Our Bodies Could Fall Off the End of the World

"Hey, you know," Sirius says at 3:53 pm on February 1^st, 1977, a sentence fragment which is quickly followed or perhaps punctuated by the heavy, boneless thump with which he falls into the seat across from Remus.

Remus is used to "hey, you know"s from Sirius; they're an occurrence at least as common as Wednesdays. Unlike the innocuous Wednesday, however, Sirius's "hey, you knows" rarely signal anything but coming trouble. "Hey, you know" is the universal- well, Siriusversal, at least- segue into a plot of what some might call adventure but which Remus sensibly refers to as lunacy; and- once again, and probably just as effectively as ever, which is to say not at all- he wants none of it.

When precisely seventeen seconds have passed without any reaction from Remus, Sirius tries again. "Hey, you know," he repeats, and this time forges on, much to Remus's chagrin, "Gryffindor's having a St. Valentine's ball this year."

The revelation startles Remus, both because he's never heard of such a thing at Hogwarts and because it's not the sort of mischief that he's come to expect from Sirius over the course of six and a half years. Exploding toilets, yes; dances, no. Well, not formal dances involving other people. Sirius has a habit of using St. Patrick's day as an excuse to do a very poor jig on whichever table he happens to be closest to when the urge overtakes him, but this is different. So surprised is Remus that he makes the elementary mistake of looking up from his charms essay; immediately, Sirius's big silver eyes catch his, triumph flooding them, and it becomes inevitable that he will do whatever mad thing Sirius wants him to.

"Yeah," Sirius continues, lips quirking up into his familiar grin of triumph. "James's idea, if you can believe it. Anything to make Evans happy, apparently. The big sentimental girl, one of these days we'll find out that he's got ovaries hiding under those pasty abdominals. Anyway, now that he's Head Boy," the title said in a sing-songy tone that Remus finds at once vastly irritating and horribly endearing, "he can arrange balls. Or so it seems."

Remus takes this all in and tries to quell the habitual long-suffering sigh that he knows makes him sound about forty years old. "What are you planning?" he asks wearily, the tone his futile attempt to pretend he's not going to do whatever Sirius asks him, though he knows the truth and furthermore knows that Sirius does too.

"Nothing," Sirius says, face an absurd mask of innocence. "Just wanted to warn you so you've got time to ask somebody worthy of a seventh year and a Marauder. Time to do us all proud with your selection."

Remus swallows against the familiar sensation of his stomach diving, swan-like, into his heels, the same drop it takes every time somebody mentions girls, and dating, and romance, and his name in the same sentence. He has worked very hard for a very long time to make sure that he's competent enough at everything to keep from sticking out like a sore thumb, like the scarred face that he, unfortunately, has to look out at the world from. Things he can't learn to do frighten him, and he knows with an instinct he likens to the wolf's innate need to tear that this is something he will not ever learn, by study or practice.

What's more, he's pretty sure that Sirius knows it too. Which makes this unforgivable, another tally mark in the long account of unforgivable things that Sirius Black has done to him, except that he always forgives him for the price of a smile.

"Right," he mutters, wrenching his eyes from the angular planes of Sirius's face and setting them resolutely back on his essay. Maybe if he's dull and studious Sirius will get bored and flounce off and forget to press it.

No such luck (not that it would be lucky so much as miraculous, and Remus has yet to be granted a single miracle.) For approximately two seconds it looks as if there might, for once, be a reprieve from touchy issues and Sirius's habit of worrying at them like a puppy with a slipper dipped in gravy, but then comes the expected hand slamming down into the center of Remus's parchment.

Sirius's hands, achingly familiar as they are, always startle Remus for a split second; somehow, when he's not looking at them, he always (and it is always, he is always thinking of Sirius's hands,) imagines them to be large and quick and all-encompassing as Sirius himself. In reality they are small, rough-skinned but delicate, graceful as any girl's with long fingers and nicked knuckles and surprisingly unbitten nails.

Those fingers dig menacingly into the parchment, ready to smudge or crumple if offered the smallest hint of being denied. "Moony. Listen," comes the insistence. "Anybody you ask will say yes, whether you think so or not." Remus has to smile at that; misguided as the sentiment is, he knows that Sirius believes it, and that's comforting despite being so for all the wrong reasons.

"Because you'll pay her?" he asks, because he's desperate to keep some dignity and somehow there's dignity in self-deprecation. "Or just because it'll give her the chance to make eyes at you all night?"

He looks down before he can see the annoyance pass over Sirius's face, but he knows it's there, can almost feel it. The way the dark brows knit together, the purse of smooth full lips, the wrinkle of the aristocratic nose- all these he can feel in his own skin despite the bland expression he works to wear. "Remus Lupin," comes the reprimand, the irritation in Sirius's voice overlaid with something that Remus can't name; and then there's a snort, and when Sirius speaks again the unnameable something is gone. "Idiot. Because you're quite the catch. Evans told Prongs that Greta Catchlove has it on for you, why don't you try her? I'm right. You'll see I'm right."

