Commentary: Remix Redux Fic: Perhaps Still Untitled (remix)
Perhaps Still Untitled: Only Happy When It Rains Remix
Italics are my comments, randomly thrown in. Colored text in each paragraph is whatever I'm going on about in the comments themselves.
So. Introductory remarks: This story causes me pain. It caused me lots and lots of pain before writing it, it caused me even more while I struggled to write it (it came to a point where I simply said 'fuck it,' embraced my disgruntled self and sat on a rock in the lake and wrote there, as I got rained on) and it causes me pain even now, for reasons that will be expanded upon as we go along. So, yeah. Fun stuff.
Perhaps Still Untitled (Only Happy When It Rains remix)
Rain rocks my socks. Utmostly; all types of it do, from faint ugly drizzle to tropical rainstorms in the middle of nowhere.
So, I chose to write about rain. And because we were remixing and there’s a fantastic Garbage song with this same title I went ahead and ‘remixed’ to it. Only that not quite, as the song is a lot darker than either my or Sirius’ love of rain.
narie_the_waitress
Sirius will show up the second week of July, bringing with him horror stories about how Mundungus Fletcher tried to redeem himself in the eyes of the law by handing him over to the Aurors, and even more terrifying tales of Arabella Figg, her cats and her cooking, if indeed it can be called such.
The future tense... ah, the future tense. After far too many beginnings and three-pages and ‘oh god I hate this remix and I want to crawl into a hole and die and what the hell prompted me to sign up anyhow,’ I thought about the future tense. I’d tried the past, I’d tried the present, I’d tried assorted points of view and approaches and given up on all of them, until I woke up one morning with something similar to this sentence in my head. And from there, on we went...
He will also have rain clouds on his tail, and Remus will jokingly tell him that it must be the universe’s attempt at compensating for the way he looks - and smells. Sirius will smirk at the comment, and when the skies open up later that night, he will transform into Padfoot and run around the garden carelessly, getting muddy and dirty all over again.
“I was planning on letting you have the bed,” Remus will tell the soggy dog when he comes back inside. ‘But you remember how hard it is to get the smell of wet dog out of bed sheets, don’t you?”
Shaking himself, droplets of water flying everywhere, Sirius will change back to his human form. “I’ll have to shower again, then” he’ll say, straightening, and with half a smile make for the bathroom, reappearing some time later with damp hair and wearing a set of borrowed robes that will hang loosely from his nearly skeletal frame.
They’ll sit together in silence, and while Remus reads books or simply thinks, Sirius will gaze out the window, at the night sky and its intermittent stars, or maybe at some other equally abused romantic object.
“I’m glad you don’t live near the sea anymore, Moony,” he’ll say, and not explain his remark. They’ll go to bed later, Remus warm and comfortable in his room; Sirius in the sofa, curled up as the big black dog.
I can’t quite decide if it’s because of the much-toted nightmares from Azkaban or simply because it’s more comfortable to sleep on a sofa as a big black dog. But I’d lean towards the latter, I really don’t like horrid-nightmare-ridden!Sirius, even if I admit that it’s a possibility. But it doesn’t sit well with me.
They will live like this for a week, passing the time in a strange, almost companionable silence. The three times a sudden summer storm surprises them, Sirius will drop whatever he is doing at the time and transform into Padfoot, rush outside and chase his tail in the rain, barking happily. Afterwards, when the downpour ceases and he comes back inside he will inevitably reek of wet dog.
-
Before their seven days of living together in near silence are over, they will already have gotten used to this routine of sorts, wherein Remus carries on with life and occasionally lifts his eyes from whatever he is doing only to find Sirius either asleep somewhere in the sun or dithering around the house as if they’ve always lived together.
“Moony,” Sirius’ll say every once in a while, treating the nickname with unsettling reverence. “C’mere,” where ‘here’ will inevitably be the location of his latest discovery - a new book by an old author, or an old book by a new author, or some strange cooking contraption... anything, really, that catches his attention by virtue of being unfamiliar, or that feels like a new part of Remus, whom he’ll desperately be trying to relearn.
Sirius has these moments of awkwardness every once in a while; it’s that childlike sense of ill-fit when visiting a stranger’s house and you’re not quite sure what to do with yourself, and what you can and cannot touch.
This particular time it’ll be a leaf, which he’ll have found resting on one of the shelves lining the walls. It’ll be yellowish, and look out of place because it’s July, and leaves do not fall until autumn comes.
“James gave it to me,” Remus will offer by way of explanation as Sirius holds it up inquiringly.
“Why’d you keep it?” Sirius’ll ask after a few moments of shocked silence, that something so old and fragile has survived so long.
Remus’ll think before answering, looking Sirius evenly in the eye. “I used to fancy him, I suppose - didn’t we all? - and after he died.... It was the last bit of him, of them, left, and maybe if I kept it alive he’d come back someday.”
