l'osservatore della bellezza | wolfstar

for even in the most broken mind

trigger warning at the end of the chapter (to avoid a very big spoiler). 

also, some very vague smut for like a paragraph.

***

It was funny, really - the 'shack', as it was so lovingly called, had never seemed so lonely.

Like a cave, it swallowed light, and left the echoes of his life before to shrivel and die within its musty walls. If Hell was to be found on earth, it would likely not be found here, since there were worse places. This godforsaken shit-hole, however, was certainly a strong contender. Nobody visited: friendship was a memory for the time-being. The shack was a stark reminder of his self-made isolation, and he hated it for that.

For these reasons, Sirius made his best efforts to stay away from it as often as he could (and if he couldn't, he was pretty adept at finding company). Of course, he still needed a place to sleep at night, but the beds of strangers were frequently available, and always inexpensive. And it kept him distracted, being mindlessly fucked by a nameless man and then passing out beside him.

Except, even though his current participant was very well-equipped for the job at hand, he found his mind drifting anyway.

Sirius lay on his back, staring blankly at the ceiling, gasping for breath, and wondered whether there was another world where the face above him wasn't a stranger's, but familiar, and loved, and loved him as well (which wasn't a thought that made the most sense, but it made sense to him, in his hazy, drunken head).

And when he came, the name Sirius called out was familiar, too, though the stranger didn't seem too pleased with that.

"Who's Remus?" he muttered, clearly bitter.

Who, indeed.

A stranger? Sirius mused, after the man had kicked him out of his house ("All that effort and you can't even say my name!"). You don't often know a stranger so well.

Perhaps an enemy, then? Enemies were people who hurt you, and Sirius had been hurt by him, albeit unintentionally. Although... you had to hate an enemy, and even after everything, Sirius couldn't bring himself to do so.

An old friend, an old lover... Sirius couldn't bear to think of what they'd had together as something resolutely confined to the past, even though it was. And he knew that if everything had been just a little different, he would not be thinking in the past tense, and instead they would now be in love with each other and happier than they ever imagined possible. He knew this, and it broke him: they'd been so close, hadn't they? But now that other life was naught but a dream, fading with every waking blink.

Walking aimlessly down the street, Sirius was revisited by a memory that seemed to come to him more often than he'd like it to.

It was a memory from long ago, back before they'd even begun their more... physically intimate relationship. Sirius had been perusing a stack of yellowed paper, each with a half-finished poem scribbled on it in blurred ink. He'd reckoned they were abandoned pieces of writing, since all of them were slightly dusty, and most of them were not very good.

Halfway through the pile, he'd stopped at one that he didn't quite understand:

When Zeus ripped us both in two,
He did not know what that would do,
For darling, I'm lost without you,
And my arms are always empty.
I do not know how it should feel
To be whole - to have something real
To love, and have them softly peel
Away this shell of... damn, nothing fits!

"What does this poem mean?" Sirius had asked later that day, taking the folded page out of his pocket and handing it over.

The other man had read it, and laughed. "Oh Lord, I'd forgotten I ever wrote that piece of trash."