Thinking
Title: Thinking
Author: olfactoryeyes
Word Count: 2019
Characters/Pairings: Remus Lupin, Sirius Black, James Potter, Peter Pettigrew, Remus/Sirius
Rating: PG, very lame tame, some swearing
Disclaimer: I wish.
This is my first completed attempt at fanfiction, just as a warning.
Remus lay in his bed, blinking into the darkness. All of the lamps had finally been turned out and the only light came from the little sliver of moon that wasn’t covered by thick clouds. The window by James’s bed was open a crack and Remus could smell the rain. It wasn’t here yet but he knew that tomorrow morning they would be splashing across the flooded lawn to the greenhouses. Remus would be tramping through the mud, muttering to himself about the state of his soaked trousers and robes and behind him Sirius and James would be laughing, shoving each other into slippery patches. Peter would be scurrying along behind them, avoiding the larger puddles but walking in enough mud to make it look like he had been playing around with James and Sirius when they got into the greenhouse. Remus mentally reminded himself to use one of the water repelling charms that Flitwick had taught them a few weeks ago.
Remus didn’t mind the darkness, and he didn’t mind being by himself in it. On the contrary, he almost enjoyed it. Not for the same reasons that his roommates did, of course. He didn’t used the dark stillness to plot ways to make Lily Evans fall madly in love with him, or ways to remember that Transfiguration law that Peter could never quite remember but was always on exams, or plan new methods of inciting chaos during breakfast. No, Remus enjoyed the darkness because it was the one time during the day that he could be quiet and alone and thoughtful without being prodded or yelled at or have bits of parchment flicked at his nose. Remus was naturally a contemplative person and at night, he didn’t have to share his thoughts with anyone but his bed curtains.
He thought about all sorts of things: how close they were to their last year of school, whether or not there was any chance of him ever getting a proper job, if he could stop James from going through with that prank he had planned out especially for tomorrow’s dinner that had way too much to do with Snape’s trousers. But most of all, Remus thought about this thing. This weird, new thing. Well, it wasn’t new exactly but it wasn’t old either. He wasn’t sure when it started. It had just dawned on him the other day. Nothing out of the ordinary was happening. The four of them were sitting in the common room: Remus on the sofa, sitting with his legs crossed, a book balanced on his knee, James on the other end, feet on the table, arguing with Sirius and Peter about the prospects of the Wimbourne Wasps’ new Chaser. Peter was perched on the arm of the sofa, leaning slightly towards James, gesturing grandly with his hands, talking about some amazing play he’d seen the new Chaser make and Sirius was in between Remus and James, arms stretched out on the back of the sofa, one behind James and one behind Remus, with one leg stretched out onto the table and the other curled under his body.
There was nothing particularly different about the situation but Remus just seemed more aware of everything than usual. He felt his leg pressed against Sirius’, the fabric of his trousers rubbing against Sirius’ trousers when one of them shifted. He was trying to concentrate on his book but he had read the same line about fourteen times before he realized why he was distracted. Sirius’ hand, the one loitering behind his head, was absentmindedly twirling the curly ends of Remus’ hair between his fingers. Not looking up from his book, Remus smiled and enjoyed the sensation: deft fingers twisting in his golden curls, sweeping softly against the back of his neck.
This touching, this casual brushing of fingers against skin, was nothing new or strange to Remus. The four of them had lived together for nearly six years and spent almost every waking minute together, but this, this, for some reason, was unusual. Or it wasn’t until Remus, staring off into space, book completely forgotten in seconds, began to imagine that the gentle touch of Sirius’ fingers against his neck weren’t fingers at all, but lips. Sirius’ lips. Pink and full and perfectly shaped and, Remus realized, perfectly kissable.
His eyes opened and his book closed and stood up quickly, Sirius’ hand pulling away at the sudden movement. Three pairs of eyes, one brown, one blue, and one misty grey, looked up at him.
“I, er, I’ve got to finish my Runes homework. Book, in the, uh, library I need. Got to, you know, get it,” Remus said, throwing his book and a few others off of the table into his bag and climbing out of the portrait without another word.
