Looking back at it now, Sirius knows he shouldn’t have been particularly surprised by everyone’s assumptions. Still, when he’d first found out about them, they had caught him off guard and left him questioning everything he knew about himself.
His surprise could partially be attributed to his lack of observation skills. The first to start noticing others’ knowing and unhesitating looks had, of course, been Remus in September of their seventh year. He had woken up later than usual, what with the full moon from two days prior exhausting him and having to catch up on the work he had missed in class. Sirius had shaken him, anxiously blabbing about how they would miss breakfast if they didn’t get a move on.
After hurriedly packing his bag and putting his robes on with an undone tie hanging around his neck, he ran after Sirius and into the lively halls of Hogwarts. Their cheeks burned from laughing, successfully and surprisingly managing to dodge everyone around them. People stopped, some of them ready to complain about the disruption but held back when they caught sight of who the culprits were and instead just smiled and looked at them admiringly.
Remus might have missed the glances towards them in the corridors but he couldn’t ignore the feeling of all eyes turning to look at them when they finally burst into the Great Hall. He quickly made his way over to his friends, Sirius in tow and smiles still plastered across both of their faces, choosing to ignore the attention they were getting.
Upon sitting down, he continued fumbling with his tie, struggling due to his bandaged arm that Poppy insisted stayed wrapped for at least a few days. Sensing his struggles, Sirius put down the cup of coffee he was happily sipping on and pushed Remus’s hands off to tie it himself.
“Thank you,” he whispered, shooting Sirius a radiant smile before turning back to James and Peter who were looking at them with an enigmatic look. “What?”
“Nothing,” James chuckled, pushing the sausage around his plate with a fork and sharing a meaningful glance with Peter.
And, though Remus knew it wasn’t nothing, he decided not to interrogate him further, instead starting a conversation about a History of Magic assignment due in a week.
—
It was barely a week later when Remus found himself sitting in the common room, a book in his lap and a cup of tea warming his hand. He let himself enjoy the moment of tranquility, the knowledge that it wouldn’t last long heavy on his mind. He loved his friends dearly, but his social battery could only take so much and theirs seemed to never run out which left him craving alone time daily.
Expectedly, the peace didn’t last long and he was soon being crushed under the weight of Sirius’s legs that stretched across his lap, wrinkling the book in the process.
“Sirius, you absolute git,” he complained but could do little to fight the giggles when Sirius started poking his cheek with his finger. “Okay, okay, Si— Stop that, Pads.”
“Nope,” he continued poking Remus, watching him squirm and cackle until he regained enough strength to wrap his hands around Sirius’s wrists and pry him off. “Mooooony,” he whined, desperately trying to wriggle out of his grip.
“Yes?”
“Let go.”
Remus hummed, seemingly thinking about this proposition. “If you promise to let me finish this chapter.”
“Fine,” Sirius scoffed but settled down nonetheless, head falling on Remus’s shoulder and eyes closing to let himself enjoy the moment.
Remus picked up his book again, smoothing out the wrinkled pages with a quick spell before continuing where he had left off. As he was reading, his hand came to rest on Sirius’s thigh, absentmindedly tracing random shapes.
James and Peter watched the scene from where they were sitting at the table, going over the plan for their next prank, with a rare type of attention. They could see Remus close the book and toss it away when he was done, whispering something into Sirius’s ear that made his eyes snap back open to look into Remus’s and a smile stretch on his face. They continued whispering back and forth, faces mere inches apart and eyes never leaving each other’s with radiant glows clearly radiating from both of them.
The little imaginary bubble they cast around themselves burst when James cleared his throat. “If you two are quite done ogling each other, I believe we have a prank to plan.”
“We weren’t—“ But Remus stopped himself from defending their actions further after he wrongly interpreted James’s smile as a joking one. “And isn’t the prank planned already?”
Sirius stepped towards the table, leaning on it to inspect the notes they had so far gathered. Remus followed suit, pushing some of the fallen strands of raven hair out of Sirius’s face and behind his ear. He let his hand stay there, tangling in Sirius’s hair that he had somewhere along the way found out Sirius, surprisingly, let him touch. The boy hummed in satisfaction, head pushing back against Remus’s hand.
