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Chapter Text

Remus knows, quite for certain as it happens (having surreptitiously asked Flitwick back in third year if it was in fact possible—hypothetically of course—and having received a very definite No, and Please ensure your friends spend more time charming their spoons to stick to the wall and less time sticking them up their noses in future, if you please, Mr. Lupin), that Sirius Black is not capable of controlling the weather.

The bright beam of sunshine that spilled into the compartment on the Hogwarts Express at the start of first year just as Sirius stepped through the sliding door, all elbows and anger and a long aristocratic ponytail he’d chop off later that night as a celebration for landing in Gryffindor: an accident of timing. The freak snowstorm the day after the Incident, when Remus was curled gut-punched on the floor of the Shrieking Shack with the memory of Severus Snape coming down the passageway and the taste of blood in his mouth that he wasn’t sure was his: a trick of air currents and cold fronts. And now, Sirius at the window of his and James’ flat, the storm outside roaring and Sirius turned to face the rain lashing the pane, dressed in black and looking from this angle like a Sturm and Drang painting, all heroic isolation and inner turmoil—why think anything of it?

If he’s doing it by magic, these uncanny weather patterns, it’s the other kind of magic, the kind Muggles believe in: luck that someone’s always stumbling into or out of, or the coincidences of weather that mean it’s always raining at funerals and sunny at picnics. Remus on the other hand has been taught all his life to believe in firm cause and effect. James looks particularly shifty at breakfast—toads are likely to fall from the ceiling. Toads fall from the ceiling—detention is certain to follow. You go out at night in the wide-open countryside when Fenrir Greyback’s got a grudge against your father—well. 

But cause and effect doesn’t always seem to work where Sirius is concerned.

Remus, curled up on James’ deeply ugly rust-orange sofa, picks at a scab on his knuckle and considers whether throwing something at Sirius would be the best move, or whether he’d prefer to sit here for a little longer in grudging admiration of his friend’s seemingly effortless ability to fall into the role of Tortured Romantic Lead. Sirius bows his head slightly and his long ragged hair falls gently forward, just brushing his squared but somehow defeated shoulders. 

Maybe it’s a Pureblood thing, Remus thinks. Or a Black thing. Maybe Sirius had lessons in Moody Posing growing up.

“Oy,” Remus says, tossing a crumpled page of the Daily Prophet at Sirius’ back. It bounces off and lands on the shag carpet. For a moment, Sirius doesn’t move. But then he turns around, slowly, aggrieved and long-suffering patience emanating from him like stink off a fish.

Remus returns his solemn gaze for a moment, as thunder rolls above them, and then breaks down. 

“I’m sorry,” he says through a wheeze of a half-stifled laugh. “I’m sorry, I just—”

“I’m having a fucking—”

“I know, I know—”

“Emotional crisis here—”

“Yes, Sirius, I know—”

“And you—Moony—of all people, are—”

“I’m not, really—”

“Laughing, yes you are, the second betrayal of the day—”

“All right, that’s a bit—”

“A bit much, is it? I’m about to be abandoned, and you—”

“You’re not being abandoned, Sirius, don’t be melodramatic.”

Sirius surveys him with a mournful look and then flops down on the couch, practically on top of Remus.

“You’re on my feet,” Remus says, to cover the jolt of his pulse at the brush of Sirius’ body against his own. He wiggles his wool-socked toes under Sirius’ leg and Sirius shifts, but somehow, inevitably, manages to end up even more in Remus’ lap, his knee extending over Remus’ shin bones and his arm stretched out along the back of the sofa, nearly brushing Remus’ shoulders. It’s been like this always, Sirius spreading himself out in the manner of a particularly jelly-like parasite over all three of them, a foot on Wormtail, an elbow in Prongs’ ribs, Remus’ nose full of his thick black hair, so they’re linked together like some mutant vaguely sweaty boy-creature. As far as Remus knows he’s the only one who’s responded to this constant invasion of his personal space by wanting to cede even more of it.

“Abandoned for a girl,” Sirius says mournfully. Remus is about to make a flippant remark but there’s something about the slope of Sirius’ neck and the catch in his voice that makes him falter. Remus can’t read Sirius the way James can, can’t pick out from amongst the thick threads of arrogance and mischief and melodrama that knit the man together the hidden skeins of pain and anger and unreconstructed childhood grief. But Remus has spent long enough, Merlin knows, watching Sirius sulk and swan about to notice when he hits a false note.

“Not abandoned,” Remus says. Sirius huffs out an impatient sigh and the inadequacy of Remus’ own words needles him. “They’re moving in together,” he tries, “that’s—that’s natural, at this stage, and anyway you must have seen it coming…”

“Natural,” Sirius says, with a curl of his lip.

Yes, Remus thinks, it was a bad choice of words; he’d felt it curdle, all three syllables of it, as it fell from his mouth. Here’s a riddle, he thinks, Natural: to whom does that word sound worse, a werewolf or a disgraced Pureblood?

“I only meant it’s the way of things.”

“Boy meets girl. Girl rejects boy. Girl hexes boy. Girl humiliates boy, repeatedly, in front of the whole school. Girl, out of the blue, changes mind. Boy runs to girl with open arms. Boy abandons best friend to move in with girl, because that is, as you say, the way of things.”

“Hey,” Remus says, stung on Lily’s behalf. “You forgot the part where Boy is an incredible berk and rather deserves to be hexed until he shapes up.”

“Shapes up,” Sirius says, contempt thick in his voice. He moves restlessly, removing his arm from behind Remus’ back and swinging his feet to the floor. The abrupt lack of contact feels, as it always does, like wind sucked suddenly through an opening door. Sirius strides across the room and back to the window, staring out again at the rain. Remus watches him, feeling uncharitably annoyed by the thought that he might slip once more into his sulk. But Sirius drums his fingertips on the sill, paces twice, and turns again to face Remus.

“The trouble with you, Moony,” he says, “is that you’ve never needed shaping up. In fact you came all shaped up straight from the womb.” He advances. “We’ve had to go to quite a bit of trouble to get you nice and rumpled. To stretch you out like one of your old sweaters. Add a few lumps here and there.”

Remus raises his eyebrows. “Are you perhaps referring to all the times you convinced me to put flobberworms in the Slytherins’ porridge? Or to steal Filch’s cane? Or get drunk on Firewhiskey at the Leaky Cauldron and sing along to Celestina Warbeck?”

“You didn’t sing along,” Sirius says, jabbing a finger in Remus’ direction. “Just because I was sozzled doesn’t mean I didn’t notice you nursing your second glass for an hour and remaining definitively silent while the rest of us were warbling like songbirds. I think Peter shattered a window.”

“I wasn’t silent. I was laughing at you all quite audibly, if I remember right,” Remus shoots back. But he feels that tightness in his throat, the clench in his chest that speaks of shame and helpless inertia. That feels like digging his hands deeper into his pockets when in the presence of particularly handsome young men, like keeping his mouth shut when everybody else is shouting. Sirius springs the sensation on him at least twice daily but rarely with such precise aim.

“Am I the last holdout among us of the young and reckless?” Sirius flops across the sofa again. “The last to man the barricades against daily vitamins and his-and-hers pyjamas and the rising tide of middle age?”

There are a thousand things Remus could say to pierce Sirius’ overinflated rhetoric and explode it into a cloud of dust. He could point out that as none of them are yet twenty middle age is a long way off, and if the state of the world gets as bad as Dumbledore thinks it will there seems a distinct chance that middle age, if they do reach it, won’t look anything like as staid and stable as it does now; or he could say that James and Lily shacking up is more the product of a delirious love-addled disregard for reality than it is an opening of the gateway to hair loss and a joint bank account. But, affected as they are, Sirius’ words feel like a kick to the stomach. You don’t know, Remus thinks, burning shame and anger slowly suffusing him, you don’t know me like you think you do.

“I’m hardly going to be getting his-and-hers pyjamas, Sirius,” is what he finally says.

Sirius raises his head up from its dramatic angle and surveys Remus for a moment. “No ‘her’ forthcoming, you mean.”

“No.”

“Because you’re a werewolf and therefore don’t date.”

“Ye-es,” Remus says slowly. 

“And because you’re bent as an Ever-Bashing Boomerang. Yes, I know. Still, you do wear flannel nightly and your flat looks like it’s been infested by particularly dull librarians. You must admit you’re hardly the poster boy for Wild Youth.” 

“Unlike you,” Remus says quietly.

“Well, yes.” Sirius raises a finger. “One, owns a flying motorbike. Two, once drank both Prewett brothers under the table, a feat hitherto unknown to man. Three, was put in detention for a month not once not twice but three times for streaking naked across the Hogwarts grounds. Four, had, until very recently, a brother-in-arms, a loyal partner in the fight against All Things Respectable, who was right beside him in detention all those years, but who later deserted their shared flat to play house with a certain red-headed seductress—”

“Merlin, Sirius, do you talk about Lily like that to her face? Your problem is with James, not her.”

Sirius lets out a loud impatient sigh. “You don’t even know how to say unreasonable things when you’re angry, do you? I’m throwing a tantrum, Remus, I’m entitled not to have any perspective at the moment.”

Remus blows out a breath. Fine. Yes. Sirius can instruct him on how to be angry, and he’ll take notes. Prepare for the exam. Trust you to make this into a class, he imagines Sirius saying to him. Failed the first lesson already.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I know.”

But Sirius and James will work it out. They always do. They’ll get drunk and shout and then maybe cry a little, or James will anyway, and fall asleep on top of each other and wake up hung over and absolutely fine. Difficult for a few short hours, then easy as breathing.

“Oh, Moony.” Sirius reaches over and ruffles Remus’ hair. Why is it when Sirius touches him Remus forgets how to be angry? 

A delirious love-addled disregard for reality, presumably.

Remus leaves before James comes back. He doesn’t particularly care to be present for whatever row or explosion or long resentful silence is about to transpire. He tells Sirius he’s got to stop by the shops on the way home, but really he just wants to be out in the rain for a while. You’d think, he considers, shoving his hands in his jacket pockets and bowing his head against the wind, that ‘bent as an Ever-Bashing Boomerang’ would be the upsetting part of that conversation. But as with Remus’ “furry little problem” his friends have defused what might have been a perilous revelation by downplaying it to the point of absurdity. Remus isn’t sure whether they do it to make themselves feel more comfortable or whether it’s meant for his own benefit. Either way that’s not what’s got Remus worked up now, frustration fizzling down his skin like the tracks of raindrops as he strides rapidly through the wet streets.

Not exactly a poster boy for wild youth. Well, no, he’s not, that’s true, that’s always been true, that’s the point of him, after all; if Peter’s role is to follow James and Sirius in unquestioning admiration Remus’ is to protest just enough to make them feel truly daring. When Remus was there worrying at his robes and looking out for McGonagall over his shoulder the pranks and the rule-breaking always seemed more dangerous, more illicit and more brave. And now when he stops Sirius from spelling his motorbike to shoot fire out the exhaust pipe or protests when James rides his broom through the flat they can feel, in the absence of Argus Filch and lost house points and the threat of detention, that they are still just as much trouble as they always were.

And then there are the times Remus can tell they’d rather he were a little less of a wet blanket: when he sits in the corner of the pub sucking the energy from the room and refusing to dance; when he won’t answer their sexually explicit questions in the games of Truth or Dare they still for some reason play when they’re drunk; when he turns Sirius’ tuneless pulse-pounding music down because it’s setting his teeth on edge. What they don’t seem to understand is that Remus wishes he were a little less of a wet blanket. Don’t they know he’d give his fucking eyeteeth, sometimes, to be able to just stand up and move his body on the dance floor like a normal nineteen-year-old? Or that he’d very much like to share with them that while the answer to “Have you ever had a finger up your bum?” might be Only my own he fantasizes frequently about having five fingers up his bum and the whole rest of the hand besides.

The problem seems to be that fantasy and what Remus wishes apparently don’t count. Remus would like to tell them that he is not a sexually naïve lukewarm bookish amoeba, he’s not a sweater that needs to be stretched out, he’s not a placid lake that just happens to be wracked with storms once a month when the full moon turns him into something viciously unrecognizable. But the same stifling instinct that keeps him close-mouthed and stiff-limbed and rooted in place makes it impossible. And anyway, next to the blazing deafening bursts of light that are James and Sirius, what claim does he have to be anything else?

The storm swells like a blood vessel about to burst, and Remus tips his face up to the rain, trying to open his chest to the elements the way Lily, barefoot and French-braided, once claimed that Muggles doing something called yoga try to open theirs to the sun, “letting,” she said as she stretched her freckled arms above her head, “good energy flow through them and allowing the universe in.” James and Sirius couldn’t stop giggling at the idea until Lily demonstrated, at which point James had grown quite red and suffered a long coughing fit as he tried not to stare at her chest while Sirius began scoffing loudly about Muggle nonsense: “and they used to burn witches for looking at their cows the wrong way.” Remus doesn’t know about cows but Sirius is probably right about Sun Salutations being bunk, because all Remus is getting out of it right now is a faceful of cold water. He sputters, shaking rain out of his nostrils, and casts a sidelong glance at the secondhand clothes shop whose big front window he’s standing beside, just to make sure no one witnessed his failed attempt at mindfulness; but only a one-armed mannequin standing beside a depressing display of faded rugby shirts seems to have caught it. He stares at the mannequin, feeling a brief but tender moment of kinship with it, then moves on. 

Cold water trickles down the back of his collar and Remus keeps walking. What does it matter, anyway; he’ll never be anything but a taut overfull packet of wanting in the shape of a boy, a slick shining bubble-edge that expands infinitely, pushing and pushing and pushing outwards but never quite to the point of bursting. Helpless, trapped in this young-old-man body with a weak chin and mousy hair and scars that his friends are in the habit of mentally Vanishing away. Remus pushes back a sopping sleeve and digs a finger into the cruel white curl of skin at his left wrist: what is it, if not proof of the jagged hungry thing inside him?

Nasty run-in with a gnome, Sirius had once explained solemnly to a Hufflepuff second-year who’d been staring at it as Remus, on Prefect duty, helped her collect the books and quills Peeves had snatched from her arms and dumped on the floor, cackling as he zoomed away. Could have lost a finger. Very dark creatures, gnomes. Some of them can spit venom, you know.

No, they can’t, Remus had responded, sending the girl on her way, a little pleased spread of warmth fanning out low in his belly as it did whenever his friends invented excuses for Remus’ scars and bruises. He had a whole host of them by the time he’d finished school, a furtive litany of absurd injuries he wasn’t sure he was supposed to remember but that he’d recite, sometimes, in the shower or after the full moon lying unclothed and aching in the Shack. The gash on his left shin: pierced by a rapier during a botched reenactment of Gregory the Smarmy’s attempted assassination. The long thin line on his right shoulder: a melonballer accident, according to Peter, or, if you asked James, a stint in the circus gone horribly wrong. The white gap cutting through his eyebrow: a rogue Healer in the maternity ward at Remus’ birth. And the bite marks just above Remus’ hip: must have been a very angry weasel, Sirius had said, tracing his finger over the fresh bloodred punctures in the thin early light of the hospital wing as Madame Pomfrey went for fresh bandages. Remus had laughed, a bright sudden twist of sound escaping from his throat, and pushed Sirius away, his heart flipping over several times in quick painful succession in his chest. He’d still been fighting his feelings then.

Now he’s long past the pretense and when he thinks of that little girl staring at the scar on his wrist he has a fierce retroactive urge to tell her the truth, to watch her face change as he explains that once a month the bones of his gentle fingers shoot upwards through his skin and sharpen into claws, that his mouth and his nose push forward and like mutant cancerous cells elongate and stretch into a snout as his jaw snaps to make room for rows of jagged teeth bursting bloody through his gums, that his back arches in painful submission as he’s forced to his hands and knees, that he knows what it is to be overtaken by an endless black chasm of devastating hunger.

You had to bend me out of shape, is that right? he imagines saying to Sirius. You know my true shape. You’ve seen my bones break and my skin burst to let it out. 

Remus’ breath catches, there on the street, hand rising to his throat, Merlin, is this—oh, god, this is what he is. He’s standing in the rain on the corner between a grocer and a mobile phone shop and he can feel the beast twist inside him. Oh, god, of course he’s a drumbeat pulsing in a soundproof room; he’s a werewolf, down to the very marrow of his bones, in his blood, in every skin cell and hair follicle and drop of sweat and urine and semen and tears; written on his DNA and stamped along every cell wall is the indelible truth of who Remus is, and the formula to change him from boy to beast. Understanding breaks over him like a lightning-crack, like a revelation: this is what he is.

It’s not horror that’s buzzing through him, not the impulse to go and toss himself in the river and be done with it, but something headier and stronger and somehow viciously pleased: euphoria, elation—they don’t know, Sirius and James and Peter, none of them, they don’t know him. They think he’s a human with a glitch. He’s a different species. Fuck pranks and drunken mayhem and flying motorbikes: once a month Remus watches his fingers split open and sprout claws.

You’d better get home, he thinks, dazed, touching his forehead. You’ll catch your death in this rain.

He slips into an empty alleyway and pushes his hand against his chest and Apparates away.

Remus takes a scalding shower and slides into his flannel pyjamas and curls in on himself in bed, clutching a cup of tea. He feels tender and raw, like he’s been flayed open and his skin has only just grown back, thin and pale and translucent. The headiness of his revelation on the street corner has drained away and he’s not sure what to do with himself now. But something has shifted.

He buries his face in his faded brown blanket. It’s been washed too many times to smell like his mum and dad’s cottage anymore, but the particular way it scratches against his skin reminds him of his childhood, of lying cocooned in bed as if the things that hunted and haunted him were outside the walls, external to him and his home. You’re still my little boy, his mum had whispered to him every morning after the full moon, stroking his hair as he trembled beneath the covers. Still my Remus. Still my boy.

Remus had curled up into her warmth, dreading the moment his father would come home the next day—he always stayed away at the full, searching, he said, for a cure, but Remus knew better—and look at his son with fear and anger dark in his eyes, look at him as if he didn’t recognize him. From across the room, Remus would feel his dad’s mistrustful gaze piercing through the bent body of his mother as she leaned over him, trying to make herself into a shield. When the moon was waning his father would fry eggs in the mornings and show Remus how deep to plant knotgrass and dry Remus’ wet hair after baths with a huge hot puff of an Airing Charm, and when he was a little tipsy he’d get out the family photos and point out the resemblance between Remus and the whole line of Lupins—the flop of the hair, the dip of the nose, the crooked corner of his smile. But as the white scrape of the moon widened in the sky his dad would retreat into moods and work, leaving early in the mornings before Remus awoke. Remus could hear his mum crying about late at night it in the next room.

Remus is only nineteen but after eight-plus years in the company of friends determined to get closer to Remus at the full moon, not farther away—closer certainly than has ever been wise or probable—he knows his dad, and may he rest in peace, was a bastard, and he knows it’s fucked him up in ways he’ll likely not map out entirely till he’s too old for those wounds to heal. But as Remus lies in bed and fingers the scar on his wrist he understands that in some twisted ironic sense his dad was right. You’re still my Remus, his mother had whispered. But he wasn’t.

He drains the last of his tea and burrows down into bed. He slips his hand up his pyjama shirt and feels the wolf’s-tooth scars above his hip, the little nubs of skin where sharp fangs once drew blood. Remus doesn’t remember full moons the way he remembers other things, in little discrete pictures that play like Muggle films; his time as a wolf comes back to him in jagged vivid flashes—a rush of trees, a splash of blood—and in sensory onslaughts, dim embodied memories of wild hunger and a landscape of sharp distinct smells. He’s not always sure about the provenance of his scars, whether he gave them to himself or whether they’re from thrashing against the walls of the Shack or if they’re what’s left of the terrible mercy of dog claws or stag antlers keeping him in check. But the marks on his hip are old, from before the birth of Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs, so he knows what they mean: that he once twisted himself up and sank his teeth into his own flesh in a frenzy of need.

The scars are so small that he can barely tell there’s no sensation in them. He slides his fingers back and forth, poking until he finds the places where he can dig in a nail and feel nothing. With a hushed murmur of a charm he extinguishes the light on his bedside table and blinks his eyes closed against the darkness, his curtains shut against the waxing moon. He rakes his nails gently over the scars, over his belly, just hard enough to leave little tingling lines in their wake.

He imagines teeth at his hip, biting down. Human teeth, fitting themselves over the wolf’s-tooth scars. Slowly, he breathes in and out of his nose. He thinks about the weight of a hand on his hipbone and runs his own hand down below his pyjama bottoms and into his pants. He traces a finger over his balls and then back, slowly, almost reluctantly, to the dry pucker of his arsehole.

He nudges against it for a moment, considering slicking himself up and slipping in, but—he sighs and turns over onto his belly. He pushes himself half up onto his knees and puts a hand around his cock. 

The movement of his hand, practiced and easy, fades into the back of his consciousness as images bloom against his closed eyes and imagined sensations move hot and nearly tangible over his body. Teeth in his neck, then a tongue slick against the indentations they leave in his skin; lips sucking in the crook of his collarbone; a body big and heavy folded over the top of his…

Fuck this, Remus thinks suddenly, twisting his hand faster and imagining a hand coming down hard against his arse. Beg, a deep male voice echoes in his head, and Remus imagines himself shaking his head, shamed, into the pillow, and a hand at his throat, until he gasps out, Hit me, please.

His arse gets hot as he imagines himself getting spanked, one hand bruisingly firm holding down his hip and the other smacking ruthlessly against the tight skin of his arse. Helpless, Remus thinks meltingly, I can’t…The image shifts to the man’s dick up his arse, and he’s, what, a man from a pub? Picked up Remus over a pint and pinned him against the back wall like Sirius does with girls, tongue in their mouths and a hand up their shirts—

No, stop it, Remus tells himself as pleasure jolts up the base of his spine, get his face out of your head, Sirius’ wicked smile and bright eyes, no, somebody different, somebody—older, blonde-haired, but now in his head this older blonde man is where Sirius was, against the wall outside the club and he’s kneeling down, pushing up the skirt of the girl Sirius slipped away with last week when they were out with Peter and Alice and Frank—

Fuck this, Remus thinks again, angrily, and slips his hand off his dick and lies flat on the bed for a moment, breathing hard. No. Something else.

Pretty boy, a rough low voice says in his head, a familiar, guilty fantasy; Remus flushes and puts his hands palms-down at his sides but lets it unfold in his mind. Pretty boy, but I know what you really are. A booted foot against his naked side. I know what to do to boys like you.

Facedown, Remus swallows, sweating under the brown blanket, imagining his body naked on the floor, exposed to the air and to the cruel knowing gaze of the man above him.

I’m going to fuck you like an animal.

Remus’s cock gets hotter, harder, his pulse speeding, but he keeps his body still and his hands flat at his sides. 

But first I’m going to mark you like one.

Remus imagines his cheek pressed against the cold dirt ground, imagines hearing the clink of a belt buckle and the rustle of the man pushing his trousers down and the slap of skin as he gets a hand on his cock. Remus imagines lying there, silent and obedient and fearful and wanting as the man strokes and grunts and gasps above him. He waits for the warm splatter of semen on his back and his bum, waits to be painted with it, but when the man grunts out a warning it’s not come that Remus feels hitting his skin but piss, hot and fluid in a long constant stream running over his back and down the crack of his arse, and shocked and humiliated Remus writhes on the ground, in his bed shoving a hand between his legs, Told you I’d mark you like an animal, the man’s voice says, his piss still splattering against Remus’s skin, mark my territory, so you’ll roll on your back for me whenever I want, legs in the air, and in the fantasy Remus turns over with a flush of shame spreading hot through his chest as his arse lands in the puddle of piss and he stares glassy-eyed up at the man, whose cock is still hard and whose skin is rough and dirty and who, Remus understands suddenly, is going to fuck him here on the ground because he is a real werewolf, wild and half-feral even in human form, living naked in a cave and fighting and fucking in broad daylight, and the man gets on his hands and knees like the beast he is and lifts Remus’ legs till they wrap around his waist and shoves his cock up Remus’ arse and all the breath punches out of Remus’ stomach as he thrusts, thrusts… 

Remus lets out a noise of frustration as he strokes his cock, imagining himself full up to the hilt, imagining the man’s teeth on his neck, but he can’t…quite… 

“Dammit,” he whispers, aggravated, and thinks of himself on hands and knees with a cock up his arse and another down his throat and then against the wall out behind the club, Remus with his face to the brick, a tongue in his arse, yes, good, the older blonde-haired man in the leather jacket, who bends him over a—the hood of a car, and—and fucks into him, and Remus pushes his arse back, yes, and looks up and through the door of the club sees Sirius emerge, his eyes widening in shock and Remus coming—oh, fuck, he’s coming, jackknifing against the bed, Sirius’ face bright in his head just behind his eyelids and realer than anything.

Remus flops over, breathing hard, the back of his wrist limp over his forehead and eyes wide open.

Fucking hell. He may be in love with the man, but Sirius is supposed to stay out of his fantasies.

Chapter Text

Sirius doesn’t stay out of anything, whether he’s wanted there or not. Not out of Remus’ head, or his heart, or, as it turns out, his home. 

“All I’m saying,” Sirius says as he kicks his feet up on the armrest between Remus and Peter, “is that it makes sense.”

Across the aisle of the train, James nods earnestly and Lily watches, eyes narrowed.

“Some people like living alone, you know,” Remus says.

“Some people spend enough time by themselves and they’re at risk of turning into a sea sponge,” counters Sirius. 

“Feet off the seat, please, love,” says the ticket-taker as she passes, and Sirius flashes her a winning smile and plants his feet on the floor. Outside, the countryside whizzes by; Lily was right, Remus thinks absently, it is nice to take Muggle transit once in awhile.

“You were just telling me you pay too much for your flat,” James points out. 

“Cheaper with two,” says Sirius.

“And he’s surprisingly good about doing the dishes,” James adds. “I was quite shocked.”

“We all know I’ll go stark raving mad if I’m left to live alone.” Sirius props his feet back up on the armrest now the ticket-taker is gone. “I won’t make it a week before I turn up at work with a tea cozy on my head raving about how the little people in the nice moving pictures in the Prophet are my only friends.”

“Aren’t they, though?” Peter puts in quickly, looking pleased with himself. 

Sirius shoots him a wounded glance. “Anyway, Moony, now Prongs is off with that one, insufferable lovebirds that they are,” he nods at Lily, “and Wormy’s stuck living with his mum till he’s fifty—” 

“Oy.”

“—you’re my only hope.” He grins. “Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi.”

“Who’s Obi-Wan Kenobi?” Peter asks, frowning. 

“Muggle space-thingy film,” James supplies. “Thought you were there when we watched it?” 

“No…”

“Won’t you just think about it, Remus?”

Remus has thought about it. He hasn’t stopped thinking about it since Sirius sprang the idea on him in the ticket queue at Kings Cross that morning, eyes bright and mischievous and altogether too sure of themselves. Yes, Remus has thought about it: Sirius first thing in the morning, bleary-eyed and bedheaded, frying toast; Sirius listening to his music, nodding his head with his eyes half-closed and banging on the radio whenever it goes on the fritz, which is often; him and Sirius Apparating home from James and Lily’s new place or from the pub or the shops; Sirius’ mess all over the flat, records and splayed-open comic books and screwdrivers and oily boots and everything covered in dog hair. After the full moon, Remus in bed twisting himself up with a little less loneliness knowing Sirius is warm and alive in the next room.

The smell of Sirius’ aftershave in the bathroom. The sight of him wet and dripping after a shower. The brush of his hand as he reaches for the salt.

