Levity

Remus was really astoundingly drunk. Impressively, astonishingly drunk, with a side of bastard to go with the mix. He'd gotten himself tossed out of the bar approximately half an hour prior and he'd set himself at walking toward his flat immediately thereafter.

He'd made good headway, he decided, when he looked over his shoulder and noticed that the bar was at least six yards behind him.

All those things he'd heard over the years about the amazing werewolf metabolism were obviously total shit. He'd never trust another book again. The more he thought about it the more angry he became; he'd spent endless amounts of money on books over the years, everything from paperbacks to massive, leatherbound tomes and he had more than the passing suspicion that the girl at the counter of the Flourish and Blotts thought he was a Death Eater in the making, from the sheer number of volumes regarding werewolves and magical beasts he'd purchased. That however, he thought with a grin, hadn't ever stopped her from slapping on an extra ten percent discount on all his purchases and telling him to owl her sometime.

He could Apparate back home, but he was sober enough to know he was drunk (that didn't make sense, Remus was nearly sure of it), and he had the sudden, uncomfortable image of himself splinched with a lightpost in his back. He decided against the idea. He'd had money in his pocket at the beginning of the evening, but most of it had gone to the greater pursuit of extensive liver damage so calling a cab was out of the question. He could ride the tube but negotiating the stairs down to the metro or minding the gap seemed like incredibly difficult tasks at the moment. If he was lucky, someone would arrest him for public drunkenness and he'd call James to pick him up in the morning.

He took two staggering steps forward, didn't fall down, and decided that it was another on a list of triumphs for the evening. As an encore, he'd push forward.

At least he had had enough mind to pick a respectable bar fairly close to home. If he'd been stupid enough to go to the Hog's Head in Hogsmeade, he'd probably find himself naked and sexually assaulted by Astrid the book girl the morning after.

And really, that's what had started the whole thing: sex.

He, along with James, Peter, and Sirius, had spent much of their sixth year discovering what every functioning adult knew on one level or another: Sex Was Bad. James, in between stalking Lily and making an increasingly large ass of himself in public, spent sixteen and one half hours terrified in the infirmary that he and Melissa Marsters would end up proud parents. Pete was found hiding in the dorm after Valentine's Day moaning about botched attempts at intimacy after his one and one only date with Susan Carter. Sirius did the infirmary thing twice, kissed a boy full on the mouth during supper on a dare, and then been caught necking in a closet with Jorie Thomas before serving detention for a week for his efforts. Remus kept finding himself naked and bored the morning after, first with Jacqueline Roe, then Erin Franks, and finally Eve Waterston, who had told Remus that she wasn't breaking up with him because she didn't love him, but because he'd fallen asleep on her and muttered Sirius' name in between breathing.

"Look," he'd tried to say reasonably, "I'm practically married to my friends. We even have to live with one another. I was probably dreaming about filling his shoes with marmalade." She'd been pulling on her shirt and frowning at him, not nearly as upset about the situation as Remus felt she should have been, if she really meant that part about not seeing each other any longer. Eve countered that be that as it may, it was suspicious, and Sirius was more attractive than she, so she knew when to draw herself out of the running.

Remus had ranted and raved at James for nearly an hour before James had dragged Remus down through one of the secret tunnels to Hogsmeade and bought Remus more butterbeer than he knew what to do with.

That was four years ago.

At twenty-three yards away from the bar, he could be honest with himself, as much as any much-inebriated man was honest with himself, anyhow.

He should have known that sharing a flat with Sirius had been a bad idea, given that he'd shared a room with the git for seven years by necessity, Remus already knew all of Sirius' bad habits and that was before they'd had to share a smaller bathroom.

But Remus had known that there wasn't a chance for him to find a job in the wizarding world, and the position that Dumbledore had mentioned was too good to pass up: a teaching post at a Muggle college. So he'd taken the job and found an apartment and started begging anyone around to be his roommate; unsurprisingly, the only one of his friends who had any intention of living Muggleside was Sirius, and Remus was half-convinced he'd done it only to further piss off his mother.

On one level, he knew that despite the dishes never being set away or the fact that Sirius was always caught either asleep in front of the telly or wandering around naked, that he ought to be grateful that he was making the rent. On the other hand, Remus was not grateful to find himself making explanations when he arrived home late and found Sirius fuming with him and inevitably yelling about how with the Dark Wars raging all around them wasn't it just brilliant that his stupid wanker of a best friend had decided to go and camp in the university library instead of telling his flatmate that he wasn't dead at the end of an Avada Kadavra. Remus also found great offense in the way that Sirius had managed to infiltrate every aspect of his life, from his schedule to his closet ("Really, Remus, those leather trousers were made for you. Oh -- stop being such an idiot and put them on."), to his students, who'd taken to asking about Professor Lupin's "friend."

Remus was also trying *very hard* not to think about what would happen if one of his students saw him. Professor Lupin was popular, as far as junior professors went, and he'd had more than his fair share of admirers and nosy girls asking him for private tutorial. The last thing that he needed was for any of them to see him staggering around London, three sheets in the wind and fighting back an irrational urge to have the sex, just to get the bloody thing over with and out of the way.

The only thing he knew for sure was that it was all Sirius' fault.

*****

As far as evenings at home went, it had been a typical one.

Remus had come home with a stack of badly-written term papers the size of Mount Everest, and Sirius had been on his eighth cup of coffee, frantically studying for the A.P.E.s, tossing out a totally irrelevant and obscure question every few moments and panicking when Remus didn't know the answer. "How can you not know?" Sirius had been wailing. "How can you not know? You work for the Order -- you had a hundred and six average in Defense Against the Dark Arts -- you keep boggarts because you think they're educational!" He'd been clutching his head in his hands at that point. "How can you not know?" Remus had simply blinked, set aside the paper he was grading, and started questioning whether or not Sirius had finally lost his ability to function as a normal human being to the Auror Proficiency Exams.

"I think I have," Sirius admitted mournfully. He put his face flat against the table when he muttered, "I haven't been on a date in over two years."

Remus blinked, The Heart of Darkness momentarily pushed to the side at Sirius' revelation. "That's not true," he countered. "That girl -- what's her name? -- Gillian was just here. A month ago."

Sirius glared up at him. "You and Gillian spoke more than Gillian and I did," he'd muttered. "I mean a date, Remus. I fuck occasionally but I haven't been out with a person in ages." Sirius turned his glare to the papers that littered and surrounded him. "And for what? The bloody Ministry."

Everyone who knew Sirius knew how Sirius felt about the Ministry of Magic.

Remus rolled his eyes and turned back to Julie Russell's reinterpretation of the savage lover scene. "You chose the job yourself, Sirius," he reminded him primly.

And the fact that Sirius had had been an agent of tension for a few nervous months. As long as the Marauders had known of Remus' proficiency in DADA, they'd always assumed, and rightly so, that as soon as they were out of school Remus would be applying to be an Auror and he'd be the one slamming his head against a wall for the A.P.E. tests. It had been seventh year when the legislation against werewolves and other half-creatures working in "dangerous occupations" had come out that Remus had made a mad scramble to reassess his future, put together a different plan, all while his friends wrote nasty letters to the Daily Prophet and the Ministry of Magic and James took to owling his father six times a day about what absolute wankers his coworkers were.

