presenting...MRIII!
this was supposed to be SHORT. and it's not. it's longer than the last one. i'm not its biggest fan, and the main reason i finished it was so that i didn't have to worry about finishing it while i'm moving in two days. this thing has gone in a totally different direction than the other two, it was written totally out of sequence, it's mood-swingy to extremes, and changes verb tense about four times, and i'm STILL not sure if the tenses are all correct for their placement. i am a terrible, negligent writer. you don't have to read this one, really. Remus is barely even in it, and i've learned i'm no good at ensemble fics.
that said, this fic owes the fact that it's done to guster's "keep it together" (which is a lovely album), and the Two Towers dvd (which makes me happy), and, of course, to my muses-and-beta-readers all in one, Jackie and Jamie, who put up with the endless copying and pasting and stupid questions.
this isn't really directly connected to the events in the first two parts (one and two), and they take place a couple weeks or so before this, i guess.
[symptoms of touring]
Peter comes back from the convenience store down the street with a half-loaf of Wonder bread, a jar of garlic pickles, a box of generic brand chocolate sandwich cookies, and, inexplicably, three bruised-looking tangerines. James and Sirius are just drunk enough not to threaten never to let him go buy the food again, opting to tear into the cookies instead. Peter settles in with the pickles in front of the tv, which is playing vintage Looney Tunes, with Wile E. Coyote being run over by a steamroller.
Sirius is almost drunk enough not to wonder where Remus is. Almost.
The night's been a whirlwind, the expected chaos of a show night got kicked up a few notches by the band they played after, a trio of still-in-high-school girls with heavy eyeliner who called themselves "Wrath of Trudy." The singer/guitarist, who Sirius talked to backstage, explained that the three of them lived in this town, and that all of their friends were coming out to see them tonight. And so it happened that they got an audience of excited, screeching high school girls, which suited James just fine as he sang with his eyes strategically half-closed and his leg hooked around the mic stand, and took off his shirt after two songs. Sirius got into the act, too, let his hair stay plastered over his eyes and played his guitar like he was fucking it. Peter tossed his drumsticks out after the last song, and a couple girls actually fought over them. Remus, as usual, totally ignored the audience.
After the set, James reluctantly put his shirt back on, and he and Sirius set about being impressive, schmoozing and buying drinks for themselves and some appreciative sixteen year old girls. They laughed and talked and signed the backs of fliers with clumsy hearts next to their names and felt like rock stars. It was the sort of night that let you ignore rats in your hotel room and shitty practices where everyone argued and only getting decent food when Remus woke up early enough. Even Peter had to tell them about eight times that he'd given his beer away to a girl with spiky hair and a pierced lip who asked him about what brand his cymbals were and if the duct tape that was repairing the bass drum messed up the sound.
Most of the girls cleared out by around one, they probably had curfews, and Sirius scanned the room for Remus, eyes lingering on likely-looking corners, which were all empty.
"Haven't seen him, sorry," James said, sidling up to Sirius more gracefully than he had any right to. "I mean, since after he was talking to the bassist of the girls' band."
Sirius glared at him, half out of annoyance at the way James always knew, and half to try and focus his eyes. "I just thought we should find him if we're leaving, that's all."
"I'm sure he can find his way back to the hotel all by himself, when he wants." He raised his eyebrows, left a healthy pause to suggest that there might not be a 'when he wants.' Sirius took refuge in draining the last of his drink and contemplated spitting an ice cube at James, but Peter interrupted. Sirius swallowed the ice cube by mistake, and grimaced as he felt it sitting in his throat, a slow-melting lump of cold.
"Have we lost Remus?"
"No, Pete, I think he went off with that girl bassist."
"Dana. That's her name, I mean." Peter was good with names.
James waved him off, he'd probably be in this rock star persona for days. Worse than usual, even. "Right, sure. We heading out, then?"
Peter nodded eagerly and Sirius shrugged and went to get his guitar, and the three of them stepped out of the smoky, dim club (which was called, mysteriously, the Moving Castle) into a world that was shiny with rain that had fallen while they were inside. It was always a little strange to re-enter the outside world, eyes trying to adjust from one kind of half-light to another. Sirius's ears felt like they were stuffed with cotton, everything muffled and almost drowned out by the tinny, treble ringing that he vaguely knows has something to do with some little wavy things inside his ears dropping off. Peter's voice (recounting the tale of the pierced-lip girl again) seemed to be coming from far off, which Sirius realized had something to do with the fact that he'd been staring at the water droplets of drizzle in the streetlight and thinking about his hearing rather than walking.
