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1.
Dust is dancing in the sunlight, the light filtering through the leaves and turning everything sunny yellow. It shines off Remus’ pale skin and makes him look even more pallid in comparison to the others. James is back from a holiday in some muggle town, tanned and skinny and grinning; brimming over with tales of hot local birds and the things they let him do to them on the beach. Sirius was with him too, he knows, but he is nowhere near as vocal in his boasting. He just lounges back against the tree, eyes heavy-lidded and smiling at nothing, last minute reading for McGonagall’s class balanced over his face as he drifts off in the summer heat.
And it is hot. Too hot.
Remus can feel his shirt sticking to him, clinging to his skin. His binder feels claustrophobic, too tight. He sits up straighter, shifting to reduce the pressure on his ribs. It’s the start of the summer term and by all accounts summer should be trailing off by now. Slinking away to be replaced with bitterly cold winter. But this time round, summer seems to be putting up more of a fight.
He sighs, stretches out lazily in the grass, head pillowed on his wadded up robe. Peter, beside him, is blowing on a dandylion clock and Remus watches him, squinting against the brightness of the sky. “What about you?” Wormtail asks. “How was your summer?”
Lupin gives a small smile. "Told my mum," he says.
"No way!" Sirius lights up, grinning at him. "Well done, Moony."
Remus shrugs. He doesn't want to dwell.
"How'd it go?"
"Not exactly badly..." It hadn't gone badly, that was true. Some crying over him cutting his hair. A few 'what happened to my little girl' comments that made him want to crawl into a hole in the ground and die. Grudging acceptance in the form of 'I'll try'. What more could you possibly want? He bit his lip, holding back the sarcasm. "Yeah, it was. Alright. I guess." He turns to Peter, wanting to shift the spotlight away from him for a second, poking him in the thigh with a toe. "You?"
Peter shrugs. “Met a girl,” he says quietly. “Didn’t get her number though.”
“Ooooh,” James teases, the opportunity to tease his friend giving him life for an instant before he slumps back down again amongst the weeds. “Do tell, Wormtail.”
“I wish you wouldn’t call me that,” Peter says, wrinkling his potato-shaped nose. “I don’t know. She was pretty, I guess.”
“You guess?” Sirius snorts from underneath the book, and Remus looks over, surprised. He had thought that he was asleep. “Sounds to me like she was ugly, mate.”
Peter shrugs again. “Not likely. She was gorgeous. But even so, she was super smart. And nice. And kind. And-”
“Kind,” James grins and pokes his leg. “Probably why she snogged you, mate. An act of pity.”
“What, like Evans giving you the time of day in the corridor today?” Peter shoots back and Remus laughs, surprised.
“That was not pity. I am telling you, she’s into me.”
“Right. Sure.”
Remus tunes out of the conversation, eyes wandering towards Sirius. His eyes are shut and he’s chewing on the end of a bit of grass like some old-timey muggle farmer. The long line of his neck is arched back, one arm thrown across his eyes to shield them from the sun and his tie is loose. That undone top button will be Remus’ death, he tells himself and makes himself look away but not before Sirius has caught him staring. He opens his eyes lazily and smiles a long drawn-out grin, the corners of his mouth twisting up lazily.
The memory of that smirk torments Remus all night and he wakes up tangled in sheets and aching all over, his body feeling fevered and his head swimming with dreams of that smile.
For some reason, in the morning when he opens the curtains, he notices a little paper bird on his pillow.
2.
Autumn comes around too fast and just like that, Sirius has a girlfriend.
Remus tries too hard not to look jealous and fails miserably and throws himself into his studies even harder to avoid having to be near Sirius because almost every interaction physically hurts. When Sirius smiles, he feels like he’s going to be sick. When she smiles at him, all sweetness and light, he feels even worse, like when he transforms. Like his skin is tearing from the inside out.
He feels terrible that he hasn’t even bothered to learn her name. She’s a person, a lovely person from what he hears from Sirius. And it’s not fair of him to take his petty jealousy out on her, because it’s ok for him to be upset but it’s not ok for him to completely disregard the poor girl as a human being.