He’d be an idiot to agree to this. 

“I’ll think about it,” he says.

Sirius shuts up about flats and flatmates for the rest of the trip, putting on what’s clearly his best behavior as they spread their picnic out by the river, handing Remus his sandwich quite cordially and casting only the barest of disapproving glances at James and Lily’s clasped hands and crossed ankles. After they eat, he turns into Padfoot and coaxes Peter to throw sticks for him. 

“Do you want to live with him, Remus?” Lily asks, leaning back on James’ knees with her flame-red hair fanning out around her head.

“I’m not sure,” Remus answers, not quite truthfully.

“Sorry to, erm,” begins James. “If you. If this is. I didn’t mean to put you in this position—”

“It’s all right,” Remus says quickly. “It’s not your fault.”

“It’s mine, I’m sure,” says Lily, arching an eyebrow. “According to Sirius, that is. I imagine I seduced you away from him?” 

“Mmmmmm.” James makes as noncommittal a sound as possible but can’t help looking guilty. 

“Good. ‘Seductress’ is always the reputation I wanted anyway.”

“Lily…”

“It’s fine. He’ll deal.” Lily raises an arm and pulls James’ head down into a kiss, pushing her fingers up through his messy hair. Remus doesn’t miss that she holds it long enough for Padfoot to look over in their direction, momentarily arrested in his game of fetch. 

“He’s really not a bad roommate, Moony,” James says, face flushed from the kiss. 

“I believe it.” Remus lies back, his head tipping off the blanket and into the grass. “I did live in Gryffindor Tower with him for seven years, after all. He’s messy but not dirty, he plays his music too loudly but doesn’t notice if you slowly spell it quieter, and he only walks around naked about half the time.” He tosses this last comment out flippantly; mentioning each other’s nudity in a casual teasing way is something boys do, he’s found, and though James and Lily know he’s gay they don’t know about his feelings for Sirius, so he makes sure to keep up appearances.

“He’s only full nudist on the weekends,” James says. “Weekdays he’ll at least put on pants.”

“Good to know.” If Sirius really did walk around naked half the time, Remus thinks, he would be well and truly fucked. 

“It’s fine,” he sighs, throwing his hands above his head and saying a silent farewell to his quiet, orderly, lonely little flat. What is it he loves about Sirius, anyway, if it’s not the loud, pushy, delighted way he sprawls himself out over his friends’ lives, throwing them into disorder and leaving them messier, less peaceful, and much more vibrant than they’d been before? “I’m sure I’ll let him talk me into it, just like I do everything else.”

“Remus, watch—out.” James winces. “Sorry.” 

Remus is spluttering, his face suddenly full of dog breath and dog snout and wet dog saliva. “Padfoot, quit licking me. Quit. Padfoot. Merlin’s balls, if this is what I’m to expect I certainly won’t move in with you—” 

Padfoot immediately sits, looking contrite. Remus raises himself to a seated position, wiping his face and pretending his heart isn’t racing.

“Disgusting,” he says. “Dog spit. Peter, get this beast under control.” 

“Sorry, Moony,” Peter says as he hurries up, slightly breathless but grinning. “He got tired of fetch.”

In a long sinuous movement Sirius reappears, looking extremely pleased with himself. “I’ve got a new flatmate,” he crows. “Sorry I licked your face, though.”

“Yes, well,” Remus says, flattening the image of Sirius’ very human tongue against his cheek as soon as it pops into his head. “Be sure it doesn’t happen again.”

Remus fits into James’ place in the flat with surprising ease. He insists that James take the horrid orange sofa, even though Lily swears under her breath she’ll hex him halfway to Aberdeen if he does, and sets up a couple of old bookshelves in the living room. With his beat-up pots and pans next to Sirius’ shiny silver ones in the cupboards and his postcards of Seven Sisters and Beachy Head on the bathroom wall he feels almost like the place is home. Sirius struts around, still obviously pleased that he’s got his way. 

“What now, Moony?” he asks the first night after Remus moves in, spreading himself out on their new grey sofa. “Feels like we should celebrate.” 

“Mm. Yes. You can make me dinner and I’ll do the washing up and then we’ll slip into our his-and-hers pyjamas. That’s what this was about, right?”

Sirius is silent and for a second Remus thinks he’s overstepped. He was deliberately pressing on a bruise there, but he thought it was his own, not Sirius’. Then Sirius sits up and glares at Remus.

“You’re a little shit, Moony, and I think I’m the only one who knows it.”

Remus grins, relieved. “They’ll never believe you when you tell them.”

“Let’s go out. Dancing.”

The bottom drops out of Remus’ good mood. “Er…”

“Come on. It’ll be fun. What was living with me for if not to shake up your earthworm tendencies?”

Remus looks away. He can imagine the night unfolding with crystal-clear vision: Sirius dragging him onto the dance floor after a couple of drinks, Remus making what he thinks is a good effort, Sirius telling him he looks like a sock puppet, Remus’ fragile self-confidence shattering, Remus going to sit at the bar and nursing a single Firewhiskey as girls hone in on Sirius like moths to a flame. 

“Not really my scene, Pads,” Remus says, picking at the cushion of the armchair and feeling inadequate. 

“Not really taking no for an answer,” Sirius replies.

Which is how Remus finds himself outside a club in a pair of Sirius’ black jeans with his hair all mussed, standing next to his leather-jacket-clad, black-booted, shaggy-haired friend, who’s lined his eyes just slightly with black eyeliner that looks, Remus is infuriated and aroused to admit, heart-stoppingly gorgeous.

“How punk is this place,” Remus asks slowly, watching a man with a mohawk and a girl with ANARCHY written on the back of her jacket walk inside.

Sirius shrugs a shoulder. “It’s a wizard place, so honestly, not very. A few people are really into the scene but mostly it’s kind of wishful thinking more than anything.”

Remus is slightly reassured, but that doesn’t cancel out the burning anxiety wearing a hole in his stomach. “Sirius—”

“Remus, we’re just going to walk inside, okay? And then we’re going to order a drink. Stop looking like you’re about to step up to the gallows.”

Embarrassment warms Remus’ ears. “I’m fine.”

“Good.”

Inside it’s dark and just as pulsingly loud as Remus expected. He follows Sirius to the bar, squeezing through too many straight couples with too many piercings, not that he’s got anything against piercings, but it’s blatantly obvious that Remus is out of place here, and he’s almost too nervous to look the bartender in the eye to order; Merlin, what’s wrong with him, he’s been to clubs before, but not like this one and not alone with Sirius and that’s the thing, isn’t it, all Sirius’ attention will be on him and his ineptitude and his inability to fucking look like a normal fucking human being—

“Moony. Earth to Moony. Remus.”

“Yeah. Oh, yeah, sorry, here.” Flushing, he hands the bartender a Galleon and some change. “Thanks.” 

There’s nowhere to sit, so they stand against the wall. Sirius looks over the room, relaxed, masterful, even, like he’s scoping out his territory. Remus sips his beer and wonders, stomach churning, how long till he’s forced to confront the dance floor. 

“Wanna dance?” A girl with bleached hair and tight jeans comes up and smiles at Sirius. He raises his eyebrows, grinning back, and turns to Remus.

“You mind, Moony?”

Remus shakes his head. “Want me to hold your beer?”

“Thanks, mate.”

As Sirius turns to go Remus feels pathetically bereft. Don’t leave me, he wants to call out, alone now amidst the tight-packed crowd of sweaty people, everyone in groups, everyone laughing. He sinks back against the wall, trying to ignore the couple making out next to him. One of them sticks an elbow in his side and doesn’t bother to apologize.

He feels, suddenly, electrically angry. Fuck you, Sirius, he thinks, you know I hate this, you know I can’t—. Hot tears spring to his eyes and it takes, to his great humiliation, all his power to push them back. He breathes, drinking his beer, hoping the alcohol will loosen him up but it doesn’t, it never does. 

“Come join us, Moony!” Sirius is back at his side, grinning madly, sweat glistening on his forehead. “Sheila’s with her friends over there, they’re down from Glasgow for the weekend, they’re a riot, you’ll love them—”

“No, I won’t,” Remus surprises himself by saying.

“What?” Sirius’ smile fades a little.

“I—forget it, Sirius, I’m going to go home.”

“What? Moony, no, wait—what are you—” 

He grabs Remus by the elbow and Remus whirls around. 

“I’m not James, Sirius, I hate this place, I hate clubs and dancing and you fucking know it. Take your bloody beer. I’ll see you back at the flat. Or not, I guess, depending on just how much of a riot Sheila turns out to be.”

He hurries out of the club, not worried now about bumping into people. The music fades into a low thudding pulse as soon as he’s out in the clean, cool air and he lets out a sigh of relief. He takes a moment to center himself, then Apparates home.

He’s halfway out of Sirius’ jeans when there’s a crack and Sirius appears in the living room.

“Merlin, Sirius,” he says, startled, tripping in his haste to cover himself up. 

“Remus,” Sirius says. He’s still holding the beer. “What’s happening?”

Remus was expecting to be able to deliver a long rant to the empty flat and maybe cry a bit in the bathtub before having to confront Sirius again. He’s still humming with anger and humiliation but looking at Sirius’ baffled face he’s beset by a strong desire to sweep this under the rug. It’s his own fault, anyway. 

“Nothing,” Remus says, moving into the bathroom to step out of Sirius’ jeans and pull on his pyjama bottoms. He keeps his voice as steady as possible. “I just got a little claustrophobic. I’m sorry. You can go back, I don’t mind.”

Sirius is quiet for a moment. Then, in the other room, he says, “I don’t think you’re James.”

Remus closes his eyes. He steps out of the bathroom and leans against the wall.

“I just can’t be a replacement for him, Sirius. I’m sorry he’s gone but I don’t…I’m not him. I wish I could be."

Sirius frowns. “But I wasn’t…”

Remus looks at him steadily.

“All right. Maybe I was, a little. But—I also thought—if you just went, if you had a drink, you’d have fun. I really think if you just tried—”

“You think I don’t try?” Anger punches through him again.

“Well you—you kind of hold up the wall, Moony, and—”

“Fine. I get it.”

“No, you—get what?”

“I’m a wet blanket. Thank you. I know. I just—”

“Look, I could teach you,” Sirius begins.

“To what? To dance?”

“Well, maybe, for starters—”

“This isn’t a fucking rom-com, Sirius, I’m not some shy heroine who just needs to, to be coaxed into enjoying life—”

“To what?”

“A—to dance, you know, and, and, I don’t know, take off her shoes in the rain or, or kiss, or open that dress shop she’s always dreamed of—”

“What kind of Muggle crap have you and Peter been watching?” Sirius is looking amused, and yes, Remus is aware he’s rambling, but fuck Sirius, fuck him, he doesn’t know—

“I can’t do it, Sirius.” He is, he notes in distant horror, shaking. In rage? In shame? “I can’t, okay? I know you think it’s easy, that if I wanted to I could just—just—but it’s not. It’s not easy, not for me. And I do want to.”

“Want to what?” Sirius steps closer. His beer has clearly been forgotten in his hand; his eyeliner is a little smudged and Remus is suddenly terribly weary of being in love with him.

“To be like you,” he says. “Like you and James.”

There is a kind of dawning understanding on Sirius’ face. “You think we think you’re a bore.”

Remus shrugs.

“We don’t—”

“Be honest.”

Guilt flashes sharp across Sirius’ face. “Fuck. I don’t—look, Remus, wishing you’d lighten up and let things go once in awhile, which by the way is for your own sake as much as ours, isn’t the same as, as feeling like we have to drag you around like a sack of potatoes—”

“Sometimes I feel like a sack of potatoes.”

“Well, potatoes are delicious, so.”

Sirius tries a small smile but Remus can’t, he just can’t.

“I do try, Sirius. You don’t know—what I want—”

“What you want?”

“How much I want. To be able to…” To be like you, he thinks, like a fucking supernova. “To…loosen up.”

“Why don’t you, then?” Sirius asks softly.

“I can’t.”

Sirius sighs and turns away, finally putting his beer down on the table. Feeling the crushing weight of disappointing Sirius settling on him, heavy and horrible, Remus tries again.

“I want—”

Sirius turns back, and something’s caught in his face, arrested him, and he stares at Remus. “What do you want?”

“I…"

Sirius keeps his gaze, intense and piercing, trained right on Remus’ face. Remus feels like he’s about to have his skin peeled back so Sirius can get a good look at his bones: inspect his skeletal structure, poke and prod the muscles, turn his heart over a few times in his hands. Not, Remus has to admit, an entirely unwelcome prospect. He swallows hard.

“I just…want, Sirius.”

Sirius nods slowly, still staring at him.

“I…” Remus’ throat constricts. He feels trembly, almost lightheaded. “I’m like a great gaping chasm, Sirius, like a—like inside me there’s this black hole that pulls—and pulls—and I can’t do it, I can’t do anything, but I want…”

His voice trails off. Sirius steps closer. Remus’ pulse is skipping wildly.

“You want.”

Remus nods. “You don’t know,” he says shakily, barely audibly. “You don’t—it’s in me, Sirius. It’s in my bones.”

“What is?” Sirius’ voice is soft. He’s so close.

“The wolf,” Remus whispers.

Sirius stares at him. Then he takes a full step back, and for a dizzying second Remus thinks he’s afraid.

“Holy shit,” Sirius says. “That’s the most intense fucking thing I’ve ever heard you say. Heard anyone say. Holy shit, Moony, you should…hah. Pull that out at parties.”

Remus watches him, heart still in his throat, uncertain.

“Merlin. Remus. What the hell. Where did the wooly-socked Prefect go and what did you do with him.”

Sirius moves to the table and takes a drink from his beer, then back over to Remus.

“I…”

He goes back to the table and takes another drink.

“Sit.” He points to the armchair. Slowly, Remus complies. Sirius sits on the sofa and looks at him.

“Okay. So. Just so I’m hearing this right. You…hate dancing.”

Remus nods.

“And clubs.”

“They aren’t my favorite,” Remus admits.

“But you want to like them.”

He feels himself go a bit pink. He nods again.

“But you can’t. But you want to. So you get all—twisted up inside, is that it, and you feel like it’s your fault and you’re a burden to your wild and carefree friends who would have a much better time if they didn’t have to keep prying you off the walls et cetera et cetera.”

“Well. Yes.”

Sirius surveys him. “But you are quite capable of being convinced, Remus. The pranks, the sneaking out after hours, the staying up late and gorging ourselves on—on rum punch and spicy cheese crisps. I rather thought you enjoyed being prodded out of your shell.”

“I do. But some things—”

“Dancing. Clubs.”

“Yes. I just—can’t.”

Sirius sits back. “That’s all right. It is. We don’t—we don’t mind. I know I dragged you out tonight and I’m sorry, but you never have to come again and none of us will think any worse of you.”

Remus nods. “I…all right.”

Sirius takes a few more swigs from the bottle. There’s a small rip in the knee of his black jeans and Remus tries not to stare at it.

“But you want things.”

Remus looks up at him quickly.

“What things, Remus?”

His voice is quiet, odd. His gaze is mesmerizing. If Remus isn’t careful, he’ll go spilling all his secrets.

“Not particular things,” he says, which is, with the one massive exception sitting dark-eyed and handsome in front of him, the truth. “I just want.”

After a second, Sirius gives a short jerk of a nod. “That I can understand.”

He gets to his feet.

“Time for bed,” he says, squeezing his hand briefly on Remus’ shoulder. “You look like you’ve been to hell and back.”

Chapter Text

Several weeks after Remus moves in with Sirius, James and Lily have a party.

They cram as many people into their new flat as possible: Remus and Sirius and Peter, and Alice and Frank, and Mary MacDonald and the Prewett brothers and Caradoc Dearborn and Marlene McKinnon and Dorcas Meadowes. Lily and James haven’t quite got the normal amount of furniture yet, so Remus and Sirius are conscripted to bring extra chairs. In fact when they get there it’s mostly chairs—a couple of overstuffed maroon poufs from James’ parents, which clash horribly with the orange sofa, and an outdoor recliner scavenged from the side of the road, and the rest, miscellaneous kitchen and folding chairs. Marlene McKinnon still has to perch on the counter and Alice sits on Frank’s lap. The place smells like Lily’s incense and the vat of curry James is cooking up on the stove, and between the scarves draped on the walls and the shelves overflowing with Quidditch memorabilia and the press of loud laughing people Remus feels comfortably claustrophobic. 

He finds himself in a corner next to Dorcas Meadowes, who was a couple years above him at Hogwarts. He remembers her and Marlene McKinnon at Quidditch games, dressed in elaborate Gryffindor gear they’d sewn themselves. Once they’d showed up as the front and back halves of a lion and nearly fallen off the edge of the bleachers.

“What are you up to these days, Remus?” Dorcas asks, leaning in close so he can hear her over the noise. 

“I work at a bookshop,” he answers. “I do their ordering. It’s nice.” It is, actually. He’d had trouble holding down a job before he’d started telling people up front that he’d need a couple days off every month to help his Muggle mum through dialysis. The kind old witch who owns the bookshop had been impressed by his filial devotion and baffled by the unfamiliar medical term, and as long as Remus conceals any fresh bruises or wounds after the full she doesn’t ask questions.

“You ever think of going back to school?"

Remus looks at her, startled. “Yes, I do. I’d like to teach, maybe, or do a research degree. Magical theory, probably.”

“But?”

“Well, I mean.” He shrugs. “You know.”

Dorcas sighs and pulls a pack of cigarettes from her pocket. “Yeah. I know.”

She offers him one but he declines.

“You really think there’s gonna be a war?” She lights up with a whispered charm, the glow faint and orange between her fingertips.

Remus leans back, looking around the bright crowded room, Lily laughing with Alice, Peter applying himself seriously to his curry, Sirius grinning wickedly at Marlene, leaning close as she gives him a half-skeptical, half-interested look. He feels a pang in his stomach. God, he loves these people. 

“I hope not.” 

“No kidding.” Dorcas takes a drag on her cigarette and exhales a long stream of smoke. “You think it’s changed things, all the—” she waves a hand “—the horrible rumors? The weird shit happening? The feeling that something really bad’s about to go down?” 

Remus nods. “I think everyone’s life is on hold, a little.”

“Waiting to see what’s coming. Yeah. I think so too.” 

“I do want to go back to school.”

“You should.” She sighs again, sticking her long legs out in front of her. “But I get it. Hard to start something you probably won’t be able to finish.” She glances around the room. “Bet you Sirius Black’s gonna pull tonight.”

Remus doesn’t let the sudden clench of his stomach show. “Marlene, you mean?” He keeps his voice casual.

“They hooked up at Hogwarts a few times.”

“I know.”

“She said she was through with all that drama.” Dorcas waves her cigarette vaguely in the air, her voice not quite matching up with her amused smile. “But look at her now.”

Remus does, despite himself. She’s perched on the counter, bare legs dangling, and Sirius is angled in to her, one hand just brushing her knee. She’s bent over to say something in his ear. Remus knows this moment like the back of his hand: the reluctant wave of jealousy, the determination not to care, the dry prickle in his eyes when Sirius eventually lands a kiss on the girl’s lips. And through all that, a strange, unfair twist of admiration.

Remus looks away.

“That’s the war.” Dorcas pulls on her cigarette. “Bet you anything.”

“What do you mean?”

“If we’re all about to give up our, whatever, our youth or our chance at being normal to fight some horrible Dark threat, we might as well, I think the theory is anyway, make the most of the time we’ve got.”

“By…having sex with Sirius Black.”

Dorcas laughs. “Sure. Yeah. Or, you know.” Her voice gets quieter, a wry edge to it. “With Marlene McKinnon.”

Remus raises his eyes to her face. She’s watching Marlene with a look he recognizes all too well.

“I’d,” he says, heart suddenly racing. “I, er.”

She raises her eyebrows at him, her gaze going wary.

“I’d prefer, er, him, as a matter of fact,” he says, tipping his chin up even as he feels a shaky sort of wobble all through his body. 

“Knew I liked you,” she says, giving him a crooked grin. 

Warmth rises through his chest. “I…”

“Ladies and gentlemen!” James, flushed and clearly well on the way to drunk, is clinking his fork against his glass. Remus and Dorcas look over at him. “If I could have your…attention please…”

Amidst laughter and eye-rolling, the chatter subsides. James clears his throat. He’s got one arm wrapped around Lily’s waist.

“Let me just…” He takes a step up onto the coffee table, pulling Lily up with him. Their bare feet knock against plates and cups; Gideon Prewett has to grab a wine glass before it tips over.

“Steady on,” he says. 

“Perfectly steady, thank you, my…dear friend.” James puts a hand on his chest. “You’re all such…dear friends.” 

His voice chokes a little. Lily strokes her fingers through the back of his hair. 

“I am so…honored…to be here with you all,” James continues, eyes glistening now. Yes, he’s quite a bit more than tipsy, Remus thinks, suppressing a laugh; James gets maudlin when he’s wine-drunk, liable to teary pronouncements of friendship and affection. Across the room, Remus’ eyes meet Sirius’—Sirius is also clearly trying not to laugh—and they exchange a knowing smirk that nearly knocks the breath from Remus’ chest.

“It’s all right, James,” Lily says, sliding an arm around his waist. “They love you too.”

She’s wearing a long floral skirt and a white blouse with puffy sleeves, her red hair loose around her shoulders, her green eyes sparkling. James turns a look of heart-stopping adoration on her and she raises a hand to touch his cheek. They’re probably idiots, Remus thinks, drunk on the terrifying freedom of adulthood and the consummation of a long-time-coming romance and obviously overwhelming sexual attraction, but fuck if they don’t seem like maybe they’re really, actually in love. 

“Lily and I would like to announce,” James says, regaining a modicum of his composure, “a very important announcement. I have the ab—the absolute pleasure of, a thing I truly never believed possible, as Lily for so long and quite rightly too found me unworthy of her affections, as I was really and truly a prick, although I did love her, and I only ever meant the best for anyone—” 

“Get on with it!” somebody shouts.

James’ face breaks into a broad grin. “We’re getting married!” 

There is, it must be admitted, a split second of shocked silence before the applause breaks out. Shouts of “Congratulations!” and “That’s amazing!” ring out and everyone’s on their feet, patting James on the back and hugging Lily. Remus, applauding through his surprise, catches a glimpse of Sirius: he’s grinning, pushing through the crowd to James, but when the two men hug Remus can see his face, gone blank with shock. 

Somebody turns the music up and opens the champagne James pulls out of the fridge and everyone’s laughing and shouting, the already lively gathering feeling now like a celebration. Remus hopes the neighbors aren’t bothered. Maybe he ought to put up a few Silencing Charms. But he gets pulled into a heated conversation in which Fabian Prewett and Frank Longbottom each try to conscript him into their side of an apparently longstanding debate over whether the Martin Miggs, the Mad Muggle comics are offensive to Muggle-borns or not. Somewhere between trying to follow Fabian’s account of a convoluted plot arc involving a giraffe with a transistor radio and Mary MacDonald lighting a pungent stick of incense in the corner Remus begins to drift. He leans forward, attempting to focus on Fabian’s story, but the detachment he feels when parties get wilder starts to creep in. His gaze wanders. Dorcas is lying flat on her back on the carpet, legs up against the wall, smoking another cigarette and talking earnestly to Alice. Peter is sitting cross-legged beside them, looking intent on their conversation. Lily and James are on the orange sofa, kissing; James is sprawled against the armrest, collared shirt open at the throat and hair mussed, and Lily is sitting in his lap, hands on his chest, head bent over his. James’ arms are low on her back. Remus feels that he ought to look away—James’ hands are very low on her back—but he ignores the nudge of embarrassment and watches them drown in each other for a moment. 

He knows where Sirius is, in the corner with Marlene, but he doesn’t look that way. He doesn’t need to look to find Sirius, at any party or bar or club, because he’s always conscious of him, a prickle at the back of his mind, a constant hum of awareness he can mostly tune out but that’s impossible to shut off. He’s kept his distance from Sirius deliberately tonight, knowing that the trade-off for a few hours basking directly in his magnetic presence as he charms and jokes and scandalizes his way through the evening is the abrupt jolt of abandonment when he peels himself away with his arm wrapped around someone’s waist. Now, as he sees out of the corner of his eye Sirius and Marlene pushing themselves up from the floor and disappearing quietly into the bathroom, Remus feels the jolt as more of a tug, a drawn-out echo that slips through him, hollowing him out slowly. 

“Sorry, Frank,” he says, turning back to the conversation, disappointment flattening him out no less painfully for being expected, “I think Fabian’s right. Miggs is a Muggle stereotype. There’s just no getting around it.” 

“Hah!” Fabian says triumphantly. 

“But he’s lovable,” Frank insists. “You’re on his side.” 

“But he’s still helpless,” Remus points out, corralling his focus and energy so they’re pointed at this debate, these two people, not at the bathroom door or his absent flatmate and certainly not at what Sirius might be doing to Marlene right now, Get a fucking grip, Remus; “Making him stupid and lovable is still putting wizards in a position of superiority.” 

“But it’s not like wizards fare all that well in the comics either. In issue twenty-seven…”

He loses track of time as Peter joins them and Alice draws Frank away from the group to share a bag of crisps and get his ruffled feathers stroked. He’s more than ready to go, but for James and Lily, he’ll stay. 

“Want to head out?”

Remus twists around and looks up into Sirius’ face. His heart leaps in his chest, which he ignores. Sirius’ shirt is untucked, his hair messy. Remus’ eyes flick around the room; Marlene is sitting down next to Dorcas, who’s propped up again on her back against the wall.

“Yeah.” He gets to his feet. “We should probably say goodbye to Prongs.”

Sirius raises an eyebrow. “Do you see Prongs in this room?”

Remus looks around. James and Lily have disappeared. Ah.

“Right.”

They say their goodbyes and head out into the hallway, which smells faintly of weed and in which the sounds from at least two other parties are audible from behind closed doors. No worries about the noise of Apparating, then.

Their flat seems preternaturally quiet now. Remus switches on a light as Sirius collapses onto the sofa.

“What the fuck.”

Remus perches on the side of the armchair, waiting.

“Fucking—married?”

Remus shrugs. “They’re, erm…”

“They’re idiots.”

“They’re in love.”

Sirius snorts. But then he goes quiet.

“Never quite got what he saw in her,” he says slowly, “other than that she’s gorgeous and was the only girl who ever told him no, but…this is…” He rubs a hand over his face. “I thought it was a bad thing, her changing her mind and giving in to him like she did, out of nowhere, but James is like that too, isn’t he. Impulsive.”

Remus nods.

“I think this is the stupidest thing James has ever done, but she’s the same kind of stupid,” Sirius finishes. He looks like the words are costing him rather a lot to say.

“That’s a good way to put it.”

“That James is stupid?”

“Hah. Yeah.”

There’s a long silence. Remus fidgets. He ought to go to bed. 

“So you and McKinnon…”

The words are out of his mouth before he can stop them. Sirius turns his face to Remus and grins. 

“I don’t kiss and tell, Moony.”

“That’s balls.”

“Yeah, it is.” Sirius smirks. He strokes his hand across his chest, looking like the cat who got the cream. He sighs showily, a long exhale of contentment. “I know it’s not your area, Remus, but eating a woman out is truly one of the great overlooked pleasures of sexual intercourse.”

Remus flushes. He tries to marshal his features into a worldly expression, yes, fine, this is fine, fucking hell, Sirius…he…

“I mean, men are always after women to give them blow jobs,” Sirius says, “but the thought of paying them back in kind for some reason seems to most beyond the pale. I mean, yes, it does get very wet, it’s certainly messy, but…Merlin, Remus,” he says, laughing, “I wondered how long it’d take for you to break.” Remus is bright red, his traitorous hands having flown to his mouth at Sirius’ last words.