Remus makes a noise, the meaning of which is unclear even to him.

"You're going to ask someone," Sirius continues, "just to prove me right. And you're going to do it before you have the excuse of it being too late. Yes?"

The warm pleasure left behind by Sirius's annoyance on his behalf and his unnameable something and his faith is washed away by the floor of helplessness brought on by the order. He can't say no to Sirius, and so he'll ask someone; and he can't ask the person he wants, because he knows very well that Sirius can say no to him. Sometimes he thinks that he's going to go mad at the unfairness of this, of everything, but even as he thinks it he knows that this is self-pity and hormones talking and that no one's ever gone mad from being in love with the wrong person no matter what Shakespeare and the romantic poets might imply.

He nods and is given the questionable reward of the sound of Sirius's chair scraping over the floor as he leaves Remus to the cold comfort of his essay.

"Greta, hello. Hi," Remus says, feeling as if he has mud in his mouth. Potions has just ended, and the fumes from the Fascination Draught Slughorn had them make- badly botched on Remus's part and fascinating only in that it managed to turn out both sludge-like and grainy at once- have made him both pleasantly buzzed enough to attempt to follow Sirius's instructions, and insane enough to cease caring about his own happiness, his moral standards, and the fact that he doesn't like girls.

Greta looks away from the bag into which she's haphazardly stuffing a roll of parchment and up into Remus's face, which he is sure is the colour of a turnip.

"Remus," she says in a tone that somehow combines both studied indifference and encouraging warmth. She reaches back into the bag and comes out with an unidentifiable metallic tube; for a second, Remus has the panicky thought that it's the latest hex-in-a-bottle from Zonko's and she's going to make him break out in hives for daring to be both speaking to her and secretly queer, until he realizes that it's just a lipstick. She pops the cap and starts spreading the colour over her mouth, all the while looking expectantly at him. He supposes in the part of his brain that hasn't been killed by potion fumes- the part that's rational and reminding him quite loudly that this is ridiculous and Sirius Black cannot make him do anything he doesn't want to do, even by threatening him and especially not just by having the most intriguing hands in all of England- that she thinks this applying of makeup while talking to a boy makes her look sophisticated and alluring instead of distractable and frankly a bit trashy. Girls are terrifying. They have unappealing lumps of flesh where flesh shouldn't be and strange mechanics of thinking and goop on their faces and they are terrifying.

Oh Merlin, he's twelve years old. Somehow he's managed to become seventeen and sound forty without leaving the age of twelve. He might as well start making references to cooties.

"Remus?" she asks again, actually sounding concerned this time. It's the concern that gets him. He has to speak to alleviate it, and, well, he might as well ask her to the sodding ball while he's speaking.

"Valentine's dance. Want to? Go. With...me?" he asks, trying to think what Sirius would say in this situation (and oh, God, this is not the time to start imagining how Sirius would sound and what his eyes would look like and where his lovely hands would go while asking Remus out,) and somehow sounding more like James. Huh, why couldn't he have an unhealthy attraction to James, James who gets far too tongue-tied to convince anybody to do anything, much less ask stupid sodding girls to stupid sodding dances, James whose obsessive, stalkeresque love of Evans would surely discourage the unhealthy attraction of a hopeless friend...

Oh, shite. Greta is answering, and Remus has missed it entirely. But she's nodding, and there's a smile, and so she's agreed. Bugger all. His stomach does another swan dive, one that he's sure would garner a 10 if there were a Muggle Olympics for internal organs. He returns the smile with a look that he hopes doesn't seem too pained, and hurries away.

Sirius is, of course, waiting for him around the corner. "Well? Am I right? What am I saying, of course I'm right, who'd turn our Moony down?"

Remus gives him a death glare. He continues to refer to it as a death glare in his mind though he's sure it's at best a stomach-ache stare. And probably it's not even that deadly. "I hope you're happy."

The crow of triumph that rips from Sirius is surely audible in Timbuktu. Or maybe not; Remus doesn't quite know where that is. He'll have to look it up. Anything to avoid thinking about February the fourteenth.

"You might ask her to dance, mate," Sirius says dryly, sidling up so suddenly that Remus nearly leaps out of his second-hand dress robes. Thankfully, though they are a bit ragged around the edges, the seams are strong, and they stay on. Last time he saw Sirius, he was twirling Meredith Proud into a dip infuriatingly worthy of Fred and Ginger. He has no idea how his friend, who would stick out in black velvet robes that look like the entire vault at Gringotts might just begin to cover the stitching even if Remus were able to take his eyes off of him for more than two minutes at a time, has managed to sneak up behind him. It's especially inexplicable because Remus has placed himself in a corner behind a particularly curly pink streamer.

