l'osservatore della bellezza | wolfstar

because you might suggest it wrongly

It took a while for Remus to realise something had changed, and longer still to do anything about it.

Probably, it was because he was a coward. He'd already known himself to be such, so usually the repetition of proof of it to him was bitter, and comforting. He could wallow peacefully in his acceptance that he had a fatal, irredeemable failing, and cheerfully enough postpone any attempt at improving a hopeless situation.

And he would be cheerful this time, too, except Sirius was not, and since that was the crux of the issue, and also his fault, the evidence of his cowardly nature was only bitter this time. It reminded him that his failing had caused someone he would never willingly hurt to continue hurting, all because he didn't have the courage to even acknowledge that things were wrong.

So it was for that reason (Remus' cowardice, I mean, despite his sudden loathing of it) that nothing was pointed out to have changed, even though it had. Conversation was scratchy between the two of them, and neither tried to soften it. They shied from the other's arms as if they were afraid of feeling too much, or worse, of revealing that they felt too much. Neither said a word, and the change was suppressed, until it wasn't.

It wasn't, by complete accident, because Sirius looked so unbearably morose one warm evening, despite his best efforts to smile as Remus painted him. And too quickly, Remus decided he couldn't stand by and let him suffer on like this, and do nothing to ease it.

"Sirius," he sighed, and put down his paintbrush. The other man froze, his smile immediately falling as he felt the last two weeks of tiptoeing silence stumble loudly into the room.

"Yes?"

"What's happened?"

Sirius looked at him with a dishonest frankness. "I'm not sure what you mean."

"Please. We haven't spoken properly to each other in a while now, and I don't know why." Remus got up, walking to the other end of the couch where Sirius was sat. There was a chaste distance between them.

"It's not anything. You don't need to worry about it. In fact, maybe you should be the one to explain it."

"Why me?"

There was an expression in Sirius' eyes; it was so hollow that Remus felt cold. He realised, with flinching certainty, that Sirius knew.

"You know why."

They couldn't talk. It hurt too hard, too much, to attempt to put words to the depth of feeling both had tried incompetently to hide from the other.

Sirius spoke first, because Remus felt like he was going to die, and dead people aren't very good at talking. "I heard you and Pettigrew discussing... how you felt. And how you wanted to feel. And how, how they didn't match, and it was tearing you apart."

Remus tried to build some sort of sentence. "Why - you didn't say anything - why?"

"Because I love you."

His breath stopped, then came too quickly. He felt sick, sick with the emotion, suffocated by those two grey eyes that looked too sad and too beautiful to be real.

Remus hated him, a little bit, for being braver than him. And he hated that he loved him back, but couldn't say it, didn't dare to.

"Remus, it's alright." His smile was cruelly forgiving. "I know how you feel towards me, and I know it can't be."

"You aren't... angry?"

"How can I be? I'm angry at Greyback, I would kill him if I could, but I cannot blame you for what he did."