Work Text:
Sunday, December 1st, 2024
Remus clicked off the TV and flicked on the light, before speaking. “I mean, it’s not my movie, but I don’t see why so many people are upset about it. It’s not weird or disturbing like some people say, it’s just not me.”
“Sev?” Remus frowned and turned his head when it had been longer than socially acceptable without Severus responding.
Severus was just sitting there, face blank, arms crossed over his chest. “I hate it.” He eventually got out.
Remus’s frown deepened. “Just because a movie isn’t for you, doesn’t mean you should hate it. I Saw The TV Glow is a very comforting and important movie for many people.”
“I hate it.” Severus repeated, voice lower, then fled the room before Remus could say another word.
—--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“Sev,” Remus repeated for the umpteenth time, half-heartedly knocking on the bedroom door Severus had locked himself behind. Remus could get in, technically, with alohomora, but that felt icky, an invasion of privacy and respect. Still, Remus would like to go to bed.
Severus, as he had done for the past seven minutes, did not respond. In fact, not a single noise could be heard from inside the room, meaning it was either a decoy or a silencing charm had been put up.
“Lovely, I can see you want to be alone, so I’m gonna go sleep in the guest room. The door will be unlocked, and you can come in whenever you want.”
Silence.
Remus sighed, shook his head, then did a 180° to be facing the door across the hall.
As he snuggled beneath the patchwork quilt, in his boxers and the same sweatshirt he’d worn all day as he hadn’t been able to access his pajamas, he just hoped it wasn’t a two-way silencing spell and Severus had heard him.
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Monday, December 2nd, 2024
When Remus went down for breakfast he honestly wasn’t sure what to expect. Would a night of sleep have made Severus more reasonable and back to normal? Would he still be behaving like last night? Or something in between? Regardless of how he was feeling, would he have made breakfast like he typically did, or would Remus have to whip something up quick because he had overslept with no alarm clock?
It turned out that none of the above was true, Severus hadn’t even got up yet, or if he had, he hadn’t left the bedroom. The bedroom with the door still locked.
Remus was starting to actually worry now. Severus wasn’t just mad about a movie or pouting about their mild disagreement, something was seriously wrong. He might not even be….
No. ‘Severus wouldn’t kill himself over a movie he disliked’ Remus mentally repeated to himself, pacing the length of the kitchen. ‘Of course he didn’t, of course not.’
The pacing was not helping.
Remus had no choice but to rush back up the stairs and bang on his bedroom door. Alohomora wouldn’t even work now, he didn’t have his wand. “Severus! Severus. Sev….” His voice got quieter by the syllable, tears streaming faster.
The door unlocked.
It didn’t open, a word wasn’t spoken, but the door unlocked.
Remus collapsed, sobs coming out louder and more pronounced. He felt fit to explode with everything coursing through his blood, the fear, concern, relief, love. His body couldn’t take it.
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Remus was sitting in the living room rocking chair, pretending to read whatever random book he’d pulled off the nearest bookshelf, when Severus finally came down. Remus looked at the clock on the coffee table, 12:13, then at his husband.
Blood red cheeks. Hair that random chunks had been cut and ripped out of. Glossy eyes. A gray hoodie pulled over his Queen shirt and blue jeans from yesterday. Thin red cuts the hoodie sleeves weren’t quite long enough to cover. His two front teeth, undeniably shorter than before, revealed by the manic smile on his face.
“What happened?” Were the only words Remus’s brain would supply, though he searched hard for nearly a minute to find others.
“I hate it.”
“The movie?”
Severus stayed quiet.
“You did all this,” Remus indicated Severus’s body, “because you hate a movie?”
Severus stood, with that too big, almost predatory, smile for a few minutes. Not speaking, not moving, not reacting.
“Sev?” Remus eventually called, unable to handle the pin pricks the silence was making on his skin any longer.
The smile fell and Severus’s arms found themselves wrapped around his chest, his heart, as they had the night before. “I’m rotting.”
“What?”
“Corpses don’t stay perfectly pristine, I haven’t been bathed in formaldehyde. My nails are broken, my vocal chords ripped, my body rotting.”
“But, you’re alive?”
“On the wrong side of the television screen.”
The room went still and silent again, before Severus turned as if to flee. As he had the night before. As he would forever if Remus didn’t do something.
Remus stood and grasped onto his husband’s wrist. “Wait.”
Severus turned back. “What?”
“You don’t have to be.”
“Don’t have to be what?”
“On the wrong side.”
“Look at me.”
He did. The choppy hair, filed down teeth, panicked eyes. The pale skin, small waist, long fingers. All Severus was, and had ever been, and would ever be. “I am.”
“I’m so ugly.”
“No, you’re gorgeous.”
“I’m bloody and crazy and—”
“Gorgeous.”
“I’m sixty-four, almost sixty-five.”
“So?”
“So, it’s too late.”
“There is still time.”
“Not for Isabel.”
“But, she does still have time. She may be rejecting it at the end, but her time is not up. And you are not Isabel.”
“I’m not really anyone.”
“How so?”
“The person I’ve been acting as for my entire life doesn’t exist, but the real me…she never got a chance to.”
“She has a chance now.”
“I’ll never look right. I’m too tall, my features are too sharp, too many people know who I am.”
“I think you already look right. Not to say you can’t change how you look, but that even if you didn’t you wouldn’t look wrong. Tall women with sharp features exist, and you already said the person everyone knows you as isn’t real.”
“But, I can never be real at all.”
“You’ve already started to be. Perhaps your TV is dim, or even off, but it’s not being hidden any longer. You’re starting to come alive, your heart still beats.”
“Perhaps I should put the sheet back on, shove the TV back into the closet, behind everything else.”
“You could.”
“But, should I?”
“I can’t make that choice for you; you have to decide which is better, which is survivable, which would make you happier. I can’t turn the TV on or off, I don’t have a remote.”
When Severus didn’t respond, and didn’t seem to be about to respond any time soon, Remus asked the question he had been wondering since Severus entered the room. “Why did you file down your front teeth?”
“They were too big. Needed to conform, be the same size as the rest of my teeth.”
“But, they’re meant to be bigger. It helps you bite, makes eating easier. They help you survive.”
“It doesn’t matter. They needed to conform. Grew in wrong. Were so stupid. I hate it.”
“What is ‘it’?”
“I don’t know. Everything. The TV. Myself. The movie for making me acknowledge the TV. The world.”
“You don’t have to hate. To love is to change, and you want to change, right?”
“I want to become.”
“Then become.”