When Sirius Black walked the corridors, people turned to study him, savor him, take him in, and they did it without shame. Because they knew he knew, and that he loved it. And they weren’t that disgusting, were they? They weren’t, no, until he caught their gaze.
And when he said something, privately or publicly, everyone tended their ears to listen. He was observant, discerning, intelligent. Until he wasn’t. Because sometimes envy brewed and passion and respect meant nothing. People couldn’t deny the soft curve of his cupid bow, and the way his lips were cotton candy and blossom. But they could argue that it’d been a bargain. They could convince themselves and others that he was shallow and stupid and that memory served him but culture had never known him and never would.
Sirius spoke to everyone, but let very few people speak to him back. He pretended not to be superior, but relished in it. And when you crossed a boundary, he let you know.
That’s all that Remus Lupin had learned in the few months he’d already spent at Harvard. And the one he’d learned those things about, was the person he’d come to love, somehow.
He wouldn’t have been startled to find out he envied Sirius, or admired him, no matter the shame such a feeling would’ve brought him. But to learn that he’d fallen in love so easily, and with a someone that seldom thought about him, and that even more rarely cared about not humiliating him?
That had been the worst surprise the universe could’ve prepared for him. At the same time though, it had not been surprising at all. His breath had caught one day, and some caveman, ignorant of what he was starting, had taken it as a signal, and lit up a fire in his heart. This man trapped in Remus’s ribcage would never die, and neither would the fire.
He’d turn into a devotee, a philosopher, a scientist, a pyromaniac, a tree. And the fire would turn into an object of worship, into light, into a phenomenon to be studied, into a lover and into the very thing that consumed and devoured. And so on and so forth until all that was left in Remus’s place was ash. That too a living being, aching. Sirius Black would slap it (him?) off his clothes, an annoyed grimace adorning his sharp features.
Sirius Black, whose abundant, behaved hair smelt like roses and whose eyes held every secret to the Seven Seas. Remus would try and dip in, from time to time, when he’d forgotten, and every-time he’d be met with the reminder that the ocean was too vast, too cold and too dangerous. Too unknown and yet too transparent for him to try and touch. Was it malevolent, as well? A natural force such as it, which caused so much death and was a home to predators and prey and food for humans to accompany with white wine. Could a creature like that be evil or good? Could it be nothing at all?
Remus knew, deep down in his heart, that every-time Sirius regarded him, to joke or to chat or to ask about something, that all he saw was a community college transfer, with barely any money and whom no one but him ever spoke to. And Remus knew that Sirius knew that he was making his day when he talked to him. And he knew that Sirius didn’t consider this peculiar at all, because perhaps what the ocean really was was an attractive, rich man who’d never been told no, not even once in his (its?) lifetime.
But still Remus wished, and hoped, and day-dreamt and longed for and watched, analyzed, studied, considered and almost sometimes acted.
Acted.
A pen. What could Sirius richer-than-God Black care for a pen? The same Sirius that was always asking for one, furrowing his brows after rummaging around his bag and not finding any, though why would he ever expect to? He lost things, didn’t care for them. He could always buy more, but never needed to. People hurried and stumbled and bit and tore and killed each other in order to offer him their belongings, and themselves.
So exactly, who did Remus think he was? Who did he think Sirius Black was?
“Um, you dropped this?”
Sirius turned around, almost startled, and looked up. He wasn’t a short guy himself by any means, but Remus bordered six foot five. The height difference didn’t make Remus feel superior, but rather like a try-hard. As if his skin, filaments, limbs and muscles had grown with the expectation and hope that one day the sum of their parts would be able to look down at Sirius Black.
Remus hunched his shoulders, gritted his teeth.
“Oh,” Sirius replied. His voice the song that tore apart the fabric of time. The present reverted, and their bodies melted and burnt and built themselves up until one was lighting and the other oak, then back. In just a second, Rome had fallen and they’d gone back to being irrelevant pieces of history. Sirius exhausted and Remus hurting and bruised. More similar nonetheless.
James Potter, ever the absolute fucking golden brat, giggled to himself.
Remus’s eyes darted to him, trailed over his traits so that he could send a message to his brain to demolish his heart before it could find out that its worst fear was true, if it even was. Remus didn’t understand his own center. What did it matter who kissed Sirius’s lips under the moonlight? It could’ve never been him, anyway.
Sirius smiled and took his pen, and their fingers brushed. He smiled. And Remus would’ve believed it, he would’ve. That maybe becoming nature had meant they were now allowed. They’d been wood and fire for a moment, and being those things had erased the differences between their current bodies, permitting them to love freely, and to be the same.
Remus would’ve believed it.
If James Potter hadn’t turned around to erupt not-so quietly into laughter.
“Unbelievable,” James muttered under his breath, as if he was writing in his diary, instead of standing near them and letting his thoughts become words become bullets, his mouth the shotgun.
The fire that had spread through Remus’s entire body crackled, tried not to falter and disappear into smoke, and failed. His lungs were now clogged, and he needed to cough.
Remus’s face twisted, and Sirius’s did as well, and for a moment it felt like they were in on something. Just the two of them. For a moment, James Potter was a mean, pretentious, gorgeous asshole, and they were kind-hearted individuals silently reproaching him.
But the next, Sirius tipped his chin down, turned his feet towards his friend, and agreed with the source of his laughter. In the end, they were still in agreement, always would be. James had an okay reason to laugh, and no shame or regard for stupid, pathetic people who wanted things they didn’t have any right to even ever think about.
Remus had started walking away, but was still not out of earshot, when James nudged his friend in the ribs and sang, “he likes youuu.”
Sirius saw Remus’s shoulders stiffen and him stop in his tracks, but it was just a moment. Moments, that’s what they were made of.
“You’re such an asshole,” Sirius told James, topping his sentence off with amusement, to signal that his friend’s lack of manners didn’t bother him.
“Come on,” James laughed, and Sirius sighed. Both were perfectly aware that Remus was nothing but a fragment of a day that harbored a thousand more people just like him, with the same impossible desires.
Remus let out a trembling breath, hoped for relief that never came, and shook his head. They’d never been meant to be on the same planet, him and Sirius, he was sure of that.