Title: The First and Last Chance
Summary: Sirius puts the moves on Remus one lonely
night in the common room…
Dedicated to: My mother, whom I know would be so
proud of me if she knew I was writing slash to pass the time.
Song Listened to While Writing It: "Digital Love"
by Daft Punk. Everybody, please go
listen to this song right now.
Written Under the Influence of: Extreme starvation
Caution: !Contents contain lukewarm slash!
Last night, I
had a dream about you
In this dream,
I'm dancing right beside you
And it looked
like everyone was havin' fun
The kind of
feeling, I've waited so long
Don't stop, come
a little closer
As we jam, the
rhythm gets stronger
There's nothing
wrong with just a little little fun
We were dancing
all night long
The time is
right to put my arms around you
You're feeling
right, you wrap your arms around too
But suddenly, I
feel the shining sun
Before I know
it, this dream was all gone
Oh, I don't know
what to do
About this dream
and you
I wish this
dream comes true
-Daft Punk, "Digital
Love"
Remus and Sirius sat at a quiet table in the common room,
diligently completing their schoolwork (more or less). James had gone out for a walk with Lily an
hour ago, and Peter was likely to be found snooping around the school in rat
form. This meant that Sirius and Remus
were alone, seeing as everyone else in Gryffindor was sound asleep in their
dorms.
Sirius scribbled the answer to number fifteen wearily, and
looked up at his work companion with tired, unfocused eyes. He gave a barely audible sigh at the sight
of his friend, who was hard at work and didn't even glance up from his
parchment once. Sirius vaguely wondered
how anybody could be so focused at the task at hand. He, personally, couldn't stop thinking about other things on his
mind…
He looked down at his paper, leaned his chin in the palm
of his hand, and took a deep, exasperated breath. He stared at Remus, still completely focused on his work. Sirius coughed quietly. Remus did not look up. Sirius coughed a little louder. Still nothing. Finally, he got out of his seat, pulled his chair around to the
other side of the table, and sat down next to his oblivious friend.
"Oi, Wolfman," Sirius joked, "What did you get for number
sixteen?"
"I'd appreciate if you didn't call me that," Remus said
mildly without looking up, but all the same, he pushed his paper over so Sirius
could copy.
Sirius ignored the gesture, and continued to gaze at the
teenage boy sitting next to him. Could
he possibly…? Remus looked up at him
with a questioning expression on his young, yet hard features.
"Are you going to do it or what?" he asked, indicating the
paper he had pushed towards Sirius.
Sirius was silent for a moment while looking into Remus'
light brown eyes. His heart was racing
as he thought to himself, …if only I could…
After a long moment of staring blankly at one another,
Remus went back to his work. His hand
seemed very unstable as he loaded his quill and began to write furiously fast
on the parchment in front of him.
Sirius listened to the scratching of the quill for a minute, feeling as
if he wasn't actually hearing it, but rather, dreaming it. His mind felt heavy with tiredness, but it
was strangely alert of the moment. What
am I doing…? he thought.
Remus glanced nervously over at Sirius, who was staring at
him with a look of sudden determination.
He swallowed hard, and felt his hand grasp his quill more tightly. He felt his feelings switching back and
forth from wonderful to horrible, and it was making him incredibly nervous.
Was this what he thought it was…?
Sirius was closing the space between them slowly, and they
were barely a foot apart now. Remus
blinked. Six inches…five inches…four
inches…until…
The portrait hole opened suddenly and loud laughter came
through, sending them both about a foot off of their seats. A boy and a girl walked in, smiling and
holding hands. Sirius banged his head
on the table painfully as the two strolled into the common room and over to
where he and Remus were sitting.
"James…Lily," Remus said, trying desperately to mask the
intense disappointment in his voice.
James' gaze passed over the two of them, and mercifully,
there wasn't any suspicion in his dark brown eyes. "You two are up late," he commented nonchalantly, "Still working?"
Sirius looked up, picked up his paper, and said with what
he hoped was a convincing smile, "Done."
He did a good job of covering up his feelings at that moment, which was
fortunate. If he hadn't, they would
have seen his heart breaking.
But, for fear that he couldn't hold it in much longer, he
got up and set off at a fast walk towards the boys' dormitories.
He ripped open the curtains to his four-poster, closed
them again, and sat down with his legs sticking stiffly out in front of him
like a little boy. A minute later, he
heard the door open and heard the sounds of James putting on his
bedclothes. He heard him yawn loudly
from a little ways away, then heard footsteps coming closer to his bed from
across the room.
James stood for a minute, staring at the red curtain
hanging around Sirius' bed, separating him and his best friend—made out of such
thin fabric, but closing him off like a brick wall.
"Sirius…" James said quizzically, "…anything wrong?"
"Nope," Sirius replied in what he hoped was a normal
voice, and wiped his eye with the back of his hand. They both knew he was lying, but both pretended he wasn't.
* * *
Sirius sat in his damp stone cell, all the horrible
feelings he had felt back then flooding back to him. He had only been in Azkaban a couple of days, and yet he felt
like he had been stuck in that cell for years.
Or maybe time went more slowly in this place, and he really had
been there for years, but in the outside world, only a week or so had passed…
He sat there turning all his thoughts over and over in his
mind until he eventually came to the place he had started. But the thought that stuck out most of all
was a nagging voice in the back of his head, always reminding him:
I never got another chance…
