floor, 'no need to manhandle me.'
On the upside this makes Remus a slightly less angry, because James is really quite pathetic when it comes to play fighting and gives up quicker than anyone else he knows. It also gives him something to smile about, seeing Lily laugh heartily at his heap on the floor. Remus knows he's ruined any small advances James may have made tonight.
It might also have been to do with another small factor. Remus has been sufficiently distracted for the time being. Sufficiently distracted enough that is, to take his eyes of his best mate and his best mate's bird in the middle of the Great Hall.
And so he fails to notice that anger feels suspiciously like jealousy.
Save me, save me, save me from myself,
Before I hurt somebody else again.
Sirius doesn't have to look at Moony, his Moony, to know that he's watching. He can feel the hardened, angry gaze through instinct, his hairs prickling on the back of his neck, his muscles tensing under the pressure. Moony is a very intense person; intense when he's studying, intense when he's planning, intense when he's looking at Sirius. Sirius loves it.
Sirius loves all kinds of things, things like girls, and not boys, definitely just girls. Most of all Sirius loves attention, and all kinds of it. Attention from girls and attention from boys, even though Sirius most definitely only wants girls thank-you-very-much.
If Sirius really thinks hard, (something he really hates doing because it involves all kinds of effort) he's never told anyone that he loves them. Not his goddamn mother, or his weak willed father, his useless brother or the innumerable sexual partners he's had over the years.
(Maybe he's only had two but that's really not the point.)
He doesn't love because he's only in it for the attention.
(Or so he likes to tell himself.)
Unfortunately, people have fallen in love with Sirius, and he's really not sure how to take it. Being unsure isn't one of Sirius' strong suits. Being unsure usually leads to disastrous things like botched potions turning Pete's physique very feminine, or James falling off the balcony over the paved courtyard.
(Saved by Moony and an excellent cushioning charm.)
Sirius is very, very unsure about Remus, because as much as Sirius tends to avoid overworking his brain, he knows there's something about Sirius that attracts Remus. Sirius generally believes himself to be an attractive person; however it's a little disconcerting when your best mate tends to agree more than you do yourself.
Remus likes proximity with Sirius that he doesn't tend to enjoy with the rest of them. They're always together, poking fun at each other and planning and pranking and touching a lot more than friends should. James is always whinging and complaining that all Sirius does now is hang out with Remus, and that Pete is a great guy but despite the constant ego boost and adoration he's not brother material like Sirius is.
James and Sirius work together like bread and butter (Sirius being the bread because he's not soft like James). They can poke fun at each other and plan and prank together without touching in the way that Sirius feels compelled to with Remus. After all, Sirius has always wanted a real brother and James has always wanted a sibling. But Remus, well, Sirius isn't quite sure exactly what he wants.
Sirius feels like he should just tell Remus that RemusSirius is never going to work, it's nothing but an imaginary dream Remus has made up in his head, and that this should just stop because it's wrong and Sirius really, really, really likes girls. But he can't. He can't hurt his pride, because a loss of Remus-y attention would mean a loss of attention full-stop and Sirius reallyloves attention.
A small part of him concedes that he also really doesn't want to hurt Remus. Remus is, after all, still his best mate. And nothing in the world is wrong with Sirius wanting to protect his best mate.
Nothing in the world is wrong, except Sirius is still uncertain, and things just tend to happen when Sirius is uncertain.
Domino motion, it jumpstarts when we touch.
The blackout approaching, here it comes now, wish me luck.
Remus is still mildly annoyed when he trudges upstairs that night, utterly exhausted. He's lost James somewhere up the Grand Staircase, struggling to hold onto the railing, his eyes blurry and his speech slurred into something resembling 'why does Lily hate me?'
Remus can't really be bothered explaining to James that he's an insufferably annoying prat and that getting paralytic when he was supposed to be charming Lily out of her lovely slytherin-green dress probably wasn't going to help. James would put his excessive firewhisky consumption down to fantasies involving spin-the-bottle or the fact that he needs copious amounts of confidence to deal with the feisty red head. In any case, he would have forgotten all of Remus' advice by the morning.
So instead, Remus has hoisted himself up into the common room, stopping mid-step to marvel at his face in the oblong mirror that faces the dormitories above the fireplace. He looks tired. He looks like utter crap.