He jogged to catch up, guitar case thudding heavily into his leg.
"I think that we're all going to go deaf," he said, once he caught up.
James cupped his hand around his ear and responded in a stage yell. "WHAT?"
"I SAID," Sirius yelled back, having decided not to point out to James what a terrible joke that was. "THAT WE'RE ALL GOING DEAF!"
"We should get earplugs, those orange ones," Peter said, frowning to himself. Sirius waited for a remark from James about how bad that would look, but it never came. James was busy rummaging through the pockets of his jacket.
"Hold these," he said, thrusting five matchbooks, an assortment of crumpled money, and a AA battery into Peter's hands, turning the pocket inside out. Lint and shredded paper fell onto the wet sidewalk. He muttered something about his other pocket, and continued rummaging, coming up with a condom wrapper, a ballpoint pen, and the cold-water knob from a faucet before shouting "ah ha!" and brandishing the key to their hotel room. "And just in time, too," he said, swerving suddenly to duck into the lobby of the hotel.
"Now I see why Remus is always the one who lets us into our room," Peter said, trying to give James back his matchbooks without dropping them.
"I didn't lose it, did I?" James dangled the key in front of Peter's nose.
Sirius's mind made a helpful montage of Remus unlocking nondescript hotel doors, bass in one hand and key in the other, trying to blow his perpetually in-his-eyes fringe out of his eyes. He shook his head to try and dispel the image (he'd never been much of a maudlin drunk, and he didn't want to start now, especially by being morose about doorknobs), and followed James and Peter down the hall and into their room.
James sent Peter out for food soon after, and, much to Sirius's surprise, actually wanted to work on a new song, and scrawled Sirius some chords to play. James hummed and mumbled the lyrics more or less on key, and Sirius strummed along until they were steady enough to do it earnest. James sang into an imaginary microphone with his eyes closed, occasionally stopping to revise the words with the pen from his jacket, and Sirius added some picking to the chords and tried to convince James that this was the perfect song for a long guitar solo. It was like all the nights they'd spent in James's basement before there'd been a "rest of the band," except that it was Peter who arrived with the cookies instead of James's mum.
The cookies are gone by now, though, and Sirius scrutinizes the half-loaf of bread with a grimace. "Pete, unless you were planning on pickle and tangerine sandwiches, what are we supposed to do with this?"
" 'Thought we could have toast," Peter says through a mouthful of pickle.
"You need a toaster for that."
Peter looks a bit panicked until James grabs the bag of bread and grins. "The radiator!" he exclaims, and Sirius and Peter exchange looks of confusion, and James elaborates. "We can make toast over the radiator." He waits for approval, and gives up. "Well, it'll be warmer, at least."
A few minutes later, James has cranked up the thermostat, and the three of them are clustered around the radiator by the window, holding pieces of bread.
Peter squinted at his, flinching back from the jet of heat from the vent. "Mine's not brown. Is yours brown?" He tries to look at the underside of James's toast without bending towards the radiator. "You know, once when we had no power, my mum made me toast over a candle. Have we got a candle? James, you've got all those matches, we could use those..."
"And blister our fingertips, yeah. Sirius, haven't you got a lighter?"
Sirius pats his pockets. "No, I don't know wh---oh. I gave it to Remus the other day." James is raising an eyebrow and Peter looks disappointed, but Sirius is busy trying to shake yet another Remus image out of his head, in this one he's leaning against the brick wall outside a music store where Peter was getting a new skin for his snare drum, cigarette clutched in his teeth and thumb working furiously on the wheel of his lighter. Sirius fished his own lighter out of his pocket, and tossed it to Remus from a few feet away, which effectively stopped him from cradling Remus's chin in his hand and lighting the cigarette for him.
When Sirius gets back to the present, James has speared his bread with a pen and is in the middle of a sentence. "---almost like marshmallows, and we can do a little singalong! Sirius, go get your guitar, Peter, you can pick the first song, go!"
