glance and gleam
“Since I have known above my forehead glance and gleam,
A ray, a single ray, of your star, veiled always,
Since I have felt the fall, upon my lifetime's stream,
Of one rose petal plucked from the roses of your days;
I now am bold to say to the swift changing hours,
Pass, pass upon your way, for I grow never old,
Fleet to the dark abysm with all your fading flowers,
One rose that none may pluck, within my heart I hold.”
Remus had spent the past month trying not to think about Sirius.
The problem with trying not to think of someone, he’d realized pretty quickly, was that it sort of just made you think of them more. Sirius Black was everywhere, unfortunately. He was in every cigarette he smoked, every song that came on the radio, every obnoxious band tee or pair of Doc Martens seen on the street. Remus saw him in the stars, saw his deep black waves of hair in the night sky, saw the mischievous shine of his eyes everytime he caught a glimpse of his mother’s silver jewelry, duller and far less beautiful.
His mother’s side of the family was muggle, and though he’d never admit it to his father, he rather preferred them to the wizarding side. They were easier to talk to, and they gave him better gifts, too- books and sweaters and cassette tapes, things he’d actually enjoy. Not like his father’s side with their magical items and posh, proper gifts. He supposed Sirius really was getting to him, his obsessions with all things muggle.
Things with his father were tense, as they always were. Lyall Lupin was a good man- there was no denying it, and Remus himself wouldn’t dare to. However, he didn’t really feel like his dad, if that made any sense. He remembered his dad, fleeting memories of playing catch and being tossed into the air, giggling, being read to by his bed, but after he was bitten that man ceased to exist. He was guilty, that much was obvious. And perhaps he ought to be, Remus thought sometimes. They could skirt around the topic, he and mum could deny it all they wanted, but Remus’s affliction was his father’s fault. Plain, simple truth.
Sometimes he had the urge to say it aloud, just get it out there once and for all. When mum left the room and it was just him and father, and father would get all quiet and awkward as if his emotional support was gone, as if he had no clue how to talk to his own son, Remus just wanted to stand up and scream at his father, ask him where he’d gone, why Remus had to lose a dad on the same day he’d lost his personhood. He felt sometimes if he just spoke it aloud, father could apologize for everything, and they could both move on with their lives, and maybe things would be okay again.
Instead, Remus’s condition was this horrible, unspoken truth in the household. He and mother skirted around it as if afraid to offend father, which was, now that Remus really thought about it, bullshit. It was his condition, not father’s. He felt the urge to speak of it more prominently over this holiday than he ever had in recent years. Perhaps he’d grown bolder over the past few months, quicker to stand up for himself.
Still, though, he didn’t. And he doubted that he ever would, no matter how bold or brave he became.
His mother, however, continued to be the greatest person in the entire world. She’d stated, almost immediately upon his return home, that he seemed different.
“You seem brighter, sweetheart,” she told him at dinner on their first night. “Those new friends have opened you up a bit, huh?”
Remus ducked his head, blushing. “Mum,” he groaned.
“Come on now, I’ve been waiting so patiently. I wanna know about this new friend with the radio. Did they like the gift?”
Remus shook his head again, blushing, although a smile was coming to his face just picturing Sirius’s reaction to the gift. “Yeah, mum,” he said. “He loved it.”
Mum grinned. “And what’s this new friend’s name?”
“Er-” he glanced over at his father, who was eating and showed no sign of paying attention to their conversation. Invoking Sirius’s name was sure to cause a stir, but Lily was coming over in a few weeks and she would almost certainly mention their friendship, which would go over far worse if it seemed like Remus was hiding it. It was best to simply get it out of the way.
“Sirius Black,” he said lightly.
Father’s fork clattered to his plate. “You’re friends with a Black?”
“Aren’t they the crazy ones?” mum added, quite unhelpfully.
“Yes, I am,” Remus said firmly, directed towards his father.
Strangely, father seemed to shrink a bit under Remus’s gaze.
“The family’s crazy, but he’s not, mum,” Remus added. “He’s a Gryffindor. He ran away from home last year, so he’s not really one of them anymore. And I have other friends now, too. James, Mary, Marlene.”
Truth be told, Remus wasn’t sure if he would confidently call all of them his friends yet, especially not Marlene, but he was eager to move the subject away from Sirius.
“Oh, honey,” mum breathed, looking absolutely delighted. “That’s wonderful!”
“That’s, er,” father said, clearing his throat awkwardly, refusing to meet Remus’s eyes. “That’s great, son.”
