fic: monster boy
title: Monster boy
pairings: Remus, Remus/Sirius
words: 2127
rating: PG
note: For Hannah noneedofcrepe's birthday!
Monster boy
Blood rushes but he keeps his head the wrong way up just a little while longer (though it seems right to him - everything seems so much more interesting upside down). He gazes under his bed, staring into the black. There’s nothing there, but maybe if he waits long enough something will come out and bite him. He’s curious, he’s afraid, he’s dizzy - but he’s six, and when you’re six you’re the bravest age in the world. You’ll stay the wrong way up (the right way, he corrects) until you pass out.
“What are you doing, dear?”
Remus looks up into the eyes of his mother standing at the doorway. He blushes in embarrassment and sits up from lying on his stomach.
“Nothing,” he answers quietly, playing with a strand fraying from his pyjama bottoms.
“Hmm,” his mother replies unconvinced, but there’s a hint of a smile there. She sits on the edge of his bed and hugs him. “Do you want me to read you a story before sleep?” she asks, kissing the top of his head, lips meeting sandy hair.
“Not tonight,” he answers, sounding very much like an adult as always. “I’m tired.”
“Okay.” She lays him back down, and he gazes up at her with the roundest blue eyes, the picture of innocence.
“Mum,” he starts, and looks reluctant to go on, but his mother looks at him with encouragement to get whatever Six Year Old Woes he has off his mind. “Is there a monster under my bed?”
“Why do you say that?”
“Somebody told me at school today.”
Remus' mother laughs, smoothing down the wrinkles in his duvet. “Well, whoever said that is silly because it’s not true,” she comforts him.
“So why did he say it?”
“Because he wanted to scare you.”
“But why?”
Remus looks genuinely befuddled by it all. His mother is exhausted from a long day and just wants some rest, but she knows her son won’t stop thinking - won’t stop being awake until his questions are answered.
“Because… because people are cruel, Remus,” she tells him sadly.
“But-”
She places a finger over his lips and hushes him. “Nobody knows why,” she speaks before he even poses the question. She kisses his forehead again and gets up from the bed. “Night, dear.”
But she knows him too well, glancing back at him from the doorway with a warning:
“Don’t look under the bed again. There’s nothing there.”
And after she leaves, Remus rolls onto his stomach and hangs his head off the end of the bed. And he looks. And he looks again.
And he keeps on looking.
***
If tears are like salt water, Remus’ cheeks could be the ocean.
He stares at the bite on his arm like an infection slowly taking over his body, taking over who he is--no, was - just a boy who liked the outdoors and questioned everything. His arm aches, but his heart aches more. Nothing his parents say will make it better - he is of the wolves now. Werewolves do not feel; they eat the living, the dead, and whatever’s in between.
***
“I can’t find him.”
Mr Lupin looks over at his distraught wife with comforting eyes. “I’m sure he’s just hiding somewhere.”
“He’s run away, I know he has.”
“He wouldn’t do that sort of thing. He’s a good boy.” He seizes her arms gently to stop her pacing the room. “Calm down,” he murmurs against her forehead.
“How can I be calm right now?” she snaps. “Our son, our little boy, has been bitten by a…”
She can’t say the ‘W’ word; it’s just as awkward as saying the ‘D’ one (death).
“You’re going to have to learn to speak the word eventually,” he tells her, “because that’s what he is now.”
It’s those words which make her realize the full magnitude of what has happened. “Oh God,” she sobs, and her husband wraps his arms around her. “He’s six years old.”
Mr Lupin assures her, “We’ll get through this,” stroking her hair. “Sit down for a moment. I’ll go check his room.”
He makes the hurried journey up the staircase, all the while praying their son is safe, reading in the confinements of his bedroom as usual. But Remus’ room is empty, and he sits on the edge of his bed, cradling his head in his hands in despair.
A muffled cry is heard within the room. Mr Lupin stands up at once.
“Remus?”
The cry increases in volume.
“Remus, where are you?”
Listening harder, it sounds like it’s coming from the… floor? He crouches on his hands and knees and looks under the bed. Eyes engulfed with tears stare back at him. Remus looks almost ashamed; he knows Remus would have been happier if his mother had discovered him. There’s something quite shameful about a boy being caught crying by his father.
“Son,” Mr Lupin starts gently, overcome with relief that he’s unharmed, but pained to see him unmistakably distressed. “Come out from under there.”
Silently, Remus shakes his head, edging further back into the darkness. “This is where I belong,” he says quietly.
“No it’s not.”
