Wildflowers and Weeds (Shakespeare's Garden remix)

No more be grieved at that which thou hast done:

Roses have thorns, and silver fountains mud;

Clouds and eclipses stain both moon and sun,

And loathsome canker lives in sweetest bud.

-- Sonnet 35

Nights like this, only the sheer power of will abetted by momentum and gravity forces one foot after the other up the stairs, left-right, left-right, bringing him home to baked beans blackening on the stove and underdone potatoes languishing in the oven. When Sirius promises to make him dinner, Remus never has the heart to tell him no, because he gets that doglike look of disappointment, and he cocks his head, confounded, in that way of his that suggests he simply doesn’t understand. So Remus always agrees, and when he arrives home, later each time, all he can do is sigh resignedly at the mess, and at the meal he cannot afford to pitch which is alternately burnt or raw.

He fixes what he can and opens a bottle of screw-top Tesco wine. It's flabby and too sweet, but it’s cheaper than any wizard wines, and it doesn’t have quite the same flat aftertaste of shame. He has a second glass, and then a third as he cleans because Sirius has already gone off to bed, glowing with Remus’ praise for cooking dinner. It never occurs to him that he cocks up everything he cooks, or that he has once again stuck Remus with the dishes.

By midnight, Remus is getting quietly bladdered and knows he’ll have a headache in the morning. He pads into the bedroom cautiously, listening for the whuffs and snuffles telling him Sirius is asleep, but what he hears instead is shallow breathing in and out of Sirius’ mouth, and what he sees is the glint of two eyes wide in the dark beneath the sharp shine of his smile, a smile that does not understand no.

So Remus stops saying it; it’s less of an effort just to roll on his stomach and lie there while Sirius fucks him, feeling more and more resentful of the desperation, the clumsy-needy way Sirius touches him, and flinching at the muffled declarations Sirius makes into the crook of his neck when he comes.

Afterwards, he lies half-awake and sticky in the unmoving air, semen crusting between his legs and Sirius’ limbs a dead, hot weight atop his own. When he finally falls asleep, his dreams are thick with misgivings and the moon.

* * *

Time, for Remus, has always been measured in phases: waning, waxing, full. He is accustomed to thinking of everything in terms of the moon's sickening rise, devastating peak, and slow recession. Lately, it’s been different. Lately, he has started to think of time simply in terms of then and now.

Then, James and Lily touched often, and lovingly. They touched playfully and with desire, and Remus was more than a little jealous, even if he knew Sirius would touch him the same way if he asked, and often tried to even when he doesn’t. Now, James and Lily still touch, but less often and anxiously. Only when they touch Harry is the joy undiluted, and Remus does not want to be touched at all.

He goes home edgy and disoriented but still feeling the imprint of Harry’s moist, pudgy hands grasping at his fingers, and the sick swirl of foreboding that sours his stomach is more than just the taunting gibbous moon.

* * *

Sirius finds Severus' letters. He doesn’t know the code they’d used, but even if he did, the only thing he would see, the only thing he would understand from the precise and finicky cursive in deep green ink is that Remus has been communicating with the enemy. He looks up, and again his rucked brow and injured eyes and the dazed tilting of his head resemble nothing if not a dog that’s been kicked and doesn't understand why.

And Remus can’t tell him. Can’t say no, it isn’t what you think…no, it’s not that… because he has sworn to Dumbledore he will say nothing. If he says one word, Severus will die. So he says nothing, and Severus lives, and he tells himself that the churning pain of guilt and the sharp teeth of dishonesty are no worse than what he feels every month, no worse at all. When he steps out the door with his bags in hand and sees Sirius’ look of helpless confusion turn to bitter betrayal, he knows it is the biggest lie he has ever told.

)0(

Alack, 'tis he! Why, He was met even now

As mad as the vex'd sea; singing aloud;

Crown'd with rank fumiter and furrow-weeds,

With bur-docks, hemlock, nettles, cuckoo-flowers,

Darnel, and all the idle weeds that grow

In our sustaining corn.

--King Lear, Act IV, scene iv

Eyes, piercing and grey or yellow and round, draw him out of dreams no matter how deeply into them he has fallen. He opens his own eyes, swollen, red, and crusty with the silt of inadequate sleep and turns away on the lumpy mattress but he can still feel the eyes on his back. Remus wishes he could ask Dumbledore to put him somewhere else, but he can’t: the scent of day-old take-away wafting from the bin reminds him not only that he is famished, but that it is Sirius who pays for his meals. Remus can’t decide if it’s better when the eyes belong to Padfoot, who watches him with focused anticipation, or when they belong to Sirius, whose mind is still as storm-tossed as the North Sea. After a while, he decides he prefers the silently staring dog to the half-mad and hungry man whose eyes flicker hotly when he emerges wet and towel-wrapped from the shower, and he starts bringing his clothes with him into the bathroom, dressing blindly and alone, cloaked in steam.

