Red (Spaces in Between)

He holds the boy's face in his hands. His voice is soft, his words, measured. "Once," he says, "when I was young, I made this my home."

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They live in the bowels of the city, white washed walls and electric fans. The heart makes his bones cry out in remembrance, filling up the spaces between them. Pain leaches from his body as he sweats. He is never sure about the boy, who is silent and stiff even in the hot, wet air of Hong Kong. His skin gleams and loses pallor and turns pink but never looks any healthier. He is a beacon of white against a sea of black hair and dark faces.

The heat rouses them early in the morning. It comes with the sun, traveling over the horizon and painting the ocean in wide swatches of gold. They eat rice, or eggs, and drink tea, or coffee under the fan and they do not speak. He loses the boy on the maze of streets of Tsim Sha Tsui, finds him pawing through antiques in the little shops that spill carelessly out onto the sidewalk, heedless of cars of bicycles, porcelain as fine as eggshells nestled against clumsy sculptures, peasants in blue around a beatific Mao. The boy studies these with solemn scrutiny, ignoring the cajoling of the shopkeepers and their calculators, trying to show the young English boy what deals they will offer, just for him.

Nights are hallucinatory. Neon confounds them and it never grows any cooler, and there are more people than seem to see even in daytime, thronging the streets until dawn, shopping and drinking and dancing. The city of daylight might as well be dead compared to the one that breathes life into its twilight. They drink icy foreign beers and he teaches the boy simple words, numbers. The boy says nothing.

Sometimes they leave the city. Kowloon, Shenzen. Macao. He buys clothes for the boy with strange pink paper money. The boy buys small things: chops, cheap toys, jade. They have more money than they know what to do with, but it lies untouched. Sirius might not have known how to provide for those who truly needed it, but Harry did. They cannot touch his money yet, cannot face its reality, its cause. He changes lined paper into dollars instead, and they lack for very little but a voice and a purpose.

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They take the ferry back from Kowloon and are placid upon hard wooden benches, the night's wind ruffling their hair and the boy slips a hand into his own, curling against his chest, tucking his skull into the hollow of neck and shoulder. Remus wraps his other arm around the boy. Their fingers tangle together. The city glitters gold across the water, but the wind is silent and warm.

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The boy comes to him that night, hesitates in the doorway until Remus opens his arms. He folds himself into Remus on the hard pallet that smells of sweet barley, shaking. There is a thin brown scar at the corner of his mouth and Remus kisses it carefully. The boy looks at him, his eyes bathed in colour and life from the neon that seeps into the room, and his limbs are long and coltish and not yet graceful as Remus is sure they will one day be. His skin is damp against Remus' mouth and he cries out when he comes. It is the first time that Remus has heard him speak in three months.

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It grows hotter. He wouldn't have thought it possible. They are languid, slow moving, skin reddened even indoors. The boy asks for his voice back. Remus taps his wand against the boy's mouth, his ears, and now when he loses the boy to the street markets he finds him haggling fiercely with merchants in language that falls upon their ears as flawless Mandarin, his audacity and charm startling laughs and pats on the head. They begin to recognise him and no one charges extra anymore because they are foreign. He buys things for Remus, proud and shy in a way that Remus finds utterly charming. There is fruit at breakfast now, lychee, apples, round little pears. Draco still has not laughed since the end of the war, but Remus holds out hope.

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Draco holds Remus' face in his hands. His voice is soft, his words, measured. "I loved him," he says.

"I did too."

"He loved me."

"I know."

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They take the bus to Stanley. It is a noisy, calamitous ride and they bounce back and forth on their seats. Cars no longer baffle Draco and small children hold solemnly onto his seat, staring in frank fascination. They buy ice cream from a stall and walk along the shoreline, and Draco's fingers tangle in his. His skin gleams with sweat and his last sunburn peels the skin off his nose but there is something in his eyes that could almost be contentment. Remus has begun to tell him stories of his own life in Hong Kong and Draco listens quietly, his eyes on the grand houses that jut from the cliff sides above them, remainders of colonial times that are hardly ancient history. The ice cream runs onto his fingers and Remus watches his tongue dart between the webbing of his fingers, suck the tips into his mouth. The air is heavy around them, pregnant with silence and the far off shouts of children who play along the rocks, hundreds of languages that pour from the open-air bars where the tourists lounge in the shade.

There is lightning before the rain comes, startling in the sun and the heat that still takes his breath away, and it arcs above them. Draco's mouth opens wide and that is when the rain begins to fall, torrential in a way that Remus had nearly forgotten about. It falls all around them and soaks them nearly through in the space of a heartbeat it takes for them to look at each other, and Draco throws his ice cream upon the sand and raises his hands to the sky.

The water beads in his hair and runs in fat drops down his face, and when Draco begins to laugh it bursts out of him in golden, childish peals, and his tears are lost among the raindrops.

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Later they peel each other's clothes off, drier for the bus ride back home but chill to the touch. Air circulates sluggishly through their home and blows across Remus' back as he rolls Draco onto his belly on the pallet that smells of sweet barley, the pallet that Draco shares with him every night. Draco is smaller than he is, taller than Sirius was and taller than Harry. Remus draws his mouth down the slope of Draco's spine and Draco's fingers catch along his body, urging him on with the smallest of caresses and whimpers.

He leaves red marks on Draco's skin, lucky red the same colour as the cord around Draco's neck, pressed upon him by an exuberant old shopkeeper who patted his cheek and told him it would keep him safe. He fits his body to Draco's, long bones atop long bones and neon on their skin. Draco turns his head to kiss him and tucks his hips against Remus' own and when they move together, oh, he feels like he is home. Soft moans and strangled cries fill up the spaces between them.

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"I loved him."

"I know."

"I love you."

Remus sips his tea to hide his fear and the sudden smile that blossoms across his face. "Are you sure?"

"Yes."

Their fingers tangle together.

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Tanned and limber in the streets of Hong Kong, Draco is no longer a beacon and one day Remus nearly loses him for good. He searches the maze of narrow streets with growing desperation, and the shadows grow long and golden beneath his feet. He stumbles over porcelain as fine as eggshells and waves an absent hand at the merchants who cry to him, asking where his charming young friend is. He runs up the steps that lead to Victoria Peak, looking into every dim alleyway for a glimpse of white-blond hair. His face is red and panicked and when he finally finds Draco he is so relieved that he can barely speak. His hands hang loose at his sides and he sucks in humid air. Draco is kneeling before a small plastic bin that is filled with tiny squirming turtles of all colours and all around him are tiny bamboo cages that buzz with the sound of thousands of contained crickets and Draco turns and smiles at him and gets to his feet.

He kisses Remus solemnly and slips a red cord around Remus' neck, his fingers lifting up the small jade carving strung on it so that Remus can see. He explains the qualities of the rat that twists in clever relief on its smooth surface, his grin shy and proud. Red to keep you safe, rat for your birth year. Remus lays his fingers on top of Draco's and then wraps his other hand around Draco's waist and draws him close.

"Don't leave me again," he says, and Draco only laughs.

"I won't," he says, and they walk home under fading light that bends and breaks around impossible buildings that caress the sky and turns their footsteps golden.