Heavy In Your Arms

This will be my last confession
‘I love you’ never felt like any blessing
Oh, whispering like it's a secret
Only to condemn the one who hears it
With a heavy heart

I was a heavy heart to carry
My beloved was weighed down
My arms around his neck
My fingers laced to crown

I was a heavy heart to carry
But he never let me down
When he held me in his arms
My feet never touched the ground

REMUS

The muffle of encompassing water. The pull of suction against glass. The grumble of nervous impatience. Every unfamiliar sound left Remus more concerned than the last, additive to the searing pain on the left side of his chest. And his right ankle. And both his arms.

The further he dragged himself from the fog of this oblivion, the more he began to remember. Last night had been the full moon. No – not just a full moon, he recalled as he could hear the ripping of his own flesh underneath his fingernails, feel the slip of his own blood as it pooled beneath his feet, suffer the foreign, scraping howl inside his own throat. A blood moon.

This left him wondering where he had ended up, exhausted and unconscious after spending all night giving himself new scars. The Shrieking Shack really only worked to conceal him during the initial transformation into the Wolf. But the Wolf always found ways out of the Shack, no matter how Remus tried to restrain him. It meant that Remus often woke in unfamiliar places – the middle of the Forest, the base of the Willow, the shores of the Lake.

He could barely remember the events of last night, which was a tad unusual. Most moons, while he didn’t have control over what he did, he certainly had memory of it. Last night was … less than a blur. Vaguely, he could almost remember chasing a shadow around the Forest.

It was bitter work trying to force his eyelids to open. None of his fingers or toes would follow his command, either. There were only two things working for him – his equilibrium and his ears. From that, he knew was lying down, and he knew someone was in the room with him. He could hear them tinkering with what sounded like Potions vials from somewhere behind him. Beyond that, it sounded like everything around him was muted, like he was encased in a thick, glass box deep underwater. Realization wrenched at his gut. Oh. No.

Without the full return of his sight and knowing that he was going to tear open some of his wounds, he demanded his body move for him. After a few seconds of frustrating disobedience, the muscles in his neck begrudgingly surrendered to his order, and he slowly starting to pull himself up from where he’d been lying. He could feel his skin separating, tearing apart from where it had fused thinly back together. With determination and desperation, he bore down, labored breathing seething from the tight spaces between his clenched teeth.

“Hey, hey, hey,” he heard a voice to his right, felt a soft but coaxing touch against his chest which he only knew was bare from the closeness of skin. “Lie down, Lupin.”

He knew that voice. No other could emulate that unique, baffling blend of cynicism and sympathy in such equal parts. No other could, at once, sound raw and raked with nicotine and smoke and ash, but still be as smooth as warm honey. Remus would know, for as long as he’d spent memorizing the cadence of that voice, for how peculiar it was, how contradictory it was.

It was Sirius Black, the boy with the long, dark, wavy hair that he tied to the top of his head with his rune-carved wand to keep the hair from his face before a duel. It was Sirius Black, the boy with the jawline so sharp that it looked sculpted out of marble with the pale complexion to match. It was Sirius Black, Prefect of the Slytherin House, heir to the Black family name and fortune, top of every class by a wide margin, and all-but-confirmed Death Eater.

Why was he with Black? Maybe he’d stumbled back into the castle and gotten lost, winding up in the Dungeons. Because that was where he was, he knew that now. The muffle of underwater – the Dungeons were partly under the Great Lake, where the Giant Squid was famous for dragging his viscous tentacles across the thick glass that kept them all from drowning.

While he let Black lead him softly back down to the downy mattress beneath him, he didn’t stop in the attempt to open his eyes to get a better idea of the situation. After all, Black was a Slytherin. He was a Death Eater. It didn’t matter what Remus felt about him.

The first thing his eyes fell upon once they opened, blurry and blinking, was Black, kneeling next to him with his hands held over Remus’ abdomen in a healing spell that was so skilled that Remus couldn’t feel anything in the area under Black’s elegant fingers. Even Poppy’s spells weren’t this adept – he could always feel the effect of it, the pain it left behind.

The concentration in Black’s furrowed brow was tactile, like it hung in the air. The sleeves of his white Oxford shirt were rolled hastily up to the elbow. Underneath those sleeves were smears and fingerprints of blood, some diffusing as a crimson tide up the coiled white fabric.

With sudden, shocking clarity, Remus realized what it was he had been trying to find with no success. On Black’s inner left forearm was only a bloody handprint, obscuring a rather terrible looking scar than ran from his wrist to his elbow. There was no Dark Mark. But all the other Death Eaters had them, and Remus knew they had them, because he’d seen them.

Even Black’s own younger brother, Regulus, had one. Remus had seen that one too, the day after Regulus had reportedly gotten it. It had been red and angry from how his skin seemed to reject such a vile debasement. Now that Remus thought of it, he’d never seen the Mark of the eldest Black brother. In fact, he’d never even seen Black’s forearms, at all.

The further he thought back, the more he realized – he wasn’t sure anyone had. Not once had he seen Sirius in anything other than his dark robes or a long-sleeved shirt or a jumper over his shirt and tie. Remus had always attributed Black’s strict personal enforcement of the dress code on his being a Prefect – he’d never seen Black with even his tie off, not even at dinner.

Except, well, he wasn’t wearing his tie now, with his head bowed low over Remus’ skin like he was whispering a prayer into it, rather than a spell. With his tie missing from around his throat, his collar was splayed carelessly down to the second button, off-center to one shoulder. 

His hair was tied up with his wand in that way he tied it up just before a duel in Defense Against the Dark Arts, but also not in the way he tied it up to duel. During a duel, an elastic kept every long hair accounted for, in perfect place, even when he pulled his wand out just in time to utter a counter spell. Just then, with the way Black was bent over Remus, his hair hung loosely into his face, the wand at the crown of his head hurriedly placed without attention.

Under a heavy, dry swallow, Remus spoke as he watched Black adjust the expertly placed bandages wrapped around Remus’ chest. “Why are you helping me?”

There was no reply as Black let his fingers ghost down Remus’ thigh, his feathered touch leading Remus to the abrupt awareness that he was very naked underneath the sheets of Black’s bed. When Black pulled the blanket from atop Remus’ feet, Remus could see the advancing purple bruise circling his grotesquely swollen ankle. He winced at the sight, but the pain wasn’t all that bad. In fact, compared to when he’d first woken, none of the pain was that bad, really.

Eventually, Black spoke, taking Remus’ hand into his own quite clinically, turning it in his hands and examining it closely. “I think you would have died tonight. Had I not been there.”

“Why were you there?” Remus asked, partly of out suspicion and partly out of curiosity.

The look on Black’s face was, at first, confusion and disappointment, and his grey eyes met Remus’ for the first time since Remus had regained consciousness. With the transparency of Black’s gaze, Remus finally noticed the treacherous dark circles under Black’s tired cinder eyes, amplified by deep worry lines in their corners. There was something unsaid in them, too, masked by the haunting sharpness of his gaze, though Remus couldn’t find himself needing to look away.

Then, without warning, there was the hint, just the barest hint of a smile at the corner of Black’s lips and, for only a moment, all the sorrow was scrubbed clean. “I was your distraction.”

SIRIUS

There was a shaking breath pushing through his lips that he was actively trying to ignore, despite the stuttering it infused into the cigarette smoke that veiled his grey eyes. It hadn’t been this bad in quite some time. He hadn’t felt sleep in days. He was going to have to run again.

Earlier in the week, Regulus had taken the Mark, for which Sirius had refused to be present. Their mother was thrilled, of course, except for the disgust in her mouth when she berated Sirius for his vehement refusal of the same Mark. It didn’t matter that Sirius had Exceeded Expectations in all his N.E.W.T. classes the year prior, it didn’t matter that he was at the top of every class this year, it didn’t matter that he was, objectively, the perfect son.

Because he didn’t take the Mark. Because he didn’t agree with the murder of innocent people, Muggle or Muggle-born included. Because he didn’t think he was better than any other student at Hogwarts, blood status be damned. Because he didn’t want to follow a fascist.

His mother threatened to disinherit him, of course, and Sirius had arrogantly begged her to do it, begged her to let him be rid of this godforsaken family. The look on Regulus’ face had him retracting that statement. He still wanted to be rid of them, just not all of them. Not Reg.

To his surprise, his mother hadn’t blasted his name off the tapestry of the family tree on the wall of the sitting room at Number Twelve Grimmauld Place. He was fairly certain she was just forcing him to stay in the family purely out of spite. And her spite could live for decades.

Pushing himself from the balusters of the Astronomy Tower, Sirius tossed the dying embers of his cigarette into the waning darkness. Half of the reason he’d taken up smoking was to spite his mother, so he must’ve inherited something from her, after all. Damn.

There was a certain pink rose bush behind which Sirius always chose to disrobe. It was off to the side of the castle, away from the Herbology greenhouses (should any couples come stumbling by in their oblivious bliss), but still fairly near to the Great Lake. Being close to the Great Lake was important, as the secret tunnels underneath it that Sirius had discovered early in his Hogwarts residence led back to the Dungeons, and almost directly to Sirius’ dorm.

He was lucky that he didn’t have a roommate at Hogwarts. Well, some days he considered himself lucky. Days like this. Nights, rather, when he needed silence and stealth to sneak back into the Dungeons. Other days, having his own dorm felt quite lonely.

Behind that friendly pink rose bush, Sirius removed his clothes, taking a moment to enjoy the coolness of the early Spring morning against his fevered skin. It was almost as pleasant as the run would be. Almost. With practiced technique, he transformed into his Animagus.

Padfoot. That was the name he’d given to this version of himself. It was the one thing he could choose about it. He hadn’t been given a choice to become an illegal Animagus – it was a Black family tradition. Even Regulus had done it last year. Once, they’d gotten into serious trouble when the neighbors started to cause a panic about seeing a black German Shepherd and a Barbary Lion with a dark mane casually strolling about the borough of Islington.

Almost immediately after becoming Padfoot, his ears pricked toward a sound. A howl. It was close. He went racing off in the direction of the sound, as the howling grew louder, more frequent, more frightening. The hackles at the back of his neck rose, a snarl forming in his throat.

As he approached, he stilled, one paw raised in the air. It wasn’t just a howl, it was a cry, a bellow. Before him was a full standing werewolf, drenched in crimson blood. He meant to step back, to run, to cower. A werewolf could slit him to ribbons without even an effort. It looked like this creature of the night had already done it to some poor animal before him. Maybe many.

Before he could turn, he looked closer. No, it wasn’t animal blood. It was his own, the werewolf’s. The claws at the ends of his own fingers dug and tore and ripped into his own flesh, across his chest, along both of his arms, down his own face. With stunning plainness, Sirius realized, with a dreadful twist of his gut, that there was a person trapped in there.

Without a thought in his canine head, Padfoot barked, immediately drawing the attention of the beast in front of him. He readied himself for the vicious chase to follow. Instead, the Wolf cocked his head to one side, watching Padfoot, as if in questioning, curious and interested.

Carefully, Padfoot moved forward. The Wolf stayed still. Another step and the Wolf let him take it. With a respectful bow, Padfoot lowered his head in front of the Wolf’s terrible claws, dripping with the blood of its host. As Sirius braced for something brutal, like his throat being slit or his spine being pulled straight from his fur, the Wolf surprised him by nudging him. Gently.

With taunting fire in his bright, red eyes, Padfoot immediately dashed off into the direction of the Forest. The Wolf followed, letting out a howl that was so different than the one before it. This one sounded practically playful. It certainly didn’t sound quite so hollow.

Running in the Forest with this Wolf at his tail, and at his side eventually, Sirius lost all track of time. Though he was running for the exhaustion of it, this Wolf gave him new energy. His desperate and imminent need to sleep was forgotten. It was just Padfoot and the Wolf, running until their lungs were breathless and their muscles sore, under the light of a full, red moon.

As they neared the Lake, Sirius saw the first glimpse of daylight peaking over the mountains in the distance. A soft whimper behind him reminded him that this Wolf was a human being. A human being who was about to return to find broken skin and badly bleeding wounds.

Through the transformation, the howl in the Wolf’s throat soon became screams, accompanied by the sounds of bones reshaping and organs squelching. Quickly, Sirius reverted back into his own skin, tearing across the lawn to the rose bush where his clothes were hidden.

“Stay with me! Stay with me!” Sirius shouted from across the distance, his voice cracking under the strain as he saw grey fur give way to freckled skin. Skin now so bruised.

Hopping into his trousers, Sirius stumbled back toward the stranger. There wasn’t enough time to put on his shoes, so he left them there, but had enough sense to grab his white uniform shirt, with the silver and emerald green tie still pressed underneath the collar. As quickly as he could, he darted back to the human form collapsed onto the shore of the Great Lake, daylight highlighting the numberless old scars etched underneath all the fresh wounds.

He didn’t take time to look at his face, not at first. No, he had much more important things to do. His white shirt immediately soaked red with the blood of the stranger as Sirius pressed it hard to the cavernous claw marks that the Wolf had excavated into his skin. A makeshift tourniquet of Sirius’ tie went around his left upper arm, in an effort to slow the blood flowing from a gash just inside his elbow. In his panic, Sirius looked up. He looked to his face.

It was Remus Lupin, the boy with the shapeless, golden curls that hung low in his face but were buzzed short on the sides. It was Remus Lupin, with the sun-tanned freckles scratched out by the faded, pink scars that peppered his face. It was Remus Lupin, a quiet and unassuming Ravenclaw with limbs too long for his frame and a voice too soft for his build. He was a werewolf.

Not taking too much time to process it, Sirius strategically tied his shirt around the wounds at Lupin’s chest and kneeled to hoist Lupin across his back, over both shoulders.

“Stay with me, Lupin,” he repeated in a whisper. He tucked his arm between Lupin’s legs, wrapping his hand around Lupin’s naked thigh, his fingers slipping dangerously over the coagulating blood that coated Lupin’s skin. It was going to be a painfully long walk back to his dorm. He desperately hoped he’d be able to make it before the rest of his House woke.

REMUS

The shadow in the Forest. It had been him. And it wasn’t a shadow at all, Remus began to remember, but a dog. As memory began to return, Remus could recall a black dog approaching the Wolf with caution. His head had been bowed low in a show of submission, much like Black’s head had been bowed low over Remus just moments before. He remembered the canine moving slowly, he remembered being surprised at how the Wolf had nudged him, docile and tame.

“You’re an Animagus,” Remus spoke through breath. At first, he’d been wary of this good deed – what did Black want from this? Was he going to reveal Remus’ secret? Did he intend to blackmail Remus for his silence? Now that they knew each other’s secrets, it was reassuring.

Black nodded, but it was nearly imperceptible. “I am,” was all he said. Through the addle in his brain, Remus tried to remember the dawn, but there wasn’t much there, beyond them running together through the Forest, bowing before each other, as if in play. There was nothing that showed the way Black’s face had looked when he had discovered it was Remus. Had he been surprised? Disgusted? Try as he did, Remus couldn’t pinpoint seeing Black’s face at all.

More importantly, how had they made it all the way down into the Dungeons? Had Black carried him all that way? With a blush that burned his skin, Remus realized that Black had to have carried him, and he did so while Remus was completely nude. The blush deepened.

“I should thank you,” Remus said in a voice weighed heavy with guilt and shame. As Black’s face returned to stoicism and detachment, he moved his hands seemingly erratically across Remus’ skin, inspecting every one of his bandages, and there were many – stretched across his chest, tucked into his left elbow, wrapped around his throat, wound into his fingers.

“No need,” Sirius said, that hint of a smile purposefully erased from his expression as his fingers drifted up Remus’ chest, dusting over the gauze at Remus’ throat. When Remus tilted his head back to let Black carry out his work, those silver eyes flashed up to find Remus’ gaze.

“How did you get me here?” Remus asked, genuinely curious, finally starting to glance around the room. He was surprised not to find anything that looked of personal value.

The room was full of things that evoked the spirit of Slytherin – an oversized forest green chair with silver threading in the corner, an evergreen bedspread over silver sheets covering Remus’ naked frame, a malachite wallpaper in an endlessly repeating pattern that depicted a silver snake devouring its own tail. An ouroboros. The symbol of death and rebirth.

Surprisingly, in the whole room, there was only one thing that bore the Slytherin crest, save for Black’s robes draped over the back of that squashy armchair. A banner hung crooked on the wall across from the glass that looked out into the depths of the Lake. Even more surprising was the size of the room. It was only meant for one occupant, unlike other dorms.

“I carried you,” Black replied with what looked like wit in his gaze, his eyebrow flirting with the idea of rising on his forehead, but without the permission to do so. The ethereal glow of the bottom of the Lake cast an eerie celadon film across his pale cheeks, making him look like an ancient being that had crawled out from the Lake, evolved over the last several centuries.

For the sake of his own pride, he didn’t ask Sirius how he’d carried him, because, no matter what the answer, it was sure to be excessively embarrassing. He imagined Black kicking open the door to the Slytherin Common Room, with Remus naked in his arms, bridal-style.

Method aside, he was still wildly curious how Sirius managed to get him to his room unseen. “I’m sure you’re aware of this, Black, but I’m stark naked,” Remus said, a measure of teasing in his voice, unexpected even to himself. The pink that splashed through Black’s cheeks surprised him a bit, and he wondered if he was the only party feeling this comfortable.

“Sirius,” he said, curving low to cover his face as he let his hand slide over the back of his neck. It left a bloody red streak across the white collar of his shirt. “You can call me Sirius.”

“Sirius,” Remus repeated, with an unexpected bit of reverence in his voice as he spoke his name, which led Sirius to glance up at him through dark lashes, his fingers tensing at the back of his own neck. “I guess what I’m asking is how you managed to successfully sneak a naked bloke into your bedroom without anyone noticing.” The color spiked in Sirius’ face, reminding Remus of how unusual it was for him to be able to speak with so much candor. Or, at all.

He chalked up the strange level of comfort he felt with Black to the fact that Black knew everything, knew the secret of his lycanthropy, had been there in Animagus to distract him from the violence of the blood moon. He’d seen everything, too, not just every inch of Remus’ bare skin, but the drama and crisis and risk. And he had stayed. He had fought to save Remus’ life.

For a moment, Sirius began to fidget, only just realizing that his hands were still covered in Remus’ blood, so he Scoured it away with a wandless spell that took Remus by surprise.

“There’s … a maze of passages that lead from my dorm to the shores of the Lake,” Sirius spilled out in a barrage of words, as if saying it quickly enough would make Remus forget he’d heard it in the first place. “I mapped the way out in First Year.”

The way out, Remus heard him say. The way out. As if these Dungeons lived up to their name. As if this castle was a prison. As if his House was a prison. Thinking that sent an intractable pain into Remus’ gut unrelated to the wounds he’d carved into it the night before.

That ache grew worse when he began to understand why there were no personal effects in this room, why there wasn’t a single photograph to be found in it. Most people put up photos of their family to feel less isolated. Sirius didn’t, which mean home was a prison, too.

He sidestepped that. For now. He wasn’t about to get that personal with someone who was ultimately a stranger. Instead, he confirmed, “So, nobody knows I’m here?”

Something darkened in Sirius’ gaze, the dimples on his face deepening as he clenched his teeth in a near-smile, but it was all swept underneath his skin in the next moment. “Just me.”

There was something that Remus couldn’t name about this boy, this Sirius Black, something howling in the caverns of his chest, in the chambers of his heart. If he was honest with himself, it had been there for a while, growing over the last seven years. While he didn’t know what it was, he knew what it wanted. And he wanted the same damn thing.

“You know,” Remus uttered, fidgeting with the bandages around his fingers as he felt a delicate smile curling at his lips. “I rather like the quiet atmosphere down here. Maybe I could stay a while. If that’s alright with you.” His gaze playful, he looked over at Sirius to watch his mercury eyes glaze over, their focus moving to a distance beyond the borders of the room.

He blinked and it was muted, but it never fully left. “You’ll have to,” Sirius said, his voice unchanged, and Remus wasn’t sure if it sounded like annoyance hid within it. “I’m certainly not about to let you try to stand on your own after you’ve been eviscerated.”

“Oh, it’s been much worse than this,” Remus said with a laugh, but the terror in Sirius’ eyes reminded him that not everyone was able to joke about his mutilation the way he could.

“Lupin,” Sirius exhaled, clearing his throat after to pretend he hadn’t been visibly shaken by that statement. The softness of his tone made Remus think that maybe it was okay to stay.

He still backtracked, just to give Sirius an out, should he want it. “What I’m saying is I’ll manage, if you don’t want to –” He didn’t have time to finish, Sirius was interrupting.

“You’re staying. At least until tonight. We’ll go from there.” As he stood, he moved to that place behind Remus’ head where he couldn’t see what Sirius was doing but could hear the delicate clinking of Potions vials and the now familiar humming of inquisitive thought.

“Remus,” Remus called out and there was silence as Sirius stilled. “You should call me Remus.” There was no sound between them but breathing and stifled waves.

“Rest, Remus,” Sirius whispered back in that warm honey sort of tone. With his eyelids growing heavy, Remus let himself sink into the softness of Sirius’ pillow, watching the remote shadow of the Giant Squid through the murky water and the aquatic vegetation that had overgrown at the bottom of Sirius’ glass wall. He fell asleep listening to Sirius work.

SIRIUS

The pull of Lupin’s lungs fell far too quickly and much too shallow against the back of Sirius’ neck, every rise and fall of his chest left more wanting than the last, evidenced by the way Lupin gasped for breath. Blood slipped down the back of Sirius’ neck with every heaving step and he was glad these passages were abandoned, as he was surely leaving a trail of blood splatter.

Pausing the fury of his movement, he hunched over, adjusting Lupin across his shoulders, his fingers pressing indentations into the pliable skin of Lupin’s thigh. With every step, Sirius’ body groaned and begged him to rest, to let go of his weight. He refused to surrender to it.

At the hidden entrance to the dorms, Sirius paused, listening. Not a sound. With great difficulty, he balanced Lupin with one, struggling arm, holding Lupin’s dangling arm at the wrist for balance and reaching for his wand with his free hand. He wasn’t sure he had the energy to successfully perform even a simple unlocking charm with wandless magic just then.

“Alohomora,” he whispered, panting heavily. The rusted metal door opened, leading into another short corridor, the opening of which was cloaked in full darkness from the main Slytherin hallway. His dorm was right across the way at the end of the main hall. It was probably why no one used this passage. Nobody came down this far, except Regulus, infrequently. After a few furtive glances, Sirius moved forward with a soft grunt, angling their bodies to fit through the space. With a sigh of relief, he shuffled into the room, kicking the door closed.

It took quite a bit of effort to lower Lupin onto his bed without inflicting significantly more damage to his already ruined skin, but he managed it. The blood on Lupin’s skin diffused across Sirius’ silver, silk sheets the moment Lupin was placed upon them, but Sirius ignored it.

“Come on, Lupin,” Sirius muttered, mostly to himself, as his hands hovered over Lupin’s wounds, one hand clutching so tightly onto his wand that it trembled. Healing spells hurried through Sirius’ lips, one after the other, until he was satisfied that he’d recited enough of them.

The translucent sheen of the spells enveloped Lupin’s skin, blurring the jagged lines of his wounds and turning the frightening amounts of blood into a less alarming shade of pink, as if to assure him that they were working. It didn’t ease the panic in his chest all that much.

His grip on the wand never lessened as he knelt next to the bed, despite the fact that he didn’t need to guide the spells any further or chant any more incantations. They would work on their own. With a breath, he settled his forehead onto the mattress next to Lupin, feeling Lupin’s skin pressed to the crown of his head. It was oddly comforting, the warmth of Lupin’s skin, feeling the press of his chest as it filled with air, though still too uneven for Sirius’ full relief.

For a moment, he thought of bringing Lupin to Madam Pomfrey. His healing spells were advanced, but surely she knew more, surely she worked faster. With a frustrated huff into the mattress underneath his face, he knew that wasn’t an option. For one, Sirius didn’t know if anyone on Earth knew about this secret – about Lupin’s lycanthropy. He wouldn’t easily give away a devastating secret like that. Two, he was positive he couldn’t carry Lupin any further.

A fevered blush swept over Sirius’ cheeks as he realized, three, Lupin was still totally naked. He was in Sirius’ bed, totally naked. Sirius’ face was nearly pressed to his hip, which was bare, because he was totally fucking naked. With a quick jerk, Sirius blindly reached out and yanked the corner of his sheet to cover Lupin’s naked hips which, he only realized in afterthought, could’ve gone rather badly, if his hand had moved with a little less precision.

With an awkward clearing of his throat, Sirius got to work. The healing spells were only the start. Lupin’s wounds were too deep for them to work as quickly as he needed them. He pretended he wasn’t bothered by the fact that there was a naked boy in his bed, specifically when that boy was Remus Fucking Lupin, the one Sirius had been watching for years, even before he had admitted to himself that he had been watching him at all.

As the spells continued to sew fragile sinew bridges across the gaps in Lupin’s skin, Sirius fetched a warm, wet cloth from the adjoining bathroom, one more of the perks of living in this solitary dorm. He could Scour the blood away, but he decided against it, for fear of interrupting the healing spells. As carefully as he could, he blotted the cloth across Lupin’s blood-stained skin.

Moving with his hands, his eyes traveled over Lupin’s chest, over his throat, his face. He was covered in wounds, most of them long since healed. How long had Lupin had to go through this alone? Based on the limited amount of unblemished skin on his body, too long.

There were scars that Sirius was inexplicably familiar with – the scar across the bridge of his nose, the scar that followed his throat and usually dipped into the collar of his robes, the three parallel lines dragged down his temple often hidden by his wild, golden curls.

The scars that Sirius wasn’t familiar with were the ones that sent a tremble into his breath, an ache into his heart. Across Lupin’s shoulder were more parallel lines, obvious as claw marks to anyone who knew about his lycanthropy. Along one forearm, there looked like teeth marks, the holes left by his canines deeper and rounder than the others. On his chest, opposite to the wound he’d just caused the night before, was a wide, jagged indentation.

Without realizing, Sirius let his fingers brush over the uneven border of that scar and he could feel the difference in thickness to the skin around it, could feel his fingers dip into the valley this scar had left in Lupin’s skin. As Sirius held his hand over it, he realized it was just a bit wider than his hand, from thumb to pinky. Like the Wolf had plunged in with his whole claw.

A painful shudder ripped up Sirius’ spine as he tried to stop imagining it, focusing on the rag between his fingers, focusing on the blood still left to clean from Lupin’s skin. He had to hurry. The healing spells were good, they were working, but Lupin was still bleeding.

Forsaking the rest of his cleaning, Sirius dug through his cedar chest, uncovering the massive amounts of gauze and bandages that he kept hidden at the bottom, trying not to remember the last time he’d had to use them. Or, rather, when Regulus had to use them in a panicked effort to keep the blood in Sirius’ body from the self-inflicted Diffindo down the full length of his left forearm, a vain attempt to ensure he would die before getting the Mark. He’d promised Regulus never again as Regulus cried into his chest in the infirmary the next day.

It was easy enough to wrap the wounds on Lupin’s arms, the gash at his elbow, the claw marks around his wrists and fingers. His ankle was extremely swollen, but not bleeding, so Sirius let the healing spells continue their work alone there. There were a few scrapes and scratches down Lupin’s legs, but there wasn’t significant blood loss there, either. He loosely bandaged Lupin’s throat for good measure, not liking the looks of the marks that ran down it. Getting the wraps around Lupin’s chest without assistance, that was going to be the tricky part.

He knew what he had to do. Decisively, he climbed into the bed and straddled over Lupin’s hips, making sure the cloth covering his wound was in place and making sure the sheet covering his groin stayed in place. Gently, he pulled Lupin up by the shoulders, letting him fall forward, balancing him bare chest to bare chest, with Lupin’s chin perched atop his shoulder.

After quite a bit of twisting his wrists and adjusting Lupin’s body and gripping him tightly when he nearly slipped away and squirming at the twitches of Lupin’s hips underneath him, Sirius returned Lupin to the carved-out spot in his bed with steady but gentle hands on his back.

Sirius took another several minutes to make sure all the dried blood was cleaned from Lupin’s skin, head to toe (save for one specific region covered by the edge of a sheet), even trying to wash the matted blood out from Lupin’s hair. While he wished he could Scour the sheets, so Lupin didn’t have to lie in the crust of his own dried blood, he didn’t want to perform two spells at once and chance interrupting the healing spells, so he left it for now.

Once he was absolutely, unquestionably certain that Lupin was healing, that he wasn’t going to bleed out in Sirius’ bed, Sirius took a few hurried minutes to clean up himself, scrubbing away the dried blood by hand, just to make sure all his magic was focused on healing Lupin.

His bloody uniform shirt and tie went into the bin. There was no saving them. No matter, he had several spares of each, and it was lucky he did, because Lupin was going to have to have something to wear when this was all over. Something tugged at his heart at that word. Over.

With the blood cleaned, Sirius pulled on another shirt and brushed off the trousers he’d been wearing, which were surprisingly clean to start, after what they’d been through. After he buttoned the shirt, he tucked it in, out of habit. He could thank his mother for that. With a defiant snarl in his lip, he unbuttoned the top two buttons, internally refusing to put on the tie. 

He’d just gotten his hair tied haphazardly on top of his head with a clean wand and the sleeves of his shirt rolled up, knowing his work wasn’t over, when there was a sickening gasping from Lupin’s throat. With his heart sent racing, Sirius slid into the floor next to Lupin, trying to figure out what the fuck was happening. Lupin was sucking in air, but his chest didn’t rise with it, his lungs didn’t inflate with it. It was stagnating in his throat. The sound of it was harrowing.

His healing spell wasn’t deep enough. There was damage much further in than Sirius had accounted for initially. Thinking quickly, he realized that the way Lupin was choking for air was because his lung was collapsing. His rib had likely ruptured the space surrounding his lung.

With shaking hands, Sirius scrambled for the Quill at his bedside table. With his teeth, he plucked out the feather to clear the barrel and spat it onto the floor, taking a very quick breath before pressing the sharp point into Lupin’s skin. The immediate hissing of air and the loud intake of air that Lupin pulled into his now-inflating lungs told Sirius his suspicion was correct.

When the air stopped moving out, Sirius pulled out the Quill tip, startled at the volume of blood that followed. “Shit,” Sirius hissed through teeth that snapped closed as he immediately held his hand over the wound to stop it. He gathered up a sloppy handful of gauze and pressed in tight, whispering a succinct healing spell over the wound to close it as quickly as he could. His hands hadn’t stopped shaking. He wondered if he was doing the right thing.

It took just under a minute for the blood to stop. Sirius had been timing it, trying to make the judgement call whether to summon Madam Pomfrey. When the blood stopped, he let out a shallow breath, letting his head hang from his shoulders. He just needed to dress this wound and reset the healing spells. He needed to put more focus into his magic this time.

First, he covered the wound, snaking his arm under Lupin’s back to tie the bandage as tightly as he could to the opposite side. Next, now that his magic was on hold, he Scoured the sheets and Lupin’s back. Finally, he restarted the healing spells, deeper and more involved.

Again, Lupin receded into another deep sleep. No gasping, no moaning. His breathing was deeper than it had been before, and Sirius softened at the sound of it. For only a moment, Sirius allowed himself to breathe. With his elbow propped up on the mattress, Sirius rested his forehead against the back of his wrist, one of the only clean spots left on either arm.

And he listened. He listened to the calm lulling of the murky water beyond the glass. He listened to the quiet chatter begin to fill the hall outside as morning approached. He listened to the even rhythm of sleep and breathing inside the chest of his new, temporary roommate.

After that one moment, Sirius stood, covering Lupin fully before he moved to the desk in the far corner of his room, thumbing through the vials of Potions that he’d made recently. He searched for a specific healing Potion that he could give to Lupin for when he inevitably had to leave this room. His heart went into his throat at the thought of him leaving, and he knew why but he intended to ignore it, as he had been ignoring it for longer than he could remember.

That wasn’t going to be any time soon, anyway. As he was, Sirius would be surprised if Lupin would even be conscious in the next several hours. Even then, he would be equally surprised if Lupin were even able to sit up straight, much less stand, much less walk.

It was no matter, Sirius was happy for the excuse to stay in his room all day, happy for a reason to not have to interact with the students outside, happy that he didn’t have to put on that mask and pretend like he sympathized with all the things he hated about this House. And he could keep pretending that he wasn’t sort of happy that it was Remus Lupin in his bedroom.

