i've got all the broken dreams i can buy

romanculus_ex — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 23:03:55 GMT

Title: It was the carpet.
Pairing: Sam/Dean.
Summary: Sam's visions lately have been most odd. Especially the ones involving Dean.

He was perched on the edge of the bed - dirty white sheets folded in all the wrong places, rubbing against the back of his knees as they pressed tight against one another. On the edge of the bed with the door half open - and Dean taking careful steps towards him. He could almost count them in his head, short and sharp, like the breaths gathering behind his chest onetwothree - pause - fivesix-onetwothree.

His hands were shaking in his lap, sliding down over his jeans to grip the duvet hastily and he didn't really understand the sharp hitch in his throat.

They stopped either side of his own though. Dean's feet. Dark grey socks with a hole between the toes.

He didn't notice things like that though.
Nothing but the way Dean let "Sammy" fall from his lips, pushing against his neck as he leaned over. Irrationally, right then, he wanted to feel Dean's tongue swiping up just behind his ear. He wanted to hear shallow breathing and mumbled sighs and barely suppressed moans.

He nearly jumped when fingers squeezed his knee but he let himself move backwards on the bed, let Dean follow him until their chests were pressed close enough for their hearts to beat in and out of rythmn. He felt racing and stopping and pounding and he thought it may be his own until Dean sighed softly, leaving a trail of thick saliva as he pulled away from his neck.

{"Wherearewe?" Sam asked groggily, stretching as the car pulled to a stop and glancing across at Dean.

"Delaware. Go back to sleep, nothing to miss here."

He smiled.}

His shirt was hooked around one shoulder, Dean's fingers sprawled over his chest and they were almostnotquitekissing. His lips, damp, pressing up fervently and Dean's never quite pressing back down in the right places.

But he had a hand hastily tugging at his belt. At his zipper.
All he could think of were the off-centre curtains and what should-be moonlight.

Midday. It was midday.

His arms latched around Dean's hips and pulled him closer. Until there was no space for breathing.
Until there was no space to think of anything but him.

{"Did you spend all that time I was in college, I dunno, looking up songs that might fit in with every single demon, ever?"

"I checked out some of your indie crap too. Not impressed, man, not impressed."

Sam laughed as 'Voodoo' faded into the background, the engine purring to the sound of heavy guitars.}

Deans head was between his legs, his fingers fisting strands of his hair and the carpet faded into green diamonds as it disappeared into the hall.

There was a lamp in the corner that didn't work and he imagined, right then, groaning, what their shadows might look like merging on the wall.

Dean raked blunt nails down over the top of his thigh and he was blind to anything else.

{"This all feels a bit too Harry Potter for me."

Sam stared incredulously, "You read?"

"Emma Watson, you know? She's smokin'"}

Sam's head ached by the time they pulled into the parking lot, rubbing at his temples, the front doors of the motel covered in peeling paint.

Dean glanced across at him, frowning.

"You okay?"

Sam grit his teeth.

{Green diamond carpet, two pairs of bare feet and Dean pressing him against the wall.

"Yeah, yeah, fine. Better hurry up."

"Dude, it's only eleven."

The minute Sam stepped inside, he almost froze. Staring at the pattern trailing along the floor and disappearing into the hall.

He bit his lip. Glanced at Dean, at 'M.Suvrelez', and smirked to himself.

"Sammy?"

('earlier, in the car, i had this vision...')

He didn't close the door behind him.

romanculus_ex — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 15:47:17 GMT

Title: All around me (part 3)
Pairing: Remus/Sirius.
Summary: AU. Remus owns a bookstore just outside of town. It's small, it's quaint - and horribly English. Every Wednesday he gets the strangest of customers.

It was well past closing time when Remus finally got to sit down, collapsing back into his chair with the embroidered cushion and almost smiling. Barnes immediately jumped onto his lap and started digging her claws into his thigh just barely enough for him to know she wanted attention.

"It's been quite a day." he said to her softly, rustling the fur behind her ears as she rubbed up against him, purring.

James, it seemed, most definitely wasn't the 'book' type. He'd spent half an hour (at the very least) trying rather inarticulately to explain to Remus exactly what he was looking for. And even then, Remus didn't think he really had a clue.

"My friend --" he'd rubbed the back of his neck and looked about embarrassed, "--he likes all this weird shit. I mean stuff. This weird stuff. And it's his birthday."

Remus just nodded mutely and leaned back on his heels.

"It's for my girlfriend, really." James spluttered then and looked down at the floor, "...I'm really not used to book shops."

"How about you just tell me what it is you want, and I'll see if I have it, no questions, no awkward situations. Sound good?"

James let out a sigh of relief and they both laughed.

There was a trail of wet, muddy footprints from the door to the rug by which James was standing and his jeans were pulled taut in all the wrong places. His shirt collar looked completely windswept and he was like a hurricane, Remus thought to himself, only more volatile and (kind of) less destructive.

He walked over to the counter, following Remus, a loose lace trailing in his wake as he helped himself to a couple of the biscuits. Stuffing them into his mouth and chewing.

"You have a girlfriend?" he asked around a mouthful before swallowing hard and asking again.

Remus shook his head and walked over to where Barnes was asleep, leaning back, his arms folded across his chest, fidgeting with his sleeves. "No, no. It's - just me."

"Right." James nodded, "See, I'm looking for a book about making - things. For people."

He most definitely was intriguing.

"Knitting? Woodwork? Chemistry?"

He half wanted to laugh.

"Fuck off." but it was lighthearted and James shook his head, a pale flush spreading across his cheeks, "I was thinking more. Making things. In an oven..like...area. Yes."

Remus looked incredulous.

"You want to learn to bake?"

"Great, make me sound like a pansy, why don't you?"

Two hours later, he'd managed to set James off with three books. One a beginners guide to cookery and two on the finer side of pastries. After they'd shared a pot of tea and rummaged around a bit for books in the backroom, Remus had learnt of a girl. They worked together apparently, James and her, she was in the same department and they'd trained together. "My girlfriend." he'd been told and he grinned.

Apparently cooking impressed her.

Remus thought it was cute, though had odd allusions to Bridget Jones in his head.

"Good Luck!" he called as James headed for the door.

It wasn't until he heard him muttering under his breath about flower stores that Remus knew he'd be back.

--

He had a routine for everything really, most of it developed through habit more than anything. When he got home on a night he would pour himself a glass of milk and heat it up in the microwave, shower and change into a pair of loose pyjama pants before sitting down to drink it on the sofa.

On the nights he was late, he would make sandwiches with just the right amount of mixed jam in the middle. On the nights he wasn't, it'd be tuna casserole or soup.

At 10:02 Remus would tuck himself into bed and Barnes would curl up by his shoulder.

He'd read the obituaries in the newspaper and skim past the star signs before turning out the lights and lying awake, staring up at the ceiling until 10:37, when he promptly fell asleep.

--

On Friday, Remus got a phonecall. Whilst this wasn't that unusual in itself, it being from his mother made it so. He lowered his voice and excused himself from the young couple out front, speaking in hushed tones and disappearing into the back.

"I met a lovely lady the other day -" she started and Remus almost groaned, almost hung up but he flipped the switch to boil the kettle instead and rested back against the table. Half watching out at the store. Half not paying attention to anything.

Her name was Marie. She was half his age and a student.

Remus was about to protest when the next line cut him short.

"Her father and I are going out Saturday evening. Are you okay with that?"

--

"My mother is dating and I'm not." he groaned to Barnes that afternoon, "Something is completely wrong with this picture."

She just miaowed softly and rubbed her wet nose against his face but, under her breath (if she could speak), Remus was sure she called him a loser. Affectionately, all the same, but still.

He frowned and spent the rest of the day putting books about sex into alphabetical order to make himself feel better.

Sadly, it didn't do anything but make him think of his mother and 'sex' in the same sentence.
Which he had, naturally, avoided for the duration of his life.

"Until now -" he muttered, "Great. Just great."

--

He spent the weekend between places. Half of the time at his store trying not to think about anything, the rest watching a show on the discovery channel about whales beaching themselves along the coast, abroad.

Emily called in Saturday morning and made him a cup of herbal tea, against his wishes.

He sighed and inhaled the fruity scent whilst the pleasant burning spread up his finger tips and into his hands.

"Now what's wrong, dear?" she asked and he paused. Stuck on his words.

"My mother acts more my age than I do." he answered eventually and she just smiled, the wrinkles across her face twisting up with her thinning red lips.

"Of course she does -" and Remus looked at her with surprise and she looked right back, firmly, " - of course she does, she's old. It's what we do. Spend half our life living it and the other half re-enacting it."

He thought of his father then and bit his lip.

"Yeah." he shrugged, "Yeah. I guess you're right."

--

James didn't come by that Wednesday and Remus wasn't still moping, really, he wasn't. He hadn't answered his phone since before the weekend but he was letting himself fall in love all over again with some of the classics he found on a top shelf, buried away.

A short man with wide shoulders and blonde hair stumbled in cheerily just after one though, and placed a collection of books on the counter.

"You do trade in?" he asked and Remus nodded, "Good. Anything that won't destroy my kitchen?"

And that's when he met Peter ('Looking good dead').
If anything, he thought, right then - James really should be Claire in his head.
Natural disasters.
He smirked to himself and offered over the plate of biscuits which Peter pawed at greedily before showing him a flashy, white grin.

romanculus_ex — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 23:22:24 GMT

Title: All around me (part 2)
Pairing: Remus/Sirius.
Summary: AU. Remus owns a bookstore just outside of town. It's small, it's quaint - and horribly English. Every Wednesday he gets the strangest of customers.

Remus's favourite season had always been winter, ever since he'd rolled around in baggy jeans and no gloves up on the fields as a child. His fingers numb, his feet aching but he'd laughed and laughed until his throat started to dry up and he threw himself down the bank - tumbling into a giant snowball.

Even as an adult, he never wore gloves in winter. He had a wardrobe full of them (sent by his mother) wool and cotton and plaid - but they were for autumn weather with damp leaves and strong winds and rain.

He never wore them in winter because it never felt as real and biting and chaotic.

Once the beginning of December hit and the bad weather with it, the hours seemed to drag by. After midday, of course, because nobody wanted to be stranded or come up with the possibility of public transport shutting off.

He'd pull thick jumpers around then, knit in ridiculous patterns of deer and sheep and chimneys, snuggling into their wide collars as he sat in the back of the store with hot chocolate.

He spent those days doing stockchecks or looking up books he felt he ought to have read.

He always still went to work. Sometimes flipping the 'open' sign to sit staring at the empty floor. But he didn't mind all that much.

Winter was still the best.

It gave him time to himself, to think - and nothing could really ever beat watching the umbrellas flying past outside or seeing the first snow reflected in the high streetlights, settling delicately on the pavement.

--

"Merry Christmas, honey!" his Aunt crooned cheerfully as she handed over two brightly coloured parcels before turning to his mother and stretching her grin even further across her ruby-cracked lips, pulling her into a hug, "Oh, and you too!"

Remus ran a hand over the greens and the reds and the silvers, curling his thumb around the ribbon and pulling on it self-consciously as he sat on the edge of the sofa.

"You still doing that book thing?" his uncle asked awkwardly from the doorway and he nodded, mutely.

There was a silence then. Not the kind like way back when, his mother telling him in hushed tones that his father was a very busy man and he wouldn't be back until the New Year. Not like the kind when his cousin had voiced his intent to move in with his married lover. It was tense, but not the hurtful kind where secrets bulged behind pressed lips or tight eyes.

"Good for you." his uncle smiled after looking him up and down then sharing a glance with his wife and Remus's mother, "Good for you, son."

Remus's hands tightened nervously around the gifts, shaking, staring as the tape ripped right down the middle. But he looked up, unashamed, and laughed. Laughed until it wasn't awkward anymore.

--

A week before spring kicked in, Remus met a girl.
A week before spring kicked in, Remus fell in love.

Only not really.

"What do you think of Hemingway?" she'd asked, pushing her way to the counter and slamming a stack of books down. Remus seperated them into two piles so they didn't obscure her face and he shrugged as he keyed them into the till.

"He was very ahead of his time. I'm still not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing."

"Men without women?" she smirked and he could see then that her eyes matched her scarf and he almost blushed. Instead, he looked down, studying the twisted spine of one of the books almost too carefully.

"The lost generation. And that's seventeen pounds fifty. Good material."

There was a pause and Remus pretended he wasn't studying the way her lips curved around ghost words from the corner of his eye. She tucked a strand of thick red hair behind her ear and rubbed her hands together.

"In modern war you will die like a dog for no reason."

She handed over a couple of loose notes and Remus smiled to himself.

"There is no hunting like the hunting of man." he stuttered as she turned to leave.

They dated for two months.

She didn't break his heart, but she broke her own.

Hours later, she sat in a motel room in Switzerland and wrote him letter after letter that she knew she'd never send.

Hours later, he bought his first ever walkman - second hand, and sat down amongst the shelves in the dark listening to Morrissey.

There were always imprints.

--

Two days before his twenty seventh birthday, Remus bought a cat.
It was dark ginger with thin white stripes over it's back and blonde paws.

His mother had been allergic for as long as he could remember, which was one bonus, he thought.

When we walked into his apartment, late at night, after work, it ran towards the door and followed him around making soft mews as it tried to climb up his leg.

Pushing himself back into the sofa, it climbed and lay nestled between his shoulder and his neck.

Remus decided, after three days, to name it Barnes, after her.
Hemingway was always hers now.

It made him feel less loney, curled up in bed with the rain crashing against the windows (spilling into the buckets lazily). Gentle purring in his ear in the dark.

It was like growing up.

--

It was April 17th when Remus was sitting in his store, Wednesday, his left hand flipping pages and adjusting his reading glasses whilst his right rubbed up and down Barnes's back as she sat beside him, her front paw in her mouth - behind her ears.

He'd taken to letting her accompany him to work when the old lady in the apartment opposite his had commented on how lovely she was and how, sometimes, she heard sad little miaows ducking under the door during the daytime.

Remus had given her extra treats and cuddles that night before tucking her safely in his bag the next morning and she'd followed him ever since.

He made a mug of tea for himself and shared the milk, a rose-patterned saucer on the side from a customer who had grown quite attatched to her - though, in all fairness, there hadn't really been one who didn't seem to love her.

Emily broke off pieces of chicken from her shopping bag on a Friday. Sometimes fish, but that was only ever when she was having her daughter over for Sunday lunch. She preferred fish, Remus had been told, and he smiled.

Barnes wasn't really all that picky though it was obvious she relished in the attention. New smells, new people, new hands digging against her fur.

Remus had to say he liked it too, it was a conversation started so it seemed, she was a conversation starter.

In a matter of weeks he'd learned not only about Emily's daughter but also that she had a grandson who was going off to University in the fall to study Literature and all of the books she purchased she eventually passed on to him.

He learnt that Jack used to be an Engineer until his back gave out and now he ran his own webpage specialising in trading car parts.

Geoff was around the same age as him and worked as a schoolteacher. He'd lost his virginity to his brother's ex-girlfriend and they hadn't spoken since. He had one kid with a woman up in Scotland who he never saw, her terms, not his. But he wrote twice a year.

Charlotte was an aspiring novelist with a young daughter, she'd got pregnant at sixteen and her brother had diverted their parents anger by announcing at the same time that he was gay and had been shagging his best friend. She'd based the main character on him, but she'd never tell him. They didn't tend to throw 'I love you' around a lot.

It was captivating and heartbreaking and Remus sometimes set biscuits out on the counter after that. Just ginger snaps and oatmeal cookies. The best ones he kept in the back room for emergencies.

It was April 17th and Remus was flipping through an ancient copy of a J.M.Barrie novel when the chimes above the door went off and he glanced up at an awkward young man in a black jacket and thick boots - looking terribly out of place.

Of course he recognised him, of course, but he nodded in greeting and went back to reading.

He heard a tumble of books a little while later and almost stood up to go help.

It's only when he heard the cursing that he gave a half-laugh and sauntered over, glancing down at the crouched position of the young man with fallen books all around him.

"May I help?" Remus asked, shaking his head, "It seems like you're having a little trouble there."

"Me and bookstores don't exactly have a great relationship. 'sides, I'm looking for something for my idiot of a friend. This is sort of embarassing."

He looked up then, thick black glasses framing an angular face with a mess of dark hair.

"James Potter." he said as he stretched, standing and scrunching up his face at the shelves, "And do these come in sizes or what?"

romanculus_ex — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 15:54:51 GMT

Title: All around me (part 1)
Pairing: Remus/Sirius.
Summary: AU. Remus owns a bookstore just outside of town. It's small, it's quaint - and horribly English. Every Wednesday he gets the strangest of customers.

well you know everytime i look at that expression printed on the page, i think i hear you

It was nothing like the centre of the universe, but sometimes Remus liked to pretend. Tying his laces together on a morning, sitting on the edge of his bed, before untangling them and smiling to himself as he catches his reflection in the mirror. Heading into the kitchen, draping his jacket over one shoulder as he stirs up two cups of tea. Drinking the second after watching the first go missing somewhere between the bathroom and the study. Three paces out of the door, rushing back for his keys and missing the second step on the stairs with a low hum. Bypassing the mail and taking the park route, right before dawn.

At twenty-six, he definitely knows better. But at twenty-six, he's young enough to not really care.

--

It's routine, really, he thinks to himself as the chimes above the door blow in the breeze. Dolphin shaped, stars, and completely not fitting at all. Watching his spoon drag waves as he pours milk into a mug and glances up.

At eight am, he's already surrounded in pages of other peoples stories. Magic and fantasy and how to teach yourself croquet. The psychology of love and he smiles to himself, highlighting passages and handwriting notes and sticking smiley faces, on white (in ink), right on the spines.