His eyes are slightly reddened from some of James' fire whisky (which he only drunk to prevent James from drinking it first – Merlin knows Hogwarts hasn't had a student vomit off the Grand Staircase yet and probably doesn't need it) and his forehead has creased into what resembles a permanent scowl. To add to the appealing image, his hair is dredged across his forehead, sticking like glue to it with sweat or firewhisky or something, giving him a sort of bedraggled look. Of course, he still has the ugly scars crisscrossing his cheeks like he's got into a fight with a particularly nasty hippogriff and lost, convincingly.
Feeling very inclined to pummel the mirror into sand on the floor; Remus hunches his shoulders and stalks away, up the winding stone staircase to the boys dormitories. He's about to shove the door open when he hears some kind of panting going on inside, an obvious coital sound which makes his cheeks warm, probably flushing them with the embarrassing amounts of blood. Remus has always hated looking so stupidly innocent. Being a werewolf could have offered him some perks, like an aura of general toughness at least.
The sounds aren't really helping him because they're getting louder, and more intense than before. He realises that girls sound stupid when they're in the moment, loads of little whimpers and fluttering sighs. He wouldn't want to feel like he was screwing a small animal. Remus almost vomits in his mouth at that point, because he's definitely not into bestiality in any way; however his awful train of thought stops when he hears something else behind the wooden door.
He's not stupid, he knew from the beginning that the girl in there probably wasn't just helping herself. However, his body fills with trepidation when he hears the corresponding male version. It's low and rough, just what Remus always imagined sex to be like, and his body quivers. He knows it's fucking creepy to stand outside the door like this and eavesdrop, and it probably wouldn't do him any favours if anyone was to catch him there, but he's transfixed.
Remus knows it's not Peter, and James is still struggling to reach the second floor, so logically he knows there's really only one other person it could be in there, screwing the brains out of some small, watery-eyed girl. Remus feels like, at this point, his anger should be paramount, he should want to burst into the door at full speed and chase her out of his dormitory, his haven. She's ruining it, she's ruined everything.
He can't help but feel absolutely desolate. Like where his anger should have been sadness is slowly filling him up, like a dry well which really didn't want any of the impeding water. It aches in his chest, a dull, methodical pain that twists and turns somewhere inside him. He would say it's over his heart, but he's not sure he has one anymore; it feels like a blank, black expanse where a vital organ should have been. Instead he's living to the rhythm of the pain, still beating it out in his chest.
And although the water is filling him up the brim, so close in fact, he feels it's about to spill over, he can't help but feel so fucking empty. Like Sirius has ripped him up into fine cotton threads, and is throwing them to the wind, uncaring where they end up and why. Sirius is hurting and hurting him all over again, ripping fresh wounds into his skin where he thought only lycanthropy could tear.
It's so pathetic and stupid that he's even standing there, listening to a fucking girl make Sirius moan like he wishes, in some perverted part of his mind, that he could do. He wants to be the one close and warm against Sirius' body, biting hard and hot down onto his neck, feeling his rough lips press firmly against Remus'.
This pipe dream is tearing Remus so thoroughly to shreds that he's standing stock still, feeling like less of a man than he has ever been; so weak, and so vulnerable. He's still standing like that when Sirius saunters out of the bedroom, conspicuously underdressed and headed for the bathroom.
Remus is standing in the dark of the passageway, so Sirius can't really see his facial expression, although if he could he probably would have been more alarmed than he was. Granted, Sirius didn't take Remus for an eavesdropper, so it was perfectly natural to assume that he'd only been there a second before Sirius exited the bedroom.
'Wotcher Moons' he calls, slipping past the statuesque body and shuffling down the stairs.
Remus snaps in two.
He's just so angry and frustrated that he's so bloody sad. He's depressed over Sirius fucking Black for fucking sake (and Moony knew what a terrible screw up he was better than anyone else – anyone that is, aside from James).
He storms, utterly furious, into the room and pulls back the curtains roughly to Sirius' four poster bed. After a scuffle of blankets and a breathy gasp Remus sees his first, real live, female, naked body. To be honest, he's not all that impressed.
He's reeling in as much shock as she is at first, he expected her to be at least half decent, after all, Sirius had been (and with a sickening jolt he realises that Sirius may have only gone down for an intermission) and jumps back. She glances up nervously and the anger only swells inside him. This was so unlike the real Remus that he almost feels like it should be full moon, although that's still weeks away.