Peter swallows a mouthful of not-really-toasted bread, and sings, off-key. "On top of spaaaaagheeeeettiiiiiiii, all covered with cheeeeeese, I lost my poor meeeeeaaatballll...."
Sirius couldn't help wincing. "Enough, stop!"
"Alright, different song then!" James waves his bread-on-a-pen around to the time of his song. "Great big globs of greasy grimy gopher guts, greasy grimy goph---"
Sirius practically has to yell over James's voice. "See, no, I meant enough singing, in general. For the night, even."
James stops abruptly, and takes a bite of his bread with a glare. "Fine. C'mon Pete, Sirius wants to sit here by the heater and brood in silence."
By the time Sirius tells James to sod off, they're already peeling tangerines and staring at the tv. He takes a bite of his bread, which is a little over room temperature, and imagines that he tastes the dust that must have been flying out of the vents. He turns down the thermostat and sits on the edge of the bed that will be Remus's, should Remus ever come back, and plays the song that they'd worked on earlier, and watches James, who's mouthing the words along with his eyes on the tv.
Sirius grins and works through a few more songs, the tv show changes, soon Peter's snoring, and James is sleeping, too, leaned against the foot of the bed with his eyes closed and his mouth open. Sirius plays a few chords, hums the tentative tune to the words he's had transcribed on the back of a flier (some bands called Portico, Three Turtle Raft, and None of This Nonsense had been having a show last week) for a while and hasn't had the chance to play. He gives James and Peter a last glance before he sings, softly, a song for someone who'd (maybe) written a song for him. He hates to be in anyone's debt.
I spend my half-drunk fake-sleep nights
Imagining your history
I feel teenage and devoted
And that one's new to me
And I can't help thinking that it might be---
You're singing like a spectre
Constant soundtrack in my mind
This brightest star is burning out
To feel the way you shine
And I can't help thinking that it might be,
I mi---
"What," James (who wasn't asleep after all) says, and Sirius starts, cuts himself off mid-line, "the fuck is that? There's obviously a reason why I'm the one who writes the songs, isn't there?"
"It's better than your shite about 'angels with hair like fire,' at least. Don't think I don't read your fucking stupid secret lyrics when you pass out." Sirius's voice is harsher than he means it to be, but James seems unfazed.
"And don't think I don't know who you're singing about," James stands up and walks to Sirius, oddly predatory, all smoothly moving hips and calculating eyes. He sits at the very edge of Sirius's lap, straddling his knees, and half-sings, half-talks, softly, voice quiet and full of edges. Sirius recognizes some of the phrases from an unfinished song James had floating around on the back of a receipt from the liquor store, but the pronouns are different now.
he's treacherous, baby
'cause he knows how to save you
--but he won't
and silence sails smooth in his wake,
like a ghost
you claim you'd paddle with sharks to catch up
--but you don't
and all your "might be's" are dragging you down
they're lead weights in your pockets
and you'll drown
The rise and fall of his voice stops, and Sirius realizes he's making a white-knuckled fist around the neck of his guitar. He steels himself, tries to keep his voice even. "Those aren't your lyrics."
"No, I guess they're not," James says, leaning forward and bracing his hands on Sirius's thighs, fingertips brushing his guitar and leaving smudges. "They're yours, now."
James grins like a cat with feathers still in its teeth, and Sirius gives him a sharp shove, sending him sprawling onto the floor. "Well I don't bloody want them, all right?" Sirius stands up, pulling his guitar strap over his head so quickly that it almost gets stuck around his neck. He glares at his guitar and tosses it onto the bed. "I don't know what the fuck I thought I was doing, James, thinking this was a good idea, staying in shit hotels and eating lukewarm bread for dinner and playing to fourteen year olds and having you be practically the only person I see for weeks on fucking end! What do any of us think we're doing? I---"
"Remus is the only person you see for 'weeks on fucking end,' mate." Somewhere during Sirius's tirade, James stood up, and his jaw's set hard, his eyes are steely, and his voice is colder than the ice cube that was lodged in Sirius's throat what seems like an eternity ago.
Sirius knows the thing to do right now would be to storm out the door, but there's nowhere to go, and he hasn't got a key to get back in, so he clenches his hands at his sides and tries to think of something sharp to say back, and all he can think of is 'he is NOT,' and it's clear that James wouldn't be fooled anyway.
