InsaneJournal

Who: Remus and Sirius
What: Remus is back! Also known as; 'Sirius ends up completely whipped within about half an hour.'
When: Sunday 23rd, late afternoon.
Where: Their flat
Rating/Warnings: PG-13. For language and discussions of filth.
Status: Complete.

Sirius had transformed in some half-arsed attempt to escape some of the coiled, angry energy that was pent up in his chest. He was sick of this, sick of sitting and waiting and hoping. Sick of wondering why Regulus had been back, but Remus was still gone. Every moment his thoughts had become more and more frantic, everything looking darker and bleaker until he’d finally snapped and thrown a half-drunk mug of tea at the wall, leaving a satisfying stain on the paint and shards of blue crockery scattered over the kitchen floor. Then he had transformed, retreated to where his emotions weren’t so complex and the tension didn’t make him feel like he was about to explode out of himself. Now a large, black and slightly hungover dog lay beside the couch, dark eyes watching the window and the eerily empty sky.

Merlin. He hated this. He’d almost preferred the time he’d died. Then at least he hadn’t been left behind, floating aimlessly and feeling so fucking helpless.

Then the door opened, and Padfoot’s head snapped up like it was on a spring, ears perking upright, tail thumping on the floor.

And thank fuck.

Padfoot scrambled to all four feet, transformed back into a tall, lean boy mid-stride, and then Sirius threw himself at Remus with all the force and none of the care of the Hogwarts Express, his momentum sending them both stumbling back a step. He couldn’t breathe. The sheer emotion was strangling him completely and making his eyes burn and his heart swell until it was far too big and hammering against his ribs. He wanted to cry, but Sirius Black hadn’t cried in years and he wasn’t about to start now. So instead he clung to Remus like a lifeline, long fingers clenched in the other boys shirt as he struggled against the blood rushing through his veins.

Sirius pressed his face into his best friends shirt and took a deep, shuddering breath that smelt so much like Remus it almost tore him apart all over again. “You stupid bastard,” he managed gruffly, speaking into the curve of the others’ shoulder. “You stupid, fucking, werewolf twat.”

Waking up had been strange and disconcerting. Remus had kept expecting to see blood on his clothes or to feel the pain of that piece of metal. But he had been fine, or physically fine at any rate. Mentally, it was quite another story. He felt jittery, like he had during the war, and he kept expecting something awful to happen. He had vague recollections of a conversation, though he couldn’t remember the particulars of whom he had spoken with or the topic, save that it had been important somehow. The one thing he did know was that he hadn’t come back to life for free. There was a large empty space inside of him, something that was distinctly missing. It hurt, though in a metaphysical way, and he felt smaller, as if her were somehow less without whatever was gone.

He went to apparate back to the flat when it hit him. It was like a piece of information slotting into place, like the answer to a question finally coming just after you had given up thinking about it. His magic. That piece that was gone was his magic. He could feel the space where it had been like a tangible presence. But it was more than that. He knew, without a shadow of doubt, that he wouldn’t change with the full moon. He was as normal and human as a man could be. And he ached with it. He’d lost so much of what had defined him, and he wasn’t sure what to make of the bits that were left because they didn’t quite add up right and he felt strangely hollow.

The suits of armour directed him out of the library, and he made his way to his flat in silent contemplation. He was still unsettled, but he knew he would feel at least a little better once he had some time to regroup. His thoughts were all over the place, on the fact that he had died and on the war back home. Noises startled him and he jumped at movements out of the corner of his eye, unable to completely control the slowly rising tide of panic that threatened to drag him under. By the time he reached the flat he had gotten himself mostly under control, but he realised even as his hand turned the knob that he had forgotten something crucial.

Sirius. He hadn’t even thought about how the other man would react, and now he was afraid to push open the door and see the results of his death. He wasn’t entirely sure what would bother him more, a reaction or none. It wasn’t that he wanted Sirius to be hurting, quite the opposite, but he selfishly wanted him to have some sort of reaction so he could know he meant something to him. He wanted to smack himself for even thinking it, and he pushed the door open with a sense of trepidation. He took a second to register the sight of Padfoot with a pang at his chest at the realisation that he couldn’t share that with Sirius anymore. Then, almost before the thought was complete, Sirius was human again and his arms were full of the other man, almost bowled over by the force of the embrace. It was too much, the way so many things with Sirius were, and his chest tightened with regret and relief simultaneously. For the first time since he’d come back, he felt almost like himself again. He hugged back tightly, resting his head against Sirius’s shoulder and fisting his hands in the other man’s shirt.

“I’m sorry,” he said softly, his voice breaking. “I’m sorry, Sirius. I’m so sorry. I tried, but they...I’m sorry.” He couldn’t seem to stop apologising, no matter how he tried to stop the flow of words. Then one word from Sirius got through, tearing a strange hybrid of a sob and a laugh from his throat. Werewolf. He wasn’t sure if he was relieved or devastated as more words tumbled out of his own mouth. “But...I’m not.” He spoke almost inaudibly against the fabric of Sirius’s shirt. “I’m...not. Not anymore.” And he wasn’t sure he knew how not to be what he’d been for almost his whole life. “It’s gone. All of it is gone and...I don’t...I don’t know...” And he trailed off and just held even more tightly to Sirius, shaking with confusion and an overwhelming mix of emotions and clinging to the one point of certainty he had left.

Sirius had his teeth gritted against everything, bringing in great lungfuls of air which burnt and released some of the tension across his chest as Remus’ arms wrapped tightly around him, holding on just as hard as Sirius was. As if one of them would slip away again and leave the other if they dared to let go, and that hole… that open, gaping wound that had been burning deep in the animagus’ chest started to finally close up. He didn’t hurt for the first time in days, and it frightened Sirius, how bloody dependant he had clearly become on Remus, how losing him had destroyed him and left him completely hopeless and vulnerable. Left him floating. Then the other man was speaking, words tumbling into Sirius’s shoulder in some babbling rush, and he held tighter for a moment before reluctantly peeling away.

Sirius leaned into Remus to make up for their height difference, dark eyes frantically searching out blue, his fingers tight enough around the others upper arms to probably hurt. But he wasn’t ready to let go yet.

