hurry home, I wanna put on a slow dumb show for you
Title: You Don't Know Me
Author: veterization
Rating: T/PG-13
Warnings: N/A
Status: Oneshot
Pairing: Remus/Sirius
Summary: Sirius asks all too much if he can kiss Remus. And the response is always the same.
Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.
Era: MWPP,
It was one of those weird things.
One of those awkward, I’m-just-a-boy-what-do-you-expect-from-me situations that Remus never knew how to deal with. Because despite his desperate attempts to avoid all things uncomfortable, they sought him out like they knew the address in his head, and Remus’ running away would never be enough to morph his bad fortune into good luck when it came to All Things Awkward.
Whether it was being the one boy in the dormitory walked in on while using the bathroom or being the one boy to have to wake up in the hospital wing to drink an array of repugnant potions that rang a doorbell at his gag reflex while the staff watched through stifled giggles, or being the one boy whose boxers end up in the pudding for dessert one night, or being the one boy that was found under the mistletoe with McGonagall and cheered on by thoroughly amused and merciless students.
The point was, no matter how much he tried to repel the magnetism of awkward situations that gravitated toward him almost naturally, Remus couldn’t shake off the cumbersome clouds that ruthlessly stalked him.
But this crisis, he didn’t see coming.
A week before third year graduation, Remus sitting on a trunk of poorly packed socks and books and Sirius sprawled across his bedspread in a gargantuan X. Sirius’ nose pressed into the sheets, Remus detected a few mumbles being spoken into the fabric, muffled by the cotton.
“’N’t wa go.” Came the stifled reply once more. Remus cleared his throat.
“You haven’t been packing.”
Sirius raised his head, bangs curtaining his eyes as he frowned at his friend, “’Course not.”
“They’ll tie you up, y’know,” Remus told him in a small voice, a faint grin tugging at his lips, “and then end up shipping you off home in a cart with nothing but bacon in it.”
“I like bacon.” Sirius proclaimed feebly, “Who’s /they/?”
Remus sighed, “Home can’t be that bad.”
“Shut your mouth.”
Remus shut his mouth. Stray laughter wafted up to the dormitory from the common room, doing nothing to break the growing silence between him and Sirius.
“I’m going home with James for the summer.” Sirius finally declared, and fisted his pillowcase.
Remus wavered on the spot, “Does he know?” he ventured, worrying his lip.
Sirius looked up from the sheets again, knitting his eyebrows together at Remus before twisting his torso to lie on his back. “His mom likes me,” said Sirius, a little more assertively, “I think.”
“She hasn’t met you.”
“She sent me cookies this year for Christmas. And a recipe for plum pudding.” Sirius defended heatedly, and sat up.
“You lost that recipe,” Remus reminded him with a small sigh, rocking back and forth on his suitcase.
The dark-haired boy was silent, and for a moment Remus mentally mused if he was pushing too much on Sirius’ already abused temper button. On instinctual reflex, Remus pushed his fringe out of his forehead and murmured, “Sorry.”
“Don’t,” Sirius scooted to the edge of the bed, “don’t apologize or anything. It’s fine. It’s not like you know me.”
Remus looked up from his knees and glanced at Sirius’ eyes, gray orbs attached fixedly to the wall a few inches right of Remus’ eye.
“Three years.”
“Summer doesn’t count.” He dismissed.
“Two and a half?”
Sirius’ eyes met Remus’, and all of a sudden the temperature in the room dropped at least twenty degrees. Remus’ rocking increased, the suitcase thumping along with him.
“You don’t want to take me home for summer,” Sirius shot at him, as though it justified his statements, “don’t act like you know me.”
Remus felt a shrug was necessary. He shrugged. The awkwardness didn’t cease, and by now the thorny matter that was this entire conversation was poking Remus in places he didn’t need to be poked.
“Not like you want me to.”
“Right.”
This time, Sirius shrugged. Remus felt the suitcase shake on its ledge as he rocked on it a little too harshly. His heels dug into the ground.
“Right,” Sirius said again, “So you’re a little messed up.”
The way he spoke it, so disgustingly lightly, as though they could be elders chatting over peppermint tea, almost seemed to make the statement lose all of its cruel intentions. If Sirius had raised his voice even by a fraction of a decibel, Remus might have been insulted.
“I think you are too.” And this time, a chuckle wormed its way into his words, lightening the mood considerably. Sirius grinned.
“Hey,” he spoke, and then again, “hey?”
“Is that a question?”
“I think so.” And then Sirius had gotten on his feet, still smiling like a vacuous loon, and straddled the end of the suitcase Remus was sitting on.
“…it’s a strange question.”
“Lemme finish,” said Sirius, and his grin slanted to the left, “Can I kiss you?”
Remus’ face had never moved so much in such little time. His eyebrows raised into the heavens, his mouth fell agape into a soft ‘o’, and his eyelids blinked a few times to make sure he wasn’t imagining the sight in front of him; a still beaming Sirius expectantly awaiting an answer.
“No?” Remus denied the request, but it definitely didn’t come out of his mouth as boldly as he had hoped. The chuckle that fell from Sirius’ lips couldn’t have been a good sign either.
“Yeah, whatever,” Sirius said, and he got swung his leg over the suitcase. The grin was still immovable on his face and a second later a loud, obnoxious laugh fell from his throat.
“You weren’t actually asking, were you?” Remus ventured, and the rocking started again. The suitcase spun a little on its wheels.
Sirius glanced at the werewolf, and to the steadily growing fury of Remus, his grin widened to the point of splitting his cheeks.
“Don’t act like you know me.” He repeated, and rolled his eyes.
Remus didn’t know what to think. But before he could stare incredulously after Sirius’ back as he walked away with snickers following him the whole way down the dormitory stairs, Remus’ suitcase groaned under his weight and finally gave way, and the next thing he knew there was nothing but a pile of books, socks, and Remus.
---
“You gonna open that?”
With the exception of a platter of eggs that rested innocuously in between the four boys at their section of the Gryffindor breakfast table, a single letter rested on top of Sirius’ bacon, a steady stain of grease seeping into the parchment.
The owl hooted impatiently for a reward, snapping its beak in Sirius’ direction. Sirius glared.
