Lupin watched the dim light of the moon, which in turn played with his scars without him noticing. It highlighted them without making them grotesque, as if it wanted to convey their beauty to him. But he wasn't listening. He had never listened to her, overwhelmed as he was by the hatred he felt towards her. The Moon had never pleased him, a cruel manifestation of all his nightmares since he was a child. Yet now he hardly paid attention. He looked at her, but his gaze traveled beyond, lost in his memories and the boundaries of his pain.
-
"Come on, just tell me!!"
"I told you no! I'm not telling you," Sirius laughed.
God, how beautiful he looked when he laughed like that, a mix of mischief and wildness like the animal he was deep in his heart.
Remus sighed, caught between amusement and resentment.
"You’d tell James!" he said, hoping to reignite an ancient sense of guilt. They both knew that Sirius and James had always been united by a deeper friendship than the rest of the group, and reluctantly, Remus had often been jealous of that bond. Just a shared glance between them was enough to communicate, excluding the rest of the world.
"Actually, James already knew," Sirius admitted, his voice heavy with amusement.
His friend fell silent. He hadn't expected that.
Though he probably should have. Among them, James was indeed the only one who could know something so intimate. After all, despite being considered a heartthrob by all of Hogwarts, Sirius had always avoided expressing his feelings. The only emotions he seemed to possess revolved around friendship, adventure, and audacity.
He loved having hordes of screaming girls at his feet but simultaneously didn’t give them a glance unless it was to generate false hopes.
He had always been a tremendous jerk.
The thought made him smile.
"Right," he said, "seems obvious."
"Hey, he figured it out by himself. He was the one who asked me!" he defended himself, raising his hands, sensing from the other's tone the weight of his words. "One day he came up to me, grabbed me by the scarf, and said, 'I figured out who you like, stop acting like a fool,' and I couldn’t deny it." He laughed again, shaking his head, then began to scratch himself insistently.
He used to do this even when they were carefree kids, the day after spending the night in dog form, but now, after such a long time in his animagus form, it was a constant habit.
He stopped when he noticed Lupin's gaze and assumed an embarrassed expression.
He let himself fall back with a sigh and looked up, then added, "I wouldn’t have told him otherwise."
Remus mimicked him, and the two found themselves gazing at the carpet of stars that, undisturbed by the lights beneath them, made its way across the black night sky.
It had been an unexpected proposal from Sirius to climb to the roof of Grimmauld Place to get some fresh air.
He knew that his friend struggled with the confinement of that house, which he hated as much as Lupin hated transforming, so he had asked no questions and followed him.
Sirius had been living in seclusion in the Black house for months, a place he had learned to loathe and from which he had escaped once before.
Now it felt a bit like breaking the rules to be up on that roof, and it brought back memories of when he would let himself be dragged into the most improbable troubles by his group of friends.
"You know, I liked someone too," he said impulsively, continuing to gaze at the sky.
He sensed his friend's gaze abruptly shift to him, and he couldn't help but smile.
"Who??" Sirius asked, unable to contain himself.
His hair fell back over his face as he slightly raised himself to look at him.
Carelessly, he brushed it away from his eyes and stared at him with an eager intensity.
"I'm not telling you," he laughed, echoing the way his friend had just done.
"Moony!" Sirius exclaimed, exasperated, giving him a light slap.
They both laughed.
"If you tell me who you liked back in Hogwarts, I’ll tell you mine," he tried to negotiate.
Padfoot shook his head again with that dog-like manner and howled his amusement and frustration.
"Alright," Remus continued, propping himself up on his elbows. "Let’s say you give me some hints."
His friend's eyes lit up with a new spark, and a mischievous smile appeared on his face—almost victorious.
"Let’s agree to give each other one hint until one of us figures it out."
"Deal."
They shook hands enthusiastically, and Sirius began with his nonchalant air intact.
That competition ignited in Remus the need to prove that this cocky man wouldn’t get the best of him.
"Was in our year."
"Same thing."
"Was in our house."
"Same thing."
"We knew each other's names."
"Same thing."
"Are you going to stop copying me?" Sirius teased him.
"If you stop stating the obvious," Lupin shot back.
Sirius raised his hands in surrender, laughing, "Alright, alright. Let’s see... brown hair."
"Black hair."
"Gray eyes."
"Black eyes."
They went back and forth like this for a while, until at one point, Sirius seemed to frown.
"What’s wrong?" Remus asked, still having no idea who Sirius Black’s young crush could be.
"Nothing, it’s just that I can’t think of any girl that fits that description who you’d know well enough to call 'nonchalant but charming, beautiful and loyal.'"
