Waking

Sometimes, Remus wakes with a start to a room full of the black that proceeds dawn, and he can't remember anything. He listens to the sounds in the dark- breathing muffled by bed curtains, Peter's full of small wheezes, James' heavy with the mumbling that he always does during his dreams, Sirius snoring and occasionally loosing a great, gabbled snort like a contented dog. Remus stares at the peak of the black above him where his curtains meet the ceiling and listens to these things, and feels, for a few minutes, absolutely nothing weighing in the pit of his stomach.
Actually, it happens all the time, every time, every morning that proceeds a full moon. Every time. And Remus knows, somehow, from the lack of dread in his stomach that today of all days there should be dread in his stomach, and he moves his arms slowly against his sheets and tries to delay the knowledge of why with the sensation of hot cotton against his naked limbs and the meditatively erratic noise of his sleeping friends. And then Peter coughs flem-ily in his sleep in the way that Sirius and James have snickered about since first year but which Remus has always found strangely endearing; or James shouts, garbled, about 'fighting like a wizard' or, and Remus cringes, about 'yes, Lily, like that;' or Sirius growls, just growls in a way that hurts Remus' spine; and the knowledge slips in and descends from his brain to his stomach like a plummeting star, burning and making a dent at impact. The wolf is coming tonight. He can hear it in his own breathing. In something like twelve hours, his body will be devoured.
He has learned, if not to stop dreading it, than to stop dreading the dread. No, that's not true. If he didn't mind, he wouldn't try every time to subsume it in the lungs of other boys. But he knows it, and can live with it, and it no longer makes him sad. In something like twenty-four hours, after all, it will be over. Yes. The beast will spit him out, covered in hot saliva and torn around the edges, maybe, but alive and able to sleep past dawn for twenty-seven more mornings.
This morning his eyes snap open and he listens, hard. It's not passive listening and never has been, but this morning it seems harder. He strains. Where are the...Sirius' snore comes, surprisingly jarring in what Remus recognizes as the otherwise absolute silence of the room. No wheezes. No mumbles. James and Peter...he lifts an arm through the sheets to rub at his eyes, notes the morning salt that falls away from them, and waits for comprehension. He can hear the tinkle of music, maybe from the Common Room. His mind sings along- "Silver bells, silver bells, it's Christmas time..." Oh. Yes. Christmas holidays. Most of the school has gone home. Not Sirius, who is not, he says, ever going back to the Black mansion and who for some reason hasn't gone to James'. And not Remus, because...Oh. Right. The wolf comes tonight and his parent's house in Surrey is not equipped for it and it's only two days till Christmas and this isn't fair, Remus thinks suddenly, feeling tears spring into his eyes. He wipes at them angrily. This isn't like him, he thinks. Fair has nothing to do with anything. This isn't not fair, either. It just is.
He focuses his mind in on Sirius' breathing, but without the discordant harmony of three, it doesn't help. It only twists in his spine and he sits up, pushing blankets and curtains back simultaneously. The cold of the floor on the soles of his feet is, thank God, enough to shock the tears away. He pushes through the chilly air to his trunk and grabs at a sweater, scrabbling about until the pads of his fingers snag on torn wool, knobbly and distinctive.
There is a rasping from Sirius' bed behind Remus- the curtains parting. Remus jumps despite himself.
"Pants, Moony," Sirius says in a voice that manages to be both sleep-laden and amused.
"Err," says Remus, feeling the heat of a blush creeping up his neck. Unfortunately, he realizes with growing discomfort, he can also feel the blush creeping down, down his back to burn his bare buttocks. "err," he says again, reaching for a pair of trousers.
"Not that we haven't all been pining for a gander at your goods for years," Sirius adds. "Always hiding yourself, like a nun. 'course, now I see why. You've got a bum like a nun, all right. A very red nun."
"Not everyone works their arse out by speaking with it all day," Remus mutters darkly, pushing one leg into his pants and missing in the dark. He trips forward a few feet and hears his best friend chuckle.