Only seven books in the entire store have frowning faces in red biro. Seven books he spent his summer on when he was fifteen and he'd prefer to keep them to himself.

His first customer is at half past eleven and his nose is buried happily in an old Shakespeare anthology, magnifying the side notes and biting down on his bottom lip. He sells two copies of The old man and the sea and three of A better guide to hugging.

He drinks camomile tea with a spoonful of honey over lunch and nods at the group of teenagers heading to the back to laugh over the erotic literature and point out words like 'erect' and 'throbbing' before shoving each other as they leave.

His regulars call in late afternoon. He knows none of their names but in his head recognises them by their books.

An old woman wearing a checkered headscarf with tufts of silver curls hanging down at the front. A pair of sharp glasses and a cane. He calls her Emily even though she collects her backorders under the name Margaret. Remus thinks Emily is more fitting.

The first book she ever purchased from his was The Bronte Myth by Lucasta Miller. And he's called her it ever since.

Of course, there are the others too. Jack ('Big Sur'), Geoff ('The house of fame'), Charlotte ('The Professor').
And Remus's eyes light up horrendously whenever he hears them rummaging around at the back of the shelves.

At sixteen, he'd often visited the place himself. Never imagining, back then of course, that it would come to mean anything like it does. He always figured he would leave school, get a degree in something or go into training with his father. For his father.

He was most definitely happier, but climbing on a set of rickety stepladders to dust down the very top shelves was far from what he'd expected of himself.

--

He got to read all the new editions, first editions, best editions before anybody else, though. It was one of the few pleasures he enjoyed. And one of the many reasons he hadn't given up, even as the customers became less and less.

It was much too easy for him to lose himself in a small string of words.
He had a store full of them.

--

On Wednesday's, right before closing, there was always a man. He'd been curious at first, a dark winter jacket and heavy boots loitering outside. He thought it was a one off. He was quite used to that, people unsure as to whether they wanted to go inside. People wanting to take photographs. But there was a pattern. Every Wednesday, this man, for almost two months, at precisely 4:57 in the afternoon. He would be there.

Just as Remus was turning the sign to closed and dimming the lights, he would take a few steps towards the door before turning around and leaving.

Remus was quite fond of watching the way he walked into the distance, quoting poetry in his head, searching for lines that would fit it perfectly. But nothing was ever enough.

It was like sewing disastrous stories together and making them beautiful.

It was a bit of mystery for him, and he lived for it.

--

His mother always wanted him to be a doctor. A veterinarian. He almost agreed until he got attacked by dogs the week before his fifth birthday.

On his Twenty-fourth, she hand-wrapped a medical journal and told him it was never too late.

Remus just smiled and said he had to get to work.

He opened the store, for the first time, at ten pm then.

He was completely exhausted and falling asleep over smudging ink by morning came, but it was quite possibly the most liberating experience of his life.

A young girl with a ponytail and brown knee-highs bought the book for seven pounds.
He wished her good luck, holding the door open for her as she stuffed it haphazardly into her backpack and walked away.

He whistled to himself cheerfully, swinging a dirty cloth in his left hand, and went back to work.

okay, so i know it's short but i'm not sure if it's worth continuing so i would love opinions please? :)

romanculus_ex — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 02:11:57 GMT

Title: Everywhere and inbetween.
Pairing: Sam/Dean. Sort of.
Summary: Dean really can't stand the quiet.

you are the noise in here i cannot sleep without♥

Dean couldn't really stand the quiet - it's the reason he blasted the stereo so high on long drives, windows down, angry music following carefully behind. When he was a kid, sometimes, he'd hum to himself. Before he discovered the wonders of death metal and a walkman. Hitch the curtains open in his room, let the chaotic lull of the city calm him down - until the day his dad stormed in, slamming his fists against the sil and yelling how he could have let 'anything' in.

To most kids, that would have meant burglars or bugs or the cold on your little brother's sore chest.

To Dean, it literally meant anything.

There were no stories of the sandman, to him, they were all true. Blinding kids, blinding them until they couldn't stay awake long enough to remember to breathe.

When it was quiet, when it was silent, he could hear them all in his head. The heavy breathing, the static of manic grins.

Drowning it out, he could pretend some of it didn't exist and feel pretty okay about it.
He had nightmares about vampires when he was eleven. Instead of telling him it was just stupid, an overactive imagination, his dad had drawn him clan charts and made him sleep with the lamp on.

When he was eleven, he had learnt that the silence was to be feared just as much as the dark. His dad had told him, shown him what was out there.

For years it had been Metallica (his dad always disapproved), Black Sabbath and the occasional old grunge remix. When he couldn't sleep.
For years it worked.
Until Sam.

Punctuated sentences, arguments, haphazard snoring and feet pressing against the floor in the middle of the night.
Idle conversation. Everything.

Gradually, the music faded delicately into their daily clutter.
And Sam became the noise instead.

Like it was always meant to be.

Title: A foreign language.
Pairing: Sam/Dean. Ish.
Summary: Dean likes women. Really. He does.

Dean liked women. It was kind of a well known fact to pretty much everyone. Tall, short, blonde, brunette - he wasn't exactly picky. So long as they matched up to his standards of "hot" he'd give them the once over, then the twice over and grin. Just tilting his head ever so slightly to the left when he approved. Dean liked women. And Dean liked sex. With women.

Occasionally, one managed to hold onto him for a little while longer than just a quick fuck. A week, two at the most. And it was always good between them.

Dean had really liked Marie. And Sandra, the red-head from up North with the killer thighs. Laurie had come after that (quite literally) and he would never forget Danielle.

His eyes would wander, sitting in the bar with his brother, darting rapidly from his beer to a pair of double-d's across the room. He'd be subtle, walking past her on the way to the bathroom. But she (the collective 'she' of course) never was. And there would be kissing (he really liked that part) before the inevitable. Smooth skin and dimples and freckles and lovebites. Nipping at the hollow of the throat, biting at the tip of the ear, the stomach, the breasts.

Mostly, they all had green eyes. Bright green eyes that rolled back in their head when they screamed. Sharp green eyes that looked at him in all the wrong ways.

Yeah, Dean liked women - but he liked Sam more.

romanculus_ex — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 23:31:06 GMT

Title: Dying to get to you.
Pairing: A little bit Sam/Dean if you squint.
Summary: Somwhere along the west coast it all goes wrong - but they miss each other more than they think they would. Dean decides to do something about it.

They were just off the west coast, midnight, when it really started. The radio turning static and Dean cussing it all to hell. The storms, of course. Nothing like some of the ones they'd seen but the rain and the thunder, rolling across the sky and smashing like fists into the hood of the car as they pulled over about twenty yards short of a decent motel.

It was barely even a lay-by really. Barely even anything but a slip of road not bustling with people too much in a hurry to get anywhere. It was dark, they were tired. Dean's eyes ached in all the wrong places and even the dimly flickering lights painted behind his lids meant another half hour drive at least. Sunday. It was Sunday, he thought, maybe. Full of nothing but silence and scenery. So they pressed themselves back into their seats and let out a collective breath. It had been days since they'd been able to feel that sense of relief nudging up their spines. Days.

And there - here - out in the middle of fuck-knows-where -- Sam leaned forward, resting his hands on the dash and Dean glanced across at him warily.

But there was nothing. A snide under-the-breath remark about Metallica before the silence caused him to grit his teeth and slam his fists against the wheel.

"God'dammit Sammy -"

"I can't do this anymore, Dean. I want to go home."

--

Somewhere between Michigan and Illinois Dean started to miss him.
But he just snorted to himself, looked out the window and flipped the cassette tape.
Singing along like it didn't even matter.

Somewhere between a backpack full of scribbled notes and the voicemail on his cell, Sam started to miss him too.

--

Two weeks and it was starting to feel a little like abandonment. Only with seperate heartbeats.

"Fucks'sake" Dean muttered to himself, lying staring up at the ceiling with the duvets slumped around his hips, "It's not like he's even a big deal."

--

Sam held his breath, trying to remain as still as he could as he waited for Dean to pick up - the dialtone pushing his lips together firmly until his bottom teeth were jutted against the skin.

Three seconds in - he paused - and hung up.

Right before hitting redial.

--

Five missed calls.

"This is stupid --" Dean hissed under his breath, speeding down the highway at four in the morning with no music. His own breathing fogging up the windows and his wiper blades wearing out the glass. But it was. Really. It was completely stupid. And he didn't even know why he was doing it. Except that it was because it was Sam.

Nobody else could truly inspire him to be such an idiot.

His eyes were dragging heavy with sleep and his mind kept drifting. He'd had four cups of coffee by midway point and his head was pounding quite inarticulately.

Too much for Metallica to calm him down. Not enough for Black Sabbath.

--

8:49am and Sam pulled open the door with a guarded look on his face.
Messy hair, unshaven. Dressed in an old shirt and boxers.

He kind of hoped it was the mailman.

--

"Dean --" he stared, blinking and rubbing a fist against his eye sleepily. He paused, opening his mouth and shifting to lean against the wall.
"What are you--" he started and Dean just shrugged as if that explained it all.

"I drove all night to get to you --" he said to his shoes (which Sam was pretty sure meant it was really to him). He looked up. They both looked up. " -- is that alright?"

It should have been awkward. It was awkward. But they were as much of a mess as each other.

Sam tilted his head to the side and his eyes creased up into his brows as he smiled.

"I think it is."

--

(He was definitely glad it wasn't the mailman.)

romanculus_ex — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 00:18:13 GMT

Title: The man who fell in love with the moon.
Pairing: Remus/Sirius.
Summary: He supposed he did fall in love with it a little bit. With that part of him. But only when he fell in love with Sirius. And he'd never tell. On both accounts.

It was all fragmented now, but Remus still remembered the last time he looked up into the night sky and felt nothing. A slight chill digging into his neck between the fibres of a thick woolen scarf and a sort of childish awe that he would have grown out of anyway. But, as he stared up blindly into the fading stars and dim glow of the moon spiralling around itself like coffee cup stains - his father holding onto him tightly. Nothing. Nothing at all.
But that's how it always started.

Dark and grainy like an old muggle movie looping through the best bits.

The runny nose, rubbed red from the November air. The long sleeves catching sneezes. And the smell of his mother's perfume against his face.

The same lines that never seemed to fit together in a sentence.

Moving lips and the dew soaked grass, crunching under loose laces and a hole in the bottom of his shoe. Tilted until his socks grew damp, just on the left, just enough to entice a child to keep doing it.

And his mother's brisk smile when she hugged him tight.

"What did you see?" but he couldn't recall if she asked that before or after he'd returned with his father to a cup of steaming hot cocoa and an open fire.

{"It was like being blind -" but he was older then, a lot older, staring fixatedly at the grey hairs gathered around the front of her curling fringe. And she nodded. }

"And every star was a gap - light piercing through. Glimpses, you know?"

"What did you see?" but no, he'd only been young. Rosy cheeks, a kiss on the forehead.
"There was a squirrel!" he grinned brightly and she ruffled his hair.
"What about in the sky?"
And Remus's five-year-old brows knit together in the middle.
"I don't think squirrels can climb that high."

Somewhere, it all fit together - semantics be damned. A running order that he liked to believe when he flipped through astronomy charts and dotted in white on a dark background. Pencil first. Ink. With red drapes closing him in.

Half-eaten biscuits left idly on the kitchen table - the old one with the broken leg.
Browning around the edges and crumbs lining the edge of the plate. Right next to three empty glasses. And he could hear the angry voices from the next room.

["It has nothing to do with you!" "It has everything to do with me - I'm his mother!" "You may be, but you're just a muggle. I have to protect you both --" "Excuse me, just a muggle?" "Don't you start aswell --"]

At eight, he wondered if they even remembered it was his birthday.
Or anything else, for that matter.
He doesn't think he had a cake. But he remembers the ends of his fingers grimy with dust.
Maybe he drew one.
Or he just wishes he did.

Sirius told him, when they all found out, that he thought it was "bloody brilliant" - all arched eyebrows and a lopsided smile.
"Don't half wish I had something like that. You know. Werewolf. Reckon them lot might stay away from me then. Once a month at least."
Remus didn't even have to ask who "them lot" were. It was in Sirius's eyes like static, barely passing between them. But everpresent.
"I think -" Remus grimaced, " - that they'd be more likely to disassociate themselves from you".
He didn't expect the large, hopeful grin or the bouncing on the souls of his boots.
Sirius wrung his hands together tightly.
"Oh goody. Bite me, Remus. Go on. Please."

He walked off.
Shoulders hunched. Eyes half closed.

Sirius's lips closed into a pout and he shrugged before heading back down the corridor.

It felt a lot like love, sometimes, staring wistfully out of windows as the familiar tightening in his stomach caused his teeth to clench. His mind was already working at twice it's usual pace and it wasn't like an internal battle or anything. Nothing like James seemed to suggest with the theatrics and high-pitched voices. Nor was it like two brains merging together every now and then.

It was - he sighed, sort of like it was part of him, splitting off from the rest and growing into this big ugly apparition of something else entirely. Something angry and vicious and terribly terribly afraid.

On those nights, he didn't know how to explain it to the others, but he was six-years-old all over again. He hadn't aged. He hadn't grown up.

His heart pounding furiously in his head.

Six. His one claim to immortality lay in the one thing he resented the most.

Because, effectively, he had died back then. To make way for this whole other person. Whole other Remus, who had no choice but to sit in corners and read books and think about the 'what if' and laugh at jokes in his head because his parents were too afraid to let him mix with other kids. And he was too afraid of himself to try.

Two weeks, every two weeks, he'd mourn and it'd ache in all the wrong places.

Then he'd lose his appetite. He'd seclude himself, lock himself away for a few days - before being overly gratuitous and affectionate.

"Sure you're okay?" James had asked him and he'd nodded, "- cos it seems like you're lovesick or something to me, you big pansy."

And they'd laughed. They'd both laughed.
Before he realised just how right James had been.

But it wasn't the same. Not entirely.
It was like being in love with the one thing you hated about someone else, but all internalised. And he didn't really love it at all.
Except for the times Sirius loved it for him.

"It's like - there's this whole other part of you," Sirius had whispered to him, "I dunno, it's kind of weird and I'm not good with this whole 'talking to people' thing. But, like, you're Remus, which is pretty cool and then you're a wolf too. And I just want to ask you everything but you're looking at me like you're going to hit me if I try --"
At fourteen, it didn't matter, and the tension melted from Remus's spine.
He jumped when Sirius's knuckles brushed his wrist.

"But, see, it's also cool because even though you hate it and I can appreciate why. You have to go through all that changing and stuff. So I'm on the outside. I get to hate it with you, but also tell you how awesome you look when you lunge at Peter with those big snarling fangs."

He could still recall the good bits, the harsh bits, sitting at twenty-eight on his own in an apartment that was barely furnished (and barely his).
Like a loop, still, a reel that never stopped playing.
Over and over and over until it slowly drove him crazy and he was quoting lines in his sleep or to the postman or to old lady Greggory downstairs.
"I get to hate it with you. Big snarling fangs. Whole other part. Everything."

He supposed he did fall in love with it a little bit. With the moon. With that part of him. But only when he fell in love with Sirius.
And he'd never tell.
On both accounts.

Not even when they were both growing wrinkles under their eyes and hearts and their hands slipped almostnotquite together downstairs, on the old oilsmacked sofa of the place Sirius had tried running away from.

[Really, Remus thought, he'd never stopped running. Only paused. Temporarily.]
And that he, himself, was a bit of a hypocrite with his rapidly rising pulse rate and teeth pressing sharply into his bottom lip.
"I still think you being a werewolf is pretty damn cool."
And their laughter was tainted then, worn, but he still smiled back.
"Well, so long as you think so." he exhaled in a long drawn out breath, "Let me get right on it and call the Ministry. Tell them all those old Werewolf laws can go out the window now. Sirius Black thinks it's cool. Yes, the same Sirius Black who escaped from Azkaban and --"
"You're such a prick sometimes, nothing changes."
Remus's read rolled back against the cushion and he cast Sirius a sort of lazy smirk.
"Thank you, I'm glad you appreciate me giving up my entire life to come and stay in the box room your brother used to keep his illegal pets in just so you're not bored."

There was a silence then. Different. And Sirius met his gaze.
"Come on -" he whispered, "You know I love you, Moony."

Remus almost choked on a breath but caught himself just in time and pressed a hand subtly against his stomach to rage the knot of air trying to make him splutter indecently.
"Yeah?" he wanted to say, "I love you too" or even "Not likely" or something bitter and scathing and too longlived.
But he tilted his head to the side.

"Say, Pads, I ever tell you about the first time I saw the moon?"
Sirius shook his head and moved closer.

As a baby it had been a big glowing diamond, except he never knew what it meant to describe something as glowing back then. Nor what a diamond was. But it looked expensive and primitive and he stared up with it reflecting sharply in his eyes.
At two, he'd turned to his mother with a toothy grin and said, "It looks like a big butter biscuit. But better. Like it'd keep forever and never go off."
At three, he'd ignored it in favour of chasing butterflies around their old backyard and far into the woods until it was no longer in sight.
At four it was sitting out on the grass with his father, hearing stories of aliens and muggle news reports and cheddar-but-not-mozarella ["because the colour is wrong --"] cheese. And lunar nodes that he thought were a special delicacy until he asked his mother to buy some for dessert.

Sirius smiled the whole way through and had his lips pressing to Remus's neck when he finished talking. Trailing off into a shallow gulp and uncomfortable silence.
"Tell me something else." Sirius whispered in hot, damp breath. "Anything."

