Think of You Always
Title: Think of You Always
Song: Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy
Pairing, Characters: Sirius/Remus, a bit of James/Lily, Andromeda, James’ parents
Rating: hard R
Warnings: sexual content, expensive dining, unsupervised motorbike useage ;)
Summary/Author’s Notes: Sirius has tried his best to figure out how one shows affection. Doesn’t mean it’s going to help him figure this out any. Special thanks to beta, youngcurmudgeon! Title taken from the song. And sorry for how late it is. Studying abroad is eatng me alive....
Sirius Black did not learn the art of romance at the homestead.
The reasons why should be far too obvious and numerous. Safe to say that he had never seen his parents kiss, his mother did not take kindly to having her feet rubbed and his father was not the sort of man to bring home bouquets of roses. His father’s idea of “an evening out” was having to go to that ball at the Malfoys’ each year and rub elbows with the family. If you were going to buy Sirius’ mother a gift, the only rule was that it be expensive and hopefully illegal in parts of the wizarding world.
It left him walking blind, at any rate. Sirius had no means to understand what one did to make an impression, how one conveyed feelings of affection by means that were healthy and debonair at the same time. He had instincts, certainly, looks to back them up and a natural propensity towards flirting, but it didn’t help him in the event that he was trying to impress someone that he truly liked.
It quickly occurred to him that James wasn’t the one to ask. James had no idea what he was doing, not really. Everything he lacked he made up for in determination, hope and that goofy yet endearing smile he got on his face when he thought that the object of his fancy was looking the other way. Luckily, Lily had caught that smile one day. Things had been different after that.
But it didn’t help him any. Sirius never smiled goofily; he grinned like a madman with the wind hitting him straight on, or sometimes with a certain softness that only his friends could appreciate. That soft smile was beautiful, though Sirius never thought of it that way. It had an honesty that he lacked elsewhere in his person, an intensity that was frightening because it displayed his vulnerability to a keen eye. He never realized this.
Someone else did. That someone didn’t say so.
And Sirius was left in the dark.
* * *
He received his first lessons at the age of fourteen. Much to his relief, he never had to ask the question directly, she simply knew. Andromeda was perceptive that way.
“It’s all in the little things, Sirius,” she told him as she stirred her tea, bouncing the little girl on her hip at the same time. They had run into each other in Hogsmeade and Sirius had for once abandoned the Marauders to have a quiet afternoon with his cousin. He had missed her since she got married.
“How do you mean?”
“People crave contact, touch. They want to know that they are in your thoughts all the time, even for stupid little reasons. It’s not about giving them big gifts, although a nice dinner can start the evening off right. Do things that you both like. If that means curling up on the couch with some cocoa and a movie, do that.”
Sirius nodded slowly, taking the information to heart. It sounded right sensible to him, even at that age.
He also noticed that she never used the word “her” when referring to this hypothetical person. He didn’t say anything about it. Not that it would surprise him if she knew; she was the one who had put him in lipstick, rouge and eyeliner for the family Christmas party when he was four. Their parents had not been amused.
Andromeda took a sip from her teacup, quickly setting it down again when the child in her arms squirmed enthusiastically. She didn’t seem interested in her mother’s prattling. “The other thing? Don’t be afraid to say things that sound sappy in your head. They may sound stupid to you, but to someone else, they can make a dreary day one hundred percent brighter. Even Ted will tell you that. I told him I thought he looked handsome in his new suit yesterday and he was grinning like an idiot all through the play we went to see.”
Sirius couldn’t help it. He smirked. “And you were checking all through the play, apparently.”
“Hush you.” Her cheeks turned just a little pinker. And then her daughter’s skin turned a bright, fizzing blue, and she sighed. “Nymphadora, I’ve told you time and again that we can’t have you doing this. You have to learn some self-control, for Pete’s sake, handful that you are.”
Sirius thought that was an amusing thing to say to a one-year-old, even more amusing when the little one stuck out her tongue and crinkled her nose at the uttering of ‘Nymphadora’. “I don’t think she likes her name.”
Andromeda sniffed, her lips pouting endearingly. “Well, she’ll just have to deal with it. Try being named Andromeda.”
“I’ve always called you Ann.”
She smiled fondly, reaching out to brush some hair out of his eyes. “You’re the only one, love.”
* * *
James’ parents were another resource. Sirius watched them diligently; how they were used to each other’s routines and pesky little quirks, how they laughed together, how Mrs. Potter was never left without a shoulder to rest her head on. How their love for each other extended through their love for James….
“You know, I hear those things can give you bad muggle diseases…”
Sirius snuffed the cigarette out on the porch. “I don’t really smoke.”
“I know. I saw you trying to light up and the nice, long coughing fit that resulted from your first drag.”
Sirius had always hoped that one day he would do something that would truly shock the impenetrable Mr. Potter. His latest attempt had now failed.
Sirius chuckled and leaned over the railing to feel the breeze kiss at his jaw. “Should’ve known better.”
“Nah, that’s just you being you, son.”
He felt a tightening in his chest that he couldn’t quite put a name to when those words hit. “And is that a good thing? Just me being me, then?”
Mr. Potter sat halfway on the railing, staring at Sirius’ profile. He pretended not to notice. “’Course that’s a good thing. I’d be a bit worried if you tried going on as anyone else.”
“What if you want to be more than just you, or different than just you?”
“Never try to be anything but yourself, straight up. That’s what you have to offer. Anything else comes on its own, whether you believe it or not.” When Sirius didn’t respond, the older man took a deep breath and sighed. He took off his glasses for mindless inspection for a moment, something his son had learned from him, before he continued. “You know, when I went after James’ mum… hell, I did everything I could to impress that woman. Everything fancy, overdone, to the limit. And she appreciated it. But you know what she loved the most?” He waited until Sirius was looking at him, made sure he had the young man’s full attention.
“She loved it when I made stupid jokes so she could laugh. She loved it when I gave her my favorite old tattered jacket to wear when she was chilled. She loved it when I got excited about things that she couldn’t care less about. Because they were important to me, and that’s who she wanted to be with - me.”
Sirius nodded, biting his lower lip and staring at the lush grass down below.
Mr. Potter coughed, cleaned his glasses on the hem of his shirt. “Anyway, you might want to get some sleep. Remus is coming along early tomorrow, and I’m sure you’ll want to be awake when he gets here.”
Sirius’ head snapped up, casting a cautious eye on the man. But the heavily lined face was passive, unreadable and so Sirius went inside without argument.
“Night.”
“Night. You tell that boy of mine if he has any great plans for tomorrow to make sure that he doesn’t start putting them together tonight. I’d like to sleep, and I can’t very well do that with the two of you blowing up the kitchen, can I?”
“No, sir.”
* * *
Next, of course, was Lily. Her help wasn’t so direct at the beginning. Mostly Sirius just listened to what she said when she got on one of her James Rants. It was easy to learn from his friend’s mistakes, though he never told him that.
At least once a week, in a corner of the common room. Never failed. There was always something he’d mucked up good.
This, naturally, got worse after they were married.
“Honestly, he could at least make an effort to look nice when we went out!”
Sirius would grunt and keep his nose buried in the paper, like he wasn’t paying attention. Remus would drink the coffee because she had made some, nodding ever so sympathetically, though Sirius could see he was trying not to smile. After all, they knew James’ shortcomings better than most. It wasn’t that he didn’t care, or that he really wasn’t attentive or loving, he was just…
Well, male for starters.
“It’s like, now that we’re married, he doesn’t have to put anything into it, doesn’t have to help me or pay me any mind. I’m his laundry woman and his cook! I’m just some wench in an apron - ”
The sound of music suddenly filtered in from the living room, an old song by the sound of the tinny recording and the arrangement. There was a smooth, buttery voice painting a picture through the instruments, stretching a hand out and inviting everyone to take a closer look. And James was singing with it -
“The very thought of you and I forget to do
The ordinary little things that everyone ought to do”
James wasn’t really a singer. He could keep on key, but that was about it.
Lily waved her wand to get the dry dishes in the cupboards, blinked angrily and went out to investigate. “What’s he doing home this early…?”
Sirius and Remus got up and obediently followed, like good canines should.
James was dancing around the living room with an imaginary partner, dipping her this way and that, moving about the floor as though no one was home, his bare feet making barely registered sounds on the rug. “I’m living in a kind of daydream, I’m happy as a king/And foolish though it may seem, to me that’s everything…”
“What’s this now?”
He let the song go on without him when he heard her voice, turned around with surprising grace, holding a hand out to her. “Dance with me.”
Lily tried to continue glaring as she had been, but there was that grin. That goofy, stupid grin and those hazel eyes that he couldn’t see out of properly without his silly glasses. She crossed the floor to him willingly, her pronouncement of “you sod,” somewhat diminished by the radiant smile on her face and the way she slipped so easily into his arms.
James twirled her in close and spun her around the room effortlessly. “I see your face in every flower, your eyes in stars above… It’s just the thought of you, the very thought of you, my love…”
Well, well. Seemed there was something to learn from him after all.
