Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“We recognise the sacredness of life and that every person has inherent dignity and worth. Our human rights and responsibilities are founded on this essential, shared human dignity.” 

-https://cssa.org.au/resources/catholic-social-teaching

Despite his avidly religious upbringing, Remus had never had an encounter with a proper, fully ordained and pledged to God priest before. His town only had a pastor, who, though he acted like the supreme vessel for God’s word and will, also had a wife and didn’t ever wear the black cassock often associated with the position, and had more skeletons than holy items in his closet. 

And to say that he certainly hadn't expected his very first experience with one to happen in a supply closet, while he was haphazardly tugging a uniform skirt down his legs, a boy's trousers and jumper clutched to his taped chest because he hadn't yet clasped the buttons on the cotton dress shirt, so it hung limply at his sides. 

He couldn't have known that one of the many priests leading the young adults onto a bus that was meant to take them to the reform school - nestled far from any towns on the rocky coast - had seen him wander off in an effort to find a private place to change out of the girl's uniform and into the boy's one before he boarded. 

He especially couldn't have predicted that he'd be followed into the little church they all gathered outside of; the home parish for the school that sponsored struggling young men and women and claimed to educate them for a life of loving and serving God and their neighbors. 

That the aforementioned priest would even open the door to the supply closet without knocking was startling, but that wasn't what had Remus frozen with the circle of fabric around his ankles after having thrown the trousers at the offending, open entrance to the dark room with a shout. 

No, Remus hugged the jumper tighter to his chest, eyes blown wide, because the priest who caught his pants - even with the look of shock and his mouth agape as he lowered them from his face - was obscenely gorgeous .

Properly fit, he couldn’t have been more than a few years older than Remus, who was nearly eighteen. He looked young enough to still be at a university, made to look a little older only by the Roman collar band around his neck, the single pop of color on his stuffy clerical outfit; though the clothes fit more tightly to the man’s body than Remus thought they ought to. 

Behind the tortoiseshell, round glasses he wore were eyes like amber - looking like they should glow but made dull by the oppression of the holy spirit on his angelic shine - and they stared down at Remus's pants bunched in his hands past the strong bridge of his nose before trailing over the floor towards Remus's feet. 

His hair curled wildly around his head, ending near his cheek bones in waves like a crooked halo; dark, though, like something from the depths of hell sent to mimic divinity. He brushed it back from his eyes with his hand, bronze naturally but also with a sheen like he spent a lot of time outside.

Remus's eyes caught on the split of his lips, both plump and separated by white teeth that clacked unsurely when the priest stuttered, "What.. Uh, what in the world are you doing in here ?!" 

“I..I can explain!” Remus assured hurriedly, although his excuses - which were admittedly not well thought out - died on his tongue as the man - or God, Remus might just have reason to actually believe in one, now - stared at him incredulously. “The.. it was the.. I was in the wrong, um, uniform..” 

The priest's nose crinkled as he struggled, mulling over his words like they tasted bitter before he asked slowly with a gesture towards the floor, “Is this a.. sex .. thing?”

“W-what? A sex..” Remus’s eyes widened impossibly further as he realized what the man was suggesting. Glancing down past the boy’s jumper he held to the skirt around his ankles, he swallowed hard, voice coming out higher than he meant for it to when he frantically shook his head, “N-no, no, No! ” 

“Then what..” The priest hastily looked away after glancing towards the skirt again. 

“I’m a boy,” Remus chirped, quietly and unconvincingly, to someone he’d never met before and who would probably force him back into the skirt and whip him for saying so. 

That was the entire reason he was in this mess to begin with. Remus was a boy and nobody believed him and everyone in his small village called him monstrous names for this belief he'd held since he was small. 

Wrong and sinful and confused and worse . 

Even his own father. 

Lyall Lupin, at his wits end with the shame Remus’s adamance in his identity had brought to their family in a community of staunch and strict catholicism, had finally had enough, and had enrolled him in a reform school with the reminder that this was a kindness, because he could have sent him somewhere much harsher for his condition and with the hope that Remus would come out of the year spent “finding God again” as what everyone thought he should be; a woman. 

But Remus had other ideas. A plan to prove his identity through the very God his father and their community worshiped, so that it would be irrefutable. 

Hence, the changing of clothes in a supply closet before their departure for a year of isolated, religious schooling. Though, his plan had only just started with the theft of a uniform and was now foiled before he’d even made it to the school, because a priest had caught him in the act and stood in front of him plainly seeing the truth of the body he was born into. 

He swallowed hard and raised his chin, because at the very least Remus thought he could take the verbal rebuke and disgust without letting show his dignity in tatters with the stupid, plaid fabric pooling over his feet. 

Hate speech and Godly rage was not what came, though, and neither was any look of disgust like he anticipated- was used to.  

It was only confusion that shined like rays of the sun on the priest's face, melting off into understanding as the heat of his gaze roamed over Remus’s body slowly and curiously, and by the time the look landed on his face, the man’s lips were pursed and his jaw tense, but his eyes were soft, almost.. warm. 

With a short and stilted nod, the priest held out the wrinkled bundle of his dark blue trousers towards Remus. “The bus leaves in less than five…?” 

“Remus,” He blinked dumbly as he said his name aloud. Not the one written down or said around him constantly in reference to him, but the one he thought in his head. The one he prefered. “Remus Lupin, Sir.” 

“I expect you to be on it, Remus. Properly dressed in the.. correct uniform.” The priest gestured down with his chin to the pants he still held out. 

Shakily, Remus accepted them with a nod. “Of course, Sir.” 

Their fingers brushed, and the priest looked down at them oddly, mouth opening and then closing like he was deciding against whatever words had tried to leap from his throat. Dropping his hand to his side, and with another glance towards the skirt at Remus’s ankles, he backed out of the room and shut the door behind him. 

Still in shock, Remus stood there a number of seconds longer before deciding he had no time to think too deeply about the entire embarrassing interaction. Kicking off the skirt - which he left in an abhorrent pile on the closet’s floor - he tugged his pants on and fixed his shirt, throwing the jumper over top. After brushing his fringe backwards from his forehead, he grabbed his pack and rushed through the church towards the front doors on quick heels. 

He didn’t look around to see if the priest had waited for him outside of the closet, or even if he could see him standing amongst his peers and the other leaders of the church still standing around; he had a bus to catch, a religion to pretend to fall prey to the trappings of, and a father to prove wrong. 

*

The bus ride was long, achingly so. He was at the back of the loud vehicle, tuned out from the world as he was apt to do in order to filter out the abundance of voices all talking over each other. It was eager chatter that permeated around him, everyone antsy and getting out the last of their unrepented musings before they would no doubt be silenced by the staunch atmosphere inside of the school’s grounds. 

The rules of St. Mary's Reform College, which each unfortunate detainee’s parents would have no doubt gotten along with their introductory pamphlets, were stringent. Ways set in stone when stones were still the primary methods of building a society. The discipline used to ‘encourage’ the respect of these rules would be standard at first; detentions with lines and chores, and then branching off to be, in more severe cases, corporal.

Remus wandered what consisted as a case ‘severe’ enough to warrant laying hands on someone in the eyes of men and women of God, and then went on to correct himself because their savior was an active believer in physical tests and repercussions, and then to wonder what methods of physical punishment would be employed. 

Remus was always too curious for his own good. 

Always a little lacking in the obedience department, too. Not the loudest to break rules but surely doing it the most thoroughly, most bold, when he did. 

And yet he remained fairly unworried, though he was thinking of the worst ways a priest may punish a boy, because he had undeniably been through much worse, much crueler punishments. 

Still, he would have to try his hardest to avoid such things because for one, getting into large amounts of trouble didn’t actually serve his purposes for being here and two, besides one priest who Remus was decidedly not thinking about punishing him.. he couldn’t let the other’s see his body with their eyes, or feel it with their hands, or punish it in any way that may expose the nature of his complicated situation. 

He would have to be extra quiet in all of the ways that he was planning on thwarting the precious rule book. Sneaky, like the snake that slithered its way into the garden, except he had no intention of making his presence known. 

He only agreed to seek acceptance in the kingdom of God so that the other occupants of the sinful realm he was stuck in would see and accept him in kind for who he was. 

Is.

Remus eyed the register that the priest at the head of the bus held, assessing his tight hold on it with a crude eye and pondering just how he was going to manage to get it and change his name. He'd worked under the assumption that there would be a sign-in table or something, but when he'd come out of the church he'd been promptly directed by a pudgy, curly haired man to board without even being asked his name. 

Which was good for him, because at the very least, he hadn't had to verbally try to explain why his name wouldn't be on the register; his excuse for that was even worse than the stammered ones he'd given the Hadean looking priest in the closet.

Late entry, he'd have said in the heat of the moment. Poor timing on his parents' part, he was keen to study the word of God though, so if that priest could just kindly write his name down at the bottom and take him along for the ride that would be swell ..

Luck he hadn't counted on had aided him thus far, but he wasn't about to start counting on it now. Actively he thought through stealing it - he was very good at stealing things, the result of being a single income household and hungry all of the time - through damaging it, and through relying on hope that these priests didn't have things like wifi or printers out at their destination, which would no doubt be like a convent. He even wondered lastly if he could just claim a typo and a wrong click of a button, like he himself had made the mistake of doing many times when using the only computer available to him in his town's little library. 

After the impossibly long ride and far after the disappearance of modern life, he didn't have the opportunity for either of the first two options. The man with the clipboard led the group towards a small steepled building at the front of several larger ones and Remus had foolishly let himself be one of the last off of the bus. By the time he stopped admiring the scenery around him for what it undeniably was - gorgeous - the priest had gotten too far ahead and left him with no option but the most foolish; the third. 

They all filed in through the double doors slowly, and so from where he stood he could continue to glance around while he worked on his argument, taking in, besides the copious amounts of forestry, the structures sat amongst it; looking rather like the trees and roots were trying to absorb them one dreary wall at a time. 

The buildings behind were somewhat hidden by the church, but Remus could see enough to know they were stuffy looking and old, with wide windows, though half were stained glass. Walls that might once have been a rich brown were now faded eggshell and russet in others, looking like they'd been kept functional or just livable at very best.

He hoped the insides were nicer, because from the outside the buildings gave the impression of something straight out of a 1950's boarding school. 

Two taller buildings sat parallel to each other, presumably with the church opening up to a courtyard between. Behind either of said buildings were ones a smaller size and with smaller windows, too. 

School buildings and dormitories, except it was impossible to tell yet which was which. There were gates around as well, directly at the rear of the second pair of buildings. The bus had to call ahead to pass through the entrance and looking behind him, Remus noted they were quickly closed once its wheels carried them through. 

Possibly the newest looking thing he could see were their tall, wrought iron bars. 

Like a literal prison. Remus had anticipated being trapped here, had been trapped one way or another for his entire life and was used to that , but faced with the tall and imposingly barbed wire fencing as evidence, the fact now felt almost unbearably suffocating. 

Truly, he was finding it harder to breathe the closer he got to having to explain himself. Stepping out of the dewy air and into the church's main room of worship made that struggle worse. The room was lit by old and yellowed overhead lighting, and the sun from outside - shielded by trees as it was lowered to its early evening position - bathed the room in even darker yellows, oranges and reds from the many painted glass fixtures in place of clear glass, making it seem smaller than it was. 

For more cozy and intimate gatherings, he supposed, or if you didn't really want to be there, like the walls were going to close in on you at any given moment. 

Jesus Christ, the Virgin Mary, crosses and blooming flowers and doves and shapes of all sorts of disfigured reflections' glared at him, judging him from their respective positions in the air, and Remus raised his hand to his mouth and chewed on his nails as was his nervous habit. 

He tore at the skin as he stood there, even though he knew he would curse his own teeth in an hour or two when his fingers pained him. But whether or not he would suck at them in the privacy of a dorm or in the back of some scary cell meant to confine sin until he was ready to repent for ‘being born wrong’ would depend on his ability to lie through said teeth, so he didn't wish them gone just yet.

Worse still, as the line shortened, he realized with a mounting horror that they were being divided to either side of the room by gender. 

Girls were being sent to sit on the right along with modestly garbed female leaders, and boys were sent to sit on the left behind a line of priests. 

Most were old, gray haired and with growling looks on their faces. The men were mostly disinterested, and the women very obviously evaluated each girl as she chose her seat in the pews. 

There were a few younger; a woman who wore an apron over her long dress instead of a more solid representation of the girls uniform, another who was darker skinned and worried over a microphone which she tapped and made screech repeatedly, and then of course, the pudgy priest with the damned clipboard, who couldn’t have been more than thirty-five. 

With the clear of a throat, Remus realized how quiet it had gotten around him. Those sitting had promptly stopped chopsing, and those in line only made noises of boredom; the stray yawn or the tapping of their feet. 

He was busy trying to count just how many people he would be outting himself to - five or six priests, the same amount of women, thirty or so peers - when ten of those people in the line in front of him dwindled to nine, eight, seven, and from a door in the back that opened quickly emerged the devilish looking priest from Remus's closet fiasco earlier in the day. 

He looked around the room with a considerate glance, his eyes catching on Remus with what he could only take as a disinterested blink before jumping to the front of the line.

After a roll of his tongue underneath his bottom lip - which Remus absolutely did not watch avidly - he approached the stouter priest with ease, a gentle smile on his face as he leaned in and said something quietly to the man that Remus couldn't hear. 

Clipboard priest chuckled, and gave a confused arch of his brow, then shrugged, handing over the clipboard and walking off towards the seats as the handsome one - really, it should be illegal for someone so lush to be in a celibate profession - took over dividing the remaining line of youth. 

Seven became six, then five, and four, and while the last three ahead of him were sorted into their obvious seats, Remus found himself even more anxious to have to further justify the "confusion" he was about to claim. 

He hadn't prepared to make his argument to a man who had already seen him in - or rather, slipping out of - a girl’s uniform skirt . 

Three people dwindle to two, one, and by the time it came his turn to step up to to the priest, Remus was sure he was sweating from his nerves, which shook underneath his skin and made his body - sore from the ride and sore in general as it often was - feel like he'd run a race instead of sitting still on a hard bus seat for hours.

The priest looked at him briefly, then back down at the papers pinned in place, clicking the pen in his hand. "Remus Lupin?" 

The taste of iron exploded in his mouth and Remus dropped his hand in a fist to hide the damage he'd done to his nail bed, lifting his chin and opening his mouth to begin to attempt to explain.

No words came out though, halted when the priest swiped his pen across a name on his list and with another quick glance at Remus, nodded his head to the boy's side of the room. "Have a seat." 

He blinks several times, frozen where he stands in front of the priest until it catches the man’s attention once more and earns him an expectant expression that has him clutching his bag tighter and scurrying off to his side of the pews. He chooses an aisle seat, several down from a group of boys who he can hear quietly snickering, and staunchly ignores the noise in favor of watching the curly haired priest climbing the slightly raised steps to the stage. 

He clearly aims to give a welcome speech, taking the microphone from its holder and pulling forward a chair from the altar table behind him. He could stand - earn the awe of the crowd before him as he does so - large and imposing, but instead he sits on said chair. 

Backwards. 

He spreads his legs, resting them open like an invitation with his feet on either side of the seat, and he leans forward on his arms against the back of it, aiming a warm smile around the room as he clears his throat into the mic. 

Several of the youth in the pews, and even a couple of priests in the front, cringe from the high pitched, tuning noise it emits.

The priest chuckles, lowering it from his mouth when he mutters, "Sorry, sorry. Technology-.." 

Remus smirks at his fumbling, it makes him seem so incredibly… human. Less godly. 

"Anyhow. Welcome, everyone, to St. Mary’s Reform Collage. My name is Father James Potter, and I’ll be the priest overseeing your individual studies and progress throughout your stays here.” His words sound rehearsed, bored, and he says them with the confidence of a man who’s said them many times before. 

“I can already see a few promising faces amongst this semester's crowd, I do believe you’ll be positive additions to our existing class. I’m excited to meet with each of you to determine where you’re starting in your educational and spiritual journeys with us, and to track your advancement to the end of the year.” His smile seems wider, more genuine then, and Remus is enraptured by the gentle, heartwarming spread of his lips, like he truly cares about the students growth. 

And his name . 

James. James. It’s fitting. like the saint, the “one who follows”, he wears the vestiges of a dying religion and teaches a school dedicated to a God that loves all of his children, but doesn’t , all because.. well, Remus doesn’t know why a man who looks like him, who’s so clearly stifled by his circumstances, would devote himself to something so oppressive. Something that dulls him, obviously. 

But he wants to. 

He's made more curious by each memorized word he speaks why James isn't doing something more reticent of his shine. 

“Ladies, your classes will primarily consist of teaching from your Matron’s, though you will join the boys twice weekly for mass, and at mealtimes. Those are as follows; Breakfast at 8:30am, Lunch at 12:30pm, and supper at 5:30pm, except on Wednesdays when we serve supper at 5pm to ensure that everyone is ready for Wednesday evening mass and 6pm, and Sundays when breakfast is moved towards 9am to allow for our 7am service that morning. Services are, of course, mandatory.”

This is where Remus expects there to be a gentle rolling of groans through the seated students, and Father James must as well, because he pauses. The crowd smartly stays quiet, though, and with a pleased nod he continues. 

“Ladies, your dormitories are in the second building on my right,” Father James extends his arm to gesture towards Remus’s left. “And gentleman, your dormitories are the second building on your right.” 

“It goes without saying, but you’re to stick to your respective assigned dorms. There'll be no mixing pools. There is also a curfew, you’re expected in your rooms by 9pm and lights off is at 10:30pm. Each building has an adult housed on the bottom floor who will do rounds in the morning and the evening. The rest of the priests and matron’s are housed separately, at the very end of campus, and those buildings are off limits to students. You’ll have your classes in the buildings at the front of your dormitories. Classes are in ninety minute sessions, and you’ll join one of four existing schedule groups, which have already been assigned and have been placed in the 'news and notifications' folders on the outside of your room’s doors.” 

Several yawns sound from around him as Father James talks, and Remus is admittedly just as bored, but he listens keenly because the croon of his voice is a gentle and mesmerizing melody, even uninterested as he, himself, seems. 

“Well. Now that all of that is out of the way.. I know you’ve all had a long trip here, and would probably like to get settled before supper. Ms. Mary will lead you girls to your dorms and show you to your rooms while she explains in greater detail the rules and expectations for your stay here, and then nearing five you can find her in the common room of your dorms and she’ll lead you south to the Great Hall. Though she isn’t the patron saint that our facilities are named after, she is lovely." He aims a cheesy, satisfied smile at the ladies, who giggle. "So I hope that in time you’ll find yourselves comfortable enough to go to her for anything you may need. I’ll be showing you boys to yours, and meeting you in your common room to do the same.” 

Pushing to a stand, Father James adds one more important reminder to the end of his speech, tone gone serious as he does. “And a reminder.. unsanctioned trips off of the church grounds are prohibited. We provide what necessity products you may need, and there is ample time given to enjoy the courtyards during breaks and the weekends, but no students may leave the grounds, except in expressly approved and chaperoned cases.” 

The silence that this garners is deafening. Everyone already knew this, but to hear it.. Remus’s hand subconsciously raises to his throat, and he drags his nails across his skin in an attempt to burn away the phantom itch there. 

“Right. And again, welcome. Each of us," He waves his hands towards the adults in the room, "is so happy to serve the Lord by teaching you, through his word, how to do the same.” 

The sentiment worsens the strangled sensation. 

The foreboding sense of suffocation . 

The walls he'd forgotten were hugging his peripheral draw in, worrying his breath. 

Reminding him that he has to spend a year here, pretending that he believes this drivel. But, he thinks as he stands and thankfully works his way out of the pews to follow in the group of boys behind Father James, who leads them past the raised stage to another set of double doors at the back of the little church, at least the view is nice. 

Trees, and greenery, and curls like forest brush atop the straight and sturdy spine of a man made to look hugged by the clear night in the black clothing he wears.. 

He shuts down the train of thought carrying him away before it can carry on down Father James's backside, because that , well.. 

It’s certainly a good thing that he doesn’t actually believe in catholicism, or he might just be smited on the spot for his thoughts about a priest. 

They walk down cool colored concrete paths to their right, around the school building to the ones that are meant to house them. Remus glances behind him more than once, taking in the open courtyard in the middle of the oval line of buildings that surrounds it. 

There’s trees that line the footpath down the middle, benches spread throughout, a few darkened corners between buildings. It’s empty of students - those who are presumably still in class - and it’s.. open, but with the stone and the gates and the giant cross on the back of the church they’d just exited, Remus can’t help but to still compare it to a prison yard. 

The housing building itself is rather cold inside, despite the warmer weather. The walls are beige, the hallways long and the rooms themselves are guarded by old wooden doors with golden number plates resting on the middle panel of each. They start at the top of the building to place students in the empty spaces there, which Remus thinks lazily is a fire hazard, surely. 

There are only two other students and Remus left when they reach the open rooms at the bottom, the last hallway only half filled.

“Gideon, Fabian, you boys will go in this one here. I assume the two of you will be used to sharing?” Father James nods his head towards the pair, and it’s only as they turn to let themselves into the room that Remus notices that they look startlingly similar. 

If not.. the same. 

Brothers, or more aptly, twins. 

"All our life, Father," One nods. 

"Unfortunately," The other elbows him. Remus can’t help but smile at the innocent antagonism between them; lighthearted and fun. He’d often wished for that growing up, but he was an only child, and his peers definitely meant to gut him with the elbows they through his way. 

Father James chuckles, and with a shake of his head he jovially reprimands, "Don't cause any trouble now, or I'll seperate you." 

"Yes, Sir." The second brother nods, and like two sides of a coin the other takes up the playfully mannerisms.

"Aye, aye, captain." He solutes.

They close the door behind them and then it’s only Remus and the handsome priest left in the hall. Remus shifts on his feet, looking across to the adjacent door because he expects to be roomed there, the next available one. But instead, James turns on his heels and heads further down the hall. 

Remus follows, confused, quietly asking, “Where are we going?” 

“Your room.” Father James shrugs without turning around. 

Four doors down and one of the farthest in the hallway from the main entrance but before the bend of the corner is a room without a number plate, and Father James stands in front of it as he digs around in his pocket, pulling out a set of keys. 

They’re haphazard, all different sizes, with several different keychains attached. 

The other dorm rooms didn’t lock . 

“I admit it’s a bit unconventional, but given the circumstances.. I can’t in good conscience room you with the others.” 

Remus’s heart has become good friends with his stomach over the years, sinking from its perched position in his chest when he’s humiliated, embarrassed, treated differently, like a girl, and now is one of those times. Sullenly, he nods, dropping his chin to stare at the floor as Father James pushes open the door to the room, continuing on. 

“This is one of the rooms used for the priests who stay in the building, but it’s my turn this semester and I have my own, just around the corner, so.. this one will be yours. If anyone asks why you aren’t sharing a room, you tell them to come directly to me, okay?” 

“I understand..” Remus bites at his lip after he answers, taking a step in to glance past the priest currently singling him out. The room is spacious, a kitchenette to one side and divided from the twin bed on the other by a small table in the middle. There’s a door to the right, a bathroom, he thinks. 

“What.. what do you understand?” Father James’s wary tone has him looking up, realizing how close his steps have landed him. The both of them fill out the doorway, and quickly Remus moves past and drops his bag on the little countertop. 

“Why I’m not allowed to share a room like everyone else.” He answers, knowing how petulant he sounds. How silly. Of course, this priest wouldn’t let him share with a boy, he’d said it earlier in front of everyone that they were to stick to their respective dorms. And anyway, he probably still thought this was a sex thing, and as a pious man he couldn’t possibly condone- 

“Allowed?” Father James takes a step into the room, and then another, nearly closing the space between them. His foot knocks the leg of one of the table's two chairs, and he looks down at it in shock, as if he hadn’t meant to let his feet carry him so far, like Remus hadn’t just moments ago. He sets the key - removed expertly from the keyring - down on the table. “This isn’t.. some sort of refusal of rights, Remus.” 

“What is it then?” His tone is sharper than he intends it to be. 

“Protection,” Father James rushes out. The assertion stuns him, so at odds with the persecution he’d been expecting. “The other boys share.. bathrooms, sleeping spaces, there are no locks preventing them from barging in. I assume you need more.. privacy, then those rooms could afford you, given what I saw of your.. chest.”

Remus’s face heats unexpectedly, and he brings his arms up automatically to cross, covering the body parts in question. He’s tall, and his breasts have always been smaller than those around him, perky but not heavy with fat, easy to bind but necessary to bind all the same. 

“This room is.. the best I can do to give you those things, to ensure that you’re as safe at this school as you deserve to be.” 

“Why would you do this for me? Any of this?” Remus asks incredulously, meeting his eyes with a determination to know, because this priest, this man has no reason to be protecting him .

Letting him change his clothes in that broom closet.   

Stepping in and changing his name on the student register. 

Leaving it unsaid, the specific things making him different from the peers he means to emulate, both to him and to others, and taking it on as his responsibility to make these allowances for Remus to be.. comfortable. 

If anything, he has every reason to be doing the opposite of these things, same as the rest of the people in his life, claiming religion as their justification for hatred. 

God’s servant meets his gaze with a confident look, demanding truth. “You told me you’re a boy. Did you lie?” 

“No, Sir.” Remus pledges, with all of the honesty and surety that placing your hand upon the face of a bible relays. 

“Then I’ve done nothing,” Father James shrugs, as if it’s that easy for him to accept Remus as he is. As if it's as simple as Remus saying so for him to believe him , see him , and no one has ever been so readily agreeable to the truth right in front of them as this man is being now, not even Remus himself, faced uneasily with a mirror. “Have you read the bible, Remus?” 

Fuck. Once was heady, but now twice, three times, Remus has never heard his chosen name said alloud to him so many times , so easily falling from the older man’s lips like praise each time he says it, and it makes Remus sort of ache with the desire to hear it said in ample tones, connotations, maybe even slower, deeper, purred.. 

Groaned..

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Focus. 

Swallowing hard, Remus answers, “No, Sir. Not.. entirely. I’ve been to church since I was little, though.” 

Father James nods, “In Romans 15:7, Paul teaches us that we should all work towards living in harmony. He says, “Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God.”, and.. all I am doing, is listening to the scripture as it’s written.” 

“God.. is your reason for accepting me?” His voice is laced in whispy disbelief. 

The priest moves closer, still. The clean scent of vanilla wafts forward, not the imitation kind but something fresh from the bean. “Amongst.. other reasons. You’ll be safe rooming here. Although..” 

His amber eyes glance down, catching on Remus’s sleeves. His stiff posture goes limp when Father James reaches out, and Remus is shocked by the impossibly soft glide of his fingers over and around the delicate length of his wrist. Carefully, the priest pulls his hand from its position tucked into his other arm, and holds it up between them. 

His thumb encourages Remus’s shirt sleeve down- left unbuttoned at the cuff and only an inch, but the brush of his nail along the sensitive vein running into his palm and the intense gaze lingering on his damaged skin makes him feel naked . His skin flames, fueled red by the furious pumping of blood in his chest at the featherlight but insistent contact. 

He watches Father James's eyes delicately follow the blotches of pinkened, raised blemishes with a curious melancholy as he says very softly, almost afraid, “I’m going to ask that you stay far away from the kitchenette, Remus..” 

“Those aren’t from a kettle,” Remus whispers dejectedly, and a little further embarrassed. The marks are a few of many, scattered around his body like a map of all of the attempts to fix him (even some of his own ) that were made before he was finally sent away. 

Sent here. 

To this school that is supposed to do him worse than marr his already ill-fitting skin. 

He looks away from the priest’s intensifying stare, having seen the dawning of understanding cross his lovely features far too quickly. The shame of being born wrong like brand marks - some literally pressed in with heated iron - against his fawn colored skin. 

“Somebody.. did this to you?” If looks can kill, that tone could be considered blasphemous, sounding ready to plan murder as it does. Gravelly and low and dangerous, and the holy man in front of him sounds so ready to rip his white collar from his neck and fall from grace in order to avenge Remus .

“Multiple.. people.” Remus grits out, unused to the subject. It’s common knowledge in his town, where the perpetrators go about their lives unpunished, why he looks the way he does. 

“It was a long time ago.” 

The words rush out, not because he’s gotten over the hatred he’s endured or because it’s okay what he went through, but because the fingers around his wrist tighten minutely, and when he braves Father James’s face again there are the first sparks of unrestrained flames in his eyes. In a juxtaposition to how he was feeling previously in the day, Remus feels the need to wet them in order to avoid an entirely unnecessary explosion right in front of him. 

Like underneath his skin lives the sun, blazing and untouchable, a threat to everything around it, and the only thing keeping it at bay is the cross hanging down from around his neck, which Remus somehow metaphorically tugged at. 

As if a demon is restrained by the blessing of Christ, holy water endowed religion, and they share experience with the burn of it. 

He looks lost in it. This anger which fights its way out from the inside, and cautiously as the trickle of water from a low pressure faucet, Remus asks, “Father James.. Are you alright?” 

The grip on his wrist tightens a little further, stinging his skin with the slightest of twists. It’s a bearable prickle, one that shoots like lightning through to his elbow and follows a grounding path; but not all the way to his feet. 

Past the tight plain of his stomach and straight to his cunt, decorated with the round swell of his pink cock which practically twitches with the sweet screw of pain through his body. 

He gasps, a short and light sound, drawing the priests eyes up to his lips. 

“Am I.. are you ?” He sounds so far away when he speaks and incredulous . Words carried forward by a suspicion that Remus is not alright, and though it’s not what the priest means by what he’s asking, Remus answers with a glance towards where they’re blissfully - alarmingly - connected.

“You’re.. I mean.. should you be..” 

“Oh,” Father James says breathlessly as his eyes follow Remus’s to where he has a hold of him, fingers softening to reveal a path of newer redness underneath the pads of them. 

“I’m so-,” The priest starts to apologize, but as if in a trance, he raises Remus’s hand, bringing it closer to his face. 

“Don’t be,” Remus murmurs. 

The interaction gentled, his entire body thrums with a new sort of nervousness. The kind that feels like radio static, he could close his eyes and sink into a bath of it, focusing only on the little lights dancing between their joined skin. 

The thumb against the inner side of his wrist traces further down the line of his life, slowly dragging his sleeve with it to reveal more muddled skin, more marks, more places for the rest of his fingers to brush along as he trails down to Remus’s elbow, raising goosebumps as he goes. 

When the crook of his arm is traced with an inquisitive and interested touch, he can no longer keep the whine that works its way up swallowed, and it spills under his breath, which comes in a wondrous puff. 

“I’m sorry.” Father James says again, this time rougher, like he can’t help but to touch Remus first and apologize after he’s committed a cardinal sin, and Remus will let him, because it feels like something reverential when all he’s ever felt has been disgust wielded against his softened surface. Remus is incapable of telling him to stop, doesn’t want to, the pain in his body hindered by the floating sensation that this man’s delicate attention is causing. 

“I’m so sorry,” He struggles, and his ragged breath is warm where it brushes the palm of Remus’s hand. 

Remus’s eyes flutter closed, his fingers curling, which makes his knuckles brush against the flushed skin of Father James’s cheek. Satin soft and tempting, he lets his loose fist lay there. 

He doesn’t know - and is entirely uncaring of - how long they stand there. 

Seconds, hours, an eternity far sweeter than any after life, but over far too quickly and with another whispered apology, the calmed man’s fingers dust lightly along his elbow before leaving his skin entirely. It leaves the indentations of his regretfully innocent touches unnaturally cold. 

“No one will hurt you like that here.” He finishes, his voice threatening to break. Father James steps away as Remus’s hand falls from his cheek to befriend his side again, and he opens his eyes to see the windows to the rampant soul shutter closed over the cooling ginger gaze, darkened by the dilation of his pupils. “Not if I can help it.” 

“Thank you, Father.” It’s a silent plea for the man to step in again, to touch him again, but like all of his prayers, it goes unanswered. 

Even, maybe, punished. 

Father James turns towards the exit with only an uneasy nod in parting, and then leaves him to stew in his confusion and desire alone in the startlingly empty room, closing the door behind him.

There's a buzzing left in his absence, in Remus's ears, created by the conflicting ramifications of his feelings after a swipe of grace against some of his oldest scars. 

Because it was admittedly only a few moments between them, if that, and to Father James they were probably nothing more than a forgettable and timid search for understanding. 

An outraged examination of the harm that sheltered zealots could exact on someone the priest saw as undeserving of it. 

A promise of protection that most likely comes very easily to good people. 

But to Remus, who was pretty sure no one had touched him so gently since long before he could remember, and certainly not while acknowledging and validating his identity so irrefutably, a few moments was all it took for him to develop a crush on a fucking priest. 

A rather explicit one, if the dampness in his boxers had any light to shed on his finely tuned state of arousal. 

Whether he would make it through the year and graduate with a renewed and blind eyed baptism from God and return home with a smug stamp of approval on his manhood was undecided, but one was thing was for sure.. regardless of his success in his religious endeavors here, Remus was lusting after a priest, and he's sure he's going straight to hell for it. 

Chapter Text

“We have a responsibility for one another in our life together and are called to work for the common good of all. We must advocate for a just society in which all people, particularly the vulnerable and marginalized, are able to flourish and meet their needs.”

-https://cssa.org.au/resources/catholic-social-teaching

Remus settles in as well as can be expected of a person when they’re trapped under God’s roof and hiding the fact that they’re the epitome of everything the religion hates. He makes it to his classes, eats his meals alone, attends mass and thankfully doesn’t fall asleep which is solely due to the fact that the very first service he attends - the Sunday morning one - is led by the inexplicably understanding priest who left him wide awake in his room the Monday prior. 

It had been a different priest to escort them to supper not twenty minutes after, a fact Remus was relieved to discover if only so that he had longer to curb the unfamiliar interest that had made itself a frustratingly hard to ignore home in his groin before he saw Father james again, and the priest had been notably absent for the evening, but he looked as unflustered as when he gave his welcoming speech the following day when Remus walked into his class just before lunch and found him writing scripture on the chalk board at the front of the room.. until they spoke. 

He’d gotten there a few minutes early, deciding to forgo the quick break they got between classes, and was the first to let himself into the classroom with a book tucked underneath his arm. He’d frozen in place when his eyes fell on Father James. He stood resolutely, arm extended, his script in messy white and slightly above the height of his eyes. Remus blinked several times as he took in the bright light from the mid-morning sun that cascaded in through the window and bathed the man in an ample refraction of it.

Jesus fucking Christ.. 