Remus paused for a moment, not daring to move.
"Sometimes -" he half grinned to himself, "Sometimes I really do love the moon."

Sirius studied him carefully then, running fingers under his jaw before something stirred in the back of his mind. And he seemed satisfied with that.
"Good."
The dull white circles in the centre of Sirius's eyes were better though.
Like gaps, piercing through.

--

Remus pulled back, straightening his shoulders and taking a deep breath. Right down until he felt his lungs starting to burn.

"I think there's one more thing I haven't told you --" he started.
And Sirius sat up too, his whole attention on Remus and his worry lines and hard eyes.

"I'm listening."

He inhaled once more, shakily.
"Well --"

romanculus_ex — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 13:45:45 GMT

Title: Two hearts.
Pairing: Doctor/Jack (with implied Doctor/Rose)
Summary: Biology complicates everything, really. Two hearts means space for two very different people.

don't run away, cos i can't live without you
please stay, and i'll learn to love you right

The problem, when it came down to it, was that he had two hearts. No matter how much he - and everybody else - tried to rationalise it. And that when he met Martha - and Donna - they were both already full. The tugs, the pulls, the sniping little cuts and he sometimes wished he was biologically human. Only sometimes - enough to allow him human mistakes and human indecision. But he was stuck with all of these people trying to find a way inside and he couldn't breathe a word of it because he was too desperately afraid of being alone to tell them the truth. And maybe just a little bit naive.

Because his first heart would always belong to Rose.

But that's when it got complicated. Somewhere along the line - dashing between double-helix timelines - came the harsh realisation that two hearts meant space for two very different people. And that it wasn't just one heart that was bursting.

He had a harder time admitting that than anything else.
And an even harder time coming to terms with by who.

But he still ran. As he did from Rose at first, as he did from everything that could mean something more than just drifting through life after life trapped between four wooden walls with another new face that would, eventually, fade away. Behind wrinkled eyes that had seen more than they were made to.

But this was different.
He had two hearts, two loves.
One had to be Rose.

Of course the other was Jack.

romanculus_ex — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 23:36:03 GMT

Title: Restless Hearts.
Pairing: Leon/Luis: Resident Evil 4.
Summary: He met him only in instances. Unfortunately, he fell in love in much the same way.

It was in instances, that's how he fell in love. Only he refused to call it that.
Leon was old enough to acknowledge when he was lying to himself but it still didn't fully register. Spending most of his time on the run, though, ducked behind dusty crates and wearing down sores on his fingers - it didn't really leave him much time to consider the 'what ifs'.
But that's when he met Luis and they all seemed to disappear.
A human amongst the monsters.
{"What are you gonna do after this?" a cursive smirk. Leon; "After this?" and a back shrugging against the wall. "Yeah, you know, after this is over." What if - a jerk, What if we survive?}
And his heart stuttered, pushing right up to the back of his throat.
{"Never thought about it, really." a nudge and restless feet, "Never thought there'd be an end more like"}
He paused but swore it didn't mean a thing.
{"Something like that."}
The second time, a steady hand pressing bruisingly against his jaw, and all it was doing was giving him something else to fight against.
{"See, I know you too well already and we only just met."}
{"Yeah, yeah, whatever you say."}
The last time, he wished he hadn't fought at all.

romanculus_ex — Sat, 17 May 2008 15:43:31 GMT

Title: This is ruining us.
Pairing: Remus/Sirius.
Summary: One kiss may have started it all off. But, really, that one kiss had been building for months. Years. And it's much more of a catastrophe than either of them realised.

so i found out your reasons for the phone calls and smiles. and it hurts and i'm lonely and i should never have tried. and i missed you tonight, so it's time to leave. you see it meant everything to me♥

It started when they were drunk. Or, rather, when Sirius was drunk. But sometimes, late at night, when Remus couldn't sleep - sometimes then he thought maybe it had started long before that and he just hadn't noticed. Rolling himself in and out of a cocoon with the thick red blankets trapped between his fingers and thighs. Lost. Frustrated. He wasn't angry, but the more he tried to make sense of it, the more his temples ached and he just wanted to be able to hate it all so much.

It had started on a Thursday evening, Sirius, a bottle of firewhisky or two and the Gryffindor common room. James and Peter had long since given up the fight and retired to bed leaving the two of them dancing amongst a string of anonymous students. Sharp angles crossing with blurred features and eyes that sparkled like looking through the corners of a diamond and not quite being able to comprehend the thousand pictures merging into one.

Remus didn't know how he'd ended up dancing, but there he was, Sirius's arms around him - pressing him to his chest until their navels lined up perfectly, coincidentally, beneath stuffy fabric and creasing buttons.

The music was loud. Not too loud, but enough for it to vibrate and the words to muffle when his cheek pressed against a collar or a shoulder or the swift brushing of an upper arm.

And they'd kissed.

Well, to be more specific - Sirius had kissed him. And it was driving him crazy.

The room emptied and he didn't stop smiling and Remus wasn't sure if it was the best or worst moment in his life, right then. Sitting precariously on the sofa when Sirius dropped down beside him with a grin and leaned in again. Shyly, hesitantly, and he pushed back until their knees were knocking clumsily and Sirius's back was edging against the cushions.

"I know this sounds weird," Sirius had laughed afterwards, halfway to depositing his guts down the bathroom sink, halfway to stumbling on his own feet up the stairs but also, Remus noted, to some degree - disgustingly more sober than he thought he should be able to get away with after that. "I know this sounds weird -" he heard Sirius repeat and looked up, "But I swear I can still hear your heartbeat."

He'd reached across to stroke Remus's hair then. He'd reached across to grab his hand and they'd walked into the dormitory before climbing into bed together and waking up in a tangle of limbs of lovebites.

He hadn't known what to expect, but he'd hardly slept. Sirius's pulse racing through his head and it had just been warm. He never thought of it before, really, but body heat and blankets and being smothered by insistant arms. Uncomfortably warm - but he hadn't the heart to move.

They'd woken, half woken, and Sirius had said nothing. Got up, casually, walked to the shower and it was like nothing had happened. Joking with James and Peter about how much he'd drank. And Remus didn't consider himself to matter. But he felt awkward.

Sirius would sit next to him, and it'd be silent. Sirius would sling an arm around his shoulders or smile in just the right/wrong way and there'd be tension. Hesitation.

You kissed me. he wrote, on a loose scrap of parchment the night after when they were all tucked into bed, separate beds (VERY separate beds) You kissed me last night. I don't know if you remember. I was just inquiring as to whether it was because you were drunk or if it meant something more. Remus.

And he thought up every nuance then. Every offhand comment. Every incidence of drunken kisses on the cheek and arms around his waist. Every holiday offer of spending days together at a time. And his chest ached horribly.

He stilled when he noticed Sirius moving, when he saw the flicker of wandlight and Sirius's eyes scanning the paper he'd left by his pillow. He relaxed his muscles as much as he could and tilted his head to try and pretend his eyes were closed.

He didn't know what he was expecting, but whatever it was - Sirius climbing into bed with him was certainly not it. Moving his head right up against Remus's and smiling.

"You know --" he yawned, nestling his head into Remus's neck, "At five in the morning the birds sound like vultures." and they'd shared a grin as arms wrapped around waists and shoulders and hearts.

Remus still couldn't comprehend it. Remus still couldn't make any sense of it.
Espeically Sirius crawling out of bed, soundlessly, and slinking into the showers again before acting exactly as before.

Nothing had happened. Of course not.

And part of Remus felt rejected then. The other part felt loved. Somewhere in the middle they met in an explosive mix of shyness and he went along with it, all the same.

Sirius. he wrote again, Did you just wish to put the kissing antics down to you being drunk? Or was it something more? I really wouldn't mind if that was the case but I just want to try and calm the awkwardness that appears to be building between us. Remus.

And that's when he'd said it. Really. When he'd read it and paused and inhaled shakily and told Remus that things would be fine. That the night before was nothing.

"I was just being free with my affection." he'd half laughed, "I really like you, but not in that way. It's okay."

And then he'd ran off, walked off. Slid out of the dormitory and down the stairs whilst Remus swallowed hard past the lump in his throat and even the words felt foreign to him when he'd said "Good."

And there he was. Tossing and turning. And it hadn't destoryed anything, but he overanalysed everything to death. And it didn't really help that he'd started seeing Sirius in a way that really didn't fit inside the boundaries of "just friends" but, when he really thought about it - really - he didn't know if they ever had been "just" anything.

The incident of Sirius's friend from Ravenclaw trying to set them up months ago. The too long hugs and too many excuses. The four and a half hour journey to spend a few hours with him before retreating home. The almost kiss the week after they'd met.

Yet - nothing. Sirius said he felt nothing. Said he didn't think of him like that.
And it was then, wrapped up, in and out of his cocoon, that Remus realised just how much he wished he did.

And then it all came down to playfights after that. To wrestling matches. And tense silence.

"We're going to study tomorrow." he informed him and Sirius nodded before his eyes narrowing.

"I don't like your use of the phrase 'we' tonight." he commented, leaning back in his chair, "It makes me feel like I'm excluded."

He paused, bit his lip, and couldn't think of a single thing to say other than "Sorry."

This is ruining us. he thought to himself later, this is really going to end up ruining us.

I need to tell him. Remus decided, I need to tell him. And I need to do it now.

romanculus_ex — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 01:59:29 GMT

Title: Close your eyes, dear.
Pairing: Remus/Sirius
Summary: Sirius has never been very good at sharing.

Sirius had never been very good at sharing - and that's where it had all gone wrong, really. Five years old, heavy strides across the garden to stand with his arms folded and a scowl on his face; towering over his little brother, expectantly.

"That's mine." he hissed, under his breath and possessive. Not claiming just that one innocent little cauldron but everything Reguluus planned to take, everything he was eyeing up. Territorial and succint. "That's mine." and his father had commended him. Sirius had been sure, if he squinted, if he pushed his top lip as far against his nose as it could go - the way his father's eyes had creased together tightly or the way his jaw twisted, almostalmost it could have been mistaken for a smile.

Reguluus just sat there, tapping his chubby fingers against the concrete and trying to avoid the glare of the sun from hitting the edge of the grass as he stumbled across concrete to line rocks up like soldiers.

"They're mine too, you know." Sirius muttered before turning on his heel and running to the edge of the fence where an ice cream truck slowly faded in the distance. "What a stupid song." - rash and blunt, offhandedly. A flock of dungarees with skimmed knees and shoelaces trailing behind, a swarm of kids, all running after it. His mother ruffled his hair awkwardly and gave him two helpings of dessert. He didn't understand why but she said they were proud of him, all the same.

At seventeen, his gut clenched when he thought about it.
At fourteen, he still had lines of angry howlers pushed under his bed.
At twelve, he was a disappointment.

"What's wrong with muggles?" he asked his Uncle, the one with the shaggy beard and long hair that Sirius thought made him look like it'd all been cut around a dotted line to make room for his face to breathe. He never asked, but he always tilted his head curiously when a loose hairtie dangled at the bottom.

"Muggles?" his Uncle would reply and glance around. At nine years old, he thought it was to check none were hiding under the stairs or in the back of the broom closet, right behind the box of family photographs his parents had deemed unsuitable. Mostly of his cousin, Andromeda, and he still didn't really get it because he thought she looked quite pretty in them. As pretty as an eight year old boy could admit to thinking, anyway, but he still knew she probably had cooties.

("They make your head grow twice the size of your body!" he'd explained to Reguluus, "And your skin turns purple. But it's okay for girls because it's dormant. It only effects us if we touch them.")

"There's nothing wrong with muggles --" his Uncle said softly, pressed right down against his ear, "But don't tell your mother I said that. Lets call it our secret okay?" And Sirius didn't think about anything else then. He didn't think about girls or about his brother. He thought about what it was like to have something that only belonged to him. Something nobody else could take and something he didn't have to push his way into claiming.

All the brooms and chess sets and books hiding under his bed - they didn't seem as important when he had a secret. A secret for just him and his uncle.

His grin pulled his lips taut against his teeth and he nodded emphatically, "Our secret."

At ten, his mother told him stories - how muggles would cram eight people into a rough little house and breed and breed until the sweat bled through the walls and all the children had to share a tiny little bed in the attic. How the muggles would try and force their way into their world, the wizarding world, how they all wanted a better life and a more magical life and - how they'd breed with wizards, how a muggle girl might try to breed with him. And then he'd be dirty.

"What about muggle boys?" he bit his lip and his brother's face pulled itself into a look of disgust.

"That's just weird."

His mother compsed herself and continued whilst Sirius watched the traces of daylight disappearing along the hardwood floor, creeping beneath the doorframe and into the garden. He wanted to chase them. To ignore this, to ignore them and keep running until he was out of breath and his lungs burnt.

"You have no reason to ever be involved with muggle boys." he was told and he shrugged, "Hogwarts is a wonderful place to find an appropriate, pureblood, female."

At the station with his shoes digging into his ankles and his laces pressing down too hard, he'd smiled at a blonde girl with chipped pink nailpolish and a big green suitcase. He'd waved at a broad-shouldered brunette rolling her eyes at her parents.

"Remember --" his father whispered as he leaned down to give him a hug, "Your character is determined by who you mix with, who you meet. Not by which house you're sorted into. No matter what your mother says."

As the engine of the train shook the carriages, Sirius pressed himself awkwardly against a window - two older boys pushing past, running. Robes tugged between them.

"Ignore them --" a small boy laughed from the doorway opposite and Sirius looked up, for the first time, noticing an open carriage with a huddle of small children in a variety of lopsided clothing. Thick black glasses sat on the boy's face and he leaned his shoulder out against the frame, aiming a polished wand down the hall.

"That should do it." he smirked, "He'll look like he got his cornflakes stuck on his face now. I'm James by the way."

Sirius nodded, looking around like he remembered his Uncle doing nervously and paused.

"Sirius Black."

He thought that must have been the turning point, remembering what his father had said, that must have been when he made the wrong decision that still felt like the right one. But he was thirteen then and completely besotted with the idea of teenage rebellion. It should have been a sign when he got sorted into Gyrffindor. When he went back for summer and all of his stuff had been moved to Reguluus's room and when he'd tried to take it back, his brother had cocked his head; "It's mine."

"No, it's mine." Sirius had argued and he still wasn't very good at sharing but his mother had given him a piece of parchment and a quill telling himself to 'make it all better'. Dinner, every night, had him sitting in his best dress robes with ink stained fingers and the words "I should have been in Slytherin" covering his walls.

And Reguluus was better than him, then. The one thing he couldn't handle. His brother was better than him because he wasn't a fucking Gryffindor.

At sixteen he put posters of muggle girls all over his bedroom at home, scantily clad - breasts and hips and thighs jutted out at odd angles with alluring 'come to bed' eyes and thick mascara. At sixteen his mother locked him in until he took them down and he ran away to James's after going three days without food.

At sixteen, in the middle of summer, he decided he wanted to fall in love.
At sixteen, in the middle of summer, he kissed Remus.

It was everything his parents were against, he was everything his parents were against and as their lips pressed together hastily by the giant oak in the Potter's backyard he couldn't help the sharp shudder his heart gave as he reeled with the force of what he'd done.

People would see them at school. His brother would see them. Hands down pants by the potions classroom, yes, and they'd all know then. The biggest 'fuck you' he could give them but they wouldn't get it. Because, he realised, they didn't know. They didn't know about Remus.

Letters and letters, reams of ink, and it had been a hiss under his breath to Snape in the corridor because, even though he was supposed to hate him now, Reguluus was still his brother. And he didn't want to be the golden child without competition.

James punched him. Hard. Peter backed away and Remus wouldn't talk to him.

"But you don't understand --" he'd started, rocking back and forth on his heels in the infirmary.

"No, Sirius --" Remus shot back hollowly and neither dared look at the other, "I understand perfectly. You may not be part of the family anymore, but you'll always be a bloody Black."

He didn't share. He didn't.
A hanging pressure of remorse shook the back of his eyes and inched its way down his spine as he lay restlessly in bed. Behind thick red curtains - his wand pressed against the bedsheets turning tiny squares a sharp green colour until he couldn't see anything but splintered wood. He read all of the letters then. Every last one telling him he'd shown so much hope with the scribbled signature of his mother or father at the bottom.

And he'd done it. They knew. They knew how much of a fucking failure he was and they could see exactly what they'd turned him into. He'd pushed and pushed and pushed and he wondered, vageuly, if those posters were still hanging limply in his room or if they'd found a way to cover them with some kind of reminder as to how much they hated him now. Or if his name was even still on the door.

"You're such a wanker." James told him, "Remus bloody worshipped you. Don't know why. He was right, you know, you're still one of them."

But he didn't apologise. He didn't say anything. He started climbing in Remus's bed when he was asleep and it wasn't any sort of gratitude, it was embarrassment, if anything.

At eighteen, fresh out of Hogwarts, he realised they were right. Remus moved in with Amelia from the apartment below and Sirius's anger flared enough to tell her. To tell her everything.

"You're mine." he hissed, one hand pressing an icepack to his eye where James had, once again, socked him hard. "You're fucking mine." Sirius whimpered, collapsing in front of Remus and half hugging him because he really didn't know how else he was supposed to deal with something like that.

About five minutes later, when Remus's hand half knotted in his hair and edged him back, Sirius realised he was incapable of real love and he told Peter via firecall at four in the morning.

"It's just - I'd have been quite happy for him to be with her but she was a fucking Slytherin -- he -- she -- they shouldn't be able to waltz in and just take everything they want, saying damn the consequences."

"She isn't Reguluus, you know." Peter told him calmly and he grit his teeth together and slammed a bottle of firewhisky down on the table.

"Well. Fuck."