Instead, he starts to time his days so that he never has to be around when she’s around. He wakes up early and sneaks out of the dorm to the library- sacred ground where Sirius would never dare to tread. He goes to bed late and tries to ignore the snuffly puppy-like snores from the bed next to him that should be annoying but are freakishly adorable.
Of course, it’s inevitable that Sirius would finally catch up with him.
He’s walking down by the lake, kicking fallen leaves that make a jewel-bright carpet at his feet, when he hears someone calling his name.
“Oi! Moony!”
He turns- Sirius is hurtling towards him so fast that he’s scared that when he tries to stop his momentum will just push him forward. His arms are windmilling wildly, hair flapping in the wind. If it were anyone else, they would look ridiculous but Sirius just looks Darcy-esque in his baggy dramatic school shirt.
“Bloody hell, Moony, you walk too fast,” he says, clapping a hand on his shoulder and doubling over to catch his breath. Remus can see his spine through the thin stuff of the shirt, the indentations of his shoulder blades and the very illegal tattoo that he paid a slytherin artist girl to do for him in the slight dip of his back. A stick-and-poke tree silhouette. It’s… oddly pretty, calm. At odds with Sirius, who is straightening up as he thinks and shaking his hair back into its regular dishevelled deliberateness.
Remus gives him a tight smile, remembering that he’s meant to be avoiding him, and starts walking so that Sirius has to jog a little again to keep up. “What do you want, Sirius?”
“Moony.” His voice has gone all serious. Ha. Serious Sirius. Lupin mentally slapped himself and told himself to concentrate. “Listen, I just want to make sure we’re ok?”
“What?” He frowns. “Yeah, sure we’re ok. Why wouldn’t we be?”
“Because… I don’t know. That’s why I was asking. We haven’t spoken for ages.”
Remus shrugs. “You’ve been off with what’s-her-name all the time.” He feels a little bad then, and hastily adds, “And I’ve been busy, too.”
Sirius eyes him with concern, biting his lower lip as he glances over the dark circles evident under Remus’ eyes. “If you’re sure.”
“I’m sure.” He manages to work up a smile that doesn’t look entirely faked and tries to conceal the little flip in his stomach when Sirius smiles back.
Sirius doesn’t just smile, he grins again- that lazy fucking grin that turns Remus to jelly- and falls in step with him as he walks. “So, my distant friend. How have you been?”
Remus takes a breath of clean air before Sirius’ smell of cheap aftershave, chocolate frogs and probably bad attitude seeps into his airways. And wet dog, too. It shouldn’t, but it reminds him of a home that he’s never really had. He fixes his eyes determinedly on the horizon. “Ok,” he says, uncertain. “Ok.”
3.
The winter chill is setting in for real by now. What’s-her-name is history and Sirius is off letching at other girls instead. Remus doesn’t care. He doesn’t. Wrapped in his ridiculously over-large robes and sitting as close to the roaring fire as he can manage because it’s bloody freezing in the common room this time of year, he’s pouring over a history of magic text and jotting down notes when something falls out of the pages. Another one of those little paper birds. He frowns and slips it in his pocket, just as something- someone- taps his shoulder.
He looks up.
Sirius is standing there, a cup of hot butterbeer in each hand and a wide smile stretched across his face. His eyes look anxious, out of place. “Want one?”
“Sure,” Remus smiles, and takes the cup, breathing in the warm smell and letting the heat bring the life back to his fingers. Sirius’ hands are shaking a little as he hands over the cup and Remus frowns. “Are you alright, Padfoot?”
Sirius laughs nervously. “I’m ok.” He takes a breath. “So. I ought to tell you.”
There is a long silence and Remus takes a breath, scared he’s been found out, scared Sirius wants nothing more to do with him. “Um. Alright.”
