Ripples

I saddled up my pony right and rode into the ghostly night. It was wide, wide open

There was a time, he knew, when the world had been wide and new and they had stood hand in hand at the brink of it, looking into darkness. The curls of smoke rose in the fireplace and snaked out. The room was cold and dank and now smelled strongly of the burning but Remus ignored it.

There was a time - when they never went anywhere alone. It had begun so early on. First it had irked him. He was used to solitude, had spent hours alone as a boy, curled up on his bed with a good book, lost in the raptures of fantasy. Of knights and quests and magic wizards, and, best of all, compatriots on great adventures. He liked sitting on the grass in the afternoon, and reading or thinking alone until twilight. Then he had been part of four, and Four meant they were always together.

When they had losses; when James spent the sticky May and June months with Lily in the castle, curled up together in companionable silence, listening to music on the gramophone in the common-room, the Four tightened around without him. The Four was not complete without James, and yet, being part of the Four meant they hung onto him longer. When the malevolence scaled the castle walls like an ancient besieger, and the children coming into the years lessened, and were hard-eyed and strangely wiser, being the Four meant they were still them. When all around them, people found new places in this terrifying new surround, they still had the notches of the Four, familiar marks and childhood reminiscences that tied them together with silken ribbons of memory.

It used, sometimes, to annoy Lily. Remus had sat at their dinner-table - how often? James had never liked his friends to leave. He'd smiled his most charming smile at Lily, and invite them to stay to supper. Remus had been the one to look, and see. The little way Lily handled the stew onto the plates, the almost imperceptible tightening around her lips before she turned and smiled as warmly as if she'd invited them herself. That strain had been present as they'd chatted lightheartedly about the old days - days Lily had never been a part of. They might be five around the table - but there were the Four there. Lily might have James's love, but she never could get the piece of his heart that belonged to his boyhood triumphs and adventures.

Remus had sipped his wine, and carefully, quietly, steered the conversation back to the new days. As the wind howled around the cottage in Godric's Hollow, rattling the windowpanes with the Welsh winter, they had spoken of new things, and the creases had ironed out of Lily's forehead and she was more relaxed. The Four lay hidden once again, boyish heroes with smooth skin and scraped knees concealed in the four young men with stubble and bags under their eyes who ate wolfishly.

You could never separate them from one another. It had surprised Remus, with an odd sharp pain where his heart should be, when the betrayal had happened. He thought of it like that, 'the betrayal'. Cold and impersonal, not, oh, Sirius. If he thought, oh Sirius, he was undone. So he thought, 'the betrayal' as strongly as he could, and ignored the bright, bitter pain.

It had hurt, that Sirius was now running, the way he would when he was a boy, all long-limbed strides with an easy, coltish grace that bounded across the grass. Sirius could fly, when he was a boy, but skimmed so close to the ground that Remus could fly too. And now he was riding ahead, a glimmer in that ghostly night, that ghastly night. So wide and vast that it swallowed up his figure in an acre of nothingness. He had gone on ahead, where James had stolen away years before to, and -

Left me behind.

And Remus sat on the edge of the bed, and the pain where his heart should be cried out, Oh Sirius with all its might and Remus was either too tired or too broken to silence it, and didn't know or care which.

I left the only home I knew. I stayed alive and I found you. Now I take you where the water's deep and make the air you breathe so sweet.

The knock at the door startled him irritably out of the book. Remus closed it carefully on the bookmark, and hurried down the narrow flight of stairs, to the doorway. Mother was out, Father working. His Christmas holidays, one of the few times he was really alone. He opened that door, that door. Paint peeling,

Can't you afford to keep the wolves from licking the paint from your door? Laughing

and cracked glass and the rain sweeping the street in great gusts drumming on the faded tiles in the walkway. And Sirius on the doorstep.

Water dripped from his hair, hanging around his neck wetly. Swathed in the patchy, washed out overcoat he'd left there once before. Trying for the same, wicked grin that lit his face while his eyes spoke of secrets, pleading and desperately vulnerable.

"Going to let me in, Moony, old chap?" he said and the cheerfulness of his voice horribly hollow, and unable to stop his teeth from chattering. His eyes on Remus's face reminded him of Sirius-as-the-dog, but a dog much beaten and kicked and too tired even to whimper. They were old and tired, and the naked spirit looked dimly out of them, like coals that had burnt down too low. In a face whose sharp lines and planes Remus knew as well as he knew his own, but until today, had never seen so dully defeated.

