angelgazing (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
angelgazing) wrote2004-09-30 12:49 pm
angelgazing) wrote2004-09-30 12:49 pm
Entry tags:
cowboys and clowns; r/s; r; 6600ish words
title: Cowboys and Clowns
author: me
email: angelgazing [at] hotmail [dot] com
rating: R
words: 6644(ish)
summary: Sirius and Remus and they'll both play the fool, but they can't both be the satellite.
notes: written for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
everysingleway for rsficathon as a back up fic. The request was lots of angst, pre-Lily and James death. I suck at summaries, so if you've got a better one, let me hear it. Ta to Twin (aka sleepismyfriend for putting up with me while writing this and helping to make it not suck. If you see a typo, please let me know and I'll fix it. :) The title is, unfortunately, metaphorical. Unfortunately because actual cowboys and clowns in a HP fic would be awesome; or possibly that's the allergy meds talking and I should go to bed.
He laughed, the branches of the Whomping Willow swinging just out of reach behind him, a half empty bottle of bitter red wine in one hand and a cigarette in the other. “The moon is just a satellite,” he said, laughing darkly to himself, “that’s… that’s what’s so bloody unfair about the entire fucking thing, you see. The moon is just a satellite, pulled along by the earth and its gravity. It’s the earth that fucks me over every bloody month, really, because it pulls the moon and the moon pulls me. Pulls blood and bones and skin until I’m nothing like myself and it never fails, never, but the moon is just along for the ride as well, when you think of it.”
The moon was two days to full, swollen and angry orange red, heavy just above the horizon, Remus tilted his head back to look at it, then closed his eyes against it like it hurt as much as looking at the sun.
Sirius watched—his vision just a little hazy—the line of Remus’ throat when he took another swig of wine straight from the bottle. He nudged James, sitting beside him but half asleep, then stole their bottle because his mouth was suddenly dry.
“But,” Sirius said, swallowing a mouthful of wine. “But then isn’t it really the sun? The sun pulls the earth, doesn’t it?”
“Finally admitted you aren’t the center of the universe?” Remus asked, turning toward him and grinning faintly. “Maybe… Maybe it’s the sun, maybe it’s the earth and maybe it’s the moon. Maybe it’s all three. No, no, that’s it.”
“What’s it?” James asked, blurrily, taking the bottle back from Sirius and empting it. He handed it back and then laid down on the ground. Passed out, more like, snoring.
“S’all three,” Remus clarified just the same, watching James with the faintest traces of amusement dancing in the irises of his eyes. “The fault of all and the fault of none because everything builds, doesn’t it? Can’t blame the moon because it just does what gravity demands, can’t blame the earth cause it follows the sun, can’t blame the sun cause it just sits there and the earth spins round it. And maybe it’s all my fault anyway, and maybe it’s my father’s, but then maybe it isn’t.”
“Maybe,” he said. The dirt was cold underneath his palms, and the grass was damp and it soaked through the knees of his trousers as he crawled away from James’ side and over Peter—passed out like the lightweight he is before they’d even really made a dent in one of the bottles of wine—and toward Remus. He stayed on his knees when he snatched the bottle from Remus’ loose grip. “Maybe it’s just fate that fucked you.”
Remus waved the hand with his cigarette as he answered, all lazy grace that he’d never got round to realizing he possessed. “There’s a theory. Just fate that fucked me and just fate that fucked you, too, and left you with a family you despise. Fate that fucks us all, fucks everyone and then never bothers to call the morning after, when you’re scared and insecure.”
“Fate,” Sirius barked, lifting the bottle in mock salute, “the ultimate one night stand.”
Remus cocked his head, snuffed his cigarette on the ground and came away with dirt on the tips of his fingers. His eyes were bright and slightly unfocused. “You think I don’t know,” he whispered, “but I see it. I know why you lot do this. Get drunk on alcohol ‘til Wormtail and Prongs pass out nearly every month we can sneak away, because I get drunk on the bloody moon when it’s this heavy in the sky, this full and close. My skin doesn’t fit right, you know, when it’s this near, drunk becomes a blessing.”
“That’s the problem with you, isn’t it?” Sirius sighed, took another drink and then handed back the bottle; brushing his fingers against Remus’ as he did, just drunk-clumsy enough not to bother with subtlety anymore. He moved closer on his knees and pressed his nose against Remus’ throat when he exposed it while drinking. “You never allow for a motive other than pity. Never stop to consider for a second that maybe we just want to share in the drunkenness. That maybe we just don’t want you do be alone in it. Maybe we just bloody love you.”
Sirius darted out his tongue to taste the way Remus’ pulse picked up just a little speed.
He pulled away, laid down and propped himself up on his elbows. Sirius followed.
“It doesn’t--”
“Shut up,” Sirius interrupted. The moon was bleeding a reflection of the sun and his sleeves were rolled up so his elbows were cold in the dirt. But he had his body pressed to Remus’, who was always so bloody warm even in the dead of winter, and he could see the way that he was waiting silently. The way they’d both been waiting. He shivered and inhaled against Remus, licked away the dried sweat saltiness from just beneath his jaw. “I’m through talking, for tonight, and you’re beginning to slur.”
“Am not.”
“Shut up,” he said, again. “I’m tired of this.”
“So am I,” Remus answered on a sigh against his temple, stirring strands of hair. “I’m just so bloody tired of all of it, but it won’t stop. You won’t stop.”
“Remus--”
“You going to take advantage of me while I’m good and pissed? Nice and pliable, just the way you like for your Moony to be?”
Sirius blinked and then sighed as well. “Well, yes, that was the plan. Not like you let me any other time, is it? Gotta catch you when you can’t walk away.”
Remus trailed his long fingers over Sirius’ cheek, smearing dirt across it before burying them in hair and he tugged, just a little. “Get on with it then, would you? Don’t much fancy getting caught out here again when dawn comes, and Lily will be round to cast her charms upon those among us who can’t hold their alcohol.”
“One of these days, Moony,” he whispered against Remus’ mouth, “we won’t have to worry about getting caught.”
“You think that’s my only worry, do you?”
“Stop talking now,” Sirius said, and kissed him.
---
The breath was knocked out of him, he hit the wall so hard, but he didn’t get a chance to try and catch it before there was a mouth on his, hard and demanding and even if the taste was familiar, it was nothing like the kisses he remembered from slow, lazy, clumsy, drunken nights or panting, desperate, needing fucks behind spell-locked bed curtains.
Remus’ fingers were too tight on his arms, his body and mouth pressing him just that too hard until he thought he’d have stone and mortar imbedded in bone, but he didn’t really care because the tongue in his mouth was hot and slick and knowing.
“You,” Remus whispered, hissed, panted against his cheek when the kiss broke. “You stupid, selfish, arrogant fuck. You never know when to quit, do you, Sirius?”
He couldn’t breathe, from running and hitting the wall and kissing, but he grinned, despite the fact that Remus was still gripping his arms hard enough to bruise. “I hexed him.”
Which was, he reflected, probably not the brightest thing to say, all things considered.
“I could kill you myself, with my bare hands, Sirius, I could spread your blood and bones across this godforsaken Slytherin corridor and leave your skin for them to gnaw on when they felt the need for a snack. You… You ignorant, unthinking, fucking…”
“Fuck, yes, you’ve said that already.” Sirius looked up, looked him in the eye when he said it. Though it troubled him, sometimes, that he couldn’t pinpoint when he’d had to start looking up to meet Remus’ eye. “They were--”
“I know what they were doing, I was there.”
Sirius tilted his head back further, hair catching on a chip in the rough stone and pulling. He thought he might choke on the dust. “You think I should have just let them--”
“Yes, Sirius, clearly I think just that.”
Sirius closed his eyes to try and block the thin, angry, kiss-bruised line of Remus’ mouth. “No,” he said, still seeing the disapproval.
“You don’t fucking get it, do you?” Remus snapped, pulling him forward just to push him back to the wall again, not has hard but not for lack of trying. “This isn’t a game, Sirius, you don’t hex whomever you feel like-- without a thought to the outcome just because you don’t like the way they look. You don’t get to send them to their deaths because you don’t like them. You don’t get to play God, not while I’m watching and not while I’m the fucking weapon you chose to use.”
