Ficlet: This Is What Grace Looks Like
I'm the last to the party, I'm sure, but just in case anyone else has come in late, the giant Remus/Sirius post of love is this way, chez imochan. Drop by and enjoy the R/S love! I wrote a tiny ficlet for it, which I'm going to repost below.
Title: This Is What Grace Looks Like
Characters: Sirius Black, Remus Lupin
Rating: PG
Word count: 800
Summary An unexpected visitor changes everything.
This is what grace looks like: he is in his mid-thirties, with graying hair and the hint of a paunch and a face that’s flushed in the unseasonably warm weather. He wears a white button-down shirt that’s damp under the arms and loosened blue tie and a cheap watch you recognize from a lifetime ago, back when you scorned cheap watches.
He arrives in your house unexpectedly on a late Tuesday afternoon with two mismatched suitcases and his traveling cloak thrown over his shoulder, and the sound of the door closing wakes you from a stupor you didn’t even realize you’d sunk into.
You sit up and slide your drink surreptitiously under the couch. You are not so far gone yet that you don’t recognize him when you see him standing in your entranceway, glowering at you, not twenty feet away.
“Dumbledore requested a babysitter,” he says crossly. “Apparently one is needed.”
He disappears for a moment, not waiting for a reply, and you can hear him pounding up the stairs, his suitcases banging on the banisters. When he returns, he’s still frowning, but he’s shed his traveling cloak and rolled up his shirt sleeves. You take this to be a good sign.
"I'm sorry," you say. You’re not sorry you left, not exactly, but you are sorry about the house arrest and damp chill in the bedrooms and the clammy ennui that will sink into his bones all too soon. And you crave forgiveness, more than anything. For anything. For everything.
He leans on the door frame, arms crossed. "I don't even know what to say to that," he says, still cross. "How hard is it to just stay inside the bloody house like you’re supposed to?"
It’s a good question. A better question than he can guess.
He sighs. "I suppose it's not such a bad gig, in the end." He gives you a grudging half-smile and sits down next to you on the couch, propping his feet up on the ottoman and crossing his arms behind its head. "God, my knees are killing me. Couldn’t keep the flat anyway. I was behind five months' payment, and I kept promising I'd find a job and pay up, but no one’s willing to hire me, and--”
Here he breaks off and runs both hands through his hair and rubs his face, sighing. Then he turns to you and gives you a real smile, warm and wrinkly and intimate. “And, well, you owe me, so I don't have to feel too badly about crashing on your couch."
"You gave up that ratty old flat?"
"I told old MacKinnon that he could kiss my arse,” he says, smiling broadly. “Told him I had four-story Regency-era house in central London."
"You didn't!" you crow, delighted, remembering MacKinnon, who would take a werewolf’s money but not shake his hand. Served him right, the old bastard.
"Well, not in those exact words," he admits. "But it felt good anyway."
“That deserves a bit of celebration,” you say, standing up. “Drink?”
He raises an eyebrow. “You don’t have one going already?”
“There’s half a glass of Firewhiskey under the couch, you can drink that. I’ll get my own.” You slip through the door to the dining room and pour yourself another. When you return, he’s swirling the Firewhiskey in his glass in a preoccupied way.
“I suppose I'll send him what I owe when I get it,” he says, looking up at you with a vaguely guilty air about him. “Eventually."
“Bugger MacKinnon,” you say. “You’re here.”
“I’m here,” he says. He tips his glass at you and takes a sip. “Keeping you in line.”
Keeping you in line. The phrase recalls a dozen heated conversations over the years. When you were young, you thought a lot about justice and retribution, about tracking down criminals and making them accountable for their crimes. Only lately have you begun to realize that guilt and innocence might not be so easily tallied.
You have a suspicion you’re lucky that the universe is less just than a twenty-two-year-old would have it. You don’t know how to explain it, otherwise, the arrival of someone you do not deserve.
“I suppose takeaway's out of the question if we're stuck in this hellhole?” he asks lightly, glancing around the sitting room. “Something about all this gloom makes me hungry.”
“Would it be a hellhole if we had takeaway?” you counter, and he laughs.
“Your turn to do dinner tonight, then,” he says, and he must see some hesitation in your face, because he waves you away with his hand. “Go on, then. I’m the guest here, for the first few nights, at least. Be hospitable. And don’t leave the house again, for God’s sake. I can’t afford to get fired.”
Don’t leave the house, you think fondly as you walk down the stairs to the kitchen. Wild hippogryphs couldn’t drag me from it. From you.
