To Ashes

It was always going to be Sirius. 

It was Sirius who had first tumbled into Remus’s empty train compartment six years ago, plopping down on the seat opposite him like he’d been invited. His absentminded ‘hello’ was pleasant enough, his voice mild and friendly, but there was something intense in his gaze that made it hard for Remus to meet his eyes. It pinned him to the train seat, left him feeling like Sirius was peeling  back a layer of Remus’s skin.

Looking back, Remus always regretted that he couldn’t remember exactly what he first said to Sirius, but all he could conjure of that first train ride was a pair of eyes that shone in the light like polished silver, and an inkspill of black hair.

It was when Remus stood to fish a book from his trunk that he accidentally bumped Sirius’s shoulder. He barely hit him, certainly not hard enough to bruise, but the other boy flinched away as if burned. It was only a passing moment, lasting no longer than a second. Sirius continued talking as if nothing had happened, but it seemed to Remus that he dug into his words, hurrying them along so that there was no opening for apologies or questions. It was then that Remus decided he could be Sirius’s friend, because the boy had secrets of his own.

Remus soon met James and Peter and a whole crowd of others, but it was Sirius who had first bridged the gap. 

As they grew, Remus and Sirius were constantly in orbit with each other. He was always aware of where Sirius was in relation to his own body. When Sirius shifted, Remus shifted along with him, like a planet and its moon. He kept him in his periphery at all times. He wasn’t even completely certain why he did this, only that it was important to do so. 

With James and Peter he fell into a comfortable rhythm, jostling each other for space at the sinks and tripping over each other in the dormitory. They must’ve brushed past each other dozens of times a day, elbows knocking together, pressed leg to leg at breakfast, shoulders brushing in the stairwells. Remus never noticed. But somehow, when Sirius touched him, he felt it like a jolt of muggle electricity. A hand on his arm was felt all the way down at the tips of his toes. And he couldn’t escape it, because Sirius expressed his affection in the most physical of ways. He doled out shoulder claps and ruffled his hands through hair and splayed his limbs out into others’ laps. So Remus would brace himself, but somehow he was still always caught off guard by the way Sirius’s touch burned.

Sometimes Sirius would glance at him afterwards, a measuring look, like he knew. Remus had never felt comfortable when Sirius’s eyes turned to him, he became too aware of his limbs

Despite all that, despite the discomfort and the storm rolling in his belly that he fought every day to quell, Remus had to suppress the urge to lean into every little touch. Was he truly so starved for love? 

Sirius had been the first to piece the puzzle of Remus together. Any of them were smart enough to, but Sirius was the one who paid close enough attention. 

It was the first term of their third year, on the morning after a full moon. Remus was straining at the bit to leave the Hospital Wing,  but no matter how much he pleaded Madam Pomfrey wouldn’t have it. Looking back, Remus had to concede she was right to try to keep him, his injuries were still too fresh and indiscreet. But when a student was rushed in, bleeding from an undetermined wound and supported between two frantic prefects, Remus took advantage and slipped out amid the commotion. 

He strolled leisurely in the direction of the Gryffindor tower, too busy probing his tongue gently around the loose molar trying to break free from his jaw to notice Sirius approaching from down the corridor. 

By the time Remus spotted him it was too late to scurry back in the other direction. They halted in front of each other and time seemed to slow, stretching out around them generously, as if all the seconds and minutes ran in a river, and the two boys were stones dividing its currents. He could feel it eddying around his legs. Remus, with all his bruises and weeping wounds. Sirius, cataloguing each one. He might’ve wondered before about his friend’s aches and pains and monthly absences, but he’d never seen the root of them. There was the curious feeling of all of the air in the corridor disappearing.

They exchanged no words, there was no need. Remus could see the thoughts weaving together behind Sirius’s dark brow, and where he expected to feel dread he was met only with an immense rush of relief. Finally, someone to know him. Someone to see. 

The moment broke, time rushing to catch up to itself. Sirius beckoned to Remus to join him, lips curling catlike across his face. Remus was too fresh to understand his own hunger but he felt its gnawing all the same. It was enough to understand that he was balanced on the edge of an abyss, and to reach for Sirius would be to tumble willingly into its gaping maw.

A heartbeat passed. Remus spat out his tooth, and took his hand.

Remus’s cuts and bruises healed as they always did, angry red fading to purple fading to mottled yellow, skin puckering as it knit back together, aches fading into the dull memory of past pain. There was no bruise to show what Sirius had done to him, no scar to mark where he’d been sliced to the bone. His body healed, but were someone to peel back his skin they would find his heart, limp and lifeless in the cavernous tomb of his chest. A pitiful, brittle thing that had endured far too much. 

He’d expected to feel rage. It would be easier, he’d thought, with anger to strengthen his resolve. He tried to reach for it, grasping at its tendrils like a lifeline but it slipped further and further out of reach. Where there should’ve been rage, there was only a heavy sorrow slipped apologetically into its place.

He wanted to weep, to wail, to tear at his clothes and curse at the sky. But he couldn’t, so he sat with his friends at breakfast and bit his tongue. At least once an hour he would turn automatically to his left, ready to whisper a joke or passing thought to Sirius, only to remember that he wasn’t there. The rest of them kindly pretended they didn’t notice. 

Sirius had taken up the habit of sitting apart from the rest of them during classes, always a few tables to the front, which Remus left staring at the back of his head the entire time. Even through the thick gloss of black hair, Remus could map every bump and seam of that skull. He’d run his hands over it more times than he could count, and the memory of it thickened his throat. Remus had never known someone so perfectly. If Remus were to open him up, he would be able to recognize every dip and curve of bone, every healed break, every twist and crease where muscles met. 

Every moment was a reminder of his absence. There was no reprieve, not even when they were all snug in their beds. In the dim silence of their dormitory each night Remus could somehow sense Sirius through the curtains, whether through love or need he didn’t know. Each of Sirius’s breaths ran through his own body like a bolt of lightning, and Remus had to fist his hand in the bedsheets to hold himself in place. He wanted to pad across the room, slot in behind the sleep-heavy boy beneath the quilt in the next bed. Sirius would let him, he knew that for fact.

He could picture it, Sirius always slept with his limbs splayed out, an occasional twitch hiccuping up and down his body. His own bed felt cold. How cruel it was that the boy that had broken him was the only thing that could put him back together. 

It was a thousand small moments that chipped away at his resolve. Walking through the portrait hole to see Sirius sprawled over the sofa with his head in Mary’s lap, her fingers smoothing out the bloom of curls as she held her novel with her other hand. A wayward melody from another student’s record player that reminded Remus of the first muggle vinyl he’d bought for Sirius. A day that should’ve marked a milestone, passing silently by. The moments found tiny chinks in Remus’s armor, growing into them like weeds to crack him wide. 

One evening lecture in the Astronomy tower circled around to the Dog Star, for which Sirius had been named. Scorching, the professor called it. And Remus had to close his eyes against the wave of longing that nearly overtook him. It was true. Sirius was many things - whip sharp, volatile, cruel at times, but he scorched the earth he walked. Remus had simply been too close to the flames.