She giggles nervously and bats her eyelids. 'Awfully sorry Remus' she starts, tossing her hair over one shoulder.
Remus doesn't know her name, hell, he's basically never seen this girl before, and she could have been a muggle for all he knew. But he hates her. Hates her with a burning passion that makes him want to break her neck in two, and that scares him.
'Get out' he growls.
'Sorry, but I think Sirius would disagree with you' she says, lowering her voice defiantly and wrapping the blankets tighter around her svelte frame.
'I don't give a fucking rat's arse what Sirius wants,' he bites back, 'get the fuck out of my dormitory.'
It takes her all of forty-four seconds for her to get dressed and collect her belongings. Remus thinks she must be doing this an awful lot, or have done it a lot in the past. She's exactly the kind of animal Sirius deserves and again Remus goes back to throwing up in his mouth.
It's all over, it's all over, it's all over in a flash,
I can't remember, what have I done now?
Sirius climbs back up the stairs a little more hurriedly than he did going down them. He does this because he's realised something; Moony is in his dormitory with Clarissa and Moony is a raging lunatic when he's angry.
When Sirius casually passed him on the landing he didn't notice anything obscenely odd, only that Remus wasn't being very talkative, which, to Sirius is a clear indication that he's either beyond drunk or angry. After all, Remus always wants to talk to Sirius.
(And, somewhere inside him Sirius knows he always wants to talk to Remus – even though talking involves thinking.)
He opens the door with a little more trepidation than he usually would. After all, Sirius has balls and he's not scared of anything, not even a hormonal werewolf in Remus' clothing. However, if he's completely honest with himself, Sirius does find Remus slightly intimidating; he reckons lycanthropy has just given him a bit of an edge.
When he steps through the door he can't see much, it's fairly dark in there. He swiftly pushes the curtains of his poster bed open to find it empty, and finds himself a little relieved. That girl had the stamina of a racehorse and he wasn't sure he'd enjoyed anything that much to want to go again.
Instead, he busies himself searching around for Moony. He's not in any of his usual places: The bay window facing the lake where he permanently has a book stuck onto his face, the corner which he squashes himself into when he's thinking or taking up all the desk space in the dormitory while violently scribbling down an essay. Instead, Sirius finds Moony lying on his side in his bed, something that Sirius did not expect.
Remus doesn't seem to flinch when Sirius opens the curtains, preferring to stare blankly at the wall he's facing instead. Sirius isn't quite sure how to diffuse the tension, so he opts for flopping down onto Moony's bed instead.
'Fuck off Sirius' the statue mutters, defiantly facing the wall and stiffening as if Sirius is definitely not allowed to touch.
'Look, Moony, I'm sorry if Clarissa gave you a bit of fright, I should have wa-'
'Who says this is about one of your goddamn conquests, Sirius?' Remus interrupts harshly, and for the first time that night Sirius begins to notice that he's too far along to play the 'not wanting to hurt you' card.
He begins to notice other things too, like the way Moony is positioned on the bed, deliberately hiding his face. He notices that Moony's voice sounds rough like sandpaper but indescribably weak; like it was so brittle it could crack at any moment. Moony hasn't been crying; he knows that Moony never cries, but Moony has been hurting, and it feels eerily like Sirius hurts along with him.
'I-'
'Shut the fuck up Sirius and get off my bed.'
'Moony, I'm sorry.'
'Get the fuck off my bed Sirius' Remus growls, and Sirius knows he's pushed and prodded just a little too far. But he's got this feeling in his chest now that won't go away, and he knows nothing is going to make anything better, other than Moony's forgiveness and perhaps even a strictly platonic hug.
He's also a little offended, his pride a little hurt, because no one ever rejects Sirius, especially not when he knows that he has their full attention.
'You don't really want that' he starts, bravely testing the waters, seeing how far he can make Moony admit that all he really wants is for Sirius to pay him some attention right back.
Moony clenches his teeth and snaps up off the bed. He ends up in sitting position on the opposite end of the four poster bed and carefully extends his legs off it.
'What the hell do you mean?' he snaps, standing up brusquely and making his way over to draw the curtains closed, taking a long time to fiddle with the drawstring as if he was trying to interpret what Sirius has just blurted out.
'Moony, I like girls' he states baldly, but even as he says it he can feel that niggling sense in the back of his head which tells him he's trying to convince himself more than he is trying to convince Remus.