“Fuck you,” he manages, “unfair use of…of heterosexuality.”

Sirius roars with laughter. “Oh, god. Oh, Remus.” He sits up straight, feet jiggling against the floor. “I’m not going to be able to sleep. Married. Christ.”

He stands. “Let’s do something.”

Remus opens his mouth, startled.

“Not a club. I know. But something—something you want to be persuaded to do, yeah? Something you’d normally say no to. Come on.”

“I—I’m tired, Sirius—”

“No. That’s what I’m saying. Not straight to bed. Not flannel and tea.”

“It’s after one—”

“Yes. I thought you wanted—things.”

Remus swallows. “I…”

“To be pushed.”

Remus stares at him. His blood is loud in his ears. A tug in his chest: the hole inside him, opening wide.

“What, then?” he says. His voice comes out softer than he means it to. 

“I’m going to take you,” Sirius replies, “for a ride on my motorbike.”

Remus stares at the bike, six kinds of anxiety coursing through him. He’s refused to ride it too many times to count: “Not even on the road, Sirius, not a chance in hell, let alone in the air.” He’s seen too many bits and pieces of it lying around to trust that the thing is entirely functional; and he doesn’t trust Sirius, who’s of course never got near a driver’s license in his life, to drive it; and he’s not even a huge fan of brooms and they’re meant to fly; and on top of all that, he’ll have to put his arms round Sirius and hold on tight.

“Are you even sober enough to drive right now?”

“I didn’t splinch myself on the way home, did I?”

“Not sure that’s the same thing. How much wine—”

“Relax, Remus, I stopped drinking after the toast. Here. Smell my breath.”

Remus leans in to perform the semi-regular pre-Apparition check and Sirius exhales, not the smell of alcohol but something else warm and unplaceable—Remus reels back, fast, and Sirius after a second does the same.

They stare at each other for a moment, the thought of where Sirius’ mouth has been hanging in the air between them, before Sirius gives an uneasy laugh.

“Not drunk. Come on.”

More to avoid looking him in the eye than anything else, Remus obeys. Sirius mounts the bike and Remus awkwardly clambers on behind him.

“Arms around my waist, Remus, or you’ll fall right off. Tighter. Good.”

Remus tries not to bury his face in Sirius’ neck, but it’s hard at this angle. He smells like incense and curry and sweat. Even through his leather jacket Remus can feel the warmth of his body, insulation against the chill night air.

“All right. Don’t let go and don’t freak out. I’m just going to take her up for about five minutes. And yes, there’s Silencing and Misdirection Charms on every single bit of her, so no one’s breaking any Statutes of Secrecy tonight.”

“Just half a dozen other laws,” Remus mutters. 

“Well, yeah, but much more minor ones. Hold on!”

Sirius revs the engine. As it roars into life Remus feels a sharp incredible twist of excitement: the bike alive and vibrating beneath him, Sirius bright and solid in front of him, the night open and clear—

And then they take off, and it’s all Remus can do not to scream.

It’s terrible. It’s the worst thing he’s ever done. It’s nothing like a broom, it’s loud and jerky and the motorbike dips and climbs in the air, sending Remus’ stomach to places he’d rather not go; Sirius laughs and turns sharply, the lights of the city blurring queasily below them. Then he dives and Remus feels his whole body plummet, out of his control, as he grips Sirius in a vise grip that still seems unbearably fragile. He does scream, then, as London hurtles closer, screams till his throat is hoarse. He feels absolutely as if he is about to die.

When Sirius finally starts to descend, their street coming into view, Remus can’t help but shut his eyes against the impending collision; the bike jostles as it hits the pavement and comes to a stop.

Remus dismounts, shaking so hard he nearly collapses.

“Steady there!” Sirius calls out, laughing, then hurries to get off the bike himself. “Shit, Moony, are you okay?”

Remus nods. He’s drawing in great gulps of air. The ground beneath him is blessedly, beautifully solid.

“All right. Inside.” Sirius mutters an anti-theft spell at his motorbike and leaves it parked on the curb. He steers Remus in the door and up the stairs to their flat.

“I’m okay,” Remus says.

Sirius gets him a glass of water. Remus spills a little as he drinks.

“That was…not your thing, then.”

Remus shakes his head, the blood pounding in his ears. His legs are limp, noodle-like, and he leans ungracefully against the wall to hold himself up. His chest feels hollowed out. His throat is rough from screaming. God, he and Sirius really aren’t a match, are they?

“Sorry,” he manages.

“No, Merlin, Moony, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—” Sirius steps closer, concern flashing across his face. “You’re shaking.”

“Just the aftereffects. Sorry.” Remus feels pale, distant. “It’ll pass.”

Sirius puts both hands on Remus’ shoulders. “Steady on. Take a deep breath.”

Remus does. Sirius grasps him tightly, watching as Remus sucks air in and pushes it out again. His features sharpen, the lines of his body and his too-close face getting finer as Remus’ head clears.

“What…” Sirius begins, reaching out a hand to brush against Remus’ chest, where his heart is pounding loud enough that James and Lily can probably hear it. His fingers bunch the fabric of Remus’ shirt slightly and then he drops his hand. The other is still on Remus’ shoulder, tight.

Sirius’ features are blurring again, but this time through the haze of simply proximity: the warmth of his skin, the brightness of his dark eyes, the breath Remus can feel on his own lips. Mesmerized, still trembling slightly, Remus watches him.

“What would you do?” Sirius asks softly. “If you could do one reckless thing. Take one un-Moony-like risk. Not flying motorbikes. Not dancing. What would you do?”

Sirius is much, much too close to Remus for this conversation. He doesn’t answer. How can he?

“What is it, Remus?” Sirius asks. His eyes are glittering with that wicked light to which Remus’s stomach is perfectly calibrated: a gleam like this one, past midnight with Sirius’ hand on his shoulder, provokes backflips and roller-coaster drops and the hard twist of need. “Tell me. Anything. You know I don’t care. If it’s stupid or dangerous or fucked-up somehow. That, hell, that makes it better.” He laughs, low.

Remus, slowly, shakes his head. The adrenaline is draining out of his body, leaving him light-headed.

“Come on, Remus.” Sirius’ whole face is alight, his voice edged with the same current of mischief and challenge that has sent Remus through secret passageways and into forbidden places and out of his weak and treacherous mind, and he moves in closer and whispers:

“I dare you.”

Remus kisses him. He surges forward and his lips land on Sirius’, clumsy, needy, opening onto Sirius’ mouth—

“Holy shit,” Sirius gasps, and stumbles backwards.

In the suspended silence that follows, Remus stares into Sirius’ shocked eyes, immobilized. Then his body catches up to him and he lurches into motion.

“I’m sorry. Fuck. Sorry, sorry—”

“Remus—”

“I’ll go. I’m sorry.”

He hurries toward the door, shaking again, no thought in his head but to leave. But when he reaches for the handle—

“Protego,” Sirius’ voice calls sharply, and Remus slams into a solid wall of air.

“Stop,” Sirius says, and like a puppet on a string, Remus turns slowly around.

Sirius moves rapidly toward him and cups his hand around Remus’ neck and kisses him back.

“Sirius,” Remus gasps, pulling away. “What—”

Sirius moves closer, shutting him up with a tongue in his mouth. His hand snakes up to Remus’ side, settling above his hip.

“But, Sirius,” Remus says helplessly, breathless, with Sirius’ nose on his cheek. “But…”

“You caught me off guard,” Sirius murmurs against his skin. “That’s all.” He slips his tongue out over Remus’ neck and Remus lets out a startled gasp.

“I just—”

“Remus,” Sirius says firmly, pulling back for a second. “The number one rule of hooking up is that it’s only awkward if you let it be.”

Hooking…up. Remus’ breath sticks in his throat. His kiss had been the answer to a dare. Sirius had responded to it as…

An invitation.

Remus puts his hands gingerly on Sirius’ waist.

Sirius backs him up against the wall and kisses him hard. He bites Remus’ lip and Remus moans, shocked, into his mouth. Sirius still smells like incense and like the cigarette-tinged tang of the cold night air. He keeps his mouth on Remus’ as he shrugs out of his leather jacket, letting it fall to the floor.

Sirius looms large over him, black hair falling in his face, muscled arms pinning Remus to the wall, one big hand running over Remus’ chest. He puts his mouth expertly on Remus’ skin, sucking behind his ear, licking down his neck. Remus feels helpless, hot, grasping the back of Sirius’ white T-shirt, almost painfully aroused, kissing when he’s kissed and letting little moans escape his lips despite his best efforts to hold them in.

“Here goes nothing,” Sirius murmurs rough in his ear, half-laughing, and cups his hand over Remus’ crotch. “Yeah,” Sirius muses, grinning against Remus’ skin, “definitely a dick.”

“Fuck you,” Remus manages, as starbursts explode behind his eyes.

Sirius doesn’t grace that with an answer, other than to unbutton Remus’ trousers. “Get out of these,” he says, and pulls his own shirt above his head. Remus stares as he slides off his shoes and his jeans. Sirius has never been a modest individual; Remus has seen him naked more times than he can count, in the dormitory, the showers, the Hogwarts lake. Their kitchen, just last week. He knows the sparse black hair on his chest, his lean legs, the muscled torso he knows Sirius is secretly vain about. But he’s always diverted his eyes from what’s now presenting itself unapologetically to his wide-eyed stare. For a second he feels the impulse to turn his face away, embarrassed. I didn’t mean to look.

He looks. The bulge between Sirius’ legs seems all the more obscene for being covered in his tight white pants. Remus doesn’t feel as though it’s something he could just reach out and touch. His hands hover at his sides.

“Trousers off.” Sirius is grinning at him. Remus flushes. Being caught in the act of staring at Sirius’ cock is something that’s haunted his nightmares for years. He’d never imagined Sirius would respond by raising an eyebrow at him in pleased amusement.

Remus fumbles with his clothes, shedding them on the floor till he’s in his pants as well. He feels a rush of relief at the thought that Sirius has seen him in this state dozens of times too—that he knows every scar, every white line and twisted pucker of skin. No questions. No explanations. No revulsion.

“Remus fucking Lupin,” Sirius breathes, and pulls him in.

Sirius’ naked body against his sends electric tremors all through Remus. He feels choked, wanting; he runs his hands across Sirius’ back and, tentatively, kisses his neck.

Strange how he’s so hesitant, when what he really wants is to beg Sirius to bend him over the couch and fuck him till he cries.

“Oh, god,” Remus murmurs. Sirius’ hand is between Remus’ legs again, stroking, gaining surety with every move of his fingers. Remus arches his neck. “Couch—”

“Floor,” Sirius breathes, and pulls Remus down on top of him. Remus scrabbles for purchase on the rug, their cocks rubbing against each other, fuck, he isn’t sure if he’s allowed to pull down Sirius’ pants but he would really really like to—He steels himself and with a quick movement of his arms rolls them over, pinning himself beneath Sirius. Sirius lets out a started huff of breath, his face inches from Remus’.

Remus puts his hand on the back of Sirius’ head and brings it to the join of his neck and shoulder. Sirius kisses him, sucking gently. Remus writhes, frustrated. Sirius’ tongue is tender, soft, wet. His nose bumps lightly against Remus’ skin. Remus tries to let it be all right, to feel the touches as arousing and not irritatingly insubstantial, but—but—

“Bite,” he whispers into Sirius’ ear, shutting his eyes.

Sirius sinks his teeth lightly into Remus’ skin, nipping down his chest. Tiny barely-there bits of not-quite-pain flare up and then fade out, too fast for Remus to really register. Remus clenches and unclenches his fingers and focuses on the heavy heat of Sirius’ cock pressed against his thigh and finally, through a lump in his throat almost too big to speak around, asks. 

“Harder. Please.”

Sirius looks up at him: lips swollen, eyes bright. Then he bites down hard on Remus’ shoulder, digging in his teeth in sharp bright points that pulse through Remus’ body.

Remus cries out.

Sirius applies himself to Remus’ chest, scraping down it open-mouthed, trapping his skin between his teeth and biting down, worrying at his nipple till Remus shouts.

“Sirius,” he pants, oh, god, this is Sirius. Biting his chest. Lying heavy on top of him. Remus feels pinned, trapped, and long lines and points of pain smart across his chest. His bitten nipple stings. Blindly, hands roaming over Sirius’ back, he moves his hips, searching for friction and the right angle, and Sirius reaches down and pulls his cock out of his pants, then reaches into Remus’ and does the same. He grasps both of them in his hand and squeezes.

Remus makes an incoherent noise, heat rocketing through him. Sirius kisses him again, mouth open, breathing fast, and moves his fist up and down. Remus gets a hand on the back of his head, holding him there, willing him to go deeper, to overwhelm him—Sirius plunges his tongue into Remus’ mouth and Remus moans in affirmation, panting as best he can through the all-consuming kiss, through the tongue delving deeper into his throat; when Sirius tries to pull back, to give Remus a moment, Remus tightens his grip on Sirius’ hair. He wants to drown. He wants Sirius to ignore his choked attempts at breathing and kiss him and kiss him and kiss him till Remus’ mouth is bruised and wet and puffy and Remus can’t do anything but lie there and let him.

Sirius bites down on Remus’ bottom lip. Remus’ hips jerk up, sudden, involuntary, and he finds himself without warning on the sharp edge of a scream; Sirius bites harder, and Remus comes: bright, breathless, like a punch to the gut. He makes some impossible agonized sound into Sirius’ mouth, jolting his hips up again and again as he spills over Sirius’ hand.

“What the hell, Moony,” Sirius pants, and comes. Remus feels it hot on his belly. Sirius shudders above him, gasping low against Remus’ cheek.

Sirius finishes and rolls off to the side, flat on his back, eyes on the ceiling.

“Well,” he says, breathing hard. He tips his head to look at Remus. Remus, still in a half-stunned well-fucked haze, looks back, eyes glazed. “Better than the motorbike, then?”

It takes Remus a moment to understand. “Arsehole,” he says, voice weak. He bends his head awkwardly to look at his shoulder. There are still red tooth marks there. He runs his hand down his belly, through Sirius’ and his come. He’d drifting somewhere, warm and distant. Idly, he skates his wet fingers up across his chest, and all the way up his neck. 

Sirius is staring at him. Remus blinks, once, then several times. 

“What?” 

Sirius shakes his head. “Nothing.” He raises himself gingerly to his elbows. “I need a shower.” 

“Yes,” Remus agrees, “you smell like Lily’s incense.” 

“That’s definitely why.”

Sirius gets to his feet, balling up his discarded clothes. Remus sits. Through the postcoital haze he starts to feel a flicker of nerves. 

“Erm, Sirius—”

“First rule of hooking up is that it’s only awkward if you make it that way,” Sirius says calmly. “Second rule of hooking up,” he continues, looking quite grave for a moment, “and this is very important, so I want you to remember it, is that I always get the first shower.”

“Arsehole,” Remus says again, voice stronger now. But he lets Sirius take the bathroom without protest. He…needs a minute.

The shower starts up. Remus looks at himself, sweaty, naked, sticky.

He needs more than a minute.

Chapter Text

In the morning, Remus feels elated. 

He wakes at nine—much later than normal, and far too early given how late he was up last night. Sirius’ bedroom door is still shut when he pads out to the bathroom. He smiles at himself in the mirror, eyes crinkling, the premature lines at their corners for once looking fine and delicate, like they’ve been sketched in deliberately by an artist with an eye for detail. He tugs hopefully at the collar of his pyjama shirt and sees on his pale chest the small red marks of Sirius’ teeth.

He sticks his toothbrush in his mouth, grinning through the foam. He spits vigorously into the sink. 

He did a thing. An actual thing. He hooked up with someone.

With Sirius. 

Now Sirius can’t—he can’t look at Remus and see a helpless twist of a boy half-stifled by his own skin; he can’t write him off as a tepid wallflower who only really exists when his more exciting friends drag him out of his shell. He kissed Sirius. Sirius asked him what risk he’d take if he could, and he answered. 

Of course, Remus thinks, good mood fading slightly, Sirius sleeps with a lot of people. He’d slept with Marlene McKinnon hours before Remus. For him—for most people—having sex is normal. A thing that they do when they want to, if they want to. Even Peter gets a leg over sometimes.

Remus flushes. Maybe all he’s proven to Sirius is that he’s just like everyone else. Maybe he hasn’t opened up his chest to show him the gaping hole of want and need inside him, the churning whitewater rush that keeps Remus on the edge of something huge and impossible, the dizzying desire that sizzles under his skin. Leaning forward to kiss Sirius last night had been like stepping off a cliff into empty air: like letting go of a parachute. Surely Sirius had felt it?

But other people kiss all the time. Just a tip of the head, a parting of the lips—that’s all it is. For Sirius, kissing is like breathing. Natural. Easy. 

Although, Remus thinks, not with men.

The thought floats up bubble-like through the dampening disappointment seeping into his chest. At least last night will stand out for Sirius in one respect. At least he knows that Remus, in kissing him, did take a real risk, the risk that Sirius would find sleeping with a man the limits of his otherwise expansive sexual repertoire. 

And what will this do to their friendship? What precise effect it will have on the hopeless, helpless tangle of love and desire that ties Remus to Sirius, on the daily urges to slide his hand over Sirius’ cheek, to meet his eyes across a crowded room, to take the man’s bruised heart between his hands and tenderly massage the muscle till Sirius feels the knots smooth out?

He doesn’t know.

As it turns out, Sirius’ extensive experience with casual sex and Remus’ practice at keeping his feelings locked up tight makes it easy to go on with their lives as if nothing has changed. Sirius isn’t exactly pretending it didn’t happen—he smirks, raising an eyebrow, when he catches a glimpse of the marks on Remus’ neck, and he makes a comment or two about the aphrodisiac effects of post-motorbike panic attacks—but they slip back into their routine without difficulty. Remus is relieved. The biggest change seems to be that there’s a sharper undercurrent to his desire for Sirius now, a frankly sexual edge that he had hitherto been managing to mostly ignore. He can’t decide whether it feels all right to get himself off to thoughts of Sirius now. As a compromise between his libido and his conscience, he allows the memory of that night into his fantasies, but nothing more.

He does wonder—can’t help but wonder—if it might happen again. Presumably this was a one-off for Sirius. Presumably it was one of those late-night daring stupid things he likes to do to feel alive. And he did it for Remus, of course—Sirius dared him to take a risk, and Remus did, and Sirius, presumably, didn’t want to shut him down.

Remus does feel that things have changed for him, though. He looks at young men in shops and cafes and thinks it’s just possible that, were circumstances different, he might actually be able to touch them. He could. He’s kissed someone now. He’s taken off his clothes in front of another person. He’s come into someone else’s hand. 

Maybe that’s why, the following Friday night, when Lily’s visiting her mum for the weekend and Sirius and Remus and Peter are sprawled out in James’ flat, drinking Butterbeer and transfiguring chips into other kinds of potatoes (mashed, boiled, fried) and generally regressing to their Hogwarts years, and Peter suggests a game of “Never Have I Ever,” Remus doesn’t groan and try to change the subject.

“We’re not sixteen,” James laughs. “We’re a bit old for that.”

Peter’s face falls. “I only thought it might be fun. Now that some of us have actually done some things, you know.”

James leans up on his elbow, looking interested. “Fair point.”

“Is this the kind of ‘Never Have I Ever’ in which all questions just so happen to be about sex?” Sirius asks idly. 

“Obviously,” Peter answers, giving him a strange look. “What other kind is there?”

“Well, it’s just, I rather think this gets our Moony’s knickers in a knot,” Sirius says, stretching out along the sofa. “We’ve been dragging him down to our unsophisticated depths long enough, haven’t we?”

It takes Remus a hurt second to realize that Sirius is actually trying to help him out. Pleased but a little embarrassed, he shakes his head. Anticipation burns through him: the chance that this game will, for once, not be just an exercise in humiliation. “No, no. I’m used to it. Please don’t injure yourselves trying to rise to my level.”

“Touché,” Sirius replies, but he looks a bit surprised. “All right then. Carry on, I suppose.”

“I’ll start,” James says. He taps a hand against his chin. “Never have I ever…had a sexual experience in a body of water.”

Glaring at him, Sirius takes a drink. “I see how this is going to go.”

“The giant squid remembers it fondly, I’m sure.” James smirks.

“I know Gwen Davies does. Peter?”

Peter considers. “Never have I ever gone down on a girl.”

Sirius and James both drink, shaking their heads. “You’re missing out, Peter,” James says.

Peter makes a face. “Gross.”

“It’s really not.” Sirius thinks for a second. “Never have I ever kissed Lily Potter under the mistletoe.”

For a second, James looks smug. He takes a drink. Then his forehead creases. “What…”

Peter, with a look of deep dread, drinks reluctantly as well. “It was on the cheek!” he splutters as James’s face grows magnificently appalled. “I swear!” He glares at Sirius. “Thanks, Padfoot.”

“Yes, thank you, Padfoot,” James says grimly. 

“Okay,” Remus says. He spent a good deal of time in his later Hogwarts years crafting the perfect “Never Have I Ever”: just dirty enough that it’s reasonable not to have done it, just tame enough to not reveal anything about his actual sexual fantasies, and gender-neutral enough that everyone can politely ignore or remain oblivious to his particular preferences. “Never have I ever had sex in a Hogwarts dormitory.”

All three of the others drink. Remus feels a flicker of inadequacy, an echo from earlier, rowdier games that stretched across the Gryffindor common room and that shot a sour anxious hum into his stomach. He was always unreasonably worried he’d reveal his disinterest in women—unreasonable, given that his greater worry, one much more well-founded, was that he’d reveal his absolute dearth of experience with anyone of any gender at all.

But here’s it’s just the three of them, and Remus isn’t entirely inexperienced anymore. James, who’s drumming his fingers against his knee as he thinks, looks suddenly at him, eyes narrowing. Remus feels his heart jump in his chest: does he want to be found out?

“Never have I ever touched another man’s prick,” James says.

Pulse suddenly racing, Remus raises his bottle and drinks.

“Remus John Lupin!” James exclaims, half delighted and half outraged. Remus can’t help a sheepish grin rising to his face. “When—who—”

“Sirius just took a drink,” Peter says. He sounds thunderstruck.

James whips around. “No he didn’t.” But Sirius is lowering his bottle.

There’s a silence as he as James watch each other for a long moment.

“Problem?” Sirius asks, a challenge in his eyes.

“No,” says James, tone curiously flat. “Just news to me, that’s all. Wormtail, it’s your turn.”

Peter fumbles, searching for a question. Remus watches James watch Peter, wondering if he’s taken aback by the information itself or the fact that he’s only just hearing about it. Then he looks at Sirius, who catches his eye and winks.

Remus blushes.

“Never have I ever had sex with more than one person at once,” Peter tries.

Nobody drinks.

“I’m only nineteen,” Sirius says airily. “I’ve got a lot of things to look forward to. Never have I ever been erotically asphyxiated.”

James and Peter laugh. Remus’s hands go suddenly cold. His head buzzes. His body feels, appropriately, like all the air has just been sucked out of it. Should I—

He drinks.

Sirius turns to him, shocked.

“Does it not count if you do it to yourself?” Remus asks; in one of the proudest achievements of his life to date, he manages to sound miraculously casual.

“Remus John Lupin,” James says again, sitting up straight and staring at him.

“Did you—did you hang yourself?” Peter asked, sounding scandalized and keen. Blinking, Remus shakes his head. “Did you do a, a spell to stop your breathing?”

“No. Peter. That’s dangerous.”

“You just put your hand around your throat and squeezed, didn’t you?” Sirius’s voice is low, with the ghost of a smile in it. Remus, slowly, nods.

“Well.” James clears his throat. His eyes hone in on Remus, assessing. “All right. What else can we surprise out of our resident Prefect, I wonder? Mmm…never have I ever given a blowjob.”

Nobody moves.

“Okay,” says Peter eagerly, watching Remus as well. “Never have I ever been spanked.”

Remus doesn’t drink, and there’s barely a murmur when James does. The attention is making him jittery and hollow at the same time, a sinking feeling slowly passing through him; they can keep asking questions, he realizes, but he’s got little else for them to stumble on.

“No, I’ve figured it out,” Sirius says suddenly. “Never have I ever fantasized about being spanked.”

Holy shit. Remus raises the bottle to his lips, heart starting up a fierce tattoo.

“Yes,” Sirius crows. “That’s it!”

“Hang on,” James says, indignant, turning to Sirius, “you little liar! I know for a fact you have fantasized about being spanked.”

“Oh! Fuck.” Sirius gives a shit-eating grin. “Got carried away.” He raises his bottle in a mock toast, then drinks.

“Never have I ever had sex with two people in the same night,” Remus says quickly, over the drum of his heartbeat.

Sirius lets out a startled, indignant sound, and then shoots a rapid glance at Remus—is that worry in his eyes?—and, seeming to relax at whatever he sees in Remus’ face, he drinks.

“Cad,” James says, amused. “Never have I ever fantasized about having a prick up my arse.”

Remus snorts. He takes a drink.

“Never have I ever fantasized about putting my prick up another man’s arse,” Peter says.

“For fuck’s sake,” Remus says, drinking again, “you guys. That’s like asking if you’ve ever wanted to touch a woman’s tits.”

“True,” Sirius muses. “All right. Never have I ever fantasized about…being tied up.”

Remus drinks. But so do James and Peter.

“Really?” James mutters to Sirius. “Never?”

It takes a long time to get properly buzzed on Butterbeer, even the more alcoholic kind they buy now they’re past seventeen and out of school, but it’s starting to happen for Remus: a looseness spreading through his body, warm, languid; he’s not sure whether it’s that or the fact that he’s actually participating in the game that makes him feel daring, flush with the same mischief that’s got ahold of the others and, maybe, with something else, something more momentous.

“Never have I ever had a sex dream about Professor McGonagall.”

“You fucking arsehole, that was a secret,” Sirius says. James and Peter burst into laughter.

“Bullshit,” says Peter, “no it wasn’t.”

Sirius flips him the bird and takes a drink.

“Never have I ever,” James says, looking wickedly at Remus, “had a sex dream about Albus Dumbledore.”

Remus smiles, shaking his head. Peter starts to sputter.

“I, well, look,” he says defensively, as their heads turn in his direction, “he wasn’t doing anything, he was just—there—while I—he was, erm,” he’s giggling and blushing now, “he was giving me house points, actually—”

They’re all laughing, now. “Drink!”

“You have to drink!”

Peter does. Bright red and grinning, he says, “Never have I ever been—no, never have I ever fantasized about being called dirty names.”

Remus, ears growing hot, drinks.

Sirius’ turn. “Never have I ever fantasized about somebody coming on my face.”

Remus drinks at that one, too.

Everybody goes quiet.

“Never have I ever fantasized about having sex on a broom,” he says, thinking maybe it would be a wise idea to deflate whatever’s made the air in the room grow suddenly tight. But James and Sirius both drink at that one: not a joke, then.

James clears his throat. “Never have I ever…fantasized about having sex with a hand transfigured so the fingers are tentacles.” Peter lets out a shocked squeak. “It’s a thing, I read about it,” James says. His voice sounds a little strained.

Remus, a rumble in his ears and his heart in his mouth, drinks.

The room is very warm. He can feel Sirius’ stare like a hand on the back of his neck.

Peter blows out a breath. “Never have I ever fantasized about, erm, having sex while, erm, while in a Full Body-Bind. That’s a thing, too, I…”

Remus drinks.