* * *

Days are better, if only because they are outside and Sirius has other things to look at. When they talk, it is only of Hogwarts because everything else is forbidden, forgotten, or too painful to discuss. Some days, Remus thinks he’ll go mad from revisiting every single bloody day of his school years, but he bites back his frustration; after all, what else does Sirius have? The Dementors took most of his own memories, and trapped alone with Remus, who pointedly ignores every look and every overture, he can’t very well make many new ones, can he?

Remus learns to do his errands and his idle bookshop meanderings on his own time because Sirius inevitably becomes distracted, transforming into Padfoot and chasing plastic bags down narrow sidestreets until both of them are lost. Remus will hunt him down, finding him at last in a park or someone's garden, blissfully oblivious to the time because there is just too much fun to be had with one’s nose in a rubbish bin, so many interesting smells to roll in and birds to bark at, and he just can’t help himself. “We had fun, though, right?” he asks, his face, his posture, everything about him begging for approval, and Remus nods as his heart contracts painfully in his chest.

Sirius pulls up wildflowers and weeds with a careless enthusiasm Remus associates with Padfoot. There's less of a difference between the two now. When he bends to pluck cuckoo-flowers and thistles and conium with his long, bony fingers, Remus sees Padfoot, low to the ground and digging with undimmed delight. Soon the flat is strewn with foliage. When Remus tells him that silk lasts longer, he is pinned by an irritable scowl and wonders what he's missed.

* * *

They wash dishes like Muggles, Remus scrubbing, Sirius drying, because it takes longer and occupies their hands. It fixes their eyes to dishes that threaten to slip and break in the sink, permits a silence that would be excruciating if there weren’t the squeak of wet fingers on porcelain, the rush of warm water through the faucet. Having to scrub at the stubborn dregs of coffee on the bottom of a mug means having an excuse not to acknowledging the persistence of Sirius' stare.

But then comes the errant splash of something slipping through his fingers, and the warm splatter of soapy water on his cheek and when Remus raises his arm to wipe it away with the back of his wrist, it happens. Sirius' hands are on his face, trembling over the contours of his cheekbones and the terrain of scars and stubble and then he is pulling Remus into a kiss. Remus' eyes go wide, cannot close against the shock of it, the impact of familiarity. If he had wondered what Sirius tasted like now he would have imagined fermented desperation: hunger, stale coffee and cigarette smoke with a top note of whiskey. But he doesn't. He tastes just like he did when he was twenty years old. He is still wild and reckless and withholds nothing, and when his lanky arms flail around Remus' body, they cling with the same clumsy-needy strength of the twenty-year-old that in so many ways he still is.

Remus barely has time to swipe his wet hands over a dishtowel before Sirius grasps one and pulls it into his trousers, wraps Remus' fingers around his cock. It is hard and straining and violent with its wanting; it has been waiting for this touch for so many years.

Remus wants to push him away, but doesn't. He can't, and he doesn't want to think about why when the taste of lost years is flooding his mouth. The rhythm is the same: bodies keep their own time, their own tides. "Stop this," he says, but Sirius has never understood no, and when he comes, quickly and urgently with his eyes locked on Remus, Remus wonders resentfully why Sirius thinks he knows him better than he knows himself.

)0(

Here's flowers for you;

Hot lavender, mints, savoury, marjoram;

The marigold, that goes to bed wi' the sun

And with him rises weeping: these are flowers

Of middle summer, and I think they are given

To men of middle age.

-- The Winter's Tale, Act IV, scene iv

When he apparates back from the Continent, he finds hairs on his pillow. Some are long and fine, some are shorter and wooly-coarse, but all are black and all unmistakably Sirius'. The sheets smell slightly stale and faintly of dog, but Remus is too exhausted to change them. He is too exhausted to do anything but sleep and hope he does not dream of where he's been or what he's done or whatever he will be asked to do next.

When he wakes, Sirius' arms trap him like a cage and his instinct is to snarl and throw off the uninvited restraint but he lies quietly instead, hoping that Sirius is still sleeping and doesn't see him gritting his teeth. He's not asleep, though, never is when Remus is at home, and emotions flicker one by one across his face: anxiety, concern, confusion, hope. "Bad dreams," Remus tells him and watches his face settle on hope.

He waits faithfully at the door to the garden that he is forbidden to enter, stands patiently just behind the threshold between his own stifling cage and the sunlight from which he is exiled, and watches Remus pick wildflowers and weeds. He savors them with his full body, closing his eyes before he leans in and deeply inhales the verdure, delicately curling fingers around their pulpy stems as he reverently arranges them in vases. For a moment, his face is beautiful again, the careworn lines erased in a moment of fleeting peace, and Remus knows with sickening certainty that it's because Sirius thinks that Remus picks these flowers for him.

* * *

Today, lips reflexively pucker at the tannic draw of tea left too long to steep. Yesterday, it was barely more than water. Sirius likes to brew it himself, but he tends to forget what he's about and either the leaves loiter in the water until it is brackish and bitter, or they're barely submersed at all. Neither of them says anything about it, and they drink it regardless, long after it goes cold. It is an appropriate accompaniment to the day-old scones Molly has left for them, which crumble as they eat them in front of the fireplace on a Persian rug older than the house itself. Remus allows himself to be held because when he does, Sirius doesn't ask him questions. He trains himself not to balk at fingers apprehensively stroking, offering comfort for old aches he has not asked for, and probing new wounds he doesn't want to discuss. He closes his eyes, squeezes them tight against the sting of tears and tells himself it's only the smoke from the hearth.

