nekare

Err, guys who I'm writing drabbles for, don't take it personally if some drabbles are only 200 words and other ones are 1000 words long. I just go where it takes me, so it's really not favoritism, or anything (for example, I had to write some R/S today, so I used the prompt for that pairing given for drabbles, so I could kill two birds with the same stone). Luv ya all. ♥

tokyoghoststory: This turned out having to do with EXACTLY what I didn't want to write for you, give the circumstances, but now matter how hard I tried it kept on happening. So sorry, dear. *hugs*

Title: Haunted By Your Empty Eyes
Pairing: Remus/Sirius
Rating: R
Word Count: 1223
Summary: Pre-Azkaban, Sirius doesn't quite know what to make of this empty shell Remus is becoming.
Author Notes: Written for remeciel, who gave the prompt garden and the color green; and for tokyoghoststory, who needed a bit of cheering up. (Which... is ironic, considering this is semi-angsty. *headdesk*)

There’s something growing in the garden of the tiny house Remus inherited from his father, a bright green monstrosity that keeps on opening a figurative mouth whenever Sirius dares come near it.

“It wants to eat me, really, just look at it,” says Sirius, staring at it from the security of the house, and the reflection of Remus on the window rolls his eyes at him.

“You’re just insane,” he says, and Sirius wishes he would do something else than look at him through the mist of the tea in his hands, quiet, as if they had never laughed at the way Peter’s chest became a furry carpet after a Charms accident when they were thirteen. Nothing has been going right since the attack to the Prewetts.

“Well yeah, but at least I admit it,” Sirius says because he’s not quite sure of what else to say. He leaves the dirty teacup on the sink and gets out of the house before he goes really mad and starts shaking Remus’ shoulders and scream Snap out if it, darn it, snap out! just like he wants to do.

He turns to look at the table just before leaving the house, and Remus is still sitting there, staring at nothing as he blows gently on the tea to make it cooler. He doesn’t seem to have noticed Sirius leaving.

Sirius bangs the door on his way out.

---

He finds Remus in the garden the next day, lying on the grass with his fingers twisting innocent green blades into twisted knots. Sirius jumps over him, and approaches the odd plant in the middle of the yard.

“You didn’t come home last night,” says Remus quietly, still looking at the clouds, and Sirius snorts with his eyes closed.

“Oh, now you notice.”

“Sarcasm doesn’t suit you.” Remus replies with a frown.

“Well it does now.” Sirius takes a deep breath, trying to control his raging temper. He gets one of his fingers close to the plant, a deep green bulb, with no roots visible but for purple-dotted leaves at the bottom that enter the earth as if wanting to hurt it; and it tries to bite him. Sirius backs off with his eyes wide open. “What is this bloody thing, anyway?”

“Ginospe something or limi something else. The name’s too odd for me to remember it. I found it in my old fourth year Herbology book yesterday; it’s supposed to feed on people’s sour mood.” Remus still won’t look at him.

“Quite fitting, then.”

“Yes, quite.”

“What’s wrong with you?” Sirius blurts out, backing away from the nasty plant until he feels safe to turn his back to it.

“Well aren’t you the subtle one?” asks Remus, not wanting for an answer, and Sirius nudges his leg with the tip of his right foot.

“Stop it with the cheek and give me a straight answer, for once. What’s eating at you so much that you’re going around the house as if you were a fucking ghost?”

Remus sighs and pushes his tongue against the inside of his cheeks, and then bites his lip. His assault on the grass magnifies, and Sirius has to lift his eyebrows.

“I shagged Gideon.”

Okay, not exactly what Sirius was expecting.

“What?”

“Not lately, I mean, I just used to shag him, when we were just out of Hogwarts, and now, well, he’s just not there, is he? And it’s not even as if I cared that much, or that I miss him, just. Just. I don’t know anymore.”

Sirius puts his hands in his pockets, shoulders lifted, his previous bravado gone away. “Oh,” he says, standing on tiptoe and coming down again (and again and again as he keeps shifting, nervous).

“I just never thought before about the possibility of dying in the war, that’s all.”

“And you’re solving this by becoming one of the living dead, then?” Sirius says, and Remus finally turns to look at him, looking as if he couldn’t believe what Sirius had just said. “Because it looks that way, and you’re just wasting away, feeding that awful plant with your fucking insecurities.”

“I think that went too far.”

“What? For saying the truth? Fuck, Remus, you haven’t been yourself for weeks now, and paint me naïve, but I didn’t really expect this treatment when all I’m doing wrong is caring about you!” Sirius’ voice goes higher with every word, even when he doesn’t intend it, and Remus keeps on doing that bloody infuriating thing with his tongue.

Remus lifts himself up with his elbows, staring at him with his head lowered, which creates shadow under his eyes, and Sirius doesn’t buy it, because he knows - Remus himself taught him – that that’s just a simple way to be intimidating when you don’t have the upper hand.

“I don’t think you have any right to judge the way I live,”

“The way you’re not living, you mean.”

“Bloody hell, Sirius, stop it already!” Remus is furious, Sirius can see from the way he trembles, as if trying to restrain himself. Good. It’s the strongest emotion Sirius has seen him display in weeks.

“No,” says Sirius, face set, and he drops to his knees, not bothering about the grass stains on his jeans, and leans over Remus. He lifts a portion of Remus’ shirt (and isn’t that ironic?) before the other boy can get a word in, and licks a wet path on Remus’ stomach. Remus hisses, his eyes wide open, and he says firmly “What are you doing?” before he tries pushing Sirius away.

“Getting you out your lethargy,” Sirius says staring right into his eyes, and then he’s unfastening Remus’ trousers.

“Wha- Are you mad? The neighbors could be watching!” Remus all but squeals, but Sirius can practically feel the anger leaving him, by the way he’s not struggling anymore.

Sirius smirks, puts a finger in his mouth and then writes his initials on Remus’ chest, a sticky trail that makes Remus moan. “Do I look like I care?”

Surprisingly, Remus laughs for the first time in weeks, and he drags Sirius’ head down for a kiss. “Let’s not care together then, shall we?” He says in between nips to Sirius’ lips, and he turns them around until Sirius can feel the grass under him and the sky surrounding Remus’ head.

“Now that’s more how I like you, alive and kicking and are you hearing me, you prat? That’s just the way you’re staying.” His hands cup Remus’ head, making him look at him to the eyes. “I’m not going anywhere and neither are you. Got it?”

Remus stares blankly at him for a few seconds, and he nods briefly, his jaw set. Not a warning at all, and then Remus’ hand is rubbing him through the fabric of his trousers, and his eyes are rolling to the back of his head. “My, you seem alive too, Sirius. Good,” says Remus, with a bittersweet smile.

There’s panting and sweat and they get dirt and grass everywhere, but it feels real, and it feels like aching comfort in war time.

---

A year later, Sirius sits on his bed with his head between his hands regretting having ever given back Remus Lupin’s will to live. Maybe he wouldn’t be betraying them, if he had withered away.