FIC: Love the One You're With
Title: Love the One You’re With
Rating: R
Disclaimer: I disclaim that I am JK Rowling.
Words: ~750
Summary: If you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with. Or, four times Remus Lupin couldn’t be with Sirius Black (but never stopped thinking about him anyway).
I.
The first thing Remus noticed about the Muggle boy was how pretty he was. Almost too pretty to be a boy. Dark hair and light eyes and pretty pink lips that whispered the most filthy things while they were hidden in the dustiest stacks at the library.
Being fifteen and a wizard and a werewolf was apparently not enough. Remus had to be fifteen and on his knees with another bloke’s cock in his mouth. And then leaning back against the bookshelf while that bloke knelt and returned the favor. And everything else they got up to that summer that Remus couldn’t quite forget no matter how he tried.
It wasn’t till months later, back at Hogwarts, under the covers, eyes closed, hand down his pajama bottoms, that Remus realized how much that Muggle boy resembled someone who was sleeping just one bed over. Deep brown hair instead of black, light blue eyes instead of grey, but the lips, the perfectly pouty pink lips - the lips were the same.
And after that when he closed his eyes and imagined it was someone’s mouth on him and not his own hand, he wasn’t sure just whose mouth he wanted it to be.
II.
He liked the anonymity of the club. The thumping bass, the pulsing lights, the cold beer and the hot skin of the random bloke he had pressed up against the wall.
Blond. He always went for someone blond. He didn’t want a reminder - any more of a reminder, as if everything in the world didn’t remind him - of what he’d lost. Didn’t want to dig his hands into shaggy black hair and pretend, even for a moment, that he was with someone else, someone he was trying to forget. Five years and he still couldn’t do it, and shagging his way through half the men in Britain wasn’t helping, and neither was getting falling-down drunk on weekends and sleeping it off in the bed they used to share.
“My flat’s just around the corner,” said Mr. Random, an invitation Remus wouldn’t refuse. But in the morning, alone in his own kitchen, he always felt grimy and tired and ashamed, and he would promise himself never to do this again.
It was always the same.
III.
It was just sex. They didn’t speak to one another, and that was the only way it worked. If they spoke they would fight and if they fought, well, that took up too much of the few moments of privacy they could find. Trading insults was saved for school hours, over lunch at the staff table and goblets of Wolfsbane in his classroom.
Once, he almost slipped, opened his mouth when he came and almost said a name, started to say a name, and which one, he wasn’t sure, but he didn’t have to find out, cut off with a snarled “Shut up, Lupin.”
Just sex. Just a way to get by, to ward off the chill of an old drafty castle filled with too many painful memories.
But then, when it was over, when that sneering scowl and that branded arm came back into focus, he wasn’t sure if it really helped that much, after all.
IV.
Sometimes she looked a lot like him. If he looked sideways and not for too long, if she was trying a new look and went with the black hair characteristic of so many of her relatives, he could almost pretend. But it was better not to.
He could have asked her to do it.
Strengthen her jaw. Lighten her eyes. Darken her hair. Straighten her nose. Sharpen her cheekbones.
She seemed so desperate sometimes, so insistent that he love her back, so naïve and determined, that he thought maybe, just maybe, she would have. It wouldn’t be right, it wouldn’t be fair, and so he didn’t, because he felt guilty enough as it was, giving in to loneliness and staying one night when she asked him if he wouldn’t like just one more cup of tea.
Maybe, he thought, it was really time to move on, now. Maybe he could do it.
Right, because that’s worked so well in the past.
“You fancy stepping into Sirius’s shoes,” Harry hurled at him, and he didn’t have the heart to tell the boy no, no, that’s not at all what I fancy, but we can’t always have what we want, can we? Sometimes we just have to settle for what’s available.
fin.
Rating: R
Disclaimer: I disclaim that I am JK Rowling.
Words: ~750
Summary: If you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with. Or, four times Remus Lupin couldn’t be with Sirius Black (but never stopped thinking about him anyway).
I.
The first thing Remus noticed about the Muggle boy was how pretty he was. Almost too pretty to be a boy. Dark hair and light eyes and pretty pink lips that whispered the most filthy things while they were hidden in the dustiest stacks at the library.
Being fifteen and a wizard and a werewolf was apparently not enough. Remus had to be fifteen and on his knees with another bloke’s cock in his mouth. And then leaning back against the bookshelf while that bloke knelt and returned the favor. And everything else they got up to that summer that Remus couldn’t quite forget no matter how he tried.
It wasn’t till months later, back at Hogwarts, under the covers, eyes closed, hand down his pajama bottoms, that Remus realized how much that Muggle boy resembled someone who was sleeping just one bed over. Deep brown hair instead of black, light blue eyes instead of grey, but the lips, the perfectly pouty pink lips - the lips were the same.
And after that when he closed his eyes and imagined it was someone’s mouth on him and not his own hand, he wasn’t sure just whose mouth he wanted it to be.
II.
He liked the anonymity of the club. The thumping bass, the pulsing lights, the cold beer and the hot skin of the random bloke he had pressed up against the wall.
Blond. He always went for someone blond. He didn’t want a reminder - any more of a reminder, as if everything in the world didn’t remind him - of what he’d lost. Didn’t want to dig his hands into shaggy black hair and pretend, even for a moment, that he was with someone else, someone he was trying to forget. Five years and he still couldn’t do it, and shagging his way through half the men in Britain wasn’t helping, and neither was getting falling-down drunk on weekends and sleeping it off in the bed they used to share.
“My flat’s just around the corner,” said Mr. Random, an invitation Remus wouldn’t refuse. But in the morning, alone in his own kitchen, he always felt grimy and tired and ashamed, and he would promise himself never to do this again.
It was always the same.
III.
It was just sex. They didn’t speak to one another, and that was the only way it worked. If they spoke they would fight and if they fought, well, that took up too much of the few moments of privacy they could find. Trading insults was saved for school hours, over lunch at the staff table and goblets of Wolfsbane in his classroom.
Once, he almost slipped, opened his mouth when he came and almost said a name, started to say a name, and which one, he wasn’t sure, but he didn’t have to find out, cut off with a snarled “Shut up, Lupin.”
Just sex. Just a way to get by, to ward off the chill of an old drafty castle filled with too many painful memories.
But then, when it was over, when that sneering scowl and that branded arm came back into focus, he wasn’t sure if it really helped that much, after all.
IV.
Sometimes she looked a lot like him. If he looked sideways and not for too long, if she was trying a new look and went with the black hair characteristic of so many of her relatives, he could almost pretend. But it was better not to.
He could have asked her to do it.
Strengthen her jaw. Lighten her eyes. Darken her hair. Straighten her nose. Sharpen her cheekbones.
She seemed so desperate sometimes, so insistent that he love her back, so naïve and determined, that he thought maybe, just maybe, she would have. It wouldn’t be right, it wouldn’t be fair, and so he didn’t, because he felt guilty enough as it was, giving in to loneliness and staying one night when she asked him if he wouldn’t like just one more cup of tea.
Maybe, he thought, it was really time to move on, now. Maybe he could do it.
Right, because that’s worked so well in the past.
“You fancy stepping into Sirius’s shoes,” Harry hurled at him, and he didn’t have the heart to tell the boy no, no, that’s not at all what I fancy, but we can’t always have what we want, can we? Sometimes we just have to settle for what’s available.
fin.