Disclaimer: They don't belong to me, though the story idea will. Does, whatever.;) Remus/Sirius/Harry/anything else I mentioned belongs to J.K. Rowling, WB, Scholastic Books, and whoever else owns it.
Rating: PG-13. It's Angst/Romance and it's SLASH.
Summary: The night before.
!!WARNING!!: This is a slash fiction. That means there is male/male relations going on here, people. Nothing explicit this time round the maypole though. Not that I ever really wrote anything above R, and that was for violence. But anyway, flame if you want, I have marshmallows. Again, this is SLASH, YAOI.
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Follow Me
"Follow me." It was a softly spoken command, and one very willingly obeyed.
"And where...exactly...are we...going again, Moony?" Sirius Black asked between stumbling steps as he meandered on the same basic path as Remus through the woods. It was all more tangled and weedy than he'd remembered it.
Remus Lupin paused long enough on his trek to look back, the smallest of calm smiles leaking over his lips. "I told you already-The answer won't change just because you ask more than once." He said kindly.
"You didn't tell me!" Sirius objected, yanking his foot free from a vine that had laced around his ankle. He gave it a scandalized glance.
"I didn't? Perhaps it slipped my mind."
"Moony you old liar!" A lopsided grin of extreme prowess appeared on Sirius' face. He'd finally made an impression on his old comrade, and though teaching him how to lie might not have been the most moralistic thing, to Sirius it certainly was a start.
And after all the things, which Remus had taught him; it was a start long in the making.
It was fairly late in the evening, they'd started out when the sun was riding low in the sky, and now Sirius began to find himself surrounded by the increasing darkness.
He was sure it wasn't the smartest thing to be out in the Forbidden Forest this late in the evening, but it hadn't ever stopped him when he'd gone to school here, and he was damned if it would stop him now. He was big enough to take care of himself.
No, it wasn't himself for which he worried. Remus though...he was still weak from the last full moon; you could see it in his eyes, the lines which laced them and the slight pauses before each movement made, as if he had to remember what to do and then gather his strength to do it.
It worried Sirius, but he'd relented to go on this little...expedition just the same. Remus had seemed so determined about it, as if it would be proving something to himself to go. Sirius knew Remus to be stronger than logic sometimes said.
Maybe he really did want to just take Sirius out for a night, and since someone would have recognized him in town the woods really did seem the only choice. But...something smelled off about that story.
Sirius continued to rationalize it to himself as he stared at the back of his companion's head, trying not to lose him in the dark.
Rationalization had never been a strong suit for him and in the end Sirius decided why Remus had been so insistent. He smiled at it, at the back of the man in front of him.
Maybe Remus had wanted to prove to himself he wasn't weak. He was still capable of marauding.
The crunching behind Remus changed abruptly; it was less plotted now, the footsteps of Sirius seeming to just fall where they may.
Remus thought that his lover had probably started to lose himself in his own world again. He did that sometimes...actually, he did that a lot. More so now though, after Azkaban, after Lily and James. And especially with what had been happening recently. The attacks, the everythings.
The smile, which had grown on Remus' face as he thought of Sirius' quaint habits, fell slowly. He didn't like thinking of what had happened-to Lily, to James, especially to his Sirius. Or to anyone else for that matter. It was his least favorite subject, yet he always managed somehow to find it. Even out in this woods.
He looked around, drawing his own attention back from things best left aside tonight. He was looking for a specific spot in the woods, one which he hadn't been to in years, and he needed to concentrate to make sure he was actually able to find it again after so long.
"-oony? Moony!" The voice behind him caught halfway through a sentence.
Remus turned around, blinking sharply to refocus his eyes, which had glazed over some time ago with memories.
"Sirius?" He squinted, "What's the matter?"
"Are you ok? You got quiet." Sirius stepped up beside him, less than a foot away; he faced him head on, trying to read his eyes. He could always tell what was going on by the look inside those golden eyes.
And Remus knew it, that was why he always ducked his head, or looked away, he never met the eyes that could so easily tell him what he was thinking.
"Nothing. I'm fine, we should get moving, Sirius." He was quite proud of the sincerity he put in his words, but still, self-consciousness refused to let him meet the other man's gaze.
"Don't think of them." The strong words resounded, more deeply then the others spoken.
"What?" Remus looked up now, and callused hands cupped gently the edges of his face.
"Don't think of them. Tonight is ours." Sirius looked straight into his eyes, his own looked dark, almost black, and deep, endlessly, endlessly deep. Remus lost himself in those eyes...he always did. He nodded slightly.
