Chapter Text
“Just. Don’t you think it’s a bit.” James waves his hand, his nose scrunched up under his glasses. It’s one of Remus’s favourite expressions on him, because there’s a little crease that folds into the front of his eyebrow, and he always wants to reach out and smooth it over with his thumb. Except he sort of doesn’t, because it’s the type of thing he wants to see even when he closes his eyes. “Grim.”
“You always say shit like that until you try it, Prongs.” Remus raises his eyebrow, sucking on the cigarette - the menthol is cold and burning on the chap of his lips. He leans forward a little bit then on his knees, holding the filter end of the cigarette out in between his two forefingers. James swallows heavy - his eyes dart between the cigarette and Remus and Remus considers clipping him upside the head because he’s being fucking weird about it, but then again, James is weird about everything. Eventually James takes the cigarette, and valiantly attempts a feeble puff on it, spluttering around the smoke. Remus chuckles and dodges a spray of dragon cloud.
“Pussy.”
James flips him off and coughs again, but then he’s shuffling along the cold stone ledge that watches the window panes in their dorm, until their knees are touching. He takes Remus’s tea without asking and sips it thoughtfully, unaware to Remus tutting. He always does that, but James thinks ‘what’s mine is yours,’ and so on.
“There’s a lot of things I try and still hate.” James muses, his mouth poised around the tin edge of Remus’s favourite mug - it’s got lupines crudely painted on and James’s scrawling signature at the bottom.
“Oh yeah?” Remus snorts, contemplating taking his tea back. “Like rum?”
“Don’t bring that up,” James groans, laughter hot under his breath. Remus wants to catch the sound like a firefly.
“Mm, in fact. If i remember correctly, you liked it so much you were pretty much comatose for like. All of my 18th.”
“Shut up!” James elbows Remus hard in the ribs, and then he’s leaning into him again, and James’s body feels like immovable stone. He treasures moments like this, their arms and legs pressed close, cross hairs tangled like nettle plants. Inseparability. James lives somewhere in his brain like ruthless creeping charlie, trepanning, nestled close in his cerebellum or medulla, always at the back of his throat, like a prayer.
“Besides.” James licks his lips. “It’s not like you’re exactly flexible.”
“Erh!” Remus tilts his head, eyes wide and a smile curving the corner of his lip. “Excuse you. What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means,” James swirls Remus’s tea like he’s divining the future, “that you, Remus John Lupin, are one stubborn motherfucker.”
Remus scoffs and puts his cigarette out in the tea - it makes a sizzling sound and steam trickles from the contact point and James makes a sound of indignation as Remus throws his head back and laughs - then James is abandoning the cup and pushing Remus hard on the shoulders. He tumbles back, still laughing, and James hunches over in his spot, scowling. But Remus can see it in his eyes - there’s a quirked eyebrow and the half crescent moon of a smirk nestled in the hazel. Remus sits up on his elbows and pokes James with his foot.
“There’s plenty of things I think I’d like.” James tuts, staring through the window into the Scottish dreamscape.
“Yeah?” Remus pokes him again. “Like what.”
“Shut up.” James mutters.
“Oh come on. Spill. Like what?” Remus pokes James with his toe in the elbow this time; James looks down wordlessly over his shoulder at Remus’s leg and then he’s swallowing.
“James.” Remus nudges him one more time. “Why’re you being so ominous. Like what.”
“Nothing.”
It’s barely there - no ordinary person would notice it. But no one knows James quite like Remus; a near incomprehensible shift. The cords of muscle in the back of James’s neck and along the column of his throat tighten and his shoulder blades hunch in, and Remus wants to splay his hand out on James’s back like a sunburst.
Remus sits up then, sliding his legs towards him - he tucks his right leg underneath himself and leaves his left hanging off the edge, and he’s suddenly horribly aware that his chest is perpendicular to James’s shoulder.
“What’s up with you?” He fights the urge to brush a curl out of James’s face.
James’s mouth twists then, like he’s not sure he can remember how to speak, and the syllables are so balanced along the edge of his lips and teeth, and Gods Remus loves his voice, he wants to reach forward and pluck them from the tongue tip and taste them.
“James.”
“I’d probably. I'd probably. I'd probably kiss you.” James says it without turning to Remus, who feels each tightly packed coil on his fingertips come to life, feels his heart set into his manubrium, feels it echo in his brain like hymn, and then he does something he thinks he might regret. But he’s always been helpless for James.
“James.” It's barely a whisper. Remus snakes a hand up James’s jaw, his middle finger, cold and ash tipped, on the diveted pressure point behind James’s ear, his forefinger resting on the tragus piercing he’d given the other boy in fifth year. Remus is not sure what comes over him, but then he’s gently tilting James’s head towards his and then their mouths are pressed together, unsure.
It’s everything he thought it would be and somehow the most alien dialect he knows: James’s mouth is warm and soft and a little bit surprised, and it tastes like tannin and menthol and the honey from his tea. It’s the slowest, surest thing Remus thinks he’s ever done, and it feels like treetops in autumn or the perfect song in a sort of divined speechless static, and he’s thankful he’s sitting down because he’s sure his knees would go a little sodding wobbly.
James’s eyes are wide when Remus pulls away, and the sun cloud washing over him starts to trickle its gold edged fingers back.
“Remus.” James whispers, breath barely there, indecipherable, and it feels holy, it feels sacrilegious.
Remus swallows, and prepares to apologise, to grovel, to pissing sprint off, and then rapidly James is leaning into him, insistence, desperation, crowding Remus’s mouth with his own, and this time they know it, this time their teeth clack together and their hands are in each other’s hair, a tangled effigy, and Remus’s heart is beating one-two-three with finally finally finally, because yes. This is it, this was always it. This feels like home.