No Romance

"No romance," Sirius said as he flicked Remus' buttons open. "All right, Moony? This is just a bit of fun. Just the two of us."

He said the words softly, almost gently, but Remus heard in them a warning, and heeded it. No romance. This was not a love story. They were men, they were friends, and this was just sex. Romance was for James and Lily, Frank and Alice, even Peter and his girlfriend. There would be no love letters for Remus - not from Sirius, anyway - or kissing in public. They would never hold hands. They would not have a song.

Which was fine with Remus. He did not want any of those things - not from Sirius, certainly, not after standing by and observing so many of his disastrous relationships. What Remus wanted was to be fucked, and while he could have gotten that anywhere - there was that rancid alley off Knockturn - here was Sirius with hot, eager hands, an even hotter mouth, and eyes the color of bruises in the deepening dusk. Here was Sirius, a tangle of raw nerves and needs, and no answers, for once no answers even for himself.

He had a bed, his sheets were clean, and he smelled of expensive leather, clove cigarettes, motorcycle grease and, very faintly, dog. He tasted like the expensive red wine he'd been drinking, and of mint toothpaste, and other things that Remus could not name, but lapped greedily into his own mouth, and held there, and savored. He would take everything Sirius chose to give him, he thought, be it a bite mark on his shoulder, or a faint red line left after Sirius drew a fingernail wonderingly across his thigh.

Somewhere in London, a girl was waiting, and would continue to wait. It pleased Remus that she should wait, that he could not remember her name, and that Sirius seemed to have forgotten it as well, though he'd been going on about her not ten minutes ago. I'm twenty-one, Moony. I've been doing this for six years. I'm fucking tired of it. I can't go meet her. Whatever Prongs says, she'll be like all the rest. It won't work. I'm fucking horny, that's all. I want to get laid. I don't want another relationship. No more romance. None of these girls ever understand that. You understand, don't you, Moony?

Remus did not. He'd felt like thirty by the time he was sixteen, but he'd never gotten the sense that he was being rushed along against his will. He had no goals, other than surviving and recognizing pleasure when he encountered it. So, he let his handsome, unnerved, slightly pissed friend fuck him, on his clean bed, with the lights off. They lit no candles - even if there'd been time between the first messy kiss, the warning, and the tumble into bed, candles would have been romantic - and they did not speak.

It could have been anyone's cock inside him, Remus thought, his face pushed against the pillows, his fingers clawing the sheets. It could have been anyone's hands on his belly, his thighs, and his cock. In his mind, he conjured veils and cast them over Sirius' face. They thickened as need and pleasure rolled in his belly and began to pulse through him. But the deluge was stronger than he'd anticipated, and it ripped away the veils, and there was Sirius again, sagging against him, gasping, sweaty, dark, and beautiful.

They did not speak afterward. Remus left the flat shortly after Sirius fell asleep. He did it quickly, gathering his clothes to his chest, and staggering into the corridor, not looking back to see the long, lithe limbs splayed across the sheets, or the heart-tumbling smile.

When they met again two days later, Sirius said somewhat crossly, "You didn't have to bugger off. It's a big bed. You could've stayed."

"No romance," Remus reminded him.

"I know," said Sirius, and Remus tried not to wonder if he sounded disappointed. "We're friends, though. It was a cold night. You should've stayed."

The next time, Remus stayed. But the third time, he did not. If this was going to work, he told himself, Sirius' face could not be the first thing he saw when he awoke in the morning.

It worked sporadically for nearly a year and a half. Sirius went out with the girls the Potters and his other friends found for him, and brought more than a few of them back to his flat. None of his relationships lasted for more than a week or two, and when they ended, and Sirius was feeling lonely, uncertain, frustrated, and sometimes even frightened, Remus was there with a glass of wine and his own warm body.

"You don't have to do this," Sirius said once, after they'd fucked.

Remus stared at the ceiling, which seemed to wheel above him. He could not move, though the carpet was beginning to irritate his sweat-slick skin. "You don't have to, either," he said at length.

"I'm not queer," Sirius said.

"I know," said Remus, and knew somehow that Sirius had turned to look at him, finally.

"I'm not," Sirius insisted. "Anyway, I'm not one of those ponces we used to--"

"Pick on?" Remus finished.

"Some of them deserved it," Sirius said. "Prissy queens, prancing about school. What were they expecting? But I'm not like that, Moony. Neither're you. I mean, we're friends. And we fuck. That's all."