On their fourth circle around the coffee table, James finally noticed that there were guests in the room, but it didn’t slow his steps. He leveled them with a would-be stern expression. “Naff off,” he commanded affectionately. “I’m planning on making slow, passionate love to this woman right on that very couch in a short while, and I don’t want you two poofs looking on.”
Lily turned red and buried her face in his shoulder, laughing.
Remus snorted amusedly and went to fetch his coat.
Sirius winked at his friend before following.
* * *
It had all changed Sirius slowly, over time, words and signals piling up and giving him the map that he needed, ideas to try and leave for dead, what to say and what definitely not to. He thought he had done well, all things considered. Damn well, if he were honest.
More than damn well, if he were feeling impudent, which he always was.
After all, what other bookish, silent, fastidious types could brag about having a boyfriend who wore a black leather jacket and often grabbed his arse in public?
Not bloody many.
And now he had to leave or risk running late.
Sirius was at James and Lily’s; he’d come over to sit around the radio and listen to the Quidditch match with them, but now he was straightening his coat in front of the hall mirror. He had changed in the loo, left his other clothes in their linen closet for now. The suit made him look practically decent, he thought, as he adjusted his tie again.
“Oooo, love. Oooo, lover boy, watcha doing tonight? Hey boy…” he heard behind him, the lyric a special favorite of the singer in question. There was a pause, and then Lily’s reflection was in the glass too, her chin resting on his shoulder from where she stood on tiptoe at his back. “Don’t you look adorable.”
Well, not anymore he didn’t. Now he looked disgusted. “‘Adorable’ is not a suitable replacement for ‘charming and desirable.’”
She rolled her eyes and went for it again. “Fine then. You look very fine tonight, Mr. Black.”
He grinned, appeased, tugging at the lapel of his black wool coat. “He’s getting off work late tonight. He needs someone to take him out after all that.”
“Here, here,” she agreed, taking the scarf out of his hand and wrapping it about his neck in a tousled, devil-may-care fashion, as she knew he wouldn’t have it any other way. “You clean up so nicely when you want to.”
“I really do, don’t I?”
She cuffed him lightly in the temple. “What’s the occasion?”
Sirius shrugged. “No occasion. Just felt like it, is all.”
Lily’s eyebrows raised knowingly, her smile small and secretive. “Well, look at that. A romantic, you.”
“I am not!” Sirius exclaimed, clapping a hand to his chest like the very idea might cause coronary failure. He shouted into the other room. “James!”
“What? I’m trying to hear the match!”
“James, tell your wife that I’m not a bloody romantic!”
“That man has not one romantic bone in his bloody sapient frame! You got the better end of the deal, sweetheart!”
“Yes, as I’m constantly reminded!” she called back, watching Sirius smirk at her.
“There, you see? Not a romantic.”
“Whatever pleases you,” said Lily, shoving him toward the door. “You can’t fool me.”
But Sirius wasn’t planning on walking. He’d waited too long. Once outside the door his brow furrowed for a moment, and then he was standing outside Remus’ flat building.
He wasn’t being a romantic, he decided as he climbed the steps. He was trying to see what happened if he really put everything to use. Sure, he’d tried bits and pieces here and there, but Sirius wanted to go full stop tonight. Try things the right way. For the bookish, silent, fastidious type.
That wasn’t romantic. It was practical. It was a wise, charming and desirable move.
When he answered the door he was dressed, but his hair was still damp.
“You could have given me more of a warning,” Remus said, toweling his head dry.
Sirius really didn’t see what the problem was and continued on as though Remus was in the best of moods. He smiled that patented one of his, crazy so no one could argue with him. “I sent you an owl.”
The smile, shockingly, did not seem to have any effect whatsoever. Remus continued furiously scrambling his hair with the threadbare, dingy towel. “It got there ten minutes before I left work! Oh, and lovely message, by the way: ‘Surprise, I’m picking you up after work, dress nice, we’re going out.’ That’s really something you should let me know about ahe - ”
“Would you rather I tried using the telephone at James and Lily’s next time?”
Remus held one hand up in a stop-please-now gesture and said, “No!” far too quickly.
Sirius frowned inwardly. This was not how this was supposed to be going. It was all planned out in his head, and this certainly wasn’t the start that he’d pinned up in his mind. He had to turn it around right here, or risk an entire evening like this.
But Remus was still talking. “Even if you had told me earlier in the day, maybe I could have gotten off work early, if I’d known you were in such need of attention as to come over right when I - ”
Sirius wrapped his fingers around the back of Remus’ neck, pulling him forward until their lips met. He was cautious, certain not to be over-demanding, allowing a chasteness that he normally wouldn’t because it was the right way to stop the rambling. For now. Because that was what they needed; some silence right then, a moment to say hello properly, like people. They didn’t do that much anymore. They didn’t have a lot of time.
And it felt really good.
Remus’s mouth was warm and soft, welcoming without intending to be, just pliant enough against his own, and when he made that soft exclamation in his throat the resulting vibration tickled Sirius everywhere, drew his mind up into a corkscrew of pleasure and expectation.
How he was able to collect so much from one innocent kiss that he was supposed to be pushing for his own reasons, was a mystery that he would not linger on. He’d probably had one ale too many with James early on.
He broke from Remus only inches from his face, watching him draw his breath a little faster through wetted lips, watching his eyes try to focus on air and heat. “I wanted to surprise you,” Sirius told him, and his voice was quiet, full of hope. “I thought it would be fun.”
Suddenly the brown-eyed young man looked so very guilty and Sirius crowed on the inside. He’d already won. But he wasn’t going to gloat, not tonight. Tonight he was going to do this just right. “You don’t have to,” he said, making sure the edge of his tone was just a little weak, “but come out with me tonight, Remus. Please.”
“…All right.”
As if any other answer had been an option.
“Good,” said Sirius, and there was that old grin again as he raised his wand to Remus’ head and murmured something that blew his hair upward in a single gush of air, drying it instantly.
Remus grabbed Sirius’ wand hand after that, a surprising show of strength in the grip that made his blood pump just a tad faster. “You know I hate it when you do that without warning,” he scolded. “It burns, I told you.”
Sirius tried to twist away, but Remus held him fast by the wrist, the grip of those long, thin fingers more brittle than the grindylows he spent so many late nights studying. It was all part of a game. Remus wasn’t mad, not really. Annoyed, certainly, but not angry. Sirius had discovered early that it was good to allow him this, his annoyances. He preferred the petty grievances instead of the alternative. They were safer.
“I’m sorry,” Sirius finally said, his eyes tattling on him, showing that he wasn’t at all.
Remus didn’t seem to mind much and let him go. “Where are we going, then? It better be someplace good because I’ll be very put out if I dressed up for nothing.”
Sirius knew he was being teased and put it to good use, smoothing his hands down over his spotless clothes, tossing his head so that his hair flew rakishly into his eyes. “Why, you know I always dress this impeccably for fish and chips, Moony,” he shot back, and without another word of warning, he grabbed Remus firmly by the arm and Apparated them both.
They came out in a dark alley and Remus tripped, too thrown by the unprompted lurch to keep upright. He fell forward, crushing Sirius up against the brick side of a building, his sternum pressed to Sirius’ shoulder. “That was also something you should have - ”
“Warned you about ahead of time?” Sirius finished, his smile shaping lasciviously in the dark as he felt Remus’ heart pound through his jacket.
Remus lifted his head and looked at Sirius, his returning smile decidedly calculated, as though he had figured something out and was now prepared to play his part. “Quite. So, this is where we’re dining? The décor leaves something to be desired.”
“Funny,” Sirius said seriously. “No really, that was good. It’s around the corner actually, unless you fancy staying out here and freezing to death.”
Remus stared at him a moment longer before taking a step back and nodding slowly. “Lead on, then.”
Sirius did, revealing their position to be around a corner from a restaurant that looked like the sort of place you couldn’t get into without signing over your first born or your birthright. Since neither of them had either of those things, it was making the lankier of the two of them stiffen.
“They have a basement, right?” Remus said in a wouldn’t-be nervous voice, like he could really make the joke fly if he could just stop his eyes from widening so much.
“Don’t be absurd,” Sirius sighed. “And don’t make that face. Come on.”
He almost thought that he had shocked Remus into keeping his mouth shut. Almost. Until they reached the concierge, and a hand was holding Sirius back as they were being led to their table.
“Sirius!” Remus hissed as softly as he dared, looking around to be certain he wasn’t making too much of a scene. “This is ridiculous! And too expensive, we can’t do this!”
“Yes, we can,” Sirius whispered back, decisively not matching Remus’ desperate air. “We can because I say so, now follow me or I will turn your suit lavender and frilly.”
Remus grit his teeth and did as he was told, sitting down across from Sirius at a beautiful table by the window. When he got hold of the menu, he did another double take and gripped the white tablecloth as though it were the only thing responsible for keeping him on the ground. “Sirius, this is not - ”
But Sirius was busy ordering wine, turning back to Remus with a smile once the waiter had gone. He frowned again when he saw brown eyes glaring and trapped, staring him down. Sirius tried for a tactic. “You know, when we were younger, before… well, before, and you used to glare at me like that, it made me excited and I never knew why. Funny, isn’t it?”
