Four To The End (prev Shifting Lines) Book Three (Marauders Era)

Chapter Forty-Two - Gay

Author's note: a LOT of internalized homophobia in this one, emetophobia, disassociation

Also I will be getting another chapter out this Friday, I won't leave you on this chapter's cliffhanger for a whole week ;)

Also thanks to my European friends who UNJUSTLY and RUDELY coerced me into releasing the chapter early today.

(no im kidding they didn't, they're all wonderful and lovely and I love them)

-x-

No.

He had heard wrong.

No.

He misunderstood what she said. She meant 'serious' not 'Sirius', right?

NO!

"You fancy Sirius, don't you." It was a statement, not a question. She continued talking as if she hadn't utterly destroyed her friend, hadn't crushed him into dust and let him blow away into a fire.

Destroying him, she was destroying him.

Everything was falling apart, breaking away, expanding out, stretching into an abyss that threatened to swallow him whole.

Then everything rushed back into him so fast he felt he would fall over; or at least he'd fall over if he wasn't ice. Everything had frozen. His breathing—he wasn't breathing. His heart wasn't beating. His blood wasn't flowing. Lily said something else but he couldn't hear her. Couldn't hear anything except a rushing sound in his ears.

Slowly he regained control of his body... sort of. His limbs felt distant and wrong, like strange things dangling uselessly yet somehow attached to his body. But he managed to turn around to see her. To see those gentle green eyes, full of pity.

She knew.

Merlin.

She knew.

Somehow he managed to force a voice out of his body, force syllables out even though they ballooned from his mouth like someone had painted them there.

"Wh-what the hell are you talking about?"

The burning, inside.

The freezing.

Fear.

Terror.

The wolf was writhing within him, clawing so hard he almost physically felt it. Black vines were still at the edge of his vision, clutching to his eyeballs. He thought Lily could see the black there, see the poison.

Maybe it was the wolf controlling him.

"Remus—"

"That's disgusting."

Somehow the words were coming out, choking out from the ocean drowning him. From the bile rising in his throat, the fire inside of his chest. His vision was blurring even more and the wolf howled. It cried for violence, cried to lash out and destroy this enemy. He tried to push back but he was too panicked, too scared; it was a lot like when the Marauders admitted they knew he was a werewolf, when they confronted him. But it was so different.

"How could you even suggest such a thing?"

Was the wolf in his voice? In his eyes, peering out?

Lily took a step forward. "Remus, it's okay—"

He pressed back against the door, the knob jamming against his back. "That's vulgar. Wrong. That's so wrong and—and how could you?" The room was swaying back and forth and he felt himself slipping away. "That's absolutely—ab—absolutely degenerate."