“/No./” He said, and pushed his food out of reach. The owl hooted again, “you don’t get a reward, go back home.”
“Letter from home?” James inquired as the bird ate from Peter’s plate before fluttering off.
“Letter from Satan.”
“Letter from home.” He nodded.
James went bake to his toast. Peter looked mildly concerned. Sirius was too busy dabbing his envelope in the grease of his breakfast to notice any of it.
Remus blinked, watching the scene in front of him and lack of commotion in slight astonishment, but the fact that no one else was displaying real worriment behind Sirius’ obvious inner turmoil toward his mother also had him feeling quite flummoxed as to whether or not to show concern.
James chortled, “Dipping the whole thing in fat. Is that a ritual you do with all of your mum’s letters?”
Sirius’ shrugged his taut shoulder and continued the furious dabbing, “It’s a curse that one day will come true,” he muttered, and finally held up a dribbling letter with a sated smile, laying it on his napkin, “the hope is that she’ll get fat if I dunk her letters in fat.”
More silence, /disturbing/ silence, filled the air.
“…I didn’t know Satan writes letters.” Remus ventured, and swallowed on his words.
Sirius looked at him.
“Tch,” he pinned his tongue in between his teeth, “you don’t know my family, Remus.”
And feeling bolder than he should, because Sirius’ eyes were clearly a warning to /drop it/, orange vests and neon signs and all, Remus reached across the table and grabbed the greasy letter, prying it open with a now buttery thumb.
“Hey - what do you think you’re doing, Lupin?!”
Remus slipped out the equally fatty letter out of its greasy casing and avoided the swipe of Sirius’ demanding fingers. The words were blotchy from the oil and the infallibly ivory parchment was stained yellow, but it was still more than readable to Remus.
“I just want to read it, Sirius.”
He /knew/ this was a violation of personal space, and a violation of Sirius’ privacy, but Sirius Black pranced in on people as they sat on toilets and masturbated in a closet. As far as Remus was concerned, the prying boy had it coming to him.
“Go fuck yourself, Remus!”
“Hey, at least she /writes/.” He snapped over his shoulder, and Sirius paused. And a second later, his frantic swiping started up again, and ineluctably, the raven’s Quidditch-born reflexes managed to retrieve the letter from Remus’ fingers.
“It’s none of your business, Remus.” He mumbled moodily, folding the letter in half and promptly submerging it in his pumpkin juice.
Remus opened his mouth and closed it again. “Maybe it should be.”
Sirius glanced at him, and then at James for immediate support, who shrugged recklessly. He turned back to Remus, and to the complete shock of the werewolf, smiled.
“Can I kiss you?”
Peter fell into an instant state of uneasiness, his eyes shifting from his plate full of eggs to James. James burst out into unconcealed laughter.
Remus was hoping that if his mouth stayed shut and he just /kept on chewing/ he wouldn’t have to deal with this capricious madness and Sirius would shrug carelessly and say “no answer is also an answer.”
But Remus didn’t want to know what Sirius thought silence implied.
“Only if you don’t use your mouth.”
Sirius’ nose bumped against his cheekbone and Remus’ frown wasn’t strong enough to hide his smile.
---
For a person with a semi-moral mindset, Remus had a fleeting moment of doubt when James and Sirius had first prompted the idea of bringing firewhiskey into the dormitory after midnight to help celebrate the holidays.
Christmas was still a fair bit away, but today had been the first day in a long fall that snow was beginning to litter on the ground. Naturally, James and Sirius had taken this as a green light to sneak into Hogsmeade and embezzle bottles into their coats.
And in the midst of his thoughts of /I’m only fifteen, I’m only fifteen/, Remus found himself too inebriated to care about the morality of underage drinking.
Fifteen-year-old boys were edgy people. If Remus had learned anything while growing up through his awkward stages and growth spurts, it was that there would be no group hugs while he was sprouting through his teenage years. Touching was too effeminate for boys.
Which is why it was almost surprising when Remus found Sirius sprawled over his lap, stifling his laughter on his thigh and breathing against his skin.
“-and she was shaped like a Lego person, so that totally wasn’t going to happen.”
Through the inebriated giggles, Remus wondered if he was the most sober out of the group of four boys. Through the drunken haze of his own swimmy mind Remus felt the bedpost of James’ bed digging into his spine and a heavy weight in the shape of a boy on his legs. Peter’s cheeks were already a sharooshing shade of green, his knees wobbly as he wandered over to the remaining bottles of firewhiskey, and James was doing karaoke to nonexistent tunes.
A rare silence fell into the shadowy dark of the night, a few stray rays of moonlight falling through the thick window.
“Hey,” Sirius mumbled, twisting on Remus’ lap so he was staring up at his eyes with a drunken yet poignant intensity. Remus blinked, squirming.
“Uh huh?”
Sirius’ hand drifted upward aimlessly, a fingertip pressing against Remus’ chin. He prodded the flesh curiously.
“Personal, personal space.” Remus stuttered.
“Personal,” Sirius repeated, and his head shifted on Remus’ knee, his eyes a little lost within their alcohol-sunken sockets, “can I kiss you?”
A few feet away, James tutted.
Remus remained silent, his head suddenly feeling heavy on his neck. He hoped the dizzy snarl he sent in Sirius’ direction was answer enough.
Clearly, it wasn’t.
“Can I kiss you?” Sirius persisted, and this time his forefinger and thumb gripped Remus’ chin, holding his jaw a little more forcefully than necessary as he kneaded the soft skin between his fingertips.
“Fuckin’ queen,” James tilted his head back, his bottle fused on his lips as the remaining swig of firewhiskey sloshed down his throat.
Sirius’ head twisted on Remus’ leg, his cheekbone pressing on his kneecap. Remus wriggled some more.
“Queer!” He spat at James.
“Queen!”
“Queenly queer!”
“Queerly queen.”
The next second Sirius’ body shriveled up with laughter and James mimicked him, falling on a dozing Peter. As grateful as Remus was that the cumbersome request for osculation was currently halted by Sirius’ ability to be easily distracted, the current situation of watching his friends laugh at ludicrous things wasn’t much less awkward, especially with Sirius still lying heavily on his lap.
“Am I the only sober-”
“I was saying something!” Sirius’ face stared directly at Remus’ again, his mouth furled into a determined line as he attempted to prop himself up on his elbows.