Remus made an awkwardly wounded noise when the priest’s hand left the board to instead wipe distractedly at his brow, pushing his curls away from his face. The palm of his hand where he still held the chalk left a swipe of white against his cheek in a similar place to one that ran from just under Remus’s eye to curl around his cheek bone. 

Startled by the sound, Father James turned, eyes falling on Remus’s widened stare. 

"Oh, good morning." 

"Good morning." Remus parroted, struggling to meet the priest's eyes when that stark chalk line contoured his face. It marred him in the reminder of purity that had kept Remus from imagining too vividly the things his mind had tried relentlessly to conjure the night before. He had no experience beside his own hand and that of cruel ones, and yet the way that Father James touched him yesterday evening had him curious how that cautious thumb would have felt.. elsewhere. 

"Did you.. sleep well?" The priest asked slowly, warily , and then blinked hastily, his eyebrows drawing in at his own question. His cheeks even colored a little pink, making it harder for Remus to look away from him. 

"I.. did, yes, Sir." 

"Good, that's.. good." Silence fell between them for a couple of moments and Remus knew he should look away, but his feet wouldn't carry him, and seemingly without thought, the man in front of him let his own guide him forward a step, then two. 

Stopping at the end of his desk, Father James asked softly, "Is everything…?" Okay? Went unsaid with the gesture of his hand towards Remus. 

“Huh?” Remus asked dumbly, clutching his book tighter to his chest. It drew the priest's eyes down for a moment before he raised them again and spoke. 

“Is there.. something you needed?” 

Yes. 

“What? N-no, no, uh.. you have.. um..” Remus grappled for the words to explain but couldn’t find purchase besides the brush of two fingers over his own scar, eyebrows jumping in reference to the priest's face. 

“Wha-,” Father James’s face crumpled in confusion as he watched Remus’s gesture, raising his own hand to his cheek. His fingers came away white, and with a chuckle, he wiped again. “Oh! God, I’m such a mess aren’t I? Wow..” 

Remus went slack jawed at the expression, further silenced by the way Father James didn’t even seem to notice the slip of his savior’s name like profanity from his mouth. He shook his head, smiling timidly. 

Father James wiped his hand on his pants and after a beat, seemed to regather his stoic equilibrium, though the smile remained as he took another step in to reach out and pluck the book out of Remus’s hands before he could tighten his hold on it. 

“What’re you reading?” 

“Nothing! It’s.. it’s nothing, just, don’t-..” Remus reached to grab it back, but the priest, with a smirk, turned his back to fan through the contents of the novella he’d been eagerly consuming in the moments he could. 

It was a plainly covered little book, one he’d grabbed for no particular reason from the library he frequented and stuffed into his bag; it wasn’t stealing, he would eventually return it. But inside the cover - which he’d only opened during his first class that morning - was the farthest thing from innocuous. It was full of raunchy, colorful language and explicit, descriptive relations and was definitely not catholic school appropriate but, well, he hadn’t expected anyone to grab it from him when he’d kept it open, reading further. 

Let alone a priest. 

Perhaps with this particular Father though, he should have. 

“Please give it back,” He squealed, reaching out as Father James’s shoulders went straight and stiff. 

Remus heard the paperback covers slap closed, and went red with horror, but as quickly as he tensed, the priest in front of him started to shake. 

With rage? 

With.. Oh. Father James turned, shock and humor all over his softened features as a laugh busted free, filling the quiet classroom around them. He slapped a hand over his own mouth as he did, unable to contain his bubbly response. Remus pulled his hand back slowly, a snort escaping before he joined in the laughter, though this was more of a relieved exhalation of his panic. 

When Father James calmed, he handed over the book with an exasperated shake of his head. "I wouldn't have this out if I were you." 

“You’re.. going to let me keep it?” Remus stuffed it into his bag even as he asked. 

With a shrug, Father James whispered, “In your room, from now on, please. If anyone else got a hold of it they would be.. well, scandalized.” 

“But you’re not?” 

“..No.”

Sensing the way that Father James wouldn’t be explaining, Remus let his humility fall away, replaced by a testing smirk. “Isn’t lying a sin?” 

“We’ll both pray for forgiveness for it later.” Father James answered quickly, a similar playfulness lighting his features in a new way then the messy chalk line had before. Remus’s eye caught on a thin lock of stray curls, the kind that glowed around the edges where it poked out from behind his ear, and his fingers had twitched with a restrained desire to reach out and test the silky strands with a brush of them. 

Not to smooth them down, but to encourage them wild. 

“Remus?” His name sounded breathy, far away when it drew his attention back to the man in front of him. 

“Uh-huh?” He managed, throat impossibly dry. 

“You can.. you can have a seat now.” Father James tipped his chin towards the tables - individual things with the chairs attached like they’re for primary students - and it was then that Remus noticed the way they were starting to fill. 

“Oh.. oh, right .” He muttered, and very, very quickly made his way to one of them.  

To say that Remus had a hard time focusing in his Catholic Social Teaching’s class over the course of the first week would be an understatement of the gravest kind, because Father James stood at the head of it and spoke about Catholic values, their opinions on the rights and respect that all people deserved, while unbuttoning his Cassock at the front of - and flaunting his - strong chest in an entirely unfair and disrespectful and distracting manner. 

He’d lean back against his desk while he spoke of the way that everyone around them deserved the same level of care that God employed in inviting all sorts to be loved by him, and Remus couldn’t focus on anything but the fluttering in his chest. 

He heard the man speak of consideration and all that he could consider were the ways in which he felt tempted by ungodly desires, pooling low and stealing his ears, getting him lost in the passionate speeches but not absorbing a single word because Remus could only sit and admire the sparks of fervor that were present in his dedication to this cause. 

It was no wonder that when led to God however he was, he ended up in the altruistic position of running a school for the wayward, but especially a class aimed to teach said struggling youth how to care for others. 

His genuine care for others was evident, not only in the ways he had treated Remus himself so far - although those examples were exceptionally obvious - but also in the ardor he displayed in every selfless action. He was kind in ways that were subtle; kneeling to pick up a pen that had fallen, taking over serving lunch for the mild looking woman behind the glass counter when she’d been setting down the ladle every few minutes to rub at her wrist, offering the pudgy priest his seat and choosing to stand while he looked over papers on a clipboard. 

Father James was always looking around at other’s needs and putting them before himself, in an almost pathological, obsessive nature. And he aimed a number of these considerate glances at Remus, he noticed, though he didn’t approach him for anything. But the awareness of his gaze was enough to heat Remus’s cheeks whenever he felt it on him. 

While he was writing during class - which he did with his left hand - he knew sharp honey was dripping over the cursive and careful script he penned. When he was reading in the courtyard - on his back in the grass with his book held over his face to shield from the sun - he’d seen Father James pause and stare more than once. One morning, when Remus was just coming out of his room for breakfast, they’d passed by each other - the priest heading towards his own rooms - and his steps had faltered - already shaky, because he’d been having a particularly sore day, a headache brewing on top of already aching bones as they were often apt to be - but with a nod Father James quickly found his composure and continued on by him without a word.

They hadn’t had another of those uneasy moments alone - or a moment alone in general - since before that first class, but Remus had been helpless but to watch the priest as often as he could. He enjoyed the human portions he saw, and then, this morning, had felt himself awed once again by the way the man stood tall and spoke proud as a true messenger of God as he led the Sunday morning prayers and then gave a particularly touching sermon. 

Or at least, Remus assumed it was touching, because though he had admittedly paid more attention to the way that Father James carried himself when on that slightly raised stage, the ending had caught his attention because his words and his eyes were aimed at Remus - sat a few rows back at the open end of the aisle, legs spread and relaxed with his foot hanging slightly out of the pews - when he finished. Remus sucked in a breath, which he held excruciatingly, a shiver working its way down his spine and his body frozen underneath the intensity of the Father’s stare as he spoke. 

“Jesus is clear when he says to the crowd in front of him, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. But as I told you, you have seen me and you still do not believe. All those the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away.” They struggle, though. They're blinded by their own suffrage. They think they see him, see the evidence of his parentage and they do not believe that he is what he tells them.”

Relief from his burning lungs came quickly as Father James looked away again to address his audience as a whole. 

“Many of his disciples said, “This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?” And Jesus knew that his truths were offensive to some, but those some were simply not enabled to follow him to the Father yet. Yet, he didn’t look upon them with any sort of malice for their grumblings, despite the way that they aimed their's his way. He only looked at those closest to him, his twelve who did believe wholly in him in those moments, who said, “We have come to believe and to know that you are the Holy one of God.”” 

“It’s this that I ask each of you to take away and ponder. “No one has seen the Father except the one who is from God,” and yet.. those who hadn’t, seen him, known him, were not him, and could not understand, they struggled. We struggle, too, each of us here, with something we see and are not yet ready to. Whether that be a lack of belief in God’s word, or blindness to your place in the world around you, or a discredit to Eternal Truth that has the ability to lead you somewhere prosperous.. Look around you, church, and ask yourself in the coming week-..”

Remus dug his fingernails into his upper thighs when the priest again aimed a piercing glance in his direction; like a touch, phantom insistent fingers pinching underneath his chin, holding his eyes forward and making his heart race. 

“Am I hungry? Am I thirsty? And what feast is prepared and spread in front of me, that I have accepted readily as false staging because I did not understand its origin in the Holy Spirit?”

The room, already quiet, so silent that Remus’s ears rang loud enough to deafen even the most experienced of monks; of which Remus was certainly not. He hungered, his mouth watered from the dehydration, and Father James echoed his sentiments when his voice dropped. 

It was a slow baritone admittance which felt dedicated to him because of the way the priest’s eyes dropped to his lips and then staunchly looked away. “It’s my calling to have my eyes open to the Lord and yet I hunger and thirst like any man, I can admit that. Jesus is not saying you won’t, if you accept him. He is saying that in doing so, you’ll be working towards the Eternal Reward, which is to be one with him. Go with this suffering, follow it to where you are called, and in this way you will find yourself, and in yourself, you’ll find God.” 

It took a similar length of time for Remus to shake the frazzled feeling in his nerves that morning as it had after the touch to his arm, and even still, it lingered well past and far more spread over his entire body than it should have. So, no, they hadn’t had another moment truly alone, but that had felt like one. It had stuck with him, and arriving at Father James’s office inside the boy’s school building for his “introductory meeting” to “assess his starting point” only hours later, they were about to have another , and Remus felt decidedly and nonsensically nervous about it. 

He knows he’s being weird, even as the priest looks at him with a plain and pleasant smile as he knocks on the cracked open door and then - after a nod and a gentle, “Come in.” - lets himself into the room. 

Outwardly anxious, he twists his hand into his shirt as he takes the seat in front of the priest’s desk as directed. Not the uniform kind but his own clothes, allowed to be worn on Sundays only. It’s a knitted jumper, warm reds and golds over loose fitting brown slacks and a little warm for the spring air, but that isn’t why he’s starting to sweat. 

Father James looks him over before pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose and sitting forward. He wears the same black slacks as always but with a more casual, and more tight fitting black cardigan, adorned of course by that white stripe and rosary that hangs from his neck. 

He looks.. decently indecent. 

With his elbows on the desk and two fingers on his lips he asks, “How have you found your first week here to be, Remus?” 

Remus swallows, filing through the ways he could answer in his head to find the one most advantageous to this meeting. “I’m.. adjusting.” 

“Do you have any immediate concerns about your stay here?” It’s a question from the white sheet of paper in front of him, no doubt, but Father James doesn’t make any move to record his answer when he shakes his head, nor does he look down to it for his next question. 

His forehead does crease a little though, and his lips work on his words until he’s said, “I’ve noticed you’ve not made much of an effort to begin forming connections with any of the peers around you.” 

“Was I meant to?” Remus asks a little defensively. He was a loner, used to being so, and it was hardly of notice or upsetting to him the way that he often sat separate from everyone else; in class or the lunch room, and spent his free time in his own company. 

“I think it would help.. alleviate the strain of being away from home, to make some friends.” 

Truthfully, it hadn’t been a strain at all thus far. The classes were as boring and restrictive as he’d figured they’d be, and if he looked towards the gates too long or didn’t open a window at night he would start to struggle to breathe, but regardless, this priest had no idea the constant torment he went through in his daily life. Without the need to be on guard against the bullying he endured, and despite the suffocation he experienced stuck here as he is, this school had felt more like an oddly chosen retreat. 

“Wasn’t I to make friends with God, here? Isn’t that why we’re having this meeting, to determine my friendliness with the faith, not the people around me?” Crossing his arms, he leans back in his chair and frowns.  

After an assessing look, Father James mimics his position, sitting back in his desk chair. It doesn’t look entirely comfortable, the seat almost too small for the well built man. Remus wonders idly if he works out, and if he does, where . 

“I mean to track your spiritual advancement as well as your educational one, yes.” Again, it’s monotonous sounding, as if he’s reading from a script, and Remus loathes the disingenuous tone. 

“How does one even ‘track’ spiritual advancement?” He asks, smart and haughty, because.. he needs to know if he’s going to cheat the system, but perhaps he can work to dismantle the facade of distance that the desk and the rehearsed words put between the two of them with the information, too. 

“Well..” Father James rubs at his chin, seemingly thrown by the question. “First, we find your starting point. What is your relationship with God like, currently?” 

Remus barely contains the scoff. He also swallows the urge to lament about how God feels to him like a grim reaper feels to dying patients. Foreboding and haunting and they know he’s there, know he’s waiting, but the requirements are too great to meet him and Remus, like many of the sick he references in his head, isn’t ready to give up his stance and admit defeat. 

Not yet, if ever. 

Though, he doesn’t know if he’ll have a choice, if the priest in front of him has anything to say in the matter, because Remus’s knees are made weak by the desire to kneel, if he’d only ask him to. 

“Fraught.” He answers eventually. A short answer dripping in an obvious disdain, eyebrows raised as if to ask, so what? He assumes it will be easier to fake progress if he starts from the very bottom. 

“How do you know this?” 

Confused, Remus gestures to the office around him. “I’m here, aren’t I? Doesn’t that mean God and I aren’t on good terms?” 

“It might. Or it might mean that somebody with blind eyes decided you weren’t. Either way, something tumultuous brought you to us. So.. why?” 

“I’d think it would be rather obvious to you.” Remus shrugs, looking away. 

“No, I mean.. Why are you here? Do you want to improve that relationship?” 

“The town I come from sees me as someone needing saving,” Remus answers slowly. “My dad.. thinks I’m tainted by some worldly sin.”

“They fear what they don’t understand,” Father James softens when Remus glances back at him. 

With sharp words he argues, “They fear me . I’m an outcast there, people turn their heads, whisper, even cross the street to avoid me like I’ve got some kind of disease and others.. others employ many methods, no matter how medieval, to cure it.” 

The priest’s nostrils flare in obvious disgust, but he sounds calm when he notes, “That doesn’t answer my question, Remus.” 

Remus leans forward as if beckoned by the siren call of his name, resting his hands on the edge of the desk. “No.” 

“No?” 

“No, I don’t particularly want to improve my relationship with God. But if I want one with my dad.. I have to.” It isn’t an entirely honest answer, his motivations are more selfish and based in his own presentation then he's saying, but it is honest enough . Not an outright lie. 

And even if it was.. Father James might just excuse it, with a reminder to pray for forgiveness later, just like with the salacious book he reads, rereads, keeps close even though it tortures him, makes him want in a way he hasn’t been able to stem because of the giant red cross painted on the wall opposite his bed. 

“You’ll.. go back to that place when you’re finished here?” 

“Where else would I go?” As much as he would love to travel, to see the world, to get to know himself outside of the parameters of a religion that would see him burned, he has no money for school abroad, no safety net or safe arms besides the roof over his head that his father could offer him. He has no option but to go back. 

Father James looks at him with an odd sadness in his eyes, as if he understands his desolate expression for what it is; hopelessness. “What if God had a different plan for you? A better one?” 

“Well,” Remus does scoff then. “I would ask him to stop being so selfish. To stop with the all in God’s time nonsense and show me, show me where I’m supposed to go or what I’m supposed to be doing and stop messing around with my life like it’s fun for him .” 

Father James stands as his speech comes to a slow and regrettable end. Mouth still hanging open on his last words as the priest comes around his desk, Remus is startled by the gentleness of the, “Follow me.” that he gives, along with a jerk of his chin towards the door. 

“Where are we going?” Remus asks quietly as he stands. 

“Somewhere greener,” Is the only reply he gets before Father James leads him out of his office, and subsequently, the building. "Everyone has a path, Remus. It just isn't always clear until you're looking at it from the right angle; whether that be standing tall or on your knees or six feet under ground and hopeless." 

Somewhere greener is a bench, far to the end of the courtyard. It’s hidden around the side of the building that students are “in no uncertain terms” meant to be near: the staff facilities, but Father James leads him there with little worry for the boundary line crossed. 

They sit side by side on it and stare at a little garden, blossoming with fruits and vegetables, planted close enough together that their stems and vines and leaves intermingle endlessly. Tangle wantonly. 

The afternoon sun makes the tomatoes shine and the sparse sprinkling of sunflowers lean towards where it presumably drops with the evening rise of the moon. 

“Tell me about your life back home. More than.. how people treat you. Tell me about you .” 

“I-..” Remus stops and starts a couple of times. People don’t ask him these questions about himself. They don’t care. They treat him no better than the monsters they still choose to ward their doors from with silver and iron, because a centuries old fear of devils exists even to the modern day in the most reticant of the other sides. But Father James doesn’t pressure him to answer quickly. 

He sits patiently - Remus can tell that the antsy way the man’s leg taps has nothing to do with the time he’s taking - and waits for him to.. remember things about himself. 

“I like to read.” He knows that’s obvious, but it's the only fact he can manage to remember, and it's a start. “My mum taught me when I was really little, she.. she loved to read, too. Did all of these voices, and she was funny, made it.. an experience, not just words on the page. She died when I was still really young, but.. I can still remember her voice if I try.” 

“That’s lovely,” Father James nods. 

“ She was. I’d like to be like her, though.. not in the ways every one would prefer I be. Not in the ways my dad would prefer me to be.” 

Swallowing hard, he tries to think about himself, but he finds he’s uncomfortable with most of the details he finds. The chronic pain keeps him a little slow, the anxiety making him pick and bite at himself, the trauma responses that keep him alert of his surroundings. Even now, though he feels comfortable sitting next to Father James - their pinkies close where they both grip the edge of the bench between them - his mind is slightly preoccupied with wondering if anyone is around, how badly he would get cut up if he were to scale those gates, who’s garden they're sitting here leering at. He wishes it would quiet, but can’t make it, and can’t dive past the things he hates about himself to find any good. 

“That wasn’t entirely about you though, was it Remus?” 

“No, Father.” 

“You said you’d like to be like her.. how was she?” 

“She was.. kind to everyone she met. Easygoing, she always seemed at peace. That’s a big one, I would love to be as carefree as she always seemed. And she was brilliant, her mind worked on so many things at once. Mine does too, but.. it never overwhelmed her, the way it does me. She told me once that she could slow it down or speed it up, but she never.. she never explained how, and I was too young to understand what she meant when she said her thoughts were racing. Cooking and cleaning and playing with me all at once and she did it so effortlessly, and I want that, but everything is so hard all of the time, for me.” 

Father James lets him go on for a little while before he gently interrupts, “How old were you, when you came to the conclusion that your mum found everything so.. effortless, as you put it?” 

“Five or six, at most.” Remus mumbles. 

“And was she a religious woman?” He hints, and Remus doesn’t appreciate it, if only because he can sense now where Father James is going with it. 

“Yes,” Remus admits tightly, looking up towards the billowing, puffy white clouds. “She’s up there somewhere, no doubt. I was too old for the “Your mum is with the angels now” speech when she died, according to my dad, but.. I would still like to believe it.” 

He hears Father James let out a heavy breath, and turns to find his eyes always upturned. “How did you.. find your path? God, for yourself? Were you raised in the church?” 

  It’s a question that’s been nagging him for a week, and one that the priest answers at first with only a simple, “No.” 

A couple of quiet minutes pass where Remus gives him the same consideration of patience as he gave him prior. Father James mulls over his words before he starts. “No, my family wasn’t religious. Farthest thing from it, actually, both of my parents were.. are.. successful in business, by any means. But I had a friend growing up whose family was ..” 

“So they.. encouraged you to faith as well?” 

“No,” Father James shakes his head with a rueful smile. “No, Sirius hated his religion. This religion. He had a very free spirit, hard to restrain, and a bone to pick with God for the many, many times that this got him into trouble and punished, because his parents were extremists.” 

Remus falls quiet as the priest speaks softly about his friend. Father James looks between them, at their hands so close, and slowly he lets their pinkies brush. Just the sides, but his eyes are still downcast when he continues, “They punished him ‘in the name of God’ for being the way he was. They did so often, and he would run to me after. Seek safe haven from this violent and unforgiving force under the roof of ‘sinners’.” 

Catching Remus’s eye, he mutters, “His parent’s words, not mine.” 

Remus’s mouth purses, enough of an example that he’s listening for Father James to continue. 

“We grew close,” He says fondly. “Closer than friends. Brothers, and then, when we hit puberty.. closer, still.” 

At the suggestion, Remus whispers, “Closer. Like.." 

"Lovers." His stomach flutters with the suggestion, and promptly drops when jealousy swirls and reminds him that regardless of his past, this man is now a priest . 

"Did you? Love him?” 

Father James sighs. “Very much. More than he loved me, I think. It sounds horrible to say but he.. he loved the attention, and I loved giving it. It was exciting to be with him, and he was.. fuck.” 

Remus startles at the swear, even as the priest's shoulders shake with a fond laugh, lost in reminiscing, “He was gorgeous, and dangerous, and magnetic and I let him talk me into anything he wanted and then I finally wore him down over the things that I wanted, because I wasn’t religious and didn’t care and he was religious and he did, and even though it was different for each of us, we loved each other.” 

The bob of his throat is a visual display of unease as he continues, “Looking back on it now, I think.. I think I became less of a safe haven for him and more a self punishment tool. A tool he used often, in all manner of ways, after the first time that he let himself. And I fell farther in love while he fell further into.. depression, and self hatred.” 

“Oh..” Remus gasps, mind whirling. Father James’s hand inches further, weighted palm sliding smoothly overtop Remus’s, as if unthinkingly for comfort, and Remus doesn’t move; just lets him have it. 

Willing to provide this man who so often does the providing with anything he needs while he quietly bares his past in the shade and silence to only Remus and the plants. 

“When we were fifteen, we got caught by his parents in a rather.. compromising position.” White teeth sink into his bottom lip, and Remus is distracted for a moment by the soothing of his tongue over the spot he’s bitten. “They reacted badly, we were separated by distance for some time because they doubled down on their faith. I suspect they used.. inhumane methods, to bring their son right. Straight. He was.. different, after that.” 

“So they.. fixed him, then?” How could losing a love to religion bring a man to religion? It makes no sense to him at all until Father James, with a sour look, shakes his head. 

“They broke him. Irreparably. And a year later he.. he was gone.” The priest’s eyes close, his breath leaves him harshly. “And that.. that broke me. Badly. Bad enough to be put into a rehab facility for my terrible coping mechanisms only a year later. A large part of the AA program as a whole is religious, and for the under eighteens in the program they had actual priests be the sponsors. Father Peter was mine and he.. he showed me forgiveness, and understanding, and when I felt like I had no place in life, he showed me that God’s arms were open and often most receiving of those seemingly lost to him altogether. I.. have always needed the love of others to fulfill me and through my faith I found a path to the everlasting kind. The kind that wouldn’t hurt anyone else to search out and beg for. Work for. And Pete.. Well, he told me that I could help people. That my view of God’s selflessness and my own could help . I joined the seminary, served as an ordained deacon at the home parish you saw for six months before receiving my priesthood, and Father Peter asked for me to join him here and help him run this school for other children who ended up like I had. Lost.” 

“Children like me.” Remus mutters distantly, and the hand over him squeezes his before releasing. 

In an almost resentful tone, Father James whispers, “You’re hardly a child, Remus. No.. Next to me, I see a strong young man, who’s been through enough to make him see the world through mature and somewhat bitter eyes. And you know yourself better than I ever could have hoped to at your age. Even if your circumstances keep you blind to that knowledge.” 

Bitterly, as the priest just described him, he mumbles, “You’re the first person to see me like that, Sir.” 

“Strong?” 

“As a man ,” Remus corrects him, turning his body to ineffectually hide himself. “As a person, at all. Most think I’m some sort of.. I don’t know.. it’s outdated, but I've heard the term demon thrown at me more than once.” 

Father James scoffs, and then outright laughs, and it reddens Remus’s face more thoroughly than the sun ever could. Far quicker, too, and he can feel the heat unmistakably when Father James’s cool palm lands on his cheek, suggesting his head to turn. 

He does so, heart leaping from his chest at the way the priest touches him, stares at him.  

“Demons have the ability to shapeshift. Did you know? They can be anything they want you to see, and the only sign would be their blasphemy. Tell me why you would struggle as you do with yourself, if you needn’t?” 

“I.. wouldn’t.” He acquiesced. “I would be happy.” 

“You look the very farthest thing from a demon to me, Remus Lupin.” It’s the brush of his breath, released like a soft wanting sigh, that draws Remus’s eyes down to the priest’s mouth. His lips, in turn, are stroked by a featherlight thumb. 

He leans in, just a little, starting to close the space between them inch by sacred inch. 

“You don’t look.. happy.” Remus lets slip out in a whisper. Because if he could shapeshift, he would look like it, and if Father James had found fulfillment in God’s love, wouldn’t he, too? 

“I am.. content.” The priest matches the softness of his voice, like if they both lower them, not even The Holy Spirit could be privy to the thinning distance between them, or the way the heat of their breaths warms the inch left. 

His hand drops from Remus's cheek and slides over his again, gentle and testing, and quietly Remus asks. “Is that enough?” 

“..No.” A second hand touches him, slips smoothly around his collarbone to find his loose hair at the nape of his neck and sinks in between the strands, making his eyes flutter from the sweet pressure. “It is not.” 

“ Father? ” He all but whines, eyes fluttering, threatening to close. "I'm sorry." 

“Call me James,” He feels the shape of the words formed against his lips, a quiet plea. “And call this penance.” 

James kisses him, then. 

Kisses him with the deliberation of a man finding deliverance, sincere and devout. Searching and full but then - for a second - achingly incomplete when he pulls away, like he might refuse them both the salvation. Remus reaches up with his free hand and with an urgent whine he captures the priest’s rosary and tugs him back in, because if he’s going to repent, he’s going to do so between this man’s passionate lips. He chases his mouth longingly and James is quick to give in to the incredible affection once it's crystal clear that Remus wants it, with a groan of appreciation for the flavor of sin. 

It’s a short, liquidly intimate and impassioned kiss, the first of its kind for Remus when James opens with a gasp for air and leans into it readily; a greedy display of his hunger. Religion digs into the palm of his hand and Remus hopes it breaks skin and stains them both with the evidence of the divinity of this kiss. Hopes James’s tongue, delicate and reverently pressed against his own leaves stains there, too, so that he can remember later what seconds of bending to temptation and gorging himself after starvation tasted like. 

Just when Remus has decided to die on this hill and let live his breath in this priest’s lungs forever, James pulls away. Their noses knock, foreheads press, and while they both pant and with closed eyes, still, James presses several last kisses - chaste and final - against his lips. 

Remus doesn't quite understand what sin he paid James penance for with his first kiss, but he knows he would commit it unendingly if the punishment for doing so was to be held tightly and explored with rapture.

They breathe together in harmonious shock, and Remus leans in for another gentle press, which James doesn’t refuse him. One, two, three, a holy number before Remus lets the world around them filter back into his consciousness, and the rosary slips from his hand at the same time as the hand in his hair releases him. 

It’s not a quick rip of bodies away, or a disgusted and silent judgment of their deplorable actions, and only the tiniest bit of regret passes over James’s face as he stands and straightens his shirt, soft and sad. 

Cautiously, James murmurs, “I’d like to make ours a weekly meeting, if you’re agreeable. I think.. I think the Lord has much to offer you, and I’d like to ensure personally that the message is well received, since you're not ready or willing to make friends here yet.” 

“Did you rehearse that in your head before you said it?” Remus jokes breathlessly, staring up with his spit-wet lips still parted and tingling, sort of numb.

“No.” James frowns sternly and then, after a few slow blinks and a scrub of his hand through his hair - where Remus’s heart fails to beat properly - he fails to hold his mask in place and starts to smile. It’s a cheeky turn of his lip up, followed by a disbelieving shake of his head. “Maybe..” 

"We're.. friendly, aren't we?" 

"We shouldn't be…" 

“These weekly meetings..” Remus hedges as he, too, stands. He takes a step into the light, a step closer to James, running a shy but determined hand up his outer forearm as he does. “They’re.. for you to monitor closely my.. awakening ?” 

“Your spiritual awakening.” James reiterates weakly, chin dipping as he looks down at Remus’s hand. 

Casually, Remus lets it fall away, and revels in the way James watches it go, too. 

“Thank you, Father.” He purrs, and it draws James’s attention back to his mouth. Remus has never liked the feeling of being watched, but he lets this man’s fevered gaze roam, and he stands with his arms at his sides and lets him see without the blush of shame. 

He doesn’t call him by his name; not yet. 

He turns and leaves him wanting. 

Leaves him thirsty. 

Chapter Text

“The capacity and capabilities of people and communities ought to be respected, with decisions made at the lowest level possible. Everyone should have the opportunity to participate in and contribute to decision processes that closely affect them.”

-https://cssa.org.au/resources/catholic-social-teaching

In biblical accounts of Jesus's death, the process took six hours. For Remus to mark the first little one of his own by his priest's hand took six weeks . And, in the end, just as Jesus did, he cried out to God.

But, distinctly different from The Son of the Savior, Remus cursed Jesus Christ the entire time that he carried the cross; the metaphorical weight of his desire pledged to another. 

In a spiritual marriage with a larger than life figure whom Remus couldn't possibly compete with.

But oh, he gave his very best effort in trying to, without much effort at all, because in the end, he needed to only exist in James's path to lead him astray. 

He wouldn't have even started trying to, if the union he saw wasn't so bloody joyless most of the time. But it was . Passionate sometimes - especially when he gave his clearly hand written sermons, the ones that meant something to him - sure, James loved and valued his faith, that much was clear, and his position here at this school gave him a contentment that he had longed for post-heartbreak and unimaginable loss as a teenager, but it didn't bring him happiness as the man he is now. 

It didn't make him glow from the inside out, not like the little things in life did. A stray joke caught by his alert ear or a little back and forth with students during class or even the disapproving look Remus saw him get from Father Peter for balancing his breakfast crumpets like a tower before eating them; those things made him smile.

Remus made him smile, too. More often than any of those other things did , he thought selfishly, and so he sought to do it more and more. 

Because every time James's lips spread, sheepishly or animatedly or mischievously or youthfully or in any way at all that culminated in the little spark of joy in his amber eyes, Remus was reminded of how handsome he was when lit with life from the inside. Not that he wasn't handsome always; Remus discovered very quickly into their first Sunday "meeting" that the other ways that James looked at him, or looked in general, could make his toes curl in far more delicious - and, as the weeks went by, frustrating - ways. 

Grave - when trying to end what they'd only just started - that was the first sparks of a wildfire between them. A match box held against a wooden desk, James leaned back against his, arms gone tight, and Remus approached slowly.

They hadn't talked since the previous Sunday, not even in class or after Wednesday's service. The closest they'd come to full sentences was when James handed him the body of Christ (a cracker) and a cup of his blood (a paper thing, with something sharper than grape juice and barely a mouthful inside), and he mumbled those prayers all the while, staunchly not meeting Remus's searching gaze. 

But now they were meant to - by James's own design - and he was noticeably quiet, until he rushed out, "That can't happen again. You understand that, right?"

"Do I, Father?" Remus uncrossed his arms, letting them fall to his sides. 

"It was.. uncouth, of me. Unprofessional, not to mention immoral ."

"Funny that that should be the last concern you mention." Remus murmured playfully, in an attempt to lighten the despondent mood that hovered over James's shoulders. 

The ghoulish ghost of regret having grown like the foliage in the garden after having left it a week prior, working its vines around the priest's body and then cinching his desires in at the waist with thorny greens. 

Remus had heard it even in the way he spoke during church, and the perfunctory way he led class that week, like he hung from a noose of his own making; guilt woven between lust and gluttony and tightened around his throat to make his words hard and his enthusiasm forced. 

"I'm serious," James admonished softly, even as he made no move to stop Remus's advances.

Remus sensed the opening and struck with a thankfully steady hand, dragging only the backs if his knuckles up from the center of James's stomach. "Is it not due process to be thorough in my.. enlightenment?" 

"That's.. not.." The priest seemed at a loss for words, and Remus heard his fingers clench on the desk he held resolutely, old wood bending under the strong resistance. 

"Maybe if you taste the sin on my tongue now, you could tell me at the end of this process how thoroughly converted I am?" 

"Holy… Spirit , Remus, please.." 

"Shouldn't I be the one begging for your mercy, Father ?" 

James let their mouths brush, when Remus came in close enough. Not a kiss, not even a chaste one, not even enough to light fireworks underneath the pink skin of his lips. It was only a tingle, a suggestion, a tease before like a strike , James's hands found Remus's hips and gently pushed him away. 

With a sigh, Remus took a step back, and even though the heat of the moment died with an ashen look of doleful regret and a soft suggestion that they put this all behind them and start again, there was still enough of a spark between them for Remus to kindle his affections. 

His attempts over the next few weeks were far more respectful, less brave after the first refusal. It was small things, mostly that he didn't even realize he was doing, because rejection bred a lingering doubt in his mind that despite the ongoing evidence of desire, James obviously couldn't want him. 

Not him . 

Not monstrous, scarred and chronically disadvantaged and ill him . 

It was a self-deprecating seed planted by gentle but firm hands in the soil of his nature, and he watered it as weeks went by with ample attention from the priest from an assumed air of distance. 

But occasionally he would find a flower or two burned through the roots like a sunbeam through a magnifying glass when he would glance up and catch that amber gaze lingering on him; and then quickly beseech God to stop taking it away again. 

Down a quick burning stock another would go when, as they walked through the courtyard, their hands would brush and the priest didn't recoil; and if that hand didn’t linger, he’d aim his annoyance at the sky. 

Not long into the third week, Remus stayed far past the class period to re-read his book; which was to say he watched James tidy up the room from overtop the edges of his pages, and the both of them walked to the Great Hall together for lunch afterwards. When they parted to eat, Remus grumbled about the ridiculousness of keeping space for Jesus between them, because apparently, when someone showed him an ounce of kindness, he became a little codependent. 

