small_gifts | Fic: Over the waste of waters; like a veil for buckle

Title: Over the waste of waters; like a veil
Author:

saraannette
Written for:

buckle_berry
Rating: PG-13
Prompt: 'At the enchanted metropolitan twilight I felt a haunting loneliness sometimes, and felt it in others... in the dusk, wasting the most poignant moments of night and life.' --F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby. Plus!! Banter, slagging each other off, the other Marauders, silliness, UST, and angst with a happy ending.
Summary: Five Decembers, five vignettes about twilight and loneliness and wasted moments.
Warnings: Drinking and naughty language
A/N: The title comes from a description of dusk in Lord Byron's Don Juan (canto II, st. 49). Love, love, love to

amazingly_me and

harajuku_girl for beta-reading, encouragement, and general awesomeness. And, um... I think this is really pushing the upper word limit. I'm sorry. I am the queen of tl;dr. Ask anybody on my flist, ha. ETA: I just realized I completely screwed up one of the dates. LOL, fail. It's fixed now.

Happy holidays, buckle_berry!

1970
Don't think about it, she keeps saying, just don't think about it, love. There's nothing to be done, of course, but you needn't dwell on it.

I'm not, I haven't been, Remus assures her, again and again. He is lying, of course, but-- as James and Sirius have carefully explained to him-- there are times when lying isn't actually wrong. When you are trying to spare somebody's feelings, for instance, or when you really, really want to skive off Potions. And so he says, I'm not bothered, honestly, and his mother's face breaks into a weary smile.

'There will be other Christmases,' she tells him at dusk, leading him down to the cellar. 'And besides, you'll be alright in the morning at least, won't you, dear? That's the best part of Christmas, anyway, everybody knows that.'

'Everybody,' he repeats at the foot of the staircase. 'Honestly, Mum, it's alright. I'm not going to bawl about being... sick, on Christmas. I'm not a little kid, I'm eleven years old.'

His mother just looks at him, pain in her eyes, and Remus wonders what he has said wrong. It is a relief when she leaves him, a relief to hear the door locking from the outside.

Remus curls up in the old wing chair in the corner-- his parents have done their best to make the cellar nice for him, but it’s still a cellar-- and gazes up at the one window, small and set high in the wall. The sky is that odd colorless shade it always is in the city at twilight, dulled and washed out by all the lights until you cannot see any stars. He cannot see the moon, either, but he can feel it, in the dull ache of his bones and in the unreasoned anger beginning to swell within him, not all of which belongs to the wolf. He calculated, once: assuming he lives a hundred years (rather shorter than the average wizard’s life span, but quite optimistic for a werewolf, he's looked it up) and changes each month, he will in the end have spent five years transformed. Five years; that's almost half as long as he's been alive now. It is a lot of time to lose.

He gnaws anxiously at his lip, never taking his eyes off the darkening sky. He wishes night would just fall, he wishes he would just get better. Above all, he wishes somebody could be with him when what is about to happen, happens.

1971
'Well, hello, there,' the woman coos, as though she is speaking to an infant, or some sort of small furry animal. 'And what's your name, little fellow?'

Sirius squints irritably at her, but he is all well-spoken politesse as he says, 'It's Severus, ma'am. Severus Snape.' He glances furtively around the room: he doesn't know where Reg has run off to, but as the younger sibling it is clearly his duty to stick around at their parents' stupid parties and be titchy and adorable and deflect the attentions of ancient old bats onto himself so that Sirius can have a moment's bloody peace. Regulus is getting thumped for this, and no mistake.

'And how old are you, ickle Severus?' the woman continues. Her face is coated thickly with powder, and her salt-and-pepper curls are done up in a little puff atop her head and decorated with a hairpin in the shape of a serpent's head. Probably she means to look quite grand, but Sirius is finding it hard not to laugh.

'Twelve, ma'am,' he chimes, telling the truth this time.

'Oooh, then you must be at Hogwarts!' the woman trills. 'And I'll just bet you're a Slytherin!' Her tone implies that being sorted into Slytherin is the highest possible pinnacle of human achievement.

'Yes, ma'am.' Sirius pastes on his most charming smile. 'I love being in Slytherin, we sit around all day being complete wankers, and then we cry like girls cause we didn't make it into Gryffindor. It's brilliant.'