He was almost nineteen before him and Remus slept together. He was pretty sure it wasn't just because he couldn't have him but he was also damn certain it had nothing to do with loving him either. It was attraction. It was -- it was claiming, it was all about claiming him. "Mine --" he breathed damply against Remus's bare neck as it arched up in the moonlight, "Fucking -- mine --" and his hands clumsily tugged at Remus's belt and pressed his hands against the wall, pinning their bodies still with his hips until Remus started to moan.

At James's and Lily's wedding he dragged him off to the bathroom and shoved his tongue so far back in Remus's throat they both started to gag.

"Actively -- looking -- my arse --" he spat out before bending Remus over the toilet and fucking him until he was sick from having his face pressed up against the peeling rim.

"It's not what you think." he told Lily when she caught them and she shook her head.

"No, Sirius, I'm pretty sure it's not what you think."

And then he had a secret again. A bigger secret, and he still had the one between him and his Uncle nestled safely in the back of his throat. He had a secret when him and Remus slurred drunkenly into one another's mouths.

"Muggles aren't that bad --" he laughed, pausing, "You're not that bad. Even if you are a fucking pathetic werewolf."

At twenty one, he couldn't remember anything past being sixteen and that one summer by the oak tree. At twenty one, he had no secrets and he realised, pressed against the inside of a cell, Remus really had been the fucking love of his life.

Because, really, as a Black, that had been the closest he could ever expect to get to it.

"Mine --" he mumbled in his sleep, "--mine--" because for all he hated Peter now, for everything, Sirius didn't share. And just like he hadn't shared Remus (still didn't), he wasn't going to let anyone else beat the fucker down for what he'd done.

romanculus_ex — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 23:47:35 GMT

Title: I still remember.
Pairing: Remus/Sirius.
Summary: For the prompt: MEMORY. Remus can't remember a lot of things but he tries to hold onto the ones that matter.

Even at eleven years old, Remus's memory was patchy, but he never said a word.

He figured it was all just a side effect of being a werewolf and it didn't really matter. He was unfortunate. It was unfortunate. Sitting, unaware, in his parent's backyard with the sticky summer sun burning angles across his arms and flushing his cheeks - right round to the back of his neck where the loose hair tickled awkwardly. His shoelaces were half fastened, half looped, but his father sat down beside him and his head ached; the edges of his thumbs pushing half moons against his temples.

He could trace the way his lips moved in his head but the words, all of it -- an arm tangled itself around his shoulders and the sleeve of his jumper fell down, rolling itself over his clenched fingers. And it was green. Peppermint green. A burst of colour and he was laughing, crawling across the beach with a shaggyhaired sheepdog.

Then nothing.

"I don't know." he told Mr.Jamison from across the street, curled up with a fraying blanket on a strangers sofa, "I don't -- remember. I don't remember."

But he'd been outside with only his pyjama bottoms on and his grandpa's slippers. The moon was rising -- fading, and Remus had been breathing: in, out, in, out, bringing it back into his world for a fraction of a second at a time until it was too much for him to handle.

Chipping paint on white fences, flaking numbers scrubbed against doors. Number 72 with the A missing.

"I think I want to go home now." he said timidly into his hands, shaking, his shoulders tightening as he looked around and a large bronze cat stared back at him with emerald eyes from the fireplace.

He still had the thick blue shirt and the dirt marks on the knees meant nothing to him. The grass stains, the scuffed shins. Even his own scars.

"I fell off my bike." he told them, when he was old enough to lie properly, "I tripped over my robes." and he was thirteen by then, hiding behind library stacks and between pages and under big red duvets or heavy eyes. "I...don't know where they're from. I really don't." he wanted to cry, he wanted to scream when it hit him that he could have been telling the truth and he, himself, he wouldn't know the difference.

In and out, he reminded himself, catching his lungs pushing up too hard against his stomach when they all stood around him. James with his glasses tilted to the left. Peter with the smudge of ink down his nose. Sirius....Sirius.

"You had fuschia lipstick half hanging off your collar." he could smirk, weeksmontshyears later, "It disappeared onto your neck. And there was a lovebite right behind your ear. James was wearing Lily's tie because it hung too far above his stomach."

The exact shade of oak leaves was stuck on repeat behind everything else in his mind. The feel of dry grass against his stomach where his shirt twisted up and the thick scatter of clouds directly above. He told Sirius all of it. He told him he could never forget the things that mattered. They both smiled and their knuckles almost brushed as he moved his hips away from the spot of dew gathered over the morning flowers.

He had his eyes closed, he had the world running behind them. And Sirius was there. Looking down at him and grinning like he'd just found a stash of dungbombs behind an old mulberry bush or the entirity of Slytherin house had been expelled for the year.

His hand reached up before he could stop it and Siriu's lips were moving, pushing words between them. His chest tightened, his fingers gripped tightly in his hair.

And they were running.

"I don't remember." he whispered to a newspaper cutting with sharp eyes and a wispy beard, "I don't remember you not being like this."

{"I don't remember you saying it, Sirius, I don't remember you loving me."}

The first thing he did the next day was cancel his subscription to the Daily Prophet.
The next, was to call his mother and tell her she had been right all along.

romanculus_ex — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 03:55:35 GMT

Title: All that's left of us now.
Pairing: Heero/Duo.
Summary: After the war, all they have is silence. After the war, all they can hope for is each other.

'Love. Yes. Love was so much more destructive than anything he'd ever witnessed before and he wasn't quite sure he could cope with it on his own.'

After the war came silence and that, in itself, was much harder to adjust to than all of the rest. Hearing a crash in the middle of the night - or the low hypnotic buzz of someone else's alarm clock through the wall - and the curtains were ripped apart; haphazardly: nothing but the still cresent of the moon or a galaxy of newly born stars on the other side, smiling through the curve of the glass.

But it was habit.

Like static, background noise. The sharp hiss of terror sticking to the base of your spine at every little creak that was out of place. And Heero was used to it. Duo, too. Falling asleep through a cascade of hair and violence.

"It's the sound of what we're fighting for." Wufei would hiss under his breath (under his pillow) and Quatre would clench his eyes shut until he felt the pulsing pressure of veins and could trace them against the ceiling. Trowa. Trowa sat there, not quite able to make sense of it but trying, regardless.

Waiting.

None of them questioned it but it lingered hastily after midnight - the fears, the doubts. 'what if this is all for the wrongs reasons' versus 'it's better than letting them all die, pointlessly' - tossing and turning, slick, sweaty backs and awkward knees : tangled with threadbare sheets or wrap-around jackets, a size too big.

It was hectic. Chaos. And it blocked out all of the thoughts they couldn't quite keep out of their heads. So when it was over - when they weren't startled upright with staggering explosions or radio calls, or shoved over sofa edges for a round of bullets - without it, all they were left with was the silence.

And, really, it wouldn't have been so bad, Heero realised, if his wasn't so full of Duo.

romanculus_ex — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 21:11:36 GMT

Title: You're not here {1/3}
Pairing: Remus/Sirius.
Summary: A mix of music and fiction. The story of how they went from strangers, to best friends, to something more. And how the war, not only tore them apart, but helped bring them back together again.

i. i'm not here, this isn't happening, i'm not here.

It was growing up that broke him, really - although if anyone ever asked he'd just knead his knuckles into the back of his eyes and smile, saying it was nothing, that it was okay.

Before his eleventh birthday Sirius would hide in his room. He wasn't stupid enough to think nobody knew about it, but he did it anyway. Momentarily, sometimes, it made him feel safe. Under blankets, behind piles of books - even going so far as to wrench the thick mahogany headboard forward so he could squeeze behind it and try to forget how to breathe.

When he was older, Regulus joined in - until the day he ran to mother and told her all about it. "He's beneath the bathroom cupboards" or "There's a set of floorboards that move" and, in all honesty, neither of them had ever been too good at sharing, anyway. Sirius, with his toys that always (secretly) belonged to his brother. Sirius with the hole he had been digging behind the branching apple tree in the garden. Sirius with his secrets that Regulus never managed to play into. He never had his own so he had to take somebody else's.

"That's my broom --" Regulus hissed, and it was a Wednesday, almost spring. His tiny hands spreading like eagles wings across the bristles and Sirius tried not to growl.

"No! It's mine --" they didn't fight, they never fought, but they set one another with dignified glares and square jaws, even at seven years old. Black's did not make public displays. Black's did not squabble. Black's had no need for arguments.

And then his father came along, heavy tread boots with his neatly combed back hair and took it from both of them.

"Regulus had it first." he would say and for all they both knew it wasn't true, neither said a word. Apart from tongues were stuck out behind palms and eyes creased downwards.

He went back to hiding then, Sirius, he did everytime. And by the time he set foot on Hogwarts grounds he thought he had got rather good at it. Maybe too good, he realised, perched shakily on an old oak stool as the sorting hat with the fraying mouth and threads hanging in his eyes yelled "Gryffindor!".

And for all his heart started pounding wildly with relief, he still felt like a traitor.

"At least you didn't get Slytherin!" a boy to his left muttered loudly and he turned straight into thick black glasses and wide eyes, a small round boy beside him, "They have to live in the dungeons!"

"Won't there be dragons?" Sirius nearly snorted but kicked his shoes together beneath the table instead. Perfectly polished, loose laces.

"Don't be stupid! They don't have dragons in the school - they'd eat everyone!"

Surrounded by red and gold banners and staring directly across at the silver and green he'd been brought up on, he suddenly laughed. Threw his head back and laughed.

And then he spoke, across the shoulder of robes with the wrong colour thread sewn, with a scar down his left cheek. He didn't know what spurred it, but his fingers tapped against his dinner plate all the same.

"I think we should go find out."

Summer was still the same though, summer in the big grey house surrounded with static and the hallway that screamed when he was out of bed after ten pm. Regulus stopped knocking for him. Regulus started locking his door.

Nobody met him at the station fourth year. And fifth year he couldn't get into the house.

After that, he just stopped trying. After that, he knew he'd been hiding too long.

ii. i will take you as you are, please accept me as i am. there'll be something in the wind to show us we're right and tell us we're wrong. i want to know more.

James's garden was much better than his own had been - tall yellowing grass around the edges brushing his knees at midday. Just the right size for Quidditch but not so big you could lose yourself, even if sometimes he felt like he ought to try anyway, for old times sake.

He'd never had cookies before then. He'd never had juice with the seeds still in, hitting the back of his throat until he nearly choked with James bent double in front of him; eyes watering.

He thought he was in love with him then, once, he thought he was in love with all of them. But the beginning of autumn was always, Sirius agreed, by far the best. Peter would fly over from his holidays and Remus would turn up with smudges of soot across his cheeks that nobody would mention.

They'd run through the forrest in the midlands, they'd climb the trees and sit around in the Potters' living room, large glasses of lemonade and stories they all knew had never happened.

It was their last year before he suspected anything, the week before they went back and Lily's letters were pinned all over the bedroom walls. Hearts and spirals and sharp-angled A's.

"Do you love her?" Sirius asked, lounging on the bed with a soft breeze coming through the open window. James paused and Remus looked up from the floor.

"I think I really do."

He thought then, and nodded, he thought about the pile of letters he had neatly tucked away in his trunk. He thought about the way it had only been the three of them the year before and how he'd stayed inside, "I don't know what's wrong" he'd told James and Peter with a snarling glare, "I don't know I just - something's --". They'd both exchanged a look and patted him on the back. James and Lily had kissed that Christmas, for the first time, and when he thought back he could only recall the way Remus's eyes fell on the mistletoe and the slight flush aching against his cheeks.

"How do you know?" he asked James later, when they were alone, tucked inside a bedroom with the door locked - though he wasn't sure why. "How do you know you love her?"

James stalked over to the window, his wrists hanging over the ledge and his eyes lit up the way they always did when he thought about Lily.

"I just do." he smiled and Sirius thought then that he'd quite like someone's eyes to turn the same fuzzy shade at the corners when they spoke of him.

School was hectic that year, his mind was hectic. He sat with his thigh pushed up against Remus's the whole way there and only moved away when it was time to step onto the platform. The carriage ride saw his knuckles pushed into Remus's hip but they both stayed quiet incase it was an accident. They both stayed quiet, moreso, incase it wasn't.

Peter started seeing a girl then, a pretty little thing with dark brown curls that fell past her shoulders. Carrie he called her, Carolina, after her mother. And Remus always grinned at them. James and Lily too, grinned so widely his eyes closed into small slits and he hid behind his bed curtains.

"Don't you want what they have?" Sirius asked, crouching down beside him, "All of that?"

The dorm was dark with only a thin pencil of moonlight tinkering across the floor.

"No." he shook his head, pulling his knees up to his chest, "I - I don't know what I want exactly. I don't want the kind of love that consumes you though, suffocates you. I want the kind that is comfortable. That you can grow old wrapped up in and it won't expect anything at all."

Sirius nodded at that, he nodded and felt his eyes starting to burn the way he'd witnessed James's do a thousand times before. He looked away from Remus, he looked to the floor and his head started to pound in the same gentle rhythmn as his pulse.

He knew then, he sort of understood then. But it was him, nonetheless.

"I want the kind of love --" Sirius began, pausing as he shifted to sit on the edge of the bed, "--where you can both be yourselves, or not, but either way the person still wants to come back to you. Like - they know you well enough to understand you're not as great as everyone else thinks, but they love you enough that they're willing to pretend, anyway."

The door slammed shut then before either could watch the way the other's eyes slipped down to their fingers against the mattress. James came wandering in, slackened tie and hand-woven hair.

"Gentlemen!" he smirked before slipping into his bed.

And Remus and Sirius moved away - their thumbs may have barely brushed, but they moved away all the same only neither of them slept as soundly as they knew they should have.

"I think I'm in love with you" Sirius wanted to say so many times. "I want you." but every time he opened his mouth, his jaw steeled instead and the words fell into a splutter of indecencies that left Remus with wide eyes and shaking hands.

"I think I'm in love with you." he wrote on a slip of paper on their graduation day but before he got chance to part with it, Regulus was behind him, brow creased, wand pointed.

"I am not letting you ruin the family again." he said steadily, "Incendio."

And the ashes that buried his hands told Sirius everything he needed to know.

Again, he realised, he was hiding. Only this time it was for the best.

iii. when it all falls down i'll still be right here, when it all falls down we'll still be right here. once in a lifetime i could feel this way. once in a lifetime you could feel it too.

"This is a war" were possibly the hardest words Sirius had ever had to take in. Sitting with his legs spread out in front him, his head cocked to the side, "This is a war and there will be casualties" Shacklebolt continued, speaking from the back of his throat, "We all know what - who - we're fighting and we can't guarantee the outcome. To us, this is something worth fighting for. But, if you're in and that's not enough, think of the people you could lose and fight for them instead."

"This is a war--" he heard someone whisper under their breath, "And we might not all make it out alive."

If anyone had asked him a year ago, even a few months past, about how he pictured his life after Hogwarts he definitely would not have described to them a wide concrete room with rickety chairs that creaked when you swung your weight the wrong way. He would have talked about dragons, probably, about dark wizards and unspeakables. His wand, where once it had been a pleasant weight settled comfortably in his back pocket, now stung with the heavy sighs of responsibility.

But he knew he had no other choice, he didn't want any other choice.

He glanced to his friends, to Lily, with her arching back and swollen belly. To the tumultuous mix of joy and fear in James's eyes. To the empty seat where Peter should have been and the thick bags beneath Remus's eyes.

"If you want out --" Shacklebolt roared suddenly, "--now is the time to do it."

Everybody held their breaths collectively then but nobody moved an inch. Sirius reached desperately for Remus's hand under the table and squeezed hard. Please say we'll survive this it begged, please say you'll survive this.

Remus linked their fingers together and smiled solemnly, bowed his head.

Dumbledore stood before them all in his bright purple robes and without the twinkle in his eyes, they all knew, right there, it was serious.

"Oh." Remus frowned. Oh.

It was hard to say when the fight really started, or when it turned from just a war for the wizarding world into something much more personal. Remus and Sirius clung to one another at night, nothing more, arms and bodies grasping tightly until it felt safe for them to step outside of the bedroom again. Outside of the house. The flat.

The splitting pavement caused them both to reel back in alarm at first until they looked at one another and laughed. Sirius grinned then, Sirius grinned and took Remus's hand in his.

"Don't step on the cracks!" he laughed, his face practically glowing as he tiptoed past another and another and another. Remus laughed too, joining in, being pulled along.

"Sirius!" he shook his head, his knee buckling and his teeth biting back on a girlish scream.

"See, you have me--" Sirius said confidently when he caught him, Remus's scarf falling between them and onto a gathering of dried leaves and rainwater, "--no matter what happens, you have me."

And that's when they first kissed.

It wasn't really when Dumbledore piled them all into a tiny room with burnt walls that he suspected anything, it wasn't even when the announcement was made about there being a traitor in their ranks.

Thinking back to the feel of Sirius's lips pressed awkwardly against his neck, no, Remus realised, it wasn't until Peter took him aside with sunken eyes and a grave face to say "I think it's Sirius" that he even began thinking at all.

romanculus_ex — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 00:07:37 GMT

Title: Working backwards towards you.
Pairing: Remus/Sirius.
Summary: Remus is having difficulty coping with the tension between him and Sirius at Grimmauld Place.

There had been tension right from the beginning and they both knew it. Not that Remus had expected it to be easy after everything that had happened, not that he expected some sense of familiarity to slip back into place - making it easier to pretend. No, not at all, he told himself, except, deep down, he'd sort of hoped for it, anyway.