This became a routine, adding additional minutes to the alone time they spent on Sundays after Mass. One hour became two, and three, and then suddenly Remus was spending his entire afternoon around the priest; talking or reading (he'd chosen far more dull but new, at least, books from the shelves in James's office) or walking the courtyard and indulging in spring warmth. 

They found more and more that they had quite a bit in common, or complementary opinions, with each other. Their senses of humor were similar, though Remus's was dryer and James's more youthful, they spent a good deal of time together laughing. Where James was fairly active, Remus preferred to sit and enjoy quiet activities, but the whirlwind of James going about his time around him was soothing; James seemed to agree that the company was nice, and never pushed for Remus to leave. 

Often, James would walk him back to his dorm room when their "meetings" were naturally finished - Remus tiring (which he did easily) or James having priestly duties to attend to that had no reason to involve him - and the few moments of expectant silence before Remus would let himself into the room became more and more tense, because every time and despite his doubts , he felt a match being held to his skin when James would raise his hand to brush against his cheek.

But James never kissed him any of those times.  

And Remus never said just his name. 

Sometimes, both got really close. 

With hardly an inch of space between their lips, and with the letter J on Remus's tongue. 

At the end of his fifth week of pining, Father Peter noticed this. James’s fingers had been lingering - longer, and longer - on Remus’s cheek, and the mildly older priest picked an inopportune time to let himself in through the dorm’s front doors, shining early evening light directly on the touch. 

Hastily, James’s fingers shifted from the cool and downy touch to something that blistered, and he was rough with the way that he made to swipe nothing off of Remus’s cheek as he muttered, “Bit of dirt is all-..”

Wiping his clean hand down the side of his pants he then took a safe step back, and turned with a look of innocent surprise on his face as he exclaimed, “Oh! Father Peter. What brings you to the dorms?” 

“I was looking for you actually, Father James.” Father Peter answered slowly, eyes narrowing on the two of them. 

“Whatever for?” James asked, and Remus raised his thumb to his mouth, chewing nervously on the corner of his nail. 

The man’s eyebrows raised towards Remus, and then in turn towards James. “Perhaps we could speak.. alone?” 

“Oh,” Remus startled into movement, flushing. “Of course. Thank you for your time, Father James.” 

He shut himself inside of his room quickly after that, back landing against the door and listening to the faint sound of the conversation as the two priests walked away together, and his ears burned. 

“-..priest’s room?” 

“-..explanation-..” 

“A good one I-..” 

Releasing a breath and with a slam of the cover of the hardback book against his forehead, Remus groaned heavily and slid to the hard floor, letting the stiffness in his limbs distract him from the anxiety in his heart. 

James didn’t look at him at dinner that night. Not even a glance, or a shallow acknowledgement, and Remus swallowed the sullen feeling along with his insecurities because it was fine, except that.. it wasn’t. 

Not after weeks of being the cozy recipient of the priest’s attention; the lack of a fond expression aimed his way was noticeable and unduly upsetting, as was the way that James started quietly excusing himself from the classroom before lunch and avoiding his usual routines the next couple of days. 

Icy embarrassment embraced him easily, fueled him forward like he walked on slick frozen water towards James in the courtyard that Wednesday to confront him before mass, but his chilly steps were interrupted by a tundra. 

The fair haired woman who served their meals stepped up to Father James, batting her eyelashes prettily. They spoke too softly for Remus to hear from several feet away as he was, but he didn’t miss the way James’s eyes softened, or his smile became the fond kind, sweet and adoring. 

Something he said made her laugh, and in turn he brightened. 

Something she said in response made him join her in the joyful exchange of humor and jealousy like no other made Remus’s fingers clench over his stomach, an unpleasant ache brewing there.

It was nothing . 

Except it was every bit the heavenly warmth from James he’d been lacking for several days - even more so then he’d gotten before - and it was aimed at a woman who James was not allowed to have, but could have with far more acceptance than he could have Remus . 

Remus turned and headed for the chapel without a reprieve and turned more green than the garden the two of them had come to frequent. 

His sermon on the following Sunday morning, short and without a lot of the usual commentary they get from James - who usually pulls passages and speaks around them more plainly to convey his meaning - feels pointed in his direction, though again, his eyes don’t settle on Remus more than once or twice, briefly and blankly. 

“My namesake, he says in James 1:2-16, “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance.”” 

He sits down in a chair - the right way, knees closed - as he reads from the bible in his lap, glasses falling down his nose. “Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.” 

“If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you. But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. Such a person is double-minded and unstable in all they do.” 

The priest pauses, letting the gravity of his words sink in to the crowd who listen, and for Remus especially, he feels them crash over him and pour down his lungs in a way that drowns him and makes his small hopes fizzle out into a sad puff of smoke.

“Believers in humble circumstances ought to take pride in their high position. But the rich should take pride in their humiliation - since they will pass away like a wildflower. For the sun rises with scorching heat and withers the plants; its blossom falls and its beauty is destroyed. In the same way, the rich will fade away even while they go about their business.” 

With each word aimed at him, Remus feels a little more like those plants, and he bites at his nails to further destroy any confidence in his posture, sitting wilted in his seat. 

“Blessed is the one who perseveres under trial because, having stood the test, that person will receive the crown of life that the Lord has promised to those who love him. When tempted, no one should say, “God is tempting me.” For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone; but each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed.” 

James audibly swallows, the kind of noise that has Remus cringing because it's thick with words the priest doesn't say, but he can hear them anyway. His eyes sting with tears and so he keeps them on the back of the pew in front of him, gnawing away at his fingers as the priest wraps up his public scolding . 

“Father Peter asked me to read you this passage today, and to ask you to think about what in life tempts you. I ask instead.. What do you desire? And how might you avoid the temptation, when it is placed right in front of you? Because, “After desire has been conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.” 

There’s hushed muttering amongst the crowd, silenced by the closing of the bible James holds. The priest stands, smoothing down his clothes as he finishes, “Don’t be deceived, my dear brothers and sisters.” 

With barely a nod and a quickly muttered prayer in closing, James leaves the stage and the dismissal of the students is delegated to one of the elderly priests, who does so with a bored expression on his face. 

Remus debates skipping his Sunday “meeting”, but after pacing a hole in his floor he decides that he’ll never believe in a burning bridge being unsalvageable if he doesn’t go confirm it’s crumbling, so he winds up slipping quietly inside of James’s office an hour late. 

His heart twists at what he finds inside; James is sitting behind his desk with his forehead resting against his arms on the surface of it, his face hidden underneath a mop of curls. His shoulders rise and fall in slow increments, like he’s sleeping, but when the click of the door behind Remus sounds, he startles. 

He sits up, and fuck he looks tired. This close up, closer than Remus has been all week except in class and even despite the yellow hues to his skin, he looks like he’s been sleepless, and Remus shames himself for not having noticed sooner. 

He feels a little sick when James’s eyes fall on him and quickly leave again.  “You’re late.” 

“I’m sorry, Father.” He tips his chin demurely. 

James sighs heavily. “It’s alright. I think.. Well, I’ll get straight to the point so that I don’t take up too much of your afternoon.” 

“Sir?” Remus keeps his back to the door defensively, made wary by the way that James stands slowly, and still won’t meet his gaze. 

“I’ll be discontinuing our Sunday sessions together.” 

His voice is a whisper, strangled from his throat. “What? Why?” 

Tugging offhandedly at his collar, James stares down at his desk. “I no longer think it’s appropriate for us to be spending time together.” 

“But-..” 

“You should endeavor to make some friends your own age, now that you’ve had the chance to settle in a little bit more here. The Prewett twins are-..” 

“Why are you doing this?” Remus’s voice wavers as he speaks, tears laced with hurt threatening his eyes and nursing a stab to his dignity like cramps in his stomach. 

“I asked everyone this morning to think about what they desire. I have been asking the same of myself this week, and I.. I come back to you every time, Remus.” 

“So you're pushing me away?” He knows he is, knows why , but he grits his teeth with the desire to hear it said to him anyway.

“I’m a priest, my duty is to the Lord,” James mutters, causing Remus to scoff. He comes around his desk as he continues, “But I am also a man, and I have eyes and I’ve made a covenant with them-..” 

“Look at me, James.” Remus interrupts with a frustrated rasp, and finds himself confronted with the shining facade of a man struggling with himself. A mask he knows well. “If you’re going to quote your outdated book to me while you reject me further, the least you can do is offer me the courtesy of looking at me while you do .” 

There’s a long silence between them as they take each other in, wherein Remus lets his nails dig into the palms of his hands to refuse himself the right to reach out, and beg for James to come in close. His head starts to ache with the tension in his rigid spine, but he ignores the swiftly rising pressure of a migraine, pays no mind to the ringing in his ears and lets James go on, when he does. 

“Looking at you the way I do is the entire problem,” James breathes harshly. Agonized and dying for Remus to understand. 

He does. 

He doesn't. 

“I can’t seem to stop, so instead I’ll have to minimize the amount that I can. Refuse us both the times in which looks could turn into acts, because no one else but God is watching.”

“You have to?” Remus snaps. “Shouldn’t I get a say in any of this?” 

“Remus..” 

“This decision affects me too, you know.” He steps closer. Brave little steps, bold words that have been knocked off of the pedestal of his surety but still he says them, in the hopes it will change James’s mind, because underneath the stoic disapproval, James is a man who likes a bit of trouble. “You don’t get to kiss me like you did and then spend weeks making me feel more seen then I have e ver been and only to just..  decide that you won’t see me any more because you have an issue with wandering hands..” 

He cringes as he raises his own voice, channeling the intensity into his palms when he throws them up against James’s chest and like lightning struck James immediately and defensively grips his hips and spins them around, pinning him roughly against his desk. 

He leans forward, bending Remus backwards as he does, so far that he might lose the stability of his feet against the floor and he'll willingly give up his grounding to fly amongst the clouds between this man's arms. 

“Lower. Your. Voice. Before someone hears you,” The threat is clear, low and vicious against his ear, making his entire body shiver. 

“Someone? Like Ms. Mary?” Remus snarls, hands fisting into the front of James’s shirt. He turns his face, nudging James’s nose as he does, knocking his glasses off. They land loudly against his desk to the side of them. 

James’s eyebrows furrowed in confusion. “What does Ms. Mary have anything to do with this?” 

This is punctuated by James’s searching gaze between his eyes. The priest’s knees are locked around his own on either side, their centers oddly and intimately pressed, and the growing bulge there unmistakably twitches underneath the thin fabric of his trousers.

“ She’s someone you’re unafraid to look at.” 

“She’s an adult, at least.” He answers hotly, not denying it.

“She’s a woman. ” 

“I am not attracted to women, ” It’s a pained admittance, tested against Remus’s lips. So close, so close, his hips arch minutely and James all but groans. “I cannot give into my attraction to anyone at all .” 

“What is this then?” Carefully, so that he doesn’t send them both falling unsteadily to the floor, he releases James’s shirt in search of purchase around his shoulders. Their chests press as he pulls him in, hearts both pounding erratically. 

“You’re a student, Remus.” 

“You desire me, Father?” 

“I’m a man of God.” James whines, followed by a chastely pressed kiss to the corner of his mouth. 

Remus turns, lets their lips slide into place of a proper kiss and gives one, before he whispers, “You’re a man with his cock pressed against my-..”

“Stop,” James begs, and kisses him quickly.

“Do you desire me, Father?” 

“Stop.” He kisses him again; he sounds near tears. 

“Stop. Stop.” James drives his hips forward, desperate to relieve the throbbing. He kisses him again. And again. Shallow connections, he holds himself back and between each of them he begs for a reprieve from his own explorations; his mouth on Remus’s to stop the words that spill rudely from him, his fingertips sliding up underneath the hem of his shirt to find flushed skin, his groin twitching and digging into the divet of Remus's thigh. 

“This feels like desire to me, Ja-..” He doesn't get to finish the name, dripping off of his tongue reverently. 

“I’m begging you to stop.” His fingers clench tighter, making Remus whine against his mouth. 

“You asked me to call you by your name.” 

“And you didn’t. You didn’t, and I didn’t know it would sound like that. Please, I won’t be able to stop if you-..”

“ Don’t stop, Jam- ,” Remus finds the curled strands of his hair and just as he’s about to secure his hold there, tug, insist a deeper sort of connection, a faraway door slams loud enough to startle them both, and James rips away from him with a shuddering gasp.

Remus’s hands land harshly against the desk behind him and he pants, his pulse so loud he can feel it in his ears. 

James covers his kiss-bitten mouth with his hand, leaving only the strong bridge of his nose between horrified eyes visible. He takes a step back, then another, a frustrated cry leaving him as he swings around and slips both hands into his own hair, tugging far more harshly than Remus had been thinking of doing only moments prior. 

“Fuck!” He snarls towards the walls, and then his fist impulsively comes out to hit it, making Remus wince. Slowly, he straightens, wiping spit from his mouth with the back of his hand. 

“James..” He starts gently, and the priest rips around, anger written all over his face. 

“Don’t!” He yells. Remus stiffens visibly, And James follows suit, chin raising and all gentleness gone from his tone. All begging and pleading and desire killed off by hypothermia, because his voice is deadly cold when he orders sternly. “Don’t. Use my title or nothing at all, Remus.” 

“Fine,” He rushes out, feeling left out in a winter storm. “Fine. Just don’t.. don’t take this away, please. Our Sundays.” They’d quickly become the only things making him feel like he could breathe here. 

James shakes his head, lips pursed. 

“I can keep my hands to myself. I have, ” He argues desperately. The office feels too large with so much sudden space between them, and too small with the way the walls threaten to close in around him. He subconsciously pulls at his shirt, hunching forward. 

“I can’t,” James mourns, eyes dropping to the floor resolutely. 

“You really can’t even look at me, huh?” Remus spits, cruel and disgusted; in himself or James, he isn’t sure. 

"That isn't fair.." 

" Life isn't fair. But at least it isn't shy about wanting to fuck a man." 

"Remus.." 

"Going to have me pay penance for all of the swearing? Because I would." 

With a shake of his head, James steps away from the door, and after a heartbroken beat, Remus pushes away from the desk and storms past. 

"Whatever," He growls as he stalks out of the office, hurt and angry. "That would make you a hypocrite anyway." 

"I am sorry." James mumbles after him, but made ravenous with the need to make him hurt as deeply as he feels, Remus aims low with his parting words. 

"I bet Sirius was, too." 

It's callous, and personal, and mean in a way that makes him feel far more disgusting than the things he'd done thus far with the priest possibly could have. 

It makes him feel no better than the people he hates.

No more worth saving than he thinks their souls to be. 

He makes it to his rooms, falls asleep before noon, and doesn’t leave his bed again until the following morning; just stews in things like discomfiture, desperation and desire. 

*

Like an act of divine repercussions, everything that could go terribly wrong before his morning class does . He slept fitfully, and woke up feeling ill. The dizzy kind of ill, where your body hurts and your brain is foggy and you don’t really want to move but being absent isn’t really an option, so he peels himself out of bed; much slower then he’d intended.

When he goes to shower in an attempt to make himself feel even the slightest bit more human, the hot water refuses to work. He tries for ages, eventually hitting the nozzle out of frustration and settling on a cold spit bath that makes his skin hurt worse. Every brush of the fabric of his clothes is torture, especially the three sports bras he layered over themselves to bind his chest - having run out of tape the week prior - because they feel extraordinarily tight. 

They do a piss poor job, and it's uncomfortable as all hell, but it's better than not doing so at all would have been. By the time he makes it out of his room, his stomach growls uncomfortably - and fuck, he would kill for a chocolate orange right about now - but he’s taken so long to get ready that he misses the final call for breakfast, and has little time to do anything else except trudge to his first class. 

It goes by slowly, and the droning of the priest who leads the class furthers his headache until he quite literally can't hear anything over it. 

Everything but bleak despondency has flooded from him by the time he makes it to Father James's class, his stomach cramped with something violent and he has to clutch it, leaning forward while he tries to pay attention. 

"That's a good question. He asks us to remember our leaders, who spoke the word of God to us. To consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith." James has opened a class discussion, one Remus actively works to avoid participating in.  

He hides his snort in the palm of his hand, and then leans his chin against it. Who in this place would look at their leaders and want to imitate the dreary lives they lead? 

He lets his eyes fall closed as James moves on to speak about respect for said 'spiritual leaders'. 

"Therefore, it is necessary to submit to the authorities, not only because of possible punishment but also as a matter of conscience. Who amongst us today feels their conscience is clean?"

Remus, especially, does not raise his hand or even open his eyes. He's so bloody tired, he could fall asleep sitting up. 

"None of you? That's good. Even stepping out of confessional our consciences aren't clean. We are by nature sinners, we will by nature sin, it's our responsibility to work constantly to avoid this and to spend our time repenting for the things we cannot. Does anyone have anything they'd like to get off their chests? You'll find respect in this class, and you may be surprised who amongst you may also share your burdens." 

He tunes out the class's answers to instead think of his own burdens. Mostly, the things he isn't particularly sorry about. The time spent with a man who feels that same time is indecent enough to be worth repenting. The smiles he caused or gave, the ample, soothing touches. The kisses..

"Mr. Lupin." A palm slaps down on the desk in front of him, startling him straight. James's palm, accompanied by an entirely unpleasant look. James has the divine ability to look like the worst possible punishment when upset with him. 

"Father," He grumbles, scrubbing at his face. 

"Am I boring you?" 

"No, Sir." He fiddles with the front of his shirt as he grouses. 

"Is it just that you feel your conscience is clean, then?" James asks, quietly offended.

"You know that isn't true." He whispers back fiercely, casting his eyes up through a fan of blonde lashes, uncaring of the class around him.

James sucks in a breath, pursing his lips before he pushes away from Remus's desk. "Do show me some respect and pay enthusiastic attention to the rest of the lesson." 

Remus nods, and he tries, he really does, despite the way humiliation and lingering resentment from the day prior and now from being called out in front of the entire room makes his lip curl. 

He's sitting there, willing himself to absorb the lesson and conjecture going on around him, but after a particular sharp twist low in his stomach, panic sets in. 

Relief from the cramping makes its way down from that twist, an uncomfortable southward sensation. 

He counts the weeks he's been here in his head and prays he's wrong about the small little leak he feels, but he knows he isn't when, with a shift of his thighs, he feels his underwear dampen. 

His cycle fluctuates, he often skips a month, or two, but this time he hasn't been so lucky, and he definitely hasn't planned accordingly, because he'd been under the assumption he'd have some sort of access to a facility with fucking sanitary items , which he did not . 

Very quickly, he raises his hand. 

"Mr. Lupin?" James looks towards him expectantly. 

"May I use the bathroom?" He rushes out, but hope is a deaf cunt and his cunt is leaking, leaking, leaking and James, either from his frustrations or because of Remus's sleepy attitude, is uncharacteristically uncaring.

He gives him a sharp look of irritated incredulity as he tuts, "Patience is a virtue , Remus. I'll thank you to wait until the class period is over." 

James turns from him to write on the board, but Remus gasps out, "Please?" 

"No," James shakes his head, without turning around, ruder than he’s ever seen the man before. 

There are quiet chuckles from around him, which he ignores, if only because he's so fucking fucked . 

Remus swallows his grizzling, because he spends too many minutes contemplating how much trouble he would get in for grabbing his things and running off to the loo without permission and explaining later, and the leak becomes a pooling that in those few short minutes has saturated his boxers and leaked through his trousers, onto the seat underneath him, thoroughly preventing his ability to do anything but sit chagrined and wait for class to end. 

When it does, he stays seated, expecting James to depart in a rush to lunch like he has been for the week prior. 

But he doesn't. 

James, too, stays seated behind his desk, shuffling dutifully through papers, while the rest of the class files out of the room. 

When it's just the two of them, James glances up at him and says dully, "You've been excused, Mr. Lupin." 

"I'm aware, Father." He grits out, clutching tighter to the book he's placed gingerly over his lap.

After a huff, James's words are gentler, but even more expecting of obedience. "Go to lunch, Remus." 

He stays silent, keeps his eyes downcast and again James says his name warily. 

"You first," Rushes out of Remus's mouth clumsily, followed by begging. "Please can you just.. go.." 

"..Are you alright?" 

He regretfully shakes his head, voice reduced to whispers, "I'm fine just.. please , James.." 

The squeak of a chair being pushed back makes him cringe, and he bites down on his lip so hard it bleeds when the sound of the door being shut is followed by footsteps coming closer.

Too close.

Shiny toed shoes stop at the edge of his vision, a hand coming down to gently rest atop his desk. After a moment of appraisal, Remus cringes at the sharp suck of air in through the priest's teeth. 

"You needed to.." James says the words slowly, as if working out the problem in his head. Remus stares harder at the floor, praying for it to swallow him up. Carefully, James reaches down to his lap, and gone weak from embarrassment and with very little energy to begin with, the book he takes away slips easily from Remus's grasp. 

"Have you soiled yourself?" James whispers hesitantly. 

Remus makes a pained noise, clenching his thighs together and shaking his head frantically. 

"Your lap is wet." 

His eyes are wet, too, and then his cheeks as streams of tears spill over. 

"Spread your legs," James orders delicately, and at the noise of refusal that leaves Remus, he couples it with a generous, "Spread them for me, Remus, let me see." 

Swallowing hard, and because he's spent the week wishing for James to look at him again, he does as he's asked.

He slowly spreads his legs, making obvious the dark red hues of liquid mess between them, baring - yet again - another ugly and incorrect part of himself to this Godly man, who sucks in another breath like he's affected by the sight. 

Remus's glare could burn a hole in the tile as he waits for James to say something, anything , and when he does, Remus braces for punishment. 

"Stand up." James finally drags out through a closed sounding throat. 

With nothing left to hide and tears still dripping down his face, he does as he's asked, and feels the uncomfortable flooding sensation ruin his dark blue colored trousers further. 

He stands in front of James, hands twisted into his shirt still and refusing to meet his gaze until the soothing backs of the priest's knuckles wipe the stray tears away from his cheek. 

"You're crying." He notes in idle surprise, like he's only just realized.

"I'm mortified," Remus stammers out, voice shaking, and the two little words coupled with James's eyes on him, curiously heated, release an entirely different kind of flood; one of rampant honesty. "Yes, I'm.. I'm crying . I've had a terrible week, an even more terrible morning , I feel like crap and I'm.. I've soaked through my trousers which is bad enough without thinking about why I'm bleeding in the first place and you're looking at me and looking at me like that and it has me wound so tightly that I could just.. I could just burst!" 

Frustrated, he brings his hands up to his face, knocking James's away to scrub at himself. 

James goes quiet while he rants, and for moments after. For so long and without comment that Remus drops his hands and takes in the man in front of him.

What he expects to find is shock, revolt, annoyance, further irritation.. The look of a priest horrified to find his student sitting in a puddle of his own blood.

What he sees instead on James's face - as he looks between the seat and Remus - is.. wicked. 

And sexy. 

His teeth are sunk into his bottom lip, creating a dip between plush and tender valleys, and overtop in ardent gold is an angel's view of heaven , hidden only by wild curls that drift down over eyebrows pinched by restraint. His hands clench and unclench in the legs of his trousers - black fabric rumpled by the tense action - as if that would hide his center, tented and obviously…

"Are you hard?" 

James meets his eyes and asks an equally obtrusive and easily blurted question in return - smooth and sultry - that makes his face flame further. "Is it running down your legs, Remus?" 

“..Yes.” He breathes, a fresh tear making a track down his cheek; hot and prickly. 

“Didn’t you want me to look at you? Isn’t that what you’ve been begging me for?” 

“Yes, Sir.” 

James closes his eyes upon hearing the term of respect, a groan slipping past his lips, and when he opens them again, he’s every bit made anew by his desires. 

Stripped of his reluctance. 

Reaching out and encouraging Remus close with palms itching to be soaked in ample reds. 

“I’m looking, now.” 

“How are you looking?” He lets himself be pulled in, tips his head for the feathery insinuation of kisses along the skin of his throat. 

“Like one does at the moon.” James hums there, a smile forming and dragged along his shoulder. “In veneration.” 

Oh… God. 

He drops his forehead to whine when James encourages more blood to the surface of his skin under an attempt to taste him deeply. 

The soft spot before his shoulder burns and aches the sweetest of ways, and Remus leans into it, until James's hands drop to his waist and with a sure insistence, his center is tugged down against a hard and lifted thigh. 

He lands wetly, a shock to his groin working its way up as arousal grows behind his navel. His hands come forward to twist into James's shirt, but when he tries to push himself away with a gasped apology for falling , he isn't allowed to climb out of the pit of feelings he's toppled into. 

He isn't allowed to put space between his center and James's thigh. No, he's dragged into a rough wave against him that has his lips spreading, his cock receiving ample pressure, wet and sticky and making a twin mess of the priest's trousers. 

James moves his body again - easily, he's a moldable and willing student underneath the guiding hands of an informed mentor - drawing moans from him as he begins to aid with shy tilts of his hips.

"Do you touch yourself?" James's voice is rough against his ear, and he mouths there, too. 

Remus wouldn't have even thought to want to be kissed there, and yet teeth teasing the cartilage of his ear has his back arching. 

Fuck .. "No, Father, I.. I do, but I haven't, not.. not while I’ve been here." His voice doesn't even sound like his own, overcome with lust and honesty like the cage of his priest's arms is a confessional. 

"Why haven't you? You clearly need it, as wound up as you are.." James presses his knee more insistently between Remus's legs, uncaring of the warm dampness that's spreading between them. "Do you not have ample inspiration?" 

"I do," Remus whines, and daringly his teeth find and sink into soft flesh below James's chin. Just for a moment, just enough to make the man against him gasp, and then he laments, "But there's a cross painted onto the wall in my room. Giant, vibrantly red. How am I meant to touch myself to thoughts of God's servant with such a reminder that he's watching me? Judging me?" 

The world blurs as James tugs himself roughly away and spins Remus around. Unbalanced, he tips clumsily back, and lands with his shoulders against James's chest. The knee returns between his legs from behind him, an arm slips tightly around his waist, and a hand, firm and insistent underneath his chin, forces him to look towards the wall.

A twin cross to the one painted in his bedroom adorns the back of the classroom, stark and assessing of the education he's currently receiving. 

"Any God who looks upon you and judges you as anything but divine isn't a God at all, but a false prophet, and possibly also fucking blind. " 

"Isn't self-pleasure a sin?" He gasps, hands falling back to land on James's hips to support his grind down against his sturdy thigh. 

“In Romans, we’re told, “For if you live after the flesh, you shall die.”” James confirms, squeezing Remus’s cheeks with guiding fingers and continuing in a salacious turn of scripture. “But if you see through the Spirit - Are you looking at the cross? Uh-huh? Yeah.. - If you see through the Spirit, do mortify the deeds of the body - That’s it, Moony, baby, ride my leg. Fuck .. yes.. - and you shall live .” 

Remus desperately searches for the same purchase he’d found facing James, his head falling back and being turned by a gentle nudging. 

The rim of James’s glasses bites into his cheek. 

James bites into his cheek, right where his scar runs through and divides his skin. An aggressive little nip, like he can't help himself. 

“You need to come to Jesus a little faster, baby, or someone’s going to notice we’re both missing from lunch.” 

Canting his hips, his voice is shaky and pleading as he grits out, “It’s not.. not enough..” 

The hand around his waist drops to deftly undo his fly. James tugs it open harshly, untucks his shirt and drags it up to be held by his other hand, which drops from his chin to rest flatly against his clavicle. “Touch yourself. Go on.” 

“I-I can’t..” Remus hesitates, unwilling to release his grip on his sanity, on James who might have lost his . “The blood..” It’s a flimsy excuse at best and they both know it, but it earns him something better than his own healing hand. 

James practically growls, not a frustrated sound but one of heady intoxication, like his thinly veiled desires are running rampant through them, and Remus can feel where they make him as hard as the painted stone cross they face. 

“For Christ’s sake, Rem, It’s yours..” His hand dives in, two fingers spreading around the engorged sheath of his cock and pressing down. They go in search of his wet center and dip into sticky red mixed with an amorous amount of pre-cum, and that growl turns pleased, turns incorrigible, makes him sound like the most bloodthirsty believer. “Just a little.. little blood.. or a lot. You’re drenched, Jesus, feels like I’ve got my fingers in the ciborium..” 

James compares Remus’s cunt to the fucking chalice that holds sacramental wine, and he tests the rim of it like he means to search out the very bottom of the cup. 

Remus lets his hips carry him forward, bring him back, lets his body weight add pressure until - with the crook of them, quick and unthinking - two of James's fingers find his hole and slip easily inside. Made wet by his own blood and accepted by his body, Remus cries out when they tear through his maiden-hood and make him holy.  

“Oh God!” He arches, squeezing his eyes shut as the palm against his cocklet makes him dizzy, makes him see blinding light behind his eyelids. 

James is as rude as a missionary where he fits himself inside and mercilessly tries to convince Remus to come to a new religion. He finds an undiscovered spot behind his cock that sends angel songs into the air around them; cries of grandeur leaving him so loudly that the priest has to stifle them with the shove of the fabric of his shirt into his mouth; lest someone hear the profanity of it all. 

James purrs into his ear the rudest turn of bible verses he thinks he's ever heard, "I lied to the entire congregation yesterday. I told them their desires give birth to sin, and when it’s full grown, gives birth to death. But I didn’t tell them how righteous -,” Swift slides of his fingers in have Remus reaching forward to claw and clutch at his arm, grinding them deeper. “-That death would feel. I didn’t finish the word. It goes on, Remus, do you want to hear it?” 

“Please, please-,” He gasps after dropping his shirt from his teeth, not for the scripture, but because he’s close to something more violent than the small little snaps of pleasure he causes by rubbing himself dry. 

Something as life altering as the parting of the Red Sea was for the Israelites before him. 

James continues anyway, and Remus can hear the devilish smile, the shine in his eyes, and wishes he could see it.  

“Every good and perfect- ” He punctuates his words inside of Remus, “-gift is from above. Coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows .” 

Remus pants unendingly into the palm that tastes of chalk and holy ointment, hints of vanilla underneath that of a preacher's tasks. 

“He chose to give us birth through the word of truth , that we might be the kind of firstfruits of all that he created . Is this a first for you? You’re so fucking tight; did I take your virginity with my fingers, Remus?” 

“Yes, yes, yes !” 

A low and satisfied sound rumbles against his throat. “Therefore,” It’s a strong start to a verse that sends Remus over the edge. “Get rid of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent and humbly accept the word planted in you. Can you do that for me? Can you take me, come for me, moony?” 

In. Out. In. Out. 

Take me. 

Moony. 

There isn’t a word for the way the world goes blindingly white around him, ecstasy a distant cousin to this rapturous feeling, until James is strumming him down with heavy handed and sopping strokes, murmuring so softly in his ear, “Which can save you. Save you. Save us… Whoever looks into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in it - not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it - they will be blessed in what they do. What we do. What we’ve done. Shh, shh, breathe, you’ve done so well, so well ..” 

“Oh God.. Oh, God..” Remus whines softly as his head drifts down from the clouds on pure feathered wings. 

“Not God, though I’m sure he was watching.” James cooes as he pulls his hand out from Remus’s pants. It’s blood coated and sticky and he wipes it against the side of his black slacks, paying the mess little to no mind. “Say my name.” He rasps in a throaty, demanding tone. 

“James.” Remus answers automatically, finding enough stiffness in his bones to turn himself around and throw himself forward again. 

James catches him easily around the waist, careful with his dirty hand. 

“James.” He whines again, mouth searching out his priest’s. “James. James. Jamie, you have to kiss me now. You have to. Please..” 

James doesn’t need to be convinced, he’s diving in once the nickname has slipped off of Remus’s tongue in prayer, leaving the other words to be mumbled against already moving lips. 

They kiss hastily - their time together running low - but before James sends him off (to his room, key in hand with his jumper tied tightly around his waist after he haphazardly explains the hot water situation in his own into branding presses that slur his words) he’s thorough in his claiming of the inside of his mouth. 

Passionate and hedonistic and forcing Remus to swallow noises that make his eyes roll back in his head all over again. 

“Look at me, look, look at me, Remus Lupin. Moony, baby, please.” James begs as the kisses end in closed-mouth presses of devotion. He groans when Remus does. “I’ve never seen a truer green in my life than I see in your eyes. Let me enter their gardens as a sinner and I’ll tend to their color joyously. Tend to you unendingly. Let me have you in the shelter of our hidden bliss?” 

And though he’s never felt so much like a snake in his life, he doesn’t feel like anything so monstrous or evil for saying yes. 

Chapter Text

“Humans are social by nature and depend on one another. We seek to stand in unity with each other, particularly those who are powerless or disadvantaged, and recognize each person’s rights regardless of our differences.” 

- https://cssa.org.au/resources/catholic-social-teaching

Father James Potter’s bedroom - if Remus should even be using that title after what just happened between them in his classroom - lacks.. anything personal. It’s a bare bones room with only a modest bed, a picture of Jesus Christ above it, a dresser that after Remus opens the top drawer to find wads of black fabric, he determines is uninteresting. The only mildly entertaining thing is the source of the natural vanilla smell that James carries with him; a few tall sticks sitting in a clear vase of scented oil next to a lamp on top of an empty and unused looking desk. 

He doesn’t know why he expected anything different out of the priest’s room. Perhaps because there was so much under the surface of James’s repression, light and joy and quirks and kinks, apparently, if the way he’d lost (or possibly found) himself at the sight of Remus’s blood was any indication of the man’s proclivities, so he had assumed he would find the same amalgamation of human characteristics behind his closed door, too. 

It was his mild disappointment in the plain room that had him searching deeper; sitting on the side of James’s bed, left unmade and untucked at all corners as if he’d tossed and turned continuously the night before and gotten up late this morning, and opening up the small bedside table’s drawers. 

The top one only holds a bible- a generic one and not the small and deep purple hued one that he gives his sermons from. That one is messily annotated, there’s color throughout the pages and love drawn in loops underneath James’s favorite passages. Moving on, he finds the middle drawer is empty, dusty and unused. The third drawer though, at the very bottom, holds bits of the man he’s seen the hints of underneath tightly worn skin. 

It’s an array of seemingly random items. Loose photographs of the sea, spare change, a battery, a couple of flowers that he assumes would've been plucked and dried but are now flaky remnants sitting atop a yellowed and unopened letter. Sitting next to them is a bundle of fabric. A shiny black-silken handkerchief that Remus bends forward to scoop up with the palm of his hand. 

It’s as heavy as a bag of coins, jingling the same too when he rolls it like a pouch between his fingers. When he thumbs the fabric away with his free hand, it falls limply, draping down around his palm. What's concealed underneath is a well maintained rosary ; a softly shined silver cross sits amongst a pile of obsidian beads, connected by a strong thread that feels like further silk between his fingers when Remus pinches it. 

