Chapter 12
Breathing hard, mind racing, Remus looked around Sirius's office; the pictures of James and Lily, of him. Pictures of Harry, Ron and Hermione. All the pictures were waving and smiling down at him and Sirius, who was standing still in the doorway, looking out after Hermione.
"What you accused her of," he said softly. "Isn't in the least bit true."
His voice wasn't harsh, it was actually very calm and quiet, but the coolness in it sent shivers down Remus's spine that made him wish Sirius would just scream and shout the way he wanted to himself.
"She slept with Harry because, let's face it, they're both attractive, hormonal teenagers, who just happen to be best friends." He turned around and met Remus's eyes. "Sound familiar?"
"It's different," Remus said. "We weren't in the same situation, and-"
"Oh, no, ours was probably worse! I was disowned by my family because of my friends, for being sorted into the wrong house, for my sexuality and beliefs, had just run away, you were a bloody gawky, very horny bi-sexual werewolf! Peter was a bloody homophobe, and James knew how we felt before we did! We couldn't come out, no, because being in a relationship of the same sex was just so wrong, and you were ashamed. Then, you were with that French bitch,"
"Don't you dare bring Amber into this." Remus whispered.
"Why not?" Sirius sneered. "Still mourning her? Still in love with her, then?"
"Shut up,"
"Shut up? No, Remus, I don't think I want to. So, you still in love with her, then? I'm sure you are…drooling after Hermione, fucking me. You must have been really in love with her when you buggered me when you and her were together. All the times in Lily and James' guest rooms, when-"
"I was young and stupid, had I know how it would end-"
"You would have left her and probably killed yourself out of fear of what you were capable of, Remus! I wouldn't have been able to save you! All of the suicide attempts, all of the nights I stood outside your bedroom door at night, listening to you cry and scream in your sleep. She wasn't worth all the pain, all the blame you put on yourself."
He turned his face away from Sirius so he wouldn't see the tears welling up in his eyes; Sirius, however, did not acknowledge the defeat Remus was showing.
"She was a bitch, and you knew it, and you liked it. I think her arrogance reminded you of me and James, and you absolutely loved it.
Because the war was getting bad, and we all knew that Voldemort had a spy within our ranks, and we all thought it was you. Of course, it wasn't me. James trusted me with his life,"
"He shouldn't have," Remus muttered darkly, still avoiding Sirius's gaze. Ignoring this, Sirius continued,
"No, Lily and James would never have thought the man they named godfather to Harry could be the traitor. Of course not; and who would've suspected Peter? He was weak, simple-minded, he had absolutely no talent with a wand. He only made it through school because of us. James was in hiding with Lily; he had been trying to win her over for years, there was no way it could have been him. He was one of the most anti-purebloods you could find. They'd just had a baby. It couldn't have been him.
Naturally, after we thought this through, Peter had the nerve to say, 'Moony. It's Moony. He's joined the rest of them' and the werewolves had indeed joined Voldemort by then. We had been distancing ourselves from you, and you had been spending too much time out of the country. We thought it had to be you. It was only logical; of course, I didn't realize at the time that betrayal wasn't really a logical thing."
"If you thought it was me, Sirius," Remus choked out. "Then why? Why did you…all those times?"
Sirius was quiet, and Remus looked towards him and saw that the taller man's blue eye were dark with emotion. "Why?" he repeated.
"I - I loved you, Moony. I loved James and Lily, and Harry, so, so much. But I wasn't in love with them, like I was with you at the time."
Anger bloomed in Remus's chest, and he felt lightheaded.
"You're a liar," he said. Sirius shook his head. His silky black hair fell into his fair, handsome face. He shifted his weight nervously and bit his lip.
"No, I'm not. I was in love with you. And a part of me still does, I won't lie." He smiled sadly. "I saw a secret in your eyes all those times. I always saw guilt in them after. Yet you never said no, never turned me down. Then one day, James…" his voice, trembling with emotion, trailed off, and he turned around. Remus stared silently at his back, waiting for him to continue.