“…right.”
“Can I kiss you?”
Remus worried his lip and stared at Sirius’ ear. It didn’t make the situation any less tense. He began praying to the Gods of the drunk to bless him with a miracle and let James burst out with more meaningless sniggers just to pass them onto Sirius and divert the topic once again.
“…try when you’re sober.” He finally answered.
“I am sober!” The crisp night air was promptly tainted with a hint of intoxicated indignance. Sirius hiccupped.
“No you’re not.”
Sirius’ eyeballs rolled under their lids clumsily and he rolled off of Remus, “Don’t act like you know me.”
James flopped on his stomach to lie side by side with Sirius, jabbing him in the ribs with a pointy elbow.
“You’re such a fucking mannequin.”
“I know. I’m totally plastic.”
“Don’t forget lifeless.”
“And pretty hot too.”
More giggles. And for the ephemeral moment of bliss he enjoyed, Remus thanked whatever unknown force had helped him sidle out of his predicament and that James had such impeccable timing to being a thoughtless fool.
---
“Y’know,” Sirius murmured, “I always hated the color green.”
Remus wondered whether or not to argue. In a small voice, he managed the meek, “You love the color green.”
Sirius’s feet, dangling in the lake water up to his knees, swung back and forth and created little angry splashes that reached the surface.
“Don’t act like you know me.”
Remus parted his lips and a soft sigh fell out into the heavy air suffocating them both. His shoulder bumped against the raven’s. Both their skin felt cold and clammy in the crisp fall air as flesh touched for a brief second.
“Okay,” said the werewolf, admitting defeat to the matter. Sirius sighed.
“He’s not even looking at me.”
“He probably doesn’t know you’re here.”
“I shouldn’t know he’s here either, but I do.”
Remus glanced at Sirius, his complexion pasty and his expression contorted into one of a repressed scowl, twitches coming out at pulse points at his jaw here and there. Sirius felt the eyes on him.
“Don’t,” he alerted, his eyebrows knitted together, “don’t tell me it’s okay to cry or scream or something. ‘M not a girl.”
“Didn’t say you were.”
“No, but - but,” Sirius paused and bit down on his lower lip, a little miffed, “I saw the way you were looking. Don’t.”
Their eyes wavered on each other. And then Remus let out another sigh, one that made him sound too tired and too troubled for his youth, and slumped his shoulders, eyes once again staring at the horizon and the soft ripples in the lake.
“Okay.” He said again, and lifted his toes out of the water to examine them.
A few more minutes of silence.
“I wish James were here.” Sirius finally admitted through grinding teeth.
“I’m sorry,” Remus told him, and if he was offended his eyes - bored and half-mast as they gazed at the children on the other end of the lake - made him seem uncaring about the matter, “I know.”
“He’d be off making some offensive joke right about now.”
Remus was silent.
“I wouldn’t want him to,” Sirius confessed in a small voice, and stared at his knees.
“Because this actually matters.” The other boy answered for him, and drummed a beat onto the water with his knuckles.
“Damn straight!” Sirius agreed, and water flew into the air as he lividly padded his feet, “You get it, don’t you, Moony? I don’t want him to see me behind all of the pranks and the smiles and the stupid games, because I don’t think he would know what to say to me then.”
“There’s more to a person than just laughter.” Remus admonished.
“Maybe,” Sirius replied, his voice shockingly solemn, and after a moment’s pause he continued again, “I hate the color green.”
“You said that already.”
“I mean it.”
“No you don’t.”
“…I do now. No more liking the color green.” Sirius declared, and fisted the grass by his hip.
“…it’s silver too.”
The black-haired boy tilted his head, his mouth furled in a question mark as he glanced at Remus for further explanation even though chances were he didn’t want to hear the elaboration in the first place.
“Their scarves. The colors, I mean. I know where you’re looking.”
“I wasn’t looking.” Sirius defended instantly.
A feeble thumb waved in the direction of the Slytherins across the lake.
“Green and silver, right? But more so green.”
Sirius bit his lip, staring at Remus like a deer in the headlights as though he was trying to decide whether to throw more denial in his face or actually mumble a few words of candor.
“Today,” he started, “is the first day Regulus wore his scarf.”
“Right.” It didn’t take a genius to figure out that all of Sirius’ ambiguous /he’s/ and /him’s/ were referring to his brother, because unspoken or not, Remus could follow the boy’s forlorn gaze all the way across the lake to where his brother sat immersed in conversation with others from Slytherin.
“You think… they’re his friends?” Sirius raked a shaky hand through his hair and cocked his head to the boys Regulus was talking to, also donning their black capes and emerald scarves.
“Yes.” Remus replied honestly, and swirled his forefinger around in the murky water. A small tornado followed his finger dutifully.
“Right. Is it because I’m not?”
“Probably.”
“…right.” Sirius mumbled.
The cloud of brooding misery hung around Sirius like an umbrella through his next wordless moments. His lack of speech was ridiculously uncharacteristic, and for a moment Remus wondered if his short one-word replies were too simple for Sirius’ liking.
“Hey,” a clammy hand, tremors running through its knuckles, crawled its way across the damp grass to rest on top of Remus’ palm.
Remus turned to face Sirius.
“Hey.”
“Hello.”
For a moment, the conversation was thorny and not exactly normal for any humans, because this was the second time Sirius had said a greeting and Remus didn’t even need to be greeted in the first place.
So Remus prodded, even though he knew he shouldn’t prod at matters that tended to prod back, “What’re you thinking?”
Sirius smiled sadly, a rare despondence tugging at his eyebrows. Sirius already had lines on his face from grinning so profusely, almost like he lived with a hanger in his mouth, and it almost seemed sinful to watch them vanish as a deplorable frown took over Sirius’ lips.
“Can I kiss you?”
Remus was suddenly very aware of the fingers resting on his, bitterly icy and numb. He resisted the urge to tug on his arm and shake his wrist to remove Sirius’ curious hand, but he realized too painfully that it wasn’t because he was bothered by the invasive touch, but rather because /this was weird/ and what was he supposed to do? His fingers knew how to hold quills and grab forks, not how to hold someone’s hand without squeezing too hard or too little.
