Remus Lupin sits in the bath.
His eyes are red.
His fingers are wrinkled.
His tongue is loose.
Remus Lupin sits in the bath.
He's breathing. In and out and in again.
In. Out?
He holds it, the breath. A while. Tastes the temptation, the rising panic of his lungs as he swishes the air from cheek to cheek.
Pressure builds and time passes, seconds so fluid like the water wading along his neck.
His breath stays held and his head spins. Movement and light and chaos floating in the water. Silence untouched by the hum of breathing.
In. In and out. Water ripples under his nose, bubbles up in warm relief. A breath.
He stares. Remus Lupin stares. Through red eyes and blur. Staring. Heat tickles under his eyes. He lifts one hand, right and left, checks for tears.
He feels the print of a hand melting away. Water spilling from where sleek skin was just pressed. Tears, bathwater, liquid heat crying off his cheeks.
He blends and he blends with the water.
Slipping.
Falling.
Gravity, all of it.
He's floating?
Sinking and floating and blurring. Becoming one with the water, all one element, all one temperature, all one thing.
Under.
So much nothing.
Cold knees poke up and chaos and panic and shock ripple an impossible pattern into the water. Just water now.
Breathing. Ripples. Cold.
Remus straightens his legs as much as he can, tucking them back into the embrace of the water that is panting in waves.
It wades only up to his chest. Hugs him and leaves him and hugs him again.
First it's cold. Then it's warm. Then much colder.
Warmth.
Gone faster than it came.
The water calms and Remus stares through red eyes.
His face is water, boiling and itchy. Melting away and tickling the surface below.
Drops edge to his chin, peer down at the surface, fall away.
Dripping, dripping,
dripping
,dripping, dripping.
Red. It's not his eyes. It's the water.
Blood?
Scars.
Scars disappearing into the water.
Red. It's not his eyes. It's all of it.
The water is hot.
Remus Lupin sits in the bath.
His insides unfold into the water.
He just keeps melting.
He can see it.
Skin but liquid but air but solid. He's fogging the mirror, dripping and wading. He's breathing and it's waves but it's breathing.
He lifts a hand.
What is it?
It's water and it falls away.
It's cold and it's melting before it's real.
Realness is so cold.
He folds into himself.
He folds into the water.
Under.
So much nothing.
Nothing is warm.
Like a hug.
Like enough space.
Like all the air he never had.
Swish, drip, trickle trickle.
Under it's the sky wading along his back, all tucked into four tile walls. Four tile walls polished with blood and water and echoes and gravity and thick thick thick sky.
The sky is warm, it's so there with no gravity and no gravity whatsoever. It's blue but the kind of blue you've never seen before, blue like warm and blue like red and brown but blue like clean. Blue like nothing. Nothing you've ever seen.
His scars are leaving, they're slipping away and they're melting and he's going with them.
Into the water, into the sky, lost wherever gravity has gone, wherever it went, wherever it goes.
Beyond the clouds because this is space. Space that's blue and black and brown and red and yellow, bright yellow.
Melting and melting and folding and disappearing.
Gone.
Evaporating.
Up and up and up and up and up.
Water and no gravity.
Where does it go?
Remus Lupin sits in the bath.
He's breathing.
He can hear it.
He's whimpering.
It cracks on the bathroom tiles, echoes right back to him. It hugs him, suffocates him.
He's drowning in his own cries.
Swarming and swirling and twisting right into him, right into the eye of it all.
Red eyes.
He brings up a hand, shows it to himself, the red eyes.
It's wrinkled, the hand, the water.
Old.
Time floats around him.
Drip
He stares and lets time wade along his chest and wrinkle his fingertips, tainted with blood.
drip
Keys. A soft little sound.
"Moony?"
Sound like the stars.
Remus opens his mouth. Heat spills from his lips. Heat and breath and noise, no words. Echo.
drip
"Moony?"
A knock and it grabs him and it shakes him. He thrashes and blinks and the red falls away, all back into the water. Pink water. White-ish eyes. White tiles. All around.
Can he come in? Can he? can he? Moony?
Sirius' gasp slips from one echo to another. It twirls in step with fog from pinkish water. It dances with the tiles and then the others and back again. To and fro and to again. All around.
All around.
drip.
"Moony."
Red eyes, red eyes trembling, red eyes turning redder by the second. Almost as red as the pink pink water.
They look up to the sun because the stars are too bright.
Red eyes burning in light.
Remus Lupin sits in the bath.
He looks up at a silhouette that's all curls and all stars.
Blue eyes, blue eyes blurring, blue eyes bleeding.
Drip.
Blue tears meet pink water. It ripples in purple.
A sniff. "Sorry."
Did he say that?
Remus licks his lips. Empty. He want's to echo it, the sorry that he didn't say.
"Sorry." It comes out cracked and split and shattered. Broken and trembling and gone.
Fuck.
Sirius kneels and the light shifts, it gets comfortable in a new position.
Half of his face is lit. Remus stares at the darker one, the easier one.
"Do you want me to go?"
A whisper and a stab.
"No." Remus stares at the echo right there right ahead but it doesn't mind the audience.
"Okay." Soft and pink and flowing.
"Louder."
Sirius stares. Blue or gray and both.
He clears his throat. "Okay." Almost solid, almost red.
Remus nods.
Sirius lays on the floor.
His hair is lost somewhere behind him and above him and all over.
He stays quiet, breaths echoing with all the peace of a starless night.
Remus Lupin sits in the bath.
His eyes are there.
His fingers are lost in black curls.
He cannot feel his tongue.
Remus Lupin sits in the bath with the stars at his side.
And just for a second he forgets how easy it is to drown.