HP Fic: Sheets.
Title: Sheets
Author: eponymous_x
Rating: PG-13
Pairings: Remus/Sirius, Remus/Tonks
Word Count: 2,300
Summary: Remus’ relationship with Sirius, as viewed through the lens of something exceedingly common. 1975 through 1997.
Warnings: Angst. Boys touching boys, girls touching boys. Angst.
Spoilers: Mention of Things Occurring Between Remus and Tonks in Book Seven.
A/N: I have been dormant in the fandom community for some time now; I’ve just started writing fic again. Consider this an introduction, or re-introduction. Somewhat beta’d by expointokyo. Crossposted to remusxsirius and starcrossedmoon. Comments and concrit are appreciated.
Sheets.
In nine parts.
“Darling, all night
I have been flickering, off, on, off, on.
The sheets grow heavy as a lecher's kiss.”
-Sylvia Plath, Fever 103°
Prologue.
It took Remus an alarmingly short time to get used to the opulence of sleeping without sheets between him and the comforter. Since he could remember, it had never even occurred to him to do it. It was one of the many things stemming from his family’s poverty that separated him from his wealthy school friends. Friends whose families had been Pureblood for centuries. Friends who would buy new slacks before letting out the hems and wearing the knees thin and shiny, before sewing a belt loop back on, replacing a popped button.
This was the world Remus Lupin lived in: shirts whose sleeves barely brushed the jutting bones in his wrists, fraying jumpers, a sheet between him and the comforter.
Of course, Sirius changed all of that.
I. Hogwarts, January 1975
He noticed it the first night he slept in Sirius’ bed. Slept as in actually stayed, after they had pulled each other off like they had been doing for weeks, scrabbling fingers on sweaty skin and muffled, bitten-back cries. Sirius had grabbed Remus’ wrist as Remus moved to slip silently off of the bed and pad off to his own.
“Moony, don’t,” he mumbled sleepily. “Stay here.”
“But the others -” Remus began.
“Don’t go.”
They had curled their bodies together then, for the first time, and it felt so natural Remus wondered that they hadn’t been doing it forever. Sirius slipped a hand around Remus’ waist and rested their foreheads together gently, just enough to feel the heat of each other’s skin, the brush of each other’s hair. Just before he followed Sirius into sleep, Remus noticed that Sirius slept without sheets. The comforter was soft against Remus’ skin, different from the slightly battered white sheets that had been “scourgify”-ed countless times before.
They spent more time in each other’s beds after that, and every time Sirius slept in Remus’, he kicked the sheets down so that they pooled by their feet, sliding off the bed to join the mess of clothing and books on the room’s floor. Remus never bothered putting them back on.
II. London, September 1977
After their seventh year ended, Remus moved into Sirius’ flat. They lived comfortably in the tiny three-room apartment, bumping elbows while brushing their teeth in the narrow bathroom, stealing kisses while trying to find clean plates to eat take-away Indian on (they ended up eating out of the cartons after all, with marginally clean silverware because they couldn’t be bothered washing anything. Sirius stole chicken tikka masala from Remus’ box and Remus felt the tingle of spices on Sirius’ lips when they kissed).
It took Remus two weeks to even notice that Sirius did not own sheets. He was not surprised at all.
III. London, November 1981
Remus did not leave the flat for days. He sat on the mattress on the floor of the closet-sized bedroom. He did not touch the blanket that was crumpled next to the mattress; it smelled of Sirius and he could not bear it. It made him nauseous and dizzy.
Minerva McGonagall Floo’d to the awful flat several days after the Ministry released him, a fortnight after Remus’ world collapsed.
“Mr Lupin?” Her prim voice rang hollowly on the empty walls of the flat. Remus curled up into a ball like he used to when he was a boy and he saw the moon growing rounder, more perfect each night. The door eased open and a line of light fell across Remus’ body in the otherwise dark bedroom. He heard a soft intake of breath. “My goodness, what have they done to you?”