"I know. Let's go, I don't think it's too much further." Remus turned looking down the small gap between the trees. He thought it was whatever remained of the old path he and Sirius had used years before. "Let's go..." He repeated, looking over his shoulder to Sirius, his eyes gleamed for a moment. "I'll race you."
Before it had a chance to register with Sirius, he'd taken off down the path, far too quickly for any normal man to go, the power of the full moon still running silently through his veins.
"What? Hey!" Sirius called after him, he easily let a grin pass over his face, "Cheater and a liar. I guess I do rub off on him..." He said proudly of his lover.
It was a rocky summit, their destination. Peaking above most of the trees, and looking out across fields and a small lake, which seemed a pool of oil in the dark.
By the time Sirius crested the hill, Remus had already situated himself on the ledge of rocks, he stared down at the water beneath them.
"It must be covered in rocks," He said, Sirius moving beside him he laid himself down on his back, resting enough on his elbows so as to still watch Remus speaking, "The bottom of the lake I mean. From all the ones James, Peter and you and I used to throw from up here. We would throw them for every test we failed, or detention we were given. It must be beautiful, the lake bottom...all tiled with our troubles."
"And that's where they should rest. We should leave them all there, Remus. We threw them away for a reason, and it wasn't to dredge them back again." Sirius said slowly, he felt this was something Remus sorely needed to be convinced of, even though he wasn't sure he was the best at teaching this. He thought it best to at least try. The past was the past.
"I know.." Remus said, without conviction.
A moment paused before he continued, "I suppose I wanted to see this place again though, to put to rest what has been done. I brought you, Sirius," Remus said, turning with the noise of his clothing against the rock to face Sirius, "Because I didn't want to be alone with this lake."
"Even if you hadn't brought me, you would still have had me here. I was a part of the people who tossed those old rocks down. And I'm still a part of you, Moony. I intend to be for quite a long while."
Remus slid further across the space between them, scraping against dirt and pebbles as he crawled to Sirius' side.
His lover moved an arm around him and pulled him against his chest. It took a few minutes before both bodies fell into rhythmic breathing, a sort they felt only with each other.
"Tell me, Sirius." It was another command.
"Nothing's bothering me, except you. I mean-what's bothering you. I'm not blind, Moony. Something's up." Sirius managed to be stern and tender at the same time, something he reserved mostly just for Harry and Remus.
"I don't know.... It was this last change. It brought so many memories back to me, I suppose.... It's tomorrow, also. What are we going to do if..."
"Shhh. We're more powerful than last time we faced him. Harry's older, he can help again. And Dumbledore...it's very difficult to see him losing anything he puts his mind to. He's stubborn, Moony. Just like you." Sirius said, but it seemed to Remus as though he were trying just as much to convince himself as comfort him.
"I don't want you to have to fight again. You've done so much already, Sirius. This is someone else's fight-it's not yours." Remus said, looking up to face his companion.
Sirius couldn't help but hear the almost frantic note in Remus' words. He felt the exact same way: he wanted more than anything for Remus to be left out of a fight tomorrow that was never his to fight. He wanted him safe.
"If it's not my fight, then it isn't yours either. Don't you see? We all can't back out. We all can't decide it's not our fight, or He'll win without any effort."
"I don't want to be the last of us, Sirius."
"I don't want you to have to be." Sirius answered with a small grin.
A silence came upon them suddenly just then, settling like a damp cloth over the two.
"Promise that we'll come here together again..." Remus whispered against the momentary comfort of having his lover beside him.
"I can't...." His voice was pained, "But every time either of us comes here, we'll find the other one. I'll always find you, Remus. So long as you let me. I promise." He squeezed the man in his arms more tightly, emphasizing his words.
Sirius' eyes were shut, too tightly to be normal; he pressed against Remus, holding onto both him and the moment.
Remus looked up, finding the eyes he was used to turned away. "Look at me."
A silent demand.
Obeyed willingly.
Both their eyes glistened with unshed tears.
"I never saw the sunrise from this spot." Sirius said it as though this were a sin worse than any, his voice coming from far away.
It was a moment before Remus could speak without falling into his unbidden tears. "We have something we have to do before.... Come on, Sirius. We have to put tomorrow to rest now."
They stood on the edge of the rocks, the lake lapped silently below them. It seemed so peaceful. So oblivious to what it held.
"Who first? How did we used to decide?" Remus asked, reaching out to clasp his lover's hand.
