A fuck-ton of fucks
The last thing Remus expected as he laid sleepless in bed was for his phone to ring with an alert. It had been 2:58am when he last checked for the time, and considering that it was a weekday night, he hadn’t expected anyone that he usually texted to be awake at that time. He was an exception to the rule of course, having been ridden with a particularly bad bout of migraines since that day. Truly, life did not slow down for anyone, especially him.
For a millisecond, he considered reaching for his phone to ease the curiosity. After all, it wasn’t much too often that he received texts from his friends, much less in the middle of the night. But, with prayers to the skies and hope in his heart that the paracetamol will kick in soon, he decided against it, sure that the light from his phone would only worsen the headache further. That, might not have been the smartest of choice, despite his rationalisation.
It was midday when he finally decided to scroll through his notifications. Over the night, notifications from various applications had piled on, and he had completely forgotten about the alert he received from the night before. Even as he made the commute to work, it wasn’t a part of his habit to clear his notifications, so there they stood, a test against time and laziness (let’s be honest) until Remus found it within himself to look through them.
“Fuck you,” were the creative choice of words that were spelled out beneath an instagram handle belonging to Sirius, and it took an absolute half-minute for the situation to sink in. He was at work, clearing his notifications using company time, when he read a message from Sirius Black, who he hadn’t been in contact with for what must have been seven years now. It was a message from Sirius Black, whom he last saw in the aquarium, three months ago. It was a message from Sirius Black, who had riddled his mind for years until it led to the demise of his own relationship.
Remus laughed. His finger hovered over the alert, and he laughed. His shoulders shook with the intensity of his laugh, and because he was having trouble holding it in, the slightest breath of chuckle left his lips, and Remus was done for. It was twenty minutes to 4pm, and Remus was chuckling aloud in his office chair, his table only separated from his colleagues by a partition that stood a little taller than his head.
Remus was laughing when his colleague stood up to look over the partition at him, curiosity evident in his face. Remus caught his eyes, and he laughed even harder, because fuck! He was at work, and he was reading a text from Sirius Black and fuck it if that was the only thing he could do — laugh. Remus heard the snort from his colleague, and a mutter of “crazy” from under his breath, and he slumped himself over his table, trying his best to suppress the sounds of his laughter.
Tears sprung to his eyes, only because of the intensity in which he was heaving, and God, he really, really couldn’t stop laughing. So he did the next best thing he could; he excused himself to a phone booth by the corner of his desk, and shut the door firmly behind him. He flicked the magic switch that blurs the glass, and he let himself laugh, unrestraint.
The tears fell as he clenched his eyes shut, and they kept falling, and falling, and he couldn’t stop them, and oh. Remus was crying. He was crying because his chest hurt from laughing too hard, and he was crying because it wasn’t just his chest that hurt, it was his heart. His heart hurt like it was being squeezed, like it had been wrung dry and left to burn under the blistering sun. He was crying because he thought he was done with Sirius Black, he really thought he was done with Sirius Black, so why was he messaging him now.
If there was one thing Remus was objectively good at, it was compartmentalising. He shelved his problems away like they were baggages that needed storage, and he was the steward on the flight to hell — to review, to abandon, to I don’t know. So he shelved it, in the ‘I don’t know’ department of his mind, and it shouldn’t have been new to him, after all, that was where Sirius Black lived for the better part of a decade.
Ten hours later, and in a losing fight against insomnia, Remus Lupin once again laid awake in bed, with his phone resting on his chest. He wasn’t going to open the book back up, he wasn’t going to stoop to Sirius’ level of childishness, he wasn’t going to let Sirius win by replying him. No, the story was done with. It was over. He wasn’t going to goad a reply out of Remus; and Remus began typing.
“Fuck you too,” he sent, and before he could delete the message, the ‘read’ alert popped and Remus resigned to his fate. Whatever it was, he didn’t know anymore. All he knew was, he meant all three of the words that he sent Sirius.
Because fuck him for messaging him out of nowhere. Three months, it had been three bloody months and he chose now to send a message? It was a fucked up move to message somebody after three months, after all the effort spent on working through whatever it brought. Also, fuck him for being in the aquarium in the first place. It was his time. It was his moment of closure and not only did he choose to appear right then and there, he just had to kiss someone in front of him? Fuck him. Most of all, fuck him for making Remus fall in love. Fuck him for breaking his heart. Fuck him, fuck him, and Remus felt better about sending that message. He deserved it.
Sirius was typing. The three dots appeared and disappeared beneath his last sent message, and Remus waited, despite himself. He waited for the message to come; an explanation to being cursed at out of nowhere, or another curse directed at him, but no messages came and Remus eventually fell asleep to the coming and goings of the dialogue bubble on his screen. Of course, trust Sirius Black to leave him on read. Just like he did then, why would it be any different? At the very least, Remus fell asleep, and that was a win in his books.
