Fic, These Conversations We Aren't Having [Written for woldy], PG-13
Oh, crap. I meant to post this when I posted the other thing. I wrote it last year as part of rs_small_gifts, based on woldy's awesome, awesome prompt. And I meant to post it last year and forgot about it until I went looking for it on my journal yesterday and lo! could not find it.
woldy, if, for whatever reason, you don't want this up here and you're mad that I posted it, I will totally take it down.
Title: These Conversations We Aren't Having
Author:gyzym
Written for:woldy
Rating: PG-13, for language.
Prompt: (I can't bear to mess with the formatting)
"Silence can be a plan
rigorously executed
the blueprint to a life.
It is a presence
it has a history, a form.
Do not confuse it
with any kind of absence.
-Adrienne Rich, from "Dream of a Common Language"
Summary: In which Sirius Black sleeps past four, there is much Indian take-away, and Remus Lupin scowls at moldy peas.
Any other notes, warnings, etc.: Seriously--while there is no fucking in this story, there is a lot of the word "fuck." Consumption (and destruction) of alcoholic beverages also occurs. Be warned. Also (and this warning was not included in the original posting), it does get a bit darker than it is at the beginning.
There’s fresh snowfall outside the window, lending a brilliant glow to the small flat. “Sirius!” Remus calls, dropping his keys on the nearest flat surface (a pile of unpaid bills) and moving quickly to the kitchen. “Padfoot! Wake the fuck up! I’ve got take-away!”
A head that cannot possibly be Sirius’s-or human, come to that-pokes its way around the door. “Mrrr,” it growls.
“Take-away, Sirius,” Remus says again, pulling off his coat, shivering, and putting it back on. “And it’s your turn to pay the heat, by the by.”
“’S my flat,” the thing grumbles. Remus pulls a face at it.
“That doesn’t make it any less your month. And now there’s no heat in here.”
“Fucking freezing,” the thing agrees. It rubs something that might, under all that hair, be a face. “Take away?”
“It’s Indian,” Remus says, “and it’s 5:30. Honestly, Padfoot. Go get dressed.”
The thing growls again and ducks back into the bedroom. Remus sighs under his breath and begins to unpack containers.
--
Two weeks ago, Sirius kissed Remus.
He’d been home from work-it was the second day after the full moon, and he was too shaky to go out in public, but too antsy to sit still. Sirius was away doing…whatever it was he did with his time, and Remus, unable to take it anymore, had dug some chicken out of the freezer and made himself dinner.
Or tried to, anyway. He’d never been much of a cook. He was staring at the blackened lumps in the pan with resignation when he heard the key snick in the lock.
“Bloody hell,” Sirius had yelled, slamming the door behind him and smelling the smoke, “who torched my fucking flat?” He’d poked his face into the kitchen and, confronted with the image of Remus staring forlornly at the former chicken, had promptly burst out laughing.
“Moony, oh god, Moony,” he’d gasped, and before long Remus was laughing too, because it really was ridiculous-who couldn’t make chicken?-and soon neither of them could breath, leaning on the counter for support.
“There are peas,” Remus’d said, still giggling, when they’d calmed a bit, and that had set Sirius off again, and so Remus picked them up and proffered them, brandishing them wildly in laughter, and Sirius came to take the bowl from him and slammed their mouths together instead.
Some necessary gear in Remus’s mind snapped, and after a split second of hesitation he’d shoved himself forward, opening his mouth to the kiss. Sirius had made a small noise and Remus, forever weak in the face of temptation, had moaned in response, the sound echoing down Sirius’s throat. “Moony,” Sirius had choked out, pushing Remus into the counter, slipping two fingers under Remus’s shirt, and Remus-Remus had-
Remus had dropped the bowl.
It made a truly spectacular noise when it hit ground; they’d both jumped as the peas flew everywhere, as shards of glass scattered in all directions. “Fuck,” Remus’d hissed, and then Sirius had looked at him with panic wild in his eyes, and he’d left.
