FIC: The Shy Stars (1/1)
Mar. 8th, 2009 06:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
leashy_bebesTitle: The Shy Stars
Pairing: R/S, but with mentions of non-canon others.
Rating: r for sexual activity and drug use.
Summary: This is a story about the love of my life. It's not a very nice one.
Notes & Warnings: First person, lots of angst, no happy ending. Because sometimes you just don't get one, even in a no-Voldemort AU. Title and quote at the end are from carol Ann Duffy poems (Grammar of Light and Oslo respectively). Feels maybe a bit weird because there's so little dialogue, which is usually what I'm most comfortable with. And yes, I am aware that I'm wittering a bit now. Onwards.
Words: ~6300
Disclaimer: JKR's, not mine.
I can identify the first moment fairly clearly. Maybe not down to the day or the hour, but I know that it was in the second or third month of my third year at school. We were working together in the library on one of Slughorn's projects – this was after the teachers started banning me from working with James, but before they realised putting me with Remus or Peter was no real punishment. Each pair had been given a sample of a potion in class, and we had the lesson time to run as many tests as possible to identify ingredients and properties. Eventually, we would have to give in an essay outlining the ingredients and recipe, showing how this could be ascertained from the tests we'd done.
I was grumbling about the project in general, and Slughorn specifically when it happened. He looked up from the book he was perusing, mixed amusement and frustration on his face. And as he tapped the end of his quill against the table distractedly it happened. There was something, some effect of his gaze which was new and decidedly odd. It made me feel like I couldn't quite catch my breath. Weirdly, the feeling reminded me of the way my brother would cry when he was a child. When he finished, he would draw in these desperate, shaky breaths (huh-huh-huh) and it would take him about six inhales to fill his lungs. I felt the same way that day in the library, as though there was no possible way to get enough air, as though an invisible hand had squeezed itself around my throat. I didn't understand where it had come from, this sudden mad feeling, and even more than that I couldn't understand why it actually felt kind of good. There was something exciting in the moment, in the inexplicable tightening of every muscle in my body, in the tingling anxious-happiness that fizzed in my belly.
It happened several times before I made the connection between Remus and those weird excited-happy-scared moments. Or maybe, in honesty, it just took that time for me to admit it to myself. I can remember the first time I dreamed about him, too. I don't remember the content of the dream really - it was one of those slow, warm, slightly fuzzy ones. Still though, it was the first time I really understood what it was to be turned on, rather than just to have an erection. I was horrified the next day. I felt as though the thoughts I had had must be written all over me. I felt as thought I must be broadcasting it to Remus with my eyes every time I so much as glanced his way.
I had no choice but to admit the truth to myself after that dream and a handful of others like it. Of course admitting the truth was pretty difficult when I had no idea what word to use for the way I felt about him. Love was just a ridiculous idea - I was a fifteen year old boy, what did I know of love? Who falls in love at fifteen? I mean - everyone does obviously, to a degree, but who falls in the real grown-up forever kind of love at that age? And that was the kind of love it felt like. The kind that you should find when you are older and have your life in order, and then you meet the person, the one. I wasn't supposed to meet the one when I was fifteen and confused, not when I hated most of the world and a lot of things about myself, not when I was on the verge of being disowned and when everyone who was meant to love me wished I was someone else. So I decided that I simply couldn't be in love with him. There had to be a different word for it. I fancied him. I admired him. I lusted after him. I wanted him. I adored him. I was obsessed by him. I told myself that I every-other-word-but-loved him, and I still can't quite explain to myself why I couldn't use that word. I knew even then that this was a different feeling from the ones I'd had before for Quidditch players or even for Fabian Prewett. I told myself that it was different because I knew Remus so well, saw him every day and shared ridiculous conversations with him most nights. Now that I'm older, I think that maybe that's what love is. That word that we dress up so importantly, that people pine for, long for, live and die for, is just the happy coincidence of finding someone you both fancy and respect, someone you want to fuck and talk to afterwards, someone who knows you inside out but doesn't bore you. And given that, how could it have been anything other than love that I felt for him, even at such an age?
It was at sixteen that he suddenly seemed to grow into himself, and I became aware that I wasn't the only person noticing him. He cut short the longish hair that he used to hide behind and exposed a face to the world that was somehow delicate and strong, eyes that were wide and guileless and bright. He grew a last couple of inches and suddenly lost that semi-awkwardness he'd had before. His body seemed to fit together perfectly for the first time, and girls noticed him. Fucking girls, with soft bodies and shiny hair and pretty laughter, girls that I knew I could never compete with, not in a million years. They drifted around him admiring his cleverness and his kindness and his soft brown eyes - things that had hitherto been mine to admire and adore and appreciate and want (but not to love).
I could deal with that, though, with vacuous females twittering about the place, because he didn't seem particularly bothered. He went to Hogsmeade with a few different girls in our sixth year, but never with the same one twice. And it was me he chose to tell about the girls. I should have been sickened by the very idea of listening to him relive his dates, but he has always been such a good story teller. He was funny and sarcastic and self-deprecating even as an eleven year old, but when he told me about those dates, he'd have me in paroxysms of laughter that felt a bit hysterical at times. And even though I knew it was ridiculous, I couldn't help reading into every comment that he made, and wondering desperately if it meant what I so wanted it to mean. I wondered if he told me about his dating disasters to show that he wasn't really serious about any of the girls, or if he wanted me to react other than with laughter that he never seemed to notice was vaguely uncomfortable.
And I think that was one of the main problems at school. I wanted him so much, and we were so close, such good friends. James always has been and always will be my brother, but in a lot of ways, we had no common ground. His family are so ordinary. His parents love him and spoil him. He's never exchanged so much as a cross word with either of them, I don't think. Not that I desperately wanted to spend my teenage years raking over the fact that I never seemed to be good enough for the people I most wanted to please. Still though, when the weight of those kinds of thoughts got too much, when I knew without a doubt that nothing about me would ever be good enough for anyone or anything, it was Remus I turned to. He understands life's imperfections, and he understands me, understands how I react to them.
I remember one time, not long after leaving home, I'd had a fight with Regulus and was feeling like a complete wreck, like I'd failed as a brother as well as a son. And I was angry. So angry. I can't help myself, and I know it's not healthy but anger seems to have been my constant companion. I know that I'm lucky in my friends, and I know that from an outside perspective I'm probably one of those jammy bastards that always lands on his feet one way or another. But since childhood I've felt it, something black and red and pounding in my chest. I don't know why I have it, and I don't always know what's going to bring it on, but Regulus was always a fairly safe bet. I'd be spoiling for a fight for days, weeks at a time. I'd hate. Not things or people, unless maybe myself for being such a useless prick, but I'd just be a bundle of practically vibrating anger. James would always rise to the bait and fight with me. Peter would hide away until I calmed down. Remus would serenely ignore my little digs until late one night in our fifth year, he just looked me in the eye and said, you're not angry at me. And there was no way I could deny that.