“Never have I ever,” Sirius says, the crosshairs of his gaze settling right on Remus’ face, “fantasized about hot dirty werewolf sex.”

“Sirius,” James says, startled, shifting, “that’s a bit—that’s taking it a bit far, isn’t it? And what even, what does that even mean? It’s fine, Moony, you don’t have to—not that you would—”

Remus drinks.

“Never have I ever sucked a woman’s tits,” Peter bursts out.

The air comes rushing back into the room, and the mood breaks. “It’s not your turn, Peter,” Sirius says, exasperated. James stands, taking his empty bottle over to the sink, shaking his head. Remus puts his down on the table, heart pounding like he’s just finished a sprint.

“What an illuminating evening,” James says, grinning, as he Summons the rest of the bottles to the sink. “I feel somehow as if I have been deflowered.”

“Don’t tell Evans, or she’ll get jealous.”

“Pads, after tonight, I honestly don’t know how I’ll survive another two days without her.”

“Ugh,” Peter says, getting to his feet, “spare me the details.”

“I was certainly planning to.”

“Ready to be off, Moony?” Sirius asks. “Someone needs to put you to bed, after the night you’ve had.”

“Yeah, they do,” James says, grinning.

“Mind in the gutter, as always.”

Remus exchanges good-byes with Peter as James and Sirius bicker. “All right, Wormtail?” Remus asks quietly.

Peter nods. “I s’pose. My gran’s visiting and my mum’s making me share with Thomas and Simon so she can have my room, so it’s a bit cramped at the moment.”

Remus winces sympathetically. “Well, come stay with me and Padfoot some night. Our couch isn’t big but it is free of younger siblings.”

“Thanks. I might.”

When Peter Apparates out Remus and Sirius head down the hallway. “Want a walk?” Sirius suggests.

Goodness knows Remus could use the fresh air. “Sure. Yeah. Let’s walk.”

The night is cool. The neighborhood of James and Lily’s flat is lively, and when they emerge onto the sidewalk, Remus experiences a slight shock like coming up from underwater: the noise and the lights startle him, particularly after the close, charged atmosphere of James’ living room. Maybe things had gotten a little weirder between the four of them than Remus had realized at the time. He’s a bit dazed by the groups of people laughing and shouting, running across the street, ducking in and out of brightly lit restaurants and bars. Neon flickers above a falafel place and across the street two men are having an argument outside a pizza joint. They pass a couple kissing in the shadow of an alleyway. Oh, right, Remus thinks, there’s a whole world out here.

Of course, he can’t quite forget Sirius walking next to him.

“That was a lot of ‘never have I evers’ for the amount of drinking you were doing,” Sirius says quietly. “I assume you’ve not actually done more than fantasize about most of those things.”

Across the street, people hurry into a Tube stop. A young woman runs after her friends, shrieking that she’s lost her purse.

“You know what I’ve actually done,” Remus confesses. “You were there for all of it.”

Sirius doesn’t answer for a moment. “I thought that might be true,” he says finally. “I just didn’t know…”

Remus waits.

“I didn’t know how much you…thought about it.”

No, Remus thinks. I know you didn’t.

“Don’t you want to…experience…some of those things?”

They turn onto a more peaceful street. Their footfalls are quiet on the pavement. Remus tries not to brush against Sirius as he walks.

“Some of them. Yes.”

“I feel like I’m missing something.” Sirius is frowning, forehead creased. “So, I understand why you don’t date. I don’t necessarily agree with it, but—” he puts up a hand as Remus opens his mouth. “I know. You can’t tell anyone about your—problem. I get it. But what I don’t get is why you feel like that means you can’t have sex.”

“I don’t…feel like I can’t have sex,” Remus says slowly.

“But you don’t.”

“Well, they often, you know. Go together.”

He knows it’s an evasive answer. Sirius huffs impatiently. “No. I don’t know that. Why don’t you go to a gay bar and find someone to hook up with?”

Remus stares at the sidewalk under his feet. “Well, I do have scars, you know.”

“Scars? What—on your body, you mean. Yes. Melonballer accident. Stint in the circus. Demented weasel.”

The corners of Remus’ mouth prick up. “Maybe I should take you along to explain.”

“You don’t have to explain, though. People won’t ask.”

“I just…it’s hard, Sirius.”

A cat darts across their path. The headlights of a car swing past them. “You’re worried about whether you’d be able to pull?” 

Remus nods. “Partly. It’s—it makes me nervous. And also,” he pauses. Also, I’m in love with someone, he doesn’t say. He’ll never say. “Also, I know it sounds stupid, since I’ve barely even—but the things I, I think about. That I—want, or think I might want. That I want to try. They’re not exactly, erm, things you do with people you don’t know.” 

“Oh. Well, but…”

“Not if you’ve never done them before. Not if you don’t know if you really like them. Not with—not with someone you don’t trust.”

Remus doesn’t look at Sirius. But in the yellow light from the streetlamps, he can see, out of the corner of his eye, a thoughtful crease in Sirius’ forehead. Remus wonders: if I stepped just a bit closer…but he doesn’t. He’s certain, almost certain, that that’s not the kind of conversation they’re having. 

“I’d be up for it.” Sirius flashes him a quick glance, then trains his eyes back on the street ahead.

Oh, god.

Maybe it is.

“You’d be up for…”

“Trying some of those things out. With you. If you wanted.” 

Remus would have expected this moment, if he had expected it at all, to be a kind of tipping point. A pendulum, swinging from one state of being (before Sirius offered) to another (after Sirius offered). At the very least, a stumble over the edge of a hill into the unseen landscape on the other side. But he keeps walking, next to Sirius, still the same. Limbs and lungs still intact. 

“Why?” he has to ask.

“Why?”

“You don’t…” He’s not sure how to finish. “You don’t usually sleep with men.” 

“Ah. No. But. It went quite well the other night, I thought, at least from my end,” he says, with a wry twist of a smile, and Remus’ stomach swoops, “and I’m not sure if you’ve noticed but I’m rather enthusiastic about sex generally. And I enjoy venturing into…the unknown.”

Remus swallows. “Even the things I…”

“The things you drank to tonight? Yes.” 

The homes they’re passing now have little gates and front steps and window boxes full of flowers. In the lighted front window of a tall white house on Remus’ right, a TV flickers, a family snug on the couch watching together. The man is bald and portly. He keeps laughing at the program and looking over at his wife. She reaches behind the little boys sandwiched between them and rubs the back of his neck. For a breathless longing second, Remus imagines himself there: in their lives, in the gold-glowing light of the living room, framed like a painting.

“You do trust me, don’t you, Moony?”

Remus meets Sirius’ eyes, which gleam dark under the lamps.

“Yes,” he says, the pulse of the little Muggle family still faint in his chest. It fills him with a sort of calm, as if there’s something, this warm vision of a life he doesn’t really want, anchoring him in a place beyond Sirius’ reach. “I do.”

He breathes in the cool night air, and thinks about the tug of the moon in his bones, and nods.

“Yes. I’d like that.” 

Sirius puts a hand low on his back, leans in towards Remus, and whispers in his ear: “Good.”

Chapter Text

Remus spends the weekend waiting, agonizing about if or how he should bring it up. Sirius works on Saturdays and has plans with James that night; on Sunday morning the Prophet reports that several Ministry officials have been mysteriously murdered and then they’re too on edge to think of much else. Remus also isn’t quite sure how to start the conversation: So, about the offer to engage in some sexual experimentation with me…

On Sunday night Sirius comes back from Tesco and pours Remus a glass of wine and sits on the sofa.

“So,” he says, “when do you want to fuck?”

Remus inhales sharply. “Er,” he stutters, “I.”

Sirius throws his head back and laughs. “Moony, you’re a fucking enigma.”

“I, er. Don’t know quite how to take that.”

“Good. Well?”

Remus takes a drink of wine. Get it together, he tells himself. “…Soon.”

“And which ‘never have I ever’ are we striking off the list first?”

It takes a moment for Remus to get his vocal cords working. He feels his face heat up. He doesn’t quite manage to meet Sirius’ eyes, but he says, “I want you to fuck me.”

“Okaaaay, anything more specific, or—”

Remus looks at him.

“Oh,” Sirius says. “Oh. You mean, really, like, fuck…you.”

“Up,” Remus says, heart pounding, “my arse.”

Heat is pooling in his groin. Saying the words aloud is, and he shouldn’t really be surprised by this, much more like a sex act in and of itself than he’d anticipated. He shifts, feeling awkward, and embarrassed, and aroused.

“Check,” Sirius says. His Adam’s apple bobs, but his voice is light. “I’ll pencil it in my calendar.”

“And,” Remus says, before he can stop himself. 

Slowly, Sirius looks up at him. “And?”

The lead-up to the sex is: strange. Inelegant. Like fumbling in the dark. Last time it happened so quickly, with no planning whatsoever, and this time they’ve talked through everything—what they’re going to do, what Remus will say if he wants Sirius to stop, what kind of protection they should use. The only thing they didn’t plan was how to get from Point A (clothed, in separate rooms) to Point B (unclothed, in Remus’ bed).

An hour after Tuesday’s dinner, the night they’d set for the…event, after dancing politely around each other in the living room and the kitchen, Remus attempting furiously to get through Why I Didn’t Die When the Augurey Cried while masking a minor erection, Sirius had rolled his eyes and let out an impatient sigh and said, “Fuck this.”

Remus had looked up, and Sirius had given him what was likely the dirtiest once-over the world had ever known.

“I need a shower after that look,” he’d said, a little out of breath.

“Good. Take a shower,” Sirius had replied. “Then go to your bedroom. I’ll get the stuff.”

Remus had showered, then wrapped himself in a towel and headed to his room. Sirius hadn’t been there yet. Now, several minutes later, he’s pacing, trying not to think of the way his friend’s hair had curled gently over his ear at dinner that night or the knowing curve of his lip as he cleared the table. Or maybe he should think of those things. When his stomach dips at the memory of Sirius’ soft hair falling over his face, is that love or lust? Is that anticipation of what’s about to happen or is it the thing Remus is supposed to be ignoring, for both their sakes?

And should he be wearing this towel around his waist or not?

When Sirius comes in Remus has the towel half-unwrapped. “Starting without me?” Sirius asks, grinning.

“Sorry,” Remus says, flushed, and throws it over the back of his desk chair.

This, too, feels very different from last time. Last time, he didn’t stand naked before Sirius with his friend raking his eyes frankly across his body. Last time, he was riding on a heady mix of adrenaline and nerves and terror and desire. Last time, he didn’t have time to try and gauge the precise impact on his life of sleeping with his best friend, his best friend whose sharp-edged grin makes his heart curl gently in his chest.

“Okay there?” Sirius asks softly.

Sirius has seen his body mutilating itself into the twisted embodiment of hunger and horror, has seen him sobbing with the pain of it the morning after, has seen him laid out helpless and hurting on the floor of a rotting house shut up specifically to cage him. He wants Sirius to see him like this, too, naked and helpless in a way he’s chosen for himself. It will hurt. Of course it will hurt. But then again, it’s supposed to.

“Remus?”

He nods. Sirius reaches out and grips him briefly by the shoulder, a touch alive with the deep-running strength of eight years’ friendship and devoid entirely of any erotic intent. Remus is unbearably touched by it, and a little bit heartbroken, too.

“Please put me on the bed, Sirius,” he says softly.

Sirius does. Remus bends his naked legs on either side of him and leans back half-upright as Sirius ties his wrists to the bedframe with a couple of ropes left over from a prank their sixth year. He flexes his fingers, feeling the ropes tight but not too tight against his wrists. When Sirius pulls back to look at him, Remus flushes, part of him uncomfortable at being so exposed, and the other part growing hot, or maybe cold, like ice behind his ears and at the base of his neck.

He stretches his legs out along the clean white sheets.

Sirius reaches for his wand, then stops. He’s watching Remus carefully.

“We can just do this, if that’s better,” he says. “You know you don’t have to try everything all at once.”

“I want it,” Remus says. “And—”

“And?”

“And please don’t—be gentle with me.”

It’s hard to say the words. He doesn’t want to have to ask. He wants Sirius to know. To know to grab him hard and…

“You mean that, don’t you?” Sirius asks, quiet.

Remus nods, shame slowly moving over him like a wave. The shame feels, along its edges, unpleasant. But the great mass of it feels darkly good—guilty, and perversely hot, and it makes Remus want.

Sirius points his wand at Remus and murmurs a spell.

Darkness descends over Remus’ eyes. The world grows black, not a glimmer of light breaking through. His eyes are open, but it’s like peering into a cave, miles from the surface of the earth.

He doesn’t sense it coming when Sirius cups his hand over Remus’ cock.

“Ahh,” he gasps, a strangled high noise, involuntary, inhuman.

“Everything dark?” Sirius asks, fingers tight around Remus.

“Yes,” Remus whispers.

He can’t see Sirius’ expression. Satisfied? Aroused? Indifferent? What if he finds all this…embarrassing? Remus squirms, moving his arms to try and touch Sirius’ face, but the ropes hold him tight.

Sirius runs his hand slowly down Remus’ cock, then pulls it away, and there’s nothing Remus can do about it. 

When Remus has fantasized about this, about his eyes spelled shut and wrists tied, he’s imagined drowning in helplessness: balancing on the sweet-sharp knife’s edge of immobility, his body laid out for unseen fingers to pinch and stroke and caress, and feeling the rising and falling swell, over and over, of the impulse to move and to look. He was expecting the choked breathlessness he feels now, and the oversensitization that makes him jolt at every unanticipated touch. But he hadn’t foreseen the mundane discomfort of the ropes chafing against his wrists or the transformation of the hot-close-stifled feeling of lying facedown pushed into the pillow with his hand on himself into the belly-up overexposure of air on his naked skin and his cock stiff and bare and neglected. He feels stripped open, aching for Sirius’s touch.

Sirius slides his hands down Remus’ legs. He brushes his thumbs through the wiry hair on the inside of his thighs. Then he nudges his fingers up against Remus’ arsehole.

Remus’ arms jerk automatically to reach out, but his wrists meet immediate resistance. Remus breathes, squirming, panting. He doesn’t want Sirius to stop stroking him there, light, dry, but the knowledge that he can’t stop him ratchets his arousal up to an almost unbearable level.

When Sirius takes his hand away Remus lets out a pained moan. He wants to rest his arm over his eyes, hiding his face, but he can’t. He can’t see what Sirius is doing, either, can’t watch to figure out if Sirius is about to touch him again, or kiss him, or lower himself down to rub against Remus’ body, or—

Sirius’ fingers return, wet.

Remus has been holding in his moans as best he can, but when Sirius starts to open him up, he can’t keep silent. Little punches of breath escape him, and a low keening whine that won’t stop, even when he bites his tongue.

Sirius’ fingers, inside him. Steady, penetrating, sure. In and out. What does Sirius’ face look like—

Without warning, his pulls out his fingers and his cock makes contact with Remus’ hole.

“Ahhh,” Remus gasps out, a twisted sound wrenched from deep inside.

Bit by bit, Sirius fills him up.

When he stops moving, pushed inside Remus up to the hilt, Remus feels about to burst: overfull and aching with it, throat stopped up, short ragged gasps and whines and his hands not in Sirius’ hair, not on Sirius’ back, but stretched out wide and—and—he can’t—he digs his heels into the mattress, trying to get a better, deeper angle, to stop himself slipping, to—and Sirius grasps Remus’ legs, first one then the other, and guides them around his waist, and slips even deeper inside Remus, his chest falling closer, making hot sweaty contact with Remus’. Remus didn’t even know he’d taken off his shirt, isn’t sure, suddenly, how he’d missed the zip of Sirius’ trousers before, but—oh—and Sirius kisses him, fierce, panting, his tongue deep in Remus’ mouth.

“Please,” Remus gasps, “Please—”

“Do you want me to,” Sirius murmurs into his mouth, his voice strained, “should I move, or—”

“Don’t ask me,” Remus begs, “please, just—please—”

“Am I hurting you—?”

“No. Yes, but it’s good. Not…Don’t—don’t stop, I—I—”

Remus wants to beg, and for Sirius to refuse him. He wants to plead incoherently and for Sirius to do whatever he wants with him: to hold him here, still, and kiss him for hours, or to pull slowly out and then push back in till Remus wants to scream, or to fuck him hard and ruthless till Remus’ wrists ache and his eyes smart. He just—he just doesn’t want to have to say it. He’s lying here tied up and blindfolded, for fuck’s sake, surely it’s clear that he wants Sirius to—to—

“I promise I’m all right,” he makes himself say. “Please, just, please, please…”

“Moony—”

“I—I want—”

For a moment, in which Remus feels the slice of disappointment carving out a hollow in his chest, nothing happens: Sirius still tight and hot inside him, his legs still wrapped around Sirius’ torso, the sound of breath, and nothing else. But then—

Sirius moves. In a rough, sudden movement that shakes Remus’ whole body and strains the ropes against his wrists, Sirius pulls back and then thrusts in. Grunting, hands under Remus’s shoulders, he fucks into him, fast, hard, over and over. Remus’ fingers curl helplessly. He wants Sirius’ mouth on his. He wants his hands around Sirius’ back. He wants to know what Sirius looks like, flushed with sex, wants the expression on his face—intent? Joyous? Grimly determined?—he wants all the things he can’t have, can’t control.

The not having them is driving him mad.

The not having them is bringing him to the brink of orgasm.

Sirius cries out, and his fingers dig deep into Remus’ shoulders, and his thrusts turn erratic as he jerks inside Remus, coming. Remus, nearly out of his head with need and desire and the frustration of too much sweat and not enough friction, realizes in a sudden burst of clarity that he’s set this up, this whole thing up, so that the first time Sirius comes inside him, Remus can neither see nor hold him. 

Sirius keeps his softening cock inside Remus as his hand clasps around Remus’ prick. He slides it up and down, and Remus, feeling both too much and not enough at once, can’t quite finish. Can’t—quite—and Sirius’s other hand settles on Remus’ wrist, and squeezes, pinning it harder to the headboard, and Remus comes.

Sirius slides out, and Remus winces, and breathes.

As the dregs of his arousal drain from his body, the chafing of the ropes around his wrists starts to feel truly uncomfortable. He smells of sweat and sex and he’s far too exposed, his whole naked body open to the air. He can feel Sirius next to him, their legs brushing hot against each other, Sirius’s breathing slowing, but he can’t quite open his mouth to speak.

“I’m going to undo your wrists.” Sirius’ voice is a little bit hoarse. Remus can’t read its tone, and with his vision still dark can’t tell anything about what Sirius is feeling. His fingers fumble against Remus’ skin, pulling at the ropes. One loosens, then the other, and Remus curls up tight on his side, away from Sirius, bringing his knees to his chest.

“Remus?” Sirius sounds uncertain now. “Your eyes?”

Remus shakes his head. He wants to stay in the dark, just for another minute. He presses his nose against his knee. It feels like if he lets go of this too soon, if he emerges too quickly into the world, it’ll hurt, a violent landing after a fall.

“Hey. Moony.” Sirius places a hesitant hand on the back of Remus’ neck. Remus shudders.

“Let me see you.”

It takes all Remus’ trust to roll himself over, still staring into the darkness, and turn his face towards his friend.

Sirius’ fingers slide lightly over his cheek. Then he pulls Remus’ head close against his chest. Sirius is sweaty and the feel and smell of him aren’t entirely pleasant, not to the part of Remus that wants a cool clean bath and never to touch anyone ever again, but at the same time, Remus can’t help nestling against him, letting Sirius’ fingers come to rest threaded through his hair.

“Finite incantatem,” Sirius murmurs, and light bleeds suddenly into Remus’ eyes. But pressed as he is against Sirius’ chest, his vision is still dim and blurred. Sirius lets him rest there, hidden, tucked away, and after a long moment Remus feels able to pull back.

“Hey,” Sirius says.

“Hi.”

Sirius is glistening with sweat, his dark hair plastered against his forehead. He’s looking at Remus with a peculiar, unreadable expression on his face.

“Are you…all right?”

Remus breathes in through his nose. He nods.

“You…went somewhere.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No, no. Don’t be sorry. I only…”

Sirius’ voice trails off.

If Remus were a little more himself, he thinks distantly, he’d be able to help them manage this moment. As it is, he merely blinks at Sirius, feeling sluggish, no clear sense of the path forward appearing to him.

“You always get the first shower,” he says after a second.

“What?”

“You said last time…”

“Oh. Yeah. I’m, er, a right bastard, aren’t I? If you want to—”

Remus shakes his head. “Go ahead. I’ll just…”

Sirius stands. He scratches the back of his neck. “This isn’t usually how I, erm, leave my…how things finish.”

Remus pushes himself up, covering himself with the twisted bedsheet, his listlessness dissolving in the face of Sirius’ discomfort. “I—I’m sorry. I’m okay. I just…was feeling…” He looks down, helpless, embarrassment creeping through him. “I’m sorry.”

“Fuck, Remus, no—I—” Sirius lets out a sort of almost-laugh. “I, er. I just don’t tend to leave people on the verge of tears. Is all.”

Is Remus on the verge of tears? He puts his fingers up to the corner of his eyes. “It’s…” He breathes in. “This is what I wanted.”

Mild surprise flashes across Sirius’ face—milder, maybe, than Remus would have expected.

“I’m going to get a glass of water,” Remus says. His throat is so dry it’s sore. Awkwardly, he stands, pulling his damp towel off his desk chair and wrapping it around his waist.

“I’ll get it,” Sirius says. Startled, Remus looks up. “Hang on.”

Remus stands, mostly naked, in the middle of the room, and waits. The water is cold, and Sirius watches him drink.

“You gonna take care of your wrists?” he asks, nodding at the red marks on Remus’ skin where the rope rubbed up against him.

“I will.”

“Okay. I’m…going to shower, I guess.”

“Okay.”

Sirius reaches out a hand and rubs it gently along Remus’ shoulder, then leaves. Slowly, Remus strips his bed, pulling off the wet sheets as the noise of the shower starts up. He touches his rubbed-red skin. He will do a healing spell. In just a moment. Just one more moment, of staying here, with the faint ache, with the marks of something that isn’t there anymore, a touch no longer on his skin.

Remus has long known what he’s done: taken the vicious, unfair parts of his life—the parts that threaten with ruthless constancy to dismember him piece by piece every month—and turned them sharply in on themselves till he can shudder through them, gasping, riding the edge of pain remade as pleasure. He knows the hot pool of shame that clings, dripping, to the fantasies of violence and sensory overload and losing control that he’s wrested from the swallowing depths inside him. He knows that though the transmogrification of his pain doesn’t shave one centimetre off the moon’s swelling mass or console him when it reaches its pale fullness, it’s kept his head above water in the meantime, given him back, on the other, kinder days of the month, some bit of the control he’d lost when Fenrir Greyback’s teeth had sunk into his flesh, even if that control is imagined, even if that control takes somehow the shape of his own helplessness. 

He knows. He knows he’s eroticized, in the little warm space of his fantasies, the violence of his transformation, the way his body lurches suddenly out of his grasp, and the humiliation of the dirty secret the world has made him into. What he hadn’t known, not till he’d cracked open that fantasy space and let someone else in, was what else he’d already let in without realizing. What else had slipped into the place that makes him gasp, and shake, and keen.

Or would he have felt it anyway, regardless of how smooth or warped the shape his life had happened to take? Would he still have writhed, sightless and bound, at loneliness made manifest, and spilled, as he felt absence press close against him, in juddering, uncontrollable jerks? 

Because it’s hard not to read it that way, now he’s had and denied himself the chance to wrap his arms round the man he loves and look into his eyes as they’re locked closer together than Remus had ever for a second imagined they would be. It’s easiest to think Remus did it to protect himself—to keep a necessary if painful distance from Sirius—but his body didn’t respond despite the constraints he’d set on it. He didn’t fall into that slow thick postcoital haze despite the frustrating space he’d put between himself and his friend. The loneliness that limns each line and curve of Remus’ life, the absence he’s quietly claimed for the place where lovers might otherwise lie, turned up in his bed that night, in his empty grasping fingers and his sightless eyes. And they’d pushed Remus right over the edge.

Does he want to love Sirius always in secret? 

If Remus were given the chance—to reach out and take him—full, whole, with both their eyes open and no dares or games in view—would he?

Chapter Text

Lily looks happy. She smokes a clove cigarette out the window of a sunny little café and tells Remus about the dinner her mum insisted on making for her and James when they heard about their engagement. “A massive steak-and-kidney pie,” she says, “and roasted potatoes, and two kinds of tarts for dessert.” And her dad had cried, and said he’d never been prouder.

“Mind you,” she says, “all I’ve done is put a ring on my finger. If he hadn’t said exactly the same thing when I made Head Girl, and when I got into the Healer training program, I’d be right annoyed.”

“And the Potters?”

“Oh,” she says, “they’d be proud of James if he stuck a fork in an electrical socket. Say it showed admirable curiosity about how the other half lives.”

Remus smiles. He’s met the Potters a number of times, and Lily’s probably right. 

“Will Sirius be fine as best man?” she asks.

“What do you mean?” 

“Oh, I don’t know. I’m half afraid he’ll do something massively stupid, just to try and make people laugh. Or he’ll spend the whole time flirting and be no use at all.” 

“Sirius won’t pull anything stupid. Not at James’ wedding.” 

“If you say so. I’d warn the bridesmaids off him, but the only one who hasn’t met him yet is Petunia, and…”

“Not your sister’s type?”

“Not each other’s type, let’s say. Anyway she’ll be there with her new boyfriend,” Lily made a face, “some no-necked bully who sells second-rate power tools.” 

“Grim.”

“It is, truly.” Lily hesitates, a crease forming in her smooth forehead. “Petunia’s probably the only one who’ll want to be at the wedding less than Sirius does. Between the two of them, that’s a lot of bad energy up there with us.”

Remus isn’t sure where to start answering that.

“She’s jealous I’m getting married first,” Lily says, crushing the end of her cigarette into the ashtray. “She’s older. And she doesn’t like James, but she’d feel the same about any wizard.”

“She’s not—she never showed any magical abilities?” 

“Petunia? Not a jot. If she’d been different, or if I had, maybe we’d be closer, but…” She shrugs.

Remus thinks of how many times he’d thought that: If I just hadn’t been bitten, maybe Dad and I… “People have to respond to what you are, not what they want you to be.”

Lily narrows her eyes, shooting him a sudden penetrating look, but doesn’t say anything.

“Sirius isn’t unhappy about the wedding, you know.”

Lily flashes a smile. “Oh, you’re sweet to defend him. It’s all right. I’m the interloper. The girl, sticking her nose in where it doesn’t belong. Breaking up the boy band.”

“He’s just—”

“It’s not actually helpful when you tell me it’s not true, Remus,” Lily says. “I know what I’m seeing, and it just sounds like you don’t believe me.”

Remus puts down his tea, a bit stricken. “Oh. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—I’m sorry, Lily.”

“Well. That’s all right.”

“It’s.” He looks down, fiddling with the tablecloth. “It’s a bit easier for me to, er, tell myself it’s not true as well, is the thing.”

“Why?”

He sighs. I’m jealous that Sirius is jealous about James, he doesn’t say. “I’m living in James’ old room. Sirius takes me to do things he and James used to do. I’d rather not feel that it’s because I’m some sort of…second choice.” 

“Oh, god.” Lily looks appalled. “Remus, has it crossed your mind that Sirius just isn’t a very nice person?”

