Fic: The Hanged Man (HP)
Title: The Hanged Man
Author: ravenclaw42
Fandom: Harry Potter
Rating: PG
Summary: From a fic-prompt meme. Prompt was "Sirius/Remus: The moment that Sirius *knows* he loves Remus (No emo!)"
Author's Notes: The image of upside-down Sirius sort of grew like a fungus into this ficlet. Attempted in the Shoebox Project style of painfully awkward S/R, which is my favorite. Title is as in the tarot card, which is usually The Fool hanging upside down, experiencing a moment of profound revelation because of his changed perspective. /incapable of unmeaningful titles
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The Hanged Man
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Sirius is hanging upside down from a staircase rail when he realizes he loves Remus.
It's an idle thought, meant platonically: The best part about this is that I know Moony will come and get me. The others'll leave me to hang. Merlin's beard, do I love Moony.
He blinks, partly in surprise at himself and partly because his eyes are watering. His brain backtracks. A thought that ought to have passed unnoticed, as most thoughts did in Sirius' doggish mind, sticks uncomfortably like stray threads on the ragged edge of a truth Sirius has never noticed before. The thought flutters and tickles the rest of his mind. He tries to shift his weight and slips down another few inches. The rope tied round his feet is getting highly uncomfortable.
All right, this rappelling idea: not his best.
But it's going to be all right. Moony is on his way. He always rescues Sirius at the last minute, tuts and gets ointment or antidote or whatever reversal charm is needed, and when Sirius is set to rights Remus goes back to his book or his essay and smiles, just a little, when Sirius regales the common room with his tales of personal Gryffindor heroism.
Sirius tries ignoring the ticklish thought. It doesn't work, which is unusual. Sirius is usually very good at forgetting things that happened five seconds ago.
He sighs, slips another inch or two, and wonders what time it is. Is Moony in class? No, library. He'll have that essay done in the next ten minutes or so. You could rotate crops by that boy, he's so punctual.
So, he thinks. Well.
He tries an experiment. It involves imagining naked girls and then imagining naked post-moonfall Remus, to prove to himself how ridiculous this passing notion is. He's positive, going into this experiment, that he knows what the outcome will be.
He's wrong. His dignity is saved by the fact that all the blood in his body is rushing to his head and can't fight gravity to get back up to his groin, but it's making itself clear that that's where it would go, if it could. His head spins, although he could blame that on his current inversion.
Okay. Okay. There's a difference between attraction and love. Sirius admits that he has appreciated male bodies before. Aesthetically, you know. He hasn't said anything. Not shame, just - James would never let him live it down.
Okay, a little bit of shame. Sirius twists in his rope snare, hideously uncomfortable. Moony needs to come soon.
The idle thought is as tangled in Sirius's head as Sirius is in this damned rope. The idle thought, not so idle anymore, tickles harder.
It's just that Moony makes Sirius feel worthwhile. Not the waste of space his family calls him. Moony made the difference between Sirius being relieved at being a non-Slytherin and Sirius being proud of being a Gryffindor. So do James and Peter and the rest, of course. But Moony looks at him sometimes, and Sirius sees that Moony is as happy as he is exasperated that Sirius is his friend, and it makes the dog inside Sirius wag its tail so hard it feels like he's shaking to pieces. Moony makes him fall to pieces.
God, this is sounding bad. Where are you, Moony? The blood's making me hallucinate and spout purple prose.
He isn't going to think about it any more. His heart is pounding, but he's positive now that it's because he's about to die of a brain hemorrhage, not because of any of this crazytalk that he is not thinking about because Moony is his friend. His male, bookish, compassionate, able-to-talk-to-girls-but-not-date-them, as-far-as-he-knew-celibate, friendly... friend. And you know, now that he thought about it, his quite probably very gay friend.
Damn. Damn, damn and more bloody damn.
Footsteps echoed above him, coming down the stairs from the direction of the library. Sirius hears a sigh as the feet reach the spot above his lovely tableau of red-faced, choking, flailing inverted Gryffindor.
"Wingardium leviosa," says Remus' voice, and an invisible force picks Sirius up, relieving the pressure of his stomach trying to squish his lungs and the burning scrape of rope around his ankles. A few seconds later Sirius is righted and untied and panting like he's run a marathon.
"Merlin's beard, I love you," says Sirius, because he has the attention span of a goldfish and no filter whatsoever. "Damn!" he spits as soon as he hears himself.
Remus doesn't even blink. "Of course you do," he says, inflecting an eye roll in his tone as if he can't be bothered to go to the trouble of actually rolling them.
Sirius is not at all good at these things. He ought to keep his mouth shut. Well, technically, he does keep his mouth shut. It just happens to be shut against Remus' mouth, suddenly, in an awkward bashing of noses and Remus' textbooks gouging into Sirius' sternum.