He didn’t hate being in Slytherin. Slytherin was as noble a House as any, full of history and loyalty and tradition and family. If he had a family worth loving, he would love Slytherin. If the Wizarding World weren’t on the brink of war, he’d love this House. If an obscene percentage of his House weren’t getting branded to pledge their fealty to a tyrant from Slytherin, he’d love it.

With a shake of his head, he focused on the task at hand, still searching for the Potion vial he knew was there – they clinked together as he moved them down the desk. As he found the correct vial, there was another ghastly sound from Lupin’s throat, very unlike the last. This one was the bearing down of breath, concentrated into a determined seethe.

Lupin was awake. He was trying to move. He was trying to leave. With two wide steps, Sirius was at his side. “Hey, hey, hey,” he whispered, flattening his palm to Lupin’s chest and trying to guide him as gently as possible back to the mattress. “Lie down, Lupin.”

His eyes were still closed, his teeth still clenched. Sirius wagered he probably had figured out where he was. No other House had the sounds that Slytherin had, the wet squish of the Giant Squid’s massive tentacles sliding against the glass, the muffling of sound only found underwater. Based on their reputation, Sirius wasn’t surprised that Lupin wanted to leave.

What did surprise him was the way his head turned toward Sirius’ voice, despite the concerned furrowing of his thick eyebrows, one of those eyebrows notched out with the presence of a long-faded scar. It surprised him that Lupin seemed to visibly soften at the sound of Sirius’ voice, like he was relieved it wasn’t someone else. It surprised him more than anything that he let Sirius coax him to lie again in Sirius’ bed. It was pleasantly unexpected.

Eventually, when Lupin was finally able to pry his eyes open, heavy with the weight of his exhaustion, they were on Sirius immediately and they stayed there. They danced over the face twisted in focus, to the hair messier than anyone in the castle had ever seen it, to the shoulders hunched over in examination of his work, to the bloodied hands that were renewing the countless healing spells scattered over Remus’ frame, to his forearms, exposed and empty of ink.

There, they stilled. They widened. And Sirius knew what it was he had been looking for, because everyone was always looking for it. He’d gotten away with lying about it to the rest of his House, he’d gotten away with always covering his forearms to hide its absence, but he did not have the Mark. The only one in the Black household who hadn’t taken it.

I’m not one of them, Lupin. You’re safe here. You’re safe with me. He didn’t say any of this out loud. He wasn’t even sure Remus wanted to hear it. And Lupin wasn’t speaking, either, so Sirius returned to his work, extending the deeper healing spells to make sure Lupin’s lung wasn’t going to collapse again. With that done, he moved to check for bleeding through the bandages.

“Why are you helping me?” Lupin asked as Sirius brushed the tips of his fingers across the bandages wrapped around Lupin’s chest, relieved not to feel the wet squelch of blood there.

For a moment, Sirius was silent, knowing the answer, but trying to avoid admitting it, as he continued his survey of Lupin’s body, moving down his leg to look over his ankle. The swelling had gone down, the bruising worsened. But Lupin didn’t seem to show fear of Sirius’ touch. Not even when that touch moved into Lupin’s hand, as Sirius traced over his scarred palm.

Finally, Sirius just gave something close to an honest answer. “I think you would have died tonight. Had I not been there.” It didn’t touch on the reasons Sirius wanted to save Lupin, it didn’t address the hours Sirius had spent healing him before he’d awoken. But it was an answer.

“Why were you there?” he asked immediately in return and Sirius didn’t know much about lycanthropy, so he shouldn’t have been disappointed that Remus didn’t remember him being there or Padfoot or the Lake shore at dawn or Sirius carrying him to the dorms. He shouldn’t have been disappointed that this attachment to Lupin didn’t cross over when the other party was either not himself or unconscious for the extent of their time spent together. Not to mention, Sirius’ vague attachment to Lupin extended far beyond the events of last night.

As he decided if he would answer that question with truth, he thought back to running the Forest with the Wolf and a quiet smile crossed over his lips. There was probably no one else in Lupin’s life who had done that with him. Sirius let the smile stay. “I was your distraction.”

With barely a pause, Lupin’s eyes widened as he said, “You’re an Animagus.” So, he did remember. At least some of it. For that, Sirius was glad, but he tucked the smile back.

“I am,” he said with a slight nod, not elaborating, and hoping Lupin would not ask. In place of a question, Sirius was gifted with a bright blush into Lupin’s skin, and Sirius almost smiled again at the sight of it. The sight of life in this skin that was still so fractured.

Still, Sirius wondered the cause of such a sudden and vibrant blush until he realized that Lupin most likely had pieced together that Sirius had carried him naked all the way to the castle.

“I should thank you,” Lupin said with a heavy voice and Sirius had to busy himself with pretending that he was looking over Lupin’s bandages again to avoid mirroring that blush.

“No need,” he said, hardening the lines of his face to keep his emotions in check, which proved extremely difficult as he reached the bandages at Lupin’s throat and Lupin craned his neck in response to let Sirius touch him. He moved like a display of submission, without a speck of doubt in his honey-and-cinnamon eyes as they met Sirius’ sudden and darkening gaze.

“How did you get me here?” Lupin asked, breaking Sirius’ gaze to glance around the room. There wasn’t much to see. Where other people had knick-knacks from home and photographs of their family, Sirius had a single Slytherin banner, given to him by Regulus on the day Sirius had been Sorted into Slytherin, his younger brother so proud of him, then.

With sass in his voice, Sirius grinned while Lupin looked away. “I carried you.” When Lupin looked back, Sirius scrubbed the expression, but his cocky eyebrow fought the order.

“I’m sure you’re aware of this, Black,” Lupin said, and Sirius winced at the use of his surname, nearly missing the taunting tone of Lupin’s voice as he said, “But I’m stark naked.”

Despite the effort he put toward stuffing it down, the blush still bloomed quite obviously in Sirius’ face. But he was so distracted by the sour taste left in his mouth by Lupin calling him Black that he swerved completely around that comment and blurted out his first thought.

“Sirius,” he spouted, blushing more, and lowering his head to cover it up, pressing one hand to the back of his neck to fake an itch. “You can call me Sirius,” he clarified.

There was a tick of silence from Lupin before he repeated, “Sirius,” with such a wistful tone that Sirius had to look up, had to watch him speak his name, had to see the quiet smile in the corner of his mouth as he said it. He continued, still smirking. “I guess what I’m asking is how you managed to successfully sneak a naked bloke into your bedroom without anyone noticing.”

The blush roared back, and Sirius began fidgeting with his fingers to pretend like it hadn’t happened, not realizing his hands were covered in blood when he’d ran it over the back of his neck. Wandlessly, he Scoured the blood from his hands, his forearms, his neck.

As he formulated his answer, he tried to decide if he wanted to give away this secret, but realized that Lupin already knew his biggest secret, anyway. “There’s a maze of passages that lead from my dorm to the shores of the Lake. I mapped the way out in First Year.”

The way Lupin responded to that answer was not what Sirius had expected. He expected Lupin to be impressed, or at least pretend to be impressed. No, the look on his face was concern and sympathy, but he wiped it clean in the next moment. The confusion on Sirius’ face remained.

Lupin didn’t address it at all. “So, no one knows I’m here?” he asked and this, this was where Sirius expected to see the concern. Put in this situation, that would be the logical response from most people. Not Lupin. On his face was relief. Relief, but something dark beside it. Something so at once disquieting and appealing that it sent a clench into Sirius’ jaw.

“Just me,” Sirius assured him, and that disquieting darkness didn’t shift, didn’t move, didn’t disappear when Lupin blinked. It steadied and fastened and made residence.

“You know,” Lupin said, the restlessness moving into his mouth and in his hands as he fussed with the bandages around his fingers. “I rather like the quiet atmosphere down here.” He glanced at a tentacle pressed to the glass. “Maybe I could stay a while. If that’s alright with you.”

The whole time that Sirius was trying to save his life, there had been a nagging thought in the back of his mind. He’s going to find out it’s you and he will never speak to you again, it doesn’t matter that you were the dog in the woods, it doesn’t matter that you saved him. All that time, Sirius had argued that voice because he knew, wretchedly, he wanted Lupin to stay.

But he wasn’t about to admit it right then. “You’ll have to,” he shrugged. “I’m certainly not about to let you try and stand on your own after you’ve been eviscerated.”

Lupin did the last thing that Sirius would have ever expected after a sentence like that. He laughed. When presented with the very real truth of what happened last night, what almost could’ve ended his life, Remus Lupin laughed. “Oh, it’s been much worse than this.” His laugh died out as he looked at Sirius rather peculiarly, like there was something he needed to say.

“Lupin,” Sirius couldn’t stop himself from saying out loud, trying to comprehend how indifferent he was about being ripped to shreds once every month. Remus glanced at him with that same disquiet in his face, his eyes as dark as resin and as full as the Lake.

It vanished as Remus spoke, his words hurried, “What I’m saying is that I’ll manage, if you don’t want to –” No, Remus couldn’t leave. He wasn’t ready. Sirius wasn’t ready.

Promptly, Sirius interrupted, clearing any ambiguity from his voice, saying, “You’re staying. At least until tonight. We’ll go from there.” As his legs began to go numb from kneeling, he stood, moving back to the desk to remind himself which vial was the one he wanted, and it was growing increasingly difficult to focus on anything except the boy in his bed.

“Remus,” Sirius heard him call out and he went still, his heart suffocating him from where it had leapt into his throat. “You should call me Remus.” With a soft smile, Sirius nodded, unseen.

“Rest, Remus,” he called back in barely a whisper and he was pleased to hear the contented sighs from Remus’ lips as he nestled back into the softness of Sirius’ bed. There was a vial in his hands and a smile on his lips as he looked back to watch Remus Lupin fall asleep.

REMUS

Stay with me! Stay with me! That voice broke and echoed in his dreams. A naked, pale figure went racing away from him, but the perspective was all wrong – he was watching it sideways. And then it shifted, but not righted. His gaze was drawn down, motion blurring the scenery. There was a hand on the back of his thigh, his chest was pressed against something, something warm and unyielding. He could hear the heaving of breath somewhere close.

Stay with me, Lupin, that voice said, the tone changed to a pleading whisper. As Remus woke from the dream, he began to realize. That was Sirius’ voice. These were the events that he couldn’t recall from the night of the full moon. This was the memory of Sirius saving his life.

It was an odd sensation, waking in a strange room, in a strange bed. It was odder still when Remus woke to find himself alone in that strange room. Though, he supposed it wasn’t a strange room anymore. It was Sirius’ room. Sirius’ bed. Somehow, in less than a night, Sirius Black knew him better than anyone else had ever even attempted. It was pleasantly unexpected.

As he struggled to sit up, finding himself to be thoroughly unable, he heard the knob of Sirius’ bedroom door rattle. After a silently muttered prayer to The Grey Lady, Remus let out his held breath to see Sirius leaning in through the crack in the door, glancing at Remus before entering as if ensuring he had Remus’ permission before coming into the room.

“This is your room, you know,” Remus joked, giving up on sitting upright and letting himself fall back into the most comfortable pillow upon which his head had ever rested. As Sirius kicked the door closed, Remus saw a tray in his hands, food filling every available space on it.

The flash of a smile crossed over Sirius’ lips and, unlike the ones before it, he let it stay there for a moment. “Just wanted to make sure you were decent.” His gaze swept over Remus’ bare chest as a show of his sarcasm, before making an absurd shrugging motion that Remus was sure referenced their strange, shared comfort about Remus’ constant nakedness in Sirius’ bed.

“As decent as can be with my entire wardrobe in a separate tower,” Remus laughed softly, enjoying this comfortable banter much more than he was ready to admit to himself. Carefully, Sirius set the tray at the side of Remus’ bed (or was it Sirius’ bed?), smile still in place.

“You need to eat,” Sirius said, his words sounding like a demand, but his tone of voice sounding like a plea. “Your wounds won’t heal if your body has no energy to do it.” From his place on Sirius’ pillow, Remus glanced over at the towering breakfast – eggs and bacon and sausage, toast and croissants and pastries, coffee and tea and pumpkin juice.

“There’s enough food here to feed all of Slytherin,” Remus said with a smirk, pleased by the way Sirius’ smile had yet to vanish, how steadfast it was. How unyielding.

“You’re probably right, we’re all collectively trying to maintain our perfect figures,” he said, rolling his silver eyes, the grin widening on his face. Remus tried again to sit up, the muscles of his abdomen twitching and fluttering with pain and fatigue. Before Remus could even wince, Sirius was beside him, one hand firm against Remus’ back, the other instinctively gone to support the area most tenuous, his fingers spread out over the bandages stretched across Remus’ ribs.

There was a breath that fell from Remus’ lips at Sirius’ touch against his skin like this, tender and close, before he realized that this touch probably felt familiar to Sirius. Remembering the clinical wave of Sirius’ hands as they’d cast healing spell after healing spell across Remus’ troubled skin, he began to imagine it, but it was conflicted by the shattered voice he’d heard in his dream. Suddenly, the wave of Sirius’ hands wasn’t so clinical, wasn’t so impersonal.

To match the pulsing anxiety that Remus had heard in Sirius’ voice in his dream, Remus imagined his hands trembling, covered in Remus’ blood as they worried over the fissures in Remus’ flesh. He could nearly see it then, the strain in Sirius’ expression as he pressed his fingers to the holes in Remus’ skin, begging his veins to stop bleeding, begging Remus to live.

Too much time passed after that breath for Remus to be able to hide it, to cover it as something that sounded a little more pained and a little less unnerved, so Sirius pulled away with a quick, hesitant glance. He busied his other hand building a support of pillows behind Remus.

Something dangerous hid in that breath. He wanted to pretend it was just surprise at the decisive intimacy of Sirius’ touch, but the truth was not that easy to discredit. This truth had been coiled tight in Remus’ gut, deeper than the reach of Sirius’ healing spells, but it was unraveling, exposed to the soothing lilt of Sirius’ voice and the care in every touch of his hand.

The ease and comfort that had filled the room sunk deep into tension and regret, and Remus cursed himself for ruining what little momentum they had. Distracted, as he wracked his brain trying to find a way to win it back, he flinched at the motion suddenly in front of his face.

Sirius held the golden-brown edge of a croissant in front of Remus’ lips, his silver eyes so full of crested waves that Remus thought it might spill over, had his pupils not been wide enough to keep their oscillation in check. “Eat,” Sirius said simply, in the same tone of voice he’d used the first time he said Remus’ name. Remus wondered if he could get him to say it again.

With that same decisiveness, and a nervous swallow in his throat, Remus leaned forward as far as he could, the strength in his weary neck stretched thin. With an engaged curiosity in his gaze, Sirius closed the distance and his fingers met the boundary of Remus’ lips.

When he took the bite, he watched Sirius’ attention sharpen onto the movement of his lips, onto the way they opened over Sirius’ skin, onto the way they pursed against Sirius’ velvety fingertips. Without hurry, Sirius drew back, his touch lingering in the air.

“Good boy,” he hummed, quite unexpectedly, with a smile so arrogant and enticing that Remus wondered if Sirius knew exactly what to say to get Remus to blush that viciously.

He scrambled to recover. “Shouldn’t I be saying that to you?” he countered, reaching toward the tray to take the rest of that croissant. “What breed is your Animagus, anyway?”

“German shepherd,” Sirius said, with something that was almost a smile, but was simultaneously also very clouded in misery. To distract Remus from it, Sirius settled onto the edge of his bed, his hip pressed to Remus’ thigh, and he plucked a Chelsea bun from the tray.

“Does he have a name?” Remus asked, just to keep the conversation going. The expression that resulted in Sirius’ face made Remus think he’d said something wrong. His dark, high-arching eyebrows were furrowed between his eyes, his lips slightly parted.

“Nobody has ever asked me that before,” he said, his face suddenly splitting into the widest, most brilliant smile Remus had ever seen on his face. On anyone’s face, really.

Remus took another bite. “That’s because they hate dogs.” For the first time, in their many hours together, Sirius laughed. It was louder and clearer than Remus anticipated, and he wasn’t prepared to restrain the immense way he softened toward it. Sirius didn’t notice.

“Padfoot,” Sirius said, with a unique sort of fondness in his voice. Remus turned the corners of his mouth down in his show of approval, though his cheeks were full of food.

“Very appropriate,” he said, downing a very long sip of warm tea that Sirius had evidently already sweetened, alarmingly precise to Remus’ taste. “Who gave you that nickname?” Remus asked, pretending he wasn’t fishing for information about Sirius’ life outside of this room. Sure, they shared a few classes (in which Remus rather frequently grew distracted by Sirius, especially the way he pushed his fingers through his hair), but he knew Sirius – really knew him – very little.

A loud scoff bounced off the back of Sirius’ throat. “Get ready to feel sorry for me, Remus, because I gave myself that nickname.” With a shrug, he took the coffee mug from the tray, unsweetened, as black as his name, and downed half of it. Remus took a breath.

This was the information Remus had been trying to affirm. Well, not this information, specifically. But they had been together at Hogwarts for seven years and today was the first time he’d seen Sirius produce a genuine smile, the first time he’d ever heard Sirius laugh.

It was as Remus feared, but it was also something that Remus was more than willing to fix. If Sirius Black didn’t have friends, then Remus Lupin was intent on giving him one. 

“Give me one,” he instructed, steadying his gaze in Sirius’ direction. When Sirius returned that look, his eyes were narrowed and searching, casting across Remus’ face.

The smirk returned to the corner of Sirius’ pink lips. “You can’t just demand a nickname, Remus, these things have to come out fluidly. Organically.” There was a certain level of sarcasm to his voice and Remus paused shoveling eggs and bacon into his mouth to speak.

“You’ve already picked one, haven’t you?” he asked, twisting his expression into accusation and suspicion, going so far as to throw the corner of his toast at Sirius, who curled in on himself to avoid it, but was smiling all the while. Remus was getting used to the sight of Sirius smiling. Already, he’d begun formulating ways to make it happen more, to make it brighter.

“I absolutely have, and you’re not going to hear it until you least expect it,” Sirius stated factually, and Remus had a very strong urge to dive across the bed and tickle him until he surrendered the name. If his ribs weren’t split apart, he probably would have.

About that time, when Remus had just started to feel the pressure of swelling and the itchiness of healing and the anxiety of pain, Sirius shifted toward him. His hands were raised over Remus’ belly before Remus could even ask, before Remus had even winced. He uttered spell after spell, each a slightly different incantation, and Remus could feel it differently than he had that morning. He could feel the density of Sirius’ magic in his gut, the weight and the heat, the attention and meticulousness, all at layering depths underneath his skin.

The look on Sirius’ face was nothing like it had been only a few hours before, when he had been bowed low over Remus in silence and focus. Now, he called on his magic effortlessly, with fluent bewitching and a dexterous wave of his hands. When he looked up, his silver eyes reflected the vibrant color of his magic, a prism over the dark cloud of his eyes.  

“Better?” he asked under a tired smile that reminded Remus that Sirius had not only run out the full moon with him last night, all night, but had been caring for him since dawn. With all the exhaustion that must’ve been weighing on him, Sirius still worked with a soft smile.

“Better than I’ve ever been,” Remus replied without pretense, watching for the flush to blossom underneath the pallid marble of Sirius’ cheeks. When it arrived, it was beautiful.

As usual, Sirius attempted to hide it, moving off the bed. “I’d better get this back to the kitchens,” he started to say, reaching for the tray at Remus’ bedside, but Remus reached out too, taking Sirius delicately by the wrist. When Sirius’ gaze shot over, Remus wondered if he could feel the spiking of Sirius’ pulse underneath his fingertips. He moved his thumb into Sirius’ palm.

In a low voice, Remus spoke. “Stay, Sirius. Stay with me.” Under a strained, deep breath, Sirius swallowed, his eyebrows rising, hidden by the lengths of hair brushed across his face.

At first, Sirius argued. “It’s alright, I’ll just pop back into the kitchens, and …”

“Sirius, you’re spent,” Remus emphasized, tensing his arm just a bit to pull Sirius back toward him. “The tray will wait. You need to rest now. You’ll work yourself to death over me.”

As Sirius looked toward their joined hands with wonder, he spoke under his breath, as if he didn’t intend Remus to hear it. “A better death than what the gods have planned for me.”

The breath was torn from Remus’ chest with woe and agony. The desolation in Sirius’ life went far deeper than Remus knew, that Remus might ever know. But if there was something he could do to mitigate that sorrow, even if only for a time, it would be sweet work.

“Padfoot,” Remus whispered, moving his grip on Sirius’ wrist to let his fingers slip between Sirius’, provoking a sharp intake of breath through Sirius’ parted lips. “Please.”

“I don’t want to hurt you,” Sirius finally admitted, glancing at the empty space next to Remus, obviously calculating the miniscule distance that would lie between them.

With a quiet smile, Remus reminded him, “You’re the one who’s keeping me alive.” It was like the tension melted from Sirius’ shoulders and he slumped forward, holding Remus’ hand to his chest, a ghost of his warm breath seeping over the tops of Remus’ calloused knuckles.

“Are you sure?” His voice was small and timid. Remus nodded, pulling him close. But Sirius let his hand fall away from Remus’ grasp, moving to the other side of the bed, so he didn’t have to climb over Remus, though Remus had been preparing himself for the latter.

As Remus pulled some of the pillows out from underneath the tower that Sirius had built behind him and Sirius lifted the edge of the blanket, they both went rather still as they realized, in the same moment, that Remus was still very, very naked underneath that blanket.  

“I … did not think this through,” Remus laughed to hide the blushing of his cheeks. With a blush and a laugh of his own, Sirius went rummaging through the chest of drawers in the corner next to the squashy chair, emerging hesitantly with a pair of black boxer-briefs.

“I’m … really sorry,” he said, pulling his lips into his teeth. “The only other clothes I have are my uniforms.” Blinking in confusion, Remus stared at him, scratching the scruff on his chin.

“What do you wear when you’re not in your uniform?”

Sirius shrugged, but he looked a little annoyed at the answer he knew he was about to give to that question. “I wear that bloody uniform from morning to night.” While Remus had expected that answer, based on the fact that he had never seen Sirius without a tie until today, it didn’t hurt any less to think that Sirius was constantly under pressure to be so perfect.

“Then what do you wear at night? To sleep?” Remus enunciated with a laugh.

Again, Sirius blushed. He cleared his throat, brows furrowed. “I, um … I don’t … usually … wear anything to sleep.” Instantly, that blush invaded Remus’ cheeks like a fever-inducing virus.

“Oh. Right. Sorry,” he said, pretending to be entirely unfazed by the notion. With a grimace, and reluctance in his fist, Sirius held out the black boxers for Remus to take.

“I swear they’re clean.” Remus took them, pretending to be totally indifferent to the fact that this fabric had been against the indelicate parts of Sirius Black. As he slipped Sirius’ clothes underneath the sheets and attempted to maneuver them down to his feet, he found it much more difficult that he anticipated, with the state of his ribs. More than once, Sirius moved to help, each time pulling his hands back with a frustrated sigh. “Remus … if you want … I can …”

“Yeah, alright,” Remus groaned, falling back onto the mattress in pain. “Help me.”

Sirius moved to the end of the mattress and Remus managed to kick the bunched fabric down toward his fingers. With a careful expression, Sirius rose his eyes to the ceiling as he slipped the boxers over Remus’ feet, taking extra heed of Remus’ swollen ankle.

With his fingers curled onto the elastic waistband, Sirius slowly moved them up Remus’ calves, over his knees, onto his thighs, and Remus was afraid he would let slip a rather vulgar sound if he didn’t hold his breath, so he held it. He kept holding it as he angled his reach down to grip the fabric, brushing over Sirius’ fingers as they held the clothes against Remus’ thighs.

After a bit of wriggling, which Remus noticed Sirius had to look pointedly away from, Remus again sunk down into the mattress with a fatigued sigh. Sirius glanced over.

“It’s safe,” Remus smirked as Sirius moved to pull back the sheets again. “But don’t tell me you’re realistically going to try to sleep in that pressed shirt and trousers.”

Sirius looked at him with an exasperatedly raised eyebrow. “I’m not going to strip for you, Remus.” That turn of phrase left Remus quite unsettled. “It’s bad enough that you’re half-naked in my bed.” Without another argument, Sirius crawled under the covers, careful not to uncover too much of Remus’ skin as he slid next to him. On his side, facing Remus, Sirius let a weary smile splash over his face as he folded his arm under the pillow, his eyelids drifting heavily.

“Half-naked and wearing your pants,” Remus continued to tease Sirius.

“Shut up and let me sleep,” Sirius said, swatting at Remus with his eyes closed. His fingers fell right across Remus’ face, a smile still upon it, and he let his touch brush over it for only a moment. When he drew his hand back, he let it rest closer to Remus than to himself.

“Goodnight, Padfoot,” Remus said, admiring the sight of Sirius, relaxed.

“Good morning, Moony,” he mumbled, his breath heavy as he drifted off to sleep.

SIRIUS

He slept longer than he intended. When he woke, the murky green of the Lake in daylight had descended into a tenebrous blue, with hints of light from the near-full moon occasionally catching on the crest of a wave. In the darkness of his room, he could barely see Remus at all.

But he could certainly feel him. He could feel the sharp, bony projection of Remus’ shoulder underneath his pressed ear, he could feel the warm twitch of Remus’ arm slipped heedlessly underneath the curve of Sirius’ waist. He could feel the coarse hair of Remus’ calf against the top of his foot from where his knee was resting on Remus’ thigh. Most damning of all, he could feel Remus’ hand, calloused and rough, holding Sirius’ leg, just behind the knee.

Fuck. It was bad enough that Remus was half-naked, that Remus was half-naked wearing his pants, this was going too far. Sirius was getting far too involved in this. And he knew the mistakes he’d made the moments he made them. Holding that bite of croissant out and coaxing Remus’ lips to his skin? Letting Remus convince him to sleep next to him, letting Remus wear his clothes? Admitting that stupid nickname out loud? Mistake after mistake after mistake.

The problem wasn’t Remus. Well, it was, because if it was anyone else, there wouldn’t be a problem at all. But the bigger problem was Sirius. He could never admit the truth of this to anyone. Not even to himself. He refused to admit to himself the way he imagined the taste of Remus’ lips as they parted to take that bite. He wouldn’t dare admit that he’d slept better curled into Remus than every other night of his life combined. No way in hell he was ever going to admit how much he enjoyed taking care of someone this way, taking care of Remus this way.

Because it could never happen. It didn’t matter what he was feeling for Remus, it wouldn’t even matter if Remus returned those feelings. They could never happen. Not in Sirius’ House, not in Sirius’ family, not in Sirius’ lineage. If he didn’t stay the course and finish school with perfect scores, if he didn’t marry the wife his mother had already chosen for him, if he didn’t have dark-haired, inbred children with perfectly pale and chiseled faces, his mother would make his life miserable. Worse still, if he fell in love with a boy? Disowned. If he were lucky.   

They would take Remus away from him. There was no doubt in Sirius’ mind. What that meant, however – that was where the doubt came in. To what lengths wouldn’t his mother go, to make sure that her son didn’t tarnish her Pureblood name? And Sirius knew, because he had seen the evidence on his little brother’s left forearm. Any length imaginable.  

For his sake, and for Remus’, Sirius carefully untangled himself from Remus’ arms, already shivering at the loss of Remus’ warmth. For the briefest of moments, he allowed himself to revel in a single downward glance upon Remus as he slept, grateful for the way his eyes had adjusted to the dark, because it cast Remus in such a different light than the dawn. In the dawn, he was golden – skin kissed with freckles, hair swept with light, blood like cherry wine.

In the dark, the curves of his skin caught shadows that seeped into the unpolished structure of broad muscle and tapered bone, imbuing them with definition. Under the near-full moon, those freckles looked less static in their place and more like that were bewitched to dance underneath his resting eyes. Through the turbid light of the Lake, his ungovernable curls were no longer golden – they were as dark as pitch, touched with flakes of iridescence.   

And then the moment was gone, and Sirius required himself to look away. With a stone in his chest, he moved to the glass, studying the way the gillyweed bent and swayed to the will of the waves. A swarm of Grindylows surged past, barely before his eyes had even registered their presence. Looking out at the Lake had always given him a great deal of peace, cleared his head of every vile thought, soothed an angry heart. Then why wasn’t it working now? 

From behind him, he could hear Remus stir, could hear him shuffling through the sheets in an effort to find a body that was no longer there. There was a moment that Sirius thought he might be purposefully cruel to Remus, to diminish the bond that had formed between them, to make Remus hate him, just as everyone else did. But it was a fickle, little thought, an idea as small and petty as his mother, and it evaporated the moment Sirius heard Remus’ voice.

“Did you sleep at all?” Remus asked and Sirius allowed his face to make the wanting expression that it made so instinctively in response to the depth and grit of Remus’ voice. When he turned, however, he made sure any trace of that expression stayed in the Lake’s reflection.

“I did,” he said simply, working quite ruthlessly to rebuild the impersonal barrier that had separated them for the last seven years. The tired smile on Remus’ face crumbled it at once.

“I’m not sure you know the difference between sleeping and just keeping your eyes shut for a few minutes,” Remus said with a sarcastic lilt in his voice. He didn’t know how right he was.

Beyond the twitch in the corner of his mouth that would’ve developed into a smile if he’d let it, Sirius didn’t acknowledge the humor in Remus’ voice. He was still suffocating under the weight of threatened familial obligations and what else would be threatened if he failed to deliver on those vows. He couldn’t let his mother find out he was even friends with Remus.

“It’s late. You should get back,” Sirius said, shifting his eyes to look at Remus and immediately wishing he hadn’t. It wasn’t the way he had let his arm move to stretch over his head. It wasn’t the dark circles that formed a resinous patina against his freckled skin. It wasn’t the way he arched back into the mattress to stretch, all expansive waist and exposed throat.

The reason Sirius regretted looking back was the way that Remus responded to the words Sirius hadn’t wanted to say. “Oh,” he said, pursing his lips and nodding curtly. “Right.”

“Do you think you can stand?” Sirius asked, moving to the edge of the bed, but not allowing himself to reach out to Remus the way he wished he could.

With a short breath, Remus closed his eyes tightly. “No way to know, except to try,” he said with a smile that looked uncomfortably forced. Nothing like what Sirius knew his smile should be. Nothing like the way he smiled when he’d said Sirius’ name for the first time.

“I’m right here,” Sirius assured him, his defenses slipping as he watched Remus tense every muscle in his upper body to even get to an upright position. Maybe it was too soon to try to move him all the way across the castle. Maybe he could stay. Just one more day.

He didn’t voice this. Instead, he took Remus’s hand with his right while his left kept tight to the center of Remus’ back, right between his shoulders. With less difficulty than that morning, Remus was vertical, this time unsupported. With a victorious smile, Sirius pulled away, holding his palms up to show Remus how far he’d come already. Remus looked a little sheepish, a little irritated that sitting up was considered an improvement, but his smile still broke through.

The smile faded a little when he started to turn his body toward Sirius, to get to where his feet could touch the floor. As soon as he twisted, a sharp grunt pushed unauthorized through his mouth, opened wide with the surprise of sudden pain. One hand went straight to Sirius’ shoulder, his fingers clawing and tightening around Sirius’ skin like the Wolf that lived inside him.

“I don’t know if I can …” Remus huffed on empty lungs, hanging his head back in frustration and letting a little growl slip through his teeth. With a sigh, Sirius worried his lip.

“Maybe you should stay,” he said, more to himself than to Remus, moving to the foot of the bed so he could take another look at Remus’ ankle. This would all be for nothing if Remus couldn’t stand. The healing spells had taken some of the swelling down, but the bruising was as violent and vicious as ever. Without reinforcement, it would never support Remus’ weight.

Remus’ eyes went soft as he watched Sirius pull the wand from his hair. With a wave of his wand, a wave of his hand, and a whispered incantation, Sirius Transfigured a green pillow with several large, silver grommets into a crude boot that opened and closed. He held his breath as he fitted it over Remus’ swollen ankle, watching Remus carefully as he closed the latch.

A sad laugh moved up from Remus’ lungs as he shook his head. “This is what I mean. I’ve overstayed my welcome. It’s running you ragged,” he said, pointing to Sirius’ handiwork.

“Remus,” Sirius said on an outward breath, moving over to crouch next to Remus. His hand went to Remus’ knee before he even realized he’d done it. The focus of Remus’ eyes went to it at once. “I never intended to sleep last night. Taking care of you just kept me busy.”

“I was your distraction,” Remus said under a wry smile. Sirius nodded, smiling back.

“You’re not wearing me out,” he replied honestly “Your being here is the only reason I slept at all.” Carefully, Remus reached out and let his hand rest over Sirius’ fingers.