It all came spilling out of me that time, and it was one of those conversations I will always remember because it seems to have shifted the whole course of my life. That was when he became so bloody important, and it was also the first time I let myself think the words I love you. How could I fail to love someone who still cared for me when I was at my worst, my most ridiculous and unlovable? And that was the problem, really. He would let me get away with terrible behaviour, would let me say terrible things, and never even flinch. James would be sick of my attitude long before Remus, and I was so blinded by how much I adored him that I started to wonder if there was something more to his friendship and understanding. I started to edge towards believing that maybe, just maybe, he sometimes gave me looks loaded with the same mad mixture of interest and hope and dread that I gave to him.
It wasn't one-way, either. It wasn't as though he listened to my shit and then went about his life as normal. He told me things too, things I don't think he shared with other people. He told me about his parents, and how he sometimes felt their love like a stifling blanket over his face. He told me that everything we knew of him, that mischievous, devilish Remus that he showed to us was packed away carefully at the end of each school term. He told me that it was like being a different person at home, because he was so scared of shaming them, so determined to make up for being a werewolf. He tiptoed around at home, watching every word he said, constantly feeling like he should apologise for even existing. His parents loved him of course, but there was always that aura of concern floating about them. They worried, and he felt guilty, and they worried even more, and he felt frustrated, and it went on and on and on.
"I feel like I can't breathe," he said, "Unless I'm with you."
My heart leapt and stuttered because that was exactly, to the word, how I felt about him. I know now, and knew even then that he meant you in the plural, not me. It still did that thing to me, though. I came to think of it as the Remus effect. Things he did or said would have an instant physical effect on me. It was like a splash of cold water to the face, and like sinking into a hot bath, and like flying without a broom, and like falling from an impossible height. He used to sit so close to me, to whisper things in my ear even when there was no need to keep anything secret. He trusted me, and he touched me. I had never been touched like that before. Not that it was anything extreme. Certainly his hands never wandered under my clothes as I often wished they would. But he would run his fingers down my forearm while we talked or occasionally grab my wrist and squeeze it for a second to make a point. It made my heart leap, made mouth go dry, and made my mind race. My parents had definitely never touched me in that simple, absent-mindedly affectionate way. Me and James would shove each other around, and I would ruffle Peter's hair, but it was different with Remus. Gentle and unthinking and even though it made my head spin, made me wonder all kinds of illicit thoughts, part of me always knew that he didn't really mean it romantically. I think that just made me love him all the more, though. The fact that he would do these things and never expect anything, never think that it was anything out of the ordinary, made me feel warm and squirmy.
Of course, then, it was very easy for me to just be glad that he was there, and he was my friend, and he trusted me, and he liked to spend time with me. I think I had just never expected to feel that way, and certainly not so early, not for one of my best friends. That mad, crazy kind of adoration for him was such a delicious contrast to being angry or being sad or being a smart-arse. I suppose it was a relief as much as anything else, to know that I could feel something that made me want to be good rather than bad. An emotion or an impulse that didn't make me want to fight or throw a fit, but made me want to be lovable. He treated me like I was kind and funny and decent instead of like I was a slightly unhinged fuck-up, and it made me want to live up to his expectations. Who knew that falling head over heels for one of my best friends would actually make me feel more normal instead of less?
Because it did feel normal. It felt normal to spend so much time with him, and it felt normal to care more about him than anyone else. In the end, it even felt normal when my throat tightened and my heart pounded in response to his closeness. Everything about those couple of years felt so right. Looking back now, I can see the raised eyebrows that Peter and James exchanged when I would rather hang about the place while Remus studied than make good use of the time by pranking. At the time though – well, to be honest, at the time I was in no position to notice, because I was drunk or stoned more often than I was sober.
We all drank, obviously. We all smoked too, me and James a little more enthusiastically than the others, but I don't think they realised the full extent of it. Well, Remus did, but in those days he noticed everything about me, knew everything about me, and worse or better than that, I've never been sure which, he understood it. So unlike James who would sometimes catch me smoking a joint first thing in the morning and call me a fucking reprobate before leaning over for a toke, Remus would just look at me with sad eyes because he knew why. Anything to feel nothing. Anything, anything in the world to feel less aware of myself.
Anyway, my point is that it's very easy to be grateful for what you have when you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that you'll never have anything more. But I think, maybe, there was a time when I could have. Well, there was a time when I did have more, but I think there might have been a chance I could have had even more, and for longer than five minutes. I'm not sure, I mean, we never really talked about it. For two people who talked about everything, we never talked about the way things were between us unless we were both supremely drunk, or if I'd been picking away at it all night like an old scab.
It only happened one time when we were at school, about halfway through our last year, but I remember it so vividly. It was late and dark and cold in the corridors, and we were both drunk. In fact, I was too drunk to know whether he or I started it. That's the only thing I don't remember, though. I remember the way the weight of his body pressed me back against the corridor wall, and I remember the press and retreat of his lips as they clung to my own. I remember the way his mouth tasted - the dark ale he used to favour, and the muggle cigarettes he used to steal from Longbottom - part of Frank's teenage rebellion, and merciful Merlin, wouldn't anyone rebel if they had a mother like dear old Frankie's? I remember too the little noises that he made and the way his face seemed to fit between my palms as though sculpted for the express purpose of being cradled in my hands. And sweet god, the way he reached so casual and determined for the waistband of my trousers - yes, I remember that. Even that drunk, I was vaguely amazed that he didn't ask, didn't wait for permission, just dove straight in and wormed one hand into my pants, using the other to drag my own hand to the front of his trousers. I think I said something at that point, something about wait or why, but he just leaned more heavily into me, pressed a tiny kiss to the parchment-thin skin under my eye and I was sure even in that instant that his whispered, yes, yes, let me, would stay with me forever.
