31 Days of Fic: Twenty-Four
All right; here we go. Only seven days left.
Remus is tired of being avoided...
May 24, 1976:
Sirius has been avoiding him for three days when Remus finally decides that he's had enough. Sirius' absence is an almost physical pain, and if Remus has done something wrong, then he wants to fix it. He tracks Sirius to his usual hiding spot beneath the Quidditch stands, and corners him there.
"Are you annoyed with me for some reason, Padfoot?" he asks.
"No!" Sirius says, but his voice sounds off, and he won't meet Remus' eyes.
"Are you sure? Because you've been avoiding me for days, now." He can hear his own insecurity in his voice, and wants to kick himself, but presses onward. "If I did something, Sirius, please tell me. I can't make up for it if you don't tell me what I did."
"You didn't do anything!" Sirius says sharply; then his voice softens. "I'm sorry, Moony. I didn't mean to snap at you. You didn't do anything, all right?"
"All right," Remus says. The silence grows; spreads itself thickly and awkwardly between them. Sirius stares at the ground.
"I'll just go, then," Remus says after a minute, but the sheer misery of Sirius' expression as he turns to leave stops him. "Sirius, what's wrong ?"
"Nothing," Sirius mutters.
"Is it your family again?"
"No."
"Pads -" Remus wants to hug him, but is too afraid of betraying himself to risk it. He settles for crossing the few feet between them and putting a hand on Sirius' shoulder. "You can tell me anything, you know." Sirius leans into Remus' hand for a second or two, then pulls away, his face drawn in lines of unhappiness.
"Not this," he says, wrapping his arms around himself. "You'd - I'd - it would fuck things up between us, Moony. I'll get over it eventually."
"Nothing you could say would fuck things up between us," Remus vows, and he means it. Sirius was the first person to make Remus feel human since the bite. "I mean, I told you I was a werewolf and you forgave me."
"There was nothing to forgive!" Sirius says hotly, glancing at Remus for half a second before looking away again. "And besides, I figured it out."
"My point is that you can tell me anything." Sirius laughs shortly, but doesn't sound like himself at all. Remus grips his shoulder hard. "I mean it! I promise, Padfoot."
"Anything?" Sirius asks, still with that bitter twist to his voice.
"Anything," Remus promises. Sirius closes his eyes, and the look of despair on his face almost stops Remus' heart.
"I'm so sorry," he says, then leans forward and presses his lips to Remus'.
There is one brief, frozen moment in which Remus isn't sure what's happening; then he realizes that Sirius is kissing him with the same tender, desperate ferocity that has been running through Remus' veins and dreams since Christmas, and he's kissing Sirius back for all that he's worth.
Sirius takes a startled breath, and Remus bites gently at his bottom lip, kisses the corner of his mouth, kisses him again, licking past lips and teeth to get his first taste of Sirius Black, tangling a hand in Sirius' hair as Sirius pulls him closer. When they finally have to stop for breath, Sirius' eyes are shining with the sort of joy that Remus hasn't seen since he first demonstrated his mastery of the Animagus transformation.
"That was brilliant," he breathes.
Remus wants to say something smooth and dashing, but can only manage a breathless: "Yeah. It really was. It really, really was." He knows that he's grinning like a lunatic, but he doesn't care.
"We can do that again, right?" Sirius asks, and he's grinning too, like he's too happy to do anything else.
"Count on it," Remus assures him, leaning forward until their foreheads touch. He can't stop smiling.
"I told you, didn't I?" he says. "You can tell me anything."
***
( day twenty-three)*(day twenty-five)
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Author's Notes: I was going to hold off on this one until the very last day, but Remus got tired of Sirius avoiding him. This one is dedicated to all of the people who have been waiting for it.
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