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aeaean--bliss · 4 months

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the madonna | chapter one: arrival

summary: It's 1985. The English countryside swells with the day's remains of midsummer heat as you make your way towards the gate, longs strands of grass nipping at your calves.

It's a good time to get away. Old and distant family friends have taken you in against your wildest imagination, following torturous personal circumstances and a recent mental breakdown. Here, where you can live with purpose among people who care about you, you can slowly begin to rest and recover in the secluded privacy of the Burrow.

Now would be a really bad time for you to run into the most traumatic ex-fling of your life, wouldn't it?

pairing: remus lupin x reader

genre: non-magic!AU; farmhand remus!AU

word count: 4k

warnings/tags: blood, injury, mental breakdown, mental health issues (mostly anxiety and depression), shitty parents, alcohol consumption, drunkenness, swearing, mentions of violence, orphanhood, smut (eventually), a lot of self-deprecation, tension, pining, arguing, etc.

author's note: minors DNI! please read the warnings. this series is taking all i have to write, and a lot of it is just me projecting. i hope it resonates with at least some of you.

chapter index

masterlist

chapter one | arrival

The night’s a dewy one; wet and almost, almost , cold, with a fog that hangs heavy around your head.

“Y/N. So good to see you, love.”

She means well. The sincerity in her eyes and the warmth in her smile tells you as much. But there’s something in her voice that sounds a little too much like pity. Her clammy palm cups your cheek, adding to the itchy layer of grime that seems to coat every inch of your skin.

Still, you smile.

“Molly.”

She shoves a cup into your hands. She’s gone before you have a chance to thank her.

Can’t stand this English Breakfast shit.

Placing the cup on the mantle, you wrap an arm around the waist of each twin in the armchair and lift them up before settling in yourself.

Every joint in your body aches. Your wrists feel weak, like half the blood has drained from your body. The headache that’s been brewing since you got on the train this morning threatens to spark up again, pounding dully against your skull like a speaker pumping underwater.

It’s just the travel. Travel, and inhaling shit air, and eating shit food, and being all cramped up. You’re not even sure you ate. Hard to tell when each day bleeds into the next and time goes by a million miles an hour and not at all.

Small feet and hands dig into the flesh of your thighs and stomach. The twins settle either side of your waist, gurgling and babbling to themselves. You sit in silence, staring at a patch of carpet, restless nails picking at frayed threads on the tattered armrest. Someone enters the room, voices speak, but it all sounds muffled. It isn’t until Molly pushes a saucer of biscuits under your nose that you come to, blinking heavily and mumbling disjointedly.

“Thank you.”

Molly glances at the clock on the wall. It’s got nine hands, one for Molly, one for Arthur, and one for each of the children. Does she keep a stack of them in a drawer somewhere, to add one on whenever a new one comes along?

“It’s getting late,” she mutters.

Is it?

The thought that you might be keeping them up gnaws at you. You’re about to offer to retire for the evening, to apologise and head off, when Arthur stands. He hums, brows furrowed as though in deep thought, and shuffles into the hallway. As the air grows heavy with silence, your gaze rests back on Molly.

“You know, I might just…”

The words die on your lips. They must have barely been audible, anyway, judging by Molly’s lack of reaction.

The odd child meanders into the room as you wait for Arthur to return. Bill’s at that age where you pretend you’re an adult, unsurprised and unscared. He barely spares you a second glance as he steps over to his mother, asking for the whereabouts of his book on Britain’s Most Dangerous Deepwater Sea-Creatures.

Charlie’s not quite there yet, lingering in the hallway and peeking around the doorframe with wide eyes and a long, floppy, pink tongue. It’s the toy in his hands that catches your eye, a bright green dragon with blue spikes and huge eyes. He holds it around its neck so tight it might just pop off.

You beckon him over. His eyes dart to his mother, then back to you, then back to his mother. Then he steels himself and tiptoes towards you.

“Y/N.”

He blinks. He looks like he’s going to chicken out and back away.

You pull your hand away from the mouth of a teething George, wiping his saliva off on your sleeve and reaching behind your head. Lifting one of the many pendants from around your neck, you slip the chain onto your finger and hold it out to the seven year old in front of you.

