Demetra’s Reviews > All The Young Dudes > Status Update

“You’ll break my heart if you go now.” Remus said, aware he sounded sulky and petulant.
Grant shook his head lightly, holding his ground. “I’m sorry, love. But it’s breaking my heart to stay.”

Grant’s voice was suddenly hard and dangerous - almost aggressive “He’s special to me , and if you’re not man enough to be kind to him, then you don’t deserve him. He’s been waiting for you. He’s never stopped waiting. He won’t say it, because Remus doesn’t say stuff like that. But he feels it. He feels everything , you must know that.”

“Don’t care,” Grant shrugged, “It’s not been an easy life for any of us, sunshine, you’re not special. Remus is .”

So once he’d packed, he’d just need to say goodbye. He hoped he could say it the right way, and not sound bitter or self-pitying. He hoped Remus would understand that Grant would always be there if he needed him; he’d come running in a heartbeat.
At the same time he hoped that Remus would not need him. He hoped that he was leaving him in safe hands.

“Lupin.” He said, haughtily, at their first meeting, just before the welcome feast. “I was surprised to hear you survived the war.” His lips curled, “When it seems so many of your friends did not.”
As foul as Snape was, it did bring out something Remus hadn’t properly felt in years. Mischief.
“Severus,” he smiled, warmly, “And I was surprised to hear you survived the trials. When so many of your friends did not.”

“We will see each other again,” Remus said, forcefully - promising it to himself as much as anything. Grant stretched out sleepily and nodded,
“Yeah, I know.” He sighed, “Like magnets, you and me. Always snap back together again.”

“It’s his fault for letting you down, not your fault for trusting him.”

Fuck. Alarm bells started going off inside Remus’s head.
It was as if someone had started flashing the lights on and off, and the walls were closing in, and all the air had left the room, and he was dizzy, drowning, blinded. There was a weird taste in his mouth, and he thought he might be sick, except he couldn’t breathe enough to retch, just kept gasping, tumbling forward.

The TV went on first thing in the morning as he pottered around the flat getting dressed or brushing his teeth, and more often than not he fell asleep in front of it in the evenings. Grant started calling the set ‘the other man’.
“I just like the noise,” Remus said, “For company.”

Remus wondered why he always ended up stuck with chatterboxes, and why on earth he liked it so much.