Remus looked up at her, squinting in the light. He realized he hadn’t shaved for weeks, had barely washed the grit of Ministry dungeons off of his skin. He had worn his only suit to the Ministry “questioning,” and that had been so worn from shackles (“justifiable cautionary restraint”) and so torn from beatings (“peaceful coercion”) that he had had to throw it away. He wore a thin old t-shirt now, and jeans that may not always have belonged to him. He didn’t want to think about it. The bruises around his wrists, on his legs and that particularly awful one across his left shoulder (which was still probably dislocated, which he still couldn’t bring himself to care about) hadn’t healed, and the white of his right eye was still spotted with blood; he lacked the energy and motivation to heal himself.
He shook his head. She kneeled on the dusty floor and coaxed him to sit up, turned his head this way and that with dry cool fingertips on his jaw.
“Professor, you don’t need to…” Remus’ voice was hoarse from silence following days of repetition.
I knew nothing of Black’s plans.
I have never worked for He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.
I did not betray my friends.
I -
I did not help Sirius Black kill James and Lily Potter.
“Hush. Someone has to take care of you, as you are clearly not willing to do so yourself.”
Remus yielded to her healing spells, the white glow that closed the cut on his lower lip that kept opening and flooding his mouth with blood, spells that healed the bruises and added the cuts to the map of scars that covered his body, white twists scrawled across pale skin.
“Why are you doing this?” Remus asked her, with a weight his twenty-two years should not have had to carry.
“Mr. Lupin,” McGonagall said to him, still concentrating on the dark purple bruises encircling his wrists, “I cannot begin to imagine how you must feel. But that does not change the fact that life will go on, whether or not you are prepared to face each passing day.” Her voice softened and she looked up at him, eyes sad. “You have lost more than most people can possibly imagine losing. But if you lose the will to live, you will have lost everything you have.” She looked away from him and busied herself with the poorly-healed scrapes that marred his palms, back to her usual straitlaced demeanor.
After she left the flat, Remus shaved and bathed properly, carefully washing away any remnants of the Ministry and of the flat. He packed what few belongings were truly his, enough to fill the trunk he had from Hogwarts, and left. He did not look behind him before closing the door.
When he moved back into the small house his parents had owned, the first thing Remus bought was a set of sheets.
IV. London, July 1993
When he heard of Sirius’ escape from Azkaban, Remus carefully allowed himself to feel nothing.
It was ten days before Remus realized he had begun kicking the sheets off of his bed, sleeping with only the comforter next to his body.
V. Grimmauld Place, August 1995
They technically had two separate bedrooms, but Remus’ was never occupied. They slept together like they had at school, silent about it amidst so many other people, still marveling at how their bodies fit together just so, just like they used to, after all these years and countless tragedies. Remus cringed at the hollows around Sirius’ hipbones, the dips between his ribs that never seemed to fill in. Sirius traced his fingers along the lines of old scars, scars from years back that he had not been there to prevent, and berated himself and tried to heal them now through love alone. Remus smiled, and Sirius threaded his fingers through graying hair.
“Moony,” he murmured into Remus’ neck. Remus counted tattoos.
“Pads.”
“We can’t ever part, now. Not again.” His breath was hot on Remus’ skin but the room still felt cold, even in August when everywhere else in the world was sweltering. Remus pulled the comforter up to Sirius’ neck. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
VI. Grimmauld Place, June 1996
Remus returned to Grimmauld Place, numb, and allowed himself only twenty-four hours in Sirius’ room. He slid between the comforter and the mattress, pressed his face against Sirius’ pillow and breathed in. His knuckles whitened as he tried to get a hold on the world.
The rest of the time he spent in that horrible house, Remus slept in the bedroom that had been intended for him. The comforter he used seemed rough and scratched his skin, but he couldn’t bring himself to use the sheets that had been on the bed.
VII. Grimmauld Place, September 1996
It was one of the last oppressively humid nights of the year when Tonks kissed Remus for the first time. She was taller than he remembered her being, her fingers longer and harder. He stood still, unfeeling, and as she kissed him her hair grew, long and black, slightly unkempt as though she was unused to being able to brush it every day. For one second Remus kissed her back, desperately, tangled his fingers in the dark hair.
