Blink And You Miss It

Blink And You Miss It

He was lying on his bed, Sirius on top of him, moving inside him. It felt amazing, warm and wonderful and so erotic... He groaned, paused for a moment as a thought hit him.

'Sirius? Sirius, when did we start doing this?'

'Shh,' Sirius whispered. 'Don't worry about it, Moony. Just enjoy.'

Afterwards, he stroked Remus's hair, covered virtually every inch of him with kisses and said, 'God, I love you. Moony, I love you.'

Remus knew he loved Sirius too. He tried to remember how that had happened.

*

In the morning, Remus wondered why he felt so tired, and a bit sore. There was a bruise on his neck.

On the other side of the dorm, Sirius was knotting his tie, or trying to. He finally gave up and aimed his wand at it. 'What are you staring at, Moony?'

'Nothing. Nothing. I feel...odd.'

'Nearly the moon, isn't it?'

'Yeah, I suppose so.'

Sirius kept giving him peculiar looks all through breakfast. Remus blushed, for no reason at all, and put his hand up to cover the mark on his neck. Sirius dropped his glass, spilling pumpkin juice all over the table, though Remus hadn't the faintest idea why.

*

Sirius was chatting up a girl, or rather, three girls. Remus watched him from his snug place beside the common room fire. With his usual flair, Sirius had managed to put together a blonde, a brunette, and a redhead who wasn't Lily Evans, though she was almost as pretty.

Remus wasn't sure why the sight of Sirius laughing and joking with the girls made him feel a bit miserable. Why would it worry him? He had a sort of girlfriend himself, didn't he? So what was it to him that Sirius could, and did, have any girl he wanted?

Occasionally, Sirius glanced across at him, slightly apprehensive, as if he needed Remus's approval. Remus smiled back. They were best mates, after all, and he liked Sirius a lot. He loved Sirius, just as Sirius loved him.

Something strange flickered across his mind, but flew away as Sirius leaned over and kissed the redhead full on the mouth.

*

They were lying under a tree just outside the Forbidden Forest, kissing fiercely, biting and scratching each other in their wild passion.

'Feels so good,' Sirius mumbled into Remus's neck.

'Yes, yes, it does, but, but -'

'Don't talk, kiss me.'

And they kissed and fucked and screamed out each other's names into the darkening air.

*

Remus was paired with Sirius to practise Cleaning Charms for the OWL practical. Over and over again, they poured the dye on to the calico; over and over again, they swished and cleaned, and Remus stared, fascinated.

'What's wrong, Moony? You look like you've seen a ghost.'

'It's nothing. Just a bit of deja-vu.' He was getting a lot of that these days.

Sirius shrugged, and leaned back in his chair to talk to the pretty girl who sat behind them. He flirted with her outrageously, and ended up not asking her for a date at all. Remus thought that was sadistic, but it was none of his business, so he didn't comment.

James, on the other side of Sirius, beamed fondly at his best friend. Remus knew James liked it that he and Sirius were the two most fancied boys in the school. Except by Lily Evans.

*

It was another of the weird dreams he'd been having for a while. Why was he dreaming of Sirius all the time? But he wasn't really. This dream now was the only one.

He and Sirius were lying on Sirius's bed, with the curtains drawn, lying very close, kissing again. Again?

'Why are you kissing me, Sirius?'

'I'm not. It's a dream. Go back to sleep.'

Remus went back to sleep. In his dream, he was quite happy to kiss Sirius back, to take off his clothes, to lie with Sirius on the bed and do that thing, which maybe he'd done before in another dream, because it felt familiar, and so, so good, the way things feel in sleep.

'You won't forget I love you, will you?' Sirius was pleading, tracing the line of Remus's hipbone with his left hand.

Remus thought that was ironic, but he didn't know why.

*

The four of them were celebrating the end of NEWTs. Remus was a bit worried about some of the exams, because sometimes a charm, or a date in History of Magic, or an Arithmancy equation seemed so tantalisingly close - he'd revised, of course he'd revised - yet he couldn't quite reach it. He hoped he hadn't failed.

They were with their girlfriends. Which meant that James was with Lily, Peter was with that very odd Ravenclaw, the one Sirius maintained had only half a brain - 'She likes Wormtail, doesn't she? That's what I mean,' he said cruelly - and Remus was with a girl he'd spoken to for the first time half an hour ago, whose name he couldn't remember. Sirius was, as usual, surrounded by girlfriends, past, present and future.

