The Last and The First

Chapter Two

After they had finished their very large breakfast (their argument being that they had burnt off a lot of calories the night before), they moved through to the living room. This had been the second-last room that Ginny had redecorated as it had taken them so long to remove the awful family tapestry (in the end, they had resorted to Harry's idea, to 'just burn the bloody rug down!').

They arranged themselves in their usual position, Remus sitting on one side of the couch, and Sirius lying across it, his head resting on Remus' thigh. Many a time they could be found in such a way, reading, talking, or watching TV (Arthur Weasley had magically enhanced the TV, so it could not only work in such a magical house, but the pictures appeared in 3D). Today they were reading. Remus was absorbed in The Daily Prophet ('Ministry in Treaty talks with Giants'), and Sirius was re-reading 'Quidditch Through the Ages, The New Edition'.

A picture of an eleven-year-old Harry flying waved at Sirius from the page before chasing after the Snitch, above a brief Quidditch history of the youngest player in a century at Hogwarts. Harry had had offers from several teams to join them after school, but he had declined only after securing a place in Auror training. He often visited Oliver Wood, his old Quidditch captain and new Keeper for the Tornados, for a few hours of training and talk of Quidditch. Wood was still as hell-bent on the game as he had been in school, and it was a relief for Harry who didn't want or need another person asking him about his personal life.

Remus and Sirius had been sitting (or lying, in Sirius' case) in comfortable silence for an hour or so, when a strange feeling came over Remus. It felt as though he was being watched, but he couldn't sense anyone else in the room. Slowly, he closed his paper, and looked down at Sirius to indicate his uneasiness, only to find Sirius staring right at him.

"Gaahhh!!" Remus exclaimed, his whole body jumping, "are you trying to give me a heart attack Padfoot, because you're going the right way about it!" At this, Sirius started to laugh.

"For one who's so perceptive to other people, you appear to have a blind spot when it comes to me. I was staring at you for ages before you realised," Sirius managed to say, while he recovered from the poke in the midsection Remus had administered after he started to laugh. After seeing the look on Remus' face, Sirius took a different tack, honesty. "Do you remember our first proper kiss?"

"Oh no you don't. You're not going to get around me like last night!" Remus wanted to know what the hell was going on, Sirius had been in a funny mood since last night.

"How easily they forget, I must be losing my touch," Sirius mumbled to himself. "No, our first kiss. It was...wait, it's Harry's 21^st birthday soon, so, it will be 20 years ago in October. Hell, now I feel old!" A look of recognition streaked across Remus' face, and he visibly softened.

"Oh, that kiss! That was the last time I saw you in twelve years. Probably one of the reasons I tried so hard to forget it." Remus whispered the last sentence, but Sirius still heard. His face flushed, and he sat up straight on the couch.

"Remus, that kiss, and what could have happened, kept me going in Azkaban as much as the knowledge that I was innocent!" Sirius was shouting now. "Did it not mean anything to you that I was gone, and we couldn't talk about that kiss?!?"

"Sirius, shush, calm down! That's not what I meant at all! At that moment, for those few minutes before you went off on your motorbike to, I thought, meet Lily and James to perform the Fidelius Charm, you meant more to me than anyone had before. I knew we didn't have much time, so I didn't need to talk. When you flew off, it was hard, but I thought, 'at least he's protecting the people we both love.' Three days later, Lily and James were dead, I thought Wormtail was, and you had been arrested and taken to Azkaban. What would you think, feel? I thought, no, he can't have done it, that kiss promised too much for him to have known there would be no more, and I felt angry and upset that you were in Azkaban. Then I thought, but if he did do it, was that kiss just one other way to screw me over? - kill my friends, fuck up my head - and I felt betrayed. So, I tried to forget it. Very fucking hard! You have not, nor did you ever 'lose your touch'. It was just too painful to think about, so I didn't. I'm sorry I didn't explain it before." At this point, Remus' head was in his hands, and so he couldn't see what Sirius made of what he had said. They sat like that for a few moments, until Sirius broke the silence.

"You know," he started, "we've never really talked about that whole time, other than the facts, and what we told Harry. We never dealt with it, not as a couple. I've come to terms with a lot of the things people thought of me for years, but we never talked about it, not really. Why is that, do you think?" He looked over at Remus, whose head was still in his hands. Slowly, Remus lifted his head and looked Sirius in the eye.

"I suppose, for the obvious reason, that Lily and James were so close to us, and even Peter (Sirius growled at the name) was like a brother. It was so hard to deal with by myself, and I honestly thought it would hurt the two of us too much to bring up. There is one other reason, but..." Remus averted his eyes.

"Yes?" Sirius gently probed, "You know you can tell me anything." Remus turned back to face him, and Sirius was amazed by the shame in his expression.

"I'll tell you," Remus said, his voice just above a whisper, "but you may not like it. I never brought it up because I felt guilty. Guilty that I didn't believe in your innocence, guilty that I had 12 years living that you spent existing, guilty I never once tried to visit or write to you, even for my own peace of mind. Not to know why you had killed them, but to know why it had taken you so bloody long to kiss me. I couldn't talk to you about it because I felt guilty for thinking about us before you or Lily or James!" Remus practically shouted the last statement, before collapsing back into the couch, wondering how Sirius would take it. He didn't have long to wonder, as a large, loud, body-shaking laugh erupted from his lovers mouth. "Sirius," shouted Remus, "this is not funny. I was being serious! Why are you laughing?" It took Sirius a few moments to stop laughing enough to talk.