Sirius takes another breath, in and out, and then laughs again because he’s so unused to this uncertainty. “I just want to say you’re my best friend and the first person I’m telling and I don’t want to lose you so please don’t stop talking to me after this.”
Remus frowns. “I won’t?” He says, quirking an eyebrow. He’s confused.
“I’m bisexual.” Sirius says all in a rush and then squeezes his eyes shut like Remus is going to scream or hit him or something. When nothing happens, he opens his eyes a crack and when Remus is just staring at him, a little slack jawed, the tension in his shoulders relaxes. “What?”
Remus shakes his head, a little shell shocked, and huffs an almost desperate laugh. He feels winded. “I thought you were going to tell me something like you didn’t want to be friends any more or something!”
“God, no!” Sirius sits on the chair beside him, knees suddenly giving way and he looks like he’s about to cry even though he’s smiling. “I mean. I knew you’d be… ok with it. You are ok with it, right?”
“Of course.” Remus smiles, patting Sirius’ arm because a hug would be lethal right now.
“It’s just scary. It’s a scary thing to do.”
“I can imagine,” Remus breathes to himself, and closes his eyes briefly. When he opens them again, Sirius is staring at him in a mix of confusion and something that Remus can’t quite place. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m proud of you for telling me.” He tries to imagine doing it himself, telling his family, his little group of friends that he’s built around himself. He imagines it crumbling around him like he’s sure that it would.
Sirius stands again, shrugs one shoulder nonchalantly and tries to look like he isn’t recovering from the scariest experience of his life. “I’ll be honest, just saying that was worse than being kicked out of home,” he says and Remus doubts the slight hint of sarcasm in his tone. “I don’t know why. It was just… scary. Not because of you.” He grins, looking a little more back to normal, although his sharp cheekbones still have an oddly nervous pallor to them. “Anyway!” He glances over to James and Peter, sitting on the opposing couch and deep in the midst of a game of chess. “I’m going to go disrupt their game!” He puts a hand on Remus’ shoulder uncertainly, half pulls it away like he’s been burnt. “I just wanted to tell you first. You’re a good friend, Remus.”
Lupin watches him amble lankily through the common room, in those definitely-not-uniform-regulation skinny jeans. In an uncharacteristic moment of bitterness, his heart twists and he thinks to himself ‘fuck him”. He closes his eyes and tries to focus on the page but he’s thinking now and he can’t stop. ‘Fuck him for having the courage to come out when I couldn’t, for being brave enough to say it out loud. For knowing and being sure of himself. Why can’t I have that?”
He shakes his head, trying to get rid of those thoughts because look at what he has. Look at what he's made for himself here. He's done it once before with the gender thing, and... It just seems unfair.
It crosses his mind briefly for a moment that this is the first time he’s admitted to himself that he even wants to come out. Even has a reason to.
And… Sirius. He didn’t expect it. Until then, Sirius was unobtainable, beautiful but way off in the distance surrounded by a nice shiny protective bubble of heterosexuality. Now… He bites his lip hard. Now he doesn’t even have that to make himself fell a little better about the fact that Sirius will never like him like that.
It’s somehow worse. When he was unobtainable like that, it was easier to just think ‘ok, he’ll never be interested, move on’. But now, with all of… this. Remus hunches into his ridiculous robes and catches Sirius’ eye just in time to see the other guy grinning at him. Remus blushes. He looks a mess, he knows, hair messy and thick-rimmed glasses on his nose. There’s a smudge of ink on his cheek and his stupid robes aren’t exactly flattering.
Remus is suddenly tired. He catches Sirius’ sleeve as he passes, telling him he has a migraine and that he’ll see him in the morning. When he stands up, there's another paper bird on his chair.
That night he lies awake for hours, staring at the ceiling. The moonlight makes patterns through the gaps in his curtains. He feels so empty sometimes that he can barely breathe.
4.
By the time it’s Christmas, everyone is back to normal. Remus swallows down his feelings and stops avoiding Sirius, so Sirius in turn starts once again to be increasingly tactile and drive him mad. He sleeps more, and watches smiling tiredly from the side lines as they run around casting their seasonal pranks.