James's face softens, and he rubs at his eyes, fingers dodging around the lenses of his glasses. "And I'm sick of watching it fuck you up," he says, and looks away before Sirius can even look confused. "I'm going to sleep." He busies himself turning off the tv and the overhead light, shimmies out of his jeans, wrenches a pillow out from under Peter's arm, and lies down on the floor between the wall and Peter's bed. Sirius is left standing in the middle of the floor staring into space. He stays there for a few moments, then finds his bag, and fishes for the miniature bottle of Jack Daniel's he knows he's got somewhere.
Once it's found, he sits against the bed that's waiting to be filled, drinks it slowly, and dozes off, not daring to look at the clock or turn off the lamp on the bedside table. Remus is the only one who ever turns off the lamp.
He wakes up to the door opening, and it's a moment before it registers, and his eyes snap open, and Remus is shutting the door quietly and setting his jacket over the back of the chair, and raking his hands through his hair. He looks at Sirius and gives him a little wave, and as he walks toward the bed, the light catches a smear of glitter on his cheekbone, and Sirius wants to say Remus, you sparkle, but he knows it would probably come out whose fucking glitter is that, and he tries to remember the bassist of Wrath of Trudy, short girl with nice tits and purple braids worked into her dyed-black hair and the glint of a piercing in her eyebrow, he tries to think if she was especially glittery or not, imagines her face pressed against Remus's, eyes against his cheek and breath heavy on his neck, braids spilling over his shoulders.
Remus is standing in front of him now, and Sirius tries to search his face for some kind of afterglow, but even in the gentle lamplight, he doesn't look just-laid or breathlessly snogged, just tired, and the glitter looks accidental, and Sirius wonders if he's just seeing what he wants to see. Remus bends forward a little and opens his mouth to speak, eyebrows raised and mouth quirking in a smile, and Sirius grabs his wrist and finishes the chorus of the song, barely above a whisper.
And I can't help thinking that it might be,
I might be
In love...
Remus looks surprised for a moment, genuine deer-in-the-headlights surprised, but his gaze flickers from Sirius's unfocused eyes to the bottle on the floor, and he closes his eyes for a moment, shaking off Sirius's hand. "You're fucking drunk, Sirius, go to sleep." His voice is harsh.
He doesn't wait for Sirius to defend himself or even apologize, just shakes his head and walks around to the bed, and Sirius is too scared somehow to turn and look at him, and lies down miserably on the floor, still dressed, and curls an arm around his head and over his ear, trying not to hear Remus take off his shoes and unzip his jeans and slide into bed (he does anyway).
The light clicks off, and after a few minutes, something thuds on the floor softly next to Sirius's head. He reaches out and pulls the pillow under his head, cradling an arm around it gently, whispers a thank you that's too quiet to be heard, and half smiles in the darkness, waiting for the sounds of Remus lighting his last cigarette.
_____
[notes.]
1) title is from "fragile" by veruca salt. went through a billion cds, and finally remembered this song, ran through the lyrics in my head, got to the phrase "symptoms of touring" and screamed "YES, THAT'S IT!" luckily no one else was at home. the title actually changed the shape the fic was taking.
2) much love to jamieabsent, who is my Peter Consultant, and who brainstormed details of what he'd bring back from the supermarket and what campfire songs he (and James) would sing, as well as quizzing her family about what Peter would be buying for his drum. i think all of you should go to her journal and beg her shamelessly to write a Peter POV fic in this universe, because it would be stellar.
3) this fic is Allusion Heaven. the club Our Boys play at is called the Moving Castle in homage to Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones, one of my favourite books EVER. the bands on Sirius's flyer are references to Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere, Pirates of the Caribbean, and Patricia C. Wrede's Enchanted Forest Chronicles, respectively. Wrath of Trudy is something that i'd like to call my band, if i had any musical talents.
4) the radiator toast is shamelessly inspired by Johnny Depp's toast-with-the-iron in "Benny and Joon."
5) i don't know when this thing turned into a broadway musical, with James and Sirius both having songs to sing. eek. both of their songs don't really have tunes (making them poetry, really), and for the record, i think both of them are hideously lame and offer my apologies. Sirius's song was conceived in my mind as a justification for the title of the last MR fic ("if you think you might be, you are"), as was the scene in which he croons the chorus (such as it is) at Remus, so that was the starting point of this fic. James's song was written partially in my head in the car (and inspired by the Beatles' "Daytripper," don't ask.), and finished/transcribed on the back of a deposit slip in a bank, along with the James/Sirius dialogue that happens directly after it.