It was a bit pathetic, Remus supposed, that he was so socially helpless that his parents considered him making a few friends to be some kind of wonderful, earth-shattering news.
He didn’t write to Sirius. He wasn’t exactly sure why. He liked Sirius, there was no doubt about it, but instead of the feelings going away as they spent time apart, they seemed only to intensify. He thought of him every day. To write to him almost felt like encouraging them. He’d made his decision- nothing could happen between him and Sirius. It was over.
Unfortunately, he was surrounded by reminders of Sirius, both in his muggle family members and in Remus’s own possessions. His poetry collection seemed to taunt him all week, every book he picked out to read himself only making him think of how much Sirius would enjoy it.
On Christmas eve, he sent a T.S. Eliot book. He’d been eyeing it the past few days, knowing it would be the perfect gift, and well… he just couldn’t help also thinking of Sirius’s hatred for Christmas. It could just be some childish, Sirius Black quirk, but Remus was willing to bet it may have some deeper connection to his troubled family life. He tried not to think of Sirius, sad and alone on Christmas eve, unable to have fun with the Potters, awaiting a letter from Remus to cheer him up, but… well, again. When you try not to think about something, you only think about it more.
So he sent one damn book. Just to show that they were still friends, that he hadn’t forgotten about him. He didn’t want to forget about Sirius. He only wanted to think of him normally, like a friend.
Lily came to visit the day after Christmas and spent the first twelve hours crying. Remus didn’t even catch the whole story; he was too afraid to ask. But it was something with Petunia, no doubt. He really only made one phrase out of the crying- “she said I wasn’t even her sister anymore.”
It made Remus flinch and hold Lily tighter. Merlin, he hated that Petunia bitch. He wished there was something he could say, but he was shit at comforting. Every mumbled threat or insult directed toward Petunia was only met with horror from Lily. She’d made Lily cry for a whole day straight and Lily still insisted on stagnantly defending her. Remus supposed he just didn’t understand siblings.
The next few days of the visit went great, as any time spent with his best friend did. His mother especially loved Lily, insisting on cooking all of her favorite foods and spoiling her every time she came for a visit. A few years ago, she’d bought a piano for their living room, claiming that she wanted to learn to play. A poor coverup for the real reason- so Lily would have somewhere to practice whenever she visited.
On the last night of her visit, laid on his bedroom floor covered in blankets and scattered pillows, Remus could no longer hold back what had been bothering him those past weeks.
“Hey, Lily?” he said.
“Yeah?”
“Can I get your advice on something?”
Lily sat up, wrapped in blankets, and peered over her spot on Remus’s bed to look down at Remus with a peculiar, raised-eyebrow stare. “Er… yeah, fucking obviously?”
It was sort of an overly formal way to address someone he’d been best friends with since they were eleven, Remus supposed, but he hadn’t breached this topic with anyone before. He had to be careful about it. “Okay, okay,” he said. “I just… listen. I like somebody.”
Her eyes lit up, mouth dropping open with delight. “Who? Who? Who? Remus, who?”
“Merlin, I knew you were gonna act like this!”
“Like what?”
“Like a bloody owl, all who-who- ”
She threw her hands up in surrender. “Okay, okay, don’t say who. What’s the advice? Are you asking her out? Are you gonna tell her you like her?”
“Er, no. None of those things. I need to get over her.”
“What?” she cried. “Why?”
“Because I just- it’s complicated, okay, but there’s some circumstances and it just won’t work. It really won’t. But the thing is, I still wanna be friends. Like, I don’t want anything to change between us.”
Lily was staring at him peculiarly, head tilted. “Er, Remus…”
Remus frowned. “Yeah?”
“You don’t mean… you’re not talking about…”
The realization hit Remus all of a sudden. Her… I still wanna be friends…
“Merlin, no! No! Not you, Lils!” he cried.
She exploded into giggles, throwing herself backwards onto the bed and tossing a pillow down at him. “Okay, thank God , thank God , you had me going there for a second…”
Remus found himself laughing as well, at the simple absurdity of the idea. He loved Lily, of course, but romantically… they’d be a mess. And besides, she definitely had her eyes on James Potter, though he wasn’t going to provoke her by bringing it up.
“But seriously, Lily,” he said. “Like, can I still be friends with… her, you think? Like, will the feelings go away, even if we’re still friends?”
“Er…” Lily sighed. “I dunno. I’m not really an expert. I suppose yeah, maybe just… hang out with them normal, right? But don’t look at them too much. And don’t… just don’t think about them like that, y’know? You’ve gotta move on eventually, right? You’ll find some other crush after a while. Who knows? Maybe when you see them after the holiday you’ll realize they weren’t really so great after all?”