“It’s yours, if you want it,” you say softly.

He eyes it timidly, looking up at you, then down at the pendant, then up at you, then back down at the pendant. The pendant’s a photo coin you bought at a museum gift shop when you were young; it’s got a celtic dragon pressed into its centre and waves decorating the rim.

“Take it,” you whisper.

He smiles shyly, before snatching the chain with clumsy hands and shuffling away, not taking his eyes off of it for a second. The movement excites the twins, who squeal, and giggle, and squirm in your arms. One of them accidentally slaps you in the face. The other tries to shove their hand in your face, getting their hand stuck in your necklaces.

“Come here,” you sigh, taking the soft, small, pudgy hand in yours to ease it out of the knot of chains.

Four heavy knocks pound somewhere in the distance.

The chains have gotten caught up in your hair, now. The child tugs, and you lurch, dangerously close to getting your fingers tangled up in the mess.

A door slams in the distance. The bairn pulls his hand back, threatening to take a chunk of your scalp out with it. You grab hold of his hand again, murmuring for him to keep still, to relax, to stop pulling-

Then, from the doorway, with a kind lilt and a Yorkshire accent that makes your blood run cold as ice, comes a soft, deep voice, and surely you must be ill. Surely, you must have caught some fatal, delayed-onset disease, because the fever that burns at your skin, rippling in waves and numbing your wrists, is anything short of natural.

It hurts. It actually hurts.

“Where’d you like ‘em, Molly?”

You might pass out. Jesus, you can hear your heartbeat squelching in your ears. You can vaguely hear Molly fussing about the time and we were beginning to think you weren’t coming back tonight and-

Back?

Soft, small hands slap at your wrists when they notice your attention has drifted.

What does she mean, back?

You’re still trying to untangle the knot in your hair, fingertips trying and failing to set you free. You can just about see the lower half of him where you sit, hunched over, with toddler spit trailing down your forearm and a fist in your hair. You can see the way his shirt sleeves have been rolled up to his elbows; see the sprigs of some kind of plant poking out from the handles of one of the plastic bags in his hands.

He’s grown. Lived. Thrived, even, by the looks of things.

It’s the smallest thing, but it fucks with your head. You haven’t grown, or lived, or thrived at all. You’re small. Ratty. Shrivelled, even, by the looks of things.

As you finally detangle the child’s fingers from your hair, you get a proper look at him. He looks like he has friends. But not like he has to make any effort to keep them. Not even that; like it’s effortless for him to keep them. Like he’s got that kind of quiet magnetism. He looks like the type of guy someone else randomly brings to a night out and every friend of a friend tries to chat him up. Like he barely needs to say a word, but everyone still knows who he is and greets him when they see him.

What must he see when he looks at you?

You feel sick.

You can see the exact moment he sees you because he frowns and cocks his head to the side. He says nothing as Molly’s fusses, eyes fixed on you with his lips barely parted, head half-turned to the side like it wants to tear away but can’t seem to force itself.

You’ve been sat by the fire too long; your face burns from it. Why they’ve lit a fire in mid-june is beyond you.

“Now,” Molly says, waving you over, “Arthur’s set everything up for you, dear, though I’ve got to warn you, it’s no luxury hotel. That room’s barely been touched since there were farmers here, and that’s about fifty years ago, now…”

When did Arthur come back in?

“And Gideon told you about the plumbing, and the-”

“Yes,” you interject, heart beating in your throat, now, “Yes, thank you. Really, Molly, thank you so much. For everything.”

She carries on, turning to Remus. You feel lightheaded; so lightheaded, and it’s been such a long day and you’re exhausted, and she’s asked you something now, she’s actually asked you something and you can see her lips moving but you can’t hear a thing.

“Sorry,” you say suddenly. “I’m just- I’m very tired. Could I maybe…?”

Is your voice really loud?

“Of course, dear,” Molly says, prying Arthur’s cup out of his hands. “You must be exhausted, all that travel. Here, Remus’ll walk you down, he’s staying in the other room. It’s no more than fifteen, twenty minutes down the road - will you manage?”

“Yes, I-,” you say, “that’s fine.”

