Ayeeee!

(this prompt was sent to someone who wasn't me ((thank you @lunapwrites and @impishtubist for this)), and i...ran with i...feel like i should apologize? also hoping i did it justice <3)

about 5k.

-

They gave out pamphlets.

Leaflets.

Pastel-colored booklets with images of smiling children plastered on every side, hoping to bandage bad news the same way they bandaged injuries. But Remus’s arm kept on bleeding through the dressings and his mother hadn’t stopped crying. There was no way to put a bandage on this bad of news.

Your kid is a monster, better get used to it.

Remus didn't remember a lot about the first few weeks after he was bitten, aside from the pamphlets. He wondered if any of the children had just been turned into something they never asked for or if they had merely caught a cold. In any case, the pamphlets were left around his house, his parents gathering all and any reading material they could find in hopes of figuring out how to make this new...thing...more bearable for their son. The way they talked around it, through fake smiles and stickers that matched the color palette.

Remus also remembered what the Healer had told his parents when they thought he had been asleep. The side effects that weren't in the booklets.

Chronic joint pain

Vomiting

Hyperhydrosis

Fatigue

Early death. Shortened lifespan.

And that last one, Remus remembered loud and clear as he stared at his three new friends, his three best friends, that he made at boarding school who weren't tiptoeing around the secret Remus had managed to keep for all of half a year. Too clever for their own good. Too caring. Too much time on their hands.

Or they had gotten too close.

"You all don't....know. You don't get it," Remus said, looking down at his hands as he sat on his four-poster, knees tucked under his chin. He tried to remember the last time he looked down at his fingers and didn't see bandages and bruises, only to find he couldn't.

"No, we do get it!" James said indignantly, staring at him with hazel eyes and glasses too big for his face, "You're our friend! What else is there to get. You're not a monster, you're not a big scary thing, you're our friend."

"Best friend," Peter agreed, and Remus looked up from his hands to see the small blonde boy nodding. Remus's eyes looked to Sirius, who had been quiet as the nervous confession spilled out of Remus's mouth, mumbled and garbled and Remus was sure he had drooled at one point. Arrogant, privileged Sirius Black, was quiet and listened, dark, thick eyebrows knitted together softly. And even after James and Peter continued to cheer him up, make him laugh, make him feel like maybe they did get it, Sirius stayed quiet and Remus would catch him glancing at him every so often, with the same look that Remus couldn't read.

Until they were alone in the bathroom, brushing their teeth, James already asleep and Peter close.

"Are you going to say anything?" asked Remus finally, "If you're...I know what you must think, I know--"

"Oh, please, go on, tell me what I think."

"You think I'm...dirty. No good. Half-breed. Don't you? Too proud to say it, especially not since James was so good about it, and Peter too. It's all over your face."

"I don't think that."

"Then say something!"

"What can I say?" Sirius asked softly, "What do you want me to say?"

"I dunno..."

"James already told you we're still friends, so you've heard that bit. Peters told you we'll wait up for you on full moons and take good notes during class. If you want to hear that I agree, then you've got it. We're still friends and I'm the only one of us who takes legible notes and you know, I....don't sleep so, the staying up part is already done."

Remus softened the arms that were wrapped protectively around his body--the last barrier he had between himself and his friends--dropping stupidly to his sides in front of Sirius Black who was perhaps the only person Remus had ever met who could maintain any sort of dignity in a dressing gown. "You don't have to."

"Shut up."

"Why have you been so quiet?"

"Why have you?"

"You're frustrating, you know. Answering my questions with questions when I'm the one who basically revealed the world's biggest secret today! I'm the one who's....sick and whatever! I'm allowed to have kept that to myself, you of all people should know what the worst looks like."

Sirius's eyes darkened for a split second and then it was just gone, replaced with an easy half-smile, "You're so dramatic, really?"

"I'm telling you all, you don't get it! It's not just a once a month thing--"

"Then tell us."

"I could die early, you know. You want to be friends with someone who could die when their sixteen? I could keel over next year for all I know!"