Taking a deep breath, the dark haired man began to speak again, "James told me that a few years back, right after graduation, you had met someone in France. He told me that you had spent a few nights with this someone. He said Lily told him you had stayed in contact with your friend…he was trying to tell me, in his own way, that you were in a relationship with someone else."
"It's why you stopped writing," Remus whispered.
"Of course. I was obsessed at that point," he gave a bitter laugh. "You'd left me, without me even realizing it."
Remus sighed and leaned against the wall. Running his hands over his face and through his hair, he said, "It wasn't safe. I thought it was a mutual, unspoken agreement between us. You know how certain Death Eater's felt about gays."
"We weren't gay!" Sirius said indignantly.
"But we weren't straight, either. When your brother caught us snogging in our sixth year, he nearly had a heart attack."
Sirius snorted. "Too bad he didn't. He was a prejudiced little fuck, just like the rest of my family. I know for a fact he wasn't so straight-laced himself, though I never ratted on him."
"That's why you weren't sorted into Slytherin, Sirius."
"I know." Sirius sighed again. "Anyways. Let me continue."
"Of course,"
"Like I said, I was obsessed. I drove to your house one day when I knew you were going to be gone; you'd written to Peter and told him you couldn't go out that night. I went through your things, and I found a drawer full of letters from a girl named Amber. I found pictures…"
Remus paled. "They were art!" he defended. "She was very artistic, loved painting and drawing and photography!"
::::FLASHBACK::::
Sirius crouched low behind the wall of an old building in a dodgier part of London, watching a tall, sandy haired man push open the large glass doors of the apartment complex across the way. He hated muggle neighborhoods; they were so hard to blend into.
Remus, despite being born into a pureblood family himself, had always been the one who knew how to dress, how to act, in front of muggles. Which is why he found it so easy to live in the shabby thing he called a flat.
He pressed himself flatter against the wall, trying to hide in the shadows, as he observed the other young man's handsome countenance. Framed by shaggy, golden hair, his grey eyes, oddly flecked with gold, stuck out strikingly. Though his angular face was pale, and looked rather peaky, he still had a distinctly pink tinge of happiness in his cheeks.
Sirius tried to swallow the lump in his throat; he had not been the one to cause that.
Remus looked around quickly, and walked into an empty alleyway, and moments later, Sirius heard a familiar 'POP'. He walked out from behind the building, his hand in his pocket, gripping the handle of his wand. He pushed open the glass doors, and climbed the stairs that lead to the fifth level.
Not for the first time, he wished he could have just apparated directly into his ex-lover's flat, or flooed, but it had been warded by Albus Dumbledore himself. Sirius wasn't stupid; he didn't want to risk anything.
Of course, Sirius still had his key. Remus may have stopped speaking to him, but he had never bothered taking back any of the clothes he left at Sirius's or the spare keys he had given to him when he first moved into his flat. As he reached the door, number 376 B, he crossed his fingers, and let out a sigh of relief as the lock clicked open. He stepped in, and looked around.
"If I were Remus Julian Lupin, where would I hide the evidence?" he asked himself. His eyes roamed over the kitchen, the front room, and eventually stilled on the bedroom. "Oh, Remus, you're too predictable,"
Stepping into the clean but sparse bedroom, he spotted the muggle radio on the desk, and with a grin, he flipped it on. Annoyed at the commercials playing, he shrugged out of his black leather jacket, and threw it onto the bed.
"Wait," he said to himself. "Of course!" he spun back to the desk, and pulled open the drawer on the bottom, where four stacks of letters sat. He picked them up, and they were all from the same girl: Ambre Desjardins. Ambre? Amber.
Fancy French bitch.
He flipped through the letters viciously, some of which he couldn't even read. Remus spoke French? He had never known that; why had he never told him?