“What’s gone?” he asked, confusion and obvious concern breaking through the hoarse edge of his words. “All of what? Remus?” Because Sirius knew Remus well enough to recognize there was something very wrong with him. He could tell from the way he seemed to sag against him, the tightness of his words and tension in his lean frame. Sirius had an odd feeling that he knew what was different, but he needed to hear it, and then Sirius rather wanted to wrap him up, to keep him safe with him so nothing could ever happen again and they could just stay in here, drinking tea and coffee and bickering and laughing.

“Are you alright?” he added, urgency creeping into his tone. Because clearly Remus wasn’t alright, but Sirius couldn’t help letting one slightly shaking hand skim down to brush against the parts that had been torn from Remus by the splinching, moving over to touch his fingertips carefully against the spot where that jagged piece of metal had been nestled in his chest. But he didn’t find anything, just warmth and solid flesh and a quick, faint heartbeat, and he felt relief send his head spinning again. Keeping a palm pressed against the other boys chest, reassuring them both, Sirius released a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding, sagging forward again to touch his forehead against Remus’ and letting them hold each other up.

It hurt but Remus didn’t care, because feeling anything - even if that anything was the sort of pain that came from Sirius squeezing him too tightly, the sort that promised there would be bruises later - was a relief at this point. Pain was just another sign that he was alive, and he would take anything he could get. His death had scared him, more than he really wanted to admit, because it brought his mortality into sharp relief. The war had come with the knowledge, at least in theoretical terms, that people could die - and others died often enough that the idea was and ever-present one. But nobody really believed they themselves would die, either out of misplaced optimism or foolish arrogance; or perhaps it was some combination of the two that made people blind to the ephemeral nature of their existence. Remus couldn’t be sure what it was. All he knew was that he had died and it made him realise just how fleeting life really was. Life and so many other things besides.

He didn’t want to answer Sirius’s question, and when he did the words were hushed and shaky. “I don’t remember,” he began, stopping and then starting again. “I talked to someone, but I don’t remember who or what or...I woke up in the library and I tried to apparate back to the flat but-” He shook his head and swallowed to try and make his throat less dry. It felt like a desert and he wasn’t sure how he was still speaking. “I don’t have any magic, Sirius. It’s gone. And...the wolf isn’t...it isn’t there. I don’t know how I know that, but I do.” He looked up at Sirius, wide-eyed and shaken, feeling terribly lost. He knew that he should feel relief at not having to deal with his curse anymore, but the werewolf had been a part of him for so long that he didn’t know quite how to cope with out.

“I really don’t know,” he admitted when Sirius asked if he was all right. “I mean...I should be. I know I should be glad or grateful or...I don’t know...happy? And I’m glad to be alive. I’m glad to be here again with you, but-” He close his eyes and took a deep breath. “I’m not...I don’t feel like myself anymore. There’s something that’s gone and it’s left this huge bloody space and I feel like it’s eating away at me and I just...I feel like I came back wrong somehow.” He buried his head in the hollow between Sirius’s neck and shoulder with a quiet sob, shoulders shaking as he clung to the other man like a lifeline. He felt like he was fracturing in places, slowly breaking apart, and he needed Sirius to hold him together.

With each word from Remus, Sirius was quite sure his heart was breaking. Just shattering right there, a few steps inside his own doorway. And as much as he wanted to have Remus look after him, reassure him that he was here, alive, and not lying empty and cold in some room in the clinic, he knew he had to be the strong one. After all, he was fine, mostly, while Remus was breaking and Sirius couldn’t expect him to shoulder anything else. He was used to that, burying his emotions down to stew poisonously as he carried on. How else had he managed sixteen years in that house? And he was confused, of course he was. Everything he’d ever known, everything he’d seen told him Remus should be happy to be free of the thing that had plagued him for so long. The wolf was brutal, ripping Remus apart month after month and hurting him each and every time. In Sirius’ head, Remus and the monster had always been two separate things, unfortunate enough to be shoved together in that one dynamic frame. And though he had to admit full moons had often been the best part of school career, he knew which of the two he’d rather have back here.

But he couldn’t say that. So Sirius swore under his breath and wrapped his arms back around the boy leaning against him, one hand curling gently through Remus’ hair as he stared at the closed door and waited until the other man had recovered enough to listen to him. “You’re not wrong,” Sirius finally breathed. “You’re fine, Remus. You’re perfect, okay?” He eased the shorter boy away, forcing him to meet his gaze. Sirius face was open, sincere. And he was quite sure he’d have ripped his own heart out at the moment if it would fix this. “I’ve got you. And we’ll figure it out. We always do, yeah? It’ll be fine.” He didn’t know how, but Sirius would always have moved heaven and earth to help his friends, loyal to a fault, and this was killing him. So he’d fix it. Or at least try and stop it hurting.

“Come on.” Sirius led Remus gently to the sofa, sitting him down and pressing his lips briefly to the top of his head before backing out – he didn’t want to look away until he absolutely had to - and heading to the kitchen, finding cigarettes and silently boiling water to make a cup of strong tea. A moment later, Sirius was back, placing both items before Remus and settling next to him, long legs curled under his body as he reached out to push stray strands of fair hair off Remus’ forehead, a gesture that was so far from his usual wild, chaotic behaviour, but was completely automatic. Then he leaned forward, resting his forehead on the others shoulder and letting his eyes close, breathing him in. “Merlin, I missed you.” A pause. “I’m so fucking sorry, Moony.”

A nickname that should, in light of the circumstances, be changed. But Sirius knew it never would.

He knew Sirius couldn’t possibly understand how he felt. Hell, he couldn’t quite understand it really. By all rights he should have been thrilled to be rid of the pain and the uncertainty and the secrets and lies and constant danger that came part and parcel of the wolf. But he wasn’t, and he couldn’t be. He’d been a werewolf for fourteen years, the majority of his life. He’d been a wizard for all of that time and more. To not be those things any more left him with a large space that he couldn’t possibly fill. He just didn’t know how to explain that to Sirius. Still, he knew he had to at least try. Sirius deserved that much from him, and if he understood maybe it would help things. The other man shouldn’t have to shoulder his burdens. That had always been Remus’s place, to keep calm and carry on no matter how much it grated some days. And he could do that. He just needed to pull himself together. He closed his eyes and forced himself to breathe through his indecision and confusion, gathering his thoughts as he did so.