"Why are you here?" he blurted out and Sirius laughed and tried to rub his hands together, stuffing them in his pocket.

"Run away, haven't I?" he said shrugging, and Remus couldn't tell if the water on his face was the rain streaming from his hair, or a different, saltier kind but it didn't matter. Sirius simply looked at him and said quietly,

"Couldn't stand it anymore. I couldn't... I couldn't.... crash with you a few days, could I, old fellow?" with a question that wasn't so much pleading as desperate. Remus nodded silently, and pulled his friend into the shabby home that was not-a-home with a single, tight hug that said all the things two less than eloquent teenage boys couldn't. An unspoken agreement that tomorrow, when Sirius wasn't raw and alone and desperate, he would go to James and literally share the family he'd always watched with wide brown eyes and wanted.

That tonight, when Sirius would cry himself to sleep silently, mourning the family he'd never really been a part of but was still part of him, Remus would listen in the quiet of the darkness and pretend he hadn't heard a thing.

And that they would forget that the night Sirius ran away from his parents, he turned to Remus and the old appeasement of the Four and the dormitories and ... family. The meaning that Remus knew inherently and Sirius had only discovered through the stories of his friends and deep within himself.

But is it not enough to be complete? Please? Let me give you everything you need, please?

"Here. Happy birthday." The brown paper parcel lands in his lap heavily on his knees. Remus looks up and his lips twitch, trying not to laugh at the pleased pride clearly written on Sirius's face. Quickly, he looks down to the package, hiding his amusement.

"It's a birthday present," Sirius explains unnecessarily, but because he is impatient. He runs a hand through his hair which is too long, and curls over his collar to distract himself from his eagerness. "I bought it. I thought you'd like it."

Remus tugs on the string which ties up the parcel carefully, because he is careful and slow and neat. He knows that it irritates Sirius, who would rip off the paper and tear it, but he has a habit of saving things. Brown paper is useful, and can be saved.

The book that falls into his lap is new, and the binding smells rich, and under his fingertips the leather is soft and stamped with gold. He strokes it, and the tang of leather and crisp print and pages fills his nose. He looks at Sirius, and the look expresses the words of thanks he cannot say, overcome.

"You haven't even opened it to see what it is, yet," Sirius says reprovingly, and his arms are around Remus's neck and his breath ghosts against Remus's cheek as he speaks. Remus nods silently, and opens the cover while holding his breath. He reads the title, and turns his head to look at Sirius properly.

"It's the book I needed, for the research," Remus breathes, and his fingers tighten on the book and look at Sirius, who smiles, and that desperate look in his eyes that he can find the perfect thing, reach out and take everything Remus needs and put it into his lap for him, abates a little.

"I knew you needed it," he shrugs, and runs a hand through his hair again, nonchalant. "Silly present, really. If you weren't so bookish, I wouldn't think of a book as a decent present."

But Remus kisses him and the hungry look goes away completely when Sirius is asleep, and Remus knows it will be there again tomorrow. As Sirius traces the faded pattern of scars over his skin and the edges of his ribs - because Remus never eats more than is enough - he looks up at Remus through his hair, and it is palpable. He wants to fight to give Remus everything, and Remus is afraid and scared and soaring.

We found a way, we found a street. Directions sweat under the sheets, and I let you have it.

The sheets are rumpled, ghostly white in the streetlight shining through the thin curtains, and they rise like waves on the bed, an island, a world that contains just them. Sirius moves against him, and his breathing is fast and quick and Remus strokes a hand across his cheek and his other he rests against Sirius's hip, and the salt of his sweat is in his mouth; it has run down from his upper lip and he tastes it. It crusts on the crests of the sheets that move as if they are alive, and Sirius bucks and arcs under his hands, and his face pushes itself into Remus's neck. His back is glistening, and he mumbles instructions against Remus's collarbone with frantic kisses, and then Remus watches him clench. His hair is inky black against the pillows, his limbs long and lithe caught in the sheets and he shudders against Remus and gasps.

But it can be a lonely place, desire comes, desire fades. There's a bright one caught your fancy eye. It's okay so long as you stay mine.