Underneath the cross sits a silver centerpiece, a woman bending in awe of another. Remus has never had a rosary of his own before, he doesn’t know who the women sitting raised from the metal above the four beads between them and the cross are, but he knows what those beads stand for. 

Tracing each, he mutters to himself as he counts them. “Our Father, Three Hail Mary's.. One, Two, Three..” The beads are cool, calming underneath his thumb. Thinking of James, of how he just made him feel, his voice is that of a disciple during worship when he whispers, “Glory Be.” 

It’s a beautiful piece with its gothic charms and nearly mirrored little beads following the five decades of loops around, and Remus is delicate as he spreads them out and starts to count each one of them. 

He only counts a slow twenty four, lost in his own little world while he mumbles the Hail Mary prayer for each of them, before he remembers where he is and what he’s meant to be doing, because he shifts where he sits and dried blood pulls at sparse hair around his center in an uncomfortable manner.

  Without thinking he closes his hand around the rosary and slips it down into his bag, before making his way into James’s private bathroom. This, too, is moderately empty of anything personal, except inside of the cabinet where he finds little more than necessities. 

Remus drops his bag underneath the sink, along with the small bundle of pants and a clean shirt he’d had the sense to stop in his room and grab first. He strips carefully, hissing as he encourages the dried fabric from the skin of his legs and folding it before setting it down atop his jumper, so that he doesn’t make a flaky red mess of the tiled floor. 

Once naked he steps inside the glass shower, and he lets the blessedly hot water run over his heated skin until he can’t feel the burn of it - or James’s hands, fuck, they’d been all over him, inside of him - anymore. When the rough irritation he’d been gritting his teeth through all morning subsides, he scrubs at himself with the available loofah and a generous dollop of James’s soap, only holding the bottle to his nose for a mildly embarrassing amount of time beforehand. 

The shower soothes something inside of him that had felt uneasy since the day prior. An itch he couldn’t scratch because the cause was too thoroughly rubbed against his skin and fed down his throat in pleading and regretted kisses. 

But now he’d had the cure - given freely, fingers anointed by God and slipped inside of him and words to match the dedication - and once the water ran clear at his feet, he felt cleaner of the disgust he’d worn like a well-deserved filth. 

After he’s dried off and covered from the waist up in his frustrating binding situation and a chunky knitted sweater - because he’d only had the one school uniform that he’d stolen off of a boy prior to the closet incident where he’d come face to face with an entirely new religion, unbeknownst to him - he knots the towel around his waist to go in further search of something to use like a sanitary pad.

He stops dead when several steps out of the bathroom he finds James sitting on the end of his bed, waiting for him and then staring with an unreadable expression on his face. He has a blue disposable box in his hand, hanging down between his spread legs, and after swallowing hard to make room for his hesitant voice Remus asks, “Are those.. tampons?” 

“Hmm?” James’s gaze trails lazily over Remus’s body, visible parts flushed pink from the shower, before they drop to the box he holds. “Oh, yes. For you. I didn’t know if you.. did you.. already have some?” 

“No,” Remus shakes his head, moving forward to take the box from James. Instead of handing it over though, as Remus mumbles shy appreciation, James’s free hand wraps around his wrist and gently pulls him closer. 

He takes a smooth step between James’s legs, blinking rapidly as James’s head falls forward against Remus’s chest. He’s stiff for a moment, before he brings his free hand up and fondly cards it through the curls - moppy and wild - that fall around James’s ears. 

After a dumbfounding moment or two of silence, James’s chin turns and he casts his eyes up; dark and dilated in the center like even the fiery glow around his pupils can't tame the hellish depths inside of him. “How’re you feeling?” 

He sets the tampon box next to him on the bed as Remus mutters a confused, “I’m.. fine.” 

“Fine.” James deadpans, sounding amused. He drops Remus’s wrist to instead slide the smooth palms of both of his hands up from the outside of his knees to the tops of his thighs, following unevenly raised and scarred skin underneath the towel that covers him. 

The touch makes him shiver, especially when the fingers James rests just underneath the gentle globes of his arse begin to stroke him featherlightly.

“Yes?” Remus asks, unsure of the answer James is searching for. He’s.. confused, sure. Still feeling a little unwell from the sudden and loud appearance of his menstrual cycle. And where the shivers coalesce below his pubic bone to form an altogether different sort of pleased reaction, he’s mildly.. 

“Are you sore?” James breathes, as if reading his mind. 

“Oh,” Remus is entirely unaccustomed to anyone caring how he feels, especially after laying hands on him. Though, he’s also never had someone touch him the way that James has; like his body is a temple to be entered in pursuit of religious submission. “I-.. Yes, a little.” He admits, trusting honesty to be the answer that earns him that florid smile. 

It does, a lionizing spread of his lips and Remus can see - in the face of this man sitting practically underneath him - his pride.  

Like a God who’s accepted a virgin sacrifice. 

But a humble one, the kind that comes to earth himself and spreads his word in a worried way when he slips his thumb inside of Remus’s thigh and lets it swipe carefully along his moist slit, making him wince. 

“I’m sorry, I probably should have asked before I-..” The thumb that presses into the warmth between his lips doesn’t move, but James’s other hand does, to the outside of the towel that hides him. 

“Don’t apologize,” Remus is quick to assure him, heart fluttering. “I wanted it. Want you to keep-..” 

“Touching you?” James pulls the damp towel away from him when Remus nods mutely, teeth sinking into his bottom lip, leaving his center nude. 

With James’s head tipped, his glasses slide, and Remus pulls them from his face and folds them, leaning over to set them on the side table. James’s thumbs run parallel to each other, between the warm crevices on either side of his center, up towards his hips bones. 

It spreads a little pinkened slick that neither of them pay any mind to. 

James watches his own hands avidly, unabashed as he silently traces down Remus’s pubic bone. When both dip down through his downy, tawny colored hair and between the slit in his mound to find his protrusion he thumbs around it, encouraging it to stiffen and stand enlarged. 

“Do you take.. something .. that does this?” 

James's curiosity heats Remus’s cheeks, and he looks away in mild horror as he responds flatly, “No, it’s just.. like that.” 

Engorged.

He knows he’s puffy there, a little larger and more swollen than the diagrams he’d seen in health class. 

He’s never thought of anyone looking so close at it besides himself, though, and he was already inordinately judgemental of those parts of his body, so incongruent and disproportionate to how he sees himself in his head. 

This part though, made him feel good, made him feel more.. like himself. Still, he felt embarrassed by the obvious difference in his parts to others, until James hums. 

“You’re inconceivably lovely,” James’s voice is practically a purr, blowing warm air over his clit, and he casts his eyes up when the brush of his thumb makes Remus’s hips jerk away. “Is it terribly sore?” 

Remus nods again, missing the look of hungry appreciation that James gives him. “Will you let me make it better?” 

He doesn’t expect to be laid down on his back atop the bed with his knees raised and his legs spread when he agrees, but he is, and he covers his face with his hands when James lays between them. He’d pulled a tube of cream from his back pocket - “a numbing cream,” he’d explained - and supported himself on his elbows, again using his thumbs to spread Remus’s cunt. 

When he blows a testing stream of cool air against his entrance, Remus can’t help but squirm, knees falling in and knocking against James’s shoulders as he gasps. 

“So responsive. Your cock twitches when I tease it, baby, did you know that?” James cooes it, and then he puts Remus out of his aching misery with two well-slicked fingers running with beautiful pressure against his inflamed skin. Up from his entrance and around his cock, down again, and the movement is repeated until, with gentle insistence, he works them inside. 

He’s diligent in his coating of Remus’s walls with thick white medicine that steals away the burn of the newly deep stretch, and once his hisses of protest have given way to wet whines, James embarrasses him further by slipping a plastic tube up inside of him and deploying the absorbent tampon for him. 

Remus groans his self-consciousness into the palms of his hands when James then gently wipes the outside of him clean of blood and cream with the bath towel he’d used. The bed shifts around him as James lifts himself up and over him, and his hands are encouraged away from his face so that James can kiss him; this affectionate molding of their lips where he aims to smother Remus’s distress in ample praise. “I would have used my mouth to show my affection where you’re pretty, Moony, but I’ll need my lips to speak through my afternoon class, and the cream would have thoroughly numbed them.” 

“You could have foregone the cream,” Remus informs him. “I would have been none the wiser." 

The hand of God is often said to be a gentle one, but Remus thinks there couldn’t possibly be more of a loving caress than the one that cups his cheek and spreads reverence along the scar there. 

No, the touch, paired with James’s crumpled, guilty expression says, I couldn’t have. 

And Remus thinks he understands; this need to care for others is a natural instinct in James, not something he’s done to trick Remus into some sort of false favor. It wasn’t done to humiliate him, or to put him into a debt to be called in later, but instead because despite the way the ache he caused was of the sweetest kind, James couldn’t stand to let him suffer with it. 

“Thank you Jamie,” Remus slides his hands into his hair and brings the priest's face down for another kiss. “I feel much better now.” 

*

Far earlier than he would ever willingly be awake otherwise on Thursday morning, Remus let himself in through the chapel’s back doors in search of James, after being summoned by the man in secret after Wednesday service the night prior. 

He hadn’t asked why; could only assume that it was for another of many stolen moments they’d been having the past few days. The kind filled with ample looks, sweet touches, kisses - some chaste, and some like James couldn’t help but try to devour him in the seconds they had alone - and lowered voices lest their conversations run the risk of being overheard. 

Not all of it had been risque, but quite a lot of it had been intimate comments and far more comfortable contact than should be between a head priest and his student. 

Remus can’t bring himself to feel guilty about the disrespect he’s showing to James’s religion when the priest so actively seeks him out like his morning, midday and evening prayers, and seems so reinvigorated by doing so. 

There’s been a bounce to his walk and his word since Monday. The refraction of light that Remus had noticed catching him in the garden over a month prior seemed to engulf him in miraculous vivation now, skin and eyes and smile glowing more easily. 

He seems more free, like each kiss to Remus’s lips is another rosary bead slipped off of the collar that restrained his character, his enjoyment of life, his motivation, so Remus can’t help but indulge each of them and breathe them in like new air. 

He breathes them in now, panting the excess between when James lets up to give him the chance. He pins him against the white linen dressed altar by his hips, a hand in his hair and the other half splayed across his neck as he tastes his lips, his jaw, the bared side of his throat, but Remus catches his mouth again before he gets too far past the dip of his partially unbuttoned dress shirt.

His heart races inside of his chest and with each foreign delight it threatens to be knocked loose from its already tentative and limp position; used to being beaten and bruised, not searched after by sinfully delicious affections.

He just doesn't know if James is aware that while he avoids leaving evidence of his indulgent attention on his skin, he's permanently branding himself onto the delicate muscle responsible for Remus coming away from this year unscathed. 

He may not be successfully converting Remus to the Catholic religion, but that isn't to say the sound of his name like scripture from James's lips in indecent moans isn't baptizing him anew in a religion far more dangerous for him.

He wonders unfairly if James would let this perfection found between them - synchronized waves of pleasure in the frottage of their bodies - be the cause of his ultimate corruption; or how far he'll fall into temptation before facing the handsomeness of the morning star  lasciviousness in the mirror sends him fleeing back to his God for forgiveness.

He's about to ask, about to wonder aloud with the call of his name if the way that James grinds against Remus's center feels like such extraordinary exoneration to the priest as it does to him or if his conscience is dirtied with contrition with every touch of his hands to Remus's skin, when the overhead light flickers to life above their heads, and they both startle.

Their mouths break apart on gasps, swallowed up by the echo of a feminine voice from behind the stage.

"Is someone in here?" Footsteps follow the call, coming closer, and Remus is already sinking to his knees when James's hands come down to his shoulders. He hits the floor a little roughly, stifling a grunt against James's pant leg.

He'd meant to slip under the altar table, but James's hands pinch and still him, keeping his top half out from under the cover of the large decorative table cloth. 

He grips James around the knees first for dear life, and then to keep from ending both of theirs by exposing himself with a possessive jerk to his feet when Ms. Mary rounds the stage corner and approaches from the other side of the table. 

"Father?" Ms. Mary asks. Remus can't see her, but it's definitely her voice coming from behind him, sweetly and sounding confused.

Remus watches James lick his lips, running a hand through his hair which is a thoroughly messed and wild nightmare atop his head. The kind that terrifies you with, with how much you enjoy the chaos. 

"Mary, what has you visiting the chapel so early?" He asks cooly, fixing a friendly smile on his face. 

Remus grits his teeth. 

"Oh, I left my bag about the pews somewhere, and came to fetch it before I start on breakfast. I'm trying something new that-.." 

Tuning her out, Remus leans forward, attempting to bury the jealous anger that surfaces at the easy conversation between the two adults above him into the supple inner thigh of his priest's leg, first with his cheek and then his nose in a gentle nuzzle. 

James smoothly pulls the earlier discarded chair close, and positions it behind him to then sit, leaving room for Remus to stay because his legs, but keeping his head hidden. 

One of the hands on his shoulder loosens, and he casts his eyes up through the fan of his lashes as James instead works idle fingers through his hair. Remus stifles a noise like a purr, and James glances briefly down at the look of blissful appreciation on his face as he indulges the woman's words.

But Remus is a little selfish, and the only indulgence he wants James to enjoy is in himself, so before he has time to talk himself out of it, he leans up slightly on his knees and mouths along that thigh, following the seam of his trousers to where he's gone soft from shock. 

He wraps his lips around the considerable size of James, creating a wet, warmed suction that has the priest gasping , bending over and ripping his hand away from Remus's shoulder to land flatly against the table. 

The other tightens in Remus's hair, but he doesn't attempt to pull him off. Keeping his eyes up, he enjoys the look of awe and disbelief James aims down at him. 

"Father, are you alright?" Mary takes a step closer. 

James's hips jerk, nudging him further under the table. He moves smoothly, clothes only shuffling minutely, and he keeps his mouth around his prick as he attempts to soak through the fabric with his spit. 

"Quite. Yes." James grits out quickly, and after a breath he straightens and answers more smoothly. "I'm sorry, you said, you were here for your bag?" 

"Oh, yes." James gives a subtle grind of his hips as she confirms. "I'll just-.." 

"No!" James stops her with a sharp shake of his head. "No.." 

"But my-.." 

"I didn't find a bag when we cleaned the chapel last night, Mary.." 

Remus wishes desperately that he could taste more than detergent in his mouth. Skin and sweat and salt flavors, more heady then where he'd lavished them from James's neck. 

"Oh.." 

"But I'm happy to have another look for you, this morning." 

"Um.." 

Remus makes to pull off, but as if sensing the sharp sound the inhalation of air would create, or perhaps the distance he means to put between them, James's fist tightens, keeping Remus's mouth pressed against him and warming his crotch. 

Remus's hands smooth down the front of his pants to his shoes, landing there easily, and he lets his eyes close to focus now on bringing in bits of air through his nose.

To be a pleasing worshiper.  

"I wouldn't want you to be late for your breakfast shift." James explains genially, to which Mary makes a sound like a coo. 

"That's very thoughtful of you, Father James." 

Remus tenses. His name sounds wrong coming from her mouth. Less exulted, but still far more affectionate then Remus thinks it should, and James stiffens against him further like he, too, hears it for what it is.

That is the sound of sinful temptation.

The kind of lyrical leading, like joyful fire dances and pagan worship that would send a man like James into the pits of hell for partaking. 

Not because they worship some false God, but because they do so naked and writhing and James pleasantly ignores it, but Remus can see the slightly uneasy disinterest that it stirs to the surface in him. 

He means to relieve the pressure of this interaction by creating a new one, and dutifully rubs his face in, enjoying the sensation of hardening, lengthening cock covered but between his lips all the same. 

If there was ever a moment to confirm his sexuality he thinks it would be this, drooling against a man's pants because he's hungry to swallow down what's underneath. 

"Think nothing of it. I'm happy to help." James's words come out tighter, but finally, Mary acquiesced in her decision to search. 

"Sure. Of course. I'll.. see you at breakfast? Most important meal of the day." She works through mild confusion into hopeful hinting, and Remus can't help the suggestion of teeth he works into James's erection; a gentle nudge is all, making him hiss like the snake who just won't leave them be. 

"I might skip it today, actually," Remus expects the tug of his hair that he gets and sheaths his teeth accordingly, but he doesn't expect the soothing after. Soft fingers carding through, tracing lightly around his ear. Praise. "I've an appetite for some more time spent in the Lord's presence this morning." 

They stay how they are while Ms. Mary's footsteps retreat. The door closes louder than it was opened to begin with, but lights stay on, giving Remus an intoxicating view from his place on his knees.

He wants to stay here.

Wants to pray here .

He reaches up with eager fingers to fumble with James's fly, but James catches his hand and holds it.

Heat in a house fire rises, but the flames in James's eyes simmer low, threatening the old wood of the chapel floor as he bends down. With their faces close, he smirks, purring erotically, "Did you just try to bite me, Moony?" 

"I'm sorry, Father . She was toeing the line.." Remus catches the front of his stole, letting their noses nudge. His facetiously innocent words fog James's glasses, but it does nothing to cool the hellfire amusement behind them. "Was it not my turn to claim the body of Christ?" 

James's head tips, curious, and Remus continues playfully, "Or would you rather put it on my tongue instead, like you do during communion?" 

The priest makes a sound not heard besides during an exorcism before he encourages Remus to his feet with a careful pull of the hair at the back of his head. He too, stands, the chair making a loud screech as it's forced out behind him. 

Remus raises lithely, lets James press him back against the altar like they were before, save for the passionate snogging. 

"Do you know why we celebrate the Eucharist, Remus?" 

"To ask for God's forgiveness for our sins?" Remus smoothes the delicate scarf over James's shoulders, letting it fall down his toned arms. It hangs by his elbows in red waterfalls. 

“Our sins,” James works with one hand to unbutton the top few of his black, long sleeved clerical shirt. “That his one and only son already died for them.” 

With timid fingers Remus strokes along the white collar, looking oddly secured overtop the white undershirt that James exposes. 

"If he's already died for them, why do you resist making them?" If it's to mimic divinity, Remus wants to make it entirely clear that when he's unrestrained and unrepentant is when he looks the most heaven sent. He pulls at the collar he strokes, releasing it and then stuffing it forgettably into James's pocket. 

“To remember.” James goes quiet for a moment, eyes raking over Remus’s body while he takes a step away, releasing him. Remus can only hold his breath and will his beating heart to still as James lets his stole fall down his arms to a softly piled heep at his feet. “We’re asked to remember his sacrifice by offering gifts to that altar behind you, and we accept that they’re blessed and become parts of the divine, and when we swallow them down, God strengthens us to do what He wants us to do.”

Remus's teeth sink down into his bottom lip as he waits for James to make his point - words slow and sweet and low and sacrilegious when he does. “I feel called to partake in the liturgy of the Eucharist, this morning.. Remus, are you still bleeding?” 

Bashfully he nods, hands twisting into the front of his shirt. 

"And do you have faith?" 

Looking at the man in front of him, Remus has never been so devout. So reticent of the word. So ready and willing to do whatever God asks him to. 

"Yes, James." He breathes, and James removes his glasses, pocketing them in his trousers. He's tented there where his hand dives, and Remus can see the way he casually repositions himself. 

"Then you make the perfect sacrifice to the Lord, baby. Drop your pants." 

Remus quickly follows his orders, abandoning the crisp fabric of his new uniform trousers - one of a few pairs that James brought to his room after he capriciously explained how he'd gotten the ruined one in the first place (polite conversation, petty theft of an unwatched bag, and quick feet carrying him mostly unnoticed away from the scene of said crime and into a closet to change) - to the floor, and then kicking them aside. 

When James licks his lips and jerks his chin, Remus slips his thumb underneath the waistband of his underwear and does the same with them. Nude from the waist down, the priest gives a stunned and muttered, " Lord.. Hear my prayer." That starts the familiar ceremony.  

James closes the space between them with sure steps, hands immediately lifting Remus by the backs of his thighs onto the altar table. 

He spreads his knees, and diligently he finds the white cotton string attached to the tampon Remus has inserted. He pulls it slowly, nonplussed by the sight as he deposits the bloodied stopper in one of the chalices off to the side. 

He returns with a keen eye and more searching thumbs, using his arms to push out Remus's thighs and then spreading the sticky lips of his lightly downed cunt. 

It's the preparation of the gifts, a step James performs with the skill and proficiency of his profession. He rubs across the sensitive bundle of nerves as he prays over the offering, and Remus is mewling from the pressure by the time James turns his chin up towards the roof and asks for God to accept these gifts. 

It sounds, in the silence between his intimately whispered words, that he's asking God to accept Remus , and bending his head with his hands on his sex like he'll be doing so with or without his saviour's approval.

No lightning strikes or massive floods interrupt their communion, so James continues by releasing his center to catch Remus's chin instead, kissing him deeply. 

"Say the Eucharist prayer along with me, sweet sacrifice. The Lord be with you." 

"And also with you." Remus moans his dismay when James makes a little bit of room between them again. 

"Lift up your heart." Remus is still, heart hammering so hard it could fly to new heights, but that doesn't seem to be enough for James. "Take off your shirt for me." 

"M-my.." Remus stammers, hugging the hem of it protectively. 

"Your shirt.." James murmurs with a nod, and he reaches for the hem. "I see who you are on the inside. Let me worship the outside on this holy mantle too?"

It isn't just the inconsistencies in his anatomy that makes him hesitate, but this observance is meant to make sure they remember and Remus does , in this moment, the way that James has only ever looked at his deepest insecurities with adoration. 

"We lift them up to the Lord." Remus whispers as he raises his arms, and he lets James gingerly remove his top. It exposes the skin of his stomach - softer than he'd like - and the three uncomfortably tight bras, which James's face twists in confusion towards when he sees.

It's a blissful few seconds for Remus to suck in a last shaky breath before his copious shame gets caught in those golden-hard hues. 

He knows James's gaze follows the several raised or reddened or jagged protrusions on his skin. It catches for a long while on the most horrific of them, a long and crooked line that starts where it's hidden below the under band of his bra and cuts his stomach in half, ending just around his belly button like a hook. 

Remus looks away from James's face, setting his jaw and determined not to shy away from the priest's lingering stare. Over his shoulder, he watches the way the barely risen sun starts to light the pews in color, and somehow - empty like this - the space seems open, and warm.

As warm as the hand that slides over his hip. "Can I touch you, Moony?" James whispers, drawing his attention back.

His eyes are wide, and sad, and wanting, no judgment, or even the anger like Remus had expected like there was the first time that James found a hidden stain on his skin. 

He nods, silent, and shivers when James's palm drags moral deliverance over his desecrated stomach. He traces him slowly, like they have all of the time in the world for James to make a map of each place he's not quite perfect, and it pinkens Remus's body with a growing feverish desire to satiate the tingling, ticklish feeling James leaves with body weight and friction .

"This can't be comfortable," He hedges as he reaches for the edges of his bras. 

"It isn't," Remus shrugs. "But it's.. it's what I have, and it's better than nothing at all." 

There’s a tense moment - like contemplation - before James’s fingers slip in underneath the first layer. "I'm going to take them off, now." It’s a whisper, a warning. 

A question.

Remus meets his eyes and stows his nerves, nodding again. He sinks into the trust he has in James's character, letting him peel each bra from his sweating skin until his chest is released, breasts itchy from the freedom. He rubs them until the skin is calm and his tanned nipples have peaked from their flattened imprisonment and when James's hands replace his own and press them in, squeeze them experimentally, the priest continues, "Let us give thanks to the Lord, our God." 

His mouth comes down to test the side of his breast, following around the curve underneath and then smothering his nipple in hot, hot, hot ..

“Thank you-..” Remus gasps as James uses his mouth to inspire his nipple erect, tongue laving around it. It’s a new and odd sensation, one that sends that same liquid heat from his priest’s mouth down his center, swirling wildly underneath his belly button where one of James’s hands has rested to stroke him. 

His other comes up to lightly pinch the other nipple, but where Remus expects him to pull, to roll the tissue of his breast between his fingers, he instead presses in. He flattens it against Remus’s chest, encouraging the fat to the side, before he moves to mouth at that one too. 

Remus’s hands tense against the table where he supports himself against James’s ministrations, which leaves his body open, defenseless, and James fits himself between his legs and touches him like lands undiscovered, curious and excited and with the expertise of a confident explorer. 

“You’re supposed to thank Jesus, ” That hand restraining his chest drops and thrums at his center, pushing through Remus’s folds to find where he’s most sensitive and pull the response from his lips, dripping lust. 

“It’s right - ah, hnn, haa - to give Him - mmm - thanks, t-thank you, ah, and-..” 

“And praise, Moony, come on,” James purrs it against his nipple, the vibration of his words like a torment to his senses. 

“ Ha-aaa, ” Remus whines, and then, “Feels so fucking good.. thanks and praise, yeah, please James-..” He doesn’t even know what he begs for, just that he needs more . 

More tongue and teeth and James , who tests the slightly damp skin of Remus’s back before easing him down against the table. His elbows become support beams for his raised shoulders, his tipped head, and his mouth hangs open as he pants through the way James works his lips down his stomach, humming, “Holy, Holy, Holy Lord..” 

The song normally ends with the congregation kneeling, but in the privacy of their secret communion, Father James is the one to sink to the floor in reverence before the altar. He dedicates his breath to Remus’s soft inner thighs, his teeth to the muscles, his hands to the spread of his legs and then his lips, his lips find where Remus parts in a targeted strike. 

“Say the words of Jesus for me, Moony, baby, lead me in prayer.” James instructs as his tongue teases apart his slit to curl around his clit. 

Remus reaches forward and slips his fingers into the curls atop James’s head in a surprised grasp, shy when James nuzzles and tastes him all around where he can feel himself pulsing desperately. 

“Take this, all of you, and eat it.. This is My Body, which will be - ah - umm.. which will be..” 

“Given up for me.” 

“Given up for you.” Remus repeats, voice a whisper of the sincerest honesty. 

James, with strong hands, pushes up his knees, and Remus obediently plants his feet on the edges of the table. 

When James lowers his head like he might taste him where he’s dripping red, Remus tugs at his hair. “The blood,” He reminds him with a panicked and horrified look, remembering suddenly what comes next. 

The chalice of consecrated wine. 

James looks up at him, voice like humored honey to match his hungry eyes when he hums, “Keep going, baby, where are we, huh?” 

Remus watches him lower his mouth, connected through their gazes when - with the first swipe of his tongue - he experiences the first of metaphorical nails pierced through flesh like the kindest, most delectable sorts of torture. Sharp enough to make Remus’s legs jerk closed, or attempt to, his calves clamping around James’s head like a vice. 

James doesn’t tease him with light licks or hesitant suction, he dives in like a man starved, no doubt staining the altar underneath him with the evidence of his feasting, and Remus runs through the scripture with shaky, struggling words while his pleasure rises. 

“Take this, all of you, and drink from it-..” 

James adds fingers, spreading his entrance wide so he can dip his tongue inside. 

“This is the cup of My Blood, the Blood of the new and everlasting covenant-..”

My Blood.

Blood.

James is mouthing at and sucking down his blood like.. like.. 

His priest groans like he tastes of fine wine, and dazedly, Remus lifts his hips, grinding into the sweet sound desperately. 

“It will be shed for you and for all-..”

“No.” James growls, drawing Remus’s attention away from the ceiling where his eyes have rolled to face. 

“What?” He whines, system shocked from the way all pleasure ceases. 

James nuzzles his cock before lifting, drawing up on his knees to hover over Remus’s stomach. 

Remus hasn’t ever seen anything as sinful as red blood dripping down a priest's chin, like the devil has taken residence inside this church, inside of God’s most devout member, and uses him to gorge himself on the gratification of a virgin. 

Uses him to enjoy illicit desire and covetousness. 

A sacrifice that looks stolen, but Remus knew fully well when he tempted the wicked want in James that he was offering himself to a different sort of king. 

“You’ll offer this to no one but me ,” James warns as he drags his fingers up through his folds before palming his cock, adding pressure that has Remus's head falling back. “Start again.” 

“This is the cup of My Blood, the Blood of the new and everlasting covenant. It will be shed for you -..” 

His words stop and start on a groan when James adds his mouth back into the overwhelming and indescribable pleasure at his center. 

“So that sins may be forgiven. Do this in memory of me.” 

He barely gets through the last of the words before he falls back, flat against the table. He grips the cloth with one hand, James’s hair tightly with the other, reduced to writhing and to cries that come louder and louder as James begs him to proclaim his faith, and to be vocal in doing so. 

A tightening starts in his stomach like the cinching of a priest’s vestments, tighter and tighter until he’s arching his hips and gasping, “ Christ, James-..” 

“Christ has died.” James reminds him as he slips a finger inside, finding the very depths of insanity and pressing there with insistent, thorough thrusts. 

“Christ has risen .” James uses his other palm to rub, to complete the cycle of pressure and pleasure and so much sensation that Remus feels truly like he’s floating away from the table. 

“Christ will come again.” 

“ I’m going to come, James, James, Father, please -..” His cunt squelches with the lewd noises of his hell, of his rapture. 

“Come for me, come on, that’s it. Get a good look at heaven for me baby.” 

Remus has never been closer to the kingdom of God than he finds himself carried towards on the waves of ecstasy that James’s mouth and finger create inside of him. He peaks like those crests, white washing the flavor James swallows down like his mouth is desert dry. 

“God, God, James! ”

His head is turned to the side, body tightened and paralyzed in it’s arched position as the inside of him convulses, clenching around the finger James keeps still inside of him, lazily pressing somewhere that keeps the pleasure rolling for an innumerable amount of minutes while he cleans him, eagerly lapping. 

Remus meets the eyes of a colorful depiction of the Virgin Mary, and the grin he gives her lighted face is manic and satisfied, his ears ringing with the sounds of James completing the rite while he smooths Remus’s legs down and rubs his hands into the stiffened muscles. 

“Through Him, with Him, in Him in the unity of the Holy Spirit, all glory and honor is yours, almighty Father, forever.. and ever..” 

“Amen.” Remus whispers, eyes rolling towards the heavens he’s just attempted to reach before James leans over him, painted the same color rouge by Remus’s blood as the holy seats behind him are by the morning sun. 

Shakily, he reaches up to smudge the red around James’s lips. He looks every bit the fallen prince, fulfilled by the flavor of consecration and triumphant in his tasting of Holy deliciousness. Curiously, Remus brings his own fingers to his lips, and James watches him with aroused consternation until the taste of iron and salt exploding on his tongue has him murmuring his enjoyment of the combination. 

James kisses him then, as if he can’t help himself but spread his share of the Body and the Blood, and he gets Remus’s chin and lips and cheeks moist with the same mess. 

By the time he pulls away it’s drying, sticky and uncomfortable on their skin, their lips the only thing left wet with spit. 

James pulls back slowly, admires his body in its entirety as he fishes a hanky from his pocket - white, tarnished by red when he wipes his own mouth - and hands it to Remus to clean his face after. 

Remus lets his head thunk back against the table as he does so, limbs heavy with the after effects of a mindblowing and tiring orgasm. 

A groan sounds from the front of him which makes him smirk, and it’s followed by hushed, whispered words of the biblical sense. 

“Are you.. praying?” Remus asks, sounding stupefied even to himself as he pushes himself to sit back up. 

James stands still before him, gripping the bulge in his pants in an almost white knuckled hold. 

He nods, not meeting his eyes. “Do you know how people send prayers to the sick, asking God to make them well again?” 

Remus feels slight offense sharpen the tilt of his chin. 

“I’m praying for myself that way.” 

“Because you feel.. sick?” Remus asks carefully, now wrinkling in a dawning worry that it wasn’t even seeing himself that ended James’s eager sinning but instead, looking at Remus after ruining him with only his mouth. 

But James’s eyes widen, and he’s clear in the sharp, “No.” He gives. “I’m in pain..” 

“Pain?” Remus breathes relief, and then reaches out for James with what he hopes are healing hands. He pulls him in as he laments to him his struggles.

“Mm.. pain. It’s the human consequence of love-..” Remus leans in, letting his mouth soothe the skin at James’s collar to hide the way his head screams for him to run, to hide, to not believe that word dropped so easily from his priest’s lips. “An emotion that God gifted us with the misguided notion that we would only feel it how he deems; in Holy reference.” 

“Oh?” 

“He said.. love your neighbors, love your family, love your wives , all through our love for him. But to me specifically, he said love him above all else and do so contentedly without all the rest in any intimate sense and how? How am I meant to love him above all else when I have you laid across an altar, like my one chance at a clear glimpse of heaven? How can I be content when I ache to have you? When it hurts to resist having you?” 

“So you’re asking..” 

“I’ve performed the liturgy, tasted the glory of your body, Remus, and now I’m begging for God to tell me what He wants me to do .” 

“And did you get an answer?” 

James, after a sullen look and a kiss to Remus’s cheek, shakes his head and takes a step back. He takes his time, pointedly buttoning his black shirt overtop of the spilled evidence of their debauchery on his undershirt, and it isn’t until he’s fishing out and fixing his Roman Collar back into place that he finally answers. 

“No,” James deplores, casting his eyes up towards the Lord before stepping back in, catching Remus’s chin and bringing their mouths close. “But I’m fairly certain it’s one I already figured out myself.” 

“And what is that?” Remus slides his hands around James’s wrists, a soft purchase to keep himself upright, because the deeply determined look his priest gives him makes him feel weak. 

James kisses him chastely before he speaks in obeisance to their prospective union when he answers, “My only chance at salvation will be to fuck you, Remus Lupin, over, and over, and over, until we find the promise land together.” 

Chapter Text

“The needs of the socially disadvantaged and vulnerable are prioritized.” 

-https://cssa.org.au/resources/catholic-social-teaching

Remus is struggling with his key on a temperate Friday evening; jiggling it in the old keyhole and begging the tricky lock to let him in. Frustrated, he grumbles to himself while he twists the handle every which way in hopes it will unstick. 

He’s just about to kick the ruddy thing when a familiar hand, followed by the white of a pure cuff and the black of a stuffy uniform, comes down over his. 

“Is there a problem here, Remus?” James’s voice is quietly amused, teasing like Remus may get into a physical altercation with the door any minute now which admittedly.. he might have, had James not intervened. 

“Lock is stuck,” He answers sheepishly, and he lets his hand fall away from the handle. James’s other arm slides suggestively around his waist, fingers then following the inside of his wrist down to where he holds the key, and he plucks it with a gentle insistence from him. 