He wasn’t even lying. It had gotten him into trouble on more than one occasion, that scolding glare. Made him want to start fires. Luckily, as they had gotten older, the fire became a different kind, and Hogwarts was spared.
Sirius’ surprising honesty naturally diffused space between with a withdrawal from the other side of the table, but it didn’t fix a thing because Remus did something worse once their wine was brought to the table: he sulked. Swirling darker-than-blood liquid in his glass, the break in between his eyebrows creased and the world went three shades greyer.
It should be noted that even in a place like this, Sirius wasn’t above infantile behavior. He pulled an ice cube out of his water glass and chucked it at Remus’s dithering face. “Stop it. Stop caring so much about how your suit looks, and what everyone else thinks of you and us, and have a good time with me.”
Remus took the ice cube from his lap and placed it into his own water glass with a sigh. “We can’t all have your bravado, I’m afraid. And I still look ridiculous in a place like this.”
“Will you relax? They probably just think you’re some adorable academic who finally managed to break with his books long enough to enjoy his genius grant money.”
“Oh, you are feeling witty tonight, aren’t you?” Remus drawled unimpressed, but Sirius saw some of the tension leave his shoulders, and it prompted him to wink.
Any other dinner, anywhere else, Sirius would have engaged in a good game of footsy by now. His feet could never stay still all the way through a meal, he had too much energy to suppress. But, as that was out of the question tonight, he reverted to his old school habits, tapping his right foot so swiftly he began to wonder that he wasn’t making a hole in the carpet.
Had he been paying closer attention, he would have noticed that Remus’ foot inched forward once or twice, looking for something it would seem.
The waiter was approaching again. “What are you getting?” Sirius asked quickly so he could make the order.
“The chicken breast, I think.”
“That’s the cheapest dish they have.”
Remus stared at the scripted menu resolutely. “I like chicken.”
The waiter came to the table, looked questioningly back and forth as Sirius handed back both menus. “I’m having the lamb,” he said with a small smile. “He’ll have the duck.”
There was no time to protest. The waiter was off in a snap.
Remus was glaring again.
Sirius wanted to hold the flickering candle sitting inches away from his fingers against their tablecloth.
By the time they had finished their main courses, Remus was just drunk enough to not be bothered over the dessert menu that was set into his hands, and he looked over the items with a sleepy, well-fed interest. Sirius was having a hard time focusing on his own menu, instead rather caught up in how untouched Remus’ skin looked under soft light, how every swallow and motion of his throat drew the eye terribly, how fucking beautiful his hands were when he held something gently.
Perhaps he was a little drunk too, because the next words out of his mouth were, “I love you.”
Remus snorted and continued down the list, his eyes presumably coming to land on something all-important, like de gateau au chocolat. “I should hope so,” he intoned lazily, not sounding awed in the slightest. “It would be rather sad for you to force all this on someone who you didn’t like very much.”
Sirius wasn’t hurt. In fact, he laughed. He was rather pleased that Remus was playing it that way. It made it more challenging for him.
And so dessert became a game of Making Remus Laugh. Sirius had played it before. He was good at it. Good because he was reckless, and didn’t care how strangely everyone else in the restaurant looked at him, and also because Remus laughing always made him smile brilliantly, and he knew that Remus waited for that.
After dessert, he made the wise move of excusing himself from the table and paying the check in secret up front, so there would be no arguments.
And then they were out on the street again walking side by side, shoulder to shoulder, the way they both liked it. Remus nudged Sirius, staring down at his shoes, his cheeks flushed from the cold and leftover alcohol. “I know I can really be a pain for you sometimes, but… thank you. For this. It was lovely, and you must have planned it ages ago to get it all worked out so nicely.”
Sirius didn’t say anything, only stared ahead serenely. The silence settled contentedly for a few minutes more until Remus spoke again. “It’s getting late. And cold. I think we should be Apparating back.”
Sirius tried not to smirk too obviously. “Wrong again,” he said.
Remus glanced sideways at him, confused and already apprehensive.
“I worked hard to set this up right, and I can’t leave her on the street overnight.”
The pretty flush was gone in a matter of seconds. “No. No, Sirius, I can’t.”
“You will.”
“No.”
Indeed, as the rounded their final corner there stood the beloved Bike, as promised, faithful and glistening under the streetlamps. Nothing could tarnish that lady, even under phosphorous. She was simply divine.
And Sirius didn’t show signs of taking a “no” this time around.
“I promise, I’ll drive slower than my grandmother.”
“You always told me that your grandmother was a lunatic.”
Sirius swung one leg over the bike and settled in comfortably, looking back over his shoulder at nervous eyes. “Ah, but that doesn’t say anything about how fast she drives now, does it?”
“I feel the burning premonition of being caught on a technicality,” Remus deadpanned.
“Aren’t you bright. Come on, on you go.”
“We’re not dressed for it.”
Sirius’ quirked an eyebrow. “Are you kidding? The suit makes it even sexier. You really need to get out more, Moony.”
He was almost inclined to feel guilty. He knew Remus was truly concerned, that this wasn’t one of his ridiculous attempts to be “the good one” in his group of friends. But really, it was an irrational fear. And Sirius, for all his audacity and daredevil stunts, was actually a good driver.
“Sirius…”
He reached out and grabbed Remus by the edge of his jacket, tugging him closer, waiting until he had his eyes. “Will you please. Trust me. This once. I won’t let you fall, you know I won’t. Hell, Remus you’ve faced a lot worse than a bloody motorbike in your life, I don’t know why you should be afraid of anything in the whole damn world.”
Remus blinked rapidly at the words, as though years of reasoning was crumbling from his sturdy frame, ruining his balance, and now he had nothing left to do but to take a deep breath and a flying leap. In reality, that was exactly what was happening. He had nothing stopping him, nothing real, and he couldn’t deny it. Shaking his head with a half-smirk already creeping into his features, he got on the motorbike behind Sirius, pressed them together chest to back, and held onto Sirius like he was iron anchored to the earth.
And even when Sirius went a little too fast, even when he turned the corner sharp, even when he revved the engine so hard the bike thrummed and vibrated fiercely beneath them, Remus only clutched tighter, gasped longer, and smiled against Sirius’ shoulder like he was the summer sun after weeks of spring rain.
* * *
It had all certainly gone as planned. They had a lovely night to remember. A brief evening of respite amid the cacophony of time and war, a chance to feel like their lives, their affair was their own. A sharp reminder of the fact that it was real, it was all real, and it was deserved in one way or another. It was the only gift Sirius knew he could give without guilt or embarrassment, and it had worked. And so, in front of Remus’ door again, ending where he had started and feeling rather pleased with himself, he kissed Remus briefly, silently on the lips and stepped back.
Silver-in-the-shadows hair fell into Remus’ narrowed eyes as he tilted his head just a bit, clearly confused as to what that meant, but Sirius only smiled back. “All right then. I suppose I’ll be heading out.” He turned in the direction of the stairs, coiled spring already prominent in his step.
A deadly quiet fell there, the calm before an earthquake.
“The hell you will.”
Before he had time to react, Remus had grabbed him by his scarf and tugged him back violently, without any of the calm trepidation of the evening, and then they were kissing, kissing like they hadn’t all night, with every part of their bodies and Remus’ hands fisted in his shirt against his back, and a complete disregard for the world around them, the neighbors who might leave their homes and find them this way, and Sirius had never been made to feel dizzy so quickly in all his life….
He let Remus pull him into the flat, let him tug their coats off and toss them haphazardly on the floor. And when Remus toed off his shoes and Sirius tripped over them, he let Remus laugh because it was funny and he laughed too.
Suddenly, he was pressed up against the wall and a very persistent tongue was tracing the line of his jaw, melting bone and thought with such a light touch -
Sirius moaned low and soft, biting his lip as his knees began to shake.
Remus noticed. “Are you all right?”
“Oh… yes, I think so,” he replied with wild eyes, his tone shining light on how truly ridiculous he thought that question was. “I just… I think we need to actually make it to bed this time.”
There was a slow chuckle there and the brush of lips as Remus smiled against his cheek. It was a joke between the two of them really, an amusement because it happened so rarely that they actually found themselves in a place with blankets and proper back support, even more rare in Remus’ flat where the moth-eaten bed creaked like the opening of doors in a cheap horror film. In school it had been different, behind closed four-poster curtains or not at all, and it seemed that once they were free of that constraint they made it their business to never be confined again.
But tonight Sirius wanted the solidity of a bed, the meaning in sharing it that made him more than just a good lay. Not that he ever felt that was all he meant to Remus, never, not with the way those clever eyes lit on him in shade or sunlight, always waiting for an answer with a terrifying fervor that Sirius was never quite sure he deserved.
Remus was looking at him like that right now. Taking Sirius’ hand with no lack of urgency, he pulled him down the short hall and into the bedroom, crossing the threshold on another promising kiss.
Sirius didn’t want to break from that kiss, even when Remus tried to back out of his arms, and it made the bookish one squirm and snigger. “Take your trousers and pants off, and get in my bed,” he demanded on a fluttering laugh against the corner of Sirius’ mouth, throwing him back with a gentle shove.
Sirius, for his part, raised his eyebrows effectively. “Just my trousers and pants?”
