AHHH it's been so long since I've wriiten Remus/Sirius ohmygod. Now, this fic is based on Pablo Neruda's Sonnet XVII, and it's one of my favourite pieces of poetry. Please do read and review this, I'd be very grateful.
DISCLAIMER: I don't own Harry Potter.
Your Eyes Close As I Fall Asleep
i.
Remus, Sirius thinks languidly, even looks tired when he sleeps. Circles ringed his eyes, although the eyes themselves bloomed bright and longing, and his mouth was always in a pale thin line, when Sirius knew, he knew that they could be soft pads of pink when they wanted to. Looking at seventeen-year-old Remus as he slept, Sirius feels as if he is standing at the edge of something exquisite, perfect, and if he took a step further, he would fall in. He ran his fingers across Remus's cheekbone, feeling the little scars and he could feel the humming vibration within Remus, something that only he could hear and feel and taste. It was a secret thrill buried deep beneath him, underneath the uneasiness and the hurt and the secrets, there was a blooming, buzzing thrill that sang and danced.
"Love." Sirius stated simply, as Remus's eyes fluttered open, grey blurs in a painfully white eye. Remus smiles his usual smile, the one that looked as if it were stitched together, and he sits up, moving aside to make space for Sirius.
"What is it?" Remus asked. It was quiet in the dormitory, of course it was, James running out excitedly to play for the last match of the season, Peter running along to sit in the stands and loyally cheer (you would never find someone more loyal than Peter, really).
"Read to me." Sirius said again, leaning back so that his head rested against Remus's shoulder. He felt infinite and impossible, lying on Remus's bed for the last day they would spend in school, the bed where they had kissed, they had touched, they had fucked. Remus cannot reach any of his books, not with Sirius' head in the way, so he closed his eyes, and began to recite from memory.
"I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
Or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
In secret between the shadow and the soul."
Remus would have continued, he would have gone on, and finished the words of the poem, but something stirred in Sirius then. Something that told him you will never hear the end of this poem and he shudders, quietly, and puts a finger to Remus' lips. Sirius feels almost unhappy that he and Remus were sitting like this now, shoulder to shoulder, hand on hand, and unspoken words of a poem lilting between them. He feels almost guilty that a tally of death could not be counted on his fingers, even if he had twenty, thirty, forty of them. This was war, and people were grieving and dying.
But Remus, and Sirius, they sat in the waning sunlight of a school they would leave tomorrow, and they swam in the innocence of the last day of safety.
ii.
He was panicked. Remus tried to breathe rationally, tried to ration out oxygen but he was obscenely frightened, his face pale. Hogwarts had been broken into, Professor McGonagall had told him, her face wan and somber, Sirius Black had brandished a knife over a boy, Ron Weasley. Classes were cancelled, and Remus was set to look around the west wing of the castle, to check any hiding places, nooks and crevices. It was with a wry smile dragged onto her tired face that McGonagall handed him the list of known hiding places, as if she knew Remus knew dozens more.
He searches dutifully, but the confirmation that Sirius is in the castle scares him, and he sees a black dog bounding across the empty corridor and the flickers of dark, curled hair. He keeps seeing the burning grey eyes and svelte hands disappearing behind corners, and the trilling, mocking laughter that Remus thought was magical once, he had thought Sirius was faerie folk. He did not pursue his visions, however, because the Sirius he kept seeing was not matted and bedraggled and guilty, no, it was the laughing-eyed, blooming bright boy of nineteen.
He was afraid, oh Merlin, he was so afraid.
Fear curled within him, but it was not fear for himself, and it was not fear for Sirius. It was not the gnawing pain of guilt, and Remus tried breathing, but the air stuck in his throat and tasted of oil. He slipped into a corridor, and a small niche, the list lying forgotten on the floor, he walked on and on, trying so hard to breathe that the air almost screamed, but still, he saw black hair and light eyes and burning blooming oblivion sky Sirius Sirius Sirius. When he emerged into the Shrieking Shack, his breathing comes more naturally, as his eyes adjust to the darkness and the dust feels oddly comforting in his lungs, and it was so odd that it was here that Remus stops seeing visions of Sirius, here in this place where they had roamed so much.