The woman's lips compress into a hard shocked line, and Sirius reckons he's about to get a good bollocksing. 'It's been delightful meeting you,' he says quickly, already backing away. 'Do enjoy the party, have you tried the phoenix puffs?'

By the time he makes it out into the hallway he is snorting and gasping with the effort of keeping his laughter in. He leans against the wall, lost in mirth, for several moments, finally composing himself and, with a furtive glance back towards the parlor, slipping out the front door and settling onto the stoop.

The sidewalk before him is crowded with Muggles, on the town with friends or else rushing home from last-minute Christmas shopping. It is strange to think that they cannot see Sirius through the concealment charm, even though they are only a few feet away. The longer he watches them, the odder he feels, and it takes him a moment to realize that the emptiness in his stomach and the painful stinging in his lungs are loneliness.

He hears the door open behind him, but he does not turn around, even when his mother's voice snaps, 'I don't know what you're playing at, Sirius, but you will come inside immediately, and you will behave yourself. You will also apologize to Mrs. Yaxley for your insufferable cheek.'

'Fine,' he says, so quietly he is not sure his mother has heard him, but before he stands he spares one last glance for the darkening street, for the wide and vibrant world sprawling just beyond his grasp.

1973
The firecracker flies upward in a slow spiraling arc, dropping little sparks that remind Remus of falling petals, or else a rain of sulfur. Just as James had intended, it lands squarely on the snowman's head. The explosion, when it comes, is quieter than Remus had expected, and doesn't decapitate the snowman so much as reduce it to a pile of slush. Ice and assorted debris shoot out in every direction and Sirius, standing far too close for safety, yelps and leaps to one side, barely dodging a particularly dangerous-looking projectile.

'Did you see that? His festive carrot nose nearly took out my eye!' He is hopping rapidly up and down, whether to guard against the cold or from the excitement of causing gratuitous explosions it is hard to say. 'Go on, Prongs, one more.'

'One more,' Peter echoes, and James grins as his hand dips into his coat pocket.

'What d'you reckon this time?' he asks, producing another Dr. Filibuster's Fabulous Wet-Start No-Heat Firework and eyeing it critically. 'Chuck it at the Whomping Willow, maybe?'

'Not the Willow,' Remus says uneasily. He feels a certain loyalty to the tree, and anyway, if they damage it beyond repair, he doesn't know what will be done with him at the next full moon.

'Maybe, um-- maybe throw it in the Owlery?' Peter suggests tentatively, but James shakes his head.

'That seems unnecessarily vicious, Pete,' he says.

Remus smiles. 'Owls are people, too.'

'S'a shame Snivellus went home over the break,' Sirius says darkly, 'or I'd know just where to put it. My only concern is it would be a bit tricky shoving it up his gigantic nose before the fuse burned down.' Nobody, Remus notes, decries this plan as vicious. 'I say the Whomping Willow, that’ll be a laugh.'

'Oh, don't,' Remus says, and Sirius fixes him with an impatient look.

'Why not?'

'Because... I don't know. I like the Whomping Willow.'

'Don't be such a hippie,' Sirius says scathingly, and there is really no answer to that, so Remus follows a bit hesitantly as his friends trudge across the grounds toward the tree.

Between the thick blanket of snow resting over the grass and the darkening sky, Hogwarts seems almost to be sleeping, and even the Willow is moving slowly, lazily, as though lulled. James grins wickedly, lighting the firecracker with a swish of his wand, and says, 'Course, this is probably the stupidest thing we've ever done.'

'We've done stupider,' Sirius says bracingly. 'And we'll do stupider still!' James grins and flings the firecracker hard at the tree.

When it disappears into the tangled branches, there is a silence during which nobody seems to breathe, and then the Willow springs to life, boughs working furiously. One of the branches gives a particularly vehement jerk, and Remus does not understand right away what has happened-- only that there is an alarming hissing heat at his neck and adrenaline in his veins. Sirius shouts, 'Ah, fuck,' and strikes Remus squarely in the throat, dislodging the firecracker which had caught in the folds of his scarf. It tumbles to the earth, skittering several feet before going off at last.

Remus's hand flies to his neck. He realizes he is breathing hard. 'That was-- that--'

'It's a good job I was around to heroically save the day,' Sirius says dispassionately.