"Well...currently, I'm also friends with," Sirius held up his hand to count on his fingers, "Peter, who burps Irish folk songs, Marlene...who has more hair than I think anyone should and talks so fast I think she could win an award, James who does morning affirmations--"

"You've done them a few times," Remus grinned a little looking down at his feet.

"I will deny it. And then...my little brother, who is...ten and an artist. He paints." Remus laughed again this time a little louder, a little hard, "It's...watercolors? I don't know, he sends me cards sometimes. I've never had friends before this year, I'm not sure how friendships are supposed to go but...you fit right in with what I've gathered so far. Bloke who dies early."

"...Is...that better or worse than an artist?"

"Better. Definitely better."

--

Remus didn't think of the pamphlets again, not for many years. Because he made it to fifteen and suddenly there wasn't just Remus, there was Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs. Because he made it to seventeen and fell in love with the boy who had told him he was definitely better than a ten-year-old artist though he had substituted silk dressing gowns for sweatpants and nights in Remus's bed. Remus never let himself make plans, convinced they were going to fall apart anyway and he'd find himself in a hospital bed with his mother and father holding onto his hands, just waiting for the end to come sooner rather than later. But with James? Remus made plans to be around for a baby in the middle of a war. Plans that involved staying alive, and building cribs. And Sirius?

Remus made all the plans with Sirius.

Study plans.

Dinner plans.

Moving plans.

Wedding plans.

Secret plans that had Remus slipping out in the middle of the night, kissing the top of Sirius's cheekbone as he slept, hoping it didn't wake him up (it always did; Remus did it anyway).

Unexpected plans when Sirius didn't return to their tiny, weathered flat, and Remus had to find out through a long-winded grapevine that his best friends had been murdered, and his almost-fiancee had been the one to do it.

Remus didn't make plans after that, for the opposite reason. Not because he thought he was going to die, but because he had no reason to live. Day in and day out, dead-end jobs that paid next to nothing, sweaters unraveling thread by thread, and Remus couldn't have cared. A rock stuck on the side of the stream, unmoving until a visit from Albus Dumbledore made Remus remember what it was like to have something to look forward to. Until that same summer, Sirius's face was on the front page of the Daily Prophet--though not in the way Remus ever thought his stunning, beautiful, charismatic, almost-fiancee-husband-life partner-better half-soul mate would be pictured in a paper.

Everything picked up. Remus met Harry, 13 years after he had first met him in a tiny blanket in his mother's arms.

James's smile.

Lily's eyes.

James's curiosity.

Lily's persistence.

Whiplash, moving back and forth between two people he would never see again, forming a connection with someone he swore he would never meet properly, his own cowardice to blame. Harry had more words now and Remus felt like he was making up for the time he hadn't heard any of them. And in one single night, everything changed. Just like that.

--

"We're in the middle of a war," Remus said.

"Deja vu, hm, babe?"

"Sirius..."

"You said yes before."

"You never asked me officially before."

"My coffee proposal was just as good as this." Sirius was smiling at him, down on one knee and ring in his hand. In the middle of the sitting room of Number 12 Grimmauld Place, while they listened to the wireless for war reports, waiting to see if they would hear Harry's name.

"I dunno, I do love coffee..."

"I love you."

"Yes."

Remus's knuckles hurt more these days; Remus noticed when Sirius put the ring on his fingers how tight it was. but Remus made plans.

--

"What do you mean I have to go back to school?" shouted Harry abruptly, pushing back from the kitchen table roughly, "I graduated."

"You didn't graduate, Harry, you have--"

"I don't care about NEWTS! No one gives a damn if I have--"

"I give a damn," Sirius said, pointedly looking at Harry firmly, "I give all the damns that you go back to school and you learn all the damn things that you didn't get to learn because you had a Dark Wizard on your back," he said.

"And the damns Sirius doesn't give, I'll give. I think I have a few lying around," Remus said and Harry rolled his eyes.

