Chapter Text
Reaching his hand out into the rain to ash out his cigarette In the water collected on the windowsill, Remus heard Sirius clatter into their dorm out of breath - from sprinting up the stairs it seemed. The late evening light from the west window shone behind him and his hair, which was everywhere, caught the light - briefly outlining him in gold. He almost seemed like he had a halo. The was a redness high on his cheeks, and his eyelashes looked spiky and dark, wet from the rain. Only he could look like that in such a fluster, Remus thought.
“I’m late for quidditch practice, and Hooch won’t let me play with my hair down.” He sighed, going over to his bed and rattling around frantically in his bedside drawers. His bed was a complete wreck, his school bag and it’s contents strewn across the covers along with his Docs, an eyeliner pencil and the stuffed black cat teddy that Remus knew Reg had gotten him last Christmas. After things had been difficult between them for so long and were only just finally beginning to heal, Padfoot cherished the teddy. It was quite charming, the way he tucked it in to bed when he thought nobody was looking. But Moony had been. He was watching more often than not, nowadays. It was beginning to get dark outside, and the heavy rain was a beautiful percussion on the roof that settled Remus.
“Merlin, I swear there was one in here, I stole it off Marlene last practice!” He exhaled.
“Fucking health and safety.”
Remus took a drag of his cigarette and shook his head fondly. Sirius was in a right state. Always so dramatic.
“Padfoot.”
He held up his wrist, which had a hair tie on. He usually kept it there for the girls - they always ended up putting their hair up. Lily claimed it got in her way, Mary said she got too hot, Marlene liked to assure Remus that she looked like a ‘messy sexy singer’ when she put it up in a bun and pulled out her slut strands as she liked to call them, and so always pestered him for a hair tie when a girl she liked was near them.
Sirius walked toward Remus and pulled the hair bobble of his outstretched hand. A droplet of water ran down his temple and Moony watched it intently. He had to push up Remus’ sweater just an inch to get it, but even the minuscule touch against the inside of his wrist had Remus holding back a shiver. No, Remus thought, he is your friend. Pull it together. Then Sirius clocked what was in his other hand burning quietly, and looked back up to Remus pleadingly, grey eyes shining through those ridiculously long eyelashes.
“Get your own.” Remus sighed, distracted with trying to stop thinking about Sirius’ thin wrists, and how good they would look in his hands. How delicate. There were so many things that Remus had noticed recently. It was as if once he saw them they were all he could see. Sirius wrists, his lithe waist, the blush that appeared at the tops of his ears sometimes, how he walked more confidently wearing his Dr. Martens. The eyeliner, the muscles that flexed in his arms when Sirius reached high, the v shape just below his hips and the subtle trail of hair leading down below his belt. He was an intricacy and every detail enticed Remus more. But he was also his best friend - entirely, decidedly, completely off limits.
“I don’t want my own, I want yours.”
Remus was starting to believe Sirius could read his thoughts, because why did he always know what to say to make him fold?
“Just a little bit moony? Please.” Sirius whined.
Remus had already resigned himself to his fate and let out a long breath through his nose as he held out the cigarette. He wouldn’t let Sirius hold it, he’d take the whole thing, greedy bastard, and Remus had had a shit day. His hip was giving him grief, and he still felt groggy from the full moon three days ago. He’d gotten a lovely new scar, starting just between his neck and shoulder that had barley scabbed over yet. He had lost so much blood Poppy hadn’t let him out until two nights after the moon, when he was normally out the day after.
Sirius had been unnaturally quiet when visiting him in the infirmary, reserved and withdrawn yet always staying close to Remus, doting on him like a mother. James had told Remus he had been torn up the night after the moon, he’d felt like he was useless to help Remus when he was bleeding onto the planks of the shrieking shack. Sirius had helped though. Had curled up as padfoot next to Moony for as long as possible until he heard Pomfrey coming up the stairs. His steady weight a was comfort on Remus’s good side. When he had gone, his scent was still clinging to Remus, and it made the cold hospital bed feel that much more like home.
Remus was transported out of his brooding back to the present when he smelled Sirius’ expensive cologne as he came closer. As if he was intent on driving Remus to insanity, Sirius smirked and leaned in, placing a hand, complete with cold sliver rings, on Remus’s shoulder for support as he took a long drag. When Remus pulled the cigarette away quickly, Sirius tried to lean in again for another puff and stumbled, catching himself with his hands in the collar of Remus’ sweater, dragging it down a bit. It stretched off his shoulder, showing the new scar.