The look on Remus’ face was subversiveness incarnate. “Just.”
Sirius forced a chuckle when he really felt more like gulping, and did as he was told. Remus had turned around, pulling his shirt off with his back to Sirius, his skin dull and less angry in the lack-light. It seemed like a move of avoidance, privacy even, but they both knew that wasn’t the case. There were deeper scars around Remus’ flanks; his choice to expose that to Sirius first was trust, honesty. Proof that Remus didn’t have doubts about Sirius’ sincerity.
And Sirius needed that assurance, needed it because so few people trusted him that way, knew him well enough to understand that not everything was a joke no matter how hard he sneered at it.
His part in this was simple, and he found that the chill in the room had less to do with the crack in the unreliable window and more to do with how his stomach dipped and swerved at the knowledge of the charged room, the man standing across from him in darkness, the awareness that they weren’t children anymore and that they were about to do something very unchildish indeed.
The way Remus felt no shame about this, the way embarrassment never painted a sheen on his beautifully wounded skin, made Sirius feel much smaller than his just-ten-centimetres-shorter-than-you-dammit.
He just had to stop contemplating and let it happen. He wasn’t sure why he was thinking so hard about it tonight when they did this so often. When they had for a few years now.
Sirius flopped down on the bed once he’d squared his part of the deal, feeling less wrong about being so exposed now that he was in a place that called for it. Everyone felt less guilty being naked in bed, he thought.
With all the wolfish grace his thin feet retained, Remus turned in one fluid motion, smiling sharply at how well his directions were followed. It seemed that a bare chest was as far as he would go for now, in favor of pouncing instead, rushing to the bed and crawling over his prey. But when he stared down, Sirius saw too much conversation in those piercing eyes.
Sirius’ thumb found a nipple without even looking, moving circular in hopes of shorting out coherent thought and leaving all the discussion for some other time. Remus didn’t seem unhappy with that for the moment, allowing the touch, the shimmer in his eyes melting out to his eyelashes when they touched his cheek, while his tongue began searching Sirius’ skin for their favorite sweet spots.
But then things were moving a great deal faster, as though the ease was too bothersome for Remus to handle, and Sirius could only listen to the syllables catching in his own throat as his shirt was unbuttoned, his own hands guided to a worn belt around slim hips. He took the cue and made short work of the fastenings in a haze of simplicity, wondered awkwardly at how he was being straddled and smoothed over like fine canvas.
Everything paused in Sirius’ reality for a moment, went heavy, covered in something sweet and thick, like syrup maybe.
Remus was murmuring into the curve of his ear, the air from his lungs teasing already overeager skin so that Sirius couldn’t breathe for fear of cursing a streak bluer than his favorite cloudless sky. “I can’t believe you thought I’d just let you leave after all of that.”
“Well, I didn’t think you’d - ”
“What?” A casual nip at his jaw that made his hips jerk like a novice. “You thought that after an evening like that I’d be keen on spending my night in a cold, empty bed, remembering all the times during dinner when I’d wanted to touch you and held back?”
He could tell that Remus was feeling playful and wanton, could tell by the way he was pressing himself so close, like he wanted their bodies to meld without regard for clothing, for personal boundaries, for the physics that they had never learned. In spite of that irresistible pull, that returning and neverending pressure of one unscarred mouth, he managed to wonder at the idea of self control, especially now, when they were so far away from its territory. “Why did you do that?” he said dimly between short, sliding caresses against his lower lip. “I wasn’t stopping you.”
“Yes, but you seemed to have a plan. I didn’t want to disrupt.”
Sirius finally broke from those lips, shock registering in his abruptly-focused eyes, his jaw slackening from something that had nothing to do with Remus’ hands or his kiss. “So you thought this whole thing was just some… what? Elaborate seduction?”
“Well, I’d hoped so after the lengths you went to….” Remus’ eyes darkened. Things went terrifyingly quiet in the dark. He stopped laughing, splayed one hand across Sirius’ chest to give pause. “Wait a minute. You weren’t. You really weren’t trying to….” The connection had been made too late, a recognition that dawned with awful displacement. “Sirius, why did you do this for me tonight?”
Sirius took a shaky breath, suddenly feeling caught, which was an odd position for him to be in. He wished that he weren’t trapped beneath those brown eyes, that he had some say in where he was placed for this. It was best to tell the truth of the matter. Remus wouldn’t settle for less and he shouldn’t have to. “Because….”
He licked his lips and tried again.
“Because you deserve it. Because I wanted to give you something, something a little different. Because there should be at least one day where I do everything for you with no thought of myself in the mix. Where I can’t be selfish.”
It seemed that there was the place where Remus’ breath caught, where all the tension in his body fell away to reveal something far less urgent, more scathingly tender.
Sirius meant for his next words to come out sarcastically, but they simply wouldn’t. “Sometimes being selfish can grow to be quite tiresome, you know, especially when people expect it of you.”
And then something in Remus’ face crumpled, and Sirius’ immediate thought was that he had damaged something sacred, that maybe he shouldn’t have been so honest, but when Remus spoke again his voice seemed strong enough.
“So… when you said you loved me, you really were - ”
Sirius leaned up and claimed his lips again, refusing to allow that sentence through to its logical conclusion.
Remus whimpered against his mouth in frustration, but then kissed back hard, harder than Sirius would have ever dared, bit until their teeth clashed, as though he had to devour Sirius whole for his unforgivable kindness. It seemed that neither of them had the capacity for this, to understand it and give over to it without a fight, and fight they did, Remus’ teeth at Sirius’ neck, Sirius’ hands tearing into Remus’ ribcage, his hair, shouting out when Remus’s strong fingers pinched in supple places.
This wasn’t like the scuffles they had during full moons, all about dominance and animal play, this was dissatisfaction, inability to say what needed to be said, two men who were still just boys and couldn’t reconcile difficulty without a tussle. Remus, despite his eloquence with words, was no better at speaking his emotions than Sirius. If anything, he was worse at it, completely without Sirius’ ability to explode when he needed it most.
And so they continued to roll and push and cuff, and when someone from the floor below hit the ceiling with what had to be a broom or an umbrella and yelled at their racket, they laughed so hard that tears leaked out of their eyes and tongues lapped out to taste precious salt. Now they bore down hard on the bed just to make it creak, make it exasperate and scandalize, and in the midst of it they somehow realized that they were getting rid of Remus’ unbuckled trousers, his pants, that there was only skin now and the flavor of tears.
“Want you…” Remus whispered as he ran his hands down Sirius’ sides, his body rocking in an obscenely slow and deep rhythm, the only kind that either of them had any talent for. Sirius gasped, closed his eyes, let it take him. He had no strength to resist, and he was so far beyond apprehension now that the feel of Remus’ skin was enough to make him murmur creative blasphemies, lush and vulgar.
Fingers traced patterns in sweat -
There was a growl and a kiss, then another -
Names were shouted, gasped, turned on a breath as someone was taken, slow and hard, and the broom or umbrella didn’t dare knock again when Remus was moaning like that….
Find a rhythm -
Press there -
Beg because you’ve been reduced to it and you don’t even care -
“Ooooohhhfuck, yes…”
Don’t stop, don’t ever stop -
And when Sirius came that night with Remus sprawled on top of him, urging him on while he slammed back against the headboard and screamed, he knew instantly, with such clarity, that even without being selfish there was no way he could do anything for Remus without doing it for himself. Because every part of him was so wrapped up in this.
And it didn’t fucking matter.
Screw the rules. And the advice. Even if everyone else was right you couldn’t spend your life copying lessons out of other peoples notes, it didn’t work that way, didn’t make you good at anything except pantomime. And that wasn’t what he had.
At the end of the day, all that mattered was that you were sweating and rumpled and breathless, spent on a bed with the springs popping into your back and tangling limbs with the sharpest elbows in all of England.
“Ow! Watch where you stick that, you almost broke my nose!”
“Sorry, Padfoot.”
All that mattered was being here just this way.
And maybe that was old-fashioned of him. It was fine. He didn’t bloody well care. Not even when Remus cleared his throat like he was feeling clinically nervous.
“Sirius?”
“Mm?”
“I… I do love you too, you know.”
Sirius smiled that soft smile that so few knew about, the one that Remus had noticed first, and barked a laugh. “Shut up, Moony.”
Teeth scraped playfully at his shoulder in reply.
“I’m not going back to my flat tonight.”
Remus sighed too sadly amidst his afterglow. “I have to work tomorrow.”
“I don’t give a hippogriff’s arse. I’m not going home.”
Sirius didn’t have to see the grin on Remus’ face as he curled in closer, jabbing Sirius’ ribs accidentally again. “Good.”
Remus was grateful, always grateful. Treasured what he had because he’d never thought that he would be allowed to have it. And in that respect, he would never know how much the two of them were alike.
Sirius had never thought that he would be allowed to stay the night anywhere. Certainly not in someone’s arms.
Never in these arms.
Even as he drifted off, he could hear Lily’s voice taunting him at his earlier petulant denials. Luckily, Remus’ half-snores drowned out her know-it-all lecturing. She really should learn when to keep her mouth shut and let him be.
