An Ocean Of Salt Water Tears

Remus wasn't going to cry today. He had already cried. He had been crying for the past two months. An ocean of salt-water tears.

Sirius was lying on his back on the stone floor when the guard let Remus into the small private antechamber before the holding cell where he was being kept. The contrast between the pure white tiles that covered the majority of the floors in the Ministry of Magic, to the crude stone that abruptly began as he stepped through the door, was sudden and unpleasant. Remus kept his eyes on those stones, desperate to look anywhere but at the young man who lay just a few feet away from him.

A few feet, and yet an ocean away at the very same time.

Suddenly, Remus heard a swift intake of breath that was not his own. And then a voice.

"Moony!" Sirius voice sounded just like Remus had expected it to, cocky and confident. "I was wondering when you'd get here. I sent for you ages ago. I was beginning to think they'd just ignored me. They won't listen to a thing I say; it's outrageous. I keep telling them that I can prove that I'm innocent. They just won't hear me out." Sirius said more to Remus now than he had in the last two months.

"Moony, what is it? You're not looking at me."

What was it? Sirius was so thick. For all his brains, he couldn't understand emotions or how people worked. Not if his life depended on it. Perhaps now it did.

Against his better judgment, Remus raised his eyes to look at Sirius. In the few seconds of silence that followed, he processed the sight of his boyfriend, grasping at the bars from the wrong side of a cell door. Sirius' hair, just starting to grow out from when he'd chopped it off for his Auror exams, was unkempt and greasy. His face was covered in dirt and grime. Blood was smeared over his forehead, concentrating around his right temple. His hands looked bloodied as well. Dumbledore had told Remus earlier that the force of Sirius' own spell had sent him careening backward into a glass storefront nearly ten feet behind where he had been standing. Remus didn't want to know what his back looked like.

"Remus come here," Sirius coaxed, beckoning him closer to the bars. Remus was strong, he didn't move. He kept his eyes away from Sirius' face, kept them on his hand, which was stretched out through the bars and toward him.

"Remus, just come"

"Sirius, I-"

Sirius cut him off as he started to argue. "Please Remus"

It was the please that Remus couldn't refuse. The humble tone that pervaded Sirius' voice. The sincerity. It was a voice that Sirius nearly never used, but Remus knew it, and it melted his knees and his resolve every time.

His body was moving forward, but he couldn't remember why. He couldn't remember making a conscious decision to move, and yet he was moving just the same. Sirius' outstretched hand grabbed frantically at his robes and pulled him further forward. Remus was assaulted with the smell of blood, and sweat, and two-day-old aftershave.

Their lips met in a tingling fog. Remus felt as though all of his sensations were reaching his brain after swimming across an Olympic sized pool. He could feel his lips tremble under what seemed like an inch of rubber that was covering them. It took a few moments, but his body soon remembered Sirius' familiar touch, and the way he flicked his tongue over Remus' canines before diving further into his mouth. Sirius' mouth tasted real, it wasn't minty or sweet, but earthy and natural. His tongue felt cooler than Remus's did.

Remus broke away from the kiss for a moment to catch his breath and mutter, "Didn't come here for this, you know..." His words were drowned out as Sirius pulled him back in.

After a moment, Sirius paused and pulled away. Remus whimpered at the rejection, but stopped as soon as he opened his eyes.

Sirius' expression had changed suddenly. For a moment he looked as lost as he had when he'd come to Remus' house during the summer before sixth year, after his parents had thrown him out into the street for the third time.

"Remus," he said, his voice gruff, "I don't think I should be happy when James is dead." Sirius' words were frank and the reality of what was happening rushed back to Remus. Sirius, happy. James, dead. Peter, dead. Sirius, happy. Sirius, guilty. The ocean of water came flooding back between them.

Remus pushed himself violently backward, away from Sirius' and out of his arms. Eyes screwed shut, he waited for the pain of betrayal to fade. When it didn't, he opened his eyes again. Looking across the room, across the ocean, at Sirius, he gathered all of the resolve he could muster.

"No," he said simply. "Sirius, I didn't come here to give you any sympathy. When we were kids and I promised I would always stand by your side, well, I never guessed that it would be through a murder conviction." He took a deep breath, and tried to ignore the disbelief and incredulity in Sirius' eyes.

"We aren't friends, Sirius. We aren't lovers, and we aren't brothers. Don't bribe Ministry guards into letting me visit you, because I won't come. Don't appeal to me for support if they give you a trial. I won't testify on your behalf." Sirius tried to say something and Remus cut him off. "I want you to know, Sirius, that I don't like you, and I'll have no more to do with you." Remus turned to go, because if he had to watch Sirius' crestfallen face try to make sense of those words he knew that he wouldn't be able to leave.

"Remus," he heard him call in one last desperate attempt, "I'm innocent."

Remus felt his jaw tighten. His eyes were starting to sting. "I'll repeat it for you Sirius, I don't even like you."

Remus exited the room before he changed his mind. As the guard showed him out his final words rang though his head.

"...I don't even like you..."

But I could never stop loving you.