Remus stood and watched his friend, his brother, his lover, his Four, walk away. No, not walk. Shouting silently, his arms caught behind him, struggling, kicking; trying to push away the hit-wizards. He watched and his hands shook as he clutched the paper, until the thin black and white photo tore, and the charms broke. And he hated him. Hated him with the fire that caught alight from the burning of loving him, the fire that burned Remus from inside out and blazed and was agony.

Sirius had given him everything he needed. Everything he wanted. And taken it within him, killed Peter, destroyed him, destroyed them - Remus didn't know what of what was left was him, and the others, and then them, the them they had built on shifting grains of their world, a delicate, matchstick centre that Sirius had knocked aside.

He couldn't love him. Didn't love him. He hated him, loathed him, he wouldn't ever think, wouldn't ever remember.

The hand rests briefly on top of his for a moment, so quickly there and gone, perhaps Remus has imagined it. Except when he looks up, the man's face is shyly friendly and interested and he smiles in that way that is strangely private.

And Remus waits. Waits for a jolt, for anything to tell him that this is a different man, that he can see him the way he waits to be seen.

And nothing comes - except Sirius.

And I'm so number one that it's a shame, a shame that you let other numbers in the game.
Now I suffer for your hungry eye. Oh, why must it see more than mine? It's a light you're after, 'cause light moves faster.

They stand in the common-room, and Sirius's shirt clings to him in the heat of the summer. He scowls through his hair at Remus.

"Why do you need James's advice?" he snarls, and his teeth click and he is like a dog with a bone. "Why James?" And Remus is reminded of when they were First Years, and Sirius and James hated one another with a tempestuous loathing that burnt all the fiercer because they were so alike.

"James knows more," Remus explains again, patiently but he is losing patience. He has never liked summer; he cannot wear short sleeve shirts like the others do, for fear of the twisting, mottled scars on his arms and the heat makes him sleepy and irritable.

Sirius slams the parchment off the chair and scatters it and all Remus can think of is, I'll have to pick it up later. Sirius wants to fight; Remus can see it. He is angry, and anger radiates from him, his skinny body all angles and planes, his hipbones jutting from his trousers where his shirt hangs open. Remus sometimes wonders if Sirius feels things too much, that the feelings will burn him up, consume his thin frame in an ecstasy of passion that tortures him.

"I know," Sirius snaps obstinately, and Remus realizes, and sighs, shaking his hair out of his eyes.

"You're jealous," he says softly, and Sirius glares at him, because Sirius never, ever lies to Remus, not anymore.

"So?" he demands, but it's quiet and grouchy and said to the Gryffindor-red carpet, ruby red, wine red, red like blood and heat and passion.

Remus steps closer to him, and stands there, awkwardly. He is a pace away, and yet they have not learnt one another yet. He has not felt the graze of Sirius's cheek against his yet, the softness of his mouth, he has not learnt the taste of him and the taste of him, waking up with salt on his lips and an ache in his throat. The ease of boyhood companionship is slipping away as Remus looks at him and sees the little things. The handsomeness of Sirius's fingers, the beat of Sirius's pulse in his throat, the bones and lines of him, the jut of his pelvis. Boyhood companionship hasn't quite fled, but the ease of knowing one another intimately has not yet begun and they are awkward in those dawning moments.

"Don't be stupid," Remus says and his mouth is drier than sand. Perhaps he can taste something that is a memory of what is to come. "You're... first, you know?"

Sirius looks up and grins, a sliding, shy smile through his hair and Remus aches.

But when I ride again into the night, my torch will shoot flames strong and bright. And my absence will remind you of how tough it is to be in love.

It had taken years. They had lost the old knack of it, co-existing. It was under darkness when they found it again, picking it up. When Remus found the age-old crack in his heart, where Sirius the boy nestled, and Sirius the man struggled to be found once again.

And Sirius filled his mouth, hot and pulsing and Sirius moaned above him, and his gasps and sighs threaded inside Remus's bones and settled there. Sirius's hands wove themselves into his hair and tugged and pulled; Sirius's hands that were bony and the skin stretched tightly across them, tattooed with odd symbols that meant something to Sirius. Sirius's hands that were older than the boy's had been, as they stroked and caressed, but hands that knew the same tricks, that brought Remus to sobbing, aching climax.

Sirius, whose back arched like a cat and whose hips rolled with the same surety, and cried aloud as he spilled, thick and searing and salty down Remus's throat and escaped from the corners of Remus's mouth. Sirius's body that was burning against his, with the old fierceness of being alive that was bright and hot and real, settling into the sheets with a contented sigh. Sirius who mumbled words into Remus's side as he fell asleep. Sirius, whose sounds echoed in Remus's mind, as Remus stroked his hair sleepily.

