Chapter 2.
Remus and Sirius hid out in their dorm for the rest of the evening, talking and laughing. Remus was really surprised that there wasn’t any awkwardness between the two of them, and was trying his best to keep conversation from steering into the direction of what’s going to happen next between them.
After a lovely game of who-can-fling-pillows-the-hardest-at-each-other, James and Peter walked into the dorm.
“Hey ladies!” James grinned at them. Him and Peter weren’t there for the incident. James was out practicing his Quidditch skills and Peter was serving detention for the last prank the Marauders did.
“Hiya, Prongs.” Sirius grinned back. Remus held his breath. Sirius was going to tell the boys. Or at least James. He tells James everything, this was no exception. “How was Quidditch?”
Remus breathed out heavily. He didn’t tell them. At least not yet.
But Sirius still did make a mistake — asking James about Quidditch. Peter groaned, shared a bored look with Remus and announced he was going to take a shower. Smart bastard, Remus thought, getting out of the Quidditch talk like that.
Remus couldn’t escape though. He couldn’t go downstairs to the common room because of the incident. He couldn’t go outside because it was past curfew and James forgot the cloak the last time they were in the passage to Honeydukes. He couldn’t go to the bathroom because Peter was there. Only thing left to do was to stay here and listen. Or read. Remus settled on reading, while the two Quidditch maniacs continued on their blabbing.
—
The next morning Remus was pleasantly surprised when he wasn’t woken by James telling him aggressively to “RISE AND SNINE, PRINCESS!”. When he looked around, he realised the reason he was still sleeping was because James wasn’t in the dorm, and neither was Sirius. Peter was still here though, fast asleep, probably enjoying his James-free Sunday morning.
Worry quickly washed over Remus, realising James and Sirius were off somewhere together, and probably alone, meaning Sirius was going to tell him. Remus really didn’t need James knowing that right now, but in hindsight, he was bound to find out anyway. Considering that the whole of Gryffindor had placed bets on Remus and Sirius, it wouldn’t be long until everyone in the school knew, let alone just James.
Remus tried suffocating in a pillow like he does every morning once he finds out he did, in fact, wake up. It didn’t work but oh well, he tried. He sighed an incredibly heavy and loud sigh, that for some reason didn’t even stir Peter, and got up to go to the bathroom.
As he was washing his face, he thought. He didn’t want anyone to know that he likes Sirius, but now that was kind of inevitable. He didn’t want James to know, because most than likely James already knew and, once he got confirmation, was going to be his personal cheerleader which he really didn’t need. He didn’t want Peter to know either, because he knew if Peter found out, it would get extremely awkward. Peter wasn’t the type of guy you could seriously talk to. But most of all, he didn’t want Sirius to know that he didn’t want anyone to know, because that would mean he confirmed he really does like Sirius. (Which he does, but he would rather play Quidditch than admit that.) Why is being gay so hard?
He came out of the bathroom with another sigh, and met Sirius standing beside his bed, with a plate full of food from breakfast.
“Oh, hi. You’re awake,” Sirius said. Remus nodded. “I brought you breakfast, in case you didn’t want to go down and see all the staring faces.”
Remus smiled, “Cheers, Pads.” Sirius set the plate down on Remus’ bedside table. Remus walked over and sat on his bed. “Didn’t they stare at you, though?”
Sirius grinned and shrugged, walking over to the bed and also sitting on it. “I’m used to it, mate. People always stare at me. It’s probably because of my unbelievably good looks.”
“I highly doubt that.” Remus rolled his eyes, then cleared his throat and asked, “So, does James know now?”
Sirius’ breath hitched, “No. I didn’t tell him. Did you want me to?”
“Merlin no.” Remus breathed out. He reached over to the plate and took a bite out of toast with marmalade. “What’s the plan now?”
Sirius shrugged, taking the apple slice offered by Remus and chewing it. “Whatever you want, Moons.”
Remus shook his head. “No. I’m the one that got you into this. What do you want to happen next?” Remus knew Sirius won’t disagree with this. Any statement that meant he was in charge, he was happy about.
Sirius’ face was unreadable. “I say we stay pretending we’re together. Maybe that’ll stop all the people coming up to you, asking you out.”
Remus blinked. “Alright.”
“Alright?”
“It’s a good plan. Alright.”
“Alright.”
—
As Remus and Sirius walked to their Care of Magical Creatures class, the next day, they held hands. Peter and James didn’t choose that class, so they were free to do so. James chose to do Muggle Studies because, in his words, “It’ll help me get closer to Evans.” Peter chose Divination, because he thought it would be an easy class to skip through the day, but oh how wrong he was.
However, the stares for Remus and Sirius never ended. As the two walked through the hallways, and through all the crowds of kids, people were gawking, murmuring, or full on whistling. Remus couldn’t feel more embarrassed. His ears were bright red, his heart was jumping out of his chest, and his breathing was extremely heavy. Sirius, on the other hand, was looking incredibly comfortable parading around and holding hands with Remus. He was strutting with his chest puffed out, his feet steady on the floor, looking like he was born for this.
Remus really didn’t think Sirius would be acting like this. From the things he heard from Sirius about his family, Remus presumed they were all homophobic, and in no way would accept anything remotely gay. And Remus slightly presumed Sirius must be like that too, but was now kicking himself. If only he wasn’t dumb and actually built up the courage to ask Sirius out, seeing how easy being gay made him feel. The scary part was, Sirius never actually came out to anyone as anything. And looking at him now, and how he was completely fine with being gay, (or at least pretending), Remus thought he must be totally understanding. Or, on the sickeningly sweet hand, Sirius was only so fine with this because he wanted to make Remus happy and he actually wasn’t gay and Remus was getting his hopes up for nothing. Remus repeated the same thing he always thinks — being gay is hard.
The two walked into their class and took their seats beside each other, their fingers still intertwined.
Remus was about to pass out from all the eyes staring at them. Sirius seemed to notice that, because he brought their hands under the table so no one could see that something was out of the ordinary. At that moment, the professor started blabbing on about flobberworms and bowtruckles, and Remus was obliged to the silence of the other students, listening to the professor. Still, Remus squeezed Sirius’s hand to say “thank you”. Or maybe it was just Remus getting comfortable, but at that point Remus knew he had gotten himself to far, and he was never going to recover from holding hands with Sirius Black.