F: Three, Two (R/S, PG-13)
Three, Two. For desetoiles because she is awesome, and also because she asked; sorry, dear, that I didn't exactly use the challenge you gave me or make it very long or any of that. Feel free to make me try again. My next goal is to write a fic that actually goes beyond the initial kissing, like. Un-beta'd, 1000+ words
"But there's some evidence that the inheritance system then was matrilineal," Remus hears himself saying, "so they might not have really been fighting because she was beautiful so much as because she was important for the legitimacy of Menelaus's throne."
His thin hands dart in and out of his vision in vague gestures, as if 'inheritance' and 'matrilineal' and 'legitimacy' can be explained with the motions. He doesn't even know why he's still talking. This Helen certainly is beautiful, with coffee-cream skin and dark eyes that nearly have him convinced she's interested. He wishes he could be.
"She left a daughter behind to go with Paris, too, so if we disregard the minor possibility of real gods and goddesses, historically she must have been a bit flaky," he says, on autopilot, but she laughs, really laughs, and she likes him even though he has done little more than insult Helen of Troy for the past 10 minutes.
All he has to do is hold out his hand. It should be so easy, so uncomplicated.
But then Sirius slides into the chair between them -- flushed, glistening, gasping and grinning crookedly -- and Remus remembers why it's not.
"Going to talk all night?" he asks once he has his breath back, presumably directed to Remus, but his eyes are on Helen.
"Er," Remus says, meaning, Yes, Sirius, I probably am.
Sirius spares him a glance and an amused smile, then leans over to murmur against Helen's ear. Her smile flashes teeth Remus hadn't seen.
He isn't sure which of the two he hates more, at the moment. He looks pointedly away, aware of the prim, offended line of his shoulders but unable to loosen them. He wonders if Sirius will shag her -- if Sirius will bring her back to his flat tonight, if Remus will have to spend his last night before he goes home listening to thuds and moans.
Sirius has always been wild, but this new Sirius Independent is completely unmanageable, his days away from school composed entirely of motorbike oil and leather and alcohol and dances Remus’s mother would call obscene. Remus would call them obscene, too, if Sirius wouldn’t laugh at him for it.
"Y'mind, Moony?" Sirius asks a minute later. He has Helen by the elbow and they are already edging toward the teeming crowd.
Remus shakes his head at them with a carefully practiced blank expression. "Why would I mind?"
He catches the beginning of Sirius's grin before his eyes can make it to the safety of his drink. He waits until they're done to drop his head lower, glaring into the amber liquid. "Fuck this," he says to it, which makes him feel slightly vindicated, then knocks the glass back in a fluid motion copied from his uncle John.
Unfortunately, he's never had a real drink before; he only has one now because Sirius insisted it would make them look older. And he somewhat miscalculated the bite, so more of the liquor is spilled and spluttered down the front of his shirt than is swallowed. He leaps up, wiping at his face and blushing, but no one has even noticed.
He manages to feel bitter anyway (No one ever notices.) and storms to the bathroom, dripping a trail of liquor behind him and not caring, because in less than 20 minutes the object of his best-hidden affection is probably going to snog Remus’s only chance of getting kissed himself.
The bathroom’s only other occupant smirks at him when he comes inside, and Remus glares, though it is not a very powerful expression because he is always afraid of being impolite to strangers.
He locks himself in a stall, wrestles with his shirt to retrieve his wand, cleans his clothes with a quickly murmured charm, and stands there feeling sorry for himself (he couldn’t deny it). He doesn’t know how much time passes while he stares at the “WANKER” scrawled across the wall, but it can’t be much, because after the smirking bloke leaves, only one other person comes inside.
“Moony?” Sirius, of course. “What are you doing?”
Remus quickly turns to stand in front of the toilet, so his feet are in the right places if Sirius looks under the stall door. “What one normally does in the loo,” he says crossly.
“Are not,” Sirius says, and rattles the door. “Let me in.”
“No.”
“I’ll crawl under the door.”
“I’ll step on your face.”
Remus grits his teeth for the duration of the long pause that follows, then hears a murmured alohamora and makes an indignant, half-growling noise in the back of his throat as Sirius steps inside. “I could have really been using the toilet!”
Sirius smiles easily and leans against the sticky, graffitied wall Remus has been so carefully avoiding. “Nah, you never would have said you were if you had been.”
“I...” He can’t deny that, either, so he juts his chin out defiantly and focuses on the fact that he’s supposed to be having a nice sulk and Sirius is ruining it. “What do you want?”
Remus so rarely snaps at his friends that James and Peter never know how to handle it, but Sirius merely shrugs, unbothered. Perhaps he’s built up an immunity, being the one most often at the receiving end of Remus’s temper. “You ran off,” he says. “Helen was disappointed.”
“Helen went off with you.”
“Yes, well,” Sirius says with a blatant roll of his eyes, “the plan was to make you get off your arse and come take her back. Idiot. I wouldn’t do that to you.”