“Yes it is. I’m the- the m-monster under the bed.”
His father almost has to fight back tears himself. “You are not a monster, you are my son. Come here.” He beckons him forward. “Your mother’s sick with worry.”
Again, Remus shakes his head.
“Everything is going to be fine.” Mr. Lupin has never looked surer about anything in his life. He shoots a consoling smile to his little boy. “Trust me.” He sticks out his hand firmly. “Take my hand, Remus.”
After a small while, his hand clasps with his father’s warm one, and he comes out into the light.
***
Eleven years later, Remus awakes from a bad dream in Hogwarts, restless and unable to sleep without the urge of hanging his head upside down and sticking it into the black hole, the dark cave that is under his bed. Except when he does it this time, he screams “Christ!” as he sits up almost simultaneously, clutching his chest in shock.
“Sirius, you absolute pillock! What are you even doing under there?”
The boy’s laughter is heard from underneath. He manages to form a reply when the giggles subside: “Thought it’d be funny to scare you.”
Remus promptly grabs a sock and throws it underneath the bed.
“Augh! Moony! That practically went in my mouth!”
“Good,” Remus sniffs.
There’s a moment of silence where Remus is sat up in bed, arms crossed, huffy and waiting for Sirius to get out and apologise. Instead, Sirius comments aloud and proud, “It’s cosy under here…”
“Is it now?” replies Remus, uninterested.
The werewolf lets out a yelp as Sirius’ arm suddenly appears, latches onto his ankle, and tugs him hard off the bed. He crashes to the floor in an explosion of annoyance and cursing.
“God, Sirius!” He groans whilst rubbing his back, though it doesn’t hurt enough to cause a genuine sound of pain - he just wants some sympathy. “I think you broke my spine…”
Sirius shoots him a grin Remus knows all too well. “Get under here,” he says in an effortlessly entrancing voice, and Remus can hardly argue as Sirius tugs him forward with the most impish eyes that glitter grey in the dark. Remus slides under the bed, joining him on his stomach.
“When I was little,” Sirius remembers aloud, but whispers, remembering James and Peter are sleeping, “Regulus and I would hide from our hag of a mother under the bed.” He smiles a little. “Merlin, how times change…”
Yeah, Remus agrees in his mind, as Sirius starts kissing his neck and knows this certainly isn’t something he could have pictured doing with him years ago.
“You’re very friendly tonight,” Remus remarks amusedly, though when is Sirius ever not?
“James and I-” Sirius kisses his clavicle, and Remus bites back a satisfying moan “-put a hole in Snivellus’ trousers today when he wasn’t looking.”
“That explains your good mood,” Remus rolls his eyes, but gets distracted by Sirius’ eyes and mouth and hands. “Mmm… haha, okay, stop that. It tickles. Seriously, I mean it-mmmm-ow. I just banged my head. Can we get out from under here now? I don’t like it.”
“Why?”
“Wouldn’t you prefer to have your wicked little way with me on top of the bed?”
“On top, under,” Sirius smirks, “I’m really not fussy.”
Remus thinks back to Sirius’ memory revealed moments before, of he and his brother, touched Sirius would tell him about that. He has the urge to tell Sirius a memory from his own childhood. “You know that story you believe as a child, of a monster being under your bed?
Sirius takes a break from planting kisses on his neck, eyeing him inquisitively. “What of it?”
Remus realizes too late that he’s gone wrong somewhere, because this is a memory that is unlike Sirius’. Though Sirius and Regulus were no longer close now (or even civil towards each other), the memory had been sweet. His memory wasn’t remotely as sugary. “Erm,” he stumbles.
“Go on.” Sirius elbows him affectionately, guessing Remus’ anecdote involving some form of silly and insignificant humiliation. “I won’t poke fun.”
“Well…” Remus scratches the back of his neck - it’s wet from Sirius’ mouth. “I’m the monster, aren’t I?” Sirius is stiff and looking at him with sad eyes. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“You’re an idiot.” All of a sudden Sirius is suddenly enfolding him, and it doesn’t make sense because hugging doesn’t normally occur after an insult, yet somehow Sirius gets away with it handsomely. “I can’t believe you’d even say that. You’re not a monster. You just have a-”
“Furry little problem, as James would say,” Remus finishes his sentence, coming across as tired by the phrase. “But he’s wrong, because problems can be fixed. What I have can’t be fixed-”
“Not all problems can be fixed,” Sirius butts in. “See, I have this problem. I fancy the pants off this werewolf-actually, it’s not really a problem. I’d call it-”
“A tragedy.”
