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fangirlwriting-stories · 9 months

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Before I Go

Summary: Remus doesn't have a lot of time left, but he wants to give living his best shot anyway, and that includes fixing things with someone he never thought he'd see again.

Author's Note: Hi, yeah, if you couldn't tell from the death and noncon tags, this isn't exactly going to be a happy one. No false pretenses here, characters will die, nothing is fixed except for the things the characters fix themselves with their bare hands. That is not to say there is no hope involved, this is a story by me after all, but don't expect all good feelings from the ending.

Honestly I blame Rent. I saw Rent for the first time and it fucked. me. up. (positive), so I had to make my own catharsis. If you're looking for something to be mad at, be mad at the Rent musical. It's not my fault. Except for all of the ways that it totally is.

Anyway enjoy!

AO3 Link

Chapter One:

It is 3:00 on a Wednesday morning and Remus is hacking blood into the sink. Janus woke up when he leapt out of bed and followed him into the bathroom, and is now rubbing his back, obviously just as exhausted as Remus is. He has told Remus to shut up the few times that he’s actually tried to apologize, so even if Remus could speak around the blood coming out of his mouth, he wouldn’t say anything. Or maybe he’d say “I love you.” Because he does, he loves Janus so much sometimes it hurts almost as much as the actual physical pain that’s coming with the stupid blood he’s coughing up.

He manages a couple gasping breaths in between coughs, but he’s still weak in the knees by the time everything stops and he’s leaning his weight on the edge of the sink.

“Everything done coming out?” Janus murmurs from behind him.

“Never,” Remus says weakly. “I’m gay, Janus.”

“Not at three in the goddamn morning, Remus,” Janus says, reaching out and pulling Remus’ arm over his shoulder. He leads him to the toilet and helps him sit down, then heads back to the cabinet under the sink and pulls out disposable gloves and a washcloth.

He spends the next ten minutes wiping the blood from Remus’ mouth like he’s a toddler who got mush all over his face, and Remus is too exhausted to even feel embarrassed. Finally, Janus helps him up and supports them both back over to the bed, then heads over to the other side of the room and grabs the bucket they’ve kept here since the coughing up blood started. He sets it on the nightstand next to Remus and climbs into bed, immediately wrapping his arms around Remus from behind and starting to run a hand through his hair.

“I love you,” Remus murmurs, not having the strength to turn around. Janus just hums in acknowledgement and replies “Go to sleep, Remus,” sounding halfway there himself.

Remus, however, lays there with his eyes open, despite the exhaustion begging him to shut his eyes.

This isn’t the first time he’s woken up in the middle of the night to cough up blood. It is, however, becoming more common, and Remus is beginning to dread the day he’ll have to move into a hospital full time. The idea is nauseating for more reasons than the actual nausea in his stomach. Hospitals mean round-the-clock care from nurses who won’t stop looking at him like dying is his fault. It means restricted access to Janus. It means he’s that much closer to actual death.

And yes, he and Janus had agreed to focus on something else until it’s impossible to do so. Remus doesn’t want to wander around like he’s already a ghost. He wants to continue living while he’s still around to do it. They cook fancy dinners and Remus writes songs, writes stories, kisses Janus until he can’t breathe. They go to bars and drag shows and spray paint slogans on the side of the highway. Remus refuses to die before he’s dead.

But this is the third time this month he’s coughed up blood, and one of these days he’s going to ruin the sheets.

Remus pulls himself gently out of Janus’ arms, and shushes him with gentle reassurances when Janus shifts and starts to wake up again.

Thankfully, Janus is tired enough to fall back asleep. Remus looks down at him for a second before heading out of the bedroom, through the hallway, past the living room, and into the kitchen of their tiny ass apartment.

He picks up the phone and stands for a minute, listening to the dial tone as he catches his breath from the short walk from the bedroom. Finally, he dials, pushing and pulling his finger in and out of the wound up cord as he does. It’s only as he hits the last number that he remembers it’s three in the morning, but he also doesn’t care.

The phone rings four times, and Remus has almost resigned himself to leaving a “see ya, I’m dying” voicemail when someone picks up.

…

Roman hadn’t been excited to be woken up by a phone going off in the middle of the night since it had meant a snow day, but tonight was an especially bad one. He was laying in bed in the t-shirt and boxers he’d pulled on in order to not have to sleep naked, curled up on the opposite side of the mattress from Clarissa. He’d wanted to wait to process thoughts until he could get up and shower the next morning and shove all of last night into a box in the back of his head.

But then he was woken up by the ringing phone, and he groaned, rolled over in bed and buried his head back in the pillow.