"The Auror department just said I can walk in and I have a job. I saved the entire bloody wizarding world! What's it matter if I don't have NEWT's? Isn't the point to get a job?"

"The point is to be proficient at magic, Harry," Sirius told him, "Are you?"

"Are you?" Remus snorted. Like father, like son, James was never the best at arguing either.

"I graduated," Sirius responded. "And, you can go ahead and be angry at me for this...but it's already been decided."

"What?! Why even bother asking me! Family discussion my arse! This is bullshit!"

"Mhmm," Sirius nodded but didn't flinch. Only picked up his cup of tea and took a sip, making eye contact with Remus over the top. Remus raised his own cup in response.

Remus remembered Harry crawling into bed with them that night after spending the afternoon giving both of them the silent treatment. Harry cried into Sirius's chest, his hand gripping Remus's arm tightly until he fell asleep. The next morning Remus woke up and noticed the red marks on Harry's hand-- the bruising he had to use paste for that had Sirius worrying when he looked at it.

Are you sure we don't need to go to the Healers?

They didn't.

They had other plans.

--

And Remus realized. One thing was better than making the plans.

Executing the plans.

The wedding in the backyard of Number 12. The wedding night that ended with Remus's head in the lav, and Sirius pressing a cold washcloth to his neck.

Vomiting.

Watching Harry graduate and take a breath to think about what he wanted for themselves.

Painting the kitchen. Remus had to stop every hour, even doing it by magic.

Fatigue.

Planting flowers in the backyard that Remus wasn't able to keep alive.

Planning a second wedding--this time for Harry and a boy with a big smile and a bigger heart that was able to hold Harry with care. Wedding in the middle of winter, because they had met around Christmas, and Remus was sweating through his suit.

Hyperhydrosis.

It wasn't just around full moons anymore, Remus noticed as he aged. It was all the time.

Vomiting.

Fatigue.

Hyperhydrosis.

Wash, rinse, repeat.

--

Remus woke up screaming one morning after a full moon that lasted longer than it should've in his opinion. Wolfsbane, while the most wonderful invention in his twenties, even in his early thirties, was miserable in his forties. You get to keep your mind. Remus didn't want his mind, Remus didn't want to know, or feel, or recognize any part of himself as he transformed, and tried to make his way back to being human. It would've been easier if he could just turn it off. But he couldn't. Especially when everything was getting worse. His shoulder, throbbing, aching, burning, singing the loudest amongst the other pains throughout his body.

"Baby, baby, sorry, I know it hurts," Sirius said, and Remus could barely make out his husband's face, barely registering his touch on his body his vision was so blurred.

"Sirius."

"I'm trying, baby, I'm trying, your shoulder, I can't get it back in, this is over my head."

Transformations got harder. That wasn't in the pamphlet. Remus even went back to check the pamphlets, making an absent comment to the Healer about how their reading material hadn't changed as the Healer put his shoulder back into place, though it didn't quite move the same after that. There should've been something in the leaflets that addressed what happened when you didn't die at 20, despite all odds, and now had a million things that you'd be leaving behind.

A script for Remus to follow.

Because he was coming up empty.

--

He could feel it. He could tell it was coming. His shoulder was useless. He had lost one of his canine teeth, though Sirius insisted it made him look cool. He was tired all the time, ending most days by 7pm and starting them at 10am.

He stopped teaching.

"You love your job."

"It's...an early retirement," Remus told Sirius for the millionth time. Sirius still slept on top of him and Remus was grateful that even this version of his body wasn't adverse to Sirius's touch. "Stop looking at me like that..."

"Like what?"

"Like you're trying to figure me out. I've known you forever, I know that look."

The pinched dark eyebrows, the set jaw.

"I want you to be happy. Will you be unhappy if you stop teaching?"

"Are you here?"

"Sometimes."

"Then I'm happy."

"Remus..."

"I'm happy, Sirius. I'm fine."

--

"Remus--"

"I'm fine, Sirius."

"This won't stop bleeding."