I suppose that before, I would have thought I'd have preferred to be sober for such a mind-bending, life-altering event. In fact, looking back, I'm glad, so fucking glad, that I was drunk. It was awkward and brief and heated and a bit ridiculous. And perfect. If I'd been sober, I probably would have wasted that moment in wondering if this was going to happen once, or twice, or forever. I would have wondered what the fuck we were doing in an alcove that was no kind of hiding place. I would have wondered what our friends were up to, especially as they could have been anywhere. I didn't think any of that, though, and I didn't realise anything other than that it was good, good, hot and fast and sweet and oh, just touching him. Despite all the confusion and the bitterness and the mess that came after it (all on my side, I'm painfully aware), that moment remains one of the brightest, most shining experiences I've ever had. Even in the depths of my resentment, I never regretted it, not for a second, not that perfect, stupid, heartstopping moment with him. I'm glad that I didn't ruin it with sobriety.
It only took a few minutes for both of us. I can't speak for him, obviously, but for me, the sounds of his breath in my ear and the feeling when the fingers of his free hand stroked roughly through my hair were what finished me off. He kissed me afterwards, shaky and breathless and sweet, one hand still in my hair before he untangled his fingers and cleaned us both up with a wobbly wave of his wand.
"Fuck," he laughed. "Sorry, Padfoot. Fuck, I'm drunk," he added, leaning against me for a moment. I let myself run my hands across his back and he huffed a breath of air onto my neck. I should have said it then, I suppose. That would have been the moment. I should have told him that I wanted him, needed him, and I've no idea why I didn't. Maybe it was the fuck, I'm drunk comment, or maybe I still hadn't reassembled my scattered brain, or maybe I am just more of a coward than I realised, because I said nothing. When I'm feeling charitable to myself about the whole thing – which isn't often – I think that maybe I didn't have the words to say it properly then, to tell him that I loved him beyond thought or reason, that I loved him like normal people love their lives.
I tried a few nights later to explain it to him, but I honestly believe that once I let that night go past, that night when I still had the heat of him warming my body, when I could still taste his lips on mine... As soon as I let him step away from me, I killed any chance at making a go of it. Still, I tried, because it's not in my nature to let things go, not when I really want them. I managed to corner him alone one night and I stammered and stuttered out the frankly ridiculous facts. I told him how it had felt, the mad kind of terrified joy when I had him in my arms. I told him that I couldn't imagine my life without him, and I think I even told him that I thought he was beautiful, or something equally foolish. To be fair to him, he looked devastated in that moment, and it gave me fair warning, that look on his face. With trembling voice and shaking hands, he told me that he would, he did, he thought I was wonderful. I suppose I should have felt my heart leap then, should have felt a surge of hope. I didn't though, because the way his face had fallen left me with no doubt.
He said that I was his friend, his best friend, and that he had wanted to for a long while now, but that now it wouldn't be fair. It would risk too much, and it wouldn't be fair. He kept coming back to that point, that it wouldn't be fair, and I didn't understand until he said words that I'd never thought to hear, words that should have been impossible. It spilled out of him and once it did, I thought that I should have known all along. He'd been planning it for months but not mentioned it in case it hadn't worked out. His big move. His very own prison break. His fresh start, new life, cry of independence. The ministry had finally approved arrangements he had made with a second cousin, the only member of his family he was ever in touch with after the bite. In Liverpool.
It's horrible now, to look back on how I felt when he told me that, and I hate the fact that my first reaction was anger rather than sadness. How could he? How could he go away, when I loved him? Pathetic and immature, but that was how I saw it. I didn't care that he was moving for himself and his own peace of mind, all that mattered was that he was moving away. From me.
So I did what I always do in such situations, when I can feel my throat closing and my legs weakening and my eyes stinging. I wasn't thinking, and as usual that's my only defence for the way that I spoke to him. How the hell would he manage full moons in Liverpool alone when he could barely drag himself upright afterwards even with the three of us to help him? We'd spent five years figuring out how to break the law for him and he was just going to fuck off? That was fucking charming, wasn't it?
I never said I was a nice person. I never said I deserved to have him love me back.
In fact, I know that I don't deserve that. Especially as, when I finally ran out of steam or bitterness or whatever it was that was powering my words, he just looked at me. There was hurt in his eyes somewhere – I learned early to notice that, to see when a barb has hit home – but he just barely let it show. Even after all that, even after everything I'd said he just looked at me with those eyes that are so much more than they should be, and apologised. Yeah. He apologised.
I think my words registered somewhere with him though, they must have done. Maybe they were the last straw, the words that made him finally reach his limit with me, made him decide that I frankly wasn't worth that concerted an effort. Maybe that's just wishful thinking on my part though, because at least there would be a reason. I don't think it's the case though, in all honesty. Now, later, supposedly an adult, I can just start to believe what my teenage self could never have accepted. This band of friends, of brothers, we would grow up, and we would just drift apart. It wouldn't be like school forever, because nothing stays how it is forever. Once your life has changed a few times, that becomes easier to understand but at the time it seemed impossible that we should ever be anything other than what we were right then.
But we left school, and James proposed to Lily and started playing for the Arrows, and Pete started working in the department of magical catastrophes, and I signed up to auror training and Remus went to Liverpool. And it wasn't like there was a fight or any last bitter words. The final months of school had been good at the time – full of pranks and illicit Hogsmeade trips and plots to leave our mark indelibly on the castle – although now when I look back they seem...muted.
We all met up a few times in the first couple of months after school ended. Once at Remus' place, a couple of times at mine. The four marauders back together again, and in those times it felt like nothing had changed. And hell, I suppose we were only a few months out of school, still thoroughly wet behind the ears. We hadn't really changed by that point.
But we did change. We all did. James – James is a lot more serious now. He always loved quidditch, but also always treated it like a bit of a joke. These days he has special diets and early morning runs. And he's serious about Lily, too. They're having the longest engagement in history, purely to appease Lily's parents a little about her moving in with him in Appleby, but for all that, they're devoted. They're really in love, and seeing them sometimes, with their lives that have turned into two halves of a whole life, makes me wonder about the way I feel for Remus. It can't be love, it sometimes seems to me. James and Lily make me think that love only counts when it's reciprocated, when your love encourages another person to weave their whole self around you, to forge a whole new being from the best of both of you. So James is grown up now, more serious than he used to be, and so in love that it sets him apart. He's one of those people, whose relationship is so passionate and affectionate and loving and mischievous - it's as though he gets everything he could possibly need from Lily, and while he'll always be my best friend and brother, he doesn't need me anymore.
