19title: afraid but not bowing out
competition: dauntless competition ; round one ; part one [shooting lessons] ; represent that character
characters: sirius, remus, background james and peter
pairing: sirius/remus
summary: they never say i love you. ― sirius, remus, and the art of falling. seven moments. dauntless competition.
notes: i actually ship wolfstar pretty damn hard i don't know why i never write them. also a healthy side of ace sirius because ace sirius is life. no caps because stylization choices.
i.
remus draws circles on sirius' hand, thumb moving slowly, leisurely. the great hall is empty, besides them - of course it it. it's midnight, christmas eve. the gryffindor table is empty, so they're laying on the sturdy tables, side by side, shoulders touching and hands overlapping. sirius is pointing out each star and constellation, but it's taking forever since sirius keeps dragging off into stories about relatives he knows with that star's name.
"look," sirius implores, pointing at a streak of light. "shooting star."
"make a wish," remus replies, and for a moment, they're quiet.
"what did you wish for?" sirius asks, and remus blurts out, "kiss me."
so sirius does.
and that's all he wrote, for tonight.
ii.
sirius doesn't like sex, and that's the hard cold fact of it.
it's not sex with remus that he doesn't like, not sex with marlene or dorcas or any other lovely lady hogwarts had to offer that couldn't get him off, and he hates it, oh merlin he hates being different, being queer.
and he knows it's not considered normal, because he hears his mates talk about sex freely, rating girls freely, talking and raving about what they'd love to do to them, and sirius doesn't look that way at women or men, can't bring himself to. but sirius was raised in the black household, he can lie with the best of them. so he curls his lips into a shit eating grin when someone starts the leering conversation, saying the dirtiest things he can think of and takes another girl home for another attempt at understanding what was wrong with him.
he doesn't say this to remus though. every relationship has secrets, right?
...right?
iii.
sirius leads snape to the willow on a full moon and james saves him.
remus can't help but be angry, can't help but see red, bubbling in his vision. it's anger, it feels like the wolf overtaking him, weighing him down and sinking into him, digging its claws into remus, and he can't breathe. it clings to his fists, it buries itself in his chest like a bullet and it clouds his brain in a haze of maroon. it's not night, but it feels like he's less man and more wolf right now. salt on a wound, he thinks. salt, meet wound.
breathe. he should breathe.
breathe. he can't breathe.
duly, he thinks he's punching sirius. jaw. nose. eye. chest. chest. repeat. it's as if he's watching someone else do it, watching someone else lay into sirius and sirius won't fight back, why won't he fight back.
when he speaks, it doesn't feel like he's him, like that is someone else's voice and someone else's words escaping his lips.
when he's done, he breathes heavily, as if he just ran a marathon. when he opens his eyes, sirius is gone.
iv.
remus doesn't say anything to sirius nearly all summer. sirius doesn't try.
it isn't until remus comes to visit james over the summer, the last few weeks of august dwindling away, that they actually speak. it doesn't go well, to say the least.
remus screams his throat raw, hands slamming onto wood and balling into fists, digging pale crescents into the scarred skin of his hand, and sirius howls back, and it takes james and peter holding them down and mrs. potter sending a temporary sticking charm at them, plastering them each against separate walls, to actually get them to calm down.
they aren't like they were for nearly six months after, and it takes being alone together over christmas to fix it up again.
v.
"shooting star," sirius says, finger pointing to the sky. the light streaked across the great hall's ceiling as sirius grins a shit eating grin and tells him, "make a wish."
"i'm getting deja vu all over again," remus informs him, but squeezes his eyes shut and wishes anyway.
"what do you want?" sirius asks him, and remus says, "kiss me."
"as you wish," sirius says, then leans over.
vi.
they never say i love you.
vii.
james dies, lily dies, harry becomes famous. peter dies.
sirius betrays them all ― all but avada's the potters himself, and he blows peter to bits.
[a finger, remus thinks numbly, because no, sirius wouldn't do that but he did and that's the cold facts. all he left was a finger.]
he doesn't think as he walks, just ends up at a shady bar, where people were celebrating in every nook and cranny.
remus drinks until he can't feel the weight on his chest anymore.