Somehow, Remus found himself doubting it, but he nodded along anyway.
Don’t look at him, don’t think about him like that, just think of him as a friend.
It was a tentative plan, but it was something to tell himself as he entered the Hogwarts express a week later, preparing to face Sirius again. Lily may be right, he thought. Perhaps it really was as simple as avoiding looking at Sirius, avoiding thinking of him like that. It’d been weeks now since he’d last seen him. Perhaps Remus’s memory had embellished him, and when Remus finally saw him again he’d realize he really was just a normal looking person all along, nothing to be so worked up about.
The first pair of eyes he met on the train, however, put some doubt into his plan. They were deep, beautiful silver, and for a fraction of a moment, he thought he was looking at Sirius. His heart picked up at just the thought.
Then, the realization hit him that he was looking down , further down than Sirius’s height, and he took in the rest of the face, sharper jawline, slimmer features. Regulus.
He looked, put simply, like shit. Though certainly the less handsome Black, he was undeniably a good-looking boy, with his family’s trademark silver eyes, soft pale skin and sleek black hair. But he didn’t look unattractive, he looked unhealthy, tired. He was a rather small kid compared to his brother, but he seemed especially small now, stick-thin, cheekbones sticking out even more than usual, a shade too pale, dark bags under his eyes. Remus thought he looked like a starving Victorian orphan from Oliver Twist or something. It was a rather sorry sight, and Remus felt a pang of sympathy for him. Sure, he was a Slytherin, and likely a pureblood supremacist, but he was still just a kid. And given what little hints Sirius had let slip about his childhood, it couldn't be easy in that house. Especially with Sirius gone. Regulus couldn’t be completely blamed for everything he’d become.
“Watch it, fucking half-breed,” Regulus spat, bumping his bony shoulder against Remus’s intentionally as he pushed right past him through the aisle.
Funny, Remus thought, how one’s opinion of someone could vary so quickly in just a moment: from hatred, to sympathy, and right back to hatred.
He made his way through the rest of the train cars, peeking into each compartment, waiting to spot Peter’s messy blonde hair, or Sirius’s- well, Sirius.
Finally, he came across one compartment with a girl hanging around outside it, talking to someone else. Remus nearly walked by them, ready to mumble his excuse me , before he identified one of the girls. Blonde hair, leather jacket…
Marlene. Great, Remus thought, just who he wanted to see.
But wherever Marlene was, he figured, Sirius couldn’t be far.
Marlene recognized him before he could even say a word, blue eyes lighting up in recognition. “Remus!” she chirped, grabbing at his jumper to stop him from walking by. “Sit in our compartment.”
Merlin, she really was a nice girl. Remus was going to have to let go of all this jealousy bullshit- in his determination to stay away from Sirius, he was almost definitely going to go running back to Marlene, and Remus was going to have to learn to live with it if he wanted to stay friends.
“This is my friend, by the way,” she said, putting a hand on Remus’s back and pushing him forward to greet the other girl. “Dorcas.” Remus restrained the urge to peek into the compartment and shook the girl’s hand.
She was pretty, and reminded him of Marlene with her excessive makeup and unique manner of dress- a brown leather jacket, dress, and tall boots. The dress was, however, a bright Slytherin green as opposed to Marlene’s Gryffindor color schemes. Remus tried not to stare too long at it. He’d never seen anyone from Sirius’s group hanging around with Slytherins. He’d thought the Gryffindor-Slytherin rivalry was strict procedure.
“Nice to meet you,” Remus said carefully.
“Yeah, you too,” Dorcas said. She had harshness to her voice, not at all prim and proper as her Slytherin status suggested.
“Remus is Sirius’s friend,” Marlene said.
Dorcas’s face fell slightly at the mention of Sirius’s name. “Oh,” she said bluntly.
Hm. Perhaps it was more of a Sirius-Slytherin rivalry.
There was a moment of awkward silence in which the three of them stood there uncertainly, before Marlene threw the door to the compartment open and called, “Hey, look who’s here!”
With the open door came a wave of cigarette smoke and blaring music- Led Zeppelin’s Whole Lotta Love . Remus instantly recognized the cheap, tinny tone of the portable radio’s speakers. So he was in there. Remus was nervous all of a sudden, his heart racing in his chest, holding his breath, suddenly wishing he’d checked himself in the mirror before he came. Which was stupid, because everything between him and Sirius was over, he scolded himself, before taking a step forward to peek into the compartment, heart pounding.
