For Remus, reality had always been fluid. A liquid that so easily slipped through his fingers, leaving no trace except its shine and chill along his scarred palm. Very occasionally did it turn solid. But when it did, that was mainly in the form of freezing. A slippery, unreliable surface that could crack under his feet at any time. Sometimes the ever-changing particles of reality would even loosen so much that they would become nothing but air. Thin air at that. Fluidly entering and exiting his lungs, brushing against his skin, picking up and slowing down its pace at its own will with not a thought to how he may like it to blow. When reality was air, Remus was gone. Gone with the wind, you might say. He was still there, pinching his skin in the pockets of his corduroy pants, itching the back of his neck red where the disobedient curls of his hair would tickle his skin, pulling the sleeves of his sweaters so far over his hands that the wool started to develop holes. He was still there.
But he wasn't present.
He wasn't sure he wanted to be. He was fairly sure he didn't. When reality was nothing but the air that he inhaled and exhaled, so thin it could slip away at any moment and leave him breathless, he didn't want it. He would rather be gasping for the air upon which he could truly depend. The one of oxygen and carbon dioxide. The one that everyone else was breathing. Not just the easily-spooked thin mist that was reality.
He hadn't always been like this. For a time, reality was solid. Too solid. It was a rock. A boulder. A mountain sitting on his chest, pinning him down into the dirt in which he would so desperately want to find himself six feet under. For a time, reality didn't defy gravity, but strengthened it. Encouraged it to pull him down to the core of the Earth and scald his pale and fragile skin. Reality was as fickle as the weather. Even more so, harnessing not a strain of consistency, letting its only dependable trait be its inconsistency. When reality was a rock, he wanted so badly for it to shatter and disappear into the wind. He wanted so badly for it to be the wind that blew away in seconds. When reality was a rock, he just wanted it thrown into the ocean to sink to the bottom. Lost forever.
But when his memories became too heavy, even for the reality that challenged gravity, his world slipped away. Like water trickling through the gaps in his fingers. And he let it. He was glad to let it seep down his hands in silky waves that cooled his skin. He didn't mind that it just kept flowing with seemingly no end in sight. He didn't want it back.
When reality became fluid, it was because Remus couldn't handle it in any other form. He wanted nothing to do with the body that was torn to shreds by unsympathetic daggers of moonlight that he would never escape, even through the closed curtains of his room. His hands, bony and scarred, were not ones at which he ever wanted to look. They were just hands. As seemingly harmless as any others, with pink and blue veins and wiggling fingers, and, on occasion, violet nail polish. But all he ever saw were claws. Claws that collected particles of dirt and whose nails were painted, but painted scarlet. From nothing other than blood. Of what? He had no idea. And he didn't want to.
When reality became fluid, his skin was not something in which he could longer tolerate being trapped. It blushed like anyone else's, it bled just as easily as anyone else's. But it was claimed by his scars. The ones that he never remembered getting and the ones that he always did his best to hide. The ones that he thought would appreciate the soothing trickle of reality along them when it chose its liquid form. New scars every month, like a fucking subscription to some brand of skin tear, he thought. He bled the same as everyone else, but he was the only one to draw the oozing liquid himself.
When reality became fluid, his eyes were not ones out of which he liked to see. They were the same eyes that were nothing but subjects to the moon. That had no choice but to reflect it. They were simply its method of transportation, carrying its unforgiving light down to Earth. His eyes were the same ones that saw everything that he couldn't remember. How selfish of his hazel eyes, he thought, to take every golden sunrise and every innocent flower illuminated in the starlight, and keep the memory to themselves. His eyes were not ones that he appreciated.