“No. The best thing that's ever happened to me, actually.”
Sirius rolls out from under the bed, gracefully so, while Remus follows in a clumsy fashion. Then he pushes Remus in the chest, and he falls backwards onto his bed.
“My spine,” Remus reminds him, uttering a small and painful whimper.
“Now,” Sirius grins, “you’re not the monster under the bed; you’re the monster in my bed.”
“How eloquent.” Remus hitches up on his elbows as Sirius bends low over him and gives him a slow kiss, then pats his cheek afterwards.
“Get some sleep,” Sirius tells him, head close, voice low. “And not that sleep where your eyes are shut but you’re actually thinking and completely alert, but that sleep where you’re dead to the world and dreaming of me. Probably unclothed.”
“Don’t flatter yourself.” Remus tries to kick him away, but Sirius only takes hold of his foot and sticks out his tongue.
“Someone has to do it, Moony, you’re neglecting my ego lately.”
“Look,” James suddenly chimes from his bed, and Remus and Sirius look over at him, startled that he’s awake (though they had been very noisy). “Just shag or get some sleep. Either way, stop flirting so loud so I can dream about a certain redhead in peace.”
Sirius winks at him. “Sorry James, no show tonight.”
James pulls a face at him and disappears under the covers.
“Well, better get my beauty sleep,” Sirius alerts the inhabitants of the dormitory, pointless when two are asleep. He turns to Remus, sending him a sly curve of the lips that always keeps him under his toes. “Night, you.”
Remus shakes his head, chuckling; it’s never a dull moment with him. “Night,” he says, climbing into his bed after Sirius settles into his own.
But even after all that, Sirius’ way of making him - for just the tiniest second - stop feeling sorry for himself, he knows he’ll forever be the monster of nightmares, the starring beast of horror tales, the thing mothers raise their babies to stay away from. An it.
His face is blank; he is tired of emotions (werewolves do not feel). He climbs out of bed and lays under it alone in the dark, like he’s six all over again. And he lays until sleep overpowers him, just like how he believes the monster inside him will take over one day, no matter how much Sirius tells him I will not let that fucking happen, Moony. Words don’t account for anything to werewolves.
Sirius watches him wretchedly from the next bed.
pairings: Remus, Remus/Sirius
words: 2127
rating: PG
note: For Hannah noneedofcrepe's birthday!
Monster boy
Blood rushes but he keeps his head the wrong way up just a little while longer (though it seems right to him - everything seems so much more interesting upside down). He gazes under his bed, staring into the black. There’s nothing there, but maybe if he waits long enough something will come out and bite him. He’s curious, he’s afraid, he’s dizzy - but he’s six, and when you’re six you’re the bravest age in the world. You’ll stay the wrong way up (the right way, he corrects) until you pass out.
“What are you doing, dear?”
Remus looks up into the eyes of his mother standing at the doorway. He blushes in embarrassment and sits up from lying on his stomach.
“Nothing,” he answers quietly, playing with a strand fraying from his pyjama bottoms.
“Hmm,” his mother replies unconvinced, but there’s a hint of a smile there. She sits on the edge of his bed and hugs him. “Do you want me to read you a story before sleep?” she asks, kissing the top of his head, lips meeting sandy hair.
“Not tonight,” he answers, sounding very much like an adult as always. “I’m tired.”
“Okay.” She lays him back down, and he gazes up at her with the roundest blue eyes, the picture of innocence.
“Mum,” he starts, and looks reluctant to go on, but his mother looks at him with encouragement to get whatever Six Year Old Woes he has off his mind. “Is there a monster under my bed?”
“Why do you say that?”
“Somebody told me at school today.”
Remus' mother laughs, smoothing down the wrinkles in his duvet. “Well, whoever said that is silly because it’s not true,” she comforts him.
“So why did he say it?”
“Because he wanted to scare you.”
“But why?”
Remus looks genuinely befuddled by it all. His mother is exhausted from a long day and just wants some rest, but she knows her son won’t stop thinking - won’t stop being awake until his questions are answered.
“Because… because people are cruel, Remus,” she tells him sadly.
“But-”
She places a finger over his lips and hushes him. “Nobody knows why,” she speaks before he even poses the question. She kisses his forehead again and gets up from the bed. “Night, dear.”
But she knows him too well, glancing back at him from the doorway with a warning:
“Don’t look under the bed again. There’s nothing there.”