6) if you're reading this, i love you. <3
that said, this fic owes the fact that it's done to guster's "keep it together" (which is a lovely album), and the Two Towers dvd (which makes me happy), and, of course, to my muses-and-beta-readers all in one, Jackie and Jamie, who put up with the endless copying and pasting and stupid questions.
this isn't really directly connected to the events in the first two parts (one and two), and they take place a couple weeks or so before this, i guess.
[symptoms of touring]
Peter comes back from the convenience store down the street with a half-loaf of Wonder bread, a jar of garlic pickles, a box of generic brand chocolate sandwich cookies, and, inexplicably, three bruised-looking tangerines. James and Sirius are just drunk enough not to threaten never to let him go buy the food again, opting to tear into the cookies instead. Peter settles in with the pickles in front of the tv, which is playing vintage Looney Tunes, with Wile E. Coyote being run over by a steamroller.
Sirius is almost drunk enough not to wonder where Remus is. Almost.
The night's been a whirlwind, the expected chaos of a show night got kicked up a few notches by the band they played after, a trio of still-in-high-school girls with heavy eyeliner who called themselves "Wrath of Trudy." The singer/guitarist, who Sirius talked to backstage, explained that the three of them lived in this town, and that all of their friends were coming out to see them tonight. And so it happened that they got an audience of excited, screeching high school girls, which suited James just fine as he sang with his eyes strategically half-closed and his leg hooked around the mic stand, and took off his shirt after two songs. Sirius got into the act, too, let his hair stay plastered over his eyes and played his guitar like he was fucking it. Peter tossed his drumsticks out after the last song, and a couple girls actually fought over them. Remus, as usual, totally ignored the audience.
After the set, James reluctantly put his shirt back on, and he and Sirius set about being impressive, schmoozing and buying drinks for themselves and some appreciative sixteen year old girls. They laughed and talked and signed the backs of fliers with clumsy hearts next to their names and felt like rock stars. It was the sort of night that let you ignore rats in your hotel room and shitty practices where everyone argued and only getting decent food when Remus woke up early enough. Even Peter had to tell them about eight times that he'd given his beer away to a girl with spiky hair and a pierced lip who asked him about what brand his cymbals were and if the duct tape that was repairing the bass drum messed up the sound.
Most of the girls cleared out by around one, they probably had curfews, and Sirius scanned the room for Remus, eyes lingering on likely-looking corners, which were all empty.
"Haven't seen him, sorry," James said, sidling up to Sirius more gracefully than he had any right to. "I mean, since after he was talking to the bassist of the girls' band."
Sirius glared at him, half out of annoyance at the way James always knew, and half to try and focus his eyes. "I just thought we should find him if we're leaving, that's all."
"I'm sure he can find his way back to the hotel all by himself, when he wants." He raised his eyebrows, left a healthy pause to suggest that there might not be a 'when he wants.' Sirius took refuge in draining the last of his drink and contemplated spitting an ice cube at James, but Peter interrupted. Sirius swallowed the ice cube by mistake, and grimaced as he felt it sitting in his throat, a slow-melting lump of cold.
"Have we lost Remus?"
"No, Pete, I think he went off with that girl bassist."
"Dana. That's her name, I mean." Peter was good with names.
James waved him off, he'd probably be in this rock star persona for days. Worse than usual, even. "Right, sure. We heading out, then?"
Peter nodded eagerly and Sirius shrugged and went to get his guitar, and the three of them stepped out of the smoky, dim club (which was called, mysteriously, the Moving Castle) into a world that was shiny with rain that had fallen while they were inside. It was always a little strange to re-enter the outside world, eyes trying to adjust from one kind of half-light to another. Sirius's ears felt like they were stuffed with cotton, everything muffled and almost drowned out by the tinny, treble ringing that he vaguely knows has something to do with some little wavy things inside his ears dropping off. Peter's voice (recounting the tale of the pierced-lip girl again) seemed to be coming from far off, which Sirius realized had something to do with the fact that he'd been staring at the water droplets of drizzle in the streetlight and thinking about his hearing rather than walking.