Remus blushed violently and focused his eyes on his hands.
He tried to quickly regain his composure, but this did not escape his friend.
"Moony?"
"Uhm?" he said, adopting the most innocent tone he could muster.
"Is there something you’ve neglected to mention? A detail... you know... important?" Sirius asked, narrowing his dark eyes.
Remus swallowed hard. He didn’t like this game anymore.
"Let’s drop it," he said, starting to bite his nails.
Sirius took one of his hands to make him stop, and he flinched. Once again, this didn’t escape his friend, who squinted his eyes further. Then he leaned in, towering over him.
Lupin pushed him back forcefully, making him step back a little.
"Okay, okay!" he exclaimed, exasperated. He categorically refused to look at him, so he turned back to the sky.
Again He swallowed hard. Suddenly, he was out of saliva.
He opened and closed his mouth several times without making a sound until he finally managed to speak.
"Who said it was a girl?"
"What?" Padfoot asked, caught off guard.
"Oh, don’t think I’ll repeat that," he laughed nervously, not knowing what to do with his hands. The temptation to start biting his nails again was strong, but he feared Sirius might catch the movement from before.
The electric shock he had felt at he's touch was enough to last a lifetime, let alone a night.
"Oh," said Padfoot, not knowing what else to say, his eyes a bit wider than usual and his brows raised.
He moved a little further away from Remus, as if he had suddenly realized what that might mean, and Lupin felt the blood that had been rushing through him chilling in his veins.
Did he disgust him? Now would he hate him just like he had hated himself all those years?
"Am I the one you liked?" he asked, his lips barely parting.
Remus forced himself to look into his eyes, now an endless well, inscrutable like never before.
Yes, he was repulsed by him. He had never seen that gaze before, but it was the closest thing to hatred he could discern on his face.
His beautiful face contorted by a primal emotion. The beast had awakened again, and Remus could see it there, ready to pounce and tear him apart.
Despite this, he steeled himself and, though his voice trembled, managed to say, "Yes."
Sirius jumped to his feet, and his anger unleashed itself on everything that could be found on that semblance of a roof.
He turned to look at Lupin, who sat there, staring at him without blinking.
All his fears materialized before him.
They wouldn't be friends anymore.
A single tear slid down his cheek as he stood up. He faced him, even though he could almost feel the invisible claws slicing through the air between them.
"Yes," he repeated more forcefully, "and you’re just a bloody jerk. You act as if I were... as if I were... the monster I feel like 24/7 but which thanks to you all I've almost managed to accept. The nights when you kept me company returned my humanity to me month after month, and being what I was... was less difficult. Then James died, and you... you were almost dead to me too, and after what I felt for you, I felt like I was the one dying. Damn it, Sirius, I hated myself so much because inside I couldn’t find the strength to really hate you. Even though I thought you were responsible for James's death, I couldn’t stop thinking about you. And I think a part of me knew that you wouldn’t be capable of betraying him, so when you reappeared, my heart exploded. Again. And everything I once felt came bubbling back up."
He felt his heart beating so hard he thought it might burst from his chest and flee just to escape the avalanche of emotions flooding over him with increasing force. Instead, he held on, and Lupin continued with an ever more cracked voice, pointing a finger at his friend, who was subject to the flow with widening eyes. "And now you judge me and look at me the way I look at myself in the mirror, making me feel the crap I feel every day. I’ve always been wrong, a wrong creature, and even in this. Now that you know, you can hate me, but it won’t change anything because I feel such an idiot that I can still love you even if you hate me! Yes, you heard me loud and clear, I love you!"
The last two words he spat out as if they were an insult, the worst kind. In doing so, everything finally came crashing down on him, and he fell to his knees, tearing his pants at that point and scraping his knees.
The former friend didn’t say a word, but his chest was rising and falling violently as well.
His heavy breaths began to condense into little clouds in the increasingly dense cold of the night.
Then he started to laugh.
Remus raised his tear-streaked face in shock.
He watched as Sirius doubled over with laughter, losing his balance and falling flat on the ground. The laughter grew stronger, shaken by his disheveled body in a scene so surreal it made Lupin burst into hysterical laughter as well.
They looked like a pack of hyenas in the middle of the city.
"You’re such an idiot, really,” Sirius confirmed breathlessly, clutching his stomach as he struggled to get back to his feet. “You’re such a bloody idiot."
Remus absorbed those words without them hurting him at all. He thought them himself, and hearing them from Sirius, after all, was just like hearing his own reflection speak back thoughts and words to him.
