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He hears it the first time, faint, when he’s motoring by the tiny little island on the way home. It’s a Saturday in July and the sun is shining, the air is clear, and the sound of gulls drowns out most of it, but it’s still clear enough to make out, even over the sound of his engine.
It’s Crash, that hideous Dave Matthews Band song that haunted him in college.
His eye twitches, remembering. And thinking about what was certainly a frat from one of the universities is probably trashing that tiny island.
Three days later, though, and the damn song is still stuck in his head.
The second time he hears it, it’s a Tuesday morning, grey and miserable. A midsummer storm passed through overnight and the clouds haven’t cleared. It’s the same Dave Matthews song, the same tiny island, and Remus seriously doubts it’s a frat party. He wonders if it’s a fisherman, or if someone with a particular affinity for mid-nineties soft rock lived on that island despite the fact there’s no ferry, no dock for a boat, and it’s the size of a nickel.
Curiosity gets the best of him on his way back home. He pulls close to the edge of the island, skirting some underwater rocks that ping on his radar. About a third of the way around the coast, he catches sight of someone standing on the shore, shirtless, holding a boombox over his head. The man looks at him, shocked and surprised, and drops the boombox between his feet. He waves both arms over his head, and when he sees Remus is watching, he beckons him in.
Remus drops his anchor and clambors into the water, near enough to just wade to the shore. He hopes the man isn’t in trouble; it’s been a week and some days since the first time he motored by.
“Are you alright?” he shouts to him as he stumbles up the rocky beach.
“You didn’t crash into the rocks,” The mysterious man says. “You’re supposed to crash.”
“I’ve got satnav and a radar,” Remus says. He crosses his arms. “Wait--did you want me to crash? I thought you were in trouble!”
“Course I want you to crash!” He throws his hands up and lets out a little frustrated noise. “I’m a siren! It’s kind of my whole thing!”
They’re quiet. Remus didn’t consider that the man might be a few cards short of a deck when he dropped anchor and came running.
“Thought sirens lured men in with their own song, not—“ Remus makes a face. “—Dave Matthews.”
The man narrows his eyes. He mutters something under his breath.
“What’d you say?” Remus asks.
“I said I can’t sing to save my fucking life!” he shouts, flushing.
Remus considers the absurdity of the man in front of him, shirtless and in cut-off denim shorts three sizes too big at least, belted at the waist with a rope. He’s unbelievably gorgeous. Dark hair cascading over pale shoulders, a plump, red-lipped frown on a flawless face—he’s scowling, but even that looks good on him, a faint blush on his high cheekbones and narrowed, quicksilver eyes.
He’s completely mental, Remus thinks, and he’s got the audacity to look that good while he does it.
“Look, I don’t know how long you’ve been out here—”
“Eons,” the crazy man supplies.
“Right,” Remus agrees as he creeps back toward the edge of the rocky beach, close to where he moored his speedboat. “Look, I’ll just go get the coast guard, they can help you get home.”
“I live here!” He gestures angrily off to the left.
Remus peers down the beach. At the tree line a ways away sits what can charitably be called a tent; it’s more like a tarp thrown over some tied together branches. A hammock is tied between two trees, swaying in the breeze.
He looks back at the beautiful psychopath in front of him.
“Aren’t sirens mermaids?”
“That’s ignorant bigotry!” he shouts, fury making his cheeks redden again. “Medieval propaganda!”
Remus takes another cautious step back. He’s close enough to run for it. His boat’s just there, not crashed into the rocks.
The rocks look pathetically easy to dodge, even just with his eyeballs.
“Alright, but they’re definitely Greek, and this is Washington.”
“Is it?” the supposed siren asks. “I thought this place was called Canada.”
“You’ve picked the wrong side of the international border, I’m afraid.” Remus tilts his head to the side and stares at him. “Are you Canadian, then?”
He crosses well-muscled arms and glares at Remus. “Greek,” he says petulantly.
Remus takes another half-step back. “What’s your name?”
“Sirius,” Sirius says. “Did you not like the song? Is that the problem?”
“Hate the song,” Remus tells him. “Dave Matthews is for college assholes and stoners who think they’re cool.”
“Well it’s all I’ve got,” Sirius says. He taps a finger against his chin. “I got the music player from these.” He scrunches his face thoughtfully. “They were not the sort of men I’d like to crash into my rocks.”
“You’ve got a preference for that sort of thing?” Remus is most of the way back to the water’s edge.
“Well, yes, don’t you?” Sirius looks back up at him. “Where are you going?”
“I’ve got--errands and such, and you seem alright on your own.” He steps back into the surf. “I’ll just be on my way.”
“That’s not fair!” Sirius shouts. “I lured you!”