There hadn’t been anything dramatic about it, afterward; Sirius had come home the next morning and waved hello, and they just-hadn’t spoken of it. If things were a little awkward between them, it was only to be expected. In any case, there wasn’t time to worry about such things. There was a war on. Remus’s feelings, or lack thereof, were unlikely to make the morning papers.
And, after all, there was no reason to bring it up if Sirius wasn’t going to.
--
Five minutes and several crashes later, Sirius emerges from the bedroom, looking marginally more alive and quite a bit more human. “Wotcher, Moony,” he says, slipping behind Remus to grab a beer from the fridge, and, for a second, things are alright.
And then a voice that decidedly is not Sirius’ sounds, jarring and unwelcome. “I found my pants,” says the girl, a surprisingly small-chested brunette, as she emerges from the bedroom. “They were caught on the ceiling fan.” She sidles into the room and puts her arms around Sirius’s waist. “Can’t imagine how they got up there,” she says innocently, adding in what she clearly imagines to be a discreet undertone, “you animal.”
You’ve no idea, Remus thinks viciously. He grips the container harder and doesn’t look up.
“Didn’t find your shirt, I see,” Sirius says, and Remus sees him finger the cuff of his own white button down, draped loosely over her thin frame.
The interloper giggles. “Didn’t figure you’d mind,” she says, and she’s far too close, far too close to Siri-to the window. Which could open unexpectedly at any time, allowing her to fall through, and wouldn’t that be a bloody tragedy.
“Oi, Remus!” Sirius snaps, and Remus whips around, aware that this is probably not the first time his name has been called. “This is Melanie-“
“Melinda,” she snaps, put out, and Sirius winces at Remus over her head.
“Melinda,” he agrees. “And she’s, uhm-she’s-“
“She’s leaving,” Melinda says, her voice decidedly colder than it was a moment ago. She storms to the door, grabs her shoes-how had Remus not noticed the shoes?-and struts out.
“She’s not returning my shirt, is what she is,” Sirius grumbles. “I fucking liked that shirt.” He takes a long draught from the beer bottle and turns to Remus with a grimace, or maybe a grin. “Women, huh?”
“Sure, Sirius,” Remus says, trying not to let too much ice creep into his voice. Sirius tilts his head and stares at him, eyes narrowed, but says nothing. Eventually he sighs and takes a plate from the draining board, grabbing the curry from Remus without preamble.
“This from the place down the street?” Sirius asks, snatching a dirty fork from the sink and stabbing at his curry with a violence Remus hasn’t seen since their schooldays. Remus nods, and pours some of the curry onto his own plate.
They eat in silence for a few minutes and then, unable to help himself: “It was my shirt,” Remus says.
Sirius drops his fork and glares at him, his mouth half open. There is some curry caught between his bottom teeth and that’s really disgusting; Remus tries to focus on it and not his desire to slam Sirius to the floor and beat his head against it.
“Bloody hell, Moony,” Sirius snaps finally. He shoves back from the table and grabs his coat from the rack, his shoes from under the couch. “Finish the damn curry yourself.”
The door slams behind him, irritatingly loud. Remus sighs and stands, and a errant moldy pea from two weeks ago squelches unpleasantly under his socked foot. He scowls at it.
--
It’s a little past three in the morning when Sirius slams back into the flat, soaked with sleet and bristling. Remus, occupied with staring blindly at the diagram he’s been going over for hours, starts when he comes in.
“Should have known you’d be out here,” Sirius growls at him, shaking his head like the dog he is and dropping his sopping coat unceremoniously on the floor. “Doing your fucking deskwork again, like the bloody civilian you are.” He shakes his head violently, adding “Fuck,” for good measure. Remus groans and rubs his face with the back of his hand.
“It’s not that I wouldn’t like to be in army proper, Sirius, you know that,” he snaps, and then-maybe it’s the look in his eyes, or the water on his face-Remus hesitates, and softens. “Hard night?” he asks, and when Sirius makes a small but ferocious noise of assent, Remus picks up the nearly-full beer bottle at his feet and holds it out as a peace offering.