He was an idiot.
He continued to laugh a little longer, and when he finally calmed down, he looked down at Remus.
Lupin was sitting while Sirius stood before him, an expression that was hard to decipher on his face.
The amusement faded from the scene as Sirius crouched down in front of him and looked him straight in the eyes.
Sirius's eyes, black as the night watching over them, blended with his for what felt like an eternity, during which Lupin thought of nothing else but that it could very well be his end.
He would die like this, under the unwavering gaze of the person that he loved. And he was okay with that.
"You’re an idiot," he repeated, not losing his composure for once "because all this time you haven’t understood a damn thing."
Remus furrowed his brow, but when he opened his mouth to speak, Sirius lunged at him.
He closed his eyes.
Here it was, the attack he had been anticipating.
Here came the pain that would greet him like an old friend always lurking in the shadows.
But it didn’t come.
Instead, something happened that he couldn’t comprehend.
Their lips collided in such a passionate surge that it stole the little breath he had left in his body.
His body didn’t respond.
Everything within him froze, except for his lips, which moved on their own to welcome the other.
Their tongues intertwined, and their breaths fused into one.
When Sirius pulled away, he still couldn’t breathe.
He opened his eyes again, not understanding what was happening.
Sirius was smiling, while he, without even realizing it, was still crying.
"Moony," he called, and that was enough to bring him back to reality.
He sprang to his feet.
"Why?" he asked, his voice reduced to a gasp. He took a deep breath and continued, "Why did you do it?"
As he spoke those words, he brought his right hand to his heart, trying to calm it down a bit, but in vain.
Sirius was still smiling. "Because I’ve wanted to do it for too long," he said in the same tone.
God, that voice.
And suddenly, he understood.
It wasn’t hatred he saw in his eyes. It wasn’t disgust, it wasn’t revulsion. It was desire. The strongest passion ever existed.
He had never seen it reflected in his body, and yet there it was, ravaged for him.
The beast that had awakened vibrated with a primal instinct, yes, but not to kill him, but rather to devour him in the sweetest of ways.
After all, love and hate often hide behind each other's masks.
So Remus Lupin chose, and he basked in those emotions and threw himself toward Sirius, allowing everything to envelop him and turn him into music.
His heart played, his veins played, his entire being played. And all of it was for him, Sirius, his secret love.
They spent much of the night rolling around on the roof and the rest rolling in bed, until their movements finally exhausted it, sending them crashing to the ground, abandoned on a mattress whose springs had given way to their passion.
Neither of them could utter a word for quite some time.
But after all, it wasn't necessary. Their labored breaths and hearts beating in sync were enough to convey their mutual emotions, stronger then ever, now free to fly between and through them.
Remus, indeed, could finally breathe for real, all the way down to his core. He could be happy, and he could live like he had never lived before.
He had never felt so complete in his entire life.
So, just like that He smiled. And Sirius smiled.
The most beautiful thing in the world...
"Just so you know" said Sirius with that smile "I win. You didn't realise that it was you I longed for all this time" he kissed him again "I win".
-
Lupin found himself crying.
He cried with every part of himself as his body and soul were shaken by sobs that showed no signs of stopping.
He would stop crying when he was dead, and if he were not dead, when there were no more tears left in his eyes to shed.
It had only been a day since Sirius had left him, but he suspected that the pain would never diminish.
Never.
Ever.
They only had a month to love each other fully, and it hadn’t been enough.
The image of his beautiful face disappearing behind that damned veil forever clung to him.
Padfoot. Sirius. His friend. His lover.
Dead.
He couldn’t get out of his head that beautiful body being ripped away from him.
He had had to cling to Harry with all his strength to stop from throwing himself behind that damned veil and chasing after him into the "forever" that it promised them.
While Harry screamed, he could do nothing but drag them both away, further and further, or he wouldn’t have been able to stop.
His heart fought to surrender to the desire to let go and pursue a love that was now far away.
He felt like Orpheus who, having just found Eurydice, lost her again.
All the struggles endured in vain.
He cried and cried again.
The roof of Grimmauld Place soaked up his pain and seemed to weep with him.
"You abandoned me," he said, falling once again to his knees, scraping himself again like he did that night. The first night together. "You left me here, condemning me to a life without you. Again."
He lifted his eyes to the sky, to the moon, to the stars, to the entire galaxy.
In that moment, a star shone brighter than the others, and despite his misty eyes, he saw it.
He saw it and, against his better judgment, smiled.
"Wait for me," he said softly.
It was just one word.
But to put it simply, it was a promise.