He jogged to catch up, guitar case thudding heavily into his leg.
"I think that we're all going to go deaf," he said, once he caught up.
James cupped his hand around his ear and responded in a stage yell. "WHAT?"
"I SAID," Sirius yelled back, having decided not to point out to James what a terrible joke that was. "THAT WE'RE ALL GOING DEAF!"
"We should get earplugs, those orange ones," Peter said, frowning to himself. Sirius waited for a remark from James about how bad that would look, but it never came. James was busy rummaging through the pockets of his jacket.
"Hold these," he said, thrusting five matchbooks, an assortment of crumpled money, and a AA battery into Peter's hands, turning the pocket inside out. Lint and shredded paper fell onto the wet sidewalk. He muttered something about his other pocket, and continued rummaging, coming up with a condom wrapper, a ballpoint pen, and the cold-water knob from a faucet before shouting "ah ha!" and brandishing the key to their hotel room. "And just in time, too," he said, swerving suddenly to duck into the lobby of the hotel.
"Now I see why Remus is always the one who lets us into our room," Peter said, trying to give James back his matchbooks without dropping them.
"I didn't lose it, did I?" James dangled the key in front of Peter's nose.
Sirius's mind made a helpful montage of Remus unlocking nondescript hotel doors, bass in one hand and key in the other, trying to blow his perpetually in-his-eyes fringe out of his eyes. He shook his head to try and dispel the image (he'd never been much of a maudlin drunk, and he didn't want to start now, especially by being morose about doorknobs), and followed James and Peter down the hall and into their room.
James sent Peter out for food soon after, and, much to Sirius's surprise, actually wanted to work on a new song, and scrawled Sirius some chords to play. James hummed and mumbled the lyrics more or less on key, and Sirius strummed along until they were steady enough to do it earnest. James sang into an imaginary microphone with his eyes closed, occasionally stopping to revise the words with the pen from his jacket, and Sirius added some picking to the chords and tried to convince James that this was the perfect song for a long guitar solo. It was like all the nights they'd spent in James's basement before there'd been a "rest of the band," except that it was Peter who arrived with the cookies instead of James's mum.
The cookies are gone by now, though, and Sirius scrutinizes the half-loaf of bread with a grimace. "Pete, unless you were planning on pickle and tangerine sandwiches, what are we supposed to do with this?"
" 'Thought we could have toast," Peter says through a mouthful of pickle.
"You need a toaster for that."
Peter looks a bit panicked until James grabs the bag of bread and grins. "The radiator!" he exclaims, and Sirius and Peter exchange looks of confusion, and James elaborates. "We can make toast over the radiator." He waits for approval, and gives up. "Well, it'll be warmer, at least."
A few minutes later, James has cranked up the thermostat, and the three of them are clustered around the radiator by the window, holding pieces of bread.
Peter squinted at his, flinching back from the jet of heat from the vent. "Mine's not brown. Is yours brown?" He tries to look at the underside of James's toast without bending towards the radiator. "You know, once when we had no power, my mum made me toast over a candle. Have we got a candle? James, you've got all those matches, we could use those..."
"And blister our fingertips, yeah. Sirius, haven't you got a lighter?"
Sirius pats his pockets. "No, I don't know wh---oh. I gave it to Remus the other day." James is raising an eyebrow and Peter looks disappointed, but Sirius is busy trying to shake yet another Remus image out of his head, in this one he's leaning against the brick wall outside a music store where Peter was getting a new skin for his snare drum, cigarette clutched in his teeth and thumb working furiously on the wheel of his lighter. Sirius fished his own lighter out of his pocket, and tossed it to Remus from a few feet away, which effectively stopped him from cradling Remus's chin in his hand and lighting the cigarette for him.
When Sirius gets back to the present, James has speared his bread with a pen and is in the middle of a sentence. "---almost like marshmallows, and we can do a little singalong! Sirius, go get your guitar, Peter, you can pick the first song, go!"
Peter swallows a mouthful of not-really-toasted bread, and sings, off-key. "On top of spaaaaagheeeeettiiiiiiii, all covered with cheeeeeese, I lost my poor meeeeeaaatballll...."
Sirius couldn't help wincing. "Enough, stop!"