The teaching position was a blessing, and Remus suspected that Dumbledore had been arranging for it for years, just in case. After all, it had always seemed suspicious that he'd find packages of Muggle classic literature on Christmas morning alongside his Every Flavor Beans. It was lucky that Remus was Muggle-born, and that he'd always loved to read. The equivalencies for working at a Muggle university had been complicated and Remus ended up taking a year of night classes, just in case, but the end result was fine: he taught English 29 and Sirius struggled with relearning DADA, somehow propelled by Remus' failed dream to pursue it as if it were his own. Maybe it was. The lines had become blurry, after all. Sometimes, Remus almost thought that he was in love with Lily, and it always took that extra moment to remember that it was James who was.

"I did," Sirius shot back tartly, "and largely because I assumed that you'd just funnel yourself into my brain." He paused, a wry, tired smile on his face. "Why'd you think I moved in here, Moony?"

Remus recognized a change of subject when he saw one, regardless how artfully done. "Using me, I see," he said, mock-disdainfully. "I'll have you know I feel cheap now, Sirius."

Sirius leered. "Oh, Moony -- if you only knew." He flopped over onto his back and made a distinctly puppyish sound to accompany the canine wiggle.

"It's things like that, Padfoot," Remus said behind a smirk, turning back to his papers, "that make me question if what you're looking for is a woman at all."

*****

Thing was, when Remus had said that, he'd been waiting to follow it up with a supremely distasteful joke regarding bestiality in the Wizarding world, only Sirius had always been impatient. So when Sirius had said, totally honest, that he probably wasn't, it took Remus half a beat to wrap his mind around the idea.

For one (or six) incredulous minutes, he played with the idea that Sirius had somehow picked up mind-reading over the years and was playing right into Remus' joke. For another few moments, he debated whether or not Sirius was honestly saying he was interested in four-legged company as opposed to a bipedal.

It took at least four revolutions of the idea before Remus decided that maybe Sirius meant that it was the wrong gender, and not species.

The Marauders had suffered more than their fair share of jokes over the years, even from teachers. It was the price to pay for being utterly inseparable friends, the assumptions and jokes and sniggers from the Slytherin table, which Remus felt were more than fairly repaid by James and Sirius' sometimes unforgivable behavior. And frankly, it had only really bothered them during the Horrible Year of Fourteen. Thereafter, when James and Sirius' frequent fights were waved off as "lovers' spats," Peter and Remus just nodded in agreement; when Peter and James scowled at one another over one comment or another, everyone just rolled their eyes and muttered about the odd couple being at it again. But if the unending jokes about their alternative lifestyles had done one thing, they'd solidified the general disbelief in its possibility. No group of boys who played so cheerfully into the giggles and implications of their being together twenty-four hours a day could really be gay.

So it wasn't Remus' fault that he'd reacted badly to Sirius' sort-of admission.

*****

"Maybe I'm not," Sirius blurted out.

Remus glanced up from the paper and set down his pen. "Padfoot?"

He'd heard that tone of before, declaring that they were brothers to the end, deciding to become Animagi (though, technically, Remus hadn't heard about that until he caught them stealing his potions supplies for one of the final steps), and every other week for the new love of his life. Remus didn't exactly see Sirius' conviction as a guarantee of anything (despite its relative dependability to that point), but knew enough to know that Sirius at least would treat it as Hammurabi's Code, subject to dismemberment and all its trappings in the event of failure.

Sirius growled. "I've been thinking, Remus."

Remus fought the primitive urge to run. To date, every time that Sirius had been thinking, the end result or the detention that had resulted from it had been disastrous. He could ramble on for days about how he'd regret till the day he died telling his friends the password to the Prefects' bathroom, what with being stained magenta for a week while Sirius insisted that he'd only been thinking of doing it to Malfoy, and hadn't anticipated that Moony used the bathroom as well. He could also mention how after a good round of "thinking," Sirius had decided that a proper punishment for Snape's habit of trying to get the Marauders expelled was to send the boy to the Whomping Willow to be eaten -- but after spending half of seventh year in total silence, watching Sirius almost kill himself with remorse, Remus had long ago decided not to press the issue any more.

"Oh?" he asked, voice half a pitch higher than normal. "Have you?" Remus congratulated himself on still being seated.

"I had -- oh, Jesus, Moony, I don't know how to talk about this," Sirius moaned, covering his face with his hands.

Remus wanted to say, "That's okay, I don't know how to respond to this, either," but figured that it wasn't exactly the most heartening or sensitive thing to say to a friend in need of a compassionate listener. Instead, he said, "It's okay, Sirius. Just say whatever comes to mind."

Sirius nodded, taking the advice to heart, and Remus suddenly felt bad. Sirius shouldn't take the advice to heart, not when Remus was pulling it out of his arse at incredible speeds and offhandedly wondering at the chances of James or Peter barging in this late and offering to hear Sirius' troubles instead. He was in the middle of a particularly difficult piece of calculation when Sirius blurted out:

"I've been -- there've been these hints."

Remus blinked. "Well, then."

"All the bloody time," Sirius went on. "Hints." A scowl appeared on his face. "Hints everywhere."

Was, perhaps then, sexual orientation actually a mass decree? Had there been signs posted that Remus had just simply neglected to read?

It was pure masochism that led Remus to say, "Hints?"

"And dreams," Sirius went on, voice stiff and hurt. "I just -- Moony, I don't know what to say. Or who to talk to." He laughed, low and dark and tired, familiar from early seventh year and Remus hated to hear Sirius so distressed. "I'm sorry. You must think I'm an utter poof."

After debating what sorts of answer that phrase invited, Remus decided that teasing was out of the question, and so was simply telling Sirius that maybe he was a poof. Years of constructing detailed lies to mask the real reason he was always gone a few days every month had given Remus a laudable talent for letting whomever was speaking direct the conversation into more comfortable territory, thereby reducing the number of lies spoken and by association the number of lies that Remus had to keep track of when people inquired as to his health or his family later as they invariably did.

Remus said, "Do you think you're an utter poof?"

"I don't know what I think anymore," Sirius admitted. "If I didn't know any better, I'd say that this was just my subconscious' newest way of rebelling against my mother." He grinned, almost happy. "I mean, imagine the look on Mum's face -- not only a Muggle-born, but a man." Sirius snorted. "That'd be worth taking it up the arse any day."

Remus coughed.

"Sorry," his friend muttered. "It's just..."

They settled into a silence before Remus sighed. "Look, nothing's for certain yet, right?"

Sirius nodded. "Right. Not certain. Hinting -- "

" -- but not certain," Remus finished. "Right." He turned back to his papers for a moment of thought before he looked at his friend and gave him the only piece of advice that he could conscionably give. "Why don't you just try it, then?"

It was probably the dumbest thing he'd said his entire life.

*****

Considering that Remus had spent twelve months being fifteen, having the dumbest thing he'd ever said be "Why don't you try it, then?" was notable and worthy of shame and flagellation -- at least that's what he'd deduced. Stone drunk and barely walking on his own, but Remus didn't doubt his ability to deduce when the moment called for it. If it was one thing that he could do, it was over think any situation.

He tried to kick a trashcan and missed, starting the inevitable downward tumble to the dirty, wet ground. Gravity loathed him and so did fate, which was obviously the reason why he was twenty-one, looked nearly thirty, turned into a raving beast once a month, and had a best friend who'd up and decided that he might be homosexual. The last of which wouldn't have bothered Remus so much if Sirius hadn't gotten that strange, intent look on his face -- the look that precluded all logic, thought, and contention. Which was probably the other reason that Remus was out there, falling down drunk.