Sirius scratched at the back of his head with his free hand. "I think James used to just pick.... Why don't you go first, Moony?"
"Alright." Remus stepped forward a little further, "Don't let me fall." He smiled calmly back at Sirius.
"I never would." Sirius said tightening the grip on the hand in his own.
"Tomorrow..." Remus said, casting the stone out high into the air of night, it flickered against the backdrop of pinpoint stars before falling down, hitting against the water with a splash, the noise of which reached their ears seconds later.
"Your up." Remus said, stepping back and smiling reassurance to Sirius as he too tossed his stone out, it went higher than the other, cascading over tree tops.
"Tomorrow." He said, watching his trouble fall the rest of the way to hit the water with a tepid crack.
He turned to Remus, who spoke. "I love you, you know."
"After all of this..." Sirius said, insinuating more than that one night, he spoke of their entire lives, "You'd better."
They held each other, Remus burying his head against Sirius, as though he wished never to see anything but Sirius' shoulder again.
Their lips met more than once, impassioned, lost kisses looking for the path back to each other. They found it, pulling slowly back; it was a moment of being-simply being in each other- before Remus found voice enough to speak.
"Look...the sun." Remus' words echoed quietly. An unwelcome statement the eerie glow of pre-dawn had already testified to.
"It's tomorrow. We should go back."
Remus looked once around the cliff, across the fields and hill that led to it. And down, finally, deep into the lake where in rested the rest of whatever was to happen that day the sunrise so willingly began.
"Yes. I... think... we can leave now."
It was night again. The sunset of the next day now so quietly coming to its close. Dark against the backdrop of the lake.
He stood alone atop the rocks. The plunking of a stone hitting water seemed to be the only thing willing to break the descended silence.
"Yesterday." Remus said.
A/N: Well there you have it. Ok, first things first! I'm sorry it's taking me SO long to put up another chapter of Hopeful? What Me? but I just utterly hit writers block with that story. I'm still working on it, so don't worry, it will be finished, just more slowly than I'd hoped it seems. This is sort of like my return to FF.net, it's been a while since a posted;(;)
Secondly, should I do anything more with this story? A sequal? Knowing me, I doubt Sirius is dead and I hate just leaving poor, sweet, Remus all alone! *sniffs* What do ya'll think?! Please do review! Thanks!
Rating: PG-13. It's Angst/Romance and it's SLASH.
Summary: The night before.
!!WARNING!!: This is a slash fiction. That means there is male/male relations going on here, people. Nothing explicit this time round the maypole though. Not that I ever really wrote anything above R, and that was for violence. But anyway, flame if you want, I have marshmallows. Again, this is SLASH, YAOI.
--------------------------------------------
Follow Me
"Follow me." It was a softly spoken command, and one very willingly obeyed.
"And where...exactly...are we...going again, Moony?" Sirius Black asked between stumbling steps as he meandered on the same basic path as Remus through the woods. It was all more tangled and weedy than he'd remembered it.
Remus Lupin paused long enough on his trek to look back, the smallest of calm smiles leaking over his lips. "I told you already-The answer won't change just because you ask more than once." He said kindly.
"You didn't tell me!" Sirius objected, yanking his foot free from a vine that had laced around his ankle. He gave it a scandalized glance.
"I didn't? Perhaps it slipped my mind."
"Moony you old liar!" A lopsided grin of extreme prowess appeared on Sirius' face. He'd finally made an impression on his old comrade, and though teaching him how to lie might not have been the most moralistic thing, to Sirius it certainly was a start.
And after all the things, which Remus had taught him; it was a start long in the making.
It was fairly late in the evening, they'd started out when the sun was riding low in the sky, and now Sirius began to find himself surrounded by the increasing darkness.
He was sure it wasn't the smartest thing to be out in the Forbidden Forest this late in the evening, but it hadn't ever stopped him when he'd gone to school here, and he was damned if it would stop him now. He was big enough to take care of himself.
No, it wasn't himself for which he worried. Remus though...he was still weak from the last full moon; you could see it in his eyes, the lines which laced them and the slight pauses before each movement made, as if he had to remember what to do and then gather his strength to do it.
It worried Sirius, but he'd relented to go on this little...expedition just the same. Remus had seemed so determined about it, as if it would be proving something to himself to go. Sirius knew Remus to be stronger than logic sometimes said.
Maybe he really did want to just take Sirius out for a night, and since someone would have recognized him in town the woods really did seem the only choice. But...something smelled off about that story.