But Sirius was speaking before he could, and he couldn’t focus on anything beyond the words and the other man’s eyes on his, his hands a point of constant contact where they touched him. It made him feel warm inside in ways that were still strange and a little unsettling but unquestionably wonderful, and he found himself nodding almost without conscious thought. “Okay,” he agreed softly. “All right, Sirius. You’ve got me...you always have me. And we’ll work it out, of course we will. You’re right.” And he wanted to believe it so desperately, because he had to believe that this horrible feeling inside of him could be exorcised if he just had enough faith in the man in front of him. Of course, Sirius had a way of making him feel like anything was possible with just a flash of his cocky smile, so perhaps he wasn’t the best judge of these things. “Not sure about ‘perfect’,” he said after a moment, his smile hesitant but there. “Think you might be a bit mental on that one. But I’ll take fine. I can be fine.” Of course he could. He was always fine, even when he wasn’t.

He sat down and watched with bemusement as Sirius gave him tea and cigarettes. It wasn’t the first time Sirius had made him tea, but it was still such a novel experience. The substance in the cup looked like tea and smelled like tea and, when he took a sip, it even had a distinctly tea-like flavour, but if he hadn’t watched Sirius make it, he might never have believed it. He took out one of the cigarettes, but realised he didn’t have a lighter. He’d always lit his cigarettes with a simple spell, wandless and wordless, but that wasn’t something he could do now. He’d have to get a lighter. He could feel his stomach drop a little as he thought about all the little ways his life had changed and the hand holding his cigarette shook slightly, until he set the cylinder down long enough to take a calming sip of tea before picking it up again. “Could you give me a light?” he asked Sirius finally, feeling ill at ease with the need to ask for help.

“I know you don’t understand why it upsets me,” he said. “And I know I ought to be happy not to be a werewolf any more. But...I was six when Greyback bit me, and I’ve been a werewolf going on fifteen years. It’s practically all I’ve ever known. Between that and the magic...there’s so much of me that’s just...not there any more. And I’m not quite sure how to adjust. I don’t know how to just be a normal person. And it scares me a little. More than a little, actually.” He paused a moment. “But I do remember...well, I don’t remember everything about the conversation...but I remember there was a choice. I could give that up or...” He tried to remember what the other thing had been. “This place. I could forget everything that happened here...maybe more than that. Or I could stay where I was.” He looked over at Sirius, suddenly nervous at the implications of what he was about to say. “Staying dead was never something I would consider. And I didn’t want to forget the things that have happened here. I didn’t want to forget them. I didn’t want to forget about you.” He looked down at his hands. “I missed you. Terribly. It was awful and...I don’t want to do that again.” When Sirius apologised, he looked at him in wide-eyed confusion. The name hurt a little, but he brushed that aside. “Why are you apologising, Sirius? You don’t have anything to apologise for.”

Sirius silently lit the cigarette, feeling a shiver of regret that he hadn’t thought about that before. There was definitely a muggle lighter kicking around the flat somewhere – Eames had given it to the Azkaban Sirius when he’d been here without his wand. He’d dig it out for Remus later. The dark haired man quietly, absently drawing one knee up to his chest and hugging it to him as he watched Remus like a hawk, intense, dark stare not leaving the profile of his friends face. He knew he was being paranoid, knew this was quite possibly how stalkers and their subsequent prison stretches started, but he didn’t care. Regulus had come back and come and gone without dissolving into nothing, and the chances of Remus being the one who would buck the trend of staying alive were almost nil. But after weeks of having people torn away from him, Sirius wasn’t about to take a chance. So he made sure he didn’t look away, was always touching him, even if it was just a shoulder or a tiny point of contact.

When Remus began to speak, Sirius’ head had still been resting gently on his shoulder, and he pulled it up to look at him. At one moment, he cocked and eyebrow and attempted a grin, trying to inject some normality into this conversation. “We’ll have to scour the streets for a normal person to give us advice. No one we know’d be any good.” Then Remus was talking again, and Sirius stole the cup of tea he’d just made and took a hearty gulp, burning his mouth as always.

But then the words, and what they meant, hit him like a bludger and that time he really did choke on the stolen tea. Remus had given it up, the wolf and his magic, for this. At least partially. Sacrificed it for him and the odd, delicate, secret thing that they shared between these walls. His friend was feeling like this because he’d chosen that and that revelation made his stomach curl at the edges with guilt and something else close to happiness. There was a burning pressure in his chest again, and Sirius was hastily placing the cup of tea on the coffee table, ignoring Remus’ final question for the moment because there were more important – more impulsive - things to be doing. Then long fingers were tugging on the other boys collar and he leaned in to kiss him. Hard.

“Uh…” he managed, when he pulled back a long minute later, staying close enough for Remus’ breath to warm his cheek. Sirius’ own breath was coming a little short. “I’m not sure. For not being there when it happened. For thinking you wouldn’t come back. I don’t know… But if you ever pull this dying caper on me again, Lupin, I’m going to kick the shit out of you.” Then he kissed him again, because that was all he could think to do.

“Thank you.” What else was there to say? Remus certainly couldn’t think of anything. Instead, he brought the cigarette up to his lips and took a long drag. It felt like it had been weeks, and he supposed it had even though he had been dead for most of that time. He vaguely wondered how addiction worked with death, but decided that might be overthinking things even for him. He could feel Sirius’s eyes on him the whole time, intense and focused like a laser burning him, and it was somewhat overwhelming. He didn’t mind though, and he certainly understood why his friend would be watching him like that. If it had been Sirius to die, he had no doubt he would have been hard-pressed to take his eyes off him once he came back. And in some ways it was almost a comfort. After all, if he could feel embarrassed and uncomfortable from Sirius’s stare, that just meant that he was alive to feel those things.