Sirius was halfway off the bench, leaning forward toward the half-open window, smoking a cigarette and directing the smoke out through it. He was just turning to face Marlene as Remus came into view, eyes halting to a stop on Remus instead, and for a moment all Remus saw was familiar, glimmering silver.
His breath stuttered in his chest. Merlin, he’d forgotten how bloody beautiful he was. Had he looked like that when Remus last saw him? Lily was wrong. Lily was definitely wrong.
Sirius broke eye contact first, squeezing them shut and bringing a pale hand up to stifle a cough, a few puffs of smoke seeping through his fingers. His face was red, as if he’d inhaled one huge breath far too quickly. Marlene snorted beside Remus, watching Sirius struggle with amusement.
“All good there, Sirius?” she asked, raising a smug eyebrow.
“Great,” Sirius squeaked. He blinked hard, cleared his throat, and looked back up to meet Remus’s gaze again. “Remus,” he said, voice softer, but still gravelly. It had no business sounding as good as it did, Remus thought, after the coughing fit he’d just had. He’d forgotten the way his name sounded on Sirius’s lips, like it was supposed to be there, that tiny, barely discernible hint of French, the hard-suppressed poshness in his tone.
“Sirius,” Remus said. They just said each other’s names instead of actual greetings. He wasn’t quite sure why.
“Alright-” Marlene said beside him, and Remus started embarrassingly. He’d nearly forgotten she was there. She was looking from Remus to Sirius with some strange amusement glimmering in her eyes. “I think I’m gonna go to Dorcas’s compartment for a minute. I’ll be back in a few.”
“You better not come back dressed in green,” Sirius said with teasing bitterness.
Dorcas poked her head into the compartment suddenly, taking up Remus’s space and forcing him to step further through the door. “Fuck off, Black,” she said.
“Tell the little bro I say hi!” Sirius sang mockingly, though there seemed some actual bitterness in his tone.
Dorcas stuck her hand through the doorway to flip Sirius off before grabbing Marlene’s arm and leading her away from the compartment. As they walked down the hallway, Remus just barely heard her hiss to Marlene, “I will never understand why you’re friends with that git.”
Remus smirked at the floor. He took another step into the compartment, rather awkwardly, and shut the door behind him. It was just the two of them now, Led Zeppelin, cigarette smoke, and some unspoken tension hanging in the air. So he didn’t have to look at Sirius, Remus instead studied the rest of the compartment. Next to Sirius’s bags, there was another trunk and set of bags, likely James’s. The radio sat beside Sirius.
“So, uh,” he said. “Where’s James?”
Sirius shrugged. “Went off to find Peter,” he said. He raised his cigarette to his lips, recovered enough to take another drag, Remus figured.
“Will he be back soon?” he asked.
“Not for a while, I don’t think,” Sirius said. “He just left.”
He took the drag, shutting his eyes briefly with the rush of nicotine. He turned to blow it out the window, and with Sirius’s gaze finally off of him, Remus found himself staring at him, studying his face as if it were some precious sight. His eyes couldn’t resist roving over the outline of his side profile against the sun. The gentle curve of his nose, the way the sunlight hit his pure white skin, the smoke curling out of his parted lips. It reminded him of that night, Sirius’s seventeenth birthday, sitting on the roof. Sharing the cigarette, the smoke passing between them, Sirius’s soft lips on his.
The kiss itself was so hazy. He remembered the music, the cool air, the starlight, the smoke, but the feeling of Sirius’s lips was so unsatisfyingly fleeting. Not enough. Now, with Sirius right before his eyes, looking the way he did, reality was beginning to hit. It was no one-night fluke. It wasn’t the alcohol or smoke clogging his brain, or the soft music and starlight emphasizing Sirius’s beauty. It couldn’t have been, because in the sun’s harsh brightness, with Whole Lotta Love obnoxiously loud and his brain as functional as ever, Sirius Black was even more beautiful now than he was then.
To see a person who looks like this, to know them and have them right in your grasp, and not kiss them felt almost a crime to Remus all of a sudden. To have only one fleeting, drunken kiss with Sirius Black… that simply wouldn’t do. That didn’t feel right.
Staring at Sirius’s face, the smoke curling from his lips, Remus didn’t think about any of the people around them. He didn’t think about the little glass window on the door to the train compartment, or the fact that any one of their friends could walk in at any moment. He didn’t think about being queer or even the fact that he was a werewolf. The only thing his mind could handle at the moment was that Sirius Black was beautiful, and in two strides he was across the compartment kissing him.