The entire Common Room is filled with similar streamers and looks rather disturbingly like a whole herd of crepe paper chose it as their grave yard. Greta is a bit hard to spot in the profusion, if only because she's wearing a red just as vivid as the decorations. Remus has to admit that it's not her looks that make her hard to spot; even he can admit that she's stunning despite all the face-goop. If he liked breasts, he probably wouldn't be able to take his eyes off of hers. It's inexplicable that she's consented to go to this dance with him; Remus can only assume that whichever deity is currently in charge of romance- surely not still Aphrodite- has decided to be as unfair to her as it is to him. There's no other reason for her to fancy a drab prefect, and one who happens to be a poofter at that. Unfair, unfair, unfair.

"Lupin. Wakey, wakey," Sirius says, making him jump once again. Thank Merlin for strong seams. "Did you even hear me? Don't tell me you're thinking about Catchlove's tits, I admit they are fantastic but I didn't think you were that sort of lad."

"I heard you," Remus answers quickly.

"It wasn't really a suggestion, you know. The dancing thing. I mean, it was, but...really. Really, really, you might ask her to dance. Girls like that, I've heard. Makes them happy. And you want that one happy, looker like that might go off with somebody else if you don't."

"I don't dance," he says, making a vain effort to keep from sounding as tired as he is.

"Everybody dances," Sirius answers. "I dance. She dances. You dance. Come on." He raises his arm and starts to call, "Oi, Catchlove, c'mere," but Remus has not spent six years studying the meter and verse of Sirius Black for nothing and he sees it coming. He sees it coming, and it's the last thing in the world that he can stand, because as much as he likes to wallow in self-pity he knows that really, Sirius isn't trying to torture him, Sirius is trying to help, to, to get him laid, and how is he supposed to stand here and smile while the boy whose hands he hasn't been able to stop contemplating in five years tries to get him laid by somebody else? And so while Sirius is distracted by his attempts to wave Greta over, Remus steps to the side, ducks into the crowd, is up the stairs before Sirius notices. Which is really nothing new.

The dormitory isn't as quiet as he'd like, even after he shuts the door; the chatter and the music from the commons float through the stone floor, distorted and soft but still audible. It's a shame. He wants silence, not so that he can wallow but because unable to hear the music he'd be able to distract himself with homework or a book and he wouldn't wallow. He doesn't want to wallow. He's sick of wallowing; it hasn't gotten him what he wants and it hasn't gotten him over it either. It's useless. Unfortunately, it's one of the things he's very good at, and maybe that's why he can't give it up.

He leans back against the door and tries very, very hard not to brood, a useless endeavor if ever there was one. Sirius likes Greta's ti- well, her breasts, so he's probably made the best of Remus's running off and asked her to dance himself by now. The image floods his mind, and he doesn't really will it away, at least not strenuously, because though it stings it's really quite lovely- her light hair, his dark, the tanned skin of his graceful hands resting against the crimson fabric at the curve of her waist, her thin body engulfed by him, his casual strength and lazy grace. Remus doesn't even realize when in his mind's eye Greta's hair shortens and her hips go angular and she becomes him and it's not Sirius and Greta but Sirius and Remus dancing in front of everybody...

And then the door opens.

Remus falls backward and just manages to catch himself before sprawling to the floor. He's seventy percent of the way to the floor anyway, and so he just sits down, and is confronted by Sirius Black towering over him with all the fury of an avenging angel, which is perhaps the least apt metaphor for Sirius Black since the emergence of human speech.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" Sirius snarls, sticking out a hand to help him up even in the midst of his apparent anger.

Remus allows himself to be pulled roughly up before he opens his mouth to answer. Unsurprisingly, he doesn't get a chance to; Sirius forges on.

"You've got this gorgeous girl all aflutter because you asked her out, all it wants is a fucking spin around the room, and you leave? You leave? What the fuck, Lupin?"

"You made me ask her," Remus points out, any defiance in the statement negated by the tiny voice in which it is said. Sirius ignores him.

"It's just a bloody dance, how fucking hard is that?"

"I told you, I don't dance," Remus says, sharper this time, his composure cracking a little under the battering ram of Sirius's anger. "Why do you care, anyway? Why do you want me going out with Greta Catchlove? Do we all have to have girlfriends, is it that? Am I reflecting poorly on your sodding boy's club because I'm not shagging one or two or a hundred girls regularly? Trust me, Sirius, everybody knows what a man you are even if you do have a fairy for a friend."