Reality had only ever become so fickle, so unpredictable, to save Remus. How kind. How kind of it to rob him of any control he had over his experiences. When the spinning of his mind and relentless nagging of his thoughts had been so deeply ingrained in him, when the heaving boulder of reality sat on his chest, suffocating him, he had nowhere to escape. What little part of him that didn't loathe his every nerve escaped through silent tears, slipping from his tired eyes as easily as reality slipped through his fingers. When his every memory and every thought was tinted with self-hatred and the utter discomfort of being Remus Lupin, his grip on the real world left him in helpless whispers that trembled through his lips. He'd feel the foreign but also painfully familiar tingle of dirt padding against his hands, the shaggy and itchy brush of fur against his skin, the untamed and savage monster inside of him and he would want nothing more than for everything, everything real, to just drift away.
And finally, it did.
It was gone. As seamlessly as the sun disappears over the horizon, eventually leaving not the weakest trace when the moon dictates the sky's light, the boulder rolled away. Though he barely had time for relief. Panic was almost immediate. What was this, where was he, who was he? He knew. Of course he knew. He was Remus Lupin. That's who he had always been and who he was stuck being. But he didn't feel it. Like a thick fogged glass between his body and his mind, the disconnection from his thoughts was isolating. He was water and his body was oil. He could do nothing but watch. Watch himself move, watch himself think, watch himself speak. He could control his thoughts and he said what he thought he felt. But he had no way of knowing. Reality had left with a gift for itself; his ability to feel. Even physical pain was muffled. Pinching his skin did nothing but tickle, stubbing his toe did nothing but elicit anger, touching a too-hot plate did nothing but tingle his skin ever so lightly.
He was disconnected.
Maybe he should have been grateful. Maybe it was a good thing that he no longer had the feeling of dirt and blood shoved under his nails. But he wasn't. He still had nightmares, he still dreaded so fucking much every full moon, he was still petrified. Nothing was okay. Nothing was even close to okay, but now he couldn't even be sure it was supposed to be. He had no reality. He could feel no reality, how could he be so sure he was supposed to? Maybe he wasn't half human and half wolf. Maybe he was just a wolf in waiting. A wolf picking up as many memories as it could before being permanently trapped in its disgusting, flea-infested fur and running off to do nothing but howl at the moon and long for whatever life it thought it had. Maybe his every experience was nothing but a memory to be missed when reality was completely gone.
Remus paced back and forth along the floors of his dorm. His friends were... somewhere. He didn't remember where. They had probably said, but he didn't know. His mind had been too busy trying to clear out any cohesive train of thought. The tapping of his heel along the floors wasn't audible. Maybe it would have been to someone in the room, but he wasn't in the room. His mind was elsewhere. Where, he didn't know. Maybe it was drifting. Floating through the clouds, tied to a balloon.
He could see his feet moving under him, he could see the sliver of the moon starting to rise to its peak, he could see the window losing its gold-ish hue as the sunset drained from the sky. He could see it all. He knew it was there, he knew where he was. But he could not for the goddamn life of him tie himself to the ground that he could see. It was right in front of him. Right beneath his feet. He could touch its chipping wood. But he could not ground himself.
"Moony?" He didn't notice Sirius' voice seep into the room.
"Moony." He kept pacing.
"Moony!" Nothing.
Sirius took rushed steps forward, stopping in front of Remus, but keeping his distance. He caught Remus' eye. His eyes were just as fickle a hazel as always, but Sirius felt as though he were seeing them through smudged glass. Remus looked right through him. Sirius was nothing but a ghost, a cloud, a figment of Remus' imagination. "Moony."
Remus stared at him. It was Sirius. His boyfriend. His person. His Padfoot. It was Sirius. He knew it, he was sure of it. He reached out a hand that he hadn't realized was trembling, stopping it half way between Sirius and himself.
"Padfoot?" His voice was frail. It wasn't gentle, it was weak. A mere squeak about to be shattered by the simple brush of a feather.
"Yes, it's me."