If they did it was fully platonic, but from the original I got a very clear feel of unrequited affection, and I didn’t feel like neglecting it. It’s irksome, when True Love blossoms between Sirius and Remus because they both wake up one morning and realize that they are Meant For Each Other, so I like all these permutations a lot better.
Of course, only if in the long run it’s S/R. :) But you knew that already.
“That’s daft, Moony,” Sirius will reply casually, as if he were twenty. “Not that I-” he’ll stop himself and start over. “We’ll find Peter.” he’ll amend, ire flashing in his eyes. “He’ll pay,” and they’ll fall back into silence again, until Sirius breaks it some time later, as they eat dinner.
I imagine their convivency must have been, despite all appearances to the contrary, rather tense underneath the surface. Sure, we’re friends, we get along just fine etc etc, but that does not make the fact that we’re cooped up together in the middle of nowhere any less awkward, or the fact that we haven’t seen each other for fourteen years any better...
“But really, like that bird in that fairy tale of Lily’s she used to tell Harry? The one who, eh... knit, to get her brothers back? I worry about you sometimes, Moony. Next thing you’ll tell me you didn’t speak to anyone for twelve years.”
This whole paragraph is casual and offhand, but once I thought of it I really wanted to work it into the story. Because for all we know Remus did not speak to anyone for 12 years; and the Remus in the original certainly seemed to have a notable attachment to the leaf; he says there that he kept it because part of him hoped that indeed, maybe he could bring James and Lily back to life just by keeping the leaf itself alive.
I think Sirius would have found that ridiculous, that sort of displacement, especially after the penance he’d been paying. If Remus had indeed chosen to go 12 years without speaking, he wouldn’t understand it, it would make no sense to him as a punishment.
Personally, I have issues with the biology and magic involved in keeping it alive, so I deadened a bit.
Dumbledore will Floo soon; they’ll have moved to Grimmauld Place by the end of next week, but their lives will not return to this lulling calm until the middle of September, with all the children gone to school and Molly and Arthur back at the Burrow.
-
The first time it rains, when it’s just the two of them in the house in London, Sirius will once again drop everything and Padfoot will lop down the stairs, any semblance of grace abandoned for the sake of expediency. Past his mother’s portrait and into the kitchen he’ll run, through the small door at the back that opens to an equally small patch of soil, used long ago by the family’s house-elves to grow both aromatic herbs and obscure potion ingredients.
The Black House is modeled, entirely, after the only two British houses I’ve ever actually been inside of, which sort of followed the same general floor plan, even if the yards I actually were visited were actually larger.
After so many years of abandon it’ll be overgrown, covered in weeds and wild thorny bushes, not quite as large as Sirius remembers it. There’ll hardly be enough room for Padfoot to run around, but he’ll try it nonetheless, giving up after five minutes of unsuccessfully chasing his tail in the falling drizzle, resignedly changing back into his human self. He’ll go back into the house reeking of wet dog, but Remus won’t say anything about it, because by then he’ll be the only one allowing Sirius his little comforts, even if he doesn’t understand the reasons behind them.
-
“I love the rain, you know,” Sirius’ll tell Remus some day early in October, while an autumn storm rages outside, heavy drops beating against the windowpanes. “The sound of it.”
Remus’ll be just about to say that yes, he remembers very well how much Sirius loves the rain, as well as the subsequent attacks of pneumonia that followed every time he got it in his head to go flying in a downpour, when Sirius will close his eyes and continue, voice markedly quieter. “It drowned the waves,” he’ll explain. “The only time there was anything to hear other than the sea, and the scre-. Every time it rained I’d feel better - saner.
I knew I wanted to write this scene a few drafts before this one. What’s more, having fallen in love with the idea of it, it forced me to write all however-many-years of shared history Sirius and Remus have, but in the end I settled for three sentences. There were a couple of attempts at telling the whole story from Sirius’ POV, and also a abortive attempt at a quick sketch of the scene where Sirius gets the Daily Prophet from Cornelius Fudge, while in Azkaban, and sees Peter. Of course, it would have been raining that day.
But in the end, I abandoned it all for the sake of mood. Because, you know, mood. :)
“I think I’m crazy,” he’ll finish, then turn to look at Remus. “Do you?”
“No,” Remus will reply, hesitatingly coming closer and dropping an arm around his friend’s shoulders.
“But it never goes away,” Sirius will retort, sounding ten and scared. “Sometimes I close my eyes and listen for the waves, and can’t believe they’re not there. Can’t believe I’m not there. When it’s dark, I just...”
Remus’ll squeeze his shoulder, tenderly. They’ll have never spoken about this before, they won’t speak about it afterwards either. “Oh, Sirius...”
Somehow, I don’t see Sirius as having too many moments of openness about these things...
