Sirius fucking Black. Remus has an abundance of opinions on and feelings toward Sirius fucking Black. Currently, Remus thinks that he’s a prick, and his feelings veer solely toward annoyance. And nothing else matters, even if it is there. Which it isn’t.
They’re stuck together in a bloody broom cupboard, because of course they are, and they have to wait for James and Peter to come around and get them out, lest they get caught by Filch and spend the rest of the semester in detention, because James and Peter are the ones with the Map.
Remus is trying his best to stay as far away as possible from Sirius fucking Black, though his attempts seem futile in a space this size. Sirius is crammed in his own corner, and won’t meet Remus’s gaze, and if it wasn’t so dark, Remus would swear he was blushing.
Now, Remus would very much like to be the cause of Sirius Black going all flustered and red in the cheeks. His pathetic crush on the boy would typically be waving its arms and running around in his head like an excited dog, going awww, look, he’s so cute when he’s blushing, and I got his ears to turn red, and he’s soooo pretty, and his lips look so soft and I really, really wanna kiss him, please, and tuck his hair back behind his ear and tell him he’s perfect and hold his hand and kiss him and kiss him and kiss him and on and on and on. Except it isn’t a typical day, now is it? Or a typical year, really, because Sirius has been acting just slightly differently around him since September 1st, 1976.
This gives Remus hope that perhaps he has a chance with Sirius Black. Remus does not like hope, as it often ends up smooshed like a bug under someone’s heel.
He would really like to smoosh that bug sooner rather than later. The only issue is that Sirius is not a girl. Well, that and the fact that Sirius is his closest friend. It isn’t like he can just tell Sirius fucking Black that he has a crush on him and expect him to take it well. It’s 1976, after all. If Sirius doesn’t replicate (shut up, un-smooshed bug of hope) it will likely ruin their friendship, and the dynamic between them, not to mention the other Marauders, will suffer. Remus really does not want to be the one to kill the Marauders.
But the un-smooshed bug of hope is just so persistent. And Sirius is fidgeting, and really, he does look red; Remus has better eyesight than most in the dark. One of the few perks of the wolf.
Remus mentally punches himself. Then groans internally. Then decides on telling himself he’s a dumb fucking wanker and that this won’t bloody end well.
Why can’t he be a coward? Why has he decided now to live up to the Gryffindor name? It’s fucking dumb.
“Sirius,” he whispers, because if he doesn’t whisper, they’ll get caught, and they’ll have had no reason to hide in the bloody cupboard in the first place.
The boy’s head snaps up, startled. They hadn’t said a word before now; instead opting for awkward silence. Although it might only have been awkward for Remus. He would find out soon enough.
“Moony,” Sirius whispers back.
Remus won’t go into details, but he really likes the sound of Sirius’s stupid posh wanker voice.
He gives himself one last chance to cling to his senses, the real reason he’s survived this long, but the un-smooshed bug roars up and tells him to get on with it. Remus really wishes the bug would shut it’s nonexistent fucking mouth. He listens to it anyway.
“What are we?” he asks, and oh, Merlin, he really just decided to jump right into it, didn’t he?
“What?” Sirius mumbles, and tries to take a step back, not that he has anywhere to go.
“What are we?” Remus repeats, and he takes a step forward to counter it.
“Er – we’re – friends?” Sirius says. He sounds confused. Remus doesn’t blame him. His thoughts can articulate much more of what he means than his goddamn mouth, and Remus’s goddamn mouth has decided to be very fucking vague. “We’re best friends.”
Remus squints. Yup – shifty eye contact, crossed arms, red cheeks – he really is flustered. “James is your best friend,” he says.
“Merlin, Moony,” Sirius says, with an awkward chuckle and a glance down. “You can have more than one best friend. That’s different, anyway.”
Different. The bug latches on to the word. “Different how?”
“James is practically my brother.”
Sirius really is pressed up against the wall. It doesn’t do much; if Remus was against his own wall, they’d still only be a few paces away from being completely pressed together.
“But he was your best friend first.”
“…Yeah?”
“So why is it different?”
This seems to stop Sirius in his tracks. He stops fidgeting for a moment, and his brows furrow. Remus sort of wants to trace the line they make with the tip of his finger. “It just – I dunno, it just is.”
“What about Peter, then?” Remus asks.
“What about Peter?”