As he was about to hit the cement, he didn't.

Remus blinked three times, and swiveled his head around while the whole world swiveled drunkenly around him. He was about to scowl and request that the universe just stop for a few moments when he came face to face with worn black wool. Vaguely familiar black wool. Then again, with nearly ten shots of Absolut in him, Remus was about to claim that any number of religious icons were familiar black wool, too.

"Remus! God -- are you all right?"

He rolled a little in the hold (or tried to) and saw Sirius' light blue eyes against a tan face. Of course, it was all very dark and shadowed and he was feeling a bit put out, what with the enormous yellow street light just behind Sirius' head that was rapidly blinding him.

"I feel fabulous," Remus drawled.

Sirius laughed, breathy and desperate. Remus had always liked Sirius' laugh -- never too much, but enough to appreciate it after a particularly rough Quidditch game when Remus tumbled out of the Gryffindor tower, voice half-hoarse from yelling the play-by-play, to find Sirius there, broomstick muddy and hair even worse, laughing loud and hard and honest. "Moony!" he'd yell. "You see that?"

"Sure you do," Sirius said, sounding a bit crazy. "Christ, Moony, just how much did you drink?"

As if Remus hadn't spent half the game extolling the virtues of Gryffindor beaters and chasers, anyhow. (Carefully, of course, since McGonagall only tended to get distracted toward the very end of games.) But Sirius seemed to like it better when Remus was throwing a towel at him, choking on laugher, shouting about what an incredible save it'd been, or how brilliant that shot was, and did you see the look on Goyle's face when that bludger hit him in the arse?

"Thing is," Remus informed Sirius gravely, "I didn't even like Quidditch before you two."

Sirius stared at him for a moment, baffled and silent. "You didn't like -- " he started, but rethought his statement. "'Course you didn't. Bloody hell, Remus. You -- I can't believe you." Remus felt himself being rearranged and moved. The bar that had been so kind to him was now very far away and his feet were moving despite being as heavy as bricks, and the play of light on the sidewalk underneath his shoes was just fascinating. "Weren't you the one who always made fun of James and me after we drank?"

"Yes, but you seemed to enjoy it so," Remus said matter-of-factly. "I thought I might try to enjoy something, too."

That wasn't...exactly why Remus had done it, but he recalled that the flippant thought had passed through his head sometime in between the fourth and eighth shot of vodka, but then things had gotten remarkably foggy.

Sirius snorted in disgust and tugged on Remus' arm none too lightly, ignoring his friend as Remus muttered, "Watch it!" and said instead, "Figures. I'd get to haul the only eloquent drunk in the world home in the middle of the sodding winter." He glared at Remus for half a beat before the expression softened and his eyes got hazy. A lot of things were hazy. Remus was starting to enjoy the haziness on a whole.

Remus was ready to say something but decided against it, and leaned hard on Sirius' shoulder instead, cheek pressed to the winter-chilled and slightly damp cloth, smelling cold and motor oil and whatever the hell Sirius had been eating before he'd decided to trek out into the big London midnight and find him. How had Sirius found him? The prospect seemed that much less important when Remus had a shoulder to lean on, plenty of alcohol in his blood, and a whole weekend during which to be properly hung over. Besides, the way that the street lights and store signs blossomed out in patches of foggy, distilled light behind Sirius' head, framing his angular features was rather pleasant, like one of those Greek statues of eternal youth, the Grecian ideal of beauty. And in some strange, liquor-blazed way, it made perfect sense, Sirius would never grow old, Remus simply couldn't see it.

By the time Remus looked up from Sirius' shoulder, Sirius was looking down.

"We've stopped," Sirius said.

"Have we?" Remus said intelligently. It took a massive effort but he wrenched his neck around to look at the world, mostly still now, except for the shuddering halos of light everywhere. "Oh, I see," he murmured. He whipped his head back up to look at Sirius again. "Why?"

A few functioning neurons in his brain fired and he realized that Sirius' large, brown hand was on his hip, steadying him, and one lean, long thigh was actually pressed against the back of his bended legs, keeping him mostly propped up. Most of Remus' weight was on Sirius' right side. Sirius, for his part, didn't complain, but was flushed, either from contact or from the cold, Remus couldn't be bothered to care -- he'd just never realized how fascinating cars were.

"Because you're extraordinarily heavy for a man who looks like he hasn't eaten in a year and there's a cab coming just this way," Sirius explained gruffly. He waved one arm, flagging down a cab, and the whole universe shook unpleasantly around Remus like some sort of dire reminder that he was growing far too sober.

"Don't do that, Sirius!" Remus moaned and Sirius just sighed in response.

The cab slowed down in front of them with a slushy sound, entirely native to metropolis' during particularly contrary winters, and Remus felt his feet get wet just as he heard Sirius mutter a loud curse. Remus was about to apologize for Sirius' shoes (were they new? Remus was nearly certain they were new) when he felt himself being rudely shoved into the backseat of the cab, which, as all cabs tended to, smelled like cigarettes and liquor and teenagers.

Remus wrinkled his nose. "Sirius -- this cab smells like come."

The driver shouted something and Remus watched in amazement as the flush on Sirius' cheeks turned into a full-blown blush, accompanied by frantic apology and hand-waving gestures that were probably supposed to keep the peace, but only made the driver glare at Remus darkly.

"Well it does," Remus protested as Sirius turned to scowl at him dangerously, pressing Remus' hands into his lap to keep them from scratching along the backside of the front seats of the car.

"Well, I don't care if it does, you don't go around saying -- oh, what am I doing, you're pissed," Sirius muttered in reply, embarrassment high in his voice. He sounded like he was choking on something, and his eyes were glassy -- or maybe it was just Remus and the vodka and that brilliant bartender, because everything (except for the upholstery in the cab which had to have been hosed with semen, Remus thought unhappily) seemed a bit glassy that night.

The ride was blessedly short and so was Sirius' temper every time Remus attempted to start a conversation. By the fourth attempt at trying to capture Sirius' interest in the way that dirty snow seemed to form ridiculously amusing shapes in the gutters, Remus decided that Sirius wasn't worth it and shut up, slamming himself petulantly back in the seat, arms loose around his sides.

Sirius was shoving the driver an egregious amount of Muggle money by the time that Remus was in full pout and before he'd had a chance to mention that a bottle of fabric cleaner wasn't going to cost him more than a fiver, Remus was hauled bodily from the vehicle.

"Don't even," Sirius warned, voice low in Remus' ear.

The apartment building loomed ahead and looked strangely friendly, lit up with premature holiday lights and bright yellow windows.

Remus slid a little on the icy ground, scowling into Sirius arm and barely standing. Somewhere, he was aware that Sirius now had both arms around his chest, bracing Remus' slipping body against Sirius' chest to keep them both upright, and somewhere, Remus cared that they were...uncomfortably close.

"It was just a suggestion," Remus said, voice muffled in Sirius' heavy coat. He'd always liked that coat, admired it on Sirius when they'd gone to do their holiday shopping for Lily and James.

It had been a welcome distraction from being two bachelors who had no idea what to buy a new couple who were newly flatmates, in a much more intimate way. Remus had mentioned a book for the coffee table and Sirius complained that Remus had nearly bought out the Flourish and Blotts over the years and could he get something other than a bloody book for once? Remus had pointed out that James probably wasn't up for getting charmed cards with naked women on the deck either, this year, and Sirius had paled. They'd been struck silent and desperate until Remus saw the coat in the window.