Remus scrambles back through the surf and pulls his anchor. “You. Stay safe out here!” he shouts back, turning over his engine and letting the roar drown out whatever Sirius tries to say back to him.
***
The thing is, Remus can’t get him out of his head. He hears the fucking DMB song in a grocery store and wants to bash his own head in. He thinks about Sirius’ ink-black hair and pale, flawless chest every time he looks out at the water through his sliding glass door.
He mightn’t be a siren, but he’s occupying Remus’ thoughts like one.
A week after their strange encounter, there’s a storm, the sort that rattles the very bones of Remus’ waterfront home, thunder cracking deep and booming. He wonders how Sirius fares out there all alone, under a tarp in the Puget Sound. He motors by the island in his boat a few times after, peering out at the treeline, straining his ears for Crash, but he doesn’t hear or see anything.
Maybe the coast guard came by, he thinks to himself as he ties his boat off at the end of a long day. Maybe he got swept into the sea by the storm. It isn’t any of his concern.
Still, he buys canned beans and veg. He picks up D batteries, enough for a boombox. And a copy of Green River just for a lark, because CCR is a thousand times better than DMB. It all goes in the emergency box on the boat. Every day he goes to the mainland, he squints his eyes as he passes the island, watching for signs of life, listening for Crash.
Two weeks pass like that. And then he hears it.
***
There’s smoke coming up from the far side of the island when Remus motors past. And he can’t stop himself, he can’t get the damn man out of his head. He has to know he’s alright. Remus should’ve gone to the coast guard that first afternoon, weeks ago. He left a man on a postage stamp island with no way off, no proper clothes, in what was probably the middle of a psychotic break.
He feels guilty, so he drops his anchor a fair distance away from the smoke and wades onto the beach.
Remus finds Sirius, curled up in a sandy blanket by a blazing fire. He drops the emergency box on the beach in front of him.
“Uh, hello,” he says.
Sirius looks up, wide-eyed. “You!”
“Me,” Remus agrees. “I thought you might’ve had a rough time, after the storm. So I thought I’d check on you.”
Sirius’ lips twitch. He turns down the boombox and sheds his blanket. He’s still shirtless--Remus wonders vaguely if he’s even got a shirt, and maybe he should bring him one before the fall chill hits--and his skin is still pale, unsunkissed despite the blazing July sun that’s been beating down most days since he last saw him. Remus worries for a moment that Sirius isn’t a siren but is one of those terrible sparkly vampires from Twilight. Edward Cullen would like DMB unironically.
“Have you brought me a gift?” Sirius asks, eyeing the box by Remus’ feet.
“Supplies,” Remus corrects, but he supposes gift isn’t wholly wrong. “Canned food, mostly. Flares, if you’re ever in trouble. Some other things.”
Sirius scrambles across the beachline and skids to his knees in front of the box. Remus takes two cautious steps back--he still thinks the man’s crazy, but he doesn’t deserve to suffer on an island, either way.
“Oh, I’ll be fine,” Sirius says as he tears through the contents of the box, turning the batteries over in his hands, scrutinizing the first aid kit with narrowed eyes and pursed lips. “I’ve been out here for four hundred years. A little thunder is hardly a bother.”
Remus arches an eyebrow. “Right. Of course. Still, better safe than sorry.”
Sirius looks up at him, plump red lips twisting into a secret smile. “You’ve been thinking about me,” he says.
Remus hesitates. “I’ve been worrying about the shirtless man I met on an island, yes,” he agrees. He stands his ground. He’s got a knife, after all, and Sirius has nothing but incredibly nice-looking biceps.
Sirius sits down hard in the rocky sand. “It worked,” he breathes, grey eyes lighting. “It finally worked! Two millennia later, but take that, Mother! It worked! I’ve lured--what’s your name?”
“Remus.” He doesn’t know why he answers, or why he tells the truth.
“Remus. Lovely. Roman, how awful.” Sirius’ smile gets bigger on his face. “I always hated the Romans, you know. They were awful. Buff, though. Big, honking muscles, very lovely to look at. Still, the one that came across the island was dumber than the rocks he crashed into.”
“You’ve had men crash into your rocks before?” Remus asks, eyebrows and curiosity raised.
“They weren’t my rocks. I’ve never had anyone crash into my rocks.”
Remus arches an eyebrow. He gets the feeling the rocks are a metaphor. “Not ever?”
Sirius’ cheeks color. “Well, who’s going to come sailing after a siren who can’t sing? Honestly, this music box has been life-changing.” He looks up at Remus, all big grey eyes and long, dark lashes. “I mean, it lured you.”
Remus suddenly goes uncomfortably warm. He shifts from foot to foot, ignoring the way all his blood had rushed to his groin, watching Sirius look up at him with fucking bedroom eyes.
“If they weren’t your rocks, how’d you know shit about shit about Romans?”