It has, a few times. Sometimes Sirius even deserved the thought. But three days ago Sirius lay next to him in the Shrieking Shack, one hand gentle on Remus’ bruised ribs, skiving off work so James and Peter could get to the Ministry and the temp agency on time and Remus wouldn’t have to peel himself off the floor alone. Three days ago, Sirius rolled around with the wolf, in the dog skin he’d once risked everything to acquire.

“Sirius can be an arsehole,” Remus says quietly. “But he’s done things for me…”

“What things?”

Remus looks down, heart on the edge of his tongue. He wants to say the words. But not here. Not now. “Ask James sometime. Tell him I said you could.”

After a second his eyes flicker up to her face. Guilt lingers in lines around her mouth, her eyebrows.

“Fuck. Remus, I, erm. James…told me. I’m sorry. It was the staying out all night once a month thing, and I knew he was keeping some sort of secret, and…”

Remus’ heart is beating fast. His mouth has gone dry. “When?”

“A few months ago? I’m sorry, Remus, I know it wasn’t his to tell.”

“And you’re…” He racks his brain, trying to remember if Lily, a few months back, had done anything, said anything—a recoil, an avoidance. A look of pity. He can’t remember. “You’re not…” 

She tilts her head at him, waiting. 

“I s’pose you’re still sitting here with me,” he says, trying to make light. “So that’s a good sign.”

She looks at him with startled compassion. “Oh, Remus, I don’t give a fuck,” she says. “Cross my heart.”

He nods. He’s pleased, truly, but he can’t help something inside him pushing back, curling in disdain as it scrapes against the structure of the moment: the secret, the confession, the acceptance. Lily’s lovely, and she’s behaving just exactly right, but the whole scenario, no matter who it’s played out with or how it plays, is just a bit poisoned.

“The wedding will be perfect,” he says, pushing them away from the subject, casting off into clearer waters. “Don’t worry.”

“Oh, I don’t expect perfection. I rather think it’ll be a great big mess, in one way or another. But a nice mess, hopefully.”

A nice mess. There are worse things to hope for. And if Lily’s happiness makes Remus ache with envy ever so slightly, what does it matter?

But he would rather not think about Sirius flirting with bridesmaids.

“I’ll keep Sirius in line,” he says to Lily. “He’ll behave like a perfect gentleman.” 

“I’ll hold you to that,” she says, and smiles.

Sirius wants to have sex again. Rather to Remus’ surprise. 

“Have to check things off your list,” he says, wriggling his eyebrows. “Make sure you’re as debauched in real life as you are in your head.” 

Over the next few weeks, Remus lets Sirius choke him with his cock, and gag him, and come on his face. He can’t believe it’s happening, really. That he’s sleeping with Sirius Black. 

That Sirius Black is slapping him, roughly, on his arse. That Remus is grunting into the pillow, muffling himself as best he can, so Sirius doesn’t hear. 

“Scream,” Sirius says, breathless. “Come on, Remus. Scream for me.” 

He hits him again. A shock of pain fireworks across Remus’ arse. 

“Scream.” 

The sound of Sirius’ hand against Remus’ skin seems to resonate throughout the room, to hold itself like a singer holds a note—a loud echoing smack, not the dull thud it had made at first, before they’d got it just right, before Sirius had learned to lift his hand as soon as it makes contact.

Smack. Smack. Smack.

“Scream, you little shit.”

Tears prick suddenly at the corner of Remus’ eyes as a molten surge of shame courses through him: shame at what Sirius just called him, shame at having asked Sirius to call him that. Shame at the way the words seem to dangle at the edge of Sirius’ lips, not quite sitting right. 

“I said scream, you naughty—little—shit.”

This time the words hit home like the smack of Sirius’ hand: and Remus screams.

Sirius’ hand falls against his arse, and Remus lets his throat open, lets a hoarse twist of sound escape. Remus’ arse is pushed up into the air, no doubt bright red by now, and Sirius is spanking him like he’s—like he’s been bad—

Smack.  

—unruly—

Smack.

—troublesome, disobedient, wild— 

Smack.

—like he needs to be tamed.

Another scream rips out of his throat. His hands scrabble for purchase against the side of the bed, searching for something to hold onto. Sirius grabs him around the waist, pulling him closer and spanking him again. 

“Come here,” he pants, and drags Remus towards him so Remus’ hot, bare arse shoves against Sirius’ crotch. Remus feels his cock hard and thick below the pants Sirius is still wearing. Sirius starts to thrust, the fabric rough against Remus’ tender skin. Sirius has one arm wrapped around Remus’ waist and the other free; he spanks Remus’ arse cheek as he rubs himself against his crack. Remus’ cock is trapped against his belly, brushing against the bed whenever Sirius’s hand comes down against him, a maddening, frustrating touch not quite sustained enough to send him over the edge. Remus feels brimful of pain and arousal and shame. 

He still can’t believe that this is happening. That Sirius is braced behind him, holding him bruisingly tight. That Sirius is coming against his arse, grunting, panting, wetness spreading through his pants as they bunch against Remus’ arse. That Sirius is still spanking him, thrusting a knee between Remus’ legs till Remus is riding his thigh, rubbing blindly as each slap brings him closer to the edge. 

That when he comes, his face is wet with tears.

Sirius lowers him down gently, helping him lie flat on the sheets, careful hands settling him in place. Then he lies down alongside him and runs his tongue up the salty tear-track on Remus’ neck. 

“Holy shit, Remus,” he says quietly. He brushes light fingers over Remus’ smarting-hot skin. Remus looks at him, open-eyed, no words in his mouth. Sirius smoothes back his damp hair. 

“I can’t believe you let me see you like this.” There’s something almost reverent in his eyes. “I can’t believe this is something you want.”

Remus is peeled open, defenses pulled back like the flaps of a tent, the dim, raw-edged mouth of his vulnerable insides exposed. He can’t do anything but watch Sirius watch him, and hope he doesn’t peer too far into the darkness.

“You know before now the only time I’ve ever seen you cry, or heard you scream, is at the full moon.” 

Remus shudders. Sirius touches Remus’ damp eyelashes with one impossibly gentle finger. 

“You keep so quiet,” he says.

Remus’ heart trembles in his chest. Sirius’ hand is cupping his cheek as he looks wonderingly at him, and for the first time, Remus feels really known.

A jagged chasm is splitting him open, and Sirius is probing tenderly inside it. A finger in an open wound.

He’d bleed for Sirius, a lot more than this.

The owl comes at breakfast one morning, tapping at the window. Remus looks up from his toast. The bird is big, with sleek dark brown feathers. When Remus slides open the glass and reaches for the crisp cream envelope tied to its foot, it pulls back, snapping its beak.

“Sirius?” Remus calls out, bemused and a little offended. “Owl for you.”

Sirius emerges from the bathroom, bare-chested, toothbrush sticking out of his mouth, and stops cold.

His face grows dark as he reads the letter. 

“I’ve been summoned.” 

“By whom?”

“By,” he says, “my mother.”

A whole rainbow of feelings fans out in his voice: irony, resentment, resignation, rebellion. Possibly, underneath it all, pain. Remus hasn’t got the slightest idea of what to say. 

“She wrote to you?”

Sirius nods.

“I thought…” Remus hesitates. “I thought you hadn’t spoken since—since you moved out.”

“Every year or so,” Sirius says, with what seems like some effort, “she makes me have lunch with her. Tries to guilt me about something, or berate me. She tried to curse me once.”

“Shit.”

“Normally James goes with me.” His eyes flick up to Remus’ face. “Will you come, this time?”

Startled, Remus’ eyes fly open wide. “Oh,” he says. “Oh. I—but—your mum—she won’t like that, will she?”

Sirius’ eyes flash. “No.” He surveys Remus for a second, and then something in him seems to deflate. “No, forget it. Never mind. You don’t have to come.”

“I—” 

“She was always horrible to James, she’ll be horrible to you as well. It’s fine. I know you hate it when people hate you.”

“I didn’t—” 

“You hate that Snivellus hates you, and you hate him.”

It’s true. Remus’ guts are squirming at the thought of what Sirius’ legendarily cruel mother might say to him when he crashes lunch with her son. 

But what kind of friend would he be to say no?

“I care more about you than about your mum’s opinion of me. I’ll go with you.”

Sirius eyes him warily, and Remus feels a flicker of guilt. “Really?” Sirius asks.

“Really.”

A tiny, brief smile crosses his friend’s face. “Thanks.”

“Yeah.”

Sirius stands, picking up his forgotten toothbrush from the table and pointing it at Remus. “She will be horrible, though, no matter how polite you are. Remember: there’s nothing you can do to change that.”

As Sirius disappears back into the bathroom, Remus wonders if he’s talking more to Remus or to himself.

Lunch is at a fancy restaurant in some nebulous middle ground between Diagon and Knockturn Alleys. The day is gray, mist hanging low over the streets, growing denser, or at least it seems that way to Remus, the farther they walk from the brightness of Gringotts’ façade and the cheery bustle of Florean Fortescue’s Ice Cream Parlour. The restaurant’s mix of dark stone and forest green trim caters to the kind of old-moneyed clientele who look down on obvious flash but like to be seen by both the casual crowds of Diagon Alley and the more serious inhabitants of its shadowy counterpart. Remus can only assume Mrs. Black is paying, because he can tell by a glance at the maître d’s shiny shoes that a side salad would cost more than his weekly wages.

He shows them into the high-ceilinged dining room, where Walburga Black is waiting. 

“Sirius,” she says, rising to her feet. She’s a head shorter than her son, and closer to sixty than fifty, but there’s nothing soft or old about her. Her dark red nails are sharp and, when her lips part in a smile, so are her teeth. Her night-black hair is pinned back in a tight, elegant bun. Remus expects Sirius to refuse her open arms, but he doesn’t; he goes in, mutely, and allows his mother to embrace him.

“You’re new,” Mrs. Black says, stepping back and raking Remus over with her piercing green eyes. “Sirius, did you and the Potter boy have a falling out?” 

“No,” Sirius says shortly. “This is Remus—”

“Lupin, yes. I know all your friends.” Her lips grow thin. “This is the one with the Muggle grandfather.” 

Startled, Remus flicks his gaze to Sirius. Sirius shakes his head, avoiding Remus’ eyes.

“Well,” Mrs. Black says, pulling back her chair and settling herself in it as if it were a throne, “don’t stand on ceremony. And Mr. Lupin, if you need any help understanding the menu, or determining which fork to use—or how to use it—do let me know.” 

Remus is too shocked for a moment to fully grasp her words. Then his face starts to flush, heat creeping up his neck into his cheeks. 

“Mother—” Sirius begins, his voice low. 

“I’m just being polite, Sirius. Since you’ve seen fit to bring a guest. I want to ensure he doesn’t get confused.”

Her voice is mild but underneath, there’s a vein of venom impossible to miss.

In any other situation, Remus knows, Sirius would have stood up and stormed out, or shouted, or possibly flung his drink. But he merely twists his mouth into an unhappy knot and accepts a menu from the waiter.

Remus takes one as well, ears still burning with shame.

She orders for the table anyway. As they wait, Sirius answers all her questions in monosyllables. 

“Tell me how your Auror training is going, Sirius,” Mrs. Black says once the first dish arrives, delicately using a tiny fork to separate a bit of oyster meat from the shell. Remus has not, in fact, eaten oysters before, but he watches her carefully out of the corner of his eye so as not to embarrass himself. He hates that he’s doing it.

“Fine,” Sirius says warily. Remus has never seen him this closed off. There’s something muted about him, something stunted, like the Whomping Willow just after its knot has been pressed. Remus is even more unsettled by this than by Walburga Black’s needling.

“Playing at heroics,” she says, smiling sharp and insincere. “You know that’s all you’re doing, don’t you?”

Sirius swallows.

“And you,” she says, turning to Remus, “you’re not in Auror training.”

It’s not a question. He shakes his head anyway. “I work at a bookshop.”

“A Muggle bookshop?”

“No. Er.” Remus feels a rush of relief that he can truthfully answer in the negative, then, immediately, a wash of shame. He clears his throat. “Wizarding. In Bloomsbury. Gretl’s Books and Enchantments?” 

“Ah, yes. I was at school with Gretl Vogt’s younger sister. Not an English family, you know; their parents were at Durmstrang. But quite well-connected. Gretl, though, I seem to remember getting in a bit of trouble—possession of illegal magical plants—hallucinogenics. Bit of an embarrassment. I do hope she’s on the straight and narrow now. Would hate to hear of anything happening to her.”

Remus’ heart speeds up. Mrs. Black has a way of making even the most innocuous words sound sinister; he can’t tell if she’s making a threat. He thinks of kind, sweet, half-deaf Gretl Vogt, happily dusting bookshelves while her kettle whistles unnoticed in the background. He swallows and looks at Sirius, but his friend is pushing his fork around his plate, oysters untouched, misery clear in every line of his body.

Finally, after the waiter arrives with their entrees, Sirius clears his throat.

“All right,” he says, the pale ghost of his usual defiance shadowing his voice. “What is it you want from me?”

Walburga Black makes a moue of displeasure. “Don’t be rude.”

Sirius clenches his knuckles under the table. “I know you want something, and if you don’t say what it is, I’m going to leave.”

His mother’s eyebrows contract dangerously. “I had hoped we might speak in private.” Her gaze lands briefly on Remus, and he feels a hot rush of embarrassment flow through him. His feet itch to get up and go, to let her have her way.

He stays put.

“Well, we’re not in private, and if you won’t say it in front of Remus you’re not going to get to say it at all.”

It looks like the words are costing Sirius a lot of effort. Remus can’t remember the last time he saw his friend like this: constrained, withdrawn, unnaturally unwilling—or unable—to speak up.

Sirius, he understands with a sudden shock, is frightened.

Mrs. Black’s lips curl into a humorless smile. “Very well. I see you’ve not grown any less stubborn over the past year.” She taps her pointed fingernails against the cream tablecloth, apparently considering her words. Remus is willing to bet it’s just for show: this is the moment the whole meal has been leading up to.

“I want you to come home.”

The words land on Sirius with a shock. He starts violently, then forces himself to go still again. Remus watches him, eyes wide.

Sirius runs a hand over his knee and stares at the table.

“Why?”

“I don’t know how much you’ve been paying attention, Sirius,” she says haughtily. “Probably not much, knowing you. But things are changing. Something’s coming. Something big.”

Sirius’ posture shifts. He sits up a little straighter, looking warily at his mother. Remus feels himself do the same.

“What’s coming?” Sirius asks, sounding unwilling.

“A new era.”

Walburga Black smiles dangerously. This time it’s not insincere at all.

Sirius exchanges a quick glance with Remus. “What do you mean by that?”

She lets out a huff of breath. “Oh, Sirius. Surely you have some idea. New powers are rising. New voices, with new plans. And when they come to fruition, the Black family name will mean quite a lot.”

“Why?”

“Really, Sirius?” Her voice is impatient, disgusted. “Are you truly so immature and irresponsible as to be unaware of the world around you? Haven’t you been listening to that beloved headmaster of yours?” She takes a breath, but then something changes in her face. Eyes trained on Sirius, she says slowly, “Or…he doesn’t know.” She lets out a low laugh. “Oh, how rich. Yes. Albus Dumbledore, so blinded by his faith in humanity, his trust in wizardkind, that he has no idea what’s ahead. The fool.” 

“He’s no fool,” Sirius bites back. He’s breathing heavily, blood rushing to his face. Remus can see his knuckles turning white as he clenches them around the edge of his chair. “And neither am I. Dumbledore knows a lot more than you think. He’s already told us—”

“Sirius,” Remus says sharply.

Sirius breaks off. He looks at his mother’s face: hawkish, lined, eager.

“You—” He swallows, realization dawning. He raises a hand, the fingers trembling, then lowers it again. “You—you were—you were baiting me. You wanted me to tell you what Dumbledore’s planning.”

She parts her lips, exposing her crocodile teeth.

“You never wanted me to come home. You just—it was just a trick.”

“I burned your name off the family tapestry the day you left my house for good,” she hisses. “Regulus is my heir, my boy, my only boy. I will never call you son again.”

Sirius stands, eyes burning. His whole body is shaking. Remus stands, too, feeling horribly enlightened: this is what Sirius grew up with.

No wonder, he thinks, no wonder—

“Let’s go, Remus.”

But as Remus turns away, Walburga Black’s clawed hand reaches out and grabs his wrist.

“Don’t think I’ll forget you. He may not be my son, but he bears the Black name, and the taint of your blood won’t sully it if I have anything to say about it. The Potters may be blood traitors but at least they’re pure.” Her eyes seem half-mad now, her fingernails digging into his skin. “When the new world arrives, Mudbloods like you will get what’s coming to them. I won’t forget you, Remus John Lupin, and you’d do well not to forget me.”

“Now,” Sirius says, thunder in his voice, and pulls Remus away, wrenching his arm free, striding out of the restaurant, the scandalized eyes of wealthy diners watching them go.

“Fuck,” Sirius explodes when they’re outside, a rush of raw pain in his voice. “Fuck, fuck—”

He moves abruptly, abortively, like a motorbike stuttering out of control. He steps away from the restaurant, crossing the wet street, and kicks the curb, then a brick wall.

“Shit—”

He breathes, breathes, breathes: a volcano, a trapped whirlwind. He shoots out a hand and takes Remus by the arm, pulling him down a side street, a grubby little alley, out of sight of passersby, away from the eyes of curious onlookers.

He falls back against the wall, flattening his palms against the cold stone.

Remus watches, wanting to say something, not knowing what. Sometimes Sirius just has to burn himself out.

“Can I ask you something?” Sirius’ voice is unsteady. His eyes are shut.

“Yes.”

Sirius opens his eyes and watches Remus for a moment. Then he says, sounding quiet—strained—nearly, but not quite, wrecked—

“Can I kiss you?” 

Remus’ whole body goes numb, then pumps back into life.

“Yeah.”

Sirius’ gaze is uncertain. “Yeah?”

In answer, Remus moves forward. Sirius captures his mouth, hand rising to the back of Remus’ head. He opens immediately, the soft wet press of his tongue snaking between Remus’ lips. His mouth is hot. His hands are still shaking.

He kisses somewhere between unhurried and urgent: slow but deliberate, deep, and as he breathes through his nose, keeping his lips against Remus’, as he kisses and kisses and kisses, Remus can feel it surging through him: Sirius’ want, Sirius’ need—and Sirius searching for something, seeking it in the kiss, in the press of Remus’ mouth, on Remus’ tongue, behind his teeth. Sirius half melting into him, the better to look for whatever it is.

Remus registers all this remotely, intellectually, through the overpowering sensation of drowning helplessly in his own vast and devastating love.

Chapter Text

When Remus had slept with Sirius the first time, he’d worried it would raise something strange and awkward between them. When he’d told Sirius in halting half-formed sentences the things he wanted, and when Sirius had carried them out, and seen the raw, teary, flayed-open creature they turned Remus into, he’d feared he would scare Sirius away. And all along he’s been testing himself, trying to keep his balance on the tightrope stretched out between his need and his desire, maintaining his footing on the taut wire of the game they’ve been playing while the yawning chasm of his love gaped hungrily below him. They’ve managed it all so far: friends, flatmates, casual sexual partners. Somehow the highwire act has been working; somehow they haven’t stumbled.

It shouldn’t be a simple kiss that breaks their balance. Not after so much bare skin, so many whispered dirty words, so many bodily fluids spilled between them.

But it is.

They Floo home from the Leaky Cauldron, lips still swollen, hands still shaking, and Sirius looks at Remus, really looks at him, and stumbles into his bedroom, slamming the door behind him. 

Oh, Remus thinks, oh. So this is how it ends. 

Deep, deep in his stomach, something turns over slowly in a long queasy churn. He can feel Sirius’ lips on his mouth. He can feel Walburga Black’s fingers on his wrist.

Sirius had been searching for something in their kiss, and he hadn’t found it.

Remus sinks into a kitchen chair. No, you can’t kiss me, he imagines saying. 

I don’t think that’s a good idea.  

Not now. Not like this.

There’s not a universe in which he would have said those words.

Not with Sirius’ eyes full of fire, his face twisted in pain, his mother behind them, still sitting at the table they’d left, tapping oyster shells with her long nails, her demonlike calm. 

Not with every inch of Remus straining toward him.

Not ever.

He realizes then just how far gone he is. How incredibly stupid, to think he could manage this. To think he could let Sirius Black into his bed but not all the way into his heart. That he could keep some part of himself back, even after all those years of wanting, of pining. 

Whatever Sirius’ kiss had meant, in the alleyway, it hadn’t been a declaration of love. Not for Sirius. But for Remus, with his eyes open, hands unbound, face to face: how could it have been anything else?

Surely Sirius had tasted it on his lips. Had felt it under his tongue. Remus’ longing. Remus’ need. 

That’s why there’s a closed door between them right now. That’s why, when they stumbled out of their fireplace and stared at each other, the look in Sirius’ eyes had been one of fear.

Remus knows now what he didn’t before: that Sirius has been afraid all his life. Every muscle in Sirius’ body screamed that truth as he sat silently eating lunch with his mother, as he stopped up everything that made him Sirius Black, every shred of anger and courage and defiance and let them simmer under his skin. Sirius knows fear far more intimately than Remus had ever imagined.

He knows fear like Remus knows fear.

And now he’s afraid of Remus.

No sound from Sirius all afternoon. Remus reheats leftover soup for dinner and takes it into his room, where it goes cold slowly as he stares at the wall. 

Maybe Sirius is just upset about his mother?

Maybe he isn’t hiding from Remus. Or maybe he is, but not because of the kiss. Maybe he’s ashamed. 

My father ran away at every full moon, Remus imagines telling him. I know what this feels like. It isn’t your fault.

From the other room, he hears a sudden loud pop. Sirius Disapparating.

Remus is alone in the flat. 

Remus is alone.

Sirius doesn’t come home that night. Remus thinks: Maybe he’s with James. He tries not to think: He’s at a bar. He’s with a girl.

And what if he is? He was bound to get tired of sex with Remus eventually.

Or of sex with a man.

He’s probably been sleeping with women this whole time, anyway. True to his word, he’s not dragged Remus to any more clubs, but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t been going himself. Of course he has—of course he’s been flashing that wide straight-toothed smile across the dance floor, reeling in girls with eyebrow piercings and tight skirts, taking them into dark corners and sliding a hand under their shirts. Of course he’s been kissing girls up against the wall.

When he wasn’t kissing Remus, that is. 

Remus’ thoughts play in a grim loop. He feels like an idiot. He feels guilty, like he’s betrayed Sirius. Feelings weren’t part of the package. Sirius never asked for them. Remus should have kept things clean, careful, unsullied by the sticky mess of his love and wanting, shouldn’t have brought it into the bedroom, into Sirius’ life. If he couldn’t keep the door to the jagged pit of his twisted, hungry inner self firmly shut, he ought to have sequestered himself where Sirius was never going to accidentally fall through.

The next morning, when Remus is in the shower, he hears the pop of Sirius Apparating back into the flat. A few minutes later, before he shuts the water off, he hears the pop of Sirius leaving again.

With a horrible sinking swoop he remembers life before Sirius: life before James and Peter. Before Hogwarts. Before friends. 

No, he thinks, panic rearing its monstrous head, no, no, no.

Around noon, James and Lily Floo into the flat.

“Erm. Hi?” Remus says, staring at them in confusion. James is holding a jug of pumpkin juice. Lily’s carrying a large bag, with fabric swatches spilling over the top.

“We’re here for lunch,” James says brightly. Then, “Are you all right, mate?”

“Yes,” Remus replies automatically. He’s wearing his oldest, ugliest sweater and a faded pair of shorts despite the chill outside. He has not combed his hair. He knows he does not look all right.

“Sirius did tell you we were coming, yeah?”

Remus shakes his head. Behind Lily and James, the fire—why is there a fire lit right now?—glows green again, and Peter appears, shaking ash from his sandy hair.

“Hello, all!” 

“Sirius invited you for lunch?” Remus asks. It does not seem like something Sirius is likely to have done at the moment, but here they all are.

“Sorry to surprise you,” Lily says. She glares at James for some reason. “We didn’t know he hadn’t told you.”

“Where is he, anyway?” Peter asks.

“Out,” Remus says. There’s an awkward pause. 

“Then what…”

The door to the flat bursts open, and Sirius strides through, arms full of plastic takeaway bags, a slightly manic grin plastered across his face.

“Lunch is here! Orange chicken, lo mein, two kinds of fried rice—no shrimp for you, Peter—dumplings…” As he speaks, he unloads cartons onto the table. “And kung pao chicken for Lily. That’s your favorite, isn’t it?”

Lily’s eyebrows shoot up. “Yes, it is.”

“Right. Chopsticks for all. Ah, and you’ve brought pumpkin juice. Not sure it’ll go, but what the hell. Glasses still in the same cupboard, James, we haven’t moved them.”

Chairs scrape as everybody sits. Remus feels quite thrown for a loop. The bottom had dropped out of his life yesterday, or at least he’d thought it had, and now Sirius is offering him potstickers and a pair of chopsticks.

But Remus doesn’t think he’s imagining the guarded expression in his eyes.

He sits, because what else is he going to do?

“Now,” Sirius says, once they’ve all had a few bites, “much as I love feeding you all, I do have a reason for asking you over today.”

“You wanted to tell us you’re dropping out of the Auror program to become a professional dog trainer,” Peter says immediately.

“You’re getting married as well. To Celestina Warbeck,” says James.

“You’re selling your motorbike and buying a flying boat,” Lily, rather surprisingly, chimes in.

“No, no, and no.” Sirius points a finger at Lily. “Never blaspheme like that again.”

“My apologies.”

“Good.” The mirth drains from his face. “No,” he says again, taking a sip of pumpkin juice and arranging his face into a carefully casual expression. “I had lunch with my mother yesterday.”

“Blimey,” Peter says, round-eyed, and James turns quickly to Sirius.

“I’d have come with you!” he says. “You didn’t have to go alone.”

“I didn’t,” Sirius says quietly, the slightest trace of hesitation in his voice. “Remus went with me.” 

An expression flashes across James’ face so quickly Remus nearly misses it: hurt. Then he nods. “Oh. Well. That’s all right then.” 

Sirius fidgets with his glass, moves his chopsticks to the carton of fried rice, looks away from James. Remus realizes just what had been so unsettling about his demeanor with his mother: he’d been so still, stripped of the constant whirl of motion that accompanies him wherever he goes.

“My mother said some things.” Sirius’ tone remains carefully even. “Things I think someone should hear. Dumbledore. I think I need to tell Dumbledore.”

“What did she say?” James’s voice is intent, suddenly, sharp and focused.

“That something’s about to happen. That a ‘new era’ is coming. One in which being part of the Black family will be a distinct advantage.”

“And one in which Mudbloods like me will get what’s coming to them,” Remus adds, surprising himself with the bitterness in his own voice.

“What the fuck,” Lily says. She darts out a hand and squeezes Remus’. He squeezes back, grateful for the steadying pressure. His pulse is jumping.

“What else did she say?”

Sirius’ eyes flick to James’, then away. “She wanted me to tell her how much Dumbledore knows. What he’s planning.”

“What did you say?” Peter asks, something of the frightened rat slipping into his posture.

“Nothing, of course. And it’s not as if—not as if I know much, anyway. Only what Dumbledore said to us when we graduated, and in Hogsmeade that day.”

“That there are dark forces rising,” James says softly, intensely. “That we may be called upon to fight them.”

Sirius nods. “And if my mother is drawing battle lines…” He breathes. “Then there’s a battle coming. Soon.”

The table falls silent.

“Write to him,” says Lily. “Tell him what your mum said. And tell him we’ll do whatever he needs.”