“Your brother’s watching.”
Sirius’ eyes scanned the other end of the lake, where for the first time in the whole afternoon where Sirius’ figure had remained camouflaged amongst the others, Regulus was looking over at his brother as discreetly as possible.
“…right.” Sirius dismissed.
He kept their hands touching, however, and out of his peripheral vision Remus could detect Sirius’ eyes running up and down his body as though he didn’t realize that Remus noticed the subtle gazing. And even though he knew he shouldn’t, he liked that Sirius was looking.
---
“It’s not like anyone’s going to say /I’ll miss you/ anyway.”
Sirius spat on the ground. Peter shuffled nervously on his feet.
“That’s stupid, Prongs,” Sirius drawled wryly, and James shrugged.
“I know,” he shrugged again, and Peter chuckled.
The booming sound of smoke whistling halted the conversation. More students yelled and chattered, some of them crying and clinging to their friends in an octopus-like group hug, some of them standing alone as they attempted to fruitlessly heave their trunks up to the train.
“You do realize it’s all over, right?” Sirius cracked his knuckles and leaned against his suitcase.
“Yeah.”
“I think I left my toothbrush in the bathroom.”
“You’re such a geek, Wormtail,” James rolled his eyes, and Peter beamed, because despite the words, the four of them knew that there was no animosity left to settle. Not anymore, even if there was.
“I don’t really… want this to end.” Sirius confessed, and his fingers furled around the handles of his trunk until they were pallid and white.
“Well, I’m sorry. We had to break up eventually,” the bespectacled boy mocked, and promptly received a punch in the shoulder.
The train whistled again. The strong smell of smoke and iron wheels wafted into Remus’ nose, and more students bustled around the station.
“You think they’d let us stay here for another year?”
“I packed chocolate. We can just camp out here for summer.”
There was laughter, but it was silent and under everyone’s breaths. It only took another moment of wordless eye contact before all boys glanced at each other’s suitcases and started tugging at their trunks.
It was almost too uncanny that somehow, in whatever world of bad luck he lived in, Remus and Sirius ended up sitting alone in a compartment while James helped Peter stuff his trunk onto one of the shelves.
And the sad thing was, Remus knew this moment was coming.
“You already know that I love you.” Sirius said to the window, eyes low.
“Hey, me too.” Remus said, and the words left his lips almost too quickly.
They stared at each other. The train was rumbling under their feet, the silent humming of the engine revving up penetrating the silence. And the weird thing was that the silence wasn’t as awkward as Remus expected.
Sirius gazed at the window again, and hooked two fingers onto the ledge. Remus kept his eyes focused on the door, waiting for James and Peter to reappear, at of course the most inopportune time.
“Hey, Moony?”
“Nope.” Remus said, and waved his hand airily, smacking his lips.
“I haven’t asked anything yet.”
“I already know.”
“I know,” Sirius mumbled, but ignored him anyway, “Can I kiss you?”
“Nope,” Remus said again, a smug smile tearing at his lips. And then there was laughter, loud and bubbling up his throat. Sirius frowned.
“I, I don’t like it when you laugh like that.”
“I’m sorry,” said the werewolf with a rare grin, and laughed some more.
“Hey, I mean it. I’m gonna kiss you.” Sirius squirmed in his seat, as though deciding whether or not to get up and pounce on Remus or stay seated and be the coward he was, because nothing was exactly solid between them. Remus had been very vague, and of course he’d enjoyed every minute of Sirius’ discomfort, but it was more than irksome now that he was actually worrying about what the werewolf was thinking.
Remus pinned his lower lip between his teeth to put an end to his laughter and smiled at Sirius in a way that made him look as though for the first time in seven years of watching him grin crookedly and smile goofily, he wasn’t really meaning it until now.
“You’re so under my skin. And it’s so funny, I forget to laugh.” Remus beamed.
Sirius grumbled, and his stare returned to the window, “Don’t act like you know me.”
“But I do.”
“I know, but don’t pretend you’re not a horny little horndog right now either,” Sirius replied, “can I kiss you?”
“Why are you even asking?”
Sirius growled, a little impatiently, and put his palms on Remus’ thighs, breathing hot and straight on his lips. Remus was too composed for his liking, and as far as he was concerned, Sirius would be the one to break that fine line of sanity into one that chanted nothing but /Sirius Black, Sirius Black, Sirius Black/ like a broken record.
“Gimme a kiss.”
“Oh, fine.” And Remus reached over, his fingers demanding and palm strong as he let their teeth bump and lips grind against each other.
It was a sinfully enjoyable kiss for how rough and sloppy it was. It was nothing but built-up denial and desire after seven years of /can I kiss you’s/ that were all answered the same way. Remus owed Sirius dozens of kisses, all to make up for the times that he denied him despite the fact that they both knew they couldn’t do any better.
Probing tongues and hot lips were all blurs from then on as Sirius climbed on Remus’ lap and got exactly what he came for. It certainly wasn’t sweet and soft, it was rough and needy and they both liked it like that. Sirius’ hands grabbed Remus by the hips, hard, and dragged his fingernails up to hook onto his shirt. Remus was nothing but one moan after another, sliding his fingers into ebony hair and tugging at Sirius’ scalp.
“Hey,” Remus mumbled, breathless and panting as his lips bumped against Sirius’ as he spoke. There was a definite tingling on the back of his neck where the hem of his hair tickled the skin that didn’t seem to be going away as he stared straight onto Sirius’ face, complete with swollen red lips and hungry eyes.
“Moony,” Sirius grumbled, “this is no time for talk.”
“Shut up,” said Remus, and almost forgot what he meant to say as he caught a glimpse of a pink tongue within the cavern of Sirius’ mouth, his lips parted, “I was saying something.”
“You were?”
“Yes!” His panting finally came to a stop, “Hey.”
“Hey?”
“Can I kiss you?” Remus ventured, and his hands squeezed Sirius’ shoulder bones.
“You’re only asking because-”
“-I know you’ll say yes.” And there went that evil grin again, smug and smirky, perfect for Remus’ lips.
“Don’t act like you know me.”
Silence.
And then, unable to form a proper response with his brain going two hundred miles an hour and his heart palpitating hard enough to be the powerhouse of several factories, Remus did the only thing that made any sense anymore, and kissed Sirius.