He swallowed hard, lifted a hand to feel the back of his head. “Remus--”
“No, you shut up now and listen to me, for once in your life just shut up and listen.” Remus stepped closer, pressed against him again and forced Sirius to crane his neck backwards to keep meeting his eyes. “This isn’t a game, Sirius, you could have --”
“He was--”
“Shut up,” Remus hissed, shaking him so hard his teeth rattled. “I don’t fucking care what he was doing! You say you deserve my trust, my forgiveness, say you’ve learned your lesson but finally and that you understand the world doesn’t spin round you, and then you--”
“I won’t,” Sirius said, interrupting again. “I won’t stand by and let anyone—not ever, Remus, no one, dead or alive, will be able to hold a fucking—not so long as I am beside you and drawing air. I don’t fucking care if they are Slytherins or Hufflepuffs or Ministry officials, even, because no one, not man nor beast--”
“You can’t possibly think that I wanted you to-- And you forget, of course, that I am a beast as well, don’t you, love?”
“You aren’t, not like—one night a month you want to rip me limb from limb, but they--”
“You think,” Remus asked, seemingly darkly amused despite himself, with a sort of grin that hurt Sirius, because it wasn’t-- “You think it’s one night out of the month that I--”
“—they want you dead for something you can’t control, and the ones who don’t wish you dead want you locked away in Azkaban and it’s their mums and dads and aunties that forced ink under your skin; that marked you something that you aren’t--”
“Aren’t I?”
“No,” Sirius answered, shrugging his shoulders. “Maybe, one night of the month, but no—not now, not tomorrow morning and not tomorrow night.”
“You still don’t get it,” Remus said, but the hint of amusement had faded into something closer to disbelief or maybe despair, but Sirius still had the bitter taste of adrenaline on his tongue and it’d always mixed well with the taste of Remus and he never was bright enough to read the signs until they were behind him. “It isn’t one night a month that I’m a werewolf, it’s every night of every month.”
“But it’s only--”
Remus laughed darkly, hurt and bitter and a little bit afraid, even, maybe, and cut him off by shoving him against the stone again. The full moon passed a week ago and he’s just two days out of bed from it, because it was hard this time, because Sirius was a stupid git who never ever stopped to think when he should and, oh but for the grace of James-- “It’s every night of every month,” he repeated, dragging lips and tongue and teeth over Sirius’ stubbled jaw; but the words were sharp, hard and the kind of cold that burns, and the flames from the torches that lit the corridor where dancing in hungry, empty eyes that bled black and hurt and want, “and it never stops, never.”
Sirius reached for him, but Remus caught his wrists, pinned them to the wall hard and looked down at him and scrapped both their knuckles raw. “Remus,” Sirius said, and then shut up because Remus was kissing him again and not allowing him the air for talking or thinking or breathing.
“I dream, every night,” Remus said, when the kiss broke and Sirius was panting, his forehead to Remus’ jaw, “of sinking my teeth into you, Sirius, I dream of chasing and catching and devouring you until there is nothing left to taunt me every time I breathe. It doesn’t stop, but it gets worse when the moon is close-- but it doesn’t stop, and you think that the problem is that I don’t want you or that I don’t know what I want and the problem has always been just how and how much I want you.”
He released one of Sirius’ wrists, sliding long, pale fingers roughly down and then over, cupping the back his neck—no, cupping would be gentle, he dug fingertips in and demanded with them, turned Sirius’ head just where he wanted with only the pressure of his thumb—and kissed him like he was dying for the taste of it. And Sirius knew that much, at least, he knew the desire to drown in someone, if nothing else, so he kissed him back like his life depended on it, because sometimes he thought maybe it did, and he couldn’t keep his hips still when Remus was pressed this close and he was so hard that--
Then Remus stopped, pulled away and pulled Sirius away and then shoved him back to the wall face first. He realized that a counter curse had got close enough to burn his cheek only when it scraped against the grimy, crumbling stone and rubbed dust into the wound.
“It never stops,” Sirius said, whispered breathless into the stone, like he knew because for once he was sure he did.
Remus bit—hard enough to sting and bruise but not to break skin—the place beneath his collar where shoulder met neck, and Sirius threw his head back and gasped and cried out and understood, even if he didn’t. His hands were pulling Sirius’ shirt from his trousers, rough and not careful like he always thought he had to be before. “This isn’t a game, Sirius,” Remus said, hissed and swore and cursed against the skin he’d just abused, “this is who I am, this is what I am. This is why they’ve put permanent numbers into my skin and it’s why they have tracking spells on every known werewolf. This is what it is, to be a beast, isn’t it?”
“No—Remus, stop,” he said, the words spilling out all of a sudden because it got to be just a little clearer to him what was happening. “No,” he repeated.
“What?”
“I-I don’t want you like this,” Sirius said, cheek pressed to stone and fingers clutching at the hand beneath his shirt, through the fabric and he was breathing dust and Remus and it wasn’t—but it was and he couldn’t, not really.
Remus put his forehead against Sirius’ shoulder and laughed, just as dry and bitter and humorless as always. Just as hopeless as he always seemed to be since—when he’d let Sirius pull him aside only to say ‘should have known this is what I’d get for trusting you’-- “Of course you don’t,” he said, “who would? But that’s the point isn’t it? The point I’m trying to make to you. Jesus Christ, Merlin and God above, Sirius you don’t understand what it is for me to want you.” He slid one hand down, over Sirius’ erection and it made him jump and arch and gasp and almost come.
“I don’t want you like this,” Sirius said again, even though he did—wanted him so much he couldn’t catch his breath—because Remus, when he was thinking straight, wouldn’t.
“Right,” Remus whispered, soft and just a little worse for wear and his fingers were shaking against Sirius’ skin and bleeding into him. “I knew that.”
He pulled his hands away and oh, Sirius thought and then, oh, because he never got it right on the first try. “Remus,” he said, but Remus was gone when he turned round.
---
He laid on his stomach, on his bed, with his socked feet on his pillow. It was too crisp, too white and clean and he liked the smell of dirt and sweat and the way it lingered on Remus’ skin for days after the wolf and the moon and a night in the forest. He held his chin in his hand and stared just a little blankly at the comic in front of him.
Remus laid down next to him, without taking off his shoes, and said, “You’re sulking.”
“I’m not,” Sirius said, because he wasn’t. He was just… thinking. “I’m not,” he repeated.
He pulled the comic over so he could read it too, even if he found them odd and didn’t care much for them; said he’d rather read books, of course, but Remus was almost always willing to indulge his friends if they asked him just right. “You are,” Remus said, his eyes scanning the colorful pages spread out between them now. “I can always tell.”
Sirius liked the Muggle comics. He liked them because they were still but told a story anyway and because his mother hated them and because his first one had been nicked from the care package one of Remus’ slightly clueless but mostly well meaning Muggle aunt’s had sent him. He ran his fingers over the crease between the pages and said, “There are Wizarding comics you can buy special made to have yourself written in, drawn in like you were meant to be there all along.”
“So who would you be then?” Remus asked. “Who would I be?”
“The hero,” he answered, except not really because he forgot to clarify which one, “of course.” There were some things he always forgot to do.
“Always the hero.” Remus turned his head just a little, looked out the window across from Sirius’ bed. The sun was bright and blinding and it bleached the sky white. He sighed, through his fingers, and didn’t blink until he turned back to Sirius. “Predictable.”
Sirius shrugged, shifted just a little closer because that’s just what he did when it was Remus beside him and they were all alone because James was off doing god-knew-what with Evans and Wormtail was god-knew-where with a bird whose name they didn’t bother to learn. “You,” he said, and then stopped and cleared his throat and tore his eyes away from Remus and the way the sun was reflected in his hair and his eyes and the quick flash of his teeth in his almost, sort of, maybe smile. “You liked predictable yesterday, told me I should try and be, at any rate.”
“I never--”
“You always,” Sirius corrected, and his mouth was dry again and his skin was cold. “Anyway, that’s the thing with comics, isn’t it? They’re predictable. They talk about heroes and villains and love and hate and good and evil, but you always know, in the end, who is going to win when the book closes.”