In all honesty, I'm probably closest to Peter these days. Partly that's because he's the one who lives closest and because on any day that I'm not out in the field for practical training, we actually work in the same building. Another reason that we're closer now is that he's changed, probably more dramatically than any of us. There's no way to say it without sounding smug, but when we were at school, people would always see Peter as one of us, and usually as the least intelligent one of us. Not that he is stupid, not by a long shot. It's just that me and James, we were always so smug in our cleverness, so brazen, that Peter seemed to fade into the background. Now, working in magical catastrophes, he is coming into his own in a way I'm ashamed to admit I never expected. It's as though he did three years' worth of growing up in the few months after we left school, turning into a confident, independent bloke who wasn't forever looking to others - not to come up with the ideas, but to validate the ones he's had on his own.
And Remus went to Liverpool and did a variety of muggle jobs, and lived with his cousin, and he changed too. He changed in that he didn't have that old Remus need to make everyone else happy. I should have been glad that he was doing what he needed to do, that he was taking ownership of his own life and making it better. And I was. In a way. To a degree. There was always part of me that believed, on one level or another, that no matter how happy his new life made him, I could have made him happier. I could. I could.
And me? I went to training, and I slogged my guts out trying to get to the top of every class, and I went home to an empty flat and cooked myself boring meals and passed out exhausted most nights. I wasn't happy. For a while, I thought I was lonely. It took me some time to realise though, that I wasn't lonely in the normal sense. I couldn't have been, because I saw Peter for lunch almost every day, James for a pint at least once a week, and of course there was the weekly night in at James and Lily's house too. And I made friends at work, not what I've always thought of as real friends (not the marauders in other words), but friends nonetheless. No, I wasn't lonely, and if I was, it was my own choice to be that way. It wasn't as though my friends from work didn't ask me to go out with them. They did, at least once a week, especially when I started getting top marks, but I usually said no. I didn't feel...anything much, really.
I missed Remus, missed him to distraction, thought about him every day. In the first year after we left school, I tried twice more to make him change his mind. I told you I don't give up on the things I genuinely, desperately want. The first time, we were all out together and I cornered him on his way back from the bathroom to whisper in a shaky voice that I did, I'd still, whatever it took, however he wanted. He just looked at me like I was trying to hurt him for a moment before shaking his head and squeezing my arm and changing the subject. The second time we were alone, and drunk, and everything he did or said seemed laden with promise. That's the problem, I think. I want him so much that everything he does, I view through the lens of my own desperate adoration, and I see exactly what I want to see.
I asked him that night, in the most roundabout way, if he was fucking anybody. The answer seemed to be no, and it spilled out then, like something diseased and distasteful, as I told him how much I wanted him, how I still wanted him, how I couldn't think without him. I cringe to look back on how pathetic I was that night, how I practically begged him to give us a chance, to just think about giving us a chance. Now, once or twice in my life, I've been on the other end of that little debacle, I've been the unfortunate soul hearing how someone adores them and being completely unable to return to sentiments, and it is no fun at all. I don't know how he got through that night without wanting to throttle me, I was so over-the-top and maudlin in my desperation.
Then there was Niall. Niall was my boyfriend for a year and a half, and all I could ever have said about him was that he was Great. Great. He's Great. Everything's Great. It's just a word people use when they can't legitimately fall back on nice. Niall was handsome and funny and clever and made racing brooms. James put the two of us in touch in that weird way that straight people with only a couple of gay friends will do. Me and Niall had good sex and he told me he loved me a few times. There. I know it's been years now since Niall, but even at the time, it didn't get much more emotional than that, let alone any more passionate. Whereas hearing Remus' name, or the word werewolf, or smelling chocolate, or overhearing someone talking about muggle literature - those and a thousand other little things will send me off into thoughts that seem to leave me with a bad taste in my mouth. I am an adult now, I often remind myself when I think of these things. It shouldn't be like this anymore; I shouldn't be like this anymore.
I did like Niall, and although I wasn't completely mad about him, I did feel for a while that I was moving on from Remus. Then about six months after I started seeing Niall, me, James, Peter and Remus all met up together, and my heart was fluttering in my throat as I decided I would tell Remus about Niall. That should have been my first clue, I suppose. I didn't want Remus to be jealous, not really, not consciously. Maybe I wanted him to share my surprise that I could even imagine looking at anyone other than him. Maybe I just wanted him to look shocked, a tiny bit taken-aback. I don't know what I wanted, but it was not the momentarily relieved tilt to his smile, or his gentle and heartfelt congratulations. He asked what Niall was like. I told him that he was Great. He said he was pleased, and that he'd been seeing this girl, Eleanor, for a few months and that she was beautiful and funny and foul-mouthed. Eleanor, I thought afterwards. What a stupid fucking name. And it was then that I realised that I was right back there. Just a few hours in his company and my heart was beating out of rhythm, my stomach was swooping at meaningless comments.
Dozens of times, I have resolved to move on from this. From him. A handful of times over the last five years, I've even believed that I have done so. When he is not here, I'm able to realise that he is not perfect. I have a photo of the four of us where I can see his imperfections - probably because I have spent far too long looking for them, but I don't think about that. I can see that actually, his nose is rather on the large side. His eyes aren't completely symmetrical, and his lips are somehow too full and sensuous for his fairly slender face. In all honesty, there is nothing special about him apart from the fact that I spent my formative years with him, and that I can't get him out of my head.
I'm an adult now. A grown up, fully qualified auror, with a caseload that's too big, a nice flat, and some good friends. And although I still want him, I'm coming to accept that it - he - is an impossible dream. He is never going to be mine, and although that might still sting, it doesn't plunge me into the depths and blackness of despair that it once did. I suppose that is to do with growing up, with not being such a self-absorbed, self-obsessed teenager. Still, I always imagined that growing up would mean an end to all childish things, but it doesn't. Because I still love him.
I'm more confident in the use of that word than I ever have been before. Maybe he doesn't love me, and maybe he never will, so maybe I will never know the kind of real, true love that James and Lily have, where each person is equally blinded by the other. But I do love him, and I'm starting to accept that won't change anytime soon. He will always be the funniest, the most handsome, the smartest person I've had the fortune to know. And I will always be the fool that loves him too much, because there is nothing else that I can do. It may not send me into fits of rage or sorrow anymore, but it is always there, and it is always unfair in a niggling way, that he should go through life with no idea that someone loves him like this. If I could trust myself to say it without sounding like a fool, I would tell him. I would tell him that no matter how far he goes away from me, he will only ever have to ask once for me to join him there. All it would take would be a single look, a single word, a single crook of his finger beckoning me closer and I would leap at the chance, even now.