Sirius reaches him in two strides and rips the damn thing from his hands, tossing it back in one painfully large gulp. He makes that noise again, that ferocious pained sound that reminds Remus of the full moon, and his grip goes white-knuckled on the bottle. “Padfoot,” Remus starts, wary, but he’s too late; Sirius whirls around and hurls the bottle at the wall with all his weight.
The silence echoes in the wake of the shattering, and then Remus says “I didn’t actually think it was that bad,” because he has to say something. Sirius manipulates his mouth into an expression that is decidedly not a smile, and he barks out a short laugh that sounds more like a cough.
“Fucking awful,” he says, and his voice is-strange in his mouth, like he’s choking on his own words. “Fucking awful beer, Moony,” and then, before he can start punching the walls, Remus opens his mouth and says:
“What happened,” and Sirius looks at him, just looks at him, like the world is ending.
“What the fuck do you even care,” he chokes out and Remus opens his mouth to say something, something that isn’t stupid, but then Sirius smiles horribly and Remus’s potential for speech dies in his throat.
“I’ve been out killing people,” Sirius says. He doesn’t yell-this is a surprise-but his words are horribly flat, and it’s almost worse. “Three people. I killed them. They died. Tonight.”
Remus stares at him, because he can’t help it-he’s soaking wet and his face is all twisted in on itself and it’s, it’s terrifying, and then Sirius yells “Aren’t you going to SAY ANYTHING” and the volume is so comforting, so familiar, that Remus kind of grins.
And then he stops grinning, because of course that’s horribly inappropriate, and he opens his mouth and says “It’ll get easier,” which is not what he means to do at all.
Sirius’s face is a picture, but not one he’d want to take. “It’ll get easier?” he repeats, glaring at Remus with unbridled fury and advancing. “And what the fuck do you know about it, huh, sitting here with your bloody diagrams and not doing anything, nothing, you haven’t killed anybody-”
And Remus is on his feet because he’s so angry, and he knows better but he’s been so angry, for so long, and he snaps “Oh, because I don’t understand what it’s like to be something awful, like that’s fucking fair, Sirius, you know I want to be fighting out there, you fucking know they won’t let me and it’s because I might do something terrible, like I don’t bloody well get it-”
“This was never a part of you I wanted to fucking understand!” Sirius yells. Remus falls back onto the couch like he’s been punched and tries to hide it, but Sirius notices, and the anger drains from his face as quickly as it’d built.
“Fuck, Moony, I didn’t mean-”
“I know you didn’t, it’s fine-”
“It’s not, I shouldn’t have-”
“Padfoot!” Remus snaps, sharp in exhaustion. “Shut up. I know what you meant. It’s fine.”
Sirius growls and collapses on the couch next to him. “I’m so fucking tired, Moony,” he says, and Remus glances over at him, at his shaking hands and wild eyes, and suddenly doesn’t care about the fuss anymore. He’s so sick of it, and really it’s the easier thing to thread his fingers through Sirius’s soaking wet hair and kiss him, so he does.
“I killed people,” Sirius says, pulling away, “I killed people, I killed them, you shouldn’t be-I don’t -“
“I don’t know the right things to say to you,” Remus says faintly, kissing him again. This time Sirius leans into it, pushes his tongue out in typical exploratory fashion, and Remus makes a rather desperate and pathetic noise from somewhere deep in his chest.
And then Sirius pulls away again and says “What about,” and makes a frustrated sound. Remus looks at him and looks at him and could knock his stupid head against the wall.
“I don’t-this is so much easier than talking,” Remus answers, finally, “and we-can’t we not talk about it? I’ll still-we can-maybe we should just go to bed.” He’s resigned himself to defeat and is about to get up when:
“Moony,” Sirius says, his fists balled in Remus’s t-shirt, “Moony, don’t,” and Remus lunges forward, pushing Sirius to the floor by the mouth, because it’s a war. It’s a war, and he can’t fight, and Sirius has killed people, and their feelings are never going to make the morning paper or even a coherent sentence, but they’re something. They’re something, and everybody needs something to hold onto while the world falls apart, and besides Sirius’s hand are shaking and everywhere, and if Remus is careful they might still be here in the morning, bloodstained or not.
woldy, if, for whatever reason, you don't want this up here and you're mad that I posted it, I will totally take it down.