“You seemed …” Remus paused, tracing the lines of Sirius’ knuckles. “You seemed like you were ready to be rid of me.” This stripped honesty left a clench in Sirius’ jaw.

Sirius took a breath. If Remus could be honest, then so could he. He just didn’t know how honest he should be. “I’m … we couldn’t be … there are certain expectations of me.”

“What, you can’t be friends with a Ravenclaw?” Remus asked incredulously.

“I can’t be friends with a mu- a halfblood,” he corrected quickly, wincing at how his mother’s vernacular had unwillingly seeped into his vocabulary, despite his resistance.

“Oh,” Remus said, a forceful breath expelling from his lungs. “Well, don’t you get a choice?” His voice suddenly turned up with anger. “You didn’t take the Mark, right?”

“And I’m still paying for that,” Sirius admitted softly on a hard swallow.

“Sirius,” Remus immediately sighed, his breath filled with sorrow. “Is it the other Slytherins? Are they the ones who give you hell about refusing to take the Mark?”

Sirius shook his head. “You’re the only one outside of my immediate family that knows I haven’t taken the Mark. Everyone in my House thinks I’m … one of them.” Realization seemed to cross over Remus’ features, but it wasn’t about the point Sirius hoped they would avoid.

“That’s why I’ve never seen you in anything except your uniform. It’s long-sleeved,” he said, with a woeful sigh pulling from his lungs. Before Sirius could quickly change the topic, Remus asked the question Sirius had been dreading. “Then who’s making you pay for …” he trailed off as his eye-widened in distress and pain and understanding. “Sirius.” 

“It’s nothing, Remus.” Sirius curled in on himself, absently tracing his thumb along the faded, smoothed scar that he’d left down the center of his left forearm. A savage scar he’d inflicted in outrage and disgust to ensure he could never be Marked the way his mother wanted.

After a brief but burdened pause, Remus spoke, eyeing Sirius’ arm. “Alright, let’s get out of here before someone sees me.” With every feature of his face clenched in preparation, Remus pushed himself toward the edge of the bed. Sirius practically had to catch him.

“No, we’re … you’re staying here,” Sirius argued, holding Remus by the waist again to keep him steady and to keep him from trying to push himself onto the floor.

“You said it yourself, Padfoot.” Remus said his nickname so casually that it nearly brought tears to Sirius’ eyes. “I can’t stay. If someone finds me here – if Regulus finds me here …”

“Regulus barely has time for me,” Sirius shrugged, trying to keep the bitterness out of his voice. “He won’t come down here. He won’t find you here.” Remus kept pushing, verbally and physically, trying to move Sirius away so he could make it to the edge of the bed.

“Say he does. On the off chance he does.” Remus had gone a little manic, Sirius could feel the stress vibrating out underneath his skin. “And he comes into your bedroom and finds a boy, a half-naked boy wearing your clothes – what’s he going to think? What would he do?” 

Letting his head fall, Sirius pinched the bridge of his nose. “If he thought I was throwing my life away, he would most certainly tell my mother.” A shudder rocked his frame.

“And what would she do?” Remus pressed, relentless. Sirius let out another breath.

“I’m not sure if she would disinherit me or if she would still force me to marry Bella out of spite, but in either case, she would make sure you went through hell.” As he looked up, he expected to see a justified expression on Remus’ face, but it wasn’t there. Instead, it was hurt.

“Is she …” he started, sounding very short of breath, despite the fact that he hadn’t tried to move in some time now. “Is she really forcing you to marry someone you don’t love?”

With a roll of his eyes, Sirius nodded. “Worse yet, she’s my cousin.”

“What the fuck,” Remus exhaled heavily, staring blankly, as Sirius pretended not to be visibly stimulated by the profanity on Remus’ tongue. “Do you know when?”

“As soon as I leave Hogwarts.” Together, they sat in silence for quite some time because Sirius knew Remus didn’t know what to say – who would? Sirius could cast it off and pretend they hadn’t had this heart-to-heart, but one of his hands was still pressed to Remus’ waist, the other back on Remus’ thigh with Remus’ fingers still mindlessly ghosting over his own.

“I don’t care,” Remus stated suddenly, drawing Sirius’ attention, though Remus’ gaze was still projected to some distance that Sirius’ couldn’t follow. Without pause, Remus took Sirius’ face into his hands, their foreheads nearly pressed together as Remus’ commanding gaze sending an immediate blush into Sirius’ cheeks. “I don’t care what your mother thinks. I don’t care what she would try to do to me. The only one I care about is you, Pads.”

A delicate breath fell from Sirius’ lips. “Moony.” As his eyes scattered chaotically over Remus’ face, suddenly closer than it had ever been, he could see the ignited fuel in the golden color of Remus’ eyes, he could form constellations in the freckles on Remus’ cheeks, he could taste the sugar from Remus’ tea on his breath. He struggled to take back control of himself.

“If you tell me to leave it alone, I will,” Remus said, with conviction in his voice, with truth in his eyes, with unwavering loyalty in his hands. “But I’m not staying away because of her.”

“I want you to stay,” Sirius spilled immediately, his words tumbling over each other in their desperation to be heard. With a breath, he corrected, calmly. “I … I want you to stay.”

“Then I have to go,” Remus said with a wide smile as he wrinkled his nose against Sirius’ before pulling away and taking hold of the edge of Sirius’ bed frame in strangely shaking hands.

“What?” Sirius squeaked anxiously, holding his palms against Remus’ shoulders in an attempt to keep him from flailing off the bed. With one heave, teeth clenched to suppress the pained growl that tore up from his throat, Remus managed to swing his legs off the mattress.

After a few deep, exhausted breaths, with Sirius hovering nervously, his hands fumbling around every bandage in contact with Remus’ skin, Remus spoke. “I never said anyone had to know about it.” His voice was raspy with too much air and too little energy, but as smug as ever.

With a raised eyebrow, Sirius smirked. “You want to keep our friendship … a secret?”

The level of excitement on Remus’ face was entirely ridiculous. It was excessive and childlike and extremely contagious. “It might be fun,” he grinned, shrugging. With a sigh, Sirius sat next to Remus on the bed, taking Remus’ hand into his own. For only a moment, he let his fingers rove delicately across Remus’ palm before slipping Remus’ arm around his shoulder.

There was only a momentary widening of Remus’ eyes as this renewed closeness, but realization burned through as Sirius slid his arm around Remus’ waist. Holding him as tightly and as powerfully as he could, they stood together, slowly and carefully. As they moved, Sirius studied Remus’ face for any signs of pain, but the only thing on his expression was the familiarly soft smile that Sirius couldn’t quite interpret. At least the brace on his ankle was holding up well.

“In that case,” Sirius said as they took their first tentative, stumbling steps. “I guess I should show you how to sneak back into my bedroom.” With a coy smile, Remus tightened his arm around Sirius’ neck, pulling himself in so he could press his lips into the waves of Sirius’ hair.

REMUS

He was getting married. Sirius’ palm was cupping Remus under the ribs as they made short-lived laps around Sirius’ bedroom, there was a wonderful laugh in Sirius’ throat, and he was getting married. To someone else. To someone he didn’t even love. To his cousin.

With careful, brief steps, Sirius led Remus around his room, letting Remus use him for support as Remus tried to accustom himself to the cast Sirius had fashioned for his ankle. If there was any ache in Remus’ voice, Sirius steadied his grip. If there was any stumble in Remus’ step, Sirius’ hand went to his abdomen. And he was getting married to someone else.

Their exercise stopped in front of Sirius’ closet. As Remus leaned against one of the posts of Sirius’ bed, Sirius fished out some extra trousers, an extra white shirt, and (just for safety’s sake), a Slytherin tie. There was an abundantly clear level of pleasure in Sirius’ expression at getting Remus to wear so much of his own House colors. Remus rolled his eyes, smiling.

After he laid out the clothes rather meticulously on the foot of his bed, he picked up the trousers and went to one knee in front of Remus’ feet, without so much as a single moment of hesitation. With the waist of the trousers open for Remus to step into, Sirius glanced up at him.

There were a thousand unclean thoughts that drove through Remus’ mind, each more sordid than the last, with Sirius looking up from his knees under those innocent and dark lashes, with his cheeks still flushed from carrying half of Remus’ weight, nibbling the inside of his lip.

“I could probably manage this myself,” Remus said with a laugh, trying to ignore the spike in blood pressure that he could feel concentrating at the center of his hips. There was no way he could get out of this without Sirius knowing the truth, how Remus literally felt about him.

“I’m already down here, you may as well let me do it,” Sirius replied, totally sincerely, and Remus screwed his eyes closed, wishing Sirius had phrased that just a little differently.

“Fine,” Remus huffed. “You can help me step in, but I’ve got it after that,” he added, pretending he didn’t see the way Sirius furrowed his eyebrows at the sudden awkward tension between them. With his boot first, Remus put his feet through the legs of Sirius’ trousers.

Before Remus could even attempt to bend at the waist to stop Sirius’ fingers before they moved up Remus’ legs, they were already to Remus’ knees. It took a bit more effort to get them up his thighs, as Remus was not quite as slender and sculpted in the hips as Sirius.

Once Sirius’ fingers reached their destination, he stilled, holding the splayed trousers with Remus’ hipbone underneath his touch. With his eyes scattering over the bruises and scrapes slashed over Remus’ belly, he let his fingers stray a little from the waist of the trousers.

“Moony,” he called out into the air, and the name landed against Remus’ skin like it had weight. It certainly had heat. Shifting his fingers through the beltloops of the trousers, Sirius let his touch flutter over the black and purple pooling of blood trapped underneath Remus’ skin.

“It’s not as bad as it looks, Pads,” Remus said, forgetting himself for just a moment, just long enough for him to push his fingers through Sirius’ hair, tucking it behind his ear. As if the thought occurred to them simultaneously, they watched each other’s eyes widen.

“I’m sorry,” Sirius stuttered, the grip of his hands loosening enough on the trousers to let them drift back down Remus’ hips. Quickly, he caught them, but not before his hands slid rather high up the backs of Remus’ thighs. Remus breathed in tightly. “Shit. Sorry. Remus. Sorry.”

Remus wasn’t sure what was more alluring – the flustered way Sirius spoke his name, the nervous crimson flush of Sirius’ cheeks, or the tremble of Sirius’ hands on Remus’ arse. It was probably some combination of all three, and it focused all the blood in his body to one point.

“It’s alright, Sirius, my fault, totally my fault,” he replied, just as flustered, as he untangled the garment from Sirius’ fingers, trying to cover the swelling between his legs before Sirius could catch sight of it. Too little, too late. But Remus couldn’t ignore the keen way Sirius’ shadowed and sculpted eyebrow rose, his eyes so wide in the dark that they had lost their silver luster.

The expression was so transient that Remus wondered if he had imagined it, because in the next moment, Sirius was standing, turning away from him like it had never happened. As quickly as he could, Remus fastened the trousers, arching his hips away from his own touch.

That was it. He knew it. Because he couldn’t keep his libido in check, he was going to lose the one person who knew him better than anyone in any world, magic or Muggle. After all, he’d already said they weren’t even allowed to be friends. Something more was out of the question.

Before he could start to explain, using whatever irrational verbal device he could to discredit what just happened, Sirius was holding his Oxford shirt by the shoulders, waiting for Remus to finish fussing with the trousers. A curious, fascinated expression was on his face, and it spread across every last feature of his face, until he was absolutely saturated with it.

“You’re quite a bit bigger than me,” Sirius said in a low voice and Remus audibly choked on the breath in his throat. “My shirt might be too slim in the shoulders for you,” he added with a smug twist of his lips as Remus stared at him in awe. He knew exactly what he’d said, because the difference in the size of their shoulders was not that significant.

“You’ll be the death of me, Sirius,” Remus muttered under his breath, pushing his fingers through the stubble on his face. A pitiful, whimpering laugh pressed through his lips.

“You can die in my lap, if I can die in yours,” Sirius said under a smirk and just by the salient expression on his face, Remus knew there was a euphemism hidden there somewhere.

Before Remus could convince himself to find out what it was, he held one arm out, letting Sirius slip the shirt sleeve over it. With a soft groan, he twisted his other arm behind his back to reach the other sleeve. As Sirius pulled the shirt up his back, Remus confirmed that there had surely been innuendo in what Sirius had said, because the shirt fit him just fine, other than his arms being a tad too long for the sleeves. As Sirius came around, he started on the bottom buttons and Remus started on the top, until their hands met somewhere in the middle.

“You realize I can do this part by myself too, right?” Remus asked with a laugh, but Sirius didn’t even look up, the look on his face absolutely peaceful as his knuckles brushed against the pads of Remus’ palms. Without a word, he leaned past Remus to reach the tie at the end of his bed, entirely unruffled by the fact that their chests were pressed together.

Wrapping the tie around Remus’ throat, Sirius smiled as his fingers worked deftly to tie the silk band. “These colors looks good on you.” He spoke softly, the silver returned to his eyes.

“Your colors,” Remus corrected, craning his neck as Sirius tightened the knot. As Remus slowly lowered his gaze, Sirius met it candidly, letting his hands spread down Remus’ collar, over his chest, down his waist, only breaking Remus’ stare to glance down at his waiting lips.

 Just as Remus nearly did something he couldn’t take back, Sirius widened his eyes and pulled sharply away, leaving Remus with an abrupt emptiness. “We’d better get going or it’ll take us all night to get to your Tower,” Sirius said, tying his hair on top of his head with his wand.

With a defeated but silent sigh, Remus nodded solemnly, holding his arm out as Sirius slipped underneath it, providing a massive amount of support for how thin he was. They paused momentarily at the door for Sirius to stick his head out to check the hall.

“That’s the way out,” Sirius pointed to what looked like a solid wall of black, tucked underneath a short ledge where the Lake went overhead. Instead of moving toward it, Sirius pulled Remus down a large hallway, swathed in silver and green and Slytherin crests. The windows on the right that displayed the Lake were elaborate and wreathed in wrought iron and precious metals, so different than the unadorned wall of thick glass in Sirius’ bedroom.  

“Then where are we going?” Remus glanced over at him, reminded of the way he had seen Sirius for the first time under the glow of this same Lake, when Sirius had looked so ancient and ethereal, like a deity that lived in the depths of the Lake and governed the Merpeople.

Sirius returned a look of disbelief. “You can’t visit my House and not see the Common Room,” he said, making some expression that showed how ridiculous Remus’ question was.

When they moved from the hallway and stepped into the soaring, majestic room, Remus’ breath caught in his throat. The same eerie glow from the Lake that changed with the trough of every wave was amplified in this room, casting shades of turquoise over the black leather of the decadent sofas in the center of the room, enchanting the fire in the hearth into an unearthly shade of purple. The portals into the Lake that had lined the hallways were dwarfed by the enormous floor-to-ceiling windows, framed by elegant, mossy curtains that pooled their excesses at the floor. The reflections of the water made everything look kinetic, alive.

“Wow,” Remus breathed out, only absently recognizing the way Sirius had been watching him take it all in. Sirius’ fingers tensed at his waist. He snuggled in a little closer.

“Sometimes when I can’t sleep,” Sirius said, his head resting on Remus’ shoulder, “I’ll come out here and listen to the waves on the sand just above us. You can hear it a little better in here than you can in my room.” Holding his breath, Remus closed his eyes, listening intently and hearing the distant splash of water and the unsettling of silt. It was oddly calming.

“Then, if you really can’t sleep,” Remus said with a grin, “you run the Forest with a wicked mad Wolf and exhaust yourself taking care of him when he goes comatose.”

The bashful smile on Sirius’ face spread. “If it works, it works,” he shrugged. From where Remus’ arm was slung over his shoulder, Sirius slipped his hand up, gripping him rather tenderly by the wrist. “I’ve never slept better. Maybe we could make this a standing appointment.”

Careful not to make a sound, they halted their conversation as they moved toward the dark alcove where Sirius had indicated. Though it looked like a solid wall, they walked right through it, into a short corridor that led to a large, steel door that bore the Slytherin crest.

“If only I transformed more than once a month. Damn shame,” Remus laughed as Sirius wandlessly opened the door. The casual, expert use of his magic consistently impressed Remus.

“I did say I’d show you the way back in,” Sirius said, catching the door with his foot to let it close as softly as possible, while still keeping Remus on his feet. “You can come back whenever you want. No transformation required.” He spoke softly, practically under his breath. As the door closed, they were left in the dark. “Lumos,” Sirius whispered, and the wand that was shoved into his messily coiled hair flashed bright, lighting up the way in front of them. 

“Can I come back tomorrow night?” Remus asked, squeezing Sirius’ shoulder. When Sirius looked over, with the halo of light crowning his dark hair, the edges of his face looked softer.

His eyes faltered just after they met Remus’ gaze. “I’d like that.” As they rounded a curve in the corridor, it opened into multiple possible passages, in every direction, and Remus sighed.

“If I can remember how to get here, that is,” he laughed pitifully, but the bolstering squeeze at his ribs made him remember he would attempt anything for the boy at his side.

“Don’t worry, Moony, I’ll draw you a map,” Sirius said with a lovable wink and, while the pace of Remus’ feet was restricted, the pace of his heart had no problem racing on ahead.

As they took turn after turn within the labyrinth under the Lake, Remus knew he was going to need that map. Honestly, he had no idea how Sirius had figured this out on his own, especially in his First Year. The quickness of his mind was just as impressive as that of his magic.

Eventually, they emerged into nearly full moonlight from a rocky bay tucked away on the edge of the Lake. As soon as they left the maze, Remus looked back to find that it looked like there was no opening at all. Yes, he was definitely going to need a set of directions for this.

For the first time since yesterday, Remus walked under the open air as himself, reveling in the feeling of the cool air against his skin. He took just a moment to admire the Lake, the moonlight that didn’t make his skin feel like splitting apart, the boy at his side.

As they walked slowly along the shore of the Lake, they passed a spot in the soil that seemed darker than that which was around it. With a sickening sort of abruptness, Remus realized that was where his blood had seeped into the sand.

“It was here,” he said under a heavy breath. Sirius paused, nodding. “You … I remember you running toward the castle wall,” Remus said, shutting his eyes tight to pull the memory.

“You remember some of it? The transformation?” Sirius asked softly.

“A little. You were yelling something …” Remus trailed off, trying to recall.

“I was yelling at you. To stay with me.” He blushed a bit, then.

“Why were you running back to the castle?”

Sirius furrowed his brows. “To … get my clothes?” It was Remus’ turn to furrow his brows. And blush. “That’s how an Animagus works, Remus. My clothes don’t change with me.”

“And how was I supposed to know that exactly?” he laughed as Sirius guided him over to the pink rose bush where his shoes were still hiding. Remus’ smile widened. “Interesting.”

“Don’t get any unsavory ideas, Moony,” Sirius said, nudging Remus’ hip with his own as Remus took control of their steps, guiding them toward a hidden way into the castle. 

“You should’ve carried me in just as you were,” Remus teased, just to watch the color change in Sirius’ skin under the moonlight. “It’s hardly fair that I was unconscious and the only one of us left naked,” he smirked, making sure to lower his voice they entered the castle. As Sirius was doing all the heavy lifting, Remus made sure to keep an eye out for Filch.

“To be fair, I did only have my trousers on,” Sirius mentioned as they made careful work of the moving staircases. “Since I was using my shirt and tie to keep you from bleeding to death.”

For a moment, they concentrated on the movement of their feet, Sirius timing the extra support he provided underneath Remus’ arm to whenever Remus had to rest all his weight on his right ankle in order to make it to the next stair. He did it all without losing his smile.

“What I can’t comprehend is how you carried me all that way. Was I heavy in your arms, Pads?” Remus asked, in a facetious tone that Sirius only glanced toward, with a suggestive expression that he seemed to reconsider as he quickly removed it from his gaze.

“It was over my shoulders,” he corrected simply, as if it were anywhere near simple.

“Oh, right,” Remus mused, flashes of that dream he’d had of that night returning to him in pieces – the world turned upside down as his head hung from Sirius’ shoulder, the sturdy and unyielding strength of Sirius’ neck supporting most of Remus’ weight, the anxious, trembling grip pressed tight to the back of his thigh. His naked thigh. “Oh,” Remus repeated, coming to an embarrassingly blunt realization. “So, you had my …” he stopped, puffing his reddened cheeks.

“Oh, yes,” Sirius replied with a ridiculous grin, that lewd expression returning to his face instantly, like it had been there all along, biding under the surface. “Right next to my ear.”

“Oh my God,” Remus mumbled, burying his face into one hand, trying to hide the feverish blush deepening and spreading over his skin. “I am so lucky it was you that found me.”

“Trust me, I’m the lucky one,” Sirius grinned, biting down onto the tip of his tongue with one of his overly sharp canines. The expression was so filthy that Remus lost his footing.

When he recovered, quite ungracefully, he growled. “You are not helping.”

“Oh, is that what I was meant to be doing?” Sirius smiled innocently. “From what I could tell, you’ve really got nothing to be embarrassed about at all, Moony, I mean, really.”  

Remus interrupted before Sirius could make it worse. “Thank you, Sirius, I get it. You’ve seen me naked, yes, that’s been established.” Awkwardly, he pushed his hair from his face.

Sirius glanced over, side-eye. “That’s cute that you have to tell yourself that,” he said with far too peaceful a grin. “You and I both know it was much more involved than just seeing.” The mortified groan that Remus let out was a bit too loud – Sirius laughed, shushing him.

“Whatever it was, unless you fondled me while I was unconscious, I’m sure it was necessary,” Remus stuttered out, throwing his head back in embarrassment. Despite that, he was strangely delighted by how much Sirius was enjoying tormenting him over this. This peculiar comfort that he could only feel with Sirius was better knowing Sirius felt it with him, too.

“Maybe I should tell you that I straddled you in bed,” Sirius hummed thoughtfully. Remus blinked at him, the blush returned in full as Sirius’ deviant smile continued to grow.

“You know, eventually, I’m just going to need a detailed account of where your hands were at all times during my coma, thank you.” Readying his wit, he looked over to see how Sirius would respond to that baited comment, but Sirius’ expression had gone rather solemn.

“We made it, Moony,” Sirius said as they turned the corner, finding the spiral staircase that led to the door of the Ravenclaw Common Room. His tone had dropped off significantly.

“Well, you can’t come all the way to my House and not see the Common Room,” Remus said with a sly grin as they ascended the stairs, with some difficulty, as they could no longer fit side-by-side. With his hands steadying Remus’ hips, Sirius followed closely behind him. More than once, Remus nearly toppled to his knees because he was more focused on the touch of Sirius’ delicate hands so low on his hips than he was on the movement of his clumsy feet.

At the top, the bronze eagle knocker on the door spoke in a methodical tone, “The more there is, the less you see.” It was a new riddle than the day before – Remus paused to think.

“Darkness,” he answered confidently, and the door swung open. Quietly, the pair crept into the lofty, circular room. Remus moved to steady himself against the wall so he could watch Sirius take in the view of his Common Room, from the carpet so dark blue that it was nearly black to the constellations on the ceiling Charmed to mirror the night sky to the stained-glass windows with patterns of eagles and owls and the Lost Diadem of Ravenclaw.

“How different our Rooms are,” Sirius said in an airy voice as he brushed his fingers over the bronze threading of the midnight-blue crushed-velvet loveseat, staring into the embers still glowing from the white marble hearth. As he looked back to Remus, the reflection of the constellations twinkled in his silver eyes, despite the hood of his eyelids, despite the thickness of his lashes. Under that gaze, Remus couldn’t help the next thing that moved from his lips.

“Next time, I’ll let you hang out naked in my bedroom all day. For fairness sake,” he said with an arrogant grin. As Sirius sauntered back over toward him, the glimmer in his eyes was replaced by a clear, hollowed gaze. When Sirius got close, he didn’t stop – he moved in, nearly pressing Remus to the wall behind him. To dissuade the sudden tension, Remus changed topic.

“I don’t think I thanked you.” Immediately, the dark, wide hunger in Sirius’ eyes evaporated, as if he suddenly realized what he’d been about to do.

“You can thank me by staying off that foot as much as you can tomorrow,” Sirius smiled, pointing to Remus’ boot as he moved back toward the still-open door to the Common Room.

“I’ll have to, or I won’t be able to come see you tomorrow night,” Remus replied with a smile just as soft and wanting as the one he’d seen on Sirius’ face. Before Sirius could get too far away, Remus caught him by the wrist, pulling him back so strongly that Sirius stumbled into Remus’ chest, and Remus wrapped his arms tightly around him. “Thank you, Padfoot.”

Sirius sighed into his hair, sending a shiver down his spine. “I should be thanking you.”

“Why?” Remus laughed, letting his fingers spread out over Sirius’ back. “You’re the one who saved my life.” Sirius nestled into Remus’ arms, burying his face into Remus’ neck.

“Someday I might be able to say why you’ve saved mine, too,” he whispered in a shaking breath that fell warm and wishful into the loosened collar of Remus’ shirt. “I don’t think you see yet that I’m the one who is heavy in your arms, Moony. With all the weight I’m bred to carry.”

Remus’ hold on Sirius’ shoulders tightened. “They may have bred you to carry it, but I’d like to help make sure you don’t have to carry it alone.” With a sharp breath of surprise, Sirius pulled back to look Remus in the face. For a moment, he shifted forward, but the sound of someone descending the stairs into the Common Room sent them scrambling apart.

“Go, go!” Remus urged quietly, pushing Sirius in the direction of the door. After a slight moment of hesitation, Sirius leapt in and pressed a soft kiss to Remus’ lips. When he pulled away, he hovered only a moment, anxiously searching the surprise in Remus’ face before racing back out the Common Room door. As Remus stumbled backward in surprise, falling hard against the wall behind him, a Sixth Year appeared at the bottom of the dorm stairs.

“Remus?” she asked, bleary eyed. “Is everything okay?” Bringing his fingers up to his lips, still feeling the tingle of Sirius’ lips against his, Remus stared wide-eyed at the door.

“Yeah,” he breathed out, distracted and dreamy. “I don’t think I’ve ever been better.”

SIRIUS

Sirius didn’t sleep. Instead, he spent the rest of the night going over every microscopic change in the expression on Remus’ face after Sirius had kissed him so suddenly. Was that surprise? Good surprise or bad surprise? It wasn’t terror, right? Shit, what if it was?

Truthfully, he didn’t even know why he’d done it. Well, he knew why he had done it, the same reason he’d been wanting to do it for years. But it was so reflexive, so instinctual, that there was no logic behind it. Because rationally, it wasn’t prudent. There was no way in all of hell that he could ever be romantically involved with Remus. With a boy. Even in secret.

Still, last night, when Sirius had his hands exceptionally low on Remus’ hips (because he would not admit to himself that he groped Remus’ arse), when he saw the physiological way Remus responded to Sirius being knelt in front of him, to Sirius’ hands on his skin, he knew. There was something between them that wasn’t between other friends. Even secret ones.

On the way into the castle, when he had been brazenly teasing Remus about seeing him naked, Sirius couldn’t ignore the fact that, through the blushing, Remus had been baiting him into saying more, into admitting more. When they got into the Common Room, the disheveled hunger on Remus’ face nearly resulted in Sirius pressing Remus to the wall with just his hips.

Maybe if he had done that, he could’ve played this off. He could’ve pretended his brain was fogged with exhaustion and desperation and want, and Remus was the warm body that was present. But instead, he’d pressed his lips to Remus’ so tenderly that there was very little left to interpretation. It was obvious that Sirius was falling for him. That he’d been falling for some time.

While he wasn’t sleeping, he made good on his promise to make Remus a map through the labyrinth under the Lake. Honestly, it was a good thing his heart hadn’t stopped racing since that kiss, or he probably wouldn’t have been able to finish. It so was elaborately detailed that it took him all night. Every turn was accounted for, every step, every second.

Because Sirius didn’t want to take a single chance in not knowing. If Remus didn’t come back tonight (as it was already morning), then Sirius would know it meant he had screwed up by kissing Remus like he had. Sirius couldn’t blame it on a faulty map. The map was flawless.

The first class of the day was History of Magic, which was a dreadfully long and boring class, and the only way Sirius had ever gotten through it was by pretending to stare out the castle windows. In truth, he wasn’t staring out the windows at all, but staring at Remus Lupin, who sat right between Sirius and the window, without fail, every day.

He rather enjoyed watching the meticulous way Remus Lupin sketched across the corners of his parchment – the absent way he dusted the feather of his Quill under his chin as he determined the best way to shade Professor Binns’ ghostly expression, how his head slipped down into the cradle of his elbow when his wrist could no longer support the weight of his thick curls, the subtle movement of his shoulder as he shifted to let Sirius watch him scribble.

On the way to class, Sirius walked alone, as he did every morning. Somehow, it was so much more lonely than it had ever been. Only the night before, he’d walked these corridors under the arm of the boy with limbs too long for his frame and a voice too soft for his build, the same boy with whom Sirius found himself become more and more enamored.

He skipped breakfast. Not knowing how Remus felt about that kiss was churning at his insides, leaving nothing but nausea and terror in his gut. With one hand in the pocket of his robes, he clenched his fist around the map, knowing he was wrinkling it, but unable to stop.

Unintentionally, he took a rather long route to class. If he went and Remus wasn’t there, he wasn’t sure what he would do. Would he empty what little he had left in his stomach all over Professor Binns’ desk? Would he race to Ravenclaw Tower, screaming Remus’ name?

Luckily, he didn’t have to find out. As he walked into the classroom, Remus glanced up, sunlight streaming in from the window behind him, making his unruly bedhead look more like a crown, though the dark circles under his eyes made him look rather devilish. There was an automatic smile on his face, but he stifled it. After all, they weren’t friends. Not on the outside.

With his heart in his throat, Sirius circled his desk, slipping the folded map onto the edge of Remus’ desk, and Remus immediately put his hand over the top of it. The next time Sirius looked over, it was gone, and Remus’ fingers were tucking it into the front pocket of his robes.

Professor Binns’ started up, the drone of his voice already lulling other students to sleep, but Remus, with a knowing smile on his face, pushed his parchment to the furthest edge of his desk. He let Sirius watch him draw Binns’ face with cat ears and a Viking beard. With a smile, Sirius settled his face into his palm, watching Remus more than he watched the Quill.

He paused, glancing over to Sirius as he scribbled in the corner of the parchment, ‘Map?’ it said in Remus’ cramped handwriting. Hiding a grin, Sirius nodded slightly, allowing himself to get lost in the brightness of Remus’ face. It felt like so long since he’d seen Remus in sunlight.

After a charged pause, Remus returned his Quill to paper. ‘Can I still see you tonight?’ In surprise, Sirius leaned in to draw Remus’ attention to his face. With furrowed brows, he nodded emphatically, wondering why Remus felt he had to ask. After all, Sirius had kissed him. If anything, Sirius should’ve been the one wondering if Remus even wanted to sneak back in.

Despite that, the smile on Remus’ face upon receiving that slight nod was brighter than the sunshine outside and Sirius let himself bask in it, lying his head across where his arms were folded atop his desk. Even just being next to Remus was intoxicatingly comfortable – if he were to just close his eyes, he would fall asleep in an instant. But he didn’t want to stop looking at Remus. He never wanted to stop looking at Remus for as long as he lived.

Under the weight of his exhaustion, it seemed he didn’t have a choice. His eyes were closed long before he ever realized it. It wasn’t until he felt the soft tickle of the feather of Remus’ Quill against the tip of his nose did he awake with a half-start.

Blinking furiously against the sunlight behind Remus, Sirius squinted at him as Remus pointed back at the edge of his parchment with the tip of his Quill, with delight in his gaze. ‘Have you ever played Muggle poker?’ When Sirius looked back up, Remus’ eyebrow was raised quite suspiciously, a sinister grin unfurling across his cheeks. Sirius accidentally laughed out loud.

While they shared many classes, there weren’t many in which they had the excuse to sit next to each other like they did in History of Magic, and it was agony. For Sirius, at least. It meant he had to listen to Slughorn’s incessant boasting about the Wizarding World celebrities he’d ‘collected’ instead of listening to the way Remus hummed while he was taking notes. It meant looking to his left to see James Potter and Lily Evans passing notes between one another instead of being able to pass notes with Remus. It meant having to pretend to drop something on the floor just so he could turn a bit in his seat to steal a brief glance in Remus’ direction.

Once, it almost seemed like Remus had been waiting for him to turn because, when he did, Remus was watching him, his face propped up in his palm. The moment he noticed Sirius twist in his seat, the smile on his lips devoured his whole face with it. It was magnificent.