They’ll fall silent again, sit motionless for a bit, Remus’ arm still around Sirius, fingers softly massaging his friend’s shoulder. “There was a window - narrow slit, really - and I’d search for rain clouds.”
Movie canon! Movie canon!
“Did it rain often?”
“Not enough,” Sirius will say with what can only be a smirk, or maybe a grimace. “It stormed, in the summer. Kept track of the seasons that way.”
I’ve no idea of what the weather out at sea is, as I’ve always lived inland, but summer storms are a must, as far as I’m concerned, and there really is something about them, and the stillness in the air, that makes them so easy to tease apart from any other sort of storm.
-
I don’t like this section, as it is vehemently at odds with the style in the rest of the story. But I needed to get back to the original (which this is a key part of), as I felt I was straying away and writing not so much a remix as a ‘loosely inspired by’ story. I could think of no better way to do it.
The thing was, in school, they used to sleep together, to fuck each other. But only in the darkness, where the unpredictability of every thrust, the erratic nature of their grips, made it all much more enticing that simply having a plain affair, or a normal relationship. Sirius claimed to like the darkness, saying it had ‘depthlessness,’ whatever that was, while Remus simply claimed to like the darkness, period, never giving away his reasons but collecting the secrets it told him all the while.
It was a decent enough arrangement; for all that they could not see one another’s faces in the middle of the night they could look each other in the morning without any awkwardness, operating on the twisted logic that if they had not seen it, it had not really happened. Worked fine, until Sirius started claiming to have fallen in love.
Back then, Remus said that he’d rather they accept that they were sixteen and not quite sure of what love meant. Sirius disagreed. He knew what love was, he said, because he was in love with Remus. And it wasn’t as if he’d been in love ever since they were eleven and met on the train; that was a ridiculous and preposterous notion, and besides, Sirius had loathed all of his housemates for a long time, until James had glared and beaten some sense into him.
I loathe love at first sight where Sirius and Remus are concerned, because you know, Sirius is an insufferable, dark-haired version of Draco Malfoy for most of his first year.
... God, I’m really pushing an agenda here, aren’t I?
“No,” he used to tell Remus. “We’re friends, we’ve always been friends and I love you now. I know it, and I believe it,” he’d say, sounding oddly passionate.
And because Sirius liked to say ‘I love you’ not when they were tangled in one another (and in sweaty bed sheets) or in the silent darkness afterwards (when he said many other foolish things) but at random, unexpected and surprisingly soft moments during the day, Remus ended up believing him, and in his love.
Living together now, it’ll be the same after a while, the quiet acceptance of a love that will not quite start out as such.
No grand passions here. It’s all subdued. Which you know, goes with the title, because it’s a subtle love you can’t put a name to, Hence perhaps still untitled.
Only that I just made that up. So, you know, total crap :)
-
After many months of suffering and struggling I finally made it down here, and even started this scene; I can’t remember where exactly I stopped, but the last scene and bits of this one were written late at night while being godawfully drunk, with the help of my friend Deanna, who was not drunk but certainly acted like it. I had to type virtually every word five times before getting it right, and even that did not save me from having to edit the next morning (the day the story was due, even), but actually, most of the prose stuck.
It’ll happen like this:
Remus will be in the kitchen, sorting through some papers for the Order; Sirius’ll be upstairs in his mother’s old room, feeding Buckbeak. At some point Remus’ll get thirsty, decide that the sound of the wind outside somehow makes him want to drink tea. He’ll fill the kettle with water and touch the tip of his wand to it.
Ah, Remus and a kettle. That’s certainly his OTP...
The whistling, or maybe the fact that he’ll have just run out of rats, will draw Sirius down from the attic and into the kitchen, just in time for Remus to pour him a cup while he washes his bloodied hands in the sink. Remus’ll return his attention to the parchment in front of him, Sirius will hold the mug in both hands and glare at it for a few moments as if it holds the answer to all the secrets in the universe, then take a sip and make a face as he scalds his tongue.
That’s such a me Sirius thing to do...
Cursing under his breath, Sirius will lean forward, tea cup still cradled in both hands, and read over Remus’ shoulder. His eyes will be met with some stuffy document or another, dull and repetitive but he will nonetheless ask “what are you reading?”
“A report,” Remus will answer, and take a sip of his own tea before it gets lukewarm, something he has never been able to stand.
“Well, yes. What about, I meant.”
“Not quite sure - I keep on getting distracted, it’s too poorly written.”
“Oh,” Sirius will say, and offer an apologetic smile. “Want help?” he’ll continue, eyeing the pile of parchment in front of Remus and longing to make himself useful, for a change.
“Suit yourself,” Remus’ll reply, and clear a space on the table for Sirius to finally put his tea cup down.
