All Those Bohemian Ideals
Title: All Those Bohemian Ideals
Author: shaggydogstail
Pairing: Remus/Sirius
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: None
Summary: 'I may never convince you how lovely you are,' he says wistfully, 'but you must believe this: you're lovely to me.'
Prompt: Beauty, for cliche_bingo
Author notes: Title, and blatant theft of various song lyrics, bits of poetry and the like inspired by Moulin Rouge. Many thanks to red_squared for beta help.
Spun caramel hair touched with platinum and curls, falling like vines around a pale opal face. Warm hazel eyes framed by summer-sand brows, sparse and simple, pure. The one-of-a-kind curve to a long, freckled nose, kissed only by summer and by Sirius. Narrow lips, marshmallow-pink, perfectly arranged in a concentrated frown, offering the merest glimpse of -
'Padfoot, you're doing it again.'
'Hm?' Sirius blinks, still languid in his study of Remus' features, now lit and reassembled by sudden animation. 'Doing what?'
'Staring at me,' says Remus, annoyed, embarrassed and maybe just a touch delighted under Sirius' adoring scrutiny. 'You're supposed to be helping me with this.'
Remus rustles the sheet of parchment he's got propped up against his knees, adding an elbow in the ribs to be sure of distracting Sirius' attention.
'Oh, this.' Transfiguration homework, strangely, does not receive the same patient examination that Sirius reserves for Remus' features. 'The third Principal Exception to Gamp's Law of Elemental Transfiguration: free-floating gases and vapour cannot be transfigured - you have to catch it, contain it somehow first.'
'Right, thanks.' Remus scratches his quill across the parchment, trying very hard to ignore the burn of Sirius' gaze upon him, the warm tickle of breath on his cheek as Sirius leans closer...
'Not here, Padfoot,' Remus protests, indicating the crowded lawns around them with a sweep of his quill. 'People will see.'
'Pish, no-one's looking,' says Sirius, but he contents himself with a single chaste kiss to Remus' forehead, just north of today's ink smudge and below a faint ivory crescent, Sirius' favourite memento of a particularly spectacular Potions disaster.
Remus just shakes his head in despair. He thinks he'll never understand how Sirius, for all his electric intellect, can be so utterly clueless about the world around him. Remus knows, because he pays attention to these things, that people are always watching Sirius. How could they not? It's hard to ignore those perfect features, smooth olive skin and classically sculpted cheekbones, rosebud lips and midnight lashes. There are rumours about Sirius making girls cry, or feel faint, with just a single glance and Remus can understand that perfectly. Sometimes he aches just looking at Sirius, overwhelmed by his beauty, that fantastic, almost inhuman perfection. How the poster-child for male beauty can see anything attractive in him - plain, ordinary boy, not much to look at - is a constant source of bafflement to Remus.
'I think,' says Sirius softly, hardly wanting to shake Remus out of his reverie or chase that ghost of an absent-minded smile off his lips, 'you've finished that now.'
'Huh?' Remus forces himself to look down at his parchment and sees that, yes, that was the last Transfiguration question. 'Oh, yeah, cheers. You wanna go and see if Prongs and Wormtail are back from Quidditch, then?'
'Whatever you like,' says Sirius, his face breaking into a smile that shows off his perfect teeth (half above and half beneath, in rows). It makes Remus' head swim just to look, so he averts his eyes to take the hand Sirius offers.
It's ridiculous, Remus knows, to be giddy over the face he's been looking at for six years, and yet he can't quite trust his composure to so much as glance at Sirius as they stroll towards the castle together. Perhaps it's catching - he's getting as daft as Sirius.
#
In the early days of Dumbledore's headship, he was full of new ideas and grand plans to bring Hogwarts up to date. Faced with the combined intransigence of the School Governors and the Ministry, most of these had to be scaled back or abandoned completely, but none faltered quite so quickly as the expansion of the Hogwarts curriculum to include Comparative Magic. A bold bid at internationalism foiled by politics and diplomatic squabbles that had nothing to do with the school, the subject was cancelled after only a term.