Remus was aware that Sirius did eventually shoot him a reply. In fact, he was painfully aware of that fact as he went about his day at work. His fingers itched, his brain screamed, and all he really, really wanted to do the entire day, was to read the message. But he persevered. He didn’t quite feel like crying at work again, or ever again for that matter, and thus, he persevered. He went about his day at work, smiling, laughing, making up a story for his minor bout of insanity from the day before, and it was shit. He felt like shit.
He felt like a stupid fucking mascot as he went about his day. His laughs were insincere and forced, and he really, really didn’t wish to smile. All he wanted to do, was curl up on his couch with a mug of tea in hand, as he read the message that could potentially trip him into a heart attack, or a stroke. It was fake, fake, fake, and it was exhausting keeping up the pretence, and when Remus was finally done with his chores that day, washing up included, he all but fell onto his bed with his screen opened to the darn app.
He’d just read the message. Really, that was all he was going to do. “That was my girlfriend,” and that was about as close as he got to ever having a stroke. Because why, in the flying fuck, did Sirius message him just to tell him that. Why, in Jesus’ weeping ass crack, was that something he saw the need to clarify. What, in the name of God’s forsaken children, was the damn fucking point of that? He couldn’t just read the message anymore. He had to reply, he just had to, because what the fuck was he on?
“No shit. I’m not fucking stupid.” He replied, and almost instantaneously, Sirius read it.
The reply came quick enough, and as much as he hated knowing what he did, he knew the other was only ever active in the early a.m. of the nights. “Fucking rude fuck” came the response, and before Remus could reply, or not, another message followed, “WAS”.
Oh, so they broke up, and just ever so minutely, breathing came easier, and nope. Remus wasn’t going to allow himself to go down that road. He wasn’t going to overthink the implications of the message, he wasn’t going to let himself fall into whatever the fuck trap Sirius was planting. No, no, nope. Whatever Sirius was up to, no. It was going to be a no. No arguments, no bargaining, just no.
“Fuck you telling me that for?” Yes, that was the only correct response. The book was closed, let it remain closed.
No reply came after that. The chat bubble with the three dots never appeared. That was it, it was the end, and just as abruptly as the breath came easily for him just minutes ago, it was just gone just as sharply. His breath hitched in his throat, his lungs felt caught between his ribs, and it really hurt to breathe, but it felt normal somehow. It seemed, that he had grown used to pain, and wasn’t that something nice to think about.
He did think about it. It was a Friday night and he had plenty of time to think, and so he did. He thought about how he’d close the books. How Sirius had slipped in just a few little pages of his own narrative, just for the sake of it, just for the fun of it. He thought about how his once completed book was now left open-ended once again, all because of Sirius Black.
He thought about it further. He thought about the new path of maturity he vowed to walk on. He thought about the concept of moving on, about where he was in the timeline of separation, and it wounded its way back to how he left things. That wasn’t a mature reply. That was immature at best. That wasn’t how he should have left things, not if he was on a path of righteousness or whatever it was that he told himself. No, he had to set things right. He was going to be an adult about it, reply in a way that a grown man would, and put it all behind him. Force the book close.
So he picked up his phone, typed in a new message: “Sorry to hear that. Hope you feel better.”, and hit send. He waited, just like he did a night ago. He waited, just like he did years ago. He waited, and no reply came. His message remained unread, and because he was done waiting, and because it felt like he was sinking, he deleted the message and threw his phone to the other end of the bed. Fuck setting things right, he was going to force the book close as it was.
He slept soundly that night, or dawn, when he actually fell asleep. It was likely the best sleep he had in months, or even before things went to shit. Resisting the urge to bite the bait - deleting the message essentially constituted not falling to the bait - had shifted something within Remus, and yes, he woke up as refreshed as he could be for a working adult.
The orange rays of the dipping sun was what woke him up that Saturday afternoon. It was warm, toasty even, and he curled into himself like a loaf of bread, or cat, whichever floated his boat, really. Only as the sun began to fall beneath the horizon did Remus stretch himself back up into humanhood. He reached for his phone, that had lain abandoned since the night before, and without an inkling of what was to come, he was slammed in the face with yet another message.
“Fucking coward,” the message read, and wow, Remus thought in that moment, wow, was he an absolute fucking pain. He was the one who brought up the girlfriend. He was the one who chose to ignore Remus’ attempt at niceties. He was the one who started the whole fucking mess in the first place, and all for what? Just to call him a coward for deleting an unread message? Honestly, fuck Sirius Black to the gates of hell and beyond.
Remus was done, he really was this time, and he didn’t care if his message remained unread. He also, didn’t care if Sirius read it and chose not to reply. No, even if Sirius replied, he was done. No more niceties, no more fucks, no more talking. Remus was glueing the book of Sirius Black and his icy blue eyes shut, and no amount of persuasion, of goading, can pry it open ever again.
“Get fucked,” he replied, and that, was really, really the end of it.
(Until, of course, Remus found himself descending into insanity as the time ticked by, or more accurately, as the weeks dragged by.)