And after she leaves, Remus rolls onto his stomach and hangs his head off the end of the bed. And he looks. And he looks again.
And he keeps on looking.
***
If tears are like salt water, Remus’ cheeks could be the ocean.
He stares at the bite on his arm like an infection slowly taking over his body, taking over who he is--no, was - just a boy who liked the outdoors and questioned everything. His arm aches, but his heart aches more. Nothing his parents say will make it better - he is of the wolves now. Werewolves do not feel; they eat the living, the dead, and whatever’s in between.
***
“I can’t find him.”
Mr Lupin looks over at his distraught wife with comforting eyes. “I’m sure he’s just hiding somewhere.”
“He’s run away, I know he has.”
“He wouldn’t do that sort of thing. He’s a good boy.” He seizes her arms gently to stop her pacing the room. “Calm down,” he murmurs against her forehead.
“How can I be calm right now?” she snaps. “Our son, our little boy, has been bitten by a…”
She can’t say the ‘W’ word; it’s just as awkward as saying the ‘D’ one (death).
“You’re going to have to learn to speak the word eventually,” he tells her, “because that’s what he is now.”
It’s those words which make her realize the full magnitude of what has happened. “Oh God,” she sobs, and her husband wraps his arms around her. “He’s six years old.”
Mr Lupin assures her, “We’ll get through this,” stroking her hair. “Sit down for a moment. I’ll go check his room.”
He makes the hurried journey up the staircase, all the while praying their son is safe, reading in the confinements of his bedroom as usual. But Remus’ room is empty, and he sits on the edge of his bed, cradling his head in his hands in despair.
A muffled cry is heard within the room. Mr Lupin stands up at once.
“Remus?”
The cry increases in volume.
“Remus, where are you?”
Listening harder, it sounds like it’s coming from the… floor? He crouches on his hands and knees and looks under the bed. Eyes engulfed with tears stare back at him. Remus looks almost ashamed; he knows Remus would have been happier if his mother had discovered him. There’s something quite shameful about a boy being caught crying by his father.
“Son,” Mr Lupin starts gently, overcome with relief that he’s unharmed, but pained to see him unmistakably distressed. “Come out from under there.”
Silently, Remus shakes his head, edging further back into the darkness. “This is where I belong,” he says quietly.
“No it’s not.”
“Yes it is. I’m the- the m-monster under the bed.”
His father almost has to fight back tears himself. “You are not a monster, you are my son. Come here.” He beckons him forward. “Your mother’s sick with worry.”
Again, Remus shakes his head.
“Everything is going to be fine.” Mr. Lupin has never looked surer about anything in his life. He shoots a consoling smile to his little boy. “Trust me.” He sticks out his hand firmly. “Take my hand, Remus.”
After a small while, his hand clasps with his father’s warm one, and he comes out into the light.
***
Eleven years later, Remus awakes from a bad dream in Hogwarts, restless and unable to sleep without the urge of hanging his head upside down and sticking it into the black hole, the dark cave that is under his bed. Except when he does it this time, he screams “Christ!” as he sits up almost simultaneously, clutching his chest in shock.
“Sirius, you absolute pillock! What are you even doing under there?”
The boy’s laughter is heard from underneath. He manages to form a reply when the giggles subside: “Thought it’d be funny to scare you.”
Remus promptly grabs a sock and throws it underneath the bed.
“Augh! Moony! That practically went in my mouth!”
“Good,” Remus sniffs.
There’s a moment of silence where Remus is sat up in bed, arms crossed, huffy and waiting for Sirius to get out and apologise. Instead, Sirius comments aloud and proud, “It’s cosy under here…”
“Is it now?” replies Remus, uninterested.
The werewolf lets out a yelp as Sirius’ arm suddenly appears, latches onto his ankle, and tugs him hard off the bed. He crashes to the floor in an explosion of annoyance and cursing.
“God, Sirius!” He groans whilst rubbing his back, though it doesn’t hurt enough to cause a genuine sound of pain - he just wants some sympathy. “I think you broke my spine…”
Sirius shoots him a grin Remus knows all too well. “Get under here,” he says in an effortlessly entrancing voice, and Remus can hardly argue as Sirius tugs him forward with the most impish eyes that glitter grey in the dark. Remus slides under the bed, joining him on his stomach.
“When I was little,” Sirius remembers aloud, but whispers, remembering James and Peter are sleeping, “Regulus and I would hide from our hag of a mother under the bed.” He smiles a little. “Merlin, how times change…”
Yeah, Remus agrees in his mind, as Sirius starts kissing his neck and knows this certainly isn’t something he could have pictured doing with him years ago.