“Let me try,” There’s a wicked smile pressed to his cheek in a chaste kiss; they’d been doing quite a bit of that over the last few weeks. Small touches, kind pressures, searching out each other's affections. Not all of the time they spent together was sexually charged and in fact, most of it wasn’t.

It was quite a bit of talking and going about their days in a private sort of tandem with each other, loops of gravity bringing them in for cherished moments alone whenever those were possible, and turning their chins to catch glances of each other when they weren’t; little smiles and nods given with secret meanings ( I miss you, I need to see you, my office? The closet? Meet me here at five tomorrow - said with a number drawn by the point of a finger on the edge of tight slacks) . 

They’re deceiving sorts of familiarities - of that Remus is sure, because while James comes out of his shell metaphorically, he has yet to come out of his robes physically - but he allows them; worse yet, he counts each one like the beads on the rosary which he still keeps with him, having not found a time to return it after he realized he’d taken it. 

Worse still , he lets them convince him there is something more to what they’re doing, because James has a way with words that would make the most atheist reconsider their stance, sure , and when scripture is being sung to you in considerate moans while your body’s worshiped, it’s hard to resist the call to land on your knees, but there are no words in those unguarded presses of his lips, his hands, his arms in solid hugs like James just needs to hold him for a moment, and that to Remus feels something like.. fidelity. 

Feels like a relationship. 

Feels less akin to hiding in the gardens and more like they’re making plans to leave them together, which they absolutely haven’t been doing. 

Or at least, Remus hasn’t been, hasn’t let himself, but James startles him with a casual, “If you’re not too fussed about eating breakfast first, I’d like you to meet me by the front gates at seven tomorrow morning.” 

“What for?” He asks, confused. They hadn’t had plans; usually didn’t see each other at all on Saturdays; James spent most of his in the confessional booth listening to students pleas for forgiveness and Remus in the courtyard, because he had yet to visit the mildly offensive room with the wooden box like a casket for all that could be sinful. 

“You have an appointment off campus.” James shrugs, giving the door a nudge with his shoulder. 

“No, I don’t.” Remus shakes his head, entertained by the way the door to his room pops open, throwing James off balance. He catches himself and stands tall, smiling proud and gleaming. 

“If anyone asks, you do.” 

Remus glances around them - thankful to live on such an empty floor - before taking a step closer, chin tipped and voice low and suggestive. “Lying is a sin, you know.” 

James catches him around the waist without the same worried look to ensure they’re alone, and he turns them so that Remus’s back is pressed against the door jam. “Can you give me an example of where the bible says that, Mr. Lupin?”

“Um..” Remus flushes, dragging his hands up along James’s chest. “In the story of Naboth?” 

It’s a warm hum against Remus’s neck when James dips down to give his answer there, “Only because that false witness led to an unjust outcome. Try again.” 

It’s increasingly hard to focus with the way that James presses their centers together. “You shall not steal, Leviticus something-..” 

“Am I stealing your time, Remus? Did you have other plans?” 

“No,” He whispers into the white collar that stands out against his dress shirt, nudging it aside and clinging to James’s shoulders as he taunts him. 

“Cursed is he who does the work of the Lord deceitfully,” It’s a playful reciting, fingers card through Remus’s hair and encourage his head to fall back so that James can catch his eye, grinning at his own games. “That’s ridiculous, isn’t it? Because God sees all, knows all, it’s an illusion that our actions have any free will to them, so how could it possibly be deceitful? Besides.. you do have an appointment. With me. It’s in my calendar and everything, ‘Remus Lupin - seven a.m until.. an undecided time in the afternoon’.” 

“Like a.. date?” Remus breathes, hypnotized by the magnetism aimed his way. Fucking gravity, this man is more and more the embodiment of the sun and Remus has no choice but to lean into him, kiss him desperately, enjoying the warmth despite the danger of being burnt . “Where are we going?” 

“You’re going to freshen up for dinner, since I’ve opened your door for you,” James notes, all righteous self-esteem in spades. 

“ Pride is also a sin,” Remus notes, and finds himself walked back into his room. James doesn’t shut the door, simply turns them again. 

‘Round and ‘round they go, celestial bodies in a solar system, heaven when James fits a knee between his legs and shields his head from hitting the wall so harshly. 

“So is lust , but I can’t imagine feeling the need to repent for this anymore,” The words are lost down his throat, said into a kiss as all consuming as a black hole, and Remus’s hands search for greedy purchase in his priest’s hair. Languidly, and without respect for the possibility of being caught, they roll their hips under the disapproving gaze of a violently red cross. 

Sloth-like delight, they find it in the way the minutes spread out languidly before them, aplenty for them to imbibe in the soft yellow lighting of the room. Quiet disregard of their stations, their ages, their responsibilities, for anything but the inarguable rightness in the way that they fit together. 

It’s a miracle either of them makes it to supper on time. 

*

Remus doesn’t dress like a prisoner of his fate on Saturday morning with the blue and black of his uniform but instead in casual clothes he’d brought from home. There are holes worn into the sleeves of his jumper - he lives in them, despite the rising heat of the season - and his kilt has frayed edges all around the base of its creamy plaid fabric, where it’s gotten caught under his chunky boots an immeasurable amount of times. 

He slings his bag over his shoulder, although he’s unsure if he’ll need it given the way he has no identification, he’ll be too disracted by James to read, and the fags at the very bottom are probably crushed and stale by now. He dips his hand in and thumbs around the beads of the rosary still hidden in the single interior pocket, letting the cool stone distract him from his nerves lest he change his clothes or forgo the bag or worry himself into staying in his room all together, where the walls would no doubt begin to move closer by the hour. 

The subtle breeze of the morning air is a relief to his anxiety-fevered skin and he sucks some down his lungs as he strolls as casually as he can towards the back entrance of the church. 

No one catches him, the door is unlocked, he has permission to be there and yet he tiptoes through the chapel with nervous glances all around him; but the stained glass can’t speak to warn others of his sneaking about and no Holy ghosts snag his shirt before he gets to the other end and lets himself outside those final doors. 

From the exit he spots James, and nearly trips down the couple of flat steps when he does. The priest faces away from him at first, hair glistening like he’s barely bothered to dry it after hopping out of the shower. 

A shower Remus has been in, used, and he pulls his hand out of his bag as he slowly approaches - sans the stolen rosary - to bite at his thumb nail, stifling the embarrassing noise he might’ve made while thinking about James using it. 

The color of the shirt he wears draws his eyes down from the hot water reddened skin at the nape of his neck. It’s blue, middle of the ocean blue, cotton and tight fitting. Below it are jeans, denim fabric hugging his backside snuggly and Remus feels like he’s actually died, dead , gone to somewhere far more tortuous than this school could have ever been for him, when James turns to face him approaching and the glint of a golden cross on a necklace catches the sun. 

James pauses too, and the both of them stand in this place of wild astonishment even though they’re still contained on all sides by tall iron bars. The ringing in his ears is replaced by a low, appreciative groan. 

“You’re wearing a skirt ..” James says in moderate awe. 

“You’re wearing clothes,” Remus blurts unthinkingly in response, causing James to double over and clutch his stomach with the force of the laugh he barks.  

“Yes, well,” James pants, wiping stray tears from his cheek as he straightens, brilliantly lit by hilarity. “It’s not just the catholics who would frown upon public nudity.” 

Remus huffs, crossing his arms over his chest and turning his cheek away, biting down on his grin. “I meant you’re in.. normal clothes.” 

“Would you have prefered I wear my cassock to the city?” 

“Shut up,” Remus grouses, thrown by the turn of conversation and mouth thoroughly dry. “We’re going into the city?” 

Silence meets him, charged and taunting. When he glances forward again, James shuts his mouth with a zipper motion over his sealed lips, and Remus shakes his head in feigned aggravation. 

His heart pounds louder in his ears than the birds chirping their morning songs and they both stand, and soften, and smile, until insecurity grips him with the ruffle of his skirt in the wind. Remus shuffles, arms dropping to his sides as he asks, “Do I.. look alright, for wherever we’re going?” 

James’s eyes drift down his body, slow and languid and dripping like heated honey that pools under the heels of Remus’s feet. “You look-..” He starts in a voice like a lover’s, before the church bell rings behind them, and they both wince. 

“Aha-..” James throws a hand up, rubbing it against the back of his neck. “It’s, you’re.. perfect.” 

“Thank you,” Remus whispers, smiling lightly, and as easily as it became summer heat between them, the mood shifts again, heavy humidity carried off like leaves and innocuous plans returning. 

James leads him out past the iron gates after entering a code; long and he didn’t exactly hide it from Remus, so as they’re walking down the graveled path and under the cover of expansive trees he asks, “Is that a birthday?” 

James looks at him oddly, and Remus tips his head back behind them. “The code. Six digits like a date.. a birthday.” 

James shrugs, “An anniversary.” 

“Oh?” 

“It’s the day I lost.. him. Sirius.” The woods eat the words, swallow them up whole and leave only guilt to sit unnaturally like lead in Remus’s stomach. 

He nods at the hesitant reminder of the sharpened knife he’d stabbed right where James was soft just because he was hurt. 

“I do this for him, too, I think. Believe, serve the Lord.”

“You told me he hated his religion?” 

James stuffs his hands in his pockets. “He did. But he.. he left me some things. Put them in my mailbox. There was a rosary and a letter, so when I met Father Peter that felt like.. fate.” 

Dread hangs in moist morning heat around his head. 

There isn’t enough room for Remus to swallow anymore so to make room for the question to crawl its way up his throat, the guilt bubbles over and makes a heavy home at the bottom of his bag, wrapped up in black satin.

“What did the letter say?” 

“I don’t know,” James drifts closer, the farther they get from the gate, and when their hands touch he wonders if the priest can feel how damp his is with sweat. “I never opened it.” 

“Why not?” 

“I’ve never been very good at goodbyes. If I didn’t read his letter then.. I never got one. And that hurts less than.. less than whatever he probably wrote.” 

“Was he that selfish, that he would leave you harsh words to remember him by?” 

James thumbs the pendant hanging at the V-neck collar of his shirt, lost in saddened thought for long moments as they continue down the path. 

“No,” He answers finally, softly. “No, he wasn’t. That’s what I’m afraid of. That he wrote something.. generous. Platitudes or apologies that would make it harder to pretend I had no hand in it." 

"But you didn't. It was his parents who sent him off, who hurt him." 

His heart twists when James gives an ample sigh in return, with a shake of his head. "They would have had nothing to fix if I hadn't needed him to love me the way that I loved him." 

"Needing to be loved isn't a bad thing, James.." 

"It is when your inability to accept it being refused gets the man you love killed." 

He says it so sternly, like an irrefutable truth; one Remus rejects whole-heartedly, but he doesn't have the words to justify his disagreement. He didn't know Sirius, can't argue what he might have said in that yellowed and unopened letter, and he especially can't say to James now how his desire to be loved doesn't make him some harbinger of death but instead.. entirely human .

So he says nothing, feeling just as fallible, and searches out the purest form of connection between them. His fingers slip between James's and curl around his knuckles - long and well fitting - palms pressed snuggly like long lost loves while they walk. 

“You have a car ,” Remus gasps minutes later, as they approach a shiny silver two-door parked next to several remarkably less impressive vehicles under a sheltered port. 

He’d seen the little circle of car parks when their bus passed by on it’s way to the school, and had admittedly assumed the vehicles belonged to the church, but to say that Remus is surprised when James leads him to the flashiest of them, keys in hand, would be an understatement. 

“Uh-huh, did you think we’d walk to the city, Moony?” 

“You have a nice car,” Remus carries on muttering after flashing James a look , dragging his fingers over the cool door handle. 

“I stole a nice car,” James corrects him nonchalantly, unlocking the door with an electronic key fob. Like it’s nothing. Like it isn’t hot as fuck that his priest has a penchant for rule-breaking , which it is. Especially when he continues, “It’s my parent's. I didn’t exactly.. tell them where I was going when I left home to become a priest.” 

“Do they know, now?” 

“They know I’m a priest.. or at least, I assume they do. I sent them a letter .” James grins as he tosses the fob over to Remus, who rips his hand away from James's to catch it, staring down at it in horror. "You know how to drive, Remus?” 

“A gweiadur - a, uh, tractor, not a sports car! ” He holds out the fob, shakes it for James to take it back but with a chuckle, James walks around him, turning him by the shoulders and pushing him gently towards the hood. 

“Well, that’s even better. If you can drive a big machine, then she’ll be an easy time for you, just keep her in a straight line and we’ll make it to the city in one piece.” 

“Straight is not my specialty,” Remus deadpans, and then worriedly from the driver’s side door he adds, “I don’t even have a learners-..” 

James shrugs, and as he’s throwing himself down into the passenger seat he jokingly hums, “Better keep your eyes on the road then, Moony, baby.” 

Blushing and terrified, Remus’s eyes do stay on the road the entire time, even though he is viscerally aware of the priest in the passenger seat; who hasn’t taken his eyes off of the side of Remus’s face except to very subtly turn on cruise control when Remus’s foot on the gas - because he was resisting the urge constantly to bounce his leg - kept sending them lurching forward. 

His fingers are splayed tightly over the curve of the wheel, his back stiff, until sometime into the thirty five minute drive, James’s hand comes sliding over his knee. He rubs gentle circles into the side of it, comments of praise filling the quiet interior of the car, even though all Remus has done is follow a couple of long, winding roads. Still, it soothes him, and they make it to the point where trees and farmland turn into signs of life again with little trouble, making him feel ultimately proud of himself. 

A pride that James mirrors with the quick mold of their lips, bodies pressed together and against the side of the car shielded from the road, after Remus carefully pulls over to switch seats with him, not wanting to risk the paint job or their lives by trying to maneuver through a crowded city center and still not privy to where they’re going, anyway. 

“What was that for?” He tugs James down into another kiss even as he asks, fingers encouraging lazy loops out of his drying curls. 

His priest gives him a goofy smile, the kind unrestrained by prudish eyes. “Just.. Because I can.” 

"Because I can."

That explanation, given easily, like removing the vestments of his religion and leaving the church behind them left James’s covenants there, too, plays on repeat inside of Remus’s head as James drives them the rest of the way. 

He chews on his bottom lip, consumed by the lingering desire to know if that could last . 

If they could.

But the silly thought is squashed by the way James rolls the golden cross he wears between his thumb and forefinger as they sit in traffic, because it’s a visual reminder that his priest is a man of God’s word, not a man of his own, and while he might think he’ll find refuge or pleasure or the promise land between Remus's legs temporarily, he’s after a more permanent kind of absolution in the long run.

The kind that Remus can’t offer, because he can’t grasp it himself.

He can only pretend to, in order to return home and convince the small minds around him of his right to exist as he does, because that was his original plan and the entire reason he let himself be driven up this perpetual religious alley; not for any sort of unreachable eternal safe haven, but to feel accepted in this life.

He asks again where they're going when James parks the car in a mid-city parking building. James only drapes his arm around Remus's shoulders and pulls him close, a composed smile on his face when he drops his chin and reminds him to be patient. 

When Remus's eyes roll towards the roof of the sheltered building, that composure spreads into an amused curiosity. James is often steady, steadfast, he teaches with a calm demeanor that just begs obedience because he leaves his classes with very little reason not to be, but Remus knows he is also mercurial , and when tested, a little bit explosive.

It's that heat he chases when James's voice drops to test his intentions with a daring, "Did you just roll your eyes at me, Mr. Lupin?" 

"Towards Jesus, Father ," Remus bats his lashes, drawing James's eyes down with teeth sinking into his lower lip. 

"I'm going to have to ask him later how it looks from all the way up there." 

"My eyes?" 

"Mm." James stares hotly, and like low simmering coals, Remus lets his voice deepen in reply.

"Or you could put me on my knees and find out for yourself." 

His heart pounds, and he gives an audible gulp, when the response he gets is narrowed eyes and a wicked contemplative spread of his priest's lips. 

"How much trouble has that mouth gotten you into before, sweetheart?" 

"Not enough for a teacher to punish me physically for it yet," Remus licks his lips. "Maybe you'd want to be the first? I do have quite a few arguments I could make during class to excuse it." 

The force of the sun searches his face, landing on his scar until his cheeks have caught flame. The carpark is quiet, empty, James's words echo off of cement walls even though he says in the roughest of whispers, "I hadn't even thought to give you detention. If you're so keen to land on your knees, Remus, why don't you visit the confessional first?"

He deflects the evidence of guilt on his skin in a scarlet A with a quickly muttered, "Is that really how you want to punish me, Father? With Hail Mary's?" 

James catches his chin with his free hand, freeing Remus's repeatedly trapped lip with his thumb. "First of all, confession isn’t a punishment, it’s a gift to be able to go somewhere and speak directly to God to ask for forgiveness. And secondly.. I'm hesitant to punish you at all, Moony." 

"Why?" He breathes as that thumb travels over long-numbed skin. 

The air is warm and still between them, but the world moves so fast it gives Remus whiplash. The bustle of the city is white noise all around them, soothing the anxiety laced answers. "You've been hurt enough . Too much, in my eyes." 

"Isn't there scripture on discipline being.. loving?" 

James nods thoughtfully. "Proverbs. He who spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is careful to discipline him." 

Remus finds the belt loops of James's jeans and with a confidence he doesn't necessarily have, he mumbles, "So don't hurt me , Jamie. Heal me , leave marks on my skin that I'll feel for days, discipline me to show your love for.. for your God." 

James huffs a laugh, accompanied by the slow shake of his head. "Oh baby.. If I leave marks on your skin, they won't be in display of my love for anyone but you." 

It's said quickly, casually , before James leans in and begs for a kiss that he gets, before leading him towards the car park stairs without another word. 

It's dropped like an often repeated prayer. 

It finishes his sentence like an Amen. 

And Remus immediately captures the rupture of butterflies in his stomach in a hastily deployed net of logic, because James doesn't mean it , like Remus heard it. 

But his heart heard it like a gospel truth, and the butterflies flutter their fragile wings regardless, so violently that they might as well be bees. 

They stroll at a leisurely pace along the city streets and it is every bit like sightseeing to Remus, who hasn't had the opportunity before. It admittedly gives him a bit more of that anxiety that troubles him, all of the activity going on around him, but he's tucked safely under James's arm like a physical shelter from the copious other bodies.

James steers them off to the right and guides him, points out interesting buildings or signs or shops, drops his mouth to Remus's ear to focus his attention when he talks. It's nice to experience the hustle of life through James's eyes, and he doesn't find himself overwhelmed with the struggle to perceive any of it himself.

He also isn't focused on how he is perceived, because the only opinion that matters to him is that of the man next to him, and he's confident that James truly does just see him. He's comfortable in his skin, or at least, he is until James gently guides him through an open glass door, adorned with several sparkling rainbows.

The shop is filled with pride; colorful, bright, unmistakably catering to the lgbtq+ community. Remus is already making up one of the most embarrassing colors of the rainbow, cheeks no doubt bright red. 

"James," He whispers harshly, attempting to plant his feet when his priest , for fucks sake, tugs him towards the register. "Really, we don't need to.. we can just.. can we just go wherever we're meant to be going." 

James looks around the shop with a raised brow, "This is, um.. where I meant to take you. Well, one of the places." 

"Why?" He asks, dumbfounded. 

James opens his mouth to answer, but he's interrupted by a bubbly redhead who very obviously stores a wad of gum in the corner of her mouth before greeting them.

"Morning! Welcome to Circe's Circle!" 

"Good morning… Lily ," James smiles as he reads her name tag which only makes the girl beam brighter, and Remus bristle harder.

"Is there anything I can do to help the two of you find today?" 

"James," Remus nudges him in warning, eyes wide and head shaking.

"Actually," James gives him a softened look before encouraging him forward in front of him. With his hands on Remus's shoulders, James continues, "My boyfriend needs a.. um.." 

The drift of her eyes down, down , side to side and clearly following the hand that James took away to use to gesture on himself, makes him want to die a little, sooner rather than later.  

"A.. binder?" She finally surmises gently, looking to Remus for confirmation, whose mouth is incredibly dry. 

"Yes, please." James voices. 

"Do you know what size you are?" 

Remus fidgets with the front of his shirt, pulling it out. "Um, uh.." 

"That's okay! I can fit you, or, I can get my coworker to? He's just out back." 

"N-no, no, um," Remus turns, begging James to hear him when he whispers, "Jamie I don't, um.. I can't.." 

"Do you.. would you prefer tape instead? Or something else?" James asks quietly between them, eyebrows drawn in and looking worried, now, seeing the panic plain on his face. 

Remus fights the hot burn of tears, the embarrassment that threatens to choke him. "I don't have any money, James." 

It comes out in a regretful hiss, looking towards the store front's windows to avoid the pity. But James chuckles, that familiar perplexed laugh he gives. "Rem, I'm paying." 

Horror fits itself across Remus's face in place of the embarrassment. 

"Or well, the church is," James is quick to correct. "Necessities.. we take on the responsibility for those for our students while they're in our care. This.. this is a necessity. You can't keep doing.. what you're doing, it isn't safe for you." 

"Oh.." Remus blinks, astounded. 

James smiles fondly, "We're not leaving here without a safe alternative." 

Swallowing the lump in his throat, Remus bashfully admits, "I've never had a binder before." 

"So, baby?" James asks, as Remus turns around to the sound of a bubblegum bubble popping behind him. "Can Lily fit you, or would you prefer the coworker?" 

"I would appreciate it if you could fit me," Remus says to her shyly, proud when his words don't shake. She spins and sprints off to the back after a cheery nod, but before Remus can follow, James catches his arm. 

He hums, more than a little posessively, with a nudge of his nose against Remus's ear. "Good choice, I don't think I would've enjoyed letting another man touch you." 

"But you would've let it happen anyway?" He reads between the lines, and feels the smile James presses against his cheek before he nudges him forward. 

"Of course. It's your body, your comfort, it was your choice. I just happen to like the one you made." 

"I like that," Remus sighs softly, happily . "Making decisions for myself. I know it's such a small thing, but-.." 

"It isn't small," James assures, sidling up next to him. "Our decisions are the sums of our lives. What they are, what they could be. You deserve to get to make them for yourself, Remus, and have others respect them ."  

Bodily autonomy is something Remus has had to fight for his entire life. 

He's been a small child in a cage with a bunch of other feral peers, set loose at the whistle of impurity like dogs and encouraged to bite, and scratch, and Remus never had the claws to bloody others . 

He turned on himself like an animal with open wounds that itched and ached after the other kid's teeth were dulled by the repeated breaking of his skin. 

He cowered, and covered up, cornered into conforming and then he was sent here when he still couldn't quite manage to be the right breed. 

Here , where his rights are handed to him along with acceptance and interest and affection by this man who’s gone out of his way to keep him safe.

And he isn't stupid enough to think that if the entire congregation, if Father Peter , knew, even about his gender , that his freedom from the restraints that tore red stripes into his skin would last . 

But he is a dog with a bone being dangled, sure enough that he won’t be beaten for reaching for it, unable to quite keep quiet the buoyancy of his mood when he steps out of the fitting room with a flat chest underneath his shirt, and James immediately embraces him, because he can, here. 

They leave that eye opening little shop with four binders, after Remus sees the price, insists on only getting one when James wants to buy eight of them like a maniac, and they settle in the middle because James flashes a platinum card and essentially tells him to sit pretty and stop barking about the cost. 

He takes him to brunch - this idyllic little place with outside seating - and pays. 

He takes him to get an I.D, which Remus didn't even know he could do - and did admittedly take also filing for a replacement birth certificate - and he pays for those things, too .

He holds Remus's hand inside of shops.

He tucks him under his arm while they walk.

They go for a movie when Remus tires, and James says it's because he hasn't had the opportunity for a while, but Remus believes he secretly just isn't ready to go back, yet. And Remus can't blame him, he doesn't want to go back either, because James is like a kid in a candy store; so enthused by fucking everything . The world is an oyster and Remus thinks James could find pearls in any direction he looked, including all of the ways he turns Remus's head towards things that he thinks he might like. 

Bookshops, and museums, and alternative stores and cafes and pop up shops with exotic stands in alleyways. He points all of it out and asks Remus's opinion on varied goods and lifestyles and food and Remus has very little experience to draw on or things to say besides expressing his interest in it all; he's carried forward by ocean waves through seas of new experiences.

James looks vibrant in the blue he wears. 

Windswept hair and wet sand skin and a look like the dawn on his face; pink and glowing. 

He's also as tempestuous, disarming and deceiving as the white caps that crash gently along the shore, because underneath that calm exterior is a current and sitting beside him in the darkened theater is catastrophic . 

Remus begins to drown in the sounds of the movie in front of them, overwhelmed by every small shock of their bodies touching.

Knees knocking.

Knuckles bumping when they each reach into the tub of popcorn.

Shoulders, heads on shoulders, a hand on his knee. 

He fizzles, can sense the steam just under the surface but can't bring himself to let the heat between them boil, bubble, because he carries cool water in his bag like a bucket of stolen and salty evidence that he didn't respect the beach he was invited to weeks prior. 

It's guilt that steals his breath and still threatens to hold his head under water instead of the kisses that James pulls him over the center console to press against his lips under the safety of that covered park before they walk back towards the catholic cells behind iron bars of religious reformation. 

"Thank you for spending the day with me," He breathes against Remus's mouth; his priest is so wildly affectionate outside of the strong hold of catholic clothing and walls that threaten to close in around them (since they're so eager to press tightly and writhe in sinful proximity, anyway). 

"I should be thanking you," Remus argues, enjoying the smooth skin his palms find at the nape of James's neck while he can. "You have no idea what today meant to me, Jamie. What you did.."

He doesn't even mean the binders, or the identification, or the movie date. 

He means the experience , as a whole, and he isn't blind to the regretful way that it may be the only time he gets to enjoy James so beautifully free like that.

"Can you see it, Remus?" He opens his eyes when their foreheads press to find James staring hopefully at him. 

"See what?" He asks carefully, because what he sees in front of him now equates to a sanctified vision. 

"The possibilities." James spreads hope like disease through Remus's chest, but before it can multiple and make prophecies that the church would surely burn before letting see the light of day, he clarifies, "The opportunities this world has for you, the paths you could take, instead of going back to that place that's treated you terribly ." 

Disappointment grips his words, flattens them, makes them a mockery of his subconscious aspirations. "The opportunities this world has for me .." 

When it only looks so open through your lense?

"Yes. You could go anywhere, somewhere you could be yourself.." 

"Aren't you meant to be leading me to salvation ?" Sharp teeth around the snap of his tongue. 

James sighs; soft, gentle shoves in a foggy direction. Reality is scarily clear, the antithesis of the colored hues he saw the city through today. 

"I don't think you'll find any in that town." 

He won't find any at all. Won't go looking for it alone , which is what James means for him to do. He's already found his. The tangle of their bodies is nothing but that ; a knot of gratification he'll untangle for his savior later, when they've burnt past the wick of wet pleasures. 

But Remus is a man starved, and he'll seek out the taste of it in the only place he's ever experienced the flavor - sacrilegious and sweet on James's tongue - while he's here and feigning interest in being saved and it's being handed to him on a blessed platter; each time feeling more and more like a new course and a last supper, because James doesn’t know yet what he took without permission. 

"We should get back.." James says in a melancholy reminder when Remus goes quiet. 

"Can I see you later?" He whispers. 

"Possibly… if you come to confessional," James smirks, and then shares secrets in the silence he leaves. "No one visits past seven." 

"Maybe," Remus answers, but he knows full well there's no better place on the school grounds for him to bring to light his theft of a sacred item than the tinder box that channels sin to the ear of God. He'll bring it down in cinders of mistrust, but maybe it will suffocate the ruddy pipe dream that James temporarily stopped him from choking today, only to smother it himself with a reminder of their connections mortality. 

*

Possibly the oldest and most archaic of the structures on the grounds, the confessionals inside of an otherwise empty little building beside the church are grand, dark wood with only very small privacy glass panels on either door parallel to each other and complex decoration on the very top. The doors each have a wrought iron handle, and when Remus pulls his side open to step into the little box, lit by a single and simple bulb above the cove, not even inside of the booth, it makes a bell chime around him. 

He takes a final look at the visage of Jesus hanging from a cross between the doors before he steps inside. 

He knows he cut his time fairly short; only an hour until curfew, but he’d spent a great deal of the evening in his room after supper thinking about how he was going to admit to this theft; if he even should, or if he’d be better off picking the lock on James’s door and putting the rosary back where he found it like he should have done instead of dropping it inside of his bag and spending the next few weeks counting on the smooth beads to calm his racing thoughts. 

He feels even sicker for it now than he did before, knowing that it was Sirius’s rosary that he left for James to have, and he knows deep in his heart that its this significance making him feel that he owes James an honest apology for his actions. 

He closes the door behind him, walking over a singular step to sit at the bench seat on top of a plush cushion. He turns his head to look over the diamond lattice paneling that separates him from the booth for the priest to sit, and notes appreciatively the way the lighting is too low to see through it properly. 

He won’t have to face James’s disappointment at the very least. 

When he hears the twin door to his own open and close with only a shuffle of fabric, he panics for a second that it might not even be James to hear his confession at all, and he’s at a startled loss for words until it’s his priest's voice to quietly greet him. 

“Good evening.” He says genially. 

“Hi, Jamie,” Remus gives sheepishly, and it’s so quiet around them that he hears James’s breath catch. He clears his throat, thumbing the rosary he’d pulled from the pocket in his kilt and using it as he makes the customary Sign of the Cross. “Bless me Father, for I have sinned.”

“When was your last confession, Remus?” James asks tentatively after a long pause follows his opening admittance. 

“I’ve never visited a confessional before. Where should I.. start?” 

“Name any of the sins that feel of importance to you. God will hear all of the ones you don’t name as long as you’re not purposefully omitting them,” He’s guided gently.

But there’s only one of his sins he finds he cares at all to confess, the one that drove him here to rectify it. “I’ve only one of importance.” 

“Only one?” He can picture the smirk that he hears in James’s voice. 

“I.. I stole something.” He twists the rosary in his hands, holding his breath before blowing it out. 

“Surely you’re not coming here now to seek penance for a uniform?” 

“No,” Remus sighs, heart pounding heavily. An anchor dragging him down to the pits of unsuitability. “I stole something of significance to someone I care deeply for.” 

“Go on..” 

Shaking his head, he lets the cross dangle between his legs, landing in the divet of fabric there. “I also didn’t exactly mean to take it. I slipped it into my bag without thinking, and then I didn’t make much of an effort to return it. I shouldn’t have been looking in the first place, and I.. I didn’t know how important it was to you then, otherwise, I wouldn’t have touched it.” 

James’s voice is gentled further when he asks, “What did you take?” 

Closing his eyes, Remus whispers, “The rosary, from your bedside table.” 

Silence greets him, loud as church bells. 

“It was his, wasn’t it? It’s.. the one he left for you.” 

“It is.” James answers shortly, and then, “You’ve had it this whole time?” 

Remus cringes. “Yes. I’m.. I’m so fucking .. sorry, so sorry, I should have never been going through your stuff, I was just so curious and your room was so empty and I.. I.. there’s.. not really any good excuse. Like I said, I wasn’t thinking .” 

“..God offers you mercy and forgiveness for your willingness to come and confess your sins to him.” It’s automatic. 

Scripted. 

Flat. 

It hurts . 

“It isn’t God’s forgiveness I’m after. It’s yours. I just.. I couldn’t find a better time to apologize, but after today I realized that I.. I need to. Need to give it back, too, because it wasn’t some small meaningless thing I took or something that I needed and if you can’t forgive me for taking it then I.. I understand.” 

“..You have it with you now?” 

“Yes,” Remus searches the side panel for something akin to a mail slot, but he doesn’t find one. “I can leave it on the seat, and go.”

“Ah, ah, ah, ” James tuts quickly, quietly - too quiet, too low . “No skipping steps, Remus. You can’t just leave . You’ve confessed a sin.. now it’s time to pay restitution. You do want forgiveness, don’t you?” 

“More than anything,” He gasps. More than.. most things, anyway. “Please, tell me how I can make it up to you.” 

“Have you used it?” At Remus’s obvious confusion, James clarifies, “The rosary.” 

“Oh.. well.. yes, not exactly to pray but I.. I’ve been holding it, and counting the beads. It sounds silly now and I.. I feel like I’ve dirtied it.” He stares down at the way it hangs between his legs in disgust of his own hold on the soft satin. 

“Nothing you touch could be made dirty,” James disagrees softly, before his tone sharpens once more. The air of a dedicated church leader fills the booth around him. “Do you know what the rosary is traditionally used for?” 

“Yes, Father. To.. pray.” 

A breathy huff escapes James, not exasperated but like his inhalations are strained, ghostly. “To be guided through Jesus's mysteries. It’s in your hand now?”

“Um.. uh-huh..” 

“How does it feel?” 

“How does it feel?” Remus parrots, confused.

“In your hand, how does it feel?” 

“Oh.. The, um, the cross is warmed from my palm. The beads are still cool, smooth.. why?” 

After a beat, James confirms, “Do you feel genuine remorse for your sin?”

“I do.” 

“ Where do you feel it, baby?” 

Remus searches the wood paneling in front of him for an answer worthy of the suddenly sultry tone James uses, eventually settling on a whispered, “Inside..” 

“Then I’m going to have to make sure you feel my absolution on the inside too.” 

“How?” He asks, bringing the cross to his lips and pressing it there in mild impatience, eager to find deliverance however James will ask him to, and so fucking greatful that any anger over his actions is either being convincingly channeled into authority, or is absent. 

“You’re going to pay a penance for your sin with my rosary. I'm going to guide you, ” James cooes, and Remus leans back as he hears James do the same. “And God is watching, Remus, so you’ll have to convince us both that you mean your apologies.” 

The suggestion that the Holy figure watches his atonement as James instructs him to drag the end of the crucifix along the skin around the base of his neck makes him shiver.

“‘In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.’” James starts to pray as Remus dutifully traces his collar bone. “Are you still wearing a skirt, sweetheart?” 

“Yes, Father,” Remus answers just as sweetly as the voice beckons him to be. 

“‘I believe in God, the Father almighty, Creator of heaven and earth.’ Pull it up, bunch it at your waist,” At the shuffle of the fabric that Remus drags side by billowy side up, exposing his legs, James adds easy praise with further instruction. “Spread your knees, good boy. I want him to see what sanctum he created in you. ‘And in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under the Pontius Pilate.’ Remus?” 

“James?” His knees knock as he’s startled out of the deep state of attentiveness he was in - listening to his priest’s melodic voice speak to him - by his name amidst memorized prayers. 

“Are your knees still open?” 

Bashfully, he spreads them again upon realizing they’d fallen closed. “They are, now..” 