“They are,” Remus agreed, closing his eyes and folding his arms to rest his chin on them, sounding nothing so much as tired and bored—Sirius remembered the way his voice trembles just a little and gets just that little bit deeper round the edges when the moon is running through his blood like alcohol and he wants, too, then, just as much as Sirius wants all the time, and he knew that he wouldn’t ever really be able to hate the moon the way that Remus always will—“all the same, aren’t they?”
“Basically, when it finishes, it’s the same story told. You know going in what you’re gonna get when it’s over.”
“Lot like life then, way you make it sound.”
“You can’t,” he started, and then stopped to breathe because Remus was grinning and not looking at him so much as looking through him and it was so fucking bitter that it took him by surprise, but Sirius had learned, when it came to Remus, anyway, if not any other time with any other person, to take what he could get. “Thought we agreed that Divination is shit, Remus, that stars and tea and cards can’t tell you what is coming.”
“Stars and tea and cardboard can’t; no, can’t tell you a damn thing except that it isn’t just Muggles who want to know when life will mend itself or love will find them, but Muggles want it enough to fall for the tricks of squibs at carnivals just to get a taste of knowing, so maybe they deserve it more—you think?—or less. But that’s the secret to it, Sirius, the knowing.” Remus shook his head, put his forehead on his bony wrist and sighed. “Take you for instance,” he added, speaking mostly to the wrinkled bedcovers. “I know, without cards or stars or tea leaves, that what you want from me I can’t give you, and eventually you’ll see that as well.”
“Bullshit,” Sirius said, answered, growled from low in his throat or deep in his chest or wherever it was his heart had relocated to, at any rate, that was so hard to find now because the ache had moved to all over and everywhere, whenever he breathed. “Don’t have any bloody problems giving it to Prongs when he crawls into your bed at night, do you? You’re just too much of a coward to admit that--”
“Prongs, has Lily, doesn’t he? It’s not… He doesn’t want to stick round and look at scars and swear to love me ‘til my dying day. He doesn’t want to do anything but get off and then get gone, and you want any number of things, not the least of which appears to be an oath signed in my blood—even if my blood isn’t safe, but that doesn’t matter to you because you pretend not to see—stating who really even knows what.”
“That’s it then?” Sirius whispered, after a moment. “You don’t want me because I still give a fuck what happens to you when morning rolls round?”
“I never--”
“Remus,” he said, growled again. “Be a fucking man for once, would you?”
“I’m not, Sirius, that’s the whole bloody point. I’m not a man, not really, not when it comes down to blood and bones and workings. No man has to—every month like… And you want for me to be too much to ever—It isn’t really me that you want, you just think that you--” Remus sighed, rolled onto his back and they ended up shoulder to shoulder. His eyes fell to the deep red curtains of Sirius’ bed, just to his left. “I never said I didn’t want you, Sirius, have in fact proven time and again just how much that isn’t the case.”
And Sirius knew, suddenly, but he didn’t know. And he wanted, but he didn’t know.
“Why can’t,” Sirius asked, his voice surprisingly steady, “we both be--”
“The problem with comics is they all have the same characters,” Remus interrupted, tapping the edge of a page with his knuckles—the back of his hands and it wasn’t fair, strictly speaking, because Sirius had never been able to not watch the lazy movements of his hands—without looking. “The villain, of course, and the hero is always a given, but then there’s the other one. The one the hero is in love with who never knows who he really is when the sirens scream and there is someone who needs saving.”
“So who are we?”
“You tell me, Padfoot. Tell me, who are you, and tell me, who am I?”
“Always so careful not to get trapped into being a ‘we’ aren’t you?” Sirius sighed, eyes going back to colorful pictures that never changed. And that was the high point of them, wasn’t it, the thing that made them brilliant?
“Who are you and who am I?” Remus asked, again, still not looking at Sirius. He folded his hands on his stomach and Sirius watched, fascinated as he always was, as Remus darted out pink tongue to wet red lips, like he was the one who didn’t understand, who didn’t know, for once, and not Sirius. “The hero or the fool?”
“Who says we’re either?”
“Have to be one or the other, don’t we? Not like you’re going to play the villain.”
Sirius laughed, quiet and just a little bit bitter. “Have before, Moony, isn’t that where your problem really lies?”
“The problem,” he answered, sighing again and wetting his lips with the tip of his tongue again, and it wasn’t fair because Sirius was righteously pissed off—not jealous, though, and he felt that should be stated because Remus seemed to think he was and he wasn’t, but he didn’t know how to bring it up without—and—and Remus did that and all Sirius could really think of was kissing him until he was the one who couldn’t catch his breath, for once, instead of Sirius, “is that I’ve always known the role I’m to play if I gave you… Christ, Sirius, you just want so bloody much.”
“Then you tell me,” Sirius sighed, just the edge of what might be defeat lacing his words. He turned his head and watched Remus’ profile—his nose really was too large and his fingers were too long even if they were breathtaking and tangled in his Gryffindor tie and his eyelids fluttered and his lashes were pale, like dust and shadow across the bones of his cheeks—and wondered and thought he knew but knew he didn’t, “fool and hero, who am I and who are you?”
Remus laughed, like it was funny when it wasn’t and the moon was in the sky and pulling on his bones like cold did an old man’s and his blood was running away from him again. “You should know by now, you’re a smart enough lad when you set your mind to it.”
“Does it,” he asked, leaning up and over until they were chest to chest and Remus’ fingers and tie were caught between them and he could see better now the shadows and hollows of Remus’ face and he couldn’t breathe without breathing Remus but it was mostly alright because he liked it that way, “does it really matter?”
“Yes,” Remus told him, then kissed him, “it matters because I don’t want to--”
“You want.” Sirius blinked opened his eyes and realized he’d closed them. “You want, Remus, you just won’t--”
“You should know by now.”
“I think I do, sometimes, and then you prove me wrong. I thought once that it was-- but it never really was, was it? I mean, not really. You should… you should worry that we’re both going to play the fool this time because you won’t let it be any other way.”
“You can get off me now,” Remus said, flat and mildly polite, as though speaking to a stranger and asking for the time. “We’re through with this, now.”
“Because you say so?” Sirius asked, but moved just the same.
“Because it’s what has to--”
“It doesn’t have to be, you’re just making it this way. There’s a war outside this castle and even if it isn’t ours now it will be when we leave, and you just keep pushing like it would be the greatest tragedy the world has ever seen if you dared to let someone close. It’s closing in and who’s to say that in a few months I’ll still be here to wait and to fucking want you this bloody much. It’s not a pleasant feeling, Remus, to want someone, to fucking love someone who doesn’t want to feel the same; someone who would rather bleed and suffer and live all alone than admit to ever wanting you. Do you know what it is that you want, because you never really seem to anymore.”
Remus was on his feet, shoes dully thudding across the stone floor as he walked across the room—tugging on the sleeves of his shirt to that they covered his bony wrists that always seemed so frail—and he had his back turned to Sirius, and it was straight and narrow in a way that the Marauders had learnt was dangerous, when he said, “Knowing is one thing, Sirius, having is another.”
---
There were, Sirius thought, objectively, any number of things that Remus Lupin knew, but, he thought, that number was nothing compared to the things that Remus didn’t know.
Like, for instance, that he was often completely full of shit.
He was sprawled across the front steps of the castle, carelessly casual and fucking regal—even if he teased and said that was Sirius’ game, it was his, really, always, with Sirius if no other time, it seemed—with his elbows on stone steps and his tie loose and Sirius’ jacket on even though the sleeves were too short and a hole in the knee of his faded Muggle jeans and a smoke in hand.
And he didn’t know—at least, Sirius was almost certain he didn’t and he didn’t tell him because then it would stop, wouldn’t it? Like all things with Remus did when he became aware of them—that the way his fingers curled round his cigarettes always made Sirius stop and watch, because it was beautiful, really, but he didn’t know that either.