Peter looks stricken. 'Fucking hell,' he says in awed tones. 'Are you alright?'

'Fine, I'm fine.' Remus catches Sirius's eye. 'Thank you for, er. Thank you for punching me in the neck.'

'Glad to do it,' Sirius says. 'Too glad, some might say.'

He seems quite unconcerned, but the incident must have stuck in his mind, because two hours later, when they are sprawled about the common room and Remus says, 'You didn't have to do it,' Sirius looks at him in surprise.

'Course I did, that bloody thing would've blown your face off.' He smirks. 'It's not much of a face, mind, but as it's the only one you've got...'

'Not that,' Remus says. He lowers his voice. 'I mean... I mean staying here over the break. Badgering that lot--' he nods toward James and Peter, engrossed in a game of Exploding Snap at the other end of the room-- 'into staying. It was-- I mean, you--' But he cannot say what it means to him, not without sounding like a poncy git at any rate, so he resorts to repeating himself. 'You didn't have to do it.'

'Don't be stupid,' Sirius says. His face is grave in the firelight, his eyes silvery and wide. 'We wouldn't leave you alone, we wouldn't do that.' He leans over the arm of his chair, towards where Remus is curled at the end of the couch. One of his hands wavers uncertainly in the air, settling for only a second across Remus's fingers before he snatches it back, and Remus cannot account for the way his breath catches in his throat. 'Obviously we wouldn't.'

Remus leans forward, his face blissfully, splinteringly, hot from the fire. There was, of course, no question of him going home for the holiday. He would only ruin it for his family-- his poor mum's face flashes across his mind's eye-- and it was that knowledge rather than any real desire to stay away that kept him at Hogwarts. He had expected to be alone, though, and now he is not. He can't understand why this isn't enough.

1975
'You cannot,' Remus says, arching one eyebrow skeptically, a gesture which has recently been getting right on Sirius's nerves. It is nothing he can explain-- there is no reason why Remus should fill him with this creeping frustrated irritation, as though his whole body is being pricked by little pins. For perhaps the thousandth time he studies the other boy's face for clues, but he can find nothing offensive in the countenance gazing at him from across the table at the Hog's Head. The mild expression, the chapped and bitten lips, the scars like careful calligraphed strokes, none of it is any different than it ever was. Sirius does not even make sense to himself anymore.

'You can’t,' Remus says again. 'There's no such thing as reading a person's firewhiskey leaves. There's not even such a thing as firewhiskey leaves.'

Sirius rolls his eyes, tipping James's half-full glass towards the light. 'Maybe if you don't have the inner eye,' he scoffs. 'But for those of us with the sight--'

'Go on, then,' James says. 'What d'you see in my future?'

Sirius peers into the amber liquid, unable to stop the smile tugging at the edges of his mouth. 'Ah, Prongs, s'worse than I feared.' He looks up, widening his eyes. 'You will-- you will never shag Evans. Sorry, mate.'

'Don't have to be a seer to know that,' Peter mutters blearily around the rim of his glass, and James boxes his ear.

'You're rubbish at this,' James says, snatching his drink back.

'You're just jealous of my talents,' Sirius insists, looking around the table. 'Who's next, then? Wormtail? Moony? Shall I look into your futures with my mystical third inner eye?' Peter clutches his firewhiskey to his chest, apparently unwilling to surrender it for even a second, even to get a glimpse into the beyond, but Remus smiles a little half-smile and pushes his own glass across the table.

'Do mine, go on,' he says. 'D'you see me getting expelled for getting drunk on a school-approved Hogsmeade trip, possibly?'

'You really are, you really are an awful prefect,' James mumbles, smiling faintly. 'Terrible example you set.'

'Yes, I know.'

Sirius, whose many firewhiskey-related talents include drinking large quantities of it as well as using it to see the unseen, is having a bit of a struggle focusing his eyes on Remus's glass. 'You will--' he says, and then he looks up and Remus's eyes, the pale brown of driftwood or old parchment, focus on his. 'You will,' he says, but he can't think of anything clever. A fresh wave of annoyance swells within him and he finally settles for, 'You will be sick all night, the way you've been drinking.' It is not what he wanted to say.