"You really like it?" Sirius had asked skeptically.

"For God's sake, Padfoot," Remus had said, equal parts affectionate and annoyed. "You're in no shortage of money or ego, please don't make me stroke your self-image."

So Sirius had bought the coat.

*****

Sirius stared at Remus, halfway in between flummoxed and vomiting blood, eyes larger than Remus had ever seen, impossibly blue and terrified.

"My God, Moony," Sirius said, low and fearful.

Remus rolled his eyes. "You said you weren't sure," he said, supremely reasonable, lacing his fingers together and setting his hands on the table, looking Sirius over with the practiced gaze of an educator. He said, "How else will you ever know? Unless you try it?" Remus smiled kindly. "And really, this is a good place for it. I'm sure London has plenty of bars and clubs and things that cater to this."

Sirius turned an unnatural shade of red and crawled toward Remus on his hands and knees, aghast. "Remus."

"Yes?" he asked.

"It's not like I'm deciding between Earl Grey and green tea you stupid, sodding bastard!" Sirius roared, slamming his hands on the coffee table and glaring at Remus, eyes manic. If Remus hadn't spent seven years trapped in a bedroom with the man shouting at him at the top of his lungs, the display might have actually been frightening, but given circumstances, Remus simply picked up his pen and poked Sirius in the forehead with the blunt end.

"You wanted advice," Remus said gently. "I'm giving it to you."

Sirius moaned and flopped face-down against the coffee table with a painful thud. "I hate you. You're useless."

Remus hummed in response and looked down at the mussed locks at the back of Sirius' head before a note of pity reached his thoughts. It was to a different degree, but Remus remembered having his own identity crisis, several dozen, actually, what with the eternal struggle between the wolf that seemed to rule him and the human who was constantly caught negotiating treaties with a larger, more forceful nation. Though he supposed that being twisted with crippling angst at the age of fifteen was markedly different than doing the same at twenty-one, by which time you were mostly expected to have figured things out (at least the basics) and to have purchased a nice suit.

He sighed, and decided that he wasn't going to get anything else done on those term papers anyhow that night. "Sirius," he said, voice light.

Sirius didn't reply, just breathed heavily onto the table in a way which suggested that the thud had been every bit as painful as it had sounded.

Remus frowned. "Sirius."

His friend pointedly ignored him and started pulling at the fibers of the wool rug beneath the table.

"Sirius," Remus said, a warning in his voice.

Sirius looked up, scowling like an eleven-year-old, a dark red spot on his forehead, which Remus carefully neglected to mention. "Don't speak to me. For you are filled with hate and mocking and cruelty. I never should have signed this lease. My heart breaks for the day I decided to become your friend."

"Nevertheless," Remus said breezily, "I am here. And male." He leveled Sirius with a look that dared him to make the obvious joke. "And willing to use Obliviate on myself if it'll make you stop sniveling like some sort of gutter-bound wretch."

Sirius' jaw dropped and Remus sighed.

He sometimes wondered at whether or not the things he did were out of genuine friendship for Sirius, James, and Peter, or if it was simply because he was so stupidly grateful for companionship that the debt seemed to linger to that day. It seemed irrational that he'd help James pick out lingerie for Lily, go with Peter on his blind date and end up having to chat with some horrible woman named Rita, or offer to let Sirius experiment with his sexuality on him otherwise. He wondered distantly, watching Sirius open and shut his mouth over and again whether or not Frank Longbottom had done the same sorts of things for Arthur Weasley, though it seemed implausible, after all, since by their seventh year Remus had already heard that Molly was bound to bring the second of what looked to be many Weasleys into the world.

Sirius finally got his vocal chords to work. "Remus -- you'd -- "

"Yes," Remus cut him off. Nervousness was only then trilling through his body and he was starting to debate whether or not it had been a good idea to offer at all when Sirius suddenly flushed an even deeper and more pervasive color of red, stuttering as he murmured:

"But I haven't got any..."

Remus strained to hear the last word, barely spoken above the hoarsest whisper before he found himself turning equally red. "I meant a kiss not a goddamned free ride, Sirius!" he cried.

If Sirius had seemed uncomfortable before he looked mortified then. He muttered a dark, "OhmyGod," and then dropped his face to the table again, the thud even louder. He was quiet for a long time and Remus waited for the blush to slowly recede while fuming all the while. A few more horrible moments passed in silence before Sirius moaned, "Sorry, Moony. I didn't -- I wasn't thinking."

"When do you ever?" Remus asked, grudgingly teasing.

Sirius looked up, smiling weakly, still blushing. "Well, that."

In that moment, Remus felt so terrible for him he didn't know what best to say. Remus had very little experience with Sirius when he was genuinely conflicted. And the closest he'd ever seen Sirius to the expression Remus saw then was that was the morning after the full moon, Sirius' eyes hollow and face pallid as Remus told him that he never wanted to speak to him again, that whatever bonds of friendship they'd built over the course of six years had been razed from existence when Sirius had made his decision. And granted, questioning whether or not boys struck his fancy was probably second tier to nearly destroying three peoples' lives in one fell swoop, but realizing that everything could change with one realization had to be an awful pressure.

So Remus chalked it up to total idiocy or pity or any combination therein, that had him crawling around the coffee table until he was kneeling right before Sirius, whose eyes had gone the size of dinner plates, mouth half-opened again in shock.

Remus' first kiss had been behind Greenhouse number three, with Lily Evans their third year. They'd gone out for two and a half weeks before she'd realized that despite how much she liked the way his hair fell into his eyes or how he seemed to know everything about Defense Against the Dark Arts, it hadn't meant that he'd forsake his disgusting cabal of friends for True Love, or a third year's version thereof. Still, as nerve-wracking as it had been to date on the sly a redhead who hated his friends (and a nerve-wracking two and a half weeks it had been), the only time he'd gotten a bigger shock from her was when he'd been moving a box of her clothes into her and James' new flat and she'd hugged him tightly and told him he'd been a phenomenal kisser.

With that and the fact that things mostly got better with age, Remus wasn't so much worried about making a total prat of himself as he was of Sirius dying from a brain hemorrhage, which looked like it had a fair chance of happening, what with the blank shock on Sirius' face.

"You still want to try this?" Remus asked, voice rough with nervous tension.

Sirius blinked, hard. "Yes!" he nearly shouted. "Or, rather, yes," he said half a beat later, far more composed. He hesitated. "Are you sure -- ?"

Remus leaned in, lips slightly parted, and a breath away from contact with Sirius' perpetually-swollen mouth, he whispered, "You tell anyone about this, and a werewolf bite will be the least of your worries."

*****

"Are you drooling on me?" Sirius asked, horrified.

Remus made an insulted noise. "I do not drool."

"You do," Sirius said, "and you're drooling on me."

"You should be so lucky," Remus shot back as he fell away from Sirius against a cold wall, thumping against the peeling paint uncomfortably and hitting his elbow hard.

It hurt and he was cold. Where was his scarf? The Gryffindor one that had come with his uniform was still tucked away in a large crate of things that didn't fit or were too ratty to wear but he couldn't bear to toss. He'd -- no, Sirius had bought him a new one, just the other day. It was camel-colored and soft and wonderfully light and warm, looped on a mannequin just a stone's throw from where Sirius had been paying for his new coat. Remus hadn't even been paying attention, just admiring some particularly nice Christmas displays one minute and then wearing a new scarf the next, draped loosely around his shoulders. He remembered Sirius' grinning face as he'd said, "Early Christmas, can't have my boyfriend looking homeless." And Remus remembered what he'd said, jokingly since it'd been so easy to joke about it just a few days before, "I could do better, Sirius."