Author: veterization
Rating: T/PG-13
Warnings: N/A
Status: Oneshot
Pairing: Remus/Sirius
Summary: Sirius asks all too much if he can kiss Remus. And the response is always the same.
Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.
Era: MWPP,
It was one of those weird things.
One of those awkward, I’m-just-a-boy-what-do-you-expect-from-me situations that Remus never knew how to deal with. Because despite his desperate attempts to avoid all things uncomfortable, they sought him out like they knew the address in his head, and Remus’ running away would never be enough to morph his bad fortune into good luck when it came to All Things Awkward.
Whether it was being the one boy in the dormitory walked in on while using the bathroom or being the one boy to have to wake up in the hospital wing to drink an array of repugnant potions that rang a doorbell at his gag reflex while the staff watched through stifled giggles, or being the one boy whose boxers end up in the pudding for dessert one night, or being the one boy that was found under the mistletoe with McGonagall and cheered on by thoroughly amused and merciless students.
The point was, no matter how much he tried to repel the magnetism of awkward situations that gravitated toward him almost naturally, Remus couldn’t shake off the cumbersome clouds that ruthlessly stalked him.
But this crisis, he didn’t see coming.
A week before third year graduation, Remus sitting on a trunk of poorly packed socks and books and Sirius sprawled across his bedspread in a gargantuan X. Sirius’ nose pressed into the sheets, Remus detected a few mumbles being spoken into the fabric, muffled by the cotton.
“’N’t wa go.” Came the stifled reply once more. Remus cleared his throat.
“You haven’t been packing.”
Sirius raised his head, bangs curtaining his eyes as he frowned at his friend, “’Course not.”
“They’ll tie you up, y’know,” Remus told him in a small voice, a faint grin tugging at his lips, “and then end up shipping you off home in a cart with nothing but bacon in it.”
“I like bacon.” Sirius proclaimed feebly, “Who’s /they/?”
Remus sighed, “Home can’t be that bad.”
“Shut your mouth.”
Remus shut his mouth. Stray laughter wafted up to the dormitory from the common room, doing nothing to break the growing silence between him and Sirius.
“I’m going home with James for the summer.” Sirius finally declared, and fisted his pillowcase.
Remus wavered on the spot, “Does he know?” he ventured, worrying his lip.
Sirius looked up from the sheets again, knitting his eyebrows together at Remus before twisting his torso to lie on his back. “His mom likes me,” said Sirius, a little more assertively, “I think.”
“She hasn’t met you.”
“She sent me cookies this year for Christmas. And a recipe for plum pudding.” Sirius defended heatedly, and sat up.
“You lost that recipe,” Remus reminded him with a small sigh, rocking back and forth on his suitcase.
The dark-haired boy was silent, and for a moment Remus mentally mused if he was pushing too much on Sirius’ already abused temper button. On instinctual reflex, Remus pushed his fringe out of his forehead and murmured, “Sorry.”
“Don’t,” Sirius scooted to the edge of the bed, “don’t apologize or anything. It’s fine. It’s not like you know me.”
Remus looked up from his knees and glanced at Sirius’ eyes, gray orbs attached fixedly to the wall a few inches right of Remus’ eye.
“Three years.”
“Summer doesn’t count.” He dismissed.
“Two and a half?”
Sirius’ eyes met Remus’, and all of a sudden the temperature in the room dropped at least twenty degrees. Remus’ rocking increased, the suitcase thumping along with him.
“You don’t want to take me home for summer,” Sirius shot at him, as though it justified his statements, “don’t act like you know me.”
Remus felt a shrug was necessary. He shrugged. The awkwardness didn’t cease, and by now the thorny matter that was this entire conversation was poking Remus in places he didn’t need to be poked.
“Not like you want me to.”
“Right.”
This time, Sirius shrugged. Remus felt the suitcase shake on its ledge as he rocked on it a little too harshly. His heels dug into the ground.
“Right,” Sirius said again, “So you’re a little messed up.”
The way he spoke it, so disgustingly lightly, as though they could be elders chatting over peppermint tea, almost seemed to make the statement lose all of its cruel intentions. If Sirius had raised his voice even by a fraction of a decibel, Remus might have been insulted.
“I think you are too.” And this time, a chuckle wormed its way into his words, lightening the mood considerably. Sirius grinned.
“Hey,” he spoke, and then again, “hey?”
“Is that a question?”
“I think so.” And then Sirius had gotten on his feet, still smiling like a vacuous loon, and straddled the end of the suitcase Remus was sitting on.
“…it’s a strange question.”
“Lemme finish,” said Sirius, and his grin slanted to the left, “Can I kiss you?”
Remus’ face had never moved so much in such little time. His eyebrows raised into the heavens, his mouth fell agape into a soft ‘o’, and his eyelids blinked a few times to make sure he wasn’t imagining the sight in front of him; a still beaming Sirius expectantly awaiting an answer.
“No?” Remus denied the request, but it definitely didn’t come out of his mouth as boldly as he had hoped. The chuckle that fell from Sirius’ lips couldn’t have been a good sign either.
“Yeah, whatever,” Sirius said, and he got swung his leg over the suitcase. The grin was still immovable on his face and a second later a loud, obnoxious laugh fell from his throat.
“You weren’t actually asking, were you?” Remus ventured, and the rocking started again. The suitcase spun a little on its wheels.
Sirius glanced at the werewolf, and to the steadily growing fury of Remus, his grin widened to the point of splitting his cheeks.
“Don’t act like you know me.” He repeated, and rolled his eyes.
Remus didn’t know what to think. But before he could stare incredulously after Sirius’ back as he walked away with snickers following him the whole way down the dormitory stairs, Remus’ suitcase groaned under his weight and finally gave way, and the next thing he knew there was nothing but a pile of books, socks, and Remus.
---
“You gonna open that?”
With the exception of a platter of eggs that rested innocuously in between the four boys at their section of the Gryffindor breakfast table, a single letter rested on top of Sirius’ bacon, a steady stain of grease seeping into the parchment.
The owl hooted impatiently for a reward, snapping its beak in Sirius’ direction. Sirius glared.
“/No./” He said, and pushed his food out of reach. The owl hooted again, “you don’t get a reward, go back home.”