"Alright, different song then!" James waves his bread-on-a-pen around to the time of his song. "Great big globs of greasy grimy gopher guts, greasy grimy goph---"
Sirius practically has to yell over James's voice. "See, no, I meant enough singing, in general. For the night, even."
James stops abruptly, and takes a bite of his bread with a glare. "Fine. C'mon Pete, Sirius wants to sit here by the heater and brood in silence."
By the time Sirius tells James to sod off, they're already peeling tangerines and staring at the tv. He takes a bite of his bread, which is a little over room temperature, and imagines that he tastes the dust that must have been flying out of the vents. He turns down the thermostat and sits on the edge of the bed that will be Remus's, should Remus ever come back, and plays the song that they'd worked on earlier, and watches James, who's mouthing the words along with his eyes on the tv.
Sirius grins and works through a few more songs, the tv show changes, soon Peter's snoring, and James is sleeping, too, leaned against the foot of the bed with his eyes closed and his mouth open. Sirius plays a few chords, hums the tentative tune to the words he's had transcribed on the back of a flier (some bands called Portico, Three Turtle Raft, and None of This Nonsense had been having a show last week) for a while and hasn't had the chance to play. He gives James and Peter a last glance before he sings, softly, a song for someone who'd (maybe) written a song for him. He hates to be in anyone's debt.
I spend my half-drunk fake-sleep nights
Imagining your history
I feel teenage and devoted
And that one's new to me
And I can't help thinking that it might be---
You're singing like a spectre
Constant soundtrack in my mind
This brightest star is burning out
To feel the way you shine
And I can't help thinking that it might be,
I mi---
"What," James (who wasn't asleep after all) says, and Sirius starts, cuts himself off mid-line, "the fuck is that? There's obviously a reason why I'm the one who writes the songs, isn't there?"
"It's better than your shite about 'angels with hair like fire,' at least. Don't think I don't read your fucking stupid secret lyrics when you pass out." Sirius's voice is harsher than he means it to be, but James seems unfazed.
"And don't think I don't know who you're singing about," James stands up and walks to Sirius, oddly predatory, all smoothly moving hips and calculating eyes. He sits at the very edge of Sirius's lap, straddling his knees, and half-sings, half-talks, softly, voice quiet and full of edges. Sirius recognizes some of the phrases from an unfinished song James had floating around on the back of a receipt from the liquor store, but the pronouns are different now.
he's treacherous, baby
'cause he knows how to save you
--but he won't
and silence sails smooth in his wake,
like a ghost
you claim you'd paddle with sharks to catch up
--but you don't
and all your "might be's" are dragging you down
they're lead weights in your pockets
and you'll drown
The rise and fall of his voice stops, and Sirius realizes he's making a white-knuckled fist around the neck of his guitar. He steels himself, tries to keep his voice even. "Those aren't your lyrics."
"No, I guess they're not," James says, leaning forward and bracing his hands on Sirius's thighs, fingertips brushing his guitar and leaving smudges. "They're yours, now."
James grins like a cat with feathers still in its teeth, and Sirius gives him a sharp shove, sending him sprawling onto the floor. "Well I don't bloody want them, all right?" Sirius stands up, pulling his guitar strap over his head so quickly that it almost gets stuck around his neck. He glares at his guitar and tosses it onto the bed. "I don't know what the fuck I thought I was doing, James, thinking this was a good idea, staying in shit hotels and eating lukewarm bread for dinner and playing to fourteen year olds and having you be practically the only person I see for weeks on fucking end! What do any of us think we're doing? I---"
"Remus is the only person you see for 'weeks on fucking end,' mate." Somewhere during Sirius's tirade, James stood up, and his jaw's set hard, his eyes are steely, and his voice is colder than the ice cube that was lodged in Sirius's throat what seems like an eternity ago.
Sirius knows the thing to do right now would be to storm out the door, but there's nowhere to go, and he hasn't got a key to get back in, so he clenches his hands at his sides and tries to think of something sharp to say back, and all he can think of is 'he is NOT,' and it's clear that James wouldn't be fooled anyway.
James's face softens, and he rubs at his eyes, fingers dodging around the lenses of his glasses. "And I'm sick of watching it fuck you up," he says, and looks away before Sirius can even look confused. "I'm going to sleep." He busies himself turning off the tv and the overhead light, shimmies out of his jeans, wrenches a pillow out from under Peter's arm, and lies down on the floor between the wall and Peter's bed. Sirius is left standing in the middle of the floor staring into space. He stays there for a few moments, then finds his bag, and fishes for the miniature bottle of Jack Daniel's he knows he's got somewhere.