The holidays are looming and he’s decided he’s staying behind at Hogwarts for the holidays- so is Peter, who frankly can’t be bothered to pack his suitcase, and Sirius, who doesn’t want to intrude on the Potters for too long. James, of course upon hearing this, writes an impassioned letter to his parents begging them to let him stay over the Christmas holidays too and by breakfast the next morning, it’s confirmed.
Beside his glass of orange juice, Remus finds another paper bird and it's holding a heart in it's beak. He slips it into his pocket. He has a collection of them now, although he swears that it wasn't there at all a mere moment ago.
From there, plans instantly move towards celebrating; more specifically the huge quantities of firewhisky that Sirius plans to buy under the counter from Rosmerta, the daughter of the pub owner in town.
Remus grins and goes along with it even though he knows that as a prefect he should at least attempt to reign in their madness. Still, its seventh year and he loves his friends and he loves some of his friends probably more than he should and he can’t bear to see them disappointed.
Christmas itself comes around all too quickly and he wakes to someone sitting on his legs and gently tickling his face. “Mooooooooony. Moooooooooooooooooony.”
“Whadjljdfm.” He says, articulately and bats whatever it is poking him away.
“Wake up, Moony, it’s Christmas!”
He sits bolt upright, surreptitiously trying to wipe away any drool on the corners of his mouth. Apparently not surreptitiously enough, though, as he catches Sirius smirking at him anyway. He’s already up and dressed. “Presents!” he says like that’s an adequate explanation.
Remus groans sleepily. “Coffee.” He stipulates. “Coffee and breakfast first. And get off me.”
Sirius huffs and clambers off him, taking his arm instead to gently yank him out of bed. “Peter and James are already up!”
Remus rolls his eyes with a smile. Sirius’ eyes are all sparky with excitement and he keeps bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet like an overexcited kangaroo. He’s watching him back, too, and when Remus notices, he looks away, blushing.
“Moony. Come on!”
*
It’s a long day but Remus makes it through without getting too frustrated and simply walking out. Sirius, he finds, is difficult to distract for once and the lanky git keeps on catching him staring. Every time he does, he gives him one of those long slow grins like he can see everything that’s going on in his head and takes a long gulp out of his butterbeer bottle. The first few times it was, to be honest, painfully sexy but the fifth time, he’s a bit too drunk and instead of drinking the butterbeer it went down the wrong way and made him splutter. Remus considers this a small victory.
Although, they are both at least five drinks in by now, and he figures that it doesn’t really matter too much at this point what happens.
Of course, it is then that Peter decides to open his big fat gob.
They’re all sat around the fire in a semi-circle, Sirius with his ridiculous legs stretched out in the middle and Wormtail all curled up in a corner. Moony is closest to the fire- he seems to feel the cold easier these days. James is far too drunk, and grinning wickedly, egging on whatever Peter is about to say.
“I reckon, right.”
“Yeah?”
“I reckon, right. That we should, like. Play a game.”
“Like…. What?”
“We should play truth or dare,” Peter says and sits back like he’s very proud of himself.
Sirius frowns. “What’s that?”
“It’s a muggle game,” Peter explains with a toothy grin and slurs his words as he continues. “You pick someone and ask them to pick a truth or a dare and if they say truth you ask them something and if they say dare, they have to do a dare.”
James is looking incredibly excited by this prospect, Sirius not so much. Remus frowns. “This….” He says and then has to pause to remember what he’s talking about. “This is a very bad idea.”
“No it isn’t.” Peter sounds genuinely affronted and Remus instantly feels bad.
“Ok, ok,” he huffs. “I’ll play your stupid game. I’ve played it before, anyhow. Mostly you just dare people to kiss each other and that won’t work for you two cos there are no girls.” He realises his slip up the moment he says it and gulps down a huge amount of firewhisky to cover up his mistake. Sirius gives him a sly, appraising look from out of the corner of his eye.