“Do we have any cream?” Sirius’ll ask, after taking another sip of his tea and grimacing at the bitter aftertaste.
Symbolism, symbolism! Sort of, anyhow! The original story has Sirius not remembering that he takes cream with his own tea, but that just depressed me too much (this rewrite is, in my opinion, distressingly more cheerful than the original, and that’s saying something), so I made him remember, also because the image of a cup of tea being lightened (and made more opaque, but kindly ignore that) by cream was too tempting even for me to pass it up.
“Eh...” Remus will trail off for a moment as he thinks. “I believe you finished it yesterday. I’ll get some tomorrow.”
“Tea isn’t the same without it,” Sirius’ll complain, and pretend to shudder. With one hand he’ll grab the top-most roll of parchment from the pile and with the other he’ll reach for the sugar, distracted adding spoonful after spoonful to his cup, apparently unaware of his actions until Remus stills his hand by placing his own over it.
From here on it all goes to hell. I had no idea of what I was doing, just that I knew where I wanted to get, to the ending (which, as it turns out, is somewhat of an in-joke, only that we actually made it work. Sort of) and that, by god, the journey was proving to be exceedingly painful.
“I think that’s quite enough sugar...” he’ll say, arching an eyebrow.
Sirius’ll look down at his cup, take in the surrounding ring of white and shrug. “Probably,” he’ll snort. Then he’ll raise his eyes to meet Remus’ gaze; they’ll drift from his face to their hands, and back. “Moony,” he’ll say, and trail off.
Remus’ hand won’t move. All of Remus will be still, in fact, save for his eyes, which will trace a line from Sirius’ eyes down to his to the hollows of his cheeks, and then linger too long on his lips. He’ll watch intently as Sirius moves closer, their foreheads almost touching, and he won’t react when Sirius presses his dry lips against his own, or when Sirius bonelessly slumps forward, their foreheads now pressing against each other before they kiss again, longer this time.
I suck most massively at writing kisses; this was all written with my friend Deanna looking over my shoulder and telling me what the characters were doing, step by step.
“I can’t believe you forgot to buy cream yesterday,” Sirius will say afterwards, as if the last five minutes have not happened, and smirk. “I’d have thought you’d remember how much I like it.”
And things will go on from there. It’ll be very different from before, because where Sirius used to love the darkness, now he will hate it, rightfully claiming to have had enough of it in his life. Where he used to be experienced and hungry he’ll be awkward and hesitant, at least until his long-forgotten hunger flares up again, and he remembers the way they used to fit together, all angry thrusts and grabs, because they knew no better way.
It’ll be a pleasant surprise, discovering they fit equally well under the rancid light of the house, their eyes actually focused on one another, their hands and mouths softer and tamer after all this time.
-
It will rain on Halloween, and Sirius will stalk through the house opening as many windows as possible to let in the sound. Once done, he’ll curl up as Padfoot next to the window in his mother’s old parlor, and listen to the water falling outside. It will be a fantastic thunderstorm, with enough lightning and thunder to satisfy even the most demanding of spectators.
Upon rereading I realize that there are too many thunderstorms in this story. My bad, really, but again, this scene called for one, and not only because it’s also raining on the original on this day.
“I made tea,” Remus will murmur some time later while entering the room, a laden tray floating in front of him.
Padfoot will raise his head, whine inquisitively and look at him, then return his attention the window. Changing back, he’ll cross his legs, still on the floor, still facing the open window. “You steeped it too long. I can tell from here,” he’ll complain without turning.
“For your taste, maybe,” Remus’ll reply. “But I bought cream,” and he’ll pass Sirius a cup of unsweetened tea, gently directing the tray to a table, then lowering himself onto the ragged carpet.
Uh, more of the same symbolism. This has got to be one of the first times I attempt symbolism with a steady hand....
However, there’s no hidden depth to it being Remus who bought the cream. As the only one who can go shopping, the task fell to him by default.
“About time,” Sirius will say, frowning at the dark liquid. “I still don’t understand how you can drink that stuff. Pass it over, will you?.”
Remus will watch with morbid fascination as Sirius ruins a perfectly good cup of tea by adding cream until it is a dull shade, faded and uniform and disturbingly light.
“It’s good to know you don’t like darkness anymore,” he’ll comment.
“Had enough of it, haven’t I? Besides, I believe in a thing called love,” Sirius’ll reply, finally turning away from the window to face him.
Dear god, the ending. I cannot read the ending. It makes me wince and choke and want to curl up and die, and also wonder how the hell people think it’s good. I mean, it worked fine at 2.30 AM when being rather drunk, but even then there was somewhat iffy about it.
It’s not so much Remus’ line that irks me, as much as the whole; it was getting to the point of desperation and Deanna was about to throttle me for being so damned recalcitrant and stubborn and thus the ending.