END
Song: Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy
Pairing, Characters: Sirius/Remus, a bit of James/Lily, Andromeda, James’ parents
Rating: hard R
Warnings: sexual content, expensive dining, unsupervised motorbike useage ;)
Summary/Author’s Notes: Sirius has tried his best to figure out how one shows affection. Doesn’t mean it’s going to help him figure this out any. Special thanks to beta, youngcurmudgeon! Title taken from the song. And sorry for how late it is. Studying abroad is eatng me alive....
Sirius Black did not learn the art of romance at the homestead.
The reasons why should be far too obvious and numerous. Safe to say that he had never seen his parents kiss, his mother did not take kindly to having her feet rubbed and his father was not the sort of man to bring home bouquets of roses. His father’s idea of “an evening out” was having to go to that ball at the Malfoys’ each year and rub elbows with the family. If you were going to buy Sirius’ mother a gift, the only rule was that it be expensive and hopefully illegal in parts of the wizarding world.
It left him walking blind, at any rate. Sirius had no means to understand what one did to make an impression, how one conveyed feelings of affection by means that were healthy and debonair at the same time. He had instincts, certainly, looks to back them up and a natural propensity towards flirting, but it didn’t help him in the event that he was trying to impress someone that he truly liked.
It quickly occurred to him that James wasn’t the one to ask. James had no idea what he was doing, not really. Everything he lacked he made up for in determination, hope and that goofy yet endearing smile he got on his face when he thought that the object of his fancy was looking the other way. Luckily, Lily had caught that smile one day. Things had been different after that.
But it didn’t help him any. Sirius never smiled goofily; he grinned like a madman with the wind hitting him straight on, or sometimes with a certain softness that only his friends could appreciate. That soft smile was beautiful, though Sirius never thought of it that way. It had an honesty that he lacked elsewhere in his person, an intensity that was frightening because it displayed his vulnerability to a keen eye. He never realized this.
Someone else did. That someone didn’t say so.
And Sirius was left in the dark.
* * *
He received his first lessons at the age of fourteen. Much to his relief, he never had to ask the question directly, she simply knew. Andromeda was perceptive that way.
“It’s all in the little things, Sirius,” she told him as she stirred her tea, bouncing the little girl on her hip at the same time. They had run into each other in Hogsmeade and Sirius had for once abandoned the Marauders to have a quiet afternoon with his cousin. He had missed her since she got married.
“How do you mean?”
“People crave contact, touch. They want to know that they are in your thoughts all the time, even for stupid little reasons. It’s not about giving them big gifts, although a nice dinner can start the evening off right. Do things that you both like. If that means curling up on the couch with some cocoa and a movie, do that.”
Sirius nodded slowly, taking the information to heart. It sounded right sensible to him, even at that age.
He also noticed that she never used the word “her” when referring to this hypothetical person. He didn’t say anything about it. Not that it would surprise him if she knew; she was the one who had put him in lipstick, rouge and eyeliner for the family Christmas party when he was four. Their parents had not been amused.
Andromeda took a sip from her teacup, quickly setting it down again when the child in her arms squirmed enthusiastically. She didn’t seem interested in her mother’s prattling. “The other thing? Don’t be afraid to say things that sound sappy in your head. They may sound stupid to you, but to someone else, they can make a dreary day one hundred percent brighter. Even Ted will tell you that. I told him I thought he looked handsome in his new suit yesterday and he was grinning like an idiot all through the play we went to see.”
Sirius couldn’t help it. He smirked. “And you were checking all through the play, apparently.”
“Hush you.” Her cheeks turned just a little pinker. And then her daughter’s skin turned a bright, fizzing blue, and she sighed. “Nymphadora, I’ve told you time and again that we can’t have you doing this. You have to learn some self-control, for Pete’s sake, handful that you are.”
Sirius thought that was an amusing thing to say to a one-year-old, even more amusing when the little one stuck out her tongue and crinkled her nose at the uttering of ‘Nymphadora’. “I don’t think she likes her name.”
Andromeda sniffed, her lips pouting endearingly. “Well, she’ll just have to deal with it. Try being named Andromeda.”
“I’ve always called you Ann.”
She smiled fondly, reaching out to brush some hair out of his eyes. “You’re the only one, love.”
* * *
James’ parents were another resource. Sirius watched them diligently; how they were used to each other’s routines and pesky little quirks, how they laughed together, how Mrs. Potter was never left without a shoulder to rest her head on. How their love for each other extended through their love for James….
“You know, I hear those things can give you bad muggle diseases…”
Sirius snuffed the cigarette out on the porch. “I don’t really smoke.”
“I know. I saw you trying to light up and the nice, long coughing fit that resulted from your first drag.”
Sirius had always hoped that one day he would do something that would truly shock the impenetrable Mr. Potter. His latest attempt had now failed.
Sirius chuckled and leaned over the railing to feel the breeze kiss at his jaw. “Should’ve known better.”
“Nah, that’s just you being you, son.”
He felt a tightening in his chest that he couldn’t quite put a name to when those words hit. “And is that a good thing? Just me being me, then?”
Mr. Potter sat halfway on the railing, staring at Sirius’ profile. He pretended not to notice. “’Course that’s a good thing. I’d be a bit worried if you tried going on as anyone else.”
“What if you want to be more than just you, or different than just you?”
“Never try to be anything but yourself, straight up. That’s what you have to offer. Anything else comes on its own, whether you believe it or not.” When Sirius didn’t respond, the older man took a deep breath and sighed. He took off his glasses for mindless inspection for a moment, something his son had learned from him, before he continued. “You know, when I went after James’ mum… hell, I did everything I could to impress that woman. Everything fancy, overdone, to the limit. And she appreciated it. But you know what she loved the most?” He waited until Sirius was looking at him, made sure he had the young man’s full attention.
“She loved it when I made stupid jokes so she could laugh. She loved it when I gave her my favorite old tattered jacket to wear when she was chilled. She loved it when I got excited about things that she couldn’t care less about. Because they were important to me, and that’s who she wanted to be with - me.”
Sirius nodded, biting his lower lip and staring at the lush grass down below.
Mr. Potter coughed, cleaned his glasses on the hem of his shirt. “Anyway, you might want to get some sleep. Remus is coming along early tomorrow, and I’m sure you’ll want to be awake when he gets here.”
Sirius’ head snapped up, casting a cautious eye on the man. But the heavily lined face was passive, unreadable and so Sirius went inside without argument.
“Night.”
“Night. You tell that boy of mine if he has any great plans for tomorrow to make sure that he doesn’t start putting them together tonight. I’d like to sleep, and I can’t very well do that with the two of you blowing up the kitchen, can I?”
“No, sir.”
* * *
Next, of course, was Lily. Her help wasn’t so direct at the beginning. Mostly Sirius just listened to what she said when she got on one of her James Rants. It was easy to learn from his friend’s mistakes, though he never told him that.
At least once a week, in a corner of the common room. Never failed. There was always something he’d mucked up good.
This, naturally, got worse after they were married.
“Honestly, he could at least make an effort to look nice when we went out!”
Sirius would grunt and keep his nose buried in the paper, like he wasn’t paying attention. Remus would drink the coffee because she had made some, nodding ever so sympathetically, though Sirius could see he was trying not to smile. After all, they knew James’ shortcomings better than most. It wasn’t that he didn’t care, or that he really wasn’t attentive or loving, he was just…
Well, male for starters.
“It’s like, now that we’re married, he doesn’t have to put anything into it, doesn’t have to help me or pay me any mind. I’m his laundry woman and his cook! I’m just some wench in an apron - ”
The sound of music suddenly filtered in from the living room, an old song by the sound of the tinny recording and the arrangement. There was a smooth, buttery voice painting a picture through the instruments, stretching a hand out and inviting everyone to take a closer look. And James was singing with it -
“The very thought of you and I forget to do
The ordinary little things that everyone ought to do”
James wasn’t really a singer. He could keep on key, but that was about it.
Lily waved her wand to get the dry dishes in the cupboards, blinked angrily and went out to investigate. “What’s he doing home this early…?”
Sirius and Remus got up and obediently followed, like good canines should.
James was dancing around the living room with an imaginary partner, dipping her this way and that, moving about the floor as though no one was home, his bare feet making barely registered sounds on the rug. “I’m living in a kind of daydream, I’m happy as a king/And foolish though it may seem, to me that’s everything…”
“What’s this now?”
He let the song go on without him when he heard her voice, turned around with surprising grace, holding a hand out to her. “Dance with me.”
Lily tried to continue glaring as she had been, but there was that grin. That goofy, stupid grin and those hazel eyes that he couldn’t see out of properly without his silly glasses. She crossed the floor to him willingly, her pronouncement of “you sod,” somewhat diminished by the radiant smile on her face and the way she slipped so easily into his arms.
James twirled her in close and spun her around the room effortlessly. “I see your face in every flower, your eyes in stars above… It’s just the thought of you, the very thought of you, my love…”
Well, well. Seemed there was something to learn from him after all.
