moony49

[moony49]

So good I turned into Remus stalking to see if a new chapter is up

your hands; mine (stalker Remus AU) part 8

PART 1 | | PREVIOUS PART

“I have to go,” Remus says.

Sirius is blinking sleepily, then three times in quick succession, like an animal startled by the lights of an oncoming semi truck. “Huh?”

“Otilde must be wondering where I am,” Remus clarifies in answer to what he assumes is a question.

“Who?” Sirius rubs at his eyes and shakes his head, chasing the lingering sleep away. It makes his hair move around his face, and even with how limp it is with the night’s sweat, it frames him perfectly.

“Otilde,” Remus tells him again, momentarily stunned that someone who is such a large part of his life doesn’t know about the other large part of his life. “My cat. Her breakfast time is at six thirty.”

“Your cat has a set time for breakfast?” Sirius sits up on the sofa and stretches, hands far over his head. It makes his shirt ride up and shows off the long lines of his arms. He’s so pretty it hurts to look at, like a laser beam shone straight into Remus’ eyes.

“She gets anxious otherwise. And her medication must be given at the same time every day. I wrap it in cheese.” Remus fumbles for his phone. “Here, I have a photo.”

Little black ball of fur, matted no matter what Remus does to fix it, a sharp snuggletooth on each side of her mouth. Huge brown eyes, slightly bulging out of her skull.

“She’s…” Sirius starts and stops and zooms in on the photo.

“I know,” Remus tells him. He has no delusions about it. He’s had her for years and she still looks as she did the day he pulled her out from the street-side drain, damp and scraggly and half-starved.

“This is the cutest fucking cat I’ve ever seen.” Sirius subverts expectations. He holds the phone with both hands, looking at Otilde’s photo with something almost like reverence. “Look at those teeth.”

“They’re very sharp,” Remus supplies, unsure what else to say. 

Remus is self aware: he knows that just because he can’t see the flaws on Otilde doesn’t mean that there aren’t any. He’s never rendered her in glass but he knows that if he were to, he’d be no better than pug owners, delusional about her to the point of romanticising each imperfection. 

Are you sure you want to keep her? The vet asked him when Remus brought her in that first time. It might be kinder to end her suffering.

Awfully expensive, keeping a sick pet, were his Mam’s words, when he called to show her through the camera.

Nothing we can do for you, said the pet insurance man when Remus tried to get Otilde a plan. There is no cover we can offer with the pre-existing conditions.

But Sirius looks at her and it’s almost the same as he looks at James’ wife. Not quite with the awe he has for James, nor the devotion he has for their son, but still there’s nothing short of wonder in his expression as he zooms in on Otilde’s little round eyes.

“I bet they are,” Sirius responds, looking at Otilde’s teeth. His voice is different - talking at the phone almost the way one would at a baby. “I bet she makes such a perfect little itty bitty hunter.”

“She’s rather terrible, actually,” Remus points at the way his cat’s eyes are ever so slightly crossed. “No depth perception.”

At that, Sirius’ eyes light up like nothing Remus has ever seen. He finally looks away from the phone and straight at Remus, and suddenly there’s no sneer and no hesitation and no coldness. It’s nothing like all the ways he’d looked at Remus in the past.

“Is she very clumsy?” Sirius asks with an almost whisper.

“I guess,” Remus tells him about the time she’s fallen off the sofa or when she miscalculated her jump and missed the kitchen counter.

Sirius hangs off each word like a man starved.

Remus falls in love a bit more, then a lot more.

“I could…” he hesitates, pivots the sentence. “You could meet her. If you wanted. She’s not very friendly, but maybe…”

There were the times Otilde had hissed at the pizza delivery man, and the time she attacked the doorframe while trying to go for the plumber’s leg. She’s more than unfriendly. She’s territorial and hates strangers and it’s been her and Remus, and no one else, since the very beginning. But maybe, Remus thinks, wistfully and maybe naively, maybe Sirius could be her exception, the way he has been Remus’. 

Sirius shuts down. The soft look is gone and he hands the phone back, the screen black. “If you think I’ll go with you anywhere, you need your head checked,” he bites out like a dog on high alert. “I’m not going to let you chain me up in some basement for the sake of seeing a cat.”

“I would never hurt you.”

“You’ve been following me for a better part of the year,” Sirius hisses out. “You’ve made me consider moving. You’ve been hurting me for months.”

“You were going to move?” Guiltily, Remus thinks of all the mornings he’s watched Sirius relax here, of the times he’s seen him cook with James or have wine with James’ wife. The way Sirius would look after putting on his comfortable clothes after a frustrating work day. The way he’s at home here, guard down and open the way he isn’t anywhere else.

“Yes I was going to move, there’s a psycho outside my window every single day. Are you daft?

The guilt ramps up. Remus picks up his sketches and phone, cleans his mug and makes a fresh tea for Sirius. Gathers everything that he has brought with him - the ghost and the kebab containers.

“You should tell James what happened,” he tells Sirius from the door. Doesn’t give himself the right to look at him.

“James is a detective,” Sirius throws like casting the first stone. “Sure you want that?”