“Oi, Padfoot, you big girl,” James said and shoved Sirius, playfully but not, and Lily gave a tipsy-easy laugh, and Peter snorted and coughed and choked on his butterbeer, which was the least he deserved, really, when he said, “Stop mooning over Moony, it isn’t attractive, mate.”
“More attractive than puns,” Lily said, grinning, and Sirius thought that maybe she wasn’t so bad after all.
Remus looked down at them with a cocked eyebrow and a lazy grin that looked like he may have really meant it, and said, “You know, James, you may have finally hit on the reason that it took Lily so long to give into your—well, I hesitated to call them charms but—”
“You think, Remus,” Sirius asked, over Lily laughing into James’ shoulder, “that she would have given into him ages sooner and we would have been spared years of moping and plotting to catch her skirt, had he only not been mooning over you?”
“I thought that we decided to never speak of it again,” James said, all mock dramatic, like it didn’t matter to him that it was the truth and like he hadn’t--
But then Sirius stood, with a bottle of Firewhisky almost slipping from his hand, and climbed the steps until he fucking tripped over Peter and ending up half sprawled across Remus. “Well,” he said, “hello there.” And kissed him.
“That,” he heard Lily say—with an odd amount of fondness—through the haze of Remus and smoke and alcohol and Remus pushing him away, “is our cue to get lost, I think.”
Remus flicked his cigarette, like nothing had just happened and like nothing could fucking touch him, no, not him, not ever, because that would mean having to be something approaching honest with himself and then with someone else, even, maybe.
“Coward,” Sirius said, and smiled and sat back down on the steps below and watched Remus and listened to Peter skitter away like a frightened rodent, which wasn’t, of course, that far from the truth of the thing, most times.
He didn’t realize, until Remus tipped his head back and took a long swallow—thin, red lips wrapped round the mouth of the bottle and long, thin fingers wrapped round the neck of the bottle and Sirius was, naturally, unbelievably jealous and achingly hard and possibly, very, very drunk—that he’d lost possession of the alcohol.
“Fool,” Remus countered, except that by then Sirius had lost the thread of the conversation and was instead plotting how difficult it would be to convince Remus to-- “We’re leaving tomorrow, you know, just means that--”
“Everything changes, doesn’t it?”
“—that we leave tomorrow, doesn’t mean I’m gonna fuck you as a last hurrah for our time at Hogwarts.”
“Disappointing,” Sirius said, or thought, or thought he said; he was watching Remus tip his head back to look at the moon and then close his eyes against it, and Remus was the one with the unhealthy fondness of words anyway, Sirius thought there were better things to do with your mouth, especially when one had a mouth like Remus’ to play with, all pretty and red and mean and made to play, really, even if only with words.
And in his head the word fool was playing, too, dancing round and singing songs and reminding him of things that-- “Am I, then?”
“Disappointing?”
It was, naturally, typical of Remus to not bother trying to understand, or to pretend he didn’t understand, for whatever reason. “The fool, Remus,” he said, careful not to slur his words. “Am I the fool?”
“If you think that--”
“Shut up, now,” he said, because that was his line, or at least, he thought it was. “Moony--”
“The thing of it is, Padfoot, I know what I am and I know who I am and—there are things that… I know the role I’m set to play.”
“Tell me,” Sirius said, maybe just a little irrationally and maybe not any at all, but he said it just the same and didn’t stop to think as he turned and stood on his knees and stole back the firewhiskey.
Remus sighed, and reaching into his—into Sirius’ jacket pocket—and pulled out his pack of fags, he shook one free and tossed the pack to Sirius, but Sirius was, of course, too drunk and too busy being struck dumb by the site of his fingers curling round the smoke to catch it. Remus laughed and twirled it in his fingers like he knew, but he didn’t, he couldn’t, because then he wouldn’t, and Sirius almost wanted him to know, because something shouted that, that, at least, would be easier.
“Tell me,” Sirius repeated, “who are you and who am I?”
“I’m easy, Sirius--” Sirius snorted and Remus rolled his eyes and they both knew that he was anything but. “--the moon is just a satellite, after all.”
The moon was shining down, not heavy enough in the sky to matter, but heavy enough to—Remus was looking at him for the first time in ages, it seemed, and the light from the moon and the torches from the castle caught on his hair, shimmering and winking and almost being, but not-- his hair all sun-kissed honey gold and his eyes bright and questioning and not—
He lit his smoke with a Muggle lighter he’d nicked from James, and his fingers were sort of, almost, maybe trembling, and it wasn’t—well, it was, obviously, but it wasn’t—because Remus always moved with slow liquid grace because he’d been a master of his body when he had control for all of time or at least since he’d had to protect himself against the times he didn’t and wasn’t and Sirius thought, no, and then he thought, no.
And he said, “No.”
Remus cocked an eyebrow again, all vaguely, darkly, politely amused like-- but Sirius wasn’t a stranger, no matter how much he wished sometimes and he knew, even when he didn’t, the way that Remus moved, because his eyes always followed and his fingers always itched to do the same. And the wry smile on his face pulled, twisted scars that Sirius knew the taste of too well to ever just forget.
He saw it coming—he had, of course, learnt some lessons, though clearly not nearly all of them—so Sirius leaned forward and kissed him, sloppy and too wet and they were better at it, of course, but not just then because-- Well, Sirius thought and then, well, and then, fuck, he thought, because Remus had shoved him away again but not before he could taste the desperation under the hot, whisky, Remus flavor of his tongue.
Still holding his forgotten cigarette between two fingers, Remus pressed the pad of his thumb to his wet bottom lip, and Sirius wondered, not then, but later, whether it was to wipe away the kiss or press it deeper, and then he stopped wondering because he was afraid he knew.
“I’m sorry,” he said, suddenly, without realizing he was going to—only realizing after that he was, really, he just didn’t—and so he repeated it, “I’m sorry.”
“You aren’t,” Remus said, scoffed and grinned and shook his head just a little but didn’t dislodge his hand until he had to flick away his cigarette. “You never are.”
“I am now.”
“If you are it’s probably not for the reasons you should be,” he said, decided like that was just that and there was nothing else to it.
“No,” Sirius agreed, not even as reluctantly as he should have because it was true, at least to Remus, because he was never sorry for the things that Remus thought mattered the most and would probably never go back and change—well, there was the-- “probably not.”
Remus laughed, until it almost sounded like he meant it and like he thought there was something funny about this and it wasn’t, but Sirius would pretend because-- Well, Sirius thought, and then, fuck, because saying and knowing are different, sometimes, than knowing, because sometimes it hits you in the chest and steals your breath and your heartbeat and it isn’t all that it’s made out to be, this kind of knowing.
Because sometimes, the firelight catches and highlights his hair and the moon shines in his eyes and his mouth is red and wet from your mouth and his eyes flutter, shudder closed against one thing or another and he’s parchment pale and lit from above and behind and you remember the numbers they put under his skin and you wonder if the desperation you were tasting wasn’t really your own all along. And it hits you, then, and knowing it, in that way that won’t let you breath, is painful like nothing else before it.
“Fuck,” Remus said, hissed, “oh, fuck, Padfoot, I’m sorry,” he said, because he knew too, but he didn’t know, not really.
Remus brushed his fingertips down Sirius’ cheek, across his bottom lip and over his jaw, and he buried his fingers in Sirius’ hair and kissed him, this time, like he’d never really done it before because this time the point had already been made.
The slick, slip slide of mouth against mouth, and Sirius was the one to break it because it felt like… and well, he’d never been good at endings, not really.
And Remus pulled back too, trailing fingers, that felt like nothing so much as anger and losing and bone, over his skin until they were back on the stone steps, and the moon bled sliver, a reflection of the sun, down on them and it burned, just a little.