Title: These Conversations We Aren't Having
Author:gyzym
Written for:woldy
Rating: PG-13, for language.
Prompt: (I can't bear to mess with the formatting)
"Silence can be a plan
rigorously executed
the blueprint to a life.
It is a presence
it has a history, a form.
Do not confuse it
with any kind of absence.
-Adrienne Rich, from "Dream of a Common Language"
Summary: In which Sirius Black sleeps past four, there is much Indian take-away, and Remus Lupin scowls at moldy peas.
Any other notes, warnings, etc.: Seriously--while there is no fucking in this story, there is a lot of the word "fuck." Consumption (and destruction) of alcoholic beverages also occurs. Be warned. Also (and this warning was not included in the original posting), it does get a bit darker than it is at the beginning.
There’s fresh snowfall outside the window, lending a brilliant glow to the small flat. “Sirius!” Remus calls, dropping his keys on the nearest flat surface (a pile of unpaid bills) and moving quickly to the kitchen. “Padfoot! Wake the fuck up! I’ve got take-away!”
A head that cannot possibly be Sirius’s-or human, come to that-pokes its way around the door. “Mrrr,” it growls.
“Take-away, Sirius,” Remus says again, pulling off his coat, shivering, and putting it back on. “And it’s your turn to pay the heat, by the by.”
“’S my flat,” the thing grumbles. Remus pulls a face at it.
“That doesn’t make it any less your month. And now there’s no heat in here.”
“Fucking freezing,” the thing agrees. It rubs something that might, under all that hair, be a face. “Take away?”
“It’s Indian,” Remus says, “and it’s 5:30. Honestly, Padfoot. Go get dressed.”
The thing growls again and ducks back into the bedroom. Remus sighs under his breath and begins to unpack containers.
--
Two weeks ago, Sirius kissed Remus.
He’d been home from work-it was the second day after the full moon, and he was too shaky to go out in public, but too antsy to sit still. Sirius was away doing…whatever it was he did with his time, and Remus, unable to take it anymore, had dug some chicken out of the freezer and made himself dinner.
Or tried to, anyway. He’d never been much of a cook. He was staring at the blackened lumps in the pan with resignation when he heard the key snick in the lock.
“Bloody hell,” Sirius had yelled, slamming the door behind him and smelling the smoke, “who torched my fucking flat?” He’d poked his face into the kitchen and, confronted with the image of Remus staring forlornly at the former chicken, had promptly burst out laughing.
“Moony, oh god, Moony,” he’d gasped, and before long Remus was laughing too, because it really was ridiculous-who couldn’t make chicken?-and soon neither of them could breath, leaning on the counter for support.
“There are peas,” Remus’d said, still giggling, when they’d calmed a bit, and that had set Sirius off again, and so Remus picked them up and proffered them, brandishing them wildly in laughter, and Sirius came to take the bowl from him and slammed their mouths together instead.
Some necessary gear in Remus’s mind snapped, and after a split second of hesitation he’d shoved himself forward, opening his mouth to the kiss. Sirius had made a small noise and Remus, forever weak in the face of temptation, had moaned in response, the sound echoing down Sirius’s throat. “Moony,” Sirius had choked out, pushing Remus into the counter, slipping two fingers under Remus’s shirt, and Remus-Remus had-
Remus had dropped the bowl.
It made a truly spectacular noise when it hit ground; they’d both jumped as the peas flew everywhere, as shards of glass scattered in all directions. “Fuck,” Remus’d hissed, and then Sirius had looked at him with panic wild in his eyes, and he’d left.
There hadn’t been anything dramatic about it, afterward; Sirius had come home the next morning and waved hello, and they just-hadn’t spoken of it. If things were a little awkward between them, it was only to be expected. In any case, there wasn’t time to worry about such things. There was a war on. Remus’s feelings, or lack thereof, were unlikely to make the morning papers.