Which, in case you missed it, is a very very thinly veiled reference to a band and a song. But I’m not saying anything else, because god....
Italics are my comments, randomly thrown in. Colored text in each paragraph is whatever I'm going on about in the comments themselves.
So. Introductory remarks: This story causes me pain. It caused me lots and lots of pain before writing it, it caused me even more while I struggled to write it (it came to a point where I simply said 'fuck it,' embraced my disgruntled self and sat on a rock in the lake and wrote there, as I got rained on) and it causes me pain even now, for reasons that will be expanded upon as we go along. So, yeah. Fun stuff.
Perhaps Still Untitled (Only Happy When It Rains remix)
Rain rocks my socks. Utmostly; all types of it do, from faint ugly drizzle to tropical rainstorms in the middle of nowhere.
So, I chose to write about rain. And because we were remixing and there’s a fantastic Garbage song with this same title I went ahead and ‘remixed’ to it. Only that not quite, as the song is a lot darker than either my or Sirius’ love of rain.
narie_the_waitress
Sirius will show up the second week of July, bringing with him horror stories about how Mundungus Fletcher tried to redeem himself in the eyes of the law by handing him over to the Aurors, and even more terrifying tales of Arabella Figg, her cats and her cooking, if indeed it can be called such.
The future tense... ah, the future tense. After far too many beginnings and three-pages and ‘oh god I hate this remix and I want to crawl into a hole and die and what the hell prompted me to sign up anyhow,’ I thought about the future tense. I’d tried the past, I’d tried the present, I’d tried assorted points of view and approaches and given up on all of them, until I woke up one morning with something similar to this sentence in my head. And from there, on we went...
He will also have rain clouds on his tail, and Remus will jokingly tell him that it must be the universe’s attempt at compensating for the way he looks - and smells. Sirius will smirk at the comment, and when the skies open up later that night, he will transform into Padfoot and run around the garden carelessly, getting muddy and dirty all over again.
“I was planning on letting you have the bed,” Remus will tell the soggy dog when he comes back inside. ‘But you remember how hard it is to get the smell of wet dog out of bed sheets, don’t you?”
Shaking himself, droplets of water flying everywhere, Sirius will change back to his human form. “I’ll have to shower again, then” he’ll say, straightening, and with half a smile make for the bathroom, reappearing some time later with damp hair and wearing a set of borrowed robes that will hang loosely from his nearly skeletal frame.
They’ll sit together in silence, and while Remus reads books or simply thinks, Sirius will gaze out the window, at the night sky and its intermittent stars, or maybe at some other equally abused romantic object.
“I’m glad you don’t live near the sea anymore, Moony,” he’ll say, and not explain his remark. They’ll go to bed later, Remus warm and comfortable in his room; Sirius in the sofa, curled up as the big black dog.
I can’t quite decide if it’s because of the much-toted nightmares from Azkaban or simply because it’s more comfortable to sleep on a sofa as a big black dog. But I’d lean towards the latter, I really don’t like horrid-nightmare-ridden!Sirius, even if I admit that it’s a possibility. But it doesn’t sit well with me.
They will live like this for a week, passing the time in a strange, almost companionable silence. The three times a sudden summer storm surprises them, Sirius will drop whatever he is doing at the time and transform into Padfoot, rush outside and chase his tail in the rain, barking happily. Afterwards, when the downpour ceases and he comes back inside he will inevitably reek of wet dog.
-
Before their seven days of living together in near silence are over, they will already have gotten used to this routine of sorts, wherein Remus carries on with life and occasionally lifts his eyes from whatever he is doing only to find Sirius either asleep somewhere in the sun or dithering around the house as if they’ve always lived together.
“Moony,” Sirius’ll say every once in a while, treating the nickname with unsettling reverence. “C’mere,” where ‘here’ will inevitably be the location of his latest discovery - a new book by an old author, or an old book by a new author, or some strange cooking contraption... anything, really, that catches his attention by virtue of being unfamiliar, or that feels like a new part of Remus, whom he’ll desperately be trying to relearn.
Sirius has these moments of awkwardness every once in a while; it’s that childlike sense of ill-fit when visiting a stranger’s house and you’re not quite sure what to do with yourself, and what you can and cannot touch.
This particular time it’ll be a leaf, which he’ll have found resting on one of the shelves lining the walls. It’ll be yellowish, and look out of place because it’s July, and leaves do not fall until autumn comes.
“James gave it to me,” Remus will offer by way of explanation as Sirius holds it up inquiringly.
“Why’d you keep it?” Sirius’ll ask after a few moments of shocked silence, that something so old and fragile has survived so long.
Remus’ll think before answering, looking Sirius evenly in the eye. “I used to fancy him, I suppose - didn’t we all? - and after he died.... It was the last bit of him, of them, left, and maybe if I kept it alive he’d come back someday.”