“Letter from home?” James inquired as the bird ate from Peter’s plate before fluttering off.
“Letter from Satan.”
“Letter from home.” He nodded.
James went bake to his toast. Peter looked mildly concerned. Sirius was too busy dabbing his envelope in the grease of his breakfast to notice any of it.
Remus blinked, watching the scene in front of him and lack of commotion in slight astonishment, but the fact that no one else was displaying real worriment behind Sirius’ obvious inner turmoil toward his mother also had him feeling quite flummoxed as to whether or not to show concern.
James chortled, “Dipping the whole thing in fat. Is that a ritual you do with all of your mum’s letters?”
Sirius’ shrugged his taut shoulder and continued the furious dabbing, “It’s a curse that one day will come true,” he muttered, and finally held up a dribbling letter with a sated smile, laying it on his napkin, “the hope is that she’ll get fat if I dunk her letters in fat.”
More silence, /disturbing/ silence, filled the air.
“…I didn’t know Satan writes letters.” Remus ventured, and swallowed on his words.
Sirius looked at him.
“Tch,” he pinned his tongue in between his teeth, “you don’t know my family, Remus.”
And feeling bolder than he should, because Sirius’ eyes were clearly a warning to /drop it/, orange vests and neon signs and all, Remus reached across the table and grabbed the greasy letter, prying it open with a now buttery thumb.
“Hey - what do you think you’re doing, Lupin?!”
Remus slipped out the equally fatty letter out of its greasy casing and avoided the swipe of Sirius’ demanding fingers. The words were blotchy from the oil and the infallibly ivory parchment was stained yellow, but it was still more than readable to Remus.
“I just want to read it, Sirius.”
He /knew/ this was a violation of personal space, and a violation of Sirius’ privacy, but Sirius Black pranced in on people as they sat on toilets and masturbated in a closet. As far as Remus was concerned, the prying boy had it coming to him.
“Go fuck yourself, Remus!”
“Hey, at least she /writes/.” He snapped over his shoulder, and Sirius paused. And a second later, his frantic swiping started up again, and ineluctably, the raven’s Quidditch-born reflexes managed to retrieve the letter from Remus’ fingers.
“It’s none of your business, Remus.” He mumbled moodily, folding the letter in half and promptly submerging it in his pumpkin juice.
Remus opened his mouth and closed it again. “Maybe it should be.”
Sirius glanced at him, and then at James for immediate support, who shrugged recklessly. He turned back to Remus, and to the complete shock of the werewolf, smiled.
“Can I kiss you?”
Peter fell into an instant state of uneasiness, his eyes shifting from his plate full of eggs to James. James burst out into unconcealed laughter.
Remus was hoping that if his mouth stayed shut and he just /kept on chewing/ he wouldn’t have to deal with this capricious madness and Sirius would shrug carelessly and say “no answer is also an answer.”
But Remus didn’t want to know what Sirius thought silence implied.
“Only if you don’t use your mouth.”
Sirius’ nose bumped against his cheekbone and Remus’ frown wasn’t strong enough to hide his smile.
---
For a person with a semi-moral mindset, Remus had a fleeting moment of doubt when James and Sirius had first prompted the idea of bringing firewhiskey into the dormitory after midnight to help celebrate the holidays.
Christmas was still a fair bit away, but today had been the first day in a long fall that snow was beginning to litter on the ground. Naturally, James and Sirius had taken this as a green light to sneak into Hogsmeade and embezzle bottles into their coats.
And in the midst of his thoughts of /I’m only fifteen, I’m only fifteen/, Remus found himself too inebriated to care about the morality of underage drinking.
Fifteen-year-old boys were edgy people. If Remus had learned anything while growing up through his awkward stages and growth spurts, it was that there would be no group hugs while he was sprouting through his teenage years. Touching was too effeminate for boys.
Which is why it was almost surprising when Remus found Sirius sprawled over his lap, stifling his laughter on his thigh and breathing against his skin.
“-and she was shaped like a Lego person, so that totally wasn’t going to happen.”
Through the inebriated giggles, Remus wondered if he was the most sober out of the group of four boys. Through the drunken haze of his own swimmy mind Remus felt the bedpost of James’ bed digging into his spine and a heavy weight in the shape of a boy on his legs. Peter’s cheeks were already a sharooshing shade of green, his knees wobbly as he wandered over to the remaining bottles of firewhiskey, and James was doing karaoke to nonexistent tunes.
A rare silence fell into the shadowy dark of the night, a few stray rays of moonlight falling through the thick window.
“Hey,” Sirius mumbled, twisting on Remus’ lap so he was staring up at his eyes with a drunken yet poignant intensity. Remus blinked, squirming.
“Uh huh?”
Sirius’ hand drifted upward aimlessly, a fingertip pressing against Remus’ chin. He prodded the flesh curiously.
“Personal, personal space.” Remus stuttered.
“Personal,” Sirius repeated, and his head shifted on Remus’ knee, his eyes a little lost within their alcohol-sunken sockets, “can I kiss you?”
A few feet away, James tutted.
Remus remained silent, his head suddenly feeling heavy on his neck. He hoped the dizzy snarl he sent in Sirius’ direction was answer enough.
Clearly, it wasn’t.
“Can I kiss you?” Sirius persisted, and this time his forefinger and thumb gripped Remus’ chin, holding his jaw a little more forcefully than necessary as he kneaded the soft skin between his fingertips.
“Fuckin’ queen,” James tilted his head back, his bottle fused on his lips as the remaining swig of firewhiskey sloshed down his throat.
Sirius’ head twisted on Remus’ leg, his cheekbone pressing on his kneecap. Remus wriggled some more.
“Queer!” He spat at James.
“Queen!”
“Queenly queer!”
“Queerly queen.”
The next second Sirius’ body shriveled up with laughter and James mimicked him, falling on a dozing Peter. As grateful as Remus was that the cumbersome request for osculation was currently halted by Sirius’ ability to be easily distracted, the current situation of watching his friends laugh at ludicrous things wasn’t much less awkward, especially with Sirius still lying heavily on his lap.
“Am I the only sober-”
“I was saying something!” Sirius’ face stared directly at Remus’ again, his mouth furled into a determined line as he attempted to prop himself up on his elbows.