“You’re more than welcome to stay here for the night if you like,” Arthur offers, insistently. “I wouldn’t want you walking down to that old shack at this hour of the night, why don’t-”

“She’s a grown woman, dear,” Molly fusses, reaching over to take Remus’ cup.

When’d she find time to give him that?

They shoo the boys out and suddenly, in a heartbeat, the room is almost completely empty.

Time slows way down, with a force that leaves your stomach surging like you’re on a plane taking a dive. This is the split second where Remus’ nonchalant facade breaks, when he first gets a good, up-close look at your face. Where he gets this look, this far-out and distanced look in his eyes, but you can’t make out what it is. And then it flashes before your eyes, dark and pained and sharp and twisted and it’s like you’ve both tapped into the same frequency for the millisecond it takes for the memory to flicker in front of your mind’s eye.

Can he see the way your eyes gloss over?

“Remus, dear,” Molly’s voice tuts from behind him, “Would you mind? You’re just in the way, love.”

He doesn’t answer, eyes - not wide in surprise like yours, but narrowed; narrowed, unblinking, and concentrated. It fills your stomach with dread. Anything neutral in his surprise has melted away now that he’s had a moment to think and recollect. His forearms flex as he shifts the plastic bag in his hands to readjust the weight, head almost entirely cocked to the side as he stares at you, brows furrowed in something nearing anger and lips parted ever so slightly, like he might want to think about saying something but can’t quite decide what to say.

Surely they must have told him you’d be here?

“Remus?”

He almost jumps then, blinking and tearing his gaze away from you.

“‘course, Molly.”

His voice echoes in the room after he turns to let her through.

“Here,” Molly says, pulling the bag from your hands before you have a chance to hold on, “Remus’ll take that.”

Remus lets out what you can only describe as an affirmative grunt, just about polite enough for it not to be rude in front of Molly, grabbing your duffel by the strap and swinging it onto his shoulder. He’s gone out the door before you can say another word.

You press a forced smile onto your lips and move to follow.

“What time will you be back tomorrow, dear?”

Molly’s unassuming tone chips away at you for reasons you can’t explain.

“Not too late, Molly,” you mumble, tearing your eyes away from his back, flashing her what you hope looks like a tired but genuine smile and heading for the door, “Not too late.”

The old farmhouse down the lane from the Burrow is surrounded by overgrown weeds and old rubber tires. Some of the tires are as wide as you are tall, stacked on top of each other with tufts of green and yellow poking through the gaps in the threads.

The walk itself is less than quiet. He stalks in front of you, never closer than about six feet. Doesn’t even look back to check if you’re in tow. Though to be fair, besides actively diving into the brambles and brush that outline the lane, there’s not really anywhere you could go.

Bare wooden planks cover the floors, worn down from decades of use. There’s a simple, wood-burning stove in the corner of the front room, surrounded by stone walls. There are two doors on the back wall, one on the right, and one on the left. Two doors, two bedrooms.

Two tenants , you remind yourself.

This is where you live, now. On Gideon’s request, Molly and Arthur have been generous enough to let you stay here free of charge. It’s hard to pay rent when you can’t work. No one’s supposed to know you’re here, either, outside the Prewett-Weasleys.

And Remus Lupin, apparently.

What the fuck is he doing here? You’ve not heard a word from or about him in years, literal years, and up he pops, like a jack-in-the-box. It’s knocked you for six; you drag your bag across the wooden floor into the room he didn’t stalk into and and sit down on the mattress, and then you just… sit there, staring out into the darkness until your eyes grow used to it and you can begin to see the outline of the handles on the dresser drawers on the opposite side of the room.

Don’t even know how long it takes you to move, strip, and shuffle under the covers, but by the time you do, your joints are stiff and sore and the first signs of daybreak have begun to push through the thinly woven fabric of the curtains.

Remus must be long gone by the time you wake. It’s unsurprising; judging by how bright the sun is, you’re guessing you’ve slept in. You have a vague memory of almost waking a few hours ago and hearing the sound of rushing water outside. Gideon had mentioned that there wasn’t any indoor plumbing, but the way your nightclothes stick to your skin makes the thought of dousing yourself in a bucket of cold water outside a heavenly fantasy come to life.