Relief floods naked across Sirius’ face. “Yeah?”

“Of course.” James grips his shoulder. “We’re in this with you, mate. Always.”

Peter, though he looks frightened, nods as well.

Sirius looks at Remus.

“You don’t even have to ask,” Remus says, heart in his mouth. “I’m with you. With—with all of you.”

For a second Sirius can’t seem to speak. He clears his throat, then nods.

“Okay. I’ll send him an owl today.”

“Is that safe?” Peter asks suddenly.

“Why wouldn’t it be?”

“You don’t think she’d intercept it, do you? Your mum?”

They all look at Peter, and he flushes under their eyes.

“Just want to be careful, that’s all,” he mutters.

“It’s a good thought,” says James slowly. “Well, a bad one. Sirius?”

He hesitates, then shakes his head. “I don’t think so.”

After a moment, they all resume eating. But none of them have much of an appetite now.

“Well,” James says finally, standing. “We should—”

“Stay,” Sirius says. “I thought we might all make an afternoon of it. I’ve got the next Muggle film on our list—the one with the shark—”

“Ah, sorry,” James says, glancing at Lily. “We’ve got an appointment with a florist, for the wedding.”

That explains the fabric swatches. Lily actually looks apologetic. “Sorry, Sirius.”

“No, no,” he says, waving a hand. “Go. No carnations, though, they’re, er, very tacky. Wormtail?”

But Peter shakes his head as well. “I’ve got work.”

“It’s Sunday!”

“The temp agency has me at a law firm this week. Filing. Deadly dull, but they never rest.” 

Lily, James, and Peter Floo out, leaving Remus and Sirius alone.

Remus looks at Sirius, tension suddenly winding his body tight.

“What about you?” Sirius asks, an edge to his voice. “You don’t have a meeting with a florist scheduled, do you?”

Remus shakes his head.

“Fuck Jaws,” Sirius says abruptly. “Let’s tick another box off your list.”

Sirius’ ability to give Remus whiplash is really at its peak today. “Wha—really?”

“Why not?” 

For a second the impulse to shout flares up in Remus’ chest: Why not? Why not? Because yesterday you kissed me in an alleyway and didn’t speak to me for twenty-four hours and you know, you must know now that I’m in love with you—

Then the bubble bursts, and Remus thinks: No.

Sirius has to know. How could he have kissed Remus like that, let Remus kiss him like that, without seeing—without understanding… 

Is Remus truly that unreadable?

He shouldn’t be feeling disappointed. He should be feeling stupidly, pathetically grateful.

His secret’s still safe.

“Okay,” he says. And he should say no. He knows he should say no. But if he did, wouldn’t he be acknowledging something Sirius either hasn’t realized or wants to ignore?

And maybe that’s what the sex does, anyway: when they sleep together under the guise of this—this dare, this game, this imperative to cross off items on some fantasy list of Remus’ so that, what, he doesn’t walk around sexually frustrated and sad—maybe that’s what keeps Sirius from finding out the truth.

Or maybe that’s what Remus tells himself because he doesn’t want to give it up.

Sirius is as enthusiastic as ever in bed, though Remus doesn’t miss the fact that having a gag in his mouth means Sirius doesn’t have to kiss him.

Afterwards, Remus lies there, sweat cooling, his breathing returning slowly to normal, and Sirius rolls over onto his back next to Remus and lets out a long sigh.

“I’m sorry about yesterday,” he says quietly to the ceiling.

“You don’t have to apologize for your mum. It’s not your fault.”

Sirius lets out a short laugh. “Hah. Well, I’m sorry for her as well. But I meant for afterwards. For asking you to kiss me.”

Remus inhales. “Why—” he starts, meaning to ask Why are you sorry, but Sirius takes it another way. 

“I asked because—I know this won’t make sense. I know it sounds mad. But I…I wanted…I wanted to feel like Hogwarts again.”

“But we never—” 

“I know. Not the snogging. But because of—of the way it made me feel. Like…” Sirius struggles, his hand over his eyes. Both of them still lying there, naked. “I always felt, at Hogwarts, like I wasn’t just Sirius Black. I was Padfoot. As in, Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs. Part of something bigger.”

Me too, Remus wants to say, as his heart skips a beat, but this—this explanation, this revelation, is so rare for Sirius that Remus is afraid he’ll break the spell of it if he speaks.

“And I know,” Sirius says, voice rising, “I know that of course we don’t all sleep in the same room anymore, or eat all our meals together, or spend every waking moment together. I know we’re not children anymore. I know it’s normal, I know, I know, I just—I hate it, I fucking hate it—feeling like—like I’m just me again.”

Sirius breathes, and Remus holds his breath. 

“That’s why,” he says quietly, eyes flicking to Remus’ and then away, “that’s why I’m so—so bad about Evans. Lily. I don’t hate her. I don’t. And I’m not even jealous of the way James feels about her, I’m glad he’s in love. But the time she gets to have with him. And she’s his—his fucking first priority now and I know, I know,” he says, agitated again, as if Remus was opening his mouth to argue, “that that’s normal. That’s the way things go. I know.” 

He twists his fingers in the sheets, quiet for a moment. “I know I’m—I’m a lot. Too much. For everyone. Too much for Peter, certainly, too much for you—the things I’ve put you through—”

Now Remus does want to protest, but Sirius is barreling onwards again, words tumbling from his mouth:

“But I never felt like I was too much for James, and now I do. And I’m so, I’m so selfish, Remus, I want him all to myself, I want all of you all to myself—I’m greedy, so greedy, this horrible mass of jealous, grasping—Christ, I want you all, everything, every last particle of James and you and Peter, and it isn’t fair, you can’t possibly give it to me, and I know I’m like this just because I’m, I’m fucked up, you saw my mother, I’m like her, really, possessive—horrible—”

He laughs, once, and it’s the least amusing sound Remus has ever heard. 

“So there you have it, then.” 

Remus is stunned speechless. His pulse has long since passed from trot to gallop: he feels it in his ears, his veins, his fingertips. Oh, Christ, he’s on the edge: if he opens his mouth, if he pushes the words through— 

“You,” he starts, and it comes out a snarled mess of a noise. He coughs. “You…” He props himself up on an elbow and looks at Sirius, at the barely masked self-loathing, the wry contempt on his face. “You have me, Sirius. You have all of me.”

Sirius winces. “You’re kind, Remus, but—”

“I’m not.” Remus stops him, quietly, firmly. His heartbeat thumps in his ears. “I’m not kind. I’m yours. Every last particle. I…” He swallows.

Sirius is staring at him now. The room is hushed, the air between them tight. “Mine and theirs, you mean. Mine and the others’.”

“No. Just you. Just yours. I…have been for a long time, actually.”

Sirius’ eyes are wide, disbelieving. Remus feels nearly faint, a wobble in his chest and at the back of his throat. Slowly, Sirius’ gaze changes. He looks uncertain, uncomprehending, but no longer skeptical. 

“I didn’t know that.” 

His voice is very soft. 

“I know,” says Remus.

The next morning, Sirius makes him tea and they have their worst fight in years.

At first everything is fine. After the sex they clean themselves up and Remus helps pen the letter to Dumbledore. They’re both so thrown off-kilter by everything—Sirius’ mum, the threat of some approaching conflict, their unexpected confessions—that they seem to need to move quietly, cautiously, stripped of their usual defenses but wrapped in a strange, soft cocoon. 

Remus lies in bed that night and considers what Sirius is getting from all this.

Insofar as he’d let himself think about it, he’d assumed Sirius 1) appreciated having a consistently available sexual partner, 2) enjoyed the feeling of doing reasonably outré things in bed, 3) enjoyed the feeling of debauching someone far less experienced than himself, and 4) was doing Remus a favor. It had not occurred to him that there was anything deeper going on.

Greedy, Sirius had called himself. Grasping.

Possessive.  

Well, Remus had offered himself up, and Sirius had taken him with both hands.

For a long time Remus has felt pulled between a gnawing desire to split himself wide and let his friends plunge into the maw of his wanting—see, see, he imagines himself saying, all the things you didn’t know—and the curling sense that the inside of himself is a faintly embarrassing place. Teeth and claws, maybe, the werewolf in his DNA; but on the other hand maybe it’s not; on the other hand maybe it’s just the ordinary substance of a life that anybody else would have let slip loosely, easily, from their fingers, every day, without thinking. Perhaps the only thing special about Remus is the way he keeps it all tight to his chest. 

But Sirius wants it: has confessed to wanting it, all of it, all the detritus of Remus, all his odds and ends—and James’ and Peter’s as well, of course—but it’s Remus who can offer them up, bronze like gold, tin like treasure. Of course Sirius doesn’t mean he loves Remus, not like Remus loves him, but maybe Remus’ feelings won’t be the catastrophe he feared: maybe Sirius can find it in himself to accept them as just another one of his spoils, another piece to fill his grasping fists.

He does love Sirius in some strange imbalanced way, after all, wants to offer his pale throat for Sirius to press, his body for Sirius to claim. Maybe if Sirius returns his all-consuming love in unequal measure—meets it with a grasping possessive need for the Marauders more generally, with fucking and friendship and nothing besides—maybe Remus can be all right with that. Maybe he can twist that into something sharp and pleasurable, too, if he tries hard enough.

The thought almost quashes his worry. And it almost fills the hole inside him that wants, and wants, and won’t be satisfied with half-measures.

The next morning Sirius is oddly solicitous. He fusses over Remus when he comes out of his bedroom bleary-eyed and nervous, wondering what Sirius will make of everything in the light of the new day.

“Sit. I’ve made tea.”

Remus raises an eyebrow at the kettle. It’s not that Sirius never offers him tea, but he doesn’t make a pot of English Breakfast at seven a.m. and serve it in one of their good teacups, pouring in just the right amount of cream. Nor does he usually make a fry-up and slide a full steaming plate in front of Remus’ face. And yet bacon and eggs and beans are staring up at him.

“All right?”

“Er, yes?” Remus says, and then it hits him that maybe this is a let-him-down-gently situation: tea and food and then I appreciated what you said, Moony, but just to be clear, you know I didn’t mean it like that, right?

Remus does know. But oh god, having to hear Sirius explain it to him…

“It’s good? The eggs aren’t overdone?”

“No,” Remus says, swallowing, “they’re great. Thanks. Sirius…”

“What time’s work today?”

“Ten.” Sirius, he knows, has to be at the Ministry in an hour. “I’m going straight from the shop to Hogsmeade.”

Tonight is the full moon. Remus had almost forgotten it, what with the drama of the last two days. Almost.

“Right. We’ll meet you there.”

They still use the Shack. It’s the safest place for Remus to transform, and of course they know the lay of the land intimately by now.

“How are your bones? Bad today?”

The day of the change, Remus feels it coming deep inside: an ache, grinding, intensifying as the day goes on; his limbs tensing, muscles straining towards the rising moon, preparing to rearrange all his guts and organs. It hurts. It’s always hurt.

“They’re fine. A bit sore.”

Usually his friends don’t ask. Remus, sometime back in fourth year, got tired of their gentleness, their efforts to bring him pillows and get him to lie down. He’d rather soldier his way through the day, pretending nothing’s wrong. It doesn’t do him any good to cave into the pain and the anxious anticipation, and he’d always hated being treated like an invalid. They’d complied with his wishes ever since.

“Can I do anything? Warming charm?”

Sirius looks earnest but also, inexplicably, nervous, and suddenly Remus hates it. Whatever this is, it’s not Sirius. It’s whatever his friend has decided he owes Remus in exchange for Remus giving over his soul to him the day before. Whatever he thinks Remus wants from him, now it’s all out in the open.

But what he wants isn’t pity. It’s never been pity.

“I’m fucking fine,” he snaps. Sirius jerks back.

“Well, okay then,” he says.

“What are you doing, anyway?”

“Doing?”

“This.” Remus gestures at his plate, his teacup. “I don’t need you to feel sorry for me—”

“Sorry for you?”

“I can take care of myself.”

“No one says you can’t.” Sirius looks bemused, but annoyance is quickly overtaking him. “What the hell, Remus? What are you talking about?”

“I know you think I don’t know things, or do things, that I—that I wallow in my own thoughts, and—and—but I’m fine—”

“No one said you’re not!”

“Then don’t treat me like I’m pathetic!”

“I wasn’t!”

They’re both breathing fast now, glaring daggers at each other. Remus at some point appears to have stood up. He feels the beast opening its jaws inside him, fire burning in its belly. His bones stretch and ache. It feels good.

“Christ, Remus, what do you want from me?”

The stinging unfairness of the question strikes hard.

“I—I don’t—”

“Do you want me to pay attention to you, or to leave you alone? Do you want me to drag you places and push you to do things or not? Do you want me to fuck you? Make you tea? Take you to meet my mother? Or should I just—just let you simmer in your own—your own inscrutability—”

“My inscrutability!” The word knocks Remus for six. After yesterday—after what he’d told Sirius—what he’d admitted—

“Yes, fuck yes, your inscrutability! You’re impossible, you’re—I never fucking know with you, what’s going on in your head—”

“Bullshit,” Remus says, the thud of his pulse strong in his ears, “that’s bullshit.” Every last particle, he’d said, and now Sirius claims he’s inscrutable—

“Then tell me how you are. Really. Right now.”

“I’m—” Remus swallows. “Right now I’m a bit peeved, as a matter of fact.”

“No. Try again. Full moon. How do you feel.”

“I—I told you I’m fine.”

“No. Fine. Fine, my arse. Fuck fine.”

“I can handle it, Sirius, like I’ve been handling it since I was five.”

“If you can handle it, then you don’t need us there, do you? You’re good on your own?”

Remus stares at him.

“You’re fine. You’re—you’re self-sufficient. Perfectly capable Remus Lupin.”

Sirius’ voice is shaking.

Remus isn’t sure he understands quite what they’re arguing about anymore.

“You don’t have to come if you don’t want to,” he says bitterly.

Sirius looks like he’s been slapped.

“Fuck you, Remus.” He storms into his bedroom, then storms out again, coat in hand. He looks at Remus for a second, then turns on his heel and walks out the front door.

With a sudden jerk Remus reaches out and shoves his teacup over, spilling the liquid over his half-eaten meal. Then he swears as hot tea drips onto his legs, and scrabbles for his wand to clean up the mess.

Chapter Text

This is what comes of spending too much time in the company of ordinary people. People who aren’t werewolves. People who aren’t queer, for that matter. People who, whatever their hardships, can still have things. Who can want them, and reach out for them, and take them.

Inscrutable.

At the bookshop that day, Remus makes mug after mug of tea, clutching the hot cup between his aching fingers, pressing it to his tender muscles, his throbbing joints.

He keeps replaying the look on Sirius’ face when he put down that plate of eggs and bacon. It had been the look of someone who hadn’t spent the last eight-plus years with him. Who hadn’t seen him cry, and vomit, and laugh till his sides hurt; who hadn’t spent countless mornings waking Remus up bleary-eyed and annoyed by the sound of his quill scratching frantically down the parchment of an essay he’d score higher on than Remus despite the fact he’d still be dotting the last i when McGonagall pulled it from his hands. Who hadn’t run with him again and again through the darkened woods behind Hogsmeade, cold night air and the pull of the chase in both their throats. 

It had been a tentative look. A careful look. The kind of look you give to someone you don’t really know. 

Inscrutable.

Around noon Mrs. Vogt puts her wrinkled hand on his forehead and tells him he looks peaky. He protests—just a late night, sorry, couldn’t sleep—and she purses her lips and sends him to the back room to sort through some musty boxes of plant encyclopedias a retired herbologist had brought in the other day.

Almost without thinking, Remus picks up the last volume and turns to the W’s. Wolfsbane (aconite). A careful sketch of the delicate purple flowers is accompanied by a bolded WARNING: HIGHLY TOXIC. Remus runs his fingers over the brittle page.

Just brushing against the plant can be dangerous, the entry says. The poison can seep in through the skin, through any open cuts.

Hunters used to coat the tips of their arrows with wolfsbane juices before they went in search of the wolves terrorizing their flocks and villages.

A small note at the end explains that in 1584, twenty wizards caught a werewolf running wild on the night of the full moon. It ripped out two of their throats before they managed to shove a whole wolfsbane plant down its gullet, roots and all. The werewolf convulsed, howling in agony for hours before it grew still. In the morning a teenage boy lay on the ground, emaciated, bruised, dead. 

They cut off his head and buried it at a crossroads, even though legend said that was only necessary with vampires.

Remus already knows all this by heart. 

He also knows of the rumors that in some secret laboratory somewhere, expert potions masters are working out how to dilute wolfsbane enough that it can put a werewolf to sleep rather than killing it. That they’re on the brink of discovering a potion to make transformations gentle and full moons safe.

Remus has been hearing rumors like that all his life.

Is there something toxic about him? he wonders, eyes stinging. He can feel the roots of it deep inside, wrapping around everything he wants, everything he touches. It’s no wonder his love for Sirius is more like a spreading poison, a festering wound. 

Inscrutable.

Fuck him. 

By the end of the day he has to stop himself curling over in pain as he reaches up to shelve a romance novel about a witch who goes back in time and falls for a soldier fighting in some endless goblin war. Some months are so much worse than others. He hasn’t felt the transformation coming this badly in years. Already he feels bruised and battered.

Is he really such a mystery to his friends? There’s no one he’s closer to than Sirius. And yet Sirius said he doesn’t really know him.

Foolish, to think he could be like them.

He’d always meant to fall on the sword of his love for Sirius. To suffer in silence, long enough that suffering felt like breathing, something he did without noticing. Something vital and constant but that rarely intruded upon his consciousness.

Remus is good at turning suffering into breathing. He’s had a lot of practice.

It’s only days like these, nights like these, when darkness is creeping up on him and the terrible alchemy in his sinews and veins is beginning again that he has to face himself head-on. By the time he gets to the Shack he’s panting, clutching his roiling stomach. It’s going to be bad tonight.

He stretches out on the ragged mattress on the floor upstairs, trying not to move his swollen joints. Tears blind his eyes. What have I done, he thinks. I’ve ruined it. Wrecked it all.

He’ll never touch me again.

“Remus? You up here?” 

Peter appears in the doorway. He’s fiddling with his coat, twitching, nervous as he always is in the lead-up to the full. But he kneels beside Remus when he sees him sprawled on the mattress, face wet with tears.

“Sorry,” Remus gasps out. He wipes his face. “Bad—bad time, today.”

Peter, thankfully, doesn’t try to touch him. He just fishes a crumpled tissue out of his jacket pocket and offers it to Remus. Remus wipes his face and nose. 

“Thanks.” 

“Sure.”

Remus pushes himself up to a sitting position, wincing. Peter drops down to the floor, leaning against the wall, knees up to his chest.

“Peter, do you think I’m inscrutable?” 

Peter gives him a strange look. “What do you mean?” 

“I…” Remus shuts his eyes. “Sirius…”

“Oh, well, Sirius.” Peter says it as if the statement is self-sufficient. Remus looks at him, questioning.

“Well, you know. Sirius and James both. They think you need skywriting to get your point across.”

 A startled laugh escapes Remus.

“You are a fan of the long mysterious silence, though.” 

A muscle knots in Remus’ side and he doubles over, clutching himself.

“Merlin. It is bad today. Where are Prongs and Padfoot?” Peter stands and moves anxiously to the window. “It’s got to be nearly time.” 

As if on cue, a door bangs downstairs. Footsteps echo through the empty house and James bounds in, flushed, smiling. 

“Sorry, nearly late, I know.” He looks around the room and frowns. “Pads not here yet? We left the Ministry at the same time. I had to stop at the bakery on the way, check in on the wedding cake—he should be here by now.”

A sick inevitable swoop cuts through Remus.

“I think,” he says, “he might not be coming.”

James’ and Peter’s heads swivel towards him. “What?”

“We had a—a bit of a row…”

“No.” James’ voice is rock solid. “He’d never skip. No matter what.”

“So he hasn’t told you…” The words escape Remus’ mouth before he can stop them. 

“Told me what?” 

Anything? Remus wants to ask. What we’ve been doing. What I said to him last night. What I said to him this morning. 

“He was in a bit of a mood today, but I thought, the usual Sirius…is something going on between you two?” 

If that isn’t the million-Galleon question. 

“It’s time,” Peter says suddenly. He’s staring out at the darkness. “We need to change.” In the next second his body seems to disappear, shrinking so rapidly it’s almost impossible to catch the shift from boy to rat. Remus has always envied the quickness of the others’ transformations. 

“He’ll be here,” James says, but he sounds uncertain.

Then Remus loses a bit of time. He’s dimly aware that there’s a stag in the room, watching him with silent calm, but his stomach is turning itself inside out and he can feel the bones of his jaw starting to shift. He’s up on all fours, head bent nearly to the floor, heaving breaths shaking him as the skin of his fingers splits, claws slicing out. His bones are lengthening, his back bending; and through the pain, his mind is going—dizzying bursts of color flash across the insides of his eyelids. Smells rise up sharp in his nose: the musk of the stag, dark and deep; the scent of meat and bread and humans on the air coming in through the window; the anxious throbbing pulse of the rat at his feet, the sound of the stag’s hooves pawing against the wood—not just smells anymore, sounds, and tastes, and all his senses seem to blur till on his tongue is the wind and in his ears is the sharp tang of his own blood. My teeth, the human in him manages to think, as fangs jut up through his tender gums. 

For some reason, his teeth are always the last to change.

And then the wolf is there, dark and kinetic and poised on the edge of a snarling leap: and he lunges forward, the stag’s antlers rising to meet him, and Remus is lost, lost in the beast.

They hurtle out of the house and up the hill behind it, towards the trees, the forest that the wolf can feel alive and writhing with life, owls, rodents, insects crawling in the underbrush. His heart throbs, faster than a human’s, nostrils wide, legs contracting and extending powerfully as he lopes towards the woods. His territory: his pack.

But something isn’t right. The pack is incomplete.

The wolf feels it like a gaping wound. The absence of the dog worries at him like the scent of blood in the air, a red pulsing sensation he can’t shake. Snarling, he hurtles through the trees, searching: where is he?

Anger is too human an emotion for the wolf to feel, but he senses the wrongness of the night coursing through him, and in the damp leaves underfoot, the too-clean smell of the air, the ache of his teeth and claws as they long to wrestle with the dog, to leap at him, to roll as they always do under the pale light of the moon, a playful deadly match that neither of them will win or lose.

The wolf growls at the stag. The pack is wrong tonight.

He leaps. He can sense the panicked flutter of the rat’s heart at his feet but doesn’t heed it, just obeys the instinct to lunge, to attack. The stag lowers his antlers and the wolf glances off them, rolling across the floor, a tree branch slicing deep into his back.

Growling louder, he rights himself, circling low around the stag.

He jumps again. This time the stag raises himself on his hind legs and brings his hooves down against the wolf’s chest. The wolf howls in pain, the breath knocked out of him, hitting the forest floor with a sickening thud.

Laboriously, slowly, with the single-minded intensity of his wolf’s brain, Remus pulls himself slowly to his feet.

He bares his teeth.

And then—faint but unmistakable, a scent on the wind.

The wolf’s head turns. His hackles lower.

He can smell the dog.

With light, powerful bounds, the dog hurtles through the forest. He stops when he reaches the pack. Stands there still, black against the black night.

The wolf moves slowly toward him, hobbled by the bleeding wound on his back, the throbbing ache in his chest. His left front paw smarts: twisted in the fall.

The dog lets him approach.

They sniff each other. The wolf circles.

The dog bends its head down and begins to lick the wolf’s wounds.

Remus awakens on the lumpy mattress, weak morning light bleeding through the window and the holes in the roof.

His whole body hurts.

“Don’t move,” says a voice. “Wait.”

He opens his eyes. Through pain-hazed vision he sees James kneel down, reaching gently toward him.

“You’ve got some nasty gashes on your back and bruises on your chest. I think you’ve sprained your wrist as well. Maybe a broken rib. No one else was hurt.”

First thing, every time Remus awakens after the full, one of them offers a list of his injuries and any damage he’s caused to others. It’s been many months since it was this bad.

Remus can see Peter hovering behind James. Sirius, the dark shape of him, is back in a shadowy corner, unmoving.

“You’ve got to get to work,” Remus croaks, voice like an unused hinge.

“It’s all right. It’s still early.”

James takes him gently by the wrist. He hisses in pain.

“I know. Sorry, mate. Lily’s been teaching me a few healing spells. Thought it might come in handy. Trust me?”

After a second, Remus nods.

“Good.” He taps his wand against Remus’ wrist, mutters a few words, then makes a complex movement Remus can’t follow without feeling dizzy. He feels something shift below the skin of his wrist.

“Oh, god,” he gasps, pulling back, then winces as his sudden movement sends a jolt of pain through his chest.

“Be still,” says James, and after an agonizing minute Remus feels something snap back in place.

“You’ve done it,” Peter says behind him, sounding surprised. “Remus, has he done it?”

“I think so.” His wrist aches, but not like before. The angle is right, too. He moves his fingers, then his hand. “Thanks, James.”

“Thank Lily.”

He leans in and gently runs a hand over Remus’ torso. Remus breathes sharply through his nose; even that careful touch pulses hotly through the twin hoof-shaped bruises on his chest.

“Yeah. I think you might have a broken rib. Maybe two. I’m…sorry about that.”

Remus remembers, dimly, the scent of the stag in his nostrils, the lunging leap, a raw churning all through his body. “It was my fault, wasn’t it?”

James hesitates. “You went a bit…wild for a minute there.”

In the corner, Remus sees Sirius shift.

“Sorry,” Remus says.

“I’m all right, mate. You’re the one who needs looking after. We could—you know we could take you to Hogwarts, to see Madame Pomfrey—”

“No. It’s fine. I’ve got the Skele-Gro she gave me at home. And balm for the cuts. I just need to—” He tries to stand, then gasps, clutching his chest.

“Okay. Okay. We’ll get you home. Just give it a minute.”

“You’ve got work,” Remus protests again. “You can’t all skip—”

“I’ll stay.” Sirius’ shape detaches itself from the corner and steps into view.

“You did last time, Sirius,” James argues, “they’ll be after you for missing again—”

“I’ve already talked to Moody about it. It’s fine. I’ll take him home.”

“Remus?” James looks at him questioningly.

Oh yes. He’d told James there’d been a row.

“It’s…fine. Go.”

He doesn’t want to be any more of a burden than he already is.

“All right. I’ll come by the flat later, okay?” says James.

“Good luck, Moony,” Peter says. And the two of them leave, footsteps echoing down the stairs. The back door slams.

Sirius kneels down next to Remus.

“All right there?” he asks quietly. Slowly, Remus shakes his head.

“Can you stand?”

“I—I think so. If you—”

Sirius takes him by the arm and gradually, gingerly, Remus gets to his feet.

The blanket James had stretched over his naked legs falls to the floor, but Sirius has already seen it all, so Remus lets it drop.

Sirius reaches toward the bruises on Remus’ chest. Remus jerks back. They stare at each other.

“I’m going to Apparate us home.”

“Are you sure you can—"

“Yes. Hold onto my arm.”

After a second, Remus does what he’s told. A loud pop, and they’re back in the flat.

Before Remus lies down, Sirius makes him sit still while he washes the deep cuts on his back with soapy water. Remus bites his lip, trying not to cry out. In a dark rush of memory he feels the roots of a tree sharp against his fur. Then the tongue of the dog, licking his wounds.

Shocked, he raises his eyes to Sirius’.

Sirius averts his gaze and rubs healing cream along the open cuts. They start to tingle, then numb. Remus’ muscles relax just a little in relief.