Remus steps back - not instantly, Sirius realizes. His eyes are a little wide. That's like hysterics from Remus. That's like rolling on the floor having a shouting fit and punching Sirius in the nose. Sirius already feels like he's been punched in the nose, of course, as well as the stomach. Luckily, he can't get any redder in the face than he already is from hanging off a staircase.
"Okay," says Remus.
"Okay," says Sirius. "Okay?"
"I," says Remus. "You look like a boiled fish, Sirius, did you know? With the sweaty and the red and the sort of... mouth thing. Yes, that."
"I just kissed you."
"Did you?"
"I meant it."
"Did you?"
"Stop calling me a fish."
"I wasn't. Just then. I was repeating myself."
"I noticed."
"So you finally noticed, then?"
Sirius blinks at the derailment from a conversation that already didn't make much sense. "Noticed what?" he asks, feeling as he did in those moments where Lily looked at him pointedly and he was sure he was supposed to know that she had changed her hair, or whitened her teeth, or something.
"That," says Remus, flailing a little with his free hand, the other white-knuckled on his books. Words fail him. Sirius worries for his health. Words never fail Remus. "That I... never mind."
"I will not never mind," says Sirius, "and don't change the subject to double negatives," he adds because he can see the gears shifting in Remus' head.
Remus re-paces the step he had taken backwards and kisses Sirius.
Slightly less awkward this time. Somehow when Sirius isn't the initiator, he still retains some brain function. He thinks: we're in public. He thinks: gravity is not working against me any more. He thinks: Shit. Bugger. Bugger bitch bum. Stop kissing me before I embarrass myself.
Moony stops kissing him suddenly, as if he's realized what he's doing. His eyes are now saucer-wide and Sirius doesn't have a scale translation for what that means in normal-person facial expressions. It probably means Moony is dying.
"You're an idiot," Remus says at last. "I'm an idiot. We're a great bloody pair of tits."
"Yes," Sirius agrees. "Please tell me we're not going to pretend this didn't happen."
"You don't want to?"
"Pretend this didn't happen?"
"No. Yes. I'm confused." Remus rubs his brow, looking to the floor for answers. "I think you're still delirious."
"I was never delirious," said Sirius. "I'm serious."
Remus looks at him. It's that look. An exasperation so joyful and loving Sirius can't stand it. At nearly the same moment, they start laughing - and then can't seem to stop.
Sirius determines later, while wheezing and wiping his eyes, that Moony is right: they're idiots. Lovable idiots, Sirius hopes, but that isn't enough to save them. He also determines that if it took them this long to figure each other out, they had better make up for lost time. Starting now.
Author: ravenclaw42
Fandom: Harry Potter
Rating: PG
Summary: From a fic-prompt meme. Prompt was "Sirius/Remus: The moment that Sirius *knows* he loves Remus (No emo!)"
Author's Notes: The image of upside-down Sirius sort of grew like a fungus into this ficlet. Attempted in the Shoebox Project style of painfully awkward S/R, which is my favorite. Title is as in the tarot card, which is usually The Fool hanging upside down, experiencing a moment of profound revelation because of his changed perspective. /incapable of unmeaningful titles
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The Hanged Man
---------
Sirius is hanging upside down from a staircase rail when he realizes he loves Remus.
It's an idle thought, meant platonically: The best part about this is that I know Moony will come and get me. The others'll leave me to hang. Merlin's beard, do I love Moony.
He blinks, partly in surprise at himself and partly because his eyes are watering. His brain backtracks. A thought that ought to have passed unnoticed, as most thoughts did in Sirius' doggish mind, sticks uncomfortably like stray threads on the ragged edge of a truth Sirius has never noticed before. The thought flutters and tickles the rest of his mind. He tries to shift his weight and slips down another few inches. The rope tied round his feet is getting highly uncomfortable.
All right, this rappelling idea: not his best.
But it's going to be all right. Moony is on his way. He always rescues Sirius at the last minute, tuts and gets ointment or antidote or whatever reversal charm is needed, and when Sirius is set to rights Remus goes back to his book or his essay and smiles, just a little, when Sirius regales the common room with his tales of personal Gryffindor heroism.
Sirius tries ignoring the ticklish thought. It doesn't work, which is unusual. Sirius is usually very good at forgetting things that happened five seconds ago.
He sighs, slips another inch or two, and wonders what time it is. Is Moony in class? No, library. He'll have that essay done in the next ten minutes or so. You could rotate crops by that boy, he's so punctual.
So, he thinks. Well.
He tries an experiment. It involves imagining naked girls and then imagining naked post-moonfall Remus, to prove to himself how ridiculous this passing notion is. He's positive, going into this experiment, that he knows what the outcome will be.
He's wrong. His dignity is saved by the fact that all the blood in his body is rushing to his head and can't fight gravity to get back up to his groin, but it's making itself clear that that's where it would go, if it could. His head spins, although he could blame that on his current inversion.
Okay. Okay. There's a difference between attraction and love. Sirius admits that he has appreciated male bodies before. Aesthetically, you know. He hasn't said anything. Not shame, just - James would never let him live it down.