Sirius, whose presence in his heart made it throb with the crucifying agony of loving him. Discovering him once again, loving him once again made him crumple with the pain of the years he'd missed him, re-doubled.

And it's not what I think it's what you say, hey. And it works great for you to have your way, hey.

"How Could You." It is not a question. Remus's spine is stiffened and icy. Cold wracks him, the shivers of dislike and distaste shivering through his veins and ribboning through his mind.

"Remus, I..." Sirius protests pleading, and Remus shakes his head, cuts him off.

"You almost had me kill someone. Murder them."

"Yes." Sirius bows his head, and he is defeated. He seems smaller, shorter suddenly, the breath of confident, wicked spirit that blows through him and animates him, blown away.

"I will never, ever speak to you again," Remus says with the damning certainty of a teenage boy, cold with the atrocity of what could-have-been. Sirius lifts his head, and wet tracks across his cheeks mark what is stupid and trite to say.

"Remus..." he begs, weakly, and Remus ignores him, walking away, head high, with the taste of blood and fur and hatred in his mouth.

But if the west can be a desperate place, you search all day for just a taste of the cold, cold water.

"Sirius!" Remus shouts it, and the house echoes it back mockingly. How could he be so stupid, to leave Sirius alone in this mausoleum of silence, of the family who threw him out when Sirius's real, true -- only -- family was desperate and fighting?

"Sirius," Remus whispers softly, and he leans against the door post, without the strength to stand somehow, and looks at their bed, the sheets rumpled from that morning because Sirius never makes beds if he can help it. "Sirius, Sirius, Sirius," he says again, and his voice is thin like thread. Perhaps, if he says it often enough, the house will give him back. Surrender him, from its thick, black cloak of depressive past.

"Sirius," he says as he lays his head in the dent of Sirius's head, and smells the musk of his scent caught in the fibres of the fabric. He curls in the sheets that hold a facsimile of Sirius's shape, and clings closely to where Sirius was.

"Sirius," and Remus wants a body to hold. A warm, live body and the ability to stroke back Sirius's hair from his forehead one last time, to kiss his lips lightly and tell him firmly that it was all right. He wants to lie to him, to assure him that where he is going, he shall be all right. He wants to cradle Sirius's head in his lap, and hug limpet-like to his dead friend, so tightly that they can never, ever take him away from him.

"Fuck," Remus shouts loudly, the word a tight, brittle shout of pain that wrenches itself free from him. "Fuck, Sirius."

There is silence. The tears dribble onto the pillow that Remus hugs to his side where there is a dreadful ache of nothingness. Salt spilled.

And if you think I've gone too long, listen. The sky will sing this song as it burns up all the memories that flow like water out of me.

Sirius lay on the fresh springy grass beside the Lake edge, and dabbled his fingers in the cold, clear grey of the water. Fish darted deep below the surface, and the sun shimmered across the ripples.

His shirt was grass stained, tinged with green across the back, and one button had twisted itself off, Remus noted, as the glitter across the water caught his eyes and made him squint. Sirius's tie was half-off, and the red and gold pooled at the lake-side in a clump of reeds, rich treasure against the dark greens and olives of the plants that rustled.

"Don't you think it's odd?" Sirius drawled lazily, his voice a melodic flow of words, a pleasant sound in Remus's ears. "I touch the water here--" He dipped his little finger into the stillness of the surface, and the ripples spread, fanning out from the centre, ruffled by the breeze; "And the ripples go all the way across. Little thing here -- It becomes bigger."

He smiled at Remus comfortably, his hair spread out around his head like an ink-black aureole. "I want to be like that," he yawned, and his fingers slipped into Remus's palm, warm and strong against his own. "I want to be a ripple. A sen-sation," he strung the words out, satisfied with the sound. "Never forgotten."

The parchment curls and crumples in the grate, and the place smells of damp as the photos shrivel and disappear into ash, Peter's face grinning next to James', whose arm disappears around a sillouette, already swallowed by the fire.

It is too late to pull them out, to rescue them. Anyway, he has no need, as the rain drums against the window in a tattoo of foreboding. He can never forget.

Remus covers his face with his hands, and cries.