Sirius laughed, and it only sounded a little bitter and a little broken and fuck that was just to his own ears and Remus had always-- “It isn’t,” he said, “you that’s the satellite, here.”
author: me
email: angelgazing [at] hotmail [dot] com
rating: R
words: 6644(ish)
summary: Sirius and Remus and they'll both play the fool, but they can't both be the satellite.
notes: written for
everysingleway for rsficathon as a back up fic. The request was lots of angst, pre-Lily and James death. I suck at summaries, so if you've got a better one, let me hear it. Ta to Twin (aka sleepismyfriend for putting up with me while writing this and helping to make it not suck. If you see a typo, please let me know and I'll fix it. :) The title is, unfortunately, metaphorical. Unfortunately because actual cowboys and clowns in a HP fic would be awesome; or possibly that's the allergy meds talking and I should go to bed.He laughed, the branches of the Whomping Willow swinging just out of reach behind him, a half empty bottle of bitter red wine in one hand and a cigarette in the other. “The moon is just a satellite,” he said, laughing darkly to himself, “that’s… that’s what’s so bloody unfair about the entire fucking thing, you see. The moon is just a satellite, pulled along by the earth and its gravity. It’s the earth that fucks me over every bloody month, really, because it pulls the moon and the moon pulls me. Pulls blood and bones and skin until I’m nothing like myself and it never fails, never, but the moon is just along for the ride as well, when you think of it.”
The moon was two days to full, swollen and angry orange red, heavy just above the horizon, Remus tilted his head back to look at it, then closed his eyes against it like it hurt as much as looking at the sun.
Sirius watched—his vision just a little hazy—the line of Remus’ throat when he took another swig of wine straight from the bottle. He nudged James, sitting beside him but half asleep, then stole their bottle because his mouth was suddenly dry.
“But,” Sirius said, swallowing a mouthful of wine. “But then isn’t it really the sun? The sun pulls the earth, doesn’t it?”
“Finally admitted you aren’t the center of the universe?” Remus asked, turning toward him and grinning faintly. “Maybe… Maybe it’s the sun, maybe it’s the earth and maybe it’s the moon. Maybe it’s all three. No, no, that’s it.”
“What’s it?” James asked, blurrily, taking the bottle back from Sirius and empting it. He handed it back and then laid down on the ground. Passed out, more like, snoring.
“S’all three,” Remus clarified just the same, watching James with the faintest traces of amusement dancing in the irises of his eyes. “The fault of all and the fault of none because everything builds, doesn’t it? Can’t blame the moon because it just does what gravity demands, can’t blame the earth cause it follows the sun, can’t blame the sun cause it just sits there and the earth spins round it. And maybe it’s all my fault anyway, and maybe it’s my father’s, but then maybe it isn’t.”
“Maybe,” he said. The dirt was cold underneath his palms, and the grass was damp and it soaked through the knees of his trousers as he crawled away from James’ side and over Peter—passed out like the lightweight he is before they’d even really made a dent in one of the bottles of wine—and toward Remus. He stayed on his knees when he snatched the bottle from Remus’ loose grip. “Maybe it’s just fate that fucked you.”
Remus waved the hand with his cigarette as he answered, all lazy grace that he’d never got round to realizing he possessed. “There’s a theory. Just fate that fucked me and just fate that fucked you, too, and left you with a family you despise. Fate that fucks us all, fucks everyone and then never bothers to call the morning after, when you’re scared and insecure.”
“Fate,” Sirius barked, lifting the bottle in mock salute, “the ultimate one night stand.”
Remus cocked his head, snuffed his cigarette on the ground and came away with dirt on the tips of his fingers. His eyes were bright and slightly unfocused. “You think I don’t know,” he whispered, “but I see it. I know why you lot do this. Get drunk on alcohol ‘til Wormtail and Prongs pass out nearly every month we can sneak away, because I get drunk on the bloody moon when it’s this heavy in the sky, this full and close. My skin doesn’t fit right, you know, when it’s this near, drunk becomes a blessing.”
“That’s the problem with you, isn’t it?” Sirius sighed, took another drink and then handed back the bottle; brushing his fingers against Remus’ as he did, just drunk-clumsy enough not to bother with subtlety anymore. He moved closer on his knees and pressed his nose against Remus’ throat when he exposed it while drinking. “You never allow for a motive other than pity. Never stop to consider for a second that maybe we just want to share in the drunkenness. That maybe we just don’t want you do be alone in it. Maybe we just bloody love you.”
Sirius darted out his tongue to taste the way Remus’ pulse picked up just a little speed.
He pulled away, laid down and propped himself up on his elbows. Sirius followed.
“It doesn’t--”
“Shut up,” Sirius interrupted. The moon was bleeding a reflection of the sun and his sleeves were rolled up so his elbows were cold in the dirt. But he had his body pressed to Remus’, who was always so bloody warm even in the dead of winter, and he could see the way that he was waiting silently. The way they’d both been waiting. He shivered and inhaled against Remus, licked away the dried sweat saltiness from just beneath his jaw. “I’m through talking, for tonight, and you’re beginning to slur.”
“Am not.”
“Shut up,” he said, again. “I’m tired of this.”
“So am I,” Remus answered on a sigh against his temple, stirring strands of hair. “I’m just so bloody tired of all of it, but it won’t stop. You won’t stop.”
“Remus--”
“You going to take advantage of me while I’m good and pissed? Nice and pliable, just the way you like for your Moony to be?”
Sirius blinked and then sighed as well. “Well, yes, that was the plan. Not like you let me any other time, is it? Gotta catch you when you can’t walk away.”
Remus trailed his long fingers over Sirius’ cheek, smearing dirt across it before burying them in hair and he tugged, just a little. “Get on with it then, would you? Don’t much fancy getting caught out here again when dawn comes, and Lily will be round to cast her charms upon those among us who can’t hold their alcohol.”
“One of these days, Moony,” he whispered against Remus’ mouth, “we won’t have to worry about getting caught.”
“You think that’s my only worry, do you?”
“Stop talking now,” Sirius said, and kissed him.
---
The breath was knocked out of him, he hit the wall so hard, but he didn’t get a chance to try and catch it before there was a mouth on his, hard and demanding and even if the taste was familiar, it was nothing like the kisses he remembered from slow, lazy, clumsy, drunken nights or panting, desperate, needing fucks behind spell-locked bed curtains.
Remus’ fingers were too tight on his arms, his body and mouth pressing him just that too hard until he thought he’d have stone and mortar imbedded in bone, but he didn’t really care because the tongue in his mouth was hot and slick and knowing.
“You,” Remus whispered, hissed, panted against his cheek when the kiss broke. “You stupid, selfish, arrogant fuck. You never know when to quit, do you, Sirius?”
He couldn’t breathe, from running and hitting the wall and kissing, but he grinned, despite the fact that Remus was still gripping his arms hard enough to bruise. “I hexed him.”
Which was, he reflected, probably not the brightest thing to say, all things considered.
“I could kill you myself, with my bare hands, Sirius, I could spread your blood and bones across this godforsaken Slytherin corridor and leave your skin for them to gnaw on when they felt the need for a snack. You… You ignorant, unthinking, fucking…”
“Fuck, yes, you’ve said that already.” Sirius looked up, looked him in the eye when he said it. Though it troubled him, sometimes, that he couldn’t pinpoint when he’d had to start looking up to meet Remus’ eye. “They were--”
“I know what they were doing, I was there.”
Sirius tilted his head back further, hair catching on a chip in the rough stone and pulling. He thought he might choke on the dust. “You think I should have just let them--”
“Yes, Sirius, clearly I think just that.”
Sirius closed his eyes to try and block the thin, angry, kiss-bruised line of Remus’ mouth. “No,” he said, still seeing the disapproval.
“You don’t fucking get it, do you?” Remus snapped, pulling him forward just to push him back to the wall again, not has hard but not for lack of trying. “This isn’t a game, Sirius, you don’t hex whomever you feel like-- without a thought to the outcome just because you don’t like the way they look. You don’t get to send them to their deaths because you don’t like them. You don’t get to play God, not while I’m watching and not while I’m the fucking weapon you chose to use.”