Still, there was one unforeseen benefit to the experiment - the rooms of the short-lived Professor Esposito, left empty these many years, provided an excellent bolt-hole for those boys inquisitive and clever enough to find it. Upon discovery, it was immediately pressed into service as a secret HQ for James and Sirius to plot those activities that even the most open-minded of prefects would prefer not to know about ('we just don't think it's going to be your sort of evening, Moony'), until James got distracted with Head Boy-ship and Lily actually talking to him. Now it gives Remus and Sirius the privacy to, as James put it, 'get all that gayness out of your systems so that Wormtail and I don't have to put up with you making googly eyes at each other across the dorm'.
Sirius cherishes these rare opportunities to get Remus all to himself, without fear of distraction or interruption and no excuse for Remus to run off and hide. He likes to touch, of course, and taste and smell, but before all that he likes to look, indulging privileged eyes in a private display of unedited Moony. Sirius takes his time gazing at the brown sugar sprinkle of freckles over Remus' cheeks, the ivory-soap skin of his throat, and bitten nails on elegant fingers dangling below frayed cuffs.
'Don't you ever get tired of that?' asks Remus, amused, baffled. 'I'm really not much to look at.'
(No false modesty, just realistic. Remus knows he's ordinary, unremarkable, and for the most part he's grateful.)
'Silly, Moony,' Sirius tells him. 'Could look at you forever.'
(So long as Remus tolerates him at all, Sirius has every intention of doing just that.)
Remus rolls his eyes, that oh-so-familiar "daft dog, there's no reasoning with him" look on his face, but Sirius isn't giving up this time. He's tried and failed a hundred times to convince Remus how glorious, and special, and beautiful he is, but Sirius Black is nothing if not determined.
'I may never convince you how lovely you are,' he says wistfully, 'but you must believe this: you're lovely to me. I don't care how plain or unattractive you say you are because to me, you are perfect.'
Remus gasps softly, unable to doubt the sincerity of Sirius' words or the depths of his devotion. No, he'll never believe that he's lovely, but he can accept - outlandish as it may seem - that Sirius believes it. Sirius, for all that he can lie outrageously to professors and publicans at the drop of a hat, never could be anything but honest about his emotions. If Remus can count on anyone at all to tell him the truth about love, it's Sirius.
'Thank you,' he says simply, too happy to even think of arguing. Really, it's better this way. Loveliness in itself is abstract and elusive, doesn't count for a hill of beans against Sirius' attention. Whatever it is that inspired Sirius' infatuation, what strange quirk of the Black psyche that pulls him towards a very ordinary teenage werewolf, Remus is grateful for it, grateful for the opportunity to bask in the irresistible warmth of Sirius' adoration.
Maybe Sirius is right after all; Remus is special, because Sirius makes him so.
#
Much, much later
Time and outrageous fortune have taken many things from Sirius but not, for now, his capacity to find joy in the simplest things. The wild freedom of running, four-legged, over hill and brook, the crunch of bracken beneath his paws and the wind in his fur. Liberty so long denied is all the sweeter, and sweeter still with his destination in mind, the scent of poppies and grass, glossed woodwork and old carpets, tea and fresh scones, then yes Moony in his nostrils.
'Change, please, Padfoot,' says Remus, laughing as he lifts the milk jug beyond the reach of the wagging tail. 'I've told you before; it's humans only on the furniture. I'm not having you shed enough fur to stuff a pillow all over the sofa.'
'Anything you say,' Sirius tells him amiably, happy enough to comply. It's easier in many ways to be a dog, but he can see Remus much more clearly through human eyes.
Remus is still a fascinating study. Older, of course, much older than he ought to be, a little grey around the temples and a constant tiredness around the eyes, but not so very much different. He still wears accidental ink-stains (a smudge below his left ear) and there's a bump on his forehead, from when he battered himself with a door. His brow crumples in confusion when he notices Sirius staring, and Sirius is pleased to see it more than he is embarrassed to be caught out. Same old Moony, after all, still dazed, beautiful and bruised.
