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It’s a frigid November night in fifth year when Remus finally takes his shirt off.
It’s not as though he hasn’t undressed at all in the last five years- no, much to his chagrin, he can’t wear clothes in the shower- but he’s avoided it diligently. He has dressed within the confines of his bed’s curtains, has gone to bathe only late at night and double-charmed the shower door locked, has woken up as early as possible on post-moon mornings to make sure he’s fully covered under a blanket. Perhaps most difficult of all, he’s passed up on a multitude of skinny-dipping opportunities, armed against his friends’ persistent enthusiasm with a thin smile and even thinner excuses. He and Sirius had finally gotten together last month (after agonizing years of glances snuck peripherally and hard-ons badly concealed) but the boundaries are clear: hands stay outside of cloth. Remus Lupin likes his clothes, and he likes them on himself, and he likes other people’s eyes in other places- it’s that simple.
Which is why, when he pulls his shirt off in front of Sirius Black in the dorm bathroom at ten ‘till midnight, Sirius knows something is up.
Sirius can’t recall exactly when it was that he fell in love with his best friend. Maybe it had been colliding on their first Hogwarts Express ride and the way the werewolf muttered myriad breathless apologies (even though it’d been Sirius’s fault). Maybe it had been their first Transfiguration lesson, where Sirius had managed to, transcending all known laws of magic, unintentionally transfigure Remus’s book into a nightstand by swearing whilst unknowingly holding his wand backwards. Maybe it had been the morning after the roughest full moon of third year and how Remus smiled warmly from the hospital bed (and the ensuing snarkiness about Sirius’s hair), or maybe it had been the way, a year ago April, he hummed while holding a sobbing Sirius after he got disow- no, that’s cutting it late. Sirius was definitely deeply in love by the time that happened. Maybe he had loved him long before he’d met him.
Remus pulls his shirt over his head and nearly throws it to the floor, and Sirius tries not to let his jaw drop. It doesn’t work. Remus sees the shock- the fear- in the animagus’s face and his eyes flash to his feet, cheeks flooding crimson. Sirius doesn’t come any closer.
Finally clearing his throat a minute later, Remus tries to cut the silence. “Yeah, I know.” He gulps, glancing quickly upward. Sirius is still gaping. “There’s a lot.” It’d be understandable, he thinks, if Sirius never wanted to touch him again. The gouged-in lines, some small and some bigger, some perfectly straight and some jagged, marr him from head to toe. The largest concentration of every-which-way marks is on his torso, for reasons the werewolf doesn’t want to remember, and they glimmer slightly silver in the quiet light of the bathroom.
Sirius still isn’t speaking, still isn’t moving, and Remus feels like he might cry. This was a mistake, he knew it, the second he reached for the hem of his shirt he regretted it. “Look, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t’ve-”
And then Sirius is in motion, slowly reaching for the hem of his own shirt with trembling hands (fear, says the ever-present voice in Remus’s head, he’s afraid of you). He doesn’t break that eerie stare at Lupin’s chest as he pulls his shirt up over his head. What the hell is he doing? Remus doesn’t exactly mind the look at his body. It’s not a bad view (has he always had abs like that?), but-- Oh. Sirius has turned around.
It takes Remus a long minute to realize: that’s not just one giant scar.
No, those are all individual lines. Thin, straight, level, running all the way across his back, and packed in close together. Unlike Remus’s gouges, they’re raised off of Sirius’s skin and a more iridescent, darker gold than the tan on his shoulders. Spell-given scars. Remus tries to count, and fails, giving up at 43, about 8 centimetres down from the top. He’s far from the end; they go all the way down to Black’s waist, spreading out a little in the last few centimetres. Hundreds, if not thousands.
Remus wants to kill the person responsible. No, not kill, torture, torment, reciprocate exactly the agony physicalized in front of him. But who had the time to do all- wait. No.
“I’m starting to think they disowned me because they were running out of space,” Sirius cracks weakly, staring at the floor, still turned away. It hits Remus in the gut, hard.
“Do the others...” He trails off. He can’t come up with anything else to say.
“No. You can charm over it for a few hours, and if the light is dim enough, you can’t really see.” The taller boy doesn’t consider for a second telling him that even in the relatively low lighting of the bathroom, the broad patch of scars still glints bronze.