He swallowed hard, lifted a hand to feel the back of his head. “Remus--”
“No, you shut up now and listen to me, for once in your life just shut up and listen.” Remus stepped closer, pressed against him again and forced Sirius to crane his neck backwards to keep meeting his eyes. “This isn’t a game, Sirius, you could have --”
“He was--”
“Shut up,” Remus hissed, shaking him so hard his teeth rattled. “I don’t fucking care what he was doing! You say you deserve my trust, my forgiveness, say you’ve learned your lesson but finally and that you understand the world doesn’t spin round you, and then you--”
“I won’t,” Sirius said, interrupting again. “I won’t stand by and let anyone—not ever, Remus, no one, dead or alive, will be able to hold a fucking—not so long as I am beside you and drawing air. I don’t fucking care if they are Slytherins or Hufflepuffs or Ministry officials, even, because no one, not man nor beast--”
“You can’t possibly think that I wanted you to-- And you forget, of course, that I am a beast as well, don’t you, love?”
“You aren’t, not like—one night a month you want to rip me limb from limb, but they--”
“You think,” Remus asked, seemingly darkly amused despite himself, with a sort of grin that hurt Sirius, because it wasn’t-- “You think it’s one night out of the month that I--”
“—they want you dead for something you can’t control, and the ones who don’t wish you dead want you locked away in Azkaban and it’s their mums and dads and aunties that forced ink under your skin; that marked you something that you aren’t--”
“Aren’t I?”
“No,” Sirius answered, shrugging his shoulders. “Maybe, one night of the month, but no—not now, not tomorrow morning and not tomorrow night.”
“You still don’t get it,” Remus said, but the hint of amusement had faded into something closer to disbelief or maybe despair, but Sirius still had the bitter taste of adrenaline on his tongue and it’d always mixed well with the taste of Remus and he never was bright enough to read the signs until they were behind him. “It isn’t one night a month that I’m a werewolf, it’s every night of every month.”
“But it’s only--”
Remus laughed darkly, hurt and bitter and a little bit afraid, even, maybe, and cut him off by shoving him against the stone again. The full moon passed a week ago and he’s just two days out of bed from it, because it was hard this time, because Sirius was a stupid git who never ever stopped to think when he should and, oh but for the grace of James-- “It’s every night of every month,” he repeated, dragging lips and tongue and teeth over Sirius’ stubbled jaw; but the words were sharp, hard and the kind of cold that burns, and the flames from the torches that lit the corridor where dancing in hungry, empty eyes that bled black and hurt and want, “and it never stops, never.”
Sirius reached for him, but Remus caught his wrists, pinned them to the wall hard and looked down at him and scrapped both their knuckles raw. “Remus,” Sirius said, and then shut up because Remus was kissing him again and not allowing him the air for talking or thinking or breathing.
“I dream, every night,” Remus said, when the kiss broke and Sirius was panting, his forehead to Remus’ jaw, “of sinking my teeth into you, Sirius, I dream of chasing and catching and devouring you until there is nothing left to taunt me every time I breathe. It doesn’t stop, but it gets worse when the moon is close-- but it doesn’t stop, and you think that the problem is that I don’t want you or that I don’t know what I want and the problem has always been just how and how much I want you.”
He released one of Sirius’ wrists, sliding long, pale fingers roughly down and then over, cupping the back his neck—no, cupping would be gentle, he dug fingertips in and demanded with them, turned Sirius’ head just where he wanted with only the pressure of his thumb—and kissed him like he was dying for the taste of it. And Sirius knew that much, at least, he knew the desire to drown in someone, if nothing else, so he kissed him back like his life depended on it, because sometimes he thought maybe it did, and he couldn’t keep his hips still when Remus was pressed this close and he was so hard that--
Then Remus stopped, pulled away and pulled Sirius away and then shoved him back to the wall face first. He realized that a counter curse had got close enough to burn his cheek only when it scraped against the grimy, crumbling stone and rubbed dust into the wound.
“It never stops,” Sirius said, whispered breathless into the stone, like he knew because for once he was sure he did.
Remus bit—hard enough to sting and bruise but not to break skin—the place beneath his collar where shoulder met neck, and Sirius threw his head back and gasped and cried out and understood, even if he didn’t. His hands were pulling Sirius’ shirt from his trousers, rough and not careful like he always thought he had to be before. “This isn’t a game, Sirius,” Remus said, hissed and swore and cursed against the skin he’d just abused, “this is who I am, this is what I am. This is why they’ve put permanent numbers into my skin and it’s why they have tracking spells on every known werewolf. This is what it is, to be a beast, isn’t it?”
“No—Remus, stop,” he said, the words spilling out all of a sudden because it got to be just a little clearer to him what was happening. “No,” he repeated.
“What?”
“I-I don’t want you like this,” Sirius said, cheek pressed to stone and fingers clutching at the hand beneath his shirt, through the fabric and he was breathing dust and Remus and it wasn’t—but it was and he couldn’t, not really.
Remus put his forehead against Sirius’ shoulder and laughed, just as dry and bitter and humorless as always. Just as hopeless as he always seemed to be since—when he’d let Sirius pull him aside only to say ‘should have known this is what I’d get for trusting you’-- “Of course you don’t,” he said, “who would? But that’s the point isn’t it? The point I’m trying to make to you. Jesus Christ, Merlin and God above, Sirius you don’t understand what it is for me to want you.” He slid one hand down, over Sirius’ erection and it made him jump and arch and gasp and almost come.
“I don’t want you like this,” Sirius said again, even though he did—wanted him so much he couldn’t catch his breath—because Remus, when he was thinking straight, wouldn’t.
“Right,” Remus whispered, soft and just a little worse for wear and his fingers were shaking against Sirius’ skin and bleeding into him. “I knew that.”
He pulled his hands away and oh, Sirius thought and then, oh, because he never got it right on the first try. “Remus,” he said, but Remus was gone when he turned round.
---
He laid on his stomach, on his bed, with his socked feet on his pillow. It was too crisp, too white and clean and he liked the smell of dirt and sweat and the way it lingered on Remus’ skin for days after the wolf and the moon and a night in the forest. He held his chin in his hand and stared just a little blankly at the comic in front of him.
Remus laid down next to him, without taking off his shoes, and said, “You’re sulking.”
“I’m not,” Sirius said, because he wasn’t. He was just… thinking. “I’m not,” he repeated.
He pulled the comic over so he could read it too, even if he found them odd and didn’t care much for them; said he’d rather read books, of course, but Remus was almost always willing to indulge his friends if they asked him just right. “You are,” Remus said, his eyes scanning the colorful pages spread out between them now. “I can always tell.”
Sirius liked the Muggle comics. He liked them because they were still but told a story anyway and because his mother hated them and because his first one had been nicked from the care package one of Remus’ slightly clueless but mostly well meaning Muggle aunt’s had sent him. He ran his fingers over the crease between the pages and said, “There are Wizarding comics you can buy special made to have yourself written in, drawn in like you were meant to be there all along.”
“So who would you be then?” Remus asked. “Who would I be?”
“The hero,” he answered, except not really because he forgot to clarify which one, “of course.” There were some things he always forgot to do.
“Always the hero.” Remus turned his head just a little, looked out the window across from Sirius’ bed. The sun was bright and blinding and it bleached the sky white. He sighed, through his fingers, and didn’t blink until he turned back to Sirius. “Predictable.”
Sirius shrugged, shifted just a little closer because that’s just what he did when it was Remus beside him and they were all alone because James was off doing god-knew-what with Evans and Wormtail was god-knew-where with a bird whose name they didn’t bother to learn. “You,” he said, and then stopped and cleared his throat and tore his eyes away from Remus and the way the sun was reflected in his hair and his eyes and the quick flash of his teeth in his almost, sort of, maybe smile. “You liked predictable yesterday, told me I should try and be, at any rate.”
“I never--”
“You always,” Sirius corrected, and his mouth was dry again and his skin was cold. “Anyway, that’s the thing with comics, isn’t it? They’re predictable. They talk about heroes and villains and love and hate and good and evil, but you always know, in the end, who is going to win when the book closes.”
“They are,” Remus agreed, closing his eyes and folding his arms to rest his chin on them, sounding nothing so much as tired and bored—Sirius remembered the way his voice trembles just a little and gets just that little bit deeper round the edges when the moon is running through his blood like alcohol and he wants, too, then, just as much as Sirius wants all the time, and he knew that he wouldn’t ever really be able to hate the moon the way that Remus always will—“all the same, aren’t they?”