And so he told him. "I could do better, Sirius." His 's's were slurred but it would have to do.

Sirius laughed, loud and sudden and dry, like he hadn't really thought of that before. "I could," Remus insisted.

"I'm sure, Moony," Sirius said, voice quiet and tame, strange and rare. Remus only remembered hearing him like this twice before, and he wasn't quite sure he believed the soft look in Sirius' eyes as he looked at where Remus was slumped against the wall, digging short nailed into aging paint.

"I could do better -- I have," Remus felt it necessary to add.

Sirius was still looking at him with a faint, blue expression that Remus didn't like; he couldn't place it, didn't know where it went in the triple-wide spectrum of emotions that Sirius had shared loudly and quietly and contentiously over the years. Remus couldn't remember seeing it over a game of Exploding Snap in the common room or by the lake as Sirius charmed Snape's pants off, literally. Remus wasn't oriented by the expression in Sirius' eyes, and he didn't like it; the Marauder's Map had been his idea and mostly his creation for a reason -- Remus liked to know where he was going.

It started out as necessity and became habit. Scheduling, maps, and calculations were all part of a daily life to make the moon bearable. It began with an in-depth study of Astronomy and ended with a curious fascination with the way things moved and maneuvered around one another, highways, canals, oceans and currents; Remus liked to know and anticipate and plan. He remembered being teased for spending so much time on such Muggle pursuits when he was sprawled out in the dorm room of a school that stood for all that magic invited: flexibility, instant change. But Remus remembered his instant change, one late night after a row with his mother and a seven-year-old's determination to stay out past his bedtime if it'd kill him -- and it very nearly did.

And what had never been clear was so much more muddled with that much alcohol in his system, and all Remus could remember was a flash of silver-white moon and the jagged mouth of something that'd eat him up and swallow him down. He had the scars and sores to prove it, years later, all healed up and marked by the Registry. It hurt differently now, and strangely, he felt an out of place ache that this was his life, and that he needed to live it.

And gently, so much more gently than Remus would have ever anticipated, Sirius stroked one broad, calloused hand down the side of Remus' face.

"You'll always do better," Sirius murmured, halfway between a wish and a regret, the distance in his eyes growing until it collapsed on itself, shifting and remaking into the brightness Remus found so much more comforting, like an old t-shirt. "You've always been too good for me, Moony. For all of us."

Remus nodded, thoroughly satisfied with that answer and the change in atmosphere. "Yes. And I'm cold."

Sirius smirked this time, and with the same dark-cloaked arm, half-pulled, half-bullied Remus up the aging steps.

*****

A kiss, once lips were met and eyes were closed was pretty much the same regardless which gender one found himself kissing, Remus reflected.

As soon as his mouth had sealed over Sirius', soft skin against chapped lips, tentative pressure growing stronger with familiarity, Sirius had sighed, mouth parting just enough for the tiniest slip of a wet tongue to stroke against Remus lower lip. Remus, brave either by delusion or just lunacy, sighed back and his lips parted like he was waking for the first time, slow and careful and cautiously against something hot and dangerous. It was all habit and reflex and sensation after that point, the taste of coffee and chocolate frogs, the faint, sweet taste of flesh, and the same wet, cool and hot slick of tongue over tongue, running expertly across a row of teeth or teeth themselves -- biting down on the bow-curve of a mouth and sucking gently, insistently, like a tease all on its own.

And eventually they parted on tiny brushes of mouth on mouth and the last, hot, tight bite of a row of orderly teeth down on his bottom lip as Remus pulled away for oxygen.

They sat, eyes closed in surprised silence.

*****

Remus fell down as soon as they got into the flat, stumbled into an undignified pile just short of the nearest couch and explained to Sirius that he was damaged.

"Bloody fuck," he whined. "Bloody fuck."

Remus made a sound of general discontentment and allowed himself to be dragged toward the bedroom, where he knew that Sirius would end up stepping on his dirty laundry and Remus' magazines and old copies of the Times to dump him in his unmade bed. He thought he remembered Lily coming over to castigate them over the state of their home until Remus had pointed out that whereas he and Sirius could still see the floor, all Lily and James had was a vague suggestion that it still existed. And really, Remus thought cheerfully, vodka-blurred happiness seeping into all of his pores, there was something nice and comforting about the stacks and piles of books and papers that filled the bedroom. Without them, he was certain that there'd be nothing more to the room than two mattresses and a desk lamp, depending on how long Sirius was between one night stands, there might or might not have been hugely embarrassing magazines laying in plain view.

Sirius snorted and pulled him back to his feet. "All things considered, that'd hurt far more than falling on your ass, Moony."

"Oh, I remember," Remus said brightly.

Sirius stopped dead in the doorway of the bedroom and stared at Remus.

Remus looked around the bedroom, feeling his eyelids droop. "You should probably lay me flat on my stomach," he said blandly.

Sirius continued to stare and started to blush. It suddenly occurred to Remus that he'd seen Sirius blush more that night than he had in seven years.

"I'm all bruised," Remus explained, though it only made Sirius turn a darken color red. "From falling?"

Sirius, despite Remus' explanations, stubbornly continued to stare and stand still, until Remus frowned and started toward his bed on his own. He was halfway there by the time Sirius grabbed his wrist.

*****

Remus opened his eyes first to find Sirius still dazed, mouth kissed-red and looking much younger than his twenty-two years.

And Remus let himself think it, let himself wander just long enough to admit that Sirius was beautiful -- in a scraggly, rough-edged way that half the girls at Hogwarts, house loyalty or not, found utterly irresistible, though Sirius had (oddly enough) never abused it. Sirius, contrarily, tended to keep his friends close and his enemies in hexes, more preoccupied with investigating new ways to torment Slytherins or master the Animagus charm than chase skirts, though plenty came chasing Sirius. As far as Remus knew, there'd only ever been six women, and that included Gillian. It seemed odd that with eyelashes that long, or smooth, olive skin, and those blue, blue eyes that Sirius should be alone so frequently.

"But I'm not alone," Sirius had mentioned once, with the subject broached just after Remus had forgiven him. "I've got you guys."

He could have been imagining things or reshaping memory, but Remus thought that there'd been a pause, just there, that changed the intention of that entire sentence.

Not that it mattered beyond an offhand thought. Remus coughed and Sirius' eyes snapped open, wide and surprised and startlingly pretty for a starry moment.

Remus grinned awkwardly. "Well?"

Sirius breathed, took a few moments, and murmured, "Oh my God." He looked down and cupped his face in his hands.

There'd been a few bad dates during his lifetime, and Remus had had his share of horrified girls and even more horrifying moments where things slipped or were horribly abused. He'd heard that tone before at least six humiliating times and he knew that the kiss didn't warrant it, which left only one feasible possibility. He let out a frustrated breath. They just didn't prepare you for these sorts of things. Hallmark hadn't ever bothered to make a "Sorry you're gay but you know it's more socially acceptable than ever" card, not that Remus thought that Sirius wouldn't kill him messily if he were to be presented with one.

"It could be a fluke," Remus offered. "I mean..."