“‘He was crucified, died, and was buried’.. Put the crucifix in your mouth, bury it deep, get it wet; I want to hear you sucking on it.” 

There’s a shifting of fabric, the telltale scrape of a zipper, and Remus sucks the end of the cross into his mouth loudly. It worries his taste buds with the flavor of polish, acrid and with the sharp tang of metal underneath. Not copper, not quite like blood, but close. It tastes like sacrifice, and he whines when James continues on. “He descended into hell; on the third day He rose again from the dead; He ascended into heaven, and is seated at the right hand of God the Father almighty. I’ve got my right hand on my cock, baby, and I want yours on your inner thigh.” 

Remus’s cheeks heat as he does as James wishes - wishing loudly inside his head that he could see what James just described for him - and slides his fingers over the tight skin just underneath the edge of his pants. He encourages them up, up, up, brushing lightly over the crease of his center and giving another high pitched noise from around the crucifix he still sucks on, to signal he’s listening. 

“‘From there he will come to judge the living and the dead. I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic church, the communion of saints , the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body,’ that’s what we’re doing here, Remus. Communion, resurrection, I want to taste the forgiveness dripping from the inside of your thighs once we’re done earning it.” 

Holy mother of..

“‘Life everlasting.’ Take the crucifix out of your mouth, hold it out, let it cool.. mm.. and finish the prayer for me while you drag it from the inside of your knee up to your fingers.” 

Remus leaves the cross shining in his spit and watches the goosebumps arise from underneath the chilled glide of its silver bottom along his skin. His body tingles by the time he reaches the fingers of his right hand - there's something so blasphemous about the way he holds the cross with his left - and softly he whispers, “Amen.” 

“Again, on the other side. Dry it lightly with your underwear, over where you’re swollen.” 

“Amen,” It comes far more desperately, his wrist tense to deny himself the pressure he would prefer when he teases himself with the flattened shaft of the stolen cross.  

“Do you feel forgiven yet?” James’s voice has gone tight, but there’s no skin sounds, no slapping or dampness from the other side of the booth. 

He isn't touching himself, isn't jerking to his own direction, isn't driven to give in, not yet.  

And Remus doesn’t think that the anticipation making his blood sing is what forgiveness feels like. He shouldn’t feel keyed up, tight, tense, unsatisfied and searching still, and so he answers, “No, Father.” 

“I think you need to be closer to God for that, baby, so let's slide that rosary down your pants.” 

Nudging his hand underneath the ball of fabric at his waist, he leans back farther to slip his hand inside the cotton fabric, cross pressed into his palm. It’s cooler then where fever makes him hot , and calm fills him when the shock of its metallic surface nudging between his lips wears off to little more than a tease of pleasure. 

“Close your eyes. Are they closed? Yeah? I want you to pray an ‘Our Father’ with me, and I want you to picture that it’s my hand while you grind that Redeeming Cross against your cunt.” 

“Our Father,” He starts breathlessly, lucky that he didn’t instead just start with James’s name, because in his head the prayer is a twisted plea for salvation from the man beside him, separated by cursed wood. He keeps on with the prayer, slow to match James’s pace, timid and with every other word he presses the crucifix against himself, no doubt audible enjoyment in his words. 

He does as he's asked, and he pictures it's his priest controlling his pleasure. 

“‘-And lead us not into temptation.’ Lord, but into satisfaction, because there could be no evil to deliver us from between those legs. In that heart.” Remus quiets, quits speaking as James begins to pray off script. He’s almost sure he isn’t meant to hear the next part, a whisper on the end of a moan, “He’s blessed, and I am but your humble servant, I want to consecrate him with the love you offer all of us to share.” 

“James?” He asks in a whisper, when his priest sounds lost in his own prayer, still dragging pleasure against his folds. 

“Amen,” James finishes hurriedly, like it pains him. 

“There are three beads between the Our Father and a Glory Be,” Remus fishes, dipping the end of the cross meekly into his center and testing the spread. It stings, conflicting and too wide, too flat, not right, his anatomy making him wary of the next steps. 

But James is as devious as he is benevolent, and darkly he answers, “I won’t have that cross be what first blesses the fruit that you offer between your legs, sweet sinner. The hour of your fullness causing little deaths there will come by and only by me.” 

“Oh..” He whines, struggling with shaking knees to keep them spread if he isn’t to be offered reprieve where he’s left open. 

“I do however want to see you full of grace. How slippery do those beads feel?” 

“The.. beads?” He rolls them between his fingers and feels them slide with ease against his entrance. “They’re.. drenched, Jamie.” 

“Good, that’s so good, baby. They’ll need to be. In place of the Hail Mary’s, I want you to fit those three beads inside of yourself.” 

Oh.

Remus thumbs his clit as James’s voice guides the rosary lower than he’s ever dared explore. Somewhere darker, somewhere untouched.

The first cool obsidian bead is a smooth and imperceptible pressure against where he’s not been deflowered yet, even by his own fingers, but he lets this newness guide his whined request. 

One for aid in his spiritual development, as James is called to give to his students.

“Father?” 

“Remus?” James answers roughly. The way his name is dug through gravel makes his head spin, his knees ache to feel that same scrape in devotion to the voice saying it each time with a meaning far deeper than he can even know. 

“This is my first time,” He hints, lamely, shy and inexperienced. 

James is quiet, waiting, and Remus steals a breath - yet another fucking theft to atone for. “In a confessional, repaying a sin, touching myself here.. and it’s for you, so it’s important to me that I do it right .” 

A whistle of wind being blown out through frozen lips has him clarifying, “Please, Father, will you come supervise my prayers ?” 

God has abandoned him in this booth, the savior can’t watch the perversity of Remus’s desperation for his priest to shed his purity and fist his cock and watch him earn the forgiveness he craves, and for a long stretch of moments that wrack him with further guilt for the suggestion - because at the end of a beautiful day spent as a couple in the city, James is still very obviously an ordained man of God - he thinks that James will deny him, and the request will cost him greatly. 

He wonders what he'll have to pay for not only stealing something valuable from this man - his rosary, his day, his chastity - but also stepping so far out of line.

Wonders if, after such whiplash as a rejection from him now, he'll have anything left to give. 

Wonders, worries, waits .. 

Until the heavy door in front of him rips open with the force of heavenly winds, and James fills the lightened space it creates; imposing and large and sweaty, glasses hung on his unbuttoned collar where the white stripe lays tugged open, hair ascue, one hand on the jam and the other hanging limply by his side, though his fingers twitch. 

Remus’s eyes travel down as does his jaw because his priest has so hastily shoved his erection back into his parted pants that the head of it - purpled and weeping - stands out above his waistband. 

“Jesus Christ ,” Remus swears, grinding the heel of his hand against his own throbbing cock. 

James looks him over with a forced blankness, taking him in like he might have this glance and nothing more; leave and shut the door behind him and abandon the penance Remus so badly wants to pay altogether.

It's this sight that leads his former wonders into a prickly curiosity; how long has it been since this sensual force mimicking a sexual sobriety has cum ? 

Remus scoots down farther on the seat, practically slipping off of it, keen to find out. 

He uses his free hand to spread the front pocket of his tight fitting boxers, and he knows the second James sees the slick wet cross bent to still be pressed against his cunt that it's been a while, because his chin lifts and his eyes flutter with the last of his pious resolve fleeing. 

In place is left a wicked man; desirous and hellish and gorgeous, who sinks gracefully to his knees on the step in front of Remus with little hesitation besides to firmly close and latch the door to the booth; something Remus himself hadn’t even thought to do. 

James adds his mouth to the mix of sensation between his legs, first with kisses against the insides of his thighs and then with his teeth sinking into the fabric around Remus’s fingers like he can’t help the urge to attempt to consume his remorse straight from the source, supple skin inslide slick lips pulsing around the crucifix he pinches between greedy fingers. 

His hands find each side of Remus's boxers and in an otherworldly smooth slide he drags the fabric down his legs and then off altogether, stuffing the balled up underwear inside the pocket of his robes, open and laying in puddles on the floor around him now. 

He starts his prayer as he gingerly replaces Remus’s hold on the rosary. “Hands on the seat,” James orders and when he’s satisfied with where Remus clenches his fingers against the cushion, he spits on his cunt and then he makes him pray.

“‘Glory be to-,’” You, he almost gasps, when James rubs the beads up into the saliva mixed mess pooling at his entrance. He fits the first inside of the tight ring of muscles between the cheeks of his rear which he spreads just enough, spurring Remus on further. “‘The Father, the S-son, and the Holy-,’” 

Holy Fuck. Remus lifts his legs when a second bead enters him. “‘Holy S-spirit; as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end-,’” 

James finds one though, the third bead which he slips inside with ease, Remus’s body lazy and boneless with this newly discovered sensation accepting the intrusion readily. “Amen.” 

James’s tongue glides up his wet slit, flatly attempting to taste glory, before circling his clit until it aches . "Amen, Amen, Amen -.."

The crucifix is trapped - it can only bend below or over his filled hole - and after closing his lips around his clit and encouraging further calls to God for minutes on end that have Remus seeing stars, James presses it flatly against his cunt again, lapping over it. 

He’s full of God. 

Wet with a spiritual leader's spit. 

Dripping with sacrilegious slick. 

And when James stands, slowly pulling out his own erection, he’s overcome by the Holy Ghost; weightless as he sinks forward onto his knees because James catches his chin first with his free hand, and against his lips he breathes a purposeful, " Kneel. "

Remus lands there in front of him like he's called to worship, skirt in waterfalls of cream down his thighs, and James asks him to do so by fucking himself with the visage of Christ's death until he comes hard enough to wet the floor between his knees like he's the new messiah. 

The task is slowed by the way that James grits out prayer sans the hidden and desecrated rosary while he does so, hand slow on his cock. He makes Remus stop grinding against his own palm for each of the five mysteries at the end of every ten swiftly counted decades of beads. 

Hands on the floor by his sides, the both of them soak in the smell of sex around them and burn with the torture of prolonged execution during each break, until Remus is shaking from the pent up energy filling him. 

"Please, Father.." He begs at the end of the fourth decade, whispered and as husky as he can manage to drop his voice. "Let me taste your compassion?"

"How am I ever to say no to you?" James laments hand visibly tightening around his base. 

At the end of the fifth and final Fatima Prayer, James puts him out of his salivating misery, only just to dip the end of his cock into that glistening temptation. It slides against Remus's tongue, which he let hang out, displaying his starvation. Skin and salt and delicious deliverance bursts in ample flavor there, a mindblowing first taste, as James holds his head still and struggles with his own restraint. 

"Oh.. my.. fuck, Jesus. ‘Forgive us our sins,’" His hips jerk, and an inch more of the gloriously full length spreads Remus's lips. "’Save us from the fires of hell; lead all souls to Heaven ,’" He must find it at the back of Remus's throat, because he says it like a curse. "’ Especially those who have most need of your mercy .’ Mercy, fuck, baby. You're mouth is the most serene mercy I've ever felt offered." 

James's hands find the back of his head, gentle and coaxing him forward until his nose is pressed firmly against the soft patch of public hair above the base of his cock. "You know what comes next, don't you, Moony?"

Remus blinks dumbly, having kept his gaze up and reverential; glued to the man towering over him, filling him sweetly, giving life to the tightening behind his navel, who offers no clemency with the swipe of his thumbs underneath his eyes as they start to burn. 

"We're meant to send up our sighs," Slide out, slide in, James fills his throat until his stomach heaves. 

"Our mourning," Slide out, slide in, he pinches Remus's cheeks and does so again, and again, and again, groaning deeply. 

"Need you weeping. Need it wet around my cock, your mouth a valley between your tears. Can you cry for me, baby?" At his muffled whimpers of agreement James smiles like it's the most divine sight he's ever seen, and Remus is so thoroughly damned for the thrill it gives him when he tests this with a harsher thrust down his throat. 

One sharp enough to cut through his center, and remind him of the beads lodged deeply behind. 

He chokes a little, spit dribbles down his chin, and his eyes fill and blur with tears. Remus is filled with need, and grinds his hips down against his hand in search of more .

"Hit my thigh if you need me to stop," James pants, the last warning he gets before - and then with a tighter grip in his hair - his hips pull back, and he slams in again, hard enough to make Remus's eyes roll. 

" Ah, oh, fuck.. " James mutters.

He takes his time with this as he has throughout Remus's confession. Pauses between each stroke, determined to find the very deepest part of Remus's throat that he can each time, delaying absolution. Each rock of their bodies in connection drives Remus closer to his own edge, like he follows the voice of God to ultimate salvation, and James makes ample noise to do as he said he was going to; guide him there.

His cheeks ache, his skin itches from his tears - streaming now, from the burn - and his heart turns over, his vision whiting violently when James gasps that he loves-, loves-, "Oh, god, love, I'm going to fucking cum!" 

That in itself, those words with his cock driven forward makes Remus choke on delicious tension that coils and snaps in the most shocking sparks against a stolen cross and his own palm; first at his center and then through his stomach, his chest, each of his limbs like his body is a live-wire, thoroughly conducting shared and sinned-for pleasure. 

James pulls his cock out of his mouth in time to hear the cut off end of his cry from his orgasm undeterred by the shaft that suppressed it, and he jerks his hand over it rapidly, tip aimed down as he leans - practically folded - over him.

Remus goes weak with the force of the flood that leaves him, shoulders slumping, but James keeps his chin tilted up with the strong grip in his hair. 

He grunts his release like the most blissful relief. 

Forgiveness isn’t bought, or fought for, with James it is earned and it is given and it is splattered across Remus’s face in stinging white stripes of the Holiest waters, his priest's groans the most rare and honored of benedictions.

Thoroughly, once he’s left to leaking slow pools of it, James uses his shaft to wipe the spread of his seed against the garden he’s soiled; Remus’s cheeks are sticky, cream shined and fertile, warmed by the dirtiest parts of his pure-hearted priest, who after sowing his absolution into his skin like he could anoint him in this baser baptism, spits against his cheek and then cleans him of the evidence of his penance. 

Remus’s head floats, he feels funny . Like laughing, or crying, on edge like he could do both in a fit of hysterics and his body is exhausted, practically numb. James catches his chin and wordlessly searches his eyes - a contact that Remus blinks through, can’t hold - before he slips an arm around his waist and lifts him up onto the bench seat. 

“I’m going to remove the rosary sweetheart, okay?” He whispers, fingers rubbing circles into his spread knees as he crouches there between them. 

“Uh-huh..” Remus’s head rolls back against the paneling. 

James is delicate in removing the beads; he kisses there when he’s done, and it tickles, enough for Remus to give a breathy coo and arch his hips into the contact. James nuzzles him, a bit of stubble ruff against his inner thigh, before he smooths down Remus’s skirt.

“Can you walk?” He checks as he pulls Remus up to stand. He doesn’t answer, but he sways on his feet, and he isn’t there for more than a few seconds before James lifts him into his arms like a bride, carrying him out of the confessional booth and he haphazardly digs in his own pocket in search of a pair of keys which he uses to open the door to the office just beside it.

Remus doesn’t even bother to look around the dark room, he only has presence of mind to bury his face against James’s neck and enjoy the warmth his body offers, feeling overly sensitive and yet light headed, fuzzy and needing exactly what he gets from James when he sits with Remus in his lap on a generous sofa; to be held. 

“ Nng.. ” He whines his enjoyment when a grounding hand makes its way back into his hair, rubbing where it previously abused. “You didn’t finish your prayers..” 

“I know,” James hushes him gently. 

“Do you forgive me, Jamie?” Remus asks warily, face kept hidden underneath his priest’s chin. 

“I do,” He answers, and carefully, Remus feels him return the rosary to the pocket it had lived in on the short walk from the dorms to the confessional building. “And I want you to keep these.” 

“Why?” Remus chokes a little in his disbelief. He lifts his eyes to find James’s on his face, tender and indulgent. 

“The rosary is a prayer that’s meant to always accompany you. A prayer of the ordinary people, and of the saints.. and this one, it’s a gift.. it’s a prayer from my heart.” 

Sincerity fills his words, deeply and endlessly, and Remus feels a fresh tear slide down his cheek from the intensity of the sentiment. He feels James’s forgiveness in the gentle nudge of his nose, the brush of it away with a delicate swipe of his lips, light and as caring as his affections were earlier in the day. 

A little overfond. 

A little like that word that keeps slipping from his lips. 

Four little letters, which to say to Remus now would not be so little at all, and he doesn’t, thank God, doesn’t confirm his earlier betrayal, solidifying those feelings in this moment where the utterance would be a permanent change of fate between them. 

But James does lean down to press veneration against his lips, and he lets it mix with - at the very, very least - warmth when he whispers, “Close your eyes, Moony, baby, let me hold you for a while.” 

“ Mm, Jamie, ” He purrs, to the tune of an even far more affectionate term of endearment; one salacious and almost begged for by his already official title. He lets his eyes close and he sleepily chases those plump lips until he loses the battle with sleep and finds himself submerged in her gentle waters, but he does so unafraid of his back being left unguarded when he’s held so closely by the highest of angels to walk the earth, despite the way they’re both locked in a cage . 

Chapter Text

“Care for the earth, recognizing that all of creation is interconnected and we are a part of and dependent on the environment.”

- https://cssa.org.au/resources/catholic-social-teaching

Two more months locked behind the iron bars of Catholicism with his decidedly wicked priest sees the seasons change from a warm spring to a broiling summer around Remus, one where the lack of air conditioning in the classrooms is the least of the reasons that he leaves the school building for lunch very often red in the face and finds himself last in the line with kiss bitten lips and sweat dampened clothing. 

"Go to lunch. Go. Go. Go, Moony ," James would encourage him between mouthing at his jaw, his neck, clawing at his clothing and refusing to release him. 

"I'm going. Father. Going. Going to- nnng ," He'd often whine as a sharp and well-aimed knee, or a palm slipped inside of his trousers would grind against his groin until he was falling apart around him. "Going to.. to be late, ah! "

James seemed to get a frankly devious enjoyment out of stealing the rigidity from his spine, leaving him boneless, mouth tingling and little fireworks still popping in his vision and then sending him off; stumbling like a fawn, blushing and blissfully spent. 

James was ravenous some days, hardly letting the door close behind the last student besides Remus before he was pressing him against it, caging him in between strong arms and touching him, tasting him, and Remus was often just as hungry; not even pausing to say a proper hello in their private moments before desperately pawing at his cassock, slipping his fingers inside the ruffled fabric to find the warm skin of his stomach, his hips, his cock , stiff and weeping for the attention. 

Other days, there was a different sort of yearning shared. Sheepish glances traded during breakfast, longing stares from across the courtyard, long class periods where they couldn't meet to rectify the persistent ache between them, but they could both see and feel and suffer through its existence, and one of them would give in long after dinner, and curfew, and search the other out behind the privacy of their bedroom doors. 

James did so first, surprising Remus by closing them both inside of his dorm and pulling him into a long hug. They both stood there, and slowly he worked through his shock and wrapped his arms around James's waist. They held on, and James quietly hummed against his hair, "I'm going to take you to bed and kiss you. Just kiss you. Is that okay?" 

Remus was wary that first time, his heart already jerking uncomfortably in his chest, because those moments were the ones he couldn't justify in his head as rampant searches for pleasure. The way James covered his body with his own and slowly devoured every reservation from his lips and replaced it with saccharine affection - like they meant something - went on the list with the all other ways James had of making him feel loved . 

The ways he meant to ignore, because he was surely and sorely misinterpreting them; an easy feat when even gentle touches were a grace he hadn’t experienced much in his life except from the one person that had loved him; his mum. 

But he didn’t dare hope , because he lost her, same as he’ll lose James. 

And yet it became a routine for James to seek him out after those long days and spend similarly long hours covered by his sheets before slipping out before dawn, and each time that it was nothing but kissing and whispered conversations, his resolve to assume it was a purely physical connection that kept his priest coming back wore thin, only strengthened by his surety that it couldn’t be anything else. 

He couldn't expect them to be anything else, except that he did start to expect James to show up on those nights, so he was thrown when one night, he didn't. 

His priest didn't knock on his door at the time he'd come to expect him to, and he tried to ignore his disappointment, but it threatened to consume him, and so quietly he slunk down the hall towards his room. 

James opened the door looking disheveled. Behind him, his bed was unmade, and he was still rubbing sleep from his eyes and blinking rapidly against the brighter lighting in the hallway. Remus felt instantly terrible for showing up at his door so late, and he shuffled on his feet, bringing his thumb up to his mouth to chew at the nail. 

"Remus? What time is it?" 

"I'm sorry," He whispered, mortified. "It's.. it's past midnight, I-I shouldn't have-.." Bothered you. 

He took a step back from the door, meaning to say an embarrassed goodnight, but his eyes caught on his clothing, askew and rumpled. 

"Hey," James reached out and pulled him in close with a hand around his waist. Easily, carefully, he pulled Remus's hand away from his mouth with the other. "What's wrong? Did you need something?" 

His embarrassment no doubt showed on his face as he searched James's now worried eyes, "You didn't come to my room." 

"Oh," James seemed to shake off some of the confusion. " Oh. " 

Remus didn't answer, but with a look away that said all he needed to. He'd let his crush cloud his judgment, clearly. Assumed, expected, was making an arse out of himself, even though James held him close like it wasn’t an issue at all that he’d come to his door in the middle of the night unbidden. 

James let his hand drop to catch his cheek instead, thumb rubbing over Remus's bottom lip as he did. "You were waiting up for me?" 

"Yes," Remus admitted, ridiculously near tears. 

He got a peppering of kisses for this, James's lips dry from sleep, and his priest leaned their foreheads together after them. "I'm a little too tired to spend until the early hours worshiping you as I'd like to, but if you need-.." 

He punctuated his offer with a weak press of their hips, but Remus quickly blurted a horrified, "No." 

At James's furrowed eyebrows, he continued softly, his hands folding into the front of his robes, "N-no, that's not why I came.. I just.. missed you, is all." 

It sounded so stupid out loud like that. Fuck. 

"You.. missed me." James sounded out the words softly, like he couldn't quite believe them. His expression softened too, soothing the harsh pangs of mortification in his chest.

He didn't look mad, or put off by Remus's presence.

If anything, he looked.. charmed. 

Pleased.

"Mhm," Remus finally pressed a bold kiss to his cheek, and then to his lips. He felt entirely better with James looking at him with that gooey sentiment, gaze like warm honey. 

The sweetest kind.

Dripping. 

Pure and good and filling and one of Remus's favorites, even though it hurt a little, and at first the churning that felt so funny in his stomach made him think that maybe he was allergic to bees. 

But he doesn't feel swollen, or sore, or on the brink of any little deaths. He feels safely contained, a nest of new feelings and he can't help but enjoy the gentle rattle when he's so clearly free to indulge in the sugary buzz of them.

Perhaps he'd only ever been exposed to wasps, before, and he was just overly sensitive about being stung. 

James only kissed him again, though, no teeth or tongue or sharp judgment. 

Soft and adoring. 

"You didn't come for sex?" He asked curiously, hand drifting up to card through Remus's hair. 

"No," Remus repeated, their noses brushing. "Is that what you've been coming to my room for? Because we've not had any sort of sex in my room, so if that was your goal-.." 

"No," James chuckled rushedly, under his breath. "I come to your room because I miss you, too. You've unlocked something needy in me, Remus, that I've long since caged, and I can't seem to get through the day without spending a bit of it with you." 

O-oh.

"Can I stay?" Remus knew the desperation was rife in his voice, broken and unduly, ignorantly hopeful. 

"Of course. Of course, sweetheart." James agreed like it was the inevitable outcome, and he held on like not even the wrath of God would see him letting go of Remus anytime soon.

Like he wouldn’t let him slip out before dawn, either.

He spoke like Remus's confession months prior cleared away the slate of sin and made their connection an irrefutable indulgence that James no longer felt any hesitation about pursuing. 

That hesitation was growing inside of Remus, though. The first seeds of doubt about their rightness were planted, outside of their sweet little summer garden, because in only half a year or so, he'd have to go home, and James.. James had a hard time with goodbyes, and Remus worried that with white and icy blankets falling from the sky and freezing their flowers at the roots, this one might be just as hard to take as a death. 

They ended up in a new position in James's bed that night, one that hadn’t laid in before; Remus on his back, encouraging James to lay his head on his chest. 

James paused before he fully laid his cheek against Remus's uncovered breast, and quietly he checked, "You're comfortable?" 

"Yes, Jamie," Remus assured him, smoothing back the curls from his face. 

With his ear pressed gently overtop Remus's heart, James mumbled a prayer directly to the stolen vessel. "'It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil; for he gives to his beloved .. sleep. In peace we'll both lie down. In you alone, mm, O Lord, thank you for this safety.'" 

Remus hummed a quiet ' Amen ' for him after he drifted off, and he held him in his safety the rest of the night; mostly awake and counting each breath, thanking a God he didn't believe in for these small comforts, and begging for them to last. 

Remus was starting to realize more and more that they couldn't , though, and it was a particularly dreary Sunday, weeks after that night where they started alternating rooms, that this feeling sprouted from the Earth of his lungs; ghostly gasps in a hallway, on the outside of a conversation that watered his self-loathing more thoroughly than the rain ever could. 

The morning started, as it did every week, with a service. 

James leads, as is his usual role, and it makes Remus wonder - not for the first time - what exactly Father Peter does for the church or the school, because he always seemed to be around but short of leading the group in Hymns and occasionally taking over a class to recite very, very boring recountings of scripture, he didn’t seem to do much at all besides hover . 

He hovers now, at the right hand to the stage and watching James with a sharp eye, like he’s auditing mass. 

James’s recountings of scripture were thankfully, usually animated, anything but the dull or lifeless readings that left Remus with a heavy brain fog. There wasn’t time for his mind to stay long in between the lessons; woven together, overarching, delivered in bold tones and strong countenance and dedicated care, so he can’t imagine what fault would cause the wary purse of the older priest’s lips. 

James stands for this one, positioned behind a podium and reminding the congregation of students of the events of Genesis; namely the flood and the covenants that God made with his people after that original sin. He’s passionate, but this one is more scripted then his normally are; long winded. 

“After Adam and Eve’s exile from the garden of Eden, the biblical narrative has the propensity to feel grim. There’s a rapid advancement of evil, so that by the time we arrive at the story of Noah, sin has enveloped the world. This is meant to represent a return to the pre-creation chaos.” 

James takes a moment for the notion to sink in before he continues, facing each side of the room with timely attention, “In response to this defilement of his once good place, he sends a flood, sparing only Noah and his family for their perceived blameless nature. He makes a promise, a covenant, then, that despite humanity’s corruption he won’t ever flood the earth again, but instead endeavors to rescue humanity. But evil still continues to ruin the world, and we’re left to wonder.. How will God restore his good world? Well, he enters another covenantal relationship; this time with Abraham.” 

“This trend continues,” James pushes up his glasses, closing the book he reads from. “Evil spreads, but God’s promises continue; remain faithful to him, follow his word, and humanity will be saved, continue, he won’t go back on his word and yet still, the people of Israel break commands and live by their own definitions of good and evil.” 

Remus catches James’s eye, confusion laced, because his priest’s sermons aren’t normally so judgemental, or so harshly delivered. But James smiles at him softly, and what he asks next sounds far more like the man he knows him to be, though still like he repeats words he didn’t entirely want to . 

“Now, what is it I’m asking you to understand here, friends? That your thirst for understanding is wicked, or your trust in other’s naive? No, not at all. That you are sinful? Yes. But also that you are made in his image, and above all else you are forgiven, because of the The New and Everlasting Covenant that God made with His only son to fulfill all of His covenants. He writes his law onto the hearts of his people and brings that complete forgiveness of sin. The story of Genesis isn’t just one story of failure in the face of one offered redemption or another, it is a complete arc, a lesson of continued faith. And what is the point of knowing this? That Jesus Christ lived and died or our sins? How does that affect us all today?” 

“Job tells us in 14:1-6 that every man of Adam’s fallen race is short-lived. His is a book of poetry and in it, he explains that all Man’s shows of beauty, happiness or splendor falls before the stroke of sickness or death, as the flower before the scythe; or passes away like the shadow. We are on God's time. He goes on to demonstrate for us how, because of this, we should cast ourselves wholly on the mercy of God, through our Divine Surety. We should seek daily renewing of the Holy Ghost, and look to heaven as the only place of perfect holiness and happiness, and I do agree...” 

James hooks his fingers around his dangling rosary, bringing it to his lips as he casts his eyes up towards the ceiling. When he lets them drift down again, there is a wild spark in his eyes, and he comes around the podium as he very obviously abandons his script. He looks towards Father Peter and then quickly looks away, and the older priest's lips are pursed, cautious, the tilt of his chin a subtle warning that Remus would assume everyone else misses, because it’s only seconds of disapproval.

“‘Though a tree is cut down, yet, in a moist situation, shoots come forth and grow up as newly planted trees.’ Evil prevailed, time and time again until God decided to forgive, and to let grow, because that was his entire intention; that these good and perfect things, mortals , could grow. So we’ve sinned, been made imperfect, we’ve asked for forgiveness, we’ve been forgiven, because we are in his image but we are fallible, and he understands that. What would he have us do now? Humanity is short and uncertain, it is the fading beauty of all natural enjoyments. I think he would ask us not to consider this a life of dying work, hard work, as Job describes, but to consider it an opportunity. It is a choice we make to be good, and to be together, and to enjoy the beauties he created, all under his love and reverence, because he allows us to do this with our lives, and affords us still the opportunity to be loved by him. I ask you this week not to curse your own capability to sin, but instead, question: what is written on your heart? And is it good? If so.. rejoice in that good, and enjoy it, let it guide your decisions in the name of the Father, the Son, and The Holy Spirit." 

"Amen," The pews chorus in front of him automatically, and with the sign of the cross made with the end of his crucifix, he dismisses them for breakfast. 

All but Remus, who he calls to the front gently. 

"Yes?" He asks amiably, and his approach cuts off the same one Father Peter was making. The stout priest turns and files out the door with the others instead of continuing towards them. 

"Would you mind terribly if I asked you to help me clean the altar table before you head to breakfast?" 

Remus looks towards the already fairly tidy table with a smirk as he drops his bag into the aisle seat of the front row behind him. "Not at all. Anything I can do to serve , Father." 

James hides his amusement with a cough, and the both of them fiddle around until the church is empty.

Blessedly, beautifully empty. 

Of expectations and judgment and everything but the two of them and the Holy Spirit, and James is quick to lessen the space between them the second that they're alone.

But doubt still makes a home between his teeth. 

It interrupts their fresh ground breaking; Remus can't help but mumble, "Jamie.. Anyone could come back," when James pulls him into his arms and encourages his chin to tip, placing sweet and unhurried kisses along his neck.

"Then they'll see me rejoicing, " It's practically a groan as James finds Remus's lips with his words. He cleanses unease from his skin with ginger hands that guide him backwards, up the steps of the slightly raised stage and even past the altar table as they kiss. 

Remus stumbles, perpetually clumsy, and James leans down, perpetually in search of his mouth.

"They'll see you sinning," He whines in correction, unwilling to peel himself from James's embrace or drag his fingers out of lusciously grown hair. 

"Don't you dare," James rips away to growl, to duck his head further and dig his annoyance into the supple skin below his ear. "Assert that what you and I are doing is wrong. I heard it once and listening was almost one of the most terrible, selfish mistakes I've made in my time as a priest. I won't do it again." 

"Okay," He gasps. "Okay." 

He's convinced for long moments by James's surefire, hell born insistence that absolutely nothing could be wrong when the taste of their tongues together is so sweet.

Such fruitful presses, ripe apple moans, collective and suggestive and delicious to swallow, so much so that their bodies are called to move and clothes start to shift, both made dizzy by their spiral into depravity in front of the empty church seats. 

A new kind of service, one written from a place far more naturally passionate, from Remus’s hands dragging curled strands down like cursive signatures between his knuckles. 

Their garden, their worship. 

Kneel at the foot of God? No. Grasp at his white collar, dirty the color with the stain of your green thumb. Devour the blessings straight from the source, moans true and meaningful like His word; feed until you're full but it's an eternal hunger that threatens to drive you mad enough to want to deflower the ground and plant something even more nourishing between willing, warm, fertile thighs. 

Remus will never get enough of this craving James carves into him with every scrap of devout attention to the places he's been left to wilt. 

He starts to starve the second the feast is over, the beginnings of a cruel twist in his stomach even though it's a light hearted separation when James's hip knocks into something and he grunts, they adjust and Remus's hand swings out to catch himself from falling only to knock the basin of Holy Water onto the floor. 

It crashes loudly, startling them both back into some semblance of sanity that includes gasping, and wide eyes that meet, and simmer, and prelude boisterous laughter from the both of them. 

"Oh, tin, I'm sorry," Remus laughs as they both drop to their knees, towels from underneath the podium that the basin stood on in hand. 

"Bollocks," James continues to laugh too, kneeling opposite of him and patting the carpeted floor. "It's only water." 

“ Holy water,” Remus shakes his head, grinning. “This has got to be at least ten years of bad luck.” 

“Ten?” 

“Yeah. Seven for breaking a mirror plus the holy trinity?” 

James laughs again, endlessly amused. “Who told you that breaking a mirror would give you seven years of bad luck?” 

Remus shrugs, “Same people who thought holy water would burn my skin.” 

“Does it?” James teases. 

Remus squints, only partially joking when he answers, “I don’t know. I haven’t had it tested when it wasn’t hot.” 

James stows his horrified expression, though Remus can see it make his face twitch. But at his continuous grin, James matches it with a mischievous whisper. “Should we test it now?” 

“What?” Remus asks, seconds before James dips his fingers into the small puddle still left at the bottom of the bowl, and playfully he flicks the water at Remus’s face. 

Remus hisses, a sharp sound through his teeth as he jerks away, squeezing his eyes closed and grabbing onto his face. James makes a wounded noise and both of them freeze, hearts pounding. 

Until he peeks out through spread fingers, his smile widening at the incredulous and confused look James has stuck on his face, fingers still in the air. 

“Gotcha,” Remus hums as he lets his hands drop, face unmarred by fresh burns. 

Because he’s not a demon. 

He never was.

James taught him that. 

And when the moment of fear abades with his joking, the both of them are full of laughter again, breaths tickling their faces because James pulls him in by the back of his head until they’re both hovering on their knees, foreheads pressed and giggling behind the altar table. 

Sweet, innocent. 

Until Father Peter clears his throat from the front of the stage, an unimpressed opinion of their antics clear in the sharp, “Father James?” That comes attached to it. 