Just as he was leaving, he heard James say, “Well, that was odd. Really fucking weird. What’s with him?”
Shit, Remus thought, shit, shit, shit.
Once in the hallway, Remus walked to the library. There was no runes book he needed; Remus Lupin just naturally gravitated toward libraries.
He walked in, ignoring Madam Pince’s outraged look as he haphazardly dropped his bag onto an unoccupied table, and sat down, slumping over in his chair, head resting on his loudly discarded school bag.
It wasn’t as though this was the first time this had happened. Creeping through the corridors after dark, squeezed together under James’ Invisibility Cloak, Remus had been pressed against Sirius’ side and he had smiled at how much he liked being close to him, being squished against the other boy’s side, feeling their arms and legs brush together. Leaning over each other, the touch of hands at meals when passing dishes back and forth, the warm feeling of Sirius’ limbs against his on the couch or when Sirius shoved his way into Remus’ armchair in the common room.
Even when Remus had seen Sirius with his assortment of girls he had always sort of wondered, in a way he never consciously noticed, how it would feel to be the one in Sirius’ lap or the one with his hand on Sirius’ thigh or the one that, well, snogged Sirius.
Really, he asked himself, Sirius? He supposed it made sense. Sirius was attractive. Remus snorted. He was more than attractive, ask any of the girls in their year. Or any year, for that matter. Straight nose, high cheek bones, sharp jaw line, grey eyes with long, almost girlish black eyelashes. He was muscular, in a thin, boyish sort of way, all smoothly curved arms and flat stomach. He had seen Sirius naked enough times to know.
“Shit,” he said to himself, banging his head into his bag, hoping that Madam Pince wouldn’t hear him swearing. Shit, he had seen Sirius naked. Now he couldn’t get the image out of his head. Dammit.
This was not what he needed now, something else to worry about. Not a week away from the full moon. Or three weeks from exams. Or ever, actually, not something else that would set him apart from everyone else even more. He didn’t need to be in love with Sirius, his best friend, a boy.
Love. Shit. He can’t be in love. Wouldn’t he have noticed before?
Well, you have noticed before, thought a snide little voice in his head that sounded frighteningly like Lily Evans’ I-told-you-so voice. It’s not really the first time, he or Lily or whoever thought, you do basically stare at him in class and you’re always around him, even when James isn’t, when you’re not the Marauders, it’s still Sirius-and-Remus. It laughed (most definitely Lily) and thought, You love him, you do.
Remus really wanted it to shut up so he could think about the best way to make all of this stop when someone sat down across from him and cleared their throat rather impatiently and much louder than was necessary. Remus looked up, knowing exactly who it was.
“Yes, Sirius, what is it? I’ve been gone nearly five minutes; can you three not function without me that long?”
Sirius smiled. “Why, Moony, what’s got your knickers in a twist?”
Remus sighed and wondered why he hadn’t had this ridiculous epiphany before. Stupid smile. “Nothing, Padfoot, and please, leave my knickers out of this.”
“Nothing?” Sirius said, cocking his head so it was even with Remus’, “You ran away, all in a huff, to get a book that you don’t even have. And Moony, you never pass up the opportunity to get a book. So I’d say your knickers are rather twisty at the moment. Go on, do tell.”
“Why must you always-” Remus began before he was cut off.
“Knickers, knickers, knickers.” Sirius laughed and busied himself with picking at the hem of Remus’ bag.
Remus rolled his eyes. He knew he was being stupid and probably dramatic but he was staring at Sirius’ fingers playing with a thread hanging off of his bag and his mind went back to the fingers in his hair and the lips at his neck and, oh hell.
Sirius had allowed several seconds of silence to pass before he remembered he had come here on a mission. A mission to figure out what was wrong with Moony and stop it because it was annoying and weird and unRemus-like to wander out in a jumble of incoherency and he still had to show them the wand movement for the jinx they were using on Rodolphus Lestrange and his brother tomorrow.
“Okay, Moony, words, now, let’s go. You love words. Use them.”
“It’s. There’s. Nothing. Let’s just go back to the common room. I doubt you’ve finished that essay Slughorn wants tomorrow,” Remus said, standing up, surrendering to the force of nature that was Sirius Black after only seconds of struggle.