“I’ve got it,” said Clarissa, who was much more awake than he was at any time of day. She climbed out of bed and walked towards the kitchen, leaving the bedroom door open in her wake.

Roman vaguely heard her say something about “what is the meaning of this do you know what time it is” before he slipped back into sleep.

Unfortunately, it seemed Clarissa wasn’t able to handle it, because suddenly Roman was waking up again to her shaking his shoulder.

Roman jerked upright into a sloppy resemblance of a seating position and looked blearily at Clarissa. Her mouth was pressed tight into a line and her face showed barely concealed disgust. Roman was about to ask her what was the matter and why she looked like that, but then she answered both questions at once.

“It’s your brother,” she said, pointing behind her back towards the kitchen.

Roman blinked a couple of times, trying to make sense of her sentence. “Calling at three in the morning?” he managed.

Clarissa just nodded, lips pursed.

Roman shook his head a couple times to try and wake himself up, then pulled himself out from under the covers, headed out through the living room and over towards the kitchen. If it was Remus, and Clarissa hadn’t hung up on him as soon as she realized, that meant it was bad.

Roman picked up the phone from where it had been laid on the counter and put it up to his ear. “Remus?”

“Roman, hey,” Remus said. His voice sounded rough, like he’d swallowed sandpaper, which, knowing Remus, was very possible.

“Remus,” Roman repeated, trying to gather up some sort of disgust or anger in case Clarissa was listening from the other room. It wasn’t that hard, it was the middle of the night and Remus had called him out of nowhere. “What the hell are you calling me for?”

Remus was silent for a second, which was so unusual that Roman looked down at the phone, almost concerned. “Remus?”

“So uh,” Remus said, and suddenly his voice sounded weak, which was definitely not like Remus, and now Roman was actually concerned. “You know how you always said being openly gay was gonna get me killed one day?”

“What?”

“Well, you were, um, you were right. Just… not in the way you thought.”

Roman gripped the phone tighter. “Remus, what’s going on?”

Remus was quiet for another moment.

“…I’m dying,” he whispered finally.

Roman squeezed the phone so hard he heard it squeak in his hand. “When?”

“Couple months, probably.”

Neither of them said anything for a minute, instead standing there listening to each other breathe through the phone.

“Roman?” Remus said finally, and Roman hated the shake he heard in his voice.

“Yeah?” Roman whispered.

“Can you come here? Please?”

“Where are you?” Roman said before he really thought it through.

“New York.”

Roman huffed a laugh. “Yeah. Yeah, that… that makes sense.”

“I’ll give you the address.”

Roman grabbed a pen and paper and wrote it down as Remus said it to him. “I’ll be there as soon as I can,” he said. “Probably later this week.”

“Thanks,” Remus said, and his voice was still shaking and Roman wanted it to stop.

“Remus,” Roman said, but stopped after that when he realized he didn’t have anything else to say.

Remus was quiet for a minute, then seemed to realize this too. “I’ll see you,” he said, and hung up.

Roman pressed the phone to his forehead and listened to the dial tone.

“You’re going?”

Roman squeezed his eyes shut without moving. “He’s my brother, Clarissa.”

“Since when?”

“I don’t know,” Roman said. He’d say something about ‘since now, since he just told me he was dying,’ but that would be a lie, because Roman was pretty sure Remus had never stopped being his brother. No matter what he’d said to their parents.

“Roman,” Clarissa said, and Roman heard her footsteps walking forward and he did not want her to touch him right now.

He turned and walked quickly past her, back towards their bedroom.

“Roman!” Clarissa said, starting after him.

Roman went straight for their closet and pulled out a suitcase, then dragged it over to their dresser and pulled open drawers, starting to shove clothing inside.

Clarissa’s voice came from the doorway a second later. “Roman, I think you’re being a little ridiculous.”

“I’m being ridiculous?” Roman snapped, turning to glare at Clarissa, which seemed to surprise her.

She recovered quickly. “Yes! You’re rushing off like it’s the end of the world!”

“He’s dying, Clarissa,” Roman said, standing and realizing in a way he often didn’t that he was several inches taller than her.

Clarissa rolled her eyes. “Well, whose fault is that?”

Roman’s eyes widened slightly, though he wasn’t actually that surprised. He still didn’t say anything though, just stared at Clarissa for a couple seconds.

Eventually, she seemed to find it a little uncomfortable, and took a step back. “What, am I wrong?” she asked, trying to glare up at Roman and falling short.

Roman just looked at her for another second. “Shame on you,” he said quietly, and this time Clarissa’s eyes widened in what was an obvious shock.

Roman turned and started packing again.

...

Chapter Two

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