Running with wolves

Remus walked Elsie to the entrance of Ravenclaw tower after their date. They were mostly silent after they had exhausted all possible conversation topics during their stroll to the shrieking shack. They held hands still. Remus' hands were clammy but so were Elsie's. Neither of them mentioned it since couples were supposed to hold hands on dates, so they walked in silence, hand in sweaty hand. Remus had begun to feel very stupid wearing his friends jacket to a date but no one had mentioned it so he had concluded that it was his own silly little anxiety, making him feel weird about the tiniest insignificant details.

"I had a really good time, today. I'm glad we did this." She told him once they were face to face, standing next to the entrance to the Ravenclaw common room. This was the part in movies where they were supposed to have their magical little first kiss and then retreat back to their individual spaces and squeal about how perfect it had all been. This wasn't a movie and they had already had their first kiss.

"Me too." Was all that he could think to say. He had nothing to say. It felt like the right thing to say but at the same time it felt infinitely too little.

"It was nice to meet your friends. Lily and James seem really sweet together." She smiled. They weren't holding hands anymore, just looking at each other. Elsie was a good bit shorter than Remus. Well, everyone was a good bit shorter than Remus. He was looking down at her, thinking that if he were to carry on with this, he would end up very dizzy.

"They are. James has liked Lily for ages." Remus internally told himself off for being an entirely bland conversationalist.

"So, like us then. You know because I've liked you for ages." She fluttered her eyelashes up at him, she seemed quieter right in that moment than she had on the rest of the date, like she was nervous. Well, that made both of them, didn't it.

Remus wondered if Elsie was actually telling the truth. He had never seen her before the party where they met. How could you like a person that you've never even talked to before? He only started liking Elsie when he'd had a conversation with her, kissed her and then... well, you know. Maybe if he'd known her as a friend first he might have liked her before that. But it made no logical sense to Remus that she could like him without even meeting him. Was it all about how he looked? A lot of girls like Sirius for how he looked but it also seemed impossible to Remus that someone could like him for the way he looked. In his eyes there wasn't a whole lot to look at. He didn't think he was that attractive.

Remus thought he liked Elsie but at the same time he wasn't entirely sure what liking a person romantically entailed. He thought she was pretty and she was smart and he laughed at her jokes and she laughed at his which made him feel good. They had interesting conversations about things that they both liked, like books and music. But that couldn't be it, could it? Remus felt like that about most of, if not all of, his friends. He could appreciate that his friends were beautiful people, inside and out, just like how he felt about Elsie. And he had good conversations about common interests with his friends and they all laughed at each other's jokes and hung out in Hogsmeade. Just like how it was with Elsie. If that was liking someone romantically, then Remus fancied all of his friends and he was pretty sure that he did not fancy all of his mates. What even was attraction?

Remus was very confused.

"I like you, too." That felt like the right thing to say. He couldn't tell what his face was doing but he just had to hope that he didn't look as painfully bewildered as he felt. Thoughts were swimming around his brain faster than Olympic athletes and he couldn't focus on one thing at that moment in time. It seemed like he'd done something correctly because she looked at him and grinned widely. It was a nice smile. A happy smile. Shit, she really did like him.

Should he kiss her?

He should kiss her.

Remus stepped closer to her. Not too much just a small amount to tell her that it was okay for her to take the next step. And she did. She took the step closer to him, a sparkle in her eye that was full of hope. Remus leaned forward and down very very slightly, not too much but not too little. He was still unsure on what to do. He'd kissed her before but he was a little tipsy then and so was she. The wall of awkwardness had been broken down by the small amount of alcohol they had both consumed. This time was different. They were both stone cold sober. Despite the name, butter beer was not intoxicating. Elsie stood up on her tiptoes to reach his height a little more, their faces were about an inch apart. Remus wasn't sure who was supposed to close the gap. Was that his job? Hers? Where was the rule book?

He leaned in closer to her, reluctantly, hoping that that was the right thing to do. His lips touched hers. She kissed him, bringing her hands up to hold his face and run her polished fingers through his short hair. Where were his hands? Should he be holding her face? What was he supposed to do with his hands? In all the confusion Remus realised too late that his eyes were wide open and that he had forgotten to actually kiss Elsie back. She broke apart from the kiss with an expression of confusion crossed with one of disappointment painted across her face.

Remus didn't know what to do, so in an entirely odd heat of the moment decision, he leaned in again but quicker, giving her a peck on the lips like a mum saying farewell to her son before he goes to school in the morning. "Goodnight." He basically yelled at her before turning on his heels and power walking until he was out of sight much to quickly to see her expression grow sad and her eye widen with tears gathering within them.

Shit.

Maybe this wouldn't work out.

Once he had safely turned a few more corners, Remus finally stopped in his tracks. Plastering himself against a wall like a magnet snapping onto a fridge and leaning his head back for support as if his neck might snap from the weight of holding it up all day, he took a moment to breath. In and out. Easy. Just breathe. That's all there is too it. He had been breathing his entire life, it came naturally to him but in moments like these, it felt as if he had just landed on this planet and that oxygen was a new concept for his lungs to grasp. He felt bad.

That.

Was.

Shit.

He did like her. He wanted to kiss her. Didn't he? He thought she was pretty. She was objectively pretty. How could he not like her? He'd held hands with her all day even though it was an oddly sweaty activity, he still did it. That meant that he liked her, right? He'd never done anything like this before. He was totally out of his depth in this.

This was all so confusing.