The last class of the day was Advanced Arithmancy, an elective that Sirius had chosen to take, but Remus hadn’t. Well, chosen was a strong word, because Sirius’ mother chose all his electives for him. She’d had his entire academic schedule mapped out long before he’d ever gotten his letter. It didn’t stop with academia – no, that was just a steppingstone. After all, he needed to take the right classes to be placed into the right career field so he could accrue the right wealth to take care of the right wife and father the right children. Every facet of his life had been strategized for him – what to wear, who to flatter, when to speak, how to act.

But not who to love. Sirius was figuring that part out just fine on his own.

After Advanced Arithmancy, when everyone else would be headed to the Great Hall for dinner, Sirius decided to head for the kitchens. There was a particularly tiny House Elf called Sissy who, for reasons unknown to Sirius, had taken a liking to him. Whenever he visited the kitchens, Sissy gave him more food than he could ever eat as long as Sirius told her a joke.

Her favourite so far had been ‘What does Filch shout when he jumps from the broom closet?’ and Sissy had gone quite silent waiting for the punch line, her wide eyes shimmering in anticipation. When Sirius shouted ‘Supplies!” throwing his hands into the air, she had dissolved into a fit of giggles, her spindly legs kicking underneath where she was sitting on the edge of the counter. That was only the day before, when he’d returned to his bedroom with a tray full of breakfast for Remus. Sissy had given him extra after hearing he was taking care of someone.

That little House Elf was quite refreshing – so different than Kreacher, who did nothing but scowl at Sirius. He knew he shouldn’t take it out on Kreacher. After all, he was only repeating things he’d heard ‘his Mistress’ say about Sirius. But Sirius couldn’t very well blame his mother.

On his way to the kitchens, trying to choose between a handful of jokes, trying to decide which one Sissy would laugh at the most, Sirius glanced up to see Remus walking in the opposite direction, toward the Great Hall. For a moment, they shared a clandestine smile.

It was fleeting. A duo of Slytherins came around to Remus’ other side, purposefully catching the curve of the boot that Sirius had Transfigured for him, sending Remus stumbling down to the stones of the corridor. Without hesitation, Sirius lurched forward to catch him.

“Remus!” he called out, dropping to his knees to position himself below Remus, slipping his hands underneath Remus’ outstretched arms. With a soft grunt of the air being forced out of his lungs, Remus landed against Sirius’ chest. Sirius pulled him in tight. “Moony.”

Remus let out a sigh. “I’m alright, Sirius,” he assured him, but Sirius wasn’t ready to let him go. Not yet. This was the closest he’d been to Remus all day and it still wasn’t enough.

“Oi, Black!” It was one of the other Slytherins – the one who had tripped Remus, a dark-haired boy with broad shoulders and lips so thin they were merely a line across his face. With fury in his gaze, Sirius flicked his eyes up toward the boy, balling a fist into Remus’ robes.

“What the bloody hell are you doing, Sirius?” the blonde Slytherin boy asked, looking at the way Sirius held Remus with confusion and contempt in his gaze. “You should’ve just let him fall. He’s a Mudblood, after all.” A breath seethed through Sirius’ clenched teeth as he heard that word being used on his Remus. Before he could move, before he could turn to plant his fist into the face of the arsehole who dared use that word, Remus tugged him back.

“Don’t,” he cautioned with a hesitant breath. “You’re a Death Eater, remember?” The clench in Sirius’ jaw tightened as he considered flashing his forearm and snogging Remus right in front of these bastards. “Let me handle this,” Remus whispered as he began to struggle against Sirius’ hold, though it was more tender than it was tight. “Get the fuck off me!” he shouted, pushing Sirius away from him as hard as he could, and Sirius went tumbling backward.

“Rem–” Sirius started to say before he saw the warning in Remus’ face.

“I know what you were doing!” he yelled, pointing sharply into Sirius’ face. “You were trying to hold me down so your Death Eater buddies could get a few more good kicks in! Well, you’re out of luck today, Black!” Sirius nearly smiled – Remus certainly was laying it on thick. The wand in Remus’ sleeve dropped into his waiting fingers and he raised it. “Obscuro!” he shouted theatrically, making sure to cast above Sirius’ head to hit the two other Slytherin boys.

“Well done,” Sirius whispered with a grin as the Slytherins grumbled loudly about the dark blindfolds suddenly over their eyes. Remus leaned in, stroking Sirius’ cheek fondly.

“I’ll see you tonight,” he smiled dreamily for a moment before racing down the corridor, just as the Slytherin boys pulled the literal wool from their eyes. Sirius pretended to do the same.

“Sorry about that Black, I thought …” Avery, the dark-haired boy, extended his hand to help Sirius from the ground, but Sirius looked at him with derision, eyes hollow and grey.

Sirius knew exactly who these boys were – their first names were insignificant, but his mother had made sure he memorized the surname of every Pureblood family in the Wizarding community. He had to know their family trees just as intimately as he had to know his own. He knew the families these boys belonged to, Avery and Mulciber, and he knew their standing.

“I wonder,” Sirius hummed, his voice low and threatening as he stood, dusting off his robes calmly. “What would the Dark Lord think about his most loyal servant having his motives questioned by those who haven’t even taken his Mark yet?” As the looks of fear in the two Slytherin boys solidified his bluff, he stepped in and jabbed his finger into the chest of the arsehole who dared called Remus a slur. “Question me again and we may have to find out.”

“S-sorry, Sirius,” Mulciber stammered. Sirius wondered how far he could take this.

“Don’t touch Lupin again. I have my own plans for him,” he said, completely truthfully, working exceptionally hard to keep the smile tucked deep into the corner of his lips.

“Yes, sir,” the boys whispered in sync, and Sirius almost lost his composure. Instead of taking the chance of speaking (and laughing), Sirius jerked his head to the side, in the direction of the Great Hall, silently and grimly indicating for them to get out of his sight entirely. Without another word, the duo went barreling down the corridor, bickering with each other regarding fault. With a heavy sigh, Sirius shook out his limbs and let the austerity wash from his face as he continued to the kitchens to tell his favourite tiny House Elf a joke about unicorns.

On the map that Sirius had given Remus, he’d put specific instructions for Remus to wear the Slytherin tie on his way back over, just in case. Granted, he was pretty recognizable as someone who was definitely not in Slytherin, but better to take all the precautions they could.

He also made a point to note that if Remus wanted to come early, he could sneak out halfway through dinner because nobody skipped dinner (except Sirius), so it was likely that the main hall would be empty. Still, he recognized that Remus may decide not to come until well after dark, for safety sake. That should still be enough time for them to spend together.

There was a specific knock that he told Remus to use when he arrived. Two rapid knocks, a pause, a single knock, then repeat. At first, he wondered if he shouldn’t just wait in the corridor across the hall, but did that make him seem too eager? It was for safety sake, right?

Just as Sirius nearly convinced himself to go wait for Remus underneath the Lake, the series tapped out on his bedroom door – two raps, one, two raps, one. Quickly, he tore open the door, gripped Remus by the wrist and pulled him inside. The rush and imbalance of one good foot sent Remus tumbling forward. Sirius caught him again. This time, he could really hold him.

“Hi,” Sirius breathed out into Remus’ hair. Remus’ arms tightened around him.

“Hi,” he repeated, just as breathy. “Jesus, that was nerve-wracking,” he laughed, pulling away to throw himself down onto Sirius’ bed. Leaning onto the post, Sirius admired the sight of Remus on his bed, Remus comfortable in his bedroom, Remus smiling at him.

“Now, imagine that, but also if you were carrying a naked werewolf victim in over your shoulders,” Sirius grinned, settling on the edge of the bed. He indulged himself in letting his hand slide down Remus’ calf as he pulled Remus’ right ankle into his lap, unlatching the boot.

“A werewolf can’t very well be his own victim,” Remus argued, watching the movement of Sirius’ fingers as he cast another light healing spell on Remus’ ankle without prompting.

Sirius glanced up, expression a bit stern. “That’s not what I saw.” With the healing spell enveloping Remus’ skin, Sirius let himself apply a little manual pressure with his fingers to the ball of Remus’ foot, making sure to keep away from the bruising at his ankle. There was an indelicate moan from Remus’ lips as he craned back into Sirius’ pillow, hand into his hair.

“Ah, Sirius,” he sighed, his eyes fluttering closed. Sirius swallowed hard.

“Feels good, Moony?” he confirmed, his breaths coming up suddenly short.

“God, yes.” Remus moaned again, flexing his foot in Sirius’ hands, his heel digging a little deeper into the space between Sirius’ legs. A space growing ever more narrow.

A biting voice in the back of his head reminded him he couldn’t have this. He couldn’t have Remus moaning in his bedroom and do anything about it. He couldn’t have Remus’ lips to his own again. He was going to have to put a stop to this before he couldn’t anymore.

“Did you eat? I stole some food from the kitchens,” Sirius said, carefully setting Remus’ foot atop the sheets before moving a large tray over to the side of the bed. For only a moment, there was a sheen of disappointment across Remus’ face, but it was replaced quickly by a grin.

“I actually skipped dinner because I was afraid it was going to take me all night to follow that map you drew,” Remus said, his grin turning sly as he reached for a puffy roll. “It was very well drawn, by the way, just a little more detailed in instruction than I expected.”

“I really wanted you to come back,” Sirius laughed, filling his mouth with chips before the blush of his cheeks could catch up to him. Instead, it caught up to Remus.

“No, it just has to be the same suit to be a flush,” Remus explained, leaning over to peer over the tops of Sirius’ playing cards. “If they’re sequential, then it’s a straight flush.”

Sirius groaned. “Ask me to list the Headmasters of Hogwarts, I can do that.”

“I’d expect nothing less of a Prefect,” Remus snickered, falling back into Sirius’ pillow again, his bad ankle hanging from the bed. With a yawn, Sirius stretched out his legs in front of him, and Remus took that opportunity to brush his finger along the underside of Sirius’ foot.

“Not a very good Prefect, considering I’ve spent the last two full nights with you instead of patrolling the halls for curfew breakers,” Sirius smiled, slowly moving his foot out of Remus’ reach, though it hardly deterred Remus from reaching across the bed to tickle him again.

“Not to mention the smoking,” Remus said, raising his eyebrow in Sirius’ direction.

Sirius narrowed his eyes at him. “How do you know about the smoking?” That was one of the few secrets he’d managed to keep to himself. He didn’t think anyone knew he smoked.

“The smell,” Remus shrugged. “It’s barely there, you do a good job of hiding it,” he said, strangely avoiding Sirius’ gaze just then. “That and I’ve watched you do it.”

“Watched me?” Sirius said, his smile widening at the way Remus had phrased that. Not seen but watched. Specifically. “I only ever smoke from the Astronomy Tower.”

Remus laughed. “Which is where I watched you do it.”

“I like the way you say you watched me, like a pervert,” Sirius baited him with a devious grin. When Remus looked up in surprise, it melted away as he noticed Sirius’ expression.

“What can I say? You make it look really good,” Remus hummed. “Speaking of which, you’re welcome to smoke right now, as long as I can watch.” A grumble moved through Sirius’ throat as he threw himself face-first into the mattress while Remus collected the playing cards.

“I don’t smoke in my room. It concentrates the smell too much.”

“You don’t sound very happy about that arrangement,” Remus said, shifting in his place so he could lie on his side to face Sirius, who was doing the same. At once, they both moved in closer, diminishing what little gap there was between them. From where their hands rested between them, Sirius let his fingers trace over the rough edges of Remus’ knuckles.

“I started smoking to relieve stress,” Sirius sighed. “Now it seems like there isn’t much in my life that isn’t stressful. But I have to temper how much I smoke because it’s unbecoming,” he said it in his mother’s voice, leaving a distaste in his mouth that he could swallow.

“Tomorrow, we’re going to the Astronomy Tower,” Remus said, pausing to yawn, which Sirius was quick to mirror, “and you’re going to smoke as much as you fucking want.”

“Moony,” Sirius hummed, word slurred by exhaustion and judgement blurred by the feeling of Remus warm and close. “I like it when you curse at me. I shouldn’t, but I do.”

“Sirius,” Remus closed his eyes, taking Sirius’ hand into his own. “Go the fuck to sleep.”

In the early morning hours, Sirius eased from sleep like he’d been asleep for days, though it had only been a couple hours. Sleeping next to Remus had him sleeping deeper, sleeping sounder, sleeping better. He wasn’t sure he’d felt this rested in all his life.

Just like the last time he’d fallen asleep with Remus at his side, they ended up with very little space between them. Both Remus’ arms were wrapped completely around Sirius’ frame, burying Sirius’ face into the curve of Remus’ throat. With the way they were positioned, Remus was nearly lying on top of him, with Sirius’ leg nestled between Remus’ thighs.

Under a sated sigh, Sirius snuggled further into Remus’ arms. A glance toward the Lake told him they still had a little time – he could usually gauge the time by the amount of sunlight absorbed by the murky water. There was none. It wasn’t dawn yet. They still had time.

As Remus’ stirred and stretched, his muscles tensed with Sirius within them, his lungs pushing out a weighted but contented breath. The more Remus woke, the more the tension in his muscles changed, a carefree stretch stiffening into a blunt awareness of their tangled form.

There was something that Sirius could feel in the sinew under Remus’ skin that he couldn’t quite name, couldn’t quite understand. The contented breath had become nervous and shallow, the stretch of his lithe muscles becoming rigid and uncertain.

“Padfoot?” Remus whispered so softly that Sirius felt the vibrations in his cheek and felt the puff of his breath more than he heard the tone of Remus’ voice.

“I’m awake, Moony,” Sirius replied. Again, Remus stiffened at the sound of his voice and Sirius disheartened toward it. This was about the kiss. About how Sirius shouldn’t have done it.

“There’s been something I … I’ve been wanting to ask you.” He chose his words carefully, moving back so that he could look Sirius in the face. In the dark, the black circles under Remus’ eyes looked like they were inked onto his face, the freckles dotting his cheeks like splatters of costume paint. His honeyed eyes glowed and flashed like a wild animal under lamplight.

“Anything.” Sirius tried to keep the terror from his voice. He knew this had been coming, he knew he had made a mistake when he kissed Remus without permission.

Remus took in a short breath, hardly an exchange of air. “I’ve been wanting to … ask you this all night. All day. In the middle of class, in the corridor when you caught me, I … I just …”

“Remus,” Sirius said emphatically, reaching one of his hands up to hold Remus by the face and, to his surprise, Remus closed his eyes and leaned into it. “Please. Ask me.” Maybe this wasn’t about what he thought – Remus was being far too tender to ask Sirius to stop being so affectionate with him. For several long seconds, Remus nuzzled his face into Sirius’ touch.

“Will you kiss me again?” The breath stilled in Sirius’ throat as Remus opened his eyes under a gaze so different than the one before it. Within his hooded stare, the tawny of his eyes had darkened greatly, rum and coffee and the Lake in a thunderstorm. From where he was perched over Sirius, his tousled curls tumbled down over his forehead, over a furrowed brow.

An overwhelming consent very nearly escaped from Sirius’ throat. He was little more than a moment away from leaping up to capture Remus’ lips within his own, from burying his hands into Remus’ soft curls, from sliding his tongue deep into Remus’ mouth.

He didn’t do any of that. Because he knew where this would end. He knew it when he had kissed Remus in the Ravenclaw Common Room. He knew it when he saw the evidence of arousal in Remus’ body. He knew it when he had carried Remus back to his bedroom, naked.

If he got romantically involved with Remus, it would end with both of them being heartbroken. Inevitably, Sirius would still get married to someone else and he would either have to cut all ties with Remus for appearances sake or he would continue to let Remus feel inferior as they kept their relationship a secret. There was no happy ending. Not with Sirius.

Still, he couldn’t lie to Remus. Not even for Remus’ own sake. He couldn’t pretend that he had kissed Remus last night for any other reason than want and ache and desire. He couldn’t act like the last two days hadn’t happened, like they hadn’t woken up tangled in each other’s arms and legs and bodies, like they hadn’t seen parts of each other that no one else had.

“I can’t,” Sirius whimpered helplessly, voice wavering as his throat tightened, his fingers trembling from where they were still pressed to Remus’ face. Remus winced, screwing his eyes closed and letting his head fall forward, his formless curls bouncing with the movement.

With careful hope in his eyes, he looked back at Sirius. “Do you want to?” A terrible whine slipped from Sirius’ throat as he felt bitter tears threaten at the corner of his eyes.

“More than anything,” he choked out on a near sob, taking in a stuttering breath. With a defeated sigh, Remus dropped his head onto Sirius’ collarbone. The ever-lengthening stubble on his cheek grated against Sirius’ perpetually clean-shaven skin. Sirius reveled in it.

“I thought that would make me feel better, but I feel so much worse now,” Remus said with a broken laugh that died in the air. Sirius tightened his arms around Remus’ ribs, careful of the bandages that still held him together. How was he so miserable and so happy, all at once?

“I know, Moony,” Sirius mumbled into his hair, savoring the feeling of his lips moving against the shell of Remus’ ear, the warmth of Remus’ skin against his own.

“Just once,” Remus pleaded, his voice grieving. “We could just do it once more.”

An unsteady breath pulled from Sirius’ chest and he let it out slowly, trying to ignore the surging of blood in his hips at the craving in Remus’ voice. “I wouldn’t be able to stop at one.”

“Me neither,” Remus laughed again, but this time it was light. “I think maybe I should get back before I do something I’m going to regret.” He sighed heavily as he reluctantly pulled himself away from Sirius and out of his bed, pushing his hands through already tousled hair.

“You’d regret kissing me?” Sirius asked in a small voice, still lying in the position where Remus had left him. When Remus looked over, his eyes went all the way down to Sirius’ feet and back, the ache abundantly apparent on his face. With a groan, he put his hand over his eyes.

“I’d regret putting you in a position that made you feel like you were doing something wrong,” Remus said, pacing in front of the Lake, his fingers still covering his eyes. Carefully, he peeked through his fingers. “But I don’t think I’d regret it enough to stop kissing you.”

Despite the delicate blush that splashed over Sirius’ cheeks, he couldn’t help but realize that there would be no solution to this problem. It was obviously just as hard on Remus as it was on him. Being with Remus without letting himself be with Remus was torture for them both. As long as he stayed, Remus would never be happy. Sirius would keep him miserable forever.

“Let’s get you home, Remus.” Sirius turned his voice flat, drawing any emotion left on his tongue down into his gut, where it dissolved with the misconception that he could be happy. He still knelt dutifully in front of Remus to place the cast back over the ankle that was very likely broken, casting one more healing spell for the trip. He still offered his shoulder to Remus’ arm for support, he still walked Remus all the way to his House, and he let himself hold onto Remus tightly, one more time, outside the door to his Common Room. Because he had decided, resolutely. After tonight, he would never let himself see Remus Lupin outside of class again.

REMUS

All day. All fucking day. Not a single shared glance, not one covert smile, not even an uneven breath in Remus’ direction. And Sirius had skipped History of Magic altogether. It left Remus feeling like the wound in his ribs had opened up again, but worse. So much worse.

What had he done? It had to have been about the kiss, about asking Sirius for another when Remus knew Sirius couldn’t give it to him. He knew Sirius was marrying someone else, Remus was only complicating things by asking him for that. He was backing Sirius into a corner.

Still, the way Sirius had responded to Remus’ suggestion of ‘once, just once more’ wasn’t exactly filled with dissention when he replied ‘I wouldn’t be able to stop at one.’ Then again, maybe that was part of the problem. Sirius knew how this would end, just as Remus did. This wasn’t a way out for Sirius, just digging himself further in the hole in which he was trapped.

Maybe it was for the best. After all, Remus couldn’t have him, not the way he wanted. It was nice being friends with Sirius, but it was impossible to just be friends with the way he felt about him, with the way he knew Sirius felt in return. Not to mention, they couldn’t keep it a secret forever. Especially not once Sirius was legally married to someone else.

The thought of that turned Remus’ stomach. It was bad enough that she was his first cousin, but Remus had figured out it was Bellatrix, a girl from Slytherin who was quite a bit older than Sirius. She’d left Hogwarts before their First Year. Word around school was that she was a cruel creature with a twisted sense of humor who was morbidly devoted to What’s-His-Name.

Remus knew he shouldn’t be angry about it. It wasn’t his business. But ever since he’d woken up in Sirius’ bed, it felt like anything to do with Sirius was his business, like he was meant to save Sirius from this, the way Sirius had saved Remus from himself. Wasn’t that only fair?

He also knew he shouldn’t be angry with Sirius for shutting him out the way he had. After all, Remus knew why he’d done it. He’d done it for Remus’ sake, as well as his own. It was futile to start something between them that they knew they could never fully have. Even if they kept it a secret, Remus knew he wouldn’t be able to let Sirius go home to that woman every night. He would never stop fighting to get Sirius away from her, to keep Sirius to himself.

Wait. Isn’t that what he should be doing anyway? Relationship or not, kissing or not, how could he stand idle and let this atrocity happen to someone as kind and as giving and as affectionate as Sirius? How could he let the boy who wordlessly healed his wounds without a thought to his own exhaustion be given away to someone who would take advantage of that compassion, to someone who would carelessly warp that devotion to fit their own agenda?

Finally, Remus knew. It had taken him all day long, moping in his own self-pity, but he finally knew. Maybe Sirius would reject him again. Maybe Sirius would carry on not speaking to him. Maybe Remus would ruin the only chance he had left. But he had to try to save him.

With a map in the pocket of his trousers and a Slytherin tie around his neck, Remus set off toward the Lake. Dinner was just starting in the Great Hall, so nobody noticed him slip away, nobody noticed the green and silver tie tucked underneath his jumper, nobody noticed the way he hopped as carefully and as quickly as he could on the boot wrapped around his right ankle.

In his desperation to see Sirius, he took wrong turn after wrong turn in the labyrinth below the Lake, trying to rely on his memory over the map. He needed to memorize this trail, to bind it to his heart so he would never forget it. It was the one that led to Sirius.

Concealed in the darkness just beyond the hall, Remus looked across to the door of Sirius’ bedroom. After a couple quick glances, he emerged and rapped the pattern out against the grain of the hardwood. Two, one. Two, one. There was no answer. Was Sirius ignoring him?

Distant voices sent Remus scurrying back into the dark corridor. As the pair turned into the hallway, Remus recognized one of them as Regulus. There was concern on his face, but it was hidden, masked by a practiced detachment. The only reason Remus could see it was because he knew what it looked like in a face so wrenchingly familiar to the one in front of him.

“Have you seen my brother today?” Regulus asked the other boy, his steady voice remote and frigid, but if Remus was right, there was a stitch of worry threaded through it.

The blonde boy shrugged. “I saw him leave his room earlier. Said he wasn’t feeling well and was going out for some fresh air.” The trouble in Regulus’ expression deepened, but only for a split second before it was hastily obscured again by polished indifference. As they disappeared inside a room up the hall, Remus slinked back into the labyrinth, moving through corridors like he had the plans laid out before him. He knew exactly where Sirius was hiding.

“You know, when I suggested this, I meant for us to go together,” Remus called out to where Sirius sat on the ledge of the Astronomy Tower, one leg dangling dangerously into open air, the other tucked tightly within his grasp. His face was turned from Remus, cigarette smoke coiling into view from above Sirius’ long, dark hair that looked more disheveled than it should.

Sirius didn’t turn. “Remus,” he sighed deeply, his voice sounding frustrated. “You know this isn’t going to work.” He settled his chin onto the top of his knee, at least giving Remus a glimpse of his profile. The dark circles under his eyes made Remus regret sneaking into his bedroom last night, rather than letting Sirius get some rest. There was a cigarette dangling almost forgotten between his lips. They were curved down into listlessness.

Cautiously, Remus moved in, settling next to Sirius on the ledge, letting both of his feet hang below the ledge. With a thoughtful expression, Remus spoke. “I don’t think I care.”

“What?” Sirius finally looked over at him with a wild look of surprise. The cigarette between his teeth tamped down through the sudden clenching of his jaw.

“I don’t care,” Remus repeated with a shrug. “I’ll take what I can get. If you want to just be friends, I can do that. If you want to kiss me only when the need arises, go ahead. I’m willing to take anything, Sirius. Just let me stay with you.” When Remus looked over, Sirius’ eyes were wide, his lips parted so far that the cigarette fell from them, bouncing off the open ledge.

“Moony,” Sirius finally whispered, and Remus was surprised at the tears suddenly pooling along the borders of Sirius’ eyes. Voiceless, Remus moved close, pulling Sirius to his chest.

“I won’t let you do this alone, Pads,” Remus breathed out into his hair. “Whatever you have to do to satisfy your family, I’ll be here. Even if it means marrying someone else.”

“I can’t let you do that,” Sirius mumbled into Remus’ jumper, curling tight fists into the fabric until Remus could feel a breeze sweep underneath the hem. “You would be miserable.”

“So will you. And I can’t let you be miserable alone,” Remus said, closing his eyes and holding Sirius as tightly as their bodies would allow. Quiet sobs pressed from Sirius’ throat.

“Why go through this for me? You’ve known me for two days, Remus,” Sirius reasoned with speech, but it didn’t lessen the hold he had on Remus’ waist.

Remus smiled softly. “In two days, you know me better than anyone else in this castle, better than members of my own House. You’re the only one who knows about the Wolf. I don’t think anyone would’ve kept that secret the way you did. Cared for me the way you did. Jesus, you’ve seen me naked.” A barking laugh echoed out against Remus’ chest, so he continued. “And it’s not just the last two days, Sirius. It’s seven years of watching you from across the room. Seven years of letting you watch me scribble on parchment. Seven years of memorizing the way your voice sounds until I could recognize it in my sleep. Seven years of not knowing.”

There was a weighted pause before Sirius asked, “Not knowing?” With an airy laugh, Remus slipped his hands around Sirius’ face, pulling him back so he could look at him fully. Never had he seen Sirius look so unpolished, so disordered. The face normally so pale and sculpted was reddened and puffy, streaked with tears but still splashed with a careful smile. And Remus wasn’t prepared for the surge of affection it sent into his heart or the truth it sent to his tongue.

“Not knowing that I’d spent the last seven years growing rather fond of you,” he sighed, leaning in so that he could press Sirius’ forehead to his own. “The last two days just proved it.”

It was an oppressive confession – not quite a declaration of love, but the prerequisite for one. Sirius had surely heard that in Remus’ voice because he was quiet for some time. But Remus wouldn’t dare consider retracting it because it was truth. However, he did ready himself to tell Sirius that he didn’t expect anything in return, and he knew Sirius had obligations to his family, and he knew Sirius was getting married, and Remus was happy just being his friend if that was alright with Sirius –and – and – and– his rabid thoughts stopped short when Sirius spoke.

“Maybe tonight … we could go to your room,” Sirius said, his voice hushed. The spike in Remus’ pulse was so high, Remus felt a dizzying rush of blood to the head.

“I’d like that,” Remus replied with an echo of what Sirius had said to him in the beginning, when they were still awkward, when they were still figuring out what the hell they were to each other. With their foreheads still together, Remus watched as the smile grew on Sirius’ face.

With eyes narrowed, Sirius glared at him. “I think you’re cheating.” With a full laugh, Remus fell back onto his pillow, clutching onto his broken ribs in welcomed pain.

“You’re just really terrible at this!” he laughed loudly, and for a moment, it looked as though Sirius meant to shush him, forgetting that they weren’t in his bedroom.

Sneaking into Ravenclaw Tower was entirely too simple, because Ravenclaws didn’t give a shit. Half of them were all introverts and only left their rooms and their books when they were absolutely required to leave (or even less often), and the other half were sneaking people into their own rooms. Hell, Remus’ roommate spent nearly every night in his girlfriend’s dorm, whose roommate spent nearly every night in her girlfriend’s dorm. It was totally fucking lawless.

Sirius was probably safer here than he was in his own room. Though, Remus had to admit, he had gotten quite accustomed to the lull of the Lake – the airiness of Ravenclaw Tower didn’t have the same silence. Still, Remus’ House had plenty of its own benefits.

Whereas Sirius’ House was underneath the Lake, Remus’ House was above it. From Remus’ bedroom window, the entirety of the Hogwarts grounds were within sight – the mist of the Forest, the sparkle of the Lake, the rolling green hills, the mountains in the distance. And with nothing above them, Ravenclaw Tower had the best view of the night sky.

There was a constant enchantment in place, not just in the Common Room, but in Remus’ bedroom, for the ceiling to appear open to the sky above it. Every night a different constellation, a different weather pattern. No two nights ever exactly the same.

Despite the lightness of the Tower, everything within the dorm rooms were formulated to provide comfort and security. The deep blue quilts, patterned with a bronze eagle, were Charmed to carry the favourite scent of the one snuggled within it. The curtains around every four-poster bed automatically Muffled any sound once closed. There was always hot tea and scones for long study sessions, always calming music carrying through each room to promote concentration, always the right amount of heat coming from the hearth, adjusted to individuals.

“Fine,” Sirius grumbled, resorting to glaring again. “Care to make it interesting?” With that look in Sirius’ eyes, with his knees knocking against Remus’ from where they sat across from each other on Remus’ bed, it was almost enough to make Remus say something rash.

“Bring it on, Black,” he recovered, throwing on an arrogant smirk for good measure.

“Whoever loses the next hand,” Sirius began, and Remus held his breath, waiting and hoping and knowing he would be disappointed, “gets tickled to death.” Oh. Oh. This could work.

“Tickled?” Remus scoffed at the hubris in Sirius’ expression. “You must really want me to tickle you to death then, because you have lost every single hand in the last three hours.”

“I guess we’ll see,” Sirius grinned, like he’d already won. Casually, he reached over and took another jammy dodger from the plate that Remus had stolen from someone else’s dorm and popped the whole thing in his mouth at once. Remus narrowed his eyes at him.

“Alright, I’ll let you deal, so you can’t say I cheated,” Remus conceded, handing the deck of cards to Sirius, pretending that he didn’t feel a charge when their fingers touched. How he was going to make it through tickling Sirius (or, God, being tickled) was very unclear.

Through the entire hand, Remus’ heart was in his throat, pounding out and hindering his breath with every beat. Through sheer luck, he had three of a kind. It was unlikely that Sirius had a better hand than that but trying to read Sirius’ expression was like trying to read a mask. He was so good at hiding what he wanted to hide. Usually Remus was the exception to that.

“Let’s see it, Lupin,” Sirius said, and Remus was sure there was innuendo there. With a flick of his wrist, Remus vainly slapped his cards in front of Sirius’ knee, wriggling his fingers in front of him and flashing his eyebrows up to indicate Sirius’ punishment. Instead of a reply, Sirius held up a single finger, lying his cards over the quilt with a flourish. It was a straight flush.

As Remus’ jaw dropped, Sirius wasted no time in lunging across the mattress, toppling Remus over backward, his fingers moving determinedly across Remus’ waist. Cards went flying around them as Sirius straddled Remus’ hips to pin him into place. Remus wriggled to get away, laughing hysterically and trying to capture Sirius’ fingers, rapidly changing their position.

“Pads, please!” Remus shouted, throwing his head back off the edge of the mattress and considering throwing himself (and Sirius, on top of him) off onto the floor.

“This was the agreement, Moony!” Sirius cackled, bending low to get his fingers at more of Remus’ skin, slipping them underneath the hem of his jumper. “Death! Death and glory!”

“I swear to God, I will hex the shit out of you!” Remus bellowed with a throat full of laughter as he tried to turn Sirius’ own punishment against him and tickle him back.

“No, no, no!” Sirius shouted, trying to lean away from Remus’ fingers. “I knew you were a cheater, this is cheating, Moony!” Quickly, Sirius grabbed Remus by the wrists and pinned his hands high above his head with a soft press into the mattress underneath them.

As their fighting ceased, it went quiet. With Sirius leaning so closely to his face, panting heavily with exhilaration and bliss, his hair slipping from where it had been coiled around his wand, his dilated eyes scattering across Remus’ face, Remus did the one thing he knew he wasn’t supposed to do. Impulsively, he tilted his chin forward and claimed Sirius’ lips wholly for his own.

The curse was on his lips sooner than Sirius’ were. He readied the apology, readied the explanation, readied himself to beg for Sirius’ forgiveness, but there were no amount of words that could correct this level of betrayal. He’d told Sirius that he was alright being friends, that he would accept what he was allowed, and then stole something that was forbidden, anyway.

He didn’t get to speak his apology. The explanation died in his throat. Forgiveness was forgotten. Because Sirius slipped his hand around the back of Remus’ neck and pulled him in, breathing into his mouth and kissing him deeply and fully and heedlessly.