Remus was once again left confused when he noticed James looking at them fondly. He let his hand fall from Sirius’s hair, not missing the slightly hurt look shot in his direction. James looked like a deer in headlights but quickly recovered and turned his gaze back towards the piece of parchment with the notes about their upcoming prank. Attributing his weird attitude to his overall peculiar personality, Remus decided not to probe him on it and instead started brainstorming with the rest of the group.
—
Sirius, being notably less observant than Remus, hadn’t noticed anything strange until he was directly faced with it.
They were sitting in Transfiguration, taking notes on human transfiguration and its side effects when he saw James hastily scribbling on a ripped piece of parchment that he slid towards Sirius. The boy, ready to indulge in anything that would allow his hand to rest from the non-stop writing, happily took the note.
Any plans for this weekend?
He could remember promising Remus to help him pick a gift for Hope’s birthday but when he tried to think of any other plan, he came up short. He wrote his answer before giving the parchment back to James.
Not really, Moony and I have to get something done but I’m free otherwise. Why?
Sirius could see an apologetic look cross James’s face as he read the note, quickly writing Shit, sorry, I should’ve expected. Don’t worry about it, I don’t wanna bother you. Sirius looked at him quizzically but before he could ask him about the meaning behind his message, a voice called the boys from across the class.
“Mr Black, Mr Potter, having fun back there?”
McGonagall’s words had everyone turning their heads to look at the two boys at the back of the class. She sometimes wondered if letting them sit so far away from her was a smart decision, though the voice in her head kept reminding her it was best if they weren’t in her vicinity when that wasn’t needed.
A shit eating grin spread on Sirius’s face. “As a matter of fact, yes, Minnie dear. Thanks for asking.”
Unimpressed by the nickname, though slightly amused, she hastily reminded them to take notes before continuing with the lecture. As the class neared the end, Sirius made a decision to invite someone to Hogsmeade, even if it was only to pass time and assure himself that this lack of want for dates and partners was completely normal.
He didn’t wait a second after the bell rang, immediately stuffing his books into his bag and running out of the room. He saw his target, a girl from Hufflepuff that he had only briefly talked to in the past, walking swiftly through the corridor towards her next destination, thankfully alone.
“Grace!”
The girl in question stopped and turned around at once, confusion plastered on her soft features. “Black?”
He made the last few steps towards her before continuing. “Would you like to go to Hogsmeade with me this weekend?” he asked hopefully, looking around to make sure no one was listening in to their conversation. He happily noted that the corridor was completely empty, save for a couple of first years that seemed to have gotten lost again.
“Uh, sure,” she said reluctantly, puzzlement seeping into her voice. “If you promise to bring that friend of yours. You know, the one with the scars.”
It was now Sirius’s turn to be confused. He tried figuring out if there was a secret meaning behind her words that he wasn’t getting but his mind failed to supply him with a possible answer. “Moony?” he finally said after a few beats of silence.
“You call your boyfriend Moony?”
If he hadn’t been confused before, he surely was now. Her words left him gaping at her, barely able to form any coherent thoughts. “He’s not my boyfriend.”
“What do you call each other, then? Lovers? Partner—“
“We’re not dating,” he cut her off sharply.
She looked at him, blinked, then burst out laughing. Sirius looked at the girl as she doubled over, hands clutching her stomach and her chuckles echoing inside the empty walls. “Good one, Black,” she said after finally calming down, though the effects of her laugh were still visible through the bright pink patches on her cheeks and her slightly teary eyes.
“I wasn’t joking,” his statement was said more like a question, still not being able to make sense of anything happening.
She must’ve heard the unwavering perplexity in his voice because her smile dropped instantly, her expression now matching Sirius’s. “Oh,” she breathed out, if only to give herself a few seconds to think about her next words. “Sorry, I just assumed…”
Her words had started an internal battle inside Sirius, his brain providing him with memories of the past year. He was just realising that people had stopped flirting with him some time during his sixth year for seemingly no reason at all. No one had asked him out in a damn hot minute either, and though he would’ve most likely rejected them, now that he realised what had been happening, it was making his blood boil.