Sirius stood up and followed Remus out of the library. “What about your book?” he asked with a smile.
“Shut up, Sirius,” Remus said, smiling himself.
“Remus, honestly, is it a girl or something?” Sirius asked as they walked back towards Gryffindor Tower.
“Or something,” Remus said quietly, without thinking.
“A girl! Oh, Moony, you sneaky minx, why didn’t you say anything?”
Remus continued not saying anything.
“Or something? Is it … it’s not a boy?” Sirius asked, stopping.
Bloody fuck. Why did he answer Sirius? Answering Sirius’ questions were seldom a good thing. Dammit. Resistance was futile … He was staring at his stupid mouth again too. Lips parted a little bit, he looked rather shocked to Remus.
Remus stopped walking and shifted his bag across his shoulders, trying not to look at Sirius. “What would you say if it was?”
“I would say, alright Moony, as long as it’s not Snape, because then I would vomit all over your shoes, and no one wants that,” Sirius grinned and then looked solemnly at Remus’ shoes, nodding slowly. “Who is it, then?”
Remus wasn’t sure how exactly to get out of this. He didn’t know how he was stupid enough to get himself into this conversation in the first place. He wasn’t sure what to say. So he didn’t say anything.
Remus grabbed the front of Sirius’ robes and closed the space between them by pulling him, rather violently, forward. Their faces were centimeters apart and Remus could feel Sirius’ breath on his chin. Instead of letting go and running away and finding some way to kill himself so this would never have to be discussed again, Remus just stood there and thought about how he never actually appreciated just how white Sirius’ teeth were, or how soft his hair looked or, never mind because, Christ, Sirius was smiling.
“Good,” he said softly before closing the last inch and kissing Remus gently on the lips.
Remus released his death grip on Sirius’ robes and slid his hands around to place one in the middle of Sirius’ back and the other at his waist.
Remus decided, turning onto his side and smiling into the cool cotton of his pillow, this thing was the only thing worth spending his precious darkness thinking about.
Author: olfactoryeyes
Word Count: 2019
Characters/Pairings: Remus Lupin, Sirius Black, James Potter, Peter Pettigrew, Remus/Sirius
Rating: PG, very lame tame, some swearing
Disclaimer: I wish.
This is my first completed attempt at fanfiction, just as a warning.
Remus lay in his bed, blinking into the darkness. All of the lamps had finally been turned out and the only light came from the little sliver of moon that wasn’t covered by thick clouds. The window by James’s bed was open a crack and Remus could smell the rain. It wasn’t here yet but he knew that tomorrow morning they would be splashing across the flooded lawn to the greenhouses. Remus would be tramping through the mud, muttering to himself about the state of his soaked trousers and robes and behind him Sirius and James would be laughing, shoving each other into slippery patches. Peter would be scurrying along behind them, avoiding the larger puddles but walking in enough mud to make it look like he had been playing around with James and Sirius when they got into the greenhouse. Remus mentally reminded himself to use one of the water repelling charms that Flitwick had taught them a few weeks ago.
Remus didn’t mind the darkness, and he didn’t mind being by himself in it. On the contrary, he almost enjoyed it. Not for the same reasons that his roommates did, of course. He didn’t used the dark stillness to plot ways to make Lily Evans fall madly in love with him, or ways to remember that Transfiguration law that Peter could never quite remember but was always on exams, or plan new methods of inciting chaos during breakfast. No, Remus enjoyed the darkness because it was the one time during the day that he could be quiet and alone and thoughtful without being prodded or yelled at or have bits of parchment flicked at his nose. Remus was naturally a contemplative person and at night, he didn’t have to share his thoughts with anyone but his bed curtains.