Sirius laughs, a sharp, sweet sound that makes Remus almost doubt that he can’t sing. “I’ve got a load of cousins. Or I did. Who knows if they’re still around.”
“Sirens have cousins?”
“Did you think I just sprung from the Earth fully formed? My cousin, she lured one of the Romans, some glistening soldier named Lucius. Didn’t have a thought in his fluffy head. He crashed on her rocks.”
He’s sure it’s a euphemism, now.
Remus takes one step back toward him, curious now. He’s alluring, really. It isn’t his fault. He hasn’t gotten laid in ages and Sirius is very attractive and shirtless and his lips are very plump. Frankly, all of him looks like something out of a pornography. A very artsy one, but still.
“You don’t talk to them?”
Sirius shakes his head, examining one of the cans of beans. He tosses it back into the emergency box and fishes out the jewel case, flipping it in his hand. “What’s this?”
“A CD.” Remus doesn’t miss that he ignored the question about his family. “To put in your boombox.”
Sirius scrutinizes it. “This won’t fit,” he says, narrowed eyes peering at the plastic. “The thing inside, it’s a circle--”
Remus reaches out and takes the jewel case. Their hands brush. An electric shock runs up his arm, the hairs on the back of his neck stand up, and Sirius gasps, letting the jewel case clatter to the ground. He grabs at Remus’ wrist. For a moment, one single moment, Remus swears he sees Sirius’ eyes flash golden, his inky-black hair looks like feathers, but then it’s gone and it’s just Sirius, staring up at him with parted lips and wide eyes.
“Oh,” he says, choking on the syllable. “Oh.”
Remus rips his arm away, staring wide-eyes down at Sirius on his knees on the rocky shore. “You open it,” he says, gasping for air. “The--the CD’s inside.”
Remus turns and takes off down the beach at a run, clutching his own wrist in his hand, feeling his heart beat frantically against his ribcage.
He motors away from the island, resolved to not come back. He’ll call the coast guard when he gets back to land.
***
He dreams of him, strange vivid scenes of Sirius’ red lips against his skin, his tongue tracing the angles and the shapes on Remus’ chest; that silk black hair fanned out against his stomach. Sirius’ eyes, glowing quicksilver, staring up at him from where he kneels between his legs.
It goes on for weeks. Remus thinks incubus, he thinks demon, nymph.
Siren.
Crash echoes in his head, the siren call that he can’t escape. He reads the wikipedia page on Sirens, which confuses him even more, because Sirius doesn’t have the body of a sparrow and he probably isn’t a mermaid. He tries to think of anything else. He finds it hard to sleep, tossing and turning and dreaming of waves crashing against the rocks, the smell of the sea, red lips and quicksilver eyes.
One late August morning, he wakes. Remus makes a choice.
***
“Prove it,” he says as he comes to a stop on the beach, feet away from Sirius, who’s sprawled out on the blanket Remus left in the emergency box.
Sirius yelps and turns over onto his back, staring up at Remus with wide eyes. “You’ve come back!”
“I can’t get you out of my head,” Remus admits. “All the time, you’re just there. None of it makes any sense.”
Sirius grins up at him, scrambling up to his knees. He’s still bare chested, untouched by the sun, in those ridiculous too-large cut-off jeans. “Course you can’t,” Sirius says. “I’m a siren.”
“Well, prove it,” Remus insists again.
A grin spreads across Sirius’ face and he holds his hand out. Remus reaches for him, tentative, and that same electric shock slams into him when they touch. Sirius’ eyes flash gold. His shiny black hair looks like feathers for the blink of an eye, and then, suddenly, there’s wings.
Wings. Coming out of Sirius’ back.
“I told you the mermaid business was medieval propaganda,” Sirius says, sounding smug. “Sirens are part bird, thank you.”
“Is that--are you--millennia?”
Sirius nods. “Been around for a while,” he agrees.
“And you lured me?”
“I did.” Sirius gets to his feet, still holding onto Remus’ hand. “With the music box. Only took two thousand years, and still no one’s crashed on my rocks.”
“I told you, I’ve got a--”
“Yes, yes, you’ve all learned how to not crash into rocks.” A grin spreads across Sirius’ lips. “You’ve gotten smarter in two thousand years.”
Remus’ mouth goes a little dry. He has about ten thousand questions and no idea where to start.
“What happens now?” he asks.
Sirius tilts his head just a little, staring at Remus’ lips. “Usually, a kiss.”
“And then what?” Remus demands. His whole world is tilted on its axis; Dave Matthews is still in his head. He takes a step forward. “We kiss and I--crash into your rocks, or whatever, and then what?”
“Then we live happily ever after,” Sirius says. He stretches up, wings fluttering, and crashes his lips against Remus’.