Fic: The World Stops Turning, Anyway for why_me_why_not
Title: The World Stops Turning, Anyway
Author: earthanthem
Giftee: why_me_why_not
Rating: PG
Word Count: 1,124
Characters/Pairing: Lily, Remus/Sirius
Author Notes: Snarky banter turned heartfelt affection. It may seem cheesy, but it works for them.
Summary: Sirius is not used to letting the world know how he truly feels about anything. But some things are the world.
“June is for babies,” says Sirius, and he means it. His eyes are trained on Lily’s football-shaped stomach, which is made all the more evident by the skin-tight tank top she is sporting. Lily seems to take joy out of her pregnancy, making sure everyone knows about it. Sirius has never known a woman to do this before - usually, pregnancies are unplanned things, meant to be hushed underground and kept secret from prying aristocratic eyes.
Lily is so big, now, so round, that Sirius thinks the baby will be born sooner than they think. And so he means it when he says that June is for babies - but he also means it because Remus says it is his favorite month.
“You’re a baby,” says Lily, and her tummy gets in the way when she reaches down to pull a weed from the sidewalk. Remus lays a hand on her back and takes the weed from her. She stands, wordless, and he finishes the task. She folds her hands over her belly button and watches, lower lip drawn between teeth because she’d rather do it herself, but now knows that she cannot.
Sirius sits on the porch steps, cigarette dangling limp and unlit from his mouth. He won’t light it while he’s around Lily - God, James would kill him - but he likes the feeling of it. It keeps his fingers from itching with need.
“Just because everyone else likes June, Sirius, doesn’t mean it’s less worthy of being my favorite month.” Remus’s voice sounds underground and muffled, the way he’s hunched double over the sidewalk and speaking into his chest.
“Would it kill you to be little more creative about your preferences? Really - November? Now that is a fascinating month. No one likes November. Why? Because it’s cold and gray and ugly - but it’s also the last month before December, when you get holidays and presents and family. It’s the last dull month. That’s reason enough to celebrate it. What does June have on that, huh?”
“June has flowers, and warmth, and sunshine. Which is what brought about this discussion.”
Lily is nodding in agreement, but her presence is suddenly inconsequential. They’ve hit their stride, now: they’ve entered intellectual debate and will soon move on to acidic words, pointed glares, heavy breathing, and then tearing one another’s clothes off.
Well. The last bit would come after they’d gone home. If they were lucky.
“Warmth is overrated. Give me a cold day in bed, with a heavy blanket, and I’ll be happy.”
“You just like having a cold nose.”
“All the better to wake you with, my dear.”
Lily smirks. She understands this ritual now, this dance of words, and decides that the weeding can wait until they’ve gone - which won’t be much longer, if past experience is to tell her anything. She turns to the porch, and wordlessly disappears inside the house. Neither man notices her leave.
“One day I’ll smother myself in garlic and see how you like it, then.”
“Can you do that? Smother yourself in garlic? Or is that only bad for vampires?”
“I am not a vampire, Sirius.”
“Same classification.”
“Do I look undead to you?”
“Well, you are a right pasty git…”
Remus hurls the wad of greenery in his fist at Sirius’s head. It knocks the cigarette loose, and Sirius curses rather unbecomingly for such a suburban setting.
“Sirius! There’s kids around here. Last thing they need is an education from you.”
Sirius has a collection of comebacks stored in his mind -- mostly insults involving lycanthropy -- and the set of his eyes, as he stares at the muddied cigarette tube in the garden, tells of his preparation to launch at will. But he restrains himself. He doesn’t know why. He just stares at the cigarette. He thinks about getting another one out, but doesn’t bother. So he stares.
Remus approaches, silently, and sits beside him on the porch. “You seem to be out of form, today,” he almost whispers, and Sirius hates him a little bit for it. Whispering is a sign of the retreat of normalcy. The failure to be normal, to be happy, is Sirius’s greatest fear.
