Chapter 4: Week Nine: Green Olive
Written for my @mixed-up-writer-fest fic with @theresthesnitch and uh yeah, like 21k? Enjoy. LOL
Read Chapter 1 or Continue with Chapter 4, excerpt below
[...] [Remus] wants his mum, desperately, suddenly. Wants her cool hands and her honeyed tea and her Muggle cure-all: vaporub. He wants her to stroke his hair and tell him it'll all be okay, that he's going to be just fine and sing him to sleep. But she doesn't even know this is happening to him, he realizes as he cries as silently as he knows how, like he did as a first year behind the drawn hangings of his four-poster bed, hot, fat tears coursing down his cheeks because just like then, what's happening to his body is not fair. It's not fair and there's nothing he can do to stop it, and it's not even the end. It'll come back, and even when it's over, he'll have a real living baby—babies—that need him and then what? Then he'll have to ditch them around the full moon? What kind of father is he? Who would want him for a dad?
But unlike in first year, James and Sirius are now very attuned to his emotional state. He must smell sour, Remus thinks, when he sees two pairs of feet: one pale, one socked in the doorway of the bathroom. "'Lo," Remus whimpers, unable to muster up anything more than that.
James drops down first, a glass of water in his hands. When Remus tries to apologize for waking them—he could have at least closed the door!—James just waves him off. "Hush, sweetheart," he murmurs, Transfiguring a cotton swab into a straw with the barest flick of his wand.
While Remus drinks, the water beautifully cool and soothing and sort of gingery, Sirius crouches in front of him and presses a soft, folded-up damp washcloth against his forehead. He smooths back Remus's sweaty curls and takes the tie from his own hair to put Remus's mop in a jaunty little bun. "Beautiful," Sirius whispers.
Remus, who doubtlessly has some level of bile on his chin, scoffs weakly at him. "Lying sod."
"Hear that, Prongs? He's enough life in him to sling insults, that's great news."
Remus pouts and leans into James's waiting arms. "I'm having your babies and you want to make jokes?" he whines, and sure, he might be playing it up a little because he can, but it's not like Sirius doesn't deserve it.
James takes pity on him and thumps Sirius in the arm. Hah. "Don't kick the man while he's down, Padfoot." He kisses Remus's sweaty brow and helps him into an upright-enough position to get all the vomit in the toilet when the next wave of nausea crests over him. "He's a bad man what did this to you," James whispers conspiratorially, rubbing Remus's back.
"The worst," Remus hiccups, nose running most attractively.