Remus drops his hands from the front of James’s cassock, but James doesn’t release him, even as he straightens and stands. He keeps Remus on his knees, shielded from the other priest's view by the table. 

“Father Peter,” James cooes. It’s impressive, the relative amount of calm in his voice, even though it still portrays his previous glee. 

“Have I interrupted something ?” Remus can hear the sneer aimed down at him even with the table and it’s draping cloth between them. 

He attempts to push himself up, only for James to yank him forward instead. His knees drag through the holy water still staining the carpet, and his cheek lands pressed against James’s crotch. 

His priest is hard , straining in his pants. 

Unassumingly, James rubs his face against the bulge, and Remus turns his cheek to donate his mouth to the cause, warming him through his pants. “Not at all. There was a mishap with the basin, but Remus has it suitably handled. Did Mary want my help with breakfast?” 

“Actually,” Father Peter answers slowly, a beat after James’s easy explanation. “I was hoping to speak with you.” 

After a gentle massage of his mouth over the ungodly impressive member and with a salivating mouth, Remus attempts again to pull away. James stalls him, still, his fingers tightening in his hair. 

“Go on,” James encourages. 

“Alone.” 

“My office hours are-..” 

“Now. Father.” 

With a sigh, James finally releases him. Remus takes a steadying breath, praying his cheeks aren’t as red as he knows they are, and he grabs one of the damper towels as he stands. 

Shyly, he drops it like necessary evidence on the altar, and mutters, “Good morning, Father Peter.” 

“Mr. Lupin. Best to get to breakfast before you miss out, don’t you think?” 

“Actually, I’m fasting,” Remus deadpans, annoyed with the tone aimed at him. Like he’s a child. But at the narrow eyed grimace he gets, he adds a quiet, “Joking. Sorry. I’m going now. Again, sorry for the mess.” 

He aims his apologies at James as he backs away and then turns, quick steps leading him out one of the parallel back doors from behind either side of the stage; shielded by large hanging curtains that he peels aside to get past the short way.

He steps outside, several spits of rain landing lightly on his cheeks, before he remembers his bag, left sitting at the front of the pews. He turns around and slips back inside before the weighted door has even had time to close behind him, but he’s stopped mid stride and still hidden behind the curtains by the argument already in full swing. 

“-You would have had me tell an entire congregation of children to just accept the fact that they’re sinful, and that what they do on this earth is cursed and worthless, and that would have taken away every reason for them to follow God. What point is there for these kids, struggling already to see any reason for making an effort to change, if the only peace you want them to find is after they’re gone ?” James rants, stern and upset. 

Remus sinks his teeth down into his bottom lip as he listens. 

“Better than you telling them that it’s okay that they sin! To enjoy it !” Father Peter grouses in response. 

“Do not willfully misinterpret my words. I told them to be good, to search out good and live in good and to enjoy that , because there will always be sin. As long as we’re seeking forgiveness for it, we should also be seeking to be happy.” 

“In God!”

“In life!”

“I think mine is a lesson you would do well relearning, James. What you’re doing with that student-..” 

Remus freezes at the mention of him, ears beginning to ring when James cuts the priest off mid-sentence. “Remus. His name is Remus.” 

“Remus,” Father Peter scoffs. “The independent study, time spent alone, your trip off campus . At what cost is all of this nonsense?” 

“I didn’t use church funds for that trip, if that’s what you’re insinuating.” Remus's heart pounds in his chest, his confusion growing further when he remembers that James specifically told him the church was paying . 

Father Peter scoffs again . “I meant your covenant with God , Father . Do not treat me as though I am blind, I alone here am privy to the circumstances that saw you fall into God’s arms. Are you betraying him to fall into that same trap, with this boy?”

“No.” James snaps adamantly. 

“Clearly you have crossed a line if you have a deep enough relationship with him to risk your parents finding you, or their ire, if you chanced using your personal funds. 

“If they were going to come after me and insist I go home, they would have done so years ago. My letter to them was clearly postmarked from the church.” He can hear his priest’s eyes roll, his tone dismissive of the other man’s concerns. 

But Remus has some of his own, further amplified when Father Peter audibly straightens his clothes to say sternly, “I warned you before of this foolish stance you’ve taken, but now I must insist you stop this nonsense before I begin to believe you a liar, too. I see how you look at him.” 

“How? How do I look at him?” 

Like you love me.

“Like you will let him ruin you.” 

Tears spring to Remus’s eyes as the accusation washes over him. 

The honesty of it, because that's what James is doing, isn't it? What he encouraged him to do? 

But his tears can’t clear away the dirt, the stains, the scars. They can’t make any part of him clean enough for James, because James himself is meant to be clean of any others besides God, who didn’t even have the decency to make Remus right. 

To make him good enough, not even for himself. 

He misses James’s response, spoken too quietly to make it past the swimming vision and muffled by the churning in his stomach; violent and loud now. Bile like acid waves, wading their way up his throat.

Sharp stingers in his chest.

Rattling, shaking, the world around him blurs from the motion of outraged swarms.

“Should I speak of you then?” Father Peter snaps. 

Please don’t. 

Please, don’t.

“You’re his superior.” 

He’s blameless.

“You’re his teacher.” 

Blindingly brilliant. 

“And you’ve taken an oath -,”

Pure, and dedicated, and holy. 

“-of celibacy to retain the position you currently harbor. You’ve been a blessing to the church, Father James.” 

A blessing.

“And though we would be loath to lose you, you leave me no choice but to send you back to seminary for penance if you’re breaking that oath.” 

After a tense beat of silence, James’s voice comes dangerously tight. “Were you not listening to this morning’s service? I’ve done nothing wrong, Father Peter.” 

He hasn’t, truly. He tried to stop this. Stop Remus.  

But Remus couldn’t help but to tempt him.  

“Nothing." 

Nothing but indulge a serpent's hiss. 

"Because God is loving, and forgiving, and we all have a choice to pursue both his approval and happiness .” 

It isn’t a choice that Remus can let him make, because that happiness - sugary as it is - is a sin. It is fake plastic fruit placed in front of a man none the wiser to the way the initial burst of flavor is cool and refreshing, artificial, only to leave a bad taste in his mouth when Remus has no choice but to leave and James has no choice but to stay. 

“We all have choices, I agree, James. The one I think you’re making now, though? It is the wrong one. ” 

Clenching at his chest now, tears burning his cheeks, Remus knows that Father Peter - as much as it fucking hurts - is right. 

Remus is nothing more than a shiny scarlet surface, white looking flesh, but at his core he’s rotted. Hung on a tree that refused to hold him up for long enough before he fell. And it’ll only spread, make sickly the beautiful man who imbibes in him, in forbidden fruit, the longer that he lets himself stay in the safety of James's secret garden. 

James agrees, soft and cajoling. “You have always had a keen eye for the path that God sees for me.” 

And Remus rushes from the church and out into the pouring rain, knowing now that he is nothing other than the Original Sin.

No matter how good it looks, or feels, if he offers anymore of himself to James, he will damn him , and Remus can't stand to cost him his forgiveness like that. 

He's ordained, and Remus is the defilement of the once good place. 

Living by his own definitions of good and evil, but he shouldn’t cost the man he loves his salvation by making an apostate out of a saint . 

And he does love him . 

He realizes this as he braves the weather in order to walk away. 

The rain drenches his clothes, and he knows with something close to divine surety that the feeling washing over him is heartbreak. 

He makes his choice to run out into a flood, and put space between them, and spare James from making the wrong one so quickly that he misses the way that James is unmoving in the one he's already made. 

*

“You have always had a keen eye for the path that God sees for me," James nods, his tone soft and cajoling. 

Father Peter gives a sigh, relieved that James seems to have seen the error of his ways, but his glance at the light is short lived. 

James stands straighter, he hooks his finger around the golden cross that he usually hides behind his collar. It was a gift to him from the congregation he studied with as he worked towards his priesthood; a sign of new beginnings and luck for their prosperity. 

He speaks with the voice of God behind his words when he says to the older man, "This time, though, I think you're looking at it from the wrong angle, because it is very clear to me that this is the right one. That he is." 

"Careful," Father Peter hisses. "Be careful what you say here James. What you insinuate. You will tie my hands." 

"I stand by what I said, Father. I've done nothing wrong. And he, especially, has done nothing wrong . Now, if you'll excuse me. Remus seems to have left his bag." 

*

Chapter Text

“Peace is not just the absence of war. It involves mutual respect and confidence between people and nations. It involves collaborations and binding agreements.” - Pope John Paul 11

“Peace is the fruit of justice and is dependent upon the right order among human beings.”

A sudden covenant for abstinence is harder to keep than it should be for a virgin when temptation reaches out with warm hands at every available convenience. Remus hadn’t realized how much time they spent together, how often they spent that time alone , until he was actively working to keep himself busy and away from his priest. 

The priest. 

Not his , not anymore.

His struggle started inside of the Great Hall. It was dry, and warm, but it did nothing to chase away the wetted chill that seeped through Remus’s clothes and into his bones, or to clear the soil from underneath his fingertips from tripping and falling into the dirt when he’d run from accusations to avoid his own rot. 

It spread down his knees anyway, painted him - and his mind - muddy. But unlike something strong that grew from the very earth he landed in, Remus felt himself drooping underneath the force of heavy rain; truth like a hailstorm, quick seconds he didn’t see coming until it battered against his skin like flagellation. 

He was still stewing in his own self-loathing, standing with his tray in his hands and his head in the clouds when his name was called from across the room. The calling only managed to catch his attention on what must have been the third or fourth try, because it was accompanied by loud whooping from around the table. “Lupin! Hey! Lupin! Get over here!” 

Remus flushed, shuffling over to his usual table as Fabian cheered, “Finally!” 

“Mate!” Gideon grinned, which widened with his eyes when he took in his literally dripping clothes. “Oh, you’re already right soaked. Come here, Jesus- oh, I mean.. no, I meant that one. Get over here!” 

Remus set his tray onto the table, startled when Gideon dragged his own jacket off and dropped it over his shoulders. It was longer than his own, heavy, and the boy tugged it closed at the front before patting Remus over the shoulder. 

“Sit, sit,” Fabian begged, and though he felt a little like he was in the bloody twilight zone, he did. 

“What’s going on?” He asked hesitantly, glancing around the table as most went back to eating and small talk. Everything looked normal - and he had the thought that it shouldn’t , what with the end of days having sent him fleeing from the church with his world feeling destroyed by a few sighed words, damnation like acceptance on James’s tongue - so when Gideon nudged his shoulder, he winced further in surprise. 

“Woah, mellow out,” Giden laughed with a shake of his head. “You haven’t been this jumpy since the first few weeks. Anyway, we were waiting on you.” 

“What for?” He asked incredulously as he was passed an apple. He traded his beans for it automatically; Gideon started to eat them right from his plate. 

“We’ve decided today is as good a day as any for a wild game of football. You’ll be on our team, right?” Fabian clued him in - or rather, made him even more confused - as he passed his notes from CST class over. Remus reached down without thinking to grab his math notes to pass back before remembering, as his fingers curled around air by his calf, that he didn’t have his bag at all. 

He was too busy eavesdropping and getting his spirits crushed by the Holy one to grab it. 

“Shite, I’m sorry. I.. I left my bag back at the church,” Remus muttered, blushing out of embarrassment. Then, as if an afterthought, he asked, “It’s raining?” 

“So? Are you afraid of a little thunder?” Gideon whispered, but his joking was talked over by his brother’s heartbroken cry. 

“Nooo,” Fabian lamented, clutching at his chest. “How will I ever pretend to understand maths if I miss one day of notes?” 

“And Wednesdays, because you were too busy looking over at Marlene to copy them,” Gideon inserted playfully. 

“And Tuesdays! Bummer you didn’t get the mandarin to bounce by the end of the period,” One of the guys at the end of the table added, standing to toss his own fruit Fabian’s way. 

Fabian dodged it with a laugh, “I guess it’s my own bad for not copying them yesterday. You’re forgiven, Lupin. Or, I’m forgiven.” 

“We’re all forgiven, weren’t you listening to Father James?” Gideon teased, punching his brother in the shoulder. 

“Well, then, I’ll guess I’ll have to try again tomorrow to change, since it’s never too late. Right?” Fabian laughed, and shoved Gideon hard enough to knock him into Remus, who was still sitting and feeling thrown for a loop.

“You want me to play? On your team?” He double checked as he righted Gideon with hands on his shoulders. 

The brothers shared a look - amused head shakes included - and it was Gideon who turned to him to say, “Well, yeah? We need an even number, and you’ve got long as legs. Plus, we’re mates, aren’t we?” 

“We haven’t said more than a few words to each other the entire time we’ve been here,” Remus deadpanned seriously. 

It was Gideon’s turn to laugh. “Oh my God-rick. Godrick. Yeah, oh my godrick, we just thought you were quiet, you wanker. Still thought we were friends though. Are we not?” 

Remus blinked rapidly, unsure how to answer until Fabian grabbed at his chest and pretended to keel over. With his cheek pressed against the table he whined. “You wound me, Lupin. Look, my love is bleeding out all over the table. How could you think we aren’t friends?” 

Swallowing hard, Remus shrugged. He’d never had friends before, didn’t quite know how it was supposed to look or sound or feel, but as he sat and thought about it - letting Fabian metaphorically bleed out and watching his face go more and more slack, tongue starting to hang - he realized they had been friendly. 

He’d sat with them at meal times, traded food and notes, and more than once he’d caught their gazes in class as if to share silent jokes. They’d walked back to the dorms, the three of them, and sometimes gravitated towards each other to spend their free time in the courtyard as well. If Fabian and Gideon were rough-housing, Remus often interceded at some point with the toss of a book or the quiet grunt, and usually he followed them towards the fields and sat on the sidelines while they participated in team games. 

And vice versa, the twins came and sat by him, too, if they came into the Great Hall later than him. They tossed paper balls his way when they tossed them at each other. It was Gideon who first noticed him eyeing his apple, and offered it as a trade, and Fabian who had asked if anyone was any good at maths while looking directly at him, and then traded his notes from James’s class like he’d noticed he hadn’t been paying much attention to the studies. 

And it didn’t look exactly like how he thought friends did, but.. them inviting Remus to play on their team in a dirty game of football sort of did, and he had to fill his newly free time without James somehow . 

“Come on man, you’re killing my brother. Dramatic git he is, but he will absolutely refuse to move from that spot until you hand over your friendship, so can you just put the crack pot out of his misery?” Gideon interrupted his internal monologue to beg with a roll of his eyes, spooning another heaping of beans into his mouth after. 

With an apologetic nod, Remus agreed, “Yeah, okay, football. I’ll play.” 

“Perfect!” Fabian popped up, good as new and went on to plan their outing in the rain while they waited for Remus to finish his breakfast. 

Gideon even pulled him into his side at one point, which was mildly off putting until he apologized, and noted that Remus was shivering, and then it was sort of.. nice . They even included a plan to run back to the dorms so he could put on a pair of dry clothes before getting soaked again, and the whole time Remus wondered if simply not feeling so alone here would make it easier to disavow his budding relationship with James, because he had to. 

And for ten or so minutes, the very last of the period, he was convinced that it might. That his heart wouldn’t shatter completely if he just kept it distracted until acceptance set in. But acceptance isn’t blind and forgiveness can’t be earned when the mute can’t tell the deaf what they’re missing. 

“Remus,” James caught him with a gentle tug of his elbow as he was leaving the Great Hall with the group planning to play football, his bag in hand. “You left this in the pews.” 

Remus looked at the priest’s hand on him and thought sadly that this was the entire problem he was going to have in fighting loneliness for cold space, because his skin heated from just the connection alone. Carefully, he pulled his arm away from James’s grasp, avoiding any of the group’s eyes but especially Fabian and Gideon’s, because while the rest moved on towards the wet fields, they stopped when Remus had. 

“Thank you,” Remus rubbed his hand over where James had touched him, and it chilled again instantly, making him shiver. He placed his hand on the strap of the bag, but James had yet to actually let it go.

“The garden’s obviously off of the table for today.” 

Remus wondered how he could sound so casual, so unaffected, after making the realizations that slapped Remus in the face with reality so sharply only half an hour prior, but the priest went on. “But we could sit in my office and read. Or, I could pull down my chess board, if you’re open for a game? Or there’s-..” 

“No,” Remus interrupted quickly, and James chuckled. 

“No chess, okay. We could-,” 

“J-.. Father James ,” He almost hissed, and this startled James out of his mindless planning of their day. It wasn’t their day anymore, couldn’t be. Sundays, and every day, would need to be seperate from now on if Remus was going to keep his promise to purify what he marked up with his mistakes. “I.. I have plans.” 

“Plans-..” James’s expression pinched as he looked between the boys now, and with confusion he started, “Good morning Fabian, Gideon. How are we?”

“Good, Father,” Both chimed, cheery smiles. 

“Good, good. Would the two of you mind giving me a moment alone with Mr. Lupin? Seems he’s forgotten he has independent study.” James jerked his head as if to dismiss them, but Gideon - with a wicked and curious smile - threw his arm over Remus’s shoulder instead. 

“Actually, Father, we’ve roped Lupin here into a game of football. Surely he can skip his study just this once, right?” Remus shuffled awkwardly underneath the weight of the other boy’s shoulder. 

He looked between his brother, who kept that same mirrored grin on his face, and James, who had a perplexed red staining his cheeks. Not anger, but Remus knew him well enough to know he was stifling one of his more possessive reactions. 

Gently, Remus shook Gideon’s arm off of his shoulder, and he struck low and shamelessly in an attempt to preserve the integrity of his efforts. “It was you who encouraged me to make friends, Father James. I’m.. doing that.” 

James caught his eyes and held his gaze for a moment, searching between them before he answered slowly. “Sure.. of course. Yeah, this is.. wonderful. I’m very proud of you for branching out, Remus.” To Fabian he then asked, “Which adult has agreed to supervise these activities?” 

“It’s a co-ed game, so Ms. Mary and Father Brighton agreed, as long as we all promised not to play sick tomorrow after getting all wet.” 

With a tight smile, James nodded. “Glad to hear it.” He finally released his hold on Remus’s bag, and Remus slung it over his shoulder, casting his eyes towards the building. “I’ll see you later then, to.. make up for lost time.” James took a step back, and let them pass, but Remus felt the subtle air of animosity the priest aimed after them, and it followed them out onto the field. 

Remus played hard, though he’d never played before; even skinned his knee half way through after Fabian caught him around the waist to fix the flag on his belt, and in his ear he muttered, “Father James took Father Brighton’s place. Any idea why he might’ve done that, Remus?” 

Glancing over to the edge of the field, James was in fact sitting underneath a shared umbrella with Ms. Mary. The sight upset his nerves and his balance, the two of them sitting so close. Made him jealous, a sickening and ugly green color like the pulled up grass they played on. Remus bit down on his lip and muttered a simple, “No.” But the knowing look and the shrug Fabian gave him before bounding off to continue playing told him it wasn’t as subtle a change - at least to the brother’s - as James probably thought it was. 

It was also obvious where his eyes stayed; on Remus, and with the mud slick like that honey and his attention on the edges of the field, he tripped over his own feet and landed in a harsh slide of his knees against dirt covered rocks. 

“Ah!” He hissed as his palms hit the ground for a second time that day. 

Rock bottom, when the game continued without him but Gideon and James both rushed over to him. 

“You alright, mate?” Gideon asked, clapping him on the shoulder. Tears didn’t even prick at his eyes, he’s used to the dull throb of surface level pain. It’s his chest that really hurt when James dropped to his knees in front of him, uncaring of the mess, practically shoving Gideon away, and made him lie. 

“Moony?” James hushed, catching his chin between his fingers. “Hey, you okay?” 

Remus jerked his face away, eyes widening and appalled. 

“Did you hit your head?” James questioned, his finger hovering in front his eyes, and Remus smacked it away harshly in frustration. 

“Did I-.. Did you?” He practically screeched, and then flinched at his own tone. 

James’s jaw tightened, and Remus continued on, infuriated. “I’m fine! I’ll be fine! ” 

He swears it to himself because the swift seconds he was touched have him sure he won’t ever be fine, again.

“Okay, mate, calm down, we were only checking,” Gideon cooed, his hands in the air and defensive. 

Towards him, Remus softened enough to nod. “I’m fine,” He reiterated petulently, and Gideon dragged a hand through his bright hair as he looked between Remus and James before nodding back, and joining into the game going on around them again. 

James tried to help him stand, like he could just touch him and check on him and like any of that was normal and maybe it felt really nice and maybe a teacher would do those things anyway, without the last dredges of warmth that Remus soaked up from his gaze, but they couldn’t lead to a hug. 

Or a kiss.

Or a cuddle. 

They could lead to nothing except Remus leaving his heart on the field and so he did. With another sharp reassurance, a lie, he stomped off of the field and went back to his dorms alone, and he couldn’t even hope that he'd be forgiven for his behavior, because ultimately, it was for the greater good. 

For James’s greater good. 

The rain poured outside, and misery flooded inside, outside of him, down his cheeks and under the sheets and even made wet stains on the outside of the white bandage on his knee. He cried so much that it made a river bed out of his pillow, damp and sad. Day turned to evening and he skipped dinner. Evening turned to night as he stared at the red cross on the wall and drowned under his own judgment. 

He laid on his back and dragged his fingertips over his skin, tracing his scars and mourning the way it would never feel as good as James’s gentle dedications; he knew better than to get used to them and yet he let the jumpy sensation - like he might be burned - ebb away under the constant flow, and now the sunburn left him itchy. 

He even slipped his fingers between his thighs to prove a point to the sign on the wall by chasing away the ache, only to make himself feel homesick for doing so. Red colored his vision and it only reminded him of the drip of it down a smooth chin, crowned with a devilish smile. 

When knocking interrupted his quiet funeral, he laid in his bed like he’d passed away and it was yet another struggle to let the moment pass, to not answer his door. 

“Remus?” James’s worried voice carried through the crack underneath the old wood, a sliver of light coming from the hallway with it. “Moony, baby .. I just wanted to check that you’re alright. And I.. I brought you dinner.” 

His pleas were met with Remus’s silence, because he bit down on the inside of his arm to keep from calling out to him. 

“I’m worried you might have a concussion or something,” James added. Moments later, and with a sigh, Remus watched the length of a tray drown out the light he’d kept his eyes on. 

He muffled a heartbroken sob with his own elbow - like an illness to be sheltered from others - when footsteps finally carried his salvation away. 

And for almost an entire week he struggled, and pretended not to notice that salvation right in front of him, ripe for the taking and continually offered. 

James was very visibly restraining himself, giving Remus the distance he obviously wanted, and he hated being the one to cage any part of the man. It was a reminder of why Remus encouraged more between them in the first place, because the dulling of his joy was like the weather; regrettable and dreary. 

And after five days of trying to mimic creation by making new routines and avoiding old temptations, Remus realizes one very important fact; there’s no use struggling when he can’t even sanctify a change that James won’t want to make; is afraid to. 

The original couple couldn’t take back their sin any more than Remus can, and he has no doubt after several of James’s wanting glances and the sporadic way he still knocked on his door at night, that just like them with the fruit of betrayal, James would bite and taste and mouth at him immediately if given the opportunity. 

And Remus would, too. He’s desperate for it, empty and lonely and especially because he can’t avoid James’s stares or handle the space between them when he wants to be planted close and heated until all warm and gooey. If given the opportunity, if spurred on by soothing hands, he would roll around in the mud as willingly as he would have a week ago. 

He wants to indulge, wants to drink from the fountain and live forever in some contempt of the very life James stands for. This heartbreak isn’t like cuts or burns or bruises to his skin, it isn’t a bearable sort of pain like he’s endured countless times before. He hadn’t counted on not being able to swim in it like he has all those other instances of hard times. 

Those agonies were torture with hatred but this one is torture with love and he just isn’t strong enough, he’ll give in. He’ll seek James out and ask for an entirely different sort of forgiveness. 

Feels like he’ll die without it, because it isn’t enough to be close to glory without ever letting himself touch it again, especially when every time it’s aimed his way it begs for him to give in and bask in the glow. 

He understands now what he didn’t before about the corruption of the garden; Satan had just as little choice in his actions, must have been just as compelled to spread his rot in that ethereal place as Eve was to have a bite of forbidden knowledge, to know the taste of divinity on her tongue and swallow down satisfaction. 

Remus doesn’t know how else to prevent himself from making those exact mistakes except to leave the garden altogether. And sure, his is surrounded by wrought iron that’s fortified by loss, but he knows the six numbers needed to access freedom are the very last of another man’s suffrage, so on the night of the sixth day of his self-induced quarantine and well before the sun has risen from sleep, Remus rises and grabs his packed bag. 

It’s light, with nothing of substance except some clothes, sans even the rosary which he leaves on his pillow so that it can’t convince him to come back at any point. 

He braces to climb a mountain of his own guilt and sacrifice his love for the love of God; even though it is every bit as hard as Abraham’s struggle as he did the same. 

Except he won’t be halted in his endeavors by a gratified angel, and he will actually have to watch his love die for God’s to live on in James. 

He leaves his room with the intention of chasing the dawn away from sacred ground and safe arms and towards a failed end; he’ll hitchhike home and hang his face in shame in front of his father, and probably, be what he has to be to live under his roof again. 

New routines and friendships he didn’t know he’d made and all of his knowledge gained about the faith his father preached so misguidedly weren’t going to fill the ripped up and empty seeming ground where love sprouted so new and was crushed by shiny shoes, and Remus couldn’t be responsible for treating that love like a weed any longer. 

He doesn’t account for the new information that the brothers he stays down the hall from are particularly nocturnal, and they’re still awake with their door wide open even though it’s practically half the night past curfew when he goes to pass by. 

“Lupin?” Fabian calls from inside the dimly lit room. Remus pauses in the doorway, shoving his bag behind his back. “Where are you off to?” 

“Uh,” Remus stammers, wiping at his face. He’d been crying again , knew his face was blotchy, and tried to hide it further by chewing on his thumb nail. “Just out for a walk.” 

“It’s the middle of the night,” Gideon lifts his head up off the floor. He's hanging from the bed, bent at his knees and with his feet pressed against the wall. 

"And raining," Fabian adds with an arched brow. 

“Yeah, well, you know how the Catholics feel about suffering,” Remus shrugs, attempting to joke, but it falls flat when the brothers share a look and then start to stand. 

“We’ll come with,” Gideon smiles, and Fabian nods. 

“N-no!” Remus gasps, hands coming up, and both boys startle. He backtracks quickly, tone softening. “No, I mean.. I’d rather go alone, if it’s all the same to the two of you.” 

Fabian’s eyes in particular narrow. His voice drops secretively as he points out, “Going the wrong way for a romp, mate.” 

Remus reddens, taking a step back. “What?” 

“Father James’s rooms are the other way, which we know that you know . Your priest isn’t particularly quiet with his middle of the night slinking about, Lupin.” 

“That’s not, we’re not,” Remus struggles. “He’s not my priest.”

“Deep breaths, we’re not going to tell anyone you’re shagging the priest,” Gideon chuckles. “But you’re going the wrong way to do it. Unless.. things aren’t so good between you two?” 

“We’re.. it’s not..” Like that . 

But it was, sort of. That’s why he has to leave. 

“There has been some distance between you two this week. Did you have a fight? It wasn’t because of the game last Sunday, was it?” 

“You’re not running away because of a little lover’s spat, are you?” Fabian teases, and he comes forward to push at Remus’s shoulder with two fingers. “I didn’t take you for a quitter, Remus.” 

Swallowing hard, he shakes his head. “It’s just.. it’s complicated,” He finally admits, “and he.. he needs me to be the one to end it. He won’t, otherwise.” 

“Why does it have to end?” Gideon asks seriously from behind his brother. He approaches slowly, a curious expression on his face. 

“It’s wrong,” Remus feels his lip wobble with the effort to keep his face somewhat passive. He bites down on it, eyes flashing with confusion as Gideon slides his hands carefully around his brother’s waist from behind. 

A cautious but familiar glide. 

Low, much lower than his navel. 

A show, silent secrets. 

His words catch in his throat when those hands slip underneath the hem of his shirt. Fabian holds Remus’s gaze as he leans back into his brother’s arms, his own hands drifting back to catch on the stretchy waistband of Gideon’s pajama pants, thumbs hooking in. 

A subtle shift of their postures closer.

Twin heats lighting in their eyes, for each other . 

An admittance of a sin just as great as the one he’s been committing; disrespectful to the cross in the name of love. 

He blinks rapidly as Gideon mumbles a leading, “Sometimes a couple of wrongs make the sweetest rights, mate.” His breath ghosts his brother’s neck as he drags his nose fondly against the arch of it. “What does your priest have to say about it, huh?” 

“He’s a man who follows,” Remus whispers brokenly, as he looks between the twins. Birth like covenants between them, he aches with an envy that is wholly consuming for that same sort of belonging, but he has to leave the beginnings of it behind if he wants to keep James’s covenant with God intact. “So I have to stop leading him into temptation. That’s.. that’s all there is to it. I have to go, I’m.. I’m sorry.” 

He doesn’t stick around for even so much as a goodbye from either of the brothers, just lets himself out into the rain and makes a break for the gate on shaky legs. 

It drizzles, and the wind whips through his thin clothes, but he’s been so cold for the past week that he hardly notices the difference except for the way that it sticks to his skin. The gate looks even harsher in the dark, and he feels every bit the convict as he approaches it, code fresh on his mind after he’s repeated it out loud to himself a hundred times. 

He thumbs the shielded keys on the keypad, and without looking back he enters the code. Wrong, at first, perhaps on purpose. Wrong a second time, just to assuage a curiosity about any alarms, he tells himself. Right on the third time, like the holy trinity, and the gate makes a particularly loud buzzing sound as the lock clicks open. 

He tugs the gate open far enough to slip outside of its perimeter, but he stares at the couple of footsteps between him and freedom. 

Between a garden of love and a home of contempt. 

And it’s a long enough second for footsteps to slap through the mud behind him on a rapid approach, a desperate and puffed exhalation of his name ringing through his ears like the most melodic bells. 

“ Remus ,” James calls from several feet away, and Remus stiffens with his hand on the gate. “The twins said-.. What-.. What are you doing ?” 

He has a white knuckled grip on his exit as he turns towards the very man he flees from. James is disheveled, and frantic, and practically naked in only his sleep clothes. His feet are bare and his eyes are horrified; they bounce between Remus’s face and his hand on the open gate, his mouth agape. 

“I’m going home, Father James,” Remus whispers, and wonders as James is silent and unreactive if the rain drowned out the sound of his distance. 

“No,” James says finally. “No.”

“Yes..” 

“No. I can’t.. I can’t let you go.”

Remus sighs, “I know you’re not supposed to let me. If you just go back to your room, you can pretend you never saw me. I’ll get home fine, and I’ll make it clear that I snuck out without anyone’s knowledge.” 

“No, no, I mean.. I can’t let you go,” James takes a step towards him, palms raised, defenseless, but he doesn’t need any sort of restraint besides his words to be a threat to Remus’s offensive decision. “Why do you even want to? Is this because of what happened after Sunday’s mass?” 

Remus’s mind whirls; he’s sure the two priests didn’t know he was listening in on their conversation.

“Because I was only joking around when I flicked that holy water at you. It was a stupid joke and I should have never said anything so thoughtless. We laughed, I thought.. I didn’t realize that-..”  

“James, James, stop, what are you talking about ?” Remus interrupts his rambling incredulously. 

“The holy water,” James repeats himself, his face pinched. “You have to know that I knew it wasn’t going to burn you. I’m so sorry-..” 

“This.. This isn’t about the holy water ,” He gasps, and his hand falls from the gate. “Why would you even think that it was?” 

His priest’s face falls, and he looks like he desperately wants to look away from Remus, but he doesn’t trust him enough to not disappear out the gate if he does. “I don’t know, it was.. the last interaction we had before you started ignoring me.”

“No, I.. I heard the conversation between you and Father Peter,” Remus admits honestly, glancing away, if only to be able to continue without seeing the look of contrition pass over James’s face along with surety in his words. He can't let James stew in this idea that he hurt him. “I heard everything, and he was right .”

The rain comes down harder over their heads, mixing on his lips with an attempt at salty indifference, “He was right, you said it yourself that he’s always seen the path God has for you and I.. I am a roadblock on that path.” 

“You can’t just leave me,” James laments emotionally. “I love-,” 

“ God ,” Remus swears, his eyes rolling up towards the crying heavens. “You love God, James, and that’s.. beautiful. So I need to go before I ruin that. I was just trying to save you the goodbye.” 

“You didn’t hear everything,” James’s voice hardens as he takes a step closer. His hands come up, making Remus cringe. 

“Please don’t,” He blurts. James’s hands still inches from his face, and a sadness crosses his own that has Remus squeezing his eyes shut. “Please don’t touch me. You’ll only make this harder.” 

“ Good ,” James growls, and warmth envelopes Remus’s cheeks, holding his face like a chalice tipped up towards the mouth of God. Their foreheads press, noses knocking, lips a passionate adamance close enough for him to feel them move. “I have spent a week not touching you, and all because you’ve jumped to an infuriating conclusion based on a biased man’s words that I shouldn’t be allowed to do so and that I agree with that sentiment. I do not. And if you had heard everything, all the way to the end of that conversation, you would know that I don’t.” 

“You don’t?” 

“No. If you had just talked to me about what you heard, you would know that.” 

“You should,” Remus whispers. “You should agree. Your covenant-,” 

“Is to love God. To live my life according to him. To spread his word, as I’m called. Well, I am called to love you, Remus, and I would have told you that, too, if I had known the purity of my intentions with you were in question. Will you deny me the ability to fulfill that covenant?” 

Remus raises his hands in worship of those curled and messy strands, fingers sliding into locks like they’re moved by the spirit himself. “Jamie-..” 

"Does this feel sacrilegious?" James whispers, and their lips catch in the suggestion of a kiss. "Is it dirt you taste in your mouth when I kiss you?" 

"No," He breathes, heart hammering in his chest. The world around him shrinks, only exists in the couple of steps in a circle around them in this altar of affection.

James tastes clear headed and tear sharp.

He tastes refreshing, like the first sips of water to soothe a pounding head.

He tastes like deliverance, and he offers it too. 

“What was your plan, Moony, baby?” A hand drops from his face to press over his heart like a bandage. “Did you really think if you went home, I wouldn’t just chase you there?” 

“You’re needed here,” Remus murmurs, but he can’t think straight when his back is pressed against cool iron bars. 

“And I would have left to come after you, anyway.” 

“Why?” 

“I have plans too,” James admits, sincerity dripping. “I’ve been making them, was I not clear enough when we’ve been together that you’ve changed my path?” 