Sirius continued to rationalize it to himself as he stared at the back of his companion's head, trying not to lose him in the dark.
Rationalization had never been a strong suit for him and in the end Sirius decided why Remus had been so insistent. He smiled at it, at the back of the man in front of him.
Maybe Remus had wanted to prove to himself he wasn't weak. He was still capable of marauding.
The crunching behind Remus changed abruptly; it was less plotted now, the footsteps of Sirius seeming to just fall where they may.
Remus thought that his lover had probably started to lose himself in his own world again. He did that sometimes...actually, he did that a lot. More so now though, after Azkaban, after Lily and James. And especially with what had been happening recently. The attacks, the everythings.
The smile, which had grown on Remus' face as he thought of Sirius' quaint habits, fell slowly. He didn't like thinking of what had happened-to Lily, to James, especially to his Sirius. Or to anyone else for that matter. It was his least favorite subject, yet he always managed somehow to find it. Even out in this woods.
He looked around, drawing his own attention back from things best left aside tonight. He was looking for a specific spot in the woods, one which he hadn't been to in years, and he needed to concentrate to make sure he was actually able to find it again after so long.
"-oony? Moony!" The voice behind him caught halfway through a sentence.
Remus turned around, blinking sharply to refocus his eyes, which had glazed over some time ago with memories.
"Sirius?" He squinted, "What's the matter?"
"Are you ok? You got quiet." Sirius stepped up beside him, less than a foot away; he faced him head on, trying to read his eyes. He could always tell what was going on by the look inside those golden eyes.
And Remus knew it, that was why he always ducked his head, or looked away, he never met the eyes that could so easily tell him what he was thinking.
"Nothing. I'm fine, we should get moving, Sirius." He was quite proud of the sincerity he put in his words, but still, self-consciousness refused to let him meet the other man's gaze.
"Don't think of them." The strong words resounded, more deeply then the others spoken.
"What?" Remus looked up now, and callused hands cupped gently the edges of his face.
"Don't think of them. Tonight is ours." Sirius looked straight into his eyes, his own looked dark, almost black, and deep, endlessly, endlessly deep. Remus lost himself in those eyes...he always did. He nodded slightly.
"I know. Let's go, I don't think it's too much further." Remus turned looking down the small gap between the trees. He thought it was whatever remained of the old path he and Sirius had used years before. "Let's go..." He repeated, looking over his shoulder to Sirius, his eyes gleamed for a moment. "I'll race you."
Before it had a chance to register with Sirius, he'd taken off down the path, far too quickly for any normal man to go, the power of the full moon still running silently through his veins.
"What? Hey!" Sirius called after him, he easily let a grin pass over his face, "Cheater and a liar. I guess I do rub off on him..." He said proudly of his lover.
It was a rocky summit, their destination. Peaking above most of the trees, and looking out across fields and a small lake, which seemed a pool of oil in the dark.
By the time Sirius crested the hill, Remus had already situated himself on the ledge of rocks, he stared down at the water beneath them.
"It must be covered in rocks," He said, Sirius moving beside him he laid himself down on his back, resting enough on his elbows so as to still watch Remus speaking, "The bottom of the lake I mean. From all the ones James, Peter and you and I used to throw from up here. We would throw them for every test we failed, or detention we were given. It must be beautiful, the lake bottom...all tiled with our troubles."
"And that's where they should rest. We should leave them all there, Remus. We threw them away for a reason, and it wasn't to dredge them back again." Sirius said slowly, he felt this was something Remus sorely needed to be convinced of, even though he wasn't sure he was the best at teaching this. He thought it best to at least try. The past was the past.
"I know.." Remus said, without conviction.
A moment paused before he continued, "I suppose I wanted to see this place again though, to put to rest what has been done. I brought you, Sirius," Remus said, turning with the noise of his clothing against the rock to face Sirius, "Because I didn't want to be alone with this lake."
"Even if you hadn't brought me, you would still have had me here. I was a part of the people who tossed those old rocks down. And I'm still a part of you, Moony. I intend to be for quite a long while."
Remus slid further across the space between them, scraping against dirt and pebbles as he crawled to Sirius' side.
His lover moved an arm around him and pulled him against his chest. It took a few minutes before both bodies fell into rhythmic breathing, a sort they felt only with each other.
"Tell me, Sirius." It was another command.
"Nothing's bothering me, except you. I mean-what's bothering you. I'm not blind, Moony. Something's up." Sirius managed to be stern and tender at the same time, something he reserved mostly just for Harry and Remus.
