Pairing: Lupin/Sirius
Warnings/rating/genre: drama, R
Summary: Lupin thinks back to his past...
Author's Note: The conversation was heavily inspired by one of my favorite films, "Sex, Lies, and Videotapes."
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Lupin stared out the window of his train compartment, looking at the dried out and bare hills outside. This was his life, riding trains, stopping temporarily in random places, no destination in mind, and it had been his life for years now.
He never paid for a private or sleeping compartment, preferring to be lulled to sleep in his seat by the rumbling, or abruptly woken by it. He’d sometimes open the window and let the hot air blow the damp hair off his forehead.
He didn't take his journals or books out of his luggage and he rarely talked to people, because this is what he wanted - to feel how alone he was, to try to see this loneliness as some sort of freedom, to think and let the disjointed thoughts in his mind connect and separate.
He barely ate, feeling safe in needing so little: so little of people, of sleep, of entertainment, of food. His friends had died, so had his parents. He had no one to write, no one expecting him, and only when the full moon approached did he go back to his parents’ home, using magic to lock himself in their steel cellar built for him after he was bitten. Shadows and memories seemed to permeate every inch of space in that house, and thus, he rode the trains the rest of the time.
Sometimes he’s step off the train in the middle of the night, carrying his suitcase, cracked and falling apart, held together by leather bands only so that things wouldn't fall out. If not stopping for long, he would pay to use the train station showers, standing for too long under the cold water that ran copper no matter how long he let it run.
But sometimes he decided to settle somewhere, and would instead rent a room in a squalid motel with doors that wouldn't lock, dirty walls and stale air, to try to work as a tutor, bookstore clerk or maybe in delivery. He’d stay in these places anywhere from a few days to a few months, though the days felt longer and the months shorter. If he worked in delivery, he was sometimes allowed to sleep in the store’s basement, with steaming warm pipes that leaked, dim yellow lights and small grease covered windows.
Sometimes he’d receive letters from friends of old, still concerned, still loving. He always felt a stab in his heart seeing these letters, some carefully kind, some pleading, and he always answered in a tone he hoped was reassuring and cheerful. He knew his attempts were transparent, but there was nothing for anyone to do.
In a way that seared through him, he knew he was simply recreating someone else’s escape. Sirius had done similar things many times before, after he moved out of his parents’ home at 16, eternally taking trains, spending his money on liquor instead of food, and, once he’d graduated, riding his flying motorcycle to nowhere.
Remus knew both he and Sirius were running from something when they started their trips, but unlike Sirius, he knew what he was running from and why. But that knowledge was not a key to anything.
Back then, before he joined the Order, Sirius would disappear for months, not responding to letters for weeks, and when he would, they were filled with a distance, a reserve. Sometimes he’d come back with a split lip, a black eye or healing knuckles. If you asked him he would tell you what had happened, not out of pride, but, rather, out of some sort of compassion for the person asking, as if he pitied anyone who would care.
But then he joined the Order. The reticence didn't go away, but he stopped running. Most of the time, Sirius got a thrill from fighting, he and James laughing and running after completing their missions. But Remus also remembered him standing still and whispering apologies to the bodies of people who had been killed by Death Eaters, had seen him punch a wall afterwards, heard him say he wanted to kill Regulus, and he'd thrown Lupin to the floor when he'd tried to stop him from continuing to try to revive a child.
Lupin's soul was raw and bruised after these moments, yet he was too trapped to say anything, and watching him, he wanted to reach out.
And one day, after they both tortured a Death Eater for the first time, Lupin had screamed at him, had hit him. The next day Sirius had approached him, and somehow, without words, they reached across the distance separating them, and they slept together.
Sirius had disappeared again afterward, so that Remus had to show up at his place one day. He stood outside the apartment building, the guard frowning, judging his worn clothes. He hit the buzzer until Sirius finally let him in.
Lupin then had to wait outside his door, listening to the locks and chains rattling and clicking. Sirius opened the door and turned away, leaving the door for Lupin to close.
Though facing brick walls, the large windows at the end of the apartment and to the left let the bright morning light fall onto the bare cherrywood floor and the groupings of overgrown container plants.
Sirius looked terrible, thinner and paler than he’d been in a while, undereye circles like he hadn't slept in a long time, his face unshaven, his long hair wet, wearing a loose threadbare white t-shirt with faded black jeans and his motorcycle boots.
There was a long silence as Sirius walked over to his kitchen on the right, looking into his empty fridge, moving newspapers and bottles covering the countertop, until he found a cup and served himself some coffee which had long since gone cold. As he took a sip, Lupin saw long thin red horizontal marks on one of Sirius’ forearms.
“Why did you go?”
“It had nothing to do with you,” Sirius said, emptying the cup over the sink, not looking at him.
“Are you- are you ashamed?”
Sirius leaned against his counter, looked up at the ceiling and then at him, “No, I just- I don’t want it. This. I don’t... want it. I don’t want… us.”
After a pause, Lupin spoke gently. “And if you did?“
Confused and frustrated, Sirius asked “If I did, what?”
Lupin stepped closer, but Sirius took a small step back. “Would you still need that distance?”
Still confused, but gently now, Sirius said “I don’t- I can’t answer that question.”
“Why are you-” Lupin suddenly felt his frustration become rage.
“What?” Sirius asked, in a mocking laugh.
Lupin laughed bitterly. “No, no… Why are you like this?”
“How am I?” Sirius asked. Seeing that Lupin wasn’t going to answer, he nodded, narrowing his eyes, and calmly said "Ok. You want me to tell you why? Why I’m like this?"
He turned his back to Lupin, and stepped away, putting his cup on the floor.
He then threw his hands up and turned to look at Lupin. "I don’t know! You want to psychoanalyze me? You- you want me to give you the moments I think might have meant something? And, what? Hope they somehow make some sort of sense? They don‘t make sense to me!”
Sirius threw his head back, and walked to his living room, with all the furniture backs facing the door. He sat on the arm of a chair, staring out the window. After a long pause, he spoke, "I... leave, no plan in mind, not promising to write, just… going somewhere, I never really know where, and… try to…"
He again turned to look at Lupin. “This… shouldn’t be happening, Remus.”
Lupin stepped closer, taking deep breaths, hoping to calm his racing heart.
Lupin tried to shake away that memory, and, once again, stroked the letter that had arrived that morning. He closed his eyes, already seeing the ghosts haunting the grounds, still expecting to see his friends sitting in the Great Hall, the classrooms filled with the shouts and laughs of his friends, and he wanted to refuse, but he felt it all calling for him, and so he signed the letter accepting Dumbledore’s offer to teach at Hogwarts.