After a very long evening of uncertainty, Remus finally knew. They couldn’t just be friends. But that was the furthest thing from Remus’ mind. Because there was seven years of repressed attraction to the boy across the classroom that Remus intended to balance.

“Oh, gods, Remus.” Sirius was moaning his name. He was on top of Remus and he was moaning his name, outloud. With this sanction, Remus lost every last ounce of his sense to the depths of Sirius’ mouth, sliding his hands underneath the hem of Sirius’ untucked shirt and tugging at Sirius’ hips, encouraging him to close the distance between their hips. And he did.

“Jesus, Sirius,” Remus hissed as Sirius rolled his hips against Remus. With Remus’ mouth hanging wide as an invitation for Sirius to bury his tongue within it, Sirius obliged him, and they moaned in synchrony at the crackle of heat that struck between their open mouths.

Before Remus could call his name out again, Sirius tore himself away from Remus, immediately moving to pace around Remus’ bedroom like a caged animal. With fury in his movement, he ripped the wand from his hair and flicked it in his trembling hands, sending out sparks and embers that left scorch marks in the dark blue carpet underneath his bare feet.

“Fuck,” he muttered, burying his face in his hands, wand still sizzling between his fingers. Remus physically flinched at the profanity he’d never before heard come from Sirius’ lips.

“Sirius,” Remus spoke cautiously, wincing with guilt as he moved from the bed. “I’m so sorry, I … I got carried away. I swear I won’t let it happen again.” Cautiously, he placed a hand on Sirius’ shoulder. To his surprise, Sirius didn’t recoil the way Remus expected.

“I will,” Sirius swallowed. “I’ll let it happen again, I know I will.” He turned to face Remus, defeat in his expression. “Because I wanted it to happen, I made sure it would happen.”

“Which is okay, Sirius,” Remus assured him emphatically. “It’s okay to want this. You’re not married yet. You’re not even engaged, really. We can take the time we have left and …”

“And what, Remus?” Sirius barked back. “Do you think I could get married to someone else, someone that dreadful, after I’ve spent all this time with you, as perfect as you are?” 

Remus blushed brightly, but he sidestepped the argument building in his voice, knowing how little that would help the situation. “Then don’t marry her.” Sirius let out a sharp breath.

“You say that like I have a choice in the matter. Like I’m not obligated to do it,” Sirius growled, his voice curling at the back of his throat like a snake poised to strike.

“Fuck your obligations,” Remus grumbled back, not intending to take his frustration out on Sirius, but unable to hide the irritation painting his tone. Sirius shot his gaze to Remus.

“I didn’t ask for these obligations! I don’t want to be the heir to the Black family!” he growled, throwing his head back and driving the heel of his palms into his eye sockets, his fingers into his hairline. “What I want is standing in this bedroom, and I can’t fucking have him.”

“If it makes you feel any better, what you want was also naked in your bed yesterday and you handled that pretty well,” Remus said with a laugh that he hoped would ease the tension.

Raising one hand from his eyes, Sirius glared at him. “You’re not helping.”

“We were friends before, we can be friends again,” Remus shrugged. Sirius sighed loudly.

“No. Not when I know you want the same thing I want.” 

Remus blew out a deliberate breath. “Well, we weren’t friends before,” he said, clenching his teeth and swallowing the bitterness of his words. “We can go back to that. If you want.”

Immediately, it drew Sirius’ rage. “Is that what you want?” Sirius asked, his words snarling out from the back of his throat, clipped and broken as they reached the end of his tongue.

“You know it’s not,” Remus replied, looking at him without suppressing the expression on his face. Couldn’t Sirius see that Remus wanted him more than anything? Even if this was all he could have. It would be hard, near impossible, but he would do anything to keep Sirius close.

“If it were your decision,” Sirius lowered his voice, watching Remus with eyes that looked like they were ready to fill with tears. “If I told you to decide for me, what would you choose?” 

“I think you already got a clear answer to that, Sirius,” Remus sighed, running his hand through the back of his hair, rubbing at the stress knot forming in his spine.

“Yeah,” Sirius whispered, absently biting at the corner of his bottom lip as his attention was drawn to Remus’ mouth. “We already keep so many secrets – can’t we just add one more?”

Remus tried not to visibly respond to that question the way he wished he could. “That’s entirely up to you,” he said, collecting himself so he didn’t influence Sirius’ decision. As Sirius dragged the back of his hand across his face, Remus knew he’d already made it.

“I wouldn’t be able to do it, Moons. It would be useless to try to keep it a secret, because as long as I know I can have you, I won’t want anything else. I would always choose you.”

With a nod, Remus took in a deep breath and let it out again. “Friends, then?” Under the misery in his expression, Sirius nodded, his lips quivering as they formed a thin line.

“Friends,” Sirius agreed, unwillingly. “I have to go.” Before Remus could even sigh, Sirius had slipped out of his bedroom, despite the voices in the hall. With his head in his hands, Remus let himself fall back into his mattress, preparing for another sleepless night.

SIRIUS

This was fine. Alright, so he wasn’t exactly sleeping as well as he had when Remus had been in his bed, and maybe he found that the taste of all food had become rotten and spoiled, and life was also entirely meaningless now that he’d gone two days without talking to Remus or touching Remus or kissing Remus or being anywhere fucking near Remus. But it was fine.

They still shared classes, but they didn’t sit next to each other, not even in History of Magic. They still smiled pleasantly in one another’s direction, but it was dark and forced and full of a longing that would never be fulfilled.  They stayed away from any and all touching.

No more visiting each other’s bedrooms in secret. No more calling each other by their own special pet names. No more trips to the Astronomy Tower to smoke. No more tickle fights to the death that would inevitably end in a tangled heap of limbs and breath and expectation.

It wasn’t fine. It was so fucking not fine. It was absolute, unadulterated suffering, and Sirius wasn’t sure how much more he was willing to take just to satisfy the ungrateful shrew he called his mother. Why was he going through all this pain just to please her, just to pretend like she loved him as much as she loved Regulus? It didn’t matter what he did, he would never win.

He had this argument with himself at least every half-hour. It was starting to drive a hole into his psyche. Ultimately, it came down to his happiness versus his mother’s. And why did his mother’s happiness always come first? Why had he spent his whole life dying to impress her?

The answer was obvious, but not at all clear. He wanted to be loved. But now he couldn’t remember why he wanted to be loved by her, specifically. Maybe he wanted love, in general, and she had been the only one from whom he had never received it. But he didn’t need it now.

He’d already made the decision in his heart. He would choose Remus. He would let his mother disinherit him and disown him and discard him. None of it mattered if he were happy, and he knew he could be happy with Remus. Those two days with Remus had been nothing less.

With the burden of indecision lifted, Sirius found himself floating in the direction of Ravenclaw Tower, his feet light and swift underneath him. Had he known coming to this conclusion would lead to this level of peace, he would’ve made this decision the moment he carried Remus back to his bedroom, the moment he recognized Remus’ face in that first dawn.

Outside of the Slytherin Common Room door, in the stairs that led back toward the Great Hall, Sirius was stopped by a wall of green and black and silver. As he looked up with indifference, he recognized them – Avery and Mulciber, the boys who had tripped Remus in the corridor. They were surrounded by a small gang of other Slytherins, Severus Snape included.  

“Heard something interesting today, Black,” the dark-haired boy with the broad shoulders stated insidiously, a worrying smirk in the corner of his thin lips.

Mulciber spoke. “Turns out those plans you had for Lupin involved you sneaking up to his bedroom the other night.” With a tight clench in his jaw, Sirius swallowed. Shit. Shit.

“What prick told you that?” Sirius asked vaguely, realizing he hadn’t been nearly as careful in the Ravenclaw dorms as he had been in his own. It wasn’t just possible that he’d been seen, he knew he had been, by multiple Ravenclaws. Apparently, they weren’t all Ravenclaws.

“Evan’s shagging a Sixth Year,” Avery pointed over his shoulder to the arrogant, knowing expression on Rosier’s face. “Said he heard some … raised voices and saw you leave Lupin’s bedroom in quite a hurry.” The insinuation on the boy’s face was clear. Fuck.

He had to lie his way out of this. “I went to Lupin’s room to teach him a lesson,” Sirius huffed, not exactly ready to outright deny his non-relationship with Remus. After all, he had taught Remus a rather harsh lesson about underestimating his blind luck in Muggle poker.

“Show us your Mark, Black,” Severus demanded from the back. Sirius stiffened.

“I don’t have to prove myself to you sorry bastards,” he scoffed as the group pressed forward, trapping him in the corner beyond the Common Room door.

“Hold him down,” Avery commanded. Before Sirius could flinch, the boys were on him, one hand strong under his chin, forcing his face to the ceiling, several more pinning his arms to the wall behind him, still others tearing at the cufflinks of the shirt underneath his robes.

At that point, Sirius didn’t even bother fighting, didn’t bother calling for help. There was no help for him in this House, not when he didn’t carry the Mark. It was only a matter of moments before they found his bare arm, void of ink and Dark Magic.

The silver serpent cufflinks that Regulus had gotten for him on his last birthday clattered to the stone floor. The seams of the shirt that his mother insisted he could only wear if it were custom-tailored to flatter his inherited frame popped and snapped. Sirius blinked back the angry, hot tears threatening to spill over his cheeks. It would only make this worse if he cried.

“I fucking knew it,” Avery hissed, holding Sirius’ naked arm out for the group to see, amid the grumbling and hostility. He felt someone scrape roughly down the scar on his skin.

“I bet he did this to himself so the Mark wouldn’t take,” Mulciber scoffed, inciting a chorus of riotous and sneering laughs all around him. There was only one way this was going.

“After the hell you gave us the other day,” Avery said, pulling Sirius’ face down so he could look him in this eye, his fingernails digging sharply into the dimples in Sirius’ cheeks. “You can bet you’re not going to be getting out of this without a few new scars.” As he felt the swarm of hands pull away from him, Sirius closed his eyes, breathing in sharply and bracing silently, summoning a memory of Remus, the one where he had called Sirius by name for the first time with awe in his expression. Just before the first punch smashed into his jaw, Sirius smiled.

At some point in the night, Sirius woke from the buzzing in his pounded ears, from the jarring pain of moving in his sleep to his left side, where there were likely a few broken ribs from the polished toes of expensive wingtips. There was blood on his pillow. It was matted in his hair.

As he struggled to sit up, he saw the edge of his door creep open and the panic still swirling in his gut surged into his throat. In his pain and delirium, he’d forgotten to lock his bedroom door. Visions of angry Slytherins with their wands raised flashed into his mind.

Instead, Remus’ concerned face appeared beyond the door as he slipped into the room, shutting (and locking) the door firmly behind him. When he saw that Sirius was awake, that Sirius was sitting up, he moved quickly to his side, sliding to his knees next to Sirius’ bed.

“Oh, Sirius,” he breathed out, delicately slipping his fingers around Sirius’ ears and turning Sirius’ battered face in his hands. “What the fuck did they do to you?”

“How are you here?” Sirius asked in a small, distracted voice, his head still swimming enough that he wasn’t sure he wasn’t hallucinating Remus out of his intense desire to see him.

“Evan Rosier is telling everyone he saw you leaving my dorm,” Remus said, screwing his eyes tightly closed, his hands trembling lightly over where he held Sirius. “I came as soon as I heard it myself. I knew they would retaliate somehow. I was hoping it wouldn’t be this bad.”

His fingers slipped away from Sirius’ skin as he reached for the wand in his back pocket, but Sirius quickly reached out to take one hand, desperate not to lose his touch. With a woeful glance and a bolstered grip, Remus raised his wand under Sirius’ bruised chin and whispered a healing spell. It felt cool, like river water. A grateful sigh slipped from Sirius’ bruised lips.

“I’m glad you’re here, Moony,” Sirius said, reveling in speaking that name.

“Why haven’t you cast any healing spells on yourself yet?” Remus asked, strain in his voice and a tremor in his fingers from where they gripped tightly onto Sirius’ hand. The movement of the hand that held his wand was erratic and hurried, as if he were trying to make up for the lost time that Sirius had wasted by not performing these spells himself.

He ignored Remus’ question of healing spells. It wasn’t important. Besides, Remus would only worry over the fact that Sirius had rapidly lost consciousness after stumbling back into his room and out of his robes. He wasn’t even sure how long had passed since he’d fallen into bed.

Not to mention, there was still such a dense fog in his head – he couldn’t be sure this was really Remus and not just a fever dream he’d invented to distract himself from the pain. If this was a dream, he didn’t want to waste time talking about his injuries. He needed to act.

“I was on my way to see you,” Sirius said quickly, feeling like his words were slurring through the swelling in his face. “I made an important decision and I needed to tell you.”

A wary smile finally appeared on Remus’ face. “What decision was that?”

“That we should be together, my mother be damned,” Sirius confessed calmly. The short breath that moved from Remus’ mouth drew Sirius’ attention to the tenderness and elation in Remus’ expression, his lips parted slightly in surprise. “I was hoping you’d make that face.”

“Sirius,” Remus said in a heavy exhale as Sirius let the tension in his shoulders release, falling back into his pillow, and Remus was quick to facilitate the movement. “Are you sure?”

“Even if I wasn’t sure – and I’m pretty fucking sure –” A blush swept through Remus’ cheeks as Sirius swore. “The decision’s been made for me, Moony,” he reasoned, trying to keep his eyes open so he could watch the changes in Remus’ face. “We’re not a secret anymore.”

Moving from the side of the bed, Remus disappeared into the bathroom, emerging with a wet cloth in his hands. Again, he knelt at the side of the bed as he cleaned Sirius’ face with affection and care, pushing his hair up over the pillow so he could wash the matted blood from Sirius’ hair. “This wasn’t how I wanted this to happen,” he sighed deeply. Suddenly, Sirius laughed madly, though he winced at the pain caused by the stretch of his cheeks.

“Ideally, my face wouldn’t have been bashed to bits when I told you this, because I planned to spend the whole night kissing you,” Sirius groaned in frustration and the sentiment was mirrored in Remus’ expression. “At this point, I’ll settle for a forehead kiss.” Without a moment’s pause, Remus climbed into the bed and dusted his lips over the unbroken, unbruised skin on the side of Sirius’ forehead, the warm, wet cloth still softening the dried blood in his hair.

“Maybe I can just kiss the pieces that aren’t broken,” Remus whispered, acting as he promised, moving his lips to places of Sirius’ face untouched by bruising or bleeding or cuts.

The eyelid of his right eye (the left was nearly swollen shut), the tip of his nose (but not the bridge, which was probably broken), the corner of his jaw underneath his right ear (though the sound of his lips against it was rather muffled from the hearing loss on that side).  

The rag in Sirius’ hair, now significantly cooled, fell from Remus’ fingers as his touch slipped down Sirius’ face, down his swollen jaw, along his neck. The caution in the stroke of his hand was steadily giving way to urgency and longing, his kisses becoming open and languid.

“This side of my mouth is intact,” Sirius smiled with his eyes, tapping his finger at the unsplit corner of his lips. With a sweetened grin, Remus obliged, lingering a bit longer, until Sirius let his lips part just a bit, pulling Remus in a little bit further, his hand on Remus’ jaw.

“Sirius,” Remus spoke onto his lips with warning, but didn’t pull away. As Remus stretched out next to him, his hip pressing sharply against Sirius’ hip, an electric current ran down Sirius’ core and he twisted his body, pulling Remus closer, knowing where that current was going to take residence. Remus leaned into him further. “You’re making it hard for me to stop.”

“Then don’t stop,” Sirius hummed, no longer aware of the pain as he opened his mouth wide to draw Remus’ tongue into it, quite successfully. “I sure as hell don’t want you to stop.”

“It’s just because it’s late and it’s dark and we’re alone and you’re delirious,” Remus rambled his dissent, pushing himself up so that he was hovering over Sirius. “Come morning, you’ll be in considerably more pain and you’ll regret letting me kiss you.”

At the sight of Remus looking down at him with that expression in his eyes, of a want that had been pushed so near to the edge that it meant to devour them both, Sirius swallowed. His eyes focused so heavily on Remus’ mouth as he spoke that he didn’t realize he’d brought his hand up to Remus’ face again until his fingers were already ghosting over Remus’ lips.  

“I strongly disagree,” Sirius exhaled sharply, the dark tone of his voice and the dedicated attention of his eyes giving away his intention as Remus pursed his lips to Sirius’ fingertips.

“I think we’re both just overstimulated.” Remus was only half-arguing, speaking extraordinarily slowly as Sirius dragged his thumb down Remus’ bottom lip. A dry swallow scraped down Sirius’ throat as Remus took his thumb into his mouth, sucking softly.

“There’s always so much tension between us, Remus,” Sirius admitted, mesmerized by the way Remus swirled his tongue against the pad of his thumb, tucked away inside his lips. “I wonder if we just … got it out of the way,” he continued, his fingers moving down Remus’ throat, to the open collar of Remus’ shirt, Sirius’ tie hanging loosely from his neck. An eager breath fluttered wildly from Remus’ lips. “Maybe we wouldn’t feel so … suffocated by it.”

To his surprise, Remus gently pushed Sirius flat onto his back, straddling his hips and giving Sirius a clear impression of what he wanted. “We could find out,” he breathed out, his voice hollow, pulled deep from the void of his chest, straining for adequate breath.

“We should at least try.” His breaths were coming in so short now as he brought both hands up to Remus’ shirt, unbuttoning it to the hem and letting his hands slip into the space.

“Padfoot,” Remus called out, timidly moving his hips against Sirius, sending waves of incitement into his blood until Sirius was panting heavily underneath him. “We shouldn’t do this, not while you’re hurt as badly as you are,” Remus’ words rationalized, but his body disagreed.

“They’ve kept me from you long enough, Moony,” Sirius growled, craning his neck up to pull Remus’ lips into another fitful kiss. His grip slid down Remus’ bare waist to hold him by the hips to give him the added leverage to arch up, grinding into Remus that much heavier.

“Fuck,” Remus whimpered, his hand going over his mouth to keep himself silent, but Sirius shook his head, prying Remus’ hand away from his face and moving it to Sirius’ chest.

“Let them hear you, I don’t give a fuck,” Sirius’ voice rumbled deep in his throat, arousing a feral impatience in Remus’ hands as they ripped at the tie around Sirius’ neck, instantly moving to the buttons of Sirius’ shirt until Sirius’ chest was fully exposed. And Sirius was beginning to notice a trend of Remus’ eagerness spiking when Sirius spoke to him that way.

“I like it when you curse at me. I shouldn’t, but I do,” Remus smirked, parroting the thing Sirius had said to him what felt like a lifetime ago, in this same bed. There was chaos in his vision as his eyes scattered hungrily over all of Sirius’ bare skin that had been hidden for so long.

“Oh, you shouldn’t have told me that, Moony,” Sirius hummed, pushing the unbuttoned shirt from Remus’ shoulders, dumbstruck at the way Remus arched his back to slip the fabric from his skin, at the aching increase in pressure of Remus’ hips as he moved. “Now I’m going to use that against you in the worst possible ways, all the fucking time.”

“That’s exactly why I told you.” The cockiness in Remus’ gaze settled into the darkened, crystallized-honey color within it, and Sirius was left fighting the impatient surge in his gut at the familiar way Remus baited him like this, coaxing Sirius to say the things he wanted to hear.  

“I know what you’re doing,” Sirius crooned, sitting up with only the slightest of attention diverted to the pain left by the bruising in his ribs. “I know what you want me to say.”

There it was, that focused impiety in Remus’ eyes, swirling within the scorched caramel irises that were nearly blown to oblivion by the dilation in his pupils. “Then say it.”

Silently, Sirius parted his lips, placing his open mouth to Remus’ chest, kissing and sucking and biting until Remus let his head fall so far backward that the rest of him followed. Sirius’ mouth was just behind, and he adjusted his legs so he could kneel between Remus’ thighs.

The tirade of Sirius’ mouth was ceaseless, his wet, open mouth moving from the center of Remus’ chest to his ribs to his stomach, where Sirius pressed in deeply. With his teeth biting down softly onto the sharply protruding bone of Remus’ hip, Remus’ fingers went into Sirius’ hair, his grip slowly tightening as Sirius expertly snapped open the button of Remus’ trousers.

Sirius tugged at the zipper, agonizingly slowly, and Remus’ breathing reached a furious pitch as Sirius’ fingers brushed over the swollen skin underneath the fabric. Black boxer-briefs, Sirius realized under widening eyes and expanding chest. His boxer-briefs. The ones Sirius had given him when Remus had been very fucking naked in this same bed, only days ago.

With staggering provocation in his chest, Sirius breathed out, “Gods, Remus, fuckme.”

“Oh, fuck, that’s it,” Remus moaned, throwing his head back in rapture as Sirius spoke the words he’d been waiting to hear. Just watching the depraved way Remus responded to him, just to his voice, just to a few well-placed words and well-weighted breaths, had Sirius driving his face forward, burying his face between Remus’ legs and mouthing heavily at his erect skin.

With a gasping curse that was undoubtedly louder than either of them intended to let it be, but that neither was willing to silence, Remus called out Sirius’ name into the dark. As Sirius’ impatient fingers tucked into the elastic waist of his own boxer-briefs on skin that was no longer foreign, a faint knock echoed through the hardwood of his bedroom door. They froze.

“Shit,” Remus muttered, clapping his hand over his still-open mouth, a trembling breath moving out through the spaces between his fingers. He cast Sirius a nervous glance as Sirius moved soundlessly from the bed, gathering their wands where they had fallen to the carpet.

“Wand ready,” Sirius told Remus, handing him the wand. Remus nodded, clumsily fastening his trousers as he followed Sirius closely to the door. With a backward glance at Remus, Sirius placed his hand on the knob, wand aimed at the seam of the doorframe.

“Sirius?” he heard a familiar voice from beyond the wood. “It’s Reg.”

“Shit,” Sirius hissed, panic in his voice. When he turned to Remus, it was mirrored in the concern on Remus’ face. “Hide. You have to hide,” Sirius whispered, his voice trembling and his hands shaking as he guided Remus to the closet, closing the doors behind him. Quickly, he slipped his wand into his back pocket, not wanting Regulus to know how on edge he was.

“Sirius, I heard about the fight. Open the door,” Regulus called, his voice strained. When Sirius opened the door, there was evident relief in his face at seeing Sirius alive, but the relief was quickly replaced with distress as his eyes scattered from one wound to the next. “Sirius.”

“It’s not as bad as it looks,” Sirius said, reminded of the time when Remus had said the very same thing to him, when Sirius’ hands had been rather low on his stomach.

“Don’t lie to me,” Regulus snapped, breezing in through the open door so he could shut it behind him. His hands went to Sirius’ face, grazing over Sirius’ damaged skin, his eyes shimmering with the threat of tears that Sirius knew he wouldn’t allow to spill over his cheeks.

“They found out that I don’t have the Mark,” Sirius admitted quietly.

A heavy breath seethed through Regulus’ teeth. “You make it sound like they found that out by chance, Sirius. They cornered you ten-to-one and assaulted you to find out.” While Sirius appreciated the concern, he couldn’t quell his frustration at the hypocrisy in Regulus’ outrage.

“Guess you better get used to that now that you’re one of them,” he grumbled, and Regulus let his head fall forward, his hands slipping from Sirius’ face as he moved into the room.

“Are we doing this again? You know why I took the Mark.”

“You did it for her. And she isn’t worth it,” Sirius enunciated, finding himself having to clench his fists at his sides to keep from shouting, digging his fingernails into his palms.

“Don’t you see I’ve spent every moment since plagued with doubt and regret?” Regulus hissed. Sirius softened toward him, but Regulus just rolled his eyes. “It doesn’t matter now.”

“You can still –” Sirius started, but Regulus cut him off.

“They’re already telling everyone you don’t have it,” he said, his voice cutting through the thickness in the air between them like a sharpened blade. “And that’s not the only thing.”

“What –” Again, Regulus interrupted, glancing toward the closet.

“Lupin, get your arse out here,” he demanded in a gruff tone. With a wince, Sirius balled a fist into the hem of the unbuttoned shirt that hung loosely from his shoulders. He didn’t try to delay the inevitable. After all, it was obvious he wasn’t alone in this room.

There were two pairs of shoes at the edge of Sirius’ bed, one much too large to fit Sirius’ narrow feet, and Remus’ discarded shirt still on Sirius’ bed. With a defeated sigh, Remus appeared from the closet, apologetic and half-naked. As Remus moved to stand next to Sirius, they shared a nervous glance that Sirius could feel Regulus analyzing from across the room.

“Regulus, wait,” Sirius tried to explain, not having any idea how he was going to get out of this situation. It was exactly what it looked like. He couldn’t pretend it wasn’t.

“Tell me why you’re here,” Regulus spoke to Remus, point-blank and expressionless.

With a deep breath, Remus held his hands to his sides, gesturing to the fact that he was standing in Sirius’ bedroom with half of his clothes removed. “I’ll give you one guess.”

“I thought as much,” Regulus nodded, pressing his lips into a thin line and letting his gaze drift toward the wall, his eyebrows furrowed deeply as it often did when he was calculating his next move. “Avery is telling our whole House that you’re shagging a queer mudblood.”

“Reg!” Sirius blushed, looking quickly over to Remus, who was not looking as offended about that comment as Sirius thought he should. In fact, he looked almost amused by it.

“He’s not,” Remus argued, but there was an unusual smirk on his face. “But not from lack of effort on the part of the queer mudblood.” His voice was carefree as he ridiculed the slurs and it gave Sirius the confidence to admit the thing he’d been so careful to hide from his brother.  

“Or mine,” Sirius interjected, brazenly taking Remus by the hand, to which Remus responded with surprise and wonder, watching Sirius with admiration in his gaze.  

Regulus held up his hands, but Sirius could see him eyeing their joined grasp. “His words, I was only repeating it verbatim. I’m sorry, Remus,” he said, looking softly toward Remus, and Remus cast a hopeful but uncertain glance in Sirius’ direction at Regulus’ use of his first name.

“Why are you here, Reg?” Sirius snapped. “Came to get proof of my indiscretion to report back to Mother?” The hardened demeanor that Regulus constantly carried with him with was suddenly gone, replaced in full by caution and concern. Sirius startled at his shoulders laxing.

“Sirius,” he said with a short sigh. “When are you going to let me prove to you that I’m no longer on her side? I haven’t been for a while. Not since she forced me to take this,” he said, yanking at the sleeve on his left arm to show the Dark Mark. Sirius instinctively looked away.

“I thought … I thought you took it willingly,” Sirius stammered in a broken voice, his grip tightening on Remus’ hand. In response, Remus moved closer, adding his other hand and pulling them against his chest, placing the knuckle of Sirius’ thumb against his lips and kissing softly.

Unless Sirius was mistaken, Regulus watched Remus’ motion with what looked like sentiment in his face, but it was removed as soon as he was aware it was visible. As he spoke, Sirius could hear the fragility in his voice, so different than his usual rehearsed composure.

“I told you I did because I didn’t want you to feel guilty,” Regulus said, clenching his teeth. “And you shouldn’t. I could’ve refused the Mark. If I were as strong as you.”

“Don’t give me that bullshit, Regulus!” Sirius exploded, releasing Remus’ hand and lunging across the room at his brother. By the look on his face, it seemed Regulus thought Sirius meant to hit him. Instead, he pulled him into his arms. “You’re stronger than I have ever been.”

A choked sob was stifled from Regulus’ throat and he struggled to clear it. “You’re choosing happiness, Sirius. There is nothing stronger than that.” Sirius gripped him tighter, feeling the unexpected hold of Regulus’ hands in return. “Which is why I’m here to warn you.”

“Warn me?” Sirius asked, pulling back to look him in the face. Reluctantly, Regulus let go, smoothing out the wrinkles in his pressed shirt, which left a brief smile on Sirius’ face.  

“I believe Severus sent an anonymous Owl to Mother regarding your … behavior,” he said, swallowing hard. Sirius felt himself go pale. “She’s coming to collect you. Tonight.”

“Sirius,” Remus said, stepping up behind him to put a supportive hand on his back. Sirius let out a breath, shaking his head and talking himself down from the blinding panic in his brain.

“Lying to Mother is like breathing, Reg,” Sirius laughed, but even to himself, it sounded forced and unnatural. The look on Regulus’ face told him the same. “I’ll be fine.”

There was a loud crack that echoed from the Common Room and sent a jolt of terror down Sirius’ spine. Even Regulus looked shaken by it, his silver eyes going wide as the sharp clack of expensive high heels on cobblestone grew ever closer with every moment that passed.

“That’ll be her. Slughorn will have altered the wards to allow her to Apparate in directly,” Regulus said as he shoved Remus back in the direction of the closet. Before he could close the door, Remus shot out and took Sirius by the face, kissing him fiercely for only a moment.

“Come back to me, Padfoot,” he whispered into Sirius’ lips. Sirius returned a delicate kiss.

“I promise, Moony.” As the doorknob rattled, Remus slipped into the closet, silently closing the door just as Sirius’ bedroom door opened. Sirius took a breath. “Hullo, Mother.”

REMUS

“You can come out now,” Remus heard Regulus’ voice say after he heard Sirius and his mother leave. She hadn’t said a single word to either of them. Cautiously, Remus peered through a crack in the door just in time to see Regulus drag the back of his hand over his glistening eyes.

“Tell me the truth,” Remus said, taking a rather deep breath, knowing he likely wasn’t going to want to hear the answer to the question he was about to ask. “Will he be alright?”

There was silence between them for a very long time. Any attempts Remus made to read Regulus’ expression were in vain as he’d already reinforced the imperturbable mask that he constantly wore to protect himself. Still, there was the faintest crack in that mask, just behind the swirling silver in his eyes, so like Sirius’ and yet, so vastly different.

“I don’t know,” Regulus replied, in a shuddering voice, his exterior crumbling the longer he was allowed to let it. “I’m not sure what she’s planning to do. She doesn’t tell me much anymore. Not since I took the Mark. I think she suspected that I took it for Sirius.”

“For Sirius?” Remus clarified in confusion.

Regulus took a breath. “He did everything right. Everything perfect. Everything but one thing and she made his life hell for that one thing.” Under a sigh, Regulus let his hands drag down over his face. “I thought if I could take his place for that one thing, maybe she would start pushing me to be the perfect son instead. That maybe she would let Sirius live, for once.”

“Regulus,” Remus said in a delicate tone, but Regulus shook his head.

“I just wanted to pay him back for all the times he’s done the same for me. All the times he made sure to draw all her attention and all her expectation so I could be free from her,” he said, pushing through the hair that was so much like Sirius’, just in shorter waves. “Sirius has saved my life more times than he will ever admit, and I wanted to return the favor. Just once.”

As an excuse to move, Remus began gathering his things. As he slipped the shirt over his shoulders, he caught the way Regulus looked strangely at the Slytherin tie that hung down from his throat. With fondness, he thumbed at the silk fabric, remembering the night Sirius had given him that tie, the night after Sirius had saved him, the night he realized his fondness for Sirius.

“He’s saved my life, too,” Remus said, trying to explain to Sirius’ younger brother why they had become this strange thing. “I won’t tell you how, but I would’ve been dead without him. He carried me into this room allalone, over his shoulders, and brought me back to life.”

There was a surprisingly warm smile on Regulus’ face. “Yeah, that sounds like Sirius, alright,” he replied quietly. “I’m not surprised you fell in love with him after that.” At first, Remus thought to argue, for image sake, because he was so used to pretending, because he didn’t even know how Regulus knew the way he felt when he had barely been able to define it himself.

“Actually,” he finally said with a smile that gave away the truth of his confession before his words were able. “I think I was in love with him long before that.” The smile on Regulus’ face grew as he unexpectedly crossed the room and pulled Remus into a hug. Remus’ eyes widened.

“I’m trusting you to take care of him, Remus,” Regulus spoke under his breath, his arms tightening gently around Remus’ neck. With a cocky grin, Remus replied.

“Even a queer mudblood like me?” Regulus laughed loudly as he pulled away and Remus had never seen a blush on Regulus’ porcelain face, but it was like watching him come to life.

“I mean, it’s not even a good insult, is it?” Regulus made a derisive face as Remus slipped on his shoes. “You’re halfblood. Totally different than Muggle-born.” A look of surprise crossed over Remus’ expression – apparently Regulus knew enough about him to know his actual blood status. “Not that a Death Eater would care about that, they throw that word around like it’s a seasoning.” He huffed and Remus remarked at how strikingly similar he was to Sirius.  

“They really need to work on their creativity,” Remus chuckled.

“Honestly!” Regulus’ laugh was high and bright. “They’re calling Sirius queer like that’s supposed to hurt his feelings.” He looked pointedly at Remus. “Listen, I’ve known for quite some time that Sirius is about as straight as Gillyweed. Queer is a compliment to Sirius.”