Sirius is under no illusions that the greater change is in him. However beautiful he may once have been, it's all over now. He remembers once, long ago, hearing of a superstition amongst Muggle children that if you look in the mirror after midnight you'll see yourself after death, remembers laughing at the silliness of it. He's not laughing now, not when he sees his own corpse in every reflection. No, the challenge now is not convincing Remus of his own appeal, but looking for something that Remus might find to love in him.
'Still not got tired of staring then?' Remus asks with an indulgent smile. 'It is generally considered rude, you know.'
'Sorry,' says Sirius, and he is, because he knows he's lost the right. 'It's just... you're still beautiful.'
'So are you,' says Remus. He says it on reflex and he knows Sirius doesn't believe it, but it's true. It hurts now to look at Sirius, not because of his long-lost breathtaking good looks, but because of the pain and desolation of Azkaban writ large across his damaged face. Remus, though, can see through the pain - he's good at that - can see the strength and resolution behind it all. Sirius has been to hell and lived to tell the tale. Lived, and loved enough to survive, and now he's come back to Remus, and it's glorious in ways Remus could never have imagined.
'No need for platitudes, Moony,' says Sirius. 'I can believe you're noble enough to care about me anyway, but we both know I'm monstrous.'
'Never.' Remus shakes his head resolutely. He leans forward, cups Sirius' face with his palm. 'I know you can't see it, and I know there might be no-one else on this earth who can see how lovely you are, but I can. It doesn't matter if you're not so pretty. To me, you are everything.'
Sirius remembers dimly that he might have said something similar to Remus long ago. The possible plagiarism of his own words doesn't trouble him, though. He's learnt the hard way that Remus wouldn't lie to him. And, yes, Remus is right that Sirius can see no beauty left in himself, but if Remus can, then that's enough. More than enough. It's perfect.
'I love you,' he whispers.
Remus smiles, soft pink lips, slightly chapped, charmingly crooked and wonderful. It's a smile that makes him look seventeen again and something deep inside of Sirius feels it too.
It's not the same; older, ragged, torn at the edges, crumpled up and almost (not quite, not quite) broken. Still, it's beautiful.
FIN
Author: shaggydogstail
Pairing: Remus/Sirius
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: None
Summary: 'I may never convince you how lovely you are,' he says wistfully, 'but you must believe this: you're lovely to me.'
Prompt: Beauty, for cliche_bingo
Author notes: Title, and blatant theft of various song lyrics, bits of poetry and the like inspired by Moulin Rouge. Many thanks to red_squared for beta help.
Spun caramel hair touched with platinum and curls, falling like vines around a pale opal face. Warm hazel eyes framed by summer-sand brows, sparse and simple, pure. The one-of-a-kind curve to a long, freckled nose, kissed only by summer and by Sirius. Narrow lips, marshmallow-pink, perfectly arranged in a concentrated frown, offering the merest glimpse of -
'Padfoot, you're doing it again.'
'Hm?' Sirius blinks, still languid in his study of Remus' features, now lit and reassembled by sudden animation. 'Doing what?'
'Staring at me,' says Remus, annoyed, embarrassed and maybe just a touch delighted under Sirius' adoring scrutiny. 'You're supposed to be helping me with this.'
Remus rustles the sheet of parchment he's got propped up against his knees, adding an elbow in the ribs to be sure of distracting Sirius' attention.
'Oh, this.' Transfiguration homework, strangely, does not receive the same patient examination that Sirius reserves for Remus' features. 'The third Principal Exception to Gamp's Law of Elemental Transfiguration: free-floating gases and vapour cannot be transfigured - you have to catch it, contain it somehow first.'
'Right, thanks.' Remus scratches his quill across the parchment, trying very hard to ignore the burn of Sirius' gaze upon him, the warm tickle of breath on his cheek as Sirius leans closer...
'Not here, Padfoot,' Remus protests, indicating the crowded lawns around them with a sweep of his quill. 'People will see.'
'Pish, no-one's looking,' says Sirius, but he contents himself with a single chaste kiss to Remus' forehead, just north of today's ink smudge and below a faint ivory crescent, Sirius' favourite memento of a particularly spectacular Potions disaster.