Tonks pulled away from him, hair turning lank and brown, and he looked down into her bright eyes.
“I see the way it is,” she said, and turned away from him.
Remus’ fingernails bit dark half-moons into his palms.
VIII. Grimmauld Place, February 1997
Tonks smiled against Remus’ lips. She took one of his hands with both of hers and slid it around her waist, under her shirt, so he could feel her smooth warm skin, the curve of her spine under his fingertips. He let her, wishing he didn’t yearn for flat planes, sharp angles and the almost-raised lines of old tattoos -
She gave him a handjob on one of the dark landings of the big stairway. Remus bit his tongue for fear of making noise, but hated himself for not needing to. She slipped away into the shadows, grinning wickedly. After a moment Remus climbed the stairs and before reaching the end of the hall, stopped in front of Sirius’ room. His self-loathing deepened and he was drawn in by some sick compulsion.
The room was exactly as he remembered it, without so much as a week’s worth of dust on it. The bed was roughly made, but clearly had not been touched since he had been in it.
Remus kneeled on the wood floor and rested his forehead against the comforter, in search of benediction. He didn’t know whether he could still smell Sirius in the room. The bed was somehow not musty and he buried his face in it, slipped his hands under the comforter to feel for - nothing. He lifted his head, breathed deeply and avoided the happy gazes of the teenagers from another life who shouted silently and grinned from photos on the walls.
He did not look behind him before closing the door.
IX. A letter.
Dear.
Dear.
I can’t get past that salutation, because it is so unlike you. You were never a “dear” type of person, but I don’t know how else to start a letter, a letter to you, so.
Dear. I feel like I’ve betrayed you. I feel like I need to apologize even though you’d laugh at me for it.
Dear.
(dear god how I miss your laugh, haunted and abrupt as it was lately, darker around the edges, rougher than it used to be. almost a bark, one might say.
that almost makes me smile, there, but there the knife twists just that bit deeper. dear, dear.)
I’ve gone back to smoking and you’d laugh, too, at how hard I try to hide it. I fear I’m too good at hiding things, from so much practice, of course, but now it’s become a compulsion. A permanent part of me. I hardly know when I really should be hiding things and when it’s just out of force of habit I lie.
(i never told you: for four months after you’d gone, the first time, that awful empty stretch before loneliness became a part of me again, for four months I told nothing but lies.
dear, i almost couldn’t do it. it was almost too difficult to start telling the truth after that.)
What I started off wanting to say: I feel like a traitor to you. To, you know, to us, as much as you hated saying “us” as an object, apart from you and me.
Dear. I can’t even write a coherent letter; my grammar and syntax are deserting me and if these lines started out with a purpose they have disintegrated into haphazard, erratic scribblings. My hands are shaking. I feel like a schoolboy again, grasping at words as they fall flat and ineffectual beside what I am really trying to express.
And she’s even related to you, god, god, I cannot stand this.
I hate myself so much for this.
And I know now you would be giving me that look that says “stop being so self-deprecating, Moony, you daft bastard,” but this is awful and if my life was less fucked-up by half I would probably still be in this situation. I cannot bear it.
Dear, I must say it.
Dear. I’ve married your cousin, Tonks.
Dear. I’ve been married for not thirty-six hours and I’m writing to you in desperation because sometimes our shared, worn bedsheets repulse me. Sometimes my fingers curl, my skin crawls and I wish…
You would never let me finish that sentence. Thinking about the way you would cut me off there - it makes me ache in places I thought had been scarred over to numbness years ago. Dear, dear. It seems as though I keep finding new ways to hurt. And I don’t know how to stop this and it’s - it’s…
Dear. Dear Sirius. It’s killing me.
(sirius, i writhe under the bright heavy moon and these nights without you ache worse than every transformation those twelve years you were gone. i didn’t think anything could be worse than the smoldering burn of betrayal that weighed always in the pit of my stomach but I was wrong. the hollow emptiness of true, final loss is so much worse.)