“Basically, when it finishes, it’s the same story told. You know going in what you’re gonna get when it’s over.”
“Lot like life then, way you make it sound.”
“You can’t,” he started, and then stopped to breathe because Remus was grinning and not looking at him so much as looking through him and it was so fucking bitter that it took him by surprise, but Sirius had learned, when it came to Remus, anyway, if not any other time with any other person, to take what he could get. “Thought we agreed that Divination is shit, Remus, that stars and tea and cards can’t tell you what is coming.”
“Stars and tea and cardboard can’t; no, can’t tell you a damn thing except that it isn’t just Muggles who want to know when life will mend itself or love will find them, but Muggles want it enough to fall for the tricks of squibs at carnivals just to get a taste of knowing, so maybe they deserve it more—you think?—or less. But that’s the secret to it, Sirius, the knowing.” Remus shook his head, put his forehead on his bony wrist and sighed. “Take you for instance,” he added, speaking mostly to the wrinkled bedcovers. “I know, without cards or stars or tea leaves, that what you want from me I can’t give you, and eventually you’ll see that as well.”
“Bullshit,” Sirius said, answered, growled from low in his throat or deep in his chest or wherever it was his heart had relocated to, at any rate, that was so hard to find now because the ache had moved to all over and everywhere, whenever he breathed. “Don’t have any bloody problems giving it to Prongs when he crawls into your bed at night, do you? You’re just too much of a coward to admit that--”
“Prongs, has Lily, doesn’t he? It’s not… He doesn’t want to stick round and look at scars and swear to love me ‘til my dying day. He doesn’t want to do anything but get off and then get gone, and you want any number of things, not the least of which appears to be an oath signed in my blood—even if my blood isn’t safe, but that doesn’t matter to you because you pretend not to see—stating who really even knows what.”
“That’s it then?” Sirius whispered, after a moment. “You don’t want me because I still give a fuck what happens to you when morning rolls round?”
“I never--”
“Remus,” he said, growled again. “Be a fucking man for once, would you?”
“I’m not, Sirius, that’s the whole bloody point. I’m not a man, not really, not when it comes down to blood and bones and workings. No man has to—every month like… And you want for me to be too much to ever—It isn’t really me that you want, you just think that you--” Remus sighed, rolled onto his back and they ended up shoulder to shoulder. His eyes fell to the deep red curtains of Sirius’ bed, just to his left. “I never said I didn’t want you, Sirius, have in fact proven time and again just how much that isn’t the case.”
And Sirius knew, suddenly, but he didn’t know. And he wanted, but he didn’t know.
“Why can’t,” Sirius asked, his voice surprisingly steady, “we both be--”
“The problem with comics is they all have the same characters,” Remus interrupted, tapping the edge of a page with his knuckles—the back of his hands and it wasn’t fair, strictly speaking, because Sirius had never been able to not watch the lazy movements of his hands—without looking. “The villain, of course, and the hero is always a given, but then there’s the other one. The one the hero is in love with who never knows who he really is when the sirens scream and there is someone who needs saving.”
“So who are we?”
“You tell me, Padfoot. Tell me, who are you, and tell me, who am I?”
“Always so careful not to get trapped into being a ‘we’ aren’t you?” Sirius sighed, eyes going back to colorful pictures that never changed. And that was the high point of them, wasn’t it, the thing that made them brilliant?
“Who are you and who am I?” Remus asked, again, still not looking at Sirius. He folded his hands on his stomach and Sirius watched, fascinated as he always was, as Remus darted out pink tongue to wet red lips, like he was the one who didn’t understand, who didn’t know, for once, and not Sirius. “The hero or the fool?”
“Who says we’re either?”
“Have to be one or the other, don’t we? Not like you’re going to play the villain.”
Sirius laughed, quiet and just a little bit bitter. “Have before, Moony, isn’t that where your problem really lies?”
“The problem,” he answered, sighing again and wetting his lips with the tip of his tongue again, and it wasn’t fair because Sirius was righteously pissed off—not jealous, though, and he felt that should be stated because Remus seemed to think he was and he wasn’t, but he didn’t know how to bring it up without—and—and Remus did that and all Sirius could really think of was kissing him until he was the one who couldn’t catch his breath, for once, instead of Sirius, “is that I’ve always known the role I’m to play if I gave you… Christ, Sirius, you just want so bloody much.”
“Then you tell me,” Sirius sighed, just the edge of what might be defeat lacing his words. He turned his head and watched Remus’ profile—his nose really was too large and his fingers were too long even if they were breathtaking and tangled in his Gryffindor tie and his eyelids fluttered and his lashes were pale, like dust and shadow across the bones of his cheeks—and wondered and thought he knew but knew he didn’t, “fool and hero, who am I and who are you?”
Remus laughed, like it was funny when it wasn’t and the moon was in the sky and pulling on his bones like cold did an old man’s and his blood was running away from him again. “You should know by now, you’re a smart enough lad when you set your mind to it.”
“Does it,” he asked, leaning up and over until they were chest to chest and Remus’ fingers and tie were caught between them and he could see better now the shadows and hollows of Remus’ face and he couldn’t breathe without breathing Remus but it was mostly alright because he liked it that way, “does it really matter?”
“Yes,” Remus told him, then kissed him, “it matters because I don’t want to--”
“You want.” Sirius blinked opened his eyes and realized he’d closed them. “You want, Remus, you just won’t--”
“You should know by now.”
“I think I do, sometimes, and then you prove me wrong. I thought once that it was-- but it never really was, was it? I mean, not really. You should… you should worry that we’re both going to play the fool this time because you won’t let it be any other way.”
“You can get off me now,” Remus said, flat and mildly polite, as though speaking to a stranger and asking for the time. “We’re through with this, now.”
“Because you say so?” Sirius asked, but moved just the same.
“Because it’s what has to--”
“It doesn’t have to be, you’re just making it this way. There’s a war outside this castle and even if it isn’t ours now it will be when we leave, and you just keep pushing like it would be the greatest tragedy the world has ever seen if you dared to let someone close. It’s closing in and who’s to say that in a few months I’ll still be here to wait and to fucking want you this bloody much. It’s not a pleasant feeling, Remus, to want someone, to fucking love someone who doesn’t want to feel the same; someone who would rather bleed and suffer and live all alone than admit to ever wanting you. Do you know what it is that you want, because you never really seem to anymore.”
Remus was on his feet, shoes dully thudding across the stone floor as he walked across the room—tugging on the sleeves of his shirt to that they covered his bony wrists that always seemed so frail—and he had his back turned to Sirius, and it was straight and narrow in a way that the Marauders had learnt was dangerous, when he said, “Knowing is one thing, Sirius, having is another.”
---
There were, Sirius thought, objectively, any number of things that Remus Lupin knew, but, he thought, that number was nothing compared to the things that Remus didn’t know.
Like, for instance, that he was often completely full of shit.
He was sprawled across the front steps of the castle, carelessly casual and fucking regal—even if he teased and said that was Sirius’ game, it was his, really, always, with Sirius if no other time, it seemed—with his elbows on stone steps and his tie loose and Sirius’ jacket on even though the sleeves were too short and a hole in the knee of his faded Muggle jeans and a smoke in hand.
And he didn’t know—at least, Sirius was almost certain he didn’t and he didn’t tell him because then it would stop, wouldn’t it? Like all things with Remus did when he became aware of them—that the way his fingers curled round his cigarettes always made Sirius stop and watch, because it was beautiful, really, but he didn’t know that either.
“Oi, Padfoot, you big girl,” James said and shoved Sirius, playfully but not, and Lily gave a tipsy-easy laugh, and Peter snorted and coughed and choked on his butterbeer, which was the least he deserved, really, when he said, “Stop mooning over Moony, it isn’t attractive, mate.”
“More attractive than puns,” Lily said, grinning, and Sirius thought that maybe she wasn’t so bad after all.
Remus looked down at them with a cocked eyebrow and a lazy grin that looked like he may have really meant it, and said, “You know, James, you may have finally hit on the reason that it took Lily so long to give into your—well, I hesitated to call them charms but—”
“You think, Remus,” Sirius asked, over Lily laughing into James’ shoulder, “that she would have given into him ages sooner and we would have been spared years of moping and plotting to catch her skirt, had he only not been mooning over you?”