As they laughed together, it was almost like laughing with Sirius. But, despite the glimpse Remus got into the real Regulus, ultimately, he reverted back to cynicism and distance. As Remus finished buttoning his shirt, Regulus stood with his hand on Sirius’ doorknob.

“If I’m allowed to keep him,” Remus said. “I’ll keep him forever. And I’ll keep him safe.”

“Then I guess I better make sure you’re allowed to keep him,” Regulus said, smiling once more before plastering over every miniscule crack in the mask he wore in public. “I don’t know how you’ve been sneaking in and out of our House, but you’d better make sure you’re not seen.”

Remus nodded as Regulus opened the door. Before he could make it far, Remus caught him by the shirtsleeve. “If you hear anything … about Sirius …” This time, Regulus nodded.

“I’ll find a way to let you know.” With that, he slipped from Sirius’ bedroom and down the main hallway, empty and deserted. Remus darted underneath the Lake and disappeared.

Sirius had gone missing. The day after his mother had come to take him home, he’d sent an Owl to Regulus to ensure him that he was fine, that everything was fine. As Regulus had relayed the message to Remus, tucked away in an empty classroom to avoid speculating eyes, Regulus had mentioned that Sirius had used a particular phrase in his letter, a code that they had absently developed as children to comfort each other after things had gone very wrong.

Their uncle Alphard had given them a portable record player that they kept hidden in Sirius’ room. He’d given them only one record, Astral Weeks by Van Morrison. They listened to it so often, surrounded by the dust underneath Sirius’ bed, that the audio became fuzzy and scratchy, and they kept listening anyway. Sweet Thing was Sirius’ favourite song.

As Regulus recounted the memory to Remus, his composure wavered, he struggled to speak in his usual even tone. When their mother had given Sirius a black eye with the jagged edge of her emerald ring and Regulus would crawl into Sirius’ bed to cry, Sirius would smile and hold Regulus to his chest and sing. Someday they would escape Grimmauld Place, he’d say, telling him that they would not remember that they even felt the pain, that they would walk and talk in gardens all misty and wet with rain, and they would never, never, never grow so old again.

Regulus cried as he told the story, his worry for Sirius palpable in the air, and Remus had taken the fragile boy in his arms, then. They had stood together for a long time, Regulus sobbing into Remus’ chest and Remus letting tears roll unhindered down into Regulus’ dark hair.

It was that phrase, Regulus had said, that Sirius had said in his letter. ‘I will not remember that I even felt the pain,’ the same phrase that Sirius had whispered to Regulus every time he mysteriously broke his nose or went to bed without dinner or was forced to sleep in the attic.

But that letter had been several days ago. Every Owl that Regulus sent back returned with no reply. So, it wasn’t fair to say that he was missing. They knew exactly where he was, they just didn’t know what was happening to him, or when he would return, or what they could do.

The rumors were flying at school. By then, everyone knew Sirius wasn’t a Death Eater, that he had never taken the Mark. Thanks to Evan Rosier, they all also knew that Sirius was somehow involved with Remus (some didn’t believe the idea that the two had been in a romantic relationship, some were heavily exaggerating the extent of said relationship).

Every person he passed in the corridors gave him a strange look – some disgust, some confusion, some pity. He heard the whispers all around him, wondering how a disfigured halfblood like Remus Lupin could snag a perfect pureblood like Sirius Black, or discussing why Remus would get involved with a suspected Death Eater, or snickering over which one of them was the top and which one was the bottom. Eventually, he stopped blushing about that one.

There was also talk of Sirius being disinherited and disowned, rumors that his mother was going to place him under Imperius in order to get him to take the Mark, suspicions that this was all an elaborate plot for Sirius to infiltrate the Resistance as an undercover Death Eater.

One last message came that morning for Regulus, during breakfast in the Great Hall. As Regulus had read it, Remus watched him closely, struggling to see any emotion at all in Regulus’ professional placidity. He had only one distinguishable tell – he looked straight up at Remus.

They had met after breakfast in that same classroom as Regulus handed over the letter with trembling hands. It read, ‘I have seen the error of my ways and have realized how foolish I was to refuse such an enigmatic leader. In a fortnight, I will be taking the Dark Lord’s Mark, after which, I will not be returning to Hogwarts. Tell Remus my decision remains unchanged.’

 Regulus had expressed his apologies but startled at the determination in Remus’ expression that quickly evolved into laughter through tears. Sirius was still in there – they were trying to break him, but he was still breaking through. Because, in their last night together, Sirius had said he’d come to a decision. That they would be together, his mother be damned. From the way he’d worded it, Remus knew. That decision remained unchanged. There was still hope.

For a few minutes, Regulus and Remus discussed their options. Getting to Grimmauld Place would be the hard part – Remus could Apparate once they made it off the grounds of Hogwarts, but he couldn’t Apparate to a place he’d never been, and Regulus had barely started to learn how. They still had a little time before Sirius was going to be forced to take the Mark, so they formed a plan to leave the next evening, in the middle of the night. They were willing to walk to London, if that was what it took to free Sirius from that prison.

In the meantime, the gossip around the school hadn’t diminished in the slightest. With all the speculation happening behind his back about his relationship to Sirius, about how long they’d been keeping it a secret, about where Sirius had disappeared to in the middle of the year, not one person asked him about Sirius directly. That is, until James Potter did.

 They were in History of Magic. Remus was resting his face in his hands and staring at the empty chair where Sirius should’ve been, trying not to think about the torture that he was undoubtedly going through at that moment. A brush against his elbow caused him to look down to see a tightly crumpled wad of parchment sitting precariously on the edge of his desk.

As he unfolded it, rather loudly, he glanced behind him to see James Potter siting in the desk just behind his own, which was unusual, considering Lily Evans was on the opposite side of the room. Weren’t they disgustingly inseparable? James indicated to the page, where he had scrawled, in nearly illegible penmanship, ‘Is he alright?’ A clench went into Remus’ jaw.

A subtle shake of his head sent James falling back against his chair, a heavy breath being pushed out from the depths of his lungs. He sounded worried. But why would someone like James Potter, a Gryffindor, be concerned about Sirius Black? Before Remus could dwell on that reason, he felt another forceful tap against his shoulder. When he turned, an unfurled sheet of parchment filled his field of vision. On it was written ‘I’m coming to your dorm after class.’

“But wait, how were you sneaking into the Dungeons?” James asked, crossing his legs underneath him from where he sat on top of Remus’ roommate’s empty bed.

“I’m not telling you that part,” Remus said, giving James a playful glare to let him know he was not going to be convinced otherwise. James held up his hands, as if in surrender.

Remus had expected this to be much more awkward than it was, but with the volume of speech that poured from James’ mouth, there wasn’t a lot of space left for any awkward silences. Surprisingly, he was also an extremely good listener, which Remus hadn’t been expecting from a Gryffindor. In any case, Remus was grateful to have James there, listening.

There were a few things he specifically hadn’t told James. Of course, he hadn’t mentioned his own lycanthropy, nor did he mention that he’d been in regular contact with Regulus to get the information that he was getting. But, for some reason, he felt such an odd level of comfort around James. It was like being with Sirius. Well, without the sexual tension.

“Fair,” James nodded with a curious grin in Remus’ direction. “You know, I didn’t believe them about you two. I mean … he kept everyone at such a distance. Even his own House.”

“For good reason,” Remus nodded, chewing on his fingernail, a nervous habit he’d developed over the last few days. “He couldn’t risk anyone knowing he didn’t have the Mark.”

“I guess you were worth the risk,” James said under a smile that was so devastatingly kind that Remus couldn’t help but smile in return, despite the anxious acid boiling up into his throat.

“The risk, maybe. The actual consequences, I’m not so sure,” Remus sighed, burying his face into his hands. Without a beat missed, James’ hand was on Remus’ back instantly.

“This isn’t your fault, Remus,” James said, his thumb stroking across Remus’ shoulder blade as he spoke. “He went after what he wanted, and you just happened to be it.”

“I should’ve stopped seeing him,” Remus groaned. “I knew about everything, about his mother, the way she controls him. And I kept sneaking in to see him anyway.”

James let out a soft laugh. “That would be like me trying to stop seeing Lily. I couldn’t do it if I tried, and she would fight me if I did.” With a swallow, Remus nodded, readying his audible agreement, just as a bright light surged in through Remus’ open bedroom window.

“Remus,” he heard an unbearably familiar voice say, but it was so disembodied that Remus knew it couldn’t have come from the mouth to which it belonged. Blinking against the glow, Remus looked up, his eyes adjusting to the light as it ebbed and dimmed and shifted. 

“Remus, is that his …” James began, gripping tightly onto Remus’ shoulder.

“Patronus,” Remus breathed out. An ethereal dog that bore a striking resemblance to Padfoot sat calmly in Remus’ bedroom, watching Remus with unbroken devotion.

As Remus looked closer, he could see all the features that were significantly different from Padfoot’s – fangs that looked too big to fit in his mouth, enormous paws that tapered into claws that were sharper than a German shepherd’s should’ve been, fur that was wild and wiry and willful. It was like looking at a version of Padfoot that had been bitten by the Wolf.

“Remus,” the message started again, the dog holding his mouth open like a conduit for Sirius’ voice, and Remus could hear the exhaustion and defeat in his even tone. “I wish I’d been able to tell you this in person, but I don’t think I’ll see you again after tonight, so this will have to do.” The breath halted in Remus’ lungs as he tried to stave off the ruin he felt in his chest at the thought that he would never see Sirius again. No, don’t say that, he begged silently.

Sirius’ voice continued. “That day you spent in my room after the full moon made me want to spend every day of the rest of my life with you. I think you were the first person I loved, and I never even knew it.” His voice grew distant and diminutive as he whispered.

“Padfoot,” Remus whispered, tears spilling down his cheeks before he even recognized the swelling in his eyes. This sounded like goodbye, it sounded like Sirius was giving in.

“She made me tell Regulus that it would be a fortnight before I took the Mark, but they’re coming tonight.” Sirius’ voice drew in a trembling breath. “And I will die before I let them brand me with their hideous symbol of hatred. So, I’m going to fight, Moony. Though I don’t think I can win.” The grip that James held on Remus’ arm intensified as Remus’ hands went to his face, tears soaking through tightly clamped fingers over his mouth, dripping from his knuckles.

“No, you have to win, Sirius,” Remus whispered into his hands.

“Tell Regulus I love him. Tell him we will walk and talk in gardens all misty and wet with rain. And Remus,” his voice paused as he took a breath. “I’m sorry I was so heavy in your arms.”

“You weren’t,” Remus sniffled. “You never will be.”

“But I am so lucky it was you that found me,” he said through Padfoot’s image, and Remus could hear the tired smile in his detached voice at the nostalgia of his chosen words.

“Trust me, I’m the lucky one,” Remus responded in kind, repeating the things that he and Sirius had said to one another the night they crept into the castle. It went unheard as the Patronus dissipated with something that sounded like a sigh, like a dying breath.

For only a moment, Remus sat still, staring at the spot where Sirius’ Patronus had been, where it had dissolved like ash and light and broken glass. Though the tears hadn’t stopped streaming down his cheeks, Remus stood with resolve in his movement, in his hands, in his heart.

“I’m going to find him,” Remus swallowed. “I’m going to save him.” When James stood next to him, Remus was surprised at the tears he found in the hazel eyes behind square frames.  

“Then go!” James shouted, shoving Remus toward the door. “Go!” As Remus raced down the stairs to the Common Room, he didn’t have a single doubt that James Potter would’ve gone with him, if Remus had asked. But Gryffindors were strength, and Remus needed strategy.

“Regulus!” Remus shouted as he barreled down the stairs to the Dungeons, only halting his movement as he landed heavily against the thick Common Room door. “Regulus!” he screamed at the top of his lungs, beating his fists against the door until they were sore.

This was going to be difficult, but Regulus was smarter than anyone else in his House, next to Sirius, so Remus was sure he would be quick to adapt. The problem would be getting close enough to Regulus with all the other Slytherins standing in his fucking way.

Someone else opened the door, but Remus ignored them, charging into the Common Room despite the protests and attempts to stop him. When Regulus appeared from the hallway to discover the source of the commotion, eyes wide with warning as he saw that it had been Remus screaming his name, Remus raced toward him, shoving him against the glass of one of the towering windows that looked into the Lake. At first, Regulus looked startled, irritated even.

“You son of a bitch!” Remus shouted out loud before moving close to Regulus’ ear to deliver his actual message. “They’re Marking him tonight, we have to go. Now.”

“Shit,” Regulus breathed out under his breath before playing into Remus’ act. “Get the fuck off me, Lupin!” They only had limited time before another Slytherin moved in to help.

As Remus bunched his fists into Regulus’ robes, throwing him dramatically against the glass, he spoke again. “Meet me in front of the Whomping Willow in twenty minutes.” For good measure, Regulus pushed back against Remus, covering up his nod of agreement. “Tell me where he is, Regulus!” Remus shouted theatrically, knowing he had to make this seem believable.

To his relief, Regulus said exactly what he needed to say to keep any of the Death Eaters from thinking that Regulus would ever sympathize with him. “Our family affairs are none of your business, you Muggle halfbreed.” Remus almost smiled at Regulus’ intentional avoidance in using that slur that the Death Eaters seemed to love so much. Halfbreed was a bit easier to hear.

Carefully, Remus laid his forearm across Regulus’ neck, slipping his other hand into Regulus’ and pressing a worn, folded bit of parchment into it. The footsteps of angry Slytherins moved toward him. “There’s a passage under the Lake and a map in your hand,” he whispered quickly before the boys tore him from Regulus. As they dragged him from the Common Room, Remus watched Regulus curl his hand into his sleeve, hiding the paper he held within it. From across the room, their gazes met, and Regulus lowered his head in the slightest of nods.

The Slytherins gave Remus a few blows to the face before tossing him back out onto the stairs that led up to the Great Hall. But Regulus had gotten the message. That was all that mattered. Together, they could Apparate into Grimmauld Place. Together, they could save him.

“I’ve never done this before, you know,” Regulus said, the silver of his eyes darkening in the shadow of the Shrieking Shack. “I could Splinch us both. I could kill us.”

With wariness in his chest, but not a bit of hesitation, Remus had demonstrated the secret of the Whomping Willow, the knob at the base of the tree that slowed her movements, and the passage underneath the grounds that led to the Shack just outside of Hogsmeade. Not once had Regulus asked how Remus knew this secret, why he needed to know this secret.

“Just breathe, Reg,” Remus coached him, holding both hands on Regulus’ shoulders as Regulus did as he was told and sucked in a deep, stuttering breath. “Think about where we’re going, imagine Grimmauld Place. Remember why we’re doing this. Think of nothing else but getting into your house to save your brother.” With another breath, Regulus closed his eyes. 

“For Sirius. For Sirius,” Regulus repeated like a sacred mantra as Remus locked his arm tightly into the crook of Regulus’ elbow. “I’m going home to save my brother.”

“Do it now, Reg,” Remus said in a whisper. He closed his eyes, too.

Suddenly, Remus’ feet were swept out from underneath him, and it felt like he were being pulled in every direction, or maybe it was like being pressed in from every direction, or maybe it was more like being turned inside out, mouth first. And then, his ears popped as he stumbled forward, his feet abruptly catching on carpeting that was now underneath them.

In panic, he looked over to Regulus to find Regulus doing the same. They took a moment studying each other, searching for gaping wounds and spurting blood and organs in the wrong places, but their survey gratefully returned empty, though Regulus did take a moment to lean over and sick up all over the expensive rug at his feet. Still, Regulus had done it – they were safe, Unsplinched, and standing in the formal sitting room of Number Twelve Grimmauld Place.

There was little time for victory. From somewhere above them, an agonizing scream ripped through the air, so violent that it sounded as if was lacerating the flesh of the throat it moved from, so intense that it was strained to the point of shattering, so hollow that the howls echoed through the vast emptiness of the ancient and contemptible house.

There was no mistaking it. Remus would know that contradictory voice anywhere, the voice that bore the unique blend of cynicism and sympathy in such equal parts, the only voice that could, at once, sound raw and raked with nicotine and smoke and ash, but still be as smooth as warm honey. It was Sirius. But his voice had been robbed of its warmth and eloquence.

“The attic,” Regulus said in a quivering voice, moving like a flash up the stairs, and Remus was directly on his heels. As they ascended, Sirius’ ravaging screams grew louder, his voice rupturing and shredding without so much as a single pause for breath until his lungs were void, and even then, Remus could hear the choking gasps of a scream that continued without air to fill it.

Around them, a suffocating weight hindered their movements, but Remus could feel the familiarity in it. It was reminiscent of the colors of his healing spells, the sound of him unlocking secret doors, the hallowed light of his wand in the dark, the warmth of his Transfiguration. This weight was the deluge of Sirius’ magic, spilling out of his body without his consent.

At the door to the attic, with the shards of Sirius’ splintering magic growing thicker and more excruciating, Remus could hear the voice of Sirius’ mother, her shrill voice shouting madly at him from beyond the wall, as if unaffected by the gravity of Sirius’ power surrounding her.

Remus went frightfully still as he recognized what curse she was casting at her oldest son, over and over. Crucio, Crucio, Crucio, Crucio. The dull, devastating thud of her magic was audible as Remus heard it land against its intended target, against Sirius’ bludgeoned body.  

Without a plan, Remus slammed his shoulder against the door, breaking the hinges of the decrepit door and stumbling into the room. His blood lit with fury as he watched another blinding Cruciatus curse strike the boy he loved. His heart swelled with wrath as he saw the tremendous tensing of Sirius’ body as the curse surged through him, teeth clenching until they cracked, fists trembling as blood seeped between his fingers, tears streaking down the dirt and grime that obscured the sharpness of his features. His mouth opened wider than it should as another scream filled his throat, the corners of his mouth splitting from the stretch, but the scream went no further than the tip of his tongue. His cinder eyes blanked white as he lost consciousness, his head falling over the back of the chair into which he’d been restrained.

“Stupefy!” Remus shouted, snapping the wand at his wrist toward Sirius’ mother. Her arm went up to defend, but she had been so focused on torturing her son that Remus had caught her off guard long enough to let the spell land. She went limp and slumped to the floor.

“Sirius!” Regulus cried as he stormed into the room behind Remus and they moved fluidly together, working in rhythm to sever the restraints that bound Sirius to this house.

“Diffindo!” their voices called out in synchrony as Regulus sliced at the rope that held Sirius’ wrists behind his back, while Remus slashed at the tethers around Sirius’ ankles. They held Sirius up together, their arms crossed over one another’s from where they were snaked around Sirius’ waist. Remus tightened his hold underneath Sirius’ ribs. They were more gaunt than ever.

“Accio, Sirius’ wand,” Regulus called, tears dripping from his chin as he supported Sirius’ hanging head against his shoulder. As the rune-carved, ebony wand flew toward them, Remus reached out and captured it, securing it in his back pocket before holding onto Sirius again.

Closing his eyes, Remus focused on their destination, on his determination to keep Sirius safe, on moving them deliberately through space and landing without a Splinch among them. He stole one last glance at Sirius’ face, blood pooling at every corner and along every wrinkle, though he could see no wounds. Under his breath, he chanted take us home, take us home, take us home. With a shrill hum that sounded like rending the air, they Disapparated.

SIRIUS

“Hullo, Mother.” His condescending greeting went without a verbal response, but the condemning expression on his mother’s face said enough. Her silver eyes were coal, darker than they were when she’d caught Sirius flirting with the Muggle boy next door when he was thirteen, darker than they’d been when she caught him crying after she hadn’t shown any pride in his being sorted into Slytherin, darker even than that night when he had refused to take the Mark.

With that sickly black gaze, she moved back down the hallway into the Common Room and Sirius swore he could see scorch marks on the turquoise rug from where she had Apparated in with fury in her feet. She stood just over that spot, extending her elbow for Sirius to take. He could Apparate himself, of course, but she wouldn’t want to risk him getting away, Apparating to somewhere else while the wards were lowered, escaping to a place she would never find him.

With disgust sloshing into his throat, he touched her arm and she Disapparated before he could even move close. It felt as if his arm would tear off, lost somewhere in the rippled space, and maybe that was what his mother wanted. It wasn’t his left arm, after all, and that was the one she needed. There was no doubt in Sirius’ mind that this was the reason she came for him.

Now that everyone knew Sirius had refused the Mark, she couldn’t let the other Death Eaters continue to think she was weak, to think that her son had a will of his own. She would try to force Sirius to take the Mark to repair the damage he had done to their family’s reputation.

As his feet pressed into the lush imperial rug in the sitting room, the movement and the dread proved too much for his gut to manage, and he vomited into the carpet. With a sneer in her lips, his mother snapped her fingers and, immediately, Kreacher appeared to clean it, glaring up at Sirius with much the same expression as the one on his mistress’ terrible face.

Before Sirius could even move, his mother’s sharp fingernails dug into the flesh of his forearm and she twisted his arm upward, behind his back. With a wince, he arched to ease some of the strain he felt pulling in his shoulder. She just pressed in deeper to compensate.

With a shove, she moved Sirius to the stairs, and he obeyed, not even bothering with reluctance or hesitation. There was no way out of this for him. Not yet. He couldn’t dare raise a hand to his mother. At the top of the stairs, she threw him into his room, and he landed against the edge of his bed as he heard her lock his bedroom door behind her. Instinctively, he reached back. His mother had swiped his wand from his pocket while he’d been distracted.

A sigh pushed through his lips as soon as he heard her footsteps retreating from beyond earshot. At least she had locked him in his bedroom. At least he might be able to get a little bit of sleep while she plotted how to tarnish his skin with the brand of bigotry and malice.

Before turning over to sleep, Sirius leaned over the edge of his bed, shuffling around underneath it until his fingers felt the sharp edge of his portable record player. Carefully, he pulled it out and set it on his bedside table, opening it and flicking the hand of the needle.

With all the dust and Dark Magic in this house, it was surprising that the record even still turned. As he placed the needle at a spot somewhere in the middle of the record that he had memorized as the location of the start of his favourite song, he leaned back into his bed, folding his hands underneath his head. Now that the bliss of being so near to Remus had worn off, the pain of his injuries had started to return. He closed his eyes to try to ignore it, focusing instead on the lyrics that took him away from this place. And I will stroll the merry way and jump the hedges first. And I will drink the clear, clean water for to quench my thirst.

Listening to this song while imagining Remus lying next to him in this bed proved to be dangerous with the dizzying levity still rushing through his skull. Before he could admonish himself for using Remus as a distraction, Remus was next to him, his fingers in Sirius’ hair.

“I thought you liked me acting as your distraction,” Remus hummed in an ephemeral voice that sounded like it could vanish as quickly as it had arrived.

“You know I do,” Sirius whispered, unsure if he was actually speaking aloud or if this was all happening in his head. The only difference it made was whether he needed to keep his voice down, to keep his mother from overhearing him madly speak to a delirium illusion.

When Remus’ lips went to his ear, when Sirius realized he could feel the softness of Remus’ kiss, the warmth of his breath, the nibble of Remus’ teeth on his earlobe, that was when he knew. He’d lost consciousness. This was all happening within the confines of a dream.

“You blacked out,” Remus spoke, his fingers ghosting down the curves of Sirius’ throat, and Sirius craned his neck to let him continue, as far and as extensively as he wanted. 

“If it means being here with you, then I’m glad I did,” Sirius said, turning on his side to face Remus, the fingers on his throat pushed deeply into his thick, wavy hair.

“You know you have to wake up from this, don’t you?” Remus moved in to unsettle Sirius’ lips, speaking into them until the words melted away and only his kiss remained.

“I know. I will,” Sirius promised, his hands slipping around Remus’ waist to pull him in closer. “Just not yet,” he whispered, provoking the fervor of Remus’ kiss, of his hands, of his body. Without pretense, Remus gripped the shoulders of Sirius’ shirt and pulled with all his strength, until Sirius was on top of him, nestled deeply between Remus’ spread legs.

“As long as you’re here,” Remus said, his hands sliding down to Sirius’ hips, just to let them slide right back up underneath the hem of his shirt. “We may as well make the most of it.”

“Moony,” Sirius breathed out, just before Remus slipped his tongue between Sirius’ lips.

“But you have to promise me, Sirius Black, promise me right now,” Remus spoke hurriedly, devouring Sirius with deep and frantic kisses. “Promise me that you will make it away from this house. Promise that you will come back to me, no matter what it takes.”

“No matter what it takes,” Sirius repeated as a vow, while Remus’ hands tore at Sirius’ shirt, sending buttons scattering down into his hair, a wild insistence on his face. The sound of his uneven breath was fading out, like the static of Sirius’ well-worn record. Sirius could feel the familiar yet unwelcome chill of a healing spell around his face. No, he pleaded, not now, not yet.

“They’re trying to take you away from me now,” Remus panted, sliding the turbulent touch of his hand down Sirius’ bare chest while he was still able. Sirius responded the only way he could, with a trembling breath and an audible whimper in the shape of Remus’ name.

“I want to stay, I want to stay here with you,” Sirius begged as Remus’ touch grew lighter down his belly, though it only spurred Sirius’ want. With a smile, Remus craned up to kiss him.

“Then come back to me,” he whispered, the ends of his words fading as Sirius woke to find Kreacher standing on the edge of his bed, his knobby hands hovering over Sirius’ head.

“Why even bother?” Sirius grumbled, looking away from the house-elf. “When she finds out I’m not going to do what she wants, she’s only going to repay me with the same wounds.”

Kreacher was strangely silent, the expression on his wrinkled features contracted tightly to disguise whatever intent lied behind them. When he spoke, his voice was hushed, like he was afraid Sirius’ mother would overhear. “If Master Sirius takes their Mark, then Master Regulus’ efforts are being in vain.” At Kreacher’s unusual candor, Sirius furrowed his brows.

“What efforts?” he asked, and Kreacher pressed his thin, pale lips together, as if angry at himself for letting himself divulge this information in the first place.

“Does Master Sirius not know that Master Regulus was taking their Mark in Master Sirius’ stead?” When the breath fell from Sirius’ lungs, Kreacher shook his head, his large, floppy ears brushing against Sirius’ face as he did so. “Kreacher says too much,” he mumbled quickly.

“He took it … for me?” Sirius sighed, mostly to himself, but Kreacher replied anyway.

“Kreacher sees Master Regulus and he is crying. Master Regulus tells Kreacher not to tell his Mistress. Master Regulus tells Kreacher not to tell Master Sirius.”

“And yet, here you are, Kreacher, telling me,” Sirius spat bitterly. “Which means you could’ve told me a lot fucking sooner.” With a rasping grumble, Kreacher argued.

“Kreacher only tells you now, Master Sirius, because now is when it matters,” the house-elf spoke through gritted teeth as he finished the healing spell and climbed from Sirius’ bed.

Sirius took in a breath. “Because I’ve got to fight,” he said, watching Kreacher as he hobbled slowly to Sirius’ bedroom door. “To make sure Regulus didn’t get the Mark for nothing.”

“Master Sirius is right, as ever,” Kreacher acknowledged, lingering for a moment.

“She didn’t send you to heal me,” Sirius said blandly, with realization that shouldn’t have been as painful as it was. “You came on your own to make sure I had the strength to fight it.”

With a gradual, silent nod, Kreacher closed the door behind him, only pausing to speak the words, “Sleep now, Master Sirius,” before Sirius heard the fixtures lock behind him.

Without warning, Sirius felt the effects of a familiar spell that Kreacher had used on him countless times, when his mother had grown weary of him or wanted him out of her way for a little while. The sleep spell took quick work. Sirius didn’t even have enough time to imagine Remus next to him before his head lolled back onto his pillow, his eyes fluttering closed.

His sleep had been dreamless, much to his own disappointment. Several times in the night, he woke – still alone and still in his nightmare of a home.  Desperately, he tried to drown himself in thoughts of Remus, most of them unholy, to at least escape into a dream, but every attempt was more futile than the last. It only riled him with no means of release.

In the morning, his bedroom door was still locked, but there was a shorn bit of parchment with a Quill and a note from his mother at his bedside. There was nothing more in the note than a demand that he write to Regulus and assure him that everything was fine.

The first draft consisted entirely of Sirius writing back ‘fuck you’ and sliding it underneath the crack at the bottom of the door. There was no more pretense between them, his mother had always known where he stood, even if he thinly tried to veil it for her benefit, for the benefit of the family’s image. Once that image was irreparably tarnished, Sirius realized he didn’t give a shit. No, worse than that – he enjoyed the ruin he had brought down on this house.

A response had come a little while later, soaring under the door with a flourishing spell, and Sirius scoffed at it. The minimal effort it would’ve taken for her to come up the stairs and speak with him, and she had refused to do even that, instead relying on her magic to carry out her work for her. Typical of a woman who had outsourced child-rearing to an elderly house-elf.

The note had been spelled to open in Sirius’ hands and, as it did, he realized how far into a corner he’d been backed. If he didn’t write to Regulus, she had said in explicit terms, then something rather dreadful could befall the boy who had been sleeping with her son. Of course, the term she used for Remus was much more offensive, but Sirius refused to acknowledge it.

With his teeth grinding in frustration at his helplessness and a loathing for his own mother, Sirius penned a second letter, saying all the things she wanted him to say, but making sure to write a specific phrase that only Regulus would understand. He spoke of his fight with the other Slytherins, stating he would not remember that he even felt the pain. It was the thing he used to calm Regulus after Sirius had been miserably beaten by his mother, time and again.

As he wrote, he wondered if Remus would see the message, whether he should put something in that Remus would understand, too. But the odds that Regulus shared any of this with Remus seemed unlikely. Regulus was very protective of his family, of his mother.

Still, based on what Kreacher had said the day before, Regulus was protective of Sirius, too. Absently, as Sirius sent the letter back under the door, he wondered how Regulus was dealing with this situation. Was he upset? Was he afraid? Was he as stoic as ever?

All day, Sirius spent locked in his bedroom. It would’ve been easy enough to utter a wandless Unlocking charm, but knowing his mother, he’d probably be electrocuted as soon as he set a finger on the doorknob. And Kreacher certainly wasn’t going to help. Not that he could blame the house-elf, he was only doing as he was ordered. In fact, throughout the day, Sirius kept magically finding scraps of food about his room that hadn’t before been there. In his own way, it seemed that Kreacher was trying to help, in what little ways he was able.

Late in the evening, another letter was slipped underneath the door, but there was no flourish of magic that swept it in, leaving Sirius to wonder why his mother had instructed Kreacher to deliver it to him, instead of distantly sending it herself. As he opened the letter, recognizing Regulus’ handwriting, he began to realize that Kreacher had given it to him in secret.

In the letter, Regulus said nothing of any apparent value – he said he was glad to hear that Sirius was doing well, he hoped Sirius would come to his senses, how their mother was always right. He droned on about classes and Dumbledore’s incompetence and ordinary things that didn’t matter at all. Until he mentioned seeing a girl with rainbow ribbons in her hair.

Yonder come my lady, rainbow ribbons in her hair. Six white horses and a carriage, she’s returning from the fair. Cypress Avenue, it was Regulus’ favourite song from their Van Morrison album. There was something in this letter meant for Sirius. Meant only for Sirius.

“Revelio,” he whispered. His mother may have taken his wand, but even as a Fifth Year, he’d been able to perform this spell wandless. The writing on the letter scrambled, distorted, rearranged, until it held the message that Regulus actually intended to deliver.

I’m relieved to hear she hasn’t killed you yet. Though he wasn’t able to read it, I relayed the contents of your letter to Remus. We’re very close now and, as he has begun to grow on me, I may try to steal him out from (literally) underneath you. I told him the story behind the lyric you quoted, and he cried. I definitely didn’t cry. At all. Don’t embarrass yourself.

As we speak, Remus and I are plotting a heroic rescue. Again, this means spending ample amounts of time together. Consider being jealous. There is a lot of touching. We haven’t quite worked out HOW we’re going to heroically rescue you (it’s still in the development phase) but just know that it will be very dramatic and very romantic and very theatrical (knowing Remus).

Please don’t let this be your last letter. Even if you have to say what she wants you to say to get your message to me, I don’t care. Do whatever you have to do to prevent taking the Mark and, in the same breath, do whatever you have to do to stay alive. If for no other reason, do it for me. And do it for Remus. Because he will undoubtedly murder me if you do not return.

With a smile, Sirius held the parchment to his chest and closed his eyes. Leave it to Regulus to fabricate jealousy as a means for motivation. With one last breath to take in the smell of kindling that accompanied the parchment and the iron of the dried ink, Sirius buried the letter deep under his mattress. Regulus was right. Sirius had to do whatever it took to survive.