He laughed at Sirius’s comment, an awkward weak sound almost as if he had forgotten how. “Do they bring normal people here?” he asked after a moment. “I don’t believe I’ve ever met one. And I imagine taking advice from the locals would just be a bad idea. Might end up a pod-person if I do that. And that would be a fate worse than death...speaking as someone who knows.” And of course he could joke about death less than an hour after coming back from the dead. He was a Marauder after all and just as mental as James and Sirius. Remus was finally relaxing a bit, the tension in his shoulders easing as he finished his cigarette in silence. The nicotine helped, but mostly it was Sirius’s presence that made him feel calmer than when he’d first come back. “I suppose any muggle would do,” he acknowledged at last. “There’s no rule stating I have to be a normal one.”

He was about to scold Sirius for drinking too fast and burning his mouth and several other things, like tea-theft and apparently trying to commit suicide by way of hot beverages. He was about to do all of that, but then Sirius was kissing him and he completely forgot about anything else in favour of kissing back. This was what he had needed, without even knowing he had needed it. The hard press of Sirius’s mouth against his convinced parts of him he hadn’t even been aware of, parts that thought this was maybe just another part of the afterlife, that this was indeed real and he was actually alive. Everything from when he had been dead, from the bits he could remember, had been muted somehow and slightly off. This was nothing at all like that. It was painfully wonderful and Remus really wanted to just sod breathing because breathing was incredibly stupid and he’d rather just keep kissing Sirius forever. But he imagined suffocation via kissing would be an incredibly awkward way to die and would most likely earn him a lecture. Probably from Hermione.

“Stop,” he said when Sirius started speaking. “Just stop apologising. Don’t apologise for anything. I much prefer that kissing thing we were doing a moment ago, so if we could get back to that, I would really appreciate it.” At the comment about dying again, he nodded. “You know how I hate to repeat myself. Doing it twice would just be boring.” Then Sirius was kissing him again and it was just as brilliant, but he pushed him back and looked at him for a moment. “So that taking it as we go idea we had...or you had, I guess...” He paused for a moment, still catching his breath from the kiss. “That was a really bloody stupid idea.” Then he kissed Sirius, moving closer so that he was practically straddling the other man. God, it was good to be alive, if being alive meant he could do things like this.

Sirius was quite sure a hoard of Hippogriffs could have come charging through their sitting room at that moment and he wouldn’t have had a bloody clue. Sirius had never been too big a fan of thinking anyway – something his professors could attest to – so this was really working out quite well for him, this kissing malarkey. It wasn’t any different now that Remus didn’t have magic, wasn’t a werewolf, had been stabbed by an alien and splinched and brought back to life. He was still Remus. He still smelled the same, tasted the same, felt the same. Perhaps better, because there had been those days where Sirius’ morbid brain had managed to convince him he’d never even see the other boy again, let alone do this. Then Remus was pulling back again and Sirius heard himself make a mildly embarrassing noise of protest as they lost contact. Pouting in a particularly childish manner, the animagus slumped back against the back of the sofa, his brow suddenly furrowing a falsely insulted frown.

“I don’t have stupid ideas!” he defended himself, “It just takes you lot a while to realize how incredibly not stupid they a-“ But Remus had kissed him again, which rather ruined his attempts at being insulted. Sirius grinned against his mouth and snaked an arm around the other boy’s waist, pulling Remus more firmly on top of him so he had to crane his neck to meet him, long dark hair getting caught between.

“Anyway,” Sirius’ attention had moved down to the fascinating point on Remus throat where a pulse fluttered reassuringly, feeling the speed of it beneath his lips and giving a smug, triumphant grin against the curve of the other boys neck. “Did you have a better plan? I’m open to suggestions.” Although it didn’t seem particularly fair to bring this up now, where Sirius was in a position where would pretty much agree to almost everything Remus said.

“You have incredibly stupid ideas,” Remus assured Sirius with a fond smile. “It’s part of your charm. I like your stupid ideas most of the time. It’s just that this one could do with some improvement.” He got a bit distracted by the kissing, but resolved to press on even as he was distracted by the feel of Sirius underneath him. It was nice, being this close to him, and something he had thought he might never feel again. He was glad to be wrong on that score. Trying to focus in spite of Sirius’s mouth against his neck, he took a deep breath and forced himself to calm down. They were talking and he wasn’t going to be distracted by Sirius’s wiles. He felt a little bad about comparing his best friend to some sort of femme fatale in a noir detective novel, even if it was just in the safety of his own mind, but Sirius most definitely had wiles.

“I actually do have a better plan,” he said, pulling away enough that he could rest his forehead against Sirius’s and not be distracted by things happening to his neck as he tried to talk. “I wrote up a whole argument for why my plan is better. There’s charts and diagrams and possibly a graph or two...and I’m realising even as I say this that flaunting my neuroses by pointing out my propensity for chart-making while trying to convince you a relationship would be a good idea is probably a misstep as far as these things go. But I did...make charts and diagrams and a well-constructed argument in favour of my point...but I can’t be bothered to go get them because I really like where I am right now. A lot actually.” He realised about this time that he was babbling, and forced himself to stop. “The point is...my point is...we should give that new-fangled relationship thing a shot. It worked well enough for Prongs and Evans...not that I’m saying I want to marry you or have a sprog - physical impossibilities of that aside - or anything like that. I just think it might be nice to date you. You know...go on dates. Snog regularly...or even semi-regularly. Do...other things. What do you think?”

Remus’ forehead touched his, giving them both a chance to catch their breath and let Sirius focus on letting his heartbeat slow down a little. One eyebrow cocked meaningfully at the first mention of charts – Remus loved charts in a way that could only be called unnatural - and remained stubbornly raised throughout the rest of Remus’ adorable, but rambling speech, a slightly baffled smirk curling upwards at the corner of Sirius’ mouth. As he spoke, one hand absently slipped under Remus’ shirt and he ran a thumb gently over the ridge of his hip. Mainly because Sirius had quickly decided that a new favourite game of his was simply distracting Remus from whatever bloody sensible and boring thing the fair-haired boy was trying to talk to him about. Especially when they’d just been doing something that had been a hell of lot more interesting and enjoyable, even if Remus was irritatingly attractive when he was all unsure and babbling.

