WARNING: This chapter contains slash. SLASH. Do I need to elaborate? Please do not read this if you are going to get offended.
Sirius' POV:
All those girls – they mean nothing to me.
It's cruel and cold-hearted, but it's true, and I've always been honest. At least to myself.
I don't feel absolutely nothing for them… it's just that after a while, they all begin to blend into one massive body. Instead of regarding them as Mandy or Angela or Lauren, or in other words, individuals, they just become… 'them', girls I snog for ten minutes before every lesson.
I don't like saying it, but that's just the way it is. But why do I do it? Why knowingly become Hogwarts' resident heartbreaker?
To fulfil the need I feel for him. To feed the hunger that begins deep down in the pit of my stomach and spreads throughout my body, leaving tingling trails of fire. To satisfy the desire that courses through my veins, pumping my heart with more energy than blood alone could do.
But of course, like all great romances go, Mandy and Angela and Lauren never do fill the emptiness that sings its aching song in my chest everyday.
I've never been one for sappy mush, but this just goes to show what Remus Lupin does to me.
What he does to me… it's not just physical attraction, definitely not, and it's more than the fact that we 'connect'. It's… it's like, when I'm with him, everything just feels so right, like he's answered a need in me that I never even knew existed. It sounds so complicated, but it's actually so simple. It just is. I don't even know if it's only love. I think it's… even above that.
Who knew falling in love, being in love, could be so complicated?
He doesn't know.
How could he?
How do I tell him?
It's funny, isn't it, how all our most prized personal traits fly out the window when they're most needed? Like how I can't find the impulse to just tell Remus how I feel, to just do it, get it over and done with. Where's that old recklessness when I need it?
Or how Remus' bloody insightfulness is lost when it comes to things like this staring him right in the face. He can notice what everyone else misses; the smallest details, the masked thoughts, but with things just waiting to be detected by him, he can be so amazingly dense!
But deep down, I know these are just excuses. Excuses for the inevitable.
He loves me as a brother, and a best friend, but that's where it ends. His love has an ending point, a limit, unlike mine. My love for him is the kind that fairy tales are woven out of, just without the 'happily ever after'. It's never-ending and unconditional; it's like sweet summer rain and clear crystals; the kind that everyone dreams about.
The kind that I used to dream about, when I lay in bed at night, hating my family, my heritage, and everything that is stood for. Wishing for love; real, lasting, soul-searing love.
That maybe love would only be one-way never occurred to me.
I guess my wish must have been a double-edged sword. In that case, perhaps even love is a double-edged sword.
Then does that mean I'm unlucky to have experienced the full blow? Never. I will never regret this feeling, I will never regret falling in love with Remus. If I lost this, it would be like losing everything, losing life itself. It hurts, but I can't let go, because my love is my life source. They're so interwoven; it's impossible to see where one begins and the other ends. Maybe, in the end, they're the same thing.
He's beautiful. And he's even more so because he's unaware of it. It's clichéd, but it's a cliché for a reason, isn't it? Not even a decade's supply of Butterbeer could satisfy the voice in my head that practically screams at me to run my thumb along that fine face, across ivory skin and through silky, baby-soft golden hair. I remember the last time it was a full moon – that night, when I saw how his eyes, his beautiful, liquid eyes, changed from gentle and kind and loving to primal and raw and powerful. And god, how I wanted him. I wanted to take him right there and then, and I would have, too. Every muscle in my body was wrought with pent-up tension and urge, every fibre spilling with desire and heat. But god, thank god James had the sense to wake me from my guilty reverie with an urgent hurry up and CHANGE, you senseless prat! For a terrifying second, I hated him. I hated my best friend for denying me the one thing I wanted that I couldn't have.
But it's not always like this, not always so heavy and heated and physical. There were, and still are, the light, carefree hours we would spend talking over Transfiguration essays, about everything: life, futures, dreams, even love. Remus doesn't want anything, except a good, steady job, and never to be alone. I always grin, and say, you're not going to get rid of us that easily. As for love, his reply is the same every time: 'Who wants a monster?' followed by a bitter laugh. That's when I have to bite my lip, hard, to stop myself from forming the syllables on the tip of my tongue, which sound suspiciously like 'I do'. Instead, to break the tense silence, I come out with another one of my stupid jokes, like, I heard a fourth-grade Hufflepuff tell her friend that she thought you were great shagging material.
And, like always, I have to kick myself to stop me from visualising how utterly blissful it would be to feel Remus' lips pressed tentatively against mine, his low moans escaping into my mouth while my hands caress and touch, mapping his body, his soul, until we melt into one being, lost in a heaven only we know.
But of course. That can't happen because he doesn't think about me like that. I'm just his best friend, nothing more, nothing less; good old Padfoot with his wild ideas and cocky fronts. If only the same could be said about the way I feel.
Every night, I'll go to bed with his face locked in my mind, knowing that I can only watch from afar. And it'll hurt, craving his touch and his smile and his eyes looking into mine, wishing for something that isn't. But maybe, just maybe, things might start to change. Maybe I won't have to live the rest of my life in limbo. And maybe unrequited feelings won't have to stay unrequited.