Sirius was glaring up a him, eyes panicked and angry. "Remus."

"Maybe," Remus said, growing creative, "I'm just so good, that you're overwhelmed."

Sirius Orion Black, heir to the House of Black actually looked as if he was considering the idea for a second before he roared back, all fiery disenchantment in his eyes and threat of death on his lips and how could Remus be taking it so lightly? Sirius had been sleeping with the wrong gender for years, apparently, and what the hell was he supposed to do? Just burn his address book and start filling up a new one with the names and numbers of every attractive bloke he saw on the street? When Remus pointed out that not ever attractive bloke on those streets might lean that way, Sirius moaned and flopped down on his back again.

"Look, Sirius," Remus tried again. "I know it won't register but I still say that one kiss doesn't prove anything."

When Sirius looked back up at him, Remus figured that it probably wasn't just about the kiss.

*****

Remus stared at where Sirius was holding his wrist and then looked back up at Sirius.

"Yes?" he asked politely.

"You -- Remus!" Sirius started.

Remus was getting tired and the room was getting darker by the minute. He was fairly certain (though he was fairly certain about a lot of things at that point) that it had been nearly ten when he'd stumbled out of the apartment and down the street. He didn't have a clue what time it was but knew instinctively that it was time for him to go to sleep. Remus wanted nothing more than to crawl underneath the covers and sleep till morning, at which point he was sure he'd regret his choice of actions for years, decades, millennia --

And why had he gone out to that bar, anyhow? He remembered it was Sirius' fault, but a lot of things were, and Remus was having trouble...

He blinked in alarm. "Yes? What is it?"

Sirius worked his mouth around the words for a few moments before abandoning composure to ask, "Remus, are you gay?"

Remus sighed, extricated his wrist from Sirius' death-grip, and frowned in annoyance. "Sirius, I'm tired."

"Just answer the question!" Sirius insisted, eyes wild.

Remus looked doubtful. "Will you let me sleep then?"

His friend nearly yelled in frustration, but tamped down whatever it was that struggled to the surface to say through gritted teeth, "Yes. If you tell me if you're gay."

"Yes. Shows you how much you notice," Remus said disapprovingly. He yawned. "Can I go to sleep now?"

Sirius' face was the color of a beefsteak tomato, though Remus wasn't sure if it was because he was blushing or angry. The hard line of his mouth suggested the latter, though statistical analysis from the evening to that point suggested the former. All Remus knew for certain, drunk and exhausted and irate, was that Sirius was about to break his promise and start yelling.

"You -- how come -- what -- you never told me!" Sirius bellowed at last, grabbing Remus' wrist again.

"Oh for God's sake," Remus muttered.

He remembered having the conversation with James and Peter sometime during their first year out of Hogwarts. It'd been raining like the Flood outside and he'd been bracing himself for horrified reactions when he'd just blurted it out, told them the truth he'd only just figured out the other week. "I'm gay," he'd said, louder than he'd intended, though still quiet enough to get lost in the background noise at the pub. Peter blinked at him and James had stared. Both men looked at one another and cautiously, they'd asked, "Sirius?"

It had taken a full twenty minutes to explain that Sirius had nothing to do with it and Remus would appreciate it very much if they'd remember that Remus had friends aside from their incestuous little group of comrades.

"Incestuous only because you dated my girlfriend," James had said, grumbling, so Remus knew it was okay.

He could swear he'd talked to Sirius, too. Then again, Sirius might have been pulling double-duty for Moody, or something. No one quite knew what Sirius had to do when he was out late after Auroring classes, and Sirius didn't like to talk about it, just come home dripping mud or smelling like the bottom of a lake.

*****

Remus felt distinctly nervous. Sirius looked like he was about to have a panic attack.

Maybe he overreacting.

"Sirius?" he asked carefully.

"Oh my God," Sirius said, increasingly distressed. "I'm so sorry." His voice dropped an octave with each syllable and he sounded like he was about to will himself into an early grave. Maybe not so much, Remus concluded.

Remus frowned and dropped a hand to Sirius' leg. He wished he knew how women made those comforting, soothing noises, but he'd never bothered to ask and had never needed to learn before that moment. "Sirius -- it's all right, really. Look, I'm sorry, I never should have..." He left off frustrated, regrouped, and tried once more, "Look, I still say that a kiss proves nothing, and it could have been anyone and -- "

"No it couldn't have been," Sirius said in a monotone. "Moony, haven't you ever noticed?"

"What, your supposed homosexual inclinations?" Remus said, hoping banter would lighten the mood. "Now that you mention it, Sirius, you always did seem a bit over-fond of James -- "

"About you, Moony!" Sirius had launched himself into a sitting position, a hungry, desperate look on his face.

Remus was extremely well-read. He'd devoured Shakespeare and Rousseau and Marlow; he'd understood Proust and enjoyed Conrad. In fact, Remus made a study in understanding people and how other people understood the same subject matter --

He'd just...

He just hadn't anticipated this possibility.

Over the years, by both necessity and boredom, Remus had learned how to read people like the books he consumed, and he trusted his own abilities enough to recognize the look in Sirius' eyes, despairing and hopeful and impossibly bright -- but Sirius had always been impossibly bright, just never in the right ways. And of all the people Remus had expected to be frightened of, he'd never thought that he'd see Sirius like this, eyes fractured and shockingly blue, shimmering with something and rimmed black around the irises, blooming azure in the center like a vortex. He'd never had this degree of intensity directed at him, not while he was looking right back, and it set him aflutter, loosened his grip on the furniture and sent him leaning back, edging away, the wolf in him seeing a fight and shying away from his brother, surprised and unsettled.

He laughed nervously. "Sirius, you're not honestly trying to tell me that..."

"What if I am?" Sirius murmured, barely a whisper. "What then?"

Remus sighed. "Then I tell you you're acting irrationally and that all the caffeine from the coffee and chocolate have gotten to your head." Sirius sneered and started to turn away, an angry, injured expression on his face that Remus hadn't seen before. "Not to mention," he pushed on bravely, "that you just said you hadn't had a date in two years and you've been studying like a madman over these A.P.E.s and I'm not quite sure you're altogether yourself right now."

"That's a lot of bullshit to say that you don't feel the same way, Remus," Sirius muttered, harsh and half-broken.

"Don't be stupid," Remus snapped, irritation bubbling over. "I love you, Sirius. I always have, but like a brother, and you know that." The hopeful light in Sirius' eyes lived and died for just that breath of a second and then closed over like doors drawing shut, Sirius' head drooping. Remus felt like he was loosing footing and he disliked being so suspended, uncertain. He sighed into his hands. "God. I never should have done this -- it's gotten you all turned around."

"I'm sure of myself for the first time in years," Sirius said, voice brittle.

Remus stared at Sirius. He couldn't be serious. "You can't be -- " He stopped himself before the old joke could get played. "Look, you're just confused."

"Only about why you're acting like such a dick," Sirius said; he sounded congested. Or close to tears.

Remus didn't think he could handle anything more traumatic than he'd already suffered that night: bad literary analysis, really poorly brewed coffee, kissing one of his best friends, and now, The Most Uncomfortable Conversation Ever Conducted. He buried his face in his hands and sighed, "Oh my God, Sirius are you crying?"

"Oh, fuck you!" Sirius shouted. "Do you always answer confessions like this?"