Sirius’ eyebrow dropped and a frown crumpled his brow as he sagged back, letting his head loll back on the back of the sofa to fix Remus with a ‘really?’ look, which was about as much as he could manage with the other on top of him. “You do remember me, right?” he checked, because Remus had seen Sirius’ very occasional attempts at having a relationship, and the inevitable aftermaths, which were usually rather messy and involved girls crying and screaming at each other breakfast. Add the howler one of them usually received and breakfast had quite often been the rowdiest part of the Marauders day. Sirius sighed, dropping the hand which had been tracing an absent pattern over Remus’ hipbone. “Are you sure?” Because if Remus asked it of him, he’d try. He really, really would. He’d have done anything the other boy asked of him without a second thought, but his own confidence in his self-control wasn’t huge, and if he hurt him he didn’t think he could forgive himself.

“Although…” Sirius tried to dispel his own disconcertion with a crooked, arrogant smile, leaning forward and tilting his jaw to get close to Remus, lips brushing against the others as he spoke. “I am interested in these other things you mentioned… And as long as ‘dates’ mean annoying the fuck out of Prongs and pranking Snape and Merlin I could probably get behind that...”

Remus could see what Sirius was doing, and god help him if it wasn’t working. It was hard to focus, harder than it had already been considering he was already babbling and stumbling over his words, with Sirius touching him the way he was. He had to resist the urge to grab the man’s hands and pin them down just so he could say what he needed to without interruption. Of course, knowing Sirius, his friend would just take that as a challenge, and Remus wasn’t sure he wanted so see how creative Sirius was willing to be in his efforts to distract him. He had no doubt the other man would succeed and, as enjoyable as that might be, he didn’t want to be distracted right now. They needed to have this talk. He felt like this was the only thing he really had left, and he needed to sort it out or he knew they would lose it.

“I do remember you,” he said softly. “But I think that’s why this will work. I know you, Sirius, better than anyone else. And you know me. This isn’t like the other times. Just give this a chance, please.” He leaned forward to kiss Sirius again, just a quick brush of lips. “I’m completely sure about this,” he said. “Because you and me...we’re good together. So this will work. It just makes sense.” He was good at being sensible and logical, so if he was saying this would work it had to be true, right? He hoped so in any case. He pulled back and looked at Sirius, nervous about what the other man might say. “We can try this, right? We can give it a shot at least?”

He really didn’t want to get distracted by Sirius’s lips, but he couldn’t help leaning forward slightly to kiss him for a long moment. And honestly, he had a better shot of convincing Sirius this way, and he wasn’t ashamed to use some wiles of his own. “By dates, I mean the things we normally do,” he said, moving his mouth down along Sirius’s jaw to his neck. “Dinner, watching films, harassing Prongs...but with more of this involved.” And Sirius not going around shagging random birds. “What do you think?”

Sirius’ perfect hair was more than a little crumpled, two spots of flushed colour decorated his high cheekbones and his lips were kind of swollen. In a good way. For a moment he thought he might be able to get out of this conversation when Remus leaned in to kiss him yet again, but then the other boy was trailing a burning route down the line of his perfectly angled jaw and he couldn’t bite back the odd noise he made at the back of his throat. This wasn’t right, a voice piped up in the back of his head, was he actually letting Remus Lupin take advantage of him? Fuck that. He was supposed to be the sex pest here, not the other way round! Sirius made that odd noise in the back of his throat again – almost like a dog growling - and used his hip to nudge Remus off and into the seat beside him, quickly slinging a long, jean-clad leg over so he was in the more dominant position. Why did he get the feeling this power struggle was going to play quite a major role in future?

“I think,” Sirius replied, flashing a triumphant, winning grin down at the other man from his newly elevated position, “that if you’d been this persuasive at Hogwarts whenever you had a point, I would have spent a lot less time bored out of my mind in detention.” Because Sirius couldn’t count the number of times Remus had thought something was a stupid idea, and then had ended up giving him and James an ‘I told you so’ look when they sloped back from another two hours spent with Filch. Leaning down to press his lips hard against the other boys, Sirius took the moment of silence to think. Which was a revelation in itself.

Remus was his best mate. Like he’d said, they knew each other better than anyone, and he knew he could spend time with him. And there was very clearly a physical thing here he certainly didn’t want to ignore. What more could he really ask for? Of course, he liked sleeping around. He liked the thrill of chatting people up in bars and that awkward moment before you kissed them for the first time and everything that came with it. But he also liked Remus. A lot. And he’d lost him for a while there and it had nearly completely destroyed him and he couldn’t do that again.

Finally, breathing heavily, he pulled back a fraction, nose brushing Remus’. “I can’t help but feel you’re manipulating me with snogging,” Sirius pointed out, “Although I’m actually alright with that.” There was a moment of silence as Sirius took another breath, a wicked grin coiling at the corner of his mouth as he came, cautiously, to a decision. ”Fuck it. Why not? I’ll give it a shot. Although shotgun not telling Prongs.”

Remus couldn’t help but wonder if he’d lost the advantage when he suddenly found himself on his back with Sirius on top of him, but he was hardly complaining. On the contrary, there was absolutely nothing wrong with his current position. He was twenty years old and he was a red-blooded man; whatever some people might think of him, he enjoyed sex. The problem had always been that he didn’t trust himself because of the wolf, and that was one good thing about losing it. He felt like he could trust himself for the first time.

“And I think this tactic never would have worked on James,” Remus pointed out with a laugh, “so it’s a moot point. After all, he was our mastermind, as you may recall. And if I’d just used it on you, he and Peter would have felt terribly left out.” He let Sirius kiss him, but wrapped a hand around the back of his neck so he couldn’t pull away. Sirius could break the hold if he wanted to - and Remus realised that for the first time Sirius could probably take him in a fight, a fact which was more intriguing than anything - but he doubted he would want to. Remus took control of the kiss, drawing it out until the need for oxygen became almost painful before pulling away.

When Sirius called him out on manipulating him, Remus just gave him a cheeky smile. “Well, in the entirely hypothetical event that I was manipulating you,” he said innocently, “I would hardly own up to it, now would I?” His grin faded into a shocked expression and then a shy, pleased smile when Sirius said that they could give a relationship a shot, but that expression quickly morphed into one of confusion when he started talking about shotguns and Dora. “Sirius!” he exclaimed, scandalised. “We are not shooting Prongs! If you want to avoid telling him awkward things, there are simpler ways to go about it! And anyway, where would you even get a shotgun in this batshit insane scenario.”

