Fic: Found You For The First Time
May. 3rd, 2006 06:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
merrilyI just read a JKR interview in which she implies a certain annoyance with fandom. Specifically, with our longing for slash.
Bah! I say. We treat the pups better than she does. Which it turns out that I needed to demonstrate.
Be warned: this be so very angsty.
Found You For The First Time
(Or Why Canon is a Cold-hearted Bitch)
It happened at school. That’s the obvious story, isn’t it? No privacy, common changing rooms, sleeping an arm’s reach from 5 other boys for seven years. Of course it happened at school. Of course Sirius realized, wrestling with Remus, that they were both flushing, that Remus was twisting desperately to avoid certain body contact. Of course they got drunk, and bets were made. Of course someone said they should kiss to see what it was like. Of course the Prefects bathroom became a Marauder Sex Grotto.
Except it didn’t.
Finding out Remus was a werewolf should have done it. Becoming Animagi should have done it. Running with pack the first time, waking up sore but whole and tangled with Sirius should have definitely have done it.
But they both didn’t look at it; pretended there was no it to talk about.
It should have happened in the flat. Poverty should have made the transition easier, made the necessity of sharing a bedroom turn into sharing a bed. Sirius should have become jealous of all the dates that Remus found, working in the second-hand bookstore on Charing Cross Road. Sirius should have come home early one night and found Remus entertaining a gentleman friend, and suddenly realized that for all the ways they were completely opposite, this way they were painfully, exactly the same. Remus should have followed Sirius one night and found himself in an underground club, full of men wearing leather, men kissing each other, men kissing Sirius. The flat should have become RemusnSirius’ flat, not a place they shared cautiously, carefully, where the distances between them widened.
But what should have didn’t.
It couldn’t have happened those twelve years after. Concrete and steel between them, betrayal (mistaken), hope lost, notches in the wall and out of Sirius’ heart. Remus lonely, living more and more in solitude; Remus locking himself into a basement cellar on the full moons, tearing himself manically, memories of running joyfully with pack sucked out as easily as if a Dementor paced there in the dark with him, cheek by jowl, instead of despair.
Sirius curled into a corner of a 6-by-8 hell, living as a dog even when he wasn’t one.
It might have happened in Harry’s third year, when Peter was found out and Remus held Sirius fiercely, held him like he could save them, like his arms were adamantine and the world could go fuck itself. It really could have happened then, but there wasn’t enough time, no time at all, and Sirius was flying away, and they’d barely touched, and Remus was trembling (at the window, watching Sirius disappear) as if he’d run a hundred miles.
Letters came, but they couldn’t say it. How could they say it? 12 years broken between them and a history of friendship, and nothing, nothing made it possible for Sirius to write Your hands, Moony, I always dream about your hands or for Remus to reply Padfoot, goddamnit, come home to me. I’m dying without you.
So the words never bloomed.
They both wanted it to happen at Grimmauld, even in that dank dim, even where the walls stank of darkness. But Remus always came back from Fenrir exhausted, and Sirius couldn’t stop being angry, and there were always other people there, watching both of them, measuring both of them.
So the doors stayed shut.
Until the wrong one opened. It took that long, and it was that cruel, but they still found each other, eyes meeting as Sirius fell backwards. He looked for Remus because Remus was the only thing that mattered, and Remus looked at him because Sirius was the world. And there still wasn’t time, and some people might say it still didn’t happen, but it did. They found each other, and they loved each other, and that is all that matters.
Even if there was no second time.
Bah! I say. We treat the pups better than she does. Which it turns out that I needed to demonstrate.
Be warned: this be so very angsty.
Found You For The First Time
(Or Why Canon is a Cold-hearted Bitch)
It happened at school. That’s the obvious story, isn’t it? No privacy, common changing rooms, sleeping an arm’s reach from 5 other boys for seven years. Of course it happened at school. Of course Sirius realized, wrestling with Remus, that they were both flushing, that Remus was twisting desperately to avoid certain body contact. Of course they got drunk, and bets were made. Of course someone said they should kiss to see what it was like. Of course the Prefects bathroom became a Marauder Sex Grotto.
Except it didn’t.
Finding out Remus was a werewolf should have done it. Becoming Animagi should have done it. Running with pack the first time, waking up sore but whole and tangled with Sirius should have definitely have done it.
But they both didn’t look at it; pretended there was no it to talk about.
It should have happened in the flat. Poverty should have made the transition easier, made the necessity of sharing a bedroom turn into sharing a bed. Sirius should have become jealous of all the dates that Remus found, working in the second-hand bookstore on Charing Cross Road. Sirius should have come home early one night and found Remus entertaining a gentleman friend, and suddenly realized that for all the ways they were completely opposite, this way they were painfully, exactly the same. Remus should have followed Sirius one night and found himself in an underground club, full of men wearing leather, men kissing each other, men kissing Sirius. The flat should have become RemusnSirius’ flat, not a place they shared cautiously, carefully, where the distances between them widened.
But what should have didn’t.
It couldn’t have happened those twelve years after. Concrete and steel between them, betrayal (mistaken), hope lost, notches in the wall and out of Sirius’ heart. Remus lonely, living more and more in solitude; Remus locking himself into a basement cellar on the full moons, tearing himself manically, memories of running joyfully with pack sucked out as easily as if a Dementor paced there in the dark with him, cheek by jowl, instead of despair.
Sirius curled into a corner of a 6-by-8 hell, living as a dog even when he wasn’t one.
It might have happened in Harry’s third year, when Peter was found out and Remus held Sirius fiercely, held him like he could save them, like his arms were adamantine and the world could go fuck itself. It really could have happened then, but there wasn’t enough time, no time at all, and Sirius was flying away, and they’d barely touched, and Remus was trembling (at the window, watching Sirius disappear) as if he’d run a hundred miles.
Letters came, but they couldn’t say it. How could they say it? 12 years broken between them and a history of friendship, and nothing, nothing made it possible for Sirius to write Your hands, Moony, I always dream about your hands or for Remus to reply Padfoot, goddamnit, come home to me. I’m dying without you.
So the words never bloomed.
They both wanted it to happen at Grimmauld, even in that dank dim, even where the walls stank of darkness. But Remus always came back from Fenrir exhausted, and Sirius couldn’t stop being angry, and there were always other people there, watching both of them, measuring both of them.
So the doors stayed shut.
Until the wrong one opened. It took that long, and it was that cruel, but they still found each other, eyes meeting as Sirius fell backwards. He looked for Remus because Remus was the only thing that mattered, and Remus looked at him because Sirius was the world. And there still wasn’t time, and some people might say it still didn’t happen, but it did. They found each other, and they loved each other, and that is all that matters.
Even if there was no second time.
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(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-03 07:35 pm (UTC)