If they did it was fully platonic, but from the original I got a very clear feel of unrequited affection, and I didn’t feel like neglecting it. It’s irksome, when True Love blossoms between Sirius and Remus because they both wake up one morning and realize that they are Meant For Each Other, so I like all these permutations a lot better.
Of course, only if in the long run it’s S/R. :) But you knew that already.
“That’s daft, Moony,” Sirius will reply casually, as if he were twenty. “Not that I-” he’ll stop himself and start over. “We’ll find Peter.” he’ll amend, ire flashing in his eyes. “He’ll pay,” and they’ll fall back into silence again, until Sirius breaks it some time later, as they eat dinner.
I imagine their convivency must have been, despite all appearances to the contrary, rather tense underneath the surface. Sure, we’re friends, we get along just fine etc etc, but that does not make the fact that we’re cooped up together in the middle of nowhere any less awkward, or the fact that we haven’t seen each other for fourteen years any better...
“But really, like that bird in that fairy tale of Lily’s she used to tell Harry? The one who, eh... knit, to get her brothers back? I worry about you sometimes, Moony. Next thing you’ll tell me you didn’t speak to anyone for twelve years.”
This whole paragraph is casual and offhand, but once I thought of it I really wanted to work it into the story. Because for all we know Remus did not speak to anyone for 12 years; and the Remus in the original certainly seemed to have a notable attachment to the leaf; he says there that he kept it because part of him hoped that indeed, maybe he could bring James and Lily back to life just by keeping the leaf itself alive.
I think Sirius would have found that ridiculous, that sort of displacement, especially after the penance he’d been paying. If Remus had indeed chosen to go 12 years without speaking, he wouldn’t understand it, it would make no sense to him as a punishment.
Personally, I have issues with the biology and magic involved in keeping it alive, so I deadened a bit.
Dumbledore will Floo soon; they’ll have moved to Grimmauld Place by the end of next week, but their lives will not return to this lulling calm until the middle of September, with all the children gone to school and Molly and Arthur back at the Burrow.
-
The first time it rains, when it’s just the two of them in the house in London, Sirius will once again drop everything and Padfoot will lop down the stairs, any semblance of grace abandoned for the sake of expediency. Past his mother’s portrait and into the kitchen he’ll run, through the small door at the back that opens to an equally small patch of soil, used long ago by the family’s house-elves to grow both aromatic herbs and obscure potion ingredients.
The Black House is modeled, entirely, after the only two British houses I’ve ever actually been inside of, which sort of followed the same general floor plan, even if the yards I actually were visited were actually larger.
After so many years of abandon it’ll be overgrown, covered in weeds and wild thorny bushes, not quite as large as Sirius remembers it. There’ll hardly be enough room for Padfoot to run around, but he’ll try it nonetheless, giving up after five minutes of unsuccessfully chasing his tail in the falling drizzle, resignedly changing back into his human self. He’ll go back into the house reeking of wet dog, but Remus won’t say anything about it, because by then he’ll be the only one allowing Sirius his little comforts, even if he doesn’t understand the reasons behind them.
-
“I love the rain, you know,” Sirius’ll tell Remus some day early in October, while an autumn storm rages outside, heavy drops beating against the windowpanes. “The sound of it.”
Remus’ll be just about to say that yes, he remembers very well how much Sirius loves the rain, as well as the subsequent attacks of pneumonia that followed every time he got it in his head to go flying in a downpour, when Sirius will close his eyes and continue, voice markedly quieter. “It drowned the waves,” he’ll explain. “The only time there was anything to hear other than the sea, and the scre-. Every time it rained I’d feel better - saner.
I knew I wanted to write this scene a few drafts before this one. What’s more, having fallen in love with the idea of it, it forced me to write all however-many-years of shared history Sirius and Remus have, but in the end I settled for three sentences. There were a couple of attempts at telling the whole story from Sirius’ POV, and also a abortive attempt at a quick sketch of the scene where Sirius gets the Daily Prophet from Cornelius Fudge, while in Azkaban, and sees Peter. Of course, it would have been raining that day.
But in the end, I abandoned it all for the sake of mood. Because, you know, mood. :)
“I think I’m crazy,” he’ll finish, then turn to look at Remus. “Do you?”
“No,” Remus will reply, hesitatingly coming closer and dropping an arm around his friend’s shoulders.
“But it never goes away,” Sirius will retort, sounding ten and scared. “Sometimes I close my eyes and listen for the waves, and can’t believe they’re not there. Can’t believe I’m not there. When it’s dark, I just...”
Remus’ll squeeze his shoulder, tenderly. They’ll have never spoken about this before, they won’t speak about it afterwards either. “Oh, Sirius...”
Somehow, I don’t see Sirius as having too many moments of openness about these things...