Remus couldn't breathe normally anymore as he suddenly became very aware of what he was wearing. The sleeves of James' jacket were ever so slightly too short but they might as well have been half way up his forearms. The shirt collar seemed normal enough at first but now it felt as if it was strangling him, choking the air out of his lungs. The seams, connecting the sleeves to the body of the jacket dug in under Remus' arms, making him want to rip the fabric right off of his body and with it his skin so that he would never have to feel a thing again. The hallway was silent enough but every slight motion or movement that made the tiniest sound sent shockwaves up Remus' spine as he cradled himself against the wall, his eyes firmly shut, willing his brain to stop for just a moment so that he could get some peace. He shook off the jacket, throwing it on the floor and sliding down the wall so that he was sitting in a sort of foetal position. His hands gripped at the back of his neck, nails digging into his skin, his fathers voice swimming around his head, calling him pathetic, calling him a queer because he couldn't kiss a girl without having a little cry about it.

Get out.

Get OUT.

GET OUT.

"GET OUT OF MY HEAD!" He screamed, a few students late for curfew looked at him with concern but quickly rushed back into whatever they were doing before his interruption. He felt crazy for yelling at the voice of a dead man that resided in the back of his head always. That was what happened when people went mad. They heard voices. They talked back to the voices.

Why was he wearing James' jacket in the first place. He should have just worn his jumper. His favourite one. Knitted, red, warm. He thought about Sirius wearing it. How soft he looked. How could a person look so incredibly perfect? He thought about how much he had wanted to hug Sirius then. He thought about Sirius' hand and how perfectly it had fit into his, how it wasn't clammy because he wasn't nervous or unsure about it, he was just there. He thought about Sirius' hair, how it fell in his eyes whether it was tied up or not and it how it was perfect either way even though some people didn't think so. He thought about Sirius.

Remus' breathing began to calm down and he released his nails from where they were, stuck deep under the skin in his neck. It stung but he didn't mind. The pain made him feel as if he was actually there in the moment. Like he was a real person.

Remus stood up slowly, collecting himself and James' jacket but he didn't put it back on eve if the corridors were freezing cold. He walked slowly back to Gryffindor tower so that he didn't collapse from the dizziness. He always felt lightheaded after a panic attack. It was as if all the thoughts in his head were spinning around like ballerinas in toy jewellery boxes, confusing his senses and throwing him off balance. Really it was because of his breathing. He tended to breath so fast that he would take in too much oxygen at once and then release it too fast, leaving his head whirring around like a teacup ride at an amusement park. It was easy to think of fun similes for dizziness. He didn't know why but they always came to him at times like these when the floor would moved underneath him like an extra rocky boat. It gave him something to smile about so he really didn't mind it at all.

He got back to the common room a good while later, not knowing what to expect from his friends, he was still confused by Marlene's comment but he was somewhat confident that she wouldn't bring it up again. It was Sirius and James that he was worried about. Girls always got a bad rep for being gossips but none of them had anything on James and Sirius when it came to being nosy. Remus did not want to recount the story of what just happened to anyone, especially Sirius. He cared what Sirius thought. Perhaps more than anyone else in this world, he cared how Sirius perceived him. This was sure to make Remus look worse in his eyes.

"Ooh, here comes our little boy." Mary called as Remus came in through the portrait hole. The room was occupied by most of Remus' friends and a few younger Gryffindor students who were taking their studies way too seriously way too early in the year. Marlene was sat next to Dorcas and Mary was sat across from them, James and Peter were playing chess on the floor and Lily was reading an overly huge book, sat next to Mary. "Oh, they grow up so fast, don't they?"

"Ha ha, very funny." Remus rolled his eyes at her. "What have you guys been up to, then?"

"Taking bets on how long it'd be until you came back with your tail tucked between your legs like a sad little puppy." Mary laughed.

"Very good visual description, Mary. Well done." Remus droned, sarcasm dripping off of his tongue like blood from a knife. "Who won, then?"

"Peter got the closest."

"I'm not sure how to feel about that."

"So, how far did you get?" Dorcas asked.

"What?"

"Like, how far did you get with her?"

"I don't know, we kissed." Remus shrugged, wanting to leave the room immediately. "I'm going upstairs, you guys can gossip down here for as long as you want."

He opened the door to the dormitory, turning dead silence into music blasting Remus as he entered the room. Remus didn't know what song it was but it was definitely something by Deep Purple. Remus never really got into metal music but Sirius loved it to bits, Deep Purple being his new favourite metal group as of late.

"Hey, can you turn the music down a little?" Remus asked but it was a feeble attempt, since he could barely hear himself talk over the music. He walked over to Sirius' bed, tugging the curtains aside. "CAN YOU PLEASE-"

Sirius was sat on his bed, cross legged with his head in his hands. He looked up at Remus when the curtain wall between them was torn away. His eyes were red and puffy.

"Sorry, sorry." He kept on apologising as he stood up to turn the music off. He knocked the needle aside so that the loud music immediately stopped, leaving them in even more dead silence than before. "Sorry, sorry."

Remus just stood there, dead still. "Sirius."

"What?"

"Are you okay?"

"Yes, I'm fine." Sirius said, turned away from Remus as if he was looking for something around him. "I'm fine."

Remus stepped towards him a few times, not even thinking about what he was doing, and placed a hand on his best friends shoulder. "Sirius." He said again. Not sure why.

The boy whipped around, his dark hair flicking around his head, if it were any longer it might have hit Remus, causing some damage. "WHAT?!"

Remus just stared at him and Sirius stared at Remus. He couldn't think about what to do other than wrap his arms around his friend like he'd thought about doing every day for the last week and a half. So he did. He held onto Sirius for a few seconds before the other boy reciprocated the embrace, wrapping his arms around Remus' neck and shoulders, resting his head against his neck.

He felt soft in Remus' arms. Just like he thought.