Remus' jaw is so tightly clenched Sirius thinks it may break off in two seconds if he doesn't open his mouth. Fortunately for Remus' health, it does. Unfortunately that is, for Sirius' pride.
'Bloody fucking fantastic Sirius' he laughs without mirth, pushing himself up off the window and standing stiff, hands making balls at his sides. 'Did you think that might shatter my dreams? That I might beg you to change your mind? Tell you that you broke my heart?'
Remus is beginning to scare Sirius. Scare him because Remus has never been this angry with him, not even last year when he accidently told Snape something that definitely shouldn't have been said. Something that Remus and Sirius have had an unspoken rule about never speaking of such things ever again ever.
'Get over yourself Sirius' he spits, 'even if I swung that way you would be the last person I'd consider.'
Surprisingly, he doesn't think it's just the pride that's been hurt. Something else inside twinges a little in pain, and something sets into his mind that feels kind of like desperation.
Moony is heading towards the door, kicking James' clothes off the floor as he does. He's about to leave and Sirius can't let that happen, for the love of Merlin he can't let that happen. It's not about attention anymore, or lies or stupidity and just fucking not thinking when he really should have been. It's about Moony and Sirius and RemusSirius and whatever other fucked up things Sirius wants but generally can't have. So he flings himself at the door, hand finding its way to Remus' shoulder, desperately trying to turn him around.
Moony stops and flinches, spinning on the spot and facing Sirius, hazel eyes still full of something that looks sickeningly like hatred, and Sirius chest jolts like he's just experienced a heart murmur.
'Don't go Moony' he pleads, and it sounds kind of pathetic but really, Sirius doesn't care anymore. He's entrusted everything to instinct, and he's like a steam train on a track that takes him places he's never been before and is ultimately, very scared of.
'Why?' Remus asks, and it's very simple, but Sirius still can't quite answer him. 'If you want the rest of me you can have it Sirius, but there's not all that much left. If it makes you happy, you can tell me a million times over how much you love girls, but don't expect me to like it. I'm a fucking joke to you Sirius, I can see it. I'm not stupid. You love girls; you love sex and you fucking love attention.'
'I love you' Sirius says, and he swears it didn't mean to slip out of his mouth like that, but it did. It's unfair, because for Sirius things don't make sense when they're this warped, and it's really just an amalgamation of months of confusion and not thinking. That, and being unsure, which is not Sirius' strong suit.
Remus looks like he doesn't believe him, and Sirius really doesn't blame him for that. Sirius has a way of saying things which make them sound insincere, which is probably because Sirius isn't very good at saying things at all. He's always been a rather physical being.
'Liar' Remus challenges and looks him straight in the eye.
Sirius can't just let him win like that.
So he kisses him. Very simply, smack bang right on the lips and Remus reels in shock.
Sirius doesn't often do all that much thinking while he's kissing, it's always been rather hormonal and sloppy, wet lips sliding over each other, tongues swirling in and out awkwardly of mouths. This time, it's rather different.
This time Sirius wants something, no, needs something. He needs Remus to stay, to enjoy kissing him, to want him because if he doesn't this is going to turn out all awkward and wrong and everything will be ruined. Ruined like Sirius has already partially ruined things by cavorting around with girls he didn't really want because in this moment he realises all he's ever wanted is Remus.
So, being the rather physical being he is he tries to show Remus love. It might be impossible to show Remus all the love in the world through a simple and still slightly awkward kiss (awkward because Sirius is slightly taller than Remus although Remus is musclier, so the power balance is all wrong) but Sirius is going to try because he hasn't really got any other exploding snap cards up his sleeve.
At first Remus doesn't really do much, his eyes just open very wide and his mouth feels kind of like a mushy wall. Sirius hopes to god he hasn't read every single blatant signal wrong and kisses him for all its worth. Then, thankfully, Remus begins to reciprocate, and moves his lips rhythmically against Sirius'.
Sirius doesn't register much of what comes next, only that Remus' lips taste like apples and his tongue is hot and wet and, fuck, doing all the wrong things inside his mouth (although in actual fact it feels quite right). And he can't do much but let himself get carried away as Remus lightly licks the sides of his lips, as if begging his tongue to join in and carry out the steamy and fucking fantastic things Remus is doing to him.
Of course, they have to come up for air sometime.
'I thought you liked girls' Remus breathes, his forehead resting against Sirius' as they stand, arms wound around each other in the middle of the dormitory.