And this is why, Remus remembers, he isn’t supposed to get angry; with a few rare exceptions, like that bit with Snape, he almost always ends up wrong and embarrassed. “Oh,” he manages. “I, well. I didn’t want to dance or anything anyway.”
Remus wants to leave but, considering how stupid he feels, doesn’t want to ask Sirius to move aside. And Sirius doesn’t seem ready to leave, anyway. He stares at him for a long moment, leather-encased arms folded over his chest, then smiles again, looking amused. “Do you wank to mythology books?”
“No!” Remus says, then, “What?”
“She asked, before she left. I told her yes, though. Oops.” The pleased smile broadens. “Are you queer?”
Remus turns pink, and looking pained isn’t difficult. He just hopes it is an exasperated sort of pain on his face, rather than a terrified sort of pain such as is currently making his heart try to beat its way through his ribs. “Sirius,” he says, but the other boy only raises an eyebrow (infuriating talent), still smiling, so Remus takes a deep breath and thinks, Serves him right. “I might be.”
Whatever he expected -- shock, disgust, laughter -- Sirius doesn’t give it to him. Instead he nods and looks puzzlingly pleased with himself. “I thought so.”
And then he stares again. Remus shifts on his feet and looks wistfully at the door. “Er, Pads,” he begins, but Sirius cuts him off.
“I didn’t leave home because of the whole pureblood thing,” he says breezily, as if he’s still making jokes, and Remus gapes at him, because this is a fine time and place to talk about that for the first time. “My father found pictures under my mattress.”
“Of?” Remus asks before his brain catches up, then blushes yet again. “Oh. Those sorts of pictures.”
“Yes,” Sirius says. His smile fades, at first a little, then completely. “Have you ever fancied me?”
“I,” Remus says, then, “Sirius, no, you’re.”
Sirius grabs a fistful of his shirt, at the shoulder, and steps closer. “I wouldn’t mind if you had. You could tell me. We’re mates, right, but that wouldn’t mean you couldn’t fancy me. Friendship, it’s good, you know, for that sort of thing. It wouldn’t be strange. We could --”
“Sirius,” Remus says helplessly as his knees knock against the toilet seat. Dirt! Disease! Filth! his mother’s voice says in his head, which seems highly inappropriate, and he mutters aloud, “Shut up.”
Sirius does, even though it wasn’t intended for him, falling silent mid-sentence and staring at him with wild eyes. Remus tries to think that he has no idea what’s happening, but he does. In the new quiet they can hear the garbled chant from the crowd outside, matched by their breathing: Five, four, three, two.
They don’t make it to one.
"But there's some evidence that the inheritance system then was matrilineal," Remus hears himself saying, "so they might not have really been fighting because she was beautiful so much as because she was important for the legitimacy of Menelaus's throne."
His thin hands dart in and out of his vision in vague gestures, as if 'inheritance' and 'matrilineal' and 'legitimacy' can be explained with the motions. He doesn't even know why he's still talking. This Helen certainly is beautiful, with coffee-cream skin and dark eyes that nearly have him convinced she's interested. He wishes he could be.
"She left a daughter behind to go with Paris, too, so if we disregard the minor possibility of real gods and goddesses, historically she must have been a bit flaky," he says, on autopilot, but she laughs, really laughs, and she likes him even though he has done little more than insult Helen of Troy for the past 10 minutes.
All he has to do is hold out his hand. It should be so easy, so uncomplicated.
But then Sirius slides into the chair between them -- flushed, glistening, gasping and grinning crookedly -- and Remus remembers why it's not.
"Going to talk all night?" he asks once he has his breath back, presumably directed to Remus, but his eyes are on Helen.
"Er," Remus says, meaning, Yes, Sirius, I probably am.
Sirius spares him a glance and an amused smile, then leans over to murmur against Helen's ear. Her smile flashes teeth Remus hadn't seen.
He isn't sure which of the two he hates more, at the moment. He looks pointedly away, aware of the prim, offended line of his shoulders but unable to loosen them. He wonders if Sirius will shag her -- if Sirius will bring her back to his flat tonight, if Remus will have to spend his last night before he goes home listening to thuds and moans.
Sirius has always been wild, but this new Sirius Independent is completely unmanageable, his days away from school composed entirely of motorbike oil and leather and alcohol and dances Remus’s mother would call obscene. Remus would call them obscene, too, if Sirius wouldn’t laugh at him for it.
"Y'mind, Moony?" Sirius asks a minute later. He has Helen by the elbow and they are already edging toward the teeming crowd.
Remus shakes his head at them with a carefully practiced blank expression. "Why would I mind?"
He catches the beginning of Sirius's grin before his eyes can make it to the safety of his drink. He waits until they're done to drop his head lower, glaring into the amber liquid. "Fuck this," he says to it, which makes him feel slightly vindicated, then knocks the glass back in a fluid motion copied from his uncle John.