He felt like throwing a tantrum; hadn't he started off the evening so well, too? He was going to be productive, grade papers, maybe help Sirius review for the exam, if he had time, he would go to bed, have a nice wank, and wallow in self-pity. Nowhere had he jotted down a note to have to deal with his friend's sudden bout of homosexuality, nor had he blocked out time to first kiss him, and then comfort him and then console him after Sirius suffered some sort of obvious psychotic break and started thinking he was in love with the first man with whom he'd swapped saliva. Remus was starting to wish he'd gone with this first plan for the evening, which was to ignore everything Sirius said and go to bed early.

He glared up at Sirius to say, "Oddly enough, no. Most people who confess something of this magnitude aren't out of their minds."

Remus had always known when to pull a punch, when not to bare his teeth, and how to force a softening of his voice so he didn't give himself away. He'd always known just when to stop, so it surprised him when he finished talking and was left staring at Sirius' expression, angry and tired and red from embarrassment or something close to sadness.

He sighed, relented, and said, "Sirius, I'm sorry. I didn't mean it like -- "

And he didn't get a chance to finish his sentence because Sirius had always had two inches and twenty pounds on him, and Sirius was sprawled out over him now, lips hot and wet and angry against Remus' mouth and oxygen a thing of the past.

*****

"You're gay? Why didn't you tell me?" Sirius demanded, the hand around Remus' wrist like a vice.

"I -- I thought I did," he said weakly. He really was quite tired. "Sirius, can we talk about this in the morning?"

"No, we cannot!" Sirius shouted. He looked as if he were about to explode and Remus started to carefully think over the situation, over possible reasons why Sirius could be so angry with him, and came up empty-handed. It was slight distressing because he was fairly certain that Sirius felt he was truly wronged, and also because Remus was having a hard time focusing on one train of thought for more than four seconds. But the fairy lights outside the window from storefronts and cars and neighbors were really quite extraordinarily shiny, and Sirius just couldn't expect Remus not to be mildly distracted.

"Oh fine," Remus murmured. "Can I at least sit down?"

Sirius led Remus to his bed and sat him down at the foot of it. He crossed his arms and glared down at his friend, who was occupied with picking at the fabric of his very old jeans, suddenly fascinated by worn denim far more than was humanly possible. Sirius cleared his throat and Remus looked up, supremely involved, as if he was eleven all over again and Sirius was just the most interesting thing ever.

"Yes?" Remus said, preternaturally bright.

Sirius looked like he wanted to punch Remus. Very hard. "You're gay," he said through gritted teeth.

Remus blinked twice and frowned. "I thought we established this."

"You're gay, you never told me, and you just blew me off, utterly," Sirius growled, fingers tight on his own arms. He'd probably be sporting bruises if it weren't for the very nice coat that Remus had mostly-convinced him to buy; it was hard to say no to Remus, it always had been. "Why didn't you tell me."

Remus rolled his eyes dramatically and flopped backward on the bed, laying then with knees bent over the edge of the mattress, dark grey peacoat open and flaring out at his hips like some sort of ungodly invitation. It was hard to have a conversation with a drunk, even harder when said drunk was newly astounded by the large, curlicue crack in the ceiling just above his bed; Remus was staring at it as if it were the Holy Grail.

"God, Sirius," he said, "it wasn't malicious or anything. I just forgot."

How had Remus never seen that crack before? It was simply wonderful.

"You forgot," Sirius deadpanned. "You forgot to mention to one of your oldest and dearest friends that you changed your sexual orientation."

Remus glanced up at him, head lifting off the mattress with a great amount of effort. "Yes, exactly."

"You don't just forget something like that!" Sirius yelled.

Remus rolled over, propped up in a strange, twisted position that was just as uncomfortable as it looked. Remus bore shadows and scars and he showed them all in that moment, unguarded and unraveled and out of his usual orderly precision, away from his carefully defined parameters of behavior. He looked at Sirius with a tight-lipped expression and said, "You did,"

If he'd been sober, it never would have come out of his mouth.

Sirius paled instantly.

All of a sudden, Remus frowned and his eyes shut and he felt a headache coming on.

He was seeing pieces of moon and James and Peter's apologetic faces as they told him sorry, they wouldn't be there for the moon that day. And Sirius -- busy serving yet another detention for doing something else hideous to Snape, the details of which Remus hadn't even bothered to ascertain for himself, knowing that Lily Evans would be glaring across Charms at him, a desperate note in her eyes that lingered from Prefects' meetings as she begged him to do something, anything, about his friends. Remus remembered being alone and annoyed and forcing himself into some state of understanding, trying not to dwell on Sirius or what he'd done or what he had been doing; it was so hard and so rare for him to have friends. Snape was such a terrible person anyhow, was it really worth it? Just because he was a Prefect didn't mean he needed to ensure total social justice -- and besides, he hadn't even seen whatever had happened; McGonagall had taken care of it just fine on her own.

And then moonrise and nothing but fur and blood and an angry, caged wolf, pacing edge to edge in the Shrieking Shack wondering where his packmates were.

Before...before what? The smell of humans and the promise of flesh and skin in which to sink razor teeth --

"I'm tired. Good night," Remus said abruptly. He turned to sleep but in three large strides, Sirius was upon him and he was dragged up to a sitting position, wrist tight in Sirius' grasp and shoulder the same. He couldn't move if he tried -- all that werewolf strength for naught, all due to the evils of the drink.

"Why?" Sirius managed, and he sounded hollow and scared.

As if Remus could tear him to pieces right there and then.

Remus supposed he could.

*****

It had been months.

Months since he'd had someone this close, with lips pressed against his, sloppy wet and desperate, tongue swirling against his own and the ridges of teeth biting down on his lower lip. Months since someone had pressed him against the floor with powerful arms and intention and kissed him, made his mouth and every inch of his body raw and throb in primitive, mindless response, upper lip suckled on gently before hands stroked up and down along his sides and fingers, large and thick and strong stroked just beneath the waistband of his jeans to brush along the rise of one hip, to dip along the curve of his pelvis and light the skin there.

Remus hissed into the contact and bucked up against the touch, against Sirius' thigh. The sound of blood rushing in his ears was broken by Sirius' soft, mewling whimper, thrusting down against Remus bended leg, grinding himself and his ratty pants into Remus' thigh, desperate and feral and new.

There was a rhythm to this that was altogether independent of logical thought or social creed, and Remus let the idle realization pass through his brain as Sirius gave in to temptation and slicked two hands up Remus' worn gray sweater, pads of fingers against taut muscle and rib, pale white skin so many times scarred and healed and stronger for it. Hands rushed against his belly and stroked and clutched and pulled closer, pulled tighter, pulled more and more inexplicably deep into the embrace until Remus broke for oxygen and Sirius dived to the werewolf's throat. Little butterfly kisses with just the tiniest swirl of hungry, hot tongue that left Remus panting and cross-eyed flopped back against the dusty carpet and gasping for breath, even as Sirius' hands reached higher beneath his sweater and stroked lower under his jeans.

Remus was breathing hard and Sirius was moaning against the skin of Remus' throat, whispering promises and pleading and "Please, Remus, I'll be good, I swear. I've always loved you, don't you get it? Always -- I'd do anything -- anything -- " before the sounds dropped off into a grunt and a moan.