"Christ, Moony, it's early."
"I hardly think that it's appropriate to start frivolously calling on deities right before their birthdays," Remus muses, feeling slightly recovered as his trousers slide up over his body and he buttons them securely. He turns around to regard Sirius with a raised eyebrow. He's rather proud of that eyebrow- Sirius has never been able to mirror the expression.
"I don't think it's appropriate to wake me up before six am, so there you go," Sirius replies with a scowl. His hair is plastered to one cheek and sticks out away from the other, and his eyes are half lidded. Remus' spine twitches again. He shrugs quickly, as much to relieve the sensation as to respond to the other boy.
"Your sweater is on backwards," Sirius drawls after a minute in which it becomes clear that Remus isn't going to answer. "So unless you're trying to start a new trend of Moonyfashion..."
Remus shrugs again and starts to pull the sweater over his head. It's an old sweater, and tight in the shoulders, and it sticks around his head so that he is buried in the collar and can't see. He flails for a moment, gets even more tangled, and hears the muffled slap of Sirius' bare feet hitting the floor.
"Quit moving," the other boy orders with a gruff laugh, and the sweater starts lifting over Remus's arms. The heat of Sirius's body is tangible on his newly bare chest and then the sweater is off and Sirius is offering it to him with a wide, sardonic grin.
"Pants, Padfoot," he mutters after a moment, taking the sweater. And he's blushing again. At least Sirius can't see his red bum this time. Oughtn't Sirius be the one blushing this time, for that matter? And it isn't like he hasn't seen Sirius' body before. Sirius enjoys being naked.
"Shirt, Lupin," Sirius replies, jovial. He throws himself backwards, onto his bed again. Remus grunts and wriggles back into the sweater, making sure that the tag is in the back this time and that the hem is indeed at the bottom, for good measure.
When Sirius speaks again, his voice is softer, registers as coaxing. "Oi, Moony. Cheer up. Tonight...tonight we'll be running through the snow and there'll be cold wind and tiny frightened mammals and it'll be just the two of us, mate, a real pack, and it'll be just brilliant."
"I have to get to the Shack," Remus mutters, turning back to the trunk and eyeing it. Socks. He needs socks.
"And tomorrow we'll sleep all day and have the feast in the evening, and then afterwards, afterwards we'll sneak up the Tower and I'll filch some firewhiskey from Professor Octavian's office and we'll carol the night away. And then, mate, it will be Christmas."
Remus sighs. Sirius never shuts up.
"It'll be wicked," Sirius promises.
"No," Remus says finally as he spots a grey ball in the corner next to the trunk which might just be an old-ish pair of socks. "It takes four marauders to be wicked." He starts to pull the socks on.
A small grunt comes from behind him- there is no more warning than that. Remus turns around in time to see Sirius leap up from his perch on the end of his bed. He full-body slams Remus to the ground. Remus just sighs and looks expectantly up at the other boy, trying to ignore the ringing coming from the place where the back of his head hit the ground. Sirius, still fully undressed (Remus notes worriedly) licks his cheek like a dog might and then moves away, grabbing Remus's right sock in passing and yanking it off of him. "No," he says cheerfully, "You only need me. I am wickeder than wicked itself, all by my lonesome."
Remus starts to get up, but thinks better of it. Sirius is still looking tackle-prone, and his spine- it's aching. "I've got to get to the Shack."
Sirius shakes his head violently. "You have hours upon hours to get to the Shack, Moony-my-lad. You need to hang around here for a bit. You woke me up. Now entertain me." He reaches into Remus' trunk and takes another sweater out, this one green and worn into scratchiness and at least four sizes too big for Remus, a hand-me-down from his father.