“Okay. You can lie down now. But stay on your side, so you don’t hurt your back, and lean up against these pillows.”

Remus obeys. His chest is still screaming, the sharp pain of his ribs against the duller, but no less intense, throb of the bruises. He takes the cup Sirius offers and downs the Skele-Gro; he’s drunk it so many times by now that he barely registers the awful taste.

“Okay,” Sirius says. “Do you think you can rest?”

“I’ll try.” 

“Okay. I’ll just be in the other room. Call if you need anything.”

As he goes he dims the lights.

The pain of Remus’ ribs knitting themselves back together is nearly as bad as the pain of his bones stretching when he transforms. He puts a hand on the bare skin of his belly, just below the bruises, and tries to breathe deeply. But that hurts even more. 

Tears track down his cheeks. He can’t even really think; his mind feels like a puddle. Misery drips down his throat, collecting deep in his gut. He doesn’t mean to make noise as he cries, but when Sirius reappears in the doorway he realizes he’s been letting out choking, gasping sobs.

“Remus,” Sirius says softly. He comes closer, then hovers, standing at the edge of the bed, looking down.

He stretches out a hand, then stops.

“You can…” Remus doesn’t know how to finish the sentence.

Sirius doesn’t extend his hand farther. Instead, he walks around to the other side of the bed and pulls the covers back. Remus feels him slide in behind him, feels the weight of him as the mattress dips.

“I know I’m not supposed to pity you,” Sirius says softly, “but, Jesus, Remus.”

His fingers brush gently against Remus’ torn-up back.

Remus can’t stop the tears leaking from his eyes.

Sirius’ hand hovers lightly on his bare skin. Slowly, he starts to stroke his fingers below Remus’ wounds, rubbing soothing circles on his lower back. Remus breathes in, and out, and feels his muscles start to loosen.

Sirius’ hand is cool and soft. As Remus’ ribs grow themselves together again, Sirius rubs his back in circles and swoops and easy lines. Remus’ sobs stop, though tears still slip occasionally down his cheeks.

The grinding in his chest begins to even out. Finally there’s just the deep, dull ache of the bruises and of newly-healed bone. Sirius senses the shift, pressing a little harder into Remus’ skin, massaging the knots low against his spine. Remus exhales, long and slow.

Sirius circles, circles, circles.

His palm lifts so it’s just his fingertips, tracing, brushing, hypnotic and light. Remus shivers a little at the changed touch.

Slowly, slowly, Sirius dips his fingers lower.

He does it so gradually that Remus barely registers it at first. His hand rubs low down Remus’ spine, below Remus’ hips, down farther. Remus’ breathing hitches. Sirius keeps moving, unhurried, smooth.

His fingers slip between Remus’ cheeks.

Remus inhales sharply.

With his outside fingers, Sirius keeps his cheeks slightly parted, and his pointer finger pushes gently against Remus’ hole. 

He doesn’t slip inside. Instead, he rubs his finger lightly across it, back and forth, still gentle, still slow. Remus’ eyelashes flutter. He holds himself still as Sirius strokes, and pets, and caresses.

Sirius’ finger slips over his hole, again and again.

He nudges at the pucker of it. Remus feels the touch all through him, a dry, hot sensation like breathing in a closed-up room, like a damp cloth over aching eyes. His whole body seems to reorient itself around Sirius’ fingertip, to redirect all sensation to the juncture of their touching skin. Sirius strokes, and strokes, and Remus feels as though he’s sounding his depths.

Again and again, across the entrance to Remus’ body.

Remus breathes.

Sirius’ finger worries, and prods, and soothes.

Over the top of him. Just outside.

Sirius circles his finger around the rim. Remus has never felt more open, or more closed.

Time floats away. Remus’ eyes have drifted shut: when? Dimly, sense memories from the wolf’s brain flicker across his closed eyelids, but they seem ages away. Nothing is more present, more immediate, than Sirius’ finger.

He taps, and slides, and rubs. 

The intimacy of it is breathtaking.

Remus slips into a slow-whirling planetary haze: stars wheeling around him as he falls, and falls, lightly, impossibly, without heed for gravity or time. There’s only him and the insistent, burning nudge of Sirius’ finger against him. Gentling, and skimming, and never letting up.

Without feeling it happen, Remus drifts into sleep.

Chapter Text

He wakes to silence, and weak light, and a dull ache in his ribcage. He can tell by the pang of nauseous hunger and his urgent need to relieve himself that he’s been asleep for a very long time—the whole day after the full, and the whole night as well. It happens, sometimes, when he takes Skele-Gro. There’s a sour-bitter taste in his mouth and a fuzzy haze in his head.

There’s a dip in the bed next to him, crumpled sheets in the shape of an absent body. 

Out the window, the sky is low and linoleum-grey. It’s not raining, exactly, but a dirty brownish mist hangs over the sliver of street that Remus can see from this awkward angle. He can feel the strain of his freshly healed ribs, and the lingering bruises on his chest, and a tenderness where he’d sprained his wrist. He can’t feel, however he tries, any lingering sensation from Sirius’ fingers on him the day before. Sirius had been far too gentle for that.

Remus is so, so tired.

He goes to the bathroom and cleans himself up. One summer, he and the others had taken a boat out on the river near James’ parents’ house, a rowboat that turned out to be more of a challenge than they’d anticipated; at the end of hours spent pulling oars through increasingly resistant water, Remus’ arms had been limp and useless, every movement an effort. He feels like that now, like he’s straining simply to walk and open cabinets and turn doorknobs. And it feels like that to think, as if every coherent idea has to struggle to the surface. 

He sits at the kitchen table and sips too-hot tea. Eventually, he hears the muted noises of Sirius getting up and moving around in his bedroom. He expects a flutter of anxiety or anticipation to come to life in his chest, but he’s been hollowed out. Nothing there. Only exhaustion, and a kind of resigned disappointment.

Sirius nods to him when he comes out of his room. Remus pushes the teapot across the table. They sit quietly for a while, and then it’s time for work. They say goodbye. Sirius Floos out. Remus walks.

It feels very much like it’s over.

Mid-week and an overcast sky mean a long, slow day at the bookstore. Mrs. Vogt is away at a book fair so Remus lights all the lamps and drags a chair behind the counter. He pulls a stack of travel books off the shelves, big ones with lots of photos, and rubs his aching chest and tries to drown himself in the traces of other worlds.

Beaches of Britain catches his eye. Chapter six is “Day Trips from London.”

The photograph of Botany Bay in Kent shows tall white cliffs and a long flat stretch of sea. A smuggler’s cove, centuries ago, with caves for hiding dug into the rock. 

After work, he doesn’t go home.

Remus walks from the train station, the jostling forward motion of the journey seeping slowly from his body, the noise of the passengers—commuters chatting about sales and meetings, children shouting, teenagers with pulsing beats bleeding from their headphones—fading away, emptying Remus out, till all that’s left are his footfalls rhythmic on the pavement, muffled under the heavy grey sky, and salt coming in on the cold air. Hidden behind banks of clouds, the sun is sinking, or will be soon. Streetlamps placed at long intervals cast weak light over the footpath. Remus shivers with the chill and breathes in deep, smelling the sea.

Past a line of houses is a set of concrete steps, leading down to the sand, to the base of the chalky white cliffs. Remus takes them slowly, one at a time. Water pools in dips and grubby cracks, evidence that at least a few bathers were here today despite the changing season, the coming on of cold; the beach is mostly deserted now, the tide out, clumps of rock and seaweed tangled over the shore, black and ominous in the fading light. They signal rock-pools and paths through the sand, Remus read in the travel book, good for curious children and sketchers of tidal life, but now they look like refuse, like the underside of something, the soft tender bits that should never have seen the light of day.

The chalk-piles are still pale, even at this hour, as are the white faces of the cliffs. Remus can just make out the holes in their sides—smugglers’ caves carved in devious twists all through the stone. Escape routes through the earth.

Sand sinks into his shoes as he walks out towards the water. The wind chills him to the bone and all the hairs are standing up on his arms, goosebumps even through his thick sweater. His lungs fill with salt air, clean, fresh, cold. 

The sea stretches before him, endless and dark. 

At the back of his mind, the usual sorts of cautions flicker: nearly dark, past dinnertime, train back in an hour, work tomorrow, Sirius will be wondering where you are. His healing ribs and wrist ache in the evening air. 

He walks out farther, till the shallow tidal pools stop him. 

Let it go, he thinks, into the sea.

But to let go of the way he feels about Sirius is to give up a part of himself and Remus isn’t sure he’s capable anymore of discerning how big that part is or even where its boundaries lie. Keeping his desire locked tight inside him for so long has given it precisely the power Remus wanted to withhold; with no outlet, no place to go, it has woven itself like a creeper vine into all the darkest recesses of himself, into all his hollows and chambers, his tiniest cracks and crannies; unfurling itself in the only way it knows how, insidious, climbing, it has woven itself into the very fabric of Remus. There is ivy at Hogwarts, Professor Sprout told his class once, that can never be removed, because it has become so entangled with the castle that the stones themselves would crumble without the plant to support them.

Remus thinks of teeth, and claws, and scars on his skin. His snapped ribs, knitting themselves back together. He knows how to cut himself and he knows how to heal. His body knows, his bones know: they break and bend every month under the grey glow of the moon, and then when the moon sets they break and bend again back into shape. The secret isn’t how to heal. The secret is that the healing hurts more than the wounding. Remus can slice out his own heart. He knows he can. And he knows he can survive its growing back. 

The secret is that survival isn’t a gift.

The waves beat, and beat, and beat against the shore.

There was a poem Remus’ Muggle grandfather used to recite, when Remus was small and they went to the seaside. Remus looked it up once, a few years ago, and found he could still remember it, the melancholy lines, his grandfather’s hoarse voice.

Only, from the long line of spray 

Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land, 

Listen! you hear the grating roar 

Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling, 

At their return, up the high strand, 

Begin, and cease, and then again begin, 

With tremulous cadence slow, and bring 

The eternal note of sadness in. 

He reaches down and picks up a rock, slick and cool, and throws it as far as he can. With the tide out, it doesn’t come close to the waves. It thunks into some tidal pool, beached, still. The water will come for it later, and wash it out to sea.

Over the rocky sand, some ten feet out ahead of him, a figure is picking its way across the beach. Remus hopes whoever it is keeps their distance. He doesn’t want his solitude shattered. As the person steps closer, he can see it’s a woman—a young woman—with a mass of curly hair, and dark skin, and her skirt hiked up past her knees. And, as if this cool dark seaside journey is a dream, as she comes into view, she seems to solidify into a familiar shape, a figure he knows in a place he doesn’t, walking to him through the night.

“Remus Lupin?”

Dorcas Meadowes hops from rock to rock, till she’s next to him on the sand, close enough to touch.

“Hi,” he says.

“What are you doing here?”

The dream-logic of the moment doesn’t seem to require a real answer. He shrugs a shoulder. “Looking at the sea.”

She sticks her hands in the pockets of her sweatshirt and stares out at the horizon.

“My mum and dad live in Broadstairs. I’m visiting. Sometimes I walk out to the beach at night.”

He nods. She reaches out and puts her hand on his chest. He flinches back as she touches his bruises.

“Sorry. I felt so strange for a moment, I had to make sure I wasn’t dreaming. Are—are you okay?”

He smoothes the pain quickly from his face, but her eyes have narrowed. They track over his body, and he sees them catch on the bruise at his wrist, and a couple of long scratches disappearing into the arm of his sweater. He’d forgotten to cover them up this morning—they’d seemed so inconsequential compared to the rest of it.

“Your scars,” Dorcas says slowly.

A wind gusts in from the ocean, whipping up her hair, blowing down Remus’ neck. A light winks from out at sea, a boat, probably, making its way across the water. And we are here as on a darkling plain, Remus thinks, his grandfather’s voice echoing through his head, and without turning to look at Dorcas, he says, “I’m a werewolf.”

Silence: silence, and the wind, and the roar of the waves.

Dorcas says, “How’s Sirius Black?”

“He’s fine,” Remus replies. “I think he’s fine.”

“How are you and Sirius Black?”

He shakes his head. “Not fine.” He moves his gaze to her, finally, and she meets his eyes. Nothing in her has changed. “How are you and Marlene McKinnon?”

She lets out a breath. “There is no me and Marlene McKinnon.” She tilts her head. “Is there a you and Sirius Black?”

Remus rubs his hands over his face. “Maybe. I’ve…” He swallows. “I’ve been sleeping with him.”

“Oh my god.” Her eyes are wide. “But he’s not—is he—?”

“I don’t know what he is.”

“Does he know how you feel?”

Remus thinks of the kiss in Diagon Alley, his mouth falling open for Sirius’ tongue. He thinks of lying naked next to him in bed, saying, Just yours. Every last particle.

“Yes,” he says.

“And?”

“And…” Another gust of wind catches them, blowing right through Remus’ sweater, chilling him to his bones. “And nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“He hasn’t said anything.”

Dorcas bites her lip. “Silence isn’t a good sign.”

“Yeah. I know.” The desire to explain himself, to defend himself, rises up in Remus suddenly. “I know. I never thought—I’ve never thought he might feel that way about me. I know he doesn’t. I’m not—I’m not surprised. I didn’t—it’s not like I thought this could go any other way.”

She lets out a low, noncommittal hum.

“I didn’t,” Remus insists, stung.

“Sure,” she says. “Maybe not consciously. But you don’t…you don’t look like a person who’s only had their expectations confirmed.”

Shame rises thick in Remus’ throat as her words catch on something inside him—tugging at the creeper vine, pulling at its roots. “Oh, god.” His face is hot. He rubs the back of his neck. “I—maybe I—maybe part of me…” The words stick in his throat, humiliation slowing their passage. “Maybe part of me hoped.”

Admitting this feels worse than anything.

Dorcas looks at him steadily, and then, with the resolve of someone who’s spent a lot of time following her own advice, says, “Sometimes the best thing to do with hope is to kill it.” 

Remus stares out to sea. Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain, he thinks, and tugs at the thread of his desire, and feels his foundations tremble.

Three days later. Albus Dumbledore sits in his office, looking over his half-moon glasses with his pale blue eyes. Luminous, penetrating, they rest in turn on each of the young people sitting before him: James, Lily, Peter, Sirius. Remus.

“So I hope you understand,” he says, “what it is I would be asking from you.”

I hope you understand. After his long speech, full of grim predictions and cautions and warnings, it would be hard to underestimate the gravity of the situation, of the threat looming ahead. But understanding is beyond Remus’ abilities. The future is opening like a jagged chasm, splitting the earth beneath their feet; by asking them to join this resistance organization, this Order of the Phoenix, Dumbledore is asking them to dive into the darkness. Remus can’t possibly understand, while he’s still standing above its dizzying depths, what will happen to him there: what he’ll see, what he’ll do. What he’ll lose.

He knows enough to know that.

“Yes,” James says, and, gripping Lily’s hand, he nods. “I’ll join.”

“So will I.” Lily’s face is flushed, her eyes bright.

In the corner of Dumbledore’s office, Fawkes croaks softly.

“Be quite certain,” Dumbledore says steadily. “The things I will ask of you—gathering information, protecting those who are vulnerable, responding to attacks—will be nothing like what you have practiced in Defense Against the Dark Arts. They will be more dangerous even than your Auror training will have prepared you for, Mr. Potter. If things grow as bad as I believe they will, there is a good chance you will not all survive.”

Peter flinches. James pales, but his jaw is firm.

“I’ll do it.” And Lily nods.

“Is my family part of Voldemort’s following?” Sirius’ tone is abrupt, harsh. His face betrays nothing; the darkness in his eyes is just that, darkness: impenetrable, deep.

“Some of them, according to my sources, have joined him,” Dumbledore replies. He offers no consolation, no reprimand.

“My mother?”

Dumbledore hesitates, then shakes his head. “I do not believe Walburga Black has pledged her allegiance to Voldemort. Her attempts to extract information from you appear to have been due to her own curiosity.”

“She supports him,” Sirius says jerkily. “She’s just too interested in keeping herself safe to make it official.”

Dumbledore inclines his head. Waiting.

“I’ll join,” says Sirius.

“Thank you.”

“I—” Peter’s eyes dart from side to side, person to person. “Me too. If James and Sirius—if everyone’s doing it, so will I.”

“You must make your own choice, Peter. This is not something another may decide for you.”

“I’ll do it. I—I want to help my friends.”

“Very well.”

And then it’s just Remus. His head has been filled with a low buzzing since Dumbledore began speaking. A swell is rising inside him. This isn’t the beginning: it’s the crest of a wave, about to crash over his head, a wave that’s been coming for a long, long time, inexorable, inevitable, a wide, slow roll. Since school—since before school. Since he was five years old, maybe, and Fenrir Grayback sank his teeth into his flesh.

No way to avoid that. No way to avoid this. The monster is coming for him.

The monster has always been coming for him. Always coming, and always, somehow, already here: already with its fangs in his skin. Always biting down. Always opening its jaws.

“I’ll join,” Remus says, as their eyes all find him, one by one. “Of course I will.”

Dumbledore holds his eyes for a moment, then nods.

He sends them off with warnings and promises. “Oh, and—may I have a word, Mr. Lupin?”

Remus turns back, with the dubious but impossible-to-shake sensation of having just missed escaping in time. An echo of being in this office as a student, in trouble or adjacent to trouble. Or maybe it’s something more.

The others exchange glances with him, curious, concerned, but file out. Remus stays.

So does Sirius.

“I have a question,” Sirius says, still in that odd abrupt tone. He doesn’t look at Remus, and his eyes are flickering towards and away from Dumbledore, unable to settle.

“Yes, Mr. Black?”

“I’ll feed you information on any of my family members you want,” Sirius says. A rebellious tremor has entered his voice, and he sticks his chin up. “Just please don’t make me spy on my brother.” He takes a deep breath, his defiance faltering. “Is that—is that okay?”

The corners of Albus Dumbledore’s eyes crease, and for a split second he looks sad, and kind, and old.

“Yes, Sirius. I won’t ask you about Regulus. I promise.”

Sirius nods, a sharp movement, and then he leaves, head down.

“Mr. Lupin. Please, sit.”

Remus looks at Dumbledore and sighs. He sits.

Might as well cut to the chase.

“What’s going to happen to the werewolves?” he asks.

Dumbledore betrays no surprise. “In times like these, when panic and fear run wild—as I suspect they will sooner than we wish—whatever tolerance has been built up tends to dissipate. These will not be easy years.”

Remus knows that. He shakes his head.

“The wild ones. The ones who live outside wizarding society. What about them?”

Dumbledore looks at him steadily.

“Will Voldemort try and get them on his side?”

“I believe he will.”

Remus nods. Dumbledore watches him for a moment longer, and then a puzzling expression settles on his face: not a smile, but something close to satisfaction; yet disappointment, too, shades the lines and wrinkles that crisscross his skin.

“What is it?”

Dumbledore sighs. “You are the first person to whom I’ve offered that opinion who hasn’t protested that Voldemort’s obsession with purity will prevent him from approaching creatures he sees as only half human.”

“The werewolves would be his weapon, not his ally,” Remus replies coolly. “You don’t have to approve of a weapon to wield it effectively.”

“Indeed.”

Remus avoids Dumbledore’s gaze now, which carries something a little too close to pity—or maybe it’s just understanding. Either way, he wants to avoid it; he wants to avoid what he knows is coming, too, but it’s as inevitable as the wave of darkness rolling in.

“You want me to try and persuade them otherwise.”

To his credit, Dumbledore doesn’t hedge. “I do.”

Remus moves in his chair, running a frustrated hand through his hair. “I won’t be able to. They’ll smell it on me. Wizarding society. They’ll know I’m not one of them.”

“You have a better chance than anyone else, Remus.”

“They won’t want to help us. They hate wizards. They’re more likely to join with Voldemort than with the Ministry. At least he hates the powers that be, too.”

“Yes. But you’re not the Ministry. And the likelihood of their being swayed by him is precisely why we need your help.”

I’m just a boy, Remus wants to protest, the words floating helplessly to the surface of his mind.

But he isn’t. He isn’t just a boy.

“Now?”

Something in Dumbledore relaxes—lightens. “No. To approach them so early would make it seem as if we are the aggressors. They must not believe we are the ones stirring up trouble.”

That’s something, then. Not yet. Remus pictures it, somewhere down the line, leaving London and his friends for wild places: there’s a group of werewolves in Scotland, way up north, and a pack in Wales, in the hills. And lone wolves, and pairs, here and there, across Great Britain. Living in caves and abandoned houses. Hunting. Being hunted. They have scars like Remus’. Their jaws split open like his, once a month. Their hands sprout claws.

They don’t have Skele-Gro, afterwards, or a friend with a Healer-in-training for a fiancée, or Sirius Black to tend their wounds and put his hands gently on their skin.

“Just let me know when.”

He doesn’t mean for an edge of resentment to cling to his words, but something catches in Dumbledore’s face, and he puts out a hand as Remus gets to his feet and holds him lightly by the wrist.

“You do not owe me this, Remus,” he says quietly. “You are not in my debt.”

Remus could laugh: seven years of crackling fires in the Gryffindor Common room, and high stone ceilings, and hearty meals and the chance to learn how to be a real person. Seven years of James, and Peter, and Sirius.

He owes Dumbledore his whole life.

“What I did for you, ensuring you could attend Hogwarts. That is my job, Remus. You were a magical child, and Hogwarts is a place for magical children. I was doing no more or less than I was obligated to do by my position as Headmaster.”

Remus looks at his fingers. At the scar on his wrist.

“I do believe I owe you,” he says quietly. “But I’d do this anyway.”

After a moment, Dumbledore nods.

“Thank you.” 

Remus leaves.

Out in the wide, empty hall, at the end of Dumbledore’s circular staircase, he finds Sirius.

“Oh,” he says, startled, the surprise of it sending his heart into his mouth for a moment. “I didn’t think you’d still be here.”

“What did he want?” Sirius’s face is dark. He’s dressed all in black, ripped black jeans, a black t-shirt, a black leather jacket. Black boots. His black hair is falling loose around his face, sharp-edged; sometimes it makes him look cool, sometimes a bit of an arse, but today he just seems dangerous. Remus thinks of him standing at the window and staring sullenly out at the rain the day James told him he was leaving to move in with Lily—remembers thinking how well the weather fit his state of mind, how well it always seemed to. Today, Sirius looks like he should be standing in the middle of a wild storm, wind whipping around him, lightning cracking the sky. Remus would believe it if they walked outside right now and the day darkened, clouds called in by the forbidding mood of Sirius Black.

“Werewolves,” Sirius bites out, when Remus doesn’t answer. “He wants you to—”

“Yes. Don’t, Sirius.” His friend has turned back to Dumbledore’s office, to the gargoyle that will open onto a staircase if he says the password. His mouth is open to speak it when Remus cuts in. “Stop. It’s fine. I said I’d do it.”

“You said—”

“It needs to be done.”

He sounds calm. He feels calm. Now that the future is bearing down on him, it’s time to stop running.

“The hell it does!” Sirius glares at him, then at the gargoyle.

Sirius never stops running. And when he does, it’s to turn around and fight.

“It does, Sirius. And I’m the one to do it.”

Sirius stands still for a moment, hair mussed, fists clenched. The line of his neck arches proudly. His jaw, sharp, elegant, is set.

But when he speaks, his voice is soft.

“They’re dangerous.”

Remus takes a breath. “So am I.”

For a long moment, Sirius watches him. One of them, it seems, is going to say something; Remus can feel the words in the air, waiting.

But the moment passes. Sirius turns away.

“I—” Remus swallows. He can’t speak the words crowding in his mouth, pushing to come out. But he wants to take the tension out of Sirius’ shoulders, to smooth the line between his eyebrows. “My father went away for every full moon.”

Sirius turns back to him, slowly.

“He told me it was because the full was the best time to look for a cure. That he was traveling, trying to find something to help me. Then, one day, after my transformation, when I was nine or ten, I ran into a man from the village. He owned the pub. He asked if my dad had got home okay. Said he’d been so drunk the night before he could hardly stand.”

Remus rubs his hand against the side of his jeans, remembering. It had been a cold day, the nip of winter in the air. The barman’s face had been red and jolly, flushed with wind.

“That’s where he was. Every full moon. Down in the village, at the pub, not twenty minutes away, getting pissed enough to forget he had a werewolf for a son.”

Anger flashes, pure and bright, through Sirius’ eyes. “Bastard.”

“Yes,” Remus says evenly. “He was.”

“You don’t—” Sirius steps towards him. “You don’t have to—if you’re doing this to prove something to him, to your dad, that you’re—that you’re human, or, or worthwhile—”

“No.” Remus shakes his head quickly. He hadn’t thought of it like that; had thought they were speaking about something else entirely. “I don’t. That isn’t—that’s not what I meant. I only told you because…because I don’t want it to sound like bullshit when I say that I get it. About Regulus.”

Sirius’ eyes widen. Remus watches him closely; this is shaky ground, the shakiest. Ground he’s barely managed to step on before, barely traversed at all. Sirius and his brother are a complicated constellation. Remus knows Sirius well enough to know that guilt and jealousy and anger and love don’t begin to make up a fraction of what’s between them.

Well. Maybe love does.

“Regulus isn’t…”

“No. He’s not like my dad. I didn’t mean that either. I only meant that—families are—” Remus sighs. “They’re so easy for people like James. And so hard…”

“For people like us.”

Remus nods.

Sirius takes it in. It looks like a bitter pill to swallow, but he takes in Remus’ words, and he doesn’t run away.

“My dad didn’t deserve all the time I spent trying to figure out how he could still be a good person, despite what he did. But Regulus—” Remus hesitates, then takes the plunge. “If you think Regulus deserves that from you, you’re probably right.”

Sirius squeezes his eyes shut. 

“Home?” he says, after a minute, eyes still closed. 

“Home,” Remus agrees. And for once, leaving Hogwarts feels okay. Like he’s grown out of the castle walls, out of his childhood. Like he’s made a home for himself, somewhere else.

Chapter Text

Remus wakes up on the morning of James and Lily’s wedding with a mild hangover and a looming sense of foreboding.

There is simply no way James Potter can get married without something going wrong.

Remus’ hangover fades, but the worry doesn’t, even as the day unfolds with surprising ease. The venue is clean and bright. The flowers arrive, pink and white and perfectly fresh. The caterer shows up right on time and with the correct number of vegetarian meals. Nobody from the wedding party goes to the wrong location, or misplaces the rings, or spills tea on themselves. And Sirius is shockingly competent in his role as best man.

James looks a bit dazed as it all unfolds around him. His father comes in to adjust his dress robes, eyes suspiciously moist, and Sirius and Remus duck out for a bit to pick up coffee for everyone who needs it. Just a fifteen-, maybe twenty-minute trip.

Theoretically, not enough time for anything to go wrong. 

Theoretically.

“Oh thank Merlin,” Peter says when they walk back in. His hair is mussed and his eye is twitching a little. “Help.”

“What—” 

He steps aside. James is lying facedown on the sofa in the corner, moaning gently. 

“Well, shit,” says Sirius. “Is he ill?”

“I wish,” Peter mutters.

“This is the end, Pads.” James’ voice rises, plaintive and muffled, from somewhere within the cushions. “It’s all over.”

“The end of what, exactly?” 

“My life. The world. All of it.” 

Sirius looks at James with a complex mixture of fondness, exasperation, and bewilderment. “What the hell are you talking about, Prongs?” 

“I can’t do it,” James says. His voice is brimming with a level of misery that would be comical if it weren’t less than an hour before his wedding. “I can’t marry her.”