They’ll fall silent again, sit motionless for a bit, Remus’ arm still around Sirius, fingers softly massaging his friend’s shoulder. “There was a window - narrow slit, really - and I’d search for rain clouds.”
Movie canon! Movie canon!
“Did it rain often?”
“Not enough,” Sirius will say with what can only be a smirk, or maybe a grimace. “It stormed, in the summer. Kept track of the seasons that way.”
I’ve no idea of what the weather out at sea is, as I’ve always lived inland, but summer storms are a must, as far as I’m concerned, and there really is something about them, and the stillness in the air, that makes them so easy to tease apart from any other sort of storm.
-
I don’t like this section, as it is vehemently at odds with the style in the rest of the story. But I needed to get back to the original (which this is a key part of), as I felt I was straying away and writing not so much a remix as a ‘loosely inspired by’ story. I could think of no better way to do it.
The thing was, in school, they used to sleep together, to fuck each other. But only in the darkness, where the unpredictability of every thrust, the erratic nature of their grips, made it all much more enticing that simply having a plain affair, or a normal relationship. Sirius claimed to like the darkness, saying it had ‘depthlessness,’ whatever that was, while Remus simply claimed to like the darkness, period, never giving away his reasons but collecting the secrets it told him all the while.
It was a decent enough arrangement; for all that they could not see one another’s faces in the middle of the night they could look each other in the morning without any awkwardness, operating on the twisted logic that if they had not seen it, it had not really happened. Worked fine, until Sirius started claiming to have fallen in love.
Back then, Remus said that he’d rather they accept that they were sixteen and not quite sure of what love meant. Sirius disagreed. He knew what love was, he said, because he was in love with Remus. And it wasn’t as if he’d been in love ever since they were eleven and met on the train; that was a ridiculous and preposterous notion, and besides, Sirius had loathed all of his housemates for a long time, until James had glared and beaten some sense into him.
I loathe love at first sight where Sirius and Remus are concerned, because you know, Sirius is an insufferable, dark-haired version of Draco Malfoy for most of his first year.
... God, I’m really pushing an agenda here, aren’t I?
“No,” he used to tell Remus. “We’re friends, we’ve always been friends and I love you now. I know it, and I believe it,” he’d say, sounding oddly passionate.
And because Sirius liked to say ‘I love you’ not when they were tangled in one another (and in sweaty bed sheets) or in the silent darkness afterwards (when he said many other foolish things) but at random, unexpected and surprisingly soft moments during the day, Remus ended up believing him, and in his love.
Living together now, it’ll be the same after a while, the quiet acceptance of a love that will not quite start out as such.
No grand passions here. It’s all subdued. Which you know, goes with the title, because it’s a subtle love you can’t put a name to, Hence perhaps still untitled.
Only that I just made that up. So, you know, total crap :)
-
After many months of suffering and struggling I finally made it down here, and even started this scene; I can’t remember where exactly I stopped, but the last scene and bits of this one were written late at night while being godawfully drunk, with the help of my friend Deanna, who was not drunk but certainly acted like it. I had to type virtually every word five times before getting it right, and even that did not save me from having to edit the next morning (the day the story was due, even), but actually, most of the prose stuck.
It’ll happen like this:
Remus will be in the kitchen, sorting through some papers for the Order; Sirius’ll be upstairs in his mother’s old room, feeding Buckbeak. At some point Remus’ll get thirsty, decide that the sound of the wind outside somehow makes him want to drink tea. He’ll fill the kettle with water and touch the tip of his wand to it.
Ah, Remus and a kettle. That’s certainly his OTP...
The whistling, or maybe the fact that he’ll have just run out of rats, will draw Sirius down from the attic and into the kitchen, just in time for Remus to pour him a cup while he washes his bloodied hands in the sink. Remus’ll return his attention to the parchment in front of him, Sirius will hold the mug in both hands and glare at it for a few moments as if it holds the answer to all the secrets in the universe, then take a sip and make a face as he scalds his tongue.
That’s such a me Sirius thing to do...
Cursing under his breath, Sirius will lean forward, tea cup still cradled in both hands, and read over Remus’ shoulder. His eyes will be met with some stuffy document or another, dull and repetitive but he will nonetheless ask “what are you reading?”
“A report,” Remus will answer, and take a sip of his own tea before it gets lukewarm, something he has never been able to stand.
“Well, yes. What about, I meant.”
“Not quite sure - I keep on getting distracted, it’s too poorly written.”
“Oh,” Sirius will say, and offer an apologetic smile. “Want help?” he’ll continue, eyeing the pile of parchment in front of Remus and longing to make himself useful, for a change.
“Suit yourself,” Remus’ll reply, and clear a space on the table for Sirius to finally put his tea cup down.
“Do we have any cream?” Sirius’ll ask, after taking another sip of his tea and grimacing at the bitter aftertaste.