“…right.”
“Can I kiss you?”
Remus worried his lip and stared at Sirius’ ear. It didn’t make the situation any less tense. He began praying to the Gods of the drunk to bless him with a miracle and let James burst out with more meaningless sniggers just to pass them onto Sirius and divert the topic once again.
“…try when you’re sober.” He finally answered.
“I am sober!” The crisp night air was promptly tainted with a hint of intoxicated indignance. Sirius hiccupped.
“No you’re not.”
Sirius’ eyeballs rolled under their lids clumsily and he rolled off of Remus, “Don’t act like you know me.”
James flopped on his stomach to lie side by side with Sirius, jabbing him in the ribs with a pointy elbow.
“You’re such a fucking mannequin.”
“I know. I’m totally plastic.”
“Don’t forget lifeless.”
“And pretty hot too.”
More giggles. And for the ephemeral moment of bliss he enjoyed, Remus thanked whatever unknown force had helped him sidle out of his predicament and that James had such impeccable timing to being a thoughtless fool.
---
“Y’know,” Sirius murmured, “I always hated the color green.”
Remus wondered whether or not to argue. In a small voice, he managed the meek, “You love the color green.”
Sirius’s feet, dangling in the lake water up to his knees, swung back and forth and created little angry splashes that reached the surface.
“Don’t act like you know me.”
Remus parted his lips and a soft sigh fell out into the heavy air suffocating them both. His shoulder bumped against the raven’s. Both their skin felt cold and clammy in the crisp fall air as flesh touched for a brief second.
“Okay,” said the werewolf, admitting defeat to the matter. Sirius sighed.
“He’s not even looking at me.”
“He probably doesn’t know you’re here.”
“I shouldn’t know he’s here either, but I do.”
Remus glanced at Sirius, his complexion pasty and his expression contorted into one of a repressed scowl, twitches coming out at pulse points at his jaw here and there. Sirius felt the eyes on him.
“Don’t,” he alerted, his eyebrows knitted together, “don’t tell me it’s okay to cry or scream or something. ‘M not a girl.”
“Didn’t say you were.”
“No, but - but,” Sirius paused and bit down on his lower lip, a little miffed, “I saw the way you were looking. Don’t.”
Their eyes wavered on each other. And then Remus let out another sigh, one that made him sound too tired and too troubled for his youth, and slumped his shoulders, eyes once again staring at the horizon and the soft ripples in the lake.
“Okay.” He said again, and lifted his toes out of the water to examine them.
A few more minutes of silence.
“I wish James were here.” Sirius finally admitted through grinding teeth.
“I’m sorry,” Remus told him, and if he was offended his eyes - bored and half-mast as they gazed at the children on the other end of the lake - made him seem uncaring about the matter, “I know.”
“He’d be off making some offensive joke right about now.”
Remus was silent.
“I wouldn’t want him to,” Sirius confessed in a small voice, and stared at his knees.
“Because this actually matters.” The other boy answered for him, and drummed a beat onto the water with his knuckles.
“Damn straight!” Sirius agreed, and water flew into the air as he lividly padded his feet, “You get it, don’t you, Moony? I don’t want him to see me behind all of the pranks and the smiles and the stupid games, because I don’t think he would know what to say to me then.”
“There’s more to a person than just laughter.” Remus admonished.
“Maybe,” Sirius replied, his voice shockingly solemn, and after a moment’s pause he continued again, “I hate the color green.”
“You said that already.”
“I mean it.”
“No you don’t.”
“…I do now. No more liking the color green.” Sirius declared, and fisted the grass by his hip.
“…it’s silver too.”
The black-haired boy tilted his head, his mouth furled in a question mark as he glanced at Remus for further explanation even though chances were he didn’t want to hear the elaboration in the first place.
“Their scarves. The colors, I mean. I know where you’re looking.”
“I wasn’t looking.” Sirius defended instantly.
A feeble thumb waved in the direction of the Slytherins across the lake.
“Green and silver, right? But more so green.”
Sirius bit his lip, staring at Remus like a deer in the headlights as though he was trying to decide whether to throw more denial in his face or actually mumble a few words of candor.
“Today,” he started, “is the first day Regulus wore his scarf.”
“Right.” It didn’t take a genius to figure out that all of Sirius’ ambiguous /he’s/ and /him’s/ were referring to his brother, because unspoken or not, Remus could follow the boy’s forlorn gaze all the way across the lake to where his brother sat immersed in conversation with others from Slytherin.
“You think… they’re his friends?” Sirius raked a shaky hand through his hair and cocked his head to the boys Regulus was talking to, also donning their black capes and emerald scarves.
“Yes.” Remus replied honestly, and swirled his forefinger around in the murky water. A small tornado followed his finger dutifully.
“Right. Is it because I’m not?”
“Probably.”
“…right.” Sirius mumbled.
The cloud of brooding misery hung around Sirius like an umbrella through his next wordless moments. His lack of speech was ridiculously uncharacteristic, and for a moment Remus wondered if his short one-word replies were too simple for Sirius’ liking.
“Hey,” a clammy hand, tremors running through its knuckles, crawled its way across the damp grass to rest on top of Remus’ palm.
Remus turned to face Sirius.
“Hey.”
“Hello.”
For a moment, the conversation was thorny and not exactly normal for any humans, because this was the second time Sirius had said a greeting and Remus didn’t even need to be greeted in the first place.
So Remus prodded, even though he knew he shouldn’t prod at matters that tended to prod back, “What’re you thinking?”
Sirius smiled sadly, a rare despondence tugging at his eyebrows. Sirius already had lines on his face from grinning so profusely, almost like he lived with a hanger in his mouth, and it almost seemed sinful to watch them vanish as a deplorable frown took over Sirius’ lips.
“Can I kiss you?”
Remus was suddenly very aware of the fingers resting on his, bitterly icy and numb. He resisted the urge to tug on his arm and shake his wrist to remove Sirius’ curious hand, but he realized too painfully that it wasn’t because he was bothered by the invasive touch, but rather because /this was weird/ and what was he supposed to do? His fingers knew how to hold quills and grab forks, not how to hold someone’s hand without squeezing too hard or too little.
“Your brother’s watching.”
