#..taglist?

Poly!Marauders x Werewolf!Reader 1.5k words, angst, not proofread, unexpected part two

Remus has been keeping an eye on you all week. Every hangout, date, and class together, he’s watching you. Looking for signs of pain, soreness, strain, anything that he missed that night. Suspicion and concern saturate your interactions, it’s sweet, and stressful. You know you’ll have to explain everything soon, but you’re not ready to yet.

You have a date tonight. It’s been a while, with school and assignments and curfew, there’s just not much time to have an actual ‘dress pretty’ date. You get ready in quiet, your roommates at their respective partner or friend’s dorms, the sun will be setting soon. You like the quiet sometimes, now it feels heavy. Heavy with dread, like a weight on your shoulders. You stand in front of a tall mirror, clad in undergarments only, and you worry. Not because of something you see but because of something you don’t.

Old stretch marks mar your skin, the only evidence of the full moon's effect on you. When you were younger, like most wolf cubs, transformations were a little clumsier than they are for you now. Tension in an adolescent body could result in stress while shifting, which would lead to things like this, stretch marks or soreness. And although you grew out of it, the stretch marks stayed, nothing to be ashamed of in your mind, every wolf you knew had them. These marks connected you to every wolf in the world, silver stitches uniting families of werewolves. Some people saw them as badges of honor, proof of their identity, or just a sign of aging. It's a subtle look, more than the average human had, but not enough to be noted as intriguing by someone who didn’t know what it meant.

Bitten werewolves had them too, but they hardly noticed them at all. Too preoccupied by their scars. Scars that litter their body. Always a bite mark, often scratches, rarely claw marks. Most bitten wolves, you learned, hated these scars. You didn’t know many werewolves, just your parents and some of your moms family, almost all of the wolves you knew were born. Besides of course, your father, and some older gentlewomen you met later in life. Your father had never uttered a word of hatred towards his scars. Though your mother often looked at them with a fond sadness. When you got older, you heard people talk about scars like they were something disgusting. When you met Remus, you learned that he too thought of his scars like that, like they were something to be ashamed of.

Remus hated his scars. He hated the evidence of his lycanthropy. He hated that people asked him where he got them from. He hated where they came from. He shied away when you touched him too lovingly, when Sirius’s nimble fingers brushed a scar on his back, when James’s hands traced the grooves on his hands. Remus, who loved so thoughtfully, truly and deeply hated his scars. 

You wondered if Remus would hate your stretch marks. It felt like a bitter, horrible thought. Like you were taking his pain and making it your own. How dare you, you thought. But there it was. The thoughts that plagued you, the marks that proved your flawed existence. 

You never used to think it was flawed before.

The marks on your skin were evidence of your lycanthropy just like the marks on his skin were evidence of his. And although the marks were different in shape and making, the root cause was the same, and Remus only hated his scars because of that cause. Your traitorous mind asked if he’d see your marks and only see his own hatred. 

You felt sick, the way the blessed often do when confronted with the cursed. Survivors’ guilt maybe. You had always loved your skin, loved your marks and loved the moon. Even when the world punished you for who you were, you never stopped loving yourself, briefly, perhaps you did once, but when you stood up at the end of the day, unchanging and learning to be unapologetic for it, you loved yourself.

The issue is, when you begin to love someone else so much, you lose some of yourself. You grow careful, worried, especially when that someone isn’t loving you the way you love them. But it hurts to admit that, because then you’d be admitting that Remus doesn’t love you the way you love him. It’s not your fault, nor is it Sirius’s or James’s, it’s not even really Remus’s fault. It's just that it's hard to love someone fully when you don’t love yourself, and Remus at heart, does not love himself, not the way you love him, not the way the boys love him. It’s a self-based insecurity, not unique entirely to Remus, but it’s something he can’t ignore. Which means it's something no one else can. 

It’s the fact that his insecurity is rooted in a part of him that you both share. It makes you feel terribly cruel for loving that part of yourself, and it makes some part of you want to shy away, to hide that piece of you. How could you ever explain your lycanthropy to him? When he hates it so.

But the sun is setting now, so you walk away from the mirror and those haunting thoughts. James had called it a picnic in his letter, something in the Astrology Tower. You pick through your closet until you grab a pretty blouse and nice pants. You take a few minutes to get ready, before making the trek to your date location.

It’s pretty. There’s a blanket on the ground, food scattered around the plaid. James stands waiting for you, and he smiles brightly when you walk in.

He greets you with a hug and a soft kiss on the cheek.

“Am I the first to show up?” You ask, sitting where he leads you.

“Surprisingly, yes.” He answers, setting a sketchbook on your lap. 

“Why is that surprising? I’m a very punctual person.” 

“No one’s more punctual than Remus.” James laughs, rubbing your head.

“True.” You hum, flipping to a blank page. “Wonder what's taking him so long.”

“Guess.” A new, dry voice answers, and you look up to see Remus standing by the entrance, Sirius following right behind. 

“Guess what?” Sirius asks, head poking in through the entrance of the Astronomy tower.

“Nothing.” James laughs. “Come come sit.” 

“This is very nice James.” Remus murmurs, walking over to join the two of you on the blanket. On his way, he plants an appreciative kiss to James’s hair.

Remus sits next to you, Sirius skips over and sits beside James, eyeing the treacle tart in the middle of the blanket.

“It is nice, thank you James.” You murmur, grasping his hand and pressing a light kiss to his knuckles.

“Are we loving on James now?” Sirius grins, leaning into James’s side.

“No, we're eating.” James huffs, ears red.

The date is fun. The boys are lovely. By the end, you’re laying down, head pressed to Remus’s chest. His fingers tangled in your hair. Sirius lays beside the two of you, his head on James’s lap, everyone looking at the sky.

Your fingers graze Remus’s waist and his breath hitches. It’s a small “nothing” thing, and you don’t say anything when he grabs that hand gently.

“Sorry.” You murmur after a few moments, quiet.

“For what?” He hums lightly. You don’t say anything. 

It’s nothing. Yet it’s everything to you.

You sit up and he comes up with you, still holding your hand, still looking at you. You lift his hand and press the back of it to your lips. It's not really a kiss, just a lingering touch, soft and lasting. You stay there for a bit, the clouds pass over the moon, a bird flies by. After a moment you sigh softly, pressing your forehead to the skin instead.

“I wish you saw yourself the way I see you.” You murmur. Your eyes flicker up to his and he catches the silent meaning, the words you wanted to say but couldn’t give voice to. I wish you loved yourself the way I love you. God, you love him. Your moony, your moon.

You can feel your throat constrict, and you let out a soft breathy laugh to soothe it. 

“It’s about time for me to go, boys.” You say, shaking off the sadness and breaking the delicate walls of the moment. You stand, Remus’s hand slips out of yours and you smile to them all. “Goodnight.” You murmur and disappear before they can think to question or follow you.