Remus continued to watch the ceiling. His gaze traveled over the thin cracks in the plaster. This was his firmament, he thought. Sirius sounded very far away.

"You understand," he was saying. He laid a palm lightly on Remus' thigh, which nearly stung Remus back to reality. "That's why it's all right. No one else understands, but you do, Moony."

"Yes," Remus lied absently.

Remus never did understand. He fancied he was using Sirius, and that Sirius was using him, that Sirius did what he did, and that Remus took what he could, and that it was all right. They never told anyone, not even the Potters. Peter found out - Remus never knew how - but he promised he would never tell anyone, and as far as Remus knew, he never did.

When Sirius abruptly stopped returning his messages, Remus felt only a little surprise.

"Maybe he's realized he's a big, flaming poofter," Peter chuckled to him, sounding uncharacteristically vindictive, "and he's sulking on his own."

Peter was probably right, Remus thought, but with the war escalating, and with the Ministry breathing down his neck - he was, after all, a Dark creature - he had little time for speculation.

When Sirius sold the Potters to Voldemort, murdered Peter and twelve innocent Muggles, and was dragged off to Azkaban, Remus wondered when his heart had become a lump of plaster. He huddled in his flat for a long time, and every time he moved he felt another tiny crack. If he got up, he knew, the entire lump would shatter, and the cold and the darkness would flood him and drown him from the inside.

_____

"No romance," Remus said, leaning across the kitchen table to touch Sirius' cheek.

Sirius' smile revealed his crooked, yellowed teeth. "Fuck it, Moony," he said, "I wouldn't know romance if I saw it."

In the dim lighting of Number Twelve Grimmauld Place, Remus saw the lines like cracks in Sirius' white face, and the night trickling through. He thought, I don't believe in romance, anyway. It's for other people. But we have each other again, and that's enough.

Still, he was gentle when he got Sirius upstairs, and slow undressing him. "I'm not going to break," Sirius said wryly, his head on the pillows.

But I might, Remus thought, looking down at him. Sirius' skin lay over his bones like a cobweb over leafless twigs. His hipbones jutted, his wrist bones poked, his hair hung in great tangles around his face, giving him the appearance of a drowning man. The ghost of his beauty lingered over him, but Remus wondered as he shrugged out of his clothes and crawled into bed beside him, why either of them still held any desire for each other. Was it desperation? A mutual longing for what had been lost? A tacit understanding that after all these years, they were attractive only to each other?

"Got something to tell you," Sirius whispered when Remus lay flush with him on the creaky, lumpy mattress.

Remus felt a jolt of fear, but kept his voice steady. "What?" His fingers played over Sirius' ribs, down to his thigh.

"Tickles," Sirius muttered, twisting closer. When they were nose to nose he said helplessly, "Moony, I'm gay."

Relief rushed through Remus so swiftly that he forget what it was he'd feared Sirius might say. He managed to laugh, and nuzzle Sirius, and curl his fingers around Sirius' stiffening cock. "I know," he said at length.

"You know? You mean you knew. Even though there were all those girls, you knew."

"I knew." Remus shifted his hips, moved his hand slightly, and swallowed Sirius' gasp. "Idiot," he murmured, pulling back slightly, and smiling at the ravaged face, "I've always known."

"You were the only one," Sirius said quietly, his grey gaze on something beyond Remus' right shoulder. "The only bloke, I mean. But I know I'm gay, because you were the only person I ever--"

Remus kissed him again before he could finish, and went on kissing him and pumping him until all either could think about was his own need for release.

_____

After Sirius died, Remus remained in Number Twelve Grimmauld Place for a few days. He was cleaning up, he told the other Order members. Sirius' things could not be left lying about the house. There were some that Remus wanted to keep - tokens from their days at Hogwarts - and some that Harry ought to have.

He did very little packing, though. Mostly, he wandered through the dusty, unlit rooms. His fingertips moved over shelves and windowsills, feeling the wood's shallow grooves and ridges. He was not looking for anything, he told himself. But if he should happen to find...

Find what? Their initials enclosed in a heart? No romance, they'd told each other.

Still, Remus walked, and felt with his fingertips, and listened because there might be an echo huddled in some corner, a word uttered in solitude and left to disintegrate.

But the only word Remus found was the one he had swallowed, snagged on a fragment of his own heart.

03/09/05