Grimmauld Place was depressing at the best of times and the longer you spent there the longer it sucked you in. But still he stayed, watching from doorways or behind closed curtains, watching as Sirius slowly tore himself apart because he didn't know any better. And, after a good few months there, Remus came to the conclusion (laid on his back with the starch-pressed sheets clawing at his spine) he realised then, he got it. It was suffocating and the way the floorboards creaked in all the wrong places when he took careful footsteps on a night to linger outside Sirius's old bedroom - that's when he got it the most.

"Remember when we were sixteen?" Sirius would laugh, hollowly, and he always spoke in fragments of thoughts, Remus noticed, pieces that only seemed to click together with the moon wavering just out of sight. "When we were young and could take on the world? What happened to us then?"

Sitting in a stuffy red armchair with spirals carved into the thick mahogany frame. Sitting - with Sirius, he paused; his head falling barely to the side.

"If I remember rightly you were sent to Azkaban and I was, am, still a werewolf."

Sirius didn't seem to hear him at first and he turned to look, hands pressing down fiercely against hips and folding creases over creases in a pair of jeans that should have been on a boy instead of this, him, them - thirty five nearly, thirty five and still nowhere to go. Not really.

"I -" And Sirius stopped, shaking his head. That's when it burned, spreading down his shoulders and inching across his body until his head pounded. It. The way Sirius didn't quite glance at him but Remus knew he was watching all the same.

But they weren't the same people anymore and he couldn't even explain it to himself without sounding like he was losing it. And, he huffed silently, maybe he was. Maybe he already had long ago and this was the price. A conversation leading into nothing but dead-ends with a man who wasn't even sure where he was anymore. Or who he should be.

"But that's in the past." he added quickly and Sirius shrugged down in his chair. Shrugged back against the stark white cushion and sighed.

"It should have been different."

And then Remus pretended not to hear until it was repeated.

"We should have been different."

But that's when he got up instead, tugging nervously at the loose button at the bottom of his jacket, and headed up the stairs.

I know, he'd wanted to say, actually, he'd wanted to say a lot of things. But, as always, he chose the safe route. And never slept a wink.

--

"Harry will be home for the holidays soon." Molly said that morning, stirring porridge with shaking hands but clinging so tightly her knuckles turned white - so tightly nobody would be able to tell, except Remus saw it. And he didn't mention it, but he sat down and said he'd have seconds, nonetheless.

"Something to occupy your mind, Sirius." Arthur piped up, doing up the clasp on his cloak from the corner, "The kids too. All of them."

And the vacant stare from the chair pushed back against the wall was all Remus needed to know. To really know. He shuffled his own stool along, tugging a trail of dust and old unicorn hairs, old footprints that never quite went away. He didn't touch him, but he didn't smile either and he wondered if maybe Sirius appreciated that more or if he really was just that empty now.

"You're not sixteen anymore." Remus hissed in his ear - nudging his knee gently, "But I trust you enough to hope you understand that."

He didn't glance up and he didn't see the way Arthur was trying to stop Molly saying something. He didn't see the way her lips were pressed into a hard thin line, wearing against her face. And he most definitely didn't see the way Sirius's brows edged into one another when he parted his lips, but no sound came out other than "I know".

--

{"Remus?" Sirius whispered against his cheek, "Remus?"

He paused, but turned over fitfully in bed and almost forgot to smile until he realised none of it was real, anyway. He grinned, he pulled his lips taut across his face until his cheeks started to ache and he felt sick.

"Yes?" he mumbled against the jut of a shoulder and an elbow meeting awkwardly.

He heard the rustle of dry grass and an enigmatic burst of wind as two broomsticks flew past the window, long robes trailing desperately behind.

Sirius shook his head and wrapped his arms around him.

"Nothing." he said, not quite kissing him, "Nothing at all."}

--

Fred and George noticed first. The polite conversation and the way they both took seats at the opposite end of the dinner table. Fred and George noticed because nobody else dared to and they always liked to believe themselves as being right on the 'cutting edge'.

They didn't say anything, but they exchanged looks more than once until Remus glanced up from running his fork over the grains in the table and widened his eyes.

It was after dark when it became more obvious though, more apparent, downstairs, by the hall. Sirius was crouched with his head in his hands and Remus was standing over him, defensively.

"This can't go on, Padfoot." he murmured softly before kneeling and hesitantly touching his fingertips to Sirius's neck, "It really can't. It's killing you. It's killing both of us, only it's a little easier with you."

Fred glanced at the shadows grasping the banister and winding their way up like vines. His elbow grazed George's but neither looked away.

"Sirius. Please. You're destroying everything."

And when he was on his feet, when his eyes were glowing like thin vicious slits by wandlight, Remus pressed up against the back of the stairwell, they both inhaled sharply.

"Destroying everything?" he growled, "Please elaborate, Professor Lupin, because I am rather under the impression that means there is something left to destroy."

"Si --"

They didn't see the almost brutal way Sirius's hands pinned Remus's flat, or the way his body kept him in place. At least, they didn't speak of it. Nor of the way two sets of lips crashed together with such bruising force they both swore they could feels the shudders on the landing.

No, they never spoke of much after that. But Remus was holding hands with Tonks at the next meeting and neither of them even questioned it.

--

He was tired, they both were - and he needed to get out before it broke him too. He knew too much about survival, he'd read books and lived through it on his own for as long as he could remember. Sirius was gone, Sirius went away, Sirius didn't matter anymore. He ached, but he understood, and forced himself to move out of their flat.

He got a nice little bedsit above a shop in Yorkshire. It wasn't much, but he sold everything he owned when he laid it out in the exact same way as it had been before and kept expecting Sirius to walk through the door raving about how he'd been set up.

For seven years he'd thought that, hoped that. For seven years his heart had lingered somewhere between breaking and holding on. It wasn't until he saw him again, it wasn't until he turned up on his doorstep by Dumbledore's orders in rags that it finally went the distance. Sirius didn't hug him, didn't kiss him. Sirius stood there like a stranger, bowed his head politely and said "Lupin." - as if they'd never met, Remus remembers, and really, then, they kind of hadn't. Not like that.

He never fell out of love with him but he tried. He hid the razors so he couldn't shave, he fed him as much as he could possibly afford, he said and did all manner of cruel things just to try and turn him into something so repulsive his heart could move on enough to heal.

Yet there he was, thirty five years old and every sideways glance still had his throat tightening and pulse racing. Every odd smile made him wish, too, they were sixteen again and could start over.

"You don't know what it's like --" he told Molly, one night, "To have to live a life where your heart breaks everytime they're in the same room and you know you can't do a damn thing."

Because, really, that was only half of it. But he couldn't take back any of what he'd said. He couldn't pretend anymore that it was all over and he was fine.

He smiled at Tonks, he spoke to her, he even sometimes went for midnight walks with her out in the street. When they could go unnoticed, of course, when it didn't matter.

They sauntered back in on a Saturday morning, laughing, to Sirius sitting at the table with a mug of cold tea. The way he'd looked at them then, the way he'd looked so icily at his own cousin made Remus's heart beat faster - but, later, when he didn't do anything but say "Congratulations" it shattered again and he didn't know how many times he could pick up the pieces before he just didn't have the energy to bother anymore.

--

"What the fuck is your problem anyway?" Sirius ground out between his teeth, not quite looking at him, focussing his gaze - instead - just past Remus's shoulders. Just past the back wall to the pantry and the bottles of wine all looked so much more normal right then. So much more - more homely. Except he wanted to break every single one. "What the fuck are you being such a dick for?"

And Remus wasn't sure how the answer. But he stepped back, just incase, and his eyes narrowed.

"Excuse me?" he said calmly, "My problem? You're the one who has been avoiding me for the past two weeks. You're the one who has been going out of his way to not speak to me. How dare you even suggest that --"

"You absolute fucker --" Sirius spat out then and they were face to face, breathing hastily, heavily - furiously, "You - just - you - fucker--"

"This is - shit, Sirius, this is just too hard." And their hips were so close the cotton of their trousers brushed and they could both feel it. They both wanted to feel it, but they pushed back, they pushed and pushed until something broke and Sirius was slammed back against the table.

"This -" he breathed, "Us - it's too - fucking - we can't. You don't --"

"What?" And Sirius was speaking softer then, his voice pressing like gravel, like a force nudging against Remus to say it. To say something. But he shook his head at the last minute, he leaned in, but shook his head and stepped away.

"I wish --" he sighed, "I wish I had the guts to walk away and forget about you, about this, about us. But damn it, I can't, okay. I tried. And I can't. Because, right now --" he paused and gripped his hands together tightly, "Right now -" he repeated, "I know you won't come after me and despite everything we've been through - stupidly, that hurts the most."

Sirius took a few steps forward then, shadows and light inching like warm heat behind him.

"We both walked away." he whispered, resigned, "Just neither of us were brave enough to come back."

--

The next morning, Remus still held Tonks's hand at the breakfast table but Sirius sat beside him until, eventually, he let go. First, of her, and then of every other little thing stopping his heart from breaking.

Because to start over, Sirius told him, you have to be prepared to give everything.

And, in the end, Remus sighed - Harry cradled in his arms before the pale grey arch - Sirius really had.

Everything.

And neither could go back now.

romanculus_ex — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 22:06:58 GMT

Title: The severely overcomplicated chemistry of Sirius Black.
Pairing: Remus/Sirius.
Summary: Remus and Sirius are like oil and water. Written for aqua_eyes♥!

Somewhere, between the arguments and the battle of wills and petty little snipes from across the hall, they're exactly the same. Only, at sixteen, neither of them see it. Sirius is like water - he fits. No matter what the situation he manages to blend, to arch his back and twist his neck and he'smilingbutitfeelssowrong - he can connect, and it doesn't matter who. But to Remus, that's part of the problem.

He takes them all on, every single one, and he strolls back into the common room with a lopsided grin and a head full of bad ideas. "She gets me." he says and they all nod along, "She really gets me." and then the next one comes along. Someone better, someone brighter, but they all understand him. "It's - complicated." Sirius mutters in way of an excuse, "They get different parts of me. And sometimes," his voice softens barely, "--sometimes it feels, I don't know, like we're - bonded. Not exactly. But - it's hard to explain. Like someone is keeping us comfortable, not letting us get any more or less better acquainted."

James calls him crazy then, affectionately, nudging his shoulder and Peter calls him a pansy behind his hand. And they're all laughing - their stomachs aching, but Remus holds back and doesn't quite smile.

I have a theory, he writes in cursive thick black ink - lying flat on his stomach with a parchment creasing at the edges {trying desperately to meet in the middle}, and whilst somewhat disproved, I like to believe it.

Remus - Remus is oil and he's always missing out. Digging his way just below everybody's line of sight, of acknowledgement. The stories and the poems, none of them have real endings but he likes them that way; if nothing is permanent, he thinks, it can be changed. The only part of him that disagrees, however, is the seven-year-old boy who still organises his socks by colour and material. Or highlights important points in an essay both with italics and underlining - in case the professor misses them, or perhaps, in case they're something new. Something just for him. He doesn't speak as much as he should, he knows, and he doesn't socialise in the right way. Sometimes, watching his friends - sometimes, watching Sirius, he thinks part of him is missing. And he sits then, perched perfectly still with a quill in his hand, he sits and writes it down.

Every two people, or three people, they all interact differently. It's nothing to do with personality, but almost everything to do with chemistry.

"Sirius is what?" James scrunches up his face when he tells him, tries to tell him, and it's rational and honest and makessomuchsense. He straightens his shoulders whilst managing to look awkwardly at his feet.

"Sirius is water." he repeats, "He's the solvent. And all of us are solutes."

And in his head it worked. It worked so well he needed a second opinion, he needed to say it outloud, he needed ohgodjust he had to tell someone.

But James snorts and a smirk catches as a throaty sound against his teeth.

"Well he gets all girls wet - apparently. Not to mention his own," he pauses, "--'wet dreams' but...what the fuck? Seriously?"

And Remus shakes his head before Sirius slams the door and they start all over again.

BASIC CHEMISTRY OF WIZARDS AND MUGGLES, he writes in capitals, biting his lip before crossing it out. THE SEVERELY OVERCOMPLICATED CHEMISTRY OF SIRIUS BLACK and glancing up as a girl crumples into Sirius's arms quite happily before he shrugs her off for a pair of dark eyebrows hitching across the room, he wonders why he never got it earlier.

"She's not a fucking whore --" and Remus sighs, backed up against the wall off the potions classroom.

He shakes his head.

"I never said she was." but his lips thin, "I simply stated that maybe your affections are misplaced if you were wanting somebody faithful."

"Fuck you, Lupin." Sirius's hands tighten around his shoulders, his thumbs digging in the hollow between the bones and he almost winces. He'll have indents. He'll have bruises. And then they both look up.

"Well fuck you, Black."

And for an instant - a fraction of a second when his mind stopped, he almost thought Sirius was about to. That is, until James and Peter showed up and the heady eyes, instead, fell to the skirt of a Hufflepuff or the missing belt loops of a Ravenclaw Prefect.

"You okay?" James asks and he smiles, plucking his robes away from his body, but he walks slowly nonetheless.

"Absolutely fine."

They didn't mix, they both knew it. They didn't work or fit or - or - love, Remus thought, quickly, desparately, before knocking it back. Oil and Water. But they still danced around it - whatever 'it' had turned into. Before, it was getting past a day without a hasty glance or a fight or a blackeye. Now - Remus sighed, now exactly.

'Some, for all the chemistry is potential, amounts to nothing but stagnating opportunity unless the energy can be converted into something slightly more kinetic. There is chemistry, the basic human kind, and 'chemistry' where it's more than just covalent bonds.'

"Loony Lupin." Sirius hisses under his breath, passing behind him on the way to charms, "Loony loony Lupin."

And the tension creeps up his spine when their bodies nearly touch. Like heat and static.

"Fuck you --" Remus mumbles back, "Nobody likes it doggy style anymore."

He's pushed against the wall but he doesn't fight back, just watches, and his breath hitches.

"You drive me fucking crazy." Sirius breathes against him, "You make me --" and he trails off, he thinks, he sighs, hedoesn'tgetit. But their hips push together anyway, in the middle of the hall, and he can feel the outline of Sirius's jeans beneath his robes. And Sirius's forming erection below them.

"Make you what?" Remus challenges, pushing his stomach up until his thigh catches just offcentre, "Make you -- what?"

His eyes are staring up and his lips are twisted, suddenly, smirking, grinning, almost. But he's hard. And Sirius steps away. Walks away.

"You don't get it." he mutters to himself, trying to smooth the creases between his eyes, "You just -- nevermind."

Others, it's nothing but desparation. But they try because it hurts not to.

"So - uh -" And Sirius is perched on the edge of Remus's bed. It's dark, but he still sees the way he blinks and tries not to look at him. Tries, instead, to watch the shadows spreading out between his fingertips against the mattress.

"Yeah." Remus whispers, "Um."

And they don't know whether it would be better or worse to go to sleep and forget it all.

"Look, I--" Sirius moves closer, pulling his knees up over the edge and the curtains sway precariously. Remus, thinking, nudging his toes away - and he interrupts.

"Don't start right now I hav-"

And that's when Sirius kisses him.

"Oh."

You and I are oil and water, just trying to mix it up.

romanculus_ex — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 05:45:24 GMT

Title: The Unofficial Rules of the Marauders {and the reasons they were made to be broken}
Pairing: Remus/Sirius.
Summary: The Marauders create a rulebook - a way to make sure their friendship is preserved. But when it starts tearing them apart, when secrets start tearing them apart, is there more than meets the eye to the reason behind rule number one?

Rule #01: Secrets stay as secret.
It wasn't until sixth year that they made them up - James, with a dictionary and a copy of Lily's classnotes, and it wasn't until sixth year that any of them were really mature enough to try and follow them, either. I'msoinlovewithher, and nobody was allowed to breathe a word. Peter's lips had slipped offtopic and Sirius had stuttered to save himself until it was inked carefully, innked invisibly, onto the back of the map.
"Law." They'd all nodded. "Law."
Repeated and repeated enough times to make them dizzy until it finally stuck.
"It's like family. We need to trust each other."
Sirius nodded, Sirius grinned, Sirius provided the spellwork to keep it all hidden. And Remus was there, barely a glance away, barely a footstep away.
He almost said it, thethingnobodycanknow, he almost ruined himself until it showed up in thick black marker and he felt a shudder of relief creep down his spine at being reminded.

Rule #02: Friends come first.
They all made additions, they all changed parts. They discussed it, sometimes, behind thick red curtains or between classes or thisistootightasqueeze in new passages, behind old ones. It didn't matter, but they all had reasons. And it was considered. And taken note of. It was just a part of them.
Remus had cornered Peter after Herbology, dirt smeared cheeks from rerooting mandrakes - fingers pressing against his face and everyone had been silent. It matched his eyes, Sirius had told Lily - 'hush, hush, he'll get embarrassed' - but Peter just looked past his shoulders instead.
"We need to make number two." he said, a little too solemnly, and he was almost blushing. He was almost refusing to talk. "Friends come first."
Friends come first. And it had turned out in green cursive with exclamation points. James scratched it out. 'Marauders come first!' he changed it to and they all shared hidden grins.
'Friends come first' Remus reminded himself when Sirius held hands with Anna Whitelowe all the way to the Astronomy Tower. But the way they disappeared onto the observation deck caught him writing it over and over that night, by wandlight, after dark. Just to be sure, he told himself, just to be sure he knew his place.

