Professor Lupin's (Not So) Tough Night
by Am-Chau Yarkona
e-mail: amchau@popullus.net
Entered for The Alfonso Cuaron Fangirl and Fanboy Extravanganza
The flat was the same as it had always been, with perhaps a
little extra dust. He'd been away for nearly a year, after all.
He didn't bother to even flick a wand at it; he kicked his
shoes off, rested his cane against a bookcase, and threw his coat over the back
of the sofa. Sirius would laugh if he could see it—Remus had once been the one
who tided everything away, and Sirius the one who left things where they didn't
belong.
He made the double bed the Muggle way, the way his mother
had, with hospital corners. He undressed slowly, somehow unwilling to accept
that he was tired, and slipped between the sheets naked.
Silence shone in every corner.
The jazz records called him; he nearly got out of bed and
put one on, but when a stray glance at the bedside table found The Whitsun
Weddings, he settled for the poetry of a man who loved jazz.
"…at his age having no more to show
Than one hired box should make him pretty sure
He warranted no better…"
He felt like the man in Mr. Bleaney's room. Trying, like
him, to drown the sounds that a long-gone tenant had allowed to echo. Although
where Larkin's narrator had found the ghost of a fellow resident who was like,
and yet presumably unlike, himself Remus thought he was fighting the ghost of a
long-ago self: a self who had been wrapped in Sirius until he almost drowned.
You're being silly, he told himself, almost laughing
at the way a year of essays had sent him back into academic tones. Stop
analysing, and sleep.
He laid the book down, ignoring the other voices to be
found there (the man who stopped reading, the wailing confessionals), switched
the electric light off with a click he hadn't heard in months, and tried to calm
his mind.
Sirius hung behind his eyelids.
Holding Sirius once more, hearing in his voice the love
they had once shared; the smell of Sirius, warm dog-fur and sweat and a surely
imaginary whiff of motorcycle grease; Sirius reaching for him as the
transformation began, his heart, his flesh, his love.
Awkwardly, Remus rolled over, pulling the blankets firmly
up to his chin and breathing deeply, steadily, consciously relaxing his muscles.
They'd made love in this bed, clung to each other,
whispered love in the dark the night Lily and James married. They'd laughed
together, wondering what exactly the duties of a godfather were these days,
outside the Mafia (he'd had to tell Sirius about the Mafia); they'd watched
movies on the tiny colour set on the cabinet, including The Godfather,
and rather a lot about werewolves, because Sirius liked to mock the ignorant
Muggles.
They'd "had ripping times in the dark…"
said Larkin, and Remus gave in, switching the light back on.
For a moment, he fancied that he heard something outside
the window. It couldn't be anything other than rain, though, since the flat was
three floors up, and he returned his attention to the poetry.
"Give me your arm, old toad;
Help me down Cemetery Road."
He'd lost his job. It was always going to be the case; he
knew full well that he was lucky Dumbledore had been able to persuade the
governors to take him on in the first place.
No old toad to help me down, he thought. I'll die
alone, unloved and unremembered. A lyric drifted into his mind, an old song
with tune that was nearly jazz.
"Me and you are subject to the blues now and
then..."
I really am going to have to put that jazz record on.
Remus climbed stiffly out of bed, the cold of the air nothing after Hogwarts'
damp and stony chill, and was starting to fumble through the box of LPs when
there was a definite knocking at the window.
His first idea was that the Ministry had decided to cull
all the werewolves after all. He stood up straight, shaking, acutely aware of
his nudity; then a voice shouted outside, "All right, Buckbeak, all right.
Just another minute!"
Sirius.
Suddenly uncaring—trusting, on some unconscious level,
that if Sirius was trying something as dangerous as a visit, he'd have made sure
he wasn't being followed first—he dragged the curtains back and yanked at the
window catch, without even looking outside to check his visitor's identity.
There could be no mistaking that voice.
A rush of rain preceded Sirius, and the hooked beak of a
hippogriff followed him. "Go find something to eat," Sirius said,
batting the beak away, and Buckbeak squawked a confirmation.
"Sirius," Remus gasped.
"That's me," Sirius replied, with a wide grin. He
stepped back a little, closing the window with one hand while looking Remus up
and down. "You're…" he began.
"Remus?" Remus suggested, when it became apparent
that Sirius was, for once, a little stranded on the vocabulary front.
"Yes," Sirius agreed, and then added, "Naked
Remus."
Remus glanced down at himself. "Seems so," he
agreed mildly. "Is there a problem with that?"
"None," Sirius told him, and pushed him backwards
towards the bed. "None at all. Why would it? It never used to."
Remus laughed at him, giddy with the change of tone.
"'Sparked the whole shooting match off', did it?" he asked.
Sirius kissed him. Remus couldn’t even pretend to be disappointed by a non-verbal reply like that.