Dear Sirius.
--R
Author: eponymous_x
Rating: PG-13
Pairings: Remus/Sirius, Remus/Tonks
Word Count: 2,300
Summary: Remus’ relationship with Sirius, as viewed through the lens of something exceedingly common. 1975 through 1997.
Warnings: Angst. Boys touching boys, girls touching boys. Angst.
Spoilers: Mention of Things Occurring Between Remus and Tonks in Book Seven.
A/N: I have been dormant in the fandom community for some time now; I’ve just started writing fic again. Consider this an introduction, or re-introduction. Somewhat beta’d by expointokyo. Crossposted to remusxsirius and starcrossedmoon. Comments and concrit are appreciated.
Sheets.
In nine parts.
“Darling, all night
I have been flickering, off, on, off, on.
The sheets grow heavy as a lecher's kiss.”
-Sylvia Plath, Fever 103°
Prologue.
It took Remus an alarmingly short time to get used to the opulence of sleeping without sheets between him and the comforter. Since he could remember, it had never even occurred to him to do it. It was one of the many things stemming from his family’s poverty that separated him from his wealthy school friends. Friends whose families had been Pureblood for centuries. Friends who would buy new slacks before letting out the hems and wearing the knees thin and shiny, before sewing a belt loop back on, replacing a popped button.
This was the world Remus Lupin lived in: shirts whose sleeves barely brushed the jutting bones in his wrists, fraying jumpers, a sheet between him and the comforter.
Of course, Sirius changed all of that.
I. Hogwarts, January 1975
He noticed it the first night he slept in Sirius’ bed. Slept as in actually stayed, after they had pulled each other off like they had been doing for weeks, scrabbling fingers on sweaty skin and muffled, bitten-back cries. Sirius had grabbed Remus’ wrist as Remus moved to slip silently off of the bed and pad off to his own.
“Moony, don’t,” he mumbled sleepily. “Stay here.”
“But the others -” Remus began.
“Don’t go.”
They had curled their bodies together then, for the first time, and it felt so natural Remus wondered that they hadn’t been doing it forever. Sirius slipped a hand around Remus’ waist and rested their foreheads together gently, just enough to feel the heat of each other’s skin, the brush of each other’s hair. Just before he followed Sirius into sleep, Remus noticed that Sirius slept without sheets. The comforter was soft against Remus’ skin, different from the slightly battered white sheets that had been “scourgify”-ed countless times before.
They spent more time in each other’s beds after that, and every time Sirius slept in Remus’, he kicked the sheets down so that they pooled by their feet, sliding off the bed to join the mess of clothing and books on the room’s floor. Remus never bothered putting them back on.
II. London, September 1977
After their seventh year ended, Remus moved into Sirius’ flat. They lived comfortably in the tiny three-room apartment, bumping elbows while brushing their teeth in the narrow bathroom, stealing kisses while trying to find clean plates to eat take-away Indian on (they ended up eating out of the cartons after all, with marginally clean silverware because they couldn’t be bothered washing anything. Sirius stole chicken tikka masala from Remus’ box and Remus felt the tingle of spices on Sirius’ lips when they kissed).
It took Remus two weeks to even notice that Sirius did not own sheets. He was not surprised at all.
III. London, November 1981
Remus did not leave the flat for days. He sat on the mattress on the floor of the closet-sized bedroom. He did not touch the blanket that was crumpled next to the mattress; it smelled of Sirius and he could not bear it. It made him nauseous and dizzy.
Minerva McGonagall Floo’d to the awful flat several days after the Ministry released him, a fortnight after Remus’ world collapsed.
“Mr Lupin?” Her prim voice rang hollowly on the empty walls of the flat. Remus curled up into a ball like he used to when he was a boy and he saw the moon growing rounder, more perfect each night. The door eased open and a line of light fell across Remus’ body in the otherwise dark bedroom. He heard a soft intake of breath. “My goodness, what have they done to you?”