There’s no way to get lost on your way back to the Burrow; the farmhouse is at the end of a dead end, so your feet move on auto pilot.

There’s shouting in the halls as you step through the open back door, echoing up the stairwells. Moving through the kitchen in shoes you probably should take off, you stick your head through the doorway and almost trip over the two tiny streaks of ginger that run into you as they head around the corner. They land on their bottoms and freeze to a halt with big, brown eyes that peer up at you and just look up, and up, and up until they reach your face.

You tower over them, a ghastly vision with matted hair and sunken eyes, skin gaunt and discoloured. Moments tick by before you bend down to reach both hands out, one in the direction of either bairn. They blink.

You wiggle your fingers when the bairns don’t move, and something clicks behind their eyes as they heave themselves onto their feet and reach for your hands. Each twin grips two of your fingers tightly as you lead them down the hall, stooped low as they waddle along the tattered carpet in their nappies. You lead the boys through the doorway first, shuffling after them.

Molly stands behind an ironing board, one hand wrapped around a small bundle, the other resting on top of a nearby dresser. Her head darts up when she hears footsteps shuffling along the carpet.

“Think these belong to you.”

The boys have taken a liking to you. You can’t imagine why. They cling onto your legs the minute you step into the open kitchen door and babble a thousand innocent questions in your direction without cessation.

It’s good. Idle hands make great feeding grounds for nervous breakdowns.

Molly’s got you peeling potatoes by the time Arthur and Remus get back. He’s working as a sort of farmhand, you’ve learned. Though the Weasleys aren’t really farmers, so you’re not sure how that works. But Arthur’s always fancied himself quite the handyman, so odds are he’s got things brewing. Plenty of farmers around these parts anyway, bound to be plenty of work to be done.

The spuds rest in a net bag in front of you, a muddy brownish colour with green and yellow eyes poking through the gaps in the mesh. Molly’s upstairs trying to give the children a bath. Judging by the shrieks and howls echoing down the stairwell, it’s not going very well.

Molly’s left some record on, some woman warbling out of tune on a track that is ninety-five per cent harp. It’s got you dissociating, hands moving without thought, carving strips of potato skins onto a board in a steady rhythm. Tuber after tuber gets tossed into the pot. The ever-lasting scent of manure from the nearby fields doesn’t agree with your insides yet, and you can taste the bile on your tongue as the smell of starch and water from the skins hit your nose.

Midsummer months bring heavy air, slick with sweetness and humidity and the type of heat that makes your clothes stick to every crevice and plane of you with sweat. You thought it was just you; just a summer’s day of physical labour in a house with terrible ventilation, but the air that hit your cheeks as you stuck your head out of a window in the stairwell was even warmer than the stale air inside. Right now, in the late evening when the fever breaks and a cool shade begins to descend over the fields, it feels like being let out of a car that’s been left in the sun for too long. Flesh on your cheeks, arms, and legs burning and swollen with warmth, you heave the back door open and inhale deeply through the nose, hand resting on the handle of the door to ground you.

There’s that smell in the air that you only get in warm, humid places. It settles in your belly and calms your nausea. The bugs don’t even cross your mind. Bugs be damned. The setting sun is painting streaks of orange and pink over the cloudy skies. It feels like a dream, something not quite real, after months of being unable to feel your fingers and toes from piercing frost. For a moment, you feel like the sun could swallow you whole, pick you up and lift you and bring you in on yourself. You’re not sure how long you linger in the doorway; could be a minute, could be half an hour.

Your chores beckon, and you move to sit at the kitchen table. The soft strumming of the harp in the background seems less intrusive now; maybe it’s because the singer hasn’t sung a note in a minute. The pot begins to fill slowly, and your fingers begin to prune. A bead of sweat trickles down your temple but disappears before it can reach your cheek.

“Thought I might find you here.”

Shit. You suck in a sharp breath, droplets of crimson trickling down the crease of your thumb. You stick the throbbing digit in your mouth, wincing at the starch residue from the skins.