Sirius grins, 'I thought I was the last person on earth you'd take.'
'I lied' Remus murmurs, reaching up to nibble Sirius' earlobe.
'Liar' Sirius responds, and tugs him back down onto the bed.
Go, go, faster, wider,
more, more, get it down yeah
dance, dance, take me over glittering clouds.
Remus will always remember the first night they spent together, entangled in his sheets on the four poster bed. It comes back to him sometimes, when he thinks hard about it, about how Sirius used to be, and not how he's turned out.
He swears that the Sirius he knew, the Sirius he trusted, the Sirius he (oh screw it) loved, is different from the one in the grainy Azkaban picture, sign hung low around his neck, screaming manically at the camera. The Sirius he knew was arrogant, a little self-absorbed and horrendously flirtatious, but he was a good person. Most definitely, Remus thinks, not a murderer. If anyone was a murderer back then it was him.
It wasn't supposed to happen like this, Remus thinks. Sirius was supposed to stay with him during the war, shelter him, and protect him, just like he would have gladly done for Sirius. Remus understands now, he was a traitor, a weed amongst the roses, which despite the thorny barriers killed the loveliest of them all.
Sirius isn't how Remus remembers, and yet all Remus wants to do is go back to those days, that night. He wants to remain there, fixed in his teenage memory, cotton sheets flung around his ankles, Sirius' naked chest warm and comforting against his head. He doesn't want to leave the perfect, perhaps slightly embellished memory that stays, transfixed at the forefront of his thoughts. Sirius and Remus, RemusSirius, and everything that constituted them.
Remus flits from room to room, unfeeling. He knows he'll have to move out of here soon, because despite all the jubilation around him, he can't see anything but Sirius. Sirius is in the kitchen when he sits down to eat dinner. Sirius is in the bathroom, standing obtrusively in front of the mirror when he wants to brush his teeth. Sirius is curled up next to him on his bed, although he can't feel it; it's cold, it's lonely.
Remus never cries. He tries so hard not to when he transforms, despite all the pain. But Remus cried when Sirius left. Because it's not like Sirius is ever coming back, Sirius is gone, Sirius would be better off dead. If he were, Remus wouldn't have to contemplate that everything had been a lie. He wanted to believe, so badly, that Sirius, his fucking Sirius, was a good person.
The world is bitterly unfair, almost as unfair as whatever life likes to toss at you, Remus knows this. So when he wants to escape everything, leave the evil Sirius behind, he closes his eyes and re-enters his teenage mind, reliving over and over the moments in the bronze toned bed with maroon sheets. He doesn't give a shit if it's not healthy, he knows it's not. But for now that's what gets him through the nights.
Oh, my head hurts.
Oh dear, Oh dear.
It's all over the papers, on the T.V, wagging tongues.
The artist's impression looks just like me, only…better.
Sirius slips in and out of consciousness in Azkaban; it's a way of life. With all your physical senses being extracted from you every second, it's hard to stay focussed enough to breathe, let alone think.
It's after a few days in shock that Sirius really thinks about Remus. Of course, Remus has been on his mind since he'd been brought to his knees in that empty street, surrounded by bodies and a single, little finger, but Sirius hasn't been able to clearly envision him. Remus means happiness, and Sirius is just that little bit more resilient.
It starts off with the guilt, a guilt that plagues Sirius like nothing else. The guilt over Lily and James death, the guilt for mistrusting Remus, and for trusting Peter of all people. Peter who was small and weak and untrustworthy from the start. Why couldn't he see it? The guilt washes over him in waves, just like he's the sand under the water, being pulled this way and that by a strong undertow.
Sirius goes without feeling for a few days, and then, for some reason it resurfaces.
He remembers trepidation. The same feeling which struck him that time Remus was going to walk away from him, walk away when all Sirius needed to do was make sure. Make absolutely sure because he was so uncertain. Being unsure wasn't one of Sirius' strong suits. He feels it now because he remembers that Remus doesn't know about Peter, no one knows about Peter, and Remus would think of Sirius just like everyone else did.
Sirius hates the thought of Remus hating him. Sirius loves Remus. Sirius can't live with anything else.
It's another few months before Sirius is strong enough to conjure the memories of Remus again. It's a lot easier to fall into the lull of blankness, a strange, autonomic feeling which is neither happy nor unhappy. It just is.