“When do we ever own up to anything?” Sirius pointed out, returning the grin, but then Remus’ face was falling, blue eyes widening out of shock, and Sirius settled back, still stubbornly planted on top of Remus and giving him a completely baffled, slightly amused stare. Then he reached behind him, found a cushion which had been pushed to the side at some point during the kissing session, and whacked Remus quite hard around the head with it. Because fuck it, just because he’d come back from the dead less than an hour (Or was it two hours? He had no idea how long they’d been doing this) ago, did not mean he would not have to pay the consequences of saying something really stupid.

“You’re a fucking idiot,” he told Remus seriously, still holding the cushion loosely. Then a grin cracked his features. Perhaps he’d been spending too much time with Eames and Ariadne, picked up too many phrases and picked them up wonky so he used them a bit weirdly. Like when Juno attempted to talk about Quidditch. But still. Sirius gave his usual bark of laughter, dropping the cushion to the floor and lifting his arms above his head in a stretch – the kind of gesture he’d known since the age of about sixteen drew admiring looks - as he grinned down on Remus beneath him.

“I’m just saying I’m not telling. And he’ll find out sooner or later, ‘cos I’m going to have to go around telling… other people. And you know how I am at keeping secrets from that bloke.” Sirius didn’t feel completely comfortable keeping things from James - the other boy knew every little detail about Sirius, after all. They told each other everything. But he’d definitely have to speak to Ariadne, for one. And that brunette waitress. He should probably tell Morgana and that blonde (Sarah, maybe?) should perhaps know… Sirius might have a hoard of people he was sharing a bed with, but he didn’t want any of them to get upset. It wasn’t as if he didn’t know their names or anything. At least, not usually. Sometimes. There was always the odd one...

“Or perhaps I could just tell everyone I’ve joined a monastery.” He pondered, his gaze doing that distant thing it often did when Sirius’ idiot brain took his thoughts on an impromptu trip down some random tangent. “Or have taken a vow of abstinence to try and strengthen my magic. I think they did that in the old days. Maybe. Or maybe I heard Binns wrong. They definitely did something mental… I think I got that wrong. Maybe they ate eggs. Anyway,” he smirked and reached down to ruffle the fair strands of Remus’ hair playfully, causing it to stick on end. “you’re telling him, Moony. Sorry.”

Remus wasn’t expecting to get smacked with a sofa cushion, or to be called an idiot, and he looked a bit gobsmacked for a moment. Sometimes it was hard to believe that Sirius wasn’t a muggle, what with how he acted so much like one sometimes. “What was that for?” he asked, shocked into laughter at the unexpected move on the other man’s part. It felt good to laugh, and he was completely unsurprised that Sirius had him laughing so soon after coming back from the dead. “Just how am I an idiot for not understanding an American muggle saying?” he asked. “And one you probably cocked up in the first place.” And that was possibly a bad choice of words, considering their current position, but he couldn’t be bothered to correct it. Besides, he liked his current position.

He rolled his eyes as Sirius intentionally stretched, bringing a hand up to poke him in the side. “I’m not one of your girls, prat,” he said affectionately. “I know what you’re doing when you do that. Not, of course, that I’m complaining, but you don’t have to show off for me. And it’s certainly not going to get you your way.” He raised his hand further, sitting up as much as he could, to run his fingers through Sirius’s hair. “Bloody hell, you’re gorgeous,” he said softly, before pulling Sirius down into a kiss. What could someone like Sirius possibly see in a skinny, pale boy like him? He couldn’t see it, but he was glad for it.

“So...you’ll be telling people then?” he asked hesitantly, because he hadn’t actually asked for exclusivity from Sirius and he was almost surprised to have gotten that from him. He was quiet for a moment, then he smiled shyly and kissed him again. “Good...I’m glad. I mean...I’m happy that you...that we’re doing this and that...you want to.” He laughed at his own awkwardness. “Merlin, look what you do to me. I can barely put a sentence together. It’s dreadful.” But he hardly sounded upset, too amused and genuinely happy for the emotion to have any place.

“Monastery, huh?” he asked in a teasing tone, returning to his earlier attentions at Sirius’s neck. “Is this what you think they get up in monasteries then?” He used a moment of distraction to topple them over so that he was once again on top and raised an eyebrow at Sirius. “I think you might want to do a bit more research on the topic, Mr. Black. Your conclusions are proving to be decidedly fallacious.” And he felt much better now that he had regained his mastery of the English language. “I think everyone knows you couldn’t be abstinent if you tried, Sirius.” Still the problem of telling James remained, no matter how he tried to ignore it. “I just don’t want to upset him,” he admitted. “It’s such an awkward situation all around. I worry that he’d think differently of us if he knew we were...” He gave Sirius a small smile. “But that’s just silly. It’s James and he’s our best friend no matter what. Besides, that would be like worrying about Harry thinking less of us just because I’m not the older me who married Dora. And I don’t think he would. Anyway, I wouldn’t change this for anything. Being the older me...the one who lost you...I don’t think I could bear it.”

“You’re an idiot,” Sirius told him, “because you thought I was planning on shooting our best mate. I mean… out of all the people here James would be, like… at least my fourth choice for a killing.” He looked seriously down on the other boy for a moment, then his mask broke and a grin cracked his features cheekily. Sirius’ sense of humour had often been a little... odd. But he liked to think that was what people found adorable. Then Remus was jabbing him in the side as he stretched and the dark haired boy gasped and feigned a look of insult, one hand massaging the point in his side where he’d been, in his mind, viciously attacked.

“But I like showing off,” he reminded Remus, then smiled smugly as fingers laced through his hair, for once not complaining about the ruining of his precious locks – they’d probably been ruined by all the sofa snogging anyway. “And weirdly… it does look like it’s helping me get my own way.” Bending to meet him, Sirius kissed Remus back eagerly, the grin still playing around the corners of his mouth. “Good genes,” he murmured against his mouth, “Created by years of evil inbreeding. Although you’re not too bad yourself, Lupin. And I bet your ancestors didn’t even have to sell their souls to the devil.”