Sirius’ eyes scanned the other end of the lake, where for the first time in the whole afternoon where Sirius’ figure had remained camouflaged amongst the others, Regulus was looking over at his brother as discreetly as possible.
“…right.” Sirius dismissed.
He kept their hands touching, however, and out of his peripheral vision Remus could detect Sirius’ eyes running up and down his body as though he didn’t realize that Remus noticed the subtle gazing. And even though he knew he shouldn’t, he liked that Sirius was looking.
---
“It’s not like anyone’s going to say /I’ll miss you/ anyway.”
Sirius spat on the ground. Peter shuffled nervously on his feet.
“That’s stupid, Prongs,” Sirius drawled wryly, and James shrugged.
“I know,” he shrugged again, and Peter chuckled.
The booming sound of smoke whistling halted the conversation. More students yelled and chattered, some of them crying and clinging to their friends in an octopus-like group hug, some of them standing alone as they attempted to fruitlessly heave their trunks up to the train.
“You do realize it’s all over, right?” Sirius cracked his knuckles and leaned against his suitcase.
“Yeah.”
“I think I left my toothbrush in the bathroom.”
“You’re such a geek, Wormtail,” James rolled his eyes, and Peter beamed, because despite the words, the four of them knew that there was no animosity left to settle. Not anymore, even if there was.
“I don’t really… want this to end.” Sirius confessed, and his fingers furled around the handles of his trunk until they were pallid and white.
“Well, I’m sorry. We had to break up eventually,” the bespectacled boy mocked, and promptly received a punch in the shoulder.
The train whistled again. The strong smell of smoke and iron wheels wafted into Remus’ nose, and more students bustled around the station.
“You think they’d let us stay here for another year?”
“I packed chocolate. We can just camp out here for summer.”
There was laughter, but it was silent and under everyone’s breaths. It only took another moment of wordless eye contact before all boys glanced at each other’s suitcases and started tugging at their trunks.
It was almost too uncanny that somehow, in whatever world of bad luck he lived in, Remus and Sirius ended up sitting alone in a compartment while James helped Peter stuff his trunk onto one of the shelves.
And the sad thing was, Remus knew this moment was coming.
“You already know that I love you.” Sirius said to the window, eyes low.
“Hey, me too.” Remus said, and the words left his lips almost too quickly.
They stared at each other. The train was rumbling under their feet, the silent humming of the engine revving up penetrating the silence. And the weird thing was that the silence wasn’t as awkward as Remus expected.
Sirius gazed at the window again, and hooked two fingers onto the ledge. Remus kept his eyes focused on the door, waiting for James and Peter to reappear, at of course the most inopportune time.
“Hey, Moony?”
“Nope.” Remus said, and waved his hand airily, smacking his lips.
“I haven’t asked anything yet.”
“I already know.”
“I know,” Sirius mumbled, but ignored him anyway, “Can I kiss you?”
“Nope,” Remus said again, a smug smile tearing at his lips. And then there was laughter, loud and bubbling up his throat. Sirius frowned.
“I, I don’t like it when you laugh like that.”
“I’m sorry,” said the werewolf with a rare grin, and laughed some more.
“Hey, I mean it. I’m gonna kiss you.” Sirius squirmed in his seat, as though deciding whether or not to get up and pounce on Remus or stay seated and be the coward he was, because nothing was exactly solid between them. Remus had been very vague, and of course he’d enjoyed every minute of Sirius’ discomfort, but it was more than irksome now that he was actually worrying about what the werewolf was thinking.
Remus pinned his lower lip between his teeth to put an end to his laughter and smiled at Sirius in a way that made him look as though for the first time in seven years of watching him grin crookedly and smile goofily, he wasn’t really meaning it until now.
“You’re so under my skin. And it’s so funny, I forget to laugh.” Remus beamed.
Sirius grumbled, and his stare returned to the window, “Don’t act like you know me.”
“But I do.”
“I know, but don’t pretend you’re not a horny little horndog right now either,” Sirius replied, “can I kiss you?”
“Why are you even asking?”
Sirius growled, a little impatiently, and put his palms on Remus’ thighs, breathing hot and straight on his lips. Remus was too composed for his liking, and as far as he was concerned, Sirius would be the one to break that fine line of sanity into one that chanted nothing but /Sirius Black, Sirius Black, Sirius Black/ like a broken record.
“Gimme a kiss.”
“Oh, fine.” And Remus reached over, his fingers demanding and palm strong as he let their teeth bump and lips grind against each other.
It was a sinfully enjoyable kiss for how rough and sloppy it was. It was nothing but built-up denial and desire after seven years of /can I kiss you’s/ that were all answered the same way. Remus owed Sirius dozens of kisses, all to make up for the times that he denied him despite the fact that they both knew they couldn’t do any better.
Probing tongues and hot lips were all blurs from then on as Sirius climbed on Remus’ lap and got exactly what he came for. It certainly wasn’t sweet and soft, it was rough and needy and they both liked it like that. Sirius’ hands grabbed Remus by the hips, hard, and dragged his fingernails up to hook onto his shirt. Remus was nothing but one moan after another, sliding his fingers into ebony hair and tugging at Sirius’ scalp.
“Hey,” Remus mumbled, breathless and panting as his lips bumped against Sirius’ as he spoke. There was a definite tingling on the back of his neck where the hem of his hair tickled the skin that didn’t seem to be going away as he stared straight onto Sirius’ face, complete with swollen red lips and hungry eyes.
“Moony,” Sirius grumbled, “this is no time for talk.”
“Shut up,” said Remus, and almost forgot what he meant to say as he caught a glimpse of a pink tongue within the cavern of Sirius’ mouth, his lips parted, “I was saying something.”
“You were?”
“Yes!” His panting finally came to a stop, “Hey.”
“Hey?”
“Can I kiss you?” Remus ventured, and his hands squeezed Sirius’ shoulder bones.
“You’re only asking because-”
“-I know you’ll say yes.” And there went that evil grin again, smug and smirky, perfect for Remus’ lips.
“Don’t act like you know me.”
Silence.
And then, unable to form a proper response with his brain going two hundred miles an hour and his heart palpitating hard enough to be the powerhouse of several factories, Remus did the only thing that made any sense anymore, and kissed Sirius.