Sirius makes a noise that's something like a bark, and in it is that unnameable quality again. "Fuck you, what do you know? I just try to do something nice for you, I just- James is with Evans, and Peter's Peter, and I can't hang around you all the time, you hit me when I do, and so there you are all the time moping and alone and making love to your bloody textbooks and I just want you to be happy for five bloody minutes and what, you walk off, and then you accuse me of- bullshite, Lupin. Your head is so far up your arse- you know, maybe James is right. 'Leave him,' he says, 'If he doesn't learn to take initiative for himself he doesn't deserve anything but the textbooks,' but no, I go and try anyway and you think this is about me? Fuck that, I wish it was about me, I'd've shagged her already and had done with it and I'd be happy, and I don't bloody know what to do for you if you won't do the same. I just don't bloody know, Lupin, so you're just going to have to do for yourself because I can't stand your sulking anymore-" And just as abruptly as he began, Sirius is done, panting like Padfoot after a run and holding several universes of fury in his eyes.

Something about the whole fierce diatribe has dissolved Remus's anger, has swallowed it and digested it and spit it back up transformed into something like recklessness, something like bravery.

"Teach me to dance," he says softly, reaching around Sirius to shut the door. For a moment he's close enough to catch the peculiar odor of Sirius, the dog musk and spicy cologne and old magic and butterbeer scent that is particular to this one boy and none other. From this distance he knows what he's about to do- what he's about to admit, a secret more awkward and closer kept than even the bite that changed him, because it is him- and he can't bring himself to regret the fact that, even only four words into his admission, he's gone to far to turn back. If he forgives for the price of a smile, he'll give himself over to disaster for the cost of a moment close enough to smell Sirius Black, sweat and sweetness both.

And then he leans back again, and the scent is gone, and only the knowledge remains.

"I- what?" Sirius asks inanely, looking caught off-guard for perhaps the first time since Remus has known him.

"Teach me to dance," Remus repeats.

"What? You just sort of sway, don't you."

"No," Remus protests, letting their gazes catch and lock. "I mean it. Teach me." And then, because Sirius is still looking at him like he's gone daft, "Maybe that's what it's going to take. For me to stop sulking. Dancing lessons. Maybe that's what it's wanted all along, this sulk."

He watches the expression in Sirius's light eyes go through more permutations than he can name, incredulity and confusion and maybe a flicker of comprehension, maybe a burst of excitement before it lands on that unnameable something again. (Remus thinks that he will name it Angus. Angus is inscrutable but tantalizingly promising. Maybe he's deluding himself, or maybe Angus is his own long-lost courage bottled in another boy's eyes.)

"All right," Sirius says slowly. "How- all right. D'you want to be the- this is absurd, I'm teaching, I get to be the man." The look he gives Remus would be defiant if not for Angus. "Just-" he reaches out, almost stiffly, and lays his hands on Remus's hips so lightly that they might as well not be there. Even the suggestion of contact is enough to make Remus shiver, and while a part of him hopes that it isn't noticeable, a larger part hopes that it is. He reaches up very, very slowly, as if he's dealing with a wild animal- and he is, the wildest of creatures, a Sirius half-tamed at best- and lays his hands over and then around the broad shoulders.

"That right?" he asks, trying to keep the volume of his voice at a level resembling normal. Normal's distant cousin, even.

"Yeah," Sirius says, and thank God, his voice is as soft and timid and warm as Remus's own. "Yeah." He can hear Sirius swallowing heavily around the words, and his own throat gulps of its own accord in sympathy. "And you just...dance..."

In the silence that follows, their bodies lean into each other, pulled by magnets hidden under ribs and in wrists, inextricable. Gradually- a feather sinking into the sea- Sirius's hands begin to weigh against Remus's hips, pressing up against the juts of bone so sharp that they can be felt even through the thin fabric of second-hand robes and school-issue trousers, gliding gently over the bone-curves and making Remus's whole being tremble.

Abruptly the whole thing frightens him, soul-deep, and he leans into the first safe place he sees, the crook of Sirius's neck, the warm skin of his throat. He rests his forehead there, and breathes.

"Just wanted you to be happy for once," Sirius repeats finally, inanely.

"I know," Remus says, because he does. It's why he loves Sirius, loves, yes, loves- take away the mad babbling and the insistence and the mischief and the dirty and dog scent and exquisite hands, and what's left is just that pure desire for the people close to him to be happy. Remus recognized it from the first, from the near-insane tantrums and horrible grief that welled in the eleven-year-old after the Sorting, the despair that arose from knowing how unhappy he'd made his family. It's Sirius's essence- unnameable and impossible to resist. "I know. I am."

Remus ghosts his lips over the flesh at the join of shoulder and neck, just the idea of a kiss; at the same time he can feel the pressure of lips in a shape he has studied so long against his hair.

"Do you think you can dance on your own now?"

"Yeah," Remus answers after a moment. "Yes. If I have to."

The silence is brief and filled with music distorted by a stone floor and all the more pointed for that. "You don't."

"I know," he says again, and he does. He knows.