“Wait,” he stopped her before she could walk away. “Does the whole school think we’re dating?”
“Yeah,” she said and, with one last look at the bewildered boy, walked to her class.
—
“Prongs!”
Sirius’s booming voice alerted the whole common room, though he paid them no mind as he made his way up the stairs, taking two at the time. “Prongs!” he yelled once again before pushing the door open with such strength and urgency that it hit and bounced off the wall behind it, leaving a slight dent that Peter was quick to repair.
“You bellowed?” James smiled at his manic-looking friend from where he was laying on his bed, flipping through a Quidditch magazine.
Standing in front of them now, Sirius was faced with the reality that he hadn’t come up with any remotely reasonable way to ask this. He knew what he was wondering, but in his panicked state it was hard for all his rushing thoughts to align into neat patterns.
“Do you think Moony and I are dating?” He wanted to facepalm himself at the way he finally phrased the question. He had all intentions to ease his friends into this conversation and gradually allow them to put the pieces together instead of coming onto them so harshly. It’s too late to take anything back, he thought, I guess we’re being straightforward about this.
James didn’t seem to notice Sirius’s internal battle, too busy fighting his own one. “What?” he asked dumbly, if only for the lack of any other words. “Yes?”
Sirius let his gaze drift towards Peter on his own bed who only gave him a nod of confirmation. “Are you… not?” Peter’s confusion matched the one from James and Sirius was left with the realisation that this conclusion their friends had made ran deeper than he could’ve even imagined.
“No.” His tone seemed too defensive but he didn’t have time to ponder it for too long.
“Oh,” was all James could say, dumbfounded by this new revelation.
Sirius sighed, running a hand through his hair and pulling at it slightly in hopes that it would help him comprehend the situation he found himself in. “Okay, so let me get this straight. You two,” he gestured between his two friends, “have been under the impression that Moony and I are dating for… Wait, for how long?”
“Uh,” James looked at Peter, willing the boy to proceed but a slight shake of Peter’s head let him know he was on his own. “A year, probably.”
“A year?” Sirius had to pinch the bridge of his nose as a reminder to not steer off the course. “So for the past year you were convinced Moony and I are together and you never thought to ask either one of us about it?”
“Well,” Peter finally started, deciding that the pressure had been on James for long enough. “In our defence, we were pretty confident about it. Hell, the whole school is convinced you two are enamoured with each other.”
“Still, you could’ve mentioned it,” said Sirius. “How come it never came up in a conversation?”
“We didn’t want to prod you,” James explained with a shrug, fixing his glasses that had fallen down his nose. “We wanted to leave it to you to tell us, in your own time.”
Sirius could feel his mind reeling yet no thought was intelligible enough to decipher. Looking back at it, he had to admit him and Remus had been more tactile with each other than with anyone else but he always blamed it on the renewed affection after Remus had forgiven him for the prank.
Besides, they were the only people either of them could talk about their issues to. They both loved James and Peter deeply, but neither of them could ever begin to understand the depths of Sirius’s and Remus’s problems, try as they might. And maybe Sirius could never understand what it was like to be a werewolf and Remus could never understand how it felt growing up in an aristocratic, pureblood society with unreachable expectations. But despite that, they still held an empathy for what it felt like to carry scars, either visible ones or the ones that only tainted your soul.
“Are you sure you don’t fancy him?” James’s voice snapped Sirius out of a mind maze he had travelled to. “I mean, you look at him—“
“I’m not into him, Prongs.”
But, regardless of his words, James’s question left Sirius pondering on the matter. He knew what he felt for Remus was different than his feelings for James or Peter, however he always assumed it was purely due to their mutual understanding of each other that was different than with everyone else. And sure, he had noticed the swarm of butterflies attacking his insides every time Remus was near but he was too busy trying to kill them to calculate what they actually meant.
“I— I can’t like Moony,” he whispered, eyes filling with tears that he didn’t let drop, instead blinking them away. “I mean, he’s Moony. Our Moony,” he smiled but it failed to reach his eyes.