Remus just shakes his head in despair. He thinks he'll never understand how Sirius, for all his electric intellect, can be so utterly clueless about the world around him. Remus knows, because he pays attention to these things, that people are always watching Sirius. How could they not? It's hard to ignore those perfect features, smooth olive skin and classically sculpted cheekbones, rosebud lips and midnight lashes. There are rumours about Sirius making girls cry, or feel faint, with just a single glance and Remus can understand that perfectly. Sometimes he aches just looking at Sirius, overwhelmed by his beauty, that fantastic, almost inhuman perfection. How the poster-child for male beauty can see anything attractive in him - plain, ordinary boy, not much to look at - is a constant source of bafflement to Remus.
'I think,' says Sirius softly, hardly wanting to shake Remus out of his reverie or chase that ghost of an absent-minded smile off his lips, 'you've finished that now.'
'Huh?' Remus forces himself to look down at his parchment and sees that, yes, that was the last Transfiguration question. 'Oh, yeah, cheers. You wanna go and see if Prongs and Wormtail are back from Quidditch, then?'
'Whatever you like,' says Sirius, his face breaking into a smile that shows off his perfect teeth (half above and half beneath, in rows). It makes Remus' head swim just to look, so he averts his eyes to take the hand Sirius offers.
It's ridiculous, Remus knows, to be giddy over the face he's been looking at for six years, and yet he can't quite trust his composure to so much as glance at Sirius as they stroll towards the castle together. Perhaps it's catching - he's getting as daft as Sirius.
#
In the early days of Dumbledore's headship, he was full of new ideas and grand plans to bring Hogwarts up to date. Faced with the combined intransigence of the School Governors and the Ministry, most of these had to be scaled back or abandoned completely, but none faltered quite so quickly as the expansion of the Hogwarts curriculum to include Comparative Magic. A bold bid at internationalism foiled by politics and diplomatic squabbles that had nothing to do with the school, the subject was cancelled after only a term.
Still, there was one unforeseen benefit to the experiment - the rooms of the short-lived Professor Esposito, left empty these many years, provided an excellent bolt-hole for those boys inquisitive and clever enough to find it. Upon discovery, it was immediately pressed into service as a secret HQ for James and Sirius to plot those activities that even the most open-minded of prefects would prefer not to know about ('we just don't think it's going to be your sort of evening, Moony'), until James got distracted with Head Boy-ship and Lily actually talking to him. Now it gives Remus and Sirius the privacy to, as James put it, 'get all that gayness out of your systems so that Wormtail and I don't have to put up with you making googly eyes at each other across the dorm'.
Sirius cherishes these rare opportunities to get Remus all to himself, without fear of distraction or interruption and no excuse for Remus to run off and hide. He likes to touch, of course, and taste and smell, but before all that he likes to look, indulging privileged eyes in a private display of unedited Moony. Sirius takes his time gazing at the brown sugar sprinkle of freckles over Remus' cheeks, the ivory-soap skin of his throat, and bitten nails on elegant fingers dangling below frayed cuffs.
'Don't you ever get tired of that?' asks Remus, amused, baffled. 'I'm really not much to look at.'
(No false modesty, just realistic. Remus knows he's ordinary, unremarkable, and for the most part he's grateful.)
'Silly, Moony,' Sirius tells him. 'Could look at you forever.'
(So long as Remus tolerates him at all, Sirius has every intention of doing just that.)
Remus rolls his eyes, that oh-so-familiar "daft dog, there's no reasoning with him" look on his face, but Sirius isn't giving up this time. He's tried and failed a hundred times to convince Remus how glorious, and special, and beautiful he is, but Sirius Black is nothing if not determined.
'I may never convince you how lovely you are,' he says wistfully, 'but you must believe this: you're lovely to me. I don't care how plain or unattractive you say you are because to me, you are perfect.'
Remus gasps softly, unable to doubt the sincerity of Sirius' words or the depths of his devotion. No, he'll never believe that he's lovely, but he can accept - outlandish as it may seem - that Sirius believes it. Sirius, for all that he can lie outrageously to professors and publicans at the drop of a hat, never could be anything but honest about his emotions. If Remus can count on anyone at all to tell him the truth about love, it's Sirius.