"For now, you're lucky –
Across the world, someone loves you hard enough
to sieve a single star from this dark sky."
Pairing: R/S, but with mentions of non-canon others.
Rating: r for sexual activity and drug use.
Summary: This is a story about the love of my life. It's not a very nice one.
Notes & Warnings: First person, lots of angst, no happy ending. Because sometimes you just don't get one, even in a no-Voldemort AU. Title and quote at the end are from carol Ann Duffy poems (Grammar of Light and Oslo respectively). Feels maybe a bit weird because there's so little dialogue, which is usually what I'm most comfortable with. And yes, I am aware that I'm wittering a bit now. Onwards.
Words: ~6300
Disclaimer: JKR's, not mine.
I can identify the first moment fairly clearly. Maybe not down to the day or the hour, but I know that it was in the second or third month of my third year at school. We were working together in the library on one of Slughorn's projects – this was after the teachers started banning me from working with James, but before they realised putting me with Remus or Peter was no real punishment. Each pair had been given a sample of a potion in class, and we had the lesson time to run as many tests as possible to identify ingredients and properties. Eventually, we would have to give in an essay outlining the ingredients and recipe, showing how this could be ascertained from the tests we'd done.
I was grumbling about the project in general, and Slughorn specifically when it happened. He looked up from the book he was perusing, mixed amusement and frustration on his face. And as he tapped the end of his quill against the table distractedly it happened. There was something, some effect of his gaze which was new and decidedly odd. It made me feel like I couldn't quite catch my breath. Weirdly, the feeling reminded me of the way my brother would cry when he was a child. When he finished, he would draw in these desperate, shaky breaths (huh-huh-huh) and it would take him about six inhales to fill his lungs. I felt the same way that day in the library, as though there was no possible way to get enough air, as though an invisible hand had squeezed itself around my throat. I didn't understand where it had come from, this sudden mad feeling, and even more than that I couldn't understand why it actually felt kind of good. There was something exciting in the moment, in the inexplicable tightening of every muscle in my body, in the tingling anxious-happiness that fizzed in my belly.
It happened several times before I made the connection between Remus and those weird excited-happy-scared moments. Or maybe, in honesty, it just took that time for me to admit it to myself. I can remember the first time I dreamed about him, too. I don't remember the content of the dream really - it was one of those slow, warm, slightly fuzzy ones. Still though, it was the first time I really understood what it was to be turned on, rather than just to have an erection. I was horrified the next day. I felt as though the thoughts I had had must be written all over me. I felt as thought I must be broadcasting it to Remus with my eyes every time I so much as glanced his way.
I had no choice but to admit the truth to myself after that dream and a handful of others like it. Of course admitting the truth was pretty difficult when I had no idea what word to use for the way I felt about him. Love was just a ridiculous idea - I was a fifteen year old boy, what did I know of love? Who falls in love at fifteen? I mean - everyone does obviously, to a degree, but who falls in the real grown-up forever kind of love at that age? And that was the kind of love it felt like. The kind that you should find when you are older and have your life in order, and then you meet the person, the one. I wasn't supposed to meet the one when I was fifteen and confused, not when I hated most of the world and a lot of things about myself, not when I was on the verge of being disowned and when everyone who was meant to love me wished I was someone else. So I decided that I simply couldn't be in love with him. There had to be a different word for it. I fancied him. I admired him. I lusted after him. I wanted him. I adored him. I was obsessed by him. I told myself that I every-other-word-but-loved him, and I still can't quite explain to myself why I couldn't use that word. I knew even then that this was a different feeling from the ones I'd had before for Quidditch players or even for Fabian Prewett. I told myself that it was different because I knew Remus so well, saw him every day and shared ridiculous conversations with him most nights. Now that I'm older, I think that maybe that's what love is. That word that we dress up so importantly, that people pine for, long for, live and die for, is just the happy coincidence of finding someone you both fancy and respect, someone you want to fuck and talk to afterwards, someone who knows you inside out but doesn't bore you. And given that, how could it have been anything other than love that I felt for him, even at such an age?
It was at sixteen that he suddenly seemed to grow into himself, and I became aware that I wasn't the only person noticing him. He cut short the longish hair that he used to hide behind and exposed a face to the world that was somehow delicate and strong, eyes that were wide and guileless and bright. He grew a last couple of inches and suddenly lost that semi-awkwardness he'd had before. His body seemed to fit together perfectly for the first time, and girls noticed him. Fucking girls, with soft bodies and shiny hair and pretty laughter, girls that I knew I could never compete with, not in a million years. They drifted around him admiring his cleverness and his kindness and his soft brown eyes - things that had hitherto been mine to admire and adore and appreciate and want (but not to love).
I could deal with that, though, with vacuous females twittering about the place, because he didn't seem particularly bothered. He went to Hogsmeade with a few different girls in our sixth year, but never with the same one twice. And it was me he chose to tell about the girls. I should have been sickened by the very idea of listening to him relive his dates, but he has always been such a good story teller. He was funny and sarcastic and self-deprecating even as an eleven year old, but when he told me about those dates, he'd have me in paroxysms of laughter that felt a bit hysterical at times. And even though I knew it was ridiculous, I couldn't help reading into every comment that he made, and wondering desperately if it meant what I so wanted it to mean. I wondered if he told me about his dating disasters to show that he wasn't really serious about any of the girls, or if he wanted me to react other than with laughter that he never seemed to notice was vaguely uncomfortable.
And I think that was one of the main problems at school. I wanted him so much, and we were so close, such good friends. James always has been and always will be my brother, but in a lot of ways, we had no common ground. His family are so ordinary. His parents love him and spoil him. He's never exchanged so much as a cross word with either of them, I don't think. Not that I desperately wanted to spend my teenage years raking over the fact that I never seemed to be good enough for the people I most wanted to please. Still though, when the weight of those kinds of thoughts got too much, when I knew without a doubt that nothing about me would ever be good enough for anyone or anything, it was Remus I turned to. He understands life's imperfections, and he understands me, understands how I react to them.
I remember one time, not long after leaving home, I'd had a fight with Regulus and was feeling like a complete wreck, like I'd failed as a brother as well as a son. And I was angry. So angry. I can't help myself, and I know it's not healthy but anger seems to have been my constant companion. I know that I'm lucky in my friends, and I know that from an outside perspective I'm probably one of those jammy bastards that always lands on his feet one way or another. But since childhood I've felt it, something black and red and pounding in my chest. I don't know why I have it, and I don't always know what's going to bring it on, but Regulus was always a fairly safe bet. I'd be spoiling for a fight for days, weeks at a time. I'd hate. Not things or people, unless maybe myself for being such a useless prick, but I'd just be a bundle of practically vibrating anger. James would always rise to the bait and fight with me. Peter would hide away until I calmed down. Remus would serenely ignore my little digs until late one night in our fifth year, he just looked me in the eye and said, you're not angry at me. And there was no way I could deny that.