"It will."

"Remus--"

"Kiss me."

--

"Is Moony okay?" he heard Harry ask one evening. Remus had fallen asleep on the couch, just after dinner with Harry and his own family. Remus hadn't planned for grandchildren, and now they were here and Remus used every bit of energy he had on them. Harry's oldest had a loud laugh. Harrys youngest loved to run. Remus's eyes were half-closed and he desperately wanted to open them and reach out and comfort Harry.

The person he had started thinking about plans for all those years ago. Because he had time then.

And now he was running out.

Sand through an hourglass, grain by grain.

"He's fine, my love," Sirius said, though it wasn't a terribly convincing tone.

"He's..." Harry paused, "The...Dursleys had a cat... he was old. I remember. And he would sleep more and more as he got older and--"

"Hey," Sirius said softly, "Remus isn't a cat. He's always loved sleeping and now we're both ancient. I found three grey hairs the other day."

Harry gasped, "Three!? Terrible news."

"It was, I debated shaving my entire head," Sirius said, "Moony's fine, Harry."

"Would you...would you tell me if he wasn't?"

"Yeah. I would."

"Okay."

But what if I don't tell you?

--

"You're the only kid I like," Remus told Harry one afternoon when they were outside in the sun together. The only place Remus felt remotely okay anymore. Until he got too hot anyway. "I hope you know that."

"You taught."

"Teaching is very different than...birthday parties. Still the only kid I like..."

"Still?"

"My kid."

--

Remus thought back to that first conversation with Sirius at eleven, swallowing wolfsbane with shaking hands as he looked at his husband across the table.

First, he was Remus.

Then Moony.

Then my love, darling, baby, my moonlight.

"Sirius?"

"Yeah, babe?"

"I..."

I'm going to die wasn't something that could be stirred into morning coffee.

"Alright?"

"I just love you."

"I love you."

You're the only reason I bothered making plans wasn't something that could be said casually, not like the way they talked about taking a walk or sitting in the sun together.

He got to be Moony again-- this time said differently from a kid who agreed to be his at fifteen. Moony from cradle...to grave.

Then finally husband.

And Grandad Moony.

Remus got to be a lot of things.

He was sure there were more things he could plan for....but he was out of time.

This was it.

"Baby?" Remus managed, watching as the moon out the window began to rise, and he could feel it deep in his bones that this was it.

Shortened lifespan.

Early death.

"You're alright, I'll see you soon, okay?"

"I'm the bloke who dies early."

Remus held on just long enough to watch as Sirius's face registered what was happening before his eyes, a tattooed hand reaching out to Remus's face.

It wasn't his mother and father there holding his hands. It was Sirius. His last touch.

"Remus..."

"Still better than an artist?"

"Just--"

"I'm sorry."

shit man i thought i was e-x-t-r-a-o-r-d-i-n-a-r-y!!!!

that's my HAROLDDD!!!!!!!!!

HARRYWEEN. New York City, NY. I

Ok everyone but imagine Todd and Neil do have to separate for college and for some reason have no other way to communicate with each other aside from ✨letters✨

Neil constantly writing letters to Todd between classes or filling his notebooks with doodles and thinks he wants to send and say, puts tiny cute little stickers in with the letters, is blunt but gushing and just a total sap and hates how long it takes to get a letter from Todd. He has a SPECIAL PEN for letters for Todd and ONLY letters for TODD and Todd ONLY. No one touch his pen for Todd he WILL yell at you and his insults are painfully accurate, creative and one might even say…. Shakespearean.

Todd on the other hand would always be overthinking what to say. After classes he would just sit there for hours into the night thinking, scrawling then crumpling up and throwing away. The poor kid could probably deforest the entire continent of North America with how many times he crumpled up drafts. Puts in pressed flowers with the letters, struggles with words and expressing things when not in poetry form but he’s trying his best.