Remus is falling asleep. He's tired after a long day of pointless studying in the library and Sirius has him tucked into his body, the curve of Remus' back fitting snuggly into his chest. Their legs are intertwined further down on the bed, and Sirius can hear his soft breathing as he can see his chest rising and falling.
He remembers feeling so peaceful, so content. He traces light patterns in the maze of Remus back, watching as goose bumps formed as his fingertips fell. Remus is hot, so hot against him, and Sirius feels like he's overheating, but he's just too happy to bother moving and instead shuffles around looking for his wand on the bedside table. Succeeding in placing a light cooling charm on his pillow he swims out of consciousness.
Or was that the product of Azkaban?
In a few years Sirius thinks of Remus again. He just thinks of Remus and love. He wonders why he still feels like he loves Remus, when he hasn't seen him in so long, and surely Remus despises Sirius now.
When Sirius has been in Azkaban for ten years he'd thought of Remus almost every month, only when he had conjured the strength, saved up from the other twenty-nine or thirty days. On this day he thought of Remus and his four poster bed, and the adventures they'd got up to.
He thought of Remus' soft fingers running purposefully up his body, gingerly brushing all the right places, like he hadn't really meant to, but was instead just a fucking irresistible tease.
He thought of Remus' mouth on his, or on his neck, or elsewhere, places he couldn't quite conjure the memory of. He could almost feel Remus' hot breath on his neck, teasing the skin, making it beg for his lips to touch it, to take him away, to release him.
He begged for Remus to capture him up again and take him places he never thought he'd experience, much less enjoy. To take him high up, away from the crap that the world threw at you and away from all the brokenness and hurt until his heart shone out in a thousand shimmery pieces, exploding out of him with a guttural moan and a heaving chest.
He ached for Remus.
Don't blame me, don't maim me, I can't help what I am.
Oh, lord knows I've tried to
Remus hands his own resignation into the headmaster, although he feels slightly like he's being banished from the school. It's strange, the rejection he feels. Hogwarts is like an old home he's returned to, only to have the familiarity plucked from him again. He supposes that he always knew his curse would work against him at some point. Life is bitterly unfair and Remus is obviously never destined to be happy.
Leaving Harry is almost harder than leaving Hogwarts. He doesn't want to admit it, because teachers are never supposed to have favourites, but he's gotten quite attached to the young boy over the course of the school year. Remus thinks it's because he resembles James so much, so much so that sometimes when Harry calls his name he expects to see a smiling, younger James in front of him when he spins around.
Aside from Harry, Remus' life is in what could be adequately described as shambles. He has an underfed fugitive at his house right at this very second and a hippogriff probably residing in the paddock that runs down to the stream of his backyard.
A hippogriff. Could Dumbledore have picked a more conspicuous animal to place in the middle of a muggle community? Remus shudders at the thought.
In all honesty, he isn't quite sure what to do with Sirius. He's spent the last thirteen years thinking of Sirius as the man he loves and hates, both at the same time. But now he's returned it's thrown all of his logical thinking into chaos again. Sirius has a habit of doing that.
It's hard to know if he really understands Sirius anymore. After all, a twelve year stint in Azkaban has got to change a man, hasn't it? He hasn't spent enough time with him to know exactly how much. Will Sirius still want to speak of their old school days? The memories which form the basis of Remus' everyday life? Will he remember them?
More importantly, Remus isn't quite sure how Sirius feels anymore either, if he is capable of feeling higher emotions. After all, most recently he has only managed to eat fully solid food and drink less than four litres of water a day without feeling parched. Remus isn't sure if Sirius remembers, or understands what they used to be, what Remus wishes they were. But they are different now.
Above all, Remus wonders whether Sirius is still Sirius. Sirius in the way that he is still the man underneath the skin and bones that Remus remembers. In a way, he still kind of looks like Sirius, a battered, underfed version of him, but that doesn't necessarily mean his heart is the same.
Practically, what will they do? Will Sirius want to live with Remus? Will he hate it because he's blamed Remus for believing that he's a wanted criminal? Will they eat together? Should Remus cook for Sirius, or is that too personal? Will they sleep together, just like they always had?
Questions without answers run through Remus' mind over and over. They take him all the way out of the Hogwarts grounds, into Hogesmeade where he can safely apparate. It's strange, he thinks, that questions about hiding a wanted man haven't even arisen. It's almost as if Remus doesn't really care about his fate, or the fact that he could wind up the same way Sirius did just by hiding him (or Buckbeak for that matter).