“What is he? If James is your brother, are Peter and I your best friends? Is there no difference between the two of us?”
He takes another step forward, so they’re only one away, and Sirius doesn’t seem to notice, though he does seem to be getting slightly aggravated by the conversation.
“Peter’s… I don’t know! Peter isn’t you! James isn’t you. Neither is Lily, or Mary, or Marlene. What do you want me to say?”
Remus allows the bug to scuttle around in his head for a moment, far from being smooshed, then says, cooly, “I want you to tell me what we are.”
Sirius scowls. “And I want you to explain what the bloody fuck you’re on about, because I don’t know! I don’t know what that means! What do you think we are? Why don’t you just tell me what you want me to say?”
“Because that isn’t the fucking point, Sirius! I’m asking you. I want you to give me a real, straight answer. What are we?”
Sirius really seems to think this over, because he goes quiet, and still, and looks Remus in the eyes for the first time all night, instead of glancing away. He never responds, so Remus prompts him a little more, by taking that step closer so they’re toe to toe. “Sirius. Is it the same with me as it is with James, or Peter, or Lily? That’s all I’m asking. Is everything the same?”
He bites his lower lip, then breaks eye contact again. “I don’t… no. No, not everything’s the same.”
“What’s different?”
“I don’t bloody know, Remus!” he snaps, glancing back up. “No, it’s not the fucking same, but I don’t know what hell that means!”
“Have you ever kissed anyone?”
Sirius blinks. The question has clearly caught him off guard. The bug in Remus’s head doesn’t know what to do with that information.
“What?” he asks.
“Have you ever kissed anyone?” Remus repeats calmly.
“I… What? I don’t know. I’ve snogged a girl or two,” he says, with the slightest frown tugging at his lips.
The bug is on high. It seems to take over Remus’s whole mind and body, because somehow he ends up asking Sirius Black if he’s “Ever snogged a boy?”
“No!” Sirius says. Remus can tell he’s telling the truth, but it also seems like more of a defensive answer than a truly thought out one.
The bug keeps going on its path of destruction, creating chaos and causing hijinx, all in the name of hope. “Want to?”
“Do I… do I want to snog a boy?”
Sirius’s gaze, it seems, involuntarily jumps down to Remus’s lips. It only lasts for a millisecond, but it’s enough to jumpstart the bug into asking its last dumb question.
“Do you want to snog me?”
His mouth falls open. Remus finds it adorable.
“Do I what?”
“Would you like to snog me?”
“You mean… as in… like an experiment, right? Like a… like a test? Because I’m… you aren’t… we’re not… er, queer?”
“Sure,” Remus says, because he’s taken slight control of the bug and is directing it into vaguely less dumb territory. There’s that slip of the gaze again, from Sirius. Remus’s lips twitch, and the bug again wrenches free. “Can I kiss you or not, Black?”
Remus would expect him to say no, but the bug is Remus now, and the bug is very ready for Sirius Black to agree.
If the bug didn’t exist, Remus wouldn’t have known how to respond when Sirius said, very quietly, “Yes.”
But the imaginary bug does exist, and so half a second later, their lips crash into one another and Remus wonders if this is what it feels like when you fall in love.
Sirius is a much better snog than that girl who’d kissed Remus in 3rd year – he knows her name, but his brain seems to have short-circuited, and so he can’t currently recall it. He’s rather preoccupied with sliding one of his hands into Sirius’s hair, while the other presses against the wall beside him, anyway.
Sirius seems to be enjoying it, if the way he tugs Remus closer is anything to go by. Still, he’s the one who eventually pulls away. He also, however, immediately blurts out “You taste like chocolate and cigarettes.”
Remus fights to keep the grin off his face, though he’s not sure how well a job he does. “Is that a good thing?”
“Er – yeah. I mean, you, you know, you taste good… you’re rather good at that, I mean, I just… I, er…”
“Sirius?”
“Yeah?”
“Is that what’s different?”
The bug holds its breath – or maybe Remus does. It’s hard to tell at this point.
“Oh,” Sirius says.
Remus gives him a moment to try and figure out fully what that means – if oh is anything to go by, it means that yes, that’s what’s different.
“Oh,” he says again. “Oh.”
“You’re a dork, Black,” Remus mutters.
Sirius snorts, and seems to have regained his usual bluster. “You love me, really,” he says, then pulls Remus in close.
The bug in his head explodes into fireworks.