Once it's found, he sits against the bed that's waiting to be filled, drinks it slowly, and dozes off, not daring to look at the clock or turn off the lamp on the bedside table. Remus is the only one who ever turns off the lamp.
He wakes up to the door opening, and it's a moment before it registers, and his eyes snap open, and Remus is shutting the door quietly and setting his jacket over the back of the chair, and raking his hands through his hair. He looks at Sirius and gives him a little wave, and as he walks toward the bed, the light catches a smear of glitter on his cheekbone, and Sirius wants to say Remus, you sparkle, but he knows it would probably come out whose fucking glitter is that, and he tries to remember the bassist of Wrath of Trudy, short girl with nice tits and purple braids worked into her dyed-black hair and the glint of a piercing in her eyebrow, he tries to think if she was especially glittery or not, imagines her face pressed against Remus's, eyes against his cheek and breath heavy on his neck, braids spilling over his shoulders.
Remus is standing in front of him now, and Sirius tries to search his face for some kind of afterglow, but even in the gentle lamplight, he doesn't look just-laid or breathlessly snogged, just tired, and the glitter looks accidental, and Sirius wonders if he's just seeing what he wants to see. Remus bends forward a little and opens his mouth to speak, eyebrows raised and mouth quirking in a smile, and Sirius grabs his wrist and finishes the chorus of the song, barely above a whisper.
And I can't help thinking that it might be,
I might be
In love...
Remus looks surprised for a moment, genuine deer-in-the-headlights surprised, but his gaze flickers from Sirius's unfocused eyes to the bottle on the floor, and he closes his eyes for a moment, shaking off Sirius's hand. "You're fucking drunk, Sirius, go to sleep." His voice is harsh.
He doesn't wait for Sirius to defend himself or even apologize, just shakes his head and walks around to the bed, and Sirius is too scared somehow to turn and look at him, and lies down miserably on the floor, still dressed, and curls an arm around his head and over his ear, trying not to hear Remus take off his shoes and unzip his jeans and slide into bed (he does anyway).
The light clicks off, and after a few minutes, something thuds on the floor softly next to Sirius's head. He reaches out and pulls the pillow under his head, cradling an arm around it gently, whispers a thank you that's too quiet to be heard, and half smiles in the darkness, waiting for the sounds of Remus lighting his last cigarette.
_____
[notes.]
1) title is from "fragile" by veruca salt. went through a billion cds, and finally remembered this song, ran through the lyrics in my head, got to the phrase "symptoms of touring" and screamed "YES, THAT'S IT!" luckily no one else was at home. the title actually changed the shape the fic was taking.
2) much love to jamieabsent, who is my Peter Consultant, and who brainstormed details of what he'd bring back from the supermarket and what campfire songs he (and James) would sing, as well as quizzing her family about what Peter would be buying for his drum. i think all of you should go to her journal and beg her shamelessly to write a Peter POV fic in this universe, because it would be stellar.
3) this fic is Allusion Heaven. the club Our Boys play at is called the Moving Castle in homage to Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones, one of my favourite books EVER. the bands on Sirius's flyer are references to Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere, Pirates of the Caribbean, and Patricia C. Wrede's Enchanted Forest Chronicles, respectively. Wrath of Trudy is something that i'd like to call my band, if i had any musical talents.
4) the radiator toast is shamelessly inspired by Johnny Depp's toast-with-the-iron in "Benny and Joon."
5) i don't know when this thing turned into a broadway musical, with James and Sirius both having songs to sing. eek. both of their songs don't really have tunes (making them poetry, really), and for the record, i think both of them are hideously lame and offer my apologies. Sirius's song was conceived in my mind as a justification for the title of the last MR fic ("if you think you might be, you are"), as was the scene in which he croons the chorus (such as it is) at Remus, so that was the starting point of this fic. James's song was written partially in my head in the car (and inspired by the Beatles' "Daytripper," don't ask.), and finished/transcribed on the back of a deposit slip in a bank, along with the James/Sirius dialogue that happens directly after it.
6) if you're reading this, i love you. <3