Remus puts it down to the fact that he's doing what's good and right, what a good mate would do for an innocent man.
Remus doesn't want to think about love. Not just yet.
Go, go, faster, wider,
more, more, get it down yeah
dance, dance, take me over glittering clouds.
It's one night; roughly a month after Sirius moves in, that he feels like things should start getting back to normal. He's sick of Remus pretending that Sirius has forgotten how to feel, or forgotten completely about him, and he just wants things to go back to normal and stay there just for once.
Whatever normal was. With RemusSirius, normal was the watchword.
Remus has been perfectly cordial to Sirius, in fact, he has been overly hospitable. Sirius expected at least a little anxiety over placing a wanted man in his house, but Remus seems to have no qualms.
Remus reads and studies, reads some more and then writes a bit. He tends to his vegetable patch, which Sirius has discovered routinely dies just before the season starts. Remus is hoping it will be different this year, he tells Sirius. They're going to stay alive, you'll see. We'll eat the tomatoes and the pumpkins together.
At a quarter to six every evening, Remus puts tea on. Sirius sometimes drinks it but rarely; he despises the taste, not to mention it reminds him of his mother. Then, at seven o'clock, Remus serves up dinner, usually something homemade, but occasionally when he's feeling particularly adventurous, it's take-away from the shops down the street.
Sirius feels guilty that Remus is forever making things for him, and on a couple of occasions he has tried to create something edible. Remus always ends up shooing him out of the kitchen before he can ruin it however, or before one of them comes down with a bad case of food poisoning.
Depending on the night, Remus curls up in bed at ten thirty, and Sirius makes himself comfortable on the living room couch. There's a strong pulling sensation within him somewhere that begs him to ascend the stairs with Remus, but he's afraid of rejection and unsure of what Remus would say. He has changed a great deal over time, and he's scared Remus won't find him attractive anymore. He's more terrified of the notion that Remus may not even like him.
But tonight is different. He's decided that the stairs aren't going to stop him and instead of nuzzling into the battered couch he'll be breathing softly into Remus' hair.
It takes a certain amount of energy to get off the couch and creep up the stairs, hanging onto the banister carefully because they're stupidly steep and any false move could send his still-frail body tumbling in a heap to the bottom.
He pads quietly along the upstairs corridor, past the small bathroom that he and Remus share, just like old times. Although now they use the bathroom separately, so Sirius isn't in the way of Remus when he wants to brush his teeth and Remus isn't hogging the basin when Sirius wants to shave. There are some things, he muses, that just can't be achieved by magic.
Remus' door stands slightly ajar in front of him. Through it, he can see Remus, slid up against one side of the bed, hugging a pillow to his chest.
Sirius engages in a furious internal battle. Although he'd managed to get all the way here, his mind still fought him, begging him to remain in the elusive ambiguity he had for the past month. As long as he didn't ask, Remus wouldn't tell, and so any awful truths would never be heard and never had to be thought about.
Sirius wouldn't know what to do if Remus abhorred him.
Despite this, things just seem to happen when Sirius is unsure. Things like crossing the bedroom floor quickly and quietly, and brazenly slipping under the covers with Remus, curling up to his back and cradling him, just like he did once upon a time under those maroon sheets.
Remus murmurs a little, and unconsciously (or was it?) wiggles back into Sirius' embrace.
Sirius doesn't seem to notice that much because he's too busy revelling in everything else that's happened. The big empty expanse of his insides, torn out and twisted by years in Azkaban (and years without Remus) have been righted and filled. He feels like molten gold itself is filling him up to the brim and holding it there, solidifying and making him real and alive. It's all too warm, all too familiar. Sirius has never been a religious man, but he would certainly make a deal with whoever may be up there that he will never curse again if it means Remus will accept him.
Carefully removing the pillow from Remus' grasp he drapes his arm over Remus' side and interlocks his fingers inside the scarred hands. As if by impulse, the hands reach back to grab him, holding him close.
Sirius sighs, as if he is breathing out the weight of the world and sinks back into the pillows, breathing in Remus.
He's not sure what Remus will say in the morning. He's not sure whether Remus' vegetable garden will grow this year. He's not even sure what he feels for Remus and how Remus feels about him.
But he doesn't seem to care.
Sirius is home.