"Oh," he sighed, wiping tears of mirth from his eyes, "You are a very, very funny person. All this time you've been going on about mine and Harry's guilt complexes, and you have a huge one following you around for 20 years! Oh, this is classic. You, the most rational of us all, based your complex on a kiss! At least I am definitely not losing my touch." At this, Sirius broke down laughing again.

"But," Remus was very confused, "you don't think I'm a sorry excuse for a human being? I don't repulse you?" Even as he asked the question, he remembered a twelve-year-olds similar pleadings a long time ago.

"Remus," said Sirius, after he had calmed down, "this just proves that you are human. You are a selfish, flawed being. Just like most other people on the planet. I was beginning to think you were some kind of saint or something. Damn, I owe Ron 20 Galleons. He said being with me would corrupt anyone. I guess he....hold on! What took me so long?!? You had thought about me, us, before that night!?! How long? Why didn't you say something? I only took so long because of my reputation. I didn't want you to think that you were just another fling to me." Sirius realised that Remus was staring at him with a very bemused expression on his face.

"You had thought about us before?!? Since when? I didn't say anything because you were going out with mystery stranger number, err, I lost count! When did you think about me?" At this, Sirius looked rather abashed.

"Um, well, to tell you the truth, well, I wasn't. Going out with anyone that is. After school I only went out on some dates that James or Peter set up, which were not exactly memorable. I don't think Peter understood I only like men. The only relationship I had before you, after school was, em," now Sirius was looking downright embarrassed, "Bagman."

"Bagman, Bagman...who..!?!" Remus stared at him incredulously. "Ludo Bagman! Well, you sly old dog, you certainly kept that quiet. When did this happen?"

"Do you remember the Wasps match we went to for James' 21^st birthday?"

"Sure I do. James used to play with or against half the team in school."

"Well, Ludo had been a few years ahead of us in school, and he was really amazing to watch. Anyway, I bumped into him in the pub afterwards - I had gone to the bar for my round - and he remembered the four of us. We got chatting, and, well, do you really want specifics? I see you do. Well, we met up a couple of times before we went on our first 'date'. We went to another Quidditch match, well, he couldn't be seen to be out with anyone other than a gorgeous leggy blonde, so we kept it quiet. We only went out for about four months."

"Wait, this was just a few months after James' birthday? Then that would have been mysterious stranger number eight. Myself and Lily thought something was up when you refused to bring him to my party. I just thought it was someone that you didn't particularly want us to see, that we knew or something. Merlin, we were envisioning you with Severus!"

"Snape! You had me down as being with Snape?!? How could you!" Although it had gotten easier to be around Snape in the last few years, their animosity was by no means over.

"Thank Merlin we were wrong. Although," Remus added, a dangerous twinkle in his eye, "that would explain the, em, hostility." Now it was Remus' turn to break down laughing, as Sirius let forth on a string of curses (non-magical curses that is) imaginative enough to put any Brit Pop icon to shame. "Ok, ok, I'm sorry. You didn't actually think I was serious did you? No, but we knew something was up. So what happened?"

"Humph! At least you can see how absurd it would be, me and Snape. We'd kill each other. Oh, Ludo, right. Well, funny you should mention your birthday Remus, it's kind of one of the reasons we broke up. Ludo wanted to make a 'statement' and go to your party together, but I wasn't ready and didn't want to. It was that simple."

"Sure, and I'm you're Aunt Fanny. Come off it Sirius, there's always more when it comes to you."

"Ok, ok. But that was a part of it. We agreed not to go to the party together, he had training until late that night anyway. So, at your party, that's when."

"When what?"

"Remus, I know you're not stupid, but you're certainly doing a good impression of it. That's when I started to think about us. No, that's not true. I started to think of you. I didn't realise I wanted there to be an us until that Christmas, when James and Lily announced she was pregnant. Looking at what they had, I realised that that was what I had always wanted, and that I wanted it with you." Remus sat in shocked silence while the words Sirius spoke reverberated around his head.

"What happened to Ludo?" Remus asked in a hoarse voice. "Were you still seeing him?"

"No! We broke up a few weeks after your party. I didn't want him, it was you that was important."

"But even after you realised that, it still took you, what, almost two years to do something about it. You didn't tell me. Did you tell anyone?" Remus had a very strange look on his face, as if he were daring Sirius to lie to him. Sirius sighed. They should have talked about this before, not six years into their relationship.

"James knew."

"So that was why Lily was so encouraging. Why couldn't you tell me? You had to have known I felt the same way." Remus' voice held none of the anger which had flashed through him when he heard how long it had been before he found out. All he could think of was the wasted two years that could have been.

"No Remus, I didn't." Sirius took his hand in his own, his voice soft. "I didn't know. Honestly. I don't think even James knew. Lily could always hide what was going on better than he could. When suspicion was on you as Voldemort's spy, I didn't want to believe it. More fool me that I did. But I knew that I had to tell you, or show you, or something. That month leading up to the Fidelius Charm, everyone must have been acting really weird."

"It was a dark time," Remus agreed. "Harry was only 15 months old. I knew the Fidelius Charm was going to be performed, and immediately thought that you would be the secret keeper. So when you came around that night, I thought it was to say goodbye because you'd be going into hiding yourself."

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