Years later, when they’re old and grey and going through their things to find out what to keep and what to give away (as old people often do) they stumble across a pair of wooden boxes, each with each other’s names on them somewhere. They open them and unearth their letters from college, the paper beginning to yellow with age and antiquity, the ink having turned from black to brown and beginning to bleed around the edges. The look at each other, smile, and laugh.

“After all these years you still kept all of my horrendous excuses for love letters..?” Todd asks.

“They weren’t horrendous! Plus.. eh, I’ve always resorted to reading them when I’m down or needing some extra encouragement.” Neil answers, with a shrug, voice sounding similar to a winter fire as the snow drifts down outside, warm yet crackling every so often with age. “Plus, you kept mine too so you’re one to talk.”

this is so important

I’ve always wanted to write Wilmon fic but nothing I write sounds like their authentic voice. You always manage to get them so in character, sometimes it feels like you’re secretory in the writer’s room. I guess I’m asking if you have any tips or tricks for characterizing Wille/Simon

Surprise, I’m actually Lisa

But thank you anon, that’s so sweet. Let me kind of lay out my thoughts on how I write them and hopefully that will help.

In general, I think you should always start with a character’s flaws and build their reactions to events/people from there. It’ll also give you a good starting place for whatever emotional journey you want to take them on.

For Wille’s flaws: there’s a lack of emotional maturity here. Wille’s usually not intentionally mean, but most of his flaws come from how unaware he is and how he ends up unintentionally hurting the people around him but is often unable to understand how he did so because, to him, his actions are always, completely justifiable. He’s almost emotionally stunted in a way, and he kind of has trouble identifying what he’s feeling at any given moment which is what makes him tip towards anger and frustration more often than not. He reacts poorly to situations and people he can’t control, which is a hallmark symptom of anxiety. As a result, he has trouble putting words to his thoughts in a meaningful, constructive way. He’s impulsive and stubborn and self absorbed.

For Simon’s flaws: he’s actually incredibly emotionally intelligent and very perceptive - but he uses this intelligence to be intentionally cruel when he’s angry. For example, in arguments with Wille or Sara, he uses his intellect to pinpoint exactly what he needs to say to cut them down completely. He’s very, very good at getting the last word and sometimes he gets kind of consumed by that. Simon’s definitely not the super nice approachable guy at school - he’s a cunt to Wille on his very first day, he’s loud and outspoken, and hard headed. He’s also got a slightly hypocritical streak of idealism where he’s an idealist when it comes to the things that affect him, but is sometimes unable to offer the same grace to other people, especially when he’s angry or hurt. He also has a difficult time asking for help and being vulnerable.

Wille’s positives: he’s loyal, romantic, and he doesn’t have a wandering eye, he likes being coddled a little and is unafraid to ask for it, he’s quicker to admit that he’s wrong and knows when to give in, he’s also incredibly bold and brave - he’s unafraid to be the black sheep of the family, but he still loves his family and wants them to be proud of him.

Simon’s positives: he’s incredibly selfless and wants to take care of the people he loves and genuinely likes being there for them, he likes being supported but not protected - he loves that Wille respects his autonomy and thinks he’s capable, he has a strong sense of right and wrong and he stands up for what he believes in even if it might hurt him or if he might end up being wrong. he’s also a romantic and he definitely likes grand gestures and praise.

As for their dynamic, I always liken it to that old Christmas story where the husband sells his prized pocket watch to buy his wife a set of expensive combs, only for her to have cut and sold her hair to buy him a gold chain for his watch.

Just don’t be afraid to make them fight and annoy each other and not always say the right thing. It doesn’t take away from their love in any way.

Sorry this got out of hand, but I could talk about it forever. Hopefully that was even the slightest bit helpful ❣️

say whatever you need to, but please. STAY.

Share. Please. In honor or this nameless hero whom because of this letter he or she sent me, could save a life tonight. 

again, my box is always open.

James & Lily.

Song: [x]

"Let me..."

holy mother of shit-

I THOUGHT IT WAS EMMA CORRIN AT FIRST-

Jodie Foster photographed by a classmate at Yale University; 1984