Symbolism, symbolism! Sort of, anyhow! The original story has Sirius not remembering that he takes cream with his own tea, but that just depressed me too much (this rewrite is, in my opinion, distressingly more cheerful than the original, and that’s saying something), so I made him remember, also because the image of a cup of tea being lightened (and made more opaque, but kindly ignore that) by cream was too tempting even for me to pass it up.
“Eh...” Remus will trail off for a moment as he thinks. “I believe you finished it yesterday. I’ll get some tomorrow.”
“Tea isn’t the same without it,” Sirius’ll complain, and pretend to shudder. With one hand he’ll grab the top-most roll of parchment from the pile and with the other he’ll reach for the sugar, distracted adding spoonful after spoonful to his cup, apparently unaware of his actions until Remus stills his hand by placing his own over it.
From here on it all goes to hell. I had no idea of what I was doing, just that I knew where I wanted to get, to the ending (which, as it turns out, is somewhat of an in-joke, only that we actually made it work. Sort of) and that, by god, the journey was proving to be exceedingly painful.
“I think that’s quite enough sugar...” he’ll say, arching an eyebrow.
Sirius’ll look down at his cup, take in the surrounding ring of white and shrug. “Probably,” he’ll snort. Then he’ll raise his eyes to meet Remus’ gaze; they’ll drift from his face to their hands, and back. “Moony,” he’ll say, and trail off.
Remus’ hand won’t move. All of Remus will be still, in fact, save for his eyes, which will trace a line from Sirius’ eyes down to his to the hollows of his cheeks, and then linger too long on his lips. He’ll watch intently as Sirius moves closer, their foreheads almost touching, and he won’t react when Sirius presses his dry lips against his own, or when Sirius bonelessly slumps forward, their foreheads now pressing against each other before they kiss again, longer this time.
I suck most massively at writing kisses; this was all written with my friend Deanna looking over my shoulder and telling me what the characters were doing, step by step.
“I can’t believe you forgot to buy cream yesterday,” Sirius will say afterwards, as if the last five minutes have not happened, and smirk. “I’d have thought you’d remember how much I like it.”
And things will go on from there. It’ll be very different from before, because where Sirius used to love the darkness, now he will hate it, rightfully claiming to have had enough of it in his life. Where he used to be experienced and hungry he’ll be awkward and hesitant, at least until his long-forgotten hunger flares up again, and he remembers the way they used to fit together, all angry thrusts and grabs, because they knew no better way.
It’ll be a pleasant surprise, discovering they fit equally well under the rancid light of the house, their eyes actually focused on one another, their hands and mouths softer and tamer after all this time.
-
It will rain on Halloween, and Sirius will stalk through the house opening as many windows as possible to let in the sound. Once done, he’ll curl up as Padfoot next to the window in his mother’s old parlor, and listen to the water falling outside. It will be a fantastic thunderstorm, with enough lightning and thunder to satisfy even the most demanding of spectators.
Upon rereading I realize that there are too many thunderstorms in this story. My bad, really, but again, this scene called for one, and not only because it’s also raining on the original on this day.
“I made tea,” Remus will murmur some time later while entering the room, a laden tray floating in front of him.
Padfoot will raise his head, whine inquisitively and look at him, then return his attention the window. Changing back, he’ll cross his legs, still on the floor, still facing the open window. “You steeped it too long. I can tell from here,” he’ll complain without turning.
“For your taste, maybe,” Remus’ll reply. “But I bought cream,” and he’ll pass Sirius a cup of unsweetened tea, gently directing the tray to a table, then lowering himself onto the ragged carpet.
Uh, more of the same symbolism. This has got to be one of the first times I attempt symbolism with a steady hand....
However, there’s no hidden depth to it being Remus who bought the cream. As the only one who can go shopping, the task fell to him by default.
“About time,” Sirius will say, frowning at the dark liquid. “I still don’t understand how you can drink that stuff. Pass it over, will you?.”
Remus will watch with morbid fascination as Sirius ruins a perfectly good cup of tea by adding cream until it is a dull shade, faded and uniform and disturbingly light.
“It’s good to know you don’t like darkness anymore,” he’ll comment.
“Had enough of it, haven’t I? Besides, I believe in a thing called love,” Sirius’ll reply, finally turning away from the window to face him.
Dear god, the ending. I cannot read the ending. It makes me wince and choke and want to curl up and die, and also wonder how the hell people think it’s good. I mean, it worked fine at 2.30 AM when being rather drunk, but even then there was somewhat iffy about it.
It’s not so much Remus’ line that irks me, as much as the whole; it was getting to the point of desperation and Deanna was about to throttle me for being so damned recalcitrant and stubborn and thus the ending.
Which, in case you missed it, is a very very thinly veiled reference to a band and a song. But I’m not saying anything else, because god....