On their fourth circle around the coffee table, James finally noticed that there were guests in the room, but it didn’t slow his steps. He leveled them with a would-be stern expression. “Naff off,” he commanded affectionately. “I’m planning on making slow, passionate love to this woman right on that very couch in a short while, and I don’t want you two poofs looking on.”
Lily turned red and buried her face in his shoulder, laughing.
Remus snorted amusedly and went to fetch his coat.
Sirius winked at his friend before following.
* * *
It had all changed Sirius slowly, over time, words and signals piling up and giving him the map that he needed, ideas to try and leave for dead, what to say and what definitely not to. He thought he had done well, all things considered. Damn well, if he were honest.
More than damn well, if he were feeling impudent, which he always was.
After all, what other bookish, silent, fastidious types could brag about having a boyfriend who wore a black leather jacket and often grabbed his arse in public?
Not bloody many.
And now he had to leave or risk running late.
Sirius was at James and Lily’s; he’d come over to sit around the radio and listen to the Quidditch match with them, but now he was straightening his coat in front of the hall mirror. He had changed in the loo, left his other clothes in their linen closet for now. The suit made him look practically decent, he thought, as he adjusted his tie again.
“Oooo, love. Oooo, lover boy, watcha doing tonight? Hey boy…” he heard behind him, the lyric a special favorite of the singer in question. There was a pause, and then Lily’s reflection was in the glass too, her chin resting on his shoulder from where she stood on tiptoe at his back. “Don’t you look adorable.”
Well, not anymore he didn’t. Now he looked disgusted. “‘Adorable’ is not a suitable replacement for ‘charming and desirable.’”
She rolled her eyes and went for it again. “Fine then. You look very fine tonight, Mr. Black.”
He grinned, appeased, tugging at the lapel of his black wool coat. “He’s getting off work late tonight. He needs someone to take him out after all that.”
“Here, here,” she agreed, taking the scarf out of his hand and wrapping it about his neck in a tousled, devil-may-care fashion, as she knew he wouldn’t have it any other way. “You clean up so nicely when you want to.”
“I really do, don’t I?”
She cuffed him lightly in the temple. “What’s the occasion?”
Sirius shrugged. “No occasion. Just felt like it, is all.”
Lily’s eyebrows raised knowingly, her smile small and secretive. “Well, look at that. A romantic, you.”
“I am not!” Sirius exclaimed, clapping a hand to his chest like the very idea might cause coronary failure. He shouted into the other room. “James!”
“What? I’m trying to hear the match!”
“James, tell your wife that I’m not a bloody romantic!”
“That man has not one romantic bone in his bloody sapient frame! You got the better end of the deal, sweetheart!”
“Yes, as I’m constantly reminded!” she called back, watching Sirius smirk at her.
“There, you see? Not a romantic.”
“Whatever pleases you,” said Lily, shoving him toward the door. “You can’t fool me.”
But Sirius wasn’t planning on walking. He’d waited too long. Once outside the door his brow furrowed for a moment, and then he was standing outside Remus’ flat building.
He wasn’t being a romantic, he decided as he climbed the steps. He was trying to see what happened if he really put everything to use. Sure, he’d tried bits and pieces here and there, but Sirius wanted to go full stop tonight. Try things the right way. For the bookish, silent, fastidious type.
That wasn’t romantic. It was practical. It was a wise, charming and desirable move.
When he answered the door he was dressed, but his hair was still damp.
“You could have given me more of a warning,” Remus said, toweling his head dry.
Sirius really didn’t see what the problem was and continued on as though Remus was in the best of moods. He smiled that patented one of his, crazy so no one could argue with him. “I sent you an owl.”
The smile, shockingly, did not seem to have any effect whatsoever. Remus continued furiously scrambling his hair with the threadbare, dingy towel. “It got there ten minutes before I left work! Oh, and lovely message, by the way: ‘Surprise, I’m picking you up after work, dress nice, we’re going out.’ That’s really something you should let me know about ahe - ”
“Would you rather I tried using the telephone at James and Lily’s next time?”
Remus held one hand up in a stop-please-now gesture and said, “No!” far too quickly.
Sirius frowned inwardly. This was not how this was supposed to be going. It was all planned out in his head, and this certainly wasn’t the start that he’d pinned up in his mind. He had to turn it around right here, or risk an entire evening like this.
But Remus was still talking. “Even if you had told me earlier in the day, maybe I could have gotten off work early, if I’d known you were in such need of attention as to come over right when I - ”
Sirius wrapped his fingers around the back of Remus’ neck, pulling him forward until their lips met. He was cautious, certain not to be over-demanding, allowing a chasteness that he normally wouldn’t because it was the right way to stop the rambling. For now. Because that was what they needed; some silence right then, a moment to say hello properly, like people. They didn’t do that much anymore. They didn’t have a lot of time.
And it felt really good.
Remus’s mouth was warm and soft, welcoming without intending to be, just pliant enough against his own, and when he made that soft exclamation in his throat the resulting vibration tickled Sirius everywhere, drew his mind up into a corkscrew of pleasure and expectation.
How he was able to collect so much from one innocent kiss that he was supposed to be pushing for his own reasons, was a mystery that he would not linger on. He’d probably had one ale too many with James early on.
He broke from Remus only inches from his face, watching him draw his breath a little faster through wetted lips, watching his eyes try to focus on air and heat. “I wanted to surprise you,” Sirius told him, and his voice was quiet, full of hope. “I thought it would be fun.”
Suddenly the brown-eyed young man looked so very guilty and Sirius crowed on the inside. He’d already won. But he wasn’t going to gloat, not tonight. Tonight he was going to do this just right. “You don’t have to,” he said, making sure the edge of his tone was just a little weak, “but come out with me tonight, Remus. Please.”
“…All right.”
As if any other answer had been an option.
“Good,” said Sirius, and there was that old grin again as he raised his wand to Remus’ head and murmured something that blew his hair upward in a single gush of air, drying it instantly.
Remus grabbed Sirius’ wand hand after that, a surprising show of strength in the grip that made his blood pump just a tad faster. “You know I hate it when you do that without warning,” he scolded. “It burns, I told you.”
Sirius tried to twist away, but Remus held him fast by the wrist, the grip of those long, thin fingers more brittle than the grindylows he spent so many late nights studying. It was all part of a game. Remus wasn’t mad, not really. Annoyed, certainly, but not angry. Sirius had discovered early that it was good to allow him this, his annoyances. He preferred the petty grievances instead of the alternative. They were safer.
“I’m sorry,” Sirius finally said, his eyes tattling on him, showing that he wasn’t at all.
Remus didn’t seem to mind much and let him go. “Where are we going, then? It better be someplace good because I’ll be very put out if I dressed up for nothing.”
Sirius knew he was being teased and put it to good use, smoothing his hands down over his spotless clothes, tossing his head so that his hair flew rakishly into his eyes. “Why, you know I always dress this impeccably for fish and chips, Moony,” he shot back, and without another word of warning, he grabbed Remus firmly by the arm and Apparated them both.
They came out in a dark alley and Remus tripped, too thrown by the unprompted lurch to keep upright. He fell forward, crushing Sirius up against the brick side of a building, his sternum pressed to Sirius’ shoulder. “That was also something you should have - ”
“Warned you about ahead of time?” Sirius finished, his smile shaping lasciviously in the dark as he felt Remus’ heart pound through his jacket.
Remus lifted his head and looked at Sirius, his returning smile decidedly calculated, as though he had figured something out and was now prepared to play his part. “Quite. So, this is where we’re dining? The décor leaves something to be desired.”
“Funny,” Sirius said seriously. “No really, that was good. It’s around the corner actually, unless you fancy staying out here and freezing to death.”
Remus stared at him a moment longer before taking a step back and nodding slowly. “Lead on, then.”
Sirius did, revealing their position to be around a corner from a restaurant that looked like the sort of place you couldn’t get into without signing over your first born or your birthright. Since neither of them had either of those things, it was making the lankier of the two of them stiffen.
“They have a basement, right?” Remus said in a wouldn’t-be nervous voice, like he could really make the joke fly if he could just stop his eyes from widening so much.
“Don’t be absurd,” Sirius sighed. “And don’t make that face. Come on.”
He almost thought that he had shocked Remus into keeping his mouth shut. Almost. Until they reached the concierge, and a hand was holding Sirius back as they were being led to their table.
“Sirius!” Remus hissed as softly as he dared, looking around to be certain he wasn’t making too much of a scene. “This is ridiculous! And too expensive, we can’t do this!”
“Yes, we can,” Sirius whispered back, decisively not matching Remus’ desperate air. “We can because I say so, now follow me or I will turn your suit lavender and frilly.”
Remus grit his teeth and did as he was told, sitting down across from Sirius at a beautiful table by the window. When he got hold of the menu, he did another double take and gripped the white tablecloth as though it were the only thing responsible for keeping him on the ground. “Sirius, this is not - ”
But Sirius was busy ordering wine, turning back to Remus with a smile once the waiter had gone. He frowned again when he saw brown eyes glaring and trapped, staring him down. Sirius tried for a tactic. “You know, when we were younger, before… well, before, and you used to glare at me like that, it made me excited and I never knew why. Funny, isn’t it?”