With hope in his heart and the thought of Remus plotting his rescue, Sirius drifted off into a dream. In the dream, Remus splintered the front door of this house with a blasting spell that grew into a brilliant, blue flame, and Sirius held his hand as they watched Grimmauld Place burn.

The morning of the third day, his mother forced him to write to Regulus again. Evidently, she was confident in her ability to force Sirius to take the Mark, because she instructed Sirius to inform Regulus that he would be taking the Mark in two weeks. Of course, this was all done through Kreacher, because Sirius’ mother still refused to speak with him directly.

As Sirius refused to write the letter, he absently wondered what she had planned for him in the next two weeks. More starvation, he listed, probably physical torture, nothing new. He’d been through this with her before, many times. He knew all her tricks.

Still, for every minute that Sirius refused her, she had Kreacher hit him with a lashing spell, across Sirius’ naked back. He managed to last thirteen whips until he finally gave in, but he made sure to include a message that Remus would understand. Afterward, Kreacher patched Sirius up with physical bandages, commanded to refrain from performing a single healing spell.

However, he did leave Sirius a rather gratuitous cup of warm, sweetened tea and Sirius took it as an apology, which he accepted, albeit a bit begrudgingly. The tea was so sweet and so warm and so filling that Sirius didn’t notice until the very last drop that his head was beginning to drop and his eyes beginning to hang until he fell face-first into his pillow.

It had been easy to have hope, easy to imagine Remus’ valiant deliverance, easy to not be afraid when Sirius had been locked in his room alone. In the back of his mind, he knew that his mother wouldn’t leave him to his own devices for long, but he had hoped for a bit more rest, a bit more stolen food left for him by Kreacher. It had been days since his last full meal.

What he hadn’t expected was Kreacher turning on him. Had he been leaving Sirius food only to gain his trust, only for this ultimate purpose, only to leave a warm cup of morning tea in his bedroom so full of Sleeping Draught that it rendered him unconscious? Not just unconscious but damn near comatose, as he woke in the afternoon bound to a chair in the attic.

His mother stood in front of him and he ignored her entirely, wriggling his hands against the ropes that kept them straight behind his back. Both ankles were tethered to the legs of the chair and he nearly toppled himself over in trying to free himself. All while his mother watched.

With the attic door open just a crack, Sirius attempted to Summon his wand and the attempt was successful until the wand had to pass his mother. With a wave of her hand, she wordlessly swatted it away, slamming the door as Sirius’ wand clattered down the stairs.

Finally, with a sigh of frustration, he looked up at her, and she moved in quickly to take him by the face, her dark, manicured nails digging into his dimples. With a slow, deliberate raise of her hand, she steadied the tip of her wand against Sirius’ temple. His eyes grew wide.

“Legilimens,” she hissed. Sirius could nearly hear the rattle of her forked tongue.

In his mind flashed the memories of his time at Hogwarts. Being so excited to get sorted into Slytherin, just as his parents wanted, only to find out that they cared very little when it happened because that’s what he’d been expected to do. Practicing spells every night in his First Year, well into the night because he had to do everything perfectly, because he had to be better than the rest of his House, because he had to win approval that was otherwise never given.

As the reel in his mind played back his time at school, he realized all the time he had wasted trying to gain that approval. Time over, he watched the scowl on his mother’s face deepen as he, yet again, proved only to meet expectations, and not ever exceed them, despite his perfect marks, despite his expertise in wandless magic, despite becoming a Prefect. It was like she knew one day he would be tested, like he had been with the Mark, and knew he would fail.

Time moved forward and Sirius saw the evidence of his pining. Long before their first night together, Remus was consistently present in Sirius’ mind. Whenever Remus appeared, Sirius’ attention was solely focused on him, like he was the only soul in existence – in his seat during History of Magic, doodling on the edge of his paper, or in Defense Against the Dark Arts, watching the way he dueled with his whole body, or in Astronomy, noticing the way the scars on his cheeks and across his nose looked silver underneath enchanted starlight.

If not for his mother invading these memories, Sirius would’ve laughed. How long he and Remus had been dancing around each other, admiring each other from a distance and not knowing, becoming close so slowly that the universe had no choice but to intervene.

He could practically feel his mother’s awareness of Remus’ abundant presence in Sirius’ memories, but her hold didn’t tighten until Sirius saw Remus lying bloody on the shores of the Lake. It could’ve been luck, or it could’ve been Sirius’ immense willpower to avoid the memories just prior to that one, but the Wolf and the transformation gratefully stayed hidden away.

As they watched the memory of Sirius hoisting Remus over his shoulders and carrying him through the forgotten tunnels underneath the Lake, Sirius could feel the rage in his mother’s magic. It was so familiar to him that he could taste the oft accompanying blood in his mouth.

His mother’s magic swirled darkly within the memory, winding about Remus’ naked frame like an incorporeal, black snake until the image of Remus began to fade. She was trying to remove him from Sirius’ mind. His memory, his influence, his love. Sirius wouldn’t allow it.

“No!” he shouted, though he couldn’t tell if he voiced it out loud. “You won’t take him from me,” he growled, driving his own magic forward in a wild flame, red and gold, deep and breathing, that flickered with his need for warmth and acceptance and affection.

His mother didn’t speak, but increased the force of her magic, coiling around Remus’ ankle, or the memory of it, as if to tear him from Sirius’ life, forcibly. With a defiant and desperate howl, Sirius surged his magic forward, scorching through the memory until there was no darkness left for her shadows to lurk within, until he incinerated her very presence there.

With a start, Sirius flew back into the chair he was fastened into, his mother stumbling in her place on the hardwood floor. As he glanced outside, he realized more time had passed than he realized – the approaching darkness outside was nearly as great as the darkness in this house.

The fury on his mother’s face was more aggressive than he’d ever seen it. Her silver eyes were lit white with it, her fingers curled so tightly around her wand that her fingernails left indentations in her reddened palm. With a snarl on her ruby red lips, she spoke to Sirius for the first time in days, in weeks, maybe in years, and it sounded nothing like Sirius remembered.

“I will break you of him,” she threatened. “You will willingly take the Mark tonight, or I will brand it on your corpse and pretend you gave your life in His service,” she spat, moving down the stairs with her robe sweeping out behind her. Sirius was left to shiver in the blustery chill of the attic, in the iciness of his mother’s threat, in the void where her love should’ve been.

She had tried to slam the door behind her, but it was a very old house with very old woodwork and the door bounced back open, just a smidge, just enough for Sirius to Summon his wand, successfully this time. With the sudden threat of the Mark and listening to his mother say how she would lie about his death, Sirius’ priority was making sure Remus knew the truth.

Despite the shivering in his skin and the terror in his heart, Sirius closed his eyes and focused instead on Remus. On the callouses of Remus’ hands as they held Sirius’ own, on the softness of Remus’ lips and the blurring of the scars that crossed them, on the fondness in Remus’ voice as he had said Sirius’ name for the first time. With Remus in mind, Sirius spoke.

“Expecto Patronum,” he whispered, clutching tightly onto his wand. As he opened his eyes, he saw a ghostly Padfoot seated courteously in front of him, but he couldn’t help but notice the features that his Patronus had borrowed from the Wolf – the sharpness of his teeth, the length of his claws, the wiriness of his fur. Unexpectedly, Sirius smiled.

“Remus,” he spoke, hoping he was doing this right, having never sent a message through Patronus. Hell, he’d never even successfully cast a Patronus before now. “I wish I’d been able to tell you this in person, but I don’t think I’ll see you again after tonight, so this will have to do.”

The feral Padfoot sat still in his spot, as if waiting for Sirius to finish the message, so Sirius continued. “That day you spent in my room after the full moon made me want to spend every day of the rest of my life with you. I think you were the first person I loved, and I never even knew it.” He thought back to all the times he’d seen Remus in his memories – not even anything of any importance, just Remus being himself, and Sirius watching with admiration.

He kept going. “She made me tell Regulus that it would be a fortnight before I took the Mark, but they’re coming tonight.” He paused. “And I will die before I let them brand me with their hideous symbol of hatred. So, I’m going to fight, Moony. Though … I don’t think I can win.”

Tears had begun to sting his eyes, the fist around his wand clenching so tightly, he could feel blood seeping through his fingers. “Tell Regulus I love him. Tell him we will walk and talk in gardens all misty and wet with rain. And Remus,” he took in a shaking breath, watching it puff out as vapor in the cold atmosphere. “I’m sorry I was so heavy in your arms. But I am so lucky it was you that found me,” he smiled, thinking back to that night, sneaking back into the castle with Remus’ arm around his neck, speaking with freedom, and smiling at each other unabashedly.

With a nod, Sirius concluded his message and the dog blinked, shrinking up into a ball of light that went soaring out into the sunset, leaving Sirius only to hope that his message would be received. In the moment the light vanished off the edge of the horizon, his mother stormed back into the attic, and Sirius straightened his wand again, his hand quivering with exhaustion.

“Diffindo!” he shouted, trying to cut at the ropes that tied him, or at her, but the slash swept across the room, splintering the wood along the walls of the attic. His mother looked at him with disgust and Disarmed him without even uttering the spell, tossing his wand back out the door, further down the stairs. She shut the door again, for good measure.

“I’m being forgiving, allowing you to reconsider,” she spoke with practiced composure, but it was obvious that Sirius’ disobedience was testing that greatly.

“I have reconsidered,” Sirius stated plainly, and she finally looked directly at him. He wished her eyes weren’t the same color as the ones he had to look at in the mirror. “I’ve really reconsidered my pride in my Sorting. Really wishing I’d been sorted into Ravenclaw.”

A snarl went into her lips. “Careful where you step.”

“Slytherin is full of blood traitors and cocksuckers,” Sirius insulted, leaning as far forward in his chair as the ropes would allow. “Guess that’s why I fit in so well for so long.”

“Don’t speak another word!” his mother shrieked.

 “I get that you were trying to force me to marry Bella to hide it, but I’m gay as shit,” he emphasized, an arrogant smile on his face. “And already in love with a boy. Which I guess you figured out when you invaded my memories and saw how often he’s present in them.”

“I told you I would break you of him and I will,” his mother growled and threatened.

Sirius laughed loudly, scoffing and derisive. “Try if you like. I am already his.” With a dangerous narrowing of her eyes, his mother leaned in, nearly smiling, as if she knew how.

“Then I will find him and break him of you,” she sneered. Calmly, Sirius smiled.

“Find him?” he cackled. “He was hiding in the closet of my bedroom the other night, not three meters from where you stood.” His grin went sinister. “Half-naked, if I’m being honest.”

His mother’s expression went dark. “You will pay dearly for your vile behavior.”

“Oh, it hadn’t gotten vile yet,” Sirius hummed. “But it was going to. The things I want him to do to me …” Sirius paused to take a deep, unsteady breath. “Vile is a good word for that.”

“Silence,” she spoke through clenched teeth, her hands trembling furiously at her sides.

“Honestly, if you hadn’t come when you did, I sure as hell would have.”

With a violent screech, his mother leaned in. “Crucio,” she hissed through clenched teeth, her wand hesitating for only a moment until she thrust obedience into it.

The intangible spell struck Sirius in the chest with magnitude. From where Sirius had braced for the impact of the spell, the tightening of his muscles spread to every inch of his trembling frame as the pain became more and more unbearable. He could feel the scrape of a scream moving up his throat but couldn’t hear himself make it over the deafening burst of his eardrums and the fluid that he felt pour from his ears and trickle down his neck.

It was like an electric current had been laid into the marrow of his bones and with every recast of the curse from his mother’s wand, he felt that energy surge, burning caustic holes in the sinew of his muscles on its way out, drilling through the vessels that carried his blood, and thinning that blood until it was seeping from his pores and settling into the lines on his face.

In the distance, there was a scream, but it was so mangled and gruesome that Sirius was glad for the hearing loss he’d suffered. Until he realized it was his voice, until he reconciled it to the clawing in his throat. It was like the scream was a part of the curse and not an effect of it, because they moved in the same wavelength, they destroyed the same tissue in the same body.

He couldn’t stop it, he couldn’t stop from screaming, just as he couldn’t stop the torment that was snaking through his organs like jagged needles and shards of broken glass. As his endurance and his consciousness wore out, he swore he could hear Remus’ voice.

REMUS

“Here, lie him down here,” Remus instructed as he led Regulus (and Sirius, still unconscious between them) toward the creaking bed in the second floor of the Shack. They placed Sirius atop the mattress as delicately as they could. His breathing was so shallow that Remus couldn’t see his chest moving at all, but he could feel it underneath his palm.

“He’s … is he going to …” Regulus stuttered, tears still streaming unhindered and unnumbered down his pale cheeks. He held his quivering hands out in front of him, his silver eyes widening at the sight of Sirius’ blood settling and drying into his fingerprints.

With a violent shake of his head, Remus replied. “No,” he growled fiercely, wand in hand, kneeling on the bed next to where Sirius was lying. “I’m going to save him.” In an instant, he cast every healing spell he knew, even the ones he didn’t know, the ones he’d only overhead when he’d listened to Sirius cast those same spells on him when Remus had been the one bloody.

“Can I do anything?” Regulus asked, the composure returning to his voice, but only just.

“You have to go back to the castle, Reg,” Remus commanded. “She can’t know you were there with me. You have to pretend like you don’t know anything that’s happened tonight.”

“I can’t just leave you,” Regulus argued, a whine in the back of his throat.

“You don’t have a choice,” Remus stated firmly, glancing back to see the indecision and fear on Regulus’ expression. Remus softened his glare while keeping the intensity of his healing spell as high as he could tolerate it. “I promised you I’d keep him safe. And I will.”

Regulus squirmed, fighting with himself on staying. “I’ll Owl you at first light.”

“I’ll be watching for him,” Remus smiled calmly, despite the overwhelming dread in his heart and the pressure of his magic as he poured every piece of it into healing. As Regulus headed down the stairs of the Shack, as Remus heard him shuffle into the underground corridor that led to the Willow, Remus let out a heavy breath through tightly clenched teeth.

“Come on, Sirius,” he whispered, his voice and his magic filled with urging. The blood that had been pooled around his cheeks had stopped flowing and Remus didn’t want to know how a Curse that allegedly only inflicted pain led to his blood being forced through his skin. Almost more important than that was the blood that was soaking through the sheets underneath him.

As carefully as he could, Remus lifted Sirius from the mattress, leaving the healing spells to do their work. His eyes widened over a horrified breath that sucked into his teeth as he saw the gashes carved into the skin of Sirius’ naked back. It looked like he had been flogged.

The slashes were too deep – Sirius was still actively bleeding, despite the layers of healing spells in place. Quickly, Remus dug in the drawer of the bedside table, having hoarded many rolls of gauze and bandages and cloth given to him by Madam Pomfrey over the years.

After gingerly straddling Sirius’ hips, he perched Sirius’ chin atop his shoulder and let Sirius’ weight fall against him. It was strange work, dressing wounds he couldn’t see directly, but he’d done it for his own back enough times to know how to use the blood still leaking from Sirius’ skin as a sort of adhesive until he was able to wrap the clean bandages around his torso, though it proved to be rather awkward, passing the roll of bandages through their pressed skin.

Taking the risk of pulling magic away from the healing spells, Remus Scoured the sheets and Sirius’ back as best he could before cradling Sirius’ heavy head in his palm and returning him to the pillow. While he could’ve done the same for Sirius’ face, he didn’t trust his hands to be that steady. He grabbed another handful of cloth and held it to the end of his wand.

“Aguamenti,” he called quickly, moving to sit on the edge of the bed and making sure to enhance the healing spells as soon as his magic could solely focus on them again. When he recast them, he focused as deeply as he could within Sirius’ skin, concentrating on repairing organ damage and vessel damage and nerve damage. There was so much hurt he couldn’t see.

How strange that he wished for physical wounds. At least he could see the healing spell working, at least he would know if it healed at all. Injury from a Cruciatus Curse was so much worse, so much deeper than anything Remus had ever had to heal on himself. Not only that, there was bound to be lasting psychiatric and emotional damage that nobody would be able to heal, especially knowing the caster of that Curse was your own wretched mother.

In a desperate attempt to stave off that madness he knew often accompanied the Cruciatus Curse, Remus carefully cast a few healing spells like a halo around Sirius’ head, casting a translucent glow across his pale skin. It was a sore attempt, but it was better than nothing.

As he lightly moved the rag across Sirius’ face, he sharply realized that this is what it had been like when Sirius had taken care of him, that first morning after the moon. This is the way Sirius had bandaged him, as he’d joked the night after ‘Maybe I should tell you that I straddled you in bed,’ with a smirk on his smart lips. This is the way Sirius had layered his healing spells until they formed a prism of color across the purple and black and red of Remus’ bruised skin. This is the way Sirius had cared for him, delicately and tenderly and fondly, before they even called each other by first name, before Remus ever even knew that Sirius had done it.

With tears in his eyes, Remus blotted the wet cloth against Sirius’ forehead, watching the water and blood roll down Sirius’ pale skin. “You promised you would come back to me.” In his fright and exhaustion, he slumped down onto Sirius’ shoulder, sobbing until his breath was gone.

It had been several days since their raid on Grimmauld Place. Several days since Sirius had last been conscious. Even more since Remus had seen Sirius look at him. Several days of healing spells and bandage changes and talking to himself because Sirius couldn’t hear him.

That first morning, Regulus had Owled. His mother had come back to Hogwarts, looking for Remus and Sirius but without telling anyone that she’d been bested by a student, without telling anyone that she’d been caught performing an Unforgiveable on her own son.

Because of her presence, and the increased scrutiny of the Slytherin House as a result of her questioning, Remus hadn’t been able to return to the castle to enlist Madam Pomfrey’s help in healing Sirius, nor had Regulus been able to sneak away to provide his own magic to double the healing efforts. In Sirius’ absence, Severus had been appointed temporary Prefect, and Regulus said he was a terror, patrolling at all hours, and especially suspicious of Regulus.

Truthfully, Remus wasn’t even sure the extra magic would make a difference. All of Sirius’ physical wounds had healed, his breathing had stabilized, his heart rate was steady and strong, there was color in his cheeks again, the scars on his back were flat and pink and smooth. His skin was nearly as flawless as ever. But he hadn’t so much as opened a single eye in three days.

In an effort to assure Sirius he was safe, to wake him as gently as possible, and to maintain hold of his own sanity, Remus talked. Mostly, he described the scenery – the distant view of the spires of the castle from the window of the Shack, the changing color of the sky as rainstorms came and went, the way the sunlight caught the hovering dust in the room.

Sometimes, he would tell Sirius fond memories that he had of him, in the time before Remus started calling him by his first name. Like the time Sirius successfully brewed an extremely complicated and advanced potion in Slughorn’s class hours before anyone else even came close to finishing it. Like the elaborate way Sirius twirled his wand in his fingers just before a duel, with style and grace and arrogance. Like the way Sirius stifled a laugh behind his fingers as he watched Remus draw a caricature of Professor Binns victoriously riding a Hungarian Horntail.

And when it got late, Remus would crawl into bed next to Sirius. He would hold Sirius’ hand within his own and he would remind him why he needed to come back. After all, his younger brother was worrying himself sick. Not to mention, the werewolf who had fallen in love with him was starting to hallucinate Sirius talking back, and hearing voices was never a good sign.

That night was no different – he was talking to Sirius the same as he’d done every other night that week. Just then, he was going on about James Potter and what a strange fellow he was and how he wondered if they all could’ve been friends, if they’d been sorted into Gryffindor.

“I think you’d like him, Pads,” Remus hummed, turning away for only a moment to look up into the night sky, gauging how long he had until the next moon. “Oh, you know the one I mean, with the square glasses and the hazel eyes and the wild hair that never stays down …”

“Should I be jealous, Moony?” he heard from Sirius’ bed and he laughed at his mind’s ability to play the part of Sirius so well. He was getting better at that cocky lilt in Sirius’ voice.

“Compared to you, he’s …” Remus turned to see Sirius sitting up in his bed, watching Remus with a rather curious grin. The breath moved unprompted from Remus’ throat. “Sirius.”

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Sirius smiled, his voice still a little raw, a little deeper than it used to be, a little raspier than it should’ve been after all the healing spells.

“You’re awake,” Remus exhaled heavily, rushing to Sirius’s side, and taking his face into his hands. His lips were on Sirius’ face before he could tell himself not to, peppering tiny, feathered kisses to Sirius’ skin. “Thank all the gods. You’re awake, you’re awake, you’re awake.”

“If I didn’t know better, I’d think you missed me,” Sirius laughed as Remus pulled him into his arms, his hands sliding along Sirius’ back and flinching at the scars he felt underneath them.

“How do you feel?” Remus asked immediately, pulling back to scrutinize Sirius’ expression, to search for any hint of pain or discomfort. “Does anything hurt?”

As if in an internal sort of inspection, Sirius took a moment to wriggle under Remus’ hold, shifting his shoulders and tensing his face and breathing deeply. A couple times, Remus caught him wincing, but Sirius played it off by making other ridiculous expressions in its place.

“A bit sore, I guess,” he shrugged with a smile. “But I think I’m alright, Moony.”

“I should’ve been there sooner,” Remus said, something of an apology, looking at the dirt collecting on the hardwood floor of the Shack. Sirius took him by the face, guiding his sight.

“You were there just when I needed you, love,” he said, delicately unsettling Remus’ lips with his kiss, a tenderness buried within it that banished the tension of the last three days.

“I don’t know how you’re still sane,” Remus breathed out into Sirius’ mouth, his words filled with awe and astonishment. “People are driven mad by less than what you went through.”

“Those people don’t have you,” Sirius said, his fingers going into Remus’ hair like they were old lovers, like it was a decades-old habit. “I’m only alive because of you, Moony.”

Remus wasn’t accepting of that. “You’re in this mess because of me.” His Housemates never would’ve found out he didn’t have the Mark, his mother would’ve never tried to force him to take it, she never would’ve performed the Cruciatus on him as punishment. But before Sirius even had a chance to disagree, Remus continued. “Also because of me, you’re stuck hiding from your mother in the Shrieking Shack,” Remus said with a roll of his eyes as Sirius began to glance excitedly around the decay in the room, eyes shining over their dark, heavy circles.

“Is that where we are?” he laughed, pausing abruptly, motionless. “I hear no shrieking.”  

“That’s because it’s not the full moon,” Remus replied with a smirk. Sirius just blinked.

“Wait, it’s you?” Just then, Sirius was the one shrieking, a strange mixture of hoarseness and giddiness in his voice that was so contradictory, it suited him perfectly. “You’re haunting the Shrieking Shack? How?” His whole demeanor went solemn frighteningly quickly, and Remus knew he was recalling the way Remus had screamed as he’d come out of his transformation that first morning on the shores of the Lake. “You come here for your transformation every month.”

Remus made some motion that was between a nod and a shrug, trying to show that Sirius was right, but he didn’t want him to worry over it. “Don’t think so hard about it, Pads.”

“When I was with you … the Wolf, I mean,” Sirius whispered, fiddling with his fingers from where his hands were resting between the two of them. “You stopped hurting yourself.”

“You were my distraction, after all,” Remus grinned, but Sirius wasn’t grinning.

“You said you should’ve been there sooner, you said that just now,” Sirius said, still scratching at his fingernails. “But I should’ve been here sooner. I should’ve noticed sooner.”

“Sirius, nobody noticed,” Remus assured him, stroking his finger along Sirius’ cheek, but that statement wasn’t as assuring as he thought as he watched the pain cross over Sirius’ face.

“I’m not nobody,” he argued softly. “And maybe you didn’t know it then, but I was paying more attention to you than anyone else in the castle. I should have been able to figure it out. I should have been here with you every month. I should’ve saved you from those scars,” he rambled, his eyes darting dangerously to the open collar of Remus’ half-unbuttoned shirt, immediately studying the deepest of Remus’ scars, the one on the right side of his chest, the one caused by the entire width of the Wolf’s claw plunging straight into Remus’ ribs.

“Maybe you could have,” Remus sighed, taking Sirius’ hand and moving it underneath the open front of his shirt, sliding his fingers along that jagged scar. A heavy swallow traveled down the length of Sirius’ throat, his pupils widening just a touch. “But they’re not that bad, are they?”

Immediately, Sirius looked up emphatically, bracing his palm to Remus’ chest, argument evident on his face. “God, not at all, I …” Sirius paused as he recognized the knowing expression on Remus’ face, and Sirius’ features softened at the realization. “That’s not fair,” he smiled.

“What’s not fair?” Remus asked innocently, baiting him again.

“Pretending to be self-deprecating so I’ll admit how wildly attractive I think you are,” he said, pursing his lips to the side as he let his hand wander a bit within Remus’ shirt.

“Mm,” Remus hummed, eyelashes fluttering in bliss as he reveled in Sirius’ touch against his skin for the first time in days. “I’m not sure I see it. Maybe a demonstration will help.”

Though he seemed to try to subdue it, Sirius’ eyebrow rose with intention. “Get up here and I’ll give you one,” he stated, his breathing laboring as he shifted over, pulling Remus over him by the open placket of his uniform shirt. While Remus’ hands landed on either side of Sirius’ head, he hesitated in his motion to straddle Sirius, an uneasy expression settled onto his face.

It wasn’t just the dull grey color of Sirius’ eyes or the leaden dark circles underneath them. It wasn’t just the increased pallor of his skin or the matting in his normally soft hair. It wasn’t even the knowledge of the scars on his back or the ones in his mind. It was all of that piled on top of one another and the weight of the guilt in Remus’ chest that detained him.

“I don’t deserve you right now, Sirius,” Remus exhaled heavily.

“You don’t have to keep pretending, Moony. You say anything else that even hints of self-loathing and I’ll end up admitting things that will make your ancestors blush.” His dark, sharp eyebrow rose high in incitement, but when Remus didn’t return his smile, it fell into a furrow.

“You’re right, I am pretending,” Remus scoffed, arrogance dissolving into anger. “I’m pretending that you weren’t nearly tortured to insanity and pretending that you haven’t been unconscious for three days and pretending like we can pick up right where we left off.”

Sirius took a breath, the movement of his hand stilling on Remus’ ribs. “Remus.”

“But I can’t pretend it’s not my fault, because it really is. You would’ve never been through this if not for me.” For longer than Remus wanted, Sirius was immeasurably quiet, his softened eyes searching Remus’ gaze so thoroughly that Remus began to wonder what he was looking for in them. Eventually, his fingers moved up to ghost over Remus’ face, starting with his lips and the scar that passed through them. Remus tried hard to keep his lips tight.

“Maybe not,” Sirius finally said, and Remus could hear the argument forming on his tongue, as he let his hand slide down to Remus’ thigh. “But let me tell you where I would have been, if not for you.” His fingers shifted into the space behind Remus’ knee, tugging softly until Remus gave into his request and pressed that knee into the mattress on the other side of Sirius’ hip, but Remus didn’t allow himself to settle on top of him, still resting his weight in his hands.

Sirius continued, changing the attention of his hands to the remaining buttons of Remus’ shirt, working slowly. “I would still be alone in the dungeons, engaged to be married to a woman I hate, heir to a family name I never wanted.” As he finished, he let a single finger drag down the full expanse of Remus’ waist, from the curve of his throat to the indentations at his hips.

“If I had been more careful, you could’ve been free of those things without being tortured and flogged,” Remus argued, despite how shallow the breath in his lungs had grown.

“If I remember correctly,” Sirius went on, undeterred by Remus’ verbal dissent as he pushed the shirt from Remus’ shoulders, smiling quietly as Remus obediently shed it. “Going to your room was my idea.” With Remus now bare-chested and hovering above him, Sirius let his hands travel freely across his skin, kneading at the soft skin above Remus’ jutting hipbone. He applied a little pressure until Remus relinquished, sitting down right on top of Sirius’ hips.

“And we had a fight because I kissed you when I knew you didn’t want me to.”  As he adjusted his weight on Sirius’ hips, he realized he could feel Sirius underneath him, and he couldn’t stop himself from shifting again just to watch the way Sirius’ mouth fell open vagrantly.

“Neither of those things is true.” Sirius’ chest had begun to heave with the volume of air moving in and out of his lungs at an increased pace. “It wasn’t a fight. And you know damn well I wanted it.” Unable to stop his natural reaction, Remus sucked in a breath. Sirius watched.

“My point is, if I hadn’t kissed you …” he began, but Sirius interrupted.

“You should kiss me again,” he hummed, though his voice was still gravel and grit, and he looked up at Remus under dilated silver eyes that amplified the luster of the smile on his face.

Remus stifled a smile. “Are you even listening to me?”

“No. Kiss me.”

“You could request that a little more politely, you know.”

“Oh, you’re right,” Sirius smirked, running the tip of his tongue along the points of his teeth, looking up through dark lashes. “Remus,” he exhaled intently. “Fucking kiss me.”

The sarcasm was formed on his tongue, but it died in his throat as Sirius tilted his chin and closed his eyes. It was in the way he waited, knowing doubtlessly that Remus would kiss him.

“Fuck,” Remus growled as he surrendered, slowly pushing Sirius’ mouth open with his lips, kissing him as indolently and as deeply as he could. Savoring every detail, Remus memorized the eager way Sirius slid his tongue into Remus’ mouth as soon as he was able, the unfamiliar scrape of Sirius’ raw voice as he sighed contentedly, the desperate pull of Sirius’ grip.

“You say this was because of you,” Sirius spoke into his mouth as he tucked his fingers into the waist of Remus’ trousers. “And it is.” There was a pause that carried on for just long enough to make Remus nervous. “I’m here, and you’re kissing me …” he trailed off, focusing the work of his mouth on increasing the depth of that kiss as he craned up to meet Remus’ lips that much closer, and he seemed to lose the purpose of his thought to the wanting hollows of Remus’ mouth. “Oh, Moony,” he moaned softly, burying his fingers in Remus’ hair again.

“I know where you’re going with this,” Remus began, speaking in whispers that were only half-spoken through the occupation of his lips. “But I –” Sirius interrupted again.

 “No, you don’t,” he called out, curving back over the pillow underneath his head as Remus’ lips traveled down his throat. One of Remus’ hands wrapped around Sirius’ neck, his thumb pressed sharply underneath the arch of Sirius’ jaw to push his gaze toward the ceiling and make more of the skin at Sirius’ throat available for him to kiss. “You really don’t.”

“I do,” he mumbled against the sharp edges of Sirius’ protruding Adam’s apple. “You’re going to say that I saved you, but it was more Regulus than me. All I did was cast a spell.” Even with his gaze directed elsewhere, Sirius still managed to unfasten the button of Remus’ trousers.

“You have no idea how much I relied on you while I was in that house, do you?” Sirius asked, deftly sliding his hand into the open zipper of Remus’ trousers, his fingers just barely brushing against the already aching skin underneath the cotton fabric underneath them.

A weighted exhale pushed from Remus’ lips onto Sirius’ collarbone. “I wasn’t with you, Sirius. I should’ve been, but I wasn’t.” The pressure of Sirius’ fingers between his legs increased and Remus couldn’t stifle the pleasured moan that broke from his throat. “Oh my God.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, Moony,” Sirius continued, rolling the heel of his palm down the length of Remus, letting his fingers drag along before starting again. “You were in my bed with me, you were singing Sweet Thing into my ear, you were telling me to come home to you.”

Remus’ arguments grew thin the longer Sirius spoke, the longer Sirius touched him. In his impatience, Remus wriggled out of his trousers and knelt next to Sirius, angling himself in a way that Sirius’ touch could continue, but so could the work of Remus’ mouth. “Don’t stop.”

“Oh, gods,” Sirius groaned as Remus pressed his mouth deep into the soft skin of Sirius’ abdomen, kissing and biting and sucking and uncovering more of Sirius’ skin until Sirius was writhing underneath him. In his ecstasy, Sirius made the most damning confession of all. “I used a memory of you to cast that Patronus.” A stilled breath in his throat, Remus looked up at him.

“You used a memory of … me?” he repeated quietly, surprise in his voice.

“Those are nearly the only good ones I’ve got,” Sirius grinned. With renewed fervor, Remus buried his face into Sirius’ hips, wrapping his lips around the imprint of Sirius still hidden beneath boxer-briefs, mouthing and panting and humming. “Fuck, Remus, fuck.”

“Tell me which one,” Remus stated, muffled from Sirius pressed to his teeth. Under a stimulated moan, Sirius tried to answer, his voice trembling with need, but it went unarticulated.