"I don't know.... It was this last change. It brought so many memories back to me, I suppose.... It's tomorrow, also. What are we going to do if..."
"Shhh. We're more powerful than last time we faced him. Harry's older, he can help again. And Dumbledore...it's very difficult to see him losing anything he puts his mind to. He's stubborn, Moony. Just like you." Sirius said, but it seemed to Remus as though he were trying just as much to convince himself as comfort him.
"I don't want you to have to fight again. You've done so much already, Sirius. This is someone else's fight-it's not yours." Remus said, looking up to face his companion.
Sirius couldn't help but hear the almost frantic note in Remus' words. He felt the exact same way: he wanted more than anything for Remus to be left out of a fight tomorrow that was never his to fight. He wanted him safe.
"If it's not my fight, then it isn't yours either. Don't you see? We all can't back out. We all can't decide it's not our fight, or He'll win without any effort."
"I don't want to be the last of us, Sirius."
"I don't want you to have to be." Sirius answered with a small grin.
A silence came upon them suddenly just then, settling like a damp cloth over the two.
"Promise that we'll come here together again..." Remus whispered against the momentary comfort of having his lover beside him.
"I can't...." His voice was pained, "But every time either of us comes here, we'll find the other one. I'll always find you, Remus. So long as you let me. I promise." He squeezed the man in his arms more tightly, emphasizing his words.
Sirius' eyes were shut, too tightly to be normal; he pressed against Remus, holding onto both him and the moment.
Remus looked up, finding the eyes he was used to turned away. "Look at me."
A silent demand.
Obeyed willingly.
Both their eyes glistened with unshed tears.
"I never saw the sunrise from this spot." Sirius said it as though this were a sin worse than any, his voice coming from far away.
It was a moment before Remus could speak without falling into his unbidden tears. "We have something we have to do before.... Come on, Sirius. We have to put tomorrow to rest now."
They stood on the edge of the rocks, the lake lapped silently below them. It seemed so peaceful. So oblivious to what it held.
"Who first? How did we used to decide?" Remus asked, reaching out to clasp his lover's hand.
Sirius scratched at the back of his head with his free hand. "I think James used to just pick.... Why don't you go first, Moony?"
"Alright." Remus stepped forward a little further, "Don't let me fall." He smiled calmly back at Sirius.
"I never would." Sirius said tightening the grip on the hand in his own.
"Tomorrow..." Remus said, casting the stone out high into the air of night, it flickered against the backdrop of pinpoint stars before falling down, hitting against the water with a splash, the noise of which reached their ears seconds later.
"Your up." Remus said, stepping back and smiling reassurance to Sirius as he too tossed his stone out, it went higher than the other, cascading over tree tops.
"Tomorrow." He said, watching his trouble fall the rest of the way to hit the water with a tepid crack.
He turned to Remus, who spoke. "I love you, you know."
"After all of this..." Sirius said, insinuating more than that one night, he spoke of their entire lives, "You'd better."
They held each other, Remus burying his head against Sirius, as though he wished never to see anything but Sirius' shoulder again.
Their lips met more than once, impassioned, lost kisses looking for the path back to each other. They found it, pulling slowly back; it was a moment of being-simply being in each other- before Remus found voice enough to speak.
"Look...the sun." Remus' words echoed quietly. An unwelcome statement the eerie glow of pre-dawn had already testified to.
"It's tomorrow. We should go back."
Remus looked once around the cliff, across the fields and hill that led to it. And down, finally, deep into the lake where in rested the rest of whatever was to happen that day the sunrise so willingly began.
"Yes. I... think... we can leave now."
It was night again. The sunset of the next day now so quietly coming to its close. Dark against the backdrop of the lake.
He stood alone atop the rocks. The plunking of a stone hitting water seemed to be the only thing willing to break the descended silence.
"Yesterday." Remus said.
A/N: Well there you have it. Ok, first things first! I'm sorry it's taking me SO long to put up another chapter of Hopeful? What Me? but I just utterly hit writers block with that story. I'm still working on it, so don't worry, it will be finished, just more slowly than I'd hoped it seems. This is sort of like my return to FF.net, it's been a while since a posted;(;)
Secondly, should I do anything more with this story? A sequal? Knowing me, I doubt Sirius is dead and I hate just leaving poor, sweet, Remus all alone! *sniffs* What do ya'll think?! Please do review! Thanks!