Startled, Remus stares. Sirius’ eyebrows shoot up. Peter gives them both an anxious, imploring look. They share a moment of silent conspiracy, wordless planning perfected over years of after-hours near-misses in Hogwarts corridors with Argus Filch’s footsteps echoing ever closer. Sirius nods, and Remus and Peter step back. 

“Prongs, are you dying?” Sirius asks loudly. “Are you drunk? What’s going on?” 

“I can’t marry her.” 

“That’s all he’s been saying since you left,” Peter whispers. 

“You’re getting your robes all crumpled, mate,” says Sirius.

James moans. 

For a long moment, nothing happens. Remus glances at the others, then takes a tentative step closer. James moans louder. Remus stops. “What, erm, what exactly is the problem, James?” 

James removes his face from the sofa and turns it towards Remus. His skin is creased from being pressed into the fabric and his formerly slicked-back hair is a disaster. “Can’t do it.”

“All right, but why exactly—”

“BOYS!” The three of them whip around as Marlene McKinnon skids through the doorway. “Oh. Hi, James. Hello. Everything is…fine.” She pauses, squinting at him. “Is…everything…fine?”

“He’s all right,” Remus says hastily. “Just got a bit dizzy from the excitement. Needed to lie down for a second.” Behind him, Sirius and Peter nod vigorously. 

She doesn’t look remotely like she believes them, but wisps of hair are escaping her bun and she’s hiked up her long green dress to her knees and she just generally seems like she has bigger things to deal with than the last-minute histrionics of James Potter. “Lupin. Black. Can I…talk to you outside for a second?”

“Don’t leave me,” Peter whispers, panicked, eyes wide.

“It’s okay, Pete,” Sirius says, clapping him on the shoulder. “Just the usual dramatics. Dump a glass of water over his head and he’ll be fine.”

James plants his face into the couch again and groans loudly.

Remus and Sirius hurry out of the room. 

Marlene shuts the door behind them. “Okay. So. We have a problem.”

“Big enough to need both of us?” Sirius asks, raising an eyebrow. 

“Well. We have two problems. One, the cake.” 

“What’s wrong with the cake?” 

“It’s the wrong cake.” 

Remus and Sirius share an alarmed look. “What?”

“It’s not theirs. It’s got a—a—some…decorations on it, that are not…they are not…anyway the bakery says they can’t do anything because they thought the wedding was next week—”

“This was not my job,” Sirius interrupts, holding up his hands. “I just want to state for the record that this was not a best man job and I will not be held responsible—” 

“No one’s holding you responsible, Black, get a grip.” Marlene rolls her eyes. “James ordered it, I’ll have you know, and Lily’s mum picked it up this morning, but she’s not all that familiar with wizarding shops and I guess she got overwhelmed by a display of floating tarts in the bakery and forgot to check inside the box—”

“How bad is it?” Remus asks. He’s imagining some other couple’s name splashed across the top, possibly in neon pink. He rubs his fingers in the tops of his eye sockets. “Can we fix it?”

“We’re going to have to do something. I would but you have genuinely, truly no idea how long it takes to get a woman ready for her wedding and something’s gone funny with Lily’s hair and Alice is showing people to their seats and Lily’s sister is absolutely useless, won’t do anything but sit there with this pinched expression on her face like there’s something foul under her nose—”

“What’s the second problem?” Sirius interrupts.

Marlene closes her eyes and sighs. “Vernon Dursley.” 

Sirius frowns. “What’s that when it’s at home?”

“Not what, who. Petunia’s boyfriend. He’s a Muggle, of course, but she insisted on bringing him, but she also apparently insisted on not telling him we’re wizards—”

“Oh, no,” Remus groans.

“No one told me this wedding had to be Muggle-proof!” Sirius looks horrified. “There are self-sprinkling rose petals as they walk down the aisle! There’s a choir of singing cupids planned for their first dance!”

“Well, supposedly he’s really dim. Like those Muggles who can’t see the Knight Bus because they don’t believe in magic. I don’t know. Anyway, Lily’s sister has told him we’re all in some sort of strange cult, to explain the robes—”

“Dear god.”

“Yes. So, point is, he’s getting suspicious, and loud, and rude, and Lily’s parents, bless their hearts, are very lovely and very useless, and Petunia is busy with the wedding party—well, busy being judgmental in the general direction of the wedding party—and I thought since all James really has to do is make sure his hair lies flat maybe one of you could look at the cake and one of you could just go and manage this Dursley bloke a little—take him outside or make things up about this cult we’re all in, just—anything—”

“Marlene!” Dorcas pokes her head around the corner. “Are you sorted? Lily’s asking for you, she wants to know if everything is okay—”

“Tell her everything is fine!” Marlene turns to them, palms out. “Guys. Please?” 

“Yeah, yeah, of course,” Sirius says. “We’re on it. Remus, you should take the boyfriend.”

“What? Why?” He’d much rather fiddle with a neon pink cake, like any normal human. 

“Because I’m likely to murder him immediately.”

Remus has to concede that this is true. The three of them hurry to their respective tasks, determination landing on each of their faces. Remus feels an unexpectedly pleasurable jolt of adrenaline as he turns on his heel. It is not that he is happy that things are going pear-shaped, but the skittering twist of urgency that accompanies this last-minute putting out of fires settles familiarly into his skin, a strangely comfortable panic of the sort he always felt at Hogwarts when a Marauders prank went a bit off the rails, which was often. He knows intimately the feeling of parting like this from Sirius: conspirators splitting up to pull strings and plant things under everybody else’s unsuspecting noses. As he speeds down the corridor a great weight lifts from his shoulders and he spares a moment for the realization that not only has he has not felt nearly this light since Hogwarts, he hadn’t known how deeply he’d dug himself into his sadness till just now. 

No time for revelations: he rounds the corner and grinds to a halt in the arched doorway to the big hall where the wedding is to take place. Rows of white chairs draped with tulle and pale pink flowers face a canopied stage. The aisles are filled with chattering guests, a sea of dress robes in peach and seafoam green and pale grey. Remus scans the crowd. He catches sight of James’ parents in the middle of it all, beaming at everyone who makes eye contact, and of a woman who must be Lily’s mother, with bright red hair and a fancy brimmed hat, and—ah, yes. There. A bulky man in his late twenties and a rather dreadful brown suit is standing in the way of the drinks table, complaining loudly to a bemused and wide-eyed group of what seem likely to be somebody’s second cousins that all the men are wearing dresses, and that there’s something distinctly odd about the music.

“I mean, really, where is it coming from?” he asks them, gesturing into the air. In fact its source is a floating harp in the corner, but apparently Vernon Dursley hasn’t noticed.

“Well, it’s spelled, you know,” says one of the second cousins, “the harp’s up over by—”

“Hello,” says Remus hurriedly, cutting in. “Hi. I’m Remus. James’ friend. You must be Vernon Dursley, Lily’s sister’s boyfriend?”

The man turns to him, squinting as he looks him over. His red face can’t seem to choose between a suspicious sneer and a gratified smile at being important enough to be recognized. 

“That’s right. And?”

The second cousins are all gratefully taking the opportunity to escape. Remus feels a strong desire to run after them. “Er…I…heard you…needed something?” 

He didn’t, but as it turns out, Vernon Dursley is not a man to pass up the opportunity to be catered to. “Yes. That’s right. I wanted to know, you see—”

Remus surreptitiously tries to steer him out of the way of the queue of thirsty guests attempting to reach the lemonade, but the man’s as solid and impervious as a bull.

“—I wanted to know if there’s to be any funny business at this wedding. I’m in an important position at work, you know, up for promotion to assistant manager of semi-regional sales, and it’s important that I maintain my reputation. Can’t be seen mixed up in anything fishy, you know.” 

“Where do you, erm—if we could just move away from the drinks table for a bit, I think these people want to get through—where do you work, Mr. Dursley?” 

“Grunnings, Inc.,” says the man, puffing himself up impressively and inching a scant few centimetres to the left. 

Sirius would have murdered him, Remus thinks with a slightly hysterical urge to laugh in the man’s face, and says, “Oh, yes. And what, erm, remind me what you sell?”

“Drills, of course.” He looks faintly shocked that Remus doesn’t know.

“Oh yes. Naturally.” Drills, he thinks, imagining telling this story to the others later, and stifles a giggle.

“Naturally. So you see I can’t be associated with any funny business.”

“When you say ‘funny business’…" 

“Well. Petunia tells me you’re all in some sort of,” he sniffs, casting a hard look around the room, “cult. And if there’s to be any, any odd rituals, or, or devil-worship—”

Remus fights down another laugh. “Oh. No, we’re not—we’re not that sort of cult.” What would Sirius say? “We’re, er, we think of ourselves more as a spiritual circle, anyway. A group of true believers. We believe in—in the healing power of the natural world. Paying respect to the sun, you know, and trees, and…grass…”

Vernon Dursley looks revolted. “Hippie rigmarole, you mean.”

“Mm. Yes. We live as naturally as possible.” Oh: he’s enjoying this. This is fun. If he were Sirius, as daring as Sirius, he’d really push it—

Oh, what the hell. “That’s what the robes are for, you know,” he says, straight-faced. “Keeping as natural as possible. We’re all naked underneath. Closer to the earth, that way.”

A look of sheer horror crosses Dursley’s face. Remus opens his mouth to say something more but out of the corner of his eye he catches a wild movement. Sirius is in the doorway, waving at him in frantic bursts and obviously trying not to be noticed.

“Excuse me, I have to see to something—but do let me know if you need anything else—” 

He leaves Vernon Dursley muttering incoherently and backing slowly away from the rest of the guests. Well, that’ll keep him from getting in everyone’s way, at least.

“Remus,” Sirius hisses as he comes closer. He shoots out a hand and tugs Remus by the wrist. “Come here. Now.” 

Remus allows himself to be dragged. In a small room off the main hall, whose door Sirius shuts firmly before letting go of Remus’ wrist, sits a table with a large white box on top of it. The box is moving slightly. 

“That’s not the cake,” Remus says, appalled, as the box gives a violent shake. 

“That is the cake.”

Carefully, Sirius approaches and whips off the box. 

There is nothing actually wrong with the cake. It is an impressive cake, all told. No pink neon with someone else’s names scrawled across the side. Just simple white frosting and quite artful decorations. The problem is that the decorations are not flowers or curlicues but flames, actual fire that is actually burning, and on top of the cake is a fondant dragon, wings beating, more flames shooting out of its snout. 

“Sirius, what is this?” Remus covers his mouth, aghast. 

“This is the cake for the West Riding Dragon Enthusiast Association. Merlin knows whose cake they’ve been saddled with. Not James and Lily’s, apparently.” 

“Yes, but…you were supposed to fix it.” 

“I’ve been trying!” Sirius pulls distractedly at his hair. “But all I’ve managed to do is turn the dragon purple and make it angry.”

“I’m no better at charms like this than you are,” Remus says. They look at each other despairingly. “You know who is good at charms?” 

Sirius’ eyes widen. “You can’t ask Lily to fix her own wedding cake.”

“Oh, god.” Remus sighs. “Then you know what we have to do.” 

“No.”

“Yes.” 

“It bit me.” Sirius holds up a finger, which is indeed spotted with tiny red toothmarks.

“You’ll have to be brave,” Remus says solemnly. Sirius’ eyes are dancing, and a smile cracks open Remus’ face. “We have to kill that dragon."

Twelve minutes, ten puncture wounds, and three clumps of singed hair later, the remains of a small fondant dragon are spattered across the walls. Sirius is wiping frosting from Remus’ robes and Remus is putting out the last of the flame decorations, which have proven to be extremely stubborn.

“The cake is going to be very plain now,” Remus says, “but at least it won’t try to set anyone on fire.”

“Yes. That’s probably an improvement.”

“Probably. At least James won’t freak out—” Their eyes meet and they scramble suddenly to their feet.

“Oh, no,” says Remus. “Do you think he’s still—”

“We’d better find out.”

He is. James is now lying face-up on the sofa, staring bleakly at the ceiling, and the look of anxiety in Peter’s eyes has been ramped up to panic.

“Where have you been?” he hisses. “Are those—are those scorch marks?”

“Yes. There was a battle. Okay, time to end this.” Sirius marches over to James. “Sit up.”

James shakes his head.

“Sit up, James.”

James does. 

Sirius puts his hands on his hips. “What’s this about?”

James rubs his palms over his face and sighs miserably, guilt creasing his forehead. “I just…I can’t, Sirius. I can’t marry Lily Evans.” He lets out a disbelieving laugh. “Lily Evans, Sirius.” 

Sirius narrows his eyes at his best friend, and Remus can see the moment when Sirius, without needing James to say another word, understands. “Because you think you’re not good enough for her?” he asks. 

Slowly, James nods.

Sirius shrugs. “You’re probably not,” he replies matter-of-factly.

“Sirius!” Peter moans, scandalized. 

“No. Listen, James. For whatever mad reason, this girl wants to marry you. I certainly can’t pretend to understand it. I think you smell like the Quidditch changing rooms and your curry is crap, frankly. Nightmare scenario, spending the rest of one’s life with you. But you’re head over heels for her and if she’s daft enough to feel the same about you, then you get up and you attempt to do something with that appalling mess you’ve made of your hair and you go out there and you fucking marry her.”

“But—”

“You want this. She wants this. You’ve both managed to get to a point where you can admit to each other and everyone else that you want this. That’s got to be some sort of miracle, James. So don’t be a fucking idiot.” 

Don’t be a fucking idiot is not what Remus imagines ideal relationship advice would sound like. But there’s a tenderness in Sirius’ eyes as he looks at James that takes his breath away. James reaches out and squeezes Sirius’ hand, then stands up and smoothes out his dress robes.

“Yes. Yes, you’re right.”

There’s a knock on the door and James’ father sticks his head in. “You ready, James? Time to get going. Good god, what have you done to your hair?”

“This is the true me,” James says gloomily, staring at himself in the mirror. “I suppose she’d better get used to it.”

The ceremony is beautiful, and it seems like everybody cries except for Remus. As soon as the music starts up, something splits inside him—the crack of ice through a glacier, a landmass drifting into the sea. He processes down the aisle arm-in-arm with Dorcas and stands at the front of the hall and listens to James and Lily say their vows and all the while he feels that he is stranded somewhere distant, witnessing everything from a strange faraway angle. He looks across a drippy-nosed Peter at Sirius, who passes James the ring and watches with dark steady eyes as James says, tremblingly, “I do,” and thinks for a moment that he sees the same hovering uncertainty in Sirius’ face that he feels in himself.

Toasts and dancing and the (now dragon-free) cake, and increasingly champagne-drunk guests laughing and shouting and scurrying around the room, and Remus is exhausted. Peter is waltzing diligently with Mary MacDonald and James and Lily are staring stupidly into each other’s eyes and Sirius nudges Remus with his foot and mutters, “Do you want to go sit in a corner somewhere?”

Remus nods gratefully. The table for the wedding party is right at the front of the hall and he’s exhausted from keeping up his smile. They snag a mostly-full bottle of wine and move quietly to a couple of folding chairs at the back of the room, where they can keep an eye on things in case any more fires, literal or figurative, erupt.

Sirius lets out a long breath as they sit.

“Oh my god.”

Remus laughs a little. “Yeah.” 

Sirius lapses into silence. Remus takes a sip of wine straight from the bottle. He’s been drinking responsibly all evening, because somebody needed to, but he’d prefer to be a little less sober than he is right now. Apparently Sirius has the same idea; he takes the wine from Remus and swigs.

“What did you think of the wedding?” he asks. He picks at the label of the bottle, not quite meeting Remus’ eyes. “Honestly.”

Remus hesitates. Honestly—honestly, the adrenaline of the pre-wedding capers has long since worn off, and he hasn’t been able to shake the strange quiet mass of feelings he’s been carrying around since the ceremony began. He’s sinking into them, letting himself fall deeper and deeper. In the world inside his head it is peaceful: saturated with a spreading melancholy, hypnotic, easy, a comfortable quicksand. Here, Remus knows who he is. Here, Remus presses gently on his own bruises and feels their familiar ache. Here, he floats away, letting the bright noises and sharp edges of the world drift apart. 

He’s not quite sure how to articulate what he’s feeling. How to put it into language Sirius will understand.

He makes Sirius wait for his answer, long enough that Sirius begins to turn away. 

A flash of regret as he sees Sirius give up, and he casts out a line. “Weird,” he says. “I thought it was weird.”

Sirius turns back, watching him closely. “Weird how?”

“Erm…” The feeling is there, at the tip of his tongue, but the words to describe it are not. “Like…I just felt sort of…outside of it all. Far away. And…I don’t understand weddings, I think. I don’t understand why people like them.” 

Sirius’s gaze is hooked on his, and at Remus’ last few words he starts to nod. “Yes. Yes.”

Remus blinks, a fluttering of lashes. “Yes?” 

“Yes! It’s—everybody acts like they’re this obvious thing, like they were all born knowing what to do, the flowers, the walking down the aisle, the rings, the vows—but—it’s made up. It’s all made up.” 

Sirius’ voice is keen-edged, eager. 

“I hate—” Remus breathes in. “I hate feeling like—when I was standing up there, I know it looked like I was part of it. Like I believed in it. But I felt…I felt outside somehow, like I wasn’t—and like if they all knew, they’d…they’d…” 

He trails off, flushing, his voice failing, fading into silence.

Sirius opens his mouth, then stops. His rich dark hair, pulled back to expose his handsome cheekbones; his long straight nose; his smooth pale neck: he is elegant, and aristocratic despite himself, and all the surety that is supposed to come with those things has been smudged and shaken as he looks at Remus with the uncertainty of a man approaching a threat in the dark, unseen but palpable, warm and dangerous. “Do you—” He worries at his lip with his teeth for a moment. “Do you feel that way because…you can’t ever get married?” 

Remus swallows. He rubs his thumb over the scar at his wrist.

Sirius’ question sets something trembling inside him. A tug. A pull. A breath of wind at the entrance to a cave, dark, earthy, smelling of old stone and secrets. Inside, snaking vines and teeth and claws and everything Remus has ever buried deep in the ground. A hoard. A cache. The bones and building blocks of who he is. Locked up tight and guarded with his life. 

He is a beast crouched above his treasure. 

He pictures widening jaws and bursts of flame and Sirius fighting dragons.

“Yes. I think so,” he says, in a warm rush barely louder than a whisper. “But…not how you mean it.”

Sirius looks at him, and Remus can see him purposely tamping down the curiosity and keenness in his eyes. There are two ways to approach beasts: with a raised sword, or a soft tread. Remus would never have expected Sirius to choose the latter—but here they are. 

“How do I mean it?” Sirius asks quietly.

“I’m not jealous,” Remus answers. He lets the words escape, quickly, tumbling one after the other into the light: “I don’t wish that were me getting married. I don’t want it. I don’t like it, the whole thing, getting up in front of all your friends and family and proclaiming—declaring—like you have to tell everybody else to make it real, the way you feel about somebody.” 

It’s true. The truth of it is blinding, actually, seeping through him like sun through cracks in a cave, shining into corners, illuminating all his inner bits, burnishing it all gold: he doesn’t want a wedding. Not even if he could have one. He’d be—he’d be embarrassed, standing up in front of all those people, proclaiming his love, when the truth is that’s not where his love lives, in the lights and the music and the ritual of public speech. His love, for better or worse, lives in the shadow on the surface of the moon, and the imprint it makes on the sky when it’s gone.

“You’d rather keep it to yourself,” Sirius says quietly.

Remus tugs on his hair. His eyes feel dazzled, sunspots in his vision. “Yes. No. I mean—I’d rather keep it for myself. And—and for him, for the person I—” 

He remembers the bottle in his hand and takes another drink of wine, staring out over the flower-strewn hall and the laughing guests and the dancing couples and for once he doesn’t wish he were amongst them. 

But he isn’t—that doesn’t mean he isn’t— 

“It’s not that I can’t imagine wanting that,” he bursts out. “I mean, wanting to—to, I don’t know, stick with somebody. I mean, to love someone like that, I’m not saying I don’t get feeling that way, I do feel that way—but it’s the part of it where you have to make it official, and everybody smiles and acts like they understand you, understands how you feel, and I don’t—I don’t recognize that, that’s not the way I feel, not the way I’m in love—it’s—it’s obsessive, it’s huge, it’s—it’s all twisted up inside me, inside who I am, and I can’t just bare that for everyone, slit myself open and, and pull out my guts for them to coo over and make toasts to. That feeling, that love, it’s—it’s mine.”

“And his?” Sirius asks softly. 

And Remus looks at him, called back to himself, to Sirius: cold panic slams through him.

Sirius’ voice is very quiet, his eyes hooded and dark, as he takes in Remus’ horrorstruck expression. “Did you forget you were talking to me?” 

With a tiny, frozen movement, Remus nods. 

“Were you talking…about me?” 

Remus buries his face in his hands. “Oh, god. Oh, god. I—I’m sorry, Sirius, I’m so sorry—”

“For what?” Sirius’ voice is sharp.

“For feeling that way. About you. I didn’t mean to—”

“No. If you want to feel sorry about something, it’s not that.”

“What—then what—”

“How about for not telling me? For not telling me, all this time, how you really felt?”

Remus’ daze lifts. The ice cracks. Outrage sizzles up his spine, zipping through him like a spark. “I did tell you! I told you, I told you, I said—” 

“No you fucking didn’t.” Sirius’ eyes flash. He keeps his voice low, so it doesn’t carry over the music to the people around them, but it’s taut and quivering. “You told me—Jesus, Remus, you—you almost told me. You said—you said everything except what would have been clear enough that I couldn’t misunderstand it, couldn’t second-guess. You said just enough to make me think maybe I knew what you meant and not enough to be sure.”

“Well, that,” Remus is still lit with anger, stung, “that’s because I wanted to make sure you could second-guess! I didn’t want to say anything we couldn’t both pretend I hadn’t said! I wanted us to be able to just—to carry on like we were.”

Sirius goes quiet. He looks down. “Well, what you did is make me worry myself to death, trying to figure out if I was really hearing what I thought I was. You said I’m yours, and I thought—yes, that has to be what he’s saying, and then the next morning you shouted at me for making you eggs, and I just…I didn’t know.” 

“Well, I…” Remus squirms miserably. It’s true. For months now, he’s been opening the door for Sirius and then slamming it closed as soon as he puts a foot inside. It’s true. But, but: “It was better that way, though, wasn’t it? I mean, I should have just kept it all to myself in the first place—I shouldn’t even have said that much.” 

Sirius spreads his hands. “But why, Remus?” 

The answer is so simple, so obvious. The corners of his eyes prickle. He can’t believe Sirius is making him say it.

“Because you don’t feel that way about me. Because you can’t.”

The table closest to them erupts in laughter. Somebody pops a champagne cork: a bang, and a fizz, and a burst of cheers. Sirius takes the wine bottle from Remus and drinks deep. 

“Why?” he asks. “Why can’t I?”

Remus shakes his head. A quick unpleasant twist knots his stomach. “Because. You can’t.” 

Sirius raises his eyebrows. 

“Well, you’re not—you don’t like men that way,” Remus says weakly.

“I’ve been enthusiastically shagging you for months. Try again.” 

Remus looks down at his lap and rubs the scar on his wrist and tries not to choke on the humiliation rising hot in his throat.

“Because people don’t feel that way about me.”

There’s a very long silence from Sirius, and Remus stares at his knees and listens to the music play.

From the corner of his vision he sees his friend shift, and then his hand slides gently under Remus’ chin, cupping it lightly, tilting his head up to meet Sirius’ dark, handsome eyes. 

“I feel that way about you.” 

Remus’ chest stretches tight, and his heart pushes against it. Trying to escape. 

“You can’t,” he says helplessly.

“I do.” Sirius smiles wryly, the corners of his eyes creasing. “It’s been an intense few months, I have to tell you. A lot of ups and downs. A lot of late-night motorbike rides and soul-searching.”

Remus lets out a choked noise, not quite a laugh. 

“Today felt good,” Sirius says. “Like being one of the Marauders again. And I just kept looking at you, and grinning like I couldn’t stop, and I can’t—I can’t pretend it’s not true, Remus. I love you.”

A helpless sound escapes Remus, and his hand presses down on his chest. His gaze moves blindly out over the now-messy tables and the wilting flowers and the sweaty smiling dancers and then back to Sirius, who reaches out as if to take Remus’ hand and Remus almost flinches away, but Sirius is only pressing the wine bottle into his grip.

“Drink,” he says. “Drink that. Then tell me what you want.” 

Remus, obediently, drinks. Obediently, he opens his mouth.

The words are all stuck in his throat, tangled up inside him.

“I dare you,” Sirius says softly.

Remus puts a trembling hand on Sirius’ cheek. Sirius leans into it. Leans in closer. 

Remus could say: wait. Don’t. Not here. No one is looking at them, but they could. They could glance over and see two men nose-to-nose. Closer than they should be. 

He thinks about privacy, and secrecy, and shutting things up so tight they grow like strangling vines into the foundations of who he is. He thinks about the difference between standing up in front of everyone he knows and saying I do and kissing his best friend in an empty back corner of a crowded room. He thinks about the difference between keeping it to himself and keeping it for himself and then he looks at Sirius’ wanting, waiting eyes and leans in even closer and kisses him on the mouth.

Just a press of lips, warm and light. 

They pull away, but not too far.

“I want you,” Remus says. “I love you.”

Sirius’ eyes light up: gold sparks, a burst of sun. “Thank you,” he says, “for telling me.” 

They hold hands, and watch their friends be happy.

James and Lily find them in the corner when most of the guests are gone and the night is winding down. Peter follows after, panting a bit and smelling like the cloying oversweet jasmine of Mary MacDonald’s perfume. 

“We just wanted to say thank you,” James begins, and then he falls silent, looking at their joined hands. 

Peter squeaks. 

“Problem?” Sirius asks quietly. 

James shakes his head, a quick jerk. “Never.”

Lily bends down and kisses Remus on the cheek. Then she kisses Sirius, too, startling everyone.

“Whichever of you got the fire-breathing dragon off the top of our wedding cake,” she says, “thank you.”

“The what?” James asks, rounding on her with widening eyes.

“Don’t worry about it,” she and Sirius say in unison. James sinks down to the floor, looking dazed. Lily pulls up the white froth of her skirts unceremoniously and sits down next to him, leaning against his shoulder. He puts his hand around her waist. His hair, if possible, is even worse than it was before the ceremony.

“What a day,” says Peter, pulling up a chair.

“What a day,” Sirius agrees.

“As much as I loved every second of it,” James says, “let’s not do it again.” 

“I have no plans to,” Lily replies, and yawns widely. She stretches out and lays her head in James’ lap, as if they were all sitting on the floor of their flat late at night, just the five of them, empty Butterbeer bottles strewn about and the lights low. 

Remus feels a great swell of happiness overtake him. Warm with wine and fondness, he soaks in every detail of the moment: Lily’s red hair against James’ black robes, the shine of sweat on Peter’s brow, the loose, close grasp of Sirius’ hand in his. He memorizes the texture of his feelings, the pushing, expanding sensation of love and affection threatening to overflow his borders and drown them all. 

“Storing it all up for later?” Sirius murmurs in his ear. 

Startled, Remus turns to him. He’s smiling a little, and looking at Remus like he knows him.

“Yeah,” Remus says. “Yeah, I am.”

Sirius smiles wider. “Just make sure to save some for now.” 

Outside, suddenly, the wind picks up, and below the music and the dregs of laughter and conversation, they can hear it rattle the windows and howl at the doors. But inside, there’s still light and warmth; inside, the weather holds.