“I’ll play,” he offers, still looking at Remus.
James grins. “Brilliant. So…” He looks at Peter. “You first, mate. You know the rules. Pick someone.”
Peter smirks. “James. Truth or dare?”
Looking affronted at the very insinuation that he would pick truth, James picks dare and is immediately dared to try and get up into the girl’s dorm. After a few embarrassing steps, he fails miserably and has to give up. Next, Sirius is dared to down a whole bottle of butterbeer in one go, which he does in a concerningly attractive way, according to Remus. Then finally Peter picks truth and is boo’d heavily. Of course, they decide to ask him about his most recent sex dream and Remus tries desperately to imagine that he never heard it because… the detail.
And then it’s his turn.
“Truth or dare,” Peter asks.
Remus shrugs. “Dare, I guess. I’m not scared of anything you can come up with.”
James and Peter confer for a moment between themselves, and then Peter sits up and grins at him with ridiculous sobriety. “Remus Moony Lupin. I dare you…” James starts a drum roll, banging his hands on the table, until Sirius shushes him. “… to kiss Padfoot.”
“What? No!” Remus half shouts, and then lowers his voice. “No. Pick something else.”
“Do it, do it, do it,” Peter chants, a grin spread over his inebriated face.
Sirius looks hurt for an instant. “Is the idea of kissing me really that gross?”
“No, that’s not what I meant,” Remus splutters. “No, I’m not going to do it. You’re my friend!”
Sirius huffs, and half turns his back on him and Remus pokes his arm. “You know I don’t mean it like that, Sirius, come on.” He takes a breath. “What, so. You don’t mind?”
“Obviously not,” Sirius snarks.
“Ok,” Remus says and takes a breath. He glares at James and Peter. “Stop staring, you bloody perverts!” Then he leans over to where Sirius is sulking and presses his lips to his cheek, briefly. He smells good. Really fucking good. His skin feels nice against his lips and the moment he pulls away, he wants to do it again. But he doesn’t. Just looks at the floor and drains the last of his firewhisky.
Sirius looks at him, biting his lip. He is looking at Remus like he has been all year. Staring with his half-lidded eyes, grudgingly giving way to a lazy smirking smile. Sirius glances quickly towards Peter and James, who still have their backs turned. Then he leans in to Remus, crowding into his space to whisper in his ear. “You like me.”
Remus opens his mouth to protest. Then he closes it again. He has lost his ability to form adequate words right now.
“Tell me to stop,” Sirius murmurs to him, and then drags his lips across Lupin’s jawbone. Remus takes a sharp breath in that turns into a whine half way through and Sirius chuckles. The vibrations feel good against his throat. “I knew it.”
“Don’t…” Remus closes his eyes, trying to block out the sensation for a moment, and regrets it the moment that Sirius pulls away. “Don’t tease me.”
“What?” Sirius frowns.
“I don’t want to just… kiss. One off.”
“Oh!” Sirius smirks. “You want me.”
“Don’t be a prick about it.”
“Ooooh, Lupin fancies me!”
“Fuck off, Padfoot.”
Sirius grins. “I want you too.” And fuck, those words send a rush of heat through his body and it’s dizzying.
“Fuck,” he manages. And then. "Wait, you're the one with the fucking paper birds!"
Sirius grins and pulls him towards him, finally brushing their lips together. Remus is clingy, like he expects Sirius to just drop him and brush it off as a joke. "I am."
Remus grins and kisses him again, sliding into his lap.
Beside them, James wrinkles his nose disgruntledly. “Guys?”
“Fuck off, Prongs.”
“Guys!” James shields his eyes as he is blatantly ignored. “Oh my god. You two are ridiculous.” He pokes Peter, who seems transfixed. “Oi. Lets clear off to the dorm. Let them… talk it out.”
Peter nods soundlessly, letting James lead him up the stairs. “But,” he starts, and then stops. “But.”
Remus grins into the kiss. Firelight is dancing over his skin, over Sirius’ skin. He is happy.