Sirius let out a little “mmph!” of surprise against Remus’s lips before he was returning the kiss with rapid, breathless determination, hands coming up to grab fistfuls of Remus’s hair, yanking on it as a mouthful of cigarette smoke assaulted Remus’s tongue. Remus gripped the sides of Sirius’s face, roving over his skin frantically as if to feel every inch of it beneath his fingertips. Their lips clashed and pushed and pulled aggressively, taking quick, panting breaths between, and Sirius Black was everywhere. In his mouth, on his body, his bony fingers under Remus’s sweater, stroking his sweaty chest, tracing the texture of his scars, the other hand still yanking at fistfuls of his hair.
It was nothing like their first kiss. There was nothing soft or sweet about it. It was hard and desperate and aggressive, Remus on top of Sirius, Sirius’s arms roving over his body, pushing and pulling and stroking, slick with sweat. The air around them had turned to hot, sticky syrup, Led Zeppelin loud and grating, and Remus’s chest was aching beneath Sirius’s spindly fingers, contracting with sparks of pain.
It’d been a while since he breathed, Remus realized suddenly.
He detached himself from Sirius’s lips to take a gulp of thick air, chest heaving and stuttering as if he’d just surfaced from a pool. In barely a moment Sirius’s lips had connected instead to his neck, hand lowering to pull it towards him, sucking on the gentle skin and outlining Remus’s jaw with his tongue, the hot breaths of his pants warming Remus’s skin.
“Sirius,” he whispered when he felt he could breathe again.
Sirius pulled back from his neck, a spot of cold hitting his skin where Sirius’s lips had been. Remus imagined he must look a bloody sight like this, but all he could focus on were his eyes, dark lashes clumped together, pupils blown wide open, little sliver of silver dazzling as if in a trance. It felt like forever since he’d seen them this close.
Sirius went in again, but only for a moment. Before Remus could think to return it, his lips were cold again, and Sirius was back to where he’d been, staring up at him.
That final signature kiss, just like last time. Sirius Black.
There was a thump outside their compartment.
Remus blinked and he was cold. Sirius was gone, all the way on the other side of the compartment just in time for James and Peter to stumble through the door.
“Hey, Remus!” James cried, and Remus stumbled his way through the greetings awkwardly. He couldn’t bring himself to look at Sirius as Peter placed his stuff down and greeted them. He was afraid that if he did, he wouldn’t be able to resist kissing him again.
When the flurry of greetings and “how was your holiday”s had ended, James’s gaze settled on Sirius with a frown. “Sirius, you all right, mate?” he asked, studying him with some well-meaning concern.
Finally, Remus allowed himself a look at Sirius.
He was sitting rather stiffly across from Remus, his cheeks flushed bright pink, a stark contrast against his pale skin, his hair a mess of mussed up black waves. His shirt was rumpled, his lips plush and swollen and still glistening with saliva. His chest was rising and falling rapidly in restrained pants. Merlin, it really made Remus want to grab him and kiss him again.
Sirius, without a trace of shame, met James’s eyes and shrugged casually. “All good,” he said. “Just bloody hot.”
“Yeah, it is sort of stuffy in here,” Peter agreed with a shrug, plopping down on the bench beside Remus. “Thank Merlin you’ve opened a window.”
“Sirius,” James said again. He nodded down toward the floor of the compartment, by Remus’s feet, where Sirius’s cigarette lay discarded on the floor, still lit. Shit. Remus had forgotten he’d even been smoking. Sirius’s gaze followed James’s towards Remus’s feet, sheepishness passing over his features for only a moment before the confident mask returned.
“Must’ve dropped it,” he chirped, leaning down to pick it up. When he sat back up, he stuck it in his mouth, took another drag, and met Remus’s gaze. He was smirking just the tiniest bit, eyes narrowed and glimmering with mischief. Remus couldn’t resist smiling back.
He was an idiot. He’d promised himself not to think of him like this anymore and within the first five seconds of seeing Sirius again he’d snogged the shit out of him. He didn’t think it would be easy to get over Sirius, but he figured it would happen eventually. Like Lily had said, everyone moves on, everyone gets new crushes eventually. That was how this was supposed to work. He was beginning to feel that this was some sort of special case.
Sirius was still smiling at him, looking smug as ever, and things were about to get much more complicated.
“Your flying wings may smite, but they can never spill
The cup fulfilled of love, from which my lips are wet;
My heart has far more fire than you can frost to chill,
My soul more love than you can make my soul forget.”
- “More Strong Than Time,” Victor Hugo