“I thought that we decided to never speak of it again,” James said, all mock dramatic, like it didn’t matter to him that it was the truth and like he hadn’t--
But then Sirius stood, with a bottle of Firewhisky almost slipping from his hand, and climbed the steps until he fucking tripped over Peter and ending up half sprawled across Remus. “Well,” he said, “hello there.” And kissed him.
“That,” he heard Lily say—with an odd amount of fondness—through the haze of Remus and smoke and alcohol and Remus pushing him away, “is our cue to get lost, I think.”
Remus flicked his cigarette, like nothing had just happened and like nothing could fucking touch him, no, not him, not ever, because that would mean having to be something approaching honest with himself and then with someone else, even, maybe.
“Coward,” Sirius said, and smiled and sat back down on the steps below and watched Remus and listened to Peter skitter away like a frightened rodent, which wasn’t, of course, that far from the truth of the thing, most times.
He didn’t realize, until Remus tipped his head back and took a long swallow—thin, red lips wrapped round the mouth of the bottle and long, thin fingers wrapped round the neck of the bottle and Sirius was, naturally, unbelievably jealous and achingly hard and possibly, very, very drunk—that he’d lost possession of the alcohol.
“Fool,” Remus countered, except that by then Sirius had lost the thread of the conversation and was instead plotting how difficult it would be to convince Remus to-- “We’re leaving tomorrow, you know, just means that--”
“Everything changes, doesn’t it?”
“—that we leave tomorrow, doesn’t mean I’m gonna fuck you as a last hurrah for our time at Hogwarts.”
“Disappointing,” Sirius said, or thought, or thought he said; he was watching Remus tip his head back to look at the moon and then close his eyes against it, and Remus was the one with the unhealthy fondness of words anyway, Sirius thought there were better things to do with your mouth, especially when one had a mouth like Remus’ to play with, all pretty and red and mean and made to play, really, even if only with words.
And in his head the word fool was playing, too, dancing round and singing songs and reminding him of things that-- “Am I, then?”
“Disappointing?”
It was, naturally, typical of Remus to not bother trying to understand, or to pretend he didn’t understand, for whatever reason. “The fool, Remus,” he said, careful not to slur his words. “Am I the fool?”
“If you think that--”
“Shut up, now,” he said, because that was his line, or at least, he thought it was. “Moony--”
“The thing of it is, Padfoot, I know what I am and I know who I am and—there are things that… I know the role I’m set to play.”
“Tell me,” Sirius said, maybe just a little irrationally and maybe not any at all, but he said it just the same and didn’t stop to think as he turned and stood on his knees and stole back the firewhiskey.
Remus sighed, and reaching into his—into Sirius’ jacket pocket—and pulled out his pack of fags, he shook one free and tossed the pack to Sirius, but Sirius was, of course, too drunk and too busy being struck dumb by the site of his fingers curling round the smoke to catch it. Remus laughed and twirled it in his fingers like he knew, but he didn’t, he couldn’t, because then he wouldn’t, and Sirius almost wanted him to know, because something shouted that, that, at least, would be easier.
“Tell me,” Sirius repeated, “who are you and who am I?”
“I’m easy, Sirius--” Sirius snorted and Remus rolled his eyes and they both knew that he was anything but. “--the moon is just a satellite, after all.”
The moon was shining down, not heavy enough in the sky to matter, but heavy enough to—Remus was looking at him for the first time in ages, it seemed, and the light from the moon and the torches from the castle caught on his hair, shimmering and winking and almost being, but not-- his hair all sun-kissed honey gold and his eyes bright and questioning and not—
He lit his smoke with a Muggle lighter he’d nicked from James, and his fingers were sort of, almost, maybe trembling, and it wasn’t—well, it was, obviously, but it wasn’t—because Remus always moved with slow liquid grace because he’d been a master of his body when he had control for all of time or at least since he’d had to protect himself against the times he didn’t and wasn’t and Sirius thought, no, and then he thought, no.
And he said, “No.”
Remus cocked an eyebrow again, all vaguely, darkly, politely amused like-- but Sirius wasn’t a stranger, no matter how much he wished sometimes and he knew, even when he didn’t, the way that Remus moved, because his eyes always followed and his fingers always itched to do the same. And the wry smile on his face pulled, twisted scars that Sirius knew the taste of too well to ever just forget.
He saw it coming—he had, of course, learnt some lessons, though clearly not nearly all of them—so Sirius leaned forward and kissed him, sloppy and too wet and they were better at it, of course, but not just then because-- Well, Sirius thought and then, well, and then, fuck, he thought, because Remus had shoved him away again but not before he could taste the desperation under the hot, whisky, Remus flavor of his tongue.
Still holding his forgotten cigarette between two fingers, Remus pressed the pad of his thumb to his wet bottom lip, and Sirius wondered, not then, but later, whether it was to wipe away the kiss or press it deeper, and then he stopped wondering because he was afraid he knew.
“I’m sorry,” he said, suddenly, without realizing he was going to—only realizing after that he was, really, he just didn’t—and so he repeated it, “I’m sorry.”
“You aren’t,” Remus said, scoffed and grinned and shook his head just a little but didn’t dislodge his hand until he had to flick away his cigarette. “You never are.”
“I am now.”
“If you are it’s probably not for the reasons you should be,” he said, decided like that was just that and there was nothing else to it.
“No,” Sirius agreed, not even as reluctantly as he should have because it was true, at least to Remus, because he was never sorry for the things that Remus thought mattered the most and would probably never go back and change—well, there was the-- “probably not.”
Remus laughed, until it almost sounded like he meant it and like he thought there was something funny about this and it wasn’t, but Sirius would pretend because-- Well, Sirius thought, and then, fuck, because saying and knowing are different, sometimes, than knowing, because sometimes it hits you in the chest and steals your breath and your heartbeat and it isn’t all that it’s made out to be, this kind of knowing.
Because sometimes, the firelight catches and highlights his hair and the moon shines in his eyes and his mouth is red and wet from your mouth and his eyes flutter, shudder closed against one thing or another and he’s parchment pale and lit from above and behind and you remember the numbers they put under his skin and you wonder if the desperation you were tasting wasn’t really your own all along. And it hits you, then, and knowing it, in that way that won’t let you breath, is painful like nothing else before it.
“Fuck,” Remus said, hissed, “oh, fuck, Padfoot, I’m sorry,” he said, because he knew too, but he didn’t know, not really.
Remus brushed his fingertips down Sirius’ cheek, across his bottom lip and over his jaw, and he buried his fingers in Sirius’ hair and kissed him, this time, like he’d never really done it before because this time the point had already been made.
The slick, slip slide of mouth against mouth, and Sirius was the one to break it because it felt like… and well, he’d never been good at endings, not really.
And Remus pulled back too, trailing fingers, that felt like nothing so much as anger and losing and bone, over his skin until they were back on the stone steps, and the moon bled sliver, a reflection of the sun, down on them and it burned, just a little.
Sirius laughed, and it only sounded a little bitter and a little broken and fuck that was just to his own ears and Remus had always-- “It isn’t,” he said, “you that’s the satellite, here.”
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Sirius, gaaah. His feelings of warmth or coldness all depending on Remus... The satellite line, I loved all of it. I have this strange feeling I've suddenly become your Sirius, and I can no longer finish a sentence without giving in to the need to interrupt my already rambling thoughts and just utter fuck; so it's probably for the best if I just stop now. :D
Also, I have to know, why exactly did you call it "Cowboys and Clowns"?
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You mean that isn't normal? ;)
heh Thank you! Again, thrilled the dialogue worked because that's the thing I am always most afraid of doing, and tend to think I do the worst.
As for the title. Well. heh. Ok, I was stressing about getting it done and listening to the Counting Crows 'Goodnight Elisabeth' which has the line "we couldn't all be cowboys/ some of us are clowns" which somehow, in my head, lead to the hero or fool conversation and it just sort of... grew from there. Plus I couldn't think of anything better on short notice. lol