Fic: god does not pass this door (PG)
Title: god does not pass this door
Author: earthanthem
Word Count: 1,073
Rating: PG
Summary: Too soon. Too late. And the frozen in-between.
Notes: THE QUEEN OF ANGST HAS RETURNED....I think.
Time moves without speech, without announcement, without hark or call or notice. It sweeps silent through lives, like the hand of God passing over blood-strewn doors. It is only in looking back that one notices it has passed. At least, that’s how time should move.
Remus knows time. He knows the mathematical beat of night to day, day to night, month to month, year to year, life to life. He knows the feeling of exhilaration as it falls away beneath him. He knows the sense of loss that swallows up his past and he knows the shadow that threatens his future. He is not outside of time, looking in. He is a part of it.
It’s too soon.
They were young, once, when seasons were new and the moon was no longer made of cheese. There were Americans sticking their flag into the moon - the fucking moon! - when it waxed and waned and they didn’t feel a thing, even when Remus was twitching on dusty floorboards, his tongue lolling out of his mouth and his nerve-endings exploding with indescribable pain.
Pain that Sirius tried to feel one night, during holidays, when everyone else had gone to their families and Sirius just wanted to understand. But Remus knew, because he saw the potion bottles under Sirius’s bed a week later. Remus felt sick, like his insides were churning stomach acid into butter, but he never said a word, because he didn’t want to know why.
They were caught between children and adults, lingering on the parapets at midnight, thin cigarettes caught between their fingers and burning low, lower, with the turning of the stars - “Did you know, if you could see the whole path of a star, it would be one big circle of light around the sky?” someone asks, and it doesn’t matter who, because they’re all thinking about it - and when James leads Peter inside with an arm over his shoulders, because Peter has never taken to cold air and the smoke makes him cough like Bob Cratchett, it is too soon for Remus and Sirius.
It is too soon, because they are not boys and are not men and the way their eyes meet tells them everything, but mostly that it is too soon. Sirius sucks on the cigarette like he’s filtering sugar between his lips, and Remus turns over the edge of the wall, palms flat against stone and head hung between his shoulders like a panting dog. Sirius watches him, remembering the vague twitches of pain he had tried to feel, and realizes, not for the first time, that they are further apart than two boys can be. The whole of Remus is not his to understand, not his to feel or to have - the whole of Remus belongs on another plane, where time means moonlight and life means shadows instead of hope.
It’ll be too late.
They are men, briefly, when shadows swallow everyone’s hope, and Sirius plucks a gray hair from his scalp at age twenty. It doesn’t make sense, Sirius thinks, when he stares at it and wishes it away, but it’s long enough to have been there for years - three or four, maybe - and then he remembers hearing how Fabian Prewett’s hair turned gray from the Cruciatus. He lets go the hair and it falls into the white porcelain bowl of the sink. His eyes look into the mirror, over his own bare shoulder, and Remus is there, back to him, scrubbing at the caulking between shower tiles because there is mold, there has always been mold, and there will always be mold.
There’s not a gray hair on his head.
Sirius snorts a quick laugh, one that almost chokes like a sob, and braces his arms on either side of the sink. His back lifts and falls like surf, crashing silently as he tries not to grin, not to betray his thoughts. But Remus-in-the-mirror is turning to watch him, narrowing his eyes with questions, and Sirius suddenly feels naked in only a towel.
“Sorry,” Sirius says, and he stands up straight, one hand over his face, the other moving to tighten the towel, and Remus tilts his head to the side in that way that says he is listening. “M’Sorry, it’s just… you’ve not gone gray, not even with all that pain.”
And then there’s a diarrhea of explanation, and Remus trying to understand, because Sirius’s thoughts are on a plane of their own, outside of time and existence, and when Sirius finally turns around and lifts his palms in defeat, seeming to say, It’s okay, I know where we stand now, and it’s time, we’re ready, it is already too late, because the shadow has struck them across the jaws: someone has broken down their door, and they do not have their wands, and it is only the emergency escape Remus had devised that gets them out with their lives.
They spend the night on Prong’s couch, toes to nose and nose to toes, one blanket between them. Sirius still feels naked, even through his designer jeans and Pink Floyd t-shirt, but he doesn’t say anything again because God, the moon, the whole fucking world, has already intervened, and the hope that it will just let them be has turned to shadow.
Sometime around three in the morning, when the moon has drifted behind a cloud and starlight has turned to mist around them, Sirius awakens to Remus’s shifting body. The blanket is drawn back and Sirius is swallowed in cold air. Then there is warmth against him, and the blanket has returned, heavier than before.
They are nose to nose, toes to toes, and Remus’s arm glides its way, like a single wave, around his neck. Noses touch, chins bump, fingers separate his hair and smooth it behind his ear.
There is a reason I’ve not yet gone gray, Sirius hears, and it could be Remus speaking, it could be Sirius wishing, but he hears it like wind-chimes echoing across a front porch at dusk, saying home. home. home.
They would kiss, they both know, the way they want to, the way it hurts so much not to, but even wrapped in Remus’s arms, Sirius knows that the future has claimed his Remus, has taken away Remus’s hope, and in place of Sirius, Remus only grasps shadows.