He thought about all sorts of things: how close they were to their last year of school, whether or not there was any chance of him ever getting a proper job, if he could stop James from going through with that prank he had planned out especially for tomorrow’s dinner that had way too much to do with Snape’s trousers. But most of all, Remus thought about this thing. This weird, new thing. Well, it wasn’t new exactly but it wasn’t old either. He wasn’t sure when it started. It had just dawned on him the other day. Nothing out of the ordinary was happening. The four of them were sitting in the common room: Remus on the sofa, sitting with his legs crossed, a book balanced on his knee, James on the other end, feet on the table, arguing with Sirius and Peter about the prospects of the Wimbourne Wasps’ new Chaser. Peter was perched on the arm of the sofa, leaning slightly towards James, gesturing grandly with his hands, talking about some amazing play he’d seen the new Chaser make and Sirius was in between Remus and James, arms stretched out on the back of the sofa, one behind James and one behind Remus, with one leg stretched out onto the table and the other curled under his body.
There was nothing particularly different about the situation but Remus just seemed more aware of everything than usual. He felt his leg pressed against Sirius’, the fabric of his trousers rubbing against Sirius’ trousers when one of them shifted. He was trying to concentrate on his book but he had read the same line about fourteen times before he realized why he was distracted. Sirius’ hand, the one loitering behind his head, was absentmindedly twirling the curly ends of Remus’ hair between his fingers. Not looking up from his book, Remus smiled and enjoyed the sensation: deft fingers twisting in his golden curls, sweeping softly against the back of his neck.
This touching, this casual brushing of fingers against skin, was nothing new or strange to Remus. The four of them had lived together for nearly six years and spent almost every waking minute together, but this, this, for some reason, was unusual. Or it wasn’t until Remus, staring off into space, book completely forgotten in seconds, began to imagine that the gentle touch of Sirius’ fingers against his neck weren’t fingers at all, but lips. Sirius’ lips. Pink and full and perfectly shaped and, Remus realized, perfectly kissable.
His eyes opened and his book closed and stood up quickly, Sirius’ hand pulling away at the sudden movement. Three pairs of eyes, one brown, one blue, and one misty grey, looked up at him.
“I, er, I’ve got to finish my Runes homework. Book, in the, uh, library I need. Got to, you know, get it,” Remus said, throwing his book and a few others off of the table into his bag and climbing out of the portrait without another word.
Just as he was leaving, he heard James say, “Well, that was odd. Really fucking weird. What’s with him?”
Shit, Remus thought, shit, shit, shit.
Once in the hallway, Remus walked to the library. There was no runes book he needed; Remus Lupin just naturally gravitated toward libraries.
He walked in, ignoring Madam Pince’s outraged look as he haphazardly dropped his bag onto an unoccupied table, and sat down, slumping over in his chair, head resting on his loudly discarded school bag.
It wasn’t as though this was the first time this had happened. Creeping through the corridors after dark, squeezed together under James’ Invisibility Cloak, Remus had been pressed against Sirius’ side and he had smiled at how much he liked being close to him, being squished against the other boy’s side, feeling their arms and legs brush together. Leaning over each other, the touch of hands at meals when passing dishes back and forth, the warm feeling of Sirius’ limbs against his on the couch or when Sirius shoved his way into Remus’ armchair in the common room.
Even when Remus had seen Sirius with his assortment of girls he had always sort of wondered, in a way he never consciously noticed, how it would feel to be the one in Sirius’ lap or the one with his hand on Sirius’ thigh or the one that, well, snogged Sirius.
Really, he asked himself, Sirius? He supposed it made sense. Sirius was attractive. Remus snorted. He was more than attractive, ask any of the girls in their year. Or any year, for that matter. Straight nose, high cheek bones, sharp jaw line, grey eyes with long, almost girlish black eyelashes. He was muscular, in a thin, boyish sort of way, all smoothly curved arms and flat stomach. He had seen Sirius naked enough times to know.
“Shit,” he said to himself, banging his head into his bag, hoping that Madam Pince wouldn’t hear him swearing. Shit, he had seen Sirius naked. Now he couldn’t get the image out of his head. Dammit.
This was not what he needed now, something else to worry about. Not a week away from the full moon. Or three weeks from exams. Or ever, actually, not something else that would set him apart from everyone else even more. He didn’t need to be in love with Sirius, his best friend, a boy.
Love. Shit. He can’t be in love. Wouldn’t he have noticed before?