“It’s all the damn sunlight. Makes a bloke a bit too cheery to insult his best mate.”
“Well. At least it lets you know that I’m not a vampire. I’m not allergic to sunlight… just silver.” Remus stretches out his arms - they are rather pasty, Sirius thinks, but I love him for that - to compare the varying shades of non-tan he has accumulated. The light hair on Remus’s arms sparkles like water droplets as he turns them over, and Sirius is reminded of the prisms he played with as a child.
“Well. All the more reason to gift you with platinum,” Sirius says, and the quirk of his lips says that it is both a joke and not a joke. Remus sees this and he smiles, dropping his arms into his lap once more.
“I don’t need any gifts. I don’t even need much to get by. Just the promise of a future and friends, and maybe some sex now and then, and I’ll do just fine.”
“Yeah right. If that’s all you needed, you wouldn’t put up with me.”
Remus throws an arm around Sirius’s shoulders, like old pals, and Sirius tries to draw away in disgust. Sirius is no one’s “buddy.” But Remus grabs him tight, finger pads fusing with the flesh of Sirius’s shoulder, and smiles genuinely. “Didn’t you notice?” Remus asks him. “All of those things are what I get from you.”
Sirius turns away. He doesn’t pull away, not now that Remus is holding him so tight - so tight it makes them both ache - but he can’t look at Remus, can’t look at that prismatic skin and the honest eyes, can’t believe that Lily is going to have her baby soon, in the midst of a heated summer when the world has come together with sun and life and renewal, and their worlds, their lives, are falling apart over and over again. He doesn’t give Remus a future; he gives Remus the hope of a future, and that is the worst thing he can give to someone he loves.
But Remus gives him the hope of a future, too, and he feels it as Remus presses sun-warmed lips to shaded temple, ear, neck, and when Sirius finally turns back to him, gives in to kisses and hands and love, he understands why Lily wants the whole world to know about her baby.
When you love something enough, the rest of the world just stops mattering. And in the midst of June sunlight, Sirius’s world stops turning.
Author: earthanthem
Giftee: why_me_why_not
Rating: PG
Word Count: 1,124
Characters/Pairing: Lily, Remus/Sirius
Author Notes: Snarky banter turned heartfelt affection. It may seem cheesy, but it works for them.
Summary: Sirius is not used to letting the world know how he truly feels about anything. But some things are the world.
“June is for babies,” says Sirius, and he means it. His eyes are trained on Lily’s football-shaped stomach, which is made all the more evident by the skin-tight tank top she is sporting. Lily seems to take joy out of her pregnancy, making sure everyone knows about it. Sirius has never known a woman to do this before - usually, pregnancies are unplanned things, meant to be hushed underground and kept secret from prying aristocratic eyes.
Lily is so big, now, so round, that Sirius thinks the baby will be born sooner than they think. And so he means it when he says that June is for babies - but he also means it because Remus says it is his favorite month.
“You’re a baby,” says Lily, and her tummy gets in the way when she reaches down to pull a weed from the sidewalk. Remus lays a hand on her back and takes the weed from her. She stands, wordless, and he finishes the task. She folds her hands over her belly button and watches, lower lip drawn between teeth because she’d rather do it herself, but now knows that she cannot.
Sirius sits on the porch steps, cigarette dangling limp and unlit from his mouth. He won’t light it while he’s around Lily - God, James would kill him - but he likes the feeling of it. It keeps his fingers from itching with need.
“Just because everyone else likes June, Sirius, doesn’t mean it’s less worthy of being my favorite month.” Remus’s voice sounds underground and muffled, the way he’s hunched double over the sidewalk and speaking into his chest.
“Would it kill you to be little more creative about your preferences? Really - November? Now that is a fascinating month. No one likes November. Why? Because it’s cold and gray and ugly - but it’s also the last month before December, when you get holidays and presents and family. It’s the last dull month. That’s reason enough to celebrate it. What does June have on that, huh?”