Noticing his despondency, James stood up from his bed and pulled Sirius into a hug. The boy kept shaking his head, as if doing so would will his newfound feelings away, and was finding it harder to keep the tears away with every passing second.
“I can’t like him, James,” his voice was muffled by James’s shirt. “He’s my best friend. I can’t— I can’t lose him. What will I do?”
James could only hug him tighter and whisper words that he hoped would trickle some ounce of hope into him. “You won’t lose him, Pads. You’ll be alright.”
—
The next couple of weeks made Sirius regret every time he made fun of James’s pining for Lily. He felt like he was on fire all of the time; either due to being too close to Remus or not close enough. Whatever he did, he never seemed to be able to calm his racing heart that he swore now had Moony tattooed on it in invisible ink. Or at least, that’s how he felt.
At first he had wanted to shut Remus out, his mind and body going into full fight or flight mode. However, he quickly realised that this would raise all the more suspicion in Remus and would consequently leave him in a worse situation than the one he was currently in, if that was even possible.
So, despite the burning feeling on his skin and the swarm inside his stomach, he kept his relationship with Remus unchanged.
He was thankful to have such needy and close-knit group of friends which meant they were mostly together all of the time. Having James and Peter by his side made it impossibly easier to manage his self-control, if only to keep his pride intact. Still, he knew he couldn’t count on them being by his side for the rest of his life, following him like a shadow, which is why it came as no surprise when he found himself alone in the dorm with Remus, both sitting on Sirius’s bed.
After Remus finished the first of his essays, he pushed the parchment away and leaned against the headboard, looking at Sirius quizzically. “Why are you so quiet?” he finally asked after realising the boy wouldn’t be meeting his gaze any time soon. “You’ve been sitting there, peacefully doing your homework for the past hour. That’s unlike you. Is there something wrong?”
“Did you know that the whole school thinks we’re dating?” he could hear the words angrily spill out before he even had time to realise he had said them.
Remus paused and blinked for a second, perplexed and slightly surprised by the sudden outburst. It took him a few seconds to get his brain working again before he finally answered. “Does it bother you?”
Sirius was left speechless at that, opening his mouth to mutter something then closing it again to let himself think about his words for once. Does it bother him? Of course not. At first he was weirded out by it, by people’s need to suspect about his life and scrutinise his every move. However, having discovered his true feelings towards the werewolf, he could hardly claim the same now. If anything, it excited him that so many people saw the two of them and thought yeah, those two are in love. It sparked a small flame of hope inside his chest, though he knew he would have to put it out sooner or later.
Looking up and into Remus’s expectant eyes, Sirius’s brain supplied him with the realisation that he was taking too long to answer a seemingly simple question. “I mean, no. But—“
“But nothing,” Remus concluded with a nonchalant shrug, taking another piece of parchment for a new essay. “They’re just rumours. We both know they’re not true.”
Sirius could swear Remus’s voice sounded stiff but he figured it was probably just his head feeding his heart delusions it wanted to hear. With one last look at him, Sirius went back to his own work, willing his mind to work accordingly.
And yet, his mouth, ever the traitor, didn’t seem too happy to cooperate with his head, because it wasn’t long before Sirius was muttering, “I wish they were.”
Though the sound was low and almost incomprehensible, Remus’s heightened senses allowed him to pick it up. “What was that?” He had heard him clearly, of course, but still wanted to test the ground, make sure it hadn’t been just a spur of the moment before he could let himself dream.
“I said,” Sirius sighed, playing with the quill in his hands. “I wish they were. True, I mean.”
“Sirius—“
“No,” he cut Remus off, deciding to use this small ounce of confidence before it evaporated into thin air. “Let me talk now. I always knew we had a… special bond, if I can call it that. You always understood me the way no one else could. And yeah, I always found you impossibly attractive. But I never really let my mind wander further. It never occurred to me that you being my friend, my best friend, didn’t automatically mean I couldn’t fancy you. But then I heard about the rumours and it made me see you in this whole new light and maybe I’ve been looking at you in that light for a long time now but it was pointless before because I was blind.