Remus decides not to answer. It’s not his choice anymore. He closes the door behind himself and leaves the flat, the building, the space Sirius and he breathed the same air and spoke in the same vibrations.

✨ ✨ ✨ ✨

notes: that took a bit longer than expected but in my defence I had fandom friends over in real life and their presence was too golden to waste on writing ❤️

Tags!

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@remoonysiriusly

@lunalovegoodsgirlfriend

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@a-sunset-outside-my-window

[moony49]

I thought I would draw something based on the little thing I wrote after watching DPS for the hundredth time...

[moony49]

YESSSSSS, THAT'S WHAT I'VE BEEN SAYING AND PEOPLE DON'T GET THE VISION!!!!!

he's SO Remus Lupin coded

[moony49]

I sound my barbaric yawp to the sky

As the ice breaks and makes me slide by

The snow falls over my last goodbye

Making my eyes sore and my tongue tie

[moony49]

Can't get them out of my head, at this point my family justa assumes the soundtrack is always on repeat and they are not wrong.

Someone please encourage me to finish it...

[moony49]

It’s just a Monday, like any other. They’re having eggs and toast for breakfast, the tea caramel-coloured where fresh milk offsets its rich darkness. Remus breathes across the surface and watches it ripple.

“The new Priest arrives today,” Hope says. “You should go and greet him.” Like she’s telling Remus to pick up more bread or some forgotten ingredient for their supper. Inconsequential.

And it should be. Who the Priest is in their little church makes no difference to the Lupins. Their contract with the Church is for life - as long as there is a Lupin living in the caretaker's cottage, they have a place in the Church. They barely interacted with the previous Priest anyway.

“Do you know his name yet?” Remus asks around the smell of his tea, more just to answer than out of curiosity.

“Father Sirius,” Hope says.

(The first time Remus hears it is the last time the name invokes no feelings.)

“He’s about your age, I’ve heard,” Hope continues. “It’s his first time leading a Church. Let’s be gentle to him, Cariad.”

***

And Remus complies. Or - at the least - he means to.

He heads to the Church after their breakfast. Through the old little graveyard he cares for and the roses that need trimming and the grass he’s recently mowed. Comes up to the blooming rhododendron and there stands a man.

His back is turned to Remus. Tall, posture impossibly straight, broad back. His hair is swept to the side, down one shoulder and exposing the line of his neck above a clerical collar, and the delicate arch of his ear.

That’s all Remus sees of him. The sunlight hitting his hair in such a way that the black almost turns golden - a holy man chosen by the grace of the Lord. Illuminated in the mundane morning.

Remus has never felt peace in the confines of the Church. It’s a vibrating, incessant presence for him, the knowledge that in there, Remus is known inside and out, all of his sins on display, the monster that lives within him as close to the surface as it can be outside of the light of the full moon. Scratching to get out as if coaxed forward by the promise of forgiveness Remus knows he can never be given.

There’s peace in the way Father Sirius bends to take a closer look at the blue-pink petals.

There’s something else completely in the way Remus aches to go down onto his knees. It’s nothing like when he prays.

Father Sirius never even sees him standing there, watching, until Remus runs away.

(Tiny little preview of something I’ve been working on while procrastinating from *redacted fest fic*)

[moony49]

[moony49]

art by sophithil

Conan Gray is never escaping the Sirius Black fancast allegations...

[moony49]

"You believe me like a god

I'll betray you like a man"

But it's Patroclus and Achilles because Achilles is a demigod.

[moony49]

One of the most annoying things in school for me was always when the friends of my brother followed me around and tried speaking to me just because I was the sister of my brother... and you know all those jokes about sisters.

So I kind of imagine Regulus having to deal with the same, specially being Sirius so known around the castle. And it would make Regulus want to kill everyone and himself.

And this would be even funnier when James tries to talk and flirt with him and Regulus in his mind is just thinking " How many laughs will he get with this? He'll probably tell Sirius... and he'll be annoyed. Good." And my poor James is just in love.

[moony49]

Around this time one year and a half I entered the Marauders fandom because I had found an interesting looking audiobook in Spotify... little did I know that it was fanfiction. I'm so grateful to be in this fandom and get to know so many wonderful people with incredible minds and imagination.

I've been working on doing some of the All te Young Dudes covers and maybe one day I'll learn how to bind it all together.

[moony49]

It doesn't matter what book I'm reading in the moment I can't go on for too long without re-reading Crimson Rivers. I can't help it... it's an obsession.

[moony49]

Stephen from Penda's Fen (1974) is so Remus Lupin coded but most of you aren't ready for that conversation...

[moony49]

I know how we all feel about her... but remember season 2, she was so scared and lost. I don't condone her actions but fuck they were all cult crazy in season two.

[moony49]

Of course I couldn't help myself and I've drawn my crazy queen again.

[moony49]

So... I'm finally reading tcoptp after refusing to read it ,for no reason in particular, for several months now. And I love it! I HAD TO draw this scene as soon as I read it, it was so perfect.

[moony49]

I've been drawing all of the yellowjackets while I re-watch to cope with the fact that we're gonna have to wait for season 4. Of course I had to draw my favorite girl Misty.