Then they were separating and Sirius was settling back again, cocking his head to look down at the boy beneath him as he babbled on. Remus was honestly one of the most fascinating creatures Sirius had ever had the good luck to, well… straddle on a sofa. He was all long muscle and a faint scattering of freckles over soft features and just generally rather jumpable. Especially, for some mental reason, when his lips were touching the curve of his throat and he was talking like he’d swallowed a dictionary. God… The know-it-all professor thing should not do that to him. His attention somewhere else, Sirius barely realized he what was happening until his head jarred on the sofa a little as he was suddenly pushed back, Remus’ body close on top of his. “Ouch,” he complained, one hand coming to rub the back of his head as he pouted up at the other boy.

The animagus couldn’t help but scoff. “Killed by curtains,” he muttered. “How embarrassing. Anyway, I’m glad you’re you too. He wasn’t as much fun. I mean, I never did this with the other you,” he pointed out, fingers curling through the belt loops in Remus’ jeans. “And he took a photo of me when Regulus died my hair pink and then sent it to everyone, so any chance he had with me was cut off right there. And then there were exploding ink balloons...” Sirius smirked. “Okay, he was kind of fun.”

He leaned up as best he could, repeating Remus’ previous tactics and trailing his lips down towards the other boys collar, where a scar was only just hidden by the fabric. One hand slipped back under the hem of Remus’ shirt to find the curve of his hipbone again. “But if you want to leave the James thing for a while, that’s fine.” he told Remus’ neck. “And if you’d rather I can tell… certain people to shut up. Although I may slightly have already told Hermione about New Year. But apart from her it could always be… I don’t know.. just us two for a while.”

“You were talking about shotguns,” Remus insisted. “What exactly was I meant to think? I don’t understand muggle idioms.” He didn’t understand muggle anything, really. He felt a momentary sensation in his gut, a hollow feeling, as he reminded himself that he was, for all intents and purposes, a muggle now. These were things he would need to understand. But he resolved not to think about that just now, because it would only make him upset and he didn’t want to be upset. He was comfortable, lying here with Sirius, and he didn’t want anything mucking that up.

“You still don’t need to do it,” Remus assured him. “Not with me. There’s no point, when I know exactly why you’re doing it. Besides, you don’t need to do stupid things like that to get your way.” He ducked his head with a shy smile when Sirius complimented him, his face colouring with pleased embarrassment. He knew he wasn’t nearly on Sirius’s level in terms of looks, so it was somewhat gratifying that Sirius was attracted to him in spite of that. “It’s the werewolf thing,” he insisted with a grin. “All the scars and the sickliness are what make me deadly good looking. But I guess you’ll have to settle for me without that.” And it would be nice to sleep for a full moon and not wake up once a month with new scars added to his collection.

Remus grinned as he toppled Sirius back, rolling his eyes at the exclamation of pain. “Oh, you’re fine and you know it,” he said, ducking down to kiss Sirius again. It was a terribly addiction, this constant urge to kiss his boyfriend. Ha! His boyfriend. He felt giddy just thinking it. He knew the word was horribly immature and he cringed at it under normal circumstances, but in this instance he rather liked it. He wouldn’t ever admit to Sirius that he’d used the word, even in the safety of his own mind, but it was still there. Sirius was his boyfriend. It was weird and wonderful and Remus almost wanted to laugh. And then he did laugh at the ridiculous of what Sirius was saying.

“I should hope you never did this with older me,” he said. “For one, he was married with a kid. And for another, he was too old for you.” He smiled fondly. “And you won’t ever die by curtains if I can help it.” Just like he’d never go to Azkaban and James and Lily would never die and Harry would never grow up an orphan. He’d find a way to stop all of it. “But I will say with absolute certainty that you completely deserved anything he did to you, prank-wise. Just as you always ha-” He broke off as Sirius’s mouth moved along his throat, sighing contentedly. This was nice, except for the part where it completely interfered with his thinking. “No,” he said, trying his best to focus in spite of the things Sirius’s mouth was doing, “we’d best tell him, before he inevitably walks in on us and starts shrieking like a girl about how we’re damaging his oh so delicate eyes.” He pulled back from Sirius, though he could have happily continued all evening and gave him a small smile. “And we should probably tell him and Evans that I’m alive, else they’ll be terribly cross. We can continue this later.” And he fully intended to, once they’d told their friends he wasn’t dead anymore.

It was good that Remus was laughing. Sirius had always been able to make Remus laugh – it was probably half the reason the other boy hadn’t cracked him round the head with a heavy book yet. But if it had been him who’d had his magic ripped from him he’d doubted he’d have taken it so well. There’d almost certainly be swearing and shouting and a hole punched in the sitting room wall by now. But then Remus was always a lot more mild-mannered than Sirius, or at least not so aggressively explosive. It couldn’t be healthy, Sirius had thought more than once, being so composed all the time, so grounded and sensible. That was why he pushed for Remus to take part in his stupid jokes, to argue with him. Because Sirius was sure that if someone like Remus, who shouldered so much, didn’t have some kind of outlet then one day he’d just break completely. Then again, Sirius was hardly stable himself. Perhaps that was why this could, maybe, be a good thing. They could balance each other out.

“Protecting me from drapery?” Sirius grinned, one eyebrow raising. “I appreciate it, Moony.” But then he was focusing on the rather delightful taste of Remus’ throat, the flutter of his pulse beneath the pale skin. Sirius gave a muffled noise of protest, letting his teeth scrape teasingly over the spot where Remus’s neck met his shoulder, payback in the face of the accusation that he deserved anything like inky water balloons. Still, Sirius couldn’t help but groan in frustration as Remus pushed him away just as he was hitting his ‘let’s seduce Moony until he forgets his own name’ stride, instead fixing the other boy with a ‘look’. “We could always tell them you arrived back in the morning?” he offered hopefully, before rolling his eyes and squirming just enough to dislodge Remus from on top of him. It was a shame, and he suddenly felt a little chilly as cold air seemed to rush in on him.