Remus pushes himself up onto his elbows, trying to ease his spine. Sirius pulls the sweater on over his head. It hangs down to his thighs, though it's tight across his shoulders and chest. Remus makes a face, trying to ignore the fact that Sirius is not wearing pants and he is now never going to be able to wear the sweater again, no matter how many times he washes it. "Entertain you. You want me to dance around with bells on my toes, like a court jester?"
"No," Sirius replies, leering down at him. "I'm talking about less pure forms of entertainment. How do you feel about harems?"
Remus just looks at him.
Sirius sighs. "No, I suppose not. Too bad. I've alwas wanted to corrupt a nun."
"Pants, Black," Remus mutters again, pushing himself up until he's standing. Banter with Sirius is familiar, but this morning he can't fall into it and his best friend seems ridiculously chatty, ridiculously frivolous, ridiculously ridiculous. Maybe I need James and Peter, he thinks, Maybe I can't be alone with Padfoot. Maybe he can't take Sirius's sole focus.
"Moooooony," Sirius' voice comes. "Come back to me. Earth to Moony."
Remus shakes his head. The wolf comes tonight. Half his pack is gone. "You've got to do the Potions work, anyway. You can do that today. I've got to get-"
"To the shack. Bollocks. Lighten up." Sirius's brows are knit together. His scowl shows teeth. He strides across the room to his own trunk and grabs a pair of pants from the mess around it. He keeps glancing over his shoulder to glare at Remus, who can only think of one thing to say.
"Can I have my sock back?"
"No," Sirius shoots back, pausing with the trousers still half-down to awkwardly pull the sock in question onto his own foot. These sudden incoherent rages, Remus thinks wryly. Sirius is something like a child, still. The thought wells up in Remus- his own childhood, Christmases with his mother and father, real oranges in his stocking. Suddenly he understands incoherent rages intimately. He imagines gasping. He wants his sock back. He holds out his hand, crosses the room, shoves into Sirius. "Give it back. I'm going."
Sirius grabs his shoulders roughly. "What, too good to sulk in my presence?"
Remus twists. "No, Black, but I do have a date with a viscious beast in a few hours, so unless you'd like to get bitten? Or maybe you think you'd look good in wolf's clothing. Girls love scars, is that it?" He is surprised, somewhere in the back of his mind, at the venom in his own voice.
Sirius's fingers tighten; were he gripping any harder, Remus would have bruises to show for this morning. He makes a sound that Remus can't name in the back of his throat. "You are an idiot, aren't you." A long pause in which Remus stares mutinously at Sirius' left cheek. "Stop ruining my holiday," Sirius finally grits out.
It is so incongruous, so selfish, that Remus can only gape, can only splutter. "Ruin your holiday?"
"I stayed, didn't I?"
"I didn't ask you to!" Remus has never before wanted to hit anyone. The sudden urge now blindsides him, and he shuts his mouth hard, lips pursing painfully.
There is a long moment of silence. Sirius's expression is fiece. Remus shifts under his hands, feeling more and more like a fool with each passing second.
"Well, I'm here," Sirius finally says, dropping his hands to his sides and looking off to the side of Remus' head.
"Right," Remus answers. He turns and walks toward the door.
"Moony?"
"Er?"
"I'll be there tonight, too."
"Right," Remus says again. Something hits him in the back of the head; he turns to find his sock on the floor behind him. Sirius is grinning wickedly. He can't help but smile back.

The sky is clear that night. What snow is going to fall for Christmas has already fallen, and the clouds where it germinated have moved off toward London.
The wolf is violent- time of year could not change that. Scratches mark its sides and there is a bloody trail across its chest. Red drops mar the snow among its tracks. Two sets of tracks, Remus will note the next day as he stares out of a tower window. Two sets of tracks next to each other, and obscuring each other. He will turn from the window to look at Sirius, sprawled across his bed and kicking irratically in his sleep. Sirius will growl, low and from his chest, at whatever cats frolick in his dreams, and as always Remus' spine will jump sideways. He will think, Tomorrow is Christmas morning. He will think, He'll be here then, too. And then he will go back to sleep.