And, after all, there was no reason to bring it up if Sirius wasn’t going to.
--
Five minutes and several crashes later, Sirius emerges from the bedroom, looking marginally more alive and quite a bit more human. “Wotcher, Moony,” he says, slipping behind Remus to grab a beer from the fridge, and, for a second, things are alright.
And then a voice that decidedly is not Sirius’ sounds, jarring and unwelcome. “I found my pants,” says the girl, a surprisingly small-chested brunette, as she emerges from the bedroom. “They were caught on the ceiling fan.” She sidles into the room and puts her arms around Sirius’s waist. “Can’t imagine how they got up there,” she says innocently, adding in what she clearly imagines to be a discreet undertone, “you animal.”
You’ve no idea, Remus thinks viciously. He grips the container harder and doesn’t look up.
“Didn’t find your shirt, I see,” Sirius says, and Remus sees him finger the cuff of his own white button down, draped loosely over her thin frame.
The interloper giggles. “Didn’t figure you’d mind,” she says, and she’s far too close, far too close to Siri-to the window. Which could open unexpectedly at any time, allowing her to fall through, and wouldn’t that be a bloody tragedy.
“Oi, Remus!” Sirius snaps, and Remus whips around, aware that this is probably not the first time his name has been called. “This is Melanie-“
“Melinda,” she snaps, put out, and Sirius winces at Remus over her head.
“Melinda,” he agrees. “And she’s, uhm-she’s-“
“She’s leaving,” Melinda says, her voice decidedly colder than it was a moment ago. She storms to the door, grabs her shoes-how had Remus not noticed the shoes?-and struts out.
“She’s not returning my shirt, is what she is,” Sirius grumbles. “I fucking liked that shirt.” He takes a long draught from the beer bottle and turns to Remus with a grimace, or maybe a grin. “Women, huh?”
“Sure, Sirius,” Remus says, trying not to let too much ice creep into his voice. Sirius tilts his head and stares at him, eyes narrowed, but says nothing. Eventually he sighs and takes a plate from the draining board, grabbing the curry from Remus without preamble.
“This from the place down the street?” Sirius asks, snatching a dirty fork from the sink and stabbing at his curry with a violence Remus hasn’t seen since their schooldays. Remus nods, and pours some of the curry onto his own plate.
They eat in silence for a few minutes and then, unable to help himself: “It was my shirt,” Remus says.
Sirius drops his fork and glares at him, his mouth half open. There is some curry caught between his bottom teeth and that’s really disgusting; Remus tries to focus on it and not his desire to slam Sirius to the floor and beat his head against it.
“Bloody hell, Moony,” Sirius snaps finally. He shoves back from the table and grabs his coat from the rack, his shoes from under the couch. “Finish the damn curry yourself.”
The door slams behind him, irritatingly loud. Remus sighs and stands, and a errant moldy pea from two weeks ago squelches unpleasantly under his socked foot. He scowls at it.
--
It’s a little past three in the morning when Sirius slams back into the flat, soaked with sleet and bristling. Remus, occupied with staring blindly at the diagram he’s been going over for hours, starts when he comes in.
“Should have known you’d be out here,” Sirius growls at him, shaking his head like the dog he is and dropping his sopping coat unceremoniously on the floor. “Doing your fucking deskwork again, like the bloody civilian you are.” He shakes his head violently, adding “Fuck,” for good measure. Remus groans and rubs his face with the back of his hand.
“It’s not that I wouldn’t like to be in army proper, Sirius, you know that,” he snaps, and then-maybe it’s the look in his eyes, or the water on his face-Remus hesitates, and softens. “Hard night?” he asks, and when Sirius makes a small but ferocious noise of assent, Remus picks up the nearly-full beer bottle at his feet and holds it out as a peace offering.
Sirius reaches him in two strides and rips the damn thing from his hands, tossing it back in one painfully large gulp. He makes that noise again, that ferocious pained sound that reminds Remus of the full moon, and his grip goes white-knuckled on the bottle. “Padfoot,” Remus starts, wary, but he’s too late; Sirius whirls around and hurls the bottle at the wall with all his weight.