It all came spilling out of me that time, and it was one of those conversations I will always remember because it seems to have shifted the whole course of my life. That was when he became so bloody important, and it was also the first time I let myself think the words I love you. How could I fail to love someone who still cared for me when I was at my worst, my most ridiculous and unlovable? And that was the problem, really. He would let me get away with terrible behaviour, would let me say terrible things, and never even flinch. James would be sick of my attitude long before Remus, and I was so blinded by how much I adored him that I started to wonder if there was something more to his friendship and understanding. I started to edge towards believing that maybe, just maybe, he sometimes gave me looks loaded with the same mad mixture of interest and hope and dread that I gave to him.
It wasn't one-way, either. It wasn't as though he listened to my shit and then went about his life as normal. He told me things too, things I don't think he shared with other people. He told me about his parents, and how he sometimes felt their love like a stifling blanket over his face. He told me that everything we knew of him, that mischievous, devilish Remus that he showed to us was packed away carefully at the end of each school term. He told me that it was like being a different person at home, because he was so scared of shaming them, so determined to make up for being a werewolf. He tiptoed around at home, watching every word he said, constantly feeling like he should apologise for even existing. His parents loved him of course, but there was always that aura of concern floating about them. They worried, and he felt guilty, and they worried even more, and he felt frustrated, and it went on and on and on.
"I feel like I can't breathe," he said, "Unless I'm with you."
My heart leapt and stuttered because that was exactly, to the word, how I felt about him. I know now, and knew even then that he meant you in the plural, not me. It still did that thing to me, though. I came to think of it as the Remus effect. Things he did or said would have an instant physical effect on me. It was like a splash of cold water to the face, and like sinking into a hot bath, and like flying without a broom, and like falling from an impossible height. He used to sit so close to me, to whisper things in my ear even when there was no need to keep anything secret. He trusted me, and he touched me. I had never been touched like that before. Not that it was anything extreme. Certainly his hands never wandered under my clothes as I often wished they would. But he would run his fingers down my forearm while we talked or occasionally grab my wrist and squeeze it for a second to make a point. It made my heart leap, made mouth go dry, and made my mind race. My parents had definitely never touched me in that simple, absent-mindedly affectionate way. Me and James would shove each other around, and I would ruffle Peter's hair, but it was different with Remus. Gentle and unthinking and even though it made my head spin, made me wonder all kinds of illicit thoughts, part of me always knew that he didn't really mean it romantically. I think that just made me love him all the more, though. The fact that he would do these things and never expect anything, never think that it was anything out of the ordinary, made me feel warm and squirmy.
Of course, then, it was very easy for me to just be glad that he was there, and he was my friend, and he trusted me, and he liked to spend time with me. I think I had just never expected to feel that way, and certainly not so early, not for one of my best friends. That mad, crazy kind of adoration for him was such a delicious contrast to being angry or being sad or being a smart-arse. I suppose it was a relief as much as anything else, to know that I could feel something that made me want to be good rather than bad. An emotion or an impulse that didn't make me want to fight or throw a fit, but made me want to be lovable. He treated me like I was kind and funny and decent instead of like I was a slightly unhinged fuck-up, and it made me want to live up to his expectations. Who knew that falling head over heels for one of my best friends would actually make me feel more normal instead of less?
Because it did feel normal. It felt normal to spend so much time with him, and it felt normal to care more about him than anyone else. In the end, it even felt normal when my throat tightened and my heart pounded in response to his closeness. Everything about those couple of years felt so right. Looking back now, I can see the raised eyebrows that Peter and James exchanged when I would rather hang about the place while Remus studied than make good use of the time by pranking. At the time though – well, to be honest, at the time I was in no position to notice, because I was drunk or stoned more often than I was sober.
We all drank, obviously. We all smoked too, me and James a little more enthusiastically than the others, but I don't think they realised the full extent of it. Well, Remus did, but in those days he noticed everything about me, knew everything about me, and worse or better than that, I've never been sure which, he understood it. So unlike James who would sometimes catch me smoking a joint first thing in the morning and call me a fucking reprobate before leaning over for a toke, Remus would just look at me with sad eyes because he knew why. Anything to feel nothing. Anything, anything in the world to feel less aware of myself.
Anyway, my point is that it's very easy to be grateful for what you have when you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that you'll never have anything more. But I think, maybe, there was a time when I could have. Well, there was a time when I did have more, but I think there might have been a chance I could have had even more, and for longer than five minutes. I'm not sure, I mean, we never really talked about it. For two people who talked about everything, we never talked about the way things were between us unless we were both supremely drunk, or if I'd been picking away at it all night like an old scab.
It only happened one time when we were at school, about halfway through our last year, but I remember it so vividly. It was late and dark and cold in the corridors, and we were both drunk. In fact, I was too drunk to know whether he or I started it. That's the only thing I don't remember, though. I remember the way the weight of his body pressed me back against the corridor wall, and I remember the press and retreat of his lips as they clung to my own. I remember the way his mouth tasted - the dark ale he used to favour, and the muggle cigarettes he used to steal from Longbottom - part of Frank's teenage rebellion, and merciful Merlin, wouldn't anyone rebel if they had a mother like dear old Frankie's? I remember too the little noises that he made and the way his face seemed to fit between my palms as though sculpted for the express purpose of being cradled in my hands. And sweet god, the way he reached so casual and determined for the waistband of my trousers - yes, I remember that. Even that drunk, I was vaguely amazed that he didn't ask, didn't wait for permission, just dove straight in and wormed one hand into my pants, using the other to drag my own hand to the front of his trousers. I think I said something at that point, something about wait or why, but he just leaned more heavily into me, pressed a tiny kiss to the parchment-thin skin under my eye and I was sure even in that instant that his whispered, yes, yes, let me, would stay with me forever.