Remus looked up at her, squinting in the light. He realized he hadn’t shaved for weeks, had barely washed the grit of Ministry dungeons off of his skin. He had worn his only suit to the Ministry “questioning,” and that had been so worn from shackles (“justifiable cautionary restraint”) and so torn from beatings (“peaceful coercion”) that he had had to throw it away. He wore a thin old t-shirt now, and jeans that may not always have belonged to him. He didn’t want to think about it. The bruises around his wrists, on his legs and that particularly awful one across his left shoulder (which was still probably dislocated, which he still couldn’t bring himself to care about) hadn’t healed, and the white of his right eye was still spotted with blood; he lacked the energy and motivation to heal himself.
He shook his head. She kneeled on the dusty floor and coaxed him to sit up, turned his head this way and that with dry cool fingertips on his jaw.
“Professor, you don’t need to…” Remus’ voice was hoarse from silence following days of repetition.
I knew nothing of Black’s plans.
I have never worked for He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.
I did not betray my friends.
I -
I did not help Sirius Black kill James and Lily Potter.
“Hush. Someone has to take care of you, as you are clearly not willing to do so yourself.”
Remus yielded to her healing spells, the white glow that closed the cut on his lower lip that kept opening and flooding his mouth with blood, spells that healed the bruises and added the cuts to the map of scars that covered his body, white twists scrawled across pale skin.
“Why are you doing this?” Remus asked her, with a weight his twenty-two years should not have had to carry.
“Mr. Lupin,” McGonagall said to him, still concentrating on the dark purple bruises encircling his wrists, “I cannot begin to imagine how you must feel. But that does not change the fact that life will go on, whether or not you are prepared to face each passing day.” Her voice softened and she looked up at him, eyes sad. “You have lost more than most people can possibly imagine losing. But if you lose the will to live, you will have lost everything you have.” She looked away from him and busied herself with the poorly-healed scrapes that marred his palms, back to her usual straitlaced demeanor.
After she left the flat, Remus shaved and bathed properly, carefully washing away any remnants of the Ministry and of the flat. He packed what few belongings were truly his, enough to fill the trunk he had from Hogwarts, and left. He did not look behind him before closing the door.
When he moved back into the small house his parents had owned, the first thing Remus bought was a set of sheets.
IV. London, July 1993
When he heard of Sirius’ escape from Azkaban, Remus carefully allowed himself to feel nothing.
It was ten days before Remus realized he had begun kicking the sheets off of his bed, sleeping with only the comforter next to his body.
V. Grimmauld Place, August 1995
They technically had two separate bedrooms, but Remus’ was never occupied. They slept together like they had at school, silent about it amidst so many other people, still marveling at how their bodies fit together just so, just like they used to, after all these years and countless tragedies. Remus cringed at the hollows around Sirius’ hipbones, the dips between his ribs that never seemed to fill in. Sirius traced his fingers along the lines of old scars, scars from years back that he had not been there to prevent, and berated himself and tried to heal them now through love alone. Remus smiled, and Sirius threaded his fingers through graying hair.
“Moony,” he murmured into Remus’ neck. Remus counted tattoos.
“Pads.”
“We can’t ever part, now. Not again.” His breath was hot on Remus’ skin but the room still felt cold, even in August when everywhere else in the world was sweltering. Remus pulled the comforter up to Sirius’ neck. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
VI. Grimmauld Place, June 1996
Remus returned to Grimmauld Place, numb, and allowed himself only twenty-four hours in Sirius’ room. He slid between the comforter and the mattress, pressed his face against Sirius’ pillow and breathed in. His knuckles whitened as he tried to get a hold on the world.
The rest of the time he spent in that horrible house, Remus slept in the bedroom that had been intended for him. The comforter he used seemed rough and scratched his skin, but he couldn’t bring himself to use the sheets that had been on the bed.
VII. Grimmauld Place, September 1996
It was one of the last oppressively humid nights of the year when Tonks kissed Remus for the first time. She was taller than he remembered her being, her fingers longer and harder. He stood still, unfeeling, and as she kissed him her hair grew, long and black, slightly unkempt as though she was unused to being able to brush it every day. For one second Remus kissed her back, desperately, tangled his fingers in the dark hair.
