The Other Side of the Bed
Title: The Other Side of the Bed
Word Count: 441
Rating: PG-13
Prompt: 28
Summary: The time for asking has long since passed.
Disclaimer: Do not own unless stated.
He doesn’t know how their relationship deteriorated so far, to where they sleep backs facing each other like unspoken accusations on the few nights they are together. In-between Dumbledore’s mad quests for peace that only lead to more war, the determined set of Prongs’ now adult jaw as he watches Lily’s belly swell with life despite all the death surrounding them, and Peter’s skittish paranoia that is slowly eating at him from the inside, it’s a wonder they see each other at all, shared flat or no.
Spy. Of all the words thrown at him, whispered behind weathered hands, fearful snatches of gossips and rumors half wild that Sirius disregards them as soon as he hears them, even if they seep into his conscious and torment him in his dreams, that word alone pours ice to every inch of his skin. Betrayal. Caradoc Dearborn, or pieces of him, were fished out of a dumpster yesterday, and they could only tell it was him because of a tattoo he had on his wrist. He had been a laughing man, a comrade, a fighter. Who would do this to them? Sometimes Sirius feels, traitorously, that the answer is on the other side of his bed, the distance between them physically only a few inches, but everything unsaid gapes between them, a maw that is chewing through the threads of their friendship, loyalty, even their love, the frayed threads snapping like wire and slicing into his skin.
They used to eat dinner side by side, laughing and joking, always asking for salt or pepper or sugar, just to watch the other have to get up and reach to the top shelf to get it, enjoying the view and pretending that there was some innocence left in the world when they were caught. Now they sit across their tiny circular table that whirlpools into darkness, barely talking. ‘Pass the salt’ was once a request, then it became a demand, then an accusation, and now it’s not said at all. They reach around, over, through each other every day.
‘Do you hate us so much to betray us? Do you hate me so much to inflict those deaths on our friends?’ Sirius wants to ask, but the answer or the silence that Remus would give him would never be enough. Instead of feeling hurt, despair, or fear of separation (he lives and breathes those things everywhere else, his flat should be home base in this game of blindfolded tag), he hates Remus instead. And even though he’s freezing, he will not ask Remus for his share of the comforter. The time for asking has long since passed.
(Hope I'm not breaking any rules. First post huzzah?)