I suppose that before, I would have thought I'd have preferred to be sober for such a mind-bending, life-altering event. In fact, looking back, I'm glad, so fucking glad, that I was drunk. It was awkward and brief and heated and a bit ridiculous. And perfect. If I'd been sober, I probably would have wasted that moment in wondering if this was going to happen once, or twice, or forever. I would have wondered what the fuck we were doing in an alcove that was no kind of hiding place. I would have wondered what our friends were up to, especially as they could have been anywhere. I didn't think any of that, though, and I didn't realise anything other than that it was good, good, hot and fast and sweet and oh, just touching him. Despite all the confusion and the bitterness and the mess that came after it (all on my side, I'm painfully aware), that moment remains one of the brightest, most shining experiences I've ever had. Even in the depths of my resentment, I never regretted it, not for a second, not that perfect, stupid, heartstopping moment with him. I'm glad that I didn't ruin it with sobriety.
It only took a few minutes for both of us. I can't speak for him, obviously, but for me, the sounds of his breath in my ear and the feeling when the fingers of his free hand stroked roughly through my hair were what finished me off. He kissed me afterwards, shaky and breathless and sweet, one hand still in my hair before he untangled his fingers and cleaned us both up with a wobbly wave of his wand.
"Fuck," he laughed. "Sorry, Padfoot. Fuck, I'm drunk," he added, leaning against me for a moment. I let myself run my hands across his back and he huffed a breath of air onto my neck. I should have said it then, I suppose. That would have been the moment. I should have told him that I wanted him, needed him, and I've no idea why I didn't. Maybe it was the fuck, I'm drunk comment, or maybe I still hadn't reassembled my scattered brain, or maybe I am just more of a coward than I realised, because I said nothing. When I'm feeling charitable to myself about the whole thing – which isn't often – I think that maybe I didn't have the words to say it properly then, to tell him that I loved him beyond thought or reason, that I loved him like normal people love their lives.
I tried a few nights later to explain it to him, but I honestly believe that once I let that night go past, that night when I still had the heat of him warming my body, when I could still taste his lips on mine... As soon as I let him step away from me, I killed any chance at making a go of it. Still, I tried, because it's not in my nature to let things go, not when I really want them. I managed to corner him alone one night and I stammered and stuttered out the frankly ridiculous facts. I told him how it had felt, the mad kind of terrified joy when I had him in my arms. I told him that I couldn't imagine my life without him, and I think I even told him that I thought he was beautiful, or something equally foolish. To be fair to him, he looked devastated in that moment, and it gave me fair warning, that look on his face. With trembling voice and shaking hands, he told me that he would, he did, he thought I was wonderful. I suppose I should have felt my heart leap then, should have felt a surge of hope. I didn't though, because the way his face had fallen left me with no doubt.
He said that I was his friend, his best friend, and that he had wanted to for a long while now, but that now it wouldn't be fair. It would risk too much, and it wouldn't be fair. He kept coming back to that point, that it wouldn't be fair, and I didn't understand until he said words that I'd never thought to hear, words that should have been impossible. It spilled out of him and once it did, I thought that I should have known all along. He'd been planning it for months but not mentioned it in case it hadn't worked out. His big move. His very own prison break. His fresh start, new life, cry of independence. The ministry had finally approved arrangements he had made with a second cousin, the only member of his family he was ever in touch with after the bite. In Liverpool.
It's horrible now, to look back on how I felt when he told me that, and I hate the fact that my first reaction was anger rather than sadness. How could he? How could he go away, when I loved him? Pathetic and immature, but that was how I saw it. I didn't care that he was moving for himself and his own peace of mind, all that mattered was that he was moving away. From me.
So I did what I always do in such situations, when I can feel my throat closing and my legs weakening and my eyes stinging. I wasn't thinking, and as usual that's my only defence for the way that I spoke to him. How the hell would he manage full moons in Liverpool alone when he could barely drag himself upright afterwards even with the three of us to help him? We'd spent five years figuring out how to break the law for him and he was just going to fuck off? That was fucking charming, wasn't it?
I never said I was a nice person. I never said I deserved to have him love me back.
In fact, I know that I don't deserve that. Especially as, when I finally ran out of steam or bitterness or whatever it was that was powering my words, he just looked at me. There was hurt in his eyes somewhere – I learned early to notice that, to see when a barb has hit home – but he just barely let it show. Even after all that, even after everything I'd said he just looked at me with those eyes that are so much more than they should be, and apologised. Yeah. He apologised.
I think my words registered somewhere with him though, they must have done. Maybe they were the last straw, the words that made him finally reach his limit with me, made him decide that I frankly wasn't worth that concerted an effort. Maybe that's just wishful thinking on my part though, because at least there would be a reason. I don't think it's the case though, in all honesty. Now, later, supposedly an adult, I can just start to believe what my teenage self could never have accepted. This band of friends, of brothers, we would grow up, and we would just drift apart. It wouldn't be like school forever, because nothing stays how it is forever. Once your life has changed a few times, that becomes easier to understand but at the time it seemed impossible that we should ever be anything other than what we were right then.
But we left school, and James proposed to Lily and started playing for the Arrows, and Pete started working in the department of magical catastrophes, and I signed up to auror training and Remus went to Liverpool. And it wasn't like there was a fight or any last bitter words. The final months of school had been good at the time – full of pranks and illicit Hogsmeade trips and plots to leave our mark indelibly on the castle – although now when I look back they seem...muted.
We all met up a few times in the first couple of months after school ended. Once at Remus' place, a couple of times at mine. The four marauders back together again, and in those times it felt like nothing had changed. And hell, I suppose we were only a few months out of school, still thoroughly wet behind the ears. We hadn't really changed by that point.
But we did change. We all did. James – James is a lot more serious now. He always loved quidditch, but also always treated it like a bit of a joke. These days he has special diets and early morning runs. And he's serious about Lily, too. They're having the longest engagement in history, purely to appease Lily's parents a little about her moving in with him in Appleby, but for all that, they're devoted. They're really in love, and seeing them sometimes, with their lives that have turned into two halves of a whole life, makes me wonder about the way I feel for Remus. It can't be love, it sometimes seems to me. James and Lily make me think that love only counts when it's reciprocated, when your love encourages another person to weave their whole self around you, to forge a whole new being from the best of both of you. So James is grown up now, more serious than he used to be, and so in love that it sets him apart. He's one of those people, whose relationship is so passionate and affectionate and loving and mischievous - it's as though he gets everything he could possibly need from Lily, and while he'll always be my best friend and brother, he doesn't need me anymore.