He wasn’t even lying. It had gotten him into trouble on more than one occasion, that scolding glare. Made him want to start fires. Luckily, as they had gotten older, the fire became a different kind, and Hogwarts was spared.
Sirius’ surprising honesty naturally diffused space between with a withdrawal from the other side of the table, but it didn’t fix a thing because Remus did something worse once their wine was brought to the table: he sulked. Swirling darker-than-blood liquid in his glass, the break in between his eyebrows creased and the world went three shades greyer.
It should be noted that even in a place like this, Sirius wasn’t above infantile behavior. He pulled an ice cube out of his water glass and chucked it at Remus’s dithering face. “Stop it. Stop caring so much about how your suit looks, and what everyone else thinks of you and us, and have a good time with me.”
Remus took the ice cube from his lap and placed it into his own water glass with a sigh. “We can’t all have your bravado, I’m afraid. And I still look ridiculous in a place like this.”
“Will you relax? They probably just think you’re some adorable academic who finally managed to break with his books long enough to enjoy his genius grant money.”
“Oh, you are feeling witty tonight, aren’t you?” Remus drawled unimpressed, but Sirius saw some of the tension leave his shoulders, and it prompted him to wink.
Any other dinner, anywhere else, Sirius would have engaged in a good game of footsy by now. His feet could never stay still all the way through a meal, he had too much energy to suppress. But, as that was out of the question tonight, he reverted to his old school habits, tapping his right foot so swiftly he began to wonder that he wasn’t making a hole in the carpet.
Had he been paying closer attention, he would have noticed that Remus’ foot inched forward once or twice, looking for something it would seem.
The waiter was approaching again. “What are you getting?” Sirius asked quickly so he could make the order.
“The chicken breast, I think.”
“That’s the cheapest dish they have.”
Remus stared at the scripted menu resolutely. “I like chicken.”
The waiter came to the table, looked questioningly back and forth as Sirius handed back both menus. “I’m having the lamb,” he said with a small smile. “He’ll have the duck.”
There was no time to protest. The waiter was off in a snap.
Remus was glaring again.
Sirius wanted to hold the flickering candle sitting inches away from his fingers against their tablecloth.
By the time they had finished their main courses, Remus was just drunk enough to not be bothered over the dessert menu that was set into his hands, and he looked over the items with a sleepy, well-fed interest. Sirius was having a hard time focusing on his own menu, instead rather caught up in how untouched Remus’ skin looked under soft light, how every swallow and motion of his throat drew the eye terribly, how fucking beautiful his hands were when he held something gently.
Perhaps he was a little drunk too, because the next words out of his mouth were, “I love you.”
Remus snorted and continued down the list, his eyes presumably coming to land on something all-important, like de gateau au chocolat. “I should hope so,” he intoned lazily, not sounding awed in the slightest. “It would be rather sad for you to force all this on someone who you didn’t like very much.”
Sirius wasn’t hurt. In fact, he laughed. He was rather pleased that Remus was playing it that way. It made it more challenging for him.
And so dessert became a game of Making Remus Laugh. Sirius had played it before. He was good at it. Good because he was reckless, and didn’t care how strangely everyone else in the restaurant looked at him, and also because Remus laughing always made him smile brilliantly, and he knew that Remus waited for that.
After dessert, he made the wise move of excusing himself from the table and paying the check in secret up front, so there would be no arguments.
And then they were out on the street again walking side by side, shoulder to shoulder, the way they both liked it. Remus nudged Sirius, staring down at his shoes, his cheeks flushed from the cold and leftover alcohol. “I know I can really be a pain for you sometimes, but… thank you. For this. It was lovely, and you must have planned it ages ago to get it all worked out so nicely.”
Sirius didn’t say anything, only stared ahead serenely. The silence settled contentedly for a few minutes more until Remus spoke again. “It’s getting late. And cold. I think we should be Apparating back.”
Sirius tried not to smirk too obviously. “Wrong again,” he said.
Remus glanced sideways at him, confused and already apprehensive.
“I worked hard to set this up right, and I can’t leave her on the street overnight.”
The pretty flush was gone in a matter of seconds. “No. No, Sirius, I can’t.”
“You will.”
“No.”
Indeed, as the rounded their final corner there stood the beloved Bike, as promised, faithful and glistening under the streetlamps. Nothing could tarnish that lady, even under phosphorous. She was simply divine.
And Sirius didn’t show signs of taking a “no” this time around.
“I promise, I’ll drive slower than my grandmother.”
“You always told me that your grandmother was a lunatic.”
Sirius swung one leg over the bike and settled in comfortably, looking back over his shoulder at nervous eyes. “Ah, but that doesn’t say anything about how fast she drives now, does it?”
“I feel the burning premonition of being caught on a technicality,” Remus deadpanned.
“Aren’t you bright. Come on, on you go.”
“We’re not dressed for it.”
Sirius’ quirked an eyebrow. “Are you kidding? The suit makes it even sexier. You really need to get out more, Moony.”
He was almost inclined to feel guilty. He knew Remus was truly concerned, that this wasn’t one of his ridiculous attempts to be “the good one” in his group of friends. But really, it was an irrational fear. And Sirius, for all his audacity and daredevil stunts, was actually a good driver.
“Sirius…”
He reached out and grabbed Remus by the edge of his jacket, tugging him closer, waiting until he had his eyes. “Will you please. Trust me. This once. I won’t let you fall, you know I won’t. Hell, Remus you’ve faced a lot worse than a bloody motorbike in your life, I don’t know why you should be afraid of anything in the whole damn world.”
Remus blinked rapidly at the words, as though years of reasoning was crumbling from his sturdy frame, ruining his balance, and now he had nothing left to do but to take a deep breath and a flying leap. In reality, that was exactly what was happening. He had nothing stopping him, nothing real, and he couldn’t deny it. Shaking his head with a half-smirk already creeping into his features, he got on the motorbike behind Sirius, pressed them together chest to back, and held onto Sirius like he was iron anchored to the earth.
And even when Sirius went a little too fast, even when he turned the corner sharp, even when he revved the engine so hard the bike thrummed and vibrated fiercely beneath them, Remus only clutched tighter, gasped longer, and smiled against Sirius’ shoulder like he was the summer sun after weeks of spring rain.
* * *
It had all certainly gone as planned. They had a lovely night to remember. A brief evening of respite amid the cacophony of time and war, a chance to feel like their lives, their affair was their own. A sharp reminder of the fact that it was real, it was all real, and it was deserved in one way or another. It was the only gift Sirius knew he could give without guilt or embarrassment, and it had worked. And so, in front of Remus’ door again, ending where he had started and feeling rather pleased with himself, he kissed Remus briefly, silently on the lips and stepped back.
Silver-in-the-shadows hair fell into Remus’ narrowed eyes as he tilted his head just a bit, clearly confused as to what that meant, but Sirius only smiled back. “All right then. I suppose I’ll be heading out.” He turned in the direction of the stairs, coiled spring already prominent in his step.
A deadly quiet fell there, the calm before an earthquake.
“The hell you will.”
Before he had time to react, Remus had grabbed him by his scarf and tugged him back violently, without any of the calm trepidation of the evening, and then they were kissing, kissing like they hadn’t all night, with every part of their bodies and Remus’ hands fisted in his shirt against his back, and a complete disregard for the world around them, the neighbors who might leave their homes and find them this way, and Sirius had never been made to feel dizzy so quickly in all his life….
He let Remus pull him into the flat, let him tug their coats off and toss them haphazardly on the floor. And when Remus toed off his shoes and Sirius tripped over them, he let Remus laugh because it was funny and he laughed too.
Suddenly, he was pressed up against the wall and a very persistent tongue was tracing the line of his jaw, melting bone and thought with such a light touch -
Sirius moaned low and soft, biting his lip as his knees began to shake.
Remus noticed. “Are you all right?”
“Oh… yes, I think so,” he replied with wild eyes, his tone shining light on how truly ridiculous he thought that question was. “I just… I think we need to actually make it to bed this time.”
There was a slow chuckle there and the brush of lips as Remus smiled against his cheek. It was a joke between the two of them really, an amusement because it happened so rarely that they actually found themselves in a place with blankets and proper back support, even more rare in Remus’ flat where the moth-eaten bed creaked like the opening of doors in a cheap horror film. In school it had been different, behind closed four-poster curtains or not at all, and it seemed that once they were free of that constraint they made it their business to never be confined again.
But tonight Sirius wanted the solidity of a bed, the meaning in sharing it that made him more than just a good lay. Not that he ever felt that was all he meant to Remus, never, not with the way those clever eyes lit on him in shade or sunlight, always waiting for an answer with a terrifying fervor that Sirius was never quite sure he deserved.
Remus was looking at him like that right now. Taking Sirius’ hand with no lack of urgency, he pulled him down the short hall and into the bedroom, crossing the threshold on another promising kiss.
Sirius didn’t want to break from that kiss, even when Remus tried to back out of his arms, and it made the bookish one squirm and snigger. “Take your trousers and pants off, and get in my bed,” he demanded on a fluttering laugh against the corner of Sirius’ mouth, throwing him back with a gentle shove.
Sirius, for his part, raised his eyebrows effectively. “Just my trousers and pants?”