Tonks pulled away from him, hair turning lank and brown, and he looked down into her bright eyes.
“I see the way it is,” she said, and turned away from him.
Remus’ fingernails bit dark half-moons into his palms.
VIII. Grimmauld Place, February 1997
Tonks smiled against Remus’ lips. She took one of his hands with both of hers and slid it around her waist, under her shirt, so he could feel her smooth warm skin, the curve of her spine under his fingertips. He let her, wishing he didn’t yearn for flat planes, sharp angles and the almost-raised lines of old tattoos -
She gave him a handjob on one of the dark landings of the big stairway. Remus bit his tongue for fear of making noise, but hated himself for not needing to. She slipped away into the shadows, grinning wickedly. After a moment Remus climbed the stairs and before reaching the end of the hall, stopped in front of Sirius’ room. His self-loathing deepened and he was drawn in by some sick compulsion.
The room was exactly as he remembered it, without so much as a week’s worth of dust on it. The bed was roughly made, but clearly had not been touched since he had been in it.
Remus kneeled on the wood floor and rested his forehead against the comforter, in search of benediction. He didn’t know whether he could still smell Sirius in the room. The bed was somehow not musty and he buried his face in it, slipped his hands under the comforter to feel for - nothing. He lifted his head, breathed deeply and avoided the happy gazes of the teenagers from another life who shouted silently and grinned from photos on the walls.
He did not look behind him before closing the door.
IX. A letter.
Dear.
Dear.
I can’t get past that salutation, because it is so unlike you. You were never a “dear” type of person, but I don’t know how else to start a letter, a letter to you, so.
Dear. I feel like I’ve betrayed you. I feel like I need to apologize even though you’d laugh at me for it.
Dear.
(dear god how I miss your laugh, haunted and abrupt as it was lately, darker around the edges, rougher than it used to be. almost a bark, one might say.
that almost makes me smile, there, but there the knife twists just that bit deeper. dear, dear.)
I’ve gone back to smoking and you’d laugh, too, at how hard I try to hide it. I fear I’m too good at hiding things, from so much practice, of course, but now it’s become a compulsion. A permanent part of me. I hardly know when I really should be hiding things and when it’s just out of force of habit I lie.
(i never told you: for four months after you’d gone, the first time, that awful empty stretch before loneliness became a part of me again, for four months I told nothing but lies.
dear, i almost couldn’t do it. it was almost too difficult to start telling the truth after that.)
What I started off wanting to say: I feel like a traitor to you. To, you know, to us, as much as you hated saying “us” as an object, apart from you and me.
Dear. I can’t even write a coherent letter; my grammar and syntax are deserting me and if these lines started out with a purpose they have disintegrated into haphazard, erratic scribblings. My hands are shaking. I feel like a schoolboy again, grasping at words as they fall flat and ineffectual beside what I am really trying to express.
And she’s even related to you, god, god, I cannot stand this.
I hate myself so much for this.
And I know now you would be giving me that look that says “stop being so self-deprecating, Moony, you daft bastard,” but this is awful and if my life was less fucked-up by half I would probably still be in this situation. I cannot bear it.
Dear, I must say it.
Dear. I’ve married your cousin, Tonks.
Dear. I’ve been married for not thirty-six hours and I’m writing to you in desperation because sometimes our shared, worn bedsheets repulse me. Sometimes my fingers curl, my skin crawls and I wish…
You would never let me finish that sentence. Thinking about the way you would cut me off there - it makes me ache in places I thought had been scarred over to numbness years ago. Dear, dear. It seems as though I keep finding new ways to hurt. And I don’t know how to stop this and it’s - it’s…
Dear. Dear Sirius. It’s killing me.
(sirius, i writhe under the bright heavy moon and these nights without you ache worse than every transformation those twelve years you were gone. i didn’t think anything could be worse than the smoldering burn of betrayal that weighed always in the pit of my stomach but I was wrong. the hollow emptiness of true, final loss is so much worse.)
Dear Sirius.
--R