Rule #03: A tie is to be placed on the dormitory door if one is 'entertaining'.
Whilst it hadn't been as attached as the others, James had deemed it necessary. "Nobody wants to see that." he scrunched up his face, "Nobody wants to know about that." And it had been Sirius who started it all. A kiss behind the greenhouse and he'd told the world. A bit of a fondle under robes, a hand tugging at his zipper, teeth against his neck - she had been pretty at least, even Remus admitted that. High brows, he said, and downy lips. She had been pretty enough and James had heard it all.
siriusharder. siriusmore. ohyes. Tangled sheets around hearts and legs and achingaching. Hips pressed against mattresses with the curtains wide open. Her shirt was still on but that had been enough. "Number three." he had told Sirius after fleeing down the stairs with wide eyes, "And no arguments."
Remus agreed wholeheartedly but only when he saw the look Sirius was giving Joanna Westerley behind him. He was still fully grateful for number one.

Rule #04: If any disagreement is to take place between two parties, a mutual party is not, under any circumstances, to get involved.
He'd broken up with her. They'd all seen it. And she had, it turned out, been perfectly lovely with only everything {she'd said} left to lose. Sirius. It had been about Sirius. Or the way she'd pressed her hand to Remus's thigh under the table by mistake. Or her lips to Remus's cheek 'accidentally' in the dark. "Would you help me with my Transfiguration?" she'd asked and he had said yes. Then Sirius had walked in with Remus's trousers past his hips and it had been allsoverywrong.
"You're a liar, Lupin." he'd shouted, "You're a fucking dirty liar."
Her lipstick was still pressed on his collar and his pulse hurt - physicallyhurt - echoing shallow thumps of how he had messed it up without trying. She'd - she was nice, she was very nice, but she thought he was too. He'd smiled. He'd spoken to her. Everything Sirius had tried so hard at. Everything Sirius had asked Remus for advice on and she - her - the girl - she'd broken them both by dragging her teeth along pristine white folds and dripdripdrips of almost love. Chocolate, she'd smiled, chocolate. And it'd all been too much. He was in over his head. She was in in over hers.
"I can't believe you." Sirius had yelled and James had ended up with the black eye and bruised ribs.
Remus didn't cry that night but he wrote a very long letter to his mother about how, sometimes, he just wanted to go home.
She asked if she could come get him the very next day but Dumbledore had smiled through the hot blue flames.
"I assure you this will all, what's the word - oh yes, blow over very soon."

Rule #05: All arguments, or disagreements, or to be talked out before more drastic action is involved.
They still weren't talking but Sirius climbed into his bed in the middle of the night, nonetheless. Remus wasn't fully aware other than an arm encircling his waist and the covers being kicked down his legs, right to the bottom sometimes. He'd wake up, before his alarm, he'd wake up suddenly freezing with an indent in the pillow beside him and no blankets.
"ohgodimissyou" Sirius wanted to say, "ithadnothingtodowithher" but it all came out a mumble in his head and he couldn't get it past his lips in anything but a stutter of anger and a sharp nudge, or a kick, or a smack.
"I'm sorry." Remus told him eventually, glancing up at the wrong time to bed-ridden hair and toobigeyes, "I'm sorry for whatever I did but you know, Sirius, you know what happened."
"Rule number one." he shrugged the, staring at the floor, following the trace of small red lions on the undersheet of the bed linens - shaping his lips into a small, firm knot. And trying not to speak.
"Rule number one?" Remus asked in a whisper.
"This is all James's fault. I'm so sorry."

Rule #06: All physical contact between two parties is to be administred only in the presence of another mutual associate.
They hadn't hugged exactly, much less 'kissed and made up' but it had been the firewhisky. The butterbeer. The veritaserum tripping them over their tongues, their hands, yespleaselikethat. It had been an hour before dawn when Remus tumbled through the door with a stack of books and Sirius's arms had flung around him with enough force to send his lips quirking down into a scowl. "Get off you big mutt." he laughed and next time it had been James.
It had lasted too long, Remus thought, it had been too intimate. They were talking, slurring, theproblemwithyouthtoday - it hadn't meant anything, he tried to talk himself into it, it hadn't meant a thing. Lily. Of course it was Lily. James's head was in his hands and then Sirius's arms were around him. Not patting, not rubbing his back, just around him and the dark glow and the almost silence - Remus watched but felt as if a bubble had been suddenly erected around the two of them. A bubble of another completely different life that he, Remus, Moony, he was just an outsider and they didn't even know his name.
"There, there, mate." Peter had said awkwardly and patted him on the shoulder but Sirius had hugged him - held him.
And the way the door slammed behind Remus hadn't been intentional but it had broke them apart all the same.
"It's such a stupid rule." James had muttered under his breath before looking curiously at the flush spreading across Remus's cheeks, anger, he thought at first, before the shy eyes refused to look at Sirius. Nononowait. "It's such a stupid rule but I think I have a better one." he said and crossed out number one.

Rule #01-B: Secrets stay as secret unless they're a matter of life or death.
"Remus, a word." he'd said, and they were locked in the dormitory. He was sure, almostfuckingdearpositive, he knew the other two were trying to listen in but James assured him they would hear nothing but white noise. Static. His dad was a big muggle television fan, he explained, his dad was - a dad. And it all made sense then.
"This isn't about your furry little problem." he clarified at once, pointing sharply to the purple ink scratched hastily on parchment, "This is about you, but is a rather different secret I think it would be in you best interest to share."
Remus said nothing, he thought, right then, it was probably in his 'best interest' to let James wait it out instead. Talk it out. Think.
"You - come on." he sighed, "It's not the end of the world. It's not a big deal. You're gay."
And Remus paused, his lips parted. It's not, he reasoned, like he could have done anything but nod. It was, he thought too, so perfectly executed. 'Would you like some tea? How about some butterscotch? A lovely cock?' and he wanted to scream or hide at his own stupid analogy.
"Yes." he added a moment later as confirmation, "But it doesn't mean --"
"And this person, they're your life. So I changed it for you. Now you have to tell him."
Remus stuttered, paused and James shook his head.
"In case I didn't make myself clear, a matter of life or death. They're your life, you tell them, or uh - something involving me and death. I just liked that it sounded eerie."
"Right." Remus nodded having no intention of breaking the original Rule Number One at all. He took a deep breath anyway until the cold air hit the back of his throat and he nearly choked, "Right."

Rule #07: If one party starts developing feelings that could be viewed by mutual associates as 'non-platonic' he is to inform other parties closesly associated. Or become more practised at Silencing Charms.
James had heard. James had heard again. He didn't march over but he waited until morning when Peter and Remus went down to breakfast early.
"uh - something you want to tell me, Pads?" he asked, crouching on the corner of Sirius's bed where the blankets were rolled up in a knot of red and cream and gold.
"Not particularly?"
They didn't look at each other but Sirius knew. The look in James's eyes, the way his brow creased - he knew.
But he stayed quiet, stayed hidden, biting on his bottom lip.
"You like Remus."
"Yes."
James just smiled in a way Sirius, then, would have described as 'too cheery'.
"Excellent!"

Rule #08: All parties of the name Sirius Black are to inform all parties of the name Remus Lupin they would very much like to shag them. Desperately. Please.
James had made it dark black and bold and they had all been gathered round when he said he had the perfect rule. He said he'd had an ephiphany and almost all of them had groaned before moving to kneel anyway - curiosity. Curiosity and adolescent boys.
"Excuse me?" Remus had exclaimed when he saw it, his cheeks bright red and a hand roughing up his hair. Yes, James knew, yes, he was definitely flustered.
"What?" Sirius glared.

Rule #09: All parties under the alias James Potter are hereby banned from negating rules.
Both of their ideas really, albeit shy smiles and hands that almost but never quite managed to touch during the writing process. Sirius's knee pressed against Remus's thigh when they were standing up though, but that didn't mean anything.

Rule #10: The world does not, under any circumstances, revolve solely around Sirius Black.
"What?" Sirius hissed, slamming the door behind him as he stomped angrily into the room after a glowering Remus. "What?" and neither of them dared look at one another, "How does this even involve me?"
He tried to calm his voice, to calm his breathing and his heartrate and the frantic way his shoes kept tapping against the ground. He tried to watch Sirius out of the corner of his eye but couldn't look away from the ink stains on the floor curling into lips and eyes and faces and {sometimes, just barely} hearts.
It had been a girl, of course, it had been a girl and Lily Evans and everything and nothing. And nobody had even said a word.
"Don't you get it by now?" Remus ground out between his teeth eventually, his shoulders turning sharply to face Sirius, moving towards him, "Don't you get it? Everything is about bloody you!"
There was a sharp inhale of breathe then. A sharp hiss of hands or legs or hips hitting wood and neither of them knew who had dared make the noise. Sirius, shocked back into the door or Remus, surprised he said anything at all, never mind the truth.
"It - well - um - wow." Sirius mumbled, "Wow."
And Remus's hand was on his chest, in his shirt, tugging and pulling and twisting.
"All the time. It's just - it's just you." he sighed and James shouted up the stairs just before their lips met.

Rules #11 to #122: James Potter must develop appropriate judgement before he is allowed the colour of his pubic hair to return to normal.

Rules #122 - #137: Sirius Black is a right wanker.

Rule #138: Remus Lupin is to fall in love with Sirius Black before the end of term.
It didn't snow but they smiled anyway, knee-deep in rain at Hogsmeade station. Remus had a hat pulled low under a hood and Sirius's hair was plastered to his skin.
"So--" he started, shuffling his feet awkwardly.
"So --" Remus mumbled, looking away.
It was clumsy, and draining, and wet but they kissed then. Surrounded in the buzz of students and parents and - whatwilltheprofessorssay? - a waterproof jacket and old boots pressed firmly against expensive denim. Sirius's hand fastened deftly under the knot in Remus's tie and pulled him, through puddles and past squelching feet (his hands, ohgodyes, still touching, still aching) around the corner. Pushed up against a barrier, a brick wall behind them. And he kissed him again. He kissed him like he'd wanted to since that first rule was meant to be broken. Damp shirts rubbed together, damp skin. Buttons and zips and - ahmorepleaseohfuckremus. Perfect, it wasn't perfect, but they fit.
"It really is all about you." Remus whispered against Sirius's neck, "All about bloody you."
And they laughed.

romanculus_ex — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 02:54:14 GMT

Title: Too late to catch you falling (so lets enjoy the rebound).
Pairing: Pete/Patrick. Pete/Ashlee.
Summary: Pete's in love, he doesn't understand the why or the how or the ohmygod - but he's in love with both of them. If only his body would agree.

The problem Pete had with love was either that he felt too much of it or not enough, often getting the balances mixed up and walking around in a state of dark circles and bruised wrists for a few days as he tried to write it out. He ended up in the same place he started, of course, heading lower than nowhere, but everytime it made his heart ache with indecision his eyes lit up because he felt, for once, completely human.

we're still walking backwards into this and the crashing doors should have been a warning sign. i see the same mistakes but i overplay them as melodies where every bad decision leads back to the first one. my mouth is still pinned by magnets to you and the poles won't match up with anyone less important - i think i'm staring to get how lady baglady felt. i swear one day we'll become better than ourselves.
posted by xo at 04:27am.

Surrounding himself with thick foundation faces and tightly knit sweaters made it easier, sometimes. Hands stuffed in pockets with his thumb running over the wrong letters comfortably. Patrick, an old shirt and messy hair - everyone else, their suit-ties and ballgowns with casual shoes. Laughing with long skirts over how it made them 'naughty'. He didn't pay attention a lot of the time but his head spun, nonetheless, the haze of alcohol that surrounded lipstick smears and bathroom mirrors and ohgodyes.

But he watched. And he craved. The simplicity, the regularity, and his hips twitched in starch-pressed jeans. That's how Ashlee had come about and he'd, part of him at least, the loneliness - it had fallen in fucking love with her.

Their hands wound together tightly on the back of a bus, one eye on the way her pulse raced against his with Patrick's voice sounding out new songs in the background. And he wanted to watch him, to look away, to stare and it exploded like he imagined the idea of cold fusion had to that one, maybe many, to those - unfortunate scientists. To the brains and the intelligence - and ohhislipsgotitright.

But he loved him. He just loved him. His hands they strayed, his cock it strayed too, but with firm breasts and a string of pink or yellow or white - hipbones, feminine, sharp, jagged hipbones. And he couldn't do it. He couldn't curve his mouth around a hard nipple and think of him. He couldn't tug a hand down against damp underwear and think about getting him off.

His back ached at the thought and his throat stung - but it all died on the tip of his tongue, on the tip of his fingers as they ran down the head of his penis and - and nothing.

"I'm not attracted to you -" he wanted, needed, ohdesperately, he had to say it to stop driving himself insane. And it was Ashlee. It had to be Ashlee. But it was too right, it made too much sense, and their breathing was always in sync like he wrote about. He wanted irregular patterns, he wanted fastpaced and short gasps and shallow clips.

He wanted someone to catch upto, someone to lie in bed with and suck in his stomach to match them until they fell asleep.

Parties, so many parties, and they were both always there. He wore a shirt now, a dress-shirt with a collar and Ashlee linked his arm with perfectly manicured fingers and the tiniest scar. He never asked but with Patrick he knew every single one without a word between them.

the hardest thing i've learnt recently is that looking across at an empty pillow and seeing someone else's face means nothing unless you do something about it. it's easier to let go than to learn how to hold on.
posted by xo at 01:18am.

"I'm in love with two different people." he told Andy, cross-legged on silk sheets in another hotel he wouldn't write home about, "Two different versions of two different people. Fuck, I don't even - you know, I love someone but I don't think I could be with them. I love someone else because I know the world hates me for it."

His hands shook that night, sitting crouched against a lazy-chair with a pen and paper in hand. A pen and paper resting on his knee - on the table, shoved disparingly on the floor under the vein of shadows from his socked feet.

"I miss you." he told Ashlee on the phone, seconds later, climbing into Patrick's bed and pressing their cheeks together. "I miss you." he whispered to him and only partially knew what he meant.

It was human. It was completely human. He was human. But he couldn't do it.
I'm fucking in love with all the parts of him I hate.

But it was different. Kissing. A peck on the lips at New Year and that was it. No sudden urges, no lust, nothing but a clap on the shoulder and a shy smile that - fuckishelookingatme. It wasn't awkward. It wasn't, he swore. But eggnogg and - ohshit.

Ashlee's tongue cornered him by the bathroom and he had his jeans open before they reached the door handle.

He tried, he fucking tried, imagining her curves as anything but womanly and when he reached to tug her skirt up he felt sick.

Years of being accused of it, he thought, And I can't get it up for the right person. The wrong person. It would have been better. Patrick would have been better.

I'm in love with you. he wrote out on the fridge with alphabet magnets. Cryptic enough, elusive enough, nothing to feel guilty for except the - hurtpaindenialfear, and he was watching him.

"I don't think I can have sex with you." he hissed caefully between his teeth but Patrick just grinned.

"That's good to know, I think. By the way, Ashlee was asking if I'm sure you're still straight. Problems?"

Damnfully he sighed and tried, one last time, to kiss him like he deserved to be kissed. Their tongues darted out and he almost - thisisdifferentthisisoh - almost felt a spark of something electric shoot up his spine.

But then Joe walked in with a stack of comics books and sat down between them with a raised eyebrow.

Ashlee, Pete smiled, Ashlee.
And for all he was still in love with him he couldn't do a damn thing about it.

romanculus_ex — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 16:35:49 GMT

Title: I time every journey to bump into you.
Pairing: Ten/Jack.
Summary: They're not together, but Jack keeps appearing - everywhere the Doctor goes. It's not really intentional until it is. And even then it takes something like a Haemovore to get them both to realise why neither can really ever leave.

January, 1969.
He saw him, but only from a distance; bent casually over a Newspaper in the street with a cup of coffee if his hand. It hadn't meant anything and he'd barely glanced across - but he was there, and - for the first time in centuries - so was the Doctor.

Jack, he noticed, had a hat bent low over his face and if it hadn't been for the thick accent rolling off his 'good morning' he may have never guessed. Except he already knew, he'd sensed it. And it still tugged violently at a part of his spine that was, he insisted, curved in the wrong direction to fit snugly into a mattress.

"Martha -" he mumbled distractedly, shoving his hands into his pockets, "Tell me - does that picture from the Venera 6 look suspiciously like interference?" And he knew then he was staring.

He could have walked over, he could have smiled, or acted like he hadn't walked away. He could have asked to see the article and avoid conversation or hope he didn't remember a thing. Instead, there was a young boy selling copies on the corner. From the moment he picked it up, scanning his eyes over the vague detail of ghastly blue bodies fading in the static gases, he found himself watching him over top until Martha nudged his elbow.

"Well? What is it?"

He frowned, taking a step back as their eyes almost locked across the street, shrugging.

"Nothing." and he grinned widely, "Absolutely nothing." a pause, "Say - how do you fancy a trip to Venus?"

April, 1611.
"London?" Martha asked as they stepped out onto cobbled ground again, glancing around at the dark streets and high brows, single file, rushing; piling into a modest little building with a thatched roof and no windows, "What happened to Barcelona? Could have done with a holiday."

But the Doctor shrugged himself into his jacket as he stood beside her and narrowed his eyes.

"Shakespeare -" he laughed, "Marvelous. What a time to get the wrong year - The Tempest, wonderful, by the way. Well, not after our last visit. I wonder how old Will is doing. I hope he remembers us, I think a spot of tea would --"

"Doctor?"

He shook his head and turned to slam the door of the TARDIS shut gently, "1611. Not a flaw in the history books!" and then he grimaced, "Ooh. That usually means we'll have to stop one happening. And I thought we could have a break."

They ended up around the corner of a playhouse, as they always seemed to - somehow - in Elizabethan England. Hollow green eyes, the doctor had paused, and it had been so obvious.

"Graske - " he had smiled, "Why I haven't seen you in - at least three hundred years, what have you been doing with yourselves?" and they'd tried to replace him.