'Thank you,' he says simply, too happy to even think of arguing. Really, it's better this way. Loveliness in itself is abstract and elusive, doesn't count for a hill of beans against Sirius' attention. Whatever it is that inspired Sirius' infatuation, what strange quirk of the Black psyche that pulls him towards a very ordinary teenage werewolf, Remus is grateful for it, grateful for the opportunity to bask in the irresistible warmth of Sirius' adoration.
Maybe Sirius is right after all; Remus is special, because Sirius makes him so.
#
Much, much later
Time and outrageous fortune have taken many things from Sirius but not, for now, his capacity to find joy in the simplest things. The wild freedom of running, four-legged, over hill and brook, the crunch of bracken beneath his paws and the wind in his fur. Liberty so long denied is all the sweeter, and sweeter still with his destination in mind, the scent of poppies and grass, glossed woodwork and old carpets, tea and fresh scones, then yes Moony in his nostrils.
'Change, please, Padfoot,' says Remus, laughing as he lifts the milk jug beyond the reach of the wagging tail. 'I've told you before; it's humans only on the furniture. I'm not having you shed enough fur to stuff a pillow all over the sofa.'
'Anything you say,' Sirius tells him amiably, happy enough to comply. It's easier in many ways to be a dog, but he can see Remus much more clearly through human eyes.
Remus is still a fascinating study. Older, of course, much older than he ought to be, a little grey around the temples and a constant tiredness around the eyes, but not so very much different. He still wears accidental ink-stains (a smudge below his left ear) and there's a bump on his forehead, from when he battered himself with a door. His brow crumples in confusion when he notices Sirius staring, and Sirius is pleased to see it more than he is embarrassed to be caught out. Same old Moony, after all, still dazed, beautiful and bruised.
Sirius is under no illusions that the greater change is in him. However beautiful he may once have been, it's all over now. He remembers once, long ago, hearing of a superstition amongst Muggle children that if you look in the mirror after midnight you'll see yourself after death, remembers laughing at the silliness of it. He's not laughing now, not when he sees his own corpse in every reflection. No, the challenge now is not convincing Remus of his own appeal, but looking for something that Remus might find to love in him.
'Still not got tired of staring then?' Remus asks with an indulgent smile. 'It is generally considered rude, you know.'
'Sorry,' says Sirius, and he is, because he knows he's lost the right. 'It's just... you're still beautiful.'
'So are you,' says Remus. He says it on reflex and he knows Sirius doesn't believe it, but it's true. It hurts now to look at Sirius, not because of his long-lost breathtaking good looks, but because of the pain and desolation of Azkaban writ large across his damaged face. Remus, though, can see through the pain - he's good at that - can see the strength and resolution behind it all. Sirius has been to hell and lived to tell the tale. Lived, and loved enough to survive, and now he's come back to Remus, and it's glorious in ways Remus could never have imagined.
'No need for platitudes, Moony,' says Sirius. 'I can believe you're noble enough to care about me anyway, but we both know I'm monstrous.'
'Never.' Remus shakes his head resolutely. He leans forward, cups Sirius' face with his palm. 'I know you can't see it, and I know there might be no-one else on this earth who can see how lovely you are, but I can. It doesn't matter if you're not so pretty. To me, you are everything.'
Sirius remembers dimly that he might have said something similar to Remus long ago. The possible plagiarism of his own words doesn't trouble him, though. He's learnt the hard way that Remus wouldn't lie to him. And, yes, Remus is right that Sirius can see no beauty left in himself, but if Remus can, then that's enough. More than enough. It's perfect.
'I love you,' he whispers.
Remus smiles, soft pink lips, slightly chapped, charmingly crooked and wonderful. It's a smile that makes him look seventeen again and something deep inside of Sirius feels it too.
It's not the same; older, ragged, torn at the edges, crumpled up and almost (not quite, not quite) broken. Still, it's beautiful.
FIN