In all honesty, I'm probably closest to Peter these days. Partly that's because he's the one who lives closest and because on any day that I'm not out in the field for practical training, we actually work in the same building. Another reason that we're closer now is that he's changed, probably more dramatically than any of us. There's no way to say it without sounding smug, but when we were at school, people would always see Peter as one of us, and usually as the least intelligent one of us. Not that he is stupid, not by a long shot. It's just that me and James, we were always so smug in our cleverness, so brazen, that Peter seemed to fade into the background. Now, working in magical catastrophes, he is coming into his own in a way I'm ashamed to admit I never expected. It's as though he did three years' worth of growing up in the few months after we left school, turning into a confident, independent bloke who wasn't forever looking to others - not to come up with the ideas, but to validate the ones he's had on his own.
And Remus went to Liverpool and did a variety of muggle jobs, and lived with his cousin, and he changed too. He changed in that he didn't have that old Remus need to make everyone else happy. I should have been glad that he was doing what he needed to do, that he was taking ownership of his own life and making it better. And I was. In a way. To a degree. There was always part of me that believed, on one level or another, that no matter how happy his new life made him, I could have made him happier. I could. I could.
And me? I went to training, and I slogged my guts out trying to get to the top of every class, and I went home to an empty flat and cooked myself boring meals and passed out exhausted most nights. I wasn't happy. For a while, I thought I was lonely. It took me some time to realise though, that I wasn't lonely in the normal sense. I couldn't have been, because I saw Peter for lunch almost every day, James for a pint at least once a week, and of course there was the weekly night in at James and Lily's house too. And I made friends at work, not what I've always thought of as real friends (not the marauders in other words), but friends nonetheless. No, I wasn't lonely, and if I was, it was my own choice to be that way. It wasn't as though my friends from work didn't ask me to go out with them. They did, at least once a week, especially when I started getting top marks, but I usually said no. I didn't feel...anything much, really.
I missed Remus, missed him to distraction, thought about him every day. In the first year after we left school, I tried twice more to make him change his mind. I told you I don't give up on the things I genuinely, desperately want. The first time, we were all out together and I cornered him on his way back from the bathroom to whisper in a shaky voice that I did, I'd still, whatever it took, however he wanted. He just looked at me like I was trying to hurt him for a moment before shaking his head and squeezing my arm and changing the subject. The second time we were alone, and drunk, and everything he did or said seemed laden with promise. That's the problem, I think. I want him so much that everything he does, I view through the lens of my own desperate adoration, and I see exactly what I want to see.
I asked him that night, in the most roundabout way, if he was fucking anybody. The answer seemed to be no, and it spilled out then, like something diseased and distasteful, as I told him how much I wanted him, how I still wanted him, how I couldn't think without him. I cringe to look back on how pathetic I was that night, how I practically begged him to give us a chance, to just think about giving us a chance. Now, once or twice in my life, I've been on the other end of that little debacle, I've been the unfortunate soul hearing how someone adores them and being completely unable to return to sentiments, and it is no fun at all. I don't know how he got through that night without wanting to throttle me, I was so over-the-top and maudlin in my desperation.
Then there was Niall. Niall was my boyfriend for a year and a half, and all I could ever have said about him was that he was Great. Great. He's Great. Everything's Great. It's just a word people use when they can't legitimately fall back on nice. Niall was handsome and funny and clever and made racing brooms. James put the two of us in touch in that weird way that straight people with only a couple of gay friends will do. Me and Niall had good sex and he told me he loved me a few times. There. I know it's been years now since Niall, but even at the time, it didn't get much more emotional than that, let alone any more passionate. Whereas hearing Remus' name, or the word werewolf, or smelling chocolate, or overhearing someone talking about muggle literature - those and a thousand other little things will send me off into thoughts that seem to leave me with a bad taste in my mouth. I am an adult now, I often remind myself when I think of these things. It shouldn't be like this anymore; I shouldn't be like this anymore.
I did like Niall, and although I wasn't completely mad about him, I did feel for a while that I was moving on from Remus. Then about six months after I started seeing Niall, me, James, Peter and Remus all met up together, and my heart was fluttering in my throat as I decided I would tell Remus about Niall. That should have been my first clue, I suppose. I didn't want Remus to be jealous, not really, not consciously. Maybe I wanted him to share my surprise that I could even imagine looking at anyone other than him. Maybe I just wanted him to look shocked, a tiny bit taken-aback. I don't know what I wanted, but it was not the momentarily relieved tilt to his smile, or his gentle and heartfelt congratulations. He asked what Niall was like. I told him that he was Great. He said he was pleased, and that he'd been seeing this girl, Eleanor, for a few months and that she was beautiful and funny and foul-mouthed. Eleanor, I thought afterwards. What a stupid fucking name. And it was then that I realised that I was right back there. Just a few hours in his company and my heart was beating out of rhythm, my stomach was swooping at meaningless comments.
Dozens of times, I have resolved to move on from this. From him. A handful of times over the last five years, I've even believed that I have done so. When he is not here, I'm able to realise that he is not perfect. I have a photo of the four of us where I can see his imperfections - probably because I have spent far too long looking for them, but I don't think about that. I can see that actually, his nose is rather on the large side. His eyes aren't completely symmetrical, and his lips are somehow too full and sensuous for his fairly slender face. In all honesty, there is nothing special about him apart from the fact that I spent my formative years with him, and that I can't get him out of my head.
I'm an adult now. A grown up, fully qualified auror, with a caseload that's too big, a nice flat, and some good friends. And although I still want him, I'm coming to accept that it - he - is an impossible dream. He is never going to be mine, and although that might still sting, it doesn't plunge me into the depths and blackness of despair that it once did. I suppose that is to do with growing up, with not being such a self-absorbed, self-obsessed teenager. Still, I always imagined that growing up would mean an end to all childish things, but it doesn't. Because I still love him.
I'm more confident in the use of that word than I ever have been before. Maybe he doesn't love me, and maybe he never will, so maybe I will never know the kind of real, true love that James and Lily have, where each person is equally blinded by the other. But I do love him, and I'm starting to accept that won't change anytime soon. He will always be the funniest, the most handsome, the smartest person I've had the fortune to know. And I will always be the fool that loves him too much, because there is nothing else that I can do. It may not send me into fits of rage or sorrow anymore, but it is always there, and it is always unfair in a niggling way, that he should go through life with no idea that someone loves him like this. If I could trust myself to say it without sounding like a fool, I would tell him. I would tell him that no matter how far he goes away from me, he will only ever have to ask once for me to join him there. All it would take would be a single look, a single word, a single crook of his finger beckoning me closer and I would leap at the chance, even now.
"For now, you're lucky –
Across the world, someone loves you hard enough
to sieve a single star from this dark sky."