Later, after the sun has vanished and another day has passed with loose ends untied and appointments not kept and his own work unfinished, Remus is still lying pressed against the threadbare rug, his lips pursed irritably. He reminds himself that it is unfair to blame Sirius for not thinking about his obligations, because what does Sirius have but this? He has nothing to do, nowhere to go, no one asks much of anything from him these days. Remus drowns his guilt in a glut of kisses, in the swipe of a tongue over protuberant collarbones and the ghosting of lips on a pale neck. He tries not to listen to Sirius' little noises of contentment because they only make him feel worse. He closes his eyes again, keeps them closed so often now, and focuses on the familiar scent of Sirius' skin.

Sirius responds with all his predictable vehemence and soon the scone crumbs beneath Remus' back have been reduced to dust and ground into the warp and weft of the carpet. The fire is dying, the air outside is crisp, but they throw their own heat and Remus does not feel the chill. All he feels is the wet, tight heat of Sirius' mouth, the eager glide of hands that want to touch and he is pulled over the edge, drawn down hard, thrashing as he comes down Sirius' throat, grunting and jerking when Sirius bathes him with his tongue. It's too easy, in the gloaming haze that lingers, to return the favor. Remus does, after all, know how Sirius wants to be touched, how he wants to be tasted. It doesn't take long, and when he comes, saying yes, gods, that feels so good, yes, oh God I love you, I love you so much, Remus is relieved that he has Sirius' cock in his mouth because then he doesn't have to answer.

)0(

There's rosemary, that's for remembrance; pray,

love, remember: and there is pansies. that's for thoughts…

…There's fennel for you, and columbines: there's rue

for you; and here's some for me: we may call it

herb-grace o' Sundays: O you must wear your rue with

a difference. There's a daisy: I would give you

some violets, but they withered all when my father

died: they say he made a good end.

-- Hamlet, Act V, scene iv

The house has turned on him. It is dark and claustrophobic as a tomb, the sepulchral silence thick as the dust on the heavy velvet curtains and the grime blackening every windowpane. Remus has given up trying to trick the light in.

The flowers are all dead now, every last one of them; the Verdant Charm stopped working long ago, though for a while Remus kept intoning the words each day like an orison.

At last, he admits defeat, dumping out the vases on the floor in front of the fireplace, watching what was left of the water darkening over the Persian rug. When he looks at the red and blue Mashhad, he can still remember the texture of its threads on his naked back. The swampy smell of decay rises from slimy stems; rue and columbine and hemlock and violets, all are uniformly colorless and brittle.

The lamps gutter one by one and he cannot relight them. No one culls the weeds from the garden anymore and Remus can't be bothered. Sirius isn't here to breath them in and arrange them in vases; there just isn't a point. On the day he returns to 12 Grimmauld Place, which is Narcissa's now, no longer a haven, just a cursed old house with windows that rattle and doxies in the curtains, Kreacher sneers with malevolent glee even as he offers Remus the sword to behead him. Remus looks at him without expression and says, simply, "Avada Kedavra" and then "Incendio," and chucks the ashes in the loo. It was easier done that way. Whatever souvenirs he had left in his nasty little lair would be food for the rats, and what they didn't want, the house would reclaim in its own way. There would be nothing left of him at all, not even a memory. It doesn't seem quite fair that he should be so lucky.

Remus is a stranger here now; nothing belongs to him. But then, he thinks, nothing ever did. His bed, his time, his body… all of that had belonged to Sirius, hadn't it? And now…

Now, he can't even stand to touch himself; he feels he doesn't have the right. At night he dreams of Sirius and of an altered landscape where he returns every touch, every look, with startling fervor, and he has never flinched and never winced and never shut his eyes, but each morning he wakes alone in stained sheets that pinion him like a Full Body Bind, and the bitter taste in his mouth is the taste of his own perfidy. He wants to weep but his throat is parched, and when his mouth bends in a grimace, his dry lips crack and he tastes blood.

The days are still bright but growing shorter. The air smells dry and fusty, like dead flowers. The ragged groan of his own feet on the warped floorboards startles him and he turns, knocking over the last of Sirius' vases. Frantic, he grasps at the broken pieces, feels the stagnant water slopping through his fingers as he tries to fit them back together. He reaches for fragments of Sirius' flowers but they disintegrate in his hands, crumbled leaves and husks of blossoms sticking to his fingers. There is nothing left, nothing left but Remus and his incantation: "I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you."

His magic is useless here. Even in this room, cavernous, high-ceilinged and cold, his words ring out once and are devoured by the walls, by the ancient Persian rug, by the velvet curtains. He wipes his hands on them, leaving behind little bits of wildflowers and weeds, and rubs away the soot on the windowpane until he can see outside, into the light.

He stares and does not blink. When he feels the tears start, he tells himself it's only the sun.