When they leave the Hog's Head and start back to school, Sirius lags behind his friends, feeling swallowed and camouflaged by the soft glimmering twilight. They have not walked far when Remus slows his steps, dawdling until he is at Sirius's side. 'How drunk are you, exactly?' he asks nervously.

'I'm not,' Sirius says crossly. 'I am the very model of sobr--' His feet hit a treacherous icy spot on the path and though he does not tumble over he lurches a bit, and his stomach churns unpleasantly. 'Ah, sod it, Moony, I'm pissed as a flobberworm.'

Remus glances ahead at Peter and James, then puts out one arm to stop Sirius. He flicks his wand and mutters an incantation, then leans closer, sniffing. 'Well, you don't reek of alcohol now, at least,' he says. 'Just, just try not to talk at all until we get back to the common room. Or, you know, move too much.'

Sirius smiles. 'Or look at anyone.'

'That's probably best, yes. Can you make it back to the castle?'

'Of course,' Sirius says with all the dignity he can muster, but he does not protest when Remus slings an arm about his shoulder, holding him up.

They make their way down the high street, Sirius doing his best to act sober. His neck, his mutinous goddamn neck, keeps going all limp, and when his head drops against Remus's chest he smells wool and frost and cheap white soap. He can feel Moony's heartbeat, slow and steady where his own is racing impatiently. Firewhiskey and the forgiving dusk make him brave, and a moment of terrifying self-awareness twists through him. He stops walking.

'Oh, god,' Remus says. 'Are you going to be sick? Don't be, please, I can't stand--'

'I'm not going to be sick,' Sirius says, and turns his head till his face is inches from Remus's. He is used to following impulses to their logical conclusion, and there is nothing to stop him from doing so now, but some mean petty panic freezes him and makes him say, 'You're such a poof, Moony.'

Remus snorts unpleasantly and begins walking again, and because Sirius is hanging off him, so does he. 'I really cannot stand you when you're drunk, Padfoot,' he says.

'Yeah,' Sirius says. He is aware that he has let a chance pass, that he has shoved it away and it is tumbling farther out of his reach every second. It all seems such a waste. 'Yeah, well, nor can I.'

1976
It is the first time in four years that Remus has come home for Christmas, and it has been, so far, both easier and more difficult than he had feared. His mum had to lock him in the cellar three nights last week and he is sure he heard a strangled sob escape, that first time, as she rushed up the stairs, but once it was over she said to him, 'I'm glad you're here at Christmas for once,' and it seemed as though she meant it.

Still he never would have left Hogwarts if it weren't for Sirius, who has been making a nuisance of himself about it since November-- You have to pop down to London over the break, for one night at least, it'll be brilliant, come on, don't be a prat. Remus is not very good at saying no to Sirius at the best of times, but after all the holidays Sirius spent with him at Hogwarts, he feels he owes him this.

Sirius's new flat turns out to be in rather a rough neighborhood, and Remus is glad of his wand, tucked discreetly into the sleeve of his coat. He stands shivering on the stoop and presses the button marked 'Black', and a moment later Sirius's voice crackles over the little speaker set into the wall. 'Moony?'

'It's me. Let me up, I think I've caught frostbite.'

'Nah, I'm coming down. I fancy going for a curry, d'you fancy going for a curry?' The intercom goes dead before Remus can answer.

A moment later the door swings open and there is Sirius, clad in jeans and a scuffed leather jacket-- honestly, Muggle music has been a terrible influence on him-- with his naff striped school scarf flung about his neck, rather ruining the effect. 'You look like shit,' he says cheerfully, and Remus gingerly fingers the bruise over his left eye, a souvenir of the most recent full moon. 'Have you got a fag? S'good to see you, by the way, Moony.' He fairly leaps down the steps, not losing his footing though they are icy, and starts down the sidewalk, gesturing for Remus to follow.

It is dusk, and the streetlights are just flickering on, reflecting off the snow and tangling with headlights and neon and the last of the sun until it is like being underwater, or in the middle of an inferno: someplace vague and otherworldly, someplace with a radiance that is more than the sum of its parts. Sirius laughs for no particular reason, showing teeth (his teeth are almost perfect, but it is the one crooked incisor that Remus likes best) and says, 'Do you like the quaint rustic charm of my neighborhood, by the way?'