Through the streets, across the shallow bridges, through deep British puddles and still he hadn't seen the look. Jack, a long grey duster, walking calmly out of the pub just as the doors opened.

"Hi," he'd said to Shakespeare {'William' as he'd called him}, raising his head, and the Doctor, he - he would have known, "I'm Captain Jack Harkness."

But they'd been trying to get them - to get them all. They'd wanted a peaceful life, a new life, but it had all backfired in the end. Sadly, the Doctor could sympathise too well and just, that night, the time he turned to leave, he caught a set of familiar eyes following his every move in silence.

November, 7921.
They were running after the same thing, or running away from it. Crossing corners on a thinly shielded old aluminium spaceship - leisure-cruiser they'd called it, private stores, won it. But neither of them believed a word. Jack had scratches across his cheeks and a mark of dirt running the length of his left arm, braces heavy, shirt untucked - but he was close.

They never made contact when they met, they just looked, and kept on going.

"So what is this thing?" had been the only question, subtle, not quite subdued, but friendly enough to not warrant any expectations.

"Haemovore -" the doctor replied, taking a sharp left to avoid a host of Judoon guards, "Met them in the Viking Age, years ago. Feed on blood, sort of like - well, vampires really. But they're not. They're not human. You have - you have this chain, you see, this evolution chain but nothing like the ones from Earth. They're the end product, pollution, war, all of it turns you lot into them." he paused, pushing Jack's shoulders against a wall to miss a growl, a hiss, an ohmygod, "The only way to repel them to - to disarm them is by their victim's faith. It's all a bit mumbo jumbo but we need to --"

And Jack jumped in front of one. Arms out, winking back.

" -- find someone loyal who can't die? Relax. I haven't changed."

Under his breath, with a set jaw, the doctor muttered, "That's what I'm afraid of."

July, 1905.
"Martha - she, well, decided it better if she didn't come with me. It's complicated I think." the Doctor shrugged, his sleeves rolled up, staring fixatedly at a screen in the TARDIS with Jack on the ground, buried in mechanics again. And he swore this wasn't going to happen.

"Nobody else then?"

The doctor frowned, "Nobody else. I travel alone."

Jack snorted then and sat up, rubbing a grubby hand across his brow and resting his back against the wall. "Come on, I'm not one of those stragglers you meet along the way. I know you better than that. You don't need to give me some old excuse just because you don't want me to come along --"

"Your Vortex Manipulator, of course!"

And it went quiet.

"I wondered how, in all times, in all places, you were there. I thought it was coincidence at first - {'or guilt' he added silently} but no --" he grinned, "No. It's still working, isn't it?"

"I -"

"Jack, you utter genius!"

And the kiss on the cheek had meant nothing at all.

December, 2007.
Everything had a tendancy of going a bit topsy-turvy over the Christmas period, he noted, after the past few years at least. So he'd turned up. There were no big window displays but the lights were enough, the tinsel; empty apart from the brief glimpse of Jack hurrying down a side alley to avoid him.

Against his better judgement, or perhaps, because he may have been the only one to know what was going on - he followed.

"We've got to stop meeting like this, Captain." he smiled, and there were dumpsters, big green dumpsters piled high with restauraunt waste and old wrapping paper, "Went through all of time and space to try and get away from you, and you were there - every single time."

"You know why." Jack shrugged almost nervously, holding out his wrist, "Guess you'll be wanting to fix it then? So I can't?"

"Come with me." the doctor asked suddenly, surprising them both. His eyes widened and his mouth pressed into a firm line, "Come with me" he repeated, calmer and almost laughed.

"Really?"

"Really. Elimate the element of surprise when I run into you in the caves of Adrozani."

Jack almost said no, but his lips quirked up just in time, "Okay."

--

{It didn't snow that year either, but the hydrotechnics they'd found behind the dumpsters led, again, to the breakdown of another space vessel in the atmosphere. Somehow, for them, right then, ash seemed so much more fitting to a new start}.

romanculus_ex — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 02:09:28 GMT

Title: Steadying up on us.
Pairing: Remus/Sirius.
Summary: Two mini-fics. The first, how they came together and the second, the reason they fell apart.

I promise you a heart you'd promise to keep.
"I've never been in love before --" Remus was halfway through admitting when Sirius's back hit the trim of his bed, all gentle curves and sharp elbows. He coughed, almost politely, and knotted his fingers together over the dusty cover of his book, "I don't think it necessarily matters much, but I would like to experience it sometime before I die."

"All it does is fuck you around!" James had grinned and Peter had edged in something about it being for ponces, anyway. Or girls. And there had been an uncomfortable silence then neither of them dared try explain.

"But all the same -" Remus had admitted later, behind thick red drapes to a whisper of moonlight and Sirius's gentle snores, "I would like it anyway."

It was well past Valentines when the conversation was brought up again, and it was just the two of them. Him and Sirius, pushed up together on a couch in the common room. They'd moved along, shuffled hips to hips, to make room for some third years with tears in their eyes. Once they left, once they were dragged off to bed, they just hadn't considered it. And the static from the fire accentuated the way their knuckles rested just near enough to touch if they tilted their wrists in the right direction.

"I've never been in love either --" Sirius said, all of a sudden, before looking down and pressing his lips into a firm line, "Well, not in the way you're supposed to. It's always been the wrong type or the wrong person. Mainly it's just been me. But I think I'd like it too, some day."

Remus's mind had added the "with you" on the end and it made his chest rise in such a harsh breath he felt a shock of cold air hit the back of his tongue a moment later, almost making him forget it was make believe.

"But not yet." Remus had smiled, "Not now."

Siirus laughed then but didn't dare look at him, "Of course not. That'd make us no better than James and Evans. Fucking idiots."

He didn't know why, but Remus, for some reason, whenever they talked about it from then on always assumed they would be falling in love with each other. Even if Sirius had said nothing of the sort. It wasn't hope, exactly, but something like it. So when he saw Sirius's kisses pressed timidly to Emilia Harkshaw's neck, he winced {They're supposed to be for me}, and didn't bring it up again.

"Do you think anyone can really keep a heart?" he asked James, two weeks later, "So many muggle songs talk about it but I consider them rather too free. Or too open."

"Wouldn't be able to survive without them, mate, so maybe just have a temporary philosophical hold?"

Dark eyes twinkled mischeviously from behind thin frames and the end of a quill disappeared behind his teeth. But Remus nodded, nonetheless, shuffling his feet along the floor until the rug started to curl with him.

"That's like keeping a word, owning a word, I give you my H-E-A-R-T, how is that romantic? They're just letters."

James never answered but, surreptisiously, later, when they were all asleep, he added an 'e' in a note to Lily. Secretly thanking Remus's obsession with all of this love stuff for letting him look less like an idiot than usual.

"I don't see what the big deal is -" he told Sirius the next morning over breakfast, "If you love someone, you love them. You shouldn't have all of this mumbo-bloody-jumbo about keeping them. Of course you get to, it's what love implies."

Sirius shook his head, chewing thoughtfully on a piece of bacon rind before speaking quietly, almost under his breath.

"Me neither -" he shrugged, "Mumbo Jumbo. Who gives a shit about it anyway, right?"

But when he found Remus outside the Charms classroom that afternoon, he grimaced, taking him aside as they walked; whispering carefully in his ear.

"I know exactly what you mean."

And that's how it happened, well, part of it. The cardboard heart with the jagged edges and the too large loop at the bottom. It curved, rather than ran to a point, but when Remus woke up to it on his pillow, he couldn't help but smile helplessly, anyway.

'A heart you can keep' it said, in thick red marker.

It wasn't signed but from the way Sirius's lips pressed against his that night, he didn't think he needed to ask.

You are the only person who's completely certain there's nothing here.
For all they were fighting, Remus wondered sometimes if they all knew it would be worth it. Not that he doubted the reasons, or the people, but whether things would be different if it swung the other way. He'd seen the faces, of course he had, the hopelessness mixed with desperation in tired eyes. Sullenly, all sitting sullenly over shots of whisky and month long beards. He never joined in but he watched, and maybe that's why it hurt so much.

Sirius, their shoulders nudged together, crouched in an old apartment that neither of them had wanted. Protection, they had to pretend. And it dragged them both into a whirlwind of self-destruction when they were alone.

Remus often asked, head bowed against his fraying jumper, "Do you think we'll make it out of this?" and the silence of the pillow next to him made his heart jump like a bullet into the back of his throat. He didn't like to say no, but it resonated, echoed, quite clearly at the back of his mind. I already think we're in too deep, even if we win.

He had enough scars anyway. They always told him that. Enough to last a lifetime but it had been an easy decision for him - to wait out his transformations until life took over and eventually, selfishly, killed him. Or to throw himself into something worth it and go out with a bang.

It was cold - frosty, thick white icicles hanging from the mouth of the cave when he arrived, settling down with a blanket and watching as everything slowed down to shadows on the floor. He liked to imagine then.

Sirius arrived, eventually, his skin greying just like the rest as he slunk down beside him.

"I've been feeling -" he whispered and Remus turned to look at him, turned away from the apparent 'suspicious activity' for barely a minute, "-- that perhaps I'm the only one who isn't going to be driven insane by this."

They both paused and Remus chewed dryly on his bottom lip.

"Why?"

He hadn't even meant to ask. In his head, he heard Sirius laughing. The way he used to with his head thrown back and his chest shaking. Instead, he was met with silence, and it was still taking some getting used to. But they were all different now. They were grown up. The backbones of men trying to be boys. They weren't made for any of this at all.

"Why?" Sirius asked, and he snorted, "It's not --" he took a deep breath and pulled his knees up to his chest, "..no matter how much we argue it or how terrible we know it is, so long as there is distinctly a good side and a bad side we'll be okay. But once more people get killed, the ones we love, it's going to blur - and I think a lot of us will become monsters."

Remus thought about that for a moment but didn't say anything. He didn't know what he could say, as awkward as he always got around serious conversation, there was something different about the way his hands shook as they clung tightly onto his thighs.

"A lot is going to be taken from us," Sirius continuted distantly, "And I don't know how many of us are strong enough to fight it. To be tempted -" he hissed, "because it's easier. Everyone has a dark side and a light side. Things like this tend to bring out the worst and I'm trying to make damn sure there's more than just me who knows what they're fighting for."

"Survival?"

Their knees almost brushed. He shook his head, then stopped, shrugging himself back against the wall instead.

"Maybe. But there's no way in hell my reason is going to be the same as theirs. As far as I'm concerned, Black means murderer. They taught me that -- and I'm not going back to it, Remus. Never."

romanculus_ex — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 14:25:28 GMT

Title: Blood Moon.
Pairing: ORIGINAL FICTION.
Summary: He fell in love with him that day. Everything else, without conscience, was to be expected. He wasn't a murderer, it was just his heart was wrong.
Warning: Vampires.

He fucking fell in love with him - open toed sandals, frayed grey socks and a mop of messy red hair. He didn't know what he was doing, he didn't know what either of them were doing, but they met outside an old discount mart upstate. There was no conversation other than a muttered sneer under his breath or a hiss directed viciously at the sweep of his jacket as he turned around. There was nothing; no rhyme, no reason, but his chest tightened and pushed his heart like a bullet into his throat. "I don't know why," he wanted to say, "But I don't think I can watch us walk away from this."
It wasn't as if anyone heard, or knew, but his jaw set when he turned on his heel and started hesitantly towards an old push bike chained up against the wall. It didn't have a license plate but the spokes were covered in novelty flashlights and alien heads.
"I'll be here tomorrow." he tried to hiss but his teeth clenched awkwardly, uneven, and he rode away with a jerk of his front wheel over jagged cobble.
"And tomorrow." he thought, "and tomorrow. Just in case."

They never kissed. Never. Even after four months of lounging against curbs and listening to the chatter of feet as the sun fell into a thick pool of midnight. The shutters of the store clattered in the wind but they still sat there, silent, with heavy breathing and idle hands knotting together. Gin soaked lips, on Fridays (or Wednesday's if his mother had left the bottle cap unscrewed again) would almost collide. Messy, unruly, damp alcohol smeared down cheeks but they both went home with stained collars and the promise of something more.

"I'm Syl." he told him, eventually, lowering his head and watching the shadows of his shoes branch out like veins. He nodded, but didn't offer anything back, smiling haphazardly up at the thick rain clouds.

"I'm a vampire."

He didn't know how to react then, so he stilled and his shoulders tensed, studying the thick bags under his eyes and the graze of pale yellow on his front teeth.

"Good. That's - good."

"I'd like to taste your blood."

He hadn't seen him for a few weeks after that, he'd been by, just after dawn, but didn't hang around for longer than the sight of the old woman with an afro of white curls moaning into the shed around the corner; her battered purse bursting with dollar bills.

"It's everyone," he concluded, setting as a run towards the bus stop, "It's everyone. It's not me. The world needs saving."

Two and a half hours, cracked faces and shaking hands, he wondered why he felt invincible all of a sudden.

And he'd got the scar, he didn't tell anyone the real reason - hid under layers of thick lace sleeves and pinstripe gloves. A diagonal slice running up from his wrist to his elbow. Shaky, unsteady, and full of nerves.

"Okay." he had said, after a year, settling down beside a new pair of sneakers outside, "Okay." he nodded, "Do it."

"I'm Numi." he had whispered afterwards, and it felt good. Watching him throw up reams of his blood across the sunken gaps in the pavement. Numi.

"Human digestion." he muttered but he shook his head.

"I'm a vampire." he screamed and the veins in his neck pulsed rhythmically as his gut tugged him onto his knees again.

"I know." he smiled, "I know."

And he liked it better knowing he wasn't quite right.

When it didn't heal, he stopped, a wound tapered at the edges and he frowned as he looked at it in the mirror. He didn't believe a word of it but he'd thought, before, that he had been better than this. He didn't have a number but he called him anyway, looking up everyone in the telephone directory covered in dust. A spider was squished between the pages and he almost grimaced.

"Hello?" he said.

"Oh. You."

"I need to see you."

It wasn't quite desperation but his chest heaved uncomfortably, nonetheless.

The noise of an old seventies docu-drama echoed through the speaker. He almost laughed. He almost started talking about how his mother always used to watch Doctor Who with the sound off in the dark.

"I -- uh - I don't think that's a good idea. Bye."

He hung up, but he lingered on the line. Radio static and television set snow.

"I'm a vampire." he told the boy across the street that week, drawing a dagger from his belt loops and letting his lips fall into a snarl, "Do you believe in eternity?"

He didn't get a reply but the small shaking frame was enough. He threw up too, with hollow cheeks, threw up all over his new jeans and the boy's cowboy boots. Pains stabbed like bruises down his sides but he kept on going.

"I'm a vampire." he said to the wrong person and ended up with broken ribs and two black eyes.

"I'm a vampire." he told his mother and she never saw it coming though the broken glass of vodka in her hand.

They met again, by the park off fourth, he was rocking back and forth on the swing with the broken chain; kicking up dust.

He didn't say anything, but sat down beside him - pushing himself forwards until his toes could touch the line of yellowing grass.

"I'm a vampire." he smiled and their gazes locked, the thick silver blade gleaming against the black plastic base by his thigh, "And I think you owe me an apology."

"I was lying."

He shook his head and his hair swung out in an arc behind him.

"I'm a vampire." he repeated, angry, "And this is where it all begins."

romanculus_ex — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 03:28:21 GMT

Title: By Morning.
Pairing: ORIGINAL FICTION.
Summary: He doesn't watch, he observes. Everything is always falling apart and sometimes he needs to let himself fall with it. They're just strangers to him, but where will this go? This not quite story that's already got an ending.

He worked on number four, even though they only really had three cashiers and his desk was nothing but a chair and a little sign for information; customer service. My fingers shook as I plucked items from shelves, but my whole spine went rigid as I stood, queued behind a guy with sweat marks running like bruises down his sides and a belt with four extra holes poked in. His jaw shook, his neck pounding - chewing tobacco. I could smell it. Pouring through his vest to the uncomfortable shuffling of his sandalled feet.

When he spoke, it was gruff, but timid, asking under a pant of breath for three packs of cigarettes and calculator batteries. "Aisle seven" the checkout girl said, the one with red hair who didn't smile, and I almost looked around, wondering if all the numbers had been scrubbed off like the letters outside. 'Dic Store' it read now. But he just grunted and walked away.

I wondered, then, pausing, mid-step, what it was like. For him, I mean. I had a tendancy to place people I met in imaginary scenarios so I could pity them, or feel better for myself, I'm not sure. A dark caravan, either way, I knew, with thick curtains that smelled like beer and sperm. On Wednesday, his sister would visit, never at the same time and never with the same man on her arm but always carrying the same thick pregnant belly under a pleated pinny and blue tights. She'd chew gum, I decided, strawberry gum, turned white from the pressure of uneven teeth in all the wrong places. She'd tell him how the kids were. He wouldn't say a word. She'd pour them both a glass of gin, or whisky, and they'd sit not speaking for three hours until he - the man, the hairy hands clinging to her pale forearms, until the hanger-on made a run with half a years supply of booze and sleeping pills. But she'd always give up chase when they met the trailer in the distance and the tow-away-truck with the unsteady brakes. He'd sit, on a night, by the window, with his calculator and his savings trying to work out how much longer until he could afford something better to kill himself with than cheap alcohol. He'd slide into his bed, not showering, and he'd lie awake cursing that he let them both get away. He'd never see his sister again, but he'd still show up at the store, the highlight of his week, a two and a half hour walk with a hangover just to buy his way back into oblivion so he didn't have to remember a thing. Surviving, just like me.

A long, angry fingernail pressed into my back then and I winced, but turned around. Pale blue eyes narrowed into slits and a face that had seen too much sun and too little make-up. I almost frowned at the way the eyeliner never quite coasted the edges of the upper lids and the wrinkles creasing in the brow.