Remus tries to say something, and he chokes, so instead he goes with something shorter. “I love you.” His voice still cracks.
Sirius inhales in reply, a shaky gasp for air, tears beginning to swell up. He may as well go all the way. Quavering, he pulls his wand out of his pocket, whispering finite incantatem as he waves his wand over each forearm, and pushes his arms back across the gap between him and Remus, who takes them gently before looking closer.
Those aren’t spell-inflicted.
“Sirius,” he whispers, voice breaking. “Sirius. Fuck.” He doesn’t want to look at the marks- even the redder ones remind him of his own. But he can’t look away, can’t let go, can’t stop repeating his name like it’s sacred. “Sirius,” like he’s casting a spell, “Sirius,” like he’s swearing, “Sirius,” like he’s saying ‘I love you,’ “Sirius,” like he’s praying. Maybe he’s trying to do all four. “Fuck.”
Sirius, with his eyes shut tight, head hung down, and joints stiff, swallows his tears. “Are you okay?” He asks the boy behind him.
“Sirius.”
“Yeah?”
“Sirius,” Remus breathes again, reverently.
“Fuck, Rem, what is it?”
The taller boy squeezes his eyes shut for a moment. “Can I touch your scars?” He asks quickly. “Not your wrists,” he clarifies.
Sirius pauses, then nods, and Remus lets go of his arms. As he brushes callused fingertips over the very end of the top line, they both shudder. Carefully, slowly, he ghosts his thumb across the rest of the scar. “You didn’t have to take your shirt off. You didn’t have to do that for me.”
“I did, I did.”
I did, I did, I did. We did.
“Which kind hurt more?” Remus has to ask.
“I don’t know how to answer that.” Sirius’s turn for a question. “Do you ever maul yourself on purpose?”
“I don’t know how to answer that, either, to be honest.”
So many, Remus thinks, as he traces his way over the fifth line. Too many. He wonders if Sirius recalls still why he got each one, and he prays not. It makes him glad he doesn’t remember much from being the wolf. He stops tracing. “You didn’t have to show me, Pads, but thank you.”
“Thank you for showing me yours.”
“Mine are uglier,” Remus responds, leaning back against the sink behind him.
“Don’t.”
“What? They are.” He shakes his head, tracing Sirius’s figure with his eyes. “You... You’re still everything.” The way he says it, the way he says ‘everything’ makes Sirius’s gut flip. “Which is not to say yours didn’t hurt, and not to say I hurt more, because I can’t even begin to imagine what you went through but fuck, I can’t look at myself in the mirror. I look like a monster, Sirius, even if I don’t, I still do.”
“You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen, Remus.” Sirius’s voice begins to break. “You’re so beautiful.”
“No, no, I’m not, do you--”
“Okay, well, now, that’s just rude,” Sirius cuts him off, a weak smirk in his voice. “Are you insulting my taste in men?” Remus doesn’t say anything. “Do you know when I fell in love with you?”
He said it back, he said it back. “When?” Remus half-doesn’t want to know.
“I don’t know," he says to the wall, not wanting to turn back around. "But I’ve always known you have scars, Rem, maybe not so many but I saw the ones on your face and arms that were there when I first met you and I fell in love with that, I fell in love with all of that. And maybe there are more than I imagined- and trust me, I’ve imagined- but they’re beautiful, you’re beautiful.” He pauses. “I’m sorry you don’t know.”
Remus steadies himself against the sink, knees on the verge of giving out. “And I’m assuming I don’t need to tell you that you’re perfect?”
“I’m not perfect, Moons.”
“Yes, you are.” Sirius has a hundred responses in his head, but he can’t bring himself to speak. “Yes, you are.”
Remus leans forward across the gap between them and hooks an arm around Sirius, pulling him in closer, tentatively pressing the greyish lines covering his bare chest into the bronze lines across Sirius’s back. Sirius leans back into his warmth, Remus wraps his arms tighter, and they are still for a moment, feeling each other’s breathing. Remus always knew they fit together: he’s starting to think they were made for this. They were meant to correspond and contradict, to share pain and endure different kinds, and fuck it, it doesn’t even matter when they fell in love because before there was anything, anything else at all, there were the moon and the stars. The light in the darkness. Silver and gold.