Lumos.
He set the light on the table, and he looks around. He did not miss the dog hairs on the floor and the bones in the corner, he did not miss the bed that looked slept on and the newspapers piled in the corners. He noticed the clothes discarded in the pile and he did not move, he did not move.
"Please." He almost-whispered, and he can taste the scent of Sirius in this room, the blurred lines between Sirius then and Sirius now vanished completely and Remus' head started whirling, he sat down on the floor, back against the bed where Sirius must have lay at night. "Please."
He tries to wake, he tries to tell himself to tell Dumbledore, but he feels fragile and pale, and he feels as if he does not matter. This is not his world, his world was with Sirius, a decade ago, with flashing eyes and sweetened kisses, this world with hollow-eyed Sirius and murder, this was not his world, he has no part in this world. He sits and sits, until the sun sinks and the light from his wand started flickering, he sat for a long, long time but he did not speak, and he did not move. He stared at Sirius's bed, wondered if he slept as a dog, and he wondered how Sirius must look now when he slept, tortured and torn.
Remus's face feels hard and unyielding to his own fingers as he clutches it desperately.
"I love you as the plant that never blooms,
But carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
Thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
Risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body."
He sits there, shaking and breathing white, tired breaths, and he does not even realize when Sirius Black, shoulders trembling, and tears running down his face, takes the wand Remus left on the table, and points it at him.
Obliviate.
iii.
Remus feels as if he is dying, his mouth is on Sirius's it is too soon and they are too raw and this must be forbidden, here in the Ancient House of Black, Sirius is returned to him and he is gasping for air around Remus's mouth. He has longed so much and loved so little, and Remus's skin feels like home, he can feel his heart wrenching in his chest as Sirius licks down his neck, teeth grazing and fingers bruising. They fit so well together, as though they were lock and key, and their voices are not steady, they will never be steady again. Sweat burns on his face.
Sirius takes Remus into his mouth, and the werewolf immediately swells inside him, as Sirius uses his tongue in ways he has not had a chance to do since then.
Sirius takes his erection out of his pants and he is so hard, almost close, and Remus feels almost dizzy with the fact that he is enough to make Sirius almost break like this, his breaths gasping at his lips in the stillness and silence.
(please)
And Sirius is inside him, and he holds him tightly as though if by holding Remus like this, he can meld his cracks and breaks, but Remus is almost there, the firework and the thrill inside him is vibrating and thrumming, and they are so tight together. Sirius is beautiful, he is beautiful like a god is beautiful with his dark eyes and curled hair, and the shapely chin off which sweat dripped off. Sirius is coming, and he looks diving, with his head thrown back and his lips pouring Remus's name, loudly, almost a scream. The sight is enough to send Remus past the edge and he comes over his own chest, and SiriusSiriusSirius rolls off his tongue like water but thicker, darker, and more like syrup.
"I love you without knowing how, or when or from where." Remus starts, shakily.
"I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
So I love you because I know no other way…"
But there is a bell and there is Sirius's mother is screaming and cursing, and they get dressed like wildfire, the poem forgotten.
iv.
Sirius is gone and the world crumbles.
Tears feel hot and wet and crumpled on his skin and his voice is not his own.
He talks to Sirius, in the darkest of night and he talks until his voice runs out and the tears begin, he talks to the memory and ghost of Sirius, and he imagines he is clasped in strong arms and that he is staring into grey eyes. Let me hate him, he beseeched Dumbledore on the day Sirius had passed, let me hate him so that it doesn't hurt. But the air is still and thundering, and there is no Sirius, not in this universe at least, there is no man with laughing grey eyes and the whispers of a smile. Remus is alone in this ghost of a house and he is silent and solitary and there is only he, he, he, and nobody else except the memory of a man who did not live to hear the end of the poem.
"Where I do not exist, nor you,
So close that your hand on my chest is my hand
So close that your eyes close as I fall asleep."
Remus repeats this, every single night, and he hopes, secretly, that Sirius hears.
I do hope that you enjoyed it, it's refreshing to write R/S again, ugh. PLEASE do leave any reviews and comments you may have, as I'm always looking intently for feedback!