Okay, a little bit of shame. Sirius twists in his rope snare, hideously uncomfortable. Moony needs to come soon.
The idle thought is as tangled in Sirius's head as Sirius is in this damned rope. The idle thought, not so idle anymore, tickles harder.
It's just that Moony makes Sirius feel worthwhile. Not the waste of space his family calls him. Moony made the difference between Sirius being relieved at being a non-Slytherin and Sirius being proud of being a Gryffindor. So do James and Peter and the rest, of course. But Moony looks at him sometimes, and Sirius sees that Moony is as happy as he is exasperated that Sirius is his friend, and it makes the dog inside Sirius wag its tail so hard it feels like he's shaking to pieces. Moony makes him fall to pieces.
God, this is sounding bad. Where are you, Moony? The blood's making me hallucinate and spout purple prose.
He isn't going to think about it any more. His heart is pounding, but he's positive now that it's because he's about to die of a brain hemorrhage, not because of any of this crazytalk that he is not thinking about because Moony is his friend. His male, bookish, compassionate, able-to-talk-to-girls-but-not-date-them, as-far-as-he-knew-celibate, friendly... friend. And you know, now that he thought about it, his quite probably very gay friend.
Damn. Damn, damn and more bloody damn.
Footsteps echoed above him, coming down the stairs from the direction of the library. Sirius hears a sigh as the feet reach the spot above his lovely tableau of red-faced, choking, flailing inverted Gryffindor.
"Wingardium leviosa," says Remus' voice, and an invisible force picks Sirius up, relieving the pressure of his stomach trying to squish his lungs and the burning scrape of rope around his ankles. A few seconds later Sirius is righted and untied and panting like he's run a marathon.
"Merlin's beard, I love you," says Sirius, because he has the attention span of a goldfish and no filter whatsoever. "Damn!" he spits as soon as he hears himself.
Remus doesn't even blink. "Of course you do," he says, inflecting an eye roll in his tone as if he can't be bothered to go to the trouble of actually rolling them.
Sirius is not at all good at these things. He ought to keep his mouth shut. Well, technically, he does keep his mouth shut. It just happens to be shut against Remus' mouth, suddenly, in an awkward bashing of noses and Remus' textbooks gouging into Sirius' sternum.
Remus steps back - not instantly, Sirius realizes. His eyes are a little wide. That's like hysterics from Remus. That's like rolling on the floor having a shouting fit and punching Sirius in the nose. Sirius already feels like he's been punched in the nose, of course, as well as the stomach. Luckily, he can't get any redder in the face than he already is from hanging off a staircase.
"Okay," says Remus.
"Okay," says Sirius. "Okay?"
"I," says Remus. "You look like a boiled fish, Sirius, did you know? With the sweaty and the red and the sort of... mouth thing. Yes, that."
"I just kissed you."
"Did you?"
"I meant it."
"Did you?"
"Stop calling me a fish."
"I wasn't. Just then. I was repeating myself."
"I noticed."
"So you finally noticed, then?"
Sirius blinks at the derailment from a conversation that already didn't make much sense. "Noticed what?" he asks, feeling as he did in those moments where Lily looked at him pointedly and he was sure he was supposed to know that she had changed her hair, or whitened her teeth, or something.
"That," says Remus, flailing a little with his free hand, the other white-knuckled on his books. Words fail him. Sirius worries for his health. Words never fail Remus. "That I... never mind."
"I will not never mind," says Sirius, "and don't change the subject to double negatives," he adds because he can see the gears shifting in Remus' head.
Remus re-paces the step he had taken backwards and kisses Sirius.
Slightly less awkward this time. Somehow when Sirius isn't the initiator, he still retains some brain function. He thinks: we're in public. He thinks: gravity is not working against me any more. He thinks: Shit. Bugger. Bugger bitch bum. Stop kissing me before I embarrass myself.
Moony stops kissing him suddenly, as if he's realized what he's doing. His eyes are now saucer-wide and Sirius doesn't have a scale translation for what that means in normal-person facial expressions. It probably means Moony is dying.
"You're an idiot," Remus says at last. "I'm an idiot. We're a great bloody pair of tits."
"Yes," Sirius agrees. "Please tell me we're not going to pretend this didn't happen."
"You don't want to?"
"Pretend this didn't happen?"
"No. Yes. I'm confused." Remus rubs his brow, looking to the floor for answers. "I think you're still delirious."
"I was never delirious," said Sirius. "I'm serious."
Remus looks at him. It's that look. An exasperation so joyful and loving Sirius can't stand it. At nearly the same moment, they start laughing - and then can't seem to stop.
Sirius determines later, while wheezing and wiping his eyes, that Moony is right: they're idiots. Lovable idiots, Sirius hopes, but that isn't enough to save them. He also determines that if it took them this long to figure each other out, they had better make up for lost time. Starting now.