What I’m trying to say is, I’m in love with you. Have been for a while, I was just too scared to admit it to myself. I’m not scared anymore. Maybe I’ll lose you now, maybe you’ll never talk to me again. Maybe even if you do we’ll never be the same. But maybe our friendship is strong enough to overcome this. I’ll get over it eventually, we can get through this. That is, if you’re not completely disgusted by me now.”
Having said all of that in what seemed like only one breath, Sirius was left gasping and looking at Remus hopefully. He could see his lips stretch into a smile and let the fire of hope burn inside of him for just a little longer.
“If you’re quite done,” Remus started, hands clasping around Sirius’s to stop his nervous fiddling. “I can now finally admit that I wish they were true, too.”
“You do?”
Remus could almost cry at how small and hopeful Sirius’s voice sounded. “Yes,” he confirmed. “How could I not? I’m surprised that the whole universe isn’t throwing themselves at your feet.”
Sirius laughed at that, wiping the tears that he hadn’t realised spilled down his cheeks. He looked up again, catching Remus’s eyes and he couldn’t help the laugh that tumbled out of him at the pure and raw happiness he was feeling.
“What now?” he asked, unable to think of how they were supposed to approach the situation at hand.
Instead of giving him a verbal answer, Remus tucked a fallen strand behind his ear, the way he had so many times before but never had it meant so much. His hand rested on Sirius’s cheek, which was getting progressively more red by the second. He let his eyes travel freely to where he rarely let them in the past, wondering, for the last time, how it would feel to have Sirius’s lips against his.
“Can I—“
“Yes,” Sirius’s breathed out, his eyes never straying from where they were studying the dip of Remus’s cupid’s bow.
He could see when Remus’s lips curled into a teasing smirk, finding pleasure in his desperation, before he closed the gap, successfully wiping the smirk off his face. He smiled against Remus’s lips, both because of his victory and because he was kissing Remus bloody Lupin.
One of his hands reached the back of Remus’s neck, pulling the boy even closer, while the other one tangled in his hair and occasionally pulled, eliciting a sinful groan from the boy. He felt Remus’s mouth part slightly and followed suit, letting their tongues touch and noting how the boy tasted exactly how he had expected; like tea, chocolate, cigarettes and Sirius’s wildest dream.
Resistant towards Sirius’s desperate attempts to lead, Remus pushed him down, crawling on top of him and leaving a trail of open-mouthed kisses in his wake. “Hi, stranger,” he grinned at the boy under him when they were finally face-to-face again.
“Hi, back,” Sirius couldn’t fight the smile at Remus’s dorky expression, complete contrast to his previous actions. His hands intertwined behind Remus’s neck, pulling the boy back in after deciding they had been apart for long enough.
Remus happily returned the kiss, leaning on one elbow while his other hand travelled down Sirius’s side. He untucked his shirt, letting his hand reach under it and relishing the skin-to-skin contact. Sirius’s mind short-circuited, what with Remus’s hands on him and his mouth kissing him like that. He felt like he was floating, though he knew it was impossible with Remus’s body pushing down onto him, rolling his hips in just the right way that left Sirius gasping into his mouth.
“I’ve wanted to do this for so long, you have no idea,” Remus manager to say in between kisses. “All this time I was too busy being in love with you to feel anything with anyone else. I was wasting my time with them. I finally got you now, I’m never letting you go. Nothing can take you away from me.”
“Too much talking,” Sirius whined, chasing Remus’s lips but stopping just before them to whisper, “I’m not going anywhere, ever. You’re stuck with me now.”
After a few more minutes of hands grasping, bodies moving together and lungs begging for air, the kisses turned lazy and affectionate until they stopped altogether. Remus nudged Sirius with the tip of his nose, pressing a peck on his cheek before nuzzling into his neck.
They knew that they had much more to talk about, that they had to learn navigate their life and the dynamic of their friend group under these new life-changing circumstances. But none of that mattered as they laid there in each other’s arms, a million memories of their life together behind them and a promise of many better ones to come. The stars had finally aligned, their souls had interlinked for an eternity and both of those made boys blissfully unbothered at the detention they got the following day for their unfinished essays.
—