Kept

It is, Remus knows, a question worthy of a fourteen-year-old girl. A particularly melodramatic fourteen-year-old girl. It is a question that no middle-aged man could possibly ask while retaining any measure of self-respect. It is a question that trivializes everything, that makes the last fifteen years sound like a beach holiday, that ought to come from the lips of a little girl clinging to her first boyfriend.

He supposes that he is, then, a fourteen-year-old girl at heart.

"Did you miss me?" he asks, low and quiet. Even to him, his voice sounds odd, at once displaying the deep and leisurely sound of once very recently satisfied and the tension of a throat tight with nervousness.

Sirius shifts under him, and for an instant he forgets the nervousness and vague embarrassment and focuses instead on the strange, precious sensation of the skin of a bare chest moving against his cheek. This body is still so beautiful, even after torture and deprivation. It's no longer the muscled, golden torso that he wanted so achingly much as a boy, but he thinks that this is better. That body was a gift to its owner, accepted greedily and unthinkingly and lost just as easily. This body has been won, forged in a fire that Remus cannot and does not want to imagine. Every rib that Remus can trace with his fingers is as sharp and beautiful as a knife, cutting into him with the evidence of pain and strength and the love he feels for the pale man that has come back to him in place of the boy.

"Hmm?" Sirius asks in a voice soft and thick with the approach of sleep. Remus cringes at the thought of repeating the question, because somehow it is even more childish the second time, but then he feels Sirius's hand come up and stroke at the bits of hair that fall across his forehead. And so he asks again, because he is not certain of the answer despite everything and he needs to be.

"Did you miss me?"

There is a long pause in which the hand stroking his hair stills, and Remus feels like his head weighs several tons against Sirius's body. The answer, when it comes, is like a punch to his belly if punches could be made of ice.

"No." Sirius's voice is emotionless.

He pulls back, just a little, as one would pull back from the sting of a bee, but the hand pulls at him with all the desperation that the voice lacked and he settles into place again, warily.

"No," Sirius says again, and pauses. During that pause, Remus can feel the muscles of the chest under his cheek tense. This is the only warning he gets. Sirius flips them over in one fluid movement so that Remus is pressed into the mattress and Sirius is hovering over him, propped up on one arm, their legs tangled hopelessly. There is something so intense in Sirius's expression that for a moment Remus is honestly frightened of whatever it is that he's awakened. But then Sirius's free hand seizes his own and their fingers lace together.

"No," Sirius says again. "I didn't miss you. Not for a moment. They take all of your happiness, the Dementors, and so I didn't miss you," he leans closer so that his hair is brushing Remus's cheeks, "and I didn't long for you," he punctuates his words with kisses along Remus's jaw, "and I didn't think of you," the kisses begin to trail down Remus's neck and lower, "or of your hands on my body, or of the way you always had ink stains on your lips from chewing your quill, or of your voice, or even of your name."

The hand has unwound from Remus's and trailed down, stroking his stomach, fluttering just above his cock. Remus thrusts up, trying to encourage that hand lower or at least find friction against Sirius's stomach, but Sirius arches up just enough that he can't and he groans. For a split second he hates his body for this, and Sirius too, both of them, for making this about sex when all he wanted was a simple answer. His mind does not want physical satisfaction. It wants emotional satisfaction. But oh, that hand has finally drifted to his cock and is stroking lightly, the pad of the thumb brushing over the head in a way that makes Remus forgive the other man instantly. He moans again.

"Shh," Sirius tells him. "I'm talking." His hand stills for a moment and Remus bites his lip to keep himself silent. Sirius smiles slightly and continues.

"As I was saying. I didn't think of your eyes looking at me in the dark, or how they look when you laugh, or how wide they go right before you come." His touch is firmer now, tight enough that Remus has to bite back another groan at the warm pulse of pleasure from the increased friction. He tries desperately to focus on the words rather than the sensations, and only half succeeds. "I didn't think of your eyes at all. I did not think of you at all. Not once. If I had, they would have taken you from me. Sucked you out of me." The suggestive growl in his voice makes Remus thrust up, hard, right on the brink. He can feel himself staring wildly at the face above him. "They would have taken you from me," Sirius repeats, "And I couldn't lose you." Despite the fact that Remus is coming into Sirius's palm, he doesn't miss the way his lover's voice breaks.

By the time he has stopped shaking and shuddering with the aftershocks of his orgasm, Sirius has composed himself and is grinning down at him lazily. Remus stares up at him, trying to memorize this moment, the way the stark contours of Sirius's face shine silver in the moonlight. So goddamn beautiful, even after all of it.

He reaches up and pulls Sirius's face down to his own so that, when he speaks, his lips are moving against Sirius's full, ravaged ones.

"Well," he whispers, "I missed you," and then he sets about proving it.