“June has flowers, and warmth, and sunshine. Which is what brought about this discussion.”
Lily is nodding in agreement, but her presence is suddenly inconsequential. They’ve hit their stride, now: they’ve entered intellectual debate and will soon move on to acidic words, pointed glares, heavy breathing, and then tearing one another’s clothes off.
Well. The last bit would come after they’d gone home. If they were lucky.
“Warmth is overrated. Give me a cold day in bed, with a heavy blanket, and I’ll be happy.”
“You just like having a cold nose.”
“All the better to wake you with, my dear.”
Lily smirks. She understands this ritual now, this dance of words, and decides that the weeding can wait until they’ve gone - which won’t be much longer, if past experience is to tell her anything. She turns to the porch, and wordlessly disappears inside the house. Neither man notices her leave.
“One day I’ll smother myself in garlic and see how you like it, then.”
“Can you do that? Smother yourself in garlic? Or is that only bad for vampires?”
“I am not a vampire, Sirius.”
“Same classification.”
“Do I look undead to you?”
“Well, you are a right pasty git…”
Remus hurls the wad of greenery in his fist at Sirius’s head. It knocks the cigarette loose, and Sirius curses rather unbecomingly for such a suburban setting.
“Sirius! There’s kids around here. Last thing they need is an education from you.”
Sirius has a collection of comebacks stored in his mind -- mostly insults involving lycanthropy -- and the set of his eyes, as he stares at the muddied cigarette tube in the garden, tells of his preparation to launch at will. But he restrains himself. He doesn’t know why. He just stares at the cigarette. He thinks about getting another one out, but doesn’t bother. So he stares.
Remus approaches, silently, and sits beside him on the porch. “You seem to be out of form, today,” he almost whispers, and Sirius hates him a little bit for it. Whispering is a sign of the retreat of normalcy. The failure to be normal, to be happy, is Sirius’s greatest fear.
“It’s all the damn sunlight. Makes a bloke a bit too cheery to insult his best mate.”
“Well. At least it lets you know that I’m not a vampire. I’m not allergic to sunlight… just silver.” Remus stretches out his arms - they are rather pasty, Sirius thinks, but I love him for that - to compare the varying shades of non-tan he has accumulated. The light hair on Remus’s arms sparkles like water droplets as he turns them over, and Sirius is reminded of the prisms he played with as a child.
“Well. All the more reason to gift you with platinum,” Sirius says, and the quirk of his lips says that it is both a joke and not a joke. Remus sees this and he smiles, dropping his arms into his lap once more.
“I don’t need any gifts. I don’t even need much to get by. Just the promise of a future and friends, and maybe some sex now and then, and I’ll do just fine.”
“Yeah right. If that’s all you needed, you wouldn’t put up with me.”
Remus throws an arm around Sirius’s shoulders, like old pals, and Sirius tries to draw away in disgust. Sirius is no one’s “buddy.” But Remus grabs him tight, finger pads fusing with the flesh of Sirius’s shoulder, and smiles genuinely. “Didn’t you notice?” Remus asks him. “All of those things are what I get from you.”
Sirius turns away. He doesn’t pull away, not now that Remus is holding him so tight - so tight it makes them both ache - but he can’t look at Remus, can’t look at that prismatic skin and the honest eyes, can’t believe that Lily is going to have her baby soon, in the midst of a heated summer when the world has come together with sun and life and renewal, and their worlds, their lives, are falling apart over and over again. He doesn’t give Remus a future; he gives Remus the hope of a future, and that is the worst thing he can give to someone he loves.
But Remus gives him the hope of a future, too, and he feels it as Remus presses sun-warmed lips to shaded temple, ear, neck, and when Sirius finally turns back to him, gives in to kisses and hands and love, he understands why Lily wants the whole world to know about her baby.
When you love something enough, the rest of the world just stops mattering. And in the midst of June sunlight, Sirius’s world stops turning.