“Ugh. Fine. Here’s the plan. Waltz into James and Lily’s. Be all; ‘Hey Prongs and Evans. I’m not dead. It’s just grand, isn’t it?’ Let Lily hug you and cry for a bit. Pretend we don’t see James hugging and crying. Then you go; ‘Oh, by the way, from now on Sirius will only be attempting to bed me. S’later.’ Then Lily will cry more, because she will realize what a mistake she made marrying Prongs now that my excellent arse and I are off the table.” Sirius did his best to untangle himself from the other boy, pausing for a moment to press his lips softly against Remus’ before continuing. “Anyway, then you whack something on the network so Granger and Harry know you’re back. Then back here and you can stop bloody talking and let me do whatever I want to you. Yes? Yes. Excellent.”

At some point during his master plan Sirius had scrambled to his feet and was now peering down at Remus with one eyebrow raised, hand reaching out to pull the other man to his feet.

“We’re not telling them I got back in the morning,” Remus insisted. “They’ll know you’re lying and they’ll be cross with us, and it’s better just to tell them now.” He listened to Sirius’s frankly terrible plan with a bemused smile, letting himself be pulled to his feet before he responded. “Well, that settles it,” he said. “You are never again making plans. Ever. That’s awful.” He shook his head, laughing. “One, we never pretend we don’t see James hugging and crying. It’s more fun to mock him ceaselessly. Two, I’m not saying it like that. It would be more ‘Oh, by the by, if you’re looking for me or Sirius, we’ll probably be shagging like rabbits for the foreseeable future’. Three, when Lily cries it will be both because she realised she missed out marrying the one of us who is actually sensible, and because she knows you’ve driven me absolutely mental if I’m settling into a relationship with you, negating the sensible bit. Now, James will be weeping from the pangs of unrequited love for you, and it will be terrible embarrassing and we will mock him, but not Lily.” He grinned. “Then I’ll put up a message so everyone else knows I’m alive and we proceed to the portion of the evening spent doing wicked things to one another. Sound like a plan?”

“Reeeemus,” Sirius whined, “You can’t use the phrase ‘shagging like rabbits’ and then make me leave the flat. That’s just cruel. I never took you for a cruel one.” Still, the pouting expression and the puppy-dog eyes were quickly replaced by an amused grin as he envisioned, and accepted, Remus’ revised plan. “He loves me. He better weep. Like a little girl. Perhaps we should bring a camera. Or a bonnet. Or both.” The end of the plan, however, was definitely something he could get behind. Which was a turn of phrase which threw up a thousand crude jokes in Sirius’ head, but he decided to perhaps save them for when they reached the Potters and he could make the maximum amount of people feel uncomfortable and awkward. One hand still linked with Remus’, Sirius shrugged carelessly, dark hair falling across his forehead. “I suppose that could work. If you’re lucky I might still be in the mood then. If our visit to the prematurely middle-aged, married couple hasn’t destroyed my sex drive. I might just fancy a cup of tea and an early night.”

Absolute bollocks, and they both knew it.

Sirius grinned wickedly, and then hesitated. Usually he just apparated downstairs into James and Lily’s sitting room. Then you had the possibility of startling one of them into falling out their chairs, mixed with the added bonus of not having to do any walking. But Remus couldn’t do that anymore, he reminded himself, trying not to let the strangeness of the situation show in his face. Not without holding onto him, anyway. This would take more getting used to than he had thought… And hadn’t Remus splinched last time he’d apparated? He wouldn’t blame him if he wanted to give it a miss. Sirius shrugged the sudden unease and concern off smoothly, hoping Remus hadn’t noticed the hesitation. “We walking?” he asked, his tone light-hearted. “Or you can risk my apparition skills?”

“I think you’ll find that I just did,” Remus said with a wicked smile. “And I’m terribly cruel, but you love it so don’t even pretend you don’t.” He shook his head at Sirius’s abrupt change in focus and patted him on the arm. “Yes, yes,” he agreed, “you and Prongs have a bromance that will never die.” He’d heard the word from Hermione, regarding her boyfriend and his best friend, and he was fairly certain he was using it correctly. “He’ll weep like a child and cling to your leg and I’ll take photographs for the purpose of blackmail. Basically, it will be the Prongs and Evans wedding all over again, but in reverse.” He raised an eyebrow at the notion that Sirius would ever turn down sex in favour of tea and an early night, then smiled wickedly. “I suppose if you want an early night, I’ll just have to get myself off. I’m sure you won’t mind, will you?”

The question about walking or apparating threw him for a moment, and he paled slightly at the memory of his last apparition. It hadn’t been pleasant, and he wasn’t quick to repeat the experience. Besides, side-alonging with Sirius would just serve as a reminder of what he could no longer do. He forced a smile and headed toward the door, glancing back at Sirius. “Let’s walk,” he said mischievously, because if he focused on teasing Sirius it would keep him from worrying too much. “They’re only a floor down, and you need to keep in shape for later.” He tossed a wink back at the other man, and then headed out of the flat and toward the stairs.

Sirius was more likely to snog Snape than he was to turn down an offer of sex, and he and Remus knew it only too well. Still, Sirius couldn’t help but think that one day Harry, Ron or Hermione would hear their Defence against the Dark Arts teacher making a sex or wanking joke and their heads would explode. He just hoped he was around to witness that. Still, even if Remus – sensible, quiet, kind Remus – was somehow turning out to be a bigger sex pest than Sirius could have ever hoped for, he had some pride. Ish. So the animagus cocked an eyebrow and did his best to look disinterested, and not like he was rather considering dragging Remus over to the bedroom and locking him in there permanently. He didn’t have magic now, after all. He wouldn’t escape. “I shared a dorm with you for seven years, Moony,” he pointed out. “It wouldn’t be anything I haven’t overheard before.”

Sirius knew Remus enough to recognize the slight paling, the way his shoulders tightened. He wasn’t surprised, didn’t blame him. To be completely truthful Sirius wasn’t a huge fan of the idea of Remus apparating again either, with the aftermath still so fresh and vivid in his mind. And he was sure he didn’t need the reminder that Sirius still had his magic while his, well… Sirius knew when not to push a sensitive topic, and Remus was one of the few people Sirius would actually grant that respect. “Oi,” Sirius called after the other boy as he turned away, “I’m in peak physical condition. You’re the one who died last week.” Then, after a quick glance at Remus’ retreating arse, the dark haired man scowled and sloped reluctantly after him, calling out again as he pulled the front door closed. “If Lily offers you food, just say no. Or she’ll trap us there forever and ever and ever….”