Remus grabbed Sirius' hand. He held it so tight. As if it were about to slip away like water through his fingers. Like reality through his fingers. His arms shook in his effort to hold on to Sirius as tightly as he could. Sirius couldn't leave. Remus couldn't let him fall away as easily as everything he thought was real had. He couldn't let himself drift away to wherever the balloons go.
"Padfoot." It wasn't a question. It was a reminder. Sirius was real. Sirius hadn't ever not been real. He had been a dream at a time, but not the same kind that slipped from Remus' memory when he woke up. Sirius was real.
"Remus." Sirius had seen this look before. He knew how easily Remus could be ripped from the unstable hold of the real world. "You're Remus Lupin, you're seventeen, you attend Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. It's Wednesday night, seven PM, December twelfth. You're here. I'm here."
Remus' grip didn't loosen but he pulled Sirius closer. He pulled all that was real closer. He couldn't let go for long enough to wrap his arms around the boy, so he just left him awkwardly placed right before him.
Sirius took initiative, moving his free arm around Remus' shoulder and holding him close. Holding him so close that it was impossible for him to slip away. Sirius' breath ran along Remus' back, engulfing him in warmth and familiarity. The kind that was grounding and reliable. The kind that was a rock. Not one that pinned him down or forced him to succumb to the persuasive tug of gravity, but one that he knew he could hold. One that he knew wasn't going anywhere. And it wasn't. Sirius stayed, shaking in his effort to hold Remus closer to his chest than his own heart.
"You're real," Sirius whispered. He felt a single tear tremble from Remus' cheeks and slip through the black waves of his hair before seeping down his neck. It fell impossibly slowly, too exhausted to fall any faster. "I'm here," Sirius whispered through his own tears. "And I'm not going anywhere." He dug his face into the crook of Remus' neck, his lips brushing against a thin scar as he spoke, "I promise."
Remus whimpered. Like a dog lost in the rain, he cried into Sirius' embrace. But the tears barely let him know that they existed. The only sign that they were really there was the blurred image of the world doing its best to show itself through the wall of tears in his eyes.
Sirius ran his fingers through Remus' hair, sure to make each stroke definitive and clear, letting Remus know that he was there. He let his hand fall, never once parting from Remus, and he drew small circles along Remus' back. Remus never loosened his grip. He still held Sirius' hand so close to his chest that it might as well have been his heart and the other arm he had wrapped around Sirius' waist.
Sirius traced the scars that ran along Remus' shoulders. The ones that were as familiar to Remus as his the beating of his own heart, no matter how much he despised them. They were familiar. They were real. They were a painful reminder that he, too, was real. Sirius traced them gently, running his finger along each gash so soothingly that to Remus the scars seemed almost comfortable. Comfortable or not, they were his. His to wear every day, his of which to be ashamed. And Sirius traced them, claiming them as his own too. Shared scars, hated by one, loved by the other. But felt by both.
"Sirius?" Remus asked, his voice still so meek that not even the moonlight, which was right in front of him, could hear it.
"Yes?" Sirius' voice wasn't loud, but it was definitive. Sure and solid.
"I'm scared."
The two words thrashed through Sirius' heart before shattering it completely like a boulder breaking the peaceful surface of a pond. "I know." Sirius tried to pull him closer, but they were already so close it was nearly impossible. "You don't have to be."
"You promise?"
Sirius only lifted his head, leaving the tip of his nose to press against Remus', but not moving his arms from around Remus. "Can I?"
Remus nodded. A small movement of the head, but a sure one nonetheless. Sirius kissed him, barely needing to move his head to make their lips meet ever so softly.
And suddenly Remus was real again. His hands were his own, holding Sirius close. His eyes were his own, the same ones that had gazed into Sirius' countless times before. His heart was his own, thudding against his chest in the same reliable rhythm as Sirius'. Sirius was the last tether tying him to reality. Not only that, but he made reality more bearable. So much more bearable. Enjoyable, almost.
Sirius just barely pulled away, his lips brushing against Remus' as he spoke, "I promise."