The silence echoes in the wake of the shattering, and then Remus says “I didn’t actually think it was that bad,” because he has to say something. Sirius manipulates his mouth into an expression that is decidedly not a smile, and he barks out a short laugh that sounds more like a cough.
“Fucking awful,” he says, and his voice is-strange in his mouth, like he’s choking on his own words. “Fucking awful beer, Moony,” and then, before he can start punching the walls, Remus opens his mouth and says:
“What happened,” and Sirius looks at him, just looks at him, like the world is ending.
“What the fuck do you even care,” he chokes out and Remus opens his mouth to say something, something that isn’t stupid, but then Sirius smiles horribly and Remus’s potential for speech dies in his throat.
“I’ve been out killing people,” Sirius says. He doesn’t yell-this is a surprise-but his words are horribly flat, and it’s almost worse. “Three people. I killed them. They died. Tonight.”
Remus stares at him, because he can’t help it-he’s soaking wet and his face is all twisted in on itself and it’s, it’s terrifying, and then Sirius yells “Aren’t you going to SAY ANYTHING” and the volume is so comforting, so familiar, that Remus kind of grins.
And then he stops grinning, because of course that’s horribly inappropriate, and he opens his mouth and says “It’ll get easier,” which is not what he means to do at all.
Sirius’s face is a picture, but not one he’d want to take. “It’ll get easier?” he repeats, glaring at Remus with unbridled fury and advancing. “And what the fuck do you know about it, huh, sitting here with your bloody diagrams and not doing anything, nothing, you haven’t killed anybody-”
And Remus is on his feet because he’s so angry, and he knows better but he’s been so angry, for so long, and he snaps “Oh, because I don’t understand what it’s like to be something awful, like that’s fucking fair, Sirius, you know I want to be fighting out there, you fucking know they won’t let me and it’s because I might do something terrible, like I don’t bloody well get it-”
“This was never a part of you I wanted to fucking understand!” Sirius yells. Remus falls back onto the couch like he’s been punched and tries to hide it, but Sirius notices, and the anger drains from his face as quickly as it’d built.
“Fuck, Moony, I didn’t mean-”
“I know you didn’t, it’s fine-”
“It’s not, I shouldn’t have-”
“Padfoot!” Remus snaps, sharp in exhaustion. “Shut up. I know what you meant. It’s fine.”
Sirius growls and collapses on the couch next to him. “I’m so fucking tired, Moony,” he says, and Remus glances over at him, at his shaking hands and wild eyes, and suddenly doesn’t care about the fuss anymore. He’s so sick of it, and really it’s the easier thing to thread his fingers through Sirius’s soaking wet hair and kiss him, so he does.
“I killed people,” Sirius says, pulling away, “I killed people, I killed them, you shouldn’t be-I don’t -“
“I don’t know the right things to say to you,” Remus says faintly, kissing him again. This time Sirius leans into it, pushes his tongue out in typical exploratory fashion, and Remus makes a rather desperate and pathetic noise from somewhere deep in his chest.
And then Sirius pulls away again and says “What about,” and makes a frustrated sound. Remus looks at him and looks at him and could knock his stupid head against the wall.
“I don’t-this is so much easier than talking,” Remus answers, finally, “and we-can’t we not talk about it? I’ll still-we can-maybe we should just go to bed.” He’s resigned himself to defeat and is about to get up when:
“Moony,” Sirius says, his fists balled in Remus’s t-shirt, “Moony, don’t,” and Remus lunges forward, pushing Sirius to the floor by the mouth, because it’s a war. It’s a war, and he can’t fight, and Sirius has killed people, and their feelings are never going to make the morning paper or even a coherent sentence, but they’re something. They’re something, and everybody needs something to hold onto while the world falls apart, and besides Sirius’s hand are shaking and everywhere, and if Remus is careful they might still be here in the morning, bloodstained or not.