In like frenzy, Sirius yanked at the only remaining clothing keeping him from Remus’ skin and, through his peripheral, Remus caught the way Sirius’ expression went vacant – mouth open, tongue absently sliding over his back teeth, pupils wide and hungry, eyebrow high and shrewd.

“For fuck’s sake, Remus,” he breathed out, reaching out involuntarily to touch Remus’ naked skin, leaving an electric jolt in the wake of his fingertips. As he swirled the tip of his middle finger over the plush head of Remus’ cock, watching the feral way Remus responded to the tender stimulation, he exhaled sharply, tilting his head and biting hard onto his lip.

“You’ve seen me naked before, Sirius,” Remus laughed softly, burying his face between Sirius’ legs again to cover up the absurd blushing he could feel surging through his face.

“No, I just thought I had,” Sirius growled, taking a moment to wrap his hand slowly around Remus’ length, as if savoring the motion, before whispering a spell that left Remus feeling warm and wet within Sirius’ palm. “Seeing you like this, it’s … it makes me wonder if I ever woke up from that dream at my mother’s house. You’re too immaculate to be real.”

The blush in Remus’ face was worsening, spreading through the rest of his skin the longer Sirius recited poetry at the proof of Remus’ arousal. “You’re getting carried away, Pads.”  

“Am I?” he asked, his voice breathless as Remus’ lips sunk lower into his hips, suckling softly at the indentation at the inside of Sirius’ hipbone. “Because I don’t think I’ve convinced you, yet. I don’t think you understand how sacred this is to me, to hold you in the palm of my hand. To have your perfect lips so low on my skin.” In response to that thought, Remus bit down gently onto the protruding bone of Sirius’ hip, eliciting a quiet, unsteady breath from Sirius’ lips.

“Of the two of us, you are far more perfect than I am,” Remus argued.

“You still don’t see it,” Sirius laughed, but it was all breaths and moans. “It took me a long time to see it, too. It was so slight in the beginning, but now I can’t see anything else.”

“See what?” Remus asked absently, just to keep Sirius talking, just to keep hearing the cavernous and coarse vibrations his voice sent into the rest of his skin.

“How much I worship you, Remus,” Sirius breathed out into the empty air.

“Jesus, Sirius,” Remus swallowed, readying to state his wonder into Sirius’ belly, into his hips, into anywhere he could put his mouth, but Sirius was ahead of him again.

“I noticed every time you cut your hair, every new scar that appeared on your face, every freckle, every wrinkle, every frown. I kept every scribble you gave me from History of Magic,” he whispered as Remus arched his back, straightening and tightening and bowing back with his hand wound tightly into his hair. The pace of Sirius’ fingers increased as he watched Remus approach a very sharp edge, one that dropped off into bliss and oblivion.

“Sirius,” he spoke, but it was diminutive and small from lack of breath.

“When I cast that Patronus,” Sirius reminded him, muttering another spell underneath his breath that crested the warmth in Sirius’ hand, renewed the slip of his fingers. “I thought of you. You, saying my name for the first time,” he gasped, and Remus let his eyes fall to see the devotion in Sirius’ gaze as it moved over Remus’ taut skin and the revelry in the way his mouth hung wide to show his tongue moving indolently along his teeth just to get a little friction.

“Oh, fuck,” Remus groaned, so close at the sight of Sirius ruined underneath him.

“And I don’t know why I kept pretending that I didn’t fantasize about you like this – gods, just like this,” Sirius exhaled sharply, running his idle hand up Remus’ chest. “Because, fuck me, did I fantasize about it. I only let it happen once or twice, but I wanted you so fucking bad.”

“Oh my God, oh my God,” Remus howled heedlessly.

“And right now,” Sirius continued with calculation in his voice as he watched Remus hovering over that edge. “I think I might die if I don’t get to watch you come while you say my name,” Sirius growled and instantly, at the sound of Sirius’ voice so raw and reckless, Remus felt the weight in his belly release, felt his legs tremble beneath him, felt the twitching of his rigid skin between Sirius’ fingers, heard the anticipating gasp of Sirius’ hollowed breath.

“Fuck, Sirius,” he groaned, spilling out into Sirius’ hand, warm and sticky and wet. “Fuck.”

When Sirius didn’t immediately respond with the flowery prose that Remus expected of him, or at least breathless panting at the sight of Remus undone, Remus opened his eyes, not even realizing that he had closed them in his climax. As soon as he looked down, he saw Sirius staring, shameless and awed at the mess between Remus’ legs, dribbling through Sirius’ fingers.

“Moony,” he sighed deeply, looking up at Remus, a breath falling from his parted lips as they curved into a smile. “You are so fucking beautiful. Surely you already know that.”

A pink blush crept underneath Remus’ freckles, but he rolled his eyes. “Hush, Sirius.”

“I mean it,” Sirius urged, wandlessly Scouring away the evidence of Remus’ orgasm and purposefully tensing his fingers as he drew away from Remus just to watch the way Remus tensed at the stimulation on his already spent skin. “Watching you come, because of me, feeling it happen in my fist …” he paused to swallow hard, going breathless. “Jesus Fucking Christ.”

“It must truly be sacred for you to take the name of someone else’s Lord in vain,” Remus said with a smirk as he shifted his weight to lie between Sirius’ legs, his fingers immediately drawn to the swelling underneath his chin, drawing listless circles around the imprint of Sirius.

“You have no idea,” Sirius hummed. “If I’ve ever had a religious experience, that was it.”

“That puts me in quite a tough position then,” Remus whispered into Sirius’ skin, sending a shiver to the surface where Remus’ lips were delicately pressed. “Because here I am, about to do things to you that are very unholy.” Under a stuttering breath, Sirius pushed his fingers through Remus’ hair as Remus pushed the last remaining article of Sirius’ clothing down his hips.

“Remus,” he called out in a trembling voice as Remus’ eyes went dark.  

SIRIUS

If watching the way Remus Lupin climaxed was religious, then seeing the way he looked at Sirius, naked and aroused and aching underneath him was fucking divine. His pupils were blacked out, darker than they had ever been, darker than they’d been even in the dim glow under the Lake. His pink lips were parted slightly, wetter than they were just after Sirius pressed his own against them for the first time in the Ravenclaw Common Room. His caramel curls were tameless, even more disheveled than they had been when he’d writhed under Sirius’ tickling fingers. Back then, he had seemed so wildly free. Now, the wild was all that was left, and Sirius found himself wanting to submit completely to it, wanting to give every piece of himself to it.

There was something in Remus’ eyes that Sirius had never seen. It amplified when his gaze drew down to the center of Sirius’ hips, when his fingers slipped off the last thing that kept Sirius concealed. This darkness in his eyes was heavy and sinister, and Sirius recognized it as the violence that he’d seen in the Wolf’s eyes, when his claws had been in Remus’ skin.

The moment Sirius lay bare underneath him and his eyes fell upon Sirius’ naked cock, Remus’ eyebrow twitched upward in avarice and need. The notch in his brow made his stare that much more menacing. When his tongue darted out to wet his lips, Sirius felt as if he were prey, waiting to be swallowed. And he had never wanted to be devoured so eagerly in all his life.

But Remus didn’t make a single move. Instead, he studied Sirius like a textbook, eyes hungrily ravaging each of Sirius’ features. His gaze started at Sirius’ lips, dragging down his throat, rolling down his chest, settling at his hips. Without warning, he slipped his fingers around Sirius’ cock and pulled him to his lips, where he drew his tongue over the tip, just to taste him.

The unexpected contact sent an indelicate whimper into Sirius’ throat and Remus paused to look up at him. With his eyes locked tight to Sirius’, Remus leaned in again, closing his lips around the head of Sirius’ cock, swirling his tongue over the slit in slow, agonizing circles.

Sirius couldn’t help but buck his twitching hips. “Remus, please,” he begged, the sound of which seemed to incite something dangerous in Remus’ darkened gaze.

“Speak to me, Sirius,” Remus demanded, his voice dragged deep from the furthest chasms of his chest. “You say you fantasized about me. Describe it to me while I get you off.”

“Oh, fuck, fuck,” Sirius groaned as Remus sank him just a touch deeper into his mouth, only enough to suck at the soft, pink skin of the head of Sirius’ cock. “God, which one?” he laughed, but Remus robbed him of it, turning it into another moan as he glanced up at Sirius.

“I thought you only said once or twice,” Remus teased. Even the playful cadence of his voice sounded ominous when buried in the rough snarl of dominance still present in his throat.

“I did. Because after the first couple, I knew I couldn’t indulge myself in anymore,” Sirius said, the breath pressing into his words as he suffered underneath Remus’ toying lips, sinking ever lower on the shaft of his cock. “The first one was completely by accident, but once it happened, it was all I could think about.” Even with his lips around Sirius’ cock, there was still an evident smirk on Remus’ occupied lips, and he pulled up just enough to speak.

“Accident?” he grinned, mumbling onto the tip of Sirius’ cock. “Tell me that one.”

“Remus, I have to be honest, I don’t know how I’m coherent right now,” Sirius sighed as Remus swirled his tongue around the ridges underneath the head of Sirius’ cock, though a soft sort of laugh from Remus’ nostrils interrupted his motion. “But I’ll try to make it make sense.”

“Thank you,” Remus smiled again before plunging the whole impressive length of Sirius deep into his throat, drawing out a moan from Sirius’ throat that bordered on a scream.

“Oh gods, oh fuck,” Sirius whimpered, throwing his head back into the pillow.

“You promised,” Remus reminded him of the story he was meant to tell, and Sirius let out a growl, burying his fist tightly into Remus’ curls. It only spurred Remus’ frenzy.

“It was a dream,” Sirius started, struggling to speak evenly through the shortening breaths being drawn into his lungs. “Earlier that day, I watched you duel against Pettigrew in Hufflepuff and you just …” he paused for a moment, panting and cursing as Remus loosened his lips around Sirius. “You duel with everything you have, you duel with your whole body.”

With a curious hum, Remus pulled up again. “What do you mean, my whole body?”

“Let me tell you what the fuck it means, Remus,” Sirius grumbled playfully as Remus tried not to laugh, holding Sirius upright to keep him from slipping out of his teeth. “It means you move gracefully and without wasted intent. It means I can watch a spell roll all the way up your spine before you cast it. It means when you duel, you curve your hands and you arch your back and you thrust your hips like you know how to fuck really well.” Sirius groaned, recalling it.

“Oh,” Remus replied with an incentivized growl that surged into Sirius’ hips, curving his hands around the backs of Sirius’ thighs to grip him harder, to pull him in deeper. “Keep going.”

“Fuck,” Sirius whispered into the air, widening his legs to let Remus sink as far down as he could go, and Remus took that extra measure, swallowing the whole of Sirius into his throat, over and over, without pausing for breath, without so much as a gag or a choke or a sputter.

Sirius continued, despite the quivering in the muscles of his thighs, “That night, I dreamt we dueled each other, and you were so much better than me, so much stronger than me. You backed me into a corner, and you thrust your hips the way you do, and you were so hard.”

A desperate sort of whimper moved up from Remus’ throat, muffled by the thickness of Sirius’ cock buried deep within it. His grip on Sirius’ thighs tightened and he adjusted the position of Sirius’ leg until he was lying on top of Sirius’ foot, just as hard as Sirius imagined he would be.

“You put your lips to my ear, just breathing and grinding your cock against me until I woke up covered in spunk,” Sirius moaned, shuddering at the warmth of Remus’ mouth and the memory of the friction. With a tremble in the violent hum of his voice, Remus moved his grip inside Sirius’ thigh, his fingers sliding slowly underneath where his mouth was working.

“Whisper that spell for me, Sirius,” Remus spoke with an order in his tone, one hand on Sirius’ cock and the other teasing at the tight ring of muscle hidden deep. With a tight swallow, Sirius did as he was told, feeling the warmth and wetness of Remus’ finger as it circled.

“Oh. Oh, gods, Remus,” Sirius called out softly as Remus pushed forward carefully, precisely timing the thrust of his fingers to the drive of his mouth and the roll of his tongue. In only a few harmonizing movements, Sirius was shaking, begging, panting, swearing.

Expertly, Remus balanced Sirius’ cock against his fingers while he spoke, keeping his tongue in near constant contact with Sirius’ skin. “Did you ever imagine this? Your cock in my throat?” he asked, shifting his hips to get some friction against Sirius’ foot, still between his legs.

“Yes,” Sirius confessed, breathless. “Another dream. And you fucked me in that one.”

“Fuck, fuck,” Remus groaned, every syllable prolonged until it became a hum as he moved the entire length of Sirius back into his throat, but only until he made a confession of his own. “God, I would fuck you right now if I could, Sirius. Jesus, fuck,” he growled heavily.

“Then fuck me, Remus, fuck me,” Sirius called out as Remus went back to sucking Sirius’ cock and pumping a wet finger deep into him, adding a second and increasing the pace.

“I’m too close,” Remus whined. “Keep talking, don’t stop.” He let his hand drift away from Sirius’ cock, using only his mouth to brutalize Sirius to the point of oblivion. With his fingers still within Sirius, his free hand moved down between his own legs and Sirius gave him another dose of that spell to ease the friction. Remus thanked him with a deep, gratuitous hum.

“Not long after that,” Sirius continued, much to Remus’ pleasure, based on the unintelligible sounds moving up from Remus’ packed throat, “I had to force myself to give up the daydreaming because we collided in the hallway once and I nearly did something questionable.”

“Tell me,” Remus urged, his mouth only away from Sirius’ cock as long as it took him to speak, his voice fluttering with need and snapping in desperation. Sirius struggled to speak.  

“My obsession with you was so bad then,” Sirius tremored, “I was a breath away from shoving you into the wall, dropping to my knees, and burying my face between your thighs.”

In response, Remus purred rapturously, the vibrations of his lips sent out into Sirius’ rigid skin, and Sirius could feel the fury and disorder in Remus’ hand between his own legs. The pressure of Remus’ mouth increased, the force of his fingers increased, driving into Sirius until Sirius was howling, thrusting his hips forward to push deeper into Remus’ mouth.

And Remus was taking it, taking it, taking it, steadying himself to let Sirius fuck his throat, his fingers keeping perfect time with Sirius’ movement until Sirius felt the blinding, swirling, crashing waves of orgasm sweep over him, surging through his chest and moving into his twitching thighs. Without hesitation, Remus rode it out, taking the warm, wet ribbons of Sirius’ orgasm into his throat before he pulled his fingers back to use them for his own benefit.

With a heavy sigh, Sirius collapsed onto the mattress just as Remus moved to his knees, stroking his own cock as he fixated on the satiated bliss that was evident on Sirius’ face, though it was steadily giving way to renewed arousal at the site of Remus brazenly pleasuring himself.

“Fuck,” Sirius exhaled hard, his hands sliding up Remus’ exposed hips as the movement of Remus’ hand became ruthless, the rhythm of breath in his chest fell into chaos, and the moan in his throat reached a pitch. “All the things I wanted to do to you,” Sirius said, biting his lip as he watched Remus devotedly, “And all it takes to fuck me up is watching you masturbate.”

Over a stuttering breath, Remus cocked an arrogant brow, but it didn’t wash the nearness and anticipation of bliss from his tortured expression. “I need you to keep talking.”

Immediately, Sirius slipped back into poetry. “Never in any of my fantasies did you look so ruined the way you do now, so debased and so well-fucked.” Instantly, Remus gritted his teeth, a breath seething through the tight spaces so sharply that it sounded like he was in pain.

“Ah, fuck, Sirius,” he droned, his words moving much slower than the pace of his hand.

“Watching you orgasm is almost more satisfying than having my own,” Sirius spoke, wrapping his hands around the backs of Remus’ thighs. “You make it look so fucking good.”

“Yes, yes, fuck yes,” Remus rambled on emptying lungs, throwing his head back.

“I won’t ask if you’ve ever fantasized about me, but I’m going to make damn sure you start,” Sirius whispered with precision, cupping Remus’ arse, reminded of the first time he’d done that by mistake, when he’d seen the evidence of Remus’ attraction for him for the first time. “Imagine me on my back, just like this, but you’re pressing my knees to my shoulders.”

Finally, Remus looked down at him, waiting and wanting, the breath in his chest surging high and the normally golden color of his eyes darkened in full. And for a moment, Sirius waited too, pushing Remus to the absolute brink. His silver eyes moved down Remus’ torso.

As Remus took a breath, Sirius spoke with intent and depravity. “Imagine the way I’ll look up at you. Imagine the look on my face as I watch you come while you fuck me.”

There was no sound in Remus’ mouth as it hung open, loose and lascivious as Sirius watched Remus’ second climax rip through him – the quiver of tightened muscles and skin, the fluttering of eyelashes and his bottom lip, the throbbing of his cock as he released, white and warm and wicked across Sirius’ stomach. Sirius pulled him in closer to feel every drop.

“Sirius,” Remus growled, not bothering with his mess as he pressed himself to Sirius, slick and sticky. His kiss began furious and profound, but the further his pleasure waned, the deeper and more languid his tongue became until he was absently lapping at Sirius’ open mouth.

“Gods, I’ve watched you come twice already,” Sirius taunted, feeling arrogant and euphoric with Remus so debauched and corrupted because of him. With a suddenly bashful grin, Remus’ reply was interrupted by a foreign voice that came from just down the stairs.

“Hopefully that was the last time?” that voice said, Sirius and Remus scrambling to cover themselves as footsteps began pounding like a warning up the hardwood stairs. “Because I’ve been down here for a little while, and honestly, it’s getting rather awkward for me.”

With a furrowed brow, Remus’ shoulders relaxed from where he had been reaching toward the bedside table for his and Sirius’ wands. “James?” he called out. Immediately, Sirius looked over to see James Potter poke his head through the bedroom doorway, looking flushed.

“Really lads, terribly sorry for interrupting,” Potter grimaced as Remus handed Sirius his wand, but Sirius Scoured their skin clean without using it, instead using it to put his hair up, as always, and Sirius was delighted by the slight smirk his movement had left on Remus’ face.

“You should be,” Sirius grinned. “I intended to try for three times.” Despite the ephemeral blush that swept over Potter’s cheeks, he still smiled at Remus like he was overjoyed.

“You still have a little time,” Potter winked in Sirius’ direction, and Sirius lit up.

“No, I’ll need much more than a little time,” Sirius said shaking his head, seeing Remus watch him in amusement. “There are so many more things I’d still like to do to him.”

“Sirius,” Remus laughed, turning a bit pink. Potter picked up where Sirius stopped.

“Based on what I heard, you did some rather wonderful things to him already. Twice, if I’m not mistaken,” Potter said, blinking innocently in Remus’ direction. Out of the corner of his eye, Sirius watched Remus tilt his head back, a groan escaping from his expansive throat.

“I’ve made a terrible mistake, letting the two of you meet,” Remus huffed.

“Half of that, he gave to himself,” Sirius continued, ignoring Remus’ playful plea to get him to shut up, Sirius, for the love of God, please. “And while I thoroughly enjoyed watching, I have never wanted to put my mouth on anything so badly in all my life,” Sirius purred.

“Oh my God,” Remus continued to groan. Sirius ogled the motion of his Adam’s apple.

“He sounds like quite a specimen,” Potter smirked widely at Sirius as they both glanced over at Remus, who was busy burying his face into his hands to avoid looking at either of them. 

“I am not even exaggerating when I say his cock is exquisite, and I mean breathtaking, alright? Like a –” With his skin flushed a deep red, Remus slipped his hand over Sirius’ mouth, while Sirius continued to try to shout his euphemisms over the mumble of Remus’ fingers.

“Yes, Sirius, thank you,” Remus sighed defeatedly, screwing his eyes closed. “Jesus.”

“I’m feeling a bit inadequate in your presence, Remus,” Potter teased, and Sirius beamed.

“Oh, you were right, Moony, I do like him,” Sirius purred, nuzzling his face into Remus’ neck, and Remus tried to shove him away, but ended up pulling him close, ignoring the strange vulnerability of their situation, naked in the presence of a classmate. Potter, on the other hand, looked at Remus triumphantly, like he was impressed, like he was proud. Sirius began to see what Remus had meant about what they could’ve been, had they all been sorted into Gryffindor.

“I’m sure you didn’t get past the Whomping Willow and come all this way just to help Sirius in his eternal effort to get me flustered,” Remus stated plainly, raising his eyebrows in James’ direction. That point sparked a question in Sirius’ mind that he hadn’t considered.

“The Willow?” Sirius asked, glancing at Remus, who chewed on his lip. “Is that how you get here from the castle? A tunnel underneath the Willow?” Remus nodded, keeping his eyes resolutely on James Potter, as if wondering how he knew how to get here in the first place.

“Regulus sent me,” Potter said suddenly, leaving a shudder in Sirius’ spine. Not at the mention of his brother’s name, but at the realization that his mother was likely still hunting him.

“I figured as much,” Remus replied calmly, finding Sirius’ hand underneath the blankets, like he knew the vast number of emotions that surged through Sirius’ chest just then.

“Your mother is telling Dumbledore that Remus illegally Apparated into her home and attacked her using a Stupefy charm.” The words burst from Potter’s lips like he was anxious to be rid of them, taking an unsteady breath as soon as they were gone. Remus had gone silent.

“He did that to save me!” Sirius shouted bitterly, and Potter just nodded, like he knew.

“It doesn’t change the fact that I did it,” Remus spoke quietly.

“She’s calling for your expulsion,” Potter said over a heavy swallow.

Sirius scoffed in surprise, stiffening. “How the fuck is that fair?” he screamed.

“She knows we’re here, doesn’t she?” Remus asked. “That’s why Regulus sent you?”

Potter nodded, taking another deep breath. “Maybe not here, but she knows you’re close. Both of you. And she’s recruited half of the Slytherin House to find you.”

“Fuck,” Sirius muttered, his hands beginning to tremble as he imagined going back home, as he imagined what more his mother could do to him. To Remus. Cruciatus wouldn’t be enough, her cruelty would extend far beyond that now. She could kill them both without batting an eye.

Not missing the skip of Sirius’ anxious breath, Remus reached up to take Sirius’ face into his hands, setting their foreheads together. “I won’t let her take you back. Not ever.”

“If you mean to fight, I’ll stand with you,” Potter said, strong and defiant, and when Sirius looked over, he was surprised to see Potter looking at him, instead of Remus. “Maybe we weren’t friends before, but we sure as hell are now. I mean, I’ve seen you naked,” Potter said with an arrogant smirk, hazel eyes sparkling behind square frames. Remus laughed out loud.

“You haven’t seen anything, Potter,” Sirius quipped, smiling, forgetting the war outside their bubble of solitude for a moment. “You’d be questioning your sexuality if you had.” 

Remus chimed in, smirking wickedly. “That’s not an exaggeration. His cock is exquisite.” With his mouth hanging wide, Sirius looked over at Remus in delighted shock, moments before assaulting him with kisses. And Remus took them all, every violent one, laughing all the while.

“It’s James,” Potter said, interrupting once more, but it was much more welcome than it had been the first time. “You should call me James.” When Sirius looked over, he saw an expression that was so like the one he’d seen on Remus’ face when Remus admitted he might like to stay with Sirius for a while. It was warm and reckless and certain. It left Sirius dizzy.

“James,” Sirius said, injecting that same sort of reverence that he’d heard in Remus’ tone the first time Remus had said his name. What a strange family he was making for himself.

Just as he was about to offer the same, to ask James to call him by his first name, their attention was drawn away by distant shouting from somewhere outside the Shack.

“They’re moving into Hogsmeade now,” James said, his breaths shortened, and he shook his head, as if in decision, in finality. “You have to leave. Fighting them would be suicide.” He kept his back turned long enough for the pair of lovers to start getting dressed.

“But where will we –” Sirius began, arching into his shirt as James interrupted.

“I can take you to my parent’s house. You would be safe there. You could stay as long as you liked.” He spoke hurriedly, but nervously, like he was afraid this would be the last time he would see his friends if they went anywhere else. Friends, Sirius thought with a smile.

“We couldn’t put that burden on them, James,” Remus sighed, buttoning his shirt only halfway before giving up on the uselessness of his trembling hands. “We’ll go to my parent’s house. They live in the country, they’re barely involved in the Community anymore.”

For a moment, James faltered, looking down the stairs. “I won’t see you again,” he said, his voice small. He looked back, eyes wide. “There was so much we should’ve done together.”

Without hesitating, Sirius grabbed Remus by the wrist and pulled him over to James, hooking his arm around James’ neck, heaping them all together into a tight embrace.

“We will see each other again,” Sirius assured him, awed by the way both Remus and James wrapped their arms around him in return. “There is plenty of mischief left to manage.”

“I swear, the three of us will only get up to no good,” Remus laughed softly.

“What a terrific bunch of marauders we could’ve been,” James sighed, but his voice had gone light and hopeful, like a life still unlived, but with all the time left to live it.

“Then that’s what we’ll be,” Sirius promised. “When we find each other again.”

“Go,” Remus urged James, pulling Sirius back and pushing James to the stairs. With one last backward glance, full of regret, James dashed down the stairs. After a deep breath under glistening eyes, Sirius looked back at Remus, linking their arms together, wands raised.

With a single tear moving down his cheek, Sirius looked up at Remus. “I never meant for any of this to happen. I never meant to get so heavy in your arms.” There was a smile on Remus’ face as he reached up to brush that tear away, holding Sirius by the chin.

“You will never be too heavy for me to hold, Padfoot,” Remus assured him. With a sniffling laugh, Sirius set his head onto Remus’ shoulder, holding onto him tightly.

“Take me home, Moony,” Sirius smiled brightly, as Remus moved his hand over Sirius’. A quiet pop echoed out through the emptiness of the Shrieking Shack as they Disapparated.

JAMES

The mission assignment had come down straight from Dumbledore, not long after Lily had told him that she was pregnant. He was going to be a father. They were going to be parents together. Sure, the timing wasn’t perfect, with everything else in the world falling to shit, but James couldn’t be happier. He’d never seen Lily look so excited, so nervous, so beautiful.

He was going to make this trip as quick as he possibly could. There were rumors building among some of the Muggles in a small town in Wales about a silent, dark-haired stranger that had appeared seemingly out of nowhere with a very peculiar and ominous tattoo on his left forearm. Not many Death Eaters hid out in Wales, but Dumbledore wanted him to check.

With a cheerful smile that was only half-faked (after all, he was going to be a dad), James walked into the tea shop central to where the rumors had originated. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. To maintain his cover, James ordered a black coffee and took a seat in a corner that overlooked both the front door and the main counter. He sipped at his coffee with a wince, wishing he had added just a touch of sugar to it. When Lily made it, it was somehow sweeter.

The moment he glanced down into his cup, he heard the bell chime at the front door as someone entered the shop. His wand vibrated anxiously within the sleeve of his jacket as he saw the profile of the man that entered. This was the man he had been waiting to see.

Long, dark hair, the untrimmed ends dyed peacock blue, tied up into a strange half-bun on the top of his head with what looked like a wand skewered through it, pieces of it spilling out over his face, down the back of his neck, tucked behind pierced ears. With the first two fingers of his left hand, he slipped the cigarette from between his lips and stubbed it out, giving James a brief glimpse of the dark ink on his left forearm, fully uncovered by sleeves rolled to the elbow.

Black jeans, torn full of holes, were slung low on his slender hips, the collar of the dark grey shirt splayed carelessly around a sharply defined throat. Just by the way he carried himself, James could tell he was old money, the kind of old money that usually meant Death Eater. Still, nothing else about this man screamed Dark Magic. Dark, aesthetically, but not in demeanor.

There were oversized sunglasses that covered most of his pale face, his high-arching eyebrows only visible when they rose with the rest of his delighted expression, an expression that James certainly never expected to see on a suspected Death Eater. Come to think of it, that expression seemed vaguely familiar to him. When the man lifted those sunglasses to the top of his head, pushing back his hair to display a uniquely silver eye color, James smiled. And watched.

“Stevie!” he called to the girl behind the counter with an iridescent smile. “Lucky. I was afraid the old hag would be back today. She really dislikes me.” The young girl who had given James his coffee stifled a laugh, swatting at the sleeve of the not-stranger at the counter.

“You’re going to get me fired!” she giggled. “The usual today?” That absurd smile on his face only brightened, deepened, strengthened. He leaned on the counter with a sigh.

“You know he gets grouchy if he doesn’t have his critical Masala chai.” The words he chose were sarcastic, but the tone of his voice was blissful and comfortable.  

“And a batch of Chelsea buns for you?” the girl named Stevie grinned.

“You know me so well, darling.” His voice purred with practiced grace, learned for a different circumstance and used professionally, James knew, on someone quite different than Stevie. As she went to go fetch his order, James stood from his table, coffee in hand.

“Didn’t think I’d find you in a place like this,” James called out and, at first, that debonair melted away as the spine underneath it stiffened significantly, but he didn’t turn.

“Didn’t expect anyone to be looking for me in a place like this,” he replied softly, carefully, his voice tight with tension and terror. James rested a hand on his shoulder.

“I wasn’t actually looking for you. Just the ghost that you leave behind,” he said with a smirk, catching a sideward glimpse from those pointedly silver eyes. “Apparently, some Muggles don’t like the vibe you give off with your dark hair and your cigarettes and your tattoos.”

A smirk in return. “The old woman who owns the shop has it out for me.”

“We thought you were a Death Eater,” James said with a subdued laugh and he was graced with a laugh in return. One that he hadn’t ever heard quite so clearly or so honestly.

“In another life, I might’ve been,” he said, pushing his fingers through the thick, dark stubble on his cheeks, blurring the smile building over his lips. “Lucky for me, I fell in love first.” 

Stevie returned and James leaned away for a moment as he thanked her, exchanging tea and sweets for paper and coin. With one last glance and one last smile, he slipped the handle of the paper bag over his wrist, taking his cup into the same hand and turning to go.

As he neared the door, he began to whistle a tune that James recognized – a Muggle song that Lily listened to when she’d had a bad day that sang about jumping hedges and walking in gardens and never, ever growing old again. It sent a crippling ache into James’ heart.

“Maybe Lily and I could come back for a visit sometime,” James called out after him, feeling suddenly vacant at the loss of something he never had. He turned, still smiling.

“I’d like that,” he said, the smile looking more like it held a secret in his lips.

“Fair warning, I’m going to try to convince you to join our side of the fight,” James said, watching for the expected hardening of the face that knew more loss than James ever had. The silver in those eyes swelled and surged, igniting into white flame that had a palpable heat.

“They took my brother from me, it won’t take much convincing,” he seethed. James could nearly see the smoke of his fiery breath hissing through his clenched teeth. A chaotic thrumming of the molecules in the air swept around him, like the crackle of electricity before a lightning strike, and it left James’ hair standing on end. His magic was spilling out, uncontrolled.

But the sternness of his expression washed out under a deep breath, and the tumultuous waves of magic seemed to pull back in with it. As it moved, James took in a compensatory breath of his own, as the pressure of that dense and overwhelming magic dissipated from around him.

When James looked up again, in surprise and awe, the softness had returned to the face in front of him, and he winced a bit, somewhat of a silent apology for the unwarranted tension he had created. Even his remorse looked ominous, all sharp canines and glinting fangs.

All the same, James smiled, waving it off and ignoring the parts of his instinct that told him to be afraid of someone with such devastating magic. Instead, James chose to draw this one in closer – there was anguish in that magic and James couldn’t let it go unanswered.

“I have a feeling I’ll be back very soon,” James said, easing into another smile.

“I’ll be right where you left me, Potter,” he hummed in response, but just like the last time, it didn’t sound quite right to hear that voice call him so formally by his last name.

“It’s James, remember?” he corrected, watching the smile bloom from across the shop.

“James,” he repeated fondly, his smile settling in and expanding. The once frightening snarl of his canines settled into an affectionate smirk, and James began to wonder if he hadn’t heard this voice call him by this name under this very expression in some other lifetime. Not just that one night in the Shrieking Shack, but every night, calling across a room they’d never shared.

“Tell Remus I said hello,” James said, trying to prolong the interaction, though he wasn’t sure why. Suddenly, seven years in Gryffindor felt unfulfilled. “It was good to see you, Black.”

The smile evolved into something brighter and fuller and holier than anything James had ever seen on this face. As he held up his left hand to wave, his arm exposed by tightly rolled sleeves, James could see the slight swaying of the tentacles of the Giant Squid tattooed on his forearm, Charmed to drift in the imaginary current of the Lake. It half-hid a ghastly scar running all the way from his wrist to his elbow. Above the tattoo, a silver band on his ring finger.

“I’m sure I don’t know who you mean. The name’s Lupin.” There was a light in his silver eyes that James was sure he had grown to love in another life. “But you should call me Sirius.”