“You’re very friendly tonight,” Remus remarks amusedly, though when is Sirius ever not?
“James and I-” Sirius kisses his clavicle, and Remus bites back a satisfying moan “-put a hole in Snivellus’ trousers today when he wasn’t looking.”
“That explains your good mood,” Remus rolls his eyes, but gets distracted by Sirius’ eyes and mouth and hands. “Mmm… haha, okay, stop that. It tickles. Seriously, I mean it-mmmm-ow. I just banged my head. Can we get out from under here now? I don’t like it.”
“Why?”
“Wouldn’t you prefer to have your wicked little way with me on top of the bed?”
“On top, under,” Sirius smirks, “I’m really not fussy.”
Remus thinks back to Sirius’ memory revealed moments before, of he and his brother, touched Sirius would tell him about that. He has the urge to tell Sirius a memory from his own childhood. “You know that story you believe as a child, of a monster being under your bed?
Sirius takes a break from planting kisses on his neck, eyeing him inquisitively. “What of it?”
Remus realizes too late that he’s gone wrong somewhere, because this is a memory that is unlike Sirius’. Though Sirius and Regulus were no longer close now (or even civil towards each other), the memory had been sweet. His memory wasn’t remotely as sugary. “Erm,” he stumbles.
“Go on.” Sirius elbows him affectionately, guessing Remus’ anecdote involving some form of silly and insignificant humiliation. “I won’t poke fun.”
“Well…” Remus scratches the back of his neck - it’s wet from Sirius’ mouth. “I’m the monster, aren’t I?” Sirius is stiff and looking at him with sad eyes. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“You’re an idiot.” All of a sudden Sirius is suddenly enfolding him, and it doesn’t make sense because hugging doesn’t normally occur after an insult, yet somehow Sirius gets away with it handsomely. “I can’t believe you’d even say that. You’re not a monster. You just have a-”
“Furry little problem, as James would say,” Remus finishes his sentence, coming across as tired by the phrase. “But he’s wrong, because problems can be fixed. What I have can’t be fixed-”
“Not all problems can be fixed,” Sirius butts in. “See, I have this problem. I fancy the pants off this werewolf-actually, it’s not really a problem. I’d call it-”
“A tragedy.”
“No. The best thing that's ever happened to me, actually.”
Sirius rolls out from under the bed, gracefully so, while Remus follows in a clumsy fashion. Then he pushes Remus in the chest, and he falls backwards onto his bed.
“My spine,” Remus reminds him, uttering a small and painful whimper.
“Now,” Sirius grins, “you’re not the monster under the bed; you’re the monster in my bed.”
“How eloquent.” Remus hitches up on his elbows as Sirius bends low over him and gives him a slow kiss, then pats his cheek afterwards.
“Get some sleep,” Sirius tells him, head close, voice low. “And not that sleep where your eyes are shut but you’re actually thinking and completely alert, but that sleep where you’re dead to the world and dreaming of me. Probably unclothed.”
“Don’t flatter yourself.” Remus tries to kick him away, but Sirius only takes hold of his foot and sticks out his tongue.
“Someone has to do it, Moony, you’re neglecting my ego lately.”
“Look,” James suddenly chimes from his bed, and Remus and Sirius look over at him, startled that he’s awake (though they had been very noisy). “Just shag or get some sleep. Either way, stop flirting so loud so I can dream about a certain redhead in peace.”
Sirius winks at him. “Sorry James, no show tonight.”
James pulls a face at him and disappears under the covers.
“Well, better get my beauty sleep,” Sirius alerts the inhabitants of the dormitory, pointless when two are asleep. He turns to Remus, sending him a sly curve of the lips that always keeps him under his toes. “Night, you.”
Remus shakes his head, chuckling; it’s never a dull moment with him. “Night,” he says, climbing into his bed after Sirius settles into his own.
But even after all that, Sirius’ way of making him - for just the tiniest second - stop feeling sorry for himself, he knows he’ll forever be the monster of nightmares, the starring beast of horror tales, the thing mothers raise their babies to stay away from. An it.
His face is blank; he is tired of emotions (werewolves do not feel). He climbs out of bed and lays under it alone in the dark, like he’s six all over again. And he lays until sleep overpowers him, just like how he believes the monster inside him will take over one day, no matter how much Sirius tells him I will not let that fucking happen, Moony. Words don’t account for anything to werewolves.
Sirius watches him wretchedly from the next bed.