Unfortunately, he's never had a real drink before; he only has one now because Sirius insisted it would make them look older. And he somewhat miscalculated the bite, so more of the liquor is spilled and spluttered down the front of his shirt than is swallowed. He leaps up, wiping at his face and blushing, but no one has even noticed.
He manages to feel bitter anyway (No one ever notices.) and storms to the bathroom, dripping a trail of liquor behind him and not caring, because in less than 20 minutes the object of his best-hidden affection is probably going to snog Remus’s only chance of getting kissed himself.
The bathroom’s only other occupant smirks at him when he comes inside, and Remus glares, though it is not a very powerful expression because he is always afraid of being impolite to strangers.
He locks himself in a stall, wrestles with his shirt to retrieve his wand, cleans his clothes with a quickly murmured charm, and stands there feeling sorry for himself (he couldn’t deny it). He doesn’t know how much time passes while he stares at the “WANKER” scrawled across the wall, but it can’t be much, because after the smirking bloke leaves, only one other person comes inside.
“Moony?” Sirius, of course. “What are you doing?”
Remus quickly turns to stand in front of the toilet, so his feet are in the right places if Sirius looks under the stall door. “What one normally does in the loo,” he says crossly.
“Are not,” Sirius says, and rattles the door. “Let me in.”
“No.”
“I’ll crawl under the door.”
“I’ll step on your face.”
Remus grits his teeth for the duration of the long pause that follows, then hears a murmured alohamora and makes an indignant, half-growling noise in the back of his throat as Sirius steps inside. “I could have really been using the toilet!”
Sirius smiles easily and leans against the sticky, graffitied wall Remus has been so carefully avoiding. “Nah, you never would have said you were if you had been.”
“I...” He can’t deny that, either, so he juts his chin out defiantly and focuses on the fact that he’s supposed to be having a nice sulk and Sirius is ruining it. “What do you want?”
Remus so rarely snaps at his friends that James and Peter never know how to handle it, but Sirius merely shrugs, unbothered. Perhaps he’s built up an immunity, being the one most often at the receiving end of Remus’s temper. “You ran off,” he says. “Helen was disappointed.”
“Helen went off with you.”
“Yes, well,” Sirius says with a blatant roll of his eyes, “the plan was to make you get off your arse and come take her back. Idiot. I wouldn’t do that to you.”
And this is why, Remus remembers, he isn’t supposed to get angry; with a few rare exceptions, like that bit with Snape, he almost always ends up wrong and embarrassed. “Oh,” he manages. “I, well. I didn’t want to dance or anything anyway.”
Remus wants to leave but, considering how stupid he feels, doesn’t want to ask Sirius to move aside. And Sirius doesn’t seem ready to leave, anyway. He stares at him for a long moment, leather-encased arms folded over his chest, then smiles again, looking amused. “Do you wank to mythology books?”
“No!” Remus says, then, “What?”
“She asked, before she left. I told her yes, though. Oops.” The pleased smile broadens. “Are you queer?”
Remus turns pink, and looking pained isn’t difficult. He just hopes it is an exasperated sort of pain on his face, rather than a terrified sort of pain such as is currently making his heart try to beat its way through his ribs. “Sirius,” he says, but the other boy only raises an eyebrow (infuriating talent), still smiling, so Remus takes a deep breath and thinks, Serves him right. “I might be.”
Whatever he expected -- shock, disgust, laughter -- Sirius doesn’t give it to him. Instead he nods and looks puzzlingly pleased with himself. “I thought so.”
And then he stares again. Remus shifts on his feet and looks wistfully at the door. “Er, Pads,” he begins, but Sirius cuts him off.
“I didn’t leave home because of the whole pureblood thing,” he says breezily, as if he’s still making jokes, and Remus gapes at him, because this is a fine time and place to talk about that for the first time. “My father found pictures under my mattress.”
“Of?” Remus asks before his brain catches up, then blushes yet again. “Oh. Those sorts of pictures.”
“Yes,” Sirius says. His smile fades, at first a little, then completely. “Have you ever fancied me?”
“I,” Remus says, then, “Sirius, no, you’re.”
Sirius grabs a fistful of his shirt, at the shoulder, and steps closer. “I wouldn’t mind if you had. You could tell me. We’re mates, right, but that wouldn’t mean you couldn’t fancy me. Friendship, it’s good, you know, for that sort of thing. It wouldn’t be strange. We could --”
“Sirius,” Remus says helplessly as his knees knock against the toilet seat. Dirt! Disease! Filth! his mother’s voice says in his head, which seems highly inappropriate, and he mutters aloud, “Shut up.”
Sirius does, even though it wasn’t intended for him, falling silent mid-sentence and staring at him with wild eyes. Remus tries to think that he has no idea what’s happening, but he does. In the new quiet they can hear the garbled chant from the crowd outside, matched by their breathing: Five, four, three, two.
They don’t make it to one.