Well, you have noticed before, thought a snide little voice in his head that sounded frighteningly like Lily Evans’ I-told-you-so voice. It’s not really the first time, he or Lily or whoever thought, you do basically stare at him in class and you’re always around him, even when James isn’t, when you’re not the Marauders, it’s still Sirius-and-Remus. It laughed (most definitely Lily) and thought, You love him, you do.
Remus really wanted it to shut up so he could think about the best way to make all of this stop when someone sat down across from him and cleared their throat rather impatiently and much louder than was necessary. Remus looked up, knowing exactly who it was.
“Yes, Sirius, what is it? I’ve been gone nearly five minutes; can you three not function without me that long?”
Sirius smiled. “Why, Moony, what’s got your knickers in a twist?”
Remus sighed and wondered why he hadn’t had this ridiculous epiphany before. Stupid smile. “Nothing, Padfoot, and please, leave my knickers out of this.”
“Nothing?” Sirius said, cocking his head so it was even with Remus’, “You ran away, all in a huff, to get a book that you don’t even have. And Moony, you never pass up the opportunity to get a book. So I’d say your knickers are rather twisty at the moment. Go on, do tell.”
“Why must you always-” Remus began before he was cut off.
“Knickers, knickers, knickers.” Sirius laughed and busied himself with picking at the hem of Remus’ bag.
Remus rolled his eyes. He knew he was being stupid and probably dramatic but he was staring at Sirius’ fingers playing with a thread hanging off of his bag and his mind went back to the fingers in his hair and the lips at his neck and, oh hell.
Sirius had allowed several seconds of silence to pass before he remembered he had come here on a mission. A mission to figure out what was wrong with Moony and stop it because it was annoying and weird and unRemus-like to wander out in a jumble of incoherency and he still had to show them the wand movement for the jinx they were using on Rodolphus Lestrange and his brother tomorrow.
“Okay, Moony, words, now, let’s go. You love words. Use them.”
“It’s. There’s. Nothing. Let’s just go back to the common room. I doubt you’ve finished that essay Slughorn wants tomorrow,” Remus said, standing up, surrendering to the force of nature that was Sirius Black after only seconds of struggle.
Sirius stood up and followed Remus out of the library. “What about your book?” he asked with a smile.
“Shut up, Sirius,” Remus said, smiling himself.
“Remus, honestly, is it a girl or something?” Sirius asked as they walked back towards Gryffindor Tower.
“Or something,” Remus said quietly, without thinking.
“A girl! Oh, Moony, you sneaky minx, why didn’t you say anything?”
Remus continued not saying anything.
“Or something? Is it … it’s not a boy?” Sirius asked, stopping.
Bloody fuck. Why did he answer Sirius? Answering Sirius’ questions were seldom a good thing. Dammit. Resistance was futile … He was staring at his stupid mouth again too. Lips parted a little bit, he looked rather shocked to Remus.
Remus stopped walking and shifted his bag across his shoulders, trying not to look at Sirius. “What would you say if it was?”
“I would say, alright Moony, as long as it’s not Snape, because then I would vomit all over your shoes, and no one wants that,” Sirius grinned and then looked solemnly at Remus’ shoes, nodding slowly. “Who is it, then?”
Remus wasn’t sure how exactly to get out of this. He didn’t know how he was stupid enough to get himself into this conversation in the first place. He wasn’t sure what to say. So he didn’t say anything.
Remus grabbed the front of Sirius’ robes and closed the space between them by pulling him, rather violently, forward. Their faces were centimeters apart and Remus could feel Sirius’ breath on his chin. Instead of letting go and running away and finding some way to kill himself so this would never have to be discussed again, Remus just stood there and thought about how he never actually appreciated just how white Sirius’ teeth were, or how soft his hair looked or, never mind because, Christ, Sirius was smiling.
“Good,” he said softly before closing the last inch and kissing Remus gently on the lips.
Remus released his death grip on Sirius’ robes and slid his hands around to place one in the middle of Sirius’ back and the other at his waist.
Remus decided, turning onto his side and smiling into the cool cotton of his pillow, this thing was the only thing worth spending his precious darkness thinking about.