Remus had always loved this, the hard planes of a body against him, muscles and bone just a few millimeters of cloth away, and how skin felt beneath his fingertips, like some sort of flawed linen, raw silk, wrinkled and bended, stretched to the limit and hot against bone. A fluttering eyelid beneath his lips or the outer curve of a knee, rough skin and tender flesh underneath, an open mouthed kiss pressed to the inside of an arm or high on the inside of a thigh. He'd tried women before and the delicate curves and soft, birdlike structure of their bones had been a dream, gentle and smooth and deceptively powerful -- but he'd kissed a man at a nameless bar in London three years ago and he'd truly fucked for the first time after that.

And it had been like this, overwhelming like a wave roaring down at him and pinned to rocks beneath, drowning in the sensation and totally lost in the touch. Remus could hold on and let go and let himself free, braced on two elbows and watching silver-flecked eyes underneath him widen and shut, large, soft mouth opening and closing with a whimper and the flat, smooth chest beneath him rise and fall at a desperate pace. That was power, that was control, and the feel of tanned, muscled thighs against his sides was like opium, sweet and burning and necessary, fundamental and all-consuming.

Jesus. He found his breath hitching and realized Sirius' mouth was stroking wet kisses just above his naval, gray sweater pushed up to reveal pebbled nipples and Sirius fingers -- usually so blunt and hard -- pulling at the button on his jeans and --

This had gone absolutely too far.

"Sirius," he managed, a moan in his voice, hands insistent and tugging at helplessly mussed locks of dark hair. "Sirius."

"God -- love you," Sirius moaned in reply, mouth tight against the exposed rise of one hip, Remus' pants already opened. "Always, Remus, always -- "

Remus focused very hard, and with all his strength, and one powerful shove, pushed Sirius off. The taller man landed with a thump beside Remus on the ground, eyes unfocused and gasping for breath, mouth swollen and color high, clothes in disarray with buttons undone -- had he done that? Remus couldn't remember.

For his part, he sat up, fumbling at his trousers and cursing underneath his breath, pulling up the zipper and giving up on the button, casting horrified, embarrassed glances toward Sirius every few seconds to make sure he wasn't about to be mauled again. Remus was sure he'd have a hickey in the morning; he hadn't had a love bite since sixth year Hogwarts and he knew exactly why, they were childish and embarrassing and Jesus Christ how had he let this happen?

When had he started acting like some sort of virgin schoolgirl?

"I've got to go," he muttered, pushing himself up to his feet and spraining a finger in his haste.

He pulled on his coat and was halfway down the creaking stairs by the time Sirius managed to yell "Wait!"

*****

"Why?" wasn't the real question, Remus knew very well.

The real question was if he was gay, and they'd been brothers and friends packmates, why didn't Remus love him? Why didn't Remus want Sirius like Sirius wanted him?

"You're so full of shit, you know that?" Remus said, glaring down, eyes darkened and tired.

Sirius' face of hard. "Look -- I just. I just want to know. Why?"

Remus sighed, unforgivably honest in that moment and said, "You know, Sirius. I don't even like you sometimes."

Sirius' mouth opened and closed around words he couldn't seem to say out loud, and he just looked despairing.

"You're rude and you're haughty and for all you claim to hate your family you still siphon money off of them and act like you're above half the people we meet." Remus paused to breathe and added, "You have a capacity for cruelty that you match with your ability to be kind and I hate that I never know which you'll decide to exploit. And most of all -- you think you're entitled." Remus whipped around, alcohol-hazed and suddenly angry. "Why should I love you, anyway? What's so wonderful about Sirius Black?"

"That's not -- !"

"That's exactly it!" Remus yelled. "You've got all the trappings of a man I could love, Sirius, but you've also done horrible things, and for so long that you think it's okay. I don't -- I don't want to be with someone like that. And it's different if I'm just your friend. It's different if I'm not responsible for you -- but it can't be any more than friends, do you understand that?"

Remus blinked in shock at Sirius' face and cursed under his breath.

"And now I'm becoming sober," he complained. "I'm going to bed. Good night."

He'd already shucked off his coat, kicked off his shoes, and turned angrily into his bunched sheets when he heard it, Sirius, broken and angry:

"You forgave me before."

Remus closed his eyes. He was tired, and he'd be extremely hung over in the morning, and they hadn't any hangover relief potion. And more than likely, in the morning, with hideous sunlight streaming into the horrible windows of the kitchen, he'd get an owl from Peter and James would just burst out of the fireplace itself to demand to know what had happened to Sirius since they'd found him dead drunk in a gutter outside James' flat. He'd need his strength for morning.

"You forgave me -- before. When, when it was much worse. Remus, please."

He steeled his nerves. He wasn't going to give in to this. Sirius always promised and he always said he'd change, but he so rarely did. And even as James had grown less arrogant, Sirius was the same as always, with a mean streak a mile wide for Snape and a soft spot for Remus that seemed to extend to the edges of the universe. What good was a friend who'd drag you home for Easter break and make you hunt eggs with the Muggle children two streets over when the same friend would be randomly searching for opportunities to be cruel just a few days later? Love wasn't an island.

"I could change."

The magic words.

"You never have," Remus said roughly. "You won't."

"I could," Sirius insisted, nearly a whisper, and Remus could feel him coming closer. "I have -- for you."

Remus laughed and tried not to press himself to the wall, along cold, aging paint to get as far away from the warmth of Sirius' body as possible. He didn't need this, the pleading tone in Sirius' voice to cloud his judgment. He'd considered and reconsidered and decided years ago; it was the best choice he'd ever made and he wasn't going back on it. What was the point of having a plan if he just let himself get stupidly talked into this or that whenever a conflict arose? Sirius would just have to understand; things were different for them now, but Remus was going to stay the same, regardless the circumstance.

"Sirius," he said, tired, "just stop, all right? This isn't -- "

"I became an Animagus for you!" Sirius yelled, losing patience. One hand jerking Remus around so that they were face to face and he finally saw the true panic in Sirius' gaze. "I became an Animagus for you and I stopped teasing Snape after -- after what happened. I spent three years changing for you and I could do it again. Just -- give me the chance. Just give me the chance, Remus."

And his eyes were wide and honest and scared in a way that Remus had never seen before. As if Sirius was holding out his hands, palms up, hopeful, and begging for an opportunity, just a chance -- and for what? Remus didn't even know if he could love Sirius anyway. Even without the obvious personality flaws and all the hateful things gone, who was to say that it would even work, what guaranteed that one day, somewhere down the line, Remus would turn to his side and see anything more than Sirius Black, friend and lifetime companion and a large, shaggy dog? There weren't any promises.

"It might not work, Sirius," Remus said quietly. "What if after you change, I still don't...?"

Sirius shook his head, eyes even more frightened. "No, no -- it's, it's a chance. I have to take it, right?" He furrowed his brow and twisted his fingers in Remus' sweater, holding on as if Remus was about to run away, leave and throw him away. "I have to try. If you'll -- just let me."

Remus watched Sirius and he saw a thousand ways everything could go wrong.

But vaguely, he nodded, and Sirius made a sound that sounded suspiciously like a sob and Remus drew him closer, soft hands tugging Sirius up onto the bed. And it was his arms, steady and certain, that held Sirius that night, too close for friends and not tightly enough for lovers but somewhere in between, where there lay possibility.

It was all he had promised and the only thing he could give, because Sirius was unpredictable like the weather and Remus was stubborn like a rock.

Maybe a little levity would be good for him, Remus decided, half-asleep, hearing Sirius breathe tightly against his shoulder.

Maybe it was what had been missing from the start.

*****