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“Okay, my turn,” Mary says, settling back into the circle with a triumphant flourish, bottle swinging in one hand. Her cheeks are already flushed from drinking and laughing, but her voice is steady enough to make it clear she’s about to cause some troubles.
She plops onto the rug, cross-legged and grinning wide. “Never have I ever… slept with a Muggle and accidentally used a lubricant spell.”
Laughter bursts out around the circle before the words even sink in. Barty groans and rolls his eyes, but obediently raises his glass and takes a long sip. There’s no shame, just a smirk playing at the corner of his mouth. Of course he has.
Mary winks at him, but the real surprise is Peter, who quietly lifts his drink and takes a sip too.
That gets a louder reaction.
“What?” he says, grinning. “We all have a past!”
“Apparently yours is filthier than we thought,” James says, raising his eyebrows.
Peter shrugs, and the group roars with laughter. The game continues, the circle shifting, bottles being passed around, bodies lounging and leaning against one another like they’ve done this a dozen times before, because they have. No secrets in this circle. Not really.
Then it’s Marlene’s turn.
She leans back on one hand, drink in the other, eyes sparkling with mischief. Her voice is cool, loud enough to cut across the chatter, and just cocky enough to make people sit up. “Never have I ever been with Remus Lupin.”
There’s a beat.
Then, like dominoes it falls and the drinks go up.
James drinks first, predictably smug. Evan follows, then Barty, taking another sip with no explanation needed. Then Regulus raises his cup, casually avoiding Sirius' gaze. Lily sips, then Dorcas. Then Gideon, chuckling under his breath. Mary lifts hers like she’s toasting him, and Pandora follows with a smile.
All in order.
And it’s so casual, so smooth, that it takes a second for the room to realize what just happened.
Remus blinks, then lets out a laugh, half in disbelief. He runs a hand down his face. “Oh, bloody hell.”
The room erupts again, laughter bouncing off the walls. Even Remus can’t help it, his cheeks are hot but he’s grinning. He should’ve seen it coming.
That leaves only three people who haven’t taken a sip: Marlene herself who was clearly just stirring the pot; Peter who has been in a long relationship with some girl he won't reveal the identity of; and Sirius.
Remus lifts an eyebrow at her, and she meets his look with a grin like a cat who just knocked something off the shelf on purpose.
“Not my fault you can’t keep it in your pants, Lupin,” she says, entirely too proud of herself.
The group loses it again. James falls sideways into Lily, wheezing. Gideon raises his cup toward Remus like it’s some kind of medal of honor. Remus groans and tips his head back against the sofa, hiding his face with both hands, but he’s laughing along with them.
It’s not malicious, not awkward. Just chaotic, affectionate teasing. This is what they do. No one’s keeping score. No one’s judging.
He’s had history with some of them; snogs, a few drunken hook-ups, maybe more but it was all harmless and affectionate. Temporary connections in a tangle of close friendships and too many shared dorms. Nothing dramatic, nothing lingering. They were just young, curious, tipsy, and far too comfortable around each other.
Marlene’s joke could’ve landed differently if this were another group. But not here. Not with them. These are the people who’ve seen him at his worst, post-moon, hungover, heartbroken; and still handed him a blanket or a cup of tea without question. So what if a few of them have also seen him shirtless in other circumstances?
Remus lifts his head, finally, catching Sirius’ eye across the circle.
He’s not drinking.
Remus watches him subtly out of the corner of his eye. He’s still stiff, still quiet, jaw still locked like it’s holding back words. Remus wonders what those words would be, if there are any. If he’s biting them back because he’s angry, or shocked, or... jealous?
That last thought creeps in slowly, unwelcome, but persistent.
Could Sirius be jealous?
He doubts it. It would be easy to assume, easy to imagine, but he knows Sirius better than that. Knows how he plays the long game of emotional denial. Still — the idea plants itself like a weed and refuses to be pulled.
And if he was jealous?
Well.
Remus wouldn’t mind.
Because it wasn’t like he didn’t notice the way Sirius looked at him sometimes. Like something unsaid hung in the air between them. But Sirius never crossed the line. Never touched him the way others had. Never said anything that couldn’t be twisted into a joke. And Remus, who had long ago learned how to keep secrets even from himself, had never asked for more.
But now, the air is different. Charged.
This wasn’t about the game anymore. It was about the moment after. The way people look at you once they’ve learned something they didn’t expect to know. The way the room tilts. And the way Sirius hasn’t looked at him at all since Marlene said his name.
Remus shifts slightly, reaching for his drink, not to play, just to busy his hands. He’s very aware of the warmth still in his cheeks, the weight of all those looks from across the circle. Most of them have already moved on, laughing about some joke James just made, but the damage is done. The spell is cast.
He tells himself it doesn’t matter. That it’s all in good fun. That everyone’s stories are messy, and this doesn’t mean anything.
But still, the image of Sirius lingers in his mind.
The clenched jaw.
The untouched drink.
And the smallest chance, just the smallest, that tonight might change something.
The game moves on, and to everyone else the mood stays light. Someone spills something, someone else tries to eat crisps off the floor without their hands. Remus watches it all with a warm, fizzy kind of fondness in his chest. It’s always like this with them. Noisy, messy, a little inappropriate, but never cruel. Just them, tangled up in each other’s lives, their laughter echoing off the walls like a charm.
At some point, Remus ends up stretched out on the carpet, head resting against Lily’s leg while Pandora braids something small into his hair. Sirius is sitting close now, close enough that Remus can feel the heat from his knee.
They’re not touching, but the not-touching feels deliberate.
Maybe later they’ll talk, maybe they won’t. Maybe it doesn’t need to go anywhere, and maybe it already has.
That night, Remus lays in his bed. The marauders apartment is, for the first time ever probably, completely silent. The wind pushes through the window and plays with the curtains as Remus lays with his eyes wide and watches it happen.
He thinks back to the game, has he truly been with all of them in some way except for Sirius? He doesn't recall holding hands with Padfoot let alone anything more.
He thinks back, wondering if it could somehow be his fault but nothing comes up.
It just seems that it's never the right moment with Sirius.