The course of my life, Remus hears. Like he’s moved the sun in the sky. 

“I thought if I was gone, you would be saved from damnation, or.. or something.” Remus mourns that salvation not because it ever felt right, but because he thought that was what James wanted. 

It all sounds so nonsensical with James’s body molded against his own, shielding him from the storm that’s hung over his head for a week. The rain and the reasonings are wiped away by a wicked ability to preach devout belief against his lips like it applies to him. 

“I don’t want to be saved, and I don’t feel damned for loving you,” James’s thumb swipes against his cheek, follows the bone to his ear and swirls around his lobe. Remus opens his eyes to molten, melted ministry in his priest’s eyes. “I feel reborn; made new by your very existence in my life. You’ve reminded me why I ever loved to begin with. Please.. don’t take that away from me again unless you don’t return that love. But if you do.. oh, if you do, sweetheart, let me rectify this misunderstanding once and for all? Because I won’t let shame steal it from me again, and I won’t let anyone hurt you with the lack of it anymore.” 

Remus’s hands clench in James’s hair, at a loss for words except for scripture and feeling saved from a sacrifice that would have torn him apart and left him raw by this angel, who leans over and closes the gate in a final act of blessing. “I know you’re scared, but I have confidence in God, I trust him, and this, between us, is a gift I won’t leave unopened.” 

Not like yellowing letters.

Remus's love won't be treated like a tomb if he doesn't leave James empty. 

“Take me to your bed,” Remus whines in place of his own feelings, because he’s sure they’re read biblically between the lines of need and want and calls to worship. “Open me.” 

*

The shower is hot enough to steam the room around them, leaving white fog to curl and bend their vision, but they’re both naked and bare of reservations as they kiss under an entirely different kind of pour. 

Hands wander along soapy skin, curling into slicker heat and around smooth satin, James’s voice uneven against the side of his face, “I’m going to take such good care of you.” 

Evidence of acceptance in the drag of his lips as James kneels in front of him, honesty in his eyes. “I’m going to worship you.”

The fingers inside of him shift gently, spread, make room , “I’m going to fill you.” 

His tongue swirls around the sensitive nub between Remus’s thighs until he’s whining, and writhing, and James stands and fits his length between those thighs with an insistent tug of his butt cheeks so that he’s buried to his hilt. 

Not in him, not yet, but present and dragging against his spread cunt while James lavishes his neck with enough suction to leave pink circles on his skin. “I’m going to have you, and I’m going to keep you, and I’m going to make you come, pretty thing. Sweet boy. My love, I’m going to make love to you first, and then I’m going to love you so thoroughly and so insistently that you think I’m possessed.” 

Remus gasps, hips arching and his arms tight around his priest’s shoulders. “Jamie, ah, please, I’m so close-!” 

“I’m not done yet,” James warns, fingers tightening where they grip him, keeping him open. Not just his body but his long sheltered heart, too. “I’m going to show you the world.” 

Their hips bump with each slide past his folds. The head of James's cock drags wetly over his clit, nudging it around until his toes curl. 

“I’ve been offered a position doing missionary work, many times.” 

“ Jamie ,” Remus pants, head falling to James’s shoulder. 

“I’m going to take it,” James purrs. 

“Father,” He cries, head spinning. Dizzy. 

“As devotedly as I’m going to take you .” 

“Father, father, father- ,” Panting, begging, babbling desperately, his nipples rubbing against the slightly coarse hair on James’s chest and sending pleasure to his center. He can feel it each time James’s shaft throbs, loses his breath when the head of his cock tests his tight entrance. 

“Going to take you with me.” He can tell James is close. His priest’s hand drops to his cock, keeping the head of it between his lips as his hand flies quickly over his shaft. “Come with me, Moony, baby, baby please, come with me.” 

He sounds like he'll die if he doesn't, and Remus agrees like the very last words of a crucifixion. 

Hot heat shocks his system, floods between his legs like a claim and he follows suit with a blinding release of pleasure as well, nails digging into James’s dark skin and his mouth pressed against the crook of his neck as he comes. 

“Daddy-!” He croons in benediction. 

Bends to bliss, entirely unashamed. 

James groans, ringing out pleasure between them with the insistent and continuous bumping of his suddenly oversensitive clit with his cock. He shoves the shaft back between his lips again, spreads himself around in the mess as Remus adds to it. 

He twists the hair at the nape of Remus’s neck into his hand and tugs his head back as Remus whines through his orgasm, nudging his entrance as he leans down to kiss him. Wet lips, white thighs, woesome words, “Say it again for me baby, let God hear who you’re coming along for. Coming for, come on.” 

“Coming-, ah, nnng, Daddy, please!” his words are swallowed up by James’s panting. He strokes himself insistently, keeping his cock hard and poised where he would fit so smoothly with the aid of their mutual pleasure. 

“Please what?” James demands, adding pressure. 

“Take me,” Remus scrambles breathlessly for purchase, bringing his leg up around James’s hip. “Take me, Daddy , take me with you.” 

“Good boy. Breathe, breathe sweetheart, take a breath for me.” 

As a big gulp of air fills his lungs, James fills his cunt with one merciless thrust of his hips, and his mouth with his tongue to smother the cry it drags from his lungs. 

Remus’s body goes tight with the intrusion. 

He’s thankful for the breath he took even as it leaves him, and he can’t loosen his grip until the sharp sting between his legs ebs away with the smoothing motion of James’s hands over his body, but even then, he holds on tight enough to leave fingerprints on his shoulders. 

“I’ve got you, shh, shh, Daddy’s got you,” Sweet caramel drips into his mouth with loving kisses. “I’m not letting you go.” 

“Don’t,” He gasps when James starts to move. He finally moves his hands to grasp James's face, his fingers framing divinity. “Don’t let me go. Please. I love you, Jamie. Let me love you.” 

In the shelter of our hidden bliss. 

Out in the open of the world. 

He's full of it, this love. Made up of it, safe in it, glowing from it and ready to grow from it, too, even if it isn't exactly how one man or the other might say that it's intended. 

He doesn’t just ask James, but God , for this chance at everlasting warmth, and once they move to the bed and James smothers him in returned adoration, he feels baptized by the purity of their love, blessed by a new perspective, and ready for the change. 

*

Remus wakes before the sun despite the very, very little sleep he’s gotten. An hour, at most, but his sun has shifted away from his arms, and he reaches out to ward off the cold by wrapping them around James’s waist where he sits at the edge of the bed. 

He rubs his cheek against his lower back, voice feeling raw. “What are you doing?” 

“Reading,” James whispers tightly, making him nervous. Remus hums, and waits patiently even through the subtle tremors that start to wrack his priest’s body. 

Slowly he sits up, though he keeps his arms around James’s waist as he plants his lips in soft worship along the strong plains of his shaking back. He follows his spine up to his shoulders, paints him in love there in a much more innocent way then James has painted between his thighs until he was out of white to spread. 

He tastes him where his lips have left their mark already, nosing up the side of his neck to mouth at his jaw, and it’s all nothing more than petting, nuzzling, as he presses himself - naked and unafraid - against James’s back. He leaves him dirty with spit and revels in how the shine of it makes God’s passionate lover look clean. 

He glances over James’s shoulder, unsurprised to see the old letter that he has open in his hands and displaying messy cursive. Some of it’s in French, and James thumbs over the script as he pronounces the dialect aloud, like he’s remembering the particular way that Sirius used to say it. 

“ Toujours Pur, ” He reads at the very bottom, hushed and deliberate. 

“What does that mean?” Remus asks curiously, hands sliding around to drag gentle reassurance over his ribs, palms landing against his chest. 

Like a seatbelt, stability, like he’ll endeavor to be on their travels, too, he’s decided. A safe place, and grounding, somewhere James can always call home in case he’s made wary by his own propensity for new. 

Secure, like he knows James will be for him, too. Shelter like he felt underneath his arm as James showed him the city and opened his eyes; he’d just misunderstood his intentions and closed them too quickly to see the light he was offering. 

He lays his cheek against his shoulder as James explains, “It was their family motto. ‘Always pure’. He was never made to feel it, though. Never fit; in their family, or their beliefs.” 

“Why did he sign it like that at the bottom of the letter, then?” 

James lets loose a breath as he steadies himself, and one of his hands finds Remus’s. He entwines their fingers as he asks, “Would you like me to read it to you?” 

“Please?” Remus grants permission against his cheek; he doesn’t feel threatened by ghosts anymore. 

“Jamie,” He starts, pausing after. 

“You don’t have to,” Remus adds as an afterthought in the silence. “I don’t need to know what he said, if you don’t want me to.” 

“I want you to hear it, too,” James clears his throat. “So that you know that opening this letter this morning of all of the mornings I could have.. only makes me feel even more justified in this decision we’re making together to leave.” 

“Okay,” Remus whispers, a little wary still, but he settles his chin on James’s shoulder and lets him start again. His voice shakes with unshed tears as he recites the words of a sad and sickly boy who loved him. 

“Jamie,

I hope that this letter finds you well; somewhere as warm and sunny as your disposition, with my rosary in some dusty drawer, because if I know you at all, I know that you won't toss the bloody thing even though we’ve talked about doing just that a hundred times, and you won’t open this envelope until I’m long gone. 

That’s okay, love. 

I forgive you. 

And it’s okay if you can’t forgive me. I was selfish with you in ways that were distinctly cruel, made me just like them, and this decision too isn’t a fair one, because I’m only thinking of myself. 

I’m sorry for that, but I’m not sorry for skipping the goodbyes. This isn’t one, either, because I know how you love and I know I won’t ever really leave you; that’s why I left the rosary instead of the many things I could name off of the top of my head of mine that I think should go to you. 

Above all else would be the acknowledgement that you are the reason that I lasted so long in a world I shouldn’t have, and that one you can keep, but the rest of it.. 

I wouldn’t want you to keep any of it. Any of me. I don’t want to haunt you. 

I don’t want guilt to follow you either, so I left you my rosary, as an expendable explanation. 

Did I ever tell you the story of Our Lady of Lourdes? It’s her face, sitting above my crucifix. She’s known as a healer.. but not a lot of people talk about the way that she heals the sick, but she cannot heal all of the sick. 

I’m sick, Jamie. Have been, for as long as I’ve been alive. And I don’t know if I believe it, really, but she promises not to make us happy in this world, but in the other. I hope to be healed and find that happiness, wherever I pass on, and I need you to know that if the Virgin Mary herself couldn’t heal me here, neither could you have. 

Please don’t blame yourself for this. 

It wasn’t you, or my love for you, that I found fault enough to end it all in. When they sent me away, the message preached to us between.. horrid experiences.. was ironically that God loves us as we are, with all of our successes but also with all our wounds, our weaknesses and our limitations. 

They tried to make me believe that loving you was such an illness, but loving you was the most blessed thing I ever did. Unfortunately, I am and have always been ultimately too weak to do it well. 

To do it fully, the way you deserve. 

I’m too wrong for this world, in many, many other ways, and I’m struggling. 

I’m tired.

Tired of hurting.

I hope (selfishly, there’s a pattern here, love) that you’re angry enough with me to have ripped the beads from their purchase and let them rattle to the floor with all of your memories of me, and that you left them there, onto better and brighter things worthy of your shine. 

I hope you didn’t let this loss hinder you from loving and being loved again. 

You’re so worth loving; I envy everyone who will get to do it once I’m gone, and I would’ve done it for a lifetime if I could stand to stay awake and endure all of the rest, outside of you and I. 

All of this to say, thank you. 

Thank you for the love you gave to me endlessly, showed me shamelessly, had in spades for life and adventure and happiness. I wish you all of those things.

Find the bottom of the bottle a few times, see the world, find a love as divine as yours and keep it; that’s righteous. That’s right. And you could do no wrong Jamie, by me or anyone else, and you haven’t. 

And if you’ve held onto me for however long, I want you to let go, now. 

Say goodbye, even though I didn’t, because you have never been selfish. 

Your love is the kind of light I hope to find on the other side. Toujours Pur.

-Sirius.” 

“Oh,” Remus sighs sadly in the long moments after James has finished, Sirius’s name like the quiet softening beat of James’s heart, prayers ending milder than they started. “That was..” 

“Yeah,” James folds the letter gently. “Yeah, I don’t regret not reading it until now though.” 

“But if you had read it years ago.. I mean, you didn’t get to let yourself do any of those things.” 

James shifts, their thighs brushing as he pulls Remus into his side. He kisses him fondly as he whispers, “I’m doing them now.” 

“Sure, but,” Remus starts, and James cuts him off by squeezing his hand as he brings it up to his mouth. He brushes his lips against the first of the scars he ever dedicated with a touch, following them to the bend of his arm as he encourages Remus to lean back. 

He falls slowly into the fluffed duvet, James following to hover over him and drag his mouth lazily along his upper arm and shoulder. 

“If I had opened this letter and done all of those things years ago,” A kiss to the crook of his neck, “lived adventurously,” A kiss to his jaw, “sought happiness,” A kiss, that turns into breath ghosting underneath his eye, “tried in vain to find a love that was unknowingly waiting for me in a little town I probably would have avoided,” Butterfly kisses against his temple, and then finally, a kiss there, “It wouldn’t have been real. None of it.” 

“How not?” Remus whines, dropping his hands to James’s hips and encouraging him closer; more friction, more contact. 

“I would have only been doing them for him, because he asked me to. My heart would still have been broken, wouldn’t have been in it.” 

James’s hand slides between them, thumbing open his thighs to make room. Dipping down past his mound and into holy springs, spreading wealth along his slit while he keens, open mouthed and breathless for every bit of connection. “I’m doing them now, though, and I’m doing them for me.” 

Remus’s entire world is centered around the end of his cock, pushing delicately into Remus. He isn’t sore, not after James spent a long while the way he did that first time with his fingers, smoothing cream everywhere that he left aching. 

“I settled for being content after falling hopelessly into God’s arms, and I believed for a long while that was what he intended for me.” 

James’s palm is flat and punctuated on his clit, fingers framing his cock where he parts him, fills him up reverently. 

“But I didn’t lie, when you asked me in that garden if it was enough.” 

Against his mouth and before a deep and binding kiss, like a promise, the both of them moan, and James prays, “But it wasn’t. Dear God, it wasn’t, I just didn’t know it yet. It wasn’t time for me to see it. Now that it is.. Now, I’m going to be happy .” 

“Amen, oh, mmf- Daddy ,” Remus manages before, and on the seventh day, he’s blessed and made holy, and in his rest underneath James’s revenant body, he finds rapture in Their New and Everlasting Covenant. 

*

The sermon that James chooses to give the week after Remus turns eighteen, and the day before the both of them leave together on this new adventure, is a bittersweet and beautiful one. It’s the same he gave his parents while on the phone a week prior, confident in his decisions and unapologetic for having found faith and love. 

His parents were surprisingly - to him - happy for him. They’d been worried about their son, though busy with life and understandably trusting that, despite how they would prefer he have a real job, James could discern what was best for him, and had thought it was quite clear from the tone of his letter that he hadn’t wanted to see them. 

Hadn't wanted any part of the life they were leading. 

He hadn’t, but he did now, with this new perspective on loss. There were old grudges between them that he didn’t want to hold anymore, and so he promised to join them for Christmas; as long as he could bring his partner along, and they’d agreed amiably to that. 

Most of the congregation was also happy for them, sans a few. Ms. Mary was downright distraught, as if she ever had a chance, and Remus had gotten off once or twice with James while discussing her petulant looks or her dour mood since the news came out that he would be leaving. 

Father Peter hadn't wiped the grimace from his face, but he hadn't come near Remus to claim him a temptation or ruination, not after James very sternly threatened his entire career if he did so. 

It wasn’t as known that Remus would be leaving with him, but a few people were privy. Fabian and Gideon, who were delighted by the reconciliation, and begged to be kept updated about their travels; even hoping to join them for an adventure or two in the future. 

His dad also presumably knew.. Remus had sent him a very detailed letter , and, though he hadn’t really wanted to, with James’s insistence, he even included a very clear goodbye . 

There's a goodbye in this service, too, at the very end, and Remus is so proud of him for it. It’s a deference to a higher power, and to love, and a question like he has often posed to the pews filled with youth that the church is there to reform and lead to God. 

“‘You, then, why do you judge your brother or sister? Or why do you treat them with contempt? For we will all stand before God’s judgment seat. It is written: “As surely as I live,” says the Lord, “every knee will bow before me; every tongue will acknowledge God.” So then, each of us will give an account of ourselves to God.’ My account, friends, is that I am as flawed as all of you. As imperfect, and as reticent to the world around me. My path is as ever changing as yours, and I hope you can understand the necessity for me to follow it.” 

“‘Therefore, let us stop passing judgment on one another. Instead, make up your mind not to put any stumbling block or obstacle in the way of a brother or sister. I am convinced, being fully persuaded in the Lord Jesus,’” James turns to look at him lovingly, voice softening. “‘That nothing is unclean in itself.’” 

Remus smiles back at him, bashful and with an accompanying nod of agreement. His priest has a way of reading the word of God so differently than he’s ever heard it, in a way he’s made happy to believe. In a way he could, can, because James swears so deeply that God loves him for all the ways that he is and for all of the changes he would make. 

“‘Therefore, do not let what you know of as good be spoken of as evil. For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.’” 

“I am going to leave you to seek this peace and joy in his name and also for myself, and I hope and pray for each of you that when you find the path right for you, you take it with the confidence that I have in our Lord. ‘Because anyone who serves Christ in this way is pleasing to God and receives human approval. Let us therefore make every effort to do what leads to mutual peace and edification.’” 

With a final press of his lips to his cross - not his rosary, but the one as golden as him - James beams towards the crowd of watery eyed students. “You are all doing right by him by doing what feels right in him, for yourselves and for others. This choice I make to spread his word elsewhere, surrounded by love and gifting it to others too, is one I am proud to make. In the name of The Father, The Son, and The Holy Spirit. Thank you for letting me lead you this far, and peace be with you on your continued and unique journeys. Amen.” 

“Amen,” The congregation gives back, and then their goodbyes as they each go up to James and wish them. 

“Amen, Jamie,” Remus whispers against his lips in the car, before they head off the next day. A finishing of his priest’s prayers as it has become a habit for him and a granting of his own for the first time in his life as they speed off towards a new one; the two of them just as they are and in love. 

“Amen, Moony, baby.” Says the sun, and leisurely they travel around the world together, blessed by God. 

Chapter Text

They’re on their third country, their fourth mission, their thirty second build, when James, for the first time in his life, truly meets God. There’s simply no other explanation for the coincidence, a chance collision of fates which threatens to bring him to his jean clad knees in an instant on the underdeveloped cement floor of the new build that he and Remus are holed up inside of to finish, in the outskirts of one of Mexico’s less privileged areas. 

They were meant to be keeping families together, building houses for those who had none so that children and parents could avoid separation and stay under one finished roof. But they’d taken a middle of the night break to enjoy themselves and in this moment after, James feels his heart stop, his soul leave his body. For a few gruesome seconds it isn’t Remus hanging by sore wrists but James, who can feel nails digging into the palms of his hands. 

It isn’t even the extension of the very basic leather instrument he’d been employing to slight Remus’s nerves before; that hardly bit at his skin. 

No, this is a shocking, painful curve of metal piercing his flesh, slipping through his veins like slivers just as sharp as the set of eyes on him, a testament to his faith; a condemnation for using a sacredly built space so lewdly, though he didn’t regret it.

He refused to regret a single moment of time spent with Remus Lupin. He chose to stop regretting a relationship that died and left him a ghost, trapped in a prison of his own making for so many years. He just hadn’t realized he’d had any regret left to let go of, until this very moment. 

Dewy with sweat, having only just done up his fly, Remus startles from where he’s suspended in front of him, and in the frozen moments after James’s vision settles on the figure in the doorway, it’s his spirit released on a breathy name. 

This exorcism starts - first with Remus, climbing into his lap and glancing up at the opportunity above their heads - the same as it ends - with eyes turned up (at him, this time) and opportunity galore - on a name . 

“Jamie.” Remus had breathed, before James tied him to the ceiling. 

It couldn’t be helped that the rafters were freshly hung and perfectly exposed; same as his blushing boyfriend ended up. Remus’s toes just barely brushed the floor and when he thrashed, the flogger coming down and creating stinging, quick-disappearing welts along his tawny skin, they curled up and gave him the rapturous illusion of ascension. 

James’s hair was longer than it’s been in some years,  flowing free and curling down his neck, sticking to his skin. He dragged the flogger once more across Remus’s waist as he circled him, landing a quick smack of the thick stripes against his already heated butt cheek. The sight was a lovely pink, and James stared down at it as he dropped the flogger to his feet and dug inside of his pocket for a hair tie. 

Remus hummed and whined, knees turning in, and the sounds were heavenly echoed in his ears, his blood, his cock . Angels; that’s what he heard every time his boyfriend made such pretty, needy noises for him. James stretched the hair tie from his teeth with his fingers and gathered his hair into a messy bun as he asked teasingly, “Are you sorry yet, sweetheart?” 

He could tell that Remus was more so than anything, wholly pleased, even with the stubborn ache pulsing between his legs. 

Hormones will do that, James read. Make a man insatiable.

When only a muffled whimper came from behind the thin cotton of his shirt, stuffed into Remus’s mouth, James chuckled and stepped in close. 

His heart soared as his fingers grazed up Remus’s sides and drifted over two peaked and thoroughly cherished buds; as it had, every time he touched Remus since the very beginning, but especially these days, his flat chest beared confidently.

After they came to understand more clearly the demands of the missions they took, Remus began to beat at his breasts. He was ashamed and humiliated to still bear what felt to him like a disgrace of his youth, and so together they chose to take a break, to remove the sight Remus couldn’t bear to see of himself, and to heal before returning what had slowly become a call for both of them. 

After nuzzling his nose behind the younger man’s ear and feeling him for a selfish, explicitly arousing moment, he asked huskily, “Do you even remember what you’re meant to be sorry for, Moony, baby?” 

His boyfriend’s head fell back against his shoulder, gaze turned up as he gave a muffled no . His eyes were as glassy as the cuts of the sea they’d been collecting together to liven the poured cements with color. 

“You’ve spent all day tempting me,” James turned his chin with his fingers to kiss him, while his other hand drifted down. Past Remus’s cloudy mound he found heated skin, parted and runny, which he bypassed to instead swipe his digits through the mess collecting between his thighs. 

Another string of words came, incoherent because of the gag, and James filled in the unintelligible plea with his own assumptions. 

“I know , you’re in great need, and I would dedicate my every breathing second to this need-,” his fingers made wet curls after slipping lightly up through Remus’s folds, right past his swollen head to instead rest against his hip. “But they’re waiting on this house to finish, no time to spend the daylight hours searching the inside of you for my own.” 

The arch of Remus’s hips made James grin against his neck, and as he took pity on his poor, screaming body, finally pushing his hand down over top of his boyfriend’s swollen cock, he threatened slowly. “You’ve been very naughty, interrupting the Lord’s work as you have today, my love. ‘But this is how God fulfilled what he had foretold through all the prophets, saying that his Messiah would suffer. ”

Finally dipping into the sweet, simmering heat of his clenching hole, James groaned his appreciation for the oasis. “Sweet mercy…” he cooed. “Should I take mercy on you? Hm? After all.. roll your hips yourself, good boy.. ‘I am only a man myself’ , and that was quite a show you made of yourself all day.” 

James let go of Remus’s chin to drag him back, his arse lifted and more insistently pressed against his front, where he strained considerably. It was a wonder his pants weren’t leaked through, with the edge Remus’s taunting had kept him on.

“And in front of the other missionaries..” James tsked, sounding pleased even to himself. 

And then he stroked his fingers in, until his angel sang for him, and screamed, too, a fall from heaven and a ruined orgasm when James stole away his wings; his fingers.

“No, no, no, no-,” he pleaded through James’s shirt, and James released his speech with his sticky hand and tossed the wet fabric to the floor. 

“Come on,” He encouraged. “ ‘Repent, then, and turn to’ me. So that your sins may be wiped out, ‘that times of refreshing may come .’ You want to come, don’t you?” 

Remus turned his chin, teary eyed and desperate. “Yes. Yes, Father,” he gasped. “Father, please-..” 

It wasn’t uncommon for this title to come out first, as if a game for Remus. Say the wrong thing, be begged to say the right thing. He did love when James begged for it, and he always did. 

Did then, too. “Say my name - say it, baby, and I’ll make you come so hard that all you can do is scream it. ” 

“Jamie,” he gasped brokenly, thrusting forward, and James pinched his swollen length between his fingers in return, making him keen. 

“That’s good,” he groaned. “ So good.. but not the one I’m after. Try again. Tell me you’re sorry, while you’re at it.” 

It didn’t take much of the focused attention on his clit for Remus to break, and bend, and call out a halfhearted apology before the most adoring and dedicated of names.

“I’m sorry, Daddy, sorry, please .. please, I need you!” 

“I know you do, sweetheart.” I need you, too. 

Need to taste you.

Get your holy waters on my tongue. 

James turned him, the straps hanging him like a cross in the middle of the room twisting well above his head, and sank reverently to his knees. 

His mouth pressed first into each of Remus’s calves, which he raised to bring against his lips. He traced the scars, old ones, and the marks he’d left anew as his kisses lifted higher. On the inside, where he’d held Remus’s knees open and slapped the sharper of the leather prongs until it would surely burn to slick the skin, he used his tongue like forgiveness to soothe the worst of the irritation. 

They wouldn’t scar; he would never leave such brutality on Remus’s skin, there’d been more than enough of it. Too much. But they would bruise, and leave something for James to soothe in the days to come with his thumbs and his mindless rubbing and the both of them liked when there was this evidence of trust between them. 

By the time his ministrations made it to his leaking hole, Remus was so wound up and ready to come that a minute’s lapping and suction had great dams bursting, the body and the earth above him trembling and his cries a mighty roar. 

But James wasn’t satisfied with one apocalypse, or even two , he wanted to bring about a ruin so complete that his moon found his rest tonight instead of stirring about, mumbling in his sleep, that’s why he’d hung him from the sky like so. 

Death was but a peaceful end, James wanted to give to Remus an eternity of contentment. And then, he wanted to ruin that, too, and be made to do it all over again like some form of divine reward. 

His chin and cheeks were soaked with the evidence of his indulgence and the space he pressed his tongue inside quivering by the time he moved onto newer lands to conquer.

He hooked Remus’s weak and hanging ankles around his shoulders, and grappled his arms around his thighs as he looked up and checked, “Can I keep going, my love, or have you had enough?” 

Remus’s chin lulled, but he nodded and whimpered so eagerly for more.

Into a kiss he gave to his inner thigh again, the scent of his ecstasy making James’s head spin, he asked again, “Words, moons. Prayers. I can have you?” 

“God, oh god, ” Remus gave in return, loud and clear, as good as the brightest morning star; a yes. 

James shuffled back and pulled his legs to follow, until his mouth was back above that sopping grace and Remus’s hips were so arched that his cheeks were spread, the tight ring of muscles below James’s mouth spread with them. 

Not open, but pulled taut, so that when he tensed and tightened and with any movement at all, the entrance winked against James’s searching fingers.

His touch slipped and slid between the wetness and the sweat, made to drip onto the floor with all of the spit, and he earned a glorified gasp when he pushed past the pretty flower. Remus was hot and wet and still so impossibly tight inside, despite the many times recently he'd wanted and begged to be taken there. 

James slid his finger in slowly, carefully, up to his second knuckle, and felt for his own tongue in the former hole with the pad of his finger inside, until his lover’s cunt was drooling into his mouth. 

When he added a second knuckle he pulled his mouth away and spit; not that he needed to, he just wanted to watch himself add to the collecting shine, and with his free hand he pulled Remus up higher. 

Laid him out mid-air, hanging spread, and watched his gooey, glistening fingers work in and out - watched the shine spread when he pulled open the hole he stretched, and could do nothing but quench his watering mouth by relieving himself of the desire; he leaned in, and stuck his tongue between his fingers, and licked himself inside. 

“Daddy,” Remus practically sobbed, his voice a weak and shaky melody; a broken record, when he kept repeating it as James slurped and ate his fill and gorged himself right to the edge of his own orgasm - and to another one for his beautiful boyfriend, with nothing but the brush of his thumb over his cockhead out of a sheer desire to work him over everywhere. 

He immediately plugged his release with that same thumb and relished the way Remus clenched down tightly on his touch until the tremors subsided and James looked up, to find his entire body - not just his hips, which turned this way or that like a man possessed - twitching. 

“Do you need me to fuck you now?” He hummed, to draw the overstimulated man’s attention. “Need me to fill this empty pit inside of you with my devotion , hmm?” 

“God, god, god, Daddy, if you don’t fuck me right this second I might die and meet him, please!” 

James, ready to fuck the Lord’s name from his mouth and replace it with his own in an even more unending fashion, stood. He kept his fingers lodged, even as Remus’s legs dropped around his arm, and shoved them up inside of him rather harshly, like a hook. 

Lifted his knee next, with his free hand, and spun his body back around to face the closed front door. 

Anyone could come in at any point and see the come drenched evidence of their love, but at least this way they wouldn’t see the obscene spread of the hole that he replaced his fingers with his cock to fill. 

Red, and swollen, and ready for him , still the pop of his head inside when he pressed his released erection was evolutionary. 

Remus was made to take him here. The fit tight as a glove, James had to wrap one arm around his waist and the other around his chest and keep his hanging doll still as he jerked his hips forward. Steady thrusts, an inch at a time, until they were one and their groans no doubt slipped out the newly installed windows. 

But James didn’t even care if the other missionaries heard them worship. He tugged Remus’s aching body back against him, growled into his ear his prayers for him, then made him scream when he pulled out to his tip and barrelled in, burying himself inside like an Amen. 

Remus did; loudly , an unmissable cry of pure and unadulterated rapture. 

It was ridiculously wet inside of him, James drowned in the spring of the garden and hugged close the brush of his body and drank from his skin milk and honey, salted by his sweat and sweetened by his words; which turned quickly into heaves of veneration.

God, James loved him.

Loved him fully, deeply, and thought in moments like that one that no heaven could possibly compare. Even the strain of his limbs as he basically supported Remus’s weight in his arms and thrusted forward into the pounds with his hips was this delicious burn he savored. His hair hung loose, fell out into his eyes, he even managed to push his glasses out from his back pocket, and they landed in a hollow racket on the floor.

When James came inside of him, he gave his forgiveness too. Pressed it in behind his neck, down his back, over his arse, against the abused skin between his thighs, and swallowed what he spilled straight from the source of the open mess so that he could stand - as he then did - and share it into his limp partner’s mouth. 

Remus sighed contently, and was so languid in the way he hung that his elbows popped, and his tongue laid placid for James’s perusal through his mouth. He swallowed readily though, and when he turned his head and breathed out nasally for more - James kissed him deeply before stepping away and reaching down to retrieve and repocket his glasses. 

He wiped his soft cock with his shirt tossed onto the floor before - wincing at the temperate pour of water over it from a bottle - and then stepped up behind Remus again, and pushed his flaccid length up into the damp and waiting cavern of his cunt.

He grew hard inside of him as he moved his hips slowly, pulling Remus in for more deep gestures with his tongue. 

Remus moaned his love, his praise, feels so good he cried. James touched his face, smoothed his hair, caressed all parts of him that he could possibly reach while working them both up again. 

For a long while they were just connected, rolling, kissing, until Remus’s shoulders began to sting so greatly that he finally acquiesced.

“Take me to bed and love me there,” Remus begged against his mouth. “Fit yourself inside of me and love me ‘til the morning, Jamie. I like when you do that.”

James hummed his agreement, stopped, lifted him around the waist, but didn’t disconnect just then.

Remus wasn’t done begging. He leaned back against James’s chest and let himself be free of the burden of choice on his conscience. “I like it here . We should.. could we stay, a while?” 

“You want to stay here?” James wasn’t in the least surprised. He’d watched Remus blossom socially in the years they’d spent traveling, but amongst the kids here he found some sense of belonging for the first time that wasn’t due to James belonging anywhere he was. 

“They want me to teach the kids to read; want me to stay and do that.” 

“What do you want?” James held his cheek and nuzzled into him, skin-on-skin connection. 

“To stay,” Remus kissed him imploringly. “To stay with you. Just for a while, James, just.. a temporary home.” 

“You’re my home.” James looked deep into those green eyes and knew as he had for years that it was an everlasting garden staring back at him. Keeping him enthralled. “And you want to stay, so we’ll stay. As long as you want, Moony, baby.”

“You won’t be disappointed, settling down for-”

“For however long feels right for both of us.” James caught his bottom lip and tasted love between them. “No. Not at all. Some rest and reprieve from the spin of the world does sound ideal. And maybe.. we’ll find the time for me to worship you in the daylight, after this build is finished. The kids don’t need to learn to read on weekends, do they?” 

Remus gasped this relieved chuckle; the kind of laugh that made James sad to not be able to bottle the sound, because he never wanted to lose it. He swallowed it instead, kept it inside of him as he kissed him again, and again, and again.. 

He felt blissfully relaxed after their revelry, their decision, and was just then working on the first of Remus’s restraints, a goofy, sated smile on his face. He’s just admiring and pressing kisses to the red stripes on that first wrist released when the swearing starts. 

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.” Remus hisses, making the restraint he’s still stuck in jingle louder than before. 

Without thought, James steps in front of him, shielding his partner’s body from view with his own. He sweeps a hand through his hair, pulling it back from his blurry eyes, and for a moment before he reinstates his glasses onto the perch of his nose, he thinks it’s only a bird caught in the stream of moonlight, suspended in eternal animation in the middle of a wind opened door. 

But as he gains his senses, and finds it to be instead pearlescent skin and raven locks, made sentient by piercing blue eyes, one paler than the other, he also feels the fear of God fill him with an existential dread. 

“Jamie?” French curls on a long forgotten tongue. The kind he’s never touched, but might’ve thought to, once or twice before.

Long before. 

When it was too nubile a tongue in the mouth of a juvenile boy eclipsed by a brighter star. 

He feels Remus’s free arm slide underneath his shoulder, and leans back against his boyfriend’s suspended body for support, as the sight of a ghost before him makes his knees quake. 

He looks so much like his older brother did, and yet nothing alike at all. His features are smaller, softer, but unmistakably upon his neck is a horribly twinning twine of satin and beads, ended in a cross. 

The younger man clutches his rosary as he stares between them; James and Remus, and the ghastly sight of bondage wrapping them up in what must look to an outsider to their love like perversion. 

And off of James’s tongue in response to the call of his most personal nickname, rolls the first utterance of the most potent forbidden fruit. 

“...Hey, Reggie.”