"Move up or move out, sonny."

And then, I saw, with freckles across both sagging shoulders, she was just surviving too. A bag full of new-world antidotes and reams of tomatoes punched into the till. Skin Cancer, I thought, and stepped aside. And he smiled. Just off-centre, showing a set of crooked grey teeth, but I moved towards him nonetheless.

"Hi." he nodded brightly, and reached for the fraying plastic edge of my basket.

Cucumber. Dirty Magazines. And seven tins of tuna.

'It's for the cats' I wanted to say but my nose twitched and, instead, I just watched as his eyebrows quirked.

"Hi."

He must have been fifteen, sixteen, barely out of school. A tie plastered around his neck in a loose knot and grease stains skimming the collar of his shirt.

"You shouldn't use wax." I said, hands rummaging in my pockets, "It leaves marks that won't come out. The only way is a good shampoo but there's not much around here."

He blinked up at me and I paused.

"You shouldn't use wax." I repeated and his fingers clenched as he stuffed everything into a cheap paper carrier.

"I don't." he hissed and I pictured him with an overachieving sister and a poor mother. I wanted to ask about his jawline, why his gums didn't meet, I wanted to ask about dental plans and personal hygeine and if he needed money.

But I took my shopping, brushed his knuckles, and looked down - handing over a couple of notes and miming 'keep the change' before realising I couldn't do that anymore. The coins skimmed the loose threads in my pocket, knocking against my keys viciously, as I edged away from him.

"You're new." I said, as I turned, and he exhaled slowly.

"This is paying for my sister's college fund."

"You're new." I said again, slumping my shoulders inside my father's old navy jacket, "You have better skin than the old guy. He used to always charge me more saying that way, with all the porno, I was paying for my immortal soul or some bullshit."

I'd hoped he would laugh but he just stared frostily at the blinking digits on the clock in front of him. I turned again and backed away just as he nudged his head towards me and grinned.

"I'm Michael." he offered.

I didn't tell him my name, but I don't think he needed me to, nor would he appreciate being almost hit on by a twenty seven year old without a penny to him.

"I know." I mumbled back, watching him out of the corner of my eye, "I'll see you tomorrow then - Michael."

Outside, the guy in the vest, the one from the caravan, slumped up against the half stuck shutters - one hand clutching his chest whilst the other ghosted over the bulge in his pocket. His throat twisted as I approached, almoast as if he wanted to scream for help but didn't dare. Almost as if I would run over.

But I slunk back into a pair of dark sunglasses and walked on by.

Never help the helpless, my mother used to tell me as she tossed me - bare-bottomed - over my father's knee, never help the helpless or you'll end up just like them.

All I could think about from then on as I kicked dirt over his reddening toes was how slick my boxers would feel around my ankles once I got home.

romanculus_ex — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 02:28:44 GMT

Title: We're saving ourselves tonight.
Pairing: Pete/Patrick.
Summary: Pete can't remember what keeps him awake at night. But, somehow, Patrick is involved in everything after four am inside his head.

Sometimes Pete thought about giving up - lying awake and tracing the veins across the ceiling until he reached the tip of the curtains. He'd drive himself to insanity if they weren't closed properly. If there was a gap with a thin strip of moonlight. The clock would move aimlessly in the background and he'd ache, his head would pound - right at the back, behind his skull - and he wouldn't be able to look away. Edging each side closer with his mind and picturing the window framed perfectly with his eyes closed.

But he would never get up. Pete never stepped past the confines of his mattress after midnight because he knew he would never make it back in one piece.

Throwing himself under layers of quilts and pillows and blocking everything out but the music inside his head. And then, when he could tell everyone exactly how many cracks were in the ceiling or how many different shades of magnolia had been used to cover them, he would grit his teeth together and wonder if it would really be that bad. His knuckles would dig into his face and he'd think about what it felt like to be blind. To see nothing but sleeplessness all the time.

As a child, he was never scared of the dark, but the constant nightmares and heaving pulse started something worse. He would sit up and practise holding his breath in case a time ever came when he needed to pretend to be dead.

He wasn't morbid, or curious, even then, he would admit sometimes, he had something of a penchant for self-destruction and everyone should have seen it coming.

"Patrick -" he sometimes whispered, the cold air hitting the back of his throat so hard he had to sit up so as not to choke on the way his breathing patterns changed with just that name, "Patrick -" he would murmur, "Do you think it would be easier if existance was optional?" and for all nobody was ever there to answer, he'd smile to himself anyway, "Or maybe if everything was controlled more."

"Patrick -" he would say, when thick red digits flashed behind his eyelids and his skin pulled tight across his cheeks, "Patrick - do you think it would be easier with you?"

When the door opened, or the mattress heaved, he hadn't moved but, mostly, he didn't remember a thing. In the dark it all felt the same, and in the throes of dawn all he could think about was how to get through the next night in one piece. Pills stuffed in jacket pockets. Hoods tugged up around sunken faces and dark circles.

"Patrick -" he frowned when someone sat next to him on the sofa. He remembered, with an ache, it meant something after four in the morning.

"Still not sleeping?"

He didn't shake his head, but he thought he had and stared blankly ahead at the eyes settled on his own.

"Pete?"

He glanced up.

"What?"

"Are you okay?"

His shoulders felt heavy and his back ached. But he had nothing left to lose.

"Getting there." he muttered into the bottom of a mug.

It wasn't a lie exactly - but the next night, spread across a bed in a cheap motel with Patrick by his side, he couldn't help but hide a grin in the warm side of his pillow.

"Some nights are like this -" he said to the shadows inching down Patrick's hips, "Most nights all I can do is lie awake and write songs in my head about how much of a mess I've turned myself into."

Patrick still didn't answer. And Pete still counted the veins across the ceiling.

But he did whisper "Thank you" in the morning, and slung an arm around Patrick's waist.

"For what?"

"Listening."

It wasn't until they were back on the road, months down the line, speeding down a highway at something-miles-an-hour that Pete sat up, suddenly, and it all seemed to fit in his head.

"Thank you." he hissed, cornering Patrick by the bathroom and pressing their foreheads together in a sweaty mesh of hair and temples.

"Thank you -" he said, before Patrick could utter a word, "-for making me fall in love with you enough that I couldn't sleep. I don't know what it means, or how, but you saved me."

"Everything tends to fall apart when you're not awake."

romanculus_ex — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 01:39:51 GMT

Title: To give you the universe.
Pairing: Remus/Sirius.
Summary: Remus is the moon. Sirius is the stars. And this is their world now.

Remus was the moon - he was never cold, but he was lonely. Shivering into the thick blanket of the sky and living in constant fear of himself. He was slow, but not steady, and cast heavy light on all of that not-quite-romance. Until a kiss caused the clouds to break enough for someone to matter just the right amount to someone else. He watched, he observed, but he was never a part of it.

He had Solar Systems, planets, worlds within his reach, but he never tried for any of them. Sitting contentedly in his little pocket of the night, not a smile, not a frown, but existing, as if that was the only way.

He kept to himself and never tried to outshine anyone. He kept to himself all the secrets of the tide, the oceans, and the heart he wished he knew more about.

Remus was the moon and he didn't need anyone. Except, really, sometimes, he did.

Sirius was the star - one of many. Always surrounded, but constantly wanting something more. Tucked into a crowd of sighs, 'beautiful' they would all say, 'beautiful' - and he'd hide, fade away, trying to burn himself out before the rest because it's the only chance he had at standing out.

It was full, life, of lows and highs for him. Everything was too bright, or too colourful, or too grey. But full of so much energy he couldn't slow himself down to appreciate it. Some nights, settled high above the west coast, bathed in the thin glow of white light, he would shine so brightly he felt like he was going to explode. He'd feel so much love, compassion, hatred, anger, he'd feel so - so human then that he'd almost forget.

He needed so much but had nothing, he didn't understand love, but he wanted it, nonetheless. His observations were all he had. Young couples barely brushing hands, marriage dying during sleep and babies rubbing noses, gripping fingers. He saw the way it all destroyed itself in the end, the way it all began like a flourish, a bang, a firework. And it was the most wonderful thing, he would think.

Sirius would crave it then, crave another dimension to his own heart and once a month, twelve times a year, he could almost feel it.

The full moon with a beautiful face, glowing dimly beside him.

"I would give you the whole universe" he wanted to say, "to keep you shining like that".

Sirius was a star and, in the end, the only thing he could give was his life.

It was a beautiful explosion, a beautiful dissipation of gas settling just over the moon.

And two boys, on the very edge of a grassy hill that night, two boys made a wish as he fell.

"I'd give you the whole Universe if I could," one whispered, leaning his head against an angled neck, "to make you mine."

"But Sirius," the other said, smiling, "you already did".

Remus was the moon - lonely but not alone.

Sirius was the star - the closest he could get to love.

romanculus_ex — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 05:39:48 GMT

Title: Up until now.
Pairing: Remus/Sirius.
Summary: Remus falls in love with Sirius long before he can figure out the signs. Is it wishful thinking or something neither dare say?

They were walking back from Astronomy - the bottom of their cloaks trailing patterns through the dusty, late-night floor, but they were smiling. The moon caught a quarter of their faces in tight white light, rising patiently as the sun burned it's way back behind the stars. And their hands brushed. It wasn't anything spectacular and it certainly wasn't planned. They'd turned the corner at the wrong angle - both of them - and Sirius's knuckles had grazed the back of his fingers lazily before he moved away. It was nothing.

But Remus couldn't stop himself thinking about it. Even for a second.

The dormitory wasn't particularly cold but shivers spread like veins down his spine, branching off until his muscles ached rather pleasantly and he tucked himself under a layer of thick blankets. If it had been intentional Sirius would have made more of a show of it, he was sure, if it was intentional Sirius wouldn't have moved away and almost lost his step for a second.

But what if he was just that well practised? His eyes ached and pulled dry at the back, staring at the same fold in the curtains for the past two hours and he suddenly couldn't remember if he'd blinked. No, he thought, forcing his heart to slow down, no - it was just coincidence. But as he settled his head down against his pillow, that didn't make it any better, and he still couldn't sleep.

--

Their conversations were normal enough still, with all the misplaced analogies and short, gruff 'boy words' as Remus liked to call them. He'd observed James using them before, almost forcefully, slotting in a host of violent terms as if they made sense.

"Padfoot, you're my best friend." would, after various glances around the room, become "Padfoot, you wanker, you're a right bastard, but you're my best friend." To assert manliness, Remus would grin, it's the best he could come up with.

{Of course, that didn't mean "Peter, you're a dick" really meant "Peter, you're a dick now please let me insert mine into one of your lovely orifices" - in some cases, "Peter, you're a dick" really did just mean "Peter, you're a dick." but Remus always was a fan of semantics.)

"Remus." Sirius would say, lounging effortlessly in the common room - nudging him in the side, "Dinner tomorrow. I charmed the Slytherin's underwear to perform a rather moving rendition of Beethoven's Polonaise in C Major. It took forever to get them up from an A. I know it's your favourite piece."

Remus was quite accustomed to staring, but his lips barely quirked at the corners, despite himself.

"How romantic." he rolled his eyes and Sirius smacked him across the back of the head.

"Appreciate me more. Growl. Roar. Bark."

He was sure, when they went silent from laughter, that he could hear the faint thrum of "fucking idiot" underneath the words. But they were the rules. James had explained them clearly back in Second Year once girls had suddenly decided it may be nice, sometime, to have a dirty, smelly thing to hang onto. And he had been all too keen to be the dirtiest and smelliest so they'd all want him the most.

"You know you don't have to take it literally!" Sirius had joked. And everything had been a mess of innocence back then.

You don't compliment another guy. James had informed them, Without making sure to insult him at the same time. Otherwise, you know, it's a bit gay.

"Remus." Sirius said suddenly, jerking him back to the grey eyes ahead of him, "If we got a puppy together would that be like legal adoption considering our - um - statuses?"

He coughed under his breath and Remus felt his cheeks ache.

Some people being excluded from that rule never meant a thing, he'd tell himself, nothing at all.

But he'd still be awake all night tearing it apart, just in case.

--

They were behind the greenhouses when Sirius's hand folded over his knee and walked up his thigh. He never said anything but his body stiffened and he tried not to look.

"I understand, it's okay Moony." he'd whispered and it was all like a tragedy in the back of his head.

Maria, a rather determined Hufflepuff, had been after him for months, apparently. She chose that morning, of all times, to try and show her interest in a display of skin Remus liked to keep hidden from people. He'd paled, opened and closed his mouth so many times his jaw hurt, and Sirius had (somehow) appeared and dragged him off. And then they were sitting so close it made Remus think if Sirius had jumped out at him like that, he might not have minded so much.

"It's okay to not like girls." Sirius said calmly, shaking his head, "I mean, I like them sometimes. But mainly I just like you."

By the time Remus turned to stare at him, wide eyes and shaking hands {lips almost pursed}, he'd grinned.

"Friends are so much less complicated aren't they?"

The next morning, nose covered in drying porridge from where he'd practically fallen asleep in his breakfast, he really wished he could agree.

--

"I like you the most." Sirius always whispered, slipping between the shadows to Remus's bed and curling up on his side under the blankets, "You have the warmest bed."

It didn't matter that it was June, Remus convinced himself, it didn't mean anything that the room was too hot to sleep with the quilts for anyone else.

He watched beads of sweat roll fitfully from Sirius's eyelashes and disappear as light grey specks into the under throes of the cushions.

"I like you the most too." he would whisper, under his breath, but always let out a sigh of relief when he heard a deep snore in reply, knowing Sirius hadn't heard a word.

--

"It was a football game." he said, and Sirius nodded aptly, legs crossed, leaning back with hair falling in his face, "I was thirteen and a bit. And I was with my dad."

He hadn't thought about it in so long, but his stomach ached as he remembered and the thin pencil glow from the wand lying between them made it more intimate, somehow. His eyes flickered down and he almost smiled, clearing his throat instead - and Sirius looked up, watching him.

"It wasn't anything special." Remus explained, "There was a man running across the pitch at half time. He had big thighs and a hairy chest but I liked it. I liked that he was naked. But I didn't want to think about why. It just - came naturally after that."

"Penis." Sirius smirked, and his laugh rolled from the back of his throat and Remus shifted uncomfortably next to him.

"Stop it!" he muttered, punching Sirius lightly in the chest, but they were both smiling and it was all okay.

"Penis." Sirius added again and Remus jumped on top of him without a second thought.

After that, he never asked why, but Sirius wouldn't wrestle with him anymore. Watching on as he rolled about on the floor with James and (occasionally) with Peter, all he could wonder was if he was losing his best friend. Or he'd got it all terribly wrong.

--

"He likes you." Lily told him, glancing up from her book and across the room to where Sirius was pulling faces at his chess pieces. "It's so obvious."

Remus bit down hard on the inside of his lip and the feel of wet skin against his tongue, even his own, made him squirm.

"It's just because he trusts me more. Because we're closer."

But Lily shook her head.

"He likes you." she said again.

"I wish."

And they never spoke of it again. But, secretly, he hoped that for once James's Lily ravings could be right and that she really was an excellent observer.

--

It was summer, and the station was crowded, and it never quite clicked but, somewhere, it felt more comfortable. Peter left first and they shook hands, patted shoulders and waved goodbye. James was next and Sirius clapped him on the back and offered him a "See you mate!". When Remus's mother turned up they looked at one another awkwardly before Sirius wrapped his arms around him and hugged him tightly.

"I'll miss you." he mumbled behind Remus's ear. And all the way home, Remus could swear his skin was still tingling and his cheeks still warm.

He doesn't hug anyone else, he thought to himself, lying in bed with the window open. He's just worried because of the full moon. But the more he thought about it, the more it drove him insane. And every night he woke up after about an hour and started a letter he knew he would never be able to send.

Dear Sirius, it read, but that's as far as he ever got before tucking his knees up under his arms and sighing.

--

{It was years ago, he remembered, the first time they'd managed to sneak a few gulps of firewhisky each and they'd been standing against the wall. There had been no conversation but Sirius had touched his face and their noses rubbed together. Remus had really wanted to kiss him then but he'd never managed to work up the nerve. After that, Sirius had backed off, or changed his mind. And for all he wanted it, no matter what he did, Remus couldn't get them back to the same place. And it killed him every time he wished for it.)

--

And I'm learning how to fight, kissing you goodnight--

--

"Remus?" Sirius whispered, sitting in the back corner of the library under a pile of books, "Remus!" he hissed again and they both looked up.

"Yes?"

Sirius's palm was resting flat against the table, nudged right up against the spine of an open text. He didn't say anything else but went back to casually flicking through pages, inching his fingers forward but Remus couldn't do anything but stare.

For a moment, he contemplated placing his hand down there too, and imagined their thumbs nudging together or the way their fingers could link together in just the right way. His wrist was pressing along the table but just as he almost got up the nerve, Sirius stood up, pulling himself away.

He shrugged his shoulders, picked up his bag and smiled.

"I - have stuff to do. I'll uh - see you later, Moony."

Five minutes later, Remus got up and followed him out, almost sure everybody else could hear his heart beating as loudly as he could. And he didn't feel he should disturb them over something so trivial as unrequited love.

Or lust.

Wait.

--

That was their story, up to now, Remus would remind himself bitterly when he was alone, hugging pillows and bunching blankets around himself when Sirius slept across the room. That was their story of almost chances. And how he blew every single one.

Sometimes, when he would watch Sirius secretly from between his curtains, he thought about how he really shouldn't be in Gryffindor.

But on the nights he saw Sirius watching him back, he thought maybe he shouldn't be either.