Remus noticed that Sirius was sitting rather too close to him. It made him uncomfortable, but every time he shifted a bit, Sirius would close the distance between them again. At one point, as if he couldn't help himself, he put out his hand and almost seemed about to take Remus's hand, before he abruptly pulled away.

*

They'd be at an Order meeting, or chatting afterwards, and suddenly time would seem to unravel itself at top speed, and Remus would find himself standing by Sirius's fireplace, just about to Floo home. He'd always have that moment of confusion, be on the verge of asking, 'How did I get here?' Only there was something in Sirius's face that stopped him, and he'd immediately forget what he wanted to ask anyway.

A distinctive smell, a smell Remus knew yet didn't know, and often he would turn back just before he stepped into the fire and Sirius would be looking at him with an expression like yearning in his eyes, his pupils so enormous that the irises seemed black, not grey.

*

Remus brought the girl back to his brand new, tiny bedsit in Soho. He knew her from school, and they'd been getting on wonderfully at the impromptu party that had blossomed in the Leaky Cauldron after a particularly harrowing Order meeting.

They made love on Remus's narrow bed, and he thought, 'This isn't quite right. It shouldn't feel like this.' How it felt was fantastic, tight and wet, and he didn't understand how that could be wrong, how he could think it should be different, clenching, tighter, just...different. He'd never even slept with a girl before, so how could he tell? Afterwards, the smell, the faintly chlorinated scent of semen, and that he did know, because it was the smell of Sirius's flat sometimes when he was about to Floo home.

*

He and Sirius kissing so deeply that it was as if they shared the one mouth. This felt right, the feeling he'd been searching for over the empty years.

'It's the dream again,' he informed Sirius.

'I know. Just flow with it, Moony. It's a brilliant dream, isn't it?'

'I don't remember. It's been such a long time.'

'Never thought there'd be anything good about Grimmauld Place,' Sirius murmured,

In Remus's dream, they made love repeatedly through the night, and it was a dream of coming home. 'I never stopped loving you, Moony,' Sirius whispered, holding him so tightly he felt he might break. 'Not for one second. I never stopped loving you, and the things we did. Never thought we'd do them again.'

'In the dream,' Remus reminded him. 'Do I love you in the dream, Pads?'

'Oh, you do. How couldn't you? I love you so much, you must love me back.'

*

Tidying the drawing room, and Sirius a bit vague, his mind elsewhere. Remus worried about him; since Azkaban, he'd seemed so frail. It broke Remus's heart that both of them were still so young yet sometimes he felt about a million years old.

'You okay, Padfoot?'

'Yes. Exhausted. Didn't get much sleep last night.'

Remus was about to say, 'I had a wonderful dream,' but then he found he couldn't remember it anyway, or indeed whether it had been wonderful in the first place, so he contented himself with saying, 'There's a curse on every single window in here, you know that, don't you?'

'Yeah. To stop undesirables breaking in.' Sirius gave his slightly bitter laugh.

They worked through the morning, then had a break for bread and cheese. Sirius lit a cigarette, and as he smoked it Remus thought he could just imagine, at the edge of his consciousness, the faintest taste of tobacco on his tongue from the dream he could no longer recall.

*

After Sirius died, Molly took to fluttering round Remus, making sure he ate properly and drank enough non-alcoholic liquid. Remus was a bit nonplussed. Of course he was sad, his oldest, dearest friend dying, but you'd think he'd lost a life partner or something.

Molly's lower lip trembled. 'You poor soul! Don't try to be brave in front of me, Remus. Cry if you need to.'

Remus tried to cry, but though he felt desolate, the tears wouldn't come. 'Please, Molly, leave it. I lost James and Lily, I thought I'd lost Peter, and that's just the way it is.'

'But Sirius,' Molly faltered. 'Who meant so much to you.'

'They all did,' Remus said softly. 'Even Peter, once.'

'Yes, I know, but you and Sirius, you were, you were - together, weren't you?'

Remus put down his cup of coffee and frowned. 'No, of course not. Whatever gave you that idea?'

'Well, I just thought, we all thought --'

'You were wrong, then,' Remus said. 'Oh, we've always been friends but there was absolutely nothing else between us.'

He got up and took his cup to the sink and washed it, without using magic. No doubt Molly would Scourgify thoroughly afterwards, to make sure not a trace of dirt remained.

End