'It's delightful,' Remus says. 'I am looking forward with great anticipation to my first mugging.'

Sirius looks at him with mock gravity. 'Don't worry, Moony, you won't have to wait long.' He grins and Remus feels his stomach dive. It is different when they're at school, when he sees Sirius every day, and at his most disgusting (even Sirius is not attractive when he first wakes up, hair lank and tangly, eyes swollen with sleep, pillow creases across his cheeks), Remus becomes a bit inured then, to Sirius himself or to the dull bitter taste of longing. (He read once that a person can build up an immunity to poison by drinking a small dose every day-- possibly love works in the same way.) But after two weeks' separation it is the worst it's been in ages, the worst it's been since the summer after fourth year when Remus realized that he-- well.

'One thing I will say for it, though,' Sirius continues, 'being surrounded by a bad element, it makes one feel right at home, it's just like being in the dormitory with you lot.'

'I'm not a bad element,' Remus protests, and Sirius snorts laughter.

'You're a worse element, though, than you would've been without me,' he says proudly, which Remus supposes is a fair statement. 'Anyway. Cigarette? Yes? No?'

'Yes,' Remus says, pulling his packet of fags from his coat pocket and offering it to Sirius.

'Ah, brilliant, I've not--' Sirius pauses, lighting the cigarette with a quick wave of his arm, it was he from whom Remus picked up the habit of concealing his wand in his sleeve-- 'I've not had a fag all day, you can't imagine the torment, I could almost snog you--'

I wouldn't mind, Remus thinks, and wishes he could just say it. They press on, cutting a path through the melting snow on the sidewalks, through the soft subterranean melancholy of the city as the day's light dies. It is like something out of a pratty French film, it is just the kind of setting in which one makes ridiculous declarations of love, and Remus thinks, Why can't I say it, why not? And just as his mind is filling with perfectly good reasons to not say it, not the least of which is that Sirius would certainly be horrified, it seems to come out of its own accord.

'I wouldn't mind.'

Sirius stops in his tracks, laughing his harsh barking laugh as he turns to face Remus. 'What?'

'I said I--' Remus cannot believe he's done it, it is a feeling not unlike stepping off a cliff, and at the last moment his nerve fails him. 'Nothing, I'm just talking bollocks. Where's this curry place, then?'

Sirius is looking at him strangely, and Remus's cheeks burn as he begins walking again. 'What did you say, Moony?'

'Nothing, Sirius, leave it--'

But Sirius grabs Remus's wrist. They are standing now at the mouth of an alleyway and Sirius pulls them both inside, not meeting Remus's eyes until they are in the shadows. His expression is startled and searching and-- something else, something Remus cannot name. He thinks for a moment that Sirius is going to punch him, or curse him, but what he actually does is say, 'You wouldn't mind,' and Remus realizes with a giddy mixture of relief and terror what is going to happen next.

Sirius's face is cold, his fingers as they tighten convulsively around Remus's wrist are cold, but his mouth is hot and demanding and full of the taste of Remus's cheap off-brand cigarettes. Remus feels as though he should be too stunned to move but his body seems quite content to act without any input from his brain, and he thinks briefly that this might be for the best. At first his own heartbeat is the only sound in the world, and then Sirius lets out an odd little moan from somewhere in the back of his throat and something inside Remus breaks and mends itself, better than before, within an instant. 'This--,' he gasps, pulling away with difficulty. 'Sirius, what are you doing?'

Sirius smirks. 'It was your idea.'

'But what I mean is--' A sense of unreality washes over Remus, and then he is pulled back by the unfamiliar brush of skin against skin, fingers twisting into his, warm breath and then warm lips and then sharp insistent teeth against his neck. 'Oh. What I mean is, are you sure you want--' Remus often has the sense that you could present Sirius with absolutely any awful idea in the world and he'd go along with it out of pure contrarianism, or else curiosity. But this-- he wouldn't be able to stand it if that were the explanation for this.

'Don't be daft,' Sirius breathes, and as their lips meet again Remus thinks vaguely of wasted moments and miserable twilight and perhaps Sirius does as well, but it all seems so far away now, a vestige of the lost and pointless past, and though the sky is darkening overhead they do not either of them notice.