From the corner of your eye, you see him pull a tissue out from a nearby box on the counter. You almost trip on your skirts as you lurch to your feet to grab the handles and heave the pot of potatoes onto the hob, threatening to slosh water all over the chipped tiles in your haste to avoid him trying to give it to you. But he lingers after you, coming up to lean against the counter beside you.

He’s trying. Somewhere, deep down, you know he’s trying. The fact that he’s even talking to you is something, let alone the tissue hanging limply in his outstretched hand. But you can’t find it in you to pretend that you’re in the mood. Maybe you’re overtired. Maybe… maybe it’s something else. You yank the tissue out of his grasp unceremoniously, avoiding looking at his face and pressing it to your skin after rinsing it in the sink.

“So,” Remus says slowly, quietly feigning nonchalance as you wrap the tissue around your thumb, “what are you doing here, then?”

When he talks, it’s like he’s trying not to speak too loud. Everything sounds like it’s being murmured in your ear. You half expect to feel his breath on your neck. You remind yourself that he’s got some nerve talking to you in the first place. You purse your lips.

“What are you doing here?”

Something changes in Remus’ eyes, then. It’s like you’ve broken some sort of ice.

“If I’ve done something to offend you,” he begins, eyeing you with calculated caution. Like he’s testing the waters. “Or said something…”

“Then I’ll know you haven’t changed,” you supply.

You can feel his eyes on you as you turn to the kitchen table and he moves, but he doesn’t follow you, instead lingering in the open space of the kitchen floor. He watches as you scrape peelings into the half-full bucket near the stove and grab its handle, almost yanking it off with the force of it. He makes a point of dipping his head slightly and cocking it to the side as you dry your hands aggressively with a fraying kitchen towel so as to better look you straight in the eye. He keeps his eyes on you unapologetically as you pass him, pushing through to the back door to make your way to the garden.

You can’t tell if he follows you out. You don’t want to turn around to look. You stalk towards the compost heap on the far side of the field, a shabby thing held up by rotting planks of wood, poorly nailed together. Must be Arthur’s handiwork. Everything he lays his hands on begins to tear at the seams as soon as he’s done. He’s got a copy of some DIY manual from 1958 proudly displayed in the sitting room; its spine has almost fully disintegrated and the letters on the front have faded from years opposite a south-facing window, but it remains surrounded by trinkets and charms like a holy book on the mantelpiece.

Gnats buzz around your ears. You slop the contents of the bucket onto the growing heap and turn, all too quickly, and nearly jump out of your skin when you see him directly in front of you. The bucket clatters dully against the grass as only plastic can, hitting the ground with the edge of its curved lip and bouncing off behind him.

“Heard you’re living here, now. Permanently”

“Hearing all sorts of things, you are,” you mutter, almost out of breath as you push past him again and stoop to retrieve the bucket.

He beats you to it, snatching it just out of your reach.

“Something about you needing to get away from something?”

“What do you care.”

Swipe. Miss.

“Of course I care,” he drawls, walking backwards with quick, hurried steps to stay ahead of you as you move to lunge for the bucket. “What, your folks finally given up on ya?”

“Well you’d know all about that, wouldn’t you?”

It’s a nasty thing to say. It’s really nasty. So nasty it makes you feel repulsed that you could even formulate such a thought, let alone choose to say it out loud. Because he was at least partly joking, and there’s no way you can spin it so you don’t look like a horrible, horrible person. His feet stumble as his expression falls, face becoming slack. And in that moment he looks every bit the beautiful, tormented twenty-five year old he is. Golden, freckled skin glows in the setting sun; bright green eyes pained and beaten.

Then he pulls himself together.

“See you haven’t changed either.”

That’s a bit uncalled for. You’ve never had a go at him because of his parents before, and you don’t appreciate the insinuation. It causes you physical pain that he clocked you on the first try, though. It annoys you. Why is he pretending he knows anything about you? Your skin begins to burn again, and your eyes threaten to puff up like you’ve been stung.

You snatch the bucket out of his hands and stalk back to the main house.

He doesn’t follow you back in.

#marauders era fan fiction #remus lupin x reader #remus x reader #remus lupin x you #remus lupin fan fiction #marauders #hp universe #fan fiction #the madonna #remus lupin imagines #aeaean--bliss

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