This is grace, you realize. After all these years, the long-forgotten word from your childhood suddenly means something to you.
This is grace. This is friendship. This is love.
Title: This Is What Grace Looks Like
Characters: Sirius Black, Remus Lupin
Rating: PG
Word count: 800
Summary An unexpected visitor changes everything.
This is what grace looks like: he is in his mid-thirties, with graying hair and the hint of a paunch and a face that’s flushed in the unseasonably warm weather. He wears a white button-down shirt that’s damp under the arms and loosened blue tie and a cheap watch you recognize from a lifetime ago, back when you scorned cheap watches.
He arrives in your house unexpectedly on a late Tuesday afternoon with two mismatched suitcases and his traveling cloak thrown over his shoulder, and the sound of the door closing wakes you from a stupor you didn’t even realize you’d sunk into.
You sit up and slide your drink surreptitiously under the couch. You are not so far gone yet that you don’t recognize him when you see him standing in your entranceway, glowering at you, not twenty feet away.
“Dumbledore requested a babysitter,” he says crossly. “Apparently one is needed.”
He disappears for a moment, not waiting for a reply, and you can hear him pounding up the stairs, his suitcases banging on the banisters. When he returns, he’s still frowning, but he’s shed his traveling cloak and rolled up his shirt sleeves. You take this to be a good sign.
"I'm sorry," you say. You’re not sorry you left, not exactly, but you are sorry about the house arrest and damp chill in the bedrooms and the clammy ennui that will sink into his bones all too soon. And you crave forgiveness, more than anything. For anything. For everything.
He leans on the door frame, arms crossed. "I don't even know what to say to that," he says, still cross. "How hard is it to just stay inside the bloody house like you’re supposed to?"
It’s a good question. A better question than he can guess.
He sighs. "I suppose it's not such a bad gig, in the end." He gives you a grudging half-smile and sits down next to you on the couch, propping his feet up on the ottoman and crossing his arms behind its head. "God, my knees are killing me. Couldn’t keep the flat anyway. I was behind five months' payment, and I kept promising I'd find a job and pay up, but no one’s willing to hire me, and--”
Here he breaks off and runs both hands through his hair and rubs his face, sighing. Then he turns to you and gives you a real smile, warm and wrinkly and intimate. “And, well, you owe me, so I don't have to feel too badly about crashing on your couch."
"You gave up that ratty old flat?"
"I told old MacKinnon that he could kiss my arse,” he says, smiling broadly. “Told him I had four-story Regency-era house in central London."
"You didn't!" you crow, delighted, remembering MacKinnon, who would take a werewolf’s money but not shake his hand. Served him right, the old bastard.
"Well, not in those exact words," he admits. "But it felt good anyway."
“That deserves a bit of celebration,” you say, standing up. “Drink?”
He raises an eyebrow. “You don’t have one going already?”
“There’s half a glass of Firewhiskey under the couch, you can drink that. I’ll get my own.” You slip through the door to the dining room and pour yourself another. When you return, he’s swirling the Firewhiskey in his glass in a preoccupied way.
“I suppose I'll send him what I owe when I get it,” he says, looking up at you with a vaguely guilty air about him. “Eventually."
“Bugger MacKinnon,” you say. “You’re here.”
“I’m here,” he says. He tips his glass at you and takes a sip. “Keeping you in line.”
Keeping you in line. The phrase recalls a dozen heated conversations over the years. When you were young, you thought a lot about justice and retribution, about tracking down criminals and making them accountable for their crimes. Only lately have you begun to realize that guilt and innocence might not be so easily tallied.
You have a suspicion you’re lucky that the universe is less just than a twenty-two-year-old would have it. You don’t know how to explain it, otherwise, the arrival of someone you do not deserve.
“I suppose takeaway's out of the question if we're stuck in this hellhole?” he asks lightly, glancing around the sitting room. “Something about all this gloom makes me hungry.”
“Would it be a hellhole if we had takeaway?” you counter, and he laughs.
“Your turn to do dinner tonight, then,” he says, and he must see some hesitation in your face, because he waves you away with his hand. “Go on, then. I’m the guest here, for the first few nights, at least. Be hospitable. And don’t leave the house again, for God’s sake. I can’t afford to get fired.”
Don’t leave the house, you think fondly as you walk down the stairs to the kitchen. Wild hippogryphs couldn’t drag me from it. From you.
This is grace, you realize. After all these years, the long-forgotten word from your childhood suddenly means something to you.
This is grace. This is friendship. This is love.