Sirius stared at it, his expression shifting from a smirk to a grimace. It’s disgusting, Remus thought with a pang of hurt that Sirius seemed to think so too. Remus registered Sirius reaching a hand toward it and firmly grabbed his wrist, holding it away with calloused fingers. He didn’t want Sirius to touch this scar, or any for that matter. The ache in his hip was forgotten when he closed his fingers around sirius’ wrist and they fit perfectly, just like he knew they would have. Sirius’ eyes flicked back up to Remus’ face.
“It’s still sore Sirius, don’t prod it you wanker.”
As if coming to some realisation, Sirius gingerly pulled his hand away, and Remus let it drop, trying not to note the lack of warmth on his fingers where they had been feeling the hot thrumming of Sirius’ pulse.
“That’s not- I wasn’t going to prod.” Sirius huffed, a trace of hurt in his voice. He wrung his hands in front of him, unsure what to do with them now they weren’t touching Moony. A look of concern came across his features.
“Show me. How far it goes down.” He breathed.
Remus contemplated refusing, but he knew he would give in if Sirius just said please again, and he felt it better to just give in now than admit defeat again. It would be too far to just pull the collar down, the scar traced all the way to his rib cage. He shrugged one arm out out the grey wool and pushed up his jumper. It must have looked bad, because Sirius’ breath hitched. His eyes traced the scar to the middle of Remus side, all the way across the left of his chest.
He reached out again, and despite telling Sirius off for it before, Remus was struggling to form coherent thoughts as he watched Sirius’s adams Apple bob as he stared at Remus’ chest, and didn’t stop him this time.
He didn’t prod, and in fact Sirius was surprisingly gentle, reverent as he followed the scar with his fingers, not touching the scab, just tracing a line above it, something like concern or tenderness on his face. His hands were cold. Remus felt a bit like a dove about to take flight. Sirius reached the bottom of the cut and looked back to Remus’ face.
His hand stilled and the energy of the room shifted. Sirius felt it too, and his eyes never left Remus’ as every other sound seemed to fade into the background, as if somebody had cast a muffalatio. Remus couldn’t help it then, the way his eyes darted to padfoot’s mouth, his mischievous smirk nowhere to be seen, replaced by a slight shine on his lips as if he’d just licked them. Remus wished he could lick them instead. Remus’s hand reached to lightly touch Padfoot’s hand on his chest, fingertips just resting on the back of his hand. He looked like a painting, something not real. The black hair had curled around his ears from the heat and the rain, and hoops reflected silver light from his ears. He was still flushed from running and his quidditch kit was soaked. Fingertips still rested on his chest, burning a way through to Remus’ heart. He can probably feel my pulse, Remus thought and tried a deep breath in hopes of slowing it down. The movement lifted Sirius’s fingers slightly as he inhaled, and he moved, as if coming out of a trance.
Dropping his hand out of Remus’ grasp and and stepping back, Sirius seemed a bit lost for words. He was a hummingbird, hovering in the same place yet he seemed to be expelling so much energy. Remus felt like he’d never taken a full breath in his life, he was starved for air.
“I- See you later Moony, thanks” and Sirius whirled on his heels, striding back out the door and off to the quidditch pitches. He left Remus by the window, out of breath despite having not moved at all since Sirius first bounded in. Cold air chilled his chest and he pulled his jumper back on properly. The material was now scratchy against his skin and Remus was ever so hot. He stubbed out the smoke in his empty mug and reached for another from the red packet in his pocket, the first having burned to nothing during that interaction. Feeling the ghost of Sirius hands lingering on his bare chest, seeing that confusing look in his face, hearing his sharp breath, Remus put his head in his hands. He sunk onto his mattress with a sigh. Oh dear. He thought. This is so not going to end well.
Nothing had even- he was so worked up over a two minute conversation. But it was how Sirius looked when he said his name, said Moony , that nickname which made him feel so loved, and the way Sirius’s neck had been gleaming with the rain, and the way his hair looked even blacker than normal. Remus was so gone for him, he realised. He just hoped he hadn’t read everything wrong. Sirius black was a force of nature, and Remus would have to hope that he didn’t get caught up in the storm and drown. But it was a slippery slope, and Remus was already descending.