mess it up
Really rather abruptly (or so Remus finds), it's two weeks off of Christmas, he's owl ordering gifts and hand crafting things for his parents (as he's done for years now), and even three weeks later, he can't stop thinking about the conversation with Sirius' brother.
Regulus Black...
Remus shakes his head. Sirius doesn't talk about his family - with good reason - and he honestly knows next to nothing about him. In the corridors, he's heard the occasional comment on the brother's differences, but other than that? He's clueless.
Listen to your instincts and get the hell out of there.
Maybe he's just paranoid, but Remus has been seeing Sirius differently, hearing his comments, offhand as they may be, and not quite liking them. Obviously it's nothing; obviously Regulus' words have been influencing him. Sometimes he sees the Slytherin looking at him intently. Sometimes (especially after Regulus received a letter from who he assumes is his parents, eith a face so sad and sour it's like watching a lemon cry in kitten form, which actually sums him up pretty well) he sees Sirius staring.
Remus never says anything.
"Congratulations, Mr Lupin," McGonagall praises with a smile as she has back their essays, "very well done."
He smiles. Sirius positively beams at him. His stomach twists with his brother's words and flutters at his friends grin. Stupid, stupid Lupin. He internally tells himself to grow up and sort himself out.
I've dealt with this for years.
Angrily bristling, he stuffs his now crumpled essay into his bag, because this is starting to get a little ridiculous.
Outside in the corridor, because speak of the fucking devil and low and behold, he shall appear, his eyes catch on Regulus. Remus clenched his jaw. Black must have - he must have hit his head or something, that's probably it, or he wanted to throw him off his game and put him on the back foot. That's it. Remus is just being paranoid.
Just being paranoid.
He smiles thinly at Lily when she passes.
"Merry Christmas!"
Remus groans. "Ug, Sirius, get off-" Sirius does not in fact get off, instead whacking him repeatedly with a pillow, cackling delighted as he does so. Half blind and utterly exhausted (it's - half six in the morning? Really, Sirius?) he slaps at the boy, grappling his body down until the fall in a heap.
"Remus," Sirius whispers, as is he is a blessing, as if he is the only thing that matters to this beautiful, foolish, stomach twisting boy, "Remus, my Remus."
"Moring, Sirius, merry Christmas," he grins. "Seriously, though, get off. You're squishing me." Its just them in the dorm - Peter, James and Kingsley have all gone home already.
He grumbles, rumpled from their impromptu pillow fight, and then curls up right them on his bed, sticking his face in the crook of hamish neck and yawning, which, gross. "Sleep," the other boy insists.
"You're the one who-!" He protests, but falls silent at another yawn. "Christ, you're so fucking clumsy."
"Only for you," the other Gryffindor promises, trapping his body against his own, guiding him in place, his heartbeat mimicking an echo that pulses to mine, mine, mine.