The look on Remus’ face was subversiveness incarnate. “Just.”
Sirius forced a chuckle when he really felt more like gulping, and did as he was told. Remus had turned around, pulling his shirt off with his back to Sirius, his skin dull and less angry in the lack-light. It seemed like a move of avoidance, privacy even, but they both knew that wasn’t the case. There were deeper scars around Remus’ flanks; his choice to expose that to Sirius first was trust, honesty. Proof that Remus didn’t have doubts about Sirius’ sincerity.
And Sirius needed that assurance, needed it because so few people trusted him that way, knew him well enough to understand that not everything was a joke no matter how hard he sneered at it.
His part in this was simple, and he found that the chill in the room had less to do with the crack in the unreliable window and more to do with how his stomach dipped and swerved at the knowledge of the charged room, the man standing across from him in darkness, the awareness that they weren’t children anymore and that they were about to do something very unchildish indeed.
The way Remus felt no shame about this, the way embarrassment never painted a sheen on his beautifully wounded skin, made Sirius feel much smaller than his just-ten-centimetres-shorter-than-you-dammit.
He just had to stop contemplating and let it happen. He wasn’t sure why he was thinking so hard about it tonight when they did this so often. When they had for a few years now.
Sirius flopped down on the bed once he’d squared his part of the deal, feeling less wrong about being so exposed now that he was in a place that called for it. Everyone felt less guilty being naked in bed, he thought.
With all the wolfish grace his thin feet retained, Remus turned in one fluid motion, smiling sharply at how well his directions were followed. It seemed that a bare chest was as far as he would go for now, in favor of pouncing instead, rushing to the bed and crawling over his prey. But when he stared down, Sirius saw too much conversation in those piercing eyes.
Sirius’ thumb found a nipple without even looking, moving circular in hopes of shorting out coherent thought and leaving all the discussion for some other time. Remus didn’t seem unhappy with that for the moment, allowing the touch, the shimmer in his eyes melting out to his eyelashes when they touched his cheek, while his tongue began searching Sirius’ skin for their favorite sweet spots.
But then things were moving a great deal faster, as though the ease was too bothersome for Remus to handle, and Sirius could only listen to the syllables catching in his own throat as his shirt was unbuttoned, his own hands guided to a worn belt around slim hips. He took the cue and made short work of the fastenings in a haze of simplicity, wondered awkwardly at how he was being straddled and smoothed over like fine canvas.
Everything paused in Sirius’ reality for a moment, went heavy, covered in something sweet and thick, like syrup maybe.
Remus was murmuring into the curve of his ear, the air from his lungs teasing already overeager skin so that Sirius couldn’t breathe for fear of cursing a streak bluer than his favorite cloudless sky. “I can’t believe you thought I’d just let you leave after all of that.”
“Well, I didn’t think you’d - ”
“What?” A casual nip at his jaw that made his hips jerk like a novice. “You thought that after an evening like that I’d be keen on spending my night in a cold, empty bed, remembering all the times during dinner when I’d wanted to touch you and held back?”
He could tell that Remus was feeling playful and wanton, could tell by the way he was pressing himself so close, like he wanted their bodies to meld without regard for clothing, for personal boundaries, for the physics that they had never learned. In spite of that irresistible pull, that returning and neverending pressure of one unscarred mouth, he managed to wonder at the idea of self control, especially now, when they were so far away from its territory. “Why did you do that?” he said dimly between short, sliding caresses against his lower lip. “I wasn’t stopping you.”
“Yes, but you seemed to have a plan. I didn’t want to disrupt.”
Sirius finally broke from those lips, shock registering in his abruptly-focused eyes, his jaw slackening from something that had nothing to do with Remus’ hands or his kiss. “So you thought this whole thing was just some… what? Elaborate seduction?”
“Well, I’d hoped so after the lengths you went to….” Remus’ eyes darkened. Things went terrifyingly quiet in the dark. He stopped laughing, splayed one hand across Sirius’ chest to give pause. “Wait a minute. You weren’t. You really weren’t trying to….” The connection had been made too late, a recognition that dawned with awful displacement. “Sirius, why did you do this for me tonight?”
Sirius took a shaky breath, suddenly feeling caught, which was an odd position for him to be in. He wished that he weren’t trapped beneath those brown eyes, that he had some say in where he was placed for this. It was best to tell the truth of the matter. Remus wouldn’t settle for less and he shouldn’t have to. “Because….”
He licked his lips and tried again.
“Because you deserve it. Because I wanted to give you something, something a little different. Because there should be at least one day where I do everything for you with no thought of myself in the mix. Where I can’t be selfish.”
It seemed that there was the place where Remus’ breath caught, where all the tension in his body fell away to reveal something far less urgent, more scathingly tender.
Sirius meant for his next words to come out sarcastically, but they simply wouldn’t. “Sometimes being selfish can grow to be quite tiresome, you know, especially when people expect it of you.”
And then something in Remus’ face crumpled, and Sirius’ immediate thought was that he had damaged something sacred, that maybe he shouldn’t have been so honest, but when Remus spoke again his voice seemed strong enough.
“So… when you said you loved me, you really were - ”
Sirius leaned up and claimed his lips again, refusing to allow that sentence through to its logical conclusion.
Remus whimpered against his mouth in frustration, but then kissed back hard, harder than Sirius would have ever dared, bit until their teeth clashed, as though he had to devour Sirius whole for his unforgivable kindness. It seemed that neither of them had the capacity for this, to understand it and give over to it without a fight, and fight they did, Remus’ teeth at Sirius’ neck, Sirius’ hands tearing into Remus’ ribcage, his hair, shouting out when Remus’s strong fingers pinched in supple places.
This wasn’t like the scuffles they had during full moons, all about dominance and animal play, this was dissatisfaction, inability to say what needed to be said, two men who were still just boys and couldn’t reconcile difficulty without a tussle. Remus, despite his eloquence with words, was no better at speaking his emotions than Sirius. If anything, he was worse at it, completely without Sirius’ ability to explode when he needed it most.
And so they continued to roll and push and cuff, and when someone from the floor below hit the ceiling with what had to be a broom or an umbrella and yelled at their racket, they laughed so hard that tears leaked out of their eyes and tongues lapped out to taste precious salt. Now they bore down hard on the bed just to make it creak, make it exasperate and scandalize, and in the midst of it they somehow realized that they were getting rid of Remus’ unbuckled trousers, his pants, that there was only skin now and the flavor of tears.
“Want you…” Remus whispered as he ran his hands down Sirius’ sides, his body rocking in an obscenely slow and deep rhythm, the only kind that either of them had any talent for. Sirius gasped, closed his eyes, let it take him. He had no strength to resist, and he was so far beyond apprehension now that the feel of Remus’ skin was enough to make him murmur creative blasphemies, lush and vulgar.
Fingers traced patterns in sweat -
There was a growl and a kiss, then another -
Names were shouted, gasped, turned on a breath as someone was taken, slow and hard, and the broom or umbrella didn’t dare knock again when Remus was moaning like that….
Find a rhythm -
Press there -
Beg because you’ve been reduced to it and you don’t even care -
“Ooooohhhfuck, yes…”
Don’t stop, don’t ever stop -
And when Sirius came that night with Remus sprawled on top of him, urging him on while he slammed back against the headboard and screamed, he knew instantly, with such clarity, that even without being selfish there was no way he could do anything for Remus without doing it for himself. Because every part of him was so wrapped up in this.
And it didn’t fucking matter.
Screw the rules. And the advice. Even if everyone else was right you couldn’t spend your life copying lessons out of other peoples notes, it didn’t work that way, didn’t make you good at anything except pantomime. And that wasn’t what he had.
At the end of the day, all that mattered was that you were sweating and rumpled and breathless, spent on a bed with the springs popping into your back and tangling limbs with the sharpest elbows in all of England.
“Ow! Watch where you stick that, you almost broke my nose!”
“Sorry, Padfoot.”
All that mattered was being here just this way.
And maybe that was old-fashioned of him. It was fine. He didn’t bloody well care. Not even when Remus cleared his throat like he was feeling clinically nervous.
“Sirius?”
“Mm?”
“I… I do love you too, you know.”
Sirius smiled that soft smile that so few knew about, the one that Remus had noticed first, and barked a laugh. “Shut up, Moony.”
Teeth scraped playfully at his shoulder in reply.
“I’m not going back to my flat tonight.”
Remus sighed too sadly amidst his afterglow. “I have to work tomorrow.”
“I don’t give a hippogriff’s arse. I’m not going home.”
Sirius didn’t have to see the grin on Remus’ face as he curled in closer, jabbing Sirius’ ribs accidentally again. “Good.”
Remus was grateful, always grateful. Treasured what he had because he’d never thought that he would be allowed to have it. And in that respect, he would never know how much the two of them were alike.
Sirius had never thought that he would be allowed to stay the night anywhere. Certainly not in someone’s arms.
Never in these arms.
Even as he drifted off, he could hear Lily’s voice taunting him at his earlier petulant denials. Luckily, Remus’ half-snores drowned out her know-it-all lecturing. She really should learn when to keep her mouth shut and let him be.
END