" 'My dearest Remus, mon amour, I ache for you at night, to feel the warmth of your skin against my own. I want to hear the steady beating of your heart as I sleep upon your chest,' Ugh, Remus," Sirius groaned as he read the rest of the needy letter.
He sat there for hours, just reading about all the adventures and, um, 'escapades' his former lover had been having in France. No, not just France. Paris; the city of love.
The sky outside was fading rapidly, and Sirius got up from his spot on Remus's soft bed only to flip on the lamps in the flat, before returning to his previous spot, where he resumed his reading.
J'ai besoin de sentir vos lèvres douces contre ma peau. J'ai besoin de sentir vos mains sûr ma chair. I am so lonely without you here, Remy. It's been months…I understand your friends need you in these hard, cold times, but, mon amour, I need you, too. It's so cold at night, and I need a release. I don't care what you say…I will wait for you. Please, Remus. Come back to me.
Amber xoxoxo
Sirius' eyes teared up, but not at her words. If this what the little bint was writing, what in Merlin's name was Remus writing back?
Suspicions stronger than ever, he got up and returned to the drawer. He dug through the piles, until he felt something in the very back. He pulled it out.
It was a large black folder, and it was tied shut. He untied it, and nearly dropped it.
They were moving black and white pictures of a naked Remus and a petite blonde woman fucking with the Eiffel tower's glittering lights in the background. They were out in public…it looked like they were in the grass. He flipped through them, his hands trembling, and saw more of them, one of Remus shamelessly going down on her, and one of her going down on him…on of her riding him while he sat in a swing. Oh, good God, they were doing it in a park…
Sirius felt faint. Normally, an image of Remus with an attractive woman would have driven him wild, but this was different.
A date was written on the folder. Two and a half years ago…when James, Lily, and Remus had first visited Paris. When he and Remus were still together…
They warned you, he thought. They told you he didn't come home some nights. Flinging the pictures across the room and sank down onto the mattress, and only then did the song that was playing on Remus's radio really register in his brain.
Just
tell me what you've got to say to me, Now I know your
heart, I know your mind, Well I guess what you say is true,
I've been waiting for so
long to hear the truth,
It comes as no surprise at all you see,
So
cut the crap and tell me that we're through.
You don't even know you're being
unkind,
So much for all your high brow Marxist ways,
Just use
me up and then you walk away.
Boy, you can't play me that
way.
I could never be
the right kind of girl for you,
I could never be your woman.
I could never be a woman
I could never be a woman
I
could never be a woman You're such a charming, handsome
man, Well I guess what you say is true - Well I guess
what they say is true,
Now I think I finally understand,
Is it in your genes?, I
don't know,
But I'll soon find out, that's for sure,
Why did
you play me this way?
I
could never be the right kind of girl for you!
I could never spend my life with a man like
you
I could never be a woman
I could never be a woman
I
could never be a woman
::::END FLASHBACK::::
"Yes, those pictures were just so…Picasso." Sirius said. "So very, very artistic."
"Sirius," Remus said. "Please, wait," but it was too late.
Sirius had picked up Hermione's forgotten book bag and had stomped out, leaving the sandy haired man all alone.
He'd lost Amber.
He thought he's lost Hermione.
…Had he lost Sirius, too?
J'ai besoin de sentir vos lèvres douces contre ma peau. J'ai besoin de sentir vos mains sûr ma chair- I need to feel your soft lips against my skin. I need to feel your hands on my flesh
Mon amour- My love
Song- White Town's 'Your Woman'
Yay! New Chapter!
Okay, I know some of that didn't make sense. Amber seems so sweet to Remus, but Sirius does seem to hate her, doesn't he? I know. It's not a mistake…it will all make sense later on in the story. I promise!!! There's a lot more to the whole Amber story. Anyways. Leave me a review and let me know what you thought!!!!
Ps- I know that meaning of the song is not the same as how I used it, but it came on right as I was writing this, and I was like, OMG, YES! I must use it! Lmao