His Remus has always been in another realm. And it has always been too late.
Author: earthanthem
Word Count: 1,073
Rating: PG
Summary: Too soon. Too late. And the frozen in-between.
Notes: THE QUEEN OF ANGST HAS RETURNED....I think.
Time moves without speech, without announcement, without hark or call or notice. It sweeps silent through lives, like the hand of God passing over blood-strewn doors. It is only in looking back that one notices it has passed. At least, that’s how time should move.
Remus knows time. He knows the mathematical beat of night to day, day to night, month to month, year to year, life to life. He knows the feeling of exhilaration as it falls away beneath him. He knows the sense of loss that swallows up his past and he knows the shadow that threatens his future. He is not outside of time, looking in. He is a part of it.
It’s too soon.
They were young, once, when seasons were new and the moon was no longer made of cheese. There were Americans sticking their flag into the moon - the fucking moon! - when it waxed and waned and they didn’t feel a thing, even when Remus was twitching on dusty floorboards, his tongue lolling out of his mouth and his nerve-endings exploding with indescribable pain.
Pain that Sirius tried to feel one night, during holidays, when everyone else had gone to their families and Sirius just wanted to understand. But Remus knew, because he saw the potion bottles under Sirius’s bed a week later. Remus felt sick, like his insides were churning stomach acid into butter, but he never said a word, because he didn’t want to know why.
They were caught between children and adults, lingering on the parapets at midnight, thin cigarettes caught between their fingers and burning low, lower, with the turning of the stars - “Did you know, if you could see the whole path of a star, it would be one big circle of light around the sky?” someone asks, and it doesn’t matter who, because they’re all thinking about it - and when James leads Peter inside with an arm over his shoulders, because Peter has never taken to cold air and the smoke makes him cough like Bob Cratchett, it is too soon for Remus and Sirius.
It is too soon, because they are not boys and are not men and the way their eyes meet tells them everything, but mostly that it is too soon. Sirius sucks on the cigarette like he’s filtering sugar between his lips, and Remus turns over the edge of the wall, palms flat against stone and head hung between his shoulders like a panting dog. Sirius watches him, remembering the vague twitches of pain he had tried to feel, and realizes, not for the first time, that they are further apart than two boys can be. The whole of Remus is not his to understand, not his to feel or to have - the whole of Remus belongs on another plane, where time means moonlight and life means shadows instead of hope.
It’ll be too late.
They are men, briefly, when shadows swallow everyone’s hope, and Sirius plucks a gray hair from his scalp at age twenty. It doesn’t make sense, Sirius thinks, when he stares at it and wishes it away, but it’s long enough to have been there for years - three or four, maybe - and then he remembers hearing how Fabian Prewett’s hair turned gray from the Cruciatus. He lets go the hair and it falls into the white porcelain bowl of the sink. His eyes look into the mirror, over his own bare shoulder, and Remus is there, back to him, scrubbing at the caulking between shower tiles because there is mold, there has always been mold, and there will always be mold.
There’s not a gray hair on his head.
Sirius snorts a quick laugh, one that almost chokes like a sob, and braces his arms on either side of the sink. His back lifts and falls like surf, crashing silently as he tries not to grin, not to betray his thoughts. But Remus-in-the-mirror is turning to watch him, narrowing his eyes with questions, and Sirius suddenly feels naked in only a towel.
“Sorry,” Sirius says, and he stands up straight, one hand over his face, the other moving to tighten the towel, and Remus tilts his head to the side in that way that says he is listening. “M’Sorry, it’s just… you’ve not gone gray, not even with all that pain.”
And then there’s a diarrhea of explanation, and Remus trying to understand, because Sirius’s thoughts are on a plane of their own, outside of time and existence, and when Sirius finally turns around and lifts his palms in defeat, seeming to say, It’s okay, I know where we stand now, and it’s time, we’re ready, it is already too late, because the shadow has struck them across the jaws: someone has broken down their door, and they do not have their wands, and it is only the emergency escape Remus had devised that gets them out with their lives.
They spend the night on Prong’s couch, toes to nose and nose to toes, one blanket between them. Sirius still feels naked, even through his designer jeans and Pink Floyd t-shirt, but he doesn’t say anything again because God, the moon, the whole fucking world, has already intervened, and the hope that it will just let them be has turned to shadow.
Sometime around three in the morning, when the moon has drifted behind a cloud and starlight has turned to mist around them, Sirius awakens to Remus’s shifting body. The blanket is drawn back and Sirius is swallowed in cold air. Then there is warmth against him, and the blanket has returned, heavier than before.
They are nose to nose, toes to toes, and Remus’s arm glides its way, like a single wave, around his neck. Noses touch, chins bump, fingers separate his hair and smooth it behind his ear.
There is a reason I’ve not yet gone gray, Sirius hears, and it could be Remus speaking, it could be Sirius wishing, but he hears it like wind-chimes echoing across a front porch at dusk, saying home. home. home.
They would kiss, they both know, the way they want to, the way it hurts so much not to, but even wrapped in Remus’s arms, Sirius knows that the future has claimed his Remus, has taken away Remus’s hope, and in place of Sirius, Remus only grasps shadows.
His Remus has always been in another realm. And it has always been too late.